Timeturning

I want to stop time.

I wish there was some new magic, some devilry, some transfiguration of moments into eternity, so that somehow I might stay here in this place, in this hour, caught up in soft warmth with you forever. I want to conjure an eternal Time-Turner, and turn and turn and turn it until every captured moment is another beat of your heart, another flash of emerald eyes, another burn of your hands on my skin.

I reach for you and you bring me into your arms, so warm and so alive and so deliciously real, that even as the seconds tick away, I ache to reach out and grab them back so that I won't ever have to stop touching you or tasting our tear-stained kisses.

Oh, but time passes, Harry, and morning will come. Has to come. Tomorrow I have to go to that place I call home (although home is always ever with you), and take a vow, make a public promise of eternal devotion to someone I've never loved, never wanted, but to whom I've been tied with an invisible chain since childhood.

I don't hate her. It's not her fault any more than it is mine. It's all for Family Honour, they tell me (though you are my only family, Harry). Duty to posterity, you see. Pass on the Name, keep the blood pure, live the Lie for another sorry generation to inherit, and so on, and so on. It's what Malfoys do, whatever that means.

Tomorrow is a day for false vows, for everyone, for she has as little desire to be with me as I with her. We'll say the particulars, and ride off into the miserable sunset together, and I may never see you again.

So tonight, as I hold you close to me and see the love and the sadness in your amazing eyes, I make my real vow, the only true promise I've ever made in my life. I love you, Harry, and I will always, never forgetting for a second that your heart is my home, that you are love, and that everything else is falsehood.

Even if I never look at you again, I'll remember always the flash of your eyes, the song of my name on your lips, the fierce, wild heart of you that saved me from myself and made me someone worthy of love. Your love, Harry. You love me (me!), and that's what I'll keep forever.

And for now, for these last few sweet hours, just let me love you. Let me hold you close and bury my fingers in the dark softness of your hair. I want to gather up every look, every touch, every cry from your hot, sweet mouth as a page in my memory book.

Maybe I can't stop time, Harry, but I can keep our time, hold a little bit of it inside (but oh, how I'll miss you!). And maybe, that's like having a bit of forever with me. Just a little.