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lomonaaerenSecond part of a 3-part one-shot. Don't start reading here.
Draco leaned against the wall with his arms folded, out of sight, and listened to Potter trying to firecall one of his friends and explain the situation to him. From the sound of the frequent pauses, it was Weasley, though Draco was back far enough not to be able to see the face in the fire or hear the other side of the conversation.
“Yes, I think—no, not really. Because it might not be a curse. I can’t leave the Manor anyway. Yes, I know it’s bloody ridiculous, but here I am! No, not a Malfoy conspiracy, he seems just as unhappy about it as I am. No, not Lucius, of course not, he’s dead. I meant Draco.”
Draco tried to remember if he had ever heard Potter speak his first name aloud. He couldn’t. It gave him a shock like cold water being splashed in his face. Could that be the way Potter would have addressed him if they had been friends in Hogwarts? Not Malfoy, with the sneer and the intent to murder in his eyes, but Draco, as a prelude to asking about a game of chess or discussing the girls he hoped to see in Hogsmeade that weekend?
Not that he would have got far, talking about girls with Draco. Draco was more likely to spend time discussing boys with the girls, the only ones he could be sure would respond with appreciation instead of disgust. Well, there was a chance that Theodore Nott might have been sympathetic, but Draco never had figured Theodore out for certain. Gregory thought it impossible that men would have sex with men or women would have sex with women in the way that he thought most things except the basic facts of life were impossible, Blaise had a skittishness towards any form of sex outside marriage, and Vincent…
Draco tensed his shoulders. He did not like to think about Vincent, not least because every dream he had of him involved Draco being burned to death.
And that was a fate Potter saved you from.
Draco stirred restlessly and slammed a fist into the doorframe. What did you have in mind, Father? I can’t see that Potter will think being bound in the Manor is a good enough excuse to protect Mother and me. As far as recovering the Malfoy name, his not being able to go out in public rather closes off that option. And if the reporters come here, would they bother to interview him sympathetically, or would it just be a case of something else the Malfoy family did to oppose the great Boy-Who-Lived? Potter’s fame had been tricky enough that Draco was vaguely surprised his father would have tried to use it at all.
That spell must do something else. And we’ll find it—provided Potter has the patience for research.
“No, Ron, really, Hermione couldn’t help.” A longer pause than before, and this time Potter’s voice grew sharp with irritation. “Of course not, she was tortured here, remember? I can barely stand the thought of living here for months myself, I think I’ll see Bellatrix Lestrange every time I walk around a corner.”
Draco came to startled attention. Did Potter really feel that way? Of course, Lucius could have put such considerations aside when he was choosing someone to inherit the Manor, but on the other hand, Draco could not believe his father would have missed the connection between the house and negative associations for Potter. He’d had too much time to dream up this plot in Azkaban.
Whilst he was dying. Maybe he wasn’t really sane, no matter what that will says.
Draco twisted restlessly, and then blinked when he realized Potter was standing in front of him. He must have ended the Floo call when Draco was busy trying to figure out, yet again, the twisted intricacies of Lucius Malfoy’s mind.
“You were listening to me,” Potter said, but his voice was mild and not really angry at all, compared to the way he’d yelled at Draco earlier.
“Yes, I was.” Draco decided that he might as well take charge of the conversation, so Potter wouldn’t have a chance to make it into another excuse for wrestling on the floor. “Why did you want to firecall Weasley?”
“Do you want him showing up at the gates of the Manor demanding to see me, or claiming you murdered me?” Potter raked his hand through his hair, which promptly made it stand up on edge like the quills of a maddened hedgehog. “The main problem will be my Auror training program. I don’t think they’ll let me delay some of the training exercises on account of inheriting a Manor.”
“Tell them about Ingenium est fas,” Draco suggested. “Curses do happen.”
Potter raised an eyebrow at him. “You said it wasn’t a curse.”
“I said it might not be,” said Draco. “And if Greyson, who’s fairly well-educated in Latin, doesn’t recognize it, the chances are good your instructors won’t, either. The Ministry doesn’t hire Aurors for their intelligence.”
“No, they hire people going into magical law for that,” said Potter, with a fond smile that meant he was probably thinking of Granger.
Draco tried not to gape at him. This was the most civil conversation he’d ever had with Harry Potter, and his not taking umbrage with the insult to the Ministry was a wonder. It was that, and the hope that he might be able to figure out the spell from observing Potter’s behavior, that made him suggest, “It’ll be less work for the house-elves if we both dine at once.”
Potter looked up sharply. The small sitting room in which he’d used the hearth was a dim one, and its windows faced east; there was little light now, at sunset, to let Draco identify the way Potter’s eyes, suddenly hard and thoughtful, glittered at him.
“Yes,” Potter said at last, with a tone in his voice Draco didn’t understand, either. “To spare the house-elves. Of course.” He shook himself, and grinned slightly. “It’s what Hermione would advise.”
*
Dinner was awkward, but considering the many other things it could have been, Harry didn’t think he could complain.
So long as he kept his eyes strictly on his plate and glass, the memories that crowded around him and haunted Malfoy Manor were not too pressing. He could eat the delicious duck the house-elves had prepared, taste the complicated flavors of the sauce, and munch his way heroically through the vegetables that arrived after the duck whilst thinking of Bellatrix’s torture of Hermione only once or twice. He didn’t even have to look Malfoy in the eye, or do much more than smile weakly at him when they happened to glance up at the same time and were looking at each other by default.
Yet the dinner wasn’t very satisfying, either, as far as thoughts about Ingenium est fas went and how he would break free of it. Indifference towards Malfoy was better than rage, less likely to hurt him, but would the spell let him maintain it? And indifference would help their research less than civility. Malfoy hated to be ignored. Perhaps he would find a trace of the solution and keep it to himself because he found Harry irritating.
Harry scowled at his plate, and picked through the last shreds of the vegetables. He would have liked to say that they were less cooked than the others, but the Malfoy house-elves were very nearly as talented as the ones at Hogwarts. He was picking through them because, when they were gone, he would have to face Malfoy again.
Why does it have to be up to me initiate the civil conversations? he whinged in his head.
Because he’d been the one who attacked him, and he’d been the one who intruded into Malfoy’s mourning for his father, even if he didn’t want to. And he was also the one who bore the curse, but maybe it would be mollified if Harry tried to be polite to Malfoy. Like Draco himself, Harry couldn’t really believe that Lucius had meant to hurt his son.
So Harry counted to three under his breath and shoved his plate away from him. Malfoy, who had been gazing past his shoulder at a certain fascinating spot on the wall, turned back to him at once, lifting an eyebrow.
“I wanted to say again that I’m sorry,” Harry began, picking his way delicately. He was rubbish at this. When he’d had arguments with his friends, dangerous circumstances ended them. But here there was much less active danger, unless he wanted to count the chance of being hit on the head by a falling book.
Malfoy only looked at him, his hands folded on the table in front of him. Harry self-consciously removed his elbows from the tablecloth and watched as his plate vanished before he tried to continue. The room was quiet enough that he could hear Malfoy’s breathing, and the shafts of late sunlight through the windows made his face look colder, which Harry was fairly certain was opposite the natural order of things.
“And since we do have to work together—“
Malfoy snorted. Harry controlled the immediate leap of his temper, and sighed. Why did he have to do this? Because Malfoy wouldn’t. And in the interests of getting out of the Manor as soon as possible, Harry would rather reach out now than sit around waiting smugly for Malfoy to make the first move. He valued freedom more than satisfaction.
