1. This is composed of three parts, and each could be read separately, but there are some gaps missing depending on the narrator. The first part would be from Harry's point of view; the second, from Snape's journals; the third, Draco's point of view after the first part. None of the parts would overlap; for instance, most of Snape's journal entries would cover events that Harry does not mention in his narration, and vice versa.

2. This is morally dubious at best. It started with my own misgivings about whether Harry would have moved on after the war so quickly, whether Draco could have so easily repented and changed his ideas, and whether Snape's moral ambiguity still made him capable of being noble.

3. There are few literary references throughout the work: the title comes from W.B. Yeats, and the poem that Snape alludes to comes from Paul Celan. Other works, such as Pessoa, Kafka, Rilke, allow appear in the work explicitly.

4. Most of the ambiguities will come from the first part-for example, Harry does not explain some of the sights from Berlin, or any literary references that Snape mocks him with. They will all be explained in Snape's journals, but such knowledge is not essential to the story at this point.

Life is a long preparation for something that never happens.

—William Butler Yeats

Part 1.

The fetus was not a child, but he still named it. For what else was he to call the lump? He dug up a little hole in the ground and buried the boy. It was a withered dead babe; they had a bitter frost that year and a winter child it might have been. His eyes were raw and the wind was cold on his skin, but he still dug and scrabbled at the frozen ground until his finger were raw and bleeding. Dirt and pebbles prickled his fingertips. Still it was not deep enough for the bloodied child he would have liked to call James. He would have liked to think it was alive, even for a brief second when it came out of a womb, that shriveling sad lump of flesh he had held in his arms.

In a garden alone he dug out a grave and wept silently until he was too tired to cry and feel anything except for the familiar despair that had never gone away since.

.

.

Is there a point to this story? he wonders.

His hand falters as his eyes stare blankly at the clean sheet of paper that is now marred with a blot of ink. A waste, he thinks, distracted. It is hard to get a good supply of ink and paper in the winter months and he had wasted yet another sheet. This exercise is futile. There would now exist no words to explain his empty heart. It would have been possible if the pain was recent, he acknowledges ruefully with a small smile, but the wounds have long since festered and hardened. What he is left now is a gaping hole. How do you explain a void that you cannot fill?

He folds the paper and feeds it into the open stove in the kitchen. He sets the kettle on the stove and boil the water. He looks out the window.

There is snow. There is complete silence. The white brightness blinds him.

There is nothing to do up here out in this grand and hostile wilderness. Harry prefers it this way. There is no one to talk to, to fight with, to scream at—there is only blissful and everlasting silence. He wakes up in the morning and prepares a hot cup of tea. He reads and lounges about. He talks to his reluctant companion. He sleeps undisturbed. The outside world is white and he has no plans to go out into the blasting wind. At night, the wind howls, and he does not know if it is the sound of a feral wolf or a vindictive soul.

He sits by the window and drinks with caution, careful to not let his tongue burn. Outside in the shed dried meat is already hung for the long season, the vegetables harvested and packed away. He slices out a piece of thick, dry bread and takes a bite without much appetite. Everything is still and silent.

In the morning, he treks across the land with only the lone wind for company, and he scoops up a bit of snow and rubs it between his lips. It feels cold and clean on his skin, and his fingers burn when he licks them to stave off the frost. He walks onward. His feet crunch upon the fresh snow, and for an hour or more, he walks with no end in sight to the endless landscape before him.

A fox approaches him. Harry watches how the animal swishes around his tail, its fur sleek and bright in the morning sunlight, and its steps are sly and graceful as it steps a few feet from his garden fence. The fox is wary, but not frightened, of his strange presence. This side of the mountain has never seen many hunters trapping animals; the land is too savage for Muggles to clear off the land and make a living in these areas. This suits him just fine. He feels no magic in the wilderness, and this pleases him as well. He carries a gun in place of his wand. He walks around like a hunter. He is back to his old childhood habits, wary of approaching enemies out from the woodlands. Days when he did not know such a thing as magic existed, when wizards and cauldrons were only things out from fairy tales.

He cocks the gun, wondering whether to shoot it. He does not need the meat, but it has been a week since he last killed anything. His fingers are brisk as it moves around the handle of the gun. The fox does not move.

It is easy to kill, Harry imagines telling his younger self who had always been foolishly haunted by memories of lives that he could not have saved, easy to kill and forget when one does not much care. It is easy to move on, when one does not have anyone to talk to, anything to think about.

He shoots the fox and brings back the pelt. The blood does not make him nauseous. The fur is warm against his skin.

.

.

"I caught a fox today," he reports cheerfully by the bedside.

"So you are now finding joy in killing the innocents," a guttural voice replies.

Snape is huddled in his sheets and he looks more tired than the day before. He makes sure to stomp his feet well in the doorway before he comes into the bedroom, but Snape makes a disgusted face at the wet floor all the same. He gives a little shrug helplessly, and walks closer to the bed. The man's face is gaunt and pale, his skin is alabaster and sickly. He still manages to muster up a sneer, showing yellow teeth, and it's delightful and endearing. Harry smiles.

"It's a good pelt, good fur. See, touch it, how soft it is."

"You talk like a savage now. Hunting game has clearly left its marks on you."

Yet a thin hand obediently comes out of the bedcovers and strokes the cleaned fur. He had made sure to skin it without any residue, and cleaned out the insides before laying it by the kitchen table to dry. The fingers touch the reddened fur carefully. The gesture is awkward and slow, and Harry patiently holds out the offering until the man is finished.

"It's stiff," Snape says. "You didn't dry it thoroughly."

Snape talks in a rebuking manner, bringing back dusty memories of cauldrons and dank dungeons, but the man before him is not his repulsive professor but an old, weary man who has not known any other way to talk to people. As if sensing his sharp tone, he adds, somewhat snappish, "I supposed it'll do. Mind you don't cut it into something hideous."

Harry nods. He reaches out to hold the hand carefully tracing the fur pelt. Snape does not move his hand away.

"Your hand is still cold," he says.

"It's the weather," Snape says, never the one to show such a simple weakness. "It'll pass when winter goes."

Snape does not meet his eyes as he says this, but he is not so fooled easily. He says evenly, "Did you eat? I laid out some bread—"

"Potter, I am bedridden, not an imbecile," Snape snapped, "Let me be."

He leaves.

.

.

In an index of future scenarios that may happen, for there existed no protocols for grief and recovery, he imagines that months and years and decades will have passed, and one day, he will grow tired of the stillness and nothingness. And so he imagines that he will return.

Late at night, he envisions such stories. When the light is dim and he is alone with the shadows just before bedtime, he sits by the window and tries to see through the blackness and fails. It is then that he closes his eyes and sees his homecoming.

He walks down a grand ballroom, regal in his posture and careful with his steps. Attired in finery and decked with his medals, he smiles for the cameras and the Minister and the people who come up to him to shake his hand. Old times, new beginnings. He will be almost, almost unrecognizable, with his hair slicked back and his collar stiff. He will let them manhandle him and gawk at the strange, foreign man, until they see and startle themselves with their jubilant shouts.

But it cannot be—!

They do not recognize him at first, but soon they let their eyes wander to his face and they begin to stare. Someone whispers more quietly than the rest: but it cannot be. The words are reverent, their faces enrapt.

It's those green eyes, Mister Potter, another whispers to him, coyly flattering. People here, they never quite forgot your green eyes. No one quite has them like you do. An arm might come up, hesitantly, wondering if they may touch him. People laugh around him from all sides, with gaiety and affectedness, and they all try to squeeze past a word in while slyly catching his eye.

The last photo they have seen of him would be the one right after the War, his face streaked with dirt and mouth set into a grim line. His eyes had glared at the camera, a bright poisonous green. He had looked savage. Such is the past that they now evoke as they openly flock to him.

He smiles a serene smile that is not quite an answer and moves on. He nods and laughs at their gushing admiration, with his charming mannerisms and his face set in gaiety. Gone is the reluctant child playing the hero. Gone is the angry boy shouting for justice. In one of those Ministry functions he had so detested in his youth, he makes a grand entrance, full of grace and sincerity that he had always failed to muster up as a sullen teenager. Now he sets his face that has the ladies swooning and the men raising eyebrows. The Prophet would later speak of his sudden public appearance with dramatic flair.

Whispers follow along his wake but die out with his bedazzling charms. The world has changed, but not by much. The people still are hungry for a story, and they wish to honor him with a hero's welcome before they crave to denounce him as a power-grubbing boy. The words would change; the sentiments would not. And so he is careful where he treads and plays the game of the high society that had once eluded him. He is careful to talk only of frivolities. He takes care to appear modest. All throughout the function he walks around and smiles, to ward off any hostile feelings that he may provoke, until he sees a familiar face shifting out from the crowd.

Yes, there he would be, standing aloof and tall, home in this place of the rich and famous. Hair groomed and robes impeccable, no fault would be visible to the eye. Face pale and set, aristocratic and cold. The face would have aged, after these years. Still not quite handsome, but there would be a certain allure that would draw even the most hostile enemies into his gaze. There would be no mistaking the posture of the man. The grey eyes would turn, and they would be at crossroads.

He would say the name.

Malfoy. It's been awhile.

He would speak as if their history was nothing and he was nothing and they had been nothing together. People would watch on, mild curiously at his easy greeting. Draco would stiffen, perhaps would hesitate to reply to his words. But he would hold out his hand and wait patiently for Draco to take it, because Malfoys were nothing without their flairs and appearances, and soon enough, Draco's hand would tentatively rise and their palms would meet, their fingers would clasp.

Draco would never make a scene, it would be dreadfully un-pureblood of him, but worse than that, it would be un-Malfoyish for him to create a scene. Draco would mirror his expression, a tight little smile that would not reach his eyes. And that would be that, and they would never cross paths again in this lifetime.

He imagines this. It would be a stage of reunions, of anticlimactic resolutions and clean endings.

But that did not happen yet. Perhaps it would never happen. For it is a future he had created in his lazy daydreams, the myriad possibilities of what-ifs. It is a curious, foreign feeling to be so free of everything.

.

.

He has not decided on a plan in his life that would make the past years go away. He only wakes up each day, greeting the darkness. Here the sun comes up late in the morning and sets early in the afternoon. He is lazy in his first hours or waking, walking around the kitchen with unhurried steps. He taps his fingers against the small wooden table and lights up another cigarette, waiting for the sun to rise. The smoke burns his eyes. He lets out a breath. Closes his eyes. The cold winters in the Far North have nothing to compare to his own homeland. Here he is alone with the snow and the stars, and day after day he sits in his small house, staring out the window. He thinks about a grave dug and a body buried. He thinks about the bed in the next room, a man awaiting to die and he, awaiting to dig the ground if the frozen ground ever thaws.

.

.

Before the north, he was in Berlin, allowing himself to be led farther east and farther away from his beloved and hateful country. There were countless train rides amongst people who did not know who he was, hunched alongside men who were drunk and bawdy, who offered him a swallow of vodka or whisky or wine, all of which he declined, although he laughed himself hoarse at the jokes he did not know or care to ask the nuances of. The men in the compartments smelled raunchy and most of them were drunk, but they were harmless, and they did not recognize him.

He acquired a habit of smoking, sucking up stick after stick until he could feel a sharp burn near his stomach. And later, when the pain did not go away, he was always able to blame his atrocious habits of smoking in place of the barren fury that nestled inside of him. Gone with the blood that flowed between his legs, one winter day. He sat in the beds as the nighttime train rolled by the nameless countryside and small towns, all the while composing letters to people that he would never send.

.

.

In one such letter, it went:

You told me once that after the war you placed everything aside—family, blood, honor—to begin a new life, and you were ready to create a fresh start with everything given to you, and your words brought something alive in me that I had not felt for a long time; perhaps it was hope, or it was even something even more trite, something such as adoration and affection. Yes, when you told me that you were ready to declare that your family name and blood and honor did not matter to you, when you told me that such things were relics of a bygone era, I was ready to believe you and thus deluded myself that you were different, and I was ready to accept and love this new person whom I had never known. We had a history, you and I—but the war happened, and then we happened, and perhaps I thought that was enough, that we grew up out of our petty feuds and we were stronger and wiser for it.

I did not consider then that I had never really known you, aside from the values that you were brought up—but perhaps, that was all I would have ever needed to know.

Was that my warning, then? Fresh out from the war, you renounced everything you once stood you for so fervently, as if you truly hated the very identity that defined you, and back then I did not question your undulated hatred, I accepted it as a form of your remorse, and I welcomed it, even, because it meant we shared common hopes for the future of our generation. But I should have known such hatred is more complicated than what it would seem like. There is no complete way of dismantling your past.

You would like it here, this complete and unequivocal freedom—you always told me you wanted to travel out of the isle and yet, ironically, here I am, alone and free, when it was always you who had hated the fog and the coldness of our country. You sometimes whispered to me about voluntarily exile—somewhere only we would exist—and I laughed at your ideas and mocked how we would kill each other before the week was up. You did not contradict me on this point. At least, you pointed out sensibly and haughtily, our graves would be next to each other. In life and in death.

Draco, I—

The name would make his words flounder. He would then stare out the window, clicking the lighter furiously with one hand, wishing he could set something on fire.

The letters would stop somewhere along the way. He had never been good at beginning or endings to conclude. The words were always a digression of pleadings and accusations, nothing that he wished to send along. But every night, he would look out the window of the passing scenery and light up a smoke. He would compose words in his head. On some nights, when the weather turned misty and cold, when the rain reminded him of his own drab city that he left, he would start off without any pleasantries:

I wonder sometimes, why it died and who killed it. I wonder if you ever went to that small grave I dug up, whether you even cried for the dead child. Because it was a child, it was our child, no matter how hard you may deny it or disown it, it was created out of your reluctance and my disaster and our doomed notions of love.

But tell me that, if nothing else: was that love?

.

.

Afternoon goes, and he sits, looking down at the clean sheet of paper laid out in front of him, wondering what words to write. He recites numerical, hard facts about himself. Harry James Potter: born in 1980, famous in 1981, wizard in 1991, hero in 1998, vagabond in 2002…those are names for the things he had achieved (or had failed to) and they talk of nothing substantial, nothing he would deem important. What do the years tell me about myself? He brings up a hand to rub alongside his chin. There is a rough patch of stubble that he has failed to shave. It won't do, he thinks vaguely, and frowns. He scrawls the first lines absentmindedly:

What does it mean to have lived and survived?

He dips the tip of his quill into the inkpot and continues.

I believe in that the question depends on the matter of intent. I have been called the Boy-Who-Lived; it was not my intention to have survived the wizard who had murdered my parents. My deliberation and choices came later, when I needed to stay alive, not just for myself but for the wizard world.

There was a prophecy that said—

He stops. That damned word. He rubs his chin harder and glares at the word. He furiously scribbles down the remaining sentence without hesitation.

There was a prophecy that said that I was Voldemort's equal, that 'neither can live while the other survives,' that one must finally kill the other. I have abbreviated the prophecy and did not care much for it, because as a student I did not believe in the power of prophecies, and older, I still do not. I believe that we make our own choices and take responsibility in the consequences that follow. I believe that our choices define us.

He stops writing and tear out the page. He feeds the crumpled paper into the fire.

.

.

"I'm thinking of writing," he tells Snape late at night. "But the words won't come to me."

The room is cold. He drags over the remaining logs by the shed and reminds himself that he must split logs first thing tomorrow morning, or else they will let the house freeze and Snape would be dreadfully cross with him. He crouches down and shifts around the soot that have gathered inside the fireplace while Snape watches him from the bed. He steadies his hand as he lights a match and feeds the logs gently one by one to the flickering flames. He says, almost to himself, "I'm trying to find the right words—but everything's muddled up inside my head, it's not a straightforward story. The years elude me, and I don't think I'm writing anything that really matters to me." He stops and turns around. Snape is watching the fire. "Does that make sense?"

Snape replies, "Your mind was never sound to begin with, Potter, and stories are never quite so straightforward. Are you finally trying to pen down your heroic life for posterity?" He says the last words with a sharp bark of derision. "I am surprised that it has taken you so long."

"No, I'm trying to write—"

He stops and shakes his head. The bubble inside him had burst, and along with it, the giddiness and frustration that had stayed with him throughout the day is gone. It is replaced with hollow brevity and lightness. He smiles and continues with a false and pleasant voice.

He says, "Yes, that's what I'm doing, trying to milk in my fame for what it's worth, maybe people will still be interested in me after all these years."

The affected tone and words come with years of practice and he is not hurt by Snape's dismissal, he is only gently amused by it, but Snape presses his lips together tightly as if Harry had angered him somehow. Snape does not immediately reply.

He turns forward once more to place the remaining logs into the fire. The heat warms his face and now his hands are covered with black soot and dust. He stares into the fire and thinks about tomorrow, the water he must boil, the trees he must cut, the meat he must salt. He dusts off his hands and stands up.

"It's late," he says lightly. "I want to read a bit before bed, so I'll just be in the other room."

And that should be the end of it, he thinks, that was that, he will now never write another word about the dead buried fetus and Draco, he would not write about his nonexistent years nor about the war he had survived, because what was the point, there was no point save for stroking his ego and vanity; words would only serve as his justifications about his choices, if he had any in the first place.

He is about to walk out, but Snape sits up from the bed and calls his name in a strained voice.

"Sometimes you are a dreadful fool," he says, "and a liar."

He is still smiling, he thinks. His mouth is awkward on his face and he is standing still, waiting.

"Come to bed," Snape says, when it is clear that he was not going to respond to the insults. "It's late."

He starts again. "The books—"

"You are not an avid reader, Potter," Snape interrupts, and the malice is gone, replaced with a certain fatigue and patience Snape rarely shows. "It'll do no good to waste precious wax."

He does not move. His mouth tries to form polite words. "I really do need to—"

"Potter, don't try to contradict me, it's very tiring and I'm an old man," Snape says, and he lifts off the covers and beckons him with one hand. "It's late." They are spoken softly, as if cajoling a particularly stubborn child.

He walks slowly towards and around the empty side of the bed. The sheets are thick but cold to the touch. Just as he is about to slip into the sheets he looks down at himself and frowns.

"My clothes," he says helplessly. "They're covered in soot, I should—"

Snape makes an impatient sound, and reaches under his pillow. Out comes an object that he rarely sees nowadays; he flinches and backs away, but it is too late to duck. He feels the magic wash over him, and his clothes are now clean and soft against his skin. He finds that his hands are shaking when he touches the soft fabric.

His voice is high and nervous when he talks. "I thought—"

"I know," Snape says, and it is a testament of how truly tired Snape must have been, for his voice is not cruel or exasperated, merely very weary and gentle. "But it's late, and we'll waste wood drawing up a bath. This saves time."

He does not move for a moment, and then, very slowly, he walks forth the remaining few steps to the bed and crawls underneath the sheets. The bed is warm. He inches nearer to the other man and seeks out a calloused and hardened hand. Snape gives it to him easily.

They do not speak, allowing the fire to warm the room. The fire crackles and it is the only sound they hear until Snape opens his mouth.

"Even after all these years you feel the need to lie to me," Snape says. "It pains me to say it, but there are sometimes days when I miss your tantrums."

Snape's hand comes up and brushes out a lock of his hair, and in the dim room he does not see the man's face, what expression he might be exposing. He stays passive and silent.

"What are you thinking of?" Snape finally asks.

"Nothing," he says. He closes his eyes. "It's been a long day."

"Yes," Snape murmurs. "Sleep."

.

.

On another day, as he brings Snape a tray of coffee and rye bread with dried fruits, Snape tells him abruptly, "A story is never linear, it would be dreadfully boring and trite if one is to delineate one's life from cradle to grave."

Harry blinks his eyes.

"Will it?" he says politely.

"There is never one story," Snape tells him, using his lecturing tone, cold and brittle, "there are many stories that conflict each other, and you must make sure they do not unnecessarily ruin each other's words."

"But I only have one story I want to tell," he says.

Snape twists his lips. "Don't be ridiculous, Potter," he says. "Or Merlin knows, don't be a bore. I wouldn't know which is worse, but your one redeeming point is that you have led quite an erratic life. It would be quite a shame to record only one version of that story."

He shakes his head. "I didn't say I was going to write about my life," he points out. "Just. I want to write. About what, I don't know yet."

"Dear me, Potter." Snape speaks with mocking pity. "Whatever else would you write about?"

.

.

In 1998 the war was over; he was lost while Draco Malfoy lost. Only he had room for ambiguity.

They were both eighteen when it all ended. One was a decorated war hero and the other a disgraced Death Eater. He was lauded by the press as a 'noble, forlorn young man, gracious in his victories and humble in his achievements' and the reporters churned up heartfelt op-eds about how 'Harry Potter is now on the way to leading us towards a new era' while Draco Malfoy was summed up in one sentence: 'The Kiss is too sweet for the Malfoy heir.'

