Title: Comfortably Numb (Love Ridden 4)

Author: Romie

Archive:  anywhere.  In fact, I'd appreciate it.  Let me know if it's convenient.

Rating:  PG

Pairing:  prelude to Harry/Draco

Spoilers:  none

Disclaimers:  Rowling is God.  Title is courtesy of Pink Floyd.

Warnings:  This series contains elements of Slash, or same-sex relationships.  If you have a problem with that, don't read it; spend your time becoming more compassionate instead.  The world will thank you.

Summary:  Draco takes a bath, then gets ambushed.

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Baths are inherently superior to showers.  Showers are tawdry, rushed affairs, built for efficiency, not luxury.  Jets of punishing water beat down on stooped shoulders, pummeling the muscles into submission.  The water is angry and agitated, furious at its exploitation into this unnatural form, this contrived rain.  As a philosopher and an avowed hedonist, I find the whole thing vaguely offensive.

 

A bath, on the other hand, is an elaborate ritual, a solitary meditation planned and scheduled like any important religious event.  One sits in the porcelain tub, a sanctuary of sorts, and locks the rest of the world behind closed doors.  It's a time of complete vulnerability and total honesty; some would say self worship, but I find it equally humbling.  With the removal of clothes comes a stripping of pretence, of the armor we're forced to wear around observers.  They have no place here; the bath is a commune between me and the water.

 

When I first came to Hogwarts, I thought I'd have to give them up.  Except for the prefects, we all use communal house showers - one for the boys, and one for the girls.  I was surprised when, just after the welcome feast, Snape himself showed me to a small one-person bathing room; he said he'd had it converted for me from an unused cupboard.  I don't know how he knew - perhaps my parents told him.  We never spoke of it again, but I will always be inexpressably grateful.

 

Of course, I didn't use the room at first, choosing instead to suffer through the dreadful communal showers.  I was afraid the other students would mock me for my perceived weakness.  I was already the richest and one of the smallest; I could easily have become a laughingstock back then, (before I'd established my reputation).  One day, Blaise Zabini pulled me aside and told me everyone already knew, and I was a fool for not using what had been given me.  That conversation planted a seed of understanding that continues to grow even today.

 

It's difficult to explain to outsiders, but Slytherins stick together as surely as any of the other houses.  Our alliance is not born of love, or friendship, or fear, but of understanding.  We all have our quirks; I take obsessively long baths, Blaise can't sleep without his stuffed rabbit, Pansy sucks her thumb when she's worried.  If we discovered these foibles in a member of another house, we'd exploit them to their fullest.  The difference is we all know enough to damn each other; if I were to betray any of them, they'd see to it I was screwed right back (and vice versa).  It forces an astonishingly peaceful truce.

 

(This does not preclude a certain amount of teasing within the walls of the Dungeons.  Greg periodically sings a song of his own invention, entitled "Draco Transfigures Into a Prune."  It's surprisingly clever and undeniably catchy; I find myself humming the damn thing occasionally, to his express enjoyment.  He has an unusually good ear for a tune; I don't know why he never wrote anything else.  I haven't asked, and he hasn't offered.  Don't fear for my honor; I'll get him back with a dirty limerick about his hatred for mushy peas.)

 

A bath is not about anything so provincial as cleanliness or sanitation.  It's the sensation of having time away from everyone else - a particularly rare commodity in a boarding school.  I like to stretch out on my back so that only my face stays above the tide line.  The water acts as an amplifier; I become entranced by the sound of my own breathing, of my heartbeat, of the blood spiraling through my capillaries.  (When I was younger, I believed the moat's merfolk were trying to contact me by banging on the pipes.  I must have spent months tapping back replies before I realized it was just the water valve clicking open and closed as toilets were used throughout the building.)

 

One would think I'd get tired of being solitary now that hardly anyone speaks to me.  (Disowned by friends and enemies alike.)  Instead, my baths have become longer and longer.  There's a profound difference between being alone in a public space and being left to one's self; the latter implies a certain choice in the matter, while the former smacks of ostracism.  I'll recline against the porcelain, mind blank, until the water turns cold; then I'll pull the plug and run the hot water tap until the temperature is almost unpleasant.

 

I'm not sure how long my current bath has lasted, but I've refilled the tub four times and the water is cold again.  It's been long enough, I suppose; there's Potions homework to be done.  Besides, my room should be empty now.  Vince is gone, and I heard Greg leave for his date with Pansy.  (She moved on *very* quickly once my family was implicated.  I understand, although I don't forgive; I might have done the same in her situation.  Our relationship, if it can be called that, was a show for the rest of the world.  She knows I'm gay, (all of Slytherin does.  I sometimes think they realized before I did.  It certainly provides an alternate explanation for why they never begrudged me my independent bathroom.)  Pansy didn't care; she just wanted my last name.  It's hardly as desirable now.)

 

Nevertheless, pulling the plug feels like wrapping a noose around my neck.  I watch the water whirl down the drain; a part of me always goes with it.  When every vestige of liquid has disappeared and I'm shivering too badly to keep sitting here, I finally step out of the tub to dry myself.

