lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2008-06-05 12:08 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2008-06-05 12:08 pm
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Happy belated birthday, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
megyal! ~One-shot, Ingenium Est Fas, PG-1
This is the third post of three in a one-shot story; don't start reading here.
“And how’s Malfoy been?”
Harry smiled slightly and leaned back in the chair he’d dragged in front of the fireplace for these conversations. After the second firecall with Ron, he’d got rather tired of kneeling on the floor, especially when he had an after-dinner glass of Firewhiskey. “Great, actually.”
Ron’s eyebrows drew together, and his head bobbed in the flames as though he were considering coming through into the Manor no matter how many times Harry had told him he didn’t need to. “That’s not a word I can imagine you using of Malfoy.”
“Not easily,” Harry conceded. “He’s not my best friend or anything. No one could ever replace you.” He reveled in Ron’s smile before he continued, “But he’s kept his distance when he could have mocked me instead, and he’s told me some basic information that makes using the library easier, and we actually discuss things that aren’t the books sometimes.” He didn’t want to reveal the substance of those conversations—about food, mostly, and the interior garden, and sometimes circling around acknowledgment of Draco’s grief over Lucius—for fear they would turn out to be nothing in the light of plain skepticism. If he played those conversations over only occasionally in his mind and in his bed, Lucius’s bed, before he went to sleep, they retained an air of significance that was much greater than it probably was in reality.
He could let the memories fade in a short while. It had been two weeks since the casting of the spell, and he and Draco had now gone through three-quarters of the encyclopedia. The spell couldn’t be hiding in very many more pages. And then Harry would be free, and chances were five hundred to one that he would ever see Draco again.
It doesn’t matter, he reassured himself, and blinked to chase away the sense of sadness plaguing him. There were plenty of people he would be happy to never see again. Did it really matter that Draco had become something like a friend?
Maybe it matters that you’re calling him “Draco.”
But it only made sense to be polite when you were stuck in a house with only one other person.
He exchanged only a few more words with Ron, mostly about the work he’d have to catch up on in the Auror training course when he got back, before an owl arrived on Ron’s end of the Floo connection and he had to leave. Harry sat watching the ordinary fire, sipping his Firewhiskey and trying to sort out his feelings.
His nightmares were diminishing. Malfoy had said something about how they were bound to, now that Harry was doing serious study for the first time in his life and exhausting his brain during the day, but Harry privately thought he was getting used to the house. His house, at least for the moment.
Harry shook his head and addressed Lucius Malfoy. “What did you think I would learn, exactly? Were you hoping I would become friends with Draco? Protect him? I could see wanting to do that, but you could have achieved the same results without leaving me the house. Or did you think I wouldn’t change unless I was trapped here? That could have backfired on you, you know. If I’d resented you too much to try and develop a friendship with Draco—“
“It’s always entertaining when you talk to yourself, Potter, but this is a rather long monologue for you to give a dead man,” a tight voice interrupted from the door.
Even before Harry put his glass of Firewhiskey on the carpet and turned around, he knew something was wrong. Draco’s voice was too tight, and he had a slight hiccough in the back of it that not all the Firewhiskey Harry knew he had drunk with dinner that night could account for.
Draco leaned against the doorway, his head bowed so that his face was in shadow rather than openly touched by the light of the fire. He had an entire half-empty bottle of Firewhiskey in his right hand which Harry eyed with concern. He was sure that that wasn’t the bottle they had opened to drink together.
You were drinking Firewhiskey at dinner with Draco Malfoy, Ron’s voice said in his head, with flat incredulity.
Harry shook his head and stood. For the moment, there was something in front of him that might mean something. Or—he hesitated; his thoughts always moved a little more slowly when he was drunk—maybe he could help Draco, Malfoy, with whatever hurt him.
“Did something happen to your mother?” he asked quietly. Knowing how protective Malfoy was of his family, it was the first thing Harry could think of that might make his voice sound like that.
“No.” Draco paused to drag air into his lungs. “I got a letter. From my father.”
Harry felt hope surge through his body, briefly making him feel as he had when he’d looked up in the Chamber of Secrets and realized Fawkes was flying towards him. Then he shook his head in confusion. He didn’t know why it would make him so glad to know that Lucius Malfoy wasn’t dead.
Well, of course. If he isn’t dead, he can take back the Manor, and you can go home.
“It was a joke?” he asked, taking a step forwards. Anger at the prank could have outweighed Draco’s happiness that his father was still alive. “He faked his death?”
“No,” Draco whispered. “He’s dead. He time-delayed it. Left it with a friend with instructions to post it to me when he’d been gone for a certain length of time.” His left hand swung into view suddenly, and Harry heard the sound of crackling parchment. “Read it.”
Carefully, Harry took the letter away, smoothed it out as best he might, and read it.
My dear son:
I trust that, by now, you will have begun to learn the reasons why I gave you almost everything except that which you most expected to have. It is a test of character. You have been less than you could have in the past few years. I feared that it would take a great shock to shake you loose of your denial of reality. My death will provide that shock, and a confrontation with the boy you have always considered your greatest rival should aid in it.
You are not sixteen anymore, Draco. The mistakes you made in that year will not define the rest of your life. But neither can I allow you to sustain the illusion that I will rescue you because you are young and I am your father.
The rest of your life will be lived without me. There will be suffering, which you have experienced and know how to live with. But there must also be moving forwards. I fear you have done little of that. The blame is partly mine, for spoiling you. But blame does not matter now, except for the slight and momentary satisfaction it may permit you. Instead, you must reach into mature emotions such as acceptance, no matter how hard it is, no matter how much you might wish to hide your head.
Live, my son. Accept my losses and your own. And do that which is harder than anything else for someone accustomed to following orders, as you were: do these things because you want to, of your own free will, not because I command it.
Your loving father,
Lucius Malfoy.
Harry’s eyes prickled suspiciously by the time he handed the letter back to Draco. He took a few moments to catch his breath. He wouldn’t have wanted his father to write a letter like that to him, he thought absently, even though he would have given almost anything to have a letter from either of his parents. Lucius had absolutely loved his son, but his cruelty was as great as his love, and Harry could not decide whether he envied or pitied Draco more.
Draco crumpled the letter further, and further, until Harry was sure it was the size of a dust mote. Then he began to breathe in a way that caused Harry to look at him in concern. When he looked up, though, his eyes were dry, if feverishly bright.
“I’m going to go up on the roof and break things,” he said, voice curiously conversational. “Come with me?”
*
The sky was full of scudding clouds, running as if they feared the faint light of the waning moon. Draco sniffed, and decided that the smell of the air meant there would be a storm shortly. He wondered if the lightning would be as violent as his mood, and then decided that he didn’t care.
He hardly cared about anything. His emotions were broken and shattered in him, and feeling anything was like walking across shards of glass. He laughed and threw up a hand. Then he aimed his wand at the first row of delicate glass jars he’d conjured out of thin air when Harry had refused to let him bring anything out of the Manor proper. Draco had argued that he owned most of the objects in the Manor and he could damn well break them if he pleased, but Harry had insisted he would regret it in the morning.
Harry stood some distance behind him now, wrapped in a cloak as if the early summer evening were cold, his eyes a heavy pressure on Draco’s back. He had mentioned something about being sensitive to Dark magic, not that Draco intended to let that stop him.
Draco laughed again, and cast a curse his father had taught him when he was fifteen. The air around the glass jars glowed red, and then they broke apart in a sparkling mist that disintegrated further and further as it traveled away from its origin, with a horrendous screeching noise like a dying rabbit’s.
“What the fuck was that?” Harry shouted. Draco glanced back at him again and saw that he had his hands over his ears.