It was all they talked about, in the first months after the end of everything. The beginning of something.

"This is outrageous; will they never stop?" he said.

He had flapped the newspaper with one hand and laughed at the farcical nature of it all, this clown show, the great eagerness to point fingers at clear perpetuators in the war who had a mark branded on their arms.

But Malfoy didn't do anything, he remembered saying to Hermione, a smile on his face to show how he thought the idea as far-fetched, a stunt that the Ministry would not seriously consider executing. The Kiss? He's barely legal, he was barely legal when he took the mark…

Hermione did not laugh with him but observed him with pity and impatience, a combination he did not very much like.

"Oh, Harry," she said, in that calm and rational way of hers that drove him mad. "The Ministry wants someone to blame and something to show for their ineptitude. They want blood."

"But why?" he demanded. His amusement turned to incredulity, even anger. "The war is over, isn't it? We're supposed to move on!"

"And is that so easy, moving on?" Hermione asked wearily. He stared at her.

"It's not," he said, his words slow to form. "But it's better than this—blood hunting. What's going to come out of executing one student?"

"Not just him," Hermione said. "But it's to make an example of them all. It's a clean break, Harry, don't you see—oh. I don't know." She sighed. "I agree with you, but I also understand what the Ministry is trying to do for once—and it's hard, it's hard on everyone."

In 1998 he had saved the world but made it an angry place, a hostile place. He did not care much for this new world, so eager to commit justice, to condemn people without trial, to shower him with honors and glory he alone did not deserve. He did not very much care for Draco Malfoy except that he did not think his school nemesis deserved such a rotten death, not when the boy had no sin upon him, save for the fact that he was a lowly coward.

For reasons that he did not care to study, he had a violent and irrational wish to save Malfoy, if only because it would have been a shame for the boy to be without a soul after Harry had taken the trouble of yanking him out of a bewitched fiendfyre.

Sometimes he dreamt of the fire. He wondered if Malfoy thought about those moments, wondered if the boy hated him for that false mercy.

.

.

There you were in the courtroom, he imagined writing in one of his unsent and unwritten letters,

or perhaps you were in your prison cell, waiting for the end to come. I visited you, and you looked at me without the usual sneering you would have shown me in our younger years, but you looked at me as if seeing me for the first time. There remained no trace of your haughtiness and dismissive remarks about my abysmal failures in life. Instead, you beseeched me with your eyes and begged me with your mouth and laid down your pride and our past grudges. You spoke with an intensity that I was not ready for.

You asked me to speak up for you and your parents and I replied that I did not think I could save you all. In truth I did not know what I was doing back them, only had a vague idea that I needed to save you because you were young, as if you being young exempted you for your own foul deeds when we were in school. You begged me again and swore that you would repay me in any way that I saw fit, and what was so heartbreaking was that you truly thought I would go ahead and save you, that you, out of all people in this world, believed in my ability to absolve you. I said that you had nothing that I wanted but I would try anyway because you did not deserve to die.

You laughed at this, delirious and perhaps even deranged, saying that was what was so endearing about me. my infallible belief in humanity and its goodness.

These letter he wrote in fits of madness and insomniac episodes, letters from his early days, just after he snuck out of Britain and acted as a Muggle tourist in Paris, just before he brought train tickets to Strasbourg and made his way to Berlin. He went farther east, to Wien and Prague and Budapest, before he settled down one day and realized that the countless train rides made him feel that his entire life felt like a vertigo.

In each and every city, all he could do was curl up in his sheets and feel cold and miserable, empty, and he wondered what he was doing, living. Memories of the immediate aftermaths of the war returned to him, and alone, he only had to close his eyes and a thin, pointed face surfaced, a thin body dressed in rags. Malfoy hovered around the corners of his mind, and he thought dimly, I saved him.

Other times, he wondered, but why did I save him?

.

.

In real life Draco did not beg for life until he forced the other boy to do so. He had visited Draco in prison and Draco had yelled at him to leave and Harry had shouted back insults and they were reduced to childish spites and accusations until Harry had screamed hysterically,

You can't die,

a statement that had Draco retorting coldly about how his life was his to rot away, to which Harry cut his tirade of free will and pride and vented out,

I can't let you die,

and it surprised him, that his words sounded like a plea, as if Draco's life mattered to him, as if Draco was precious to him even then, when he had no way of knowing the things to come, when he had never truly known the other boy to warrant such strong feelings. At that time, he did not know what he was begging for; he only knew that there were many deaths he could not have saved but this would not be one of them.

He did not admit even to himself that saving Draco Malfoy was not about the other boy at all, it had to do with his own convictions of the world; that the world would now be a place of atonement and forgiveness. There would have been no place for death in such a world he envisioned. He had gone to his death to save this world that was just as foul and ill-conceived as he had left it. He would change the world, he must, but if he could not do that, then he would at least change this one life.

Draco had stared at him with those pale, grey eyes of his, at a complete loss for words. He was silent until the guard timidly knocked at the door and announced that Mr Potter's time was up.

Draco said, "Potter, you really should stop believing in the best of people, it'll get you killed one day, even though the Dark Lord didn't quite succeed."

And it was Harry who had laughed, delirious and perhaps even deranged, while Draco looked at him passively.

.

.

Somewhere along the Train Ride Era that dated from 2002 through 2004 (as Harry had been meticulous in labeling his journeys), he was accumulating numerous correspondents inside his head, some marked Draco, others for his friends who would have no idea where he was, and sometimes, on very black nights when the only sound he could hear were the locomotive engine roaring outside, he would compose eulogies for the dead, accusations for the fallen.

Days when he smoked cigarette after cigarette, letting out the smoke through the small gap through the window, he would sometimes think of death, and how he had accepted such a fate. He would remember the man who had led him to such a decision. He would sometimes think about that man and with broad, fragmented bursts of inspiration, he would think:

Once, very long ago, when I did not quite know who you were and what you may have been capable of, you told me that we looked alike. Before that you listed off our similarly miserable lives and afterwards you tried to entice me into a future I wished no part of…but those are bygone eras, I do not feel like harping up old grudges, not when I've already vanquished you.

But your words stayed with me. Not every manic and maddening thing you said, of course—it would have driven me mad—but when you had pointed out how we resembled one another. When I held that child in my arms he did not have that fair Malfoy complexion I had hoped out of him; he was mine, all mine. That matted bloodied hair was dark and the child was a scrawny thing and so fragile, I was afraid that I might kill it a second time. The way it was not breathing. The first thing I thought was a silly thing, a laughable thought.

I imagined what you might have looked like when you were a child. I wonder, sometimes: in my dreams, I see that white train station I envisioned in my death, and Dumbledore does not appear. You are there, in your foul, shriveled state, and I watch you wail and screech. I wonder then if I should have touched you then, should have fought harder for the remorse you would have surely never felt. This is not to say I regretted what I did, you understand—it is just the mad ravings of a person who can't seem to understand the war and the trials it brought onto me. You dragged me into a war which I was too young to fully understand. But age has resolved me of that pitiful excuse; older, I would still follow in the footsteps of my younger self. Older still, I believe I would have done everything in my power to stop you, even if that meant I had to die. This has never changed.

You taught me to love; but you had also taught me to hate, and hate everything I did, in those few years after the war.

When I buried the child, I named it after you just so that I would find it in myself to hate it, for it brought me very little joy throughout those bitter months and much anguish when it was borne. It was fitting at that time. You were a winter's boy, and you were also conceived out of a type of delusional love I did not think myself capable of.

The child was tiny, so it should have been easy to dig up the grave. But the ground was hardened by ice and the wind was bitterly cold. There was no one to console me, only hours after the childbirth, and I was very weak by the time I staggered out to the manor grounds. I scraped and dug the ground until my nails broke and my fingers were stiffly frozen, and yet I continued to dig. I laid the small bundle that was utterly still. I wanted to conjure up the darkest magic known to wizardkind and force life onto that unmoving bulk.

But I could not.

So I named it Marvolo.

It was to remind me that I could not love this bundle, it was to warn me about the unnatural ways in which the child was conceived. I thought a name itself could summon up the hate I could not feel. I thought the name alone would change everything I felt about the child. The name was evil; you, Tom Marvolo Riddle, you were evil.

And yet, still. I could not hate the child. It was mine, as nothing ever had been; it was mine, as nothing ever will be henceforth.

.

.

Marvolo Potter.

He whispered the name amidst the cold howling wind and repeated it louder; the wind hid away his anguish and the name he dared speak aloud. It was a name that he had never managed to tell Draco. At the first light of sunrise he left the grounds after having patted down his makeshift mound with his wretched fingers. There was nothing to take with him; always, he was an unwanted guest in the manor, and he left it with a particular relish, his legs hobbling from the loss of blood and sheer exhaustion. Yet he walked on until he could pop away. The wards would not alert his disappearance.

He did not bother leaving a note. For years, his words would only be stored away in his head, until they lost all meaning and he was left to repeat the same letters again and again, inconsequential and pointless with time.

.

.

After the trial, Draco had sought him out in a Ministry function and he did not remember this night as clearly as he would have liked, for his mind was fuzzy from the liquor he could not hold.

Slouching against the wall, sulking in a corner, sipping a drink that burned his throat…yes, those were the nights that he remembered, one after another in the months that followed the war.

"Potter," Malfoy said as his customary greeting.

Or he must have said as such. In the eyes of the public, Draco had never ambushed him, always treated him with polite contempt, and it had amused him at first until he found no delight in keeping pretense.

"Malfoy," he slurred, and he blinked, he must have gawped at the other boy, in his impeccable robes and tidy hair. "Malfoy, what are you doing here?" he asked dumbly. "You—but your trial—you got out free. Merlin. You're free."

He blabbered, first astonished then delighted and amazed. He tried to form coherent words. "They ruled you innocent."

"You're drunk," Draco observed, his voice very dry but not cruel, "Good Merlin, and the Minister's not even here…I should go back, I'll come later when you're sober—"

"No, don't go," he said, trying to straighten up, his lips trying to move rapidly to form the necessary words. "I wanted to say—you're free now—"

Draco gave him a thin smile. His voice sounded colder. "Yes, you've established that already, Potter. I'm here lounging about with the heroes and the martyrs, it must be quite a shock for you, but all's the pity, you'd best hide your disappointment, because—"

"I'm glad," he said loudly, cutting through Draco's enmity, his voice making Draco step back and eye him warily. "It's what should have happened, they shouldn't have locked you up in the first place—"

"Potter, stop making a scene. This was such a rotten idea," Draco muttered, swerving his head around. His tentative hostility was replaced with exasperation and he no longer wore a sneer. He gestured impatiently at Harry's hand. "Give me your glass, come on, let's get you some fresh air."

"I don't need—"

"You clearly do," Draco said firmly. "I have no wish to be in company with the new celebrity of the wizarding world and have him be ill. People talk."

"Fuck people," Harry slurred, but he shook his head roughly and followed Draco out of the vast hall and into a small alcove where the open windows led to a small balcony. Draco walked with deliberate footsteps, and he trudged behind, watching how straight and proper the other boy held himself. Out in the open air, he shivered a little and his head cleared. The night air chilled his skin.

"Better?" Draco asked.

"I—yes," Harry murmured, reaching out and massaging his head with his fingers. "Just—give me a minute, I must've drunk a bit over there—"

"I could have told you that," Draco said, but he leaned against the sills and watched him as he breathed deeply into the night air.

Draco had grown older over the last few months while he was in prison, he noted. His old nemesis wore his defeat with a quiet dignity; he was no longer the puffing idiot he had know, no longer the sniveling coward that had screamed at Harry to save him from the fire. Draco observed him and the world around them with a certain weariness which was endearing as it felt familiar. The constant tiredness and ennui of the aftermath.

Draco: I didn't come up to you to chat about social niceties, Potter. Merlin knows if we would ever have them between us.

He: No? I thought that with the war over—

Draco: It's not a fresh start, whatever the newspapers are blathering about. I've been lucky so far—they thought that I was too young to have understood the consequences of my actions—

He: I would've spoken up for you if I could.

Draco: My lawyer didn't think it would have been a good idea.

He: No, he didn't.

Draco: You've talked to him?

He: I—yeah, I tried to. I might have broken one of his quills. His secretary wasn't best pleased.

Draco: Yes, he's told me about that. He said that you had some anger issues, we wouldn't know what you would have said in the courtroom. I—

He: It wasn't right. The way they were treating you, I mean. I needed to tell them—

Draco: And they would've listened?

He: I would have made them.

Draco: That's what I didn't get. Why did you ever come visit me in that prison?

Draco asked this with wonderment, almost with disgust, as if he did not understand how he, savior of the wizarding world, had ever mustered up the empathy that was needed to have forgiven Draco, former enemy and damned Death Eater.

He tried to explain about the need to forgive and move on, tried to talk about fresh new starts, or even perhaps talk about how he was very tired of hating people nowadays, he did not have enough energy to hold grudges any longer, but in the end the words that come out are much simpler.

"I wanted to," he said dumbly. "I needed to."

"You wanted what?" Draco asked.

"I wanted to," he repeated, and shook his head a little. "I wanted you to live."

And it surprised him, this simplicity, and it must have taken Draco by surprise as well, the way his eyes grew wide and his jaws slackened a little, and it seemed as if there was nothing more important to say, until Draco broke out in choking laughter.

He said, scorn and contempt in his voice, "I tried to kill you, Potter, did you know that?"

He blinked. "I almost killed you once," he said, stuttering with a hesitant smile. "Sixth year, remember? We—"

"Yes," Draco said, dismissively waving his hand, as if such things no longer mattered, "And I wished you dead long before that, and I wanted you dead most of that year, and then later, when everything seemed wrong—"

Draco paused and he rubbed his neck and looked away. He did not speak for some time.

"When everything seemed wrong," he finally continued calmly, "I still wanted you dead because I thought your death would make a difference, that the world I once knew would come back again, that what we were going through was a temporary insanity, that surely, surely my father knew what he was doing. I thought your death would have made sure of that—that everything would end, the world would go on as before."

Gently, as if to console a child, he said, "But you didn't kill me. You saved me, rather. In the manor, you pretended you didn't know who I was. "

"Is that what we're going to call it?" Malfoy looked beyond the balcony, beyond the night skies, His eyes were unfathomable. "If you want to believe that, Potter. Yes, say that I saved you. If it'll do you any good."

"You saved me," he insisted.

Draco laughed. "Yes," he said. "I did. And you saved me. "

"Yes," he said.

"Where does that leave us?" Draco asked. His voice rose, and at that moment, he thought he saw something in Draco's eyes that made him look much younger than his years. "What does that make us?"

He paused. "It would make us…not enemies," he said slowly.

Draco finally looked at him, his grey eyes cold and his lips set in a thin line. He looked angry.

"Yes," Draco replied, almost mockingly, "we could be that."

"Or," he said hurriedly, not knowing what Draco could possibly want, what he could possibly grant, "we could be friends."

At this, Draco narrowed his eyes.

"Friends?"

"Yes, it's—we saved each other, I don't want you to die, and you don't—do you still want me to die?"

He asked the last question with a tentative smile, feeling awkward and foolish. Draco looked momentarily taken aback.

"No, of course not—don't be idiotic, Potter, the war's over now, and I—I don't want you dead. It's all meaningless. No," Draco repeated firmly, "No. It's good that you're alive."

He nodded. "That should make us friends," he said.

On a sudden whim, he stuck out his hand and Draco looked down at it somewhat horrified and amazed. "We should shake on it," he said.

"Merlin, you're mad," Draco whispered. "After all these years."

He did not know what that meant, but he took it as a good sign.

"It's a new beginning," he said firmly.

Draco stared at him. He was silent for so long, looking strange and intense and perhaps even angry, that he regretted his momentary lapse of judgment, but at the last moment Draco held out his own hand.

"Yes," Draco said. His hand came up and they shook, and he noticed how Draco's hand was trembling around his fingers.

.

.

The next few months after their handshake were some of the happiest of his life. Perhaps that is why he does not remember much of those days; joyous moments had fed him lies and false securities against the despair that was to await him.

It felt like a new beginning. Spring was in the air, and the wind was sweet with the blooming saplings, and the nights were balmy and warm for midnight strolls. The Ministry was eager to throw massive and pointless functions, and he was equally eager to avoid them all. Yet he went diligently, because he knew that Draco loved such places, and after a few unwanted drinks and pleasantries, he would be free to whisper loudly into Draco's ear that he had enough and wanted out.

You are such a child, Potter, Draco would say on such occasions, but with a twist of his lips he would oblige and they would slip out together, out into the open air, and they would walk without talking.

Soon he would get bored of this silence and announce trivial and inconsequential musings. Draco would snort and add in his own cruel commentary, and he would laugh at how sharp Draco could be sometimes, and at his laughter Draco would give him a twitching smile, not quite a grimace nor a smirk. Most of the time Draco chose to study him openly. Some nights Draco would be the one to start up the conversation, talking in a soft and drawling tone. They did not talk of many things, but then again, it was better that they did not. It was better if they continuously stuck to banalities and pleasantries.

He could not definitely define those early days. Draco made him feel when after the war, he thought that he could no longer care about anything. With Draco, he felt old animosity, exasperation, and even fondness as they talked.

On one occasion, they were talking about the old families that came flocking to the Ministry balls, and he had offered a banal, quite insipid comment about their attires, when Draco suddenly said, "I can't stand them anymore."

He turned and looked at the other boy, surprised at this unexpected outburst. But Draco did not wait for him to reply and continued on scathingly, almost in a rapture. "It's revolting the way they hold themselves, as if they had nothing to do with the past few months…" His face flushed, as if he was remembering how those same months have not been very kind to him. "It's repulsive," he said, with a slight sneer, "Those old families, I wish they'd all crawl back into their houses, they did so well during the war, as if nothing had happened..."

"You must have known some of them," he said uneasily. He had not liked the bright look in Draco's eyes because he did not know what to do with such vulnerability.

Draco startled and looked at him as if he had forgotten another presence; at once, Draco's voice grew light and mocking.

"I knew everyone, Potter, what family do you think I come from?" he said, and Harry did not pursue the topic further.

Such was the fragile friendship they had, and such was the thin line that they treaded.

.

.

I forget sometimes when all that changed, he thinks now, closing his eyes and waiting for the water to boil. His hands are cold and he feels feverish. He rubs his arms and waits for the fire to warm up the room. When it became something more. I would like to say it didn't matter anymore, after everything—but that would be a lie, and I promised myself, that the words I hold with you inside my head would be nothing but the truth.

That day, it was raining throughout the night and then it stopped abruptly, leaving a chill in the morning air. When I woke up the room was already damp and cold. I woke up from a nightmare about death and the people I could not save, and I dreamed that I laughed at them. It was that familiar laughter, high and cold, and I watched them burn, watched their lifeless eyes. I woke up and everything fell into a terrible gaping hole and this emptiness lingered with the cold. I was not feeling well to go and face the world that demanded too much from me. I had those days even back then: those gloomy and empty days when I could not get out of bed, when I thought nothing would change no matter what I did, when I thought that it was better to disappear silently.

I forget how many days I was in bed that time. Summer was supposed to come, and there I was, waiting for the sun to rise so I could get up and walk about the world again. The press wanted me to talk, reassure people that everything would be fine, that we were on the way to solidarity and peace. That week I had another charity function I was supposed to attend. I had dinners to go to, people to see. I blocked the fireplace, I draped the curtains, and surrounded myself in the dark until I lost track of the time.

And then, you came.

I remember this day clearly like no other: the musky smell from the bedsheets, the pounding rain against the window, the agonizing groans from the portraits. The house that I inherited was ghastly, and I felt no love for it, and on that day I wished to set it on fire and watch it burn to the ground, so great was my irk and anger against the world. I felt as if I inherited a house full of the dead, and I was but one of them. I remembered my godfather, who had gone mad within these very walls, in a constant state of boredom and frustration. I tried to stomp down my rages, and slept on stubbornly, until I heard a brisk knock in the parlor.

No stranger knew where I lived, and those who knew did well to steer clear away from this house. Too many memories, Ron once said. I did not blame him for saying that even though he looked awfully guilty about it afterwards. I wanted to pretend that I did not hear it at first, but the knocking was insistent and harsh. The sound continued to grate at me, until it led me to draw back my covers and stomp downstairs to yank open the door.

You were there, standing in front of my house, your face unreadable and blank. You wore a black coat and a grey scarf, and your hair was freshly trimmed and slicked back, and you held a cane in your right hand and you—and I saw you, very prim and proper and waiting to see me, and I was momentarily confused. I asked what you were doing here but I did not ask you how you knew where to find me.

You answered both my asked and unasked questions.

Granger gave me the location, you said. She showed me your handwriting. Why do you even live in this hovel?

