Somewhere within the past few years, the devil has entangled itself into Draco’s soul.
It screams sometimes. It rakes at his ribs with torturous claws as if begging for freedom, pleading for destruction but sentenced to confinement; a creature sculpted from wrath, it seemed, unforgiving in its ways. It plunges its way through his veins, until the blood and water and bones that make up the structure of a body become nothing but a deep void of rotten evilness, decaying but never quite dying. It is not so much a body anymore, but a prison; a hostage.
The devil doesn't bargain, but demands instead. It demands, simultaneously, for its captive to feel tribulation and helplessness. So helpless that one must have no choice but to hand over control, to no longer inhabit their body and surrender to the blazing fire circulating through the valves and ventricles situated only near the heart until there is not a steady rhythm of a pulse but a constant burning, enduring until one learns to dance with the flames, sing with the embers.
His existence has turned into something of a Midas touch; everybody and everything he has touched or will touch must suffer at his hands. At first it was a blessing, so much power that he thought he might've taken the place of God himself. Now it’s nothing but a curse - when could he lay his treacherous hands on somebody, and have it just be a touch, instead of an ill-fated promise, a ruination of a soul?
His gaze meets his own silvery, traitorous eyes in the mirror. He can not look for long; he fears his reflection may jump at him without warning, gauging out his eyes and calling him a monster, a renegade, a villain. The worst part is that it would not be a lie. The truth may be barbarous, but this truth cannot be changed, impossible to disguise as anything other than evil.
Within the next few minutes - Draco can't recall exactly when - he sprawls onto the bathroom tiles in defeat, tainted blood gushing out from his chest, his face, his arms. Finally, the devil can stop clawing. It will no longer linger in his dreams, or even in his waking. Now, there will be no more waking. He is sure that his next sleep will be his last.
Green, panicked eyes stare down at him helplessly. They wander his body, taking in every inch of maroon blood that spills onto the tiles and transforms his porcelain skin into gory flesh, soon becoming devoid of paleness at all. He bitterly resents himself for not loving the boy sooner, not until Death has come to greet him and cradle him in its arms, the same way in which a mother holds her son for the first time.
He has always known that he would welcome Death and it’s cold, unforgiving touch. Doing so in the hands of such an innocent, lovely boy is a blessing, the last and most wonderous blessing he would ever receive.
Such a contrast they make; lightness meeting darkness. Someone that will never be destroyed, meeting someone that will never be repaired. Draco wonders if his blood will stain these tiles, a piece of himself embedded into this school forever, never giving up its search for another to haunt.
“Draco! Please hold on, I'll go and get help. Please,” Harry sobs, kneeling down next to Draco’s almost-lifeless body until he is close enough in proximity that he is able to reach out and put a comforting hand onto Draco's newly maimed shoulder.
He has never been one to beg, but right now he feels as though he might. Don’t take this chance away from me, let me go, he silently pleads. Aloud, he simply says, “Kiss me, Harry. My desire isn't to live, but to love you like I've never allowed myself to before.”
The frightened boy hesitates, but mutual desire burns in his eyes, making him lean forward and plant his lips upon Draco’s as if bestowing a gift.
It is a messy kiss: crimson red blood runs down Draco’s face still, meeting their entwining mouths and pungently trailing down each of their tongues, yet not even the foul, metallic taste dares to stop them. The sweet taste of Harry’s lips drowns out any other, but he could not ignore how his blood also tasted of love; it tasted of mending heartbreaks, of a silent promise.
Harry’s hand travels down Draco’s bloodied body, tracing the wounds that he painted as if they are a gift, too. They are, really, the best gift he'd ever had. Wherever Harry touches, it illuminates, the stars in the sky becoming nothing in comparison. His gentle caress can only be described like that of an angel.
Oh, how unfortunate, that the devil has to fall for the angel. Maybe once he is finally set free from the world, then he will become pure and clean again. But has he ever been an innocent? Was he born to be the embodiment of a sin?
Their lips part, although the feeling lingers, as if a part of Harry had settled firmly into Draco to make sure he would never forget what could've been, even in death.
"You know, sometimes I dream of killing you just to set you free from all of your pain. I know how much you hurt. A part of me never wants to let go, but a bigger part of me wants to set you free," Harry admits hesitantly.
"I've always thought you hated me."
"I didn't realise love and hate were disparate."
Draco pauses, wanting to revel in the moment for the rest of eternity. “Just don’t forget me, alright? Next time we meet, somewhere in another lifetime, we’ll start all over again and do everything the way we were supposed to. Just promise that you’ll make something pretty out of me when I go,” he finally says.
“Oh, Draco,” Harry starts, his fingers still tracing the patterns of Draco’s cuts in the way an artist admires their artwork. “I will. I’ll make you beautiful, I promise. I’m so sorry.”
