fic: The Eight Tale 2/2 (Harry/Draco)
Title: The Eighth Tale
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: meta, sex, and sad (don’t say I didn’t warn you)
Summary: Draco Malfoy tries to fix the past, but instead mucks it up some more. For Harry, it all becomes quite clear.
Go to: part 1
*
The summer passes in warm waxen days that take ages just to burn and melt away, and Harry feels like he’s moving through a thickness of time, gone still and sulking in the hazy summer heat. He’d been convinced that if only they could destroy the locket, their problems would be solved; they could find the next Horcrux and move on.
Instead, the summer comes and passes, and Shell Cottage is attacked while Harry, Hermione, and Ron are out searching for a golden cup. Draco Malfoy, as it happens, saves the Order with a Patronus as a warning, and they all come out alive (except for Dobby).
After that, the Order frees Malfoy, who stays of course; he says he’s going to help them find the next Horcrux. The problem is, he was never here (in the past) and doesn’t know the whole story (no one does), and has to piece together all the bits he learned after the end. He doesn’t know where the cup is either, and as the summer melts away to autumn, his general good humour melts with it.
He grows agitated (it’s taking too long), moody when Harry visits him, which he does. For some reason, this Draco Malfoy is easier to comprehend, this Draco Malfoy who seems to think that everything is going wrong. It’s a feeling Harry shares (this essential wrongness of the world, an intense feeling of should not have been), and yet the fact that Malfoy feels it too makes things easier, and Malfoy said that things would turn out fine (in the end). Harry remembers Lily’s freckles, and for the first time feels the thread of hope (as before him, Draco Malfoy slowly unravels).
Ron and Hermione don’t share those feelings; Ron is too grounded for such abstraction and Hermione too determined (why waste time on the wrongness of the world?) Only Malfoy shares it, and Harry does not know what to do with that, other than to waste his time with Malfoy when they retreat back to Shell Cottage (which happens more and more).
Malfoy won’t tell him any more tales (though Harry hasn’t asked since learning about Lily’s freckles). He snarks at everyone; there are shadows under his eyes; maybe he’s a bit like Snape after all, when eventually he asks Kingsley Shacklebolt (in a fit of snide disapproval at the way the Order seems to be handling everything), “Has he been to Malfoy Manor yet?”
Shacklebolt doesn’t need to ask who ‘he’ is, but he questions Malfoy anyway, and Malfoy isn’t giving any answers. When they give him Veritaserum, he’s still sullen and all he says is, “They should have gone to Malfoy Manor by now.”
“He was tetchy,” Shacklebolt says. “He kept blinking, scratching the back of his neck.” He looks at Harry gently, and Harry is tired of people doing that, of all the adults looking at him like they know better, because they don’t (except one does). “Harry, you do know that some people can fight Veritaserum, don’t you?”
Harry hasn’t wanted to ask. He doesn’t like to ask, but when he does ask (“what was the shape of Malfoy’s Patronus?”), he already knows the answer.
So they go to Malfoy Manor.
Malfoy knows a secret way (of course he does; it’s his house). It’s underground, and they end up in a sort of cellar (dungeon, Harry thinks, and wonders if he would have thought it if it wasn’t Draco Malfoy’s house). Inside the cellar are Luna Lovegood, Dean Thomas, Ollivander, and Griphook.
They usher the prisoners back through the tunnels, and back outside to safety; then Malfoy leads Harry, Hermione, and Ron back inside the tunnels, insisting, “Only them. Only these three. You can’t go,” he tells Shacklebolt, and seems to be resisting sticking out his tongue. He’s supposed to be in his thirties, but not for the first time, Harry thinks this might just be Malfoy under an aging potion. Then he remembers Lily’s freckles, and tries to forget the things that might not be true.
Suddenly, the inhabitants of Malfoy Manor realize something has happened to the prisoners. An alarm goes up, and Malfoy hangs back; “I’m not supposed to meet myself; that’s the first rule of time travel,” he tells them.
Bellatrix screams and tortures Hermione; Harry fights her and Malfoy’s father; suddenly there’s Nagini, and Draco Malfoy. The real Draco Malfoy-Malfoy who’s supposed to be here, anyway, and God, he is so young (am I that young? Harry doesn’t feel that way).
He doesn’t understand why he never noticed that Malfoy-even this Malfoy-looks just like a Black; he never noticed that perhaps, if this Malfoy would only smile in his direction-not with a sneer or insult attached, but with friendship, Harry could have-maybe they really could have been-
A spell pops directly in front of him, narrowly deflected, and Harry looks over in the shadows to see where the Protego came from, finding Draco Malfoy (the other Draco Malfoy). He’s taller, longer hair, broader shoulders, long legs and thighs (his thighs-for a moment, Harry can’t think of what he’d say about Draco Malfoy’s thighs-and yet somehow, he can’t stop looking, because they’re long and lean and muscular and they belong to a man, but still he can’t stop looking), but that Draco Malfoy (his Draco Malfoy-or anyway, the one on his side) is waving Harry back, telling him to pay attention.
Harry defends himself, defends his friends, but periodically there’s something he doesn’t see, and someone he thought he knew, but doesn’t really, protecting him.
It’s when the chandelier is going to fall on the younger Malfoy and Nagini has finally scented the elder Draco that there’s a choice to make, except there’s no choice at all. Still, that moment is suspended in time, suspended in Harry’s memory (maybe Draco used the time-turner), and later, he actually thinks about it.
He thinks that if the elder Draco really is a later version of Malfoy, he should have saved the younger one, because if the younger one had died, the older one wouldn’t live, and then Harry would never have found the sword, and never have saved Luna, and whatever else they’re going to achieve because the elder Draco helped them.
But Harry isn’t thinking in that moment, and so saves his Draco Malfoy, and not the other one. It’s just an instinct-maybe because Draco saved him; maybe because of Lily’s freckles; Harry doesn’t know. What he does know is that Draco, when he sees Harry’s save him instead of the younger Malfoy, breaks from a look of concentration into an expression that’s so crushed, hurt terribly, overwhelmed by disappointment, that the only word for it is crestfallen.
“I’ve fucked it up,” he says in horror; “Oh my God, I’ve fucked it-”
“Are you,” Harry begins, and Draco waves at him wildly, still standing in the shadows.
“Him,” Draco shouts, waving at his younger self. “Him, goddamn you, Harry, him!”
Harry glances at the younger Malfoy, and Mrs. Malfoy has saved him from the chandelier, so he thinks for a moment that maybe he made the right choice after all. The younger Malfoy, regaining his balance, steadies himself and points his wand (haphazardly at best) at Harry.
Turning slightly toward the elder Draco, still in shadow, Harry says, “Do I . . . ?”
Cursing (inaudibly, but the intent is obvious), the elder Draco disarms his younger self, and Malfoy doesn’t know what hit him.
When they finally get away, all they have to show for it is a Malfoy’s hawthorn wand and a bit of Bellatrix’s hair. Draco (wearily) says that it’s enough, but Harry worries that he’s messed up the future (or is it history).
Draco shakes his head. His expression is warm and his voice is soft, and though his words tell a different story, the corners of his mouth speak only of regret. “No,” he says. “You were fine. It’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself; of course it’s not your fault; I just-you were magnificent,” and there’s something in his eyes that also says, you always were.
Harry can’t sleep that night, or the nights that follow, because he knows the truth is too perfect to be true. Autumn’s rolled in on waves of leaves and sunsets, harvest colours in Gryffindor gold and red. Meanwhile Harry dreams of Lily’s freckles (red hair, her smile, gold skin, green grass; the grass was so green at spring in Hogwarts, the first time Harry kissed her mother). All Harry can think when he wakes up is that green grass is a dream, which also means Astoria isn’t real.
These days Draco doesn’t smile nearly as much as he did when they first found him, so that now when Harry says, “it isn’t real,” Draco doesn’t give him that shit-eating grin. Instead he looks a little pensive, a little surprised, and says quite kindly, “What isn’t real, Harry?”
“That story you told me,” Harry says.
Draco looks at him a little while, and looks away. “If you want it to be,” he says, which answers nothing.
“What are we like?” is what Harry wants.
Draco still won’t look at him.
“I don’t mean me and Ginny. I don’t mean you and-and her. I mean . . .”
“You and I?” Draco’s voice is bitter; he looks at his hands, which slowly clench and unclench, fist and unfist, hold and unhold all the thousand futures he has not yet told.
“You and I,” Harry says.
“You nodded to me once on Platform Nine and Three Quarters,” is all that Draco says.
Harry opens his mouth, closes it. “Why was I-why were you on Platform Nine and Three Quarters?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Draco unfolds his fists again. “I had a son.”
Harry wants to say something, but can’t, because he doesn’t believe in Lily’s freckles; he doesn’t believe in green grass, and he doesn’t believe Draco. “You knew my scar was hurting,” he says. “You know the way I sleep. You know my magic,” he says, “so you can’t say you don’t know me.”
“Of course we know each other, Harry.” Draco’s voice is toneless, and his hands clench again. “We went to school together. Don’t you remember?”
“I mean I know you now.”
“Of course you do,” and now Draco just sounds tired. “We’re talking, aren’t we?”
“I mean I’ll know you then.”
“We’ve been changing tenses,” says Draco. “That’s not good form either.”
“Stop. Just stop.” Harry wants to shake him, wants to shake himself, because he doesn’t like this truth either, this truth where there aren’t any answers, and the story isn’t clear. “Just give it to me straight.”
“Straight.” Draco scoffs. “We’re friends. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes,” says Harry, who sits down, and listens.
In the fifth tale Draco tells him, Harry spoke for him in the trials that followed the war, saving Draco’s life. Harry got to know Draco then and gradually they became friends. Harry learned that Draco regretted all the things he’d done, and Draco learned that Harry wasn’t half such a ponce as he used to be (“well, you were”), and from there they established a relationship of mutual trust and respect. Harry, after witnessing the corruption in the Wizengamot, became a barrister, and Draco made a Quidditch team, and was friends with Viktor Krum.
