Note: So here we are with a new chapter. A long one it is. And one that's taken a lot of work.
You, my lovely few readers, wanted for them to have a healthy relationship, so I'm working hard on it.
For Draco and Harry to seem to be reaching an understanding, I have have to play heavily with Draco's spider and pain. Still, I didn't want to make Harry into more of an evil monster than he already is, so there's a lot of guilt going on with him too. As of now things are starting to get better, but they have a very long road to recovery left. I hope they will be able to eventually fall in love… let's see if they can. Shall we?
And now…
Welcome to:
SPIDERWEB
Chapter 19 - You are not alone
"TAKE HIM AWAY!"
"NO!"
But they were already walking away, and his uncle was lost behind a bend of the road.
Later, Draco would not remember too much of the escape through the red mist of exhaustion, and the impossible embrace of shock.
He did remembered that Potter had pulled, and pulled him away, like a possessed man. Through corridors made of stone and blood, narrow and twisted like the spiral inside the shell of a snail. Far, far away, from the cries that were left behind them, and from his godfather.
While inside his brain 'Severus, Severus, Severus …' was a broken recording, of the same, increasingly incomprehensible, word. 'Severus…'
He remembered the first blow of night's air on his face, the freshness on his skin covered in sweat, blood and tears... When had he begun to cry? The moonlight in his eyes, cold and white, sharp... as the edge of a sword.
The stumps that had been Hogwarts scattered around him like the broken pieces of a sandcastle. Ruins, a shell devoured by fire.
And running, running, running ... Potter at his side. Potter screaming. Potter helping him along. Potter pulling him forward... Green eyes and black skin, and claws and fangs. And running, running, running ... until he could not breathe.
Processions of chained people, howls and tears, farther and farther away.
The Dementors on the sky, floating like delicate handkerchiefs made of nightmares. The giants roaring. People screaming. Small remnants of resistance still in combat. The Death Eaters...
One second he thought he had seen Sirius, but in the midst of such madness, his figure had disappeared among the swarm of fighters, only a blink later. His black hair ruffled as he wielded his wand like a whip.
Draco remembered the light of the moon as silver oil on the fields. He remembered the red of the flames on the stone more and more distant. The black of the ash that floated in the wind, dirtying the immaculate white of the landscape. His feet sinking into snow and ice.
And he remembered shouting as they finally crossed the castle's barriers. The liberating sensation when the magic that prevented them from apparating finally escaped their skin. Relief so divine as to be almost painful.
Draco knew to have smiled between tears and blood, while those who were chasing them stretched out to catch them, and he raised his wand with stone-heavy fingers ... and spent every tiny speck left of his magic to transport them both to the house.
The howls of rage far, farther and farther away ...
Then, just blessed darkness.
oOo
(Draco)
He woke up bathed in the pale, dying light of morning, filtering through the stained glass and the dusty shutters of a bedroom...Draco blinked, and pushed a lock of dirty brown hair from his face.
The movement brought to the forefront of his awareness other things too; the rubbing of the sheets on his skin, soft and worn from so many washes, the weight of a good pile of blankets on his body, the soft pressure of a pillow under his head...
Everything smelled of dust and spices, old wood and leather, new and old magic, and dried pressed flowers.
Safeness... home.
Turning his head slightly to look at the room he had at his godfather's house, Draco could see that everything was as he had left it, the last time he was there, almost a year ago.
The books, copies of his favorites, placed neatly on the small shelf in the corner. His desk with the set of silver-tipped feathers, Pansy had given him for his twentieth birthday. The simple, spartan chair. The beautifully decorated armoire that had been his uncle's mother's. The trunk of his time at Hogwarts, that he had liked too much to throw away, but had not wished to leave in Malfoy Manor...
Ancient photos in frames just as old, scattered on the desk and walls. Posters of his teenage years, he had never found the will to take off the walls...
This room had always had the air of a memento box. And now, covered in dust, it was an almost breathable aura.
Draco closed his eyes to wrap himself in it.
At the edge of his conscious mind, there were things waiting for him to decide to pay attention to, but he knew… somehow, that they couldn't be good. And Draco just wanted to let himself rest. Not think about anything.
Whatever they were, they could wait a bit longer.
