In Moratorium

In Moratorium

Harry

There's an empty seat right across from where Harry is sitting in the Gryffindor Common Room, and if it had been two months ago, Hermione would have been sitting on it, nose buried deep in her Arithmancy textbook. But it isn't like any other day, and these days Hogwarts is one Prefect short, and there are too many ghosts that linger its now too silent, too empty hallways.

The same chairs in the classrooms and the same beds in the dormitories remain vacant for two months, and no one bothers to fill up the glaring spaces. Harry Potter is the Boy Who Lived once more, and the wizarding world had been celebrating mutely for seven days. All things considered, there were too many losses, too many broken pieces to put back together. And so the students walk the corridors, hushed and hollow like ghosts in shells.

Like the night before and the nights to come after, Harry watches the fireplace crackling in the common room long after he barely notices that he is the only one left in it. He watches Crookshanks slink around the room like a vagabond until he finally jumps onto the seat in front of Harry, curls up, and stares back at him with knowing golden eyes.

Harry sees things that were not there before. Across desks, Harry watches Lavender Brown, her stares empty and blank, run the tip of her wand across her wrist in slow slicing motions. Seamus Finnigan skives classes all too frequently, and there are too few Slytherins in the Great Hall, in classes, or even in the dungeons. Ernie Macmillan has stopped taking baths, and only Luna Lovegood bothers to come near him.

Harry hasn't slept for days. How long exactly, he can't remember.

Harry watches everyone watch something else. But most of all, Harry watches Ron stare at the clean, polished, dark wood of the table in the common room, upon which Hermione had always corrected their essays. Harry watches Ron stare at the empty seat between them during class, watches him thumb the engraved P on his badge idly; watches him scrub the handle of his Cleansweep vigorously, carelessly for the third time in an hour.

At night, Harry listens to the hurried, quiet sounds Ron makes in the bed next to his. He wonders what it would be like to suck Ron's prick. He wanks silently on his own bed and comes at the same time Ron makes a soft, low groan.

Harry wishes sometimes that he had brown hair instead of jet black, brown eyes instead of green when he is talking to Ron, and Ron is looking through him. Harry wishes a lot of things--wishes Sirius didn't make the switch with Wormtail, wishes he can fly on his Firebolt like he used to, wishes Dumbledore is alive so he can make things a little better with that mischievous glint in his blue eyes. But most of all Harry wishes that Ron would stop looking over Harry's shoulder, or that Ron would stop gazing at the bushy-haired 5th year Ravenclaw girl during Charms long enough to realize that Harry is there.

There are nightmares hanging over everyone's heads, waiting, and Neville wakes up five times during the night sweatingscreamingclawing wildly at some invisible demon. Everyone had taken to casting Silencing Charms, but Harry looks over and sees Ron staring with wide, unseeing eyes at the roof of his bed. Harry knows Ron's nightmares all too well.

Molly Weasley politely refuses help from the remaining members of the Order. She says that they will manage on their own. The Weasley boys do what they can to keep the kitchen cupboards at the Burrow adequately full, to make sure the bills are paid, and, just beneath everything else, perhaps to maintain the flimsy sheet of sanity that came with simply surviving. Arthur Weasley is not likely to wake up anytime soon, and Harry ponders--not for the first time--why exactly an orphan like him has more gold than a decent wizarding family like the Weasleys.

Ginny looks longingly at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade, and Harry battles silently on whether to ask her if she wants to go inside and have a couple mugs of butterbeer and not to worry, it'll be on him. But Ginny is already walking back towards the castle before Harry could get past stammering.

Ron tells Harry that he is thinking of leaving Hogwarts early, like Fred and George, because how can he help the family if he remains an unwilling liability. Ron tells him this and Harry's chest tightens painfully, and so, naturally, he starts to offer help even though he knows Ron is too proud to accept anyway.

