Fic: Harry/Draco (R)
Title: Stay with Me 'Til Morning
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rated: R
Notes: Done for the hp_fairytales fairytale fest. Based on Sleeping Beauty.// There is an illustration in the text. To veiw the larger image, click on it.// Love and kisses to my betas, judas_denied, eeyore9990, and shiv5468. You guys are the best.
Summary: In a once upon a time world, white magic would triumph over black, good would carry the day, evil would be vanquished, the valiant would stand and be true, and always, always, true love would end with a happily ever after.
Stay with Me 'Til Morning
Their first time was all teeth, and curses, and thorns that drew beads of blood like rubies from milk white skin. And ever after, with his face pressed to the curve of Draco's sweat-slick shoulder, Harry would breathe in his scent and think of roses.
~~*~~
Their last time was far sweeter, but no more gentle than the first, and that was something for which Harry would be forever grateful when he thought back to those stolen hours. It is sometimes both a curse and a blessing that you never really know when the last time will be the last time.
So much time was spent watching each other across the crimson battlefield, trying not to kill each other, and yet not look like they were trying not to kill each other. It had a way of bringing out violence, of a sort, in them both.
“Draco,” Harry murmured with his mouth against Draco's ear, his arms around Draco's flexing shoulders.
“What?” Draco asked, fingers digging into Harry's hips, where little blue marks would blossom by morning.
Harry shivered and tightened his legs around Draco's waist. “Do you love me?” he whispered.
Draco paused, cock deep inside Harry's contracting body, and turned his face to meet Harry's eyes. “Don't ask me that,” he said, his voice rough.
“But I--”
“Harry... please don't ask me that.”
Harry closed his eyes and ran his tongue over his bottom lip before sucking it between his teeth. “I'm sorry.”
Draco shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips. “No, you're not.”
Harry narrowed his eyes and glared up at him. “You're right, I'm not,” he snapped. “I can say it, and you know I mean it, and I know you feel it too... Why can't you give it back to me? Just once?”
Draco grit his teeth and pushed his hips forward, drawing a gasp from Harry. “Harry,” he hissed, “you have got the worst timing. Can we talk about this later?”
Harry pushed up against him, his back arching, head falling back as Draco moved inside him in deep, steady thrusts. “We're... talking about it... now,” Harry panted. “Tell me.”
Draco muttered something under his breath, then let go of Harry's hips to rest his forearms on either side of Harry's shoulders and cup his face in his hands. He stopped thrusting into him so roughly and slowed his pace to a gently swaying, rocking motion. “I do love you,” he said softly, reluctantly. “I have betrayed my blood, my heritage, my family, my oath... all that I am. I am betraying them now, this very moment, and I'll do it again. I betray them every time I walk away from you and let you live. How could you ever doubt that I love you?”
Harry lifted a hand and touched Draco's mouth. His fingers lingered lightly, lovingly, on his lips, tracing the shape of his thin upper lip and the curve of his fuller bottom one, as though Harry meant to commit Draco’s form to memory by touch, and was starting there.
“I don't,” Harry said, still savouring those words and clutching them to himself tightly. “I don't doubt it. But sometimes...”
Draco lifted a brow and slowly, deliberately, thrust. Harry's hand trembled and moved to tangle in Draco's hair.
“Sometimes what?” Draco asked.
Harry whimpered and pressed his face into the curve of Draco's shoulder. Roses. Pleasure tingled in his skin and throbbed in his blood and Harry thought of roses as Draco drew his orgasm from him with a strangled shout.
Draco licked Harry's mouth and began to move faster. “Tell... me,” he insisted.
“Sometimes... I want to... hear it,” Harry whispered, his breath hitching in time with the thrusts of Draco's body. “Sometimes I can't... Sometimes I see you... on the field... Your wand... and I wonder...”
Draco kissed him then to make him stop. “I love you,” he murmured into Harry's mouth. “I love you; I love you, IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou...”
Harry laughed softly, his breath falling in puffs against the side of Draco's neck. Draco stopped speaking and moaned, his orgasm taking him gently to the edge of sleep. He rested his head on Harry's shoulder and closed his eyes.
“Meet me again tomorrow?” Harry asked, his fingers moving back and forth through Draco's hair. “In the cypress grove, where the wild roses grow.”
“I can't,” Draco said. “Not so soon. Someone will wonder. Someone will ask, and if he is the one to ask, you know no lie will satisfy him. He would know.”
“Please?” Harry said.
Draco lifted his head, looked into Harry's imploring eyes, and sighed. “If I can get away without arousing suspicion, I'll meet you. If not...”
“I'll be there, I promise,” Harry said. “I'll wait all day if I have to.”
Draco shook his head. “Doesn't the saviour of the world have anything more important to do than lurk around in old rose briars for his lover?”
“Probably,” Harry said. He didn't sound particularly interested in what those other things might be, though. He yawned and closed his eyes.
Draco waited for his breathing to even out before moving, as carefully as he could, off of Harry's chest and out of his bed. He dressed quickly, by touch in the dark, not wanting to risk alerting the camp to his presence by lighting his wand.
“Draco...?” Harry sighed.
Draco paused and moved back to the bed to place a last, lingering kiss on Harry's mouth. “Tomorrow, Harry.”
“Stay,” Harry whispered.
“You know how impossible that is,” Draco said. He moved toward the door. “I have to go before I'm missed. I'll see you again tomorrow.”
“In the cypress grove, where the wild roses grow,” Harry repeated, already half asleep.
Draco's lips twitched in amusement. “I remember,” he said, and left Harry sleeping.
~~*~~
In a once upon a time world, white magic would triumph over black, good would carry the day, evil would be vanquished, the valiant would stand and be true, and always, always, true love would end with a happily ever after.
In such a world, Draco would meet Harry in the cypress grove where the wild roses grew, precisely as he promised, and theirs would be a reunion of joy, laughter, kisses and soft little love songs. They would embrace as though they had not touched in eons. They would roll in the grass and make love, every caress done with care, like they both expected to never touch again.
In such a world, those things would be, but by the time Draco left Harry there on the bed and slipped into the forest on his way back to his master's side, such worlds were long dead and such times lost.
War had swallowed them whole.
~~*~~
The next morning, Mad-Eye called a meeting of the Order to discuss their plans, strategies, methods... nothing that Harry hadn't heard a thousand times before. None of it, not one word of it, was worth a spray of piss in the wind.
Harry did go to the grove and wait for Draco. He called an early end to Moody's 'meeting' and disappeared around noon. And he waited all day, just as he had promised that he would.
Laying there on his back, in the grass between the forked roots of a giant cypress tree, rolling the lush petals of a rose one by one between his fingers until the tips were stained pink with their juice, he remembered how it had been that first time. He couldn't recall exactly what he had been doing there, but Draco had followed him there to kill him.
Draco had hurled the first hex and Harry had thrown the first punch and, somehow, they had both lost their wands and were rolling and cursing and pulling at each other on the ground. And then... Then everything got kind of blurry around the edges. Harry remembered that his robes got caught in the brambles and he'd panicked, certain that Draco would do it now, kill him now, when he was trapped like a fly in a web, but Draco had surprised him. No, Draco had stunned him.
Draco had kissed him.
The next hour was a flood of interlocking broken images. Rough hands that became so very gentle. Curses that melted into moans and whispered words. Pale skin, dappled with shadows and spots of sunlight from the overhanging branches, which seemed to glow like moonstone under Harry's hands. They had rolled in the roses, crushing lush blossoms beneath their weight, sending up perfume in a mist, digging thorns into their skin; blood smearing their skin like vermilion paint.
“Such a lovely image,” a voice hissed, and for a moment, Harry thought it was his imagination, so he answered it. “Yes,” he said, “it is.”
“I shall have to be clearer when I give an order from now on. Apparently Draco took my command to kill you in quite a different way than I intended it.”
Voldemort's mad laughter rang through the grove and Harry leapt to his feet, pawing frantically at his robes for his wand. Face to face with his most hated enemy, and he'd been caught unarmed. Sure that he was only moments from death, Harry silently cursed himself for being so careless as he fumbled with his wand and finally got a secure grip on it.
Voldemort didn't move. He didn't reach for his own wand or try to avoid any curses or hexes Harry might choose to send at him. He smiled calmly and held up one hand. “No wands, Harry,” he said. “I think this is best settled between us without resorting to that...” He moved his uplifted hand in a silent commanding gesture and two dark figures separated themselves from the shadows, bearing Draco's limp body between them. “Wouldn't you agree?”
Harry felt his breath still in his chest and his heart falter for a beat. He wanted to run forward, to snatch Draco from their loathsome hands, to wake him--wake them both--with soft kisses to his eyelids, and in the end, find this whole thing nothing but a frightening dream. He wanted... oh, how he wanted, but one of the cloaked figures lowered his hood and Harry remained right where he was, staring.
“Snape, you bastard!” he said, spitting the words. “You double-crossing--”
“Triple crossing, really,” Voldemort said, amused. “Or was it more than that, Severus?”
Snape smiled thinly and shrugged. “I've lost count, my lord.”
“No matter,” Voldemort said, waving it away with one of his hideous, spider-like hands.
“What the hell is going on here?” Harry demanded, looking between them. He spared a brief glance for the other hooded Death Eater, but the man just stood there. He seemed to be no threat and of very little importance at the moment, so Harry returned his attention to Voldemort. “If you're not going to kill me, then what do you want?”
“I never said we weren't going to kill you, Harry,” Voldemort said, smiling his ghastly smile. “But you're quite right, we won't be killing you. I believe it will become unnecessary in a few short minutes.”
Harry blinked at him and waited for him to explain that. He would. The man was ridiculously fond of the sound of his own voice.
“It looks like we've confused him, Severus,” Voldemort said. “Would you care to explain to young Mr. Potter the specifics of our current situation?”
Snape's smile widened and his dark eyes took on a malicious gleam. “With pleasure, my lord.”
Harry looked again at Draco and felt his stomach clench with fear. “What--?”
