Wicked

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Draco didn´t turn up for dinner, but people were so preoccupied with other matters, like Mr Weasley´s long-awaited presence or returning to school, that only Harry seemed to notice. He went looking for his boyfriend, who was neither in Harry´s nor his own room.

The dark-haired boy looked everywhere for him without success, and eventually began to panic.

He went back to the living room and beckoned Sirius towards him: “I can ´t find Draco,”he whispered. “He wasn´t at dinner either!”

Sirius only nodded, drawing his wand, and helped him search the house.

In the end they found Draco in one of the bathrooms upstairs; he was in the shower, frantically rubbing his arms. At first Harry thought that the blond was simply trying to get warm, but then he saw that Draco´s skin was red and almost raw from the repeated treatment.

Unthinkingly, Harry stepped into the stall, wrapping his arms around the blond to keep him from harming himself while Sirius turned off the spray: “Draco! What are you doing?” he gasped.

Draco was shivering, since the water had long turn cold: “I´m dirty...” he mumbled, wide-eyed and with a choked voice. “I can´t get clean...”

Harry´s heart melted with worry and sympathy. He took the towel Sirius had meanwhile retrieved and wrapped the trembling boy into it: “It´s okay,” he whispered, pulling Draco close, “it´s okay...”

Draco sagged against Harry, who manoevered them out of the shower stall; Sirius quickly stepped forward to prevent Draco from falling, and together they helped him to Harry´s bedroom in silent understanding.

In front of the fire Harry quickly dried him off, then Sirius spelled his nightclothes onto him and they tucked him into the bed.

“I´ll go get some tea,” Sirius said quietly.

Nodding, Harry crawled under the blanket with Draco and pulled him close. He was still shivering but pressed himself against Harry, who nuzzled his hair with his cheek unhappily: he had been warned that there might be setbacks, but he hadn´t expected them to be this bad; he had expected nightmares, not this.
“You´ll be fine,” he murmured, kissing Draco´s temple, “you´ll be okay... I´m here with you now, I won´t leave you...”

When Sirius returned with a mug of steaming tea a little while later, Draco had stopped trembling. Harry propped him up against his chest just as he had done back in Privet Drive and helped him drink it slowly. It occured to Harry that his love´s body felt still as thin and frail as it had back then.

Wonderful warmth spread through Draco, and he felt sleepy when the mug was empty.

Sirius had put a bit of Sleeping Draught into it. He watched the boys in silence for a while; Harry seemed to know what he was doing.

“Will you two be all right?” he eventually asked quietly. His godson nodded: “Thanks,” he whispered. Sirius gave him a sad smile and left for the night.

Harry put the mug aside, quickly changed into his nightclothes as well and slipped back into bed, gathering a very exhausted Draco in his arms: “I´m here for you, baby,” he whispered, tenderly nudging the blond´s nose with his own and placing soft kisses on his face, “I love you.”

“B-but I´m dirty...”

Harry only tightened his grip around him: “How many times do I have to tell you that to me you are not, silly?” he said quietly, looking Draco straight in the eyes: “To me you are the most beautiful person in the world.”

Draco looked stunned, and very slowly his eyes began to swim: “You c-can´t bother with m-me, y-you shouldn´t-“ he began, but Harry gently cut across him: “Yes, I can,” he said firmly. “I have, in fact, for the past few months in case you haven´t noticed, and I fully intend to keep it that way.”

Draco´s tears now spilled over, and his shoulders shook as he continued to look at Harry; he seemed utterly desperate. “They hurt me,” he sobbed, barely audible. “It hurt so much, Harry, it hurt so terribly...”

Harry tenderly pulled him closer until Draco´s cheek was resting against the hollow of Harry´s neck, feeling near tears: he hated the images that these words conjured up in his mind, and he wished he could make them undone.

“They´ll never hurt you again, baby,” he whispered into the blond´s ear. “You´re safe now...”

“I´m dirty,” Draco breathed chokedly; he was still shaking when his sobbing finally abated.

Harry cradled him close; the thought of what the blond had had to endure was almost too much to bear, and Harry´s eyes were swimming as he gently reinforced his grip: “How can you say that you are dirty when your love is the purest thing I have ever had?” the scarred boy whispered. “The reason which helped me endure everything that has happened in school since Umbridge arrived?”

Draco drew a long, ragged breath before he sagged against Harry: “I love you so much...” he slurred, his eyes finally closing.

