*croaking voice* “Hello, Potter.”
“Er… hello, lump of talking bedclothes.”
*shift of bedclothes* “I do not find you amusing. I am about to perish. Have you no decency, Potter? A fallen and imprisoned enemy, bound to his bed of pain. And here you are to mock me. Shame on you.”
“I didn’t know you were sick! What do you take me for?”
“I don’t know. I depend on feminine intuition to make my character judgements. I’d better ask my girlfriend Pansy. Oh, wait just a second…”
*coldly* “Don’t bother trying to make me feel guilty.”
“Why should you feel guilty about her? She was only one of thousands.”
“I did what I had to do. And don’t act as if you haven’t done worse, as if you didn’t choose worse.”
“Oh, of course. You killed because you had to, you were forced into it, the cruel hand of circumstance manipulated you down that path. And I decided, very calmly and callously, to take the path that would work out best for me. And yet somehow I ended up behind bars. Don’t talk to me about choice, and don’t play the victim.”
“I wasn’t the one who brought the war up.”
“I know.” *pause* “Sometimes it feels as if the war is all there ever was. All there ever will be—for me. Now.”
*sigh* “For me, too.”
*strained voice* “Don’t be stupid, Potter. You’re not rotting in prison.”
“No. No. But everyone I love is dead—or—or dying. I’m unemployable because I’m too famous, the government won’t even let me help out because they say my image—the things I did during the war, the things that won the war—aren’t compatible with their new style. You were right about that much, at least.”
*sound of a head falling back on a pillow* “Right about what?”
“This isn’t the world I fought for. It isn’t what I dreamed of—it’s nowhere I want to build a new life.”
“Potter.”
“What?”
“I know I can trust you to believe I’m not saying this out of any kind of altruistic concern.”
“What, Malfoy?”
“Sod the world and its multiple imperfections. It annoys me to see anyone being so irrationally and stupidly unhappy. Go pick a cutie out from among your screaming fans and have a few revolting little brats.”
“Marry someone who’ll only like me because I’m famous. That’s—disgusting. That’s—so like you, Malfoy.”
“Why, thank you.”
“I’ve had real affection. I’m not planning to settle.”
“Ah. Then you have another exciting option.”
“What is it?”
“Live all alone forever, become the slightly crazy old man who tells the kiddies war stories and has dried spit on his chin, and then die and have your owls peck out your eyes.”
*pause*
“Has anyone ever told you that your words are like cheering sunshine?”
“Not in those precise words, no.”
“I cannot imagine why not.”
*conversationally* “I have been told that my voice is like sex poured onto hot waffles, though.”
“I don’t think what you tell the mirror counts.”
“Push off, Potter. I’m sick.”
“What do you have?”
“The flu. I caught it. Don’t ask me how. There’s an ogre in the cell to my left and a troll to the cell on my right, I have no method of human communication, and somehow I managed to catch the flu. I presume this is Life.”
“I’m sorry if I gave it to you.”
“Not half as sorry as you’re going to be.” *pleasantly* “If you gave this to me, I do not care how long it takes, somehow I will work out an intricate plan and bring about your downfall. Then I will paint obscene graffiti on my cell wall with your blood.”
“I’m terrified.”
*pause*
“Why are you here, Potter?”
“Why? Do you mind?”
*exaggerated sigh* “Yes, Potter. I mind desperately. All my adoring followers are forming an obstreperous queue outside my cell. You are sending their whole schedule to hell in a hobgoblin’s handcart. Begone, it’s not like you’re the only human company I’ve seen in three months and I can’t afford to be choosy about my companions.”
”… Then why are you asking?”
“I’m a nosy person.”
“Oh, hell, Malfoy, I don’t know.”
“Can I guess?”
“If you like.”
“You’re obviously all bitter and twisted about the war, and it gives you a perverted little kick to see one of your enemies crushed even lower than you are.”
“How dare you!”
“Oh, come on, Potter.” *softly* “Tell me you don’t like it.”