“A custom-made Banishing Spell,” Draco said cheerfully. He could feel the Firewhiskey and his dangerous glee sloshing around his head with grief just underneath, but he didn’t have to acknowledge the grief if he didn’t want to. “My father invented it and then threw it away because he decided it was too dangerous to use in case the Ministry decided it was Dark Arts.” He tilted his head back again to stare at the clouds. “Just like he made me and then threw me away.”
Harry came up beside him, but said nothing. Draco did feel the brief touch of a hand on his back, but he didn’t have to acknowledge that, either. He continued to stare straight ahead, and then Transfigured one of the roof tiles into a rat.
Harry drew a quick, sharp breath. Draco glanced sideways at him and saw him shaking his head slightly, his hair rustling against the cloak. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Please.”
“Squeamish,” Draco sniped, but he Transfigured the rat into a wooden one and then took careful aim. This time, he used a Dark Arts curse he’d learned on his own, during those terrifying days when he still thought he had a chance of killing Dumbledore. A shrieking yellow light flew at the wooden rat, snatched it up, and then began to rend it, rolling through its body like a five-pointed guillotine.
Draco glanced at Harry again. He was standing quietly, his eyes fixed on the flying scraps of wood. From what Draco could see, there was no expression on his face, even though he had turned green.
Did Father look like that when he died? Did he hope I would look like that when I read his letter?
Dangerous billows of emotion once again closed over his head, and he held his wand high in the air and concentrated on his anger, pouring life into it, shaping the force lovingly, crafting it, and holding it back until the moment when it trembled with the need for release. Then he let it go.
The air above them burst open with a roar that knocked Harry to the roof. Draco kept his feet only because he’d been expecting it. He put a foot on Harry’s arm to brace him and keep him from sliding to the ground, but his eyes were on the storm he’d just created.
The rent in the air was growing wider and wider. Briefly, Draco glimpsed writhing red tentacles behind it, and then gleaming yellow eyes, and then a blue blob that might have been a head. A shapeless thing lunged out of the rent at him, gathering form as it traveled, so that by the time it had descended enough to brush the top of his head, it was definitely a hand.
Draco spoke another curse, his wand aimed negligently at one of the smaller fingers, and the hand whirred apart into carrion-smelling goo that dripped into Draco’s hair and eyes and ran along his skin, drying almost instantly to leave an itchy residue. Draco tilted his head back, accepting it, laughing and screaming so hard his throat hurt, tears crawling from his eyes to mix into the goo.
The rent in the sky had snapped shut, but it wasn’t enough. Draco lifted his wand to cast the spell again, this time to call up an opponent worthy of him, one he could feel better about destroying.
Harry stepped in front of him.
Draco stared at him, wondering when he had cast Lumos on his wand. The light was enough to make his face a mask of shadows, but there was no mistaking his pallor or his panting, and he stood braced as if he were about to cast the curse that had carved Draco’s chest into scars again. A horrible, painful, noisy joy filled Draco’s throat and ears, and he licked his lips, aiming his wand at Harry. Despite all the Dark magic he’d just seen him cast, Harry didn’t stir, only continued staring at him.
“Do you want to duel?” Draco said. He’d thought he was whispering, but his voice broke and popped, unexpectedly loud in his own ears. Perhaps the goo that had soaked down the sides of his head was affecting his hearing, he thought absently.
“No,” said Harry, without inflection. “I want to know that you can express your grief at your father freely, and then go back inside the Manor without damaging yourself or anyone else.”
Draco snorted. “That sounds like something Professor Snape might have said to me, the year that I was ruining my life and he was trying to keep me from ruining it.” Professor Snape was dead, too, he remembered idly. Everyone important to Draco died in the end. He shouldn’t see why he should be any different, and whether it mattered if he died now or later. “Or Madam Pomfrey, maybe. Which one are you?”
“Neither,” Harry said quietly. “Just someone who’s shared your house for the last two weeks and doesn’t want you to destroy yourself.”
“Your house,” Draco said, and his anger awakened again. He danced a little closer to Harry, feinting with the wand. Harry didn’t move or respond to any of his motions that could have been spellcasting attempts, for all he knew. “And that’s the problem, isn’t it? We wouldn’t have been here at all if my father had just done what he was supposed to do, and—“ He stopped, choking. His mind was too thick, hazy, swirling with emotions. He had no idea what he might have said next.
“Left the house to you?” Harry asked.
“Lived!” Draco shouted, and lunged wildly.
It was clear from the beginning of the fight that he wasn’t doing his best, and Harry could have defeated him easily. Draco’s magic was drained by the Dark Arts curses he’d used, and the man he most wanted to hurt wasn’t here or anywhere else. He cast hexes and jinxes and spells that would have made Harry’s lungs freeze in his chest and his eyes burst out of his head like grapes being forced from a winepress if they’d hit.
They didn’t hit.
Harry dodged just ahead of him, fast enough that Draco didn’t have to feel ashamed, but well enough that none of the spells came close to him. Then he whirled out of Draco’s sight. Draco halted, teetering a few feet from the edge of the roof. His feet slipped on the tiles, and he wondered for a moment if it had started to rain and he hadn’t noticed. Then he realized the slipping came only from the Firewhiskey and the dizziness and the vertigo and the pain.
Harry’s arms came around his waist, and Harry leaned his head against Draco’s shoulder, speaking firmly and calmly into his ear. “Drop your wand.”
Draco dropped his wand and stood still for a moment, eyes closed. He wondered if Potter would push him off the roof. He was holding him in such a fashion that Draco thought he could do it perfectly. And who would blame him? What friends did Draco have? Were any of the house-elves up here to witness the little accident?
Harry tightened his grip instead, and dragged Draco backwards. Then he turned him around. Draco wanted to keep his head down, the way he always did when he got a scolding, but Harry shoved his wand under Draco’s chin and muttered an incantation. Draco’s head jerked up and froze in position, and his eyes did the same. He couldn’t look away from Harry’s face no matter how much he tried.
“Listen to me,” Harry said. His voice sounded normal, at least, and perhaps the goo had finally melted out of Draco’s ears. “You’re grieving. That’s fine. But you don’t have to destroy everything in sight.” For a moment, a smile that Draco had seen before in the mirror crossed Harry’s lips. “I did that once. I don’t recommend it as a fulfilling experience.”
Draco shoved half-heartedly at his arms, but that didn’t change the fixing of his head and eyes, or the way that Harry’s voice went on, as compelling as hypnosis.
“You’re still alive. Your father is dead and won’t get to see what you did, true, and you can’t ask him why he did this. Or,” Harry added quietly, perhaps seeing the way Draco had started to open his mouth to interrupt, “you know why he did this and you don’t agree. Fine. Either way, spending your life in an argument with the dead is an activity I don’t recommend, either. Guilt, shame, fear, regret, longing—there’s so much you can do with them, but they’re better when they go towards the living.”
“Fuck you, Potter,” Draco said, and wished he could open his jaw wider so he could actually spit. “I have no one left.”
Harry’s eyes hardened. “You don’t care about your mother, then?”
Draco shut his mouth fast enough that his teeth caught his tongue.
Harry nodded, never looking away from him. Draco wondered if he had cast his own spell on himself to hold his head in place, but direct eye contact probably came naturally to him, hero that he was. “Like I was saying, Lucius is dead. You can’t resurrect him, you can’t ask him questions, you can’t change anything he did in the past. But you can try to master the consequences of what he left behind him, just like you can try to rise above what you did when you were young and stupid.” He paused as if considering. “Not that you’re not both those things, still.” His smile flashed before Draco could yell at him. “But so am I.
“So. You want to break things, fine. You want to cast spells, fine. You want to scream your pain out, fine.” Harry paused to breathe, though Draco hadn’t had the impression that speaking those words required all that much effort. “But eventually, you have to come down from the roof and live in the normal world again.”