Harry still married Ginny, and Draco still had a son, but though he was married to Astoria, it wasn’t a love match. He says it was a marriage of convenience, so that the wizarding world would not think less of him, but Harry’s not sure what he means by that, and wonders if his marriage to Ginny was a love match also.
Draco looks away and says, “I can’t tell you your future, Harry,” but of course he has (only it keeps changing, which is why you can never tell the future, never).
The problem is, in a story, as you go deeper, the ending seems inevitable, but in everything else, as you go deeper, the possibilities seem endless.
*
Draco tells him the sixth tale after Harry’s broken into Gringott’s and got the cup, and come out riding a dragon. It was Draco who told them to go there, and Malfoy Manor had proved fruitless, but Draco says it needed to happen, and Harry believes him.
“I don’t believe you,” Harry says, having destroyed the fifth Horcrux. “Why are my children all named after-” he can’t believe he’s asking this-“after Gryffindors?”
Draco looks surprised he’s asking it as well, but he welcomes Harry’s company (or seems to), and has a look he saves just for Harry, behind his anxiety that things aren’t going as they should (as they’ve already happened). Harry thinks the look is fond, and Draco looks at him that way now, a slight smile, light behind it. “You like Gryffindors, Harry,” he says mildly.
“Right,” Harry says, “but Slytherin had heroes too. Snape,” he says first, and can’t quite meet Draco’s eye when he says, “You.”
He looks at Draco from under his lashes, and sees the way Draco’s expression changes, melts into something warm and gentle and yet more fond, and Harry used to think that expression was condescending, but he didn’t know him then. “Maybe you gave one of them a middle name,” Draco suggests. “James Snape Potter.” He pauses, as though he can’t quite meet Harry’s eyes, either. “Lily Narcissa is pretty,” he adds.
“Or a constellation, like the Blacks,” Harry says. “Albus Scorpius.”
Draco flinches, but he only murmurs, “I never knew you paid attention in astronomy.”
Harry’s eyes narrow. “It’s not enough, is it,” he says, but it’s not a question, really. “Just a middle name. I would think I would do more than that.”
“Would you?” Draco’s murmuring still, his lashes gold in the sunlight slanting through the window off the sea.
“Yes,” says Harry, certain now. “That was just another story, wasn’t it? I’m not even a lawyer, am I.”
“No, Harry.” Draco’s voice is almost obedient now, so soft. “You’re not a lawyer.”
“Then what am I?” Harry asks, but the question’s really, what are we?
In the sixth story Draco Malfoy tells him, Harry doesn’t have any children. He was married, then divorced, and then he was all alone, in a series of relationships. Draco says he was an Auror, though, and still got lots of collars. He was still a bit too abusive towards dark wizards, but Harry guesses it can’t all be pretty, and besides, dark wizards deserve it.
Meanwhile, Draco worked in international relations, along with Viktor Krum, who was an ambassador to Britain. Draco didn’t marry Astoria (“let the wizarding world disapprove of whom they may”), but he got to know Harry because they both worked at the Ministry. There was a case involving trans-Atlantic wand trafficking, and they had to work together, but it turned out not to be that bad, so they started going to the pub, and played Quidditch, and Draco even hung around Ron and Hermione sometimes, even though he still wasn’t friends with them.
And then sometimes Harry would have tea with Draco’s mother (“of course, father’s always out on those days; I make sure of it-but you stayed with me, when he was Kissed, and wouldn’t let me be alone.” Draco pauses. “Prat,” and Harry believes it because he didn’t let Draco be alone that day in the bathroom, either, and Harry hadn’t really thought about it that much then, but now he wishes that had ended differently).
Harry thinks of Lily’s freckles, and thinks that he should mourn their passing, but then again, it’s unclear whether they actually existed (whether they will exist), and he can barely remember Ginny’s face these days. She was some future that he wanted, a tale he told himself to sleep at night, but as the nights drag on and slaying Voldemort seems less and less likely, it gets hard to think about what will be, and Harry begins to focus on what is.
Right now is evenings in Shell Cottage with Draco Malfoy, spinning tales about futures that could be and never were, and it feels more real than the dreams that Harry had when he still believed in happy endings. Winter whispers at the windows with promises of frost; Ron and Hermione have their own dreams of the future, and the nursery where Draco Malfoy sleeps holds a future that never can be, now. At night they light candles and drink tea, and sometimes Harry thinks that if they could live forever in right now, the only tale he would tell would be this one.
The problem is the truth is in the telling, and the future’s what you make it.
*
Draco tells Harry the seventh tale because Harry’s finally figured it all out. He’s read between the lines of all those other stories and listened to the secrets in them, and can’t believe he never realized, “You’re gay.”
“They call me joyful, at the office,” is all Draco says, but he doesn’t look at Harry in that way he has and he’s picking at his nails. It’s a habit he’s picked up, like the other ones Shacklebolt described (the blinking, scratching his nape), and Harry wonders if it has to do with being somewhere he does not belong (but rubbing his arm, that’s the main thing, and Harry doesn’t think that has anything to do with time travel at all).
“You keep saying the wizarding world doesn’t approve of you,” Harry accuses, “and you’re always bringing up Krum-it’s always you and Krum-and you said Krum was gay.” He crosses his arms, as though he’s proven his point.
“You can be such a child sometimes.” Agitated, Draco stands, turns away, looks out the window at the sea. Braced against the frame, he’s never looked quite so much like an adult, like a man, the long lean lines of him limned in light, grown thinner in the last few months-waning, like the sun. “Is that all you can think about?”
“I haven’t thought of that at all.” Harry knows he sounds as immature as Draco has just accused him of being, but he can’t help himself. Uncrossing his arms, he drops his hands to his sides, and frowns. “I haven’t had time. I’ve been doing . . .” he thinks about it, “more important things.”
“Of course you have,” but the line of Draco against that window is tense and hard, coiled tight.
“How am I supposed to know?” Harry says, but he’s not quite sure what he’s asking.
“You’re not. You’re not supposed to know anything at all.” Draco turns around then, and Harry almost takes a step back; Draco looks so absolutely wrecked. “Harry, you’re seventeen.”
“I’m eighteen,” because July was three months ago. Harry lifts his chin, and he knows it sounds so young, even as he says it. “That’s old enough.”
“Old enough for what?”
Harry falters, then. It’s the sound of Draco’s voice. “Old enough to know about-about being gay. About you being gay,” he says, but the correction sounds half-hearted, even to his own ears.
“It’s not old enough to save the world. No one’s ever old enough. I’m not old enough, and I’m . . .” He trails off, and for the first time, Harry realizes he doesn’t know how far in the future Draco’s from. Old enough to have children, old enough to put them on the Hogwarts Express, old enough for thinning hair . . . Draco rubs his arm, and though they say children are different, Harry thinks no one is too young to have regrets.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Draco says, sounding so broken. “It’s all wrong. You said it yourself-it’s not just this.” He gestures around him wildly. “It’s everything. It’s this world-what was it that you said-the entire premise; it makes no sense.”
“This makes sense,” Harry says, coming closer.
Draco looks unbearably wretched. “This makes the least sense of all. I’ve fucked it so completely, Harry; you have no idea.”
“You haven’t fucked it,” Harry says. “You’ve fixed it. See,” he holds out his hand, “we’re friends.”
“We’re not friends.” Draco turns away. “I’ve lied. Don’t you see, I always lie?”
The seventh tale goes like this.
Harry defended Draco at the trials, but he didn’t do much more than that, and afterward, Draco was left to make a life for himself. There weren’t many opportunities open to a former Death Eater, so Draco opened up a shop, but it didn’t do well, and his mother was slowly going mad, and there was no one to turn to when his father died.
Draco got back at him (his father) the only way he could, cavorting with thieves and filth and Muggleborns (“filthy Mudbloods,” he actually says, in a fit of bitter savagery aimed at the frosted window glass). He made a spectacle of himself any way he could; he drank too much and took to potions; he got in brawls and would fuck anything that moved (“so that makes me gay, Harry, and because you’re so grown-up, because you’re so mature, I’ll tell you the truth; it makes me worse than gay; it makes me a fucking slut; is that what you wanted to hear? Is it?”)
It’s just like the second story (or was it the third? The one in which Harry was debauched, and wore leather trousers, only Draco isn’t laughing at all, now. He seems to think not a bit of this is funny, now that he’s given Harry hope) only in reverse.
Harry Potter, politician, peacemaker, and possible Unspeakable, disapproved, of course. He arrested Draco (“more times than I care to count”) and told him he should get a girlfriend, and Draco leered at him and said filthy things (“like, ‘you could fit the bill’”). Harry only ever frowned and told him to do something better with his life, something involving chasing criminals or making friends or picket fences, and Draco sneered and said (“this is what I am. This is all I ever was”).
When Draco tried to cut the Dark Mark off, it was Aurors and Harry who broke into his flat. Once the blood was cleaned up, his arm healed, wounds washed away, Harry looked stern in his scarlet, and gave him all his platitudes (“something’s got to change,” “you can’t go on this way,” “you’ve got to think about your future”). That was when Harry gave Draco something from the Department of Mysteries, and when Draco looked at it, it was a time-turner.
“I don’t believe you,” Harry says.
“Don’t worry, though,” Draco says. “You live happily ever after.”
Harry’s got to leave the room, or he’ll sick up.
The problem is we never want the truth.
*
Later, Draco calms down. He apologizes to Harry, and even though he hasn’t said it isn’t true, he hasn’t said that about any of his other tales either. Bits and pieces, Harry’s beginning to think, bits and pieces can be true-because obviously, not all of them at once can happen. There’s only one future; he knows that, but after a while of staying at Shell Cottage the lines of his hand begin to look clean again.
After that they go to Hogwarts, because it’s the only thing Draco can figure out they need to do (“there are hazy in-betweens, but let’s just get to the climax, shall we? I mean that metaphorically,” he adds, and leers at Hermione, who looks horrified, and Harry thinks there’s a sharper edge to his smirk than there was before).
Shortly after reaching Hogwarts (Draco in the Invisibility Cloak), they’re found out, and have to split up. Ron and Hermione go down to the Chamber of Secrets to fetch the Basilisk tooth, and Harry and Draco go to Ravenclaw Tower to find some kind of diadem (Harry doesn’t know; Draco told him). Out in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort is calling for Harry’s blood, and the Grey Lady tells them to go to the Room of Hidden Things.
