Fic: How can you mend a broken Heart
Dec. 17th, 2011 06:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mini_fest_mod posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
mini_festTitle: How can you mend a broken Heart
Author: ???
Rating: R
Characters: Draco, Narcissa, Lucius, Harry; Harry/Draco
Prompt: 97
Warnings: eeehhh, none really
Summary: Christmas at Malfoy Manor once used to be a joyous affair, but this year everything’s different.
Word Count: 5,140
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: The largest thank you goes to C and W for being my betas, I love you guys so much it hurts! Thanks for taking the time out of your busy RL to look this over for me and sharing your thoughts on this with me and for making sure this was presentable. I love you both! ♥
Also thank you to W, without you this wouldn’t have been written… you enabler you!
Thanks also to the girls for encouraging me, I’ve had a great time writing this in your company!
This story isn’t really all that close to the prompt. Sorry about that. I do hope it’s still something the original prompter will enjoy.
Acknowledgements: The lyrics at the beginning are from a song called “Hearts A Mess” by Gotye and I really like the thought that thinking of someone can be like a hostile take-over, like they conquered your mind and heart in some way, since this is a bit what this fic is about. The title was shamelessly stolen from a song by Al Green, because I’m lame and couldn’t think of any other title.
Happy Christmas everyone and thanks for having me.
How can you mend a broken Heart
Pick apart
The pieces of your heart
And let me peer inside
Let me in
Where only your thoughts have been
Let me occupy your mind
As you do mine
The glass is cold beneath his fingers and immediately starts to fog over where his warm breath brushes against it. The Manor grounds are covered in a thick layer of snow that seems to glow under the clear starlit sky. He can make out the silent columns of smoke rising undisturbed into the air from the nearby village. Like with so many winter nights this one isn’t dark, it’s glowing with the luminescence of the freshly fallen snow.
His shadow is dark and wavering as it falls onto the ground beneath the window. The fire makes its contours dance and leap as if this imprint of him is unable to contain all of him. Much like Draco, who couldn’t define who or what he has become since the war, even if he tried. How fitting, he thinks, for the thing you least expect to be a perfect image of your inner turmoil.
So intent is he on watching his outline shift and flicker that it takes him longer than usual to see the dark shape by the gate. The one he didn’t know he has been looking for. The shape whose existence he barely dares to believe in. His insides knot in fear and longing. Cold leaks into Draco’s hand from the glass, it’s almost painful and yet he cannot seem to move, let alone tear his gaze away.
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
The first time Draco had become aware of someone standing by the gate and watching him was after getting ready for bed and taking one last look out before closing the curtains. The thick fabric had felt wonderful in his hands as he drew them close, letting his gaze wander across the snow covered gardens. Draco remembered how this view used to excite him when he was little. He would try to force himself to fall asleep as quickly as possible so it would be morning soon. Before his minds eye he could see the frozen pond, see his father’s laughing face as he taught Draco to ice skate, wand drawn for a quick cushioning charm, should Draco lose his balance. He couldn’t help but smile at the memory, but the smile grew bitter too quickly. Those days were gone. His father hadn’t smiled even once since the Dark Lord had moved into his home and hadn’t smiled at his son for even longer.
He had squeezed his eyes shut, gripping the curtain hard enough to hurt his hand. Forcing the pain down had become more difficult every day. Rejection he could handle, or so he told himself every time, when nobody at Hogwarts had a friendly word or even so much as a friendly look for him. They didn’t matter, nobody mattered anymore. Draco had tried in vain to hold the memory back that forced its way out of him, into the open. All strength left him and Draco had leant into the cold glass in front of him, the fabric of the curtain still clutched in his hand.
There was only ever one rejection that mattered to him; it always had and recently it had begun to hurt even more than it did that first time. Draco couldn’t even say his name out loud, let alone think it, too scared of the pain and longing becoming audible. That first rejection, when the other boy refused to shake his hand. It destroyed part of him and in doing so defined what remained.
Draco opened his eyes again, hoping to see anything but the green eyes of his memories, filled with disdain. It took him a while to realise someone was watching him from the other side of the Manor gates. The figure was hunched over and looked so forlorn and sad that Draco felt his heart grow cold. Whoever was standing out there was just as lost as he was. The figure had winced once when Draco’s gaze met the figure’s face and had quickly disapparated. Every night afterwards the stranger had returned, gazing at the lit windows of the Manor, never once trying to enter or making his presence known.
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
Draco knows who is waiting for him on the other side of the gates. He knows tonight will be the last night he’ll be here, like he’s been here every night since Draco came back from Hogwarts for the holidays. What he doesn’t know is why the man is here, or what he wants from Draco and that worries him more than he is willing to admit.
Will the man make a move tonight, Draco wonders. Will tonight be the night that he ceases to be a silent watcher? Will this finally be the time that he comes to collect what’s rightfully his? Draco has no answer to these questions, so he just stands there in silence, blocking out the murmured words in the background.
He is so absorbed in his own world that it feels like he’s resurfacing from a deep and dark lake when his mother calls him to her side. Her tone is almost harsh. Draco walks over to her as if in a trance, he doesn’t know how long he stood by the window, but from the look on her face, she’s had to call him more than once. No wonder there had been a rebuke, however gentle. His mother isn’t used to being disobeyed.
Draco still feels the man’s gaze on him as he walks away from the window. Only once does he turn his head to look over his shoulder towards the dark garden beyond. Surprisingly, Draco can still see him even through the reflection of the flickering fire on the glass. Everything about him is so familiar, Draco would know him anywhere.
“Draco, darling, sit with me by the fire.” His mother indicates the empty space on the small sofa beside her.
Sitting beside her, Draco can smell the light scent of her perfume. To him sitting with his mother by the fire has always been the best part of Christmas. She would let him unwrap one present – only a small one – and then read to him sometimes. Wizarding fairytales made everything sound so exciting, like life was an adventure just waiting for him to reach for it and take up the challenge. At other times she’d comb her hands through the soft strands of his pale hair, gazing at the flames and not saying anything at all. Draco knew then, that he was loved. There was no need for words.
