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lomonaaerenFourth part of a really, really long chapter. Don't start reading here.
Harry held up a hand without answering. The anger was slow to come, but not the magic, and if he couldn’t call up flames as devouring as the normal ones that resulted from his rage, he doubted Snape knew that. He held out his hand towards the portrait and watched as Snape stilled, his eyes fixed on the fire.
“You have made your point,” Snape said at last, though he apparently had to swallow bile twice before he could speak.
Harry lowered his hand. “I meant it,” he said, not dismissing the fire yet, because he wanted Snape to take him seriously. “I don’t want you to encourage anything that would be dangerous to him. I want—I want him safe. I want him happy. If I can achieve that only by walking away from him, then I will, but you haven’t proved that I can do that yet. In fact, you’re speaking as though I’m necessary to him.”
It was his turn to have words catch in his throat. He didn’t know what he felt at the moment, tossed back and forth between emotions and conclusions, reactions and facts. He wanted to stay with Draco. He didn’t want Draco in trouble. He still had trouble accepting the truth about himself. That truth seemed to be something Draco desired, or that made him desire Harry, so Harry wanted it to stay the same. He shook his head sharply and closed his fingers down, eliminating the fires.
“Trust that Draco will restrain himself,” Snape said then. He was no longer chewing on ashes, and when Harry looked up, he had come forwards to lean on the edge of the portrait frame. “He has played these games for far longer than you have. The Ministry woman might feel that she must fight for her life with you there, given that you wounded her. She will be less cautious around Draco, and he will get further with her.”
“To the point of killing her?” Harry murmured, but he no longer felt as much need to open the door and storm after Draco.
Snape shook his head. “He would not do such a thing when he understands the cost—and the cost will remain in his mind even when he is most angry.”
“More than I can do,” Harry had to admit.
Snape sneered, but seemed to consider the straight line too perfect to take advantage of. “In the end, you will be avenged, and Draco’s need to protect you be assuaged, and the Ministry woman under control.” He paused thoughtfully. “In truth, this may be the best thing that could have happened.” He ignored Harry’s snort. “I do not mean your enslavement. I mean the Ministry acting in such a way that Draco does not need to hide behind the polite walls of politics. Until this moment, all their offenses against you were too far in the past to merit revenge. Now, he can do something that should result in the Ministry reopening Hogwarts as you desire, or at least making a bargain with you.”
“He’s going to take Covington as a hostage, and then bargain with them?” Harry hazarded.
Snape laughed. Harry jumped. He hadn’t imagined that he would ever hear a full and free laugh like that from Snape’s throat, without a hint—well, all right, this had a hint—of the malice that Snape seemed to feel all the time.
“Watch and learn from a master,” Snape said, turning back to his cauldron. “I can see part of the reason why Draco likes having you. You will be a pleasure to educate.”
Harry made some weak protest, but he knew it was weak as he made it, and that Snape had talked him into waiting. Not because he was afraid, he knew; he could have handled Covington. But because he trusted Draco, and because he wanted to show that he trusted Draco.
He went back into the bedroom, to lessen the temptation to talk to Snape again and ruin the fragile accord that subsisted between them right now or touch the vials and destroy something, and found himself looking at the gloves that Draco had enchanted to bind his hands the other night. Harry flushed and turned his head away, but then looked back, his breath quickening.
It would do no harm if he—
Right.
He picked up the gloves and held them for a time, turning them over, then slid them onto his hands. The enchantment Draco had placed on them didn’t activate without his presence, but Harry could still feel the tight clutch of the leather, and had to close his eyes as a thrill passed through his blood.
This might—
This might be all right.
*
In the end, Draco found Covington by the simplest means. He only had to summon a house-elf and ask it where she was, promising that he had a healing potion to relieve the pain in her hand. The elf squeaked and scraped and bowed, and told him that she was in an office on the sixth floor that apparently served as her private infirmary.
Draco reached it and spent some time considering his potion, wondering if he should hide it or pretend that his lie to the elf was the truth. In the end, he shook his head and pushed the door open. He was too angry to practice effective subterfuge, and Covington would never trust a potion that he offered her now.
Covington was holding a mangled mess of a hand over a cauldron, wringing the skin around her fingers back and forth with her good hand, apparently trying to bleed it out so that she could use the blood to create a healing enchantment. Draco admired her steadiness of mind. He didn’t know many wizards who would automatically try to do something so time-consuming and magic-consuming when they were wounded.
He shut the door behind him hard enough that she would hear it. Covington started and turned towards him, half-crouched as if she intended to cast a spell—though since her wand was on the floor beside the cauldron, Draco wondered how she would have done that.
“Goodness, Mr. Malfoy,” she said, with a wide, false smile. “You startled me.”
It was the first time Draco could remember that she had neglected to call him Potions master Malfoy. He didn’t think it was deliberate, so much as the pain catching up with her and making her forget about details. He stared to walk forwards, one hand on the vial that he carried in his pocket.
“What’s the matter?” Covington straightened up and stared at him with a displeased expression, the kind that she might use on a house-elf who had interrupted her lunch. Her mangled hand remained above the cauldron. Draco had to admire her focus, too. She never lost sight of what was really important—in this case, healing herself.
“The problem,” Draco said, deciding that he could explain to her, since she wouldn’t have long to resist, “is that you tried to enslave my partner.” It was a simpler word than many that came to mind, and perhaps not quite true. But then again, he could say that Harry was his partner for the duration of the investigation into the riddles. He stopped in front of her and looked at the hand.
“He told you how this happened?” Covington’s voice held nothing but curiosity. Draco wondered if she didn’t know as much about the connection between him and Harry as she thought she did.
“Yes,” Draco said. “And you shouldn’t have done it.” He met her eyes, wanting to see the dread gathering there.
Covington pursed her lips as if she didn’t know what to make of that. “I certainly shouldn’t have done it,” she agreed, and gestured with her head to the dripping blood. “I learned a lesson about trying to use a potion on someone I am unprepared to fight. I remain uncertain—and curious—why it is your concern, however.”
Draco shook his head. He would have to speak some more of the truth to make her dread, he saw, and then he would have to move fast, since he couldn’t chance her getting away and using what she knew. “It is my concern because I have control of my partner for my own purposes. He trusts his health and safety to me, in some ways. And you have violated that. You tried to take control of him.”
Covington’s eyes, for a moment, reflected nothing but astonishment. Draco nodded. Yes, her knowledge had not extended as far as Harry had assumed it had. She knew something about Harry, but not how close they had become.
Then he saw the fear he had been longing for. Draco smiled and held up the vial. “If you swallow this,” he said, “then I don’t need to cause you more pain than Harry already has.”
“You’re mad,” Covington said. She took a step back and faced him squarely, but Draco wasn’t blind to the fact that the step had carried her closer to where her wand lay on the floor. “You must be. Did you really think that you would get away with threatening me?”
“A threat that comes true cannot be classified as a threat any longer,” Draco said. “And you have spent your time threatening both me and Harry since you came here.”
Covington shook her head. “This would mean open warfare with the Ministry,” she said. “And you’re not that stupid. They won’t stand for someone imprisoning, torturing, or poisoning their employees.” Again she moved a step backwards.
“I prefer the term coercing,” Draco said. “And it doesn’t matter what they call it, if they never find out about it.”
He sprang forwards while Covington was still trying to process his words and locked his arm into place around her throat. Covington raised her bloody hand to fend him off, and Draco closed his teeth on a hanging strip of skin and whipped his head sideways. She screamed in pain, taken off-guard by the jolt that went through her.
And, more to the point, opening her mouth as wide as it was capable of going. Draco had the cork out of the vial already, a deft sleight-of-hand trick that he had perfected to impress his clients. The potion passed into her throat, and Draco slammed his hand across her lips after it, to prevent her from spitting it back out.
From the furious look in her eyes, she was holding it in her mouth instead of swallowing, and she promptly began turning her head from side to side, seeking a way past the barrier of his palm. Draco had one free hand, though, and that hand nestled his wand against the bottom of her chin. He tapped it. “Glutio,” he said.
The simple spell, meant to help patients with sore throats swallow their medicinal potions, did its work. Covington’s muscles contracted, and the potion was gone. Draco took his hand away and stepped smoothly back. The noise of the struggle might bring someone, and he wanted to show that he hadn’t hurt her if they did show up.
Covington shivered and bowed her head as if huddling before a strong wind. Draco watched critically, nodding when he noted a slight green undertinge to her skin. That was a sign of the potion working, and he hadn’t wanted to test it until he saw the signs begin to appear.
“Lift your left arm,” he said.
Covington’s left arm shot above her head. She stared at him in horror and dawning revulsion, and Draco smiled sweetly back. He hadn’t perfected the sentient potion that would let him command the bodies of hundreds yet, but this was the next-best thing. It would operate when the person who had swallowed it was away from him, too, and it was undetectable to anyone who might run the standard tests—which definitely included the Potions staff of the Ministry, not known for innovation.
“You won’t speak to anyone of this,” he said. “Your throat closes if you try. You will hurl yourself down the nearest flight of stairs if you try to write something. You needn’t stare at me as if I won’t do it,” he added scornfully, because Covington’s eyes were fixed on him in something that might have been shock and was certainly horror. “I will. I have no compunctions about hurting someone who hurt Harry.”
Covington shook her head. Draco wondered if he should allow her to speak, but he couldn’t see what it would gain to keep her silent at this point. When someone else was watching, yes. “You may speak,” he said.
“You—must have a desire that I can give you,” Covington said. Although she had to feel the alien thrum of the potion traveling through her by now, she still managed to smile. “We understand each other, I hope? We have both been Slytherins. You must have desires that your Potter can’t grant you.”
Draco studied her, not sure whether he was more surprised or impressed that she was still trying tricks at this late time. “You have nothing I want,” he said. “You might have granted me something when Harry was still uninjured, but you didn’t think of it then, and you’ll give me anything I want now.”
“The Ministry will not trust me if I start advocating for you,” Covington said. Her voice remained clear and quiet. Only her wildly darting eyes let Draco see how much she was affected at the moment. “You still won’t get what you want. On the other hand, release me from this slavery, and I might be…grateful.”
Draco laughed outright then. “You won’t be,” he said. “I know your kind. You’ll smile and thank me prettily while you’re in front of me, and then try to stab me the moment my back is turned. You’ll be too enraged by what I did to you to agree to a reasonable bargain. Come, come, don’t look like that,” he added, cruelly enjoying himself, when Covington stared at him in dismay only until her face smoothed itself out under his instructions. “I’m someone like that myself. That’s how I understand you so well.”
Covington looked as if she would have liked to cry out, but Draco clenched her throat down briskly on that, and stood there studying her for some time. Then he began to give her her commands, one by one, all of them so clearly worded that there was no way she could get around them—unless she wanted to commit suicide. Draco had to admit that he wasn’t able to guard against all the contingencies of that.
“You will not speak a word of this to anyone without your throat closing. You will not hint about it to anyone, or your throat will close. You will walk at once to the nearest staircase and fall down it with no attempt to save yourself if you write anything. You cannot gesture the truth without losing feeling in your hands. You will resist mightily if someone attempts to interrogate you with Legilimency. If someone asks you why you are so agreeable and accommodating now, you will answer that House loyalty to Slytherin compels you.”