“You go without me,” Draco says, stopping at the top of the stairs.
“What?” Harry stops as well. “No. What’s wrong?”
“I’m not coming with you.”
“You are,” says Harry. “I wouldn’t have found it without you,” because this is how he can have a happy ending.
Draco simply shakes his head again. “No. It isn’t right. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“No,” says Harry. “Of course I’m not going without you. There are Death Eaters everywhere.”
“It’s okay,” says Draco. “Just let me go; I’m supposed to-”
“I don’t care what you’re supposed to do.”
Draco’s growing paler. “Harry, this is how it’s supposed to go. I wasn’t-this is how it needs to be.”
“No,” says Harry. “I don’t care. I’m not leaving you; you’re coming with me.”
Draco grows paler still, looking sicker by the second. “Harry, no. I’m not-I’m not even meant to be here.”
“I don’t care, I said,” because even if this is Draco’s past, Draco is Harry’s present, and he’s eighteen and maybe he die and the present’s all he’s got; he’s got to hold on to something. “I’m not leaving you,” he says. “I’m never going to leave you.”
Draco looks stricken at those words, and says, “My God. Oh, my God. I’ve fucked it up.” He begins to back away.
“Don’t,” Harry says, and reaches for him. He grips Draco’s arm and his hand slides down, down into Draco’s own, Draco’s lean strong hand, his calloused-manly, Harry thinks-fingers, and it’s one of the easiest things Harry’s ever done. “Come with me.”
Draco just looks at him, and his expression is stricken with sadness, and loss. “I understand now,” he says. “I know why you left.”
“I’m not leaving.” Harry tugs.
“It was so this wouldn’t happen,” Draco says.
“Nothing’s happened yet,” Harry says, and tugs again.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” Draco says. “I did it wrong. I didn’t mean for-I didn’t mean for it to be this way. It just-it happened.”
“Please, come,” Harry says, tugs once more, and Draco comes.
So Harry and Draco go to the Room of Requirement, and Draco’s eyes are as grey as wishing wells-empty, and yet holding a thousand hopes of things that could never be. There’s a weight of inevitability in them, as though Draco’s finally decided something, and Harry doesn’t like it.
Harry turns to him, and he isn’t looking for the diadem any more. “I die, don’t I,” he says, but that, also, is not a question.
Draco lets go of his hand. Harry can see the dust in the Room of Hidden Things, floating gently down. “What?” is all Draco says.
“I die,” Harry says. “It’s okay. I’ve known for a while now-all those stories you made up. It was just to get me here.”
Draco blinks, shakes his head. “No. No, Harry, you don’t die.”
“It’s why you came back, isn’t it?” Harry says. “Dumbledore sent you, or maybe Snape.” He shrugs. “I always knew. I mean, I didn’t want to face it, but I knew deep down. I had to die. I didn’t want to at first, but I-I think now I can do it.”
Draco shakes his head. “No, you don’t, Harry. You don’t. I promise you, you’re . . .” His eyes flick up to the scar. “You’re the Boy Who Lived.”
“You’ve made a lot of promises,” Harry says, and lifts his chin.
Draco blinks again, but this time slowly, and his eyes are so, so clear. “I have done,” he says, just as slowly and just as clearly, “but they weren’t to you. To you I’ve mostly lied, but trust me, Harry. I’m not lying now. You’re why we lived. Harry,” he says, “you’re why I lived.”
“Then tell me how we are.” Harry steps closer. “In the future. Tell me how we really are.”
Draco looks down at him (but they’re almost of a height) and falters. “I can’t tell you,” he tries to say.
“Tell me about this,” Harry says, and brushes his lips over Draco.
Draco closes his eyes and breathes, breathes, breathes, so harshly. Very carefully, he removes Harry’s hand from his arms. “I’m over twice your age,” he says, very gently.
“We’re the same age,” Harry says.
“I’m still older than you. I . . . was born in May,” Draco adds, nonsensically, but from the expression on his face, he could have been born just yesterday.
“We do this every day, don’t we,” Harry says. “You and I, together.” His fingers curl around Draco’s nape, and he brushes Draco’s bottom lip with a rough thumb. “This.”
Mutely, Draco shakes his head. “Harry,” he says, “please,” but Harry can legitimately say he doesn’t know what Draco’s asking him to do, because Draco’s lips are parting, his head is leaning in to Harry’s touch, his hips are canting upward, and Harry has never done this before, but he thinks he might have done it a thousand times.
“I want to do it now,” Harry says.
Outside Voldemort is calling for his head on a platter, and Hogwarts seems to be crashing down around them, but Harry doesn’t care. He doesn’t care, because his whole future is standing right in front of him.
“I want to do now what we do then.”
“I can’t,” and Draco chokes on his own words, “I can’t tell you about our future,” and for the first time, the future is ‘ours’, not ‘yours’ or ‘mine’; it’s theirs.
Harry presses his hips inward, fitting against Draco’s; they fit. “I may never get another chance,” Harry says.
“But you said,” Draco begins, and Harry doesn’t care that if he does die, he can’t have this future, because he wants this present so badly that he’s willing to give up all the rest; he kisses him.
He kisses him and kisses him, and Harry’s only kissed one person just like this, and it was nothing like this because Draco’s nothing like Ginny. Draco’s kissed before (a thousand times before), and he knows how to do it, strong and sure, and putting his hands in the right places on Harry’s body, pulling Harry against him and fitting them yet more surely, more perfectly than Harry thought they could.
“Tell me,” Harry said, and they break apart. “Tell me our future,” and the eighth tale (the one that comes at the end, after everything) is that they fell in love eighth year.
“This is the eighth year,” Harry says, because it’s October, and he kisses him again. He worries that his kisses are too wet or wide, that he’s using too much tongue and that Draco may remember he’s a teenager, but Draco doesn’t seem to care. He’s using too much tongue, too, and when he breaks away there’s a line of spit and Harry licks it off of him and it’s so warm and wet with the world crashing down around them; he just doesn’t care.
So then (and then) they got to know each other, in temporary dormitories set up for the eighth years. They learned each other under the practice Quidditch stands and against the midnight sky, in the corners of the corridors and when the sun rose in the morning. They learned each other’s bodies, just as Harry’s learning Draco’s now, pulling off his shirt and tracing every part of him, kissing him and tasting.
“You liked it when I kissed you here,” Draco says, and kisses the corner of his jaw.
Harry shivers, but can’t read the truth in that because he would like it if Draco says some future self gets to have it, whether he would originally have liked it or not (prophesy is self-fulfilling). “Do you like it when I do this?” and Harry can’t help being a teenager, being over eager; he’s got his hand on Draco’s crotch, but Draco groans and says he likes it.
“It always got me,” Draco says, and makes a little circle of his hips, right into Harry’s hand. “Always.”
“And this?” Harry says, and grabs his arm. There are no scars besides the Dark Mark, and Harry can’t believe that if Draco really tried to cut it off, there would be no scars, and so he sinks his teeth into the Mark with something like relief.
“I,” Draco says, and then he makes a sound like pain, so Harry starts to take his mouth away and Draco makes an ah, a torn up, terrible sound, and then says, “Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”
“So,” Harry says, and smiles, “You like it.”
“I like it. I like it, Harry.” Draco’s hips buck against him. “Please don’t stop.”
“I won’t,” says Harry. “This is never going to stop.” He sinks down to his knees.
“Please, Harry, don’t, not yet,” Draco says. His hands bury in Harry’s hair, pulling up.
“I want to,” Harry says, and opens Draco’s trousers.
“Please, you’re so young, please-can’t we just-can’t we just . . . take it slowly?”
“I just want to taste it,” Harry says, and he does, and Draco makes more sounds, all those perfect sounds, and Harry wonders if this is what he sounded like then, or whether Draco never made these sounds at all.
Harry’s still pretty sure he’s going to die, and so he sucks it more, because to him it tastes real, and like life.
“Now let me,” Draco says. “Harry, just let me.”
Then he lays Harry down on the bed (because of course, there’s a bed, in the Room of Hidden Things), and starts saying things, things that couldn’t possibly be true, in the world of the other seven tales, things that aren’t sequential, things that make no sense, a thousand interpretations of a thousand endings, and Harry believes them all. All of them are true here, and Harry wonders if every story ever told maybe has an ending here, where everything is true.
“When I touched you like this,” Draco says, dragging his fingers down Harry’s chest, “I couldn’t believe how much you needed me. God, and I was so afraid.”
“You’re not afraid now,” Harry says, because Draco’s taking off the rest of their clothes.
“And when I touched your cock, I couldn’t-I couldn’t believe how much I needed you; I just wanted you to fill me up with it; I wanted you inside of me, and you wanted-you wanted to be inside, and I thought-God, Harry; I thought that I could keep you safe-you don’t know how I want to keep you safe.”
“I know it,” Harry says, because in this moment he cannot care less about the Horcruxes, Voldemort, that he is going to die. He just wants to think of this-just this once, in this hidden room, where time can last forever, and he can be eighteen, as he should have been, feeling this for his first time and remembering in the back of his mind there’s something valuable-something he’s forgotten, that he has to find.
A little phial of oil appears in Draco’s hand, and he says, “I’ll do it.”
Harry says, “I want, I want,” and needs to get the words out; he arches. “I want you to be inside of me.”
Draco’s breath catches, and he seems to have to look away. When at last he looks back, and opens his eyes, Harry thinks they may be wet. “Have you-have you done it before?”
Harry shakes his head, and Draco makes a choked sound and just says, “You can’t, oh God, you can’t-”
Taking the bottle from him, Harry looks at it. “Why not?”
Draco still won’t look at him. “If I hurt you-”
I fucked up; I fucked it up, I fucked it, Draco kept saying when they came in here, and Harry still can’t figure out what he means, or whether he meant this. “I’ll forgive you,” is all Harry says, and smiles a little. “We have plenty of time,” even though they don’t. “Please,” he says. “I want you to.”
