A Dark Time For The Light

44

That weekend the boys were busy with the mail-run. On Saturday morning they rose early, enjoyed some eye-wateringly good sex and set off. They arrived in Hogsmeade to an agitated Rosmerta and warm butterbeer. “You cannot stay here. Death-Eaters have been here”. She packed a bag with the last of Sev’s potions and thrust it at them, pushing them out, kissing both of them, before tears took over. This was definitely the final mail-run.

Harry hefted his bag on his back and turned the other way to start walking, “Hey, that’s the wrong way”, Draco said. Harry turned, glancing back at his lover, “I just want to take a last look at Hogwart’s, we’ll probably never see the place again”. Draco took some convincing, but he set off after Harry with a sigh. They kept a careful eye out, but saw no untoward movement. Soon the village was behind them and the tops of the towers became visible, then were lost again as the high boundary wall blocked them from view.

Eschewing the main gate, Harry led them around the perimeter for about half-a-mile, then concentrated on the edge of the verge, loosening moss from the stones, revealing a painted white one, then stepped straight to the wall, clearing away the curtain of Virginia Creeper, to reveal a low wooden door. The catch was rusty, but the latch lifted after a few tries. Harry managed to push it open, flattening the tall grasses on it’s other side, just enough to admit the two of them. They went in.

Even the very air changed as they entered the grounds, though neither of them felt any crackle from wards. They started across the grass, almost waist-high in places, wading rather than walking, over the slight rise, then the shock.

In the tall grass could be seen rows of two foot high white slabs. Even overgrown as they were, they were quite obviously gravestones, this side of the castle was a cemetery.

They stood, frozen to the spot, taking it all in. With a cry of dismay, Harry started towards them. They’d never seen a list of the dead following the debacle with Voldemort, but someone had quite plainly taken the trouble of burying the fatalities and recording the names on the stones with year of birth and death. With shaking fingers, Draco drew a notebook and pen out of his bag and, between them, they made a list of the names of everyone buried here.

Harry murmured, “There could be some folk in the cadres who don’t even know that relatives or loved ones are even dead, just hoping they’d turn up somewhere, or are still safely on the run. This information needs to go on the database”. Draco nodded and carried on taking notes, then cried out softly and sank to his knees, his hand on a grave. Harry came over, kneeling to comfort him, then noticed the name, Vincent Crabbe. “I thought he’d joined them”, Draco sniffled, “I didn’t realise he was dead”. Harry gathered him close and rocked him.

Harry had his own shock, moments later, with a howl of anguish, he sank between two markers, “Oh, fuck. I knew about Charlie. Oh God. I bet they don’t know. Oh shit, I’ll have to tell them”, he broke down and was held in turn as he wept. Charlie Weasley’s headstone stood beside that of his younger brother Fred.

Shaking, they finished taking a census of the dead. A short way away, there was a raised mound of earth on which no grass grew, no identifying markers save a Death-Eaters mask impaled on a stake stuck in the top. The enemy’s casualties. No names.

They held each other a while, standing at the edge of the cemetery. Harry murmured something in another language as tears leaked from his eyes, but keeping his voice as level as he could he carried on his intonation, with a few hesitations and mis-steps. When he finished, Draco was crying again, “What was that, Harry?. It was beautiful. Almost like a spoken song”. “It’s part of the Jewish Kaddish prayer for the dead. It’s Hebrew”.

By mutual consent, they left the graves and turned to the castle. Harry was puzzled, “I thought it only appeared like a derelict ruin to Muggles”, as they neared. The truth became obvious, It was a derelict ruin. Large parts were intact, but the Astronomy Tower was now a large hole in the ground and all of the ground floor windows had had stout boards nailed across them. The front door was barred and padlocked. Many of the windows had either no glass in them or large dangerous looking shards that could sever a head cleanly if they fell on you. It was obvious that they could not enter the castle by door or window.

