FIC: REACQUAINTANCE
Author: Anonymous.
Gift for: bryoneybrynn
Title: Reacquaintance
Pairing: H/D, very very mild mention of R/H.
Rating: A soft R.
Word Count: About 6600.
Warnings: Character death, but not of any major ones. Nothing else I can think of.
Summary: After five years away, a tragedy brings Draco back to England--and back to a Harry who has never quite recovered from Draco leaving him.
To the prompter: This was a pinch-hit and I don’t know exactly what you like, so I stuck pretty closely to the prompt and am crossing my fingers that you enjoy it. This was kind of different for me since I usually write H/D getting together in the first place, so I felt a little inexperienced at doing something in which they’d already been together and have to patch things up. I hope I did your prompt justice.
Harry only sees it by chance. If he hadn’t been trying to dodge an Ear-worm Hex, playfully cast by one of his fellow Healers, he wouldn’t be on the floor, surrounded by a pile of charts caught with his elbow on the way down. It takes days before the slimy feeling fades from the imagination, not to mention having to find somewhere to put the worm, and though Carmichael missed, Harry’s thought in the last few seconds of his laughter is that his friend better watch his back on their next break.
And then, as he sorts through the files and glances at one that landed by his knee, his good humour dies in his throat.
“You all right, mate?” Carmichael asks, leaning over the desk to peer down at Harry. “Saviour of the Wizarding World, felled by a Second-year hex.”
“Piss off,” Harry says because it’s expected, but the words are barely a whisper, his eyes still glued to the thing on his lap. Quickly, he gathers everything up into a pile and puts it back on the mediwitch’s desk before she returns from grabbing a coffee and notices what a mess they’ve made.
“Not to be cliché, Potter, but you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Harry stands, brushing off his robes and shaking his head. “I’m fine. Back to work, yeah?” She’s not his patient, he insists as he hurries to attend to one who is, not his concern, except she always will be because of what she did.
Just because of what she did, he tells himself, no other reason. None at all. He repeats this over and over in his head all afternoon, is still doing so when he Apparates home to Grimmauld Place and stands, aimless, in the hallway, then hurries to the fireplace.
“I’ll come to you,” Hermione says, her face and hair green from the flames. “Ron and Arthur are making the most dreadful racket outside. I’ll just let him know. Be there in a minute.”
Routine is good. Mugs. Milk. Sugar. Steam that fogs Harry’s glasses as he stands in his kitchen, pouring boiling water, one hand in a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the counter. He hears Hermione come in and carries the tea over to the long, scrubbed wooden table, placing one in front of her and wrapping his hands around his own as he sits down.
“Thanks,” he says, though he’s the one who made the drinks. She smiles gently.
“What’s wrong?”
“Narcissa Malfoy is sick,” Harry says. A long swallow does nothing to ease the dry, rough feeling in his throat. “Dying.”
“Oh, no.” Hermione’s eyes close briefly. “How? Did he tell you?”
Harry shrugs, laughing bitterly and staring into his mug. “Hardly. We haven’t spoken since... They’re not sure, at least from what I saw. Age? Old damage from the war? I’m not her Healer, I wasn’t even supposed to see her chart.”
“You probably shouldn’t be. I’m sorry, Harry.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes until Hermione shifts and the old chair creaks beneath her. Harry’s never replaced them, has only done the minimum necessary to remove some of the gloom from Number Twelve.
“Do you think he’s back?”
Harry wants him to be, if only because he’d hate to believe that Draco is the kind of man who would leave his mother alone on her deathbed, but the idea of Draco being in England again brings with it a host of memories that crush Harry, closer than they’ve been in years, and his tea is growing cold between his palms as he uses all his energy trying to force them away.
Hermione leans across the table, putting her hand on his arm. “Still? After all this time?” she asks softly, and another memory comes, a different man, a different unrequited love.
“Always.”
~*~
At the time, Harry was sure he’d get over it. He was nineteen, the war behind him for good, a whole life ahead. Remedial N. E. W. T. courses were over for him and all of the others whose seventh year at Hogwarts had been irrevocably disrupted or nonexistent. Auror training would begin after the holidays, Quality Quidditch sent him a new broomstick to replace his lost Firebolt, there were long Sunday lunches filled with Molly’s delicious cooking to look forward to.
Harry told himself every day that he was happy. That it didn’t hurt, especially at night, with no lights on to chase pain into the shadows. That the ending of the brief, passionate, physical affair with Draco was fine, because who spends the rest of their life with someone they meet at school? He and Ginny had grown apart because they’d both changed too much, and surely the same thing would happen with him and Draco, though perhaps, Harry had to admit, the changes wouldn’t be quite so drastic. He was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to go back to fancying girls.
Well, he thinks now, at least he was right about one thing, because he was wrong about everything else. Auror training had lasted less than a week before Harry decided he’d had enough fighting to last a lifetime, and if he was going to save people he’d rather do it some other way. Sunday lunches, while still delicious, are different without Fred, even now.
And around him, friends who paired up at Hogwarts have got married or are close to it, themselves the sons and daughters of people who fell in love beside the Black Lake, just as Harry did.
He never told Draco that. Not when it happened, not when Draco turned up on his doorstep a week after they’d got off the train for the last time and refused to come inside, choosing instead to stand in a light summer rain as he said goodbye.
Five years ago, almost to the day. A drizzle paints Harry’s bedroom windows and he doesn’t sleep, tossing and turning until staying in bed just seems pointless and he gets up, sending laundry to wash itself with a flick of his wand, gathering cups from beside his favorite chair. He’s the first of the morning shift to arrive at St. Mungo’s, half an hour early, coffee in hand, and with no one to stop him he takes the lift to the fourth floor. His shoes make no sound as he walks down the hallway and stops outside a closed door, heart hammering because he doesn’t know whether there’s one person on the other side or two.
And he’s not certain how he feels towards the one who might be.
Steeling himself, Harry turns the handle and hates the sigh of relief that is the loudest sound in the room, drowning out Narcissa’s faint, raspy breaths and a ticking clock that is too much like a countdown. The chair at her bedside is empty, but Harry hates just how easily he can picture a lithe, blond figure sitting there, the tendons in his deceptively strong hands twitching beneath pale skin. Harry remembers those hands, the way they looked in stillness, the way they felt on Harry’s body.
He shakes himself. Now is not the time. Never is the time, and in any case the Draco he’s imagining is the Draco of five years ago, like a faded photograph that might not bear any resemblance to its subject these days.
Striding right to Narcissa feels wrong, somehow, so Harry splits the difference, leaving the door and crossing to the middle of the floor, ready to bolt if she wakes up. Not that she will, if her Healers are right about her condition. A thick, heavy fog rolls in over the landscape of Harry’s insides. She doesn’t deserve this.
Narcissa’s chest rises and falls in tiny increments and to Harry every breath emerges as a whisper, a whisper that asks Is Draco alive?--the question that changed everything.
It was later, months later, that Harry finally acknowledged that the relief which had coursed through his body in that moment was more than knowing his answer would save his own life. He was glad Draco survived. He didn’t want to lose the boy who’d always been there, his opposite, his counterbalancing weight. The dark to Harry’s light, the light to Harry’s dark until, late in eighth year, it had all mixed together to become the most lovely shade of grey.
Grey eyes in the rain, looking at the unlit lamp over the door of Grimmauld Place, at the square opposite, at anything but Harry as they said goodbye.
Aware of the swell of sound outside the door that is St. Mungo’s waking up, Harry takes one last, long look at Narcissa Malfoy, grateful and pained, and slips from the room. All day he thinks about her, and when his last patient--victim of either a miscast or very accurately cast Stinging Jinx, the man wouldn’t say--can walk straight again, Harry discharges him to make up with his girlfriend and goes in search of Healer Romanus.
“Enter,” she says crisply at the knock on her door. Harry does, slowly. The rotation spent on her ward during training is still fresh in his mind.
“Ah, Healer Potter, this is a surprise. Emergency Spell Damage not exciting enough for you?” Her brown eyes twinkle with a humour Harry rarely saw as one of her students.
“Um, no, it’s fine,” he says, his back to the door. “I just, well, there’s something I need to ask you.”
She huffs impatiently. “Well, do sit down.”
