![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
a short fic [drarry]
Oct. 10th, 2024 11:28 pmfalling is just like flying, for us
[words: 3767]
partially written for an exercise on pathetic fallacy...partially because I wanted to throw together some random ideas about the moon and the sun and circles and foils...
“Harry, look at the sun.”
“The sun?”
“Don’t you want to catch it?”
Harry turns, a frown tugging at his lips. “Catch what, Draco?”
The sky is impossibly blue, so clear it’s like they’re on the edge of nothing and everything, and they’re in the clouds, but there are no clouds.
Only the sun, golden, flying in the space between them, the only thing keeping them apart.
The only thing holding them together.
The world lies still beneath them, silent, dreaming. They’re high above the pitch, the grass stretching beneath them, but the only green he can see is the green of Harry’s eyes, and there is no pain.
Never any pain.
They drift, weightless, carried by the dust of fading stars, and everything is golden. There are no clouds, but they’re in the clouds.
“Are you ready, Harry?”
Harry blinks the sun out of his eyes. “Ready for what, Draco?”
“To catch the sun,” he says, and then he dives.
Only the sun melts into the moon, and then they’re deep into the winter, deep into the night.
Draco can see his breath, silver, wistful—the only thing keeping them apart, the only thing holding them together.
The velvet sky curls around them, and there’s only darkness, no colour but the green of Harry’s eyes, gleaming like jewels, brighter than any star.
“Harry, look at the moon.”
“The moon?” Harry says, though it’s right there, hanging upside-down in his eyes like twin teardrops.
There are no clouds, but they’re in the clouds—but the clouds are nothing but the mist of Draco’s breath, and the moon lies suspended between them, on the edge of a fall.
“Yes, Harry. The moon. Throw it to me, and I’ll catch it.”
The moon is already slipping through his fingers, and Harry’s already right in front of him, but still he turns to Draco, frowning.
“I can’t throw you the moon, Draco.”
“Why not?”
“Because the moon belongs to the sky.”
Draco smiles, the corners of his mouth curving up, like they already know the answer. “Don’t be silly, Harry. The sky belongs to us. The whole world does. You taught me that.”
The sky is black and clear as glass, curling around Harry’s face, swallowing his hair, his body. He looks like the moon, made of nothing but light and shadow and emeralds.
“No, I didn’t.”
“But you did, Harry. You just forgot.”
It’s winter, and a layer of frost glistens like a white sheet over the world, but there’s no world, no war, just Harry, just Draco. Just the two of them, flying so high, not even time can catch them.
Draco says, “I’ll throw you the moon, Harry. Will you catch it?”
The moon spins between them like a coin-toss, hovering in the black sky, hanging in the black lake, something eternal on the edge of a question.
Harry’s eyes widen, and for one single, glorious moment, the night is nothing but two boys and two moons, suspended between the stars, only there are no stars, and there are no clouds.
Then the penny drops, drops out of the sky, and Harry dives, and Harry falls.
“Draco,” Harry says, and he’s golden, so golden it hurts to look at him, hurts to see the stars in his eyes, the dying stars. “Draco, didn’t we fall?”
“Yes, Harry. We always fall. But we never hit the ground. Falling is just like flying, for us.”
Harry blinks the stars out of his eyes. “Did I teach you that, too?”
“Of course you did, Harry. You taught me everything I know.”
“Then why don’t I remember?” he asks, and his eyes glisten, but there’s no such thing as tears, only the moon, and the stars, and the shining, shining light.
“It’s not that you don’t remember, Harry. It’s just that you’ve forgotten.”
“Draco. Look at the stars.”
“What about them?”
“There’s no such thing as stars. Don’t you know?”
Draco looks up, but above them, there’s nothing, endless nothing, because they’re at the very top of the sky, the very edge of the world.
He looks back at Harry, and the words fall from his lips like a string of dreams. “You’re right, Harry. There’s no such thing as stars.”
But as he speaks, the sky begins to burn. It burns and it burns, and the emptiness devours, and the diamonds tossed across the night are burning up, too.
The fire doesn’t touch them at first, but when it does, it’s cold as ice.
Draco screams. He screams and screams, but the sound is swallowed whole, and Harry’s eyes are no longer green—they’re golden, molten, scorching into dusk, swirling into September. Like the leaves spiralling into autumn, like they were made to fall.
“Harry, don’t close your eyes!” Draco shouts, but his words disintegrate into ash, crumbling into the blazing, golden night.
Harry says, “Why, Draco? Are you afraid that if I close them, the real world will begin?”
Draco sobs, forgetting, remembering too late that there are no tears here, and Harry closes his eyes.
He closes his eyes, and it’s like the stars are falling, only the stars are raindrops, glinting green, scattering like marbles dropped into the darkness below.
Draco listens, but he can’t hear them plop into the lake. Instead, there’s a sound like glass shattering: a brittle, empty echo that doesn’t stop.