They were a family; they would always be there for each other, no matter what. This truth to Draco was universal. He sometimes wondered what it would have been like if he had had to grow up without this sense of security and often his gaze travelled only to alight on a small scrawny boy with messy hair and green eyes.
This Christmas Eve is supposed to be like all the others before it, reassuring, warm and reaffirming the feeling of belonging that had become so difficult to find in recent times. Draco knows it is not meant to be. The tree sparkles cheerfully in front of them, mountains of colourful but tastefully wrapped gifts are piled beneath it, but something is missing. His father sits in the large armchair opposite them by the fire, hunched low as if by old age. Draco knows that what is bearing his father down is worry. Worry for Draco and his mother, worry for what might still happen. The trials lie in the past, so does his father’s sentence, but some people still think the Malfoy’s got off too easily. Draco knows his father fears there will be retribution for his sins. His father is still scared that his family will have to pay the price for his own misguided beliefs.
His mother takes Draco’s hand in hers for a moment and gently strokes it, never meeting his gaze. They all stare into the flames. For just a moment Draco allows himself to believe, to trust that things will be okay. The moment is fleeting and all too soon reality encroaches. He should feel like part of a family, a unity, but all he feels is a part of a group of three, staring forlornly at a fire, that crackles with the promise of warmth and cheerfulness that will never be theirs again.
There are so many things he wants to tell his parents so many things he wishes he had said before everything went to hell. But just like his parents he doesn’t speak, just forces his gaze towards the fire, until he knows that even when he closes his eyes he’ll be able to see the flames dancing in front of them.
Part of him is still terrified by fire and he is glad that his parents sit closer to it than he does. If it hadn’t been for him, Draco wouldn’t be alive today. Wouldn’t be here to mourn the people he lost, the people who got hurt because of him. Christmas is supposed to be happy and uplifting, something to make your heart feel warm with joy, but tonight Draco doesn’t feel any of these things. He’s too overwhelmed with the ‘what ifs’ to be able to feel anything at all.
It’s much later when the fire finally begins to dwindle. His father gets up slowly, looking over to his wife who lets go of Draco’s hand and gets up, letting her husband lead her from the room.
“Don’t stay up too long, Draco.” She says over her shoulder, before the doors close behind her, leaving him alone in the room that’s suddenly filled by dark and terrifying shadows. Draco leans into the sofa, pulling his knees up and hugging them to his chest. He grabs the blanket from the armrest where his mother sat and clutches it to him. The warmth from the fire still radiates from the fabric and Draco wraps this warmth around himself like the hug he so desperately needs.
A flicker of motion from the corner of his vision disturbs his reverie. Did he see something there by the window? Draco is suddenly worried that something like that Muggle writer wrote about might happen to him. He knows he won’t be able to bear being visited by the ghosts of the past. When did the first ghost show up again? Was it one hour to midnight?
He almost jumps out of his skin when the large clock in the corner decides that this is the perfect moment to interrupt his terrified musings by striking that very hour. The sound of the bell drowns out even the popping sounds of the dying fire and Draco shivers. He doesn’t dare move or even breathe in too deeply for fear of making his presence known. When the last chime of the clock reverberates around the room and then slowly subsides, he hears it for the first time, an almost inaudible scratching noise. It takes him a while to locate which direction it’s coming from. There it is again. Before turning his head to investigate, Draco knows that the scratching is coming from the window he’d stood at gazing out at the world beyond, not too long ago. Something is blocking the view to the garden from the outside, probably some creature looking in on him, trying to get in for some nefarious purpose.
Draco shakes with fear, unable to stop his body from broadcasting his emotion to the watcher at the window. He is straining his eyes in a desperate attempt to penetrate the darkness all around him and still he cannot make out who or what is attempting to gain ingress into his home.
When Draco can’t bear it anymore, the floor to ceiling length windows fly open and bring with them a gust of cold air and snow that extinguish the fire and the candles on the tree. The room is cast into impenetrable darkness. The shape in the window moves forward threateningly, framed by the now lighter night sky outside. It stamps its boots to dislodge the snow and then steps fully into the room, turning its head this way and that, as if trying to sniff out its prey.
Draco’s heart beats fast and loud and he is convinced the intruder must be able to hear it just as clearly as he does. As if called by Draco’s thoughts, the man turns towards him and slowly advances. An almost inaudible rustle of clothing reveals a drawn wand in the man’s hand.
The man’s hood is drawn deep into his face, most likely to keep out the cold, but at the same time hiding his features from view. If only Draco could see the man’s face, he wouldn’t feel so vulnerable. If only he had somewhere to focus his anger and fear.
Like a child that decides closing its eyes will make it invisible to the monsters in the shadows, Draco presses his eyes shut, forcing himself to calm down. The intruder is still approaching, but Draco isn’t moving, isn’t even shaking anymore, as he gets his breathing under control. The man is standing close enough in front of Draco for him to be able to smell him. Neither of them moves and the spell is only broken, when the arm of the sofa Draco is sitting on groans under his tight grip.
There is a rustle of clothes, followed by a thud and then soft hands are cradling Draco’s face carefully. His eyes snap open at the touch. The fingers are cold against his skin but somehow he doesn’t seem to mind. He still can’t quite make out the strangers features, but the tenderness with which he is holding Draco’s face and the warmth of his breath wafting over Draco’s open lips tells him that the man is no stranger at all.
“I’m sorry, so very sorry.” The man peppers light kisses all over Draco’s face, tracing his eyebrows, kissing his eyelids, his nose and then finally his lips again. “It’s my fault.”
Draco can deny himself no longer; he reaches for the man and pulls him up from his kneeling position, pulling him onto the sofa with him. Draco digs his hand into the dark hair and lets the hood fall back.
“You came back!” He manages to say between frantic kisses.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” but Draco doesn’t let him finish. He realises that he doesn’t need to hear the words. He knows he’s forgiven the man already. And just like he knows that, Draco also knows that the man will never leave him now. He is all Draco’s and they will never be parted again.
