The Duke of Silence

I. The Grass Dreams of Clouds and Fairy Lands

Draco dreams. The places he goes to when he's asleep seem far more real than the empty rooms he occupies when he's awake.

He woke abruptly one night, thrown out of a wet dream. He had been sitting in a plush armchair, and there was an old, stale chocolate-and-cream cake on the table. A small, plump woman in dungarees bit into it, and suddenly Draco was also devouring it, smearing its soured cream and crumbs on her face, chewing the cake and licking at her chin. And a man, her man, big, clumsy and sturdy, grabbed them both from behind and they staggered to another room, accompanied by somebody's snickers. There was, miraculously, a big sofa covered with formerly white sheets dotted with small pink flowers. They tumbled onto it, the woman sandwiched between him and the man. He felt weak and heavy, as if his limbs were balloons filled with water. He couldn't make himself raise his hand to her soft squishy breasts. The woman pulled his shirt open, glancing at the guy, and sucked Draco's fingers into her mouth. Draco felt as though his whole body had become his hand. He'd never had his fingers sucked like this, and he puzzled at the sensation. It was uncomfortable, his nails clicked against her teeth and scratched her palate, and her tongue felt like a slippery slug sliding between his fingers. This disgusting sucking, together with the slack open mouth of the man who watched it, and his hand that clutched at Draco's shoulder, were at the same time dirty and very arousing. When the woman stuck his hand into her wet cunt and pushed at his fingers, urging them to move, all he could do was grab his cock with his other hand and jerk it, furiously, not bothering to fully pull off his pants. He came and came, reaching his hand and face to the soft, moist body, only to find the soft and moist sweat-twisted sheets.

He's 19 and he wants sex. Real sex with real hot bodies, it doesn't matter what kind of bodies or whom they belong to. He craves touch his skin remembers only fleetingly, but all he has are weird dreams in the empty, cold house, where he's alone and forgotten. He dreads evenings because they mean that all he gets is his own hand for a lover and dissipating illusions for a life.

He often dreams of funerals. Sometimes they mimic those he attended; sometimes they are bizarre or absolutely improper, like that dream when found himself in an unfamiliar forest and tried to talk two Muggles into selling him a polished mahogany coffin. Or like the dream when he came upon a whole line of coffins, all of them brightly coloured, like the dress robes of fifth-year Hufflepuffs, escorted by groups of grieving relatives in ridiculously cheery clothes.

But other times, when he isn't whining and sulking in misery, he looks forward to his dreams.

He once dreamt that he had a handful of paints. Round aquarelles, all fresh and all bright yellow. He never remembered himself as happy as he was when he woke up then.

Sometimes he dreams he flies, but never on his broom. He just floats a foot or two above the ground as though carried on a stream; he can't control where it takes him. He always wakes relaxed and sated after it.

But there are never any sounds. Even when people - rarely - speak to him, they don't actually speak. They only communicate meaning. It's for the better, he thinks.

II. What Is the Sound of One Hand Clapping?

Sirius hovers at the foot of the bed and watches the boy thrash about in his sleep, whimpering, his arrogant face screwed up in an open, ugly grimace.

Draco won't wake himself with his screams.

Sirius still can't comprehend how Draco managed to summon him after he had been beyond this world for nearly three years. Nor does he understand how he was bound to Malfoy Manor. Something must have gone wrong in the ghost department. Ghosts shouldn't randomly pop up just anywhere. Malfoy Manor is the home of the Malfoys, but he's not a Malfoy. It would be logical if he were - heaven forbid - Lucius' relative. But he's not; he's Narcissa's cousin. Not that it's much better. He thinks that since Draco is the only living Malfoy and the only living relative of Sirius - maybe that's why he's here.

Draco never told him how he did it. Nor did he ever say whom he was trying to call. But Sirius can make an educated guess, on both occasions.

As soon as Draco saw who he had summoned, he went from outrage to despair to spite to helpless outrage again. Not that Sirius himself did any better. He remembers screaming and ranting without pause until finally he realised that they were pouring out two absolutely independent streams of insults. The boy didn't answer him, didn't notice what he was saying at all, and the words that were coming from his mouth were slightly and eerily distorted. It was ridiculous; it was wrong. The boy's terrible eyes were round like an owl's, so light-grey that they seemed not have irises. They were frightened and hopeless on Malfoy's screwed up and miserable face - and Sirius suddenly understood. The boy was deaf. His mouth was yelling words he didn't hear. Sirius fled.

Sirius heard the whole story from one of the portraits. After Lucius' failure during the Department of Mysteries raid, the Dark Lord vindictively made the beautiful manor a Death Eater playground. During his winter holidays Draco had to listen to the sound of screaming day in and day out, not knowing if it was a toy of a Muggle, or a Muggleborn witch, or maybe his mother that had displeased her Lord - which eventually happened. Finally, the boy had blocked out the sound of screaming forever when he couldn't stand it any longer - by blocking out his hearing totally and permanently.

