Title:  Fast As You Can (Love Ridden 9)

Author: Romie

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

convenient.

Rating:  PG-13

Pairing:  prelude to Harry/Draco

Spoilers:  none

Disclaimers:  Rowling is God.  Fiona Apple is my continuing inspiration - in a way, these are my version of the songfic.

Warnings:  This series features a same-sex romantic pairing.  Leave if this offends you.

Summary:  Draco works at becoming a musician.

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Orchestral strings are the most difficult instruments to play.  Unlike woodwinds, brass, or percussion, the pitches are indefinite; a movement of a millimeter, and you're playing a different note entirely, one which may or may not exist in standard notation.  For this reason, it is said that there are only two types of string player: ingenious and atrocious.  Achieving virtuosity can be the work of a lifetime.

 

That same flexibility is what makes strings the most human of the instruments.  They can play *any* pitch, mimic *any* sound, including the human voice.  The musician has infinite discretion for each and every note.  Take middle G, for example.  First, I have to pick a system of tuning - although it's relatively standard throughout Europe, the Americans play a few Hertz lower.  Then I have to choose which of four strings to play it on, and shift my left hand accordingly.  I have to decide which finger to use, then depress the selected string at precisely the right place, with a perfect sensitivity to harmonics and timbre.  Next, I have to pick a bowing pattern for the right hand, along with dynamics and tempo, and apply it with the correct speed and pressure.  All of these mechanics will eventually become instinct, but they vary with the conditions; I will never be able to pick up someone else's instrument and play a perfect concerto.  It'll take time to understand it first, to inhabit the grain of the wood and the warps in the bridge.

 

I've been practicing for six hours, and I can almost, (but not quite,) play a major scale if I go very slowly.  The fingertips of my left hand should be raw by now, but I devised a spell to give them protective calluses.  It's cheating, I know, but there'll be time to build real ones later.  As I retune a string that's come a bit loose, I feel an insistent pricking across my shoulder blades, like tiny pixies dancing over my back.  Someone's watching me.  I lift my head, wincing as I stretch protesting neck muscles, and stare at Harry Potter.  He seems to have developed an alarming tendency to break into my room unannounced; he's lounging in my doorway, (which I don't remember leaving open or even unlocked,) in blue and white striped pajamas.

 

"Violin?" he queries with a half smile and a raised eyebrow, as though there's nothing unusual about his behavior.  I shake my head dazedly, trying to clear it, attempting to pass the gesture off as a response.

 

"No.  Viola."  I hold out the instrument for him.  "See, it's wider in the body, and the tone color's a bit darker.  More mysterious than the violin, but more portable than the cello.  Sorely underused by most composers, despite its prevalence."  Harry nods, inscrutable.  I don't know whether he's acknowledging my statement or agreeing with it; I don't even know whether he understands anything about music.  From what I've heard, the muggles who raised him had no culture; it's somewhat amazing that he has manners at all.  That said, he *has* entered my room without asking, or even knocking.  I clear my throat, remembering my position.

 

"What are you doing here," I ask, struggling to exude imperiousness from every pore.  It rolls right off him, like a raindrop on a mermaid.  He shrugs.

 

"Couldn't sleep," he says, absentmindedly tugging at one of his pajama sleeves.  "I'm a bit of an insomniac, you see.  I didn't want to wake Ron and the others, so I went for a walk.  I heard you practicing, and thought maybe you could use some company.  I can go if you'd like."  He half-turns nervously, as if to leave.  His cheeks are flushed a bit pink, or maybe it's just the light.  He could be lying about why he's here, what he's doing.  It's a little too convenient that aimless wandering brought him to this wing, this hallway, this door.  Yet somehow, I know he's telling the truth, or what he believes to be truth.  He really is that honest, that innocent, that considerate.  It would never occur to him to be anything else in this situation.

 

It would be so easy to tell him no, I don't want you here, I'm busy.  I wonder how many have; I imagine the number is very small.  He'd take it stoically, a court-martialed captain, and retreat.  Perhaps he'd send licorice whips the next day to prove there were no hard feelings.

 

I open my mouth and invite him to stay.  There'll be time to analyze it later, to curse myself for my foolishness.  For now, all I know is that I'm lonely and his glow fills the room with firelight.

 

He is grateful, but off balance.  Now that he's in, he doesn't know what to do with himself, so he just stands there, a few paces away from me.  He keeps trying to put his hands in his pockets, forgetting that his pajama bottoms don't have any.  I've never seen him this flustered, this lost.  He is a child in a fairy circle, blinking at lights he can't explain and only half believes in.  The kind thing would be to give him a chair and maybe something to eat - something concrete to hold on to before he flies off the spinning wheel.  But I'm cruel enough to enjoy my power, to revel in having *him* uncertain for a change.  Never mind that my equilibrium's just as skewed.

 

I drink in his tension, nervous energy arcing off him like ball lightning.  The ever-confident Harry Potter has his eyes locked on his bare feet while he fidgets apoplectically - fingering buttons, picking at seams, tapping at flagstones.  When he reaches up to run his hand through his hair, his sleeve falls down around his elbow, revealing a pale forearm spiderwebbed with spiraling black lines.

