Threadbare

Threadbare - One

Harry.

You never thought you’d know how it is to have termites feeding on your soul. You haven’t experienced too many good times in your life, certainly; but you always believed that because of this, you’d know how to shield yourself from any kind of emotional pain: be numb to it, even, which is what everyone seems to expect from you. But you can feel it now, and it gets worse every passing second. It is constant and continual, but it cannot numb you. Yet.

Draco is slouched in his armchair when you enter the disused drawing room on the second floor of the Astronomy tower. He hasn’t lit the fireplace, so it is dark and cold. You can only see his shape from the dim rays of moonlight entering a small window just below the ceiling. His arms are crossed over his chest, and his legs are spread abjectly before him. At the right side of his chair is yours: the one you’d spent more times snogging in, simply because it’s more comfortable for two. You were the one who found this room, so you chose it to sit on whenever you met him late evenings and spoke with him about nothing and, well, everything.

You sit down on it slowly, like an old man. Your body aches. Most of the pain is concentrated in places that have never hurt before, so it is impossible to ignore it. But inside, you feel sick and dirty and used. Inside is where you think you’re dying.

“Incendio,” you murmur, pointing your wand to the fireplace before you. Flames blaze, and in a second, warmth settles over you, and the room is painted in cozy light. Your body feels better, but only slightly: there is only so much a fire can do. You turn to look at him. The shadows dance on his right cheek, pale and exquisite as ever. His lips are caught in a frown, and his eyes are sad. You wonder if you should speak first, and tell him what you think he’d want to hear.

“You’re an hour late,” he spits out, the bitterness evident in his tone, his voice like ice.

“I’m sorry.”

“I saw Weasley in the crowd. Why weren’t you with him?”

Hands on your shoulders. Your chest. Your hips.

Poison is boiling in your blood, disturbing its flow, gradually destroying the life that once reigned.

“I needed to do my homework.” You’re sure that it’s hardly an excuse. You would never give up a Quidditch match for homework, except perhaps for Hufflepuff-Ravenclaw, in which neither of you would play. But you decide that you can’t tell him. Not yet, anyway, not when he feels bad enough as it is. You’ve heard all about the game.

“You told me you’d come,” he says. “It’s the first game of the year, and I was really looking forward to...”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

You can hear his swallow: it is him enduring, because he knows he’s done what you’ve done, before, albeit with a different reason. When he stood you up for two days straight, you were angry with him for a week -- but you forgave him eventually. He was confused, and he wasn’t sure of what he really wanted: but in the end, he came back to you, and you’ve been together since.

“Ravenclaw...” he begins.

“It’s all right,” you say, but you can’t be certain. It’s his second year as team Captain, and they’ve only ever lost to Gryffindor. You think he must feel helpless, maybe like you did when Cedric was killed and you were tied to a tombstone with your life flashing before your eyes.

“If only you’d seen that dive, Harry, it was... I don’t know. I messed it up, somehow, and Lisa Turpin got ahead and won. Thank heavens Father didn’t see it. He had to go about a quarter of an hour before the end. One of his bloody business appointments again, I bet, but it’s just as well.”

Your breath gets caught in your throat, and for a long while, you can think of nothing to say. The words you had in your mind scatter like dandelions in the breeze. And when, for the first time that evening, he looks toward you uncertainly, as if deciding whether to wait for a reply, you say, “You’re a great Captain and Seeker, Draco. You shouldn’t let one loss get you down.”

“I know, Harry, but...” he sighs, staring at the wall above the mantle. The sea green paint is chipped and ugly. But really, you’ve never really cared. When you discovered this room last school year, when your relationship was just beginning, paint quality was the last thing on your mind. Both your hormones were on overdrive and the desire to touch flowed madly in your blood. You never have gotten too far with him, though. You would always say stop, and he would always say it was okay: you had forever ahead of you.

You almost sigh -- but then, you remember that this is his time. Yours will come someday else. And so you apologize again: “I’m sorry I didn’t come. Really, if I could turn back time, I would’ve gone.”

I would’ve gone anywhere but where I was.

“I know, Harry. It’s all right.”

Yeah. It is.

The fire before you dances, tantalizing, and for a moment you think about flinging yourself in, where there would be no hurt or worries or hands: hands that are not yours, hands that are not Draco’s: roaming freely and claiming you. Poisoning your soul. What would it feel like to be free of this venom? Free of the hands that you can still feel?

