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Chapter Thirty-Two—No Other Medicine But Only Hope

Harry woke to find Draco watching him with shadowed eyes.

That might be for any number of reasons, Harry thought, staring calmly back at Draco in the moment before he showed he was awake. It could be because Draco wanted to suggest having full-on sex but didn’t know how to, given what he had done to Harry last time they did. He might wonder if Harry was ever going to forgive him for going to the papers, and not know how to ask that as well. One of his hands crept out as if he would touch Harry’s thigh and then halted; was he afraid of looking weak by clutching Harry too close as they slept?

Harry knew only one thing for certain. He wouldn’t find out by lying here.

He yawned, letting the motion of his jaws squeeze his eyes shut, and stretched his arms above his head. When he looked again, Draco’s face was perfectly normal. Harry still had trouble seeing what was behind the mask when Draco was concentrating on keeping him out, but he noticed the evidence of edges and lines, which was more than he’d ever done before. In this case, he could see the tightness around Draco’s eyes and hear the slight grinding noise that meant he was working his teeth against one another.

“Harry,” he said, and paused.

Pleased that he was going to tell the truth for once without Harry’s having to drag it out of him, Harry smiled and looked directly at him. “Good morning,” he said. “Yes?”

Draco stopped grinding his teeth, but from the way his eyes dipped and flashed away, that was because he was afraid Harry would hear it. “Nothing,” he said. “Except that I have a question to ask you, and I want you to answer honestly.”

Harry felt a flash of irritation. Yes, his physical relationship with Draco was much better than it had been, and if Harry hadn’t completely forgiven him for going to the papers, that was news to him. But life with Draco was not perfect. He insisted that Harry carry far more of the emotional freight when they interacted. Perhaps he felt that his multiple confessions in one day had been enough, but Harry did wish they would move towards sharing that burden—since Draco thought of it as one—more equally.

Since it was unlikely to happen at the moment, he said, “All right,” and laid his head back against the pillow, waiting. Draco’s arm had extended behind him to provide a comfortable resting place, but he thought he’d avoid that at the moment. And Draco was unlikely to think he was avoiding it on purpose, because he didn’t have that high an opinion of Harry’s subtlety.

Sometimes I think Hermione’s right, and we’re going to tear each other apart.

“What was the most extreme action you took when you were stalking me?” Draco asked. His eyes were wide and dark.

Harry blinked. Well, all right, then. He had expected Draco to ask how he felt about having his hands bound again, since, from the way Draco liked to hold his wrists against the bed, it was one of Harry’s kinks he shared. But Harry was just as glad to answer a question he had much simpler feelings on.

“I stood outside your office for hours each day,” he said. “I spied on your meetings with clients, and I spied on you in private, so I could study the different ways you acted. And I saved—well, lots of newspaper clippings of you.” He shrugged. “I thought at the time that it was the closest I’d ever come to you.”

“Newspaper clippings,” said Draco, and rolled over to stare at the ceiling. “Newspaper clippings,” he repeated loudly, as though he were talking to someone else. Harry looked around the room, but didn’t see Lucius, or Snape, or even a house-elf.

He did hear what sounded like a bitter snort, which made him wonder if Snape possessed an Invisibility Cloak. But even if he did, Harry couldn’t see him enjoying any late-night spying he did on them. Probably, he had told Draco that Harry wasn’t good for him because of his obsession, and Draco was trying to make the point that newspaper clippings were not as bad as they could have been.

Draco rolled back to him and extended his hand to Harry, his face solemn but his eyes no longer as shadowed. “Come to breakfast?”

“Of course.” Harry smiled at him, glad that his answer had contented Draco for whatever reason. He liked being able to please and help Draco. “Just let me shower first.”

*

Maybe I don’t have to tell him.

Draco held on to that hope even as he watched Harry luxuriating in the breakfast that the house-elves had made for them. It wasn’t as good as the food at Hogwarts, or even at some of the top-level restaurants in Diagon Alley; the house-elves had a tendency to be sloppy in recent years, with Lucius so isolated and Draco gone from the house much of the time on business for his clients and Severus not caring what he ate. Draco made a mental note to remedy that. This would be a hell of a time for Harry to leave him because the food was poor, of all things.

He collected newspaper clippings of me. He was obsessed with my appearance and with stories about me, the same way I was about him. What I did was worse, but not that much worse. There’s really no reason that Mother should want me to tell him. And anyway, she’s not even my mother, but only a portrait reflection of her. Everyone knows that portraits don’t understand living people that well.

