Chapter Four of 'Stepping Stones' (4/4)- The Fourth Step (2/2)

[lomonaaeren]

This chapter has been split into two parts due to length constraints. Don't start reading here.



Title: Stepping Stones (4/4)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Ginny, Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Sex (het and slash), infidelity, angst.
Rating: R
Summary: Harry agreed to marry Ginny because he honestly believed that he couldn’t fall in love with anyone. And then he found himself falling in love with Draco Malfoy. From there, the next steps may be inevitable.
Author’s Notes: This is the first part of a four-part story. I can’t say when the other parts will be posted, since the chapters will all be different lengths. The title comes from the steps along the way.

Chapter One.

The knock woke Harry at once, although it was a single, muffled sound. He had trained himself to sleep lightly not long after he began in the Auror program. Who knew when hearing one small sound could be the difference between life and death?

He sat up, reaching for his wand, and looked anxiously at Ginny. But she slept on, even when the knock repeated.

Harry didn’t think it was anything dangerous, by now, or the wards would have reacted. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, put on his glasses, flung on a robe that was lying over the back of the bedroom chair, and cautiously went down the stairs.

The ground floor of their house looked strange and dangerous in the moonlight, though Harry had seen it like that plenty of times before. He told himself it was the lingering remnants of his dream and his fear, and opened the door.

Draco stood there, back turned to Harry, arms wrapped around himself as though he were freezing, even though it was a summer night.

Harry knew the feeling.

Then Draco turned around to face him, and his eyes were so wide and face so white that Harry thought he must have come about something related to Auror business after all. He moved back, holding the door open, and whispered, “What’s wrong?”

Draco shook his head and remained in place, trembling now. “Not there,” he whispered. “I won’t enter the house where you live with your wife.”

Stung, Harry stepped out to join him and shut the door behind him. “What is your problem, then?” he asked in a voice that he kept low. He didn’t want to alert Ginny, but at the same time, he didn’t want to act as though he was hiding a dirty secret with Draco. He had nothing really to hide, now, not since he had made his decisions and done the best he could to live up to them. “Why come here if you hate this place?”

Draco remained silent for so long that Harry considered going back inside. And then Draco replied, in a flat voice that nevertheless thrummed along Harry’s nerves.

“I need you.”

Harry shut his eyes and told himself that this was not what he had wanted for so long, that it might meant any number of things. After some attempts that ended in dry chokes, he found his voice.

“You can learn to work with a new partner. Give yourself time. If the new one is someone who doesn’t like Death Eaters, then—”

“Don’t be an idiot.”

That sounded more like the Draco he knew, assertive and snappish. Harry looked again. Draco leaned towards him, one hand extended and laid flat as if he was touching an invisible wall that loomed between them. Well, no matter what he thought, the invisible wall had to stay there, Harry thought, staring back.

“If it was only the work,” Draco said, “the way I thought it was at first, I wouldn’t feel like I’m missing a limb. I wouldn’t be constantly turning to share a joke and realizing you’re not there. I wouldn’t lie awake at night tormenting myself with fantasies of what we could have and then crying out in misery when I come, and come back to reality.”

Harry’s lips were so dry that he had to push at them before he could speak. “But—but that doesn’t mean that you’re in love with me,” he said.

“What the fuck does it mean, then?” Draco’s voice was savage. He pushed forwards, and Harry had the sudden, terrifying vision of the invisible wall between them disappearing. He should move backwards, prove it was still there and would be no matter how Draco pushed, because the wall was made of his will. But he couldn’t force his legs to work as he listened to Draco’s tirade. “I’ve never been in love before, either! I don’t know how it works. I only know I want you, lust after you, struggle to stand on my own without you, like you, want to be with you. There’s no other name to give that, no other name I know, except love.”

Harry shut his eyes again, because that was the only way he could deny what was happening. “It sounds unhealthy to me,” he said, desperately clinging to some of the language Hermione had taught him. “Have you seen a Mind-Healer? You need to be complete in yourself, not dependent on me—”

“Fuck that.”

Draco covered the distance between them, as though the wall had ceased to exist. Harry opened his eyes and stared, because it should have held—

And then he realized, in the same moment as Draco’s hands closed on his arms and Draco leaned forwards to shove his tongue into Harry’s mouth, that the wall was made up of Draco’s fear, too. Without that, and because Harry’s will had wavered, there was nothing to hold him back.

And Draco’s fear was gone.

Harry moaned and lost himself for long minutes to the way Draco pushed at him, the shove of tongue and the grip of fingers digging into his arms and the taste that seemed driven straight into his nostrils and lips by the way Draco kissed him. He couldn’t describe that taste more accurately than “hot,” but that didn’t seem to be a problem. Nothing mattered but the clench and the push and the shove.

Then he felt the press of wood against his back, and wondered what it was, and remembered the doorframe.

That they stood kissing in front of his house, wide open in the night to anyone who wanted to see them, anyone who might be lurking around the Chosen One’s house in the hope of capturing some amazing shot.

The house he shared with Ginny.

Harry had to find the same strength he’d discovered in the office, buried deeper this time, to push Draco away. And it was even harder because Draco braced his feet and pinched cruelly rather than stop the kiss. Harry nearly gave in, luxuriating in the touch and the satisfaction of having who he wanted, at last.

