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Until the Solstice Rises	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 5147 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 6
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- 8
Title: The Fire This Moment

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Rating: PG-13

Warnings: Angst, eighth year at Hogwarts, past canon character deaths mentioned.

Wordcount: 1600

Summary: Draco cannot escape the stares, the hisses about his insanity, or the remnants of the Fiendfyre glowing under his skin. But neither can he escape Harry Potter.

Author’s Notes: This was written for NikolasKristopher, who gave me the prompt “Whispered words, whispers in the dark mean nothing if you hide from me Draco,” and “A love found in rebirth,” and asked that this be posted on the 8^th, their birthday. I hope this fic satisfies!

The Fire This Moment

            His arms glowed.

            His face glowed, too, under the stares of his friends, his enemies, his professors, his Housemates.

            Draco had tried to pretend that everything was normal after the Fiendfyre and the Battle of Hogwarts and the death of the Dark Lord and his father going to prison. He had. He had tried as hard as he could. He had covered his glowing arms with makeup that his house-elves brought him when he was under house arrest during the summer, and with glamours once it was confirmed that he was going back to Hogwarts and the Aurors allowed him to use his wand again.

            But the magic he seemed to have absorbed from the Fiendfyre was too strong. His arms still glowed, red and blue and white, with a coruscating edge of orange and gold and pink that came and went, and the flame shimmered and played at the corner of his eyes in a way that told him it was moving up into his neck and face, too.

            No one knew what to make of it. His mother had shaken her head and encouraged him to hide it. His Housemates just stepped away from him, and it gave his enemies more fodder to whisper that of course he would be marked by the evil he had done. Even Fiendfyre rejected him. He was too evil to die in it.

            It was so easy for everyone to forget that Draco had been saved from the Fiendfyre, and by no one less than their bloody hero. But said hero only watched him from a distance with eyes that burned in a different way, and although Draco could have gone and talked to him—he could feel the silent invitation from those eyes, and once or twice had even seen the outstretched hand—he avoided that, too.

            Because then he would have think about the dreams, the dreams that filled his world with blazing fury and led him to fall off the broom, with Potter spiraling down to rescue him. Snatch him. Claim him with tongue and lips in a way that made Draco open his eyes regretting that there was no way to flee from his own mind and memories.

            No. He ran. He hid himself in the library, in books, in dark corners. He hid himself with glamours that at least lasted until mid-morning, and pretended that he didn’t hear the whispered words, either from people passing him or the ones that tumbled from his lips in the darkness. There was nothing he could do about it, save plow through the last months he had at Hogwarts and then hide at home.

            Right now, hiding at home for the rest of his life, even, sounded appealing.

            But that was before that day. That moment. That fire.

            That moment of rebirth.

*



            Draco cast his Strengthening Charm, which was supposed to make him strong enough to lift a whole table by himself, with the confidence of long experience. Since he had to spend so much time studying by himself, his wandwork had improved, and this was one particular charm he had known would be studied for the NEWTS, so he’d practiced it several dozen times already.

            Except, this time, it didn’t simply sink into his arms and make his muscles bulge. Instead, light flared all around him, and there was a crackling noise and the sharp sound of flames hissing and dancing.

            When Draco could see, he turned his head and stared down at his arms. Surely, the charm should have worked—surely, despite the light that told him it hadn’t—

            And it had not. Instead, flames played up and down his arms, around his shoulders, up to his ears, making a corona that flared around his head.

            Draco shut his eyes. He knew everyone in class was staring at him, and the whispers had started in a way that not even Flitwick could control. Probably they weren’t half as damaging as the suspicions inside his own head. What if the lingering Fiendfyre magic had begun to interfere with his own? It might mean he could never cast another spell without wondering what the effect would be, instead of trusting it.

            It meant—

            Draco turned around. Harry Potter leaned across the table towards him, hand extended as it had been several times before. In the center of his palm was a small flame, gamboling and forming the shape of a lion, the way that so many of the flames in the Room of Hidden Things had.

