Harry saved the world when he was sixteen.
As far as he’s aware, this is a record.
And he knows it was the right thing to do. He’s sure of it. He reached that absolute, white-hot certainty in his fifth year, when Hogwarts became a refuge for war victims. Seamus Finnigan’s pureblood mother came staggering into the castle on the first day of term covered in the blood of her family, the blood that had been judged less worthy. All of Hogsmeade came, after the first purge.
Harry reminds himself of that.
Harry remembers when Draco Malfoy came striding into the castle a few months after term had officially begun, with Crabbe but not Goyle, and Pansy Parkinson but not her friend Blaise Zabini, and his mother but not his father. He had looked white and determined and had his mother’s hand in his, and had said “Sorry I’m late,” and given Harry a spectacular sneer right afterwards which made Harry think if someone this loathsome had turned against it all…
It had to be stopped. It was perfectly simple and right.
And it would not stop.
Harry and Ron had to kill men defending the castle. Hermione never slept anymore, looking up spells and potions and anything, anything to keep herself in the library away from the empty beds in her dormitory. Malfoy was nearly discovered as a spy once and was almost killed before he stabbed the man who had discovered him, and Snape would not let Malfoy out of his sight for days. Nobody was allowed outside after they started hurling bolts from above.
Harry remembers a scene in the practise room with Ron, earlier on the day that would change everything. They had all been ordered to practise physical combat since Malfoy had lost his wand, and if he hadn’t had a knife…
Ron had just received the news about Fred and George and he was just punching the punching bags, he punched until his knuckles were bleeding and raw and Harry dragged him back.
Malfoy was in there too, hitting another punching bag with precision and systematic nastiness. Harry hadn’t even bothered to glare at him because Ron’s eyes were wide and wet, and he kept saying:
“We’re going to die. Harry. We’re all going to die.”
If Fred and George, the mercurial and irrepressible, could die… his eyes said.
“Don’t worry,” Harry answered fiercely. “I’ll save you. I’ll save everyone. By myself, if I have to. Someone has to.”
Everyone thought it should be him. He did too, because he knew with such bone-deep certainty that it had to be someone…
Malfoy laughed harshly from across the room.
“Does nothing ever frighten you?” Ron demanded furiously.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Harry. Most of the time he was too sure to be scared.
Malfoy smirked and Harry whirled on him in outrage.
“Do you mind? What’s so funny?”
Malfoy spin-kicked the punching bag. He had just come back from another month of spying, and he was terribly thin. He was wearing a sleeveless scoop-necked shirt, and Harry thought his collarbones were sharp enough to be weapons.
“You are, hero,” Malfoy responded, putting a falsetto on the last word. “And if it helps, Weasley, I’m bloody terrified.”
Ron’s mouth formed into a weird, broken approximation of a smile. He and Malfoy had been on a recon mission together once, and had been not-quite-civil ever since.
Harry didn’t get it.
“I don’t find any of this amusing,” he snarled.
“Well, I don’t want you to save me,” Malfoy snarled back, punching the bag once, twice, three times with vicious force.
“You’d rather die.”
“I’m not going to die,” Malfoy answered sharply. “I don’t do anything that people want me to do. I do what I want to do.”
Ron had clenched his hands with their bloody knuckles.
“So—like, you’re going to be the spoiled brat of the team and Harry’s going to be the saviour?”
Malfoy laughed again, and went to grab his towel, slinging it around his neck and eyeing Harry in a distinctly malicious manner, as if he thought being the spoiled brat was a much more impressive title.
Harry didn’t think it was marvellous to have left the Death Eaters because Voldemort had told Malfoy he couldn’t have seconds, or whatever had happened. He thought you should belong to the right side because you were certain.
“This has to be stopped,” he snapped.
Ron had looked at him with something too full of pain to be hope in his face and Malfoy had leaned against the wall, shaking back sweaty hair grown too long wherever he had been.
“Well. You got that one right,” he said at last.
Harry looked at him coldly and said, “Cut your hair.”
After that Malfoy had strolled out, and Ron had finally—and it was the first and last time Harry ever saw him do it—broken down enough to cry. He sat down on the practise mats beside him and clenched his hand around Ron’s shoulder, and thought it has to be stopped, it has to be stopped, even that bastard Malfoy can see that much.
That day Dumbledore told him that it could be stopped.
“It’s basically—the Imperius curse,” he’d said. “Miss Granger discovered a certain kind of archaic wards which can be put around a location. They act as foci of magical energy, but it’s intensified by so much that the curse goes beyond being simply obeying commands, and beyond resistance, and—it lasts forever.”
“So—when will you do it?” Harry asked eagerly, his heart thumping fast and thinking saved, saved, saved. Everybody.
Dumbledore looked up, and said, “I do not dare to do it.”
Harry’s fists had clenched in on themselves, as if he wanted to kill something resting in his palm, and he demanded, “Why not?”
“Have you listened to nothing I said?” was all the reply Dumbledore gave him, and for the first time Harry thought that Dumbledore looked too old to handle all of this, looked a little too weak to be properly certain.
“I‘ll do it,” he said furiously.
Cedric murdered. The Finnigans slaughtered. Fred and George, who laughed and laughed and were killed.
Harry could have despised Dumbledore, he was so sure.
“I thought you would,” Dumbledore told him softly, and Harry realised that he wouldn’t meet Harry’s eyes.
He shivered a little when he realised that Dumbledore had told him so Harry would make the offer, but then he thought—well, Dumbledore is just frightened, he just has to be saved like everyone else. It simply made him more certain.
Nobody else was told everything. Hermione was told she had to research the wards more, Snape and Malfoy told that they had to collect the Death Eaters at one specific spot—namely, the Malfoy mansion. They were all told that there was a plan for Harry to save them.
“Lovely,” said Malfoy. “It won’t affect the resale value of my house, will it?”
Hermione laughed and slapped him on the wrist. He shrugged, back in his school uniform now and looking even worse. Harry had thought he looked bad enough in the practise rooms, all nervously measured violence and thin as a rapier in scanty sloughing-off clothes. It was awful in his uniform, the once-impeccable Malfoy in clothes that no longer fit, sleeves pushed messily up past sharp elbows and scruffy hair curving on his shirt collar.
Hermione had also developed an unaccountable toleration for Malfoy’s presence that Harry assumed was based on their shared and unhealthy adoration for lengthy footnotes.
Everyone else reacted as they should. They looked at Harry with hope and belief, they wanted to be saved, they wanted to be sure. Professor McGonagall looked tired and proud, and Harry noted with pleasure that she gave Malfoy a disapproving look.
Hermione stopped after the meeting to give him a tight hug.
“You can count on me,” she said. “If there’s anything more in that library, I’ll find it. I know you’ll be able to do it.”
“Do what precisely?” Malfoy asked from the doorway. “I notice we haven’t been told what it is the hero plans to do.”
“Save all of your lives,” Harry snapped. “God, you’re loathsome.”
“You love it.”
“Draco, don’t be awful,” Hermione said absently, picking up her bag and going over to seize Malfoy’s tie and pull him along.
“But it’s what I do best,” Malfoy protested. “Come on, wench. Are you ready to decipher fourteenth century English with me yet?”
“Oh, how can I turn that offer down,” Hermione said, laughing and shaking her head.
She turned a look of shining faith at Harry over her shoulder as she went. She could be sure that Harry would save them.
Harry did save them. And isn’t he owed something for that?
It was the first time he had ever seen the Malfoy mansion, white and pale and imposing in the moonlight. There were gargoyles on it who were grimacing at Harry in a weirdly familiar way, and Harry had a picture of a five-year-old Malfoy wandering around copying each malicious twist of their stone features with his own.
There were pale points of light around the mansion, the foci of energy, perfected to the best of their ability. Harry was sure they would work, because there was no alternative.
He stood on top of the hill and felt like—something archetypal, something sure.
He lifted his wand and spoke all the words, the string of Latin and magic that had been spells centuries ago. He never faltered. It felt like fate to speak them, felt natural as Parseltongue but untainted.
They spilled out cold and certain and the light from the foci crawled over the mansion like a glowing dome, flickering and white and inevitable. Harry kept staring at the light, and it never hurt his eyes. He felt the certainty in his chest, absolute. This was the way things were always meant to end.
Then the lights went out, slid away and fell down, and there was nothing but an ordinary mansion in the darkness and that a slow song of victory in Harry’s head.
He spoke softly but clearly.
“Voldemort will come out. The rest of you will stay in there.”
Voldemort did come out, quietly and with no fuss, as if he knew that things were the way they should be. Harry looked up into that pale face without fear and thought of inevitable justice. He didn’t even feel angry or vengeful—he felt nothing but certain.
He stepped back, leaned against a tree and watched Voldemort come out to him as if he had been drawn out by an irresistible force. He had, of course, and the force was Harry.
Malfoy mansion was set on a cliff edge, presumably for the sea view. Harry walked calmly with Voldemort, as if he was taking a dog for a walk, and looked once more into the face of something which had chosen to be inhuman.
“I want you to walk off that cliff,” he told him coldly.
Voldemort did. His thin figure was spread-eagled in the air for a moment, thin and black and spiderish against the light. Then he fell, and was just a bundle of darkness against the rocks.
Harry killed his first man when he was fifteen, and his last when he was sixteen. He has never regretted any of them, and Voldemort least of all.
It was that simple. Harry felt curiously unsurprised.
He turned back, job done, over, and even Malfoy would tell him that he’d saved them all.
He walked back to the mansion, all over bar the clear-up, and said clearly, “You can all come out now, and go to Azkaban.”
Dumbledore had the transportation lined up. All he had to do was go with the masses to Azkaban, and see them shut up, and then he could go home. He stood on the foot of the hill, watching them file past him, faces blank. Death Eaters, killers, and he wanted a little bit to kill them all but—it was enough. It was all over.
