Salt

    Salt is the perfect chemical. It has a pure formula as do all known compounds, and beyond that, it has an extraordinary shape. The individual salt molecule is an exact cube; flawless dimensions, precise 90° angles all around.

    Comprised of elements in the Fluorine and Hydrogen families, there are tens of different ‘recipes’, if you will, for salt. Table salt is Sodium and Chlorine, an odd combination of a soft, silvery substance and a poisonous green gas. Sea salt is Lithium and Fluorine. Salts form by their own will, or when bases and acids neutralize. They are all white. And most of them induce a burning sensation when exposed to open wounds.

***

    Harry frowned slightly then yawned, exhausted.

    “I’m going to bed, mate,” said his friend Ron, staggering up the stone steps to their dorm with a yawn of him own.

    Alone, Harry stared lazily into the fire, too drained even for sleep. He stretched his arms over his head, which he shook back and forth to wake himself up.

    It worked. His eyes, which had formerly been drooping closed, were a bit more open, shining in the dying embers. He left the tower without his Invisibility Cloak, somehow finding himself invincible and knowing he would not be caught.

    He wandered aimlessly, observing paintings and statues, feeling the silky texture of the tapestries lining the walls. His ivory fingers were tracing a smooth paisley print.

    “Potter,” said a certain frozen voice from behind him, and he jumped.

    “Malfoy,” he returned acrimoniously before turning.

    Draco Malfoy was standing on the opposite side of the corridor, perfect in all his pointed, stark splendor, a small and supercilious smirk playing upon his lips.

    “What’re you doing here?” asked Harry resentfully, and the blonde’s smirk widened.

    Draco tilted his head to the side, his pearly teeth showing. “Well, Potter,” he breathed, grey eyes shining with a strange malice Harry had not seen there before. “I suppose I could ask you the same question.” He took a step closer to Harry, eyes glinting more than ever.

    Harry watched him for a moment. Unconsciously, he noted that Malfoy’s eyes were flecked with shades of icy and deep blue. “Go to Hell, Malfoy,” he said bitingly.

    “Ooh, touchy,” exclaimed Draco, a ruthless smile twisting his faultless mouth. “I must admit that my question has little merit.”

    “What do you mean?” asked Harry, and some of the wintriness had faded from his voice, which made Draco’s grin stretch even further across his ice-white face.

    “I mean, Potter, that you wear your heart on your sleeve. I have seen you countless times this year - and it has only been six weeks - moping about. Why? I do not need to ask myself, for your motives are obvious to all.” He stepped closer yet to Harry, face contorted in an awful scowl. “Have the losses finally hit you, Potter?” he spat angrily. “Have you been to Hell and back, only to realize that another human being is dead on your account? Have you-”

    “Shut up, Malfoy!” yelled Harry, and the words seemed to boil the very air, scorch the walls, burn the hangings all to ash. He hesitated for a moment, unsure of what he had just done.

    For a moment Draco seemed taken aback, but a second later Harry was sure he had imagined it. The blonde smirked.

    “Ah, Harry,” he said, almost genially but for the bitterness in his tone. “Harry, Harry, Harry.” Harry met his shining eyes. “So agitated. So…animal, of you.” He smirked again, the same harsh angles ripping at his lips. “Though, I suppose nothing more could be expected of a filthy half-blood like yourself.”

    There was an awkward moment, when they were close enough that Harry could smell him, breathe each of his breaths. Harry was uncomfortably pressed against the stone wall, and Draco kissed him.

    It was a burning kiss. Draco tasted metallic, like acid, sour and astringent, and he was the coldest person Harry had ever touched. Draco forced his tongue between Harry’s lips, brutally, and Harry found his tongue to be different - warm and sweet like cinnamon. It was a shocking combination, and it left Harry aching for more.

***

    Draco Malfoy must be a formula for salt. For he is perfect in every aspect of appearance; all harsh edges, simple yet beautiful proportions, and exact measurements. Lucius Malfoy is acidic, sour to the taste and strong enough to scald your skin, raze your eyesight. Narcissa Black is basic, bitter in every sense of the word, underestimated. The strongest bases are as robust and influential as acid, but if you did not know, you would not suspect. Draco has power, the raw strength that old bloodlines whisper. He has flawlessly white skin and biting words. When he speaks, exposed lesions bleed and eyes burn.

    He has fully mastered the art of perfection.

***

    Harry closed his eyes. Most of his mind, the hero side, the Gryffindor side, wanted to shut the view before him out of his mind. The rest of him, the tarnished reputation, the Slytherin in him, wanted to remember forever.

    He opened his eyes again. A long, lean arm was stretched carelessly over his bare chest, and he grinned despite himself. The morning was just filtering into the unused classroom, illuminating the dust on the floor and in the air. But Harry did not care. Cold, he pulled the green sheets up to his neck, and for a moment he was frozen, remembering.

    He remembered meeting Malfoy - no, Draco - in this room, finding the extra sheets and pillows, and knowing what would came next, unsure of what he thought.

    In the end, he gave in. He had always been easy, like that, though not in the same context.

    It had not been as wonderfully exhilarating as Draco had claimed. No, it had been painful. He remembered squirming against the wall, shaking as Draco shoved all his pulsing strength up his ass.

