at worst, going to swell at best. It was harder than Harry had been in hit in the first 17 years of his life,
harder than anything Dudley or Uncle Vernon had ever been able to rain down on a small child, even when
Dudley had convinced his uncle that it had been he who had run all of Vernon’s ties through the paper
shredder they kept in the house to get rid of incriminating tax information. It surpassed any, every, beating
he had taken as a child.
It was the weakest he’d been hit in the last fifteen minutes.
Still, it drove him backwards, threatened to rip his one leg completely out from under him as he stumbled
and it caught on a stone. There was a pause, purposely hesitated, before Harry lunged forward, lowering his
shoulder, driving it hard into the stomach cavity of the other boy. He drove forward, slamming his opponent
back, and with no wall behind them they simply... kept going. Ten feet later exhaustion over took him and he
had to stop running, his knee caps felt like they were about to snap off. Draco was flung backwards as if
he’d been launched from a sling shot, and he struck the ground with a resounding thud, curling up around
his arm in the wet grass.
For a moment, Harry thought it was over.
But it always took more than that to keep down a Malfoy. Slowly, laboriously, the blonde haired boy pushed
himself up from the ground, arms quivering with the effort the simple movement took. He looked a mess,
with sweat running down his face, visible even in the darkness. His usually perfectly placed hair was wildly
disheveled, soaked through with the dampness of the ground and a streak of blood ran from a slice along his
hair line and discolored his straw hewed hair. The left side of his face looked a good deal like raw
hamburger, swollen and red from the repeated backhand shots he’d taken. Blood ran from a cut in his lip, a
slickened red trail down his chin, dribbling onto his chest and disappearing below his ripped shirt color,
reminding Harry for a moment how long they’d been at this.
Of course, he thought, they’d been at it since he was eleven.
***
Graduation. Gaining honors for the work you’ve done, a commemoration of your achievements, the strength
you displayed by fighting your way through seven straight years of school. It was all so perfect, so grandeur,
so fairy book ending- the send off for the hero, who had completed the first step of his journey.
Bullshit.
Graduation was an assembly, a gathering, a ceremony. It was no more than that, and no less, in the terms
that the adults always referred to it. Graduating was what you made of it. It was a time to let go, to come to
grips with the fact that the seven year hell you’d just endured was just the beginning, and if you fucked up
until this point, you are very, very screwed for the impending years. Its about severing those last attachments
to childhood, to pettism, to immaturity. Harry had been ready for it, ready to made the move, ready to admit
to himself that he would be seeing his best friends a lot less in the upcoming years. That he’d no longer have
Dumbledore’s guiding hands, or the benefit of the determination that Snape’s oily voice drove into him every
week.
He’d be on his own.
But there was one link that still remained. That, in fact, could not be removed by simple admittance,
acceptance, by simply walking away. It didn’t work that way. It wasn’t a cold, which slowly melted away,
cleared itself from your body. It was a fever, a deep one, that needed to be sweated out of your system the
hard way- beaten out. It was Draco who had suggested it of course- this idea was simply saturated with
Draco’s way of thinking- putting into words seven year of emotions, calmly, in a corridor, on the way to
double potions. He’d spoken like a lawyer, naming places, people, rules. Calmly, clearly, but using very big,
presumptuous words for something that essentially boiled down to the second most primal act in the world.
Last man standing.
Midnight, of course. It would clear their blood, at least that which wasn’t left on the ground. They would
still hate each other, of course, even more than before. It wasn’t the hating that bugged Draco. It was the
fact that in the real world, feuds like theirs were dirty little secrets, remnants of the past. It would be reduced
to something pathetic, political, and empty. There would be no winner, simply the nagging knowledge in the
back of your head that you *might* be the best, but there was absolutely no way to know.
And there never would be.
Wands had been allowed, of course. After all, everything was in contention, bodies as well as minds. Harry
had chosen something as direct as he could, a silver beam of light that sliced through Draco’s stomach,
leaving no trace of damaged flesh behind but sent a pain racing through the Slytherin so intense it had almost
knocked him out right there. But the Slytherin had chosen something much more subtle. A simple hex,
useless in most cases, but perfect in this one. It had shattered Harry’s glass’s, leaving him wearing empty
frames. Half blind, and weakened, he realized, for the rest of whatever went on.
He’d tried a disarming spell next, but it was very simply blocked. Draco retaliated with the same spell, only
to have it blocked in the same way. They continued for a while, trading blows, almost like some kind of
twisted dance as neither of them managed to hit anything, the other one always performing the perfect
counter just in time. It went on until Harry was arm weary, and he’d thought he lost, but when he’d looked
up, he could see Draco, see him clearly, and he realized suddenly his glasses were back. Slowly, deliberately,
Draco had held up his wand, dangling it off to the side. His face was expressionless as he very coldly, very
simply, dropped it.
A moment later, Harry did the same.