“What made you think I wouldn’t?” Draco demanded.
“The way you were standing so close to the roof’s edge, for one thing,” said Harry. “The way you didn’t seem to care if you lived or died when that monster reached for you.”
“It’s called a flair for the dramatic, Potter.”
“But you could have died,” Harry insisted. “You might have died, if you had come up here alone.”
Draco rolled his eyes, or he tried, and found that the spell fixing them in place prevented that—a consequence Harry no doubt enjoyed. “You can’t really think this is the danger Lucius cast the spell to protect me from.”
“I have no idea what the fucker intended!” Harry screamed back, and Draco was glad to see the shine of frustration and temper in his eyes for a moment. It increased as he glared at Draco. “I don’t know how to talk you down and out of this. I don’t know how much danger you were really in. I don’t know why I like you so much when most of what we’ve done in the past two weeks is talk about dinner, or sit in the library and read books together. That wasn’t how I became friends with Hermione, for your information.”
“There was something about a troll, right,” Draco agreed. “And you saved her. Are you saving me now, Potter? Is that the way you make friends?” Part of him was distantly horrified at the way he continued to spout words he didn’t really believe, but he wouldn’t be himself if he had to shut up now. He would think up these words, and he would speak them to Potter. The terms of their truce had changed less than a day after he and Potter agreed on them, after all.
“I have no idea if I am,” said Harry, and Draco felt a bit of chagrin when he realized that Harry wasn’t just refusing to be baited, he seemed to feel no temptation to respond that way at all. “I just know that I like you and I don’t want to see you die, and I thought you might. And now I want you to come down from the roof and keep on living. If I can make sure you don’t do this again when I leave, then I will.”
Draco swallowed. He couldn’t close his eyes, either. He was shivering, and he thought it might just be muscle spasms from having his head fixed in one place for so long, but maybe it wasn’t.
He didn’t think anyone had liked him just because he was there. Never without the ties of blood, at least, which had ensured Lucius and Narcissa loved him.
He had barely thought of his mother in two weeks. And why not? She did often deal with her grief in private, but they hadn’t had such a shared pain before. A sudden flood of loneliness and the desire to know how she was doing filled him. He swallowed again.
“I like you,” Harry repeated, quietly. “I don’t want you to die, or do something stupid that results in your dying.” He hesitated, as if debating the wisdom of his course with himself, and then waved his wand and muttered, “Finite Incantatem.”
Draco lowered his head and massaged his throat for long moments. His hand was shaking. He knew what he wanted to do next, but he wasn’t sure Harry would welcome it, or that it was the best thing to do.
Then he decided that this was worth the risk, just as it had been worth it to speak about his terror of the Dark Lord, and he lunged forwards and seized Harry around the waist and shoulders, hauling him close. He made sure to hold him hard, so Harry couldn’t mistake this for some kind of girlish hug. And he kept his head bowed, so that if any tears did escape his eyes for some childish reason, Harry couldn’t see them.
Harry held him back in exactly the same way, squeezing his spine hard enough to hurt. Draco listened to their rasping breaths intermingling, whilst the smell of rain in the air increased and he grew slowly used to the smell of Harry’s sweat and the rough material of his cloak and hair against his face. The smell of his own sweat was covered by the blue liquid that still covered him.
God, that was a stupid spell to cast.
One thing was certain, at least: none of the breaking and cursing and flinging and screaming had calmed him as much as just standing here, clutching at someone else and not being pushed away, even being held in, welcomed, as if he were liked.
Or loved.
*
Harry sat up, staring. He didn’t think he could have moved if Voldemort had reappeared in front of him at that moment. His eyes were locked on the writing on the newly-opened page, and his voice was frozen.
Finally, he managed to clear his throat. But even that sound was softer and less impressive than it should have been, and Draco didn’t look up from the encyclopedia he was ferociously scowling at. That book covered spells that affected the mind, mood, and emotions, Harry knew. Draco had been sure that it would include Ingenium est fas, but he was halfway through and the scowl on his face deepened as he scanned each line and found nothing.
Nor would he, Harry thought. He was the one who had located it instead, in an encyclopedia he had privately thought about rejecting, because it was filled with spells that affected prophecy, Divination, and destiny.
“I found it,” he whispered at last.
Draco glanced up. His hair was more ruffled than it usually was. Harry didn’t know if that meant he’d had an unusually restless night’s sleep—Harry had hoped that he would sleep better after last night—or simply forgotten his grooming spells. “Hmmm?”
“I found it,” Harry said, and had to clear his throat again, because the words didn’t seem to want to make it out of his mouth. “‘Ingenium est fas, or the Character Expression Spell, is regularly translated to ‘Character is destiny.’ It…’”
Draco was on his feet in moments, striding across the distance between them. He seized the back of Harry’s chair and bent over the book. Harry adjusted the angle of the encyclopedia so that Draco could read with him, and together they silently devoured the words.
Ingenium est fas, or the Character Expression Spell, is regularly translated to ‘Character is destiny.’ It is meant to activate an individual’s soul and potential in cases where the individual is ignoring what he could be or refusing to accept the simple facts that most matter in his life. One regular use for it was to ease the pain of arranged or forced marriages, because the Character Expression Spell does not only affect the one it is cast on. It influences those he comes into close contact with as well, causing those other people to respond to his expression of himself with the expression of their own needs, desires, and characters. Considered a spell that works with destiny because it enables the individual to meet that destiny, it nevertheless has unpredictable results. The true self of the person it is cast on may not meet the caster’s expectations, and cannot be forced into any one direction.
Harry leaned back against his chair. “I told you,” he whispered. “I told you that my temper tantrum that first day was caused by the spell. I showed the anger that I’d been holding back because I wanted to get along with you and because it’s necessary to hold it back in Auror training. Once that was out of the way, then I was free to be a little more polite—to be your friend.” He twisted and looked up at Draco.
To his astonishment, Draco’s face was pale, and he shook his head several times. “I don’t see why my father cast that spell,” he said.
“Really?” Harry found himself grinning. It would be a rare occurrence, he thought, when he knew more about someone in Draco’s family than Draco himself. “Lucius wanted you to be yourself, Draco. But he probably knew that having Greyson cast the spell directly on you would have made you angry with him, made you feel like you were being forced or controlled even if you read the description of the spell. By doing it indirectly through me, he gave you someone to respond to and ensured that you could develop a little freer of his shadow.”
“But—“ Draco worked his jaw. “Let’s say that’s true,” he said suddenly, slapping his palms down on the back of Harry’s chair. “Let’s just say that it is. But that means our whole reaction to each other is a sham, right? It never would have happened if not for the spell.”
“Oh, what bollocks,” Harry said, standing up and letting the encyclopedia drop to the chair. It fell shut, and for a moment he wondered if he would be able to find the page that described the Ingenium est fas spell again. Then his rising anger at Draco swept that worry away. He stalked forwards a few steps, whilst Draco watched him warily, and then controlled himself with a jerk. It was probably not the best plan to punch in Draco’s jaw, no matter how tempting.
“You might as well say that our friendship is a sham because it never would have come about if Lucius’s will hadn’t trapped me in the Manor,” he said impatiently. “That statement is true, but it’s not interesting. For that matter, we never would have known each other if I hadn’t come to Hogwarts, or you hadn’t. We might have been born in different years, and then we’d have been unlikely to be rivals, except maybe on the Quidditch pitch. Or you could have been Sorted into Hufflepuff—“
“Liar.” Draco’s face was flushing pink now, and Harry liked that. He liked a lot of things about Draco, except for the ridiculous way Draco jumped to conclusions. And maybe even that would have been endearing, if they weren’t such utterly stupid conclusions.
