Leaves in Autumn

Leaves in Autumn

Malfoy reminded Harry of leaves in autumn.

The way they would hang to their branches, clinging as their life-blood receded farther and farther away from them. The way they drifted to the ground, winds buffeting veined parchment over grass and stone until it settled, resentful, on the ground. Or perhaps the way they crackled underfoot, wailing out brittle protests as heel and toe ground them into the earth. Yes, Malfoy was an autumn leaf, the last firey protest before winter's chill death.

He sat in his throne, prince of a dying breed, screaming out red scorn to any who even bothered to notice. Not that many did. After all, Malfoy was a reactionary, the representative of a bygone time when lords cast Cruciatus on a whim as they sipped the rewards of their bitter fruit. Bitter to all who could not taste it, that is. To Malfoy and his cohorts it must have been like ambrosia, nectar sucked from the lips of bloody honeysuckles. Harry wondered how many people they had ground to ash, how many people had become fertilizer for their aristocratic regime.

But no longer. Now they were little more than skulls and darkness burned into flesh, a last-ditch effort at regaining their lost oligarchy. They struggled and strived against the inevitable, the eventual future that would soon engulf them. If not through Harry, then through another. Changing times demanded a representative, and if one died then another would soon rise. Harry was nothing more than a tool, a symbol, and he knew it. Even so, he was not bitter.

Harry, you see, was the first of the future. Malfoy was the last of the lost. It was inevitable, then, that Harry should embody Hope and Malfoy Hopelessness. And perhaps that was why.

Like yin and yang they encompassed each other, boundaries overlapping as their dreams nipped at each other's heels. Harry felt it most when they were struggling against each other; Malfoy's spittle slapping venomous against his cheek as the other spat hatred like a dying gasp, Harry's heel an ever-present force against his throat. Somehow Harry knew that even a crushed windpipe would not stop Malfoy, not stop him from snarling and spitting and hating and struggling against their fate. Against Harry, who was nothing more than a herald or a pawn, his lightning lighting the darkness as he waved his wand. His sword.

Harry lit Malfoy's pitch even as Malfoy shadowed Harry's sun, tainting the light as he played in the corners of Harry's eyes. And they despised each other for it, their hatred as much a being as they were, forcing them together and ripping them apart like the moon with the tide. So perhaps that was why.

Why one day clenched fists beat at buttons instead of skin, clothing falling away like leaves in autumn. Why lips and flesh and nails and tongues and pain met as they acted out their hatred in a new way. Or perhaps the oldest way of all. Why Malfoy screamed as Harry entered him, glorying in the harsh agony of it all, snuffling lightly at Harry's ear before ripping it to shreds.

Harry suffered through his shower that evening, wincing as the water ran scarlet, scalding raw flesh clean of dirt and nail. The next day he wore only his robes, careful to button his collar up high and tight. Stray breezes tickled at the skin between Harry's legs, kissing it pimpled and cold as he mixed his potions, Malfoy's breath at his ear a constant companion. Several times Malfoy's fingers grazed against his thighs, careless and graceful as he measured ingredients into their cauldron. So perhaps that was why the performance of the previous day was repeated, with encores. Perhaps it even explained the day after that, then the next week, the week after, and the months leading up to graduation.

It did not, however, explain everything. It did not explain that while Harry found Hell at the Slytherin's hands, he found Heaven between Malfoy's legs. It did not explain Harry's edginess, the way he became tense and angry when anyone else touched Malfoy. And most of all, it did not explain the way Harry had taken to pressing leaves and flowers between the pages of his textbooks, sap kissing rainbow stains into paper and leather. But it did explain the way they parted.

Graduation was a tense affair, with many graduates missing as Dumbledore raised his glass to toast the end of the year. The end of everything, really. Malfoy's eyes were a hot force between Harry's legs as they sipped their wine, lips stained purple, drunk in temporary amnesia. For just one more evening, the world no longer existed. Just a few more moments of respite before the war.

That night was the last, and in some ways the first. They had never been tender before, never trailed careful fingers along flesh as they set a slow, simple rhythm between them. There had never been tongues flicked playfully across nipple and cheek as fingers stretched and teased. But now they were, and it was only appropriate. It was, after all, only 'goodbye'.

Or was it 'hello'?

The war came and came and came, continuing until Harry could no longer remember who had died and who was still alive. Sometimes it seemed as though there was no difference, so shallow and scared had life become. There were times when he thought he saw Malfoy in battle, wand pointed level as he spelled green doom at all before him.

Green, though, had never suited Malfoy. It was Harry's color, just as Harry was a child of the spring, his eyes a green made hardy from long winter's cold. Which was perhaps why it had been so easy, so simple, to say the words and watch Malfoy flutter to the ground.

Like leaves in autumn.