The Blessing
Severus stood against the frame of the door that opened into the living quarters; it had a generous view into the kitchen, in which the basement's entryway was visible. There, Draco spoke with the headmaster. The conversations being had by the younger occupants of the house were trivial at best, Severus’s attention fleeting in for a word or two, and then he would refocus on the basement floor. But such inconsequential matters are always necessary when affairs have become so demoralizingly gray. And when Harry spoke of Draco, he listened carefully.
The question being answered must have been something along the lines of "What is he like?" because Harry had adopted a conquering look; he had seemingly been waiting to answer this inquiry since the day of his birth. The young man leaned back into the threadbare seat, his eyes low with languor, then, with a low voice, spoke almost privately to his friends on either side of him. Severus dared not eavesdrop, but when it came to his godson, it weighed not a thing on his conscience.
"You'll understand when you set your eyes on her that there is not a phrase, no line in poetry that has or could ever manage to capture the exquisite lucidity that is my Draco (emphasis on my). When I see him, it's almost painful now. There is nobody that will walk the earth that will come close in character or form. Every word he speaks—in that pretty tonality—is simply maddening. You see, there is genius in his eccentricity so pure that sometimes I feel so guilty and unworthy. When he looks at me with his silver eyes, I want to obscure him from the world, put him into hermetic isolation. His lips in a pout, a smile—I wish to see them in every way: that rosy, Antoinette pink bottom lip a bit more swollen than the top, capable of war-inducing kisses. And he looks divine after he’s cried, though I hate to see him so miserable..."
His friends could not even tease him; his honesty and earnest feeling brought forth in everyone, including Severus, sincere exhilaration for Harry. And Harry went on...
"I could write a book about him; it would be terrible, but I sincerely could. Even his flaws—I wince to imply he has any—seem to have been put in him just to mortalize him, or else he'd have become a god of some sort. And then there's me, plain me. I am not smart, tall, or handsome... I'd even been so agonizingly cruel toward him, and yet Draco maintains that there is no other place for him in this world than in my arms. Those are his words; he told me just this afternoon. Isn't he so deadly? Draco has a disregard for my sanity; why else would he say things like that? And after a kiss, he, so heart-renderingly beautiful, will draw away with a nervous look but also ready to offer me everything physically, spiritually, and emotionally... An artist couldn't capture it. And he is mine, torturously unadulterated, incomprehensibly alluring Draco Malfoy is mine.”
"You've gone mad..." Ron said, laughing now. "And you've just started courting him. I think this is just the exhilaration of starting out. It'll die down with time; once you're married, you'll be complaining about him to me."
Severus sensed a bit of tension in Harry after the word marriage was thrown into the air. After having gone on for five minutes, he suddenly seemed to be nursing profound quandaries.
"Don't speak so far into the future, Ronald," said the more sensible friend, Hermione. She seemed to have understood at once. "Just enjoy the moment now."
"Why? Do you not love him as you say? Did you not spend the last five minutes speaking panegyrics about him?"
"It's not about that, Ron. It's about the circumstance. For goodness's sake, do you ever read the room?" Hermione stood and left toward the window, where Ginny sat and began to engage in a quiet conversation there, hardly audible and of startling insignificance to Severus.
“So,” whispered Ron after a short moment, establishing that his girlfriend would not be returning to their private conversation. “Have you slept with him?”
Severus blushed and tried desperately to keep his attention away, but his protective instinct kept his ears alert for any inkling of foul play.
“Of course not,” said Harry. Severus’s chest felt lighter. “I mean, he’s still getting used to his feelings toward me and, you know, acting out on them. But he will let me touch him in some places…”
Ron snorted. “At this rate you’ll be waiting for a century.”
“I’ll wait. Part of me thinks I’m not physically capable of making love to someone like that. Seriously, it’s like he’s got amortentia oozing out of his pores or something.”
“Well, from the way he acts around you, I’m sure he’s nursing similar fancies.”
Harry laughed. “The day I make love to him is the day that I’ll be reborn. That’s how great it’d be, I’m sure. To see him so vulnerable under me… If the Veil didn’t mean what it meant, I’d keep his face hidden forever. It’s so sacredly beautiful.”
