Caught in the Inertia
After washing his face, Harry gathered his belongings and took a deep breath. He exhaled fog onto his reflection and shuddered. There, along the curve of his jaw, laid splotches of red, contrasting with the pallor of his skin. Using the end of his sleeve, Harry tenderly catalogued each souvenir. Soon, this one would fade to a bruise, matching the other ones clustered atop his thighs and neck. Eventually, the splashes of color decorating his skin would retire to forgotten memory. Draco would dissolve into an afterthought, and Harry with him. Maybe that’s where they belonged.
Harry looked down at the parchment Draco had left on the bathroom floor. Unfolding it, he discovered it was a picture of himself from the Daily Prophet, edges precise as though the image had been cut with the utmost regard. Harry shook his head, blush blooming despite the chill of March permeating the bathroom. Harry pocketed the image before heading to the common room.
In the Gryffindor common room, Harry and Hermione sat on a plush chair next to the fireplace. Harry turned, noticed Hermione’s eyes on him. She pursed her lips, a look he had grown accustomed to.
“Harry, you’re bleeding,” Hermione whispered, hair backlit by the presence of fire. Harry looked at Ron, who had sequestered himself into a little corner for a round of wizard chess.
“It’s nothing. Don’t worry about it.” Harry turned his head so the heat of the fireplace could lick at his cheek.
“Harry…” Hermione responds, looking up at him from beneath a few stray curls. “How long are you going to keep this up?” she intones, a creak of worry escaping through her stern facade. He huffs in response, rubbing at the cut on his jaw.
“I’m going to catch up on some work. I’ll see you later.” With that, Harry gathers his books and robe into his arms and retreats into his room.
---
Harry laid atop his bed cover, head cushioned by the two thin pillows. He thought back to the bathroom, the way Draco’s calloused palms nudged over his sweater, how time seemed to both disappear and threaten. Harry was not dumb. He understood that whatever he shared with Draco didn’t have to be so sharp. That they were both capable of filing their claws. However, Harry also knew Mr. Malfoy and the way Draco would hide purple finger impressions under the sleeves of his button downs. To grow up with an angry man is to become an angry man. Harry did not want Draco to always be this way. He thinks of the slur he spat at Hermione on a number of occasions, the way he tugged at Ron’s worn robes. He wanted him to soften. Secretly, selfishly, he wanted Draco to change simply for the sake of whatever they had together.
Harry spent a while in the room, flipping through his textbooks and scribbling the tip of his quill across worksheets, before he noticed it was dark out. Now that he had finished his homework, Harry felt restless. Ron had gone to bed an hour prior and was snoring unapologetically, sprawled recklessly across his bed. He decided it was time for a midnight walk around Hogwarts. Donning the invisibility cloak, he quietly exited the bedroom and then the Gryffindor common area.
The long, torch-lit corridors of the nighttime castle glowed of its own aura, a unique location unlike its sun-bathed counterpart. Even the paintings snored, soft rumbles echoing down staircases. This quiet, subdued state the castle was in was almost a farce. Harry knew that darkness lurked in certain corners and despite that, the castle pretended to be docile and well-mannered. Hogwarts was a wolf in a sheep’s skin. But he’s not unnerved by this fact, no. People are like this too.
Harry meandered through the castle’s shadowy hallways, slowing before each corner to ensure a coast clear of Mrs.Norris. His wandering brought him to the astronomy tower, where the promise of fresh air above the moon-fogged hallways lured him to the top.
His ascension was halted by the white-rimmed silhouette of a figure bowing its head over the railing—bits of platinum flickering in the wind. In this frozen second, Draco seemed to capture the twinkling sky—a symphony of stars harmonizing through flecks of wind-ruffled moon. The invisibility cloak wrapped around his body enticed Harry to stay and to watch, to melt into the room that surrounded Draco and hold this image in his breath. Draco dropped his head even lower to meet a clawed hand, dragging his fingers through his hair, reminding Harry of the depth lost to a silhouette.
