Whoever said “Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all,” was full of shit. Completely, absolutely, totally full of it. Right now Harry wishes he’d never even met Draco, much less fallen in love with him. He’d been content before. He’d had his friends and his Aurorwork, and there wasn’t anything wrong with casual sex for his physical needs. He’d been fine, and continuing on like that would have have been worlds better in the long run. Five years of happiness wasn’t worth this much pain.
Autumn had finally faded into winter, and this morning Harry goes digging through his closet in search of where Draco had stored all their winter hats and scarves and gloves. And tucked away on the top shelf beneath a stack of old Hogwarts scarves, he finds a small box that’s sealed tight with a few simple locking charms. Harry doesn’t recognize it, and things inside it slide and roll and rattle enticingly. Even though Draco isn’t here to be upset with him for snooping, Harry can’t quite suppress a flicker of guilt as he takes it over to the bed and counters the charms locking it shut and lifts the lid.
And inside he finds dozens of mementos. There’s a picture of Draco and Pansy from Hogwarts, arm in arm and laughing brightly, their hands loosely clasped. There’s a newspaper clipping of Harry from 1999, the edges soft and ragged from excessive handling, the newsprint completely worn off the fold creases, and for a moment Harry can’t breathe, and can’t believe that Draco never got around to telling him that he’d wanted Harry all the way back then. There’s a rough pink stone and a dried mint leaf and a bottle cap and a letter from his mum and a crumpled Chocolate Frog wrapper and a pencil and a paperclip and a small toy duck and a ticket stub from the first movie Harry had ever dragged him to and a little glass fish and a plastic spoon and a carefully preserved rose blossom and a cobalt blue bud vase and a braided leather bracelet worn butter-soft with use and a tidy little package wrapped in brown paper and hastily-tied string, and Harry opens it to find small box containing a beautiful pocket watch of highly polished silver with a deep indigo background that glittered with tiny stars. And it all leaves Harry teary and frustrated, because here’s a whole pile of things that are important enough to Draco that he saved them and locked them away in a box in his closet, and Harry has no idea what most of them even mean.
He continues sorting through the box, taking more items out one by one and arranging them in neat rows across the bed sheets, until the box is empty and in the very bottom he finds a small slip of paper he recognizes as the fortune from the Christmas cracker Draco got during their first Christmas together: Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.
Harry doesn’t know how long he sits there with the fortune in his hands, but in the end he decides to take it as a sign. He’s been sitting here, waiting to heal but not actually doing anything to make it happen. He needs to change.
He stands up and sweeps all of the mementos back into the box and leaves out it on the bureau, because he knows he’ll probably end up sorting through it again later, puzzling over them and trying to work out the story behind each item. He dresses quickly, wraps an old Gryffindor scarf around his neck, and Apparates.
The street is nearly the same as the last time Harry was here, except the trees are now bare and all the broken glass is gone from the pavement. Slowly, Harry walks up to the warehouse and climbs the shallow steps leading to the door. The Auror wards are still holding, but Robards apparently hasn’t banned his magical signature yet because they fall easily for him. He stands frozen for a long moment, unable to make himself cross the threshold, afraid of what he’ll find.
When he finally steps inside, it’s not as bad as he’d thought it’d be. He imagined soot-streaked walls, charred wreckage, and the acrid scent of smoke lingering like a nightmare. But it’s neat and clean, and it only smells dry and disused. Harry lingers by the doorway, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light spilling in through the grimy skylights. He waits for the sadness to hit him, the anguish or pain or grief. But other than a vague sense of loss and and even vaguer sense of regret, there’s nothing.
Harry crosses the front room and makes his way into the warehouse. This has been cleaned as well, and the cinderblock walls and concrete floor show no sign of fire. The metal shelves and all the crates are gone, either burned up or removed. Here and there Harry can see the glimmer of spells holding the building together. The explosion must have damaged it significantly, and Harry’s not sure why they haven’t torn the whole place down yet.
The scuff of his shoes on the floor echoes oddly in the large space as he wanders deeper in, looking around. This was the last place he saw Draco, and this is where Draco died. And Harry’s okay. Maybe Hermione was right about trying to make him move on. Maybe this sort of closure is exactly what he needs. He turns, tipping his head back to look up at the ceiling, walking slowly backward.
A shiver crawls up his spine, and suddenly Harry gets the eeriest sensation that he’s not alone.
“I was wondering when you’d show up.”
Harry spins around and his heart leaps into his mouth because, impossibly, there is Draco. He looks over his shoulder and his mouth curls into a smirk, and Harry can’t move, can’t breathe, can’t think, because there is Draco and it doesn’t matter that he’s shining in soft shades of grey and white, it’s still him and he’s here.
“Did you find them?”
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Stop All the Clocks (This Is the Last Time I'm Leaving Without You)
Fanfictiondoing god's work and uploading it onto wattpad x originally by: firethesound on ao3 summary: Living with Draco was difficult; living without him is unbearable. But if there's one thing Harry learned from the war, it's that even when one life ends...