Harry walks in straight lines along the corridors, bumping into people's shoulders. He walks and finds himself in a deserted room on the seventh floor instead of down in the dungeons in Snape's Potion class. Harry hears nothing but muffled voices, muted conversations. The dark circles under Harry's eyes are the same color as Malfoy's these days as he watches Malfoy watch Ron with long unblinking stares over smoking cauldrons.

Ron is spectacularly failing Potions and Transfiguration and skives off with Seamus for hours at a time. Harry sees the bruise just under Ron's left ear, directly on the pulse point, as Ron enters the portrait hole one Saturday evening. Harry does not ask even when Ron takes his place beside Harry and they spend the rest of the evening in silence--mulling over what ifs, contemplating choices, and brooding on consequences and past actions.

Some nights when Ron falls asleep after he comes (and Harry with him), Harry closes his eyes and tries to sleep like everyone else because he is just so tired. He knows this, but he just lies there minding the dark shadows that dart behind his eyelids. He waits for the hour when Ron mutters and cries out in his sleep so he can walk over and lie beside Ron, murmuring in low gentle tones to him. Harry sees the cut on Ron's lower lip caked with dried blood and wonders if Ron would know if he tried to lick it.

Harry knows that it's not right to fancy his best mate something rotten, especially when his best mate still fancies his other best friend whom Harry should be grieving for. But Harry is weary of mourning, and there are too many deaths to lament, and Harry only wants to live out the rest of the time he's given like any sentient being. Harry just wants to be. Wanting to be with Ron is an entirely different matter because being with Ron, in Harry's mind, involves a lot of buggering and snogging and waking up to each other's foul morning breath, all of which are inappropriate scenarios for a thousand different reasons.

Harry knows Ron goes off on his own sometimes in the night when the castle sleeps and Harry pretends to sleep with it. There are scattered blue-black marks on Ron's collarbone, shoulder blades, across his neck when they dress for breakfast in the morning, and Harry does not ask.

Ginny has new dress robes, and Ron buys the Gryffindor Quidditch team drinks during a trip to Hogsmeade. Harry does not ask where Ron disappears to during their free periods together. He tries not to think about the fact that Malfoy sneers at him in an entirely different way than the glance Malfoy gives Ron outside the Potions classroom.

In the Quidditch locker rooms Harry sees the red livid scratch marks on the sides of Ron's torso. Ron grimaces at the angry bruises on his hips, and this time Harry asks. Ron blinks at him, and stares with startled, pained blue eyes at Harry. It-it's nothing. Clumsy is all, he murmurs before pulling on his clothes hastily, and pushes past Harry.

Harry thinks Malfoy is a shameless, malicious, filthy little git who is up to no good. This is the truth even when they were ickle firsties, and this is the truth even now after the dust has settled and Voldemort is dead beyond surmise. Harry knows this because the Marauder's Map never lies, and when the map shows two dots labeled Ron Weasley and Draco Malfoy in a classroom on the seventh floor at one in the morning, Harry doesn't know what to feel or think first.

Harry Potter does not understand a lot of things, girls being one of them, but one thing he understands is that he feels for Ronald Bilius Weasley in the same way he imagines Bill feels for Fleur, and not in the same way Harry used to feel for Cho. That is why when Harry glimpses the bite marks on Ron's shoulders in that same lovat shade as the marks on his hips, later Harry knocks down Malfoy outside the Great Hall, and pummels his face until Malfoy's front tooth chips, and Harry sees nothing but redbloodyred.

Harry used to live in a cupboard under a staircase, wear clothes that had never been his in the first place. Friendship was an entirely skewed idea mainly because the only companions he used to have, aside from the rodents and other manner of insects that shared his living quarters, were Dudley and his mates, whose fundamental scheme of camaraderie included shoving Harry into a broom closet at school and leaving him there for the caretaker to let him out. And so he can hardly believe his fortune that first day Ron and Hermione decided to come into the compartment he was occupying in the Hogwarts Express.

Heroes, as a rule, are first stripped of their loved ones before they can save the world and get the girl. Harry has lost his mum and dad, his godfather, the parental substitute he had in Dumbledore, and now Hermione. But there is no girl to get, because Harry only wants the boy.

