Fic: But not for love (H/D, PG)
Fic: But not for love (H/D, PG, 1600 words)
Summary: Harry survives.
A/N: Thanks to ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif)
semyaza and rabidsamfan for their wonderful beta help.
Warning: deals with the consequences of character death. Written pre-HBP.
A/N: Thanks to reira_21 for her lovely art for this fic.
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The urn seems impossibly small. It looks like it should contain notepaper.
After the funeral, everyone has tea in a dark little room full of Slytherins. Harry feels overlarge and out of place and not drunk. Apparently only Gryffindors get drunk on such occasions.
***
The next day he gets dressed without looking at the other half of their closet at all. His closet. His.
***
The next day he does the same. This is easier than he thought.
***
The day after that he gets drunk and wakes sprawled on the floor. Sunlight pours into the living room where a wall used to be; it hurts his eyes. Powdered bits of brick and plaster lie over everything. There is no wind; the wards have not been breached. He supposes he must have done it. He goes to take a shower.
***
He gets drunk every night. When he dresses in the morning he doesn't see their/his closet. He pretends that it isn't there. He pretends that he is blind.
***
"Potter," says McGonagall, as she explains the details of his next mission for the third time, "can you do this?"
"Sure," he says. The others look at him. None of those remaining know him very well. They look at their notes, or their hands, or the table, and say nothing.
***
One morning Harry wakes and finds that every piece of furniture has been half-transfigured into an animal. He supposes he must have done it. The couch has the head of a lion; it sees him and tries to pull itself away on huge forepaws, dragging its couch body behind it. Harry kills it and goes to take a shower.
***
He switches from gin to vodka. He never liked gin. He used to think it tasted like gasoline. Now he doesn't have to pretend to like it any more. One advantage, he thinks, of living alone.
***
He will never be able to remember the end of the war. Voldemort comes for him when he is drunk, and if subtlety mattered, if craft and art and intelligence mattered, then Harry would have died. But all that matters is power.
***
I could have done that before, Harry thinks. I could have done that when I was sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty. I should have done that forty-nine days ago. Everything would be different.
***
Fifty-one days ago.
***
Fifty-two days ago.
***
Sixty-seven days ago.
***
The new Minister is a Hufflepuff that Harry doesn't know. Hufflepuffs seem to be everywhere now, bandaging things. When the Minister pins the Order of Merlin to his chest he can feel her magic, strong and clean in the Hufflepuff way, but it's laced with fear, like a fresh sea breeze carrying the stink of something dead.
"All right, Potter?" she says.
"Sure," he says.
Then, because something else seems necessary: "Thank you." He goes back to their flat. His flat. His.
***
He wakes just as the boy from last night is leaving. "Um," says the boy. "Sorry." Then the boy is gone.
Harry remembers some fumbling and groping. It is possible to destroy a Dark Lord when you are quite, quite drunk, but maintaining an erection is another matter. He goes into the kitchen and has another drink.
***
Here is how it is. It isn't the drinking, per se, that Harry enjoys. It's the moment just before. It's the moment when he is sober and he knows that very shortly he will not be. It's the certainty that the little voice inside saying no no no no no no no no no no will, in one moment, fade.
The voice doesn't fade, or not exactly. But every time he discovers that, it's already too late.
Harry has another drink.
***
"Potter," says the Minister. "I don't know what to say."
Harry stares at the floor.
"We are of course grateful for your sacrifices."
Harry feels sorry for her. Her fear hangs in the air between them like smoke. One would never know this to look at her face. She should have been in Gryffindor, he thinks.
"Potter," she says. "Do you know what happened to the building next door to yours?"
He shrugs. "I suppose I must have done it."
***
He lifts his wand, idly, and sunlight folds into nothing. He thinks of leaving it that way, but he wants to have another drink. So he brings it back.
***
He wakes with tears on his face, but doesn't remember the dream.
***
"My goal," Voldemort says, "is to conquer death."
"How?" Harry asks. Voldemort smiles, and again Harry wakes with tears on his face.
This time Harry remembers the dream. He flexes his wand hand, and darkness shifts beneath his fingers like a favourite pet.
All that matters, he thinks, all that ever really mattered, is power.
He thinks about this some more, and as he does, he pours himself another drink. I can do it, he thinks; but soon, too soon, he falls asleep.
***
There are -- there used to be -- other bottles in their/his closet. Not on his side. On the other side. Gin, not vodka, but beggars can't be choosers. He goes to fetch one and forgets, just for a moment, to be blind.
White shirts, neatly pressed; grey and black trousers and dress robes neatly hanging; shoes neatly arranged, jumpers neatly stacked. Everything is just so, as if these things belong to someone who will be back in an hour or two.