“I could lose my position with the Ministry,” Covington whispered. “What use would I be to you then?”
“Absolutely none,” Draco said, and gave her a smile that made her flinch. “Unless as someone to punish. So you should make sure that you don’t lose that position. It’s the only thing sparing your life at the moment.”
Covington closed her eyes. The sweat stood out on her forehead, thick as blood.
Draco tapped his fingers thoughtfully against his lips, and then said, “You’ll remember that I’m in your veins now, I trust? Are there any other chains that I need to set on you?” He would be reluctant to give her extra commands. He wanted her working for their interests with some faint hope that she could free herself, not bound in utter desperation. She might decide to betray them, or try it, because one way or the other she would be free from the slavery, and Harry and Draco might have to work with someone who would be even harder to deal with.
Whimpering, Covington shut her eyes more tightly and shook her head.
“Good,” Draco said, and paused again, until she opened her eyes and looked at him. Draco clucked his tongue. “I take no pleasure in doing this. I wouldn’t have done it at all if you hadn’t threatened Harry. Keep that in mind, if you want to take revenge. I have potions that can do worse things than this.”
Covington’s face said she didn’t believe him, because she couldn’t imagine what would be worse than this. Draco laughed. “I’m a Potions master,” he said. “Think about that, and think about all the ways that nightmares can come true.”
She turned her head away from him, shuddering. Draco nodded. “Remember,” he said. “There need be no long-lasting consequences from this if you can control yourself. When Hogwarts is open again, and Slytherin House restored to its proper place, then I’ll retract most of my restraints, and you can go back to your normal life.”
“The potion will leave my blood?” Covington whispered.
“Oh, that?” Draco asked casually, as if he hadn’t anticipated the question. “Oh, no. It will stay.”
Covington stared at him in sick horror. Draco knew what she was thinking: that she would have to live with the fear for the rest of her life that he’d be bored someday and decide to take control again.
Draco let his masks drop for a moment, and all his hatred and contempt burn in his eyes. This was what he did to people who preyed on those he loved.
Covington hid from that fury. Draco nodded, murmured, “So glad we understand each other,” and left.
His fury cooled to a slow burn as he did so, and it occurred to him that he and Harry should be able to work on the riddle with few distractions now.
*
“Nothing makes sense.”
Harry winced in sympathy and touched Draco’s back cautiously. Draco had acted simultaneously self-satisfied and easily ruffled since he came back from punishing Covington, and the only thing he had told Harry for certain was that she wouldn’t bother them again. Harry hadn’t even offered congratulations, because Draco pinned him with a piercing stare each time he opened his mouth. Perhaps it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about. Perhaps he was feeling a bit ashamed of himself, if he had used the violent or coercive means that Harry suspected him of using.
But he leaned back into Harry’s palm and sighed out what seemed to be most of his tension, so at least that part had to be all right.
“Why doesn’t it make sense?” Harry asked, when a few minutes had passed with him touching Draco and Draco staring at the list of suggestions in front of him with his eyes half-lidded.
“The riddle seems to be talking about a place that rises,” Draco murmured. “That ought to make it a place easily visible on Hogwarts’s grounds. But it can’t be a place inside the school, or someone would have stumbled over it by now. Yet all the candidates on the grounds are objectionable for a number of reasons.” He turned abruptly to Harry. “Have you thought of anything else that could have mattered to Dumbledore?”
“No,” Harry said. “I didn’t know his past all that well. I learned more about Tom Riddle—Voldemort—during my sixth year, when I was studying with him, than I did about him.” He hesitated, then added, “I learned more about him after his death. But I can’t think of anything that would be relevant here.”
“Really?” Draco’s eyes were more piercing than they had been when Harry tried to speak to him earlier.
Harry nodded firmly. “Most of the things I learned about took place far away from Hogwarts, anyway. I don’t see how they could contribute to riddles or memories on the grounds.”
“Hmmm.” Draco swept his gaze back to the list of trees and sites in the Forbidden Forest in front of him and frowned again.
Harry cocked his head. “Why couldn’t it be somewhere inside the school? The fireplace in the Slytherin common room was inside the school, but that doesn’t mean anyone stumbled over it before now. This could be another half-deserted place. Remember that the school’s been shut up for six years, without any kids running through it.”
Draco made a restless motion with one hand, which looked an awful lot like a dismissive motion. Harry tried to hold his temper and wait for the reply. “The only possible candidates are the towers. We’ve been up to Ravenclaw Tower. I think we would have found something there. And Covington has told me that the Ministry investigated the other Towers, because they wanted to add safety wards to them. They didn’t find anything.”
“Do you know how closely they investigated them?” Harry asked. “The only wards I saw on the Towers were ones that people could have put up there flying on brooms. If no one’s been up there on foot…”
Draco went still. Then he turned around and said, “Harry, that’s an idea I never would have had.”
Harry flushed with pleasure, knowing as he did so that the pleasure he took from Draco’s compliment was far more than he would have taken from it if someone else had given it. He shook off the thought and said, “Well, do we know? We’d have to look at them all, I think, and go over every inch of them with a wand, but it’s a start.”
Draco nodded and stood up. “And I think we should begin with the North Tower. The reference to eternity could easily be to the Divination classes that were held there.” He made a face. “Not that it pleases me to go through the ruins of Professor Trelawney’s old office, but it’s the most likely candidate I can think of. Plenty of people at the Ministry, my father told me, thought Divination was a waste of time. It’s probable that they haven’t bothered to clear out the classrooms and clean the Tower itself, since they aren’t planning to offer Divination.”
Harry took a deep breath. He felt dizzy, as if he were standing on a mountain with wind blowing around him, but that wouldn’t get him out of saying what he had to say.
“Draco.”
At the sound of his voice, Draco paused again and turned around with a curious frown. “Harry, is something wrong? You sound that way.”
“I don’t think it’s the North Tower.” Harry wanted to put his arms around Draco, but once again, he wasn’t sure how Draco would receive that gesture. Better to stay where he was for right now and make his case. “There’s no reason for it to be dark in memory, or for the riddle to talk about fire above and fire below. I—think it’s the Astronomy Tower. The stars are the fire above. The fire below would come from the models of the stars that Sinistra kept in her offices, or maybe it was just a generic reference to the fireplaces. But—you know why it would be dark in memory as well as I do.”
For a moment, Draco’s face was grey, and Harry wondered whether it was really only fear of talking to Snape again, and shame, that had kept him away from Hogwarts for this long. Then he shook his head and seemed to return to himself with a snap. “No,” he said. “That can’t be it. The riddles were set up before Dumbledore’s death. They had to be. There would be no reason for the Tower to be ‘dark in memory’ then.”
“Ah, but there would be.”
Harry started. He had been so focused on Draco that he hadn’t realized Dumbledore had come into Snape’s portrait frame. Snape was standing off to the side, looking rather put out. Dumbledore leaned forwards, hands all but braced on the frame, and studied Harry steadily.
“I can remember that I—he—brooded over Grindelwald and what had to be done to stop him on that tower,” Dumbledore said. He caught Harry’s eye. Harry nodded silently back. He was going to keep what he’d found out about Dumbledore and Grindelwald to himself, at least until a reason came along to reveal it.
Draco, Harry saw, had noticed the exchange and seemed to be frowning about it. Knowing him, he would demand an explanation sooner rather than later. Harry tried to keep from shaking his head ruefully and focused on Dumbledore instead.
“And there is one more way that the riddles could have been changed,” Dumbledore continued. “My former self trusted Severus’s former self absolutely. Severus could have altered the last riddle before he died.”
“Yes, he could have,” said Snape from the portrait behind Dumbledore, his voice so flat that Harry had no idea what he was feeling. He wasn’t sure it would have helped much more if he could have seen his face. Snape was in one of his uncompromising moods, the same way he’d been when Harry had tried to question him two years ago. “But I have no memory of it, if he did.”
Dumbledore reached back and made a patting motion with his hand. For some reason, his eyes were fixed on Harry. Perhaps he just wants to make sure I really won’t betray his secrets, Harry thought. “I know, Severus. I simply wanted to alert them to the possibility.”
“He was on the Tower, too,” Draco said, in a dreamy voice that made Harry turn to him at once. Draco’s face was pasty. He looked more like the boy Harry had known than he had since he’d been that boy. “But he couldn’t know that I would be the one uncovering these riddles. Weren’t these riddles made to be solvable by anyone?”
He was appealing to Dumbledore, Harry saw, his eyes beseeching him to say that the Astronomy Tower couldn’t be the answer because he was so desperate not to go up there again. Dumbledore bowed his head for a moment and closed his eyes before he nodded. He saw Draco’s pain and was trying his best to acknowledge it without hurting him too badly all over again, Harry thought.
“Yes,” Snape’s voice said. “But my former self was paranoid enough to have decided that the riddle was too easy. Or perhaps he intended you as his choice to solve it all along. That would be like him.” There was pride in his voice now, for some reason, Harry thought.
Draco stood there without speaking, gaze turned so inwards that Harry wasn’t sure if he would notice if Harry waved a hand in front of his face. Not that Harry was about to try. He was fairly certain Draco wouldn’t find that funny.
“I’ll try,” Draco whispered. “I will. But I can’t promise that I won’t collapse.”
“I’ll be there,” Harry said. “You won’t collapse, because I won’t let you.”
Draco started. I think he forgot about me, Harry thought as he turned around again. That should probably be insulting, but he can make up for it if he remembers me now and takes advantage of the offer of support.
“You don’t understand,” Draco whispered in a hiss that seemed to start from the depths of his chest. “You can’t—you don’t know what that night means to me.”
“I know,” Harry said. He would have said that the memory wasn’t all that prominent in Draco’s recollections of the school if someone had asked, because he hadn’t seen him mention it or react to it so far. And the memory of the battle on the Astronomy Tower had been slotted in, for Harry, along with all his other horrible memories, something that he remembered in nightmares, but that had to wait its turn alongside the images of Sirius’s death, his mother’s death, Cedric’s body, Voldemort coming back to life, and Hermione’s screams as she was tortured. “But I can be there for you anyway.”
Draco studied him further, bending in as though he wanted to emphasize the difference in their heights. Since that difference was less than nothing, Harry glared back staunchly, until Draco whispered, “You can’t. You’re not strong enough.”
“Are you about to start that nonsense of thinking of someone who likes to be bound in bed isn’t as strong as his partner?” Harry demanded in a carrying voice. He didn’t care if Dumbledore and Snape overheard, since they already knew most of the details of his and Draco’s sex life. “If you are, then I’m walking out the door.”
Draco crossed his arms. “It has nothing to do with that,” he said, though the faint flush along his cheekbones declared he was lying. “It simply means—you have so many issues to deal with, including your anger. What happens if you get angry on the Tower? Then I’m left trying to soothe you and myself at the same time.”
“There’s no reason for me to get angry there, unless someone tries to harm you,” Harry said. “And I’ve had a lot of practice in holding back anger for a short time, until I can get to someone who can help me.”