“And I could have been Sorted into Ravenclaw, and then we wouldn’t have had the intense House rivalry to magnify our rivalry.” Harry shook his head. “Tell me, do you lie awake at night worrying about all the different turns your life could have taken and regretting that it didn’t take them? That’s not a productive hobby. You don’t know that those half a million other Dracos are happier than you are, and I’m not going to let you diminish the fact that I’ve got used to you by saying it was all caused by a spell, woe are we.”
Draco stepped closer to him, eyes narrowed and cheeks pinker than ever. He had his fists half-raised, but his wand was still in his pocket. Harry braced his feet, not sure if he was expecting a blow to the face or the midriif.
Instead, what he got were words as hard as either one of them.
“I do that,” Draco whispered. “I do regret that I wasn’t born later, when the entire war was over. I regret that my father chose to be a Death Eater. I regret every single moment of my sixth year at Hogwarts, even the ones I was proud of at the time, like stepping on your nose. Because, yes, whatever those half a million other Dracos are doing, most of them have to be happier than me.”
Harry closed his eyes. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe.
“But,” Draco said, decisively enough to make Harry look again, “I can’t regret this. And I can’t think of it as some sort of plot.” He ran his hand over his face and laughed, but Harry wasn’t sure what to label the laughter as, or who he was laughing at. “My father didn’t plan this. He just cast the spell and hoped for the best. He didn’t know what would happen next. Maybe he knew me that well, but I refuse to think he knew you that well. He wasn’t a Weasley, or Granger, or me.” He swallowed on the last words, and Harry heard a click in his throat that told him how hard those words had been for Draco to say.
“And so,” Draco said, in the voice of someone edging out on a tightrope over a void with no net or Cushioning Charm beneath him, “that’s why I’d quite like it if you would—come back to the Manor some time, even though you’ve fulfilled the conditions and can leave.” He was staring at Harry, eyes wide open, as though to memorize his expression in case he refused.
Harry didn’t even have to think about his answer, the way he hadn’t had to think about trying to save Draco last night. He was himself, and that meant he responded to gestures of grandeur and courage like this in only one way.
He held out his hand and took Draco’s, and said, “I’d like that. A lot.”
*
Draco closed his eyes. He still didn’t think he was ready to cry in front of Harry. But the exhaustion from last night’s emotional storm and the letter he’d written his mother, carefully, explaining and apologizing and crossing out twenty lines for every one he sent on, were making it difficult. He always had trouble controlling his feelings when he was sleep-deprived.
He stepped closer to Harry, feeling up his arm to his shoulder. Harry stood still and let him feel, then tentatively embraced Draco, as if he thought Draco might change his mind after all and back frantically away.
I’d like that. A lot.
Five simple words, and Draco thought he would be hearing them in his head every night for the rest of his life. They could be a weapon to fight the regrets with.
He bowed his head and dimly noted that he liked being this close to Harry, close enough for Harry’s hair to brush his cheek. Closer than friends, maybe. Friends didn’t hug each other all the time, did they? Unless they were Weasleys. Which he wasn’t.
Harry turned his head and sighed, letting his own cheek rest on Draco’s hair, and Draco felt a sharp thrill course through him, starting from his belly and streaking up to his throat like a rising star.
There were other things he liked, or would like.
Maybe they were things he could have.
*
Harry looked around his bedroom, cursing softly. Two bloody weeks back at his and Ron’s flat and away from the Manor, and the damn place still didn’t feel like home. Harry had become accustomed to having a lot of space in Lucius’s bedroom, and when he’d come back to the flat, he’d expanded without thinking about it, creating the clutter he’d been free of before. Now he’d found his glasses but lost his wand.
“Accio Harry’s wand,” he said without much hope, considering he didn’t have it in order to perform the spell.
Maybe there had been a slight wriggle under that pile of robes and exam books, though. Harry jumped on it and began digging enthusiastically, trying not to think about how late he was for his latest Auror class, and how he’d woken up that morning missing Draco, and the way in which his brain and body had evidently decided he missed Draco.
A sharp bang sounded at the window. Harry whirled around guiltily, certain he’d somehow knocked his wand flying away, or that a Ministry owl was here to tell him off for his lack of punctuality.
Instead, a black owl with tips of white to its feathers hovered beyond the glass. Harry drew in a thick breath and barely managed to walk over to the window and open the pane with shaking fingers.
He told himself not to be so ridiculous, just because it was an owl he’d seen around Malfoy Manor several times. Maybe it was from Narcissa Malfoy, telling Harry that merely making out an official legal document passing possession of Malfoy Manor to Draco wasn’t enough, and she needed to see him for some long, cold session in Greyson’s office where he wouldn’t understand one word in three.
But the owl landed on his arm with a gentleness that Harry thought it wouldn’t have bothered using if Narcissa had sent him a message, and extended the letter to him with a soft ruffle of its wings. Harry opened it.
Potter:
Your last letter to me whinging about your Auror training and that dinner with the Weasleys simply proves to me that you need to get out more. I’m having dinner in a small restaurant in Diagon Alley tomorrow. Not one I usually frequent, but one I intend to get used to my presence.
If you’d like to join me, send a response with my owl. I’ll give you the details with my next letter, as you would surely forget them if you read them now, so long before the actual meeting.
Draco Malfoy.
Harry spent a moment tracing the signature with his finger before he realized what he was doing and snatched his hand away. God, he was acting like some kind of lovesick git. And it was just a meeting in a restaurant, hardly a date, and with a boy at that.
But it was something he would like to do, very much. And maybe Ingenium est fas was pushing his courage to greater heights than he would normally achieve, influencing him to be more himself, because Harry wrote the letter accepting the invitation calmly, and resumed searching for his wand before the owl had dwindled to a distant dot in the sky.
*
Draco appeared in Diagon Alley not far from the door of the restaurant he’d told Harry he would meet him at, the Evergreen Phoenix, and sighed when he saw the large crowd of people in front of the door. No doubt the word had spread that Harry Potter had actually deigned to set foot in Diagon Alley, and that meant Draco would have to fight his way through Harry’s admirers.
Then some people turned to look at him, and Draco heard the hisses and saw some witches drawing their robes ostentatiously away.
Draco spent one more moment dreaming of his father suddenly appearing at his side and clearing a path for him with his gaze.
Then he lifted his chin and stepped forwards, using his own version of the Malfoy stride and the Malfoy glare. And maybe Ingenium est fas was pushing his pride to greater heights than he normally would achieve, because the people around him glared and muttered and struck him in the ribs with their elbows where they could, but they also got out of the way.
Draco paused in the door of the restaurant. It was dim inside, especially with the contrast between the brief splashes of sunshine around heavy thunderclouds outside and the cave-like interior lit with flickering torches. But he located Harry immediately nonetheless. He had barricaded himself in a corner where few people could approach him, and there was a lingering smell of ash from the same direction that made Draco think he knew why the people who were near him kept a respectful distance.
Harry glared at them all, his face just daring them to try something. Then he turned, and met Draco’s eyes.
Draco held his breath. He had told himself he would risk coming here because Harry had answered his letter, and tailor his behavior to the response he saw in Harry’s eyes. But that, of course, depended on showing his own interest first.
Again he stepped out over the abyss; this time he let his face show his interest and his hope and the odd loneliness that had dogged him since Harry left the Manor openly, in a way his father never would have done.
Harry stared back at him. The longest moments of Draco’s life passed under that gaze, which he told himself was critical and appraising, because it was better to know the worst truths first than to lie. He did still resent Lucius for never letting Draco know of his sickness, and that he’d thought Draco so woefully unprepared for life without him.
