The Old Spells

Chapter 1:

Serpensortia

What makes a snake?

Draco Malfoy asked himself this question first daily, then hourly. But after the day Harry caught him up against the wall in a dingy fourth floor corridor and pushed his hands under his robes, the question went through his mind every moment. He heard it drumming through the heat of Harry's body where it rested against his. He heard it beating in time to the rhythm of Harry's kiss. And there was a rhythm; it throbbed in Draco's very fingertips. Harry's lips touching and lifting from his in tiny imitations of the deep, probing kiss to come, little teases that pulled moans from Draco's throat and made him thread his fingers through Harry's hair, tugging the other boy to him more roughly than he had intended. The blood thudded ominously in his temples when he finally succeeded in slowing the rapid kisses, and Harry was flush against him, head tilted, tongue searching his mouth as if he'd lost something precious there, and Draco realized distantly how necessary oxygen was... but had no desire to give up the rhythm in favour of breathing.

Harry whispered something, broke the kiss for a moment, and slid his palms up over Draco's cheeks. His hands wove into his hair, then trailed down his throat and glided over his shoulders. Nimble fingers quicker than the Snitch found the clasp of his robes, and Draco pushed the smothering fabric with its silver-green emblem away until all he could feel and taste and touch was Harry. And there were no lions or serpents to get in the way. Just that perfect, searing heat.

It was like an itch Draco could not quite scratch, but then, snakes had no fingers.

It was too fast, that meeting, for all it did to him. Footsteps in the corridor cut his thoughts from him and forced his hands up to Harry's chest, pushing him away. The other boy twisted sinuously and brought Draco's body against his with a jerk, trapping his mouth under his until Draco was gasping into Harry's kiss. The footsteps were closer than ever, pounding, pounding, Draco's heart was pounding; Harry finally let him go as if he were tugging his own heart out and hurried away with a whispered name on his lips. Draco collapsed behind the nearest statue and listened to the intruding person pass by. When the corridor was quiet again, he remained.

It was cold and dark in the hallway. No sunlight. The warmth had fled down the hall on rapid steps, and Draco found he was too weak to move.

* * *

Harry's magic was red; that was the colour Draco saw. Draco couldn't fathom how he had managed to ignore it before, because now its absence chilled him. The dungeons might as well have had snow ringing the stones, frost fogging the high, narrow windows. Draco felt the colour of green clenching into his flesh. It was the colour of the silent pines outside under their winter mantle. He learned to take it from the very air and mold it around him, and his housemates shied away from him as if he were made of the self-same ice. He passed his days unspeaking and unspoken to, and it didn't feel entirely different from before, except now, somehow, he knew they were looking at him when they thought he didn't notice.

Only two of Draco's housemates remained in his immediate awareness, however. Nott's presence came upon him in the darkness and lingered just behind his thoughts, blue eyes devouring. Draco was not surprised. He understood. The Slytherin's presence stepped in his footsteps and spoke in the echoes of the hallways, until Draco couldn't be certain if he was ever alone.

But the other person... He wasn't sure how Millicent Bulstrode found her way through his walls. Perhaps she bludgeoned her way in, as her height and strength suggested. Perhaps she saw moments when his defenses came down, moments even he didn't see, and slipped in before they went back up. Whatever the case, she was an obtrusive companion; it seemed she followed him physically even as Nott shadowed his dreams. And Draco watched the way Nott seemed to hunt her as well until she scurried to his side, fleeing the darkness for a light Draco did not think he emitted.

But there were times when he was not followed. He liked to think it was Harry's magic, driving the cold away like a flaming shield. When Draco found Harry out by the forest, he did not try to conceal his need to be next to him. By then the cold was too painful; at the forest's edge, the sound returned, the ice melted, and Draco found that just sitting together was enough again.

Their spot against the stone was different now. It was somehow more intimate, with Harry's legs bent on either side of him, the rise and fall of his chest against Draco's back. Harry's hand settled against his side, a warm pulse, and his lips rested on Draco's hair. Draco's body felt weakened and alive all at once, and it hurt.

