Loose Ends

Disclaimer: I wrote this fanfic for completely non-commercial enjoyment. All characters are not mine and are copyrighted and trademarked by their owners/publishers.
Beta-reader: Miraba.
Notes: Written for the prompt "RIbbon" at 100 Quills.


Loose Ends
by Ravenna C. Tan

I feel my eyelids drooping and wrack my brains for a wakefulness charm, but there is no hope for me. The Minister's speech drones on like an incantation for hypnosis. Thank goodness I've already said my piece--the same thing I say every year on the anniversary of the defeat of Voldemort. Work together. Et cetera. The same shtick as the Sorting Hat only I don't do it in rhyme.

This year the ceremony is in the Chudley Cannons' Quidditch stadium, but the brightness of the sun isn't enough to keep me from drowsing. I search the podium for something to hold my interest. I see Kingsley looking like he might soon melt out of his chair--maybe it is a hypnotic incantation. Snape, though, looks awake, if rigid and bored. My paranoia subsides. If Snape is bored, there can't be any danger.

My gaze strays to the seats on the grassy pitch. The sunlight glints aggressively off one particular blond head in the first row and for a moment I feel a jolt which wakes me right up--then I realize it's Draco Malfoy, not his father, sitting there. Of course I remember Lucius is dead--I saw him die. He was trying to take out half the Order of the Phoenix at the time so I can't say I feel terribly sorry about it. But sometimes I don't trust my eyes. Now that I'm looking carefully, I see the resemblance is purely superficial. His son has grown his hair out and it looks like he has filled out a bit under his robes these last five years, but it's definitely Draco sitting there. I see enough of Lucius in my nightmares; I really don't need visions of him while I'm awake, too. And I am awake--the little surge of adrenaline took care of that.

Malfoy the Younger has his hair drawn back with a ribbon, tied neatly at the nape of his neck. His betrayal of Voldemort earned him good standing with the postwar regime and he is seated with some very influential muckety-mucks within the Ministry. Of course. The type of people I only see once a year. I can't even remember their names; it's all I can do to get myself together to attend this damn thing. They are all older wizards. Malfoy stands out among them like a daffodil among mandrakes.

His grey eyes flick up and I realize two things: I've been staring, and he knows I've been staring.

The last time we spoke was over five years ago. I didn't see much of him during the war. I can't even remember what I said--it was before the Death Eaters captured me. I let my eyes wander over the rest of the crowd. I want desperately to leave here, to go back home and forget all these people for another year. Snape will do it, actually just Apparate away the moment the ceremony ends. But he's not expected to be good company. He's not expected to pose for the Prophet shaking hands with the latest "in" witch, or make small talk with the muckety-mucks.

Which is what I find myself doing not an hour later, at some muckety-muck's ancestral castle, where a veritable army of house elves plies the crowd with food and drink on a wide, green lawn edged with tall hedges. It's all my fault this thing takes place in the summer. If only I'd been born in the winter, or if only I'd killed Voldemort in the winter, at least we'd be indoors somewhere, where I wouldn't feel like hundreds of people's eyes were following me across the grass.

Last year, at least Hermione and Ron had been here, but with their second child imminent, they had an excuse to miss it this time round. I'm getting desperate for an escape, to the point where I'm contemplating playing sick. The thought of coughing up a slug into the punch bowl is amusing, but I know better. That would just rouse even more interest and probably land me in the first-class ward at St. Mungo's. And I've spent more than enough time there, already.

Then I overhear someone mention the labyrinth on the grounds. The tall green hedgerow makes sense now and I scan for the entrance. I don't have great memories from my last time in a maze like this, but at least I can get away for a few minutes if I go exploring.

I slip between two rows of greenery and go around a corner, loosening my tie and letting my robes slip down my shoulders.

I wander for a while, wondering just how possible it is to get lost. The voices, the sounds of glasses clinking, all fade as I make my way deeper in, and I feel like I am the only one in the maze.

It is startling, then, to turn a corner and bump hard into someone coming the other way, each of us stepping back and starting our apologies before even seeing who it is.

Malfoy. I straighten my robes. "So sorry," I say again.

"Potter," he says, his voice all cultured veneer. "So nice to see you."

I've never perfected the veneer thing. "Er, yeah. You, too. I saw you at the ceremony." Well, duh.

"I know," he says, a hint of curiosity in his voice. "So, trying to get away from the hubbub out there?" As he says it, he turns his head, and the long end of the ribbon in his hair trails along his neck.

"Yeah." I am fascinated by the ribbon. It's velvet, a very dark green to match the edging on his robes. I am not sure why I am staring at it. "Um, you, too, eh?"

He nods, his lips pressed together like he's keeping something in.