Draco’s eyes flashed, even with everything else going on. “I had better be the only one who helps you with that, in the future,” he said.
Harry licked his lips and tried to ignore the melting sensation in his stomach. It wasn’t excitement, or at least he didn’t think so. “I know,” he said. “You will be. I was saying?”
Draco nodded curt permission to go on.
“My anger can express itself in magic, or in intense physical activity,” Harry said. “And I think there’s likely to be more than enough physical activity for me, given that we’ll face another fight to the death on the Tower.”
Draco lit up. “That’s true. We will.”
“You like the idea of that?” Harry asked, and then realized he was being stupid. Draco would probably welcome anything that could create a new memory, and thus a new association, with the Tower in his mind at this point.
“Yes,” Draco said, and no more. He turned back to the portrait frame. “You’re sure that Professor Snape could have changed the riddle after you set it, Headmaster?”
“I trusted him absolutely,” Dumbledore said softly. Harry tried not to think of the basis of that trust, of the fact that it played on Snape’s guilt over failing his mother. “I’m sure.”
Draco nodded and turned away. Harry followed him, only pausing to make sure that he had his wand before they left the room.
Draco strode along the corridor with his jaw firm and his eyes shining in a fashion that promised horrible consequences for whoever got in his way. Harry followed him for a few minutes, but when Draco turned in a direction that wasn’t going to lead them to the hospital wing or Ron and Hermione’s rooms, Harry coughed. “Aren’t we going to bring Ron and Hermione in on this?” he asked. “We could probably use their help against whatever’s living in the Tower.”
“We’ll be able to handle it,” Draco said, without looking around. If anything, his stride grew longer.
“We don’t know that for certain.” Harry tried to keep his voice calm. Sometimes, Draco got on his nerves something awful, although Harry hoped those incidents wouldn’t be as frequent now that they were sleeping together. “It would make the most sense to bring them along. Do you want me to—”
Draco swung around on one heel. Harry blinked. He had to admit that he hadn’t realized Draco’s eyes could glare that fiercely. Draco would have made a good Auror, he thought inanely, and then shook his head to get rid of the fantasy.
“How much more plainly do I have to say this?” Draco’s lips were slightly parted, his hands clenched into each other. “I don’t want someone around who I don’t trust, when I’m going back into a place that means as much to me as this one does.”
Harry winced. He should have been able to guess that for himself. “Oh,” he said quietly. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” Draco faced up the corridor again, his voice calming into a curious flatness, as if yelling at Harry had used up some of the nervous energy. “But that means that Weasley and Granger will just have to live without the glory of joining us.” He hesitated so short a time that Harry wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t started watching Draco a lot more closely than before. “Unless you want them to be involved, of course. Unless you’d rather join them for the evening than me.”
Harry frowned at the back of Draco’s head. This mattered to Draco, and it mattered to him, but he wished he had better words than he did. As it was, Draco was likely to accuse him of sounding sentimental or false.
But while Harry couldn’t say yet if he loved Draco, not for certain, or even liked him very much outside of bed, he knew what he said next was true.
“There’s no one I would rather fight beside than you.”
Draco half-lowered his head, and his eyes fluttered once, seen from profile. It was a minute hesitation, smaller than the one before his mocking words, but it was enough for Harry, who followed him in contented silence.
And who saw that Draco hesitated one more time, to swallow, before he took the stairs to the Astronomy Tower.
*
Draco was climbing through stone and shadow. He knew that. Harry’s idea that no one had been up to the Astronomy Tower in some time was correct. They passed through a set of wards that were meant to keep students away—Harry destroyed them with scornful ease—and dust flew around them with every step. Draco was aware of all those things, and more alert than that, waiting for the moment when the death trap promised by the last riddle would explode around them.
But he was also sixteen years old, and racing up to the Tower with his heart in his throat, caught between excitement and terror. It had worked! He had let them in! But now, he had to go up here and hope that the last part of the plan was in place. He had to kill Dumbledore. He had to do it, this time, and all the nerves that he could feel trembling in the backs of his hands would just have to shut up.
Draco could remember being that young. He had never understood the people who said they couldn’t. Of course, most of those people didn’t have fear and shame acting like a permanent fire to sear the sensation into their heads.
He came out on top of the Tower, in two years, in two times, and turned his head from side to side. He had thought for sure that the ambush would happen on the steps of the Tower, and why not? It was only sense that the creatures or the wards that were part of the trap would attack them in a confined space that would make it harder for them to fight. Severus and Dumbledore wouldn’t have wanted just anyone surviving a fight to the death and getting hold of the last keyword.
Instead, though, they stood in the open air without a sign of anyone or anything to oppose them. Draco frowned and glanced at his feet, prepared to see the stones cracking apart in lines of fire. Then he looked up again, in case a predatory bird stooped from above.
Nothing.
“I don’t understand,” he said slowly, and turned back to Harry. “Perhaps you’re wrong and this isn’t the right Tower after all?” Joy leaped up in his heart at that possibility, hotter and more important than what he had felt when he was a boy.
Harry was gone. Instead, Draco found himself staring into the eyes of a sixteen-year-old, his blond hair slicked back from his forehead, his hand trembling on the wand.
*
It was as though time had turned backwards and Harry was once more on the Astronomy Tower as he had been all those years ago, standing silent and mute and invisible under Dumbledore’s spells.
Exactly like. He could see Draco in front of him as he was, with his eyes wide and his skin waxen but his strength and his age showing—and as he had been, with his skin so pale that he looked as if he were going to fall over at any moment and permanent lines of stress tied together around his mouth.
Between them both stood Dumbledore, his expression so sad that Harry felt a ripple pass through his heart, stirring it as nothing but anger and his feelings for Draco had stirred it in years. This was the real man, not the portrait. Harry wondered how much of the animosity he felt for the portrait came about because that shadow of Dumbledore would never be able to replace the real thing.
Harry reached out, and his hands passed through both Dracos. He shouted, but neither one heard him.
They saw each other, though. Harry couldn’t doubt that, because the teenage Draco let his eyes dart away from Dumbledore and to that older version of himself with uneasy fascination. Then he backed up and lifted his wand, as though he thought he could prevent a vision from attacking him that way.
“D-don’t come near me!” His voice cracked when he stuttered, and Harry could see the utter humiliation beaming in his eyes. The sudden pink on his cheeks probably came more from embarrassment than anything else. “I’m warning you! I’ll cast a curse, and I know Dark Arts!”
Harry darted a glance at Dumbledore to see how he would respond to that. He looked a little more grieved, but otherwise he only stood there, watching and listening.
Harry reached out again. If he was seeing this vision, there had to be some way he could affect it, wasn’t there? And it wasn’t as if they were in a Pensieve.
Unless…
Harry had paused to think about that, and almost missed what Draco—his Draco—responded to the boy they had both known. Draco’s voice was soft and hoarse, and full of something that Harry thought was wonder and yearning. “I’m you. I’ve lived through what you’ve lived through right now. It’s going to be all right.”
The teenager stared at him. Then he shook his head. “You’re something that he sent, to test me!” he said. “Or you’re something that the old man is trying to do, to distract me.” He turned away and focused on Dumbledore again. “Why did you bring him here? Send him away again. You can’t trick me.”
Harry had to close his eyes at the pride in his voice. He was sure that he hadn’t sounded much different when he was a boy, but it was still painful to realize that someone could be so young.
Or do I only think that because I know what’s going to happen next?
“This was not my doing,” Dumbledore said, voice older than Harry had thought it would be. Of course, how much did he remember of that night on the Tower, seven years ago, compared to Draco, who seemed to remember everything? Harry was beginning to think that they stood in Draco’s memory, and that was the reason for the perfect detail on the people and the stones of the Tower. “This is a doing of the future or the past.” He shut his eyes and sighed, though his lips wore a faint smile. “Or a doing of dreams. I cannot be sure, and that makes it hard to concentrate.”
The teenage Draco looked at him angrily, as though to say that everyone should be able to concentrate when it came to something about him. Harry remembered that expression, and that attitude. Fuck, Draco still had it. He had thought that he should be different from Harry’s other lovers, although all of them had been content with a quick fuck or the money that Harry could give them, or both.
“It has to be yours,” the boy said, but less sure now. He turned to Draco now and made a rude noise. “You can’t be my future, can you? You don’t look strong enough.”
Draco shook his head and seemed to come to life. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice soft but controlled, rather than breaking out furiously the way Harry thought he would if he was faced with a past self this ignorant. “I’m your future the best way it could turn out, without being dead or in exile or in Azkaban.”
The boy’s face lost all its color again. “No,” he whispered. “No, he’s going to win, I know he is.”
No need to translate the “he,” Harry thought, and he could only imagine that that must be even more true for Draco, who would remember every sensation of this moment with clear and painful intensity.
“He’s not,” Draco said. His voice was calm and quiet, cool, the same tone that he used sometimes to give Harry orders. He must hope that he could reach his past self this way, Harry thought, and then wondered why. If they were in the middle of a memory, then Draco wouldn’t be able to change anything. “You always knew that. I know the secret moments of doubt that you’ve had in the middle of the night, doubt that you’re doing the right thing, for yourself or your family, even if you obey his crazy demands. I am you. All your thoughts are mine. Why shouldn’t I know this?”
“Shut up!” the boy screamed, and swept his wand up and down. “Just shut up!”
Dumbledore coughed and said something that Harry lost in the sound of the teenage Draco casting curses. His Draco darted around them and then got behind the boy, pinning his arms to his sides and saying something low and urgent into his ear.
Harry couldn’t stand it anymore. It had been bad enough to be imprisoned once outside this event, when he couldn’t help but thought he might have been able to if Dumbledore had let him intervene. He wasn’t going to let it happen again. He began to circle the edges of the Tower, looking for the passage into the memory that Draco had found.
*
“Listen, you little shit,” Draco said. He knew it would get the boy’s attention, because no one except the Dark Lord and other Death Eaters had ever spoken to him like that at that age, and even they usually used more deferential language, concerned about offending Lucius through his son. “You have no idea what you’re doing. This is a mistake that you’ll regret for the rest of your life. Professor Snape wasn’t trying to steal your glory when he told you that you couldn’t do this alone; he was telling you the simple truth, and offering his help. Put the wand down, and everything can be different.”
He was barely aware of what he was saying; the words leaped through his lips and hurried into his younger self’s ears without anything like a plan. He had to say them. His mind was spinning with memories overlaid by the new reality that seemed to be taking place around him, and if he had a chance to make a difference and change some of the consequences that stemmed from that night, he would.
Of course, he might cease to exist if his past self really did act differently. Or he might lose his relationship with Harry, or his Potions mastery, or the knowledge that he had gained from Severus, or anything else beautiful and pleasant that carried him through his days. One of the lessons that his parents had made sure to teach him young was that anything beautiful and pleasant had a price that must be paid for it, and goodness and evil—in the sense of personal benefits—were linked together in a thousand ways. You had to suffer through education and the torments of homework and boredom and repetition in order to learn how to cast powerful spells. You had to listen to people you didn’t like or respect or pay your dues until you arrived in a position where they would have to listen to you. You had to spend money and time making potential allies trust you. There was always time to be paid, if nothing else, and the list of prices went on. Draco knew that he might be condemning himself, and perhaps Harry and Dumbledore, to a price that he couldn’t bear.
