Hopeless Impossible

Victory should have been sweeter. It should have been the sun gliding out from behind the thunderheads after a heavy storm, or the relief of cresting a steep hill and having only the decline to go. It was, in actuality, dirty and uncomfortable, accompanied by a good deal of pain and a feeling of unassailable despair.

Harry Potter lay in the dirt, surrounded by rubble that had once been someone's house. His head hurt--scar throbbing, fading, a bruise on his temple where he'd landed on his broken glasses, the creeping ache of exhaustion. One elbow jutted out at an angle that made him wince to see, but for now it was too numb to feel. There was mud everywhere, caked on his clothes, matting his hair, streaked dark along his skin.

It was all over.

It was all over, and he was still alive. Harry hadn't expected that, even when he promised his friends he wasn't planning to die. He was tired, an with the realisation that he was still breathing came the hopeless rush of all those who were not. Voldemort was dead--but so were Cedric and Sirius, Colin and Charlie and Hagrid, Hermione's parents and Susan Bones' aunt and lists upon lists of people he'd never met but had memorised their names anyway. Killing Voldemort didn't bring any of them back. It didn't make Percy talk to his parents or help Neville remember potions ingredients. It didn't make Draco love Harry again.

It was over, and he was not supposed to be alive.

He lay there for a long time, not moving, waiting perhaps for what should be to catch up with what was. It wasn't even quite that Harry had a death wish, or that he was suicidal. He didn't particularly want to be dead. He just didn't particularly want to be alive, either. Being alive was hard and painful and presented a whole series of complications, and it didn't make him happy. Nothing had, for a long time, not ecstatic dancing barefoot in the grass euphoric happy or quiet cup of tea by the fire with a warm blanket contented happy. Most of the time he was varying shades of miserable. On a really good day he was numb.

So he lay there for what might have been a very long time, and tried to work up the proper enthusiasm for being alive. After a while he started getting hungry, which was really not the same thing at all but at least really drove the point home. A small brown moth flew past his head; he watched the flutter of its myopia-fuzzed outline and thought the sky had gone very blue for a day when so many people had died. There would likely be flowers next. The earth did not care who lived or died, just so people kept on doing it.

'For pity's sake, Potter, what are you doing?' The same voice, acid drawled over sugar, that had once made his heart race. 'Shouldn't you be marching in front of a victory parade or something by now?'

Draco Malfoy, fumbling down the slope to the grotto where Harry lay, a blurred shape of dark robes and pale hair. Harry did not need his glasses for his mind to complete the image of cold grey eyes, the twist of a smirk on his lips, the shallow grace of his movement. He was too familiar with it, and with other ways Draco had looked, at other times--his eyes closed, lips parted or pressed against the palm of Harry's hand, or his back arched and his smooth body writhing on top of wrinkled cotton sheets. Images of him would keep Harry awake some nights; he would never admit to it in the morning when Ron asked what he was so bloody angry about. Ron had always thought Draco was one spectacular mistake anyway, and Harry would not ever say how much he missed him.

He hadn't dated anyone after, which to most of the unsuspecting world meant he had never dated anyone at all. It made him an object of mystery and desire to the readers of Witch Weekly and a bit of a disappointment to his schoolmates. But it was too much effort, too much pain, too much vulnerability and insecurity and after too many nights trying futilely to remind himself that Harry Potter Did Not Cry he vowed never to give anyone that much power over him again. (He had settled, in the end, for only crying when he was completely alone, because he hurt, and refused to let anyone, not Draco who'd undone him or his friends who secretly thought I told you so Harry, see how very, very much.)

Because in the end, Harry had just not been good enough for Draco, even though Draco had the grace, while breaking it off with him, to claim it was the other way around. Once you got past the scar and the fame (anywhere from having saved the world to being a mental case, both of which were fairly accurate), and being good at quidditch, he was just a teenage boy with major abandonment issues and an evil wizard out for his head. They fought sometimes, but Harry expected that; one of them would always apologise after and they'd assure each other they had a love worth sticking it out for, that they'd make it over the rough patches somehow. Harry realised in retrospect that believing Draco had been stupid.

And in what Harry privately regarded as one of the worst weeks of his life, he lost the Snitch to Cho Chang and Draco left him.

Harry felt betrayed, inadequate, and entirely miserable. He wrote out everything in a long letter to Sirius because there was nobody else for him to talk to. It hit him about the time he signed his name to it that it didn't matter, that Sirius was dead and would never read it, would not listen to Harry or help him out with anything, ever again. Harry crumpled the letter up in his hand and screamed at the top of his lungs, and flames burst from his fingers and burnt the parchment to ash between them.

That was when Harry gave up on being happy.