The air swells around them, and the rain is soft at first, just damp mist keeping them aloft, clinging to the clouds, only there are no clouds—nothing but the howling wind, its invisible agony, and it’s the sound of loss, of grief, only Draco knows he’s never lost anything at all. The sound splits the sky open, and suddenly, Harry is wrenched away, carried on a rumbling wave of thunder, and he’s clutching his forehead, and his mouth forms a perfect O, but nothing comes out.
Heaven opens its mouth like a mirror, and the rain falls, and it’s just like them, living only to fall. It pours and it pours, relentless, like a monster unleashed, like a flood, only it’s too hard, too cold to cleanse. It washes over him like a tide, and Draco feels like he’s drowning, not in water, but in air.
Lightning slices the sky, a flash of bright green, and with it comes the bitterness of regret. The sky bleeds like it’s grieving, weeping with him, and he clings desperately to the edge of the world, but it’s futile.
Somewhere in the distance, Harry’s voice calls out to him. “Draco, touch the rain.”
But he’s crying so much it’s inside him, and he can no longer bear to touch it.
“Draco.” The voice sounds far away, but it ripples deep inside his chest. “Draco, can’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?” he gasps, wondering how he’s still not fallen, or maybe he has, maybe this is the fall, only it never stops, never ends.
“Feel the rain, Draco. The weight of it. Don’t you remember? You told me once—water never forgets.”
Draco opens his mouth to reply, but the rain rushes in, filling his ribcage, pouring into his lungs—or is it spilling from his lungs? He can’t tell anymore.
Maybe he’s made of water too, never allowed to forget.
“Don’t be afraid. Be brave, Draco. Can’t you feel it? The weight of memory? Yours, I think.”
“No,” Draco breathes. And then he falls.
It feels like he’s falling through time itself, ripping through history like a star crashing into the lake, igniting the dark and leaving a trail of ruin in its wake, burning up everything before it flickers and fades.
“No, Draco. The stars are just wounds, tracing the sky like scars. Wounds that never healed—but from here, all we see is light. You’re alive, Draco. You’re alive.”
He thinks it can’t be true, he must be dying. Being alive can’t feel so painful, the kind of pain so heavy it could bring the whole world down. The sky keeps bleeding, bleeding out, and all the seconds blur together, blue and black and pink and gold, just like bruises, the ones that darken before they can disappear, the tender ones that ache to touch.
“Don’t you know, Draco? Sometimes the sky turns green when it storms. It’s the water, Draco. The clouds can’t hold it anymore. But isn’t it so beautiful?”
He opens his eyes, even though he doesn’t remember closing them, and when he does, the world is a smudge, and all he sees is green.
When Draco comes to, he’s in a bed. The air is crisp, fresh, and it smells familiar, tastes like innocence and longing and the gorgeous ache of memory, a memory of two boys high up in the sky, clothed in red and green and conflict. The sheets feel soft and damp beneath his touch, and he realises he’s lying in the grass, and it’s warm and it’s real and he’s alive.
The sky cracks a smile, and the clouds shield him from the blinding light of morning. It’s so golden, too golden, but then his vision swims and sharpens, and Harry steps out of the sun.
Harry stands above him, and his eyes are so clear they reflect the world below him—the grass still cradling Draco’s face, the dewdrops clinging to his cheeks, like the earth had wept for him, too. But then he realises it’s not dew, it’s tears. His tears.
It’s Harry and he smiles like he’s never known loss, but Draco remembers now, he has, they both have, and Harry is standing there, smiling like he’s the last drop of light on the horizon, on the edge of hope.
“See? It’s only rain. Just like I told you,” he says, like he’s proud of keeping a promise.
But it’s not just rain. The clouds have returned and dropped the weight of memory onto him, of everything they’ve lost, everything they’ve been. The ache of it, swollen and raw, scraping the inside of his throat. The sky crying, washing away the years, stripping them until they’re back to when they were eleven, when the only war was two boys chasing after the sun.
Draco closes his eyes and whispers, “We’re not eleven anymore,” but he says it like he’s mourning.
But suddenly his eyelids turn inside out, flashing red, and his face is bathed in warmth, and Harry is beside him, lying in the damp grass.
“Oh, Draco,” he says, and it sounds like waking up. “Don’t you know? We’ll always be eleven.”
Draco turns his head, but Harry is staring straight ahead, straight up at the sun, like it’s not blinding, like he can’t bear to look away from something so lovely. And he’s so close Draco can feel his breath ripple the air, and the trees shiver with pleasure, and his dark hair fans out across the grass, reaching out for Draco’s blond, like the night rolling over to kiss the morning.
And he’s so alight, so alive—his Harry, only Harry doesn’t know he’s his, and the ache in Draco’s chest grows stronger, but he can’t feel it because he’s here, he’s really here.
Because he’s alive, in the grass, under an endless blue sky, beside a boy who’s just stepped out of the sun and offered him another chance to live.
