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Universal Chaos	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13263 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

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Chapter Twelve—There Are Fractures

            “And you’re sure that this spell would allow us to communicate?”

            Draco smiled slightly as Harry bent over his shoulder. He knew that Harry didn’t intend it this way, but the soft brush of his breath over Draco’s ear was very pleasant. Draco shifted the book so that Harry could see better, and Harry leaned down, squinting. Draco shuddered as the breath went over his neck this time, but somehow managed to keep his voice calm. “Yes, I’m sure. Look. It allows the opening of a door to any universe at any time, though the time that the door can remain open depends on the power of the spellcaster.”

            Harry coughed nervously and pulled his head back, to Draco’s disappointment. He was just getting used to small pleasures again, after emerging from a cocoon of depression. He thought that Harry should learn to respect that. “And what happens if the door closes and leaves you stranded in my universe, or me in yours?”

            “Door is a convenient term, but it doesn’t work like a room door that would shut you out,” Draco said. He could see that he would have to be patient and literal with Harry. That was all right. Draco was used to the idea of flaws in versions of Harry Potter by now. “When the spell ends, the person who traveled will be snatched back to his original universe immediately.”

            “So we can never know for sure when our visits might end,” Harry finished softly.

            Draco shook his head. “Not until we’ve used the spell a few times, and we know more about our strength and skill in casting it.”

            Harry’s hand tightened on the back of the chair for a moment, and then he stepped back and nodded. “It seems like the best solution,” he said.

            Draco put the book down carefully on the seat of the chair, and then stood up and rounded it so that he could see Harry’s face. “I know that tone,” he said. “A but is hovering on your tongue, and I’ll know what it is.” He actually suspected that he knew what it was already, but there was no point in giving Harry an inferiority complex with the swiftness of his wits.

            Harry sighed in a way that Draco thought must surely clear out any real reluctance he was feeling, and then looked up from under his eyelashes at Draco. Draco resisted the temptation to offer a melting smile in return. Harry was a natural manipulator. It was for the best that no one had ever taught him how to use his charm.

            “I simply wish I could have got out of this without hurting anyone at all,” Harry muttered unhappily. “And now I don’t know if the other Harry really went to St. Mungo’s or not. Even if I went after him to ask, he’s unlikely to welcome my help.”

            Draco put a hand on his shoulder as the safest compromise between the shaking that he wished to inflict and the embrace that would comfort Harry. “You can’t live in this world without hurting people,” he said. “Even if you do it accidentally. Even if you do it unintentionally. Avoid doing what Potter did to me, malicious harm that you don’t have to inflict, and you’ll be doing better than ninety percent of the people I know.”

            Harry gave him a troubled smile. “But I do feel that I acted out of malice. I disliked him, and I didn’t want to spare him the way I’ve tried to spare other people, even the ones who tried to kill me during the war.”

            “Like me,” Draco said, with a small nod.

            “You weren’t the one who tried to kill me.” Harry stepped towards him, an intense look in his eyes that made Draco feel unexpectedly naked. “If this journey has taught me anything, it’s how to distinguish people who might have seemed exactly the same to me otherwise.” And he kissed Draco with a slow, burning force that made Draco decide that someone had taught Harry how to kiss before he came here.

            He blamed his shock for the reason he stood there like an idiot when Harry dropped to his knees in front of him and drew Draco’s trousers and pants down. There was a concentration in his face that was meant, Draco decided, to fight his shaking hands. He had never done this before, obviously, and it was just as obvious that he wanted to do well at it.

            He held Draco’s eyes as he sank his mouth slowly over Draco’s cock, which he didn’t need to touch to coax erect. Draco thought he would choke when he didn’t look at what he was doing, but then Harry solved the problem by shutting his eyes and simply feeling.

            And Draco sagged back against the wall and gave himself up to feeling as well.

            Harry’s tongue was never still. Sometimes he scrubbed it up Draco’s cock in swift licks, as if he wanted to get all the taste out of the skin he possibly could; sometimes he cupped it around the head and wriggled it temptingly back and forth. Meanwhile, the powerful suction of his mouth never varied, and Draco was finally reduced to gripping the chair for balance and giving several powerful jerks of his hips.

            His voice deserted him when he tried to gasp a warning, but Harry seemed to understand, and swallowed most of his come. The white streak that dribbled down his cheek didn’t last long, because Draco pulled him to his feet and licked it away.

            And that, out of everything, was what made Harry look shocked, and what made Draco laugh.

*

            Harry opened his eyes and lay still in astonishment. Something had just happened over the bed, an enormous crack like the boom of a hundred Muggle cannons. The sound was so overwhelming that Harry could feel the vibrations in his ribs.