That was when he saw the flash of blond hair.
It never occurred to him that it was Lucius Malfoy. He knew Malfoy when he saw him, always had.
And then his certainty faltered and so did his footsteps as he went running over and said,
“Malfoy? What are you doing? Stop!”
Malfoy stopped and turned around at once, and for once he was not wearing that dreadful smirk but a pleasant and rather absent-minded expression.
“It’s all over,” Harry told him, not sure why he was doing it but obscurely wanting an acknowledgement from this stubborn brat.
“Yes, thanks to you,” Malfoy replied, and smiled suddenly, a bright beautiful flash of a smile, and added: “Thank you.”
“Oh,” Harry said uneasily, and smiled back a bit. “Well. Of course.”
“Malfoy!” Snape’s shout was flung out in the night, over their heads, and he came running down to them and seized Malfoy’s arm in his own. “Oh, my God. What happened? You didn’t get out in time, I was—you stupid boy, you’re always taking risks! What have you done to him?” he demanded, whirling on Harry.
Harry was outraged. He had saved everyone. He wanted everyone to be all right, he would never…
“I’m all right,” Malfoy said sharply. “Harry didn’t do anything!”
“Harry,” Snape repeated slowly.
He gave Harry a look that made cold thoughts slither through Harry’s mind, and Harry was already trying not to think. Malfoy had been in the house. Malfoy always called him Potter.
“Potter,” Malfoy corrected casually.
Snape’s hand stayed curled around Malfoy’s arm, almost protectively.
“I’m taking you back home,” he said.
Malfoy smirked that familiar smirk, tilting his face up to his teacher’s.
“You’re going to walk me that ten steps to my house?” he inquired. “How nurturing of you, Professor Snape.”
Snape looked almost relieved as he shook Malfoy’s arm.
“I mean Hogwarts, of course. Insolent brat,” he added.
“Yes, take him home,” Harry said.
“I’d like to go home,” Malfoy agreed quietly.
Harry backed away from him, from them, from the suspicious flash of Snape’s black eyes. He had to go see the Death Eaters into Azkaban. He had no time for this. He had to be certain.
Assurance returned soon. Everyone was safe, everyone was free, and Harry had done it. Everyone else went, and Hogwarts became a school again. Mrs Finnigan cried and thanked him as she left.
The night he came back, Hermione kept hugging him and Ron kept pounding his back. Harry looked down and Ron’s knuckles were almost healed.
There was a party that lasted all night, and Harry moved through it and saw all the grateful eyes, all the safe people, and he was so happy. He had done the right thing, and he looked into Dumbledore’s tired face almost challengingly.
He’d had to do it. It was right. He was certain.
He observed Malfoy from a distance, and he seemed perfectly normal. Pansy Parkinson had run across the room at least seven times to find him and give him another exuberant kiss on the cheek, and he kept tilting his mouth so she’d get that instead. Hermione had left Harry’s side and Harry was almost sure he saw her hug Malfoy. He definitely saw Ron punch his arm in something that looked like a shared acknowledgement of victory, happiness, and Harry thought, he’s fine, I was right, I saved him too, everything is exactly right.
Harry had walked around in a daze of relief for weeks. It was all over.
Then one day he passed by a table in the library with Malfoy sitting at it, talking far too loudly for someone in a library to a crestfallen younger student.
“No, I will not help you with your Potions homework,” he sneered. “If you don’t understand it, you study harder. You don’t come crawling to anyone asking them to save you from your own incompetence, like a Hufflepuff. That’s not the Slytherin way.”
Oh, shut up, Malfoy, Harry thought with that endless irritation. Keep it down, and would it hurt you to help someone?
Malfoy paused, and then spoke in a much softer and more suitable voice. “As long as you understand that… well, Baddock, show me what the problem is.”
That’s more like it, Harry thought, and then realised what he was doing and dropped his book on his foot.
He couldn’t do anything like that. He knew that, but it was okay, it wasn’t a big deal, it wasn’t like Malfoy didn’t deserve it. He was just teaching Malfoy a lesson, like throwing mud at him in third year.
Harry stooped and picked up the book.
It’s almost funny, he thought cautiously, as if he was afraid of telling himself that. After all, it’s Malfoy. It’s, it’s right to make him do some things.
Like…
“You know,” Malfoy said with a thoughtful frown, “I really shouldn’t be so hard on Potter. I suppose it’s because I’m jealous.”
“Um. Okay,” answered Malcolm Baddock.
Harry hid a smile and realised that Malfoy had cut his hair and slicked it back again.
Malfoy ran his fingers through his hair, thoroughly messing it up, so it stood up in all directions.
How about, Harry thought, if he…
“Look, are you all right?” Baddock asked hesitantly. “It’s just—that you don’t seem like yourself…”
That was when the horror hit Harry coldly. No, Malfoy did not seem like himself… because he was not himself. Harry had…
It was a mistake, he’d told himself. He hadn’t done anything wrong. He would just be careful, he would just avoid Malfoy in future.
To prove to himself that he was right, he left the library.
He told himself he would not do anything like that again, and so everything would be all right. He only wanted Malfoy to leave him alone, and so Malfoy did. He wanted Malfoy to be quieter in classes with him, and Malfoy was. But Malfoy, by all accounts, was otherwise the same as ever.
It had all worked out all right, and he had done the right thing.
Everything was so right.
Harry saw that around him every day. People were so dizzy with relief that they were happy all the time. They broke into irrepressible smiles for no reason as they walked around. Hogwarts was alive with loud exuberant games.
At first it pleased him. But then it started to feel… unfair.
He had done it. He had saved them. And yet he couldn’t be part of them, couldn’t have this happiness, and he did not know why.
He had accomplished everything he wanted to accomplish, and still the past was not scrubbed out. He had held on to the belief that he could make everything right, he had thought he could make things fair.
Harry had believed in ultimate justice. He had been a child. He had been a fool.
Voldemort was dead, and it did not bring him back his parents or his childhood, it did not redeem anybody’s suffering. He had done it and he still woke up screaming with shadowy dreams made up of blood and memories. It seemed an unimaginable cruelty, that after all the pain he could not even join in this universal jubilation.
Professor McGonagall bought herself sky-blue robes and Professor Snape paid her a compliment on them, and then looked utterly shocked at his own good mood and had to sit down and have a cool drink. Ron slipped something into Malfoy’s drink and it turned his hair red as cherries. According to report, he threw cups and plates at Ron’s head and then spent the day admiring how his hair contrasted with his skin in every mirror he passed. Ginny Weasley whirled tempestuously into the sixth year Charms class one day, planted a kiss on the stunned and delighted Dean Thomas, and waltzed out. The courtyards were filled with people playing hopscotch and skipping, games which inevitably ended in tragedy when Hagrid tried to join in.
They held a party in the Great Hall a few months later, a proper organised celebration of their deliverance. Harry stayed up on the balcony for most of the time, keeping to the shadows and resolutely ignoring the couples in the alcoves.
He had been resolutely avoiding Malfoy, but it was hard to miss him at the party. He and Pansy Parkinson had arrived dressed up as gypsies even though it was not a costume party. First a vicar and now this, what was Malfoy’s obsession with fancy dress anyway? Then they had proceeded to cut up a rug, Malfoy appearing to lose it after one cup of Butterbeer, dashing over to the tables and doing a brief drumming repertoire with his plate and spoon, getting up on a chair and performing a shimmy.
Harry leaned on the balcony and gave up and watched it, just another display of unfairness. Pansy had slung her shawl around his waist and Malfoy was dancing energetically, leaning back against it and moving smoothly, head tipped back with the light shimmering on his hair. Harry thought, and he’s horrible, he’s always been horrible, but he’s so alive.
There was so much spectacular unfairness, and he hated it and he knew he was right. He briefly felt a desire to spite the whole world.
He remembers that it was the most beautiful March for years.
The day he saw Ron and Hermione giggling and fumbling and kissing he went out for a walk in the trees at the edge of the forest. He looked up at the green leaves and the blue sky and he realised he had never really lived a normal life, and he did not know how to be continuously happy, and it was all so brutally unfair.
The riotous sounds of people playing chasing made him irrationally angry. He could hear Pansy Parkinson’s voice, and she was certainly old enough not to be so silly.
Another of the juvenile idiots crashed through the trees and practically into Harry’s path, and once he did Harry saw that it was Malfoy. Bright hair spilling windblown into his face, he yelled: “You’ll never catch me,” and he was always vibrant and defiant.
Harry was lonely and heartsick, and could not help himself.
“Malfoy,” he said. “Come for a walk with me.”
“Of course,” Malfoy agreed readily, and of course he would do exactly what Harry wanted, and not even stop to tell his friends.
Harry repressed his little shiver, and Malfoy walked close beside him, and it was good to have company. And Harry needed someone to understand, and Malfoy would do whatever he wanted, and surely it wasn’t taking advantage if it was just one walk, and he had saved them all and surely he was owed something.
He told Malfoy about the unfairness. He even told Malfoy about the dreams. And of course Malfoy understood, because Harry wanted him to.
He didn’t think about that. He just revelled in the luxury of someone telling him exactly what he wanted to hear.
They sat on a log as the sun went down and glinted red in Malfoy’s hair. Malfoy was sitting so close Harry could feel warmth seeping into his side, and Malfoy said soothingly, “Of course, you did the right thing,” and Harry thought, well, he wasn’t doing anything which could hurt Malfoy. It didn’t even have anything to do with Malfoy. He just needed to hear this, and he would never hurt anybody else.
Besides—after all this, someone owed him something.
“Thanks,” he said when they were going back to the castle.
“For what?” responded Malfoy, which was exactly right.