Draco just wanted to turn around and head back to London, but now he was here, Harry was determined to find out as much as he could. He looked over at Hagrid’s hut, roofless, open to the sky, the blackened struts poking obscenely at the sky. The whomping Willow, a charred stump. Of course, that was their way in, providing the passage hadn’t caved in.

“Come on”, Harry grabbed Draco’s hand and pulled him towards the tree, now completely dead. Harry fished around at the roots, then pressed one. The passage opened, “Haven’t used this for years”, he smiled back at his beloved, “Let’s hope it’s still intact”. He wriggled in, a bit bigger than the last time he had been in here and beckoned Draco to follow him, “God’s teeth, Harry, now we’re having one of your wretched Gryffindorish adventures”, but he couldn’t keep the humour out of his voice as they stumbled along in Stygian blackness, “Oh for a Lumos spell”, quipped Draco, who promptly fell over a tree root, measuring his length and swearing. Harry picked him up, laughing and held him. They kissed in the darkness then continued.

The statue as they emerged behind it now had no head or torso, it lying in pieces along the corridor. Draco looked around him in wonder. “Wow, Harry, how did you know of that passage”. Harry grinned and shrugged, “Known about it since third year as a matter of fact”, in his best smug tone, “I know all sorts of things about this place, mainly gleaned from my Marauder’s map. Sev always wanted to get his hands on that little piece of parchment, I can tell you”

Draco grinned. The Map had got the pair of them out of many scrapes, usually trying to avoid Snape or McGonagall patrolling the corridors at night, or Peeves. Harry had finally revealed it to his lover the Easter that Draco had returned, and the two of them had come up with a plethora of interesting trysting spots until the Battle had effectively ended their School careers.

The place was a mess. Glass everywhere, bits of loose masonry, shattered statues, shredded tapestries. Many of the pictures had been slashed with knives, their occupants silent and still, mere daubs of paint on split canvas. The boys felt the sadness returning as they wandered hand in hand, down gloomy corridors, peering into wrecked classrooms, brown stains and splotches in the first years Charms classroom, where thirty eleven year olds had met their end.

The fat lady had been slashed. The portal to the Gryffindor tower hanging open, moving slightly in the breeze though the smashed windows. Draco followed Harry in. Tapestries slashed and torn. Someone had tried to rip them down, but had only succeeded in ripping away the lower portions. Harry picked up a cleanish bit and stowed it about his person.

Up to his old dorm. The other beds were virtually untouched. His own stabbed and pulverised. The mattress in tatters, the frame axed into a pile of kindling, the curtains singed rags. Harry sat on Ron’s old bed and howled in grief, “This is how much they hate me, Dragon”. Draco lifted Harry against him and got him downstairs again into the Common Room, then they both sank into a wrecked sofa and Draco held his Harry tight.

Things were not much better in the Slytherin dungeons. Draco’s room was a wreck. The words ‘Blood Traitor’ daubed on the wall in what looked suspiciously like old dried blood. The tester over the bed had collapsed onto it and the mattress was burned at one corner. It was Draco’s turn to be once again traumatised and Harry was right there to hold him as they took in the carnage.

They examined Sev’s old quarters. Draco was curious. They crunched over broken glass in the lab, both deeply sad, that a life’s work was being ground up under their feet. Books and parchments were scattered hither and yon. Draco picked up one or two items and stashed them in his clothes.

They made their way to the Great Hall. No Magical ceiling, no floating candles. It was dark, the windows roughly boarded up, allowing some chinks of light to shine through. No House tables, just shreds of their House Banners on the floor. They silently took a small piece of each.

They continued to wander, slowly, sadly, their arms around each other, through the entrance hall remembering the poignant moment of coming out in front of Harry’s two best friends, declaring his love for Draco. Ron’s fury, Hermione’s slight disgust.