Harry sits on the floor and twists one of the jumpers in his hands. He buries his face in the soft fabric and breathes Draco.
***
Sunlight streams into the living room. The powdered brick has settled more or less permanently, and all the furniture is broken or gone.
"I love what you've done with the place," says Draco.
***
"You're dead," Harry observes.
"All the best people are."
Harry knows he is supposed to laugh, but he just nods. "Yeah. They are," he says. He has a list. It's a long list.
Draco rolls his eyes. "You used to be more fun."
***
Two Aurors come from the Ministry. They try to slip past the wards unnoticed, but Harry greets them, unshaven and rumpled, in the gaping hole formerly occupied by his front door. They are polite. Harry is polite.
Their fear is like the air; something they accept, something irreducible, maybe even something they need -- but something they're not going to think about. It's not part of the plan.
Harry, as he is now, isn't part of the plan either.
"Potter," one of them says. "What are you going to do?" A Ravenclaw. He knew her slightly at school. How like a Ravenclaw, just to ask.
"I don't know" he says. Their hexes bounce off him harmlessly, like balloons. Eventually they leave.
***
"Touch me," Harry says. He wants this again. He wants it so much he can taste it. Silk skin under his fingers, kisses and soft blond hair across his chest. Just this, just this one thing.
"No," says Draco.
Harry stretches his wand hand. The sunlight changes; it's coming from another angle, and it turns the swirling dust to a purplish black. "I can do it," he says. "I can bring you back. I can."
"You don't have to. You haven't yet."
***
An owl comes from the Ministry, and Harry thinks, as he always does, of a broken feathered body trembling in his arms, of snow-white wings stained with blood.
"Aren't you getting tired of all that?" Draco asks.
The owl carries an invitation to a Ministry function. Better than packing him off to St. Mungo's, Harry supposes, but not by much.
There's to be a memorial service. Another one. More Hufflepuffery, all this hand-holding. All this binding up of wounds. All this singing. "I hate funerals," he says.
"Really. When did you last leave this flat to attend one?"
"Two hundred thirteen days ago. Yours."
"That urn was appalling," Draco says. "No wonder I'm haunting you."
Harry laughs. The sound seems harsh and strange and almost frightening. The owl, displeased, nibbles on Harry's glass, and it breaks.
***
"Men have died," Draco says, mock-pontificating, "and worms have eaten them."
"Lovely thought," says Harry, pouring out the last of the gin. He frowns. He thought there was more.
"There's more, you wanker," Draco says.
Harry turns the bottle upside down.
"Harry. That's not what I meant."
***
Another owl from the Ministry. She's mottled grey and brown. There's no blood on her wings, he notices, carefully.
***
"More what?" Harry demands.
"Pardon? This habit of non sequiturs is getting annoying, Harry."
"You said there was more. More what?"
"I don't know."
"Fat lot of help you are. More what?"
"You'll just have to wait and see, won't you?"
***
"My goal," says Voldemort, "is to conquer death."
Harry is silent. He wakes and stares at the ceiling, dry-eyed.
I'm waiting, he thinks.
***
Harry points his wand to where the wall used to be. "Reparo!" he says. Dust swirls indecisively and eventually settles to the floor. Harry is surprised.
"You're drunk," Draco says, "and out of practice."
"I tore it all down fast enough," Harry grumbles.
"That was the easy part. This is the hard part."
***
Harry sits in their closet. His face is wet. He stares at Draco's shirts, Draco's robes, Draco's shoes.
"I don't want to leave you," he says. "I don't."
There is no answer.
"I don't."
No answer.
***
In his mind's eye he sees a wall, an arch, a door.
"Reparo!"
The dust swirls, then thickens. A brick. One brick.
Harry takes a swallow of his drink and places the brick neatly in a corner. This would be easier, he thinks, if he weren't so tired. He pushes the glass away. Not too far away. Just barely out of his reach. He can get it when it wants it. Just not right now.
He tries again.
***
The dinner isn't so bad, for something that came entirely out of tins.
"You," says Draco, "will die of malnutrition before you die of grief."
Harry looks at him: at that ponce hair, that baby skin, that stupid pointy face, and he loves him. So much.
"You're not real," he says.
"I'm afraid not."
Harry rubs his eyes. For several minutes he sits, and remembers.
"You were, though," he says at last.
"Yes. I was."
***
Another owl. Harry feels a mouse scrambling somewhere in the room; he gives it to the owl. While she eats, she pauses to look at him out of wide yellow eyes.
"Hello," he says.
***
He waves his wand, and makes another brick.
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