They cling to each other and Draco isn’t surprised when Harry slowly begins undressing him. It all seems so strange, but it doesn’t scare him, all he needs is here in his arms, professing his undying love to Draco with every touch and every kiss. They are so desperate to feel each other that they scratch and bite and tear at everything they can reach, marking each other and staking their claim.
Draco moans in delight when Harry finally enters him, canting his hips up to take him in deeper. Harry is making him his, claiming his body and soul. Draco rejoices in Harry’s possession of his body, his heart has belonged to the man too long to even be considered Draco’s own anymore. Every time Harry has turned away from him in a Hogwarts corridor, every time he refused to meet his eye or talk to him melts away as they connect, creating something beautiful. However fleeting this moment makes Draco feel like part of something whole, something special and with that thought in mind he can feel himself coming completely undone.
~.o.O.0.O.o.~
The bleary light of a cloudy early morning shines in through the window. The room is freezing when he wakes. The blanket has slipped from his shivering form during the night and he has curled up tightly trying to preserve as much warmth as possible. His eyelids flutter as consciousness sluggishly returns, fighting his attempts to speed the process up with every step. Draco groans when he tries to move and feels the crick in his neck and back. He must have fallen asleep on the sofa after his parents went to bed.
Draco looks around himself looking for evidence of what happened last night. There is no sign of any disturbance. Where is Harry? The shock of realisation wakes him fully. It has been nothing but a dream. Nothing but one of the innumerable dreams he has had since Harry, no Potter, he reminds himself, has saved him from the Fiendfyre.
Draco rushes to the window, to look outside and make sure there are no footprints in front of the window. It had all felt so real last night. They have to be there. The pristine blanket of snow outside mocks him and crushes the last of his hope. Everything seems bleak even the snow flakes drifting down from the sky are nothing but tiny shrouds to cover up the last shreds of his heart.
He can’t take it any more. None of it. The terror that comes at night, the jibes that he pretends don’t hurt and most of all, the one person he craves to be with but can never have. Defeated Draco sinks to the floor by the window, pressing his cheek to the cold glass, feeling just as lifeless. If only he could stop feeling this way, could stop being this pathetic empty shell of human being, driven by a craving that can never be sated. If only Draco could stop yearning for what he can’t have. His mind comprehends the facts and tries to make it easier for him to move on, but his traitorous little heart betrays him at every turn.
The cold makes him shiver and wrap his arms around himself. His eyes are downcast to the floor; he doesn’t want to look up towards the gate and not see him. Draco knows that the man at the gate will never return for him. He scolds himself inwardly for being such a coward, for not going outside and talking to him. But he knows why he didn’t. He likes to tell himself that it was Harry at the gate, not some random stranger. Draco has become so enamoured with the idea that he started dreaming of walking to the gate and asking the man to come inside. He has never seen his face; not really, he only saw what he wanted to.
He shakes his head bitterly, looking at the cheerfully twinkling lights on Christmas tree beside him that have been relit by the house elves while he was asleep. The only emotion he can feel is rage and disappointment, he wants to tear into the tree, grab the beautiful ornaments and smash them against the walls. He wants something, anything, to reflect how he feels, wants something in this world to acknowledge his pain. This utter pristineness of everything around him drives Draco up the wall. But Malfoys don’t rage, they don’t show their suffering, they are stoic and will always keep up appearances. Suffering is for the weak. Being a Malfoy should be enough to get him through the day, but lately it hasn’t been, not by a long shot. How to be a Malfoy has become something that’s slipping from his grasp. He is having a hard enough time to try and remember what being “Draco” is supposed to feel like.
After the war everything has changed, everything he’d taken for granted has become slippery and then like a puff of smoke evaporated into nothingness. All that Draco has taken to make up his life, himself, his convictions and how the world worked has been torn asunder, made to be worthless and wrong. He has always known that the way he behaved didn’t make him friends it only made him minions and people who were afraid of him.
When he came back to Hogwarts after the trials last summer to finish his studies and joined the other eighth years, he hadn’t known what to expect. He had expected to be shunned to become some kind of martyr or pariah for the causes of Slytherin, but what had actually happened was nothing like it. He had been completely and utterly ignored, by his housemates, his teachers and his fellow eighth years alike. And worst of all, he had been ignored by one Harry James Potter.
It’s not like he’s actually worthy of the saviour’s attention anyway, he thinks. He never used to believe it, but recent events have shown this to be true and even the famed Malfoy pride isn’t enough to drag him out of that dark hole of despair.
As Draco thinks back to this now, he feels even more lost. Is there any point in returning to Hogwarts after the holidays? Wouldn’t he be better off finishing his schooling at home? But his home doesn’t feel like home anymore either. The house elves have returned the Manor to what it was like before the Dark Lord stayed here, but every room is still full of memories. You can clean up shards of broken glass, but how do you purify a room that reeks of evil? It is almost as if shreds of the evil that has happened in his home still cling to every surface, defiling the very fabric of reality by the mere memory of their existence.
Draco reluctantly makes himself get up, it doesn’t do to dwell on ‘what ifs’ at least he has learned that much. He also knows that his mother will not be pleased if she finds out he has slept in the parlour and not his own bedroom. He reaches up to grab the latch to pull himself up and is surprised to find the window that’s supposed to be locked open easily, his own momentum depositing him neatly out into the snow. At first he’s too befuddled, just blinking his eyes stupidly to do anything and then the snow beneath his buttocks begins to melt and seep into the bottom of his trousers.
“Fuck! Fuck, it’s cold!” He curses, surprised by his own ferocity.
It takes him several attempts before he manages to get up. His feet hurt where they disappear into the snow and his socks are soaked through. If he doesn’t get inside right away, he’s sure to lose a limb in this weather and that’s the last thing he needs. Draco is just about to step across the windowpane when he notices something in his reflection. He can’t quite believe it and without any conscious thought his hand travels up to his neck, touching the skin just below his chin. There’s a red mark, almost like… but no it can’t possibly be.
