There was a blonde man sitting in the passenger seat with a cigarette and his legs up in front of the window. It was Draco, the love of his life.
"I told you it was time to replace this piece of shit car."
"I told you over a month ago that I was running out of Flyway powder and told you to get it, and now you're complaining about transportation!" Harry sputtered as he worked on the car to the point of clanking.
The 1pm sun burned hot on Harry's back, and the dripping sweat made a steaming sound as it landed on the hood of the car. He had never imagined that England had such torturously hot times. He wanted to dive right in and wash away the exhaustion and heat.
Draco urged, "Come on, we have to get back before the end of the day."
Harry threw down his tools in displeasure and walked over to the passenger window, bending down. Draco wondered what he was up to and retracted his legs to poke his head out, "What's wrong? Go ahead and fix it."
The dark-haired man grabbed his blonde head and shined a hard kiss on those thin lips. "Gryffindors can't be brave and helpful though, not without some reward."
How could one refuse something that was so comfortable without Draco's effort. He yanked Harry a little closer to deepen that kiss. "Baby, I'll give you as much of this reward as you want." Harry's lips were piping hot and the sun was tanning his entire body like a moving furnace. Draco released him with some disgust.
Harry licked his lips contentedly and went back to the car to continue the repairs, taking about an hour to fix the poor old antique car. He checked the tires again to make sure there were no problems and they finally got back on the road.
They had been living as a shameless duo in Manchesterston when they received a letter from Narcissa the day before. She said she was celebrating Draco's eighteenth birthday and wanted the two of them to go back to Malfoy Manor. They had planned to go back through the fireplace the day before Draco's birthday, but they hadn't realized that there wasn't enough Flyway powder left for the two of them, so they had planned to drive themselves back to Wiltshire early the next morning.
The car had been driven out of the house at the beginning of the tour, or bought the moment Harry graduated, and was now toughing it out on the flat roads of the new century. Luckily there was another car, hell if Draco without his Muggle ID was going to make it home on public **** transportation.
Draco flipped through the old paper from the day before in boredom, seeing an interesting mention or two and causing Harry to join in the discussion. It wasn't long before they were arguing over the House Elf Freedom Advocacy Movement.
"That mudblood is still meddling. Who does she think he is, that a few words in a newspaper will make those ugly, lowly pixies call the wizards' bluff?" Draco scoffed at the newspaper with the swollen head topped with curls.
Harry frowned and immediately retorted, "How many times have I told you not to talk about Hermione like that. She's just trying to make things better for the house elf. What makes you so sure she and her comrades won't succeed. The Muggles have likewise never stopped campaigning for human rights, and things are so much better now than they used to be that the effort won't be in vain."
"Spare me the muggle comparisons. In the wizarding world, identity runs in the blood. As soon as you are born, you know where you should be. Status is a pyramid, and there will always be the highest being and the lowest. This pyramid has stood for thousands of years and is indestructible. We rely on bloodlines passed down from our families, so we are more powerful than the average wizard, and you can't argue with that. Domesticated pokemon are the collateral property of a wizard, and property cannot rebel against its owner."
"The pokemon property you speak of is, in Muggle terms, slaves. Slavery was abolished a long time ago, and only the wizarding world still retains this irrational system. I don't want to have this conversation with you again, it's an endless argument every time."
"Whatever!"
Harry gritted his teeth in anger. This was not the extent of bickering and making up again. The two of them were built on separate philosophies, and with them naturally grew different ideas. The two merged into one intertwined with each other, yet were incompatible with each other in life and death.
The two argued all the way to the door of Malfoy Manor in the middle of the night.
The towering iron gates opened slowly on their own, and all that could be heard throughout the manor was the sound of the fountain tumbling outwards. They tiptoed through the darkness to Draco's room by the glimmering light of the tip of their wands, and after a brief wash, they fell into bed and slept until just before lunchtime, with no energy left to carry on with the noise.
A ray of light leaked in through a crack in the dark curtains and happened to hit Draco in the face. Seeing Draco turn under his eyelids, Harry moved closer to try and kiss his soon-to-be-awake lover. Remembering yesterday's mouth-drying argument, he immediately abandoned the decision. Instead, a hand suddenly held his head down and pressed his mouth up. Harry jerked free and kicked Draco off the bed, "Vile."
