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Flare	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21800 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirteen—Charging at the Truth

            “What he told you is true.”

            Harry sighed, leaning back against the headboard and sticking his wings through the holes that he’d cut into it. One variation of that phrase or another had been all he heard since he started seeking some way to disprove Malfoy’s theories.

            He couldn’t disprove them because they were true. The phoenix wings were wound into his magical core, and he wasn’t going to get rid of them by cutting them off or plucking feathers or waiting and hoping that they would fall off on their own. Harry had asked a few Potions masters, the ones who seemed most sympathetic, about possibly changing his magical core so that they would fade away on their own, but from what they had said, it would be like changing his curse scar. It was there, it wouldn’t fade with the application of most magic, it was difficult even to glamour—though at least the last Potions master had promised that the wings wouldn’t burn through a glamour the way Harry’s scar did—and he would have to put up with it, because this was his life now.

            Harry reached out and clenched the edge of his right wing. It trembled like tissue paper in his grasp, but of course it was nowhere near as fragile, and he couldn’t tear it off, either. If he had, he already would have.

            They might be beautiful, or at least Malfoy had persuaded Harry that he really believed that, no matter what Harry felt or other people believed. But the people who felt that way didn’t have to deal with the fact that Harry couldn’t wear normal shirts anymore, or that he couldn’t sleep on his back—which had been the way he most often fell asleep—or that he couldn’t sit on normal chairs, or that he had to estimate the distance between the sides of doorways and windows before he knew if he could pass them.

            That had been something Head Auror Fletcher said to him today, her mouth pursed and her eyelids twitching, something Harry hadn’t even thought of. “And what would happen if you needed to escape a burning building quickly, Potter? Could you take the same escape route that everyone else used?” In that case, luckily, she had accepted his answer that he could fly away from it, and that the fire was less likely to harm him than it was with most other people.

            Harry grimaced and closed his eyes. There were moments when he hated his job, but far more when he liked it. And the wings would make everything more difficult.

            It wasn’t—it wasn’t that he hadn’t expected his life to be less difficult after the war. Not really. He had known he might be wounded or even die in the pursuit of Dark wizards and Death Eaters, and he had known that his fame would always be hanging around, and he had known that he still didn’t have parents or relatives to rely on.

            But those was all years old, or risks that he had already accepted. He had never thought that there might be a risk he would get phoenix wings and end up half-human and half-something. He couldn’t say that he was half-phoenix because of all the differences from a real phoenix that Malfoy had helpfully pointed out for him.

            Malfoy.

            Harry rubbed his hand over his face, and sighed. So. He needed to go back and admit that Malfoy was right, and that Harry would be grateful for his help. He could admit that he was right, too, about the reasons he might have for finding the wings beautiful and wanting Harry to keep them.

            What he couldn’t do was say that he was happy about the wings. He would live with them, since he had no choice. But he could already fly before this, and he had made his peace with the things that he couldn’t change, and he had about had his fill of unprecedented strangeness. He would get used to the wings because he had to, but they brought him no joy.

            The wings flexed up and down as if they had heard that thought and resented it. Harry gave them a sharp smile and shook his head. “You don’t, you know,” he muttered, deciding that he could talk to them aloud as long as no one else was here to hear him sound like an idiot. “I don’t like this. I don’t care for it. Flying with you feels nice, but in the end it only makes the newspapers more eager to write stories about me. You don’t add anything to my life, you just make it bloody inconvenient.”

            The wings drooped like scolded puppies. Harry snorted. He knew they didn’t have an opinion and mind of his own. They reflected his moods, and right now they reflected his mood of restlessness, longing to be free of them, and sour accommodation. He had to learn to think of them like that, not as separate beings that he could be parted from.

            He would get used to them, because he had to.

            For once, it would be nice to do something that wasn’t because he had to.

*

            “Potter.”