“It’s about...” Harry shifts in his chair, looking across the desk at the witch, attractive in the severe way that comes with age, remembering how terrifying she could be when one of the trainees fouled up. He’d been on the receiving end of her ire on more than one occasion. “Narcissa Malfoy is your patient.”
Sharply, she looks at him. “Indeed. But that isn’t a question, Healer Potter.” Harry’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and she appears to take pity on him. “You’re wondering what’s wrong with her?”
Harry nods. Now is probably not the best time to admit he already knows, at least partially.
“We’re not completely certain. What is certain is that the problem is irreversible. She is not the first case of lasting damage we’ve seen from the war, and in many ways she likely suffered more than most. Not physically, perhaps, but there are still many things we don’t understand about the combined effects of extreme stress and certain kinds of magic--especially dark magic--on the body.”
“There’s no hope for her, then?” Harry’s stomach flips. He thinks he’s about as good as he’s ever been at accepting no for an answer, but she’s one of the hospital’s most experienced Healers, and Harry himself has been fully qualified for less than six months.
“I’m afraid not. I understand why you have a connection to this particular patient, Harry,” she says almost gently. “I suggest you find a quiet time to say goodbye. Early mornings are a good time.”
Harry catches her eye. She really doesn’t miss anything. “All right,” he says, pushing his chair back. He’s almost at the door when he stops, turns. “Has her son...?”
The senior Healer tilts her head, and Harry shakes his. “Never mind. Thank you, Healer Romanus.”
“My door is always open, Healer Potter.”
~*~
Piles of medical textbooks litter the floor, and Harry stumbles over one as he drags himself from the warm cocoon of bed and to the bathroom when his alarm-charm goes off. Cursing at the pain in his toe and the earlier-than-usual hour, he glances in the mirror just long enough to register the deepening dark circles below his eyes on his way into the shower.
The coil of certainty that Healer Romanus is right is growing heavier in the pit of his stomach, and he’s angry. At Voldemort, who is certainly responsible for this even from the urn in which his ashes sit, in a magically reinforced room, under heavy guard at the Ministry. At Draco, of whom there is still no sign, and what kind of a bastard stays away when the mother he always professed to love so deeply is dying? Sure, he’ll let Death Eaters into Hogwarts to save her, but clearly this is too much effort. And at himself, for wasting the past five years on someone who obviously doesn’t deserve it, and for his inability to save Narcissa himself when it’s the very least he owes her.
As he’s done every day this week, Harry gets to the hospital early and makes his way to her room, glancing up and down the quiet corridors to make sure no one’s watching as he steps inside. Immediately his mind fuzzes with grief and memories, but he’s used to it by now, this feeling that he’s off-balance, unable to think clearly.
There’s progress of a sort. For the second time, he crosses over to the chair beside the bed, sitting down to watch the pale face, the dry lips, the utter inevitability stealing over her.
“Back again, Harry?” a voice asks, and in the instant before Harry’s brain catches up with his ears he thinks this whole room, this whole situation is populated by ghosts of people he’s lost. Then his brain does catch up and his mouth drops open, his head snapping back and forth as he tries to find the source.
“It’s not as good as yours,” Draco says, pulling an invisibility cloak from his shoulders, letting it pool around his feet where he stands in the corner. “Some of us have to content ourselves with buying normal ones.”
“Draco,” Harry tries to say, but it just ends up as him mouthing the words because his voice is hanging on to the inside of his throat with sharp claws. He’s really there, slightly changed from the Draco in Harry’s memories, but then he supposes he looks a little older, too. The white-blond hair is the same length as it was the last time Harry saw it, but a little softer maybe, not slicked back the way it was then, and Harry’s fingers itch. Circles darker than Harry’s mar skin Harry remembers luminescent by moonlight. The cloak hid soft black cashmere clothes draped over the strong, catlike body Harry knows too well and has spent years not trying hard enough to get out of his head.
“Harry,” Draco says, and Harry’s eyes snap back up.
“You’ve been here the whole time.”
Draco nods, more a slight inclination of his head than anything. “I should thank you for visiting her. A Healer, I’m impressed,” he says, looking at Harry’s robes.
“No, you--you’ve been spying on me!” It’s irrational, the bubbling heat in Harry’s veins, and he knows it, but still can’t stop himself jumping to his feet.
“Please,” Draco says, eyebrows rising almost to his hairline, “tell me you’re not going to get precious about that.”
“Well, okay, no. Fine. I’m sorry, about...” He trails off, glancing down at Narcissa’s still figure.
“Thank you.” Draco is still in the corner, palms press against the wall behind him.
Is this it? Harry wonders. Five years of...of nothing and now it’s like there was never anything at all between us? All those afternoons by the lake, the nights wherever we could be alone, all just erased? “How is France?” he grits out through clenched teeth.
“Very French.” Draco yawns. “Beautiful. Busy.”
“I don’t... I don’t know what you do over there.”
“Je suis le Maitre de Breuvages Magiques a Beauxbatons,” he says, the words tripping smoothly off his tongue. “Potions Master at Beauxbatons,” he clarifies at Harry’s puzzled expression. “Not this whole time, of course, but the position opened up a few years ago.”
“Oh,” Harry says, the emotions inside him a wild wizarding battle of uncontrolled magic, a sharp blast of green light piercing his heart at the thought of Draco amongst all those beautiful women who get to look at him every day, even if he is their teacher. And they get to hear him speak French. Closed-minded he may once have been, but Draco never held any prejudices about gender. “Right. Well.” He’s going to be late for his shift, early as he got here, but he can’t just leave. “Would you like to get a coffee while you’re here? I mean, I know you must have a lot to take care of, and be here, too, but...”
Draco closes his eyes, pressing himself more tightly against the wall. “I can’t, Harry,” he says softly.
“Okay,” Harry says, nodding though Draco can’t see. “All right. I’m sorry, again.” He almost trips over his robes in his hurry to get out of the room, and when the door has clicked shut behind him he stops, clenching his fists and trying to breathe deeply, as if that will soothe the burning sting in his chest. Draco’s moved on, he couldn’t have made that clearer if he’d tried, and Harry is pathetic, stupid for pining away over someone who didn’t give a bloody fuck about him.
He lets himself get swept up in a wave of mediwitches, not watching where he’s going until he stops, blinking, at the doors to the Creature Induced Injuries ward and shakes his head. Five minutes late, he arrives where he’s supposed to be and Carmichael hands Harry a stack of patient charts, whispering that he covered for Harry’s absence and Harry owes him. Nodding absently, Harry tries to focus on their case assignments but, as has often been the case over the past five years, all he can think about is Draco.
~*~
“Potter! In here, now!”
Harry looks up, startled, to see one of the senior Healers urgently beckoning him. Supposedly he’d been doing this paperwork, but as he drops it on the nearest table he realises he hasn’t done more than fill in the name of the patient he discharged an hour ago.
“Now, Potter!”
Running, Harry catches up as the Healer is disappearing into one of the rooms reserved for severe trauma. “Auror accident,” the Healer says, rounding the bed. Breath catching, Harry looks down and exhales. Not Ron, thank Merlin, but still an Auror in desperate need of help. Blue lips stand out against a bloodless face, a nasty bruise is forming at the man’s temple, and a strange aura of hazy purple light hovers over the body, encasing it from head to toe.
“Do we know what happened?” Harry asks, pulling his wand from its sheath and waving it over the Auror. The diagnostic spells he tries bounce off the purple light, refusing to give readings that would help Harry treat him.
“Not yet. He and his partner were both brought in; other one’s not so bad but unconscious, Carmichael’s trying to sort him out now. We have to break through this thing or we’ve got no chance.”
“Finite!” Harry mutters, then frowns. Not that he’d expected it to work, but the very first thing he’d learned in training was never to discount the obvious. “It’s as if whoever did it wanted to make sure we couldn’t help him,” Harry says, “but why not just kill him? Why take this time?”
The other Healer shakes his head, attempting to press through the shield with his hands. “Because some people are bastards, Potter.”
Harry’s seen too much, his whole life, to argue with that.
For at least twenty minutes they try every spell and counter-curse they can think of. Harry’s never seen anything like this, and obviously neither has a Healer much more experienced than he.
“Nothing’s getting through this, right?” Harry asks, frantic and desperate. “Help me get him on the floor.”
“Healer Potter...”
Harry looks up. “Please.”
The Healer nods. “All right.” A moment later the Auror is well away from the bed or anything else that might be damaged whether Harry is right about this or not. Slowly, carefully, Harry raises his wand and aims.