Harry spent most of the day in his study, which was crammed with centuries of books. His favorite thing was when Draco put his leg over his knee and the two of them read their own books in peace and quiet, it took his mind off things. The curtains, as light as a young girl's underskirt, danced in the wind, occasionally sweeping the hem to Harry's heels, and he didn't care. He was reading the words: we are refined pure by love / We don't know what thoughts we keep / We are assured of each other in our hearts / No more worries about touching eyes, mouths and hands.
He read it out and continued, "Two souls struck together / Though I have to go, it doesn't become / Broken, but only stretches outward / Like gold struck to a thin layer"
Draco finally put down the book in his hand and said, "Can you look forward to something good? ."
"Can't you just think of it as a mere love poem."
"I can't."
"Then don't read it." Harry digressed, pulling Draco up from the soft cushions and heading for the balcony.
The sun was slowly slanting westward, hunching to the other hemisphere as if a sword blade had pierced its insides and the blood that flowed from it stained half the sky red.
The gentle evening breeze was blowing on their cheeks, Draco's blonde hair no longer shone as brightly as it did during the day, and Harry held his wide palm in one hand while the other pinned it behind his ear for him. The gray eyes were red and gray and black in each other at the moment, the black growing larger and larger until he closed them.
The night at Malfoy Manor was filled with high spirits as Draco's birthday feast was held in grand style. Both Narcissa and Lucius were warmly entertaining the guests, greeting them one by one. Their son proudly held his lover along with him as he walked up to his parents to make polite conversation with the guests and demonstrate to him. Lucius didn't even want to glance at Harry, looking away and pretending Harry wasn't there.
The prelude to the first dance played and Draco rightfully extended his hand to Harry.
The dance signaled Harry's status as Draco's mate.
Lucius held his breath and glared at Harry Potter, who was spinning all over the room. He and Draco had been in a cold war for a long time and it wasn't getting much better now. He certainly didn't approve of Draco and Harry being together, but he wasn't about to have a fit at Draco's coming of age ceremony. Draco was growing up and had a mind of his own. Even if a father was a man of great skill, there was always going to be a time when there was nothing he could do when it came to disciplining his children.
He couldn't figure out what Draco saw in Potter, who was nothing more than a half-blood wizard whose family had fallen on hard times. James had degraded himself by bonding with a mudblood, and now Lucius' own son had degraded himself.
The current head of the house of Greengrass came over with his wife as a guest. Narcissa and his lady talked amongst the women, leaving their husbands alone.
"Your Grace, with all due respect, you should not spoil Draco. His mate should have been my youngest daughter, but you rejected my family for a Potter ...... Do you want the Malfoy bloodline to be completely cut off from Draco! Look what happened to the Blakes!" Mr. Greengrass pressed his voice so that only he and Lucius could hear.
"I know." It was the understanding that had caused the falling out with his son. If it wasn't for the importance of the coming of age ceremony, Lucius would never have let Draco bring someone into the manor. Mates could be found again, the ceremony couldn't go wrong. If it wasn't for his wife, Narcissa, talking the man back in, it was likely that Draco would still be out there going crazy.
Mr. Greengrass saw Lucius grimace and understood that Lucius was also disgruntled in his heart. "Keep in mind your status. My youngest daughter is not engaged to anyone at this time, and she still has a year to reach adulthood. I hope you will consider this matter carefully."
He toasted Lucius and returned his gaze to the center of the ball, never mentioning the matter again.
Lucius kept wiping his thumb on his glass, a darkness filling his eyes.
The ball was winding down to its second half when Lucius saw Draco and Harry gradually withdraw from the crowd in search of a quiet place. They headed towards the balcony. Oil was poured over his heart, ignited via Greengrass, and it burned brightly. Lucius gracefully broke away from the crowd and slowly approached the balcony.
Pulling the curtain slit open and closed again, he closed the balcony window from the outside. In the hazy moonlight, he could see Draco and Harry at a glance, leaning in together, laughing and indulging in a duo. Lucius angrily grabbed Harry by the collar of his shirt and reprimanded him in a condescending manner, "Don't think that just because you've gotten into Malfoy's house that you're one of the masters here. You're just as invitingly self-righteous as your father. Half of your mother's filthy blood runs through you!"
