Chapter Twenty-One of 'Starfall'- Confrontation in the Ruins

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Twenty.

Title: Starfall (21/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny, past Draco/Astoria, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, manipulation
Summary: When the truth about a seemingly minor Dark hex Harry has suffered leads to the dissolution of his marriage with Ginny, Harry spins into a downward spiral. His private consolation is creating a fantasy life for himself in his journal as Ethan Starfall, a normal wizard with a big family. When he receives a random owl Draco Malfoy has cast into the void as a plea for help with his son Scorpius, Harry replies-as Ethan. There’s no reason, he thinks, for an epistolary friendship with Draco to go further. But Draco might have different ideas about that.
Author’s Note: This is likely to be a long story, updated fairly regularly. It is, however, very angsty.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-One--Confrontation in the Ruins

Harry stepped back and surveyed the side of the house, nodding a little. Yes, he didn't think anyone could be too upset with the level of work he had done so far. He had added a window shutter, repaired the most tumble-down wall, and swept out most of the branches and twigs that had accumulated inside. No one would really notice, at least if they weren't looking for it.

Harry stretched a little. His muscles ached in a way he hadn't known they could ache. Now maybe he could go back to his little fire and sleep in the consciousness of a job well-done.

He had just turned to go back to the camp when he spun around again. He had recognized the crack of Apparition, and while it was probably someone coming to see the monument, he couldn't discard the notion that it was one of his friends.

If that was the case, Harry did not want to be seen. The note he'd left would have to reassure them.

Harry faded back against the wall and cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself. That ought to be enough to avoid a casual seeker. If it was someone who wasn't casual, well, he would deal with that when he saw he had to.

Footsteps approached him. At one point the walker stopped, and Harry smiled a little, grimly. They were examining his camp. He wondered if this was a trained Auror. Of course, that meant it could be Ron. Or maybe Hermione, whose curiosity would lead her to examine everything.

"I know that you're here somewhere, Potter. Mind revealing yourself? Andromeda is getting nervous."

All of Harry's good resolutions blew away in the face of that voice. It was so mocking, so taunting, and it reached down and pierced something inside him that had been waiting, storing up his anger and dismay. Now he turned and stomped towards the speaker, removing the Disillusionment Charm.

Sure enough, he came around the corner and saw Malfoy standing there in the trampled mud and leaf mold, examining Harry's awning and hearth as though they were a mass of crawling insects. Then Malfoy turned his head, probably at a shimmer of motion out of the corner of his eye.

Harry didn't waste time. He stuck. Hard.

Malfoy went flying from the modified Blasting Curse that hit him, a modification Harry had come up with when he wanted a convenient way to toss enemies into walls without killing them. Harry followed him up, smiling nastily. He could feel his heart pounding in a way that he normally only associated with the height of battle. Well, maybe he could get some of the demons out of his soul by fighting Malfoy. Amazing that he hadn't thought of that before. It had been one of his favorite diversions during Hogwarts.

He struck again, but this time Malfoy either saw or felt it coming and set up a Shield Charm in front of him. Harry sneered at how pathetic it was. Malfoy should have been brushing up on his defensive magic in the last few years, instead of huddling in his house and obsessing over his son.

"You have a lot of nerve, talking about Andromeda," Harry said calmly, and began walking off to the side, where Malfoy's Shield Charm looked the weakest. "You're the one she chose, the one that she said was family. You ought to be worshipping at her feet for being willing to recognize you after all the years that you spent despising her."

"Potter, you idiot, she didn't mean that the way it sounded." Malfoy rolled up on one arm and stared at him through the shimmer of the shield. "She only meant that she wanted to talk to me alone at the moment. She firecalled me today because she was expecting you to come over and she was worried when you didn't."

Harry shook his head, rejecting that information, as he had to reject it. If Andromeda had been serious about expecting him, she would have firecalled his friends first.

