Part Three
The clearing looks different at night.
The green leaves that Draco loves so much look almost blue under the shadow of the night sky, as does the grass beneath his shoes. The space between the trees is nothing more than a wisp of darkness, their branches mixing and merging, intertwining into one, and the silver light of the moon reflects softly off of the stones of the well. Everything is more connected - everything bleeds into the other, almost like the dark is threading everything together.
And even though everything is bathed in darkness, the forest is as alive in the night as it was in the day. Draco hears owls in the distance, their soft coos accompanied by the quiet clicks of crickets, and the wind softly echoes through his ears and in the well behind them.
Harry looks different, too. Softer, somehow. Serene. His eyes are brighter at night - like maybe the green that was supposed to be on the leaves of the trees instead settled in Harry's eyes - and the shadows turn his hair darker. He fidgets less in the dark, his hand hanging over the knee he propped up in front of him. Draco wonders if it's because he doesn't feel eyes on him like he does during the day.
The space between them has lessened with time. They're sitting shoulder to shoulder, their hands almost touching on the blanket, and Draco never thought centimeters apart would be more agonizing than the barriers they had between them before, but the centimeters feel like maybes and what ifs and Draco knows that if he just moves a little to the right - if he bridges the gap - then maybe - maybe - maybe it would be worth it, but it's a jump off of a cliff into the ocean and Draco's always been afraid of the water. He prefers the still certainty of the bottom of the wishing well.
So instead, Draco looks up to the crescent moon, a sliver of silver between what looked like an endless sea of stars. Waxing crescent.
He remembers the clear winter night when his mother told him about the moon phases. He was nine. The dining room floor was much too cold beneath his feet, and he wondered how his mother didn't have a hair out of place, even in the middle of the night. He'd just woken up from a nightmare - one that caused him to unintentionally shatter his mirror with a burst of accidental magic (and oh, how many times he's thought of that night since then, thinking that maybe that ridiculous mirror is to blame for everything that has happened, irrational or not) - and the sound of breaking glass was followed by his mother's hurried footsteps coming down the hall.
Dobby, one of the house elves, was bringing him up a glass of water, and his mother was sitting on the other side of the dining table. The curtains were drawn and, little though it was, the light of the crescent moon was a welcome addition to the candlelight that only served to cause Draco's skin to crawl, reminding him of the dark corridor from his nightmare. Dobby silently set the water in front of him before returning down to the kitchens. His mother's back was to the windows, and he remembers thinking she looked almost like an angel with the moonlight surrounding her. She rested her hands on the glass over his. His heart aches as he thinks about how, even then, he was worried his father would see it as a sign of weakness to have his mother comforting him after a simple dream.
The silence was heavy in the room as he drank his glass of water. When he finished, his mother took his hand and gave him a smile before leading him to the window.
"Would you like to hear about the moon, Draco?" she'd said, looking out into the night sky.
Draco nodded, smoothing down the sleeve of his nightshirt. Her voice was soft in the silence of the dark house.
"The moon is something more than simply a fixture in the night sky. It's alive, like everything else in the world around us, and those before us understood the significance of the natural world - the inherent magic that lies within it, thus strengthening our own. The phases of the moon amplify that magic. Do you know why?"
"No, Mother."
His mother smiled, "Because, like everything else, it represents a cycle. The moon dies and is reborn, just like the phoenix, or the flowers in the gardens, or the seasons, and through that cycle of death and rebirth, meaning is born. So, each phase has its own significance."
Her fingers slowly ran down the windowpane as she explained each one - how the full moon heightens intuition and thins the veil - use it for divination, Draco - or how the waning phases are best for cleansing and banishing - just as the moon wanes and vanishes, so will the things you're trying to leave behind. He listened in wonder, fascinated by how something so far away can still hold so much power.
And so, in the crescent moon above the clearing, he saw his mother. He saw her pale fingers on the windowpane, and the faraway look in her eyes when she was looking out at the night sky.
"What are you thinking about?" Harry's voice whispers, shaking him out of his thoughts.