Afterwards Harry felt guilty. Of course he did. He understood that it was not at all ethical to use anybody.
He might have the power, but he did not have to use it. And he had no use for Malfoy anyway.
He would just have to be careful, and to make sure he was not controlling Malfoy. He was on the right side, he would never manipulate someone else, he would make sure Malfoy was all right and he would have done the right thing once more.
He was very scrupulous about it. He paid close and careful attention.
Malfoy seemed normal and happy. Rumour had it that he and Pansy Parkinson were a couple, but Harry was pretty sure they were just friends. Malfoy flirted with her extravagantly, but he also flirted with Hermione and at one stage Harry caught him looking up through his eyelashes at Professor Vector.
He was infected with the post-war delirium that everyone else was, and more than that. He had always been popular among the Slytherins, but now he was firmly established as part of the team he seemed to have won over the rest of the school. And Malfoy thrived under the benign attention, and actually seemed slightly less obnoxious.
Harry considered the possibility that all that spiteful nastiness had stemmed from a frustrated scream for affection and approval, but he decided Malfoy was simply a spoiled brat.
He had never believed in Harry, and now he was profiting from Harry’s success.
However obnoxious he was—and he was—there was something compelling about him. He brightened a room when he entered it. People seemed to be drawn to him, to make an effort to be involved in his life.
Except for Harry, of course. It was a matter of conscience for Harry to stay firmly out of that bright orbit.
This did not affect Harry at all, naturally, but it was odd. He was used to Malfoy being there, a part of his life. He hadn’t realised that before, because he did not miss him precisely, but Malfoy’s glittering grating presence was gone, and it had left behind… nothing.
It would be stupid to want insults and irritation back, and he didn’t. But there was a peculiar void where Malfoy had once been, sitting across the Potions classroom and flicking eyeballs at him.
Harry didn’t think about it. He had to focus on making sure that he had done everything right, and proving Dumbledore wrong by making sure Malfoy was all right.
He was fine, Harry was certain he was fine, but Harry kept watching—because, just in case.
Possibly he also watched because it was weird not to have Malfoy around at every turn. Harry liked routine. But that was all.
Malfoy was learning the mandolin, and he would wander around alone with it to find places to practise. Harry followed him and watched, and Malfoy still seemed fine, but then Malfoy started to play the songs Harry liked best all the time and Harry knew it wasn’t safe and he had to stop.
He sat in the Gryffindor common rooms for a week trying to beat Ron at chess, and Harry looked over at his profile and he seemed fine. He would just finger the chess pieces and Harry knew that look very well from Quidditch games, that absolute determination to win. Malfoy was very focused, and he never looked up.
It was on the Friday that Harry, hunched over Charms homework it was taking him an impossibly long time to complete, realised he wanted Malfoy to look at him.
And then Malfoy did. He raised his head, rested his chin on his hand and gazed seriously over at Harry as if nothing else could ever matter any more.
Harry was shot through and through with guilt, and almost ran out of the room. As he did so, he saw Malfoy laughing with Ron as if nothing had happened and returning to his game, and the resentment was nearly as strong as the guilt.
On one of the weekend visits to Hogsmeade, Malfoy was sitting at the Three Broomsticks in a crowd of people, telling jokes and doing an impression of Madam Rosmerta which apparently overpowered Dean with hilarity and made him fall off his chair. So alive, Harry thought, and it’s not fair, and I could… I could…
He shook his head and walked away, and then half an hour later came back. Malfoy came outside and they sat together and he told Harry jokes and showed him impressions, just Harry.
Afterwards Harry told himself that it was nothing. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. A couple of afternoons spent in Malfoy’s company—well, it wasn’t like it had done anyone any harm. Nobody else could be terribly anxious for the brat’s company, and it wasn’t as if Malfoy was the most pleasant person in the world, as if Harry didn’t deserve a few hours of his time…
Not that Harry would ever take more than that, ever hurt him.
At supper one day Malfoy was reading, not eating, looking absorbed and happy with his book. At one stage he stopped and stared into space, smiling thoughtfully at nothing. The candles and his lack of attention made his whole face glow and seem less sharp and rather sweet.
Candlelight looked very good with such pale skin. It was almost translucent and so it looked golden, and smooth, a lot of it on display because Malfoy was wearing only his shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
Harry leaned forward a little and Malfoy reached down and flicked open one shirt button, then another. The light struck on the line of his chest, travelled smoothly down as a third button was undone.
“Draco, what on earth are you doing?” Pansy Parkinson asked loudly.
It was then that Harry realised this was happening because he wanted to see more.
His fork fell to his plate with a crash. People were looking curiously over at the Slytherin table but Malfoy had already done up his shirt and was saying casually, “I thought it was hot in here, but it must just have been you.” Then he leered outrageously. Pansy could only laugh.
Harry was stunned at what he had done, wouldn’t even think about it.
Except that night, he did think about it. He thought, I could have made him strip in front of everybody. I could have, and he slid his hand under the covers.
He decided he was probably still in shock, and acting irrationally. Not that he’d done anything. Having this kind of power over someone was bound to make someone a little off balance, and Harry was sixteen and seeing a bit of skin was always a priority with him. Or something.
He hadn’t really done anything. He was in the right. He was certain of it.
Besides, Malfoy was as unpleasant a person as Snape. He deserved everything he got.
Still, Harry would never use the power he had, because he knew what was right. He had just been confused for a minute, with the loneliness, and the odd gap Malfoy had left in his life, and the way everyone else seemed happy and united.
Ron and Hermione had taken to sitting on the couch, his arm around her. Harry would sit with them and talk absently as they got lost in each others’ eyes, and he was forced to be quiet and just see them shine. Their lips would meet again and again, brief soft tokens of being alive and happy and wanting life and each other.
Harry realised that he had become a bit odd about missing the way Malfoy used to irritate him when he looked over at Malfoy at breakfast one day, and thought the pale curve of Malfoy’s neck from his dark jumper was taunting him.
Everything was all right, though. He had made his decision and he was going to keep doing the right thing. He always would.
He had another of the horrible dreams one night in May, and he woke up drenched in sweat and trembling and cursing everyone and everything for being unfair. So he left the dormitory—Ron sleeping happy in his bed and dreaming of Hermione—and he made his way down to the kitchens.
He was coming back, on the bottom step of the staircase to the Entrance Hall, when a voice came ringing out behind him.
“Potter creeping down late o’nights for some food? What, you have an eating disorder now?”
Harry dropped his pumpkin juice, turned sharply and snapped, “Don’t talk to me like that,” before it occurred to him that he hadn’t known Malfoy was there and those might be the first genuine words Malfoy had spoken to him since…
“Sure, whatever you want,” Malfoy said agreeably, smiling that beautiful smile.
He was leaning against the doorway of the Entrance Hall, and he was wearing pyjama bottoms and the rumpled shirt he had worn today, all but two buttons left undone. His hair was ruffled and feathery against his cheek.
“What were you doing anyway?” Harry demanded. “Out with a girl?”
“Of course not,” Malfoy responded.
Harry was oddly relieved for a moment and then he realised that Malfoy could have been out with a girl, could have been doing anything. All he was going to tell Harry was exactly what Harry wanted to hear.
Things were supposed to be all right now! Things were supposed to be easy now!
Harry shut his eyes and saw the dark bloody dreams against his eyelids. All he wanted was a little comfort.
“Hey. Harry,” said Malfoy, and his voice was all soft restful concern. “Are you okay?”
His hand was clasped around Harry’s shoulder, palm pressed against it. Harry felt it so distinctly through the frail cotton of his pyjamas.
“I just—” he said. “I don’t… I’m good, you know.”
“Of course. I know that. Everybody knows that,” Malfoy told him. He had a beautiful voice when he wasn’t mocking Harry, light and clear and Harry thought with a tiny wrench of guilt, this isn’t Malfoy…
But when he opened his eyes it was Malfoy, eyes wide and curious, and things ought to have been that simple.
Harry reached up and pressed his palm against Malfoy’s throat, sliding it up the smooth skin. Malfoy leaned his head back just like Harry wanted him to. Harry stroked that soft hair, tracing it over Malfoy’s ear, and realised how true what Malfoy’d said a moment ago was. He still can’t quite believe it.
It was with that sense of incredulity that Harry leaned forward and met Malfoy’s lips, which were already parted. Of course, Harry thought dimly, but he was sixteen and frightened and desperate, and Malfoy’s mouth was warm and soft and he kissed perfectly, and when Harry opened his eyes Malfoy was against the wall and his body was hot against Harry’s.
Harry couldn’t help wanting more, and so of course he got more.
“Whatever I want,” he said slowly.
Malfoy said, “Yes.”
They went into the Entrance Hall. Moonlight was streaming through the windows and Malfoy’s throat and chest and limbs were all soft and white and Harry was trembling and wanted everything.
Harry can’t remember everything that he said and felt that night, which upsets him because it is important.
He does remember slipping Malfoy’s shirt off his shoulders and kissing his mouth greedily, running his hands over his skin. He remembers moaning and pushing himself against Malfoy and Malfoy moaning and pushing back just right.
He remembers kissing under his ear and murmuring, “I want you so much.”
He pulled back just to look, and then moved back in to warmth and softness and… He remembers falling to the floor, and how much easier it was when thoughts went away and only desires remained.
Every one of them was fulfilled. Of course.
The next day Harry was scared and horrified. He had been—it had been… He walked to class, hands trembling as he tried to keep hold of his books and tried not to picture his hand on Malfoy’s skin.
He wouldn’t do it again, he promised himself quickly. Of course not. Of course not. He didn’t even know why he had wanted to.
But he had wanted to, he thought, swallowing painfully. And he, and he… He still wanted to.
No sooner had he thought that that Malfoy grabbed him and bodily dragged him into the closet.