But it wasn’t enough. It never would be, when he would ruin Ginny’s life right along with everything else.

So he pushed Draco away, and stood there panting, raising one hand. He thought he should wipe his lips, to express rejection. He thought he should do something to show Draco that he didn’t just accept what Draco had chosen to hand him.

He couldn’t do it. He was licking his lips too much, savoring the taste there, and Draco was looking at him with rage, scorn, something close to hatred, lust, and triumph.

“I knew it would be like that,” he whispered. “Or more intense. Like that.” He stepped forwards again, one hand curving as though he held an invisible wand. “What’s going to happen if I touch you again?”

“I don’t know.” Harry’s voice was so hoarse, so ragged and broken. No use pretending that he hadn’t participated. He had sinned against Ginny. The only thing he could do was make sure that it never happened again, by exiling Draco from his life.

“No, you don’t.” Draco’s expression shifted, becoming both softer and slyer. The hatred was gone, but the triumph burned so bright Harry cast an instinctive glance upwards, thinking it would awaken Ginny. “Because you’ve never been touched in that way in your life before, and neither have I. We both need this.”

Harry lifted both hands to form as much of a wall as he could, though the barriers felt shattered and he didn’t know that he would ever get them back in the same condition again. “I can’t do that. I married Ginny. She loves me. She depends on me. She would be devastated if I left.”

He had thought that argument would have one of two effects: either Draco would storm away in disgust or get so upset he couldn’t argue coherently. Instead, Draco’s smile sharpened with amusement, and he leaned one shoulder against the door. Harry’s breath quickened. He couldn’t help it, he thought defensively. Draco looked like the perfect mixture of the schoolboy Harry had known, the cold man he’d met that first day in the office, and the partner and friend he’d come to know.

Harry had sometimes had the impression before that Draco was fragmented, showing only those facets of his personality in the Auror office that would be acceptable there, suppressing his tendency to break the rules along with half the rest of himself. Now, for the first time, all the aspects of Draco Malfoy were whole, complete.

Integrated.

“And your absence does worse than that to me,” Draco said. “And from the weight you’ve lost since we parted, I dare say it does the same to you.”

Harry put one hand defensively over his belly. Weight? What was Draco talking about? He had noticed that his robes draped a little more loosely over him lately, but—

Then he saw the way Draco was moving closer, step by step and inch by inch, and recognized the words for the distraction technique they were. His throat throbbed and his cock, which he’d been able to ignore until that moment, was warm enough to almost compel him to squeeze it.

“Her happiness is built on a lie, anyway,” Draco breathed. “I’ll see that lie shattered and you where you belong.”

“I’ve lied so many times,” Harry said. “To you, to myself, to her. But this was the original lie. I married her because I didn’t think I could fall in love with anyone, that Voldemort had damaged me because I had a Horcrux in my head. She never would have married me without that. It was my own fault. Why can’t I preserve that one lie, the lie that makes her happy and my friends content?”

Draco paused, eyebrows rising. “I ought to know that you wouldn’t have married her for a selfish reason,” he murmured. “But that doesn’t answer your question, or mine. You did fall in love. You belong with me. Right now, three people are unhappy, since I can’t imagine that she hasn’t noticed something. Come with me, divorce her, and two people will be happy, and only one distressed.”

“A lot more than that,” Harry said bitterly. “The Weasleys will be upset. I’ll probably lose my best friends. I—”

“You’re not really afraid of that.”

Harry swallowed. He looked back at Draco’s face, proud and calm, and the bright eyes that never wavered. He wished for a dark moment that they had never been Auror partners, that Draco had never learned to read him so well.

“I—no,” he said.

“Then I don’t understand why you stay.” Draco ran one finger thoughtfully along his temple, tracing the line of an old scar that Harry had often followed with his eyes but never asked him about. “You’ve admitted that you’re not in love with her. You can’t care about hurting her more than you care about hurting me.” Harry had to close his eyes at the simple, proud assurance in Draco’s voice. “Why, then? What is it that you’re so determined to protect?”

“I made a stupid decision,” Harry said, feeling as if he were falling off a new cliff with every word he spoke. “It was ignorant and selfish, and I shouldn’t have made it. But the least I can do is stick by it now that I’ve made it, instead of changing my mind.”

“Oh, of course,” Draco said, a flare of contempt returning in his eyes. “I should have known. It’s your willingness to play noble martyr that keeps you here.”

“I don’t want to play that role,” Harry snapped. “It hurts, you arse.”

“I’m sure.” Draco looked him over in a leisurely fashion. “Merlin knows why I fell in love with you. Easy on the eyes, yes, but the masochistic streak is rather wide for my preferences.” Then he chuckled. “But you’ve taught me a new emotion. I feel sorry for your Weasley, since I’ll win in the end.”

“You can’t be sure of that,” Harry said, clutching with desperate hands to his wavering hope.

“Yes, I can,” Draco said. “I can see your eyes.” He turned to walk away.

“Where are you going?” Harry called, and cringed. His voice had come out as an abandoned wail.

