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Heliotrope	By : Reiko_k Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2962 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or its characters. This is non-profitable fanwork.

Chapter List
- 1-Heliotrope
- 1
Title/Author: Heliotrope by Reiko K.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Summary: What if events in the Room of Requirement had gone differently?
Notes: Written for a Kink-n-Squick's 2013 Christmas Fest. Fic diverges from canon somewhat after GoF, though most major canon events remain the same. I owe so much gratitude to Híril who truly went above and beyond the duties of an average beta-reader. Please mind the warnings and enjoy.

2 May, 1998.
The fire surged higher—wilder. The heat it emitted was indescribable. It hadn't yet reached them but he could almost feel it ghosting over his skin and starting to eat away at his bones and meat. He imagined his companion felt the same.
Harry flew desperately, swiveling between towers of raging flames and smoke so thick he could imagine it clinging to his clothes. The wood beneath his hands was scorching hot to the point that blisters formed. It hurt to hang on but there was no other option; what would befall them should they fall would be worse.
So Harry soared above the inferno, the tips of the flames licking at his heels, beckoning him under. He could barely see where he was going—the contours of the room were a blur, obscured by smoke and the crimson glow of heat. It was instinct more than anything that had him swerving and diving and twisting out of danger.
Harry wanted to cry out in jubilation when he saw the distant outline of their way out. His companion's grip on his torso slackened and Harry, in panic, urged himself to fly faster. The broom pushed them forward like a shooting star through the breadth of space until they were spiraling out of danger and into the cold, comforting safety of the castle's halls.
The fire roared behind them. Sparks flickered out of the entranceway, the fire's intent to recapture them all too clear, before the door slammed shut and sealed it in.

They hit the ground with a crash. Harry's broom snapped in two in his effort to keep them from hurtling into the stone wall and it hurt just as much as any broken bone would have. He took a second to mourn his loss before awareness set in and he turned around to seek out Draco.
Draco was lying in a slump against the wall, his body bent at an awkward angle his face concealed by the material of his robes. Harry's breath whooshed out of him and he scrambled forward and anxiously pulled the sliver of the cloth off his face.
His hand fell away to lie limply at his side.
Draco wasn't breathing.
The sound that tore through the halls seconds later startled the portraits—made them run for help. When the others arrived at the scene it was with the expectation of facing a banshee, as one portrait suggested, or a dragon, another inferred—not a battered Harry Potter, collapsed in a corner, clutching the unmistakable corpse of Draco Malfoy.
On the floor beside them the diadem glittered.

13 May, 1998.
Harry watched from beneath the shade of a billowing wych elm as the minister read aloud the eulogy, his voice a familiar monotone. St. Ingnovol Mortimer's Wizarding cemetery was gloomy, the afternoon sun held captive behind thick grey clouds that threatened rainfall. The only hint of color was given by the vivid flowers that spread along the marble white coffin sitting atop a plinth.
What stood out the most was the emptiness. Everything else, from the dreary weather to the solemn atmosphere, was textbook proper. The only thing out of place was that which was not there: mourners.
Mrs. Malfoy stood with a group of three to the right of the coffin. A handful of Hogwarts students, though Harry could only put names to two, hovered on the left side. There was a ministry official—the one reading the official rites—and the undertaker tasked with burying the casket.
And then there was Harry.
The ceremony progressed quickly with little fanfare. Silence answered when the minister called for orators and no one, save Mrs. Malfoy, stepped forward to kiss the deceased. Carnations were placed on the coffin and it partially sank into the ground as surely as if the dirt had been made up of water. Then it was over.