And that is who I really am.
“Then let’s try not to insult each other,” Harry said, and waited to see if the words would make him, or Malfoy, spontaneously combust. They didn’t, so he went on, “We had a civil conversation right before dinner. If we can do that, keep to plans that will help me get out of the Manor and you inherit it again, we’ll be all right.”
“Gryffindor optimism,” Malfoy said.
“The pessimistic alternative is spending the rest of my life here,” Harry said, rising to his feet. “Yes, I want to be optimistic.” He hesitated, then walked around the table and held out his hand. “Truce until I get out of here? No insults, and we talk to each other about research. We don’t have to extend our conversation beyond that.”
Malfoy closed his eyes. He could be thinking of a lot of things, Harry thought—his father, his grief, the past wrongs Harry had done him, his desire to go to bed. Harry had no idea.
To his surprise, that irritated him, just as having no idea what Malfoy had been up to during sixth year had irritated him. Maybe he really didn’t like mysteries involving Malfoy.
A deep sigh returned Harry’s attention to the Malfoy in front of him instead of the one of his memories. Malfoy put out a hand and clasped his, shaking it limply and turning away as soon as possible. “Fine,” he said.
Don’t overwhelm me with your enthusiasm, Harry thought, but he wouldn’t be the one breaking this agreement. Concentrating on keeping his voice steady and pleasant, he said, “Which room should I take for the night?” Ron had passed him some pyjamas, robes for the next day, and other necessities through the Floo, arguing loudly against it all the while.
Malfoy shot him a sudden startled glance, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that Harry’s staying in the Manor for more than one day would necessitate his finding somewhere to sleep. Then he waved a hand. “You own the Manor now, Potter. Take my father’s bedroom.”
“I wouldn’t want to put your mother out—“
“She never slept there,” said Malfoy, with a chuckle in the back of his throat. “And she was never one to stay in a house she couldn’t be sure of a welcome in. She’ll already have gone to the house Father left her.” He shrugged. “When Father gave you the Manor, he really gave you complete dominion of it. You could turn me out of my bed, if you wanted.” He waited, eyes on Harry’s face.
“Of course you’re going to test me.” Harry rolled his eyes. “No, thanks.” He turned away and clapped his hands to call a house-elf to take him to the bedroom. He was yawning as though he’d spent a whole day dodging through the obstacle course. Research didn’t usually do that to him, even if he had had a tendency to fall asleep in the library at Hogwarts; he thought it was dealing with Malfoy.
The house-elf led him up sweeping stairs, down sweeping corridors, and through a series of connected rooms that made Harry wonder absently if no Malfoy had ever worried about making a quick escape from his house. Lucius Malfoy’s bedroom was enormous—it would have contained Harry and Ron’s flat twice over—and, of course, sweeping, with curved walls done in absolute, icy white. Oddly, Harry found himself relaxing more than he had when he saw the golden library. This was the kind of room he would have expected a man like Lucius to have.
The bed was large and had dark blue sheets done up with dancing, cavorting figures of magical creatures, with curtains of soft silky material probably worth more than Harry had earned in a year. He couldn’t have cared less at the moment. He collapsed into the middle of it and barely remembered to set his glasses aside before sleep consumed him.
*
Since his mother was no longer home, Draco didn’t have to confine himself behind a door to avoid talking. He could roam through the house at will, only using his wand when he passed through a crowded room and didn’t want to give himself the indignity of stumbling over furniture. Most of the time, his knowledge of the Manor and the moonlight through the windows was enough for him.
He stopped for a long time in the sitting room his father had favored when speaking to people from the Ministry or others who might be touchy about the Malfoy name and history. It had a single window only, a narrow one; Lucius had said often that he didn’t like the temptation to distraction a large view represented. Still, since the window looked east, it showed a good view at the moment of a wide lawn spotted with light from the rising moon. Draco leaned his elbow on the sill and stared at his father’s desk, holding tidy stacks of correspondence that he would never read. Draco made a motion towards them with one hand, then let it drop.
He resented the fact that Lucius hadn’t told them he was sick. He was baffled his father had left the Manor to Potter. He didn’t want to be placed, without choice, in a situation where he had to do endless research right after his father’s death. He wished the funeral would have held off longer. His grief stirred and muttered in his heart like a sea withdrawing from the shore at ebb-tide.
At the moment, though, he thought his primary emotion was shock. He still turned around, saw a dust mote out of place or an unshelved book, and wondered what Lucius would think. He still heard his mother’s voice lilt as she scolded a house-elf and imagined his father’s voice saying something soothing in response.
He had gone to Azkaban, but that had been a place, a location not that far from the Manor in physical space and time. Draco could imagine Lucius coming back from it. And now he was never going to come back, and each time Draco reminded himself of that, the announcement of the death bit him with sharp teeth all over again.
He stirred a hand restlessly through the stacks of paper on the desk, then turned to leave. If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well pick up the encyclopedias again and continue research on the spell his father had laid on Potter.
He paused when he came around the corner and realized the lamps in the library were lit. Had Potter left one on when he went to firecall his friends? But no, the house-elves would have entered to extinguish it. Draco held up his wand again and inched slowly closer, grateful for the lack of windows, rugs, and low stools in the corridor.
When he peered around the door, however, he exhaled hard in disappointment. Potter was sitting on the same chair he’d used before, staring determinedly at a book. Now and then he took notes; now and then he rubbed his eyes. But his jaw stuck out, and he never looked towards the door as if longing for his bed.
Draco watched Potter without moving or indicating his presence for long moments, resenting him for stealing the sanctuary that Draco had imagined he would find in the library. That Potter hadn’t known he was coming here didn’t matter. How many times had he done something in school not knowing that it was exactly the thing Draco wished he wouldn’t do? It didn’t matter to him. He only had time for his friends and the sycophants who praised him.
The resentment rose—and crested. Draco frowned and tightened his fingers around his wand, but this time he was trying to imagine what his father would have said about Draco clinging tightly to a schoolboy grudge given everything that had happened in the past few years, and the past few days.
Why did he care so much about what Potter had done to him, compared to his father’s death? Why wasn’t he thinking more about helping Narcissa through the aftermath of the grief they shared? Why, for that matter, had he spent the past few years pretending that nothing had changed and life was going to be exactly as he had always known it any moment, Hogwarts and all?
Because I was still waiting for Father to come back.
Draco closed his eyes and shivered. The shock was leaving him now, and his grief seeped through him, turning up revelations he had always known but preferred to ignore.
Lucius could make life all right again. He would take charge of the burdens Draco didn’t want—making his mother happy, facing the world that had no use for a Malfoy, the glares and hisses in public places, supervising the house-elves, answering letters from old friends, arranging for Draco to take the NEWTS. Draco had hidden in limbo because it was so much simpler, really, than admitting he had to do things Lucius had done without his father’s experience or the grace or the wisdom to back him up.
But he’d been lying to himself. Even if Lucius had lived, he would have stayed in Azkaban for thirteen more years. Draco couldn’t have hidden from his responsibilities forever.
Among the many, many reasons Lucius might have decided to leave the Manor to Potter and cast this spell was to force his son to wake up, and give him a chance to prove himself. Draco would have to do many things in the future worse than getting along with a person who had hurt him in the past. He would have to show that he had the sort of self-control and composure his family’s difficult position in the world right now demanded.
