A Dream For The Dead

A Dream For The Dead

Chapter 34

This Hole You Put Me In

The sunlight filtered through and bathed the room in a warm glow. This place had not seen a shade of warmth in the span of its entire existence. It was a cold room, a cold house, a cold place. It was only ever warm when Scorpius was around, and even then, only for moments while they were together.

But now, against all odds, the room was warm and welcoming, and Scorpius was nowhere in sight.

The walls shone lightly as the curtains veiled the sun. There was a comfortable heat that filled Draco wholly, spreading from his heart straight to the tips of his fingers and toes. The bed fell full and relaxing beneath his weary limbs. Draco sighed, his eyelids fluttering as he lifted out of the last dregs of sleep.

His house suddenly felt like a home and it was all because of Harry Potter.

Draco felt a smile curl on his lips and he blinked away the sleep, becoming more and more aware of the arm that was draped languidly over his side. Harry hummed softly behind him as Draco traced the other man’s wrist with his forefinger. He smiled more fully and turned over to face his lover.

Eyelids fluttered lightly before revealing bright green eyes. Draco realized that Harry must have removed his glasses as one point or another, but he couldn’t remember when. He traced the other man’s face with his fingertip and gently leaned in to kiss his forehead, just next to the famous scar.

“Mmm, morning,” Harry whispered, still lingering on the threshold of the world of dreams. Draco kissed him again, this time chastely on the lips.

“Good or bad?” Draco asked him, kissing him again and again, unwilling to actually let him answer. Harry smiled against his kisses.

“Oh very good,” he responded, before palming Draco’s back and pulling him closer. “Waking up next to you could hardly be a bad thing.”

Draco smiled and pressed his lips more deeply to Harry’s, drawing out the kiss and trailing one hand down to pull the other man’s leg over his hip. Harry parted Draco’s lips with his tongue and moved his hips until he brushed against Draco, revealing his morning erection.

The blond moaned and bucked, adding to the friction as both of them sought easy release. Harry reached between them and wrapped his fingers around both of their shafts, slowly building up a rhythm. Then Draco pulled Harry on top of him, forcing Harry to straddle him as he pumped their cocks. Draco’s hand slid down and he pressed one dry finger to Harry’s hole. It slid in slowly, not very far. Harry groaned and pumped faster, apparently unbothered by the raw treatment of his arse.

“Oh, yes,” the Auror murmured against Draco’s lips. Draco kissed him more fiercely and Harry tightened his grip on their cocks.

The delicious, hot friction of skin on skin was too much for Draco to handle with his morning arousal. He bucked into Harry’s cock and pushed his finger in deeper, hoping to push him over the edge. Harry grunted and bit Draco’s lip, almost hard enough to draw blood. Then the pleasure hit fast and Draco cried out, spurting a stream of semen onto Harry’s hand and lubricating his thrusts.

Harry screamed and tensed and came. He held himself over Draco, panting and taking in the sight of Draco covered in semen, before the world lurched and he went flying into the headboard.

“Fuck!” Harry cursed, landing in a tangled heap on top of the blond. Draco winced from the sudden weight and then turned them over to see if Harry was alright. He ran his hand through the dark locks, feeling for a bump or a cut but there was none. Just the dull throb of pain. “This has got to stop, Draco.”

Draco flinched unintentionally, thinking that Harry suddenly had second thoughts about… well, whatever was happening between them.

With anyone else, Draco would have called it great sex and then moved on. But he got the distinct impression that, with Harry, it was never going to be just sex. The thought both calmed him and stressed him deeply. He didn’t really know how to do that. And then, with Harry’s last words, there was the possibility that he regretted the whole ordeal.

“Right,” Draco said sharply, pulling away. Harry’s eyes narrowed in confusion and he grasped Draco’s shoulder to pull him back. Draco closed his face, his heart off from possible hurt, from possible attack.

