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Draco held up his muddy hands in front of his face as he caught his breath on a fallen log. Dirt was caked deeply into the lines of his palms, sealing off paths he could have taken—should’ve taken. His left leg was cramped painfully and he rubbed at it with his soiled and grubby little fingers, leaving a streak of dirt on his expensive trousers.

“Uh uh, dirty boys aren’t welcome at this table.”

Draco felt hysterical laughter build in his throat. No longer welcome at his mother’s table because that’s what he was. He was a dirty boy now and he couldn’t run from it. What was that quote? Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes clean to the bone. What happened when you started to wear your ugly on your skin, he wondered. What happened when you went to wash away the muck and the grime and it stuck to you like glue? What happened when you reaped what you sowed, when you were what you ate, when for all the beauty you had to offer you only broadcasted the ugly?

He scrubbed at his hands with sudden frantic energy, rubbing them harsh and rough against his pants, but he was only smearing the mud further until all the little crevices and creases, all the alternative choices, were gone and he was left with what was.

“There is blood on your hands, little one.”

Draco jumped nearly a foot in the air, scampered back to his place like a timid mouse and darted his glinty eyes about into the thick brush in search of the rich voice. It had had a strange dreamlike quality that almost made him want to loll his head right along with its highs and lows. He blinked and squinted.

“I didn’t kill him—” he started defiantly but the falling body that dropped over the parapet like a limp ragdoll called him out for the liar he was. No, no, no. It hadn’t been him, he hadn’t been able. It had been Snape. He had been the one. The blood was on his hands and Draco would take no share of it. He would take the mud but Snape could have the blood.

“But you are responsible,” the voice said and Draco thought it might be the voice of his subjugated and thrice-buried conscience. But whose conscience was that vibrant and crisp? Mad people’s, he supposed. Wouldn’t his mother just love to know that?

Hi, Mum, yep, my slacks are ruined. Oh, and did you also know I’m madder than a grindylow on snobbits? Well, now that’s outta the way, what’s for brunch, eh?

“You’re not a killer.”

Nope, nope, he wasn’t. But he was a raving, gibbering dirty boy who happened to be locked in an epic battle of wits with his crummy conscience and was that really so much better?

He held the bubbling laughter at bay and rocked on his little log while the voice kept at him, pecking at the last scraps of his sanity like the vulture it was and he nothing more than unripe carrion for the picking. “There could be no murder without you,” it said. “You are more integral than you realize.”

Well, he had always liked the idea of being important, hadn’t he? How long had he been building to this moment, he wondered. How many of the tics and characteristics that he’d picked up along the way to a still far-off adulthood had led him here, to this moment, to that death, to the shiny temptation of insanity?

Too many facets to try to change the picture, of that he was sure.

Draco tugged at the sleeve of his shirt nervously. Where was Potter in all this? Still searching, that he could guess. Because Potter was the hero and the hero didn’t stop until he’d caught and quartered the villain. Draco jumped to his feet. He was pretty sure you had to be half-mad when you were the villain of your own story. “I-I think I’m lost,” he told his conscience, hoping it knew something he didn’t. “Can you—”

A cantering creature broke through the trees at his right and Draco froze in his place in pure fear. The thing tossed its head, its palomino flank glinting at him threateningly in the moonlight. “On the contrary,” it said, in perfect imitation of human tones—in perfect imitation of Draco’s own sodding conscience. “This is precisely where you are meant to be, Draco Malfoy.”

“Right,” he stuttered in absolute terror. He must be imagining it, these things, they were stupid and dangerous, his father had always told him so, so there was no way it was talking to him in an intelligent fashion or that it hadn’t tried to tromp him flat yet. Therefore it couldn’t be real. A dream would certainly explain how it knew his name. He cocked his head to the side and said suspiciously, “How did you—”

The creature smiled at him in an enigmatic fashion. “If you are patient, the universe will provide an answer.”

Draco felt like raving because that hadn’t really been an answer at all, had it? He shifted on his feet and murmured, “I have to find—”

The thing shook its head gravely, its sapphire eyes opening slowly. “Your professor cannot help you any longer. He has his own destiny to fulfill.”

Draco looked away from its eyes fiercely. They were too blue, too knowledgeable, and too similar to another pair of brilliant blues that Draco had just made sure stayed dim for the rest of eternity. And he was sure to go barking if he kept on with thoughts like that. He danced on the tips of his toes anxiously. “The forest isn’t safe. I have to—”

“No,” the creature agreed. “Even the creatures who call this forbidden wood their home respected the man you struck down tonight.”

Draco clenched his fists at his sides and pursed his lips petulantly. “I told you. I didn’t—”

“The stars do not lie, Draco Malfoy,” the thing said with finality. “Tonight you murdered the only man who would offer you safety.”

Draco felt tears well in his eyes and he shouted blindly, “I didn’t! I couldn’t do it!”

“Then you did not let his masked enemies into the castle?” the thing asked curiously and Draco hated it. Hated it for being right, hated it for painting him into a corner. Maybe it really was just his conscience come to life, monstrous and unignorable like this thing was.

“I did,” he admitted croakily, trying to beat back the tears. He may be mad but he wasn’t a baby. “But I—”

“Do not offer excuses,” the thing told him bluntly. It glanced up at the sky and said softly, “Own to your actions as they are written in the stars and there is no changing their order.”

As much as Draco hated it, at the same time he was oddly comforted by the thing’s voice. It was the kind that was perfect for lullabies and storybooks and there was a strange part of him that wanted to stay forever to hear more of it.

His self-destructive thoughts were interrupted by a primal scream that seemed to tear through his wooded hideaway and burrow straight into the very center of his heart, leaving him nauseous and racked with chills.

“Potter.” Draco gulped. “Please, you have to help me—”

The thing regarded him baldly. “Centaurs do not involve themselves in human conflict,” it told him rather airily. “I would not offer my flank to Albus Dumbledore’s killer regardless, little one.”