You turned up your nose and your voice grew colder. It's been a week, Potter, you said.

There was nothing to do but offer out a laugh. Has it been, really?

You haven't been seen around, people are talking and I—

You stopped and scowled, your haughty posture momentarily slipping, and under that harshness there was something about you that reminded me about a frightened child.

I beckoned you in then, and gave you hot tea, and you looked around and insulted me, complained about how dreary the place was. All the while you held tightly to your cane, and I saw how your mouth constantly moved, and your eyes darted about, and I realized you had been worried. Your voice grew louder while your face tried very hard not to look at me.

I doubted many things about you over the years, but this was not one of them. You were worried about me, and there was a time when you truly cared for me. There was a time when you knocked on my door and I let you in and we stared at each other across the room.

There was a time when you paused, and looked indecisive about something, and as I smiled at you, you came and closed the gap between us and I stood by passively, allowing you to do this. For that one gesture, I was left to fight for us on my own from thereon.

He opens his eyes.

Did I think it was worth it? he asks himself now, years later, his hands busily steeping the tea and slicing up dry and hard bread. Did I think I was happy then, when you looked at me angrily and resolutely, did I think of anything when you kissed me?

He still does not know the answer to these questions. Hence the voice inside his head, hence the unsent letters that he never writes.

.

.

"I was worried about you," Draco would tell him later, in his awkward and stilted manner, and his fingers were cold as they touched him. "It was as if you were gone from the face of the earth."

"I—no, it's only been a week, don't be melodramatic," he said. "I sometimes do that; it helps me keep things in perspective."

"Yes, Granger did say something similar. Although I see no reason for you to be holed up in this place." Draco looked around and scrunched up his nose. "Did I mention what a rotting place this is? Ghastly. There must be a house elf here, what is wrong with you, Potter?"
And then he could not help it, he found it endearing and quaint, and so he laughed a little, as he hadn't in a long time, and Draco quickly turned back to watch him laughing; and he muttered, "You're an odd sort, Potter," but nevertheless he looked quite pleased with himself, and then, there was that second kiss, he leaned forth and met dry and chapped lips, and then there was another, and another.

.

.

Summer came, and Draco did not leave.

"We'll be a disaster together," he said, staring at how neatly Draco sliced his meat, how carefully he held the fork to his mouth. Draco pressed a starched napkin against his mouth and took some time to reply.

"Yes," Draco said.

"We've barely just become friends; we don't even talk about—"he stopped. He shook his head. "Not that it matters."

"We don't talk about the war," Draco said.

"Yeah, that."

"We'll talk about it eventually." Draco's voice was firmer than he would have liked.

"Eventually," he repeated.

"It's this house, Potter. It's weighing down on you."

He looked around. "It's a disaster," he agreed. "But it's—it was my godfather's."

"Yes." Draco drew out his answer and pressed his lips together, as if physically trying to stop other words from coming out.

"You didn't like him," he said.

"I didn't know him," Draco corrected. "Because he died before I could."

"He was murdered," he said, before he could stop the words, and he curled his fingers, he quickly looked away. Across the hallway, something crashed. A groan followed.

"Yes," Draco agreed warily and quietly. "My aunt once talked about him."

"She was a foul bitch," he said abruptly, anger clawing inside him. "She deserved to die, out of anyone else—I was glad she was dead. I am glad she—" He stops.

There was a wild beast inside his chest that threatened to roar at the slightest provocation, a ball of anger and spite that threatened to explode without warning. He gritted his teeth and tried to push down the sickening fury he felt at random intervals.

Another crash sounded. There was a louder cry. They both ignored it.

"Yes," Draco said again. "She wasn't very pleasant to be with." He paused. "I did not know her well," he said. "Or Sirius Black, for that matter."

"No," he said. The anger was gone. He felt drained as he relaxed his hands. They throbbed with pain.

Draco fiddled with his sleeve. He looked at him.

"It's no use reliving old ghosts," Draco said. His voice was distant and indifferent. "It's over now."

He let out a breath. "Yes," he said quietly.

.

.

He stepped into the grounds of Malfoy Manor with a small suitcase.

Winter was not kind to him as he trudged down the wide and disarray path. He shivered in his thin coat as the wind hissed around them, biting and cold; Draco was with him, looking about in his old ancestral home with an air of distaste.

"The place has fallen in ruins," he muttered, "I didn't expect anything less, but I would have thought—"

Draco paused and looked about.

"It would have been beautiful in the summer," he said. "Pity we didn't arrive when the trees were in full bloom. We could have had a garden party."

And have invited whom? he swallowed. He gripped his bag and let his shoes trek across the dirtied snow. All he could hear amidst the silence was his own rapid heartbeat. They approached the house, and Draco quickened his steps, easily walking up the steps that would open the door to the manor. He was slower to follow and took time to observe the grey pallor of the walls, the eerie quietness of the place.

He stood by the front steps for some time, hesitating, while Draco looked at him wary and defiant. The manor towered over them. He did his best not to hear hallucinations.

"It'll only be for a short while," Draco said.

"I didn't say anything," he said.

"You had that look on your face," Draco said. He then made a terrible high-pitched sound that did not sound at all like Harry. He rolled his eyes and Draco gave him a sharp grin.

"Too soon, Potter?" he asked. "Are you too scared to step in? I'm sure we've cleaned out the last of the Dementors…"

"Do shut up, Malfoy," he said, and he marched in with his bag slung over his shoulders. He did not miss the way Draco's shoulders slumped; or perhaps it hadn't, or perhaps it had, but not for the reasons he assumed.

The manor was everything he remembered from his memories and nightmares, but he fought against the instinct to raise his wand, and managed to walk around the hallways and the empty rooms. He walked with purposeful steps, almost expecting something to burst forth, but there existed only a cold sullenness throughout the walls. His footsteps echoed and Draco's followed closely behind.

"It's a big house," he said, when there was nothing positive to offer. He hated the manor. The portraits and the chandeliers all repulsed him. It reminded him of the difficult times during the war. He remembered Hermione screaming, Bellatrix laughing, and Dobby—

Draco must have seen his aversion on his face. Draco repeated, more firmly, "It'll only be temporary."

He looked around. It was a house, he told himself. A house that once held many terrible things, but now would not.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay," Draco echoed. He held out a hand and beckoned. "Come on, I want to show you the house." When he did not move, Draco's voice became softer. "I spent my childhood here. Not everything has been tainted."

He took the hand that was offered.

And the bed was soft, and Draco was gentle, and in the night he was too tired to drag up old ghosts. He slept, and he did not dream.

.

.

"I can't think," he says to Snape.

He is perched on the edge of the bed, shuffling over loose sheets of paper. He lets a few fall to the ground as he tries to gather them about. Snape watches his disarray with disdain.

"What a surprise," Snape says, but he ignores the snide comment and continues.

"I can't seem to remember anything," he says. "I'm writing, but all I can think of are bits and pieces, nothing specific…there are some scenes that are very clear to me, but the days after that are muddled up inside my head, and I end up writing letters to people I don't ever want to see again—"

He stops. He looks over at Snape, who is watching him.

"You are writing to Draco, you mean," Snape says.

"I—no, not just him," he tries to say in a rush of breath, but Snape holds up a hand and makes an irritated sound.

"Spare me, Potter, the only thing that can grieve you after the post-war heroics would be the disastrous scandal you had created with my former godson."

Snape does not sound angry. He merely sounds weary and irritated, but not angry, no.

"You have a way of making people feel very guilty," he mutters with a reluctant smile. "And what do mean, former? He's alive, isn't he?"

"I'm dead to the wider world, he disowned me and everything else, the last time I heard."

"Has he?" he asks mildly, looking down at his sheets. "He never said anything about you."

"We parted on very disagreeable terms," Snape says flatly. "There is no love lost between us. And you're skirting about the issue. As always."

His hand smoothens out the surface of the papers. "Some," he says slowly, "But I don't try to think of him very much. It's just that, after the war—" He stops. He cannot speak without lying, and he has always been a terrible liar.

"I try to forget about the war," he says, and this is true. "I try to remember…the happier times, the good times." This is not false. "And the things that could have been."

Snape listens, and makes a disgusted, reluctant face when he stops.

"It was a bad idea to come here," he says, rearranging his sheets around him. "You have nothing to do, and you decide to waste your time mulling about old adversaries and moping over it. For shame, Potter."

"You were the one who said—" he begins, but Snape cuts him off.

"I was not suggesting you kindle your nostalgic moments, no," Snape says coldly. "You must be mad if you assumed I would stand for such idiocy."

He shakes his head a little and tries again. "I'm not writing only about Draco," he says. "But he was a major part of my life after the war. And—there were some good moments from the earlier days, that just—confuse me—"

"Spare me," Snape sneers, and his face is set tight, "I do not care to hear about your life miseries after the war concerning your failed love life and your wretched child that was not to be. We have already gone over this, we have moved past that, and you dare—"

"I can't write about us without writing him, you realize," he says, and something catches in his voice. He feels a little overwrought, a little strung out, as his words come rushing out. His voice is unsteady. Snape stops talking, although his glare does not subside.

"This is all foolishness," Snape spits. "I still fail to see the point of this exercise. What would it resolve?" Snape's face morphs.

He is still slow at understanding Snape's gestures, but he is at least capable of reading distress.

"I think," he says, "I would like some sort of a closure after everything. That—begins with him, but ends with something else." You, he does not say. Because Snape's eyes are fierce and his hands is gripping the sheets and his lips are pressed so tightly that they are white around the edges. You, he does not say, because that would almost be a lie, and he is not a good liar.

"Life is not about closure, Potter," Snape says. "it's about burying the past and moving on, not looking back. Living."

.

.

The letter came with the family's distressed lawyer.

"Your father left you the manor, Mr Malfoy," the lawyer said nervously looking around the front hall, "and you have settled in quite nicely, I can see."

"Yes," Draco said, his voice aloof and impatient.

"He had also given you this letter—he had written it under great distress—"

The lawyer thrust the letter to Draco, who took it with great reluctance.

"Everything he has," the lawyer said, "it is yours."

"I knew that a long time ago," Draco said indifferently.

Draco did not open the sealed parchment and looked down at it as if he was touching something repulsive.

"Here," Draco said, thrusting the letter to him and walking away, "Father must know about us already, it's the only thing the press could talk about these days…if he wanted me to know something, he would have passed it on directly. Read it or burn it, I don't care."

He took the letter and said that he would destroy it and they would not talk about it.

But alone, he could not contain his curiosity and tore the folded sheet to read Lucius Malfoy's last will and testament.

When Lucius died, he was not surprised at the sadness and anger Draco showed, but was somewhat taken aback at the sheer intensity of the sorrow and fury Draco draped around himself. For days after the lawyer had taken his leave, Draco had stomped about the manor and yelled at all the house elves until they had their ears ironed out, and he had watched with wariness and confusion.

"I thought you didn't like your father," he said, in what he assumed to be a reasonable tone.

Draco said icily, "What would you know of the complications that comes with a family?"

He assumed those words to mean: you've never had one, what good is it to explain such things to you?

He stared. He tried to find the words to offer comfort: you are in grief, you are in anger, you are in shock. He wanted to comfort and soothe, but instead he felt himself welling up in indignation and could not open his mouth without saying something hurtful.

Was that it, then? Was that their rift? He could not console Draco for the death of his father because he had never had a father, and for that Draco somehow blamed him.

Draco's face was set tight and unhappy, his eyes bright and fervent as they looked past Harry. Draco spoke in a thinner voice, subdued, "I didn't mean that."

"I know," he said lamely, and he did not remember what they said after. Later and throughout everything, Lucius Malfoy's words stayed with him, that sly old man, who cajoled and beseeched his son, who tried to command and control him even from the grave.

.

.

Letter: Lucius Malfoy to his son, Draco Lucius Malfoy (d. 2001)

My son, we have not spoken since my imprisonment, and you have not answered my owls; they return to me with their ruffled feathers and nip me sharply as if to rebuke me for my burnt bridges with my only heir. I can only profess sorrow at my guilt.

You may think me unredeemable, and on this point I do not contradict you. I have led you to a path you did not wish to follow, and while I thought such acts would bring peace and posterity to our family, it had only aggravated and saddened you. I do not ask your forgiveness, nor do I wish it upon myself. But I am soon die, and you are to be the last line of our family. You must know already from the papers—I receive them here daily, and it seems that all clamor eagerly for my ultimate fate, and it has been decided. I am to receive the Kiss.

I take comfort in the fact that you walk free, and that Potter is merciful with his enemies as our late Lord had never been, although he is still shown to be a sentimental bluff as ever, following the footsteps of his late mentor. You would think I condemn this, that I am disgusted by it—but I am not. I am relieved that you have found a solid ally in such difficult times, and you did not completely discard your survival instincts after everything. I believe you to be happy, and for that, Potter has my tepid gratitude.

Yet I do not write to you to talk about your temporary happiness, but your foreseeable future that is to come. I do not ask you to break off your happiness as of yet, if that is what you indeed have with Potter, at this moment of twilight. I do not begrudge you of your current happiness, Draco, whatever it is that you may think of me. Explore your dalliance with Potter, if that is what you desire. I am not so deluded into thinking that I have authority over your life any longer, even as I go into my death.

No, I am only an old man, and no powers I hold can force you against your will. I now appeal not to my nonexistent authority but to your vanity and noble pride, the trait that had defined and sometimes ruined our family throughout history. You have disowned me, but you have not quite managed to throw away the family name. For your pride or for formal traditions, I know not. It is a name that has given you shame and disgust, but I believe you could redeem it. The name you bear is the name that shall live on.

Grow, my son, and see the world around you. And when you have tired of it, return to that place where you once called your home, and take up a respectful wife and beget an heir. You will condemn me as stiff, even stubbornly prejudiced to the last. You will accuse me of being forever and always tethered to the old ways. And yes, I am that—I shall not pretend to be something I am not. This I cannot change.

It tires me to write this, and I know that it shall tire you to read this, but a name does not wholly belong to us; it carries the weight of history and the future to come. We will come and go, but the name remains. It is the only thing that shall remain for the years to come. We shall eventually perish; our names shall not. I have taught you this time and time again—and I tell you this in my final hour.

I do not fear death, Draco, but I fear of the future that does not remember me, remember us. It is the vain proclamations of an old man, but I beseech you to grant me this last wish.

I wish to part with a final matter. At sixteen, you had sworn oath to the Dark Lord and taken up his mark, and for a long time you could not find it in your heart to forgive me. If the unanswered letters indicated, you have yet to make your peace with it. But believe me when I say that it was never in my intentions for you to take the mark, Draco. You are my firstborn and my only heir, but more importantly, you are my beloved son. I would not have had you sacrificed for a madman's cause, and for this there can be no atonement. This is why I meekly walk to the scaffold and hope my death may absolve my many sins that ruined you.

Remember this, if nothing I say would weigh any merit. I had wished your welfare and happiness above everything else. I shall continue to do so, and hold onto the love of our family and the joy you have given me. You had made me a proud father. Take my words. There are all I have left in this world to offer you without shame and regret.

.

.

At first, when he told Draco of his decision, Draco had looked at him askance, a slight sneer curling on his lips. Draco laughed, and when he did not follow up his words with the same laughter, it was left to Draco to laughter all the louder, calling him ridiculous and sentimental with scorn.

"Look, Potter, as much as I feel very fond of you," Draco had drawled sarcastically, "There's a very great difference between this—" he gestured a jerky motion with his hand, pointing between them, "—and a family. That's what you're aiming for, yes? I didn't think you were that besotted with me."

"This isn't about you," he had said, irritated but unsure how to explain, "This is beyond you."

"Beyond me?" Draco snapped; his sneer was gone and replaced with a furious scowl. "How is this beyond me? You want a child, don't you? Doesn't this concern me, then?"

"It does and it doesn't," he said.

"You're full of riddles, very nice, Potter, very seductive you can turn out to be," Draco jeered.

Draco, after that initial failed conversation, had opposed the very idea of a child, but Harry had ignored him and proceeded with a singlehanded determination that had Draco throwing up his hands in the air as a gesture of sullen surrender in a matter of weeks. But still, Draco had protested vehemently about their firstborn being named James.

"We're not naming our firstborn after your father, Potter," he said.

"We're not naming him after yours either," he retorted.

"We're running out of our limited options here, then, aren't we," Draco spat. "We don't need to have the child, there's no precedent for such nonsense."

Harry said, "I want one, isn't that enough?"

"But why?" Draco, inexplicably frustrated, with all his spite and exasperation, contained in those two words. "But why?"

And he could not explain why.

Draco after rehabilitation was a socialite, a gracious reformer of his ways, an entrepreneur who was also lent a charitable hand. The public could not get enough of him. Of the remaining Death Eaters, Draco was the one to emerge unscathed, and of them all, he was the vibrant, young boy who would turn himself in to a righteous citizen of the wizarding world, ready to set aside past misdoings and eager to donate to whatever cause the Ministry expected of him. He watched from the sidelines, the frenzied activities that Draco launched himself into, the desperate deeds Draco did to atone for his past misdoings.

.

.

"But of course, Malfoy is, and always will be a pureblood," people whispered behind his back and Hermione pointed out, during the early days of their happiness.

"But is that so bad?" Harry asked, when he was confronted with the inevitable accusation, befuddled and irked. "Neville's a pureblood, Ron's a pureblood, most of the people we know are purebloods."

It was just like the old times, save for the fact that they have now grown and taken up the toils of the real adult world with petulance, disgruntled that they had saved the world only to find life unchanged and uninspiring as ever. They were at an unnamed pub for Muggles, and they sat tucked away in a corner so that he could freely vent out his rage while Hermione and Ron looked resignedly on. They watched him across the table from as he talked about his tentative plans with the recently freed Malfoy.

To which Hermione, of all people, pointed out the obvious and had him set on edge.

"We're blood traitors, mate," Ron interjected, looking completely unabashed and ignored Hermione's little hiss of frustration.

"This is all so stupid," he insisted. He crossed his arms and glared at Hermione. She was stubbornly silent. "Look, Hermione, if you don't like Malfoy, you could just say, I would understand that. It's not as if I forgot what a dunderhead he was back at Hogwarts, it's not as if I forgot his Death Eater sprees—"

"He almost killed Ron," Hermione said, "Our sixth year. Do you remember?"

Harry stared at her. She glared past him and would not meet his eyes. Ron did not look at either of them, choosing to look down at his drink.

He slowly replied, "Well, I almost slashed him to death. In our sixth year. Hermione, we did a lot of stupid things back then. Not you, obviously—but it was tough on us, it must've been tough on him, too."

"And did he redeem himself, do you think?" Hermione asked. Her voice sounded strained. "No, don't answer that—of course you do, he did, I know, when he didn't rat out on us back at his manor, but Harry, that was—he was—"

"It was the war, Hermione," Harry snapped, and Ron gave him a surprised look, at the vehemence Harry suddenly showed. "We didn't know who to trust, whether we would win—"

"That was awfully brave of Malfoy, I'm not saying it wasn't," Hermione screeched, and now her voice dripped the same fury Harry attacked her with. "Don't twist my words, Harry, I didn't say Malfoy wasn't capable of showing morals, I'm just saying—this doesn't completely change him, not in the way you want us to believe. Does it make him a nice person? Should we invite him for tea? You only knew him in such extreme circumstances, you can't claim to know his heart."

"I know he's capable of remorse!" Harry shouted.

There was an abrupt silence at his ringing words, and his friends looked at him, askance and shocked, and he did not know what else to say to them. He repeated firmly, in a subdued voice. "He is capable of remorse. He showed it to me."

"Did he, now?" Hermione said flatly, "That's very good of him, showing it to the current savior of the wizarding world, isn't it? It's almost as if you two have forgotten about everything, let bygones—"

"He's changed," he said, just as coldly.

Ron intervened, slowly drawing out his words. "Yeah, well, people do change, even a scumbag like Malfoy. Bring him round for a drink if you think it'll loosen him up. Hermione?" Ron's voice softened, and wheedled her as he had never done when they were younger. "Look, don't cry, Harry's just a real shithead when he comes to Malfoy, you know that."

Hermione's eyes were brimming with tears, and Harry felt the old familiar dread of guilt. But he could not bring himself to apologize, and so they sat, morosely nursing their glasses and watching the crowd of people bustling about in the small pub.

Much later, after many more drinks that had everyone feeling forlorn and languid, he was alone with Ron when he finally managed to ask: what does it mean to be a pureblood?

Ron startled. He was on his fourth glass of whiskey, and his eyes were unfocused as he squinted at Harry.

"What?" Ron slurred. "Oh. You're still onto that, aren't you? It's Hermione, let her be. She and Malfoy seems to go way back, it seems."

"Ron," he persisted.