Harry gently stroked over Draco´s hair; his back was prickling with unpent emotions. The blond had become the most important person in Harry´s world, the one he truly loved, and this realization made him so happy that he felt the urge to shout it out again, despite the anger that was coursing through him when he thought of the Death Eaters.

Simultaneously, he couldn´t imagine to be anywhere but precisely where he was at this moment; it felt right, and he knew that despite the despair that sometimes drowned Draco and made him act like tonight, he trusted Harry.

“I love you, too,” Harry whispered into Draco´s ear. And he knew now that he wanted to take revenge on those who had made Draco suffer, even though it had indirectly brought him and Harry together.

“We should have expected something like that,” Sirius said the next day; Harry was helping him to remove the holly garlands from the banisters. His godfather had been very quiet ever since New Year; he dreaded being alone again.

At least he now had something else on his mind, Harry thought. “What do you mean?” he asked.

“The holidays must have been very distressing for Draco, seeing as they will have reminded him of his family and what has happened.”

Harry looked at Sirius and suddenly felt like an arse: “Right,” he murmured. “I thought he was okay... he seemed so composed... I believed him when he said he was fine...”

“Don´t blame yourself,” Sirius said. “If he didn´t let anything on, he probably was feeling okay most of the time. Malcolm told me that he had one of these setbacks just before returning to Hogwarts as well, and that it had come very suddenly.”

“Really? What happened?”

Sirius told Harry what Malcolm had told him. Harry was agitated: “I never knew about that!”

“Does it surprise you? I am sure Draco isn´t proud of it.”

Harry snorted: “He should´ve told me anyway,” he mumbled. Sirius subdued a smile at how protective Harry was of his boyfriend.

“Give him time,” he said quietly. “Let him come to grips with it himself first.”

“But I do! I am as patient as... as...”

“As your father, when it comes to that,” Sirius grinned.

“Har har,” Harry said, evidently miffed, but inexplicably also pleased with himself at the comparison.

“I know it´s not easy,” Sirius said after a moment of silence,“and you´ve once more shown a lot of strength and inner maturity during the past months; few people could´ve coped with all these new developments in their lives as well as you did, under Umbridge´s nose at that. But you have to realize that it will even take a lot more time for Draco to heal, even though he seems to feel safe with you and is doing as well as can expected.”

He turned to look Harry in the eyes: “The human soul is a fragile thing, Harry,” he added very softly.

Harry nodded somewhat downtrodden, never noticing how forlorn Sirius looked for a moment. The younger wizard didn´t know that his godfather was suffering from nightmares as well, had in fact cast a Silencing Charm on his bed so as not to alert anyone.

“He doesn´t want me to treat him like a porcelain doll though,” Harry then said. “Yet that was exactly what I had to do yesterday evening, wasn´t it? He was so distraught...”

“Patience and time,” Sirius repeated. “It´s a thin line to find out what´s needed and when, but you seem to be doing well.”

“He, too,” Harry murmured. “He´s been there for me when I had nightmares... he can be so reassuring, and I feel safe with him as well. He´s...”

“He´s worth it,” Sirius quietly ended the sentence for him. Harry nodded, looking up, and found his godfather smiling at him.

“You´re not disappointed?” Harry suddenly heard himself ask. The question had been burning on his tongue ever since he had first told Sirius that he was gay and in love with a certain boy.

Sirius slowly shook his head: “Why on earth should I?” he asked. “I couldn´t be more proud of you if you were my own son, and I know your parents would be as well. You deserve to be happy, and if Draco makes you happy, then it´s fine with me.”

Harry looked down on his hands, laughing quietly, and felt tears in his eyes at the same time. “Thanks,” he murmured.

Sirius however gently laid his hand on Harry´s cheek and lifted his head so the boy would look at him: “There´s no need to be ashamed of what you are or what you feel,” he said softly.

Harry nodded; he was grateful for his godfather´s support, yet there was something else he had to know, so he swallowed around the lump in his throat to ask another question which had been bothering him:“Even if it´s Draco?” It came out in a whisper.

Strangely enough, Sirius´ smile deepened as he regarded the boy, though his voice was serious as he spoke: “I trust your judgement,” he said softly. “I admit that I was concerned about it at first, but now... I´ve spent some time with Draco, after all, and it´s evident that he´s changed; he´s nothing at all like you described him before all this happened . There seems no trace of Lucius left in him, apart from his looks. And I think he´s proven to us that he´s not the cold kid he tried to be during the past years, hasn´t he?”

Harry smiled despite his swimming eyes: “Yeah, he has.”