Everyone but Mrs. Malfoy left when the minister took his leave. She stood over the coffin for a very long time, staring at the ornate lid as if she didn't quite know what it was or what to do with it.
Fifteen minutes passed before Harry pushed away from the neck of the tree and walked towards her. She visibly stiffened as he approached but said nothing.
"I'm sorry for your loss," Harry forced himself to say. The words were hollow.
He didn't look at the coffin, couldn't bear to.
"As am I," Mrs. Malfoy said, glancing at Harry. Her face resembled a blank canvas. If Harry didn't know the lengths she'd gone to keep her son safe he would have thought she didn't care, but he knew and it made it easy to interpret the glint in her eyes for was it was—grief.
Harry was quite sure that, had he taken any longer to make his presence known, he would have witnessed Mrs. Malfoy tearing the casket open to bury herself with her son.
It was a sentiment he could relate to.
The clouds kept their promise and rained over them. By the time Mrs. Malfoy made her departure the quiet rainfall had sharpened to a downpour that seeped through his clothes and chilled his skin. It took Harry a long time to convince himself that looking at the coffin would give him the closure he desperately needed. How could he move on if he didn't say goodbye, and how would he say goodbye if he didn't look? He had to summon every ounce of Gryffindor courage he possessed just to turn his head—a miscalculation on his part as he had none left to keep him on his feet.
Harry sank to his knees in the mud. For all he couldn't bring himself to look before, it was all he could do now. He stared at the stone lid still above ground, at its sharp contours, its polished surface, and the intricate carvings engraved into the marble. It was hard to imagine that inside that cold, dark box lay a person—one of the many that Harry had failed to save.
He bit his lip and tried not to picture Draco lying on his back, hands entwined on his chest, his face slackened with death. He tried not to imagine him lying there forever, until age and the elements wore at his flesh and disfigured him to something Harry couldn't recognize—wouldn't even want to.
If Harry closed his eyes he could still remember the shape of Draco's mouth when he smirked and the mischievous glint that illuminated his eyes when he was being a prat. He could still remember the way his hair shone silver in the moonlight and his skin glowed under the light of the sun.

Harry could still remember the way his eyes fluttered closed when he came, he could still feel the warmth of his skin when they embraced, could still hear the hitch in his voice whenever he screamed, gasped, whispered Harry's name...
They'd had one year together and then the war had taken him from Harry.
This was the second time it had done so, only this time Harry harbored no hope of getting him back.
Harry's arms gave out and he fell into the ground with a splatter. He dug his forehead into the earth, unable to look at the cursed box that contained all his lost hopes and dreams. Harry wept, paying no heed to the dirt in his mouth or the rocks that pierced his skin. His sobs were lost in the deep rumble of thunder and carried away by the wind.

June, 1998.
Harry's friends were worried about him. He could imagine why; he hadn't left Grimmauld Place in weeks, relying on Kreacher to gather the necessary supplies to keep him alive. He cut off access to the floo and warded the house against visitors. Only owls were allowed through, though it wasn't much of a compromise considering the stack of unopened letters and packages on the kitchen table.
Harry spent his days sleeping and his nights trying to find oblivion in an endless supply of whiskey and gin. He found that he had little control over his thoughts while sober and had been quick to remedy that. Not that he had much control over them when he was pissed out of his arse, mind, but crazy mental ramblings were definitely preferred over the alternative.
So Harry drank until he was too sloshed to even remember his own name let alone dwell over stolen opportunities and the corpses of loved ones. He felt ill and weak all the time but at least he wasn't haunted by the ghost of Draco's face, his voice, his touch. By the memories of a dead man.
Harry counted it as a tentative win.

