Chapter Two of 'Heraclitean Fire'- Bubonic's Front Door

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter One.

Title: Heraclitean Fire
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Heavy angst, sex, violence, profanity, dub-con, minor character deaths, no epilogue.
Summary: Hit by a curse that will slowly destroy him, Harry makes his will and looks about for something to fill the last fortnight of his life. An invitation from Draco Malfoy to help him clear an inherited property haunted by something other than ghosts may be just what Harry needs—in more ways than one.
Author’s Notes: This is a fairly dark story, and will be irregularly updated. I’m anticipating nine to ten chapters. The title refers to a concept advanced by the Greek writer Heraclitus, about the primordial nature of things: “This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made; but it was ever, is now, and ever shall be eternal fire.”

Thank you for all the reviews!

Chapter Two—Bubonic’s Front Door

“Is he serious, mate?”

Harry shook his head and stared at the newly-arrived letter, which had come to him as he was sitting with Ron at breakfast, nursing a headache with the help of a Hangover Potion and toast. It was a strange letter. It was from Draco Malfoy, someone he hadn’t heard from for three years, and it sounded exactly the way Harry would have expected a letter from Malfoy to sound: uncaring and pretentious.

But he was making a proposal, and he seemed to expect a serious answer to the proposal, if not the rest of it, since his owl had waited and was currently preening its gleaming black feathers on a perch in the corner of the room.

Dear Potter,

So sorry to hear that you’re dying.

You may or may not be aware that my father, Lucius Malfoy, died last week. He left me a house called Bubonic, which apparently has secrets tucked inside it. What they are, no one exactly knows, though my mother believes that my father died in part from his investigation of the house. I could use some help in clearing out the ghosts, or spirits, or whatever they are, who live there, and you were the first person I thought of on seeing the article in the Prophet this morning.

I admit that part of this comes from the fact that you’re dying, and have less to fear from what lurks in Bubonic than most people. But I could use an Auror-trained wizard to recognize and ward off the Dark magic, and I wouldn’t like to go exploring by myself, in case I died and there was no one to carry the news back to my mother. I could use your company.

As a further inducement, I can offer to make a donation to any charity you’ll like. I’m certainly rich enough to do that. You said that you wanted to do something helpful with your last days, and this would fulfill that criterion while also allowing you to risk your life. I know how much you love to do that.

Cordially,
Draco Malfoy.

No matter how much he read it, the letter didn’t get any more straightforward or make any more sense. Harry pushed it away from him, frowning, and then took another sip of the Hangover Potion. He might have drunk a little less last night.

He was going to die in thirteen days. He tried to remind himself of that, but the fact slid away from him like a cat on glass.

“What should I do?” he asked Ron. He would have asked Hermione, but she had spent most of the night at the library and then got up before them this morning, to go back to the books and try to find a cure for the Withering Curse.

“What do you mean, what should you do?” Ron sent a few crumbs flying from his mouth when he spoke. His stare was frankly incredulous, and Harry began to feel a bit stupid for asking the question. “You refuse, of course! You’re going to spend your last days with us. As if we would let you do anything else,” he scoffed, and reached out for his own glass full of potion to take a healthy gulp.

Harry frowned and toyed with his plate. He hoped that Ron wouldn’t notice the silence, but Ron did and stared at him. “Mate? You can’t mean that you’re thinking about this?”

“He did promise a donation,” Harry muttered, but he knew it was ridiculous. He had accepted that he was going to die, hadn’t he? And he would spend time with his friends before then. It was the normal, the natural, thing to do. He would be stupid if he went off and risked his life for the sake of enriching Malfoy. That was what this had to be about; the small scraps of news Harry had picked up about Malfoy since the war implied that he only cared for Galleons and men, maybe not in that order. Harry couldn’t see what this scheme about Bubonic had to do with acquiring boyfriends for Malfoy, though.

But…

The simple truth was that he didn’t want to spend his last two weeks comforting his friends every time they cried about his impending death. He’d comforted Ron last night, and Ginny had broken down in his arms the day before, and Hermione had sobbed for a short time before pulling herself together and going to do research. Harry would visit the Weasleys shortly, and he expected to be overwhelmed by their grief.

They had every right to feel it. But Harry was the one who would go through the pain, the one who knew exactly how long he had to live right now and exactly what he would die of. He wanted to do something else, something more, than wallowing in the emotions of his friends and trying frantically to find a cure that didn’t exist, which was Hermione’s method of coping. When she found out that that wouldn’t work, Harry expected to have someone else on his hands who he would have to talk to and hold and soothe.

It was what he did. It had always been what he did. He and Ginny had tried to be with each other for a while, but they didn’t know how to be. Ginny wanted to share emotions with him, and Harry wasn’t reluctant to talk about his, but somehow the right words never came to him. It was so much easier to listen to her stories, like her memories of Hogwarts in the year the Carrows were there, and sympathize, and then it would have got too late or Ginny would want comfort sex and they didn’t have to talk about his.

He’d wanted to. Somehow time got away from him.

And now there would be no more time.

But he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, Harry thought, flattening the letter down with the palm of his hand. Malfoy was right about that. He had made the offer to help people because he hoped that would get him away from grief and nothing but grief for a while, and he’d received plenty of letters. But none of the projects were suitable. They didn’t want his help, they wanted his name, or his Galleons. Harry wanted something to do. He wasn’t going to helplessly waste away until he utterly had to.

Malfoy’s project sounded horrid and cynical, but it also sounded interesting. Not much else did to Harry right now.

Not that he was going to accept it, of course. It would turn out to be a trick, Harry was certain, because Malfoy hated Harry as much as everyone else desperately loved him, and he was writing just to taunt. Harry had to shake his head over how intricate the deception was, though. Perhaps Malfoy had nothing better to do.