“Reducto!”
A loud bang echoes through the room. The haze shimmers, pulses once, and disappears.
“Risky move, Potter,” the Healer says hoarsely. “Well done.”
Relief floods Harry like sinking into a hot bath. He so easily could have killed his patient with that, but he hasn’t, and together they lift the man back onto the bed, running tests that work now, identifying the underlying curses. They heal the ones they can with their wands, assemble the potions they need for others and pour them down a still throat. It takes hours to get the Auror into a stable, sleeping condition, and by the time they’ve cleared up and got the full story of what happened--something about a counterfeit galleon smuggling ring--from the Ministry, Harry is exhausted. Gratefully accepting the offer of a break, he goes in search of the strongest cup of revolting coffee the cafeteria can sell him.
Looking around, he sees all the tables full of families, other Healers and mediwitches, and patients well enough to move around but not quite ready to go home yet. Sighing, Harry takes his drink to the ground floor and slips around the back of the reception desk, through a door, and into a small courtyard kept for staff at St. Mungo’s to enjoy in their rare free moments. It’s greener than it was when Harry first started, thanks to a huge donation from Neville Longbottom of strange plants Harry mostly can’t identify.
He stops dead when his feet hit gravel and he sees he’s not alone. Scalding coffee sloshes out onto his hand.
“Fuck,” Harry says, and Draco looks up from his spot on one of the benches.
“Harry,” Draco says. “You look shattered.”
His voice is cool, almost indifferent, and a spark of hurt annoyance burns its way up through the tired fog. “You’re not supposed to be out here.”
Draco raises one eyebrow. “Shall I leave?”
Yes. “No,” Harry says, because the only thing worse than Draco being on that bench right now would be Draco’s absence from it. “Why aren’t you upstairs?”
Silence reigns in the small space for a long moment. “My father got special permission to visit. I had no desire to be there for that. Did you not see the army of Azkaban guards come in?”
Harry shakes his head. “I’ve been busy.” Without conscious thought, his feet have taken him to within inches of Draco’s bench, and it’s either sit or look like a complete pillock. Harry chooses the former, if only because falling over would be even more mortifying. “We had two injured Aurors come in,” he says, taking a sip of the vile coffee.
“I’m surprised you’re not one of them. I mean, I was when I first saw you here,” Draco says quietly. “You were planning to be.”
The words are more bitter than his drink, but Harry can’t stop them from escaping. “A lot changed after you left.”
“So I’m discovering. Do you enjoy being a Healer?”
For the first time since Draco appeared out from under an invisibility cloak, Harry smiles at him, just slightly, as the pride and relief at saving the Auror surges inside him again. “I love it.”
“Good,” Draco says, his shoulders relaxing. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“Do you enjoy teaching?”
“It would be wonderful if not for the students.” One corner of Draco’s mouth lifts a little. “No, I do like it.”
Harry nods. A bird flutters down onto one of Neville’s plants and begins to peck at it, they both watch as the plant pecks back. He has as many questions as the sparrow has feathers, each one a small, light thing, but when added up make the obstacle keeping them apart on the bench. “Why were you hiding in your mother’s room? You didn’t know I’d be there, not that first time.” It’s not the most pressing, and perhaps that’s why he asks it.
“People in England remember me. I’m...not accustomed to being stared at anymore. At home, they mostly stayed out of the war, so I suppose it’s easier for them to forgive my part in it.”
At home. Something inside Harry cracks and he takes a deep breath. “Fair enough.”
“What have you been doing, other than becoming a Healer? Still see Granger and Weasley?”
“A few times a week,” Harry says, his exhaustion growing with the effort of the conversation. He was never a good dancer. “This place keeps me too busy for much else.” Busy enough that he’s always been able to use it as an excuse when Hermione suggests pointedly that he ought to get out more, meet someone, and when Ron offers to set him up with every gay wizard at the Ministry.
Maybe he should rethink that.
“Draco--”
“Harry--”
“After you,” Draco says, gesturing to Harry with an outstretched palm turned upwards, but the awkward moment is enough to steal Harry’s nerve.
“I was... I’m truly sorry about Narcissa,” Harry says. It’s not a lie, but it’s not what he wanted to say, and something in Draco’s eyes makes Harry think Draco can still see right through him, even now. He wishes he had his own invisibility cloak to draw around his shoulders.
“So am I.” Draco’s voice shakes and Harry wants nothing more than to reach out, hold Draco the way he did when they were both waiting to hear whether Harry’s testimony before the Wizengamot would be enough to keep Narcissa out of Azkaban. Setting down his cup, Harry crosses his arms over his chest. “I should get back,” Draco says, standing and gazing at a flowering tangletree on the far side of the courtyard. “Take care of yourself, Harry.”
Harry watches him leave, the question he most wants answered still stuck somewhere south of his tonsils.
Why?
~*~
Narcissa Malfoy dies on a Tuesday, two weeks after Harry first saw her name amongst a messy pile of paper. He stays, kneeling on the hearthrug, long after Healer Romanus’s head has disappeared from the flames and they’ve turned from green back to orange. Even in the height of summer, Grimmauld Place is cold, gloomy, and Harry shivers.
Healer Romanus was right, he did want to know, but now that he does he’s not at all sure what to do, and so he sits on the floor until his knees begin to ache, watching a sliver of sun set through a gap in the musty velvet curtains. He thinks about Flooing Ron and Hermione, but Ron will be stoic and Hermione overly sympathetic, neither of which Harry thinks he can cope with right now.
She saved his life, yes, and he will forever be indebted to her for that, more so now that he couldn’t do the same for her. Hadn’t tried, even, though the logical part of his mind accepts that the outcome would’ve been the same. But it’s more than that, and in the gathering darkness of his living room Harry knows it’s not only the Narcissa in the Forbidden Forest he will mourn and miss, but the Narcissa who brought Draco into the world and, by that extension, gave Harry a fleeting glimpse at love. With her passing comes the passing of any chance, Harry’s sure, because Draco will do whatever must be done in England and then return...home.
His knees creaking, Harry stands and wanders aimlessly around the echoing house, too large for just him and a depressing place to live, really, but somehow he’d never got around to finding somewhere he preferred, the way he said he would when he’d first left Hogwarts.
Left Hogwarts... With Draco, and the two of them had spent a blissful week ignoring the world, the Prophet, the call of obligations as they holed up behind the closed door of Number Twelve and barely bothered with clothes the entire time. Every creaking hallway floorboard under his bare feet holds the ghost of Draco’s warm body, he keeps the doors shut to most of the bedrooms, and he still drinks his morning tea while remembering a particular afternoon and a sunlit kitchen table.
Perhaps he should have moved a long time ago.
He’s not hungry, but he aimlessly opens cupboards and closes them again, as if he expects them to hold answers instead of food. Will he even see Draco again, now that there’s really no possibility of running into him at the hospital?
The doorbell rings and Harry jumps, dropping the packet of biscuits he was holding. “Coming, Hermione!” he calls. Generally, she prefers not to Floo, which Harry thinks is understandable enough, so it’s a safe bet that it’s her at the door. Her habit of just knowing things didn’t end at Hogwarts, and Harry’s glad she’s come even if he’d decided not to call her.
“I’m not Granger,” Draco says. “My apologies.”
Harry stares. Despite the formal, almost clipped tone of voice, Draco looks sad, exhausted enough to wear down any last remnants of resolve Harry may have had before this afternoon.
“Draco,” he whispers, stepping forward and pulling him into his arms. “I heard,” he manages with the last of the breath Draco seems to be trying to squeeze from him. Harry’s not exactly sure how long they stand there, his face buried in too-familiar hair, but when Draco’s grip finally loosens a little Harry reaches around to lace his fingers with ones pressed to the small of his back. “Come inside.”
“I’m sorry,” Draco says in the front hall. “To just turn up like this. Are you alone?”
Harry closes his eyes briefly. “Yes. It’s fine, of course it is. Are you all right?” He knows it’s a stupid question, but for all the death and grief he’s seen and experienced, he’s never been in a situation quite like this one.
Draco’s laugh is humourless and harsh in the dimness. “I don’t know. How should I be? Upset? Glad she’s at peace now? Angry at what led to this? All of the above. I missed you, Harry.” Draco steps closer, the barrier of space between them pushing Harry against the wall. Harry’s head spins at words and closeness.
