[All Men] Reach and Fall

Disclaimer: Harry Potter characters and universe are property of JKR, Scholastic & other assorted publishers, and the WB. Title comes from a line in the film Alexander. Summary comes from the song "The Ghost in You" by the Counting Crows.


24 JUNE

Harry doesn't know what he's doing here. There isn't anything but death and decay and dried blood - his - on these stones, on this ground, all around. It isn't anywhere Ron or Hermione would look to find him, though, and maybe that's why he is here.

There is darkness, just as he remembered, and the grass is more overgrown than ever. Gravestones with engravings nearly worn away by decades of bad weather slant this way and that. One stands taller and more proud than most, and Harry doesn't need to illuminate his wand to read the name TOM RIDDLE on the marble. He knows it is there.

*

Draco doesn't know what he's doing here. He hates this place, hates the walls of musty tomes, hates the stuffing-leaking settee, hates the garish armchair, hates the water-stained ceiling, hates the gnarled-looking tables, hates the lamps, hates it all. This place is uncouth and more or less abandoned; Snape wouldn't dare return to it and there is no longer a risk of Wormtail or another follower coming to Spinner's End to find either of them.

Snape doesn't know he is here, nor does anyone else. Maybe that's why he is here.

*

Cedric doesn't know what he's doing here. Although he has tried to leave many times, he hasn't been successful. Something keeps pulling him back, as though he is attached to this place via an invisible tether.

Cedric doesn't like feeling tethered, any more than he likes feeling incomplete.

**

JULY 24

They found Hufflepuff's Cup yesterday, Harry and Ron and Hermione. Finding it had been much easier than retrieving it. The statue the cup had been hidden in was full of Dark Magic traps. Now Hermione is weak from having rapidly aged and Ron is blind, while Harry-- Harry remains untouched. He is untouched but he does not feel that way. Harry feels as though his back will break from the burden of his guilt of allowing them to go along. He is full of guilt and cursing the fact that he let them take the brunt of the pain for him like Dumbledore had back in that cave. There is also worry, worry that the Healers will not be able to fix the damage the Dark Magic has done on his best friends.

St. Mungo's is too crowded, too full of Ministry officials and Order members and Weasleys and Grangers who insist to Harry that it isn't his fault but whose eyes tell another tale, so Harry leaves. He Apparates.

He ends up here. Again.

He looks anywhere but at the stone bearing that name. Cramming his hands in his trouser pockets, he tucks his chin against his chest and walks haphazardly through the crooked aisles of headstones as though wandering about might still some of the thoughts whirling about in his mind. The walk doesn't do any such thing, though, and when yet another image of Hermione, grey and frail in a big hospital cot and Ron with Healer after Healer examining his eyes, Harry collapses to the ground in a heap. His back presses against granite and he draws his knees up to his chest.

This place is where it all began, and it's all his fault.

*

Draco found a tin of sardines in the cupboard yesterday and he isn't sure he has fully recovered from the gruesome discovery. He was starving, as food has been hard to come by in this house. Eventually he will have to venture out for food and other necessities, he knows, but for now Draco is trying to put it off as long as possible. Three days ago he ate what he had thought was the last of food, a half-empty packet of stale muesli, and it tided him over rather well for a time. Yesterday, though, his stomach began to cramp from hunger, so he set out to make one last sweep of the cupboards. Sweeping his hands along the backs and corners, his fingers brushed against something small and cool. Upon pulling the item out, Draco realised that it was a tin of some sort of meat.

When he finally figured out that the metal ring on the tin was a loop for his finger and he was to pull it back - Terribly barbaric, really. What if he cut his finger? - to get to the contents. The smell that greeted him once the tin lid was rolled back was atrocious and the site even more disgusting - eight small fish in something he supposed was meant to resemble water. The fish still had their skin and eyes; they weren't even filleted properly! Draco had promptly blacked out when he noticed this particular travesty.