When you can learn to lie better, he scrawled on the single sheet of parchment that was all that he would allow himself, then I might listen to you.

He didn’t bother signing it, since he was sure Malfoy would remember the last person he had sent his owl to, and instead just held it out to Malfoy’s bird. The owl eyed him sternly, while Harry continued to hold it out, until the bird seemed resigned to the fact that it wouldn’t get a proper envelope or a proper anything else. It stooped forwards, grabbed the letter with a nip to Harry’s fingers, and took off.

“What did you say?” Ron asked. He’d watched the byplay with interest, enough that he’d finished his toast and only now took another piece from the plate in the center of the table.

“That he should get stuffed,” Harry responded around his own mouthful.

It made Ron laugh, and that lightened the grief for a moment, and that was precious.

*

Draco arched an eyebrow. He had expected to have to persuade a reluctant Potter by detailing the terms he was prepared to offer; he hadn’t thought Potter would accuse him of deception and think no more about it. He tapped his finger for a moment as he stood in front of the Owlery. The bird he had sent to Potter, Dignus, was still incredibly ruffled and currently dozing with his head under his wing.

Draco looked along the line of owls, trying to settle on the one that would convey the appropriate response to Potter and get him to open Draco’s next letter. But then Draco shook his head and stepped back, shutting the door of the Owlery.

No. He had gone about this the wrong way. He had written to Potter like the Hogwarts schoolboy that Potter remembered, and it was small wonder if Potter reacted to that badly. Draco would have to go in person, apologize for the mocking tone of the last letter, and explain the situation in more detail. Potter might be impressed enough by that to listen.

If he wasn’t, then Draco would think of something else.

He cast a glance at his latest acquisition as he came through the door. It crouched in the middle of his drawing room, draped with chains and a warding circle, but managed to radiate a cold malevolence even through that. Draco rolled his eyes.

“I haven’t given up on you just because I haven’t worked on you for a few days,” he told the artifact, which resembled a great steel sculpture of a turtle with a fifth leg instead of a head. “I’ll change your nature yet.”

Magic coiled around the wards, snapped half-visible jaws at him, and then dissipated. Draco chuckled and went to his fireplace. Speaking to a few people in the Ministry should tell him where Potter was likely to be at this hour.

*

“There must be something, Harry. I know there’s something.”

Harry smiled—he hoped it wasn’t too sad, or he was liable to get another scolding—and patted Hermione’s hand. “You think what you need to think, Hermione,” he murmured, “and do what you need to do.”

Hermione sniffed at him and plunged back into the pile of research in front of her. Harry leaned back and looked around. This library was the largest room in the house that Ron and Hermione owned, and it literally bulged with books. Harry didn’t want to know what would happen when Hermione recovered from this latest project and noticed all the books that were stacked in boxes instead of packed neatly away on the shelves, as she thought they should be.

Then he reminded himself forcibly that he wouldn’t be around to see that happen, since he would be either in St. Mungo’s or dead by then.

Harry shut his eyes. With the sunlight falling on his skin and Hermione mumbling and murmuring away next to him as if she were working on a new mystery about Nicholas Flamel, it seemed impossible that he would die in a few weeks.

But he would. The kinder thing, Harry was convinced, was to make himself face it. He still wouldn’t be ready at the end, of course; he would still want to disbelieve it and to run away from the doom his own body carried. But thinking about it every day, spending some time in death’s company, would make him less likely to panic.

He hoped, anyway.

“Someone is here to be seeing Master Harry Potter!” Winky appeared in front of them and bowed anxiously to Hermione first, as mistress of the house, and then to Harry. She wore a fairly sturdy handkerchief around her belly, which Harry was glad for. Among the sights of his last weeks, he didn’t need house-elf genitals. “Someone—important!”

Hermione only nodded absently, but Harry raised an eyebrow. Hermione lived under several delusions regarding Winky, one of which was that she paid her—instead, Ron collected the Galleon back from Winky at the end of the week—and another that she had given up referring to people the way house-elves usually did. Harry knew that “important” to a house-elf usually meant someone from a pure-blood family.

“Who?” he asked.

Winky gave a look at Hermione that Harry understood perfectly. This was someone Hermione would get upset about. Harry stood up and followed Winky out of the library, then bent down towards her. “You can tell me, Winky,” he said coaxingly.

Winky still stood on tiptoes to get close to his ear so she could whisper. “It is being Master Draco Malfoy, Master Harry Potter Savior, sir.”

Harry slapped a hand over his face. Of course Malfoy would be pushing and shoving his way in where he didn’t belong, acting as though he could take whatever he wanted and it would be fine. Harry wanted to shake his head. No, better, he wanted to grab Malfoy and shake him. The git couldn’t even leave Harry alone to die in peace.

Neither can your friends.

Harry winced. His thoughts from that morning seemed selfish and far away. He knew that he shouldn’t want to spend his last days doing something that might get him killed. And of course he appreciated that his friends’ lives would be changed by what had happened to him. He wouldn’t want to miss a moment of that.

But still…

“Is Master Harry Potter Savior sir having something wrong?”

Winky’s anxious voice called Harry back to himself. He was in the middle of a corridor with a house-elf who looked as if she would die of angst if he waited too long. He forced himself to lower his hand and speak in a calm voice.

“No, Winky. You can show Malfoy into a room, and I’ll come down in a minute.”

“I is showing him into a room already, sir!” Winky began bouncing and beaming at him. “Important visitors is not to be waiting on the doorstep!”

Harry grimaced. He was glad that Ron had left for the moment, so that Harry wouldn’t have to have an argument with him over having Malfoy in the house. “I see,” he muttered. “Then take me to him, please.”

