Fic: Better than drowning

My contribution to miggy's H/D mp3 ficathon  - for kagyakusha
Song: Fortress of Tears by H.I.M

Title: Better than drowning
Rating: G
Pairing: H/D (duh)
Beta service gratitude: To the ever-wonderful cincodemaygirl and iseult_variante, who encouraged and prodded me in all the right places and as usual gave great ideas and astute advice :)



He held his breath for as long as he could without turning completely purple, just to see. Harry stared at him expressionlessly, the way he usually did when Draco did something that just baffled him completely. Good. At least it meant that he was responding somehow, which was more than he had been able to say for Harry lately.

Draco let his breath out with a huff, threw down the spoon he’d been toying with and leaned back in his chair, tipping it back and forth almost to the point of going over backwards.

Harry had dropped his eyes back down to the table, and was studying the palms of his hands as if he’d lost something in their creases.

“I’m bored. Bored, bored, bored. Entertain me, Potter.”

“There’s nothing to do here.” Harry’s words came out dull as the grey rain sheeting down outside.

Draco looked down at his tea, wishing that it was butterbeer, or even homely old pumpkin juice. It was tepid verging on cool, and he could see a thin film of floating scum on the top that probably came from the stuff in the packets which Harry had said was fake Muggle sugar. Draco couldn’t work out why someone would go to so much trouble to copy sugar so badly, but it was still infinitesimally better than tea without.

“Everything’s wet, and we’ve been stuck here for weeks,” Draco bit off the sentence when even he began to hear the whine in his voice.

“Days.”

“Weeks,” Draco glared peevishly at him, “and while our world may have gone to hell, we are still here, warm…ish, dry and relatively unscathed. Things could be worse, they really could, and I’d appreciate a response from you that was in some way constructive. I’m getting a little tired of the ‘poor me’  helpless act you’ve got going.” He stood up, and for lack of anything better to do went over and poked at the little fire with a twig, debating whether to put the old kettle back on the coals or whether to beat himself over the head with it just to get Harry’s attention.

Harry didn’t even look up. Draco looked around their now-familiar hideout, purposefully implying that anything else in his immediate vicinity was infinitely more interesting than the recalcitrant human sitting like a lump at the table a few feet from him.

The little cottage might have been called homey once, by the extremely charitable. Shack was a more apt name for it – stone-walled and tin-roofed and nothing quite on the square. They’d investigated every inch of the single room after six days of confinement, including the makeshift privy in the lean-to against the back wall outside.

It had seemed like a gift from the gods when they’d first seen it squatting in a treed hollow in the Scottish countryside just as they’d finally decided they’d shaken off their pursuers. The Final Battle (as Draco optimistically named it) had been nasty and short and surprisingly curtailed in the middle of the showdown between Harry and Voldemort by the sudden and complete disappearance of magic. Harry had  been left stuck in the middle of Voldemort’s lieutenants, with Draco his only support nearby as the surprise mole amongst He Who Could Now Be Named’s henchmen.

Over the last almost-a-week though, Draco’s feelings had turned from gratitude to intense dislike. He curled his lip up at the old army bed, threadbare canvas clinging grimly onto the bleached wood stretchers coloured a dirty bone from the light leaking through the streaked window-glass above. The low cupboard against the back wall irritated him with its door half-hanging off its hinges, and the stained and cracked sink set into the top.

The single tap (cold) leaked water unwillingly in slow drops that would have been an effective form of torture if the constant rain hadn’t drowned it out most nights. That was the other odd thing, even given the vagaries of Scottish weather – this rain that just wouldn’t stop. It had started around the time that the magic had gone, and Draco couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow the two were connected.

The table gave a creak as Harry shifted slightly. They’d had to wedge it with damp twigs and sticks from outside to stop the worst of the wobble. At least the milking stools they were using for seats had three legs on purpose.  They were possibly the most stable and functional things in the room as they’d found it.

His gaze wandered back to Harry, drawn by the noise, and Draco pointedly tried to avoid staring at their wands lying on the wood next to Harry’s hands, his own fingers betraying him by automatically curling around to grip empty air in spite of himself. For all practical purposes they were just prettily polished bits of wood that might come in useful now to try and prod a mouse out of its hole or slide a knut out from under the sofa. He’d almost used one to prop up the table, but in the end couldn’t quite bring himself to admit he’d lost all his faith.

“Do you think we should try…?”

“No.”

Harry stood then, and swept the back of his hand across the table violently. Their two wands bounced to the floor, making a hollow rolling clatter across the wooden boards. Draco didn’t see where they ended up because he was still Not Looking in case it helped some.

“Make you feel better?”

Harry opened his mouth as if to retort, then closed it again, and with an effort, shrugged his shoulders.

“Maybe. No. I don’t know. Not really, I guess….” He paused, “It’s just…strange, thinking that maybe it’s not coming back.”

Draco was surprised at the admission. They’d been skirting round the truth of the situation since they’d arrived here, bedraggled and exhausted and on the run.

