I always wondered what your grave would look like. It was one of my frequent daydreams when I'd be bored in class back at Hogwarts. I'd imagine the world mourning over your sad memory, myself standing proudly away from all of it, the honor of the Malfoy family gleaming like an aura around me. Sometimes it was a simple unmarked grave in a bleak and barren cemetery, hastily made at the end of the long war with the Dark Lord. Other times it would be a large pretentious shrine constructed by your admirers, covered in frost from the snow. In my more bitter moments, it would transform into a small forgotten grave, ignored and
unwanted by everyone else. Leaves would collect in the small depression in the ground over your grave, a motley collection of reds, golds, and yellows. I'd see myself coming to visit you, just to remind you how everyone had deserted you. Your disgrace and shame would be my redemption and glory, I would subsume you in a way others simply couldn't understand or accept.
Most of the daydreams and fantasies I had at school were centered around you in some way. My arch-nemesis, the darkness to my light, the summer to my winter and any other cliche I could think of at the time. You consumed my consciousness in ways that lovers or friends never could. At times it seemed like my entire existence was focused around making you understand what was happening. What you had refused on our first day of school, shunned without a thought to the implications. You couldn't see the greatness we could become together, I don't think you ever really did. Sometimes I wondered what life would be like without you, I thought it would be some sort of paradise where I would become the hero
of the story and be admired and feared by all. The proud and successful son of a Malfoy, standing rightfully by his father's side in triumph. A silly thought, I suppose, but when you're young and desperate for attention, things always seem so serious. Oddly enough, you were the only person I ever told about those fantasies.
"What are you smirking at, Malfoy?" the edge in Harry's voice was subtle, but apparent. Draco turned from where he'd been staring out the window at the summer landscape to find Harry a few feet away. Clutching a few books in his arms, he was clearly annoyed at finding Draco in the library.
"I fail to see how that's any of your business, Potter," Draco said with a malicious grin. Despite his statement to the contrary, something in Draco moved him to tell Harry anyway. "If you must know, I was thinking about what you funeral would be like."
"Are you really so eager to see me dead?" Harry asked quietly, looking away.
"I didn't say I wanted to see you dead, despite how big of a prat you frequently are. I was thinking mainly of what your fan club would do without you around. Move onto someone new to idolize perhaps?" sarcasm dripped off Draco's words.
Harry's gaze snapped back in the other boy's direction at the comment and he glared. "Unlike your pack of hyenas, my friends don't abandon and turn on me at the first sign of weakness."
"Really now? So what was that little spat you had with the Weasel last year? Let's be honest, you break enough rules and even that uptight mudblood friend of yours will abandon you." The books Harry was carrying fell with a thud to the ground as he grabbed Malfoy by the front of his robes.
"Insult my friends like that again and I'll...I'll..."
"You'll what? Make empty threats at me? How adorably first year of you." Draco plucked Harry's hands off his robe and straightened his clothes back into order, "didn't your parents teach you not to mess up other boy's clothing? Oh wait, that's right..."
"At least my mum and dad knew that family is more than just some shitty code of honor," Harry said coldly, stepping away.
Do you know what the last words my father spoke to me before being taken by the Aurors were? "Don't let the family down, boy." Realistically I knew he'd never come back, that Azkaban would be his final destination, but I still followed his orders. Even now, I am haunted by the ghost of my father who is not yet dead. Caught up in this sense of noblesse oblige, more so now then when I was in school. When I was young it was just a fanatical obsession with pleasing my father and bringing honor to the family. Now, even though I do not agree with most of the actions of my peers, I continue down this path set for me. I find
myself in the odd situation of agreeing with the ideology of the Death Eaters but unable to accept the reality of the suffering and death that it's causing. The ends justify the means, my father once told me. What utter crap. But there is no room for the twilight between night and day in this war. You are either one of us, or one of them. No room for compromise, then or now. I can no more change my course than I could stop summer from ending.
You would say it's stupid, that everyone has freedom of choice. At one time, I might have agreed with you, convinced as I was that I was forging my own path through the twilight. But even you got caught up in your obligations. Could you conceive of a world where you woke up one day and just decided not to fight the Dark Lord? I doubt it, it would be a concept contrary to your entire being. Even our brief tryst in our 7th year couldn't break either of us from our paths. Bourne of long hours in Quidditch locker rooms and years of suppressed anger, it was brief and fierce. There was no pretense of romance or love. Just two young bodies and the almost desperate need to set themselves free.
