A Spark

wild·fire (pl. wildfires):

n. a sweeping and destructive fire that sparks quickly and without warning, usually spreading rapidly in a short amount of time

*

Pt. I: A Spark

Or, Lightning Without Thunder

"I want to... I want to be someone else or I'll explode..."

-Radiohead

- -

Blue twilight turns amber when the sky has gone too long without rain.

No one can explain it, though they all try. Perhaps the sunlight has bleached all the blue away, they say. Or maybe, they say, these wizards who possess no knowledge of stratospheres or thermoshperes or exospheres, that it's the rain clouds that hold the sky down, and now that they're gone, the heavens are floating closer to the sun, blues becoming yellows, rains becoming steam.

But most of them say, in whispered voices and nervous tones, that it's neither time nor nature that have turned the dusk gold. They say it's a man, a wizard, and they do not say his name.

"It is no cause for concern, Minerva," Professor Dumbledore says, his soft voice perfectly clear over the unusual stillness of suppertime in the Great Hall. "The rain will come."

Her lips tighten into a line, as they often do when she is greatly offended, or greatly irritated "But surely, Albus, even you must see the peculiarity of the situation. This may be a rather dry time of the year, but never to this extent. It's been months--"

"One month and thirteen days," he offers kindly.

"And it's unusually warm for this time of year," she goes on as if he hasn't spoken. "Classes have had to be held outdoors in the shade, Sprout has been forced to change her entire curriculum because her Rage Roses won't bloom in such heat, and the students have taken to disrobing in order to find relief from the heat." Disapproval lines her forehead and the corners of her mouth.

"I'm perfectly aware of the grave effect that the heat has had on the school dress code, Minerva. However," he continues, unflustered, smooth as a Snitch in flight, "I have no reason to suspect that this drought has been brought on by any unnatural means."

"But what of these storms, then? They only come at night, but never bring rain, or even thunder; just lightning."

Dumbledore looks utterly unworried. "Mere lighting storms; no cause for alarm. One harnesses the weather as easily as one harnesses the very lightning from the sky, or the heart of a flighty young girl, or the legendary pride of the Malfoys."

"There are ways to garner such things, Albus," she whispers harshly, as though he has forgotten this and needs reminding.

"Of course there are," he admonishes, smiling though his tone is serious. "But not without great costs. And I trust that not even the greatest and most ambitious of wizards are willing to pay that price."

She casts a worried glance at Draco Malfoy from across the Great Hall, his crown of silver-blonde instantly recognizable, while almost completely hidden behind the bulk of Gregory Goyle. She watches him closely, as if she can place the weight of his pride and the breaking of it on separate scales and see which outweighs the other. She frowns.

"I'm not so sure of that, Albus."

He pats her hand. The enchanted ceiling flashes with lightning, but there is no thunder, and there is no rain.

"It will come."

- -

Harry can't escape the heat.

It's like a flood, flowing everywhere and spreading past everything, every chip and every crack, to get to him. He tries to run, but heat is faster. It does not rely on legs to carry it, or human lungs to sustain it, or a heart to pass blood through it. He tries to run, but he never gets away.

You'll kill yourself, Hermione says every time he leaves, You can't go running around the school in this heat, in the middle of the day. She always sighs and says again, You'll kill yourself.

He doesn't always follow the same path when he runs. Sometimes he traces the bank of the lake, leaving rhythmic footprints behind him until he returns again to form new ones. The muddy bank is filled with Harry's footprints, winding never-ending circles around the waterbed.

Other times he follows Hagrid's path through the Forbidden Forest, which is the equivalent of about three laps around the lake. It's much cooler there, but it's more difficult to see. The canopy is thick with leaves and branches and curses, and it's hard to tell the time there, without the sun to cast its shadows.

He also runs along the school's boundaries, which is the longest and most difficult of all his routes. There are no gates or fences around Hogwarts, only protective charms that feel like the push of a similar magnet, gently driving him away. He likes this path because it takes him to the farthest end of the school, where nobody ever comes. The cliff. Harry thinks it might have a name, this cliff, but nobody ever talks about it, so he doesn't know for sure.

There, the grounds of Hogwarts meet a quick end, and drop countless meters into the lake. The protective charms are stronger there, and the gentle push becomes a sort of surging shove designed to keep students from plummeting into the rocks below.