You reach out your hand to lightly touch his: dirty skin on silk; demons on the shores of heaven.

~~~

Draco.

You enter the Great Hall late the next morning in a huff, very upset with the precedent Saturday. First, you lose to Ravenclaw. Then Harry meets you an hour later than the time you’d arranged. And he says nothing but a couple apologies to you the entire evening -- it wasn’t the sort of companionable silence that you sometimes share with him. You thought it was, in the beginning; but then half an hour passed, with you two merely staring at the fire in silence, and he still wasn’t attempting conversation. When you gave it a try, he would give only a few nods and “Mmmm”s. That was when you told him, annoyed, that you had things to do. He replied that he’d better go too, and so you parted ways and that was that.

You don’t know what his problem is. Being disappointed in you is out of the question: he’d never act like your father, and he’d never expect you to be perfect. And you can’t see any other reason why he seemed so... closed. You’ve been doing so well since your relationship began, back in the Easter Holidays of your sixth year. You exchanged many letters in the summer, and in this way got to know each other better. Now, after two months of seventh year, you’ve had very few spats: all of them have been settled within two days, because neither of you can stand ignoring each other in the halls or not having your enjoyable evening rendezvous. But with all of them, he told you what was wrong, which is more than you can say for the way he acted last night. You don’t know if he meant to or not, but you didn’t like it, nonetheless.

A quick scan of his house table tells you that he isn’t eating this morning. You guess he’s sleeping in; otherwise, he’d be chatting with his friends, or sitting with them, at least. Hmm, you think, and you sit down to breakfast, thinking nothing of it until lunch, when he finally decides to come down and grace the Hall (and you) with his presence.

His hair looks untidier than you’d deemed possible, and his eyes have bags under them, as if he hadn’t had a wink of sleep the night before. There is something odd about his posture: tired is the first word that comes to mind. You recognize it, but it’s difficult to describe. It’s a very slight change that only the people close to him would be able to see.

Some of the other Gryffindors know about you and Harry; but usually, during meals, he would make sure no one at all is looking before sending you a smile across the Hall. And you would smile back like a lovesick teenager (you’re reluctant to admit that maybe you are, after all), because that smile was only for you and it made you feel special. Wanted. And you rarely ever felt like that before Harry came along.

Now, however, is a different story. It would be so much like the spat scenario, if he didn’t look so miserable as he avoids looking at you. You try to catch him off-guard by going over to his table and calling out “Potter!”; but one look in your general direction, and he averts his eyes and tries to pretend you don’t exist.

The strange thing is that you know he wants to look at you: you can see it in the way he trains his eyes downward instead of at his House-mates, and in how he eats too quietly for you to think he’s deliberately disregarding you. No: it’s not anger or stubbornness, just... well, you don’t know yet. But you resolve to find out.

~~~

Harry.

You awake with your heart beating so loudly that for a moment, you think it was what woke you up in the first place. Then you remember, in the dream, teeth on the crook of your shoulder, nails digging into your hips. A heavy torso pinning yours down. Foreign breath on your ear. Gently spoken words that burn: an accent that you recognize.

It haunts you still, four days later. It must be Tuesday night or Wednesday morning, but instead of glancing at the clock, you put on your glasses, draw back the velvet hangings around your bed, and look around the dormitory to check if anyone besides Ron and company are lurking around. You always thought that privacy, and space, and security lie behind the doors of Hogwarts. But you’ve found out, in the most painful way, that security is never truly secure.

There are no suspicious rustles, no footsteps, no sound besides the boys breathing and Neville’s soft snores. Still, as you lie back down, you bunch the sheets up with your fists and pull them tightly up until your chin. The four-poster seems so large, suddenly: as it would be to a child having night terrors. You still feel him on your skin, and under it, and outside, and inside you. You still feel like a house-elf’s rags: dirty, used. Threadbare.

He’s everywhere.

Ice water runs down your spine. Your mind is harried by the dreams you have at night, and by the memories they bring. Tormented by him.

You haven’t spoken with Draco for three days, and you don’t know if you can muster the courage to. You’ve been ignoring him at all costs, trying not to spare him as much as two glances, not replying to his notes, pretending you don’t hear when he calls out your name. Whenever you see him, you remember what both of you had, and how it was stolen. You can’t bear it.

Maybe you never were as strong as you thought yourself to be.