"Father! I told you to stay out of our business!"
Draco didn't dare strike at Lucius, his upbringing wouldn't allow him to do such a thing. Lucius opened him across the room with a blow from his stick. The blow was heavy, obviously angry to the core.
"Because you are Draco's father, I will try to respect you and not bother you with past grudges. Aren't you done with all your theories about bloodlines? Think about the war not so long ago, Mr. Malfoy! Purebloods did not rule the wizarding world!"
This was said at the same time to Draco on the floor. The war not so long ago had shattered an act of blood cleansing, and how many of these old-fashioned families had to go through before they realized that all men were created equal.
"You think I don't know what you're thinking, you don't want the Malfoy bloodline to end with Draco. Who is it that says that families live on forever and that humans don't die out? The world is quietly changing and what you value will fade into obscurity. Nothing lasts forever, sir! If that great battle buried us all in ruins, would you still confront me as you do now?"
Lucius glared at Harry, his hands shaking badly from anger as he grabbed his collar. After a long moment, he shook Harry off and yelled at Draco, "Get out! Don't let me see you again!" Leaving the two of them behind, he went back into the middle of the ball with an iron face, trying to hide his emotions as best he could over the upbeat music, pretending that he had just come back through the air.
Narcissa, of course, noticed her husband's movements. She looked at her husband and then in the direction of the balcony and let out a long sigh. It wasn't long before she saw Draco and Harry come out one after the other and storm out of the ball.
She cut through the crowd and chased after them. "Draco, where are you guys going?"
"Getting out, of course. Please take care of yourself. Goodbye, Mother."
Narcissa glanced back at Lucius in the distance and turned back to watch her son and Harry's back as they left, filled with worry.
Draco and Harry returned to Twelve Grimmauld Place.
There was always a conflict in his mind. As his father Lucius had said, he was the heir to one of the twenty-eight pureblood families, and what a noble lineage. But the fact that he had chosen to be with Harry meant that he had strangled the future of the Malfoy family himself. It was a very capricious and even cruel behavior towards the family for the only heir of a family. On the other hand, there was no way he could not like Harry. He was embedded in his heart. Rooted and sprouting and growing, and once uprooted, he himself would be destroyed along with it.
Draco touched the wallpaper on the wall. His name and avatar grew on this genealogical tree, a constant reminder that it was the fishy red of the Malfoy house that rolled within him.
Harry gathered his feet before entering and watched Draco's back from afar, also lapsing into silence.
Two days later, they went to the ugly house together. Draco promised Harry to accompany her, even though he hated the family so much. It so happened that both Hermione and Ron had returned to visit their parents as well.
Harry had decided that he wanted a new car and gave his old one to Weasley. He knew Mr. Arthur would love it. He had broken that car many times while he was at school and he was quite upset about it.
Mr. Arthur wasn't looking for the very best, as long as it was Muggle, he was interested. Draco watched in boredom as Harry discussed Muggle stuff with Arthur again. Both eyebrows knitted together, the displeasure written on his face anyone could tell. The Weasleys knew what the man was like and simply ignored it.
"Harry, I was in the store and I saw a figure moving in a muggle box! It didn't take magic to make the figures inside it move. How did they put do that? It was amazing!" Mr. Arthur said as he gestured. He and Harry sat down at the dining room table and started talking again about the new gadgets they had seen recently.
"That would be a television. Muggles would take videos and then broadcast them on television. I can't tell you the technology involved for a moment. But for sure, it's not magic it's muggle technology. If you like, I can send you one and teach you how to use it."
"I was just curious. Even though most muggles can't do magic, they can still do things that wizards can or can't do. They're just too smart!"
Draco bit his lower lip, crossing his legs together and crossing them again, crossing them and crossing them again, listening to the two men unhappily. Being in the couch but all over his body was as unpleasant as being stabbed by a hedgehog. Naturally, he wouldn't join in the conversation. Curious about what Mr. Arthur was describing while loathing muggles, he was suffocating.
Hermione came downstairs to hear a bit of Harry and Arthur's conversation and could see Draco's displeasure. She gave a small grunt and went to the kitchen to help Molly prepare dinner.