Draco lifted his head. Lucius wasn’t there to see him, but he liked to think his father would have been proud of him anyway as he walked into the library, picked up the encyclopedia he had left lying on his own chair, and took his seat with a nod to Potter.
Potter tensed the moment he saw him, and watched him with a mixture of suspicion and hope when Draco stepped past. Draco found himself exquisitely aware of the way Potter’s eyes tracked his movements and the way his hands shifted over and around the chair arms. The other wizard could be about to fire a curse at him, and Draco wasn’t entirely sure that he would know it. But perhaps he could get out of the way in time if he listened to the way his hands moved.
After some moments, though, Potter cleared his throat and said, “You couldn’t sleep, either.”
“I had to come to some decisions,” Draco said. He would be polite, but there was no reason to tell Potter all his deepest and most personal secrets. “And then I found myself here, and here you were, as well.” He looked up. “Was the bedroom comfortable enough?”
Potter’s narrowed eyes scanned his face, obviously looking for some sign of mockery, but Draco intended to make the question as neutral as he could. He had to show some kind of relation to and interest in Potter; he would have to make small talk with many more important people in the future. He kept the polite expression on his face, and at last Potter nodded and said, “Surprisingly comfortable, actually. But I’ve always had trouble sleeping.” He shrugged once and looked back at his book.
Draco hesitated, wondering what the best choice was. He could continue to probe, which Potter might take the wrong way, but which would give him good practice for those conversations when he might be even less inclined to show sympathy for someone else. Or he could keep silent and return to the book, which would at least show that he had the wits to do the research and keep the truce he and Potter had agreed on.
Perhaps it was because he’d already done the second today that made him risk the first. “Nightmares?”
Potter responded almost immediately; only someone as perceptive as Draco was trying to be at the moment would have noticed the instant’s hesitation before he did. He looked up and nodded. “Not surprising, is it?” His mouth curled in a smile Draco decided was cynical rather than bitter. “At least Voldemort isn’t still alive. He was my biggest source of them at the time.”
“You dreamed of him killing you?” Draco asked, fascinated in spite of himself. The Dark Lord had had an obsessive enough focus on Draco during those moments when he ordered him to torture other people. Draco couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have that maniacal attention bent on one all the time.
“Sometimes,” Potter said. “Sometimes I dreamed of him killing my friends.” His face hardened for a moment. “Sometimes of things that had already happened, like him killing my parents. But I dreamed—I dreamed of what he was doing at the moment, too.” He paused, long enough to make Draco’s skin break out in gooseflesh and his shoulders tighten defensively. “I saw him ordering you to torture people.” The words were quiet, and Draco knew he could ignore them if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to. He needed to show his father, and himself, and maybe even Potter, though he was likely to be the least appreciative audience for it, that he could be brave. He drew himself up and said, “You saw that I didn’t want to, I hope.”
“Well, that was obvious,” Potter said. “You looked scared to death.”
Draco bit his tongue to stifle the instinctive response to that, and nodded. “Being in his presence made me so…uncertain,” he said finally. “I never knew if he would be pleased or not, and sometimes whole meetings went by without his paying attention to me. And then he would focus on me, and it hurt. Not physically, but mentally. I always thought there had to be something I could do that would make him leave me alone and get me perfectly out of danger, even though I rationally knew there wasn’t.” By the end his voice had sunk, and Draco’s throat felt tight with something that was not tears.
“I know.” Potter made no move towards him, but his voice was low and fervent. “Believe me, I do know.”
Draco blinked at him, before nodding a little. Well, Potter would, wouldn’t he? And he was the best person to talk about it with. Most of Draco’s friends hadn’t spent as much time around the Dark Lord, most of the other Death Eaters had been loyal and as hungry for their Lord’s notice as they were afraid of it, and the time near him was one of those things Draco and his parents never talked about. Nor could he imagine talking about it, really. He didn’t want his father to know he was scared, and he didn’t want his mother to think he needed protecting.
“I believe you,” he said, and turned to look down at his book again. The conversation had already gone on long enough to make him uncomfortable. He stared fiercely at the words, and tried to make himself think only of abstract magical theory rendered concrete in the various spells the book described.
Potter said nothing for some time, but Draco started when a hand squeezed his shoulder. He hadn’t even heard Potter cross the distance between them. He twisted to look up, but Potter was already retreating.
He could probably blame that on Potter’s lack of eloquence in sensitive situations, Draco thought.
Or perhaps he could take it as it seemed to be intended, a gesture offered in silence so that he could respond as he wanted, without feeling cornered by words.
Draco stared thoughtfully at his book again.
Maybe Potter doesn’t understand sensitive situations, but there’s the possibility that he can understand me.
*
Harry removed his glasses and rubbed his face several times, knocking all the sleep out of his eyes—or at least he hoped so—before he put them back on. The words were starting to blur in front of him, but he was determined to have something substantial to report before he firecalled Ron and Hermione today.
It had been a week since the reading of Lucius’s will and Harry’s trapping in the Manor, and his friends were getting more and more worried. Hermione had given him a series of charms to cast that she hoped would break the spells holding Harry inside the Manor. None of them worked, whether cast on the fireplaces, the front doors, the wards, or the roof, which Harry had hoped to fly from after Ron sent a broomstick through the flames for him. Harry was always bounced back, smarting and singed, and with less inclination each time to test the boundaries again.
Ron had offered to come to the Manor and punch Malfoy out, on the theory that he was somehow keeping Harry there by staying awake; if he fell unconscious, then Harry would be free. Harry knew he shouldn’t have told Ron about their nightly meetings in the library. He’d refused Ron’s request, not only because he highly doubted Malfoy had anything to do with this but because he thought Ron’s presence would probably upset the fragile truce that endured between them.
Hermione had had Harry bring various encyclopedias to the hearth so she could cast a spell on them which should have revealed the presence of the Ingenium est fas spell in each book at once, simply by tracing the pattern of letters. But the books were, of course, magically protected against such things. Malfoy had sounded baffled when Harry complained about that.
“Of course they’re defended against spells that could affect the ink,” he’d said. “Did you think my father would want them damaged if they fell into water or if someone decided to try and wipe clean every written document in the house?”
“This isn’t exactly water,” Harry had said, biting back his frustration. “It wouldn’t even do anything to the words, except locate them.”
“I don’t think the protective spells make a distinction,” Malfoy said, and then returned to his own reading and research. He’d gone through five of the encyclopedias now, whilst Harry had only succeeded in pushing himself through two because he’d spent much more time cursing the books, or trying to sleep without nightmares, or attempting to escape, or talking with Ron and Hermione in a futile attempt to come up with a solution that would actually work.
Finally, Harry had resigned himself to the fact that he would have to read through the books in Malfoy’s company, from cover to cover, and do so until he uncovered information about the spell.
He sneaked a sideways look at Malfoy, who was reading with one hand bracing the book open—he was near the end and the heavy pages would have a tendency to shut on their own otherwise—and his other hand constantly writing down words in a smooth, flowing script. He didn’t look tired. He never looked anything.
No, that’s not true, Harry thought. He didn’t want to correct himself about Malfoy, not really, but he couldn’t ignore the evidence of his own eyes. I saw the expression on his face when he talked about Voldemort that first night.
There hadn’t been a repeat of that, no returned squeezes on the shoulder or return confessions of secrets. Of course, Malfoy having the courage to speak to Harry about his fears even once was some kind of crossroads. Harry wasn’t sure that he could actually ask for more, or that he wanted to.
