More Than Enough

The war was over and Voldemort was dead. It was not a time of celebration, but I had ceased to expect that months ago. My trial was set for tomorrow and Harry's silence had been growing by the day.

They trusted him to keep me there, in his house, they said. But there were wards up around the walls, prickling magic that stung my hands and scraped against my dreams when I had them. They had managed to catch Blaise. My father was dead, but that was only a passing thought in my mind. I had not fought because I had nothing left in me to fight with.

Harry's words that night were the same as every night that past week. He always asked, and I always told him I wanted speed, severity, because it was what he needed. His fury went mutely, burned over my skin in the trails of his hands, and he took me fast, pushing hard and gripping my shoulders until he came. He locked his gaze to mine as he moved and never spoke, but I could hear the silent words floating between us.

He still fought, even though he had won, and I let him fight because his anger was warm and there was a chill reverberating in the air now that the war had ended. He brought it all out when we fucked, drove me into the mattress until I was arching in almost-pain, until his arms had five finger-shaped bruises each where I clutched them. Whenever he came, in the moments just after, he would look down at me, the sweat sliding over his brow, and I thought he knew that I simply conceded when he asked every night. For an instant. And then it was gone behind his mask.

It was enough in those weeks after the end of the war. My trial was approaching. More Death Eaters were tried and shunted aside to the waiting Dementors and I knew Harry was considering me behind his fathomless green eyes. Some nights when he asked me his question, it sounded like pleading. I always gave him the same answer because he needed the speed, the release, the painful dig of fingernails against his skin.

It was enough to be with him. I convinced myself of it every time I had that luxury.

Tonight, the last night, he looked at me, pulled me against him and kissed me and for an instant he let it go languid, as if he had read what I'd buried in my eyes. He wanted to give me something those nights, but I had enough, and his taking me on top of the blankets, clothing half off our bodies, harsh gasps into each other's mouths, teeth marks on my skin, was the lengthy final battle he would never win. I no longer knew what he was fighting for. But the fighting itself was necessary.

My existence throughout the war had been one of constant vague stupors, waking only when I was again allowed to return to his side, his bed. His warmth. He had it but didn't believe it, and it was like breathing again after drowning, to return and see him standing there, hand frozen halfway through his hair, neck craned toward the door looking at me. Hollow eyes, but they sparked sometimes when he first saw me. He moved inside me slowly the nights of my returns, as if he knew his touches were driving the haze from my lungs and eyes, as if he knew, and wanted to be the first thing I saw with cleared vision. I needed those walls with Voldemort, built them up so I could exist in his presence. Harry dismantled them painstakingly, his breath warm against my throat, hands curving up the lines of my thighs and hips. But they shook, his hands, and told me more than his silence could about what he was keeping inside, the fury and urge to injure that never quite made it to my body.

The night Albus Dumbledore died, Harry returned after midnight, his magic swarming around him like a crackling wave. His eyes were red around the edges, and hard, almost black.

I had seen the essence of nightmares that day. A room full of wizards condemned to kill one another under Imperius for Voldemort's pleasure. They were Aurors, some of them, several whose faces I recognized as ones that had stared at me hatefully once. Their gazes were glassy as they fell one by one to each others' wands. I had looked away from it, and still heard the soft empty grunts as their bodies tumbled. But I had not been there when Dumbledore arrived.

That night, his magic flowing through the room and drawing the air from my throat, Harry was frightening in a way that was entirely other. My insides vibrated with it, the room hummed. His hand were knotted as he pushed me down on the bed and shook me. I remember his face looked hollow and ugly in the dim light. He grabbed my jaw in a rough twist as he forced a kiss and it was harder, painful. There were no words, just his fingers digging into my flesh, his magic flowing over me until I choked, swallowed. Prepared myself for what was coming.

He froze suddenly, eyes traveling over my face, and he let go of me like he had been burned and pushed off the bed. The fury fixed itself on his features again.