            It was beautiful, and Potter beckoned, his mouth open and the inside red and hot, the green eyes brilliant as lightning.

            And then there was laughter, and Draco couldn’t take it. He ran out of the Charms classroom fast enough that he might have burned up a few tables on the way, and headed straight for the dungeons.

*

            Draco leaned his face against the stone wall, trying to cool his skin. The flames didn’t burn him, or anything else, but they did gently heat him up, as though he stood in sunlight.

            If he could think of it that way, he might stand a chance of coming to terms with it. As it was, he thought he might come to regard even warm showers with bitterness. This controlled him; it wasn’t his to control.

            “Draco?”

            Of course Harry Potter had followed him from the classroom. Of course.

            But it was easier to face mockery when there was only one person to laugh at him, not a multitude. Draco turned around, his hand braced against the wall to help him.

            Potter’s face shone. Around him danced the fire, leaping out from his fingers to caress the stone. Flames followed and surrounded him, outlined him, silhouetted him in blue, canopied him in orange. And when he held out his hands, both of them this time, Draco saw the flames that formed beasts in the center of them. One a dragon, one a lion, and they extended their necks towards each other and melted into one another, becoming one being of skin and fire and claws.

            Draco stared at them, then up at Potter. “Why didn’t you show the fire?” he whispered.

            “I did,” Potter said gently. “To you. But you looked away each time. I’ve been shining like this since the Fiendfyre. The difference is, I found glamours that work.” He paused, but Draco could think of no words to fill the silence between them, and then Potter stepped forwards.

            Draco wanted to panic and back away, but there was a stone wall behind him, and fire in front of him. He licked his lips and said nothing. All year, that had been his surest defense. He could make people think he didn’t care, and they would eventually stop trying to make him.

            Except that Potter had been through the fire, too, and he wasn’t accepting indifference for an answer.

            He reached out, and kept reaching out, and this time, his hands took hold of Draco’s, and the lion and dragon leaped to his shoulders and danced there, in and out of his hair. And Potter kept pressing in and in, forwards and forwards, and the fire was roaring all around Draco, and he remembered the way that the muscles in Potter’s stomach had jumped under his hold as they raced away from the Fiendfyre.

            Potter had to stop, except he didn’t. There was only forwards, and there was this moment, this moment bathed in light, bathed in fire.

            His lips touched Draco’s. Draco whimpered, because it was like his dreams—dreams that he wondered if Potter shared, the way he had shared the fire and the shining with Draco. Potter’s hands arranged themselves in a cup shape around Draco’s cheeks, and the fire crossed behind his back in braided streams, and shoved him into Potter’s arms.

            Potter kissed the way he did in Draco’s arms, except hotter and realer and better. Draco finally opened his mouth, because there was no way to diminish the warmth except sharing it, and Potter’s tongue pressed in, soft but insistent, approving. Draco moaned, and surrendered.

            The fire roared around him again, but this was no dream, and this was no escape. Instead, Potter was there, and the fire was inside him as well as out.

            “You can’t hide from me,” Potter whispered into his ear. “You don’t need to hide from me. I gave up hiding after the war, and I only concealed the fire shining through me because I saw that you were trying, and I thought you should make the decision to come to me. I was trying to tell you that, but you didn’t listen. You always did make me have to chase you to get any bloody answers. Stubborn Slytherin.” His arms laced closer around Draco.

            And perhaps the fire was more than something that had stolen Draco’s friend from him, more than something that haunted his dreams and his skin. If Potter would walk into the Great Hall with his fire visible—which of course he would, from this moment forwards, when he had made the decision—perhaps the fire could be beautiful.

            Potter looked down at him, eyes blazing, tender, asking a question.

            Draco lifted his head, and blazed back.

            The End.

*

            delia cerrano: Thank you! I’m glad to hear you say that, especially since the fics aren’t related.

            pittwitch: Thank you!

            SP777: By writing. ;)

            Yes, but the point of these stories is a kind of deep backstory that I don’t have the time to explore because the story is so short.
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Until the Solstice Rises