This fanfic picks up with Harry four years after the defeat of Voldemort. Harry is 21 and lives with Ron, Hermione and Ginny in a small apartment in London. He and Ron both work for the ministry, Hermione is perusing S.P.E.W. and Ginny is a member of the holly head harpies (keeping in line with what JKR has told us about their post Hogwarts experience). Here however we veer off the course that JKR has set and explore a scenario that doesn't include the kids, etc. Some of the things I write may seem a little bit out of character but I tried to remain to true what I felt was the deepest sense of the characters while also allowing room for them to mature. Enjoy!
I acknowledge that none of these wonderful characters belong to me but are the property and creation of the always brilliant J.K. Rowlling. I thank her for building a world that is truly complex and beautiful for all of us to enjoy.
The Cave, Ch. 3
Hunger, dark. Food, light. Hunger, dark. Food, light. His list of problems and their respective solutions were on a loop, like a broken record around the spindle of his mind. If only he had a wand, his problems would dissolve. If he had a wand, he could see. If he could see, he could find food. The logic was circular and yet oddly direct. It always seemed to start with magic and end with food. He balled up his fists and pushed his back into the cave wall where he sat next to Draco. This was only their third day in the cave but the effects of the isolation were readily becoming apparent to Harry. He was familiar with them after his months of Horcrux chasing. What he wouldn't give for that lifestyle right now. Sure, he had been on the run, afraid for his own life and the lives of those who depended on him, but he had also been sure that he had something worth fighting for; a purpose driving him forward. And at least he had had his two best friends with him. Draco served as a poor substitute in his opinion.
Draco's head made a weight on his shoulder. He briefly considered telling him off. He had fantasized about taking out all of his frustration on the boy sitting next to him, pushing him violently into the unseen depths of the cave and throwing his fists until they came into contact with something warm and fleshy. He wanted so badly to believe that the situation that he was in had been concocted by Draco and could be diffused by violence. However, after the past two days of near ceaseless conversation he had learned a few things about the young man. None of those things suggested that he would ever leave himself wandless, if he could help it.
And so with balled up fists he pushed in on his temples, willing them to stop throbbing. When he did this his wrists became hot with tension and the pain seemed to, at least for very brief moments, subside ever so slightly. Maybe his touch still had some magic, he thought, maybe if he just thought hard enough, imagined the spells moving from ephemeral to concrete, they would spring to life, each one a slight miracle just for existing. It would not matter what they did or if in fact they did nothing at all, but the red and green sparks would hold the power of hope for him. Draco's head lifted, leaving a cold spot where he had once been.
The two hadn't spoken for hours, not since they had woken up to Harry's cries. He couldn't really say that he was embarrassed, though if Draco had reacted any other way to him he probably would've been. In truth, Draco hadn't reacted much to him at all. He had quietly informed Harry of the non-substantive nature of his visions and hadn't said much more. His reaction had not really been verbal but still Harry felt as though his simple returned embrace was enough to let him know that it was alright, that there was no need to be ashamed. He had woken up holding Draco in the same way that he had in his sleep: from behind with one arm under his head and the other arm, elbow bent, coming up across his chest. Draco had held his arms firmly as if giving affirmation to the claim that he was truly still alive. He held on tightly without any complaint as Harry heaved wet sobs into his shoulder.
Certain things were a blur from the experience – the least of which not being the vision itself, which had been so vivid at the time but had now faded into sudden snapshots – while other details stood out like neon signs set against the back drop of dark-windowed shops. He couldn't remember how long they had been embraced but felt as though he could remember the tone of every heartbeat that synced between the two of them. He couldn't recall why he had decided to stand and break their contact, but he could've sworn that Draco had held onto his hand for just a split second longer than was necessary. All of these things – the feeling of his skin, slick with sweat, the softness of his hair, while tangled and knotted – created a comforting but incomplete mosaic of experiences for him to reflect on. The taste of sweat and saltwater, the sound of his own sobs and Draco's hushing sounds, the smell of the dank stagnant air, the feeling of Draco's warm body shivering against his own... but no sight. He pushed in on his temples again and tried to force the pain away. Once more he found the slightest respite in his fists.
Maybe, he thought, maybe if I just feel strong enough, magic will happen. As a child this had been possible though unfocused and tended to have unintentional consequences. He didn't want to set the ground on fire by accident. No, adding third degree burns to his situation was hardly desirable. Perhaps just having the training that I have will enable me to focus, he rationalized. Lumos, he thought to himself without conviction, and opened his eyes. Nothing. Non-verbal spells hadn't come very easily to him so perhaps it was just a matter of trying harder. Lumos, he thought again, feeling silly even in the confidence of his own thoughts. Okay, one last time, he thought and tightened his muscles. He cleared his mind and thought of nothing but light, pouring into the cave from anonymous sources, hitting the dust particles that hung almost magically in the air, refracting miniscule spectrums towards his starving eyes. This light could illuminate everything but it was everything. Lumos!