The idea had been forming in his head for weeks like the dark, shadowy wisps of a Dementor taking shape. The thoughts were disgusting—they made bile clog at the back of his throat and his stomach clench with revulsion. He banished them like the undesirables they were while blaming the warped turn his thoughts had taken on his constant state of inebriation and the morbid environment in which he now lived.
They came back as surely as a gnome to a garden, though, and Harry was about as successful as Mrs. Weasley was in keeping the nasty little creatures out. Whenever he let his guard downand whenever his drunken thoughts turned particularly maudlin they snuck back into the chaos of his mind and found caverns to cling to.
As July turned into August and August into September Harry's response to it, that initial knee-jerk reaction, changed dramatically. When the thoughts flittered through his mind he no longer wanted to stick his fingers down his throat until he forced them out through his mouth. That, or smash his head against the wall until they shattered with the rest of him. When he'd once had to clamp his hands over his mouth to keep in the bile, now Harry felt only a stirring of discomfort in the pit of his stomach. Any disgust was aimed at himself for having such depraved thoughts at all, not the act itself.
It didn't help that Harry's clutch was losing its effect. No matter how much he upped his alcohol intake his body continued to adjust. At one point the only thing that had been keeping him alive was the potions Kreacher periodically stuffed down his throat. Had it not been for Kreacher's loyalty Harry would have probably died weeks ago.
Now the stupor lasted only a quarter of what it used to and took double the effort. It was like a fraying ward trying to hold back the flow of the ocean; eventually cracks would form and the water would find a way through. Harry's ward was already unraveling and the thoughts he'd tried so hard to cast out were trickling through.
Harry found himself thinking about Draco all the time, fixating on the time they'd spent together and obsessing over the future they no longer had. Harry used to lay in his bunk in Gryffindor tower and fantasize about ending the war so that Draco no longer had to choose between staying with Harry and keeping his family safe. He'd imagined Draco finding him on the battlefield and kissing Harry for the entire world to see; imagined them buying a posh little house together afterward and living the rest of their lives in a whirlwind of passion and temper and comfort and sex.
Harry hadn't considered the possibility that Draco might die. Even now, despite the fact that he'd held Draco's dead body in his arms and had been witness to his burial, Harry could not comprehend it. He half-expected Draco to pop up any day now, unannounced and with a demand for tea, and then fuck Harry senseless into the nearest surface. Not only were such thoughts irrational but they were probably an indicator that Harry was not quite right in the head.
Still, they were a sight better than the thoughts he'd been trying desperately to rid himself of for weeks.
When he'd begun to fantasize about ripping open Draco's coffin, pulling him out, and holding him, Harry didn't know. He reckoned that it might have started as a dream, one so profound that it simply stuck with him. That had been alright at first; one could hardly control the nature of their dreams, after all. But then Harry had found himself thinking about it with something akin to longing and realized that something was very, very wrong with him. He'd made it his mission to eradicate the thought but all his tactics had failed. Now his last defense was crumbling, too.
Thoughts weren't bad altogether, Harry knew. But add in grief and desperation and hopeless love and they became disfigured monsters that hid in the depths of shadows and could sing any tune and shift at whim.
Harry knew what shape his monster would take and he feared it because he knew he wouldn't be able to cast it away.

17 September, 1998.
When it became apparent that inebriation was no longer an option Harry took to other methods of distraction, namely reading and cleaning. During the day he scoured the house so thoroughly that even his Aunt Petunia would have been impressed and at night he buried himself in whatever the Black library had to offer, which was a lot. It didn't give him the sense of detachment that being drunk off his arse once did, but he found that when combined the mental and physical exertions of both were enough to tire him out. By the time Harry made it to bed most nights he was too exhausted to do much of anything, let alone think. It was enough.
He'd been in the middle of tackling his bedroom, which he'd left for last, when Harry found the photo in the bottom of his Hogwart's trunk.
Beneath a film of dust a younger version of him and Draco sat side-by-side, faces upturned towards the camera. The angle was awkward and the lighting was off but it didn't matter. Harry only had eyes for the boy grinning at the camera, his chin propped up on Harry's shoulder and his expression a model of bliss.
Draco blew a teasing kiss at real-Harry from the confines of the plastic and then turned to place a real kiss on photo-Harry, who leaned over to nip at his lip. They kissed and then the scene started all over again, looping, never ending or changing, a perfect moment frozen in time.
Harry could remember vividly the day they'd taken it. The camera had been Harry's fifteenth birthday gift to Draco and Draco had harassed him for days to take a picture. He'd relented eventually, as he always did, and had been dragged to an abandoned classroom in the West Wing to pose until Draco deemed his hoard adequate and allowed a considerably blinder Harry to flee.
The photos had disappeared the day Draco decided to fight alongside his parents. The day they'd broken up. Harry had only saved this one and at the time it had been too painful to look at, not to mention dangerous, so he'd simply hidden it, kept safe for better days.
Those days never came.
Once more photo-Draco kissed photo-Harry's cheek and Harry unthinkingly touched the spot. He could almost feel the press of Draco's dry lips against his cheek, the graze of his pointed nose against his skin, the brush of soft hair alongside his ear.
When Harry brought his fingers away they were wet.
He stared at the photo for hours, devouring it as if it were his very own Mirror of Erised.
That night his wards crumbled into dust and scattered against the onslaught of his thoughts. His monster took form and smiled. Harry welcomed it.

27 September, 1998.
It was shortly after midnight when Harry reached the gates of the graveyard. He had no trouble slipping through the cracks of the wards and sneaking past the stone guardians— if not even Death could see beneath his invisibility cloak the gargoyles hadn't the hope of being able to. His feet carried him over the plush fields of grass, past hills of dirt and along gnarling trails. He'd only been there once before but that was all he needed. His legs guided him as surely as if he'd been there a thousand times, a paragon of muscle memory.
The cemetery was mostly dark, only scantily lit by a sliver of moonlight and a smattering of fireflies. It was eerie quiet, the silence almost a sound in itself. The only thing to be heard were the echoes of his footsteps and his breathing, but they too were softened; absorbed by the ground and swept away by the wind.

