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title: Flies date: august 21, 2002 The flies followed Draco Malfoy to Hogwarts. They came in droves, crawling with sticky-sweet feet in the underbelly of his luggage trolley, wriggling into the neatly folded clothes and buzzing, suspiciously, around his clean piles of underwear. When Draco boarded the train, they buzzed and hummed in his monogrammed suitcases like a million ticking clocks all ticking at the wrong time. Some wriggled to the food trolley and happily -- and briefly -- discovered the joy of wizarding candy before they were squished to pulp. A few carriages away, Harry spat out a mouthful of cauldron cake and was distressed to find something black and squirming in it. Later on, he would say, that was when he knew something was wrong. As the Hogwarts express puffed and chuffed its way past quaint green fields and open skies and finally chugged to a thick stop at its last (and only) stop, the flies shook themselves awake and squeezed through a hole in the leather. They flew for a bit, skimming over the heads of students and particularly enjoyed traumatizing some of the more insect-phobic girls, who screamed and hid behind valiant boys, trying not to grin as they pressed into the warm largeness of their crushes. Draco was unpacking his bags when Pansy let loose the first shriek of the Slytherin semester. She pulled and wrenched at her hair and shrieked some more; but then, grubs are nothing if not resilient. Draco shrugged as she came sobbing, hair in corkscrews worse than Hermione’s , wanting comfort, consolations, a kiss, an I’m-sorry-I-dumped-you-over-school-break screw. Draco turned his back on her; she repented her little misdeeds to him, she clutched her breast and said, “Oh Draco, never leave me, never leave me.” Draco replied, “I already have, you stupid girl.” She burst into tears. Draco relented a bit and awkwardly patted her hair. She tried to turn it into a nuzzle through the sobs and Draco pushed her away, more disgusted with himself and his bad taste in girls and even worse, his bad taste in boys. The flies buzzed, in secret corners of Hogwarts, snug as bugs in rugs. Harry opened his battered trunk and discovered a horde of flies, copulating madly on his cotton pyjamas. Ron shouted and came at them with a Quidditch broom. They scattered and for a moment, wreathed in their maddening flight, Ron could have sworn that Harry’s hair was made of them, and his pupils were a darting black fly each, drowning in an iris of seawater. But only for a moment. “Not a good start to the term, much,” said Harry, shaken, but otherwise unstirred. The summer flies at the Dursleys’ were worse, considering they congregated around Dudley as if worshipping the fat boy who dripped chocolate and coca-cola from his lips and fingers. Draco sighed at the Slytherin table as the first dinner of the semester began. Dumbledore offered a celebratory toast; the Slytherin first-years, uncommonly diminutive and stuttering but endowed with otherwise perfectly shaped features (which Draco would later teach them to use, to draw out human vulnerability with startling beauty). Some hissed that they were better suited off to Terry Tantarelle house. Tantarelle was the founder of the fifth house of Hogwarts that prized mousey obedience over everything else, but was apparently so shy he ran off before his house could be officially declared, frightened of the honour and being the extraneous fifth house in a crest with room for four. Some students claimed he ran off to Asia to set up his own country; others thought he whimpered his way to a useless death. Nobody was quite sure. Dumbledore raised his goblet of pumpkin juice. A fly winked at him, drifting on a chunk of pumpkin pulp. He roared in surprise and tossed the contents; it splattered on professor Snape, who jerked up and upended the entire teacher’s table. Draco grinned through the rising noise and voices. Entertainment at last. He spotted an alarmed Harry Potter through a heap of elaborate silver plates and raised an eyebrow at him. You can’t pin this one on me, the eyebrow said, and more obviously: nyeh nyeh. Harry rose to his feet in a mixture of anger, shock and the pressing need to point a finger at Malfoy; failing that, just giving the finger would be fine. Fuck it, cursed Harry as he stormed up to his dorm that night, inexplicably furious. He wrenched his shoes off and shook it out. flattened flies tumbled out, squeezed to a hot, airless death in between Harry’s toes. Tiny spots of dark, blood-like gunk coated Harry’s mismatched socks. Fuck it, Harry said again, and yanked the covers over his head. He tried to ignore the humming of a million flies and the heavy, wet movement of a billion grubs. He eventually fell into a shallow excuse for sleep. About two hours later, a single fly descended on his forehead. It poked its thread-thin mandibles in the crinkle of Harry’s eyelids, peered curiously up his warm, damp nostrils, tip-toed a millimetre into his downy ears and finally paused at Harry’s lips, licking the remnants of dinner off with a microscopic tongue. Draco turned over in his sleep, aware of an erection in his silk trousers but sleep-drenched hands instead clenched, restlessly, at the soft folds of lips he wasn’t really touching at all. He explored dark crevices and expanses under light