Defenses Down

The sky was crimson, and the haze of smoke rolling over the Hogwart's grounds, thick and acrid and suffocating, felt too heavy to ever be cleared away. The scent of it hung in the air, permeated everything down to the cracked mortar between the stones. Some of those stones had crumbled. So had some of the sky.

In the dismal seclusion of an eighth-floor balcony, off the westward-facing classroom wing, Draco Malfoy sat slumped against the wall, his head resting against the jagged stone. He tried to see the sunset, through the residue of battle. The fog burnt his eyes, but he made himself look at it anyway. After all, he had just watched his own father collapse under the bright blinding flash of the Killing Curse and done nothing. It had not hurt as much as he thought it would--as much as he thought it should. The sight should have been horrifying, burnt forever into his memory, to return and haunt his nightmares for the rest of his life, accusing, hateful.

Oh, he was /sad/. But not horrified. Somewhere deep in the pit of his gut he had known it would happen, someday. However many nasty remarks he made to the contrary, he knew that when the final push came, Albus Dumbledore and Harry Potter would defeat Voldemort, and keep on defeating him again and again till he was well and truly dead. He was possessed of some vague understanding that his father had also known, and that his choice had not been, as most people thought, one of who to support (Voldemort), but how he wanted to die. It was a choice Draco did not envy, but could understand. People like Dumbledore, like Harry, they would kill cleanly. A dark glare, the swish of a wand, Avada Kedarva snapped quick and abrupt, and it would all be over. Draco wondered if the Killing Curse hurt, for that split second between casting and death.

And when it came to it, it had not been much of a battle. Even at the height of his power, Voldemort knew better than to try to attack Hogwart's grounds directly. That did not stop him (brazenly, stupidly, Draco thought) from having his agents sneak him in, as he'd done before, and trying to take Harry Potter out quietly, somehow not realising--or refusing to--that Harry Potter was the single most well-protected wizard in the world. About the only thing that could sneak into Gryffindor Tower without setting off every manner of alarm was a house-elf.

So. Relief, then; the knowledge that it was over, that he need not dread impending attack because it had already occurred. There was no more reason to fear for his family. That part of the game was over.

And yet, sorrow. Draco had been small in the womb when Harry had defeated Voldemort the first time, and until two short years previous, when the Dark Lord had returned to his own corporeal body at last, Lucius Malfoy had never shown any interest in resuming his life as a Death Eater. He still hated Muggles--a Malfoy could hold a grudge for centuries, and the relationship between Muggles and wizards had more than enough bad blood to fuel his animosity--but it wasn't as though they had hosted Death Eater barbecues, or even secret meetings where they conferred on how to return their former lord to power. Most of that camp, Draco had realised long ago, did not /want/ Voldemort to return. They had denied him, repeatedly, and he was not a forgiving creature.

And his parents...well, they were his /parents/. He was their only child. They loved him, and he loved them, a fact that remained complete in itself, independent of any of their actions or disagreements. He wondered how his mother was coping. She had to know. He expected, and rather hoped, that they had said their farewells to each other before his father had joined the assassination attempt.

//He would kiss her tenderly, gaze into her eyes, the way they did when they had something to say to each other that no-one else would understand. There would be no words, because they did not need them. 'I am sorry it has come to this,' his eyes would say, and hers would answer, 'As am I, but we are here, and we have done our best.' He would stand, straighten his robes with quiet dignity, and she would watch, straight and silent, till he disappeared.//

His eyes stung with a traitorous moisture that could not be blamed entirely on the smoke. He let his head fall forward, resting his chin on his knees. He did not know what to do with himself, now. He supposed he would keep on going as he had been, be haughty and snide...the Tree of Ice that Pansy had called him once in a poem she'd written. He'd thought it had been a good poem, really, and demonstrated once and for all that she understood him far better than he'd believed her capable of. It should not have surprised him, he had realised in retrospect, that her facade was as manufactured as his own.

to touch--bleed silver

the whitest stars burn brightest,

hottest, staring down

the earth--a challenge,

invitation:

quench me. I dare You

tree and star a hundred years later

still burn, still grow

still bleed--

It was the only part of it he could remember. He was suddenly very disappointed that Pansy had transferred to Beauxbatons. He'd never missed her before, and certainly didn't blame her--her parents were not former Death Eaters, unlike a good deal of Slytherin House, and she had found the entire situation too much for her to live with on an everyday basis.

"I just want to learn magic," she'd told him irritably, while she was packing. "Bloody well just want to graduate so I can get on with my life. My dad's already greasing the wheels for a Ministry job, and unlike half the people here, I'm not interested in taking them down from the inside. I know everybody thinks Slytherin is synonymous with 'Dark Wizard,' but it isn't, and I'm sick of dealing with it."

But now, staring into the smoke that burned his eyes, facing the prospect of finishing his last year and a half at Hogwart's going through the motions of an empty charade, he found himself wishing she were here, just so there would be /someone/ who understood him enough to let him drop the act on occasion. It bothered him that there was no such person; that mourning his own father would be viewed as an unconscionable act of weakness. There were some things that ought to be allowed.