Malfoy seemed to follow the internal line of his reasoning and anticipate it, in a way Harry wasn't used to and didn't like. "She did contact everyone else first. Including your boss, who told her that you were on holiday for right now. But she thought maybe I'd seen you. She suspects something more than the tension from when we were children is between us. Because of how she saw us act when we were with Teddy," he added hastily.

Harry had raised his wand without knowing he'd done it. He lowered it again, shaking with the force of the magic he'd called back. "You're not to tell her about Ethan."

"Fine." Malfoy's eyes were a little blank. "Are you going to let me up and let me dismiss the shield now? We need to talk."

"We don't bloody need to do anything," Harry said, and redirected the magic energy he'd been planning to use as the Lightning Chain Curse, when he'd thought Malfoy might have revealed Ethan Starfall to Andromeda, to raise a different kind of shield in front of him.

The Repulsion Shelter manifested as a circular brick wall, surrounding Harry and hovering a little above the ground, moving with him when he moved. Harry smiled. It would block Malfoy by body-slamming him a short distance away if he tried to get too close, and it prevented Harry from seeing or even hearing the voice of any other human being while he had it on him. Aurors were always being told it was a dangerous spell, thanks to their inability to connect with their comrades while they wore it, but Harry had excellent reason to use it right now.

So protected, he went back into his shelter and sat down to cook a simple meal over the fire. He carried some rations of dried bread and cheese with him at all times, the way most of the Aurors did. They would taste fine toasted.

*

Draco stared for a moment at the Repulsion Shelter. He'd heard of the spell and even been taught a way to counter it, but he didn't remember ever seeing it cast.

Potter really didn't want to talk to him.

Well, too bad, Draco thought, and cast the Spreading Decay Curse on the floating brick wall in front of him. It would take a while, but it would get through.

Draco glanced around again as the curse spread green, musty leaves through the brick. It looked as though Potter was trying his hand at repairing his parents' house. Draco wasn't sure why, but he supposed it might be the desire to bring new life and new buildings out of loss.

He shook his head. A short time ago, he wouldn't have recognized that impulse.

But now I know it because of Scorpius. And I want to tie up the loose ends that are still dangling. Potter's one of those. If I can just make it so that I don't feel like I owe him something, or these secrets of his aren't bothering me--

There was a thunderclap, and Draco whipped around and automatically raised a defensive shield again. Potter, with his Auror training, might despise what Draco could do, but Draco had some instincts that had been honed keen by the war, and which he could still use.

His curse had torn the brick wall of the Repulsion Shelter apart, he saw. The bricks were lying all over the ground, half-reduced to dust and half broken chunks. That was the good news.

The bad news was that he had an angry Harry Potter coming for him now, with black showing between his teeth but no color at all around his eyes.

Draco vaulted out of the way of the first direct strike, his shield moving with him, and then had to perform a complicated tap dance while lightning bolts and chains of fire and whirling blue spirals he had never seen before hammered at him. It was probably only thanks to his Aunt Bellatrix's training that he was surviving at all.

And he would never, never say that to Potter.

"Just leave me alone!" Potter screamed hysterically as he tried to corner Draco against the house for the third time, and Draco leaped again out of the way and clung to the side of the wall itself with a charm that made his hands and feet sticky like a spider's.

"When you firecall your friends!" Draco called. He had decided that he wasn't going to get to talk to Potter the way he wanted today after all. He had to calm down first. "And Andromeda. She's getting worried."

"They don't need me," said Potter, and he just stopped dead in the middle of the huge mud puddle his magic had already created around him. Draco watched him cautiously, knowing it had to be a trick, but not really understanding how. "They have their own families, their own children. If I hadn't told Andromeda I would come over the next day, she wouldn't have missed me."

Draco had no idea what to say to that. He reached into his head and groped around until he managed to find the words that fit. "But you were always close to your friends. You didn't need blood family to belong..."

“I thought I didn’t,” said Potter, and there was a peculiarity in his voice that Draco didn’t have the time to analyze before Potter’s wand snapped up and pointed at him again. “And you are really irritating me right now, Malfoy, so don’t push it.”

That was the kind of challenge that Draco never had been able to pass up. He arched his eyebrows and smiled. “Or you’ll do what?”