“Draco, the storm has passed. Doesn’t it feel so sweet?”
Draco blinks the glass out of his eyes. “But it still hurts.” He doesn’t know if he can tell bitterness from sweetness anymore. Maybe they’ve always been one and the same.
Maybe bitterness is just love smothered into silence, growing heavy with it like a cloud, swollen with unshed tears, begging for relief.
Harry turns his head and smiles—the smile that Draco thinks could sustain him forever. The soft curve of it, that crookedness, that crescent-shaped taste of surrender.
“It’s alright, Draco. It’s just a bruise. The sky bruises, too, sometimes, doesn’t it? And isn’t it beautiful when it does?”
Draco breathes, shakily, and watches it ghost over Harry’s glasses, misting the green eyes behind them. “I told you, you taught me everything,” he says. “You taught me everything I know.”
“Yes. I remember now.” Harry’s still smiling, but he smiles again. “Do you remember what you said at the beginning?”
“The beginning of what?”
“The beginning of the fall.”
“What do you mean, Harry?” Draco asks, and the other boy slips his hand into his.
“Come,” he says. “Let me show you.”
“Draco,” Harry calls, and Draco thinks to himself, he looks like he belongs inside the sky. “Draco, look at the sun.”
“The sun?” Draco says, the words coming to him like the wind whispering into his ear, slipping through his lips.
“Don’t you want to catch it?”
Draco’s heart—it stirs, flutters wildly against his ribs like it’s trying to break free.
“Catch the sun, Harry?”
Harry grins, and the world seems to tilt. “No, Draco. Catch the Snitch.”
And then Draco sees it.
It’s not the sun at all, but a tiny, golden thing with wings, flickering between them, flitting between two halves of a heartbeat, and Draco knows what it is—it’s hope.
“Don’t you want to catch it?” Harry calls over the world, and all Draco can see is a rush of colour, every colour all at once.
“I’m not sure if I can,” he says, and his pulse is pounding so hard in his ears he can almost taste blood, and he thinks there’s no way his breath reaches Harry over the distance, but it does.
“Scared, Malfoy?” Harry says it like a challenge, like he just knows—knows that for them, challenge and comfort have always meant the same thing. The words roll off his tongue like honey, like salvation, and the air smells like summer, and Draco breathes it in like courage.
“You wish, Potter,” he says, and then they both dive.
They fly higher and higher, chasing the edge of the world, chasing everything and nothing, spinning around the sun like they’re chasing clocks, and then the sun turns into the moon, and Harry says, “See, Draco? I told you we’ll always be eleven.”
“I still don’t believe you,” Draco says, but he’s laughing, laughing so hard he thinks his face might just shatter, because this might be the first time he’s ever tasted happiness.
“Don’t you?” Harry’s eyes crinkle and Draco wants to hold him so badly he almost forgets to breathe, wants to trace and count every line on his face like he’s folding a thousand paper cranes. “Let’s flip a coin, shall we?”
“A coin?”
“Yes, Draco.”
“I don’t have a coin.”
“Don’t be silly, Draco. You can have anything in the world,” Harry says.
And then he throws the moon, and it arcs across the swooping sky, and Draco dives without even knowing where he’s going, just that Harry’s right behind him, and they’re not falling, they’re soaring.
They land on the pitch and it’s the end of winter, or the beginning of spring. There are snowdrops pushing up through the earth, like the stars had fallen with them and scattered like pearls. The grass catches them softly, and nothing hurts here—and even if it did, bruises are only bruises, after all.
There’s something clutched in Draco’s hand, and there’s victory in his veins as his fingers close around the smooth, perfect sphere—and for a moment he thinks it’s the moon, he’s really caught the moon, but then he opens his palm and it’s a glass orb, so clear he can see his own face, and he’s eleven years old again.
“Draco,” Harry says, warm at the nape of his neck, and Draco jumps, because he’s right behind him, he’s catching his breath, and Draco just wants to catch him in his arms and kiss him breathless. “Don’t you remember what it is?”
“Of course,” Draco replies, because the glass mirrors his mind, clear as water, pure as memory, and he'll die before he ever forgets this moment. “I caught it.”
“Yes,” says Harry, and Draco tosses the Remembrall up in the air, just to watch him catch it, just to see that shining, aching memory all over again. “You did.”
“Am I dreaming?” Draco asks, dazed, because it’s only just hitting him now that this can’t be real, he feels so light, like he could climb inside a bubble and float away.
“Why don’t you try to wake up and see?” Harry replies, and so he does.
Draco wakes, and for one terrible, breathless moment, he knows it was all a dream, maybe it never really existed, maybe none of it was ever real—the castle towers, the black lake, the sky and the forest and the sprawling green.
Maybe green is just a colour he’d made up to fill that hollow ache in his heart, to fill that absence where hope should be.
