Draco Veritas

Chapter Twelve: London After Midnight

Odi et amo: quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.
–Catullus

***

It was a hell of a kiss, too.

Not that it mattered much, in practice, although perhaps, Harry would think later, it mattered in some kind of principle. At the time he was mainly aware of shock, a jolting sort of shock that seemed to fling the breath right out of him and he was suddenly pressed back up against the wall and the wet stone ground hard into his back and he was shivering all over and he would have thought that being smashed up against a wall like this by Draco would have offered some kind of warmth but really, it didn't.

Really, it made him colder than he had imagined it was possible to be, as if not just his cloak but his skin had been stripped away, leaving him shaking there in the dark. He didn't know what to do with his hands: they banged, flat, against the wall behind him and the gritty rock scraped his skin. His knees were giving out; he could not stand up. Without Draco to hold him up, he would never stand up again.

Somewhere in the back of his mind words were forming. He could do nothing to shape them or to hold them back although he knew that Draco would not hear them, was either beyond hearing them or had chosen not to listen, or there was something even more terribly wrong than that, something he was only beginning to guess at, but his mind raced ahead of his guesses and the silent cry came out without his being able to help it: Not this way, not this way –

Draco let him go and stepped back.

Harry took his hands away from the wall. They were bloody where they had scraped against the bricks. He looked down at them with a dull fascination and then at Draco. Draco was sucking his lower lip in a meditative manner and the rain dripped off his eyelashes and his mouth and he then grinned at Harry, unaffectedly. "Well, all right," he said. "If you don't want to play."

"Play?!" Harry's voice scraped out of his throat. "What the hell are you playing at?"

"So you don't want me to kiss you. What do you want?" Draco shoved a wet lock of hair behind his ear. "Help me out here. I'm creative, but nobody's that creative."

"W-what?" Harry struggled for words, lost them, inhaled another gasping breath, and realized. It was like being slapped in the face, repeatedly. Each slap a different emotion. Realization. Shock. Anger. Disgust with himself, for being so stupid. Disappointment. "You're not Draco," he said.

The other boy cocked his blond head and smiled. "Of course I am."

"No," Harry said. His voice had hardened. He knew. If he hadn't been so shocked before, so desperate, he would have known immediately. And now that he did know he couldn't believe he'd ever been deceived, even for a moment—and he felt a sudden horrible pity for Ron, a pity mixed for the first time with understanding. To see what you wanted to see – "No," Harry said again, more harshly. "You're not – "

"I am," said the boy, and laughed again that laugh that Harry hadn't liked. "Well, I am until next morning, anyway. After that – "

"Shut up," Harry said. "And stop fucking smiling at me. Who are you?"

The boy frowned petulantly. "You're not allowed to ask me that." He raised his hand, and again the small spark of light lit in his palm. "You should know better." He sounded cross. "If you're going to be all weird like this, I'm going to go back inside."

A cold and venomous rage was beginning to spread through Harry's veins. "Oh no," he said. "You aren't," and he flicked out the fingers of his right hand, whispering under his breath.