“Potter, I told you—”
*sound of a body hitting bars*
“Oh my God. Get up, Potter.” *pause, then steps* “Hey. Hey, what’s the matter?”
*pause*
“You can’t sit here like this forever, you know. They’ll kick you out. So—ow!”
“I did what you said.”
“Ow ow ow.”
“I did what you said. I went to Parvati and I apologised for scaring her and I tried to explain—I tried to explain why I had. I tried to tell her—about some of it, tried to let any of it out and—she kissed me.”
“You lucky bastard. Ow.”
*trembling voice* “She kissed me just to stop me talking. Do you know what that feels like, to see that in someone’s eyes—she can’t bear to remember the names of the dead, can’t stand to let me speak them, she would rather offer up her body to smother the truth and hide away all we suffered and all we were and just have some cheap comfort and—God, the silence. It’s worse than the silence of people who died, the silence of people who should be able to speak of them—with love.”
“Sometimes people aren’t strong enough.”
“Well they should be! That kind of weakness is too horrible. And then when I was leaving she told me to go see my family. My—family. And I did, and it’s sick what kind of things you do for some comfort, and you’d told me never to come back. I went back to the Dursleys. I’d sworn never to do that, to revisit the fucking indignity of childhood. I swore. And there I was looking through the windows of Privet Drive and watching them. My cousin Dudley is my age, and he had his wife with him, and she’s pregnant, and ugly, and he’s disgustingly fat, and they and my aunt and uncle—they’re lolling around in comfortable, undisturbed complacency, they’re happy and they’ve been happy for six years while I was in hell, and I know them. They’re miserable people, petty, grinding, malicious little people who revel in tiny contemptible acts of cruelty. And they’re happy. And I looked in, and I thought about living there, and I thought about what they are, and what the Muggles did to all of us, and—I came so close to killing them. It seemed so right. God, I wanted to do it!”
“But you didn’t do it.”
*harshly* “But I still want to do it! And I can’t go to some foreign beach and join them, all those smug people glorying in how comfortable they are, turning their faces away from everyone who was ever in pain and who ever disturbed their smooth, heartless, horrible lives! I don’t—is that the price, for any sort of peace? To forget them all like Parvati has, to never speak their names, not to care any more about—about those ideas that died with them? I just… I can’t do it. But I don’t want to live like this, I don’t want to keep waking up screaming at the shadows, I don’t want to hate everyone. I just want to feel—not so alone. I want to talk with somebody who understands. It’s the only company that I can bear and I can’t bear being like this, and—”
“All right. Hush.”
“I want to be with you. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand!”
“Then don’t send me away again!”
“It didn’t work very well this time, did it? I won’t. All right? I won’t.”
“You’re such a bastard, Malfoy.”
“You’re crushing my hand, Potter.”
*deep breath* “Sorry.”
“Well, it’s all right. I understand that my company and conversation hold irresistible charms. Mind, I take none of this as an excuse for not sleeping with Parvati Patil. I despair of you.”
“Sod off, Malfoy.”
“Murderous impulses, okay. Turning down a saucy, sherbet-bearing Patil—that’s just sick.”
“I don’t even like sherbet.”
“Everybody likes sherbet. You’re shivering, did you know that? And you’re even thinner than you were. I look better than you, and I am a wretched prisoner and I refuse food most days because the stuff is pigswill.”
“They wouldn’t let me in before visiting hours.”
“How long were you—no, don’t tell me, I don’t even want to know. Sometimes I think your stupidity knows no bounds.”
“At least I don’t have some kind of weird and perverted fixation on sherbet.”
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, Potter. My entire life would have been brightened if you could have come here with a report of a Patil twin and sherbet.” *exaggerated sigh* “Well. Since you’re here, you can tell me something else.”
“What?”
“How’re the Cannons doing in the League?”
*startled laugh* “I don’t know. I haven’t been following Quidditch.”
“Really. How… unlike you. All right, are there any good new songs? I’m very fond of the Wyrd Sisters. Weren’t they supposed to be doing some new ones?”
“I don’t know that either.”
“You useless prat, Potter. I can just imagine what you’ve been up to most of the time. ‘Dear Diary—’”
“I don’t keep a diary.”