"I can't be near you right now," he muttered. He turned away and I wrapped my fingers around the fabric of his sleeve and whispered something. His shoulders shuddered. Without looking at me, he left the room, left the house. I got up from the bed, sat in the corner farthest from the door staring over the tops of my knees, and did not quite think about whether I had heard what he said or not. I don't remember falling asleep, but I awoke when he returned, smelling of alcohol and silence. He tried once to lift me, and then gave up, sliding down to rest against my side. When I woke again, I was in bed in the clothes I'd been wearing the night before, and he was gone.

* * *

The last night before my trial he turned on me, spat, "What the hell are they going to charge you with anyway?" and slammed his hand through a window. The wards fluctuated so wildly he stumbled, and I nearly fell. When I could move again, I wrapped a towel around his hand. He pushed me away weakly, and then shook his head and slumped into a chair. I sat with him as the magic around us righted itself.

"They have plenty to charge me with," I said, and he looked at me mutely. I looked away until he took my hand in his. The towel was damp with blood, but I could feel his warmth again through his fingers.

"Draco... What do you want tonight? What do you want me to do?"

It was getting harder to stop myself. Tonight his eyes were deep pools of green, flickering. I wanted him to forget his battle, forget the war, forget that I spent half my time with the people who had been trying to kill him. I wanted him to remember the nights he had touched me all over, felt the contours of my skin slowly, guided me into his kisses, eased himself inside my body. The nights when the quietest whispers were enough, and possession was not spoken of because it was known. The nights he remembered that I was his completely. I wanted his tongue deep in my mouth, his body firm on top of me, and his fingers entwined with mine.

One more night, and then perhaps his anger would be gone. For a moment, looking into his eyes, I knew I would end up going along with it. It would be cold in Azkaban, until the Kiss, and then there would be nothing. I wanted all of him tonight, and that did not lie in his tenderness, I thought, or his gentility. He resided in his anger, his rage. The way he fought. I'd seen the world - my world - without him in it. I saw it every time I left for a mission and saw what happened in the absence of Harry. If I could have him for one night, my last night, in his entirety without any of the nets he put out to catch himself, then it was worth it to let him release.

"I want it fast. Hard."

Something inside his eyes wavered and diminished. He looked away before I could see it clearly, and when he turned back, I only saw green. "If that's really what you want," he whispered.

I nodded.

It was fast. His hands burned me, rocked me against him until I was voiceless, clinging to him as if he were the breath of life. His gaze fixed itself on me, hard edged as he thrust into me, as he curled his fingers over my ribs and across my chin. I twined myself around him, heard him hissing out his rage. Cursing the Ministry, Voldemort, seething Zabini's name, and his ever-present fingers gripping the soft skin of my forearm. I caught him looking down at me just after coming, and it was there, that knowledge that I'd lied to him, that I hadn't wanted this, and I pressed against him and kissed him, biting hard on his lip to draw him back again. But the look did not fade completely this time.

When he took me the second time that night, his movements were not as harsh and his eyes were hollow. I closed my eyes until I came, until he slid out of me, until he collapsed beside me. To open them would be to see, truly, and I did not want to break before they broke me the next day.

* * *

I had expected a certain coldness in the room of the Wizengamot, but the chill was absent and the room was actually warm. I'd expected the magical shackles on the chair to cut into my wrists, but they hovered just around my arms, not touching my skin until I moved. I had not expected Fudge to stand and demand that Harry remove himself from the court room until called for. Harry curled his lip wordlessly and sat in the chair directly to my right, outside of the circle of trial. His body was in shadow but his eyes gleamed from the harsh source-less light above my chair. He stared at Fudge, his body relaxed against the chair, but there was a stiffness to his limbs that besmirched his claim to nonchalance. Fudge saw it and turned from him, frowning. He did not ask Harry to leave again. The court members shifted.

Their questions were repetitive for a time, and I answered in a low voice. No, I do not have the Mark. Yes, I can show you my left forearm. No, I had no intention to take the afore-mentioned Mark. Yes, I was offered it. Yes, numerous times. No, it was never forced on me. Yes, my father had the afore-mentioned Mark. Yes, he demanded I take it.