“I... Draco...” He doesn’t know what to say, and suddenly it doesn’t matter because Draco is kissing him, lips as soft as Harry remembers in his waking hours and dreams of in his sleeping ones. It’s tentative at first, only for a second before Harry’s hands lift to twine in Draco’s hair and their mouths are opening, tongues touching with a spark of delicious heat. Harry can feel every inch of Draco’s tall body, every inch of the hard length pressed against his thigh, every cell of himself screaming for more.
Yes, yes. Harry missed this. Yes.
“No,” Harry pants, pulling away, turning his head.
“No?” Draco runs his lips down Harry’s neck, to the sensitive spot he discovered one lazy afternoon on the shore of the lake and exploited for weeks afterwards. “You haven’t stopped wanting me. I can tell.”
Harry’s knees buckle as Draco sucks gently on a tender inch of skin. “No,” he says, more firmly this time, putting his hands on Draco’s chest and pushing. “I can’t. No.” He hates himself for the stung expression he can see, for Draco’s instant retreat to the opposite wall, but while Harry has survived many things, he knows he won’t survive this. Not again. “You don’t want to do this,” he says hoarsely. “Not really. It’s a normal reaction to grief.”
“I see,” Draco says coldly. “So because you’re a Healer you’re entitled to tell me how I feel now?”
Heat of a different kind crackles through Harry’s veins. “I’m entitled to remember that you left me, Draco. You turned up at my door and said goodbye and never cared how I felt about it. It’s been five years without a single owl or Floo call or anything! And you know, you know I’m sorry about your mother, but I’m not something you get to pick up when you need it and then throw away when you’re feeling better.”
“You think that’s what it was? You think I didn’t care? Thanks ever so much for the faith, Harry, it’s much appreciated.”
“You left!” Harry yells, his voice bouncing along marble. “What the hell was I supposed to think?”
A wintry chill descends over the hallway. “Nothing,” Draco says finally, clipped, tight, his face shuttered against Harry’s prying stare. “That’s exactly how you were supposed to feel. Goodnight, Harry.”
He’s gone so suddenly it’s the echo of the slamming door that makes Harry realise it.
~*~
The finest black formal robes Harry owns are spread out upstairs on his bed as Harry stomps barefoot around his kitchen in ratty old jeans and a t-shirt so ancient and baggy it may be the last reminder of Dudley.
“I’m not going.”
“Oh yes, you are,” Hermione says. “You don’t have to speak to him, we can stand in the back and leave as soon as it ends, but she saved your life, and you will regret it later if you don’t go.”
“I can live with that,” Harry says, dumping sugar into mugs.
Hermione moves to stand at the counter. “I know, but you don’t have to, and you shouldn’t. Look, Harry, I understand, and after what you told me Draco is less my favourite person than he’s ever been, which is saying something, but even I have to admit that I’m only hearing one side of it.”
“The one that matters.”
“Possibly, yes, but that isn’t the point. If nothing else, do you really want to read what the Prophet will have to say if you don’t attend Narcissa Malfoy’s funeral?”
She’s not playing fair and they both know it. “He broke my heart, Hermione.”
“Well, perhaps you broke his, too.”
Harry gapes at her. “Excuse me?”
Taking her mug and wrapping her hands around it, Hermione tilts her head to one side. “Well, from what you told me, he came to you. Not anyone else, you, at the time when he needed someone the most. I’m not excusing his behaviour, but people do crazy things in times of extreme grief. Ron wasn’t... For a long time...” She shakes her head. “Anyway, I suspect there’s more to this than you know, and it isn’t reasonable to have expected Draco to explain it all. Not while Narcissa was dying, and not that night. No, Harry, I’m serious. I’m not saying you didn’t do the right thing by stopping him, but I still think maybe you don’t know the whole story.”
“Thanks for the support,” Harry mutters.
She sets her tea down on the counter and hugs him. “I’m on your side, just like always. But seeing you happy wouldn’t be the most terrible thing in the world. Now go get dressed.”
Cleverly, Hermione times their joint Apparition to the moment the service is about to begin, and the two of them slide into chairs at the back of the lawn at Malfoy Manor that’s been opened for the day. Beyond rows of heads, Harry can see a blond one, bowed and shining in the sun, as Andromeda Tonks stands in front of the assembled crowd, beside a coffin draped in green and silver silks, to speak about her sister. They patched things up in recent years, Harry knows, though he’s carefully avoided the subject whenever he’s been to visit Teddy so as not to have to talk about Draco. Andromeda’s speech about forgiveness and the healing power of time makes Harry’s stomach clench, and he looks down at his hands until someone he doesn’t know takes her place.
He means to leave the moment Draco is finished, but Harry is frozen to his chair by the cracked, earnest voice in which Draco talks of his mother, the way she protected him as much as she could, took curses intended for him, loved him more than anyone ever had and, Draco admits shakily, perhaps much more than he’d ever deserved. Harry stays seated as the gathering begins to move towards a more relaxed area set with refreshments closer to the house, and doesn’t stand until Hermione nudges him as Draco walks past.
“Not more than you deserve,” Harry says quietly. Draco stops, but doesn’t turn around.
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
Harry shrugs, though Draco can’t see him. “Maybe.” He knows he should still be furious and doesn’t care that all his anger has been washed away by the tears Draco has somehow managed not to cry but which Harry can tell he wants to. Instead, he reaches for Draco’s hand, lacing their fingers together.
“Is that why you left? Could you tell...?”
Draco faces him, keeping his eyes trained on the treetops somewhere in the distance behind Harry. “Partly. And no, I didn’t think I deserved it from anyone, let alone you. Everyone was watching to see what you’d do next, expecting great things from you--and you’ve done them, Harry, maybe more than if you’d become an Auror--but I’d only just escaped from the spotlight. I wasn’t ready to have the whole wizarding world look on as the man I loved realised I wasn’t good enough for him.”
A cloud of relief, sadness, and regret for lost time passes over Harry, thick as Dementor-fog. “You should have told me.”
Draco’s eyes are heavy with grief, but his lips twitch. “I’m sorry to dispel your illusions that I’m perfect. We were young. I made a mistake--one of many.”
Harry takes a deep breath. “Is it a mistake you’d like to fix?”
“Very much,” Draco says, tightening his fingers. “I need to get up there.” He inclines his head in the direction of the guests. “I would like it if you stayed.”
Don’t leave me.
“Okay.”
~*~
Harry has spent the past four weeks alone, and now he’s watching the clock, thinking that maybe countdowns aren’t always terrible things except sometimes they go too bloody slowly. He paces the rooms of Grimmauld Place, checking and double-checking that the cleaning spells Molly taught him have worked well enough, though he’ll only be in this house for another few days. Making tea fritters away a few minutes in the kitchen, and for at least the third time this morning he fluffs the cushions on the couch.
Nothing except the doorbell could stop his restless fidgeting, and that it does instantly as he jumps up and runs to answer it. Draco appears--from behind a pile of luggage that makes Harry shake his head but doesn’t surprise him--and smiles.
“Remind me why I had to come here instead of meeting you at the Manor?” Draco asks, lifting one eyebrow in an expression Harry loves.
“Because your ridiculous house is filled with elves.”
“And?” Draco asks, curling his fists into Harry’s shirt and pushing him back through the door, into the hallway, and up against the wall.
“And you’re mine for the next three days. I won’t argue that they make a mean cup of tea--though don’t ever tell Hermione I said that--but I don’t want them seeing me naked.”
Draco grins, pressing his body against Harry’s. “You’re about to be living there; they still might. For now, though...” He looks around, his face turning serious. “We didn’t do so well the last time we were standing here.”
“I know,” Harry says, meeting Draco’s eyes.
“Should I ask if I may kiss you?”
“It’s been a month,” Harry says, pulling Draco closer. “I’ll hex you if you don’t, and I’ve learned some interesting ones at work.”
It’s long, and slow, and sweet, and will never ever be enough for Harry, which is exactly how he wants it. Their tongues twist and breaths quicken and hands begin to wander, and when Draco slides the button on Harry’s jeans free, Harry breaks the kiss just enough to talk. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I would have thought that was obvious,” Draco says. One hand is on the zipper, so very close to where Harry wants it, but his eyes are boring into Harry’s. “Reacquainting myself. For good.”