He lays on something warm and soft, and he thinks it must be the grass cradling him again, because there’s that lovely scent, the one that tastes like home, that lingers like the sweet, exquisite ache after rain.
And he doesn’t dare open his eyes, even as the sun spills through his eyelashes, coaxing them to part, but he tells himself he can steal just one more moment to breathe in this air and pretend that green truly exists before he has to reemerge into a world washed in grey.
But then the earth shifts beneath him, springier than the forest floor, and something warm and heavy settles over him—but the weight doesn’t ache, doesn’t bruise. He opens his eyes to a face so radiant, so lovely, that he pretends it’s not blinding, because he can’t bear to look away from something so beautiful.
“Draco,” says Harry, and his mouth curves down into such a perfect mirror of his crooked smile that Draco thinks, well, this frown could sustain him forever, too.
“Are you going to ignore me all morning? I guess I’ll eat this wonderful breakfast I made all by myself, then,” he grumbles, and it’s such a delightful sound that Draco laughs out loud.
“I was dreaming about you,” he tells him, and Harry shoots him an exasperated look.
“I can’t believe I’m competing with the dream version of myself for my own boyfriend when I’m right here, alive!” He waves a hand in front of Draco’s face, pouting. “I shouldn’t have to share you on your birthday.”
Draco laughs and slips his hands under the soft fabric of Harry’s T-shirt, settling over the curve of his hipbones, drawing him closer. “I can’t believe you’re real,” he murmurs, and Harry flicks him playfully on the forehead.
“Do you want a sad, cold breakfast?” he demands, half-hearted now, as Draco reaches up to thread his fingers through his hair, tugging his face down to meet his.
“I thought I dreamt the colour green,” Draco says in a daze, fingers brushing over Harry’s eyelashes, marvelling that he’s painted him into existence.
Harry shakes his head, but his eyes are warm with affection. “You’re delusional,” he says, planting featherlight kisses over his face. “Can we eat now?”
“Just a moment longer. I’m still processing the fact that the world has colour.”
“I like grey,” Harry tells him.
“I love you,” Draco says, and it feels like falling and flying all at once.
Harry’s eyes crinkle softly. “I love you too, you idiot. But come on, or you’ll miss the whole day.”
Draco reminds him, “You taught me that the whole world belongs to us.”
“Merlin. What’s got you so sentimental?” Harry says, but his grin splits his whole face, shining like dawn. “That’s my role.”
“I dreamt of us. When we were eleven,” Draco tells him. “You threw the moon and I caught it.”
“Hmm. I don’t seem to remember doing that when we were eleven.” Harry pretends to think hard, scrunching his face, and Draco catches his lips between his, because it’s like breathing, because it isn’t a dream, because it’s sweeter than catching the moon.
“You told me we’ll always be eleven,” Draco says fondly.
“Do you know what’s special about today?”
“My birthday?”
Harry beams. “You’re twenty-two today,” he informs him. “And in two months, I’ll be twenty-two, too. Do you know what that means?”
“I’m older than you?”
Harry swats at him lightly. “No! It means we’ll be eleven again soon.”
“One and two are not the same thing, love,” Draco teases.
“No,” Harry insists. “It’s another cycle of eleven years, silly. Soon, we’ll have known each other for longer than we haven’t. And after that, we always will.”
“Seven of those years, we were at each other’s throats,” Draco reminds him amicably.
“We still are,” says Harry, leaning down to kiss the delicate curve of his throat.
It rains on Harry’s birthday, but it’s the sweet kind—the kind that tastes like summer, that scatters the kisses of tiny stars across their skin.
So they go flying.
“Look,” Harry calls, his eyes alight. “See how even the sky is happy for us? That we’ve made it through another eleven years.”
“I’m not surprised. If we hadn’t fallen in love, I think we might have torn the sky apart. Those are tears of relief, you menace.” Draco hovers close, reaching out to smooth down a stubborn strand of Harry’s hair, but the damp air only encourages its defiance.
“Falling is just like flying, for us,” says Harry, the rain clinging to his glasses, each droplet fracturing the light into tiny glimpses of the universe.
“I know,” says Draco, his lips curving up, and Harry looks at him like he’s the beginning and the end of everything, and it's so sweet that Draco can’t remember what bitterness tastes like. “I think we’ll never stop falling.”
Harry’s laughter breaks through the clouds, and then they’re soaring, chasing the storm, higher and higher until they breach the very beginning of the rainfall, somewhere far above the world.
“Do you remember what you said, Draco? At the beginning?”
“The beginning of what?”
“The beginning of the fall.”
“No,” Draco calls out, smiling so wide he tastes the rain on his teeth. “You’ll have to remind me.”
“You said, let’s catch the sun,” says Harry, and then he’s off through the air like a comet, and Draco doesn’t know where he’s going, never knows where they're going, only that he’ll always catch him.
“I don’t need to,” Draco shouts as he chases after him, though Harry’s too far away to hear. “I already have the sun.”
