Threadbare

Six: Secrets

Draco.

The usual hook pulls invisibly at your navel. The next thing you know, you are standing in your room at the Malfoy Manor, expensive carpet at your feet. The dust settles after your arrival: the house-elves don't clean your room until the day before you are expected to come. The air smells like home, though, and you breathe it in. The manor is a palace of hostilities, of gnarled statues, cold family paintings, and a constant echo of empty rooms, but you can go to your bedroom and sit down and you would always feel better.

But moments later you know you have to do what you came for. You pull open the door to the corridor. It creaks the slightest bit, but the hall is deserted enough for the sound to echo. You slide in through the gap and close it behind you. The converging corridor of doors stares back at you, gaping as if in challenge. Businesslike, as are most things in this house. It is something you're used to by now. You walk, turn a corner, keep walking until you arrive at your parents' door. You knock softly on the smooth cold wood before you enter.

Their large canopy bed, made of ivory posts and white sheets, lies in the middle of the dais in the north of the room, before the windows. The sun spills its afternoon rays in through the glass; they bathe the bed in yellow light, as well as your mother's face.

Narcissa Malfoy is motionless.

From the moment you spot her you know she is asleep, but the guess that she might be otherwise clenches at your heart and, for a moment or two, makes you panic. It feels like those dreams you sometimes have in the middle of the night, where the world is reduced to darkness and you are in the very middle of it, and suddenly, without even knowing where you are, you fall. And then you awaken with an irregular heartbeat and short breaths, much like the way you are breathing now, seeing your mother supine with both hands at her sides and her head tilted dead forward. Dead.

You know she is asleep because her books of poetry are stacked on her nightstand and there is a vase of fresh flowers (narcissi, you note) beside them. She cannot be dead because if she were, she should be in a coffin and you should be in black singing funeral dirges with all the members of the family. She should be six feet under in the most prestigious cemetery you can afford. So, she is not dead.

But why, you ask yourself, didn't she wake up when I opened the door? Their bedroom door is large, and one needs to heave it open instead of pushing it. It creaks more than any other door in the house. (Mother wanted to have all the doors fixed once, and Father replied, with a rare twinkle in his eye, “Creaking is the luxury of a Malfoy.” No one ever brought it up again.) Mother is the most sensitive of them when asleep: a cricket could chirp outside their window and she would promptly wake up. You have no doubt she can rival Mad-Eye Moody in late night vigilance, which he prided himself upon when he was teaching in sixth year.

“Mother,” you whisper, walking over to her. You figure that since you're already here, you might as well pay her a proper, wide-awake visit. You sit on the bed beside her. She doesn't stir.

“Mother,” you say again, louder this time, impossible for her not to hear. She lies still, and you examine her face. It looks peacefully asleep and really quite healthy, not at all pale or ashen. Her curls are the same color of brilliant golden blond they always were. Her lips, which usually become chapped and dry during her rare bouts of sickness, look soft and... normal.

“Mum, it's me,” you sigh, and a voice says behind you,

“Master Draco?”

You turn your head to see a house-elf holding a feather duster in one hand and a rag in the other. “Tolstoy, how long has Mother been asleep?”

“Today is the seventh day, Master Draco.”

You furrow your eyebrows, then shake your head upon realization: “I didn't mean how long she's been sick. I meant, how long has it been since she closed her eyes and has not opened them up to now?”

“Today is the seventh day,” the house-elf repeats. You roll your eyes at his incompetence (whose idea was it to hire this one, anyway?), but there is no time to insult him because the door creaks open quickly and your father strides in, a purposeful glint in his eyes. He smiles coldly down at you, gesturing with his hand for Tolstoy to go away. The elf disappears. Lucius moves closer, his long robes making him seem to glide across the floor.

“Father,” you greet, bowing your head slightly. “Tolstoy said...”

“He's telling the truth, Draco. House-elves may be bird-brained, but they aren't forgetful. What are you doing here, may I ask? You're early. We haven't received any of your presents yet.”

“I wanted to pay Mother a visit. So she's been in a... coma? All this time?”

“Coma is such a pedestrian term, Draco. And as you can see, your mother is as blooming and as beautiful as she always is. Why don't we call it a very deep sleep, instead?”