But he couldn’t help himself. The instinct was too strong, to intervene and tell himself how it was and how it should be and offer the benefit of superior experience to his younger self. To take the shortcut, if he found it.
That was the Slytherin way.
The boy struggled against him, all angles and elbows and legs and ribs. Draco remembered himself that way, and he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. He tightened his arms instead, and kept whispering. He no longer heard what he said; he wasn’t sure that he would have wanted to. The important thing was that he kept his voice running, and the boy struggling against him was, for the moment, still in his grasp. He still had the potential to change things, somehow. Draco had to believe that, or he would have given up and simply sat down and laughed in despair.
Someone’s hands touched him.
Draco started and reared back, intent on throwing off the unknown attacker much as he was intent on throwing Draco off. And sure enough, the boy squirmed free a moment later and faced him, panting, eyes so brilliant and angry that Draco winced in spite of himself at what looked out of them.
Then he realized that Harry was standing beside him—Harry, whom he had somehow missed at the start of the memory, or the vision, or the dream, or whatever it was that surrounded them here. Draco knew that he wanted it to be time-travel, but he also knew that it was more than likely not to be.
“Harry?” he whispered. “Where did you come from?”
“From right over there,” Harry said, nodding at what looked to be the empty stones of the Tower. Hadn’t Dumbledore been there a moment ago? Draco wondered, but he didn’t have the time to look, because he couldn’t turn away from the brilliant conflagration of Harry’s eyes. “I was locked outside the memory at first, and then I went back down the stairs, came up them, and thought of the exact same thing you were probably thinking about, that night. I think the trap Dumbledore and Snape set was triggered to go off when that happened.”
Draco shook his head. He was still upset and shaken, and he still didn’t understand most of the thoughts that wanted to rush through his head. “I don’t—why the fuck would they want to create a trap like this if they knew the chances were excellent that someone they trusted would walk through it?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. He kept his voice low and soothing and didn’t turn to look at the boy Draco could feel watching them with wide eyes. “But perhaps they couldn’t be sure of the kind of people we would be when we came back. Perhaps they had to be sure, before they started to let us into the secrets.”
Draco was about to protest that that was ridiculous, but he stopped with a grimace. Yes, he could see Severus being paranoid enough for that, and Dumbledore thinking of it as one of his insane “tests.” Draco had no idea what Dumbledore would still be testing them for, when he was on the brink of death in this memory or knew that he was going to die soon as he was constructing the riddles, but that seemed to be his way.
“Yes,” Draco said. “Fine. All right.” He gestured at the teenager who had an odd expression on his face, anger mixed with complex sadness and frustration. Draco wondered why, but had the feeling that he wouldn’t like the answer that he could feel rising in the back of his mind, and didn’t pursue it. “But what are we supposed to do about him? Why are we here—now—at this time, whenever we are? How are we supposed to break through this and get the keyword to the wards?”
“What are you talking about?” the boy demanded, his eyes darting back and forth between them. “Why is Potter with you?”
“I’m his friend,” Harry said, his hand pressing down hard on Draco’s shoulder for a moment, as though he wanted to make sure that Draco didn’t break away from him and go to embrace the boy.
“And lover,” Draco said. He wouldn’t let Harry deny that to anyone, not even a vision. He rested his hand on Harry’s and glared challengingly at his teenage self.
The older—younger—Draco blinked and stared at the ground. Draco shook his head. The complexities of time-travel had always made him dizzy. He hadn’t even done well at the Arithmancy equations concerning it.
“Oh,” the boy whispered, or Draco thought he whispered. Harry had started talking, and in the wash of those words, he lost the quieter sound.
“I don’t know if we’re supposed to break through the memory in any way,” Harry said. “I think we’re here for a different purpose. I was outside the memory at first, and couldn’t break through until I stepped in a certain place on the stairs and thought as hard as I could about what you would be feeling when you walked up here.” His arms tightened around Draco. “I think we’re here to help you get over some of the trauma that you’re feeling.”
Draco stared at him, then snorted. Harry could come up with some fairly ridiculous theories, but not even Draco had envisioned anything that ridiculous. “No. That can’t be.”
“Why not?” Harry turned and paced behind Draco, making Draco tense automatically. He let his hands pass in soothing motions up and down Draco’s spine, and Draco relaxed despite himself, and despite the audience of one teenage boy and one dying old man, both of whom he kept an eye on. “If they cared enough to make sure that only we—or you—could gain access to this secret, then why wouldn’t they care enough to try and bring you past this moment? Heal you of something that even you admit still affects you?”
“Still affects you?” The younger Draco’s voice was intolerably high-pitched when one was trying to think, Draco thought. He shut his eyes, but he could still hear the voice, persisting in shrill tones. “What’s going to happen?”
“Many things,” said the vision of Dumbledore.
Draco resisted the temptation to tell the old man to shut up. It wouldn’t help anything. He swallowed and said, “But I don’t know the way to get over it. What am I supposed to do?” And now he was whining, he thought in disgust a moment later. He bit his lip sharply and forced himself to stand there, quiet, while Harry thought.
“Well,” Harry said. “I could think of a few things. First, what was it about this night that traumatized you the most? I know that one of the reasons it took me so long to get over the fight with Ron and Hermione was that they’d been everything to me, once. There was no one else in my life who mattered so much. Was there something like that here? Was Snape—Professor Snape—so important to you that you couldn’t take what you thought of as his betrayal?”
Draco let out a sharp laugh, and then controlled himself. “What do you mean, Potter?” It was easy to slip into calling Harry that again when he was faced with this very physical reminder of his past. “The whole situation was the traumatizing thing. I was supposed to kill. I couldn’t kill. I saw someone who had been Headmaster of the school I was in for the past six years die, and I knew that other people were fighting, and possibly dying, down in the school because of me. And then we had to run, and I knew that the Dark Lord would be less than pleased with me because Severus had done my task instead. The whole night is a long miasma of anger and betrayal and fear.”
Harry wrapped his arms around Draco, living, warm, solid arms that Draco could hold to. It took a long moment for him to find the necessary courage, but in the end, he leaned back and let himself be supported. Harry kissed the skin under his ear.
Draco knew his younger self would be staring in horror and hatred and—yes, he could acknowledge this, remembering some of the thoughts that had risen to the surface of his mind when he looked at Harry—perhaps envy. He had never thought specifically of being Harry’s lover at that point, that he could remember, but he had certainly wanted to be closer to him than he was, and was jealous of those who were.
“Then start thinking of ways that would let you live with yourself,” Harry murmured. “Do you consider yourself a coward for running, the way I screamed at Snape that he was?”
Draco shook his head. “Running was the only reasonable thing to do in that situation. I was more scared of what I was running to than what I was running from.”
Harry nodded against his cheek. Draco felt the crisp rustle of his hair, and concentrated on that instead of his memories. “What about killing? Were you disappointed that you couldn’t bring yourself to kill Dumbledore?”
Draco licked his lips. He knew the truth, and he knew what he wanted to say. The truth might make Harry think him a horrible enough person that he wouldn’t be interested in talking to Draco again.
Then he told himself not to be ridiculous. He had already forced his way into Harry’s confidence and his bed. If Harry backed away from him because of Gryffindor morality, then Draco would simply win him back once more. And after the way he had been willing to curse his best friends, Draco no longer thought him as delicate as he had once been.
“I was disappointed at the time,” he said quietly. “And I still am, I suppose. I wanted to show that I had what it took to be taken seriously by the other Death Eaters. Someone who couldn’t cast the Killing Curse mattered less than some of the vampires the Dark Lord was recruiting as allies.”
“I didn’t cast the Killing Curse, either,” Harry said at once, his voice low but comforting—all the more comforting because it was hard, factual, as though he didn’t really care about Draco’s feelings. “Remember? I defeated the Dark Lord with a simple spell that a second-year could have used. That a second-year did use, more than once,” he added, probably thinking about the way he had used it.
“But you didn’t have to,” Draco said. “The Elder Wand—things worked out the way they did in a strange fashion. Without that coincidence, you would have had to use it.”
“I know,” Harry said. “But I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that, because that’s not what happened.” His arms tightened. “And you should know that the reason that situation occurred is because of this night on the Tower. I said that much when I was dancing around the Great Hall with Voldemort, remember? You made my victory possible.”
Warmth hit Draco and spread all around the center of his chest like a breaking wave. He reached up a hand that trembled and settled it on Harry’s arm. He had never thought about it—he had never thought about it that way.
Even my thoughts are stuttering.
He had been angry enough at himself over this night for the reasons he had stated to Harry, but also because it had seemed such a waste. What did he gain from confronting Dumbledore before the others arrived? Nothing, either the glory of the kill or credit for courage, not when his arm had lowered.
But to know that he had made Harry’s victory possible, that he had contributed to saving people, to doing something grand that people still praised Harry for…
Draco bowed his head and smiled slightly.
“You have my smile,” the teenager in front of him said.
Draco blinked and looked up. Strangely, he had almost forgotten the boy over the last few moments. He had been absorbed in hearing that he was important to Harry, and from there, his mind had started to spread in other, new directions. Such as that this new claim he had on Harry, this new importance he had registered in Harry’s life, wasn’t so new after all, and he had the right to say that he had always been there.
Their connection ran deep, and Draco never needed to feel like an alien or an intruder, the way that Weasley and Granger’s sometimes hostile gazes said they considered him.
“Is this what’s coming?” the boy Draco whispered, his gaze locked on their joined hands. Draco imagined, with a sudden flash of empathy, what he would have felt if someone had told him that Potter was willing to be intimate with a different version of himself—just not Draco as he currently was. “Really? Can you promise me that?”
“I don’t know,” Draco said gently. “I don’t know that your future is going to be the same as mine.” He didn’t know if the boy was real, come to that, if he was back in the past or only in the falsely constructed memory that Harry seemed to think Dumbledore and Severus would have left as the bait for a trap. “But you could make a future that’s even better, in your own way, if you just try.”
Harry nodded encouragingly past his shoulder. “You have to be willing to try,” he echoed.
Draco arched his head back and kissed Harry. Those words had undone him. Harry had no reason to remember this younger Draco fondly; the words he had spoken to comfort and soothe Draco just now were the words to an acknowledged lover. They didn’t know if this Draco was real. But he had tried, anyway, with compassion that was one of the reasons Draco felt bound to him.
In love with him?
Who knows, yet.
The Tower appeared to pivot around them. Draco felt as though the stones were melting beneath his feet and then reforming themselves in interlocked patterns. He would have stumbled or at least sought support, but Harry was there, and he had one hand locked into place beneath Draco’s hip and one arm around his shoulders.
The night tingled with a thousand stars. Draco opened his eyes and saw the teenage Draco of the past lowering his wand, his face filled with uncertainty.
He also caught a glimpse—though it didn’t matter as much to him as the former image did—of Dumbledore staring at them with deep delight and satisfaction, nodding his head.
Part Five.