And then Harry smiled and beckoned for Draco to join him.
Draco could have sworn he crossed the last steps to Harry’s table in full sunlight.
End.
“And how’s Malfoy been?”
Harry smiled slightly and leaned back in the chair he’d dragged in front of the fireplace for these conversations. After the second firecall with Ron, he’d got rather tired of kneeling on the floor, especially when he had an after-dinner glass of Firewhiskey. “Great, actually.”
Ron’s eyebrows drew together, and his head bobbed in the flames as though he were considering coming through into the Manor no matter how many times Harry had told him he didn’t need to. “That’s not a word I can imagine you using of Malfoy.”
“Not easily,” Harry conceded. “He’s not my best friend or anything. No one could ever replace you.” He reveled in Ron’s smile before he continued, “But he’s kept his distance when he could have mocked me instead, and he’s told me some basic information that makes using the library easier, and we actually discuss things that aren’t the books sometimes.” He didn’t want to reveal the substance of those conversations—about food, mostly, and the interior garden, and sometimes circling around acknowledgment of Draco’s grief over Lucius—for fear they would turn out to be nothing in the light of plain skepticism. If he played those conversations over only occasionally in his mind and in his bed, Lucius’s bed, before he went to sleep, they retained an air of significance that was much greater than it probably was in reality.
He could let the memories fade in a short while. It had been two weeks since the casting of the spell, and he and Draco had now gone through three-quarters of the encyclopedia. The spell couldn’t be hiding in very many more pages. And then Harry would be free, and chances were five hundred to one that he would ever see Draco again.
It doesn’t matter, he reassured himself, and blinked to chase away the sense of sadness plaguing him. There were plenty of people he would be happy to never see again. Did it really matter that Draco had become something like a friend?
Maybe it matters that you’re calling him “Draco.”
But it only made sense to be polite when you were stuck in a house with only one other person.
He exchanged only a few more words with Ron, mostly about the work he’d have to catch up on in the Auror training course when he got back, before an owl arrived on Ron’s end of the Floo connection and he had to leave. Harry sat watching the ordinary fire, sipping his Firewhiskey and trying to sort out his feelings.
His nightmares were diminishing. Malfoy had said something about how they were bound to, now that Harry was doing serious study for the first time in his life and exhausting his brain during the day, but Harry privately thought he was getting used to the house. His house, at least for the moment.
Harry shook his head and addressed Lucius Malfoy. “What did you think I would learn, exactly? Were you hoping I would become friends with Draco? Protect him? I could see wanting to do that, but you could have achieved the same results without leaving me the house. Or did you think I wouldn’t change unless I was trapped here? That could have backfired on you, you know. If I’d resented you too much to try and develop a friendship with Draco—“
“It’s always entertaining when you talk to yourself, Potter, but this is a rather long monologue for you to give a dead man,” a tight voice interrupted from the door.
Even before Harry put his glass of Firewhiskey on the carpet and turned around, he knew something was wrong. Draco’s voice was too tight, and he had a slight hiccough in the back of it that not all the Firewhiskey Harry knew he had drunk with dinner that night could account for.
Draco leaned against the doorway, his head bowed so that his face was in shadow rather than openly touched by the light of the fire. He had an entire half-empty bottle of Firewhiskey in his right hand which Harry eyed with concern. He was sure that that wasn’t the bottle they had opened to drink together.
You were drinking Firewhiskey at dinner with Draco Malfoy, Ron’s voice said in his head, with flat incredulity.
Harry shook his head and stood. For the moment, there was something in front of him that might mean something. Or—he hesitated; his thoughts always moved a little more slowly when he was drunk—maybe he could help Draco, Malfoy, with whatever hurt him.
“Did something happen to your mother?” he asked quietly. Knowing how protective Malfoy was of his family, it was the first thing Harry could think of that might make his voice sound like that.
“No.” Draco paused to drag air into his lungs. “I got a letter. From my father.”
Harry felt hope surge through his body, briefly making him feel as he had when he’d looked up in the Chamber of Secrets and realized Fawkes was flying towards him. Then he shook his head in confusion. He didn’t know why it would make him so glad to know that Lucius Malfoy wasn’t dead.
Well, of course. If he isn’t dead, he can take back the Manor, and you can go home.
“It was a joke?” he asked, taking a step forwards. Anger at the prank could have outweighed Draco’s happiness that his father was still alive. “He faked his death?”
“No,” Draco whispered. “He’s dead. He time-delayed it. Left it with a friend with instructions to post it to me when he’d been gone for a certain length of time.” His left hand swung into view suddenly, and Harry heard the sound of crackling parchment. “Read it.”
Carefully, Harry took the letter away, smoothed it out as best he might, and read it.
My dear son:
I trust that, by now, you will have begun to learn the reasons why I gave you almost everything except that which you most expected to have. It is a test of character. You have been less than you could have in the past few years. I feared that it would take a great shock to shake you loose of your denial of reality. My death will provide that shock, and a confrontation with the boy you have always considered your greatest rival should aid in it.
You are not sixteen anymore, Draco. The mistakes you made in that year will not define the rest of your life. But neither can I allow you to sustain the illusion that I will rescue you because you are young and I am your father.
The rest of your life will be lived without me. There will be suffering, which you have experienced and know how to live with. But there must also be moving forwards. I fear you have done little of that. The blame is partly mine, for spoiling you. But blame does not matter now, except for the slight and momentary satisfaction it may permit you. Instead, you must reach into mature emotions such as acceptance, no matter how hard it is, no matter how much you might wish to hide your head.
Live, my son. Accept my losses and your own. And do that which is harder than anything else for someone accustomed to following orders, as you were: do these things because you want to, of your own free will, not because I command it.
Your loving father,
Lucius Malfoy.
Harry’s eyes prickled suspiciously by the time he handed the letter back to Draco. He took a few moments to catch his breath. He wouldn’t have wanted his father to write a letter like that to him, he thought absently, even though he would have given almost anything to have a letter from either of his parents. Lucius had absolutely loved his son, but his cruelty was as great as his love, and Harry could not decide whether he envied or pitied Draco more.
Draco crumpled the letter further, and further, until Harry was sure it was the size of a dust mote. Then he began to breathe in a way that caused Harry to look at him in concern. When he looked up, though, his eyes were dry, if feverishly bright.
“I’m going to go up on the roof and break things,” he said, voice curiously conversational. “Come with me?”
*
The sky was full of scudding clouds, running as if they feared the faint light of the waning moon. Draco sniffed, and decided that the smell of the air meant there would be a storm shortly. He wondered if the lightning would be as violent as his mood, and then decided that he didn’t care.
He hardly cared about anything. His emotions were broken and shattered in him, and feeling anything was like walking across shards of glass. He laughed and threw up a hand. Then he aimed his wand at the first row of delicate glass jars he’d conjured out of thin air when Harry had refused to let him bring anything out of the Manor proper. Draco had argued that he owned most of the objects in the Manor and he could damn well break them if he pleased, but Harry had insisted he would regret it in the morning.
Harry stood some distance behind him now, wrapped in a cloak as if the early summer evening were cold, his eyes a heavy pressure on Draco’s back. He had mentioned something about being sensitive to Dark magic, not that Draco intended to let that stop him.
Draco laughed again, and cast a curse his father had taught him when he was fifteen. The air around the glass jars glowed red, and then they broke apart in a sparkling mist that disintegrated further and further as it traveled away from its origin, with a horrendous screeching noise like a dying rabbit’s.
“What the fuck was that?” Harry shouted. Draco glanced back at him again and saw that he had his hands over his ears.