A violent wind saw their silent cue; it thrashed fanatically against the house; the boards and upholstery moaned against the strain of the shifting weight. Within the minute, needles of rain descended upon them; thunderheads covered entirely the skyline, prematurely bringing on absolute night at the habitually glowing hour of sixteen.
Harry rose to his feet and met Severus at the doorframe, unperturbed by the storm. "We should call them up; he is feeling uneasy..."
Before Severus could even tilt his head forward in a nod, the wails of several men pierced through the floorboards and shrouded their every sense. Thunder shook the casement; its predecessor's first flash saw shades of tall figures in every corner. Severus broke into a run toward the basement door and threw it open. The headmaster, his rich cloak blood-soaked and crumbled and a shiny, pinkish rope around his ankle, pushed between them and scrambled hastily toward the door. From the darkness of the room below, Draco’s hysterical crying could be heard. "Come back!" he screamed.
Severus and Harry descended with urgency but stopped short when they'd seen it.
Draco stood at the center of a great massacre; six men lay in a mound of their communal remains, their base half-submerged in a thick crimson sea veining through the stone floor. Scattered around were stray pieces of the attack: fragments of bones, pieces of muscle and flesh, and viscera decorating the rubble like Christmas garlands. Eyes whited with fear, what little was left of Draco’s composure left entirely to see Harry stood paralyzed in her likeness upon the staircase. He covered his face with his bloodied hands and let out a terrible scream that rattled the bones of the living.
Harry broke out of his paralysis and stepped toward her, the innards squelching under his soles. He pulled Draco into his arms and let him fall completely. “Come on. Let’s go,” he whispered. But Draco was stopped short by a chain that was discreetly cuffed to his wrist; it was connected to a heavy torso on the floor. Wordlessly, Harry broke the chain with a spell and looked at Severus with a silent understanding of the situation.
Severus, horrified indeed, could not feel a real emotion at all. No fear, anger, or confusion. With duty, he moved wordlessly up the stairs and toward the Floo, which had just been used by Dumbledore. “I will be right back,” he told the Order that sat in the living room. “I need to see Lucius Malfoy.”
With his darling screaming and hysterical, Harry helped him up the basement steps. The family watched in horror; the young boy was drenched in blood, pieces of flesh and muscle clinging to the fabric, trembling like an animal. Harry’s mind had been entirely focused on one thing at the moment: Draco’s comfort. So, with calm words of encouragement and a firm grin, he helped him up the stairs, ignoring with great difficulty the pained cries of his dearest.
“You’re going to have to get changed,” said Harry calmly, locking the bathroom door behind them. “Don’t you want to take a bath? Get clean?”
Draco fell helplessly on the floor and grabbed his head in his hands. “I didn’t mean to…” he whimpered.
“I know; I know you didn’t mean it. Could you stand up? Take your clothes off?”
“I didn’t mean to…” he said again. Harry grabbed his arm and pulled him to his feet. “I didn’t mean to, Harry.”
“I know that, alright? Can I take your clothes off for you?” Harry’s answer came as a stifled sigh; Draco nearly fell again to the floor, but Harry held him firm against the sink. “I’ll do it, alright? Just keep standing. Make it easy for me.”
Harry unfastened the waistcoat, the cotton dress shirt, the fabric belt, and the gabardine trousers, all heavy with thick blood. The entire act, though producing no feeling of arousal in Harry, came with a pure ringing sound in his ear with every inch of skin exposed until he stood completely naked. Draco, his dearest Draco, so lovely when he cried, was exquisite in every way. But Harry could not savor the sight, though a voice in the back of his head praised the tapering back, taut little bottom, and his kissable thighs. Silent was this voice, but it sang while his duty carried on, stifled almost entirely. Harry helped him into the hot bath. As soon as he was fully submerged, his blonde head fell against the tiled wall.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Harry tapped his face gently with his knuckles. With two fingers, he pressed them against Draco’s porcelain neck to find a pulse. It was there, though very shallow and shy. Sick with terror, Harry pressed kisses onto his face and bathed him without speaking another word.