Draco gave him one more leisurely look. “I’m not going to betray you to your wife,” he said calmly. “I think you should make this decision on your own. And your cowardice has to cease being an obstacle between us of your own free will, or there’s no reason to think that you won’t break and run from me, too.”

“You’re different,” Harry said, impulsively.

Stupidly.

Draco’s smile was slow and dazzling. Then he faded into the darkness, and left Harry with the ruins of his life falling around his ears.

*

He didn’t go back up to Ginny. He didn’t think that he could stand to lie in the bed beside her and know that he was pretending, that he would wake up to a lie in the morning and a lie in the evening and a lie the next night after that, when they were making love.

He sat in the drawing room instead, and lit a small fire, and eyed the bottle of Firewhisky Ron had got him for a “retirement” present. But then he decided that his thinking was muddled enough already, and turned back to look into the flames.

Even then, Harry really couldn’t think. His emotions were in too much of a knot. They tangled themselves around his heart and tugged in sixteen separate directions.

Fear. Despair. Anger; how could Draco ask him to hurt Ginny like this? It was only possible because Draco really didn’t care about Ginny, and Harry knew that, but it was still shitty, that he was willing to hurt Harry by asking him to leave his wife.

The wife you don’t love. The wife you lied to and tricked into marriage.

Harry put his head in his hands. He felt as if he was falling, and on the way down, he tried to grab all the justifications that he’d had for marrying Ginny in the first place.

She won’t be happy with anyone else. She said herself that she’d never fall in love with anyone else.

The merciless response came back, tolling like a bell from hollow walls. And she could be wrong about that, just as you were. You certainly weren’t called on to make her life a joke and your life a sacrifice to her happiness. She never asked for that. She would have laughed at you if you really told her what you were doing.

He fell, faster and faster.

I fit in so well with her, and with her family. Leaving would devastate everyone—her parents, my friends, her brothers, and her. How can I cause so much hurt for the sake of a happiness that might not last very long anyway? Draco’s prickly and offensive, difficult to get along with. I don’t know that I’ll spend the rest of my life with him. Most likely I’ll end up alone and feeling stupid because I made another sacrifice and it didn’t work.

The answer this time was like the thrust of a sword.

You’re causing more pain by keeping things this way, even if they don’t know it yet. Your marriage will fall apart someday. It won’t last beside the strength of your own longing, and Draco’s. It’s better to give in and at least not be cheating on Ginny with Draco, juggling your life with her and your life with him, and lying about that, too. You’ve never been unfaithful to her in body. Don’t start now.

Tumbling, and twisting, and it was as though a vast wind was blowing around Harry that no one but him would ever feel.

I do love Ginny. Isn’t that enough?

No pause this time between question and answer. Not enough for you. Not for her. Not for Draco. And you know that your cowardice has grown to the point that it’s interfering in your life. Do you want it to start causing them the kind of pain that it’s causing you?

Harry reached the bottom, and an enormous, silent crunch seemed to surge through his body, the knowledge of his own wrongdoing cramping his muscles, breaking his bones.

He had been wrong. He had been stupid. He had known it was a mistake when he made it, that marriage, and he went ahead and made it anyway.

There, at the bottom of the night, Harry drew in one painful breath, and then another.

He had been wrong. He had been stupid. He had known it was a mistake when he made it, that marriage, and he went ahead and made it anyway.

But that wasn’t the end. It couldn’t be. If it was, then the rest of his life would be only guilt and blame, and no atonement.

And he had to make up for his cowardice and lying in the only way he could: by gathering up his courage, and telling the truth.

Harry lifted his head. The fire had died away to embers. He hadn’t noticed when that happened. His breath honked in his lungs. He touched his cheek and came away with tears on his hand that he turned back and forth, staring at them in fascination by the weak light.

He’d always lied this way and tried to avoid the consequences of his mistakes because he was afraid those consequences would be too painful to bear. For a long time, it hadn’t seemed as though there was any reason to face up to them, anyway. Why? Everything was going along perfectly well. And then he had fallen in love with Draco, and things had changed, but part of him had still believed the old deception, that what could happen was worse than what was.

Harry smiled. Only now did he realize how very effectively he had lied to himself, along with everyone else.

He touched his face, finding that his nose wasn’t broken, his cheeks not shattered, his skull not staved in, despite the overwhelming, hot pressure of his guilt.

Things weren’t going to be easy. Never that. But they would be better than the way things were right now.

That was why he made the decision, in the end: not because he had realized on his own all the nobility and purity of principle that he’d been neglecting lately, not because he had gazed into Ginny’s eyes and realized he couldn’t deceive her any longer, but because he was more afraid of one type of pain than another.

But it was better than some other ways the consequences might have fallen out. It was better than Ginny catching him with love bites on his neck, or catching him and Draco fucking.

Harry took comfort in that, and in the fact that he still breathed despite the iron weight of the guilt, as the fire and the night both wound to an end.

*

“Ginny? We have to talk.”

She knew immediately that tone meant he was serious, and her eyes became quiet. She sat down in the chair in front of the fire, the one Harry had been sitting in when he fell, and stared at him.