“Father. You lied to me. You said she was sick--”

“You shall not accuse me of lying or any such thing. Your mother is sick. She needs time to heal. She needs rest. I assure you, she will be fine in two weeks.” He sounds frustrated at having to explain this to you, as if he has better things to do.

“But... what is she sick of, exactly? And I don't think it's common wizard fever, Father, because if the mediwizard said that, he really should be deprived of his license.”

Lucius stares at you, gauging in his mind if this son of his is worthy of knowing the actual truth. You look into eyes that mirror yours, not allowing your gaze to falter. He sighs, defeated.

“All right, Draco. It's not common wizard fever.” Lucius looks down at Narcissa and shakes his head. “It's the Bedivere fever. It was discovered by Douglas Bedivere in the thirteenth century. He fainted suddenly one day; his family thought he was dead, but put him in bed just in case. Three weeks later he was awake and well. It's a rare illness that appears quite dangerous, Draco, so I understand your worry. But in the greater scheme of things, it really doesn't do much harm, except that your mother will be quite tired when she awakes, even if she has done nothing but lie down.”

“So she won't be awake in time for my birthday?”

“Likely not, I'm sorry to say. The average sleeping time for all who have been struck by the sickness is twenty-two days. She collapsed two Saturdays ago -- do you remember, I had to leave your game early? Tolstoy had sent me an emergency owl. I didn't tell you why I left because I didn't want you to worry. Which reminds me...”

“I'm more worried about my mum than the Quidditch Cup right now.”

“I understand. But I expect you to do better next time.”

“I will.” You watch your sleeping beautifully alive mother lie unmoving beside you. Every year she greets you with a warm 'Happy Birthday,' and it's always something to look forward to, because on special days like that you can almost feel her love for you as a son and not just an heir, like you so often feel like in this family. It pains you to know that it won't happen this year, and right when you're turning into a full-fledged adult, too.

“Stop worrying about her, Draco,” your father advises. “Focus on your studies and Quidditch. You know how proud both of us will be when you beat that mudblood Granger to the top spot in your graduation year, and finally nail Potter to the ground.” There is a smile in his eyes and you know that what he's expressing is not a hope, but a threat. Everything he has ever told you to do has a tacit accompanied 'or else,' and you have never liked it. But you nod agreeably, take one last glance at your mum, and say,

“I think I'd better go, Father. I've homework to do.”

“Go. Come back here on Saturday. I'll order that carrot cake you like; you can share it with the Slytherins. Your presents will be ready by then, I'm certain.”

“All right.” You twist your Malfoy ring around your finger. A second later, you disappear.

*

“What did you say it was, again?” Pansy asks. Her tone is bored and uncooperative. You want to pull on your own hair with all your might because you thought it would be a good idea to ask her instead of Crabbe or Goyle to help you with research in the library, and are now discovering that it might not have been such a good idea after all. With one arm cradling a large book opened to its index, she blinks at you in an all too clueless manner, even though you've told her about twenty times this afternoon.

“Be-di-vere fe-ver,” you enunciate, hoping she can remember this time. Her eyes light up as if just recalling some long forgotten information, and she directs her attention back to the book with newfound determination. You roll your eyes, praying to the deities to help you.

Not that you don't trust your father, of course. But if he had any reason to lie to you in the first place (common wizard fever was so obviously far from the truth), he might be lying to you now. And you hardly think it's a birthday surprise. In fact, the thought itself is enough to make you chuckle. Your parents hate surprises, especially your father. No, he must be planning something else, and you're going to get to the bottom of it. For now you have only the most vague ideas: world domination or, worse yet, your Marking ceremony. But if he's not lying, you promise yourself to let the issue go.

An hour later, you and Pansy slam the last of the medical books down on the table and sigh in unison. Pansy, too exasperated to be angry with you for wasting her time, remarks: “Maybe they were having marriage problems, and he decided to kill her and then preserve her so he could still tell people he was married. I mean--”

“Pansy, I don't think my father's sick enough to keep sleeping beside a corpse.”

“Or sleeping with,” she adds, and you shudder in disgust. “But really. Seems he just invented the thing.”

“No. He's too damn smart for that.”

