Title: Masque of the Uncrowned King

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Warnings: Established relationship, angst, mentions of violence, a few surreal scenes

Rating: R

Wordcount: 2800

Summary: Harry dreams of Draco as being a horrible criminal, but the waking Draco is no prize, either.

Author's Notes: Another Advent fic, for 0idontknow0, who asked for a fic based on these lines from "Atrophy" by The Antlers: In your dreams I'm a criminal, horrible, sleeping around. While you're awake, I'm impossible, constantly letting you down. I interpreted them pretty literally, other than there being actual infidelity. The word "masque" in the title can be interpreted either as an alternate spelling of the word "mask," or as the word for the court pageant with elaborate costumes and music.

Masque of the Uncrowned King

Harry stood in front of Draco, staring around the room. It was mostly made of tile and harder things, the walls inlaid with what seemed to be mosaics, showing a parade. In the front of the parade walked a tall young man who looked like Draco, pale and naked, with blond hair down to his waist that partially shielded him. On his head was a single thin band of gold that might have been a crown. Behind him came dancing skeletons, walking arm in arm with women, men, children, and even carrying crows on their shoulders or leading horses along by the manes.

Harry knew without asking, without knowing how he knew, that those people the skeletons led were people Draco had betrayed, tricked, hurt, perhaps stolen from, perhaps caused the death of. Even crows couldn't feed on what he left. Even horses weren't strong enough to bear the burdens he carried with him.

"Are you going to face me, Harry?"

Harry turned around, shivering, and not just because the room was cold, without heated floors or walls to reduce the impact of all that tile. Draco stood there with his arms folded, lounging against the wall, his smile small and pleasant and no crown on his head.

That didn't make him less a king, Harry knew. A king that conquered people like Harry, people who loved him but should have known better, people who would follow him even if he led them straight to death. And really, other than the length of his hair and the crown, Draco looked exactly like the representation of the king in the mosaic.

"You know that I'm no good for you," Draco said, bowing his head. He examined one fingernail. Harry looked at it automatically, expecting it to be at least chipped if it was so worthy of Draco's attention instead of him, but then he caught sight of Draco's small, half-hidden smile, and knew that Draco's focus on his own fingernail had been intended to make Harry look.

"How can you be like this?" Harry whispered. "Don't you care about anyone?"

"I care about myself, of course." Draco lifted his head and looked surprised for the first time in Harry's experience, meeting his eyes straight on. "Why would I do things like this to enrich myself if I didn't?"

"But—you're my lover," Harry said, and took a step, hand held out. Draco didn't move, but he met Harry with a look of such bold amusement that Harry dropped his hand. He tried not to remember that it had been that particular smile that had attracted him, the first night he and Draco spent together. "Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

Draco cocked his head, seeming to mumble over the idea. Then he shook his head. "I'm your lover because I like spending time with you and sleeping with you," he explained patiently. "That doesn't mean that I—oh, I don't know. What exactly do you think a lover should be like, as a Gryffindor?"

They didn't talk like that, they had left House distinctions behind a long time ago as meaningless, but Harry found himself answering. "That you feel attached to me. That you would be sad if you lost me. That you care about me and value my safety."

Draco sighed, a long noise like a cold wind whistling down a tunnel. "Exactly! I don't feel any of those things. Of course I don't. Did you expect me to? I'm going to be the one who leaves you, not the other way around. You know perfectly well that you would never leave me of your own free will. And I'll keep you safe while I have you, the same way I would any other treasured possession, but not afterwards."

Harry stared at him with tears freezing in his eyes like crystal. "Draco," he whispered.

Draco nodded to the mosaic, and his voice was almost gentle. "You should have heeded the warnings while you still had the chance, Harry. They did try, you know."

Harry opened his eyes. He had reached out a hand even before he did, and he knew that the bed beside him was cold.

He had asked Draco to stay the night—not because he knew he would have that particular nightmare, but because it was the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, and he never slept well on that night. Draco sometimes was there in the morning, sometimes wasn't, and although he had arched a perfect brow at Harry over this particular request, he had agreed without much thought.