He doesn’t feel the cold anymore, he feels nothing at all. His gaze is fixed on his reflection in the open window. He can feel a small welt beneath his questing fingers and he pulls his collar aside there’s more of them. His neck is covered in red love bites. But that can only mean… Draco spins around, staring at the gate. There’s nothing there and Draco’s spirits fall. He’s ready to give up, go inside and live his waste of a life when he sees a flicker of something not quite there, like the heat haze over a street in summer. Before he can even make a conscious decision he’s running towards the gate, ignoring the sting of the snow against his already icy feet.
Draco just knows that he’s there, probably hiding from sight. Elation carries him across the grounds faster than he’s ever run in his entire life.
He bursts through the gates, the wards and protective spells are nothing to him. They are blood wards and he could breach them easily any day. He looks both ways, but there’s nothing. Draco strains his eyes looking for the slight shimmer he’d caught even from the window. He tries to remember where he last saw it and focuses on that area. There, leaning against the gatepost is a huddled shimmering shape. Draco slowly steps closer, every step squelching and too noisy in the cool morning air.
His breath fogs in front of his face as he carefully bends down; feeling for what he knows is there, fabric, soft to the touch. It takes nothing more than a single slow tug and like water the cloak comes free, revealing a shivering but still sleeping Harry Potter.
Even though he had expected to find this, he still can’t quite believe his eyes. The implication of what his find means overwhelms him for a minute. He reaches out to gently brush an errant strand of hair from Potter’s forehead. Potter’s skin is icy to the touch. Draco stops worrying about his heart and what happened last night and begins to worry instead about the very real danger of the saviour of the wizarding world dying of hypothermia in front of the Manor grounds. Draco tries to wake the man to no avail. The bastard must have forgotten to cast a long lasting heating charm on himself and slipped slowly into unconsciousness as his spell wore off during the night.
There’s nothing to it, Draco will have to bring him inside somehow. He curses liberally as he tries to lift Potter, who is a lot heavier than he looks. Draco curses even more, because his feet sink deep into the snow drifts and he can barely feel them anymore, let alone his toes. If Potter’s foolhardiness is to blame for Draco losing his toes, he’ll kill the bastard. If only he’d brought his wand with him. But who in their right mind when falling on their arse outside a window that’s supposed to be locked has the presence of mind to go looking for their wand? It’s not like it’s in the parlour anyway. Draco wants to scream with frustration when he realises that he knows exactly where his wand is, on his bedside table, where he left it before joining his parents downstairs.
After half dragging, half carrying Potter for a few metres Draco realises that they’ll never make it. He begins searching Potter’s clothes and is surprised when what he finds among his possessions is not the Elder Wand that he expected, but his own Hawthorne wand that Potter had won during their struggle at the Manor. He’d lost it what felt like a lifetime ago. Draco isn’t the same person anymore that he had been then; still the welcoming rush of magic is there. His wand seems to be happy to get reacquainted with its former master. Draco impulsively laughs with joy and flicks it once, sparks flying through the air. It is nice to know that while he himself doesn’t even know who he is anymore; his wand still recognises him anyway.
Draco carefully Levitates Potter into the house. It’s too early for his parents to come downstairs and for once he is glad about them sleeping in on Christmas morning. He doesn’t know how he would explain floating an almost frozen to death Potter through their entrance hall to his parents. Being charged for kidnapping and killing the saviour will definitely not help in rebuilding their reputation.
When they reach his room, Draco cancels the spell and Potter falls onto the duvet. Potter is shivering uncontrollably and Draco is beginning to worry. He pulls the duvet out from under the shaking man and invents new swearwords while he does so, words about Potter’s idiocy, his enraging braveness, his stupid scar, his terrible hair and his ridiculous glasses. When he’s covered Potter and tucked him in, he feels a lot better but rants at Potter for a while longer anyway. It’s not like the prat doesn’t need someone to make sure his head doesn’t get too big.
Draco takes a step back and admires his handiwork. He has no idea what to do now. Potter is still trembling, even under the thick duvet and his lips have turned blue. Something’s very wrong here, Draco decides. He desperately tries to recall what he learnt about hypothermia and realises it’s not much. Blue lips don’t seem like a good sign. He casts a heating charm on Potter and that only makes the shivering worse. What the fuck is he supposed to do?
A small thought rears its head. No, surely not… But the thought is insistent and despite how many things can go wrong with this, he follows its lead. He takes off his soaking wet clothes, until all he is wearing are his pants. He uncovers Potter and strips him of his clothes, before climbing onto the bed with him, covering them both up again and wrapping himself around the freezing man.
Potter smells brilliant Draco decides, as he wraps himself around him.
“Oh stop being such a drama queen, Potter!” Draco chides him, because he won’t stop moving in his arms.
It takes longer than he expects but Potter’s breathing eventually evens out and the skin that had been almost too cold to hold on to warms up. This is actually quite nice he thinks as he buries his nose nape of Harry’s neck. Draco can feel the tension he has felt all these weeks finally drain out of him. This right here is what he has needed all along. Draco realises that his heart didn’t need mending, because it was never broken. He smiles as he gathers the thief who stole his heart closer. His lips seek the soft spot just below Harry’s ear that he just knows is there and press a tender kiss there.
“You cheeky bugger!” he whispers fondly, before he allows himself to drift off to sleep.
A shout of terror wakes Draco much later. (What the fuck are you doing in my bed, Malfoy?) But Draco just points out that it’s in fact Harry who’s in Draco’s bedroom, and that he can stop playing games, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. When Harry still tries to object, Draco silences him with a kiss and then several, because the saviour of the wizarding world is a bit thick sometimes. Soon hands find and seek what they are looking for, there are moans of pleasure and almost inaudible promises of future bliss. The duvet is discarded. God is called for several times, so are Merlin and other famous wizards of their time. The entire beautiful thing goes the way it usually does. When the two of them lie sated beside each other, happy ready to drift back off to sleep, their peace is abruptly shattered by different horrified scream. But that’s another story.
