Won't Be Home Again [Harry/Severus, Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny - NC-17]
Author: tigersilver
Title: Won’t Be Home Again
Prompt: #31 Submitted by: lilliephoenix
Pairing(s): Harry/Severus; Harry/Draco; Harry/Ginny
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Infidelity; Major Character Death, implied & actual (Harry, Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy); Time Travel; AU; EWE.
Word Count: 8,200
Summary:Harry’s old Potions Professor has been dead and gone for years. He’s but a whisper of memory; a refrain of a sad song. Why, then, can Harry not move on? He’s possessed of a lovely wife and three beautiful children, a career in full bloom and he stands square in the prime of his life. Damn that bastard Malfoy to burn in Hades for reminding him. Harry is sure it wouldn’t have taken much effort to save Severus Snape, had he only taken the time when he had it still at hand.
Notes:Emo is not my forte; sadly, this is evident. Harry, here, is stuck fast, like a fly in amber, and quite probably not at all IC. My apologies, wonderful prompter, for doing this prompt of yours a grave injustice. All errors are mine and not in any way the responsibility of my lovely beta, L.
Won't Be Home Again
Please, please forgive me,
But I won't be home again.
Maybe someday you'll look up,
And, barely conscious, you'll say to no one:
"Isn't something missing?"
You won't cry for my absence, I know -
You forgot me long ago.
Am I that unimportant...?
Am I so insignificant...?
Isn't something missing?
Isn't someone missing me?
Even though I'm the sacrifice,
You won't try for me, not now.
Though I'd die to know you love me,
I'm all alone.
Isn't someone missing me?
And if I bleed, I'll bleed,
Knowing you don't care.
And if I sleep just to dream of you
I'll wake without you there,
Isn't something missing?
Isn't something...
In the first years after the end of the War, Harry never, ever thought about Severus Snape.
This was a conscious decision, despite the remnants of silver tendrils that roiled about in the way back of his brain box, and despite the fact that Snape’s name was mentioned almost constantly, for quite some time: Malfoy used it, McGonagall used it. Ron, the remnants of the Order, the Wizengamot. Hermione, too, and inevitably always followed the mention up with a heartfelt sigh.
Snape had died a quiet Hero. Harry lived.
After some time, Harry managed to scrabble a life plan of sorts together. He married Ginny Weasley and joined the Aurors as a trainee, just as he said he’d always wanted.
Now and then, the words ‘Look at me!’ would pop into his head, unannounced. Firmly, regretfully, he’d push them away. The emotion in the flickering dark lights that had met his for a final time that night had not been meant for him. It had all been for his long-departed mother; nothing else remained in the Stygian depths.
Now and again, he dreamt. Of a hand firm on his shoulder; of a dark voice, tinged always with bitter disappointment and overt anger-and something else? Sorrow, perhaps, or…?
He convinced himself it was only bitterness Snape had ever felt; that, and the leftover disgust for his father, as Harry-except for those eyes-looked just like Snape’s hated adversary, in life and in love.
By the time Lily Luna was born, he’d managed to convince himself of quite a lot of things that he felt he should be feeling, but mostly that it was very, very wrong to spend so much of his time thinking about a dead man. Dead men stayed dead, despite the Resurrection Stone. Harry himself had only ever been a fluke-a crime against nature.
Malfoy, who’d ended up as his Auror partner, still spoke of Snape regularly, years later. He seemed to take a particularly grim pleasure in bringing up Snape, actually, and watching for Harry’s telltale flinch. Snape had earned an Order of Merlin, First Class, post-mortem, and Harry’d had to hear all about the letters and petitions Malfoy and Hermione (Hermione!) had written, from when the two of them were terribly active in convincing the Wizangamot Snape deserved it.
Harry told himself that it was alright, really. He shouldn’t mind Malfoy’s jibes, and needed-above all-to cease being so sensitive. The old bat was departed; had been bone-and-rag for ages, even though Harry himself could’ve-could’ve-
If he’d just taken the time to cast that one simple spell.
Ginny had accompanied him to Snape’s grave on the Tenth Anniversary of the War’s end. She’d accompanied him the Fifteenth, too, and would be there, Merlin willing, for the Twentieth. She was a good wife to him, and they had three beautiful children, and it wasn’t her fault Harry was restless.
Malfoy prodded him harder with mentions of his mentor, among other incendiary topics, and at some point they started having drinks together after their shifts, most days, mainly because Harry didn’t want to go home to his perfect family. Not that he wanted to spend even more hours of any given day exchanging insults with that git Malfoy, but-but.
All they did was bicker, he and Malfoy, on the job and off. Over small matters; over cases; over Snape. He should put in for a different partner, Harry often thought…but then couldn’t be arsed to bother.
He shouldn’t even have a family, for that matter. Not if Snape had died, essentially just so he could. That thought, like the memories Snape had given him, was firmly and thoroughly ripped out of his head and shoved into his Pensieve. It’d been Dumbledore’s and Harry, whenever he got it out, remembered his old Headmaster’s office.
And his Headmaster’s death, and Draco’s desperate, wild expression, and Snape’s terrible grimace when he shouted ‘Avada Kadavra!’
Draco’s eyes-so lost, so terrified-and the broken, reedy note deep and dark in Severus Snape’s angry voice and the one-terrible, awful; there was no other word for it-single glance sent downward, seeking out Harry’s hiding place like an eagle swooping down on a field mouse. The one flicker that had betrayed his Potion Master’s full knowledge of Harry’s hastily hidden presence-or so he decided it did, when Harry cast his mind back over the events of that night, years later. There’d been very few secrets between Headmaster and his most trusted Professor, it seemed. As a boy, he’d not realized it. As an Auror, the conspiracies and plotting that had so affected his every movement and emotion were crystal clear and apparent.
Snape had known Harry was there, all along. He’d known.
‘Look at me, Potter!’
‘Detention, Potter!’
‘After class, Potter!’
‘In my office, Potter!’
‘You fool, Potter!’
‘What will I do with you, Potter?’
Harry, face down in Malfoy’s pillow, biting his lower lip till it bled, wrestled with answering that question honestly. Gritted his teeth tight together and stared long and hard at the inside of his eyelids, where a far different scenario played. When Malfoy asked what was wrong with him later-why he’d been so abstracted-he said:
“Nothing. Really. That it was good, just now. That we should do it again.”
“Yes, Harry,” Draco smiled. “Yes.” Harry couldn’t see his face very well in the dark hotel room, but…perhaps he didn’t want to, either. Heard his partner’s smile, though. That was unmistakable.
They didn’t bother with drinks at the Leaky much, after that. Just shagged.
Harry’s wife never noticed. Neither did Draco’s, apparently, not that he spoke of it.
“Harry,” Draco remarked, one day when they were sorting through cold case files in the Ministry’s basement storage level. “I thought all the Time Turners had been destroyed at the end of the war?”
“Yeah,” Harry replied, absentmindedly, because he was looking over the file on the Lestranges. They’d been convicted and carted off to Azkaban for their crimes, but had escaped, shortly thereafter. It meant there were likely yet more Death Eaters out there somewhere-people with the Dark Mark on their forearms, people who’d managed to stay hidden in the masses of Muggles or in faraway places, like South America or Australia. He shrugged off the thought that one was sitting directly opposite him, calmly sipping his mid-morning cuppa, flipping through dusty parchments and dog-eared files.
“I thought so, too,” he agreed, absentmindedly. “Hermione would know, though.”
“Strange,” Draco muttered.
“What is?” Harry asked, half an ear cocked in Draco’s direction. “Find something?”
“DOM’s got them, apparently. There’s still a few knocking about.”
“Oh?” Harry raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Well, let them keep ‘em. Under lock and key, preferably. Cause more trouble than they’re worth, those things.”
“Yes…” Draco nodded jerkily after a moment, but Harry noticed his silvery gaze had darkened. “You’re correct. They do.” He swallowed; glanced quickly Harry’s way and then firmly brought his eyes back to the file he held. “In the wrong hands, that is. Makes a person think, what he could do, if maybe…if he had one. Actions he could change, perhaps.”
“That’s foolish, Draco,” Harry waved his hand impatiently. “It’s stupid. You can’t change the past, even if you want to. I, of all people, should know that. Going back doesn’t stop anything. It just puts off the inevitable; makes it harder to deal with later. Things still happen the way they’re going to-people still die!”
“Yes, well,” Draco looked uncomfortable for a split-second, before his usual calm mask slid back into place. “No one ever said human beings weren’t remarkably foolish, Harry.”
“No one ever said they couldn’t be sensible, either,” Harry shot back, and they glared at one another for a moment, for no good reason Harry could discern. Draco sighed heavily, after the pause dragged on for too long to be comfortable, and was the first one to drop his gaze, eyes tracking across the contents of the file he still held in his long, immaculately groomed hands-hands which Harry was very familiar with, even intimate. Then he snapped it shut with a decisive air and put it with the others in the stack, gathering his wand and his emptied mug right after, making ready as if to rise. His chair legs scraped loudly as they pushed across the floor, masking the faint harsh sound of Harry breathing though his nose. Harry was examining an old image of the Lestrange brothers, but his eyes took nothing in. His nostrils were full of dust; his eyes burning with it.
“Right. Be that as it may, Harry, we’ve lunch to procure. Fancy take-away today?” Draco’s voice was light; very much ‘nothing to see here, people. Move on, move on’.
“Yeah,” Harry replied instantly. “Yes.” He was out of his own seat with a clatter and an athletic bounce; still a fine figure of a man at thirty-five as he’d been ten, or even fifteen years earlier. “Let’s be off, then. Nothing worth bothering our heads about, here. Not at this late date.”
“I do hate the weeks after Christmas-always so slow,” Malfoy commented. “Deadly dull, this.”
“Yes,” Harry assented easily enough, but he didn’t truly believe that.
The curry shop they always favoured for lunch had a room at the back, on the second level, accessible only by the fire escape-or Apparation. Harry had paid a tidy sum to the shop’s owner to have it available always. The daughter of the family changed the linens on the narrow bed daily; Draco himself had set the Fidelius. It was two blocks from the Ministry and terribly convenient.
Harry justified Draco’s presence in his rented bed a number of ways: the git was taller than he was; his hands were larger, his shoulders broader, and all of that together made him feel younger, again. More like the boy he’d been so many years ago. Even safe, in a way. Malfoy was damned attractive physically, as well; could’ve had anyone he wanted, really, whenever he chose. Harry never asked if Draco had anyone else on the side, or if he went out to the clubs. Didn’t need to know that. Besides, judging by the way Draco acted when they couldn’t meet for a few days, Harry was convinced his Auror partner likely wasn’t seeking other outlets for his rather remarkable sex drive.