Harry likes to stand close to the brink and just stop. Running, thinking, breathing. The wind is stronger there, fresher and cooler, a pretty offer against the heat, and it whistles soft things across his ears. And he likes leaning into the charms, feeling their magic encircle him and hold him back from the drop, which is worn with jagged earth and sharp boulders, before spilling into the lake. From there the water sparkles and glitters like jewels he imagines his mother having worn, and he forgets about the squid, the heat, the school, and it's just Harry, the barriers, and the drop off.

His mind wanders when he's there. He lets free the thoughts that are usually locked tightly away in his mind. He thinks about Sirius--about Cedric--Voldemort--Tom Riddle--Ginny--Ron--Hermione--Ron and Hermione--His parents--The prophecy.

He thinks he should try to fit all of that together, to see what it all adds up to, because it's sum is important, he knows, crucial, vital, him, Harry Potter...

But a part of him doesn't want to. And that part always wins.

He never stays long at the drop off. He prefers running.

He likes the sound of his feet meeting the ground, and likes the feel of it even more. Likes the throb of his heartbeat in his ears, the rise and fall of his chest, the utter physicalness of it, of being without thoughts or doubts or fears.

But thoughts and doubts and fears are hard to quell, and sometimes, distantly, when the wind and heat make his eyes so dry that they fill with tears, he thinks that it isn't the heat he's running from. But he can't think of anything else he might be running from.

The run back is never as enjoyable as the run away, and Harry has no explanation for this either.

- -

"Have a good run, Harry?"

Ron smiles up at him as he enters the common room, automatically making room for Harry on the couch he had been hogging from the fourth years. Hermione eyes his freshly showered appearance and pink cheeks darkly over the top of her textbook.

"Er--yes," he answers, hiding his smile from Hermione by strategically toweling his hair with his left hand.

"Must have been. You missed supper."

Harry shrugs and sits, slinging the towel around his neck. "I wasn't hungry."

"Really, Harry," Hermione says coolly, setting what looks to be her Arthimacy book aside and sitting straighter, "Running in this heat, not taking any water with you, skipping meals." She sighs, and Harry knows what's about to come. "You'll--"

"Kill yourself," Ron finishes dully, rolling his eyes. "We know, Hermione. Harry knows, I know, bloody hell, the squid in the lake probably knows!" Ron considers this, and smirks at Harry. "Unless you were going to say something different. 'Catch your death,' perhaps."

"Perish?" Harry offers.

"Or you could just shorten it to, 'die.'"

"Bite the dust?"

"Kick the bucket?"

Hermione's stare has daggers in it.

"This is not a laughing matter, you two. It's serious. Harry could really--"

"Croak?"

"Pop off?"

"Meet his ma--"

"Erugh!" Hermione throws her arms in the air. "Won't you two take anything seriously?" she shouts at them, cheeks going red. Harry is suddenly aware that everyone in the common room is staring. Ron grapples for her flailing hands, shushing her. "No, Ron, I've kept quiet and now he needs to hear it," she says hotly, turning on Harry, "Harry, it isn't safe for you out there, and I'm not just talking about the temperature! Haven't you got enough hazards flying about your head that you have to go looking for more? This is fire you're playing at, and Voldemort--"

"I know all about Voldemort, Hermione," Harry shouts back. "He's in my head, or have you forgotten?"

"Of course not! But you act as if you don't care, like it doesn't matter. Well, it does matter, Harry! Sirius didn't die to save you just so that you could throw your life away! He wanted--"

Hermione cuts herself off, a horrified look in her eyes.

The silence after her outburst hurts Harry's ears. The hush is whole and complete, and no one moves, and no one breathes. The faces of the other Gryffindors are white, their stares wide and blank. Ron doesn't meet his eyes, and Hermione can't seem to look away.

The air is heavy, as if it's weighed down by something. Shock? Disbelief? Pity?

Harry doesn't know.

Harry doesn't want to know.

His fists are clenched when he walks out, leaving the silence to break without his company.

- -

Every night, after dinner, Draco steals himself away with a quill and some parchment, and he writes to his father.

He goes to the cliff on the south side of the property, where no one ever bothers to go, and takes his leave from the rest of the world. The stars and moon hide themselves behind rainless clouds, and it's just Draco, the darkness, and the lightning.

