[one-shots]: Lord of Light, 2/2, PG, for hd_parallel
Second part of a long one-shot. Don't start reading here.
"Potter?"
Malfoy sounded half-bewildered to see him, although once again he had issued the invitation. This time in response to Harry’s begging, of course, but still.
Harry didn’t let it bother him. This would be new for Malfoy. If he ever saw anyone besides Luna in a friendly manner, neither Hermione nor Luna had known about it. And Harry imagined that treating your home as a fortress left you nervous when someone else walked through the door as if they owned the place.
Harry tried not to swagger, though lots of people had told him that he did that anyway, no matter how much he tried not to. He tilted his head at Malfoy with a friendly smile. "How are you? How’s Cassie?"
Malfoy smiled back, and a hint of the gentleness that he had showed the other day returned to his grey eyes. Harry tried not to drool. That was the way he wanted to make Malfoy look all the time, though he didn’t know it was possible yet.
"She’s sleeping much better than she was," Malfoy said. "Thanks to you. We discussed the woman that she was dreaming of. Some nightmare version of her mother, but Agnes has said that she’s never coming back. Once Cassie knew that, she was able to forget about it for the most part." He turned away. "Come on, I’ll take you to her."
"And what about you?" Harry asked, falling into step beside him. They were going a different way than before, through twisting corridors that didn’t have nearly as many pretty curtains or lighted windows. Harry noted that thoughtfully, wondering if Malfoy had thought about his need to absorb as much light and color as he could last time. Not that this latest corridor was absolutely dull and blank, but it had the opulence of bronze and silver instead of jewels.
Malfoy gave him a glance that looked honestly baffled. "What about me?"
"I have an interest in your health, too." Harry leaned a little closer and lowered his voice into what he knew was a seductive tone.
Malfoy didn’t blush, or stammer, or yell at him. He just continued looking baffled. "Yes, all right," he said.
And then he didn’t answer the question.
Harry stared. It had been years since he had met someone so oblivious. Even drunks responded to his tone when he spoke like that. Not that Harry made a habit of sleeping with drunks, but it could be useful to make them move when he needed a place to sit down.
Of course, a moment’s thought told him the likely reason that Malfoy probably wasn’t thinking of himself and Harry in the same bed.
He’s spent how long alone? And he’s been how free to express his desires? And he’s had how many people who would have honestly wanted him for reasons that had nothing to do with his wealth, or his parents’ past, or his little girl?
Harry didn’t want to pity Malfoy, but it still took a long moment for him to swallow that emotion and try a different approach instead.
"Does Cassie still have the image I made for her?" he asked. "I hoped that she would enjoy playing with it, but sometimes I make toys like that and then I don’t know if it was a wise choice."
"Oh, yes, in this case it was," Malfoy said, voice a little quick, as if he imagined that he had to defend Cassie from every possible accusation of bad behavior. "Cassie’s very gentle with her toys. I could get her more easily, of course, but she loves them as if they were real people, and she doesn’t want to hurt them. She’s at that age."
And that’s what makes her different, and you different in the way you raise her, Harry thought. He knew for a fact that his cousin Dudley "at that age" had broken toys all over the place, in the sure and certain knowledge that his parents would buy him more, whatever he did to the ones in his bedroom.
Malfoy, of all people, had a daughter that gentle. Harry wouldn’t have believed it three days ago, but he had believed a lot of nonsense about Malfoy three days ago. And he had another chance to correct it now.
"She’s a credit to her father," he said. He didn’t use his seductive tone of voice, but a simple one. He thought he would build up subtly in the compliments until Malfoy couldn’t fail to take notice.
But Malfoy whirled around in the middle of the corridor and glared at him, eyes narrowed. "Are you making fun of me?"
Harry stared. "What? Of course not!"
Something of his genuine bewilderment seemed to get through. Malfoy relaxed with a snort and shook his head. "I hoped not," he said. "I would hate to have to send you away. Cassie keeps asking after you."
"Does she?" Harry asked, while he figured out another of the barriers separating him from Malfoy. He doesn’t think that he’s worthy of being desired, or perhaps he just thinks too much of the past when he thinks of me.
I’ll teach him to think of the future.
"Why would you think that I was making fun of you by praising your parenting skills?" Harry added quietly. "I’ve talked to Luna, and she says that you’re a good father. I’ve seen Cassie, and I know that you are. There’s no reason for you to doubt me and think that I’m making fun."
Malfoy walked in silence for a long time without answering. Harry was starting to think that Malfoy Manor must have miles of metal and stone in its bowels for the purpose of bewildering people who attacked, but then they turned a corner and he saw a bronze door carved with dolphins ahead of them. Malfoy quickened his pace, and Harry assumed it was their destination.
He had also assumed that Malfoy wouldn’t answer his question, but Malfoy responded very quietly. "I remember Hogwarts. I remember what happened before the war, which is more than most people will admit to these days. I know that you never liked me, and you have no reason to like my daughter. That you seem to is--unusual. I don’t know that I like it."
Malfoy pushed open the door in, and Harry sighed and followed. Well, he had the answer, and if he didn’t like it, that was his own fault. No one had told him to pursue Malfoy.
Cassie was inside, sitting on a cushioned chair and facing the unicorn image, which sat on another one that was shaped like a throne. "What does Your Majesty say?" Cassie asked, cupping her hand around her ear. "You have to speak up. I can’t hear you."
Harry’s lips twitched. From the way Malfoy’s face had relaxed when he heard her, this was probably something he had said to his daughter in the past when he was teaching her manners.
"Cassie, I’ve brought you a visitor," Malfoy said gravely. Harry had noticed that he treated her much like an adult the first time he was here. Well, she was an only child and Malfoy’s only regular human contact. He probably had to do that so he wouldn’t go crazy or have his brain turn to mush, the way Harry knew it sometimes could when adults were alone with young children.
Cassie spun around and stared. Then she leaped off her chair and dashed forwards with her hand out. "Mr. Potter!"
Malfoy cleared his throat, and Cassie stopped in place and gathered her skirts around her so that she could bow. "I mean, how are you, Mr. Potter? I hope you’re well. I’m fine."
Harry knew better than to break the game. He knelt down, the way he had when he was trying to figure out Cassie’s nightmare, and bowed back to her. "I’m fine," he said. "And I have a message for you from Laurel Lovegood."
Cassie promptly stood up straight, her eyes so bright they seemed to burn. "What is it?"
"She said," Harry said, making sure that he put all the precision and intonation he had picked up over the years into the words, "that she’ll give you her best secrets. You can have any you like. But you need to come back and forgive her for what she said last time."
Cassie stared, then looked up at her father. "Do I have to?" she asked. "I want the secrets, but I don’t want to forgive her."
"What is polite, Cassie?" Malfoy gave her an encouraging glance that was nevertheless so stern Harry wasn’t surprised Cassie looked at the ground and played with her pale blue skirts a bit.
"To always do what is right," Cassie said.
"And is it right to forgive Laurel for what she said to you?" Malfoy put out one hand as if the answer was in his palm and Cassie had to pick it up.
"Yes," Cassie said with a sigh. She put her hand in her father’s and swung it back and forth, looking at Harry with a sad expression. "She said sorry."
"Good," Malfoy murmured, and looked at Harry sidelong. "Mr. Potter would make another image for you, I think, if you told him more about the game that you and Laurel are playing."
"It’s not a game!" Cassie said, her blonde hair bouncing around her face as she raised shocked eyes. "It’s important."
"Games can be important," Harry said. "There are some people who say that my gift is a game, but I make money from it, and I make images, and some of them are beautiful." He nodded to the unicorn image in the chair, and smiled when he noticed that it sparkled more than he remembered. Yes, that was one he was proud of, especially since the nightmare had been so powerful and he’d been weaving them at the same time.
"Really?" Cassie asked.
"Yes," Harry said. "And I will make you another image, if you can think of something that you want as much."
Cassie gnawed her lip for a moment. Then she said, "It’s the Queen Game. You have to tell secrets and take over the world. Laurel’s father taught her to play."
Harry gave Malfoy a questioning glance in spite of himself, but Malfoy shook his head. He apparently didn’t know who the twins’ father was any more than Harry did.
Not that it mattered. Cassie had done as she promised, and Harry would gladly take another message to Laurel as an excuse to come back.
"Good," he said. "Now, think very hard of the image that you want to leave your head and become real, all right?"
Cassie squeezed her eyes shut.
"Sorry, not like that," Harry said. "Your eyes have to be open, or I can’t reach into your head and see the image."
Malfoy shifted uneasily, as if he hadn’t realized before now that Harry was reaching into Cassie’s mind. Harry ignored him. He had explained everything to Malfoy when he first contacted Harry and said that Cassie was suffering from nightmares. It was Malfoy’s fault if he hadn’t listened.
Cassie nodded, waited, and then said, "I’m thinking of it."
Harry leaned closer and cast his mind out.
The tunnel was even larger and clearer this time, since he had been inside Cassie’s mind once before, and Harry smiled when he saw what waited at the end. He came back into his own head, closed his eyes, and waited for the colors to burn behind them before he began to spin.
This day wasn’t as sunny, but Cassie had a fire in her chambers, and it was particularly important for this image. Harry fixed his gaze on the flames as the orange and red crept over his knuckles and the yellow licked shyly at the backs of his hands. Then he mixed it with the memories of sunlight that had flooded his bedroom the other morning and the grey-green of the sea where he’d gone the other day after a job.
Cassie gave a gasp and then stood there, silent with delight, eyes fixed on his hands. Harry didn’t dare to glance aside to see what Malfoy was doing, not when he was approaching the most delicate part of the weaving, but he thought the silence from that side of the room was stunned and admiring. It was what he would like to believe, anyway.
The grey-green climbed into the air in a wavering stream and then coalesced at the bottom of the image into eggs. Harry raised his right hand, and orange danced around the eggs, limned them, and then became an outline of raised wings. Red and gold followed, and then shifting blue that he’d pulled from the outer edges of sunlight or the heart of fire; he couldn’t always name the origins of his colors. Harry dug his fingers together, clenched them, and pulled them apart.
A firebird hovered in the air, turning its head slowly back and forth, feathers gleaming gold, tail scarlet, feet jeweled with exotic tones. The crest on its head quivered and flickered like flames, and sometimes it was blue. It saw Cassie and opened its beak in a soft cry before flying down to her. It brought the eggs that crouched beneath it, attached to its tail fathers, along.
