Animus

Author’s notes: As always, thanks to all the readers who leave reviews. I honestly don’t think I can put into words how grateful I am that you take the time to give me feedback. Thank you.

Animus (Part 10)

So once again, I find myself falling into a pattern with Draco. Except this time around, things are just a bit . . . well . . . different.

This time around I go to work, come home and we eat dinner. Sometimes we go our separate ways for the remainder of the evening - he does his own thing, and I do mine. Sometimes, we spend the entire evening together; passing the time watching movies on the telly or some such other pursuit in rather companionable silence.

 

But no matter how the beginning of the evening goes, when it’s time for bed, we always end up going upstairs together, and Draco always stays with me til morning.

I’ve learned some things about Draco during the course of these past few nights. For instance, I’ve learned that he snores very, very softly. I’ve learned that he tends to hog the bed - and the covers. I’ve also learned that he is prone to nightmares.

They seem to be rather run-of-the-mill terrors. His breath quickens, he flails around a little bit, and he mutters things like, “no” and “please.” These things invariably wake me, and I find myself unable to go back to sleep until his dreams have run their course. A couple of times, I have attempted to give him some sort of comfort; mostly by patting his shoulder or his back. Awkward, yes, but I feel I have to do something. I don’t know if it does any good, he always seems to settle down quickly, with or without my interference.

It’s during these moments of wakefulness on my part that I wonder what he dreams about. I wonder if he dreams about the turn his life has taken and what he must do to stay alive. Or perhaps he dreams about me. Maybe I am his nightmare. Or perhaps his dreams consist of something completely different - something foreign that I’ll never know about or understand.

But whatever the reason for them, they never last too long, nor do they ever awaken Draco. Or they didn’t anyway - until last night. Last night he had a very different dream.

It started out in the normal fashion, the quickened breathing, the tossing and turning, the soft moaning of words. But then came something completely unexpected. So unexpected that for a moment I believed that I had imagined it. But then he repeated his words and they were nothing less than a heart-wrenching plea pouring from his lips.

“No mother. Please . . . no.”

I lay quietly in the dark, feeling incredibly intrigued and just a tad bit voyeuristic. He continued to half-whisper, half-moan those words, and words much like them, until he screamed them. His nightmare ended then, as he sat bolt upright in bed, his hands clawing desperately at the air.

I sat up as well, although I had absolutely no idea what to do. I settled for placing a hand on his arm and whispering, “Calm down, Draco. It was just a dream.”

His body relaxed then, although I don’t think it was from my quick touch. He then mumbled something that sounded like, ‘I know,’ and flopped back down on the bed, almost instantly asleep again.

It took me awhile to get back to sleep after that, and even then my sleep was uneasy. My thoughts were fixated on what I’d heard - and to be perfectly honest, Gryffindor curiosity was killing me.

That was hours ago and I haven’t been to sleep since. I’ve been sitting here, in the dark, waiting for time to pass and Draco to wake. And finally, the night has lifted and the morning sun begins to stream in through the windows. And Draco opens his eyes.

He shuts them once only to open them wider an instant after. Then he yawns and stretches languidly, arching his body into it like he has all the time in the world for this pleasure. It’s only once he allows his body to go limp again that he seems to remember that I’m here.

“No work today, huh?” he asks.

“Not on Saturday,” I reply absently.

He stretches again and I am reminded of a huge cat; all sinewy grace and cocky attitude.

Forcing myself to concentrate on the task at hand, I say his name.

“Hmm?” he says by way of response.

“What did you dream about last night?”

He looks at me, his gaze casual. “I don’t remember. Why?”

“It’s just that . . . you said something in your sleep last night. Something I’ve never heard you say before.”

“Really?” he asks. The casual manner in which he says this matches his gaze to a tee, but it still strikes a false note.

I take a deep breath, feeling as if I’m about to take a huge plunge into turbulent waters. And well, actually . . . I am, aren’t I? “You talked about your mother,” I say.

“Really?” he asks again, albeit with a touch of wariness in his voice this time. “What did I say?”

“You were calling out for her mostly. You sounded very upset.”

He shrugs his shoulders quickly and places a hand on the covers. “Funny, I don’t remember a thing.”

He makes a move to take the covers off, but I reach out and grab his wrist before he can do it. “Tell me what happened to your mother,” I say.

“No,” he shoots back as he tries to shake my hand off. But I am not going anywhere.

“Tell me what happened.”

Now he tries to pull away, but my hand still doesn’t budge. “ I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to talk about this. Remember? You were there,” he says.

“Draco . . . ”  

 

“Drop it.”

“No! Just tell me.”

Yanking back furiously, he manages to pull his arm away from me and jump to his feet. I rise up to my knees on the mattress. “Where are you going?” I ask.

He grabs his pajama bottoms off of the floor and tugs them on, managing to maintain his balance even though he is moving so quickly. “I’m leaving!” he shouts at me. “I warned you. I said if you ever asked me again, I would leave. You asked. I’m leaving!”

He finishes pulling them up over his hips and then he takes off for the door.