Harry spent a minute watching her before he started talking. She had her hands clasped on her knees and was biting her lip to hide her apprehension. All those little gestures he knew, all those little gestures he had no right to. If Ginny needed to be in love with and marry someone, he should have left that position open to someone who would appreciate her. And she might do just fine on her own.

“I’ve been lying to you for a long time,” he said. “I think it’s time I told the truth.”

“You’re fucking someone else.” Ginny said it flatly, as if that would diminish her pain, but Harry saw the way her hands twisted together. “I should have known, from the way you were trying to avoid sex with me.”

Harry shook his head. “No,” he said. “But I am in love with someone else, and I’m not in love with you. I married you under false pretenses, to give you a happy life, and because I thought I was damaged and couldn’t really love anyone.”

Ginny sat up straight, her cheeks draining of color, her eyes so big that Harry winced and immediately wished he had broken the news another way. The problem was, he couldn’t think of any way to break it that wasn’t insensitive. It would have been a lot better if he could just have controlled his actions and feelings in the first place.

This isn’t the first time you’ve fucked up, he reminded himself, and met her eyes.

“That can’t be true,” Ginny said, but her voice had a pleading tone to it that Harry knew well. She would believe him when she heard the evidence, although she might not want to. “Is it?”

“It is,” Harry said. “I thought I was damaged by Voldemort, because he made me into a Horcrux.” Ginny nodded, lips firming as though she was facing a dangerous trek down a cliff. “I tried so hard to date people, to date women or men, to fantasize about people when I wanked, and still, nothing. So I just decided at the end that I wouldn’t ever fall in love, and then I heard you talking to Hermione about how I was your one person that you would feel comfortable loving or marrying. I wanted to give you what you wanted.”

“You had no right to use that knowledge against me that way,” Ginny whispered. She stood up, shaking, and clasped her hands together. Harry kept an eye on them. He wouldn’t blame her if she wanted to hex him, but he drew the line at things that could kill him. “No right.”

“I know,” Harry said. “I’m sorry.”

“That doesn’t make up for the fact that our marriage is a sham!” Ginny spun to face him, her hair flying. She looked ready to kill. Harry told himself that he wasn’t really in danger, that she had far more right to be upset than he did, and managed to continue sitting. “You never felt anything for me, did you?”

“The same kind of love I felt for Hermione,” Harry said. He kept his body relaxed, his face open, with an effort, because he had just remembered that Ginny had the same kind of Auror training that he did, the training needed to take down suspects and inflict injuries that would slow them but not kill them. “And concern that, if I could be doing something about your situation and didn’t, that would make me a criminal.”

“So you decided to do something far worse instead.” Ginny shut her eyes and snorted through her nose. “Do you deny that it was worse?” she added suddenly, opening one eye and focusing on Harry.

Harry shook his head.

Ginny gave him a look filled with fire and loathing, and Harry winced again, but sat there and took it. So far, he’d got off more lightly than he had any right to expect, and he would do what Ginny asked: explain the situation to her family, give her the house if she wanted it, give up some of his Galleons (though he really didn’t think Ginny was that petty). She might demand more than that, once he answered the question she saw gathering in his face.

“Who is it?” she demanded. “It has to be an Auror, because you wouldn’t have quit the Auror program without that motivation.” Her head moved in a tiny, irritated flick, and Harry knew it was at herself, for failing to put the pieces together.

“Draco,” Harry said.

He’d wondered if she would be surprised by the news or just nod grimly. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been expecting the second reaction until she staggered back, gripping at the couch, nearly shocked off her feet.

“That’s impossible,” she whispered. “You said that you tried dating men and they didn’t do anything for you.”

“Neither did women,” Harry said. “If you had been a man, and my friend, and in love with me, I would have settled down with you for the same wrong reasons. It really didn’t matter to me.”

“It must have,” Ginny said, her eyes and cheeks gathering furious heat again. “That’s why you couldn’t love me, isn’t it? Because you’re bent.” Harry flinched at the way she spoke that word, but he reminded himself it wasn’t personal, that she was angry at him and not at every man who might be gay.

“I don’t know,” he said instead. “Maybe that’s part of it. But Draco’s the only person I’ve ever been in love with, so I don’t know. I’m so sorry, Gin—”

“All this time,” Ginny said, “you would have been happier if I had blond hair, and hated you, and had a cock.”

“No,” Harry said. “That’s not what drew me to him. It’s just the way he trusts me, and the way I worked with him—”

This time, she slapped him. Harry ducked his head, clutching his cheek, and wondered why he’d thought it was a good idea to enumerate Draco’s attractive features in front of the wife he was leaving.

“I don’t want to hear it,” Ginny said coldly above him. “You’re going to get out of this house, and go off to your precious lover. I’ll tell my family, because you can’t be trusted with the truth, obviously. Don’t try to owl me, or firecall me, or do anything else until I contact you.”

Harry could feel the rising urge to justify himself, to argue. But once again, he really was getting off too lightly. He nodded, stood, and walked towards the door. He had nothing but the clothes he was wearing and his wand, but that was enough, considering who he was going towards.

I really have no right to feel so happy, he thought as he opened the door.

“Potter.”

Harry closed his eyes, feeling the shattered edges of his loss grind against him for the first time since his fall, and looked over his shoulder.

