Tainted Love

Halloween

DRACO

The air hit him first, shocking him out of the mindless disorientation that seemed to be an unavoidable side-effect of taking a Portkey. Just one of those things you never get over. One of those many things.

It was much colder outside London than it had been in Paris. The grass was dyed with frost that melted under each of Draco's footsteps. He wondered briefly whether he was doing the grass a favor, whether it was appreciative of him, his body heat. Probably not -- he was trampling it, after all.

At the end of the path, his hands clasped together for warmth, his rings absorbing the chill of late October, he stopped to take a breath.

The house was always hard to look at. His breath ran hot and savory in the air and he cocked his head, letting the cold sneak underneath his collar to the nape of his neck. There were still two brooms on the back porch. He hadn't been out there since Iris left.

So much was diminished. Waves swam around in his mind, arching around each other; he looked towards the sky to find grey.

He shook his head. "Focillo," he muttered, never one to go without a Heating Charm. Never one to do his own dishes, cut his own flowers, mix his own batter. He had grown up with magic and loved it more than anything. It had never been commonplace to him, even when he used it for the most commonplace of activities, even when his parents had drilled into him that it had been in their family, untarnished for centuries. Millenia. Eons and eons.

Draco started walking again, silently cursing himself for having set the Portkey's destination so far away from the house. There had been a reason for it, perhaps a subconscious one, but it bubbled to the surface of his mind now.

Before he left for Paris, he had gotten it in his head that Iris might come back with him. If he explained himself well enough, said all the right things, if he held her hand and fucked her right and got a place she liked. If the sound of the city had reminded her of the last time they were there.

But one night could not fix everything -- anything -- it couldn't begin to. He wrapped his hand around the wand in his pocket and thought of the unicorn who had given its hair to make up its inside. He wondered if it was the same one who had given the hair for his first wand.

Probably not. He scolded himself for wondering so much. There was no point in it, no truth he could ever hope to uncover. He put his hand on the doorknob and it clicked beneath him, unlocking. There was some comfort in that, he supposed -- being known by something.

He set a fire in the fireplace first, watching the floor around it light up in an orange glow, jumping shadows of light. The sun hung. Somewhere across the world, Iris was going about her day.

One night couldn't fix it. No. He had known that. But that was all he had left with her, all he could ever hope to get again. Single nights.

Only hours ago, they were in bed together, their bodies separate, skin heat on the sheets between them. Her eyes heavy with sleep, blinking into the sunrise, disappearing into the bathroom to brush her hair and not touching him again, not even to say goodbye.

All their many goodbyes. How he knew her with her back turned -- how he always had. Bag flourishing out behind her in the Love Chamber, hand reaching back for him as she left for work in the morning. Her body hunched over in the alley behind the Leaky Cauldron, her denial of his love freshly stained on her lips.

Her beautiful dress in the stone hallway, the way her hair collected at the nape of her neck; her shaky arms and messy hair, the light in her eyes as she shoved him away from her in the hotel room, her bare feet walking by the abandoned bottles on the shag carpet, full and warm and untouched.