Harry held up a hand without answering. The anger was slow to come, but not the magic, and if he couldn’t call up flames as devouring as the normal ones that resulted from his rage, he doubted Snape knew that. He held out his hand towards the portrait and watched as Snape stilled, his eyes fixed on the fire.
“You have made your point,” Snape said at last, though he apparently had to swallow bile twice before he could speak.
Harry lowered his hand. “I meant it,” he said, not dismissing the fire yet, because he wanted Snape to take him seriously. “I don’t want you to encourage anything that would be dangerous to him. I want—I want him safe. I want him happy. If I can achieve that only by walking away from him, then I will, but you haven’t proved that I can do that yet. In fact, you’re speaking as though I’m necessary to him.”
It was his turn to have words catch in his throat. He didn’t know what he felt at the moment, tossed back and forth between emotions and conclusions, reactions and facts. He wanted to stay with Draco. He didn’t want Draco in trouble. He still had trouble accepting the truth about himself. That truth seemed to be something Draco desired, or that made him desire Harry, so Harry wanted it to stay the same. He shook his head sharply and closed his fingers down, eliminating the fires.
“Trust that Draco will restrain himself,” Snape said then. He was no longer chewing on ashes, and when Harry looked up, he had come forwards to lean on the edge of the portrait frame. “He has played these games for far longer than you have. The Ministry woman might feel that she must fight for her life with you there, given that you wounded her. She will be less cautious around Draco, and he will get further with her.”
“To the point of killing her?” Harry murmured, but he no longer felt as much need to open the door and storm after Draco.
Snape shook his head. “He would not do such a thing when he understands the cost—and the cost will remain in his mind even when he is most angry.”
“More than I can do,” Harry had to admit.
Snape sneered, but seemed to consider the straight line too perfect to take advantage of. “In the end, you will be avenged, and Draco’s need to protect you be assuaged, and the Ministry woman under control.” He paused thoughtfully. “In truth, this may be the best thing that could have happened.” He ignored Harry’s snort. “I do not mean your enslavement. I mean the Ministry acting in such a way that Draco does not need to hide behind the polite walls of politics. Until this moment, all their offenses against you were too far in the past to merit revenge. Now, he can do something that should result in the Ministry reopening Hogwarts as you desire, or at least making a bargain with you.”
“He’s going to take Covington as a hostage, and then bargain with them?” Harry hazarded.
Snape laughed. Harry jumped. He hadn’t imagined that he would ever hear a full and free laugh like that from Snape’s throat, without a hint—well, all right, this had a hint—of the malice that Snape seemed to feel all the time.
“Watch and learn from a master,” Snape said, turning back to his cauldron. “I can see part of the reason why Draco likes having you. You will be a pleasure to educate.”
Harry made some weak protest, but he knew it was weak as he made it, and that Snape had talked him into waiting. Not because he was afraid, he knew; he could have handled Covington. But because he trusted Draco, and because he wanted to show that he trusted Draco.
He went back into the bedroom, to lessen the temptation to talk to Snape again and ruin the fragile accord that subsisted between them right now or touch the vials and destroy something, and found himself looking at the gloves that Draco had enchanted to bind his hands the other night. Harry flushed and turned his head away, but then looked back, his breath quickening.
It would do no harm if he—
Right.
He picked up the gloves and held them for a time, turning them over, then slid them onto his hands. The enchantment Draco had placed on them didn’t activate without his presence, but Harry could still feel the tight clutch of the leather, and had to close his eyes as a thrill passed through his blood.
This might—
This might be all right.
*
In the end, Draco found Covington by the simplest means. He only had to summon a house-elf and ask it where she was, promising that he had a healing potion to relieve the pain in her hand. The elf squeaked and scraped and bowed, and told him that she was in an office on the sixth floor that apparently served as her private infirmary.
Draco reached it and spent some time considering his potion, wondering if he should hide it or pretend that his lie to the elf was the truth. In the end, he shook his head and pushed the door open. He was too angry to practice effective subterfuge, and Covington would never trust a potion that he offered her now.
Covington was holding a mangled mess of a hand over a cauldron, wringing the skin around her fingers back and forth with her good hand, apparently trying to bleed it out so that she could use the blood to create a healing enchantment. Draco admired her steadiness of mind. He didn’t know many wizards who would automatically try to do something so time-consuming and magic-consuming when they were wounded.
He shut the door behind him hard enough that she would hear it. Covington started and turned towards him, half-crouched as if she intended to cast a spell—though since her wand was on the floor beside the cauldron, Draco wondered how she would have done that.
“Goodness, Mr. Malfoy,” she said, with a wide, false smile. “You startled me.”
It was the first time Draco could remember that she had neglected to call him Potions master Malfoy. He didn’t think it was deliberate, so much as the pain catching up with her and making her forget about details. He stared to walk forwards, one hand on the vial that he carried in his pocket.
“What’s the matter?” Covington straightened up and stared at him with a displeased expression, the kind that she might use on a house-elf who had interrupted her lunch. Her mangled hand remained above the cauldron. Draco had to admire her focus, too. She never lost sight of what was really important—in this case, healing herself.
“The problem,” Draco said, deciding that he could explain to her, since she wouldn’t have long to resist, “is that you tried to enslave my partner.” It was a simpler word than many that came to mind, and perhaps not quite true. But then again, he could say that Harry was his partner for the duration of the investigation into the riddles. He stopped in front of her and looked at the hand.
“He told you how this happened?” Covington’s voice held nothing but curiosity. Draco wondered if she didn’t know as much about the connection between him and Harry as she thought she did.
“Yes,” Draco said. “And you shouldn’t have done it.” He met her eyes, wanting to see the dread gathering there.
Covington pursed her lips as if she didn’t know what to make of that. “I certainly shouldn’t have done it,” she agreed, and gestured with her head to the dripping blood. “I learned a lesson about trying to use a potion on someone I am unprepared to fight. I remain uncertain—and curious—why it is your concern, however.”
Draco shook his head. He would have to speak some more of the truth to make her dread, he saw, and then he would have to move fast, since he couldn’t chance her getting away and using what she knew. “It is my concern because I have control of my partner for my own purposes. He trusts his health and safety to me, in some ways. And you have violated that. You tried to take control of him.”
Covington’s eyes, for a moment, reflected nothing but astonishment. Draco nodded. Yes, her knowledge had not extended as far as Harry had assumed it had. She knew something about Harry, but not how close they had become.
Then he saw the fear he had been longing for. Draco smiled and held up the vial. “If you swallow this,” he said, “then I don’t need to cause you more pain than Harry already has.”
“You’re mad,” Covington said. She took a step back and faced him squarely, but Draco wasn’t blind to the fact that the step had carried her closer to where her wand lay on the floor. “You must be. Did you really think that you would get away with threatening me?”
“A threat that comes true cannot be classified as a threat any longer,” Draco said. “And you have spent your time threatening both me and Harry since you came here.”
Covington shook her head. “This would mean open warfare with the Ministry,” she said. “And you’re not that stupid. They won’t stand for someone imprisoning, torturing, or poisoning their employees.” Again she moved a step backwards.
“I prefer the term coercing,” Draco said. “And it doesn’t matter what they call it, if they never find out about it.”
He sprang forwards while Covington was still trying to process his words and locked his arm into place around her throat. Covington raised her bloody hand to fend him off, and Draco closed his teeth on a hanging strip of skin and whipped his head sideways. She screamed in pain, taken off-guard by the jolt that went through her.
And, more to the point, opening her mouth as wide as it was capable of going. Draco had the cork out of the vial already, a deft sleight-of-hand trick that he had perfected to impress his clients. The potion passed into her throat, and Draco slammed his hand across her lips after it, to prevent her from spitting it back out.
From the furious look in her eyes, she was holding it in her mouth instead of swallowing, and she promptly began turning her head from side to side, seeking a way past the barrier of his palm. Draco had one free hand, though, and that hand nestled his wand against the bottom of her chin. He tapped it. “Glutio,” he said.
The simple spell, meant to help patients with sore throats swallow their medicinal potions, did its work. Covington’s muscles contracted, and the potion was gone. Draco took his hand away and stepped smoothly back. The noise of the struggle might bring someone, and he wanted to show that he hadn’t hurt her if they did show up.
Covington shivered and bowed her head as if huddling before a strong wind. Draco watched critically, nodding when he noted a slight green undertinge to her skin. That was a sign of the potion working, and he hadn’t wanted to test it until he saw the signs begin to appear.
“Lift your left arm,” he said.
Covington’s left arm shot above her head. She stared at him in horror and dawning revulsion, and Draco smiled sweetly back. He hadn’t perfected the sentient potion that would let him command the bodies of hundreds yet, but this was the next-best thing. It would operate when the person who had swallowed it was away from him, too, and it was undetectable to anyone who might run the standard tests—which definitely included the Potions staff of the Ministry, not known for innovation.
“You won’t speak to anyone of this,” he said. “Your throat closes if you try. You will hurl yourself down the nearest flight of stairs if you try to write something. You needn’t stare at me as if I won’t do it,” he added scornfully, because Covington’s eyes were fixed on him in something that might have been shock and was certainly horror. “I will. I have no compunctions about hurting someone who hurt Harry.”
Covington shook her head. Draco wondered if he should allow her to speak, but he couldn’t see what it would gain to keep her silent at this point. When someone else was watching, yes. “You may speak,” he said.
“You—must have a desire that I can give you,” Covington said. Although she had to feel the alien thrum of the potion traveling through her by now, she still managed to smile. “We understand each other, I hope? We have both been Slytherins. You must have desires that your Potter can’t grant you.”
Draco studied her, not sure whether he was more surprised or impressed that she was still trying tricks at this late time. “You have nothing I want,” he said. “You might have granted me something when Harry was still uninjured, but you didn’t think of it then, and you’ll give me anything I want now.”
“The Ministry will not trust me if I start advocating for you,” Covington said. Her voice remained clear and quiet. Only her wildly darting eyes let Draco see how much she was affected at the moment. “You still won’t get what you want. On the other hand, release me from this slavery, and I might be…grateful.”
Draco laughed outright then. “You won’t be,” he said. “I know your kind. You’ll smile and thank me prettily while you’re in front of me, and then try to stab me the moment my back is turned. You’ll be too enraged by what I did to you to agree to a reasonable bargain. Come, come, don’t look like that,” he added, cruelly enjoying himself, when Covington stared at him in dismay only until her face smoothed itself out under his instructions. “I’m someone like that myself. That’s how I understand you so well.”
Covington looked as if she would have liked to cry out, but Draco clenched her throat down briskly on that, and stood there studying her for some time. Then he began to give her her commands, one by one, all of them so clearly worded that there was no way she could get around them—unless she wanted to commit suicide. Draco had to admit that he wasn’t able to guard against all the contingencies of that.
“You will not speak a word of this to anyone without your throat closing. You will not hint about it to anyone, or your throat will close. You will walk at once to the nearest staircase and fall down it with no attempt to save yourself if you write anything. You cannot gesture the truth without losing feeling in your hands. You will resist mightily if someone attempts to interrogate you with Legilimency. If someone asks you why you are so agreeable and accommodating now, you will answer that House loyalty to Slytherin compels you.”
