[One-shots]: War Leaves No Survivors, 1/2
Title: War Leaves No Survivors
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~13,700
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: DH spoilers, but no epilogue; profanity; violence between characters in the pairing; heavy angst; slash sex.
Summary: If Harry and Draco are going to heal after the war, they’ll have to do it themselves.
Author’s Notes: And back to the angst we go. This fic is set at Hogwarts the summer immediately after the last chapter proper of DH (before the epilogue). It is deliberately an odd and somewhat disjointed story, an attempt to deal with some of the pain of the war.
War Leaves No Survivors
“You’d be welcome, Harry.”
Harry didn’t take Ron’s lowered eyes and subdued voice personally. God knew that the crippling losses his family had suffered-first Fred gone, and then George almost gone with him-would have affected Harry that way, too.
“I know,” Harry said, and hesitated, glancing around. They stood in the boys’ bedroom of Gryffindor Tower, where they’d spent the last few days discussing plans for next year and resting after they helped to clean up the damage the war had done to Hogwarts and attended funerals. But no one else was there now, though Seamus, Dean, and Neville had been in and out, as had Dennis Creevey, who wanted Harry’s company after the death of his brother. Because they were alone, Harry risked giving Ron a quick, one-armed hug. “But I’m staying here as much for myself as anything. I need to think, and it’s hard to do that at the Burrow.”
Ron gave him a watery smile. “You got that right. That’s why I’m going there. I don’t want to think. Hermione’s wonderful, but-” His jaw tightened, and he shook his head.
Harry understood perfectly. Hermione might be wonderful, the same way that Ginny’s shining eyes and shy smiles in Harry’s direction said she might be, but girls couldn’t make up for the losses or the turmoil going on in their heads.
“Go and have fun,” Harry said. “And tell Hermione good-bye for me.”
“I will.” Ron hesitated. “Are you going to stay here all summer, mate?”
“Probably,” Harry said, surprised into honesty. Then he rushed for an explanation. “I mean, I’ll visit you sometimes, but-”
“Because Hermione and I are going to Australia sometime this summer, to find her parents.” Ron looked at him with yearning, and also from a distance, Harry thought, as if one of them stood on a boat that was floating away from the shore, leaving the other one behind. “You could come along.”
I’m on the shore, and he’s on the boat. Definitely. I can’t move on just yet.
“I don’t think I can,” Harry said. “Not yet. I mean, I’d like to. But.” And then he stopped. He shook his head. His own fumbling confused him. Not much that was bad had happened to him in the war. He hadn’t lost anyone related to him by blood. He’d killed Voldemort without using the Killing Curse. He’d suffered the same trials and dangers that Ron and Hermione had, and Hermione had even gone through worse, when Bellatrix tortured her in Malfoy Manor. He didn’t understand the great hollow feeling inside him, the temptation to collapse on the bed and sleep for days and days, the craving for solitude.
It’s like what you hear about people suffering after a war, the survivors, he thought. But I’m not a survivor. I lived. I won. I don’t understand this.
There were deaths, yes, but they should affect people like Ron and Teddy Lupin and Andromeda Tonks, not him. Maybe one good reason to stay at the school was to sort himself out, Harry thought. He didn’t want to go back to Ginny or accompany Ron and Hermione to Australia when he didn’t understand his own reactions.
“I know.” Ron smiled awkwardly at him, shook his hand, and then turned and loped down the stairs.
Harry cast himself back on the bed and stared out the window, frowning. The day was warm and bright, though the sky was edged by clouds to the west and north. A brisk breeze stirred the tops of the trees in the Forbidden Forest. A good day for flying, Harry thought. He should go out and fly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d flown purely and simply for pleasure, and not as a matter of life and death.
He should get out of bed and get his broom.
He should. But he curled up on the coverlet and fell asleep, instead.
*
Draco knew who stood there the moment the shadow fell across him. He tensed, but didn’t look up. Instead, he just kept casting Scourgify on the floor in front of him with the hawthorn wand that Potter had miraculously returned, cleaning off the stone dust left by the rubble of the falling roof.
“Draco.” Lucius tried to sound stern, but there was a tremor to his tone that always betrayed him, now. Or maybe Draco just thought he heard that tremor, as a symbol of the general weakness his father concealed so well. He had seen his parents both weak during the war, trapped as prisoners in their own home, and of course, he thought, that would affect his perception of them.
“This is nonsense,” Lucius said, “this staying and helping. You did not cause this mess. Come home, now.”
A sudden flaring of incandescent rage seized Draco. That was always happening now, and he never knew when it would, or how to prevent it. He swung around to face his father, and Lucius actually took a step back at whatever he saw in Draco’s eyes. Once, Draco would have crowed about that, but now it gave him no joy.
We’re broken. We’re all so broken and I hate it.
“It’s not home to me,” Draco said. His voice wavered and dived, but though Lucius clenched his hands, he did not lean close to hear. Draco thought he could have hated his father as much as he hated Bellatrix then, just for that. He won’t show weakness, but he’s weak! Why can’t he get used to it? “I had to torture people there. How can it be home?”
“You did not torture people of your own free will,” Lucius said, smoothly and simply, as if he really believed that his words would make a difference. “The Dark Lord commanded you to.” He did move towards Draco now, but his neck was stiff and his head lifted and carried like a horse’s, and Draco knew he was trying to win back the intimidating position again. “He is dead, Draco.”
Draco laughed, and the sound broke and fell to the ground like the windows that had broken in the walls around them. “And you think that makes a difference?”
“It should.” Lucius lowered his voice impressively. “We are Malfoys.”
“Oh, fuck that,” Draco said, turning away and casting Scourgify again. He realized a moment later that he’d cast it on a patch of the floor he’d already cleaned. The wave of fury that ran through him left him feeling faint and dizzy. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to regain control of himself, as far as he possibly could. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Draco.” Now Lucius was at his most pompous, and Draco knew without looking that he would have lifted his chin, his eyes focused on something in the hazy distance that would seem of more importance than the person in front of him. Draco hated that, too. “It means pride. It means continuance. It means tradition. It means-”
“It means fuck-all,” Draco said flatly. “With-” He’d stopped. He’d been about to talk about the lack of respect he saw in so many eyes since the Battle of Hogwarts, the utter indifference where people would once have shown wariness or outright fear. But the truth was simpler than that, and anyway, he thought Lucius had seen the indifference for himself; he just refused to believe in it.
“Father,” Draco said. “There’s been a war.”
“Thank you for informing me of that undeniable fact, Draco.”
Draco laughed, and the sound broke again, spiraled out of control until he was choking, leaning on a wall, wiping spittle from his lips. He was vaguely aware of Lucius staring at him in horror, but that didn’t matter, either. Not when Lucius was unable to grasp the simplest reasons for that laughter.
“Undeniable? Ha. You’re working to deny it,” he said, the words feeling as thick in his throat as the blood had when Fenrir Greyback punched him in the mouth over Christmas holidays and broke one of his teeth. He stood upright and pivoted around to face Lucius. “You want to pretend nothing changed. You’ll want me to come home and sit around in the rooms where we watched people die and take my NEWTS next year and get married even though I still have nightmares every night.”
“Time will patch the wounds, Draco.” His father’s voice carried a tinge of uncertainty, but no more than that.
Draco fired a hex. His wand moved without his brain willing it; his voice emerged in the single word that the hex embodied without his knowing it would do so. The spell missed as Lucius flinched violently.
And only then Draco realize, hearing the echo of his voice hanging in the air, that the spell had not been a hex. He had said Crucio.
“Get out,” he told his father, who was staring at him with frightened, alien eyes. “I’m staying here for the summer.” And he turned away and went back to cleaning up stone dust, listening to the sound of his father’s footsteps hastily retreating.
Only when he was sure they were gone did Draco fold himself to the floor and crouch with his hands over his face, breathing unsteadily. He waited for tears, but his eyes remained desert-dry.
*
“Avada Kedavra!”
This time, when the Killing Curse struck, blackness spread away from the place it hit him in the chest, and consumed him, and Harry found himself falling into the abyss, with no chance of return.
And it was everything he wanted, it was peace, an ending to anxiety-
Harry woke with his heart beating so fast that he was surprised he was able to hear a bell clanging through the castle. He swallowed and sat up, his head swirling, ignoring the bell for a moment as he tried to concentrate on the dream.
