Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Nothing Like the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 35148 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 11
- 12
- 13
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twelve—Responsiveness
            Harry shifted on the couch in the waiting room of the Mind-Healer Draco had sent him to—not someone at St. Mungo’s, Harry had noted silently when Draco offered the address—and stared again at the walls. There was nothing else to do here, since the chairs were plain and wooden, the room small and without any Quidditch magazines or newspapers, and Harry hadn’t brought any books with him.
            Either the Mind-Healer or the person she had hired to decorate for her had strange taste in paintings. There was a landscape that showed a flooded city, maybe Venice, with a figure in the foreground that wore tattered scarlet robes and had a grinning skull for a face. There was another with a silver cat sitting bolt upright, while behind it, the starry sky glistened and a moon with a face leered down. And another one had a man that looked suspiciously like Professor Snape, except he was in the middle of a bunch of rainbows conjured from his wand.
            As far as Harry could tell, none of them were moving portraits, all Muggle, but the subjects were strange enough to make his heart beat up into his throat a little. When the door into the Mind-Healer’s office finally opened, he turned around instinctively.
            The woman who stepped through had a strong, square face, calm dark eyes, and dark hair braided behind her head and down her neck with cords of silver. It took Harry longer than it should have to recognize her. When he did, his jaw fell.
            “Bulstrode?”
            The woman paused and considered him. Then she shook her head a little. “Bulstrode was my name before I married,” she said. “I go by Robertson now.”
            Harry clenched his hands on the cushions of the seat, and wondered if he should leave. “Draco didn’t warn me.”
            Bulstrode—shit, Harry couldn’t think of her any other way—gave him a remote smile. “He probably feared that you wouldn’t have agreed to come if you knew who it was.”
            Harry shook his head quickly and stood up. “I wouldn’t have. I trust Draco, but this is too much. I don’t want someone who’s going to make fun of me the way you would have at Hogwarts.” He walked towards the other door, the one that led back outside into the garden of this anonymous little house in Hogsmeade.
            “Mr. Potter.”
            The novelty of being called that, instead of a sneered insult or Auror Potter, turned Harry around. Bulstrode held up a hand, and a ball of silvery magic formed there, floating like one of Trelawney’s crystal globes. Bulstrode nodded to it, and then to Harry. “I know you know what this is. The Aurors were testing them out years ago.”
            Harry nodded reluctantly. “An oath-sphere.” They were magical devices, or creations of pure magic—Harry had never used them enough to really know which—that made sure an oath sworn on them would be kept. But no one would tell Harry exactly how, whether they punished you if you broke them or just made breaking them impossible. Either way, it had sounded like the Imperius Curse to him, and he’d refused to have anything to do with them.
            “The Aurors’ mistake was in thinking they could use them for many people, such as making many witnesses swear on them to tell the truth,” said Bulstrode calmly. “But each can only be used by one wizard, although for multiple oaths.” She stretched out her hand and slid it over the surface of the sphere, which clouded over. “I swear on my magic and on this sphere that I will reveal no information about Harry Potter to anyone unless he tells me to.”
            The oath-sphere vibrated and filled with a silvery mist that seemed to solidify, obscuring it like frost on a window. Then it trembled and fell down into Bulstrode’s hand. She held it out to Harry. Harry took it, trying to ignore the way his skin crawled. He had never liked the way these things felt, either.
            But the silvery mist looked the way it should, with solid letters in the middle of it that spelled out Bulstrode’s oath. Harry swallowed again and looked back at her.
            Bulstrode kept reading him with that remote, neutral expression. “I know Draco told you that I developed a spell which will keep me absolutely impartial while we speak,” she said. “That’s the truth.”
            “I know,” Harry muttered unhappily. He knew that Draco wouldn’t send him to someone he thought Harry couldn’t trust, and he wouldn’t lie about something so important.
            On the other hand, Draco might trust her in a way Harry couldn’t.
            “It doesn’t matter who we were at Hogwarts, except insofar as it’s relevant to what’s wrong with you.” Bulstrode still hadn’t taken her eyes from him. “I promise that I will cast the spell the minute you step into my office and not release it until you’re gone. I can even swear that on the sphere, too, if you like.”
            Harry shook his head sharply. It was already enough that she had sworn one oath like that. He didn’t want her bound by a promise that he trusted—Draco trusted, really—she would keep without that.
            “Fine,” Bulstrode said, and turned towards the office door. “Are you going to follow me or not?”
            Harry shut his eyes. Draco trusts her. And you want to start trusting the people Draco trusts. He thinks she can help, and you want to be helped. That’s the first time it’s been true in years.
            Then Harry opened his eyes and snorted, because, really, he had wanted help for years. He had simply given up hope of finding it, the same way he had given up hope of finding a partner and a long-term relationship. But that didn’t stop him from wanting.
            “All right,” he said, and followed her in, handing her back the oath-sphere as he did.
            The office was far bigger than most Healers’ rooms he’d seen, partially to accommodate a huge ebony desk against the wall opposite the door, but also, Harry thought, to give space to the fireplace with what looked like gold-veined marble set around it and the thick, cushioned chairs that sat in circles every few feet. Bulstrode sat down in the nearest one of these and held her wand towards her chin. Harry nervously took the seat across from her, noting corners and defenses he could use if he had to escape suddenly.