~fin~
Author: ???
Rating: R
Characters: Draco, Narcissa, Lucius, Harry; Harry/Draco
Prompt: 97
Warnings: eeehhh, none really
Summary: Christmas at Malfoy Manor once used to be a joyous affair, but this year everything’s different.
Word Count: 5,140
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: The largest thank you goes to C and W for being my betas, I love you guys so much it hurts! Thanks for taking the time out of your busy RL to look this over for me and sharing your thoughts on this with me and for making sure this was presentable. I love you both! ♥
Also thank you to W, without you this wouldn’t have been written… you enabler you!
Thanks also to the girls for encouraging me, I’ve had a great time writing this in your company!
This story isn’t really all that close to the prompt. Sorry about that. I do hope it’s still something the original prompter will enjoy.
Acknowledgements: The lyrics at the beginning are from a song called “Hearts A Mess” by Gotye and I really like the thought that thinking of someone can be like a hostile take-over, like they conquered your mind and heart in some way, since this is a bit what this fic is about. The title was shamelessly stolen from a song by Al Green, because I’m lame and couldn’t think of any other title.
Happy Christmas everyone and thanks for having me.
Pick apart
The pieces of your heart
And let me peer inside
Let me in
Where only your thoughts have been
Let me occupy your mind
As you do mine
The glass is cold beneath his fingers and immediately starts to fog over where his warm breath brushes against it. The Manor grounds are covered in a thick layer of snow that seems to glow under the clear starlit sky. He can make out the silent columns of smoke rising undisturbed into the air from the nearby village. Like with so many winter nights this one isn’t dark, it’s glowing with the luminescence of the freshly fallen snow.
His shadow is dark and wavering as it falls onto the ground beneath the window. The fire makes its contours dance and leap as if this imprint of him is unable to contain all of him. Much like Draco, who couldn’t define who or what he has become since the war, even if he tried. How fitting, he thinks, for the thing you least expect to be a perfect image of your inner turmoil.
So intent is he on watching his outline shift and flicker that it takes him longer than usual to see the dark shape by the gate. The one he didn’t know he has been looking for. The shape whose existence he barely dares to believe in. His insides knot in fear and longing. Cold leaks into Draco’s hand from the glass, it’s almost painful and yet he cannot seem to move, let alone tear his gaze away.
The first time Draco had become aware of someone standing by the gate and watching him was after getting ready for bed and taking one last look out before closing the curtains. The thick fabric had felt wonderful in his hands as he drew them close, letting his gaze wander across the snow covered gardens. Draco remembered how this view used to excite him when he was little. He would try to force himself to fall asleep as quickly as possible so it would be morning soon. Before his minds eye he could see the frozen pond, see his father’s laughing face as he taught Draco to ice skate, wand drawn for a quick cushioning charm, should Draco lose his balance. He couldn’t help but smile at the memory, but the smile grew bitter too quickly. Those days were gone. His father hadn’t smiled even once since the Dark Lord had moved into his home and hadn’t smiled at his son for even longer.
He had squeezed his eyes shut, gripping the curtain hard enough to hurt his hand. Forcing the pain down had become more difficult every day. Rejection he could handle, or so he told himself every time, when nobody at Hogwarts had a friendly word or even so much as a friendly look for him. They didn’t matter, nobody mattered anymore. Draco had tried in vain to hold the memory back that forced its way out of him, into the open. All strength left him and Draco had leant into the cold glass in front of him, the fabric of the curtain still clutched in his hand.
There was only ever one rejection that mattered to him; it always had and recently it had begun to hurt even more than it did that first time. Draco couldn’t even say his name out loud, let alone think it, too scared of the pain and longing becoming audible. That first rejection, when the other boy refused to shake his hand. It destroyed part of him and in doing so defined what remained.
Draco opened his eyes again, hoping to see anything but the green eyes of his memories, filled with disdain. It took him a while to realise someone was watching him from the other side of the Manor gates. The figure was hunched over and looked so forlorn and sad that Draco felt his heart grow cold. Whoever was standing out there was just as lost as he was. The figure had winced once when Draco’s gaze met the figure’s face and had quickly disapparated. Every night afterwards the stranger had returned, gazing at the lit windows of the Manor, never once trying to enter or making his presence known.
Draco knows who is waiting for him on the other side of the gates. He knows tonight will be the last night he’ll be here, like he’s been here every night since Draco came back from Hogwarts for the holidays. What he doesn’t know is why the man is here, or what he wants from Draco and that worries him more than he is willing to admit.
Will the man make a move tonight, Draco wonders. Will tonight be the night that he ceases to be a silent watcher? Will this finally be the time that he comes to collect what’s rightfully his? Draco has no answer to these questions, so he just stands there in silence, blocking out the murmured words in the background.
He is so absorbed in his own world that it feels like he’s resurfacing from a deep and dark lake when his mother calls him to her side. Her tone is almost harsh. Draco walks over to her as if in a trance, he doesn’t know how long he stood by the window, but from the look on her face, she’s had to call him more than once. No wonder there had been a rebuke, however gentle. His mother isn’t used to being disobeyed.
Draco still feels the man’s gaze on him as he walks away from the window. Only once does he turn his head to look over his shoulder towards the dark garden beyond. Surprisingly, Draco can still see him even through the reflection of the flickering fire on the glass. Everything about him is so familiar, Draco would know him anywhere.
“Draco, darling, sit with me by the fire.” His mother indicates the empty space on the small sofa beside her.
Sitting beside her, Draco can smell the light scent of her perfume. To him sitting with his mother by the fire has always been the best part of Christmas. She would let him unwrap one present – only a small one – and then read to him sometimes. Wizarding fairytales made everything sound so exciting, like life was an adventure just waiting for him to reach for it and take up the challenge. At other times she’d comb her hands through the soft strands of his pale hair, gazing at the flames and not saying anything at all. Draco knew then, that he was loved. There was no need for words.