Cassie reached up and held out her hands to the bird, which nuzzled them with gentle warmth. Harry focused his concentration and snapped the bird free of him so it could survive when he left the room, then sagged back on his heels. He was dizzy with exhaustion, but he would have done it all over again, twice, for the sake of the joy in Cassie’s eyes.
And then he stood up and turned around, and he realized that he had another reward waiting for him.
Malfoy watched him as if he was the center of the universe, and his eyes were dazed, apparently with the force of his own emotion. He shook his head, once, twice, but still didn’t break eye contact with Harry. He reached out one hand, seeming not aware that he was doing it.
Harry didn’t hesitate. Yes, it was a risk, but he had been taking risks all his life, and more of them since that night in the graveyard when he had trusted to the unknown magic breaking through him--had trusted it would destroy Voldemort instead of him. He caught Malfoy’s hand, turned it over, and caressed the palm with his fingers.
Malfoy stood still for a moment, his eyes widening, his body shuddering as though a charge of lightning had rushed through him. Harry waited for him to say or do something, keeping his gaze steady.
But Malfoy didn’t do anything. Cassie played with her bird, squealing, and still he remained motionless. Harry thought he was trying to make a decision, but didn’t entirely know what about.
So he took another risk. He bowed his head and let his own emotions appear: the curiosity he felt about Malfoy, the way he had been affected when Malfoy thanked him, and his consciousness of the difference between the way Malfoy had used to be and the way he was now. He didn’t know if Malfoy would be able to understand all of them, but Harry was bloody well going to try. The way Malfoy looked at him now was like an invitation into a new world.
The tableau lasted a moment longer. Malfoy appeared as frozen as Harry had been when he looked up into Voldemort’s eyes, and Harry wondered if he needed to touch him again to get the message across.
But then Malfoy yanked his hand away and shook his head. "I don’t know what you mean," he said hoarsely, as though Harry had spoken aloud. "You can’t--you can’t look at me and hand me that huge a riddle."
"A riddle?" Harry asked. He hoped he had his voice under control.
"A riddle," Malfoy said. "Because you have no reason to look at me like that."
"Haven’t you thought of the reason?’ Harry whispered. He had hoped he would have the chance to talk to Malfoy alone, rather than in front of Cassie, but she was too enthralled with her new toy to pay attention. "What reason would someone naturally have to look at you like that? It isn’t a riddle. It doesn’t have to be."
Malfoy smiled a little, his face going cool, as if he had thought of another way to insulate himself from Harry. "Other people would have a reason to look at me like that," he explained, apparently to a slow child. "Not you."
Harry didn’t turn around and bang his head on the wall in disgust, but it was a near thing.
*
"Ah, Harry. I have been wanting to talk to you."
Harry turned around with a smile. "Headmaster Dumbledore, sir," he said. "How nice to see you."
Dumbledore bowed to him with a little flourish, eyes twinkling so madly that Harry would have thought they were on fire if he hadn’t been used to the way that Dumbledore behaved by now. The Headmaster didn’t look like a wizard who had kept Hogwarts functioning and free in a chaotic world, but then, he never did.
For a moment, Dumbledore stood looking at the people celebrating near them, calling excitedly to each other and waving food in the air and playing tag around the tents. Harry looked with him. This was the annual celebration of the end of the war, held on the anniversary of the day that Voldemort had died. Harry thought that was morbid, since it was also the day Cedric had died, but he wasn’t the one who had chosen the day or the way to celebrate it. He was just here as a performer, thank Merlin.
The tents were as large as some of the ones that Harry had seen at the Quidditch World Cup before his last halfway normal year at Hogwarts, but they housed games, food, mazes, and other attractions instead of people--except the ones towards the very edge of the Hogwarts grounds, which held some travelers who had decided to trust to the Headmaster’s protection. They flew flags of bright red and yellow and purple, and they themselves were colored with stars, moons, and prancing animals like the ones that Dumbledore regularly wore on his robes. The nearest tent was an enormous blue thing out of which crashes and thumps and squeaks regularly came. Harry didn’t think that he wanted to know what went on there, especially since so many children came out in tears.
Between the tents, jugglers, dancers, Muggle impersonators, and singers were putting on their performances, each trying to attract the most notice. Harry smiled as he caught one particular unfriendly look from a dancer known as Mystic Maggie, who wore only purple silk veils. She maintained that she had been the biggest attraction at all the shows in Britain until Harry started showing his gift off. Harry knew that wasn’t true, and had no reason to continue the dispute when she was entertaining enough about it on her own.
Schoolchildren from Hogwarts dashed through the fair, or walked if they were seventh-years or wore Prefect badges, but even then, they couldn’t hide their grins. Harry wished them well. This was certainly different from the first celebrations that had been held here when he was still a student.
"I wanted to know if you would return and take your NEWTs," Dumbledore said suddenly.
Harry turned back to him and raised his eyebrows. The Headmaster was dressed in mauve robes covered with flashing blue pixies that made it hard to look at him. "You decided to try the direct approach this time, sir?"
Dumbledore only gazed at him earnestly and stroked his silver beard. "I know that you think this request is a joke, Harry, but it’s actually quite important," he said. "You don’t know how it looks, to have you out there, without a single NEWT, and leading a career that puts you constantly in the public eye. I have students each year who continually say that they want to abandon their education as you have done. It is quite embarrassing, and could be detrimental to their futures."
"I’m not constantly in the public eye because of my career, sir," Harry said patiently, though he had come to the conclusion that Dumbledore would never believe in or acknowledge this. He still seemed to take it as a personal affront that he hadn’t predicted Harry’s gift or how Voldemort would die. "I’m in the public eye because there are too many people who still think that killing someone makes you a hero."
"Never question your own heroism, Harry." The twinkles in Dumbledore’s eyes were gone.
Harry leaned an elbow on the wooden stage beside him, which he was going to stand on when he performed, and grinned. "Why? Because it makes you uncomfortable?"
Dumbledore sighed and touched his beard as though he was using it for comfort. "Because it is not fitting for you to do so, Harry. We must remember the heroes of the war, such as your parents, who died for the sake of defeating Voldemort. To devalue your own sacrifice devalues theirs."
Harry shook his head and decided to adopt a serious tone for a moment, since it seemed that Dumbledore wasn’t going to let him go until he did. "I think of it, sir. But I prefer to think of the living over the dead."
"Harry!"
Dumbledore had started to reply, but he shut his mouth now and moved aside as Sirius came barreling up to both of them, his arms spread and his eyes rolling in exaggerated gladness. Behind him came Remus, his smile amused. He bent down for a moment to listen to a child who pulled on his robe, and so Sirius reached Harry first and grabbed him in a hug, spinning him around.
"How are you?" Sirius roared into his ear, and then went on without waiting for an answer. "You should have seen the way Remus insulted Snivellus a minute ago! Oh, it was great! I thought Snivellus was going to cut off Remus’s head and start stuffing his brains in vials, he was so angry!"
"It wasn’t an insult, Sirius," Remus said, coming up as Harry got his breath back and nodding to him. He held out his hand, which Harry gladly shook. Remus looked as content as ever, and much healthier than he had when he was teaching Harry in third year, his eyes bright and a small smile gracing his face when he looked at Sirius. "I simply told him that I wasn’t going to put up with him, next year, trying to insinuate that werewolves could change at times other than the full moon. I know what I am, and I won’t try to hide it as long as I’m at Hogwarts. But he has no right to frighten the students that way. Hullo, Harry," he went on, more warmly. "How have you been?"
"Great!" was all Harry got to say before Sirius was objecting.
"But it was the way you said it, Moony! The way you leaned forwards and lowered your voice and stared at him with predator’s eyes!" Sirius apparently tried to imitate it, but he got it laughably wrong. Harry snorted. The days when Sirius could convincingly play Azkaban inmate were long gone.
Remus chuckled. "I sincerely doubt he noticed that. You’re the only one who notices things like that about me."
In a quicksilver change of mood, Sirius grabbed Remus’s hand and squeezed it tight. "Yes, and thank Merlin," he said in a low voice. "Otherwise I’d have a lot more cause for jealousy than I like."
Remus stared at him with a besotted smile, and Dumbledore’s eyes were twinkling so fast that Harry was surprised they didn’t hurt. Harry just shook his head. Remus and Sirius had been together since his fourth year--something Harry had figured out easily, although they had only thought it was "appropriate" to tell him when he came of age--and they acted like teenagers on their first date still.
Of course, their example was one of the reasons that Harry would have liked to date Malfoy. He thought he could feel about him the same way Sirius felt about Remus.
But of course that’s not going to happen, Harry thought, rolling his eyes when he thought of the idiot’s response to his advances.
"Mr. Potter!"
Harry turned in surprise. Cassie Malfoy was sprinting through the crowd towards him, waving her arms as if she hadn’t seen him in a month. Behind her were Phoenix and Laurel Lovegood, with Luna and Malfoy a long way off. Luna was in an intense conversation with a sword-swallower, but Malfoy was anxiously walking in, eyes fastened to his daughter as if he assumed that someone would snatch her.
Harry felt his face soften. Considering the way his parents had died and the threats that Harry knew other people had made against them, Malfoy had some reason to feel that way.
But right now he had to deal with Cassie, who was leaning against his knee and looking up at him in rapt attention. Phoenix and Laurel stopped a short distance away, apparently conscious that they’d seen him not that long ago. But Cassie didn’t care, and Harry smiled at her, the warmest smile he thought he’d given in months. Few of the children he helped would trust him this much. Of course, he didn’t have to spend as much time coaxing most of them as he did with Cassie, and they rarely saw him again.
"Will you make another toy for me?" Cassie demanded. "Will you if I ask you really nice?"
"What happened to the ones you had?" Harry asked, struggling to hold his face in a stern expression.
Cassie blinked, then ducked her head so that her blonde hair fell around her face. "I still have them," she murmured. "I just want a new one."
"Who’s this, then?" Sirius said, and Harry started as he realized that he, Remus, and Dumbledore were still there, though Dumbledore had been content to watch Harry talk to Sirius and Remus without interfering. It was a bad sign for his sanity, Harry thought as he turned around, when he became so absorbed in the mere sight of Malfoy that he lost track of everything else.
"Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Headmaster Dumbledore, this is Cassiopeia Malfoy," Harry said, reckoning that the best way to introduce someone to a Malfoy child was formally. "Called Cassie. Cassie, these are the Headmaster of Hogwarts and two of the professors."
Cassie promptly gave a very adult curtsey, though her gaze was locked on Sirius. "I know you," she said. "Grandmother was Black."
Sirius had an odd expression on his face as he stared at her. Harry knew that he had never cared for any of his family except his cousin Andromeda, and he had contacted her as soon as he could after Pettigrew was captured and his name cleared, but on the other hand, this girl was young and innocent and he’d never seen her before.