He had heard about a similar case, a long time ago. One of Lily's Muggle relatives during the war was to pass information through a Muggle device - much like the Floo, actually, but without being able to see the other person. Once, one of the commanders forgot to talk directly into the device. The woman couldn't hear him, but she needed to pass the information on. She concentrated very hard - and the nervous tension made her go deaf.

He never thought a Malfoy could be capable of being human enough to inflict damage on himself.

In those first weeks he roamed the house from one end to the other, every room, every corner and passage, to be anywhere but near his host. He was boiling, impotent rage gnawing at his insides, but too soon he had to face the fact that there was nothing he could do. He was stuck in the manor, with only Draco Malfoy for company. Draco Malfoy, whose conversations with himself were sometimes weird-sounding, sometimes plain scary. Sirius told himself that it ought to be easier than twelve years in Azkaban. He didn't want to think of 'forever'.

III. Children of Love, We'll Fall Asleep in Your Soft Paws

He can't do magic despite having his wand, but he can transform. Draco says it's because he is the only ghost in the manor, so he can direct what passes for magic in his reality only onto himself. He nearly tried some spells on himself at first - he would have, if Draco hadn't stopped him, shouting about stupid Gryffindors who act before thinking. They fought again, but in the end he had to admit that the boy was being reasonable, although rude: who, indeed, would fix him if his attempt went wrong?

The manor is empty and oppressive, more so with only one boy, one ghost and a dozen house-elves as inhabitants. Plus numerous portraits, but they don't count; they are even more spiteful here than the portraits in his family house. And one visitor, once a month. Discouraging math.

At first, he didn't see why Draco chose his paranoid solitude, but now he understands. He's an invalid, a Malfoy and the son of two condemned Death Eaters, where else could such a combination lead?

There were many firsts in their routine. Ironically, Sirius started seeing Draco as a person after he caught him in an intimate situation. He was floating through the manor, deep in his ever-circling thoughts, and came upon the boy moaning and thrusting into his own fist. What made his equilibrium break and rearrange itself wasn't beauty divine; no, Draco wasn't beautiful. Nor was there anything particularly erotic about it; he doesn't care about erotic nowadays. Draco's eyes were squeezed shut, his face was pinched, he was bony, and his skin was bluish in the moonlight. It was his thin, long feet curling and shuffling on the sheets - graceless and somehow very real. It was the angry jerks of his hand and the tears streaming down his temple into his ear, his helpless solitary arousal and despair that made Sirius come to him the next day and mouth "I'm sorry" until Draco caught what he was saying. It was Draco's choked sobs when he curled into a tight ball, wiping his semen on the sheets, that made him patiently stay by him, day after day, until Draco got used to his constant presence.

The boy really is a spoiled brat, he thinks. He sulks, he rants, he often cries and throws tantrums. But it doesn't matter. Draco reads a lot, and he lets Sirius hover at his shoulder. He even doesn't protest too much when Sirius waves his hands in front of Draco's face after Draco turns a page too quickly. Sometimes they read different books, and Draco turns pages for him. So what if he often forgets to do it until Sirius signals for his attention?

Sirius can speak, but Draco can't read lips. He speaks nevertheless, because Draco can catch the general sense from his expressions and gestures. Draco could read what Sirius wants to say if he wrote it down, but there's no ghost-quill or spectre-paper available. When necessary, Sirius draws words with his hand in the air, or against a flat surface. Misunderstandings happen all the time because Draco is impatient, and Sirius is no less so. They quarrel in the same absurd way as always, then sulk in different rooms.

Draco likes it when Sirius turns into a dog. He learned the name Padfoot after the fourth time, when Sirius traced the name for him on a table, and the tentative small smile on Draco's face that made him look ten years younger was worth any tantrums or arguments.

When the desire to say something intimate and be understood overcomes Sirius, he traces big letters with his finger on Draco's bare skin, so that Draco can see his words and feel them in chilly trails. He tries not to give in to this urge too often; it makes Draco cry.

IV. His Neighbour Can Tell That He Was a Recluse

"He comes every day." Snape's voice is dull and expressionless. Sirius wouldn't believe it's him if the man weren't sitting in front of him, staring at the fire. "He doesn't let me go." His face, chiseled by an artless, heavy-handed sculptor with weird ideas of human appearance, is expressionless, too. His rough, broad, short-fingered hands - surprising that such hands are on his long skinny body - slightly tremble around his tumbler.

He never looks at Sirius, the only exception being when he acknowledged his presence that first time. He just speaks. Sirius sometimes wonders if Snape fully realises who he is and what he is, or if he cares at all. Snape repeats the same things, as if every time he had to tell them from the very beginning, or as if he has forgotten that he's already said them numerous times. Maybe he does forget.

