The Moments Between

A complete fool.

I, on the other hand, have wit and cunning on my side. Which is the exact reason why I stand here in my stifling black robes staring at a subdued Potter.

He is huddled in the corner of the room, trembling in the cold of the northern chill. His mud-caked robes are shredded and tattered to pieces; angry blotches of purple skin cover most of his upper body.

His emerald eyes still glitter at me maliciously, but his quavering fingers betray his pathetic state of being. It almost makes me want to feel guilty.

The accusation in his gaze is loaded, and I feel it bearing down on my shoulders as I watch him across the bleak expanse of cold stone floor. As much as the hateful glare irks me, the beauty of his eyes fills me with apprehension. He would kill me right on the spot if he could. And if he knew my conflicting emotions, he'd surely have me on my knees before the day is done.

It is dangerous for me to be around him.

All my precautions and carefully planed steps would go to the dust if I allowed myself to loose myself in his gaze. There is too much at stake here, and we're both too different. I am the stark opposite of Potter and his 'heart first, and ask questions later' way of life.

I want to laugh, for all it has got him. For a second, I have the insane urge to guffaw and tell him I told you so. But I remember the emptiness that's been hanging over me since Graduation. How could I ever have known how much I counted on Potter in my daily life?

The void only grows bigger as the days pass by.

I'd love to loose myself in the familiar insults and sarcastic remarks, but I bite my tongue. Fantasy only makes reality harsher. Besides five years out of Hogwarts and countless deaths later, I have matured greatly. Being who I am, I can't. And so I face my once bitter enemy with the insult of silence.

Minutes that passed like hours drag by. I keep toeing the line, staring at the death and failure that would befall one wrong step. He growls, that simple feral noise portraying his harbored hate and vindictiveness. I choose to ignore his outburst, and stare at him contemplatively.

He breaks the silence again. His voice is raspy and dry, rattling like a Dementor's, hardly recognizable as his own. I wonder idly if he has anything to drink or eat since his imprisonment.

"You've changed," He says, voice empty of hate, void of anything.

"True." I am no longer the shadow of my father. No longer the small and naïve boy who wanted to be just like his daddy. It was a wise decision to change, considering the bloody mutiny that had ended with his death.

Black deaths and blood stained white roses dance warningly in my mind. But I cannot resist the temptation. I must say something, if not anything to fill the torturous silence.

"I see you have, too."

He nods, unable to hide the grimace that follows the movement. I want to say something more, perhaps alleviate the pain hidden in his eyes, but there are no such words. And I will not disgrace his memory with pity.

He looks at me, startled for a second. Has a stray emotion has escaped my grasp? He doesn't look away, and his darkening eyes bore into mine. Finally, it seems he has come to a conclusion and he speaks.

"You should go."

He has seen the danger, seen my faltering foundations. I could have picked up right there and left, but then he had to ruin it. He had to go and be his damn all-caring self again. He wouldn't use my weakness to his advantage.

"How the hell have you survived the war up till now?" I yell, words ripping from my mouth like obscenities. Sitting down on a nearby cot, I blatantly ignoring the grime and layers of dust.

"Luck," Her says it as if it is the answer to all the questions of the world.

"And hard work." He adds as an after thought. Leaning his head back against the dank wall, he exposes the vulnerable flesh of his throat to me. That unconscious gesture shocks me to my already shaken core.

I want to throttle him.

"It didn't have to be this way." I tell him, no hints of wistfulness or longing in my voice-- Or maybe that is just wishful thinking.

His eyes glaze over for a moment, lost in the memories of another time and another realm. After a long moment, he comes back. "But it's not." He reminds me, uselessly.

I want to glare at him balefully. I want to blame him, but I can't. I'm as much at fault as he is. We both know this, and there is a loaded silence between us.

"We all make decisions. And this was yours." I say, fervently reminding myself of his weakened state. If everything follows Voldemort's plans, the man in front of me will die in a fortnight. Just thinking about it, leaves the bitter taste of bile in my mouth. It can't end that way. There is too much to say, and too little to be done about it.

It is either him or I that will come out victorious.

There can be no agreements, no negotiations or anything of the sort. There is just the cold reality that I have lived in all my life. I laugh ruefully, thinking that suddenly all those years don't seem so cold.

"Do you regret it?" His eyes gauge my reaction; he is past the line and over the cliff. But he has nothing more at stake here than usual: his heart. I get lost in my thoughts, and Potter stays quiet, watching me through the ebony strands of mess he calls his hair.

"I've learned something here," I say finally, when I find my voice again.