“This way, Master Harry Potter Chosen One sir!” Winky led Harry through the door with her chest so puffed-up that Harry kept expecting to see her toes leave the floor. He shook his head when he realized that Winky had put Malfoy in Hermione’s favorite room. Hermione would probably want to scrub the chairs if he had actually sat in them, the books if he had touched them.

Harry hesitated before he opened the door. Did he want to go have an argument instead of simply sitting quietly with Hermione and trying to absorb the sights around him, to fill his senses with as much as possible, before he never had the chance to do something like that again?

If I want to fill my senses as much as I possibly can, then only relying on what I can see from Hermione and Ron’s windows isn’t the way to do it.

Harry sighed, got rid of the useless debate, and pushed the door open.

*

Granger had better taste than Draco would have expected from a Muggleborn and Muggle-lover. She had several volumes of novels and books of poetry that Draco would have read with pleasure on a rainy afternoon. He had just taken down Catherine Welsh’s book A Mist in the Lightborns when Potter stepped through the door and confronted him.

Draco took his time about sliding the book back into place. He was a guest in this house, or at least he should be, and that meant he couldn’t be accused of stealing his host’s property without more proof than Potter currently possessed. He leaned back against the shelf, and they looked at each other.

Potter was pale, no surprise, and still wore bedraggled Auror robes, as though he had been wearing them since the moment the Withering Curse hit him. Draco wouldn’t have been surprised to learn that was the case. He only knew from his perusal of the shelves that one of the Grand Trio of war heroes, as the papers often called them, had taste, not that all of them had changed into sane and responsible adults.

In fact, Potter’s willingness to die learning about what he can do for others suggests that he’ll never have the chance to grow up.

“Malfoy.” Potter’s tone could have been called polite in the same way that the summer weather outside the windows was icy. “What did you want?”

“I came to apologize.” Draco was glad that he had practiced his speech before he entered the house. It kept him from embarrassing grimaces and simply stopping in the middle of a sentence before he could continue. He watched Potter’s face, and absorbed the sight of his sagging jaw and widening eyes with some satisfaction. The only thing that would have been better was if Weasley and Granger were in the room to hear it, too. Then again, they would interrupt the private consultation he wanted to have with Potter, so it was a good thing they weren’t. Draco continued, studying Potter for, he realized, some sign that the Withering Curse had begun its work already. “I shouldn’t have approached you in such an insensitive way. You’ve just learned devastating news, and the least I could have done was show you a bit of sympathy. I know you don’t have a reason to believe me, but I hoped that coming myself would show you how sincerely sorry I am.” He ended with a slight bow of his head and an extension of his arms, to show that he was even more sincere and truthful than Potter might think at the moment.

Potter stood there with his eyes half-shut, as if contemplating some spectacle behind his eyelids more worth staring at than an apologetic Draco. Draco straightened up, frowning. He hoped that his show had worked and Potter would now be in a more reasonable mood. If not, he had wasted a good speech and half the morning.

“Yes, fine, right,” Potter said, and Draco wondered whether it was worth having Potter with him in Bubonic if he would babble like that all the time. Then Potter shook his head and leaned forwards to squint at Draco. “But you have to want something more than that, or you would’ve just written a letter.”

Draco allowed a faint smile to tug at his lips. He had been convinced that he knew Potter. It seemed that Potter had the right to claim a certain knowledge of him back.

“Good of you to notice,” he murmured. “You could say that. I meant what I said in the letter. I want your help in exploring this house I’ve inherited. You can’t deny that it makes a better adventure than sitting around waiting for the Withering Curse to claim you.”

Potter shook his head in what looked like bemusement. “But I don’t want to go adventuring for the sake of your profit,” he said. “Why? It’s not as though you would do anything for me if you found what you were looking for.”

“I promised a donation to any charity you wish to ask for,” Draco reminded him. “Including that insufferable house-elf thing of Granger’s.”

“I should make you donate to that one, just since you mentioned it,” Potter muttered.

“I’m prepared,” Draco said. “But in the meantime, you’d be honor-bound to come with me if I did it.”

Potter squinted at him. “From the kind of person you’ve become in the last few years, Malfoy, I wouldn’t have said that you put any stock in honor.”

“In Gryffindor honor, I do,” Draco said equably. He was beginning to relax. He had been half-afraid that their antagonistic relationship would resume the moment he saw Potter, and he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from responding with insults. If that had happened, then he couldn’t have survived a trip into Bubonic with Potter, and it would have been better to abandon his half-formed plans at once. But this Potter was more restrained and more civil than Draco had expected him to be.

He could do this, and so could Potter.

“I don’t understand why it has to be me,” Potter said. “There are places where you can hire someone to risk their lives for a few hundred Galleons—less than the amount of the donation I would demand from you, anyway. And some of them would be so willing to die, just for the thrill of the adventure or the need of the money, that it would replicate the conditions of the Withering Curse. It’s not as though you absolutely need me.”

“I do.” Draco didn’t like admitting this, but he had come too far to turn back now at a slight difficulty. “I need someone who’s trained, not simply someone who’s willing to risk his life. And it’s not so easy to hire Aurors.”

“I’m still an Auror,” Potter said, turning the word over in his mouth as if it had been years since he heard it. “That’s right. I’m not allowed to work for a private individual who opposes the interests of the Ministry.”

Draco smiled slightly. “Who said that I would do that? They must be as interested as I am in having a source of Dark magic vanish from the face of the earth. And that’s what would happen if we investigated Bubonic and tamed it.”

Potter sighed. He acted as though Draco was the one who didn’t understand him, Draco thought, watching him, when Draco was convinced that he understood Potter perfectly. Potter’s principles were the things getting in the way. If he could speak to Potter without his conscience or his friends interfering, Draco believed, then they might have agreed and been on their way to Gringotts for the Galleons they would need already.