Ron stared at his empty glass and sighed. He sounded tired as he forced out his words. "Mum never talks about her brothers, but they were killed by Death Eaters. She fought two wars, Harry. V-Voldemort's done that, sure, but more than that, it was what he stood for, what he offered. That's what those Death Eaters wanted. Those Death Eaters—they didn't come out of nowhere, they were all purebloods, at least the first batch of them. They were all brought up to believe that blood was everything, and they would kill anyone who said otherwise. They followed that madman because they believed in what he preached, even when he seemed to be raving mad most of the time. Those old pureblood ways—we wouldn't understand it, Harry. It's bloody medieval and superstitious."

"It doesn't make much sense to me," Ron continued, toying with his glass, careful not to look at Harry, "but that's because I never knew the old pureblood ways. Mum wouldn't have any of it. And I'd hate to say this, but the Malfoys weren't the worst of the pureblood lot. They were practical when it suited them, because you'd see some half-blood ancestry in their family tree, from what I'd heard. They didn't want to risk in-breeding and insanity, so they sometimes laid past the blood scruples. But when it came to Muggle-borns…"

Ron paused and chuckled. His words were slower to come.

"It's nothing personal, Harry," he said. "What Hermione's just said, and what Malfoy might tell you later on. It's how he was raised to see Muggles, and Hermione is quick to catch onto those things. You know that."

"But Malfoy wouldn't," Harry persisted. He bit his lips. "If you saw him like I did—he's changed, Ron—"

"Yeah," Ron said, not unkindly. There was infinite patience in those blue eyes when his oldest friend turned to finally meet his eyes. When did Ron grow up so? Harry wondered. And just a moment ago, too—Ron had never noticed Hermione's distress before, he would have never comforted her in such a way. When did Ron change for the better? He wondered if he resented his best friend for that goodness; it was a disturbing thought.

"But until when?" Ron said, and his lips curved into a crooked smile.

"So you don't believe—" he began quickly, but Ron cut him off.

"Oh, no, mate, I'll take your word for it. He's all changed and become one of us, and you'll bring him to our gatherings and Hermione will throw a cup at him and Malfoy will—well, Merlin knows what that ferret will do." Ron tapped the table in quick, irritated strokes. "It's just that…look, Hermione still has nightmares. She wakes up in the middle of the night and…" Ron trailed off and jerked his head, frustrated. "She pretends she doesn't, but I know she always dreams about the Manor. She dreams about—and it's heard for her, yeah? So cut her some slack."

He had no reply to that. He looked down.

"Oh," he said weakly.

"I know you do too," Ron quickly said, "That you have nightmares. Bloody hell, we all do. But the thing is—"

"I—yeah. I. I think I understand. You're right, I've been—I just—" He coughed a little and turned away. "I understand," he repeated.

.

.

But why?

Draco's question nagged at him.

He remembered replying, lamely and with much exasperation, "Because I want one? Merlin, Draco, is that so hard to accept?"

"And whatever Potter wants, he just has to get, is that it?" Draco said, forever the petulant and vile boy he was, and Harry stared at him, hurt and angry, but more than that, bewildered and confused.

"You know that's not what I meant," Harry said.

"I know," Draco replied, and his voice had a sharpness to it that nagged at Harry, "but it's sometimes how I take your words. Because I know why you want one, and I think it's bloody stupid of you to head onto that direction."

"A baby wouldn't change things," Draco went on, his face withdrawn and tired, his face never quite bright and alit in the private settings of his manor, "the baby can't stand for whatever notions you may harbor, Potter. It doesn't change this, whatever this may be."

He did not reply to this tirade. There would have been no point in explaining.

.

.

Readers must understand, he writes, this is an account that is grounded firmly on bias and distortion. I have omitted many private conversations between Draco and myself; I have not, for instance, explained how I had eventually managed to convince him to beget the child, nor did I fully describes the procedures we took in procuring a womb and the many attempts we made in trying to create the fetus. There is no point in rehashing such failures. I have learned long ago that such sordid details make way for only malicious gossip. I have only added in the most essentials words of our relationship, the most reverent, the most damning. I do not exonerate myself. I do not exonerate us.

.

.

You changed one day. Or perhaps not, maybe I was oblivious as always and didn't notice the subtle shifts in your voice, the cool demeanor you put off. You had asked me, why a child? We will be terrible parents, we will be horrible adults, we are barely living on as it is—you had vehemently denied wanting such an obligation. And yet I could not tell you of your father's will and how, irrationally, I felt I had a duty to fulfill this request. I held no love for your father, I held no love for your family name.

And yet, and yet.

Some days, I looked at you, and saw how little you changed, how much I have overlooked when I protested for your innocence. We went through death and life together, after all. You held onto me as we flew past a cursed fire, and I smelt your skin amongst the debris of ash and smoke. You screamed and sobbed, and your violent cowardice showed me how much you wanted to live. I could not forget those screams, just how I could not forget your blank face in prison, resigning yourself to fate because you thought there was no other way.

And we moved on—you were seen in public with your brilliant, cold smile, strutting about in important functions and parties, and talked of peace, of cooperation. And you moved on—you shook hands with Ron one time, although Ron made sure to get properly drunk beforehand and you surreptitiously wiped your hand afterwards.

And sometimes, you could not move on—you met Hermione for the first time after the war, and your lips curled unpleasantly, and I had a blank fear wash over me, as I saw you hold out a hand for her, and you spoke her name and meant something quite different altogether. Beneath your tone I heard Mudblood, and I heard your aunt cackle Mudblood, and I heard Voldemort whisper Mudblood, and I heard a chorus of people chanting, Mudblood, Mudblood, Mudblood and those were dead people I heard, but the taint remained, the loathing stayed. Inside your voice, old ghosts came to taunt the world around us and I was trapped amidst those voices, and they mocked me for the things I had no power to change.

Hermione heard those echoes as well as I did, but she never let such labels bother her. She looked at me with bright, glaring eyes, but she took your hand and shook it firmly, and that was that, you did not speak of your tone and I did not confront you about it.

But why? you asked me. I could not answer then; I cannot answer now. I had a myriad of answers, none which would have satisfied you.

.

.

Mudblood, he scrawls on the parchment.

He pauses.

After that, it is impossible for him to write. He stands up and walks around the kitchen. He looks out the window and boils water for his tea. He waits for words to come to him magically, to exonerate his memories so that he may move past those dreadful years. He rubs his forehead and touches his scar. The cold seeps between the walls and enters the small room; he shivers a little and fumbles around his pockets for a smoke.

He breathes in too deeply and coughs a little. His hands are shaking as he draws out a breath, and he looks over to the scattered manuscripts across the table. Mudblood; the word mocks him.

One day you came home with a prophecy for our child, he thinks. You ranted at me and I laughed at you. And that's when everything changed.

What use is a prophecy, I said to you back then. What harm could a prophecy do?

You stared at me, dumbfounded. You repeated those cursed words as if I did not hear them the first time, and I refused to believe them and said that no child of ours would be predetermined and bound to his fate. You accused that I was ignorant of our ways, no, your ways, after all the years in the wizarding world.

I did not think much of your words at first, even though you hurled your words sharper than usual and I was hurt. Yes, I remember being hurt, because the next moment, I had shouted about your father and your heartless abandon, your hypocrite values. You had no right to lecture me on family, I said. Your eyes blazed at that. You were about to say something else too, but you stopped, choosing instead to look at me with hatred and dismissal. There it was: we had then come to the bridge that could not be crossed. Yes; that was the catalyst, that was the point in which there was no return.

.

.

Pansy Parkinson had not changed in the aftermaths of the war: she was still a repulsive pig-faced girl who had now the air of womanhood about her. She ignored how he stumbled awkwardly around the manor and took to taking Draco's arm whenever they walked; she ordered the house elves about in an imperial manner as if she was the lady of the house; she, in short, lived in the delusion that whatever happened in the war was a trifle that could be laughed at over tea.

"And how is your mother, Draco?" she simpered, and she daintily took a small sip from the fine china Draco had bothered to set out.

"She's well," Draco said softly, but with none of the false bravado he had put forth to her in their school days.

"Yes, I hear that the Provence is beautiful at this time of year," she said, casting a look in Harry's direction. "It's a shame your mother hadn't seen fit to return…even under these circumstances."

"Under what circumstances?" he asked, playing the oblivious fool. Draco shot him a resentful look.

Parkinson tittered a little. Her smile looked cold and false as she directed her eyes at Harry.

"The manor is in complete shambles, for one," she said. "Draco's mother was quite fastidious with her household, it would have greatly saddened her to see…" and here she stopped herself, suddenly uncertain whether to go on, and he stared back at her, hating her, despising her wretched face and aura of confidence, her amnesia, her audacity; he stared at her and dared her to finish her words.

"It's a shame," Draco said immediately, "I'm afraid I never quite had my mother's hand at keeping house." He smiled at Parkinson, and Parkinson jerked her head to smile back beatifically, and he, Harry, was left with a foul taste in his mouth. Instinctively, he lowered his hand to his abdomen.

Parkinson noticed.

"Tea upset your stomach, Potter?" she asked.

He rubbed around a small spot where he thought the fetus must be. He mirrored her smile; her fake, poisonous, beatific smile, and he said, "We're expecting a child."

Parkinson startled a little. Her tea splashed as she coughed a little, and she fussed about with her robes as Draco straightened up in his lounging chair, his eyes growing frosty.

"Are you?" Parkinson said. She seemed at a complete loss for words. She quickly looked at Draco, who was too busy glaring at him to notice her inquiring gaze. He felt himself doing a small victory dance inside.

"We were about to make a formal announcement," Draco said coldly. "Not that Potter likes to observe decorum."

"Were we?" he said. "I wasn't aware of that. I thought it would have been—informal. You really should talk to me of these things, Draco."

"Pureblood families—" Draco stopped. He let out a little sigh and rubbed his eyes. Parkinson watched him. "I meant that we take such procedures seriously. I was about to announce it sometime next month. When it should be absolutely certain that we're having the child."

"Oh!" Parkinson looked relieved. "So you haven't decided yet."

"We have," he said.

"Not quite," Draco said, "There are some…precautions we have to take."

"Draco is very meticulous about such things," he said flippantly. "He must take after his dear mum."

Draco's face contorted into something ugly and unforgiveable. He spat, "Don't you dare talk about my mother, Potter." He heaved out the words as if something clogged inside his throat, and before Harry could react, Draco stood up abruptly and walked away.

"Well," Parkinson said, and she avoided looking at him. "Well." And she did not speak further, and he resolutely took a loud slurp from his teacup.

Later, as they were having dinner, Draco refused to talk to him, choosing to reminiscence with Parkinson over their shared childhood and adolescence, and Parkinson that foul bint, chose to play along with Draco's stories, laughing shrilly and gesturing her hand for more wine as Draco's stories grew more and more ridiculous. He sat across from them in the dimly lit room, feeling estranged and cold, and he watched them and their ease with one another, their natural arrogance. The stories slowly petered out and dwindled, and Parkinson once again broached the subject of the unborn misfortune.

"—still, it's quite a shock, Draco, I didn't think you would have wanted a child, of all things—but of course, the war—"

"Potter wanted it," Draco said hurriedly, and he gave a short bark of laughter after that statement, affected and harsh, and he wondered whether Lucius had laughed like that once, so cruelly dismissive and disdainful. "It was a rather rushed affair. I would have waited, of course, I mean, if I wanted one at all—"

"But you said you aren't quite sure yet?" Parkinson persisted. "It wouldn't be too late to—"

"We have the child," Draco said. He jerked his chin towards Harry without meeting his eyes. "It's already inside Potter, we—" Draco took a hurried swig of his glass wine while Parkinson gaped at him.

"Yes," Draco said shortly, dabbing his mouth with a napkin. "We already have it. It's too late for anything, really."

"I see," Parkinson said faintly. "Yes, I can see why you would need to throw a gathering soon."

"We don't need to," he said, just because he felt rebellious and did not see the point in making their child into a very big fuss with a list of invited guests he did not much care for. "It'll be all over the press—"

"Have you seen our newspapers, Potter?" Parkinson said. "Those things are meant to be in the news. Flip through any of the societal section, it's all there—even the Weasleys."

Draco snorted. He toyed with his napkin, wondering if it would be terribly impolite of him to hurl his dinner at Parkinson.

"Besides," Parkinson continued, "Draco would need all the publicity he can get from the press. The public isn't very kind to him these days—although that might change once you announce—you are going to, aren't you, Draco?" Parkinson wavered a little and swirled her wine glass. "If there is a baby on the way, there must be an engagement. Have you thought of the ceremonies, Potter?"

"We don't need—" he said, and stopped. Draco gave a little twitch of his shoulders that he usually did when he was agitated or irritated. There was a hard gleam in his eyes that Harry did not much like, but when Draco titled his head and turned his head to look at Parkinson, his voice was casual, even lithe.

"Pansy, you're talking to the wrong person. He never quite got used to our ways," Draco murmured with a cold smirk. "You'll just have to excuse him."

His fists clenched underneath the table and fury filled him, he was positively overflowing with it, until he was sure everyone around him could stare at his eyes and see the rage inside him threatening to burst. And still Draco did not look at him, did not acknowledge him, merely laughed a little in a laugh that he had never heard before, and it was his laughter that drove away his own fury, replacing it with an abrupt sadness and calm. He stared at Draco, and at Parkinson, who was now watching him intently. She did not mirror Draco's smile. Her features were harsh against the candlelight, and she looked pensive, almost resigned as she held his gaze. Yet when she opened her mouth her voice held the same contemptuous tone that reminded him of the older days, "Draco, darling, I didn't expect him to follow, of course I understand."

And after, she wore a sickening sweet smile that had him wishing he could reach across the table to claw her eyes out. So violent was his urge that when he looked down, he saw that his hands were shaking.

.

.

The pain came too early.

He clutched at his stomach, letting out an anguished scream when he felt the first onslaught. He stumbled onto the floor, reaching out for something to hold in vain. He felt his entire body on fire, then on ice, as he felt himself being torn apart, and then there was only agony, and nothing existed beyond the pain he felt. He could not describe the pain, could not bear to remember it. He only knew that he felt like dying only to hurl death back into his wrecked body.

He screamed until he lost consciousness. The last thing he saw was Draco, running towards him.

He had not forgotten the face, that expression.

Draco had looked relieved.

.

.

He opened his eyes and felt bereft and cold. Something had been taken away from him. He tenderly groped around and found himself on his bed, and he slid his hands under the covers and touched his stomach.

The child was gone.

With a small cry, he sat up and with his shaking legs he stood up. The bed was stained with blood and between his legs some residue of dried blood was found. He scratched some out and the red flakes fell to the floor as his nailed became caked with blood.

He hobbled and looked around, but the room was dark and he could not smell anything unpleasant.

This is no place for the child, he thought, and his mind could not yet process that his child was dead, so he gingerly touched his stomach once more, and still, it was flat. Gone was the rounded bulge that had him tottering about in the last few weeks, and gone was the heaviness he had constantly carried around. He touched his stomach tentatively, and when he was only encountered with nothing, he gave out a little cry and groped around harder.

He tried to form out the name that would have given him comfort and he found that there was none. The room was eerie and silent. He tried to speak the name, the words—but he swallowed and remembered Draco's face just before everything went black. He found that the name induced something terrible inside him, that he could not now say the name without screaming. He instead called out another name, and a house elf popped into the room, who regarded him with some trepidation and contempt.

"Master Harry?" he said. "You called for me?"

And he looked at the house elf helplessly, looked at a being whose existence tethered onto the manor, looked at the being who now regarded him with disdain because he was not something Lucius Malfoy desired of his heir and because he had blood that was tainted in the eyes of the Malfoy household. Bile threatened to choke him.

"Where is it?" he rasped, and he felt strange and light.

"Sir?"

"The child—he's not here, he's gone—he—he—" and he stopped, because the elf was now rocking on his feet and looking nervous, as his wide eyes darted about the room.

"You know where it is," he said in a rush. He tried to make his voice kind and soothing. "You have it, no, him. You have him."

"Don't know what you're talking about, Master Harry," the elf mumbled.

"Where is my child?!" he screamed, and his scream was something he had not heard before, it came from somewhere inside of him; he snarled, and as he did so, he felt feral, he sounded savage.

"Master Harry should ask Master Draco about the matter when Master Harry recovers. Master Draco has it—him—all tidied up and covered. Master Harry should not concern himself with the matter and rest." The elf tugged at his ears in distress and refused to meet his eyes as he recited his orders in a flat monotone.

"Draco?" he repeated. "He—he knows where it is. He took it away?"

The elf shook his head furiously.

"You're lying." He took a step towards the elf. "He knows where it is—no, you do. Someone must."

He made a move to walk towards the door, but the elf was quicker, sprinting those smaller legs in quick succession, and positioning himself in front of the door.

"The child," Harry said, and his voice took on a higher note. He closed his eyes as a sudden pain threatened to overtake him; when the elf made a small, agitated noise and tried to step closer, he, Harry, stepped back and shook his head. He only repeated and questioned. "The child—I must see him. Where is he?"

"I cannot say, Master Harry," the elf said uneasily. "You need rest, and food, I shall send for—"

"I order you," he all but screamed; and the force behind his voice made him throw a coughing fit. He covered his mouth with one hand and supported himself against the bedpost with another; when he recovered, he said in a smaller and firmer voice, "I order you to show him. I have a right to that at least. Don't I have this right?" He stressed his last words as a plea, and he gave a little laugh. He felt lightheaded. "Or does Master Malfoy not care a fuck for the deceased?"

"Those are profanities, Master Harry," said the elf, and he looked distressed, darting his eyes left and right. "I—I cannot lead you myself—I have strict orders from Master Malfoy, but perhaps, perhaps…" The elf hesitated. He spoke in a quivering tone, "I may lead you to the kitchens. To see the evening meal's preparations. It would do you well to choose—"

"Yes," he said immediately, aggressively, power once restored to him. "Yes. I'd like that very much. Take me to the kitchens."

And the elf led him to unknown corridors and he followed like a blind man, and the elf ushered him reluctantly to the servants' quarters and he followed without any hesitation, his footsteps firm and resolute against the marbled floors, the padded carpets. He walked with a purpose, dread overtaking him with each step, and yet he could not stop. He could not say to the elf in front of him, wait; I need time, I cannot know just yet. He knew what was waiting for him beyond the doors.

They entered a large room and he saw the child.

The baby was covered in a white sheet soiled with blood. It was easy to spot, although it had been carelessly disposed of inside the open furnace. The fire was not yet kindling; food preparations were not yet underway. He rushed towards the empty, cold furnace and crouched down, his heart thudding. He reached out his hands towards the empty, gaping hole and took out the sordid bundle.

The child smelled of rotted flesh and blood; he swallowed back bile as he carefully maneuvered the bundle against his chest. He stroked the bloodied sheets slowly, not trusting himself to speak. He held it against his chest and it still felt a little warm, a little alive. He held it close and could not stop shaking.

He said, "You were about to burn it."

He said the words but they were not his own. He had wanted to shout in fury and wild abandon; he wanted to burn down the house that held many terrible memories and perhaps even burn down the man living within as he held the dead thing that was not a child any longer, and he wished his voice could come out in anger to express his inexpressible pain. Instead, what he was left with were distant, detached words. He could feel the rage simmering from within him but he had no power to harness it into power that he could use. He could not speak with abandon, for there was nothing inside him that he could attack with. What was left, what remained.

The elf shook his head again, tugging his ear violently.

"No—no, Master Harry," he croaked. "It was getting ready for—for—" He looked around, bewildered; and Harry watched him, the tiny creature ensnared to this house that brought up pureblood and honor as its highest traits, and he felt no love nor pity for the elf as he would have done once, long ago. The anger filled him until it abated and vanished, evaporated; he watched this elf and felt nothing; he looked down at the bundle and he felt nothing.

"I will bury it," he said.

The elf startled. "Master should leave such things to—"

"I will bury it," he repeated, louder, and the elf stopped speaking. "I will dig his grave. It's the least I could do for my—" He stopped. He bit his tongue until he tasted blood.

"It's the only thing I can do," he said. The elf said no more, but bowed his head.

.

.

He dug the grave and buried the child. He left the manor with his weak legs and did not look back. He disappeared and traveled farther east and into the cold. He lived off smoke and stale bread and looked at sceneries which held no memories for him, and he composed letters to the dead, the living, the forgotten. He forgot how to live, but he lived on still, aimlessly, mindlessly.

.

.

Do I dare write why we had the child, Draco? he wants to write. Do I dare confess why I asked you for that child? It is not so simple. Perhaps out of respect for your dead father, a man I abhorred but whose last will continued to haunt me. Perhaps out of sheer spite for your fellow comrades, those could have never accepted us and our timid happiness. Perhaps out of rebellion, perhaps out of atonement. And yes, there was love. Out of love for you, for us, the future we could have made; that love is elusive, as everything in our lives have been.