It was a fluke that those muggles were able to produce offspring that could use magic, besides most muggles had to get by of course they had to come up with ways to do it without using magic. How did the mudbloods deserve to use magic, they knew nothing of the rules of this world and with their broken minds tried to influence the magical world.
Arthur and Harry were excitedly discussing the television's video and audio transmission of information. Draco was getting angrier and angrier as he listened and couldn't stand it any longer, finally stopping their conversation.
"Stop, Mr. Weasley! First of all you are a wizard and secondly have a noble pureblood heritage! I am truly ashamed of you. A Muggle can do all this only because he can't use magic and has to find another way with his hands. Mudbloods don't deserve to use magic, it's all a mistake, a miracle!"
"Shut up, Draco!" Harry immediately said at Draco, "Apologize now!"
Mr. Arthur stared at Draco, holding back his anger, "You need to apologize to Hermione."
Draco pursed his thin lips.
"Malfoy, I never believed that someone like you could be with Harry." Hermione's voice came from the kitchen, no anger, just disdain. "You're in love with someone whose mother happens to be a group of people you dislike intensely. We were all surprised at your interactions, but we never spoke ill of you. You make a joke of yourself when you say those things you know? I wouldn't care for a self-contradictory joke, I'd just laugh at you from the bottom of my heart ...... despise you ......"
Draco felt like he was lying on his side in water, half submerged and soaked and unable to breathe, half being slowly seeping in breathing hard. "It's not your turn to lecture me, Granger."
"I told you to apologize right now!" Harry reached him at some point and grabbed him hard by the arm.
That hurt. The hand was extremely hard and he could still feel it shaking on top of the pain.
Draco clenched his hands, "I'm not going to apologize." The honorable blood in his bones would never bow down. Hermione's disdainful expression made him even angrier. Regardless of the fact that Harry was still seizing himself, he glared at Hermione, "None of your business."
Then Molly leapt out from behind Hermione with her rolling pin and swung it twice in front of Draco so hard it grazed his face narrowly missing him. "Get outta here! Immediately! Now!" She wouldn't have actually hit Draco or she would have used her wand.
Mr. Arthur hurried to stop his wife.
"The bastard is insulting our daughter-in-law, Arthur!"
Mr. Arthur put away his rolling pin. Despite his own unpleasantness, he comforted his wife. "Let Harry deal with this, you'll only turn out to be bullying him."
"I'm teaching him basic manners. Fred and George couldn't have been more rambunctious without saying something so hurtful. His father is amazing, teaching his son who is exactly as obnoxious as he is!"
"Honey, let's go to the kitchen first, Ron should be back in a few minutes." He forcefully ushered his wife into the kitchen and looked back at Harry. The boy he'd watched grow up over the years was gripping Draco at the moment, his face ashen. Yeah, none of them had expected Harry to be with Draco. He thought he hadn't been awake when he found out about it, or the person who said it hadn't been awake.
Hermione went upstairs to her room without a word, never wanting to talk about it again. Only two people were left in the hall.
"Harry, let go of me."
Seeing that Harry acted as if he couldn't hear him, he said it again loudly, "Get off me!"
Harry clenched so tightly and so tightly that his shirt seemed to pinch into his flesh. They held it until Harry let go slightly on his own. Then he heard Harry say, "...... Draco, you've never wanted to be respectful. You've always been self-congratulatory and lived in your pureblood worldview. I'm done arguing with you about that. You will never change yourself for me. Have you ...... ever respected me? Enough already ......"
Draco hadn't expected Harry to say that, he would have rather had a fight. They fought so often that he was used to it, so used to it that he no longer cared who was right or wrong. But now this situation was causing him to panic. "I didn't change for you? I put up with so much for you, accompanying you to leave the wizard gathering place to travel, accompanying you to visit all kinds of people I hate, bringing you home to fight with my father ...... You say I didn't change myself for you? And what changes have you made for me!"
"But you never liked any of this from the bottom of your heart. One day, you will not even like me. All that will be left between us will be meaningless bickering. Is that what you want? I can tell you that I don't. What I want is a lover who is flawed but respects me enough, don't you?"
Something went "thump" inside his body, then cracked open a seam and the wind whistled out of it. Draco frowned and stared at Harry.