Why did I think about that? That can’t be a vision, Voldemort’s dead. And killing him was no worse than killing the basilisk or seeing Cedric die, and I didn’t have so many nightmares after that.
Harry groaned and dragged a hand over his forehead, smearing the sweat to the corners of his eyes. He could have dealt with these reactions if he just understood them. What had happened to him during the war wasn’t so terribly traumatic. Voldemort had killed him, but he hadn’t tortured Harry first. The Killing Curse was painless. And he had seen that vision of Dumbledore-whether it was real or not, Harry still had no idea-who comforted him and explained everything and sent him back.
That was the real reason he couldn’t understand why he was reacting with nightmares and the hollow feeling. He’d survived. That should be enough.
The bell rang again, and then Kreacher appeared in front of Harry’s bed and bowed to him. “Master Harry is coming to dinner!” he squeaked. “The Headmistress is announcing tasks for everyone’s staying in the castle over summertime!”
Harry thought about saying that he wasn’t hungry. And, most of the time, he wasn’t, now. He just didn’t want to eat, because food didn’t satisfy the hollow feeling inside him.
But if he was supposed to know what he was doing this summer, he reckoned he should attend the dinner.
“All right, Kreacher,” he said, and waited until the house-elf disappeared before he went about the difficult task of persuading his feet to move to the floor.
*
Draco glanced around the room with a sneer that he didn’t bother to conceal. The assortment in the Great Hall, gathered around the single table that was sufficient to hold them all, was motley. Orphans, people whose families didn’t want or need them close, the teachers who hadn’t been so badly injured in the battle that they still required rest in the infirmary-they huddled at the table under an enchanted ceiling that at the moment looked pathetic instead of grand. Who cared about magic that let it mimic the sky overhead? What in the world had that magic done to save them when the Death Eaters invaded?
And he was the only Slytherin.
At least he wasn’t the latest. A moment after he took his chair next to the Headmistress herself-probably she hadn’t trusted him not to hex people unless he was under her immediate eye-Potter staggered in. His eyes were glassy, his spectacles askew, his hair mussed from obvious sleep. And yet his skin was grainy, and he still looked tired.
Everyone’s tired in the aftermath of the war, Draco thought brutally, seeing sympathetic glances turn towards Potter from all over the table, people who wouldn’t have given him the time of day. Leave it to Potter to make a drama out of it.
Potter sat down a few seats away from him, between the Mudblood Creevey boy who was clutching his brother’s camera and a thin, pale girl from Ravenclaw whom Draco didn’t know, but whom he had seen screaming as she fled through the corridors more than once. McGonagall rose to her feet to address them. Of everyone in the room, Draco thought, she was the only one who looked as if she thought of victory instead of defeat.
“I am grateful for your volunteering of your time and effort to cleanse Hogwarts and restore it to what it is supposed to be,” she began briskly. “It is my hope that we will have the school open in time for the students to return in September.”
Draco concealed an incredulous snort with difficulty. It was early June. She thought that was a reasonable goal?
But then, he thought, as his gaze went to Potter down the table again, Gryffindors aren’t concerned with reasonable goals most of the time. Such as tidiness.
“To that end,” said McGonagall, and waved her wand in a Summoning motion that made scrolls swoop towards her from every corner of the room, “I have created a list of tasks, with names beside each one, that we must accomplish in order to have the barest minimum of cleanliness and the maximum of safety set up before September. I will expect everyone to do the tasks assigned. Mere dislike of someone you are assigned to work with-” her glasses glinted as she looked at Draco and Potter for a moment “-ought not to preclude you from making your best effort.”
Draco sneered at her out of habit, and then looked over the list. Most of the tasks were simple things: clearing rubble, removing hexes that the Death Eaters had left behind on doors and corners, repairing windows. Others were heavier and would require some study, in books whose titles McGonagall had provided, before they were tackled: removing the residue of Dark spells, strengthening and replacing stones, creating new wards.
Draco was assigned to a cleaning rotation and to replacement of the stones in the collapsed wing with Potter.
He lifted his eyes and looked down the table, to find Potter peering at him. But he said nothing, only looked away from Draco towards McGonagall, who was talking again to exhort them to teamwork.
Draco stifled a bitter laugh as he crumpled up the scroll and stuck it in his pocket. Some things never do change. The Headmistress is what Granger will grow up to be, I’m a disappointment to my father, and Potter still hates me.
But one thing had changed. The directionless fire burning in him, the flame that had made him cast an Unforgivable Curse at his father, now had a target.
*
Harry was flying, by the light of a full moon.
He had gone from requiring too much sleep, barely dragging himself out of bed at noon and meeting Malfoy and Dennis and the others for their work, to needing no sleep. Or, rather, though he wanted to rest, he no sooner lay down than his nerves began to jangle and jar, and the images of his nightmares came back and crouched on his chest and made him feel like he couldn’t breathe.
He had found himself sitting up on his bed earlier tonight, wand in hand, scanning the room and breathing frantically.
So he had decided to go flying. He had simply walked down to the Quidditch pitch, taken one of the school brooms out of the shed, and hopped aboard. No one had bothered to lock the shed. Why would anyone want to steal from a devastated school?
Harry tilted his face into the wind, closed his eyes, and made several tight loops over the Quidditch pitch. As he flew, they grew sharper and sharper, steeper and steeper, until he was feeling the drag of air against his skin and hearing the broom groan and creak under him.
Maybe he could drown his nervousness in this whirlpool. If he could make himself dizzy, if he could vomit, then he could-
And then something slammed into him from the side with the force of a Bludger, nearly knocking him from the broom.
Harry gripped the broom and wheeled down, his eyes open, gasping. The stunning pain was already spreading across his side, arching in fierce white lightning across the back of his fingers and head. Once again, his nerves jangled and jarred, but this time the cause was far more apparent.
And, for the first time since the end of the war, he unlocked his anger.
“Malfoy!” he roared, catching himself a few feet above the ground and wheeling about. He never doubted who it had been, even though, logically, with over thirty people in the school, it could have been any one of them, or even a Death Eater who had got loose and come back to hunt him. But he knew.
And there was a fierce joy in the knowing.
Malfoy fleeted past him like a shadow on his own broom, moving faster than Harry. His head was turned towards him, his chin and cheeks too sharp, too pointy. He laughed mockingly, and gestured the second Bludger following him towards Harry, with a flick of his wand that reminded Harry of second year and Dobby.
Dobby. Who was dead. Because of people like Malfoy. Because of Malfoy. He never would have died if Malfoy hadn’t kept people in the dungeons of that stupid house of his.
Harry avoided the second Bludger with contemptuous ease, then flipped upside-down. Malfoy hesitated a moment, as if he hoped Harry would fall to the ground and save him the trouble of killing him, or more likely because he had to adjust the angle of the next spell he had planned to cast.
“Aboleo,” Harry whispered, his wand aimed at the broom that Malfoy rode.
The wood and the bristles began to disintegrate beneath Malfoy. He gave a startled yelp, but the next moment he was laughing, as madly as Harry wanted to.
Why should I just want to? And he gave voice to it, the laughter wide and ringing and empty as the hollow place inside him. Malfoy cocked his head to listen to it, smirked, and then jumped off into midair.
Of course Harry was there to catch him, which the bastard must have planned on. He landed facing Harry, gripping the broom with his knees as he leaned forwards and tried to punch Harry in the face.
Harry seized his arm and held it back. His wand spiraled free from his grip and towards the ground. Harry didn’t mind, was glad, even though the evidence was strong that Malfoy probably still had his wand. The other boy attacking this way was a clear sign that they were going to hang in the air and try to beat the shit out of each other. That was perfectly fine with Harry.
Malfoy struggled against him, trying to pull his arm free. Harry concentrated on holding him back-too much. Malfoy brought his other fist up and hit him in the chin. Harry’s head snapped back, all the muscles in his neck going tight the way they did in some of his nightmares when he lay on the ground and offered his throat to Voldemort so that he could cut it with a knife.
But that didn’t happen, and this is really happening, he reminded himself, as yet another punch cracked home and split his lip.
Harry gave up on holding Malfoy back and instead tilted the broom so that Malfoy was sliding towards the ground. His eyes widened and his breathing became quick, but a faint, dark smile still lingered on his face, and he was using his hands to hurt instead of hang on.
