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He’s cold looking, like if she were to press her hand against his face it would come away with a thin layer of frost. His eyes are nothing more than chinks of ice and his mouth is permanently set in a scowl as if he knew something that they didn’t. As the rest of them laughed and lived, Draco Malfoy merely observed solemnly, like the world was overdue for catastrophe. Maybe he thought it made him look older.
She thinks it just makes him look tired.
--
She walks like a wildfire, flames lap and blister him from a distance and her hair springs up with a life of it’s own. It’s her spirit, he thinks, that makes him spend more and more time trying to take her in. Like a glass of embers, it sets his chest ablaze as he struggles to choke it down. The world is slowly turning upside down and he’s struggling to hold onto something solid that can withstand the coming storm.
His fingers snag onto her right as the ground gives out.
--
A serpent twists to fit any shape it needs to crush the life from its prey. She’s come too far to lose her way now but it’s harder to execute plans when death lingers so close around the bend. Her resolve deteriorates and her feet grow heavy with fear, and the even greater horror that for the first time in her life she was truly and honestly been afraid. It’s a numbing feeling, the sinking doubt that this was for nothing and in the end she’ll die just as the others did before her and all that will be left is a corpse lying on the marble steps of the Great Hall. The revolution is here and maybe Draco Malfoy was onto something.
In the night she thinks maybe he is just as afraid as she is.
--
He draws tarot cards from the musty deck in the empty divination classroom. Something to tell him that his fate isn’t set in stone and there’s still a chance he can run as far as his legs can carry him. Six cards laying orderly on the desk, burned and crusted over with wax. He can’t decipher the symbols but the skulls speak for themselves and for the first time in years he weeps. The sins of his forefathers weigh heavy on his shoulders, the inevitability that he would pay for their crimes seeped deep into his skin. But he’s seen the blood of the impure for himself, it runs thick down the walls of his home, and the thing that shakes him the most is that he cannot tell the difference between theirs and his. In the moments before the dawn as he sits alone he thinks of Hermione Granger.
He wonders what color her blood is.
--
There’s a muggle theory she remembers reading about once in a musty bookstore in London. A possibility of multiple universes strung together on lines of string that occupy the spaces between atoms that can’t be seen. Every choice generates a new universe. When her heart races so fast she think it will cease beating she reflects on every little loose thread. A universe where Voldemort had been smothered in his crib. A universe where she had been born without magic. Infinite galaxies and dimensions.
She clenches her fists and lingers on the universe where pale fingers drift over her lips.
--
It’s a sum of every panic attack and nightmare that prevents him from going back to sleep. He’s tearing at the seams, feeling the delicate stitches fray and unravel and she’s the only thing he can see anymore. Maybe it’s because he’s losing it too, that he can see how her shoulders sag under the strain of being depended on. Even Atlas bent under the weight of the world but she refuses to show even a moment’s weakness. Childish rivalries are behind them, the harsh reality of war has made their bodies lean and wiry. In the small hours of the morning he finds her sitting alone in a corridor, the dark circles under her eyes mirroring his in the most beautiful way. Sallow faces, indescribably unique like the veins on a butterfly wing.
The night they kiss is the first night in six months he sleeps soundly.
--
Their world is imploding and she fervently hopes they are the last thing to burn out. One moment of brilliance and then it’s over. In the safety of the dark she asks him in small breaths what he thinks it will feel like. He never replies, but she feels the chill from his skin saturate the sheets and it’s an answer all on its own. In the blackness it’s okay to fall apart. He traces the ridges of her ribs and hums so softly it could be parseltongue, their secrets tumbling out like waves beating against rocks. They lock themselves away from eyes that wouldn’t understand, and when dawn comes they resume their roles.
She’s never had a secret like him before.