Today the cramps in his stomach are worse. They are so bad that he considers drinking an entire bottle of elf-made wine, the only thing in plenty around this dump, to stave off the pangs but he doesn't consider it for very long. Drinking wine on an empty stomach might satiate him for a few minutes, but the fact that his stomach was entirely empty before consumption would catch up with him quickly and punish him.

This place, Draco thinks, will be the death of him, and it's all his fault.

*

Cedric found a nest of bunnies yesterday and he hasn't any idea where the mother is. The bunnies, all wee and brown and timid, are the first signs of life he has noticed here in...Cedric isn't sure how long he has been here, so he cannot say how long it has been since he last noticed signs of life.

They are small and helpless and alone without their mother, so Cedric keeps watch over them. They need protecting and he doesn't mind providing the protection. Everyone and everything deserves the chance to grow, to prosper, to live, and Cedric will do everything in his power to ensure that these little creatures get that chance. He knows he won't get that chance himself. Not anymore.

This place is where it all ended, and it was not his fault.

**

AUGUST 24

They aren't making much progress and Harry feels useless. Ron tells him to go on without them, Hermione asks him to bring books to her bedside table so she can research and study and dig because she can no longer bear their weight herself, and Harry wants to scream from the indignity of it all. He cannot scream in front of them. They will only worry and they shouldn't strain themselves, not when they need to focus on recovering so the three of them can resume actively searching for the rest of the Horcruxes.

So Harry comes here and he screams. He screams at the sky and he screams at the house in the distance and he screams at TOM RIDDLE until the marble is so covered with his spittle that the name is no longer legible.

It doesn't make him feel any better.

*

Draco isn't making much progress and he feels useless. Progress with what, he doesn't know, but he feels useless just the same. Burrowed away in this hovel like some wounded animal.

What is he doing here? He is a Malfoy and a Black.

Whatever that means anymore.

Draco feels useless and frustrated and anxious and sick from dust and must and stale air and he cannot stand it any longer.

So Draco opens the bookshelf door and climbs to the middle of the narrow staircase and he screams. He screams at the walls and he screams at the rotting wooden treads of the stairs and he screams at Mother and he screams at Father and he screams until his voice warps and cracks and screeches and he no longer recognises it.

It doesn't make him feel any better.

*

Cedric isn't making much progress and he feels useless. He still cannot leave this cursed place but he still tries. There isn't anything here for him. His life is Back There and going on without him and he hates himself for deserting his family and friends like he did. That isn't like him. It isn't like him to fail someone.

Or, it wasn't.

He failed those bunnies, the ones he set out to protect. One morning they were fine and the next... He never did find all of the bodies, just tufts of fur and blood.

Can't even keep a tiny animal safe. If he cannot even do that, how does he expect to get himself back where he belongs? Cedric is tired and frustrated and confused, and his normally long-standing patience is running very short these days.

So he stands behind a thick smattering of trees to hide himself away from the everyones and everythings that are not there and he screams. He screams at the sky and he screams at the house in the distance and he screams at the very trees shielding him from nothing until he can no longer hear himself think.

It doesn't make him feel any better.

**

SEPTEMBER 24

Today would have been Cedric's twentieth birthday. Harry doesn't know why he knows that, but he does. It seems only natural to go there on Cedric's birthday, so he goes.

He is here.

The brush is higher and even more overgrown than it had been the last time he was here. Harry has to use his wand as a machete to manoeuvre around so he can get to The Place.

Once he reaches The Place, a lump rises in his throat as he falls to his knees.

"'M so sorry, Cedric," he mumbles, pounding a fist against the hard earth.

"Harry? Is that you?"

Harry chokes and topples over.

*

Today is Father's birthday. Draco remembers it but cannot be bothered to find some way to mark the occasion in this dump. Father wouldn't approve of festivities for him in such a place anyway. Besides, Draco does not even know where Father is and therefore he determines that ignoring the date altogether is the proper thing to do.