"The moon," he answers, turning to look at his friend.
"What about the moon?" Harry adjusts, turning his upper body to face Draco and leaning his shoulder against the well. Draco laments the loss of contact for a moment before mimicking Harry and leaning against the warm stone.
"That something so beautiful can be so powerful."
"You're talking about how lunar phases affect things like potions, right?"
"It's a little more complicated than that," Draco smiles softly. "I'll teach you someday."
"Come on, now I'm curious," Harry grins in return, obviously teasing.
Draco shakes his head, "Harry."
"Yes?"
"Harry, look at the stars," Draco whispers as he himself looks to the heavens, adjusting again so that his back is against the stone.
He'd read somewhere once that the sky is immortal - that stars are born and stars die but the sky itself is so vast and endless that somewhere, somehow it is always alive - that there is life to be found in the infinite, and to be finite is to accept death. Infinity exists, it is only out of our reach.
Draco disagrees. He's always thought that infinity is all around us - in the trees and in the leaves and in the lines on our palms and the creases on our skin - in the rain - in Harry's eyes. Life is a constant pattern of start and restart, and that, in itself, is its own infinity. It's in the flames of the fire at Beltane. It's in the songs his mother sang to him when he was a child. It's in the water at the bottom of the wishing well. It's in this moment - this moment that will end but will be reborn every time he thinks of it again. He wonders if Harry will ever think of it again, will ever think of him years from now - and if, through that, he'll be infinite, too.
"They're beautiful. You know, I never saw a sky like this when I was young."
"Light pollution?"
"No - at least, that's not what I meant. I'm sure there was. But I just meant that you don't get to see much from under the stairwell." Harry hides his emotions well; Draco supposes he's had to - hiding anger and loneliness when he was at his relatives', hiding fear and uncertainty at Hogwarts, pretending to be ready for a burden that a grown man would struggle with, let alone a boy. Now, though, Draco knows him, and he knows that no matter how unaffected Harry tries to seem by it, his eyes always give him away, and now his eyes spell heartache.
"You'll never have to experience anything like that ever again, not if I have anything to say about it," Draco answers with conviction.
"You're going to protect me?" Harry asks with a teasing grin.
"You know I will," Draco responds, his voice too serious for the nature of the conversation. He notices Harry looking at him from the corner of his eye, but he refuses to look back, his gaze fixed on the stars above them. He'd meant what he said; there's no need to take it back.
"Which one is yours?" Harry says, his voice turning softer.
"My what?"
"Your star. The one you're named after."
Draco can't help but smile when he hears that. "Draco, the Dragon, is a constellation, Harry, not a star."
"Either way, which one is it?"
"You see Polaris?" he says, pointing up.
"That one?"
"Harry, you're pointing to Kochab."
Harry shakes his head. "I can't see it. I can't really tell the difference between any of them, to be honest."
Draco takes a silent breath before looking down at Harry again. "Come closer. I'll show you." They lock eyes for a moment before Harry nods and moves so that they're shoulder to shoulder again, both of their backs against the well like before, and leans in a little. Draco leans to the side as well.
"It's at the tip of Ursa Minor. Right... here. Can you see it?"
"I..."
"Look up a little," he whispers, putting the fingers of his right hand under Harry's chin and tilting it up slightly.
"The really bright one, right?"
"Exactly. Now, that's the tail of the bear. Follow it down, down..." He uses his finger to trace the pattern in the sky. "And now, under it, we see the tail of Draco. It wraps around it quite like... so."
Harry's eyes brighten and he smiles. "I think I see it. That's the head, right? And the tail goes all the way over there."
Draco grins, "Ten points to Gryffindor."
Harry hits him lightly on the chest with the back of his hand, "Seriously?" They both can't help but laugh.
Looking up at the tail, Draco can't help but think about the ouroboros - the dragon consuming itself. The start at the end. Rebirth. Like the moon, like the stars. Maybe he can be reborn, too. Maybe all he needs is to pick up the pieces and make something new. Maybe the night sky can make him whole again.
