Sanctuary
The shortest day of the year came and went, and was followed by the darkest night and the biggest storm of the half-spent winter. Father Harry Potter was luckier than most; he had a warm bed in the snug little rectory behind the tiny parish church of Little Hangleton, in the middle of England. Before he went to it he made sure that all was secure, windows shuttered against the drifting snow, cupboards well stocked with canned milk and toilet paper, candle and matches nearby in case the power was lost, telephone at hand in case one of his parishioners needed him in the night. It was only a little after midnight, when the howling of the wind woke him from a deep sleep, that he remembered he'd forgotten to lock the front door of the church.
There was nothing to be done until morning, and little need to do anything. There was precious little worth stealing: only relics of the unpopular and nearly forgotten St. Helga, a scrap of cloth and a fragment of wood. Even the vessels used for the Mass were only silver, and not old enough to be valuable. Anyone desperate enough to seek shelter in the church was welcome to it, poor though it must be with the central heating turned off for the night. Sleepily Harry clutched his wand and said a brief prayer for anyone, animal or human, caught out in the storm and rolled over and went back to sleep. But it was a long time before the small black kitten lying beside him relaxed enough to sleep.
In the morning Harry woke to a different world. All Little Hangleton lay under a thick blanket of unmarked snow, swirled high in some places as the mountains in the north. Even the distant remains of Riddle House looked fanciful and bright as a castle in a children's story. Everything had been covered in a thin translucent layer of ice, so that as soon as Harry stepped onto the porch he lost his balance and slid down the stairs, still clutching the shovel, to land in a heap. It was while he was lying helpless on the sidewalk, weak from laughter and trapped in his down parka like an overturned turtle, that he noticed the wavering line of faint hollows leading to the great oak doors of the church. Just in front of them, there was a larger depression, as if someone, or something, had fallen and lain there for a time, gathering its strength.
Harry scrambled to his feet before one of his elderly parishioners could see him and be scandalized. With a caution he rarely found need to employ, he drew his wand from his pocket and moved carefully around to the smaller door in the back. He threw open the door to the vestibule, moved through it into the darkness of the nave. There was an untidy heap in the back, in the empty space behind the last row of pews. Harry noted the unrelieved black, and he was saying, "Father?" even as another explanation for the robe occurred to him.
The man on the floor lay still as death and Harry, who knew his duty, dropped to his knees. Gently, he rolled the man on to his back and felt for a pulse at the slim white throat. It was there; it was thready, a little too fast, but it was there. Harry had grown tired of funerals: by now he almost knew the Anglican service by heart. He was very much aware the man before him had come here to die.
But he was a priest, and before that he had been a soldier. Keeping his fingers on the flickering pulse, he began the Last Rites. No one deserved to go to Hell unshriven, not even Draco Malfoy. He was three quarters of the way through the ritual when the man on the floor convulsed once and stopped breathing all together. Abandoning ceremony Harry began first aid, reciting the remaining words under his breath as he did so.
Beneath his hands Malfoy's heart faltered, stilled, caught again. Harry had no time to spare for relief or its opposite. He sent up the Phoenix to summon aid and set a charm to monitor Malfoy's pulse and respiration. And then, sitting back, he wondered what had possessed him to save his worst enemy's life. He was a priest but he had never been a saint.
Malfoy's eyelashes, long and dark as a woman's, fluttered; his eyes opened. They were the same clear grey they had always been, without any hint of color in them. Harry had seen those eyes in his nightmares. But Malfoy was paler than he had ever been in Harry's dreams, his skin chalky. His blond hair was painfully short, and there was no flesh on the wrist Harry had held.
Malfoy had been twenty-seven years in Azkaban, and it showed. And Harry Potter had been twenty-five years a priest, and still had not learned to forgive. If it had been anyone else in such a state before him-been even Lucius Malfoy or Bellatrix Black-Harry might have been moved to pity. But his memories of Malfoy were mixed up with his worst memories of himself, of a time and place and person he had hated and hated being. He could no more absolve Malfoy than he could absolve himself.
It took a long time for help to come. Malfoy tried, once, to talk, but the sounds he made did not sound much like words. Harry told him roughly to shut up, and was immediately ashamed. He could not be sure how much Malfoy understood of what was happening, but he knew that the man had recognized the intent. It was not much different than shouting at an animal would have been.
It was difficult, reconciling the thing Malfoy had become with the man he had been. It made Harry think of Sirius, who had outrun Azkaban and been caught by death. Almost no one survived, not for very long, not if they had been in Azkaban for any length of time. But Harry had never known Sirius as anything but a broken man. He had seen Malfoy go to his fate, still proud as Lucifer and still certain he was right. He had done his part to put him there.
And so he did his best to be gentle, while he waited. Malfoy was dying; Harry had given him a few hours, and the best doctors at St. Mungo's might extend his life a few more days. It made little difference. There could be nothing left of what had made Malfoy Malfoy, not after so many years among the Dementors. Harry's church would say there was nothing left of the man's soul.
But something had driven Malfoy halfway across England to die. Something in him had recognized something in Harry. There was a power in that that went beyond the power of the Mark, beyond anything Voldemort had ever managed. Harry's faith was a practical thing, hard-won and harder-kept, but even he knew the hand of God when he saw it.