The Fortunate Fall, 5/6- for twistedm

[lomonaaeren]

"But that’s too much of a coincidence,” Draco argued, leaning over the book he’d brought to Harry’s house and shaking his head. “The Morgan family never recorded the birth of a second child. Why wouldn’t they? Most pure-blood lines like this would be proud of the birth of two healthy sons, because God knows they don’t have wealth or strong magic to comfort them.”

Harry rolled his eyes. When his lover wasn’t listening to himself, he had no idea what a snob he sounded like.

“There are all sorts of reasons why not,” Harry said, and put his feet up, ignoring Draco’s disgusted glance. They were seated in the large front room of his house, where two sliding glass panels had taken the place of the cramped doors that had occupied that part of the cottage when Harry moved in. The glass let in a flood of sunlight and permitted Harry an unparalleled view of the garden, as well as the robins that had chosen to nest in his solitary apple tree. That Draco would rather look at parchment on a day like this than at the wonders of nature astonished him. The robins had already hatched a brood, and the parents were busy coming and going from the nest to feed their young. Harry had sternly warned Philip not to climb up that tree and investigate the nest if he knew what was good for him. “Maybe they thought Gabriel was stillborn. You told me that this book updates itself by magic at the moment of the child’s birth, right?”

“Right.” Draco turned the tome over. Harry glanced at the leather cover. Gilt letters spelled out some horrendously long title. Harry had never been interested in puzzling out long titles, and still less ones in Latin, which this was. He knew, though, because Draco had patiently explained it to him, that this was a book that showed the lines of pure-blood British wizarding families going back several hundred years. The Morgans were part of it, though they had never been as prominent as the Malfoys or even the Longbottoms.

“So maybe only Raphael was actually born alive,” Harry temporized. “And then when they realized Gabriel was alive, it was too late to update the book.”

“Ha-ha,” said Draco, and set it aside. He folded his hands behind his head and stared intently at Harry. “You just don’t want to admit your precious boyfriend may have cursed me.”

Harry looked straight at him. He didn’t find the scar difficult to look at; it was difficult not to feel some regret that it was on Draco’s face, though, since Draco found living with it so difficult. “I still think it’s not something Raphael would do,” he said. “He’s very bad about letting things go. And from what you said, this wizard hasn’t approached you again in two years—“

“Maybe he will now that he realizes his vengeance hasn’t worked as well as he thought it would,” Draco muttered, face darkening.

Harry put a hand on Draco’s knee and continued speaking, while he rubbed the knee in small, consoling circles. “I think Raphael would have hung about your flat, and crowed about it to other people. That is strange, you know. Why wouldn’t your attacker have wanted to tell other people what he did?”

“Because he could be arrested?” Draco drew the words out with the dry patience he used when Harry was being particularly stupid. “This spell is Dark magic, and illegal. Even Permanence Charms, used on people instead of objects, skirt the edge of the law.”

Harry flushed. “Sorry. But it just doesn’t fit what I know of Raphael. Look how many times he keeps coming back to me, even though he knows it’s over.”

Draco shifted forwards so fast Harry had no chance to anticipate the movement before he found himself leaning deeply against the couch, Draco straddling his hips and staring down at him. “How long were you with him?” Draco asked, a small growl in his voice.

“Er,” Harry said, blinking. Thoughts of Raphael had once again fled with his new lover crouched above him, and obviously turned on. “Six months, if you count the amount of time we spent together fucking. Nine months, if you count from the time we started dating.”

“I’m going to make sure you forget him, what he’s like, what his personality may or may not have inclined him to do, and any other comparison you’re tempted to make,” Draco said sharply, and bowed his head. Harry opened his mouth eagerly to the invading tongue a moment later, and wound a hand in Draco’s hair to hold him in place.

This was perfection. This was what Harry had sought in his relationship with Raphael and never found: an intense focus on this moment and this situation, instead of the cool holding back and playing of mind-games that Raphael assumed was natural to any gay relationship. Draco—

Draco was thinking of him, wanting to bring Harry pleasure, wanting to know what would happen next, and involved in making it happen. His location was the present, not some imagined future orgasm.

Harry opened his legs and shifted down further under Draco, so that he could bring their hips and their chests fully into contact. He delighted in everything: the rasp of Draco’s robes over his skin, the sharp angles of his hips, the corded muscles of his arms as he strove to keep the kiss steady in their new position. And the silky hair that slid past Harry’s fingers, of course, and the thick scent of arousal creeping into his nostrils, and the sight of Draco’s eyes half-screwed shut, as if he didn’t dare to either look at Harry when he was kissing or look away.