The door opened with a small rustling squeak, with the arrival of someone else. Surely It must be his godfather, annoyed because he had decided to sleep late again. There was always something to do in this absurd war.
Never a moment of rest.
Draco thought about asking for a few more minutes of shuteye... but the steps that came close to his bed were not his uncle's ... they were too soft and subtle. Like the footsteps of a cat. If the wood was not so old and prone to crunch under the slightest weight, he probably would not have heard him approach.
"Malfoy, are you awake?" A whisper.
That voice...
He opened his eyes again.
Potter was standing by his bed. No longer the teenager he remembered, but a man. A tall, muscular man with the build of an athlete, and the posture of a huge feline ... no, of a spider.
"A spider." What he had been avoiding, began to stretch through his psyche as he looked at the other man.
His skin, golden as syrup, revealed a life in the open. His black hair, more biten than cut, damp from the shower he must have taken, brushed his shoulders in tips and fringes vaguely tamed by the weight of the water, dampening the hem of his black shirt.
Draco recognized the black t-shirt and gray pants as his own, and thought that, although a little tight, they did not look bad on him.
Potter was barefoot.
oOo
(Harry)
Malfoy looked at him with the relaxed calm of someone not yet fully conscious.
Considering how he had just awoken after emptying all of his magical reserve, experiencing a fit of shock, having his wrists broken, and of fleeing through what seemed to be the most nightmarish obstacle race Harry could remember, this reaction was far better than he had expected.
At least he seemed lucid.
"How do you feel?" Harry gently laid two fingers on his forehead still stained with dried blood. It looked like the skin had a normal temperature. No longer cold, as a continued state of shock would have caused. That was good.
oOo
Draco blinked languidly.
What was Potter doing here...?
Memories stretched, lifted, and invaded the inside of his skull to fill it to burst. And with them, all the feelings that the spider had been keeping away, but that now that he was safe, no longer saw the need to isolate him from.
Fear, pain, anguish, anger, worry ... fear, fear, fear, fear, FEAR, FEAR, FEAR!
The primary terror penetrated his entrails like a spear, and ascended through his organs until it reached his throat, from where it poured into a weak, small and tiny groan, like that of an injured animal, which has been left no strength to howl.
His eyes flooded with tears.
And his whole body began to tremble faintly.
They fear for his loved ones choked him.
" ... Severus …"the voice in which the name came out, was a voice without voice, a voice more appropriate for long nights away from home, and the cold of winter streets. A sound for abandoned children and people without hope.
In Draco's throat more names, many names, were struck; Sirius, Hermione, Rose, Hugo, Teddy, Remus ... but his lips could not shape them.
His chest was cracking inside, and getting undone in thick streams of horror. Everything he had fought for for so long, was gone, the people he loved so much ... dead, or captured, or sold, or dying ... but lost. The castle, Hogwarts, which had been a sanctuary, a home, a haven for so many good people ... demolished.
Everything had collapsed, and it hurt, it hurt too much. Draco had nothing left.
Nothing.
oOo
(Harry)
He saw clear as day the moment when Malfoy began to collapse, the instant his eyes filled with understanding, and everything began to tear him apart. How the axis that held his world, broke, and it crashed against the ground, breaking into thousands of sharp crystal shards.
That precise second when Malfoy began to crack, like a delicate enamel sculpture.
And Harry, who had finally begun to see who Draco Malfoy was, that could not forget how this man had given him the benefit of the doubt, when everyone he had trusted had turned his back on him ... knew he would not let this wonderfully mad blonde man, tear apart, if he could help it.
Before being aware of what he was doing, Malfoy was a trembling body against his chest, within the circle of his arms. The slytherin was his age, almost as tall as Harry, and though thin, he had the graceful constitution of an athlete, but at this moment, he felt as small and scrawny as a street kid.
"Shhh." Potter rested his lips on filthy hair, matted with blood, mud, and dust, slid his hands down the curve of a trembling back,
as Malfoy began to sob. Very quiet sounds, that shivered all over his body, and sounded as if his soul was trying to escape through his throat.
Harry recognized it.
It was the same pain that had flooded his early days in the woods, when all he could think of was the betrayal of everyone he had loved, and how they had abandoned him.
How it had seemed like nothing was left for him in the world.