“Hush,” Voldemort said. “Let Severus tell it. He has a lovely voice, don't you think? He does it so well.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Snape said.
Harry looked between them, his brow knitting. “Tell me what?”
“Your fate, Mr. Potter,” Snape said. A light breeze moved a strand of his dark hair against his wax pale cheek. His obsidian eyes gleamed with a pleasure that made Harry's stomach turn in a mixture of fear and revulsion. Anything that pleased Snape did not bode well for him at all.
“What... What about Draco?” Harry whispered, not wanting to ask, but still needing to know.
“That decision has already been made.”
Harry stared at Snape for a long time, taking in his sharp, angular, hooked features, the ever-present look of disdain in his oil-black eyes, the hate that positively radiated from him. He glanced at Voldemort and the hooded Death Eater at the Dark Lord's side and sighed.
“Tell me then,” he said, resigned.
“You know about the horcruxes,” Snape said.
“You know I do,” Harry said. “You helped me destroy one of them.”
Snape smiled. “Did I really?”
Harry narrowed his eyes at the man and did not reply.
“Regardless of what I did or did not do, Mr. Potter, your precious Order has been annoyingly persistent in their quest for the pieces of my master's soul,” Snape said.
Harry's lips curved slowly. “I know.”
“Don't look so smug, boy,” Snape said. “You are foolish where you hate...” He moved one of his hands to Draco's lowered head and ran his fingers through his soft hair. “And careless where you love.”
“Snape--”
“You love too much,” Snape said, ignoring him. “You fear too little.” Snape twisted his fingers in Draco's hair and jerked his head back, showing Harry his lover's unconscious face. “This is foolish. The more you love, the less you seem to fear, when the opposite should be true because you have more to lose.”
Harry looked at Snape like the man was gibbering in tongues. “That's really fascinating, Snape,” he said dryly. “But are you ever going to get to the fucking point? And please don't touch him or I may forget myself and curse you.”
“The point, Mr. Potter, is that even your foolishness has its uses,” Snape waited a beat for that to sink in before he added, “And so does your love.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My, he can be slow, can't he, Severus?” Voldemort said.
“More often than you would care to imagine, my lord,” Snape said.
“I suppose you'll have to just be blunt then,” Voldemort said with a sigh. “Tell him.”
“As you wish, my lord,” Snape said. He turned back to Harry and his eyes were alight with something Harry could not name. Joy, perhaps, or anticipation. Or a combination of the two. And in another instant, he knew why. “My master has once again divided his soul. One final time, at great risk to his life. Where do you suppose he put this piece of his soul, this horcrux, Mr. Potter?”
When Snape didn't tell him, after several minutes, Harry shrugged. “How should I know?”
Snape grasped the hair at the back of Draco's head and used it to shake him. Draco's head whipped back and forth on his neck like the head of a marionette. “Because, Mr. Potter, the answer is right in front of your face,” Snape snarled.
Voldemort laughed in his high-pitched, grating way as all the colour and expression drained from Harry's face.
“You wouldn't,” Harry said. He looked at Snape, hoping for some sign from the man that he was lying, that he was really on the side of the light like they'd all come to believe and this was just an elaborate plan of some sort. Snape looked back at him impassively and Harry felt that last, fragile sliver of hope wither. “He trusted you,” Harry said, voice rough with the tears that were gathering on his lashes. “We all trusted you! How could you do this to him?”
“It was really not that difficult, Harry,” Voldemort said, his red eyes glowing like hot coals in his scaly face, smiling his ghastly smile. “I am, after all, something of an expert at it by now.”
“Is he dead then?” Harry asked, indicating Draco with a jerk of his head.
“He's alive,” Snape said. “He's only sleeping. A potion I created, manipulating the Draught of Living Death so that its effects are lasting.”
Snape looked very pleased with himself at this announcement. Harry had a feeling he knew where this was going and he understood perfectly why the old potions master would be so proud. It was quite an achievement after all.
Harry closed his eyes and bent his head, resting his face in his hand. If hate had a flavour, he was sure it would taste exactly like the bile rising in his throat.
He thought he already knew the answer, but he had to ask anyway. “When you say 'lasting', what exactly do you mean?”
Snape's lips spread over his yellow teeth in a gleeful smile. “I mean forever.”
Harry swallowed a sob and sat down heavily on the ground. He lifted his wand and pointed it at Snape's heart and his hand shook, but his eyes were hard as chips of glass. “What do you want?” he asked.
Snape lifted a brow and looked to Voldemort, who laughed. “From you?” Voldemort said. “Everything. Though not in the way you think.”
“Let him go!” Harry said, his voice rising so suddenly that it cracked on the last word. “What do you want from me to let him go?”
Voldemort smiled, almost gently, and gestured to Snape and the hooded Death Eater. They carried Draco forward and laid him on the grass in front of Harry before returning to their master's side. “Take him,” Voldemort said.
Harry let his wand arm drop and moved his shaking hand to touch Draco's sleeping face. “I don't... I don't understand,” he said.
“It's simple, Mr. Potter,” Snape said. “You really only have two choices. You can kill Draco, here, now. He won't fight you. He can't. And with his death, my lord would lose the last severed piece of his soul and be mortal once again.”
Harry didn't even consider that. “Or?”
Snape turned to the other Death Eater. “Give him the stone.”
The hooded figure stepped forward and held out his hand. There was a small red jewel resting in the hollow of his palm. Harry looked at it and knew immediately what it was.
“How...? Nicholas Flamel is dead,” Harry whispered. “How? It's impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible, Mr. Potter,” Snape said. “The Philosopher's Stone is a man-made compound. Nicholas Flamel made it. I made this one.”
“Take it,” the hooded Death Eater said.
Harry glanced at him and glared when he looked into the darkness of his hood and recognised Lucius Malfoy. “He's your son. How could you?”
Lucius grimaced and shoved his hood back, casting his aristocratically sharp features into the light. “Don't you dare presume to tell me about my own son. I know what he is, just as I know what he was. Take the stone.”
Harry took the stone and was tempted, so very tempted, to throw it in Voldemort's face. Instead, he bounced his hand, feeling the weight of the thing. Such a small, small thing to hang the fate of the world on. But then, the fate of the world often rested on such small things; an apple, a sword, a stone...
“If I take it, then what?” Harry asked.
“You remain here, in this grove, and guard Draco from the rest of those who will want to harm him,” Snape said. “And there will be many once someone discovers what we've done, and they will.”
“You mean, I guard your precious horcrux for you,” Harry snarled at Voldemort. “You're so sure of yourself. It's a hell of a risk, isn't it?” Harry ran his fingers gently over Draco's cheek and swallowed back his grief. “I have your horcrux right here,” he said softly. “I have your soul at my mercy. What are you going to do if I decide I have nothing left to lose? If I decide it would be worth it just to see you dead?”
The smile dropped from Snape's face and turned to a scowl, but the Dark Lord just shook his head. “Harry,” he said, chiding. “Do you think that I have not studied you as much, if not more, than you have studied me? You are a Gryffindor, through and through. Your heart rules your head. Always.”
Harry lifted his wand and pointed it at Voldemort. There were tears in his eyes and running down his cheeks, the curve of his jaw, and spotting his collar with salt and moisture. He knew the words that would end this man's life, or would if he had indeed still been a mortal man. They were on his tongue, both bitter and sweet, and he wanted to say them. He wanted it so badly that he shook with the weight of his indecision.
He could say the words and end Draco's life, such as it was now and thereby put an end to Voldemort and this war. The man didn't look like he could stand to have one more piece of his soul ripped from him and survive it without dissolving into a wraith of a human being. Harry thought of the numerous horcruxes the Order had found and destroyed and he thought it was a wonder that there was anything left of the Dark Lord's soul to take from at all. But then, perhaps there wasn't. Maybe there was one tattered little scrap of it bouncing around inside him right now, and that's why he was so desperate. Desperate enough to risk everything on Harry's love.
But then, it wasn't much of a risk to him if he already knew what Harry would choose, was it?
Harry dropped his gaze to Draco, lying there on the ground by him. He lay exactly as Snape and Lucius had left him, his face turned so that one cheek rested on the ground and Harry could look down at his face, in profile, with the fluttering leaves in the branches overhead making little flickering shadows and sparks on his skin that looked like dancing fairy lights. Harry's expression softened and he brushed his fingers through Draco's hair, something he had always liked to do when they were alone, if there was time. But time was something there had never seemed to be enough of.
He moved his wand to point it at Draco and felt the air around him become heavy with tension. He suddenly remembered Draco kissing him and saying “I love you,” over and over against his mouth until it became one word, then one sound without meaning, and he didn't care if Voldemort was using Legilimency to force the memory on him. It didn't matter, because it was there and he still remembered, and no matter what had been done to Draco or why, it was still true.
“You son of a bitch,” Harry whispered. “I can't do it. I love him, and I can't do it. But you already knew that.”
“Love will serve my purpose as well as hate, Harry,” Voldemort said. “They are not so very different, after all.”
“But if I'm so foolish and careless in my love, as Snape says, why would you trust me to guard what's left of your wretched soul?”
“Foolish and careless in your love, Harry,” Voldemort said, “not with those whom you love. You would give your life for him, wouldn't you?” He waved his hand at Draco. “You would defend him unto death, you would not flee in fear for your own sake if it meant risking one single silver hair on his head, and there is nothing that anyone could offer you that would make you turn away from him. If there was, you would do it now, I believe, would you not?”
“You know I would,” Harry ground out between clenched teeth and the burning sweet-salt of his unshed tears.
“Yes,” Voldemort said. “Because it comes down to this; you love him or you hate me. You cannot have both. Not this time.”
Harry sighed, wiped his eyes, and got to his feet, clutching the little Philosopher’s Stone in one hand and his wand in the other. “Then it's easy,” he said. “I love him.”
~~*~~
The roses that had once thrived on their love grew and came alive and molded themselves into a place of protection for Draco, where they could feed on the blood spilled in his defence. They were the first obstacle of the Maze of Thorns, for they would kill anyone who entered if they did not know the person's blood. All it took was a little of Harry's soul to corrupt them to his purposes.