He took a deep breath and a step forward, braced for the grueling task of shoving a maelstrom into a question.
“Tell me about the picture,” Harry said, uninhibited by the way Draco’s shoulders flinched. His back stiffened, palms tightening around the curl of the railing. Harry continued forward until his shoulder grazed Draco’s, invisibility cloak now cuffed around his forearm.
“It’s a bit late to be up, Potter,” Draco bit out.
“I could say the same thing to you, Malfoy.”
Before Draco could respond, the two boys snapped towards the thin echoes of approaching voices. With a frantic inbreathe and a blur of movement, Draco snatched the cloak from Harry’s arm and pulled it over the two of them. Draco trailed his breath to the shell of Harry’s ear, heat curling around his skin.
“Don’t say a fucking word,” Draco growled a threat whose whisper-toned quivering revealed it to be a plea. Harry obliged, certain that the source of Draco’s anxiety would disclose itself well enough without Draco’s guidance.
The voices quickly grew in volume and clarity, seeping through the invisibility cloak and unfurling within it, coaxing the boys closer to each other to diminish the size of their captive space.
“...and you need to make sure they keep to the assigned seats. I won’t let my son ruin anything else.” The sentence loudened along with the muted thud of ascending steps, until it was clear two pairs of shoes and one cane were clodding up to the astronomy platform.
Lucius Malfoy’s pretentious slurring slithered into the cloak and down Harry’s spine—down Draco’s too, as he inhaled a tremulous breath. Harry’s cheek was nearly flush against Draco’s, though he turned it slightly to gesture the self-evident question. Against his cheek, Harry felt Draco’s jaw flex—a response, whether intended or not.
“Yes, Lucius,” Snape monotonized.
“Keep an eye on him, Severus, I’ll not have him muddying my name.”
Lucius spat, his words crawling out of his mouth and dissolving into the sky Draco had moments ago bathed in.
“Obviously, Lucius. Is that all, or would you like to stargaze?” Snape retorted.
Lucius responded with a chuckle and rotated on his heels, the metallic clang of his cane quieting and then reverberating through the tower as he began his descent.
“Quaint, Severus, though you’d be keen to watch your tongue” Lucius’s response trailed to a garble as he and Snape made their way out of the tower.
Seconds after the cane’s clanging had dulled to a distant ring, Draco threw the moment beneath the cloak into a wave of anxious motion.
“Come with me,” Draco bit out, digging his nails into Harry’s arm and pulling him into a frantic descent towards the corridor. Harry followed permissively, powerless to the lure of Draco’s turgid passion, for once being directed at something other than Harry.
Once the two boys had reached Draco’s room, Harry reached for the hem of the cloak to lift it over and off the boys’ heads, though Draco grabbed his arm before he could finish. He clutched it at first with a trembling strength, squeezing so tightly that Harry could feel his own heartbeat in his wrist, though it quickly loosened to a gentle palming. “Draco…” Harry whispered, turning his head to the side, internally searching for some semblance of sense in Draco’s mercurial behavior. Draco remained silent and still, facing his headboard, hand wrapped around Harry’s wrist. Without any past experience to guide Harry through Draco’s silent volatility, Harry moved his arm towards the hem of the cloak again, hoping to gain clarity in shedding the vision-blurring veil.
“No—” Draco pleaded, tightening his grip on Harry’s arm again, whipping his head towards Harry, mouth curled downward at the corners.
“Draco, I—what is—I just need answe—”
Harry stuttered, though his sentence caught on Draco’s lips. Harry’s mouth responded on its own, matching Draco’s hesitant rhythm and quickly increasing it with his own long-dormant hunger, until the two were ravenous atop each other, hands roaming greedily around the other’s body. The space beneath the invisibility cloak was teeming with vivacity, the boy’s bodies merging into one fluid action, a single heartbeat sounding for the both of them. Suddenly, the blood of the cloak froze solid as the metallic echo of cane against tile threatened to enter Draco’s dorm. With glitching inertia, Draco threw off a portion of the invisibility cloak and pushed Harry atop the bed, yanking the cloak to cover Harry’s exposed shoes.