The stars twinkle in the silence. It reminds him of the summer when he turned fifteen, before everything - before everything. He'd open the window in his bedroom and sit on the windowsill at night, looking up at the sky, and he'd feel small. Small, but full of the potential to be something more, much more. It was a maybe. The night sky is full of maybes.
Before tonight, he'd always thought the stars shined brightest at the Manor, but now he thinks he never really appreciated the way the stars shined at Hogwarts: they blanket the sky in light, like little dew drops.
This is the kind of sky that poets write about, he thinks.
He wishes he could reach up and touch them - that maybe if he did they would be able to take away the darkness he'd let inside him.
He looks down at his hands and gets an idea. He grins before looking over at Harry.
"Want to see something beautiful?"
Harry looks up at him and Draco feels his gaze brush over his face. He sees Harry's mouth twitch up and swears Harry wants to say something, but he just nods.
"Yeah. Yeah, show me."
"Watch," he whispers.
He looks at his hand again, folding his fingers one by one into a light fist and then opening them again, spreading his palm out flat, facing the heavens. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
"Āge leoma," he breathes out, the words gliding through his mouth, a soft caress beginning in the back of his throat, flitting over his tongue, and kissing his lips before disappearing into the night. He feels warmth travel down his throat and into his chest, swirling over his heart before shooting through his arm and settling in the palm of his hand and the pads of his fingers. The veins under the skin there begin to light up silver, and he hears Harry suck in a breath. He opens his eyes and little balls of light float up from his palm into the night air - white and pure like snow, delicate and fragile like fairies. They slowly fill the clearing, swirling around the boys' arms and legs, drifting into the well, sitting on the leaves of the trees.
Harry laughs softly, and Draco imagines that's what he'd have sounded like when he was a boy, "They look like glowworms."
"Or stars," Draco whispers as the last of the lights travel up from his hand into the air. He softly folds his fingers back over his palm and settles it in his lap. Small dots of warmth fall onto his skin and on his arms and over his clothes. He turns to Harry, who has a few sitting on his hair and on the rims of his glasses.
He glows. He's always glowed.
Draco watches as Harry's eyes dart over the clearing in wonder, quickly turning from the trees to the grass to the flowers. He holds out his arm with his palm up, and the lights stick to the fabric of his jacket. He lets out another small laugh of disbelief. Next to them, a shining squirrel jumps from a branch to the grass and scurries over to another tree, running up the trunk. Draco swears it looked happy.
Harry's smile widens, and Draco and a feeling of pride settles in his chest knowing that he's the one that put it there.
"What kind of spell was that? I've never heard of it before." He runs a hand through his hair, a few dots of light catching on his fingertips. "That - that was amazing, Draco." Harry turns to look at him, his eyes glittering with amusement and... awe. He never thought he'd have Harry looking at him in awe. It feels as warm as the snowflake-stars sitting on his shoulders.
"It's old - and it's not something they'd teach here. All our spells are in Latin, this one, it's in Old English. It's more - it's more connected with the earth and the elements than our spells."
"Where did you learn it?"
"I found it in our library last summer. It was in a journal left behind by one of my great-great-grandmothers, who apparently learned it from her grandmother and - well, you understand where I'm going with that." He sighs. His smile doesn't reach his eyes. "It was nice to see that there was a time when Malfoys were good for something besides the Dark Arts." He whispers the end of the sentence, a quiet murmur of shame. There's a beat of silence. Harry's hand raises slowly and Draco's heart almost bursts when he feels Harry's fingers run through the front of his hair.
"You're so much more than that, Draco. I see nothing dark when I look at you," he whispers, and Draco almost feels like he wants to cry. His eyes flutter shut as Harry's hand travels down and softly cups his face, his thumb resting on his cheek. "You're so, so much more."