“You’re doing me a favour,” Draco says. There is a stinging pain overburdening the remains of his body, but prominent particularly where one slash has dug itself so deep that the uneasy beating of his heart is visible from the outside. The heart itself, along with each bulging vein and chamber, formed the shape of a monster; his pain resides there, after all.
That heart now belongs to the boy kneeling beside him, and nobody else, the only reason for its continuous beating being for Harry. He would make sure of it; if anyone else ever tried to possess it, he would crawl out from his grave just to hand it back.
“Do it again,” Draco urges. “Please be merciful and make this death faster. I’m ready to leave now.”
Harry pulls his wand from his pocket, tears threatening to escape the confinement of his eyes and Draco's blood being smeared over his clothes as he shuffles around. “Sectumsempra,” he whispers for the second and final time, aiming it perfectly at Draco’s already phlebotomized chest.
A canvas of red paint spills from his body once again, Harry’s blissful artwork finally complete. Every last droplet of blood finds its way to the surface, draining Draco dry but somehow still finding more blood as if his supply is infinite. The devil has surely found its way out now; for the first time, he is not haunted by the ghost created from his own self. Now, he is untethered.
“I love you, Harry. I do. Don’t let anyone else touch me; your hands are the only ones I want near my body, whether it be dead or alive,” Draco chokes out, straining for his last few breaths as the pain consumes his entire being, each organ showing on the outside of his skin becoming a mass of lumps barely intact.
The descent into death is peaceful; a life of war, of battlefields and weapons and lingering pain is no longer. Now, Draco’s soul detaches itself from his body and ascends above the scene. He becomes an observer to the world instead of one of its subjects.
He doesn’t think Harry can see him (souls are invisible after all, aren't they? Or does that only happen with those who live a pure life?) but he observes anyway, his bodiless self floating closely beside the brown haired boy as he throws the invisibility cloak over himself and runs with Draco’s once-body in his arms like it is an object created with delicacy instead of curses.
They arrive at Harry’s dorm room, so it seems. The room is otherwise uninhabited, so he quickly charms the door, ensuring nobody can enter before discarding the cloak onto the floor and placing the body down onto his own bed. The colour of the sheets are a perfect match to the still-seeping blood; he wonders if it will ever stop pouring.
Harry pulls a suitcase from underneath his bed, his breaths sounding harsh and the ghost of tears possessing those brilliant, achingly familiar eyes. He begins to transfigure the suitcase meticulously into a casket-like shape, engraving intricate designs onto each side along with a small series of words: semper te memoria tenebo.
After finishing his precise work, he lifts the corpse back into his arms, although 'corpse' is a generous name for what remains. His hands and clothes soon become a harsher shade of red from where the blood seems accursed into eternal bleeding, although they already had been covered. He holds it in his arms for a while, basking in the feeling of finally holding the boy; it seems he would take any chance to do so, no matter the circumstances.
The body is finally lowered into the casket. There are no indications of it ever rotting as if presenting Harry with a fragment of hope that it may come alive again, but it is difficult to confirm when the surviving pieces of pale skin have been replaced by so much blood that it surely comes from every fallen angel to exist in the sky. Harry presses a quick kiss to the forehead of the corpse, which Draco wishes he could feel but may never again, at least not in this lifetime, then picks up a few roses from his bedside table.
The roses are placed directly into the body’s heart, where the deepest cut has dug impossibly deeper after the second round of cursing until the heart split into two, every vein that lay between the two parts visibly protruding outwards in a complex entanglement of wires like a broken circuit.
Now being decorated with delicate roses, the body possesses an almost diaphanous look. Harry has fulfilled his promises of making Draco beautiful. The lush red of the petals greets a harsher shade of red, expectedly and intently still pouring, creating a fleshly paradox that has no choice but to leave one feeling enchanted.
If the boy who had once resided in that body had ever been anything other than pure and lovely, it was now impossible to tell.
“Nobody else will ever touch you, Draco. I love you,” Harry says, not knowing that the boy he speaks to can still hear every last word.
A final caress of the deathlessly bleeding wounds, and then the corpse is covered with a transfigured lid, hidden away from sight. Harry places his invisibility cloak over it, a cloak in which the body would be immortalized under forever, carefully settling it back under his bed.
Just once, Draco craves to be the one holding Harry in his arms. But now his craving is fruitless; their universes no longer collide. They are contrasts to each other not just in goodness and badness, but life and death, too.
Without a body for the soul to latch onto, Draco cannot exist for much longer. He takes one last longing look at his lover - although an unofficial title, both knew that they'd always been more than victims of each other's hatred - before fading away into oblivion, descending the final steps into nothingness, a state he'd not only yearned for since the beginning of his existence, but also made an attempt to seize with his demonic claws.
If there is ever to be another life, they will meet again. Draco will love Harry in every lifetime; that is something he knows for certain. Draco will scream out to each corner of the universe for him, and wherever he may be, whatever form they each take, they will always be made to coexist.