            “I am going to cast the spell now,” Bulstrode said. “After that, please start telling me about the problem that Draco recommended you to me for.”
            You can do this, Harry told himself again. You can, no matter how difficult it is. Because no matter how hard you have to fight, Draco is worth it.
            Harry nodded. “Okay.”
            Bulstrode laid her wand against her chin and whispered an incantation that Harry suspected he could have heard if he’d made an effort. But she wanted to keep it secret, and that mattered to her more than hearing it mattered to him. Harry leaned back in his chair instead, feeling the softness of the cloth against the nape of his neck and waiting for Bulstrode to finish.
            When she looked at him again, her eyes might have been lenses, her face steel. She nodded. “Tell me what has been happening,” she said.
            “Okay,” Harry said again, and hesitated only once before he began to speak. She wanted the problem that Draco had sent him here for, and technically that was the nightmare, but Harry couldn’t see how the whole tangled mess of it wouldn’t come out, once he began speaking in detail about the nightmare. However, he didn’t think she would judge him for one thing more than another, given the spell.
            First he lightly told her about his relationships with his past lovers, and a little about how Draco had been pursuing him and trying to win his trust. Then he told her in more detail about the bed in Malfoy Manor, and the night he’d spent there.
            Then came the nightmare.
            “I think it was my dead godfather speaking to me,” Harry whispered. “Telling me about all the wasted chances, and the horrible things I’d done, even though I never meant to do them. In a way, it’s worse that I didn’t mean to do them. I was thoughtless, and careless, and that’s harder to make up for.”
            “Why would your dead godfather wish to torment you in such a way?”
            Harry started and looked at her. Bulstrode still sat there looking absolutely indifferent, though, and Harry supposed the question made sense for someone who hadn’t been in his mind and didn’t know what Sirius had endured.
            “I know that he didn’t, really,” Harry began. “I know that he would never do it if he was alive. But the voice sounded like his, and I can’t help thinking that I failed him, that I was part of the reason he died. And that makes me wonder whether—whether some of the other things that happened to me, like the way that I argued with my past lovers and broke up with them in horrible ways, aren’t payback for that. A long time coming.”
            “What would be the logical connection between causing your godfather’s death and losing your lovers?”
            Harry shrugged. “I never said it was particularly logical,” he muttered. He could feel Bulstrode looking at him. There was no pity in her eyes—of course not, since she had cast the spell—but he wanted to bristle in front of her gaze anyway. “But I do wonder. Why is it that I can’t keep a lover when I should be perfectly capable of doing it? I didn’t pick out six horrible people on purpose, and they didn’t have a conspiracy between them to leave me.” He drew his hand over his face, and sighed into his palm. This was the part he really couldn’t confess to Draco, because Draco would mock it, and if there was one thing Harry didn’t need to hear, it was more mockery. He had made fun of it himself, inside his own head. Hell, Frank had done the same thing, when Harry shared a little bit of it with him, before Frank left him.
            “I did horrible things,” Harry said finally, when Bulstrode waited, and watched, and was as still as a lizard sunning itself on a rock. “Isn’t—there has to be payment for that, right? Somewhere?”
            “What horrible things do you think you did, besides the part you claim you played in your godfather’s death?” Bulstrode asked calmly.
            Harry stared at his hands again. “I killed people,” he whispered. “I used the Unforgivables on them. I—I know Draco thinks I didn’t rape people, and he wouldn’t want me to use that word, but at least I forced sex on them that they didn’t enjoy. I deceived Muggles into thinking I was one of them, and I’ve probably given blowjobs to a few hundred.” He looked up at Bulstrode and shrugged. “Take your pick.”
            Bulstrode waited, as though she didn’t know what questions to ask, as if she had become as still and reflective as her glass sphere. Harry leaned back against his chair and closed his eyes. It wasn’t working, he thought, this confession to a Mind-Healer. He still felt tight and wound and stretched inside.
            Finally Bulstrode said, “The nightmare that you told me about began in a kitchen. You saw your cousin speaking to you. Why your cousin?”
            Harry sighed and opened his eyes. He should have known this would come out, too. But he didn’t think the Dursleys were the only things wrong with him, the only twisting at the strings of his soul. They hadn’t made Harry alienate his lovers, and they had been far from his mind when he did most of what he’d done during the war.
            “My relatives abused me,” he said. He could speak that word now, where once before he would have been unable to, and he thought that was progress, too. “My cousin helped. He beat me up, and made sure that I didn’t have friends at school. I made my first friends when I came to Hogwarts. I never had them before.”
            “You believe that your mind placed him there as a symbol of your alienation?”
            Harry grimaced and nodded. “That makes sense. I never—I think that I’m not going to be normal, because of what they did to me and what I had to go through in the war. Maybe that’s the reason none of my lovers stay,” he added. But he had come to that conclusion before, and it hadn’t helped, either. He couldn’t change his mental scars from the war, any more than he could permanently remove the scars on his body carved in with Dark magic.
            “What is normal?”
            Harry sat up and scowled at her. “Why do you keep asking questions? I don’t think I’ve heard you make a single statement yet.”
            “Could I make a statement and remain neutral, as the spell forces me to?”