Harry had never known that having a lover could be so much fun.

His fingers ran over Draco’s scar. Draco started and acted as if he would break the kiss for a moment. Harry paused, ready to let him go if that was what Draco needed.

Then Draco shook his head and pressed down again, openly treating the small incident as if it weren’t worth his time and attention. Harry laughed aloud, and then gasped as the vibrations from the laughter joined the vibrations Draco’s tongue had stirred up in him. He lifted his legs and wrapped them around Draco’s waist.

They rocked together like that, the heat building between their bodies, the heat of the sunlight flooding through the windows, the heat of their exertion and arousal spiraling inwards until Harry didn’t know why he hadn’t come already. His glasses were fogged with his panting breaths. His skin was so slick with sweat that his hands kept slipping where they had hold of Draco’s nape and shoulders.

Draco’s blond hair glinted in the light that made a hazy silhouette of his face. But he arched his neck now and then, and Harry could make out a pained sublimity in his face, his eyes shut as if he were striving after some lofty goal and despaired of reaching it.

So much…

So beautiful…

By chance or luck or the destiny that had guided him most of his life or maybe just because it was time, Harry had happened upon the one person who seemed able to give him what he wanted. And maybe there were other people out there who would have done just as well—maybe Raphael was right and one bent wizard was much like another—but Harry had no intention of searching ever again.

He licked along Draco’s teeth and opened his arms and the V of his legs wider, wishing there was some way he could bond Draco’s body into his, merge and blend with it, dive into the heat and keep on soaring forever towards an impossible pinnacle.

He reached the mountaintop at last, and came with a sound like a cry of pain, though in reality he had never been less hurt in his life. The sensation had simply risen to such a pitch that any touch felt like a blow; even the brush of Draco’s hair swept across his face as a cold wind.

Draco shuddered in his hold. The trapped, limited jerking of his hips was more beautiful than any dance Harry had ever beheld, and the way he sprawled limply in Harry’s arms a moment later made Harry have to close his eyes so he wouldn’t say something Draco probably didn’t want to hear right now.

He lay silent on the couch instead, stroking Draco’s hair, slowly falling out of the heat.

*

Draco kept his eyes shut. He knew he would face too much truth, too much intensity, if he opened them.

What they had shared hadn’t been so much, really. One could argue that it wasn’t as intimate as the blowjobs that Harry had already given him; then, there had been actual friction of skin on skin, or mouth on skin, instead of the accidental brushes they had given each other as they moved together just now. And he didn’t have to deal with the sticky, cooling mess in his pants that he could feel right now when Harry sucked him.

But this was the first time Draco had wanted to initiate it.

He had been unable to stand the shadow of Raphael Morgan hanging between them for a moment longer. He had needed some reassurance that Harry was only bringing up objections to the evidence that seemed to point to Morgan’s dark past because he wanted to find the real culprit, and not because he still longed for the other wizard. Draco wanted to watch Harry’s face while they got off together, and see what that might tell him.

It had told him—too much. It had made him feel desired and longed for and held for the first time in his life.

It had told him that if he screwed this up, he would never, ever forgive himself.

He held Harry tighter.

*

“I don’t like this,” Draco complained in a soft whisper to Harry as the server escorted them, with many supposedly surreptitious glances back at the great Harry Potter, across the main room of the Whimsical Mongoose and to a small private table. Their table was still open to the gazes of people around them, and Harry knew Draco’s complaints were his way of dealing with his fear. The glamour still concealed his scar, and for that reason, among others, Harry had vetoed his suggestion of taking a booth with curtains that could be drawn around it. “Did you know there’s a half-giant in the shadows over there? This place will obviously let anyone in.”

Harry took out his wand and rapped Draco’s hand where it rested on his elbow. Draco yelped and glared at him.

“One of my dearest friends is a half-giant, I’ll have you remember,” Harry said sharply.

Draco’s flush took only a moment to appear, and it was gratifying when it did. At least Harry knew that Draco had honestly forgotten about Hagrid, and not assumed Harry shared his prejudices.

“Sorry, sorry,” Draco muttered as he slid into the seat across from Harry and nodded absently to the server’s offer of water and menus. “But you have to understand why I’m nervous, surely?”

“I do,” Harry replied, picking up the menu and scanning it. The Whimsical Mongoose’s specialty was “unusual” cuisine. From what Harry could see of the list of foods—Jarveys packed with spinach, fricasseed mongoose, delicately fried boomslang—that was certainly true. But being here was more important than what they ate. “That doesn’t give you license to act like a prat.”

“But you like me when I act like a prat.”

