Chapter Text
Always, I'll wait-
For sharp glass when you break.
I'll be the light that you can't make.
I'll be your eyes, you be my face.
'Cause darling, I get scared for you
And I'm not busy anyway.
Draco watches the spiral of his breath in the frigid November air. The astronomy tower is blessedly quiet, his chosen sanctuary of survival for the next seven months. Being back at Hogwarts is not ideal, whoever decided an eighth year of education was fit punishment for swearing eternal servitude to a madman can rot. Though, he supposes he ought to be grateful he isn’t rotting in Azkaban like his father… and yet. He feels aimless, completing his schoolwork the moment it was assigned because it’s not as though he had anything else to do, no way to spend his time. His grades are a court-ordered necessity, and the work isn’t all that challenging, not after a year of simply surviving.
Fuck, it is freezing.
The burn of smoke in his lungs distracts him from his musings, and he watches the angry flare of the spliff. It’s how he feels most days, hot and glowing, burning just enough to remember that he’s still here, still alive- but the rest of him is- just waiting to be torched away to nothing. The orange ember brings a morbid memory of fire and heat and sweat to the forefront of his mind, and he flinches, smashing the end of the hand rolled cigarette into the stone beneath him. He could be dead like Crabbe, truly ash, nothing left but hulking cruel memory.
Best not to think on it too long, he’s prone to sullen dramatics, it’s a Malfoy thing. It’s what his mother tells him when he sinks a little too deeply into his despair. At least eighth years have their own rooms, he doesn’t have to worry about his classmates hearing his despairing bothersome nightmares.
The reality is that Draco is doing remarkably well for someone that was tortured right up to the precipice of insanity, to bleeding gums and eyesight that rejected the notion of silver-rimmed glasses, despite their apparent necessity. Fucking power tripping Dark Lords and maniacal aunts…all he’d ever really wanted was a warm body in his bed, a vibrant set of emerald-
The crunch of dead grass interrupts his almost daydream, and he’s instantly indignant. It’s nearly bloody midnight, who dares interrupt his solitary depressive musings at this hour? This was his time, his poetic dramatic rebelliousness.
Fuck them for taking his peace.
Casting eyes over the ramparts, he catches movement across the school lawns, a figure moving deliberately closer to the edge of the grounds, to the shores of the Black Lake. A ghost, lacking color, a blur in the dark. He squints, cursing his aunt in every language he knows, for his newly failing eyesight.
Stupid dead cunt. May she rot in the darkest pits of-
The gait looks familiar, the form pleasing- it looks like-
Fucking Gods Damn it.
Draco’s numb fingers fumble into the inner pocket of his robes, pulling out the spectacles that are absolutely not a necessity because only specky gits need glasses, and perches them on his nose. As soon as the lenses slip over his eyes, it’s apparent that he is correct and Harry fucking Potter is walking across the Hogwarts grounds at midnight, feet bare, nary a cloak in sight.
Alarm bells ring in Draco’s mind as he squints, tilting his head to the side as Harry comes to stand on the rocky edge of the newly frozen lake. It’s only had a true layer of ice for the last week or so, the water fighting off its inevitable solidity with a warmer afternoon here and there. ‘
What is he playing at?
Harry stands at the edge of the lake, and the puffs of air that Draco can see look erratic, there’s no rhythm to it. It looks…wrong. The spinning mist holds his attention, draws his fixation like all things about Harry Potter always have. He’s unintentionally leaning over the balustrades, transfixed, his body straining towards the lone figure as though pulled by a siren’s song. Moments ago, the air had felt so crisp, so cool, a welcome reprieve- now it’s suffocating, grippy fingers that are squeezing his lungs to bits, to ribbons of useless flesh, unable to expand.
Unable, because Harry’s moved, the barest shuffle, a tentative step onto ice that is not manufactured for the weight of the Chosen twat.
“Don’t.” Did he speak the words out loud?
The next step is more confident, less of a shuffle and more of a declaration.
“Don’t!” The word is pulled from his chest, a shout that should have been loud enough to still the intent of any sensible being. “Fucking Don’t!”
Harry strides out onto the ice, hands swinging at his sides as though it’s a normal jaunt he’s taking, and not a walk to certain icy doom.
Draco has no broom, no time to descend the floors of staircases that would get him to the grounds. His knuckles are white, his heart racing and he can’t do anything but watch in horror as Harry stills, not in the center but far enough out that if he goes through, no one will get to him in time.
Crack. The sound is like cannon fire in the silent night, an echoing horrendous reaping and Draco’s entire body freezes. He has no time to think, only to act, and he can’t believe he is going to do this but-
His dragonhides skid along the frosted stone, they’re not made for climbing, not made for anything really but flouncing about a castle, and skulking in shadowed alcoves. Merlin, how he hates these shoes.
Crack! He doesn’t look away, is unable to look away from unruly dark hair that he absolutely has not spent evenings imagining wrapped around his fingers, at how it would feel to grip and pull and-
Fuck. “Fuck you for this Potter.”
The ground looks leagues down, and his stomach nearly revolts as he thinks about what will happen if he doesn’t get this just right. Draco pulls his wand, praying to every awful supremacist ancestor that he has, and jumps.
The frigid air whistles in his ears, tears stream from his wide-open eyes, eyes he cannot afford to close.
“Arresto Momentum!”