“Look,” Potter said. “I can’t go with you. The whole idea’s insane. First of all, we don’t trust each other, and that’s kind of essential in a life-and-death situation. Second, of course I can’t spend my last weeks gallivanting around some Dark house with you. I have to spend it with my friends.”

“Mourning,” Draco said. “Crying. Listening to them mourn and cry.” Potter’s left eyelid twitched, and Draco knew he had struck diamonds. “Is that really what you want?”

*

Harry ripped his head to the side and began to pace around the room, picking up books and then dropping them again when he felt them, as if their covers burned his palms. He knew that Hermione would be angry about the way he was messing up her room, but at the moment, he couldn’t care about that.

Fuck Malfoy, how did he know that? Harry had been so careful not to show his impatience and his desperation. He knew that the thoughts about escaping from his friends and family were wrong even as he had them, and he knew there was no cure for the Withering Curse—well, not one that he could take—so he had suppressed the thoughts because it wasn’t as though he could do anything else.

And Malfoy had walked in and put his finger on the wound in Harry’s conscience as surely as though he had inflicted it.

Harry turned towards Malfoy. “I won’t listen to any more of this,” he said. “Get out.”

Malfoy remained still, gazing at Harry as though he didn’t feel the magic that rattled the chairs and made the walls hum with an undertone like plucked wires. His eyes were wide, but Harry was smarter than to think it was with innocence. Malfoy wouldn’t know innocence if it bit him on the arse; that was all too plain.

“I can give you what you want,” Malfoy breathed. “What you need. Not a cure to the Withering Curse, of course. But the next best thing. I can ensure that your death matters, that you die like an Auror instead of an Auror trainee.”

Harry had to turn his back, because otherwise he would punch Malfoy out of sheer irritation, sheer fear.

How in the world had Malfoy known that he wanted that, that Harry wanted to die like that if he had to die at all? The shudders crawled up Harry’s spine and earthed themselves in his shoulders and his neck. It was as if Malfoy had used Legilimency on him, but Harry thought he would have recognized the feel of that.

No, this was worse. It was as though Malfoy had walked into the house, taken one look at him, and seen through the pleasant mask that Harry had fastened across his face for the benefit of everyone else.

Harry shook his head. He couldn’t—he couldn’t think about this. He couldn’t be tempted by the demon that was Malfoy.

And he was being ridiculous, with melodramatic and paranoid thoughts, he decided, closing his eyes and resting his hand on his cheek for a moment. The coolness against his burning skin made it possible to think. He could do only one thing, and it depended not at all on his own needs and desires. He had to send Malfoy away.

He turned around and gave Malfoy a meaningless smile. If Malfoy really could see straight to the bottom of Harry’s heart, then he would know it meant nothing, and why. “Thanks for coming, and thanks for the offer. But I’m not interested.”

“You’re too much interested, then,” Malfoy said, with a pleased little nod, as though Harry’s deception was a show intended for him alone. “I thought so. Well, no need to hold back and act the martyr with me, Potter. I give you permission to give in and go along. Who knows what we’ll find in Bubonic? My mother thinks a spirit of disease lives there. I’m not sure what to think, myself, but I do want to experience it.”

Harry shook his head. “You need to listen to what I said instead of what you want to hear. I’m not going. Thanks for the offer, but no thanks. Leave.” He concentrated and pulled a bit of his magic to the surface. A book jumped off the shelf beside Malfoy and levitated to the table on the other side of him. Harry couldn’t actually drop it to the floor, knowing what Hermione would do to him if a book was damaged, but he wanted to impress Malfoy with both his power and the state of his temper.

Malfoy stood still, as though the book had been nothing more than a fly. He studied Harry. He grunted at last, and Harry relaxed, thinking he had come to an understanding of what to be done.

“I thought so,” Malfoy said. “You have the worst case of self-sacrifice I’ve ever seen. You’re not content to die from a painful and horrible curse that no one can protect you from. You’re not content to try and soothe your friends and convince them that they’ll go on without you—which they will, you know. They’ll live their lives, the life you no longer have, and in a few years they’ll be able to smile over the memories. You won’t be there to see them.”

Harry tensed and stared at him. He didn’t know what Malfoy’s newest tactic was, whether he was trying to avenge himself on Harry for his disappointment or still convince Harry to come along, but either way, he distrusted the light, chatty tone the git had taken.

Malfoy smiled at him. “You probably tried to reason that you would always die young, right? That you weren’t destined for the good things of this world after having done the great? You closed your eyes after the first confirmation about the curse and decided that, well, an Auror has to die sometime, and there are advantages to it being this way?”

“Shut your mouth, Malfoy.” Harry barely recognized the ugly, dangerous crackle of his own voice.

“No.” Malfoy looked at him with an expression that had a tinge of cold amusement burning in it, though he had lost his smile. “I don’t think I will. You’re doing exactly as you’ve always done, Potter, marching to your death with your head held high. When you thought you would die to defeat the Dark Lord, I could even honor you for it. But you never thought of marching anywhere else. And now it can’t benefit anyone to have you die. It doesn’t please you. You can’t reconcile yourself to it. But you go on trying. It’s the stupidest waste of a life and gifts I’ve ever seen,” he concluded.

Harry was breathing fast enough that he thought he would pass out. His hands were clenched to the point that they hurt. His eyes kept wanting to shut, but if he did that, Malfoy would think that he was trying to hold back tears, and that would make the git think he had won. Harry refused to allow him that privilege.

“What do you mean, prat?” he did say, when his breath returned to him enough to form words. “You can’t offer me a cure to the Withering Curse. Exactly what do you mean when you claim that I’m ‘wasting’ my life? I already know I’m going to die.”