Draco was placed ceremoniously onto his bed, his hair dry and brushed with every affection. His tear-stained, reddened cheeks; visage under an unbreakable spell that satisfied a private aesthetic of Harry’s. In his clean nightgown, he lay pale against the dark blankets, his body too feverish but shivering; his sweet, rose lips emitted an occasional whimper and moan, and his head moved from side to side in a perpetual state of torment. Harry took his hand and watched him almost in a trance, half-numb and half-submerged in that maddening, awful realm of Draco’s suffering. He was on the verge of tears but did not feel the need to cry; he wanted to speak to the Order to revolve the wickedness within them, but he did not want to think of anything but his Draco. The polarity of watching such tragedy ensue held him prisoner against his duty.
The storm did not stop; it still rattled the brittle walls of the house, and Molly tried repeatedly to enter the room, but some odd reflexive behavior from Harry sheltered his darling from every other member of the house; he’d become almost animalistic in his nature, grabbing Draco’s whole frame when so much as a single knuckle tapped gently on the outside of the door.
And his nerves only worsened when the screaming began.
The sound manifested as blades, and it cut his weak heart. His tears, though he was not crying, rolled down his cheeks as he shushed and cooed Draco. “It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t your fault, love; you have to understand that.” Harry pressed his face into the crook of Draco’s neck, the vibrations of his screams against his cheek. “It wasn’t your fault. I love you.”
Time moved cruelly slow, and under the burden of seconds, his strength faltered and strained. Harry soothed himself by running his hands through Draco’s hair, inhaling the scent of floral soap and, very vaguely, his sweat. Harry was dreadfully afraid of nothing and everything at once. So weak did he feel to see his entire world hysterically ruined upon a coverlet, under which, just last night, they’d kissed and Harry’s hand had bravely ventured up his thigh. Draco had let out a little laugh to be touched like that; he was too shy to do much else but laugh out of sheer shock.
Still, the screaming continued. And Harry fell in every direction at once.
The door opened. Harry leapt to his feet and pointed his wand directly at Severus. Behind him stood Narcissa and Lucius Malfoy. Harry dropped his wand.
“Have you given him anything?” Severus asked; his sallow face darkened upon seeing his godson’s wretched state.
“No, he’s just taken a bath… that’s all. He started screaming a while ago. I don’t know how long this usually lasts.”
“Actually, it shouldn’t have begun. He never starts on his own. You look so terribly distraught, Potter. Please, if it offers you reassurance to know that I am very optimistic about his clear individual progression.” Severus offered him a nod and began to place vials on the sideboard.
“Our poor baby,” whispered Narcissa, bowing low over her son and kissing his forehead. “Thank you for being so attentive, Harry. How it eases my mind ever so to know that there is someone who cares so deeply for him. Doesn’t it, Lucius, dear?”
Lucius glanced at Harry but did not utter a word.
“Draco has always been so sickly; pray do not be so discouraged, Harry. I see how tired you look before me now.” She smiled beautifully; her voice was silken like her son’s. “But he’s a lovely boy, isn’t he, Lucius? Yes, indeed. There’s no mind more robust than his, and so demanding a character could never grow dull. Let us perceive these moments as light shining through under ice. The ice always melts, Harry. Draco will be better soon.”
“Fret not, Cissa,” Lucius began. “Harry won’t be discouraged by this episode. I would have never let my son run into the arms of a man who would nurse disinterest after learning of illness.”
Severus had been pedantically preparing a concoction on the sideboard, and upon its completion, he weaved through the couple and stilled Draco’s head. Then, with startling aggression, he poured the thick liquid down his throat, prompting choked gags from Draco. Severus held his jaw close firmly. Harry bit his lip until he tasted blood. Draco stopped choking and swallowed. All was quiet.
“It has never progressed this quickly,” observed Lucius. “My son’s mind is stronger.”
“Indeed. A mind in love is a powerful one. Come, let us speak to Harry about lighter things! He looks so dreadful, dear.”
“There are no lighter things, Cissa. We are in the midst of a war, and our son was nearly slaughtered for barter.”
“Calm down, Lucy. Let’s not raise our voice in front of little Draco. He looks like an absolute angel when he sleeps, does he not?”
“He does,” whispered Harry.
“Do you know, Harry, when Draco was a little boy, he used to be such a terrible sleeper?” Narcissa let out a shy laugh, perhaps to distract the listeners from the tears welling up in her eyes. “I do adore when he’d come into our room, for just about anything might terrify a child. But he used to kick with such power at the wee age of three. Did he not, Lucius? Poor Lucy and I would wake up with bruises on our backs. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to sleep those nights once more… My dearest son is truly… there’s nothing he could ever do that would rob me of my love for him. My sweet little boy.” She placed a gentle kiss on his temple. “And so I’m destined to adore you, Harry. I would bow to you on my hands and knees for hours for what you are doing for my little boy.”
