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Tomorrow is dead to me	By : Prototype_UP77 Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3028 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 9
Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling and I do not own Harry Potter. This is a fanfiction, no profit has been made with writing and publishing - it's all just for fun.

Chapter List
- 1-One
- 2-Two
- 3-Three
- 4-Four
- 5-Five
- 3
- 4
- 5
It took a while before they looked at each other again, and during this time Draco stepped onto a dark, if well-trodden, path of torture and ignorance. His heart was pounding painfully against his ribs, panic was driving sweat into his forehead but he could not move. He had to see Potter's face distort once he understood what the all-pervading truth behind this damn game was.
Disgust. Horror. A pinch of pity. What would it be like to be looked at by Potter as if he were a nightmare, poured into muscles, sinews and flesh?
He kissed back.
Then why doesn't he look at me?
Potter still wiped those ugly glasses and kept his gaze down. The raven-black hair covered his face, only his reddened nose was sticking out, and Draco wished he would finally look up, at least as much as he hoped it would never happen.
There was still the possibility that they would just keep fighting. Wasn't the clash in anger and poison better than none at all? Often enough, Draco had cursed himself for the talent of always saying the worst when he meant the best. Now it would save him from the cruel wait to stifle his wretched heart.
He closed his eyes for a second, took a deep breath, ordered his thoughts.
"That's right, Potter. Haressment is a crime. Are you really this limited that you don't know when you're delinquent yourself?" Draco spat and tried to grimace in anger. It became a painful grimace, though he suspected his counterpart would not know the difference.
But Potter didn't even look up; the slender fingers stopped wiping the lenses, but nothing else happened. Was it possible that his awful words had gone unheard?
Suddenly, Draco felt as if time was expanding around them, taking in more of the atmosphere with every passing second until the air became too thick to breathe. His fingers cramped around his forearm and he was desperately looking for a way out of this hell.
Both Draco and Potter flinched when an audible crunch sounded just outside the door.
It was one of the sounds that had taught him to fear this house, and Draco waited for swirling thoughts that would make it impossible for him to escape or even to defend himself, for the booming panic that would rob him of his ability to breathe, but this time, nothing but astonishment came over him; that he had actually not imagined these strange acoustic phenomena - after all this time of not wanting to believe his own ears.
Potter had been tense even before he had lifted his head. He shot Draco an intense look and lifted his finger to his lips, his wand pointed at the servant's chamber. With the other hand, he waved wildly, probably to signify Draco keep standing there.
His mouth seemed to form silent incantations as Potter turned away and took a step towards the door. Thick, light gray mist poured out of the tip of his wand and slowly sank to the ground before it waved forward inertly. Surrounding the door, it seemed to glow ghostly in the darkness of the servant's room.
Fascinated, Draco watched as the cloud like a matted blanket crawled across the floor and split at a table leg. This spell was unknown to him, but the effect became clear as the fog filled the entire room and snuggled up around every object. It would mark an intruder whether he was invisible or not.
In this case the chamber was empty except for the orphaned furniture.
Potter stepped outside, walking silently through the fog. He didn't look back to see if Draco was following him - probably his request was still valid at that point. A moment later, he was swallowed by the darkness and the fog closed behind him.
Once again his heart began to race, because despite the cool ceiling light the kitchen suddenly seemed dark. The smell of mold penetrated his nose, and he could only breathe shallowly, as if Potter had taken the oxygen Draco needed with him.
This is his own house. He certainly could not and will not leave Potter alone.
Shaking, he grabbed his wand, still glowing on the kitchen countertop, then turned back to the servants' quarters. The first step was the hardest. The seconds (or maybe already minutes or even more?) in the kitchen had sapped his strength but the relief dispelled the heaviness of his limbs as he followed Potter into the heart of the house. Potter had already made it into the hallway and stood frozen in front of a dresser, obviously indecisive. The fog piled up at chest height in front of the entrance door as if a thundercloud was rolling against it.
As Draco stood beside him, Potter rolled his eyes, illuminated by his silvery spell. On the edge, Draco wondered when he had turned off the lights in the hallway. Did he lit them at all?