Later, looking back, he could identify that as the moment that Malfoy had won.

*

Draco smiled, though only inwardly. Potter had always been so easy to rile, and although he was an adult, he hadn’t lost that quality. Draco could see the formidable blaze gathering in his eyes and hear the creaking of the bones and tendons he was putting under pressure. He wouldn’t have been surprised to see Potter sprout wings of fire.

But he wasn’t afraid. If he couldn’t match Potter in natural magic, he still had power as strong. He carried his own collection of small artifacts, ones he had altered but didn’t intend to sell, about him, around his neck and in his pockets and embedded in his wand. They would protect him if Potter did something as stupid as a direct assault.

For now, he truly doubted that he would need them. He had the advantage in words and ideas, and Potter was watching him with the same fascinated curiosity that Draco had seen people use when he first introduced them to the idea of buying a converted Dark artifact. They could walk away at any time. He didn’t bind their limbs. They could disregard what he was saying at any time. He didn’t chain their minds.

They were so busy congratulating themselves on their assumed freedoms, most of the time, that they didn’t take account of the actual ones.

“I can offer you significance,” Draco answered, watching Potter’s eyes as they darted about and his feet as they fidgeted. He had seen it all before, and was prompted to smile tolerantly at it, but Potter would probably take that expression the wrong way, because he was capable of taking anything the wrong way. Draco therefore maintained his neutral expression and his flat tone. “No, it’s not the same as continuing life. But it’s a continuing reputation.”

“So you’re going to publicize what we find in the house?” Potter shook his head. “I don’t think so. Either you’ll want to keep it for yourself, or it’ll concern Dark magic and you won’t make it known for legal reasons.”

Draco half-closed his eyes and drew in a thick breath of air that smelled sweet. Potter had spoken as though their investigating the house together was a real possibility, just when Draco had begun to think that he wouldn’t do any such thing.

“I mean that you’ll have a continuing reputation with me,” he said. “And I’m good at careful editing. I could make sure that those who matter to you know the dangers you fought. Or I could give you leave to tell the story yourself, before you died, as long as you left out anything that could implicate me too much. You could have the adventure and the knowledge that they knew.”

Potter’s eyes fluttered shut for a moment. He stood there in contemplation so open that Draco didn’t fear smiling, this time. Potter would be a pleasure to have around. Most of the people Draco knew and bargained with didn’t let their emotions show on their faces. They thought of it as too much vulnerability. Draco knew why, and often felt the same himself, but as long as he could do it without danger, he preferred to feast on open feelings. Potter was an aesthetic masterpiece in that way.

In that one way, Draco thought, letting his eyes wander over Potter’s ragged clothes and even more ragged hair. Though the green eyes were a nice touch.

Potter’s eyes flared open, but Draco had seen that coming and wiped his face clean of anything that could be taken as mockery once more. “I’m tempted,” Potter said, his honesty like a slap in the face from a brisk sea breeze. “But I’m not convinced that I’m the best companion you could have with you. Someone who’s actually experienced in Dark magic might serve you better.”

Draco ducked his head to hide the laughter. He would have to watch that, he thought. Usually he had better self-control than this, but Potter affected him, tickled him, to the point where it was hard to keep his face calm and stern the way that he liked to.

“You’re actually worrying about my safety, when I sought you out?” he asked, looking up.

Potter shrugged. “We don’t know what’s in there. My life is going anyway, but yours isn’t. What if I went in there and survived, but you didn’t? I would feel bad.”

Draco had to consider that from a new angle, because he had taken it for granted that Potter would feel no compunctions about the death of an ancient rival. It was entirely possible that Draco had underestimated him.

He may be a pleasure to have around in other ways as well.

“I can take care of myself,” he said. “Whatever we find in Bubonic, I am probably better-prepared to survive it than you are.”

Potter gave him a bleak smile. “I would say so. I know who’s going to be living a long time here, and it isn’t me.”

Draco raised his eyebrows. Potter would not be a pleasant companion if he was constantly moaning about his fate. But Draco was going to trust that he had chosen rightly and that Potter would not do such an asinine thing. Draco held out his hand and allowed a faint spark into his eyes. “Are we agreed?”

Potter stared at his outstretched hand the way he would probably stare at a snake dancing up to him. No, with more chagrin than that, Draco thought, remembering that Potter could speak Parseltongue. “I must be insane,” he muttered.

Draco didn’t let his eyes or his hand waver. He had made the choice, and turning his back on it now would be tantamount to doubting himself. He never did that, as a matter of principle.

Potter clasped his hand and shook it. Draco discovered another aesthetic pleasure as he did: Potter’s fingers were long and slender, and despite the chewed state of the nails, didn’t look less elegant for all that.

*

“Harry? Where did you go?”

Hermione was just starting to call for him when Harry wandered back into her upstairs library, more than a bit dazed. He and Malfoy had agreed on the details, including the time they would meet at Bubonic and the equipment and provisions they would bring with them. It had been an extremely business-like discussion, which Harry sensed Malfoy was good at.

And if he hadn’t just agreed to spend part of his last few weeks gallivanting around a horridly enchanted house probably filled with Dark artifacts, Harry might even have thought it made sense.

What have I done?

Harry took a deep breath and shook his head, though. He wasn’t that lost, that incapable of being in control of his actions. He wouldn’t have made the agreement with Malfoy if he hadn’t wanted to. That meant he had to come up with justifications for his friends and family rather than think of backing out of it.

“I went to speak with Malfoy,” he said, sitting down in the chair he had occupied previously.

That brought Hermione out of her search for information on the Withering Curse as nothing else could have. She leaned forwards and stared at him. “What?” she breathed. “Harry, you did what?”

