Night Flight

CHAPTER FIVE

Draco woke with a start again. He looked over and saw Harry sitting on the bed next to him. He saw a slightly worried look in Harry’s eyes, and asked, “What?” softly.

“You know that if you drink my blood one more time, you turn.”

“I’d…what?” Draco breathed. He licked his lips, tasting Harry’s blood on them still. He shrugged. “So? It’s not like I have anything to live for. I may as well die young.”

Harry laughed suddenly at Draco’s boldness. “Is the Malfoy line going to die out?” he asked randomly.

Draco looked up at Harry and cocked his head to the side. “Um, I guess it probably will, yeah.” Suddenly, he glared at Potter. “Since YOU killed my parents…”

Harry sighed and watched Draco’s anger grow. “Malfoy, listen; I had to kill your parents. Narcissa wouldn’t get the fuck out of the way and,” he managed to say before Draco cut him off with a sharp slap to the face.

“Don’t even talk to me about it, Potter! I can’t believe I let you…let you do…let you do THAT to me two nights in a row when you MURDERED my family!” Draco shouted. He jumped off the bed and started getting dressed quickly, glaring at the floor.

“Malfoy, if you don’t shut up and let me explain it, I’ll turn you right now, and then you’ll have to listen to me bitch for all eternity,” Harry snapped. He was suddenly by Draco’s side and pushed him into a chair Draco didn’t remember was there.

“Listen, Malfoy, your mother wouldn’t get out of the way. I had to kill Lucius, who was going to kill YOU, if you didn’t know that. Since you knew everything about old Voldemort but never took the mark, he was terrified you would go and spill everything to the Order,” Harry shouted as Draco stared up at him. “So it was either kill him, and your mother who stupidly wouldn’t get out of the way, or let YOU be killed and then kill Lucius anyway!”

Harry shook his head and huffed, muttering, “Just forget it,” before stalking out of the room, leaving a very silent Draco staring after him.

***

Draco sighed and rolled onto his side, trying to find sleep. It’d been three days since he and Harry had gotten in their little fight. He sighed again and whined. It was his fault, anyway; he was the one who pushed Harry away.

He sighed again, brushing away the tear that ran down his cheek. He bunched up his pillows and snuggled into them. When that didn’t work, he pulled his blankets tight around his body, instead.

After another two hours of shifting and crying, Draco finally fell into a fitful sleep, wishing Harry was there to keep him warm. His nightmares took a different twist, showing himself losing Potter instead of his parents. He woke up throughout the night crying.

***

Draco trudged into Potions a week after his and Harry’s fight, tired and looking like utter shit. He missed sleeping with Harry – whether it was the intensity of their sex or simply the calming nature of his presence, Potter gave him sound sleep.

He had known. He really had. He knew the entire time that Lucius was supposed to kill him. He saw Harry jump in front of him and throw a shielding charm around him. He’d almost pissed himself when he realized Potter was volunteering to get in the way of one of Lucius’s killing curses. He had known exactly what was happening. But it was just…Harry DID kill them, mercilessly, and it still hurt to lose his parents. He had tried for the almost eight full months since the final battle to deny that his father was going to hurt him, that Lucius could willingly kill his only son.

He sighed when he saw Potter talking to Weasley. He listened in while waiting for their professor to enter the classroom.

“Ron, I’m warning you. Cut again, and see if I don’t drain you,” he heard Harry hiss.

“Well, it’s unnatural that you wake up every time I cut,” Ron sighed.

“Of course it’s unnatural, Ron!” Harry almost shouted. He dropped his voice back to a whisper, “Look, it’s not my fault I was turned. But I was and every time you cut yourself, it’s a near impossible fight with myself not to suck every pint of blood from your scrawny body, you ginger. Listen, Ron, you can’t cut anymore. It’s not safe for you because you could accidentally-intentionally kill yourself, or worse, you could make me kill you. Besides, do you think Hermione would want you to be cutting? She’d bloody flip,” Harry put his face in his hands.

Ron sighed and slouched in his seat. “I know, Harry. I’m sorry. It’s just that…I don’t…I don’t know. And I’m so alone now that you’re…undead…you know?” he said lamely. “You should have let them kill me. At least then, I’d be with ‘Mione.”

Harry sighed. “You know I wouldn’t have been able to just let you be killed by those murderous vampires. It was either face the two vampires myself or let you and Ginny face them and I wouldn’t have been able to handle seeing you and Gin drained. It’s a lot less pleasant than it sounds. Just…stop being so hung up on being alive, you prat.”

Harry friendlily hit Ron, who chuckled weakly.

Draco sighed as the conversation ended. He tried to pay attention to the new Potions professor as he gave directions for a blood potion – it was made for vampires. He grinned pathetically at the irony and slipped a couple vials of his finished potion into his pocket at the end of class, wondering if he’d ever even need it.

***

Harry swept out of the school as soon as dark settled outside. He had his broom with him again, and as soon as he was out the doors, he jumped on it and flew into the moonlit sky.

