Part Two
The ground is soft beneath his back, but that's only because of the blanket that Harry brought that day. The color is a little warn, and it barely reaches past their feet, but it smells like Harry, and that's all that matters to Draco. The two boys are lying down side by side, staring at the cloudy sky, and Draco wonders if it will rain. He hopes so. He's always loved the way raindrops feel on his skin - ethereal and everlasting, something that has never been touched before and never will be again.
A soft breeze lulls over the clearing, and Draco closes his eyes. He should've been surprised at how quickly the clearing had turned from his private escape to something he shared with Harry, should've questioned why the words belonging and safe were still carved into the trees and carried by the wind even if he wasn't alone anymore. But he never did. To him, it felt oddly inevitable - like they were going to end up here one day regardless - and maybe they were.
Friends. What an intimate word.
He feels Harry shift, pulling the blanket slightly to the side. It's small, but even then, their bodies don't touch, the centimeters between them muffling whatever maybes Draco may feel. Maybes are dangerous - maybes ruin things. Maybes should be pushed down and covered in layers of probably not and wishful thinking and accept what you can get and don't ask for more. Maybes are for the dark, in the late hours when he can't sleep. They have no place in the light of the clearing. He covers his maybes with snow before he speaks.
"Tomorrow is Beltane," Draco says, tucking his arm behind his head.
He feels the blanket shift again, and his fingers twitch - he has the sudden urge to put his hand over Harry's and tell him to relax, to tell him that he can rest, to tell him there's no war and there's no fear and that he's okay. He wonders if Harry's hands would be soft or rough against his if he did, if they'd be smooth or calloused; if his grip would be firm or delicate - if he'd lace their fingers together or cover Draco's hand with his own. Draco shakes himself out of his thoughts - ifs are almost as bad as maybes.
"What's that?" Harry asks.
Draco raises his head a little and gives him a puzzled look. "You don't know about pagan holidays?"
Harry shakes his head, "'fraid not. Lived with Muggles my whole life, remember?"
"But the Weasleys? Surely they told you about our holidays."
Another shake of the head, "Not really. I mean, I've heard a thing or two about, what was it, Yule, I think?"
"Yes, Yule."
"But yeah, that's about it. Everything else is exactly how Muggles celebrate it. You know, Christmas and Halloween and that sort of thing. They're different?"
Draco lies back down on the blanket, looking at Harry from the corner of his eye. He's on his back as well, with his hands folded over his stomach, the sleeves of his jacket slightly crooked. He'd look calm if his fingers weren't softly drumming on the back of his hand.
"Well, though a lot of wizards have adopted modern religions, some of us have kept to our roots and remained Pagans, as they say these days. And before you ask, no, it's not a pureblood thing. Blaise, for example, is Christian. So is Theo. Though, I'd assumed the Weasleys also never adopted an Abrahamic religion."
"Well, religion never really came up, you know."
"Too much saving the world to talk about theology?" Draco says with a teasing smile.
"Something like that," Harry grins back. He shifts to lie on his side with his hand propping his head up, facing Draco. "So, tell me more about Belt-en."
"Beltane."
"Whatever." He throws a piece of grass on Draco's stomach.
"Well," he begins, turning his head to face Harry. His eyes are the same green as the trees around them, but that's to be expected, Draco thinks. Beauty mirrors the natural world, and are Harry's eyes beautiful. "Well, Beltane is basically the midpoint between Ostara, the spring equinox, and Litha, the summer solstice. It represents the coming summer, and it's the height of spring. A lot of our celebrations revolve around the progression of the year and the turn of the seasons, you see."
"Like how Yule is the winter solstice?" Harry asks as his fingers fiddle with the open zipper of his jacket.
"Exactly," Draco waves a hand toward him, "Or how Lughnasadh is the beginning of harvest season. Anyway, Beltane is associated with, well, fertility." Harry raises an eyebrow, the corners of his mouth turning up despite himself, and Draco can't help but let out a laugh. He hits Harry lightly on his upper arm. "Harry. Don't make it sound like that. The rituals are also associated with, you know, cleansing and protection and things like that. Happiness."
When Draco looks over at Harry again, he sees that Harry's grin has gotten much wider, and his hand has stopped playing with his zipper. Draco feels a blush creep onto his cheeks, suddenly feeling very self-conscious. He moves his hand to straighten his already-straight robes.
"What? What happened?"
"You called me Harry."
"Well, that's your name, isn't it?" He attempts to sound annoyed, trying to cover up the nerves in his voice.