The fact that the world had apparently been stripped of magic didn’t mean that people had been stripped of the basic ability to do grievous bodily harm, a thought which Draco had had uppermost in his mind since the immediate aftermath of the confrontation. Hence the running and the hiding – he’d had to lead Harry most of the way too. Harry didn’t seem to have quite recovered from the ordeal still, if he even wanted to, which Draco was beginning to doubt.

“Well, don’t look at me. It’s not my fault you broke it.” The words sat there on the table, leaking into the air between the two of them like the slow hiss of a punctured quaffle.

“No, you’re right it’s not. It’s mine, my fault entirely.”

Draco waited for him to continue. This was new, this thing where they were now suddenly talking about It, and he didn’t quite know how to respond. Turned out Harry was on a roll anyway, and Draco leaned back against the fireplace and watched him spill out the thoughts that had obviously had been eating at him inside.

“I hoped it might come back, but you can feel it yourself, can’t you? There’s not even a trickle of it left, nothing that I can detect anyway. It’s like we used it all up, Voldemort and I at the end.  Or maybe whatever brought magic to the world in the first place just got so disgusted at what we were making of it they took it away again.” Harry looked down at his fingers, rubbing aimlessly at the rough table surface. “Maybe they were right, too.”

“I hardly think that this is the act of a vengeful god giving out punishments and rewards for behaviour.” Draco kept his tone acerbic, trying to break Harry out of his wallow of self-pity. “Of course it’s all academic now that we’re all just a bunch of nutters in funny clothes wandering around the glens hoping the wrong sides don’t bump into each other”

Draco waited a bit to see if Harry would respond. When nothing was forthcoming he continued.

“And if that’s not all I suppose I’m going to have to learn how to operate in a Muggle world, seeing as you bloody lot seem to have inherited the earth by default. It’s a real shame about the butterbeer though, and accio. I really liked accio…”

“Since when did you become a glass-half-full person?”

“A what?” Draco stared at him uncomprehendingly, lips moving as he tried to work this saying out. Inspirational mottoes had not been high on the list of approved Malfoy conversation topics around the Manor. “Oh…I get it. Well, you’d be surprised at the enlightening effects of having your parents killed in front of you, then choosing to betray your heritage and upbringing – not entirely voluntarily, I might add - and you know I’m still not really sure why I did that either. Of course, compared to sitting here with you and drinking cold tea that really pales into insignificance. Thanks for reminding me how much worse life could be, Potter.”

Now it was Draco’s turn to scowl and look miserable, and the two of them just sat there while the rain worked itself up a notch outside, hitting the roof with hard spats and sheeting down the windows in wide streams as if an over-enthusiastic house-elf had diverted a waterfall to really give the place a good clean.

Sometimes he couldn’t work out why in hell he cared what Harry did or thought or said. The boy obviously didn’t extend him the same courtesy and gave every indication that his life would be improved should there suddenly be a Draco-shaped vacancy in his world.

“Stuff it. It’s my turn for the bed.” Draco stalked over to the cot. He couldn’t even summon up enough energy to feel his usual revulsion for the stains on the cloth whose origins he’d been trying not to speculate about.

He curled up facing the wall – the bed too short to stretch out now that both of them had grown into their full height - and wrapped his arms around himself in lieu of a blanket. They usually used Harry’s cloak, which he’d thoughtfully decided to bring to The Final Showdown Between Good And Evil, but Draco’d be damned if he was going to bring himself to rely on anything of Harry’s right now.

“You really do like to sulk, don’t you?” What should have been a caustic insult came out almost as a polite query, Harry obviously having exhausted his brief repertoire of emotion for now. Even so, coming from him that really was bloody pots and sodding cauldrons. He wasn’t going to dignify that with a response.



When he woke up, the wands were back on the table, lined up neatly together like an equivalency sign in Arithmancy. The background noise of the rain had lifted a little, and Draco guessed that it was just drizzling outside – hard to tell now through the thick fog that he saw clinging to the outside of the glass when he lifted his head.

There was no wind, and the little cottage was almost quiet – quieter than it had been since they’d found shelter there a few days ago, cold and panicked and fleeing.

Draco winced at the memory. Despite his acknowledged lack of anything resembling self-sacrificial nobility, he still didn’t like to think of their getaway. More down to blind luck and sheer opportunism than anything else, really. He sighed. All his private dreams of adulation and glory had vanished along with magic, for without his heritage (meaningless to Muggles, and besides, not exactly something to shout about among the formerly magical fraternity either), then what was he?

Now it looked like Harry had gone as well – whether to just try and scout out their location or whether to try and find something dry for a fire (unlikely given current, and for all Draco knew, permanent weather conditions) or whether in search of enlightenment Draco couldn’t hazard a guess.

To tell the truth, Draco himself wasn’t sure why he wasn’t panicking more, or at least throwing a truly massive fit of the sulks at the sudden puncture in his little bubble of rank and privilege. He wasn’t investigating it too closely at this stage though, as at least one of them had to be fairly functional in case Something Happened. He’d promised himself that as soon as they were both safe back at Hogwarts he’d give into indulgence and have a breakdown – possibly something showy involving china as he supposed he’d have to stick to things he could break effectively without the use of magic from now on.