He leans his back against the protective charm over the edge, murmurs a lighting spell on the tip of his quill, and begins to write. Draco doesn't think his father will ever read his letters, whether because of Azkaban regulations or a physical, dementor-induced inability to read or sheer Malfoy pride, Draco isn't sure. But he writes them anyway.

They're a release.

Quill on dry paper, and flow, flow, flow. It's simple, easy; so effortless he's sure it's somehow wrong. His letters are thoughts taken shape, a circle here, a square there, build it and he will write back.

He will love you back.

Draco tells his father everything in these letters. He tells his father his test scores and what he ate for lunch and the strategies they're using in Quidditch. Tells him that he finds Blaise Zabini oddly attractive. Tells him that the Death Eaters have made no move to contact him. Tells him that Draco's mother isn't doing well since he left.

Draco tells his father that he hates him and that he loves him and that he never wants to see him again.

Sometimes they're happy, casual letters, like the time he was simply giddy after hexing Potter into a fleshy Christmas ornament, and just had to share the moment, blow-by-blow, with his father. Sometimes they're sad, and Draco has to turn away from the castle and face the horizon in case someone might see, though he knows no one is there. And, sometimes, they're neither.

Sometimes they're angry. Scathing. Accusatory.

His hand shakes and his vision goes black he's so angry. He bites through his cheek to keep from yelling at the wind, at the lightning, at the rain that refuses to fall. And then he only sits there, gazing down the plummet with furious tears in his eyes and blood in his mouth.

Draco has never received a letter from his father, but he doesn't let that discourage him. He knows the rules at Azkaban. Quills are sharp. He understands if his father cannot return his correspondence. He writes enough for the both of them.

- -

"What are you doing here?"

Draco starts at the voice, unmistakably Potter's in its abrasiveness, and narrowly misses tipping ink over onto his robes. He grabs the container in time, his quill and parchment slipping out of his hands as he devotes them to rescuing his trousers. Harry stoops down and fetches the parchment and quill from the grass. Draco sees this, but doesn't make a move to snatch them back. He doesn't want Potter to think that it means anything to him.

"What are you doing here, Malfoy?" Potter asks, Draco's letter clutched in his hand. "How do you know about this place?"

Potter is a black silhouette of messy hair and askew clothing against the distant lights of Hogwarts. There's a flash of lightning in the distance, far off, and it casts the left side of Potter's face in a purple light. His cheeks are damp, but Draco can't tell if this is from sweat or something else.

"I won't ask you again, Malfoy."

"What makes you think it's any business of yours, Potter? It's not, anyway, so shove off."

Malfoy tries to walk past him, but Potter, as Draco knew he would, grabs Draco's shoulder with his empty hand and pushes him back.

"Why are you sneaking around out here? What is this?" Potter asks, holding up the parchment. He looks around. "Is someone else here?"

"Yes, Potter, it's quite the party out here," Draco replies, rolling his eyes though he knows Potter can't see this. "It's the ghosts of your dead parents. They're right over there. Be a good son, now, and wave hullo to them."

Draco waves quickly in no particular direction.

"Don't talk about my parents, Malfoy."

Potter's voice is low, and Draco hears the unmistakable sound of crumpling paper.

"Better me talking about them than someone else though, isn't it? At least I know what I'm talking about when I call your father daft, and your mother a Mudblood." He takes a step closer. "And Voldemort knew it, too."

Clusters of lightning erupt at once from all directions, and everything is flashing white to black to purple to white over and over again, and Potter's face contorts savagely, and he pushes Draco--hard--and his papers, bent and awkward, go fluttering into the wind, lost and white in the darkness, and Draco falls back, and then everything seems to go in slow motion from there.

Two things cross Draco's mind. The first being that this is a cliff that he has just been pushed off of. The second being that Potter actually has the balls to do it.

The instant he's pushed him, Potter's face changes with the lightning, white to purple, rage to horror, as he realizes what he's done. Potter yells something, but Draco can't seem to distinguish what it might have been, because the wind is suddenly very, very loud in his ears. Potter's arms flail to grasp him, but he can't reach. Draco beings to scream--

Which quickly becomes a grunt when his back collides with the protection barrier.

They stare stupidly at one another for a moment, the shock and terror melting slowly away from their faces, and the lightning relays once more from purple to white before ceasing completely. And then laughter, harsh and abrupt, pierces the darkness, and it certainly isn't Draco who's laughing.

"Shut up," Draco whispers. His hands are trembling, but it isn't from fright. "Shut. Up. Potter."