He doesn't want to think about Father, no more than he wants to think of Mother or Snape or Voldemort.

Draco doesn't want to do anything but sleep.

Sleep seems to be the best option to rid himself of this uneasiness, of this dissatisfaction that has managed to root itself deep within him.

Lately, though, he has trouble sleeping.

When he sleeps he sees eyes, eyes bright and older beyond years. He also sees hands, hands that reach for him. There is a mouth, too. A mouth slight and chapped and smart, and he cannot see them for long before he wakes himself up in a sweat, all hot and on edge and wanting.

Draco sits in the raggedy settee and chews an old cracker found in the bottom of a crate to a paste between his molars, then starts to both swallow and nod off. His head jerks forward once, twice and then the eyes and mouth and hands and everything else comes into focus. Potter.

Draco chokes and topples out of the settee onto the floor, tense and confused and hard, which makes him even more confused.

*

Today is his birthday. Mum probably didn't even bother to prepare her delicious trifle to mark the occasion this time around on account of Cedric not having been home in ages. The thought makes Cedric sad. The kitchen back in Ottery St. Catchpole always smelled divine, but on birthdays and holidays it smelled even better than divine. Mum's kitchen without trifle on a birthday was unheard of and Cedric feels heartsick. It isn't right and he is, yet again, failing his Mum.

Angry with himself for letting his parents down, he pushes off of a tree and walks. He isn't really certain of where he's walking to or why, but that doesn't matter. He just needs the motion, the mindless motion to distract him from thinking about what a disappointment he must be to his parents.

He rounds a large block of granite and abruptly stops. Then he blinks; surely his eyes are deceiving him?

A sign of life. It's real. It's real and it's-- isn't it?

"Harry? Is that you?"

The figure on the ground twists round so their gazes meet and Cedric grins when he sees that it really is Harry Potter.

"Hello, Harry," Cedric says amiably, glad to see him.

Harry is on his feet in a flash, wand drawn and pointed and trembling a touch. "Is it really you?"

Cedric doesn't understand at first, not until he sees the apprehension and guardedness in Harry's eyes. He nods. "I asked you to take my body back to my parents and you did. Thank you for that."

The wand is lowered and Harry's eyes are shining. "You're welcome," he says slowly. He stares some more and Cedric turns in a circle for his inspection. "You're still here." Cedric can tell by his tone that Harry is as confused as him.

"Endlessly fading." He shrugs, then looks off in the distance, wanting nothing more than to seek that distance out and leave this graveyard behind him. "Endlessly fading and reaching."

"You're stuck," Harry says matter-of-factly, and when Cedric looks back at him, he is struck by how old Harry looks now. Harry is growing older right this very minute and Cedric isn't, and the knowledge washes over him like a tidal wave. It makes him sick to realise that he will not be growing old and his Mum has no reason to make her birthday trifle on this date any longer. He is gone and his family and friends are moving on.

Cedric chokes and wonders if he will still be here in this graveyard when the world topples in and over itself.

**

OCTOBER 24

Cedric is on his mind constantly. Ron and Hermione are both fully recovered now and the three of them are in proper research mode, but Harry's mind is not always on the task at hand. He hasn't found a way to tell them about the graveyard and Cedric, and he isn't sure he wants to share that with them, not just yet. Cedric is his secret and it almost feels nice to have a secret all to himself.

Whenever he has a spare moment, Harry slips away and Apparates to the graveyard. Cedric is glad for the company and Harry is as well. Ron and Hermione are his best mates and brilliant, but sometimes he just needs someone else to be around for a time.

Today Cedric is, as expected, leaning up against his favourite tree when Harry pops in.

He pushes off the tree and stands as best as a ghost can stand in front of Harry, who immediately takes his place at the tree.

"What's it like?" Harry asks, looking up at Cedric's grey face, concentrating hard to focus just on that, to not look through the transparent mass at the gravestones and bushes and house in the distance. Just Cedric.

"It?" One of Cedric's brows quirk and Harry nods.

