Apathy

Apathy

"No one knows what it's like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free."

~"Behind Blue Eyes" by The Who

Draco Malfoy is going to die tomorrow. He knows it and doesn't really care. The vast weight of living has buckled his knees, slumped his shoulders, made his once ramrod-straight spine twist. Perhaps he will lay straight and confident in his coffin, pale hands pressed to his chest in a mockery of a prayer. It will be an open coffin, he suspects. Everyone will want to cluster around and peer at the ex-Death Eater's corpse.

Only he wasn't a true Death Eater, was he? A true Death Eater would have been able to kill Dumbledore, not fail miserably and force Professor Snape do it. A true Death Eater would have been able to point his wand at the doddering old fool and say those two simple words: Avada Kedavra.

Even now, he has never uttered those words. He has tried several times to say them - he tried to shout them at Dumbledore, after all, and later on at Potter and even at Granger once, but every time the Killing Curse lodged in his throat and he'd choked on the words. He uses Crucio and Imperius without remorse, but the Killing Curse? That particular Unforgivable has never escaped his lips.

Draco wonders if the curse will finally explode from his lips tomorrow in the midst of the battle they all know will be the last one. He wonders and realizes it doesn't matter. He will not survive the battle, just as he knew he would not be able to kill Dumbledore during sixth year. A Malfoy does not fail, but the corruption of the ancient line of Black has corroded the pureness in his veins and made him worthless. He thinks of Sirius Black and Andromeda Tonks, the blood traitors. Bellatrix Lestrange, who too succumbed to the impurity of the Black line and fallen at the hands of Longbottom - Longbottom!

Even now the baseness is ruining his mother. He sees it in the way her hands shake for no reason at all and how her skin has taken on a corpse-like paleness. She is no longer Veela-like in her beauty; instead she reminds him of a blond wraith with haunted, haunting eyes.

He looks at his hands and fancies the blue veins are turning darker, darker, yes, black, as black as the corrupted line. Perhaps tomorrow when his blood is spilled, he will bleed black. Perhaps someone will mistake his blood for ink when they first come across his corpse. He wonders who it will be, and if they'll even recognize him for the proud Slytherin he once was.

Draco looks up at the sky. It is just approaching twilight, that period between sunset and the darkness of the night. The sky is just beginning to darken, revealing bruises that the clouds have teemed upon it during the day. The piercing blueness is replaced by varying shades of violet and crimson, all the hues eventually to be swallowed up by a melancholy indigo shade that bleeds stars. That melancholy indigo is the same color as his lover's eyes.

"Why do you have such sad eyes?" he asks, almost unaware that he has even spoken.

Those dark blue eyes watch him for a moment, and then Theodore Nott looks almost amused. "Why do you have eyes like gray isinglass?" he retorts, before he gives Draco a light shove. "Don't ask stupid questions."

Draco obeys, for out of all the Slytherin, Theodore was always his equal. It was why Draco avoided him during those years at Hogwarts, after all. The younger Draco did not like being equal to anyone; having inferior wizards and witches flock around him made things much easier. The older, wearier Draco finds it doesn't matter much, and that it is almost nice to have a semi-coherent conversation occasionally.

"You'll survive, you know," he says to Theodore. "If any of us do, it'll be you."

Again, an amused look. "Be quiet, Draco," Theodore orders, although his voice has no real venom this time. "I'll make sure you survive."

"But I don't want to," he whispers, too tired to consider the implications of the sentence, and watches the other wizard's gaze darken.

Theodore grabs him, crushing his mouth against his, biting hard at the blonde's lips and making Draco gasp in a mixture of shock and pain. He breaks the kiss, but his hands are painfully tight on the blonde's painfully thin shoulders. "You will live whether you want to fucking live or not," the blue-eyed boy snarls, and rage makes each word as sharp as a knife. "If the Dark Lord loses, we will grovel and kiss Harry fucking Potter's feet if we have to, but we both are going to live. Understood?"

Draco tries to summon up emotions, any sort of emotion at all. For Theodore's sake. For his lover's sake so that those melancholy blue eyes won't seem so melancholy. He tries, and realizes that it would be nice to be able to kiss Theodore without this frantic desperation in the crushing of lips against lips, frame against frame, skin against skin. It would be nice to be able to sit in the Malfoy gardens and stroke Theodore's hair without worrying about an Auror leaping from behind a rosebush and killing them both.

It would be nice and Draco begins to think that maybe living would be worth it if Theodore is there to pick up the pieces when everything shatters tomorrow. Draco Malfoy is going to die tomorrow. He knows it. If someone looks at his hand, they will find his lifeline cut abruptly short. But for Theodore he will try to live past that final battle.

Maybe, just maybe Fate will forget about him in the midst of battle, and he and Theodore can watch the sky bruise into indigo outside the Malfoy manor.

He half-grins at that, ignoring the pain in his lip. He then surprises Theodore by kissing him gently. "I won't kiss Potter's feet," Draco murmurs, "but I think I can put aside enough of my pride to kiss Scrimgeour's robes."

Theodore smiles.

"That'll do."

"With you I should love to live, with you be ready to die."
~Horace, Roman lyric poet and satirist (64BC - 8 BC)