[words: 3767]
partially written for an exercise on pathetic fallacy...partially because I wanted to throw together some random ideas about the moon and the sun and circles and foils...
“Harry, look at the sun.”
“The sun?”
“Don’t you want to catch it?”
Harry turns, a frown tugging at his lips. “Catch what, Draco?”
The sky is impossibly blue, so clear it’s like they’re on the edge of nothing and everything, and they’re in the clouds, but there are no clouds.
Only the sun, golden, flying in the space between them, the only thing keeping them apart.
The only thing holding them together.
The world lies still beneath them, silent, dreaming. They’re high above the pitch, the grass stretching beneath them, but the only green he can see is the green of Harry’s eyes, and there is no pain.
Never any pain.
They drift, weightless, carried by the dust of fading stars, and everything is golden. There are no clouds, but they’re in the clouds.
“Are you ready, Harry?”
Harry blinks the sun out of his eyes. “Ready for what, Draco?”
“To catch the sun,” he says, and then he dives.
Only the sun melts into the moon, and then they’re deep into the winter, deep into the night.
Draco can see his breath, silver, wistful—the only thing keeping them apart, the only thing holding them together.
The velvet sky curls around them, and there’s only darkness, no colour but the green of Harry’s eyes, gleaming like jewels, brighter than any star.
“Harry, look at the moon.”
“The moon?” Harry says, though it’s right there, hanging upside-down in his eyes like twin teardrops.
There are no clouds, but they’re in the clouds—but the clouds are nothing but the mist of Draco’s breath, and the moon lies suspended between them, on the edge of a fall.
“Yes, Harry. The moon. Throw it to me, and I’ll catch it.”
The moon is already slipping through his fingers, and Harry’s already right in front of him, but still he turns to Draco, frowning.
“I can’t throw you the moon, Draco.”
“Why not?”
“Because the moon belongs to the sky.”
Draco smiles, the corners of his mouth curving up, like they already know the answer. “Don’t be silly, Harry. The sky belongs to us. The whole world does. You taught me that.”
The sky is black and clear as glass, curling around Harry’s face, swallowing his hair, his body. He looks like the moon, made of nothing but light and shadow and emeralds.
“No, I didn’t.”
“But you did, Harry. You just forgot.”
It’s winter, and a layer of frost glistens like a white sheet over the world, but there’s no world, no war, just Harry, just Draco. Just the two of them, flying so high, not even time can catch them.
Draco says, “I’ll throw you the moon, Harry. Will you catch it?”
The moon spins between them like a coin-toss, hovering in the black sky, hanging in the black lake, something eternal on the edge of a question.
Harry’s eyes widen, and for one single, glorious moment, the night is nothing but two boys and two moons, suspended between the stars, only there are no stars, and there are no clouds.
Then the penny drops, drops out of the sky, and Harry dives, and Harry falls.
“Draco,” Harry says, and he’s golden, so golden it hurts to look at him, hurts to see the stars in his eyes, the dying stars. “Draco, didn’t we fall?”
“Yes, Harry. We always fall. But we never hit the ground. Falling is just like flying, for us.”
Harry blinks the stars out of his eyes. “Did I teach you that, too?”
“Of course you did, Harry. You taught me everything I know.”
“Then why don’t I remember?” he asks, and his eyes glisten, but there’s no such thing as tears, only the moon, and the stars, and the shining, shining light.
“It’s not that you don’t remember, Harry. It’s just that you’ve forgotten.”
“Draco. Look at the stars.”
“What about them?”
“There’s no such thing as stars. Don’t you know?”
Draco looks up, but above them, there’s nothing, endless nothing, because they’re at the very top of the sky, the very edge of the world.
He looks back at Harry, and the words fall from his lips like a string of dreams. “You’re right, Harry. There’s no such thing as stars.”
But as he speaks, the sky begins to burn. It burns and it burns, and the emptiness devours, and the diamonds tossed across the night are burning up, too.
The fire doesn’t touch them at first, but when it does, it’s cold as ice.
Draco screams. He screams and screams, but the sound is swallowed whole, and Harry’s eyes are no longer green—they’re golden, molten, scorching into dusk, swirling into September. Like the leaves spiralling into autumn, like they were made to fall.
“Harry, don’t close your eyes!” Draco shouts, but his words disintegrate into ash, crumbling into the blazing, golden night.
Harry says, “Why, Draco? Are you afraid that if I close them, the real world will begin?”
Draco sobs, forgetting, remembering too late that there are no tears here, and Harry closes his eyes.
He closes his eyes, and it’s like the stars are falling, only the stars are raindrops, glinting green, scattering like marbles dropped into the darkness below.
Draco listens, but he can’t hear them plop into the lake. Instead, there’s a sound like glass shattering: a brittle, empty echo that doesn’t stop.