cotton pyjama fabric; he examined the minute, the untouchable, the little godly places where clothes only have the grace of gracing. In the morning, he couldn’t remember a thing. zzzzzz zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz In the morning, the sun was shining and the appropriate birds were chirping and the more friendly insects were chirping before being attacked and devoured by ravenous newly born flies. There was nothing unusual about the morning, except that all throughout the school, there was a strange ticking, humming, buzzing sound. it sounded as if somebody had taken a giant pendulum and scythed through a continuous vibrato into an infinite number of droning voices. It sounds like bees. It sounds like flies, thought Harry. No, it sounds oddly like -- Draco Malfoy walked into the great hall, extremely vexed. A halo of flies adjusted to the sway of his agitated head and hovered serenely around and above his pale hair. “It looks like an Afro gone wrong,” Dean sniggered to the more knowledgeable Muggle-wizard friends. Harry chewed his way through breakfast. The toast was lumpy and stuck in his throat. The baked beans were worse; round pod-like things in almost the same colour as the crackly dried blood on his socks. Hermione and Ron were making bugs eyes at each other, taking every single precaution to not touch; scraping elbows, tangling feet -- Hermione found a fly in her jam and almost leapt into Ron’s lap with the horrid fear of it all. Ah, the summer of love, thought Harry, just about ready to be sick, and excused himself. “And my mother, she’s trying to commune with nature now. Mystic shamans, dreamcatchers, totems, dances with wolves... it’s all so bloody stupid she should just move to America and be done with it all. she’s going to some stupid camp-out in Germany later this year to live it rough with some of her nutter friends. They’re going to skin a buffalo imported from a speciality farm. I don’t know what they’re going to do with it, make handbags out of the skin, I suppose. Mum’s gone off her rocker and Father and I have had quite enough of i--” Harry was met with one and a half frosty glares (the other half being the combined effort of Crabbe and Goyle, who were trying very hard to muster up a full one between them). Its effect was somewhat dimmed by the flies that floated, cloud-like, around Draco’s head. “Well, i’m sorry,” muttered Harry. “I wasn’t aware the loo was property of Draco Malfoy.” He pushed past Goyle and sluiced his face with sink water. Trickles ran down his collar and rested in the hollow of his throat. “No, but you should be,” said a voice by Harry’s ear. Harry turned sharply. “What did you say?” Harry asked, the droplets of water uncomfortably dripping down into his shirt. Draco stared. “Are you hearing things?” he inquired. “Oh, that’s a good one. HARRY HEARS VOICES, brilliant for the next headline of the Daily Prophet.” “Oh yeah, you’d have no problem getting that in, would you?” snapped Harry. Suddenly his senses seemed hyperaware of the cold tiles and cold water, and his shirt, which was rapidly getting soaked by stray water, was ingraining into his skin like sand between his toes. He wanted to get out. “Considering your father bought it.” The flies jerked around Draco’s head angrily. “Say one thing about my father again,” said Draco. “How about that he’s a big fat fucking bastard who has more Galleons than sense to see he’s got a son who isn’t worth his weight in pennies?” spat Harry. Draco’s mouth opened. and closed. And opened again, letting loose some howl that seemed to come from the depths of the primordial soup, or at least the depths of Draco Malfoy (which wasn’t very deep, taking into consideration his height). Draco plunged at Harry, fingers scrabbling madly for purchase, fist wrenched back to hit. Harry took Draco’s weight and rolled into a tiled wall with it, whirling limbs and arms and cracking joints, blinking and trying to keep the masses of flies out of his eyes, their wings beating on his eyelids, nose, ears -- and this had happened before, hadn’t it? These little feet and mandibles and -- Draco’s lip curled back and he dropped his fist. Harry suddenly felt the press and solidity of Draco’s knee and calf between his legs. Draco got up from his kneel and the flies made a dignified return back to the wavering circle around his head. “You’re a waste of my time,” snarled Draco. Exit stage left, thought Harry vaguely, as he picked himself up from the tiles. Where the villains always go. A voice, by his ear, said, “Fuck you Potter. Fuck you,” although its tone may have been more sad than anything else. Harry decided to ignore it for now. zzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzz The flies multiply. You know what they say about flies? Flies live and die in a flash of blinding light and inspiration, from some small workshop of creation where quantity matters more than the quality. Almost, you could say, the same workshop that love came from. “I think the flies are all in love with you,” muttered Seamus, half-asleep, as Harry woke up from another twitchy night’s sleep and screamed as he found a thick layer of flies covering the patches of skin that peeked out from behind pyjama shirts and pants. “Shut up,” bit Harry, edgy, his body aching and still crawling with goosebumps from where he imagined flies to