Draco was—Draco was making large eyes at him, and sliding a foot up his leg under the table. Harry restrained a chuckle and reached across the table in retaliation, tracing a finger around Draco’s knuckles. “Only on certain occasions. Then, the things you can do with your tongue are quite interesting.”

The young woman who came up to ask them for their orders choked. Harry thought it served her right for eavesdropping. And if the stare she was giving him was any indication, she hadn’t known the Savior of the Wizarding World was gay. Harry enjoyed that; it wasn’t very often he got to surprise people any more.

He continued tracing the bones of Draco’s hand as he gave the witch a bland smile. “The fried boomslang for me, with toast and peach marmalade.” The toast was the only relatively normal food on the menu.

“Plebeian,” said Draco, tilting his nose back. “Everyone knows that the swan sushi is the only dish worth eating as this establishment.”

The server’s wide hazel eyes were darting back and forth between them, and she seemed to have no idea how to react. Harry swallowed his laughter and nodded to her. She came to life then, seemed to remember her duties, and scuttled off.

“You may be nervous, but you’re behaving as if you aren’t,” he told Draco.

Draco sniffed at him and sipped his water as if it were wine, then looked around and started deriding the other patrons’ clothes in an undertone. Harry smiled, and not because—or not just because—some of the comments were genuinely amusing instead of snotty.

The more comfortable Draco became in public, the higher the chance that he would agree to go without that damn glamour someday, and stop checking the time constantly.

*

Draco laid down the old copy of the Daily Prophet that Theo had procured for him on his orders. His hand hurt from being clenched into a fist, and he forced himself to fold it in his lap and stare into his flat’s useless fireplace for a long moment until his mind could clear.

When it did, of course, he returned to thinking about what he had just read. There was the damn clue, there in black-and-white. Would Harry insist now that his precious lover’s personality didn’t resemble the personality of the wizard who had marked Draco, who had caused him misery and degradation for the past two years? Would he dare recite Gryffindor platitudes about the value of mercy and forgiveness, as he had done the last time Draco pressed for going after Morgan immediately?

The article was small, and had been hidden in the back pages of the Daily Prophet. At the time, just eight years after the Dark Lord’s defeat, no one had really wanted to hear anything about Death Eaters, and only the Aurors had cared about the recruitment efforts in other countries. The Prophet had probably only run the story at all because it concerned an expatriate British wizarding family, and because it had no juicy scandals occupying the front page.

Gabriel Morgan, sixteen at the time, had been discovered, murdered, with a Dark Mark on his arm. The French Aurors had thought the Mark was real, but his body had hastily been handed over to his grieving family, and so it was never determined whether another Death Eater had Marked him or if he’d done it himself before they buried him.

Draco grimaced and touched his left arm, thoughts whirling, even as he continued staring into the empty fireplace. He knew well enough that only the Dark Lord could give a real Mark. His supporters had made due with decidedly inferior imitations in the years he was gone.

But still, that didn’t mean Gabriel Morgan’s Mark hadn’t been in earnest. And he had probably been murdered in a scuffle between Death Eaters, as the paper speculated. His twin brother would have gone away from that with hatred in his heart, and the deep, sincere conviction that all Death Eaters were evil and deserved whatever they got. Draco was glad he hadn’t met Raphael Morgan during the war. There were rumors of vigilante squads of Mudbloods torturing anyone accused of serving the Dark Lord. Morgan would surely have been part of them, pure-blood or not.

And when he had realized that Draco’s only punishment was not using his wand for a few years, not exile and not execution, he hadn’t stopped to consider that not using magic, for a pure-blood wizard, was punishment enough. He had struck out like a mad thing, and Draco had suffered for it.

That had to be it.

Just because he might have to reconsider his memory of the voice that had snarled at him—

Just because he was no longer sure, as he had been in the first moments after he heard Morgan speak, that it was his voice—

That didn’t mean he was wrong.

His hand closed down on his left arm and clenched there, until the Dark Mark began to throb softly. Draco heard the robes tear. He shut his eyes, and his breath came fast and angry.

Raphael Morgan was a murdering, mutilating madman, and it was practically Draco’s duty to inflict vengeance on him in return, since he was an Auror and the Ministry would never try one of their own.

Draco had suffered and suffered during the war, and then afterwards, with no one to soothe him and tell him it was all right. His parents had their own affairs to tend to, and since his scarring, they couldn’t look him in the face, either. Why shouldn’t he get some of his own back? Except that he would be more cautious, and leave Morgan with no way to identify his attacker. He wouldn’t kill him, though. Quite apart from the murder investigation that would ensue, death was too easy for someone like Morgan.