The second round was less simplistic.

Yes, I was in frequent contact with one Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Yes. I was well-known in the Death Eater circle.

Yes... I did... have relations with one Blaise Zabini.

Harry stirred. I saw it out of the corner of my eye.

No. I do not currently have the afore-mentioned relationship with Blaise Zabini.

His eyes were beginning to glow, his eyebrows lowered over them. I had seen that spark many times, always beneath him on his bed, my eyes drifting shut, in the midst of feverish gasps and murmurs.

Yes. I was present at the deaths of the Surrey Muggles.

He looked at me, eyes wide. Just a momentary glance, but I knew the court members had seen it. My stomach began to ache.

No. I did not participate in the killings.

No...And here I stopped, raised a hand to rub my forehead, but found it blocked by the chains. I took a breath and looked straight at Fudge.

No. I did not attempt to stop them.

Harry was staring openly now, unheeding of half the Wizengamot watching him. I wanted to look. His magic was pulling me to do so, and he knew it, had all of his concentration focused on it. Another question, and when I did look at him finally, it was in the middle of my answer.

Yes. I have recently been in frequent contact with one Blaise Zabini.

His eyes dropped. The room felt cold at last and I shivered.

* * *

We were almost captured by two Aurors two months before the war ended. I doubt they would have listened to any excuses I made had they actually managed to apprehend Blaise and myself. It was not the common practice to wait for answers from those higher up, regardless of procedure. Our deaths could be chalked up to an accident, self-defense. The Aurors had their wands pulled, one on Blaise, one on me, and had the killing curse half whispered before Blaise managed to stun them. I was still trying to breathe when Blaise stalked to my side and began to kick and beat the Auror who had tried to kill me. He left his own attacker passed out in the dust, but on mine he vented a rage I had not yet seen.

He made no excuses for it, nor any explanations, and we Apparated away before the other Aurors in the area could find us.

Bellatrix Lestrange and my father were caught on the same day, weeks before the end, blasting their way through a group of Aurors until they fell to the superior numbers. My aunt's trial was swift and decisive, her self-proclaimed guilt flung into the faces of the Wizengamot alongside her own maniacal laughter. She enjoyed proving them right as soon as it was apparent her trial could go no other way. But only her own guilt was spilled; though the questions about the roles of people ranged from Snape to Pansy Parkinson to Peter Pettigrew, she simply sneered in the Wizengamot members' faces and declared that she did not recall. Her husband had been given the kiss a month prior. I listened to the account of the trial from one of Voldemort's operatives who had been there, wondering if it was the fact that she had nothing left to lose that drove her into silence about her compatriots, or if it was some sort of loyalty, echoing from her imprisonment years before for similar crimes.

The younger Death Eaters spoke in low whispers, their countenances betraying what Voldemort would never see: they did not have the fortitude for what Bellatrix had managed. I knew they would let every name they could think of past their tongues, should that stand between them and the Dementor's Kiss. Standing next to me, watching them through narrowed eyes, Blaise flung an arm around my shoulders, said, "Proud of it, that one. That is how I plan to go out. Laughing and leaving them nameless," and kissed me on the lips.

I let him until he ended it, and then I turned my face away. I didn't believe him. "You'd go down without anyone by your side."

He laughed. "The Dark Lord will win. Loyalty will be rewarded."

"You would not even say my name? Drag me down with you?"

"Not even yours," he said, smirking.

"Perhaps she only did it because Rodolphus is already dead."

He stiffened and looked at me with icy eyes, his hand tightening painfully on my shoulder. "No, Draco. She was loyal. To everyone." He let go of me and walked away.

When my father received his Kiss a month after his trial, Blaise came up behind me where I sat at his dining room table and gripped my shoulders silently. He leaned his head against my own and held me wordlessly for an hour before giving me my time alone again.

* * *

Harry stood in the circle of light, several meters from my chair. His eyes behind his glasses were narrowed and piercing, his scar showing starkly against his forehead in the bright light bathing the both of us. He faced the panel of Wizengamot members with a tiny quirk to his lips.