“I talked with him,” Harry repeated. He focused his gaze on the window and pretended that he had to absorb the sight of all the sunlight he could, since it would be lost to him forever in a little while. “He sent me a letter earlier today that said he heard about my condition and thought I might want to join him in an adventure.” Common sense dictated that he not tell Hermione what the “adventure” was like until he had won her around to the general idea. “I refused. But he came here and apologized for some of the language he used in the letter and made his case, and—and I agreed to go with him.”

“Well, then we’re all going with him, of course.” Hermione’s brow furrowed. “I don’t know how we’ll persuade Ron and Ginny, though. They still hate Malfoy as much as ever, and they’ll probably focus on what he’s doing rather than on what the adventure is supposed to be doing.” She gave Harry a fleeting smile. “It will be like being back in Hogwarts. I reckon there’s that to be said for it.”

Harry smiled at her. He couldn’t help it. The thought of them tramping into Bubonic together was ridiculous, but he was grateful that Hermione didn’t immediately consider it so. “I don’t think Malfoy would like it much if we all went with him,” he said carefully. “He came because he thought I would enjoy the adventure and because he knows that I have Auror training. But you don’t, and Ginny doesn’t.”

Hermione stared at him. Then she said, “Harry James Potter. You’re proposing to go off alone with Draco Malfoy for your last days on earth?”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t think it’ll be all my last days on earth. Just a few. And what motive would Malfoy have for killing or hurting me now? He has to know that I’m suffering from a curse more violent than any he could get away with casting on me, and I’ll die soon enough to satisfy him if he hates me.”

Thinking back on the way that Malfoy had spoken to him during the interview in the library, Harry thought that it was highly likely Malfoy no longer hated him. The way he had spoken said that he was more concerned with business, and his strange knowledge of Harry, than anything else. Harry would have liked to know how Malfoy had come to know so much about him, of course. But it didn’t matter. It mattered that he had introduced a challenge that sizzled along Harry’s nerves and made him feel ready and competent, the way that simply sitting around the house didn’t.

I’m looking forward to rowing with him, even. Harry shook his head when he thought about it. Malfoy might think it was only natural that Harry would want to die like an Auror and not like an Auror trainee, but it had its unnatural side.

“Harry.”

It was unfair, but he had forgotten about Hermione’s presence for a few minutes. When Harry returned to the present, he found Hermione standing in front of him, her fists clenched. Once she gestured as if she would like to take his hands, but she couldn’t unfold her own.

“You can’t do this,” she said. “We need you here to take care of and say farewell to, and if I find something, I’ll have to have you immediately available so that I can run any tests I need to run or cast any spells I need to cast. How can you go off with Malfoy on this—adventure, quest, whatever it is?”

Harry took a deep breath. “Because I feel like I’m wasting my time,” he said quietly. “How many times can I say goodbye? How many times can I endure the fact that I’m leaving you, and dry someone else’s tears? I want to help you, Hermione. I want to leave you with as many cheerful words as I can. But I also want to do something before I die. That’s why I put that offer in the paper to help with charities, if someone could come up with a suitable one. Because it would make me feel like I wasn’t dying in vain.”

Hermione stared at him. Her eyes were open very wide, but Harry couldn’t see any tears behind them. They just trembled, now and then, lashes and eyes both, as if the tears would fall.

Then she ducked her head and murmured, “Living with us, being with us, isn’t enough to make you feel that way?”

Harry shook his head.

“Oh.” Hermione didn’t break out crying the way Harry had thought she would, or shouting the way Ron probably would have. She wilted back into the seat she’d risen from and stared down at her books. Harry waited, staring at the sunlight, for what she would say next.

“I never knew that,” Hermione whispered. “I never knew that about you.”

Harry shrugged. “I never really knew it about myself, either. But that’s the way it is. I’m sorry, Hermione. I hope that you can help me explain it to the others,” he added. He wasn’t enthusiastic about the task that he had set himself, making Malfoy’s proposal sound sensible to Ron and Ginny and then convincing them to stand back while he went off with Malfoy.

Why did I want to do this, again?

But he only knew that he wanted to, and he wasn’t about to quarrel with his desires, strange as they might seem, on the eve of his death.

Even if I want to think melodramatic thoughts phrased like “on the eve of my death,” Harry decided a minute later.

He shook his head and sighed. Malfoy had revealed one thing to him, at least, one thing Harry had to be grateful for: since he was going to die anyway, what mattered more than the fact of his death was how he met it. And he would meet it with his head held high and his wand blazing. He thought it best.

“If I say that I don’t want to?” Hermione whispered.

It took Harry a moment to remember where he’d left the conversation and come back to realize what she was asking. He shook his head. “Then you don’t,” he said. “But I’ll go on to Bubonic with Malfoy just the same.”

“Bubonic?” Hermione shuddered all over, but her color was coming back and she looked interested, the way she always did when she thought some situation was more complex than she’d realized. “I think you’d better tell me everything.”

Harry did, glad that he was making the announcement to her first. Hermione had always hated Malfoy with a more impartial hatred than Ron or Ginny had, since she didn’t have a blood feud and tradition of loathing between families to influence her. It was strange, Harry thought, but personal insults mattered less to most wizards than doing things in the name of having always done them that way.

He didn’t think he was like most wizards in that. He would do things just because they were new and different.

Like this thing with Malfoy.

Harry dismissed the thought impatiently from his mind. Wrong decision or not, it was made.

*

Draco opened his father’s diary for the relevant year and ran one finger down the spine, nodding approvingly. As thick as the book was, the leather hadn’t yet started to crack. Lucius had tended to enchant more pages into the diary when he needed them, rather than starting a new one. He religiously began a new diary with the start of a year, and never before that, no matter how much the book creaked with content.

This had been the year that he got out of Azkaban, and, apparently, the year he went to Bubonic. He’d had a lot to put down.