In those moments, in the midst of the pain that had been destroying Harry, he had not though he could have come out of it, if Soul has not been at his side, consoling and keeping him whole. Managing to make Harry see that despite his world having collapsed, he was not alone.
At the time he had needed those words like nothing else in the world. And Harry understood that Malfoy craved the same now.
"You're not alone. You're not alone, I'm here. I'm not going to leave, I'm not going to go." Harry began to rock the spy in his arms, offering in quiet, soft and constant whispers, the same words he had been gifted so long ago.
"You're not alone."
An hour later, Draco's arms, trembling and weak, eventually returned the embrace, and his fingers dug desperately into his shirt.
Malfoy's tears poured over the cloth, and were lost between the fibers, moistening it, to become a stain darker than the fabric. A stain that continued to grow, while the translucent droplets flowed, and flowed, between almost silent sobs, and equally silent words.
The stain clung to the warm skin beneath, and the tears filtered into Harry's epidermis, making him aware of their presence, in am almost intravenous way.
The old gryffindor hugged Draco closer, pressed his lips to a pale ear, still muttering words that tried to be comforting. Curving long fingers into his filthy hair and against his trembling back, trying to absorb all that suffering through his pores.
He held the blond until the grey reddened eyes had nothing more to give, and the body, trembling, surrounded in Harry's arms, surrendered to the calm cadence of his voice, his reassuring heartbeat ... and the spy fell into the welcome embrace of sleep and oblivion.
Draco never became aware of how his hands had been gripping Harry the entire time they were together, curling into the dark shirt with the despair of an abandoned child.
oOo
(Draco)
When he awoke again, the gray morning light had become the red stripes of dusk. A color like that of fiery embers, sticking between the old wooden blinds, lighting the room, and turning sparkly the dust floating in the stagnant air.
Draco blinked.
His head felt heavy, as if he had drunk too much the day before, and his body was heavy, reluctant to move from the protective cocoon of blankets around him.
And yet, in spite of them, he felt cold, tired... the events of days gone by, no longer hurt as if some maniac had decided to open his chest using a blunt piece of rusty metal.
Not after the morning's purge (when he had collapsed entirely into shock), and the nightmare-filled sleep he vaguely remembered, but what remained of the agony was a throbbing ache around the cold feeling of emptiness he couldn't shake off
Not heart-shattering pain unless he poked at it.
Still, now that he was calm enough to think, he understood that Hogwarts might not had fallen. Maybe it was nothing but rubble, maybe it still resisted. If so, some of his loved ones could still have survived. But ... The idea was of a hope so childish, it seemed ridiculous.
The order had safe houses like this, scattered throughout England, and strict protocols in case of evacuation. But with so little time. In an attack as violent as the one they had suffered...
To believe that at least one of them was still alive, was to think that he or she was now going to be a slave, or worse. And there was nothing he could do to stop it. Nothing anyone could do.
It would be better if they were all dead.
The dead could not be tortured. The dead do not suffer.
He swallowed, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. Something to grasp to keep at bay the worst of the emptiness.
They had to be dead.
Draco clung to the idea with all his might.
And Potter...
He looked around, but Potter was not in the room. He listened, and heard a noise on the floor below.
He was not very far away then.
Knowing Potter was not that far...
Something minuscule and warm spread through his intestines ... hot where there was so much cold. Draco decided not to think about it. Not when everything was so confused, so strange, so broken.
What Potter had done to him, what they had done to Potter (if what Raksa had told him was true), his protection, his anger, his affection, his hatred ... all this sick situation they were in ... He was not even sure how he felt about the ex-gryffindor. And he was not sure if it mattered at all. But it was something to look at, beyond the pain of not knowing if his loved ones were even alive.
And therefore, infinitely more palatable.
Draco felt hatred ... yes, definitely. And disgust, and resentment buried so long ago that it no longer mattered, and... and ... that sense of horror when he thought Potter was dying, when he still did not know who he was. And also ... too ... there were so many things intermingled and overlapping, so many layers of feelings not all completely his ... just trying to untangle them made him dizzy.
He swallowed.
This poisonous relationship they had must be made clean, before he could make any decision. Before he could even think about ...
His godfather; supplied his mind.