"Yes, she was," he said at last. "My cousin. It’s nice to meet you, Cassie." He held out his hand, and she took it.
"Black," Malfoy said, appearing behind his daughter as silently as though someone had conjured him there. "Lupin. Dumbledore." He inclined his head to Dumbledore, but there was no shred of respect in it. Then he turned and looked at Harry, and his eyes were remote. "Potter."
Oh, no, you don’t, Harry thought. Maybe Malfoy would never know what Harry really felt for him, or at least never return those feelings, but he wasn’t going to pretend that they hadn’t met since Hogwarts. Harry nodded back, smiled at him, and said in a soft voice that he knew would matter to Sirius and Remus if not Malfoy, "Hullo, Draco."
Malfoy did check at the use of his first name, blinking and then peering at Harry as if he thought that he was someone else. Harry raised his eyebrows slightly and put the full force of his emotions in his gaze, looking up and down Malfoy’s body in a way that ought to be unmistakable.
But Malfoy only turned away as if he had ceased to exist and said to the Headmaster, "You’ve never stopped celebrating something that destroyed so many people, have you?"
"Ah, young Mister Malfoy," Dumbledore said, and his voice was so calm and placid that Harry truly couldn’t tell what he was feeling. On the other hand, he thought Dumbledore had probably heard worse accusations down the years. "You must remember that Voldemort would have destroyed many more lives if he wasn’t stopped. I was rather concerned about that."
Malfoy flinched at the name and picked Cassie up, holding her close as he stroked her cheek. Harry thought he might let it go, but the passion in his voice when he spoke again said that he couldn’t. "But you did nothing for us after the war. You cared nothing about the pure-blood students who chose to leave Hogwarts. All that rot about ‘healing our community’ and ‘standing together in the wake of war’ really was so much rot, wasn’t it?"
Dumbledore’s raised hand stopped the outburst Harry knew Sirius would have given, for which Harry was grateful. "I could not interfere when your parents were your legal guardians and believed they knew what was best for you," Dumbledore said gently. "And I suspect that you would not have thanked me, at that age, if I had."
Malfoy closed his eyes and said nothing. The look of suffering was back in his face, stronger than Harry had seen it since the first day they met again. Then he shook his head, but turned away, still silent.
Harry found that he would have given anything to know what Malfoy had intended to say.
*
"Have everything you need, Harry?"
Harry snorted softly to himself as he looked up at the sky, absorbing the sunlight, studying the way the rays gathered a white edge to them as they fell and the glowing blue of the heavens. It was always perfect weather on the day that Hogwarts celebrated the end of the war, and Harry suspected the Headmaster had something to do with that.
Not that he was going to complain when it gave him so much light to work with.
"Of course I’m all right, Sirius," he said, turning around and smiling at Sirius where he stood beside the stage. "Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve done this hundreds of times."
"Not in front of other people, you haven’t," Sirius muttered, peering anxiously up at him and shifting from foot to foot. "Not above their heads where anyone who liked could take a shot at you."
"I’ve done it two times before, though," Harry said sensibly. He would grant Sirius the right to worry. Sirius’s life had changed forever the day that Harry defeated Voldemort, though for different reasons and in different ways, and then he had had Harry living with him during the summers and holidays for three years. (Dumbledore had finally seen sense and admitted that Harry had no reason to live with the Dursleys now that Voldemort was gone and most of the Death Eaters terrified of him). Sirius always felt that he hadn’t had enough time with Harry, though, that he had to have raised him from babyhood to "matter" as a parent. So he insisted on acting concerned whenever he saw Harry now.
As long as he didn’t actually try to prevent Harry from doing what he wanted, there was no reason to worry back.
Harry faced the crowd, and smiled when he saw that it was already thick. Luna and her children were at the center. She was holding Laurel on one shoulder and Phoenix on the other. Harry thought she looked like she was about to topple over, but she was staring into the distance, her lips moving slightly. Probably in the middle of a row with a Wrackspurt.
Ron waved madly from the edge of the crowd. He never missed the celebration at Hogwarts; Harry thought that sometimes he still wished he was in school. Hermione had been about earlier, but someone had owled her and she’d had to leave.
Remus was in the middle, talking with Snape. Snape felt Harry’s eyes on him--not surprising, the paranoid bastard--and looked up with a scowl. Harry nodded back politely and then looked away. He wasn’t going to argue with the man, but he didn’t have to like him, either. Yes, he had spied for them during the first war, and the Headmaster had told Harry tale after tale about Snape’s bravery. But Harry had learned that Snape was also the reason he didn’t have parents and, well. It was hard to forgive something like that.
Then he saw a flash of bright hair from the edge of the crowd, and suddenly Harry felt as alert as though someone had plugged lightning into his nerves.
Calm down, he told himself sternly. There can be other people with hair that color, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have stuck around.
Except that there weren’t that many people who had hair that platinum color, and Harry’s eyes wouldn’t move away, not even in other directions so that he could start storing up colors for his show. Instead, he watched hungrily until people parted in the right place and he could see Malfoy there, holding Cassie.
Malfoy saw him watching and lifted his chin defiantly, as though he were challenging Harry to order him thrown out. Harry grinned at him instead and swept him a small bow. The crowd thought it was directed at them and cheered. Ron thought it was for him and waved again, the bottle of Firewhisky in his hand sloshing about.
Malfoy knew who the bow was meant for, though. His lips parted in what looked like astonishment, while Cassie smiled and waved. Then he looked down at his daughter, though not before Harry saw a small frown on his face.
Wonderful, Harry thought, rolling his eyes. With this rate of progress, we might get around to a kiss in a year’s time.
The crowd gradually settled down, and Harry raised his hands and gathered a ball of colored light between them, a vague mix of shifting greys and yellows at first. The crowd cheered, and more people waved, and Harry bowed to them all in general this time and threw up his hands so that the colors rose into the air.
He was once again using his own memories, and he had prepared himself mentally for an hour already, so the memory entwined with the light quickly. Harry glanced up, moving his fingers gently in weaving motions. He didn’t need to--the magic was mental and spiritual, it always had been since the first moment when the gift came to him--but it comforted him, so he might as well do it.
The light snapped into two separate pieces, which danced around each other for several moments before settling. Harry breathed into his cupped hands, and white and black leaked around his fingers, filtering into the colored shapes in turn.
The crowd started clapping, but then fell still when Harry held his palms up, fingers fully extended. They seemed to have realized that he hadn’t finished yet, that they were in the presence of magic that made his muscles tremble and strain.
Or maybe they hadn’t. Harry didn’t see how he could expect his audiences to understand his magic when he didn’t even fully understand it himself.
He faced the two pieces of light and bowed his head slightly, giving in to the stress that raced through him, letting it place a yoke around his shoulders that he could pull against, brace himself against, and rest on before he pulled again. His mind was relaxing and then gripping the memories, and he didn’t know if he would manage to do this even though the images were perfectly clear in his mind. It wasn’t something he had ever tried before.
It also wasn’t the perfectly joyful demonstration that he had planned to create when Dumbledore again asked him to perform. He thought that a joyful one was appropriate for a celebration.
But it had occurred to him that other things might be appropriate, too. And so he chose these memories and wove them.
A third image was layered on top of the other two, and Harry ground a curse out from between clenched teeth. If someone interrupted him now--maybe by attacking him, the way Sirius had suggested--he wasn’t sure what would happen. He had never handled this much magic before. It was like standing in the middle of a roaring current of water that was passing straight through him.
He groaned against it.
And then he thought of Draco’s face.
That was the breakthrough. Those lines of suffering echoed his, though Harry had mostly put his suffering behind him, and he had certainly defeated Voldemort more easily than he might have. Harry had been able to move past his grief. But Draco dwelt in the middle of his, and he was somehow managing to raise a child through it and have her turn out wonderfully, and Harry had no words for that kind of strength.
He might have the magic, though. And the three images raced through him and into reality as he thought about that.
Harry staggered back and stared at the display above him, panting. It was real. It looked solid. There was no doubt of that. And if no one was cheering and no one--not even Ron--was shouting congratulations, that didn’t matter, because that silence that came from behind him was its own tribute.
The central, background image showed two graves, neat white headstones carved with names and dates standing in the midst of cool greenery. Harry had only seen them for the first time the summer after he defeated Voldemort, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t as though he was going to forget his first sight of his own parents’ graves.
Over the grave on the left, rendered ghostly through Harry’s combination of what he knew personally with his memory of photographs, hovered the image of a woman with red hair and brilliant green eyes. She had a smile on her face, and she stood with her hand reaching out to the man who hovered above the grave on the right. Messy black hair, hazel eyes that had a gentle wisdom to them Harry thought he might have come to in his war, glasses--he was drawn entirely from photos, since Harry had no Dementor-rendered memory of him. But he looked as solid.
And he reached towards the woman.
Harry licked his lips and pulled once more on his memory, this time of letters that he had enchanted to gleam in the air before him yesterday. He could only combine the light with memories, or dreams, or imaginings, and memories were the easiest for him; a mere glamour would look out of place as part of the image. But a single snap of his fingers was all that was needed, luckily, for the glittering golden letters to swim into being and hang like an unfurled scroll beneath the image of Lily and James Potter and their graves.
They were heroes. A hero is someone who does what they have to in the face of odds they don’t know if they can surmount.
Another movement of his finger, and Harry added another scroll of letters above his parents’ heads.
A hero is someone who lives with uncertainty.
The applause did come, then, in waves. Harry nearly staggered as he turned around and bowed, and then he really did stagger, because he’d tried to move too far, too fast. But he had to look into the eyes of the person he wanted to see most, the person he had done this for.
Draco stood motionless at the edge of the crowd. Cassie was cheering in his arms, but his eyes were very wide and his face very pale, and he looked as though he couldn’t have moved if someone had come after him with a knife.
He would have moved if someone threatened Cassie, though. Harry was sure of it. Malfoy’s love for his daughter was not one of those uncertainties to be conquered.
Draco again lifted his head when he saw Harry watching him, but this time the motion was not defiant. Instead, his grey eyes were clear with questions, and he mouthed the words What do you want of me?
Only you, Harry mouthed back, staring as intently as he could, trying to make Malfoy believe him instead of look around his meaning because he had lived for so long in a world where people only existed to hurt him, not honor him.
The gaze went deep, deep. The world turned transparent around Harry. He glided forwards and down, and--
And Draco broke the gaze, his face white now, and turned and sprinted into the crowd, Cassie’s complaints trailing behind him.