“A custom-made Banishing Spell,” Draco said cheerfully. He could feel the Firewhiskey and his dangerous glee sloshing around his head with grief just underneath, but he didn’t have to acknowledge the grief if he didn’t want to. “My father invented it and then threw it away because he decided it was too dangerous to use in case the Ministry decided it was Dark Arts.” He tilted his head back again to stare at the clouds. “Just like he made me and then threw me away.”
Harry came up beside him, but said nothing. Draco did feel the brief touch of a hand on his back, but he didn’t have to acknowledge that, either. He continued to stare straight ahead, and then Transfigured one of the roof tiles into a rat.
Harry drew a quick, sharp breath. Draco glanced sideways at him and saw him shaking his head slightly, his hair rustling against the cloak. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Please.”
“Squeamish,” Draco sniped, but he Transfigured the rat into a wooden one and then took careful aim. This time, he used a Dark Arts curse he’d learned on his own, during those terrifying days when he still thought he had a chance of killing Dumbledore. A shrieking yellow light flew at the wooden rat, snatched it up, and then began to rend it, rolling through its body like a five-pointed guillotine.
Draco glanced at Harry again. He was standing quietly, his eyes fixed on the flying scraps of wood. From what Draco could see, there was no expression on his face, even though he had turned green.
Did Father look like that when he died? Did he hope I would look like that when I read his letter?
Dangerous billows of emotion once again closed over his head, and he held his wand high in the air and concentrated on his anger, pouring life into it, shaping the force lovingly, crafting it, and holding it back until the moment when it trembled with the need for release. Then he let it go.
The air above them burst open with a roar that knocked Harry to the roof. Draco kept his feet only because he’d been expecting it. He put a foot on Harry’s arm to brace him and keep him from sliding to the ground, but his eyes were on the storm he’d just created.
The rent in the air was growing wider and wider. Briefly, Draco glimpsed writhing red tentacles behind it, and then gleaming yellow eyes, and then a blue blob that might have been a head. A shapeless thing lunged out of the rent at him, gathering form as it traveled, so that by the time it had descended enough to brush the top of his head, it was definitely a hand.
Draco spoke another curse, his wand aimed negligently at one of the smaller fingers, and the hand whirred apart into carrion-smelling goo that dripped into Draco’s hair and eyes and ran along his skin, drying almost instantly to leave an itchy residue. Draco tilted his head back, accepting it, laughing and screaming so hard his throat hurt, tears crawling from his eyes to mix into the goo.
The rent in the sky had snapped shut, but it wasn’t enough. Draco lifted his wand to cast the spell again, this time to call up an opponent worthy of him, one he could feel better about destroying.
Harry stepped in front of him.
Draco stared at him, wondering when he had cast Lumos on his wand. The light was enough to make his face a mask of shadows, but there was no mistaking his pallor or his panting, and he stood braced as if he were about to cast the curse that had carved Draco’s chest into scars again. A horrible, painful, noisy joy filled Draco’s throat and ears, and he licked his lips, aiming his wand at Harry. Despite all the Dark magic he’d just seen him cast, Harry didn’t stir, only continued staring at him.
“Do you want to duel?” Draco said. He’d thought he was whispering, but his voice broke and popped, unexpectedly loud in his own ears. Perhaps the goo that had soaked down the sides of his head was affecting his hearing, he thought absently.
“No,” said Harry, without inflection. “I want to know that you can express your grief at your father freely, and then go back inside the Manor without damaging yourself or anyone else.”
Draco snorted. “That sounds like something Professor Snape might have said to me, the year that I was ruining my life and he was trying to keep me from ruining it.” Professor Snape was dead, too, he remembered idly. Everyone important to Draco died in the end. He shouldn’t see why he should be any different, and whether it mattered if he died now or later. “Or Madam Pomfrey, maybe. Which one are you?”
“Neither,” Harry said quietly. “Just someone who’s shared your house for the last two weeks and doesn’t want you to destroy yourself.”
“Your house,” Draco said, and his anger awakened again. He danced a little closer to Harry, feinting with the wand. Harry didn’t move or respond to any of his motions that could have been spellcasting attempts, for all he knew. “And that’s the problem, isn’t it? We wouldn’t have been here at all if my father had just done what he was supposed to do, and—“ He stopped, choking. His mind was too thick, hazy, swirling with emotions. He had no idea what he might have said next.
“Left the house to you?” Harry asked.
“Lived!” Draco shouted, and lunged wildly.
It was clear from the beginning of the fight that he wasn’t doing his best, and Harry could have defeated him easily. Draco’s magic was drained by the Dark Arts curses he’d used, and the man he most wanted to hurt wasn’t here or anywhere else. He cast hexes and jinxes and spells that would have made Harry’s lungs freeze in his chest and his eyes burst out of his head like grapes being forced from a winepress if they’d hit.
They didn’t hit.
Harry dodged just ahead of him, fast enough that Draco didn’t have to feel ashamed, but well enough that none of the spells came close to him. Then he whirled out of Draco’s sight. Draco halted, teetering a few feet from the edge of the roof. His feet slipped on the tiles, and he wondered for a moment if it had started to rain and he hadn’t noticed. Then he realized the slipping came only from the Firewhiskey and the dizziness and the vertigo and the pain.
Harry’s arms came around his waist, and Harry leaned his head against Draco’s shoulder, speaking firmly and calmly into his ear. “Drop your wand.”
Draco dropped his wand and stood still for a moment, eyes closed. He wondered if Potter would push him off the roof. He was holding him in such a fashion that Draco thought he could do it perfectly. And who would blame him? What friends did Draco have? Were any of the house-elves up here to witness the little accident?
Harry tightened his grip instead, and dragged Draco backwards. Then he turned him around. Draco wanted to keep his head down, the way he always did when he got a scolding, but Harry shoved his wand under Draco’s chin and muttered an incantation. Draco’s head jerked up and froze in position, and his eyes did the same. He couldn’t look away from Harry’s face no matter how much he tried.
“Listen to me,” Harry said. His voice sounded normal, at least, and perhaps the goo had finally melted out of Draco’s ears. “You’re grieving. That’s fine. But you don’t have to destroy everything in sight.” For a moment, a smile that Draco had seen before in the mirror crossed Harry’s lips. “I did that once. I don’t recommend it as a fulfilling experience.”
Draco shoved half-heartedly at his arms, but that didn’t change the fixing of his head and eyes, or the way that Harry’s voice went on, as compelling as hypnosis.
“You’re still alive. Your father is dead and won’t get to see what you did, true, and you can’t ask him why he did this. Or,” Harry added quietly, perhaps seeing the way Draco had started to open his mouth to interrupt, “you know why he did this and you don’t agree. Fine. Either way, spending your life in an argument with the dead is an activity I don’t recommend, either. Guilt, shame, fear, regret, longing—there’s so much you can do with them, but they’re better when they go towards the living.”
“Fuck you, Potter,” Draco said, and wished he could open his jaw wider so he could actually spit. “I have no one left.”
Harry’s eyes hardened. “You don’t care about your mother, then?”
Draco shut his mouth fast enough that his teeth caught his tongue.
Harry nodded, never looking away from him. Draco wondered if he had cast his own spell on himself to hold his head in place, but direct eye contact probably came naturally to him, hero that he was. “Like I was saying, Lucius is dead. You can’t resurrect him, you can’t ask him questions, you can’t change anything he did in the past. But you can try to master the consequences of what he left behind him, just like you can try to rise above what you did when you were young and stupid.” He paused as if considering. “Not that you’re not both those things, still.” His smile flashed before Draco could yell at him. “But so am I.
“So. You want to break things, fine. You want to cast spells, fine. You want to scream your pain out, fine.” Harry paused to breathe, though Draco hadn’t had the impression that speaking those words required all that much effort. “But eventually, you have to come down from the roof and live in the normal world again.”