Harry caught his eye and smiled at him. Draco smiled and toasted him with his glass of strawberry juice. At least the house-elves had remembered that he enjoyed more juices than simply orange and pumpkin.

“What will you do today?” Harry asked, around a mouthful of toast slathered with butter. Draco avoided grimacing at his bad manners by studying his own plate intently for a moment. He still had a few morsels of bacon left. He would have to remember to take them by the Owlery.

“I’ve neglected the Keller house long enough,” Draco said. “I’ll travel to the site and set up the illusion again, then look at it in different lights and decide what needs to be changed.” He glanced up, about to ask whether Harry would prefer to lunch at the site or return to the Manor, and was just in time to catch a strange grimace on Harry’s face. He paused. “What’s wrong?”

Harry swallowed and shook his head. “Nothing. I’ll come with you, of course. The imposter would probably take the chance to attack you the minute you get outside the wards.”

“Or at any time.” Draco reached across the table and laid a hand on his arm. “Remember, the wards didn’t stop him before.”

“No.” For a moment, Harry’s eyes took on a flat, glazed sheen, as if he were seeing the moment when the imposter had snatched Draco from his bed. Though Draco hadn’t described it in any detail, Harry had told Draco he didn’t need a description. Then he snapped out of the mood and repeated, “Of course I’ll come with you.”

Draco sat back in his chair, eyeing Harry curiously. At times, he doubted he would ever actually understand Harry; there seemed to be a new, unknown factor to cope with every time he was confident that he grasped the essentials.

Before he could ask another question to try and gently shake the answer loose, a cool voice spoke from the doorway. “Draco. A moment of your time.”

Draco stared in shock. Lucius stood there, and there was a life and glittering light in his eyes that Draco had never seen since—well, at least since Narcissa was alive. Draco darted a glance at Harry, but he was blinking, apparently as surprised at the change as Draco was.

Draco wasn’t about to give away too much surprise. That would be to show weakness in front of a potential enemy. He rose to his feet, bowed a bit, said, “Of course, Father,” and moved after Lucius into the anteroom opposite to the dining room.

The worried gaze he could feel Harry fixing on his back warmed him all through. Yes, it was worth committing any crime to hang on to Harry, and he knew he would lose him in moments if he told him the truth about the relics room.

*

“Potter.”

Harry glanced up, and stared. Snape stood behind him with his arms folded and frown lines so tight around his eyes that Harry automatically looked at the table, scanning for the remains of the potion he had ruined, before he remembered that he didn’t need to worry about ridiculous punishments from Snape ever again.

He did his best to assume a cool expression. Then he realized, from his own thoughts as much as the scornful arch of Snape’s eyebrow, that he would never do it well enough to rival someone like Snape, so he settled for a harsh glare instead. “Exactly what do you want?” he snarled.

“To know what you intend to do with Draco.” Snape examined the nails on his right hand. Looking for traces of blood, probably, Harry thought, so he would know what the new stains looked like when he tried to pluck out Harry’s eyes.

“Guard him until the imposter is captured,” Harry said firmly. “Then go back to my own flat, but still visit him as often as I can. Gradually work out the problems that still lie between us. Live happily ever after.”

“A very Gryffindor plan.” Snape studied him the way he might a mouse that had been delivered still squirming.

“I do wish you’d give over the entire business about Gryffindors and Slytherins,” Harry muttered, turning back to his breakfast. He still had eggs he hadn’t yet enjoyed, and he saw no reason to let Snape ruin his pleasure in them. Snape’s presence wasn’t as important as they were. “Perfectly ridiculous, you know. We’re not in Hogwarts anymore.”

“It still guides our lives,” Snape replied. “It is still a division between two kinds of people that the simplest may understand.” His voice prickled with something Harry might have called laughter, had he considered that Snape cold laugh.

“Yeah, yeah,” Harry said, and yawned, and ate his eggs. Snape stood there staring at his back. Harry let him. He half-wondered when Snape would get bored and go back to his foul smells and gelatinous explosions.

A hand slapped down on the table next to him, making him choke. As he hastily took up his cup of tea and swallowed some to ease the bruised feeling in his throat, he saw that Snape’s hand was actually impeccable. Of course, mixing traces of old potions ingredients into new ones probably wasn’t the best idea. Harry felt proud of himself for remembering that salient tidbit from long-ago lessons.