"Mr. Potter, are we to understand that the accused has been working as a spy for the late Albus Dumbledore?"

Harry cocked an eyebrow and tilted his head slightly. "I believe that's what I told you the last time you asked a version of that question."

Fudge's face hardened. He leaned out over the dais in front of him and sneered at Harry. "And I suppose you have proof of this?"

Harry's jaw clenched. I could see his fingers curling and uncurling at his sides. But his voice, when he spoke, was calm. "It wasn't customary for a soldier such as myself to be privy to the confidential plans of my superiors. You would have to ask Alb--" He stopped and closed his eyes briefly. "Severus Snape. I believe it was to him that Draco reported."

"You will refer to Mr. Malfoy as the accused, Mr. Potter."

Harry sighed heavily. "Then it was to Severus Snape that the accused reported."

Fudge flashed him an ugly grin. "Am I to understand that you, Harry Potter, the most important member of the resistance--" his tone bit into the still air of the room "--were not made aware of the espionage tactics and methods of the accused?"

Harry's eyes flashed. I could hear him grinding his teeth. "No. I had little knowledge of his missions. The fewer people who knew about it, the better."

"Mr. Potter, can you vouch for the whereabouts of the accused on the night of August fifteenth of last year?"

Harry blinked and narrowed his eyes. "I do not recall," he said pointedly.

"Mr. Potter, are you aware that the date in question marked the massacre of eighty-two wizards, witches, and Muggles in the area of Dublin?"

Harry waited a moment before answering. I heard him swallow. "Yes."

"Are you further aware that the accused was seen in the company of five known Death Eaters leaving the scene of a destroyed Muggle neighborhood?"

His eyes sparked. "Who saw him?"

"That is beside the point, Mr. Potter. The only thing you need know is that the person has been deemed truthful by our court."

Harry smirked at that. "So, by you."

Fudge's eyes flicked to me. I was troubled by the look in their depths. "Tell me Mr. Potter, are you aware that one Blaise Zabini has admitted to a long-standing and... intimate... relationship with the accused?"

Harry's hands tensed. His face flushed. His mouth opened but he did not answer. Fudge continued.

"Are you aware that the afore-mentioned has admitted to ordering the accused to participate in the massacres by providing information and sundry to the Death Eaters?"

Harry's fists were so tightly clenched that I could see his knuckles glaring white under the sheen of light. He spat his answer back at Fudge. "He was a spy! I'm sure he was ordered to cooperate to a certain extent by Professor Snape. His activities were all known and acceptable, or Snape would not have let him go."

Fudge sat back with an odd smile and settled his hands over his lap. "Unfortunately, as Severus Snape is currently lying catatonic in St. Mungo's with injuries unknown, we have no way of verifying that."

Harry's body was so stiff I thought he would topple. His face had gone several shades paler. He worked his mouth open and shut, but nothing came out, and Fudge's smile widened. I felt the snap in the air. A closing trap. Harry's eyes flickered to mine, dark under his eyelashes. I could not breathe.

* * *

There were blood spots on the carpet of Harry's front hallway. It was my blood, before it dripped off my arm. Blaise had not taken kindly to my refusal to kill a Muggle girl. I'd said it was unnecessary for what we were supposed to be doing - getting the lay of the land in York near midnight - all the while trying to keep myself from pitching over and vomiting in the grass beneath my feet. Blaise had killed her anyway, one wand flick, careless almost, and then opened my forearm from elbow to wrist in a fit of rage. There's your Mark, because you can't have any other! He was given to these fits every so often, and they made his moments of eloquent sanity all the more painful. I could see the man I'd been friends with when he was not infuriated. When he was, he resembled Voldemort.

I Apparated into Harry's hallway and his eyes met mine from the kitchen doorway, traveled down the side of my body, and followed the crimson drops off my fingertips to the carpet. He breathed in deeply through his nose and I knew he could smell whose magic had caused the wound by the dead whiteness of his knuckles where they gripped the door frame.