            And yet, when he turned over to ask Draco what that could be and if he thought the other Harry was attacking the Manor, he discovered Draco lying innocently still, his chest rising and falling in the regular breaths of undisturbed sleep.

            Harry blinked and lay down again, trying to understand. Had he heard the sound in a dream? He would have thought that Draco was an unnaturally deep sleeper, except that he’d had the experience of rolling over last night and having Draco sit up out of a sound slumber and demand to know what was happening.

            Maybe he’s under a sleep spell.

            Even as he snatched up his wand, however, Harry knew that was ridiculous. Why would someone put Draco under a sleep spell so that he couldn’t react to an attack on the Manor and then not do the same thing to Harry? He was probably more magically powerful than Draco, and he would fight to protect him as fiercely as Draco would for Harry.

            He crept out of bed, listening to Draco mutter and roll over. As he walked towards the window, he felt more than heard the crack come again, rolling through his rib cage once more, and, this time, what felt like the bones of his legs and arms.

            Perplexed, Harry stared at the sky through the glass and ended up shaking his head. The night wasn’t perfectly clear, but he could see enough stars to discount the thought of a storm moving in. And though he watched for moments that seemed endless, there were no flashes of lightning.

            The crack sounded again. This time, Harry could envision it starting at the far end of a tunnel and shooting forwards down that tunnel until it screamed in the inside of his head, so deep and clangorous was it.

            He held up one hand as if that could shield him from it and peered at the sky. It was coming from there as much as it was coming from anywhere, he supposed, though no matter how he squinted, he still couldn’t see anything.

            This time, the sound’s echoes faded quickly. Harry kept his gaze steady for a few more minutes, wondering if it was retreating. Perhaps a magical storm? Hermione had told him that sometimes a large concentration of power built up around heavily warded buildings like the Ministry and then infected the atmosphere, seeding the clouds with magic.

            Then he saw something, after all.

            Racing and coiling above him was the same springing, sprouting mass of light that he had seen when the other Harry had pulled him from his own universe into this one.

            Fear made Harry’s legs lock. He hadn’t yet arranged with Draco when their first visit would be, or who would make it. He hadn’t studied the spell in detail. If he could find books that described this magic in his world, he wasn’t sure that he would choose the right one. (Draco knew more about that than he did). They didn’t know what the side-effects might be. He couldn’t leave yet.

            And then he realized, as the lights of the universes arranged themselves in a cascade that rolled magnificently from the top of the sky, that this couldn’t be the other Harry sending him back to his own universe, both because the light show was different and because it hadn’t riveted his attention and forced him to stare at it and only it yet. He was able to glance away from it and at Draco, still peacefully sleeping in the bed, when he wanted to.

            Curiosity replaced the fear, partially because the light was so beautiful, and Harry leaned out the window to look more closely.

            The light falling from the top of the sky resembled an alabaster waterfall by now, with foamy curls to either side of it that looked as if the alternate universes had decided to create the loveliest shapes they could. Harry lost track of how many there were, coiling back on themselves in a dance of celebration. His heartbeat eased as he stood there. No matter what this was, he no longer thought it was evil, the way he would have thought it if the other Harry had decided to send Harry back to his own universe before he wanted to go.

            The waterfall dissolved, and instead a rippling banner of white silk traveled across the night. Harry took a deep breath. He thought he could smell thick and pushing spring, like newborn grass in the rain.

            The scroll unfurled all the way, and turned the night to a crystalline blaze. The blaze seemed to catch on the stars and skip from one to another of them, spreading out in a thin and shining net. Harry blinked; he briefly had the impression of figures standing on the stars, hurling spears of light to each other.

            And he had heard laughter. He knew he had. Infectious child’s laughter, without a trace of the malice that he had heard in the voices of people like Voldemort or Bellatrix.

            The net overwhelmed the whole of his vision, and spread down to touch the earth, like the lightning of the magic storm come at last. Harry gasped as the net began to revolve like a maelstrom, and struggled with the urge to close his eyes. He didn’t want to miss a moment of this, but if he kept on looking, he wasn’t certain that he’d stay sane.

            Out of the whirling mass rose a shape that Harry thought was like a cross between swan and phoenix—a bird of radiance with a long, curved neck, and a crest nodding up and down like waving grass, and grasping claws tipped with webs and those spares of light the stars had thrown. It shook its head, and Harry saw it spread its wings.

            Once more, the clamorous thunder echoed through Harry’s bones and through the world, and the bird whirled and flew to the top of the sky.

            And then the light was gone, and no matter how long Harry stood, he knew in the root of his heart, it would not come back.

            He turned at once to wake Draco up. He had to get to the other Harry in hospital—assuming he’d really gone there—and tell him what he’d seen.