“Stop saying that!” Draco half-implored, half-demanded. He felt like ripping out chunks of his hair. “I didn’t kill him! Snape—”

“Saved your soul,” the creature finished for him quietly and Draco hung his head in shame. It was right and how absolutely cowardly and disgusting of him to try to shove all the responsibility of it onto Snape after what the man had done for him. He had never been more ashamed of himself. The thing watched him for a moment before adding, “It is unknown yet if you will be worthy of his sacrifice.”

Draco looked up at it just as he heard a crash close to his clearing. Panic and desperation crept into the lines of his face as he peered into the creature’s own. “Please,” he begged. “Potter will find me.”

“Then it would be no less than you deserve,” the thing said impassively.

Draco collapsed completely, mentally and physically. He swiped at his eyes and brandished his words angrily, “Fine, then. Leave me to my fate! Get out of here! Why sit here and torture me with a possible solution? Go find all your centaur brethren and laugh it up about stupid, cowardly Draco Malfoy finally getting what’s coming to him!”

And the thing did look close to laughter. It was smiling at least. “You are an arrogant species,” it admonished. “You seek to command me as though you have any more right to the forest than I. You believe yourself so important that you expect us to know your name and obsess about your fate. As I said, we do not involve ourselves in human conflict.”

“Merlin, I’m sorry then!” Draco threw up his hands in exasperation. He turned and glared at the thing. “I didn’t mean it like that and I think you know it, too. Please, just leave me alone,” he finished lamely.

“You intruded upon me, Draco Malfoy,” was all the thing said in that same soft voice.

Draco stood up furiously and blared, “Fine then, I’ll leave!” He tore out of the clearing and unreasonably quickly his righteous indignation paled to nothing more than fright and an icy clench took hold in his guts. He had no idea where he was going or which way might lead him directly into Potter’s vengeful grasp. The crunch of footfalls sounded behind him and Draco drew his wand with a desperate little whimper. He would try to defend himself against Potter and he had no doubt that he would die in that attempt.

He whirled around, his face set—though still terrified—to find the thing watching him curiously. “Why are you following me?” Draco practically screeched as his voice wobbled and swelled embarrassingly. He seemed destined to bawl in front of this thing.

“Severus Snape tore his soul to save yours,” it went on as though they’d been having an uninterrupted conversation and this was simply the next part. “Will you honor that kindness?”

“What’s it to you?” Draco said coldly, biting his nails into his palms to get his emotions back in check. “I thought you didn’t involve yourself in the conflicts of humans,” he mocked a bit.

“As a rule, no,” the creature agreed.

Draco huffed hair out of his face. “Then why are you bothering with me?”

“Your fate is not absolute,” the thing said with a glance up at the sky. “You will have to make a choice somewhere along the line. I am curious as to what that choice will be.”

Draco’s features twisted sourly and he set off through the woods again, batting branches out of his way and letting the sharp ends scrape across his muddied palms. “Sounds like an excuse to be hypocritical to me when needs must,” he tossed over his shoulder.

He could hear the thing galloping behind him through the underbrush easily. “You would see it that way,” it responded, not in the least out of breath. “Humans are too impatient to see the finer points of existence.”

Draco’s face soured even more. “And what do centaurs fall short of, what are your faults?” he demanded, practically jeered in fact. “You have no trouble pointing out those of my species, so you must be in touch with yours, yeah?” The creature said nothing so Draco went on a bit belligerently, “I’ll start, centaurs are a pretentious lot—know all these things that could be helpful but prefer to hoard the knowledge and dangle it about when they’re feeling bored.”

“Why should we share our insights with those who cannot appreciate them?” the thing asked in simple curiosity. It didn’t seem to mind Draco’s attitude in the least.

“How would you know?” Draco retorted. “You’ve never tried.”

Draco could tell the thing was smiling when it inquired with undoubtedly feigned interest, “You know the entire history of centaur-human relations?”

“Do you?” Draco threw back forcefully in pitiful retort. He tried to put as much oomph behind it as possible to distract from that fact.

The thing trotted up to his side, its blond hair shining gaily, and said matter-of-factly, “You are very contrary.”

Draco defended instantly, “I am not.” The thing grinned at him and Draco realized what he had just been trapped into. He rolled his eyes. “Childish,” he said patronizingly. Just then Potter’s guttural and primeval shouts penetrated their frivolous conversation and Draco breathed, shaking, “He’s mad.”

“Harry Potter is grieving yet another lost paternal figure,” the thing corrected. He stared down at Draco. “And this death is wrought at your hands.”

Draco shook his head from side to side so hard that he thought his brains might be rattling around with it. “I didn’t—”

“I told you not to offer excuses, Draco Malfoy,” the thing cut across him warningly. “If you want to be called a man you must act like one. And man does not shift blame, man stands behind his treachery.”

Draco stopped moving completely and stared down at his shoes. “He would have killed me,” he whispered, closing his eyes.

Instead of inspiring sympathy or pity as Draco might have thought—hated, but expected—it simply said, “Shouldn’t you have died then? Is your life worth more than that of a famed and legendary wizard?”

Draco pursed his lips, feeling cold all the way down to his bones suddenly. “I was—I’m afraid of death,” he admitted chokingly.

“Your entire race seems to be,” the creature replied flippantly.

Draco nodded, not sure if he was meant to agree or not. He dropped down on an uncomfortable rock and buried his face in his hands. “I don’t want to die.” He looked up furiously as though the thing had contradicted him and growled, “I shouldn’t feel guilty for saying as much either.”

“But you do,” it replied easily.

Draco slowly nodded his head. “Because of what I’ve done to escape it,” he clarified. He glared out at the hateful woods and said spitefully, “Potter would grin and bear it, face his death head-on rather than put himself above anyone else.” He looked up at the creature imploringly. “Tell me, is that reckless stupidity or reckless bravery? Am I a coward for choosing life?”