Apparently, this is even funnier to Potter, whose breathing hitches before he howls some more. Draco can see his outline bent over double, hands on his knees, chest heaving, and that stupid, awful, hysterical laughter ringing in the air.

Draco hesitates to draw his wand. If they try to kill each other right now, there would be no one to stop them. Is that what he wants? No, he decides. What he wants is to make Potter bleed.

Draco pushes himself off of the barrier and rushes Potter, whose shock is brought into stark relief by a bolt of lightning just as Draco buries his fist in Potter's stomach. Draco swings blindly at where he thinks Potter's right eye would be, but connects with what feels like the side of his neck instead. Judging from the choked gasp that sounds the next instant, Draco would say he was right. He tries again for the eye, and this time Draco succeeds, the satisfying shatter of glass carrying into the night like a cry of ecstasy.

Lightning flashes purple to white to black, and Draco punches Potter first in the side, and then again on the jaw. Black to white, and Draco hits Potter square on the nose before backhanding him across the face, then white to black, and Potter hits the ground with a sickening grunt. Purple to black, and Draco's on top of him, then purple to white, and Draco's hitting him, once, twice, again and again; white to white, and Draco can't see anything, only hears the blood rushing in his ears and feels the rage spindling in his bones.

Black to black. And Draco doesn't stop.

It's disgusting, Draco discovers, this business of physical dueling. He hates the feel of Potter's flesh yielding and then resisting under his hands, and taste of sweat on his upper lip, and the hot, slick consistency of blood.

He hates it, but it feels good.

Draco pulls his fist back, ready to slam it into Potter's face once more, when he suddenly holds. A strike of lightning reveals a smile on Potter's lips, and the loud drum of Draco's pulse slowly begins to dissipate, and he realizes that Potter is still laughing.

"It would have been so easy," he's saying, yelling it into Draco's face even though he's right there, close enough to count the freckles on Potter's nose. "So fucking easy!"

Potter's glasses are missing, and there is blood all over his face, in his eyes, on his teeth, and his right eye is almost black, even in the white flashes of lightning. His laughter is loud and hysterical and a bit wet sounding from the blood in his throat. The sight of him makes Draco's skin crawl.

"Fucking easy!" he's still saying, arms wide at his side, eyes gazing adoringly at nothing.

Draco scrambles off of him, but Potter grabs his ankle and suddenly Draco is on his back with no air in his lungs and the edge of something very sharp in his shoulder. Pain erupts in his shoulder and lightning flashes brightly, but Draco could have sworn that his eyes were closed. He beats the earth with the fist attached to his good shoulder in an attempt to remember how to breathe, and it works after a few tries, oxygen rushing through his mouth and nose like a wave.

He feels lightheaded and barely fights back when Potter crawls on top of him, blood dripping from his chin and splattering on Draco's cheek.

"I didn't know it would be so easy!" Potter shouts, his fist colliding with Draco's temple and making lightning flash behind Draco's eyelids again. "A great wizard, and all you have to do is push! So fucking EASY!"

Potter is pounding him into the ground through his stomach and face, and Draco wonders why he hadn't just drawn his wand. He suspects they'll kill each other anyway, and curses would have been so much less painful.

The edges of Draco's vision are becoming blurry, and he hears a surprised grunt just as Potter's weight is cast off of him. And then everything goes white to black.

- -

Harry is aware of two things when he wakes up the next morning. That this is not his bed, and that there is a great deal of pain involved in moving.

The issue of the bed is easier to sort out than the latter. The Hospital Wing is like a second home to Harry; he knows the smell of healing potions and bandages like he knows the scent of his own shampoo, or the grip of his Firebolt.

He hisses in pain when he tries to sit up, stomach contracting and tightening in ways he didn't know it could, and there are lights going off in alarming intervals behind his eyelids. He grasps his temple, the seeming source of the pain, but that only serves to trigger new levels of pain, and Harry drops his hand immediately, which also hurts, and leads Harry to wonder if perhaps he has been hit by a train, or mauled by a hippogriff.

Then he catches a glimpse of his hand.

His knuckles are faintly bruised, and there are scratches all along the back of his hand. Bruises and cuts likes these do not come from trains or hippogriffs, he knows.