Ginny was standing in the middle of the drawing room, arms folded, glaring at him with eyes that had tears around the edges but were cold in the middle. She was fighting her grief with her rage so very hard, and Harry ached. He would have gone over and taken her in his arms a day ago—hell, half an hour ago.

My life is changed, but hers is destroyed.

“I’m never going to forgive you for this,” Ginny said, and her head dipped for a minute as if she was going to bow it, but she ended up staring at him again. “I want you to know that.”

“I’m not going to forgive myself, either,” Harry said. “Everything would have been easier if I’d faced up to the truth and had the courage of my convictions in the first place.”

“I hope I can fall in love with someone other than you,” Ginny said bluntly. “And I hope that you and that bastard don’t last.”

“Just blame me, not him,” Harry said. “I’m not going to blame you for anything you want to do to me short of actual assault. But if you hurt him, then I’ll make sure you can’t anymore.”

Ginny made a choked sound and turned away. “Get the fuck out of here,” she said, her voice filled with so many emotions Harry could have spent a lifetime naming them all.

Harry went.

*

His first stop was Gringotts, to pull out enough Galleons to live on for a few months. He didn’t know what would happen there, what Ginny would demand or do or ask. His vault was hers, too, under the marriage agreements, and it wasn’t impossible that she would empty it.

But it was hard to think about that, when he was thinking about the future instead.

You are selfish, he accused himself as he ducked through Diagon Alley and into the Leaky Cauldron to get some breakfast. Think about Ginny and feel sorry for what you did to her, rather than plotting what’s going to happen next.

He was wise enough about his former lies to know what would happen if he tried, though. He would invent excuses to think about Draco, excuses to pity himself, and excuses to be rude to Ginny when she contacted him. It was better to acknowledge that he was flawed and do what he could to make up for actual crimes, rather than trying to control his thoughts.

I can go to him now, Harry thought, and licked crumbs off his fingers as he finished a meat pie. Assuming that he wants to see me.

He did hesitate then, wondering if he should find a place to live first, or owl and see if Draco actually wanted to meet with him. But then he stood up, shook his head, and deposited a handful of Galleons on the table to pay for the meal.

I have to get used to acting bravely again, and making apologies rather than excuses.

*

The gates of Malfoy Manor were shut when Harry first Apparated onto the path that led to them, but by the time he looked up from dusting himself off, they had opened. Harry raised an eyebrow. The only way he knew of doing that would be to tune the wards to him.

He walked slowly down the path, watching the white peacocks. They fanned out their tails and released agitated cries when they saw him. Harry wondered what the Malfoys kept them for. Sure, they made noise, but there were more efficient alarm systems. He couldn’t imagine they added much to the decorative effect of the grounds, either, not with what they must produce in shit and scattered feathers.

Then he realized that was something he could ask Draco about, if he wanted to. He had that ability now, that permission. Harry smiled and quickened his pace.

Before he could knock at the door, a droopy-eared elf opened it and eyed him dubiously. Harry nodded to the little creature. “Could you tell Auror Malfoy that Harry Potter is here, please?” If Lucius was here at the moment, he thought that would clear up any confusion about which Malfoy he wanted.

“Harry?”

The voice made Harry shudder. He craned his neck over the elf’s head and saw Draco standing halfway down the stairs, foot apparently extended to move to the next step, his eyes wide with wonder.

“Hullo,” Harry said, and felt absurdly shy. He became aware that his clothes were rumpled, his hair unwashed, his mouth stinking of morning breath. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at his boots. “I left Ginny. I thought I’d come here.”

“Left her?” Draco utterly disregarded the house-elf as an audience, coming further down the stairs and watching Harry with greedy eyes, and so Harry did his best to straighten his shoulders and do the same thing. “Or left the house?”

“Left them both behind, probably for good, unless she doesn’t want the house in the divorce,” Harry said, and met his eyes squarely. “I chose you.”

He’d imagined Draco would fling himself into his arms, but he should have known better than that. Draco wasn’t so demonstrative (unless he was crazed with longing and the fury that came from Harry running away, it seemed). He took a deep, quiet breath now and unfolded his hands, as if he’d been holding something captive in them he finally let go.

Then he came down the stairs and reached for Harry’s arm. Harry walked past the house-elf into the maze of twisting corridors that seemed to take up the ground floor of Malfoy Manor and tried not to be overwhelmed by the marble and ivory and alabaster splendor of it all.

As it turned out, that was easy. He couldn’t spare much attention for those riches when Draco’s body pressed a blazing line against his side.

They ended up in a small room that might have been a library or a study or something in between. Two shelves of books stood against the wall furthest from the window, but comfortable islands of chairs and tables dotted the wide carpet leading towards the fireplace, and the windowsill was broad enough to serve as another seat. All of it was decorated in white and gold. Harry caught a brief glimpse of the gardens before Draco pushed him into a chair and stood over him, staring down.

“You came,” he whispered. “I never thought you would.”