Sucking in a breath, Draco takes back the bottle, and looks at it, just looks. “When I,” he begins, “when we . . . I wondered, once, who your first was, and you would never tell me.”
Harry spreads his legs. “At least now I can say it’s someone that I loved.”
“That’s just it.” Draco puts his hand on Harry’s ankle, and his flesh is warm, so so warm, and he’s looking at Harry’s legs and cock and other private places as though he’s never seen such things. At last his eyes lift back to Harry’s face. “That’s what you always said.”
Harry thinks about that. “Then it was always you,” he says, and Draco puts his fingers inside, but his fingers won’t stop shaking, his arm won’t stop shaking; all of him is shaking, and he’s trying too hard to be gentle.
“I might as well be eighteen again,” Draco murmurs.
Harry says, “I want to hear what we’re like. I want to know, years from now, how we do this.”
Draco shudders, and says, down low and close to Harry’s ear, “You stretched me out like this, and I would open for you. God, I’d open for you. You gave yourself to me and I took you. Oh God, how I’d take you.” Draco’s fingers are deep inside Harry know, slowly working open, and Harry’s never felt this before, this sensation of another person inside him, and he doesn’t know how to feel about it other than he wants it; he doesn’t even know if he likes it, but he wants it, and wants more.
“You were everything to me; you were trust and hope, redemption, all combined, and sometimes when you looked at me, across the Great Hall, and I knew-I just knew- what you were thinking, and God, you could be so dirty-so filthy fucking crude, and I should have been ashamed, I would have been ashamed, of all the things I wanted you to do to me, but it was you. It was always you, and you were so-you were so good.”
Draco’s looking at him intently, now, and Harry’s squirming under his eyes, around his fingers, against his knees, and he so spread out, splayed open, just for Draco’s eyes and mind and body, and Harry feels scared and awkward and too hot, and he wants to give him everything, all at once-everything, so Harry just says, “I want to be good for you,” because this is the choice he gets to make. Saving the world, his whole life-they were never really choices, but this is a choice he chooses.
Draco’s eyes go so soft; his fingers press in deep; his lips brush Harry’s cheeks and he says, “You’ll always be good, Harry. You’ll never be anything but good, don’t let yourself believe that you’re anything less than that. No matter what happens, Harry. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and I have no regrets.”
“Do you talk like that to me?” Harry says, and cants his hips again, into Draco’s fingers.
Draco laughs a little, drily. “No,” he says. “When we first started this, mostly I just moaned, and later tried to play it off with snark.”
“What did I say?” Harry asks, but instead of speaking, Draco gets on his knees, positioning himself, and then he pushes into Harry’s body.
It’s wider than he thought, and burns more than he expected, and Harry doesn’t care, because he’s eighteen, and having sex, and he never thought he would live to do that, much less with a man, much less with this man, much less right now, forever in this room, and always.
“Whatever you said,” Draco says at last, his voice warm and ticklish, right by Harry’s ear, “never think for a moment that I didn’t learn what you really meant. Never think that I won’t learn to love you, because I always do. Never think that this won’t happen, because it will. No matter how hard you try, this always happens. It always will.”
“It’ll happen,” Harry says. He’s adjusting to the girth of Draco inside of him, and though it still burns, he just can’t get over the fact that Draco is inside of him, and he wants more; in every future he wants this; this is every breath and every moment, because in this one, still fractured beat of time, life can’t possibly be more than this. “It’s happening.”
“But you thought it wouldn’t,” Draco says, moving against him, spreading Harry’s legs farther, pushing deeper, stroking hands down Harry’s thighs until he’s gently cupping what’s between them and squeezing, softly, carefully, excruciatingly slowly. “I know you thought it wouldn’t. You thought that you could stop it, and that informed everything you did, all those things you said.”
Draco puts his lips on Harry’s ear. “Listen to me, Harry. I’m telling you right now-I would rather have had this more than an entire lifetime of never knowing you, like this, never knowing your body, like this, never knowing-” He lifts his head and kisses Harry’s scar, and Harry thinks he means, your soul, like this, because that’s how Harry feels.
“Oh God,” Harry groaned, and arched. “Oh God, harder Draco; give me more; I want all of you-harder, harder-”
Draco’s fucking him, and he’s saying, “I love you, remember that I love you, always remember, I love you in the future, I love you in the past, and I love you right now, forever.”
“Oh, God,” Harry says again, “I’m going to come.”
“I love everything you are,” Draco says, his hips thrusting long and slow and almost gently; “I love everything you become.”
And Harry has a lifetime, he suddenly realizes, he has Draco Malfoy as he is right now, young and probably still vain and stupid, but he knows who Malfoy will become just as this Draco knows who Harry will be, and Harry doesn’t know how he can possibly deal with that, losing this Draco and learning to love that Malfoy, except he’ll always have this to look forward to.
He will always have this, and the thought of it-just the thought of Draco now and getting to have Malfoy now and getting to have this, in the future-just the thought of it makes him come; it makes him come and come and come, and he can hear Draco pumping into him and saying-
“I forgive you; I didn’t understand at first, but I forgive you; just forgive me for this-for this, Harry; you should have known that this would always happen-it’s always going to happen-” Draco was coming too, wild erratic thrusts, hungry and uneven.
Afterwards Harry lies with Draco in his arms, and thinks it’s strange, to be holding an older man like this, but in the future he won’t be older. He’ll be Malfoy, and Malfoy won’t know that this is going to happen, but Harry will. Harry will always be thinking of this moment when he’s with Malfoy, and he’ll stay with Malfoy forever so that this moment can come true.
For the first time, he thinks of his other (older) self. He puts his hand in Draco’s (thinning) hair and says, “What did you mean?”
“Mmph,” says Draco, and snuggles against his neck.
“You weren’t talking to me,” Harry says. “You were talking to my older self.”
Draco kisses the hollow of his throat, and simply says, “I can’t tell you your future, Harry.”
“Except you have already,” Harry says, and goes on, “You think I’m going to regret this.”
Draco just makes another noise. “I don’t,” kissing his way up to Harry’s ear. “I don’t regret it.”
“You think I will,” Harry says.
“No matter what happens,” Draco says, and kisses him deeply between his words, “I absolutely don’t regret this.”
“Tell me what you mean,” Harry says, but Draco gets out of bed, and starts getting dressed.
“We’re out of time,” he says. “I’m due through that door.”
“What?” says Harry, but he gets dressed too, because as good as everything was, Voldemort is still outside, and he’s probably going to die.
A moment after he throws on his shirt, Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe and Goyle step through the door, and Draco’s nowhere to be seen.
“Malfoy,” Harry breathes, and feels utterly slammed by the disorientation of Malfoy’s pale young face, beautiful still, but not beloved yet.
Malfoy just sneers. “Potter,” then he sniffs, “hiding like the coward you are, I see.”
Harry wants things to be different, but he’s out of time here, too.
The problem is, there’s never enough time, even when you can control it.
*
In the final battle, Harry goes to the Forbidden Forest, and he dies, just as he always knew (deep down) he would. He dreams of King’s Cross, then comes back to life (that part, he never knew). Then he’s the Dark Lord’s prisoner, and Draco is hiding somewhere in the forest, waiting, watching-here to ensure the future; Harry’s always known that was his purpose here.
What he doesn’t understand is why, in the final face-off with Voldemort, Draco comes out from the shadows, and points his wand at his younger self. Harry doesn’t know what’s happening, but Malfoy doesn’t either; he’s staring fearfully at Voldemort, and doesn’t see his elder self at all.
There’s another moment of choice right here, but this one’s a little different; only one Draco Malfoy is being threatened, and it’s the other Draco Malfoy that’s doing the threatening. Of course it’s (his) Draco Harry loves, but Malfoy he doesn’t want to lose, because Malfoy is his Draco, and he’s already begun to think of them as one (in spite of the fyre, in spite of everything).
But (his) Draco is firing the curse, even while Harry’s fighting Voldemort, offering him mercy, and all of the sudden, Harry knows what Draco wants him to do. What he doesn’t know is why, but he does it anyway.
Later they will say Harry Potter tried to disarm the Dark Lord twice, and missed the first time, but it’s not true. Later, Harry will figure out that he had to disarm Draco in order to control the Elder Wand, but it won’t be much comfort, because in the moments it takes to look away and disarm (his) Draco, Voldemort aims at Harry, and Draco throws a different kind of (wandless) magic into play.
It’s the same magic that his mother used, when she gave her life for Harry, and in the end, that’s how Harry gained mastery of the Elder Wand and survived, and Draco Malfoy-his Draco Malfoy-disintegrates before his eyes. When Harry casts Expelliarmus the second time, this time in Voldemort’s direction, he wants him to die (he does).
Harry looks at then at the place where Draco Malfoy-his Draco Malfoy had been, and is no more, and slowly after that, he turns to look at the other Draco Malfoy-not his Draco Malfoy at all.
If life is a book, then the pages are being written as we speak; if the end is already written, and we skip ahead to read it, then it is not an ending but a beginning, and all the pages afterward are unwritten. This isn’t a book, Harry’s thinking, as he looks at Draco Malfoy (the new Draco Malfoy, the unwritten Draco Malfoy), and nineteen years later isn’t written yet (and if it is, and he doesn’t like it, he’ll rewrite it; he’ll rewrite it and rewrite it).
Harry, in this future, will always come back to the Room of Requirement, , where the eighth tale was told and can be told again and will always be told in infinite different ways and still be true; he will always be coming back to that, back and back and back, even as he moves forward.
Harry looks at Malfoy and thinks, if Draco had never loved me, this would not have happened. He thinks that he can stop this, that if he never loves Malfoy, never touches him, never makes a future with him, then this present cannot be, and so Harry looks at Malfoy, and turns away.
He’ll marry Ginny (won’t he?) and have children (won’t he?) and stand one day on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, and when he sees Draco Malfoy standing there, Harry will nod like he doesn’t know him, and he’ll pretend like this never happened.
After all, it hasn’t happened yet.
*
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: meta, sex, and sad (don’t say I didn’t warn you)
Summary: Draco Malfoy tries to fix the past, but instead mucks it up some more. For Harry, it all becomes quite clear.