He reached the Malfoy plot quickly. The wards were a bit more difficult to discern than the ones at the front gates but he managed to disable them without setting off any alarms. Harry set up his own wards to alert him if anyone approached, stuffed his cloak inside his robe and stepped over the earthy threshold and into the garden.
Draco's coffin was among a dozen others. The only reason Harry didn't spend an hour searching for it was because his was an oddity; the only white among stones of grey and black.
Harry's heart hammered in his chest as he followed the line of partially-buried coffins. As he drew nearer he saw that fresh flowers littered the surface of Draco's and that there wasn't a speck of dust to be found, evidence that someone—most probably Mrs. Malfoy—was visiting, and frequently. Harry stared at the engravings carved along one side, cursive letters trimmed with silver that spelled his ex-lover's name, and swallowed.
Was he really going to do this?
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
He was.
Harry was lucky that Mrs. Malfoy had decided to go with the Wizarding custom of partial entombment otherwise raising the coffin from the ground and unsealing it would have been much more difficult. Harry had spent hours researching the spells in the Black library and even longer reciting the incantations and practicing the wand movements, not stopping until the foreign words slipped off his tongue easily and he was certain he could perform the movements in his sleep. The spells were long and the magic required was considerable so by the time the lid creaked open, discharging a stream of smoke, sweat had already begun to collect on his brow.
Harry cast a silencing charm around himself and levitated the thick stone to the side. The moment the heavy slab was situated he slumped against a nearby tree in exhaustion and gasped for breath. He wasn't looking forward to returning everything to its place later on.
When he thought he could move again without falling over he straightened and stepped towards the coffin.