His heart flutters in his chest and butterflies flutter in his stomach and when he opens his eyes the look on Harry's face takes his breath away. His expression holds the same wonder that he had when he looked at the lights. No one's ever looked at him like that before. He feels his cheeks heat up, and he can see that Harry notices, too, when a soft smile forms on his face. His thumb brushes over the blush and Draco's heart leaps into his throat. His lips part slightly as he tries to figure out what to say, and he sees Harry's gaze travel down to his lips.
Maybes flash through his mind like little flecks of snow in a gust of wind. The maybes that make his heart ache and his stomach twist in knots, the what ifs that keep him awake at night, the wanting and the wishing and the hope, hope, hope that he tries to bury, tries to cover with snow. His mind drifts to the wishing well and how he'd brush the snow off of the edges in the winter. He'd feel the chill of it on his hands even after he'd finish.
His hands are warm now, covered in snowflake-lights, just like Harry's on his cheek. He feels Harry lean in, and he does, too, his heart throbbing with want, want, want.
He stops when they're just a few inches away from each other and shakes his head.
"You deserve so much more than me," he whispers, swallowing the lump in his throat.
"You're so much more than you realize," Harry whispers back, his eyes flitting from Draco's own back down to his lips and up again.
"Harry - "
"No, stop. Please, just..." Harry leans in more, speaking the last word against Draco's lips. "Stop."
Reality is so much better than any of his fantasies, Draco realizes. The kiss is gentle and soft - the summer breeze against skin, or autumn leaves floating down from the trees. The first snowfall of winter. The first irises blooming in spring. The boy in front of him is the sun and the moon and the rain and the light. Earth-shattering. Ground-breaking. He glows - he glows like the stars.
Harry's thumb brushes over Draco's cheek again and Draco tightens the fists lying in his lap, unsure of what to do with his hands. The kiss is over far too soon, and he has to catch himself before he begins to lean back in when Harry pulls away. They remain only a few inches apart, and Draco thinks about how being this close to Harry and not kissing him is torture.
"I want you," he whispers - earth-shattering.
"But - but I'm - "
"You're extraordinary."
"I'm tainted, Harry."
Harry doesn't speak for a moment and just looks at him, and Draco thinks how he at least was allowed one small moment of bliss. Harry shakes his head, "You're wrong."
He pulls Draco in for another kiss.
---
Draco looks at Harry while he's folding the blanket in the air. His wand movements are steadier than the first time he tried that spell and Draco can't help but feel proud of him. He looks to the well, the stones glistening with under the moonlight, and then back at Harry. The corner of his mouth turns up - the well isn't his anymore, he thinks, it's theirs. Their wishing well. Draco walks over to it and gently lays his hands on the rim. The stone is warm against his fingertips, and the edges of the rocks have dulled with time. He licks his lips before he speaks, his back still toward Harry.
"You should make a wish."
Harry's voice comes from close behind him. "Sorry, say that again? I didn't hear you."
Draco picks at a crack between the rocks. He turns his head slightly, his body still mostly facing the well, "I said, you should make a wish."
"Well," he walks up to Draco and peers down into the well, "I don't think I have any money on me."
"I do," he says, slipping his hand into one of his pockets and bringing out a few coins. Harry smiles.
"You always have money on you?"
"Responsible adults always do."
"No reason for you to have it, then," he says with a grin, taking a coin from his palm. Draco rolls his eyes but smiles anyway. Harry is about to throw the coin in when Draco stops him with a hand on the wrist. He feels Harry tense before relaxing again.
"Close your eyes when you do," Draco says softly. Harry's eyebrows raise. "Just trust me." He feels Harry's eyes study him for a moment, but he doesn't waiver. His thumb lightly brushes the underside of Harry's wrist, and Harry nods.
"Alright. I trust you."
Harry closes his eyes and Draco lets go of his hand. The coin drops into the darkness, but Draco barely notices anything besides the boy in front of him - how his eyelids slowly flutter shut, or how his lips move around unspoken words as he makes his wish.
I trust you.
How heavy. How simple. How beautiful.
Hand in hand, fingers interlaced, they walk back to the castle.