 

"What's that," I ask, unable to speak above a whisper.  Silence has enveloped us, a thick woolen blanket woven on Penelope's loom.  Harry feels it too; he startles at the sound of my voice, quickly dropping his hand.  It feels as though he barely restrained himself from jumping; his eyes are wide behind his glasses.

 

"Wha-" he rasps, voice rough and throaty, deeper than I've ever heard it.  He clears his throat and tries again.  "I beg your pardon?"  He is utterly confused, hopelessly clueless; he's not sure where he is, what he's doing here.  It's the same look I saw when I transfigured my pencil box into a meerkat; the poor fellow looked around in utter bewilderment, trying to figure out why he was alive in a classroom instead of running across the savanna.

 

I imagine the air is full of a deep blue smoke which we breathe with each inhalation.  It's as heady as any drug I've encountered, twining 'round my reptile brain, wrapping my cerebellum in gauze.  I drift in its paralyzing embrace, a voyeur in my own head; at the same time, all my senses are shaper, electric.  I can hear my eyelids as they glide across my eyeballs, count every one of Harry's eyelashes, taste the elderberry tip of his tongue as he runs it across his lower lip.  With a powerful effort of will, I raise my bow to gesture at Harry's sleeve.

 

Flushing a deep rose, he pushes it back up.  "I like to draw," he mumbles, still not meeting my eyes, "and I ran out of paper."  No, you didn't, I think, but I refrain from saying so.  I was right in guessing Harry was a pen-and-ink sort of person, but wrong to think it two dimensional.  He likes his work to move, to live, to twist and jump as he shifts position.  Skin is his favorite medium, the ink burning into it like acid, welling up like blood.  He's ashamed of the mutilation, even though it washes off with soap and water, and so he's never shown anyone.  There's no need to; it's easily hidden behind long sleeves and dark robes.  Somehow, I know this without his telling me, the intimate knowledge hotwired from his mind to mine.

 

"What are you doing here," I ask a second time.  He doesn't answer, preferring to remove his spectacles and swab them with the edge of his shirt.  It's a remarkably disarming gesture, the removal of an artificial barrier, and I want nothing more than to embrace this perfect boy, this beautiful man.  My enemy.  I want to kiss each of his ragged fingernails and make him egg sandwiches with no crusts and tell him stories of wandering shepherds.  I want to protect him, which is *incredibly* stupid, because he's been ably fending off dark wizards since birth; and I want to kill him before he ever finds out I feel that way.

 

I may be a master of delusion, but I know that we are not meant to be together.  Even if I could fool him into loving me, the universe would conspire to rip us to shreds.  We can't be together.  That's not the way things are supposed to happen.  We were born to be opposites.  One light, one dark.  One good, one evil.  We are equal but forever separate, hands inextricably bound with words like honor and pride and loyalty.  I could make him want me for a little while, let him think he could change me to fit his life, but a year from now he'd wake up and look at me lying next to him in his bed and realize what I already know: we are enemies.  Permanently.  Inviolably.

 

I still can't stop myself from trying, just this once.  I need a human touch; I ache for it so desperately that I am made of ivy and neon, blazing even as I cling to propriety.  With hands that should be trembling, but somehow aren't, I set aside my viola and reach up to unfasten my robe, letting it pool around my feet.  Mechanically, I fumble my sweater over my head, feeling my hair halo from the static electricity.  "Draw on me," I whisper, breath hot as teakettle steam.

 

Harry's staring at me, staked to the ground.  I've frightened him, pushed too hard, too far, too fast.  Yes, good, I think.  *Run*.  I may be friendly now, but that could change in a heartbeat.  Tomorrow, I'll itch for a fight, and you will lose it.  I'll beat you down, make you bleed.  Get out while you can, quickly.  Escape before you're scarred too badly.

 

His smile, when it comes, is brilliant and omniscient, a crescent moon in the morning sky.  He grabs a quill from my desk and shoves me into a chair, pulling up another so he can sprawl across from me.  Before he begins, he looks straight into my eyes - bold, cocky, baldly reckless - and says: "I don't spook easy, Malfoy."  Maybe you should, I want to say, but I hold my tongue as he traces geometric patterns across my chest and arms.  When he finishes, he looks up giddily, almost drunk with pleasure, and I want to pull his face to mine, plunder his mouth with my tongue, lick patterns of my own against his forehead.  He wouldn't stop me, not in this state.

 

Instead, I gruffly order him to leave.  His face closes in on itself, irising shut like a day lily.  How can he have reached this age, faced the terrors he has, without learning to hide his emotions?  He stutters something that might be "good night," and practically flees the room.  My heart tries to run after him, but I force myself to walk over and close the door.  It's better this way; I can't let him get the wrong idea about us.

 

I spend the next hour in front of the mirror, wishing someone would come in and ask me where I got these marks so that I could smile mysteriously and refuse to tell them.