The Price of Light | drarry

eleven | fear and fire

June 2002

Fear wakes them up with the sun the next morning, in the form of shouts that are just a little too close to the clearing.

They untangle from one another in an instant and are on their feet, kicking pine needles brashly over their forms on the ground as a reflex response.

"Cloak?" Draco asks quietly, and Harry nods, throwing the fabric of his Invisibility Cloak hastily over the two of them. It's not meant for two and it doesn't quite cover them both, even as close together as they are.

Stupid, stupid, Harry thinks to himself angrily.

Stupid to let his guard down with Draco, to fall into such a false lull of security - there is no fucking security on the run with the world's most wanted ex-terrorist. And one day, they're going to run out of forest.

They don't look at each other much as they trip through the woods, and say even less ("We need to keep away from the river," is all Draco remarks, "They'll expect us there.") .

The shouts dim a little after several minutes, but the boys' hearts still hammer in their chests, and they don't stop just yet. An idea flits briefly through Harry's head, the idea of tearing away from Draco, keeping the Invisibility Cloak for himself, turning himself in, but he knows he'd be forced to explain himself, and he hasn't got a backup story that doesn't involve Draco. And he won't betray him. Won't even consider it.

"I hate this," Harry wheezes when they stop, scuffing a patch of dirt hard with his boot and coughing as he catches his breath in the cold air. "I hate it so much."

"I think we'll have a rabbit today," Draco says airily, ignoring Harry and the panic rattling through his own chest. "I'll set a snare. We deserve to eat nicely."

"Oh, yeah?" Harry says. Sarcasm drips from his tone as he bundles the Invisibility cloak back under his robes and runs a frustrated hand through his tousled dark hair. "We deserve that, do we? A traitor and a terrorist? Good. If we can't have freedom, at least we can have a fucking rabbit."

"I don't think I've ever had freedom," Draco replies simply, and his eyes are blue, no, grey, no, both. He leans in so achingly close. "This might be the only decision I've ever made," he whispers.

Harry lets him kiss him, stiffly at first, though it grows softer and more adept.

He lets his hands wander too; roaming over Harry's firm back and his neck and then down gently over his hips.

Freedom, he thinks, is this what freedom is? The space between us here and the decisions we make to care about one another before we die?

Harry wonders if he relates to what Draco said: "I don't think I've ever had freedom."

He thinks about the summer of 1980, of the two baby boys born in June and July, with no idea of the horrors that their lives would be coloured by. Born for one thing, chosen for another. What hope did either of these souls ever have?

"It's ok," Harry says at last against Draco's mouth, "I understand what you mean. I never had any freedom either."

That's the gasoline that turns the spark between them into a bonfire and suddenly they can't get close enough fast enough, fingers tearing at each other's hair and pouring over their skin, and all Harry can think, as he's pushed back into the ground, is how he hopes the end of the world waits a while before it comes to the woods.