I often found myself wondering about that at night, stretched out next to Harry in the darkness, how it was that Blaise could never smell Harry's magic on me. But Harry's magic was everywhere, surrounding everything. He was the planned savior, and powerful, and his essence leeched from him in never-ending tides and followed other types of magic as if hunting them down. Everything magical seemed to have a wisp of Harry in it, almost a memory. It had a pungent spice, his magic, and it curled around me even as he slept, like drying leaves. And I would go in circles about Blaise's inability to sense it in greater quantities, always coming back to the fact that in his eyes, I was a spy, and Harry's magic belonged there, in my hair, my bones, my veins.

I half-wanted Blaise to smell the spice and decide that I was a traitor. Then my twisted confusion of a role would be finished. One way or the other.

The night I returned with my injured arm, I stood over the steadily growing spot of blood on the carpet and waited for Harry's magic to spark against me as it did when he was at his most furious. It did not. He looked at me silently and his magic shifted around my body in slow sleepy waves. I was frozen, afraid to move; his magic would change if I moved, snap me apart like so much dried wood.

He approached, touched my sleeve, held a cloth over the jagged slice, and his magic simply wavered there. Tired. When the bleeding stopped at last and he had me on his bed, the air rippled and I thought I knew what was coming. But he lay down beside me and stroked my skin, his fingers drifting over my throat and chest and hips and thighs, always coming back to my arm. The one with the angry red slice along its side in place of pale white skin. My Mark. Blaise's Mark. Harry's darker fingers hovered over my cloven flesh, and I could feel his bottled anger jumping between us like electricity. His mouth opened and closed that night, over and over, but he never voiced the words he was trying to say. His frame looked withered to me, held together by thin threads, and the sensation was echoed in the listlessness of his eyes.

He would not kiss me. I tried, seven times, and each time he turned away and swallowed.

I awoke to gray pre-dawn light, alone. His side of the bed had gone cold. I reached my hand out to feel the sheets for warmth and saw that my arm was unblemished, the raw red cut missing. As if it had never been.

I got as far as the kitchen before I knew he was not in the house. The fire grate was twisted, lying in a crumpled heap of iron; one of the chairs was on its side on the floor, the other shattered into pieces across the kitchen linoleum, and the residue of his magic threaded through all of it. The feathers of a shredded pillow drifted across the carpet in the breeze coming through an open window. I sank to my knees and cried in the middle of the hallway, curled into a ball, wracked by exhaustion and his absence.

He did not return for five days. Four nights I fell asleep against a damp pillow, my throat raw from the wrenching sobs. The last night I locked it all away. When he came back, there was nothing there to show.

* * *

When they brought Blaise in and led him to a newly conjured chair several feet from mine, he came with a stony look on his face, head held high, and I could see his contempt for the people holding his arms, the straight-backed chair he regally lowered himself into, the very dust motes on the air. His face was twisted oddly, staring up at Fudge in a way that made my skin prickle. It was enough for me to keep a deadpan. I would not allow myself to let Fudge in as he wished. But Blaise actively kept the man out, and told him in silence that he was in reality too lowly for the effort he was making.

"Mr. Zabini. Is it true that you were in frequent contact with the accused, Draco Lucius Malfoy, through the duration of the recently ended war?"

Blaise sneered at him, a slow curve to his lips. His eyes flicked lazily to me and then back again. "What can I say? We're close."

Fudge grumbled. "Mr. Zabini, kindly explain the nature of these episodes of contact between yourself and the accused."

Blaise's smile grew wider, revealing his white teeth. It was horrifying to watch. "He visits and we have tea and discuss our days in Slytherin."

"You are a known Death Eater, Mr. Zabini. Your stay of sentence has been granted for the duration of this trial and will be concluded as soon as we have the information we need concerning the accused. It is no secret that your 'discussions of our days in Slytherin' do not cover a mere nostalgia for school."

Blaise was grinning openly. I saw Harry shift once in his seat in the darkness beyond the circle of light and then subside. Fudge continued.

"Mr. Zabini, kindly tell the court which activities you were engaged in the night of August fifteenth of this year."