The thing avoided an answer entirely by stating truthfully, “You believe so.”

Draco lowered his eyes and said quietly, “The more I see his body falling the more it seems like it should have been mine.”

The thing didn’t respond for a long time until it finally said, “I will only tell you it is human to fear, little one.”

Draco scoffed. “Not much help then, are you?” He bundled his arms around himself, feeling lost and lonely despite the thing’s company.

“You’re cold?” the thing asked, a parody of concern in his voice.

And Draco felt like crying at the sound of it. He didn’t. Instead he got angry again. “What do you care?” he demanded coldly. “I’m a murderer, aren’t I? It’s the least of what I deserve.”

“Your self-pity is purposeless,” the creature said remonstratively.

“Why are you still here?” Draco asked petulantly as he wrapped his cloak tighter around him and felt his exhaustion catching up with him as though it had simply been waiting for him to stand still long enough.

A warm weight settled close to him and Draco could see through the slants of his tired eyes the thing curling its flank around him. He wanted to question it, to point out that it was involving itself in his affairs, but it seemed to know it and commanded softly, “Sleep, Draco Malfoy.”

And that sounded like just about the best idea in the wide world.

Draco didn’t see the creature—the centaur—again until shortly before the Headmaster’s funeral. He had snuck back in the Polyjuiced body of some boy he had run into in Diagon Alley.

Well, you may have killed him, Draco, but I’ll be damned if you’re going to be rude on top of it. You’re going to the man’s last hurrah on earth and you’re going to nod and smile grim and act like you’re sadder than a Mudblood doing magic.

Draco sighed and nearly jumped out of his skin when he saw him standing at the edge of the wood. He craned his head around to make sure no one was paying him any mind and then stole over to his side as stealthily as he could. He opened his mouth just as the centaur smiled knowingly and nodded. “Draco Malfoy.”

Draco’s mouth closed with a snap and he found himself reluctantly impressed. He watched all the people milling about with their handkerchiefs out and their eyes red and felt a stone of guilt lodge itself in his throat. But that had been the point, hadn’t it? So he could see the devastation he had caused first hand. He brought his hand up against the glare of the sun and said simply, “You protected me that night.”

“I sheltered you,” the centaur half-agreed, half-corrected.

Draco squinted. “Why, I thought centaurs didn’t involve themselves in human affairs.”

A strong and callused hand touched his cheek and then slipped down to cup his chin. The wake those delicate fingers left in their path was like a blazing trail that incongruously made Draco shiver. “You are more than ‘human’. You are Draco,” was his enigmatic answer.

Draco looked up at him with an odd tinge of appreciation just as a fierce-looking centaur roared over his shoulder, “Firenze!” He jerked his head toward the forest, his eyes blazing.

The blond centaur smiled wearily at him and then took off after the darker one.

Draco placed a hand to his cheek and whispered to himself thoughtfully, “Firenze.”

It had been three weeks since Draco had stepped foot off the train for his last year at Hogwarts and this was only the first time he had laid eyes on Firenze. There had been just enough light to make him out through the forest’s denser trees and Draco had run off after him instantly, not having any friends left to tell not to wait up. He finally caught up to him, a bit out of breath, and panted, “I looked for you after—” but he still couldn’t bring himself to say the man’s name and he changed tack, “when I was last here but it was as if you’d disappeared entirely.”

The centaur wouldn’t make eye contact with him. His mouth was tight and his brow furrowed. “You should not have come back here, Draco Malfoy.”

Draco stared at him in confusion. “I don’t understand.”

Firenze turned to face him, his sapphire eyes hard like diamonds. “You do not belong here,” he said coldly. “The comfort of the castle is where students belong. Stay out of these woods. We are too different, you and I.”

The centaur turned around gracefully, rearing on his hind lines, but Draco called out furiously before he could make a clean break, “Different here meaning unsuited? You claim we’re the arrogant ones, better that than small-minded, eh?”

He didn’t wait for an answer before he spun on his heel and stomped back toward the castle, indignant and inexplicably pained by a sharp twinge in his lower belly.

A paunchy fist slammed into his stomach. Can fists be paunchy? Surely it belonged to a paunchy fellow, that worthless, pretentious cocksucker from Hufflepuff who had the sudden balls to call him a murderer even though this jackarse hadn’t done jack shit himself during the war—and wasn’t inaction just as murderous as his action—and if some of him was paunchy then why not all of him?

A paunchy foot followed, striking him square in the ribs, and Draco gave a little gurgle of pain as he curled in on himself.

You should be thinking of a way out of this, not concentrating on whether or not limbs can be paunchy, idiot.

Draco groaned and tried to offer at least some token resistance to the foot that was now honing in on his face but his stomach was like a lead weight and if he moved he thought he might hurl. And he had been humiliated enough for one day, thank you very much. It smashed into his nose with a sickening squelch and warm, sticky wetness splashed over his lips and chin.

Finally one of the scragglier boys grabbed the paunchy lad by his paunchy arm and hissed, “Ernie, it’s enough, you’ll kill ‘im.”

Draco wanted to protest, wanted to say it took more to snuff out a Malfoy then a few good kicks from a chap named Ernie but all that came out was a low moan. Besides, he would only taste blood if he opened his mouth now anyway.

The ringleader, Ernie, growled and spat on Draco’s cheek. “You’re lucky I’m not a murderer like you, Malfoy.”

Draco tried his best to sneer up at him but he wasn’t sure how much came across through the blood. He almost hoped he died of respiratory failure or blood loss just to prove the little fucker wrong.

