fuands.cc 
It’s someone whom Draco associates with lilies, or for whom lilies have some kind of significance. Of course, as Hermione tells him, lilies are flowers of death and mourning, used in funeral services and memorials…and just about everyone Draco knows came of age in wartime. If lilies hold meaning to the beloved, that doesn’t narrow things down much at all.
It’s someone whose relationship with Draco changed, irrevocably, when Draco was sixteen. Maybe he’d had a falling out with the object of his affection. Or maybe that person had fallen in love with someone else. This event, whatever it was, triggered Draco’s disease.
Harry runs through a mental checklist of all the Slytherins and the odd Ravenclaw Draco used to be seen with regularly, but Draco had pushed away almost everyone during sixth year, for entirely unromantic reasons. Any of those people could’ve been the person. And Draco is bisexual, which doubles the pool of potential candidates.
Brooding on all the beautiful girls and boys that might have caught Draco’s eye is a tiring, frustrating exercise that leaves Harry wanting to shed his skin like an itchy sweater, or possibly break things.
Draco notices. Of course he does. Draco always notices the things Harry wishes he wouldn’t.
They’ve picked a shady spot in the courtyard to research. Draco is working as industriously as ever, but right now, reading about all the deaths and mutations and various other horrible fates people have endured proves too much for his nerves to handle. He doesn’t speak, he’d never complain, but something in his face or his body language must betray him.
Draco broaches the subject of Harry’s ill humor with characteristic tact.
“Who shoved a broomstick up your arse today, Potter?” he drawls.
Before, that would have been the start of a shouting match. Now, Harry brightens.
“Let’s do that,” he says. Draco raises one eyebrow, and smirks, and Harry rolls his eyes. “Go flying, I mean. I haven’t been in ages.”
Out of fairness to the other students, eighth years aren’t allowed on Quidditch teams. Harry misses it desperately, but not as much as Ron does, and he’s certain Draco’s right there with him. Sure enough, Draco doesn’t hesitate.
“Seeker match?” Draco asks.
“If you’re that eager to have your arse handed to you,” says Harry.
“We’ll see about that, Potter.”
They part ways to dump their books and bags in their dorms, and retrieve their brooms; Harry swings by the kitchens to grab a couple of sandwiches, which they scarf down on their way out to the pitch. Draco digs a Snitch out of the equipment locker and tosses it into the air while they mount their brooms.
Over the handles of their brooms, they meet each other’s eyes, and Harry feels as though he’s finally woken up after a long dream.
Without a word, they take off into the sky after the Snitch, perfectly in unison. When it’s two Seekers alone in the air, with no other players or balls to worry about or the din of a crowd to distract—and when the Seekers are almost evenly matched, the way Harry and Draco are—the game transforms into an adrenaline-pounding, blood-rushing, heart-racing whirlwind of a duel.
“Best out of five?” Draco calls, and Harry gives the affirmative, but they each catch the Snitch so quickly the game stretches into nine, fifteen rounds. They lose count. Neither of them has to pretend at courtesy or sportsmanship; this is pure competition, and from the moment they take off there’s never more than a yard or so of space between them. If Harry tries to shake Draco off, Draco matches his every loop and dive and roll with a careless, manic grin. If Draco tries to catch Harry off guard with dizzying, breakneck laps around the stadium—flying so low they nearly tear seats right out of the stands or so high Harry has trouble catching his breath—Harry anticipates his every move and follows without so much as a moment of hesitation. Half the time they forget the Snitch is there until one of them sees it and shouts; then it’s a no-holds-barred aerial sprint for the goal, weaving over and under one another, elbowing each other shamelessly as they get closer and closer to the Snitch. More than once, Harry or Draco reach out and snatch the other’s wrist by accident (Draco claims it’s an accident every time, at least), and the snitch escapes them both. Neither of them notices when the sky grows dark with forbidding grey plumes of cloud.
When the rain starts, Harry puts the Snitch away and rejoins Draco in the air, and they place bets on which of them can pull off the best feints or other, increasingly dangerous and foolhardy maneuvers, like a game of chicken designed to give Madam Hooch a heart attack. Luckily, no one is around to knock some sense into their heads, so the two of them keep going until their broomsticks get too slick to hold on to. Draco, flying upside down with his hands behind his back, thighs locked around his broom to keep it in place, laughs so hard he nearly falls off when Harry slips and knocks his forehead into his broom handle while attempting to flip it over. And then Harry says, “At least I don’t look like a goddamn albino bat, you utter berk,” and Draco laughs harder, and slips, and ends up dangling from his broom with one knee hooked around it keeping him from breaking his neck until Harry comes and gets him. Draco doesn’t even look scared. “Save me, Potter!” he calls in a high- pitched, girlish voice, putting the back of his hand against his forehead as if playing at a swoon while hanging upside-down more than fifty feet in the air. (Harry almost leaves him there.)
