Harbour Ghosts

Harbour Ghosts

The War has been raging for months, now, though to them it feels more like years. The worst of course is that it shows no sign of ending soon--it is just day after dreary day of waking up to the same grey morning and clouded sky, waking to fight the same battles, waking to the same troubles and sorrows and cheerless company. Yet they do not grieve, either; they have not the time, nor the room, for emotion.

So in this time of war all feeling is put aside; perhaps traces of love still linger in forgotten places, in abandoned harbours that wait for the return of their ships, but for now there are no ships on the horizon and no promises of wealth or riches to come. These are people who must fight, who dare not wait in wishful dreams for their vessels to dock safely in harbour. Perhaps they cannot allow themselves this respite, for when they return to bleak reality it will seem all the more hopeless.

The eaves of the Forbidden Forest offer some shelter to the few who dare to take it. He comes here, sometimes, to find peace--or to try. It is not the most ideal of places; it is shadowed in faded secrets and yesterday's whispers, caught amongst the tangled cobwebs that hang from the trees. He does not venture very far in. Nevertheless, the dark heart of the forest spreads its mock-life outwards, and even where he stands the air is strangled. Sometimes an unseen ghostly breeze blows, and the branches shiver and sigh, trying to remember something.

Tonight he is here again, if only to say his farewells. Far away (it seems to him, at least) the lights of the castle twinkle deceivingly; the inside is far colder than the outside suggests. Under cover of darkness he slips beneath the forest eaves, silent as a cat. He stands pensively for a moment, gazing at the distant lights. Then he turns away, to shut out the world and be completely alone.

His movement is arrested, however, by a sudden trick of light (--is it?) to his left. Something shimmers; the air seems to move visibly. He blinks, and reaches uncertainly for his wand.

The appearance of a familiar head in mid-air forestalls him, however. "Harry?"

Harry pulls off his Invisibility Cloak completely.

"You followed me." His tone is suddenly bleak. His hand drops to his side, and he leans tiredly against a tree trunk.

The dark-haired man steps forward, a little tentatively perhaps. He strains to see in the un-light; his glasses still cumber his vision, but behind them his eyes are as dark as the forest. "I didn't want to leave you alone. Not in this place."

Draco gives a harsh, bitter laugh. "I'm not alone." He gestures at the cobwebs above that tremble as an unseen breath plucks at them, leaving them to quiver coldly. "All these ghosts."

Harry makes a harsh movement with one hand, as if trying to banish the grey wraiths that haunt the minds of those who must come here to find respite. But he stops himself, and instead reaches out, one hand gently lifting Draco's face to his own. He brushes the other man's fair hair out of his eyes. "Not ghosts, love." With his other hand he draws Draco close against him. "No ghosts."

They stand like that for a little while, although Draco does not respond to Harry's embrace.

Then Draco makes a little noise into Harry's shoulder, and buries his face fiercely in it, and Harry knows that it is best to pretend that this is nothing out of the ordinary, nothing special. So he does not move, but perhaps his embrace tightens imperceptibly.

They stand like this, one fair-haired and one dark, though in this place both look vague and grey. They could almost be shadows themselves--and perhaps they are that, shadows of what they could be, of their former selves. Suddenly Draco pushes Harry away, ever so slightly, and when Harry looks down into Draco's eyes, he finds that they are like mirrors obscured by the first frost, again: impenetrable and somehow fragile.

"Love?"

Draco turns away. "Don't call me that," his voice is lower than usual, and so soft that Harry has to strain to hear it, "Harry." It seems to Harry that his name is added on as an afterthought, as something to soften the impersonality of the rejection. "You know--I've--we've been through this before."

They have. They've argued it out, and spent restless nights debating in their heads, and then again with each other. And still they are not yet ready to enter the harbour of soft dreams and quiet sleep--or Harry is, and Draco isn't. There are too many ghosts to let go of. Harry steps forward once more and catches Draco to him, pressing his lips against the other man's. He kisses him roughly, and Draco complies at first, and finally begins to respond. Harry pulls back slightly to say, "And you know I don't give a damn what they think." He runs his hand through Draco's hair before pulling his torso back against himself. "How can I make you understand that you're all that's important?"

Instantly Draco's hands are pressed against his chest. He moves out of Harry's reach. "Don't--"

Harry steps back as well, looking down. He was wrong to say that, and he knows it. But he does mean it, he thinks; how can it be wrong for him to say something that is true? "I'm sorry--"

"No, don't be." Slate-grey eyes refuse to meet green. It is not enough that they are now opaque with frost; they must now also dodge and avoid. "It's not you--but I can't. We can't. You know--"

"I know that." Harry closes his eyes and passes his hand over them, as if he hopes that they will open onto another world. "And yet, if--" He leaves this unvoiced, just as so many other things between them are left unworded, half-finished, unfinished, incomplete. Draco too is silent: it is easier this way, with a false hope that creeps its way into a corner of his mind and works its warmth into the frozen wall he has built up to fence it out. For a while the time is given to dreams and wishes and yearning.

His hand finds its way into Harry's.

Eventually Draco lifts Harry's hand to his lips. This is his farewell. He shakes his head. "It's only a dream." He is bitter once more. "Nothing here is tangible." He laughs unhappily, and gestures vaguely at the forest and the castle and all that lies beyond them. "Ghosts, dreams. This is a dream, Harry."

"It is real." Harry's voice cuts sharply, intensely, into his consciousness, and once again he draws Draco to him, kissing his eyes shut, and then tracing a line down his jaw--"No, Draco, it's real." --and down to his neck, where it meets the shoulder--then he stops, reading the look in Draco's eyes. They move apart, and Harry reaches over to smooth Draco's hair out of his eyes, but that is all. He pauses for a fraction of a second, and turns his face away. "If only for the moment."