In this strange new world of ours, I had saved you, and you had graciously returned the favor. Out of nowhere you appeared in front of my doorstep and offered to vanquish my ghosts for me, and I accepted gladly. I thought then how much we have both changed. Nothing else was said between us. And how foolish that had been, I can only see now, when it is all too late. Drunk on the idea of renewed beginnings, I had forgotten how steadfastly you have believed in your old, tenacious ideas, and I had overlooked how much I had once despised you and for everything you ever stood for. But it is all in the past. You are in the past, a ghostly rebuke for my foolishness.

So the answer to my earlier question—was that love? No, it was not; it could not have been, for I had not known you, could not have understood you, nor you me. We did not understand much of the world, much less of ourselves.

It was the war, you see; the war took something from me, something that I could not name then and cannot define now; the war took everything from you, save your pride and family name; and the war took some things from us both, it took away our ability to be honest, to freely hate one another, because we felt that our old taunts rang empty and hollow after everything we went through. After our pain we sought each other to rebuild something that could not have been rebuilt. You cannot build anything with broken men; this much, at least, I have learned.

.

.

Astute readers would have guessed, he writes, his ink running dry, that I have dawdled on the subject of this terrible prophecy that had Draco Malfoy much shaken. I had laughed when I first heard it, because it was such a preposterous declaration. I am unable to write it down, if only for the sheer madness the words convey.

The prophecy—

He stares at the word again and again, and yet his hand refuses to move any longer. He dips his quill into the inkslot, and as he does so, he notices that his hand is shaking. Fatigue, he thinks to himself. His eyes burn as he tries to shake off the tiredness by sheer force of will. He looks about. The shadows against the walls flicker and move with the candlelight. He closes his eyes and tries to conjure up the will to write the next sentence. The story is not complete without it, he knows. The sheer stubbornness of his thoughts make his head hurt.

It is a cold night. He shivers, and hunches forth closer to the table, rubbing his forehead vigorously. He positions the quill against the paper, and tries again to no avail. Again and again something blocks him inside his head; the barricade is insistent and quite wild, and he eventually throws the down the quill in frustration. There is that something, an indiscernible feeling, gnawing at him, tormenting him. It snarls at him, I cannot, I cannot. It was a frivolous thing that took the child, and I won't have anything to do with it. He glares helplessly at the pile of sheets he had written over the past few days, covered in his illegible scrawl.

The prophecy—he writes, and cannot write beyond.

In the end he has a page full of the word, and he does not know what to do with it.

Except, perhaps, to burn them all.

He gathers up the loose sheets of paper and goes outside in a purposeful stride. Without magic, coldness is a hostile force that makes him shiver violently. The wind is a harsh sound against his ears, as he walks a few feet outside the door, engulfed in complete darkness. He fumbles for his lighter and clicks in rapid succession until his fingers grew numb from the cold. The fire is faint. He cups his hand to shield the fire from the wind, and guides the flickering flame towards the papers.

After the first paper is devoured, the rest quickly follows. He lets the burning papers fall to the ground and watches the burning light and the small stack of ash that is soon covered in snow. He waits for the fire to blown out, and surrounds himself in darkness a moment longer, wrapping his arms together and convulsing from the cold. He is very tired, but he stands there, as if asking himself: but is this all? The ground beneath him is wet, and he stands still, he looks down and sees only blackness. He opens his mouth, and there comes out a little cry of anguish. The sound surprises him; he tries to swallow it down, stifling it with his hand, but a second cry emerges, and a third, until the wind swallows down his last bouts of hysteria. And still nothing comes to him.

He does not find what he is waiting for, and eventually, he shakes off the snow gathered around his shoulders and walks back inside the house. Through the windowpane, he looks at his reflected face and curves his lips into a smile that does not reach his eyes. He is older. With his haunted eyes and hollowed cheeks, he looks nothing like his father.

"I burned everything," he tells Snape, once he dons his nightshirt and washes off the ink from his fingers. He hovers awkwardly in front of the doorway. "You were right. And wrong. I have something I want to write, but I don't think—it was quite that."

Snape does not reply to his stammers and merely makes a face.

"You bring the cold with you, Potter," he only says.

He touches his own cheek, rubbing it slightly with his unwarm fingers.

"It's a cold night," he says lamely.

Snape tilts his head. "You could have waited until morning," he says. "to do away with your fascinating oeuvre, but I suppose that was asking too much of you."

He tries for a smile. The throbbing inside him subsides a little, and he even feels lighter. "But you like that side of me," he says. "The impulsive side. The illogical one." He says it flippantly, and for his efforts, Snape glowers at him.

"I have resigned myself to it," Snape says with a slight sneer, "It does not mean it makes you an endearing nuisance." With abruptness, he flaps open the covers on the other side of the bed and commands, "Get in, unless you want to suffer a cold and I have the misfortune of nursing you back to health."

He laughs and obliges the older man. Before he wiggles under the covers, he leans down. Their mouths touch very briefly, and he quickly turns away, his face flushing, as Snape looks at him with a black and curious expression.

"I've missed you," he says, attempting a feeble explanation.

Snape sighs. "You are a sentimental idiot," Snape says, but it is said with only a little scorn.

.

.

In 2004 he came to Berlin, an ugly city filled with cranes and construction sights. He felt immediately drawn to the ruins.

He got off late in the evening at the train station and the sky was purple with bloodied streaks. "Unheimlich," someone next to him said, and he strained his ears to hear more, but all the person said was the same word, over and over, laughing a barking laugh, speaking a harsh language he knew nothing about. For a few months he stayed in a ratty old attic room near Zoologischer Garten, watching the small children running about in the grey sidewalks. The sky was devoid of sunlight day after day and the wind came from eastern lands, unfriendly and cold. He holed up in his room, not even bothering to unpack his flimsy belongings, so sure that he would soon buy the next ticket out of the horridly drab place, so sure that this stay was only temporary. Yet weeks passed and he continued watching the people with their thick black coats and their pale hair, with their sullen faces and tired eyes, and on a particularly sunny day that was quite unusual, he set out to Unter den Linden and walked around ugly slabs of concrete that did not mean anything to him then.

This was where he met his old Potions professor.

In his mind he had for so long called him Snape and no other name. He had many grievances against the dead man, many demands upon him, many soliloquies he had composed alone in his mind. And so when he finally did meet the man, he did not kneel down at his feet or punch his face, but said a simple name that wiped away all past honors and insults he heaped upon the other man.

"Snape," he said, and he thought he was allowed to feel a semblance of shock, for here was a man who was supposedly dead and became a hero through his death. But no, Snape was alive and well, although his face was tight and fatigued as many faces had been since the war.

Snape wore a simple black coat and tied his greasy hair into a loose knot, and Snape weaved past the tourists and was inconspicuous amongst the crowd, but he would know that abominable face anywhere, and he called out the name in sudden joy. He did not blame the older man for recoiling in disgust and turning away, when he saw who had dared called him by his surname without the honors attributed to his deeds. But it did not stop him from saying the name a second time.

"Snape!" he called out. And he yelled it again, but Snape did not stop for him; on the contrary, Snape walked faster until it seemed as if he was even about to break into a run, but he was faster and saved them all the trouble by sprinting the last few steps.

"You're alive," he said. And for that Snape's face contorted into something painful, but he still did not answer. By now, he was determined to walk by Snape's side and Snape seemed resigned to his persistence, and they walked past the Brandenburg Gate and entered the Tiergarten, where the skeletal tress towered over them.

"That was a stupid thing to have said," he said with a little laugh, and he knew that he sounded falsely polite; it was a frivolous tacit he took from Draco, but even still, Snape did not stop to berate him about his phony demeanor. He went on, "But you're here. Why here, of all places? I never expected to see anyone here, I came here for the anonymity, you see—but it's really nice, I mean, I know you don't really believe that but after everything that happened, I really am glad, sir, that you're alive and well, even if this was the last place I would have guessed…"

And he rattled on. He gave Snape another smile, he talked in a jovial tone. Snape recoiled in disgust with each pleasant and banal commentary, but he, Harry, could not help himself; he was affected and ironic, he could not be sincere in front of this man who was thought to be dead, who now glanced at him time to time with disgust and derision, all the while quickening his pace. He used a false tone to exclaim over the miracles and coincidence of their encounter. He opened his mouth and talked about the cold weather, this foreign city, his temporary stay, his travels, everything but the things that truly mattered. Snape did not reply to any of his words, merely waited for him to temper down, and at last when he ran out of things to say, Snape said coldly,

"Potter, even after everything, must you create such a scene? You horrify me."

And he could not find anger inside him, not even when Snape turned and walked away in the opposite direction; he kept that foolish smile plastered on, he kept his gayness as he trailed along the older man.

He followed the man all the way until they both reached a worn red brick building. Snape walked stiffly forward, resolutely ignoring him, as he fumbled for the key and opened the courtyard gates, and giving him a venomous glare he cheerfully ignored. But when they had at least reached their destination through a dark archway and entered the small courtyard, and he gave no sign of turning away and leaving, even as Snape stood on the front steps of the entrance, Snape suddenly whirled upon him and snarled, "As you can see, Mr Potter, since we are now pretending to exchange formalities as if nothing is quite amiss, this is where I live now, alone, if you please, and I do not expect, nor welcome, any visitors." When he did not move, Snape raised his voice. "If that was not clear to you, Potter, it means that I do not care for your company."

He found it very hard not to laugh. "No," he said, out of sheer idiocy or bravery he did not quite know, "But it's not as if I'm going to go on my merry way either." He paused. "I really do want to talk to you," he continued hurriedly, as one of Snape's eyes was twitching with that last remark, "Not just insulting you, or even asking you questions—although I do have some, sir, I—"

"Shut up, Potter," Snape snapped, pointing a finger at him. "You haven't changed, you're still quite the buffoon and uncouth as you've ever been. What makes you think that I've changed my opinion of you, boy, since the last time we've met?" Snape gave a sharp, mocking laugh. "Is it because of the memories, perhaps?" he asked, jeering. "Is it because of Lily Evans, and you feel touched by my memories of her? You think that after I have given you her memories, we could exchange sob stories about the past? Do you think I grew fond of you in these last few years when you blessed me with your absence? You are nothing like her!" he spat suddenly, his eyes flashing. "You dare—dare to come here after all these years and have the audacity to pretend, to dare presume—"

"I had thought," he said, and he felt himself smiling, a horrible, unnatural smile, and he felt his voice rise along with Snape's, "that you might want your memories back. I'll be on my way after that, I won't bother you."

Snape hesitated. His eyes flashed.

"I do not care to have them back," he said coldly, "There is nowhere to place them, anyhow."

"I don't very much want them either," he said, "I'll just throw it out of the nearest bin I see, then, how does that sound?"

Snape stared at him and he stood utterly still, hands besides his sides, smiling, smiling.

"You picked up repulsive manners somewhere along the way, Potter," Snape snapped after a moment. He gestured with an impatient hand. "Only for the memories, and not a minute more, do you hear me?"

.

.

He stayed for more than a minute, of course, but as he entered the small room that Snape kept for himself, he was not to have known that.

The room was a small one, and quite bare. The walls were peeled with old plaster, and the floorboards creaked as he walked about the small space. Everything was sparsely furnished. There was a wooden table and a chair, and one bookcase that was crammed with books. It was a tidy room, but it felt drafty and cold. He looked about and could not see anything he liked.

"If you're done looking about," Snape said harshly, taking off his black coat, "pull out the memories, and be on your way."

When he did not move, Snape snapped, "Are you deaf, Potter?"

"I don't have them," he said.

Snape stopped unwinding his scarf. His eyes narrowed.

"You don't have them?" he repeated.

"Look." He shook his small bag, and grinned. Snape looked as him as if he was mad. "This is all I have, it's all I brought—where would I have kept your memories?" He laughed. "It was a ruse, Professor, otherwise you wouldn't have let me in."

Snape stared at him.

"So," Snape said softly, his black eyes glittering, "You feel comfortable enough in my presence to toss about jokes, do you?"

He saw Snape's hands shaking. His lips hurt from smiling so.

"I didn't mean any harm, sir," he said lightly, but Snape did not seem to have heard him.

"It is very unfortunate," Snape whispered, taking a step closer towards him, "that I do not have my wand with me—otherwise, rest assured, Potter—"

"Why, would you like to kill me? There's a small window here, you could just as easily push me off," he said, and he felt his own body shake a little at the thought, not from fear; no, on the contrary, he felt his blood pounding with excitement as he thought of the air that would crush him.

Snape bared his teeth. It was yellow and foul. "Why would I trouble myself with killing you, boy?" he snarled. "There are other ways to banish you from my life. I have been successful thus far."

"Ah," he said. "So you don't want me dead?"

"That's neither here nor there," Snape snapped, "What concerns me is that—"

"Because," he interrupted, and he stared long and hard at Snape, and he felt his words weighing heavily inside his chest, bursting to get out, "You didn't care whether I lived or died when I was a child. That's quite an improvement, isn't it? After everything."

Snape opened his mouth; nothing came out. He looked furious.

"I don't have the memories," he said. "I left everything behind. Those weren't mine, after all." He paused, and looked around. "I didn't expect to meet you here, honestly," he said. The hilarity inside him had vanished. "But now that I have—"

"What, precisely, did you want with me?" Snape said.

He turned to meet Snape's eyes again. He felt nothing; not a flutter, not a rage. He said, "I supposed I thought you'd be angry enough to kill me. You do hate me, after all."

He did not pose it as a question.

Snape did not answer him for several minutes. The room was silent as they observed each other after a few years. It seemed a lifetime away when Snape had laid dying against his arms, and he had walked towards his death with a resolution he did not feel anymore.

"You say the most outlandish things, Potter; that certainly hasn't changed," Snape said eventually. He pointed at the empty chair. "Sit. I'll brew us some tea."

Harry sat.

.

.

He watched Snape, thinking: it is he who will wrap his hands around my neck, it is he who will not hesitate to crush my skull against the wall, it is he who will look at he and remember his enemy and friend, it is he who will eventually summon up the hate and anguish to kill me. He may raise his wand and be ready to show me a peaceful death, but I will beg him, no, let it hurt, let me howl in pain, let me feel my death. It is he who will show me that mercy and no other man. It is he, it is he, it is he.

So Harry sat down and waited for the inevitable end. It did not come.

.

.

He learned quickly that Snape was an avid and sullen drinker; the man had stashed bottles of whiskey in hidden corners, unwashed cups that were half-filled with wine, uncorked and unopened beer cans lined up on the windowsill.

"Don't touch, boy!" Snape snarled at him, when he tried to tidy things up, trying to find a place to put his small knapsack that he had brought along.

He surveyed the room and walked over to the shelves that were crammed with various mismatched books; he expected to see old potion textbooks, magical theories, wandwork—but he only saw names he had never heard of, titles and authors that were not familiar.

"Kafka?" he read aloud, hesitantly rolling the names off his tongue. "Kundera? Pessoa?" He turned and saw Snape watching him with evident distaste.

"I have renounced magic," Snape said, waspish, "and if you are to stay here, I expect you to follow suit. Read something," he said abruptly, and his face shone with something Harry could not name, "words often change a person, although I very much doubt it from you."

He picked up a book.

Snape did not tell him to leave, and so he stayed, sitting down on the floor and reading by a flickering candlelight, and he did not try to ask about electricity and modern technology that would have made their life easier. He did not ask about the static world around him, the lack of cauldrons and simmering brews. Day after day, he stayed; reading, trying to understand, trying to change.

Fernando Pessoa, in one of his many excerpts in his loose and fragmented novel, wrote: the burden of feeling! The burden of having to feel!

And he read those words and was confused by them; he reread the words over and over until it meant nothing to him, and he was puzzled at the weight of emotions that people often felt in books and what he failed to feel. Next to him, Snape too, was reading a book but unlike him, he was nursing his third drink for the night and he read with a ferocious scowl on his sallow face, as if the book was personally offending him.

The candlelight that flickered between them drew the older man's feature into a sharp contrast between light and darkness, and he watched the man for awhile, trying to forget his confusion.

…And I, who timidly hate life, fear death with fascination. I fear this nothingness that could be something else…

And as he read on, and he thought about this man who sat inside this squalid room, drinking heavily without even once sparing him a look; and he read and tried to understand this strange writer who sometimes relished death and sometimes praised life, and he felt emptier and hollower, and he asked himself, but why. He asked himself, but why am I still alive and reading words to something I cannot understand. He felt confused.

I should leave, he thought then. I should head east, I should walk to Berlin Hauptbahnhof and take the next train to Prague, and there I could go north, or I could head even further east—what matters is that I get away, I leave and never turn back.

But he was waiting.

"Why are we reading by candlelight?" he asked.

"Because," Snape said without looking at him, "the landlord did not find it fit to install electricity in the attic room. And there is no money to afford it, at any rate."

"You could cut down on your drinks," he offered, his tone gentle and mild, but Snape jerked his head up as if he had shouted the words as a harsh rebuke.

"Are you questioning my living habits now, Potter?" he asked softly, his eyes glinting with menace. "Find yourself quite comfortable enough to lecture me on how I am to live now, is it?"

"No, I—"he shook his head and put down the book; he raised up his hand in a conciliating manner, wore his awkward smile. "I didn't mean it like that. I worry, that's all."

"You worry about me," Snape said in a mocking tone. His lips curved into a cold smirk. "How very touching, Potter, it's almost as if you care for my dubious welfare."

"Maybe," he said, with an awkward smile, and he could see Snape twitching his fingers, as if he wanted to grab something.

Yes, he thought. Yes.

"Do not play the saint with me," Snape snarled. The smirk was replaced with a wild look, and his eyes flashed. "This pretense of politeness is pathetic on you, this is not you, Potter, I know you, you and that face—" and Snape spit out his words and he felt the spittle land on his cheek, and he saw this wild man, this angry man and his twitching hand, waiting to grab hold of something, anything, and he felt pleased.

Yes, he thought. Yes. He even lifted his chin a little, made sure that his neck was visible.

But Snape calmed down immediately after, and in a calmer tone, in a light, mocking voice he said, "It is a pity I do not write to Draco any longer. I am curious to know how he had managed to civilize you into a proper gentleman."

His giddiness faded, and was replaced with confusion, and finally, nothing. He felt his hand move and touch his chest lightly, and Snape saw this movement and Snape smirked. His hand no longer twitched.

A pity, he thought. This was the only thought he had.

Aloud, he said, "I thought you said you renounced magic."

"I still keep up with the rest of the world," Snape said.

"You read the papers."

"That is what one normally does when one wishes to be kept informed, yes," Snape drawled. "Although, Lucius Malfoy had penned me a letter shortly before his execution grieving to me about his son. He suggested I should do something about it."

He blinked. It took a second for him to reply. "Lucius Malfoy knew you were alive?" he couldn't help but ask.

Snape sneered. "I had sent him a letter congratulating him on his rotten fate, Potter. What do you think?"

"You sent him a letter," he repeated, dumbfounded.

"Am I not allowed to correspond with my dearest friends? There are very few left in this world, after all." Snape took another long sip of his drink, gulping down the liquid in a fluid swallow, and he watched how Snape's throat moved continuously and silently.

"Sure you are," he said, when Snape had finished his drink, "Though it's a pity you had a hand at killing most of them."

Snape's eyes darkened, but to his surprise, Snape threw his head back and laughed. It was a strange, guttural laugh.

"You do me a great disservice. I had a hand at killing all of them," Snape said.

He watched Snape staring at him with a twisted smile. Snape's smile did not hide the anger brimming inside his eyes.

"You cannot provoke me," Snape said softly, when he would not reply, "I have hated you long before you've tried your little tricks with me. My hatred of you is enough to last me a lifetime."

He waited for Snape to pour another drink.

"Even enough to kill me?" he asked quietly.

"Kill?" Snape snorted. He raised his glass and shook it a little. "Why should I kill you? Don't rave nonsensical words."

When he stayed silent, Snape laughed again. "Why, Potter," he said, "It seems as if you almost wish for me to kill you."

"That's what I've been telling you," he said calmly.

Snape did not look taken aback. His sneer intensified.

"Well, well," he said, "I'm not surprised. Not surprised at all. You've chosen a coward's way out, it seems, Potter. You barge into my house and life, thinking to rile me up and making me angry enough to—do what, exactly? To kill you, of all things? What a banal request. When you've helped us win, and saved the wizarding world from the clutches of a madman?" Snape raised his glass again, this time in a mocking salute. "What will become of my quiet life after I kill you, boy? Have you thought of that? Believe me, as much as I would be willing, you're the savior of that world you've left behind. You're a hero, aren't you, Potter?"

And here he finally felt something—not quite anger, not quite indignation, but a dark and quiet fury that stirred and raged and boiled inside his chest, and that fury overtook his breath; he could not breathe, he could not speak, and so he stood up abruptly, and Snape stopped his tirade and looked at him with those mocking eyes full of contempt, daring him to attack first.