It started with a tingling in his finger tips like pins and needles. It worked its way down to his wrists and up to his shoulders until his arms seemed to vibrate with the tension. At first he thought his mind was playing tricks on him, as the faint blue was barely discernable from the darkness. He pushed harder, willing the magic to flow through him. Slowly, but undeniably, tiny pearls of light began to gather at his finger tips. They were the grey-blue of early dawn on a stormy day, the light already once diffused by storm clouds, fighting to peek through slightly parted curtains. The surface tension broke and the light began to pool in his cupped hands. He could feel Draco's eyes resting on him and turned to look at the other boy. His face, which was dirty on the side he had slept on, was frozen in shock, eyes wide and tearful, mouth slightly agape.
"H-h-how?" he finally mumbled in shock and amazement.
"I don't know," said Harry with a face on that he was certain mirrored Draco's.
Draco dipped a quivering finger carefully into the pool of light that was continuing to fill Harry's open palms. As he withdrew, Harry could see that the light could stick like paint to whatever it touched. Draco traced his finger along the wall of the chamber in the form of a spiral and began to grin. The grin turned into a laugh and the laugh turned into a holler of triumph.
"Harry, how! You have magic!" Draco shouted and clasped Harry's shoulders. Snapped out of his shock by the contact, Harry stood quickly and almost hit his head on the low ceiling.
"I don't know!" he repeated almost stubbornly. "I just, I don't even know what I did but it happened!" he stuttered out quickly. The liquid light was beginning to overflow from the uneven edges of his finger tips. He quickly stepped out of the cavity and began walking towards the water without fully knowing why. All he knew was that food would likely come from the water. He could hear Draco running to catch up with him and possibly trying to say something to him as well, but his head was buzzing so loud that he couldn't make any sense of what the other boy was trying to tell him. As he walked, he released little droplets to the ground as markers.
"Harry! Look at this!" Draco called in a voice that seemed uncharacteristically chipper for him.
"I can't!" Harry called back without turning his head. "I need to get to the water!" his voice shook with manic conviction.
"No, stop! Look around for a second!" Draco almost pleaded.
"What?" he snapped back, stopping to turn and look at Draco for the first time with disdain. "Oh." He had been so taken with the light itself that he had almost entirely forgotten that it held the power to illuminated the cave. The pool in his palm had gotten so bright that it shined in a pure white gleam, while the spatters he had left were different gradations of blue getting lighter and lighter as they neared his feet. While the cave walls had seemed to hold nothing but sharp edges and tripping hazards, upon closer observation they were very apparently sculpted into what looked almost like a living room. The shapes of chairs and a long table were carved superficially into the wall. Each piece of outlined furniture had little knobs placed haphazardly into its edges. The ceiling that Harry had felt in his first waking moments in the cave was not a mess of jagged stalactites and ridges but an organized set of shelves set back into a hollow running down the length of the cave. Strange artifacts rested upon them, stone plates and bowls, flatware, and cast iron and pewter cauldrons in different sizes. Various cooking implements lined the walls above the shelves and hung from metal hooks almost threateningly. Each metal instrument glinted in the light like a dentist's tools laid out on sterile counter tops for nervous patients to inspect.
"This must've been intentional. Whoever put us here is not trying to kill us," Draco whispered into a salt shaker shaped like a cat. Harry poured the liquid light into a marble soup bowl and found his hands were free of any residual signs of what he had just accomplished. He picked up the bowl and carried it over to Draco.
"This is incredible," Harry said, looking into the glowing soup bowl, his heart still racing. Each one of the chair shapes had little stone knobs sticking out of it. Harry set the bowl down carefully and grabbed two such knobs and pulled as hard as he could. Landing flat on his hind-side, he found quickly that the chairs could be pulled out of the wall with very little strength indeed.
"Don't know my own strength, I guess," he said, blushing timidly.
"Oh please, Potter. It's clear that your magic isn't the only magic present here, so don't flatter yourself," came Draco's curt reply. Harry's attention was immediately ripped away from the stone chair to the figure in front of him. He hadn't truly looked at Draco before. The boy looked strangely out of place in a baseball tee shirt with green sleeves that went down to his wrists and dark blue pajama pants with white pin stripes. He was almost as tall as Harry – though a little bit thinner – but something about the way he held himself made him seem slightly taller than he was. His hair was as blond as ever but darkened by the dirt that streaked it. His face, which at the moment bore the unmistakable lines of annoyance, was pale and rigidly cut with a solid brow and jaw line, high-set cheek bones and a pointed nose. Everything about his demeanor reeked of aristocracy despite his attire. It seemed as though, in spite of having lost everything from his inheritance to his name, he maintained the Malfoy sense of pride and entitlement. Harry found himself immediately put off by this. While Draco may not have the Malfoy name at his aid, he certainly had not been transfigured into a common citizen. Harry shifted uncomfortably under the accusatory gaze of his fellow captive, feeling suddenly self-conscious of his own appearance. Straightening himself as much as he could, he decided to speak.