Gift for: bryoneybrynn
Title: Reacquaintance
Pairing: H/D, very very mild mention of R/H.
Rating: A soft R.
Word Count: About 6600.
Warnings: Character death, but not of any major ones. Nothing else I can think of.
Summary: After five years away, a tragedy brings Draco back to England--and back to a Harry who has never quite recovered from Draco leaving him.
To the prompter: This was a pinch-hit and I don’t know exactly what you like, so I stuck pretty closely to the prompt and am crossing my fingers that you enjoy it. This was kind of different for me since I usually write H/D getting together in the first place, so I felt a little inexperienced at doing something in which they’d already been together and have to patch things up. I hope I did your prompt justice.
Harry only sees it by chance. If he hadn’t been trying to dodge an Ear-worm Hex, playfully cast by one of his fellow Healers, he wouldn’t be on the floor, surrounded by a pile of charts caught with his elbow on the way down. It takes days before the slimy feeling fades from the imagination, not to mention having to find somewhere to put the worm, and though Carmichael missed, Harry’s thought in the last few seconds of his laughter is that his friend better watch his back on their next break.
And then, as he sorts through the files and glances at one that landed by his knee, his good humour dies in his throat.
“You all right, mate?” Carmichael asks, leaning over the desk to peer down at Harry. “Saviour of the Wizarding World, felled by a Second-year hex.”
“Piss off,” Harry says because it’s expected, but the words are barely a whisper, his eyes still glued to the thing on his lap. Quickly, he gathers everything up into a pile and puts it back on the mediwitch’s desk before she returns from grabbing a coffee and notices what a mess they’ve made.
“Not to be cliché, Potter, but you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Harry stands, brushing off his robes and shaking his head. “I’m fine. Back to work, yeah?” She’s not his patient, he insists as he hurries to attend to one who is, not his concern, except she always will be because of what she did.
Just because of what she did, he tells himself, no other reason. None at all. He repeats this over and over in his head all afternoon, is still doing so when he Apparates home to Grimmauld Place and stands, aimless, in the hallway, then hurries to the fireplace.
“I’ll come to you,” Hermione says, her face and hair green from the flames. “Ron and Arthur are making the most dreadful racket outside. I’ll just let him know. Be there in a minute.”
Routine is good. Mugs. Milk. Sugar. Steam that fogs Harry’s glasses as he stands in his kitchen, pouring boiling water, one hand in a white-knuckled grip on the edge of the counter. He hears Hermione come in and carries the tea over to the long, scrubbed wooden table, placing one in front of her and wrapping his hands around his own as he sits down.
“Thanks,” he says, though he’s the one who made the drinks. She smiles gently.
“What’s wrong?”
“Narcissa Malfoy is sick,” Harry says. A long swallow does nothing to ease the dry, rough feeling in his throat. “Dying.”
“Oh, no.” Hermione’s eyes close briefly. “How? Did he tell you?”
Harry shrugs, laughing bitterly and staring into his mug. “Hardly. We haven’t spoken since... They’re not sure, at least from what I saw. Age? Old damage from the war? I’m not her Healer, I wasn’t even supposed to see her chart.”
“You probably shouldn’t be. I’m sorry, Harry.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes until Hermione shifts and the old chair creaks beneath her. Harry’s never replaced them, has only done the minimum necessary to remove some of the gloom from Number Twelve.
“Do you think he’s back?”
Harry wants him to be, if only because he’d hate to believe that Draco is the kind of man who would leave his mother alone on her deathbed, but the idea of Draco being in England again brings with it a host of memories that crush Harry, closer than they’ve been in years, and his tea is growing cold between his palms as he uses all his energy trying to force them away.
Hermione leans across the table, putting her hand on his arm. “Still? After all this time?” she asks softly, and another memory comes, a different man, a different unrequited love.
“Always.”
~*~
At the time, Harry was sure he’d get over it. He was nineteen, the war behind him for good, a whole life ahead. Remedial N. E. W. T. courses were over for him and all of the others whose seventh year at Hogwarts had been irrevocably disrupted or nonexistent. Auror training would begin after the holidays, Quality Quidditch sent him a new broomstick to replace his lost Firebolt, there were long Sunday lunches filled with Molly’s delicious cooking to look forward to.
Harry told himself every day that he was happy. That it didn’t hurt, especially at night, with no lights on to chase pain into the shadows. That the ending of the brief, passionate, physical affair with Draco was fine, because who spends the rest of their life with someone they meet at school? He and Ginny had grown apart because they’d both changed too much, and surely the same thing would happen with him and Draco, though perhaps, Harry had to admit, the changes wouldn’t be quite so drastic. He was fairly certain that he wasn’t going to go back to fancying girls.
Well, he thinks now, at least he was right about one thing, because he was wrong about everything else. Auror training had lasted less than a week before Harry decided he’d had enough fighting to last a lifetime, and if he was going to save people he’d rather do it some other way. Sunday lunches, while still delicious, are different without Fred, even now.
And around him, friends who paired up at Hogwarts have got married or are close to it, themselves the sons and daughters of people who fell in love beside the Black Lake, just as Harry did.
He never told Draco that. Not when it happened, not when Draco turned up on his doorstep a week after they’d got off the train for the last time and refused to come inside, choosing instead to stand in a light summer rain as he said goodbye.
Five years ago, almost to the day. A drizzle paints Harry’s bedroom windows and he doesn’t sleep, tossing and turning until staying in bed just seems pointless and he gets up, sending laundry to wash itself with a flick of his wand, gathering cups from beside his favorite chair. He’s the first of the morning shift to arrive at St. Mungo’s, half an hour early, coffee in hand, and with no one to stop him he takes the lift to the fourth floor. His shoes make no sound as he walks down the hallway and stops outside a closed door, heart hammering because he doesn’t know whether there’s one person on the other side or two.
And he’s not certain how he feels towards the one who might be.
Steeling himself, Harry turns the handle and hates the sigh of relief that is the loudest sound in the room, drowning out Narcissa’s faint, raspy breaths and a ticking clock that is too much like a countdown. The chair at her bedside is empty, but Harry hates just how easily he can picture a lithe, blond figure sitting there, the tendons in his deceptively strong hands twitching beneath pale skin. Harry remembers those hands, the way they looked in stillness, the way they felt on Harry’s body.
He shakes himself. Now is not the time. Never is the time, and in any case the Draco he’s imagining is the Draco of five years ago, like a faded photograph that might not bear any resemblance to its subject these days.
Striding right to Narcissa feels wrong, somehow, so Harry splits the difference, leaving the door and crossing to the middle of the floor, ready to bolt if she wakes up. Not that she will, if her Healers are right about her condition. A thick, heavy fog rolls in over the landscape of Harry’s insides. She doesn’t deserve this.
Narcissa’s chest rises and falls in tiny increments and to Harry every breath emerges as a whisper, a whisper that asks Is Draco alive?--the question that changed everything.
It was later, months later, that Harry finally acknowledged that the relief which had coursed through his body in that moment was more than knowing his answer would save his own life. He was glad Draco survived. He didn’t want to lose the boy who’d always been there, his opposite, his counterbalancing weight. The dark to Harry’s light, the light to Harry’s dark until, late in eighth year, it had all mixed together to become the most lovely shade of grey.
Grey eyes in the rain, looking at the unlit lamp over the door of Grimmauld Place, at the square opposite, at anything but Harry as they said goodbye.
Aware of the swell of sound outside the door that is St. Mungo’s waking up, Harry takes one last, long look at Narcissa Malfoy, grateful and pained, and slips from the room. All day he thinks about her, and when his last patient--victim of either a miscast or very accurately cast Stinging Jinx, the man wouldn’t say--can walk straight again, Harry discharges him to make up with his girlfriend and goes in search of Healer Romanus.
“Enter,” she says crisply at the knock on her door. Harry does, slowly. The rotation spent on her ward during training is still fresh in his mind.
“Ah, Healer Potter, this is a surprise. Emergency Spell Damage not exciting enough for you?” Her brown eyes twinkle with a humour Harry rarely saw as one of her students.
“Um, no, it’s fine,” he says, his back to the door. “I just, well, there’s something I need to ask you.”
She huffs impatiently. “Well, do sit down.”
“It’s about...” Harry shifts in his chair, looking across the desk at the witch, attractive in the severe way that comes with age, remembering how terrifying she could be when one of the trainees fouled up. He’d been on the receiving end of her ire on more than one occasion. “Narcissa Malfoy is your patient.”
