Running on Air
by eleventy7 is a Harry Potter Fanfic published and finished in 2014. It is a post-canon (disregarding epilogue) Drarry fic in which Harry investigates the disappearance of a long-missing Draco. It explores ennui, feeling trapped in the flow of one's life, the desperation of clinging to what you know instead of making the scary jump to what you know could make you happier. It has a short epilogue fic The Mountains Eat the Stars.
This Work Has Examples of the Following Tropes:
- Arc Words: Several massively prevalent examples get at the main themes of the work.
- "But this isn't you, is it, Potter?"
- "Do you remember when we were eleven? Let's go back to that."
- "Going away is easy. Coming home is hard."
- "In incepto finis est." ("In the beginning is the end" in Latin)
- "We could go anywhere."
- "What's the point, sitting in a box going only where other people take you?"
- Differing Priorities Breakup: Ginny's Quidditch career takes precedent over relationship building/keeping and is stated to be one of the main drivers of her and Harry's breakup.
- The Disembodied: Draco appears to Harry as a ghostly apparition and in dreams and doesn't seem to have a physical body in the time between his time travel accident and the ritual that brings him back.
- "Eureka!" Moment: When Harry describes Draco's imparted vision as like "running on air", Hermione realizes that Draco had time traveled because another time traveler had also described it as like "running on air."
- I Will Find You: Harry's main goal throughout the first half of the story is finding a missing Draco.
- Never a Runaway: Somewhat subverted. Although Draco did initially leave on his own volition for three months, an altercation with his father and a time-turner left him stranded between space and time for the remainder of the three years.
- Let's Just Be Friends: Harry and Ginny's breakup is quite mutual and they stay on good, if still distant, terms afterwards.
- Never Found the Body: Draco's body was never found, even years after his disappearance. The investigator on his case before Harry believed Draco to have skipped town; others believe him to be dead.
- There's a brief stint during which the body of a suicide victim is believed to be Draco's, causing Harry a great deal of inner turmoil.
- A Place Holds Memories:
- While searching for the time-turner, Harry pictures himself at eleven streaking through the air above the Hogwarts Quidditch field catching the Remembrall that Draco threw.
- In The Mountains Eat the Stars, again in the Hogwarts Quidditch field, Harry visualizes memories as ghosts, in particular his catching his first snitch. Draco forms another memory with him there immediately after by proposing with a ring formed from the very time-turner Harry found there to bring Draco back from the void (in incepto finis est).
- Road Trip Romance: Draco and Harry go on an impromptu three week road trip with some very clear romantic tension.
- Temporal Paradox: Draco is unable to tell Harry the location of the hidden time-turner because doing so would break the laws of causality.
- Temporal Sickness: Draco's return from the void is marked by an unexplained illness that requires hospitalization and a later stated slight inability to tell reality from his time as a ghost.
- Time Is Dangerous: For Lucius messing with time, Draco is reduced to little more than a ghost, split between time.
- Title Drop:
Harry wants to answer her, but he doesn’t know how to phrase it. It was like flying, he thinks, but with no broom, no spells, nothing. Just rushing through the sky, and he’s reminded so strongly of that night Draco drove by the river and it felt like they were travelling through the sky, the world disappearing beneath them and the stars falling like rain.
“It was like running on air,” Harry says at last.