The air swells around them, and the rain is soft at first, just damp mist keeping them aloft, clinging to the clouds, only there are no clouds—nothing but the howling wind, its invisible agony, and it’s the sound of loss, of grief, only Draco knows he’s never lost anything at all. The sound splits the sky open, and suddenly, Harry is wrenched away, carried on a rumbling wave of thunder, and he’s clutching his forehead, and his mouth forms a perfect O, but nothing comes out.
Heaven opens its mouth like a mirror, and the rain falls, and it’s just like them, living only to fall. It pours and it pours, relentless, like a monster unleashed, like a flood, only it’s too hard, too cold to cleanse. It washes over him like a tide, and Draco feels like he’s drowning, not in water, but in air.
Lightning slices the sky, a flash of bright green, and with it comes the bitterness of regret. The sky bleeds like it’s grieving, weeping with him, and he clings desperately to the edge of the world, but it’s futile.
Somewhere in the distance, Harry’s voice calls out to him. “Draco, touch the rain.”
But he’s crying so much it’s inside him, and he can no longer bear to touch it.
“Draco.” The voice sounds far away, but it ripples deep inside his chest. “Draco, can’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?” he gasps, wondering how he’s still not fallen, or maybe he has, maybe this is the fall, only it never stops, never ends.
“Feel the rain, Draco. The weight of it. Don’t you remember? You told me once—water never forgets.”
Draco opens his mouth to reply, but the rain rushes in, filling his ribcage, pouring into his lungs—or is it spilling from his lungs? He can’t tell anymore.
Maybe he’s made of water too, never allowed to forget.
“Don’t be afraid. Be brave, Draco. Can’t you feel it? The weight of memory? Yours, I think.”
“No,” Draco breathes. And then he falls.
It feels like he’s falling through time itself, ripping through history like a star crashing into the lake, igniting the dark and leaving a trail of ruin in its wake, burning up everything before it flickers and fades.
“No, Draco. The stars are just wounds, tracing the sky like scars. Wounds that never healed—but from here, all we see is light. You’re alive, Draco. You’re alive.”
He thinks it can’t be true, he must be dying. Being alive can’t feel so painful, the kind of pain so heavy it could bring the whole world down. The sky keeps bleeding, bleeding out, and all the seconds blur together, blue and black and pink and gold, just like bruises, the ones that darken before they can disappear, the tender ones that ache to touch.
“Don’t you know, Draco? Sometimes the sky turns green when it storms. It’s the water, Draco. The clouds can’t hold it anymore. But isn’t it so beautiful?”
He opens his eyes, even though he doesn’t remember closing them, and when he does, the world is a smudge, and all he sees is green.
When Draco comes to, he’s in a bed. The air is crisp, fresh, and it smells familiar, tastes like innocence and longing and the gorgeous ache of memory, a memory of two boys high up in the sky, clothed in red and green and conflict. The sheets feel soft and damp beneath his touch, and he realises he’s lying in the grass, and it’s warm and it’s real and he’s alive.
The sky cracks a smile, and the clouds shield him from the blinding light of morning. It’s so golden, too golden, but then his vision swims and sharpens, and Harry steps out of the sun.
Harry stands above him, and his eyes are so clear they reflect the world below him—the grass still cradling Draco’s face, the dewdrops clinging to his cheeks, like the earth had wept for him, too. But then he realises it’s not dew, it’s tears. His tears.
It’s Harry and he smiles like he’s never known loss, but Draco remembers now, he has, they both have, and Harry is standing there, smiling like he’s the last drop of light on the horizon, on the edge of hope.
“See? It’s only rain. Just like I told you,” he says, like he’s proud of keeping a promise.
But it’s not just rain. The clouds have returned and dropped the weight of memory onto him, of everything they’ve lost, everything they’ve been. The ache of it, swollen and raw, scraping the inside of his throat. The sky crying, washing away the years, stripping them until they’re back to when they were eleven, when the only war was two boys chasing after the sun.
Draco closes his eyes and whispers, “We’re not eleven anymore,” but he says it like he’s mourning.
But suddenly his eyelids turn inside out, flashing red, and his face is bathed in warmth, and Harry is beside him, lying in the damp grass.
“Oh, Draco,” he says, and it sounds like waking up. “Don’t you know? We’ll always be eleven.”
Draco turns his head, but Harry is staring straight ahead, straight up at the sun, like it’s not blinding, like he can’t bear to look away from something so lovely. And he’s so close Draco can feel his breath ripple the air, and the trees shiver with pleasure, and his dark hair fans out across the grass, reaching out for Draco’s blond, like the night rolling over to kiss the morning.
And he’s so alight, so alive—his Harry, only Harry doesn’t know he’s his, and the ache in Draco’s chest grows stronger, but he can’t feel it because he’s here, he’s really here.
Because he’s alive, in the grass, under an endless blue sky, beside a boy who’s just stepped out of the sun and offered him another chance to live.