The second obstacle of the Maze was the Sphinx, who was beautiful beyond compare, and just as deadly as any rosebush. Harry had gone out to the gates one morning to watch the sun rise and found her there. He asked her what her name was and she asked him a riddle. He never got the answer to either, and whatever her reasons, the Sphinx stayed and he was secretly glad of it.
~~*~~
It surprised Harry a little that the first one to brave the Maze of Thorns to find Draco and kill him was Draco's own father. Lucius was a crafty old bastard and he made it all the way to the end of the Maze, to the sanctuary's gates, faced the Sphinx, answered her riddle correctly, and entered the sepulchre where Harry stood, waiting for him over Draco's body.
He got no further.
“Why are you here, Lucius?” Harry asked, cocking his head to one side.
“Why do you think?” Lucius spat. “To kill him. To end this--”
It occurred to Harry that Lucius had aged. He hadn't aged badly, but then Harry never expected that he would. He had always been too stubborn and vain to allow for that. But the years still rested heavy in the creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the silver running like frost through his golden hair, and the shadows stirring restlessly in the depths of his eyes. In a distant way, it also struck him that Lucius still looked remarkably like Draco... and like Draco would never look. Draco's skin would never be wrinkled by time, his hair never dulled with age, and his eyes would never be haunted by memories of a misspent life.
Harry wondered just how many years had passed. Time ran strangely in the Maze... mostly because it didn't matter.
“It didn't happen as you imagined it would, did it?” Harry asked, his posture relaxed, his voice serene. “He didn't give you power, did he?” Harry laughed softly. “Did you really think he ever intended to? It was for him. From the beginning, it was for him, not for you.”
“And you think I was only in it for power,” Lucius said. It was not a question. “There was more... there is more to it than just that. Power was always an attractive bonus, I admit, but it was never the reason. I would not have been so willing to curse my son to this--” he gestured at Draco's still, sleeping form with a cutting jerk of his hand-- “for power.”
“Nor would you be standing here now, ready to kill him, if it were only about power,” Harry said, and Lucius looked startled by his understanding. “After all, money, if you have enough of it, can buy you all the power you could ever want, and you always had more than enough of that.”
Harry smiled and rolled his shoulders in a careless shrug at the look on Lucius face. “I've had a long time to think about it,” he said.
Lucius sighed and suddenly looked every minute of his one hundred and eight years. “So have I,” he said.
Harry waited for him to say more or do something, but for the moment, he seemed content to remain where he was and look at Draco's sleeping face, half concealed by shadows, half cast into brilliant light by the leaded glass skylights. He shifted his weight like he meant to move closer, but Harry tensed and he stopped the movement before it was completed.
“What do you intend to do, Lucius?” Harry asked.
Lucius laughed, a dry sound without a trace of humour in it. “I've come all this way... Nearly lost my damn leg to that evil rose tangle of yours. What do you think I'm here for?”
Instead of answering, Harry merely nodded.
“I suppose if I were to go for my wand now, I would never make it, would I, Harry Potter?” Lucius said.
Harry's lips twitched at the almost amused tone to his voice. “No. It was foolish of you to come through that door without it already in your hand. Not that it would have mattered, but it was still foolish.”
They were both quiet for a minute, then Lucius broke the silence with an anguished, wordless shout and reached for Harry. Harry took a step back, his body humming with tension, but he stopped himself from casting the hex that was on the tip of his tongue when he realized that Lucius was not moving towards Draco, but towards him. And he was not, at least for the moment, a threat. There were tears on his lashes and a fathomless misery in his slate grey eyes, and whatever Harry was or had become, he was not heartless.
“Lucius,” Harry said hesitantly. “Lucius, I--”
“How can you do it?” Lucius demanded, grasping the front of Harry's shirt and holding on tight, as though he meant to poke holes right through the fabric with his fingers. “Fifty years or more you've stayed here with no one to keep you company but the roses, who kill anything that comes near them, the Sphinx, who never gives anyone a straight answer, and Draco... who is dead, or as good as. Draco, who has caused more pain and suffering as he is now than he ever could have in life. How can you do it and not lose your mind?”
Harry shoved Lucius off of him with a growl. One of Lucius' hands held tight to his shirt and it ripped down the front when he pushed him away, but Harry gave it no notice. He pointed a finger right in Lucius' face, directly under his nose. “Don't you dare,” he said softly. “You helped put me here, don't you fucking dare demand to know my reasons like you have any right to ask. I know what he is,” he said, giving Lucius' words from long ago back to him, “and I know what he was. If you suffer now because of it, all I can say to that is that you've earned it.”
Lucius clenched his hands into fists at his side so tightly that Harry could see his knuckles whiten and almost expected to see blood seep between his fingers. He waited for Lucius to go for his wand now, but he didn't.
At last, when he just stood there, the light through the sepulchre doorway casting a halo around his pale head, Harry asked, “Have you told someone where you are and why?”
Lucius smiled and fingered the hem of one of his sleeves. Harry watched his hand from the peripheral of his vision. “Yes. Someone... Quite a few someones know where I've gone. Of course, the entire world believes you are dead and that I'm mad, so perhaps no one will follow me.” His smile widened as he said it. They both knew he didn't believe that. Someone would come. And when they didn't return, someone else would come looking for them, and so on.
“So now it begins,” Harry murmured, looking sad and drawn as he had not looked only a moment before. He sighed heavily and shook his head. “So be it. And forgive me, but this little chat of ours has gone on long enough. Sectumsempra!”
Caught unprepared by the curse, Lucius died quickly and with hardly a sound. His throat opened wide and rained his lifeblood across the front of Harry's torn shirt, the wall, and when he crumpled to the ground, it pooled there, but not for long. It was eagerly sucked up by the roses, whose roots ran under the soil everywhere within the Maze, and a good mile or so outside of its borders. After all, they were the Maze.
When he was sure Lucius was dead and the roses had satisfied their thirst, Harry walked over and crouched down to take his wand out of his hand. He'd been in the process of palming it from a hidden pocket within the sleeve of his robes. Harry stood, snapped it in half, and tossed the broken pieces out into the courtyard.
“Clever,” he muttered. “But not clever enough by half.”
~~*~~
Harry sat on the cool granite step beside the Sphinx, crossed his arms on top of his knees, and sighed. “What was the riddle?” he asked.
The Sphinx looked at him and smiled. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”1
Harry knew better than to ask the beast for the answer. She would not give it, not even to him. It went against her nature. “He knew the answer?”
“Yes,” the Sphinx said. “And he suggested a few I would not have thought of. At least not right away. He was a clever fellow. Too bad he had to die.”
Harry made an amused chuffing sound. “You asked him a riddle to which you did not know the answer?”
The Sphinx gave him an odd look. “Why would I ask a riddle that I already know the answer to?”
“Why, indeed,” Harry said. “Change it.”
“Of course,” the Sphinx said. “After all, I know the answer to this one now.”
~~*~~
And thus it began, and Harry soon learned just how right in his estimation of him Voldemort had been. He was offered more money than he could ever hope to spend, and more power than he could ever dream up ridiculous things to do with. He was threatened at the point of a wand more times than he cared to count, at the point of a sword, less often, but it was still known to happen from time to time. One fool even tried to bribe him with immortality, of all things.
It was amazing how rapidly the rumour became news, became a scary bedtime story, became a sad song, and at last, became a legend. Old men and women came from all over the world to test their wits and magic against Harry and his enchanted Maze. Some came for their egos, but most came on the chance that they might be the one to end the Dark Lord's rule. That they could do that one good deed before they died. Young men and women came to test other things... for less noble reasons. To prove their worth--to the world or to themselves, Harry never asked--to attain glory, to be remembered, to be lauded as heroes. To be part of the story.
So they came, and so they died, and their blood fed the roses, and that blooming redness was the only testament of their passage.
If Voldemort had been there to ask him, or inclined to do so, Harry might have told him that it got easier. Killing, like with everything, got easier through repetition. Voldemort might have laughed his high-pitched laugh, but he would have understood. He was probably one of the few who would have.
~~*~~
Sometimes Harry would sit with Draco in his tomb and watch the sun change colours and fade through the leaded glass skylights. There were patterns of dryads, pixies, bow truckles, and gnomes set into the glass, and they glided across the walls as the sun rose or set in the Maze. On rainy days, they were like ghosts, haunting the tomb where no dead rested, and on sunny days, they seemed like the most alive things in the entire sanctuary. They danced across the sun spots on the walls and along the light cast across his skin, and if he were feeling fanciful, he might imagine them living there in the light on his flesh, finding nourishment in his dreams and memories.
Usually Harry was content to sit there quietly, staying close, keeping Draco safe, but sometimes it wasn't enough. Sometimes the silence and stillness was like a hand squeezing his heart and he had to break it or be broken. Then he would sit with Draco and talk to him. But because of what he had become, he had very little to talk about that would have made Draco happy to hear, so when he couldn't think of one single thing more to say about how beautiful the roses were looking this year and how interesting the old man was who came by to kill him the week before, he would read to him:
“'I'd have known you,' he said. 'I'd have seen you once and known you and married you and lived with you before the party was over.'
“'What would you have said to me?' Laura asked. 'Dear Miss Durand, I will love you while I live? What do you say to me now?'
“'I will love you all the days of my death, however few or many they may be. As long as I can remember love, I will love you.'
“'All the days of my death,' Laura repeated softly. 'There aren't many left, Michael. Our minds are like torn pockets. Think of all the things we've forgotten and forget every minute. Why should love be remembered any longer than any of the others?'
“'Because we need it more,' he said. 'Because without it, there is nothing left of us. Loving each other, we last a little longer before we forget even that we lived once. Knowing ourselves loved makes us almost human for a little time--'”2
“You'll know that you're truly mad when he answers you,” the Sphinx said from the open sepulchre door. “I think he will someday.”
Harry closed the book in his lap and looked at the Sphinx with lifted brows. “What are you doing here? No one is guarding the gates.”