Potter gestured. The wand movement wasn’t one Draco knew, but it obviously worked, because the wall he was clinging to exploded, stones leaping out and hitting him on the head and arms and chest, forcing him to the ground.

Draco rolled over, groaning. He wanted to raise a hand to touch his head and find out if he had a concussion, but he wasn’t sure that he knew where his hands were right now.

Potter walked towards him and stopped right in front of him, his feet filling Draco’s astonished gaze. Draco weakly tilted his head back and met Potter’s eyes. Potter knelt down in front of him and planted his wand in the center of Draco’s forehead.

“Boom,” Potter whispered. “If you were a Dark wizard I was hunting, you would lose.”

Draco shivered and said the first thing that came into his head. Yes, he was probably concussed. “But it’s not a hunt, and I haven’t lost.”

Slowly, Potter’s smile, what little of it there had been, fell away from his face. “No,” he said, and his voice was as deep as bitterness. “Not when you have a son, and I’ll never have that.” He stood up and made a flipping motion at Draco. Draco tensed for the earth beneath him to reject him as well, but it seemed that Potter just wanted him to go away. “So you’ve won. Go home and enjoy your victory.”

Potter turned as Draco sat up, one hand still pressed to his aching head. He seemed utterly intent on ignoring Draco’s existence. But Draco wasn’t going to have that, not when he had spent time and even blood coming after Potter.

“This isn’t the end of your life,” Draco called after him. “Unless you really are going to commit suicide. What are you going to do? Just stay in Godric’s Hollow for the rest of your days and spend your time camping out like you don’t deserve a bed or a warm place to sleep?”

“You know nothing about how good I am with Warming Charms, Malfoy,” Potter said, in a musing voice that made Draco wince. “And why shouldn’t I? My boss and Andromeda have made it very clear that I’m not indispensable to them.”

“Andromeda wants you to visit,” Draco said, shaking his head. He had thought some of his Slytherin friends were stubborn about seeing the truth of the Dark Lord after his fall-they had clung for years to the notion that it was only the Dark Lord’s timing that was wrong, not his methods-but they couldn’t be as stubborn as Gryffindors. “I told you that already. She told you the day she sent you away. Why do you still believe otherwise?”

“She may want me there right now,” Potter said calmly. “But soon enough, it’ll be otherwise. She’ll invite you and me over separately, and I won’t be able to go over whenever I feel like it, which has been the way it’s gone so far.”

Draco rolled his eyes. Merlin save me from Gryffindors determined to martyr themselves. “I don’t know what I can say to make you see the light.”

“You can’t. Go home, Draco.” Draco jolted, and he had the feeling Potter had meant him to, because otherwise why would he have spoken Draco’s first name? “There’s nothing you can do here. You have a son to raise.”

“A son that you would have helped me raise, if you’d gone on speaking in the guise of Ethan? If I hadn’t wanted to know who you were?”

Potter paused. He obviously didn’t know what to make of the turn the conversation had taken. For that matter, neither did Draco. He was accustomed to being several moves ahead in most conversations, now that he had so many of the same ones with his parents and friends.

Now he had to wait, his heart beating in his throat, and Potter’s silence thickening around him until it felt hard to move.

*

Fuck. I’m not having this talk with Malfoy, of all people.

Harry turned his head to the side. It was only obligation to Scorpius, and the thought of possibly having another child to help raise and no Ethan Starfall to abandon and Malfoy at Teddy’s house without coming between them, that made him answer at all. “Yes. I would have gone on being him, and you would have gone on having a source of advice you said you needed. But you had to be greedy and paranoid, and ruin it all.”

“Ethan and his children weren’t real.”

“No,” Harry said slowly, to make sure that Malfoy understood the weight of each word. “Bloody. Shit.”