            Harry sighed and slumped back, rubbing a hand over his forehead. “Fine. Fair point,” he muttered. And again they sat in silence, except that Bulstrode’s gaze seemed more piercing. Probably because it hadn’t wavered, Harry thought. He wanted to wince, but he would only get further by speaking, and he wouldn’t have got this far with any other Mind-Healer.
            “I think normal is—what I’m not,” he said at last. “Being raised by a loving family. Having a partner and being able to keep them. Having children, if you’re partners with someone of the opposite sex. Not having so many scars. Not having fought in a war.”
            “Could you have been normal, in any way?”
            Harry had to think about that, but in the end, he shook his head. “Maybe not. I’ve been involved in the war since Voldemort cast the Killing Curse at me. Even if a loving family had raised me after that, it wouldn’t change what were sort of—unique circumstances.”
            And he swallowed, because he was already thinking of the question Bulstrode asked next, even before she asked it.
            “How can you condemn yourself for not living up to the standard of normality, when that had changed for you from the time you were one year old?”
            Harry looked down at his hands. He looked at the far wall, but it remained blank. He looked at Bulstrode, but her face remained the same as it had, and her breathing didn’t change, thanks to that spell.
            He had no one to deny the words that bubbled up in his head, and no one to voice them to, since he thought asking the question would only get him another question in return. So he leaned back, and thought.
            There was still some justice in what Frank had said, he decided. He could have been fairer, and more compassionate, and noticed when someone was in pain when he had sex with them. That was all the kind of thing that any decent person would do, and if Harry couldn’t be normal, he still wanted to think that he could be decent.
            But for the rest of it…
            Why had Frank and Veronica and even Ginny, who knew more about his past than any of his other lovers, expected him to be happy and merry and normal? Ginny had even known that he was a virgin. But she had expected—maybe fairly, maybe not—more experience from him, and gentleness, and greatness. He hadn’t given her the greatest time ever, but she had chalked that up to more than inexperience, when she shouldn’t have.
            And Frank…
            Harry snorted. He’d seen through Frank, at least partially, at the Cloth of Gold. If Harry wasn’t normal, neither was Frank, not in his desire to go on persecuting someone whose feelings he claimed to care for. All he wanted was his personal vengeance, and Harry didn’t have to give Frank’s voice any more weight in his own decisions.
            Veronica was another story again, but Harry thought he had done better by her. She should have told him sooner if she was unhappy. If she flinched at the sight of his scars, and that was never going to change, then maybe she should have realized it wasn’t going to work and she needed a lover who was more to her taste, physically.
            Harry wasn’t perfect. Did it follow that he wasn’t allowed to have flaws and the same chance at attaining love as someone who had gone through the war and come out smiling, or someone who had never been in the war at all?
            He looked up at Bulstrode. “Do you treat all your patients like this?” he had to ask, with a faint grin.
            “What other way could I treat them, when the spell forces me into being neutral?”
            Harry smiled. Of course he was going to get a question as an answer. He didn’t know why he had ever thought differently.
            “Fine,” he said. “I feel a little bit better about my nightmare, and some of the forces that were underlying it. But that doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop having nightmares.”
            Bulstrode inclined her head. “Did you think that this would be the only appointment?”
            “I hoped for it,” Harry muttered, rubbing his forehead. At least now he knew that he could feel a little comfortable with Bulstrode, and he did trust the oath she had made not to reveal information about him to anyone.
            “I have one more question,” Bulstrode murmured, her voice so soft and deft that it took Harry a minute to realize what had happened. When he did, he pointed a finger at her and grinned in spite of his anxiety about what was coming next.
            “You made a statement! I thought you weren’t allowed to do that.”
            Bulstrode gave him a faint smile, eyelashes sweeping down to cover her eyes. “I sometimes may, for the good of my patients, and for the sake of moving on in a conversation,” she said. “As now. In the meantime, I wish to ask: Is your dead godfather your only candidate for the voice you heard in your nightmare?”
            Harry hesitated, then swallowed and shook his head. He hadn’t wanted to admit it to Draco, but another candidate had popped up in his head. He was a little surprised Draco hadn’t guessed it, or asked, but then, Draco didn’t know the story that would have been a precondition for his asking.
            “Who is it?”
            Harry shuddered and touched the sides of his head with his hands. But the chair beneath him helped to steady him, to remind him that he was in a Mind-Healer’s office, not lost in the depths of his own mind. While he had endured plenty of delusions at his hands, none of them had ever been pleasant, or neutral, or comfortable.
            “Who is it?” Bulstrode said, her voice as repetitive as the tick of an iron clock, when perhaps a few minutes had passed.
            Harry grimaced and looked up again. “I don’t have much choice about answering, do I?” he asked.
            “Would you prefer to return at another time, and spend more Galleons?”
            Harry cracked a dry laugh in spite of himself. “Not really,” he said. “Not for this particular nightmare. I have plenty of others that you could take a look at.” He hesitated one more time, but Bulstrode just waited, eyes slow in their blinks as a frog’s. “I think it might be the voice of a Dark wizard who tortured me a while ago,” he admitted.
            “What about this Dark wizard makes him more special than the Dark Lord or others who put you through ordeals?” Bulstrode asked.
            Harry shut his eyes. Then he opened them again. Closing himself in darkness didn’t make it easier to attend to Bulstrode’s questions, as he had thought it might. It just cast him too clearly back into the moments when he had seen nothing except the shifting shadows and shades of his mind.