“Your insouciance is unappreciated, Potter.” Snape’s voice had descended into a hiss. “I have spent much time training Draco and making him into the kind of student my labors require. I will not see that undone by your actions.”

Harry snorted. “I have no intention of keeping him from brewing. If he’d ever rather spend the night in the lab than having passionate sex with me, he only has to say so.”

As he had hoped would happen, Snape looked faintly green, but he didn’t walk away. Damn. Harry sipped his tea again and kept his expression as politely neutral as he might. I don’t even know what he wants. If this is the speech where he tells me he’ll kill me if I hurt Draco, he could have made some threat about chopping me up into ingredients that would give me nightmares for a week.

“His obsession with you has always been his great weakness,” Snape said abruptly. “It leads to complacency with his faults and a refusal to confront those aspects of himself that most need healing and tending.”

Harry arched an eyebrow as best he could. “Obviously, I don’t agree.”

Snape went on speaking as if he hadn’t heard what Harry said. “He needed to learn to know himself. And now that he has a chance, you would deprive him of it.”

Harry blinked. “Why would my presence keep him from knowing himself?”

Snape shook his head and leaned nearer, to the point that Harry wanted to retreat before the hook of his nose. He sat in his chair, however, and tried to look bored, because he had given up on showing Snape that he was afraid.

“You are a true idiot,” Snape whispered. “He has a chance to know himself better now that you have become part of his life. If you are wise, you will press that chance, and force him to face his faults. Instead, you encourage and coddle him. You treat him too gently. You must push him past that, or those flaws will drive you away in the end, and I will be left to console a student who thinks only of winning you back, and not of brewing.”

Harry blinked again. Buried in there somewhere was a compliment, something he would never have believed of Snape. He licked his lips and sat up a little straighter. “I don’t plan on being driven away.”

“It will be something you cannot control.” Snape’s eyes half-lidded for a moment, as if he were thinking of something dark, disgusting, and vulgar, though Harry had no idea what it could be. “You cannot imagine how you would react to—“

And then he shook his head, and turned away, and swept out of the room, leaving Harry to stare after him in wonder.

*

Lucius turned around in the anteroom and surveyed his son carefully. He had planned on what he would say, but he had not reckoned with the stubborn, calm face that Draco showed him. He seemed prepared to listen to exactly as many words as were required to make his father think he had learned his lesson, whilst in reality learning nothing at all.

Lucius wanted to shake his head in wonder. Had he let his son slip so far out of the discipline of thought and action that ensured the survival of their family? But of course he had, and he had encouraged Draco’s disrespect himself. The world had ceased to matter to him after Narcissa’s death, and when he did take notice of his son, it was only because he had wanted to prove that he could take up Narcissa’s charge and love Draco as she would have done.

He knew now that there was little he could have done that was more stupid. Draco didn’t have the self-control or the maturity to be on his own. Lucius should have paid more attention to him after the demise of the Dark Lord, and if he had to vanish into the library and the sustained contemplation of Narcissa’s empty portrait frame, it was his duty to ensure that his son could support himself.

He could not. His obsession with Potter was the greatest sign of that, but not the only one.

“I will grant you one chance,” Lucius said.

Draco blinked, and drew himself up. Lucius could see some of his own grace and confidence in that gesture, but he knew they were feigned. When Lucius stood on his own to face some challenge, he had resources to base his pride on. Draco had nothing more than a hollow core of uncertainty revolving around his dependence on Potter and his architectural talent. Both were great gifts—or weaknesses—but Draco could not conquer every obstacle life flung at him by relying on them. He would have to vary his interests and diversify his strengths.

Lucius had understood the same thing instinctively at seventeen, never mind twenty-seven. Of course, the early death of his father had encouraged him in that; Lucius had become the Malfoy patriarch in truth when he was young. Draco had become accustomed to acting as such whilst, in reality, fulfilling none of the responsibilities and thinking of duty as an empty word.

“One chance to do what?” Draco asked.

Lucius eyed his son with grim resignation. He had stood under the lash of longer silences than that and made his enemy speak first. Draco had no patience. That would go on the long list of flaws to be remedied.

In the end, before death came to claim him as it always did, he would see his son strong and well-made, shining, ready to take on the fury of a world that had little use for Malfoys or for Death Eaters. Lucius intended to raise Draco to that state, to teach him, not to bully him. But at moments like this, as he looked back on Draco’s extended, wasted youth, it was difficult not to want to.