Harry punched him in the side. Malfoy caught him there, too, and made his own wound from the Bludger ache. Harry whimpered, sure he had bruised ribs, but the sound was lost in Malfoy’s high laugh of pleasure.
Then Malfoy was back to grunting as Harry caught him hard with a knee in the groin and a jab to the forehead. Malfoy struck back with an elbow that Harry met with his own elbow, an unexpectedly ringing blow. Harry blacked his eyes, one and then the other, hot happiness and malice racing through him like bile.
Then they met the ground, and Harry tumbled backwards off the broom. Malfoy fell on top of him, and grabbed his throat.
He’s trying to choke me to death, Harry thought, almost calmly, although bloody darkness was invading his vision and his throat was already sore. He aimed himself carefully and then brought his head up with an enormous effort, using the pull of Malfoy’s hands more than his own strength to accomplish it, slamming his forehead into Malfoy’s nose.
And then-
Then, it was as if it were enough.
Malfoy lowered his head until his dripping nose rested against Harry’s cheek. Harry suffered a brief, painful memory of the day he had visited Andromeda, the day right after the war, and held Teddy in his arms. But this was blood, not snot, the way the liquid running from Teddy’s nose had been, and something in it made Harry turn towards the other boy and throw an arm around his neck.
Malfoy sighed, the sound shaking his body. “No one cares about me anymore,” he whispered. “No one flinches when I walk by, or thinks of what I’ll report to my father if they hurt me. No one cares.” He paused, and Harry could feel the words stretching between them like long strings of hot chocolate at Florean Fortescue’s. Except that Fortescue was gone now, and who knew if the ice cream shop would even reopen? “Except you.”
“I needed that,” Harry said. “It gets rid of the hollow feeling.” He didn’t care about what Malfoy was saying, not really. It was just the chance to talk that meant something to him, to get the words out.
“It gets rid of the temptation to throw curses everywhere.”
“I didn’t make enough people bleed during the war. I wanted to make you bleed.”
“You used my wand to kill him.”
“He killed himself.”
They were drifting back towards each other again, and already the blissful emptiness that held Harry was being filled with unwelcome memories. He shoved at Malfoy’s shoulders, and Malfoy responded by letting his body weigh more. He clutched Harry’s shoulders and stared into his eyes.
“We aren’t going to tell McGonagall about this,” he said.
Harry laughed, and the laugh was tainted, but not as it had been in the last few weeks, with mechanical uncertainty, because he was laughing to gratify someone else. This humor, he really felt. “Fuck, no,” he said. “You gave me back my anger, Malfoy.” He paused. “And maybe you’ll do it again.”
Malfoy smirked. Harry shouldn’t have been able to see the expression with his glasses cracked from one of Malfoy’s punches, but this close, it seemed easy to do so.
“Yes, I will,” he said, and it was the first promise Harry had trusted since Voldemort died.
*
Draco woke with a feeling of immense quiet in himself. He blinked at the ceiling for long moments, then rose from the bed and walked slowly towards the window that looked out over the lake.
After the war, he couldn’t stay in the dungeons. He saw Vincent everywhere, and the Slytherins who hadn’t been brave enough to pick and stay with a side during the Battle of Hogwarts, including himself. So he had appropriated a small classroom once used for Defense Against the Dark Arts dueling practice on the third floor. No one had cared.
Because no one cares about me, he thought, but then he remembered Potter, and a slow smile worked its way across his face.
He leaned on the windowsill for endless moments, regarding the prospect before him. The sunrise blazed in the lake-water, extending tendrils of lacy gold to touch the far shore. The sky was gold, too, with blue chipping away at the gold like hens’ teeth. Draco could hear an unfamiliar bird calling from the edge of the Forbidden Forest, one trill, one sharp jab of a note, and then pause and repeat.
It was the first time he had paid attention to the world since the Dark Lord died.
He turned away and went to prepare himself for the cleaning routine of the morning. He had to glance at his crumpled scroll to remember what it was: checking the stone of the collapsed wing for cracks.
Potter would be with him.
For no reason, Draco wanted to laugh, and to lash out.
*
Malfoy was watching him.
Harry knew it, but he didn’t look up from his work. They had used spells to strengthen their eyes, because they had to examine the rocks for hairline fractures. As much as possible, Headmistress McGonagall wanted to use the material of Hogwarts to rebuild Hogwarts, but they couldn’t use it if it was unsafe. And the slightest weakness might make building material unsafe.
To imagine the wing crashing down again, to imagine sprawled bodies amidst ruin-
The hollow feeling sang in Harry again like a tapped wineglass, and he pulled himself sharply back. No. No, he wouldn’t think of that. He’d thought too often of the reality, of Fred’s death, had seen the reality too often.
Instead, he thought of Malfoy’s eyes, and carefully, unobtrusively, worked himself around to a corner of the wall where he was at a distance from the others and half-hidden from sight by a pile of shattered stone slabs, not unstable enough to be dangerous. It was a place that someone could find him and speak to him without much fear of being overheard.
If that person wanted to, at least.
Footsteps sounded behind him, but Harry didn’t look up, still. He had discovered a crack that turned into a messy web of lines towards the edge of the stone. He tapped it with his wand and cast the spell that would mark this particular boulder with a red light, signaling it was unsafe to use.
An arm leaned heavily against the nape of his neck. Harry arched his neck slightly in response. The bruises around his throat where Malfoy had tried to choke him, hidden by glamours, throbbed as if in response.
“I almost cursed my father with the Cruciatus,” Malfoy breathed into Harry’s ear, his breath as warm as a lover’s.
“He doesn’t hate you for it,” Harry said.
A creaky, windy sigh in his ear. “Let’s stick to giving each other what we know we can give, Potter, shall we?” Malfoy drawled. “You can’t possibly know what my father would feel.”
“Yes, I can.” Harry turned around to face Malfoy. He had used glamours to conceal his injuries, too, well enough that Harry could only tell they were there by the slight fuzziness about his eyes and the slightly-too-perfect line of his nose. He reached up and let his hand hover in front of Malfoy’s nose for a moment. Malfoy’s breathing deepened, and he twisted his face towards Harry. “I heard him talking to Voldemort during the battle. The only thing he wanted to know was what had happened to you. You’re special to him, Malfoy.”
Malfoy froze, his smile still in place, but his half-disguised face turned to stone.
“And your mother,” Harry continued, the words dripping, driving, springing out of him, relentlessly, as much as if they were the insults he had used to hurl at Malfoy in school, hoping against hope that they hurt.
“What about my mother?” Malfoy was moving again, leaning close as if he would kiss Harry.
“She loves you,” Harry said. “She helped me in the Forest. She lied to Voldemort for me, telling him that I was dead after his Killing Curse hit me. But she only did it when I told her you were still alive.”
Malfoy closed his eyes. A breeze coming in through the tumbled wall ruffled his hair. Harry admired it abstractly. When he didn’t think about whose face this was, the hair was half-handsome.
“You’re lying,” Malfoy sighed. “Lying just like she did.”
“No.” Harry raised his hand and pressed on Malfoy’s chest, where he’d hit him. Malfoy grunted, but otherwise his breathing didn’t change. “It’s the only reason I survived.” The words he hadn’t meant to say, really hadn’t meant to say, even though he’d thought them, rushed out of him then. “And even if you cast Cruciatus at your father, that doesn’t mean you meant it all the other times you said it.”
“The other times I said it,” Malfoy murmured, opening his eyes. They stared at Harry as blankly as two specks of granite.
“The time you tried to hurt me when I caught you in the bathroom during our sixth year,” said Harry. “I didn’t know if it would have landed, but I still responded with that spell that scarred you. I’m sorry.” The words drifted like ashes away from his lips, as light and as empty.
Malfoy inclined his head, which could have meant acceptance or just a sign that he was listening. Harry didn’t care. He was continuing.
“And the times when you tortured people because Voldemort ordered you to.”
At last, Malfoy’s face turned white. “How did you know about that?” he whispered. “You’re lying. Like he did.”
“No,” Harry said, and pushed the fringe back from the scar on his forehead. He’d almost forgotten the scar since the Battle, gratefully. It no longer defined his life. But it defined this moment. He traced the line of it with a finger, which Malfoy’s gaze followed hungrily. “This gave me a connection to Voldemort. I got visions of what he was doing and thinking and feeling, sometimes. I know that he ordered you to torture people, but you didn’t want to. I saw your face. It was disgusted. He had to order you more than once.”