Things begin coming back to him, slowly at first, a single thread of thought--he had wanted to be alone--and then faster, thoughts weaving up and down, in and out--but Malfoy had been there--in, out, in, out, out--and he had pushed Malfoy, and Harry couldn't believe how funny it had been, because it was so easy to just--

He eyes the Hospital Wing for Malfoy, a throbbing in his ears protesting loudly as he looks around. Harry spots Malfoy in the bed nearest the entrance, not moving, sheets pulled to his neck and back to the wall. Still asleep, Harry tells himself, and looks away.

He slowly raises his hand to his face, fingertips gently surveying the damage. He thinks his right eye is swollen, and can only guess what color it might be. His nose is extremely sensitive, and he checks for bumps on the bridge, but the pain is almost unbearable and he relents. His lips are not cut, his teeth are all still in place, and Harry is thankful for that much.

He lies back down, eyes fluttering with tiredness, and watches shadows creep the white ceiling. There is no rain again today, day forty-four. The sun is still shining, calling loudly through the thin curtains that hang over the open windows. There's a dusty scent in the air, like dryness and disaster, and Harry can't quite place it. He doesn't think he wants to.

He tries to go to sleep, but he can't.

And he tries to make himself feel guilty for what he's done, for the scratches and bruises on his knuckles, for the boy lying motionless on the cot nearest the entry, but Harry can't do that either.

- -

"Crazy, stupid... could have... dead!"

Madam Pomfrey glares at Harry as she bustles about the Hospital Wing, doing whatever it is she does when she isn't healing somebody. Harry doesn't exactly know. Dumbledore smiles furtively at him over his half moon spectacles, his back to Madam Pomfrey, eyes glinting like sunlight on a mirror. Harry would smile back, but he doesn't much feel like it.

"You're looking much better, Harry," Dumbledore says.

Harry wonders if Dumbledore is talking about his bruises or something else. He thinks he must be, because Harry doesn't think that the something else is any better than before.

"Is my nose broken?"

It seems like a stupid question once he's asked it, but Dumbledore only smiles.

"It was," he says, amusement lining his tone like silk on fine robes. "Who knew that Mr. Malfoy would be quite so effective in hand to hand combat?"

"How did you..." Harry trails off, looking at his hands, folded neatly together in his lap. The cuts and scratches stand out hideously against his pale skin and white hospital robes, red and blotched and murder-like. "How did you know where to find us, Professor?"

"Before I tell you that, Harry, I think it would be wise if you told me what you and Mr. Malfoy were doing out by that cliff in the first place."

"We weren't there together," Harry says in a rush, the words tumbling from his mouth like rocks in a landslide, messy and heavy and one after the other. "I mean- I go there, sometimes, when I go running, and I s'pose he goes there, too, but we're never there at the same time. Well, except for last night, but I don't know--"

Dumbledore raises his hand, and Harry stops immediately.

"Slow down, Harry." He waits a beat. "Now, from the beginning."

Harry takes a calming breath. "I was angry, sir, at Hermione, and I just needed some air. So I went to the cliff, because I like it there, but Malfoy was already there. I think he was writing something. I remember that I picked up the parchment, but, um, I think I dropped it."

The Headmaster nods understandably. "Go on, Harry."

"That's pretty much it, sir. We had words, and then we fought."

Dumbledore fixes him with an unblinking stare, blue eyes focused and lips pulled into a frown.

"Is there anything else, Harry? Are you sure that's all there is to tell?"

Harry doesn't like the suspicion in Dumbledore's voice. His hands clench as he says, "Quite sure, Professor."

Dumbledore watches him for a second longer before relaxing. "Since you apparently have a fondness for going up to the cliff, Harry, I assume you know of the protective barriers there, that keep students from doing silly things like throwing pebbles into the lake. Or each other."

Harry blinks at the Headmaster's abruptness. "Yes, I know of them."

"Well, there are also wards that are embedded in those charms that alert us to any significant disturbances to the barrier." He pauses, eyes riveted on Harry. "There was a very significant disturbance last night."

Harry understands the implication in Dumbledore's tone, and his fists coil tighter. The scabs on his knuckles rip and tear and bleed, and it hurts, but it doesn't, not really.

His eyes flick to Malfoy and he asks, "How is he?" which is better, Harry thinks, than asking, 'Did I win?'

"Draco will be fine. He has a nasty cut on his back, but it will heal. In time. As will all of your wounds, Harry."

Harry's gaze snaps back to Dumbledore.

