Dragonweed

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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 6 -- Confrontations and Confessions

"out of the lie of no
rises a truth of yes"
e.e. cummings

--- Draco ---

War is over, I am alive, Harry is alive, and I should be happy, but I only feel deathly tired.

The first week I have my own private room in the hospital wing at Hogwarts, then I am moved to the general ward. My condition is considered severe at first and I need expert treatment, but most of all I need rest and plenty of light. A specialist in Dark Injuries has been called in from Bulgaria. Not just for me; Madam Pomfrey tells me there are several patients here with different types of Dark Injuries -- Harry, Sirius Black, a number of others I don't know. Dark Injuries are difficult to treat; some of them affect only the body but most of them go deeper and cast shadows on the mind, too. Others again affect only the mind, and this is the most severe type. My injury belongs to this category, and so, apparently, does Harry's. Madam Pomfrey has already dealt efficiently with my Dark Mark, an injury, if you can call it that, which affects both body and mind. Physically, it is limited, a small deep burn, but it is worse than most because of the powerful magic and symbolism connected with it. Now there is only a faint, sickly-looking shadow left of it on my arm, but I still feel the imprint on my mind.

I hear that Granger is here, too, receiving treatment for a dark burn. I know what it's like to feel it eat its way into your flesh and your mind. And Granger's burn covers almost half her body. The mere thought of how painful it must be makes me feel sick.

As soon as I can get out of bed, I go to see her.

"Ten minutes," Madam Pomfrey whispers before she leaves us.

Granger looks so small in the crisp, white hospital bed. When she opens her eyes and sees me, she smiles and holds out her uninjured hand to me. I take it and sit down on the edge of the bed, careful not to bump against her.

"Hello, Muggle-girl."

"Draco," she says. "Oh, I'm so glad to see you. Thank you."

"For what?"

"For coming to see me. For surviving. But, most of all, for what you have done. For Harry and for all of us." She is choking. "I know the risks you took. The danger you placed yourself in."

I'm embarrassed by the fervour in her voice and try to just brush it off.

"Well, it's not all that easy to kill off a Malfoy."

"That's what you said to me before you left."

Her hand squeezes mine. She looks very tired, and I ask her if she wants me to leave.

"No. I thought I heard Madam Pomfrey say ten minutes? Please stay those ten minutes."

"Is it bad? The pain, I mean?"

"It would be if Madam Pomfrey didn't supply me with the right potions."

"I'm so sorry."

"No, Draco, don't be. Not for me. I'm alive, after all. So are you. And Harry. You have been very, very brave -- you more than anyone."

I'm not used to receiving thanks or being praised; I don't know how to deal with it. It makes me feel warm and infinitely sad at the same time. I have been a coward all my life except this past year.

"You had part in it, too, you know." I say this in a low voice, not looking at her, because I'm not used to saying things like this either. My life hasn't exactly been lined with niceties. Formal niceties, perhaps, but hardly heartfelt.

"God, I was scared!" she says. "When I think back, I know I've been scared for a whole year. I just didn't realize it until it was over."

"I know, Granger. I think we all felt that way. Well, maybe not all. Out there, on the battlefield... there were two people who didn't seem scared. Dumbledore and... and Harry." I have problems saying his name. "And Harry was their prime target." I have to swallow hard. "He thinks I tried to kill him, did you know that?"

"Oh, Draco, he won't go on thinking that. Dumbledore will tell him what really happened." She looks at me and I know she can see my hurt. She says with a strange note of compassion in her voice: "You... really do love him, don't you?"

To her dismay, and my own, I bury my face in her bedclothes and begin to cry. She moves her hand up to my hair, stroking, soothing. Floodgates open inside me. I hold on to the feeling of her hand in my hair, or I would drown.

Granger and I did a good deal of talking during those months before I left Hogwarts to go back to my father and the Death Eaters. Her clever strategies and analyses impressed me deeply, and, forced to spend time together, we found we actually liked each other. I think we were both equally surprised. I found myself confiding in her, and the last week before I left I even talked to her about Harry. By then I knew I could trust her not to say anything to him. She was calm and sensible as always, but I sensed her emotion seething under the surface. She loves Harry very much. It was hard work to convince her that I do, too. At first I was afraid we would be rivals, but I soon understood that Harry is her friend. No romantic involvement.

Harry, naturally, did not know about any of this. By keeping the number of people involved in my mission down to a minimum, we could minimize the risk for me. The simple principle of fewer mouths, less talk. Harry and everyone else would believe that I had gone to join the Dark Side. It meant that I had to risk losing his love, but I had to take that risk, along with all the others. There are times in your life when you really have no choice. There is only one path you can take, if you want to be able to live with yourself. As if life has chosen for you. And that, I thought, was something that Harry should understand better than anyone.

I am still crying when Madam Pomfrey comes in to say that my ten minutes are up. I don't even have the strength to feel stupid when I lift my wet face from the bedclothes. Madam Pomfrey takes my arm gently and leads me back to my room, leaving a potion for me to take. I go on crying for hours, not even sure why. When I finally stop I feel purged, and for the first time I sleep a sweet, healing sleep without bad dreams.