The Sphinx flapped her large, peacock feather wings once before folding them against her sides. She shrugged. “I got lonely,” she said.
Harry got up, laid the book on his chair, and went out into the courtyard. “Do immortal things get lonely?”
The Sphinx smiled in her enigmatic Mona Lisa way and sat at his feet. She looked so much like a large dog waiting for her master to throw a ball for her to fetch that Harry smiled. “Don't you get lonely, Harry?”
“But I'm not--”
“You are,” the Sphinx said. “There's no point in denying it. You will live as long as he lives... and how long is that?”
“Forever,” Harry whispered. “He'll sleep forever.”
The Sphinx got up and paced around him. She nudged his hand with her forehead and he stroked her copper mane with idle fingers. “I've been sitting outside that gate for almost a hundred years... and I'll go back too, never fear,” she said. “I just needed to stretch my legs, and take another look at what it is I'm guarding. He's very pretty. I can see why you love him so.”
“That's not why,” Harry said.
The Sphinx sat again and looked up at him, head cocked curiously to the side. “Then why?”
“I... I don't think I can explain it,” Harry said. “Have you ever been in love, Sphinx?”
She laughed a little, a musical, joyous sound, and flopped down on her belly in the dust. “I have had mates who I found... entertaining from time to time. I have had children and seen them grow. I've made love that was so violent, it was almost a brawl, and so gentle, it was like a dance. I have lived a very long time, Harry, and I will go on living for a long time more, but no, I have never been in love.”
“Did you love your children?” Harry asked. He was getting almost straight answers out of her and had learned more about her in the last few minutes than in all the one hundred or so years that he'd known her, so he asked. As long as she would answer, he would ask, because eventually, she would stop.
She tapped one razor sharp claw against her bottom lip and seemed to think about it. “You know, I don't know,” she said. “I don't believe I ever thought of it like that.”
“You're a strange creature, Sphinx,” Harry said. “And I don't think I can explain love to a creature who has never felt it, any more than I could explain the colour red to a creature who has never seen it.”
“You're a strange creature as well, Harry Potter,” the Sphinx said. “Time has granted you a lot of patience and a little wisdom... but what you have not learned, is how to let go. And I don't believe you ever will. You are the gatekeeper of your own prison, not that boy.”
Harry frowned and turned away from her. “I know,” he said. “I know that, but it doesn't change anything.”
The Sphinx laughed again and got to her feet, her cat tail lashing behind her. “I didn't expect that it would.”
“Ask me a riddle, Sphinx,” Harry said abruptly.
“All right,” she said, and grinned. “When is a door not a door?”
“When it's ajar,” Harry said hollowly.
~~*~~
It was dark when Hermione entered the sepulchre. All of the little shadow creatures that moved upon the walls by day had retreated to their shadow beds.
Harry watched her from his place by Draco's pallet, but he did not move. She had aged, and not well. It was shocking to see her mink curls glittering with silver under the moonlight and her flesh creased with wrinkles, and the knuckles of her hands thick and knobby caps on brittle looking fingers, but more shocking than all of this was the look of hope in her eyes. It was something that Harry had not seen anywhere in a very long time. Ambition, desire, arrogance, despair, desperation, hatred, sorrow; those he had seen in the faces of those who came to the Maze. But not hope.
And the Sphinx... well, the Sphinx had no use for hope, and nothing to hope for. She simply was. Most of the time, Harry was glad of this. But now Hermione had brought hope into the Maze and he didn't know what to do about it.
“Harry?”
Harry thought about not answering, he really did. If he didn't answer her, if he didn't say her name, or acknowledge her presence, would it be easier to kill her? Would it be more difficult?
“Hello, Hermione,” he said. “I should have known you would come eventually.”
She gasped and whipped around to face him, her wand drawn and its tip glowing.
Harry smiled. “Put it down,” he said. “Don't make me kill you.”
The hand holding her wand shook a little before she let it drop to her side. She still held it, ready to lift it and use it the instant he seemed to be threatening her.
Harry regarded her calmly and merely sat where he was. He did not threaten. He didn't need to.
“No one is making you do anything, Harry,” Hermione said.
Harry sighed. “You don't have any idea what you're talking about, Hermione.”
“Then tell me, Harry, damn you!” Hermione shouted. “Let me help you.”
Harry's laugh was like dry paper on a windy day. There was absolutely nothing in it. “You can't,” he said. “All the magic and wisdom in the world can't help me. I'm trapped here, just as he is.”
Hermione started to move closer to him, but Harry lifted a hand in a silent command for her to stop and she did. “Harry...” She swallowed and took a deep breath. This wasn't going at all like she had planned... like she had hoped when she walked through the door. “Harry, kill him,” she said.
Harry's head snapped up and his eyes narrowed on her. “No.”
Hermione gave him an exasperated look, and for a moment, she looked so much like the girl he used to know that it made his expression become a little more gentle. “If he is the tie that binds you here, break it,” she said softly, pleading. “Break it and free us all.”
Harry laughed that horrible laugh again. “The cleverest witch of your age... and you still don't get it.”
“I get it, Harry, okay?!” she said angrily. “I get it, but what good is he like this, to you or to himself?” She waved her hand toward Draco and Harry tensed. “He's dead already, his heart just doesn't have the sense to quit beating.”
Harry's lips twitched into a half smile that was as cold and sharp as a straight razor. “And you would help him with that if you could,” he said.
“Harry--” She took a step toward him and he once again motioned her to stop. She did, but reluctantly. “Did you know that Ginny and Neville got married?” she said. “They have three daughters. They have grandchildren. They... They're happy, Harry.”
“Are they?” Harry said. “That's nice.”
“That... That could have been you, Harry,” Hermione said. “You could have had a family. You could have grown old.”
Harry looked away from her and let his eyes linger on Draco's sweet, sleeping face. “We don't get to choose who we fall in love with, Hermione,” he whispered.
She took another step toward him and this time she raised her wand and pointed it at his heart and he didn't bother to tell her to stop. “I'm sorry, Harry,” she said.
“Hermione, don't do this,” Harry said. “Leave. Leave this place and forget about it and all that you've seen here. I give you one last chance. Take it, I beg you.”
Neither of them moved for a long time. Hermione stood there holding her wand, the tip glowing with patient magic, her breath shivering in and out between her lips. Harry watched Draco sleeping, counting the spider silk hairs of his eyelashes as he waited to see what she would do.
“I can't,” she said at last. “I'm sorry, Harry, but I can't just walk away.”
Harry nodded slowly, lifted his hand, and closed it. There was enough power and will in that one gesture that Hermione's heart stopped in her chest. She made a choking sound and fell to the ground. She died, as most of them did, with barely a sound.
“I know,” Harry said sadly. He got up from his seat by Draco and knelt beside her. He brushed a lock of salted hair back from her face and shoo-ed away the thorn vines that came eagerly for her blood. They would have her, but not yet. “I know, Hermione, and I'm sorry.”
~~*~~
“Hello,” the Sphinx said when Harry sat down on the steps beside her. She caught sight of the tears on his face and tilted her head. “Are you crying?”
“She was my friend,” Harry said, “of course I'm crying.”
“How fascinating,” the Sphinx said. “What's it like?”
Harry brushed his sleeve across his eyes to wipe the tears away, but they just continued to fall. “It's like love,” he said. “I can't describe it to you, and if I did, you wouldn't understand it.”
The Sphinx shrugged. “I understand many things,” she said. “I even understand some things that I have never experienced. For instance, why do you think mortal creatures fear death without having ever felt it? I don't need to feel your tears to know why you grieve.”
Harry silently watched the rose thorns twisting and twining together along the path to the sanctuary gates and considered this. After a few minutes, he sighed and rested his face on his lifted knees, his face turned toward the Sphinx.
“You're not all wrong,” he said, “but you're not all right either. You can't understand it all, not really.”
“You think not?” the Sphinx asked. “I understand that you were once brave and honourable and true. That you loved so fiercely that you allowed the world you were born to save to be destroyed for the sake of that love. I understand that you are, and have been for a very long time, less than a man, and those roses are much, much more than roses. I understand that you have become the very thing that you hate with all that is left of your soul, and that you are still human enough that it torments you. What don't I understand?”
Harry's lips quivered and he took a ragged breath. Instead of replying to her question, he said, “If I were gone, what would you do? Would you leave?”
She smiled and rubbed the tips of her claws on one of the stone steps to polish the tips. “Not as long as people come and there are riddles to ask. I will stay as long as it entertains me, or until I run out of riddles.”
Harry sniffed and wiped his eyes with his damp sleeve again. “Ask me a riddle, Sphinx,” he said.
She lifted a brow at his abrupt change of topic, but happily obliged. “Until I am measured I am not known, yet how you miss me when I have flown. What am I?”
Harry shrugged. “Time,” he whispered.
~~*~~
Harry sat in the dappled rainbow light of the glass windows beside Draco's pallet and read to him, as he often liked to do. “...There are no happy endings, he knew, because nothing ends; and if there were any being dispensed, a great many worthier people would be in line for them long before--”3
“Harry...”
Harry marked his place in the book with his finger and looked up at the sound of that voice. Draco still lay exactly as before, his arms folded over his stomach, the fan of his white lashes resting on his cheeks, his features relaxed, his breath so light and slow that it hardly disturbed the air around his face. The Sphinx's words about madness ran through his mind, but it didn't really matter because Harry knew that voice, loved it, and he could do nothing but answer.
“Draco?”
“I've missed you, Harry.”
Harry went to his knees by Draco's side, taking one of his hands and linking their fingers together. “I've been right here all the time,” Harry murmured.
“I love you... IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou...”
“I love you too, Draco,” Harry said, his face suffused with joy. “Did you sleep well?”
~~finis~~
A/N: 1The origin of this riddle is Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and is actually known for not having a definite answer. More information on its history and origins here: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_266.html if you're interested. 2&3These are direct quotes from A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle, which was part of the inspiration for the plot of this story.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rated: R
Notes: Done for the hp_fairytales fairytale fest. Based on Sleeping Beauty.// There is an illustration in the text. To veiw the larger image, click on it.// Love and kisses to my betas, judas_denied, eeyore9990, and shiv5468. You guys are the best.
