Challenge entry for Sonnet II: When Thou Feel'st It Cold. HP/DM

Title: When Thou Feel'st It Cold
Author: Ferox
Pairings: HP/DM
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: appx 2,000
Disclaimer: The Potter boys belong to JKR and the usual suspects, the sonnet in question, of course, belongs to one William Shakespeare (at least by popular consensus. )
Summary: When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field...
Age has a tendency to sneak in. Beauty fades. Youth slides away unnoticed. ...and Harry and Draco take a left turn in mid-sonnet.
Notes: Written for the Classic Canon Challenge second wave: Sonnet II, plot applied to HP characters. I wanted to try something a little different in the HP/DM dynamic, and this was the result. The original sonnet is included at the end.



"Come in." Blond bowed over dark wood and glittering green beetle wings, the rhythmic soft crunch and click of mortar and pestle the only sound in the room. Harry'd oiled the door just last week.

...After Draco'd thrown a fit about breaking his concentration that had left Winifred and Georgianne Weasley running from Draco's office in tears.

Harry had patted them on the shoulders, assured them that they wouldn't lose any house points, and then came back to oil the door himself. He'd also oiled and thoroughly shagged Draco out of his snit afterwards.

This was, Draco thought, the reason that The Boy Who Lived had become the man who kept on living regardless of his husband's murderous rages.

You can't help heredity. Harry always said. One side of the family's mad, the other's Malfoy.

Harry'd shagged his way out of that one too.

Even the memory brought a small quirk of a smile to Draco's lips.

Very small.

But still enough to elicit a squeak from the third year peeking around the heavy wooden door. Draco sighed. "Do come in Miss Wood. And close the door behind you." Silly girl. If they'd known Headmaster Snape during his tenure in the dungeons, they wouldn't find Draco nearly so intimidating. He supposed he could count himself lucky for that.

Particularly since the most hostility Draco could work up these days was rampant petulance--it didn't have nearly the same effect at five-foot-six, eight stone, and forty as it had at ten stone and fifteen. "Do sit," he sighed, and pinched the bridge of his nose with stained fingertips. "And please stop looking at me as if I'm going to set you to scrubbing cauldrons, or I will. What seems to be the problem?"

"You--you told me to come to your office after dinner to scrub cauldrons," she said, almost in a whisper.

Draco stared at her, and very slowly blinked. "I did?"

"Y-yes, sir."

Merlin, Gryffindors are dim. I'd have taken a chance like that and been out of detention in a shot. He stared for a time at his hands, the faintly yellowed fingertips, knobbly knuckles leeching aristocracy from slender fingers. There was a temptation to ask just when, and for what infraction, he'd given her the detention.

"Y-you said that the classroom wasn't an appropriate place for passing love notes, sir," she whispered without prompting, and for a moment, Draco blessed Gryffindor honesty, remembering now just how irritating her cow eyes at David Goyle'd been. He was quite certain he hadn't been so brainlessly besotted at that age.

"It most certainly isn't when it causes you to very nearly pour powdered manticore horn into a base of elderflowers and dragonsbane. Be glad I stopped your hand before you did so, or you'd have an entire classroom to scrub."

"Yes sir."

"And do sit up straight and look at me when I'm speaking with you, Miss Wood. Five points from Gryffindor for poor posture." He could feel the thin smile pouring across his lips like oil, and for a moment, thought fondly of Professor Snape--when he'd been only Professor Snape, never the unthinkable Severus.

"Yes sir."

"Are you still here, Miss Wood? You know where the cleaning supplies are kept."

"Yes, sir," more quietly each time until she sounded like a mouse.

"Go along, Miss Wood."

"Yssr." The door shut even more quietly behind her, and Draco sighed, wondering if he could take points from a Gryffindor for showing utter lack of spine.

"Professor Malfoy, sir?" a voice squeaked abruptly enough and close enough to Draco's elbow to make him yelp, pestle and book flying when he jumped.

"Dobby!"

Big moon eyes peered at Draco over the edge of a book almost as tall as the house elf, and long ears twitched at the very tips. "P-professor Harry Potter sent Dobby with your mail, sir."

"And this couldn't have waited until later?" Draco pressed a hand tight to his chest, feeling the rattling pound of a heart he was almost certain shouldn't be beating that fast.

"Professor Harry Potter thought it might be good for Professor Malfoy, sir. Dobby is only following Professor Harry Potter's orders! And Professor Malfoy can't tell Dobby what to do anymore." So saying, Dobby disappeared in a pop. And possibly a huff.

Draco was too busy trying to regain control of his heartbeat. "Merlin forbid a house elf develop some common sodding courtesy." He was beginning to feel that being sneaked up on was rather worse than being interrupted by creaking doors and knocks. Rubbing a shaking hand over his forehead, Draco picked up the book, tearing off the wrapper and immediately forgetting everything to do with house elves and spineless students, and even the cracked pestle and ruined mortar of wings.

It was nothing, really, he knew, being published in Beetle and Vyl's at age forty. Not when Severus had been published while still at Hogwarts, and so often since that they'd given him his own annual section and three special edition volumes of his own work.

Still, Draco's hands shook as he opened the text, fingertip skimming down a list of names that he'd never have recognized at school but who now left his hands trembling when he saw his name amongst them as if he belonged there.

Four lines above Severus Snape, and three below Arsenius Jigger: Draco Malfoy. Page two hundred and fourteen.

