Draconic Recall

A month later, Draco lost hearing in his left ear. Conversation had to be directed to his right and his voice, once smooth and beautiful had taken on the loud, off kilter sound of the deaf. Harry and Ginny secretly learned sign language. They had offered to teach Snape, but the man had only glared at them, before stomping away.
The year passed with a graceful slowness that Harry had thought gone with childhood. He relished the days lecturing to his classes, teaching children nsesnses that they would hopefully never need as desperately as he had. His nights alternated between work for the school, spending time with Draco or simply being with Ginny.
In retrospect, Harry supposed that it was far better to have been that year rather then one of his busier hectic ones that Ginny had ventured out to wizarding London and not returned. When he found her inordinately late returning home, he immediately Apperated to her current location using a homing spell set in theeddiedding bands, too worried to think about repercussions.
The alley had been just as dirty and smelly as a muggle one; the body lying in the mess was not his Ginny. Not the woman he had kissed goodbye this morning over coffee and teased about over nurturing students. It seemed her attackers had only been after her purse and when she had fought back, ever the Gryffindor, she had been shot. Ginny had never really learned about muggle weapons beyond swords and blow darts the twins had once taken up as a hobby. She would not have known how to protect herself.
They were both found hours later; her head cradled his lap while he quietly sobbed over her broken body. Harry's face was soaked with tears, his nose running unheeded and blood stained his hands and face. The young boy who found them had recognized the famous face and immediately owled the school.
"Come, Harry." It was Minerva at his elbow, prying him up.
"I will take her back." He said softly, rising, gently cradling his wife in his arms.
"We will catch the men that did this to her." She promised. But Harry only sighed and shook his head.
"We won't find them. If they're using a gun then they have lives in the muggle world. It is too vast a place to search and it would not ease my heart to know that her death perpetrated misery for others. Even killers had families. No, she would be far more pleased to buried and forgotten then be known for how her famous husband avenged her death."
Those words were the last to fall from his lips for nearly a month. He buried her in silence. He had no more words to say that he had not whispered to her broken body while he held her in the alley. He had no more tears to cry, no more emotion in the void that had been sucked from his chest. It was Ron, who broke him from his silence.
Summer had come, school was out and Harry had come to the Weasley home out of habit to spend his first few weeks with the family that had claimed him as their own since he was a frightened little boy on a train platform.
His first stop when he reached the house was the small family plot and it's newest tombstone. Too many cemeteries, too many graves that Harry could remember now. Too many funerals, too much of his heart buried in the earth. Ron had seen him arrive and come to stand vigil with him.
"Malfoy sent an owl. About how you haven't said a word in almost a month. It's strange, even after all these years, him being worried about you." Harry only nodded, slightly, indicating his attention. "He said absolutely nothing worked to get a word out of you and I told him I'd take care of it. And I will.
"You listen to me, Harry Potter, stop being a selfish prig!" Harry jumped as his best friend began scolding him in the same tone that Molly and, his heart tugged, Ginny had always used. "You aren't the only one who's lost her! We've all been sick with grief. Mom's got Dad, George has Fred and it seems that even Percy and Charlie have made a go at some type of talking. I'm the odd one out here and the brother who I always turn to has given up his voice."
"Oh, Ron." Harry managed, his voice cracking. "I've only been thinking"¦of how I'm going to live without her."
"You'll go on. Just as we've done before. It won't be the first time we have stood at a grave together, Harry."
Her name is unspoken between them, their silent pledge, but Harry broke it in the moment. It was the magic between them. Their Unforgivable Curse that was always forgiven. It was a blessed release and a tearing pain.
"Hermione"¦"
"I have lived four long years without her." Ron said stiffly, staring at the verdant grass beneath his feet. "Each day I think of her, every night I dream about her. But I live because she wanted me too. Ginny wouldn't want you taking a vow of silence on her behalf. You know that. Just like you knew not tke vke vengeance on the jackals who took her life."
Instead of words, Harry threw his arms around his best friend and drew him close. They cried together as they had only once before. The night that Hermione had fallen on the battlefield. Then they had cried with each other, sure in the knowledge that their lives might end at any moment. Now, with no immediate death threat, it was different, healing and urg urgent. It was a singular moment. When they drew away again, they bd itd it, heading back towards the house; Ginny was buried alongside Hermione now in far more then dirt. Trust one Weasley to fix another.