Harry thought he was having a particularly ironic hallucination until he felt Malfoy’s teeth sharp against the line of his neck. His books were all over the ground and he was making a very strange needy sound in the back of his throat before he recalled that he had a conscience.
It didn’t seem to matter.
Malfoy had always been so horrible. He deserved some kind of retribution, and Harry deserved some kind of reward.
It was all right. Harry would never have done it otherwise.
Harry clasped his hand around Malfoy’s neck and drew him close, closer. He closed his eyes and nuzzled blindly against Malfoy’s cheek, feeling his hot mouth against Harry’s ear and his hands frantic and searching as Harry wanted them on Harry’s body.
Harry hurt his head as he flung it back, and did not care.
“Oh God yes, Malfoy,” he said as Malfoy fell on his knees and he felt Malfoy’s tongue and teeth briefly against his hip and then moving.
Harry twisted and gasped.
They both missed class.
“I fell asleep in the library,” he explained to Hermione later.
“You know,” Ron said, “the library has just the same effect on me. Weird, isn’t it?”
“Shut up,” said Hermione, poking him in the side. “Draco wasn’t there either,” she added as an afterthought.
“Weird coincidence,” Harry commented after a beat.
“Off with another girl,” Hermione guessed, shaking her head. “That boy should be put in a cage.”
Harry thought, I could put him in a cage and make him like it.
Sometimes he would do it out of spite. He would remember years of bloody nastiness and he would tear at Malfoy’s clothes and set his teeth in the curve of his shoulder and hiss out obscenities. He might be angry at the world and taking it out on the only available victim, but Malfoy deserved it.
Sometimes he would be screamingly scared of all those dark dreams and go running to drown all that, to shiver and forget and feel Malfoy’s hand curled in the small of his back. He didn’t have bad dreams like that.
Sometimes—and he did not like admitting this to himself—it was erotic. He could want anything, anything, and Malfoy would want it too. Private and almost inadmissible fantasies became reality.
Sometimes it would be because Malfoy was extremely beautiful, and he liked the taste of him and he liked to smell his hair and the touch of his hand when passing in the corridors made Harry jump as if Malfoy conducted electricity.
Sometimes it was because he was sixteen, and skin was skin, and sex was sex, and it was that simple.
Sometimes it was for reasons that seemed simple but which Harry thought might be complicated, such as that he liked the way Malfoy smiled when Malfoy was thinking about books. Or that Malfoy argued hitting younger Slytherins over the head with a ruler was a perfectly acceptable disciplinary method for a prefect. Or that Malfoy was actually very bad at playing the mandolin.
These were not things Malfoy did in direct contact with Harry, but Harry ignored that.
So… it was spite and post-war trauma and hormones and fixation and curiosity, and whatever, and that was all.
Harry was beginning to see that he might be a little messed up.
It was during exam time that Harry heard Hermione talking earnestly about a Muggle book she was reading. Ron listened to her with his eyes glazing over.
“You see, he didn’t care about Clarissa,” she explained. “She was just an object to him. Whatever he said, he raped her, she was just a toy to him, and that was what he used her as.”
“Shut up,” Harry said savagely to her, and she stared at him in bewilderment.
It’s not the same, he reassured himself. Malfoy wants this. He’s happy.
But he would be happy, no matter what, if it was what you wanted…
He went and he found Malfoy, who was reading a book of Rupert Brooke’s poems in the library. He sat down beside him and he knew nothing about Rupert Brooke so he didn’t want anything but to hear Malfoy’s opinion, so it had to be real.
“What’s he like?”
Malfoy looked up. “Well, he was a bloody awful war poet because he was a romantic idiot. But he was an astonishing love poet because he was a romantic idiot. So I suppose it all works out,” he said, and closed the book and smiled up at Harry, that thoughtful little smile he often wore when he had been reading.
And Harry thought, he’s real now, and he’s intelligent, and there’s… there’s something about him. I should leave him alone.
He couldn’t seem to.
He pulled him to his feet and they went into an empty classroom and Harry kissed him frantically, pulling at his tie and licking at his mouth, but he kept hearing Hermione’s voice in his head and then he pulled away, blinked and said,
“I want you to get out on that window ledge.”
Malfoy smiled agreeably, pushed open the window and climbed out. Harry watched him with his mouth dry and his hands shaking.
Malfoy watched him from the other side of the glass, eyes fearless and hair blinding in the sunlight. Harry leaned his forehead against the glass and thought, Nobody deserves this.
“Come back in,” he asked, his voice trembling all over the place.
Malfoy came back in and Harry almost collapsed against him with relief, curling his fist on Malfoy’s shirt, resting his lips against Malfoy’s collarbone. He smelled good.
“I don’t want to be this kind of person,” he said. “We won’t spend any time together anymore.”
“All right.” Malfoy nodded, smiled and walked out.
Harry spent the last few days of the school year sure that he had done the right thing. He always did.
Summer at Privet Drive was agony. Even more so than usual.
Harry dreamed the first night of Sirius’ death and woke up screaming. Dudley told his parents the next morning that Harry had had a nightmare, and they all laughed about how weak and stupid Harry was at their happy breakfast table, and ordered him not to disturb Dudley again.
He set his mouth and wished that they were all dead.
The next night he dreamed of killing them all, and woke up in a cold sweat because he knew he was capable of it.
He worked to stop himself thinking and dreaming. He hoed the garden before they could ask him to, volunteered to repaint the house, sweated and laboured and wished he could pray. It was the last summer. He could get through this.
He was not sure what he had to look forward to. He just wanted to push his way through torture and hatred.
He held on until his birthday. Things were always happening on his birthday.
He was seventeen and Ron and Hermione and Hagrid sent him cakes and letters. He thought he could take a day off from all this grinding toil and he ran off to the park nearby and he was running and he forgot about restraint and obligation and right and wrong, and he just wished Malfoy was there.
And Malfoy was there. He was standing under a tree and he looked handsome and well-groomed, the perfect little rich boy in a white pressed shirt and cream trousers.
“What are you doing here?” Harry asked.
“I don’t kn—” Malfoy began to say, because Harry didn’t even know why he wanted him to be there, but then Harry figured it out and Malfoy smiled. “Because I wanted to see you, of course,” said Malfoy.
“How did you get here? You’re not old enough to legally Apparate,” Harry said, and he felt a pinprick of guilt and didn’t know what he wanted Malfoy to say.
So when Malfoy scornfully tossed his head and replied, “You’d be surprised what a few bribes will do to make things legal,” Harry thought it was real and smiled at his nerve.
They walked around the park and Malfoy tossed pebbles to the ducks, who ended up looking so aggrieved that Harry told Malfoy to stop. Which, of course, he did.
Harry asked what Malfoy had been doing all summer and he had no idea, so he wanted the truth. Malfoy told him that he had been trying to fully embrace the lifestyle of the rich and famous, and had been bullying the house elves into peeling his grapes. Harry was appalled, and laughed about it.
They stopped and bought ice-cream, and Malfoy fastidiously inquired about the quality of the toppings and then ordered them all. Then he leaned against the counter and critically examined the whipping machine.
“Precisely how many ice-creams do you make a day?” he asked. “How often do you clean out that thing? I’m suing if I get some strange ice-cream-related disease.”
“Stop it, Draco,” Harry muttered, and Malfoy immediately did. Harry felt guilty, and knew that no apology would make up for it and touching Malfoy’s wrist in apology was ridiculous. He felt better after he did it anyway.
Then they strolled around eating their ice-creams, sat down on a bank and ruined the knees of Malfoy’s trousers. Harry stared at the smudge of ice-cream on the edge of Malfoy’s lip, and Malfoy leaned over and kissed him. Harry shut his eyes in the cool under the tree and explored the cool taste of Malfoy’s mouth. He ended up dropping his ice-cream, staring at the faintly-green play of light and shadows on Malfoy’s skin and then tasting to make sure it tasted no different.
The sun was bright as they walked around some more, and Malfoy’s hair hurt Harry’s eyes. It was nice.
They held hands, and an old lady gave them a scandalised look. Harry wanted to shock her and didn’t dare, which was when Malfoy hooked an arm around his neck and kissed him, and the old lady tripped over her poodle.
Harry realised that he had wanted Malfoy to call him Harry for months and that Malfoy had been doing so, because it was weird to hear something like ‘Potter’ during sex.
He asked, “Can I call you Draco?” when Malfoy was walking him home.
“Of course,” Draco said, as Harry had known he would, but Harry was finding that it was better to pretend. He kissed him leaning against the gate of number four Privet Drive, and that happens to be the one good memory Harry has of Privet Drive.
He had a dream about Draco that night.
The weeks went by, and he wrote and told Ron and Hermione that he thought he might be gay.
They both wrote back very supportive letters, in their own way. Hermione had compiled an impressive list of homosexual Quidditch players, and apparently Ron had gone around asking all his brothers what they would think about hypothetically having an affair with a dark younger man.
When they met on the train back to Hogwarts, Hermione gave him an extra-tight hug and poured more statistics into his ear. Ron gave him a grin, told him he thought being gay was terrific, and inquired with trepidation if Harry had ever fancied him.
Harry rolled his eyes. “No, Ron, of course not.”
Ron looked greatly relieved, slightly offended and then proudly told Harry that he thought he was talking Percy around.
Harry went to get some pumpkin juice from the trolley and found Draco ripping the trolley lady a new one because she didn’t have caviar. He pulled Draco into a storage room and Draco kissed him.
“I’m happy to see you,” he said just as Harry wanted him to.
“Did you think about me over the holidays?” Harry asked.
Draco kissed him again. It was musty in the storage room and Draco tasted like cookies.
“Every day,” he told him.