They were a family; they would always be there for each other, no matter what. This truth to Draco was universal. He sometimes wondered what it would have been like if he had had to grow up without this sense of security and often his gaze travelled only to alight on a small scrawny boy with messy hair and green eyes.
This Christmas Eve is supposed to be like all the others before it, reassuring, warm and reaffirming the feeling of belonging that had become so difficult to find in recent times. Draco knows it is not meant to be. The tree sparkles cheerfully in front of them, mountains of colourful but tastefully wrapped gifts are piled beneath it, but something is missing. His father sits in the large armchair opposite them by the fire, hunched low as if by old age. Draco knows that what is bearing his father down is worry. Worry for Draco and his mother, worry for what might still happen. The trials lie in the past, so does his father’s sentence, but some people still think the Malfoy’s got off too easily. Draco knows his father fears there will be retribution for his sins. His father is still scared that his family will have to pay the price for his own misguided beliefs.
His mother takes Draco’s hand in hers for a moment and gently strokes it, never meeting his gaze. They all stare into the flames. For just a moment Draco allows himself to believe, to trust that things will be okay. The moment is fleeting and all too soon reality encroaches. He should feel like part of a family, a unity, but all he feels is a part of a group of three, staring forlornly at a fire, that crackles with the promise of warmth and cheerfulness that will never be theirs again.
There are so many things he wants to tell his parents so many things he wishes he had said before everything went to hell. But just like his parents he doesn’t speak, just forces his gaze towards the fire, until he knows that even when he closes his eyes he’ll be able to see the flames dancing in front of them.
Part of him is still terrified by fire and he is glad that his parents sit closer to it than he does. If it hadn’t been for him, Draco wouldn’t be alive today. Wouldn’t be here to mourn the people he lost, the people who got hurt because of him. Christmas is supposed to be happy and uplifting, something to make your heart feel warm with joy, but tonight Draco doesn’t feel any of these things. He’s too overwhelmed with the ‘what ifs’ to be able to feel anything at all.
It’s much later when the fire finally begins to dwindle. His father gets up slowly, looking over to his wife who lets go of Draco’s hand and gets up, letting her husband lead her from the room.
“Don’t stay up too long, Draco.” She says over her shoulder, before the doors close behind her, leaving him alone in the room that’s suddenly filled by dark and terrifying shadows. Draco leans into the sofa, pulling his knees up and hugging them to his chest. He grabs the blanket from the armrest where his mother sat and clutches it to him. The warmth from the fire still radiates from the fabric and Draco wraps this warmth around himself like the hug he so desperately needs.
A flicker of motion from the corner of his vision disturbs his reverie. Did he see something there by the window? Draco is suddenly worried that something like that Muggle writer wrote about might happen to him. He knows he won’t be able to bear being visited by the ghosts of the past. When did the first ghost show up again? Was it one hour to midnight?
He almost jumps out of his skin when the large clock in the corner decides that this is the perfect moment to interrupt his terrified musings by striking that very hour. The sound of the bell drowns out even the popping sounds of the dying fire and Draco shivers. He doesn’t dare move or even breathe in too deeply for fear of making his presence known. When the last chime of the clock reverberates around the room and then slowly subsides, he hears it for the first time, an almost inaudible scratching noise. It takes him a while to locate which direction it’s coming from. There it is again. Before turning his head to investigate, Draco knows that the scratching is coming from the window he’d stood at gazing out at the world beyond, not too long ago. Something is blocking the view to the garden from the outside, probably some creature looking in on him, trying to get in for some nefarious purpose.
Draco shakes with fear, unable to stop his body from broadcasting his emotion to the watcher at the window. He is straining his eyes in a desperate attempt to penetrate the darkness all around him and still he cannot make out who or what is attempting to gain ingress into his home.
When Draco can’t bear it anymore, the floor to ceiling length windows fly open and bring with them a gust of cold air and snow that extinguish the fire and the candles on the tree. The room is cast into impenetrable darkness. The shape in the window moves forward threateningly, framed by the now lighter night sky outside. It stamps its boots to dislodge the snow and then steps fully into the room, turning its head this way and that, as if trying to sniff out its prey.
Draco’s heart beats fast and loud and he is convinced the intruder must be able to hear it just as clearly as he does. As if called by Draco’s thoughts, the man turns towards him and slowly advances. An almost inaudible rustle of clothing reveals a drawn wand in the man’s hand.
The man’s hood is drawn deep into his face, most likely to keep out the cold, but at the same time hiding his features from view. If only Draco could see the man’s face, he wouldn’t feel so vulnerable. If only he had somewhere to focus his anger and fear.
Like a child that decides closing its eyes will make it invisible to the monsters in the shadows, Draco presses his eyes shut, forcing himself to calm down. The intruder is still approaching, but Draco isn’t moving, isn’t even shaking anymore, as he gets his breathing under control. The man is standing close enough in front of Draco for him to be able to smell him. Neither of them moves and the spell is only broken, when the arm of the sofa Draco is sitting on groans under his tight grip.
There is a rustle of clothes, followed by a thud and then soft hands are cradling Draco’s face carefully. His eyes snap open at the touch. The fingers are cold against his skin but somehow he doesn’t seem to mind. He still can’t quite make out the strangers features, but the tenderness with which he is holding Draco’s face and the warmth of his breath wafting over Draco’s open lips tells him that the man is no stranger at all.
“I’m sorry, so very sorry.” The man peppers light kisses all over Draco’s face, tracing his eyebrows, kissing his eyelids, his nose and then finally his lips again. “It’s my fault.”
Draco can deny himself no longer; he reaches for the man and pulls him up from his kneeling position, pulling him onto the sofa with him. Draco digs his hand into the dark hair and lets the hood fall back.
“You came back!” He manages to say between frantic kisses.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…” but Draco doesn’t let him finish. He realises that he doesn’t need to hear the words. He knows he’s forgiven the man already. And just like he knows that, Draco also knows that the man will never leave him now. He is all Draco’s and they will never be parted again.