 

This is as much a ritual as the bath itself.  I disdain quick-dry spells in favor of a soft cream-colored towel which I run over each limb in turn, skimming off the water droplets slowly and thoroughly.  In my mind, it's not merely a towel, but a caress; this is the same towel my mother used on me when I was a small child.  If I breathe deeply enough, I can still smell her lavender perfume.  (Amazing; I suppose the same spell which keeps it from becoming threadbare locks in the fragrance.)  After I finish with this, I lightly towel my hair, then comb it back to air dry the rest of the way.  I wrap the cloth around my hips, gather my dirty robes, and pad down the corridor to my room.

 

I am brought up short by the intrusive specter of Harry Potter.  He perches on my trunk like a king waiting to pass judgment.  The way the light hits his glasses prevents me from seeing his eyes; it's chilling, as though I'm a specimen in a petri dish.  (At first, I can't imagine how he got in here, but then I remember the invisibility cloak from my third-year visit to the Shrieking Shack.  He must've slipped in when Greg and Pansy left.)

 

Before I can say anything, he launches into a speech that sounds rehearsed.  He forthrightly decrees that he wants to apologize for any past unpleasantness, and hopes it's not too late for us to become friends.

 

He's shattering my bones with a sledgehammer, but he doesn't notice.  It should be obvious; I haven't spoken yet, just started at him.  In the normal run of things, I would have uttered at least two cutting remarks by now, and probably tossed him out.  He's so used to being the hero that it doesn't occur to him I'm the one being victimized.  He's invaded my private sanctum, the one place I shouldn't have to keep up appearances.  He's caught me at my most vulnerable, fresh from the bath and nearly naked.  I hold my bundle of robes before my body like a shield.  (I can't get dressed, because he's sitting on my clothes trunk and shows no sign of preparing to move.  I refuse to ask him; I shouldn't have to.)

 

Obliviously, he plunges on with what he's convinced himself is *right*, ignoring the fact that he's ambushed me.  He believes what he's saying, but he doesn't really see me.  I'm a charity case, another mission.  Not a real person.  Have I finally fallen low enough to be incorporated into his entourage of failures?  God knows Harry loves to champion the underdog, and you can't get much more pitiful than a boy with no friends and no family.  I imagine he sees himself eight years ago.

 

Leave me be, I whisper, but I don't think it makes it past my lips.  It certainly doesn't stem Harry's earnest flow of words.  I don't fit the "villain" niche anymore - no longer politically powerful enough - so he's trying to create a new slot for me: "converted ally."  Why can't he just let me be myself, free of categories?  I think he hopes reclassification will bury all his problems; if he can label me properly, I'm no longer dangerous.  He doesn't have to worry about the vagaries of complexity.  He can react to an archetype instead of an individual - confusing, confounding, unpredictable.  Personal.

 

I wonder how he defines beauty, what kinds of art he likes.  Probably pen and ink, devoid of shading and color.  Clean two-dimensional depictions of a four-dimensional world.  I bet he thinks he's happy, or at least content.  Enlightened.  Self-actualized.  What will happen when he realizes?  Will his whole world fall apart, the ink drawings peeling away like rotten wallpaper?

 

Finally, *finally*, he finishes his diatribe with a resolute invitation to go night flying sometime, just him and me.  When I don't respond, a flicker of worry passes across his forehead, (although maybe I just imagine it).  He vaults off my trunk and walks over to me.  I want to shrink until I can hide in the floor joins.  I want to diffuse into a colorless gas.  Instead, I force myself to stand perfectly still as Harry tentatively rests his fingers on my shoulder and peers down at me.  (We're normally of a height, but his sneakers give him a slight advantage over my bare feet.)

 

Now I can see his eyes - shockingly, vibrantly green.  I've never been this close before; his pupils have tiny gold haloes around them.  Such stunning irises shouldn't be so cruelly hidden by glasses; if eyes are the windows to the soul, the heavy black frames are shutters.  I miss what he says; he looks a bit embarrassed.  I think he's asking if I'm all right.  It gradually dawns on me that I'm still frozen in the doorway, blocking his exit.

 

I step aside, the shuffle of my feet assaulting my ears like a thunderclap.  I'm moving through molasses, swimming in mercury.  I'm surprised the air doesn't snap shut after me, rushing in with an audible pop to fill the space I've just vacated.

 

With a bashful apology, Harry slips past me.  The air isn't as heavy for him as it is for me, or perhaps he's simply denser.  It wouldn't be difficult; I'm totally empty.  Hollowed out.  My shoulder is marked where he touched me, his signature scrolled in glittering turquoise.  I can't see it, but I know it's there; I can feel the tingle.  Wizards channel their magic through their hands; sometimes, they leave afterimages on what they touch.

 

I stand there for what must be hours, afraid to move, afraid to break the spell. Eventually, Greg comes back.  He doesn't see the mark either, just asks why I'm not in bed.  He must be concerned; it's the first thing he's said to me in two days.  I manage to stumble to my bed and slip between the covers, forgetting homework, too exhausted to do anything more than drop towel and robes in a heap.

 

I dream I'm trapped in a photograph, and the sun is slowly bleaching the color.