“I could lose my position with the Ministry,” Covington whispered. “What use would I be to you then?”
“Absolutely none,” Draco said, and gave her a smile that made her flinch. “Unless as someone to punish. So you should make sure that you don’t lose that position. It’s the only thing sparing your life at the moment.”
Covington closed her eyes. The sweat stood out on her forehead, thick as blood.
Draco tapped his fingers thoughtfully against his lips, and then said, “You’ll remember that I’m in your veins now, I trust? Are there any other chains that I need to set on you?” He would be reluctant to give her extra commands. He wanted her working for their interests with some faint hope that she could free herself, not bound in utter desperation. She might decide to betray them, or try it, because one way or the other she would be free from the slavery, and Harry and Draco might have to work with someone who would be even harder to deal with.
Whimpering, Covington shut her eyes more tightly and shook her head.
“Good,” Draco said, and paused again, until she opened her eyes and looked at him. Draco clucked his tongue. “I take no pleasure in doing this. I wouldn’t have done it at all if you hadn’t threatened Harry. Keep that in mind, if you want to take revenge. I have potions that can do worse things than this.”
Covington’s face said she didn’t believe him, because she couldn’t imagine what would be worse than this. Draco laughed. “I’m a Potions master,” he said. “Think about that, and think about all the ways that nightmares can come true.”
She turned her head away from him, shuddering. Draco nodded. “Remember,” he said. “There need be no long-lasting consequences from this if you can control yourself. When Hogwarts is open again, and Slytherin House restored to its proper place, then I’ll retract most of my restraints, and you can go back to your normal life.”
“The potion will leave my blood?” Covington whispered.
“Oh, that?” Draco asked casually, as if he hadn’t anticipated the question. “Oh, no. It will stay.”
Covington stared at him in sick horror. Draco knew what she was thinking: that she would have to live with the fear for the rest of her life that he’d be bored someday and decide to take control again.
Draco let his masks drop for a moment, and all his hatred and contempt burn in his eyes. This was what he did to people who preyed on those he loved.
Covington hid from that fury. Draco nodded, murmured, “So glad we understand each other,” and left.
His fury cooled to a slow burn as he did so, and it occurred to him that he and Harry should be able to work on the riddle with few distractions now.
*
“Nothing makes sense.”
Harry winced in sympathy and touched Draco’s back cautiously. Draco had acted simultaneously self-satisfied and easily ruffled since he came back from punishing Covington, and the only thing he had told Harry for certain was that she wouldn’t bother them again. Harry hadn’t even offered congratulations, because Draco pinned him with a piercing stare each time he opened his mouth. Perhaps it wasn’t something he wanted to talk about. Perhaps he was feeling a bit ashamed of himself, if he had used the violent or coercive means that Harry suspected him of using.
But he leaned back into Harry’s palm and sighed out what seemed to be most of his tension, so at least that part had to be all right.
“Why doesn’t it make sense?” Harry asked, when a few minutes had passed with him touching Draco and Draco staring at the list of suggestions in front of him with his eyes half-lidded.
“The riddle seems to be talking about a place that rises,” Draco murmured. “That ought to make it a place easily visible on Hogwarts’s grounds. But it can’t be a place inside the school, or someone would have stumbled over it by now. Yet all the candidates on the grounds are objectionable for a number of reasons.” He turned abruptly to Harry. “Have you thought of anything else that could have mattered to Dumbledore?”
“No,” Harry said. “I didn’t know his past all that well. I learned more about Tom Riddle—Voldemort—during my sixth year, when I was studying with him, than I did about him.” He hesitated, then added, “I learned more about him after his death. But I can’t think of anything that would be relevant here.”
“Really?” Draco’s eyes were more piercing than they had been when Harry tried to speak to him earlier.
Harry nodded firmly. “Most of the things I learned about took place far away from Hogwarts, anyway. I don’t see how they could contribute to riddles or memories on the grounds.”
“Hmmm.” Draco swept his gaze back to the list of trees and sites in the Forbidden Forest in front of him and frowned again.
Harry cocked his head. “Why couldn’t it be somewhere inside the school? The fireplace in the Slytherin common room was inside the school, but that doesn’t mean anyone stumbled over it before now. This could be another half-deserted place. Remember that the school’s been shut up for six years, without any kids running through it.”
Draco made a restless motion with one hand, which looked an awful lot like a dismissive motion. Harry tried to hold his temper and wait for the reply. “The only possible candidates are the towers. We’ve been up to Ravenclaw Tower. I think we would have found something there. And Covington has told me that the Ministry investigated the other Towers, because they wanted to add safety wards to them. They didn’t find anything.”
“Do you know how closely they investigated them?” Harry asked. “The only wards I saw on the Towers were ones that people could have put up there flying on brooms. If no one’s been up there on foot…”
Draco went still. Then he turned around and said, “Harry, that’s an idea I never would have had.”
Harry flushed with pleasure, knowing as he did so that the pleasure he took from Draco’s compliment was far more than he would have taken from it if someone else had given it. He shook off the thought and said, “Well, do we know? We’d have to look at them all, I think, and go over every inch of them with a wand, but it’s a start.”
Draco nodded and stood up. “And I think we should begin with the North Tower. The reference to eternity could easily be to the Divination classes that were held there.” He made a face. “Not that it pleases me to go through the ruins of Professor Trelawney’s old office, but it’s the most likely candidate I can think of. Plenty of people at the Ministry, my father told me, thought Divination was a waste of time. It’s probable that they haven’t bothered to clear out the classrooms and clean the Tower itself, since they aren’t planning to offer Divination.”
Harry took a deep breath. He felt dizzy, as if he were standing on a mountain with wind blowing around him, but that wouldn’t get him out of saying what he had to say.
“Draco.”
At the sound of his voice, Draco paused again and turned around with a curious frown. “Harry, is something wrong? You sound that way.”
“I don’t think it’s the North Tower.” Harry wanted to put his arms around Draco, but once again, he wasn’t sure how Draco would receive that gesture. Better to stay where he was for right now and make his case. “There’s no reason for it to be dark in memory, or for the riddle to talk about fire above and fire below. I—think it’s the Astronomy Tower. The stars are the fire above. The fire below would come from the models of the stars that Sinistra kept in her offices, or maybe it was just a generic reference to the fireplaces. But—you know why it would be dark in memory as well as I do.”
For a moment, Draco’s face was grey, and Harry wondered whether it was really only fear of talking to Snape again, and shame, that had kept him away from Hogwarts for this long. Then he shook his head and seemed to return to himself with a snap. “No,” he said. “That can’t be it. The riddles were set up before Dumbledore’s death. They had to be. There would be no reason for the Tower to be ‘dark in memory’ then.”
“Ah, but there would be.”
Harry started. He had been so focused on Draco that he hadn’t realized Dumbledore had come into Snape’s portrait frame. Snape was standing off to the side, looking rather put out. Dumbledore leaned forwards, hands all but braced on the frame, and studied Harry steadily.
“I can remember that I—he—brooded over Grindelwald and what had to be done to stop him on that tower,” Dumbledore said. He caught Harry’s eye. Harry nodded silently back. He was going to keep what he’d found out about Dumbledore and Grindelwald to himself, at least until a reason came along to reveal it.
Draco, Harry saw, had noticed the exchange and seemed to be frowning about it. Knowing him, he would demand an explanation sooner rather than later. Harry tried to keep from shaking his head ruefully and focused on Dumbledore instead.
“And there is one more way that the riddles could have been changed,” Dumbledore continued. “My former self trusted Severus’s former self absolutely. Severus could have altered the last riddle before he died.”
“Yes, he could have,” said Snape from the portrait behind Dumbledore, his voice so flat that Harry had no idea what he was feeling. He wasn’t sure it would have helped much more if he could have seen his face. Snape was in one of his uncompromising moods, the same way he’d been when Harry had tried to question him two years ago. “But I have no memory of it, if he did.”
Dumbledore reached back and made a patting motion with his hand. For some reason, his eyes were fixed on Harry. Perhaps he just wants to make sure I really won’t betray his secrets, Harry thought. “I know, Severus. I simply wanted to alert them to the possibility.”
“He was on the Tower, too,” Draco said, in a dreamy voice that made Harry turn to him at once. Draco’s face was pasty. He looked more like the boy Harry had known than he had since he’d been that boy. “But he couldn’t know that I would be the one uncovering these riddles. Weren’t these riddles made to be solvable by anyone?”
He was appealing to Dumbledore, Harry saw, his eyes beseeching him to say that the Astronomy Tower couldn’t be the answer because he was so desperate not to go up there again. Dumbledore bowed his head for a moment and closed his eyes before he nodded. He saw Draco’s pain and was trying his best to acknowledge it without hurting him too badly all over again, Harry thought.
“Yes,” Snape’s voice said. “But my former self was paranoid enough to have decided that the riddle was too easy. Or perhaps he intended you as his choice to solve it all along. That would be like him.” There was pride in his voice now, for some reason, Harry thought.
Draco stood there without speaking, gaze turned so inwards that Harry wasn’t sure if he would notice if Harry waved a hand in front of his face. Not that Harry was about to try. He was fairly certain Draco wouldn’t find that funny.
“I’ll try,” Draco whispered. “I will. But I can’t promise that I won’t collapse.”
“I’ll be there,” Harry said. “You won’t collapse, because I won’t let you.”
Draco started. I think he forgot about me, Harry thought as he turned around again. That should probably be insulting, but he can make up for it if he remembers me now and takes advantage of the offer of support.
“You don’t understand,” Draco whispered in a hiss that seemed to start from the depths of his chest. “You can’t—you don’t know what that night means to me.”
“I know,” Harry said. He would have said that the memory wasn’t all that prominent in Draco’s recollections of the school if someone had asked, because he hadn’t seen him mention it or react to it so far. And the memory of the battle on the Astronomy Tower had been slotted in, for Harry, along with all his other horrible memories, something that he remembered in nightmares, but that had to wait its turn alongside the images of Sirius’s death, his mother’s death, Cedric’s body, Voldemort coming back to life, and Hermione’s screams as she was tortured. “But I can be there for you anyway.”
Draco studied him further, bending in as though he wanted to emphasize the difference in their heights. Since that difference was less than nothing, Harry glared back staunchly, until Draco whispered, “You can’t. You’re not strong enough.”
“Are you about to start that nonsense of thinking of someone who likes to be bound in bed isn’t as strong as his partner?” Harry demanded in a carrying voice. He didn’t care if Dumbledore and Snape overheard, since they already knew most of the details of his and Draco’s sex life. “If you are, then I’m walking out the door.”
Draco crossed his arms. “It has nothing to do with that,” he said, though the faint flush along his cheekbones declared he was lying. “It simply means—you have so many issues to deal with, including your anger. What happens if you get angry on the Tower? Then I’m left trying to soothe you and myself at the same time.”
“There’s no reason for me to get angry there, unless someone tries to harm you,” Harry said. “And I’ve had a lot of practice in holding back anger for a short time, until I can get to someone who can help me.”
Draco’s eyes flashed, even with everything else going on. “I had better be the only one who helps you with that, in the future,” he said.