He knew he should be aloof. Professional. Read the volume from Ferdinand Archivictus through Zinnia Zapata.

He flipped directly to Malfoy, unable to hide the grin on his face as he ran his hand lovingly over the page. Dissolution of Damnation: Removal of Tattoos and Binding Marks Via Three Simple Solutions.

Simple. Simple only once he--he--had figured out the single compound that would dissolve the marks, and the combination of companion ingredients, applications, and wardings that would allow it to do so without dissolving the skin or limb the mark was on. It'd been on Jigger's shop shelves for less than a month before he'd been approached for the article.

With Severus Snape's endorsement.

Feeling almost giddy, Draco re-read every word, feeling a faint tingle in his fingertips, anticipation, the next article he'd be requested to submit, the questions he'd be asked to field, maybe even lectures he'd be giving, and wouldn't that be-

Draco stopped.

Stared.

From the last page, the brief biography, he glared back at himself, stringy blond hair pushed impatiently back from a too-high forehead as grey eyes turned dark in their hollows glared beneath the permanent scowl that marked the skin between eyebrows that barely whispered their presence.

As he watched, his picture sneered at him, the frown lines deepening around thin lips, and scrawny fingers shook a quill at him, gestured to him to go away--leave him in peace--before standing and stalking away in a swirl of black, leaving Draco staring at an empty table littered with the debris of creation. When... when had he looked like that?

Slowly, still staring with unseeing eyes at the empty frame, Draco lifted unsteady hands to his face, feeling for the scowl he'd seen in his picture, the deep lines, the hollows where flush flesh should have been. And found every one, his fingers unable to lie.

Involuntarily, he turned to the more familiar photograph where he and Harry waved back at him from their frame, arms around each other, Harry shyly, and Draco with proud possession. Lively grey eyes flashed from the captured time, his skin glowing with sun and health, hair lifted by the breeze and shining as if it had its own light.

When he picked up the frame, he could see himself reflected in the glass, a faded overlay to the figures within, the play of light and shadow turning his features into a mask not unlike the mark he'd worn on his arm until earlier that year.

Still laughing, Harry-in-the-picture lifted his eyes, meeting Draco's, and held his shining Draco closer, mouthing the words I love you, you stupid git.

And looked exactly as he did every morning when he said precisely the same thing to Draco, every morning for twenty years before kicking him out of their warm bed and sending him off to dress for each day of honest work.

Draco laid the picture in the open book, then pulled his most recent photograph of Harry from the shelf behind him and lay it next to the two of them, comparing Harry-then and Harry-now.

Sharper, perhaps.

Maybe a little thinner.

But every boyish contour, every smooth plane remained, boy to man to forty year old Defence professor. Draco vaguely recalled Harry laughingly comparing himself to a Muggle fairy tale, swearing he'd never grow up. Peter Pot?

He watched himself sweep back into his frame in the Potions journal, shaking a bony fist at the rowdy young men in the photograph above him until Draco took the photo and lay it face down, staring into the face of the stranger on his page.

Bitter.

Faded.

Wrinkled.

Old.

Draco slammed the book shut and shoved himself from his desk, his office door closing with a politely-oiled snick behind him.

*

The door to the bedroom flew open, and Harry looked up over the rim of his glasses to see Draco storm through, robes billowing in a credit to his post at Hogwarts. "Draco-?"

"What do you see when you look at me?" Draco demanded without preamble, speaking before he'd so much as come to a stop, a tremor in his voice.

Harry blinked. Slowly. "Draco Malfoy? Has there been a polyjuice accident?"

"No," snapped. "What about Draco Malfoy?"

"Slytherin? Love of my life? Pain in my arse?" Harry set down his book, a bemused smile touching his lips.

"What do you see NOW? Now, that's different than before!" Draco's voice rose, fingers clutching at air, each other, the hems of his sleeves.

"The current, and very paranoid Potions professor of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry."

"No--look.... what's changed? With us. From before."

"We got married." Bewildered, Harry watched Draco pace, his head tilted to one side.

For the first time in almost 20 years, Draco stamped his foot. "Harry!"

"I've missed something important again, haven't I?" Harry looked at Draco, wide eyed behind his glasses, and conceded defeat.

"You really don't see?" Draco made a vague gesture above his shoulders.

"....Did you cut your hair?" Harry asked helplessly.

Draco stopped, sighed, leaned over the table, and laid a kiss on Harry's lips, then backed away with a bare hint of a smile. "No."

"What was that for?"

Draco shook his head. "Being absolutely blind."

"You are the most confusing, insufferable git, Malfoy." Harry captured Draco's hand in his, twining their fingers. "You never change."

"You think?"

"I know," Harry said with absolute conviction, then toppled over with a muffled shout and a lap full of enthusiastic Potions professor.

The fumes in the Potions lab. I'm married to a madman, and it must be the fumes.

*

Sonnet II

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow,
And dig deep trenches in thy beauty's field,
Thy youth's proud livery so gazed on now,
Will be a totter'd weed of small worth held:
Then being asked, where all thy beauty lies,
Where all the treasure of thy lusty days;
To say, within thine own deep sunken eyes,
Were an all-eating shame, and thriftless praise.
How much more praise deserv'd thy beauty's use,
If thou couldst answer 'This fair child of mine
Shall sum my count, and make my old excuse,'
Proving his beauty by succession thine!
This were to be new made when thou art old,
And see thy blood warm when thou feel'st it cold.