And here, now, is the moment of truth. I could let him walk out the door. We had a deal, and I broke it. I should expect nothing else. And then there is the thought - why am I pushing so hard anyway? Why don’t I just let it go? But the moment is already passing, it is almost lost and I have to make a decision. No time to question it or think on it. It must be made now.

And my decision is to move. I, unlike him, don’t give a shit about modesty right now. I jump out of the bed and run for the door, getting to it just as Draco is opening it. Placing my hand high on the door, I slam it shut.

Draco doesn’t turn to look at me. He just sighs and looks up at the heavens. “What the hell?”

No going back now. I’m neck-fucking-deep in the turbulent water. “Tell me what happened to your mother.”

“Get your fucking hand off the door,” he says as he yanks on the doorknob, managing to open the door just a bit.

“Not until you tell me,” I say as I slam it back closed.

“Fuck you!” he says as he whirls around and pushes me with both his hands. I probably should have been expecting this, but I wasn’t and I very ungracefully flail about for a moment before falling flat on my behind.

He stares at me for just one quick second before turning back around and placing both his hands on the doorknob and turning it open.

But I am fast. Damn, am I fast. Fueled by an unnameable urgency, I jump up and run toward him. Not even bothering with closing the door this time, I throw myself at him, causing him to slam against the door and the door to shut once again.

 

“Have you lost your mind?” he yells.

“Tell me about your . . . ” I begin to say, but my words are cut off by his thunderous shout.

“She’s fucking dead, all right! She’s dead! Is that what you wanted to hear? Happy now?”

It’s funny; I’ve heard of time standing still but I’ve never experienced it before. Not until now. It’s a most amazing thing really, to see time slow and then crystallize until it becomes hard as glass. To feel as if you’re suspended in time within this glass and all you can do is wait until it shatters. I can’t say how long we stand there, looking at each other, both of us breathing as if we’d just run a mile, but it seems like a lifetime.

“I am so sorry,” I finally whisper. And it surprises me that I am. I really, truly am.

And just like that, the moment is shattered and time moves once again.

Draco stares at me, incredulous. “You . . . what . . . ?” he manages to say before his stare turns hard and a vicious look winds itself across his face. He looks as if he could rip me apart with his bare hands.

I have time for one thought only before he launches himself at me.

He doesn’t look so beautiful now.

That’s it. The thought flashes across my mind and he is on me, knocking me down to the ground and falling with me. I land heavily on my back with him atop me, straddling me, his hands somehow wrapped in my hair. They pull at it, shaking my head as if the goal here is to dislodge it from my neck.

And somewhere, through the pain and the utter surprise of it all, words manage to make their way to my ears.

 “Fuck you! I take it all back. I fucking hate you! I hate you!”

And the attack on my head continues.

It is at this moment that thought and reason desert me, and I am left with only pure instinct. And my instinct when being beaten is to fight back.

There is no thought at all - just the tightening of my hand into a fist and the flying of that fist through the air. I think I hit my intended target, I’m not really sure, and before I have time to register it, I’m already throwing another punch.

And Draco, who is still screaming loudly about how much he loathes me, doesn’t miss a beat as he lets go of my hair and begins to return the punches in earnest.

I cannot say how long this little battle of ours goes on; I really can’t, for I am truly caught up in the rage and heat of it.

Until I have my epiphany.

Maybe epiphany is too strong a word for it. All I know is that one moment I’m fighting for all I’m worth and the next moment I am flashing back to the night when I beat Draco almost to death. And just like that I know that this can’t continue - that this isn’t right and it’s not what Draco needs.

But neither do I need to be his punching bag.

So I wrap my arms around him and pull us into a sitting position. And then I cling to him for dear life. Oh and how he struggles against me. He tells me he hates me, tells me to go to hell, to go fuck myself and a hundred other insults that I can’t keep track of. And the whole while he is squirming like a worm on a hook.

But I’ve got him pretty well trapped, with his arms pinned to his sides and his legs caught underneath him. And I’m not letting go.

Eventually, his struggles begin to weaken and words he shouts begin to slur and quiet. And then soon after, the struggles stop altogether and his body begins to shake. It’s only when I feel wetness on my chest that I realize that he is crying.

“You bastard,” he says brokenly between sobs.

I nod my head, in complete agreement. After all, who am I to argue? I did this. I pushed him to this.

“I hate you,” he says although the words have no heat behind them.

“I know,” I reply.

He nods and continues to tremble and sob in my arms. And I continue to hold him tightly, feeling somehow as if I’m the only thing holding him together. Silly, I know.

I don’t utter a word, don’t move a muscle until his shaking subsides and all I can hear from him are slight sniffles. Then I pull away from him, and place my hands on either side of his face, lifting it up so he looks at me.

“How did she die, Draco?” I whisper.

He scoots away from me and wipes his eyes with the back of his hands. When he looks back up me, I can see that they are red and puffy and that they contain a dazed look.

“She killed herself,” he says dully.

My heart drops down into my stomach with a resounding thud. Not what I was expecting. Not at all.

