Of fire and ice

Of Fire and Ice

Lying in bed, propped up on my elbow I look down at his pale and naked form.
Sweat drops are still clinging to his skin although I know that it’s lost the warmth
caused by passion long ago.
Like little drops of water frozen, ice.
Only for a few minutes after our lovemaking will his heated blood keep him
warm, then he begins to cool down. Strange, but fitting for him.
Just one more thing about him that makes me think of my formerly most detested season.
„What are you moping about?“
His voice, deeper and even more sensous than usual after having been abused
by cries of passion. A shiver runs down my back.
How long till every little bit he does stops having this effect on me?
Will it ever?
Quicksilver eyes look into mine questioningly. Open and laden with emotional
and physical content.
I made him look like this. He’s chosen me. I don’t know why. And I probably
never will, but that doesn’t take away my delirious joy at having him here beside me.
„’M not moping. I’m thinking.“
He rolls his eyes in amused exasperation and a smile tucks on my lips.
„Very well, Harry.“ Sneering a bit, but without any bad will „What are you thinking
about?“ He makes it sound as if I try to do something I should rather let
people do who’re more experinced at it. I let my smile win. Funny how well he has me trained.
He doesn’t even have to say it. I know what he thinks.
„Winter“
This stuns him into widening his eyes. Seeing as it is the beginning of July
I let this little show of emotion slip by without teasing.
One eyebrow rises in a perfect arch, as I knew it would and he indicates for me to go on.
It is funny how most people think that Draco Malfoy is a blab.
As I got to know the real him. The one that is behind his cool exterior and
scathing remarks I found a man who is not fond of speaking at all.
Draco prefers to express himself in other forms. For him words are platitudes.
Things you can never trust.
This, I assume is what he learned at his father’s knees.
One would think that it bothers me, seeing as I’m not eloquent at all. But surprisingly
in this aspect as in many others we fit. I trust and can read his bodylanguage easier than
I can hold my end of a talk with my friends. One eloquent hand gesture tells
me in what kind of a mood he is and how he would like to be treated.
And his silence brings out words that seems to have been stucked inside of me for what appears to have been years.
Back to where this conversation started.
„Winter reminds me of you.“ There is a glimmer in his eyes, a warning.
He should really know me better by now.
I am not to sprout metaphors of his snow white skin and cold heart that just needs to be warmed up.
I have to grin as I remember that valentine card. There were many alike.
We sat together for hours, ridiculing the writers of the mountains of bad, mushy
Valentine greetings we got. I let my inner Slytherin totally go that day. One of the
disadvantages of being with an all out snake; it feeds the darkness inside of me.
It may also be possible that I’m totally mad at anyone who even dares
to think of MY lover in a romantic way.
Anyway we had fun.
He really should know better than to expect this rubbish from me.
Even if it is quite obvious where all his fans are coming from with their comparisons.
I shake my head.
„You know, I despised winter once. It took me quite a while to see it’s beauty.“
A slight rosy hue tinged his perfectly formed cheekbones. I had to touch them.
Nobody’s compliments affected the Malfoy heir in any way but exposing it’s
donor to a smug and sarcastic retort.
„Cold, your coldness is a blessing for me. It numbs the pain I am forced to feel
by other people\'s hands. Winter has always been so harsh, I didn’t see it’s gentleness.
There’s a muggle song which describes what winter can do to you, it’s
called „Killing me softly“. Only winter is able to do that.“ My eyes trace his angelic features. He is listening.
Listening and understanding me like no other can. No other ever tried or wanted to try.
„In winter all the lines blur. There is no black and white. Just grey. Colourless shadows
like the ones that fill your eyes. You made me see that.“
And how hard it has been to acknowlegde that there is no patent for good owned by the Gryffindor
or Order side just as not every Slytherin, not even every Death Eater is bad.
„Sometimes I wish to have stayed blind, but then I remember that in my blindness, I failed to see you and the pain is worth it.“
Draco turns his head into my caressing hand and lays a kiss upon my palm. Silent comfort and ´thank you`.
My smile which I have lost in my dark reminiscence comes back.
„But that was not the direction in which I thought this time.“
I ask „Do you know Robert Frost?“
Not expecting him to know the muggle poet, I am still unsurprised to
see my lover nod.
Just like me Draco is drawn to beauty.
But while I bask in it’s shine, let it reflect upon me to drive away the darkness
of my everyday life, he is part of it.
His grace, his perfection in form. Draco Malfoy is beauty personified as only
art can be. And in art I saw him merging with it. When he allowed me to look at his sketches.
When I listened to him playing his violin for the first time. I’m not prone to surround myself with pretty things as he is.
The only beauty I captured lies in my arms. I have to smile at the sappy turn my thoughts have taken.
His grey eyes look at me quizically.
„What has Robert Frost to do with winter, or me for that matter? I do not know
any poem of his about it.“ Literature, just another form of beauty he studies.
„Does the title ´Of fire and ice´ tell you something?“
Now his eyes close and he says