"It." He doesn't want to say 'dead'; he respects Cedric too much to say the word.

"It's..." Cedric's mouth twists to one side and Harry can see him weighing his words carefully. "It's just something I have to be."

*

Potter is on his mind constantly. It's unhealthy, really, and disgusting, but Draco cannot help himself. Potter haunts his dreams at night and invades his thoughts in daylight and it makes no sense. Is some part of his subconscious trying to tell him that he needs to be saved and Potter is the one to do it? Or is it simply trying to tell him that it cannot be arsed to conjure up any other wanking fodder than Potter and he best deal with the hand he is given?

Draco gives up trying to figure out why and begins to welcome it, all the while hating himself for being so hospitable and ready to wank at the drop of a pin as far as thoughts of Perfect Potter is concerned.

When he is wanking, though, Draco forgets about hating himself. It's hard to think when everything feels too much and you can barely hold onto the memory - real or imagined - that is urging you on.

Right now Draco barely remembers his name. All he knows is that the weight of his balls in the palm of his hand is good, and the way the vein running along the underside of his cock runs over the lifeline of his palm when he loosely fists it is better. Friction increases as the pace quickens and thighs tremble while chest jerks erratically with laboured breath and then he comes with a shout and Potter's name tumbling over and over past his lips and it is better than better. It's brilliant.

It's brilliant and Draco thinks he might be gay and wouldn't Mother be apalled?

It would just be one more thing on top of son and heir and Slytherin and bait and Death Eater that he would have to be.

*

Harry is on his mind constantly. Cedric is glad for Harry's company when he has it and looks forward to his visits when he is away.

Sometimes, though, Cedric feels jealous when he studies Harry, all blood and flesh and solid and alive.

Harry asks him what it's like to be the way he is, and Cedric doesn't know what to say other than the obvious. Just because something is obvious doesn't mean it's understandable, either, and Cedric certainly doesn't understand this.

"What's wrong?" Harry asks quietly, and Cedric lifts his chin and locks gazes with him.

"I can't feel anything," Cedric says automatically, and he thinks he might have just broken himself.

Silence falls between them then, thick and heavy and uncomfortable, and Cedric isn't used to making anyone uncomfortable. It's an odd sensation.

"Y-you. You could," Harry says just a moment after Cedric thinks he might have to scream again. The words startle him and he looks at Harry with round eyes. The gleam in Harry's own eyes is serious, and Cedric is reminded of how innovative and resourceful Harry had been during the Triwizard Tournament.

"How?" Cedric asks slowly, watching as Harry moves closer to him.

Harry wiped his hands on his trousers and then held his arms aloft. "You can move through things."

Cedric understands instantly what Harry is suggesting and he doesn't want to be selfish, he wants to say no, but he can't. Cedric can't say no, he cannot deny himself the chance to be warm and whole and able to feel, if only for a few short moments.

It's so odd merging with Harry's smaller frame, like he's trying to pour himself through a funnel, but he does it. He does it and then there is a dizzying sensation, like someone's combined a Floo trip with taking a Portkey and then suddenly everything just halts.

Oh.

Cedric bows his head and he can feel his chin settle on his chest and he laughs. He laughs and Harry shivers, then joins in. They are both laughing and Cedric feels, so he dances. He dances the waltz he'd danced with Cho at the Yule Ball, spinning and leaping and smiling and it's wonderful and freeing. So freeing.

This is the best Cedric has felt, well, ever and he touches every inch of himself. Hands touch one another, run over arms and along his chest and along his hip and he wants--

It's been so long that he just has to do it. He just has to. He is forever eighteen and male and yes.

His hand curls automatically around his cock just becoming familiar with it again, then he is slicking his hand and rolling the length between his palms. It twitches under his hands and Cedric laughs; he is alive.