Draco Malfoy. Who, him? Dead as a motherfuckin’ doornail. No! Well, who did it? Ernie fuckin’ Paunchy Legs. Well, I always knew he was a vile little murderer. And Draco would jeer from his goddamn grave, ‘How’s it feel, fuckface?’

His attackers stomped away after Ernie stomped on his face one last time and they headed back up to the school, cool as you please. Well, Draco would get those motherfuckers. He would. He would find a way to make them pay for this shit because a Malfoy did not just lie back and take it. They gave as good as they got, and he had to admit he had gotten pretty good.

He had just managed to get to his feet and was beginning to lumber toward the school when a strained cry of, “Draco!,” stopped him.

He could see Firenze riding towards him and bitterness mixed in with the agony and humiliation. “I don’t need your help. Stay away from me, Firenze,” he burbled out. He turned away from the centaur but Firenze didn’t leave, he kept right on next to him, a brutal concern and dull fury in his gaze. “I told you to leave me alone,” he half-shouted, half-slurred.

Firenze didn’t seem to care. “You’re hurt,” he lamented softly, his deadly eyes shifting towards those responsible who now resided inside the castle. “You should return to the school,” he said after a beat.

Hadn’t he been going toward the school? No, fuck. With his dead left arm he had been listing in the direction of the lake without even realizing it. “Go to hell,” he said spitefully as he changed course yet again. “What do you care anyway, Firenze?” he berated. “It’s not like we mean anything to one another. I’m human, I could never understand you.”

Firenze looked uneasy, for him at least. “The others, they—”

“Think for you?” Draco finished icily. “I let my father do that for me for sixteen years, look how that worked out.” He gestured to his mangled body. “We’re too different,” he mocked. “Let’s just leave it at that. Goodbye, Firenze,” he said with a sneer as he left the centaur staring after him in hurt and shame.

Madam Pomfrey stared down her nose at him the entire time she worked her magic and that was nearly as bad as getting the shit kicked out of him in the first place. It was almost as if she was silently accusing him of having brought it on himself and he had no doubt that it rubbed at her something awful to have to heal him, to have to roll up his sleeve and find that nasty black thing staring back at her.

Well, fuck her. And fuck every other goddamned arsehole who decided to judge him. Let’s see what they’d do in his place. He wanted to know, what had the right choice been? Because even in retrospect he still had no fucking clue.

He slid off the bed as she fixed up his bum arm and the crack in his ribs. He was still sore but far better off than he had been when he staggered in. He turned towards the door only to find it blocked by a rather large and impressive figure. He swallowed down his surprise and only perked an eyebrow coolly. “What are you doing here?”

Firenze pawed at the floor with his front hoof unconsciously. “I do not—let them think for me,” he declared righteously.

Draco shrugged, entirely unmoved. “Could have fooled me.” He narrowed his eyes and told him with blasé unconcern, “Go back to your clan. We don’t mesh, you and I.”

Firenze lowered his head and said softly, “I never should have said that to you. It is not what I believe.”

Draco froze in his uncaring bastard routine and asked around the lump in his throat, “What are you saying?”

“I think a harmony could be found between humans and centaurs.”

Draco tried not to let his disappointment settle as heavy as it wanted in his abdomen. “Oh.”

Firenze took a step closer and clarified boldly, “Between you and I.”

Draco looked up at him, his eyes twinkling. “Oh.”

He and Firenze fell into a comfortable camaraderie shortly after his hospital visit. Firenze seemed to realize Draco didn’t have many friends any longer and, although he was a bit hard to talk to at times and often spoke in riddles, Draco thought he was better than any of the people he had called ‘friend’ before.

They skirted the edge of the lake, Draco nearly blinded by the light bouncing off of Firenze’s flank. He shaded his eyes and screwed up his face as he looked up at the straight-backed centaur. “What’s it like?” he asked quietly. “Do you ever wish you were human?”

Firenze seemed to ruffle and he shot back coldly, “Do you ever wish you were centaur?”

Draco felt abashed by the gruff comment but held Firenze’s gaze resolutely as he said genuinely, “When I’m with you.”

Draco sat by the edge of the lake, glancing stones across the wind-combed surface. He leaned back only to be caught by Firenze’s rump. Draco turned to face it curiously and dragged his hand down the bristly fur. It was a strange feeling, like he was trying to tame a wild beast. But Firenze had never looked less wild as he rested with his pale face turned upward toward the sun like an adversarial moon, his tail fwapping lazily against his flank. It made Draco feel entirely out of sorts.

“I feel very off-kilter when I’m with you,” he blurted aloud.

Firenze opened baleful eyes. “Why is that, Draco Malfoy?” he said with the same lazy brilliance that he twitched his tail with.

“Because I always feel like I’m looking at you… wrong,” Draco tried to explain, and had no doubt he was doing a hash job of it. “Some days all I can see is your flank while others I can only concentrate on your humanistic qualities. I don’t think I’ve ever really taken all of you in at once.” Draco smiled to himself and added a bit cheekily, “Seems like a metaphor for your mind actually. It’s just as confusing and indefinable.”

Firenze sat up straighter and frowned. “I do not intend to confuse you.”

Draco smirked with amusement. “Must just be a centaur trait then.”

“Here,” Firenze said, taking Draco’s hand in his own and guiding it to his shoulder. Draco sputtered, caught between the warmth of Firenze’s hand and the warmth of his gaze. Firenze slowly moved the Slytherin’s hand from his shoulder down his chest and Draco shivered and did his best not to look away.

His hand dipped lower and met with the same coarse pelt just below the man’s navel. Draco looked up at Firenze, sweat beading on his brow and a burgeoning arousal throbbing between his thighs. The centaur grabbed his hand as Draco went to pull it back and intoned seriously, “Today is the day you stop seeing parts of me.” He tugged Draco’s hand back up to his shoulder and repeated the same path, slow enough that Draco imagined he could feel every pore.