They cling to each other and Draco isn’t surprised when Harry slowly begins undressing him. It all seems so strange, but it doesn’t scare him, all he needs is here in his arms, professing his undying love to Draco with every touch and every kiss. They are so desperate to feel each other that they scratch and bite and tear at everything they can reach, marking each other and staking their claim.
Draco moans in delight when Harry finally enters him, canting his hips up to take him in deeper. Harry is making him his, claiming his body and soul. Draco rejoices in Harry’s possession of his body, his heart has belonged to the man too long to even be considered Draco’s own anymore. Every time Harry has turned away from him in a Hogwarts corridor, every time he refused to meet his eye or talk to him melts away as they connect, creating something beautiful. However fleeting this moment makes Draco feel like part of something whole, something special and with that thought in mind he can feel himself coming completely undone.
The bleary light of a cloudy early morning shines in through the window. The room is freezing when he wakes. The blanket has slipped from his shivering form during the night and he has curled up tightly trying to preserve as much warmth as possible. His eyelids flutter as consciousness sluggishly returns, fighting his attempts to speed the process up with every step. Draco groans when he tries to move and feels the crick in his neck and back. He must have fallen asleep on the sofa after his parents went to bed.
Draco looks around himself looking for evidence of what happened last night. There is no sign of any disturbance. Where is Harry? The shock of realisation wakes him fully. It has been nothing but a dream. Nothing but one of the innumerable dreams he has had since Harry, no Potter, he reminds himself, has saved him from the Fiendfyre.
Draco rushes to the window, to look outside and make sure there are no footprints in front of the window. It had all felt so real last night. They have to be there. The pristine blanket of snow outside mocks him and crushes the last of his hope. Everything seems bleak even the snow flakes drifting down from the sky are nothing but tiny shrouds to cover up the last shreds of his heart.
He can’t take it any more. None of it. The terror that comes at night, the jibes that he pretends don’t hurt and most of all, the one person he craves to be with but can never have. Defeated Draco sinks to the floor by the window, pressing his cheek to the cold glass, feeling just as lifeless. If only he could stop feeling this way, could stop being this pathetic empty shell of human being, driven by a craving that can never be sated. If only Draco could stop yearning for what he can’t have. His mind comprehends the facts and tries to make it easier for him to move on, but his traitorous little heart betrays him at every turn.
The cold makes him shiver and wrap his arms around himself. His eyes are downcast to the floor; he doesn’t want to look up towards the gate and not see him. Draco knows that the man at the gate will never return for him. He scolds himself inwardly for being such a coward, for not going outside and talking to him. But he knows why he didn’t. He likes to tell himself that it was Harry at the gate, not some random stranger. Draco has become so enamoured with the idea that he started dreaming of walking to the gate and asking the man to come inside. He has never seen his face; not really, he only saw what he wanted to.
He shakes his head bitterly, looking at the cheerfully twinkling lights on Christmas tree beside him that have been relit by the house elves while he was asleep. The only emotion he can feel is rage and disappointment, he wants to tear into the tree, grab the beautiful ornaments and smash them against the walls. He wants something, anything, to reflect how he feels, wants something in this world to acknowledge his pain. This utter pristineness of everything around him drives Draco up the wall. But Malfoys don’t rage, they don’t show their suffering, they are stoic and will always keep up appearances. Suffering is for the weak. Being a Malfoy should be enough to get him through the day, but lately it hasn’t been, not by a long shot. How to be a Malfoy has become something that’s slipping from his grasp. He is having a hard enough time to try and remember what being “Draco” is supposed to feel like.
After the war everything has changed, everything he’d taken for granted has become slippery and then like a puff of smoke evaporated into nothingness. All that Draco has taken to make up his life, himself, his convictions and how the world worked has been torn asunder, made to be worthless and wrong. He has always known that the way he behaved didn’t make him friends it only made him minions and people who were afraid of him.
When he came back to Hogwarts after the trials last summer to finish his studies and joined the other eighth years, he hadn’t known what to expect. He had expected to be shunned to become some kind of martyr or pariah for the causes of Slytherin, but what had actually happened was nothing like it. He had been completely and utterly ignored, by his housemates, his teachers and his fellow eighth years alike. And worst of all, he had been ignored by one Harry James Potter.
It’s not like he’s actually worthy of the saviour’s attention anyway, he thinks. He never used to believe it, but recent events have shown this to be true and even the famed Malfoy pride isn’t enough to drag him out of that dark hole of despair.
As Draco thinks back to this now, he feels even more lost. Is there any point in returning to Hogwarts after the holidays? Wouldn’t he be better off finishing his schooling at home? But his home doesn’t feel like home anymore either. The house elves have returned the Manor to what it was like before the Dark Lord stayed here, but every room is still full of memories. You can clean up shards of broken glass, but how do you purify a room that reeks of evil? It is almost as if shreds of the evil that has happened in his home still cling to every surface, defiling the very fabric of reality by the mere memory of their existence.
Draco reluctantly makes himself get up, it doesn’t do to dwell on ‘what ifs’ at least he has learned that much. He also knows that his mother will not be pleased if she finds out he has slept in the parlour and not his own bedroom. He reaches up to grab the latch to pull himself up and is surprised to find the window that’s supposed to be locked open easily, his own momentum depositing him neatly out into the snow. At first he’s too befuddled, just blinking his eyes stupidly to do anything and then the snow beneath his buttocks begins to melt and seep into the bottom of his trousers.
“Fuck! Fuck, it’s cold!” He curses, surprised by his own ferocity.
It takes him several attempts before he manages to get up. His feet hurt where they disappear into the snow and his socks are soaked through. If he doesn’t get inside right away, he’s sure to lose a limb in this weather and that’s the last thing he needs. Draco is just about to step across the windowpane when he notices something in his reflection. He can’t quite believe it and without any conscious thought his hand travels up to his neck, touching the skin just below his chin. There’s a red mark, almost like… but no it can’t possibly be.