"You were a murderer," he said, and his voice was high and uneven, "But so was I. I wasn't a savior; you very well know that. I wasn't a hero, that war didn't have a place for heroes—or no, there was, there were, but they're all dead now."

"Are you, Potter?" Snape said flatly. "A murderer? Why, one would say that vanquishing a Dark Lord does not warrant the title of a murderer."

"A living man is not a hero," he said, raising his voice, "That man is the coward—he's afraid to die, isn't he? He's too afraid to jump to his death, and so he has no choice but to live, and he waits for someone to do the job for him…"

"What a fool you are," Snape said, smiling coldly, "It is much more difficult to live than to die, Potter. Have you not learned that by now?"

"Are you talking about yourself?" And he, too, laughed; it was a terrible laugh, a hysterical chuckle. "You live because you're a coward, because you're a vile, pathetic man—"

Snape lurched. He had expected Snape's hands around his neck, but he was taken aback at how fast those thin and hard fingers fastened themselves and squeezed; he gasped and staggered backwards, but Snape held on tightly, his eyes wild.

"I told you," Snape whispered, "I warned you, boy. Never call me that."

And Snape squeezed and his eyes bulged as air escaped from him; he could not breathe even if he wanted to save himself. But he made sure that he did not resist the attack. He slumped his shoulders and loosened his limbs. He made sure he was staring into black, fathomless orbs as life escaped from him. The eyes belonging to man who had at last succumbed and would murder him. Snape held on. He went down without a fight, feeling lightheaded and content.

This was how he was to die; this was how he was to disappear.

But the hands did not take out his last breath.

The pressure loosened, and his mouth gasped at the sudden air entering into him. He gulped and hated himself for having such the base human instinct to live and save himself. But still he could not breathe properly, even as Snape's hands freed him; the hands shifted down to grab hold onto his shoulders, and a mouth covered his own, and it was as if he was suffocated in something warm, something rancid.

Snape tasted of malt, of spit, of a darkness that he had never tasted. On instinct, he closed his eyes, trying to place a name in the way Snape held him—it was without gentleness, without love, but there was something firm in the grasp, and it was a warm feeling that welled inside him.

Warmth was good, he thought, as he reached out and grew lax under the hard grip. His hands placed themselves on bony shoulders, and he felt teeth scraping over his neck, and he thought about the coldness inside his heart that had not thawed for years, he thought of the fake laughter waiting to burst out from his mouth, he thought of his awkward words, and then he thought, this is new, this could be different from all the rest.

And, air—glorious, stale air, rushed into his mouth again, as he was hurtled back against a wall, and he coughed violently, supporting his weight with shaking legs, his hand coming up to wipe away his mouth.

When he at last straightened up, still breathing heavily, Snape was waiting for him, observing him with that cold, twisted smile.

"Wasn't I right?" Snape said quietly. "It is harder to live. Although, Merlin knows, I do not take my own advice."

He let out a dry rasp. "Then what do you want?"

Snape clenched his teeth and looked furious. But a second later that look was gone, replaced with a look he had not seen before. There was nothing there that he could see. A blank, empty look.

He stared and saw, and his heart thumped against his chest. His breathing evened.

Ah, he thought. The man understands.

His lips curved. And Snape, for the first time, startled, and looked at him strangely, almost fearfully. He did not know how he looked then; he did not consider asking Snape about it after the moment passed.

"You should do that again," he said. He raised his hand towards Snape. Snape did not move but his eyes grew wide.

"Strangle you?" Snape hissed. "Or kiss you?"

He laughed. "Both," he said.

Snape did not move as his hand brushed against thin, matted locks of hair. Snape did not move, even as he took a step closer until he could see just how black, how bottomless Snape's eyes were.

Snape said something then. This is madness, he may have said. Potter, you are out of your mind, he may have warned. But he did not wait to hear such predictable words.

He leaned over and closed the gap between them. He guided Snape's hand once more to his neck.

The fingers stayed limp.

.

.

Snape was bitter in his old age and quick to use his words to hurt, and was precise in where he targeted his disgust. But he, too, had grown up past the young child who had balked at Snape's every caustic dismissal, and so he took everything in stride and let the words wash over him, all with a wan smile that irritated Snape off to no end.

Snape would sneer, "That look doesn't suit you, Potter; it almost looks as if you have a brain inside that thoughtless head of yours."

And he would answer, "This brain is what kept me alive all these years, you see."

And Snape would glare at him over his mug of tea and Harry would not lose his smile and sip his own cup of coffee. Snape would denounce his tastes as barbaric.

Snape was not the person he had once left off but neither was he the boy Snape had mocked in their respective years as a teacher and pupil. They had a war past them and in this strange and cold city where no one looked twice at Snape's customary greasy hair or his branded arm, it was easy to pretend that they were insipid tourists who spoke terrible German. It suited Snape just fine to nod gravely at everything the shopkeepers presented to him and it suited Harry just fine to laugh at the faux-solemnity Snape took to wearing outside. They stayed in the ratty old attic room in the Mitte district for awhile, milling about in the main streets of Friedrichstraße and avoided English speaking people on principle. A foreign city gave one a sense of false security, for it allowed them to meander about with the rest of the unsuspecting crowd of people. Each morning, they stopped by at the place where he had first accidently run into Snape, those hideous grey slabs towering and covering over and around them as they walked amongst the cemented walls, and he had asked Snape what they stood for.

"There is such a thing as a book, Potter," Snape had said, and he did not care to ask anymore.

They walked around the city, and the more they walked the more he felt numb by the shades of greyness, and nothing came to him, nothing touched him. But Snape did not seem to be sharing in his inertia.

"I would prefer to die in anonymity," Snape commented one day, studying the crowded streets with distaste and morbid fascination.

"I would prefer you not die at all, not for a long time yet," Harry replied.

Snape gave him one of those terse smile that came short of a condescending sneer.

"I hate to break it to you, Potter, but it is the laws of nature that we go back into the ground from which we were once born," Snape said.

"You know what I meant." He does not rise up to the bait that Snape had set up for him, and offers a raised eyebrow in turn.

"And you know precisely what I meant," Snape said, terse and irascible, "I did not come all the way to this wretched city just to dallying about in your delightful company, Potter."

He managed to swallow back an airy reply.

Snape gave him an evil look all the same. "I came here to be left alone in peace," he said, "and to await my death. Trust you to thwart all my plans."

There was no compassion between the two of them, but some days, Harry thought they had an understanding and for him this was enough. Snape would lace his words with gentle and mocking contempt and he would nod sagely and play the fool.

And they walked around the grey streets of Berlin, not talking of the past and pretending to the world outside that they were companions; and they came back to Snape's dismal attic room bringing the greyness with them and still they did not bring out old feuds; and once on a whim, they even took a day's trip to Wannsee by Snape's request. They did nothing there, merely walked around the lakesides, the Großer and Kleiner Wannsees, and he saw the calm expanse of water a heard the shrill cry of the seagulls above.

"I had killed a priest once," Snape suddenly said.

He turned around and looked back at Snape.

"A Muggle priest?" he asked.

"What other kind is there?" Snape said tersely.

It was a rare day when Snape ever talked about himself, and so he slowed his steps and waited for Snape to continue speaking. But Snape merely clicked his tongue impatiently and threw a venomous glare at him.

"Well?" he barked.

He shrugged helplessly. "And?" he asked.

"And nothing. He died giving me his blessings. I laughed at him. I do not regret that, by the way," Snape added. "That man made me a Death Eater. He was my first kill. A vile man, no doubt. All religious man are."

Snape talked in rapid strokes, as if the words had been festering inside him all these years, and he was eager to throw them out, and he spoke without flair or precision. His words came out in jarring, inarticulate phases. Snape quickened his step. He followed closely behind.

"He was an old man," Snape continued, "There was nothing to it—a death of a Muggle was nothing to what I would go on to achieve later. I didn't think I could have done it, but I did, and killing was nothing. There was absolutely nothing to it." Snape stopped and whirled around to face him. He was wearing a peculiar smirk.

"You are walking with an unrepentant murderer, Potter," he said. "What do you make of that?"

And Snape looked upon him, haughty and eager, waiting for his response with those black glittering eyes—and he did not have the rage that Snape wanted of him.

"Nothing," he said. "That's all in the past."

Snape gritted his teeth. "That's not quite the point, Merlin save you, boy—"

"I would have killed Bellatrix if there was the chance," he interrupted. He mirrored Snape's strange smile. "I wouldn't have regretted it. I would have killed so many others too, but that's neither here nor there now."

He met Snape's gaze. Snape looked at him, incredulous and angry.

"It's getting cold," he said, when Snape did not say anything. "We should head back."

"That man was innocent!" Snape snarled. "Was that madwoman innocent? Are you, perhaps, thinking that the dead are all capable of redemption for the very fact that they're dead?" Snape hurled the last word at him, and there was a moment's pause. Snape's eyes glowered at him, daring him to fight, to deny…but he was cold, and he was too weary to argue about the past deeds of the fallen.

"What do you want me to say?" he said tiredly. "I know you're a murderer. But we're past all that, aren't we?"

Snape looked with him with pure hatred. His face twisted into fury.

"The past," he said coldly, "Yes, what a convenient label to dismiss everything that ever happened to us all." Snape drew his coat tighter around him and thinned his lips. "Do you know what place this is?" he barked suddenly, and added, "Do you know what happened here?"

He blinked. "No," he said, "Do I have to?"

Snape sneered. "Read up on your history, Potter," he spat. "Your indifference to everything is exasperating. Your life is a mess and you walk about with that silly vacant look. No wonder you occupy your brain cells with such morbidity."

Snape turned and walked away, not waiting for his reply. He was left to stare at Snape's retreating back.

No, Snape was never kind, not to him. But Snape did not try to reach out and strangle him any longer.

A pity, he thought. He waited patiently for that day. It was the reason why he stayed.

.

.

One night, Snape recited to him in a voice that sounded tender and loving, but the words were anything but.

You were my death: you I could hold while everything slipped from me.

Snape spoke those words in a soft lullaby, and said them again in harsh German words. In his sleepy and lethargic state, he mumbled, "What does that mean?"

After a short silence, Snape said. "Who knows. I did not write such words."

"A poem?"

"Yes. By a poet. Who—"Snape stopped. "Never mind," he said quietly. "It does not matter. It is beautiful no matter where it stands."

"It's very macabre," he said.

"Yes," Snape said. "He led a macabre life. He killed himself."

"Oh," he said. "Maybe I should write something and then do just that."

"Perhaps," Snape said, "But you'll write something atrocious and dreadful, no doubt."

They had moved on from kissing to fucking and not sleeping afterwards. Only Snape did not call it fucking. He had said: an unfortunate circumstance life had thrown upon us. And he, Harry, had howled at that, not because he found it funny but because it irritated Snape to no end.

Snape gripped the rails of the bedpost while they moved together and he in turn took hold of the bedsheets and everything was painful, but in those days he had relished in the pain of little preparation and coldness, he had arched up against an equally thin and worn body and thought that at least pain was something he was comfortable with, could understand. His body welcomed the pain, because it made him feel, and the burning, tearing sensation between his legs condemned him.
And he looked at Snape intently, because in those moments it was only his eyes that Snape ever looked at, and Snape did not caress his arms, his neck, his hair—Snape only stared at him, and when he let out a harsh breath, it was not to say his name.

It did not matter.

And he, in turn, looked up at Snape and thought about black hatred, this man above him who despised him beyond all measure, who was now living in a cramped room, where no warmth and light came to reach him, putting himself in self-voluntary exile; and when he too, let out a keening sound, it was not to speak of their mutual miseries and confessions of love.

It did not matter.

And they in turn, did not sleep, afterwards, but talked in soft and poisonous voices, and it was on such a night when Snape finally brought back the ghosts of the dead.

"You should have had Lily's face," Snape told him tiredly. His long fingers ran through his messy jet black hair carefully, and his words were spoken with much regret, but Harry did not blame Snape for this small moment of nostalgic love, he did not demand that Snape love him or even see him as an individual; instead he smiled his typically bland smile and offered to morph his features into what may pass off as his mother and perhaps then Snape would not look so horribly guilty when fucking him.

Snape looked at him with revulsion at his airy offerings and snarled, what do you take me for Potter, I don't go—but Snape stopped speaking, and Harry couldn't help it, he chuckled a little and remarked at how Snape didn't draw the line in killing off his once best friend (accidently) and insulting said best friend's son constantly only to fuck him later in life (purposefully) but he would stop at fucking the dead best friend (deceptively).

"It's a muddled logic you surround yourself in," he said, and he laughed softly, adding, "Professor."

He made sure to roll off the customary title with a particular relish, and Snape stared at him as if he was seeing a stranger.

And he could not stand someone looking at him like that. It reminded him of pity and compassion, emotions that had no place for him in this new world he was living in.

He leaned over and kissed the older man, and Snape stood very still under his touch, and he, for the first time, closed his eyes and thought of a winter gone, long ago.

.

.

He told Snape about the prophecy on a whim. A few months had passed in Berlin, and he was surprised to have seen the changing of the season in a familiar city. The weather was brisk and the sky was very clear, and he felt unusually giddy as he walked along the familiar routes they took. They took a small detour and he stood above the tracks and watched the U-Bahn rush past, until the sky turned into streaks of hue.

"This is such an ugly city," he said.

Snape for once, did not meet his words with disdain. He replied evenly, "One gets use to the hideous cityscape."

He laughed. He shook out a smoke, and even though Snape made a face, he did not comment on his atrocious habit. He was glad. He sucked the first smoke greedily, and blew it out the smoke.

"You've become a proper Muggle now, Potter," Snape had only said.

He drank with Snape that night, and felt sentimental and soft enough to talk about the words that Draco Malfoy had inscribed to him all those years ago, and he laughed at the sheer superstitious nature of it.

Snape did not laugh along with him.

Snape watched him chuckle, and when he pestered the man to speak up, Snape said, "There is nothing to it. You were a fool, and I am not surprised that you were."

He had been fiddling with his empty cup for awhile now, but at those words, he turned to look at Snape, whose face was hostile under the candlelight.

"I was a fool?" he echoed. He giggled and lurched to grab another bottle of whiskey. "I was the fool?"

"Potter, if you can't hold your liquor—" Snape snapped, and sighed. He rubbed his fingers against the bridge of his nose and took some time to answer.

"You are forgetting how Draco had been raised up as," Snape said. "What family he had been raised by."

"Funny," he said. His voice grew high and sarcastic. "Draco said the same thing to me. He thought I was being a Muggle about it." He laughed again, only that this time the laugh came out aggressive and angry. Snape watched him, taking a slow sip of his own drink.

"The irony doesn't escape me," Snape said. "You were also born of a prophecy."

"That was different," he said tersely. "That was not—"

"Not?" Snape immediately countered, a peculiar smile creeping up his face.

He glared at Snape, placid and waiting. He clenched his teeth. "It didn't have to happen," he said quietly, venomously. "It didn't have to go that way."

Snape continued to smile. "Yes," he said softly, "It didn't have to be you. The prophecy only said—"

"He didn't have to know about it," he said in a rush, "But you told him. You gave him the prophecy."

Snape did not try to refute his words. Snape did not try to defend his past, his actions that had resulted in the death of his parents. Snape only sat there calmly, contorting his lips to an eerie smile. Perhaps that was what had truly made Snape unforgivable in his eyes.

"A prophecy is a curious thing," Snape said instead. "Dumbledore may have fed you a midwife's tale about it, no doubt, but one does not try to ignore their words." He paused. "It is most assuredly an old wizarding tradition. One that the Dark Lord had known about."

"So you're saying that I was wrong," he said. He mirrored the calm that he did not feel. Could not feel. "But it doesn't matter now. It's gone."

"Yes," Snape said, "A fortunate accident."

He jerked his hand at this.

"Fortunate?" he repeated harshly.

"Fortunate," Snape said, resolute. "What do you want me to say, Potter? You created a child where there should not have been a child. You created it—for what?" Snape's lips twisted into a sneer. "I do not remember you being overtly enamored towards Draco Malfoy in your school days. Has your fondness for my godson grown to such astronomical heights that you wished to carry his child, and one that he did not even want?"

He opened his mouth to talk of Lucius Malfoy, his will, their happiness, their future desires. But a heavy weight clogged at his throat and he could not speak while Snape watched him mockingly. He did not expect Snape to understand, so why, so why. He did not need to justify his actions to this abominable man.

It was not anger he felt when he tried to speak. It was a quiet, brimming fury that filled him up, it was a primitive coldness that threated to choke him. He could not shout for there was no strength to him, everything he had, the earth had taken.

"I never had anything," he said, and he could not recognize his own voice, quiet and malicious, and Snape's smirk was gone, and Snape even looked surprised at hearing such a low and primal voice, "even my soul was not wholly mine."

"But that child," he continued, and the words did not threaten to submerge him, no, he had left such emotions buried underneath the ground along with the boy. "That child was mine."

He did not expect Snape to understand. He did not want an answer, a predictable reprimand for his selfishness: Potter, all of us have lost something in the war, you are not the only one to have wasted away all these years. Snape would not understand him.

He did not care for anyone's grief but his own.

He left the room.

.

.

He walked the streets, the empty, desolate streets in a city where he was forever a stranger, and he walked and walked until dawn rose. He did not think of anything or anyone as he walked along the streets.

When he returned sometime later, he stood just outside the doorstep of Snape's room; he was tired beyond belief, he looked down at his hands and flexed them once, twice, thinking absolutely nothing. He was worn and very weary, but more than that, he felt lost and empty. Thinking to himself: where do I go from here?

There was no easy answer. There existed no words to describe the emptiness that had gnawed at him ever since the child, he could not even begin to try and describe the utter abyss that was his mind; he moved slowly and heavily, uncertain of his next act and wondered if there was any point in continuing to open closed doors and reconciling with old enmity that had existed long before he was born.

He opened the door to their room. Snape had not lit anything, and the place was shrouded in darkness, even with the lighted hue of the sky, and the older man sat where he had sat just that very evening, as if he had not moved since then. He made his way carefully towards the table and wanted to walk past the man to take up his belongings and walk away again, this time to truly and finally leave. His steps were muffled and quiet against the old floorboards, and Snape watched him in the black room, but he did not turn to meet those eyes.

Snape said suddenly, tiredly, "I did not anguish over my father's death."

He paused. Snape's voice was level and slow to emerge, as if he was trying to find the right words, the precise sequence his words.

Snape said, "I was five when he started to beat me and it was for something very inconsequential. I felt wronged by his act, but when I spoke of it to my mother she comforted me but did not confront his acts. I hated them both but I hated my father much more, for he had no business in bringing me into this world if he could not care for me. No, my father from the start was a man without scruples, who could not love and who did not bother to correct his misfortunes. He was a proud and weak man, something I have always detested in all men. Perhaps that came with observing my father who believed himself to be right in all things.

"I grew up in a hovel and went hungry on most days, for my father was a drunk and a brute and he spent all the money on his gambling habits. Whatever money we had, he spent and he spent them without remorse, and when my mother dared to reproach him for his actions, he would reciprocate with a bellow, and would hit her. I would watch them, and towards them both I felt nothing, not even pity for my mother, not even indignation at my father. I kept myself out of harm's way but even then my father berated me for having a weak heart. I could not do anything to please him in his eyes, and that had never changed, even after his death."

Snape's lips moved, and he watched them open and close; he was amazed but concealed his amazement, and he turned and walked slowly towards the table and sat across from Snape. Snape talked as if he was reciting a sermon, his eyes not quite focused on anything, his face completely blank, and he did not seem to notice Harry as he spoke.

He continued, "When I knew magic, the first thing I wished to do was to avenge my father—and once, when he knew what I was he beat me even harder, and I wished him dead, I imagined it quite often and thought one day I would be strong enough to do so…but he died before I could bring myself to be a murderer. I was relieved of his death and even rejoiced in it."

He talked and talked, and Harry sat down slowly, listening to the words and hearing a story he did not expect to hear, and on that evening he knew more about Snape than he would ever know about the man then he ever had, and when it was over he was left with a curious sensation that was not quite pity, not quite fondness.

Snape spoke his final words with complete flatness. "You would not have made a good parent."

He looked down at his hands that were resting on the table.

"No," he agreed.

"It is better that…" Snape paused, and continued. "You had an unhappy childhood."

"Yes," he said.

"You would not have known how to love him. You would not have raised him as you may have wished."

"Perhaps," he said.

"It is better that it died," Snape said, and there was none of the familiar contempt in the man's voice. There was a sincere gentleness, a quiet intensity that had him looking up.

He opened his mouth, tried to form a reply. Snape saw him trying to speak, and Snape noticed how he floundered, trying to find the right words. The man took pity on him.