“Draco, the storm has passed. Doesn’t it feel so sweet?”
Draco blinks the glass out of his eyes. “But it still hurts.” He doesn’t know if he can tell bitterness from sweetness anymore. Maybe they’ve always been one and the same.
Maybe bitterness is just love smothered into silence, growing heavy with it like a cloud, swollen with unshed tears, begging for relief.
Harry turns his head and smiles—the smile that Draco thinks could sustain him forever. The soft curve of it, that crookedness, that crescent-shaped taste of surrender.
“It’s alright, Draco. It’s just a bruise. The sky bruises, too, sometimes, doesn’t it? And isn’t it beautiful when it does?”
Draco breathes, shakily, and watches it ghost over Harry’s glasses, misting the green eyes behind them. “I told you, you taught me everything,” he says. “You taught me everything I know.”
“Yes. I remember now.” Harry’s still smiling, but he smiles again. “Do you remember what you said at the beginning?”
“The beginning of what?”
“The beginning of the fall.”
“What do you mean, Harry?” Draco asks, and the other boy slips his hand into his.
“Come,” he says. “Let me show you.”
“Draco,” Harry calls, and Draco thinks to himself, he looks like he belongs inside the sky. “Draco, look at the sun.”
“The sun?” Draco says, the words coming to him like the wind whispering into his ear, slipping through his lips.
“Don’t you want to catch it?”
Draco’s heart—it stirs, flutters wildly against his ribs like it’s trying to break free.
“Catch the sun, Harry?”
Harry grins, and the world seems to tilt. “No, Draco. Catch the Snitch.”
And then Draco sees it.
It’s not the sun at all, but a tiny, golden thing with wings, flickering between them, flitting between two halves of a heartbeat, and Draco knows what it is—it’s hope.
“Don’t you want to catch it?” Harry calls over the world, and all Draco can see is a rush of colour, every colour all at once.
“I’m not sure if I can,” he says, and his pulse is pounding so hard in his ears he can almost taste blood, and he thinks there’s no way his breath reaches Harry over the distance, but it does.
“Scared, Malfoy?” Harry says it like a challenge, like he just knows—knows that for them, challenge and comfort have always meant the same thing. The words roll off his tongue like honey, like salvation, and the air smells like summer, and Draco breathes it in like courage.
“You wish, Potter,” he says, and then they both dive.
They fly higher and higher, chasing the edge of the world, chasing everything and nothing, spinning around the sun like they’re chasing clocks, and then the sun turns into the moon, and Harry says, “See, Draco? I told you we’ll always be eleven.”
“I still don’t believe you,” Draco says, but he’s laughing, laughing so hard he thinks his face might just shatter, because this might be the first time he’s ever tasted happiness.
“Don’t you?” Harry’s eyes crinkle and Draco wants to hold him so badly he almost forgets to breathe, wants to trace and count every line on his face like he’s folding a thousand paper cranes. “Let’s flip a coin, shall we?”
“A coin?”
“Yes, Draco.”
“I don’t have a coin.”
“Don’t be silly, Draco. You can have anything in the world,” Harry says.
And then he throws the moon, and it arcs across the swooping sky, and Draco dives without even knowing where he’s going, just that Harry’s right behind him, and they’re not falling, they’re soaring.
They land on the pitch and it’s the end of winter, or the beginning of spring. There are snowdrops pushing up through the earth, like the stars had fallen with them and scattered like pearls. The grass catches them softly, and nothing hurts here—and even if it did, bruises are only bruises, after all.
There’s something clutched in Draco’s hand, and there’s victory in his veins as his fingers close around the smooth, perfect sphere—and for a moment he thinks it’s the moon, he’s really caught the moon, but then he opens his palm and it’s a glass orb, so clear he can see his own face, and he’s eleven years old again.
“Draco,” Harry says, warm at the nape of his neck, and Draco jumps, because he’s right behind him, he’s catching his breath, and Draco just wants to catch him in his arms and kiss him breathless. “Don’t you remember what it is?”
“Of course,” Draco replies, because the glass mirrors his mind, clear as water, pure as memory, and he'll die before he ever forgets this moment. “I caught it.”
“Yes,” says Harry, and Draco tosses the Remembrall up in the air, just to watch him catch it, just to see that shining, aching memory all over again. “You did.”
“Am I dreaming?” Draco asks, dazed, because it’s only just hitting him now that this can’t be real, he feels so light, like he could climb inside a bubble and float away.
“Why don’t you try to wake up and see?” Harry replies, and so he does.
Draco wakes, and for one terrible, breathless moment, he knows it was all a dream, maybe it never really existed, maybe none of it was ever real—the castle towers, the black lake, the sky and the forest and the sprawling green.
Maybe green is just a colour he’d made up to fill that hollow ache in his heart, to fill that absence where hope should be.