It was an impressive one; everything about Draco Malfoy was impressive, Harry concluded, in ways that went beyond the length, breadth and skillful use of his cock. His cultured smoothness, his quick-wittedness, his quirky sense of humour; his smile, which was awfully engaging. He could have Harry laughing at the oddest of times, literally over nothing. He could infuriate him with a single sentence. And he knew Harry, in a way Harry’s little Weasley wife didn’t. Ginny hadn’t been there. Sure, she’d been a victim of Tom Riddle’s machinations and she’d been through the Battle of Hogwarts, but…she’d not been there, not when Harry needed her.
Snape had. He’d given Harry the key to his very existence, and (though Harry hadn’t realized this either, till years later) the reason to turn back on his broom and reach out a hand to Draco Malfoy, Snape’s fellow Death Eater. He’d lived his whole life-just like Harry-for other people. Silently suffering, for other people.
He’d been tall, Harry’s Potions professor, and his messy dark hair had been greasy and lank. The years painted him taller and greasier yet. He’d a large, beaky nose like a crow, and a strong lantern jaw and well-defined chin, and thin, pinched lips, though the upper one had been bowed, and rather sensual in its curve. Harry shuddered at the thought of ever touching it. Probably would be slimy with saliva. Draco lips were firm and smooth and pink; Ginny’s tasted of lipstick and woman.
Cho’s had been wet and salty. Luna’s kisses had been feather light touches: misty butterflies. He couldn’t remember the kisses from his mother and father. So little to compare with, really.
Draco, over time, became more insistent about where they met, and how often. Used to be, early on, that their encounters outside work were on Fridays only, after a difficult week. Harry was home with his wife and children far more often than not, and the newspapers loved it: ‘Devoted Father!’ ‘Loving Husband!’ ‘Our Quiet Hero!’
The children aged-they all did-and Draco wanted more of Harry’s free time, more and more often. Regularly. Harry met him, without protest, and shed his Auror robes and all his inhibitions at the quirk of a pale eyebrow or the tilt of a grin. Didn’t quibble when the fucking was hard and fast and furious and he was left walking with a limp Ginny never said a word about.
He really liked it when Draco’s eyes darkened, as they did during shagging. Draco always had his eyes open and fixed on Harry, unlike Gin, who closed hers or hid her face in Harry’s armpit. Draco never hid. He was always front-and-center, shoving his face against Harry’s, poking his tongue into Harry’s mouth, easing his cock into Harry’s hole, forcing his way into Harry’s time, muddying up the expected flow of it.
There was really only one refuge left open to Harry, and that was his Pensieve.
Time Turners were the sole business and property of the DOM, and therefore the disappearance of two of them in early May of the following year didn’t make the Prophet. It barely made the Auror’s gossip in the break room; it was Kingsley himself who took Harry and Draco aside. All very hush-hush, too, that meeting.
“Gone. Vanished. Friday last, from what the Head of the DOM tells us. Find them,” he ordered, and turned over the various vials of Pensievable memories from staff and the transcript of the interview with Undersecretary Hermione Granger, who’d been in charge the night in question.
Things didn’t just disappear from DOM without a fuss. DOM itself had been redesigned after the War’s end to be impregnable. There’d be no more random popping in and falling through Veils. Or traipsing about in search of easily broken Prophecies contained in crystal orbs. Locked box in a sealed room mystery this was, this theft of two Time Turners, and the Aurors, though known for their crime-solving abilities, weren’t all protégées of the famed Wizard Holmes or his Muggle-born sidekick Watson.
Draco looked very grim at the meeting with Shacklebolt. Harry squared his shoulders and acknowledged Kingsley’s orders with a quiet ‘Sir!’ before taking the scant evidence in hand and holding the door for both his fellow Wizards to depart and be back about their business. He and Draco retreated to their tiny grey-walled office, to pore over what little Undersecretary Granger had to report.
After reviewing the Pensieves and Hermione’s very brief relation of events, Draco was left even more pale and pinched. Harry went through it all and allowed just one word to escape, to sum it all up: ‘Huh!,’ a disbelieving snort of a syllable.
Someone in the Ministry had been very rash indeed. Two someones, actually.
A few weeks after the Time Turners were lifted, Harry woke up with a scratchy throat and a headache. Perfectly normal for a wet late spring-going-into-summer in polluted London, catching the sniffles. He got up, dressed in his scarlet uniform and went off to work, though, as was his usual wont. Didn’t arrive there, but he did leave.
A series of planned but apparently random Apparations took him all over Britain, but he eventually fetched up in the mouldering remains of the Shrieking Shack, just outside Hogsmeade. Eager citizens of the Wizarding world had wanted to transform it into some sort of memorial, but Harry-and Headmistress McGonagall-had strongly resisted. It was left to Mother Nature, and the green bitch had her way with it in short order: not much remained beyond shattered timbres and faded planking, cracked plaster and vines twining insidiously through the fallen-down walls by the time Harry arrived there, late that same day. It was shelter of sorts, with two floors and a very damp and cobwebby basement, but not much else.
He was more interested in the tunnel below it, in any case. And the rickety staircase.
He’d planned it so there’d be a lag of some considerable hours before anyone thought he might’ve done a skip on work. ‘Anyone’ being Draco, his partner. Ginny would think nothing of his delay, and likely pack Lily Luna off to her parent’s for a visit with them when he didn’t arrive home for supper in a timely manner. She was accustomed to his odd hours and never really questioned them. Draco, however, would be checking up on Harry, in his usual rude way.
Draco and Gin had never really gotten along. There was an antipathy there no amount of years or the friendship between their children could ever erase. Harry didn’t mind that so much; made his life easier, really. Less overlap between one compartment and the other. He preferred them neatly, even surgically separated, just as he preferred to keep his sexual adventures with Draco confined to the one rented room.
In any event, Draco would likely Floo Harry’s hearth sometime later in the evening. It was the anniversary of the Battle and of Snape’s death, after all, and he’d be wanting to use the opportunity to prod Harry a bit, as well as ascertain his general health and well-being.
Harry found his bearings in the Shack. He consulted his Arithmancy tables by the light of his wand tip, and located the physical spot he should be standing in order to escape detection by his much younger self, Voldemort and Snape, himself. To give himself some leeway, he would activate the Time Turner to deliver him precisely ten minutes before boy-Harry and younger Ron and Hermione had dared approach a blood-covered, dying Potions Professor.
Time Turning did much the same thing to his innards as Flooing did: he stumbled a bit on the other side, but his trusty cloak covered up his awkward landing. Of course, Voldemort and Nagini were already present, along with Snape, and he was forced to curl his toes in their regulation Auror boots, bite his lips, and keep silent as the tomb whilst Voldemort gave the final order and the snake attacked Snape.
His old Potions professor didn’t look like much, not from Harry’s vantage. He was bedraggled and terribly thin, almost to the point of being skeletal, with sunken cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. His resistance was minimal-as if he not only expected this betrayal at Voldemort’s hands, but welcomed it-and Harry wished he’d more experience with Time Turners. He could’ve avoided watching Nagini’s cruelty if he’d been more precise, dialing. But Hermione had said he should do it this way and he believed her.
It was crucial he didn’t fuck up this time. There’d be no second chances, ever.
He and Malfoy were hot on the trail of the missing Time Turners. It was only a matter of time (Hah! Harry spared a sardonic laugh to the irony of the situation) before they’d be in a position to arrest…themselves. The case would be burst wide open and no doubt be plastered all over the papers: ‘Boy Who Saved the World is a Common Thief!’; ‘Death Eater Malfoy Up to No Good Once Again!’
It was the presence of another body next to him that was the very worst, though. It shocked him, though of course it shouldn’t have. He’d known full well Draco had made off with the other Turner, because he’d not been a greedy-puss and had only taken the one. Only needed one, after all, to accomplish his goal. He’d been hoping Draco planned to use his for a different purpose, but they’d always been somewhat similar in thought process and reaction, so really, it didn’t surprise him. Snape had been-was still-terribly important to both of them.
The pungent, herb-infused cloth-covered hand over his gawking mouth did surprise him, and then his losing consciousness for a brief, terrible period-that was shocking. He’d never expected to be drugged into submission. When he blinked his eyes open, Malfoy’s face was an inch away and plainly furious.
The ‘What the fuck d’you think you’re doing, Harry?’ hissed at him was entirely expected.
“Saving Snape,” Harry replied, shrugging blearily, well aware he was likely to be forced to tell Draco all about it. Draco was as dogged a son of bitch that ever lived; never gave a case up till it had been bloody ripped into disparate factoids and neatly disemboweled for the Ministry jurors. Logically, too, there weren’t many other sane reasons for being where he was, when he was. “Why aren’t you off saving Crabbe?” he asked, hoping vainly to distract his partner. “I’m busy.”
“Because I’m here saving you from your own stupidity, Harry,” Draco replied, and his tone was pure acid: every drop of the horrid patronizing sneer Harry hated filled it to overflowing. Raised his hackles something fierce, that. He’d not felt such strong emotion in ages.
“Sod off, then. Don’t need you,” he grunted, and shoved Draco off him forcibly. He was a bit woozy still from whatever Draco had made him inhale-head pounding, throat very dry and sore-but he’d a plan, and he wasn’t stopping.
“I know that, Harry,” Draco replied, all the anger washed clear of his response. His tone was curiously bland-light, even, like helium gas. “But you’re not the only person whose wishes I’m considering. You can’t do this, you know.”
“Err-“ Harry started, gaping. “Why ever not? And what the hell’s it to you, Draco? I’d have thought you’d be all for it.”
He scrambled his arms and legs back under the slippery cloak. Draco had helped himself to a large part of it and was pressed up against Harry in an uncomfortable half-crouch. Harry didn’t know how many minutes had elapsed whilst he’d been passed out, but he was presently scared shiteless. What if he’d missed it, his chance? All due to this incomprehensible git, Draco Malfoy.
“Look, get off me,” he ordered brusquely. “I need to-“
“No, you don’t.” Draco was adamant. “You don’t need to, Harry. Not unless you want to kiss your children’s existence on this plane goodbye forever. Did you do that this morning, Harry? Like the picture-perfect father you are? Did you kiss your wife, too? The little Weasleyette?”
“What?” Harry wasn’t getting it and he’d no time to winkle out whatever bug had crawled up Draco’s arse and bitten. He’d Snape to save, and just time enough to utilize the one spell to do it with, a sort of Stasis charm to halt the blood loss-and then he’d have to ensure the someone from the Order noticed and came back to pick up his fatally wounded, time-bound professor, and carry him off to Madame Pomfrey to be healed. There was a great deal to do, and very little time to do it in, despite the Turner. No time available for this shite of Draco’s, though. “Get off me!” he said again, and it was an order. Draco started, as if he were just about to do what Harry told him, but then he hung tight, fingers digging into Harry’s upper arms, his sweaty face pressed up to Harry’s in the shadows.