The door was dismissed open by Lucius, slowing to a halt as he sauntered beneath the door frame and dragged his cane across the floor to the front of his body, rigidly upright and parallel to his center.
“A little late to be up, Draco, no?” asked Lucius, head panning slowly to encompass Draco’s room, eyebrows raised with entitled disinterest.
“I was just—” Draco faltered.
“Save it. I…” Lucius’s interjection trailed to a huff as he looked down, attention stolen by an unseemly bulge beneath Draco’s slacks.
“...have no interest in your nighttime affairs, boy. I’m stopping in—” Lucius paused and began circling the room, lifting a stack of notebooks and checking beneath, kicking a few articles of clothing strewn about Draco’s carpet. “ —to ensure that you’re behaving yourself. Did you ask Rosalind to the Yule Ball like we talked about, boy?” Lucius asked, though it was a question only in words. Draco said nothing.
“Surely if you haven’t, you will. Surely you’ve not grown so ungrateful to me, for all that I’ve done for you—this single dorm, for example—that you’d disobey my simple request.” Lucius growled.
“I—” Draco started, though Lucius domineered on.
“Surely you’re not misusing my gifts to you” Lucius spat, flicking his eyes down at Draco’s slacks and then back to hold his glare, at once pounding his cane against the floor.
Draco’s head was turned away from Lucius, mouth curled downward with bursts of air stampeding from his nose. Harry saw his downcast eyes shoot up to the ceiling, his breathing hurtling out of his mouth now, hastening to a hyperventilated whir. All at once, he yanked his wand from his back pocket, “Stupefy” forming on his lips. Lucius snagged his arm with the snake-mouth of his cane moments before Draco’s wand leveled with him, and twitched it so that Draco’s arm twisted wretchedly downward, beating a yelp from Draco’s curled lips. In the same arc of humiliation, Lucius pegged Draco’s chest with the head of his cane, crumpling him back onto his bed with a resounding thud and a half-swallowed groan. Lucius moved to loom over Draco’s flattened body, snake of his cane now thumbing the base of Draco’s neck.
“You dare defy me, boy?” Lucius hissed through bared teeth, lowering his head until it was inches away from Draco’s tightly closed eyes. His head was turned away from Lucius’s thinned lips, his frenetic breath tickling the bulb of Harry’s cloaked nose.
“Stupefy?” Lucius hissed incredulously, provoking a bed-rumbling flinch from Draco.
“You dare brandish your wand against your Father—” Lucius said, pushing the snake further into Draco’s throat “—and insult me with a coward’s curse?” He spat, bleached hair swarming Draco’s shoulders, a twitch away from encroaching upon Harry’s hidden body. Draco tightened his already-crumpled eyes.
“Continue with this pitiable hogwash and I’ll ensure you’re housed properly in the girl’s wing.” Lucius shrilled, jerking his cane off of Draco’s neck and back on the carpeted floor with a menacing thud. “Your mother always wanted a daughter.” He slowly straightened his back, eyes still lasered on Draco, until he moved his body one section at a time towards the door and began exiting the room. He stopped beneath the doorway and inched his head over his shoulder, speaking now with an indifferent air of casual conversation. “I’ll see to your suit-fitting for the ball. Rosalind’s parents have already been informed that we’ll be paying for a custom dress. Don’t dally.” He finished, regressing to a hiss in the last two words, gliding out of the room with the door left ajar.
