sassy_cissa (sassy_cissa) wrote in slythindor100, @ 2005-10-07 15:01:00 |
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Original poster: chameleonsmile
Title: Ashes, Ashes
Rating: PG for angst, blood, death, etc.
Word Count: 262.
Challenge: #5
Warnings: Character abuse.
A/N: An angsty drabble. I believe I used all the words except for flu and nut. Title taken from the nursery rhyme. Set immediately after Harry defeats the Dark Lord.
The vast space that was the horizon stretched over his eyes. There was nothing there—his friends had become enemies and his enemies had become friends, and both were lost or dead. There was no distinction. The satin wind scratched over his ears, raw and empty.
As he swayed there on the horizon, he tried to ease his numbed mind back to life, but it was as futile as trying erasing the tattoo that had adorned his lover’s arm. The darkness was enveloping, cold and filled with black sureness, and Harry Potter wanted nothing more than to lie down and embrace it. But even now, there were things to be done.
He stumbled over a rock, placed there by some well-meaning landscape architect—a Muggle, he thought dimly, if only they had known, if only someone had shown them the ways of the crystal ball—and collapsed on a park bench, a hobo, a nothing. His mind carried him on waves through his memories, smudged like eyeliner after a good cry; he was an open book that the whole world had read:
Knowing that Hermione was not the only person in the world who had read Hogwarts, a History, and putting good use to the knowledge with Draco, who always knew exactly where to go
Watching TV for the first time in years, and turning memories Dudley and his taunts to memories of warm apple cider and blankets and curling together on the couch
Getting to the beach and driving over a jagged shell—he had never fixed a flat tire before, never had any need to—and turning to Draco, who rose, unexpectedly, magnificently, to the occasion
And he was washed up on that beach in his mind, left shivering and naked and alone, to be examined and prodded and known—they were all looking to him—
He was their cowboy and they were his Indians—his friends were his enemies and his enemies were his friends, and no one could tell the difference because they all looked the same when the mark faded and disappeared.
The white rabbit lay, bleeding, on the ground. Harry hadn’t the faith to save him.