Go to: part 1
*
The summer passes in warm waxen days that take ages just to burn and melt away, and Harry feels like he’s moving through a thickness of time, gone still and sulking in the hazy summer heat. He’d been convinced that if only they could destroy the locket, their problems would be solved; they could find the next Horcrux and move on.
Instead, the summer comes and passes, and Shell Cottage is attacked while Harry, Hermione, and Ron are out searching for a golden cup. Draco Malfoy, as it happens, saves the Order with a Patronus as a warning, and they all come out alive (except for Dobby).
After that, the Order frees Malfoy, who stays of course; he says he’s going to help them find the next Horcrux. The problem is, he was never here (in the past) and doesn’t know the whole story (no one does), and has to piece together all the bits he learned after the end. He doesn’t know where the cup is either, and as the summer melts away to autumn, his general good humour melts with it.
He grows agitated (it’s taking too long), moody when Harry visits him, which he does. For some reason, this Draco Malfoy is easier to comprehend, this Draco Malfoy who seems to think that everything is going wrong. It’s a feeling Harry shares (this essential wrongness of the world, an intense feeling of should not have been), and yet the fact that Malfoy feels it too makes things easier, and Malfoy said that things would turn out fine (in the end). Harry remembers Lily’s freckles, and for the first time feels the thread of hope (as before him, Draco Malfoy slowly unravels).
Ron and Hermione don’t share those feelings; Ron is too grounded for such abstraction and Hermione too determined (why waste time on the wrongness of the world?) Only Malfoy shares it, and Harry does not know what to do with that, other than to waste his time with Malfoy when they retreat back to Shell Cottage (which happens more and more).
Malfoy won’t tell him any more tales (though Harry hasn’t asked since learning about Lily’s freckles). He snarks at everyone; there are shadows under his eyes; maybe he’s a bit like Snape after all, when eventually he asks Kingsley Shacklebolt (in a fit of snide disapproval at the way the Order seems to be handling everything), “Has he been to Malfoy Manor yet?”
Shacklebolt doesn’t need to ask who ‘he’ is, but he questions Malfoy anyway, and Malfoy isn’t giving any answers. When they give him Veritaserum, he’s still sullen and all he says is, “They should have gone to Malfoy Manor by now.”
“He was tetchy,” Shacklebolt says. “He kept blinking, scratching the back of his neck.” He looks at Harry gently, and Harry is tired of people doing that, of all the adults looking at him like they know better, because they don’t (except one does). “Harry, you do know that some people can fight Veritaserum, don’t you?”
Harry hasn’t wanted to ask. He doesn’t like to ask, but when he does ask (“what was the shape of Malfoy’s Patronus?”), he already knows the answer.
So they go to Malfoy Manor.
Malfoy knows a secret way (of course he does; it’s his house). It’s underground, and they end up in a sort of cellar (dungeon, Harry thinks, and wonders if he would have thought it if it wasn’t Draco Malfoy’s house). Inside the cellar are Luna Lovegood, Dean Thomas, Ollivander, and Griphook.
They usher the prisoners back through the tunnels, and back outside to safety; then Malfoy leads Harry, Hermione, and Ron back inside the tunnels, insisting, “Only them. Only these three. You can’t go,” he tells Shacklebolt, and seems to be resisting sticking out his tongue. He’s supposed to be in his thirties, but not for the first time, Harry thinks this might just be Malfoy under an aging potion. Then he remembers Lily’s freckles, and tries to forget the things that might not be true.
Suddenly, the inhabitants of Malfoy Manor realize something has happened to the prisoners. An alarm goes up, and Malfoy hangs back; “I’m not supposed to meet myself; that’s the first rule of time travel,” he tells them.
Bellatrix screams and tortures Hermione; Harry fights her and Malfoy’s father; suddenly there’s Nagini, and Draco Malfoy. The real Draco Malfoy-Malfoy who’s supposed to be here, anyway, and God, he is so young (am I that young? Harry doesn’t feel that way).
He doesn’t understand why he never noticed that Malfoy-even this Malfoy-looks just like a Black; he never noticed that perhaps, if this Malfoy would only smile in his direction-not with a sneer or insult attached, but with friendship, Harry could have-maybe they really could have been-
A spell pops directly in front of him, narrowly deflected, and Harry looks over in the shadows to see where the Protego came from, finding Draco Malfoy (the other Draco Malfoy). He’s taller, longer hair, broader shoulders, long legs and thighs (his thighs-for a moment, Harry can’t think of what he’d say about Draco Malfoy’s thighs-and yet somehow, he can’t stop looking, because they’re long and lean and muscular and they belong to a man, but still he can’t stop looking), but that Draco Malfoy (his Draco Malfoy-or anyway, the one on his side) is waving Harry back, telling him to pay attention.
Harry defends himself, defends his friends, but periodically there’s something he doesn’t see, and someone he thought he knew, but doesn’t really, protecting him.
It’s when the chandelier is going to fall on the younger Malfoy and Nagini has finally scented the elder Draco that there’s a choice to make, except there’s no choice at all. Still, that moment is suspended in time, suspended in Harry’s memory (maybe Draco used the time-turner), and later, he actually thinks about it.
He thinks that if the elder Draco really is a later version of Malfoy, he should have saved the younger one, because if the younger one had died, the older one wouldn’t live, and then Harry would never have found the sword, and never have saved Luna, and whatever else they’re going to achieve because the elder Draco helped them.
But Harry isn’t thinking in that moment, and so saves his Draco Malfoy, and not the other one. It’s just an instinct-maybe because Draco saved him; maybe because of Lily’s freckles; Harry doesn’t know. What he does know is that Draco, when he sees Harry’s save him instead of the younger Malfoy, breaks from a look of concentration into an expression that’s so crushed, hurt terribly, overwhelmed by disappointment, that the only word for it is crestfallen.
“I’ve fucked it up,” he says in horror; “Oh my God, I’ve fucked it-”
“Are you,” Harry begins, and Draco waves at him wildly, still standing in the shadows.
“Him,” Draco shouts, waving at his younger self. “Him, goddamn you, Harry, him!”
Harry glances at the younger Malfoy, and Mrs. Malfoy has saved him from the chandelier, so he thinks for a moment that maybe he made the right choice after all. The younger Malfoy, regaining his balance, steadies himself and points his wand (haphazardly at best) at Harry.
Turning slightly toward the elder Draco, still in shadow, Harry says, “Do I . . . ?”
Cursing (inaudibly, but the intent is obvious), the elder Draco disarms his younger self, and Malfoy doesn’t know what hit him.
When they finally get away, all they have to show for it is a Malfoy’s hawthorn wand and a bit of Bellatrix’s hair. Draco (wearily) says that it’s enough, but Harry worries that he’s messed up the future (or is it history).
Draco shakes his head. His expression is warm and his voice is soft, and though his words tell a different story, the corners of his mouth speak only of regret. “No,” he says. “You were fine. It’s not your fault. Don’t blame yourself; of course it’s not your fault; I just-you were magnificent,” and there’s something in his eyes that also says, you always were.
Harry can’t sleep that night, or the nights that follow, because he knows the truth is too perfect to be true. Autumn’s rolled in on waves of leaves and sunsets, harvest colours in Gryffindor gold and red. Meanwhile Harry dreams of Lily’s freckles (red hair, her smile, gold skin, green grass; the grass was so green at spring in Hogwarts, the first time Harry kissed her mother). All Harry can think when he wakes up is that green grass is a dream, which also means Astoria isn’t real.
These days Draco doesn’t smile nearly as much as he did when they first found him, so that now when Harry says, “it isn’t real,” Draco doesn’t give him that shit-eating grin. Instead he looks a little pensive, a little surprised, and says quite kindly, “What isn’t real, Harry?”
“That story you told me,” Harry says.
Draco looks at him a little while, and looks away. “If you want it to be,” he says, which answers nothing.
“What are we like?” is what Harry wants.
Draco still won’t look at him.
“I don’t mean me and Ginny. I don’t mean you and-and her. I mean . . .”
“You and I?” Draco’s voice is bitter; he looks at his hands, which slowly clench and unclench, fist and unfist, hold and unhold all the thousand futures he has not yet told.
“You and I,” Harry says.
“You nodded to me once on Platform Nine and Three Quarters,” is all that Draco says.
Harry opens his mouth, closes it. “Why was I-why were you on Platform Nine and Three Quarters?”
“Didn’t I tell you?” Draco unfolds his fists again. “I had a son.”
Harry wants to say something, but can’t, because he doesn’t believe in Lily’s freckles; he doesn’t believe in green grass, and he doesn’t believe Draco. “You knew my scar was hurting,” he says. “You know the way I sleep. You know my magic,” he says, “so you can’t say you don’t know me.”
“Of course we know each other, Harry.” Draco’s voice is toneless, and his hands clench again. “We went to school together. Don’t you remember?”
“I mean I know you now.”
“Of course you do,” and now Draco just sounds tired. “We’re talking, aren’t we?”
“I mean I’ll know you then.”
“We’ve been changing tenses,” says Draco. “That’s not good form either.”
“Stop. Just stop.” Harry wants to shake him, wants to shake himself, because he doesn’t like this truth either, this truth where there aren’t any answers, and the story isn’t clear. “Just give it to me straight.”
“Straight.” Draco scoffs. “We’re friends. Is that what you want to hear?”
“Yes,” says Harry, who sits down, and listens.
In the fifth tale Draco tells him, Harry spoke for him in the trials that followed the war, saving Draco’s life. Harry got to know Draco then and gradually they became friends. Harry learned that Draco regretted all the things he’d done, and Draco learned that Harry wasn’t half such a ponce as he used to be (“well, you were”), and from there they established a relationship of mutual trust and respect. Harry, after witnessing the corruption in the Wizengamot, became a barrister, and Draco made a Quidditch team, and was friends with Viktor Krum.
Harry still married Ginny, and Draco still had a son, but though he was married to Astoria, it wasn’t a love match. He says it was a marriage of convenience, so that the wizarding world would not think less of him, but Harry’s not sure what he means by that, and wonders if his marriage to Ginny was a love match also.
