He rolled onto his back, stared up at the ceiling. The fire threw a dancing pattern of shadows across the smooth surface. He could hear Draco's voice in his head, blurred with sleep, almost a whisper: Are you going to stay?
Yes. I'm going to stay.
But he hadn't stayed, of course, and so the last thing he'd said to Draco, the last thing he might ever say to him, had been a lie.
He shivered. His clothes were still damp, the fire had only partially dried them. There was a knot in his stomach. He wished he could still the voices in his head.
Is that what you want, Harry?
It's what I want.
Then I'll do it.
He rolled onto his side and looked at the fire. The heat stung his skin, this close up, but he didn't mind it. He felt cold down to his bones, as if he'd never be warm again — and in his mind, he was back on that tower, kneeling opposite Draco, cold moonlight spilling down on both of them, bright and stinging and clear as pure alcohol. Maybe you just hate me, Harry had said, shivering in the freezing night.
Hate you? Draco had said. I could never hate you.
At least Harry thought that was what he had said. Perhaps it had not been worded quite like that. His tired mind struggled after the memory -
kneeling on that tower, his hands full of glass and blood. He had picked up the glass carelessly on purpose, wanting the pain and the injury. You hate me, he'd said to the boy kneeling opposite him in the moonlight, I always thought you hated yourself, but maybe you just hate me.
He couldn't remember exactly what Draco had said back: some kind of denial, a sputtered half-sentence before interruption. Harry felt sick, thinking about it now; how could he have said something so stupid? He remembered Draco kicking the antidote bottle, breaking it beyond repair, and Harry had felt a terrible rage against him in that instant, a blindly narrow despair: how could he do that to me, how could he? When of course it hadn't had that much to do with Harry at all, or at least Harry couldn't believe that it did, because if it had then it was a gesture of such an ultimate sort of devotion that the thought of it filled Harry with a hollow and profound sense of unworthiness.
No, it hadn't been about him at all, but that was no reason for him to accuse Draco of hating him when he knew perfectly well that he didn't.
You could tell when Draco hated you. For a moment there, in the alley that night, he'd thought he was talking to a Draco who hated him and it had unsettled him in a way he hadn't expected. He remembered what it had been like when Draco really had hated him, when they'd hated each other. There had never been any doubt in his mind back then that if Draco ever got the chance to, he'd cut Harry's throat and walk away smiling. Harry hadn't minded being hated — well, he'd minded it, nobody liked being hated, but in an odd way he'd taken an obscure pride in the fact that he seemed the one person in the world able to make Malfoy lose all his self-control. On rare occasions he had to admit he'd taken pleasure in goading Draco into rages; it had amused him the way that Draco's mouth twitched and his knuckles went white, the tendons in his hands knotting and unknotting as he tried to hold himself back from leaping at Harry and strangling him.
Sometimes, of course, he couldn't hold himself back. Fifth year, when Gryffindor had won the Quidditch cup yet again, Harry'd had Dobby deliver a blue velvet cushion to Draco in the middle of breakfast, on top of which rested a small plastic drinking glass and a note reading 'Perhaps this cup might be a bit more your size, Malfoy — H. Potter.'
Draco had done nothing at the time, but later Harry had been behind schedule, running alone to Potions class, when he'd felt a hand tug on his sleeve. Turning, he'd found his arm seized and without warning he was dragged under the nearest stairwell, his legs kicked out from under him, and Draco was on top of him, hands fisted in Harry's robes, doing his level best to render Harry unconscious by knocking his head repeatedly against the stone floor.
Draco had surprise on his side, and a near-blinding rage, but he wasn't a particularly skilled fist-fighter — he'd been taught fencing and dancing and the like, but Harry'd honed his brawling skills on the wrong side of Dudley's bad moods and knew exactly how to squirm away to evade wildly placed blows. He squirmed now, kicking upward with his legs, and they rolled sideways, a writhing, punching mass of flailing fists and kicking feet. They fetched up against the far wall, Draco's knees pinning Harry to the ground. Harry ducked, trying to slide out from under Draco and avoid the blows aimed at his head, when he realized suddenly that he didn't want to squirm away from Draco — he wanted to hit him back.
He stopped squirming and jerked his body upward, startling Draco so that the other boy lost his choke-hold on Harry and slid sideways. Harry flung himself up and over and now he was the one on top, the one with the advantage, and he bashed Draco across the face one, twice, hard with the side of his fist and the third time he hit him his hand came away bloody and then Draco jammed his forearm into Harry's throat, choking him, and shoved his hand down between them and Harry realized Draco was going for his wand and so he jerked his knee up, brutally hard — a dirty-fighting move, something Dudley might have done. It was enough to make Draco gag and double up, and Harry shoved him away and staggered to his feet, and only realized when he was standing up that he had grabbed Draco's wand himself and was holding it in his bloodied fist.
Draco was choking and gasping on the floor. Very slowly, he raised his head and looked up at Harry. His eyes widened, registering the wand gripped in Harry's hand. It was an expensive wand — Harry knew as much from Draco's bragging, it had been in Draco's family for generations, had in fact been carved out of rosewood for an ancestor of his during the Tudor dynasty. It felt smooth and cool in his own hand and surprisingly light.
'You want me to break your wand in half, Malfoy?' Harry snarled. 'You want to explain that to your father?'
Painfully, Draco pulled himself up to a kneeling position and looked up at Harry through his hair. His cheek was gashed and there was blood dripping from his split lip onto his shirt. He was still trying to catch his breath. 'Give me….back…my wand, Potter, you fucking stupid….'
The wand made a faint springing sound like a violin string snapping back into place as Harry bent it into a wishbone shape with a flick of his fingers. Flexible, the wand bent with his movement, but a little more — and it would snap. Draco winced despite himself, staring at it, his chest rising and falling rapidly with his gasps.
'Apologize,' Harry said.
Draco made a choking sound. 'For what?'
A bizarre rage boiled up inside Harry — the strength of it surprised him.
'For everything,' he snarled. 'For being who you are. For being a miserable, slithering, slimy, pathetic, racist, smirking little maggot. The next thing out of your mouth better be an apology, Malfoy, or I'll snap this wand of yours into eight bloody pieces and I'm not kidding. I'll do it.'
There was a silence. Draco raised his eyes and looked at Harry — a long, considering, struggling look, and for a moment Harry thought wildly that Draco actually was going to break and apologize, make some kind of conciliatory gesture, because he didn't seem to be about to try to hit him anyway, and then Draco leaned forward on his hands and spat a mouthful of blood all over Harry's shoes.
Startled, Harry stepped back despite himself, and Draco sank back on his heels, his head hanging down, eyes slitted closed, his voice a barely audible hiss, 'There's your apology. Now do what you want.'
Harry looked down at the other boy — his shoulders tensed, hands gripped on his knees, waiting for the snapping sound of his irreplaceable wand being broken in half — and he thought of Lucius Malfoy — and he couldn't do it. Cursing himself and his own stupid weakness, he flung the wand at the floor in front of Draco, 'Take it — just take it, and fuck the hell off with it — '
Draco's head snapped up and he stared at Harry and there was no gratitude in his gaze, only a desperate bleak hatred. He didn't reach to touch his wand or wipe the blood off his mouth. He just stared at Harry and when he spoke his voice was uneven, as if he were struggling not to cry or to yell. 'Why won't you die, Potter?' Draco half-whispered. 'Why… won't…you…just…fucking…die?'