"Whatever prank you're trying to pull, it's not going to work," Draco tried his best not to jump at Harry's voice. Harry was standing in the doorway, brushing snow off his Quidditch robes.
"Whatever gives you the idea I'm trying to pull some kind of prank?" Draco said in his best attempt at an innocent voice that ended up sounding insincere and screaming he was up to something. He slipped the confusion charm he'd intended to put into Potter's robes back into a pocket in his own in the hopes the other boy hadn't noticed he'd been holding something.
"Malfoy. You're in the Gryffindor locker rooms. I can't think of any plausible scenario how you could be here alone and not be up to something," Harry said with a slightly smug expression. Draco looked at Harry for a moment, mentally calculating his chances of getting off a stun spell and escaping. "Of course, no point in explaining it twice, let me just call for Madame Hooch so you can explain it to her instead."
Harry opened his mouth to yell and Draco took the chance to bolt for it. He started to murmur a blocking charm in case Harry tried to stun him. What he didn't account for was Harry just stepping over and throwing him bodily up against the lockers instead.
"I'm not letting you get away with whatever stunt you're trying to pull, you're not leaving until the professor gets here," Harry said, his eyes glinting at the chance to finally get some level of retribution for all the trouble Draco had gotten him into. Draco pushed back, struggling to get Harry off him. The two tripped over one of the benches as they struggled, falling to the floor. Draco continued to push and writhe, trying to free himself from Harry's grasp. Harry, on the other hand, was doing his best to cling to Draco, determined not to let
the Slytherin boy escape.
After several moments of heated struggling, Harry got the other boy pinned down. Draco struggled some more, trying to break free from Harry's grip. Harry continued to hold Draco's arms down and moved one of his legs to stop Draco's legs from kicking, which resulted in Harry's thigh rubbing up against Draco's burgeoning erection. Harry froze for a moment before jumping back and putting some space between them.
"What the hell's wrong with you, Malfoy?" Harry sputtered, trying to regain some of his previous calm. Draco grinned unrepentantly at the other boy, enjoying his sudden upper hand.
"Figures you'd run like a scared little virgin, Potter. Haven't any of your admirers offered to show you the joys of the flesh?"
"I'm not the innocent dolt you seem to think I am," Harry spit out, "but I'm not the easy bundle of hormones you seem to be either."
"Prove it," Draco said, without stopping to think of the possible implications of what he was inviting. He wasn't doing much think at all, in fact. The challenge hung in the air for a moment as Draco raised himself up onto his elbows. Harry lunged forward and bit into flesh at the bottom of Draco's throat with a growl.
"Don't come whining to me when you can't handle the truth of it later on, Malfoy," was all Harry said before he made good on the challenge.
It's vaguely ironic, I suppose, just how binding the truth is. I always thought knowledge would set you free, an emancipating glory to take one beyond the confines of their expected life. And yet, knowledge has only served to bind me even closer to my set path. Being self-aware of my obsession with honor hasn't prevented me from doing things I'm ashamed to admit to in the light of day. If anything, it has only served to make me bitter. Jaded in a way, because I know the folly of my action, and yet, can do nothing to prevent them. The almost blind fanaticism of my youth has given way to a silent acceptance as I've grown
older. Like the death of fall as winter encroaches, the process was gradual.
Which is why it's somehow fitting that you died in the fall, I suppose. The season that separated us, our twilight. I couldn't bring myself to be there when they killed you, even though I was almost directly responsible for you being caught in the first place. My absence was noticed, which I suspect is the reason they gave me the job of making sure your body was delivered personally to the Ministry.
The weather is cold and unforgiving today. The last of summer's blooms are gone, the grass has all shriveled up. Your grave is just a small hole near a copse of trees. I can't afford to use magic to bury your body or they might find it again and actually make sure it gets to the Ministry this time. Everything seems muted in this time of growing cold, even the soil seems gray. Even in my most heated moments, I never thought that I would be the person to bury you. During the twilight, as the light faded from view I laid your body to rest. I did always
wonder what your grave would look like. And now I know.
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