Draco walked down from the school to meet Firenze with a lightness to his step that only ever came when he was set to meet the man. Through classes, meals, and the rest of Draco’s whole heavy day, his feet were like lead and he felt as if gravity was working double on him. But Firenze had a way of making that disappear, of making him feel like he was worthwhile.

Draco rounded a copse of trees and found the centaur lying down in the shade they provided. A smile broke out over his face. It fractured when he recognized the state the man was in.

Draco rushed forward and collapsed onto his knees, his hands ghosting over the dark patches of hoof prints and the sometimes deep gashes that he told himself were not from arrowheads. He had never been very convincing when he was out and out lying. Not even to himself.

“Firenze, what happened?” Draco groaned pitifully.

Firenze watched him carefully, his eyes shadowed. After a beat of silence, he said guardedly as he gauged Draco for a reaction, “There are those who do not approve of our companionship.”

Draco’s mouth tightened and he forced out through gritted teeth, “What would you like me to do?” Of course Firenze would tell him to leave. He hadn’t wanted Draco to begin with, had he? No, he had just been taking pity on the poor, friendless freak.

Draco was just beginning to back away when Firenze pulled him forward. The centaur grabbed his hand and covered one of the half-bandaged wounds with it. “Place your hand here and apply pressure firmly,” was all he said, his eyes glowing.

Draco felt gratitude and affection swell in his breast and instead he threw himself into Firenze’s arms and whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.” And what he was apologizing for—for not being a centaur, for killing Albus Dumbledore, for all the world’s evils?—he wasn’t sure but he took it all onto his own shoulders regardless and breathed it out over and over again as tears splashed ice cold over his heated cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…”

Draco came to awareness slowly as though he were surfacing through murky waters, his anchor the cool brush of something solid on his forehead. His eyelids fluttered and he found himself looking up into the tranquil blue pools of Firenze’s eyes. He smiled involuntarily and whispered in a voice hoarse with sleep, “Firenze?”

The centaur smiled warmly at him and began to move his hand out of range when Draco tugged it back. “I did not wish to wake you,” he said in half-hearted apology. He ran his hand along Draco’s shoulder, down his forearm, and held it out before Draco’s resting palm in quiet offering. “Shall I walk you back to the school?” he asked softly.

Draco shook his head before he had even thought to answer and took Firenze’s hand in his but, instead of using it to heft himself up, he used it to pull Firenze closer. He stared into those frightfully intelligent eyes before allowing his gaze to drop down to Firenze’s slightly parted red mouth.

He brushed his thumb over Firenze’s lower lip before drawing it into his own mouth. The centaur gave a surprised groan and bundled Draco closer to him, his arms wrapping around the blond boy’s back.

Draco slipped his tongue into the welcoming heat of Firenze’s mouth and something seemed to unfurl inside of him and suddenly Draco wasn’t close enough, couldn’t get deep enough. He was almost frantic to feel Firenze against him, inside of him, and the strong strokes of the centaur’s tongue against his were making his insides go haywire with that want. It seemed to hit him all at once that he was a eighteen-year old virgin and he was desperate to rectify that.

Firenze matched the frenzied and forceful press of his mouth as though he had been waiting for this for as long as Draco had. Something that made Draco feel warm from the tips of his ears to the ends of his toes.

Firenze finally pushed him back, breathing hard, and pressed his forehead to Draco’s cheek.

Draco held him close and whispered with a husky laugh, “Did you see that in the stars?”

Firenze said nothing but there was a smile on his angled face when he swooped in to steal more of Draco’s whining kisses. Draco clung to his shoulders fiercely as his cock grew hot and heavy between his legs and his throat started giving off a reeling, keening noise in a none-too-quiet plea for more.

Draco drew back just enough to say against Firenze’s mouth, “How does this—”

But Firenze only pressed their mouths together firmly and slid his hand from Draco’s back to his chest, plucking at a nipple through his thin shirt. Draco gasped, his lips dragging over Firenze’s, and arched into him. The hand slid further and popped the button on his slacks, slipping into his pants without even bothering with the teeth of his zip.

Draco felt like sobbing when those beautiful, beautiful fingers closed around the sticky head of his cock. He bumped his hips into the circle of Firenze’s hand before the man had even gotten started and he could feel the centaur grin against his mouth.

When Draco looked back on that night that was always what he remembered best, no matter how much time had passed—days, weeks, years—it was always Firenze’s grin spreading over his own lips.

Draco bucked against him as his hands flexed and clenched against Firenze’s shoulders, searching for something more to hold on to. Draco pulled back, his hips plunging mindlessly and slickly, and panted out, “Firenze, oh, I want—to feel you.”

Firenze drew away from him instantly as though Draco were fire and he was gasoline. Draco felt jarred from the loss while Firenze pursed his mouth and said coldly, “I would not debase you in that way.”

“There is nothing debasing about this,” Draco said honestly, a deep crease between his eyebrows as he frowned.

Firenze moved further away from him and soon he was standing, towering over Draco. He turned his face away and said in a voice trembling with suppressed anger, “I cannot—There could be nothing romantic in our coupling. I refuse to use you in that manner.”

His hands were clenched at his sides and Draco felt his own fury rise in his breast. “You—” he started furiously before he lunged at him. He sank to his knees, found the gorgeous head of Firenze’s prick beneath him and sucked it into his wet and wanting mouth.

“Draco!” He heard Firenze reprimand and then as he fell into a smooth and bobbing rhythm a more stuttering and moaning, “D-Draco.” Firenze’s eyes fell shut as he struggled with his morals over the pleasure he was receiving. “No, Draco, don’t—” he tried a bit desperately but even he could hear that it was half-hearted at best.

Draco was a novice at this, much as he was at sex in general, but Pansy had done it to him a couple of times so he wasn’t completely blind. Firenze was, however, much bigger than Draco could have anticipated but he found if he worked his hand, his mouth and his throat all at the same time then Firenze’s knees would tremble and he would give off shaky little moans that went right to Draco’s own crotch.