"You're freezing again," Harry said one evening. He drew Draco closer than usual, rubbing his hands up and down over his chest. His thighs pressed against Draco's. Draco wasn't sure if he liked the feeling. He thought he did. Harry's scent teased at his nostrils; warm breaths drifted over the skin of Draco's neck. He told himself there was nothing unfamiliar here, except that he was being held so closely under puffy, grayish clouds and patches of blue, tucked away from the spring wind. It was unfamiliar being held here instead of within the closed walls of red velvet and the muffled silence of Harry's bed.

It felt... off.

"Don't be ridiculous. I don't feel cold."

Harry's voice faded into shy reproof. "You could wear your cloak."

Draco scowled. He shifted, and Harry's legs parted, leaving his thighs bare to the chilly air. Instantly Draco didn't like it, but he knew that not liking something was hardly admitting to liking its exact opposite. There were no opposites anyway; just one thing, and endless variations of that thing. Cold air, and Harry.

Harry was not an opposite of anything, was he?

The breeze shifted. Draco's heart thumped as he suddenly realised there were still variables all around him. They were creeping in on him like hunting cats in a pitch black forest, until he turned around and there was nowhere left to go. He thought he'd managed to make at least one definite choice already, in Harry's dormitory on Christmas Eve. The events of that night still shifted something in his chest, took his breath away.

He'd truly thought it was the opposite of what he'd been doing before, and that doing it would exclude everything else, make it all easier. He needed that certainty. But it wasn't an opposing choice, it was a creature all its own, and now both it and the option he'd left behind were staring down at him again from the darkness.

Draco realised he had no idea where to go. He'd made a choice that didn't actually exist, had convinced himself it was real, but it was just a façade. Thinking he could make decisions that twisted everyone's life around one focal point had made him feel a safety he could now see was not real. He was no safer than he had been, only now he was no longer alone in the danger.

Draco felt sick. He'd ignored the first lesson he'd been taught: he'd tried, with all his insignificant pompousness, but he still hadn't seen all ends.

And he was no longer certain that anything outside of himself - including the consequences of what he was doing with Harry - had changed at all on Christmas Eve.

He didn't know he was moving until his hand found Harry's fingers. Harry did not respond immediately; his hand hovered there under Draco's fingertips and Draco was stricken into a silence so familiar it twisted his stomach.

No. Not back there again. I don't want to return to what it was like before.

He held his breath until Harry's legs squeezed against his again. The arm around his chest tightened. Draco let his own hand drift over Harry's, back and forth. He linked their hands and stared at their fingers, dark, light, dark, as the clouds rolled over.

* * *

There were days when what they did was done in a bed, but those were rare. It felt too indulgent, far too normal for Draco's sense of reality. Harry's eyes got very dark when Draco lowered him down onto the crisp sheets and crawled up over his body, and Draco could see the other boy wondering if this was what they were really meant to have. But afterward the notion seemed to vanish into the heat of the room and Harry fell asleep draped over Draco's chest, leaving him to stare up at the bed hangings in silence.

Harry slept like a snake, boneless and limp, but Draco had no indication that he was prepared to wake at the slightest danger, as a snake would. There was nothing alert or defensive in the gentle inhale-exhale, or the stillness of his muscles. It made Draco uneasy, the way Harry just lay there breathing. As if there were not a price on his head, or a target on his back. Or a half-human creature lurking in the darkness of some forgotten dungeon reading the signs in dead Muggle entrails, discovering slowly but surely the best way to breach Harry's defenses.

As if there were not a Slytherin lying a breath away from where he slept, watching his life inch onward.

Draco felt as if he were seeing through a fogged window just as it was being rubbed clean. Harry's skin, so hot and golden, unclad of any identifying stigmas save the scar just visible through his tumble of bangs, reminded Draco that appearances could be deceiving. Harry slept as a snake did, but snakes shed their skin, wriggling free and giving way to the glossy undercoat of new life. Frail-looking scales, their shape already certain, yet a worrisome mystery to the prey the snake sought and to the creatures that hunted it. Would the new coat crumble to dust under fangs? Or did it contain a poison deadlier than the most potent nightshade? Draco wondered if the snake knew what its new skin had in store for it before the glistening scales appeared, or if the answers came only through movement, through time and testing and mistakes.

Perhaps the snake always felt most hunted just before it rid itself of its old skin.