“So what does that mean?” Malfoy asked, and there was a sneer breaking around the words, defining the moment the other way. “That I’m one of your perfect, stainless Gryffindors? That I’m innocent?”
“No,” Harry said. “Just that you were strong enough he couldn’t make you want it.”
Malfoy turned and broke away from him as if Harry had threatened to kill him. Harry watched him go calmly, and then turned back to his work.
His mood had changed again, to a quiet, floating unreality that was even better, in some ways, than the anger. Maybe he had a real chance to think now, and work out what the bloody hell was wrong with him.
*
Dear Father, I heard-
And then Draco crumpled up the letter and threw it away, because there was no way under the sun that he was going to tell his father he had talked to Harry Potter about him, much less what he had heard from Harry Potter.
Draco let his head fall back against his chair. The bruises Potter had given him ached steadily. The black eyes he had healed, mostly, because otherwise he would have had difficulty with seeing the work that he needed to do, but he had left the others. They reminded him of the first time for weeks he had felt something other than anger at his family and self-loathing.
And now Potter had given him something else, though Draco had to be suspicious of his motives and therefore of his words.
On the other hand, he thought slowly, what can he have to gain by lying about Mother and Father? I can’t imagine that he values my good opinion. And he was right about what the Dark Lord forced me to do.
Draco lifted a shaky hand to brush back the hair from his forehead. His mouth was somehow both sticky and dry at the same time.
He still wanted to write a letter to his father, but he didn’t think he was ready yet. He wanted to find Potter and get some more specifics first. If he could pin Potter down to facts, then he would know more about what to believe and what not to.
*
Harry yawned and sat down at the high table rubbing stone dust out of his hair and ears. McGonagall gave him a small smile. “Is the work really that tiring, Mr. Potter?”
“Not so much,” said Harry, as he reached for one of the plate of sandwiches the house-elves had put into the middle of the table. “But I haven’t been sleeping well the past few nights.” That ought to cover any mistakes he made, and he knew others would think it perfectly reasonable for him to have nightmares about the war, even if he knew there was nothing for him to have nightmares about.
“Ah.” McGonagall seemed ready to talk with him alone at the moment, perhaps because he was sitting right next to her and there weren’t many other people around. She spread a slice of bread with honey as she seemed to consider a response. Finally she said, quietly, “Have you considered talking to a Mind-Healer at St. Mungo’s?”
Harry just barely kept a noisy sigh in. Hermione had said much the same thing before she and Ron went to the Burrow. “I don’t think it’s that bad,” he said.
“What Potter means to say,” a nasal voice interrupted from behind them, “is that the dreams are driving him absolutely mental and he needs help right now.”
Harry glared over his shoulder at Malfoy, who looked no different now than he had ever looked, except for the shimmer of glamours protecting hidden wounds. Git. Of course he would say something like that. And after all I tried to do for him this morning.
“Madam Pomfrey remained here over the summer for a reason, you know,” McGonagall told him gently.
“I know that,” Harry said, and was shocked to find himself almost snapping at the Headmistress. He stuffed the sandwich he held in his mouth so that he wouldn’t be as tempted to say dumb things.
“I think that’s quite a keen observation, Headmistress,” Malfoy said, and sat down in the chair beside Harry. “I’ll be happy to escort Potter to the hospital wing when the meal is done and see that he gets the care he needs.”
Oh, come off it, Harry thought, wishing, at the moment, that he had telepathy. She’s never going to buy that. She knows what you’re like.
But McGonagall appeared to have assumed Dumbledore’s stupid optimism about people along with his title. “That will be quite sufficient, Mr. Malfoy,” she said. “I am afraid that our Chosen One tends to neglect his health.”
And she and Malfoy exchanged condescending smiles over Harry’s head, exactly as if he were a toddler.
Harry clamped his teeth in the sandwich and used what remained of it to stifle a scream. He was fine. He would be fine. He didn’t do much of anything in the war; he didn’t have to torture people like Malfoy did, or teach in an occupied school like McGonagall did. Why couldn’t they leave him alone and let him figure out his problems on his own?
Malfoy made it worse by keeping up a steady stream of prattle all through lunch, asking Harry how he’d slept, whether he wanted more food, whether he required help with the stones he was trying to repair, and what he thought of the new portraits the school was planning to have painted in commemoration of the battle. Luckily, that last question got him involved in an intense discussion with one of the Ravenclaw girls who’d remained and apparently knew a bit about magical painting. Harry gratefully let them discuss it whilst he stared out a gap in the walls at the sunlight. It always seemed to be sunny now, and the light was as pure and golden and hollow as he felt.
I just need time. Time by myself, to think and react the way that I know I can, not the way the rest of the world wants me to.
When he stood up from the lunch table at last, Malfoy moved smoothly to accompany him. Harry waited until they had put a corridor between themselves and the Great Hall before he whirled on Malfoy and shoved him up against the wall. Malfoy blinked, as if surprised that Harry would do such a thing.
“I don’t know what you think you’re playing at,” Harry told him flatly, “but you’ve had your revenge, all right? McGonagall wasn’t worrying about me, and now she is. I don’t know-” He broke off, realizing he’d been about to repeat himself and ask Malfoy what he’d been playing at. “I don’t know why this matters to you,” he finished, “but just stop.”
“Potter, you idiot,” Malfoy said. “We have some things to talk about concerning my parents and my family, still, and I said what I did to get us out of there and give us some plausible time alone.”
Harry blinked and stepped back, his arm dropping from Malfoy’s throat. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, right, then.” His breath was coming short and his head whirling, which he didn’t understand. “What did you want to know?”
“Why did the Dark Lord ask my mother to make sure you were still alive?” Malfoy demanded.
“She was the closest Death Eater.”
Malfoy rolled his eyes and snorted. “Oh, please, Potter. If you want me to believe you’re not lying, you’ll need to do a little better than that.”
And that was when Harry decided that he was fed up. He didn’t really care if Malfoy “needed” the truth about his parents to “heal.” He’d already told Malfoy everything he knew, and he’d told the truth, and of course the git doubted him, because that was the way he was. Harry must have imagined the relief that fighting with him had meant last night and this morning.
“I don’t care if you think I’m lying or not,” he told Malfoy. “I have more important things to worry about than you.” He turned to walk away.
“Like dreams?” Malfoy called after him nastily.
Harry just kept walking.
“Why don’t you just go to Madam Pomfrey and request a Dreamless Sleep potion?” Malfoy continued, sounding bored. “That’s what I did a few nights ago. It’s not such a chore as you’re making it seem, Potter.”
“Because I shouldn’t be having these dreams!” Harry snapped back at him. “Voldemort is dead.”
Malfoy’s forehead wrinkled. “So what?” he asked. “Everyone is having dreams about the war, I think, and you did more than most.”
“No, I didn’t,” Harry said. “That’s the fucking point. I didn’t torture, or get tortured. I didn’t even kill Voldemort with the Killing Curse. All I did was make sure his own wand turned on himself and die.”
“Die,” Malfoy said, leaning forwards, his lack of inflection turning it into a statement.
Harry shrugged, irritated that he’d already told Malfoy so much, and hurried away up the stairs towards the crumbled wing.
I have to deal with this myself. If I refused Ron and Hermione’s help, why in the world would I want help from him?
*
In the end, Draco chose to write to his mother, not his father, and not until two days later, and he buried his question about Potter’s truth-telling in the middle of long paragraphs of chatter about Hogwarts and the repair sessions and the nice weather Scotland was having and the Headmistress.
He wondered if his mother would be able to recognize the only real, true, important part of the letter anyway. She did seem disconcertingly good at figuring out things like that.
He carried the letter to the Owlery and sent it away with one of the school owls. As he watched the bird wing its way towards the horizon, he caught sight of a distant figure circling above the Quidditch Pitch. A moment’s watching was enough to convince him it was Potter. No one else flew like that, with an innate and inordinate love of pure motion; he made little unnecessary flourishes that Draco had never seen anyone else make, because they might be tipped off the broom if they did. But for Potter, it seemed as if making those motions was part of life.
Draco stood there watching him for a long time, his arms folded on the windowsill, his forehead cooled by the breeze blowing in, wilder and brisker at this height than it was through the window of his rooms.
He thought of nothing at all for long moments before he made his decision.