„Some say the world will end in fire
some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favour fire.
But if I had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate,
to know that for destruction,
ice is great
and will suffice.“

I am doomed to hear his voice now whenever I think of this poem. I love how his voice sounds.
So smooth, deep and full of meaning in it’s recitation.
One day, when I’m feeling especially courageous I will ask him to sing for me.
I know he’ll do it just as beautiful as any other art form.
For a moment there is silence between us. Then he asks in a voice devoid of all emotions „You think of me
as ice? As hate? ....In hate?“ I can feel him withdrawing, although he is not moving his body
one centimeter. Hastily I put a hand on his chest. Directly over his beating heart. My eyes
focus on his. All the conviction of one saying the truth I put into my next words. „No Draco.“
As always, words don’t matter. He is in this more like an animal.
A wild cat. It is the tone in which he searches for the meaning behind the words.
His quicksilver gaze lays heavily on me. I feel his presence calming. But his eyes ask silently for elaboration.
I smile reassuringly and tell him a secret I haven’t told him before.
„That poem is why I dared to approach you.“
The grey orbs widen and then narrow in curiosity. He turns slightly towards me.
Resting his long fingered elegant hand on my waist, pulling me tenderly closer.
It’s lovely how he always tries to entwine us deeply in our world whenever we speak about personal, secret things.
He tries to protect us so much. His wariness of the outside world reasonable as only I can understand.
And maybe even not fully. Stroking over the flawless skin I trace his facial features.
„I felt something different in your proximity since the end of 5th year, I recognised
it as lust at the beginning of our 6th year; but admitting to myself that it was love at christmas last year was one of the
hardest things I ever did.“ My callused fingers painted invisible lines over his cheeks. And I watched him dreamily.
„Unrequited love is never something you want to see.“
His lips press softly against my fingertip. Reminding me of the present. Of how equal we were and still are in our feelings.
I smile and continue „Hermione gave me a poetry book for christmas.
Just another of her ideas to educate the uneducated. Frost’s poem was in it.“
My eyes wander over the androgynity of his face. To effeminate to be called handsome. Too male to be pretty.
His beauty is something etheral that lies in between. Again I wondered why he so much as looks at me.
As I make to move my hand away from him, one of his comes up and holds me to him.
My rough skin, my calluses, it means nothing to him his eyes say.
He wants my touch. And that is all I need.
„`I know enough of hate to know that for destruction ice is great and would suffice´.“
I pause. „When i realized my feelings for you, you could have easily destroyed me
if what you felt for me was hate. I knew your hate, saw it directed at many, at Ron.
I sometimes felt it’s chill, but never directed at me. That was ice, the force that can destroy the world, can destroy me.“
Again I take a deep breath. My words are true. Would his feelings ever change, I do not know what it would be that I’d do,
but living without him is not even an option. Shuddering at this thought I go on.
„But there was never ice in your look when you turned towards me. That saved me. For everytime your attention was on me,
fire blazed in your eyes. A storm of emotions. That was my hope.“
My fingers entwine with his and I move my body so that I blanket him.
His chilly skin, benediction to my again burning body.
„´From what I’ve tasted of desire, I hold with those who favour fire.` I watched you.
I saw the fire, and I wanted you to recognise it as passion,.. desire for me.“
I smile „It took all my famous Gryffindor courage to approach you. But the goal was
worth it. Worth the fear of dampening your flames into ice cristalls. Because in
the end you already knew the truth that lies between us.“
I lean down over him, and can not stop saying what I feel
„I will never understand what you, my beloved angel, see in my. But I will not let you go. Will not allow
our fire to die. Because in ice our world would end.“
Then I kiss him and our eyes close.
Grey storms and blazing emerald.
Both in flames, that soon rake through
our bodies and engulf us in a
fire only we can see..



The end