He didn't feel like explaining all of this to Draco, who was standing over him with a look he couldn't quite make out. He wouldn't have known how anyway, and it would just come out sounding bitter and hurt and vulnerable. So he just said, 'I'm tired.'

'Yes,' Draco said dryly, 'I assumed that's why you're lying in the mud.'

There were so many things Harry wanted to say, from why did you leave me to I hate you and I love you and am I good enough for you yet. It did not occur to him that Draco was there to hurt or kill him, even though he'd never quite cleared up if they had ended up on opposite sides. There was just no point anymore.

What he really asked was, 'What are you doing here?'

Draco drew his fingers through the dirt at Harry's side, came up with his glasses and tapped on them with his wand. 'I came looking for you,' he said simply, and slid the glasses onto Harry's face.

'Oh.' And Harry almost started hoping, but didn't dare, didn't let himself, and his voice was harsh and raspy when he demanded, 'Why?'

Draco looked at him as if he were an idiot and said patiently, 'To see if you were all right,' as if it ought to have been obvious.

And suddenly, Harry realised he didn't care if he hurt more. It was all over and it didn't matter and he could just lie there in the dirt and stare up at the sky with his stomach growling indefinitely because there was nothing anybody was asking of him anymore. He'd done what they wanted him to and they had no more use for him now. And with Draco sitting there crouched above the muddy ground, gingerly as if he didn't want to get dirty, looking down at him with what might have been disgust or might have been pity, he let the pain out. It started with 'No, I'm not,' and it went on, kept growing and tumbling out of his mouth, I'm not okay and they're all dead and I haven't got anybody now and I did what you wanted, what everybody wanted, and I told you I wouldn't live up to your expectations and you didn't believe me and now look at me, look at us, look at the mess we've made of things. And I was never enough for you and you gave up on me, you said you loved me but you didn't really.

Harry talked and talked and didn't cry, and didn't stop until Draco said 'Oh good grief, Harry,' and kissed him.

It was glorious and familiar and too much to hope for, and at first Harry didn't kiss back. He savoured the taste and softness of Draco's mouth but did not dare cling to it, he closed his eyes and felt something he was afraid of and could not explain.

And Draco, who had become better at reading Harry than he ever deserved to be, kissed his lips and his temple and the side of his neck, through the caked dirt and dried blood, and whispered, 'Harry, it'll be all right.'

He never did explain what made him go hunting amid the wreckage for Harry, what brought him back, why he kissed him or curled up around him on the dirt and lay there with him until the sun dipped below the horizon. Draco never felt the need to explain himself for anything. And Harry didn't ask him to, because this hesitance was still better than being numb or dead or miserable. He clung to Draco and didn't ask for reasons or explanations or anything about their broken past at all, because there was only one question that still mattered.

'Are you staying?' he asked.

Draco's face was tucked into the crook of Harry's neck, his breath cold, arms draped protectively over Harry's chest. 'Not here, no, my legs are falling asleep and all the mud is really not inspiring.'

Harry nudged him with an elbow. 'You know that's not what I meant.'

'Harry.' Draco pushed himself up, regarding him with a faint smile playing about the corners of his lips and earnest exasperation in his eyes. 'Do you honestly think I'd be out here getting cold and dirty on the ground in the middle of nowhere for you if I didn't love you?'

Harry wrinkled his nose up at him, tried to make a joke, knew he'd failed at it. 'I never know why you do anything you do.'

Draco shrugged, nonchalant. 'I'm complicated.' He kissed the corner of Harry's mouth and rolled his eyes. 'Needy, aren't you? Yes, Harry, I'm staying.'

Harry didn't protest that he was needy, he already knew it. He knew it was entirely possible that believing Draco was still stupid. He did it anyway. His fingers curled and clenched in the shoulder folds of Draco's robe and he didn't ask any more questions. Draco answered anyway, pushed himself up and brushed the hair from Harry's forehead, tenderly, as if maybe he had missed doing it, and offered the only explanation he would ever give.

'I wasn't what you needed,' he said, and it came out awkward and unrehearsed like he wasn't completely sure it was true.

'Yes,' Harry whispered, remembering hidden kisses and fervent quiet promises and the weight of Draco's head against his knee. 'You always were.'

Draco shrugged, though there was something remorseful about it. 'I'm here now.'

It wasn't exactly a promise but it was all Harry had, and it was better than being dead, and it would have to do. And when Draco, complaining of the dirt, finally hauled him upright and dragged him off in search of a bath and something to eat, when Draco pushed him up against a tree and kissed him dizzy and whispered I said I'd take care of you, didn't I, it was enough, and Harry could believe in it.

[fin]