He shakes his head, "This is the first time you've called me by my first name, Draco."
Draco's lips part slightly before he quickly clamps his mouth shut. Harry had been Harry for so long in his mind that he'd completely forgotten the careful barriers that were set up between the two boys: talk, but avoid each other in the halls; light, platonic touches over clothes, but never on skin; use surnames, given names are too intimate. Intimacy - another dreaded maybe.
But Harry is smiling, and he's just called him Draco, and his hands have stopped picking at his zipper. They lock eyes, and Draco forces a cocky grin onto his face, "I suppose I did." He knows he said the right thing when Harry shakes his head slightly, still smiling, and rests his palm on the blanket between them, making the barriers feel a little less definite.
The wind picks up, cool against his skin, slightly damp - rain is on its way.
"So, what do you do on - " Draco shoots him a look " - on Beltane. I said it right this time, didn't I?"
Draco nods approvingly. "Good job, Mr. Potter. Five points to Gryffindor," he says, struggling to keep a straight face, biting his cheek to stop himself from smiling. Harry laughs.
"Were you always this cheesy?"
"Guess you're rubbing off on me."
He flicks more grass onto Draco's stomach, "Asshole."
Draco brushes off his robes with a smile, "Child."
"Draco."
"Alright, alright." He sighs dramatically, and he can hear a puff of laughter from Harry when he does. "Well, lately, nothing, because I'm at Hogwarts for the celebration, and, as you see, they don't do much for it here." He looks down at his hands. "Even if I wasn't here, though, I doubt that we'd have done anything, anyway," he mumbles. He swallows and takes another breath before turning his gaze back to Harry. "But," he says, an octave too high and a second too quick, "but, anyway, when I was a child, I always looked forward to the holidays, and Beltane was one of my favorites.
"Now, I know what you're thinking, since you're stuck on the 'fertility' aspect of it all," he raises an eyebrow at Harry, who gives him a guilty smile. "But my favorite parts of the holiday were always the flowers and the fire."
"You burned flowers?"
Draco rolls his eyes. "Yes, in a nature-based faith we're going to celebrate spring by burning flowers," he replies, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
"Could've been more specific," Harry mumbles, focusing his attention on a spot on the blanket. The clouds have been steadily turning a darker shade of gray as Draco watches them slowly crawl through the sky. They cover the sun now, and the clearing around them has grown dark. The world has become quiet, the sounds of the forest dying down just as the light is. A dragonfly, possibly the same one that Draco heard the first day he saw Harry at the well, buzzes over their legs at the end of the blanket.
"Well, when I was a boy, the first thing we'd do in the morning was pick flowers. My mother and I would go out to her garden. Not my father, he'd have 'work' to do, even on the holidays." He gives Harry a tight smile, but then waves off the memory with a wave of the hand. "Anyway, we'd gather all the yellow and white flowers. Primrose, marigolds, and," he smiles, "And daffodils. I'd always insist to be the one to pick the daffodils."
"What was so important about the daffodils?"
Draco raises an eyebrow at him, amused. "'Daffodil' is the common name for the narcissus flower."
"And your mother's name is Narcissa, I see now," Harry says, nodding to show he understood.
"Exactly."
"Five more points to Gryffindor?" Harry says with a grin. Draco's eyes sparkle. "Since you were such a good student, I'll give you ten."
"How generous."
"I am known for my generosity, aren't I?" This time when Harry flicks a piece of grass, it lands on Draco's neck. He picks it off and throws it back at Harry. "Anyway, we'd pick the flowers and then go inside and spend the morning decorating the Manor. You see, you're supposed to arrange them on the windowsills and in the doorways - it has to do with new beginnings and the fact that the colors help represent fire," he explains quickly when he sees the question on the tip of Harry's tongue.
Behind Harry, Draco could see the trees. The leaves were shaking slightly in the cool breeze, the branches swaying softly along with them. In the distance, he sees a bird's nest wedged between a branch and a tree trunk. The mother bird is tending to her eggs - moving them cautiously with her beak, placing small twigs on the walls of the nest. It reminds him of his mother carefully placing the marigolds on the windows in the kitchen, turning them this way and that, making sure they were just right. He turns his attention back to Harry.