“‘Dear Diary, which I am too boring to actually keep—Today I lay on my bed, stared at the wall, obsessed over my bad memories, felt random depression, skipped breakfast, lunch and dinner, was driven by utter tedium to lurid fantasies of Sybil Trelawney. Am angst-ridden. Woe!’”
“I could never be bored enough to fantasise about Professor Trelawney. And I did more than that. Once I bought socks.”
“I am silenced. Your life is a frenzied social whirl.”
“I remembered what you said about not being able to. I tried to appreciate that.” *pause* “It didn’t work, but then I was starting off really, incredibly small. Next I think I’ll try cocktails.”
“You bought socks because I can’t.”
“Yes. Envy my wild, sock-purchasing good times.”
“You are a deeply strange person, Potter. My mother warned me about sock purchasers. ‘Steer clear of them, Draco,’ she said. ‘They can’t be trusted. They think they can control the socks, but in the end, the socks control them. The socks always win.’”
“I can quit any time I like.”
“Keep telling yourself that. And go to a Cannons game. I want to know how they’re doing.”
“I went to one once. When the team had just been set back up. I just kept thinking about how happy Ron would have been and I couldn’t stay because he wasn’t there, I couldn’t—”
“Go to another one. You might not want to forget the dead. There’s no reason to let the dead consume you. And—God. This is another reason why you shouldn’t have come.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you, Potter. I’m talking about who you are. I’m talking about what you were like—when we were both kids. I could see it, everyone could see it, the way you’d obviously been lonely all your life and the way you clung like a limpet to things now you were offered them. You were eleven years old and you were willing to die for it, because you were so starry-eyed and in love with this new kind world and your friends and your mentor figure and your thousand ideals of decency and goodness. But you can’t keep doing it.”
“Doing what?” *bitterly* “I don’t have much belief left.”
“I know that! That’s what I’m saying. You had all that faith, and it was so necessary to you, and it was burned away inch by inch. That’s why some days you want to die. Because you don’t know how to live without it, all that shining devotion, and… I’m saying you don’t have enough of that belief left to waste. You’re too close to the edge, and if you—if you believe in me, I’ll break you.”
*soft laughter* “And this is Draco Malfoy, more selfish than the devil.”
“Shut up, Potter. I’m serious. I’m dead, dead to all intents and purposes, and you have to stop living with the dead. Everybody bleeds, but this is draining yourself dry. You set yourself up for one more betrayal and—God—it’ll shatter you. I’ll shatter you. Is that what you want?”
“You’re not so bad.”
“You’re an utterly delusional fool. Don’t do this. Let go of my hand. Why should you, what could I possibly be to you? I was a Death Eater, I killed, I was the evil-minded brat you hated in school. There’s no reason to put yourself on the line for me.”
“Malfoy—”
“I’m nothing to you. And if you’re fucking stupid and you get attached for nothing—I’m telling you there’s no way to stop getting ripped to shreds. I’ll owe you for your life, and that’s not a debt I want to have!”
“Malfoy—”
“You’re going to be destroyed—”
“Malfoy! Stop ranting and listen to me.”
“I’m not ranting—”
“You’re always ranting. Listen. You know how, when those enchanted bombs came…”
“Yes.”
“The ones with the Boggarts in them, the spells that could make you think you were crawling through your own mother’s entrails…”
“Yes, damn you! Your side threw them too. Stop.”
“All anyone could do was close their eyes and think of something else, some image to hold against it. Ride through the nightmare and try to reach the other side. And everyone said the same thing. That there was always just one image in the end. One thing. A scene of childhood or a beautiful view or—or something.”
“Yes.”
“You.”
“What?”
“You. That night with the moths. In the officers’—in the officers’ tent. Everyone was filthy and cold and afraid for their lives. I felt grim as if I’d seen the whole world die. And you still cared about the moths—”
“It was a whim—”
“You just—you just leaned your forehead against the glass of the lamp, and laughed. You laughed and sounded almost kind when I said, ‘Who cares about the moths?’ You said ‘I care,’ and you laughed again, and it was very soft, and the light was so pale. And your hair looked silver and your eyes looked gold, and the world seemed all turned upside down. And then you blew the lamp out.”
*beat*
“That’s what else you were. That image. You don’t—you don’t owe me a thing.”
“I see.”
“It’s time. I’d better go.”
*quick steps, soft thud of the door shutting*
*deep breath* “Christ.”