            “He was a Legilimens,” Harry whispered. “He—he kept me captive through stirring up my memories and turning them against me. When they finally rescued me, they realized that I wasn’t even bound. He’d kept me in a room with an open door and a staircase I could have walked up at any time.” He knew that some of the other Aurors had wondered about that, and a rumor had circulated that Harry was getting old and slow, unsuited to Auror work. That had stopped the next time he did one of those impossible raids that no one else could do and captured a criminal who had cost a few Auror lives, but it had lasted for several months.
            “Could you have walked up the staircase?”
            Harry glared at Bulstrode. Sometimes he wished she would emphasize words in her sentences, like normal people. “Of course,” he snapped. “It’s not like the staircase was particularly steep, or had impossibly slick steps, or anything else.”
            Bulstrode’s hands slowly folded, one on top of the other, so soft and settled that Harry couldn’t keep from staring at them in uneasy fascination. “Allow me to repeat the question, with another statement,” she said. “Could you have walked up the staircase with him in your head, convincing you of what was not real?”
            Slowly, reluctantly, Harry shook his head.
            “Why did you not want to admit that?”
            Harry flexed his hands back and forth in front of him, staring at the palms. “Because I’m supposed to be better than that,” he whispered. “Stronger. I really did think I was. I thought I’d worked on my Occlumency to the point that no one could get inside my head. But he showed me wrong.”
            “Did you work on your Occlumency after that?”
            Harry looked up with a grim smile. At least he liked the answer to this question better. “You bet I did. I think that I’m probably better than most of the Aurors in the department now.” Not even someone who had bragged in threatening letters to the Ministry about his Dark Arts abilities had been able to get through Harry’s shields when they finally clashed. Harry had reasoned it was for the best, since he might carry important secrets about other people, as well as needing to keep himself safe.
            “With what Mind-Healer?”
            “What Mind-Healer did I work on my Occlumency with?” Harry repeated, frowning, to make sure he understood. He thought it was a weird question for her to ask. When Bulstrode nodded, he snorted and said, “I taught myself out of a book. I didn’t know of a Mind-Healer I could trust.”
            “Were you aware that a visit to a Mind-Healer is mandatory after exposure to a Legilimens who misuses their abilities?”
            “No one told me that,” Harry said irritably. He wanted to get up and pace again, and then he thought, Why the hell not? It’s not like Bulstrode has the capacity to mind right now. He stood up and snapped back and forth in front of his seat. Sure enough, her gaze tracked him, but there was no irritation in her face. “Seriously, no one did. I don’t remember ever being told that by any Auror in the Department.”
            “By a friend?”
            Harry shook his head. He was sure that Hermione would have told him, if a rule like that had existed. It was hardly the first time he had faced a Legilimens, although it was the worst.
            “Did he begin the nightmares?”
            “No,” Harry snapped, swinging around to face her. “You ought to have figured that out by now. Even if he figures in my nightmares, it’s not like he made my relatives abuse me or my guilt start up.”
            “Did he worsen them?”
            Harry hesitated. Yes, there was that chance, wasn’t there? He hadn’t wanted to think about that, but then, he didn’t want to think about the nightmares in general. And they hadn’t seemed to get worse in the last year. They were bad enough to drive away people from sleeping beside him, and beyond that, he hadn’t tried to classify them.
            “Did he worsen them?” Bulstrode spoke as if she could go on asking all day, which she probably could.
            Harry sighed. “There’s a chance. But I don’t dream of him every evening, you know. Sometimes I dream something different, and sometimes I take Dreamless Sleep Potion, and sometimes I don’t remember my dreams.”
            “So two-thirds of the time you either have different nightmares or you are suppressing your nightmares?” Bulstrode looked at him again as though he was the only fascinating thing in the room. But, Harry decided, running his hand through his hair, how fascinating could she find her own office by now?
            “Not two-thirds of the time.” She was going to think he was some sort of mental case when she returned to her own proper frame of mind, Harry thought. And although he didn’t really believe that she would betray his confidence to Draco or anyone else, he still hated the thought of looking weak in front of someone else. “Just—a lot.”
            Bulstrode nodded, and said nothing.
            Harry paced in another circle, shooting Bulstrode looks now and then as he waited for the next question. But she didn’t appear disposed to ask it. She waited, breathing softly, and Harry reckoned he had to work through this next part on his own.
            Fine. He had nightmares, a lot. But he’d already known that. It was one of the reasons, although far from the only one, that some of his lovers had left. And what he’d done to Andy…
            Harry flinched hard and collapsed back into his chair. Bulstrode looked at him again, and there was a spark of returning light in her eyes, as though she had remembered it was the Mind-Healer’s job to ask questions around here.
            “What else do you have to tell me?” she asked.
            “I’ve told you everything I can think of about the nightmare,” Harry said, which was true. “Maybe it does come from that bastard fucking with my head.” Not a flinch from Bulstrode, which Harry supposed was additional confirmation that that spell really worked. He would have expected either a widening of the eyes or a narrowing of them from the proper pure-blood woman that Bulstrode represented, most of the time. “And maybe it doesn’t. I still think that he contributed to it, but it’s not the only thing that did.”
            Bulstrode nodded. “Would you like to discuss the other things?”