Hand in hand, defiant, I lead him back to the Hall. The House Elves haven’t cleared away yet and there is still some food. There is only the Gryffindor table laid as is usual during the holidays. I expect him to complain but he marches up to my House table and sits down, helping himself to food which he wolfs down, then tells me he has been flying non-stop since early this morning. He’d made some flimsy excuse to his father then ran out of the Manor, hopped on his broom and pointed it here. To me.

I watch him eat, not a trace of savagery, even though I know he’s starving. His delicate almost dainty hands move with unfailing grace, whether tearing bread or stirring his tea. He mesmerises me and I find myself making note of every tiny detail, the way he holds his cutlery, the way his hair moves as he tips his head to drink, the movement of his adam’s apple as he swallows, like I’m learning him for the first time. I cannot tear my eyes from him. He is so beautiful. He ignores my scrutiny or at least pretends not to notice and I drink him in.

He takes a last drink of water to rinse his mouth then turns to look at me. The Hall is empty now, all save the House Elves beginning to clear the table. Draco turns to me then, his hair still a wreck from his recent flight, his robes disarrayed slipping over one t-shirted shoulder. Our arms go around each other and we kiss. I am reluctant due to the presence of the Elves. Draco, with his usual hauteur ignores them. He only has eyes for me. I read all sorts in them. Desire uppermost with a sprinkling of pure lust blended with fondness, affection and tempered with such love.

He fair drags me to his room in the Dungeons. Snape is the only other Slytherin here for the holidays so we are carefree as our steps carry us into the bowels of the building. At one point, Draco presses me into a wall, presses his groin into mine, and we both nearly come from the intensity of our lust to be brought round by a polite cough and a raised black eyebrow atop a smirk of gargantuan proportions. “Well well. What have we here?”. We both scramble for a semblance of respectability. We have none. It is plain in our faces. Our arousal is badly concealed. A baggy t-shirt in my case and Draco’s lopsided cloak. We are both bright pink and so busted.

Nothing is said for a long moment. I feel my desire deflate, staring fixedly at the stone floor waiting for the axe to fall, shattering the precious thing we have. Instinctively, I reach for Draco’s hand. His long fingers curl around mine. I dare to look up. He is scrutinising us, his head tipped slightly, and he’s smiling not smirking, then bursts into a guffaw of laughter. “I don’t believe this. I really don’t. Have a good evening gentlemen”, and then he turns on a heel and walks away. We look at each other in astonishment. He calls back over his shoulder, “We are on holiday, but if I catch you down here in term-time, Potter, then it’s expulsion. I have to obey the rules, even while you constantly feel free to flout them”, but his eyes sparkle and he’s still grinning. His voice has a quality that makes a shiver travel along my spine. It isn’t fear, and I dare not think of what it may be instead. I only know that we have been given a spurious permission and that I have never been so aroused in my life.

Harry stands at the top of the stairs, lost in memory. Draco brought him back with a gentle kiss to the temple, “Are you remembering what I am?”. Harry nodded, “When you came back during the Easter holidays and told me you loved me”, he turned in Draco’s arms and kissed him long and slow. They set off again.

A moment or two later and they were before the gargoyle guarding Dumbledore’s study. There’s a lump in both throats as they try intoning the names of several of Honeyduke’s confections. Fizzing Whizbees does it. To their amazement, the stone figure moved away and revealed the staircase, the sound of grinding stone heavy in the dust-moted silence. This bit of the castle still ‘worked’.

To their amazement, nothing had been touched. The Death-Eaters had not got into here. For the first time since entering, they felt a real crackle of Magic around them as if the old wards recognised them and welcomed them in. Draco shivered and closed his eyes, savouring that feeling. Harry glanced at Fawkes’ empty perch. The phoenix had expired at the same moment as his master had, never to be rescusitated. A tiny orange tail feather lay below the perch. Harry picked it up and stashed it carefully. “My wand had one of these feathers within. I shall treasure this”. They both feel a little subdued as they carefully explore. The pictures on the walls are still, despite both of their efforts to awaken the subjects.