Oh, he wanted to know about Malfoy still, understand what he was feeling, in the same way he would if he were isolated for a long period of time with anyone he didn’t know very well. But he could live without knowing. Harry returned his eyes to his book.
When they strayed back to Malfoy, he knew it meant nothing. They would find the spell soon enough, and then any connection he and Malfoy might have been forging would be cut off in any case, no matter how much it had meant or was starting to mean.
*
Draco might not know everything about Potter, but he knew what that particular kind of restiveness meant by now, after a week and three days in Potter’s company. Potter was stirring in his chair, staring at his book for two seconds and then out the windows for ten seconds. As time passed, the moments when he was actually studying grew rarer and rarer.
The last thing we need is to spend extra time researching because of Potter’s lack of interest in books, Draco thought. He put his encyclopedia down reluctantly—he’d come to an interesting section on the process of reversing spells, including accounts of attempts to create an opposite to Cheering Charms—but reminded himself it would pay off in the long run. Draco wouldn’t be the one having to do all the work if he got Potter “outside” now.
“Come on, Potter,” he said. “There’s an interior garden that I should have introduced you to earlier.”
For a moment, Potter seemed to think that if he paid enough strict attention to the encyclopedia he was juggling, Draco would have to leave him alone. Then he lowered the book to his lap and glared. “I’ve seen all the gardens,” he said. “And I can’t leave the house to walk in them, either.” He flexed his hands hard enough to make a page tear; Draco winced. He should get Potter out of the library for the safety of the books, too. “When your father left the house and the grounds to me, I thought I’d at least have freedom to explore the lawns and the gardens.”
“He probably wanted to be sure you would spend some time in the library,” said Draco, biting his tongue against the temptation to remind Potter of how little time he’d spent in the Hogwarts library as opposed to on the Quidditch pitch. “But what really matters is the garden inside the walls. It’s not very big, but the light there imitates sunshine, and we have a small ceiling enchanted like the ceiling in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.”
“Why didn’t you say so before?” Potter tossed aside the book—Draco winced again—and surged to his feet as though someone had offered him the chance to destroy another Dark Lord. “I could have used that days ago.”
“I didn’t realize you’d want it,” Draco said, but his words went unheeded as Potter ran out of the library. Draco rolled his eyes and followed. Who was the one who knew where the garden was, anyway?
The garden’s door was in the eastern wing of the Manor, the better to have windows that could open to the sun. Draco unlocked the high door with a distinct sense of enjoyment; Potter was hissing behind him, shifting from foot to foot in impatience. Draco liked it when Potter paid attention to him.
Simply because you don’t have anyone else here with you to do it right now, he reminded himself. The house-elves don’t count.
The blank white door opened, and Potter burst past him and into the blaze of sunlight beyond. Draco heard his footsteps suddenly cease, and grimaced. Any moment now, Potter would make some complaint about how this was no substitute for being outside, no matter how beautiful it was.
Instead, he heard Potter laugh.
Draco stepped into the garden, blinking himself at the way the dazzle here contrasted with the relative dimness of the corridors they’d passed through. The enchanted ceiling shone boundless, brilliant blue, although the weather outside at the moment was rather gray and rainy. Despite what Draco had told Potter, the enchantment here was different from the one at Hogwarts; it didn’t reflect the weather so much as the moods of those who wanted to use the garden. “Rain” fell from magical clouds during the night or other periods when the Malfoys were unlikely to enter it.
Potter was spinning in place in the middle of a large expanse of blue tiles, which was formed by the small paths that started near the door and from several other places beside the garden’s walls. Around the tiles gathered thick, rich dirt filled with nutritive enchantments that had been a specialty of Draco’s great-grandfather. Lucius had admitted studying them to try and replicate them on the outside gardens, but he’d had no luck. In the dirt, neatly arranged by lines of wards that pruned them whenever they tried to grow outside certain boundaries, flourished flower after flower and tree after tree.
Draco’s grandfather Abraxas had chosen roses as the major flower to decorate this garden, but around them were the pansies his wife had favored, the deep purple irises Lucius had chosen when he wanted to make a contribution, and the blossoms Narcissa had added at different times, fickle as a bee in her admiration: hollyhocks, sunflowers, marigolds, petunias, gladiolus, and the narcissus of her own name. Small pools reflected the most beautiful ones, multiplying them in startling upside-down bursts of color. The smell was carefully curtailed by the wards as well, rendered far less overwhelming than it might have been.
The trees were taller and more slender than usual, as though set free from the constraints of gravity, and their branches brushed the sides of the walls just below the ceiling. Ashes, birches, beeches, oaks, pines, and a species of tree called a redwood that Lucius had imported from America stood carefully apart from each other, the hardier flowers gathered around them and cradled in their roots. Draco would have loved forests if they were all as light and airy as this; his first experience with the Forbidden Forest after his father’s garden had come as a shock.
And Potter was wandering away from him now, stooping to examine some of the blossoms with as much passion as though he’d always been interested in them. Draco trailed him, doing what he could to conceal his amused chuckles. Potter paused long enough by a cluster of drooping narcissus for Draco to catch up with him at last.
“I never would have taken you for a Herbologist,” Draco remarked.
“Sod off, Malfoy, this place is beautiful.” Potter tilted his head back and closed his eyes, bathing in the sunlight. Draco opened his mouth to remind him that it was only magic that produced the effect, that he wasn’t actually outside, and found himself shutting it again without speaking. Speaking those words would ruin the enjoyment on Potter’s face, and it was too pure for that.
“I can appreciate luxuries like this just as well as you can,” Potter said suddenly, scrambling up and turning in a circle, to stop standing in profile to Draco. Draco stared at him. His dark head was framed against the pale trunk of a birch, and his feet not far from heaps of roses. Draco had never seen him like this before. He wasn’t sure he had ever seen him calm, for that matter, or at least not so near, taking deep, quiet breaths, his eyes half closed as if in meditation. “I just wasn’t meant to own them.”
Then Potter burst into a run down a twisting blue path, and Draco found himself running after, but falling steadily behind. He hadn’t known Potter could sprint; it must have been the Auror training. He watched as Potter spiraled around unexpected clumps of flowers and leaped tree roots as if he knew exactly where he was going, and did his best to replicate the path. Potter splashed through a pool and suddenly flung himself down in the middle of a green glade that Draco thought his mother had constructed in order to observe the odd-colored pansies there. His rasping breath came to Draco’s ears as he worked his way steadily towards the glade and stood looking down at Potter.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“I wanted to,” said Potter, and closed his eyes.
Draco found himself without much to say to that. He sat down in the glade beside Potter and watched him, observing as the flush faded from his cheeks and his hair rustled back down his shoulders into something like order, until he thought an hour must have passed.
He resembled the Potter Draco had known in school in looks, but not in personality. That boy didn’t go running through gardens for fun. Of course, Draco didn’t know a lot about what Potter liked, other than beating him at Quidditch.
He put out a hand and trailed it through Potter’s hair for no reason before settling it on his shoulder. Potter rolled his head towards the gesture, but didn’t move. His legs kicked out lazily, as if chasing away an invisible animal.
“We should go back into the library,” Draco whispered. There was no reason to whisper, either, but he wanted to.
“Oh, all right,” said Potter, opening his eyes and wrinkling his nose, and Draco found himself smiling at the latter gesture without knowing he was about to.