"What's your problem all of the sudden?" he said with impatience to match Draco's expression. "This is a good thing, and had it not been for whatever just happened, we-"
"We what?" Draco cut him off. "We wouldn't be able to see all of the dishes and silverware that we having nothing to eat with? We're still in the same shit situation as before, only now I know that you've been holding out on me." He turned around abruptly as if to end the conversation, but Harry was hardly going to let this tantrum go unanswered.
"Holding out on you? You make it sound as though I could have done this all along!" he said furiously, grabbing Draco's arm and turning him around.
"Brilliant deduction, Potter! And I'm glad to see that your people skills have matured," Draco spat back, shaking his arm free of Harry's grip. "So where is it?"
"Where is what?' Harry said in honest confusion.
"Your wand you idiot! And while you're at it, I'd like an explanation for why you've brought me here!" Draco's eyes blazed with something that Harry had seen before. Paranoia. He had seen it far too many times in the eyes of his co-workers and even in his best friends. Eyes rapidly moving left to right, right to left, as if scanning one's peers, family, room, dishes, whatever, for any aberrant artifacts. Even with the Dark Lord defeated there were those who still feared being hunted, whether by former Death Eaters or even himself.
"Well?" Draco demanded though he had lost some of his conviction. All Harry could think to do was shrug. He raised his shoulders slowly so as not to appear threatening and lifted his hands, palm up to show how truly empty they were. The only sounds that could be heard through the cave were the distant trickling of water, the rapid breathing of the two boys and the soft clink of his bracelets as they slid down his forearm. And then all at once, Harry understood.
The plain expression on Harry's face disabled him. His conviction had lapsed and once again his walls were being breached. To say that he was embarrassed by his own barefaced and baseless claims would've been an understatement. He was mortified by his loss of control. What would Father think, a voice inside of his head mused. What kind of Malfoy loses an argument to a mute opponent? Then again, I suppose I'm not really a Malfoy, he concluded morosely. Harry had not presented him with any sort of undeniable proof that his claims had been outlandish, nor had he rebutted with the wit of a Shakespearian poet; indeed, the sight of him standing there in his black button-down with red pinstripes, jeans and dirty bare feet with his palms turned upwards in dismay, was almost comical. At least, it would have been comical had the simple gesture not signified the end of their argument and Draco's defeat. Of course Harry didn't have a wand, and of course he hadn't taken Draco as his captive. This was Gryffindor he was dealing with.
"We need to go to the waterhole," Harry said suddenly, completely derailing Draco's train of self-deprecation. Without another word he grabbed a teacup off of the shelf nearest Draco's head, forcing him to recoil. "You don't need to be so paranoid," Harry said in a placating tone. "I'm used to people being paranoid around me." This time his voice held the slightest hint of bitterness, though it did not seem to be directed towards Draco. He poured half of the light from his bowl into the teacup and shoved it unceremoniously into Draco's hand. "Come on, I'm hungry."And with that Harry turned on his heel and set off in a quick trot towards the pond.
"What?" Draco called out in dismay and frustration as he looked down at his tea cup. The least Harry could have done was act offended or have the decency to regard Draco as an opponent worthy of berating. But no, all he had done was tried to cut Draco's losses for him! It was such a patronizing gesture and in any normal situation Draco would've insisted on a proper fight. But as fate would have it, this was hardly normal, so with a short sigh he followed Harry to the water.
When he arrived, he found Harry slightly out of breath with his hands resting on his knees. His black hair was stuck to his forehead by the sweat that had beaded around his temples. All at once several things hit Draco. The first though least profound was his sense of emptiness, both in a physical and an emotional sense. His adrenaline had run dry and he suddenly remembered how fatigued he had been due to a lack of food and proper sleep. His knees felt as though they might buckle underneath him and his head began to spin.
"You okay?" Harry asked him off-handedly.
"Yeah, fine, just need to sit," he replied feeling quite the opposite of fine. He felt less as though he was sitting and more like the ground had come up rapidly to meet him. The second pit of emptiness hit him almost as abruptly as the first. A sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach formed like a lead weight had been dropped down his throat. He felt alone and panicked, like a child who had unwisely strayed too far from his mother's side in a crowded market place. The walls seemed to be closing in on him. The shadows mocked him as they moved gracefully across the cave walls. The cave walls. The last and most profound realization was held in the very walls that imprisoned him. They were beautiful. Every surface seemed to glitter and wink at him. The entirety of the cavern was lined with stones that glittered like stars.
"Are they diamonds?" Harry asked, having followed Draco's upward gaze.
"I don't know. No. They can't be." Draco said, in a higher voice than he had meant to.
"Then what is it?" Harry asked. His mouth hung open slightly and he vaguely reminded Draco of a child he had once spied at the Quidditch World Cup looking upwards in awe and amazement as the players sped past at unfathomable speeds. Draco walked carefully towards the wall, teacup clutched tightly in one fist as if it contained the very force that perpetuated him through life. He was familiar with diamonds. He had, on more than one occasion, snuck into his mother's quarters and opened the vault that contained her most prized jewelry. 55-19-80-77-7 and the lock clicked satisfyingly under his youthful fingertips each time, pregnant with the promise of the treasures that lay within. Rubies the size of his fists, diamonds that cast spectrums against the amethysts in an unrelenting, unceasing reproduction of beauty. He had decided then that his future would be decorated as such. The manor had a dankness to it, an inescapable sense of darkness that stuck to all who entered. Being the only child, he would surely be the one to inherit the manor and the riches of the vault. With jeweled hands he would fantasize about directing the house elves to spread the contents of his mothers room to the rest of the mansion.