His body jolts, slowing in the air until he hovers a small jump from the ground, his relief is so great that he loses his concentration, and the spell releases him into a groaning crumpled heap in the grass. He blinks slowly, cursing under his breath at the crack that spiderwebs across his accursed spectacles.
“Gods damn it!”
He repairs the break with a casual flick of his wrist. His view of the lake is completely guarded, dark trees whose naked branches feel nefarious, like the Hogwarts ground’s vendetta to all of Draco’s poor life choices up to this moment.
His shoes pinch, his feet complaining loudly at the dead sprint he’s running on frosted grass.
A branch catches his cheek, and he grits his teeth, pumping his arms, running with every piece of his stupidly damaged soul.
Please be there. Please be there. Please be there.
Skidding to a stop, pebbles and sand slide into his heels, grating at his feet. Has it been seconds? Minutes? He has no sense of time.
The clouds part and moonlight glints off the frozen landscape, the solid and silvery lake, the lenses of ridiculous round glasses.
“Potter!” The name is more gasp than word, his body fighting for oxygen and some semblance of reality. “Potter, you bloody muppet! Get your arse-” His breath catches and he chokes, cursing his habit of late-night nicotine.
Harry turns, his head tilting to the side like he can’t imagine why Draco would be there on the banks screaming bloody murder. The snaps and pops of the ice are renting the air, each one a grain of sand in an hourglass that feels like bricks on his back.
Harry’s eyes are huge and dark and not right, pupils blown and not quite present. Draco can see it even from this distance. Potions? Or muggle drugs? Some amalgamation of both…
“Harry, just come back to the shore.” His words echo across the ice, coaxing, pleading, and Harry looks down at his feet, contemplative. For several seconds, neither of them moves, and then he turns, strolling back towards Draco, a soft smile gracing his mouth.
The closer he gets, the more that Draco can see the footprints left in his wake. His bare feet are bloodied, no doubt sliced from the rocks and ice and Draco can’t stand the sight, the memories of new and old blood on the floors of his home that flash behind his eyelids. He has half a mind to walk out and collect him, but knows that while the lake seemed happy to support the weight of a golden hero, the weight of him and his past would be far too much to hold. His options are limited, he can wait- or- his eyes scan the dark, looking for anything that might help. For a moment, his mind is drawn to the pitch, far away but not so far that he might be able to- Potter had done it after all, in fourth year. A broom from a window, a task and a dragon.
The memory is there; he can remember the way his heart had raced. The way he’d convinced himself it was because he wanted Potter to lose, to be forced from the sky and embarrassed in front of the entire school. Not- other things.
With a flourish, Draco focuses on the training brooms locked away in Madam Hooches’ shed. Surely one of the damned things would be able to break free. He only needed to- Draco’s wand acts on instinct, a forceful ‘Accio” thrown to the wind like a plea. His magic hums, angry at the strain, at fighting the pull of gravity and a locked shed door. Adrenalin fuels him, fear.
His own cloak feels meager and thin against the Scottish chill, he can only imagine how cold Harry must be in his nearly see through Falmouth t-shirt. He’s so close, almost back- almost to safety when- Draco knows it is happening before it does, Harry’s next step plunges through the ice, and Harry falls to his thigh, and still, he is unnaturally quiet. Not a sound from his azure lips.
But Draco is not quiet, he cries out in horror as he watches what happens next, watches Harry’s body disappear to the shoulder, only meters from the shore. Watches Harry’s clawed fingers drag across the ice, seeking purchase. For a moment, the only sound is the faint slosh of water, and gurgling bubbles, and then the half-moaned cry of a frozen boy wonder.
“Hold on! Just-just hold on!”
The broom stills at Draco’s side, waiting, ready and he has to wipe the tears from his cheeks so that he can see properly. He has never been happier to see one of the bent twigs Hogwarts calls a broom. It takes him only seconds to get to Harry, to hoist his solid form across his lap, to cast warming charm after warming charm, after warming charm. They won’t stay; they flutter like the dying wick of a candle. He’s too- he’s so cold. Desperate, he yanks at his cloak, pulling his arms from the sleeves and tucking it around Harry, covering as much of him as he possibly can.
“If you die, they will lock me up, you realize? They’ll say I d-drowned you, say I d-decided to off the ch-chosen prat, so don’t-” His own teeth are chattering as ice and water leak through his trousers, searing his skin like vicious needles.
‘-Don’t die. You are supposed to live, it’s-it’s your bloody moniker.”
Harry is heavy, and the weight of him is not felt in the way that Draco had always hoped. The way he thought about behind closed four poster curtains.
“Sirius?” Harry’s voice is a rasp, and Draco’s stomach sinks as he hears his disgraced cousin’s name, his very much dead disgraced cousin. Dread seems to chill him further, a dementor sucking the life out of him.
“No Black, you can’t have him yet. Off with you!” Draco’s flying as fast as the infantile training broom will take him, chasing the faint glow of Gryffindor tower.
“Sirius.” His voice is so small, nothing like anything Draco has ever heard from him.
Draco’s so cold, he’s so cold but the window is there, just there.
“Mum?” Harry whispers, “Dad?”
Draco’s wand is stuck to his hand, the wood biting with frost and cold. Somewhere in the recesses of his frantic mind, he notes that fat flakes of snow have started to fall. It’s too fucking cold, he’s shivering violently, barely hanging on to-
The sound of broken glass. Pain, a lot of pain, and then everything goes dark.