They've won the war, and Harry is suddenly faced with an expanse of skysealandtime, and Harry doesn't know what to do with it. And so he is left furrowing his eyebrows, because, really, there isn't anything left to do, and whatever this thing with Malfoy is, Harry can only do so much not to think about Ron abandoning him, because Ron cannot leave him. Not now. And so Harry waits, because there is no one else to wait for, and Harry has all the time in the world to do his waiting.

Draco

There's a fly on the wall, and Draco stares at it longer than he's aware of. It is dim in the Slytherin Common Room like it's dim outside the castle walls and within it. Dark forms slip and slide, in and out of the muted light, and Draco thinks where have all the Slytherins gone? And alone, he barks out a short laugh, mirthless and dry and not unlike the forced, dull laughter that permeates and floats along the hallways these days.

There is nothing complicated about anything when the only complicated thing everyday is the intricate patterns of quiet you have to weave through to get to classes, while eating meals, or in the corridors. This is the way of the monotonous existence, and nothing exciting happens. There is always something to talk about, but nobody says much of anything. Sometimes, when they try to throw things at Draco, you can almost see the ripple straining through the air.

Draco hears things he thinks he is meant to hear anyway. They whisper about Death Eaters still at large, atrocious crimes of Muggle killings and all manner of terrible rumors about the war. And they question, yet again, why the Ministry hasn't taken Draco Malfoy to Azkaban where he belongs, because he is as good a Death Eater as the rest of them, isn't he?

Draco sees the glances they give him, and they are none so subtle about it, because he is meant to see them anyway. The contempt, the anger, the loathing, and perhaps even the fear that flits over their eyes before they become barely aware of it. He clenches a fist around his forearm, over the fading obtrusive mark, even if it doesn't make a difference, because it never makes any difference nowadays, what you did or didn't do.

Somebody has scrawled in big, aggressive, vomit-colored words on one of the mirrors above the sink in the boys' bathroom. Draco reads it over and over JUST DIE MALFOY, as if staring at it long enough can will it to become true. Like it's that easy. Weasley is suddenly there behind him, impassive face marred by the running paint on the mirror, and Draco concludes that it's easy enough to try for a sneer, and so he does. But Weasley is already out of the door after he gives Draco a flitting look that is something horribly akin to pity. Draco realizes this as his legs give way, and he begins to spew a foul thin liquid that is very much like the color of the hostile remark that glares at him from the mirror.

They say that some people are slowly cracking up. Like that Weasley bloke, they say. Like my mother strapped in St. Mungo's, Draco thinks. But Draco is not going mental. He's not. Not when some Hufflepuffs set his robes on fire outside the portrait hole in the dungeons; not even when a Ravenclaw boy 'misfires' an Engorgement Charm on Draco's left hand, and he spends a half hour with his hand weighed down painfully on the floor before Professor Flitwick makes an effort to reverse it.

Slytherins are sparse, and house unity cannot be bothered to exist. Whatever symbiotic relationship Draco had derived from Crabbe and Goyle, he doesn't expect to acquire from anyone now. Draco doesn't mind. He never minded such things in the first place.

The quality of the light is something close to being metallic, clinical, like the color of a migraine, so Draco squints all day, and the muscles around his eyes strain with a dull ache. He shaves off his pale hair, because it hurts his eyes when he looks at himself in the mirror. Moments of red in the angry white are his reprieve, and he knows he should find it strange, but he does not. He doesn't want to think much of it either when he ends up staring at Weasley's head all the time.

The only person who thinks much of it is probably Potter, who has taken to glaring at Draco with hard, malignant looks. Draco remembers how it was when Potter threw him over for Weasley's toady devotion. Draco prefers to think that it was inevitable the day it became all about thwarting the Wonder Boy.

It is when Draco is watching Weasley's hair turn into a strange combination of coppery orange in the late, low afternoon light that he realizes he has something very important and potently useful that Potter doesn't. This is why he corners Weasley during one of his delinquent endeavors with Finnigan, and offers Weasley a proposition he can't refuse.