Part 3.
Draco leaned against the wall with his arms folded, out of sight, and listened to Potter trying to firecall one of his friends and explain the situation to him. From the sound of the frequent pauses, it was Weasley, though Draco was back far enough not to be able to see the face in the fire or hear the other side of the conversation.
“Yes, I think—no, not really. Because it might not be a curse. I can’t leave the Manor anyway. Yes, I know it’s bloody ridiculous, but here I am! No, not a Malfoy conspiracy, he seems just as unhappy about it as I am. No, not Lucius, of course not, he’s dead. I meant Draco.”
Draco tried to remember if he had ever heard Potter speak his first name aloud. He couldn’t. It gave him a shock like cold water being splashed in his face. Could that be the way Potter would have addressed him if they had been friends in Hogwarts? Not Malfoy, with the sneer and the intent to murder in his eyes, but Draco, as a prelude to asking about a game of chess or discussing the girls he hoped to see in Hogsmeade that weekend?
Not that he would have got far, talking about girls with Draco. Draco was more likely to spend time discussing boys with the girls, the only ones he could be sure would respond with appreciation instead of disgust. Well, there was a chance that Theodore Nott might have been sympathetic, but Draco never had figured Theodore out for certain. Gregory thought it impossible that men would have sex with men or women would have sex with women in the way that he thought most things except the basic facts of life were impossible, Blaise had a skittishness towards any form of sex outside marriage, and Vincent…
Draco tensed his shoulders. He did not like to think about Vincent, not least because every dream he had of him involved Draco being burned to death.
And that was a fate Potter saved you from.
Draco stirred restlessly and slammed a fist into the doorframe. What did you have in mind, Father? I can’t see that Potter will think being bound in the Manor is a good enough excuse to protect Mother and me. As far as recovering the Malfoy name, his not being able to go out in public rather closes off that option. And if the reporters come here, would they bother to interview him sympathetically, or would it just be a case of something else the Malfoy family did to oppose the great Boy-Who-Lived? Potter’s fame had been tricky enough that Draco was vaguely surprised his father would have tried to use it at all.
That spell must do something else. And we’ll find it—provided Potter has the patience for research.
“No, Ron, really, Hermione couldn’t help.” A longer pause than before, and this time Potter’s voice grew sharp with irritation. “Of course not, she was tortured here, remember? I can barely stand the thought of living here for months myself, I think I’ll see Bellatrix Lestrange every time I walk around a corner.”
Draco came to startled attention. Did Potter really feel that way? Of course, Lucius could have put such considerations aside when he was choosing someone to inherit the Manor, but on the other hand, Draco could not believe his father would have missed the connection between the house and negative associations for Potter. He’d had too much time to dream up this plot in Azkaban.
Whilst he was dying. Maybe he wasn’t really sane, no matter what that will says.
Draco twisted restlessly, and then blinked when he realized Potter was standing in front of him. He must have ended the Floo call when Draco was busy trying to figure out, yet again, the twisted intricacies of Lucius Malfoy’s mind.
“You were listening to me,” Potter said, but his voice was mild and not really angry at all, compared to the way he’d yelled at Draco earlier.
“Yes, I was.” Draco decided that he might as well take charge of the conversation, so Potter wouldn’t have a chance to make it into another excuse for wrestling on the floor. “Why did you want to firecall Weasley?”
“Do you want him showing up at the gates of the Manor demanding to see me, or claiming you murdered me?” Potter raked his hand through his hair, which promptly made it stand up on edge like the quills of a maddened hedgehog. “The main problem will be my Auror training program. I don’t think they’ll let me delay some of the training exercises on account of inheriting a Manor.”
“Tell them about Ingenium est fas,” Draco suggested. “Curses do happen.”
Potter raised an eyebrow at him. “You said it wasn’t a curse.”
“I said it might not be,” said Draco. “And if Greyson, who’s fairly well-educated in Latin, doesn’t recognize it, the chances are good your instructors won’t, either. The Ministry doesn’t hire Aurors for their intelligence.”
“No, they hire people going into magical law for that,” said Potter, with a fond smile that meant he was probably thinking of Granger.
Draco tried not to gape at him. This was the most civil conversation he’d ever had with Harry Potter, and his not taking umbrage with the insult to the Ministry was a wonder. It was that, and the hope that he might be able to figure out the spell from observing Potter’s behavior, that made him suggest, “It’ll be less work for the house-elves if we both dine at once.”
Potter looked up sharply. The small sitting room in which he’d used the hearth was a dim one, and its windows faced east; there was little light now, at sunset, to let Draco identify the way Potter’s eyes, suddenly hard and thoughtful, glittered at him.
“Yes,” Potter said at last, with a tone in his voice Draco didn’t understand, either. “To spare the house-elves. Of course.” He shook himself, and grinned slightly. “It’s what Hermione would advise.”
*
Dinner was awkward, but considering the many other things it could have been, Harry didn’t think he could complain.
So long as he kept his eyes strictly on his plate and glass, the memories that crowded around him and haunted Malfoy Manor were not too pressing. He could eat the delicious duck the house-elves had prepared, taste the complicated flavors of the sauce, and munch his way heroically through the vegetables that arrived after the duck whilst thinking of Bellatrix’s torture of Hermione only once or twice. He didn’t even have to look Malfoy in the eye, or do much more than smile weakly at him when they happened to glance up at the same time and were looking at each other by default.
Yet the dinner wasn’t very satisfying, either, as far as thoughts about Ingenium est fas went and how he would break free of it. Indifference towards Malfoy was better than rage, less likely to hurt him, but would the spell let him maintain it? And indifference would help their research less than civility. Malfoy hated to be ignored. Perhaps he would find a trace of the solution and keep it to himself because he found Harry irritating.
Harry scowled at his plate, and picked through the last shreds of the vegetables. He would have liked to say that they were less cooked than the others, but the Malfoy house-elves were very nearly as talented as the ones at Hogwarts. He was picking through them because, when they were gone, he would have to face Malfoy again.
Why does it have to be up to me initiate the civil conversations? he whinged in his head.
Because he’d been the one who attacked him, and he’d been the one who intruded into Malfoy’s mourning for his father, even if he didn’t want to. And he was also the one who bore the curse, but maybe it would be mollified if Harry tried to be polite to Malfoy. Like Draco himself, Harry couldn’t really believe that Lucius had meant to hurt his son.
So Harry counted to three under his breath and shoved his plate away from him. Malfoy, who had been gazing past his shoulder at a certain fascinating spot on the wall, turned back to him at once, lifting an eyebrow.
“I wanted to say again that I’m sorry,” Harry began, picking his way delicately. He was rubbish at this. When he’d had arguments with his friends, dangerous circumstances ended them. But here there was much less active danger, unless he wanted to count the chance of being hit on the head by a falling book.
Malfoy only looked at him, his hands folded on the table in front of him. Harry self-consciously removed his elbows from the tablecloth and watched as his plate vanished before he tried to continue. The room was quiet enough that he could hear Malfoy’s breathing, and the shafts of late sunlight through the windows made his face look colder, which Harry was fairly certain was opposite the natural order of things.
“And since we do have to work together—“
Malfoy snorted. Harry controlled the immediate leap of his temper, and sighed. Why did he have to do this? Because Malfoy wouldn’t. And in the interests of getting out of the Manor as soon as possible, Harry would rather reach out now than sit around waiting smugly for Malfoy to make the first move. He valued freedom more than satisfaction.