He would have left without much thought, too, Harry knew.

Harry winced and turned over on his side, wriggling beneath the blankets as though they might comfort him for the loss of his lover. His face was wet with tears. His back felt as chill as though Draco had splashed cold water on the bed before he left. His hands clenched and unclenched. If Draco was in reach at the moment, he might have punched him in the face—maybe.

That maybe was always the problem. Draco would do something horrid, or careless, like this, and then Harry would think about breaking up with him. And then Draco would do something else that shone like a falling star, carelessly scattering these particles of light and brilliance that filled Harry's life and made him feel as he knew he would never feel with anyone else.

Harry shut his eyes and clutched the edge of his pillow until he knew that he had come near ripping the cloth. It didn't stop the tears making their way down his cheeks, and he would never treat Draco the same way. Despite the protests of his friends, despite everything that he hated about Draco, that dream was right. Draco was the uncrowned king of Harry's life, and he would follow him.

All the way to death?

And there was that maybe again.

"You knew," Draco whispered into his ear as they waltzed across another mosaic. Harry hadn't had the time to see what was beneath his feet yet; they whirled too fast. And he knew that he was never that graceful on his own feet, in his own life, which meant this was another dream.

Maybe it would be easier to dispel the maybe in the dream.

"I knew what?" Harry snapped, twisting around so that he could look into Draco's face. Draco only chuckled and kissed him on the tip of the nose for his efforts. Harry felt his heart begin leaping and the blood surge into his face. He wanted to duck his head and hide from the open amusement shining in Draco's eyes.

He kept his head up and his hands from trembling with an effort so strong that it almost made him faint. Even in dreams he could faint; even around a dream Draco he wasn't firm enough to hold his own.

That thought annoyed him so much that he yanked away from Draco and stood on his own two feet, his arms folded. Draco came to a stop, his arms still out, his eyebrows rising. He looked so bereft that Harry flinched, and then damned himself for flinching, too.

To distract himself, he looked down into the mosaic that he had been avoiding so far. It looked as though they had trampled it a little in their dancing. Small pieces of glass were missing from the center, and jewels from along the sides. Enough remained that he could get a sense of what it portrayed, though.

His face. They had been dancing on his face. And behind him, no more than a suggestion of white tiles, given that this was one part of the mosaic that their dance had disturbed, was a hovering pair of hands that hung as if they would cover his eyes in a moment. Harry bit his lip hard enough to make the blood run and turned away.

"Why do that? You can't run away from me."

The pride, the simple certainty, in Draco's voice, made Harry open his eyes and glare at him. "I can do whatever the fuck I want," he snarled at Draco, and he didn't try to make his voice soft. "I'm still in charge of my own destiny."

Draco laughed, the rich laughter that Harry loved, the kind that said something entertaining was always about to happen, even though it might not be fun for him. "Really? Didn't you notice?"

He gestured to the mosaic beneath their feet, and Harry looked down. It had changed. Behind his face was another head, a glimpse of blond hair, and hovering over it was what he at first took for a halo. Then he saw it was a crown.

"You can never dispense with me," Draco said softly, walking towards him and leaning in to cover Harry's eyes with his hands the way the mosaic showed him doing. "Because you know that I could dispense with you. The pleasure of having someone in your life who doesn't depend on you for everything is simply too much, too tempting."

When Draco kissed him, Harry felt blood between their lips.

"Where's Malfoy?"

Harry dropped his eyes and mumbled a sort of non-answer that didn't fool Ron and Hermione. Without looking up, he could see them exchanging glances.

But they knew all about the difficulties of his relationship with Draco, if not the reason that he didn't break up with the bastard, as Ron called him, so Hermione did nothing but squeeze his hand comfortingly. Then they flowed past him to mingle with the Weasleys and Andromeda and Teddy and the other people invited to the party.

Harry's birthday party.

The one that Draco had sworn up and down he would be there for, even dropping outrageous hints about the kind of gift that he had bought Harry, and how Harry would be so surprised they would have to scrape his jaw off the floor.