It was almost everything Draco could ever imagine wanting and he drew back to obliterate that obnoxious little ‘almost’.

“Draco,” Firenze came close to whimpering.

Draco licked his lips. “I want you to fuck me.” And the no-nonsense, ballsy way he said it made him shiver at his own daring. He scrambled to his feet so he could watch the widening of Firenze’s eyes. The man did not disappoint.

“Draco, I told you, I cannot—” Firenze started carefully, as if he were speaking to a very small and tantrum-prone child.

“I want you so much,” Draco whispered and his voice nearly cracked. He didn’t think he had ever said anything more heartfelt and that made him feel slightly ill. He looked up at Firenze and bit his lip. “Just tell me how. Please.”

Firenze indicated the rock behind him as though he were going against his better judgment. The rock came waist high and stretched far past the length of Draco’s body. He choked back something that was suspiciously like a giggle as his imagination provided a picture of the students who would sit atop this same rock tomorrow, completely unaware that Draco Malfoy had lost his virginity upon it.

Maybe he should carve it into the side: ‘Draco Malfoy wuz here, and fucked heartily, my good sir.’

He tried to clear his head of all the ridiculous thoughts that marched through it so he wouldn’t laugh outright. He didn’t want to give Firenze the wrong idea—that he wasn’t taking this seriously, or worse that he wasn’t taking him seriously.

He was wholly nervous when he felt his pants drop to his ankles and then Firenze was behind him, pressing into him with a chilled digit. Draco jumped at the first brush and then tried to tell his stupidly squirming stomach that he was never going to get laid if it kept making him start at every little touch. It calmed a bit at that and soon Draco was able to press back into Firenze’s ministrations with real gusto.

Firenze groaned with him as he pressed in a second finger and Draco wailed slightly as he pushed against something that made him feel light-headed while all his limbs got that pins and needles feeling almost simultaneously. It was a magnificent, weightless ecstasy and soon Draco was impatient for something bigger to be inside him, something that could prod that knot rather relentlessly.

He pressed his cheek flat to the cool rock and jerked his hips against a smooth cut in the stone as he rode Firenze’s fingers, desperate for more—more friction, more fingers, more meat.

And then Firenze was on top of him, telling him to brace himself and breathe through the pain, and the slow slide of something much larger than fingers was being thrust inside of him.

Oh and it hurt, like a sumbitch as Crabbe’s father would say, but at the same time it was fulfilling in a way that Draco had never imagined anything could be. He wondered if he should attribute that to the sex or to the man he was having sex with. He thought, in that moment, that there was a very good chance that he had fallen a smidge in love with this man.

Firenze seated himself as far into Draco as he could with a little groan of approval and waited for the boy beneath him to adjust with trembling muscles. Soon that tenacious child was pushing back against him, panting and cursing as he twisted his hips and tried to drag Firenze in deeper.

“Oh fuck, oh Merlin, oh Firenze,” Draco rattled off in a litany of praise as Firenze fucked him harder, deeper, faster, all the things he wanted to cry out for but couldn’t seem to wrap his brain around. His vision blurred with the edge of pain that underscored the man’s every thrust but it was flooded with the sweet brush of Firenze’s large cock rubbing against the nub of absolute bliss inside of him.

When he finally dragged Firenze’s climax from him, a respectable amount of time after his own, Draco was exhausted—tired in a way he didn’t think he’d ever been before, in fact—and his arse was pleasantly and achingly sore.

Firenze slipped out of him and collapsed onto the grassy ground. Draco burrowed into his chest and breathed, “That was—”

Firenze stiffened against him instantly. “I tried to warn you that I could not—” he started morosely.

Draco shut him up with a kiss and bubbled out with a sort of giddy exuberance, “Perfect. It was perfect.”

Draco sat out by the lake’s edge, humming to himself while he braided two reeds together the way his mother had taught him when he was a little boy. He was happy, genuinely happy, in a way that he didn’t think he’d ever been. Firenze made him feel special, there was simply no other word for it. It was a feeling that had used to come easy to him, that seemed as inherent to him as the surname Malfoy did, but it had been slowly fading ever since he came to Hogwarts.

He had never been as special as Potter and, after his sixth year, he had not been special at all. It was a hard blow to suffer and Draco had begun to wonder if he had ever even been unique at all. No one had ever called him special after all, it had just been a belief that he’d held all on his own. But it had disappeared in its entirety in the last two years. Until Firenze that was.

He heard the cantering gallop of his… well, Firenze probably wouldn’t want to be called his anything. No doubt the centaur would think he was trying to own him when Draco was the one who felt branded. He would gladly have belonged to Firenze and he was beginning to suspect that he already did.

They had made love a handful of times and Firenze seemed to be getting over the idea that he was somehow degrading Draco in the face of his unrelenting enthusiasm for the act and Draco had no doubt that soon it would be as natural to them as it was to anyone else.

He smiled brightly as Firenze approached, a smile so wide his teeth showed. He didn’t even know what he looked like himself when he smiled like that and he suspected that this was because he had never done it before. “I was waiting for you,” Draco said, his voice jumpy with anticipation. He gestured for Firenze to lean down and placed the braided crown atop his head. Draco cocked his head to the side and said with amusement, “You make a handsome prince.”

He drew closer for a kiss only to have Firenze back away. Draco faltered and looked at the man curiously, his smile dampened slightly but still very much present, as if this were simply an odd game the man had decided to try out on him.

Firenze swallowed heavily and looked away, his voice tight. “This cannot continue. You must know it.”

Draco felt his heart lodge itself in his throat but made a valiant attempt at speaking calmly. “I don’t know anything like that.” He stood on his own two feet and Firenze backed away even farther.