Draco cast a spell that would find the curve of many capital letter B’s in a row and then leaned back in his chair, eyes drifting half-shut. The spell would take some time to search the book. Draco could use the time to search his memory, in turn, and add anything to the list that he had made for himself and Potter.

But no matter how many times he went over it, everything seemed in place. They would take food, of course, and warm clothing, and blankets, and a parchment that inked itself into a map as one walked, and their wands, and some of Draco’s changed artifacts that had a protective purpose. Draco reckoned he might offer Potter a trunk and extra blankets, but that was the only thing he could conceive of their needing or wanting. He expected Bubonic to be a harsh and wild place, like a foreign country, but not impossible to survive. His father had come out, after all.

If changed, and sick.

Draco didn’t intend to allow that to happen to him, which was one reason he was going to read everything in his father’s diary that pertained to Bubonic.

A soft chime sounded; the spell had finished searching the book. Draco sat up, opened his eyes, and flipped to the first page, marked with a soft velvety snake’s tail sticking out of it.

June 19th, 2001. I must search out the secret of Bubonic. Pride went from me, sitting on the cold floor of that filthy cell. Conquering Bubonic would bring it back to me again.

Draco paused, tilting his head. He had never known that his father had suffered such a blow to his pride. Hatred against his captors and the biased system that had sent him to Azkaban he could see, but this?

Pondering, Draco read on, past the information about Bubonic that he already knew; Lucius had seemingly included it simply to remind himself of the dangers of venturing into the house. Then his own name leaped out of the page to startle him.

I must consider the fortune I am leaving behind, whether to Draco or someone else. The “someone else” is the difficult part. My wife could inherit the fortune, but if she had another child, it would not be of Malfoy blood. My son is the one who should inherit it, by birth and talents, but he has involved himself in work that I cannot approve of, and there is a wildness in his soul that does not promise well to make a Malfoy of him.

Draco snorted and rolled his eyes. “Yes, Father, I was always a bit too uncontrolled for you, wasn’t I?” He did have to wonder, though, if Lucius had disapproved of him sleeping with many men instead of with men in general. The tone of this comment made him think so. If Draco had settled down and acted the picture of wedded monogamy with someone, perhaps they could have been reconciled.

But Draco couldn’t regret the lost chance for long. For one thing, if this was so important to Lucius, then he had never seen fit to communicate to Draco. For another, that wasn’t Draco. He roamed from one lover to another because his desire would die down after a time and need rekindling. That was all.

He had had enough of changing himself to suit the requirements of other people, most notably the Dark Lord. He saw no reason to go on doing so now.

There are distant cousins that I could seek out, the descendents of younger sons and daughters who could not inherit the Malfoy fortune in their time, but it is bad enough that my son would not be a worthy custodian of the money; I would rather not see someone who has never felt the touch of silk next to his skin spend it.

Draco rolled his eyes again and read patiently on, searching for details about the house. He wanted to find the page where his father had recorded the decision to enter it, or at least the details of what had happened while he was inside.

But there was neither of that. The diary went straight from Lucius’s musings about what he should do with the Malfoy fortune and properties to a stretch of blank pages. Draco frowned as he flipped them. The spells his father used on the books meant that there were never blank pages left; Lucius used all there were and then added more, or, on the one occasion Draco could remember when he hadn’t filled a book in a year, he had vanished the blank ones. What did these mean?

The next date was July 5th, and Lucius’s hand was shaky. Draco had to bend close to the page and focus his eyes carefully to make it out.

I have been through the darkness, and have reemerged into the light. While the Dark Lord and other figures in our history have acted as though Light and Dark are only convenient symbols for different kinds of magic and different states of mind, I can say now that that is not true. I have been through the darkness, and have reemerged into the light. I will jump at shadows for the rest of my life.

And then there were two other blank pages. When Draco turned them over, he found that the next date was the seventh of July and that Lucius was pondering what he should wear to dinner that night.

No matter how much further Draco looked through the book, he found nothing interesting or relevant. It seemed likely that Lucius had been in Bubonic through the last week of June and the first days of July, and also likely that he had not wanted to record what he found there.

Draco smiled. The challenge burned through his veins and made him salute the wall with his drink. Yes, he had a core of wildness in his soul, as his father had accused him. He would look forward to facing something that had frightened his father enough to induce such a strange alteration in his habits.

*

“You can’t go with him, mate.”

Harry shut the trunk and shrank it, then tucked it into his pocket. Ron had been saying the same thing for an hour now, and Harry didn’t see why he should listen until and unless Ron could come up with a coherent argument.

“Mate, are you listening?” Ron’s rough hand was on his shoulder, and Harry allowed himself to absorb the sensation for a moment. That was another thing, like the sunlight, that he would lose soon enough.

Then he told himself that he was wallowing in self-pity and turned around. Ron’s face was so pale that Harry was afraid he might faint. He reached out and clasped Ron’s shoulders, giving him a slight shake. “Ron. I’m going to be fine. Why would Malfoy choose this way to murder me, instead of just watching me die in agony from the Withering Curse? No, I think that I’ll have more to fear from the curse than from him.”

“He might have wanted the pleasure of killing you himself,” Ron said stubbornly. His heartbeat was so fast that Harry could feel it shaking his body from the grip he had on Ron’s shoulders. “I think he’s furious that someone got there before he did.”

Harry paused to think about that. Remembering the way that Malfoy had sometimes acted when they were in school together, he could see that, but—

No. He shook his head again. In the end, he couldn’t believe it of Malfoy. Malfoy had changed, Harry had seen that for himself the other day. He valued other things now. He knew that Malfoy might want to kill him, but he wouldn’t want his life ruined by the accusations and imprisonment that would follow. Harry really did think that Malfoy thought more of himself than Harry, and that meant his obsession had to be less powerful than his self-interest.