"I should have known you wouldn't wait until the coast was clear," Potter moaned. There was nothing in his posture to suggest disgust or horror.
As his heartbeat gradually calmed and the panic pumped from his veins, Draco wondered if it was possible that Potter was such a good actor. In the kitchen, he had pretended to be Zabini, probably to find out what had happened behind the scenes and what lurked behind Draco's mistrust. No point in denying it; Draco was fooled by his play.
"If you think I'm going to let you sneak around here alone and stick your nose in my business, you are mistaken, Potter," Draco said weakly.
Potter pulled a face. "As if I needed something like that. Is there any business of yours here, Malfoy? The house is so run-down, even I wouldn't want to live here without a thorough cleaning." He paused for a moment, looking at Draco with eyebrows raised. "Anyway, I need to know if there are any secret doors or anything. What about the second floor and the attic? Are there ways to get to them quickly and easily?"
Of course, he first had to rule out simple burglars. "And why don't you use spells that tell you if someone has entered the house without permission? Except your humble self, of course," nagged Draco. Although he had struck a tone of voice that no one could misinterpret, Potter grinned boorishly and made Draco's heart flutter.
"Oh, I did that. Now we are looking for an evildoer who... well, who might belong to the inventory," he replied slowly, frowning as his gaze glided across the paintings. "So how is the rest of the house built?"
This almost friendly exchange of words made the hope that Potter would not hold the events against him swell up like a balloon in Draco's chest. Clearing his throat, he looked down at the dark mop of hair, regarding the impossible to tame hair whirl, without Potter taking any notice. "The first floor, including the attic, is sealed off according to my parents, but there's a strange machine at the other end of the hall that goes down to the basement, if I'm not mistaken."
Potter looked up at Draco with a straight face. "Would you wait here until I've checked the seal is still intact?"
"No," Draco replied hastily, trying hard to suppress the feeling of having to justify himself.
"All right." Without another word, without hesitation, Potter turned away, pushed past Draco to the back of the hallway, where the aforementioned apparatus stared out of the wall like a dark hole, and from which, on the left-hand side, the worn wooden panels of the floor turned into a broad staircase leading to a blocked passage to the second floor.
"An old freight elevator," cried Potter and seemed to rejoice as he hurried towards it. His fingers stroked over the fading, dark green-painted iron bars, which were enclosed in a tightly woven golden grid. In between, a glimpse of two now dusty benches, each firmly attached to the floor of the chamber, could be caught.
When Muggles moved around with such a thing, they were even crazier than Draco thought.
Potter nested at the grille door but could not get anything other than a rattling sound out of the dark device. "It is completely rusted, parts of it look as if they were... melted. No one has driven this thing for ages," he said cheerfully. "Funny I didn't notice it when I came in."
"I didn't think about it either. The light never gets to this place," whispered Draco. All of a sudden it seemed to him that the so-called freight elevator was a crucial detail in their search for the spook. The glow of the fog illuminated the metal skeleton in a stunning way, and Draco could hardly take his eyes off the gray shreds dripping into the gaps between the ground and impenetrable darkness.
"Do you hear that, too?" whispered Potter. Quivering with obvious excitement, he put his hands behind his ears, and at that very moment it became clear what he meant, for it suddenly intensified.
It was a roar coming from the dark duct below the freight elevator.
Fear pounded down Draco's throat again as he muffledly said, "I hope this doesn't mean we have to go down there." In his head, an image pushed itself into the foreground; Draco, how he would die in Potter's arms, trembling, drawing his last breath, while the shadows of the house already prepare to consume his corpse.
A shaky smile lay on his face. That he even imagined such a thing could mean either that he was slowly going crazy - or that he had come closer to the secret of the townhouse.
He surely could have done without that.
"Reparo", whispered Potter and gently slashed with the wand at a rusty spot at chest height of the grid.
Draco wanted to shout at him to let it go, wanted to shake him until he came to his senses, but the horror had paralyzed his body. There was nothing he could do but wait to see what monster would rise out of nowhere when the rusted grids could be pushed aside.
No question Potter would be so damn stupid to go in if he got the chance. Luckily, his spell didn't seem to do anything. Probably a single spell didn't work against this amount of rust and oblivion.