“Mrs. Malfoy, please, you give me too much credit. I feel that I should be thanking you for allowing… for ignoring the… for letting…”
“For letting you love him?”
“For letting him love me. You’ve made me incredulously wealthy for it,” whispered Harry, blushing and avoiding the steely gaze of the father. “And after the war is over, I’d like to marry him.”
The sentence came out most unwillingly; it had not even passed through his mind, churned over for a while like his previous lines before being delivered to the minister—more terrifyingly, Draco’s father. It was evident, though, that he was serious; Harry did not flinch, and his strength had presently reappeared. Severus had knocked over a vial; Narcissa gasped and reached for her sapphire-studded sautoir; Lucius’s met Harry’s.
“Pardon? Are you asking for my blessing?”
“I-I suppose so.”
“You suppose so?”
“I am. But I’d marry him even without your blessing, though he’d be livid with me if I hadn’t asked. If your word forbids me, then your word is just a sound that dissolves in the air. I love him too much to be stopped by such a thing. But let me ask you for Draco’s sake; he loves the procedural tradition, that fickle thing.”
Severus’s face twisted from sheer confusion into a reluctant amusement. He shook his head with disappointment. Narcissa’s satin-gloved hand still lay on her breast, and she looked back and forth between her husband and Harry, whose stature remained firm.
“A rude young man, you are,” whispered Lucius. “I hardly imagined I should ever be so insulted by a man I respect so reluctantly. If anyone ought to marry Draco, I’d always silently hoped it would be someone with so sturdy a station. You have my blessing, but only, as you say, for Draco’s sake. It concerns me to find you so reckless.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Harry smiled and kissed Draco’s cold, pale hand. It was undoubtedly gratifying to be silently in a vow with his darling; the momentary exhilaration against the dormant madness in Draco. Harry
Draco did not wake nor stir for the rest of the night. Harry lay beside him, staring at him and memorizing every detail of his heavenly proportions. Lucius and Narcissa took charge of the guest room, and, according to Severus, the Order had managed to clean the basement.
Dumbledore’s whereabouts had not been pinned, but Harry very seldom thought about the headmaster. He could not afford to feel such powerful emotions in front of Draco, who was nursing increasingly wretched ones. And he tried not to think about the pile of human remains that he’d stepped over to reach his love. How the flesh peeling off muscle caused him to slip, how a jawbone cracked under his weight, and the blood was sticky, and some of the muscles still jerked and twitched like some unnaturally large organic mass. And even more, he tried not to think about how it happened. What curse did Draco cast if he’d slaughtered them simultaneously or one by one; if the men were innocent or if they willingly wished harm upon him? But even in deliberation, there was not an ounce of reproach for Draco, indeed apprehension, but never reproach. Draco continued to be a perfectly incorruptible angel in Harry’s mind.
Even if the six had been twelve or eighteen or…whatever comes after that, Harry understood with certainty that Draco could never commit a wrong. It simply was not his nature, and he would place his neck on a block for the sentiment.
In the middle of the night, the storm quieted, and Severus entered the room wielding a small candle. Harry watched from his pillow as Severus poured a second dose down his godson’s throat, pressing his ears further into the mattress to stifle the pitiful choking.
“Get some rest, Potter,” whispered the professor as he made for the door once again. “I am optimistic about his recovery. Pray you are in good health when he is.”
“I will.”
When they were alone again, Harry swiped Draco’s bottom lip with his thumb and tasted the serum. “That’s gross,” he hissed. “Severus makes you take that? It tastes like the world’s most bitter tea… And he forces a whole bottle's worth down your throat. Makes me a little glad that you’re not in your head right now.”
No answer.
Harry pressed a kiss into Draco’s cheek. “Goodnight, darling. You like when I say that, right? You’re my darling, that’s why, my very special darling. And I’m going to marry you one day. We’re going to live together… you’re going to go to school for something insanely smart, and I’ll do something insanely stupid. Do I have a deal, Malfoy?”
No answer.
“Deal.”