Blaise's black eyes glinted. He cocked his head to one side. "I believe I was... killing Muggles that evening."

The courtroom rustled. I watched Blaise's profile out of some sort of uneasy fascination. The straight jaw line, olive skin, and long eyelashes brought Bellatrix Lestrange to mind with frightening clarity.

"It has already been discovered that the accused was present on the night in question, and in your company. Was he engaged in the same activities as yourself?"

Blaise cast a slow look my way. His eyes were slitted, and they glinted with a certain slyness. He looked back at Fudge. "I don't recall him killing anyone, but he watched the show."

My eyes were fixed beyond him on Harry's shadowy form. He was looking back; I could feel his magic piercing through me. Blaise's shoulders gave a twitch and he jerked his head minutely in Harry's direction. I knew he could feel it as well. His jaw tightened but he remained focused on Fudge.

Fudge was frowning. "The accused did not participate in the killings?"

Blaise stretched his fingers out in front of him. They looked long, spindly and claw-like. "Not to my knowledge."

"Did you order him to?"

Now the Cheshire grin was back. "Numerous times."

"And he did not follow your orders?"

"Draco Malfoy has never been one to listen to me." Blaise was chuckling silently. His shoulders shivered with it. He glanced at me and I could see the day he'd demanded I come with him to take the Mark... and I had refused. My heart thudded in my chest. Harry was still.

"Tell me, Mr. Zabini, what is the nature of your relationship with the accused?"

Blaise laughed out loud. "Now that is a personal matter between the accused and myself, wouldn't you say?" He leered at me as if sharing a secret. I swallowed, met his eyes in silence.

Fudge paused and glanced my way. Then his eyes traveled to where Harry sat just out of sight. He looked at Blaise again. "Were you aware that the accused was working both sides of the war, Mr. Zabini?"

Blaise's eyes narrowed. "I would not be a good leader if I were not aware, now would I, Minister?"

"So you admit that he gave you information about the activities of the opposing side?"

Blaise shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands as far as his bindings would allow. "We received information from many sources."

"From the accused?"

Blaise smiled indulgently. "At times."

My stomach was in knots, furious ones, helplessly tied. Suddenly I was a spy for the light, if only to turn Blaise against me so that Fudge could accuse and convict. I clenched my fingers. Felt Harry's magic wavering in the air.

"Tell me, Mr. Zabini, was your relationship with the accused strictly platonic or did you trade his information for something else entirely?"

The courtroom members shifted. Blaise smiled sweetly. "Now, Minister, that's hardly appropriate."

"Are you aware, Mr. Zabini, that the accused has been living with one Harry Potter in the weeks since the war ended?"

One of the Wizengamot witches grabbed Fudge's arm and began to whisper to him in urgent tones. The observers were muttering. Harry had risen half out of his chair, gripping the armrests. His magic doubled in strength and I felt ill. Blaise turned to look at Harry. I saw something flicker in his black eyes... then his face twisted into a grotesque mask of fury. He'd been tricked, and realization was dawning. His own magic hummed out to meet Harry's and the air sparked ever so slightly. My body felt taught, pulled in two directions, and I fought the urge to gag at the ferocity of it. Blaise's face was filled with rage, and I could sense the wheels turning in his head, unearthing myriad ways to retaliate, to use his snake-like tongue to bring the one who had hurt him down.

His lip twitched upward, curling sharply, and he opened his mouth to speak.

And glanced at me.

The smirk froze on his face. I let him search my eyes, unable to hold anything back any longer. I was tired, wearied by the constant battle, the lying, the roiling magic surrounding and invading me. I let him question silently, and knew when the smile fell away completely that he had been answered. He looked at me with an odd sad twist to his features. A lock of dark hair drifted into his eye, melding with the black iris, and I swallowed at the betrayal there.

Fudge's voice cut in. "...asked you whether or not the accused has ever killed a Muggle or wizard under your command."

Blaise closed his eyes and furrowed his brow. Took a deep breath. For a moment I could see Bellatrix there in his features, and Voldemort. He opened his eyes.