            “We already did, as much as I’m comfortable with.” Harry said it shortly, leaning back in the chair and wondering why he felt so wrung-out. He seemed to have gone from uncomfortable to questioning to triumphant to exhausted in so short a space of time. He was out of practice at talking to Mind-Healers, though. He had avoided them when the Ministry asked him to talk to them, and his own experiences with private ones had been horrible.
            “Have you told Draco about this?”
            “About the nightmare? Of course.” Harry stared at her, wondering if the spell dulled some of her memories as well. “He was the one who suggested coming to you in the first place.”
            Bulstrode gave him another prim little shake of her head. “Have you told him about the Legilimens you believe might have caused or worsened the nightmare? Have you told him about being held captive inside your own head, more than you were inside a room? Have you told him about being unable to escape because your perceptions were so confused?”
            Harry wanted to hunch over and tear at his hair, but he wasn’t so far gone as that. He just held Bulstrode’s eyes and shook his head.
            “Why not?” And yes, she did sound mildly interested, not indignant, the way she would have if she had been in her right mind as Draco’s friend, Harry thought. “Do you think that he would not like to know?”
            Harry shuddered and looked away. He felt as though someone had dropped a honeycomb on his head, all sticky and covered. “I think he would be too interested,” he muttered, and winced. Those words hurt in the way that only really true words did, the way he had once thought Frank’s words were, the way that some of Draco’s were.
            “He would want you to relive details of the experience that you do not wish to confess to him?”
            It was the natural conclusion, wasn’t it? And yet Harry shuddered back from the idea and shook his head. “He wouldn’t want that,” he whispered, his eyes closed as he waited for the next question.
            “Then why don’t you wish to tell him?”
            Harry took a deep, fortifying breath, and finally said it. “He would want to talk it through, to know all about it. And he would want to scold me and hold me and ask me why I hadn’t been to see a Mind-Healer already. I don’t—I’m so tired of feeling like I’m always in the wrong with him, and I’m—part of me wants to be fussed over, but the rest doesn’t.”
            “Because you’ve been fussed-over in the past?” Bulstrode cocked her head like a curious bird as she waited for Harry to respond.
            “Because I haven’t been,” Harry said. “The—the people who raised me didn’t do a lot of it. And Hermione and Ron would do more of it if I let them, and I have plenty of fans who would, too. But they wouldn’t do it the right way.” He stopped, listening to himself, and controlled the impulse to snort. Yes, of course there was a right and a wrong way to fuss, and it made sense that his screwed-up brain would have decided on that.
            “Could you ask Draco to fuss over you?”
            “No, for the reasons I just told you.” Harry stretched uncomfortably in the chair. He had had more than enough revelations for this morning, and while he was sure that Bulstrode’s spell could last as long as she needed it to, he didn’t really want to take any longer here. “Should I come and see you again in a week?”
            “That would be acceptable,” Bulstrode said, and stood to gesture to the door. “If you wish to leave now, then do so.” It sounded as if she was fighting the temptation to turn it into a question.
            Harry sighed and left, shutting the door carefully behind him. The wrung-out sensation persisted. He didn’t remember feeling this way with the other Mind-Healers, but then again, things hadn’t usually got that far. They either announced that he should be doing better than this, because he was a hero, or they told him that he was pathetic, or they wanted his autograph, or…
            Harry stuck his hands in his robe pockets. Well, that hadn’t happened here. Bulstrode had done her job, and more like a professional than Harry would have expected, given their past history. He had to congratulate her on that, and he had to admit that Draco had found him a good Mind-Healer, considering all his awful experiences in the past. He would tell Draco about it if Draco wanted to hear it.
            Does Ron like Muggle pizza?
            Harry smiled a little as he prepared to Apparate home. He had taken a holiday from work today, knowing he would be useless after his talk with Bulstrode. There wasn’t any reason to delay going over to tell Draco about it.
            And he did want to tell Draco about it. Part of him wanted the fussing and the scolding and the embraces that would probably follow.
            He just didn’t know if he wanted them enough to ask for them on his own.
*
            “Did Millicent do a good job?”
            Draco didn’t raise his eyes from the paperwork he had brought home from the office, which concerned permission for Draco to harvest some parts of magical creatures for Potions research. Harry had come in ten minutes ago, and Draco thought he had enough restless energy to pace the Manor all the way through. Better to leave Harry alone, he’d decided, and let him come to him.
            Except Harry had come back into Draco’s study and stood breathing irregularly behind his chair, and it turned out that Draco’s control wasn’t as perfect as he thought it was, after all. He leaned back and fastened his eyes on Harry’s face. Harry was red, for some reason, and he met Draco’s eyes and then looked away.
            “Did she make you uncomfortable?” Draco had feared that happening, a little. Not that Millicent wasn’t miles better than the horrible Mind-Healers Harry had described, but on the other hand, the way she acted under that spell of hers could make her creepy, and there was a chance Harry would run out the door the minute he saw her.
            “You could have told me who she was,” Harry said bluntly, and dropped into the chair beside Draco. He was tense and trembling, his shoulders hunched, his hands dug into his robe pockets. Draco leaned forwards and cast the spell that would build the fire up higher. Harry tensed some more, and then he turned to Draco and swallowed. “But she encouraged me to tell you the real origin of that nightmare.”
            “I thought I knew it,” Draco said. He decided that it was okay to brush some of the hair away from Harry’s forehead, and Harry leaned into the touch. Draco concealed a smile. It might be misunderstood, right now. “You let me look at it. Was there something more behind it than your awful relatives and your godfather?”