The universe seemed to come to a still as he leaned over the edge and looked inside.
Harry felt his breath catch in his chest.
Draco hadn't changed at all.
No, that wasn't true, he realized, after a few minutes of just staring. He wasn't entirely unchanged. Though minimal, signs of decay were still evident. Malfoy's skin had darkened to an ashen gray and dark bruises stained his eyes and mouth. His hair, once the color of the midnight moon and just as soft as any of its beams, was lanky and dull, matted atop his head like straw. The smell that emitted from his body was, while not entirely repugnant, bordering on it. He looked starved, ill,dead.
Harry didn't care about any of that.
A part of him had expected to be repulsed. Expected to see Draco's dead body, flee and spend the rest of his life trying to forget this moment of madness. It didn't happen. Draco had barely looked better their sixth year of Hogwarts, to be truthful. The sight of him now was nothing compared to the horrors he'd envisaged.
More importantly, it was still Draco. Harry swallowed the lump in his throat and gripped the edge of the stone tablet tightly. It was still his body—still his brain, his skin, his heart. Harry was sure that if he removed the robe he'd discover the crescent-shaped scar that stretched across his hip and the mole that adorned his left shoulder.
It was still Draco, still his Draco. Suddenly the need to touch him, to get him out of there, to encase him in his arms and just forget overwhelmed Harry.
Harry hardly thought as he carefully levitated Draco out of his coffin and onto the ground. His robes would be stained by dirt but Harry would clean them later. Besides, Draco hated wearing white. Harry doubted he'd be mad.
Harry sank to his knees and reverently brushed the flaxen strands behind Draco's ear, thinking that he would be furious to know that his beautiful hair had been reduced to such a state. Harry felt tears gather in his eyes as he desperately tried to smooth it down. His hands cupped Draco's too-cold cheeks, rubbed his paper-dry lips, making him swallow a sob.
"You're still so beautiful," he told Draco in earnest. "Still the most beautiful boy I've ever known."
Harry hadn't told him that nearly enough when they'd been together. Why the fuck hadn't he told him?
"So beautiful," Harry repeated, tracing the contours of his face with his hands. Draco had never looked so sharp. He'd never been so still. Harry found himself outlining the curve of his lips again. They were cold and he shuddered, half expecting a ghost of icy breath to brush his palm. He would have preferred that to nothing.
Harry fixated on Draco's lips for a long time, growing accustomed to the sharp ridges and unnatural stiffness. He wasn't aware of having moved until his mouth brushed something cold. Harry froze. Long seconds passed where he just hovered over Draco, his gaze riveted by the blue veins that stitched over his eyelids and the heady scent of rot. He wondered what it would feel like to breathe into Draco, to have him breathe back and suddenly he needed it like he needed air—needed to feel Draco breathe again even if it wasn't real. Harry closed the space between them and his eyes fluttered closed. He urged Draco's mouth open with his fingers and tongue and breathed into him. Harry's breath filled Draco's mouth, warming it, and he sucked it back as if he were a Dementor seeking a kiss. The air that rose from Draco's mouth was sour with decay but Harry didn't care because it was warm and with his eyes closed he could imagine that Draco was alive beneath him, soft and hot so very, very alive.
"I need you, Draco," Harry cried against him, throwing one leg over Draco's hip to bracket his waist. "God, I need you." He kissed him again urgently, licking into his mouth and accepting the taste of death. The kiss felt like misery, felt like despair, but Harry couldn't get enough. He knew that mouth, had spent months of his life dedicated to mapping it with his tongue and capturing it with his lips. This body was his to touch and taste and claim and no one had a right to take it from him, not even Death.
"You feel so good," he whispered against him, dragging his tongue down Draco's check, and jaw and neck. "So good. I've missed you, Draco. I've missed you so much."
Suddenly the need to strip them of all clothing, to lie naked with the boy he loved more than anyone else and prove that it was still him, still Draco, was as necessary as breathing. The seconds it took to shed his clothes were an agony that only subsided when he got his hands on that cool skin once more. He couldn't shake the idea that if he let Draco go, let him out of his sight for even a moment, he'd disappear. And what would Harry have of him then? An old potions textbook? The remains of a paper crane? A photo that was as cutting as a blade to the heart?
Perhaps Draco's soul was gone but Harry had his body. It was still something, and certainly better than nothing.
Anything was better than nothing.
Draco's robes were pulled off within seconds, revealing a bare body underneath. The sight of him, of that long expanse of gray skin, made Harry grateful that he was already on his knees. His hands danced over the marble skin, outlined the indents of bones, gripped the frigid flesh. His fingers grazed the edges of the scar on his chest, a scar that Harry had not apologized for and now never would. He gasped Draco's name, over and over and over like a mantra or a prayer, and closed his eyes and imagined Draco flicking him on the forehead and calling him a sentimental git.
What would Draco think of him now, he wondered, seeing Harry clutching his dead body in such a way?
Harry imagined him throwing his head back in a bout of mocking laughter.
Imagined him saying: "Really, Harry, I know I was a good fuck but come on."
Imagined him looking sadly at him from a bed of pillows and saying: "You foolish Gryffindor. This is why you should never fall in love with anyone."