“I… That wasn’t what I was thinking!”
“So you do. All right, I’ll guess again. I’m the only person your age who’s still alive.”
“Don’t be stupid. If I wanted, I could talk to—Justin Finch-Fletchley. Or the Creeveys. Or Hannah Abbott. Or—Padma and Parvati Patil. Anyone.”
“Who’s Hannah Abbott?”
“She was in our year.”
“Doesn’t ring a bell.”
“She had blonde hair. Pigtails. She was in Hufflepuff.”
“Ah. I see. I had better things to do in school than learn Hufflepuffs’ names.”
“You’re unbelievable.”
“So I’m told. Usually in slightly more breathless tones.” *pause* “Let me see. Justin Finch-Fletchley, the only man in the world to be more interesting while he was Petrified? And the Creevey brothers, who had a shrine dedicated to your worship. What a tempting selection.”
“There were the Patil twins.”
“I admit, a matched pair of nubile Indians sounds like a good idea to me.”
“They’re also very nice people. And interesting.”
*yawn* “How fascinating.” *pause* “So it’s not that, then. All right. You felt the need to purge your soul by confession, and decided to start small by admitting to me that you, while in your Invisibility Cloak—”
“How did you know I had an Invisibility Cloak?”
“I suffer from intelligence. I’m being given medication for it, I assure you. Now, while you were in your Invisibility Cloak, did you or did you not deliberately get an enormous trifle—”
“I cannot believe you still remember this.”
“An enormous and I might add enchanted trifle—”
“You incredibly small and petty and obsessive person.”
“A trifle which you then threw on me, while I was kissing Lisa Turpin, widely admitted to be the hottest ticket in our year, which turned my hair red and blue—”
“It was patriotic.”
“And which gave me, and I remember this part extremely clearly, breasts.”
“That was a side effect and I had no idea it would happen. I was as shocked as you.”
“Believe me, nobody could possibly have been as shocked as me.”
“Cheer up. For a week there, you were the hottest ticket in our year.”
*offended tones* “I was always the hottest ticket in our year. In a very, very masculine way.” *pause* “Shut up.” “I didn’t say anything.”
“And I’ve had quite enough of that amused silence.” *sneeze* “Do you have a handkerchief?”
“Sure. Here.”
“Thanks. So I take it that it wasn’t guilt over the breastful trifle then.”
“Why should I feel guilty?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Potter—”
“As I recall, you got me back. Since you fed me a Love Potion and I spent a week trying to get Professor Trelawney to marry me.”
*small snort* “Admit it, Potter. I was unleashing your forbidden desires.”
“She accepted! At the end of the week I had to fake my own death!”
“Talk about self-fulfilling prophecies, eh?”
“Sod off, Malfoy.”
*pause* “All right, then. I can’t guess why you came to see me.”
“No?”
“Well, I mean, it’s my personal opinion that I happen to be extremely easy on the eyes, but even I have to concede that that probably isn’t your motivation.”
*dryly* “Thanks.”
“So, are you going to tell me?”
“I said I didn’t know! I—You mentioned the Creevey brothers just now. And screaming fans.”
“If you’re planning to choose one of the Creeveys out of your group of fans and set up house, I implore you not to tell me. I don’t need that picture.”
“It’s just that the whole world’s like that now. Screaming fans—or people who are afraid of me. After—after—”
“Yeah. I remember.”
“Well. You’re neither of those things.”
*brightly* “I went to a meeting of your fan club once.”
“I had a fan—? And you went—?”
“Oh, yes. It was set up in fourth year. Lasted about a week.”
“What did you do?”
”… nothing. Who, me? Nothing.”
“Did you make anyone cry?”
“Only the girls and the Creeveys.”
“That wasn’t very nice.”
“No, but it was entertaining. Many nasty things are. So you came to talk to me because I wouldn’t, for any reason besides debilitating illness, swoon at your feet.”
“And…”
“Yes?”