Malfoys believe in mutually beneficial arrangements. Draco knows he can't do anything about the sudden evil that everyone aims at him, because all you can do really is suck it up and pay for your dead father's sins. Draco also knows that when Malfoys pay, they usually do it with gold. And so this is what happens: Weasley asks what do you want, Malfoy? Draco leers at him before he closes the gap between them in one quick stride, and covers Weasley's mouth with his. Weasley struggles, and the kiss is sloppy and wet and hot, but when Draco pulls away five minutes later, he pushes a small bag of 50 galleons into the inside pocket of Weasley's robes.

Quills scratching on parchment are unusually loud these days, and Draco thinks his ears might bleed from the sound. His pen snaps sharply during History of Magic, and even Professor Binns turns to regard him with blank eyes in the perfect stillness that came after. Draco accosts Weasley at the bottom of spiral staircases, during free periods, in the library, and whenever there's nothing else better to do while the rest of the wizarding world begins purging the spoils of war.

There's a small, fine vein that throbs in the area below Weasley's left ear. Draco latches his lips onto it, and there's a conspicuous blotch on the thin pallid stretch of skin when Draco comes away.

Draco tries not to think of the ramifications even when he finally fucks Weasley one night on the cold, hard soil in greenhouse two, because Malfoys do not consort in sordid affairs with blood-traitors. And Weasley is a poor blood-traitor whore who is worse than a filthy Mudblood like his dead girlfriend, if Draco ever saw one. But Draco pays sixty, sometimes a hundred galleons after a long hard fuck, and Draco likes to believe that he puts his father's corrupt wealth to good use.

Draco hates Weasley purely on principle, which is to say, something that is difficult to unlearn. Just like the fact that he hates Potter simply because he is an insufferable arrogant little git. Time forms a vacuum when the world halts at the death of the most evil Dark Wizard to walk the earth, so Draco doesn't notice much when he ends up stalking Weasley for most of the day. Sometimes, he deprives Weasley of an orgasm after he comes hard inside Weasley's arse and pulls his dick out too soon. Draco doesn't care, because this has nothing to do with Weasley and everything to do with bitter retribution.

Weasley is all awkward angles and gaussian curves, and Draco takes his time fucking him face down on a desk. Draco remembers the gagging hex they cast on him outside the library that nearly made Draco choke to death, and he grips the sides of Weasley's torso and drives roughly into his arse until Weasley's hips are banging without restraint on the edge of the desk.

Weasley's skin is translucent and dirty with the fawn freckles scattered across it. Draco sucks on the skin on Weasley's back, the base of his neck, the long column of his throat, across his chest, the hollow of his collarbone. The dark shapes playing on Weasley's skin are like puzzle pieces, and Draco makes some more with bites on his shoulders.

Draco ignores Weasley's strangled cries of protest when he pushes Weasley face to the wall, shoves his trousers down low enough so Draco can rip his arsehole with one, quick thrust and rams into it until his cock becomes raw with friction and come. Weasley's screams are bloody like his arsehole is afterwards. But Draco doesn't care, because they told him his mother is dead, and Draco can't give a shit about things like bleeding arseholes now, can he?

When Potter batters his face into a bloody pulp, Draco is not surprised. He welcomes the beating and tries to smirk through the punches. They pull Potter off him, and Draco doesn't notice the leftover crooked front tooth because Weasley is there, unfazed and expression indiscernible. And Draco thinks, one, two, three hundred galleons--three, four, five hundred blowjobs, and Weasley doesn't move to anywhere near Potter, because he turns and just walks away.

Draco wishes Potter had smashed his skull in before they pulled him off, because Draco doesn't think a Malfoy orphan is of any importance in the larger scheme of events. And so Draco waits, because there is nowhere else to go, and trying for humor can only get him so far.

-end-

Post-fic Notes : Yes, lovat is indeed a word. According to the Encarta World English Dictionary, lovat is "a color that is a muted dusty mixture of green and yellow or green and blue".