The party wore on, and there was no Draco. The evening passed, and there was no gift. And still Harry knew he would accept the careless, glittering excuse that Draco gave the next time he saw him, because to do otherwise, to demand, would smother the light that Harry increasingly thought he needed to exist.

The problem was, could he go on accepting the darkness that came along with that light?

Harry stood watching a play.

At least, he thought it was a play. He was part of an audience, and in front of him were the actors, all of them in rich costumes that Harry thought were made of satin and velvet. Draco had tried to teach him to recognize different kinds of material, but it was largely in vain. Harry craned his neck forwards, staring at the trailing gowns of blue and black, the breeches and shirts and tunics of even darker green, looking for some sign of Draco.

Then the actors gathered in the middle of the floor—which was another mosaic, Harry saw in a flash, though it looked like this one was an ordinary one made of seastones and shells—and began to sing.

The music vibrated in Harry's bones, and he shivered, raising one hand to scratch at his head. That didn't ease the vibration, though; if anything, it made it worse. Harry ducked his head. The singing was in the middle of his skull, and he shuddered and looked again, wondering if confronting the source of that noise might lead to it being less of a problem.

And…it was.

Because the actors, or most of them, while others spread out in a circle around them to sing, had picked up a single chair draped with so much cloth that it made the chair look like one of the four-posters in Gryffindor, and begun to parade around with the seat, turning it in circles. The curtains that fell from the chair were green and silver, of course, and in the middle of it sat Draco, his arms cocked so that one fist was beneath his chin and his bright, searching eyes roamed over the whole crowd.

He caught Harry's gaze, and winked.

Harry tried to look away, but the chair turned again, and he saw something. There was a simple ring of wood fixed to the top of the chair, partially to hold a floating, transparent section of the curtains in place. As the actors danced, the light caught the ring and shone through it, and left a shadow of it floating on Draco's hair.

Like a crown.

The chair came around while Harry was still standing there, trying to decide what that meant, and Draco looked at him again. This time, he blew Harry a kiss. And he was holding something he hadn't been holding before, something drawn out of a hidden pocket or storage deep in the chair.

A scythe.

Its edge glittered silver. Its handle shone black. It was the perfect replica of the scythe that the skeletons had been carrying in the mosaic of Harry's first dream.

The chair came around a third time, and Draco's hands held nothing. Perhaps Harry had only seen a trailing swathe of curtain, and he'd fooled himself that way.

But the bright way Draco smiled at him said he hadn't.

Harry quietly shut the door to the hospital room behind him, and advanced towards the slender figure in the bed. Her eyes opened as he came closer, and her hand snaked out to hold his.

"Harry," Narcissa whispered. "You came." She coughed, and Harry touched her shoulder. The Healers thought she would survive this disease, but they weren't certain. It was the result of a long, slow curse cast on her after her trial, and the man who had cast it was still in Azkaban, refusing to testify as to what it was.

"Is Draco coming soon?" Narcissa asked, and her eyes roamed over his shoulder, bright with the reflected light that Draco carried with him.

Harry knew the answer was no. Draco was supposed to meet him after work so they could visit Narcissa, but he hadn't. Harry had even waited an extra half-hour in case Draco had just been held up.

But no. He was somewhere else, enjoying his freedom, perhaps enchanting someone with his smile.

"He'll be here soon," Harry said, lying the way he had so many times for Draco that it had become second nature. He sat down in the chair beside the bed. "Andromeda wanted me to tell you what Teddy managed to change himself into the other day."

Narcissa's gaze came back to his, only darkening a little. She was more confident in Draco than he was, or perhaps understood him better. "I'd like that," she said. "Did Teddy finally achieve that wolf form he wanted so much?'

Harry smiled and began to spin the tale, taking care to make it amusing, although it had terrified both him and Andromeda at the time. In his mind, he cursed Draco.

And in his heart, he listened for the opening of the door, the careless apology, the blazing of the light.

Even in a mosaic. Even along a scythe.

The End.