Echo

i.

bad faith

-

Faith can't be bad because faith is faith like emotion. You can't define it; it's just faith.

What you really have to worry about is when you've got none.

-

One night after dinner, sixth year, just after Christmas break; Potter is wearing an oversized Weasley sweater and smells like sweat, from the Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff game. They're out in a secluded hallway, because Draco has something of Potter's that he dropped in the air.

The rest of the details would not come to be so clear, in the future.

Potter snarls, "Give me back my glasses, Malfoy."

Draco digs into the pocket of his robes. He doesn't realize he had kept them. He doesn't hold out his hand; instead he looks at Potter curiously. Potter looks naked, vulnerable, and stripped. Normally, Draco could stare at him and see his own reflection in Potter's glasses but Potter's disarmed of his glasses and his eyes don't reflect anything.

"I showed up, didn't I?" Potter says, stretching out his fingers expectantly. "Give me back my glasses."

Draco caresses the lenses. They're not fabulous glasses; the thick lenses are round and ugly, but Draco won't say anything. He pushes the glasses into Potter's outstretched palm, and for a second, their fingers touch.

Everybody knows that boys aren't supposed to like boys.

"Don't put them on," Draco says, turning around to leave.

The lack of sarcasm or superior drawl surprises Potter. It surprises Draco, as well.

-

He'll go back the Gryffindor dorm and tell the Mudblood and Weasel how weird it was that Malfoy hadn't crushed or broken his glasses. The Mudblood, being the overeager maternal protector, will screw up her rodent face and demand to check the glasses for curses. The Weasel will mention something about the Death Eaters, and they will all go sit happily by the Gryffindor Common Room fire, discussing saving the world or whatever it is that Gryffindor talk about.

Draco doesn't particularly care to know.

There's a Storm outside: the Handbook of Psychological Disorders and Mental Illnesses is spread across his pillow, the latest gift. Lucius wants to know if his son is insane. It's opened to the Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder page.

Desire to have everything perfect -- failure to see the whole picture - pent-up anxiety due to efforts.

The Mudblood, he thinks.

Draco mentions this to the Mudblood, slipping her a note with the book's name and page number in Potions. She looks puzzled but curious at the same time.

A week later, she hisses to Draco, bending over from her cauldron, "I don't know what you think you're doing, but don't go labeling mental disorders onto other people, when it clearly runs in your family."

Draco ignores this.

-

Sixth year -- it's been a month since Draco's taken Potter's glasses.

Sunset, he thinks, trying to remember the details.

It is sunset and he's on his broom, making dizzy circles around the Quidditch pitch.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he remembers that he's supposed to go back for dinner. The ground is hard when he sets his foot down, and he feels slightly faint.

"Why do you keep doing that, Malfoy?"

Potter's voice.

Draco stares at him blankly. "It's called flying, you four-eyed git."

"No," Potter says. He holds his Firebolt tight, like he could bang Draco on the head with it in case he gets too close. "I mean, why do you keep circling the Quidditch pitch? You just keep going around in circles..."

"If you thought you could give me Quidditch advice," Draco says, walking past Potter and shoving into him purposely. "You thought wrong."

Potter blinks, his face screwed up in contempt, but unable to say anything.

Draco turns around. "You picked the losing side, Potter. I told you. Even the old, impotent ass we have for headmaster can't deny the fact that he's dying."

Potter's eyes narrow, his mouth a thin line of disgust. He pulls out his wand calmly and aims it at Draco.

Draco's left his wand in the changing room.

"You have more Slytherin traits in you than you think," Draco says, chuckling. "After all those years of giving us glares and insulting us, you're really doing this?"

"You," Harry says, calmly, "insulted the only reason you're even in Hogwarts right now. The only reason that you're not shipped off to the courts, the only reason that you're not drinking loads of Veritaserum and confessing your deepest, dirty, Death Eater secrets --"

"--and the only reason that North American wizards and witches have to be registered, fingerprinted, and catalogued."

Harry doesn't hear Draco.

"...And all the dirty deeds your bastard of a father's done. The only reason that you're even alive right now, the only reason that all the Slytherins are still in the fucking school, the only reason that everybody who's lost anybody isn't ripping your guts out."

Draco walks away, and Harry doesn't move.

(He doesn't see Harry throw his broomstick against the Quidditch post.)

-

The tension between them is thick and humid. Wet sparks that roll off wands and fuck yous that ring out in crowded hallways, followed by detentions, stern talking-tos, and deduction of points.