            Malfoy’s voice was wary as he looked up and saw Harry standing in the door of his Potions lab, and Harry couldn’t really blame him. He shrugged apologetically, and glanced back once at his wings. This time, he had tried binding them to his back with ropes instead of a simple restraining charm. It worked as long as he didn’t move his shoulders too much, and it made him a more normal size, which was nice. “Malfoy. Hullo. I hope I’m not interrupting your work?”

            “Would you care if you were?”

            “Not a few days ago,” Harry said, not coming in, because Malfoy hadn’t actually answered the question. “Now, I do. I think we need to talk again. Can I come in, or are you in the middle of a potion that you can’t leave?”

            Malfoy sneered at him. “And that would be the only reason that you would care about interrupting me?”

            “See, this is the reason that I didn’t think we should talk that often,” Harry said. “Because we just end up arguing.” Malfoy only stood there, poised and so still but with the potential of more stirring around him, that Harry thought he was the one who should have wings. “All right, yeah, if you don’t want me here, I’ll go away. But I was under the impression that you did want me here, although perhaps not exactly here. I mean, maybe you want me in your flat, or outside in other parts of hospital, or—”

            “Listening to you babble is not how I wish to spend my morning,” Malfoy snapped, and then leaned forwards and cast a charm on the potion in the cauldron that seemed to freeze the bubbles in mid-leap. “Come in, then, if you can avoid knocking anything over.”

            Harry smiled in spite of himself as he stepped through the door. So there were times when Malfoy found the wings annoying, too. That was good to know.

            He felt the wings trembling and bounding against the ropes, and renewed the charm. The ropes were connected to a sort of harness that ran around his shoulders and down to his chest. It had taken Harry almost an hour to find something that fit and yet didn’t restrict his movements. But once he had that, it was more comfortable than he’d been yet. Only a few people had stared at him as he walked through the corridors of St. Mungo’s, and that might be as much because of his face and scar as it was because he looked like a hunchback.

            He glanced up to find that Malfoy was staring at him, his lip curled as if he didn’t know whether he wanted to give a sneer or not. “What?” Harry asked.

            “You’re—you’re mutilating yourself.” Malfoy made a disgusted gesture. “This is the kind of man I’m obsessed with. Don’t worry, Potter, quite as much of my disdain is for myself as it is for you.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I’ve accepted that you were right. The wings are attached to my magical core far more than they’re attached to my back, and I’ll have to keep them. But that doesn’t mean I’m just going to let them bang about doing whatever they like. I’d tie up my arm if it was broken and getting in the way, too.”

            “They’re not a broken arm,” Malfoy snarled, and waved his wand. Harry automatically ducked what he thought was an attack and pulled his own wand, but then he heard the door slam shut, and reckoned Malfoy’s spell must have done it. “They’re going to be like this for the rest of your life. Tying them down doesn’t sound much like acceptance to me.”

            “But they are in the way,” Harry said. “And they might be beautiful, and they might let me fly, and they might be magical as all bloody hell, but they still don’t function very well indoors. You know something, Malfoy? I’m still human, and I’m going to be spending a lot of my life inside buildings.”

            “I know that, you idiot,” Malfoy said, bending so far forwards that Harry thought he might fall over, and scowling at him. “That doesn’t mean that you need to tie them up like that. That doesn’t mean that I can’t deplore your being an idiot. The wings would be better off with someone else who could give them what they needed. Like me.”

            “If there was a way to give them to you, then I would,” Harry said fervently, and strengthened the charm again when the wings bucked against the bindings once more. They seemed to know they were being talked about. “We discussed that before. I would have been willing to make you a gift of all the feathers and the wings themselves if they would come off.” He felt an entirely unreasonable anger against the wings for being part of his magical core. Both he and Malfoy would have been pleased if they had come off, and the wings, if they really did have some kind of sympathetic response to the person holding them, would have been away from someone who despised them and with someone who didn’t. If they only had had the good sense to be detachable…

            “Will you tell me something?”

            Malfoy’s voice had gone all soupy and soft. Harry looked up in some wariness. “I’ll try,” he said. “Depending on what it is, I might not be able to make it very clear.”