He looks weakened, and there are grey locks on his temples, but Sirius long ago forgot how to gloat. Maybe Snape senses it, and that's why he feels comfortable in the presence of his former nemesis - if he realises it, that is. Maybe it's easier for him to put up with a ghost as an odd sort of counselor, because his existence now centers around another ghost. It's understandable if you look at it from where Sirius is.

He visits Draco every month, always on the same day, as precise as a clock, and has been doing it for almost three years. He always stays late. And for the time that Sirius has been here, Draco always leaves Snape alone for a while so that he can sit by the fire with his drink and speak to him. Sirius is used to it.

Snape's voice drones and drones in the complaint Sirius knows by heart. It doesn't change much, because little changes in Harry's visits to Snape. Harry appears in the evening, hovering just above the floor. The hem of his robe is shredded and looks like an untidy nightgown, white and semi-translucent. But still, it's clearly stained with blood, and Snape says it makes the impression that he was slaughtered in bed.

Harry doesn't wear glasses, which seems to undo Snape most of all. Or maybe it's what undid him in the first place; maybe seeing Harry's dead face when he lay there on the grass with his robe shredded and soaked with blood and his eyes calm and defenseless without his spectacles, was one drop too much for Snape. Sirius doesn't know. He thought ghosts' shapes were objective, but now when he listens to Snape he isn't so sure.

He had never spared a thought to Snape's feelings. He knew the man had a long memory, but he never thought that it could go hand in hand with anything as human as uneasiness or regret, with anything human at all. Now that Sirius observes him, it seems very logical that he could feel, or even maybe love, or be in pain.

Snape says he wants to touch Harry, just once, to feel warm skin under his palm. He's glad that Harry is colourless; he says he wouldn't be able to sleep if he saw his eyes as they used to be. Not that he sleeps much anyway. And he wants to change Harry's bloody robes, they look too wrong. They look like a bloody nightgown - Snape goes for another round - as though he was murdered there, in Snape's room, in Snape's bed.

A few years ago, Sirius muses, he would have killed the bastard if he had learned that Snape had thought of touching Harry. If he himself had been still living, of course. Or, if he had had the choice of whom to haunt, he would have made Snape's life patently miserable. A few years ago he would have bargained with demons to have a chance to be near Harry. He remembers the tantrum he threw when he realised whom he was bound to see day after day after day. And another tantrum when he learned that Harry was dead, and no bargain would ever give him a chance to be with him. Now it doesn't bother him that his godson is nearby but still unreachable. Sirius even wishes that Snape had had something with Harry; maybe then he wouldn't have to hear about Harry's unbecoming robes time and time again. After all, he has another boy to look after.

V. A Boy and a Dog Are Crying by the Window

Sometimes Sirius thinks he's living the life of a eunuch, only worse. He doesn't have physical demands but his emotional needs are the same: the wish to caress in tenderness, to embrace or be hugged for comfort, to kiss and be kissed. Eunuchs can have it. He can only watch.

Draco writhes on the twisted sheets, both hands busy. His fingers thrust into himself, and the muscles of his wobbling, spider-like legs contract in the attempt to find a comfortable position. Sirius hovers by his side, pretending to sit by him. He doesn't lean over Draco, he tries not to get too close, because if either of them forgets himself and tries to touch, the illusion of their love-making they so desperately hold on to will be abruptly shattered. They have enough rude awakenings, so Sirius carefully sits and watches. Draco pants, Draco babbles, Draco tells him what he wants him to do and how, Draco moans about where he wants his hands and mouth, never taking his feverish eyes off him. Sirius wants to smell him, but there are no scents for him anymore.

As the winter approaches, Draco becomes paler; his skin looks as dull and lifeless as a piece of parchment wiped clean too many times. And his nightmares grow worse. Sirius can't stand it when the boy impulsively raises his hand - to touch Sirius's face or to stroke his arm. Sirius can't stand it when Draco's eyes suddenly shatter with pain and he catches his weak-willed hand half way, when his head jerks and he slumps against the wall. Sirius can't stand to watch how the boy lolls his head away in such a hopeless gesture, how he drops his hands and perches on the windowsill to look out with unseeing eyes. Sirius knows he can do nothing, and in these moments all he wants is to be dead - completely, irreversibly, to never have come here in the first place. But this is only one more thing he can't do. He turns into a big half-transparent dog, rises to his hind legs and rests his head above Draco's lap. Together, they stare into the darkness beyond the window. Padfoot listens to the raindrops quietly tapping on the glass that Draco can only see, while Draco's tears drop through the dog's head onto his own hands and knees, and he whispers broken, distorted words in his eerie, uneven voice.

The end