Sharply, she looks at him. “Indeed. But that isn’t a question, Healer Potter.” Harry’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth and she appears to take pity on him. “You’re wondering what’s wrong with her?”
Harry nods. Now is probably not the best time to admit he already knows, at least partially.
“We’re not completely certain. What is certain is that the problem is irreversible. She is not the first case of lasting damage we’ve seen from the war, and in many ways she likely suffered more than most. Not physically, perhaps, but there are still many things we don’t understand about the combined effects of extreme stress and certain kinds of magic--especially dark magic--on the body.”
“There’s no hope for her, then?” Harry’s stomach flips. He thinks he’s about as good as he’s ever been at accepting no for an answer, but she’s one of the hospital’s most experienced Healers, and Harry himself has been fully qualified for less than six months.
“I’m afraid not. I understand why you have a connection to this particular patient, Harry,” she says almost gently. “I suggest you find a quiet time to say goodbye. Early mornings are a good time.”
Harry catches her eye. She really doesn’t miss anything. “All right,” he says, pushing his chair back. He’s almost at the door when he stops, turns. “Has her son...?”
The senior Healer tilts her head, and Harry shakes his. “Never mind. Thank you, Healer Romanus.”
“My door is always open, Healer Potter.”
~*~
Piles of medical textbooks litter the floor, and Harry stumbles over one as he drags himself from the warm cocoon of bed and to the bathroom when his alarm-charm goes off. Cursing at the pain in his toe and the earlier-than-usual hour, he glances in the mirror just long enough to register the deepening dark circles below his eyes on his way into the shower.
The coil of certainty that Healer Romanus is right is growing heavier in the pit of his stomach, and he’s angry. At Voldemort, who is certainly responsible for this even from the urn in which his ashes sit, in a magically reinforced room, under heavy guard at the Ministry. At Draco, of whom there is still no sign, and what kind of a bastard stays away when the mother he always professed to love so deeply is dying? Sure, he’ll let Death Eaters into Hogwarts to save her, but clearly this is too much effort. And at himself, for wasting the past five years on someone who obviously doesn’t deserve it, and for his inability to save Narcissa himself when it’s the very least he owes her.
As he’s done every day this week, Harry gets to the hospital early and makes his way to her room, glancing up and down the quiet corridors to make sure no one’s watching as he steps inside. Immediately his mind fuzzes with grief and memories, but he’s used to it by now, this feeling that he’s off-balance, unable to think clearly.
There’s progress of a sort. For the second time, he crosses over to the chair beside the bed, sitting down to watch the pale face, the dry lips, the utter inevitability stealing over her.
“Back again, Harry?” a voice asks, and in the instant before Harry’s brain catches up with his ears he thinks this whole room, this whole situation is populated by ghosts of people he’s lost. Then his brain does catch up and his mouth drops open, his head snapping back and forth as he tries to find the source.
“It’s not as good as yours,” Draco says, pulling an invisibility cloak from his shoulders, letting it pool around his feet where he stands in the corner. “Some of us have to content ourselves with buying normal ones.”
“Draco,” Harry tries to say, but it just ends up as him mouthing the words because his voice is hanging on to the inside of his throat with sharp claws. He’s really there, slightly changed from the Draco in Harry’s memories, but then he supposes he looks a little older, too. The white-blond hair is the same length as it was the last time Harry saw it, but a little softer maybe, not slicked back the way it was then, and Harry’s fingers itch. Circles darker than Harry’s mar skin Harry remembers luminescent by moonlight. The cloak hid soft black cashmere clothes draped over the strong, catlike body Harry knows too well and has spent years not trying hard enough to get out of his head.
“Harry,” Draco says, and Harry’s eyes snap back up.
“You’ve been here the whole time.”
Draco nods, more a slight inclination of his head than anything. “I should thank you for visiting her. A Healer, I’m impressed,” he says, looking at Harry’s robes.
“No, you--you’ve been spying on me!” It’s irrational, the bubbling heat in Harry’s veins, and he knows it, but still can’t stop himself jumping to his feet.
“Please,” Draco says, eyebrows rising almost to his hairline, “tell me you’re not going to get precious about that.”
“Well, okay, no. Fine. I’m sorry, about...” He trails off, glancing down at Narcissa’s still figure.
“Thank you.” Draco is still in the corner, palms press against the wall behind him.
Is this it? Harry wonders. Five years of...of nothing and now it’s like there was never anything at all between us? All those afternoons by the lake, the nights wherever we could be alone, all just erased? “How is France?” he grits out through clenched teeth.
“Very French.” Draco yawns. “Beautiful. Busy.”
“I don’t... I don’t know what you do over there.”
“Je suis le Maitre de Breuvages Magiques a Beauxbatons,” he says, the words tripping smoothly off his tongue. “Potions Master at Beauxbatons,” he clarifies at Harry’s puzzled expression. “Not this whole time, of course, but the position opened up a few years ago.”
“Oh,” Harry says, the emotions inside him a wild wizarding battle of uncontrolled magic, a sharp blast of green light piercing his heart at the thought of Draco amongst all those beautiful women who get to look at him every day, even if he is their teacher. And they get to hear him speak French. Closed-minded he may once have been, but Draco never held any prejudices about gender. “Right. Well.” He’s going to be late for his shift, early as he got here, but he can’t just leave. “Would you like to get a coffee while you’re here? I mean, I know you must have a lot to take care of, and be here, too, but...”
Draco closes his eyes, pressing himself more tightly against the wall. “I can’t, Harry,” he says softly.
“Okay,” Harry says, nodding though Draco can’t see. “All right. I’m sorry, again.” He almost trips over his robes in his hurry to get out of the room, and when the door has clicked shut behind him he stops, clenching his fists and trying to breathe deeply, as if that will soothe the burning sting in his chest. Draco’s moved on, he couldn’t have made that clearer if he’d tried, and Harry is pathetic, stupid for pining away over someone who didn’t give a bloody fuck about him.
He lets himself get swept up in a wave of mediwitches, not watching where he’s going until he stops, blinking, at the doors to the Creature Induced Injuries ward and shakes his head. Five minutes late, he arrives where he’s supposed to be and Carmichael hands Harry a stack of patient charts, whispering that he covered for Harry’s absence and Harry owes him. Nodding absently, Harry tries to focus on their case assignments but, as has often been the case over the past five years, all he can think about is Draco.
~*~
“Potter! In here, now!”
Harry looks up, startled, to see one of the senior Healers urgently beckoning him. Supposedly he’d been doing this paperwork, but as he drops it on the nearest table he realises he hasn’t done more than fill in the name of the patient he discharged an hour ago.
“Now, Potter!”
Running, Harry catches up as the Healer is disappearing into one of the rooms reserved for severe trauma. “Auror accident,” the Healer says, rounding the bed. Breath catching, Harry looks down and exhales. Not Ron, thank Merlin, but still an Auror in desperate need of help. Blue lips stand out against a bloodless face, a nasty bruise is forming at the man’s temple, and a strange aura of hazy purple light hovers over the body, encasing it from head to toe.
“Do we know what happened?” Harry asks, pulling his wand from its sheath and waving it over the Auror. The diagnostic spells he tries bounce off the purple light, refusing to give readings that would help Harry treat him.
“Not yet. He and his partner were both brought in; other one’s not so bad but unconscious, Carmichael’s trying to sort him out now. We have to break through this thing or we’ve got no chance.”
“Finite!” Harry mutters, then frowns. Not that he’d expected it to work, but the very first thing he’d learned in training was never to discount the obvious. “It’s as if whoever did it wanted to make sure we couldn’t help him,” Harry says, “but why not just kill him? Why take this time?”
The other Healer shakes his head, attempting to press through the shield with his hands. “Because some people are bastards, Potter.”
Harry’s seen too much, his whole life, to argue with that.
For at least twenty minutes they try every spell and counter-curse they can think of. Harry’s never seen anything like this, and obviously neither has a Healer much more experienced than he.
“Nothing’s getting through this, right?” Harry asks, frantic and desperate. “Help me get him on the floor.”
“Healer Potter...”
Harry looks up. “Please.”
The Healer nods. “All right.” A moment later the Auror is well away from the bed or anything else that might be damaged whether Harry is right about this or not. Slowly, carefully, Harry raises his wand and aims.
