Chapter Text
Dust
blood sacrifices made/it's everything it takes for me to keep from screaming/love is death, love is dying/with every breath, cells dividing/I'm dying for you
(love is death - x ambassadors)
A kiss is a chemical reaction, is a biological catalyst.
Draco Malfoy had never lived like a monk—he’d fucked some of his best friends in all of the world, and gone back to platonic devotion without much thought. He enjoyed men, women, and those that were more complicated. It wasn’t that he wasn’t choosy . There were quite a lot of beautiful people out there, and he didn’t much need anything emotional to pursue something physical. Sometimes, it was a very good distraction to get lost in someone else. This time was wholly different than any of the others.
His parents would almost certainly disown him, should they discover just how their son had chased the high of affection. And he wasn’t ashamed. Draco had compromised every belief his parents held dear, but this was one rule that felt thrilling to ruin every single time.
Draco took their face in one hand, thumb resting gently on their jaw, cool fingertips meeting their hairline. He had lost the ability to think . Words were nothing, blood a thundering storm drowning out all else. Want. Desire. Neither encompassed the need he felt, dear as his pulse, when he felt them begin to kiss him back. Messily—both of them shaking and hurt and confused .
Do I open my mouth? he thought, suddenly anxious.
This question answered itself, and he groaned lowly, losing himself completely to where they were connected—just feeling . A completely immeasurable amount of time passed like that, just the two of them. Kisses petered off as the immediacy of the moment cooled. They pressed their lips to the corners of his mouth, the little line that marked his smile. Breathless, they stood there, still entangled. Draco brushed their hair out of their face—wished he had a comb or a brush or something, wanted to bury his face in their nape, where their smell was most concentrated.
They smiled at him so softly, so genuinely, that fear unfurled like a parasitic blossom in his chest.
“ Salazar ,” he whispered, almost nose to nose with them. “The things you do to me.”
Unspoken: I’m terrified I’m going to mess this up.
But there, in that moment, fear was a shadowy tendril dissolved by a bright light. Insubstantial.
He held in the urge to ask, What now?
“C’mere,” said his stranger, shuffling into his chest. He brought his arms down, and with a kind of gentleness born from being unpracticed in this kind of affection, hugged them. They sighed, as if at peace. His heart thudded—they must be able to hear how fast it was going. He was just glad they couldn’t see his flushed face and blown pupils. He could smile, absolutely besotted, to himself.
They didn’t have to say anything.
In fact, it was everything that hung between them. The secrets, the lies, and the jagged cracks in their respective facades. Draco couldn’t help but think things would work themselves out, cuddled into them. He had never been an optimist once in his life. It startled him, thinking like that. Hoping, really. He hadn’t done that since he was a boy. It was such an odd word. Hope. He’d never known how to feel about the idea—had thought it foolish.
Maybe it still was—Salazar, maybe he was.
But did it matter?
He pressed a kiss to the crown of their head, and they swayed back and forth, both of them, rocking. The world was gone. No one else lived. It was just the two of them, and it always would be. Draco would give anything for this moment to continue, never to be broken. He never wanted to go back. If this was all his life was until he died, he thought he might be a happy man, indeed.
And then reality came crashing back.
Astoria Greengrass burst into the room she shared with the person currently nestled in the circle of his embrace. The person that jolted at the sudden noise—Draco felt the muscles in their back tense . This in and of itself lit a spark in his brain. Something that caught on kindling he’d been gathering since the very first moment he’d met them, so to speak. That natural flinch response. Every single split-second reaction. He couldn’t hear Astoria, couldn’t focus on the dawning horror as he put more of those horrible pieces together.
What happened to you?
What are you afraid of?
What’s been done to you?
He looked down at them—his not-so-stranger, his complete and utter unknown. Someone more suited to complication than anything else. He didn’t know what to think of them anymore. They were kind of past friends, acquaintances.
“Love—” escaped his lips, and Astoria cut him off. He heard them squeak.
And then the world expanded to accommodate one of his best friends. She was yelling, now “I KNOW YOU’RE HAVING A LONG OVERDUE MOMENT, YOU TWO, BUT BLAISE IS GOING TO KILL UMBRIDGE.”
He’d never heard her voice so loud before.
He ripped himself away from his— them . He pulled himself away. Reluctantly. They still didn’t look well—skin sallow and their bones too sharp under their skin. They looked like they hadn’t been eating. His heart wrenched .
“What?” he said, for lack of anything better to say.
Astoria made a noise of pure frustration. It was honestly impressive. “Blaise. Umbridge.” She looked at them. “He knows.”
“Oh,” they said, voice hollow. “ No .”
“ Yes ,” she insisted. “He’s not listening to anyone.”
“Wait a moment,” said Draco. “What exactly does he know?”
They both looked at him with immense guilt. “Well,” said Astoria.
They both looked so small. Exhausted. Draco knew the look they shared—a secret unearthed unwillingly. He took a breath—steeling himself for whatever information was about to clobber him over the head.
“Well?” he prompted.
“It’s easier to just show you,” said Stranger, rooting about for their wand, which was on the floor like it’d fallen. The wood was a slender, greyish chestnut color, with a rather uncommon crystal handle. Unpolished, raw teal. It didn’t sparkle or shine, so much as it drew the eye. He quite liked it, compared to his own rather simply made wand. If he weren’t a Malfoy, if he hadn’t devoted himself to Potions, Draco had (fleetingly, when he dared to dream) imagined himself as Master Olivander’s apprentice. He was so wrapped up in the make of their wand that he didn’t notice magic being performed. Just the aftermath of it—the exposed skin of the back of their hand. Pale and scarred. Words written in their own script—pink and puckered. He could tell they would be raised—the cuts had been deep. Astoria held her own up when he looked, brows knit. It was the same kind of scar, but not the same phrase.
