Post Vitam

The gaping mouths of shadows on the walls looked bored. As bored as Harry Potter himself felt. He lay on his back in bed next to Draco Malfoy, who was dressed only in a pair of sleek, ice gray boxers. His nightwear was a great contrast to Harry's own - he had on a large, dull gray nightshirt and red plaid pajama pants. When it was dark and cold like this, Harry was in awe of how easily his boyfriend withstood the temperature. Perhaps it had something to do with his sleeping in a dungeon every night for seven years. However, the hand that had snuck its way under Harry's shirt was warm and smooth. A slow, sad sort of smile crossed Harry's lips as he wondered whether Draco's warmth was supposed to reassure him of the life still left in his affairs.

Sirius... it had been five years. Five painful, angry years. Though he had managed to convince everyone he was okay in his seventh year at Hogwarts with a brave grin, part of his happiness had left with Sirius forever.

Drowsily, Harry drew his hand up to cover his face. Maybe that was why he was feeling so empty lately. He'd finally come to terms with the fact that a small bit of him was doomed to be a void of no emotion. Though part of that didn't seem to ring true. At this point in his life, he was finally free from the constraints of the title "The Boy Who Lived." After all, that was one of the main reasons for his grumpiness during his years at Hogwarts. But now, with Voldemort gone, people tended to shy away from speaking of him. With Harry, on the other hand, they smiled genially and really seemed to appreciate his purging the blackness from their lives. Of course, this was never said outright, but Harry could see it in their hopelessly thankful eyes. At least it gave him a chance to be himself, to do what he wanted instead of what would please the rest of the world... He'd never have to think about that terrible ordeal again.

So why was he putting himself in the mindset for it?

Draco stirred, shifting so that he pressed his body closer to Harry's. He smiled childishly in his sleep as Harry ruffled his hair and kissed his bare shoulder. Harry smiled too, turning on his side to face the sleeping man, so that Draco's hand rode up on his chest under the large nightshirt. For that moment, the shadows and emptiness were forgotten.

***

Harry woke the next morning to Draco rustling parchment about, scoffing quietly and waving away the glossy, golden-feathered owl that was poking its beak into his robe pockets.

"What's up?" Harry asked, blinking.

"Just my damn father again. Give this thing something to eat, will you?"

Harry obliged, getting out of bed and shuffling into the kitchen for some sort of owl treat. His bare feet dragged slightly on the plain hardwood floor. News from Lucius Malfoy was not usually a good thing, especially when Draco was so bitingly offhand about it.

He returned to the bedroom of the flat and thrust his hand gently at the owl. It sniffed disapprovingly at first, but then seemed to be somewhat sated and allowed Harry a pat on its head. Blankly, Harry drifted to the bed and sat staring out the open window above it. He missed his old owl, Hedwig. She'd flown off after he'd come to move in with Draco. She hadn't returned since then - it was another factor in Harry's festering loneliness. Hedwig was a very intelligent animal; all owls were, and a nagging feeling told Harry he should have taken her flight as a sign something bad was going to happen. But in the two years that he and Draco had been living together, the only negative thing was this moping habit he had developed. Undoubtedly it was just Harry's bad luck Hedwig had left.

Soon Harry heard the scratching of a quill on parchment behind him, and the impatient hoot of Lucius Malfoy's owl. He'd been around Draco so long he could recognize not only his touch and breathing, but the look and sound of his handwriting. Now, as he gazed out at the hills past Hogsmeade, he heard the brisk, connected strokes of Draco's penmanship. He seemed irritated. Harry had come to expect such an emotion in matters regarding Draco's father.

They had both let go of something when they had chosen to be together. For Draco, it had been his family, and the inevitable future as his father's cohort. But it wasn't really that, because his Gringott's vault was constantly being added to, probably as a not-so-discreet bribe. Because of this, he cheerily quipped that the two of them could now stay home and "bond," since jobs were something of a joke.