“Reducto!”
A loud bang echoes through the room. The haze shimmers, pulses once, and disappears.
“Risky move, Potter,” the Healer says hoarsely. “Well done.”
Relief floods Harry like sinking into a hot bath. He so easily could have killed his patient with that, but he hasn’t, and together they lift the man back onto the bed, running tests that work now, identifying the underlying curses. They heal the ones they can with their wands, assemble the potions they need for others and pour them down a still throat. It takes hours to get the Auror into a stable, sleeping condition, and by the time they’ve cleared up and got the full story of what happened--something about a counterfeit galleon smuggling ring--from the Ministry, Harry is exhausted. Gratefully accepting the offer of a break, he goes in search of the strongest cup of revolting coffee the cafeteria can sell him.
Looking around, he sees all the tables full of families, other Healers and mediwitches, and patients well enough to move around but not quite ready to go home yet. Sighing, Harry takes his drink to the ground floor and slips around the back of the reception desk, through a door, and into a small courtyard kept for staff at St. Mungo’s to enjoy in their rare free moments. It’s greener than it was when Harry first started, thanks to a huge donation from Neville Longbottom of strange plants Harry mostly can’t identify.
He stops dead when his feet hit gravel and he sees he’s not alone. Scalding coffee sloshes out onto his hand.
“Fuck,” Harry says, and Draco looks up from his spot on one of the benches.
“Harry,” Draco says. “You look shattered.”
His voice is cool, almost indifferent, and a spark of hurt annoyance burns its way up through the tired fog. “You’re not supposed to be out here.”
Draco raises one eyebrow. “Shall I leave?”
Yes. “No,” Harry says, because the only thing worse than Draco being on that bench right now would be Draco’s absence from it. “Why aren’t you upstairs?”
Silence reigns in the small space for a long moment. “My father got special permission to visit. I had no desire to be there for that. Did you not see the army of Azkaban guards come in?”
Harry shakes his head. “I’ve been busy.” Without conscious thought, his feet have taken him to within inches of Draco’s bench, and it’s either sit or look like a complete pillock. Harry chooses the former, if only because falling over would be even more mortifying. “We had two injured Aurors come in,” he says, taking a sip of the vile coffee.
“I’m surprised you’re not one of them. I mean, I was when I first saw you here,” Draco says quietly. “You were planning to be.”
The words are more bitter than his drink, but Harry can’t stop them from escaping. “A lot changed after you left.”
“So I’m discovering. Do you enjoy being a Healer?”
For the first time since Draco appeared out from under an invisibility cloak, Harry smiles at him, just slightly, as the pride and relief at saving the Auror surges inside him again. “I love it.”
“Good,” Draco says, his shoulders relaxing. “I’m glad to hear that.”
“Do you enjoy teaching?”
“It would be wonderful if not for the students.” One corner of Draco’s mouth lifts a little. “No, I do like it.”
Harry nods. A bird flutters down onto one of Neville’s plants and begins to peck at it, they both watch as the plant pecks back. He has as many questions as the sparrow has feathers, each one a small, light thing, but when added up make the obstacle keeping them apart on the bench. “Why were you hiding in your mother’s room? You didn’t know I’d be there, not that first time.” It’s not the most pressing, and perhaps that’s why he asks it.
“People in England remember me. I’m...not accustomed to being stared at anymore. At home, they mostly stayed out of the war, so I suppose it’s easier for them to forgive my part in it.”
At home. Something inside Harry cracks and he takes a deep breath. “Fair enough.”
“What have you been doing, other than becoming a Healer? Still see Granger and Weasley?”
“A few times a week,” Harry says, his exhaustion growing with the effort of the conversation. He was never a good dancer. “This place keeps me too busy for much else.” Busy enough that he’s always been able to use it as an excuse when Hermione suggests pointedly that he ought to get out more, meet someone, and when Ron offers to set him up with every gay wizard at the Ministry.
Maybe he should rethink that.
“Draco--”
“Harry--”
“After you,” Draco says, gesturing to Harry with an outstretched palm turned upwards, but the awkward moment is enough to steal Harry’s nerve.
“I was... I’m truly sorry about Narcissa,” Harry says. It’s not a lie, but it’s not what he wanted to say, and something in Draco’s eyes makes Harry think Draco can still see right through him, even now. He wishes he had his own invisibility cloak to draw around his shoulders.
“So am I.” Draco’s voice shakes and Harry wants nothing more than to reach out, hold Draco the way he did when they were both waiting to hear whether Harry’s testimony before the Wizengamot would be enough to keep Narcissa out of Azkaban. Setting down his cup, Harry crosses his arms over his chest. “I should get back,” Draco says, standing and gazing at a flowering tangletree on the far side of the courtyard. “Take care of yourself, Harry.”
Harry watches him leave, the question he most wants answered still stuck somewhere south of his tonsils.
Why?
~*~
Narcissa Malfoy dies on a Tuesday, two weeks after Harry first saw her name amongst a messy pile of paper. He stays, kneeling on the hearthrug, long after Healer Romanus’s head has disappeared from the flames and they’ve turned from green back to orange. Even in the height of summer, Grimmauld Place is cold, gloomy, and Harry shivers.
Healer Romanus was right, he did want to know, but now that he does he’s not at all sure what to do, and so he sits on the floor until his knees begin to ache, watching a sliver of sun set through a gap in the musty velvet curtains. He thinks about Flooing Ron and Hermione, but Ron will be stoic and Hermione overly sympathetic, neither of which Harry thinks he can cope with right now.
She saved his life, yes, and he will forever be indebted to her for that, more so now that he couldn’t do the same for her. Hadn’t tried, even, though the logical part of his mind accepts that the outcome would’ve been the same. But it’s more than that, and in the gathering darkness of his living room Harry knows it’s not only the Narcissa in the Forbidden Forest he will mourn and miss, but the Narcissa who brought Draco into the world and, by that extension, gave Harry a fleeting glimpse at love. With her passing comes the passing of any chance, Harry’s sure, because Draco will do whatever must be done in England and then return...home.
His knees creaking, Harry stands and wanders aimlessly around the echoing house, too large for just him and a depressing place to live, really, but somehow he’d never got around to finding somewhere he preferred, the way he said he would when he’d first left Hogwarts.
Left Hogwarts... With Draco, and the two of them had spent a blissful week ignoring the world, the Prophet, the call of obligations as they holed up behind the closed door of Number Twelve and barely bothered with clothes the entire time. Every creaking hallway floorboard under his bare feet holds the ghost of Draco’s warm body, he keeps the doors shut to most of the bedrooms, and he still drinks his morning tea while remembering a particular afternoon and a sunlit kitchen table.
Perhaps he should have moved a long time ago.
He’s not hungry, but he aimlessly opens cupboards and closes them again, as if he expects them to hold answers instead of food. Will he even see Draco again, now that there’s really no possibility of running into him at the hospital?
The doorbell rings and Harry jumps, dropping the packet of biscuits he was holding. “Coming, Hermione!” he calls. Generally, she prefers not to Floo, which Harry thinks is understandable enough, so it’s a safe bet that it’s her at the door. Her habit of just knowing things didn’t end at Hogwarts, and Harry’s glad she’s come even if he’d decided not to call her.
“I’m not Granger,” Draco says. “My apologies.”
Harry stares. Despite the formal, almost clipped tone of voice, Draco looks sad, exhausted enough to wear down any last remnants of resolve Harry may have had before this afternoon.
“Draco,” he whispers, stepping forward and pulling him into his arms. “I heard,” he manages with the last of the breath Draco seems to be trying to squeeze from him. Harry’s not exactly sure how long they stand there, his face buried in too-familiar hair, but when Draco’s grip finally loosens a little Harry reaches around to lace his fingers with ones pressed to the small of his back. “Come inside.”
“I’m sorry,” Draco says in the front hall. “To just turn up like this. Are you alone?”
Harry closes his eyes briefly. “Yes. It’s fine, of course it is. Are you all right?” He knows it’s a stupid question, but for all the death and grief he’s seen and experienced, he’s never been in a situation quite like this one.
Draco’s laugh is humourless and harsh in the dimness. “I don’t know. How should I be? Upset? Glad she’s at peace now? Angry at what led to this? All of the above. I missed you, Harry.” Draco steps closer, the barrier of space between them pushing Harry against the wall. Harry’s head spins at words and closeness.