    It had not been a beautiful thing, he thought. It had brought tears to his eyes, stingingly hot tears, like acid, which Draco had kissed away. He had felt used during it, a cheap rag doll, but afterwards he felt better. Draco’s kisses were light, and even now he could feel the now-familiar lips upon his own.

    “Harry?” came a drowsy voice, slightly muffled in the pillow.

    “Mmm?”

    Draco sat up next to him, drawing the stolen sheets up his abdomen. He smiled. “Wasn’t it wonderful?”

    Harry looked away. “Er- Yes, yes it was, Draco. It was wonderful.”

    His words must have been hollow, he mused, for Draco’s smile faded. “You hated it.”

    “It wasn’t what you said.”

    He kissed Harry harshly. “Nothing is what I say it is,” he breathed onto Harry’s face. Even from here, Harry could taste him, longingly wishing the tang was stronger.

    “You don’t love me, do you, Draco?”

    Malfoy looked away briefly. “No,” he said. “I don’t.” He met Harry’s gaze again. “I’m sorry, Harry.”

    Eyeing him oddly, Harry nodded. “Don’t be.” He kissed Draco again, equally as vicious. “I don’t love you either.”

***

    The problem with calling him a salt is his very power. For salts are wholly neutral, a perfect seven on the pH scale, product of neutralization between an acid and a base.

    Draco Malfoy should be a perfect medium, a final reference to the bitter Blacks and acrid Malfoys. Power of the Hydrogen, seven. A salt. Any less than seven is acid, any more is base, so where does he fall? By all accounts, he is impossible. A pH unto himself.

***

    It was late, twilight, and still they were together. The last threads of dusky light were piercing the dusty windows, and Harry, relaxed, closed his eyes.

    “I’ve missed you,” drawled Draco, climbing over Harry to rub against him.    

    “Shut up, Draco,” breathed Harry, and for a moment, Draco stopped.

    “What?”

    “I said ‘Shut up’,” exclaimed Harry, his voice echoing slightly in the dungeons.

    Draco’s blonde brows ran together, grey eyes glinting angrily. “Why?”

    “Because-” For a moment, his voice faltered. Then he yelled, as loud as he could, so that the dungeons themselves quaked with the pain of his vocal cords, “This isn’t how it’s supposed to be!”

    “Harry, I-”

    But Harry interrupted him. “No, Draco! I’m sick of it, all of it! You’re always doing that-”

    “What?”

    “Bloody hell, you know what I’m talking about!” he shouted. “You’re always doing that, but you don’t - can’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t - love me, and I hate to admit it but somehow I wish you did, because I love you, in some twisted, sick, painful way!”

    This tirade was followed by silence. Draco leaned against the stone wall, thinking, and Harry shrunk down to the size of a pathetic, insignificant spider on the wall.

    “Draco, I’m-”

    “Shut up,” spat Draco. “You want love, Harry? You want everything to be the way it’s supposed to be? Well, I’ve got news for you, Potter. Nothing’s perfect. Nothing’s the way you think it ought to be. And I bloody hell am not going to sit here and make things perfect for Harry Potter, celebrity, Golden Boy, for the hundredth time even when it hasn’t been me making it that way.” He frowned, upset, then his face contorted into a odious snarl. “If you want perfection, Potter, hold a mirror up to your precious face.” His voice, too, was knotted in repugnance, stained with covetousness, dripping forgotten aspirations. “Just don’t let your screaming fans get in the way.”

    Harry closed his eyes as Draco’s incensed voice faded.

    “Well, well, well, what have we here?”

    Harry opened his eyes to see Snape standing, laissez-faire, in the doorway. He realized, with a sickening jolt, that the man was drinking in the sight of them sitting on the floor together, a pile of now-unused blankets sitting between them.

    “Professor-” began Harry.

    “Get up,” spat Snape, and Harry stood awkwardly. “You too,” he snarled in Draco’s direction.

    The blonde stood up beside Harry, an odd combination of relief and hatred, disbelief and expectance showing in his silvery eyes.

    “What have you been doing?”

    Harry instantaneously looked away, and for a moment Draco did too. When they spoke, it was accidently-on-purpose at the same moment, awkward.

    “We- we were just-”

    “Just-”

    “I am disgusted by both of you,” said Snape, black hair hanging across his face. “You, Master Malfoy, I- I thought better of you.” He frowned as the blonde, the normally cool, collected, blonde, looked away, weak. “You’ve changed,” he added bitterly. Turning to Harry, he continued, “And you, Potter, you are as insolent as your good-for-nothing father-”

    Once he would have shouted, but Harry merely glowered, blushing rosily.

    Snape’s eyes narrowed in surprise as well. “You are both embarrassments to the school.”

    “Professor-” began Draco, momentarily forgetting their fight.

    “Detention!” exclaimed Snape angrily, eyes flashing dangerously. “For both of you. Separate detentions. Nine o’clock sharp. Tonight. Both of you,” he said choppily, and Harry wished he were anywhere but here, alone and without Draco.

    Snape turned on his heel and left the dungeons with a last menacing look over his shoulder, and suddenly the stone walls, ceiling, floor seemed much colder than before to both boys.

    Draco turned slowly back to Harry, wondering if apologies were in order. “I’m sorry,” he said finally, his voice suddenly more neutral than before; quiet. “It’s my fault…I- I’m sorry,” he repeated.

    Harry eyed him out of one chip of jade set in ivory. “Don’t be. I don’t love you either.”