But Harry had gone deep enough before that happened. He had seen.
Draco’s deepest memory.
*
His parents’ bodies lay sprawled in the street. Their robes were torn, the rags scarcely clinging to their limbs. Stray clumps of his mother’s hair decorated her face. He didn’t know if it had actually been pulled loose from her head. He thought it would hurt too much to find out.
His father didn’t look like he was made of gold and ivory anymore, the way he had for the entirety of Draco’s life. He looked like a shattered porcelain figurine. His hair was just dirty blond, the same color as anyone else’s.
He wasn’t a Malfoy. Neither of them were. They were just--bodies. Corpses.
He took a step forwards. Then another. Then he stopped and stood, shaking, in the middle of the street.
And then he turned and fled.
By the time he was done vomiting over his weakness and came back, his parents’ bodies had vanished. He never found out who had taken them and how. The Aurors were no help. He placed a reward in the papers, but all he got were Howlers and owls of people who hinted smugly that they had parts of the bodies but would rather go to Azkaban than give them back--and, once, a lock of his father’s hair.
It was no wonder he remembered that place on the street. It was etched into his memory by the acid of guilt and grief.
*
Harry opened his eyes and lay still in bed for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. It was a rainy day, but the clear, grey light that entered his bedroom would still provide a nice background for any images that he wanted to create.
Well. That was a new one. He’d never dreamed anyone else’s memories before, and if someone asked, he would have said that he’d seen Draco’s memory far too briefly to have it impressed on his mind like that.
Yet here I am, and here it is.
Harry got slowly out from beneath the blankets and sat on the edge of the bed a bit, his hands dangling between his knees. He had to think. He had to think very carefully, and then turn the thoughts around and look at them from another angle. He would have liked to discuss them with Hermione, but that would have just led to her trying to dissuade him, and Harry already knew that he wouldn’t listen.
He had to think about them carefully because this was the most dangerous thing he had ever contemplated in his life.
And not to him. Oh, he might be hurt or embarrassed if it didn’t work, but he couldn’t possibly be traumatized the way Draco would.
Harry hesitated at that. The last thing I want to do is hurt him. Do I really want to risk this?
But of course he knew he would. The golden thrum in his gut, the same he had felt before he tackled the Snitch or before his gift broke free the first time, said he would. Because the dangers were great, but if it worked...
If it worked, it just might mean more to Harry, and maybe to Draco, than a world without Voldemort. That world hadn’t worked out so well for Draco. Harry didn’t think that was his fault, and he didn’t accept the guilt, but without feeling guilt, one could still work to make someone’s life better.
With a slight grin, Harry stood to go shower, already composing a careful owl in his head.
*
"What’s the meaning of this, Potter?" Draco’s voice was small and bitter. "I came because you demanded it, and I reckon you think I owe you something for healing my daughter, but the money I paid you should have..."
Draco’s voice trailed off. Harry turned and smiled at him. He wasn’t worried. Most people’s voices did that when they entered the meadow Harry had sent Draco the Apparition coordinates to.
To all eyes from the outside, including Muggle ones, it was a wasteland, a stretch of desolate road with dusty trees on either side. But that was simply the enchantment Harry had worked to keep his private property truly private. A solidified memory of a dream he’d had more than once about Privet Drive, mysteriously abandoned and left to rot like the rubbish heap it was, made sure of that.
Beyond the illusion, the meadow was wide and rippled, dipping into small hollows where stones or water gathered and then rising again into tall, feathery spikes of green grass that whipped back and forth in the wind. Small purple flowers and blue ones, almost invisible, competed with them for space, and two slender saplings grew in the middle, around the silvery creek that rose from a hidden source, wandered for a short space in the open air, and then vanished back underground. Harry didn’t know what they were for certain, but he thought willow trees. He would be more certain as he grew older with them.
Draco looked around as though trying to find a house, but there was nothing more permanent in sight than a large boulder. Harry had left it that way on purpose. This was a place he came to think when he truly wanted to escape the pressure of the public, not a place to live at all times. His place was in the world, beside people.
"Yes, it’s impressive," Draco said at last. "Even beautiful. And not one of your illusions." He focused on Harry, his eyes charged with intensity. "But I still have no idea why you brought me here."
"Because," Harry said, "I saw one of your memories the other day when we locked eyes at the Hogwarts celebration. And it occurred to me that I could do something to help you cope with it, just as I helped Cassie cope with her nightmares." He paused, then went on, voice so soft Draco had no choice but to lean in and hear. "And maybe it’ll even be a gift. God knows that I like to give the people I like things they want."
Draco froze in place, eyes locked on him. Then he looked away. He was panting lightly. "There’s nothing in your power to give me that I want," he said. "now that Cassie’s cured."
"Are you sure?" Harry whispered, and then he stepped out of the way and revealed the solidified image he’d been guarding with his body from Draco’s sight.
Two elaborate white headstones stood in the middle of the grass, carved in the shape of rearing dragons. It had taken Harry two full days of hunting through photographs and graveyards to locate something remotely suitable, and even then, he’d had to combine memories. The dragons had flaring wings, and their heads were tilted back, forked tongues emerging from their mouths. Veins of blue and gold glittered in the marble. Harry was proud of them. They were indescribably beautiful.
At the foot of each headstone was an open grave, gathered easily enough from Harry’s memory of Cedric’s funeral and then duplicated, and beside each one of those rested a shut coffin. Harry had sculpted them of brown and golden light, trying to choose the best and richest hues he could without making them so rich that they seemed unrealistic or a mockery.
When Harry looked back, Draco was standing so still that it transported Harry back in time to the Hogwarts celebration, and how Draco had looked after Harry’s little demonstration. Of course, Harry hadn’t known then how closely the image echoed one of Draco’s deepest, fondest desires.
"What is this?" Draco whispered at last. His voice was papery.
"I know that you were never able to give your parents a proper funeral," Harry said, matching Draco’s voice in tone if not volume. "I wanted to let you come close."
Draco looked up then, and his eyes were so wild and desperate that Harry braced himself the way he had when weaving the images of his parents and their graves together. "This isn’t real," Draco said.
"No," Harry said. Gentle, he had to be gentle. He would try. "But it’s what I can give you. Please let me."
He looked at Draco with that emotion again, all the emotions he felt, the gratitude for seeing Draco’s gratitude, the warmth at his warmth, the admiration and the wonder that Draco had lived through such suffering for so long. He didn’t know if it would be enough, but on the other hand, if it wasn’t, there was nothing else he could offer.
Just like there was nothing else he could offer Draco in the matter of laying his parents to rest if he refused this image. Harry’s gift was limited. He could conjure nightmares and dreams, but those didn’t always stand up well to the harsh, pure light of the waking world.
Draco wound his hands together. Then he said, "You like me."
Harry nodded. He might have rolled his eyes a few hours ago, but not now. Not now. "Yes," he said.
Draco stared at him for some time longer. Then he turned back to the coffins, graves, and headstones, and his longing was palpable.
Even so, Harry wasn’t sure what he would decide until he whispered, "I dreamed of inscriptions for their gravestones. Can you put them there?"
Harry, his heart singing, nodded again. "Yes. But I’ll need to look into your mind to see them. Will you permit me to do that?"
Draco nodded back, and stood still, with a different kind of stillness this time, as Harry walked up, slipped his hands into place around Draco’s cheeks, and leaned forwards until their eyelashes touched.
The tunnel opened around him with a motion like the wings of a swan parting as it flew for the first time. And Harry found what he needed, and while he didn’t understand every word of the inscription, he knew enough to make his heart give a single heavy beat.
"I promise," he said to Draco when he returned to his own body, although he didn’t know what he was promising, and then faced the headstones and layered Draco’s dream onto them.
The inscriptions stretched from one dragon’s wing to another, and when he had done the first, the second was easy. He only had to reshape the veins of gold in the marble by thinking of the first sunrise he had seen after he defeated Voldemort, and the way it had spread across the sky while he sat by the window in Gryffindor Tower, and stared at it, and felt his soul breathe in his chest.
The inscription on Narcissa’s grave read NARCISSA MALFOY. Elegantia vincit omnia.
The inscription on Lucius’s grave read LUCIUS MALFOY. In potentia est pax.
And then the moment came that the coffins would need to be moved into the graves. Harry watched Draco, without thought, step forwards and bend down to grasp the side of the coffin on the left.
With an effort that almost broke the light flaring in his mind and in his chest in response to his commands, Harry concentrated, and flung it all--memory, radiance, dream--directly at the place in the illusion where Draco’s hand would touch.
And it happened. Harry knew it from the expression on Draco’s face when his hand came to rest there. He felt real wood.
Harry had never done that before, and elation dazzled him, almost swept him off his feet. But in the meantime, they had the dead to bury.
Together, with Draco lifting one side of the coffin and Harry the other, they maneuvered it into the grave. And then came Lucius’s turn, and he settled out of sight, in a welter of wealth and grace that Harry knew Draco could not have afforded, and was staring at as if his soul would break out of him at the sight.
"How do we cover them up?" he whispered.
Harry lifted a hand.
His gift broke from him like rays, and images of birds swooped from the sky--silver eagles, small and jeweled hummingbirds, elegant white herons, anything graceful that Harry could think of. Each carried a flower. They opened their beaks as they soared over the graves, and the flowers fell in a whirlwind of white and silver petals, and buried the coffins, and Harry solidified each image, knowing he would pay in weariness later, not caring right now, so great was this and so important.
Draco shut his eyes.
Harry waited in silence, while he did what he could to strengthen the headstones and the heap of flowers at their feet. The birds had vanished the moment Harry released his hold on their images, but that didn’t matter. It was the headstones and the graves that had to last, like Cassie’s toys, because they were what Draco would come here to visit.
"How can I thank you?" Draco whispered. "I know what you want, but still, how can I?"
"You don’t need to," Harry said. "This is beyond thanks." He reached out and cradled Draco’s chin, unable to help himself, despite his words.
Draco turned his head towards Harry like a flower to the sun. He looked dazed, triumphant but stunned, as though he had been caught in a storm and stumbled out barely alive.
But some of the lines of suffering had also vanished.
Harry half-closed his eyes.
And Draco gave him what he wanted, what they both wanted, leaning forwards slowly, tentatively, as tentatively as Harry had reached for the inscriptions in his mind when Draco granted him permission. Once again, they were so close their eyelashes touched, and then Draco’s lips were on Harry’s.
And Harry knew, from that mere smooth brush of lips, nothing fancy, nothing deep, who had given the greater gift.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/296579.html. Comment wherever you like.