Part 2.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Word Count: ~13,700
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: DH spoilers, but no epilogue; profanity; violence between characters in the pairing; heavy angst; slash sex.
Summary: If Harry and Draco are going to heal after the war, they’ll have to do it themselves.
Author’s Notes: And back to the angst we go. This fic is set at Hogwarts the summer immediately after the last chapter proper of DH (before the epilogue). It is deliberately an odd and somewhat disjointed story, an attempt to deal with some of the pain of the war.
War Leaves No Survivors
“You’d be welcome, Harry.”
Harry didn’t take Ron’s lowered eyes and subdued voice personally. God knew that the crippling losses his family had suffered-first Fred gone, and then George almost gone with him-would have affected Harry that way, too.
“I know,” Harry said, and hesitated, glancing around. They stood in the boys’ bedroom of Gryffindor Tower, where they’d spent the last few days discussing plans for next year and resting after they helped to clean up the damage the war had done to Hogwarts and attended funerals. But no one else was there now, though Seamus, Dean, and Neville had been in and out, as had Dennis Creevey, who wanted Harry’s company after the death of his brother. Because they were alone, Harry risked giving Ron a quick, one-armed hug. “But I’m staying here as much for myself as anything. I need to think, and it’s hard to do that at the Burrow.”
Ron gave him a watery smile. “You got that right. That’s why I’m going there. I don’t want to think. Hermione’s wonderful, but-” His jaw tightened, and he shook his head.
Harry understood perfectly. Hermione might be wonderful, the same way that Ginny’s shining eyes and shy smiles in Harry’s direction said she might be, but girls couldn’t make up for the losses or the turmoil going on in their heads.
“Go and have fun,” Harry said. “And tell Hermione good-bye for me.”
“I will.” Ron hesitated. “Are you going to stay here all summer, mate?”
“Probably,” Harry said, surprised into honesty. Then he rushed for an explanation. “I mean, I’ll visit you sometimes, but-”
“Because Hermione and I are going to Australia sometime this summer, to find her parents.” Ron looked at him with yearning, and also from a distance, Harry thought, as if one of them stood on a boat that was floating away from the shore, leaving the other one behind. “You could come along.”
I’m on the shore, and he’s on the boat. Definitely. I can’t move on just yet.
“I don’t think I can,” Harry said. “Not yet. I mean, I’d like to. But.” And then he stopped. He shook his head. His own fumbling confused him. Not much that was bad had happened to him in the war. He hadn’t lost anyone related to him by blood. He’d killed Voldemort without using the Killing Curse. He’d suffered the same trials and dangers that Ron and Hermione had, and Hermione had even gone through worse, when Bellatrix tortured her in Malfoy Manor. He didn’t understand the great hollow feeling inside him, the temptation to collapse on the bed and sleep for days and days, the craving for solitude.
It’s like what you hear about people suffering after a war, the survivors, he thought. But I’m not a survivor. I lived. I won. I don’t understand this.
There were deaths, yes, but they should affect people like Ron and Teddy Lupin and Andromeda Tonks, not him. Maybe one good reason to stay at the school was to sort himself out, Harry thought. He didn’t want to go back to Ginny or accompany Ron and Hermione to Australia when he didn’t understand his own reactions.
“I know.” Ron smiled awkwardly at him, shook his hand, and then turned and loped down the stairs.
Harry cast himself back on the bed and stared out the window, frowning. The day was warm and bright, though the sky was edged by clouds to the west and north. A brisk breeze stirred the tops of the trees in the Forbidden Forest. A good day for flying, Harry thought. He should go out and fly. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d flown purely and simply for pleasure, and not as a matter of life and death.
He should get out of bed and get his broom.
He should. But he curled up on the coverlet and fell asleep, instead.
*
Draco knew who stood there the moment the shadow fell across him. He tensed, but didn’t look up. Instead, he just kept casting Scourgify on the floor in front of him with the hawthorn wand that Potter had miraculously returned, cleaning off the stone dust left by the rubble of the falling roof.
“Draco.” Lucius tried to sound stern, but there was a tremor to his tone that always betrayed him, now. Or maybe Draco just thought he heard that tremor, as a symbol of the general weakness his father concealed so well. He had seen his parents both weak during the war, trapped as prisoners in their own home, and of course, he thought, that would affect his perception of them.
“This is nonsense,” Lucius said, “this staying and helping. You did not cause this mess. Come home, now.”
A sudden flaring of incandescent rage seized Draco. That was always happening now, and he never knew when it would, or how to prevent it. He swung around to face his father, and Lucius actually took a step back at whatever he saw in Draco’s eyes. Once, Draco would have crowed about that, but now it gave him no joy.
We’re broken. We’re all so broken and I hate it.
“It’s not home to me,” Draco said. His voice wavered and dived, but though Lucius clenched his hands, he did not lean close to hear. Draco thought he could have hated his father as much as he hated Bellatrix then, just for that. He won’t show weakness, but he’s weak! Why can’t he get used to it? “I had to torture people there. How can it be home?”
“You did not torture people of your own free will,” Lucius said, smoothly and simply, as if he really believed that his words would make a difference. “The Dark Lord commanded you to.” He did move towards Draco now, but his neck was stiff and his head lifted and carried like a horse’s, and Draco knew he was trying to win back the intimidating position again. “He is dead, Draco.”
Draco laughed, and the sound broke and fell to the ground like the windows that had broken in the walls around them. “And you think that makes a difference?”
“It should.” Lucius lowered his voice impressively. “We are Malfoys.”
“Oh, fuck that,” Draco said, turning away and casting Scourgify again. He realized a moment later that he’d cast it on a patch of the floor he’d already cleaned. The wave of fury that ran through him left him feeling faint and dizzy. He closed his eyes and took a few deep breaths to regain control of himself, as far as he possibly could. “That doesn’t mean anything.”
“Draco.” Now Lucius was at his most pompous, and Draco knew without looking that he would have lifted his chin, his eyes focused on something in the hazy distance that would seem of more importance than the person in front of him. Draco hated that, too. “It means pride. It means continuance. It means tradition. It means-”
“It means fuck-all,” Draco said flatly. “With-” He’d stopped. He’d been about to talk about the lack of respect he saw in so many eyes since the Battle of Hogwarts, the utter indifference where people would once have shown wariness or outright fear. But the truth was simpler than that, and anyway, he thought Lucius had seen the indifference for himself; he just refused to believe in it.
“Father,” Draco said. “There’s been a war.”
“Thank you for informing me of that undeniable fact, Draco.”
Draco laughed, and the sound broke again, spiraled out of control until he was choking, leaning on a wall, wiping spittle from his lips. He was vaguely aware of Lucius staring at him in horror, but that didn’t matter, either. Not when Lucius was unable to grasp the simplest reasons for that laughter.
“Undeniable? Ha. You’re working to deny it,” he said, the words feeling as thick in his throat as the blood had when Fenrir Greyback punched him in the mouth over Christmas holidays and broke one of his teeth. He stood upright and pivoted around to face Lucius. “You want to pretend nothing changed. You’ll want me to come home and sit around in the rooms where we watched people die and take my NEWTS next year and get married even though I still have nightmares every night.”
“Time will patch the wounds, Draco.” His father’s voice carried a tinge of uncertainty, but no more than that.
Draco fired a hex. His wand moved without his brain willing it; his voice emerged in the single word that the hex embodied without his knowing it would do so. The spell missed as Lucius flinched violently.
And only then Draco realize, hearing the echo of his voice hanging in the air, that the spell had not been a hex. He had said Crucio.
“Get out,” he told his father, who was staring at him with frightened, alien eyes. “I’m staying here for the summer.” And he turned away and went back to cleaning up stone dust, listening to the sound of his father’s footsteps hastily retreating.
Only when he was sure they were gone did Draco fold himself to the floor and crouch with his hands over his face, breathing unsteadily. He waited for tears, but his eyes remained desert-dry.
*
“Avada Kedavra!”
This time, when the Killing Curse struck, blackness spread away from the place it hit him in the chest, and consumed him, and Harry found himself falling into the abyss, with no chance of return.
And it was everything he wanted, it was peace, an ending to anxiety-
Harry woke with his heart beating so fast that he was surprised he was able to hear a bell clanging through the castle. He swallowed and sat up, his head swirling, ignoring the bell for a moment as he tried to concentrate on the dream.
