another random snippet

[plumforests]

Draco walks into the coffee shop, and everything else melts.

Draco walks in, and the world slips away. 

The edges of reality dissolve, leaving only him—the first star in a lost sky, abandoned by a dying sun. 

Time curls itself around him, vicious, holding him still—beautiful, suspended—while all else caves into the hollow ache of memory. And there he stands—untouched, unreachable—the pale shadow of the universe drifting at his feet.

Harry stands behind the counter, just like any other day.

Harry stands, the steady rhythm of his routine, the gentle thrum of being, slowly unravelling into something darker, something that coils within him, sharp and insistent.

Everything is normal.

Draco walks in, and Harry feels it, a quivering in the air, a quiet tearing of something beneath the surface—like nothing will ever be the same again.

Everything is normal.

Except—

That can’t be right.

But there it is—the shift in the air, subtle at first, barely a whisper, a cold ripple at the edge of his mind. 

He should know him—Draco. He does know him. And yet—haven’t they only just met? 

Strangers adrift, reaching out across the divide, fumbling to grasp at something like friendship.

But now, watching Draco—beautiful, eternal—Harry feels something rip open in his mind. 

Something deeper than recognition; something more. 

Memory.

A memory, stark and unfamiliar, carving its way into his consciousness.

It settles within him, strange and heavy, like it’s still writing itself into being.

He should have only met Draco a few times, and yet…

This is wrong. 

Twelve years.

Twelve years? How could he have forgotten—or has time truly folded in on itself, slipping Draco into the quiet crevices of his childhood?

A memory that should not, could not have existed—but now, it does.

He remembers. 

Draco had been there, standing as he is now, unchanged, untouched, as though not a day has passed.

Time collapses around them, and Draco stands in the centre, ageless, as if he’s the only thing that’s ever been real.

 

 

“Harry.”

Draco’s voice slices through the air like a silver arrow, but the name, his name, misses its mark. Instead, it strikes the surface of a lake, and Harry watches the syllables ripple, scattering through the glass. Beneath it, the sky hangs suspended in the water, caught between worlds. For a moment, Harry sees his own face reflected there, whole—then it shatters, splintering into a thousand shards. Each fragment dissolves into an echo, sinking into the unknown depths.

Had Draco sought to anchor him, tether him back towards the light? 

But now he’s adrift, lost in the vast, uncharted sea of himself, his own name fading in and out in waves, slipping out of reach.

“Harry,” Draco whispers again, softer this time, but the sound echoes louder than ever, magnified across the void, a prayer sent out to all the fragments of him scattered through the water. 

But it’s too late—the sky has already begun to fall.

The sky is Harry’s mind, and it’s storming, spiralling out of sync with reality. Time isn’t real—it had twisted and stretched thin, unwinding in broken threads, and there’s Draco in the centre of it all, like a lighthouse, shining pale gold under the last remnants of a dead star, his beautiful face carved from the light of lost mornings.