Harry was happy. He leaned his forehead against Draco’s and thought, if it’s all above-board, it will be fair. I will not feel guilty. It’s all right. I deserve it.
A few days later, it happened just as he wanted it to happen.
Draco told him his scarf was crooked and so were his glasses, and asked if this was some kind of fashion theme. Then he added quickly, “And will you be my boyfriend?”
He asked me, Harry thought, so it’s real. And he shouted down his conscience and said yes.
A week later, he told Ron and Hermione that he was seeing Draco Malfoy.
“Oh, you fancy Malfoy,” Ron said with a big smile. “Not me. Isn’t that great?” he asked Hermione, looking thrilled. “You never even looked in the showers,” he added anxiously. “Because you fancy Malfoy.”
“That’s right, Ron,” Harry agreed tolerantly, patting Ron on the shoulder in a very manly and platonic fashion.
“Draco?” Hermione asked, looking surprised. “I could have sworn Draco liked girls. I mean, I’ve seen Draco liking girls. Um, a lot. I’ve never heard a word about—”
“Well he does,” Harry snapped, his tone so harsh Hermione looked stunned and hurt.
“Harry should know,” Ron said, and then winced as the mental pictures hit.
Hermione looked happier, and started talking about bisexuality and hostility as repressed desire and Quidditch. She seemed very set on Quidditch.
Harry wanted Draco to feel that he should tell his friends, and afterwards Pansy made an effort to be nice to Harry with her face twisted in a terrible grimace the whole time. Crabbe seemed to feel this was a happy solution for his free time, and when Draco was busy with study or Quidditch practise he took to trailing Harry like an oversized guard puppy.
It became something of an open secret in Gryffindor house, with Draco showing up when Harry wanted him to.
The first time Neville saw him there, he looked terrified.
“That’s right, Longbottom, quiver in your boots,” Draco said encouragingly, and gave him a wolfish smile. “I bite.”
Harry wished that Draco wouldn’t act like that, and Draco’s smile turned friendly. Neville looked surprised.
“But only, you know, in private,” Draco added, and strolled over to sit down on the sofa by Harry, leaning back in the circle of his arm.
“It must be love,” Dean said in an undertone to Ginny, and Harry buried his face in Draco’s hair, breathed him in.
It was all right. People said that they were happy together and it was true.
He made sure it spread no further. If Dumbledore or even Snape found out, then… Well, he did not want the teachers knowing about his private life. That was perfectly normal.
“I’m really happy for you, Harry,” Hermione said to him once, which she would never have said if anything was wrong.
Lupin took him out apartment hunting before his NEWTs, and Harry told him then.
“That pale Malfoy boy?” Lupin inquired. “I remember him. He was a horrifying brat, but I always thought he might have hidden depths.”
Harry looked at him. “No,” he said. “He was really horrible then. He was always horrible.”
“Clearly, something changed,” Lupin smiled, and they walked into another apartment.
Yes, thought Harry. I changed him. He was awful and he needed to be changed, I’ve made him better. I did the right thing, did him a favour, and we’re happy now.
Harry chose an apartment in Hogsmeade. He was going to replace Madam Hooch as the Quidditch coach, but he wanted a home of his very own. He liked it, and he brought friends around the shops helping him to choose things for it.
Then he took Draco in, the first person to see it furnished. He led him in with both hands and his eyes shut and then Draco opened his eyes.
“Do you like it?” Harry asked, honestly wanting his opinion.
Draco’s lip curled. “Oh my God, you’re hopeless,” he exclaimed. “All this furniture has to be rearranged immediately. Chintz curtains, Harry, are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
Harry laughed but frowned through it. He wanted Draco to like it.
Draco slid his arms around him. “Just joking,” he whispered. “It’s perfect. Kiss me.”
They had sex on Harry’s new bed. Draco slept afterwards and Harry propped himself up on one elbow and stroked Draco’s hair. He thought Draco looked good on the bed.
Hermione had decided to take the Muggle Studies exam without having actually studied the subject, and she was panicking over the amount of Muggle literature she had to catch up on.
“Each man kills the thing he loves,” she declaimed one evening, and looked puzzled when Harry slammed out of the room.
After their NEWTs were done, they all went to the Three Broomsticks. Harry, Draco, Ron and Hermione had a special table and ordered champagne.
“I think it’s great that you have an obscenely rich boyfriend,” said Ron.
Harry had spent years sidling around the subject of his money, and Ron had still been annoyed by it. But Draco was so blatantly extravagant even Ron was reduced to amusement, and Harry tried hard not to want Draco to be more tactful about it.
Harry had thought—perhaps hoped—that he would want a clean break at the end of school, a new life.
“What are you two planning to do for the summer?” Hermione asked conversationally.
Draco’s arm was hooked around Harry’s neck, and Harry felt it flex along his throat as Draco took another sip of champagne.
He said, “We thought we might go on a holiday together,” and Draco agreed though they had never discussed a holiday before.
Wanting a clean break.
It hadn’t worked out like that.
They went to Italy together. Draco spent an absurd amount of time at the museums until Harry decided that he missed him when he was gone.
As it turned out, Draco spoke flawless Italian. Harry hadn’t thought to want that, and he loved to listen to it.
“My father had me tutored,” Draco explained in a gondola in Venice. “I wasn’t allowed to spend time with him until I had learned my lessons.”
“That’s disgusting,” Harry said.
“Well.” Draco shrugged. “He wanted me to be of use to him.”
Harry felt cold in the humid warmth. Draco put an arm around his neck.
“You’re nothing like that,” he whispered. “I’m so happy with you.”
Which was just what Harry wanted to hear.
Harry remembers crisp white hotel sheets slick with sweat and suntan lotion, and that Draco looked intensely weird in a crowd of Italian people.
He still has pictures. Draco looked brightly into the camera and posed like a model until Harry felt uncomfortable about it, and from that point in time the pictures were of them both standing there, looking awkward but pleased and ducking their heads at the flash.
Harry framed those awkward pictures and put them out for guests to see, and kept the others in a drawer by his bedside table.
He took them out and looked at them sometimes.
But never too often.
Teaching was a great success. Harry spent a lot of time with the students who loved flying, really loved it, and tried to be patient with students who were no good at it.
Draco became an Unspeakable, trained for secret projects and defence plans and government strategy, all of which Draco told Harry because Harry was curious. Harry heard from Hermione that Draco was considered the most scrupulous and trustworthy agent in his office, and tried to ask less.
What Draco really loved was research, of the secret and obscure. The various project risks his department took were his special babies.
Harry remembers dropping by Draco’s apartment several times casually, unsure of what he wanted, and having Draco snap: “I’m busy,” and then lean on the doorframe and expand with interest, say something like, “It’s alchemy. I think we’ve had a breakthrough; moonlight and lead can make white gold, we’ve got the procedure right…” Draco would stop when Harry wanted him to, just say, “It’s fascinating,” and close his hand on the door.
The first time Harry wanted Draco to do his job, not get into trouble. He thought that the interested withdrawn look on his face was even kind of cute.
Every time after that, he only wanted Draco to speak a little, and then change his mind, draw Harry in, want Harry more. After all, Harry told himself, stroking Draco’s cheek afterwards, he could do his job and be with Draco. It was what couples did.
Once Draco looked worried and told Harry that he was in trouble at work because he hadn’t finished a job. Harry tried to leave him alone more after that, but he also knows that he sat watching television at his flat with Draco the next night, Draco’s head on his shoulder, and he did not want Draco to worry about anything. He did not want to know about trouble at work, after that, and Draco did not tell him about any.
Harry told himself that it must have worked out, and felt better about it except for late at night. Once he stayed at home and told himself virtuously that he was not going to bother Draco, but he wanted Draco there until Draco Apparated before him, and Harry lifted himself from the couch to kiss Draco and thought, it’s all right, it’s what he wants…
Dumbledore died the day of Harry’s nineteenth birthday. The papers had made a fuss about death on the birthday of the Boy Who Lived. Harry had felt that his life had always been marked with someone’s death.
“I never liked him much,” Draco said, and in the midst of all the numbness Harry had thought that if Draco could say outrageous things like that he needed Harry to keep him in check. “But he was kind to me in my last year. He seemed worried about me for some reason. He used to call me up to his office and talk to me.”
“You never told me,” Harry said tightly.
“You don’t like to talk about Dumbledore with me,” Draco answered lightly and matter-of-factly.
Harry didn’t want Draco to think that. He didn’t want Draco to talk like that.
Draco sat with a comforting hand in Harry’s throughout the funeral, quiet and respectful. Afterwards Draco took Harry back to his flat and held on, arm braced against his back, cheek pressed against his, and Harry could cry a little. Draco kissed him and told him, “It’s all right, you’re allowed to be upset, you two were very close, you helped save us all together…”
That was what Harry wanted.
But he wasn’t able to smile until he leaned back against the sofa cushions and let his mind drift away from Draco, and then heard Draco’s voice unexpectedly.
“Making you a soothing cup of tea is a lost cause,” Draco said in a very vexed tone. “Your cups are chipped. How can anybody chip every cup they own? Clumsy idiot.”
Harry thought, what an appalling thing to say to somebody bereaved, but he realised he was smiling just a bit. He said, “I can drink out of a chipped cup.”
“And eat out of a trough, no doubt,” Draco remarked dryly.
He had come out without the tea, looking distinctly irked with all those who owned imperfect china, and Harry caught his arm and said as if he needed to implore him, “Move in with me.”
Draco smiled just the beautiful smile Harry wanted him to.
Draco moved in, but took very little of his stuff with him. Harry did not actually like most of Draco’s things, which were austere and not homely.
It was right and exactly what Harry wanted. He told himself that he would have asked whether Dumbledore had died or not.