“I mean the…” Harry began, clearly unsure what to term it. He squinted and wrinkled his nose. “The world spinning and moving thing. Whatever it is. Death hunting us, Or the Grim. Whatever.” He caressed Draco’s face and then pressed their mouths together briefly. “That’s what I meant.”

Draco’s body released the tension very slowly. He sighed and lowered his head. He had been worried about this question. It had loomed in the back of his mind like a fog, obscuring his thoughts and demanding attention that he could not give. There was no way to shine a light on it. Not yet.

“I don’t know,” he answered, defeated. “I haven’t quite figured it out, yet.”

Harry turned around briefly to pick up his glasses from the side table. He slid them back onto his face and blinked several times before turning back to Draco. The blond watched him, strangely fascinated by the routine action.

“So you do know something,” Harry said finally, sitting up. Draco let his eyes travel down the lean expanse of the Auror’s chest and stomach before settling just below his hips. He did not get the chance, the previous night, to take in all the details of his lover’s body. Harry raised his brows in waiting.

“Well, only the cryptic details my research brought me,” he said, hoping that the man would leave off the subject and put his time to better use. Draco eyed his prick and longed, then, to suck it.

“What are those details?” he asked, ignoring Draco’s obvious disinterest in the proceedings. Draco finally sat up and glared at the other man.

“Oh, bloody hell,” he snapped. “It said some load of rubbish about there only being one kind of magic more powerful than Death and it being the most ancient magic of all. I can’t figure out what magic is supposed to be more powerful than Death. There are no spells anywhere about it, trust me, or I would have found them. So I haven’t the foggiest idea, Potter.”

Draco huffed and leaned back against the headboard, his arms crossed over his chest. He did not like admitting to the fact that he couldn’t understand the all-but forthcoming information he had collected. He liked to be able to figure out puzzles and answer questions. He liked to be able to deduce solutions where others have thrown up their hands in dismay.

It was satisfying.

Being stymied by unclear wording, however, was not.

Harry simply studied him for a moment or two before closing his eyes and shaking his head.

“Do you know how I survived the Killing Curse?” the man asked, very abruptly and without prompting. Draco blinked at him. “Both times.”

Draco cocked one eyebrow.

“The sheer thickness of your head stopped it, I imagine,” he responded, deadpanned. Potter glared at him and rolled his eyes.

“You astound me with your wit,” he snapped. He shook his head. “I survived because my mother died to save me.” He paused for what Draco concluded must have been effect. “It was the power of her love that protected me. “

Draco studied him for a moment, trying to decide if it was some peculiar joke. The seriousness in Harry’s eyes gave away his honesty. But he couldn’t be telling the truth, could he? If Lily Potter had given her life for Harry and, so, saved him from Death, then… how did Draco survive?

His mother had not been present that day in the toilets at Hogwarts, nor any of the other times he faced down Death and came out the victor. If the key ingredient was love strong enough to fight against the Inevitable, then who could possibly have fought for Draco? He was sure there was no one who would have given their lives for him.

Excepting his mother, but, again, she had not been present and she was still, most certainly, alive.

Draco pulled away from Harry and turned his back to him. He swung his legs over the side of the bed and began to dress, intent on looking anywhere but at the man who had shared his bed. He didn’t want to voice his fears and deepest insecurities. He didn’t want to make real the notion that, while love may have saved Harry, it could not possibly have saved Draco.

Maybe I, more than he, deserved to die. Maybe I’m not supposed to be here at all.

“Draco?” Harry’s voice cut through his thoughts and soon he felt a warm hand on his shoulder. He flinched away from it without meaning to. Draco bit his lip and fastened his trousers. “What’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? Draco wanted to shout that everything was wrong, that he didn’t understand the concept of love actually conquering all. He wanted to throw a fit and collapse, knowing better than ever before that there was a severe chasm separating Potter and himself.

They could never be of the same kind, of the same world because Potter had people to die for him and Draco… Draco did not.