So Harry managed to push his grieving from his conscious mind, apart, but a part from himself forever. The summer passed slowly, painfully, especially after returning to his beloved school that rang of memories. He might have gone completely mad there all summer if it hadn't been for Draco's continued attempts at keeping him amused. The blonde had difficulty actually doing much anymore aside from reading and learning how to manage with only one hand. He preoccupied himself that summer by learning slight of hand tricks from a muggle book that he had bought as a child,
"To prove to myself how stupid muggles were. Their attempts at "˜magic' were amusing. But now, there's a certain charm to them, I think. Look, I can make a penny disappear without using my wand!"
They were outside, trying to enjoy the weather. Draco was talking in his overloud tone, occasionally slipping to whisper for no apparent reason. The blonde had asked Harry to help him sit against a tree, which meant physically lifting him from the chair and having to watch the painful process of him rearranging his limbs using his right arm. After some careful primping, it had appeared as if Draco was simply sitting against the tree, legs naturally crossed, his left arm resting on his thigh.
"You've shown me that one already." Harry chided lightly. "Try another one."
"I will when I've learned another one." Came the cheerful response. "I have to convert all these to using only one hand you know, takes time." The last words were in a whisper.
"Why do you keep doing that?" Harry asked finally.
"Doing what?"
"Well, you know, talking loudly and then a whisper. It's started when I came back from the Weasley's. What happened while I was away? And don't lie and say it was nothing because I know that's shit."
"A swear word. You must be serious." Draco muttered, sounding almost like himself again.
"Come on, Drake. Tell me what happened."
"Honestly, Harry, it wasn't anything important."
"I wish you would stop defending him." With a surge of irritation, Harry clamored to his feet, then winced as his leg reminded him that sudden moves were no longer his body's expertise.
"I only defend him from you. He doesn't need help with anybody else." Draco pointed out, not looking up from the open book in his lap.
"Tell me please, Drake. I promise I won't say a word to him, no matter what he deserves." Laboriously, Harry settled down again, wincing at the pain lancing through his leg. He'd be paying for that sudden move for days.
"We were chatting and he winced." The words, once drawn forth, tumbled over each other. "I asked him why and he said I was yelling like a fishwife. When I tried to lower my voice, I could tell he couldn't hear a word I was saying. I've been trying to modulate, but I can't get used to only hearing half my voice!"
Silence reigned as Harry tried to work through his initial rage, so he could be of some help for his friend. Eventually, the anger faded, leaving only a tired bitterness in its wake.
"Why do you stay with him when he can ruin you with a word? The man picks you apart for something that you cannot help and you defend him. I don't understand. He's supposed to be your partner. Doesn't that mean that you share something? All I see is you taking care of him and never him taking care of you!" The words had been building up in Harry since the first time Draco had cried on him about Snape when they had been little more then children armed with deadly politics.
"I love him. Have since I was a child. " Draco said simply, his words even and not at all of the strange off kilter tone he'd had since October. "But he doesn't love me and it kills him. I can see it in his eyes. He takes care of me because he is honorable and good at tricking himself into penance. If I were a better man, I would leave him. I never said I wasn't selfish and with him I am as greedy as I can be, for all the time I have left."
"There you are!" A cheery greeting came from behind them. "Minerva told me you would be here."
"Sirius! How long have you been back from Egypt?"
The excitement of greeting his godfather drove Draco's painful confession from his mind for the moment, but as the months passed they would echo in his head again and again. Especially in the rare moments that Snape publicly showed affection for Draco, whether it was helping him with dinner or placing a hand on his shoulder. Surely, Harry thought, Draco was wrong. No one would stay with somefor for years, simply out of obligation?
Whenever he tried to bring it up, Draco deftly changed the subject; leaving Harry to wonder if the blonde regretted his words that maybe they were merely the idle talk of a last summer afternoon. That was the year that the blonde lost all sight in his right eye, a milky cataract filming over the once sparkling blue. For the first time, Draco did not immediately recover his good cheer. In the past, after a week of depression, he would emerge a smirk slathered over his pain. A month had passed now and the despondency had shown no signs of lifting. Draco barely left his rooms now.