Immediately he closed that line of thought, that path of agony that seemed like a whack in his skull. Because the pain there was too intense. And Draco didn't believe, that today, he could bear to suffer even more than he had already suffered.
Perhaps, if he cleaned the wound that Potter was in his psyche, if Draco could get him to listen and speak sincerely, repair something of what was left of his life, feel that at least some small fragment could still be mended...
He would feel better, and thinking of Severus without vomiting, without shouting, wouldn't look so impossible…
Carefully, Malfoy sat up in bed, trying not to put too much weight on his wrists joints. They hardly hurt, but he preferred not to impel the progress of his recovery. Once he was up against the wrought-iron headboard, the blonde looked down at his arms thoughtfully, still covered in dry blood, mud, ash, and Raksa's makeshift, now stiff and dry, bandages, that did not help improve their appearance.
Draco frowned, lifted his hands and turned them carefully, studying how they felt ... and some of the tension in his stance fell away.
He was completely human again. No chitin, nor the unnaturally white shade of the spider's skin. The claws had also retracted, to be only the blunt fingernails of a normal man.
Relief materialized in the form of a deeply tired sigh.
"Malfoy?" The sound was almost non-existent, but it must have been enough for Potter's fine ear.
The voice came from the floor below, somewhat muted, but not as much as it should have been. Were his senses, too, sharpening as he mingled with the spider? Draco set the idea aside for later. Too many things to contemplate.
Priorities.
"I'm awake," he muttered.
Potter's steps on the stairs did not take long to be heard.
A minute later the dark haired man entered the room loaded with a tray overflowing with freshly cooked food; The smell, delicious, made Draco's stomach growl, earning a brief curve of ex-gryffindor's lips. An almost invisible smile.
Draco stood still, while Potter, still dressed in his shirt and trousers, still human, placed the tray carefully in his lap. The old gryffindor had surpassed every expectation. There was a plate of golden toast, crunchy bacon, eggs, cereal, pumpkin juice, and some honey in a thimble ... (food from the magically preserved pantry of his uncle, no doubt) Draco swallowed, feeling the pull of hunger long ignored. He had not eaten well in days.
Potter looked up, searching for his gaze. So intense ... to look away an instant later, in an almost ashamed gesture, almost ... guilty?
"You should eat something, take a shower. Then ... Then I think we should talk."
"Potter…"
The dark man didn't give him time to respond.
"I'll wait for you downstairs."
oOo
Draco ate without savoring the morsels, showered in the tiny, rusty and narrow bathroom, before dressing, devoting only a glance to his reflection; The Draco Malfoy in the mirror was pale, as if he had not been out in weeks, there were mauve bags of sleep deprivation and weariness around his eyes, and he seemed a bit more worn at the edges, but he was not the unrecognizable and alienated creature, Draco had almost expected to find.
The image made him feel a little more like himself, as he took the comb that Potter must had left in the sink, (no doubt he had used it, because there were a few hairs like black sooty strands, trapped in the bristles of the brush), and tried to put some order into his own wet hair.
The result was that the water stuck the strands to his skull, copying the hairstyle he used to wear as a child, making him appear much younger, and his eyes look larger. It did not feel unpleasant, but Draco doubted that Potter needed more reminders of that time, which was surely painful for him.
The conversation waiting for them was bound to be already quite complicated without details like this.
The comb returned to its place in the sink, and Draco ran his hands through his hair, burying his fingers violently between the strands, in a gesture that spoke, for a second, of everything floating under the crust of ice with which he was trying to surround himself.
The agitation of the gesture, causing the blond locks to scatter around his face in tips and wings that gathered behind his ears, and clung to his neck disorderly, giving him a disheveled, and sad appearance.
Strangely, the reflection was more familiar than he expected.
He sighed and turned his back on the mirror, squaring his shoulders.
oOo
Harry waited for Malfoy in the living room.
To occupy the time he lit the fireplace, and prepared some tea with the dried leaves he found in a can, inside the pantry. The pantry at the back of the small kitchen, preserved with a spell of ecstasy, which was full to bursting with fresh vegetables, juicy meat and other delicacies.
He thought about what he would cook for dinner, and ended up returning to the living room with a tray containing two porcelain cups, a teapot full of hot milk, sugar, spoons, and a cookie dish.