“I need some air,” he answered quietly, pulling on a thick, fitted jumper and slipping into his shoes. He walked to the door and paused, wanting both to turn back to Harry and to slam the door behind him as he left.

He settled for neither and simply walked out, down the hall, down the stairs and out into the garden. He stepped out into the cool air and took a deep breath, letting it fill his lungs until a slash of pain tore through him from the cold.

He exhaled and stepped out along the stone path. There was a light breeze that carried the light snowfall around him and settled in the knit of his jumper and on the top of his head. His garden was green and beautiful, still flowering and lush. He had tried to recreate his favourite part of the grounds at the Manor, but hadn’t quite managed.

Nothing was like the Manor to him. Not but the Manor itself.

Draco walked along the path towards the large pond at the back corner of his lot. He shivered from the cold and looked around to the edges of his grounds.

The weather was actually below freezing and there was a steady snowfall, but he only just noticed it now. Given the thick blanket of white on the ground at the barrier to his yard, he guessed that it must have snowed rather steadily for days. Draco never noticed these things, however.

He lived in artificial worlds.

His house and yard were ensconced in a magical bubble to keep the air warm enough to allow his plants to bloom year-round and keep his waterfall flowing freely. The Quidditch pitch his team used for practice was within a similar ward to protect the health of the players. League regulation pitches followed the same magical terms.

Draco’s job and his home-life never left the magically produced climate for ideal productivity.

Diagon Alley was a tempered area as well. Being in London, caught within the boundaries of the city and forced to wind between Muggle streets, it held a warmth within it that no other location maintained in Wizarding Britain. There was a ward cast from Gringott’s to the Leaky Cauldron, filtering the snowfalls so that only a light frost ever reached the ground of the Alley. Shops could keep their doors open long into the Christmas hols without freezing the clientele.

Draco realized that, with Apparition and the Floo Network, he really never had to go outside. He mused over the idea of losing track of the changing seasons before he came back to himself at the rumble of the ground beneath him. The steady flow of his waterfall gushed strangely with the movement before calming. He stared at the rush of water and sighed.

How could he reconcile his survival with what Harry had told him?

He thought back over what Harry had revealed about his own experiences in the Otherworld. He had mentioned something about Dumbledore, had he not?

Who was waiting for you? Who told you to come back?

Dumbledore had been waiting for Harry, to explain away the world and help him understand the unsettling experience. No mortal should ever know Death and live to tell the tale. No mortal should ever know Death.

Draco had had no one. All he kept from his experience at the Platform was the memory of the beastly voices calling to him, promising his doom and the alarming knowledge that he would never know a peaceful death. He had enemies everywhere.

Maybe a Dementor’s Kiss would be the safest way to go… they can’t devour my soul if there is no soul to devour.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” Draco ground out harshly as he rubbed his eyes and shook his head. He couldn’t afford to think that way. He couldn’t allow himself to believe that this madman sending him threats was actually righteous in his actions.

He couldn’t give in to that.

“I would have phrased it differently, but since you asked…” Harry’s voice tore through the air, but instead of shattering the serenity of the waterfall, his words improved it. Draco relaxed and turned around, his face still dark and his eyes more shadowed than they had ever been.

“I… I don’t know,” he answered finally, turning back to the water. There were bright and colourful lilies floating on the water of the pond. Draco considered them.

“Why do you call this place Star’s Fall?” Harry asked in a voice so quiet it nearly got lost in the splashing water. Draco glanced at him and then returned his gaze to the pond.

“Because this is where we fall, Potter,” he said quietly with not a little bit of mystery. “This is the rock bottom place they speak of when they say there is no place to go but up.” His eyes matched the colour of the falling water now. Grey and turbulent in nature. “This is the place where falling stars collide and meet their end. So, the question really is, Potter,” he whispered, turning to face Harry. “How will you land? Will you float gracefully to the ground and float among the lilies?” He tilted his head and then turned back to the pond. “Or will you crash and burn with me?”