Harry looked at him, and let his anger rise to the surface instead of suppressing it because he had no right to feel it over something Draco had done. He could do that now, he told himself. It wasn’t the most thrilling freedom he had experienced since confessing the truth to Ginny, but it was one of the best. “What was all that snogging and snarling about, then?” he asked. “If you thought you didn’t have a chance at getting me to wake up and see how much I was hurting everyone involved—”

“I never thought it would be like this,” Draco interrupted, with a shake of his head. “I thought you would sneak away from your wife at least once. I thought there would be a speech about how we couldn’t sleep together when your lips were still swollen from sucking my cock.” His eyes met Harry’s, direct and honest although his words were scathing. “I thought, in other words, that you’d continue to act exactly the way you have all along.”

Harry winced. He deserved that one. But he still shook his head. “No,” he said. “You woke me up. I went through—a revelation last night. I couldn’t make Ginny happy, and that would have been the only reason to stay married to her. And I can’t ignore being in love with you. If I could, I would probably still have tried it,” he added.

Draco scowled in turn. Well, it’s better to be honest than anything else right now, Harry thought, but he felt a tremor of fear. Ginny could be right. He and Draco might not last.

But he and Ginny never would have.

“I’m kind of amazed that you fell in love with me,” Harry said, and managed to laugh despite everything when Draco rolled his eyes. “Really, how did you? I was acting like a friend most of the time, and then like an arse the last few months.”

Draco sat down on the table right in front of Harry’s chair, his knee jogging. Harry wondered why he didn’t take a chair himself, and realized a moment later that the table was the closest piece of furniture to him. He smiled, swallowed, and waited.

“I could see the compassion you had for me shining through despite all that,” Draco said. “Once I got over thinking it was pity—which wasn’t easy, let me tell you—then I started to appreciate it. You made an honest effort to work with me, against factors greater than I knew about at the time. You defended your friends without acting like I was evil or stupid for criticizing them. You trusted me. You were a good Auror.” He abruptly turned his head and pinned Harry with a hard stare. “You are going back to that.”

“Probably,” Harry admitted. “Of course, they might not let partners be partners.” If that’s what we are.

“I know,” Draco said. He stood up. Harry waited for him to turn away or pace in a circle; he was moving as restlessly as though he intended to do that.

Instead, he bent down and kissed Harry again, more fiercely than he had when driving him into the wall outside Ginny’s house.

Harry groaned, “Fuck,” in return, which made Draco chuckle, and reached up to wrap his arms around Draco’s neck and drag him onto his lap. Draco gave in with a gasp, and then Harry was holding him in place and could snog him all he liked.

His tongue went deeper. His hands learned a million different textures of Draco’s hair, and then he forgot them all in the middle of Draco’s taste. He grunted and tried to get closer still, while Draco’s elbow nudged him in the gut and his knee caught Harry’s shoulder in odd places.

“Yes, this,” Draco panted when Harry released his mouth for a moment to find a more comfortable position. He didn’t explain what he meant, but he didn’t need to. He bit Harry’s chin, licked soothingly at the mark he’d left, and then pushed Harry against the back of the chair in return.

Harry didn’t think it was fair, how breathless he was getting or how hard. He reached under Draco’s shirt and pinched his nipple in retaliation.

Draco cried out in shock, and Harry pinched again. Then Draco imitated the tactic, and Harry groaned and sighed and whimpered, releasing all the sounds that he had been obliged to fake with Ginny.

I’m not thinking about her right now, Harry decided, and thought instead about the bluntness of Draco’s nail as it scraped over the edge of his nipple.

They got out of the chair and towards the bedroom somehow. They stumbled into walls on the way, bruising their elbows and heels and heads, but it didn’t matter. Harry could so easily dissolve pain into pleasure that even the teasing thoughts of Ginny melted away at last, and he was left with Draco’s restless hands and bright, frantic eyes.

Only when they fell onto a large bed with soft sheets, after a progression through doors and stairs that Harry couldn’t have traced by himself, did he realize that they hadn’t agreed on what to do, what would happen next. He pulled back a little from Draco’s mouth and hesitated, gasping in air as much as courage.

“Oh, for the love of—” Draco lifted himself to one elbow and managed to make it seem as if he was looming above Harry, even though he was just lying beside him. “If you tell me that you’re having an existential crisis about this now, after everything we’ve gone through to get here, I’m going to kick you out of bed.”

“You wouldn’t do that,” Harry said, grinning in spite of all the doubts. “You want me too much.”

“Then maybe I’ll Stun you and fuck you that way,” Draco retorted, blinking hard to get the sweat out of his eyes. “There are options, you know.”

Harry laughed and reached out to kiss him again. He had wanted to hear that voice, he thought, sounding exactly like that. He had wanted to hear Draco being upset and indignant and irreverent. He wanted to hear him sounding irritated and happy and tired, too, for the rest of his life.

I thought I would be with Ginny for the rest of my life.

Harry reminded himself that he was allowed to consider other things sometimes besides how badly he’d fucked up, and turned his head so that he could eye Draco more closely. “How about I fuck you first, and then you fuck me?”

“No,” Draco said. “The other way around. This is the first time I’ve done this.”

Harry blinked, started to open his mouth, and then remembered that he had been with men before, at least, when he was trying to figure out what was wrong with him. Besides, he had to admit to a stir of curiosity about what would happen if he let Draco inside him first. Not that it would make Draco perfect, or anything, but he wanted to know, with the same devouring, greedy eagerness that he’d felt since he’d come into the house today.