"The best part, though, was the fire. Traditionally, it's supposed to be a bonfire - large and warm, fit for a much larger group than a small child with his two parents. So, we'd just make a small little fire of our own." His voice grows softer as he speaks. "My father would be the one in charge of kindling the fire every year. He'd finally come out of his office, wand in hand, and levitate the wood over to the place they'd set up the night before. Then, he'd light the fire - but whenever he did, he always whispered the spell. I never understood why; every other time I'd heard him do magic, his voice was, well, you know how it was. Strong. Proud. Arrogant." He straightens the sleeve of his robes. "But never when he was lighting the fire..."
Draco remembers how it felt to have his mother's delicate hands resting on his shoulders, him leaning back into her as they both silently watched his father work. Piece by piece, he would arrange the wood. Slow and deliberate, almost like there was a pattern that Draco didn't know he was following. His father would never look at him and his mother while he was doing it, not even once. It was like the task was the most important thing to him then. And when he thought the fire was complete, his father would walk around it slowly, with his wand out in front of him until he'd made a complete circle, stopping right in front of them on the other side. He'd always thought his father looked elegant and powerful in everything he did, but this was the only time he could ever remember seeing his father look at peace.
Then, he'd raise his wand and whisper, and the fire would roar to life, flames rising up like hands raising to the dark sky in worship, then coming down to dance in ecstasy. His mother's hands would tighten on his shoulders every time, and he remembers how the heat felt on his cheeks. And finally, his father would look at them through the flames before walking over to them.
"The fire both purifies and protects. So, while it burned, we'd use the fire to light the fireplaces in the Manor - and there were a lot." He lets out a soft laugh at the memory of his parents trying to walk all the way up to the fourth floor to light the four fireplaces there.
"I bet there were. Malfoy Manor has, what, six stories?"
"Four stories, Harry. It's not nearly that large."
"Right, because a four-story manor is about the same size as Hagrid's hut. No difference, really."
Draco narrows his eyes at the grin on Harry's face. "I suppose that was supposed to be funny?"
Harry just shrugs in response, but his eyes spell mischief, and Draco's breath catches in his throat. His eyes shift to the dark sky, and he wonders if he's nothing more than the moth to Harry's flame. He thinks back to the Beltane fire - cleansing, beginnings. Maybe the flames won't consume him this time.
"Then - " His gaze drifts back to Harry and he feels the same warmth on his cheeks that he'd felt as a child. "Then, we'd wait for the fire to die down. It never took that long, but that might've just been because of all of the running through the Manor to light the fireplaces. Anyway, we'd wait for the fire to die down to just embers, and then - this was my favorite part of the day - we'd jump over them. Well, I'd jump, and sometimes I'd even get my mother to, as well. My father never did, which I'm sure isn't much of a shock to you."
"I'd be more shocked if you said he did do it. I simply cannot imagine your father jumping over anything."
A snicker falls from Draco's lips before he can stop himself, and when he and Harry's eyes meet, they both fall into soft laughter.
"I can promise you, he'd have done nothing of the sort. But I always did. I remember taking each of their hands and them basically swinging me over the embers."
"You couldn't jump over a small fire by yourself?"
"I probably could have, but you forget how terrible I was when I was younger. They both knew if I so much as came close to getting burned I would've screamed bloody murder until dawn."
"Nice to know you're at least self-aware, now," he says through a laugh. Draco picks up one of the pieces of grass Harry had thrown at him before from the blanket and aims right for Harry's glasses. "Insufferable."
"You're just upset because I'm right. Now, what'd you do after jumping over the fire?"
"Dinner, and then make an offering to the gods and the goddesses. Flowers, fresh fruit, things like that."
Harry gives him a smile that doesn't reach his eyes and Draco's fingers curl into the fabric of his robe to keep from holding his hand. "That sounds quite beautiful, actually."
"Yeah... Yeah, it was."
A hollow feeling creeps through him - he wishes Harry had memories like that with his parents, too. He reaches his hand up halfway between him and Harry, his fingers slightly curled. He wants to comfort him - but then Harry's eyes lock onto Draco's hand midair, and he stops. Their eyes drift toward each other. The dragonfly passes between them, so close that Draco almost feels its wings on his fingertips. He takes a breath and puts his hand back down on his stomach.
Draco folds both of his hands over his stomach, turning his lips up in a timid smile. "Now, you tell me a happy memory from when you were younger."
"Me?"
"Is there anyone else here that I conveniently can't see?" he says with a laugh, to which Harry rolls his eyes. Draco's body relaxes again.
"Just not something people ask me often. I didn't necessarily have the best childhood, you know, what with how the Dursleys were and then finding out some maniac wants to kill me."
"But there must have been something."