“Didn’t you hear me, git? Don’t you get it?” he demanded. “Your kiddies-they’ll be gone. They’ll never have happened, Harry. They matter to you, don’t they? If nothing else?”
“Fuck you!” Harry began struggling in earnest. Malfoy was talking rot, trying to manipulate him. “Fuck off, damn it! Let me go!”
“No, Harry! I won’t! Get it into your thick skull, Potter-this is serious!” Draco had a hand on Harry’s Time Turner, looped about his neck on a fragile golden chain. The two of them clinked together, his and Harry’s, and Harry spared a thought to wondering why in the bloody Hell Malfoy could never mind his own damned business. “Fuck, Harry-you can’t do this! I won’t let you! It’s my son, too!”
“What? What?” Harry demanded, fierce and impatient-Voldemort and Nagini were likely long gone, and Snape was laying there on the dusty floor, bleeding to death. Any moment now, he’d stumble along, boy-Harry, bumbling through the Shack with his two best mates beside him, and-and-he had to get to Snape now! To Snape’s side, to take just enough of his professor’s precious memories so he’d know what he needed to know later, in his own time, but then also to staunch the blood that was pouring, leaking, spilling. To cast a delaying spell to hold Snape’s battered body together long enough for help to get to him later, after the final battle, after-after boy-Harry died and came back again. “Merlin, Draco, I don’t have time for this!” he gasped. “Please! I have to go! Please!”
“No-you, Harry! You please!” Draco was gabbling; his fingers bloody everywhere, wrapped round the thin chain, wrapped around Harry’s throat and the cloak clasp. “Listen to me! If you save him, you change things-things you don’t want changed, trust me! You said it yourself, Harry-just listen!”
“No!” It was entirely too much to expect of him. He’d been planning this for far too long--this crucial moment. Thinking about that fucking old bat for too many years, wondering, wishing. Wanking off to sad dark eyes and a perpetual scowl. No way in Hades was he stopping now! “Bugger the fuck off, Draco!”
“They won’t happen, Harry; your children, they’ll never be born!” Draco was damned strong and wiry, even for an Auror, but Harry had the advantage of the creaky wall at his spine to push off from. He lunged forward, using everything he’d learned in his training to throw Draco off. “Scorpius-he won’t either,” Draco was whispering urgently. “I won’t get married unless you do, Harry-I’ll lose my son, too! You have to believe me, Harry! I don’t know what the fuck Granger told you about how this works, but it’s wrong, damn it-it won’t be the way you want it. It won’t work!”
“The hell you say, Malfoy!” Gods, but Harry was furious. Bitter anger filled him; long-buried resentment bubbled through his veins like poison. Perhaps it was being here, once again, with Voldemort yet to face, with his own death looming. What if he saw Remus or Tonks-or-or Fred, before they…died? Before it was too late again? He’d have to say something, do something, anything to prevent-prevent what had happened, was going to happen. Teddy could keep his parents; George his brother, and Harry-Harry could have Snape.
Snape. Snape. Harry laughed weakly at Malfoy’s grimacing face, abruptly helpless in the tidal pull of all that intensity. Snape. Who’d have thought? Of all the people to be obsessed with, why did it have to be fucking Snape? The man hated him; had always hated him-that look in his eyes as he died had only been for Harry’s mother, never for a useless ‘Boy Wonder’ or a bumbling Gryffindor. Snape had long since locked his heart away from Harry; Harry knew that as well as he knew his own name; knew, too, that it was all most probably useless. That even if Snape lived, managed to resume his position as Headmaster, and even if Harry (the new Harry, the one this change in time would create) were to come back to Hogwarts after the War ended; even then, there’d be no happy ending. Not for him.
This wasn’t a fairy tale. And Snape was no fucking prince. He wouldn’t give a ghost of a fuck if Harry had risked his life to save him. He wouldn’t care. He only wanted Voldemort defeated, that was all. If Harry died after it or because if it, then so be it. They were all expendable to Snape, even Dumbledore, in the end. Even himself.
Harry didn’t know when he started sobbing. The shudders and gasps racking him made it all the more difficult to fight off Malfoy. He threw himself into the battle, gritting his teeth to stifle himself, grimly shutting out Malfoy’s desperate whispering, the glimpses of his white face from the Lumos-lit wand that had tumbled to the floor unheeded as they grappled.
“Harry, Harry, listen!” Draco was begging. “They’ll never happen-my son won’t happen. Your children, Harry-gone, as if they never existed! I know it; I’ve seen it, Harry! Please! You have to stop, damn it; you have to give this up! It’s madness!”
His face was wet-Draco’s, and Harry’s too, now. There was blood, along with the tears. Draco had punched him, the fucker, slammed Harry’s jaw back so that his head ricocheted off the wall, thumping it with enough force to damage the aged plaster. There was an ominous little tinkle as glass broke somewhere and Harry, seeing stars still, felt a prickling of icy shards scatter down the front of his Auror robes.
“Gods!” Draco was a mess, his mask all broken down, his entire body pressed hard against Harry’s, imprinting itself there like a scar. They were sixteen again, all at once, and Malfoy was sobbing and there was blood everywhere, Harry thought, confused and reeling into a return punch. “You don’t get it, do you? You’re so fucking thick, Potter. So…fucking…thick. So blind, you willful git-look. Listen. I’ll-I’ll do it, alright? I’ll save him, but you have to go back.”
“What?” Harry was stunned and not just from the second blow to his achy chin. He wet his damp lips; swallowed blood. “You?”
“I’ll fucking take care of it, Potter-trust me, will you, just this once?” Draco wasn’t hitting him anymore. He’d his long arms wrapped fiercely around Harry, his long fingers in Harry’s damp hair, tangled. Harry felt Draco’s mouth, smearing dampness of one sort or another, all over his wet cheeks, his straining neck. Draco trembled-or maybe that was him, shaking in reaction. It wasn’t ever supposed to be like this. He’d not ever thought it could be, not in any fevered dream or planned-out scenario.
“What the hell are you doing?” Harry ground out, struggling. “There’s no time-I have to-“
“No,” Draco moaned. “No time, not anymore. Go back, Harry. I’ll save him, alright? Trust me-I’ll wait a few minutes and then I’ll cast as soon as you’re gone. Just-just go back to our time, alright?”
“But-“
“If you don’t-if it’s you, Harry, your kids will never be born, alright? I looked, Harry. I went and I looked, at our other futures. You have to believe me, please. Just this once-just about this. If nothing else, Harry.”
“What in the fuck are you talking about, Draco? Our other futures? What other--”
There was a bustle in the tunnel below them, the sound of people rushing. A few steps away and down, ‘round the corner, Harry could hear Snape’s piteously faint hiss. “What?” he whispered, staggering in pain, real and remembered.
“Time Turners don’t just go back, Harry. They go sideways, too.” Draco was still snogging him even as he talked: lightly, as feather-light as his fingertips tracing Harry’s jaw. “I saw-I saw it, the world where Snape survives, Harry. You don’t marry the Weasley bint-they were never born.”
“No!”
“Yes,” Draco was moaning, now. He’d had Harry pulled so tightly against him the single remaining Time Turner dug into Harry’s breastbone like a dagger. “Merlin, yes, Harry.” Glass slivers from the other pierced the flesh of Harry’s chest at random, and he could feel a dozen tiny wounds opening up. They bled viciously, warm and thin and persistent, like the weals left on Draco’s skin from the long-ago Sectumsempra. “Yes, that’s it, Potter. Listen now. I’ll do it, alright? You go back. Go back, and maybe they’ll still be there. Scorpius, too.”
“You’re saying-you’re saying it changes my marriage to Ginny? My life?” Harry paid no attention to Draco’s touch. Barely felt it, he was so-so very stunned. His children-his children! And all for the sake of one single spell-“I don’t believe you! Liar!”
“Gods, no, Harry-why would I lie?” Draco’s face was just as miserable as it had been in Myrtle’s mirror, all the handsomeness wiped off by the twisting of his mouth, the innate elegance lost in the crinkled-up skin gathered ‘round his pale grey eyes: an image of misery fitfully illuminated by the Lumos cast up from Harry’s fallen wand. “Why would I ever lie about something like this? Give me a least a little credit, Harry-will you?”
“I-“ Harry began, but there wasn’t anything left to say. “No,” he said, but it wasn’t that he didn’t believe Draco. “No!”
Grim and with eyes downcast, Draco shoved himself back from Harry and the dusty plane of the wall, and reached out to grab at Harry’s Time Turner, still miraculously intact, despite their fighting. White fingers fumbled at it, twisting the tiny nub of a dial desperately, and Harry stared at them, silent and shocked into immobility. He could hear his own voice now, down the stairwell and ‘round the curve: a boyish murmur piping up in excitement over what he’d discovered. Snape had been found; was bleeding to death, all his guile useless; was grabbing at him and staring deep into his eyes-his mother’s eyes-and saying the last words Harry would ever hear from him.
“Let me see you one last time, Harry.” The pale, tear-blotched face before him, hovering ghost-like in the corridor, was terribly stern. Here was the Auror Malfoy, the pernicious git who’d finally grown up and made something worthy of himself. Here was the mask Draco Malfoy wore whilst he was acting the responsible adult. Only the eyes gave him away. Eyes like a furnace; eyes that were promptly shuttered when Harry couldn’t stop staring.
“There. All finished.” Draco leaned forward, helped himself to Harry’s cloak. He threw it around him with a typical flourish, so that all but his head and neck disappeared. And his elegant hands, poking out of nowhere, which found their way back to Harry’s face unerringly. Lingered there, the tip of one forefinger pressed against Harry’s split lower lip. “Maybe I’ll get lucky, yeah, Potter?” he asked softly, whimsically, and the cloak rippled, folding in on itself as Malfoy drew away. “You go on now, will you? Harry?”
And Harry blinked rapidly, exasperated, bewildered, and utterly furious. Was stymied, abruptly.
And Draco was gone.
And he was crouched on the staircase in the broken-down Shrieking Shack. In the dark. All alone.
Until someone came up behind him.
Stalked, rather, with a billow of robes.
“Potter! What are you doing, loitering about? It’s well after hours, Potter. Don’t you have a useful job to return to? A wife and children? A home?”
“What?” He spun, rising at a stumble, and confronted a much older Professor-no! Headmaster, now. “Snape-you’re alive?”
“Pity , isn’t it?” The Headmaster’s deep voice was gruff. “Thinking young Malfoy shouldn’t have bothered, Potter? Too late now, is it not? Though why he was present here at that particular moment, he never did say. Likely creeping after you, Mr. Potter, spying-just as always.”