Draco swung his legs over the edge of the cot with a grunt, and waited for his head to catch up with the rest of his body. They’d been there nearly a full seven days now, with not much food, and he was starting to get dizzy spells if he moved too quickly. All they’d had when they’d arrived had been some army rations that they’d parcelled out between them, and some tinned Muggle stuff and tea things that they’d found in the bottom of the cupboard.

It was all pretty much gone now, apart from the last tin which looked bloated, and which Harry had said he’d thought was probably off. Draco was getting near the point where he’d brave hypothetical Death Eater hunting parties for the promise of a crumb from the Hogwarts kitchens.

Bugger. Where had the annoying git gone now? Draco supposed that he’d have to go and investigate, and get wet on top of being hungry and cold. He also supposed that being noble wouldn’t really be such an admirable virtue if it came naturally to a person. If he’d had an ounce of the sense his father had always wanted him to have, he’d have turned around and gone back to sleep, rather than cursing and stomping round in his boots looking vainly for something to give him a little protection from the world of wet outside.


Harry of course, wasn’t in the immediate vicinity of the hut. Draco was not surprised – it wouldn’t have been like the current Harry to just provide a simple solution to the problem.

He wandered around in a cautious spiral, not wanting to call out for Harry in case there were other ears around. Frankly, Draco was by now really doubting the tracking and organisational skills of the opposition, but he liked hedging his bets, especially when the stakes involved something as singular as his skin.

Third time round the house, Harry loomed up out of the fog, fringe dripping all over his glasses, which were so fogged and rain-speckled that Draco was surprised he could see out of them at all. Draco managed to suppress an unmanly squeak, and cleared his throat, glaring at Harry and hugging himself to try and keep warm now that he’d stopped moving.

“Where have you been?” he hissed, breath short from being startled.

Harry didn’t say anything, just stared down at the ground and swayed slightly on his feet.

“Come on, it’s bloody miserable out here.” Draco turned, and got three steps towards the door before he realised that Harry wasn’t following his lead. He half-turned, “Listen…this is seriously not my idea of a good time, Potter. Will you please get inside the house?”

Still nothing. Draco was forced to step back towards him, take his arm and tug at him, gently at first, and then with more force as Harry completely ignored him. Damn that Quidditch practice for bulking him out in Seventh-year – he outweighed Draco even after a week of privation, and Draco knew that it would be almost as easy to just drag the hut over to where they were as to try and force an immobile Harry towards shelter.

Harry seemed to be in some sort of daze. His lips were blue, Draco noticed, and the knees of his trousers were a shade darker than the rest of the wet cloth, as if he’d been kneeling in a puddle since he’d left the hut. Great. He sighed again, grimly resenting each slow cold tentacle of water trickling down the back of his neck. He stood and regarded Harry, who seemed oblivious. As usual.

Screw it, he thought, and kissed Harry full on the lips. It’s not as if things could get hugely worse in their lives at the moment, he didn’t really care either, and he’d been wanting to do it for a while, just to see what it would be like. And whatever happens, I won’t be bored.

Harry’s eyes widened, fuzzy dark blurs too close for him to pull into focus. A-ha! Gotcha. For a moment he was sure that he felt Harry respond, and then his world turned sharp and red as Harry slapped him across the cheek, pushing him away clumsily and almost sticking a muddy finger up Draco’s nose in the process.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Harry had stumbled a pace or two back, and was staring at Draco – really staring at him as if he suddenly had realised there was a world outside his own head - and breathing hard. “Are you utterly insane?”

Draco rubbed a rueful hand across his face, four stripes throbbing from the imprint of Harry’s fingers. “Aah. Yes,” he said delicately. “Very possibly. Can we please get inside now before I utterly dissolve?”

Back in the house, Harry stripped off his wet clothes (he kept his back to Draco, which Draco noticed with some amusement) and curled up inside his cloak on a stool he’d drawn up to the fire, which Draco had stoked up with the last of their wood.

He pulled up a stool and sat down himself (not too close to Harry though), holding his hands out to the growing flames, and keeping his gaze firmly fixed on the fire.

“Listen, Potter, we have to go. Loath as I am to admit it and be the voice of reason here, but we can’t keep hiding out forever.” He paused, working his way carefully through something that had just occurred to him outside, and he continued slowly.

“I think that we’ve both stayed here not so much because of what may find us when we leave, but because of what we might find out about ourselves out there, and no, I can’t believe I just said that either.”

Draco rubbed a hand over his mouth and looked suitably annoyed that he was the one having to do the long-range planning and be Mr. Emotionally Perceptive.

For a moment he thought Harry might argue, then a gleam flicked off his glasses as he nodded and shrugged his shoulders. It was a considering acquiescence, a temporary truce, and Draco felt a little brighter as he stood and gathered up their meagre belongings from the room, starting with their wands.



Harry still wasn’t really fixed, of course, but he kept it together, and Draco was oddly proud of him for that. They were still talking by the time they got back to Hogwarts, which he counted as a victory at any rate.  Then somehow it ended up being just the two of them again, haring off on Dumbledore’s madcap scheme to bring the magic back. And Harry strangely didn’t seem to mind that as much as he could have either. But that is another story altogether.