Draco liked to sing in the mornings sometimes. He had odd fancies about singing opera in the shower and songs about being pretty when he brushed his hair and long foreign songs that were unintelligible while he brushed his teeth.
Harry heard him and was surprised and then thought it was strangely adorable. Then he had a run of tiring days at work and was annoyed to be woken up at the weekends. Draco stopped singing for two weeks.
Harry realised it and wanted him to start again, and Draco sang Harry’s favourite songs every day, but somehow that was worse.
After the first month, Draco never sang in the mornings anymore.
Harry liked to hold a lot of parties, have friends over often, once Draco came to live with him. He liked to be distracted enough to stop thinking about what Draco should do, and not to want anything at all.
And then he liked to watch. Draco liked parties, collected people around him and showed off with anything from intellectual conversation to absurd imitations. When Harry had his friends over Draco often cornered Hermione.
“I don’t need to read the Russians,” Draco said once with that air of knowing best Harry had once disliked so very much. “I know what they would be like, thank you. Winter, depression, musings on the emptiness of life, existential thought and cherry damn orchards.”
“You’re an uncultured and arrogant little pig sometimes,” Hermione told him with a laugh at his nerve.
“It is a part of my considerable charm, yes,” Draco answered, and she poked him and he grinned.
Draco smiled differently in company, either with a curl to his lip or in a slow, crooked way that looked oddly unrehearsed.
When everyone had left Harry had buried his face in Draco’s neck and slid his hands down his skin, and thought of the way Draco smiled then.
“I think you’re lovely to entertain everyone so much,” Hermione told him smilingly. “Especially since sometimes you stare at Draco all night, and I can tell all you want is to be alone with him.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry had answered crossly. “I’m alone with him all the time. I am.”
She looked at him in surprise, and said nothing more.
Harry was pleased when Draco started going out with Ron and Hermione, even when Harry himself was busy. He tried to make himself forget about how Draco Owling Pansy and Crabbe had annoyed him, and that Draco never did it anymore. It wasn’t a crime to dislike some of your lover’s friends, to think they were a bad influence. Lots of people did it.
Hermione brought over photographs of one night at some karaoke bar Alicia Spinnet had dragged them to. Harry looked at one picture of Draco in his jeans with his arm around Alicia’s shoulders, lounging with practised grace in his seat. Harry did not altogether like the bold way Draco eyed the camera.
It did not change. Draco turned away in the picture so he was in profile, talking silently with Alicia, and then looked back to ogle the camera once more, and all Harry could see was falling hair and an insolent mouth and a moment in time where Draco was free, captured forever.
He tore the picture in two. Hermione was stunned.
He kept the pieces afterwards.
He found himself looking at them too frequently. One night he had waved Draco and Hermione off to the karaoke bar, and he wanted to see Draco like that, like that, and he left all his diagrams for his students and went.
The bar was dark and smoky, and Hermione was the first one he saw, sitting at a corner booth and giving him a hug.
“I wouldn’t have thought this was your scene,” he’d said.
“It’s not, but it’s fun,” she had replied. “And Draco loves it. You know what an exhibitionist he is.” She laughed with tolerant affection, and after a moment he laughed too.
Harry saw Draco and Ron at the bar, with several shots lined up in front of them.
“Playing that macho game of trying to drink each other under the table,” Hermione said at Harry’s look. “Well. Ron always tries to get one up on Draco, and Draco is more or less the most competitive creature in the world.”
“I remember,” Harry’d answered slowly.
“What,” Hermione had said, “from—earlier today?”
Which was when Draco’s name was called out. People clapped enthusiastically, as if they recognised it. Harry tilted his head to watch Draco move toward the stage, white-blond hair dappled scarlet under the lights and smiling with exaggerated seductiveness at almost every woman in the crowd. He smiled reluctantly, charmed.
Draco was moving onstage, swinging hips and a carrying voice and absolutely delighted to be the centre of attention. Harry remembered that.
“Bloody shameless,” Ron remarked, coming back with a beer. He dropped his head on Hermione’s shoulder and added, “I feel sick. Don’t tell Malfoy.”
“Boys,” said Hermione, with the same conviction she had had when she was eleven.
Draco’s eyes had slid over to follow Ron back to Hermione’s booth, which was when he caught sight of Harry. He smiled brightly and waved. Harry wasn’t sure of what he wanted Draco to do, wasn’t sure if it was safe to want anything. Before, he’d looked so…
But he looked the same now, alive and mocking and daring, and if Harry was very careful… Draco was off the stage now, in the crowd, sinuous and showing off and somehow getting away with it, and then suddenly Draco was in the booth, with the spotlight on them all, and Harry blinked against it.
Draco had slid in with assurance, and was still singing blithely, leaning and winking and awful. He seized Harry’s wrist and pulled him up, moving backwards and pulling him out of the booth. Everyone was staring at them and Draco was easy and laughing.
“Anything you want, you got it, anything at all, you got it.”
Harry was laughing too, but blinking apprehensively against the light, and he wasn’t quite comfortable with all this attention, and so even though he was mostly thrilling with the strangeness and vitality for just a second all he wanted was for Draco to let him go and stop.
Draco let him go, and finished the song sedately. The clapping afterwards seemed uncertain, disappointed.
Afterwards Draco refused to sing another song. He sat with his head against Harry’s shoulder, slipped his arm around his waist and explained, “We’re shy.”
Harry leaned his cheek against Draco’s hair and felt the echo of that disappointed clapping sink heavily into his stomach.
A week after that, Ron had come by the flat when Draco was out shopping. He had looked white and tired. Harry had sat him on the sofa and fixed him a series of stiff drinks.
“I think I knew it was coming,” Ron had said. “I mean… relationships fall apart. You know how it is, there are always all these difficulties and both of you want different things and you don’t quite fit, but you keep trying and it keeps working and it’s this beautiful miracle… But it’s a miracle because you’re always taking the risk that it won’t work out. And then it doesn’t.” He had stopped the flood of unusually deep thought, and then hunched over, smaller and more miserable than Harry had seen him in years. “But I wish it had,” he said. “You and Malfoy are really lucky.”
Harry agreed, and tasted the blood on his lower lip in his drink.
Ron insisted on staying until Draco came back.
“He’s been really good about this, in his Malfoy way,” he’d told Harry. “I think he knew we were having problems before anyone else did. He tried—we always got on better with him around.”
Harry wondered why Draco had not told him before remembering that he would not have wanted to hear that Ron and Hermione were falling apart.
He concentrated on just wanting what was best for Ron, wanting that ‘Malfoy way,’ wanting not to want things.
Draco came in, tossing bags every which way, complaining loudly about the lack of aubergines, and then saw Ron. He stopped, and then came over to sit by him on the sofa quite quietly.
“Let’s face it, Weasley,” he said. “You couldn’t expect to keep a girl as good-looking as Hermione forever. Frankly, it’s amazing it lasted this long.”
Harry and Ron’s mouths fell open.
“Aim lower next time,” Draco advised him solemnly. “As for Hermione—Hermione should move in with us, shouldn’t she, Harry? And take lots and lots of showers.”
Ron tackled him. It wasn’t until Harry wanted Draco to stop saying such terrible things that he noticed that Ron had smiled for the first time since he’d come.
Harry tried to forget all about it.
But he also tried not to want anything, very deliberately, the next night, when he came and sat beside Draco. Draco was working at the kitchen table, writing long messy notes. Harry loved that he bought incredibly expensive quills and broke them constantly. And he loved the nape of Draco’s neck, hair so pale it seemed ridiculous that the skin beneath was paler. He brushed aside a lock and kissed it, slipped an arm around him and whispered.
“You were great with Ron,” he said, kissing under his ear, slipping his face into the space between Draco’s neck and shoulder. Don’t want anything, he had told himself. Don’t.
“I am irresistibly charming and delightful,” Draco agreed complacently.
Harry never let himself think certain words, so instead he kissed him again and said, “I’m besotted with you.”
Ron said we were lucky. And that’s true, isn’t it? Isn’t it?
Draco squirmed away. “Look, not now,” he said. “I need to work. I want to, it’s important that I—”
“I need you,” Harry snapped.
And if he was trying not to want anything and Draco didn’t want… It wasn’t fair. Harry had suffered and he should be more important to Draco than this, more important than anything.
Harry pressed his forehead angrily into Draco’s neck and wished, and Draco was all over him, both of them falling off the chair onto the floor. It was too urgent to use the bed, Draco was too urgent and desperate, but Harry still set his teeth and hated Draco’s work, hated any rival.
The next day Draco had met him at the door with a kiss. Harry had kissed back and Draco had said against his lips,
“I quit my job.”
Harry’d felt cold, his hands closing around Draco’s shoulders, clinging onto him.
“But—you loved it so much.”
“You’re more important,” Draco answered calmly. “I’m rich, why do I need a job? You matter so much more. You deserve my complete attention.”
Exactly right.
Harry’d backed up, blood and horror slowly filling his mouth.
“That’s not what I wanted,” he lied. “That’s not what I meant.”
He was not speaking to Draco. It didn’t even feel as if Draco was there. Just—this beautiful blank creature, waiting for his next cue.
Harry’s mind shut that thought away.
“No,” he said. “Go get your job back. Owl them.”
Draco had done so immediately, seeming serene about the entire affair. Harry left and got into a punishingly hot shower, and then when he came back out found Draco hunched over the table, tried not to want anything.
Draco’s face was so desolate.
“I missed so much work,” he’d said. “I was so unreliable. And then I left… they won’t let me come back.”
Harry smoothed a hand over his back.
“Don’t be upset,” he said helplessly.
Draco’s face smoothed. “Of course not,” he answered. “What is there to be upset about? Do you want tea?”
Harry sat down in Draco’s chair when Draco left it, held his knees against him as if they were someone he had to try and fail to comfort.