"No."

Fudge paused and frowned. "Never during the entire war did he carry out orders to kill or in any way impart information that led to others being killed?"

Blaise looked him straight in the eye. "No."

I could see that Fudge was angry. He tried again. "Are you aware that the accused gave information to the opposing side during the war that may have hindered your cause?"

"Yes," came Blaise's voice. I was finding it difficult to breathe again. My whole body was twisting inside, struggling against itself.

"You mean to say that the accused never once imparted anything to aid your side?"

Blaise did not answer for a long moment. He was thinking, studying a spot on the floor in front of him. At last he raised cold eyes to Fudge. "Nothing we could not have discovered on our own."

Fudge sputtered, called a recess. The guards came in and unchained Blaise, lifting him to his feet. His eyes were locked on mine as they removed the chains on his ankles, understanding warring with emptiness. He opened his mouth and closed it once. He watched me all the way to the door. Then his eyes flicked to where Harry stood outside the circle and held his gaze for a long moment. The air snapped once, and then the magic fell away, and Blaise was led from the room.

Harry's body was shaking, so slightly I thought I was imagining it. He covered his face with one hand and looked at me through his fingers. His hand gripped the railing and he shivered once violently.

I sat through the recess staring at the wall for a full hour until the Wizengamot returned. But there was no one else. Fudge's stare pierced me in silence, and eventually, after the repetitive questions of before, they let me leave.

* * *

Coming back to Harry's flat was a silent affair. He stood in the living room for so long, his coat dangling from his fingers, eyes shut, head turned toward a sound I could not hear, that I began to think he had drifted away. Perhaps he had never left the court room and was instead still watching them clap chains around Blaise's hands and drag him away to his cell. Perhaps he was still sitting in the chair just outside the circle waiting for Blaise's Kiss to be bestowed.

Harry turned and sighed silently, a soft rise and fall of his shoulders. He looked at me and his eyes were indefinable. He dropped his coat and walked into his bedroom, and I followed slowly like I was caught on a hook of his magic. I might have been.

Once through the door, he turned around and I stopped, felt for his magic, his anger, and could not sense it. My chest felt dull, clouded with cotton. Numb. He looked at me, and then opened his mouth and said my name once. It drew my eyes to his, and I could see my name there.

He reached out. I'd had no idea how shattered I had become at the thought that I would never be able to feel his fingers on my body again, his lips against mine. When he began to touch me, I fell into it, swift and immediate, clutching him hard enough to emblazon his shoulders with marks, kissing him deeply enough to leave him pulling away gasping. He picked me up and settled me on my back on the bed, mouth locked on mine, crawling up over my body, hands under my shirt, and I breathed him in. Tasted him. Rolled my head back when he kissed my collar bone.

He went more slowly than usual, but in my haze I did not register anything except the gentle glide of his bare chest over mine, the way he gripped my hips firmly and released, gripped and released. He trailed the back of his hand over my face and kissed my eyelids, my forehead, the soft skin where my chin sloped into my neck.

In the chair, in the court room... I had seen him being pushed away. Pushing himself away. It took all the air from my body, sucking it from me. There were dark hallways before me, dripping limestone, and cloaked frozen figures with rotting hands. A Kiss to end all kisses. And now I had him again, his warm body, his clear green eyes, his mouth against my shoulder, and I whispered his name, Harry, and Yes. And Want this.

He stilled abruptly and I opened my eyes.

He was staring at me, mouth partly open, and I realized I had made a mistake. I had dropped my guard and let him see. I froze; it was all I could do not to cry out against the look on his face.

"Why didn't you ever ask for this?" Tears were brimming in his eyes, sliding down his cheeks. "I would have given it to you if you'd..."

I swallowed a sob, turned my head from him. But he touched my chin and pulled me back, looking into my eyes with such agony written on his features. His fingers drifted over my cheek and his whole body shuddered. "Draco, why didn't you ask?"