* * *

After two weeks I am moved from the hospital wing to a spacious private room -- in the Gryffindor tower. The beautiful irony of it makes me laugh.

I feel decidedly better now, and every day I take long walks through the grounds. The bright winter sunlight caresses my eyes, dispersing the darkness of the long months behind me. I take deep breaths, as if the art of breathing is new to me. At times, I can almost pretend I am well.

But nights have always been bad for me. In the dark, with no colours or movements around you to distract your eyes and your mind, the inner pictures overcome you. And the pictures in my mind could furbish a chamber of horrors.

It's not only the things I have seen but also the things I have done. Betraying my family. My parents are dead and I am the cause of their deaths, indirectly if not directly. They never knew that, but I know. They both chose to die rather than go to Azkaban, and I am thankful (a hopelessly inappropriate word). I am told I did what was right. I know I did what was right. But that does not change anything in effect. They were my parents. The grief, the guilt is mine.

I still have not been allowed to see Harry. I go up to the hospital wing every day, but Madam Pomfrey keeps saying he is not strong enough. I think I see disapproval in her eyes when she talks to me, but I might be imagining that. I need to talk to Harry. I need to see him. The picture of him kneeling in the mud, exhausted, on the verge of unconsciousness, looking up at me with fear and resignation in his eyes, has etched itself into my memory. I want to rub it out. I must see him.

I talk to Dumbledore. He is a very dangerous man. After talking to him for five minutes you find yourself telling him your most private thoughts, confessing your deepest fears -- you feel there is no point in denying them since he has already seen them and is just waiting to see if you will be honest with him. He promises me he will talk to Harry.

When he returns with the information that Harry refuses to see me, I almost black out. It was bad enough when Madam Pomfrey stopped me, but to know that Harry himself does not want me is excruciating. I stagger and Dumbledore has to guide me to a chair. He is very earnest.

"Draco, you must understand that Harry does not know anything about what you have done for us. I haven't talked to him about it -- I think that is for you to tell him. He feels betrayed by you and he is defending himself against anything that will make him think about you. You shouldn't let it deter you. You should see it for what it is -- proof of how deeply he feels about you." He pauses and gives me a searching look. "You have shown remarkable strength, Draco. Please be strong a little while longer. Today I planted a seed in his mind and I know there is good soil for it. Just give it some time to grow."

* * *

And in another couple of days, Dumbledore tells me I can go up to the hospital wing.

"Harry has not given me his permission to let you in, but I know he is ready."

* * *

He is asleep when I come into the room, and I sit down in the chair by the bed, waiting for the wave of emotion to pass. I have waited so long for this moment, but now I'm here I don't know what to do. Part of me wants to run away. He looks so vulnerable, so fragile. I would like to touch him but I don't want to disturb his sleep. My heart beats in loud slamming strokes and I realize I am afraid. Afraid of his reaction to my presence. Afraid he will order me out of the room. Afraid he will never want to see me again.

I am compelled to touch him. I reach out and push the black hair from his face, very gently. He doesn't stir. I bend over him and kiss his scar, light as a feather. I remember I always imagined it to be hot to the touch, but it isn't. It just has the same soft warmth as the skin around it. It seems less prominent than it used to be, but perhaps it's only a trick of light.

I have been sitting there a long time, so long that the afternoon light has turned into dusk, when I see tears oozing silently from under his lashes. I catch my breath. It is almost unbearable. The pain that takes hold of me is raw and bleeding, as if my skin has been peeled off. I grip the arms of the chair so hard the chair creaks.

It must have woken him up. He opens his eyes, looks up at the ceiling, unfocused, tears still flowing. When his eye catches me he gasps and sits bolt upright. I know I have an unfair advantage but I can't wait.

"Harry."

He stares at me in shock, as if I were the Dark Lord himself. The air between us is so dense with emotion and unsaid words you could catch it in your fist and squeeze it into a ball.

"What do you want?" His voice is a hoarse whisper.

"I want to talk to you. I wanted to see how you are."

"I'm fine."

This is such a trivial, blatant lie that, in spite of everything, I have to laugh. It's a ghost of a laugh and it hangs in the space between us, fluttering like a trapped bird.

"You don't look it."

Oh, his eyes through the dusk. They are everything I have remembered them to be; they reveal his emotions so clearly it makes me tremble.

"Why?" he asks.

I'm not sure what the why refers to. Why am I here? Why did I go away? Why do I love him? If he will only let me, I will try to answer all of these questions.

--- Harry ---

"Why?" I ask.

He just looks at me.

"Why did you leave?" I sound accusing and scared, like a child who thought his parents would never come back, confronting them when they do. And I realise that this is exactly how I feel. My parents left me when I was so young I can't even remember them. All my life I have been terrified that the people I love will leave me. I have hardly dared love anyone for fear they would leave. I loved Draco -- and he left. "Why did you go to them?"

He leans back in the chair.

"It was only my body," he says.

I feel a hot surge of anger. Of all the off-hand, arrogant replies...! Draco Malfoy acts true to form. No one else in this world can make me so furious. I clench my fists and the tension in the room could blast a hole through the entire castle.