“What? Where-err, where am I?” Harry wheeled around to stare blankly down the dusty stairwell. There was only silence emanating from below. Nothing else moved in the ruins.
“What?” Snape barked. Rolled his dark eyes in frustration and brought the lamp he carried up so he could peer more closely at Harry’s shocked face. “Are you ill, dolt? Standing about in an abandoned building-of course you’re mental. Never doubted that for a moment. Be off home now, Potter. You don’t look well.”
“…Yeah-erm, yes, Professor! I’ll, uh, do that.” Harry Disapparated abruptly, fleeing for his very sanity.
Back to his beautiful wife, his happy home, his-life.
His Auror partner-who wasn’t Malfoy; who’d never been Malfoy-hadn’t bothered to check up on him. Michael Corner was an alright sort, but not terribly curious.
“Rough day, love?” Ginny asked when he sat down to a late dinner. He ruffled Lily’s copper hair and grinned down at her, his heart pounding.
“Hiya, Daddy,” she chirped. She was beautiful, just like her mother-her grandmother.
“Yes. Yes, it was.”
Ginny clucked in ready sympathy. Glanced at him fondly over the roast and the mashed. “Are you planning to stop over at Malfoy’s do tomorrow, Harry?”
“Malfoy’s do?” Harry asked, but he wasn’t really paying attention. Malfoy worked in DOM, and was an Unspeakable. Their sons were mates. That was it; the families didn’t mix socially.
“His funeral, Harry-don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about it already?” Gin sounded aghast, and she shook her head dolefully at him and his legendary absentmindedness. “It’s tomorrow, at noon. One of us should attend, if only for Al’s sake.”
“He-he died?” Harry’s voice cracked on the question. He didn’t know why that was such a shock; he and Malfoy had little or nothing to do with one another.
“Yes,” Gin replied, having dealt with her bite of meat.”Accident in the Time Turner Room, from what you said, Harry. You told me all about it-don’t you recall? You found his body-must have been there for a day or two, undiscovered.” Gin shuddered. “Gruesome, isn’t it? Him there all that time, and no one knowing. No one missing him.”
“Yes,” Harry said simply. This Harry-this reality’s Harry, who couldn’t care less whether that git Malfoy lived or died. Who’d had nothing really to do with the bloke since...since, well, forever. “Pity, that.”
“I-I think I’m going to go have a lie-down, Gin,” the other Harry said. The one who’d had Draco’s cock up his arse just yesterday, at lunchtime. The one who was a practiced liar, and an admitted adulterer, and had been, for ages. He swallowed his chewed-up piece of roast beef automatically, and then had to take a sip of water. His throat was closing, tight, tight, and it was increasingly difficult to breathe freely. “In the study.”
“Oh, that’s all right, dear,” Ginny nodded. “Headachy again, are you? I’ll take Lils with me, then. Give you a little peace and quiet.”
“Thanks, Gin,” Harry said, dropping a kiss on her hair as he left the table. “Night, pumpkin.” He hugged his little girl, who wrapped thin, tomboyish elbows round his neck and half-strangled him. “Say hullo to Grandmum Molly and Grandpop Arthur for me, will you?”
“I will! Night, Daddy!” Lils gave him a big, smacking kiss and was shooed from the table to wash up. Ginny bustled off with the dishes.
For ages, Harry lay still on the long brown leather-upholstered sofa, hands folded neatly across his chest. This Harry had had a bit of an adolescent crush on his old Potions professor. A sustained infatuation, which had ended badly.
“Not even a pity fuck out of it all,” he said bitterly to the empty room, after a while, when the sounds of Gin and Lily Luna leaving by the Floo had died away and silence echoed through the house. “Greasy old git.”
He’d gotten over the uncomfortable feeling fast enough. It had been horribly embarrassing, true, but there were other things in life, and he and Gin had patched things back up after the dust-up. Got married, had the kids, and Harry had gone off to be an Auror, just like he always said he wanted. Malfoy? Well, he’d lost track of him, really. Hadn’t seen much of him, over the years. Ministry functions and the occasional case that required the assistance of the Unspeakables.
A nod at the train station now and again, when September 1st rolled around. That was all, really. And Harry was fond of his wife. She was pretty and comfortable and seemed to want to make him happy.
It was a good life. And now Malfoy was no longer part of it. Not even peripherally.
And the other Harry-the Harry who’d had Draco’s hands all over him just a few hours earlier, the Harry who’d had an affair going for years and years now, who was unfaithful, who was passionate-that Harry felt the tears trickle down his cheeks like corrosive acid, collecting in his mouth and nose till he choked on them.
Till he rolled over at last and clutched at the bolsters and shrugged his frozen self into the folds of the patchwork quilt Ginny kept folded up on the back of the couch just for warmth-for warmth, when he’d never, ever feel warmth again.
The next morning Harry got up for work, as usual. His throat was raw, and his voice froggy. His eyes were bloodshot, and his head ached like the dickens. He kissed his daughter’s flaming red mop, told his wife he’d attend the Malfoy thing and not to worry, and went off to his job at the Ministry.
But he didn’t arrive there.
He arrived in Hogsmeade instead. Apparated directly, as there was no one in this world who’d care where he was going or that he hadn’t shown up in the office for two days running. With the sole remaining Time Turner in his pocket, an Arithmancy table clutched in one sweaty hand, and a feeling very much like hope burning a hole into his chest, under the shallow scratches left over from yesterdays’ accident.
It was a wild, one-in-a-million chance. Things had changed drastically-he’d changed-and the only reason he was still even marginally sane was due to all those years having Voldemort rattling about in his head. One Harry was bad enough; two-with very disparate lives and memories-was mind-bending. He’d go mental if he allowed this situation to drag on even a moment longer, Harry-and Harry-both realized. There’d be no going back, then.
He found his way to the doddering stairwell, and stood in approximately the right spot, the battered chart visible in the faint glow of his Lumos. Breathed in the air tainted by decaying roots and tumbled-down masonry, mouse bones and cobwebs. Old blood, soaking the floorboards; old magic, thin and wispy, like memories swirling in a Penseive.
Dialed back: one twist. Two twists. The world twisted dizzily around him; his stomach heaved. Three twists. He could smell hair tonic. Four twists. He wasn’t the only one breathing, not anymore.
There was a footfall behind him-robes billowing with a familiar slap to long legs. He’d heard that sound every single day he’d attended Hogwarts as a student, for nearly seven full years. There was no mistaking the clues: that particular scent, that exact sound of fabric in motion, that determined plant of that nearly-muffled boot heel on the creaky flooring.
Harry closed his eyes in a desperate prayer to an unknown higher power-maybe Merlin, maybe Dumbledore--and spun on his own. If the next word he heard was ‘Potter!’, he’d go fucking crazy.
Blinked, and there was a wet-faced bloke standing there, clad in Auror robes and the shimmer of Harry’s dad’s cloak, pale and not as pointy as he used to be and nearly the exact same age as Harry was, give or take a couple of months. Unusual grey eyes were red-rimmed, even in the dim light. His features were chiseled, jaw clenched. Malfoy was looking a bit lost, and grimly terrified beneath that. Harry could see that; he knew him that well.
“Harry! What?”
“You fucking arsehole. I was planning to fucking murder you if you bloody weren’t dead already,” Harry announced flatly, his fury at Malfoy so huge there were literally no words to express it. He was beyond angry; was existing in a whole new territory of emotion-madder than a March hare with mute relief-and all because this great idiot of a dumb-arse git had got a wild hair up his arse to go off on a fucking tear and act the sodding hero!
“Harry?”
Harry got at the Time Turner’s battered chain around Malfoy’s neck through sheer determination. They sank to the steps, knees wobbly, Harry’s cloak pooling around them, and Harry heard the stifled moans-Snape, of course, dying--and his own years-younger voice echoing all too close to where the two of them huddled. He wrapped his fingers round the fucking fiddly bits of the Turner as Draco had just yesterday (twenty years ago) and twisted-twisted-twisted-twisted!
“Fucking, fucking rip you to pieces, Draco,” he sighed, and fastened his mouth over the git’s like it was only source of oxygen left in all the world. “Fucking Crucio you. Fucking screw your fucking head on straight!” He was babbling in relief, in exhaustion. He’d make Malfoy pay in spades for all this-make him pay, over and over.
“I didn’t think-I never imagined-I…” Draco couldn’t manage a bloody full sentence; Harry didn’t want to talk about anything. Not now; maybe not ever. It was so much better when they didn’t talk.
“Let’s get out of here,” he urged, sometime later. Supper was likely well past at home, and Ginny and his daughter would be tucked up snug in bed. Harry was starving, fucking starving. “I want some curry, you shite-for-brains. I’m starving.”
“Alright,” Draco agreed, and finally dragged the last intact Time Turner off his neck, wrapping up the golden chain neatly and tucking the fragile device into one of his pockets. Harry took even firmer hold of his narrow waist under the cloak and Apparated them both, still sitting. “Harry,” Draco said quietly, when they finally stood in front of the Indian restaurant with the second floor room, having landed sprawled out in a nearby alleyway. They’d stumbled up, the worse for wear, and made their way here. “D’ you think he-Severus. Do you think he made it?”
“I…don’t know, Draco. I just don’t know.” Harry gazed all around him, eyes lingering on the flashing neon sign that advertised takeaway specials, the few Wizards and Witches hurrying about their business. All that was so very, very sanely familiar, and had been for many a long year. He felt the warmth of the muscled shoulder and relaxed arm budging close up against his through layers of cloth; the lean body that had been found dead, had been found living, had been found, period. “We’ll worry about that tomorrow, alright? I’m hungry,” he repeated. “I want to eat.”
Cool, dry fingertips just brushed his, below the folds of their trailing scarlet sleeve-ends.
“Yes, alright, Harry,” Draco agreed, still subdued. “Whatever. I was just wondering.”
“Well, stop.” Harry barked. “You can’t change what happened, Draco. Trust me-you don’t want to. Got it?”
“Prick,” Draco shot back, reviving just a bit. “You can, but…you’re correct, for once, git. In this case.”
“Damned straight. Come along now, arsewipe. Let’s eat.”
They stepped apart automatically when they entered the Indian restaurant, just as always. But Harry allowed their knees to bump familiarly under the tablecloth, and that was new. New enough to have Malfoy smirking into his vindaloo, at least.
Harry wasn’t ‘home’, no. Had never had one, actually. Not even the house he shared with Gin and the kids or the one-room efficiency that patiently awaited them, a floor above, stinking of foreign spices. But this was alright, for a stopping place.
This wasn’t half-bad. Considering.
