White

Snow had fallen for the first time this year and the whole school was bathed in white.

Harry sat outside behind the stands of the Quidditch pitch and watched the snowflakes fall, small and white and crystal-perfect in a way that he couldn't be, clean and fresh and new until somebody stood on them with muddy boots and they were turned to slush.

It was quiet here, quiet now that Quidditch was cancelled because of the snow; nobody came out here but Harry, and that was the way he wanted it, because Malfoy had been in his corridor and now he didn't feel alone there any more, always feeling as though someone else was there and sitting in his corridor just waiting for him to give himself away so they could jump on him and catch him and ask him questions and make everything worse.

Out here everything was white, the ground was white and the stands were white and the trees were white except for the undersides of the branches and the lee-sides of the trunks away from the wind that were bright black against the intricate lacework of snow among the twigs, like endless crochet strung by a careless artist who had left her creation behind.

And Harry was white, Harry who had been out here since before breakfast; the sun was setting now and Ron and Hermione would be looking for him, but they wouldn't find him because he had turned as white as the snow, and for the first time in quite a while Harry felt like he was almost clean. Not quite clean, no, and as soon as he stepped back into the school he would be filthy again, coated with the deaths of God-knew-how-many, but for now he was almost white again.

If he lay down in it, and rolled in it, would some of the whiteness of the snow rub off on him and make him cleaner? But then if that were true then surely some of his dirtiness would rub off on it, and the snow was too pure and too beautiful to have any of all that on it anywhere. So Harry stayed upright on the log he was sitting on, and watched as the sun crept slowly closer and closer to the horizon and the whiteness became briefly gold and red and purple until the moonlight - it was a full moon tonight, werewolf night, but Harry didn't care - until the moonlight made it white again and right again and Harry could watch it for a while and forget it for a while.

~

Harry Potter hadn't been at breakfast or lunch and now he wasn't at dinner, and Draco was off kilter because watching Harry had become the thing that he did, and when Harry wasn't there then Draco had nothing to do but poke at his food and make scathing putdowns to the rest of the Slytherins when they noticed his discomposure and tried to make something out of it for themselves. It was some sort of foreign food, chicken in spicy sauce heaped on top of gleaming white rice that looked like it just had just been oiled, and Draco didn't want any of it. He left the hall before anyone else finished and as he walked past the Gryffindor table to leave he noticed from the corner of his eye that Weasley and Granger almost didn't seem to notice that Potter was missing, but then that wasn't quite right because Weasley was paler than normal and Granger was chewing at the ends of her hair with her white teeth and neither of them had their hands on the other so something must be off other than Potter just being ill, which Draco would have heard about.

Draco wandered outside into the moonlight and felt his skin reflect it, bouncing it off like the ultimate darkness that could absorb none of it. Not a murderer yet, he told the moon, and wandered off toward the lake. A single white feather drifted past his face and he looked up but could see nothing, not the owl that had dropped it from its outstretched wing or even the stars, but somehow the moon was out and that wasn't quite right either. He tucked the feather behind his ear and stroked it gently, feeling it ripple beneath his fingertips and stay caught in the fine strands of his hair.

The lake water was dark when he reached it and when he dipped in a hand to see how dark it really was he had to snatch it back quickly and hold it to his chest, because the water was so cold he was worried his fingers had fallen off. Maybe somewhere else, then, and if he admitted to himself that he was looking for Harry then that was why his feet turned to the pitch, but it was actually because he wanted to see what it looked like in the snow because he didn't care about Potter at all, did he?

But there he was and Potter's back was to him and if his legs had stopped moving at the sight of him then it was just surprise. Potter was white, whiter than the snow and Draco would have thought him a ghost if his hair hadn't been so brightly black that it hurt in this white world of silence save for the thrusting of his legs through the snow that had stopped now.

~

Harry turned around and Malfoy was there again.

It had been happening a lot lately, and after a while Harry had stopped wondering why and just got on with living because whys and wherefores didn't matter any more. Harry accepted that Malfoy was there and turned around again, watching into the far distance the pure whiteness that had called him out of his warm bed a sea of blood and out into this cold white miraculous world.

Boots crunched through the crystals and Harry wondered if Malfoy's boots were muddy and if he was going to ruin the snow that Harry loved so much. The log sunk slightly lower into the ground as the other boy sat on it, not looking at Harry or speaking to Harry or breathing near Harry but just sitting and watching and not being there in any way that meant anything, but that was alright because secretly Harry thought that was the best way to be there and if it was Malfoy instead of anyone else who might have had a claim to Harry then that was alright too because he wasn't interested in claims any more.

Malfoy was white too, his hair and his skin and even his eyes were white now in this place that wasn't quite a place because it wasn't quite real, but that was what Harry liked about it now. And if both of them were white then that was good.

~

Potter hadn't said anything done anything asked anything told him to sod off so Draco thought it was probably okay to sit out here and stare into the distance with him. Of course, Potter probably had hypothermia by now, but what was a little hypothermia between enemies? Then again, maybe they weren't enemies any more, at least not here in the snow when he had an owl's white feather tucked behind his ear and making small whispery noises when the wind caught the ruffles just so.

Draco shivered and swore in his head. He had never been made for the cold; he detested the cold, and it always made him look pale and sickly even when he wasn't, but somehow being out here was more important, with Potter and his bright black hair and all around them nothing and nobody and no man's land.

~

Harry glanced over at his silent companion when he moved, almost angry with Draco for having disturbed the nothingness inside his mind, but then sorry because obviously the other boy was cold even though Harry wasn't. It had been cold a while ago but he wasn't now, he had been out here long enough to get used to it, and the cupboard under the stairs had been a bit like that when he was very small. Almost sighing, Harry slid across the log and grabbed Draco's hands in his own, then rubbed them fiercely between his gloved fingers until the skin turned red and Malfoy bit back a groan as the feeling started to come back. The wool was too harsh and his skin had dried out, but unless Harry spat on them that was all there was to it.

Malfoy was watching Harry now with that weird gaze Harry had felt on him for months now, and when Harry looked up and caught it he almost but not quite found himself smiling, because it wasn't hostile at all and it wasn't friendly at all but it was there and Draco saw him and didn't care.

~

His hands felt like the cold and Harry's hands were burning off his skin, but it was a good feeling all the same, and Draco made no move to take back possession of them but let Harry rub them because he couldn't do it for himself so why make him stop? He watched Potter's face and when Harry looked up his bottleglassgreen eyes were slightly more emerald than they had been before and less empty. And somehow that was alright.

~

The two boys sat together with their hands together and looked at each other, and everything was somehow alright even if they didn't like each other hate each other anything each other, but as long as there was another then maybe everything would be bearable and all right after all in the end maybe perhaps or not but who knew?