"That's bad luck, then. We should both get out of here," Draco croaked without thinking about how timid his words would sound. "Both of us." He took a step back.
Potter stood with his forehead leaning against the metal bars, his fingers interlocked in the grid above his head. He looked like a boy pressing his face against the window of a candy store, lusting for what the glass pane separated him from - and for a permission to explore it.
He won't give up.
"I'm sorry, Malfoy," he mumbled. "I shouldn't have pushed you like that earlier. Actually, I just wanted to -"
Potter interrupted himself, and Draco became dizzy under the meaning of his words. Of course, he could reply a number of things, from accusing him of having no business going into Draco's house until he officially explained what his mission was; to the fact that he had entered illegally; to the reminder that he had not only harassed him, but also tied him up and threatened him.
In the past, he had always been so talented at riding on other people's mistakes but on that day, staring at Potter's slender back, wrapped in a powerful spell that connected everything on this floor, it no longer seemed important to him.
If he hadn't invaded here, hadn't tied Draco up, he would never have known what it was like to hold the real Potter in his arms.
"My instructor did not send me here," Potter continued his apology and sighed. Although the sentence echoed empty and meaningless in Draco's head, he continued speaking. "The files clearly stated that it was your house. The Ministry had the title deed. But Mr. Malfoy burst in and demanded the return of this very deed, so I stole it because... I thought it was important. Well, actually, he was pushy and absolutely hideous to Heather at the reception. I, um... I just didn't want to grant him the chance to get what he wanted. I'm sorry that I was so... It was just like back then in school all of a sudden."
Draco's heart gave out on a beat. The fact that Potter did such a thing, out of a simple, albeit snotty mood, was not as shocking to him as it would have been half a day ago. After all he had done to Draco, he was no longer surprised. What amazed him was that he had saved him without knowing or wanting to. Again.
"Without the spell on the title deed, Father cannot enter here," Draco said tonelessly.
"I've already used it." Potter took a deep breath and then turned around, still holding on to the grid. "Shall I hand the deed over to him? Even as an Auror I actually have to wait for the owner's permission during such investigations." His cheeks turned pale pink, and he leaned seemingly casually with his back against the elevator.
Draco felt the corners of his mouth forming a grin, the cheerfulness of which slowly reached his chest. "Don't you dare, Potter. I certainly don't want to see him again so soon, especially not in my house."
The smile on Potter's face seemed honest. "I put the deed in the bowl with that Muggle mermaid by the door. How do I get into the cellar?"
The change of subject met Draco unprepared, and he knew that his confusion could be read on his face. Of course, Potter didn't let go of that basement. It was his true nature. It was what had made him chase after Draco in their sixth year of school. Draco had aroused his curiosity and the urge to prove he wasn't wrong - a trait they shared; though they differed fundamentally in how far they were willing to go to get their questions answered.
It was with regret that Draco decided to answer truthfully and to stop hitting the hooks. "I never found any stairs."
Potter looked over his shoulder and peered intently into the dark void of the chamber. "Then the freight elevator is the only way. Help me fix it."
An ice-cold hand seemed to stroke down his neck, and Draco shook his head numbly. "Never. I'm not insane," he pushed out and, surprised by the vehemence of his dislike, took a step back. "I'm not going to help you clear the way for that thing in the cellar! You don't even know what it is!"
Potter didn't bat an eyelid. "I have a vague notion." He pushed himself leisurely off the bars and slowly approached Draco, never taking his eyes off him. As he walked, his fingertips brushed across the furniture as if he was admiring the dexterity of the builders, but it seemed lurking as he stared into Draco's eyes, diving for an answer to a question Draco himself would not know.
When he had reached him and had to look up to gaze into Draco's face, the gap between their bodies seemed to shrink. Potter stretched out his back and reached out to meet him and if Draco looked down, if there was enough space between them to see anything, he could have seen Potter tiptoeing.
Then his lips met Draco's, plucked at his cool skin, and warm breath made the hairs on his cheeks stand up.
"Help me fix the elevator, Malfoy," Potter whispered against his mouth and Draco closed his eyes, unable to resist.
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Tomorrow is dead to me