Harry swallowed, feeling déjà vu slither up his spine. Draco had told him something similar once, when—
Harry rapidly shook his head, banishing the thoughts. He wouldn't allow himself to dwell on such things now. He wasn't going to waste what little time together they had left so he could brood over the past. If this was to be his last contact with Draco than he would make the best of it.
Harry continued his exploration of Draco's body. It was different, yet so very similar. He found the crescent-shaped scar on his hip and the mole on his shoulder and the clover-shaped birth mark in the space where groin met thigh but it wasn't enough. It didn't connect him to Draco as he hoped it would. It was as if there was a veil lying between them, separating them, and Harry couldn't get it off or shred it apart. He needed for it to be gone, needed to feel as if he and Draco were joined again, breathing the same air and feeling the same things and living in the same moment a-a-and—
Harry clutched Draco to him. The body in his arms was trembling and it took him a moment to realize that it was because he was shaking and he was shaking because he was crying and he was crying because—nonono. Harry wouldn't think about it, he couldn't think about 'd only fall apart at the edges and crumble in on himself like a house without a frame. This was the only thing left of Draco in the whole world and it was enough, it had to be enough.
Harry kissed him again, sloppily, desperately, until both their chins were glistening with spit. Malfoy would surely have complained had he been—
Harry crushed the thought and moaned. Why couldn't he stop thinking about it? He was doing this so he could forget, so he could have one final moment with the love of his life, so he could find closure. Why couldn't he just stay in the moment and forget everything else? Why couldn't he just fucking pretend?
"Pretend a corpse isn't a corpse?" the memory of Draco's voice whispered in his head. "You're stupider than I thought, Potter."
It would be so much easier if Draco would bloody do something—twitch, moan, touch him, hold him, kiss him back, say his name, fucking breathe!
Harry's shout echoed like a gunshot in the clearing, unnatural and deafening. It left behind an unnerving silence that seemed to extend for miles, seeping through his skin and chilling him to the bone.
"I'm sorry," he whispered. He didn't bother trying to stop his tears. "I'm so sorry, Draco, I'm so sorry."
He'd come here to spend one last time with him, to say a proper goodbye, and he'd shouted at him. No wonder he'd left him. What did Draco have to keep on living for, anyway? Idiotic parents? Backstabbing friends? War? A lover who constantly did and said the wrong things, one that he couldn't even turn to, couldn't even trust, when he'd needed it the most?
"I'm sorry, oh god, I'm so sorry, so sorry," Harry muttered the words again and again, holding Draco against him and rubbing his fingers through his hair in the way he'd always liked. He was a heavy weight against him, crushing, but Harry bore it because he deserved it and because it was his to bear.
He didn't stop apologizing even as he settled Draco back onto the ground, or when he kissed him again, or when he trailed his lips down his sternum, his stomach, his groin.
"I'll make it up to you," Harry whispered. "For everything, the way you like." Then he took Draco's cock in his mouth and swallowed him was cold, was the first thing he thought. Cold and dead. There was no heat warming his mouth, no pulsing veins tapping his tongue, no sudden jerks to threaten the back of his throat. Just dead weight, dead blood, dead skin. Harry sucked him anyway, imagining Draco writhing on the ground, gasping his name, pulling his hair, fisting the dirt, cursing. Imagined the press of thighs around his face, of tightening balls against his chin, of precome pooling in his mouth.
Harry sucked the lifeless organ until his jaw ached and his neck throbbed. When he finally pulled off and opened his eyes he half expected to see an erection there, flushed pink with arousal and twitching with desire. Harry's heart plummeted somewhere very low when it turned out not to be the case. Misery and grief took up the space his heart should have occupied and settled there and Harry didn't think it was ever going to leave, not for as long as he lived.
"Draco," he moaned, cradling his flaccid penis in his hands. "Please, oh god, please. I don't know what else to do." He didn't know how to get past the veil between them. Everything he did or said only seemed to reinforce it, make it worse. "I need help, I don't…"
Harry trailed off when a flash of color caught his eyes. Harry leaned forward and squinted at Draco's spread legs. It was so dark he could barely see anything but he could have sworn he'd seen—oh. A glimpse of purple. Harry spread Draco's legs, petting them as he did, and reached beneath him to pull out a…flower. It was small, no bigger than the tip of his finger, the color of amethyst. He held it in the palm of his hand and frowned, trying to place it.
Heliotrope, he remembered suddenly. The flower of…devotion. Of eternal love.
Harry stared at the tiny flower in his hand for a long time, hope gathering in his chest. He looked at Draco and swallowed heavily. "Is this a sign?" he whispered a question that he didn't wait for Draco to answer. It must have been, he told himself. He was sure there hadn't been a flower there before. Nothing else could explain it.
Harry nodded to himself, allowing a smile to bloom across his face. It felt awkward, stilted from disuse. He settled the small flower carefully onto the ground then repositioned himself between Draco's legs.