            Harry hesitated, but before Draco could explode, he said, “Yes. A Legilimens held me prisoner for a while. He—he confused me so much that I couldn’t even walk out of his house, even though it was open and unwarded and I could have found my wand. He’s been showing up in my nightmares since then. I think it was his voice I heard.”
            Draco stared at Harry. He had no idea what to say. It seemed as though his mouth had gone dry and motionless at the same time, and his hand froze on Harry’s head. He thought Harry might back away.
            Instead, Harry looked at him and silently braced himself. For what? Draco asked himself, but then he knew. For the kind of explosion that he thinks I’m going to have.
            Draco contained the first burst of fiery hot anger that he wanted to give, and gulped, and said, “I didn’t know that.”
            “No reason for you to.” Harry’s voice was soft, but unwavering, and it didn’t look as though he was going to let his eyes flinch from Draco’s. “I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone—how bad it was. Ron knows something about it, and the Aurors who rescued me. But I didn’t tell anyone the full extent of it.”
            Draco shook his head. He knew that he ought to have an answer for this, but he didn’t. “Why not?” he asked, at the end of sorting through all the other words he could have said, and deciding on those two as the best, and the simplest.
            “Because I wanted to forget it ever happened, that’s why.” Harry clenched his hands and dug them into his knees, screwing them back and forth as though he wanted to rub something off them. “Because—Bulstrode told me that going to a Mind-Healer after that would be mandatory, which I didn’t know, but I think part of me guessed. I didn’t want anyone ordering or pleading with me to go to a Mind-Healer. I just—I wanted to be left alone, and forget that it happened.”
            “But it added to your dreams, and your fear of Legilimency,” Draco finished for him. “That’s what made you afraid when you let me in to read your memories of the nightmare.”
            Harry bit his lip and nodded. “I only wanted to show you what was happening, and I still had to fight against myself as if I was going to swallow poison.”
            Draco touched Harry’s ears, his cheek, his eyelashes. Harry’s eyes fluttered closed against his palm, and stayed that way. Draco sighed, wishing he knew what to say, or rather wishing he could put off the words that he knew had to say.
            “I’m not someone who can deal with that,” he said. “And neither is Millicent, whom you might call by her married name. She prefers that, you know.”
            Harry grunted. When Draco tugged on his hair, he said, “I’ll call her that if I go there again. Why can’t she deal with it? I thought Mind-Healers could deal with the ruins of Legilimency, or she wouldn’t have told me I should have gone to one.”
            “They can deal with it right after it happens,” Draco said, and pulled Harry against him, so that Harry’s head was leaning on his shoulder. “But the damage is progressive, the way that exposure to the Cruciatus Curse can be. They can’t do much if you—if you don’t come in right away. Someone who’s a Master Legilimens and has made a career of it could. I can find someone for you, if you want.”
            Harry shook his head back and forth, buried in Draco’s shoulder. “I had good luck with Bulstrode. But someone else—they won’t want to take a secrecy oath once they find out who I am. They’ll be thinking of all the Galleons they could make.”
            Draco stroked the back of his neck, and sighed. He wondered if there was anyone in the world Harry trusted fully, apart from Weasley and Granger. He had given Draco some trust, but there were things he had retained for himself, too. “Then we get a secrecy oath before we tell them who you are. We can do that,” he added, when Harry lifted his head and gave him a look that was frankly disbelieving. “Please, Harry. Will you at least try, for me? I’m not thinking of having you well enough for me to fuck, please don’t think that.”
            Harry snorted a little and pulled his head back. “I don’t think that,” he said. “Because you could have had my mouth any time you wanted. I think that you’re interfering and meddling and can’t leave well enough alone, but not that you want me as some kind of sex toy.”
            Draco smiled and touched a thumb to Harry’s lip. “Look,” he said. “You deserve to be fussed over, whether or not you believe it. Is there something I could do that would give you pleasure? Just happiness, and nothing else?”
            “Happiness and pleasure aren’t the same thing,” Harry said, his eyes bright and cautious as they watched Draco.
            “Tell me,” Draco said.
            Harry struggled before he could speak again. “I don’t know. I half want you to leave me alone, and I don’t, at the same time. I half want you to touch me, and I don’t, at the same time. I want—I want things, and I don’t want them.” He flung up his arms and struggled away from Draco, back into his own chair. “This is why so many of my lovers gave up on me,” he mumbled, not looking at Draco. “I’m torn so many different ways.”
            “And I’m not most of your lovers,” Draco said, taking his arm. “Can you think of anything?”
*
            Yes. Go away and leave me alone, and that might help.
            But Harry bit his lip savagely on the words that he might have spoken, and only leaned further back, letting the chair dip behind him, letting his head fall back and down. He was trying to relax, to let Draco’s offer wash over him and only spark good thoughts. Thoughts of what he wanted.
            He felt himself tensing up again, and softly shook his head, letting the tension flow out of his muscles whether it wanted to or not. Draco made an inquiring noise beside him. Harry stayed silent, though. Speak right now, and he wasn’t sure that he would ever get back into the frame of mind where he could think about this.