“What made you think I wouldn’t?” Draco demanded.
“The way you were standing so close to the roof’s edge, for one thing,” said Harry. “The way you didn’t seem to care if you lived or died when that monster reached for you.”
“It’s called a flair for the dramatic, Potter.”
“But you could have died,” Harry insisted. “You might have died, if you had come up here alone.”
Draco rolled his eyes, or he tried, and found that the spell fixing them in place prevented that—a consequence Harry no doubt enjoyed. “You can’t really think this is the danger Lucius cast the spell to protect me from.”
“I have no idea what the fucker intended!” Harry screamed back, and Draco was glad to see the shine of frustration and temper in his eyes for a moment. It increased as he glared at Draco. “I don’t know how to talk you down and out of this. I don’t know how much danger you were really in. I don’t know why I like you so much when most of what we’ve done in the past two weeks is talk about dinner, or sit in the library and read books together. That wasn’t how I became friends with Hermione, for your information.”
“There was something about a troll, right,” Draco agreed. “And you saved her. Are you saving me now, Potter? Is that the way you make friends?” Part of him was distantly horrified at the way he continued to spout words he didn’t really believe, but he wouldn’t be himself if he had to shut up now. He would think up these words, and he would speak them to Potter. The terms of their truce had changed less than a day after he and Potter agreed on them, after all.
“I have no idea if I am,” said Harry, and Draco felt a bit of chagrin when he realized that Harry wasn’t just refusing to be baited, he seemed to feel no temptation to respond that way at all. “I just know that I like you and I don’t want to see you die, and I thought you might. And now I want you to come down from the roof and keep on living. If I can make sure you don’t do this again when I leave, then I will.”
Draco swallowed. He couldn’t close his eyes, either. He was shivering, and he thought it might just be muscle spasms from having his head fixed in one place for so long, but maybe it wasn’t.
He didn’t think anyone had liked him just because he was there. Never without the ties of blood, at least, which had ensured Lucius and Narcissa loved him.
He had barely thought of his mother in two weeks. And why not? She did often deal with her grief in private, but they hadn’t had such a shared pain before. A sudden flood of loneliness and the desire to know how she was doing filled him. He swallowed again.
“I like you,” Harry repeated, quietly. “I don’t want you to die, or do something stupid that results in your dying.” He hesitated, as if debating the wisdom of his course with himself, and then waved his wand and muttered, “Finite Incantatem.”
Draco lowered his head and massaged his throat for long moments. His hand was shaking. He knew what he wanted to do next, but he wasn’t sure Harry would welcome it, or that it was the best thing to do.
Then he decided that this was worth the risk, just as it had been worth it to speak about his terror of the Dark Lord, and he lunged forwards and seized Harry around the waist and shoulders, hauling him close. He made sure to hold him hard, so Harry couldn’t mistake this for some kind of girlish hug. And he kept his head bowed, so that if any tears did escape his eyes for some childish reason, Harry couldn’t see them.
Harry held him back in exactly the same way, squeezing his spine hard enough to hurt. Draco listened to their rasping breaths intermingling, whilst the smell of rain in the air increased and he grew slowly used to the smell of Harry’s sweat and the rough material of his cloak and hair against his face. The smell of his own sweat was covered by the blue liquid that still covered him.
God, that was a stupid spell to cast.
One thing was certain, at least: none of the breaking and cursing and flinging and screaming had calmed him as much as just standing here, clutching at someone else and not being pushed away, even being held in, welcomed, as if he were liked.
Or loved.
*
Harry sat up, staring. He didn’t think he could have moved if Voldemort had reappeared in front of him at that moment. His eyes were locked on the writing on the newly-opened page, and his voice was frozen.
Finally, he managed to clear his throat. But even that sound was softer and less impressive than it should have been, and Draco didn’t look up from the encyclopedia he was ferociously scowling at. That book covered spells that affected the mind, mood, and emotions, Harry knew. Draco had been sure that it would include Ingenium est fas, but he was halfway through and the scowl on his face deepened as he scanned each line and found nothing.
Nor would he, Harry thought. He was the one who had located it instead, in an encyclopedia he had privately thought about rejecting, because it was filled with spells that affected prophecy, Divination, and destiny.
“I found it,” he whispered at last.
Draco glanced up. His hair was more ruffled than it usually was. Harry didn’t know if that meant he’d had an unusually restless night’s sleep—Harry had hoped that he would sleep better after last night—or simply forgotten his grooming spells. “Hmmm?”
“I found it,” Harry said, and had to clear his throat again, because the words didn’t seem to want to make it out of his mouth. “‘Ingenium est fas, or the Character Expression Spell, is regularly translated to ‘Character is destiny.’ It…’”
Draco was on his feet in moments, striding across the distance between them. He seized the back of Harry’s chair and bent over the book. Harry adjusted the angle of the encyclopedia so that Draco could read with him, and together they silently devoured the words.
Ingenium est fas, or the Character Expression Spell, is regularly translated to ‘Character is destiny.’ It is meant to activate an individual’s soul and potential in cases where the individual is ignoring what he could be or refusing to accept the simple facts that most matter in his life. One regular use for it was to ease the pain of arranged or forced marriages, because the Character Expression Spell does not only affect the one it is cast on. It influences those he comes into close contact with as well, causing those other people to respond to his expression of himself with the expression of their own needs, desires, and characters. Considered a spell that works with destiny because it enables the individual to meet that destiny, it nevertheless has unpredictable results. The true self of the person it is cast on may not meet the caster’s expectations, and cannot be forced into any one direction.
Harry leaned back against his chair. “I told you,” he whispered. “I told you that my temper tantrum that first day was caused by the spell. I showed the anger that I’d been holding back because I wanted to get along with you and because it’s necessary to hold it back in Auror training. Once that was out of the way, then I was free to be a little more polite—to be your friend.” He twisted and looked up at Draco.
To his astonishment, Draco’s face was pale, and he shook his head several times. “I don’t see why my father cast that spell,” he said.
“Really?” Harry found himself grinning. It would be a rare occurrence, he thought, when he knew more about someone in Draco’s family than Draco himself. “Lucius wanted you to be yourself, Draco. But he probably knew that having Greyson cast the spell directly on you would have made you angry with him, made you feel like you were being forced or controlled even if you read the description of the spell. By doing it indirectly through me, he gave you someone to respond to and ensured that you could develop a little freer of his shadow.”
“But—“ Draco worked his jaw. “Let’s say that’s true,” he said suddenly, slapping his palms down on the back of Harry’s chair. “Let’s just say that it is. But that means our whole reaction to each other is a sham, right? It never would have happened if not for the spell.”
“Oh, what bollocks,” Harry said, standing up and letting the encyclopedia drop to the chair. It fell shut, and for a moment he wondered if he would be able to find the page that described the Ingenium est fas spell again. Then his rising anger at Draco swept that worry away. He stalked forwards a few steps, whilst Draco watched him warily, and then controlled himself with a jerk. It was probably not the best plan to punch in Draco’s jaw, no matter how tempting.
“You might as well say that our friendship is a sham because it never would have come about if Lucius’s will hadn’t trapped me in the Manor,” he said impatiently. “That statement is true, but it’s not interesting. For that matter, we never would have known each other if I hadn’t come to Hogwarts, or you hadn’t. We might have been born in different years, and then we’d have been unlikely to be rivals, except maybe on the Quidditch pitch. Or you could have been Sorted into Hufflepuff—“
“Liar.” Draco’s face was flushing pink now, and Harry liked that. He liked a lot of things about Draco, except for the ridiculous way Draco jumped to conclusions. And maybe even that would have been endearing, if they weren’t such utterly stupid conclusions.