He doesn’t feel the cold anymore, he feels nothing at all. His gaze is fixed on his reflection in the open window. He can feel a small welt beneath his questing fingers and he pulls his collar aside there’s more of them. His neck is covered in red love bites. But that can only mean… Draco spins around, staring at the gate. There’s nothing there and Draco’s spirits fall. He’s ready to give up, go inside and live his waste of a life when he sees a flicker of something not quite there, like the heat haze over a street in summer. Before he can even make a conscious decision he’s running towards the gate, ignoring the sting of the snow against his already icy feet.
Draco just knows that he’s there, probably hiding from sight. Elation carries him across the grounds faster than he’s ever run in his entire life.
He bursts through the gates, the wards and protective spells are nothing to him. They are blood wards and he could breach them easily any day. He looks both ways, but there’s nothing. Draco strains his eyes looking for the slight shimmer he’d caught even from the window. He tries to remember where he last saw it and focuses on that area. There, leaning against the gatepost is a huddled shimmering shape. Draco slowly steps closer, every step squelching and too noisy in the cool morning air.
His breath fogs in front of his face as he carefully bends down; feeling for what he knows is there, fabric, soft to the touch. It takes nothing more than a single slow tug and like water the cloak comes free, revealing a shivering but still sleeping Harry Potter.
Even though he had expected to find this, he still can’t quite believe his eyes. The implication of what his find means overwhelms him for a minute. He reaches out to gently brush an errant strand of hair from Potter’s forehead. Potter’s skin is icy to the touch. Draco stops worrying about his heart and what happened last night and begins to worry instead about the very real danger of the saviour of the wizarding world dying of hypothermia in front of the Manor grounds. Draco tries to wake the man to no avail. The bastard must have forgotten to cast a long lasting heating charm on himself and slipped slowly into unconsciousness as his spell wore off during the night.
There’s nothing to it, Draco will have to bring him inside somehow. He curses liberally as he tries to lift Potter, who is a lot heavier than he looks. Draco curses even more, because his feet sink deep into the snow drifts and he can barely feel them anymore, let alone his toes. If Potter’s foolhardiness is to blame for Draco losing his toes, he’ll kill the bastard. If only he’d brought his wand with him. But who in their right mind when falling on their arse outside a window that’s supposed to be locked has the presence of mind to go looking for their wand? It’s not like it’s in the parlour anyway. Draco wants to scream with frustration when he realises that he knows exactly where his wand is, on his bedside table, where he left it before joining his parents downstairs.
After half dragging, half carrying Potter for a few metres Draco realises that they’ll never make it. He begins searching Potter’s clothes and is surprised when what he finds among his possessions is not the Elder Wand that he expected, but his own Hawthorne wand that Potter had won during their struggle at the Manor. He’d lost it what felt like a lifetime ago. Draco isn’t the same person anymore that he had been then; still the welcoming rush of magic is there. His wand seems to be happy to get reacquainted with its former master. Draco impulsively laughs with joy and flicks it once, sparks flying through the air. It is nice to know that while he himself doesn’t even know who he is anymore; his wand still recognises him anyway.
Draco carefully Levitates Potter into the house. It’s too early for his parents to come downstairs and for once he is glad about them sleeping in on Christmas morning. He doesn’t know how he would explain floating an almost frozen to death Potter through their entrance hall to his parents. Being charged for kidnapping and killing the saviour will definitely not help in rebuilding their reputation.
When they reach his room, Draco cancels the spell and Potter falls onto the duvet. Potter is shivering uncontrollably and Draco is beginning to worry. He pulls the duvet out from under the shaking man and invents new swearwords while he does so, words about Potter’s idiocy, his enraging braveness, his stupid scar, his terrible hair and his ridiculous glasses. When he’s covered Potter and tucked him in, he feels a lot better but rants at Potter for a while longer anyway. It’s not like the prat doesn’t need someone to make sure his head doesn’t get too big.
Draco takes a step back and admires his handiwork. He has no idea what to do now. Potter is still trembling, even under the thick duvet and his lips have turned blue. Something’s very wrong here, Draco decides. He desperately tries to recall what he learnt about hypothermia and realises it’s not much. Blue lips don’t seem like a good sign. He casts a heating charm on Potter and that only makes the shivering worse. What the fuck is he supposed to do?
A small thought rears its head. No, surely not… But the thought is insistent and despite how many things can go wrong with this, he follows its lead. He takes off his soaking wet clothes, until all he is wearing are his pants. He uncovers Potter and strips him of his clothes, before climbing onto the bed with him, covering them both up again and wrapping himself around the freezing man.
Potter smells brilliant Draco decides, as he wraps himself around him.
“Oh stop being such a drama queen, Potter!” Draco chides him, because he won’t stop moving in his arms.
It takes longer than he expects but Potter’s breathing eventually evens out and the skin that had been almost too cold to hold on to warms up. This is actually quite nice he thinks as he buries his nose nape of Harry’s neck. Draco can feel the tension he has felt all these weeks finally drain out of him. This right here is what he has needed all along. Draco realises that his heart didn’t need mending, because it was never broken. He smiles as he gathers the thief who stole his heart closer. His lips seek the soft spot just below Harry’s ear that he just knows is there and press a tender kiss there.
“You cheeky bugger!” he whispers fondly, before he allows himself to drift off to sleep.
A shout of terror wakes Draco much later. (What the fuck are you doing in my bed, Malfoy?) But Draco just points out that it’s in fact Harry who’s in Draco’s bedroom, and that he can stop playing games, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak. When Harry still tries to object, Draco silences him with a kiss and then several, because the saviour of the wizarding world is a bit thick sometimes. Soon hands find and seek what they are looking for, there are moans of pleasure and almost inaudible promises of future bliss. The duvet is discarded. God is called for several times, so are Merlin and other famous wizards of their time. The entire beautiful thing goes the way it usually does. When the two of them lie sated beside each other, happy ready to drift back off to sleep, their peace is abruptly shattered by different horrified scream. But that’s another story.