Why did I think about that? That can’t be a vision, Voldemort’s dead. And killing him was no worse than killing the basilisk or seeing Cedric die, and I didn’t have so many nightmares after that.
Harry groaned and dragged a hand over his forehead, smearing the sweat to the corners of his eyes. He could have dealt with these reactions if he just understood them. What had happened to him during the war wasn’t so terribly traumatic. Voldemort had killed him, but he hadn’t tortured Harry first. The Killing Curse was painless. And he had seen that vision of Dumbledore-whether it was real or not, Harry still had no idea-who comforted him and explained everything and sent him back.
That was the real reason he couldn’t understand why he was reacting with nightmares and the hollow feeling. He’d survived. That should be enough.
The bell rang again, and then Kreacher appeared in front of Harry’s bed and bowed to him. “Master Harry is coming to dinner!” he squeaked. “The Headmistress is announcing tasks for everyone’s staying in the castle over summertime!”
Harry thought about saying that he wasn’t hungry. And, most of the time, he wasn’t, now. He just didn’t want to eat, because food didn’t satisfy the hollow feeling inside him.
But if he was supposed to know what he was doing this summer, he reckoned he should attend the dinner.
“All right, Kreacher,” he said, and waited until the house-elf disappeared before he went about the difficult task of persuading his feet to move to the floor.
*
Draco glanced around the room with a sneer that he didn’t bother to conceal. The assortment in the Great Hall, gathered around the single table that was sufficient to hold them all, was motley. Orphans, people whose families didn’t want or need them close, the teachers who hadn’t been so badly injured in the battle that they still required rest in the infirmary-they huddled at the table under an enchanted ceiling that at the moment looked pathetic instead of grand. Who cared about magic that let it mimic the sky overhead? What in the world had that magic done to save them when the Death Eaters invaded?
And he was the only Slytherin.
At least he wasn’t the latest. A moment after he took his chair next to the Headmistress herself-probably she hadn’t trusted him not to hex people unless he was under her immediate eye-Potter staggered in. His eyes were glassy, his spectacles askew, his hair mussed from obvious sleep. And yet his skin was grainy, and he still looked tired.
Everyone’s tired in the aftermath of the war, Draco thought brutally, seeing sympathetic glances turn towards Potter from all over the table, people who wouldn’t have given him the time of day. Leave it to Potter to make a drama out of it.
Potter sat down a few seats away from him, between the Mudblood Creevey boy who was clutching his brother’s camera and a thin, pale girl from Ravenclaw whom Draco didn’t know, but whom he had seen screaming as she fled through the corridors more than once. McGonagall rose to her feet to address them. Of everyone in the room, Draco thought, she was the only one who looked as if she thought of victory instead of defeat.
“I am grateful for your volunteering of your time and effort to cleanse Hogwarts and restore it to what it is supposed to be,” she began briskly. “It is my hope that we will have the school open in time for the students to return in September.”
Draco concealed an incredulous snort with difficulty. It was early June. She thought that was a reasonable goal?
But then, he thought, as his gaze went to Potter down the table again, Gryffindors aren’t concerned with reasonable goals most of the time. Such as tidiness.
“To that end,” said McGonagall, and waved her wand in a Summoning motion that made scrolls swoop towards her from every corner of the room, “I have created a list of tasks, with names beside each one, that we must accomplish in order to have the barest minimum of cleanliness and the maximum of safety set up before September. I will expect everyone to do the tasks assigned. Mere dislike of someone you are assigned to work with-” her glasses glinted as she looked at Draco and Potter for a moment “-ought not to preclude you from making your best effort.”
Draco sneered at her out of habit, and then looked over the list. Most of the tasks were simple things: clearing rubble, removing hexes that the Death Eaters had left behind on doors and corners, repairing windows. Others were heavier and would require some study, in books whose titles McGonagall had provided, before they were tackled: removing the residue of Dark spells, strengthening and replacing stones, creating new wards.
Draco was assigned to a cleaning rotation and to replacement of the stones in the collapsed wing with Potter.
He lifted his eyes and looked down the table, to find Potter peering at him. But he said nothing, only looked away from Draco towards McGonagall, who was talking again to exhort them to teamwork.
Draco stifled a bitter laugh as he crumpled up the scroll and stuck it in his pocket. Some things never do change. The Headmistress is what Granger will grow up to be, I’m a disappointment to my father, and Potter still hates me.
But one thing had changed. The directionless fire burning in him, the flame that had made him cast an Unforgivable Curse at his father, now had a target.
*
Harry was flying, by the light of a full moon.
He had gone from requiring too much sleep, barely dragging himself out of bed at noon and meeting Malfoy and Dennis and the others for their work, to needing no sleep. Or, rather, though he wanted to rest, he no sooner lay down than his nerves began to jangle and jar, and the images of his nightmares came back and crouched on his chest and made him feel like he couldn’t breathe.
He had found himself sitting up on his bed earlier tonight, wand in hand, scanning the room and breathing frantically.
So he had decided to go flying. He had simply walked down to the Quidditch pitch, taken one of the school brooms out of the shed, and hopped aboard. No one had bothered to lock the shed. Why would anyone want to steal from a devastated school?
Harry tilted his face into the wind, closed his eyes, and made several tight loops over the Quidditch pitch. As he flew, they grew sharper and sharper, steeper and steeper, until he was feeling the drag of air against his skin and hearing the broom groan and creak under him.
Maybe he could drown his nervousness in this whirlpool. If he could make himself dizzy, if he could vomit, then he could-
And then something slammed into him from the side with the force of a Bludger, nearly knocking him from the broom.
Harry gripped the broom and wheeled down, his eyes open, gasping. The stunning pain was already spreading across his side, arching in fierce white lightning across the back of his fingers and head. Once again, his nerves jangled and jarred, but this time the cause was far more apparent.
And, for the first time since the end of the war, he unlocked his anger.
“Malfoy!” he roared, catching himself a few feet above the ground and wheeling about. He never doubted who it had been, even though, logically, with over thirty people in the school, it could have been any one of them, or even a Death Eater who had got loose and come back to hunt him. But he knew.
And there was a fierce joy in the knowing.
Malfoy fleeted past him like a shadow on his own broom, moving faster than Harry. His head was turned towards him, his chin and cheeks too sharp, too pointy. He laughed mockingly, and gestured the second Bludger following him towards Harry, with a flick of his wand that reminded Harry of second year and Dobby.
Dobby. Who was dead. Because of people like Malfoy. Because of Malfoy. He never would have died if Malfoy hadn’t kept people in the dungeons of that stupid house of his.
Harry avoided the second Bludger with contemptuous ease, then flipped upside-down. Malfoy hesitated a moment, as if he hoped Harry would fall to the ground and save him the trouble of killing him, or more likely because he had to adjust the angle of the next spell he had planned to cast.
“Aboleo,” Harry whispered, his wand aimed at the broom that Malfoy rode.
The wood and the bristles began to disintegrate beneath Malfoy. He gave a startled yelp, but the next moment he was laughing, as madly as Harry wanted to.
Why should I just want to? And he gave voice to it, the laughter wide and ringing and empty as the hollow place inside him. Malfoy cocked his head to listen to it, smirked, and then jumped off into midair.
Of course Harry was there to catch him, which the bastard must have planned on. He landed facing Harry, gripping the broom with his knees as he leaned forwards and tried to punch Harry in the face.
Harry seized his arm and held it back. His wand spiraled free from his grip and towards the ground. Harry didn’t mind, was glad, even though the evidence was strong that Malfoy probably still had his wand. The other boy attacking this way was a clear sign that they were going to hang in the air and try to beat the shit out of each other. That was perfectly fine with Harry.
Malfoy struggled against him, trying to pull his arm free. Harry concentrated on holding him back-too much. Malfoy brought his other fist up and hit him in the chin. Harry’s head snapped back, all the muscles in his neck going tight the way they did in some of his nightmares when he lay on the ground and offered his throat to Voldemort so that he could cut it with a knife.
But that didn’t happen, and this is really happening, he reminded himself, as yet another punch cracked home and split his lip.
Harry gave up on holding Malfoy back and instead tilted the broom so that Malfoy was sliding towards the ground. His eyes widened and his breathing became quick, but a faint, dark smile still lingered on his face, and he was using his hands to hurt instead of hang on.