Finite
Title: Won’t Be Home Again
Prompt: #31 Submitted by: lilliephoenix
Pairing(s): Harry/Severus; Harry/Draco; Harry/Ginny
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Infidelity; Major Character Death, implied & actual (Harry, Severus Snape, Draco Malfoy); Time Travel; AU; EWE.
Word Count: 8,200
Summary:Harry’s old Potions Professor has been dead and gone for years. He’s but a whisper of memory; a refrain of a sad song. Why, then, can Harry not move on? He’s possessed of a lovely wife and three beautiful children, a career in full bloom and he stands square in the prime of his life. Damn that bastard Malfoy to burn in Hades for reminding him. Harry is sure it wouldn’t have taken much effort to save Severus Snape, had he only taken the time when he had it still at hand.
Notes:Emo is not my forte; sadly, this is evident. Harry, here, is stuck fast, like a fly in amber, and quite probably not at all IC. My apologies, wonderful prompter, for doing this prompt of yours a grave injustice. All errors are mine and not in any way the responsibility of my lovely beta, L.
Won't Be Home Again
Please, please forgive me,
But I won't be home again.
Maybe someday you'll look up,
And, barely conscious, you'll say to no one:
"Isn't something missing?"
You won't cry for my absence, I know -
You forgot me long ago.
Am I that unimportant...?
Am I so insignificant...?
Isn't something missing?
Isn't someone missing me?
Even though I'm the sacrifice,
You won't try for me, not now.
Though I'd die to know you love me,
I'm all alone.
Isn't someone missing me?
And if I bleed, I'll bleed,
Knowing you don't care.
And if I sleep just to dream of you
I'll wake without you there,
Isn't something missing?
Isn't something...
In the first years after the end of the War, Harry never, ever thought about Severus Snape.
This was a conscious decision, despite the remnants of silver tendrils that roiled about in the way back of his brain box, and despite the fact that Snape’s name was mentioned almost constantly, for quite some time: Malfoy used it, McGonagall used it. Ron, the remnants of the Order, the Wizengamot. Hermione, too, and inevitably always followed the mention up with a heartfelt sigh.
Snape had died a quiet Hero. Harry lived.
After some time, Harry managed to scrabble a life plan of sorts together. He married Ginny Weasley and joined the Aurors as a trainee, just as he said he’d always wanted.
Now and then, the words ‘Look at me!’ would pop into his head, unannounced. Firmly, regretfully, he’d push them away. The emotion in the flickering dark lights that had met his for a final time that night had not been meant for him. It had all been for his long-departed mother; nothing else remained in the Stygian depths.
Now and again, he dreamt. Of a hand firm on his shoulder; of a dark voice, tinged always with bitter disappointment and overt anger-and something else? Sorrow, perhaps, or…?
He convinced himself it was only bitterness Snape had ever felt; that, and the leftover disgust for his father, as Harry-except for those eyes-looked just like Snape’s hated adversary, in life and in love.
By the time Lily Luna was born, he’d managed to convince himself of quite a lot of things that he felt he should be feeling, but mostly that it was very, very wrong to spend so much of his time thinking about a dead man. Dead men stayed dead, despite the Resurrection Stone. Harry himself had only ever been a fluke-a crime against nature.
Malfoy, who’d ended up as his Auror partner, still spoke of Snape regularly, years later. He seemed to take a particularly grim pleasure in bringing up Snape, actually, and watching for Harry’s telltale flinch. Snape had earned an Order of Merlin, First Class, post-mortem, and Harry’d had to hear all about the letters and petitions Malfoy and Hermione (Hermione!) had written, from when the two of them were terribly active in convincing the Wizangamot Snape deserved it.
Harry told himself that it was alright, really. He shouldn’t mind Malfoy’s jibes, and needed-above all-to cease being so sensitive. The old bat was departed; had been bone-and-rag for ages, even though Harry himself could’ve-could’ve-
If he’d just taken the time to cast that one simple spell.
Ginny had accompanied him to Snape’s grave on the Tenth Anniversary of the War’s end. She’d accompanied him the Fifteenth, too, and would be there, Merlin willing, for the Twentieth. She was a good wife to him, and they had three beautiful children, and it wasn’t her fault Harry was restless.
Malfoy prodded him harder with mentions of his mentor, among other incendiary topics, and at some point they started having drinks together after their shifts, most days, mainly because Harry didn’t want to go home to his perfect family. Not that he wanted to spend even more hours of any given day exchanging insults with that git Malfoy, but-but.
All they did was bicker, he and Malfoy, on the job and off. Over small matters; over cases; over Snape. He should put in for a different partner, Harry often thought…but then couldn’t be arsed to bother.
He shouldn’t even have a family, for that matter. Not if Snape had died, essentially just so he could. That thought, like the memories Snape had given him, was firmly and thoroughly ripped out of his head and shoved into his Pensieve. It’d been Dumbledore’s and Harry, whenever he got it out, remembered his old Headmaster’s office.
And his Headmaster’s death, and Draco’s desperate, wild expression, and Snape’s terrible grimace when he shouted ‘Avada Kadavra!’
Draco’s eyes-so lost, so terrified-and the broken, reedy note deep and dark in Severus Snape’s angry voice and the one-terrible, awful; there was no other word for it-single glance sent downward, seeking out Harry’s hiding place like an eagle swooping down on a field mouse. The one flicker that had betrayed his Potion Master’s full knowledge of Harry’s hastily hidden presence-or so he decided it did, when Harry cast his mind back over the events of that night, years later. There’d been very few secrets between Headmaster and his most trusted Professor, it seemed. As a boy, he’d not realized it. As an Auror, the conspiracies and plotting that had so affected his every movement and emotion were crystal clear and apparent.
Snape had known Harry was there, all along. He’d known.
‘Look at me, Potter!’
‘Detention, Potter!’
‘After class, Potter!’
‘In my office, Potter!’
‘You fool, Potter!’
‘What will I do with you, Potter?’
Harry, face down in Malfoy’s pillow, biting his lower lip till it bled, wrestled with answering that question honestly. Gritted his teeth tight together and stared long and hard at the inside of his eyelids, where a far different scenario played. When Malfoy asked what was wrong with him later-why he’d been so abstracted-he said:
“Nothing. Really. That it was good, just now. That we should do it again.”
“Yes, Harry,” Draco smiled. “Yes.” Harry couldn’t see his face very well in the dark hotel room, but…perhaps he didn’t want to, either. Heard his partner’s smile, though. That was unmistakable.
They didn’t bother with drinks at the Leaky much, after that. Just shagged.
Harry’s wife never noticed. Neither did Draco’s, apparently, not that he spoke of it.
“Harry,” Draco remarked, one day when they were sorting through cold case files in the Ministry’s basement storage level. “I thought all the Time Turners had been destroyed at the end of the war?”
“Yeah,” Harry replied, absentmindedly, because he was looking over the file on the Lestranges. They’d been convicted and carted off to Azkaban for their crimes, but had escaped, shortly thereafter. It meant there were likely yet more Death Eaters out there somewhere-people with the Dark Mark on their forearms, people who’d managed to stay hidden in the masses of Muggles or in faraway places, like South America or Australia. He shrugged off the thought that one was sitting directly opposite him, calmly sipping his mid-morning cuppa, flipping through dusty parchments and dog-eared files.
“I thought so, too,” he agreed, absentmindedly. “Hermione would know, though.”
“Strange,” Draco muttered.
“What is?” Harry asked, half an ear cocked in Draco’s direction. “Find something?”
“DOM’s got them, apparently. There’s still a few knocking about.”
“Oh?” Harry raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Well, let them keep ‘em. Under lock and key, preferably. Cause more trouble than they’re worth, those things.”
“Yes…” Draco nodded jerkily after a moment, but Harry noticed his silvery gaze had darkened. “You’re correct. They do.” He swallowed; glanced quickly Harry’s way and then firmly brought his eyes back to the file he held. “In the wrong hands, that is. Makes a person think, what he could do, if maybe…if he had one. Actions he could change, perhaps.”
“That’s foolish, Draco,” Harry waved his hand impatiently. “It’s stupid. You can’t change the past, even if you want to. I, of all people, should know that. Going back doesn’t stop anything. It just puts off the inevitable; makes it harder to deal with later. Things still happen the way they’re going to-people still die!”
“Yes, well,” Draco looked uncomfortable for a split-second, before his usual calm mask slid back into place. “No one ever said human beings weren’t remarkably foolish, Harry.”
“No one ever said they couldn’t be sensible, either,” Harry shot back, and they glared at one another for a moment, for no good reason Harry could discern. Draco sighed heavily, after the pause dragged on for too long to be comfortable, and was the first one to drop his gaze, eyes tracking across the contents of the file he still held in his long, immaculately groomed hands-hands which Harry was very familiar with, even intimate. Then he snapped it shut with a decisive air and put it with the others in the stack, gathering his wand and his emptied mug right after, making ready as if to rise. His chair legs scraped loudly as they pushed across the floor, masking the faint harsh sound of Harry breathing though his nose. Harry was examining an old image of the Lestrange brothers, but his eyes took nothing in. His nostrils were full of dust; his eyes burning with it.
“Right. Be that as it may, Harry, we’ve lunch to procure. Fancy take-away today?” Draco’s voice was light; very much ‘nothing to see here, people. Move on, move on’.
“Yeah,” Harry replied instantly. “Yes.” He was out of his own seat with a clatter and an athletic bounce; still a fine figure of a man at thirty-five as he’d been ten, or even fifteen years earlier. “Let’s be off, then. Nothing worth bothering our heads about, here. Not at this late date.”
“I do hate the weeks after Christmas-always so slow,” Malfoy commented. “Deadly dull, this.”
“Yes,” Harry assented easily enough, but he didn’t truly believe that.
The curry shop they always favoured for lunch had a room at the back, on the second level, accessible only by the fire escape-or Apparation. Harry had paid a tidy sum to the shop’s owner to have it available always. The daughter of the family changed the linens on the narrow bed daily; Draco himself had set the Fidelius. It was two blocks from the Ministry and terribly convenient.
Harry justified Draco’s presence in his rented bed a number of ways: the git was taller than he was; his hands were larger, his shoulders broader, and all of that together made him feel younger, again. More like the boy he’d been so many years ago. Even safe, in a way. Malfoy was damned attractive physically, as well; could’ve had anyone he wanted, really, whenever he chose. Harry never asked if Draco had anyone else on the side, or if he went out to the clubs. Didn’t need to know that. Besides, judging by the way Draco acted when they couldn’t meet for a few days, Harry was convinced his Auror partner likely wasn’t seeking other outlets for his rather remarkable sex drive.