“I’ll be fine,” he repeated, and stepped away from Ron, giving him a quick smile before he picked up his wand.

“But you should have stayed with us,” Ron said, trailing Harry downstairs. “Gin’s going to be heartbroken.”

Harry hesitated. He hadn’t told Ron and Hermione about this yet, partially because he’d thought they had enough to worry them, but he wondered if it was a bad thing to go to his death with this kind of secret between them. Probably, he decided, and turned around.

“I’d mostly decided to call it quits with Ginny already,” he said. “She and I—we weren’t working together. And you must have noticed that we weren’t spending much time together in the last few months.”

Ron blinked. “But you and her—you were going to get married,” he muttered, in the tones of a child who’d lost a sweet.

Harry shook his head. “She’s a great girl, Ron, but we can’t—be. It doesn’t work, the way it works with you and Hermione.”

Ron took a swift step backwards and lifted his hand. “I don’t need to hear details of my sister’s sex life, thanks, mate,” he said hastily.

Harry smiled in spite of himself. Yes, that was Ron all over. “I mean in other ways than the sex,” he said. “You and Hermione can row and talk and laugh together. Ginny and I couldn’t do that. We did try. It was more my fault than hers. But it didn’t work out.”

Ron looked at him doubtfully. Harry tried to look as sincere and as troubled as he could be. It really wasn’t that hard to look troubled, when he thought about it. He did wish that things had worked out with Ginny. She was someone familiar and comfortable, and maybe they could have found a way to be together with more practice.

But they wouldn’t have that time, now.

Ron sighed like a hissing kettle and shook his head. “All right, mate. You have the right to decide for yourself what you want to do. I know that. It just—if you’re sure that you want to go with Malfoy, I can’t stop you.”

Harry clapped Ron on the shoulder. In the end, what made his friends friends was that they stood by each other. He had supported Ron when he confessed that he wasn’t sure he wanted to marry Hermione yet in their first year of Auror training, and Hermione when she had left Ron for a short time to live on her own and work on her own and see if she liked that better. In the end, she had wanted to live with Ron but work in separate rooms, and Harry had helped donate the money and the magic so they could build those rooms.

I shouldn’t have feared telling them so much, he thought as he followed Ron down the stairs. In the end, they’re still beside me, and I never receive the sense that they really want to be anywhere else.

For now, at least.

*

“Malfoy.”

Potter’s face was flat and closed. He turned around and stared up at the Manor as though he was remembering all the things he had suffered there. Draco restored his attention to where it should be—on him—by touching Potter’s arm.

You would think that someone had shocked him, Draco thought in amusement, as he watched Potter leap into the air like a cat and then land, turning with his eyes so big that he seemed about to lose them. Draco sighed delicately and shook his head. “I don’t live in the Manor anymore, Potter,” he said. “I only suggested it as a convenient place to meet. You don’t need to look as though the gates are going to swallow you.”

“I don’t look that way,” Potter denied automatically, but Draco didn’t see how he could be sure, since he couldn’t see his own face. Before they could get into a stimulating row, though, he resumed the flat look again. “Where is Bubonic? Were you going to tell me the Apparition coordinates? I expected you’d owl them to me.”

Draco sighed. “And reveal the location of the house when you might have chosen not to come? Of course not, Potter.” He did hope that Potter’s magical power was enough to make up for his loss of intelligence. He had seemed more complex when they met in Weasley and Granger’s house.

Potter blinked at him. “Isn’t that a bit paranoid, Malfoy?”

Draco rolled his eyes, but he felt a bit reassured. So it wasn’t that Potter was stupid, only that he didn’t understand pure-blood norms. Well, Draco could accept that in someone like him, who had grown up with Muggles and who wasn’t pure-blood even by the standards of lax people. “No,” he said. “If you knew where the house was and wanted to betray me, then you could do a bit of damage to my profit and my standing. Particularly once you know the route inside the house.”

Potter gave him a long, steady look, but it wasn’t until he spoke that Draco understood it. “No, I can’t, Malfoy. I’m dying, remember?”

Draco gave a little toss of his head. Somehow he had forgotten that, and he disliked both the fact of his forgetting, something careless that should not be permitted, and the thought of Potter dying. “Well. There is such a thing as writing and hidden letters left for anyone who wants to read them.”

Potter sighed patiently and extended his arm. “Just get us out of here, then, and to the house.”

Draco found himself trying to evaluate whether the arm he took was actually thinner than it had been yesterday, when he met Potter to speak to him. Then he shook his head. Of course it wasn’t. The Withering Curse acted more slowly than that.

But it was going to be a different world, without Potter in it. It was as if a smaller, second sun would be removed and snuffed out.

A lesser world.

Draco told himself not to jump to conclusions, and closed his eyes, fixing the Apparition coordinates in his mind. One breath, then another, and he leaped with Potter to Bubonic.

*

Harry stared at the house. It was smaller than he had expected, built of dark wood, and it hunched on the ground. The area around it seemed tangled and wild, dead trees intermingling with small live ones and scrubby, withered grass.

Then he moved to the side and realized that the house had fooled him. It wasn’t small; it sprawled out on the ground so far that Harry couldn’t tell where it ended and the small, shady forest behind it began. Because it wasn’t more than one floor, he had demoted it in his mind, but yes, it was large.

And he could feel the Dark magic that prickled along his skin from it down here.

Malfoy gave him a faint, superior smile. He looked like the house, in some ways, Harry thought, arrogant with power and more beneath the surface than he appeared at first glance.

“Shall we?” he asked, sweeping one hand towards the house.

Harry nodded shortly and followed him. He had come too far, and argued too much with his friends, to turn back now, at the first hurdle.