Author's Notes: "My Immortal" lyrics by Evanescence

I'm so tired of being here…
Suppressed by all my childish fears
And if you have to leave
I wish that you would just leave
Because your presence still lingers here
And it won't leave me alone…
These wounds won't seem to heal
This pain is just too real
There's just too much that time cannot erase…

What are we?

You told me once that we were lovers, and I said no.

"Not lovers—humans. Alone. In need. That’s all. We need each other. We need warmth. Kindness. Love."

I did say love. I cursed myself for it, when I saw that spark in your eyes, that light acknowledging my words. Even so, I did not love you. Do not love you. It’s just a word, love, just—we had no choice. We became close. Close. But not friends. And not lovers.

You touched my cheek. "Then what is this?’ you whispered, hand running along my thigh. "What…is this?"

I silenced you, my lips against yours, pleading, begging you not to ask. Not now, not here. Not when it’s not important—lovers or humans or enemies—as long as it’s just us, what does it matter? What does it mean?

When it was us, it didn’t mean anything. It didn’t have to. I held you, and drank you in, and did not pause to dwell upon what any of it meant. We would watch the fire for hours—remember that? We would stare, entranced as though it was a Gryffindor-Slytherin Quidditch championship. I would wrap my arms around your chest, and drop my head onto your shoulder, and you would smile, simply, sweetly, and let your eyelids droop, feeling safe and right in my arms. Right—no, it wasn’t—isn’t—right. But it was all we could do. It could have been anyone. It just happened to be you.

It just happened to be you on this couch, or on this rug, or in the makeshift kitchen, whipping up concoctions the way you could never create potions. It just happened to be you leaning in the doorway, making my heart jump to see that you were safely returned, just happened to be you awakening in our worn and weathered bed every morning. It just happened to be you I comforted, I kissed, I caressed. Mere coincidence that we should be here together. Nothing more. Nothing at all.

Do I believe that? Still?

I did, once. Truly and really. I believed, even as I let myself fall into you, even as I touched you and dreamt you and breathed you. I believed that it could be anyone, that I was simply intoxicated by the presence of another being, that green eyes were no more meaningful than brown or blue might have been. I believed, and it was all right. But now—

If you knew what you’ve done to me…if you knew how the proud Draco Malfoy spends his days and nights, what he’s been reduced to…

You would laugh, perhaps. Smile ingratiatingly, tease me, mock me. Then, though, you would hold me, comfort me, understand. Because you knew. From the beginning, you knew. You loved me, and I loved you, and you knew and I didn’t. Why didn’t you tell me, Harry? Really tell me, try to tell me, get it through my bloody skull before it was too late? Before you…my immortal boy, why didn’t you tell me?

It was the day after you…that’s when I knew. You didn’t come back, and I—you told me not to leave. To stay, no matter what. And yet I went looking, went out, for the first time in—it must have been two years, mustn’t it? Two years of that place, our humble palace, the abode we loved so dearly to hate. I went out, and the sun burned—you joked it would, that I’d dissolve into dust like a vampire. I nearly did, you know. Not because of any solar rays—nothing so simple. I may be fickle and foolish, my dear, but I am no weakling. It takes—it took—much to destroy me, Draco Malfoy, heir to a great legacy, descendant of a mighty bloodline. It took, for instance:

your eyes, glazed and unseeing, filled and frozen with the terror you only revealed in your darkest moments;

your hands, grasping the air, desperately, uncertainly, as if searching for hands and flesh to grab, to find the reassuring fabric of humanity;

your lips, twisted and bloodied, not grinning, not screaming, but forming a single word, a long plea ending quite clearly in an "o";

your body, broken, beaten, lying outside my door.

That, my darling, will do it every time.

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me…

We didn’t speak, at first. Even locked away, separated from the world, we didn’t want to appear amiable, give any sign that we were anything more than the hostile boys we had always been. Nothing had changed, we told ourselves. Nothing ever would. It was still our world. We were still able to choose.

Weren’t we?

I would glare at you in silence, and you would pointedly ignore my gaze, choosing to busy yourself with the all-important tasks to be done around our makeshift dwelling. Miles underground and you still cared to execute the routine of a somewhat normal life—regular meals, regular sleeping hours, regular behavior. It wouldn’t be long, we both thought. The others would come, and then it would all return to what came before. We would be children again, free again. You would be a hero again, and I a conqueror of minds and manipulation. We would be ourselves again. All we had to do was wait.

I held on to what I believed was my essence, what I believed composed the person of Draco Malfoy. I hated you—that was the one thing that seemed ever so solid in this rocky, shifting world. Without even a mirror to affirm my own existence, you were the focal point of my being, the center of all I knew. I, Draco Malfoy, hated Harry Potter. If I ever lost that, I knew, I would lose everything.