It was an impressive one; everything about Draco Malfoy was impressive, Harry concluded, in ways that went beyond the length, breadth and skillful use of his cock. His cultured smoothness, his quick-wittedness, his quirky sense of humour; his smile, which was awfully engaging. He could have Harry laughing at the oddest of times, literally over nothing. He could infuriate him with a single sentence. And he knew Harry, in a way Harry’s little Weasley wife didn’t. Ginny hadn’t been there. Sure, she’d been a victim of Tom Riddle’s machinations and she’d been through the Battle of Hogwarts, but…she’d not been there, not when Harry needed her.
Snape had. He’d given Harry the key to his very existence, and (though Harry hadn’t realized this either, till years later) the reason to turn back on his broom and reach out a hand to Draco Malfoy, Snape’s fellow Death Eater. He’d lived his whole life-just like Harry-for other people. Silently suffering, for other people.
He’d been tall, Harry’s Potions professor, and his messy dark hair had been greasy and lank. The years painted him taller and greasier yet. He’d a large, beaky nose like a crow, and a strong lantern jaw and well-defined chin, and thin, pinched lips, though the upper one had been bowed, and rather sensual in its curve. Harry shuddered at the thought of ever touching it. Probably would be slimy with saliva. Draco lips were firm and smooth and pink; Ginny’s tasted of lipstick and woman.
Cho’s had been wet and salty. Luna’s kisses had been feather light touches: misty butterflies. He couldn’t remember the kisses from his mother and father. So little to compare with, really.
Draco, over time, became more insistent about where they met, and how often. Used to be, early on, that their encounters outside work were on Fridays only, after a difficult week. Harry was home with his wife and children far more often than not, and the newspapers loved it: ‘Devoted Father!’ ‘Loving Husband!’ ‘Our Quiet Hero!’
The children aged-they all did-and Draco wanted more of Harry’s free time, more and more often. Regularly. Harry met him, without protest, and shed his Auror robes and all his inhibitions at the quirk of a pale eyebrow or the tilt of a grin. Didn’t quibble when the fucking was hard and fast and furious and he was left walking with a limp Ginny never said a word about.
He really liked it when Draco’s eyes darkened, as they did during shagging. Draco always had his eyes open and fixed on Harry, unlike Gin, who closed hers or hid her face in Harry’s armpit. Draco never hid. He was always front-and-center, shoving his face against Harry’s, poking his tongue into Harry’s mouth, easing his cock into Harry’s hole, forcing his way into Harry’s time, muddying up the expected flow of it.
There was really only one refuge left open to Harry, and that was his Pensieve.
Time Turners were the sole business and property of the DOM, and therefore the disappearance of two of them in early May of the following year didn’t make the Prophet. It barely made the Auror’s gossip in the break room; it was Kingsley himself who took Harry and Draco aside. All very hush-hush, too, that meeting.
“Gone. Vanished. Friday last, from what the Head of the DOM tells us. Find them,” he ordered, and turned over the various vials of Pensievable memories from staff and the transcript of the interview with Undersecretary Hermione Granger, who’d been in charge the night in question.
Things didn’t just disappear from DOM without a fuss. DOM itself had been redesigned after the War’s end to be impregnable. There’d be no more random popping in and falling through Veils. Or traipsing about in search of easily broken Prophecies contained in crystal orbs. Locked box in a sealed room mystery this was, this theft of two Time Turners, and the Aurors, though known for their crime-solving abilities, weren’t all protégées of the famed Wizard Holmes or his Muggle-born sidekick Watson.
Draco looked very grim at the meeting with Shacklebolt. Harry squared his shoulders and acknowledged Kingsley’s orders with a quiet ‘Sir!’ before taking the scant evidence in hand and holding the door for both his fellow Wizards to depart and be back about their business. He and Draco retreated to their tiny grey-walled office, to pore over what little Undersecretary Granger had to report.
After reviewing the Pensieves and Hermione’s very brief relation of events, Draco was left even more pale and pinched. Harry went through it all and allowed just one word to escape, to sum it all up: ‘Huh!,’ a disbelieving snort of a syllable.
Someone in the Ministry had been very rash indeed. Two someones, actually.
A few weeks after the Time Turners were lifted, Harry woke up with a scratchy throat and a headache. Perfectly normal for a wet late spring-going-into-summer in polluted London, catching the sniffles. He got up, dressed in his scarlet uniform and went off to work, though, as was his usual wont. Didn’t arrive there, but he did leave.
A series of planned but apparently random Apparations took him all over Britain, but he eventually fetched up in the mouldering remains of the Shrieking Shack, just outside Hogsmeade. Eager citizens of the Wizarding world had wanted to transform it into some sort of memorial, but Harry-and Headmistress McGonagall-had strongly resisted. It was left to Mother Nature, and the green bitch had her way with it in short order: not much remained beyond shattered timbres and faded planking, cracked plaster and vines twining insidiously through the fallen-down walls by the time Harry arrived there, late that same day. It was shelter of sorts, with two floors and a very damp and cobwebby basement, but not much else.
He was more interested in the tunnel below it, in any case. And the rickety staircase.
He’d planned it so there’d be a lag of some considerable hours before anyone thought he might’ve done a skip on work. ‘Anyone’ being Draco, his partner. Ginny would think nothing of his delay, and likely pack Lily Luna off to her parent’s for a visit with them when he didn’t arrive home for supper in a timely manner. She was accustomed to his odd hours and never really questioned them. Draco, however, would be checking up on Harry, in his usual rude way.
Draco and Gin had never really gotten along. There was an antipathy there no amount of years or the friendship between their children could ever erase. Harry didn’t mind that so much; made his life easier, really. Less overlap between one compartment and the other. He preferred them neatly, even surgically separated, just as he preferred to keep his sexual adventures with Draco confined to the one rented room.
In any event, Draco would likely Floo Harry’s hearth sometime later in the evening. It was the anniversary of the Battle and of Snape’s death, after all, and he’d be wanting to use the opportunity to prod Harry a bit, as well as ascertain his general health and well-being.
Harry found his bearings in the Shack. He consulted his Arithmancy tables by the light of his wand tip, and located the physical spot he should be standing in order to escape detection by his much younger self, Voldemort and Snape, himself. To give himself some leeway, he would activate the Time Turner to deliver him precisely ten minutes before boy-Harry and younger Ron and Hermione had dared approach a blood-covered, dying Potions Professor.
Time Turning did much the same thing to his innards as Flooing did: he stumbled a bit on the other side, but his trusty cloak covered up his awkward landing. Of course, Voldemort and Nagini were already present, along with Snape, and he was forced to curl his toes in their regulation Auror boots, bite his lips, and keep silent as the tomb whilst Voldemort gave the final order and the snake attacked Snape.
His old Potions professor didn’t look like much, not from Harry’s vantage. He was bedraggled and terribly thin, almost to the point of being skeletal, with sunken cheeks and dark circles under his eyes. His resistance was minimal-as if he not only expected this betrayal at Voldemort’s hands, but welcomed it-and Harry wished he’d more experience with Time Turners. He could’ve avoided watching Nagini’s cruelty if he’d been more precise, dialing. But Hermione had said he should do it this way and he believed her.
It was crucial he didn’t fuck up this time. There’d be no second chances, ever.
He and Malfoy were hot on the trail of the missing Time Turners. It was only a matter of time (Hah! Harry spared a sardonic laugh to the irony of the situation) before they’d be in a position to arrest…themselves. The case would be burst wide open and no doubt be plastered all over the papers: ‘Boy Who Saved the World is a Common Thief!’; ‘Death Eater Malfoy Up to No Good Once Again!’
It was the presence of another body next to him that was the very worst, though. It shocked him, though of course it shouldn’t have. He’d known full well Draco had made off with the other Turner, because he’d not been a greedy-puss and had only taken the one. Only needed one, after all, to accomplish his goal. He’d been hoping Draco planned to use his for a different purpose, but they’d always been somewhat similar in thought process and reaction, so really, it didn’t surprise him. Snape had been-was still-terribly important to both of them.
The pungent, herb-infused cloth-covered hand over his gawking mouth did surprise him, and then his losing consciousness for a brief, terrible period-that was shocking. He’d never expected to be drugged into submission. When he blinked his eyes open, Malfoy’s face was an inch away and plainly furious.
The ‘What the fuck d’you think you’re doing, Harry?’ hissed at him was entirely expected.
“Saving Snape,” Harry replied, shrugging blearily, well aware he was likely to be forced to tell Draco all about it. Draco was as dogged a son of bitch that ever lived; never gave a case up till it had been bloody ripped into disparate factoids and neatly disemboweled for the Ministry jurors. Logically, too, there weren’t many other sane reasons for being where he was, when he was. “Why aren’t you off saving Crabbe?” he asked, hoping vainly to distract his partner. “I’m busy.”
“Because I’m here saving you from your own stupidity, Harry,” Draco replied, and his tone was pure acid: every drop of the horrid patronizing sneer Harry hated filled it to overflowing. Raised his hackles something fierce, that. He’d not felt such strong emotion in ages.
“Sod off, then. Don’t need you,” he grunted, and shoved Draco off him forcibly. He was a bit woozy still from whatever Draco had made him inhale-head pounding, throat very dry and sore-but he’d a plan, and he wasn’t stopping.
“I know that, Harry,” Draco replied, all the anger washed clear of his response. His tone was curiously bland-light, even, like helium gas. “But you’re not the only person whose wishes I’m considering. You can’t do this, you know.”
“Err-“ Harry started, gaping. “Why ever not? And what the hell’s it to you, Draco? I’d have thought you’d be all for it.”
He scrambled his arms and legs back under the slippery cloak. Draco had helped himself to a large part of it and was pressed up against Harry in an uncomfortable half-crouch. Harry didn’t know how many minutes had elapsed whilst he’d been passed out, but he was presently scared shiteless. What if he’d missed it, his chance? All due to this incomprehensible git, Draco Malfoy.
“Look, get off me,” he ordered brusquely. “I need to-“
“No, you don’t.” Draco was adamant. “You don’t need to, Harry. Not unless you want to kiss your children’s existence on this plane goodbye forever. Did you do that this morning, Harry? Like the picture-perfect father you are? Did you kiss your wife, too? The little Weasleyette?”
“What?” Harry wasn’t getting it and he’d no time to winkle out whatever bug had crawled up Draco’s arse and bitten. He’d Snape to save, and just time enough to utilize the one spell to do it with, a sort of Stasis charm to halt the blood loss-and then he’d have to ensure the someone from the Order noticed and came back to pick up his fatally wounded, time-bound professor, and carry him off to Madame Pomfrey to be healed. There was a great deal to do, and very little time to do it in, despite the Turner. No time available for this shite of Draco’s, though. “Get off me!” he said again, and it was an order. Draco started, as if he were just about to do what Harry told him, but then he hung tight, fingers digging into Harry’s upper arms, his sweaty face pressed up to Harry’s in the shadows.