            Malfoy brushed that away as though it didn’t matter. His eyes were fixed on Harry, and they were very clear. “I want you to tell me what’s so ugly about the wings,” he said.

            “They’re inconvenient—”

            “The inconveniences are things you can learn to live with,” Malfoy said. “People do harder things every day.”

            He sounded less scolding than he had a while ago, almost mild, but Harry still felt a burning blush creep over his face. He cleared his throat and looked away. “They’re hard to live with, like I said. And they aren’t the sort of thing that I can do something to—I don’t know what the word is. Fulfill? Everyone expected me to defeat Voldemort because of the scar, and I did. But there’s no getting away from the wings, no expecting anyone to think they’re less significant over time. They’ll always stare and gawk.”

            “Again, you don’t know that, and I think you’re overestimating the fascination your wings have for most people who aren’t you and me,” Malfoy said calmly. “Why do you think they’re ugly? Why do you want to bind them and glamour them and cut them off and pluck the feathers?”

            Harry shook his head. “They’re not meant to be here. They’re like a chicken’s wings, or a hawk’s wings. Not something that you expect to see on a human being.” And I am a human being. No matter what the Dursleys said. No matter what the bloody papers say, when they try to make me into a saint or hero that’s too good for anyone. I’m still going to be human, and they’re not going to make me otherwise.

            But these wings might.

            “I see,” Malfoy said, though so neutrally that Harry had no idea whether he did or not. Malfoy might be on the way to understanding his own impulses towards Harry, but he wasn’t an expert on what Harry felt about himself. “Why don’t you stand and spread them for me? I want to show you something.”

            Harry looked pointedly at the delicate vials on the shelves. “I don’t want to smash anything.”

            “Shame that you care about that now, when you’ve already smashed a lot of my hopes and my images of you as someone who could actually be civil to me,” Malfoy drawled. “Not to mention some of my pride, knowing that I was pining after a right idiot.”

            Harry tightened his muscles, which of course tightened the bindings, which of course cut into the wings, which of course made him hiss in pain. He opened his mouth to retort, but Malfoy placed a hand on his shoulder and gave him a single intense look. The look seemed to impose silence; Harry stared back instead of snapping.

            “Just once,” Malfoy said quietly. “I don’t know exactly why you came here, but I think this is the last chance. The last time I want to bother with this if I can’t make you understand. I shouldn’t be giving you this many opportunities, but I still don’t think that you’ve ever properly looked at your wings, or you wouldn’t say daft things like that.”

            Harry opened his mouth to reply, then closed it firmly when Malfoy raised a warning eyebrow. Right. Last chance. He would try being quiet and polite for once and see if it got him somewhere. It was possible that Malfoy would make the potion to let him retract his wings after all. Harry nodded and tried to look patient as Malfoy undid the bindings on his wings, untying all the ropes that it had taken Harry so many hours to conjure this morning.

            “They cut into them, did you know that?” Malfoy asked at one point. “Your right wing is crumpled and bedraggled. And you haven’t been washing them…” He cut off then, because he had probably realized the thing Harry might have told him, that it was bloody hard to wash your wings when you couldn’t take a shower because of them. Harry had resorted to Cleaning Charms. Sprinkling water on the wings just made them glow with heat and burn it all away before it could touch his skin or the feathers.

            Harry took a few deep breaths as Malfoy undid the harness. It did feel better when he could breathe and extend the wings to their full range of motion, he had to admit. It was still nothing that he really wanted to do every day.

            Malfoy started extending his wings to their full reach, and Harry winced as he watched the nearest edge of the left one arch up almost to the point of brushing against a shelf loaded with cauldrons. Malfoy reached out and let a hand hover next to his face when he did that, however, until Harry turned and reluctantly looked at him.

            “Look at me,” Malfoy whispered. “Soft. Easy. That’s it. Yes.”