"I've let Madam Pomfrey right your broken nose," he's saying, the gentle tone of his voice still in place, driving Harry mad. "But the bruises and cuts are to heal on their own. This is serious, Harry," Dumbledore says as he rises from his chair. "If not for the alert of the wards, you and young Mr. Malfoy could have inflicted some serious damage to one another. As it is, I think you've both done a bang up job of it so far, funny pun very much intended."

Something tells Harry he should laugh, and so he does, blood trickling into the creases of his fingers as he smiles and forces something akin to the sound of laughter out of his throat.

"You will both be serving detention together," Dumbledore informs him, "In hopes you will be able to get past this petty rivalry. Every Friday, after dinner, in the Greenhouse for one month. Professor Sprout has a few roses bushes that need repotting."

Harry only nods.

"Now, I must be off. The smell of the Hospital Wing so early in the morning does nothing for my appetite." Dumbledore moves towards the exit, but Harry calls after him. "Yes, Harry?"

"Professor," he says, finally placing the dry scent, "Is there something burning?"

Dumbledore sighs and looks out the nearest window. "I'm afraid so."

"What?"

He answers without looking at Harry. "Everything, Harry. Everything." Dumbledore then departs, shoulders straight but head bowed, as if in thought, his footsteps light and even on the stone floor until they disappear completely.

Harry turns slowly around and looks out the window. At first he is delighted, thinking that the shocks of gray in the sky are rain clouds, and he estimates that the rain will be over Hogwarts by noontime. But then he catches the scent of the air, and the smell of disaster is stronger than before, and he remembers Dumbledore's words.

And then he realizes that his rain clouds are smoke, and that, yes, everything really is burning.

- -

They say that the fires won't reach Hogwarts.

They say that the wind is blowing north, and that the fires will get no closer to the grounds than they are at this moment, and they say not to be concerned.

They say the lighting storms have stopped, and the fires will slowly die away. They say that they are handling it. They say it is under control.

But how can they stop the lightning?

How can they handle the wind?

How can they control the fire?

They can't, and this is how Draco knows they are wrong.

- -

"It's not like we get paid for this, Potter. Give it a rest."

Sprout has left them to it with her Rage Roses, angry, enlarged roses that bite with their blossoms and claw with their thorns, and Draco sees no point in attempting to repot the vicious things unless there is someone there to witness it. And Potter, he's decided, doesn't count. So he leans against their worktable, arms folded, and observes the lighting storm through the glass roof, white to purple to black.

"At least I'm doing something. I've repotted two already and you're still on your first."

Potter has his hands covered in soil to the elbow, hair matted to his forehead with sweat, fine scratches all along his arms and face, and Draco finds all of it wildly unnecessary.

"My point exactly. Why should I even bother if I know you're going to do it anyway?"

Potter avoids looking at him as he scoops more dirt from the bag of potting soil resting beside their rose bushes, Draco's still untouched.

"You don't know that I will."

"Oh, but I do," Draco drawls, tongue sliding over the cut in his lip from days ago. He likes the tangy, metallic taste of raw skin. "And you are." White to black. "Besides, the whole point of this punishment is so that we'll get along. Dumbledore doesn't really want us to do any of this physical labor. He'd probably just lock us up in a room together without our wands if he could get away with it."

"It'll never work," Potter says, setting his third newly potted rose bush to the side. "You're too much of a prat. I'd kill you."

Potter's voice is not light, and he is not smiling, and it's unsettling, a bit, but it doesn't bother Draco.

"Unless I'm not seeing things correctly, you're the one with the broken face."

"And you're the one with the hole in your shoulder."

Draco concedes this, silently calling it a draw, and remains quiet, watching the sky blink, purple to white, but Potter seems intent on striking up conversation.

"What were you writing that night, Malfoy? At the cliff? Who were you writing to?"

The question seems innocent enough, but Potter has this way about him that most people don't see. It's a malicious streak hidden just beneath Potter's golden boy veneer, and it peaks through in the smirking corners of his mouth and the angry glint in his eyes, and Draco sees it's there even when no one else can. Two alike, his father would have said.

"None of your bloody business," Draco snaps. "I haven't made any horrid puns about your surname's relation to this activity, Potter, so if you will please refrain from talking unless you are spoken to, that would be marvelous."

Potter grins at him, and Draco can see it. That light in his eyes that tells him that Potter isn't just about saving the world and winning the House Cup.