“And I could have been Sorted into Ravenclaw, and then we wouldn’t have had the intense House rivalry to magnify our rivalry.” Harry shook his head. “Tell me, do you lie awake at night worrying about all the different turns your life could have taken and regretting that it didn’t take them? That’s not a productive hobby. You don’t know that those half a million other Dracos are happier than you are, and I’m not going to let you diminish the fact that I’ve got used to you by saying it was all caused by a spell, woe are we.”
Draco stepped closer to him, eyes narrowed and cheeks pinker than ever. He had his fists half-raised, but his wand was still in his pocket. Harry braced his feet, not sure if he was expecting a blow to the face or the midriif.
Instead, what he got were words as hard as either one of them.
“I do that,” Draco whispered. “I do regret that I wasn’t born later, when the entire war was over. I regret that my father chose to be a Death Eater. I regret every single moment of my sixth year at Hogwarts, even the ones I was proud of at the time, like stepping on your nose. Because, yes, whatever those half a million other Dracos are doing, most of them have to be happier than me.”
Harry closed his eyes. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe.
“But,” Draco said, decisively enough to make Harry look again, “I can’t regret this. And I can’t think of it as some sort of plot.” He ran his hand over his face and laughed, but Harry wasn’t sure what to label the laughter as, or who he was laughing at. “My father didn’t plan this. He just cast the spell and hoped for the best. He didn’t know what would happen next. Maybe he knew me that well, but I refuse to think he knew you that well. He wasn’t a Weasley, or Granger, or me.” He swallowed on the last words, and Harry heard a click in his throat that told him how hard those words had been for Draco to say.
“And so,” Draco said, in the voice of someone edging out on a tightrope over a void with no net or Cushioning Charm beneath him, “that’s why I’d quite like it if you would—come back to the Manor some time, even though you’ve fulfilled the conditions and can leave.” He was staring at Harry, eyes wide open, as though to memorize his expression in case he refused.
Harry didn’t even have to think about his answer, the way he hadn’t had to think about trying to save Draco last night. He was himself, and that meant he responded to gestures of grandeur and courage like this in only one way.
He held out his hand and took Draco’s, and said, “I’d like that. A lot.”
*
Draco closed his eyes. He still didn’t think he was ready to cry in front of Harry. But the exhaustion from last night’s emotional storm and the letter he’d written his mother, carefully, explaining and apologizing and crossing out twenty lines for every one he sent on, were making it difficult. He always had trouble controlling his feelings when he was sleep-deprived.
He stepped closer to Harry, feeling up his arm to his shoulder. Harry stood still and let him feel, then tentatively embraced Draco, as if he thought Draco might change his mind after all and back frantically away.
I’d like that. A lot.
Five simple words, and Draco thought he would be hearing them in his head every night for the rest of his life. They could be a weapon to fight the regrets with.
He bowed his head and dimly noted that he liked being this close to Harry, close enough for Harry’s hair to brush his cheek. Closer than friends, maybe. Friends didn’t hug each other all the time, did they? Unless they were Weasleys. Which he wasn’t.
Harry turned his head and sighed, letting his own cheek rest on Draco’s hair, and Draco felt a sharp thrill course through him, starting from his belly and streaking up to his throat like a rising star.
There were other things he liked, or would like.
Maybe they were things he could have.
*
Harry looked around his bedroom, cursing softly. Two bloody weeks back at his and Ron’s flat and away from the Manor, and the damn place still didn’t feel like home. Harry had become accustomed to having a lot of space in Lucius’s bedroom, and when he’d come back to the flat, he’d expanded without thinking about it, creating the clutter he’d been free of before. Now he’d found his glasses but lost his wand.
“Accio Harry’s wand,” he said without much hope, considering he didn’t have it in order to perform the spell.
Maybe there had been a slight wriggle under that pile of robes and exam books, though. Harry jumped on it and began digging enthusiastically, trying not to think about how late he was for his latest Auror class, and how he’d woken up that morning missing Draco, and the way in which his brain and body had evidently decided he missed Draco.
A sharp bang sounded at the window. Harry whirled around guiltily, certain he’d somehow knocked his wand flying away, or that a Ministry owl was here to tell him off for his lack of punctuality.
Instead, a black owl with tips of white to its feathers hovered beyond the glass. Harry drew in a thick breath and barely managed to walk over to the window and open the pane with shaking fingers.
He told himself not to be so ridiculous, just because it was an owl he’d seen around Malfoy Manor several times. Maybe it was from Narcissa Malfoy, telling Harry that merely making out an official legal document passing possession of Malfoy Manor to Draco wasn’t enough, and she needed to see him for some long, cold session in Greyson’s office where he wouldn’t understand one word in three.
But the owl landed on his arm with a gentleness that Harry thought it wouldn’t have bothered using if Narcissa had sent him a message, and extended the letter to him with a soft ruffle of its wings. Harry opened it.
Potter:
Your last letter to me whinging about your Auror training and that dinner with the Weasleys simply proves to me that you need to get out more. I’m having dinner in a small restaurant in Diagon Alley tomorrow. Not one I usually frequent, but one I intend to get used to my presence.
If you’d like to join me, send a response with my owl. I’ll give you the details with my next letter, as you would surely forget them if you read them now, so long before the actual meeting.
Draco Malfoy.
Harry spent a moment tracing the signature with his finger before he realized what he was doing and snatched his hand away. God, he was acting like some kind of lovesick git. And it was just a meeting in a restaurant, hardly a date, and with a boy at that.
But it was something he would like to do, very much. And maybe Ingenium est fas was pushing his courage to greater heights than he would normally achieve, influencing him to be more himself, because Harry wrote the letter accepting the invitation calmly, and resumed searching for his wand before the owl had dwindled to a distant dot in the sky.
*
Draco appeared in Diagon Alley not far from the door of the restaurant he’d told Harry he would meet him at, the Evergreen Phoenix, and sighed when he saw the large crowd of people in front of the door. No doubt the word had spread that Harry Potter had actually deigned to set foot in Diagon Alley, and that meant Draco would have to fight his way through Harry’s admirers.
Then some people turned to look at him, and Draco heard the hisses and saw some witches drawing their robes ostentatiously away.
Draco spent one more moment dreaming of his father suddenly appearing at his side and clearing a path for him with his gaze.
Then he lifted his chin and stepped forwards, using his own version of the Malfoy stride and the Malfoy glare. And maybe Ingenium est fas was pushing his pride to greater heights than he normally would achieve, because the people around him glared and muttered and struck him in the ribs with their elbows where they could, but they also got out of the way.
Draco paused in the door of the restaurant. It was dim inside, especially with the contrast between the brief splashes of sunshine around heavy thunderclouds outside and the cave-like interior lit with flickering torches. But he located Harry immediately nonetheless. He had barricaded himself in a corner where few people could approach him, and there was a lingering smell of ash from the same direction that made Draco think he knew why the people who were near him kept a respectful distance.
Harry glared at them all, his face just daring them to try something. Then he turned, and met Draco’s eyes.
Draco held his breath. He had told himself he would risk coming here because Harry had answered his letter, and tailor his behavior to the response he saw in Harry’s eyes. But that, of course, depended on showing his own interest first.
Again he stepped out over the abyss; this time he let his face show his interest and his hope and the odd loneliness that had dogged him since Harry left the Manor openly, in a way his father never would have done.
Harry stared back at him. The longest moments of Draco’s life passed under that gaze, which he told himself was critical and appraising, because it was better to know the worst truths first than to lie. He did still resent Lucius for never letting Draco know of his sickness, and that he’d thought Draco so woefully unprepared for life without him.
And then Harry smiled and beckoned for Draco to join him.
Draco could have sworn he crossed the last steps to Harry’s table in full sunlight.
End.