He is alive, if only for this brief moment, and he wastes none of it, stroking and pinching and pushing foreskin back so his thumb can better swirl about the head and there is tension, sweet and electric and pulsing, rushing forward, forward, forward and--

"Malfoy," Cedric hears a voice moan and it is not his own. The sound startles him and Cedric is suddenly falling, reaching for himself but falling further away until there he is against his tree and Harry is crumpled on the ground, clothes all mussed and cock soft and spent against his thigh.

"Oh God," Cedric says, overwhelmed by what just happened and how selfish he had just been. "I'm sorry. I didn't know, Harry. I didn't--"

Harry blinks and stares up at him, like he isn't sure what just happened or where he even is. He blinks again and Cedric watches as the clarity takes over his features again.

"Don't be sorry for me, Cedric," he mumbles, tucking himself back in his trousers. "It's just one more way for me to be far from normal."

**

NOVEMBER 24

There is an owl perched on a headstone and it stares at Harry.

No one save for Cedric knows he comes here, so Harry is confused as to why an owl would be there for him, but it's there all the same. Eyeing the owl warily, he unties a roll of parchment from its leg. The owl, expecting a treat and getting none, nips Harry's hand twice before flying off.

The letter is short and to the point.

Malfoy.

Harry reads the note several times over, staring so hard at Malfoy's signature that his eyes begin to cross and vision blurs. Malfoy.

Over the past few months, amid researching with Ron and Hermione, Harry had thought often of the last few minutes of Dumbledore's life, remembering how Malfoy could not kill him, how scared he was, how trapped he seemed. Judging from the letter he held in his hand, his assessment had been correct. Malfoy could be lying to him, of course, but Harry somehow knew that he wouldn't. He had always been able to raise Malfoy's ire. It had been hard for Malfoy to keep his cool around him, so it would be rather foolish to try to lie to him.

And what of Malfoy? Why did the thumping in Harry's chest quicken ever so slightly at the sight of his name, at the thought of him? He'd not-- All right, so maybe once or twice he'd thought it, but not since-- never until Cedric--

No one save for Cedric knew that Harry...that Malfoy...

Nothing is making sense. Nothing that he is thinking and nothing that he is feeling and it's all bollixed up. There are Horcruxes to destroy and Snape to find and if he would meet with Malfoy maybe he could get one step closer to those things.

Or maybe he would fall behind again.

*

There is an owl perched on the hideous settee, talons digging into the thin fabric, creating even more holes from which stuffing can leak.

Return owl from Potter and Draco is a little bit surprised that 1) there is return post 2) it is not a Howler.

Eyes scan the message and Draco has to read it a few times for the words to sink in.

The words sink in, as does uncertainty. Is he doing the right thing? This is Potter and who knows what he and his stupid Gryffindor tactics might have in store and--

But at the same time, this is the only option that is suitable for Draco. He can no longer stay at Spinner's End, not if what he'd heard on Snape's old Wireless set is correct. Ministry is headed his way and he has to get out. Potter is his only hope if he wants to live.

And Draco wants to live. Where he is now, what he has been doing for months, is not and has not been living. It is time to live again and Draco is ready for whatever may come.

He has to be ready or he will fall behind again.

*

When Cedric spies an owl on the headstone, he knows that someday soon Harry will stop coming to see him. Whatever message the owl carries for Harry, it is meant to propel him into some sort of action, to take him away from here.

Maybe Cedric has grown selfish in death. The thought of Harry leaving is an unpleasant one. Whether or not it is unpleasant because Harry will leave the graveyard and never return while he, Cedric, is seemingly bound to it, Cedric isn't sure.

All he is certain of is that he does not want to think of Harry leaving. If he goes, Cedric will fall back to an existence of nothingness, an existence without purpose.

He is not ready to fall behind again.

**

DECEMBER 24

Malfoy looks pale and haggard, the only spot of colour about him is the sprig of wilting holly he's got pinned to his cloak.

His breath is misty white in the night air and Harry watches how it swirls and twists on itself before moving up and away, taking care not to reveal himself behind the headstone until he is ready.

