if wishes were horses
i'd make you a saddle
and you could ride
with hands on my hips
- silvia. heh.

Draco's eyes are like this big cloudy storm -- which sounds so stupid, except they are.

They are, because Harry has seen one. It came up fast and wet, when Dudley was peddling about on his bicycle in the backyard, and Harry wished so hard for lightening to hit it and wondered if that meant he was going to hell.

And then he could walk through walls, and maybe walk on water, and change the water to rum. And he thought he perhaps wasn't going anywhere.

Perhaps, maybe, probably he'd stay on at Hogwarts and attend parties with spoiled globs of fish on rusted platters, watching the headless horsemen chase foxes and remembering tight slits of eyes -- like lines of glinting silver. Like the lining they keep saying is there, when things are gonna be all right.

He thinks nothing is right about what they do, because it makes him breathe like he can't stop and anything you can't stop is dangerous -- think of it: avalanches, ocean waves, hurricanes.

Draco gets a hitch in his chest, and his mouth falls open, but his eyelids only shut half-way. Flicker. Like he can see their tongues meet, and that's something worth watching. Like he would want to, when they're young and stupid and nothing about them is pretty. Red, damp cheeks and grit under every fingernail.

Like they might say hello someday in the hallway and there'd be some sort of conversation to have. Harry would ask about his mother, and Harry would have a mother for Draco to ask about. They would mention a professor. They would talk about the weather and the flat blue sky.

They would figure out what normal is, and have that kind of life.

return