"Potter?"
Malfoy sounded half-bewildered to see him, although once again he had issued the invitation. This time in response to Harry’s begging, of course, but still.
Harry didn’t let it bother him. This would be new for Malfoy. If he ever saw anyone besides Luna in a friendly manner, neither Hermione nor Luna had known about it. And Harry imagined that treating your home as a fortress left you nervous when someone else walked through the door as if they owned the place.
Harry tried not to swagger, though lots of people had told him that he did that anyway, no matter how much he tried not to. He tilted his head at Malfoy with a friendly smile. "How are you? How’s Cassie?"
Malfoy smiled back, and a hint of the gentleness that he had showed the other day returned to his grey eyes. Harry tried not to drool. That was the way he wanted to make Malfoy look all the time, though he didn’t know it was possible yet.
"She’s sleeping much better than she was," Malfoy said. "Thanks to you. We discussed the woman that she was dreaming of. Some nightmare version of her mother, but Agnes has said that she’s never coming back. Once Cassie knew that, she was able to forget about it for the most part." He turned away. "Come on, I’ll take you to her."
"And what about you?" Harry asked, falling into step beside him. They were going a different way than before, through twisting corridors that didn’t have nearly as many pretty curtains or lighted windows. Harry noted that thoughtfully, wondering if Malfoy had thought about his need to absorb as much light and color as he could last time. Not that this latest corridor was absolutely dull and blank, but it had the opulence of bronze and silver instead of jewels.
Malfoy gave him a glance that looked honestly baffled. "What about me?"
"I have an interest in your health, too." Harry leaned a little closer and lowered his voice into what he knew was a seductive tone.
Malfoy didn’t blush, or stammer, or yell at him. He just continued looking baffled. "Yes, all right," he said.
And then he didn’t answer the question.
Harry stared. It had been years since he had met someone so oblivious. Even drunks responded to his tone when he spoke like that. Not that Harry made a habit of sleeping with drunks, but it could be useful to make them move when he needed a place to sit down.
Of course, a moment’s thought told him the likely reason that Malfoy probably wasn’t thinking of himself and Harry in the same bed.
He’s spent how long alone? And he’s been how free to express his desires? And he’s had how many people who would have honestly wanted him for reasons that had nothing to do with his wealth, or his parents’ past, or his little girl?
Harry didn’t want to pity Malfoy, but it still took a long moment for him to swallow that emotion and try a different approach instead.
"Does Cassie still have the image I made for her?" he asked. "I hoped that she would enjoy playing with it, but sometimes I make toys like that and then I don’t know if it was a wise choice."
"Oh, yes, in this case it was," Malfoy said, voice a little quick, as if he imagined that he had to defend Cassie from every possible accusation of bad behavior. "Cassie’s very gentle with her toys. I could get her more easily, of course, but she loves them as if they were real people, and she doesn’t want to hurt them. She’s at that age."
And that’s what makes her different, and you different in the way you raise her, Harry thought. He knew for a fact that his cousin Dudley "at that age" had broken toys all over the place, in the sure and certain knowledge that his parents would buy him more, whatever he did to the ones in his bedroom.
Malfoy, of all people, had a daughter that gentle. Harry wouldn’t have believed it three days ago, but he had believed a lot of nonsense about Malfoy three days ago. And he had another chance to correct it now.
"She’s a credit to her father," he said. He didn’t use his seductive tone of voice, but a simple one. He thought he would build up subtly in the compliments until Malfoy couldn’t fail to take notice.
But Malfoy whirled around in the middle of the corridor and glared at him, eyes narrowed. "Are you making fun of me?"
Harry stared. "What? Of course not!"
Something of his genuine bewilderment seemed to get through. Malfoy relaxed with a snort and shook his head. "I hoped not," he said. "I would hate to have to send you away. Cassie keeps asking after you."
"Does she?" Harry asked, while he figured out another of the barriers separating him from Malfoy. He doesn’t think that he’s worthy of being desired, or perhaps he just thinks too much of the past when he thinks of me.
I’ll teach him to think of the future.
"Why would you think that I was making fun of you by praising your parenting skills?" Harry added quietly. "I’ve talked to Luna, and she says that you’re a good father. I’ve seen Cassie, and I know that you are. There’s no reason for you to doubt me and think that I’m making fun."
Malfoy walked in silence for a long time without answering. Harry was starting to think that Malfoy Manor must have miles of metal and stone in its bowels for the purpose of bewildering people who attacked, but then they turned a corner and he saw a bronze door carved with dolphins ahead of them. Malfoy quickened his pace, and Harry assumed it was their destination.
He had also assumed that Malfoy wouldn’t answer his question, but Malfoy responded very quietly. "I remember Hogwarts. I remember what happened before the war, which is more than most people will admit to these days. I know that you never liked me, and you have no reason to like my daughter. That you seem to is--unusual. I don’t know that I like it."
Malfoy pushed open the door in, and Harry sighed and followed. Well, he had the answer, and if he didn’t like it, that was his own fault. No one had told him to pursue Malfoy.
Cassie was inside, sitting on a cushioned chair and facing the unicorn image, which sat on another one that was shaped like a throne. "What does Your Majesty say?" Cassie asked, cupping her hand around her ear. "You have to speak up. I can’t hear you."
Harry’s lips twitched. From the way Malfoy’s face had relaxed when he heard her, this was probably something he had said to his daughter in the past when he was teaching her manners.
"Cassie, I’ve brought you a visitor," Malfoy said gravely. Harry had noticed that he treated her much like an adult the first time he was here. Well, she was an only child and Malfoy’s only regular human contact. He probably had to do that so he wouldn’t go crazy or have his brain turn to mush, the way Harry knew it sometimes could when adults were alone with young children.
Cassie spun around and stared. Then she leaped off her chair and dashed forwards with her hand out. "Mr. Potter!"
Malfoy cleared his throat, and Cassie stopped in place and gathered her skirts around her so that she could bow. "I mean, how are you, Mr. Potter? I hope you’re well. I’m fine."
Harry knew better than to break the game. He knelt down, the way he had when he was trying to figure out Cassie’s nightmare, and bowed back to her. "I’m fine," he said. "And I have a message for you from Laurel Lovegood."
Cassie promptly stood up straight, her eyes so bright they seemed to burn. "What is it?"
"She said," Harry said, making sure that he put all the precision and intonation he had picked up over the years into the words, "that she’ll give you her best secrets. You can have any you like. But you need to come back and forgive her for what she said last time."
Cassie stared, then looked up at her father. "Do I have to?" she asked. "I want the secrets, but I don’t want to forgive her."
"What is polite, Cassie?" Malfoy gave her an encouraging glance that was nevertheless so stern Harry wasn’t surprised Cassie looked at the ground and played with her pale blue skirts a bit.
"To always do what is right," Cassie said.
"And is it right to forgive Laurel for what she said to you?" Malfoy put out one hand as if the answer was in his palm and Cassie had to pick it up.
"Yes," Cassie said with a sigh. She put her hand in her father’s and swung it back and forth, looking at Harry with a sad expression. "She said sorry."
"Good," Malfoy murmured, and looked at Harry sidelong. "Mr. Potter would make another image for you, I think, if you told him more about the game that you and Laurel are playing."
"It’s not a game!" Cassie said, her blonde hair bouncing around her face as she raised shocked eyes. "It’s important."
"Games can be important," Harry said. "There are some people who say that my gift is a game, but I make money from it, and I make images, and some of them are beautiful." He nodded to the unicorn image in the chair, and smiled when he noticed that it sparkled more than he remembered. Yes, that was one he was proud of, especially since the nightmare had been so powerful and he’d been weaving them at the same time.
"Really?" Cassie asked.
"Yes," Harry said. "And I will make you another image, if you can think of something that you want as much."
Cassie gnawed her lip for a moment. Then she said, "It’s the Queen Game. You have to tell secrets and take over the world. Laurel’s father taught her to play."
Harry gave Malfoy a questioning glance in spite of himself, but Malfoy shook his head. He apparently didn’t know who the twins’ father was any more than Harry did.
Not that it mattered. Cassie had done as she promised, and Harry would gladly take another message to Laurel as an excuse to come back.
"Good," he said. "Now, think very hard of the image that you want to leave your head and become real, all right?"
Cassie squeezed her eyes shut.
"Sorry, not like that," Harry said. "Your eyes have to be open, or I can’t reach into your head and see the image."
Malfoy shifted uneasily, as if he hadn’t realized before now that Harry was reaching into Cassie’s mind. Harry ignored him. He had explained everything to Malfoy when he first contacted Harry and said that Cassie was suffering from nightmares. It was Malfoy’s fault if he hadn’t listened.
Cassie nodded, waited, and then said, "I’m thinking of it."
Harry leaned closer and cast his mind out.
The tunnel was even larger and clearer this time, since he had been inside Cassie’s mind once before, and Harry smiled when he saw what waited at the end. He came back into his own head, closed his eyes, and waited for the colors to burn behind them before he began to spin.
This day wasn’t as sunny, but Cassie had a fire in her chambers, and it was particularly important for this image. Harry fixed his gaze on the flames as the orange and red crept over his knuckles and the yellow licked shyly at the backs of his hands. Then he mixed it with the memories of sunlight that had flooded his bedroom the other morning and the grey-green of the sea where he’d gone the other day after a job.
Cassie gave a gasp and then stood there, silent with delight, eyes fixed on his hands. Harry didn’t dare to glance aside to see what Malfoy was doing, not when he was approaching the most delicate part of the weaving, but he thought the silence from that side of the room was stunned and admiring. It was what he would like to believe, anyway.
The grey-green climbed into the air in a wavering stream and then coalesced at the bottom of the image into eggs. Harry raised his right hand, and orange danced around the eggs, limned them, and then became an outline of raised wings. Red and gold followed, and then shifting blue that he’d pulled from the outer edges of sunlight or the heart of fire; he couldn’t always name the origins of his colors. Harry dug his fingers together, clenched them, and pulled them apart.
A firebird hovered in the air, turning its head slowly back and forth, feathers gleaming gold, tail scarlet, feet jeweled with exotic tones. The crest on its head quivered and flickered like flames, and sometimes it was blue. It saw Cassie and opened its beak in a soft cry before flying down to her. It brought the eggs that crouched beneath it, attached to its tail fathers, along.
Cassie reached up and held out her hands to the bird, which nuzzled them with gentle warmth. Harry focused his concentration and snapped the bird free of him so it could survive when he left the room, then sagged back on his heels. He was dizzy with exhaustion, but he would have done it all over again, twice, for the sake of the joy in Cassie’s eyes.