“I will give you one chance to tell Potter the truth about yourself,” he said. “How your obsession weakened you, what it really means—the ugly side of it as well as the beautiful. He must know how great a fool of yourself you made over him during the last few years.”

Draco laughed. “I already have done that,” he said. “I figured out that I even fought the war for him, and thought he was fighting it for me, rather than to kill Voldemort.”

Lucius told himself not to flinch at the name. Of course his son could say it. He did not understand the terror of it the way Lucius did.

He subdued his impatience as well. “And does he know the truth about your room beneath the Manor?” he asked softly. “Does he know that you buried the smallest things there, the most trivial treasures that had once touched his skin or his lips or his hand? I believe he might be very interested to know it.”

Shock melted across Draco’s face, and for a moment he stood still. Then he shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You’re only surprised that I discovered it, rather.” Lucius advanced on him with slow steps, noting the place his foot touched on the floor when Draco backed up. Much further away than I would have flinched from, he thought with disapproval. “Draco. I am still in tune with the Manor’s wards, still their primary master. I have resumed my place and my care of them as of this morning. I know the changes you made.”

Draco growled in his throat and looked, for a moment, desperate and furious and trapped. Lucius approved. This was the first moment Draco seemed to have realized what kind of obstacle he was up against, rather than carelessly trying to brush it aside. His hands clenched into fists and then opened.

“I will tell him in my own time, when I think he can understand,” Draco said temperately. “And why do you imagine that it’s necessary?”

“Because it is necessary to your happiness that he stay,” Lucius said. “And if he discovered it later—as he would—he will not. And I would rather not have my peace disrupted by the constant nagging worry that he may leave and that you may become incompetent as you were when your obsession was unfulfilled.”

Draco turned away from him, a flush mantling his cheeks and his ears and the back of his neck. Lucius watched him in silence, as strong and as pitiless as he always should have been, as was necessary to urge his son towards adulthood. He had not felt this way in almost ten years.

“Very well,” Draco said. “Did you have any wish to insult me further?”

Lucius found himself smiling with genuine amusement. “You have become unlearned in insults, if you think that was one,” he murmured. “Go.”

Draco snapped him a glance of resentment before he slid away. Lucius shook his head and prepared to retire to his rooms. He needed to look over the accounts of the Manor with great care, and then he needed to discipline the house-elves, who had given him burned toast this morning. Weak house-elves were no more acceptable than a weak son.

*

Harry looked up as Draco came back through the doors into the dining room. He leaped to his feet. Draco was pale and swaying as if he would collapse to the floor at any moment. Harry hastened around the table, took him into his arms, and used his wandless magic to cast a few surreptitious spells looking for the Dark Arts. If Lucius had used those on Draco, he would pay, whether he was Draco’s father and Harry’s host or not.

But Draco was clean, and he leaned against Harry with a desperate sob that Harry didn’t think any mere Dark spell could wring out of him. Bewildered, Harry smoothed a comforting hand up his spine and murmured nonsense words. Draco’s grip firmed on him, and he murmured something querulous. Harry made more meaningless hushing sounds.

“Do you need to leave?” he asked, when he thought that he could trust himself to speak. “You said that you wanted to go to the cliffs and look at the illusion of the Keller house again.” He did not want to go there, because that was one of the last places he had been with Draco before Draco took him to the land of pure magic and betrayed him, but he also knew that it made little difference. He needed to do what was best for Draco. At the moment, Draco didn’t look strong enough to make the suggestion on his own.

“There’s somewhere else we have to go first.” Draco’s fingers dug desperately into Harry’s arms and back. Harry restrained a yelp of pain and nodded.

“All right. Where?”

Draco shuddered and drew his head up. He was shaking as if he had plunged into a bath of ice water, but his face was set with determination, and Harry didn’t think he had ever seen Draco look finer.

“A room,” Draco said. “One I created, and one that you need to see in order to understand my obsession with you.” He smiled painfully. “My Chamber of Secrets, if you will.”

Harry didn’t know why the name of a place where he had triumphed over Voldemort—or part of Voldemort—should make his heart begin to beat as if it were a funeral drum.

But Draco wanted to go there, so they would go there. He managed a smile and swept his arm ahead of him. “Lead on.”

Chapter 33.