Harry licked his lips and tried to ignore the melting sensation in his stomach. It wasn’t excitement, or at least he didn’t think so. “I know,” he said. “You will be. I was saying?”
Draco nodded curt permission to go on.
“My anger can express itself in magic, or in intense physical activity,” Harry said. “And I think there’s likely to be more than enough physical activity for me, given that we’ll face another fight to the death on the Tower.”
Draco lit up. “That’s true. We will.”
“You like the idea of that?” Harry asked, and then realized he was being stupid. Draco would probably welcome anything that could create a new memory, and thus a new association, with the Tower in his mind at this point.
“Yes,” Draco said, and no more. He turned back to the portrait frame. “You’re sure that Professor Snape could have changed the riddle after you set it, Headmaster?”
“I trusted him absolutely,” Dumbledore said softly. Harry tried not to think of the basis of that trust, of the fact that it played on Snape’s guilt over failing his mother. “I’m sure.”
Draco nodded and turned away. Harry followed him, only pausing to make sure that he had his wand before they left the room.
Draco strode along the corridor with his jaw firm and his eyes shining in a fashion that promised horrible consequences for whoever got in his way. Harry followed him for a few minutes, but when Draco turned in a direction that wasn’t going to lead them to the hospital wing or Ron and Hermione’s rooms, Harry coughed. “Aren’t we going to bring Ron and Hermione in on this?” he asked. “We could probably use their help against whatever’s living in the Tower.”
“We’ll be able to handle it,” Draco said, without looking around. If anything, his stride grew longer.
“We don’t know that for certain.” Harry tried to keep his voice calm. Sometimes, Draco got on his nerves something awful, although Harry hoped those incidents wouldn’t be as frequent now that they were sleeping together. “It would make the most sense to bring them along. Do you want me to—”
Draco swung around on one heel. Harry blinked. He had to admit that he hadn’t realized Draco’s eyes could glare that fiercely. Draco would have made a good Auror, he thought inanely, and then shook his head to get rid of the fantasy.
“How much more plainly do I have to say this?” Draco’s lips were slightly parted, his hands clenched into each other. “I don’t want someone around who I don’t trust, when I’m going back into a place that means as much to me as this one does.”
Harry winced. He should have been able to guess that for himself. “Oh,” he said quietly. “Yeah, that makes sense.”
“Doesn’t it?” Draco faced up the corridor again, his voice calming into a curious flatness, as if yelling at Harry had used up some of the nervous energy. “But that means that Weasley and Granger will just have to live without the glory of joining us.” He hesitated so short a time that Harry wouldn’t have noticed if he hadn’t started watching Draco a lot more closely than before. “Unless you want them to be involved, of course. Unless you’d rather join them for the evening than me.”
Harry frowned at the back of Draco’s head. This mattered to Draco, and it mattered to him, but he wished he had better words than he did. As it was, Draco was likely to accuse him of sounding sentimental or false.
But while Harry couldn’t say yet if he loved Draco, not for certain, or even liked him very much outside of bed, he knew what he said next was true.
“There’s no one I would rather fight beside than you.”
Draco half-lowered his head, and his eyes fluttered once, seen from profile. It was a minute hesitation, smaller than the one before his mocking words, but it was enough for Harry, who followed him in contented silence.
And who saw that Draco hesitated one more time, to swallow, before he took the stairs to the Astronomy Tower.
*
Draco was climbing through stone and shadow. He knew that. Harry’s idea that no one had been up to the Astronomy Tower in some time was correct. They passed through a set of wards that were meant to keep students away—Harry destroyed them with scornful ease—and dust flew around them with every step. Draco was aware of all those things, and more alert than that, waiting for the moment when the death trap promised by the last riddle would explode around them.
But he was also sixteen years old, and racing up to the Tower with his heart in his throat, caught between excitement and terror. It had worked! He had let them in! But now, he had to go up here and hope that the last part of the plan was in place. He had to kill Dumbledore. He had to do it, this time, and all the nerves that he could feel trembling in the backs of his hands would just have to shut up.
Draco could remember being that young. He had never understood the people who said they couldn’t. Of course, most of those people didn’t have fear and shame acting like a permanent fire to sear the sensation into their heads.
He came out on top of the Tower, in two years, in two times, and turned his head from side to side. He had thought for sure that the ambush would happen on the steps of the Tower, and why not? It was only sense that the creatures or the wards that were part of the trap would attack them in a confined space that would make it harder for them to fight. Severus and Dumbledore wouldn’t have wanted just anyone surviving a fight to the death and getting hold of the last keyword.
Instead, though, they stood in the open air without a sign of anyone or anything to oppose them. Draco frowned and glanced at his feet, prepared to see the stones cracking apart in lines of fire. Then he looked up again, in case a predatory bird stooped from above.
Nothing.
“I don’t understand,” he said slowly, and turned back to Harry. “Perhaps you’re wrong and this isn’t the right Tower after all?” Joy leaped up in his heart at that possibility, hotter and more important than what he had felt when he was a boy.
Harry was gone. Instead, Draco found himself staring into the eyes of a sixteen-year-old, his blond hair slicked back from his forehead, his hand trembling on the wand.
*
It was as though time had turned backwards and Harry was once more on the Astronomy Tower as he had been all those years ago, standing silent and mute and invisible under Dumbledore’s spells.
Exactly like. He could see Draco in front of him as he was, with his eyes wide and his skin waxen but his strength and his age showing—and as he had been, with his skin so pale that he looked as if he were going to fall over at any moment and permanent lines of stress tied together around his mouth.
Between them both stood Dumbledore, his expression so sad that Harry felt a ripple pass through his heart, stirring it as nothing but anger and his feelings for Draco had stirred it in years. This was the real man, not the portrait. Harry wondered how much of the animosity he felt for the portrait came about because that shadow of Dumbledore would never be able to replace the real thing.
Harry reached out, and his hands passed through both Dracos. He shouted, but neither one heard him.
They saw each other, though. Harry couldn’t doubt that, because the teenage Draco let his eyes dart away from Dumbledore and to that older version of himself with uneasy fascination. Then he backed up and lifted his wand, as though he thought he could prevent a vision from attacking him that way.
“D-don’t come near me!” His voice cracked when he stuttered, and Harry could see the utter humiliation beaming in his eyes. The sudden pink on his cheeks probably came more from embarrassment than anything else. “I’m warning you! I’ll cast a curse, and I know Dark Arts!”
Harry darted a glance at Dumbledore to see how he would respond to that. He looked a little more grieved, but otherwise he only stood there, watching and listening.
Harry reached out again. If he was seeing this vision, there had to be some way he could affect it, wasn’t there? And it wasn’t as if they were in a Pensieve.
Unless…
Harry had paused to think about that, and almost missed what Draco—his Draco—responded to the boy they had both known. Draco’s voice was soft and hoarse, and full of something that Harry thought was wonder and yearning. “I’m you. I’ve lived through what you’ve lived through right now. It’s going to be all right.”
The teenager stared at him. Then he shook his head. “You’re something that he sent, to test me!” he said. “Or you’re something that the old man is trying to do, to distract me.” He turned away and focused on Dumbledore again. “Why did you bring him here? Send him away again. You can’t trick me.”
Harry had to close his eyes at the pride in his voice. He was sure that he hadn’t sounded much different when he was a boy, but it was still painful to realize that someone could be so young.
Or do I only think that because I know what’s going to happen next?
“This was not my doing,” Dumbledore said, voice older than Harry had thought it would be. Of course, how much did he remember of that night on the Tower, seven years ago, compared to Draco, who seemed to remember everything? Harry was beginning to think that they stood in Draco’s memory, and that was the reason for the perfect detail on the people and the stones of the Tower. “This is a doing of the future or the past.” He shut his eyes and sighed, though his lips wore a faint smile. “Or a doing of dreams. I cannot be sure, and that makes it hard to concentrate.”
The teenage Draco looked at him angrily, as though to say that everyone should be able to concentrate when it came to something about him. Harry remembered that expression, and that attitude. Fuck, Draco still had it. He had thought that he should be different from Harry’s other lovers, although all of them had been content with a quick fuck or the money that Harry could give them, or both.
“It has to be yours,” the boy said, but less sure now. He turned to Draco now and made a rude noise. “You can’t be my future, can you? You don’t look strong enough.”
Draco shook his head and seemed to come to life. “You have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said, his voice soft but controlled, rather than breaking out furiously the way Harry thought he would if he was faced with a past self this ignorant. “I’m your future the best way it could turn out, without being dead or in exile or in Azkaban.”
The boy’s face lost all its color again. “No,” he whispered. “No, he’s going to win, I know he is.”
No need to translate the “he,” Harry thought, and he could only imagine that that must be even more true for Draco, who would remember every sensation of this moment with clear and painful intensity.
“He’s not,” Draco said. His voice was calm and quiet, cool, the same tone that he used sometimes to give Harry orders. He must hope that he could reach his past self this way, Harry thought, and then wondered why. If they were in the middle of a memory, then Draco wouldn’t be able to change anything. “You always knew that. I know the secret moments of doubt that you’ve had in the middle of the night, doubt that you’re doing the right thing, for yourself or your family, even if you obey his crazy demands. I am you. All your thoughts are mine. Why shouldn’t I know this?”
“Shut up!” the boy screamed, and swept his wand up and down. “Just shut up!”
Dumbledore coughed and said something that Harry lost in the sound of the teenage Draco casting curses. His Draco darted around them and then got behind the boy, pinning his arms to his sides and saying something low and urgent into his ear.
Harry couldn’t stand it anymore. It had been bad enough to be imprisoned once outside this event, when he couldn’t help but thought he might have been able to if Dumbledore had let him intervene. He wasn’t going to let it happen again. He began to circle the edges of the Tower, looking for the passage into the memory that Draco had found.
*
“Listen, you little shit,” Draco said. He knew it would get the boy’s attention, because no one except the Dark Lord and other Death Eaters had ever spoken to him like that at that age, and even they usually used more deferential language, concerned about offending Lucius through his son. “You have no idea what you’re doing. This is a mistake that you’ll regret for the rest of your life. Professor Snape wasn’t trying to steal your glory when he told you that you couldn’t do this alone; he was telling you the simple truth, and offering his help. Put the wand down, and everything can be different.”
He was barely aware of what he was saying; the words leaped through his lips and hurried into his younger self’s ears without anything like a plan. He had to say them. His mind was spinning with memories overlaid by the new reality that seemed to be taking place around him, and if he had a chance to make a difference and change some of the consequences that stemmed from that night, he would.
Of course, he might cease to exist if his past self really did act differently. Or he might lose his relationship with Harry, or his Potions mastery, or the knowledge that he had gained from Severus, or anything else beautiful and pleasant that carried him through his days. One of the lessons that his parents had made sure to teach him young was that anything beautiful and pleasant had a price that must be paid for it, and goodness and evil—in the sense of personal benefits—were linked together in a thousand ways. You had to suffer through education and the torments of homework and boredom and repetition in order to learn how to cast powerful spells. You had to listen to people you didn’t like or respect or pay your dues until you arrived in a position where they would have to listen to you. You had to spend money and time making potential allies trust you. There was always time to be paid, if nothing else, and the list of prices went on. Draco knew that he might be condemning himself, and perhaps Harry and Dumbledore, to a price that he couldn’t bear.