Draco sighed, “This feels like the last place here that has any Magic left in it. It’s so fucking sad”. He looked down into Dumbledore’s old pensieve, now full of nothing but dust. The array of twirling rotating Magical ‘thingies’ that was always so characteristic of this place were all still now, laden with dust, a little off-centre where the delicate balance had been knocked askew by the device coming to a standstill. They moved restlessly in the space, touching things delicately, knowing that the last person to touch them was probably Dumbledore.

Harry slumped into a seat over a table of parchments and started to cry again, Draco was with him in a heartbeat and they shared a seat and their grief at the passing of their esteemed headmaster. Harry threaded a lacklustre hand through the parchments until he found the speech that Albus had composed to give at their leaving feast, a speech that Albus Dumbledore never lived long enough to deliver. Harry rolled it carefully and stashed it. Draco sniffed at his side, “Let’s get out of here, Harry. I think we’ve seen enough. I know I have”. Harry agreed. Before they left, he took a long look around the room, committing as much as he could to memory. He had a painful night’s writing in front of him in the near future.

They left the way they had come in. The Whomping Willow no longer a threat. They staggered through the cemetery and out through the side gate. Closing it carefully. Then both of them gave themselves to grief, slumping in the verge and holding each other again.

When they could, they carefully walked back to and beyond Hogsmeade, whispering their goodbyes as they went. Somehow each knew that this would be the last they ever saw of the place. They ate a small supper from the provisions in the panniers and they stashed the things they had picked up, all save the phoenix feather, which Harry placed in the pocket over his heart. They needed distance so Harry rode hard directly south and picked up the A1. They followed it south of Middlesborough, the found a small wood to erect the tent in. They both turned their phones off, neither wishing to speak to anyone else right now. They turned in early and held each other as they cried themselves out, then slept.

They had thought about stopping in Liverpool before going back to London, but Harry changed his mind, deciding instead to head straight home. They parked the bike and headed indoors to some food and a shower before making for the Bunker.

Their still shell-shocked faces told their own story, but when the boys presented the artifacts, the whole Bunker went silent. Harry and Draco then sat at the computer and typed out as much as they could remember. Harry typed in Dumbledore’s last speech, then with tear-filled eyes, they appended the list of the known dead. Harry turned red eyes to Hermione. “You’ll have to code this for the website, love. Sorry, it’s a bit distressin’”, he folded into the girl’s arms. “We went to Hogwart’s yesterday. There’s a cemetery. Oh god”, he crumpled. “I need to speak to Ginny, alone”. Ginny led him to a quiet place and he told her of Fred. Her howled, “NO”, of anguish could be heard all over the station. He held his trembling friend fast in his arms as she wept.

As her weeping stilled, she asked, “Have you spoken to Ron?”. Harry shook his head, “I’m still in shock, Gin. We turned our phones off. I couldn’t talk for crying yesterday”. Ginny nodded, her natural stoicism to the fore, “I’ll call Ron. You’ve done enough, Harry. At least I know for sure, now”. Harry nodded, a lump in his throat. “If it’s any comfort, Fred and Charlie are buried side by side, though we’ve no idea who buried them or who erected headstones”.

The boys went back to the flat, their hearts heavy. They knew that Hermione would be up all night readying the material for the site. They’d taken photos of the artefacts that they’d rescued including Dumbledore’s speech. Once the material was uploaded to the site, the next few days were indeed dark for the light, the cadres reading the boys’ report, the pictures of the tattered banners, the facsimile of the Headmaster’s final speech that he never was able to deliver, the list of the known dead. The one tiny thread of hope, Fawkes’ tail feather. One day may be incorporated into a wand for Harry once again. A lot that viewed this unlabelled photo had no thoughts on it, but there were some that knew, and in that knowledge found a glimmering of hope.