            Harry swallowed nervously. For some reason, this was worse than deciding that he was going to talk to Malfoy without snapping. Malfoy’s hands on his wings had always felt pleasant, but this time the pleasure was muted and they felt…careful. As though he was an artist’s model Malfoy needed to pose just right for a painting or something.

            Harry shook his head. He didn’t normally have such thoughts, but he could hardly accuse Malfoy of influencing him. He’d accused him of too much already.

            Maybe he didn’t ordinarily have such thoughts because he didn’t like looking at himself, thinking about the way the wings had added to his body or the way the scar looked or even the way he looked in Auror robes. It was just—too much. Besides, if he ever forgot what he looked like, there were the photographs on the cover of Witch Weekly at least once every fortnight to remind him. He found it weird, thinking about it, that Malfoy had decided he was attractive at all when he had to be sick of seeing Harry everywhere.

            Malfoy turned him, stroking the wings, relaxing them, smoothing the feathers down. Harry tamed the impulse to run the other way and remained still. He would. Retreating now, wrapping himself in his own private concerns and thoughts, would be cowardly. He was tempted to hold his breath, but didn’t.

            “There.” Malfoy waved his wand and said something in a mumble. The air in front of Harry seemed to shine. “Look up.”

            Harry did, and beheld himself in the conjured mirror.

            The wings extended behind him and up, trembling still, like the hands of someone who’d had to hold up a huge burden for too long. The colors that Harry had taken note of the first time he woke with them and never again shone like fire, like water, like water on fire. The red and gold were everywhere, but there was blue and white too, like torches, and orange like autumn leaves, and plain and simple yellow like the glow of candles. The wings did strange things to his eyes, making them deeper or more noticeable somehow. For the first time, Harry thought someone could look at him and fail to notice the scar at all.

            Malfoy’s hands settled on his shoulders. There was an expression on his face that Harry had to pick to pieces to read. His cheeks were flushed with what could have been excitement or anger; his eyes were bright with what could have been passion; his hands were shaking with what could have been the desire to pull Harry close or the desire to claw him apart.

            “This is what you can look like, when you appreciate yourself and have someone to appreciate you,” Malfoy said. “This is what I see when I look at you. And I wish,” and his fingers curled into the sleeves of the half-shirt that Harry was wearing, “that you would quit referring to yourself as ugly and a freak and a chicken. I wouldn’t care if it was true, but you’re making a mockery of my taste and lying at the same time.”

            Harry felt the urge in his muscles that he had felt when he faced the reporters and the truths that Malfoy had told him. The urge to lash out, splinter, destroy, disconnect himself from what he saw in front of him. This time, he thought Malfoy would go away in disgust, and Harry could finally be alone.

            And lonely.

            He reached up and caught one of Malfoy’s hands. “I’m sorry,” he said, but not in the kind of tone he would usually use when saying that. It sounded strange and shrill and dignified.

            “You had better be,” Malfoy said, and they stood in front of the mirror for a little longer, looking.

            It was harder than Harry had thought it would be, given his job and the way he’d had to defeat Voldemort, but he didn’t run.



*

            unneeded: Sorry if you had to look up a lot of words! I try not to use them like that deliberately.

            And no, I wouldn’t call Harry Draco’s inspiration, either.

            behindthelights: Thanks. Harry has a bad case of shooting the messenger—Draco was the one who bore the bad news—and he also finds it very, very hard to believe that someone who hated him in the past feels like this about him now. If Draco only feels that way due to the wings, then that’s even worse, because that only means that it’s the wings he wants, not Harry.

            SP777: I hope the solution will be convincing when you see it.

            Harry really doesn’t like flying all that much, at least not that way.

            Mehla_Seraphim: Harry doesn’t feel that he can trust someone who only wants his wings, and it’ll take him a bit to accept that that’s not entirely what’s going on here. Given Draco’s past personality, he still thinks this could be a huge joke, and the minute he shows signs of falling for it, Draco will yank everything away and laugh.

            Draco likes the heat.
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