"Line the garden walkway with the Glowing Goblin Gems, Biddy!" he would direct inside of his head. He could see the place brightening before him with precious stones opaque and translucent, all adding their unique cut and color to the very much uniform stencil of the manor. His father believed in having fine things, without a doubt. But to display such riches was a foolish whim.
"You take them out when it is useful to you," he had said after finding Draco adorned in rings, bracelets and – much to his embarrassment – his mother's wedding tiara. He was fourteen at the time and on a holiday break from Hogwarts. His father had not been cruel. He had not employed any unreasonable methods to teach Draco that what he was doing was against the rules. "For now my son, content yourself with green and silver. All of this and more shall be yours in due time. Until then, I would like for you to remember one thing," he paused for the briefest moment to make sure that Draco's attention had not strayed. "These things are beautiful of course, but they do not contain any power of their own. Beautiful things come with power, not the other way around." With those words he turned and began to leave, but before he reached the door he looked back and said, "Draco, I do expect you to never wear that tiara again. But for now, your secret is safe with me." The burning sensation that followed started in the hollows of his stomach and spread rapidly to his cheeks.
The secret in question had not been the simple adornment that Draco had been caught in; it was what it stood for. Of course he would still be expected to marry a woman, and one of his parents' choosing at that. He knew of old wizards who had had affairs with their younger male servants; people talked in the inner circles of higher wizarding society. These men often appeared alone, their wives were always 'unavailable at the moment' or 'on holiday for the month' and Draco supposed that these excuses held at least some truth. There was no doubt that they all had the money to go off to Spain or India for months at a time, but it hardly seemed like a proper marriage, producing an heir within the first year and then forgetting one another's faces. His parents' certainly were cold people, but without a doubt in his mind he knew that they loved each other and spent as much time together as they could afford to. He knew in that moment he would never be able to have a relationship like theirs in proper society.
When Draco had returned to the safe during the summer holidays that followed his fourth year he found, much to his chagrin, that the combination to the lock had been changed and was magically protected from Alohamora. Still, after all of these years, he hadn't forgotten the otherworldly glimmer of the stones as they had left an indelible impression on his young mind. He was very familiar with diamonds.
Slowly he reached into the pocket of his pajama pants and found something sharp; the rock that he had picked up to defend himself when he had first encountered Harry was warm from the heat of his thigh. He pulled out the stone and inspected it briefly before walking towards the wall of the cavern. Carefully he pressed hard against one of the larger crystals and drew the sharp edge across its surface against the grain. There gleaming back at him was the smallest, slightest scratch across the surface of the gem.
"It's probably some sort of quartz," he diagnosed finally. "Really, it's a fairly common-looking stone. Probably wouldn't get more than a few Knuts in Diagon."
"It's beautiful," Harry said as though not hearing a thing that Draco had said.
"Potter, why did we come here?" Draco asked. Harry snapped his head back towards Draco and, while slightly startled by the change in tone, he recomposed himself quickly and lifted up his left hand as if it held some significance.
"I don't know why I was able to do magic just now. I want to try something else this time." Harry had a slight grin on his face.
"What are you going to do?" Draco asked, half-afraid of the answer.
"I want to find some food. Our best bet is in the water." His tone gave away very few indicators as to how hopeful he felt about his hunch, but his face seemed alight with anticipation.
"Well, then go on! I'm half starved already, so if you're waiting for a reason-" but before Draco could finish Harry had already spoken the magic words.
"Accio, Fish!" he incanted enthusiastically. It was a strange sight to say the least, Harry with his arm out expectantly, awaiting the arrival of dinner as if beckoning an invisible chef. At first nothing happened. A frown started to pull at the corners of Harry's gaping mouth and the weight of their ordeal seemed to be settling back onto his shoulders. Then, quite suddenly, the water rippled. Harry beamed at Draco briefly and then with more confidence and closed eyes, held out both hands, one still holding the soup bowl and said once more, "Accio, Fish!", this time with much more immediate results. A small greyish fish flopped out of the water, just missing Harry's outstretched hands and hit him squarely in the nose.
"Bletch!" he said whipping his free hand across his face frantically. "Ha! Look!" he bent down and grabbed at the still flailing fish. "Food!" he grinned broadly.
"But how are you doing this without a wand?" Draco almost shouted in frustration. "There's no way that someone of our age, of our experience, or lack thereof, could do wandless magic, not with that kind of focus any way," he gestured towards the captive fish as though it was the offending party.