But Harry had given up much more. He hated himself for regretting it, and he knew he should firmly believe in his own decision, because he really loved Draco. But he missed his friends. They were all so eager to fawn over and congratulate him after the famous last battle. But he hadn't thought he'd needed friends at that time. The friends who had been left weren't even that close to him. He wanted someone who had gone through the same pain to understand and console him. He was bitter about everyone's thirst for rejoice. How could they think of celebrating when so many people had died? Even some of Voldemort's own followers were killed by that lunatic. Tangy bile salted Harry's tongue at the thought. He almost couldn't control it once he thought of whom else he had lost.

Naturally, Hermione and Ron had been the first to go. Harry could still remember that same old horrid screeching laugh from his childhood nightmares as he saw them fall. Everyone close to him who had been alive at the time of the last battle was dead now.

Harry plucked his glasses from his face and clumsily swept a hand over the sticky tears trailing down his cheeks. Looking out at the blurred greens and other happy colors past the cream-colored walls of the bedroom, he felt the emptiness swallow him again. He barely noticed as the owl flew over his head and the bed sank slightly with Draco's added weight. Sitting behind him with one knee bent and the other extended alongside his left leg, Draco put his hands around Harry's waist.

"I'm probably supposed to tell you to move on," he muttered, "but people who say that are the most goddamn annoying pricks in the world. If you don't want to get over it for a while, I don't mind. I still think about it, too."

"Do you ever feel... like... your soul's been ripped from you? Like you've been kissed by a dementor, but just to torture you some more they've let you go back to your old life?"

There was a pause, during which Harry fondled Draco's long, pale fingers, tracing the subtle blue veins and the solidity of his knuckles.

"I have you Harry, don't I?"

This answer made Harry feel dejected. For a moment he wondered if somehow this was the wrong choice. Draco hadn't even answered the question, and ultimately it had been the man's strong mind that had drawn Harry to him in the beginning. But then he felt a soft vibration buzzing somewhere near the nape of his neck.

"So... no."

A breathy sigh, tainted with exasperation, escaped Harry's lips. That was less of what he wanted than the non-answer he'd been given the first time. He put his glasses back on and started to get back up, but Draco locked his legs about his sides and cleared his throat quietly.

"I know you didn't want that answer. I'm sorry, but I don't want to lie to you. As happy as I know you would be to hear that I fully understand, I just don't. But I do understand that you want me to feel the same as you."

"I don't want you to hurt as brokenly as I do, Draco, I just - "

"Are you listening to me? I get it." He turned Harry around so that they were facing each other and tilted his face up with a forefinger. Behind the lenses of the now thin and sleek frames Harry wore, those eyes were as alarmingly green as ever. Draco pushed back the man's perpetually disheveled dark hair and fingered the scar that had all but faded on his faintly damp forehead.

"I can't begin to imagine the nights you went through in pain because of the man my father served." Draco cast his steely gray eyes to the side apprehensively before gazing straight back into Harry's eyes again and adding, "The man I wanted to serve."

A visible shudder ran through Harry's body and he drew his arms to himself. A few moments passed.

"What was your father's owl about?" Harry asked abruptly.

Never one to be caught off-guard, Draco answered easily, "His usual plea to get me away from you. That man's senility is ridiculous. Either he has a bad memory or he doesn't understand love. I'd say it's probably both."

Love... Harry smiled.

Draco moved his hands to Harry's shoulders and held them there, giving him a small shake.

"Harry... listen to me. I can see that you want me to feel the same as you, but... You do understand it's a bit unhealthy to feel that way, right?"

This was the wrong thing to say. Harry's head snapped up and his eyes blazed with anger and resentment.

"I knew you didn't understand."

"What? No, I've been telling you - "

"You must take some sort of pleasure in trying to convince me you're telling the truth, then turning around and lying, like all of them! You LIAR!"

"Harry! I have no reason to - "

Harry pushed him away. They were both on their feet now, and Harry's chest was heaving; tears were rolling freely down his already-soaked face and burning watery holes in his shirt.

"Why did I tell you anything? You made me think I could trust you, but all you did was lie! Why do people keep doing this to me?"

His words were garbled with tears, and he was throwing on clothes haphazardly, alternating between pulling on a sock and wiping his wet cheeks furiously.

"All those words - 'I understand,' 'I get it,' - you're just like you were in school, a lying, conniving Slytherin!" He spat the word so hard flecks of saliva jumped across the floor and lay still as if they were afraid. Draco yelled in frustration, flew over to Harry sitting on the edge of the bed, grabbed the sock from his hand, and punched him.