And that is who I really am.
“Then let’s try not to insult each other,” Harry said, and waited to see if the words would make him, or Malfoy, spontaneously combust. They didn’t, so he went on, “We had a civil conversation right before dinner. If we can do that, keep to plans that will help me get out of the Manor and you inherit it again, we’ll be all right.”
“Gryffindor optimism,” Malfoy said.
“The pessimistic alternative is spending the rest of my life here,” Harry said, rising to his feet. “Yes, I want to be optimistic.” He hesitated, then walked around the table and held out his hand. “Truce until I get out of here? No insults, and we talk to each other about research. We don’t have to extend our conversation beyond that.”
Malfoy closed his eyes. He could be thinking of a lot of things, Harry thought—his father, his grief, the past wrongs Harry had done him, his desire to go to bed. Harry had no idea.
To his surprise, that irritated him, just as having no idea what Malfoy had been up to during sixth year had irritated him. Maybe he really didn’t like mysteries involving Malfoy.
A deep sigh returned Harry’s attention to the Malfoy in front of him instead of the one of his memories. Malfoy put out a hand and clasped his, shaking it limply and turning away as soon as possible. “Fine,” he said.
Don’t overwhelm me with your enthusiasm, Harry thought, but he wouldn’t be the one breaking this agreement. Concentrating on keeping his voice steady and pleasant, he said, “Which room should I take for the night?” Ron had passed him some pyjamas, robes for the next day, and other necessities through the Floo, arguing loudly against it all the while.
Malfoy shot him a sudden startled glance, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that Harry’s staying in the Manor for more than one day would necessitate his finding somewhere to sleep. Then he waved a hand. “You own the Manor now, Potter. Take my father’s bedroom.”
“I wouldn’t want to put your mother out—“
“She never slept there,” said Malfoy, with a chuckle in the back of his throat. “And she was never one to stay in a house she couldn’t be sure of a welcome in. She’ll already have gone to the house Father left her.” He shrugged. “When Father gave you the Manor, he really gave you complete dominion of it. You could turn me out of my bed, if you wanted.” He waited, eyes on Harry’s face.
“Of course you’re going to test me.” Harry rolled his eyes. “No, thanks.” He turned away and clapped his hands to call a house-elf to take him to the bedroom. He was yawning as though he’d spent a whole day dodging through the obstacle course. Research didn’t usually do that to him, even if he had had a tendency to fall asleep in the library at Hogwarts; he thought it was dealing with Malfoy.
The house-elf led him up sweeping stairs, down sweeping corridors, and through a series of connected rooms that made Harry wonder absently if no Malfoy had ever worried about making a quick escape from his house. Lucius Malfoy’s bedroom was enormous—it would have contained Harry and Ron’s flat twice over—and, of course, sweeping, with curved walls done in absolute, icy white. Oddly, Harry found himself relaxing more than he had when he saw the golden library. This was the kind of room he would have expected a man like Lucius to have.
The bed was large and had dark blue sheets done up with dancing, cavorting figures of magical creatures, with curtains of soft silky material probably worth more than Harry had earned in a year. He couldn’t have cared less at the moment. He collapsed into the middle of it and barely remembered to set his glasses aside before sleep consumed him.
*
Since his mother was no longer home, Draco didn’t have to confine himself behind a door to avoid talking. He could roam through the house at will, only using his wand when he passed through a crowded room and didn’t want to give himself the indignity of stumbling over furniture. Most of the time, his knowledge of the Manor and the moonlight through the windows was enough for him.
He stopped for a long time in the sitting room his father had favored when speaking to people from the Ministry or others who might be touchy about the Malfoy name and history. It had a single window only, a narrow one; Lucius had said often that he didn’t like the temptation to distraction a large view represented. Still, since the window looked east, it showed a good view at the moment of a wide lawn spotted with light from the rising moon. Draco leaned his elbow on the sill and stared at his father’s desk, holding tidy stacks of correspondence that he would never read. Draco made a motion towards them with one hand, then let it drop.
He resented the fact that Lucius hadn’t told them he was sick. He was baffled his father had left the Manor to Potter. He didn’t want to be placed, without choice, in a situation where he had to do endless research right after his father’s death. He wished the funeral would have held off longer. His grief stirred and muttered in his heart like a sea withdrawing from the shore at ebb-tide.
At the moment, though, he thought his primary emotion was shock. He still turned around, saw a dust mote out of place or an unshelved book, and wondered what Lucius would think. He still heard his mother’s voice lilt as she scolded a house-elf and imagined his father’s voice saying something soothing in response.
He had gone to Azkaban, but that had been a place, a location not that far from the Manor in physical space and time. Draco could imagine Lucius coming back from it. And now he was never going to come back, and each time Draco reminded himself of that, the announcement of the death bit him with sharp teeth all over again.
He stirred a hand restlessly through the stacks of paper on the desk, then turned to leave. If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well pick up the encyclopedias again and continue research on the spell his father had laid on Potter.
He paused when he came around the corner and realized the lamps in the library were lit. Had Potter left one on when he went to firecall his friends? But no, the house-elves would have entered to extinguish it. Draco held up his wand again and inched slowly closer, grateful for the lack of windows, rugs, and low stools in the corridor.
When he peered around the door, however, he exhaled hard in disappointment. Potter was sitting on the same chair he’d used before, staring determinedly at a book. Now and then he took notes; now and then he rubbed his eyes. But his jaw stuck out, and he never looked towards the door as if longing for his bed.
Draco watched Potter without moving or indicating his presence for long moments, resenting him for stealing the sanctuary that Draco had imagined he would find in the library. That Potter hadn’t known he was coming here didn’t matter. How many times had he done something in school not knowing that it was exactly the thing Draco wished he wouldn’t do? It didn’t matter to him. He only had time for his friends and the sycophants who praised him.
The resentment rose—and crested. Draco frowned and tightened his fingers around his wand, but this time he was trying to imagine what his father would have said about Draco clinging tightly to a schoolboy grudge given everything that had happened in the past few years, and the past few days.
Why did he care so much about what Potter had done to him, compared to his father’s death? Why wasn’t he thinking more about helping Narcissa through the aftermath of the grief they shared? Why, for that matter, had he spent the past few years pretending that nothing had changed and life was going to be exactly as he had always known it any moment, Hogwarts and all?
Because I was still waiting for Father to come back.
Draco closed his eyes and shivered. The shock was leaving him now, and his grief seeped through him, turning up revelations he had always known but preferred to ignore.
Lucius could make life all right again. He would take charge of the burdens Draco didn’t want—making his mother happy, facing the world that had no use for a Malfoy, the glares and hisses in public places, supervising the house-elves, answering letters from old friends, arranging for Draco to take the NEWTS. Draco had hidden in limbo because it was so much simpler, really, than admitting he had to do things Lucius had done without his father’s experience or the grace or the wisdom to back him up.
But he’d been lying to himself. Even if Lucius had lived, he would have stayed in Azkaban for thirteen more years. Draco couldn’t have hidden from his responsibilities forever.
Among the many, many reasons Lucius might have decided to leave the Manor to Potter and cast this spell was to force his son to wake up, and give him a chance to prove himself. Draco would have to do many things in the future worse than getting along with a person who had hurt him in the past. He would have to show that he had the sort of self-control and composure his family’s difficult position in the world right now demanded.