Summary: In a once upon a time world, white magic would triumph over black, good would carry the day, evil would be vanquished, the valiant would stand and be true, and always, always, true love would end with a happily ever after.
Stay with Me 'Til Morning
Their first time was all teeth, and curses, and thorns that drew beads of blood like rubies from milk white skin. And ever after, with his face pressed to the curve of Draco's sweat-slick shoulder, Harry would breathe in his scent and think of roses.
~~*~~
Their last time was far sweeter, but no more gentle than the first, and that was something for which Harry would be forever grateful when he thought back to those stolen hours. It is sometimes both a curse and a blessing that you never really know when the last time will be the last time.
So much time was spent watching each other across the crimson battlefield, trying not to kill each other, and yet not look like they were trying not to kill each other. It had a way of bringing out violence, of a sort, in them both.
“Draco,” Harry murmured with his mouth against Draco's ear, his arms around Draco's flexing shoulders.
“What?” Draco asked, fingers digging into Harry's hips, where little blue marks would blossom by morning.
Harry shivered and tightened his legs around Draco's waist. “Do you love me?” he whispered.
Draco paused, cock deep inside Harry's contracting body, and turned his face to meet Harry's eyes. “Don't ask me that,” he said, his voice rough.
“But I--”
“Harry... please don't ask me that.”
Harry closed his eyes and ran his tongue over his bottom lip before sucking it between his teeth. “I'm sorry.”
Draco shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips. “No, you're not.”
Harry narrowed his eyes and glared up at him. “You're right, I'm not,” he snapped. “I can say it, and you know I mean it, and I know you feel it too... Why can't you give it back to me? Just once?”
Draco grit his teeth and pushed his hips forward, drawing a gasp from Harry. “Harry,” he hissed, “you have got the worst timing. Can we talk about this later?”
Harry pushed up against him, his back arching, head falling back as Draco moved inside him in deep, steady thrusts. “We're... talking about it... now,” Harry panted. “Tell me.”
Draco muttered something under his breath, then let go of Harry's hips to rest his forearms on either side of Harry's shoulders and cup his face in his hands. He stopped thrusting into him so roughly and slowed his pace to a gently swaying, rocking motion. “I do love you,” he said softly, reluctantly. “I have betrayed my blood, my heritage, my family, my oath... all that I am. I am betraying them now, this very moment, and I'll do it again. I betray them every time I walk away from you and let you live. How could you ever doubt that I love you?”
Harry lifted a hand and touched Draco's mouth. His fingers lingered lightly, lovingly, on his lips, tracing the shape of his thin upper lip and the curve of his fuller bottom one, as though Harry meant to commit Draco’s form to memory by touch, and was starting there.
“I don't,” Harry said, still savouring those words and clutching them to himself tightly. “I don't doubt it. But sometimes...”
Draco lifted a brow and slowly, deliberately, thrust. Harry's hand trembled and moved to tangle in Draco's hair.
“Sometimes what?” Draco asked.
Harry whimpered and pressed his face into the curve of Draco's shoulder. Roses. Pleasure tingled in his skin and throbbed in his blood and Harry thought of roses as Draco drew his orgasm from him with a strangled shout.
Draco licked Harry's mouth and began to move faster. “Tell... me,” he insisted.
“Sometimes... I want to... hear it,” Harry whispered, his breath hitching in time with the thrusts of Draco's body. “Sometimes I can't... Sometimes I see you... on the field... Your wand... and I wonder...”
Draco kissed him then to make him stop. “I love you,” he murmured into Harry's mouth. “I love you; I love you, IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou...”
Harry laughed softly, his breath falling in puffs against the side of Draco's neck. Draco stopped speaking and moaned, his orgasm taking him gently to the edge of sleep. He rested his head on Harry's shoulder and closed his eyes.
“Meet me again tomorrow?” Harry asked, his fingers moving back and forth through Draco's hair. “In the cypress grove, where the wild roses grow.”
“I can't,” Draco said. “Not so soon. Someone will wonder. Someone will ask, and if he is the one to ask, you know no lie will satisfy him. He would know.”
“Please?” Harry said.
Draco lifted his head, looked into Harry's imploring eyes, and sighed. “If I can get away without arousing suspicion, I'll meet you. If not...”
“I'll be there, I promise,” Harry said. “I'll wait all day if I have to.”
Draco shook his head. “Doesn't the saviour of the world have anything more important to do than lurk around in old rose briars for his lover?”
“Probably,” Harry said. He didn't sound particularly interested in what those other things might be, though. He yawned and closed his eyes.
Draco waited for his breathing to even out before moving, as carefully as he could, off of Harry's chest and out of his bed. He dressed quickly, by touch in the dark, not wanting to risk alerting the camp to his presence by lighting his wand.
“Draco...?” Harry sighed.
Draco paused and moved back to the bed to place a last, lingering kiss on Harry's mouth. “Tomorrow, Harry.”
“Stay,” Harry whispered.
“You know how impossible that is,” Draco said. He moved toward the door. “I have to go before I'm missed. I'll see you again tomorrow.”
“In the cypress grove, where the wild roses grow,” Harry repeated, already half asleep.
Draco's lips twitched in amusement. “I remember,” he said, and left Harry sleeping.
~~*~~
In a once upon a time world, white magic would triumph over black, good would carry the day, evil would be vanquished, the valiant would stand and be true, and always, always, true love would end with a happily ever after.
In such a world, Draco would meet Harry in the cypress grove where the wild roses grew, precisely as he promised, and theirs would be a reunion of joy, laughter, kisses and soft little love songs. They would embrace as though they had not touched in eons. They would roll in the grass and make love, every caress done with care, like they both expected to never touch again.
In such a world, those things would be, but by the time Draco left Harry there on the bed and slipped into the forest on his way back to his master's side, such worlds were long dead and such times lost.
War had swallowed them whole.
~~*~~
The next morning, Mad-Eye called a meeting of the Order to discuss their plans, strategies, methods... nothing that Harry hadn't heard a thousand times before. None of it, not one word of it, was worth a spray of piss in the wind.
Harry did go to the grove and wait for Draco. He called an early end to Moody's 'meeting' and disappeared around noon. And he waited all day, just as he had promised that he would.
Laying there on his back, in the grass between the forked roots of a giant cypress tree, rolling the lush petals of a rose one by one between his fingers until the tips were stained pink with their juice, he remembered how it had been that first time. He couldn't recall exactly what he had been doing there, but Draco had followed him there to kill him.
Draco had hurled the first hex and Harry had thrown the first punch and, somehow, they had both lost their wands and were rolling and cursing and pulling at each other on the ground. And then... Then everything got kind of blurry around the edges. Harry remembered that his robes got caught in the brambles and he'd panicked, certain that Draco would do it now, kill him now, when he was trapped like a fly in a web, but Draco had surprised him. No, Draco had stunned him.
Draco had kissed him.
The next hour was a flood of interlocking broken images. Rough hands that became so very gentle. Curses that melted into moans and whispered words. Pale skin, dappled with shadows and spots of sunlight from the overhanging branches, which seemed to glow like moonstone under Harry's hands. They had rolled in the roses, crushing lush blossoms beneath their weight, sending up perfume in a mist, digging thorns into their skin; blood smearing their skin like vermilion paint.
“Such a lovely image,” a voice hissed, and for a moment, Harry thought it was his imagination, so he answered it. “Yes,” he said, “it is.”
“I shall have to be clearer when I give an order from now on. Apparently Draco took my command to kill you in quite a different way than I intended it.”
Voldemort's mad laughter rang through the grove and Harry leapt to his feet, pawing frantically at his robes for his wand. Face to face with his most hated enemy, and he'd been caught unarmed. Sure that he was only moments from death, Harry silently cursed himself for being so careless as he fumbled with his wand and finally got a secure grip on it.
Voldemort didn't move. He didn't reach for his own wand or try to avoid any curses or hexes Harry might choose to send at him. He smiled calmly and held up one hand. “No wands, Harry,” he said. “I think this is best settled between us without resorting to that...” He moved his uplifted hand in a silent commanding gesture and two dark figures separated themselves from the shadows, bearing Draco's limp body between them. “Wouldn't you agree?”
Harry felt his breath still in his chest and his heart falter for a beat. He wanted to run forward, to snatch Draco from their loathsome hands, to wake him--wake them both--with soft kisses to his eyelids, and in the end, find this whole thing nothing but a frightening dream. He wanted... oh, how he wanted, but one of the cloaked figures lowered his hood and Harry remained right where he was, staring.
“Snape, you bastard!” he said, spitting the words. “You double-crossing--”
“Triple crossing, really,” Voldemort said, amused. “Or was it more than that, Severus?”
Snape smiled thinly and shrugged. “I've lost count, my lord.”
“No matter,” Voldemort said, waving it away with one of his hideous, spider-like hands.
“What the hell is going on here?” Harry demanded, looking between them. He spared a brief glance for the other hooded Death Eater, but the man just stood there. He seemed to be no threat and of very little importance at the moment, so Harry returned his attention to Voldemort. “If you're not going to kill me, then what do you want?”
“I never said we weren't going to kill you, Harry,” Voldemort said, smiling his ghastly smile. “But you're quite right, we won't be killing you. I believe it will become unnecessary in a few short minutes.”
Harry blinked at him and waited for him to explain that. He would. The man was ridiculously fond of the sound of his own voice.
“It looks like we've confused him, Severus,” Voldemort said. “Would you care to explain to young Mr. Potter the specifics of our current situation?”
Snape's smile widened and his dark eyes took on a malicious gleam. “With pleasure, my lord.”
Harry looked again at Draco and felt his stomach clench with fear. “What--?”
“Hush,” Voldemort said. “Let Severus tell it. He has a lovely voice, don't you think? He does it so well.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Snape said.