Harry punched him in the side. Malfoy caught him there, too, and made his own wound from the Bludger ache. Harry whimpered, sure he had bruised ribs, but the sound was lost in Malfoy’s high laugh of pleasure.
Then Malfoy was back to grunting as Harry caught him hard with a knee in the groin and a jab to the forehead. Malfoy struck back with an elbow that Harry met with his own elbow, an unexpectedly ringing blow. Harry blacked his eyes, one and then the other, hot happiness and malice racing through him like bile.
Then they met the ground, and Harry tumbled backwards off the broom. Malfoy fell on top of him, and grabbed his throat.
He’s trying to choke me to death, Harry thought, almost calmly, although bloody darkness was invading his vision and his throat was already sore. He aimed himself carefully and then brought his head up with an enormous effort, using the pull of Malfoy’s hands more than his own strength to accomplish it, slamming his forehead into Malfoy’s nose.
And then-
Then, it was as if it were enough.
Malfoy lowered his head until his dripping nose rested against Harry’s cheek. Harry suffered a brief, painful memory of the day he had visited Andromeda, the day right after the war, and held Teddy in his arms. But this was blood, not snot, the way the liquid running from Teddy’s nose had been, and something in it made Harry turn towards the other boy and throw an arm around his neck.
Malfoy sighed, the sound shaking his body. “No one cares about me anymore,” he whispered. “No one flinches when I walk by, or thinks of what I’ll report to my father if they hurt me. No one cares.” He paused, and Harry could feel the words stretching between them like long strings of hot chocolate at Florean Fortescue’s. Except that Fortescue was gone now, and who knew if the ice cream shop would even reopen? “Except you.”
“I needed that,” Harry said. “It gets rid of the hollow feeling.” He didn’t care about what Malfoy was saying, not really. It was just the chance to talk that meant something to him, to get the words out.
“It gets rid of the temptation to throw curses everywhere.”
“I didn’t make enough people bleed during the war. I wanted to make you bleed.”
“You used my wand to kill him.”
“He killed himself.”
They were drifting back towards each other again, and already the blissful emptiness that held Harry was being filled with unwelcome memories. He shoved at Malfoy’s shoulders, and Malfoy responded by letting his body weigh more. He clutched Harry’s shoulders and stared into his eyes.
“We aren’t going to tell McGonagall about this,” he said.
Harry laughed, and the laugh was tainted, but not as it had been in the last few weeks, with mechanical uncertainty, because he was laughing to gratify someone else. This humor, he really felt. “Fuck, no,” he said. “You gave me back my anger, Malfoy.” He paused. “And maybe you’ll do it again.”
Malfoy smirked. Harry shouldn’t have been able to see the expression with his glasses cracked from one of Malfoy’s punches, but this close, it seemed easy to do so.
“Yes, I will,” he said, and it was the first promise Harry had trusted since Voldemort died.
*
Draco woke with a feeling of immense quiet in himself. He blinked at the ceiling for long moments, then rose from the bed and walked slowly towards the window that looked out over the lake.
After the war, he couldn’t stay in the dungeons. He saw Vincent everywhere, and the Slytherins who hadn’t been brave enough to pick and stay with a side during the Battle of Hogwarts, including himself. So he had appropriated a small classroom once used for Defense Against the Dark Arts dueling practice on the third floor. No one had cared.
Because no one cares about me, he thought, but then he remembered Potter, and a slow smile worked its way across his face.
He leaned on the windowsill for endless moments, regarding the prospect before him. The sunrise blazed in the lake-water, extending tendrils of lacy gold to touch the far shore. The sky was gold, too, with blue chipping away at the gold like hens’ teeth. Draco could hear an unfamiliar bird calling from the edge of the Forbidden Forest, one trill, one sharp jab of a note, and then pause and repeat.
It was the first time he had paid attention to the world since the Dark Lord died.
He turned away and went to prepare himself for the cleaning routine of the morning. He had to glance at his crumpled scroll to remember what it was: checking the stone of the collapsed wing for cracks.
Potter would be with him.
For no reason, Draco wanted to laugh, and to lash out.
*
Malfoy was watching him.
Harry knew it, but he didn’t look up from his work. They had used spells to strengthen their eyes, because they had to examine the rocks for hairline fractures. As much as possible, Headmistress McGonagall wanted to use the material of Hogwarts to rebuild Hogwarts, but they couldn’t use it if it was unsafe. And the slightest weakness might make building material unsafe.
To imagine the wing crashing down again, to imagine sprawled bodies amidst ruin-
The hollow feeling sang in Harry again like a tapped wineglass, and he pulled himself sharply back. No. No, he wouldn’t think of that. He’d thought too often of the reality, of Fred’s death, had seen the reality too often.
Instead, he thought of Malfoy’s eyes, and carefully, unobtrusively, worked himself around to a corner of the wall where he was at a distance from the others and half-hidden from sight by a pile of shattered stone slabs, not unstable enough to be dangerous. It was a place that someone could find him and speak to him without much fear of being overheard.
If that person wanted to, at least.
Footsteps sounded behind him, but Harry didn’t look up, still. He had discovered a crack that turned into a messy web of lines towards the edge of the stone. He tapped it with his wand and cast the spell that would mark this particular boulder with a red light, signaling it was unsafe to use.
An arm leaned heavily against the nape of his neck. Harry arched his neck slightly in response. The bruises around his throat where Malfoy had tried to choke him, hidden by glamours, throbbed as if in response.
“I almost cursed my father with the Cruciatus,” Malfoy breathed into Harry’s ear, his breath as warm as a lover’s.
“He doesn’t hate you for it,” Harry said.
A creaky, windy sigh in his ear. “Let’s stick to giving each other what we know we can give, Potter, shall we?” Malfoy drawled. “You can’t possibly know what my father would feel.”
“Yes, I can.” Harry turned around to face Malfoy. He had used glamours to conceal his injuries, too, well enough that Harry could only tell they were there by the slight fuzziness about his eyes and the slightly-too-perfect line of his nose. He reached up and let his hand hover in front of Malfoy’s nose for a moment. Malfoy’s breathing deepened, and he twisted his face towards Harry. “I heard him talking to Voldemort during the battle. The only thing he wanted to know was what had happened to you. You’re special to him, Malfoy.”
Malfoy froze, his smile still in place, but his half-disguised face turned to stone.
“And your mother,” Harry continued, the words dripping, driving, springing out of him, relentlessly, as much as if they were the insults he had used to hurl at Malfoy in school, hoping against hope that they hurt.
“What about my mother?” Malfoy was moving again, leaning close as if he would kiss Harry.
“She loves you,” Harry said. “She helped me in the Forest. She lied to Voldemort for me, telling him that I was dead after his Killing Curse hit me. But she only did it when I told her you were still alive.”
Malfoy closed his eyes. A breeze coming in through the tumbled wall ruffled his hair. Harry admired it abstractly. When he didn’t think about whose face this was, the hair was half-handsome.
“You’re lying,” Malfoy sighed. “Lying just like she did.”
“No.” Harry raised his hand and pressed on Malfoy’s chest, where he’d hit him. Malfoy grunted, but otherwise his breathing didn’t change. “It’s the only reason I survived.” The words he hadn’t meant to say, really hadn’t meant to say, even though he’d thought them, rushed out of him then. “And even if you cast Cruciatus at your father, that doesn’t mean you meant it all the other times you said it.”
“The other times I said it,” Malfoy murmured, opening his eyes. They stared at Harry as blankly as two specks of granite.
“The time you tried to hurt me when I caught you in the bathroom during our sixth year,” said Harry. “I didn’t know if it would have landed, but I still responded with that spell that scarred you. I’m sorry.” The words drifted like ashes away from his lips, as light and as empty.
Malfoy inclined his head, which could have meant acceptance or just a sign that he was listening. Harry didn’t care. He was continuing.
“And the times when you tortured people because Voldemort ordered you to.”
At last, Malfoy’s face turned white. “How did you know about that?” he whispered. “You’re lying. Like he did.”
“No,” Harry said, and pushed the fringe back from the scar on his forehead. He’d almost forgotten the scar since the Battle, gratefully. It no longer defined his life. But it defined this moment. He traced the line of it with a finger, which Malfoy’s gaze followed hungrily. “This gave me a connection to Voldemort. I got visions of what he was doing and thinking and feeling, sometimes. I know that he ordered you to torture people, but you didn’t want to. I saw your face. It was disgusted. He had to order you more than once.”