Draco could see that Harry had never shed his skin before. It was taut, varnished, and tougher than a hero's skin needed to be. But if one knew just where to strike, it would give way in an instant.

There were times when Harry turned over and Draco lay there with his head on his lover's chest listening to his steady heartbeat, and thought about how easy it would be for that quiet thump-thump to just... stop. Hating himself for thinking it, yet unable to rid himself of the image. Thestrals.

Accepting death was the first way to prepare for its possibility. But accepting it in Harry made Draco's body seize up.

arryHarrHarry whispered in his sleep. Soft, sibilant sounds, wordless. But when they reached Draco's ears in the darkness, he felt their meaning as if he had always known it, and wondered how it was that he understood.

* * *

The weeks spun away into warmer days and gentler dreams, for some. Draco had never felt more watched.

Whether it was Nott's frozen blue, Millicent's expectant brown, or Snape's piercing black, Draco could feel it, a constant pricking over his spine. And it came from other quarters he should have expected but had foolishly ignored. Now there was Granger's dangerous hazel, much more unsettling than the gazes from his own house, especially when she caught him at a moment when he had been particularly unaware. And Dumbledore's steady blue, always sensed even when he was certain the Headmaster was not in the vicinity. It was like tasting blood on his tongue and being unable to find any source.

He began to wonder how long they had been scrutinizing him, and what they saw there. The knowing look in Nott's eyes told him that he had been shadowed for far longer than he'd been aware.

But the only eyes he wanted watching him were deep green, more perceptive than Draco was comfortable with, and far too trusting. It made Draco feel hollow when he thought of it, and he couldn't decide whether to give rein to the uneasiness it caused, or to the tantalizing shiver it started up within him.

In the quiet moments when sleep came after climax, and Harry's unbearably warm body rested in his arms - just skin and more skin - Draco could feel the approach of something, sweeping inexorably forward. It was then that he was most glad of Harry's swift slip into dreams. Draco couldn't follow him there and taint those visions with his agitation. And Harry could not witness Draco's futile attempts to remind himself of what a snake was, of the cold blood and the flat stare and the silky whisper of scales over the earth. All he could see or feel was the way Harry's arm tightened around him.

In those moments his throat burned, and Draco wanted nothing to do with snakes.

Perhaps it was odd, perhaps it even made Draco frown when he thought about it properly, but he treasured the quiet hours when Harry slept, nestled in the red and gold of his own blankets. Draco felt like a visitor, his skin far too pale against the wine-colored bedclothes, but a welcome one, allowed into the empty dorm room - a home he should not have been in - when the other residents were gone and could not stop him. They were only moments, stolen out of days that tripped over each other in their hurry to proceed, but they were their moments. He lay there tracing patterns on the soft skin of Harry's palm with his thumb, both praying for and dreading the moment when Harry's eyes flickered open and found him, because then the rest of his life came back into the dusky silence, bringing a fear Draco felt deeper than anything else.

One Hogsmeade weekend, as Draco was looping his fingers over Harry's arm, Harry sighed into wakefulness. He stared up at Draco and for once Draco felt no need to speak, to break the quiet moment, because this time, Harry's waking had not brought everything else along with it. He could feel it all pressing on the closed door of the room, but if he could keep it out for a moment longer, just one moment...

Harry's lips parted, letting forth a soft breath, and Draco lowered his head. The kiss was achingly slow. Draco breathed in through his nose, saw Harry's eyelids flutter, and let himself taste the thing he could never remember exactly afterward. Harry's mouth was pliant on his, a touch sleepier than his own. There was something rare there that Draco should find, but he could not pinpoint where it lay, whether it was the soft brush of tongues, the slow opening of lips under his. It was there; he could taste it. But he couldn't grasp it and he was suddenly content to search forever.

But even the sun set eventually. And then warmth had to be found elsewhere.

* * *

Draco pushed open the wall with a whispered word, and the familiar, damp air of his common room teased his face. He was alone again, his housemates somewhere unimportant. He stood there in the middle of the room, and was vaguely startled to realize that Slytherin House still held its nooks and crannies, delightful secrets he had first felt the pull of at age eleven. Now, walking through the passage to his dorm, Draco found himself assaulted by the strange tug of safety. It was dry and faded like fallen leaves, but there, nonetheless. He hadn't lost the presence he'd been raised in. Knowing that this was his home, that he belonged here, nestled within the lush green and silver that was Slytherin... that had not changed, no matter how much red he cloaked himself in. Millicent Bulstrode might turn from the dungeons, but Draco knew with a level of conviction he'd felt for nothing else in his life that he was home here.