“But you are,” said Malfoy, and he must have a suicide wish, to stand there and look Harry in the eye as though he really had the right, as though he had more rights than Harry wanted to grant him. “You can still help raise Teddy, and your friends’ children, I suppose.” He made it clear from his tone that he had less than no interest in Rose and Hugo. Harry was about to erupt over that when Malfoy went on, his tone creeping, flinching. “And maybe, maybe I would still need a source of good advice about Scorpius, sometimes.”

Harry stared in a way that ought to have made Malfoy crumple if he wasn’t serious, although who really knew with Malfoy. But Malfoy stood there and blinked silently back at Harry, as if he had no idea why anyone wouldn’t want his company.

“That can’t happen,” said Harry. “He still wouldn’t be my blood son.” His voice shook. He bit his lip until it felt as if it would be deformed and then spoke again in a calmer tone. “Besides, you’ve made it clear that you don’t want me near him.”

“How have I made that clear?” Malfoy’s eyebrows rose. He had altered again, to someone who looked like he was more in control of the situation, and Harry hated it. “I brought him with me to Andromeda’s house to meet Teddy, yes, but I was also hoping that you would be there.”

“You make no sense,” Harry told him roughly.

“It’s Andromeda who has no faith in our ability to get along, not me.” Malfoy gave him a smile like quicksilver, and attempted to lounge against the wall behind him. He did trip over a broken chunk of stone, though, and Harry snickered as he watched him right himself. Malfoy apparently didn’t deign to notice that. “And what does the lack of blood relationship to Scorpius matter? Do you intend to give up visiting Teddy now that he has us?”

“You wish,” Harry snapped, even though some twisted notion of doing exactly that had been in his head while he worked on the house.

Malfoy nodded intently. “So. I know that Scorpius doesn’t have the connection of being your godson, but until recently, he didn’t have the consolation of relatives on his grandmother’s side, either. Connections only matter if you choose to acknowledge them.”

Harry shook his head until he was dizzy, and sat down on the ground. He did keep his wand aimed at Malfoy, though, so if he thought he could come over and take advantage of Harry’s dazed state, he would find a trap waiting for him. “But blood connections matter more than that. Andromeda said so.”

Malfoy sighed and rolled his eyes. “I wish I’d been there when Andromeda said whatever she said that made you get into such a tizzy. I would have liked to stop it.”

“This is a time for family,” Harry quoted instantly. He was never going to forget it.

Malfoy nodded. “An unfortunate choice of words. But like I said, she would never have firecalled me if she wasn’t worried about you. I was a desperation measure.” He straightened his back. “And she tried to pressure me to reveal your secrets. She can sense the presence of Ethan hanging over our conversations, I think, even though she has no idea what he actually means. But I refused to.”

“What do you want, a bloody medal?” Harry turned around to snarl at him. “Since you were the reason I lost Ethan in the first place.”

“Ethan wasn’t real.”

“I know that!” Harry roared in return, and took a step towards Malfoy. His emotions were leaping and fountaining. One minute he wanted to collapse to the ground, the next he wanted to attack. He had reason to believe Malfoy could see that, and he just wouldn’t give up and wouldn’t run away and wouldn’t stop talking. “But he was the way I coped! I could have gone on coping and given good advice to everybody if you hadn’t decided to distrust him for no reason.”

“But I did distrust him, and he’s gone.” Malfoy’s eyes were pale, but not his face. “Besides, he was your way of coping with what?”

“Not being able to have children,” Harry said, and he made a crude gesture at his groin, and if Malfoy wanted to complain about that it was just too bad. “Being able to live in a world where everyone else who wants to can have kids, and family is the only thing that matters, and I can’t be part of that.”

Grief choked him, and he turned away. Malfoy was silent behind him. Harry added over his shoulder, “You should know that already. I told you already. Why ask these questions?”

“Did you talk to anyone? Healers, Mind-Healers, anyone?”

“Yes, of course I did.” Harry dragged his hand through his hair and grasped his wand, then seized it hard against his knee. He didn’t want to curse Malfoy out of just frustration. If he was going to do it, then he would choose a painful curse and Malfoy would bloody well know why. “The Healers confirmed there was nothing they could do. The combination of Dark hexes and the impossibility of tracing them back-”

“I didn’t mean that. Did you talk to them about any way to cope with the grief? Any way of healing it, or pulling out your memories and changing them? That’s a treatment for some traumatic memories, sometimes.”

