every scrap of you (you left them all to me)

Chapter 8

𝄞 all your closets of backlogged dreams, and how you left them all to me 𝄞

*

He comes up for air, opens his eyes to find the softest grey blinking back at him, and his hands have found refuge in silk blond hair, the space between their bodies non-existent.

"Why'd you stop?" Harry moans softly.

Draco's flushed smile says it all. "Just ensuring this is real."

Harry hums, then guides Draco down with a gentle pinch of his pointed chin, and stops just shy of his petal-soft lips to ghost the words, "I'm real. I'm all yours."

And then they're kissing, and he's starting to remember what life before felt like, and then—

"Harry? Harry, darling?" Narcissa's voice pulls him back to the surface. Visions of Draco dissipate, along with the mere shred of happiness that came with it. "Your tea's getting cold."

"Oh." He blinks heavily and looks down at the china cup on the coffee table. She must've brought it while he was sleeping. Right now, drinking it would require unfurling himself from the corner of the settee he's tucked into, reaching out, holding something between his hands. All of him feels weighted to the ground, his body lined with lead. He stares at the cup for some time, then sits upright as Narcissa joins tentatively at his side, placing her hand on his knee.

She hands him the china cup. "You're welcome to stay, darling. You're not in a good way."

He doesn't have the energy to protest. His throat swells just thinking about it all—Draco's fate, the crushing loneliness, and now, like he hadn't already been stabbed enough times, his unborn child. Narcissa doesn't know about it. At least, he assumes she doesn't, and he's not about to pile onto her grief with the revelation that the curse not only claimed her son, but her grandchild, too.

His heart is bruised. There's a physical ache inside of him. An unbearable, crushing weight on his chest that feels like it's slowly constricting his windpipe, squeezing out every last bit of air.

He tries to speak, but words fail him. Instead, he brings it to his mouth. Earl Grey. His stomach flips.

"Would you like to see him?"

Harry shakes his head and takes a slow sip. "Not right now. Later, maybe."

"Well, Healer Gabrielle insists he's doing well. We must try to stay positive."

He shoots a glance at her, just to check if she looks as delusional as she sounds. "How well can you do when you're basically dead?" The stony silence hits him. He regrets it the moment it slips out, and slowly, he lowers his tea. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean it like—" His voice cracks, and he squeezes his eyes shut. "I'm sorry."

She sucks in a breath, poised, still. "It's alright, sweetheart."

He chews his lip. Tears are welling again, and he's fucking sick of it.

He'd hardly cried before he met Draco. He cried when he lost Sirius, then again when he locked himself inside Grimmauld Place directly after the war, discovering old letters and polaroids of his parents and his godfather and Remus. He'd cried a lot that summer; when there were funerals every other week, or when Ron Floo'd to the house late one evening, sobbing over the Fred's death. He'd shed tears as he held his best friend, mourning not only the loved ones, but their old life that would now be forever changed.

Then, it stopped.

A few tears of joy at the occasional wedding, or the stinging of emotion behind his eyes when he first held Penelope at 4 days old.