I have lost everything, Harry. You…and my own self.

Days begin to bleed into nights, and neither of us knew what month it was anymore. You began to sleep more, attempting to use dreams to escape the realities of your new life, and, likely, my presence. I did not sleep so much—I never have. Sleep is weakness, a state of helplessness—I’ve never favored such things. I would find my eyes wandering to your still form, marveling at the trust inherent in your unconsciousness. "How do you know, Potter," I would say quietly, "that I will not slit your throat? How do you know I will not rip you limb from limb? How do you know I will not lock you in and leave you here to die?" It was likely the firelight that made a faint smile appear on your lips, but I would groan in disgust all the same. You were so weak, so gullible. To call you a hero—the world was mad. You had never seen true pain, true evil—how could someone as spineless and simple as you know agony? You were lucky—very, very lucky. Infuriatingly lucky. And careless, not brave. Not strong. Not anything. Just a boy with a famous scar and an irritatingly accurate sense of survival.

It was on one of these nights—or perhaps days—that you began to speak. The noise startled me—my own throat was rusty and clogged with disuse, and your voice was muffled and uncertain. I could not make out your words. "What is it, Potter?" I snapped, and you did not answer. That is when I realized you were not, in fact, speaking to me.

"Not…Ron, please, not…anything is…you can’t…he’ll die, like that…and…Ginny–let her look away, oh no… George and Fr—oh god, let them go! Let them—not—no, don’t, not—it wasn’t—this wasn’t what I—please, anything, please, please, please—" You were screaming, convulsing, and I could think of nothing to do but rush to you. I couldn’t let you injure yourself, after all. I had no desire to be left to explain the corpse of Harry Potter when the others arrived.

A nightmare, I thought, idly. So even heroes have nightmares. You continued to weep, twisting in my arms, and then—

And then—

It was your eyes, you know. Can you—would you—believe that? That I would fall from grace for a pair of jade orbs? I, prince of silver and darkness, immobile and marble-carved master? I would have laughed, had you said such a thing. Would have tossed it all aside. But Potter—Harry—when you opened those eyes—

I had never seen such pain. I would pray that I should never see it again, but it is so intrinsically a part of what I was with you that I cannot dismiss it. You stared straight into me, and what I saw—Harry, how did you carry it? You were still a boy, only a boy, always a boy…How did you get through? With demons like that in your mind?

I thought I was dark, tortured. I thought I had tasted evil, that it sat and stirred in the pit of my soul. I thought I understood things, Harry. Good and evil. Light and dark. Green and silver. But, Harry—

Your mind was soaked with blood, scattered with bones, wrapped in the ghosts of your past. Your mind, Harry—do you know what I wanted when I saw you wincing, saw the true horrors inside? I wanted to press them to me, Harry, to take them from you, to release you from their foulness. I was the dark one, Harry. You were light and good and I hated you for that, but I wanted you to have that. I wanted you to fly, Harry. It was what you were meant to do. You to fly, and I to hunt. Those were to be my eyes, Harry--the eyes of a blackened soul. Not yours, my love, never yours. Never—

It wasn’t until I pulled away that I realized I had spoken aloud. I could hear the echoes murmuring through the air between us…"Not yours, my love, not yours." You stared, and it was at me you were staring, not at distant visions of the world above. You stared, and you spoke, and the world stopped being right forever.

"Draco?" A whisper, a hope, a plea. And, really, Harry, my green-eyed wonder boy—how in hell could I resist?

You used to captivate me
By your resonating life
Now I'm bound by the life you left behind
Your face it haunts
My once pleasant dreams
Your voice it chased away
All the sanity in me

Excuses. I used them generously, filling my mind with them, supplying them as a counter to my every action. This was life during wartime, I told myself. Nothing counted here, in the strange space between the battlefields. Nothing was real. This was a dream. Only a dream. Your soft skin, your low moans, your subtle tongue—what a dream. Only a dream.

It feels like a dream now, Harry, but instead of being relieved I feel I want to weep. It is not unreal enough, and not real enough either—it shivers and flickers somewhere between truth and legend, somewhere between what might have been and what was. If I could forget, if I could go on—when I held you, I thought I could. I thought, when this time came, I would leave, easily, thoughtlessly, without a moment’s care. What I did not realize, what my mind did not account for, was that it was your existence that gave me this strength, this certainty—it was you who, in my imaginings, pulled me to the surface. We would both survive, and go our ways, and that would be all. If we needed to talk about those times—god forbid—well, there were ways to get in touch, ways to arrange a short chat. We would go on. Separately, but still, somehow—together.