Harry shifted next to him but said nothing. They stood in a thickly spread silence for a long while, separated by worlds but so very close together. A wind moved them and the world lay still, for just a moment. There was nothing to do but take in the knowledge and wonder what it really brought. This place was the harbinger of bad news and broken promises. It was the sentry at the gates to a downward spiral. Draco thought it fitting.

“I upset you before,” Harry proclaimed quietly, with only a hint of a question, after the right amount of time had passed. Draco’s eyelids slid shut and he took a deep breath.

“You said that love saved you,” he recounted slowly, feeling his stomach sink. “And maybe it did, but that doesn’t explain what happened to me. No one died for me.” His voice grew harsher and more feral with every word. He turned to look at Harry but Draco’s expression did not match his tone. His eyes were haunted and frightened. His words were strong. “No one was there to save me, Harry. No one waited at the Platform. Maybe I’m not…”

He trailed off because he had to, because he couldn’t say the words. Harry stepped forward sharply and fisted Draco’s jumper.

“Do not think, for one moment,” he began angrily. “That you were supposed to die. If you were, then so was I. There was no reason I needed to survive the first time, prophecy or not. There was even less reason for me to live the second time around.” He released the cloth and set his shoulders. “By all accounts I should have died and stayed dead. But I didn’t. If I was supposed to keep living, then so were you.” He stared past Draco to the waterfall. “No one cheats Death without a bloody good reason.”

Draco gritted his teeth and shook. He was angry and scared and relieved all at once and could not quite figure out how to cope.

“How can you know that?” he asked, his tone edged in fear. “How did I survive, then? If Love is the strongest magic of all, then how did I survive?”

Harry looked up at him, clearly wanting to stay angry but unable to do so. He sighed and dragged his fingers through his hair.

“I don’t know,” he explained. “Love had to do it. Someone loved you enough to save you.” Draco’s heart inexplicably shattered with those words. He hid the pain and terror by turning fully to the pond and casting his eyes away. His hair fell in a sheet of white-blond and shielded his face.

“I told you, Potter,” Draco said, trying to stay calm. It was too hard to say Harry without his voice cracking. “The only reason I came back was because I heard Professor Snape’s voice, calling me back, pulling me back.”

Then the notion dawned on him and he nearly barked out in hysterical laughter.

“Snape…?” Harry asked, voicing the same ridiculous notion that Draco had. “Maybe… maybe Snape loved you…?”

Draco actually did burst out laughing and the sound was harsh and wild to his own ears. Harry looked up in shock and reached out to calm him. His fingertips brushed over Draco’s cheek and he gasped back the laughter and fell silent.

“I don’t think so,” he said after a moment. “He might have liked me, but he did not love me. Not to save me from Death. “ Draco paused, fighting off another fit of hysteria. “I’m sure he only saved my life because of the Vow he made to my mother, anyway.”

He said it in an offhand sort of manner, but as the words fell from his lips, his mind caught up with them and mulled them over. The Unbreakable Vow. Was it possible…?

“What did the Vow demand, precisely?” Harry asked, cottoning on to what Draco was thinking. Draco’s face had become an impassable sheet of concentration. His eyes were focused on the middle distance and everything began to fall away.

“It demanded that he do whatever was in his power to protect me,” Draco replied tonelessly. “And by extension of the Vow, whatever my mother’s power was, so was Snape’s.” Draco shut his eyes and pressed his lips into a hard line.

“Snape had to save you,” Harry finished for him. “He had to protect you from Death or die himself. He used your mother’s love for you, the love that lead her to take part in an Unbreakable Vow, to bring you back from Death.”

Draco rubbed his eyes and exhaled deeply. He nodded and laughed humourlessly. He felt quite mad.