Draco realizes this is more than just some silly feud. Hogwarts is viewing this as their own mini-little battle, Light vs. Dark, Good vs. Evil, Gryffindor vs. Slytherin, and The Good of the World vs. Lord Voldemort. Everybody wants a prediction, a dress rehearsal to stick by when they are pushed out of the door and on stage for the real thing. Most are hoping it won't last that long, but Lord Voldemort's influence is heavy and it eventually reaches down to them.

Everybody's either on one side or the other; there's no neutrality.

One day, it goes too far. They've never actually touched each other before; the distance of a wand was always between them. Memorized spells would come spewing out of their mouths like bullets, but this time, it's utterly useless because neither have their wand.

With Potter's hands on his neck, he thinks he dropped it to defend himself from Potter's fist. And then he remembers a brief rolling up of robe sleeves and something being revealed, something cold and harsh that's still pressed to his skin but it's hard to remember things when blood is clouding up your vision like this.

Draco gets the last hit, and they both stumble away from each other to fall to the ground with a sickening crunch. He hears a high-pitched scream; the Mudblood.

After this, there are just blurs of worried faces and hushed voices. He knows the person who's pressed a finger against his Dark Mark is probably Snape.

-

They don't say a word to each other in the infirmary, even though their beds are just across from each other. Occasionally, Draco wakes up in the night to the sound of quiet cries and sobbing coming from the bed across him, and by moonlight he can see a blur of jet black hair and sheets, but he's never sure if he actually heard it.

Draco sits upright in bed, his hands pressed against large bruises on his neck. Splotchy, purple patches of skin cover his body. He's thankful that there aren't any cuts, nothing that will leave a mark. He can't say the same for Potter, who has a deep cut from Draco's boots on the back of his calf.

The Mudblood and Weasel come visit him everyday, bringing flowers, books, and the complimentary glare for Draco. Draco can't help but think this is hugely unfair because he's hurt just as bad as Potter is, and when Crabbe and Goyle come in, the nastiest look they can give Harry makes them look as if they're constipated.

Pansy's saying something about Slytherin pride, her pink glossed lips moving rapidly and occasionally opening to let out a nasal laugh. Draco finds that he needs not pay attention to her; nodding and occasionally giving her the smirk will suffice. She's the elevator music to his life; sometimes entertaining but otherwise unnecessary.

She's going on and on about a celebrity she met during the summer when she's cut off by an earsplitting shriek.

"CRUCIO!"

The word is hard, sharp, and ready to strike at the most vulnerable moment. Draco knows the latter well.

He stumbles out of the bed, peeling the sterile sheets off him. He hasn't been out for so long he's surprised by the rich wallpaper in the hallway, a drastic contrast from the vomit mess of pastels in the infirmary.

It's silent in the hallway, except for agonizing screams.

He's expecting an invading Death Eater, he's expecting his father, and he's expecting one of his father's friends - anyone but Neville Longbottom.

"Finite Incantatem!" He yells, and the figure's twitching stops. It rises and Draco can see that it's a girl that he's seen in the Slytherin common room before. The girl pales at the sight of Neville, and she clumsily climbs to her feet and runs at an awkward angle, her footsteps ringing hollow.

"Did you..." Draco says, barely able to speak, "Longbottom, was that you? You sodding piece of shit," Draco swears, suddenly disgusted. "You piece of horse shit. You useless, a waste of space, utterly moronic, idiotic, stupid, weak piece of horse shit! You don't learn, do you Longbottom? Your fucking parents - what were you, just CURIOUS?"

He wants to kick Longbottom so badly right now, and the sprawled out Slytherin's acute screams don't help to ease this temptation.

"Malfoy," The Mudblood says sternly, "you're not helping..."

"Why're you all just standing around, staring? Someone get a professor!" Draco aims a kick directly at Neville, who by now is on his knees and clutching himself, rocking softly. Draco deliberately ignores his whimpers. "You dumb motherFUCKER..."

-

Draco does not know why Potter seems angry at him when he returns to his hospital bed, after speaking to Professor Dumbledore. Potter is positively glowering at him, and Draco responds involuntarily with a cold smirk. It's become a reflex by now.

"Why are you such an arse?" Potter says finally, his scowling green eyes magnified by the thick frames of his glasses. "Why do you pick on Neville of all the people?"

