Helpless

He'd always hated him. Through the year when he'd looked down his nose, autocratic even in long black robes that dwarfed him. Through the year of 'Potter stinks' badges, and Flobberworms, and Hermione finding out what the word 'Mudblood' meant. Through a year of fighting to stay alive, and seeing the same cold, grey eyes looking at him from under the hood of a robe.

He'd always hated him, and this year was unlike any other. Hermione going frantic about schoolwork, and Ron shouting back, and the two of them entangled in a fight that seemed more about Ron and Hermione than about Professor Flitwick's Charms essay, and the Goblin Rebellion of 1326. And walking out, through the grounds, against cold November wind, bitter and biting and sly, creeping into his robes, and through his t-shirt, the fabric catching and holding the icy chill of winter closer, nearer against his skin, as he wandered, aimlessly, his mind adrift.

Coming to the lake, still and silent and deep in the washed-out watery colour of a winter's sunset. Watching the tentacles of the Squid wave softly at him, before submerging once more. He hated him still.

And then he saw him. There was no mistaking the white blond hair, falling silkily over his shoulders. No mistaking the slim figure, as tall as he was - much to Harry's annoyance when he'd finally grown. And he was there, and flinging rocks into the Lake, the missiles flying out of his hands, pent-up fury and anger in each shot, the Squid diving faster to avoid them.

"Hey," Harry shouted, frowning, the Squid not deserving quite such treatment. "Oi. Stop it." He broke into an easy lope toward the other boy, Malfoy turning to face him as he came.

"Piss off, Potter," he snarled, and there was wrath, and bitterness written easily across those aristocratic features, as open as all his nastiness had been. Harry looked again; Malfoy's face was drawn, his cheekbones jutting in his face as if he were thinner. Malfoy was impossibly skinny already and yet, Harry knew the planes of his face easily, marking them out each morning to glare at him. They'd been in the Daily Prophet more often than not lately. The Malfoy family's progress marked, with each step of Lucius Malfoy's trial, and imprisonment in Azkaban. The photographs stiff, and almost as unmoving as muggle photos, Draco Malfoy standing beside his seated mother's side, his hand on her shoulder, unblinking imperious stare at the person taking the photograph. There were other photographs, reporters catching Malfoy at Quidditch practice, or in the grounds, smeary, blurred shots that bore no resemblance to the real thing.

Malfoy was all sharp corners and angles, impossible cheekbones, moving with a fluidity that spoke of insolent arrogance and self-confidence.

He'd only ever seen him in control. He knew the signs of getting to him, getting to Malfoy with the knowledge of one who has studied his face for secret satisfaction. His lips thinned when he was angry, and pinpricks of red appeared high up on his cheekbones, and his grey eyes narrowed. But the anger or the hatred was carefully reined in, the moment of pure glowering loathing swept away before anyone saw, hidden under a dispassionate mask of studied blankness.

Harry envied him a bit for that. He'd only seen the real feeling because he was watching intently, trying to find weaknesses. Trying to find anything to hurt him. Malfoy had the advantage, that opaqueness.

He wasn't opaque now. Harry looked at him. His white skin was flushed, and his chest rose and fell with short breaths of exertion, a rock still in one tight hand. He glared at Harry, his eyes glinting silvery in the dimming light, even as his skin was stained orange and rosy by the falling sun. He was furious, Harry realized, enough to make him throw things, restless rage that had to be used, had to be moving, and hurting and causing anger.

"Piss off, Potter," he'd tossed out, as if Harry hadn't interrupted him torturing the Giant Squid. Harry's hand moved out of its own accord, and closed around Malfoy's wrist. He shook it, decisively, forcing him to drop the stone.

Malfoy's gaze flicked to his eyes, a look of utter contempt and outrage in that sweeping, sneering look. "Let go of me, Potter," he said impatiently, tugging his arm back. "Let go," he insisted, and pure ice fixed on Harry.

"Why are you throwing stuff at the Squid?" Harry asked, bewildered, and needlessly. Malfoy didn't need a reason. He was Malfoy. His actions were the opposite of Harry's, irrational to Harry's safe thoughts. Evil to Harry's... Not evil.

"Because I want to," Malfoy said flippantly, with a toss of his blond hair. "And because it's fun. Haven't you ever thrown anything, at anyone?" He sounded vaguely petulant. "And it's expected. I'm evil. Remember? Oh, Dark Lord, come and fill me with your black, naughty malevolence," he rolled his eyes dramatically, almost as if he were enjoying it. He curled a lip in an expression of distaste, and that blankness was back, sliding over his face and eyes.

Harry watched, observing with some small part of him, the quicksilver way Malfoy flashed from expression to expression. One moment a living, breathing hating boy was glowering at him from behind a curtain of silvery blond hair, the next moment, he was a statue.

"You can't go around throwing things at people," Harry said, and it was more a remark than a command, because Malfoy hadn't really said anything Malfoy-ish. There wasn't much one could say about throwing stones at a Giant Squid, except that a Squid didn't like it.

"I can," Malfoy corrected him, in that maddeningly superior way, always infuriating. "I just have," he pointed out, in a reasonable tone that seemed incongruous against the mad anger that had been there before and would appear again, presently. "Anyway," he added airily. "You threw things at people. You didn't get into trouble."