That’s about when they decide to call it quits; the rain is pouring down in sheets and Harry is pretty sure he’s soaked down to his underwear. They land on the pitch, which is essentially a pool of mud at this point, and immediately shove each other over. Harry swears Draco started it. Draco claims Harry tripped him.
(Harry might have tripped him, by accident. He was standing closer than necessary and couldn’t see his own feet.)
Harry has never seen Draco smile like this, artlessly and radiantly. He feels a little drunk. He doesn’t even mind being covered in mud; he hopes Draco will shove him again just so Harry can have Draco’s hands back on him.
“I’m sorry we didn’t get more done today,” Harry says, as they pause in the broomshed to catch their breath before making a mad dash through the rain back up to the castle. He’s only just realizing how late it’s gotten, that they wasted half a day—one of Draco’s final days —doing what basically amounted to nothing.
Draco shakes his head. “I’m not. I needed this,” he says. “I missed flying.”
A number of responses come to Harry’s mind then: I missed flying with you, he almost says, or We can go again whenever you want, or You belong in the air, you were made for this, but some deeply buried self-preservation instinct kicks in, and holds the words back. Then Draco says, “Ready?” and Harry says, “Maybe if we wait it’ll clear up,” and Draco shoots back, “Scared, Potter?”
And Harry slams the door open and takes off without warning, leaving Draco to shout indignantly after him and follow. The moment is gone. But Harry’s still grinning by the time he makes it back to Gryffindor Tower.
He’s sure he looks a fool, windswept and muddy, dripping all over the place, glasses askew, smelling like sweat and broom polish—but not even Lavender and Parvati’s wrinkled noses or Hermione’s tight look of worry dampens his mood. And it’s not until after he’s showered, changed into his most comfortable pair of jeans and a sweater, and collapsed on his bed that he even realizes Ron is there in the dorm, lying in his bunk with a neglected Quidditch magazine in his hands and a very grim expression as he watches Harry. The last time Harry’d seen Ron look so serious, he’d been in mourning clothes.
“Hey,” Harry says.
“Gone out for a fly, then? In this weather?” Ron asks lightly.
“It sort of came up on us unexpectedly. I swear it was sunny earlier.”
Harry realizes his mistake too late.
“It was sunny about four hours ago. You’ve been out this whole time?” Ron says, and then, after a beat: “Us?”
“Erm, yes. Me and Malfoy,” Harry says. “We needed a break from all the research, so I thought….”
He hasn’t done anything wrong, Harry reminds himself. Defiantly, he sits up and grabs for his shoes. “I’m starved. Think I might go to the kitchens. Want anything?”
Ron sits up, too. “Hermione told me not to say anything to you.”
“Say…what?” Harry asks, his fingers slipping as he tries to knot his shoelaces. He looks up at Ron, who fidgets and tugs at the hem of his shirt and appears, all around, about as uncomfortable as Harry feels.
It’s just Ron, he tells himself. He and his best friend face each other across the gap between their beds. Ron exhales hard, making his bright red fringe—which is in serious need of a trim—flop out of his eyes.
“I get that you’re trying to help Malfoy,” Ron says, “but you’re too invested in this.”
“Too invested in saving someone’s life?” Harry says, astonished.
“That’s the thing. It’s not a matter of saving him. It’s like saying you want to save someone from…what’s that Muggle disease Hermione told us about?”
“Cancer,” Harry sighs.
“Right. It’s not something you can fight.”
“So, what? I give up on him? We all sit back and let him waste away to nothing?”
“No, but you just got done fighting a war, Harry. Do you really need more grief and suffering in your life?” Ron runs a hand through his hair, mussing it. “It would be one thing if your help could make a difference. But Hanahaki, it’s…trust me, I’ve seen what it can do. You can’t stop it. No one can stop it, really.”
Harry lets those words sink in, the way Ron wants. He allows them to have impact, to take up space in his mind. He turns them over and over and examines them from every angle.
No one can stop it, Ron says. But that’s not entirely true.
One person can, Harry thinks.
The next day, after class, he finds Draco at their usual spot by the lake. The sunset dyes the water gold, and the castle’s reflection juts darkly through its molten shine.
Draco lies on his stomach, a book propped open in front of him as he scrawls notes on a piece of parchment lined from being folded and refolded endlessly. That’s the sheet Draco uses when he finds something promising; something that could really help him, or maybe even lead him to a cure. Most of what’s on the list has already been scratched out, and today, Harry can’t bring himself to believe Draco is brilliant enough to turn one of these slivers of hope into a solution. Ron’s words are ringing in his head.
He drops down onto the grass beside Draco, who looks up with a smirk, the kind that used to rile Harry up but was undeniably handsome. Not anymore, on either count. It loses its impact when his face is so gaunt. Lying down makes the loose hang of his robes less obvious, but he’s lost a frightening amount of weight. Harry wonders if Draco might not starve to death before the disease ever gets around to killing him.