He would do it, and who was to know?

Harry. If Morgan turned up in an alley with both his arms gone, or blinded, or with his wand snapped in half and the pieces shoved up his arse, he would know exactly who had done it. And he might feel compelled to go to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and give his testimony, Gryffindor that he was.

More than that, though, he would turn his back on Draco. Draco knew he would. Harry liked him for what he was, for the spirit he showed, for the way he made love, for the snide comments he uttered on a daily basis. He liked the less dangerous aspects of Draco. If Draco showed him the real Slytherin lurking beneath the tame, sweet wrappings, he would have to turn his back.

Was it worth it, to have his vengeance?

No! screamed a voice in the back of Draco’s head.

And he reeled, because he had been expecting that the answer from his own soul would be an emphatic yes.

He scanned his memories, wondering what others who had once been important in his life would say. His father would undoubtedly sneer and tell him that his honor was more important than any foolish Gryffindor notions of a relationship, and part of Malfoy honor was getting revenge on those who harmed them. His mother would tell him that going after Morgan might enable him to reverse the curse on his face, and he should concentrate on that. Theo would swear Draco knew how to hold grudges, and hold them well. Weasley would probably sneer and pronounce that he knew all along Draco couldn’t be trusted.

Do you want to prove him right?

And what would Harry say?

Draco’s breathing stopped. He didn’t know what Harry would say, and he found himself intensely curious to know.

He had risen and grasped his wand before he thought about it. The voice of his reason was telling him this was stupid. He only had to calm down and think this through, and he would come to a rational, sane decision. Harry would never have to know how weak he had been. It was better not to say anything, surely. He would keep his weaknesses, whatever they were, private.

But at the same time, he wanted to know. He didn’t know, and he wanted to know.

He had denied himself enough of what he wanted, in the past few years.

He snatched the newspaper and took it with him when he Disapparated. Surely, once Harry realized that the story was true and Raphael Morgan really had hurt Draco, he would have no choice but to hold Morgan down while Draco cursed him.

*

Harry started when he felt his wards part; he usually dozed in front of the fire for a good hour before dragging himself sleepily to bed, and the wards yanked him out of forming dreams in which Draco played a large part. He fumbled for his glasses a moment. Then he realized he’d fallen asleep with them on his face. He rolled his eyes, sat up, and charmed the fire to rise. From the hour and the fact that Draco hadn’t owled ahead to ask if he could come tonight, something must be wrong, and he would probably want comfort when he arrived.

The door burst open, making the robins in the apple tree, settled for the night, burst into a chorus of scolding and scuffling. Harry was on his feet and moving across the room before he could quite register that Draco wasn’t actually bleeding.

He still made it to Draco’s side more quickly than he would have otherwise, though, and wrapped his arms around his lover. “What happened?” he whispered. Draco shook in his arms, his skin colder than it should have been, given the temperature of the air outside. Harry’s worry increased, and he pulled Draco in until he could see his face clearly in the firelight.

Draco looked ghastly. His skin was pale, and his eyes stared as though he’d walked across a war zone. The scar on his cheek looked like a wound for the first time since Draco had showed it to Harry. Harry cupped a hand around that cheek, and for the first time, Draco moved into the touch instead of away.

“Read that,” he said.

Harry finally realized Draco held a newspaper along with his wand. He took it and flipped down to the article Draco stabbed a finger at, while absently waving his own wand to close the door. He expected Draco to collapse onto the couch in exhaustion, but he stayed upright, leaning against Harry.

Harry read through the article and closed his eyes with a reluctant sigh. It did seem rather damning evidence that—

That Raphael had had a Death Eater brother who died in France twelve years ago. That was the only thing it argued. Harry turned to Draco and opened his mouth.

“I wanted to kill him.”

Harry slammed his mouth shut again and wrapped his arms around Draco. Together, they moved to the couch, and Harry spent some minutes fussing to be sure that Draco could get the most out of both the body warmth and the fire.

Draco just kept staring straight ahead. The biggest concession he made to their new position was to lean his head on Harry’s shoulder.

“I thought he’d done this to me,” Draco whispered. He didn’t raise his hand to touch his cheek. By now, neither of them needed the reminder. “I thought he went mad, and decided that any Death Eater was to blame for what happened to his brother. I was a convenient target, and one the Wizengamot didn’t assign to the full term of prison they could have. He went a bit mad, I thought. That had to be it. And I was on the verge of Apparating to his flat—I found the address in those Ministry records of his—waiting until I saw him, and blinding him.”