“All right,” he whispered, and lay back, pulling the rest of his clothes off. Draco knelt there for a moment, either transfixed by Harry’s naked skin or astonished that Harry had agreed to let him go first, and then shook his head and got up from the bed.

Harry looked around when he’d dropped all the clothes off the side of the bed, and blinked. The bedroom was—calmer than he’d thought it would be. Draco seemed to like landscape paintings, most of them showing tame green park-like settings, small single trees, and pools of water. The ceiling was curved and arched, along with the canopy of the bed, but not in any outrageous way. Here and there was a touch of gold or bronze or jade, but Draco seemed to have much better taste than Harry had known.

“Here,” Draco said, and clambered back into bed with him, carrying a little sealed pot of blue liquid. Harry picked up a dab on his fingers and wrinkled his nose at how cold it was. Draco apparently took the expression in another way and drew back, folding into himself like a crab.

“If you can’t do this,” he said, but Harry grabbed the back of his neck and bit his lips until he got the idea and rolled the lube between his fingers to warm it. Then he reached down, fingers skimming between Harry’s legs and back.

His other hand, with no warning whatsoever, closed over Harry’s cock.

“Fuck,” Harry said, and dug his heels into the bed, and thrust up. He had no idea what direction Draco was in; the room had started spinning lazily, and he wanted to keep his eyes closed, anyway. It seemed to be the only way to deal with the sharp-edged sensation flowing through his body, like warm wire.

“Yes,” Draco said, and he could have meant the word in any of several senses. He dug into Harry’s arse with his fingers, and Harry would have said something about roughness, but combined with the stroking on his cock it felt like the best thing in the world.

He forced his eyes open, because there were sights he didn’t want to miss no matter how good it felt, and saw Draco studying his erection with his forehead wrinkled as if he was afraid that he might touch it wrong. That was the same expression he used when he was worrying over the details of a case, and Harry remembered, as strongly as he’d ever remembered anything, the way Draco had felt pressed against him as they crouched under Disillusionment Charms in a dirty alley, waiting for their target to reveal himself.

“It’s all right,” Harry said.

Draco snatched his head up in one jerk and sniffed. “I know that,” he said, but Harry’d seen the flash of his eyes and knew how grateful he was for the reassurance. “Like this—let me—down, right?”

And then Harry was swept up and caught up in a new experience. Whatever Draco might think, this was as new for him as it was for Draco. Harry had always felt vaguely pleased whenever someone fucked him or fingered him, but it was missing that passion he saw in other people’s faces.

Now he felt it himself, and it was like being pressed against sweaty skin, caught up in a dream, with no way out, no way to draw back. He gasped and whimpered and cried, and that was before Draco had more than a single finger in him. When Draco started to ease his cock in, Harry realized, for the first time, that he could break apart, not just make someone else break, the way he had with Ginny.

He reached up and clutched Draco’s shoulders. Draco paused in slinging one of Harry’s legs around his waist and stroked his hand. “It’s all right,” he whispered.

Harry wondered when he’d started reassuring instead of challenging, but he was thinking more about the edge of the cock in him, the keen pleasure cutting at him, sawing at him, and the way that he could lose himself in just the way Draco’s eyelashes trembled and fluttered with the beginning of sensation.

“It’s so sharp,” Harry said helplessly. “Why is it so sharp?”

Draco caught his breath, and then triumph flushed his face. “Because that’s the way it’s supposed to be,” he said, sinking home in Harry and groaning and sighing his way around the words. Harry knew he must have paused at least once to speak the longer sentences, but that wasn’t the way it was in his memory, where the words and the wordless sounds mingled. “When you love someone.”

“Oh,” Harry said quietly, and then arched his back again as he realized, really realized, that Draco was inside him and there was no escape.

No moving away from this, no releasing himself from the clutch of Draco’s arms around him, tight and gripping, the clasp of someone else’s embrace, the bite of teeth here and there, the tangle and trap of Draco’s hair around his fingers, the wideness of his eyes and the helpless clucking of his tongue.

No moving away from the weight of his tongue inside his own mouth, and the openness of his arse, and the pleasure and the pain and the passion that swept through him and drowned him, again and again and again, as implacable as sickness.

No moving away from how he felt when Draco’s grip tightened and he hammered home, or when Draco froze and quivered, or from the orgasm that stalked him, stroked him, and shook him as if it would break his neck.

There was one way, Harry thought as he lay there in the aftermath, that sex with Ginny had been good for him, too. He’d been safe. He could watch Ginny’s face as she broke apart and enjoy physical pleasure without being caught up like this.

He was never going to be safe again.

“Stop thinking about her,” Draco ordered, and seized Harry’s chin to kiss him, drowning Harry’s denial that he hadn’t been, not really.

*

“There aren’t any words for what you did.”

Harry nodded. He was standing in the Burrow, in the middle of the day after he’d been accepted back into the Auror ranks. Ron was standing in front of him, his back turned as though he could make Harry cease to exist by not looking at him. His arms were folded so tightly they made his shoulders bulge.