Once the echo of the common room’s door shutting prickled through Draco’s lacerated one, he exhaled a trembling breath. Harry’d remained silent and still throughout Lucius’s onslaught to avoid detection, he told himself, though a needling afterthought muddied his delusion—he didn’t know what he would do, or what to do now. More often than he’d like to admit, Harry found himself floating through daydreams about dethroning Lucius, punishing him, shoving the head of Lucius’ cane down his throat, freeing Draco’s. Though, he’d never seen the Lucius he imagined. He’d never been in the room that Lucius colonized, never been on the bed that Lucius perverted. Harry had always known Draco’s abuse was inherited, and that was convenient. That was a cause and its effect and Harry knew how to order the two, one after the other in a neat row, a conflict and a resolution that wrote itself. A loathsome part of Harry was angry at Draco—seething at him for dragging Harry into his and Lucius’s sickening tug-of-war, bastardizing the conciliatory narrative Harry had this far been soaking in. Still, the majority of him believed in Draco’s reconcilable victimhood, excused Draco for letting Lucius possess him during his fraught outbursts, too fatigued from his interminable battle with the dictator behind his eyes. The majority of Harry lifted Harry’s hand to cup Draco’s cheek, catching a tear that sputtered out of Draco’s eye, leaving a jagged trail of a glistening, ephemeral scar. Draco had been choking back the tears, but Harry’s palm on his cheek seemed to loosen his refrain, and soon they were pouring from his fluttering eyes, spouting in a rhythmic harmony with his timid sniffling.
“I’m sorry, Draco, no one should have to go through this.” Harry whispered the only coherent thought he could muster.
“Go through what, Potter?” Draco said, his eyes hardening in an instant, jaw setting in a defiant posture, glaring at Harry through a veil of tears.
“Gee, I dunno, how about getting caned by your own father for being—” Harry started, Draco’s defiant ignorance having mobilized the buzzing irritation Harry had been trying to subdue. With a viperous pounce, Draco once again mounted Harry, straddling him and holding his neck in his trembling hands, vacillating between a painful grip and gentle grasp.
“For being what? Potter? What?” Draco bellowed, spit and tears biting Harry’s cheeks. Within the same breath, Draco accio’d his wand and muttered “evert stratum” to the door, slamming it with listless rage. He darted his wand to the base of Harry’s neck, who had once again gone still, paralyzed in Draco’s cross-winds.
“For being—” Harry began to respond, matching Draco’s angst, boiled to a sizzling anger of his own by Draco’s flaming attack.
“I AM NOT!” Draco interjected, jerking his hand from Harry’s neck, recoiling off of Harry as though Harry’s words were infectious. Harry sat up at once, eyes widening at Draco, brows wrinkled downward and mouth ajar, opening the route in hopes that a response would fumble its way out. Draco inched slowly back from the bed, huffing a brigade of short, frenzied breaths, ripping a chasm between them, widening with each back-step. Harry felt as though he sat upright on a bed balanced precariously on a cliff, below which Draco seemed to free-fall, flailing and screaming, tears and spit spiraling upward off of his shrinking face.
“just…Get OUT!” Draco hollered, tears once again streaming down his crumpled cheeks. “Get out” he pleaded again, this time a timorous whisper, though Harry remained sitting, stuck between Draco’s extremes. “G-g–ge–” Draco stuttered, his sentences warbling and breaking off in the turgid deluge flooding his eyes and throat. With each pleading command, Draco stumbled closer to the door, managing to fumble it open and stagger through, swallowing his cries and slamming it shut behind him. Harry sat motionless and shaken on Draco’s bed, thousands of sparks of hundreds of thoughts flickering at once and extinguishing in the same moment, half of his body still hidden beneath the cloak. Draco’s bedroom was held hostage by stillness. Even the dust particles under the floor lamp in the corner froze while suspended in air.
Harry felt himself burning from the inside out. Sweat lined the column of his spine and raked through the hair follicles on his scalp. He had to leave. In his haste to escape, Harry crumpled the invisibility cloak into the cradle of his elbow and tore through Draco's room like a tornado, tripping over dress shoes and knocking over a stack of textbooks.