After that, Harry tried so hard to just want Draco to be as he was. Tried to want that more than anything. But life cheated him, little wants, the nature of human desire, fractions of seconds where all he wanted was the last of the pumpkin juice or for Draco not to mind if he switched channels on the television.
It did not work.
Harry shut down a lot of thoughts.
Then Hermione had come one day, slammed the door behind her and demanded, “What precisely is your hold over Draco?”
Harry’s heart had pounded frantically. He told himself, you did nothing wrong, but he could not contemplate her knowing without dread.
He also thought with a kind of cold fury, she’s not taking him away from me.
“What do you mean?” he’d bluffed. “We’re living together.”
Hermione had sighed and took hold of the back of a chair, her fingers white against the wood. “I know. But, Harry—I have to talk to you. I’m worried. I don’t think your relationship is normal.”
“Don’t pass judgement on me!”
“I’m not, Harry!” she had almost shouted. “I love you. You know that. But, Harry—you have an unhealthy amount of control over Draco and I don’t know why. Your relationship seems so warped by it—”
Harry had felt impossibly cold.
“No. No it doesn’t. We’re happy—ask anybody. Ask Draco.”
“And what about asking you, Harry?”
He could not reply.
“He’s not even the same person when you’re there, Harry,” Hermione had continued, her dark eyes serious, and he knew she did not mean to be pitiless. “It can’t feel right for either of you. He gives way to every little thing you want—and Draco’s the most aggressively independent person I’ve ever met. Do you want that, to be going out with a robot instead of a person, why do you let him—”
“I don’t let him!” Harry exploded, and then was stricken when he realised that the only sentence he could follow that line with was ‘I make him.’
Stop, stop, stop.
“He quit his job!” Hermione exclaimed. “He loved that job. He loved it. I knew that, he talked about it with a passion I’ve never seen him talk about—”
“Stop it!” Harry shouted, and his skin had crawled as he realised he was thinking, I can fix that, he will…
“He’s deserted his friends. The only ones he has left are yours, he Owled Pansy Parkinson saying that he and you had agreed she wasn’t good for him. She came to my house crying and asking if I would just tell her how he was. They were friends all their lives, he loved her, he told me! He doesn’t seem to have his own life anymore.”
“He’ll see her again,” Harry had said. “I’ll fix it—”
“That’s not the point!”
“What is the point?” Harry had screamed, panic taking over. “Why are you acting like I’ve done something wrong? I always try to do the right thing, I did the right thing for everyone! He was impossible before, he was hateful, everyone disliked him. I made things better for him, and aren’t I owed that much—”
He had stopped, in a flash of hot blackness, as Hermione slapped him hard.
“You aren’t owed another person,” she told him, eyes wide. “You bastard. How could you say something like that? How could you believe something like that?”
Because if I don’t, if I don’t…
“Is that why Draco does all this? Do you have him believing all that garbage? Is that why he—God, I can’t believe that Draco would, it makes no sense, him of all people!—I liked him. I liked him before you ever went near him. I liked him because he was difficult and stupid sometimes, and he was smart but he never believed he was smart enough and so he told everyone else they weren’t. I liked him because you had to work to be his friend. I liked him because he was funny even if he could be cruel, and because he constantly surprised me by having the most appalling opinions about things I was certain of, and because he was a good person! I didn’t know it once, he still doesn’t know it, but he’s one of the best. And don’t you dare say that it wasn’t him you wanted, him, because even back in the days when you pretended so hard to hate him you could never take your eyes off him!”
Hermione’s words were savage. So sharp they scythed away things Harry needed to keep, needed because if he lost them then…
“You helped defeat You-Know-Who because it was the right thing to do. I’m sorry for what it cost you, but you are not supposed to demand a reward. And Draco of all people owes you nothing, nothing, because without him you couldn’t have done it!”
“What are you talking about?”
Hermione swallowed and spoke on defiantly. “He told me, one day. He was in the hall and some wards detected danger. Everyone was going to flee the house and he enchanted the doors, he locked himself in there with the Death Eaters and exposed himself to them at the same instant. Then he said that you saved us all with a spell, but you couldn’t have done it without him. He sacrificed himself just as much as you did, he’s just as good as you, and you can’t justify yourself!”
Harry let the words tear at him. That Malfoy had done that, had been noble, and that that act had reduced him to this… But Harry had tried to be noble, and that had reduced him to this.
“Is that it?” Hermione asked. “Has it been some kind of guilt trip?”
“It’s not like that,” Harry’d choked out.
She didn’t understand. She saw so much, but she was missing one crucial fact. Harry hadn’t meant to, it hadn’t been deliberate, it hadn’t been something he could help, there had been no other way… And Draco. She didn’t understand that Draco—Harry felt something like physical pain as he admitted it—had been entirely blameless.
What would Hermione say, if she knew that Draco had had no other choice. That he hadn’t compromised his free will. That it had been taken from him.
Stop, stop, stop.
“But it is like that. Anyone can see that.” Hermione had exhaled, her voice growing soft and ragged. “Harry, I didn’t want to say it like this. It’s just I’ve been worried for so long but I didn’t want to say anything, because I know how much you love him—”
“I never said that!” Harry said painfully. “Who says I—”
He had not let the words come out. Because… because he had learned sometime, thought sometime, perhaps when he learned the truth about his parents, that love meant caring about someone more than yourself. That love meant doing the best you could to make someone else happy.
He had never said it, never let himself think it, telling himself in some part of his mind that it wasn’t like that, maybe that Draco didn’t quite deserve it.
Harry had not deserved the right to say it. Couldn’t pay the price it demanded.
Hermione had gone over to him, hugged him with her hand pressed painfully hard against his back.
“Please don’t let it stay like this,” she whispered. “You’d be so much happier with the real Draco.”
“I know!” Harry said back, voice tight with anguish, distantly stunned that he could want that. Did I want it all along? “I know,” he repeated, holding her so hard it probably hurt.
She could destroy illusions, but she still had one of her own. She didn’t know that it wasn’t an option.
Hermione did not understand the full horror of it.
Harry tried not to realise, but a couple of weeks after he and Hermione had talked, he had woken up to find Draco awake and gasping with dread. He had lifted his hand to Draco’s pale face and all he had wanted was to know what was wrong.
“What is it?”
Draco’s face was too pale to lose more colour, and ashen and streaked with sweat it looked ghastly rather than handsome. Harry held on tight.
“It’s—nothing,” he said shakily. “I just—I dreamed—it’s stupid. I dreamed that I was being rubbed out, and I was screaming but nobody noticed, and I just kept walking around doing ordinary things until I was… gone.”
Gone.
No more friends, no more job he loved, no more singing, no more furniture he had chosen for himself, no more watching television programmes he had actually chosen, no more being bratty, no more drinking out of perfect cups.
“I don’t mean to,” Harry gasped out against his neck. “Oh God. Draco.”
And a subconscious that was screaming though he couldn’t know what was wrong.
His wildness was infecting an already upset Draco, who tried to pull away.
“What are you talking about?” he asked irritably. “What do you know—”
“Nothing,” Harry said, clamping down on the panic. He kept a tenacious hold on Draco, pain scrabbling insistently in his chest. His hand was closed too hard on Draco’s wrist. “I don’t want you to be upset. I—you should go back to sleep. No more bad dreams.”
Draco immediately slackened in Harry’s grasp, eyes closed, face smooth and relaxed. Harry almost screamed.
What was the difference, between this body in his bed and a puppet? Oh, Draco…
The next morning, Harry saw to his further horror, that he had left Draco’s wrist black and swollen.
“I didn’t want to hurt you,” he said helplessly.
“But you didn’t,” Draco replied, in all honesty.
It’s not like I can do anything to him, Harry lied to himself. It’s not like I can control him. If I directed all my rage at Mrs Lestrange and wanted her to die…
The next day, news came that Mrs Lestrange had committed suicide in her prison cell.
Harry still tells himself Voldemort was his last victim, but he is too good at lying to himself.
There had been no end to the horror.
But then, there had been. From somewhere, after a few more days of clinging, of screaming nightmares while Draco slept peacefully beside him, there came nothing but that honest, real wish.
He wanted what was best for Draco.
So he had come home one day and said, “You should move out. We should never see each other again.”
And he had felt as if his mind was breaking apart at the complete acceptance on Draco’s face. He had told himself that he never believed that Draco really wanted any of it, that he might care.
Lying was a terrible habit.
Harry thinks it must have been sheer masochism that made him sit in the flat watching Draco greedily as Draco calmly packed up his few possessions, knowing that he could have Draco in his arms at once and that he must not do it.
He wanted what was best for Draco. He couldn’t even want him to be upset.
What was best for him.
Harry watched him until he left, watched his bright head as he walked out the street outside, and then sank onto the kitchen floor and stayed home for three days, just holding onto his knees and wanting what was best for Draco.
Hermione had told him that he had done the right thing, for both of them. She gave him Terry Boot’s number.
Terry Boot was shy and he and Harry had a lot in common, not wanting to be taken much notice of, wanting to be happy and low profile, wanting things like home and quiet times with friends. He didn’t have much of a sense of adventure, but he was honestly nice, and that meant a lot to Harry.
Harry felt better that Terry insisted on watching wildlife programmes. He told himself, this is right, this is normal.
He liked to see Terry read, too, and he thought the sex was probably good. It wasn’t about having every fantasy fulfilled. Harry honestly did not want that.
The first argument was strange, a little disorienting, but Harry felt a strange sense of accomplishment afterwards.
He wanted Terry to disagree with him.
“I like chipped cups,” he’d say, “and I hate being woken up on weekends, and I resent your work sometimes.”
Terry was all right with that, and he looked at him a bit oddly about the chipped cups. Harry gave up, and they had disagreements over other things and got over them.