Draco sees Harry hesitate. His eyes drift down to the blanket and he wets his lips, making Draco's gaze drift down to his mouth. That shouldn't be as distracting as it is, Draco thinks, as he feels his heartbeat speed up. The maybes start again and his lips begin to tingle before he pushes them back down into the dark again. He looks back up at Harry's eyes. Harry shakes his head.
"It's stupid."
"It's not," Draco assures him. Harry starts to softly drum his fingers against the ground.
"It really is. It's ridiculous and small and not important and - "
"And I want to hear it anyway."
Harry's eyes snap up to meet Draco's and his heart almost stops. Vulnerability and uncertainty are written in his eyes and in the crease between his brows and it's at the tip of Draco's tongue to say I want to know everything there is to know about you and more, I want to know what you think about before you sleep and if you were afraid of the dark as a child and how you take your tea but he doesn't because wanting leads to if which leads to maybe which leads to no and Draco doesn't think he can handle not having Harry in his life anymore. Then he wonders when his safe place changed from the wishing well to Harry in the first place.
Harry takes a breath, "Alright then. Well - alright, so, as you know I never really had friends or a real family before I came here. Then, I met Ron and Hermione and we talked and Ron and I, well, we stuck together. But, you know, it was still hard to believe at times. That they actually wanted me there, I mean, that they weren't doing it because they felt like they had to deal with me or tolerate me or something like that.
"But then," Harry's lips form a soft smile, "Then, there was this one time. We were at lunch. I don't even remember what day it was, but I think maybe we had, was it Transfiguration after or Charms? Whatever it was, it was with you Slytherins, that's all I remember. Anyway, we were all eating, and I think Ron was talking across the table to either Dean or Seamus, or maybe it was Neville. Then, I saw Hermione pick up an orange off of one of the plates and she starts to peel it. But then, what she does is the important part.
"She takes the slices and she divides them up on her plate and she gives three to Ron and then goes around Ron to tap my shoulder and then gives three to me. And when I took them, I looked down at them in my hand and the first thing I thought was this is friendship, this is family and - and it was honestly the first time that I'd really felt like I belonged anywhere - like I was a part of something." He puffs out a short laugh. "And the funny part is, I can guarantee that Hermione won't even remember that she did it."
Thunder softly rumbles in the distance, and Draco sees a drop of rain fall onto Harry's cheek. His heart aches - of course Harry would be able to find happiness in something so simple. Simple, like the raindrop on Harry's skin, like the way Draco's mother always let him pick the daffodils, like the wishing well. He'd spent all his life searching for the extraordinary - he never thought it would be Harry Potter who showed him the monumental nature of the ordinary.
"She might not, but the only thing that matters is that you do, Harry. And it was far from ridiculous. I enjoyed hearing it."
"You did?" Harry's eyebrows furrow in uncertainty again and Draco wants to brush the lines away with his thumb.
He nods, "I did."
The rain is beginning in earnest now - Draco can feel the droplets landing softly on his cheek and the backs of his hands, and a few fall on Harry's glasses. Harry looks up at the sky, getting more water on his lenses.
"It's raining," he says.
Draco lifts his body up slightly, shrugging off his robes, leaving himself in the white button-down shirt he wore underneath, feeling Harry's eyes on him as he does. He sits up and rolls up his sleeves, first the right, then the left. He sucks in a breath when he sees the Mark but keeps folding. Droplets fall on the black ink.
"Just like fire, rain can be purifying, too," he whispers, watching the water flow down the sides of his arm. The question is on the tip of his tongue - do you think it could purify someone like me - but he's too afraid to ask, too afraid to hear Harry say no.
He sees dark spots on his sleeves as the rain continues to come down.
"You know, I can do a spell to keep the rain from touching us, unless you want to head back inside," Harry says, shielding his glasses with his hand. Draco tilts his head back toward the clouds and closes his eyes.
"Leave it. The rain is warm. I want to feel the water on my skin."
Harry laughs, "I can't see a thing, though. Glasses, remember?"
Draco opens his eyes and turns to him, smiling. He leans over and gingerly takes the wire-rimmed frames between his fingers and pulls them off, folding them up and setting them on the blanket between them.
"You don't need them. Close your eyes. Feel it."
Harry's eyes are soft when he looks at Draco and he nods.
"Maybe we could make a little fire of our own tomorrow. You know, if you want," Harry says after a beat of silence, not looking at Draco.
Draco turns and finds Harry's gaze. Draco smiles at him, warm and genuine, raindrops falling on his shirt and into his hair, "I think I'd like that."
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