Learning to Breathe

Learning to Breathe

Harry learns to forget. To think only of what is in front of him, like a Snitch, hovering before him, golden wings fluttering in the bright sunlight. Losing yourself is hard. Forgetting is harder.

He'll die one day. A horrible painful death.

He suspects that somewhere between last summer and this term, he has lost himself. One day in December, he looks across the courtyard and merely stands. He is still, so still. There is no noise in him any longer. Voices and laughter rise up around him.

From somewhere near him, Hermione puts a hand on his arm. "Harry," she says. "Harry."

He turns to look questioningly at her.

"You'll be late for class," she says and ever so suddenly she reaches over and tightens the scarf around his neck, tucking the corners into his jumper. "There," she says softly. Her fingers brush across naked skin for the barest hint of a second and her hand jumps back instantly, a faint blush rising up her neck.

He admires its trail, likes the way it makes Hermione look alive.

He takes her hand. She looks pleasantly surprised at this. They walk, hand in hand across the courtyard, leaving behind a trail of footprints in the snow. At the end, he stops and looks back at their tracks. There is a lingering sadness that they will be gone by morning.

She looks at him. There is something so soft about her, something so hard about him. He remembers, at night, standing in front of the mirror. He is like a skeleton, shards of broken glass, all angles and sharp edges.

She reaches up to touch his cheek, just resting the back of her hand there in this simple quiet gesture that manages to be so eloquent. How does she do this? he wonders.

But he does not love her in the way that she loves him.

When he stands up tall in the Room of Requirement and looks at the faces before him, all eager for hope, for a hero, he wants to slap them all. Most of all, he just wants to walk away. It is the look in Hermione's eyes however that stops him.

*

War is harsh and the winter bitter cold. Hermione is freezing under her layers and layers of clothes. Slowly, he undresses her until he reaches her soft, woollen jumper. Silent tears are running down her face. He brushes them away with his thumb, surprised that he can still be gentle.

She is sitting with him in front of the fireplace in the Gryffindor Common Room. "He's gone," she says. "They just killed him, Harry. The Death-Eaters. What must have been his last thought? Was he afraid?"

She kisses him. Her mouth is hot against his and after a while he clutches her like he will never let go, like he is barely holding on. And it's true, he is barely holding on.

When they both go to the dorm room, they do not look at the empty bed across from Harry's.

She wants to help. This fervent desire within her is burning but does not thaw the emptiness within him.

He remembers flying with Ron, Exploding Snap, and talks in the middle of the night and facing the spiders with him. That row in fourth year. And Ron who he would miss most.

It doesn't hurt as much as he thought it would. But he is numb.

They stand at Ron's grave. He thinks of flames licking at his feet but cannot envision it. Mrs. Weasley hugs him close and her display of emotion shakes him to the core. His voice is gone when it is his turn to speak. When he opens his mouth, nothing comes out and he is ashamed, cheeks burning red in the cold air. Ron's family murmur, "It's okay, Harry."

Later, he comes back, squats over the grave and forces the words out through cracked lips. He owes Ron this much. "I love you, mate." The words are strange, foreign to his lips. He runs away from the hideous, big lie. He tries to say it over and over again in his head. I love him, I love him, I love him. He can only think of bright green light and an icy winterland.

*

Malfoy corners him one day. "Potter," he says evenly.

"What are you still doing here?" Harry asks. He doesn't wait for an answer but brushes past instead.

Most of the Slytherins have left, their table deserted in the Great Hall. The other students scurry by it as if it is an omen of bad things that will come. Malfoy is one of the only Slytherins still left. There are rumours that his father has disowned him, rumours that he is a spy, rumours that he is afraid of serving Voldemort and that he has asked Dumbledore for protection. No one knows.

Draco turns up to a DA meeting, walking right in with a bunch of Ravenclaws. Harry's eyes meet his and Harry nods. What does another person matter?

Harry approaches him one day, after a DA meeting. "You're a good leader. Why don't you be one?" There is a drive within Malfoy that has long since disappeared from Harry.

Malfoy looks surprised at this, a look that flits across his face,that touches his silver eyes.

"What's wrong with you Potter?" he asks.

"What do you mean?" Harry demands.

Malfoy's eyes flicker over Harry. "They need you, Harry."

*

Harry stays behind after DA meetings more and more, walks back together with Malfoy until they reach the corridor where they both part. He notices that Malfoy's walk is brisk and determined some days, on others it is languid, lazy as if he has all the time in the world. Harry walks like he is in a daze.

Sometimes, they walk so close, the backs of their hands brush together but they both do not recoil from the touch. Harry wonders briefly if Malfoy is as cold as he is but this is quickly erased from his mind when he watches Malfoy in meetings and sees the fire that leaps into his eyes.

*

The fire within his eyes is burning Harry. Suddenly the room is no longer empty and cold like silent tombs. It seems that sometime between then and now, Malfoy has changed as well from the spoiled brat with whom he traded insults, to this boy who stands up tall.

"You've changed," Harry says. "When? How?"

Malfoy smirks and in this he has not changed. "I haven't changed, Potter. You have."

*

One day, they kiss. It is inevitable.

Malfoy draws away, panting. "Aren't you with Granger?" he asks.

Harry raises an eyebrow. He doesn't know if he is. Does it matter? Malfoy's mouth is wet and hot against his. He traces circles along the bare skin of Malfoy's throat with lips and tongue and is delighted at the way Malfoy shudders at this.

"I belong to no one," Harry says finally. He takes a moment to bask in the warm afterglow, in the closeness of tangled limbs. He then finds his glasses and puts them on, the world coming into focus again. He gets up to leave, walks to the door.

"Wait."