“I cannot offer you a normal life,” he said hoarsely, looking at a point above Draco’s shoulder. “You are destined to be with another.”

Draco could feel tears stinging his eyes and he hated himself for it. But tears were the least of what he would shed in his attempts to keep Firenze by his side. “Bullshit,” he countered, his voice warbling stupidly. “I’ve never wanted anyone else and I don’t want normal. What’s normal without you?”

Firenze’s gaze hardened though it still didn’t meet Draco’s. “You cannot ask me to assist in ostracizing you from everything you have ever known.”

“If I’m ostracized from it then I’ve never cared for it to begin with,” Draco retorted, his voice strained with unspoken plea. Stop it, stop it, stop it, you’re pathetic enough as it is. Let him go if he wants but don’t you fucking beg, don’t you fucking collapse, Draco Malfoy. But Draco couldn’t stop the words. He wrapped his arms around himself, his tears streaming silently down his cheeks. “Do you not care for me at all?”

Firenze looked even further away from him, his eyes no longer even pretending to hold his own. “Go away from here, Draco Malfoy,” he said, his voice tightly controlled. “You are no longer welcome in these woods.”

Firenze reared and raced off toward the forest almost before the last word was out of his mouth and Draco wiped futilely at his still-streaming eyes. It was a long time before he could bring himself to walk back towards the castle and when he did he only spat out one bitter word, “Coward.”

Draco married Astoria Camille Greengrass on the fifth of June. The day had been gorgeous in a way that could only be construed here as mocking. There had been a sweet smell in the air and the sun had showered them with light as they exchanged vows, tokens of a once grand commitment that had lately become little more than a raggedy joke. ‘A man walks into a bar with a wedding ring and a smile and he walks out with a lawyer and a blue back.’

She had moved into the manor in the weeks that followed and Draco had tried to accustom himself to her presence but he felt like a cat with its hackles raised, unable to settle when he knew she was near. Her high-heels clacked across the tile and the hardwood in a way that reminded him of the gnash of Nagini’s fangs. She didn’t read much and she spent a lot of time out in the garden, or fiddling with her makeup, or out with her girlfriends. The last of which Draco appreciated very much.

She was one of those women who said ‘I have to put my face on’ before they went out and Draco thought he had never hated an expression more. What did that mean? Was she wearing a mask at all other times? It gave him a bad case of the shivers when he thought on it too long and it made him wonder how well he really knew the woman living in his house.

She was pretty. Very pretty, in fact, but her voice seemed to want for a true sound as all she had was a soft sort of emptiness that made him feel like she was speaking to him through echoes. She liked him to make love to her often, which surprised him as he had never been that much into it himself and he didn’t think he hid it very well.

She was like a limp fish in bed, a rather loud limp fish, and it left Draco feeling slimy and cold after he’d finished with a dissatisfied grunt and a stone in his belly. He always rolled off of her instantly and she would cuddle up to him and whisper his name. He supposed that was pretty all right of her to do as he was fairly certain neither one of them were thinking of the other when they had sex.

She hid it much better than he did.

Soon, he realized, it was because she wasn’t hiding anything at all and that added a healthy scoop of guilt to the already half-blended mixture of cold and slime. It had been nearly three months after they’d wed and that tight feeling had stretched taut between Draco’s shoulder blades long before she ever rounded the corner into the parlor.

She had smiled at him and sat down beside him while he read the Prophet and she painted her fingernails. She quick-dried them with a spell and then dragged her newly coated, technicolor pink nails up and down his forearm. Draco tried to appear unaffected by this, wondering if this was how normal couples interacted, and decided if the answer was yes then he would do his damnedest to give her that. She had been a good wife, despite everything. Better than he deserved or expected, that was for certain.

She continued on, her nails leaving goosebumps in their wake, and Draco wondered when her presence would stop feeling like a rough brillo pad dragging against his skin. There was a blush to her pretty cheeks when she piped up shyly, “You know something, Draco?”

Draco gave a negative grunt and kept his head buried behind his paper, grinding his teeth against the sound of her hollow voice.

“I didn’t really think this would work,” she said a bit wistfully. She gripped his forearm and squeezed. “But it has. It has.”

Draco’s fingers trembled on his paper and he hoped he was dreaming this.

“I think I love you, Draco.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek softly. “I think I love you very much.”

The photo of Draco’s son sat next to his acceptance letter and he watched as the boy twirled himself about in the front yard, arms outstretched and a large smile on his face. As he spun faster Draco could see a faint hint of fear creep into his grey eyes through the exhilaration and that infuriated him. That was one thing the Muggles had gotten right.

Photographs were meant to capture a moment in time and they had tried to cheat it and take more, which only reminded that for all the perfection of that moment, another would undoubtedly follow it that would always be unable to match its brilliance. Pictures were a lie, a wonderful delusion of momentary flawlessness where beauty was trapped forever in a frame, and the wizarding world had taken that and assumed more was better.

But sometimes all you were meant for was a single moment. And that was a hard lesson to learn.

Draco brought a hand up to rub at his wearied eyes and his elbow knocked over his glass. He cursed and waved his wand to clear up the mess but it was already seeping into the parchment of his letter, blending the dark ink into an illegible blur.

Dear Mr. Malfoy,

Draco rubbed at his forehead, a headache banging away at his temples much like Scorpius had banged away when he had formed his pots and pans band on the kitchen floor. Headmistress Vector rose to deliver her final words of welcome to the new students and then sent them off with their respective Prefects. The professors wandered away much slower and the new Muggle Studies teacher, a woman named Melody Carthage, asked if he was all right, citing he looked rather pale.

He offered her a smile, hoping it didn’t look like he was in the throes of rigor mortis, and thanked her for her concern, saying he might try to nip some fresh air. The concern in her eyes cleared a bit and she sent him on his way with an exclamation to the effect that she looked forward to working with him.