Draco was sitting in the kitchen, his fingers wrapped around a mug of tea. He only had a very hazy recollection of the previous day´s events, but was thoroughly embarassed about his breakdown. Harry had been very loving and affectionate when they had woken up, telling him that it was all right, but Draco felt terrible nevertheless.

The kitchen was deserted, which suited the blond boy just fine. Why couldn´t he get a grip, why did he have to have these drawbacks? How long would it take for him until he was done with processing?

He crabbily stared into his tea when someone came in; it was Ron. He frowned for a second before nodding a greeting: “What are you doing?”

Draco shrugged: “Worrying, I guess,” he said softly. His voice sounded tired, and Ron could see that he had dark rings underneath his eyes. He hadn´t expected such an honest answer; the old Malfoy would have answered with a snotty retort. The new one, the one who had actually apologized to Ron for everything he had ever said and done to him, seemed strangely defeated.

Before Ron could stop himself, he motioned towards the door: “Care for a game of chess?” Draco smiled hesitantly and almost shyly before answering: “Why not?”

Harry ogled at the unexpected sight when he came into the living room a while later: Draco and Ron playing chess together in front of the fireplace, and neither of them was bleeding or scowling.

That evening, Draco´s spirits had lifted a little when they crawled into bed. He had had a good time with Ron, and he was eternally glad that the red-head had given him a chance. If Ron could, others would hopefully be able to as well.

Harry pulled him close: “Feeling better?” he asked quietly.

Draco nodded: “I might have more bad days like that though,” he said tentatively. “I had one in summer...” And he told Harry what Sirius had already told him, but Harry was glad that Draco did.

“I thought I was going mad,” Draco whispered in the end. “But Madam Pomfrey said I was processing, and that it´s a slow progress.”

“She´s probably right,” Harry said, pressing a kiss on Draco´s hair. “I guess Christmas wasn´t easy, huh?”

Draco sighed: “It wasn´t as bad as I had feared, thanks to you.”

Harry smiled at this, but he couldn´t let go of the topic so easily: “Are you still dreaming of it?” he asked almost timidly.

He could feel the blond boy tense in his arms, which was an answer in itself, and wished he hadn´t asked that, when Draco spoke: “Sometimes... and it´s very vivid, I can still feel the cold... and... what they did...”

Harry quickly reinforced his embrace: “You don´t need to tell me,” he said very softly.

Draco shook his head: “Maybe I should,” he whispered. “So you can understand...”

Even as he pressed still closer against Harry, the dark-haired boy wanted to tell him that he didn´t need to, that he didn´t want Draco to relive the horrors he´d been subjected to, but the other boy was already beginning to speak.

He was trembling, small tremors that increased steadily while he told Harry about Voldemort´s attempts to subdue Draco, and how the Death Eaters had finally added a completely different kind of torture.

His voice was barely audible when he spoke about how his father had come to his cell one day, and gave out completely as he tried to describe what Lucius had later done to him; at this point, Draco couldn´t go on and exhaustedly sagged against Harry, who was trembling as well. He didn´t exactly know what he had imagined, but it was much worse to hear it from the victim´s own mouth.

For a long time, they simply held on to each other as tightly as they could, and none of them was aware that they were both shedding silent tears of grief. Harry felt bad for bringing the topic up, especially right after Draco´s breakdown in the shower, but he couldn´t think of anything appropriate to say which would undo the shock, which would soothe the raw emotional pain.

“I´ll protect you,” Harry finally whispered, his voice thick, “I´ll never allow anyone to harm you again.”

Draco wanted to protest, to tell Harry that he couldn´t possibly burden himself like that, and that he, Draco, had to take over the responsibility for his own safety if he ever wanted to feel in control of the situation again; yet he couldn´t speak. What if something happened to Harry, or worse, what if Harry and he broke up for some reason, whom would he turn to then?

A small voice in his mind chided him at this, told him that there were others who cared about him as well, but he was skeptical: they were all Harry´s friends, after all, and would very likely choose the scarred boy´s side if necessary.

He felt like a traitor while all these thoughts reeled through his mind, for Harry didn´t deserve this kind of doubt, on the contrary. And it wasn´t that Draco didn´t trust him, after all- he trusted Harry more than anyone else. In fact, he was the only person Draco trusted, as he had lost all confidence in himself.

He knew he had tried to be brave, had promised to try and help defeat Voldemort, but right now he wasn´t sure wether he could, when all he wanted to do was hide here in this house, in this bed and these arms, for all eternity.