*

            Draco was next to Harry as they walked into Potter’s hospital room, making sure he had one hand on Harry’s shoulder and one on his wand. He didn’t really understand the story Harry had woken him babbling about, except that he thought it might mean Potter was trying to send him back to his own universe. Draco would prevent that from happening if he had to drive his wand through Potter’s throat.

            On the other hand, Potter had left orders for them to be admitted to see him if they showed up, and that gave Draco some pause. Maybe Harry’s second set of suspicions was correct, and the occurrence had something to do with the spell Potter had cast, but wasn’t a sign of that spell being cast again. Draco decided that his role during this confrontation was to protect Harry, and to keep silent if he wasn’t doing that.

            That wasn’t because he wanted to be charitable to Potter, but because Harry did. And because the hope in his eyes when he spoke of Potter possibly having changed his mind and become someone different was so beautiful.

            “Harry?” his Harry asked, breathlessly, as they stepped into the hospital room. It was a cheerful, bright blue, Draco noted in distraction. At least, it was probably supposed to be cheerful. Draco knew he would be driven mad before long if he had to spend many days staring at those walls.

            On the other hand, Potter was already mad, so it probably didn’t bother him.

            Potter turned his head and looked up at them with tired eyes from the bed. Then he smiled. Draco stared. He thought that he saw something old and familiar in that expression, some echo of the boy Potter had been when they were in Hogwarts and then not again since. This was the man who had rescued him from the Fiendfyre, rather than trying to remind him of his life-debt. Draco was almost certain of it.

            He stepped up cautiously beside Harry, to be ready in case this was an imposter using Polyjuice.

            But Potter held out his hand for Harry to shake, and said, “So you saw it, too? I hoped you would, but I couldn’t be sure if the sound would wake you up or not.” Draco shifted from foot to foot in a silent protest that both Potter and Harry ignored. He was uneasy with all this talk of thunder he couldn’t hear and light he couldn’t see. He’d looked closely at the sky before they left the Manor to Apparate to St. Mungo’s, and he couldn’t see a trace of the wild magic that Harry claimed was there. “Do you know what it was?” Potter continued, snatching Draco’s attention back. He wanted to know the answer to that question, as long as Potter didn’t try to put them off with more lies.

            Harry shook his head, eyes wide with wonder and anxiety.

            “A new universe being born.” Potter tilted his head back against his pillow and closed his eyes. His voice was thin and exhausted, but still had a thread of strength under the surface that Draco would previously have thought impossible for him. “You and I were the only ones who saw it because we’re versions of the person who brought the birth about. I told you about the fractures, the series of events that would build up to a breaking point, when they would shift and separate one universe from another. That’s what you saw tonight.” He breathed in silence for a moment, while Harry continued staring at him. Then he murmured, “I didn’t think it would happen. I thought I—well, the person I used to be, was going to stay the same forever and never change. I think that would have been my fate, too, if you hadn’t come along.”

            “I don’t understand,” Harry said, in the fragile tone that meant he desperately wanted to. Draco rubbed his shoulder blade soothingly, and looked away from Potter so that he wouldn’t be tempted to hurry the man along.

            Potter took a deep breath. Draco tightened his muscles. This sounded like the same person to him, the one who had to make everything unnecessarily dramatic, and all about himself.

            “The event the fractures centered around tonight was my decision about whether I was going to come to St. Mungo’s or not,” Potter said. “I hadn’t decided on it when I stormed away from you. I wanted to go home and brood, and then shut myself away from the world again so that I could hate you and Draco in comfort.”

            Draco stiffened in shock this time. A quick substitution of names, and that could have been him speaking, the way he had felt after his parents’ deaths.

            “But then I paused and thought,” Potter continued. “I wondered what I would accomplish by doing that. If you and Draco were heartless enough to make it plain that you loved each other in front of me and would do nothing to help me ever again, then my hiding wouldn’t make a difference to you. You’d give me up as a lost cause. Draco made it clear that he already had.” Draco was sure Potter was looking at him, but he ignored the temptation to turn around. “So I might as well think about what would help me, instead of what would hurt you. And going into hospital and telling the Mind-Healers that I might harm myself or others seemed the best choice.

            “I firecalled Ron and Hermione when I got here. I offered them apologies, told them what I was doing, and left it up to them whether they wanted to come see me or not.” Potter’s voice deepened with hesitant joy. “Hermione did.”

            “That’s wonderful,” Harry said. Draco reminded himself that Harry spending compassion on a few people who weren’t Draco wouldn’t lessen the store that he had to offer Draco. “How is she?”

            “She’s already nearly the Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures,” Potter said, with what Draco decided was pardonable pride, since he was speaking about someone else instead of himself. “She thought it would take her years to get that far, but they can’t do without her. And Ron is taking over more and more of the work at the joke shop. They think—they think George might need to come here, actually. He isn’t dealing with Fred’s death at all well.”