And then he stood up and turned around, and he realized that he had another reward waiting for him.
Malfoy watched him as if he was the center of the universe, and his eyes were dazed, apparently with the force of his own emotion. He shook his head, once, twice, but still didn’t break eye contact with Harry. He reached out one hand, seeming not aware that he was doing it.
Harry didn’t hesitate. Yes, it was a risk, but he had been taking risks all his life, and more of them since that night in the graveyard when he had trusted to the unknown magic breaking through him--had trusted it would destroy Voldemort instead of him. He caught Malfoy’s hand, turned it over, and caressed the palm with his fingers.
Malfoy stood still for a moment, his eyes widening, his body shuddering as though a charge of lightning had rushed through him. Harry waited for him to say or do something, keeping his gaze steady.
But Malfoy didn’t do anything. Cassie played with her bird, squealing, and still he remained motionless. Harry thought he was trying to make a decision, but didn’t entirely know what about.
So he took another risk. He bowed his head and let his own emotions appear: the curiosity he felt about Malfoy, the way he had been affected when Malfoy thanked him, and his consciousness of the difference between the way Malfoy had used to be and the way he was now. He didn’t know if Malfoy would be able to understand all of them, but Harry was bloody well going to try. The way Malfoy looked at him now was like an invitation into a new world.
The tableau lasted a moment longer. Malfoy appeared as frozen as Harry had been when he looked up into Voldemort’s eyes, and Harry wondered if he needed to touch him again to get the message across.
But then Malfoy yanked his hand away and shook his head. "I don’t know what you mean," he said hoarsely, as though Harry had spoken aloud. "You can’t--you can’t look at me and hand me that huge a riddle."
"A riddle?" Harry asked. He hoped he had his voice under control.
"A riddle," Malfoy said. "Because you have no reason to look at me like that."
"Haven’t you thought of the reason?’ Harry whispered. He had hoped he would have the chance to talk to Malfoy alone, rather than in front of Cassie, but she was too enthralled with her new toy to pay attention. "What reason would someone naturally have to look at you like that? It isn’t a riddle. It doesn’t have to be."
Malfoy smiled a little, his face going cool, as if he had thought of another way to insulate himself from Harry. "Other people would have a reason to look at me like that," he explained, apparently to a slow child. "Not you."
Harry didn’t turn around and bang his head on the wall in disgust, but it was a near thing.
*
"Ah, Harry. I have been wanting to talk to you."
Harry turned around with a smile. "Headmaster Dumbledore, sir," he said. "How nice to see you."
Dumbledore bowed to him with a little flourish, eyes twinkling so madly that Harry would have thought they were on fire if he hadn’t been used to the way that Dumbledore behaved by now. The Headmaster didn’t look like a wizard who had kept Hogwarts functioning and free in a chaotic world, but then, he never did.
For a moment, Dumbledore stood looking at the people celebrating near them, calling excitedly to each other and waving food in the air and playing tag around the tents. Harry looked with him. This was the annual celebration of the end of the war, held on the anniversary of the day that Voldemort had died. Harry thought that was morbid, since it was also the day Cedric had died, but he wasn’t the one who had chosen the day or the way to celebrate it. He was just here as a performer, thank Merlin.
The tents were as large as some of the ones that Harry had seen at the Quidditch World Cup before his last halfway normal year at Hogwarts, but they housed games, food, mazes, and other attractions instead of people--except the ones towards the very edge of the Hogwarts grounds, which held some travelers who had decided to trust to the Headmaster’s protection. They flew flags of bright red and yellow and purple, and they themselves were colored with stars, moons, and prancing animals like the ones that Dumbledore regularly wore on his robes. The nearest tent was an enormous blue thing out of which crashes and thumps and squeaks regularly came. Harry didn’t think that he wanted to know what went on there, especially since so many children came out in tears.
Between the tents, jugglers, dancers, Muggle impersonators, and singers were putting on their performances, each trying to attract the most notice. Harry smiled as he caught one particular unfriendly look from a dancer known as Mystic Maggie, who wore only purple silk veils. She maintained that she had been the biggest attraction at all the shows in Britain until Harry started showing his gift off. Harry knew that wasn’t true, and had no reason to continue the dispute when she was entertaining enough about it on her own.
Schoolchildren from Hogwarts dashed through the fair, or walked if they were seventh-years or wore Prefect badges, but even then, they couldn’t hide their grins. Harry wished them well. This was certainly different from the first celebrations that had been held here when he was still a student.
"I wanted to know if you would return and take your NEWTs," Dumbledore said suddenly.
Harry turned back to him and raised his eyebrows. The Headmaster was dressed in mauve robes covered with flashing blue pixies that made it hard to look at him. "You decided to try the direct approach this time, sir?"
Dumbledore only gazed at him earnestly and stroked his silver beard. "I know that you think this request is a joke, Harry, but it’s actually quite important," he said. "You don’t know how it looks, to have you out there, without a single NEWT, and leading a career that puts you constantly in the public eye. I have students each year who continually say that they want to abandon their education as you have done. It is quite embarrassing, and could be detrimental to their futures."
"I’m not constantly in the public eye because of my career, sir," Harry said patiently, though he had come to the conclusion that Dumbledore would never believe in or acknowledge this. He still seemed to take it as a personal affront that he hadn’t predicted Harry’s gift or how Voldemort would die. "I’m in the public eye because there are too many people who still think that killing someone makes you a hero."
"Never question your own heroism, Harry." The twinkles in Dumbledore’s eyes were gone.
Harry leaned an elbow on the wooden stage beside him, which he was going to stand on when he performed, and grinned. "Why? Because it makes you uncomfortable?"
Dumbledore sighed and touched his beard as though he was using it for comfort. "Because it is not fitting for you to do so, Harry. We must remember the heroes of the war, such as your parents, who died for the sake of defeating Voldemort. To devalue your own sacrifice devalues theirs."
Harry shook his head and decided to adopt a serious tone for a moment, since it seemed that Dumbledore wasn’t going to let him go until he did. "I think of it, sir. But I prefer to think of the living over the dead."
"Harry!"
Dumbledore had started to reply, but he shut his mouth now and moved aside as Sirius came barreling up to both of them, his arms spread and his eyes rolling in exaggerated gladness. Behind him came Remus, his smile amused. He bent down for a moment to listen to a child who pulled on his robe, and so Sirius reached Harry first and grabbed him in a hug, spinning him around.
"How are you?" Sirius roared into his ear, and then went on without waiting for an answer. "You should have seen the way Remus insulted Snivellus a minute ago! Oh, it was great! I thought Snivellus was going to cut off Remus’s head and start stuffing his brains in vials, he was so angry!"
"It wasn’t an insult, Sirius," Remus said, coming up as Harry got his breath back and nodding to him. He held out his hand, which Harry gladly shook. Remus looked as content as ever, and much healthier than he had when he was teaching Harry in third year, his eyes bright and a small smile gracing his face when he looked at Sirius. "I simply told him that I wasn’t going to put up with him, next year, trying to insinuate that werewolves could change at times other than the full moon. I know what I am, and I won’t try to hide it as long as I’m at Hogwarts. But he has no right to frighten the students that way. Hullo, Harry," he went on, more warmly. "How have you been?"
"Great!" was all Harry got to say before Sirius was objecting.
"But it was the way you said it, Moony! The way you leaned forwards and lowered your voice and stared at him with predator’s eyes!" Sirius apparently tried to imitate it, but he got it laughably wrong. Harry snorted. The days when Sirius could convincingly play Azkaban inmate were long gone.
Remus chuckled. "I sincerely doubt he noticed that. You’re the only one who notices things like that about me."
In a quicksilver change of mood, Sirius grabbed Remus’s hand and squeezed it tight. "Yes, and thank Merlin," he said in a low voice. "Otherwise I’d have a lot more cause for jealousy than I like."
Remus stared at him with a besotted smile, and Dumbledore’s eyes were twinkling so fast that Harry was surprised they didn’t hurt. Harry just shook his head. Remus and Sirius had been together since his fourth year--something Harry had figured out easily, although they had only thought it was "appropriate" to tell him when he came of age--and they acted like teenagers on their first date still.
Of course, their example was one of the reasons that Harry would have liked to date Malfoy. He thought he could feel about him the same way Sirius felt about Remus.
But of course that’s not going to happen, Harry thought, rolling his eyes when he thought of the idiot’s response to his advances.
"Mr. Potter!"
Harry turned in surprise. Cassie Malfoy was sprinting through the crowd towards him, waving her arms as if she hadn’t seen him in a month. Behind her were Phoenix and Laurel Lovegood, with Luna and Malfoy a long way off. Luna was in an intense conversation with a sword-swallower, but Malfoy was anxiously walking in, eyes fastened to his daughter as if he assumed that someone would snatch her.
Harry felt his face soften. Considering the way his parents had died and the threats that Harry knew other people had made against them, Malfoy had some reason to feel that way.
But right now he had to deal with Cassie, who was leaning against his knee and looking up at him in rapt attention. Phoenix and Laurel stopped a short distance away, apparently conscious that they’d seen him not that long ago. But Cassie didn’t care, and Harry smiled at her, the warmest smile he thought he’d given in months. Few of the children he helped would trust him this much. Of course, he didn’t have to spend as much time coaxing most of them as he did with Cassie, and they rarely saw him again.
"Will you make another toy for me?" Cassie demanded. "Will you if I ask you really nice?"
"What happened to the ones you had?" Harry asked, struggling to hold his face in a stern expression.
Cassie blinked, then ducked her head so that her blonde hair fell around her face. "I still have them," she murmured. "I just want a new one."
"Who’s this, then?" Sirius said, and Harry started as he realized that he, Remus, and Dumbledore were still there, though Dumbledore had been content to watch Harry talk to Sirius and Remus without interfering. It was a bad sign for his sanity, Harry thought as he turned around, when he became so absorbed in the mere sight of Malfoy that he lost track of everything else.
"Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Headmaster Dumbledore, this is Cassiopeia Malfoy," Harry said, reckoning that the best way to introduce someone to a Malfoy child was formally. "Called Cassie. Cassie, these are the Headmaster of Hogwarts and two of the professors."
Cassie promptly gave a very adult curtsey, though her gaze was locked on Sirius. "I know you," she said. "Grandmother was Black."
Sirius had an odd expression on his face as he stared at her. Harry knew that he had never cared for any of his family except his cousin Andromeda, and he had contacted her as soon as he could after Pettigrew was captured and his name cleared, but on the other hand, this girl was young and innocent and he’d never seen her before.