He tells himself that he is watching Malfoy to make sure he is alone, that he hasn't staged some sort of ambush, but if Harry was honest with himself he would tell himself that he is watching Malfoy because Malfoy is still very nice to look at and there is something vulnerable about him this way, completely unaware that he is being watched.

Malfoy stops in front of the tree Cedric usually prefers to rest against, and it is then that Harry decides to reveal himself.

"I know you weren't going to do it," Harry says, stepping out from his hiding spot.

"I don't want to talk about that, Potter," Malfoy says automatically, straightening and showing Harry his wand.

"Then we won't." Harry shrugs, then gestures vaguely at the wand. "Put it away. You don't need it."

"Says you," Malfoy says, and Harry can see his eyes narrow, which makes his features all the more pointed and sharp.

"You owled me."

Malfoy stares at him long and hard and then he's brushing wrinkles out of his cloak and pushing past Harry. "A moment of madness," he sniffs. "I can assure you that it won't happen again."

"You're not leaving," Harry says pointedly. "You need me."

"I don't," Malfoy sputters, whirling on his heel to glare up down at Harry.

"You do."

*

Potter is thinner than he remembered, but just as smug and smarmy and speccy and what in God's name has he been thinking all these months? These are the eyes and the hands and the mouth that have been filling his mind with--

Yes, they are, and Draco hates that all it takes is one good look at them up close and personal for his trousers to be a bit uncomfortable in the front.

Those stupid specs make his eyes even larger and more green and Draco can't argue very well when they're focussed on him like they are, so he gives up arguing.

"Fine," he says, throwing up his hands. "Maybe I do."

"Like I told you, I'll take care of it. All of it. They'll do it. You'll see. It'll be all right," Potter says, his tone suddenly urgent and he's closer than he was before. His lashes are very long.

"Potter," Draco says slowly, forcing himself to sound neutral. "You should not promise things that your stupid Order will refuse to do."

"They need me," Potter says slowly. "So they'll do whatever I say."

Interesting. "And what," Draco asks, shifting his weight, barely able to hold in a hiss as fabric moves over his cock, "will you say?"

"I'll say that I need you."

A brow shoots up at that and Draco takes in Potter's face, Potter's serious face, pale and pinched with the slightest bit of colour blooming in the cheeks.

Draco tilts his head as he considers what all of this may mean. "You need me, Potter?" he asks lightly.

"I do."

*

They are light and dark, two sides of a coin, and yet they are well matched. Cedric cannot remember the last time he saw any two people being affectionate. It might have been Roger and Marietta at the Quidditch Pitch just minutes prior to the Third Task, snogging one another before wishing him good luck and sending him off to Cho for a good luck snog of his own. He couldn't be sure.

Had it always looked like this? Like two people were trying their best to become one and as quickly as possible?

Cedric doesn't know, but he does know that watching Harry and Draco Malfoy's meeting, observing as it went from conversation suddenly to colliding mouths and roaming hands and incoherent strings of words is fascinating. It is fascinating and at the same time depressing because he will never get to touch Cho or be touched like this again.

He should look away when Draco Malfoy's cloak falls to the ground and Harry holds their cocks together in his hand, but Cedric has always been the curious sort.

Their chests rise and fall together, Cedric can hear the sound of skin slapping against skin, and he can see how much they both shake, how they hold onto one another.

Dimly Cedric remembers that they had been something akin to enemies when he had been at Hogwarts, but he remembers that time has passed and things and people change.

People are capable of change and growth and prospering and living and, in the end, all that matters is what you've done. It doesn't matter what you didn't do.

There is a moan from one of the boys and Cedric decides that now is the time for their privacy. Once they leave this graveyard, they might not get such a thing again for a long while.

He drifts along the crooked rows and past his favourite cluster of trees, the sounds of Harry and Draco fading behind him. He drifts and drifts until he's reached that distance he has so longed for and then it hits him.

The tether is gone and he is free.


-The End-