            Harry sighed softly. “If there was one thing that I could wish was different between our two universes, then it would be Fred’s death.”

            Draco shifted restlessly. He would have liked Harry to say that he would have wanted to keep Draco’s parents alive, but then, it was true that his version of Draco was probably a prat and Harry hadn’t known about Lucius and Narcissa committing suicide before he came here.

            “How could it be?” Potter’s voice was gentle, which made Draco peek at him and wonder if this wasn’t Polyjuice after all. Potter was smiling at Harry, and at least he had the expressions correct. “Our universes were the same universe until the decision that split them.” He hesitated, then added, “And now it’s happened again.”

            Harry stared at him. “You mean—”

            Potter nodded with a solemn expression. “I made the decision to come to St. Mungo’s and get help. My counterpart made another decision. What it was, I don’t know, but probably to go home and brood.” A quick shadow in his eyes made Draco think that he suspected something else but didn’t want to distress Harry with his suspicion. Wise, Draco approved. “That was a significant enough moment for me that the universes took two different paths. I’m in this one. He—the same person I was until earlier this afternoon—is somewhere else, in another universe, following out the consequences of his decision. Whatever it was,” he added softly.

            Harry bowed his head. Draco thought he was probably mourning that other Potter—and it gave him more of a headache to think about two versions of Potter than it did to think about two versions of Harry—and wondering if there was something he could have done to help. Draco shook his shoulder and entered the conversation for the first time.

            “Why did the two of us end up in this universe and not the one where Potter made a bad decision?”

            Potter raised one eyebrow at him. “But you did end up there. A different version of you, at least. When the universes first split, they’re very nearly identical, in everything except whatever events caused them to multiply in the first place. But after that, those events and their consequences start piling up, and the two universes change to the point that they can become unrecognizable in a few years.” He hesitated, and added, “And, of course, they can spawn new universes of their own at any time, at any age. I suspect that the other version of me is probably going to do that. He’s just too unstable and changes his mind too much for it to be otherwise.”

            Draco couldn’t keep the note of loathing from his voice, so he didn’t try. “There might be a universe where I end up with him, then?”

            “There might be.” Potter gazed at him with a yearning that showed he hadn’t entirely forsaken his hopeless passion for Draco. Draco curled his lip, and Potter looked away with an angry flush. Not completely changed, then, Draco thought in contentment. “In the future, if not now.”

            “I’m glad for you, at least,” Harry said, his voice subdued. Draco wondered if Harry felt as odd as he did, thinking of another version of themselves cast out into a universe with the wild, anarchic Potter, where they might as easily have gone. “I hope that you’ll be able to find the help you need.”

            “I think I can,” Potter admitted. “I knew that you were right all along, which was the reason I resented you so much. I finally decided to stop lying to myself. Others of me—didn’t.” He shook his head, then grinned at Harry. “Really, when you think about it, this universe is as likely to be the new one as the one where the other version of me lives, since I think I made the more drastic decision.”

            “That makes my head hurt,” Harry said, with a serious expression. He hesitated, then added, “In a few days, I think I’d like to go back to my own universe.”

            Draco took a firmer hold of his shoulder. “Don’t I get a say in this?” he asked, as lightly as he could.

            Harry turned and smiled gently at him. “Of course. We’ll practice the visiting spells, too.” He covered Draco’s hand with his own. “But I do want to see my friends again, and reassure them that I’m all right, and I know what career I want after all.” He glanced over his shoulder at Potter. “Thank you for bringing me here. You’ve changed my life.”

            “And mine,” Draco said, loathe as he was to thank Potter for anything. He took some comfort from the fact that this was not exactly the Potter he had been confronting and hating for years.

            “And mine,” Potter said. He grinned again, this time more naturally. “We never know where the ripples of our actions are going to stop moving, do we?”

            Harry shook his head. “But I like to think that the majority of the universes are joyful,” he added. “What I saw tonight was a new universe exulting. It was glad to be born, no matter what happened to it.”

            “I like to think the same thing,” Potter said, and smiled at him.

            Harry smiled back, and Draco could see their faces, after all, as mirrors of each other’s.

*

            polka dot: If Draco had been any less of a jerk, there’s a very good chance that version of Harry wouldn’t have listened to him.

            MewMew2: They’ll be in the last chapter, or glimpsed in the last chapter.

            Thrnbrooke: Here it is!

            butterpie: Harry does still feel bad about it, but he knows that there’s no way Draco is going to get with Potter even if he’s out of the picture, so he’ll definitely put up with it!

            SecondStoreyStairwell: Thank you so much!

            SP777: Yeah, I think to what extent Potter is willing to accept the blame is going to be the major determination of the whole thing.
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Universal Chaos