Harry's chic glasses skittered across the floor and landed with a plastic tinkle near the open door. His lip was cut wide open and blood flowed down the center of his chin, where it dripped onto the crusted salt of his tears on his shirt and flannels.

"Damn it, Harry," said Draco softly. "You're not listening to me. I'm trying to tell you that I don't understand the pain you've gone through, but I do understand that you wish I did. I wish I did too, so maybe I could either make it better for you or... I don't know.

"You need to wake up and realize it's been three years. I thought we were happy. I knew you were still healing, but that's just it - your idea of a remedy was setting up a noose of nothingness for yourself, waiting for the day you could stick your head in it and die. Well you know the problem with that, Potter? If it's made of nothing, you can't wrap it around your neck. So please... God, look at yourself," he pleaded, his usually confident voice cracking. "Is this the man I fell in love with? You're not even as strong a person as you were back in our third year, with the courage to throw mud at me." He chuckled almost inaudibly.

"You... you don't..." Harry choked and squeezed his eyes shut.

Draco's eyes flashed. "Don't you dare tell me I don't understand."

Shaking his head slowly, Harry swallowed. "You didn't lose... he... they didn't kill so many of the people... you cared about." At this, Draco's gaze thawed a little. "First... my parents... Cedric, Sirius, my... my - "

"Your friends."

"God, Draco - why did my life turn out this way?" Harry's shoulders shook violently as he cried.

"I don't know... you're the only person I've heard say that with good reason," whispered Draco as silent tears streamed down his own pale face. "But you know what? When shit happens to good people... it makes them better. Damn it, Harry, you may have lost the people you cared about, but you didn't have to watch the people who cared about you slowly die, starting the day you were born. Maybe before." He turned away, immediately masking the pain he felt. Harry noticed the mask go up, but didn't have the energy to acknowledge it. He threw himself gently onto his back, rumpling the bedclothes.

"Holy shit, it takes a lot out of you to feel empty," he breathed.

"Yeah, babe, that's why they call it emptiness," uttered Draco dryly.

They lay there for a long time, their eyes closed, thinking about death and life and everything in between. The light, airy timbre of their Hogsmeade neighbors' voices outside was outstandingly dissimilar to the heavy, miasmic silence in their bedroom.

Draco Malfoy lay with his deep green bathrobe slightly open, the belt falling over the side of the bed like a silk ribbon from a wrapped gift disregarded and cast aside. His delicate platinum hair splayed out behind his head on the red duvet cover like a broken halo. His left arm was bent at the elbow, his hand lying on his stomach, the other straight at his side, palm up. His long, thin legs hung over the side of the bed so his bare feet touched the floor squarely.

Harry Potter lay in the same position, as if a mirror had been positioned between the two of them. His glasses still sat forgotten on the other side of the room, seeming to cower from the previous angry exchange. Harry's midnight-black hair, cut as short as it would stay, looked confused. Half of it had flopped over his forehead and stopped just above his closed eyes. The rest was tucked behind one ear messily. A scab was already forming on his pink lower lip, though he had wiped the blood from his chin. His tear-stained, blood-flecked gray t-shirt was sporting two identical rips at the shoulders. But Harry himself was reaching an enlightened nirvana.

He kept silent a few more seconds, and then spoke quietly, his voice hoarse and suddenly sounding very strange.

"I was wrong."

He sensed the sharp upward flicker of Draco's long eyelashes, but the man said nothing.

"I haven't lost everyone."

Harry sat up and leaned over Draco, who noticed the pronounced strength in his arms. Silver eyes flicked over emerald, and down smooth skin to the enigmatic folds of red pajama bottoms.

The warm, smooth hands Harry had grown to know in those few short years reached up and pulled off the dingy shirt, caressing the toned muscles exposed there, and Draco smiled impishly.

"Why do I love you so goddamn much?" he murmured.

"I don't know," came Harry's response from the hollow of Draco's neck. "I don't... I don't deserve... Draco, you make..." He lifted his head and, to Draco's surprise, the tears were back.

"You make me better."