It was suddenly Slytherin House again, without the weight of six years upon it. It became harder and harder to remember the new burden each of those years had brought every time he left through the wall space, each time he stepped back into his house and felt it curl comfortably around him. And now he remembered: it was his home.

But there was absolutely no trace of Harry there.

Draco began to wonder if he were being fitted into a new skin without his knowledge. Or perhaps re-emerging into his old skin. These ideas weren't opposites, but eventually he would have to do something about them. They would stand side by side for as long as they could before one destroyed the other.

It was in the moments when Nott's eyes brightened with an unearthly spark, when Millicent inched closer to him in the hallway outside the dungeons, that Draco finally saw reality for what it was. Saw himself for what he was.

He had bound himself, like a chain attached to an anchor, and it did not sit well with him.

* * *

"Draco?"

He looked away from where his fingers were threaded with Harry's to see that the other boy's eyes were clouded in earnestness. Something else dwelt in their depths, but it had been too long since Draco had seen it to remember what it was.

"What?"

Harry's mouth opened, and hung that way for a second before closing. He licked his lips. Fingers brushed Draco's temple. "Never mind."

Draco frowned. The look in Harry's eyes made his stomach churn. "No, what?"

Harry gave a half-shrug and looked quickly away across the grass. His arm tightened around Draco's chest and for some unaccountable reason, Draco shivered.

"I forgot what I was going to say. It doesn't matter."

It was a lie. He could practically see it hovering between them. Draco started to demand it of Harry, but the other boy lowered his head and kissed him. Draco saw a flash of green before his eyes closed, and abruptly felt the moment fall open before him in a way it never had. Raw... glowing with a fervor born of desperation.

Then the moment faded into nothing except Harry's lips on his and his body resting in the crook of Harry's own.

When Draco returned to his room, his Eagle Owl was eyeing him beadily, flexing long, curved talons against the wood of his dresser. It stepped almost nonchalantly off the edge and swooped down to land on his shoulder. Draco blinked at the bite of the bird's claws through his shirt. He held his palm up for the letter and felt its weight as the owl dropped it into his hand. His father's looping scrawl curved across the envelope and Draco thought, What makes a snake?

I debate even now whether to write to you regarding this matter. As it is merely a personal interest, I have tried to ignore it; yet the matter remains and I find I cannot simply let it rest.

It is not my first choice to request anything of you, and if you are the son I remember, you are already looking at this with suspicion. If you are not viewing it in that manner, then perhaps I haven't done my duty by you. But my past mistakes are no longer appropriate for consideration; certain events have come about at last, and there is little room for other concerns.

If there is one final idea that I can impress upon you, it is this: Looking the destiny one has crafted for oneself in the eye returns everything to its proper place.

But you are failing to slip into your place, and it comes down to this: you will not be delegated away in my mind as if you were some simple implement or tool. Therefore, I find myself here. I would order you, but by everything that I am, everything I have committed myself to being, I can do no more than request. Calling this an order implies a control over myself that I have not felt for years, and never in your lifetime.

We are given choices, Draco. Many are made without conscious thought, but every one of them has a consequence, marking the beginning of a path to the next choice, and the next. I have made two choices that even now weave my life into the knot in which it will end.

One is to tell you that I shall be visiting you very soon, within a fortnight. It is a course of action I have already come to terms with.

The other is to ask you not to be there when we arrive. I am certain, with your extraordinary faculties, you will conclude what is necessary from this.

Your mother would see you at home during the short time we have left. She has not spoken but to ask me this, and I in turn desire that you grant her - grant us - this request. I have struggled with myself during the night's most ghostly hours, and can only conclude thus: I do not want you near Him when the world turns on its end and falls away.

Your father

Draco looked past the parchment to the patchwork of stones in the floor. Standing in the milky light from the window, Draco's body felt very weak. He looked back at the letter. Read it again.

Again.

What makes a snake?

He'd known that spell once, second year. But he could not remember it now.

~tbc~