After putting everything on the low table in front of the sofa, he ran out of things to do. Draco was not done yet, and Harry could not help but start thinking.
To try to silence his mind, he looked at the walls covered with faded wallpaper, a color between dirty brown and greenish gray. He gazed at the bookshelves full of potions books, and a few, scattered, novels, that didn't manage to hold his interest even a minute. At the worn carpet of whom knew what kind of animal's fur. At the gray and blackened stone fireplace, the few photos of unknown people on the mantel... Even at the still closed door.
Anywhere but inside his own skull, where thoughts he didn't want to contemplate, rested.
Yet, soon Harry was left with nothing more to observe, and the thoughts returned to his brain.
This time Harry left them, because deep down he knew that sooner or later he would have to contemplate them, and because Raksa threatened to force him, if he did not stop trying to suppress the need. Often the guardian was as inflexible as a father.
What came to his mind was what he had already predicted; Powerful, suffocating, guilt.
Dirty and putrid images of the things he had done to Malfoy.
The memories were like fragments of a movie; Here pale lips parted in a groan of pain, there white skin marred by the bloom of a bruise, blood mixed with semen clinging to pale thighs ... And in the middle of such horrors, the conversation he had spied through the eyes of Raksa, the slender hand clenching his own, grey clear eyes full of concern, words joined in phrases that tried to understand, instead of judging.
And deep in the background of everything else, the vague impressions he kept of the moments he thought he was dying: Draco begging him not to leave him alone, his tongue on his skin, his fear of losing Harry so easy to read in the trembling of his voice, like rain pelting on crystal.
At that moment, in spite of everything Harry had already submitted him to, Malfoy had still wanted him at his side. Perhaps because of the influence of his own spider, but ... if he had not known who Harry really was, could they have advanced from there? Be ... something ... together?
Doubt, juxtaposed to guilt, was like acid in his gut. Since now that he had seen what was under the facade of the slytherin, he wanted more of him. He wanted to meet this man he knew nothing about, wanted... wanted...
"To have a mate?" Raksa's voice penetrated the bubble of his thoughts, and the spider hissed with an almost violent possessiveness and affection.
Harry closed his eyes, letting his head fall, leaning against the back of the sofa on which he sat. When two of his three personas agreed on something, it was almost impossible to pretend otherwise.
Yes, he wanted the Malfoy he had but glimpsed, as his mate, but after all he has done, how could he make it up to him? How could he even hope for Malfoy to want to have something to do with Harry? How could he hope to pay for everything he had done to the blonde? Remove the pain?
It was impossible.
Harry would be surprised if the spy stayed in the same room as him, a minute longer than necessary.
'Trying Harry, trying with all your might.' Raksa mused.
Harry hoped it would be enough.
oOo
Draco came down the stairs step by step, feeling the dry wood covered with a thin crust of dirt and dust, under his bare feet, so as not to pay too much attention, to the crazy heartbeat of his own heart.
He was nervous, and he certainly did not know what to expect from the upcoming conversation, but he hoped to clean up his relationship with Potter. Get to know something of the truth, even if maybe not all of it. Just understand how everything had come to this point.
Potter was waiting for him in the living room.
Draco went to the door, drew around himself, as tightly as possible, the coat of calm he had crafted for himself, and grabbed the latch.
oOo
Harry straightened the instant he heard footsteps on the stairs, and when Malfoy opened the door, he was ready to greet him with a hot cup in his hands.
"Malfoy, please sit down." He offered the chair beside the sofa.
Draco nodded graciously accepting the offer.
Malfoy had changed his clothes, and now he looked almost like his old elegant self, in the expensive soft gray shirt, and black pants.
His impassive face, and straight posture, seemed to say that nothing affected him, and his gestures were those of an aristocrat. But Harry could see the slight trembling almost hidden in his hands, as he picked up the cup he had placed in front of him.
Malfoy was wearing a mask. A damn good one. However, Harry did not want to deal with masks. Not now, not with Malfoy. Not when he knew what lay underneath.
He lifted his head a little, and allowed himself, for the first time in a long time, to heed his gryffindor part.
"Malfoy." He called.
The use of his last name made the slytherin look at him instantly. His pupils enormous.
"You wanted to talk to me, and here I am. Do us both the favor of being here too." He could not have sounded more like his teenage self, if he tried.