“Didn’t you hear me, git? Don’t you get it?” he demanded. “Your kiddies-they’ll be gone. They’ll never have happened, Harry. They matter to you, don’t they? If nothing else?”
“Fuck you!” Harry began struggling in earnest. Malfoy was talking rot, trying to manipulate him. “Fuck off, damn it! Let me go!”
“No, Harry! I won’t! Get it into your thick skull, Potter-this is serious!” Draco had a hand on Harry’s Time Turner, looped about his neck on a fragile golden chain. The two of them clinked together, his and Harry’s, and Harry spared a thought to wondering why in the bloody Hell Malfoy could never mind his own damned business. “Fuck, Harry-you can’t do this! I won’t let you! It’s my son, too!”
“What? What?” Harry demanded, fierce and impatient-Voldemort and Nagini were likely long gone, and Snape was laying there on the dusty floor, bleeding to death. Any moment now, he’d stumble along, boy-Harry, bumbling through the Shack with his two best mates beside him, and-and-he had to get to Snape now! To Snape’s side, to take just enough of his professor’s precious memories so he’d know what he needed to know later, in his own time, but then also to staunch the blood that was pouring, leaking, spilling. To cast a delaying spell to hold Snape’s battered body together long enough for help to get to him later, after the final battle, after-after boy-Harry died and came back again. “Merlin, Draco, I don’t have time for this!” he gasped. “Please! I have to go! Please!”
“No-you, Harry! You please!” Draco was gabbling; his fingers bloody everywhere, wrapped round the thin chain, wrapped around Harry’s throat and the cloak clasp. “Listen to me! If you save him, you change things-things you don’t want changed, trust me! You said it yourself, Harry-just listen!”
“No!” It was entirely too much to expect of him. He’d been planning this for far too long--this crucial moment. Thinking about that fucking old bat for too many years, wondering, wishing. Wanking off to sad dark eyes and a perpetual scowl. No way in Hades was he stopping now! “Bugger the fuck off, Draco!”
“They won’t happen, Harry; your children, they’ll never be born!” Draco was damned strong and wiry, even for an Auror, but Harry had the advantage of the creaky wall at his spine to push off from. He lunged forward, using everything he’d learned in his training to throw Draco off. “Scorpius-he won’t either,” Draco was whispering urgently. “I won’t get married unless you do, Harry-I’ll lose my son, too! You have to believe me, Harry! I don’t know what the fuck Granger told you about how this works, but it’s wrong, damn it-it won’t be the way you want it. It won’t work!”
“The hell you say, Malfoy!” Gods, but Harry was furious. Bitter anger filled him; long-buried resentment bubbled through his veins like poison. Perhaps it was being here, once again, with Voldemort yet to face, with his own death looming. What if he saw Remus or Tonks-or-or Fred, before they…died? Before it was too late again? He’d have to say something, do something, anything to prevent-prevent what had happened, was going to happen. Teddy could keep his parents; George his brother, and Harry-Harry could have Snape.
Snape. Snape. Harry laughed weakly at Malfoy’s grimacing face, abruptly helpless in the tidal pull of all that intensity. Snape. Who’d have thought? Of all the people to be obsessed with, why did it have to be fucking Snape? The man hated him; had always hated him-that look in his eyes as he died had only been for Harry’s mother, never for a useless ‘Boy Wonder’ or a bumbling Gryffindor. Snape had long since locked his heart away from Harry; Harry knew that as well as he knew his own name; knew, too, that it was all most probably useless. That even if Snape lived, managed to resume his position as Headmaster, and even if Harry (the new Harry, the one this change in time would create) were to come back to Hogwarts after the War ended; even then, there’d be no happy ending. Not for him.
This wasn’t a fairy tale. And Snape was no fucking prince. He wouldn’t give a ghost of a fuck if Harry had risked his life to save him. He wouldn’t care. He only wanted Voldemort defeated, that was all. If Harry died after it or because if it, then so be it. They were all expendable to Snape, even Dumbledore, in the end. Even himself.
Harry didn’t know when he started sobbing. The shudders and gasps racking him made it all the more difficult to fight off Malfoy. He threw himself into the battle, gritting his teeth to stifle himself, grimly shutting out Malfoy’s desperate whispering, the glimpses of his white face from the Lumos-lit wand that had tumbled to the floor unheeded as they grappled.
“Harry, Harry, listen!” Draco was begging. “They’ll never happen-my son won’t happen. Your children, Harry-gone, as if they never existed! I know it; I’ve seen it, Harry! Please! You have to stop, damn it; you have to give this up! It’s madness!”
His face was wet-Draco’s, and Harry’s too, now. There was blood, along with the tears. Draco had punched him, the fucker, slammed Harry’s jaw back so that his head ricocheted off the wall, thumping it with enough force to damage the aged plaster. There was an ominous little tinkle as glass broke somewhere and Harry, seeing stars still, felt a prickling of icy shards scatter down the front of his Auror robes.
“Gods!” Draco was a mess, his mask all broken down, his entire body pressed hard against Harry’s, imprinting itself there like a scar. They were sixteen again, all at once, and Malfoy was sobbing and there was blood everywhere, Harry thought, confused and reeling into a return punch. “You don’t get it, do you? You’re so fucking thick, Potter. So…fucking…thick. So blind, you willful git-look. Listen. I’ll-I’ll do it, alright? I’ll save him, but you have to go back.”
“What?” Harry was stunned and not just from the second blow to his achy chin. He wet his damp lips; swallowed blood. “You?”
“I’ll fucking take care of it, Potter-trust me, will you, just this once?” Draco wasn’t hitting him anymore. He’d his long arms wrapped fiercely around Harry, his long fingers in Harry’s damp hair, tangled. Harry felt Draco’s mouth, smearing dampness of one sort or another, all over his wet cheeks, his straining neck. Draco trembled-or maybe that was him, shaking in reaction. It wasn’t ever supposed to be like this. He’d not ever thought it could be, not in any fevered dream or planned-out scenario.
“What the hell are you doing?” Harry ground out, struggling. “There’s no time-I have to-“
“No,” Draco moaned. “No time, not anymore. Go back, Harry. I’ll save him, alright? Trust me-I’ll wait a few minutes and then I’ll cast as soon as you’re gone. Just-just go back to our time, alright?”
“But-“
“If you don’t-if it’s you, Harry, your kids will never be born, alright? I looked, Harry. I went and I looked, at our other futures. You have to believe me, please. Just this once-just about this. If nothing else, Harry.”
“What in the fuck are you talking about, Draco? Our other futures? What other--”
There was a bustle in the tunnel below them, the sound of people rushing. A few steps away and down, ‘round the corner, Harry could hear Snape’s piteously faint hiss. “What?” he whispered, staggering in pain, real and remembered.
“Time Turners don’t just go back, Harry. They go sideways, too.” Draco was still snogging him even as he talked: lightly, as feather-light as his fingertips tracing Harry’s jaw. “I saw-I saw it, the world where Snape survives, Harry. You don’t marry the Weasley bint-they were never born.”
“No!”
“Yes,” Draco was moaning, now. He’d had Harry pulled so tightly against him the single remaining Time Turner dug into Harry’s breastbone like a dagger. “Merlin, yes, Harry.” Glass slivers from the other pierced the flesh of Harry’s chest at random, and he could feel a dozen tiny wounds opening up. They bled viciously, warm and thin and persistent, like the weals left on Draco’s skin from the long-ago Sectumsempra. “Yes, that’s it, Potter. Listen now. I’ll do it, alright? You go back. Go back, and maybe they’ll still be there. Scorpius, too.”
“You’re saying-you’re saying it changes my marriage to Ginny? My life?” Harry paid no attention to Draco’s touch. Barely felt it, he was so-so very stunned. His children-his children! And all for the sake of one single spell-“I don’t believe you! Liar!”
“Gods, no, Harry-why would I lie?” Draco’s face was just as miserable as it had been in Myrtle’s mirror, all the handsomeness wiped off by the twisting of his mouth, the innate elegance lost in the crinkled-up skin gathered ‘round his pale grey eyes: an image of misery fitfully illuminated by the Lumos cast up from Harry’s fallen wand. “Why would I ever lie about something like this? Give me a least a little credit, Harry-will you?”
“I-“ Harry began, but there wasn’t anything left to say. “No,” he said, but it wasn’t that he didn’t believe Draco. “No!”
Grim and with eyes downcast, Draco shoved himself back from Harry and the dusty plane of the wall, and reached out to grab at Harry’s Time Turner, still miraculously intact, despite their fighting. White fingers fumbled at it, twisting the tiny nub of a dial desperately, and Harry stared at them, silent and shocked into immobility. He could hear his own voice now, down the stairwell and ‘round the curve: a boyish murmur piping up in excitement over what he’d discovered. Snape had been found; was bleeding to death, all his guile useless; was grabbing at him and staring deep into his eyes-his mother’s eyes-and saying the last words Harry would ever hear from him.
“Let me see you one last time, Harry.” The pale, tear-blotched face before him, hovering ghost-like in the corridor, was terribly stern. Here was the Auror Malfoy, the pernicious git who’d finally grown up and made something worthy of himself. Here was the mask Draco Malfoy wore whilst he was acting the responsible adult. Only the eyes gave him away. Eyes like a furnace; eyes that were promptly shuttered when Harry couldn’t stop staring.
“There. All finished.” Draco leaned forward, helped himself to Harry’s cloak. He threw it around him with a typical flourish, so that all but his head and neck disappeared. And his elegant hands, poking out of nowhere, which found their way back to Harry’s face unerringly. Lingered there, the tip of one forefinger pressed against Harry’s split lower lip. “Maybe I’ll get lucky, yeah, Potter?” he asked softly, whimsically, and the cloak rippled, folding in on itself as Malfoy drew away. “You go on now, will you? Harry?”
And Harry blinked rapidly, exasperated, bewildered, and utterly furious. Was stymied, abruptly.
And Draco was gone.
And he was crouched on the staircase in the broken-down Shrieking Shack. In the dark. All alone.
Until someone came up behind him.
Stalked, rather, with a billow of robes.
“Potter! What are you doing, loitering about? It’s well after hours, Potter. Don’t you have a useful job to return to? A wife and children? A home?”
“What?” He spun, rising at a stumble, and confronted a much older Professor-no! Headmaster, now. “Snape-you’re alive?”
“Pity , isn’t it?” The Headmaster’s deep voice was gruff. “Thinking young Malfoy shouldn’t have bothered, Potter? Too late now, is it not? Though why he was present here at that particular moment, he never did say. Likely creeping after you, Mr. Potter, spying-just as always.”