Draco lifted his head. Lucius wasn’t there to see him, but he liked to think his father would have been proud of him anyway as he walked into the library, picked up the encyclopedia he had left lying on his own chair, and took his seat with a nod to Potter.
Potter tensed the moment he saw him, and watched him with a mixture of suspicion and hope when Draco stepped past. Draco found himself exquisitely aware of the way Potter’s eyes tracked his movements and the way his hands shifted over and around the chair arms. The other wizard could be about to fire a curse at him, and Draco wasn’t entirely sure that he would know it. But perhaps he could get out of the way in time if he listened to the way his hands moved.
After some moments, though, Potter cleared his throat and said, “You couldn’t sleep, either.”
“I had to come to some decisions,” Draco said. He would be polite, but there was no reason to tell Potter all his deepest and most personal secrets. “And then I found myself here, and here you were, as well.” He looked up. “Was the bedroom comfortable enough?”
Potter’s narrowed eyes scanned his face, obviously looking for some sign of mockery, but Draco intended to make the question as neutral as he could. He had to show some kind of relation to and interest in Potter; he would have to make small talk with many more important people in the future. He kept the polite expression on his face, and at last Potter nodded and said, “Surprisingly comfortable, actually. But I’ve always had trouble sleeping.” He shrugged once and looked back at his book.
Draco hesitated, wondering what the best choice was. He could continue to probe, which Potter might take the wrong way, but which would give him good practice for those conversations when he might be even less inclined to show sympathy for someone else. Or he could keep silent and return to the book, which would at least show that he had the wits to do the research and keep the truce he and Potter had agreed on.
Perhaps it was because he’d already done the second today that made him risk the first. “Nightmares?”
Potter responded almost immediately; only someone as perceptive as Draco was trying to be at the moment would have noticed the instant’s hesitation before he did. He looked up and nodded. “Not surprising, is it?” His mouth curled in a smile Draco decided was cynical rather than bitter. “At least Voldemort isn’t still alive. He was my biggest source of them at the time.”
“You dreamed of him killing you?” Draco asked, fascinated in spite of himself. The Dark Lord had had an obsessive enough focus on Draco during those moments when he ordered him to torture other people. Draco couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have that maniacal attention bent on one all the time.
“Sometimes,” Potter said. “Sometimes I dreamed of him killing my friends.” His face hardened for a moment. “Sometimes of things that had already happened, like him killing my parents. But I dreamed—I dreamed of what he was doing at the moment, too.” He paused, long enough to make Draco’s skin break out in gooseflesh and his shoulders tighten defensively. “I saw him ordering you to torture people.” The words were quiet, and Draco knew he could ignore them if he wanted to.
He didn’t want to. He needed to show his father, and himself, and maybe even Potter, though he was likely to be the least appreciative audience for it, that he could be brave. He drew himself up and said, “You saw that I didn’t want to, I hope.”
“Well, that was obvious,” Potter said. “You looked scared to death.”
Draco bit his tongue to stifle the instinctive response to that, and nodded. “Being in his presence made me so…uncertain,” he said finally. “I never knew if he would be pleased or not, and sometimes whole meetings went by without his paying attention to me. And then he would focus on me, and it hurt. Not physically, but mentally. I always thought there had to be something I could do that would make him leave me alone and get me perfectly out of danger, even though I rationally knew there wasn’t.” By the end his voice had sunk, and Draco’s throat felt tight with something that was not tears.
“I know.” Potter made no move towards him, but his voice was low and fervent. “Believe me, I do know.”
Draco blinked at him, before nodding a little. Well, Potter would, wouldn’t he? And he was the best person to talk about it with. Most of Draco’s friends hadn’t spent as much time around the Dark Lord, most of the other Death Eaters had been loyal and as hungry for their Lord’s notice as they were afraid of it, and the time near him was one of those things Draco and his parents never talked about. Nor could he imagine talking about it, really. He didn’t want his father to know he was scared, and he didn’t want his mother to think he needed protecting.
“I believe you,” he said, and turned to look down at his book again. The conversation had already gone on long enough to make him uncomfortable. He stared fiercely at the words, and tried to make himself think only of abstract magical theory rendered concrete in the various spells the book described.
Potter said nothing for some time, but Draco started when a hand squeezed his shoulder. He hadn’t even heard Potter cross the distance between them. He twisted to look up, but Potter was already retreating.
He could probably blame that on Potter’s lack of eloquence in sensitive situations, Draco thought.
Or perhaps he could take it as it seemed to be intended, a gesture offered in silence so that he could respond as he wanted, without feeling cornered by words.
Draco stared thoughtfully at his book again.
Maybe Potter doesn’t understand sensitive situations, but there’s the possibility that he can understand me.
*
Harry removed his glasses and rubbed his face several times, knocking all the sleep out of his eyes—or at least he hoped so—before he put them back on. The words were starting to blur in front of him, but he was determined to have something substantial to report before he firecalled Ron and Hermione today.
It had been a week since the reading of Lucius’s will and Harry’s trapping in the Manor, and his friends were getting more and more worried. Hermione had given him a series of charms to cast that she hoped would break the spells holding Harry inside the Manor. None of them worked, whether cast on the fireplaces, the front doors, the wards, or the roof, which Harry had hoped to fly from after Ron sent a broomstick through the flames for him. Harry was always bounced back, smarting and singed, and with less inclination each time to test the boundaries again.
Ron had offered to come to the Manor and punch Malfoy out, on the theory that he was somehow keeping Harry there by staying awake; if he fell unconscious, then Harry would be free. Harry knew he shouldn’t have told Ron about their nightly meetings in the library. He’d refused Ron’s request, not only because he highly doubted Malfoy had anything to do with this but because he thought Ron’s presence would probably upset the fragile truce that endured between them.
Hermione had had Harry bring various encyclopedias to the hearth so she could cast a spell on them which should have revealed the presence of the Ingenium est fas spell in each book at once, simply by tracing the pattern of letters. But the books were, of course, magically protected against such things. Malfoy had sounded baffled when Harry complained about that.
“Of course they’re defended against spells that could affect the ink,” he’d said. “Did you think my father would want them damaged if they fell into water or if someone decided to try and wipe clean every written document in the house?”
“This isn’t exactly water,” Harry had said, biting back his frustration. “It wouldn’t even do anything to the words, except locate them.”
“I don’t think the protective spells make a distinction,” Malfoy said, and then returned to his own reading and research. He’d gone through five of the encyclopedias now, whilst Harry had only succeeded in pushing himself through two because he’d spent much more time cursing the books, or trying to sleep without nightmares, or attempting to escape, or talking with Ron and Hermione in a futile attempt to come up with a solution that would actually work.
Finally, Harry had resigned himself to the fact that he would have to read through the books in Malfoy’s company, from cover to cover, and do so until he uncovered information about the spell.
He sneaked a sideways look at Malfoy, who was reading with one hand bracing the book open—he was near the end and the heavy pages would have a tendency to shut on their own otherwise—and his other hand constantly writing down words in a smooth, flowing script. He didn’t look tired. He never looked anything.
No, that’s not true, Harry thought. He didn’t want to correct himself about Malfoy, not really, but he couldn’t ignore the evidence of his own eyes. I saw the expression on his face when he talked about Voldemort that first night.
There hadn’t been a repeat of that, no returned squeezes on the shoulder or return confessions of secrets. Of course, Malfoy having the courage to speak to Harry about his fears even once was some kind of crossroads. Harry wasn’t sure that he could actually ask for more, or that he wanted to.