Direct, undoubtedly open. But leaving the hostility of their childhood out. Those hatreds were buried, and he wanted Malfoy, no, Draco, to see him, and to recognize the Harry he must remember talking to his friends, and not to him. It was what Malfoy had seemed to ask for. It was what he, therefore, had to give.
Draco had not been prepared to find Harry Potter so soon, he believed that first he would have to dance around the cruel man who had replaced him, maybe ask Raksa for help, before he could communicate with the Harry he remembered.
But those words, that slightly proud, and deeply kind gesture that he thought he would never see again, could only be his.
He dropped his mask of calm.
Harry stared at the smoothness of his impassible face as the expression peeled, like a gossamer film, off the spy's pale skin. His shoulders sank with fatigue, his body slumped in the chair, allowing all his weight to rest on the piece of furniture, his hands curved around the heat of the cup, as his face lost its hardness, for exhaustion to make its appearance in the curve of his lips.
Malfoy was at the end of his rope. But he no longer hide behind a barrier, keeping Harry from meeting him.
The confidence necessary for a gesture like that, from someone accustomed to hide, like Malfoy, made Harry cradle a small hope that this might not result in complete disaster.
He took the plate full of cookies and brought it to him.
"You can have some, they are plenty sugary. It will help with the tiredness."
Malfoy raised an eyebrow, but took a few.
"Thank you." His voice sounded a little hoarse, the crying of that morning must have left its mark.
Before realizing it, Harry had his fingers posed on the curve of the delicate throat. Malfoy fell completely still. His defenses rose in his eyes, gray as steel. "Potter …" Ice.
Harry put his hand away at once.
"I'm sorry, the spider is ... possessive." He swallowed. It was difficult, not knowing how to act. He cupped his own tea in his hands, and closed his fingers tightly around the mug, to prevent another similar slip from repeating itself.
Draco's posture slowly relaxed again, and the blade-like edge of his eyes ceased to be so sharp. However, it was clear that now, the human was in full control. And Harry could not trust the spider of the slytherin to help him gain his forgiveness.
It made things more difficult.
Draco let the adrenaline leave him little by little. He had not been prepared for Potter's gesture, and it had gotten on his nerves quite a bit, but the ex-gryffindor had apologised, reinforcing his belief that he really was with whom he wanted to speak to.
"Potter" He whispered. The ex-gryffindor looked up, still somewhat mortified by what had just happened, and Draco drew strength from the vulnerability he could see in him. "I wanted to talk with you. I need explanations." He inhaled air very gently, trying to remain calm. "What exactly happened to make you become... this?"
Harry squeezed the cup harder, could feel his claws wanting to pierce his flesh and come to the surface, but kept them hidden by sheer willpower. He had already known that Draco would ask this.
"Raksa already told you the basics." He did not look up.
"Yes, he said that your loved ones ... abandoned you. But he did not tell me anything else." Draco knew he was dealing with something horribly painful, he could see it in the tense curve of Potter's body, hard as a strip of steel.
"What else is there to tell? They found out what I was, they turned their back on me, sent me to death. End of the matter." God, he did not want to talk about this. 'But you owe him.' supplied Raksa, and Harry knew he was right, but it was painful.
A warm hand settled on his arm.
Abruptly the tension subsided from his muscles and he looked at Draco, feeling the blonde's hand settle quietly on his arm.
"Draco …"
The spy blinked and withdrew his fingers, as if he had not known of his own gesture.
"So it's true," said the blond. His voice charged with a strange timbre, which had nothing to do with the tears of the morning, and everything to do with Potter falling his name for the first time.
"Yes," Harry whispered. And this time he forced himself to make a real effort to speak. "I know it's hard to believe. But it's the truth. When ... when I turned seventeen, I was in Hogwarts for a week, it was still summer, and the students had not returned. They would not return, because a few months later the war would begin. I think you remember."
Draco nodded, listening with every fiber of his being how this man who had been good, so damn good, exposed the festering scars that had made him a monster.
"A week is what long took my first change. It was ... "He shook his head, not wanting to remember. He could not describe the agony he had been through. Malfoy did not know how lucky he had been by having the help of the great spirit of the forest. "I got close to dying, they told me." He shrugged. "Then Dumbledore came to explain what it was that had happened to me. I don't think you need the exact words, let's say that monster was not far from the general idea."
