Title: Teardrop
Author: Savidana )
Rating: PG (OH GOD, this is rated PG...)
Summary: Faced with a terrible truth, Draco tries to avoid falling apart. It's fluff and angst intertwined to form a... thing.
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Notes: Some of the characters in this fic belong to me, some don't. I'm sure you're perfectly capable of knowing which is which. I wanted to participate... here goes nothing. >_<
It's not true. It's not true. Draco repeated this with mechanical fervour. Each time the words, muttered and strained, crawled off his tongue he hoped to prompt a revelation that would allow him to actually believe what he was saying. He stared down at his mothers usually sprawling elegant script and noted that it had been reduced to a wobbly string of words that followed no rules of any kind, as was evident by the lack of punctuation, grammar, and the presence of several words huddled together without spaces, as if they lacked the strength to stand apart.
A Malfoy still bleeds. Yet he could not allow himself to place his faith in the contents of the letter. There had to be an alternate explanation � a dream, a hallucination, a short stint with an alternate reality. He made a mental note to refrain from drinking pumpkin juice before bed. No matter what the case, Draco affirmed that nothing less than the tragic aftermath of a horrible mistake had befallen him. Some other Lucius Malfoy had met with an untimely demise, and some other Draco Malfoy, probably on the other side of the world, was the one who was going to have to deal with that.
If only.
Receiving the Owl Post was usually the highlight of his day. Sweets from home, trinkets from foreign countries, little bits of love wrapped in blatant materialism, these were offered to him in accordance with a family tradition that dated back as far as anyone could remember. Emotions were designated for the weak; that much was common knowledge to the early Malfoys, but still they craved means of expressing their affection for one another without having to endure the creeping sense of vulnerability. And so an emotional exchange was born whose cover was the perpetual gifting of an endless assortment of objects. This behaviour became the norm, and anyone wishing to communicate their feelings would invest in a pricey symbol of affection bound to invoke twinkling eyes and a pounding heart.
But today, Draco had received nothing but a letter. After glancing over it, he wandered from the castle in a daze, finding his way outside and to the edge of Hogwarts Lake. It never occurred to him to stay among his peers, seeking comfort in pity stares and half- hearted words designed to make him feel better. So sorry for your loss, blah, blah, blah. Besides, all of that would entail projecting a sense of vulnerability, which of course was never an item on his agenda.
It's not true.
It's just not true.
There was, however, one person who he may consider sharing his predicament with, one Harry Potter who was almost always perpetually present in his life. So much time had been wasted pretending to hate each other. Now those years were looked upon as foreplay. But even then, he loved Harry, yet he could not allow the boy to see him in such a state. That would involve letting his guard down, and that was not something he was willing to consider.
Scowling vehemently as he reminded himself to continue breathing, Draco kicked at the muddy shore, forgetting to care about the dark globs on the legs of his trousers.
Once wrapped in white, the land had been peaceful and bright. Now spring was in session and the snow was assaulted with piercing solar rays, revoking its frozen status in favour of a ruthless melting spree. The result was a bare, lifeless example of desolation. Haggard and yellow, the grass was slowly awakening from its slumber, yet still too embittered by the sudden change of season to show any signs of life. Fields of soft ivory coloured snowflakes were torn away and replaced with the revolting spectacle of a land that has lost everything. Even the seeds kept their heads tugged firmly beneath the ground, fearing the unknown world that lurked above them. The comforting gnaw in the frigid air was torn down and replaced with a sickly muggy scent, a thick putrescent mixture that made everything smell wet and rotten.
Dark rain clouds loomed like angry giants in the sky and a gentle boom sounded in the distance. A trickle of rain poured down from above. Calm at first, the drops grew steadily more intense until the rain pounded down so furiously that Draco could barely make out his surroundings.
Sighing deeply, he bent forward and placed his hands on his knees to steady himself. Like deadly tentacles arising from the deep, his pain was wound around his body, suffocating him. His fist tightened around the wad of crumpled parchment. The paper, grasped tightly in his hand dripped ink and rain that stained the grass when it came splashed against the withered blades.
His robes grew heavy with water, and as if that had been the final weight that he was able to bare, he was on his knees, mindless to the mud that would later on by a source of both physical and emotional annoyance. Head bowed low to the ground he placed his palms against the ground and clawed at the earth.
The rain created tiny ripples in the water and wispy swirls in the mud. Draco stayed still as glass, tendrils of his blond hair dancing across the mud surface, and forced the air into his lungs. The back of his throat seemed plagued with an invisible wad of cotton, like an emotional choke-hold seizing him by the neck and refusing to allow him to give in to the hurt, which now was all too real and much more difficult to deny. There was the torrential desire to let go and do what his heart demanded by permitting himself to fall apart, or to continue keeping it under lock and key, instead creating a series of emotional floatation devices to prevent him from going under.
Wet, cold, and shaking against the earth, it came as quite a shock to feel warm fingertips playing across the back of his neck and he quickly tightened his resolve when a soft voice sounded against the pounding of the rain. "I've been looking all over for you�What's wrong?"
Harry Potter. Fully recognizable by touch alone, let alone sound.
"Oh, just�" Draco muttered, biting his bottom lip. There were words enough to describe the situation, but none of them were readily available to him. Even if he could have told Harry what was wrong, he didn't think it would have been easy. But this� he couldn't even begin to explain himself. Repeating the contents of the letter aloud would make it real, and he couldn't allow that to happen.
"Just what?" asked Harry, bending down and reaching for Draco's hand. "Get up you silly git. You're going to be up all night hacking your bloody lungs out in the hospital wing and guess who's going to be stuck entertaining you, not to mention catching your germs."
"I don't have germs," mumbled Draco, wearily accepting Harry's hand and using the other boy's weight in order to pull himself to his feet.
Harry sighed and wound his arms around the Slytherin's waist. He brushed his lips against Draco's cheek, drawing tiny circles with his tongue and pulling the other boy as close as he they could get without their bodies amalgamating. "C'mon, Draco, what's the matter with you?"
Claws tearing at his throat, an intense pounding right between his eyes, and a horrific sense of uneasiness in the pit of his stomach, Draco locked Harry in a tight embrace. He touched the side of Harry's face with his hand and kissed his jaw-line. "Harry, my father's name is no longer accessible to me as a means of threatening the incompetent fools I'm faced with on a daily basis."
"Why's that?" asked Harry, smirking slyly. "Has he gone soft?"
Draco managed a slight smile. The thought of his father going soft was as unlikely as it was amusing to imagine. "No, he's just gone."
He would have asked "gone where?" but look of sorrow imprinted firmly upon Draco's face provided him with an answer sufficient enough for him to bite his tongue in time. Instead he refrained from speech of any kind, and raised his hand, softly brushing the hair out of Draco's eyes and dampening his fingers with the cool raindrops.
Harry sighed as Draco became heavy in his arms. It hurt knowing Draco was in pain and feeling utterly incapable of doing anything to help. This was not a wound that he could kiss better. Even if it had been, Draco would have denied him access, preferring to huddle sulking in the corner until the damage was healed. But he could still stand there, water assaulting them from above, drowning the land further, strengthening the odour of decaying matter long hidden from view, trying desperately to bring back the butterflies and the blossoms.
Draco caressed the warmth of Harry's neck with the tips of his fingers. Rain flowed down both their faces like hurried tears. And when his strength broke, the droplets offered a most masterful disguise to hide his pain.
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