Harry turns to look at Draco. He seems like he wants to say something but then he just shakes his head. "Go then," he says. "Get the fuck out, Potter!"

Harry closes the door, softly, gently.

*

Everytime he kisses Draco, he can taste the pain within him, bitter and sharp;it tastes like ashes. What happened to Draco that he is here? Someone or something had broken Draco. But unlike Harry, he is holding on, tenaciously, fingers hauling himself up from the edge of the cliff. Harry suspects that he has jumped a long time ago. Draco is still fighting.

He wants to help. "Do you want me to make the pain go away?" he asks Draco, gently one day, as Harry cradles his hips and looks into those pale eyes.

"Aren't you already?"

"I can make it all go away. Not only for a moment. For longer."

Draco's eyes go wide, his eyes are almost dark now and he clenches his lips, his body going stiff. "How?"

"Memory charm," Harry answers.

Draco wrenches himself from Harry's grip. "Fuck you Potter," he cries. "Do you think that would help? I won't be me anymore. I'll be no one. Still stuck in this bloody war. And that's worse. It's worse than knowing who you are."

Harry stares at Draco who is pacing up and down the room, his eyes fevered. Slowly, tentatively, as if he is afraid to ask, he says, "Then who am I, Draco?"

"Don't you know it Harry? Don't you know?" And Draco reaches forward and kisses him. He kisses him like there is a future, as if today is glorious, as if he is more than empty rooms, as if... he loves him. But Harry will never ask and he suspects that Draco will never say it. Not until one of them dies.

*

Harry starts spending more time with Draco. Draco seeks him out by the lake at lunchtime and sometimes they meet in the library or they go to Draco's room after DA meetings. Hermione says to Harry, "Be careful." He doesn't answer. He doesn't know when Malfoy became Draco but doesn't care.

She doesn't leave it at that. When he steps into the Gryffindor Common Room, one night, Hermione is sitting up, waiting for him.

"Why are you here?" he asks.

She walks up to him and looks at him, as if she is studying him. "I-I'm just worried, Harry," she says, softly. "Can he be trusted?"

Harry doesn't know what to say. He can't describe what it's like- being with Draco. It's like flying. It's like those times when Draco would look at him as they passed each other in the hallway and he would glare. Whenever they locked eyes or exchanged insults or dueled. It was an intensity in his eyes that took Harry's breath away. And all for Harry, only for Harry.

He is suddenly angry and he pushes past her and yells, "Shut up, Hermione. What do you know?"

When he sees her the next morning, she sits next to him at breakfast and she says calmly, "I suppose you know what you're doing."

He thinks he doesn't. He just wants to feel again. To care.

*

In January, Draco takes Harry by the hand and drags him out into the snow. Some clever person has cast a Freezing Charm on the lake and the ice glitters in the pale sunlight. Harry imagines Voldemort, skating up the river towards Hogwarts.

Draco hands Harry some skates. Harry wonders where Draco has gotten them from but does not ask any questions. He's probably conjured them. Together they skate, hand in hand over the ice, Harry, half-afraid that he will fall in, that he will slip and fall and that Draco will laugh.

Draco squeezes his hand gently. "Come on," he says. His cheeks are flushed a rosy red that crests his cheekbones and his eyes are shining. Then he lets go of Harry's hand and skates away from him, gliding across the ice with a grace that comes naturally to him as Harry watches.

Away from him, Draco is beautiful. Harry thinks he is becoming sentimental but it is something about the snow and the sun that thaws his heart.

Draco comes skating up to him. "What are you doing just standing there Potter?"

He kisses Harry on his cheek. It is such a spontaneous, simple gesture that Harry loves him in that moment. Draco grabs his hand and pulls him along and suddenly Harry is flying. It is the most exhilarating thing he has felt in... forever. Ever since he heard of the Prophecy and the war began. Ever since Sirius died and then Ron.

When they trudge back into the castle later, frozen and dripping, the other students are flooding out, skates in hand, onto the lake.

"Let's sneak down to the kitchen for some hot chocolate. I can probably get that house-elf to get me some. He still calls me Master Malfoy you know," Draco says, grinning and stripping off his sodden clothes in his own private room in the dungeons.

Harry sits gingerly on his bed and thinks that the dungeons are too stuffy for him.

Draco sits down beside him and bounces on the bed.

"Get off, you prat," Harry says. He thinks briefly of Hermione. Is she alone? Is she thinking now of skating onto the lake hand in hand with Harry?

"What's the matter?" Draco asks, pulling on a white long-sleeved T-shirt. Harry is surprised at how well Draco can read him. Has it really been that long that they have known each other?

"I don't know," Harry says, truthfully.

Draco grins. His expression then turns thoughtful and he says, "That was fun wasn't it? I haven't felt like that ever since..."

Draco looks so far away but Harry patiently waits.

"Ever since that day I walked out of Malfoy Manor. Away from my Father." There is a quiet intensity in Draco's eyes, a pain that flickers momentarily. Harry wants to kiss the pain away. And he does.

Harry is surprised that it has been an hour since he has thought about the War, an hour since he has felt so empty. How is this possible?

When he walks back to Gryffindor Tower, he sees Hermione sitting in a quiet corner of the Common Room talking to a Ravenclaw. She looks up when she sees him coming and excuses herself and walks towards him. She is glowing. Harry is glad then that she has found someone other than him.

"Harry," she says. "Why weren't you out there? You missed out on all the fun." She studies him then. "You look different."

"Yes," he says, smiling.

Afterwards, he walks into the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror, looking at himself. There is a slight tinge of red on his cheeks. He leans forward and slowly breathes. He stands back and there on the glass is his breath, misty and ghost-like, but very definitely there.

He is breathing.

He, Harry Potter, is alive.

~Fin