"I wasn't picking on him," Draco snaps. "You weren't even there, you lame-arse Gryffindor!" He pauses. He feels like he's done a good thing - a commendable service even - so he doesn't understand why Potter's tone is so clipped and cold.

Potter's face goes blank. "You don't even know about Neville's parents?" Potter's short, bitter laugh rings out through Draco's ears. "Funny, I always thought that your parents were the ones responsible...."

Draco blinks, and finally realizes what Potter's talking about. "Yes, I know where his parents are...my parents AREN'T responsible." He talks about this confidently, like he can convince himself if he says in a dignified enough tone. "And Potter...I don't think you know enough to criticize me for what I did," he says stiffly.

-

This is after he gets out of Hogwarts but before his father's death.

This is how he came to know Potter again.

-

The walls are a dulling shade of beige and it smells like air freshener. General furniture is arranged around the room; chairs form a big circle in the center and a few scattered tables and posters are off to the sides.

He examines these posters, peeking under the arm of Vinyl Heather. The plastic rubs against itself as she moves, and the sound it makes is like someone chewing their food loudly. Like an infectious virus that is eating away her skin.

Her arms are slung over his neck and he's held too tightly against her. He can't move, only to twist his head a little to better read the self-help posters on the wall.

The First Step is admitting you need help.

"I was raped on more than one occasion during the raids," she's saying to him, patting his head down. This is Vinyl Heather, the overweight single mother who is infamous for her fixations with natural blondes. Draco knows this because she's told him.

Draco barely says a word in these meetings.

Aside from the fact that these are frauds - liars - attention seekers, aside from the fact that he's supposedly redeemed in the eyes of the Ministry, he doesn't think it's enough just to say words. How to describe blur of shapes, movement against the darkness, the thrill you got when a house was suddenly engulfed in flames like an offering to an unseen god, he doesn't know.

It's been Death Eater Group Meetings on Fridays for two months and he can't imagine anything else. He's not staring down at these people, not like his professors at Hogwarts had constantly claimed of him doing. This is his therapy. This is how he manages to wake up day after day without pressing his fingers against the Mark, feeling the eerie coldness brand his skin. At least with this, he has a status.

Redeemed is a word to be used for coupons.

Not him --

Not Draco Malfoy.

Vinyl Heather finally lets Draco go and he knows he's going to go home smelling like her cheap perfume.

Around the room, other people are hugging, embracing, exchanging stories of hope and other bullshit. "We are not what we were," he hears a voice recite. "We are not what we were before."

He turns around and meets unsettlingly patient eyes. The casually dressed man blinks at him, like he can see right through him. From across the room, he's whispering something. Draco can hear some kind of hissing, but the bawling and consolations are too loud.

Fraud, Draco thinks the mouth is saying to him. He shivers.

Afterwards, Draco is having a cigarette in the parking lot. He twirls his lit cigarette and in that brief moment when the ashes light up, his dainty hands move to swirl patterns into the murky sky.

The streetlight makes everything seem effervescent and somehow illusory. He's convinced if everything is bathed in this sepia light, nothing real would be left.

"This isn't how I pictured you," the hissing man says, flicking his green eyes at Draco.

Draco blinks. "If you're a reporter," he says, "no, I'm not willing to comment on my father's state of health."

"That," the hissing man says, "I should've expected." He chuckles a little. He throws his head back, and half of his face is eaten by shadows. Draco can't see both his eyes, so he isn't sure how to respond. "Heather told me you're a regular here at these meetings," he says. "You must've really been traumatized by the whole Death Eater thing."

That's what it's been reduced to, Draco thinks, the whole Death Eater thing; it is one nice phrase to sum up the feelings, ties, and pleasures.

"I'm a Malfoy." This is his excuse.

There is a brief silence.

"What are you waiting for?" The man asks, finally. "You're not smoking anything and people who usually stand here are waiting for something."

Draco answers, "I'm waiting for silence." (But if you don't hear voices how can you possibly demand silence.)

"What," the man says, after looking at Draco strangely for a second, "do you want from all this -- from all these support meetings. Absolution is impossible, as is revenge. You're just living in repeats. You can't heal from a scar that isn't there."

"I don't think I want anything from all this," he replies.

Draco breathes in the dizzy winter air and adds, "I think I like living in the past."

It's only when he gets home that he realizes the hissing man had green eyes and a scar, and what else he could've meant by you can't heal from a scar that isn't there.