He lays on something warm and soft, and he thinks it must be the grass cradling him again, because there’s that lovely scent, the one that tastes like home, that lingers like the sweet, exquisite ache after rain.
And he doesn’t dare open his eyes, even as the sun spills through his eyelashes, coaxing them to part, but he tells himself he can steal just one more moment to breathe in this air and pretend that green truly exists before he has to reemerge into a world washed in grey.
But then the earth shifts beneath him, springier than the forest floor, and something warm and heavy settles over him—but the weight doesn’t ache, doesn’t bruise. He opens his eyes to a face so radiant, so lovely, that he pretends it’s not blinding, because he can’t bear to look away from something so beautiful.
“Draco,” says Harry, and his mouth curves down into such a perfect mirror of his crooked smile that Draco thinks, well, this frown could sustain him forever, too.
“Are you going to ignore me all morning? I guess I’ll eat this wonderful breakfast I made all by myself, then,” he grumbles, and it’s such a delightful sound that Draco laughs out loud.
“I was dreaming about you,” he tells him, and Harry shoots him an exasperated look.
“I can’t believe I’m competing with the dream version of myself for my own boyfriend when I’m right here, alive!” He waves a hand in front of Draco’s face, pouting. “I shouldn’t have to share you on your birthday.”
Draco laughs and slips his hands under the soft fabric of Harry’s T-shirt, settling over the curve of his hipbones, drawing him closer. “I can’t believe you’re real,” he murmurs, and Harry flicks him playfully on the forehead.
“Do you want a sad, cold breakfast?” he demands, half-hearted now, as Draco reaches up to thread his fingers through his hair, tugging his face down to meet his.
“I thought I dreamt the colour green,” Draco says in a daze, fingers brushing over Harry’s eyelashes, marvelling that he’s painted him into existence.
Harry shakes his head, but his eyes are warm with affection. “You’re delusional,” he says, planting featherlight kisses over his face. “Can we eat now?”
“Just a moment longer. I’m still processing the fact that the world has colour.”
“I like grey,” Harry tells him.
“I love you,” Draco says, and it feels like falling and flying all at once.
Harry’s eyes crinkle softly. “I love you too, you idiot. But come on, or you’ll miss the whole day.”
Draco reminds him, “You taught me that the whole world belongs to us.”
“Merlin. What’s got you so sentimental?” Harry says, but his grin splits his whole face, shining like dawn. “That’s my role.”
“I dreamt of us. When we were eleven,” Draco tells him. “You threw the moon and I caught it.”
“Hmm. I don’t seem to remember doing that when we were eleven.” Harry pretends to think hard, scrunching his face, and Draco catches his lips between his, because it’s like breathing, because it isn’t a dream, because it’s sweeter than catching the moon.
“You told me we’ll always be eleven,” Draco says fondly.
“Do you know what’s special about today?”
“My birthday?”
Harry beams. “You’re twenty-two today,” he informs him. “And in two months, I’ll be twenty-two, too. Do you know what that means?”
“I’m older than you?”
Harry swats at him lightly. “No! It means we’ll be eleven again soon.”
“One and two are not the same thing, love,” Draco teases.
“No,” Harry insists. “It’s another cycle of eleven years, silly. Soon, we’ll have known each other for longer than we haven’t. And after that, we always will.”
“Seven of those years, we were at each other’s throats,” Draco reminds him amicably.
“We still are,” says Harry, leaning down to kiss the delicate curve of his throat.
It rains on Harry’s birthday, but it’s the sweet kind—the kind that tastes like summer, that scatters the kisses of tiny stars across their skin.
So they go flying.
“Look,” Harry calls, his eyes alight. “See how even the sky is happy for us? That we’ve made it through another eleven years.”
“I’m not surprised. If we hadn’t fallen in love, I think we might have torn the sky apart. Those are tears of relief, you menace.” Draco hovers close, reaching out to smooth down a stubborn strand of Harry’s hair, but the damp air only encourages its defiance.
“Falling is just like flying, for us,” says Harry, the rain clinging to his glasses, each droplet fracturing the light into tiny glimpses of the universe.
“I know,” says Draco, his lips curving up, and Harry looks at him like he’s the beginning and the end of everything, and it's so sweet that Draco can’t remember what bitterness tastes like. “I think we’ll never stop falling.”
Harry’s laughter breaks through the clouds, and then they’re soaring, chasing the storm, higher and higher until they breach the very beginning of the rainfall, somewhere far above the world.
“Do you remember what you said, Draco? At the beginning?”
“The beginning of what?”
“The beginning of the fall.”
“No,” Draco calls out, smiling so wide he tastes the rain on his teeth. “You’ll have to remind me.”
“You said, let’s catch the sun,” says Harry, and then he’s off through the air like a comet, and Draco doesn’t know where he’s going, never knows where they're going, only that he’ll always catch him.
“I don’t need to,” Draco shouts as he chases after him, though Harry’s too far away to hear. “I already have the sun.”