“What the fuck is with Malfoy?” Harry muttered to himself as the wind swept through his hair. “One minute, he’s kissing me and begging me to fuck him through the floor, and the next, he’s glaring daggers at me and wishing I was alive so he could kill me. I thought guys weren’t supposed to be as much trouble as girls!”

He flew in circles for a little over ten minutes and made his way back to the castle. Because of his skin being so sensitive to the sun, though he didn’t exactly burst into flame, the night air was the only fresh air he could get anymore. But his heart just wasn’t in it tonight.

Draco was leaning against the castle’s oversized doors waiting for Harry head back to bed. When he saw him land, he walked over and timidly began, “Harry?”

Harry turned around, though he’d heard Draco approaching, and snapped, “What?”

“I…um…” Draco very tentatively put his hand on Harry’s sleeve. “Um…will you come to my room tonight?”

“What, right now?” Harry asked. He was still kind of peeved at Draco for being so emotional about things, but he did hope the blond meant for him to come now.

“Um…yeah, if that’s okay with you, at least,” Draco said quietly.

Harry smiled and nodded; his smile grew when Draco smiled back.

***

Draco lay with his back against Harry’s chest. “I’m…sorry, if you thought I meant sex, but I’m just…so tired. I hadn’t gotten any real sleep until you…and then, once the nightmares came back, it was impossible to get accustomed again…”

Harry shook his head and licked Draco’s neck. “It’s fine. I want to taste you so badly right now,” he sighed. “But I know if I do, I’ll feed you and you’ll turn; I don’t want to do that until you’re…until you’ve thought about everything.” Harry sighed again.

Draco pulled out of Harry’s spooning embrace and reached into the pocket of the robe hanging on his bed post. He slid back into the warm spot in front of the cooler body of Harry and handed him a small vial. “I saved a few vials…from Potions today. Would you like one?”

Harry chuckled as he took the offered bottle. “It smells like…fake platelets.” He snickered again as he opened it. “Not bad, though. You make the potion a lot better than I.”

“Maybe I’ll make it for you if you keep my nightmares away,” Draco sighed as he pushed back into Harry’s body. He was completely relaxed and drifting away quickly. Not wanting to relinquish the safe and loved feelings in Harry’s arms, he made himself more comfortable and asked, “So what happened? When did you turn?”

Harry finished the potion and said, “Draco, I know you heard me talking to Ron. I could smell your presence and I heard your heartbeat racing.”

“But can’t you tell me the whole story? Come on, Potter; pretend it’s a bedtime story,” he whined and turned puppy dog eyes on Harry.

Harry laughed and pulled Draco to him. “Fine, you annoying git,” he agreed. “It was before the final battle. Only about a week before…Ron, Ginny, Hermione, and I were all looking for the last horcrux. I assume with your being a pureblood, you know what dark magic those are. It was being guarded by two vampires that Voldemort had enlisted. It was in this really ancient manor and we got inside just fine. It was even easy to find. Voldemort had locked part of his soul in his old pocket watch with 2 snakes intertwined on the cover…”

Harry summoned his wand and after a quick spell, conjured a picture of the pocket watch over the bed.

“It is quite beautiful, isn’t it?” he continued. “But as we were sneaking back out, hoping nothing had heard us, these 3 people appeared. Two pale blokes, it seemed each of them were over 6 feet tall, stood on either side of this equally tall bird. The female gave them some commands and they turned on us. I told Ron to get the girls out of there, and for a bit, I thought I might even beat the two blokes. But then the female returned and they seemed to gather some greater strength from her. The three of them attacked me at the same time and took turns feeding from me. The bird finally recognized me and demanded they turn me.”

“Why did they want to turn you?”

“I believed at the time it was horrible but I guess now, maybe they just wanted to give me a better chance at surviving future showdowns between Voldy and myself,” Harry shrugged. “It was the most torturous pain, being changed. Like every veins, capillary, every little trace of blood vessel in my body was being converted to fire. I couldn’t even breathe… The memories are hazy after the two blokes fed me their own blood, but I was told I was missing for shy of 48 hours.”

After a moment of silence, Harry added, “The strongest memory I have of that time is the woman. She fed me once, whispering things to me. Telling me I can go into the light, for having her blood. I will kill anyone I feed on the first few times, before I learn control. I’ll instinctively know who I want to spend my many years with. I’ll so, so slowly age until I’m about 23…I have the power to become the next Lord…”

Draco’s eyes were closed, his breathing even as he listened to Harry telling his story. He actually wasn’t sure what a horcrux was but he had heard snippets about them from the Death Eaters, and knew that for Voldemort to be destroyed, they would all have to be destroyed first.

When Harry stopped talking, Draco turned, his silver eyes glancing into the green ones looking back at him. He kissed Harry’s cheek before turning back away from him.

Harry sighed and curled closer to the Slytherin. In moments, they were both asleep.