Draco looks away and says, “I can’t tell you your future, Harry,” but of course he has (only it keeps changing, which is why you can never tell the future, never).
The problem is, in a story, as you go deeper, the ending seems inevitable, but in everything else, as you go deeper, the possibilities seem endless.
*
Draco tells him the sixth tale after Harry’s broken into Gringott’s and got the cup, and come out riding a dragon. It was Draco who told them to go there, and Malfoy Manor had proved fruitless, but Draco says it needed to happen, and Harry believes him.
“I don’t believe you,” Harry says, having destroyed the fifth Horcrux. “Why are my children all named after-” he can’t believe he’s asking this-“after Gryffindors?”
Draco looks surprised he’s asking it as well, but he welcomes Harry’s company (or seems to), and has a look he saves just for Harry, behind his anxiety that things aren’t going as they should (as they’ve already happened). Harry thinks the look is fond, and Draco looks at him that way now, a slight smile, light behind it. “You like Gryffindors, Harry,” he says mildly.
“Right,” Harry says, “but Slytherin had heroes too. Snape,” he says first, and can’t quite meet Draco’s eye when he says, “You.”
He looks at Draco from under his lashes, and sees the way Draco’s expression changes, melts into something warm and gentle and yet more fond, and Harry used to think that expression was condescending, but he didn’t know him then. “Maybe you gave one of them a middle name,” Draco suggests. “James Snape Potter.” He pauses, as though he can’t quite meet Harry’s eyes, either. “Lily Narcissa is pretty,” he adds.
“Or a constellation, like the Blacks,” Harry says. “Albus Scorpius.”
Draco flinches, but he only murmurs, “I never knew you paid attention in astronomy.”
Harry’s eyes narrow. “It’s not enough, is it,” he says, but it’s not a question, really. “Just a middle name. I would think I would do more than that.”
“Would you?” Draco’s murmuring still, his lashes gold in the sunlight slanting through the window off the sea.
“Yes,” says Harry, certain now. “That was just another story, wasn’t it? I’m not even a lawyer, am I.”
“No, Harry.” Draco’s voice is almost obedient now, so soft. “You’re not a lawyer.”
“Then what am I?” Harry asks, but the question’s really, what are we?
In the sixth story Draco Malfoy tells him, Harry doesn’t have any children. He was married, then divorced, and then he was all alone, in a series of relationships. Draco says he was an Auror, though, and still got lots of collars. He was still a bit too abusive towards dark wizards, but Harry guesses it can’t all be pretty, and besides, dark wizards deserve it.
Meanwhile, Draco worked in international relations, along with Viktor Krum, who was an ambassador to Britain. Draco didn’t marry Astoria (“let the wizarding world disapprove of whom they may”), but he got to know Harry because they both worked at the Ministry. There was a case involving trans-Atlantic wand trafficking, and they had to work together, but it turned out not to be that bad, so they started going to the pub, and played Quidditch, and Draco even hung around Ron and Hermione sometimes, even though he still wasn’t friends with them.
And then sometimes Harry would have tea with Draco’s mother (“of course, father’s always out on those days; I make sure of it-but you stayed with me, when he was Kissed, and wouldn’t let me be alone.” Draco pauses. “Prat,” and Harry believes it because he didn’t let Draco be alone that day in the bathroom, either, and Harry hadn’t really thought about it that much then, but now he wishes that had ended differently).
Harry thinks of Lily’s freckles, and thinks that he should mourn their passing, but then again, it’s unclear whether they actually existed (whether they will exist), and he can barely remember Ginny’s face these days. She was some future that he wanted, a tale he told himself to sleep at night, but as the nights drag on and slaying Voldemort seems less and less likely, it gets hard to think about what will be, and Harry begins to focus on what is.
Right now is evenings in Shell Cottage with Draco Malfoy, spinning tales about futures that could be and never were, and it feels more real than the dreams that Harry had when he still believed in happy endings. Winter whispers at the windows with promises of frost; Ron and Hermione have their own dreams of the future, and the nursery where Draco Malfoy sleeps holds a future that never can be, now. At night they light candles and drink tea, and sometimes Harry thinks that if they could live forever in right now, the only tale he would tell would be this one.
The problem is the truth is in the telling, and the future’s what you make it.
*
Draco tells Harry the seventh tale because Harry’s finally figured it all out. He’s read between the lines of all those other stories and listened to the secrets in them, and can’t believe he never realized, “You’re gay.”
“They call me joyful, at the office,” is all Draco says, but he doesn’t look at Harry in that way he has and he’s picking at his nails. It’s a habit he’s picked up, like the other ones Shacklebolt described (the blinking, scratching his nape), and Harry wonders if it has to do with being somewhere he does not belong (but rubbing his arm, that’s the main thing, and Harry doesn’t think that has anything to do with time travel at all).
“You keep saying the wizarding world doesn’t approve of you,” Harry accuses, “and you’re always bringing up Krum-it’s always you and Krum-and you said Krum was gay.” He crosses his arms, as though he’s proven his point.
“You can be such a child sometimes.” Agitated, Draco stands, turns away, looks out the window at the sea. Braced against the frame, he’s never looked quite so much like an adult, like a man, the long lean lines of him limned in light, grown thinner in the last few months-waning, like the sun. “Is that all you can think about?”
“I haven’t thought of that at all.” Harry knows he sounds as immature as Draco has just accused him of being, but he can’t help himself. Uncrossing his arms, he drops his hands to his sides, and frowns. “I haven’t had time. I’ve been doing . . .” he thinks about it, “more important things.”
“Of course you have,” but the line of Draco against that window is tense and hard, coiled tight.
“How am I supposed to know?” Harry says, but he’s not quite sure what he’s asking.
“You’re not. You’re not supposed to know anything at all.” Draco turns around then, and Harry almost takes a step back; Draco looks so absolutely wrecked. “Harry, you’re seventeen.”
“I’m eighteen,” because July was three months ago. Harry lifts his chin, and he knows it sounds so young, even as he says it. “That’s old enough.”
“Old enough for what?”
Harry falters, then. It’s the sound of Draco’s voice. “Old enough to know about-about being gay. About you being gay,” he says, but the correction sounds half-hearted, even to his own ears.
“It’s not old enough to save the world. No one’s ever old enough. I’m not old enough, and I’m . . .” He trails off, and for the first time, Harry realizes he doesn’t know how far in the future Draco’s from. Old enough to have children, old enough to put them on the Hogwarts Express, old enough for thinning hair . . . Draco rubs his arm, and though they say children are different, Harry thinks no one is too young to have regrets.
“This shouldn’t be happening,” Draco says, sounding so broken. “It’s all wrong. You said it yourself-it’s not just this.” He gestures around him wildly. “It’s everything. It’s this world-what was it that you said-the entire premise; it makes no sense.”
“This makes sense,” Harry says, coming closer.
Draco looks unbearably wretched. “This makes the least sense of all. I’ve fucked it so completely, Harry; you have no idea.”
“You haven’t fucked it,” Harry says. “You’ve fixed it. See,” he holds out his hand, “we’re friends.”
“We’re not friends.” Draco turns away. “I’ve lied. Don’t you see, I always lie?”
The seventh tale goes like this.
Harry defended Draco at the trials, but he didn’t do much more than that, and afterward, Draco was left to make a life for himself. There weren’t many opportunities open to a former Death Eater, so Draco opened up a shop, but it didn’t do well, and his mother was slowly going mad, and there was no one to turn to when his father died.
Draco got back at him (his father) the only way he could, cavorting with thieves and filth and Muggleborns (“filthy Mudbloods,” he actually says, in a fit of bitter savagery aimed at the frosted window glass). He made a spectacle of himself any way he could; he drank too much and took to potions; he got in brawls and would fuck anything that moved (“so that makes me gay, Harry, and because you’re so grown-up, because you’re so mature, I’ll tell you the truth; it makes me worse than gay; it makes me a fucking slut; is that what you wanted to hear? Is it?”)
It’s just like the second story (or was it the third? The one in which Harry was debauched, and wore leather trousers, only Draco isn’t laughing at all, now. He seems to think not a bit of this is funny, now that he’s given Harry hope) only in reverse.
Harry Potter, politician, peacemaker, and possible Unspeakable, disapproved, of course. He arrested Draco (“more times than I care to count”) and told him he should get a girlfriend, and Draco leered at him and said filthy things (“like, ‘you could fit the bill’”). Harry only ever frowned and told him to do something better with his life, something involving chasing criminals or making friends or picket fences, and Draco sneered and said (“this is what I am. This is all I ever was”).
When Draco tried to cut the Dark Mark off, it was Aurors and Harry who broke into his flat. Once the blood was cleaned up, his arm healed, wounds washed away, Harry looked stern in his scarlet, and gave him all his platitudes (“something’s got to change,” “you can’t go on this way,” “you’ve got to think about your future”). That was when Harry gave Draco something from the Department of Mysteries, and when Draco looked at it, it was a time-turner.
“I don’t believe you,” Harry says.
“Don’t worry, though,” Draco says. “You live happily ever after.”
Harry’s got to leave the room, or he’ll sick up.
The problem is we never want the truth.
*
Later, Draco calms down. He apologizes to Harry, and even though he hasn’t said it isn’t true, he hasn’t said that about any of his other tales either. Bits and pieces, Harry’s beginning to think, bits and pieces can be true-because obviously, not all of them at once can happen. There’s only one future; he knows that, but after a while of staying at Shell Cottage the lines of his hand begin to look clean again.
After that they go to Hogwarts, because it’s the only thing Draco can figure out they need to do (“there are hazy in-betweens, but let’s just get to the climax, shall we? I mean that metaphorically,” he adds, and leers at Hermione, who looks horrified, and Harry thinks there’s a sharper edge to his smirk than there was before).
Shortly after reaching Hogwarts (Draco in the Invisibility Cloak), they’re found out, and have to split up. Ron and Hermione go down to the Chamber of Secrets to fetch the Basilisk tooth, and Harry and Draco go to Ravenclaw Tower to find some kind of diadem (Harry doesn’t know; Draco told him). Out in the Forbidden Forest, Voldemort is calling for Harry’s blood, and the Grey Lady tells them to go to the Room of Hidden Things.