"Lack thereof? Are you mad? I battled Voldemort four separate times before what should've been my seventh year! What the fuck have you ever done with yourself? I've been dueling adults with far more training than I have since I was 12, and winning! But I'm sure you're well aware of that since one of them was your dear old dad and another was your twisted freak of an aunt! And aside from that I have done wandless magic, on a few occasions, and as a child, no less!" Harry had dropped the bowl on the ground at some point during his rant but Draco couldn't seem to remember it happening. All he could remember seeing was the bonfire that blazed behind Harry's glasses, the hard set line of his jaw, and his fists clenched so tightly that his white knuckles seemed to glow in the spattered mess of light at his feet.
"First of all, Potter," he spat the name as if it had left a bitter taste in his mouth, "most wizarding children do some sort of wandless magic and it is almost always volatile and unintentional," he spoke so quietly that Harry had to lean in closer to hear him over the trickling water. "The reason we must use wands is to direct the flow of our energy, our magic – ''
"Get to the point, Black," Harry cut in. It was the first time that Harry had called him by his new surname and it seemed oddly unnatural coming from him, as if the word didn't fit quite right on his tongue. Draco cringed at the sound but continued.
"The point, is that without a proper conduit for your magic to travel through, doing magic can be potentially deadly. It doesn't simply come from your hands or fingers as some might think. Certainly it is concentrated at the tips of your fingers, like nerve endings but you have nerve endings everywhere – "
"So what? If I cut my finger I don't feel it in my toe!" He simply wasn't getting it.
"Listen, Potter, you have a hard enough time getting simple concepts through that thick skull of yours when you're not constantly interrupting, so just let me fucking finish!" Draco shouted suddenly. Harry hardly acquiesced to the demand but was effectively silenced by the change in Draco's tone. "The nerve endings were a metaphor, clearly past your level of comprehension."
"I may be a captive audience right now, but I hardly have patience for your esoteric pathos. I do hope Your Highness might forgive me for my shameful lack of finesse," Harry's voice was almost as corrosive as the piercing gaze he continued to regard Draco with. He felt his insides squirm uncomfortably but knew he must stand his ground firmly in both a figurative and literal sense. He felt his feet itching to shuffle and his mind flashed back to an instance when his father had cast a similar gaze upon him in the dank cave-like bowels of Azkaban. Still he stood his ground.
"A wizard without a wand, could start a fire intentionally and fairly easily," he fought against the urge to grind his teeth as he spoke. He words were carefully measured and slow as if trying to explain a difficult concept to a child. Harry did not seem much more fond of this tone and furrowed his brow, but he didn't interrupt. "However, without a magical conduit of some sort, whether it's a wand, or a staff, or anything containing magical properties really – " he paused as he noticed Harry break his glare for the slightest moment and grab his right wrist "- said wizard would be more likely to set himself on fire than the fire pit in front of him. Magic is something that even the most scholarly and ancient wizarding families don't truly understand. There must be a way of channeling it and while, historically various cultures have developed various colorful ways to do so, the most effective seems to either be through the use of a wand, sometimes coupled with incantations or potions," he paused for a moment.
Whatever was allowing Harry to do what he had been doing, he was clearly aware of what it was. He had dropped his guard for the slightest fraction of a second when he had grabbed his wrist but that was all that Draco needed. Still he fought the urgent impulse to sneak a glance and the bony appendage. To give in to such a reflex would give what little he had managed to ascertain away. Draco had to admit to himself that as simplistic as Harry often made himself seem he was very quick and observant when he was on his guard. His best bet was to, at least for the moment, cater to Harry's sense of dominance, let him believe that even if he couldn't trust Draco, he was still in charge. The temporary façade would hopefully be enough for Draco to ultimately gain the upper hand. He simply needed to be patient.
"The last thing I must ask of you," he felt as though he might gag on the passiveness of the phrase. It would be worth it in the end, he assured himself and continued, "is that you not bring up my father again, whether with a negative or positive connotation, I don't care. Just don't mention him." In truth he wanted to strangle Harry for what he had said about battling his father. The whole incident stood as the beginning of the end of his creature comforts in life. Not to mention the veritable end of his family. Father's failure had forced Draco into the miserable death-destined spot of Dumbledore's assassin. His proud mother, head held high with righteousness in the previous years of his life, had done unspeakable 'favours' to gain his father's release. He felt his anger begin to rise but just as he felt he could no longer keep from screaming all manner of obscenities at the other boy, Harry's demeanor changed. His shoulders went from rigid and ready for attack to slack with exhaustion. His jaw, which had been clenched so tightly that the veins in his neck were a set of royal purple cords against the paleness of his skin, was now slackened though not entirely relaxed.
"Listen," he said somewhat amicably as he reached once again for his wrist to twirl the wooden beads of his bracelets, a nervous habit that had not been lost to Draco, "I do not know how I'm able to do this. I really don't," though his tone sounded believable his eyes seemed to falter and his words were almost too intentional. "There may very well be a conduit on me, one that maybe I don't recognize as an instrument," or do you?, Draco thought to himself. His guess came back as a resounding yes. "but in any event I seem to be able to do magic, with some level of control even if it is a little bit tricky. I think that this is the most positive thing that has happened to us, not just to me, so let's not get divided over this," he said reasonably. Draco thought about this for a few seconds, trying his best to look pensive, but still on edge. In truth he was giddy with excitement. The bracelets must be the answer, he simply knew it. Obtaining them would be the tricky part and manipulating Harry had always proven to be an elusive accomplishment for Draco. He regarded Harry briefly with a look of disdain that he hoped would be convincing. It must have been, because Harry's face softened even further as he took a tentative step towards Draco and spoke.