"You and I, we are quite much alike," Snape said. "It is something your father could not have taught you."

He reeled back, protests already lining up in his mouth. "My father—"

"He did not possess that absence you sorely try to fill, for one," Snape continued on calmly, with uncharacteristic flatness he normally did not reserve for James Potter. "He chose to die and allowed you to live, because he thought your life was greater than anything else in the world, and he offered himself for that price."

He did not trust himself to speak. Snape did not wait for his reply.

"But you are not your father," Snape continued, "Your father was not a boy hero, for one. He did not have the weight of the wizarding world pressed upon his shoulders. He was not…an orphan." Snape's lips twisted. "Childhood haunts us in strange ways," he murmured, "Savior you might have been, but what were you before that?"

"Dumbledore once said—"

"Headmaster," Snape said, and his voice was firm but not a rebuke, and Harry smiled at him a little.

"Headmaster Dumbledore once said that Riddle and I were alike in some ways. I was worried that I would turn into him, if I wasn't more careful."

He looked up and glanced up at Snape, and just as quickly turned his head away. "Riddle was an orphan too, I mean. He wasn't anyone extraordinary before he became a wizard."

"Complete nonsense," Snape said. "You are one of the most blubbering sentimental fools that I have had the misfortune to meet. You are sometimes worse than Dumbledore."

"Headmaster Dumbledore," he corrected with a wider smile.

Snape sneered at him but obliged him. "Headmaster Dumbledore, then. Really, Potter, the old man had fed you outlandish tales over the years, it's no wonder you delude yourself into a savior."

"I could have been, though," he said, mostly to himself, "Some days I thought I would—" His lips quivered, but he held steadfast to his awkward smile. "But the child didn't allow me to," he said quietly, "I could have been a better person. Had he lived."

Snape looked at him, incomprehensible, unreadable. "But the child died," he repeated.

"Yes," he said. He felt exhausted, but it was a lighter feeling than the absolute nothingness he had felt earlier. "But then again, we don't know that. Maybe I would have made a terrible father—maybe Draco was right about the child and I would have hated him. You're right. Merlin, I hate it when you're right." He laughed a rusty chuckle. "But I still wished that he lived."

Snape pressed his lips together into a wan smile.

.

.

Days passed. One day, he woke up screaming.

In his dreams, he saw the bloodied child and he held it, weeping. There was a great gust of wind, and he smelt smoke and fire. The world was burning around him. And as he looked around, he saw Draco amongst the flames, burning, burning.

Draco, he screamed.

Draco looked at him, with blatant contempt and fury, his grey eyes blazing.

I knew this would happen, Draco said. You were too blind to realize it. Look at the child, Potter. Look down and see what it became.

He looked down at his bloodied child, and saw how the child was not yet dead; the child opened his eyes and smiled up at him, toothless, mirthless.

The child's eyes were red.

He screamed and this time, he heard his own screaming.

"Potter," he heard Snape say, and he thrashed about and screeched, and he felt his mouth gagged by a foreign hand.

"You fool, I'm too old for this," Snape muttered, and when he opened his eyes, the room was dark and the bed was in complete disarray and Snape was glaring at him.

"Shall I offer you some sleeping pills?" Snape snapped harshly, "It's a Muggle invention but it works quite marvelously. You'll be knocked out in no time at all, and I may get some semblance of sleep."

He stared at Snape, his eyes wide and heartbeat racing. He still could not sleep, and Snape's hand was dry and hard against his mouth.

"The child," he wanted to speak, but his words were swallowed up by Snape's hand, and Snape smelt of musk, dry air, and he heaved a breath but he could not breathe. His eyes widened.

Snape looked at him with contempt.

"Will you cease now?" Snape asked, sneering. He nodded.

"I was thinking," he said; his words were slurred and slow to come, "that I might have overstayed my welcome here."

Snape stopped fussing about the sheets and stared at him.

"Have you ever been welcome here?" Snape asked neutrally. With sudden sharpness he snapped, "And where will you haunt next?"

He averted his eyes. "East," he said.

Snape clicked his tongue. "East," he repeated. There was scorn and derision lacing his words. "That's not much to go on."

"I don't normally have these things planned," he said, just as coldly. He could feel Snape's gaze on him, but still he would not look up.

"…You had a bad dream," Snape then said, his voice lowering. Snape talked as if he would comfort a stranger's child. His softness was foreign. "You're blabbering."

"I've also been in this city too long." He jerked his head, and the words spill out of him. He stuttered and babbled. "It's the cold. It's this—greyness. The sky. Have you seen it here? And all that smoke. You look up and all you see—it's that smoke."

Snape did not say anything. His voice rose as he tried to explain.

"And we go out for walks, and everything's fine, it's great, even, you're not seeing me complaining, but it's that—you go down to that stupid place every single time—every fucking time, it's those walls, those fucking grey slabs—everywhere!" He screamed out the last words and finally looked up, only to see that Snape's face was hidden by the darkness of the room.

"Do you know where I'm talking about?" he asked roughly. "It's that place where I met you for the first time. It's—vile, is what it is, it's horrid, and every time I see that place, I think I see—"

"I know," Snape interrupted, and he was glad for the interruption; he felt tired and angry, and all he could do was ball up the sheets around him and hurl out nonsensical words.

"I hate that place," he said vehemently. "I hate this city."

"So you've said," Snape said.

"I'm going to leave," he said. Then he paused. "Are you coming?"

"With you?" Snape sounded spiteful and amused.

"With me," he repeated, mulish.

"Potter, I don't think I have run away from that dreary island just to find myself following after—"

"I know you came here to die," he cut in, and he even laughed after that, mimicking Snape's cold laughter, "I know you didn't have to take me in, but you did, and then you thought about how you'd like to strangle me—"

"—don't be morose, Potter, I wouldn't stoop to your level—" Snape began.

"—but the fact is, I was more eager to die than you were, so you had no choice but to postpone your last rites. Well, I'm not about to die anytime soon, not yet, anyhow, but I'm going East, and I want you to come with me. I'll help you die, Snape, I'll watch over you die. That's what you want, isn't it? You came here all this way to die in anonymity, after everything. You don't think I understand that? That's what I came here for. That's why I'm in this sad state. If you can't help me die, then by Merlin, by God, whatever you want, I'll help you dig your grave."

He screamed out his last words. The sun was rising. Snape's gaunt face looked at him as the first rays of dawn lighted around them, and there was no visible expression he could read. Only silence reigned. At last, when the small room was fully illuminated and the birds began to chirp outside, Snape said calmly, "What a melodramatic fool you've become, Potter."

He laughed. Snape watched him with the usual scorn, but his eyes flashed strangely.

They went to Prague.

.

.

In Prague, he was still unhappy, but he feigned his smile and walked about the Old Town alleyways and watched the timeless, eternal city and could not feel anything. Snape did not walk around with him, and by night they silently moved about their house, waiting, watching.

At night, Snape poured out four glasses of straight whiskey and he would sit at the dim firelight and read Kafka and Rilke and sometimes Snape would read aloud to him and he would allow the deep voice to wash over his numbness, listening to words that still left him bereft: They have all died their own deaths…even the children, the very young ones too, did not die simply any child's death, but summoned up all their command and gave death to what they already were and what they would have been.

And he would hear those words, but he would not understand them still. He would hear Rilke's poems (I would like to fling my voice out like a cloth over the fragments of your death, and keep pulling at it until it is torn to pieces, and all my words would have to walk around shivering, in the tatters of that voice; if lament were enough) and Kafka's despair (don't despair, not even over the fact that you don't despair) and he would laugh at them; he would look at Snape and smile an empty smile and Snape's eyes would narrow at him, daring him to say something, anything.

But he never dared.

And on his lap, he would still have his Pessoa, and the book by now had been well thumbed and leafed over, but he would still trace his fingers over the same familiar lines he would return to, time and time again: what I most of all feel is weariness, and the disquiet that is its twin when the weariness has no reason to exist but to exist. And still, words did not grasp at him as they did to Snape, words did not save him, book did not make him feel, did not fill up the void inside him, festering, rotting away. At night he walked along the bridges and saw how red the sky was on some nights, and he pointed this out to Snape, the sky here is a hellfire. The stars sometimes glittered on above them, and he raised his head up, and felt even emptier for looking at the night sky. The alleyways were embedded with a certain silence, sadness and gaiety, and as he walked a street gypsy played a hysterical tune on his fiddle.

Winter came and went.

Spring arrived with a gust of wind and Wenceslas Square was blooming with green saps and milling with people, and he had a headache; he detoured and walked along the Vltava, and across from the other side, he saw the looming castle. The smell of cinnamon and roasted walnut wafted from the trdelník stalls. He moved past the tourists and walked on the cobbled streets. Here out of the blue, he met his cousin, loitering about the riverbank, laughing with a young woman he did not know, with a young boy whom he did not want to know.

Their eyes met. Dudley waved at him, incredulous and unsuspecting.

"Dudley," he said dumbly.

.

.

He had spent so much of his childhood thinking how monstrously big Dudley was that he had forgotten how his cousin had actually looked like to the world at large. Time had been kind to him; the fat had vanished from his stature, and in place was a broad shouldered man, burly arms and a firm neck that held together a pleasantly round face. Next to him stood a willowy woman who stood erect and still to Dudley's moving body. Dudley waved his hand again unnecessarily. He took the woman's hand and steered her closer to his side.

The woman looked thin and fragile, her lips pursued as she allowed herself to draw nearer, but she was polite enough to give him a brief smile, which he returned. The woman was plain, but she did not use her thin body in an aggressive manner, as he once remembered his aunt of doing. There was no malicious curiosity in the eyes that studied him, only a mild puzzlement, a polite inquiry.

"Fancy meeting you here, Harry," Dudley said. He talked with an easy grace that he had never seen on the man.

"Fancy seeing you here, Dudley," he echoed, and he looked at the woman, and back at Dudley. At last, he allowed his eyes to drop on the young boy, whose eyes were bright and impatient.

"This is my son," Dudley said, smiling at his young boy, and he mirrored the smile crookedly. The boy looked between his father and the stranger, his sullenness evident by his pout. He seemed to have no interest in this sudden interruption.

"Dad," he pestered, "I want to feed the ducks! You said I could."

"Yeah, yeah. Alright." And Dudley did a little shrug to his wife and did a little wave with his hand. "You go on ahead. I haven't seen Harry in awhile."

"I—no, I can watch," he said, awkward and cold, and he still fixed that smile on his face. He set out to walk nearer to the water, and the boy eagerly jumped and skipped, holding a bag of breadcrumbs in one hand.

"The weather's a bit cold for the birds to come by, anyhow," Dudley said mildly. He turned his head and laughed. The sound was not mocking. "So, out of all the places!" Dudley said. "Who would have guessed, eh? What brings you here, Harry?"

"Oh, you know," he said helplessly, wondering about the weight inside his chest as he tried to force the words to come by naturally. "I'm traveling about."

"That's good," Dudley said. "My wife and I—we haven't had our honeymoon when we got married, you see—she got pregnant before we actually—" he broke off with a chuckle, and he himself was repulsed to hear Dudley talk with such casualness, as if they had been nothing but friends, "—but anyway, yeah, this is our honeymoon, see, with that little rascal over there. Hey! Don't go too near those ducklings!" He shouted the last words to his son, which his son did not heed. "Kids," Dudley said shaking, "But I—look at you! Last time I saw you, you were—er—you were fighting someone. You had a war going on." Dudley gave him a quick, embarrassed look at him, and laughed again. "Is that all over then? The war?"

Dudley said those words, the war, as if what he had been engaged in was a child's play, a mere disturbance, something he thought was a great oddity amidst a world Dudley himself thought to be very fine and tranquil. In Dudley's world, there were no deaths, no losses; and here, years later, Dudley, the tormentor of his childhood and bumbling bully of his adolescent years stood by him, smiling and talking of a war that was inconsequential to him as it was unforgettable to the other.

He shrugged.

"It's over," he said, and that was all he said on the matter, and the weight would not leave him. Bile would not choke him. He looked at the boy, so impatient and innocent, if any child of Dudley's could be called that.

"Good, good," Dudley said heartily, and for a brief, ugly moment, he was reminded of his uncle, but Dudley laughed again, and he was struck at how softly his cousin laughed. "You should leave all that behind you," Dudley continued on, in a sincere tone that he had never heard Dudley speak. "What you've been through—it was all rotten luck, I keep telling mum, she shouldn't have treated you the way she did, I shouldn't have—" Dudley broke off, looking abashed, and suddenly, after everything, he couldn't bear to listen to such apologies. Those words did not need to be coming out of Dudley's mouth and he did not care to hear and accept them.

He grinned. And he knew it would look affected, but the point was, if only Dudley would see, he did not really hold any grudges, not any longer, those things were very much in the past. Through his insincere, dazzling smile, Dudley would surely see that. Dudley stopped talking and gazed at him, uncomprehending.

"Stop yapping about, Big D," he now said, "It's all over and done. I think you've managed out pretty nicely, all things considered."

Dudley followed suit, his smile broadening.

They moved onto other topics, and he forgot what he had said, only knew that they had laughed as they never had when they were kids, and Dudley even thumped him on the back and smiled at him, eyes that had never seen death and smoke and fire.

.

.

He kept the smile plastered on his face even as they said their goodbyes and the Dudley family left him, and he smiled at strangers as he walked in the streets, and he smiled up at the astronomical clock in Old Town Square, which he previously thought to be hideous, and he smiled as he entered the dim room where he and Snape had rented out. Snape was hunched over the table and jerked his head as the door opened.

"Why are you grinning like an idiot?" Snape snapped at him.

"I saw my cousin," he said. And the smile slid off, and he did not know what his face looked like in their dark room. Snape took another look at him and snorted. He had already begun to take up his customary drink.

"Sit," Snape said.

He sat. He watched Snape swirl his glass, and Snape raised an eyebrow at him, mockingly, waiting for him to speak. When he stayed silent, Snape curled his lips.

"So you've met your delightful cousin," Snape drawled, gesturing for an empty cup and pouring him a drink. He took it but did not take the first sip. "In this city of all places. This place is a ghost town, have you noticed? You're assaulted by shadows and the like."

He stared helplessly into his cup.

"Well?" Snape barked, when he would still not say anything. "There must be something you wished to blather onto me. I'm sufficiently drunk enough to pretend I care about your dreadful woes, Potter."

"Dudley's married," he said helplessly.

"Marvelous. You would have told him a thing or two on what can come out of such a blissful union."

"Draco and I weren't—" he began to say, and stopped. Snape was giving in a sardonic smirk. "We're not going there," he said roughly, and without a second thought, he tilted back his head and drank the liquor greedily. Snape's lips curved higher. The liquor took an instant hold on him; he soon felt numb and empty-headed as the whiskey burned down his throat.

"You should stop drinking, really," he felt somewhere in his mind to chide, "It's barely dark out, and here you are."

"Here we are," Snape corrected him, and poured him another glass. He silently took it. "Yes, so you've met your cousin. A successful marriage life. Many happy blessings for him."

"You're feeling very talkative today," he observed with a wry smile. "Normally you'd rush to snap at me."

"Normally, you wouldn't come in smiling like a loon," Snape sneered. "It wasn't his wife that did you in, then. Or was she very lovely?"

"No," he said, laughing a little. "It was—I didn't even notice her, honestly. I was too busy looking at the kid. He has a son," he blurted out, and as soon as he let the words out, his shoulders slumped and he heaved a great breath. He repeated the words and the grief returned. "Dudley. He has a son."

Snape raised an eyebrow. "Ah," was all he said.

"He didn't look at all like Dudley," Harry continued absentmindedly, "The kid was bouncing all over the place. He wasn't as spoiled as I expected him to be. So Dudley's all grown up."

"And you…did not feel happy for him?"

He tried to smile.

"Oh, I don't know," he said. He fiddled with his cup and looked at the brown liquid inside. His voice was light and detached, and he hated the voice, the careful words he plucked out from the empty air just as empty as his heart. "There was a time…when I really hated him. You can't blame me for that, Dudley was horrible as a kid. I once wanted a dog that would bite Dudley's fat arse off. Or no, not even that. I wanted a friend who would have stood up to him. There was a lot of things I wanted. Those were—it was a long time ago. I was very young. I was never really afraid of Dudley, even if he did beat me and chased me with his merry little friends…it never really mattered."

He laughed. "I thought that one day I wouldn't have to deal with any of them, that one day I wouldn't see them any longer—and I never did, not since I knew magic and had real friends of my own. I didn't really care for him after awhile. And now Dudley—he—"

He paused.

"I am happy for him," he said, and at last his voice gave way to weariness, quiet despair that had never quite left him. "But I think there was that very brief moment when I saw him—I hated him for his happiness, the way he was so normal, and I thought, Merlin, what the fuck did he do to deserve that life?"

Snape watched him quietly, and he very much wanted to cry, show something of his despair so that Snape would understand.

"He had a child," he said dumbly. "He had a son."

"Yes," Snape said.

"He was young. Very loud. But compared to what Dudley had been—" He shook his head and stopped speaking. He buried his face in his hands.

"Potter," Snape said to him, and when he would not look up, Snape repeated, hesitantly, "Harry."

"I wish you would kill me," he said, his words muffled by his hands, "I really wish you'd do that. For me. That's why I was so glad to see you. I can't—" and he gasped a little, letting his hands fall back, raising his head up as he chocked. The air was stifling. He remembered his death. He remembered the forest, how resolutely he walked towards the darkness, how willingly he met his end.

"I can't die a second time," he said brokenly, and he finally felt his cheeks grow wet, and he drew in a ragged breath. "I don't know how I could."

He looked at Snape, who met his eyes evenly. On Snape's face there was an expression he had not quite seen in the older man.

"This city is weighing upon you," Snape said. "Perhaps it's time to move on."

He felt his hands shake. "Will you come with me?" he asked hoarsely.

Snape gave him a thin smile.

"Left to your own devices, no doubt you'll jump off the nearest bridge and delude yourself in a heroic death," Snape said quietly. "So I fail to see how I can refuse."

He clutched his hands together and tried to grin. His eyes watered. "East," he said, "We'll go east. And then…north."

"North," Snape agreed. The peculiar expression returned. This time, he recognized it for what it was: weariness and defeat. It was a strange look on Snape. At that moment Snape understood him completely; all his fear and anguish, the words that he had never spoken of. At that moment, he realized that Snape's desire to die was just as great as his. In that understanding alone, he had never felt closer to any human being. "There should be no one to bother us, I hope."

"No," he agreed.

.

.

Somewhere before the north, they stopped by at St. Petersburg, and he crossed he bridges and saw the Neva, the vast and ominous river, as the salty wind whipped his hair. Snape downed his drinks faster, and claimed that the coldness drove him to inertia. But he was not fooled. At night, Snape fumbled and tossed about in his sleep, slurring names of people who were long dead, and often, Snape woke up in the middle of the night with sudden alacrity, his eyes widened with fear.

"You had a dream," he told Snape in such times, his hand reaching up to touch an arm. Snape would jerk violently away from him.

"So I had," Snape snapped hoarsely, "Go back to sleep, Potter, your face invites nightmares."

Some nights they would collapse in bed without putting out the candlelight. Those would be the same nights Snape would wake up disoriented. In those moments between consciousness and the dreamlike state, Snape would look at him and see another dead man who once had the same messy hair, and Snape would let out a feral scream, and he would wake up blearily, looking up at Snape's eyes filled with loathing.

Snape would look into his eyes: bright, fervent green eyes. Snape would stare into his eyes and not speak, breathing harshly in the quiet room, and he, in turn, would sit up, tired and sleepy, until Snape would turn away first to announce testily, "I need another drink."

And he would watch the man stumble out of bed and bang the table for a half-emptied bottle of liquor, and watch the man drink himself to oblivion. Later, Snape would crawl back to bed, his mouth reeking of alcohol, and a scraggy arm would stretch out to him. He would enter into a cold embrace, and watch the old and worn face, brush out a lock of greasy hair and smoothen out a coarse cheek. Snape would flinch, and curl against him.

In such moments, Snape resembled a small boy.

"Shhh," he cooed, and Snape shifted, and soon his chest rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

.

.

A winter passes, then returns, in their place of nowhere.

In the cold winter landscape, he now sips his bitter coffee made from burnt beans and crushed chicory. He passes the time by watching the whiteness around him; on foot, the nearest town would be a few days' journey. He scrunches his face, laughs a little to himself, quietly, so that he would not be heard from the other room. Are you becoming delusional, now Potter, laughing to yourself? Snape would have yelled at him. Mayhap it's time to join the civilized society and look after your legions of fans. Fame is not forever, Potter, and Merlin help us what you would do without it.