“You go without me,” Draco says, stopping at the top of the stairs.
“What?” Harry stops as well. “No. What’s wrong?”
“I’m not coming with you.”
“You are,” says Harry. “I wouldn’t have found it without you,” because this is how he can have a happy ending.
Draco simply shakes his head again. “No. It isn’t right. I’m not supposed to be here.”
“No,” says Harry. “Of course I’m not going without you. There are Death Eaters everywhere.”
“It’s okay,” says Draco. “Just let me go; I’m supposed to-”
“I don’t care what you’re supposed to do.”
Draco’s growing paler. “Harry, this is how it’s supposed to go. I wasn’t-this is how it needs to be.”
“No,” says Harry. “I don’t care. I’m not leaving you; you’re coming with me.”
Draco grows paler still, looking sicker by the second. “Harry, no. I’m not-I’m not even meant to be here.”
“I don’t care, I said,” because even if this is Draco’s past, Draco is Harry’s present, and he’s eighteen and maybe he die and the present’s all he’s got; he’s got to hold on to something. “I’m not leaving you,” he says. “I’m never going to leave you.”
Draco looks stricken at those words, and says, “My God. Oh, my God. I’ve fucked it up.” He begins to back away.
“Don’t,” Harry says, and reaches for him. He grips Draco’s arm and his hand slides down, down into Draco’s own, Draco’s lean strong hand, his calloused-manly, Harry thinks-fingers, and it’s one of the easiest things Harry’s ever done. “Come with me.”
Draco just looks at him, and his expression is stricken with sadness, and loss. “I understand now,” he says. “I know why you left.”
“I’m not leaving.” Harry tugs.
“It was so this wouldn’t happen,” Draco says.
“Nothing’s happened yet,” Harry says, and tugs again.
“I’m sorry, Harry,” Draco says. “I did it wrong. I didn’t mean for-I didn’t mean for it to be this way. It just-it happened.”
“Please, come,” Harry says, tugs once more, and Draco comes.
So Harry and Draco go to the Room of Requirement, and Draco’s eyes are as grey as wishing wells-empty, and yet holding a thousand hopes of things that could never be. There’s a weight of inevitability in them, as though Draco’s finally decided something, and Harry doesn’t like it.
Harry turns to him, and he isn’t looking for the diadem any more. “I die, don’t I,” he says, but that, also, is not a question.
Draco lets go of his hand. Harry can see the dust in the Room of Hidden Things, floating gently down. “What?” is all Draco says.
“I die,” Harry says. “It’s okay. I’ve known for a while now-all those stories you made up. It was just to get me here.”
Draco blinks, shakes his head. “No. No, Harry, you don’t die.”
“It’s why you came back, isn’t it?” Harry says. “Dumbledore sent you, or maybe Snape.” He shrugs. “I always knew. I mean, I didn’t want to face it, but I knew deep down. I had to die. I didn’t want to at first, but I-I think now I can do it.”
Draco shakes his head. “No, you don’t, Harry. You don’t. I promise you, you’re . . .” His eyes flick up to the scar. “You’re the Boy Who Lived.”
“You’ve made a lot of promises,” Harry says, and lifts his chin.
Draco blinks again, but this time slowly, and his eyes are so, so clear. “I have done,” he says, just as slowly and just as clearly, “but they weren’t to you. To you I’ve mostly lied, but trust me, Harry. I’m not lying now. You’re why we lived. Harry,” he says, “you’re why I lived.”
“Then tell me how we are.” Harry steps closer. “In the future. Tell me how we really are.”
Draco looks down at him (but they’re almost of a height) and falters. “I can’t tell you,” he tries to say.
“Tell me about this,” Harry says, and brushes his lips over Draco.
Draco closes his eyes and breathes, breathes, breathes, so harshly. Very carefully, he removes Harry’s hand from his arms. “I’m over twice your age,” he says, very gently.
“We’re the same age,” Harry says.
“I’m still older than you. I . . . was born in May,” Draco adds, nonsensically, but from the expression on his face, he could have been born just yesterday.
“We do this every day, don’t we,” Harry says. “You and I, together.” His fingers curl around Draco’s nape, and he brushes Draco’s bottom lip with a rough thumb. “This.”
Mutely, Draco shakes his head. “Harry,” he says, “please,” but Harry can legitimately say he doesn’t know what Draco’s asking him to do, because Draco’s lips are parting, his head is leaning in to Harry’s touch, his hips are canting upward, and Harry has never done this before, but he thinks he might have done it a thousand times.
“I want to do it now,” Harry says.
Outside Voldemort is calling for his head on a platter, and Hogwarts seems to be crashing down around them, but Harry doesn’t care. He doesn’t care, because his whole future is standing right in front of him.
“I want to do now what we do then.”
“I can’t,” and Draco chokes on his own words, “I can’t tell you about our future,” and for the first time, the future is ‘ours’, not ‘yours’ or ‘mine’; it’s theirs.
Harry presses his hips inward, fitting against Draco’s; they fit. “I may never get another chance,” Harry says.
“But you said,” Draco begins, and Harry doesn’t care that if he does die, he can’t have this future, because he wants this present so badly that he’s willing to give up all the rest; he kisses him.
He kisses him and kisses him, and Harry’s only kissed one person just like this, and it was nothing like this because Draco’s nothing like Ginny. Draco’s kissed before (a thousand times before), and he knows how to do it, strong and sure, and putting his hands in the right places on Harry’s body, pulling Harry against him and fitting them yet more surely, more perfectly than Harry thought they could.
“Tell me,” Harry said, and they break apart. “Tell me our future,” and the eighth tale (the one that comes at the end, after everything) is that they fell in love eighth year.
“This is the eighth year,” Harry says, because it’s October, and he kisses him again. He worries that his kisses are too wet or wide, that he’s using too much tongue and that Draco may remember he’s a teenager, but Draco doesn’t seem to care. He’s using too much tongue, too, and when he breaks away there’s a line of spit and Harry licks it off of him and it’s so warm and wet with the world crashing down around them; he just doesn’t care.
So then (and then) they got to know each other, in temporary dormitories set up for the eighth years. They learned each other under the practice Quidditch stands and against the midnight sky, in the corners of the corridors and when the sun rose in the morning. They learned each other’s bodies, just as Harry’s learning Draco’s now, pulling off his shirt and tracing every part of him, kissing him and tasting.
“You liked it when I kissed you here,” Draco says, and kisses the corner of his jaw.
Harry shivers, but can’t read the truth in that because he would like it if Draco says some future self gets to have it, whether he would originally have liked it or not (prophesy is self-fulfilling). “Do you like it when I do this?” and Harry can’t help being a teenager, being over eager; he’s got his hand on Draco’s crotch, but Draco groans and says he likes it.
“It always got me,” Draco says, and makes a little circle of his hips, right into Harry’s hand. “Always.”
“And this?” Harry says, and grabs his arm. There are no scars besides the Dark Mark, and Harry can’t believe that if Draco really tried to cut it off, there would be no scars, and so he sinks his teeth into the Mark with something like relief.
“I,” Draco says, and then he makes a sound like pain, so Harry starts to take his mouth away and Draco makes an ah, a torn up, terrible sound, and then says, “Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”
“So,” Harry says, and smiles, “You like it.”
“I like it. I like it, Harry.” Draco’s hips buck against him. “Please don’t stop.”
“I won’t,” says Harry. “This is never going to stop.” He sinks down to his knees.
“Please, Harry, don’t, not yet,” Draco says. His hands bury in Harry’s hair, pulling up.
“I want to,” Harry says, and opens Draco’s trousers.
“Please, you’re so young, please-can’t we just-can’t we just . . . take it slowly?”
“I just want to taste it,” Harry says, and he does, and Draco makes more sounds, all those perfect sounds, and Harry wonders if this is what he sounded like then, or whether Draco never made these sounds at all.
Harry’s still pretty sure he’s going to die, and so he sucks it more, because to him it tastes real, and like life.
“Now let me,” Draco says. “Harry, just let me.”
Then he lays Harry down on the bed (because of course, there’s a bed, in the Room of Hidden Things), and starts saying things, things that couldn’t possibly be true, in the world of the other seven tales, things that aren’t sequential, things that make no sense, a thousand interpretations of a thousand endings, and Harry believes them all. All of them are true here, and Harry wonders if every story ever told maybe has an ending here, where everything is true.
“When I touched you like this,” Draco says, dragging his fingers down Harry’s chest, “I couldn’t believe how much you needed me. God, and I was so afraid.”
“You’re not afraid now,” Harry says, because Draco’s taking off the rest of their clothes.
“And when I touched your cock, I couldn’t-I couldn’t believe how much I needed you; I just wanted you to fill me up with it; I wanted you inside of me, and you wanted-you wanted to be inside, and I thought-God, Harry; I thought that I could keep you safe-you don’t know how I want to keep you safe.”
“I know it,” Harry says, because in this moment he cannot care less about the Horcruxes, Voldemort, that he is going to die. He just wants to think of this-just this once, in this hidden room, where time can last forever, and he can be eighteen, as he should have been, feeling this for his first time and remembering in the back of his mind there’s something valuable-something he’s forgotten, that he has to find.
A little phial of oil appears in Draco’s hand, and he says, “I’ll do it.”
Harry says, “I want, I want,” and needs to get the words out; he arches. “I want you to be inside of me.”
Draco’s breath catches, and he seems to have to look away. When at last he looks back, and opens his eyes, Harry thinks they may be wet. “Have you-have you done it before?”
Harry shakes his head, and Draco makes a choked sound and just says, “You can’t, oh God, you can’t-”
Taking the bottle from him, Harry looks at it. “Why not?”
Draco still won’t look at him. “If I hurt you-”
I fucked up; I fucked it up, I fucked it, Draco kept saying when they came in here, and Harry still can’t figure out what he means, or whether he meant this. “I’ll forgive you,” is all Harry says, and smiles a little. “We have plenty of time,” even though they don’t. “Please,” he says. “I want you to.”