“So what does that mean?” Malfoy asked, and there was a sneer breaking around the words, defining the moment the other way. “That I’m one of your perfect, stainless Gryffindors? That I’m innocent?”
“No,” Harry said. “Just that you were strong enough he couldn’t make you want it.”
Malfoy turned and broke away from him as if Harry had threatened to kill him. Harry watched him go calmly, and then turned back to his work.
His mood had changed again, to a quiet, floating unreality that was even better, in some ways, than the anger. Maybe he had a real chance to think now, and work out what the bloody hell was wrong with him.
*
Dear Father, I heard-
And then Draco crumpled up the letter and threw it away, because there was no way under the sun that he was going to tell his father he had talked to Harry Potter about him, much less what he had heard from Harry Potter.
Draco let his head fall back against his chair. The bruises Potter had given him ached steadily. The black eyes he had healed, mostly, because otherwise he would have had difficulty with seeing the work that he needed to do, but he had left the others. They reminded him of the first time for weeks he had felt something other than anger at his family and self-loathing.
And now Potter had given him something else, though Draco had to be suspicious of his motives and therefore of his words.
On the other hand, he thought slowly, what can he have to gain by lying about Mother and Father? I can’t imagine that he values my good opinion. And he was right about what the Dark Lord forced me to do.
Draco lifted a shaky hand to brush back the hair from his forehead. His mouth was somehow both sticky and dry at the same time.
He still wanted to write a letter to his father, but he didn’t think he was ready yet. He wanted to find Potter and get some more specifics first. If he could pin Potter down to facts, then he would know more about what to believe and what not to.
*
Harry yawned and sat down at the high table rubbing stone dust out of his hair and ears. McGonagall gave him a small smile. “Is the work really that tiring, Mr. Potter?”
“Not so much,” said Harry, as he reached for one of the plate of sandwiches the house-elves had put into the middle of the table. “But I haven’t been sleeping well the past few nights.” That ought to cover any mistakes he made, and he knew others would think it perfectly reasonable for him to have nightmares about the war, even if he knew there was nothing for him to have nightmares about.
“Ah.” McGonagall seemed ready to talk with him alone at the moment, perhaps because he was sitting right next to her and there weren’t many other people around. She spread a slice of bread with honey as she seemed to consider a response. Finally she said, quietly, “Have you considered talking to a Mind-Healer at St. Mungo’s?”
Harry just barely kept a noisy sigh in. Hermione had said much the same thing before she and Ron went to the Burrow. “I don’t think it’s that bad,” he said.
“What Potter means to say,” a nasal voice interrupted from behind them, “is that the dreams are driving him absolutely mental and he needs help right now.”
Harry glared over his shoulder at Malfoy, who looked no different now than he had ever looked, except for the shimmer of glamours protecting hidden wounds. Git. Of course he would say something like that. And after all I tried to do for him this morning.
“Madam Pomfrey remained here over the summer for a reason, you know,” McGonagall told him gently.
“I know that,” Harry said, and was shocked to find himself almost snapping at the Headmistress. He stuffed the sandwich he held in his mouth so that he wouldn’t be as tempted to say dumb things.
“I think that’s quite a keen observation, Headmistress,” Malfoy said, and sat down in the chair beside Harry. “I’ll be happy to escort Potter to the hospital wing when the meal is done and see that he gets the care he needs.”
Oh, come off it, Harry thought, wishing, at the moment, that he had telepathy. She’s never going to buy that. She knows what you’re like.
But McGonagall appeared to have assumed Dumbledore’s stupid optimism about people along with his title. “That will be quite sufficient, Mr. Malfoy,” she said. “I am afraid that our Chosen One tends to neglect his health.”
And she and Malfoy exchanged condescending smiles over Harry’s head, exactly as if he were a toddler.
Harry clamped his teeth in the sandwich and used what remained of it to stifle a scream. He was fine. He would be fine. He didn’t do much of anything in the war; he didn’t have to torture people like Malfoy did, or teach in an occupied school like McGonagall did. Why couldn’t they leave him alone and let him figure out his problems on his own?
Malfoy made it worse by keeping up a steady stream of prattle all through lunch, asking Harry how he’d slept, whether he wanted more food, whether he required help with the stones he was trying to repair, and what he thought of the new portraits the school was planning to have painted in commemoration of the battle. Luckily, that last question got him involved in an intense discussion with one of the Ravenclaw girls who’d remained and apparently knew a bit about magical painting. Harry gratefully let them discuss it whilst he stared out a gap in the walls at the sunlight. It always seemed to be sunny now, and the light was as pure and golden and hollow as he felt.
I just need time. Time by myself, to think and react the way that I know I can, not the way the rest of the world wants me to.
When he stood up from the lunch table at last, Malfoy moved smoothly to accompany him. Harry waited until they had put a corridor between themselves and the Great Hall before he whirled on Malfoy and shoved him up against the wall. Malfoy blinked, as if surprised that Harry would do such a thing.
“I don’t know what you think you’re playing at,” Harry told him flatly, “but you’ve had your revenge, all right? McGonagall wasn’t worrying about me, and now she is. I don’t know-” He broke off, realizing he’d been about to repeat himself and ask Malfoy what he’d been playing at. “I don’t know why this matters to you,” he finished, “but just stop.”
“Potter, you idiot,” Malfoy said. “We have some things to talk about concerning my parents and my family, still, and I said what I did to get us out of there and give us some plausible time alone.”
Harry blinked and stepped back, his arm dropping from Malfoy’s throat. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, right, then.” His breath was coming short and his head whirling, which he didn’t understand. “What did you want to know?”
“Why did the Dark Lord ask my mother to make sure you were still alive?” Malfoy demanded.
“She was the closest Death Eater.”
Malfoy rolled his eyes and snorted. “Oh, please, Potter. If you want me to believe you’re not lying, you’ll need to do a little better than that.”
And that was when Harry decided that he was fed up. He didn’t really care if Malfoy “needed” the truth about his parents to “heal.” He’d already told Malfoy everything he knew, and he’d told the truth, and of course the git doubted him, because that was the way he was. Harry must have imagined the relief that fighting with him had meant last night and this morning.
“I don’t care if you think I’m lying or not,” he told Malfoy. “I have more important things to worry about than you.” He turned to walk away.
“Like dreams?” Malfoy called after him nastily.
Harry just kept walking.
“Why don’t you just go to Madam Pomfrey and request a Dreamless Sleep potion?” Malfoy continued, sounding bored. “That’s what I did a few nights ago. It’s not such a chore as you’re making it seem, Potter.”
“Because I shouldn’t be having these dreams!” Harry snapped back at him. “Voldemort is dead.”
Malfoy’s forehead wrinkled. “So what?” he asked. “Everyone is having dreams about the war, I think, and you did more than most.”
“No, I didn’t,” Harry said. “That’s the fucking point. I didn’t torture, or get tortured. I didn’t even kill Voldemort with the Killing Curse. All I did was make sure his own wand turned on himself and die.”
“Die,” Malfoy said, leaning forwards, his lack of inflection turning it into a statement.
Harry shrugged, irritated that he’d already told Malfoy so much, and hurried away up the stairs towards the crumbled wing.
I have to deal with this myself. If I refused Ron and Hermione’s help, why in the world would I want help from him?
*
In the end, Draco chose to write to his mother, not his father, and not until two days later, and he buried his question about Potter’s truth-telling in the middle of long paragraphs of chatter about Hogwarts and the repair sessions and the nice weather Scotland was having and the Headmistress.
He wondered if his mother would be able to recognize the only real, true, important part of the letter anyway. She did seem disconcertingly good at figuring out things like that.
He carried the letter to the Owlery and sent it away with one of the school owls. As he watched the bird wing its way towards the horizon, he caught sight of a distant figure circling above the Quidditch Pitch. A moment’s watching was enough to convince him it was Potter. No one else flew like that, with an innate and inordinate love of pure motion; he made little unnecessary flourishes that Draco had never seen anyone else make, because they might be tipped off the broom if they did. But for Potter, it seemed as if making those motions was part of life.
Draco stood there watching him for a long time, his arms folded on the windowsill, his forehead cooled by the breeze blowing in, wilder and brisker at this height than it was through the window of his rooms.
He thought of nothing at all for long moments before he made his decision.
Part 2.