"I'm sorry about what I said about your father." the phrase appeared to cause him a sort of physical pain and Draco was hard-pressed not to show his satisfaction.
"Alright," he said making sure not to seem too comfortable. He regarded Harry with the slightest air of suspicion before sighing deeply and stepping towards him. He glanced at his toes as if they held the answer and then back up to Harry's face. "I don't think that that is going to be an adequate dinner for two full grown men, Lord Potter, summoner of pieces," he said, regarding the slimy sea dweller with mild disgust. Harry was trying to appeal to him now, and he didn't want to seem completely out of character, so a snarky comment was deemed both necessary and appropriate. Harry smiled broadly at him before summoning another fish, this time of more substance.
"I not a big fan of sushi to begin with," Harry said, after staring at the two dead fish for a few moments, seemingly perplexed.
"Well what seems to be the problem, Harry Potter, sole and divine ruler of cave magic?" Draco asked. Surely Harry had, in his time on the run, taken the time to learn how to conjure a smokeless fire. Sure, a regular non-magical fire would eat up the oxygen in the cave before they could asphyxiate on the smoke, but for the two of them conjuring a harmless one should be easy. "Well?" he prompted. Still Harry stared with ambivalence at the two fish, his brow knitted with concerted thought.
"I can't do it, I can't make a fire," Harry said as if his world was dissolving. "I mean I can make a fire, but the smoke would kill us. I have no idea how to create heat to cook them."
Draco felt his chest move steadily into his stomach with disappointment. "But in those months that you were out there? How did they not find you if you were smoking up the bloody forest every night?"
"Hermione always did it. I must've heard her recite the spell a hundred times but I simply don't know what it is," Harry said in a monotone that suggested his purposeful detachment from the situation at hand.
"There must be some way though!" Draco yelled in undirected anger. "Do you know any heating charms? We could boil them!" he suggested enthusiastically, staring at Harry, hoping that his head would suddenly turn and reflect an expression of recollection. But still Harry sat with his legs folded, elbows propping up his chin, and stared hard at the fish as if their scales held the answers like the pages of one of their long ago abandoned text books. Draco could hardly breathe, the situation was so unjust. Here they were, finally the holders of magic, stuck in a cave for three days without eating and they were staring at food they had no way of eating safely. Just as his spirits felt as they had sunken as low as they could however, Harry turned around with a quizzical look in his eyes. "What? Have you remembered the spell?" Draco chirped.
"No," Harry answered quickly and Draco felt himself become even crosser than before. "But, we could eat them raw if I cleaned them." Draco was already certain he didn't like any plan that involved eating raw fish.
"That's positively disgusting Potter! How are you going to clean them? "
"Really, Draco how did you ever get through Hogwarts without knowing a cleansing spell?" Harry asked playfully. The memories incited by the comment made Draco feel anything but playful as he recalled blistering roots in Herbology that exploded with a foul-smelling green pus at the slightest jostle, potions gone awry that stained the skin for a fortnight leaving honey-colored bruises in their wake if not removed quickly and blood-yielding mistakes in Transfiguration. If anything, these associations disgusted Draco, making him far less willing to yield to Harry's forthcoming argument.
"But that's for cleaning up dirt, or spilt things! That's not the same as taking th-the germs off of a fish!" he sounded like a young child accusing a girl of having cooties.
"On the contrary," Harry said flippantly, which only served to aggravate Draco more. "Whenever I found myself in the hospital for the umpteenth time, Madam Pomfrey would perform a very simple cleansing spell on my superficial scrapes and cuts to keep them from getting infected before she healed them. Now that is a spell that I know by heart."
"I don't know, what if it doesn't work? We could become very ill and we are certainly not in a first rate medical establishment."
"Hell we don't even have a First Aid kit!" Harry said with some force. "But we still need to eat! We've got food right here in front of us!" he insisted, gesturing rigidingly at the fish.
"What's a First Aid kit?" Draco asked quietly, but Harry had already turned his back on him to face the glossy water dwellers and to recite the spell.
"Purgo Morbus!" his voice echoed down the length of their dwelling with such force that for a moment Draco felt as though his neck had gotten hot where Harry's hands had held it the night before.
Draco's mood was very apparently foul, Harry decided as they sat staring at their crudely set table. In many ways he felt as though the bastard deserved what he was getting for being so unthankful for the food that was before them. After all, Harry had done all of the work to attain it, he hadn't done anything! And still he had the nerve to stare at the generously filled stone platter before them with disdain and something akin to suspicion in his glare. Harry shifted uncomfortably as he was forced to remind himself that Draco's suspicions were not unfounded. He twisted the beads of his bracelet nervously before reminding himself not to drop hints and then returned his hands to the table.