Those are old barbs and rants of a lonely old man on the verge of death, and so he does not take them seriously. He is not foolish now, to miss the unspoken fear beneath the man's dark eyes as they stare at him from the unlit room. He does not say to Snape: you lash out like a child, old man. What are you so afraid of? He does not offer: I won't leave you here to die, I brought you here, don't you remember? He does not promise: I will hear whatever it is you want to say to me, I will wait until you muster up that courage of yours, and until then, I will keep my silence.

He is better at looking past the sharp words and sneers; ever since Berlin, Snape, too, is curbing down his instinctive insults and choosing his words with care. His words are poisonous, but it is a vileness that Harry can defend himself against.

He has aged here, it seems. He looks down at his fingers and sees a man's hand. If he reaches up to touch his chin, he can feel a slight stubble running alongside his face. He feels old, brushing past the rough surface of his face.

You would like it here, Draco, he thinks. Or, then again, perhaps not. The food is horrible and the coffee is barely tolerable. There are no house elves to do your bidding. There is only silence around this place—well, except for the complaints of your dear old godfather. He's alive, did you know that? A vagabond in his older years, now stranded out in the ends of the earth by following the whims of his former and still abominable pupil. And yet, it is a place you had once imagined for us, with nothing and nobody about. I could hunt here, out in the wilderness, and you could tend to the fire. We could fight and kill each other, and our bodies would not be found for weeks.

But—what can I say to you, fragment of my mind? I reach out and piece together our past memories, because this is all I have left of you. I speak to you as I have never done when we were together. At times, I almost believe that you were once compassionate and understanding of my needs, so deluded I have been inside my own head. I remember your wry smile, but I do not try to reminiscence over your coldness.

It must stop. I must stop.

He shakes his head. He feels a little lighter, a little sadder.

It is a start.

.

.

On days when Snape's hands are not shaking from dousing his bottle, Snape writes fervently, crouched against a wooden desk with poor lighting. Snape wears glasses on his hooked nose, and scuffles his papers and glares at Harry maliciously when he tries to take a look.

"Is that your own magnus opus?" he tries to joke.

Snape bares his teeth at him. "It's my last will and testament," he says roughly. "Never you mind, Potter, go dabble in your hunting spree."

He does not ask Snape what is written in the pages and leaves the man to silently brood.

At night, Harry reads to him: old, tattered books that have worn with age, broken spines and folded pages that he smoothens over as he recites each word diligently and slowly. Snape is often irritated by his slowness but his hands are too weak to hold the book properly. What he does is glare at the ceiling and add contemptuous comments over the brief silences as he reads on by the candlelight.

He reads poetry, some days he reads authors that he has not heard of, some days he would read about a dreadfully boring report on science that had long faded into obscurity. He does not read anything on magic, it should go without saying.

.

.

In the north, Snape's health rapidly falls.

Perhaps it was the cold, or perhaps it was the copious amount of liquor Snape drank each night; or perhaps, it was simply Snape's grim determination to die. Whatever it is, he observes how Snape's cheeks would become sunken and shallow, and how his skin would stretch across his cheekbones. He does not ask Snape to live. He does not beseech of his own merciful death. He watches the man breathing shallowly, steadily, and thinks: it won't be long now.

Snape looks back at him with a cold smile.

"You shouldn't have come up here," he says, on one of his more sentimental outbursts, when at night the wind blows around their little hut, and he feels alone and afraid of their complete isolation, "I shouldn't have made you—it's all my fault, isn't it? But you said yes. You weren't supposed to say yes."

"Is that remorse talking?" Snape replies without opening his eyes. "Or just a poor attempt to soothe your conscience?"

"I don't want you to die," he insists.

"No, instead, you alone wish to die and make me dance around your pyre," Snape murmurs. He sounds weak. "How very selfish you are, Potter. You still have years ahead of you to contemplate morality."

He sits next to the dozing man, feeling small and miserable. He watches how Snape's chest rises and falls in a feeble rhythm. For the first time, he feels a surge of affection for this dying man, tormentor of his youth in many ways, and he only feels such emotions because he knows that Snape is on the verge of dying. He holds Snape's hand and does not let go. Snape's hand, it is cold and hard, like a rigid corpse.

Snape dozes and awakes through the night, and in his sleep, Snape twists his lips and lets out a small gasp; he leans forward and shakes the trembling body. Snape opens his eyes and looks at him, disoriented.

"A bad dream," he says dumbly, and in another fit of desperation he implores, "But you can't die. Snape. Look at me."

"Not yet," Snape mutters, eyes closing again. "No, not yet."

But Snape has been wearing a blank expression on his face for some days now, and his movements are faltering. Snape sleeps and talks in a flat, otherworldly voice that frightens him. He watches over Snape, helpless and waiting, as the man slips into a restless slumber. If only Snape would raise his voice into a feral shout; that would have been less frightening than the tranquility Snape offered to him.

"Read to me," Snape commands in a weak voice, "I can't bear to see your eyes. It's—"and Snape coughs and shakes his head, his look bewildered. "Say something," Snape whispers, "And none of your insipid begging, Potter, I won't have it. No, say something I wouldn't be able to insult out of you."

He opens his mouth and the words flow out of him before he can think.

You were my death: you I could hold while everything slipped from me.

He whispers the words to the dying man, repeats it in words foreign to him, du warst mein Tod…and Snape finishes the last lines in a rasping voice, smiling ironically, as he slowly opens his eyes, black orbs gleaming with black fire as they stare into him.

"I do not consider my life in vain," Snape says, "not when I have succeeded in teaching you German."

"You've taught me Potions too," he feels the need to point out.

Snape makes a small, agonized laugh. "That was a long time ago. You were a stupid boy back then."

"And you, you were a foul git of the highest order."

"It is regretful that your word choices still have much to be desired," Snape says, "Pity I won't be around to change that."

Before he can come up with a suitable reply, Snape reaches out and touches his hand. His hand is stiff. When he looks up to meet Snape's eyes, he finds that they are serene, weary.

"Hold back your thoughts," he murmurs, "Your thoughts are just as disastrous as your words, Potter."

He manages a smile.

.

.

One morning, he enters the room and finds Snape immobile and stiff. Snape's face is utterly devoid of everything, a clean, smooth expression that he had never seen while the man was alive.

He feels for the pulse unnecessarily.

Snape does not move.

He strips off the bedcovers and looks under the pillow. There is Snape's old wand, worn with age, cracked with fingerprints and indented nails. He rolls the stick between his fingers. He does not feel the magic. But the movement gives him a sense of peace, and he tries to recall how he had once swished his wand and he his voice sounded when he rang out a spell.

On the desk he finds a stack of loose papers all scrawled with Snape's writing. He does not think to read any of them, but he finds his name on one of the sheets. The other is addressed to his mother.

He reads the letter and he cannot make out Snape's declarations, Snape's confessions to him, and as he reaches the last lines of the letter and reads you were my death, he pauses and heaves a breath. He looks again at Snape's unmoving body and chokes back a laugh.

"You old fool," he says, and forgets himself. He laughs with abandon until he cries.

He builds a pyre.

Stack by stack, he arranges the wood around Snape's body. His fingers are red and they soon bleed from the cold and the wind, but he does not relent, and he raises and shifts the woodpile until he cannot move his fingers. He blows a breath impatiently against his palm and rubs his hands. He does not look at Snape's serene face as he builds the pile higher. He does not look, not even when it is too late to look and Snape is surrounded by wood.

At last, when the pyre is high enough for his satisfaction, he takes out Snape's wand. The wind is howling now, and the sun is about to set. All around, the snow glistens with the reddened light of the setting sun, and darkness would soon be upon him. He raises the wand.

"Incendio," he whispers. The spell is foreign on his tongue after so many years. With a sudden cry, he lifts his arm and bellows, "INCENDIO!"

The wand sparks, and the wood catches fire. The pile burns rapidly, and he feels the heat against his cheek, and he is almost afraid that he too, would be swallowed by the fire. A memory stirs and he is once again younger, wilder. But he stays and watches. The wind surrounds them, and he could smell the burning wood, the smoke, and Snape's flesh. He stands there until there is nothing left to smell expect for the burning, rotting flesh, and even then he does not move. The fire crackles and sputters; and slowly the flames died out with the black smoke with the occasional flare. He watches as the pile extinguishes itself, and he sees, and does not see.

The night is dark and overwhelming when the fire is finally gone.

.

.

He returns.

He travels from east to west through the multiple train rides alone, with only a flimsy coat and a tattered bag. It is the same bag he had carried to Snape's hovel all those years ago. He only buys his cigarettes and eats the food that is offered to him without a smile. In his head there are no more words and letters to be written, no more grievances he must pour out.

But for a brief time, he stays in Berlin, and his footsteps, involuntarily, leads him down Friedrichstraße and he walks past the Brandenburger Tor, and he weaves through the people with their sullen and glum faces, and when he finally stops, heaving a little, it is in front of the row and row of grey walls, slabs, that tower higher and deeper as he looks further into the horizon.

"What is this place," he mutters to himself, and impulsively, he strides between the slabs, deeper and deeper, into the row of walls, until he feels an unexpected chill. He shoulders on until he could not see the light, and he walks until he cannot walk further, and he feels great, infinite terror. He touches his throat and chokes a little. He feels as if cannot be happy ever again, and he stands in the middle of that abhorred place, and suddenly, he convulses and crouches down, gasping.

He faints.

When he awakes, it is on a clean bed and a stern-looking woman is fussing over him. She pursues her lips when he stirs, almost as if she is disappointed in his recovery.

She speaks to him rapidly, in a language that Snape had failed to teach him, except for a pointlessly morose poem, and he stares at her confused and tired, and when she stops to take a breath, he hesitantly says that he cannot speak the language in English, and as soon as he speaks, the woman changes her expression of pity and bewilderment. She looks at him anew, almost in contempt and incredulity.

"But you are Britisch, Herr—" she stops herself and repeats dumbly, almost angrily, "Britisch! Ich dachte, dass—" and she checks herself, presses her lips together tightly; abruptly, he is banished out of the clean bed and the hospital, and is shown the bills with utmost speed and formality.

He takes a train out of Berlin that night, and he does not make any more stops.

.

.

He returns on a winter night, cold and shivering as the authorizes sternly ask to see his papers. He gives everything to them; first to the Muggles, then to the Ministry, and one looks upon him with puzzlement, the other with complete enrapture.

"But it cannot be—!" the woman whispers, looking horrified, darting her eyes between his papers and his face. "But you are—" And she cannot finish her sentence, and at that moment, her wide eyes and her sudden gasp, it is all very repulsive for him, but no sudden anger overtakes him, only a wry resignation. The witch's magic washes over him naturally, as she inspects him, again and again. He gives her a thin smile and does not offer any words. By tomorrow, the entire wizarding world of Britain would know, no doubt.

.

.

But for his friends, it does not take them even that long. A few hours pass in Grimmauld Place, the ghastly place he thought he had once renounced forever, and there is a sudden knock. He does not even try to hide away from them and opens the door.

Ron comes in first, his stunned face making him bite back a laugh, and he even gestures to his friend with a wave of his hand to come in. He is not surprised to see them, only—he cranes his neck and look past Hermione, who is looking at him quite coldly and blankly, and sees Draco Malfoy, looking haggard and even more rattled than Ron. They meet eyes and he lets his lips curl, involuntarily, and at his sudden change in expression, Draco looks away quickly.

"Well, aren't you going to invite the rest of us in?" Hermione says, quite calmly. She had caught the look he had given Draco.

"Yes, of course, help yourself." And he steps aside to let them all pass, and he does not know what face he is making, only knows that he will not talk about anything he does not want to, he will not explain himself, will not justify anything.

"It's a bit late to be making social calls," he says affably, and he looks about them, as soon as they have gathered in the main parlor. Ron chokes a little at his words but Hermione straightens herself and gives him a cool look.

"Extraordinary circumstances," she says evenly, but her eyes quickly water; she looks away from him and glares at the wall. "It's lucky that Ron's an Auror now—he's the one who told us that there was a sudden mayhem at the Ministry—"

"Are you?" he says warmly, wearing a smile that feels awkward in his face. "Congratulations, Ron, I missed that part of—"

"Yes, you did," Hermione cuts in, hurriedly, "And you've also missed my promotion in Legal Enforcement, it was all very grand, a lot of fanfare, no Muggle has ever been hailed in such a rapid promotion, did you know? And you've missed our wedding, Ron and I are married now, not that would have been any surprise, of course, but all the same—"

"Hermione," Ron tries to interject, but Hermione snaps at him.

"No, let me finish, Ronald, Harry here, he didn't see any of that, maybe he won't believe me when I say—"

"No, I believe you," he says, smiling, and Hermione grins at him, furious, her eyes shining.

"Yes, yes, of course you do, but Ron, show him the ring, see, you've also missed the engagement party too, that goes without saying. Molly was besides herself, and Draco—" And Hermione stops, her eyes blinking rapidly, her breath coming out in short intervals, and he looks at her and loves her as he always had, but he does not love her enough, feel enough remorse to walk towards her and hug her trembling frame.

"We're friends now, aren't we, Draco?" She turns to Draco, but doesn't wait for him to reply, and snorts out a little laughter. "Yes, very odd, isn't it, and after everything you've said to persuade me to see how wonderful Draco's changed! He knows about that too, by the way—I threw quite a couple of things at him before I came about, even shouted a lot of rubbish, and he was ever so humble about it, he even said that I had a right to insult him—only, he can't quite let go of the old ways, he still calls me Granger, even now…"

"Granger," Draco now says, finally speaks, and his voice is taut and weary. "You're overexciting yourself."

"And do you remember what you said about him, Harry?" Hermione goes on, ignoring Draco completely, "There were a lot of grand things you've said—do you still believe them? You really should have brought him about to us, you never quite did, maybe that was the problem, but still, that doesn't make it okay for you to just suddenly disappear without a word and have everyone go all frantic, does it?" Hermione stares at him, wearing a queer smile, and her eyes challenge him to speak, only he cannot speak, vowed to himself that he would not explain.

He opens his mouth.

"Hermione, I—"

And he hears footsteps before he registers the slap. He feels his head turn, he feels the sharp stinging of his cheeks, the blood rushing through his ears. Instinctively, his hand goes up to touch his face, and he feels how hot one side of the face is. His fingers move around his face, and he realizes that his lips have not moved yet; he is still smiling like a loon.

"You idiot," Hermione says savagely, and her voice is hard and cold, unforgiving. "You utter moron, you can't just expect to come here after you left us and—"

She pauses. Her voice hitches and she is no longer angry, she is young, younger than he had ever known her, a sad and lost voice that implores him.

"I've missed you," she says. "Ron's missed you, Draco's—Harry, doesn't that matter? Didn't we matter to you? You were just gone, one day, no note, nothing, and do you know how we've worried, how we've—"

"I know," he says dumbly, and before Hermione could hit him again, he has her in his arms, and repeats, soothingly, numbly, "I know" and only then does Hermione burst into tears, sobbing against his chest, wrapping her arms around him tightly, and he strokes her hair, and murmurs the two inconsequential words, I know, I know. Those are the only words he can say to her.

Ron looks away.

"You won't go away again, then?" Ron asks gruffly. "I mean…you won't leave without a warning next time, yeah?"

"Yes," he says. Ron grunts.

"You don't sound better," Ron says. "I thought that all the disappearing act was to make you better."

"No," he agrees quietly.

"You sound very formal." Ron turns his head and narrows his eyes. "You haven't forgotten I'm your best mate, have you? What were you doing all this time, getting rid of amnesia spells?"

"Shut up, Ron, I've already yelled at him enough for two," came Hermione's muffled words.

"Like a banshee," Ron says with a rueful grin. "I—look, we're going to go," he adds, quickly looking in Draco's direction, who had yet to move or yet to look away from Harry, "We can talk tomorrow, I mean, of course we'd like to stay and chat, scream at you a bit more, but I expect Malfoy here wants to talk to you first, alone."

"Yes, thank you for that input, Weasley," Draco says flatly, but Ron does not look offended. He only gives a grim little smile to Draco, which is not returned.

"This house has been neglected for years," Draco continues, in a curiously quiet voice, "If you'll agree, we can go to my house."

"Not the Manor," he says immediately, and he takes one steps back; Hermione frees herself and looks between him and Draco with her tear-stained eyes. Draco does not look away.

"No, not the Manor," Draco agrees. "I don't live there anymore."

He does not drop his smile. "Pity," he says. "It was a very grand house."

Draco does not answer to that. At last, Draco drops his head.

Coward, he thinks, tired. Another man comes to mind.

.

.

Draco has a small residence near central London, a tidy flat. He walks in and notices the lack of magic riveting around him. It is plainly furnished and dark.

"It's late," Draco says carefully. "I have a bed made up in the other room, you can—"

"Yes, that would be lovely," he says easily. He does not drop his smile as he turns his head and looks at Draco, who is looking back as he would a stranger. "It's been a long day."

"Yes," Draco says, and stares at him intently. He meets those eyes with calmness.

"It's a guest room," Draco continues on, with precision and stiffness, "And you're welcome to stay as long as you want, of course."

"I'll be gone in the morning, you don't need to worry about me," he replies pleasantly, and with his words, Draco's lips twist and his face contorts.

"I—yes, that would've been your answer, that's what you'd have said, but I thought—" and Draco drops his calm demeanor and he even laughs a little, a despairing chuckle; all the while, he does not flinch at Draco's sudden turn of emotions and observes quietly.

"You returned," Draco says.

He nods.

"And you'll stay?"

"Not with you," he says, smiling, "After everything, I don't think that would be quite—"

"Damn your words," Draco snaps, "Weasley's right, you've changed the way you speak. It's disconcerting."

He shrugs a little. "I'll be gone in the morning." He repeats, "If this bothers you, I can always go to Diagon Alley, I'm sure—"

"That wasn't what I meant," Draco says immediately, and he walks over to him, grabbing his arm roughly lest he might escape. "That wasn't what I meant at all."

"Okay," he says, and tries to shake off Draco's grip. Draco holds onto him stubbornly. "Then if you don't mind—I'm really very tired—"

"Is there nothing," Draco says, and in those words, there is an emotion that Draco had not shown him yet, despair and desperation that he thought only he was capable of feeling, and he jerks in surprise, and he thinks, so Draco is still capable of unnerving me, "nothing at all you want to say to me?"

He stares. Draco is beseeching him with his grey eyes, begging him to grant him something he could no longer give, and the more he looked at Draco Malfoy, the more bemused and scornful he felt.

But I cannot, he thinks, looking at Draco.

But I will not, he resolves, then looking away.

"No," he says, tired and hollow, "No, nothing."

Draco does not say anything to that immediately. But when he tries to pull away from the other man, he finds that the grip has only tightened, and he lets out a small sound of impatience.

"Malfoy," he begins to say, but at that moment, Draco shoves him against the wall, and he finds that he is breathing into Draco's mouth, hot and moist, and when he tries to raise his arms, he finds that Draco has them ensnared. He ceases to struggle and closes his eyes. The darkness is familiar. So is the feeling of ennui, the feeling of complete emptiness.

How do I go on living? he asks, to Snape's unanswered letter.

.

.

Draco drags him into a dark bedroom, and he follows him, stumbling, without a fight and he takes off his own clothes. Draco pushes him towards the bed roughly and he lets himself be maneuvered into a pliable position. He looks up at the ceiling as something cold enters him, and he does not make a sound. Draco leans down, and their lips meet again, roughly, almost violently, and Draco soon peppers and licks and bites his neck and shoulders. He arches and Draco presses him down again, and Draco does not allow him to get up, Draco surrounds him and pins his wrists and legs with his own lanky form.

Draco fucks in a rough, uneven rhythm and fills him up, and when that's all over, he pulls out and fingers him until Harry is sore and aching and empty, and still Draco doesn't stop, his fingers scissoring inside him, thrusting in and out, moving steadily even as he writhes first in pleasure and later in pain. But Harry does not beg. Even when Draco reaches up to card his fingers through his hair and yanks at it, even when he leaves a trail of red bits against his skin, even when the fingers do not stop moving and Harry is ready to cry—he doesn't. He cannot. It's the last concession he would not offer.

And all the while Draco watches him: his thin, pointed face with those maddeningly grey eyes open wide and hungry, and Draco watches him sigh and gasp and scream, even as his fingers busily rip him apart.

"Potter," Draco whispers, and when Harry does not lift his head up to meet those eyes, when he stubbornly continues to bury his head in the pillows and fist the sheets until his hands are white from the pain, Draco whispers, "Harry. Harry, look at me."

He doesn't. He instead feels his neck kissed and licked and bitten, he feels hot breath ghosting alongside his nape, he feels hands running across his ribs, grasping his hips. He hears a high-pitched cry and a hissing sigh.

You are repulsive, he thinks. It is an indifferent thought; yes, he is surprised at the very coldness of his appraisal.