"I hate these things." I realize I am being more monosyllabic that usual. But my brain, first numbed by the ceremony and now distracted by the ribbon in his hair, refuses to do anything more complex.

"They can be quite dull," he replies. "Potter, are you quite all right?"

"Huh?" I meet his eyes, which are guarded.

"You're staring at me." He sounds nothing like the petulant, adversarial boy I knew at school. He sounds... careful.

"I... I know. I'm sorry. Ever since the war." I scrub my face for a moment. "I fixate on things and I don't always know why."

He cocks his head. This is news to him. "Spell damage?"

I shrug. "Muggles would call it Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder."

His gaze intensifies. "Do you have nightmares, too?"

Nodding, I remind myself that the way I have kept this out of the Daily Prophet was by not telling anyone. Perhaps it's time to shut my mouth.

But he lets out a breath. "I have them, too. Not so much with the fixating, but the nightmares, yeah." He sounds less like a Malfoy now and more on my level. He glances behind him. "I found a fountain a few turns back. It's pretty. Would you like to see it?"

"Um, sure." We walk side by side in the direction I had been heading when I ran into him.

He talks quietly as we walk. "Mine are mostly about him, and I hardly had to spend any time with the Death Eaters at all. Only two or three weeks." He had jumped ship after that, with Snape's help. "But you were there..."

"Three months." In Voldemort's clutches. If he hadn't been so set on killing me on my birthday, maybe he would have succeeded. "I don't remember a lot of it, though. Just snatches. And I can't tell anymore which are real memories and which are just dreams." I stop there. He doesn't need to know that sometimes I can't tell when what is happening to me is real and when it's a dream either.

The fountain is round, where several paths come together, and we sit on the marble edge. The water trickling from the central spout is peaceful, soothing. He trails a hand in the water and as he leans over, the end of the ribbon hangs down.

I tear my eyes away, but he says "It's all right. Does it make you feel better to stare at it?"

I look back guiltily. "Um, I guess. Sometimes it's like when you get a song stuck in your head but you can't remember what it is, and you have to hum it over and over until you suddenly remember what it's called."

"Do you want to touch it?" He reaches back, scissoring one of the loose ends between two fingers and sliding them along it.

My mouth goes dry and it hurts to swallow.

He then traps the end of the ribbon between his thumb and forefinger and pulls on it slowly. One of the loops shrinks as the knot comes undone and then his hair slips free, framing his face. He holds the ribbon out to me.

I reach for it with both hands, wondering if it feels as soft as it looks. Before I can react, he twists it around my wrists, trapping them together. As I'm struggling to pull them apart, he slides his hands into my hair and drags his lips over mine.

My breath goes ragged. I remember this. Lucius' hair ribbon. Oh, God. My tongue surges up and I taste a hint of champagne, which confuses me. Draco, this is Draco, and this is not happening. It can't be.

He kisses me thoroughly, exploring my mouth with his, and I am so hungry for it, so desperate. Was the last person I kissed really Lucius Malfoy, in Voldemort's dungeon?

One of Draco's hands is now snaking its way through the many layers of my formal robes. He finds my cock already hard and straining, and I would be begging him if my mouth weren't completely occupied. I feel the ring of his fingers slide the foreskin over the head and I'm whimpering into his mouth.

He tightens his grip slightly as he pumps faster, in time with the thrusts of my hips. At some point we have slid to the ground; I only notice this when his mouth shifts to my neck and I notice as I arch backward that my head is pressing against the grass. Now my breathing is so rushed that I cannot speak, and I know with sudden certainty that he is going to make me come.

It has been five years since I've been hard. Five years since I've come. I've almost forgotten what it feels like. I feel the rush start at the bottoms of my feet, shoot up my legs, and then fountain out my cock, into his still pumping-hand, and I cry out.

"Draco!"

He blinks at me. We are sitting on the side of the fountain, and he is toying with the hair ribbon and staring at me curiously. "Are you all right?"

I nod. My robes appear undisturbed. I don’t appear to have moved.

"You look a bit flushed. You sort of... went into a reverie for a bit there."

I swallow hard. "It happens sometimes. I... I think I know why I fixated on the ribbon."

He lets his hand fall to his lap.

"It reminds me of someone." I realize I am blushing as I say it. I don't know how Draco feels about his late sire, and I realize that I don't either. I don't know if what I remember about Lucius is real or if it was a fantasy. If it was real, I don't know if it was consensual or forced on me. "It reminds me of ... your father."

Draco pulls the ribbon from his hair and looks at it. Then he tosses it into the fountain. After a few minutes of silence, he says polite goodbyes to me, and then goes out to repeat them to the others.

I sit by the water, watching the ribbon. It swirls like a snake just under the surface, slippery and elusive. I want to reach out and grab it, but I know it will only slip away.

-end-