"You want this too," Harry crowed. "Just as much as I do. Oh god, Draco, I'll make this so good for us." Harry's cock was only semi-hard, but it didn't matter. Dead or alive, Draco would always be enough to get him stiff. Harry rubbed Draco's cold thighs and brushed the smattering of coarse hair at his groin. He stroked Draco's cock and squeezed his balls. He was fully hard in an instant. "Mm, so good. This is just what we need. This will bridge the gap between us, I just know it." Harry ran his hands up and down Draco's torso then hoisted him up, grunting at his weight. He spread him open, whispered one of the few spells he could manage wandlessly and watched, enraptured, as oil dribbled out of Draco's arse and pooled to the ground. Harry stuck two fingers inside him and groaned.
"You're so tight," Harry told him. "So wonderful." He didn't need to stretch him out but he did it anyway, observing the way Draco felt on the inside, cold and stiff.
"I'll fix that," Harry said, withdrawing his fingers and positioning his cock. "You ready, Draco?" He waited a beat, then pushed in.
The breath knocked out of Harry and his world skewed. He had to close his eyes against the everything that rushed through him; the sensation of being engulfed, of being inside Draco once again, and the memories that flooded him of moments spent just like this. Everything was the same, yet nothing was and Harry didn't know whether to cry or scream or laugh. He settled for biting his lip and jerking his hips.
His eyes snapped shut. If possible Draco's body felt colder on the inside. His dick was caught between wanting to rut to completion and shrivel up and hide. Harry forced himself to grit his teeth and bear it. Draco was like this now and it was the way things were. He had to get used to it. Being inside him now was still better than anything else.
It took a while for the cold to diminish to something a little less intense, a little more bearable. He dug his fingers in Draco's hips, lifted himself higher on his knees and fucked him faster.
It felt so good. So wonderful. Draco was impossibly tight around him and the friction against his cock felt incredible. Harry's eyes took in the way he jerked on the ground from their movements and while it wasn't the same as the unabashed flailing he was so used to it was almost enough.
As he fucked Draco he gazed at his bruised eyes, sunken cheeks and dry lips. He stared at the way his bones protruded against his ashen skin. He watched his stringy hair flutter in the wind and drag against the dirt.
"You're so beautiful," Harry said. He was crying now but he couldn't stop. "So beautiful, so beautiful, more beautiful than anyone." He felt that he needed to say it so that Draco would hear it and know that he was still the love of Harry's life and that Harry wasn't going to replace him, not ever, for how could he even hope to try when sex with his corpse was still better than anything else?
"I love you so much," Harry said. He hadn't told Draco that nearly enough when he'd been alive, and oh, how he regretted it now. "More than anyone in the world, I promise, I swear it."
Harry felt his orgasm building in his stomach, mighty and swift, and he shook his head, trying desperately to reign it in. He couldn't come, not yet, not when he'd only been inside him for a few minutes, not when this might be his only chance.
He was sobbing when his lips met Draco's. Sobbing when he placed his palm against Draco's stagnant heart. Sobbing when he finally came, his forehead pressed against Draco's clavicle, one arm wrapped around Draco's hips.
He crumpled over Draco's corpse and wept, though he didn't understand why.
Didn't want to understand why.
He lay there on top of the body, buried to the hilt in a freezing cavern full of his own come, 'til the sun broke over the horizon and flooded their garden in dim morning light. Harry's mind was an empty shell as he pulled himself away and cleaned and redressed the both of them.
He made sure to dismantle his wards before he levitated Draco carefully into the coffin, smoothing his hair and straightening his robes. He stared at him for a long time, not really thinking anything but head filled to the brim anyway. He stared on even as sounds of life erupted around them and the sun climbed higher into the sky. From somewhere far away church bells rang, indicating that the gates to the cemetery were opening.
It would be dangerous for him to stay any longer, but…
"I understand now, I think," he said, playing with the small petals of the heliotrope on Draco's chest. Trees rustled behind them, cicadas sang, birds trilled. "I know how to get past the veil."
There was no answer but he didn't expect there to be.
Harry nodded as if he'd heard one anyway.
"Devotion," Harry murmured, returning the flower to Draco's chest. "That's what you want from me, isn't it? My eternal love."
He breathed in deeply, taking in the crisp air of morning and the smell of marigolds and honeysuckles. The faint light of the sun warmed him to the core. He allowed himself a second to acknowledge guilt and regret before he climbed into the coffin and settled against a cushioned wall.
In the sunlight Draco's hair looked a little like it used to—flaxen and lush. His skin lost its gray tinge, making him look white. The breeze glided over him, rustling his clothes and hair, giving him the impression of moving, of being alive. Harry gazed at him for what felt like ages before he drew in a shaky breath and with an even shakier hand gripped his wand.
The words slid off his tongue with chilling familiarity. His wand jerked in a pattern he could replicate in his sleep. There was the loud sound of grinding, the heavy thud of impact and then the world began to narrow—disappear.
It's okay, Harry thought, laying his wand atop Draco's wand and seizing his hand. He'd paid his dues to the world. He didn't owe anyone anything, not anymore.
Except you. Harry traced the fading light on Draco's face, inhaled his potent scent and clutched the heliotrope between their clasped hands.
Once upon a time he promised Draco Malfoy forever.
Harry would give it to him.

He closed his eyes.

Finis.
- 1
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Heliotrope