Harry’s arms tightened again, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t think he could.

“Or changing him partially into a slug,” Draco whispered. “Or inflicting a disease on him that would make lycanthropy seem like jolly fun. Or scattering acid across his chest. Or casting any one of a number of Dark curses which I know, and which you probably don’t even know the names of.”

He laughed suddenly, the sound so raw and ugly that it made Harry jump. “Does it surprise you, Harry, this evil side to your lover?” His voice was light and mocking, but Harry knew the truth of that; those emotions were just a thin bridge over an abyss of despair and self-loathing. “You thought I was just a misguided schoolboy, forced into things that weren’t my fault. That’s what the Wizengamot decided, and that’s why they only took my wand away. But I’m more than that. I’m the person who was pleased that a hippogriff was going to die, just because he hurt me. I’m the person who really wanted to see Umbridge cast Cruciatus on you in our fifth year. I’m the person who was going to cast an Unforgivable on you that time you sliced me up. Or did you forget that?”

“Never,” Harry whispered.

Draco jerked and turned to face him. His eyes had changed again; they saw Harry, now, but they had a feverish sheen that Harry definitely disliked. “But you have to have forgotten,” he insisted. “Otherwise, how could you take someone like me to your heart and your bed?”

Harry pressed his lips to Draco’s temple, and held them there until he felt Draco’s trembling calm a bit. That was at least as much for his own benefit as Draco’s. When he locked gazes with Draco again, he had the courage to say what he needed to.

“You’re not the only person in the room who’s used Unforgivables,” he said. “I’ve used them and meant them, which is more than you ever could have.”

“I used them when the Dark Lord made me torture—“

“Made you torture,” Harry echoed. “No one made me torture anyone, Draco, or control them with Imperius, either. I could have used something else. But I didn’t.” He shivered, remembering the power coursing through his body when he’d cursed the Carrows. “So if using certain spells, or knowing them, makes you Dark and evil and tainted, then I’ve joined you in the shadows.”

Draco’s breathing sped up. Whatever he had expected to hear admitted, Harry thought, this was not it. “But you regret it, don’t you?” he asked.

Harry closed his eyes. It might almost be a year and a half ago, he thought; then, he had sat in this room with Hermione, and she had asked him that same question. And Harry had had to look inside himself, to understand his own fear, and his guilt, and get rid of the obstacles that otherwise would have prevented him from healing.

“I don’t,” he said softly. “It happened. I could have used something else. But I lived, and escaped, and I defeated Voldemort. I can’t regret anything that led me to that. I regret the deaths of people I knew and loved. I regret that it took me so long to destroy Voldemort and fulfill the prophecy that everyone depended on me to fulfill. Nothing else.”

Draco swallowed. Then he swallowed again, and whispered, “I couldn’t regret it, either. Not if regret meant—wishing I was dead instead of them. I thought it made me cowardly, evil, unworthy of anyone’s regard.”

Harry took his jaw and turned his head for a kiss. Draco accepted it, looking dazed.

“Human,” Harry whispered into his ear when the kiss was done. “That’s all.” He hesitated, and then touched the scar on Draco’s cheek. “Just as this doesn’t make you ugly. I don’t care if you disagree with me. The people who would call you ugly are like the people who would call you evil for having used the Unforgivables. They haven’t done those things, but they haven’t faced them, either. Someone who could look the same terrors in the face that we did and choose differently might be morally better than we are. But without that testing, they have no idea what they’re talking about. They don’t know what way they’d jump. We do, and I treasure that knowledge, as well as the fact that I’ve done more good for the world than most of them ever will.”

Draco just sat there for the longest time. Then he mumbled, “So—so the fact that I wanted to curse Morgan, but I didn’t, and came to you instead—that makes me—“

“Someone who did choose the undisputed right thing, this time,” Harry whispered. “Someone who could easily do more good for the world than any of the people pointing at you in the streets ever will.”

And then Draco turned his face into Harry’s shoulder and began to weep. Harry held him, not making an attempt to talk, just keeping his hand in constant, soothing motion down Draco’s spine.

He had offered what he could: honesty and compassion and self-disclosure and the hard lessons he had already learned. And it had helped Draco—helped him, when it could so easily have hurt him and driven him away. But Harry didn’t know how to be dishonest with a lover anymore.

And Draco had helped him in turn. Seeing his own difficult self-knowledge reflected and accepted in another’s face made Harry feel as if he’d stepped out of a box he hadn’t even known was there, and now he could see the stars.

*

Part 6.

Comments

[twistedm.livejournal.com]

i'm so eager for the last chapter!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

I'm glad. :)