The fire had almost burned down and the room was quite dark when Harry shifted and moved to sit up; Draco had dozed off at one point and opened his eyes now, shivering in the sudden absence of warmth. A moment later, however, Harry was back and huddled against him as before. His hand sought Draco´s , who felt something pressing against it and automatically opened it.

A small object touched his palm, and he didn´t need to look at it to be certain what it was: the small paper bird he had given Harry for his birthday. As though the dark-haired boy had known exactly what Draco had thought. He unconsciously smiled as his fingers cautiously curled around the frail little shape, knowing perfectly well what Harry wanted to tell him.

Slowly he lifted the bird up to his face; the creamy parchment shimmered in the darkness, a ray of hope. It had come with a silent, mutual promise, Draco remembered. The will to persevere.

Draco stroked the slightly worn off edges with one finger; the summer seemed an eternity ago, yet he still knew how it had felt to discover that something inside him was still willing to fight, even after all he had suffered. If he had been that determined back then, while he had still been recovering from his physical injuries, he certainly could muster that determination now, couldn´t he? It had to be somewhere inside him.

“Thanks for reminding me,” Draco eventually whispered and sought his boyfriend´s gaze.

Harry´s expression was soft as he eyed the blond: “Anytime,” he replied, his voice equally low.

Sirius sat with Buckbeak. The Hippogriff was fast asleep, yet its company had a calming effect on the man; he had marveled at the animal´s quiet strength from the first moment on, and was glad to have it here with him, in this mostly deserted house he still couldn´t bring himself to call home.

The past two weeks had been good, though, as it had been filled with people and a general air of reprieve; but that had only been due to the circumstances, and as soon as the kids would leave for Hogwarts and the Weasleys would return to the Burrow, Sirius would be alone once more, rolling around in the emptiness like a single pea in a shoebox.

He had traded one prison for another, he mused darkly, as long as he didn´t get the opportunity to clear his name.

He had tried to distract himself from impatience and fury and self-pity, had continued on cleaning the house, had read the books Remus had brought him, had spent time with Buckbeak or the dusty old grand piano in the drawing room. The latter was something he had hated as a child; his mother had forced Regulus and him to take lessons, and he naturally had been reluctant to learn properly, had never exercised regularly whereas Regulus had been brilliant, at least in the eyes of their parents.

Yet one day when Sirius had strolled through the rooms he had sat down in front of the instrument and opened the lid without thinking; he had slowly run his fingers over the keys, wiping off dust and memories, and had tentatively struck first one key, then another, until his hand had remembered a melody.

The familiar, long forgotten notes had reverberated through the room while he had played increasingly at ease, with his eyes closed; the music floated around him, seemingly too loud at first, then comforting, and had left a hole after the last tone had died away.

From that point on he had returned to the Drawing Room many times, as though drawn by a magnet; sometimes he had played, sometimes he had simply sat there, his right hand flat on the smooth keys, his left supporting himself as he´d otherwise have sagged, weighed down by memories and loneliness.


He was thinking of music now, his eyes resting on the bones which gave evidence of Buckbeak´s latest meal without registering them; the drama which inhered in his favourite melody just mirrored life. There was no beauty without pain, wasn´t that a famous quote? No love without pain either. He sighed; it certainly held true.

He smiled sadly when his train of thoughts reached Harry; Harry, who had found love, who was leaving his childhood behind now. Sirius didn´t begrudge him his relationship, yet he felt a slight pang in his heart when he thought of it; sooner or later, Harry wouldn´t need him anymore.

He and his godson had hardly gotten to know each other, yet it seemed that they´d never get the chance to be what came next to a family; after their last year at Hogwarts, Harry and Draco would probably want to stay together, moving somewhere where they´d have their privacy, given that they´d be free to do so at that time, not being hunted anymore.

Sirius buried his face in his hands: he shouldn´t feel jealous, but he couldn´t stall the sting he felt. For the umpteenth time in his life he wished that everything had turned out differently, that Voldemort hadn´t been born, and that life would be easier. He drew a ragged breath: “Stop whining, Black,” he told himself.

He had to remain strong, for Harry. As long as Voldemort and people like Dolores Umbridge were still out there and made other people´s lives miserable, he could still be of help.

To Be Continued

Author´s note:

Here´s the song which inspired me to write the piano-scene: http : // www . youtube . com / watch?v = S7TcyRl1POY

Just remove the blank spaces. I´ve uploaded it because of the music, that´s why there´s not an actual video accompanying it, but I´ve added a picture of the Sirius I´ve had in my head while reading The Prisoner of Azkaban long before the movie was made... ;D