Harry looked between them, his brow knitting. “Tell me what?”
“Your fate, Mr. Potter,” Snape said. A light breeze moved a strand of his dark hair against his wax pale cheek. His obsidian eyes gleamed with a pleasure that made Harry's stomach turn in a mixture of fear and revulsion. Anything that pleased Snape did not bode well for him at all.
“What... What about Draco?” Harry whispered, not wanting to ask, but still needing to know.
“That decision has already been made.”
Harry stared at Snape for a long time, taking in his sharp, angular, hooked features, the ever-present look of disdain in his oil-black eyes, the hate that positively radiated from him. He glanced at Voldemort and the hooded Death Eater at the Dark Lord's side and sighed.
“Tell me then,” he said, resigned.
“You know about the horcruxes,” Snape said.
“You know I do,” Harry said. “You helped me destroy one of them.”
Snape smiled. “Did I really?”
Harry narrowed his eyes at the man and did not reply.
“Regardless of what I did or did not do, Mr. Potter, your precious Order has been annoyingly persistent in their quest for the pieces of my master's soul,” Snape said.
Harry's lips curved slowly. “I know.”
“Don't look so smug, boy,” Snape said. “You are foolish where you hate...” He moved one of his hands to Draco's lowered head and ran his fingers through his soft hair. “And careless where you love.”
“Snape--”
“You love too much,” Snape said, ignoring him. “You fear too little.” Snape twisted his fingers in Draco's hair and jerked his head back, showing Harry his lover's unconscious face. “This is foolish. The more you love, the less you seem to fear, when the opposite should be true because you have more to lose.”
Harry looked at Snape like the man was gibbering in tongues. “That's really fascinating, Snape,” he said dryly. “But are you ever going to get to the fucking point? And please don't touch him or I may forget myself and curse you.”
“The point, Mr. Potter, is that even your foolishness has its uses,” Snape waited a beat for that to sink in before he added, “And so does your love.”
“What are you talking about?”
“My, he can be slow, can't he, Severus?” Voldemort said.
“More often than you would care to imagine, my lord,” Snape said.
“I suppose you'll have to just be blunt then,” Voldemort said with a sigh. “Tell him.”
“As you wish, my lord,” Snape said. He turned back to Harry and his eyes were alight with something Harry could not name. Joy, perhaps, or anticipation. Or a combination of the two. And in another instant, he knew why. “My master has once again divided his soul. One final time, at great risk to his life. Where do you suppose he put this piece of his soul, this horcrux, Mr. Potter?”
When Snape didn't tell him, after several minutes, Harry shrugged. “How should I know?”
Snape grasped the hair at the back of Draco's head and used it to shake him. Draco's head whipped back and forth on his neck like the head of a marionette. “Because, Mr. Potter, the answer is right in front of your face,” Snape snarled.
Voldemort laughed in his high-pitched, grating way as all the colour and expression drained from Harry's face.
“You wouldn't,” Harry said. He looked at Snape, hoping for some sign from the man that he was lying, that he was really on the side of the light like they'd all come to believe and this was just an elaborate plan of some sort. Snape looked back at him impassively and Harry felt that last, fragile sliver of hope wither. “He trusted you,” Harry said, voice rough with the tears that were gathering on his lashes. “We all trusted you! How could you do this to him?”
“It was really not that difficult, Harry,” Voldemort said, his red eyes glowing like hot coals in his scaly face, smiling his ghastly smile. “I am, after all, something of an expert at it by now.”
“Is he dead then?” Harry asked, indicating Draco with a jerk of his head.
“He's alive,” Snape said. “He's only sleeping. A potion I created, manipulating the Draught of Living Death so that its effects are lasting.”
Snape looked very pleased with himself at this announcement. Harry had a feeling he knew where this was going and he understood perfectly why the old potions master would be so proud. It was quite an achievement after all.
Harry closed his eyes and bent his head, resting his face in his hand. If hate had a flavour, he was sure it would taste exactly like the bile rising in his throat.
He thought he already knew the answer, but he had to ask anyway. “When you say 'lasting', what exactly do you mean?”
Snape's lips spread over his yellow teeth in a gleeful smile. “I mean forever.”
Harry swallowed a sob and sat down heavily on the ground. He lifted his wand and pointed it at Snape's heart and his hand shook, but his eyes were hard as chips of glass. “What do you want?” he asked.
Snape lifted a brow and looked to Voldemort, who laughed. “From you?” Voldemort said. “Everything. Though not in the way you think.”
“Let him go!” Harry said, his voice rising so suddenly that it cracked on the last word. “What do you want from me to let him go?”
Voldemort smiled, almost gently, and gestured to Snape and the hooded Death Eater. They carried Draco forward and laid him on the grass in front of Harry before returning to their master's side. “Take him,” Voldemort said.
Harry let his wand arm drop and moved his shaking hand to touch Draco's sleeping face. “I don't... I don't understand,” he said.
“It's simple, Mr. Potter,” Snape said. “You really only have two choices. You can kill Draco, here, now. He won't fight you. He can't. And with his death, my lord would lose the last severed piece of his soul and be mortal once again.”
Harry didn't even consider that. “Or?”
Snape turned to the other Death Eater. “Give him the stone.”
The hooded figure stepped forward and held out his hand. There was a small red jewel resting in the hollow of his palm. Harry looked at it and knew immediately what it was.
“How...? Nicholas Flamel is dead,” Harry whispered. “How? It's impossible.”
“Nothing is impossible, Mr. Potter,” Snape said. “The Philosopher's Stone is a man-made compound. Nicholas Flamel made it. I made this one.”
“Take it,” the hooded Death Eater said.
Harry glanced at him and glared when he looked into the darkness of his hood and recognised Lucius Malfoy. “He's your son. How could you?”
Lucius grimaced and shoved his hood back, casting his aristocratically sharp features into the light. “Don't you dare presume to tell me about my own son. I know what he is, just as I know what he was. Take the stone.”
Harry took the stone and was tempted, so very tempted, to throw it in Voldemort's face. Instead, he bounced his hand, feeling the weight of the thing. Such a small, small thing to hang the fate of the world on. But then, the fate of the world often rested on such small things; an apple, a sword, a stone...
“If I take it, then what?” Harry asked.
“You remain here, in this grove, and guard Draco from the rest of those who will want to harm him,” Snape said. “And there will be many once someone discovers what we've done, and they will.”
“You mean, I guard your precious horcrux for you,” Harry snarled at Voldemort. “You're so sure of yourself. It's a hell of a risk, isn't it?” Harry ran his fingers gently over Draco's cheek and swallowed back his grief. “I have your horcrux right here,” he said softly. “I have your soul at my mercy. What are you going to do if I decide I have nothing left to lose? If I decide it would be worth it just to see you dead?”
The smile dropped from Snape's face and turned to a scowl, but the Dark Lord just shook his head. “Harry,” he said, chiding. “Do you think that I have not studied you as much, if not more, than you have studied me? You are a Gryffindor, through and through. Your heart rules your head. Always.”
Harry lifted his wand and pointed it at Voldemort. There were tears in his eyes and running down his cheeks, the curve of his jaw, and spotting his collar with salt and moisture. He knew the words that would end this man's life, or would if he had indeed still been a mortal man. They were on his tongue, both bitter and sweet, and he wanted to say them. He wanted it so badly that he shook with the weight of his indecision.
He could say the words and end Draco's life, such as it was now and thereby put an end to Voldemort and this war. The man didn't look like he could stand to have one more piece of his soul ripped from him and survive it without dissolving into a wraith of a human being. Harry thought of the numerous horcruxes the Order had found and destroyed and he thought it was a wonder that there was anything left of the Dark Lord's soul to take from at all. But then, perhaps there wasn't. Maybe there was one tattered little scrap of it bouncing around inside him right now, and that's why he was so desperate. Desperate enough to risk everything on Harry's love.
But then, it wasn't much of a risk to him if he already knew what Harry would choose, was it?
Harry dropped his gaze to Draco, lying there on the ground by him. He lay exactly as Snape and Lucius had left him, his face turned so that one cheek rested on the ground and Harry could look down at his face, in profile, with the fluttering leaves in the branches overhead making little flickering shadows and sparks on his skin that looked like dancing fairy lights. Harry's expression softened and he brushed his fingers through Draco's hair, something he had always liked to do when they were alone, if there was time. But time was something there had never seemed to be enough of.
He moved his wand to point it at Draco and felt the air around him become heavy with tension. He suddenly remembered Draco kissing him and saying “I love you,” over and over against his mouth until it became one word, then one sound without meaning, and he didn't care if Voldemort was using Legilimency to force the memory on him. It didn't matter, because it was there and he still remembered, and no matter what had been done to Draco or why, it was still true.
“You son of a bitch,” Harry whispered. “I can't do it. I love him, and I can't do it. But you already knew that.”
“Love will serve my purpose as well as hate, Harry,” Voldemort said. “They are not so very different, after all.”
“But if I'm so foolish and careless in my love, as Snape says, why would you trust me to guard what's left of your wretched soul?”
“Foolish and careless in your love, Harry,” Voldemort said, “not with those whom you love. You would give your life for him, wouldn't you?” He waved his hand at Draco. “You would defend him unto death, you would not flee in fear for your own sake if it meant risking one single silver hair on his head, and there is nothing that anyone could offer you that would make you turn away from him. If there was, you would do it now, I believe, would you not?”
“You know I would,” Harry ground out between clenched teeth and the burning sweet-salt of his unshed tears.
“Yes,” Voldemort said. “Because it comes down to this; you love him or you hate me. You cannot have both. Not this time.”
Harry sighed, wiped his eyes, and got to his feet, clutching the little Philosopher’s Stone in one hand and his wand in the other. “Then it's easy,” he said. “I love him.”
~~*~~
The roses that had once thrived on their love grew and came alive and molded themselves into a place of protection for Draco, where they could feed on the blood spilled in his defence. They were the first obstacle of the Maze of Thorns, for they would kill anyone who entered if they did not know the person's blood. All it took was a little of Harry's soul to corrupt them to his purposes.
