My Soul to Keep

Watching him die was the worst time in my life.

I've seen dozens of people die right in front of my eyes - it's rather hard to avoid when you're standing in the middle of a body strewn battlefield, waging a war. Their deaths, however painful to witness, paled in comparison to watching his. Maybe it would have been easier if he had died like them - quick, painless, cut down in a wave of enemy spell fire - instead of watching him slowly burn out like a candle, flickering precariously before finally extinguishing.

Watching him die slowly, painfully, over a matter of months - not seconds, was more torture than Voldemort and his Death Eaters could have ever hoped to inflict. I watched him die a self-inflicted death, a pointless death, each day knowing it was one step closer to an end that I could do nothing about. Watching him suffer and hurt and not knowing anything that could make it all recede, even if just a little.

Over a period of nearly half a year, I had to sit back and watch the light fade from his eyes and the life drain out of his skin and body. He never had what you could call a colourful complexion, but his skin became translucent, gaunt as it stretched painfully over easily visible bones. He looked washed out and worn out like an old, faded t-shirt.

I'm ashamed to say that at first when it all started, I didn't notice anything was wrong, didn't realise that he had started changed. No, it wasn't until other people started asking me what was wrong with him that I began looking a little deeper, a little closer. And when I did, I couldn't believe that I had been so blind.

When we were forced to eat within the company of friends, he never touched his food, instead just pushing it around his plate with his fork, spreading it so that if one didn't pay attention to him for too long they'd think he'd been eating. He seemed to fill himself up on glass upon glass of water or fruit juice. When we were alone in our flat, he never went near the kitchen if he could avoid it.

One night, as I wrapped my arms around him and snuggled down in bed, I began to feel the sharp points of his elbows digging into my chest and the crevices between his ribs. At first I said nothing, naively thinking that perhaps it was just a phase. That so soon after the war a lot of people were still trying to cope with the things they had seen or were forced to do. I frequently had nightmares of friends and loved ones being slaughtered, one after the other.

But it wasn't a phase and it didn't stop. In fact, it got a whole lot worse. The weight began literally dropping off of him and he became no more than a walking skeleton, a corpse. I tried to talk to him about it, but he just brushed me off by changing the subject or telling me to mind my own business. I told him I loved him and that I had a right to know. He just said that if I loved him as much as I said I did then I would just leave him be.

I know I wasn't the only one who spoke to him about it. Many of our friends did at one point or another. I think Snape must have threatened to put him in a body bind and force feed him potions because he began avoiding the Potions Master and carrying his wand everywhere, constantly looking over his shoulder for some unseen attack.

About four months in we stopped having sex. When we did before, it was obvious that he was constantly in pain or just too tired to finish. Instead we just laid down in bed, him cradled in my arm, while I lay awake, tears dripping silently down my face. Neither of us believed in God, but most nights I found myself praying to whoever might be out there, pleading with them to make him make him see sense and help him stop whatever was poisoning his mind. My prayers were left unanswered, affirming my disbelief in any higher power.

Five months and everything began to go downhill rather quickly from there. I woke up one morning to find that he was barely breathing, his chest struggling to rise and fall. I rushed him to St. Mungo's - Madam Pomphrey had died during the war and she had yet to be replaced - but there was nothing they could do. Or rather, there was nothing they would do. Apparently, without my knowing, he had signed forms saying that if he was ever admitted to the hospital then he would not accept any form or treatment from the healers employed there. I screamed and raged, begging them to rule insanity on his behalf and just help him, but they just shook their heads, sympathy plastered all over their faces, and told me there was nothing they could legally do. With tears rolling down my face, I asked them how long they thought he had to live and they replied a few days, a week at best. His organs had apparently begun to fail and his body was slowly, systematically, beginning to shut itself down.

I floo-ed back to our apartment with him in my arms, tears slowly drying on my expressionless face. I sat down on our bed and laid him across my lap, smoothing his hair and occasionally giving him small sips of water, wetting his dry mouth. I didn't once leave his side, and nor did I sleep.

On what was to be our last day together, three days after the trip to St. Mungo's, he woke up for a short while. He began trying to talk, his voice quiet and rasping, but I kept shushing him, telling him it would just make him worse, and to save his energy. But he was adamant on telling my something.

"Bed... side ta-ble... top... drawer."

I paid him no mind at first, believing it to be delirium. He never kept anything in his top drawer. However, he kept on saying it, looking at me with those lifeless eyes and saying it. So, for the first time in days, I got up off of the bed, away from his side and went around to his drawer. Inside was his diary - the diary he had been compulsively writing in since Voldemort had been defeated, but would never let me see.

I looked at him, my face asking me why, and he just smiled a tired smile and told me to look at the inscription inside.

"I do... love you... I - think I... always did," he said just before his eyes closed, the smile still on his lips. Even as his chest stopped rising and his heart failed to beat again, that tired smile stay behind, to mock me.

I looked at his fragile, lifeless body and fell to the floor, sobbing, screaming, broken, his diary still open in my hands, my tears staining the page, causing the ink to run.

'My Harry,

I give you my soul to keep.

I love you. Never forget that.

Your Draco.'