I love you. I love you now in a way I would not let myself then, and I curse myself every day for that, darling. If I had loved you, let myself know that I could not ever leave you, then perhaps I would have enough of you within me to go on. Perhaps, if I had swallowed you whole and taken you into my heart, the way you took me, I could walk among them, walk among all those people who, god help me, Harry, just aren’t you. I could look them in the eyes, Harry, without thinking about your face, your crooked smile. But I was a fool, and I did not savor the treasure I held so firmly in my grasp. I am damned, darling, damned to lurk in this place, living as a ghost, drinking all the spilled remnants of you I can find, consuming memories just to keep me alive, just to keep me…going…

The great Draco Malfoy, destroyed by a dead boy. A boy who will not come back, and who will not die. A boy who—goddamn it, Harry, why didn’t you tell me?—I loved more than grandeur and power and all else I once held dear. A boy who leaned against that wall there and sobbed and told me of his deepest fears and of the time Snape told him he was the bravest boy who had ever lived just before his brains splattered all over the castle walls and about the exact moment he knew that everyone he had ever loved was going to die. A boy who smelled of pine and grass even miles below the Earth’s surface, a boy who loved me because, he said, I was so good in spite of being destined to be so bad, a boy who—goddamn it all, goddamn it all—a boy who I cannot seem to forget. A boy who stole me, who took me inside him and played recklessly with my soul. Why did you have to go and die, Harry? Didn’t you know? You had me there, with you, bleeding and twisting with you, didn’t you know, didn’t you feel—

Harry, I am bound. I am frozen. I am dead, and yet I can find no peaceful grave. Where is my grace, Harry, where is my heaven? Did I not love you, you hero, you saint—did you not proclaim me good? Why can I not follow you? Why damn me for thoughtlessness? Please, Harry, please…if I cannot live, come back. Come back, Harry, my god, please…my love…my life…

I've tried so hard to tell myself that you're gone
But though you're still with me
I've been alone all along…

The Boy Who Lived. The Boy Who Keeps Living. The Boy I Love. My Immortal, Green-Eyed Wonderboy.

They say Malfoys do not die, that they continue on forever, that they are above pesky little things like mortality. My father used to bring me into the halls where the statues of my ancestors stood, towering above my head, timeless and eternally elegant. Malfoys, my father said, are more than individuals, more than one single life. Immortality cannot be achieved alone–no one person is that strong, that true, to leave a mark that will call across the endless ages. No one.

No one, perhaps, but you. A boy who achieved a feat none of my smirking, self-righteous ancestors could complete. A boy who was really nothing more than that, who was just, at the end of it all, a boy. Human, through and through. You surpassed the greatest wizards, Harry, you did something they could never hope to truly do: you found a way to live forever. You did not use magic or power or extortion: you used green eyes and ruddy hands and a shy but indomitable smile. You got inside me, Harry, inside a Malfoy, the most independent of creatures, loyal only to kin and dark masters. You drove me insane with your panting and your sighing and the feel of your warm body beneath my hands–and I do not exaggerate, Harry. I am insane. Ask anyone now, ask them what has become of Draco Malfoy, and they will tell you how he does not speak, how he will see no one from his old life, how he does not share in the triumphant post-war world but still hides in his little hovel underground. Yes, they will tell you, and they will laugh, as though my pain pays for theirs. They do not know my pain–they cannot. Their loved ones are dead. But you–you are The Boy Who Lived. The Boy Who Will Never Die, Even When He Bloody Well Should. The Immortal Boy. My Immortal Boy.

I stand in the middle of the room. You are everywhere and nowhere all at once, so close and yet so unreachable, so easy to find and so difficult to grasp. My Harry—why did I not love you when I had the chance?

I realize it now. I realized everything. I feel as though I am standing in hell, carefully examining and repenting for the sins of my life. But there is no penance, is there, darling? There is no way. No matter how many memories I recall, no matter how much of my mind and energy and self I devote to you—you will never return. Nor depart. You consume me. You destroy me. And still I love you.

Harry—if you can know, somehow, even now—

I want to hate you. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I scream, and rage, and desecrate your memory, disavowing our love, tearing you apart. It isn’t any different than loving you, though—it still means you thrive and live and exist all about me, filling my soul, torturing my body. Harry—just know—

It doesn’t matter now. And yet—

Just know I love you. And I always have. But you surely knew that already, didn’t you? I can imagine you, grinning, green eyes glimmering, with my soul in your hands, my life in your grip—

Oh, Harry…oh, god…

You are everywhere. You are everything. You are for all time. And I am lost, my immortal boy. I am broken. I am shattered. And I will never be whole, for my lion-heart is gone. I live a serpent’s life, hidden and shadowed, a half-life. A half-life, Harry–for you still have my soul in your grasp. And you will never be able to give it back.

When you cried I'd wipe away all of your tears
When you'd scream I'd fight away all of your fears
I held your hand through all of these years
But you still have
All of me…

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