Harry was getting used to that by now. Draco’s parents had decided that nothing remarkable had happened and their son was not dating Harry Potter, and looking in another direction that wouldn’t force them to meet Harry’s eyes was one of their favorite tactics.

“Ginny’s going to be years recovering,” Ron said, and stared at Harry hostilely over his shoulder. “And I don’t know if we can be friends anymore.”

“I know,” Harry said. “I’m sorry. I really would have liked it if things could have worked out differently.”

“They could have,” Ron said, turning around and laying his hands on the kitchen table as if he was going to rock it on its foundations. Harry would have preferred that. All his friends and all the Weasleys had been quietly disgusted and self-contained. He could have dealt with accusations accompanied with hexes. But they were on the reasonable side, and he wasn’t, and he had to keep remembering that. “Don’t you dare tell me that you couldn’t have resisted Malfoy’s seductions. I know the git, remember? He isn’t that attractive.”

Harry blinked a little. Then he said, “I fell in love with him. If I’d been honest and the kind of person I really thought I was, I would have told Ginny the minute I realized.”

“If you’d been honest and the kind of person I thought you were,” Ron said harshly, “you never would have married her in the first place.”

Harry stared at the floor. He didn’t understand his emotions. He thought either his guilt or his happiness should have been steady, but instead he went back and forth between self-scorn that left him feeling lacerated and joy that ripped pieces out of him. “I’m sorry.”

“That doesn’t make it better,” Ron said.

“I know,” Harry said. “Would anything?”

Ron did rock the table this time, and his face flushed. Harry was glad. He felt like he was dealing with his best mate again, not some polite stranger. “You wanker. If you think we’re going to start liking you again because you offer us money or—”

“That’s not what I meant,” Harry said. “I mean, does Ginny want anything specific in the divorce settlement? Or is there anything I could do that would make you lot more comfortable?” Ron stared at him, and Harry stared back, trying to drop whatever masks across his face were keeping Ron from seeing what he really felt. He was distressed. He was sorry. He wasn’t going to walk away from Draco, and he’d been wrong in the first place, but he wasn’t cheerful about his losing his friends and his wife and his adopted family, either.

Ron licked his lips. “Leave him.”

“No,” Harry said.

“You said anything,” Ron said, and folded his arms.

“It wouldn’t really solve the problem,” Harry said. “You know it wouldn’t. I would still be in love with him, and not with Ginny.”

“Why not?” Ron drew his wand. Harry kept his hands tucked down. He didn’t think Ron would really hurt him—maybe turn his tongue green or temporarily blind him, but no worse than that. Ron was just as hurt and bewildered and caught between difficult choices as Harry was, if not more. “Why couldn’t you fall in love with her?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “It was just—something that happened. And my falling in love with Malfoy is just something that happened. I think it’s best that I finally stopped lying. Ginny deserved better than everything I did to her, but she especially deserved better than any longer in a marriage that was a lie.”

Ron gripped his wand hard enough that Harry was afraid he would break his fingers. “You had some preparation. Her life just fell apart one day.”

“I know,” Harry said. He hadn’t seen or heard from Ginny since the day he’d walked away from her, a fortnight ago now. He thought maybe it would be best for both of them if they never did meet again. “I’m sorry.”

“You keep saying that.” Ron leaned his palm against his forehead. “And the answer is that I don’t know either, all right? I don’t know what Ginny wants yet, other than to be divorced as fast as possible. I don’t know what to make of you. Hermione doesn’t want to speak to you again. Mum wants to try. It’s just—it’s very complicated.”

“All right,” Harry said gently. He had come to this meeting today hoping to settle everything, but he realized now that that’d been stupid. If they could go along by little, small steps, one at a time, that would work best, and maybe they would someday get back where they needed to be. “I’ll wait for your next owl.”

Ron nodded at him, and then turned violently away and pretended to study a spiderweb on the windowsill. Harry walked out of the Burrow, into the light drizzle there, and then paused as he felt a hand touch the small of his back.

“I know you’re there, Draco,” he whispered. “Under that bloody Disillusionment Charm. I told you not to come.”

Draco moved up beside him, from the sound of the footsteps, and murmured, “He might have hurt you badly. I couldn’t allow that.”

“Ron wouldn’t do that,” Harry said, but he could already picture the doubtful look on Draco’s face, even without being able to see it. He shook his head and extended one arm. He couldn’t blame his friends for distrusting his lover or vice versa, not when he was the only link between them right now. “Come on, let’s go home.”

Draco’s fingers closed down tightly on Harry’s arm, the way they always did when Harry called Malfoy Manor home. And he was the one who Apparated them, the wetness on Harry’s face translating abruptly to the shaded dryness under the portico in front of the Manor. Draco dropped the Charm and turned to face him, holding out his arms.

Harry stepped forwards, deciding that Ron wasn’t the only one who’d needed the confirmation that he wouldn’t walk away from Draco, and then drowned him in a kiss. Or tried. He thought Draco was still better than that, since he’d felt passion long before Harry had.

But he was learning.

Draco’s taught me about courage, he thought as he pulled back and stared into Draco’s face. And honesty. And love. But he can’t teach me everything. I think I’ll always be learning.

*

That was the fourth step.

The End.