"You should reflect on that, if you're still willing to continue with me."
What was wrong with him? He wasn't wrong.
"Whatever." And with that he flung himself away, walking out of the ugly house with dull steps immediately phantom shifting away.
Harry maintained his grip for a moment, then slowly went limp, sinking tiredly into the couch. He hated arguing. He hated every fruitless argument with Draco, who couldn't talk to anyone anyway. It took one of them bowing down to make peace, but the problem was always there and they just ran away from it over and over again. He was tired of hurting each other and even spilling over to the bystanders.
Draco rarely phantom shifted on his own, it was always someone else who carried him. The rusty spells churned him up and he fell against the wall like a drunken drunk leaning alone. He couldn't seem to go back anywhere.
Home was divided into two parts: the Malfoy Manor and Twelve Grimmauld Place. He couldn't face going back to the manor now, and he didn't want to go to Grimmauld Place. He wandered like a lonely soul to the Broken Axe bar and ordered a stiff drink.
He hadn't gone anywhere until he was found by Harry, living in the pub getting knocked on the door by housekeeping every day. The world became clean and with nothing to do he lay in bed staring at the ceiling and ruminating. He thought about magical origins, ancestors, Salazar ...... and potions, spells ...... messed up more than the order of this bar.
Lying in bed for days, his stomach dried up empty. He was like a true lonely soul, not knowing where he was going, but determined not to bow down.
A week later, Harry somehow found him. He'd had a few drinks by then and had collapsed on the bar to be carried back to his room by Harry. Harry left the lights on and dumped Draco on the bed by virtue of the moonlight. Draco was much soberer and he knew Harry was coming.
Draco had figured out a few things in that half a month. He wrapped his arms around Harry and kissed him obliviously on the lips.
The universe originated with that kiss, and stars were born from it. Stars collided with planets, blowing apart and scattering matter in all directions and pulling each other; planets revolving and autobiographing around another, day after day and year after year, tirelessly.
The universe died in this kiss, and heaven and earth collapsed into nothingness. A white void where there was neither time nor existence.
Draco remembered their first kiss. Instead of following Lucius and Narcissa away, he turned back to the ruins to look for the figure. He had liked Harry at many points. The last fire had burned the liking into love.
Harry also remembered that when they were together it was also because of a kiss. They found a little corner in the ruins and embraced each other after their victory, making sure of each other's feelings with the grinding of lips against lips. It was as if he was possessed at that moment, bound deep in his soul to a man named Draco Malfoy.
When did it happen? I'm afraid I can't count. What made him decide to be with Draco was the wand that was thrown by Draco, like a banquet, inviting him to join the dance floor. After that he finally recognized that it wasn't a merry dance. They couldn't help but dance in their red dancing shoes, their toes spinning and destroying themselves moment by moment, through thorns and through steel blades.
He wanted pain. There was no easier way to convince a man whether what he was in was a dream or reality.
He wanted reality.
His unease took root in the soles of his feet, gradually spreading to his body, closer and closer to his heart. The emotion screamed all the way around him like mandrake roots, telling him to acknowledge and kiss the person next to him countless times, until now it was finally a near explosion.
Draco looked into Harry's eyes, wanting to sink deeper into this turquoise swamp, greedily trying to chisel himself to death into it.
Harry touched his eyes his lips and let Draco ride him deeper and deeper into it again and again.
No apologies, no consolations, no bowing of the head. Silence fell on each other, saying goodbye in an overflowing crosshe of desire.
A line of saline dripped from the corner of Harry's eye, and he wiped the watery mark away with his sleeve. The late July afternoon sun beat down on his back and his mouth was dry after waking up. He plopped down on the desk in the Auror's office and squeezed the dry drool out of his mouth, collecting the daily paper that was padded under his arm. On the front page was a picture of Draco married to Astoria.
He smiled, folded the paper neatly to one side, and wrote a letter of celebration for the owl to deliver to Draco along with a gift.
At the age of twenty-two, Draco was finally still joined to the youngest daughter of the Greengrass family. He and Harry were in the past, buried in his heart as soil for the next romance. In fairy tales, there is only the happy ending of Cinderella and the prince together, but not the life after they are together. So this can only be a bedtime fairy tale.
They can't dream long together.
FIN