“What are you looking for, then? If you know the illness is real?”

You answer simply, “I'm looking for a loophole.”

~~~

Harry.

Dinner is the same miserable affair. Everyone seems all right enough, but for you it's so easy to feel sad these days. You're alone when you're with everybody, and even when you're with Draco, you swing between warmth and fear, because the intimacy you're expected to share with him seems too close to the intimacy that he forced out of you. Nothing helps but sleep, and even that does not erase the event from the past, but temporarily erases the ways of recalling it. There is no consolation for anything: not your dead parents, not your dead godfather, not Cedric in his grave, not the prophecy that either you or Voldemort will be killed by the hand of the other. Not for rape. There is no consolation, but only moving forward, and this is what you're trying to do. It's hard: each step is another burden. You can move past death by living, but you cannot move past fear by closing your eyes.

Draco is at his table. When you spot him you see that he has been waiting for you to do so. He nods his head downward in a slow arc, inviting you to meet him outside the Great Hall after eating. You don't know how you know it -- it's almost humorous, really -- but you nod and send him a small smile. Then Hermione tells you to stop playing with your food and start eating, and if only because Draco gave you that gesture, you obey her with no complaints.

After dinner, you meet up with Draco in the nearest corridor and he suggests a game of Seeker-on-Seeker Quidditch. “It's a good evening for flying. A bit breezy, and there's still light out. I know I said we'd meet at eight, but I've got loads to tell you, and I have some homework to do after.”

“It sounds like a plan.”

You run up to your dorm while he runs down to his. Later you meet him at the Quidditch pitch, Firebolt slung comfortably on your shoulder. He is looking at the sky, seeming to marvel at the cool blue covered only by a few scattered clouds. The breeze dances through his hair, making it just a little untidy at the back. You comb your hand through it in greeting, and he smiles at you, holding up the Snitch. “Scared, Potter?”

“You wish.”

He releases the golden ball, whose wings flutter immediately at the sight of freedom. The two of you wait for it to get far away before mounting your brooms and rising at the same time. And, floating in the air with the autumn wind teasing your cheeks, you ask him what he said he had to tell you.

“I ported to the Manor,” he begins, and tells you the story of how he found his mother in a deep barely-breathing sleep and how his father said it was a rare form of wizard fever. He also recalls how he and Pansy searched the library for information but failed to find any. According to him she suggested they had marriage problems, which he dismisses with a wave of the arm. “Those two have never had marriage problems. They're one entity. Besides, wizards have magical wedding contracts -- oh, didn't you know? -- so if ever he fatally hurts her on purpose, a curse will fall upon him or something like that.”

Draco admits that he doesn't know much about wizard marriage vows, but he knows something bad should be happening to his father right about now if he meant to put her in a deep sleep. Lucius didn't do it to hurt her, then, “but he must be planning something, and I'm doing anything I can to find out what it is.”

“What was the illness again? Bedivere fever, was it?”

“Yes.”

“It sounds like a myth.”

Draco shrugs. Then, because the Snitch is nowhere in sight, he flies some ways off and shouts, “Catch me if you can!” You fly after him right away, but he's gotten a good head start; every time you're close to tagging him he veers off in another direction and you miss again. Once he even makes a quick U-turn and sticks his tongue at you as he speeds by in a flurry of blurry color, making you want to reach him even more. Gradually you notice that you're moving upward and upward, where the wind surges more strongly through your hair and blows like freedom on your cheeks, where the red sun is at your fingertips, where you discover for the hundredth exhilarating time how flying can make you forget about school and death and rape, make you forget about everything but you and Draco and the sun and the paling colors of the sky.

You spot the Snitch from the corner of your eye, somewhere at your right, and with a triumphant smile on your face you turn briskly in that direction and fly as fast as the Firebolt will allow. Soon you become aware of Draco following behind you, gaining so near you can almost feel him breathing on the back of your neck. You reach out your arm until you can feel the muscle stretch over your bones, and before you know it the Snitch is safely dying in your hand.

“I won,” you tell him, turning around and holding it up.

“You didn't catch me,” he says, and his hand settles warmly on the nape of your neck, and he kisses you.

Initially, it feels good. His lips are soft and supple; they taste of the fresh pumpkin juice at dinnertime. His kiss is slow and languorous as if he wants you to feel every slide of his lips on yours, absorb every tinge of sweetness he has to offer, savor the way he cares about you. It's wonderful, and it strikes you how much you miss this.

But when he gently slips his tongue into your mouth and it molds gently with yours, it feels more like an intrusion than a welcome closeness, and you remember his tongue and his lips, and for a moment your mind is frighteningly certain that it's him, it's him, it's him and you pull back and take a deep breath and look anywhere but in front of you.

“Harry?”

“We'd better get down,” you say before speeding back to the ground. He silently follows.