            Draco seemed to realize that at the same time, and went still, one hand coming to rest on the back of Harry’s neck. He caressed Harry’s skin, softly, fascinated. Harry grunted and said nothing. His head drooped and slid, and he focused on his muscles, willing them to puddle and flow, to bend if they needed to, but only to make him more comfortable. He wasn’t going to rise from the chair and stand. Not right now.
            Ironically, one of the things that had made him tense was thinking of what he wanted.
            I don’t want anything.
            That wasn’t true, but he couldn’t help thinking—couldn’t help remembering—how many of his lovers had turned away from him when Harry wanted. When he craved their touch, their company, their understanding. Jacquelyn had told him that he wanted too much, that she felt as though he was going to suck her into a black hole and nothing would ever come back out again.
            Harry swallowed at the thought of it, and stirred, or tried to. Draco pushed him firmly back down again.
            That made Harry smile. No matter what happened between them, he was just about sure that Draco would never be swallowed up. He was too stern for that. He knew too much about what he wanted.
            Had the others?
            Maybe not. Ginny had wanted a hero, but had said she hadn’t when Harry asked her. Jacquelyn hadn’t had enough sense of her own personality. Veronica had thought she wanted Harry, changed her mind when she found out what she was really like and the scars he was carrying around, changed it back when they had come close to breaking up once, and then drifted back into deciding she wanted to be free again. As Draco had said, Frank seemed to simultaneously want revenge on Harry and to persuade Harry that he really cared about him and it wasn’t revenge.
            Damn it, he was tense again, thinking of Frank. He turned towards Draco, a vague questing motion without opening his eyes, and Draco soothingly rubbed his shoulder. Harry sighed and let his head settle on the chair back again.
            What was it he wanted? If he dismissed the fears that Draco would walk away—the problem would be getting Draco to go away if Harry really decided that he didn’t want to date him anymore—and he dismissed the fears that he might be asking for too much. What did he want?
            He hesitated. He knew, but he didn’t know if Draco would think it was weird.
            But hey, Draco had asked him. If he did think it was weird, he might do it anyway. It at least wouldn’t hurt him. And that meant Harry could ask.
            “Can you—can you take off my shirt and my trousers and touch me?” he murmured.
            He felt Draco freeze beneath him, sucking in his breath. Then he whispered, as if he needed to clarify, “Where? On your cock?”
            Harry shook his head. He had to keep his eyes firmly shut, he thought, or he wouldn’t be able to do this. “No. On my ribs. Behind my knees. Around—around really lightly, really gently. I’m not that ticklish. Not like you were tickling me, though. Just—tease me with your fingertips. Can you do that?”
            He knew that his cheeks were stinging with the force of his blush, but he hoped that Draco wouldn’t be disgusted. He kept his eyes closed, though, just in case.
*
            Draco ran his fingers lightly over Harry’s shoulder blade in response, before he could question himself about whether or not it was something he should do. Harry shuddered and buried his head in his arms, but Draco didn’t think that had anything to do with disgust.
            “Like that?” he whispered.
            Harry nodded, head still bowed. Draco reached down and tapped his wand against the side of Harry’s shirt. It slit up the seams, sagged and bowed, and Draco took it off, without requiring Harry to lift his head or even his arms to help. The shirt could be repaired easily enough later. Draco thought he might let the house-elves sew it. They had been falling over themselves to find a way to be useful since Harry had started visiting.
            Then Draco reached down and tapped his wand against Harry’s trousers. Harry shivered this time, and Draco didn’t think that shudder was all fear, but it was part of it. He waited, hand against Harry’s hip.
            Harry took a long second to stand up and let the cut trousers slide down his hips, but he did it at last.
            Draco moved back, murmuring encouragement, and let Harry lie down on the nearby couch, positioning himself the way he wanted. Draco had assumed Harry would bury his face in the pillows. It was the easiest way to get what he wanted while also letting himself pretend that it wasn’t happening.
            Harry stopped halfway through his turn over, though. He knelt there, staring straight ahead, and Draco waited, heart pounding. He had no idea what was coming next. He started to reach out, one hand moving slowly, wondering if he should touch Harry and show him how good it could be, to convince him to continue.
            Then Harry shivered and turned fully over to face Draco, stretching his legs out so that his feet rested in Draco’s lap. His eyes were wide and glazed enough that Draco could almost suspect him of being on some sort of medicinal potion. He kept shivering, and evidently couldn’t stop, even when he could see that Draco’s hands were right there on his lap and he wasn’t hiding anything that could hurt Harry.
            Then he shut his eyes.
            Draco let his fingers run over the soles of Harry’s feet, and Harry’s eyes popped back open. Draco nodded to him. “Keep them open,” he whispered, with hardly any breath or force behind his words. But they were still important, and he was evidently keeping Harry’s rapt attention on him. “Look at me.”
            He bowed his head, and breathed over Harry’s legs, making the small hairs stand up and his skin break out in rapid gooseflesh. His toes curled and flexed. Draco smiled. He had the impression that it was probably the most serious smile he had ever given. Well, the situation required it.
            He reached out and let his fingers settle between Harry’s toes, on the fine webs of skin there.
            Harry shivered again and stretched his neck. He kept squirming while Draco caressed his feet, up and down, so solid and so slow that Draco’s arms trembled themselves with the effort of keeping himself from speeding up. Harry’s skin was soft and shiny between his toes, sweaty, warm. Draco curled his fingers, and Harry’s toes shifted to follow them.