I could not speak. There was no air, just him and his heat, searing me, warmer than anything I'd ever felt before. His skin was flushed, the tracks of tears shining under his eyes, and his hand was shaking, and he was so warm.

I'd been wrong. Again. I had never found him, just as I had never heard him through my own silence months ago. All the places I'd looked, shadowed by his anger, the tug and thrust he seemed to thrive on, the rage that teemed just beneath his skin... it was not him and I'd missed the real him, always searching for what was plainly in front of my face. I'd searched so hard I had hidden it from myself.

I found myself speaking. "I wanted you-- I didn't think this was it, and I wanted your anger because... b-because it was h-how I saw you, who you were--"

He moaned, the sound holding a sadness that clamped onto my heart, and dove down, covering my mouth with his. I felt tears spill down my face and began to sob, and all the while he kissed me, searching with his tongue as if my reasons lay in my mouth, stroking my body with gentle hands. I latched onto him with both arms, wrapped my legs around him and cried helplessly. He broke the kiss, touched our foreheads and nudged my nose with his, breathing hard, and then kissed me deeply again.

I could not tell whose tears were on my cheeks anymore.

He told me in breathless whispers that he thought I'd not been completely plain with him, that my answers each night the week before the trial left a hollow emptiness that he did not know how to begin to fill. It was so easy to acquiesce, to give in because he wanted to hurt someone, he hated them so much, needed to find some way to bring back the ones who had been killed, Albus, Sirius, Hermione, Luna, Charlie, Arthur, Cedric. And every time he tried to hurt me, to seriously project it onto my body, it made him feel like he wanted to die, and at that moment he would look at me and he would see it in my eyes, that I was the one slowly dying and he had no idea why. The nights I was not there he broke things, sat and chewed his lips until they bled, paced the entire house because he knew the evil I was being enveloped with, knew its seduction and how difficult it was to break free. He tried to give me a release afterward, except he just could not extend that far outside of himself on the nights when I came back to him. He needed to be slow, to touch every part, to make sure I was still all there. To pull aside the husk he saw in my eyes after I had been with Voldemort. And he suspected I knew, that I understood him, and yet... he could not reach me. So he asked. Every night, what I wanted. It was the only expression he knew, the only way to speak to me.

It was Blaise he saw on the other nights, Blaise's magic he smelled on me. He'd felt it working over himself the last year in Hogwarts, knew its power, could see what Zabini had done to me. The emptiness in my eyes told him I was being drained, pulled apart. Zabini had done his best to strengthen the ties he had formed and Harry wanted to rip them out, reach inside me and dislodge them, replace them with something less poisonous. It wasn't until Dumbledore died that he came home, pushed me down on the bed... and realized that the ties he wanted to replace them with were his own. And he could not touch me then. Not after what he had almost done. His battle with Blaise was not only over me, but with me as the battlefield, and he saw too late that he'd not been fighting with Blaise at all, but with himself.

The moment I had spoken that night before the trial - one night ago - asking for hard and swift, he'd known that he had lost me, because that was the last night and it was likely I would not be coming back the next day. He saw my future absence as an absolute that night and hated himself for not speaking more clearly. For not hearing me. For not fighting harder. He blamed himself, thinking he had misunderstood, and when he saw in my eyes that the misunderstanding was not his alone, he nearly succumbed to his failure right then and there. Closed himself off until sleep.

In the court room, he'd seriously thought about killing Zabini as he sat in the chair in the middle of the room. Just taking out his wand and whispering Avada Kedavra, and not thinking about what would come next for him.

He realized the second it became entirely too possible I would be taken from him... that he couldn't give me up. And then Blaise spoke those words and it was like waking from a nightmare he hadn't known he was having.

I stopped his mouth with one hand and let myself cry. He held me through the shaking, continuing to touch me gently, turning my tears into gasps, my sobs into his name. Over and over. He stroked and touched and ran his mouth over my body until I thought I was dead, only to look up and find him there above me searching my face with glistening eyes. He brushed a hand over my cheek and the warmth of his palm flowed into my skin.

I nodded, and he took me then.

And it was more than enough.