Soon knuckles were cracking across flesh, and the game had changed. There was no more blocking, no
more battle of minds. Draco simply allowed Harry to hit him as hard as he could, and vice versa. There was
no semblance, no pretense of resistance. Taking turns dealing single shot punches that had the force of seven
years of hatred behind them. Two giants, trapped in the bodies of young men, hacking at each other with the
only weapons they had handy.
Themselves.
***
A high knee. Harry had seen it coming- how could he have not?- but he stood still as it came, not moving
until he felt it smash up right in the groove at the bottom of his rib cage. The air had left his lungs almost
before he was hit, and he collapsed, dead weight, trying to breathe. For Draco’s part, he remained still,
slouched, clutching his left arm delicately. Harry looked up from the ground and saw this, wondering if it
had been broken. Hopefully. He rose piteously to his feet, but it was a simple act of defiance- he knew he
had nothing left. And what was worse, Draco knew it to. With a groan he reeled back- simply slouching in
one direction, honestly- and swung with everything he had left.
It was pathetic.
Too high, and too much to the left. It practically came at Draco in slow motion, and all he would have to do
was duck. Hitting Harry wouldn’t even be necessary, he would fall with his punch, and this time there would
be no getting up. Instead, Draco simply watched it come, felt it glance off the side of his head, blurring his
vision for a moment. Completely spent, Harry pitched forward, unconscious while standing. Draco caught
him, weakly, sagging under the weight. The two stood for several moments, pressing against each other,
only standing due to the counter presence of the other. Somehow, Harry found the strength to look up,
realizing how tall Draco had gotten. Icy blue eyes looked down at him, and arms shifted, and he suddenly
thought that Draco had going to hurl him to the ground.
And win.
Instead, a slender hand, bruised, and overused, came up to catch his chin, pushing his eyes up even further.
Harry got a full vision of the stars for one second, saw them glowing up above, before his vision was
interrupted by straw colored hair. It was a light kiss, and it lasted only a second, but there was no doubt
about what happened. No doubt that Draco had done, and had meant it. Had meant it as his move.
And now it was Harry’s turn.
Exhaustion no longer mattered. Harry’s body was no longer a machine that needed sleep, calories, air, to
function. All the energy it would ever need had just been given to it, in the form of cool, liquid rage. Draco
had done the one thing- the forbidden thing- that Harry had thought he would never do, and had done it as a
form of attack. There would be no going back, no erasing the act, no making apologies. There would be
only penace. Harry threw a wild uppercut that just clipped the cleft of Draco’s chin, throwing his head to
one side. It would have taken him completely off his feet had he not grabbed hold of the front of Harry’s
robes, and he slumped himself a moment, a large boy in the grip of a smaller one. Harry felt the battered face
press down against his neck, and he wasn’t sure if Draco was even breathing. Then he felt it. Teeth, in the
slightest fashion. And then a slight sweeping, the rubbing of a tongue directly up his jugular. He shuddered
for a moment.
And then he swung.
Once, twice, a third time. This time *he* was the one who had ahold of Draco, practically lifting him off the
ground, keeping him in place with one hand as he struck with the other. The punches were almost making a
wet sound now, smacking against flesh slick with blood. He threw punches until he could no longer move
his arm, which didn’t take long. Amazingly, Draco was still able to talk. “Sheesh, baby,” but his voice was
weak, gravely, air pulled from somewhere other than his empty lungs, “I almost think you mean it.”
Harry didn’t hit him again. He didn’t need to. Draco was running on empty, and he was only standing
because he’d absolutely needed to. But now his body sagged, and Harry felt like it had simply become
inanimate, a puppet who’s strings had collapsed. Draco lay sprawled out on the grass, limbs twisted around,
breath coming almost silently around cracked lips.
Harry stared down at him, out lined in the light of the moon, blood glistening from his skin. The cold fury
rush melted away from him as he reached up to touch his neck, tracing it with a fingernail, and he was left
with only a prolonged ache, a long and painful exhaustion that he knew would not simply leave. The owelry
wasn’t long away, but he wasn’t sure he could make it there to collapse into sleep with the strength he had
left. He took a step to turn. A half step.
And then his fingers returned, once again, to the spot on his neck.
He could leave him here. That was what he could do- what he was supposed to do- it had been in their
agreement that the loser would remain where they fell, and whoever came to drag them to the medical wing
could spread the word. Who had won, who had lost, what was broken. It was what Draco had wanted, what
they both had wanted, to happen. Slowly, Harry brought his finger to his lips, slipping it past, and tasting the
line of saliva Draco had left on his skin.
Summoning strength from god knows where, he lifted the boy from the grass, hooking one arm under his
legs and the other under his neck. And slowly, laboriously, he walked away from the clearing, carrying
Draco like some kind of heroine from a bad movie.
Carrying him like a fainted lover.
Into the owelry, where a pile of straw was prepared. It was his last strand of energy to set Draco down on
the straw, and with it spent, he simply rolled over, welcoming the hardly matted wooden floors like the
softest bed. His eyes closed, stung shut from the acid feeling of blood seeping from his forehead. And the
two slept, blood clotting, forming makeshift skin above gashes and bruises.
A few minutes later, the sun rose over the horizon.