Draco thought he had become more image than substance, some days.

The creak and thunk of the door interrupted his thoughts, and he glanced up to see a too-familiar dark head, spectacle-flattened profile, trim blue-jean clad body devoid of school robes. Harry Potter. Draco tried to stir up hatred, but only managed a resentful irritation that his vulnerable moment was over so soon.

He should be angry--he should hate Harry enough to push him off the balcony right then and there. After all, it was Harry's throaty curse that had killed his father. But he couldn't blame Harry, not really. It had been a battle--a small battle, but still deadly. If Harry hadn't said the words first, Lucius would have. You couldn't hate someone for defending himself. Draco would have done the same.

Harry hadn't spotted him, hadn't looked around. His face, his jeans, his light blue T-shirt, all were covered in a thin layer of dirt, discoloured with the smoke from the battlefield below. He had let the door close itself behind him and walked straight to the balustrade, where he leaned on his elbows and stared out at the evidence of the day's events. Draco wondered if Harry was trying to find the sunset in all that red, too.

He wondered how Harry felt now that it was all over. Now that Voldemort was really, truly dead, the last of his followers scattered or killed as well, and Harry's life was no longer constantly in danger--he should be happy, shouldn't he? Ecstatic even. He should be celebrating the defeat of his lifelong enemy.

From the way he was wilting against the balustrade, he was none of these things. He looked drained, exhausted, and frail. It occurred to Draco in a flash of insight that Harry couldn't let people see him be vulnerable, either. He was their hero, and they expected things from him. It was the first time the thought had occurred to Draco that being Harry Potter was probably every bit as hard as being Draco Malfoy. He wondered how much of that easy charm, that bizarre balance of humility and arrogance, was a facade like his own.

The weight of his gaze drew Harry's attention, finally, and he turned around, aware at last that he was not alone. The flash of discomfort--if that was not far too weak a term--that momentarily darkened his green eyes was indefinable.

"Malfoy." A greeting and yet not; weary, resigned.

"Potter." Resentful of the intrusion into his thoughts, of the need to return too soon to his cold veneer. He struggled for some suitably hateful remark, but his acid tongue was not in top form.

Harry watched this with a quiet, almost disturbing understanding, and interrupted him before he'd formed more than a word. "Don't bother, Malfoy."

Harry saw the pale eyebrows arch above those flinty silver eyes, the question in Draco's ivory face. "I'm too tired to fight with you," he explained, sinking down the wall to curl around his knees, letting his head fall back against the rough stone of the wall. "Let's just ignore each other this time...pretend we're both out here alone. I won't tell we passed up a chance to be nasty to each other if you won't."

"Well, well," Draco responded, his voice as smooth as if he hadn't been sitting there breathing in smoke. "It's almost too good an opportunity to pass up, that."

Harry shrugged, and looked up at him, his eyes glazed behind the glare of his glasses. "I mean it. I'm tired. Exhausted, even. If you're that excited about starting something with me this way, you may as well, but I don't think you'll have nearly as much fun doing it if I'm not reacting."

It was true, though not what Draco had expected to hear. "Mm. That's true. No point insulting you if I can't get a rise. I could still push you off the side, I suppose."

Another shrug, barely more than a reflexive jerk of one bony shoulder. "Guess so."

"But the truth is," Draco finished quietly, "I'm too fucking tired too."

"Yeah," said Harry, his eyes fluttering closed, face turned up to the sky. "You look it."

Draco didn't answer. 'You look it.' Not 'I'm sorry for killing your father,' or even 'why didn't you go over to the dark side.' And yet it was an acknowledgement, in its own way, and Harry had already said in so many words that their respective weaknesses could remain secret. It surprised him a little that he wasn't planning on using it to his advantage somehow, of humiliating Harry before his friends and his house--that he was really as content with this small truce as Harry seemed to be.

He had, after all, wanted someone to understand him. He had not asked for a friend...just someone he could trust with his weakness. The two were not necessarily synonymous.

"Do you come up here much?" he asked. He wasn't sure why he asked.

Harry was motionless save for the faint evening breeze stirring his hair. "When I need to sit and think, yeah...pretty often I guess. What about you?"

"I just found it today." Draco's usual thinking spot was an old abandoned classroom near the Slytherin dungeons, but today he had wanted somewhere new. Somewhere he could stare at the battlefield until his eyes burned, where he could force himself to realise that it was all real.

"It's the best place to get away," said Harry softly. He did not invite Draco to invade it more often, but he didn't need to. Draco heard it anyway. He understood about saying things without actually saying them, and he found a wealth of meaning in those seven words. It was Harry saying that he was sorry, that he understood, that he was tired of fighting and if Draco didn't want to anymore, he wouldn't force the issue. It was trusting Draco with his own exhausted vulnerability, and offering a strange sort of peace. It didn't mean that they would ever be friends or share similar views or invite each other home for Christmas dinner. It only meant that they had matured, that in the face of what had happened their childish enmity seemed petty and vain and stupid, that they had moved beyond it. It made way for possibilities but guaranteed nothing.

They watched in silence until the sky was dark, and they realised the sun had set, but they had not seen it.