But he couldn’t help himself. The instinct was too strong, to intervene and tell himself how it was and how it should be and offer the benefit of superior experience to his younger self. To take the shortcut, if he found it.
That was the Slytherin way.
The boy struggled against him, all angles and elbows and legs and ribs. Draco remembered himself that way, and he wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. He tightened his arms instead, and kept whispering. He no longer heard what he said; he wasn’t sure that he would have wanted to. The important thing was that he kept his voice running, and the boy struggling against him was, for the moment, still in his grasp. He still had the potential to change things, somehow. Draco had to believe that, or he would have given up and simply sat down and laughed in despair.
Someone’s hands touched him.
Draco started and reared back, intent on throwing off the unknown attacker much as he was intent on throwing Draco off. And sure enough, the boy squirmed free a moment later and faced him, panting, eyes so brilliant and angry that Draco winced in spite of himself at what looked out of them.
Then he realized that Harry was standing beside him—Harry, whom he had somehow missed at the start of the memory, or the vision, or the dream, or whatever it was that surrounded them here. Draco knew that he wanted it to be time-travel, but he also knew that it was more than likely not to be.
“Harry?” he whispered. “Where did you come from?”
“From right over there,” Harry said, nodding at what looked to be the empty stones of the Tower. Hadn’t Dumbledore been there a moment ago? Draco wondered, but he didn’t have the time to look, because he couldn’t turn away from the brilliant conflagration of Harry’s eyes. “I was locked outside the memory at first, and then I went back down the stairs, came up them, and thought of the exact same thing you were probably thinking about, that night. I think the trap Dumbledore and Snape set was triggered to go off when that happened.”
Draco shook his head. He was still upset and shaken, and he still didn’t understand most of the thoughts that wanted to rush through his head. “I don’t—why the fuck would they want to create a trap like this if they knew the chances were excellent that someone they trusted would walk through it?”
“I don’t know,” Harry said. He kept his voice low and soothing and didn’t turn to look at the boy Draco could feel watching them with wide eyes. “But perhaps they couldn’t be sure of the kind of people we would be when we came back. Perhaps they had to be sure, before they started to let us into the secrets.”
Draco was about to protest that that was ridiculous, but he stopped with a grimace. Yes, he could see Severus being paranoid enough for that, and Dumbledore thinking of it as one of his insane “tests.” Draco had no idea what Dumbledore would still be testing them for, when he was on the brink of death in this memory or knew that he was going to die soon as he was constructing the riddles, but that seemed to be his way.
“Yes,” Draco said. “Fine. All right.” He gestured at the teenager who had an odd expression on his face, anger mixed with complex sadness and frustration. Draco wondered why, but had the feeling that he wouldn’t like the answer that he could feel rising in the back of his mind, and didn’t pursue it. “But what are we supposed to do about him? Why are we here—now—at this time, whenever we are? How are we supposed to break through this and get the keyword to the wards?”
“What are you talking about?” the boy demanded, his eyes darting back and forth between them. “Why is Potter with you?”
“I’m his friend,” Harry said, his hand pressing down hard on Draco’s shoulder for a moment, as though he wanted to make sure that Draco didn’t break away from him and go to embrace the boy.
“And lover,” Draco said. He wouldn’t let Harry deny that to anyone, not even a vision. He rested his hand on Harry’s and glared challengingly at his teenage self.
The older—younger—Draco blinked and stared at the ground. Draco shook his head. The complexities of time-travel had always made him dizzy. He hadn’t even done well at the Arithmancy equations concerning it.
“Oh,” the boy whispered, or Draco thought he whispered. Harry had started talking, and in the wash of those words, he lost the quieter sound.
“I don’t know if we’re supposed to break through the memory in any way,” Harry said. “I think we’re here for a different purpose. I was outside the memory at first, and couldn’t break through until I stepped in a certain place on the stairs and thought as hard as I could about what you would be feeling when you walked up here.” His arms tightened around Draco. “I think we’re here to help you get over some of the trauma that you’re feeling.”
Draco stared at him, then snorted. Harry could come up with some fairly ridiculous theories, but not even Draco had envisioned anything that ridiculous. “No. That can’t be.”
“Why not?” Harry turned and paced behind Draco, making Draco tense automatically. He let his hands pass in soothing motions up and down Draco’s spine, and Draco relaxed despite himself, and despite the audience of one teenage boy and one dying old man, both of whom he kept an eye on. “If they cared enough to make sure that only we—or you—could gain access to this secret, then why wouldn’t they care enough to try and bring you past this moment? Heal you of something that even you admit still affects you?”
“Still affects you?” The younger Draco’s voice was intolerably high-pitched when one was trying to think, Draco thought. He shut his eyes, but he could still hear the voice, persisting in shrill tones. “What’s going to happen?”
“Many things,” said the vision of Dumbledore.
Draco resisted the temptation to tell the old man to shut up. It wouldn’t help anything. He swallowed and said, “But I don’t know the way to get over it. What am I supposed to do?” And now he was whining, he thought in disgust a moment later. He bit his lip sharply and forced himself to stand there, quiet, while Harry thought.
“Well,” Harry said. “I could think of a few things. First, what was it about this night that traumatized you the most? I know that one of the reasons it took me so long to get over the fight with Ron and Hermione was that they’d been everything to me, once. There was no one else in my life who mattered so much. Was there something like that here? Was Snape—Professor Snape—so important to you that you couldn’t take what you thought of as his betrayal?”
Draco let out a sharp laugh, and then controlled himself. “What do you mean, Potter?” It was easy to slip into calling Harry that again when he was faced with this very physical reminder of his past. “The whole situation was the traumatizing thing. I was supposed to kill. I couldn’t kill. I saw someone who had been Headmaster of the school I was in for the past six years die, and I knew that other people were fighting, and possibly dying, down in the school because of me. And then we had to run, and I knew that the Dark Lord would be less than pleased with me because Severus had done my task instead. The whole night is a long miasma of anger and betrayal and fear.”
Harry wrapped his arms around Draco, living, warm, solid arms that Draco could hold to. It took a long moment for him to find the necessary courage, but in the end, he leaned back and let himself be supported. Harry kissed the skin under his ear.
Draco knew his younger self would be staring in horror and hatred and—yes, he could acknowledge this, remembering some of the thoughts that had risen to the surface of his mind when he looked at Harry—perhaps envy. He had never thought specifically of being Harry’s lover at that point, that he could remember, but he had certainly wanted to be closer to him than he was, and was jealous of those who were.
“Then start thinking of ways that would let you live with yourself,” Harry murmured. “Do you consider yourself a coward for running, the way I screamed at Snape that he was?”
Draco shook his head. “Running was the only reasonable thing to do in that situation. I was more scared of what I was running to than what I was running from.”
Harry nodded against his cheek. Draco felt the crisp rustle of his hair, and concentrated on that instead of his memories. “What about killing? Were you disappointed that you couldn’t bring yourself to kill Dumbledore?”
Draco licked his lips. He knew the truth, and he knew what he wanted to say. The truth might make Harry think him a horrible enough person that he wouldn’t be interested in talking to Draco again.
Then he told himself not to be ridiculous. He had already forced his way into Harry’s confidence and his bed. If Harry backed away from him because of Gryffindor morality, then Draco would simply win him back once more. And after the way he had been willing to curse his best friends, Draco no longer thought him as delicate as he had once been.
“I was disappointed at the time,” he said quietly. “And I still am, I suppose. I wanted to show that I had what it took to be taken seriously by the other Death Eaters. Someone who couldn’t cast the Killing Curse mattered less than some of the vampires the Dark Lord was recruiting as allies.”
“I didn’t cast the Killing Curse, either,” Harry said at once, his voice low but comforting—all the more comforting because it was hard, factual, as though he didn’t really care about Draco’s feelings. “Remember? I defeated the Dark Lord with a simple spell that a second-year could have used. That a second-year did use, more than once,” he added, probably thinking about the way he had used it.
“But you didn’t have to,” Draco said. “The Elder Wand—things worked out the way they did in a strange fashion. Without that coincidence, you would have had to use it.”
“I know,” Harry said. “But I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that, because that’s not what happened.” His arms tightened. “And you should know that the reason that situation occurred is because of this night on the Tower. I said that much when I was dancing around the Great Hall with Voldemort, remember? You made my victory possible.”
Warmth hit Draco and spread all around the center of his chest like a breaking wave. He reached up a hand that trembled and settled it on Harry’s arm. He had never thought about it—he had never thought about it that way.
Even my thoughts are stuttering.
He had been angry enough at himself over this night for the reasons he had stated to Harry, but also because it had seemed such a waste. What did he gain from confronting Dumbledore before the others arrived? Nothing, either the glory of the kill or credit for courage, not when his arm had lowered.
But to know that he had made Harry’s victory possible, that he had contributed to saving people, to doing something grand that people still praised Harry for…
Draco bowed his head and smiled slightly.
“You have my smile,” the teenager in front of him said.
Draco blinked and looked up. Strangely, he had almost forgotten the boy over the last few moments. He had been absorbed in hearing that he was important to Harry, and from there, his mind had started to spread in other, new directions. Such as that this new claim he had on Harry, this new importance he had registered in Harry’s life, wasn’t so new after all, and he had the right to say that he had always been there.
Their connection ran deep, and Draco never needed to feel like an alien or an intruder, the way that Weasley and Granger’s sometimes hostile gazes said they considered him.
“Is this what’s coming?” the boy Draco whispered, his gaze locked on their joined hands. Draco imagined, with a sudden flash of empathy, what he would have felt if someone had told him that Potter was willing to be intimate with a different version of himself—just not Draco as he currently was. “Really? Can you promise me that?”
“I don’t know,” Draco said gently. “I don’t know that your future is going to be the same as mine.” He didn’t know if the boy was real, come to that, if he was back in the past or only in the falsely constructed memory that Harry seemed to think Dumbledore and Severus would have left as the bait for a trap. “But you could make a future that’s even better, in your own way, if you just try.”
Harry nodded encouragingly past his shoulder. “You have to be willing to try,” he echoed.
Draco arched his head back and kissed Harry. Those words had undone him. Harry had no reason to remember this younger Draco fondly; the words he had spoken to comfort and soothe Draco just now were the words to an acknowledged lover. They didn’t know if this Draco was real. But he had tried, anyway, with compassion that was one of the reasons Draco felt bound to him.
In love with him?
Who knows, yet.
The Tower appeared to pivot around them. Draco felt as though the stones were melting beneath his feet and then reforming themselves in interlocked patterns. He would have stumbled or at least sought support, but Harry was there, and he had one hand locked into place beneath Draco’s hip and one arm around his shoulders.
The night tingled with a thousand stars. Draco opened his eyes and saw the teenage Draco of the past lowering his wand, his face filled with uncertainty.
He also caught a glimpse—though it didn’t matter as much to him as the former image did—of Dumbledore staring at them with deep delight and satisfaction, nodding his head.
Part Five.