The second obstacle of the Maze was the Sphinx, who was beautiful beyond compare, and just as deadly as any rosebush. Harry had gone out to the gates one morning to watch the sun rise and found her there. He asked her what her name was and she asked him a riddle. He never got the answer to either, and whatever her reasons, the Sphinx stayed and he was secretly glad of it.
~~*~~
It surprised Harry a little that the first one to brave the Maze of Thorns to find Draco and kill him was Draco's own father. Lucius was a crafty old bastard and he made it all the way to the end of the Maze, to the sanctuary's gates, faced the Sphinx, answered her riddle correctly, and entered the sepulchre where Harry stood, waiting for him over Draco's body.
He got no further.
“Why are you here, Lucius?” Harry asked, cocking his head to one side.
“Why do you think?” Lucius spat. “To kill him. To end this--”
It occurred to Harry that Lucius had aged. He hadn't aged badly, but then Harry never expected that he would. He had always been too stubborn and vain to allow for that. But the years still rested heavy in the creases at the corners of his eyes and mouth, the silver running like frost through his golden hair, and the shadows stirring restlessly in the depths of his eyes. In a distant way, it also struck him that Lucius still looked remarkably like Draco... and like Draco would never look. Draco's skin would never be wrinkled by time, his hair never dulled with age, and his eyes would never be haunted by memories of a misspent life.
Harry wondered just how many years had passed. Time ran strangely in the Maze... mostly because it didn't matter.
“It didn't happen as you imagined it would, did it?” Harry asked, his posture relaxed, his voice serene. “He didn't give you power, did he?” Harry laughed softly. “Did you really think he ever intended to? It was for him. From the beginning, it was for him, not for you.”
“And you think I was only in it for power,” Lucius said. It was not a question. “There was more... there is more to it than just that. Power was always an attractive bonus, I admit, but it was never the reason. I would not have been so willing to curse my son to this--” he gestured at Draco's still, sleeping form with a cutting jerk of his hand-- “for power.”
“Nor would you be standing here now, ready to kill him, if it were only about power,” Harry said, and Lucius looked startled by his understanding. “After all, money, if you have enough of it, can buy you all the power you could ever want, and you always had more than enough of that.”
Harry smiled and rolled his shoulders in a careless shrug at the look on Lucius face. “I've had a long time to think about it,” he said.
Lucius sighed and suddenly looked every minute of his one hundred and eight years. “So have I,” he said.
Harry waited for him to say more or do something, but for the moment, he seemed content to remain where he was and look at Draco's sleeping face, half concealed by shadows, half cast into brilliant light by the leaded glass skylights. He shifted his weight like he meant to move closer, but Harry tensed and he stopped the movement before it was completed.
“What do you intend to do, Lucius?” Harry asked.
Lucius laughed, a dry sound without a trace of humour in it. “I've come all this way... Nearly lost my damn leg to that evil rose tangle of yours. What do you think I'm here for?”
Instead of answering, Harry merely nodded.
“I suppose if I were to go for my wand now, I would never make it, would I, Harry Potter?” Lucius said.
Harry's lips twitched at the almost amused tone to his voice. “No. It was foolish of you to come through that door without it already in your hand. Not that it would have mattered, but it was still foolish.”
They were both quiet for a minute, then Lucius broke the silence with an anguished, wordless shout and reached for Harry. Harry took a step back, his body humming with tension, but he stopped himself from casting the hex that was on the tip of his tongue when he realized that Lucius was not moving towards Draco, but towards him. And he was not, at least for the moment, a threat. There were tears on his lashes and a fathomless misery in his slate grey eyes, and whatever Harry was or had become, he was not heartless.
“Lucius,” Harry said hesitantly. “Lucius, I--”
“How can you do it?” Lucius demanded, grasping the front of Harry's shirt and holding on tight, as though he meant to poke holes right through the fabric with his fingers. “Fifty years or more you've stayed here with no one to keep you company but the roses, who kill anything that comes near them, the Sphinx, who never gives anyone a straight answer, and Draco... who is dead, or as good as. Draco, who has caused more pain and suffering as he is now than he ever could have in life. How can you do it and not lose your mind?”
Harry shoved Lucius off of him with a growl. One of Lucius' hands held tight to his shirt and it ripped down the front when he pushed him away, but Harry gave it no notice. He pointed a finger right in Lucius' face, directly under his nose. “Don't you dare,” he said softly. “You helped put me here, don't you fucking dare demand to know my reasons like you have any right to ask. I know what he is,” he said, giving Lucius' words from long ago back to him, “and I know what he was. If you suffer now because of it, all I can say to that is that you've earned it.”
Lucius clenched his hands into fists at his side so tightly that Harry could see his knuckles whiten and almost expected to see blood seep between his fingers. He waited for Lucius to go for his wand now, but he didn't.
At last, when he just stood there, the light through the sepulchre doorway casting a halo around his pale head, Harry asked, “Have you told someone where you are and why?”
Lucius smiled and fingered the hem of one of his sleeves. Harry watched his hand from the peripheral of his vision. “Yes. Someone... Quite a few someones know where I've gone. Of course, the entire world believes you are dead and that I'm mad, so perhaps no one will follow me.” His smile widened as he said it. They both knew he didn't believe that. Someone would come. And when they didn't return, someone else would come looking for them, and so on.
“So now it begins,” Harry murmured, looking sad and drawn as he had not looked only a moment before. He sighed heavily and shook his head. “So be it. And forgive me, but this little chat of ours has gone on long enough. Sectumsempra!”
Caught unprepared by the curse, Lucius died quickly and with hardly a sound. His throat opened wide and rained his lifeblood across the front of Harry's torn shirt, the wall, and when he crumpled to the ground, it pooled there, but not for long. It was eagerly sucked up by the roses, whose roots ran under the soil everywhere within the Maze, and a good mile or so outside of its borders. After all, they were the Maze.
When he was sure Lucius was dead and the roses had satisfied their thirst, Harry walked over and crouched down to take his wand out of his hand. He'd been in the process of palming it from a hidden pocket within the sleeve of his robes. Harry stood, snapped it in half, and tossed the broken pieces out into the courtyard.
“Clever,” he muttered. “But not clever enough by half.”
~~*~~
Harry sat on the cool granite step beside the Sphinx, crossed his arms on top of his knees, and sighed. “What was the riddle?” he asked.
The Sphinx looked at him and smiled. “Why is a raven like a writing desk?”1
Harry knew better than to ask the beast for the answer. She would not give it, not even to him. It went against her nature. “He knew the answer?”
“Yes,” the Sphinx said. “And he suggested a few I would not have thought of. At least not right away. He was a clever fellow. Too bad he had to die.”
Harry made an amused chuffing sound. “You asked him a riddle to which you did not know the answer?”
The Sphinx gave him an odd look. “Why would I ask a riddle that I already know the answer to?”
“Why, indeed,” Harry said. “Change it.”
“Of course,” the Sphinx said. “After all, I know the answer to this one now.”
~~*~~
And thus it began, and Harry soon learned just how right in his estimation of him Voldemort had been. He was offered more money than he could ever hope to spend, and more power than he could ever dream up ridiculous things to do with. He was threatened at the point of a wand more times than he cared to count, at the point of a sword, less often, but it was still known to happen from time to time. One fool even tried to bribe him with immortality, of all things.
It was amazing how rapidly the rumour became news, became a scary bedtime story, became a sad song, and at last, became a legend. Old men and women came from all over the world to test their wits and magic against Harry and his enchanted Maze. Some came for their egos, but most came on the chance that they might be the one to end the Dark Lord's rule. That they could do that one good deed before they died. Young men and women came to test other things... for less noble reasons. To prove their worth--to the world or to themselves, Harry never asked--to attain glory, to be remembered, to be lauded as heroes. To be part of the story.
So they came, and so they died, and their blood fed the roses, and that blooming redness was the only testament of their passage.
If Voldemort had been there to ask him, or inclined to do so, Harry might have told him that it got easier. Killing, like with everything, got easier through repetition. Voldemort might have laughed his high-pitched laugh, but he would have understood. He was probably one of the few who would have.
~~*~~
Sometimes Harry would sit with Draco in his tomb and watch the sun change colours and fade through the leaded glass skylights. There were patterns of dryads, pixies, bow truckles, and gnomes set into the glass, and they glided across the walls as the sun rose or set in the Maze. On rainy days, they were like ghosts, haunting the tomb where no dead rested, and on sunny days, they seemed like the most alive things in the entire sanctuary. They danced across the sun spots on the walls and along the light cast across his skin, and if he were feeling fanciful, he might imagine them living there in the light on his flesh, finding nourishment in his dreams and memories.
Usually Harry was content to sit there quietly, staying close, keeping Draco safe, but sometimes it wasn't enough. Sometimes the silence and stillness was like a hand squeezing his heart and he had to break it or be broken. Then he would sit with Draco and talk to him. But because of what he had become, he had very little to talk about that would have made Draco happy to hear, so when he couldn't think of one single thing more to say about how beautiful the roses were looking this year and how interesting the old man was who came by to kill him the week before, he would read to him:
“'I'd have known you,' he said. 'I'd have seen you once and known you and married you and lived with you before the party was over.'
“'What would you have said to me?' Laura asked. 'Dear Miss Durand, I will love you while I live? What do you say to me now?'
“'I will love you all the days of my death, however few or many they may be. As long as I can remember love, I will love you.'
“'All the days of my death,' Laura repeated softly. 'There aren't many left, Michael. Our minds are like torn pockets. Think of all the things we've forgotten and forget every minute. Why should love be remembered any longer than any of the others?'
“'Because we need it more,' he said. 'Because without it, there is nothing left of us. Loving each other, we last a little longer before we forget even that we lived once. Knowing ourselves loved makes us almost human for a little time--'”2
“You'll know that you're truly mad when he answers you,” the Sphinx said from the open sepulchre door. “I think he will someday.”
Harry closed the book in his lap and looked at the Sphinx with lifted brows. “What are you doing here? No one is guarding the gates.”