Draco waved her on and let his smile drop as soon as she walked out of sight. He loosened the collar of his robes and was barely to the bottom of the steps that led onto the grounds before he was assaulted by that soft voice.

“You’ve aged.”

The words seemed to throb with the pound of his head, ebbing and flowing with the tide of his pulsating pain. He told himself he hadn’t been hoping to see him, to hear that voice, and that he hadn’t factored in to his decision to apply here at all. He had gotten much better at lying to himself over the years, so much so that he nearly believed those words.

Draco turned to look at him and that unchanged face was almost like a knife to his heart. His voice was scraped raw when he responded coolly, “You haven’t.” He left you. He dumped you like you were a sack of shit, Draco. Don’t you look at him with want, don’t you ever look at him like that again if you have any goddamn self-respect. Draco added bitterly, “I doubt much—if anything—has changed about you.”

He supposed there was a part of him that should thank Firenze for what he had done that day. After him, words of insult or injury—and there had been many, especially on his search for employ—had not even glanced across his skin. None of it had beaten him back because his soul had already been ravaged and there was nothing left to break. It had made him more tenacious, stronger, and more thick-skinned.

He was drawn back to the present by Firenze’s soft observation, “You are wearing the band of marriage.” The man’s voice was solemn as he said, “Congratulations.” Draco was sure he had never heard anything that sounded less congratulatory.

He refused to fiddle with his ring even though it now felt so tight and constricting that he thought it might amputate his finger altogether. Fuck if he was ever going to let Firenze see any emotion in him again. “Yes,” he answered impersonally, “thank you. My wife and I, we found our interests converged in a wedding of convenience. We had a son and try to keep an amiable relationship for his sake.”

Firenze took an involuntary step forward and stared at him, hard. “Your marriage is not built upon a romantic foundation?”

Draco gazed at Firenze and all the fight seemed to seep out of him. Suddenly he was overwhelmingly tired and he didn’t want to have to keep up a façade with the one man he had ever thought to lower it around. He sighed and told him weakly, “I’ve only ever been romantically inclined once. I was not enough for him. It was nice seeing you again, Firenze.”

With that, Draco turned around and headed back into the castle, wondering why he had even bothered to come back.

He was only three weeks into term but he was already tired of grading these dunderheads’ papers. He suddenly understood exactly what might have soured Snape on teaching. He was just about to call it a night when a tentative voice drifted toward him from the doorway, “I thought perhaps we might take a turn around the forest’s edge.”

Firenze was looking at him with a hopeful shine to his eyes and a slight smile. Well, fuck him. Draco had given him a look like that once and he had trampled it flat.

He rubbed his temples bitterly and bit out, “What would be the point, Firenze? It’s been a long day, I think I should call it a night.” And he strode off into his rooms without even bothering to look back.

Draco stood by the lake, the sun dappling the waves, and felt a sort of calm steal over him. It had been one hell of an intensive three months but he thought he might actually be getting a handle on how to interact with both the students and his coworkers. He was actually making friends here and he didn’t seem to be intimidating the children into learning either, the way Severus had.

He felt Firenze canter up to his side and sighed. He supposed he would just have to try to assimilate this man into his life as well. This stab in his heart every time he looked at him would have to be dealt with sooner or later. He turned to look at Firenze, his mouth open, but it snapped shut at first glance.

The man looked as if he hadn’t slept in months and his hair was no longer full of sleek loveliness but rather matted with gnarls and knots. His face was drawn as he said bleakly, “You could never have had a son if you had stayed.”

Draco wanted to reach out and touch his pale cheek but that way lay madness. “I would not have needed a son had I had you,” he answered with a truth that would no doubt cut at Firenze. He hated to do it but he refused to lie or soften the blows. “Astoria and I needed a way to fill the silence more than I needed an heir. The silence I had with you was never quite so loud or quite so raw.”

“You are accepted in society this way,” Firenze said, his voice strained as though he were grasping at straws.

Draco scowled. “Keep telling yourself you’ve done the right thing, Firenze.” He turned away, throwing over his shoulder coolly, “It’s only been twelve years, do you think you’ll believe it soon?”

Barely two days had passed since their exchange when Firenze burst into his rooms. Draco jumped to his feet in surprise but Firenze didn’t stop until he had pulled Draco into his arms and was rambling almost incoherently with his face pressed to Draco’s hair, “I miss you. I have missed you since the day I sent you away. Believe me when I say that I thought I was doing what was best.”

“Best for whom?” Draco managed to croak and then wondered why the fuck he was interrupting.

Firenze could not have looked more stricken if Draco had outright slapped him. “For you, Draco,” he said throatily.  “Always for you.”

Draco tried to push him away but Firenze didn’t so much as budge. The words he had longed to hear for twelve fucking years seemed to have invaded every part of his body and set it to tingling. But he had to say this. He had to. “I loved you. Have you any idea how thoroughly you crushed me that day?”

“As thoroughly as I did myself,” Firenze answered brokenly.

Draco couldn’t help but tangle his hands in Firenze’s hair as he whispered, “Will you send me away again?”

Firenze grinned at him in equal parts sagging relief and pure elation. “In my endeavor to become more human I shall try on this concept of selfishness.” He pulled Draco to him and growled, “Nothing will pry you from me.”

Draco tried to tell him that he didn’t want him to become more human, that he didn’t want him to be anything but him. But his head was spinning and words were now at a level of difficulty he had never encountered before. There was time now though. There was time for him to find them. He managed to wrap his tongue around the teasing words, “I intend to put that to the test.”

The mellow centaur’s eyes positively blazed. “Do,” he challenged. “I will not let you go again, Draco Malfoy, that is a promise.”

And, fuck it all, but as Firenze lowered his head and claimed Draco’s lips in a bruising kiss he believed him. In fact, he had never believed in anything more.