“So my mother did save me with her love,” he concluded with the same desperate laugh and smile that dogged him like the Grim. “She seems to be the only one who ever did fight to save me.” The last was spoken in an undertone but Draco felt a hand in his own and Harry turned him slightly.

“She’s not the only one,” he said quietly. Draco swallowed painfully, the moisture of his throat apparently gone. Harry offered him a small smile before changing the subject. “There’s something I still don’t understand. Love saved us from Death the first time,” he went on, intent on sidestepping a discussion of what was between them, but still holding fast to Draco’s hand. “But that caused all the trouble in the first place: surviving Death. So how could Love reverse the effects?”

Draco swallowed again. There seemed to be one option. It appeared in his mind, unbidden and inexplicable, but lingered there in the corners of his thoughts. It was only half-formed and wholly unclear, but it frightened him deeply. He did not know what to do with it and did not know how to speak it. The words would not form on his tongue no matter how hard he tried and he could not bring himself to try harder.

But Draco was saved from having to try and answer by the sudden flap of wings and appearance of an owl. It was a grey and shabby bird, seeming to be caught halfway through molting. It landed on the small bench to Harry’s right and stuck out it’s leg to him.

Harry blinked before untying it and breaking the seal on the letter. He unfolded the parchment and scanned the page as the bird took flight. Draco watched as Harry’s face shifted dramatically from confusion to disbelief to utter fury.

“Fucking hell,” he barked suddenly, his green eyes alive with fire and hate. He glared out at the waterfall. His knuckles were white from his grasp on the parchment. It wrinkled and crumpled under the strain of his hold. “I can’t believe she fucking…”

“What is it?” Draco asked carefully. A streak of dusky grey cut the sky and Draco looked up. Pavo was flying toward him, followed closely by an unknown owl. Pavo landed lightly on his shoulder and Draco set about untying the letter while the other owl simply dropped its missive into Draco’s arm and flew off.

“Ginny!” Harry spat, the venom in the word almost overwhelming the letters. Draco opened the unmarked letter first, knowing who it was from and feeling his heart clench at the knowledge. He scanned it quickly while Harry explained. “She’s… she’s fucking… Merlin, I can’t even say it I’m so bloody angry!” He took a moment to take a deep breath and Draco stared down at his own letter in urgent confusion. He scanned it again quickly, unable to understand precisely what the words were telling him. “She’s fucking called a solicitor and is suing me for full custody of the kids… she’s trying to take my children from me!”

“What?!” Draco cried as much in response to Harry’s statement as to the letter he received. He picked up the second letter. It bore a Hogwarts seal. He tore it open.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with her,” Harry began ranting, shaking from the force of his anger. Draco tried to listen as he read the second letter but his heart was hammering in his chest, pumping ice cold blood through his body. His pupils contracted and he felt his knees ready to give out beneath him. “She’s the one who fucking cheats on me, demands a divorce and now she’s trying to stop me seeing my kids? She can’t take my family from me. I won’t let her.”

Draco was shaking now too, from fear as much as fury. His eyes were wide and his throat closed up. He could hardly breathe as his mind raced, trying to process the information.

It wasn’t possible. No, no, no, no…. it couldn’t be.

It can’t fucking be!

“Draco? Are you list –” Harry began angrily before he saw the letters and the look on Draco’s face. “Oh, god… is that –…” Draco’s face pulled into a mask of rage and loathing, his teeth grinding down and his mouth pulled into a violent grimace. “What happened?”

He shook his head, his eyes full of a loathing and anger to match the fire in Harry’s eyes.

“He’s gone,” Draco said, his voice like rock scraping brick. “Scorpius is gone.”

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A/N: Sorry for the delay, again. I'm sick now T_T and it is VERY upsetting. Anyway. Yes. I'm glad you guys enjoyed the last chapter! hEEEE still a little something in this one. And then BANG. I attack. I do that. *is doped up on... sickness* Please forgive the ramblings.

I loves youuuu alll! *hands out baskets of love for reviews* Thank youuuus :)