“We can get over any disagreement,” Harry said proudly.
“That’s good,” Hermione said doubtfully, “but you don’t seem to care.”
“I do, I do,” Harry told her indignantly, and closed his eyes and wanted what was best for Draco.
He dreamed about Draco after a month. Just dreamed a scene from his past, remembered perfectly as if his subconscious had turned it over and over, and treasured it for a long time before parting with it.
Draco back when he was a thin sharp-tongued child, and real, real, real. He had been sitting at a meeting, eyes huge and spiteful in his pointed face. They had been talking about rations and Draco had suggested that they try giving Harry none.
“After all,” he had pointed out with exaggerated awe, “he is the fabulous Boy Who Lived. If a Dark Lord couldn’t kill him, I shouldn’t think a little thing like surviving without food would be a bother.”
“Oh, just go away, Malfoy,” Harry had said, the sheer hatred behind his words making it something like a prayer.
Malfoy’s eyes had glittered.
“Oh, you only wish, Potter. You’re never getting rid of me.”
Harry woke up glad that he could finally be angry at Draco for something. Because he had lied, too.
Terry, over coffee that morning, said slowly that he didn’t think he could keep going out with someone who woke up calling his ex-lover’s name.
“It was enough of a blow to my pride to just have you say it in your sleep,” he added, with the painful, awkward smile which was so like Harry’s own, and left.
Harry was outraged that it was so easy, not wanting Terry to do anything at all.
“It’s all right,” Hermione’d informed him anxiously. “It’s just difficult for you to have a different kind of relationship—”
“No,” Harry said savagely. “No, it’s not, it’s not about that. I don’t want someone to agree with every word I say, I don’t want a puppet or a sex toy, I don’t want anything like that. I want something normal, I want—”
“But that doesn’t seem to make you happy either!” Hermione had exploded. “What is it that you want?”
“I just want Draco!” Harry shouted.
Then the phone had rung. Harry had felt the guilt crash into him even as he lifted the receiver, as he fought with wanting to hear his voice, and told himself that it was disgusting to use this power, not to add betrayal on betrayal on betrayal…
He only wanted what was best for Draco.
The dial tone met his ear. He clenched his hand tight around the receiver, and hung it up.
“Wrong number,” he’d told Hermione.
She had gone up to him with mute sympathy, and he had let himself slide onto the floor and rest his forehead on his arms. He didn’t really have to pretend to be all right.
“How is he?” he’d asked tiredly.
Hermione had been quick to assure Harry that he’d done the right thing for Draco. Draco had a new apartment—‘and it looks like him, really like him’—and he was lobbying so persistently for his old job back that it seemed like his manager would either buckle or go mad. ‘You know how he is’ Hermione added, and Harry closed his eyes. Draco was singing at karaoke bars again, and he was seeing Parvati Patil. They looked good together, they were happy, and she was crazy about him. Hermione knew that Harry would want that for Draco.
He did, he really did, every second of every day.
Sometimes he would go home and spend all night just looking at the torn picture, and concentrate on wanting it to the exclusion of everything else. Sometimes he would call Hermione and she would come over and stroke his hair.
“Oh God, Harry, I feel so guilty. I didn’t think it would do this to you,” she said. “I never saw you trying for him. I didn’t think he meant so much to you.”
There was only one way he could try for him.
“Tell me how I feel about him,” Harry would say, because he could not tell himself.
“You love him.”
“Tell me again.”
“You love him,” Hermione would repeat, her eyes filling. Harry liked her to cry, and to want something for him. It felt safe to want something by proxy.
Then one night she had called him and asked him to come to a big dinner with her. She had been invited, but she knew that Ron and Pansy Parkinson (‘Draco set them up on a blind date for a joke, and they ended up egging his house and having a marvellous time. He’s in shock, and they’re a couple.’) were going, and so she needed a date. She thought it would be nice for Harry to get out of the house.
Harry would have been afraid that Hermione was in love with him, except he had a suspicion that she had been secretly in love with Draco for quite some time.
That was why Harry did not expect it.
He had gone to the dinner, and found Draco there. He’d looked over at Hermione in alarm, and she’d said, “I can’t stand seeing you so unhappy. I thought you could—I thought you might talk.”
Draco had been seated across the room, almost opposite Harry. He was wearing one of those exquisite, expensive grey suits that Harry had never wanted him to wear because he felt as if he would crumple it if he touched Draco, and he had always wanted to touch Draco. He had clearly been paying more attention to his hair than Harry had ever wanted him to.
It’s working, Harry had told himself.
Parvati was sitting at Draco’s left. She was all long graceful neck, dark melting eyes, casual insults and adoring glances for Draco. Harry hated her very much, and wanted them to be happy together.
It was sheer disgusting torture. The curve of Draco’s neck into his silk shirt was like a kiss. He was fussing about his shrimp fork looking like the fork for his cheesecake, which was apparently many versions of disgraceful. Harry would have been mortified in Parvati’s place. He wanted to kill her and take her place.
He wanted—he wanted what was best for Draco. He wanted Draco safe and happy and real.
He hadn’t seen Draco in weeks and weeks. He couldn’t bear the way Draco drank his wine, seeing the movement of his throat.
After dessert he fled to the bathroom, tried to get a grip on himself. He blotted his face with paper towels and reminded himself that Draco—that he had to, because Draco was…
He ran into Draco in the corridor. Draco moved smoothly to let him pass. The picture of politeness, and once upon a time Harry had only been able to tell that Draco’d been brought up carefully because when he insulted Harry his diction was perfect.
“Excuse me, Harry,” Draco said courteously.
The sound of his impersonal voice made Harry shudder uncontrollably, his mind going blank.
They had tumbled, kissing frantically, into the cloakroom. Harry was pulling at Draco’s tie, yanking it half off so he could bite at his throat. He had his thighs wrapped around Draco’s, and Draco was rocking his hips into Harry’s, slowly, rhythmically, until Harry screamed.
Afterwards, he told Draco that it had never happened. Draco had agreed innocently, and gone to kiss Parvati Patil with Harry’s bite mark on his throat.
Harry had told himself that it was a momentary lapse. He still wanted what was best for Draco.
He’d smashed a lot of things in his flat, trying to exhaust himself so he stopped seeing Draco writhing when he closed his eyes, so he stopped trying to talk to Draco as if Draco was in the kitchen.
Eventually he had taken out old school pictures. The look in his eyes when he was fifteen as compared to when he was fourteen had disturbed him.
He might have wanted Draco because he had never felt alive again since he had killed for the first time, and he was charmed and drawn in by someone who could apparently never stop feeling alive. The waters get muddied with images of a participant in sexual fantasies and all he ever wanted, but he thinks maybe all he ever needed was impossibly sharp elbows and vitality.
Harry knows that this is entirely unattainable.
Harry had managed to hold out another week, and then he had gone to Draco’s new place. He had had no excuse at all.
As soon as Draco had opened the door they had been kissing, sloppy and hard and wet and unforgivable.
Parvati had come in just as Harry wrestled Draco onto the kitchen countertop.
Her eyes had gone wide and hurt and she had fled in a flurry of long legs, and Harry had thought, he gave her a key, what does that mean, what does she mean.
Draco had moved exactly the way Harry wanted him to, and said, “She means nothing.”
Harry shut his eyes against the tears and ground down so hard. They gasped low together, and Harry had thought, I’m sorry, Draco, I’m so sorry, but I can’t give this up.
Draco had moved back in with Harry, with everyone’s blessing. He has been there a week and a half.
Harry is lying in bed beside Draco and thinking.
Even Hermione had agreed happily, told Harry she believed they could make it work. She loved Harry and could not bear to see him unhappy. There was nobody who could save Draco, who had not in their ignorance helped to throw him to the wolves.
The moonlight is streaming into the room, and Draco’s hair looks liquid against the pillow. Harry’s hand—the one he held the wand with when he spoke the word, the murdering and enslaving hand—lies in the smooth small of Draco’s back.
Harry is happy. And he understands why Dumbledore did not dare to do that spell.
He agrees with Hermione’s quote, too. Each man kills the thing he loves.
“Draco,” Harry says quietly, and immediately Draco is awake as Harry wants. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I couldn’t let you go.”
But he could have. Only he couldn’t. He couldn’t stop wanting Draco, but whatever happened to wanting the one you loved to be the happiest they could be?
Harry tells himself that he would stop if Draco was in pain, and is aware that slow obliteration is crueller than that. He feels a little bit beyond hope now, and does not really lie to himself anymore. The truth still contradicts itself, though.
“I’d undo it if I could. I would, I don’t care about the consequences. I need you to be real. I want it to be undone. I want you.”
Draco would hate him, walk away forever, press charges.
Harry does think he wants the real Draco, and is aware that this is going to be like Chinese water torture. Glimpses of him, and that’s better than nothing, but this is not the best thing for Draco. Harry also knows that the real Draco would not want him, and that he would want that.
He is going to try to stop obliterating Draco with his wishes, and he is going to fail. The first step makes all the others inevitable, and he can’t help modifying the person he wants until the person is crushed out of existence.
He can face this bleakly, and hold on to Draco.
“I love you,” he tells Draco. “I love you. I love you.”
He believes this, although he is aware nobody who knew the full story would agree.
Harry’s going to kill the thing he loves, suffocate it slowly in his arms.
Draco turns his eyes to Harry’s, beautiful eyes which are already emptying of life, of the indomitable will that fought punching bags looking half-starved, mocked relentlessly, sang annoyingly, smiled in a distinctly unlovely manner, would never have given up.
“I love you too,” he answers in exactly the right way.
Harry has it all.
He still screams Draco’s name in his sleep, and Draco watches him and wonders what he wants.
Finis
July 23, 2003