"Yes, she was," he said at last. "My cousin. It’s nice to meet you, Cassie." He held out his hand, and she took it.
"Black," Malfoy said, appearing behind his daughter as silently as though someone had conjured him there. "Lupin. Dumbledore." He inclined his head to Dumbledore, but there was no shred of respect in it. Then he turned and looked at Harry, and his eyes were remote. "Potter."
Oh, no, you don’t, Harry thought. Maybe Malfoy would never know what Harry really felt for him, or at least never return those feelings, but he wasn’t going to pretend that they hadn’t met since Hogwarts. Harry nodded back, smiled at him, and said in a soft voice that he knew would matter to Sirius and Remus if not Malfoy, "Hullo, Draco."
Malfoy did check at the use of his first name, blinking and then peering at Harry as if he thought that he was someone else. Harry raised his eyebrows slightly and put the full force of his emotions in his gaze, looking up and down Malfoy’s body in a way that ought to be unmistakable.
But Malfoy only turned away as if he had ceased to exist and said to the Headmaster, "You’ve never stopped celebrating something that destroyed so many people, have you?"
"Ah, young Mister Malfoy," Dumbledore said, and his voice was so calm and placid that Harry truly couldn’t tell what he was feeling. On the other hand, he thought Dumbledore had probably heard worse accusations down the years. "You must remember that Voldemort would have destroyed many more lives if he wasn’t stopped. I was rather concerned about that."
Malfoy flinched at the name and picked Cassie up, holding her close as he stroked her cheek. Harry thought he might let it go, but the passion in his voice when he spoke again said that he couldn’t. "But you did nothing for us after the war. You cared nothing about the pure-blood students who chose to leave Hogwarts. All that rot about ‘healing our community’ and ‘standing together in the wake of war’ really was so much rot, wasn’t it?"
Dumbledore’s raised hand stopped the outburst Harry knew Sirius would have given, for which Harry was grateful. "I could not interfere when your parents were your legal guardians and believed they knew what was best for you," Dumbledore said gently. "And I suspect that you would not have thanked me, at that age, if I had."
Malfoy closed his eyes and said nothing. The look of suffering was back in his face, stronger than Harry had seen it since the first day they met again. Then he shook his head, but turned away, still silent.
Harry found that he would have given anything to know what Malfoy had intended to say.
*
"Have everything you need, Harry?"
Harry snorted softly to himself as he looked up at the sky, absorbing the sunlight, studying the way the rays gathered a white edge to them as they fell and the glowing blue of the heavens. It was always perfect weather on the day that Hogwarts celebrated the end of the war, and Harry suspected the Headmaster had something to do with that.
Not that he was going to complain when it gave him so much light to work with.
"Of course I’m all right, Sirius," he said, turning around and smiling at Sirius where he stood beside the stage. "Why wouldn’t I be? I’ve done this hundreds of times."
"Not in front of other people, you haven’t," Sirius muttered, peering anxiously up at him and shifting from foot to foot. "Not above their heads where anyone who liked could take a shot at you."
"I’ve done it two times before, though," Harry said sensibly. He would grant Sirius the right to worry. Sirius’s life had changed forever the day that Harry defeated Voldemort, though for different reasons and in different ways, and then he had had Harry living with him during the summers and holidays for three years. (Dumbledore had finally seen sense and admitted that Harry had no reason to live with the Dursleys now that Voldemort was gone and most of the Death Eaters terrified of him). Sirius always felt that he hadn’t had enough time with Harry, though, that he had to have raised him from babyhood to "matter" as a parent. So he insisted on acting concerned whenever he saw Harry now.
As long as he didn’t actually try to prevent Harry from doing what he wanted, there was no reason to worry back.
Harry faced the crowd, and smiled when he saw that it was already thick. Luna and her children were at the center. She was holding Laurel on one shoulder and Phoenix on the other. Harry thought she looked like she was about to topple over, but she was staring into the distance, her lips moving slightly. Probably in the middle of a row with a Wrackspurt.
Ron waved madly from the edge of the crowd. He never missed the celebration at Hogwarts; Harry thought that sometimes he still wished he was in school. Hermione had been about earlier, but someone had owled her and she’d had to leave.
Remus was in the middle, talking with Snape. Snape felt Harry’s eyes on him--not surprising, the paranoid bastard--and looked up with a scowl. Harry nodded back politely and then looked away. He wasn’t going to argue with the man, but he didn’t have to like him, either. Yes, he had spied for them during the first war, and the Headmaster had told Harry tale after tale about Snape’s bravery. But Harry had learned that Snape was also the reason he didn’t have parents and, well. It was hard to forgive something like that.
Then he saw a flash of bright hair from the edge of the crowd, and suddenly Harry felt as alert as though someone had plugged lightning into his nerves.
Calm down, he told himself sternly. There can be other people with hair that color, and I’m sure he wouldn’t have stuck around.
Except that there weren’t that many people who had hair that platinum color, and Harry’s eyes wouldn’t move away, not even in other directions so that he could start storing up colors for his show. Instead, he watched hungrily until people parted in the right place and he could see Malfoy there, holding Cassie.
Malfoy saw him watching and lifted his chin defiantly, as though he were challenging Harry to order him thrown out. Harry grinned at him instead and swept him a small bow. The crowd thought it was directed at them and cheered. Ron thought it was for him and waved again, the bottle of Firewhisky in his hand sloshing about.
Malfoy knew who the bow was meant for, though. His lips parted in what looked like astonishment, while Cassie smiled and waved. Then he looked down at his daughter, though not before Harry saw a small frown on his face.
Wonderful, Harry thought, rolling his eyes. With this rate of progress, we might get around to a kiss in a year’s time.
The crowd gradually settled down, and Harry raised his hands and gathered a ball of colored light between them, a vague mix of shifting greys and yellows at first. The crowd cheered, and more people waved, and Harry bowed to them all in general this time and threw up his hands so that the colors rose into the air.
He was once again using his own memories, and he had prepared himself mentally for an hour already, so the memory entwined with the light quickly. Harry glanced up, moving his fingers gently in weaving motions. He didn’t need to--the magic was mental and spiritual, it always had been since the first moment when the gift came to him--but it comforted him, so he might as well do it.
The light snapped into two separate pieces, which danced around each other for several moments before settling. Harry breathed into his cupped hands, and white and black leaked around his fingers, filtering into the colored shapes in turn.
The crowd started clapping, but then fell still when Harry held his palms up, fingers fully extended. They seemed to have realized that he hadn’t finished yet, that they were in the presence of magic that made his muscles tremble and strain.
Or maybe they hadn’t. Harry didn’t see how he could expect his audiences to understand his magic when he didn’t even fully understand it himself.
He faced the two pieces of light and bowed his head slightly, giving in to the stress that raced through him, letting it place a yoke around his shoulders that he could pull against, brace himself against, and rest on before he pulled again. His mind was relaxing and then gripping the memories, and he didn’t know if he would manage to do this even though the images were perfectly clear in his mind. It wasn’t something he had ever tried before.
It also wasn’t the perfectly joyful demonstration that he had planned to create when Dumbledore again asked him to perform. He thought that a joyful one was appropriate for a celebration.
But it had occurred to him that other things might be appropriate, too. And so he chose these memories and wove them.
A third image was layered on top of the other two, and Harry ground a curse out from between clenched teeth. If someone interrupted him now--maybe by attacking him, the way Sirius had suggested--he wasn’t sure what would happen. He had never handled this much magic before. It was like standing in the middle of a roaring current of water that was passing straight through him.
He groaned against it.
And then he thought of Draco’s face.
That was the breakthrough. Those lines of suffering echoed his, though Harry had mostly put his suffering behind him, and he had certainly defeated Voldemort more easily than he might have. Harry had been able to move past his grief. But Draco dwelt in the middle of his, and he was somehow managing to raise a child through it and have her turn out wonderfully, and Harry had no words for that kind of strength.
He might have the magic, though. And the three images raced through him and into reality as he thought about that.
Harry staggered back and stared at the display above him, panting. It was real. It looked solid. There was no doubt of that. And if no one was cheering and no one--not even Ron--was shouting congratulations, that didn’t matter, because that silence that came from behind him was its own tribute.
The central, background image showed two graves, neat white headstones carved with names and dates standing in the midst of cool greenery. Harry had only seen them for the first time the summer after he defeated Voldemort, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t as though he was going to forget his first sight of his own parents’ graves.
Over the grave on the left, rendered ghostly through Harry’s combination of what he knew personally with his memory of photographs, hovered the image of a woman with red hair and brilliant green eyes. She had a smile on her face, and she stood with her hand reaching out to the man who hovered above the grave on the right. Messy black hair, hazel eyes that had a gentle wisdom to them Harry thought he might have come to in his war, glasses--he was drawn entirely from photos, since Harry had no Dementor-rendered memory of him. But he looked as solid.
And he reached towards the woman.
Harry licked his lips and pulled once more on his memory, this time of letters that he had enchanted to gleam in the air before him yesterday. He could only combine the light with memories, or dreams, or imaginings, and memories were the easiest for him; a mere glamour would look out of place as part of the image. But a single snap of his fingers was all that was needed, luckily, for the glittering golden letters to swim into being and hang like an unfurled scroll beneath the image of Lily and James Potter and their graves.
They were heroes. A hero is someone who does what they have to in the face of odds they don’t know if they can surmount.
Another movement of his finger, and Harry added another scroll of letters above his parents’ heads.
A hero is someone who lives with uncertainty.
The applause did come, then, in waves. Harry nearly staggered as he turned around and bowed, and then he really did stagger, because he’d tried to move too far, too fast. But he had to look into the eyes of the person he wanted to see most, the person he had done this for.
Draco stood motionless at the edge of the crowd. Cassie was cheering in his arms, but his eyes were very wide and his face very pale, and he looked as though he couldn’t have moved if someone had come after him with a knife.
He would have moved if someone threatened Cassie, though. Harry was sure of it. Malfoy’s love for his daughter was not one of those uncertainties to be conquered.
Draco again lifted his head when he saw Harry watching him, but this time the motion was not defiant. Instead, his grey eyes were clear with questions, and he mouthed the words What do you want of me?
Only you, Harry mouthed back, staring as intently as he could, trying to make Malfoy believe him instead of look around his meaning because he had lived for so long in a world where people only existed to hurt him, not honor him.
The gaze went deep, deep. The world turned transparent around Harry. He glided forwards and down, and--
And Draco broke the gaze, his face white now, and turned and sprinted into the crowd, Cassie’s complaints trailing behind him.