He stepped closer.
“ I ought to stay silent, ” he muttered, speaking those horrible words. “ I will respect my betters. ”
Astoria held her hand away from her like it didn’t belong to the rest of her body. Stranger cradled it to their chest like an injured animal.
Draco struggled to breathe. Struggled to think of anything at all. “How long?” he rasped, voice hoarse like he’d been screaming. He wondered, faintly, how he could be so affected by the scars left over by what had to have been some device of the Dark Arts. That was all his father traded in. Misery and pain. Blood. How could he have been so blind ? It was right in front of him .
“Since the detentions began,” Stranger admitted, eyes lowered.
“You mean to say,” said Draco. “That everyone that toad has been dragging off to detention has been…?”
“It’s called a blood quill,” supplied Astoria. “I think most people have been hiding it somehow. She implies it would be,” she put on a mock Umbridge voice, “ in your best interest to keep this hush-hush . Between us.”
“You—but you’re a pureblood ,” he said, voice too high. Incredulous. Stranger bristled. “I mean,” he tried again, “she should know better—our families have been close for ages. My father—he’d—”
Stranger shrugged. “She thinks she can get away with it because she’s older, scarier, and most importantly, because she has the power of shame on her side.”
He didn’t like how well they seemed to know this song and dance.
Too many things were adding up.
“Can we go find Blaise now?” asked Astoria, voice brittle. “Theo and Pansy can’t hold him forever.”
“Salazar,” Draco cursed. “I have half a mind to let him do what he pleases.”
Astoria’s eyes darkened. “He’d be in Azkaban a long time.”
Stranger cursed. “Let’s stop wasting time then. Come on guys.”
And so the three shuffled out, faces grim and wands in hand.
***
Draco was all too familiar with secrets—his entire family traded in them. They were the assurance that let him sleep at night, his political protection against the Ministry. Any and all manner of benefits, in Draco’s experience, came from well-kept secrets and well-timed reveals of such. He had lost the energy for knee-jerk betrayal, at this point. Mostly he was tired, and stung. By the implications, the work that would certainly come next (Umbridge would be losing more than her career, that was for sure), and the petty hurt. Just because he felt little soreness over things being kept from him when they didn’t directly impact him (but it did , he thought, this was about trust ) didn’t mean he was alright with being left out of the loop. Being a confidant was the highest honor. And from the looks Stranger and Astoria kept throwing each other, this wasn’t something they’d thought to share with anyone ..
They went, first, to Blaise’s room. How he’d managed to acquire a single when there were three per gender per year was, frankly, an ode to what money can buy. It was, unfortunately, dark and empty. Warmer, somehow, without Blaise’s freezing glare to cool it. Draco scoffed to himself. Neither Astoria or Stranger looked at him—for vastly different reasons. He could still feel the phantom press of their lips against his. He wondered if they regretted—no.
I don’t have time for this.
“Where was he when you left him?” Draco asked, impatient now.
Astoria wrung her hands. He turned his back to her. Couldn’t look. “ Here ,” she snapped. “He was right here and so quiet —I—”
“Uh,” said that magnificent soul he wished he could look at without blushing, “I might have a way to find him.”
Draco pinched the bridge of his nose. “Might?”
“Well,” they said, too hesitant. He looked at them, studied the unease in every line of their raised shoulders. “I can’t tell you how I know…”
“I don’t care,” said Draco, heavy with all of these damn secrets. “I really don’t. But if you know where he is,” he sighed, arms crossed and hands white knuckled as he tried to stay present, “by all means .”
“Okay,” they said. “Right. Astoria, could you hold my wand?”
Draco caught her eye as she took it. So much still yet unsaid, he had no idea what she was even trying to tell him. What a mess . Stranger stepped away from them both, still looking weak from whatever had come over them earlier. Damn Blaise for not taking them to Pomfrey—damn himself for letting them run around in search of a homicidal maniac they all loved, for some godforsaken reason.
“Here goes nothing,” they said, voice soft. They closed their eyes, palms up as if about to receive something. The night in the forest came back so strongly Draco tasted ash and burning. He almost flinched away when Astoria came to stand by him, her arm brushing his.
I know what you’re thinking, her touch meant.
He brushed her back. Yeah, you too.
And then his stranger’s veins lit up. Arachnid green, acid green—an unnatural, almost bioluminescent hue. Draco had grown up among the weeds of the inexplicable—even by magical standards. But the pulsing—truly awful —light that came from their skin—presumably their blood, and whatever magic resided within—made him think of something alive. Something parasitic. Their lips twisted in a frown—pained. He barely kept himself from going to them—but what could he do?
In their hands, a scratchy, uneven line—more like a cutting of roots—began to form. That same green, glowing and throbbing slightly. Their eyes snapped open, and they wrapped the horrid thing around their index finger. It began to grow, covering their skin and blooming ghastly little flowers. It extended until it was, in some way, like an extension of their finger.
“ What ,” Astoria breathed.
This was not like any magic they’d ever seen.
And that, as it always did, meant trouble .
“I felt it,” said Stranger, looking uneasily at their finger, “when he…when I —I felt it before. After he gave me his blood.”
They looked to Draco for some kind of an explanation. He sent them an exhausted, apologetic expression. Not my bullshit to explain, don’t know what to tell you.
They sighed. Everyone got a little heavier. They all needed more sleep.
“Well,” said Stranger. “I know where to go. This thing’s…part of him?”
Everyone looked at the disgusting botanical thing still alive and attached to them.
“Ew,” said Astoria, faintly.
“Let’s just go,” said Draco. His temples were already aching.
Head down, face a mask of fear and misery in equal measures, Stranger led the way.
***