“What? Where-err, where am I?” Harry wheeled around to stare blankly down the dusty stairwell. There was only silence emanating from below. Nothing else moved in the ruins.
“What?” Snape barked. Rolled his dark eyes in frustration and brought the lamp he carried up so he could peer more closely at Harry’s shocked face. “Are you ill, dolt? Standing about in an abandoned building-of course you’re mental. Never doubted that for a moment. Be off home now, Potter. You don’t look well.”
“…Yeah-erm, yes, Professor! I’ll, uh, do that.” Harry Disapparated abruptly, fleeing for his very sanity.
Back to his beautiful wife, his happy home, his-life.
His Auror partner-who wasn’t Malfoy; who’d never been Malfoy-hadn’t bothered to check up on him. Michael Corner was an alright sort, but not terribly curious.
“Rough day, love?” Ginny asked when he sat down to a late dinner. He ruffled Lily’s copper hair and grinned down at her, his heart pounding.
“Hiya, Daddy,” she chirped. She was beautiful, just like her mother-her grandmother.
“Yes. Yes, it was.”
Ginny clucked in ready sympathy. Glanced at him fondly over the roast and the mashed. “Are you planning to stop over at Malfoy’s do tomorrow, Harry?”
“Malfoy’s do?” Harry asked, but he wasn’t really paying attention. Malfoy worked in DOM, and was an Unspeakable. Their sons were mates. That was it; the families didn’t mix socially.
“His funeral, Harry-don’t tell me you’ve forgotten about it already?” Gin sounded aghast, and she shook her head dolefully at him and his legendary absentmindedness. “It’s tomorrow, at noon. One of us should attend, if only for Al’s sake.”
“He-he died?” Harry’s voice cracked on the question. He didn’t know why that was such a shock; he and Malfoy had little or nothing to do with one another.
“Yes,” Gin replied, having dealt with her bite of meat.”Accident in the Time Turner Room, from what you said, Harry. You told me all about it-don’t you recall? You found his body-must have been there for a day or two, undiscovered.” Gin shuddered. “Gruesome, isn’t it? Him there all that time, and no one knowing. No one missing him.”
“Yes,” Harry said simply. This Harry-this reality’s Harry, who couldn’t care less whether that git Malfoy lived or died. Who’d had nothing really to do with the bloke since...since, well, forever. “Pity, that.”
“I-I think I’m going to go have a lie-down, Gin,” the other Harry said. The one who’d had Draco’s cock up his arse just yesterday, at lunchtime. The one who was a practiced liar, and an admitted adulterer, and had been, for ages. He swallowed his chewed-up piece of roast beef automatically, and then had to take a sip of water. His throat was closing, tight, tight, and it was increasingly difficult to breathe freely. “In the study.”
“Oh, that’s all right, dear,” Ginny nodded. “Headachy again, are you? I’ll take Lils with me, then. Give you a little peace and quiet.”
“Thanks, Gin,” Harry said, dropping a kiss on her hair as he left the table. “Night, pumpkin.” He hugged his little girl, who wrapped thin, tomboyish elbows round his neck and half-strangled him. “Say hullo to Grandmum Molly and Grandpop Arthur for me, will you?”
“I will! Night, Daddy!” Lils gave him a big, smacking kiss and was shooed from the table to wash up. Ginny bustled off with the dishes.
For ages, Harry lay still on the long brown leather-upholstered sofa, hands folded neatly across his chest. This Harry had had a bit of an adolescent crush on his old Potions professor. A sustained infatuation, which had ended badly.
“Not even a pity fuck out of it all,” he said bitterly to the empty room, after a while, when the sounds of Gin and Lily Luna leaving by the Floo had died away and silence echoed through the house. “Greasy old git.”
He’d gotten over the uncomfortable feeling fast enough. It had been horribly embarrassing, true, but there were other things in life, and he and Gin had patched things back up after the dust-up. Got married, had the kids, and Harry had gone off to be an Auror, just like he always said he wanted. Malfoy? Well, he’d lost track of him, really. Hadn’t seen much of him, over the years. Ministry functions and the occasional case that required the assistance of the Unspeakables.
A nod at the train station now and again, when September 1st rolled around. That was all, really. And Harry was fond of his wife. She was pretty and comfortable and seemed to want to make him happy.
It was a good life. And now Malfoy was no longer part of it. Not even peripherally.
And the other Harry-the Harry who’d had Draco’s hands all over him just a few hours earlier, the Harry who’d had an affair going for years and years now, who was unfaithful, who was passionate-that Harry felt the tears trickle down his cheeks like corrosive acid, collecting in his mouth and nose till he choked on them.
Till he rolled over at last and clutched at the bolsters and shrugged his frozen self into the folds of the patchwork quilt Ginny kept folded up on the back of the couch just for warmth-for warmth, when he’d never, ever feel warmth again.
The next morning Harry got up for work, as usual. His throat was raw, and his voice froggy. His eyes were bloodshot, and his head ached like the dickens. He kissed his daughter’s flaming red mop, told his wife he’d attend the Malfoy thing and not to worry, and went off to his job at the Ministry.
But he didn’t arrive there.
He arrived in Hogsmeade instead. Apparated directly, as there was no one in this world who’d care where he was going or that he hadn’t shown up in the office for two days running. With the sole remaining Time Turner in his pocket, an Arithmancy table clutched in one sweaty hand, and a feeling very much like hope burning a hole into his chest, under the shallow scratches left over from yesterdays’ accident.
It was a wild, one-in-a-million chance. Things had changed drastically-he’d changed-and the only reason he was still even marginally sane was due to all those years having Voldemort rattling about in his head. One Harry was bad enough; two-with very disparate lives and memories-was mind-bending. He’d go mental if he allowed this situation to drag on even a moment longer, Harry-and Harry-both realized. There’d be no going back, then.
He found his way to the doddering stairwell, and stood in approximately the right spot, the battered chart visible in the faint glow of his Lumos. Breathed in the air tainted by decaying roots and tumbled-down masonry, mouse bones and cobwebs. Old blood, soaking the floorboards; old magic, thin and wispy, like memories swirling in a Penseive.
Dialed back: one twist. Two twists. The world twisted dizzily around him; his stomach heaved. Three twists. He could smell hair tonic. Four twists. He wasn’t the only one breathing, not anymore.
There was a footfall behind him-robes billowing with a familiar slap to long legs. He’d heard that sound every single day he’d attended Hogwarts as a student, for nearly seven full years. There was no mistaking the clues: that particular scent, that exact sound of fabric in motion, that determined plant of that nearly-muffled boot heel on the creaky flooring.
Harry closed his eyes in a desperate prayer to an unknown higher power-maybe Merlin, maybe Dumbledore--and spun on his own. If the next word he heard was ‘Potter!’, he’d go fucking crazy.
Blinked, and there was a wet-faced bloke standing there, clad in Auror robes and the shimmer of Harry’s dad’s cloak, pale and not as pointy as he used to be and nearly the exact same age as Harry was, give or take a couple of months. Unusual grey eyes were red-rimmed, even in the dim light. His features were chiseled, jaw clenched. Malfoy was looking a bit lost, and grimly terrified beneath that. Harry could see that; he knew him that well.
“Harry! What?”
“You fucking arsehole. I was planning to fucking murder you if you bloody weren’t dead already,” Harry announced flatly, his fury at Malfoy so huge there were literally no words to express it. He was beyond angry; was existing in a whole new territory of emotion-madder than a March hare with mute relief-and all because this great idiot of a dumb-arse git had got a wild hair up his arse to go off on a fucking tear and act the sodding hero!
“Harry?”
Harry got at the Time Turner’s battered chain around Malfoy’s neck through sheer determination. They sank to the steps, knees wobbly, Harry’s cloak pooling around them, and Harry heard the stifled moans-Snape, of course, dying--and his own years-younger voice echoing all too close to where the two of them huddled. He wrapped his fingers round the fucking fiddly bits of the Turner as Draco had just yesterday (twenty years ago) and twisted-twisted-twisted-twisted!
“Fucking, fucking rip you to pieces, Draco,” he sighed, and fastened his mouth over the git’s like it was only source of oxygen left in all the world. “Fucking Crucio you. Fucking screw your fucking head on straight!” He was babbling in relief, in exhaustion. He’d make Malfoy pay in spades for all this-make him pay, over and over.
“I didn’t think-I never imagined-I…” Draco couldn’t manage a bloody full sentence; Harry didn’t want to talk about anything. Not now; maybe not ever. It was so much better when they didn’t talk.
“Let’s get out of here,” he urged, sometime later. Supper was likely well past at home, and Ginny and his daughter would be tucked up snug in bed. Harry was starving, fucking starving. “I want some curry, you shite-for-brains. I’m starving.”
“Alright,” Draco agreed, and finally dragged the last intact Time Turner off his neck, wrapping up the golden chain neatly and tucking the fragile device into one of his pockets. Harry took even firmer hold of his narrow waist under the cloak and Apparated them both, still sitting. “Harry,” Draco said quietly, when they finally stood in front of the Indian restaurant with the second floor room, having landed sprawled out in a nearby alleyway. They’d stumbled up, the worse for wear, and made their way here. “D’ you think he-Severus. Do you think he made it?”
“I…don’t know, Draco. I just don’t know.” Harry gazed all around him, eyes lingering on the flashing neon sign that advertised takeaway specials, the few Wizards and Witches hurrying about their business. All that was so very, very sanely familiar, and had been for many a long year. He felt the warmth of the muscled shoulder and relaxed arm budging close up against his through layers of cloth; the lean body that had been found dead, had been found living, had been found, period. “We’ll worry about that tomorrow, alright? I’m hungry,” he repeated. “I want to eat.”
Cool, dry fingertips just brushed his, below the folds of their trailing scarlet sleeve-ends.
“Yes, alright, Harry,” Draco agreed, still subdued. “Whatever. I was just wondering.”
“Well, stop.” Harry barked. “You can’t change what happened, Draco. Trust me-you don’t want to. Got it?”
“Prick,” Draco shot back, reviving just a bit. “You can, but…you’re correct, for once, git. In this case.”
“Damned straight. Come along now, arsewipe. Let’s eat.”
They stepped apart automatically when they entered the Indian restaurant, just as always. But Harry allowed their knees to bump familiarly under the tablecloth, and that was new. New enough to have Malfoy smirking into his vindaloo, at least.
Harry wasn’t ‘home’, no. Had never had one, actually. Not even the house he shared with Gin and the kids or the one-room efficiency that patiently awaited them, a floor above, stinking of foreign spices. But this was alright, for a stopping place.
This wasn’t half-bad. Considering.
Finite