"Something that I could have lived my entire life without knowing." The haggard looking man sitting across from me considers this slowly.

"And what is it?"

"What life and love really are. And how they collide."

His fingers dance across the dingy floor of the dungeon. And suddenly, he smiles. His face doesn't split up, nor is he beaming like he would have done in the old days. But it is a knowledgeable smile, only a slight curling of his lips. Genuinely happy and almost wistful.

For a minute, I am in awe. He is at his lowest low, huddled in Voldemort's manor, battered and bruised and here he is smiling at me. I tear my gaze away from him, but the image still lingers. I doubt it will go away, even after I die.

He chuckles as if he senses my wonder, but does not say anything. I sputter for a second, a million thoughts screaming to be said. Finally, one breaks through the haze.

"Don't expect me to treat you any differently! We're still enemies!" He doesn't respond, and I can tell that he using my own silence against me.

"I could be ordered to kill you tomorrow. Would you be smiling at me then?" I ask staring at him indignantly. His smile is personally insulting. It is wrong for him to do anything but hate me. What would happen if I reciprocated?

"It's who we are. I'd never think otherwise." There are no emotions in his voice, and his eyes glitter strangely in the darkness.

'We all make decisions. And this was yours.' My earlier words play repeat in my mind, and I sigh resignedly. So it is.

Standing up, I take one more look at Potter.

He physical condition is no better, but his back is a little straighter. He looks at me expectantly and I am left at a loss of what to do. There are a million different things I can do, and the only one that might restore some semblance of normalcy into my life is leaving quietly.

I exit the magically sealed room, and find myself collapsing around the corner. It is so typical, something most people in their life have done, but that doesn't make me feel any better. I find that I can't get up; it makes me feel worse.

My gut feels wretched, as if it were strangely distorted. No matter how much I tell myself that it is only my imagination, I cannot get rid of the feeling. I can still see him sitting there, smiling. It's haunting and wonderful at the same time.

My steady breathing becomes labored and I feel a painful prickle at behind my eyes. I shut them tightly, my fists clenching forcefully. Soon my nails draw blood. It makes me feel minutely better.

I can be wounded, but I cannot cry.

If I did, then it would all be over. Being head over heels for Harry Potter would be a fate worse than death. And unlike him, I do not leap into such things headfirst.

That subject resolute, I decide that I'd best be getting away from him. Staying here would only prolong the empty ache in my chest. My legs do not follow my command; my body is rebelling against me. I realize that I never really had the control over it that I though I had.

Or maybe by some sadistic twist of fate, I have just given myself to the very enemy.

My shoulders sag in resignation.

No matter how much I ignore, it will not go away.

I look at my palm, faintly surprised at the angry red splotches. With a bloodied index finger, I smear the offending red substance from the corner of my eye to my chin.

Tears are meaningless. They are weak. I will cry tears of blood for Harry Potter.

"Malfoy...?" His brittle voice calls out, sounding so hesitant and uncertain that it really does wrench my guts. There is a waver and his voice cracks. He is only human after all. And so am I, and an already condemned one at that. So, I find myself walking back into the room.

He looks at me; half-shocked and half-smiling.

The minutes pass by as his eyes sweep over the trail of blood on my cheek. A certain understanding dawns on him. It evokes my anger; no one should be able to read me that well. Why can he?

Maybe he is not as human as I thought he is. Maybe he is stronger. And maybe I can draw my strength from him.

Yea. Right.

Neither of us can seem to say the words forming on the tip of our tongues. We can just stare. I am lost, leaning over the cliff and swaying in the wind. There's too much emotion in this one little room, too many questions of the past and future. It's almost enough to break a man.

But still, here we are. He's studying me again, committing me to memory. What a sight I must be to him, my hair disarrayed, dried blood marring my face and robes disheveled. I am also guilty here, for my eyes are mentally tracing his jaw line, learning each of its curves and angles.

Our eyes meet, and for a second understanding passes between us. My doubts quiet and my apprehensions fade away. There is no life for us without each other. Consequently, there will be no life at all.

There is nothing I can say now. He knows everything. And I must leave before anyone finds me here. Silently, I conjure something for him to drink. A delicately shaped cup made of pure crystal materializes in my hand. It is filled to the rim with water.

Going as near to him as I dare, I hand it to him carefully.

A million thoughts again run through my head.

But there is only one that I find the courage to say.

"This never happened."

"Never." He agrees, and then downs the water in one gulp.

I land on the canyon floor, staring blankly at furious gray clouds. They blur and converge, pelting me with angry teardrops of rain. I smile through the pain.

It wasn't such a long fall after all.