Harry thought about it a moment, dizzily. Even in the midst of insanity, occasionally, Malfoy had a point.

"I was in third year," he interjected, for want of anything else to say. "And you were being a prat," he stated. "Squid hasn't done anything to you. What d'you want to hurt it for?"

Malfoy looked at him again, and a faint note of incredulity and annoyance crept across his fine features.

"You don't understand," he said, with some impatience. "You shan't. I need to hit something." There was restlessness underlying his words, and he tugged sharply again at Harry's restraint. Nervousness and an itching to be free emanated from his slim-hipped body. Harry frowned, not really understanding, but loath to admit it. Not when Malfoy had let the mask slide like this.

"Why?" he asked, simply, trying to think of a reason. Snape was in full bad-humour, Potions had been dreadful for Gryffindor, Hagrid didn't teach on Thursdays, breakfast had been porridge, and once again, Harry himself had been slated in the Daily Prophet.

Malfoy laughed, a sharp, bright sound that felt... wrong in the tumultuous anger that Harry could feel, like searing heat from the boy's body.

"Why?" he repeated, and turned to look across the Lake once more, back to the castle. It was safe, Harry had always thought. That when you came down to even the furthest edges of the grounds, it was there, above you, reminding you that friends and what amounted to family for him, Harry, was warmly secure.

Malfoy was glaring at it like it was death, as sullen and fierce as if something horribly malevolent loomed above him, a constant reminder. A breeze stirred across the surface of the Lake, and he shivered suddenly, so close that his skin beneath Harry's fingers cooled, and the tiny golden hairs grazed Harry's fingertips, prickly as the boy himself.

"You should know," the blond said softly, turning to face Harry. He wanted to step back, scared and shocked by the loathing, pure and deep and carved into the planes of his face. With every move, shift in his body, hatred emanated, as if it came from Malfoy's very core, woven into his bones. "You did it. Almost as if you took the key and threw it away."

He breathed, and Harry could hear it shudder in his throat, feel the muscles tighten in his arm as he clenched his fists, desperately trying not to give in. The quaking of wanting to cry, and the defiant, shameless detestation that glowered at him, as if by hating Harry he could disguise the trapped look that Harry could see, at the very back of his eyes.

"You had my father locked up," Malfoy said thickly, his lips going white as he pressed them together. He stood looking at Harry, and his entire world seemed written across his face. Gone. Splintered, shattered.

"I did," Harry said softly, looking at the slim arm he still gripped, looked at the lake surface ruffled by wind, anywhere but into the lost and raw nakedness of Malfoy's eyes. It didn't matter that he hadn't known. This was what it came to. Him and he. Opposites, like negatives, where the world shimmered in odd colours that made up reality.

"I hate you." Malfoy's voice was low and dark. "I hate you."

"I know," Harry said, and he did. Hatred hung between them like a curtain, thick and palpable, heavy like velvet. Poisonous like loathing.

Malfoy breathed again, and Harry could see the hitch in his throat, the angle of neck and head and collarbones impossible, and then Malfoy sighed, and the impetuous, rampant arrogance that surmounted him fell away suddenly. He was exposed, all pale skin and blond hair and lost and shivering, nothing left. Harry blinked, as if a universal difference could flicker back in a moment, and he would not see his enemy empty.

There was a slight choking noise, and Harry realized, with a jolt of unpleasant dismay that Malfoy was crying. He wasn't pretty; a mess of reddened eyes and blotchy skin around his mouth, each sob real and raw, ripped raggedly from him.

"He'll not come back," Malfoy said slowly, looking at Harry dead-on, unashamed of tears streaking his face, of the pink and red and mottled look of grief, challenging him.

"No," Harry said quietly. The night breathed in his confirmation, his confession and fell into silence. The trees swayed in fear and the breeze, and the lake lay still.

He didn't know how it happened; one moment he was standing, watching Draco Malfoy cry, the next the solid weight of the boy was pressed against his shoulder, and his arms were around him. The silk of Malfoy's hair rubbed against his chin, and he could feel the cold of him against his fingers. The shaky breaths slowed; Malfoy's chest pressed against his own in a strangely exciting, naughty way with the absence of soft flesh yielding. He had only stood like this before with girls; Cho once, Ginny in an awkward hug. This was defiant, hard scope of chest to chest; he could feel Malfoy's heart beat against his own.

Awkward, aching, fierce cries, with an abandonment that could only come from the end of childhood, when the lost-in-living days of innocence and joyous selfishness parted. Harry stroked the soft satin of blond hair, and wrapped a corner of his cloak around the thin, bony shoulders. And felt helpless.

The grief of death is innate, personal and tender; each relationship like a butterfly pinned and struggling to a card, fighting the darkness of chloroform. There are many deaths in a war; deaths of laughter and happiness and long-time friendship, deaths of humanity and suffering and reality. To Draco, Azkaban was death, the first death in a mass of unseeing corpses who stare sightlessly at the same sky, dotted with stars above both boys standing, in silence by a lakeside. He, Harry had caused it, and could do nothing.