His fork still held a chunk of salmon-colored flesh with a bite taken out of it. He chewed at the gelatin texture of the fish in his mouth, willing his tongue not to taste it. Swallow, he told himself firmly, just get it over with. And with that he pushed the barely chewed oily morsel to the back of his mouth and down his throat. The sliding feeling made him want to gag it right back out but he held it down, trying to look as pleased with the fishy aftertaste as he could. Looking up with watery eyes he could've sworn that through the blur of tears, the faintest look of concern had graced Draco's tightened lips and furrowed brow. As he blinked away the wetness though, he found he was most certainly looking into the face of an extremely malcontented aristocrat. It was strange to Harry how Draco still looked as though he were royalty. There was just something in the way he carried himself that made him seem larger than he was, and more confident; there was no doubt in Harry's mind that this was an intentional and well trained habit.
"It's delicious," Harry lied through puckered lips. Draco's scowl only sharpened. "Really," he insisted and as if it could prove his point further he forked the remaining bit into his mouth as quickly as he could and swallowed after chewing just once.
"You have many talents Mister Potter, but let me tell you, acting is not one of them," Draco said icily.
Harry shrugged off the comment briskly. "Oh come on, it's really not half bad and besides, you must be starving."
"Well if you like it so much, I'd feel positively terrible taking the pleasure of eating it all away," Draco drawled, but even as he did, he picked up his fork gingerly and dug it into the smaller of the two fish. Without missing a beat he ripped a small chunk from the fish's side and, after removing the skin with his pointer and thumb, pushed the lump into his mouth. His eyes didn't water and his face, while already sour, did not pucker around disapproving taste buds. He chewed several times, pulled a fish bone from his lips and swallowed.
"Well it's certainly not 'delicious', as you put it, but I can't say it's the worst thing I have ever tasted." He wiped his fingertips on the not-quite-thick enough napkin that Harry had transfigured from a rock.
"What?" Harry said in mild disgust and exaggerated irritation. "After all that nonsense that you put me through? I'd hate to hear what the worst thing you ever tasted was."
"Well then I guess it's very fortunate for you that I don't care to retell the story of it. I'd rather not lose my appetite at this juncture. You cleaned it, but you can't preserve it and things like this go bad rather quickly," he said in a way that was sterile with practicality. With that, he tore into the fish once more, this time taking a much larger piece and wrapped his lips around the fork in a way that almost looked grateful. They ate in silence for a few minutes before Harry stood up and wiped his hands on his own napkin. The transfiguration had been a hard one – turning something from rock to paper – and his skin felt slightly raw after rubbing the coarse texture.
"Oh, sweetheart," Draco mocked in his most saccharine tone, "lose your appetite already?" he leaned over the back of the rocky chair casually and gave Harry an appraising look that made the skin on the back of his neck and shoulders prickle hot for a second.
"No, I'm full," he said honestly. After eating so little, the sudden rush of rich flesh overwhelmed his stomach, making him feel slightly bloated and uncomfortable. "Scourgify," he said, with his hand over his plate, but nothing happened. After trying a few times with his hand placed against the plate, he finally succeeded in cleaning it.
"Here," said Draco pushing his plate towards Harry with an irritating clatter. "You can do mine too, I'm no longer hungry," he looked at Harry so smugly that he almost protested the blatant disrespect of the motion before recalling that he was the only one of the two of them that could perform magic. Of course it didn't have to be that way, a nagging voice whispered at him in the back of his mind. He recognized this voice as the sound of his conscience and immediately pushed back at it. He felt his bracelets slide forward towards his hand and make a soft clicking sound as they collided. Draco's eyes could've burnt a whole though him, as he watched Harry's hand caress the stone in a sweeping motion to rid the plate of its contents.
They walked back to the water, without any better way of dealing with the remains of their meal, and dumped the partially eaten remains back into the water. Harry's Lumos spell from earlier still shined brightly along the path back to their room. They walked slowly side by side through the shockingly broad length of tunnel. Each step around the curved cavern revealed yet another strange secret of the cave. There were jars along shelves and stone cabinets here and there that could only be spotted when one realized that a wooden knob seemed awfully out of place sticking out of the rock. Upon reaching the room Draco decided to comment.
"We should get some rest now, but tomorrow we should put all of our energy into exploring the cave. There very well may be clues hidden in those cabinets as to who put us here. If nothing else, there may be some things to make our stay slightly more tolerable." Harry stared blankly at him but nodded his head once in agreement. The fatigue of the day had left him feeling numb and his thoughts were pre-occupied by the raw fish that seemed to be fervently fighting to get out of his stomach one way or another. He felt as though opening his mouth would provide the escape route it was looking for.
"Stomach bothering you?" Draco asked quietly. At first Harry was perplexed as to how Draco could've known, but soon realized that his hand was resting lightly over his abdomen and he could only guess at the shade of green that his face had taken on. He nodded once and felt the burn of stomach acid in the center of his chest.
"Try a calming charm," Draco suggested. "a simple one is sedo abdomen. My mother used to use it all the time; her side has a sensitive palate."