But Harry had gone deep enough before that happened. He had seen.
Draco’s deepest memory.
*
His parents’ bodies lay sprawled in the street. Their robes were torn, the rags scarcely clinging to their limbs. Stray clumps of his mother’s hair decorated her face. He didn’t know if it had actually been pulled loose from her head. He thought it would hurt too much to find out.
His father didn’t look like he was made of gold and ivory anymore, the way he had for the entirety of Draco’s life. He looked like a shattered porcelain figurine. His hair was just dirty blond, the same color as anyone else’s.
He wasn’t a Malfoy. Neither of them were. They were just--bodies. Corpses.
He took a step forwards. Then another. Then he stopped and stood, shaking, in the middle of the street.
And then he turned and fled.
By the time he was done vomiting over his weakness and came back, his parents’ bodies had vanished. He never found out who had taken them and how. The Aurors were no help. He placed a reward in the papers, but all he got were Howlers and owls of people who hinted smugly that they had parts of the bodies but would rather go to Azkaban than give them back--and, once, a lock of his father’s hair.
It was no wonder he remembered that place on the street. It was etched into his memory by the acid of guilt and grief.
*
Harry opened his eyes and lay still in bed for a long moment, staring at the ceiling. It was a rainy day, but the clear, grey light that entered his bedroom would still provide a nice background for any images that he wanted to create.
Well. That was a new one. He’d never dreamed anyone else’s memories before, and if someone asked, he would have said that he’d seen Draco’s memory far too briefly to have it impressed on his mind like that.
Yet here I am, and here it is.
Harry got slowly out from beneath the blankets and sat on the edge of the bed a bit, his hands dangling between his knees. He had to think. He had to think very carefully, and then turn the thoughts around and look at them from another angle. He would have liked to discuss them with Hermione, but that would have just led to her trying to dissuade him, and Harry already knew that he wouldn’t listen.
He had to think about them carefully because this was the most dangerous thing he had ever contemplated in his life.
And not to him. Oh, he might be hurt or embarrassed if it didn’t work, but he couldn’t possibly be traumatized the way Draco would.
Harry hesitated at that. The last thing I want to do is hurt him. Do I really want to risk this?
But of course he knew he would. The golden thrum in his gut, the same he had felt before he tackled the Snitch or before his gift broke free the first time, said he would. Because the dangers were great, but if it worked...
If it worked, it just might mean more to Harry, and maybe to Draco, than a world without Voldemort. That world hadn’t worked out so well for Draco. Harry didn’t think that was his fault, and he didn’t accept the guilt, but without feeling guilt, one could still work to make someone’s life better.
With a slight grin, Harry stood to go shower, already composing a careful owl in his head.
*
"What’s the meaning of this, Potter?" Draco’s voice was small and bitter. "I came because you demanded it, and I reckon you think I owe you something for healing my daughter, but the money I paid you should have..."
Draco’s voice trailed off. Harry turned and smiled at him. He wasn’t worried. Most people’s voices did that when they entered the meadow Harry had sent Draco the Apparition coordinates to.
To all eyes from the outside, including Muggle ones, it was a wasteland, a stretch of desolate road with dusty trees on either side. But that was simply the enchantment Harry had worked to keep his private property truly private. A solidified memory of a dream he’d had more than once about Privet Drive, mysteriously abandoned and left to rot like the rubbish heap it was, made sure of that.
Beyond the illusion, the meadow was wide and rippled, dipping into small hollows where stones or water gathered and then rising again into tall, feathery spikes of green grass that whipped back and forth in the wind. Small purple flowers and blue ones, almost invisible, competed with them for space, and two slender saplings grew in the middle, around the silvery creek that rose from a hidden source, wandered for a short space in the open air, and then vanished back underground. Harry didn’t know what they were for certain, but he thought willow trees. He would be more certain as he grew older with them.
Draco looked around as though trying to find a house, but there was nothing more permanent in sight than a large boulder. Harry had left it that way on purpose. This was a place he came to think when he truly wanted to escape the pressure of the public, not a place to live at all times. His place was in the world, beside people.
"Yes, it’s impressive," Draco said at last. "Even beautiful. And not one of your illusions." He focused on Harry, his eyes charged with intensity. "But I still have no idea why you brought me here."
"Because," Harry said, "I saw one of your memories the other day when we locked eyes at the Hogwarts celebration. And it occurred to me that I could do something to help you cope with it, just as I helped Cassie cope with her nightmares." He paused, then went on, voice so soft Draco had no choice but to lean in and hear. "And maybe it’ll even be a gift. God knows that I like to give the people I like things they want."
Draco froze in place, eyes locked on him. Then he looked away. He was panting lightly. "There’s nothing in your power to give me that I want," he said. "now that Cassie’s cured."
"Are you sure?" Harry whispered, and then he stepped out of the way and revealed the solidified image he’d been guarding with his body from Draco’s sight.
Two elaborate white headstones stood in the middle of the grass, carved in the shape of rearing dragons. It had taken Harry two full days of hunting through photographs and graveyards to locate something remotely suitable, and even then, he’d had to combine memories. The dragons had flaring wings, and their heads were tilted back, forked tongues emerging from their mouths. Veins of blue and gold glittered in the marble. Harry was proud of them. They were indescribably beautiful.
At the foot of each headstone was an open grave, gathered easily enough from Harry’s memory of Cedric’s funeral and then duplicated, and beside each one of those rested a shut coffin. Harry had sculpted them of brown and golden light, trying to choose the best and richest hues he could without making them so rich that they seemed unrealistic or a mockery.
When Harry looked back, Draco was standing so still that it transported Harry back in time to the Hogwarts celebration, and how Draco had looked after Harry’s little demonstration. Of course, Harry hadn’t known then how closely the image echoed one of Draco’s deepest, fondest desires.
"What is this?" Draco whispered at last. His voice was papery.
"I know that you were never able to give your parents a proper funeral," Harry said, matching Draco’s voice in tone if not volume. "I wanted to let you come close."
Draco looked up then, and his eyes were so wild and desperate that Harry braced himself the way he had when weaving the images of his parents and their graves together. "This isn’t real," Draco said.
"No," Harry said. Gentle, he had to be gentle. He would try. "But it’s what I can give you. Please let me."
He looked at Draco with that emotion again, all the emotions he felt, the gratitude for seeing Draco’s gratitude, the warmth at his warmth, the admiration and the wonder that Draco had lived through such suffering for so long. He didn’t know if it would be enough, but on the other hand, if it wasn’t, there was nothing else he could offer.
Just like there was nothing else he could offer Draco in the matter of laying his parents to rest if he refused this image. Harry’s gift was limited. He could conjure nightmares and dreams, but those didn’t always stand up well to the harsh, pure light of the waking world.
Draco wound his hands together. Then he said, "You like me."
Harry nodded. He might have rolled his eyes a few hours ago, but not now. Not now. "Yes," he said.
Draco stared at him for some time longer. Then he turned back to the coffins, graves, and headstones, and his longing was palpable.
Even so, Harry wasn’t sure what he would decide until he whispered, "I dreamed of inscriptions for their gravestones. Can you put them there?"
Harry, his heart singing, nodded again. "Yes. But I’ll need to look into your mind to see them. Will you permit me to do that?"
Draco nodded back, and stood still, with a different kind of stillness this time, as Harry walked up, slipped his hands into place around Draco’s cheeks, and leaned forwards until their eyelashes touched.
The tunnel opened around him with a motion like the wings of a swan parting as it flew for the first time. And Harry found what he needed, and while he didn’t understand every word of the inscription, he knew enough to make his heart give a single heavy beat.
"I promise," he said to Draco when he returned to his own body, although he didn’t know what he was promising, and then faced the headstones and layered Draco’s dream onto them.
The inscriptions stretched from one dragon’s wing to another, and when he had done the first, the second was easy. He only had to reshape the veins of gold in the marble by thinking of the first sunrise he had seen after he defeated Voldemort, and the way it had spread across the sky while he sat by the window in Gryffindor Tower, and stared at it, and felt his soul breathe in his chest.
The inscription on Narcissa’s grave read NARCISSA MALFOY. Elegantia vincit omnia.
The inscription on Lucius’s grave read LUCIUS MALFOY. In potentia est pax.
And then the moment came that the coffins would need to be moved into the graves. Harry watched Draco, without thought, step forwards and bend down to grasp the side of the coffin on the left.
With an effort that almost broke the light flaring in his mind and in his chest in response to his commands, Harry concentrated, and flung it all--memory, radiance, dream--directly at the place in the illusion where Draco’s hand would touch.
And it happened. Harry knew it from the expression on Draco’s face when his hand came to rest there. He felt real wood.
Harry had never done that before, and elation dazzled him, almost swept him off his feet. But in the meantime, they had the dead to bury.
Together, with Draco lifting one side of the coffin and Harry the other, they maneuvered it into the grave. And then came Lucius’s turn, and he settled out of sight, in a welter of wealth and grace that Harry knew Draco could not have afforded, and was staring at as if his soul would break out of him at the sight.
"How do we cover them up?" he whispered.
Harry lifted a hand.
His gift broke from him like rays, and images of birds swooped from the sky--silver eagles, small and jeweled hummingbirds, elegant white herons, anything graceful that Harry could think of. Each carried a flower. They opened their beaks as they soared over the graves, and the flowers fell in a whirlwind of white and silver petals, and buried the coffins, and Harry solidified each image, knowing he would pay in weariness later, not caring right now, so great was this and so important.
Draco shut his eyes.
Harry waited in silence, while he did what he could to strengthen the headstones and the heap of flowers at their feet. The birds had vanished the moment Harry released his hold on their images, but that didn’t matter. It was the headstones and the graves that had to last, like Cassie’s toys, because they were what Draco would come here to visit.
"How can I thank you?" Draco whispered. "I know what you want, but still, how can I?"
"You don’t need to," Harry said. "This is beyond thanks." He reached out and cradled Draco’s chin, unable to help himself, despite his words.
Draco turned his head towards Harry like a flower to the sun. He looked dazed, triumphant but stunned, as though he had been caught in a storm and stumbled out barely alive.
But some of the lines of suffering had also vanished.
Harry half-closed his eyes.
And Draco gave him what he wanted, what they both wanted, leaning forwards slowly, tentatively, as tentatively as Harry had reached for the inscriptions in his mind when Draco granted him permission. Once again, they were so close their eyelashes touched, and then Draco’s lips were on Harry’s.
And Harry knew, from that mere smooth brush of lips, nothing fancy, nothing deep, who had given the greater gift.
The End.
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