“How did she . . . what happened?” I ask.

He opens his mouth as if he’s about to answer, then closes it slowly. His eyes lose their faraway look. “I can’t believe I’m actually considering talking to you about this.”

“Well, why not me?” I ask.

He lets out a mirthless chuckle. “What? You think we can bond over dead mothers?”

I nod slowly, showing him that I’m perfectly serious. “Yes.”

He looks unconvinced, then turns away and looks at the ground as if searching it for something. Then he looks at me.

“I told you what our life was like - how we were treated. My mother . . . she just couldn’t deal with it. She couldn’t deal with being treated like shit on the bottom of someone’s shoe. And then there was the fact that she’d lived her whole life with magic and that it was suddenly taken away from her. She hated living like a squib, or worse yet, a Muggle. She was so sad, all the time.” He pauses. “Maybe I should have seen it coming, I don’t know . . . ”

He shakes his head. “Anyway, the day it happened, I had gone out looking for work. Came up empty-handed of course. When I got back to the little hovel we were staying in, she was . . . she was already dead. She’d slashed her wrists. Killed herself like a Muggle.” This last sentence said so quietly that I barely hear him.

I sit back for a moment, trying to take it all in. Then I whisper, “Draco, I really am sorry. No one should have to go through that.”

“I was so angry with her at first,” he says, ignoring my comment. “I didn’t understand how she could do that. How could she leave me? She was all I had left, Harry. All I had in the entire world. And she left me.”

Twin tears drop from his eyes to slide down his face, but he doesn’t bother wiping them away. It’s only when they have reached his throat that I say, “Not everyone is as strong as you are, Draco.”

“Strong?” he says, and it comes out strangled and weak. “No. Just too stupid and stubborn to know when to quit.”

I can’t contradict him because for all I know he’s right. I’ve come to realize that of the two of us, he’s a little better at this human nature thing than I am.

But I don’t know what else to say. I’ve already said I was sorry. Other than that, I’m really not very good at comforting others. Words don’t come easily to me, mostly because for the first ten years of my life nobody gave a shit as to what I had to say. So I lamely settle for saying, “Why don’t you get back in bed and I’ll make us something to drink?”

“Scotch?” he asks.

“I was thinking more along the lines of tea.”

“I think I need scotch right now. If that’s ok with you.”

“What about . . . ?”

He anticipates my question and dismisses it with a wave of his hand. “I don’t care about that right now. I don’t care if you drink yourself into a coma or if you beat me to a bloody pulp. I just need a drink.”

I stand up and hold out my hand, then pull him up when he takes it. He heads toward the bed wearily and I move to put on some clothes before going downstairs to fetch the drinks.

Standing at the bar I grab two glasses and am about to fill them when the enormity of what he just told me hits. His mother . . . dead. Suicide. And he’s the one who found her. What that must have been like. Finding her covered in her own blood, most likely.

My hands begin to shake as an image forms in my mind. Slashed wrists . . . all the blood there must have been. Narcissa must have been swimming in it.

Always so much blood.

Always surrounded by it.

Drowning in it . . .

I blink hard, then shake my head in an effort to clear it. To get rid of that horrid imagined picture that is trying so hard to meld with all the real horrors I’ve seen in my lifetime.

I decide to forego filling the glasses. I grab them and a full bottle of scotch and head back upstairs.

When I walk back in the room, I see that he sitting up in bed, waiting for me. His new bruises stand out against the paleness of his skin. It reminds me of my own and they instantly begin to throb. Ignoring them for the moment, I sit down on the edge of the mattress and pour his drink, then mine. He takes his gratefully and takes a long drink.

“I’ve never told anyone about my mother. No one. Not even Father, ” he says. His voice is normal enough, but in his eyes I see a challenge. Is he expecting me to mock him?

 

And I never told anyone but you about Voldemort.

I think this but I don’t say it. Instead I say, “Everyone has to talk to somebody, Draco.”

He nods, then takes another long swallow. “I just never thought it would be you.”

“I am sorry, you know.”

“For what? For pushing me or for what happened to my mother?”

I shrug. “A little of both I guess.”

We drink in silence until our glasses our empty and then I refill them and we drink some more. He motions for a third refill and I oblige although I do not fill my own. I don’t even want to chance becoming violent now, knowing that would ruin everything.

Ruin everything?

Did I just think that?

“Why did she leave me, Harry?” Draco asks suddenly, distracting me from my own thoughts.

He sounds so much like a lost, little boy that my heart actually aches for him.

Apparently we are bonding over dead mothers.

“I don’t know, Draco,” I say honestly.

“Didn’t she love me enough to stay with me?” he asks me, voice cracking, fresh tears spilling from his eyes.

“Draco,” I begin to say, but there is nothing to say.

I’m not good at giving comfort. I’m really not. But I feel I have to try. So I set my glass down and wrap my arms around him and hold him as gently and tightly as I possibly can.

He all but falls into me, sobbing in earnest now.

So I whisper, “Shh. Shh,” against his ear.

I can only hope I’m doing this right.