Where The Sun Drops | drarry post-war

thirteen | fucking hell

Potter was on his third bowl of cereal of the day. Draco watched as the other boy's hand moved slowly from the bowl to his mouth, took in the glassiness of his eyes and the lack of focus behind them, and the rumpled, unkempt nature of his bedsheets.

The sense of victory the ghost felt as he considered the scene was becoming uncomfortably tainted with a small ebb of guilt, which, though he fought to squash it down, was growing slowly stronger.

To distract himself from this uncomfortable sensation, Draco willed a book from the shelf at random and plunged it lazily into the bowl on Potter's lap, then sent another flying at his head, hard enough to snap it back quite roughly against his bedpost.

Milk exploded forcefully upwards and cascaded over the bedsheets, splattering cereal disgustingly up the walls behind the dark-haired boy, but he barely even blinked.

"Thank you, Malfoy," he said in a monotone voice. He set the bowl calmly down on his nightstand, book still half submerged, and shook the liquid absent-mindedly from his sleeve. His eyes didn't once flicker up to the ghost as he spoke.

"Does it ever occur to you to go and bother some people in the afterlife?" he asked after a quiet minute, milk dripping comically from his glasses to contrast the serious edge to his tone.

"Perhaps that would be too convenient for you," he continued mildly. "Or do you not know where it is?"

"Oh, I know perfectly well where it is," Draco replied. He wondered whether to throw another book. "It's where the sun drops. I just can't get there yet."

Seeing Harry's confusion, he explained. "I'm obviously not good enough for... up there. And not quite bad enough for downstairs either, because I redeemed myself in throwing you that bloody Elder wand. I'm causing quite a stir in the afterlife, so I believe."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yes, Merlin forbid you could ever go anywhere and not make an entrance."

"Exactly," agreed Draco seriously. "And I don't know much more than that. Other than that there definitely are two places. So eventually I'll end up in one of them. I hope it's ...up there-" 

Harry wondered why Draco paused every time he referenced Heaven.

"- but for now, I think I've got unfinished business on Earth. I can't move on till I work out what it is and sort it out, and then I reckon it'll be decided where I belong and I can just pop off there."

"I hope you finish it soon," Harry said mildly. "Then I can go back to having a life that isn't half yours."

Draco was getting swiftly bored of this new Saint Potter act, the soft tone and the lack of responses, and wracked his brains for something to say or do to provoke him.

Part of him knew it may not be an act, and in fact just the manifestation of Potter's trauma from the past few weeks, but he didn't care. There had to be some emotion in there somewhere.

"You think your life is half mine?" he asked, a nasty smile curling his lip. "So you admit that I'm being generous enough to share my existence with you, and let you retain half your own life?"

That got Potter's attention. "Generous isn't exactly the word I'd use."

"I'm being very decent to you, Potter," Draco insisted. "I let you eat, don't I, most of the time? I let you drink and breathe, and use the bathroom?"

"You do also psychologically and physically torture me," Harry responded, as maddeningly calm as ever. "And I hardly think letting me breathe so I don't die is the pinnacle of generosity."