be. “Just shut up, Finnigan.” “Well, they certainly had a nice night out with you,” retorted Seamus. Harry must have looked uncommonly murderous, because Seamus took a step back and reconsidered his position. “Bloody hell, Harry, why’re you so tense?” Seamus asked, and swept out of the room, offended, in whirlwind of sandy haired bedhead. “I don’t understand either!” shouted Harry after him. “I love you,” said a voice, forlornly, by his ear. Harry disregarded it, and flicked the fly and the message it bore on its creased wings away. “I want to crawl into your ear and say it over and over again,” the voice wailed. “I love you, I love you, I love --” Harry slapped his hands together and released them. A fly (or a mush that could be called a fly) tumbled out. Harry ground it under his foot for good measure. He sat down, suddenly, on the stone floor. “There’s something wrong with me,” he whispered to himself, and put his head on his knees. He pulled his legs closer to chest, very cold. “There is something wrong with me,” he repeated, trying to words out again, and decided they were very apt. If he had gone down to breakfast, he would have seen Draco Malfoy read the letter his mother sent him. Dearest Draco (it read), I am having the time of my life! Isn’t the bark I’m writing on so very quaint and lovely? We live in darling little tents over here, in the camp, all with the modern appliances any witch could ask for, of course. I wear this absolutely wonderful leather skirt with this very fetching pair of beaded moccasins, and tomorrow I learn archery! I can hardly wait! We were discussing animal totems today; did you know that everybody has their own animal totem? Mine is some animal I’ve never heard of called a raccoon, or something like that. Apparently we must grow to love our animal totems and honour them, so I’m going to ask the camp leader to kill a raccoon for me to see what it looks like. I asked about your own totem and the camp leader, who is an actual Native American!, said that yours were flies. I asked why they were flies and not a fly, and he said because you Draco incinerated it. His mother needed to learn the importance of paragraphing and even better, tact. The flies swam around his head, agreeing with him. He had tried everything to kill them, short of setting his head on fire. He’d stuck his head under cold water, but they’d only waited for him to come out of the shower; he’d kept Crabbe and Goyle fanning the flies away from his head; but then Crabbe and Goyle got tired... oh my God, he was going to be stuck with them for the rest of his life. The flies buzzed in a very unreassuring manner. The swarm had grown so thick that it seemed like flies were being born every half a second to replace those who had died, and attracted flies from the other side of the world. It was a fly carnival -- Draco imagined they were building fairground attractions out of his hair. Grow to love them; if Draco did that, he would die. Look at what happened the last time I grew to love someone, Draco thought, angrily. I became a homophobe of myself, got a girlfriend, dumped her, and now there are flies on my head. Why is the world so bloody unfair? He wished there was more of the letter so he could tear it up, stamp on it, boil it, burn it and kill it into oblivion and send the flies spinning away after it. zzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzz “Draco,” simpered Pansy. “I like the flies.” Draco tried his best to ignore her. Pansy was like getting an allergy in the morning; the irritating runny nose, the scratchy voice, and watery eyes; only this time Pansy was the allergy to begin with. “I’ve been having the worst flu ever,” she said. “You sound like a duck,” informed Draco, and ground his beetle eyes into shiny moosh, smeared around the stone pestle. One or two flies idly drifted down like winged acid rain to eat some off the rim of the bowl. “Too pulpy, Malfoy,” barked Snape as he stalked through the Potions Dungeons. Apparently the need to swat away Draco’s flies outweighed the amount of money Draco’s father paid him to keep an eye on his son. “Go jump in the Lake, Professor,” muttered Draco. He scraped out more eyes and dumped them into the bowl. He stared at them for a while, the barely-there light of the Dungeons, filtered out through inches of ancient dust and heavy glass turning them a pale, glimmering green. Then he looked up and saw Harry, looking at him as if he were the first miracle he had ever seen. As if he had suddenly chanced upon the Meaning of Life, and it somehow included Draco Malfoy. Draco, in Harry’s astoundingly short-sighted eyes, through his thick spectacles covered in grime, looked like a radio programme from a church made visual -- through the buzzing, swaying, humming of black static, the renegade Virgin Madonna, the rogue Angel with white-blond hair and a pale, pointed face shone through. Around Draco’s head, a million flies were saying something to him all at the same time, but all he could hear was the buzz of a million clocks ticking in the wrong time and the wrong place. Most of them were trying to tell him, “The jig is up, my friend. He knows.” “I love you,” a voice whispered tenderly in Harry’s ear. “I love you.” And for the first time in his life, Harry Potter understood what it meant. |
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