            Then Draco slowly reached up and drew his fingers down Harry’s legs. He could see scars there, too, curving marks that looked as though someone had struck him with a whip. Draco wondered if he should ask about them, but Harry hadn’t said that he wanted conversation while Draco was touching him.
            So Draco just touched them instead, letting his hand linger. Harry stretched and rolled his head back and forth, as though all his nervousness was pouring into his neck, but his legs remained steady beneath Draco’s caress. Draco nodded at him, smiled again, and let the sensations pour through him: stretched feeling of the scars, the rough patches where the hair grew thicker, the wonderful strength of the muscles, the secret little area behind the knees that Draco had to work his fingers into.
            Harry made a noise when he did that, and Draco paused and stared at him. He knew that the miraculous permission he’d got could be revoked at any moment, although he was trying hard not to think about what he would do if that happened.
            “It tickles,” Harry muttered, and ducked his head.
            Perhaps, after everything they had been through, Draco shouldn’t have found that charming, but he did. He smiled and snuggled his fingers further into that little crevice, then brought his other hand up and did the same thing for Harry’s second knee.
            Harry was panting a little, letting his tongue hang out as unselfconscious as any dog’s. He was still half-ducking his head, his neck rolling back and forth, and small pleased sounds came from his mouth.
            He likes this. He asked me to touch him like this because he really does like being touched here. It brings him pleasure…
            That made Draco want to speed up the touch, to strengthen it, to see what else he could bring Harry. But he remembered just in time that Harry had asked him to keep it gentle. Whether it was because he had been touched harshly in the past or not, Draco didn’t know, and it wasn’t his business. He kept his word, and only rubbed and pressed and touched in a miracle of softness.
            Harry’s head fell back again, and his eyes shut. Draco eased his way up Harry’s legs, watching how they twitched beneath his touch. There was another scar near Harry’s groin. Draco let his fingers follow it, and Harry murmured and turned his head towards him, opening one eye. If it hurt to have Draco kneeling between his legs and pressing them apart, then he didn’t show it.
            And this close, Draco couldn’t mistake the hardness that was the very opposite of minding it, pressing up against the side of his palm when his hand got a little careless.
            He met Harry’s gaze. Harry gave him a small smile. He seemed to be more relaxed than he had been when Draco first began touching him, trusting Draco to do the right thing, to caress him the right way.
            Draco allowed himself only one quick skim of his hand along Harry’s erection, so swift that he almost couldn’t distinguish it from Harry’s leg. But then he felt the blazing warmth collected there, and his mouth spilled over with saliva before drying out suddenly, and he licked his lips.
            Yes, he wanted that. But he would wait, for the moment.
            He had to lean forwards and ease along Harry to touch his chest. Harry didn’t move to throw him off, or show any sign when Draco’s legs touched his in turn, although that had to be rougher than Draco’s hands. He just let his head dangle again, and hummed under his breath.
            Draco touched the scars he had been curious about, murmuring. Harry hadn’t asked for his words, but he found that he couldn’t keep them silent, not when he was touching and gazing at the marked skin he had already touched and seen before.
            “This one is beautiful. This one looks like it hurt.” He traced the ragged sunburst he had been curious about, in the middle of Harry’s chest. Harry cringed a little when Draco would have asked how he got it, so Draco let his hand pass on. “This one…I can’t believe that someone would leave a man who looks like you do.”
            He let his fingers play, finally, with the cords along Harry’s neck. Harry gazed up at him. There was no name for what was in his eyes except intensity.
            Well, that and trust. After all that had happened to Harry, Draco knew something about what it must take him, to lie here and let Draco touch him, caress him, look at him, and all the while, he was hard.
            Draco finally bent down and breathed gently over the cords of Harry’s neck, as if he would play music with them. Harry panted and squirmed a bit. Draco sat back, still in his lap, still with their groins a few inches away from pressing against each other, and met Harry’s eyes.
            There was no need to speak. Harry’s contentment was deep in his face, and he reached up and kissed Draco, gently, hesitantly, with some of the skill, Draco thought, that he’d taught Harry in their little lessons.
            Draco shut his eyes. It was exquisite, to feel Harry’s hands playing along his back and neck, delicately, pleadingly, and then settling on his shoulders as though he was straining with Draco in some playful roll through water.
            Draco could imagine them like that, easily. Twisting through the midst of water or air, weightless, locked together.
            “Thank you,” Harry whispered into his ear.
            He didn’t say anything about whether he would go back to Millicent, and Draco didn’t press him. They lay together, and Harry shook his head and burrowed deeper into Draco’s chest, and Draco stroked and held him, and for this moment, this timeless moment out of a whole life, it was enough.
*
            polka dot: Harry is warm enough, just not very comfortable yet.
            SP777: Well, they have an Easter holiday, too. Hogwarts structuring their school year around the holidays pretty much says to me that all wizards know the basics of the Christian story. Maybe they don’t worship God or aren’t Anglicans, but I doubt they’re pagans, either. Not that it’s not fun to write! I just don’t think it’s canon.
            Meechypoo64: Thanks! I think Draco is going mostly in that direction.
            delia cerrano: Hope you got some sleep!
            taboosofreality: Thank you!
            Hawksinger: Thanks for reviewing!
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Nothing Like the Sun