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Everything is white.
White are the flakes falling from the sky, the soft feathers of the peacocks sliding through the frosted hedges. White is the hair of the boy running in the snow, up through the path to the grand house.
Everything is silent.
Silent is the night, caught under a mystic spell. Silent are the boy’s footsteps, muffled by the carpet of snow. Silent is water cascading from the frozen fountain, still in the centre of the garden, as if waiting for someone to set it free.
Everything is blurred.
The edges are hazy, like a kaleidoscope that keeps whirling and turning, confusing the images in one, swirling patch of white. Behind close eyelids, it all feels like a dream. It feels like it never truly happened.
Draco opens his eyes. Everything blends together, the past and the present are one. There is a boy who dreams of love, the kind of love that only exists in fairy tales. He dreams of dancing in the snow, while snowflakes waltz and the deserted garden turns into a ballroom. There is a man looking for that boy, for that lost dream, hoping they’re still there, buried somewhere in the snow.
Everything is the same. The snow, the frost, the peacocks swaying their majestic tails, the starless night. Only Draco has changed. He’s older now, and doesn’t believe in dreams anymore. Even the house hasn’t changed, faint music coming from the closed windows. People are celebrating and dancing inside, but Draco doesn’t belong there. He belongs here, in the snow. In the silence. In the land of lost dreams.
Years ago there was a boy bowing to the peacocks, dancing with an invisible partner, every step light and airy, carefree as only youth can be. Now that boy is gone, and with him every hope of fulfilling that dream. Draco’s heart is like a dried rose, its petals frozen and ready to crumble under the tight grip of a cruel world.
The silence is broken. A series of rhythmic thuds echo in the stillness. Footsteps. Coming to a halt right behind Draco. But he doesn’t turn around. He’s too scared of what he’ll find on the other side. A voice whispers his name. His voice. Warm and hopeful, just like Draco’s always dreamed. And yet he doesn’t turn around. He fears this dream is going to vanish if he so much as blinks.
Oh, how cruel is our mind, when it supplies with the most compelling dreams, only to take them back in the blink of an eye. But Draco’s learned his lesson. He doesn’t fall for it anymore. Now he only believes in what he sees, and before him there is only snow. Just an infinite, reassuring, stretch of snow, white and pure and perfect as he once was too. That’s why he comes back here. That’s why this place feels like home.
The voice behind him keeps calling and calling, like the wind blowing in the dead of night, and Draco is torn between the familiar and the unknown, between the possibility of happiness and the certainty of comfortable misery that awaits him if he doesn’t look back.
Hope is the last thing to die, they say, and so he does finally turn around, only to find his dream is right in front of him. Whether he’s made of snow, or simply of thin air, Draco can’t say, but his one true love is right there, a gentle hand outstretched in an invitation to dance. To dance in the snow.
And Draco’s mind is reeling, because this can’t be real. Dreams don’t really come true, do they? Not when you’ve lost them on a cold winter so many years before. Not when they’ve flown away with the icy wind. And yet Harry is there, and he’s real, more real than he’s ever been before. And his eyes are kind, just like everything else, while he makes them twirl around the garden.
The spell is broken, the frost is gone, and the fountain in Draco’s mind starts flowing again, dreams streaming freely as if he was a boy again, as if all those years never passed, never happened. They did, and Harry dances with him anyway. He bows to Draco anyway, like a lover bows to his prince, like he deserves all of this.
And Draco understands. Love is not about deserving or earning. It is about meeting another soul, one that’s so similar to yours they can dance together, playing a music that only they can understand. A perfect chord they can only sing together.
Now he knows it’s real. Love is not a distant dream anymore. It’s there, and it’s his. Forever. And even if he closes his eyes, love will still be there when he opens them again.