“I... Draco...” He doesn’t know what to say, and suddenly it doesn’t matter because Draco is kissing him, lips as soft as Harry remembers in his waking hours and dreams of in his sleeping ones. It’s tentative at first, only for a second before Harry’s hands lift to twine in Draco’s hair and their mouths are opening, tongues touching with a spark of delicious heat. Harry can feel every inch of Draco’s tall body, every inch of the hard length pressed against his thigh, every cell of himself screaming for more.
Yes, yes. Harry missed this. Yes.
“No,” Harry pants, pulling away, turning his head.
“No?” Draco runs his lips down Harry’s neck, to the sensitive spot he discovered one lazy afternoon on the shore of the lake and exploited for weeks afterwards. “You haven’t stopped wanting me. I can tell.”
Harry’s knees buckle as Draco sucks gently on a tender inch of skin. “No,” he says, more firmly this time, putting his hands on Draco’s chest and pushing. “I can’t. No.” He hates himself for the stung expression he can see, for Draco’s instant retreat to the opposite wall, but while Harry has survived many things, he knows he won’t survive this. Not again. “You don’t want to do this,” he says hoarsely. “Not really. It’s a normal reaction to grief.”
“I see,” Draco says coldly. “So because you’re a Healer you’re entitled to tell me how I feel now?”
Heat of a different kind crackles through Harry’s veins. “I’m entitled to remember that you left me, Draco. You turned up at my door and said goodbye and never cared how I felt about it. It’s been five years without a single owl or Floo call or anything! And you know, you know I’m sorry about your mother, but I’m not something you get to pick up when you need it and then throw away when you’re feeling better.”
“You think that’s what it was? You think I didn’t care? Thanks ever so much for the faith, Harry, it’s much appreciated.”
“You left!” Harry yells, his voice bouncing along marble. “What the hell was I supposed to think?”
A wintry chill descends over the hallway. “Nothing,” Draco says finally, clipped, tight, his face shuttered against Harry’s prying stare. “That’s exactly how you were supposed to feel. Goodnight, Harry.”
He’s gone so suddenly it’s the echo of the slamming door that makes Harry realise it.
~*~
The finest black formal robes Harry owns are spread out upstairs on his bed as Harry stomps barefoot around his kitchen in ratty old jeans and a t-shirt so ancient and baggy it may be the last reminder of Dudley.
“I’m not going.”
“Oh yes, you are,” Hermione says. “You don’t have to speak to him, we can stand in the back and leave as soon as it ends, but she saved your life, and you will regret it later if you don’t go.”
“I can live with that,” Harry says, dumping sugar into mugs.
Hermione moves to stand at the counter. “I know, but you don’t have to, and you shouldn’t. Look, Harry, I understand, and after what you told me Draco is less my favourite person than he’s ever been, which is saying something, but even I have to admit that I’m only hearing one side of it.”
“The one that matters.”
“Possibly, yes, but that isn’t the point. If nothing else, do you really want to read what the Prophet will have to say if you don’t attend Narcissa Malfoy’s funeral?”
She’s not playing fair and they both know it. “He broke my heart, Hermione.”
“Well, perhaps you broke his, too.”
Harry gapes at her. “Excuse me?”
Taking her mug and wrapping her hands around it, Hermione tilts her head to one side. “Well, from what you told me, he came to you. Not anyone else, you, at the time when he needed someone the most. I’m not excusing his behaviour, but people do crazy things in times of extreme grief. Ron wasn’t... For a long time...” She shakes her head. “Anyway, I suspect there’s more to this than you know, and it isn’t reasonable to have expected Draco to explain it all. Not while Narcissa was dying, and not that night. No, Harry, I’m serious. I’m not saying you didn’t do the right thing by stopping him, but I still think maybe you don’t know the whole story.”
“Thanks for the support,” Harry mutters.
She sets her tea down on the counter and hugs him. “I’m on your side, just like always. But seeing you happy wouldn’t be the most terrible thing in the world. Now go get dressed.”
Cleverly, Hermione times their joint Apparition to the moment the service is about to begin, and the two of them slide into chairs at the back of the lawn at Malfoy Manor that’s been opened for the day. Beyond rows of heads, Harry can see a blond one, bowed and shining in the sun, as Andromeda Tonks stands in front of the assembled crowd, beside a coffin draped in green and silver silks, to speak about her sister. They patched things up in recent years, Harry knows, though he’s carefully avoided the subject whenever he’s been to visit Teddy so as not to have to talk about Draco. Andromeda’s speech about forgiveness and the healing power of time makes Harry’s stomach clench, and he looks down at his hands until someone he doesn’t know takes her place.
He means to leave the moment Draco is finished, but Harry is frozen to his chair by the cracked, earnest voice in which Draco talks of his mother, the way she protected him as much as she could, took curses intended for him, loved him more than anyone ever had and, Draco admits shakily, perhaps much more than he’d ever deserved. Harry stays seated as the gathering begins to move towards a more relaxed area set with refreshments closer to the house, and doesn’t stand until Hermione nudges him as Draco walks past.
“Not more than you deserve,” Harry says quietly. Draco stops, but doesn’t turn around.
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
Harry shrugs, though Draco can’t see him. “Maybe.” He knows he should still be furious and doesn’t care that all his anger has been washed away by the tears Draco has somehow managed not to cry but which Harry can tell he wants to. Instead, he reaches for Draco’s hand, lacing their fingers together.
“Is that why you left? Could you tell...?”
Draco faces him, keeping his eyes trained on the treetops somewhere in the distance behind Harry. “Partly. And no, I didn’t think I deserved it from anyone, let alone you. Everyone was watching to see what you’d do next, expecting great things from you--and you’ve done them, Harry, maybe more than if you’d become an Auror--but I’d only just escaped from the spotlight. I wasn’t ready to have the whole wizarding world look on as the man I loved realised I wasn’t good enough for him.”
A cloud of relief, sadness, and regret for lost time passes over Harry, thick as Dementor-fog. “You should have told me.”
Draco’s eyes are heavy with grief, but his lips twitch. “I’m sorry to dispel your illusions that I’m perfect. We were young. I made a mistake--one of many.”
Harry takes a deep breath. “Is it a mistake you’d like to fix?”
“Very much,” Draco says, tightening his fingers. “I need to get up there.” He inclines his head in the direction of the guests. “I would like it if you stayed.”
Don’t leave me.
“Okay.”
~*~
Harry has spent the past four weeks alone, and now he’s watching the clock, thinking that maybe countdowns aren’t always terrible things except sometimes they go too bloody slowly. He paces the rooms of Grimmauld Place, checking and double-checking that the cleaning spells Molly taught him have worked well enough, though he’ll only be in this house for another few days. Making tea fritters away a few minutes in the kitchen, and for at least the third time this morning he fluffs the cushions on the couch.
Nothing except the doorbell could stop his restless fidgeting, and that it does instantly as he jumps up and runs to answer it. Draco appears--from behind a pile of luggage that makes Harry shake his head but doesn’t surprise him--and smiles.
“Remind me why I had to come here instead of meeting you at the Manor?” Draco asks, lifting one eyebrow in an expression Harry loves.
“Because your ridiculous house is filled with elves.”
“And?” Draco asks, curling his fists into Harry’s shirt and pushing him back through the door, into the hallway, and up against the wall.
“And you’re mine for the next three days. I won’t argue that they make a mean cup of tea--though don’t ever tell Hermione I said that--but I don’t want them seeing me naked.”
Draco grins, pressing his body against Harry’s. “You’re about to be living there; they still might. For now, though...” He looks around, his face turning serious. “We didn’t do so well the last time we were standing here.”
“I know,” Harry says, meeting Draco’s eyes.
“Should I ask if I may kiss you?”
“It’s been a month,” Harry says, pulling Draco closer. “I’ll hex you if you don’t, and I’ve learned some interesting ones at work.”
It’s long, and slow, and sweet, and will never ever be enough for Harry, which is exactly how he wants it. Their tongues twist and breaths quicken and hands begin to wander, and when Draco slides the button on Harry’s jeans free, Harry breaks the kiss just enough to talk. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“I would have thought that was obvious,” Draco says. One hand is on the zipper, so very close to where Harry wants it, but his eyes are boring into Harry’s. “Reacquainting myself. For good.”