Oh, he wanted to know about Malfoy still, understand what he was feeling, in the same way he would if he were isolated for a long period of time with anyone he didn’t know very well. But he could live without knowing. Harry returned his eyes to his book.
When they strayed back to Malfoy, he knew it meant nothing. They would find the spell soon enough, and then any connection he and Malfoy might have been forging would be cut off in any case, no matter how much it had meant or was starting to mean.
*
Draco might not know everything about Potter, but he knew what that particular kind of restiveness meant by now, after a week and three days in Potter’s company. Potter was stirring in his chair, staring at his book for two seconds and then out the windows for ten seconds. As time passed, the moments when he was actually studying grew rarer and rarer.
The last thing we need is to spend extra time researching because of Potter’s lack of interest in books, Draco thought. He put his encyclopedia down reluctantly—he’d come to an interesting section on the process of reversing spells, including accounts of attempts to create an opposite to Cheering Charms—but reminded himself it would pay off in the long run. Draco wouldn’t be the one having to do all the work if he got Potter “outside” now.
“Come on, Potter,” he said. “There’s an interior garden that I should have introduced you to earlier.”
For a moment, Potter seemed to think that if he paid enough strict attention to the encyclopedia he was juggling, Draco would have to leave him alone. Then he lowered the book to his lap and glared. “I’ve seen all the gardens,” he said. “And I can’t leave the house to walk in them, either.” He flexed his hands hard enough to make a page tear; Draco winced. He should get Potter out of the library for the safety of the books, too. “When your father left the house and the grounds to me, I thought I’d at least have freedom to explore the lawns and the gardens.”
“He probably wanted to be sure you would spend some time in the library,” said Draco, biting his tongue against the temptation to remind Potter of how little time he’d spent in the Hogwarts library as opposed to on the Quidditch pitch. “But what really matters is the garden inside the walls. It’s not very big, but the light there imitates sunshine, and we have a small ceiling enchanted like the ceiling in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.”
“Why didn’t you say so before?” Potter tossed aside the book—Draco winced again—and surged to his feet as though someone had offered him the chance to destroy another Dark Lord. “I could have used that days ago.”
“I didn’t realize you’d want it,” Draco said, but his words went unheeded as Potter ran out of the library. Draco rolled his eyes and followed. Who was the one who knew where the garden was, anyway?
The garden’s door was in the eastern wing of the Manor, the better to have windows that could open to the sun. Draco unlocked the high door with a distinct sense of enjoyment; Potter was hissing behind him, shifting from foot to foot in impatience. Draco liked it when Potter paid attention to him.
Simply because you don’t have anyone else here with you to do it right now, he reminded himself. The house-elves don’t count.
The blank white door opened, and Potter burst past him and into the blaze of sunlight beyond. Draco heard his footsteps suddenly cease, and grimaced. Any moment now, Potter would make some complaint about how this was no substitute for being outside, no matter how beautiful it was.
Instead, he heard Potter laugh.
Draco stepped into the garden, blinking himself at the way the dazzle here contrasted with the relative dimness of the corridors they’d passed through. The enchanted ceiling shone boundless, brilliant blue, although the weather outside at the moment was rather gray and rainy. Despite what Draco had told Potter, the enchantment here was different from the one at Hogwarts; it didn’t reflect the weather so much as the moods of those who wanted to use the garden. “Rain” fell from magical clouds during the night or other periods when the Malfoys were unlikely to enter it.
Potter was spinning in place in the middle of a large expanse of blue tiles, which was formed by the small paths that started near the door and from several other places beside the garden’s walls. Around the tiles gathered thick, rich dirt filled with nutritive enchantments that had been a specialty of Draco’s great-grandfather. Lucius had admitted studying them to try and replicate them on the outside gardens, but he’d had no luck. In the dirt, neatly arranged by lines of wards that pruned them whenever they tried to grow outside certain boundaries, flourished flower after flower and tree after tree.
Draco’s grandfather Abraxas had chosen roses as the major flower to decorate this garden, but around them were the pansies his wife had favored, the deep purple irises Lucius had chosen when he wanted to make a contribution, and the blossoms Narcissa had added at different times, fickle as a bee in her admiration: hollyhocks, sunflowers, marigolds, petunias, gladiolus, and the narcissus of her own name. Small pools reflected the most beautiful ones, multiplying them in startling upside-down bursts of color. The smell was carefully curtailed by the wards as well, rendered far less overwhelming than it might have been.
The trees were taller and more slender than usual, as though set free from the constraints of gravity, and their branches brushed the sides of the walls just below the ceiling. Ashes, birches, beeches, oaks, pines, and a species of tree called a redwood that Lucius had imported from America stood carefully apart from each other, the hardier flowers gathered around them and cradled in their roots. Draco would have loved forests if they were all as light and airy as this; his first experience with the Forbidden Forest after his father’s garden had come as a shock.
And Potter was wandering away from him now, stooping to examine some of the blossoms with as much passion as though he’d always been interested in them. Draco trailed him, doing what he could to conceal his amused chuckles. Potter paused long enough by a cluster of drooping narcissus for Draco to catch up with him at last.
“I never would have taken you for a Herbologist,” Draco remarked.
“Sod off, Malfoy, this place is beautiful.” Potter tilted his head back and closed his eyes, bathing in the sunlight. Draco opened his mouth to remind him that it was only magic that produced the effect, that he wasn’t actually outside, and found himself shutting it again without speaking. Speaking those words would ruin the enjoyment on Potter’s face, and it was too pure for that.
“I can appreciate luxuries like this just as well as you can,” Potter said suddenly, scrambling up and turning in a circle, to stop standing in profile to Draco. Draco stared at him. His dark head was framed against the pale trunk of a birch, and his feet not far from heaps of roses. Draco had never seen him like this before. He wasn’t sure he had ever seen him calm, for that matter, or at least not so near, taking deep, quiet breaths, his eyes half closed as if in meditation. “I just wasn’t meant to own them.”
Then Potter burst into a run down a twisting blue path, and Draco found himself running after, but falling steadily behind. He hadn’t known Potter could sprint; it must have been the Auror training. He watched as Potter spiraled around unexpected clumps of flowers and leaped tree roots as if he knew exactly where he was going, and did his best to replicate the path. Potter splashed through a pool and suddenly flung himself down in the middle of a green glade that Draco thought his mother had constructed in order to observe the odd-colored pansies there. His rasping breath came to Draco’s ears as he worked his way steadily towards the glade and stood looking down at Potter.
“Why did you do that?” he asked.
“I wanted to,” said Potter, and closed his eyes.
Draco found himself without much to say to that. He sat down in the glade beside Potter and watched him, observing as the flush faded from his cheeks and his hair rustled back down his shoulders into something like order, until he thought an hour must have passed.
He resembled the Potter Draco had known in school in looks, but not in personality. That boy didn’t go running through gardens for fun. Of course, Draco didn’t know a lot about what Potter liked, other than beating him at Quidditch.
He put out a hand and trailed it through Potter’s hair for no reason before settling it on his shoulder. Potter rolled his head towards the gesture, but didn’t move. His legs kicked out lazily, as if chasing away an invisible animal.
“We should go back into the library,” Draco whispered. There was no reason to whisper, either, but he wanted to.
“Oh, all right,” said Potter, opening his eyes and wrinkling his nose, and Draco found himself smiling at the latter gesture without knowing he was about to.
Part 3.