The Sphinx flapped her large, peacock feather wings once before folding them against her sides. She shrugged. “I got lonely,” she said.
Harry got up, laid the book on his chair, and went out into the courtyard. “Do immortal things get lonely?”
The Sphinx smiled in her enigmatic Mona Lisa way and sat at his feet. She looked so much like a large dog waiting for her master to throw a ball for her to fetch that Harry smiled. “Don't you get lonely, Harry?”
“But I'm not--”
“You are,” the Sphinx said. “There's no point in denying it. You will live as long as he lives... and how long is that?”
“Forever,” Harry whispered. “He'll sleep forever.”
The Sphinx got up and paced around him. She nudged his hand with her forehead and he stroked her copper mane with idle fingers. “I've been sitting outside that gate for almost a hundred years... and I'll go back too, never fear,” she said. “I just needed to stretch my legs, and take another look at what it is I'm guarding. He's very pretty. I can see why you love him so.”
“That's not why,” Harry said.
The Sphinx sat again and looked up at him, head cocked curiously to the side. “Then why?”
“I... I don't think I can explain it,” Harry said. “Have you ever been in love, Sphinx?”
She laughed a little, a musical, joyous sound, and flopped down on her belly in the dust. “I have had mates who I found... entertaining from time to time. I have had children and seen them grow. I've made love that was so violent, it was almost a brawl, and so gentle, it was like a dance. I have lived a very long time, Harry, and I will go on living for a long time more, but no, I have never been in love.”
“Did you love your children?” Harry asked. He was getting almost straight answers out of her and had learned more about her in the last few minutes than in all the one hundred or so years that he'd known her, so he asked. As long as she would answer, he would ask, because eventually, she would stop.
She tapped one razor sharp claw against her bottom lip and seemed to think about it. “You know, I don't know,” she said. “I don't believe I ever thought of it like that.”
“You're a strange creature, Sphinx,” Harry said. “And I don't think I can explain love to a creature who has never felt it, any more than I could explain the colour red to a creature who has never seen it.”
“You're a strange creature as well, Harry Potter,” the Sphinx said. “Time has granted you a lot of patience and a little wisdom... but what you have not learned, is how to let go. And I don't believe you ever will. You are the gatekeeper of your own prison, not that boy.”
Harry frowned and turned away from her. “I know,” he said. “I know that, but it doesn't change anything.”
The Sphinx laughed again and got to her feet, her cat tail lashing behind her. “I didn't expect that it would.”
“Ask me a riddle, Sphinx,” Harry said abruptly.
“All right,” she said, and grinned. “When is a door not a door?”
“When it's ajar,” Harry said hollowly.
~~*~~
It was dark when Hermione entered the sepulchre. All of the little shadow creatures that moved upon the walls by day had retreated to their shadow beds.
Harry watched her from his place by Draco's pallet, but he did not move. She had aged, and not well. It was shocking to see her mink curls glittering with silver under the moonlight and her flesh creased with wrinkles, and the knuckles of her hands thick and knobby caps on brittle looking fingers, but more shocking than all of this was the look of hope in her eyes. It was something that Harry had not seen anywhere in a very long time. Ambition, desire, arrogance, despair, desperation, hatred, sorrow; those he had seen in the faces of those who came to the Maze. But not hope.
And the Sphinx... well, the Sphinx had no use for hope, and nothing to hope for. She simply was. Most of the time, Harry was glad of this. But now Hermione had brought hope into the Maze and he didn't know what to do about it.
“Harry?”
Harry thought about not answering, he really did. If he didn't answer her, if he didn't say her name, or acknowledge her presence, would it be easier to kill her? Would it be more difficult?
“Hello, Hermione,” he said. “I should have known you would come eventually.”
She gasped and whipped around to face him, her wand drawn and its tip glowing.
Harry smiled. “Put it down,” he said. “Don't make me kill you.”
The hand holding her wand shook a little before she let it drop to her side. She still held it, ready to lift it and use it the instant he seemed to be threatening her.
Harry regarded her calmly and merely sat where he was. He did not threaten. He didn't need to.
“No one is making you do anything, Harry,” Hermione said.
Harry sighed. “You don't have any idea what you're talking about, Hermione.”
“Then tell me, Harry, damn you!” Hermione shouted. “Let me help you.”
Harry's laugh was like dry paper on a windy day. There was absolutely nothing in it. “You can't,” he said. “All the magic and wisdom in the world can't help me. I'm trapped here, just as he is.”
Hermione started to move closer to him, but Harry lifted a hand in a silent command for her to stop and she did. “Harry...” She swallowed and took a deep breath. This wasn't going at all like she had planned... like she had hoped when she walked through the door. “Harry, kill him,” she said.
Harry's head snapped up and his eyes narrowed on her. “No.”
Hermione gave him an exasperated look, and for a moment, she looked so much like the girl he used to know that it made his expression become a little more gentle. “If he is the tie that binds you here, break it,” she said softly, pleading. “Break it and free us all.”
Harry laughed that horrible laugh again. “The cleverest witch of your age... and you still don't get it.”
“I get it, Harry, okay?!” she said angrily. “I get it, but what good is he like this, to you or to himself?” She waved her hand toward Draco and Harry tensed. “He's dead already, his heart just doesn't have the sense to quit beating.”
Harry's lips twitched into a half smile that was as cold and sharp as a straight razor. “And you would help him with that if you could,” he said.
“Harry--” She took a step toward him and he once again motioned her to stop. She did, but reluctantly. “Did you know that Ginny and Neville got married?” she said. “They have three daughters. They have grandchildren. They... They're happy, Harry.”
“Are they?” Harry said. “That's nice.”
“That... That could have been you, Harry,” Hermione said. “You could have had a family. You could have grown old.”
Harry looked away from her and let his eyes linger on Draco's sweet, sleeping face. “We don't get to choose who we fall in love with, Hermione,” he whispered.
She took another step toward him and this time she raised her wand and pointed it at his heart and he didn't bother to tell her to stop. “I'm sorry, Harry,” she said.
“Hermione, don't do this,” Harry said. “Leave. Leave this place and forget about it and all that you've seen here. I give you one last chance. Take it, I beg you.”
Neither of them moved for a long time. Hermione stood there holding her wand, the tip glowing with patient magic, her breath shivering in and out between her lips. Harry watched Draco sleeping, counting the spider silk hairs of his eyelashes as he waited to see what she would do.
“I can't,” she said at last. “I'm sorry, Harry, but I can't just walk away.”
Harry nodded slowly, lifted his hand, and closed it. There was enough power and will in that one gesture that Hermione's heart stopped in her chest. She made a choking sound and fell to the ground. She died, as most of them did, with barely a sound.
“I know,” Harry said sadly. He got up from his seat by Draco and knelt beside her. He brushed a lock of salted hair back from her face and shoo-ed away the thorn vines that came eagerly for her blood. They would have her, but not yet. “I know, Hermione, and I'm sorry.”
~~*~~
“Hello,” the Sphinx said when Harry sat down on the steps beside her. She caught sight of the tears on his face and tilted her head. “Are you crying?”
“She was my friend,” Harry said, “of course I'm crying.”
“How fascinating,” the Sphinx said. “What's it like?”
Harry brushed his sleeve across his eyes to wipe the tears away, but they just continued to fall. “It's like love,” he said. “I can't describe it to you, and if I did, you wouldn't understand it.”
The Sphinx shrugged. “I understand many things,” she said. “I even understand some things that I have never experienced. For instance, why do you think mortal creatures fear death without having ever felt it? I don't need to feel your tears to know why you grieve.”
Harry silently watched the rose thorns twisting and twining together along the path to the sanctuary gates and considered this. After a few minutes, he sighed and rested his face on his lifted knees, his face turned toward the Sphinx.
“You're not all wrong,” he said, “but you're not all right either. You can't understand it all, not really.”
“You think not?” the Sphinx asked. “I understand that you were once brave and honourable and true. That you loved so fiercely that you allowed the world you were born to save to be destroyed for the sake of that love. I understand that you are, and have been for a very long time, less than a man, and those roses are much, much more than roses. I understand that you have become the very thing that you hate with all that is left of your soul, and that you are still human enough that it torments you. What don't I understand?”
Harry's lips quivered and he took a ragged breath. Instead of replying to her question, he said, “If I were gone, what would you do? Would you leave?”
She smiled and rubbed the tips of her claws on one of the stone steps to polish the tips. “Not as long as people come and there are riddles to ask. I will stay as long as it entertains me, or until I run out of riddles.”
Harry sniffed and wiped his eyes with his damp sleeve again. “Ask me a riddle, Sphinx,” he said.
She lifted a brow at his abrupt change of topic, but happily obliged. “Until I am measured I am not known, yet how you miss me when I have flown. What am I?”
Harry shrugged. “Time,” he whispered.
~~*~~
Harry sat in the dappled rainbow light of the glass windows beside Draco's pallet and read to him, as he often liked to do. “...There are no happy endings, he knew, because nothing ends; and if there were any being dispensed, a great many worthier people would be in line for them long before--”3
“Harry...”
Harry marked his place in the book with his finger and looked up at the sound of that voice. Draco still lay exactly as before, his arms folded over his stomach, the fan of his white lashes resting on his cheeks, his features relaxed, his breath so light and slow that it hardly disturbed the air around his face. The Sphinx's words about madness ran through his mind, but it didn't really matter because Harry knew that voice, loved it, and he could do nothing but answer.
“Draco?”
“I've missed you, Harry.”
Harry went to his knees by Draco's side, taking one of his hands and linking their fingers together. “I've been right here all the time,” Harry murmured.
“I love you... IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou...”
“I love you too, Draco,” Harry said, his face suffused with joy. “Did you sleep well?”
~~finis~~
A/N: 1The origin of this riddle is Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and is actually known for not having a definite answer. More information on its history and origins here: http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_266.html if you're interested. 2&3These are direct quotes from A Fine and Private Place by Peter S. Beagle, which was part of the inspiration for the plot of this story.