Dragonweed

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DRAGONWEED

"The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven"

John Milton, "Paradise Lost"

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CHAPTER 4 -- Dark Year

"unlove's the heavenless hell and homeless home"

e.e. cummings

--- Harry ---

That evening in the Hall is followed by frantic activity; organisation and preparation. The younger students are sent home immediately. Classes are cancelled and the older students have to make the hardest choices of their lives -- those who have not made their choices much earlier. Most of the Slytherin students simply disappear within the next day or two. No one is in any doubt that they have left to join the Dark Side.

Other students leave on missions for the other side. Ron and Ginny leave to join their father, but Hermione is among those who stay, and I am very glad to have her company. It is during this intense period after the meeting in the Hall that I realise the full extent of her strength and determination, her sharp, calm logic, her analytical brilliance in strategic matters. We sit through long conferences with Dumbledore, McGonagall, Sirius, Lupin and others, and I am very impressed by her. I feel that if I am part of the sword-arm of this closely united force, Hermione is definitely a vital part of its brain. She has always pointed out to me and Ron that knowledge is power. I haven't understood until now how true that is.

Draco Malfoy is still at Hogwarts, but I do not see a lot of him. I wonder why he is staying. We have not spoken since that fateful evening in the Hall. My eyes are constantly searching halls and corridors to catch a glimpse of the tall, elegant figure. The elegance is still there, but he seems very troubled and very busy. His steps are hurried and his grey eyes are darker than I have ever seen them, and they rarely meet mine. He seems very anxious to keep a distance between us. I am hurt by his coldness and I never try to approach him. Once or twice I think about sending him an owl, but something holds me back. I see him frequently conferring with Snape. One evening I meet him coming out of Dumbledore's office. I open my mouth to speak, but he brushes past me without a word or even a nod. The soft, ghostly touch of his fine robes against my hand is enough to leave me shaking.

At night my dreams of kisses, of soft lips and hot hands and silky blond hair, mingle with dreams of darkness and blood and the pervasive green light. I wake up feeling hollow; a deep, dark cave inside me. There is nothing to fill it except fear and steely determination.

We grow up very fast. For a lot of us, it happens in a matter of days.

War does not break out at once, as everyone had expected. There is fear and movement, sabotage and random attacks, but not war outright, not yet.

My schedule is very busy with meetings, hard physical training and Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts classes. Mad-Eye Moody is back, more fiercely dedicated than ever. I don't have much time to brood. I'm grateful.

About two months after the meeting (and our kisses) in the Hall, Draco Malfoy leaves. He has no words of goodbye for me, either spoken or scribbled down on a piece of parchment, no handshake, not even a look. One morning he is simply not there.

That night I lie sleepless in my four-poster, knowing that Malfoy's leaving means that I will very probably have to live my nightmare, the thing I dread most of all, more, even, than facing Voldemort again.

When the war breaks out, Malfoy will be my enemy and I will have to fight him.

--- Draco ---

One of the hardest things I have ever done was leaving Hogwarts without talking to you, Harry. I wanted to tell you where I was going, what the plan was, my intentions. I wanted to tell you I keep the memory of our kisses like a heavy, smooth crystal inside me, occasionally stopping to marvel at its beauty. I couldn't. I don't mean there was anything to stop me or that I was not allowed to, I just mean that I couldn't.

I had to leave secretly, knowing it would hurt you but unable to do anything else. It hurt me, too, but I have had lifelong practice at ignoring hurt, or at least hiding it.

That was more than a year ago, but you are so clear in my memory. You are what keeps me going, Harry. You are what keeps me human. When I stand in the background watching my father do unspeakable things to other human beings, a fanatic light shining in his eyes, or during the night-long Death Eater meetings where we discuss our strategies, or on our endless, uncomfortable journeys from country to country in the dark, I think of you. You keep me upright. You made me see what really matters in life, and it was not what my father has always preached.

Subservience, lies, deceit. Rituals. Blood. Darkness. How can I even begin to tell you about the horrors I see? Some of them I have to partake in. Some of them I can watch from a distance. That does not diminish my guilt. I am doing this for a purpose, but sometimes at night the agony overwhelms me, and I find myself kneeling pathetically on the hard flagstones, wishing there was a higher power I could pray to, someone to ask for forgiveness.

Our years at school stand out in my memory. They truly shine. They were so innocent. We were so innocent. Cruel, perhaps, in the way that children are cruel, but their cruelty is largely involuntary, it is mostly ignorance. We did not really know evil back in those days, Harry. Well, now that I think of it, I suppose you did. You had met it. But you were the only one among us.

I wish I could tell you what is going on here. I don't know if you will ever know, or if we will ever meet again. We might not come out of this alive. But I do know that we are fighting for all the right things, and what we feel for each other is one of those things.

Without hope, the soul dies. My hope, the one that I cling to in my most desperate hours, is that one day, somewhere far away from all this, where the air is sweet and pure and the streams are clear, we will meet and I will be able to find words to express my feelings for you. Sometimes I think that those feelings are the only sane and true part of me.

I will have to wait a long time for that. But I know how to be patient. I have had so much practice.

--- Harry ---

Darkness... mud... clashing flashes of white and green. Death Eaters closing in.Voldemort's flaring, excited red eyes. An explosion of violent pain in my head. At long last, we have reached the battle. Wands flashing and sparkling around me. Dumbledore at my side. Snape, black eyes burning. Sirius with a look on his face that I will never forget.

My vision is blurred with pain, my mind in shadow. My perception is weakening. I have no grasp of what is happening around me, or even to me. I hear the groans and screams and thuds of fighting. I repeatedly hear Avada Kedavra, or perhaps it is just an echo inside my head. The pain is excruciating, blazing white. I stagger and retch, trying to stay upright. At the edge of my blurred field of vision I see Bill Weasley fall heavily to the ground.

Flashes of green and red. I point my wand and my voice has a commanding note I have never known before. Lights are blinding. Darkness soars. This will never stop.

I slip in the mud and fall down on my knees. My wand rolls away from my hand and I feel mud squelch between my fingers. Mere inches from my hands, I see a pair of heavy black boots and the hem of black robes. Dizzy and defeated, I follow the folds of the robes upwards with my eyes. I find myself looking up at Draco Malfoy.

I have never known him to look so forbidding, so intimidating. He is towering over me, firm and still in the billowing battle, exuding a terrifying power I have never known him to possess. In my vision, hazy with pain, his hair seems to shimmer, a spiky halo of bluish white around his head. He is a pillar of blackness and metallic light, standing sternly over me like an avenging angel. I close my eyes, having no strength left in me to fight, and I know I have met my Angel of Death. I should have known that long ago. My last thought is that even if I had been fit, I don't know whether I could have fought him. His beauty shines through the mud and the grime and the blood. Even in this dark moment he is magnificent. Even in this dark moment I love him.

He lifts his hand and pain explodes white and hot in my head. Then there is only darkness.