Harry reluctantly muttered the words wondering if Draco had just made him perform some awful sort of curse on himself. His fears were quickly abated, however, as he felt a tingling warmth spread over his torso as if someone had poured steaming water over him. The relief that followed did not stay isolated at the point of his hand, but spread into his shoulders and neck, leaving him in a slight state of euphoria. Still he felt something rising up through his chest, though not in the painful way it had been before. He opened his mouth without hesitation with the vaguest sense of well being and let out a rumbling belch that tasted strongly of fish. He grinned contentedly to himself.
"Better?" Draco asked with a slight smirk, reminding Harry that he was not alone.
"Yes," he said and then added, "Thanks."
"Potter?"
"Yes?"
"Could I trouble you to do that spell once more?" Harry looked up at Draco in surprise. The request showed blatant vulnerability which was strange coming from his boyhood nemesis. But as he looked more closely at the other man's face he saw the faintest hue of green in his otherwise colorless cheeks. A sharp twinge of sympathy welled up within him and he forgot the obtuse way that Draco had been acting earlier in light of his obvious illness. He crawled towards Draco and rested his hand firmly on his stomach and felt the thin cotton of his night shirt shift easily over the hot skin that surely rested beneath.
"Sedo abdomen," he incanted softly and let his hand drop to his side a little earlier than was necessary. He waited for a moment for Draco's affirmation that the charm had worked.
"It didn't help," Draco said with a slight frown pulling at the corners of his lips. He looked down at his stomach as though it were a stubborn piece of equipment not reacting properly even after being fixed. Harry screwed up his eyes in a squint that pressed the pads of his glasses into the bridge of his nose. He placed his hand once more on the spot and found it was slightly warmer than it had been before. This was too intimate. Draco could not be alive, truly a living being under that fanciful façade of cold sophistication. It almost would've felt more natural to have discovered a cold iron hollow instead of the hot flesh of a person. The muscles twitched under his hand and he was helplessly aware of the undulating breaths that pumped his partner into life, making him feel even less objective. The first mistake he made was pondering these thoughts for a split second too long. The second was looking up. Draco's face was somewhat contorted in such a way that he no longer looked affluent and proud, but small and poor. His dirt covered face and inappropriate dress made him look more like a pauper than a prince. This realization was quickly interrupted by a flash of cold steel. Draco's eyes had met his brimming with accusation.
"Thinking about killing me instead?" Draco asked with vitriol malice in his voice. Shocked by the accusation, Harry said nothing. "Well make up your mind, will you?" Harry's hand was still on his stomach and he suddenly realized the power that Draco had given him in making himself open to attack; a very un-Slytherin move, Harry thought.
"Sedo abdomen," he said firmly and felt Draco instantly relax against his hand. He kept it there for several moments, as if the feeling of relief and the proof of his innocent intentions would be dissolved with the break in contact.
"I never fancied you as the type to wear jewelry," Draco said suddenly and reached up a hand to touch Harry's bracelets. He quickly recoiled, thwarting Draco's attempt to touch them by centimeters.
"What's wrong? I'm not going to sting you, am I?" Draco almost chuckled. Harry felt his cheeks going red rapidly and knew that he must create an excuse.
"Ginny made them for me," he said defensively, curling his wrist under his other arm, hiding the wooden beads from view. This wasn't entirely untrue; she had in fact made the bracelets for him. Their importance hardly came from who they had been made by but rather what they had been made from. Draco cocked his head to the side doubtfully and raised an eyebrow skeptically. Harry braced himself for an onslaught of berating questions, his mind buzzing with viable excuses for the way he had reacted, but the questions never came.
"You're far too much of a romantic," was all Draco said before lying down and rolling over to face the wall. Had Harry not been so thoroughly exhausted, he would've been suspicious of how easily Draco had dropped the subject. For the time being however, he was just glad to not have to make up any more lies. As Draco had so eloquently put it before, he was hardly an actor. "By the way, do you think you've got a good enough handle on that magic to make a pillow or two?"
"Yeah, you know, I think I just might. They'll probably be rather firm though." And firm they were. Turning a rock into a pillow proved vastly more difficult than Harry had guessed. If the napkins had been slightly coarse, the pillow slip felt like sandpaper. Finally, after numerous attempts at correcting and shaping the two pillows, they seemed to give at least slightly to the touch, and the covers, while not soft by any means, just felt as though they had been over-starched. They settled in as comfortably as possible with Harry on one side of the room and Draco on the other. Harry almost had to bite his tongue to keep from asking Draco why they were not lying side by side this evening. As he whispered Finite Incantatum into the cave, he saw Draco shiver in the dimming light. Next project will be a comforter, he thought to himself as he felt the chill of the cave edge its way back into the space that the excitement of the day had kept well heated. Still, he tucked his arms around himself in his best defense from the cold and settled in for another uncomfortable night of sleep. He made sure to keep his wrists tucked firmly under his ribs.
Chapter 4 is waiting in the wings! Thank you to my wonderful BETA, for her patience with me these past few months while I over came earth shattering writers block!