𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐔𝐒 2008

What Learned in Flight

Author: libby_drew
Title: What Learned in Flight
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Summary: Draco has flown away from the world, but Harry has something to tell him.
Warnings (if any): none
Total word count: ~4000

What Learned in Flight

"A friend is like an eagle. You don't find them flying in flocks."
~Unknown

"I went to the park and saw this kid flying a kite. The kid was really excited. I don't know why. That's what kites are supposed to do. Now if he'd had a chair on the other end of the string, I would've been impressed."
~Mitch Hedberg

*~*~*

He lived at the top of the tree, where the boughs were stiff and sturdy, but the limbs moved with the wind. So his house swayed, hypnotically, like a mother rocks her child's cradle.

His own mother had never comforted him in such a way. Caring for a baby was boring, tedious, and exhausting, and thus the antithesis of everything Malfoy. "I can love you, darling," she had said, "and wish you the best, and even give my life for you. The fact that I refused to spell the mess from your nappy or allow you to spit milk upon my robes doesn't mean I was an unloving mother. Have some empathy, Draco."

Empathy could be an elusive animal, but solitude was easy enough to come by. Few knew where to find him, and even fewer visited. He'd been told his open-air home was unnerving, with its lack of walls and subtle sway. One hundred feet above the earth, above his troubles, it was like flying all the time, and he couldn't get enough of it.

Plus the hand of guilt didn't rest so heavily upon him.

So when he found Potter on the ground at the base of a giant Whomping Willow, wing bent unnaturally, and bleeding from a half a dozen deep gashes, he left him there, content to let the forest have him. Potter would be easy prey for the nocturnal beasts, broken and lying in a bed of decomposing leaves, barely breathing. A peregrine falcon was little more than an appetizer for most predators, and although Draco had known Potter immediately, both by the telltale magical signature of an Animagus and the lightning-shaped bolt etched into his plumage above his eye, no other would recognize the greatest wizard of their time – except perhaps by taste, and by then the damage would be done.

Poetic, even if not entirely justified.

He Transfigured into his own form and flew away.

He landed on one of the highest terraces of his home, then descended the steps he'd built into the trunk of the great tree, round and round, down three levels to the kitchen. A chill breeze, damp with the promise of rain blew through the room, ruffling his hair. He shivered and thought more about Potter.

Dinner was small and simple, and while that usually satisfied him, this evening a gnawing emptiness clawed at his gut even after he'd eaten. Full dark came to the forest, and the wind picked up, blowing needles of rain through his living room. A simple charm would have broken the wind and water at the terrace, preventing his discomfort, but tonight he let it come. He read to distract himself, but was soon shivering. His hair began to drip from the spitting rain. The tip of his nose grew numb. When his candles were doused by a particularly hard gust, despite the charms to keep them lit, he threw down his book with a curse, and strode out onto the main terrace.

In the open, the wind's ferocity was ten times worse, and suddenly, Draco's need to get back to Potter overwhelmed him. He Transfigured and flew. Taking off from the lower levels of his home could be dangerous, but Draco navigated the many branches of the canopy with ease, focussed solely on Potter. Only on Potter.