"You weren't writing to your father, were you, Malfoy? Because that would be just stupid."

"And why," Draco asks, though he thinks he already knows the answer, "Would that have been stupid?"

"Because everyone knows Azkaban prisoners can't read their letters." Potter smiles, lips tilted at an angle that makes Draco's blood rush in anger. "It isn't like a Muggle prison, Malfoy, where the inmates get chocolates from their families and a visit from their wives every Sunday. No, your father's busy reliving the worst day of his life until the day he dies. Probably the day you were born."

The hairs on Draco's neck stand on end, and he doesn't say a word.

Potter laughs wryly. "Oh, you were writing to him, weren't you?" His smirk widens. "Has he written you back then?"

Draco flies at Potter for the second time in a week, wanting to feel it all again, Potter's skin protesting under his fists, Potter's breath stuttered with pain, Potter's blood hot and sticky and spilt. His body collides bluntly with Potter's and it throws them both into the worktable, candles rattling on the surface from the impact. Draco swings for Potter's purple right eye, but Potter ducks and his fist goes into the bag of potting soil, it's contents erupting all over the table, and Draco's momentum sends him past Potter and hurtling into the table. Pain like lighting flashes in his side and he has to grit his teeth to keep from yelling out.

Potter grabs a hold of Draco's robes and turns him around, their faces inches from touching, and leans forward onto Draco, crushing his spine against the edge of the worktable. Potter grips his shoulder, fingers digging into the flesh of his recent wound, and Draco cries out. Potter smiles.

"Louder," he breathes in Draco's ear.

Lightning strikes, black to white, and suddenly everything changes, worlds shifting and flipping and dividing, and it isn't just Potter leaning against him, it's Potter leaning into him. It's Potter's hands clutching at him, gripping five-pronged bruises into his sides, Potter's breath on his face and neck, Potter's lips hovering over his, Potter pressing down on him, forceful and real and telling Draco things he's never considered before.

The edge of the table is painful in the small of his back, and Draco recalls distantly that this table is covered with overturned potting soil and burning candles, but Potter is still there, still pressing into him, still holding him down and giving him fresh bruises to match the ones from days ago, and suddenly he doesn't care. The lines between pain and pleasure have somehow blurred, and now Draco's confused about what feels good and what isn't supposed to.

Potter moves his mouth over Draco's, forcing his head back and lips open, and suddenly none of it matters. Draco feels the split in his lip rip open again as Potter shoves his tongue over it and past it without concern, as if was his intention to make Draco bleed. Draco thinks it might have been.

Draco doesn't know what Potter tastes like, because all he can taste is his own blood.

Potter nips at his raw lip, and this time Draco doesn't try to analyze whether that's proper behavior or not, because he's already moaning and deepening the kiss. His hands slide into Potter's hair, pulling him closer before yanking him away and running his tongue along Potter's jaw line. Potter's sweat, Draco now knows, tastes a lot like everything else about Potter. Salty and hot and bitter.

"I'll make you scream," Potter whispers, and Draco can think of a thousand other things Potter could make him do, but he doesn't think any of them will feel this good.

Draco grasps the edges of the table, his hands and fingers wiping through the dirt, blackening them as if they're burnt. He knocks over the candles with his elbow, and they're immediately snuffed out by the soil, leaving them in total darkness and flashes of lightning.

Draco doesn't notice. Draco doesn't care.

They're moving against each other, still clothed, hard and fast and painful--perfect--there's a difference?

There is no table covered with dirt holding him up. There is no glass roof over his head. No hatred among them. No father in Azkaban, no blinding rage pointed at everything and nothing, no reason to care.

There is no lightning. There are no fires. No concern.

Was there ever any to begin with? No, no, no, no...

There is only the radiating heat of skin contained by too much clothing. Only the rustle of robes and the jagged line of their breathing. Only the smell of sweat and sex and dirt. Only Potter, doing impossible things to him as the sky changes from black to purple to white.

There is only now, here, but it feels like forever, everywhere.

He bites down on his lip to keep from crying out, but it doesn't work, and Potter's name is bloody when he cries it into the night.

- -

"This doesn't mean anything."

And it doesn't.

"This was a mistake."

And it is.

"I hate you."

And they do.

That's why it's perfect. Why it will work.

Because this is lightning, and lighting doesn't need thunder.

Finis