“The nightmares.”
“Oh. Oh, I see.”
“When you’re back there, and there’s the blood because people had to be tortured for information on the battlefield as quickly as possible, and you’re slipping in it and you’re running, or the Muggles are hunting you again, or you sent a spell blasting into nowhere and maybe it hit someone—”
“Yes, I know.”
“—someone on your side. Someone you loved. And you wake up in the quiet night, and that’s worse because the blood and the screaming was at least familiar and peace is—is this completely alien territory. Like a place without air. A place you don’t know how to live in.”
“All right, Potter! Stop! I know.”
*silence*
“I thought you did. That’s another reason.” *pause* “It’s not… good, to wake up after one of those nightmares and think nobody else would understand.”
“Try waking up and seeing the Dementors outside your cell.”
“I don’t think I will. If it’s all the same to you.” *pause* “Besides, in the truce—”
“If you can call two sides calling a halt to war so they could go to war with Muggles a truce.”
“You know what I mean. In the truce, we—oh, you remember.”
“Refresh my memory. As I grow ill and feeble, my mind becomes so clouded. It’s really very tragic.”
“There were those couple of weeks we were in camp together. We were both squad leaders. There was a certain amount of enforced interaction.”
“Quite.”
“We… talked a bit, back then. It wasn’t so bad.”
“You came here to talk battle tactics and food rationing?”
“You talked about other things, sometimes.”
“Did I?”
“You once told me your greatest fear was that neither side would win. That we’d end up destroying the wizarding world until we were a few miserable remnants, chasing each other down in one last miserable scrap in the mud and blood. You said ‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.’ You said you didn’t want to die like that.”
“I don’t remember.”
“Come on, Malfoy!”
*soft laughter* “No, I’m sorry, I really don’t. I was on an insane amount of drugs by then. Most people were. You kept a clear head throughout battle, so you could live, and then the rest of the time… It ends up so all you remember is the battles. As if that’s been your whole life.”
*quietly* “I remember.”
“I remember… something about a lamp and moths. It was you, wasn’t it. I kept thinking that it couldn’t be, but it was. I wanted to put the lamp out, and you said if the moths were stupid enough to fly around it they deserved what they got.”
“Yes. And you didn’t listen. You put the lamp out. You were laughing.”
“One tends to laugh a lot, when one has happy little hallucinogens.”
“I don’t remember anybody laughing. Not for five years. Only you.”
“So—the case stands thus. We were able to hold some kind of communication in wartime once, we both have nightmares, I’m not afraid of nor am I fond of you, and you like seeing me get what I deserve.”
“Something like that.”
“You’re a twisted little person, Potter. And there’s one more reason, of course.”
*warily* “What is it?”
“Felicitations on this anniversary of your illustrious birth.”
“You know…?”
“It’s a national holiday, Potter. My nanny used to give me sweets on Harry Potter’s birthday. Recognising your birthday is a Pavlovian response by now. So—twenty-one. Now you’re legally allowed to do everything legal. Even in America, that barbarian wilderness.”
“Your mindset got stuck in 1782, didn’t it, Malfoy?”
“Push off, Potter. I hope I gave you flu for your birthday. It would make up in some small way for the breasts.”
“Let it go, Malfoy.”
*soft tap at the door*
“I. Um. Well, I guess it’s the end of visiting hours.” *pause* “I might see you. Next week.”
“No you won’t.”
”…Fine.”
*dolefully* “I shall be dead by next week. By next week, all that will remain is my piteous, drawn and yet touchingly attractive corpse.”
“All right then. Next week, I might see your piteous, drawn and yet touchingly attractive corpse.”
“Get yourself a life, Potter. But if you do happen to stop by, I wish to be buried by the old mill.”
“What old mill?”
“Oh, any old mill. It sounds so charming and rustic.”
“On that charming and rustic note, I’ll go.”
“Then go!”
*soft noise of a door closing*
*grumpily* “Nobody asked you to come.”