~~~

Draco.

“Let's both get started on our homework, then.” He smiles a restless smile, one that makes you feel like he wants to get as far away from you as possible. His lips are still a gleaming red from the kiss, and you wish you could press yours to them, one last time. But you don't want to make him any more uncomfortable, and so you just nod in acquiescence at his suggestion.

“I'll walk you,” you say, but he shakes his head.

“I'll manage. Don't worry about me, Draco.”

He hands you back the Snitch; you let your fingers linger on his for a while. He then steps back, slings his broom over his shoulder, and offers you a small wave of goodbye. He turns around, and his back seems to curve forward, defeated, as he walks away.

And you feel defeated as well, as you walk down to the Slytherin dorms, knowing what you did wrong. It was just that he was acting so normally, so like the old Harry you always knew, that for that dangerous moment you forgot all about what happened and what the consequences of intimacy might be. You're only glad he didn't let go of his broom and fall from a hundred feet above. If he had, you would never forgive yourself.

What is so unforgettable about rape? What makes it so hard to accept, to get past? You wish you knew, even though you don't want to be privy to a kind of suffering you know you could never fully let go of: suffering that will find you awake late at night with your shirt clinging to your back, suffering that will kill all romance and the sense of purpose which one needs to live. You have minions, not friends, and a family so austere it's like an elite business union. Harry matters more to you than anyone else at this moment. You wish you could help him. You wish you knew how.

Professor Snape is walking from the common room. You meet him at the hallway.

“Professor,” you greet politely, “could I talk to you for a bit?”

“What about?” he asks, his face a rock of no emotion.

“About how you knew about... you know.”

“I didn't know I knew about 'you know'.” At this reply you know that Snape couldn't have been the one who hurt Harry. It's simply too ridiculous to think so. Snape doesn't care about anyone but himself, Potions, and sarcasm.

Time to cut to the chase. “How did you know about me and Harry, Professor?”

Simply, “I heard two noisy Gryffindors gossiping about you two.”

You squint your eyes, trying to imitate his suspicious glare while still appearing respectful. “I know you know something about Harry that not many people do.”

“You know something more.” He holds your gaze.

If he's not going to give you any answers, might as well ask other questions. “Professor,” you say loudly enough to inform him that you're changing the subject. “In the Quidditch game last last Saturday, did my father mention to you why he was leaving early?” Lucius and Snape were close friends in school, and they usually share news and pleasantries every time Lucius goes to Hogwarts for a visit.

“No,” Snape says in a guarded manner, obviously waiting for you to explain further.

“He didn't say my mother was sick?”

“He didn't say goodbye. I didn't even notice him leave, to tell you the truth. I...”

“You what?”

“I hope you mother's getting well.”

That was not what he was going to say. You choose to ignore this.

You roll your eyes. “She's in a 'deep sleep,' if that's what you mean.”

Snape's features take on an actual concerned expression that you've never seen on him before. “A deep sleep?”

“A very deep sleep. It's a rare kind of fever, according to my dad.”

“Oh. Did he say anything else?”

“Not really. Do you know anything about it?”

“No.”

“It doesn't sound like you don't, Professor.”

“Mr. Malfoy, I think your Potions essay is waiting for you. Time for homework. Carry on. Your hair is ruffled, by the way -- did you know?”

Snape, with the typical swish of his cloak, goes off. He knows what's really happened to your mother; you're sure of it. He probably knows your father's lies. And maybe he also knows more about you and Harry than he's letting on. But why is he wary of telling you anything?

Curiouser and curiouser.