Disclaimer: Owned by someone else, borrowed by me.
Author’s note: This is the rewrite of my earlier fic by the same name. It is the beginning of my ‘Secrets’ series, hopefully written soon.
WarmthAt times one world will crash into the other. Skies turn black for a dreaded moment, birds cease to sing and somewhere sound has completed. It is the moment of Armageddon that occurs and all spectators are truly amazed.
Sometimes worlds aren’t worlds as in ground-water-air-coulds-mold, but lives as in body-heat-cold-soul-blood.
Sometimes meetings will change you forever.
It is in the late of August, and the grounds of the school are deserted in every sense of the word. There are no pupils, obviously, as it is still summer vacation, but there are no teachers either, none to care for the castle or the gardens and there are no voices in the air. Even the ghosts have fled in fear of a great unknown that all can describe. And then there is Harry, walking towards the gates in the heat of over due rays of summer sun. He is on a mission, a mission that could save the world from the inevitable crash and a mission that will crush his. He comes alone.
In search of Horcruxes he seeks every room and closet, all hidden passages, invisible hallways, moaning chests and boxes along with all the things that are not there, but he finds nothing. Harry knows that on the other side of the country, or maybe in the neighbouring town others are doing the same. His two best friends, together or apart, look for something they only know the importance of but not the shape or smell or feeling of. They have shipped him two items since he came, in hope that one or both was what they were looking for. They weren’t, and they are all back at square one, even if they never quite made it to square two.
The worlds are soaring. He killed someone a few months back, for real, and he begins to see the true secret of his being. The man he killed – it was an innocent man – had done nothing but being in the wrong place at the wrong time. And Harry did not even flinch. He has learned that nothing is worth grieving, as all will be lost sometime.
On the 31 of October, the eve of all hallows, they spot each other from opposite sides of the Quidditch field. The skin on Draco’s forehead is purple with dried blood, and his shoulders are heavy as he collapses to the ground. Harry lets him stay with him unharmed and unarmed, for a reason that not even he can fully understand. Why? Neither knows, surely Draco Malfoy had not expected to be taken in as a stray dog in the rain, but he is given clean clothes and warm sheets, and they sleep in different ends of the castle and life continues as it always does.
Fists clash together with flesh and it is two months since they were alone, one and one. It was triggered by a misplaced word that isn’t essential for the story, because it ends in torn clothes and bare bodies, calloused hands starving for skin and angry nails biting into more than flesh. They hurt and heal and it is as bad as it is painful as it is pleasure. Red marks, back, thigh, torso, cold. Draco knows that it should never happen again, Harry knows the same thing, and both pursue it.
When Harry presses on about reasons, smooth lies grace the blond’s mouth. He says that he left him master, his father and all his beliefs for the urge to live and for the fear of blood. Harry knows that he lies then, because every time they he bites Harry neck until it bleeds, then laps it up like a cat. And as snow bury familiar slopes and hills, Harry takes up the habit of sleeping in different beds and rooms every night, to keep Draco from being able to find him and kill him in his sleep. Draco on the other hand has taken over an old teachers lounge because the Slytherin dorms were too cold only occupied by himself.
Draco is no secret to the order and its hard working members. They have known for a long time, ever since the day the blonde set foot on the school premises to be exact, but none voice any doubts of Harry judgement, because after Dumbledores unfortunate demise there has been no other to lead them but he. But as the order moves their headquarter to the Great Hall, all stare with suspicion at Draco when he walks by and wonder what he reports to their enemies and how. Their stares burn into his back, and the hole they leave grows deeper with the days.
The Horcruxes are still nowhere to be found, and Hermione and Ron has yet to report back from their latest trip two weeks ago.
The arrival of the order puts Draco at unease. The obvious reason is that people who want him hurt is now surround him on every side; the main is that along with them, they brought their families, and in the middle sits the Weaslette, who will not stop swooning over Harry for the attention she has always been starved of.
Harry still changes beds as the shadows set atop a new night, now also to stop the girl from finding him when he does not want to be found.
The ‘encounters’ continue as before, though preformed with more care as to where and when than earlier. They are still as they were the first time, with no emotion or care, and it is opposite of what both need and crave in the deep chambers of their hearts. They are cold, so that their skin crawls as the damp air around them cools. And so it is that in one starry night something changes so totally. In a tower, on stone floor draped in dust, neither moves away from the other as they are done and spent. Their bodies are not touching, but almost and clothes lies strewn across the floor. In the moment, a shaky breath is drawn and a frail voice asks: Will you leave now? There is immediate answer, and silence yet again wraps them in its silky threads before the butterfly of a reply tear it to shreds.
Is that what you want me to?
And there is no other way to say no in, than ‘No.’
Calloused fingers caress broken dreams and mended bruises they once left themselves, and finally they are growing warm in a shy embrace. Shoulder to shoulder, without Horcruxes, blessed with sleep and one set of hands touching another. Not life anymore, but illusions that soothe better than any lullaby, and they dream that it can last, behind closed doors and blocked thoughts, that betrayal is an impossible end to it all. But sleep, sleep is blessed oblivion.
It is on a night like this that the heart of a young girl is broken. She walks desert hallways and search around every corner for a lost part of her youth that flew out of a window as Harry pushed her away those long months ago, along with the ghost of Tom Riddle that long resided in her body. They say she is too young to go on any missions yet, though she doesn’t understand that, because her brother is only a year older and is alone with her best friend somewhere out there, doing God knows what. She is only a year younger than their leader. It is insane. It is also insane, this scene that slaps her in the face as she pushes open a door in a distant part of the castle. In the shadow of moonlight lie two bodies entwined, in sleep beneath a thin blanket that mirror their shapes. It is beautiful despite her urge to be sick, and the air, which smells so heavily of sex, is hard to breathe.
All her young mind can think is No, not her Harry. He is the one she has been waiting for, been holding off for, the one she extended her heart towards, the one who took it greedily.
Ginny realises in that moment, or perhaps days later, or years, that he will never be totally hers. Silently, she turns on cold, unsteady feet, and runs back to an awaiting bed.
No. She will never be enough; not in the many years of his life; the many days he wishes for someone, anyone to hold on to; not as he marries; not as he awaits the birth of his children; not on the nights he takes anything, anything to bed with him. She’ll undoubtedly take care of him when he is too drunk or depressed to care himself, she’ll always have an extra bed ready if he can’t go home. She’ll be a regular Mary Poppins, never telling the truth about this night.
Ginny feels oddly connected to Malfoy, because he too shall feel the emptiness created by the print Harry left forever etched into their mattresses. He too shall be broken as a vase to the floor, and his world will diminish as Armageddon arrives.
She is as cold as the fire in her hair.
Note: (Will dance for reviews)
MW
FanFiction.Net - unleash your imagination