Harry stared at him. “What? Of course not. What Mind-Healer could I possibly trust to keep quiet about this instead of selling the story to the papers?”

“You seem to have trusted the Healers with the truth of your infertility in the first place, and they kept quiet.” Malfoy put on a sneer that Harry felt was artificial somehow, although he didn’t know where the realization came from. “And believe me, I heard no rumors about it, and I would have. I’m surrounded by the sort of people who still think I’m obsessed with you.”

Harry shrugged. He didn’t know why it was different, just that it was. He tried to voice a sense of the difference when Malfoy went on staring at him and wasn’t satisfied, though. “I just-the Healers know how to treat physical causes. But going and telling the Mind-Healers about the fights I had with Ginny and Ethan and so on…I couldn’t do that. It would make me look weak.”

“Mind-Healers will take oaths to keep their patients’ secrets, too. Or can be bound by oaths.”

Harry stared a little. “Do you know any Mind-Healers who would willingly swear an oath not to talk about something they could see in my head? Because I don’t.”

“That’s when you offer them a lot of money,” Malfoy said with a faint sigh. “More money than they would earn by going to the papers. Or you trick them into an oath. Or you find someone who will bind someone else for a favor.”

“I didn’t want to talk to someone badly enough to do that to them,” said Harry stiffly. Bribery and forcing oaths out of people had never occurred to him. He just knew that he couldn’t trust a Mind-Healer, and he’d let it go at that.

“Besides,” Malfoy went on relentlessly, “I think you’re overestimating the attractiveness of this story to the general Mind-Healer public. You could find someone who would be bound by the oaths already sworn, and would accept a large amount of money for the work instead of bribery. But you didn’t look, did you? You just assumed that no one would be willing to treat you, and you let it go and focused on Ethan Starfall and your imaginary life instead.”

Harry looked blindly at Malfoy across the ruins. He hated Malfoy, suddenly, for the way he was standing here and preaching at Harry. Malfoy was the reason Harry had lost Ethan in the first place. He was the reason he had lost Andromeda and Teddy. And he was the reason for the faint, painful hope Harry could feel blooming in his heart, the hope that he didn’t want to bloom there, because it would mean that he had to do something about it.

“Get out,” he said, with quiet force.

Malfoy was in the middle of some other epic pronouncement, but he shut his mouth and blinked rapidly at that. “What?”

“Get out, I said,” Harry said, and stalked towards him with a flourishing of his cloak and wand. “You have no right to tell me what to do with my life when you’ve spent your own so poorly.” It was true, and better than the complicated things Harry would have said, the pathetic things, if he told Malfoy what he was really thinking.

And there was no reason for Malfoy to feel entitled to his thoughts.

Malfoy blinked and swallowed, then stood up and gave a serious little bow. “All right,” he said. “Just consider that Andromeda never meant to drive you away, and I don’t want you driven away either.”

“Of course you do--”

Harry was about to say that had been one of Malfoy’s goals ever since he was a boy, and why should it be different now? But Malfoy shook his head, eyes intense. “No. For whatever silly reason, I still feel connected to you. And maybe I can make up for this, a little, by letting you know Scorpius. Get to know him.”

Harry turned his wand on Malfoy. Either Malfoy was not as great a fool as Harry had thought, or he knew the intent was deadly this time where it hadn’t been others. He bowed his head and vanished with a pop that hurt Harry’s ears.

Harry sat down slowly in the mud. He felt more clear-headed than he had since Malfoy’s arrival, when he’d only wanted to kill him.

But so much didn’t make sense. Mind-Healers and Malfoy wanting to introduce Harry to his son and being concerned about him? It didn’t make sense, and Harry hated that it didn't make sense. He just hoped it would start to while he sorted it out in his head.

And in the meantime, he supposed he would send a Patronus to Andromeda.

Chapter Twenty-Two.

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