Draco's hand had returned to his arm, and Harry took strength from it.
"My friends, my family ... they did not take it much better. Widows are a cursed race, you know?" He clenched his teeth, refusing to remember any of it, to touch the tomb of the real Harry Potter. The words were just that, sounds, nothing more . "Some say that we bring bad luck, maybe it's true." He shook his head. Recovering the thread of the story with anger very close to the surface, but controlled. "There's not much else to tell. Freak, you have to kill the Dark Lord, but do not bother getting out of it alive. It's logical, right? A monster to kill a monster."
Draco could practically feel the pain and anger, under the fabric of Potter's sleeve, radiate through the skin of his arm.
Potter's voice dripped suffering and resentment, so powerful as to be impossible to ignore. This was not the whole story, it was obvious, but it was also easy, so very easy, to see what the rejection of his friends and loved ones had done to the no longer a gryffindor. And he did not want to push him any further into the memory.
Because this was Harry Potter, he could see it in every detail of the man who was suffering in front of him. In the gesture of his chin, in the way he spoke, in the grass-green of his eyes. No one else could have eyes like those, so green and bright. And knowing how they could become faceted gems of toxic emerald, only made Draco understand even better what had been done to this man. Who he had been made into by rejection, abandonment and hatred.
"Potter ... I do not think you're a monster."
Harry looked up abruptly, suddenly clear gazed. Just as Draco remembered him to be when they were young; alive, clean.
"Malfoy?" It was so broken ... but ...
"Do not get me wrong, I do not forgive you for what you've done to me." He looked meaningfully at the wrist of the hand with which, he was still holding his undrinked tea mug.
He had thrown the bloodstained cloth away, but his skin still remained violently bruised. Draco raised his eyes again, and fixed his intense, fierce rain-like gray gaze on the grass-green of Potter's. "I don't forgive you. That's something you will have to win for yourself, if you want it. But I don't think you a monster."
Harry swallowed. He could not believe what he was hearing, it could not be ... true. Malfoy ... did not think him a monster? He, the one who should, more than anyone else?
"After all I've done ..." His throat ached. His eyes burned. "You don't think ... me a monster?" The question was so incredulous, so fragile, and broken, that Draco could only feel a pang of ... pity.
"No, I don't think you one. You have been protecting the forest, you have killed, but that is what your nature impels you to do. I do not think you're a monster for being what you are, just like I do not think any predators are." It was the truth. He realized that he could no longer think of Potter as a monster, (perhaps because he was a widow too). But that did not change what he had done. He would not forgive him.
"So what did you do? Why did you go into the woods? " He still needed to know more, and Potter, too, seemed to need to think about something else. Something less painful.
Harry lowered his gaze again to the cup, contemplating events far away in time.
"I attacked Voldemort." Draco shuddered at the name. "But I did not have the soul in the fight, I lost. I fell unconscious, but he did not kill me. I don't know if he thought he had killed me already. Maybe he supposed the wounds would end me anyway." He shrugged. "But I survived, the spider's recovery abilities, even if they were not yet fully developed then, were enough. I awoke already in the forest, the acromantulas recognized me as one of them when they went out to the battlefield to devour the corpses, and took me with them. At first I regretted having survived. My life was meaningless without my friends, and having failed the only task left to me …"
He did not speak of his desperate longing for death, but Malfoy seemed to have understood anyway. He had risen from his seat, and was now sitting beside him on the couch, his body warmly close to his.
An offer of consolation without words, which Harry could not believe he deserved of him. Not from him. And to receive it, only nailed a little deeper, the thorn of appreciation, he was already beginning to feel for the blond man. For Malfoy. For Draco.
'God, Draco, forgive me.' Harry thought in despair, as he continued speaking.
"The great spirit welcomed me. He gave me this life as a guardian. Since then I have protected creatures like us. I have killed and fed on humans. And I don't regret it Draco. I don't regret any of it." He gritted his teeth, and refused to feel any further guilt over this. It was what it was, and if Draco wanted to meet him, he also had to know this.
"I told you already; you killed, but I don't think you did it for no reason." Draco remembered all too well the incursions sent by Voldemort into the Dark Forest. His greed for ingredients, for magical creatures to torture.