Sucking in a breath, Draco takes back the bottle, and looks at it, just looks. “When I,” he begins, “when we . . . I wondered, once, who your first was, and you would never tell me.”
Harry spreads his legs. “At least now I can say it’s someone that I loved.”
“That’s just it.” Draco puts his hand on Harry’s ankle, and his flesh is warm, so so warm, and he’s looking at Harry’s legs and cock and other private places as though he’s never seen such things. At last his eyes lift back to Harry’s face. “That’s what you always said.”
Harry thinks about that. “Then it was always you,” he says, and Draco puts his fingers inside, but his fingers won’t stop shaking, his arm won’t stop shaking; all of him is shaking, and he’s trying too hard to be gentle.
“I might as well be eighteen again,” Draco murmurs.
Harry says, “I want to hear what we’re like. I want to know, years from now, how we do this.”
Draco shudders, and says, down low and close to Harry’s ear, “You stretched me out like this, and I would open for you. God, I’d open for you. You gave yourself to me and I took you. Oh God, how I’d take you.” Draco’s fingers are deep inside Harry know, slowly working open, and Harry’s never felt this before, this sensation of another person inside him, and he doesn’t know how to feel about it other than he wants it; he doesn’t even know if he likes it, but he wants it, and wants more.
“You were everything to me; you were trust and hope, redemption, all combined, and sometimes when you looked at me, across the Great Hall, and I knew-I just knew- what you were thinking, and God, you could be so dirty-so filthy fucking crude, and I should have been ashamed, I would have been ashamed, of all the things I wanted you to do to me, but it was you. It was always you, and you were so-you were so good.”
Draco’s looking at him intently, now, and Harry’s squirming under his eyes, around his fingers, against his knees, and he so spread out, splayed open, just for Draco’s eyes and mind and body, and Harry feels scared and awkward and too hot, and he wants to give him everything, all at once-everything, so Harry just says, “I want to be good for you,” because this is the choice he gets to make. Saving the world, his whole life-they were never really choices, but this is a choice he chooses.
Draco’s eyes go so soft; his fingers press in deep; his lips brush Harry’s cheeks and he says, “You’ll always be good, Harry. You’ll never be anything but good, don’t let yourself believe that you’re anything less than that. No matter what happens, Harry. You’re the best thing that ever happened to me, and I have no regrets.”
“Do you talk like that to me?” Harry says, and cants his hips again, into Draco’s fingers.
Draco laughs a little, drily. “No,” he says. “When we first started this, mostly I just moaned, and later tried to play it off with snark.”
“What did I say?” Harry asks, but instead of speaking, Draco gets on his knees, positioning himself, and then he pushes into Harry’s body.
It’s wider than he thought, and burns more than he expected, and Harry doesn’t care, because he’s eighteen, and having sex, and he never thought he would live to do that, much less with a man, much less with this man, much less right now, forever in this room, and always.
“Whatever you said,” Draco says at last, his voice warm and ticklish, right by Harry’s ear, “never think for a moment that I didn’t learn what you really meant. Never think that I won’t learn to love you, because I always do. Never think that this won’t happen, because it will. No matter how hard you try, this always happens. It always will.”
“It’ll happen,” Harry says. He’s adjusting to the girth of Draco inside of him, and though it still burns, he just can’t get over the fact that Draco is inside of him, and he wants more; in every future he wants this; this is every breath and every moment, because in this one, still fractured beat of time, life can’t possibly be more than this. “It’s happening.”
“But you thought it wouldn’t,” Draco says, moving against him, spreading Harry’s legs farther, pushing deeper, stroking hands down Harry’s thighs until he’s gently cupping what’s between them and squeezing, softly, carefully, excruciatingly slowly. “I know you thought it wouldn’t. You thought that you could stop it, and that informed everything you did, all those things you said.”
Draco puts his lips on Harry’s ear. “Listen to me, Harry. I’m telling you right now-I would rather have had this more than an entire lifetime of never knowing you, like this, never knowing your body, like this, never knowing-” He lifts his head and kisses Harry’s scar, and Harry thinks he means, your soul, like this, because that’s how Harry feels.
“Oh God,” Harry groaned, and arched. “Oh God, harder Draco; give me more; I want all of you-harder, harder-”
Draco’s fucking him, and he’s saying, “I love you, remember that I love you, always remember, I love you in the future, I love you in the past, and I love you right now, forever.”
“Oh, God,” Harry says again, “I’m going to come.”
“I love everything you are,” Draco says, his hips thrusting long and slow and almost gently; “I love everything you become.”
And Harry has a lifetime, he suddenly realizes, he has Draco Malfoy as he is right now, young and probably still vain and stupid, but he knows who Malfoy will become just as this Draco knows who Harry will be, and Harry doesn’t know how he can possibly deal with that, losing this Draco and learning to love that Malfoy, except he’ll always have this to look forward to.
He will always have this, and the thought of it-just the thought of Draco now and getting to have Malfoy now and getting to have this, in the future-just the thought of it makes him come; it makes him come and come and come, and he can hear Draco pumping into him and saying-
“I forgive you; I didn’t understand at first, but I forgive you; just forgive me for this-for this, Harry; you should have known that this would always happen-it’s always going to happen-” Draco was coming too, wild erratic thrusts, hungry and uneven.
Afterwards Harry lies with Draco in his arms, and thinks it’s strange, to be holding an older man like this, but in the future he won’t be older. He’ll be Malfoy, and Malfoy won’t know that this is going to happen, but Harry will. Harry will always be thinking of this moment when he’s with Malfoy, and he’ll stay with Malfoy forever so that this moment can come true.
For the first time, he thinks of his other (older) self. He puts his hand in Draco’s (thinning) hair and says, “What did you mean?”
“Mmph,” says Draco, and snuggles against his neck.
“You weren’t talking to me,” Harry says. “You were talking to my older self.”
Draco kisses the hollow of his throat, and simply says, “I can’t tell you your future, Harry.”
“Except you have already,” Harry says, and goes on, “You think I’m going to regret this.”
Draco just makes another noise. “I don’t,” kissing his way up to Harry’s ear. “I don’t regret it.”
“You think I will,” Harry says.
“No matter what happens,” Draco says, and kisses him deeply between his words, “I absolutely don’t regret this.”
“Tell me what you mean,” Harry says, but Draco gets out of bed, and starts getting dressed.
“We’re out of time,” he says. “I’m due through that door.”
“What?” says Harry, but he gets dressed too, because as good as everything was, Voldemort is still outside, and he’s probably going to die.
A moment after he throws on his shirt, Malfoy, Vincent Crabbe and Goyle step through the door, and Draco’s nowhere to be seen.
“Malfoy,” Harry breathes, and feels utterly slammed by the disorientation of Malfoy’s pale young face, beautiful still, but not beloved yet.
Malfoy just sneers. “Potter,” then he sniffs, “hiding like the coward you are, I see.”
Harry wants things to be different, but he’s out of time here, too.
The problem is, there’s never enough time, even when you can control it.
*
In the final battle, Harry goes to the Forbidden Forest, and he dies, just as he always knew (deep down) he would. He dreams of King’s Cross, then comes back to life (that part, he never knew). Then he’s the Dark Lord’s prisoner, and Draco is hiding somewhere in the forest, waiting, watching-here to ensure the future; Harry’s always known that was his purpose here.
What he doesn’t understand is why, in the final face-off with Voldemort, Draco comes out from the shadows, and points his wand at his younger self. Harry doesn’t know what’s happening, but Malfoy doesn’t either; he’s staring fearfully at Voldemort, and doesn’t see his elder self at all.
There’s another moment of choice right here, but this one’s a little different; only one Draco Malfoy is being threatened, and it’s the other Draco Malfoy that’s doing the threatening. Of course it’s (his) Draco Harry loves, but Malfoy he doesn’t want to lose, because Malfoy is his Draco, and he’s already begun to think of them as one (in spite of the fyre, in spite of everything).
But (his) Draco is firing the curse, even while Harry’s fighting Voldemort, offering him mercy, and all of the sudden, Harry knows what Draco wants him to do. What he doesn’t know is why, but he does it anyway.
Later they will say Harry Potter tried to disarm the Dark Lord twice, and missed the first time, but it’s not true. Later, Harry will figure out that he had to disarm Draco in order to control the Elder Wand, but it won’t be much comfort, because in the moments it takes to look away and disarm (his) Draco, Voldemort aims at Harry, and Draco throws a different kind of (wandless) magic into play.
It’s the same magic that his mother used, when she gave her life for Harry, and in the end, that’s how Harry gained mastery of the Elder Wand and survived, and Draco Malfoy-his Draco Malfoy-disintegrates before his eyes. When Harry casts Expelliarmus the second time, this time in Voldemort’s direction, he wants him to die (he does).
Harry looks at then at the place where Draco Malfoy-his Draco Malfoy had been, and is no more, and slowly after that, he turns to look at the other Draco Malfoy-not his Draco Malfoy at all.
If life is a book, then the pages are being written as we speak; if the end is already written, and we skip ahead to read it, then it is not an ending but a beginning, and all the pages afterward are unwritten. This isn’t a book, Harry’s thinking, as he looks at Draco Malfoy (the new Draco Malfoy, the unwritten Draco Malfoy), and nineteen years later isn’t written yet (and if it is, and he doesn’t like it, he’ll rewrite it; he’ll rewrite it and rewrite it).
Harry, in this future, will always come back to the Room of Requirement, , where the eighth tale was told and can be told again and will always be told in infinite different ways and still be true; he will always be coming back to that, back and back and back, even as he moves forward.
Harry looks at Malfoy and thinks, if Draco had never loved me, this would not have happened. He thinks that he can stop this, that if he never loves Malfoy, never touches him, never makes a future with him, then this present cannot be, and so Harry looks at Malfoy, and turns away.
He’ll marry Ginny (won’t he?) and have children (won’t he?) and stand one day on Platform Nine and Three Quarters, and when he sees Draco Malfoy standing there, Harry will nod like he doesn’t know him, and he’ll pretend like this never happened.
After all, it hasn’t happened yet.
*