"What the fuck is that supposed to mean," I say through gritted teeth, so angry I could cry again.

"I went because Dumbledore asked me to," he says softly. "I didn't join them, Harry. I went there to destroy them." He looks up at me now but I find I can't meet his eyes. "I went there as a spy for your side. An infiltrator."

My mind is throbbing. I can't believe what I'm hearing. Again, I can't accept that I should have been so wrong, but he must be telling the truth. I don't trust him, but I trust Dumbledore, and Dumbledore would never have let Draco into the room if this had not been the truth.

"Go and talk to Granger," he is saying. "She knows everything about it. She was one of the people who planned the whole thing."

I have never really believed that your jaw can drop, but mine drops now.

"Hermione?"

"I believe that's her name, yes."

He is making me so angry I could hit him.

Or I could take him in my arms and kiss him.

That thought makes me shake so badly I have to steady myself against the bedside table. My mind clears slowly. If it's true that he has been an infiltrator all this time, he must have taken enormous risks. Why would he do that? Well, he wouldn't, unless... unless he really believes in the same things I do. Unless he really values the same things I do.

"Why? Why did you agree to do it?" My lips are cold and I can hardly force the words over them. "It meant you had to... betray your family. You had to leave behind all you believed in. Why?"

I'm repeating myself but I can't help it.

"I didn't have to leave anything I believed in, Harry," he says, and finally I manage to lift my eyes to his. Oh, those lovely, cloudy-grey eyes. He will never know I have dreamed of them every night since he left to go back to his father, dreamed of their beauty and their ever-changing expression. This has lived in me ever since he left: His eyes, and those kisses in the Hall the night our lives were turned upside down. "On the contrary. I went to fight for the things I did believe in. But betraying my family -- yes, that was hard. The fact that they betrayed me all my life did not make it any easier. I was naïve enough to think it would."

I know that behind these words lies an entire world of pain and fear and doubt that I know nothing about. I can't even guess at the things he has had to suffer. Compared to his courage, my own is nothing but a child's ridiculous bravado. My path has been straight and clear and I have had support all the way, where he has had to find his own way through the dark forests of lies and treason.

How can I even begin to say I'm sorry?

His eyes are still resting on me, almost dreamy now, like that night in the garden, so long ago. In another life. He stands up and takes his cloak from the back of the chair. I don't want him to leave, not now, not ever. But I say nothing. I don't even make a gesture. He looks at the beaker on my bedside table, and smiles a little.

"I see Madam Pomfrey is feeding you dragonweed."

He goes to the door, opens it, and stops. Without turning around, he says:

"Harry, I want you to know... that most of all, I did it because I love you."

The door closes behind him and I am left listening to my own sudden, startled sobs, dry and uneven as if I have never cried before.

--- Draco ---

I walk down the corridor very fast, not really seeing where I am going. So that was it, at last. I have finally told him that I love him. I did it without looking at him, without his saying it back, without string quartets and roses. I have no idea what his reaction was. I don't think I want to know. It was the dragonweed potion that made me do it. When I saw it on his bedside table I suddenly remembered that Potions class a hundred years ago, when I was so aroused at the sight of the blood-red drops on his cheek. Somehow I feel that's where it all started. I know it's not true, but at least it must hold some sort of poetic truth.

Back in my room I toy with the idea of hastily packing my things and leaving. I could just leave and try to go on with my life as if none of this had ever happened; I could go to Muggle London and create a new identity for myself, an entirely new life.

Realizing I will never be able to put my memories behind me except with the help of an extremely powerful Memory charm, I decide that the best remedy right now, if only temporary, is to go to Hogsmeade and get myself thoroughly drunk.

* * *

Some hours later I sit at The Three Broomsticks, swaying in my seat; Madam Rosmerta's potent Muggle whisky having done its job only too well. My elbow keeps slipping off the table, and whenever I try to stand up the room spins in an alarming fashion. The whisky has not taken my misery away, only diluted it and mixed it with a ridiculous wish to laugh. A clear and persistent little voice at the back of my mind keeps asking me how the hell I think I'm going to get home.

"I'm a wizard, for fuck's sake," I tell the voice loudly.

"Are you really, Malfoy," someone says into my ear. "Who are you trying to convince?"

When I'm sure this is an external voice I turn my head gingerly, and my elbow slips off the table again, almost making me fall off my chair. Someone is standing there, looking down at me patiently. The flaming red hair, the incredible amount of freckles... A Weasley. Which Weasley I can't tell. After a minute's deeply concentrated discussion with myself I come to the conclusion that it's one of the twins. I wouldn't know which one even if I were sober.

"You look as if you're ready to go home," he says, and he's not mocking or hostile at all. "Come on, Malfoy. I'm going to Hogwarts anyway. Thought you might want company."

I'm too drunk to mind him putting his arm around my waist and almost lifting me up from my seat. He hoists me out into the street. I lean heavily on him, thinking how absurd it is that I should have to rely on a Weasley to keep my dignity. The last thing I remember from this evening is my own high, hysterical, drunken laugh echoing through the quiet streets of Hogsmeade.