And he also remembered how Potter had massacred the Death Eaters who had dared to tread his woods.
Draco could not blame him for it. He too would have killed, had killed, for the ones he loved ... no mather if they were liars and traitors.
He wondered how Hermione, Ron, Remus, and the others would have reacted, if they had known what he was.
If they had turned their backs on Harry, their best and dearest friend, the icon of light, what hope could he have had for their understanding? Maybe it was better this way, maybe it was for the best. That everything ended like this, at Hogwarts. Now he could remember them fondly, because they could never say otherwise.
They were dead. They had to be.
He clenched his teeth, avoiding the pain. There were more things that needed clarification.
"The spirit of the forest?"
Harry nodded.
"Yes, the soul that is the first tree of the forest. He is the one whose magic holds the barriers."
A, so it was him the one containing Voldemort's magical attacks.
"I get it." He mouthed. "I have only one question left." Potter looked at him as if he was holding the world in his hands. Draco ignored the idea, as it was unthinkable that Potter would consider him ... so. "Why? Why did you do this to me?"
A, the great wound. He still felt it oozing under his epidermis. Draco needed desperately to clean it. But what he would never have expected was for Potter to leave the cup he had been holding on the nightstand, then stealing the one on Draco's own hands, to leave it next to the other, and finally, be able to hold his pale hand in his golden ones, soft and warm.
Guilt was written on Potter's face, and his broad shoulders had fallen under its huge weight.
"Malfoy," he whispered faintly, not looking away from him for a moment. Without hiding. "What I have done, has been …" he had no words, and decided not to try to give them shape. "And I can't ask for your forgiveness. I don't deserve it." Harry swallowed. His throat felt dry, icy, as if he'd swallowed frozen sand. But he forced his voice to work, because Malfoy had to hear this. "I was alone, I was so for such a long time. In the forest I learned to be the animal the wizards of Hogwarts said I was. And when I saw you ...I let myself be devoured by instinct. You were the only submissive of our species that I had ever seen, I thought we were the last." He did not say that maybe, now, they truly were the last. If Snape had not survived the attack. "I wanted you so much… but ... to know who you were ... I will not lie, Malfoy, I hate wizards. They torture creatures no less intelligent than them, no less sensitive, for mere pleasure, to make potions, for their skin, without stopping to think about what they do. Their lives have no value beyond the price they must pay in the market to get them. And you ... you grew up as a pure blood ... I remembered how you were when we were children. Your gratuitous cruelty, everything that you had done to me. And I blamed you for everything that had happened. A untrue as it was, it felt like relief I had been needing for so long to finally be able to take vengeance..." he caressed Malfoy's limp hand in his. "I was wrong. I had been so wrong." The anguish, the pain of what he had had to remember, accumulated and grew until he could no longer contain them, and a choked sob escaped his throat. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." The words cracked and broke. "I need you." It was the only reason he could give to keep Draco by his side. It was all he had. And it sounded so pathetic and weak, so inadequate ... but it was all he could offer. Everything he could give without revealing a secret that was not his, and that should never leave the forest, not even to win Malfoy's forgiveness. "I'm sorry."
Draco listened in silence, saw the regret and the guilt, and the motives, as clear and easy to follow as fatuous fires in the dark. And although it was not enough to forgive, it was not. He did not even know if he could eventually. His spider began to pay attention to this excess of emotions, and murmured his need of Potter, of his love, protection, his company and ... love. Especially now that he was alone, he was ...
Pregnant.
And Draco remembered all too well, thanks to the spider, how he had felt when he thought the other was dying. Were not widows the kind of creatures that mated for life? And now, with all his loved ones possibly dead...
The spider began to stir, he did not like to see his dominant suffer, he did not like this. And Draco was already so tired...
He carefully lifted the hand he still had on Potter's arm, to the nape of his neck, and drew Harry towards him until their foreheads touched. Until he could look at his iridescent tears, so impossibly close, as to be able to, if he so wished, count the individual eyelashes of his eyelids. Close enough to drown in his pupils. In the luminous green of his eyes.
"Potter," he whispered very softly. "Do not cry. I will not forgive you." His breath broke against the dark man's lips. "But …" he muttered almost silently. "I need you too."
To be continue