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Say My Name	By : Thunderbird Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 30143 -:- Recommendations : 10 -:- Currently Reading : 8
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter or any affiliated characters. I make no profit from this story.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
A/N: Oh, my amazing reviewers. You make my day, every day :)
I know some of you might be disappointed that I didn't pull the trigger on Hermione and Blaise. I hope you will believe me when I say that it wasn't that I chickened out. This was my plan all along. But I promise you that Blaise was not simply a device for the purposes of this plotline. He is a fully fledged character in my mind, who is very much on his own journey. You will see in due time.
Until then, my loves, enjoy this installment!
Chapter 15: Start Over
Harry opened his eyes to the blue-gray light of dawn, barely visible through Draco’s bedroom window. Harry couldn’t remember at first what had woken him, though a twisting knot of dread was still tying itself up in his stomach, left over, he could only assume, from whatever dream he’d been having.
It was too early to be up on a Sunday, and Draco was wrapped around him as usual, lost to the world. Harry was quite comfortable, save for a tiny pressure in his bladder he felt he could ignore for another hour or so. He knew he should go back to sleep.
But the moment he closed his eyes, he remembered. He’d been dreaming of Kemp, of the training floor, of an unbeatable virtual opponent with sallow skin, a cold, high-pitched laugh, and two snake-like slits where his nose should be.
Vesper had been there, too, off to the side. She was seated in a throne, dressed like a Victorian queen. There was a cake in front of her, an entire cake that she was eating bite by bite with a fork, a cake that said “Champion” across the top in blue frosting.
“Want a bite?” she had asked him.
But then there was a flash of green light. Harry had felt himself collapse, everything going black, and suddenly Kemp’s voice was ringing in his head.
In life or death situations, one can’t afford to be distracted by cake, Potter.
Harry opened his eyes again, fully awake now that he had remembered the details of the dream. It didn’t take a genius to figure out where those images had come from, or what they probably meant.
He wasn’t so comfortable anymore. He had the kind of nausea that feels like a heartbeat in your stomach, and Draco’s body heat was a bit too stifling around him. Slowly, hoping he didn’t disturb Draco too much, he began untangling himself and sliding out from underneath his boyfriend.
He almost made it without incident, but just as he finally slid himself free Draco’s arm flopped onto the mattress and the blond reacted with a jerk, followed by a groan at the discovery of the suddenly empty space.
“Shh,” Harry said to him softly. “Go back to sleep, Draco.”
“Harry?” Draco mumbled sleepily.
“I’m just going down to the common room for a bit. I’ll be back.”
He didn’t know if Draco heard him. He appeared to have already gone back to sleep. Harry pulled the covers around Draco’s naked form and tucked him in just a bit before searching for his own pajamas.
The common room was unsurprisingly silent, and Harry lit a fire in the fireplace to bring both some light and heat into the space. When he sat down next to the warm glow, however, he found it did nothing to ease the small tremors that kept coursing through his body.
He hated dreaming about Voldemort.
Of course, he had hated it much more when Voldemort was still alive. At least now, upon waking, he could talk himself back into the reality that he would never have to be afraid of that evil bastard ever again. But still, there were always those few moments before reality set in, when the fear was as palpable as it used to be in the war.
It’s getting better, he reminded himself. It gets better every day.
In truth, it had been a lot better since he’d started sleeping nightly with Draco. He hardly ever had nightmares, and on the rare occasion he did they weren’t the kind that jerked him awake, sweating and calling out, the metallic taste of adrenalin in his mouth. He hadn’t had those since the summer.
But why another nightmare now? Was it just the stress of a difficult week? Or did the fact that Voldemort somehow found his way into a dream about his apprenticeship mean something? If it did, it couldn’t mean anything good.
Harry sighed. He didn’t know why he had believed coming down to the common room would make him feel any better. He had wanted to be alone. He just needed that, sometimes. But he still felt the unpleasant clawing of nausea in his stomach, and thinking about the dream wasn’t making it any better.
He needed a distraction. But what? Homework? That only made his stomachache worse, thinking about all he had to get done.
Then he remembered. Andromeda had written him that week, but he had been too distracted by everything else to yet send a reply. He pulled out his wand and summoned a quill, ink, and parchment from his room. Happy to have something enjoyable to do, he began the letter.
Dear Andromeda,
A party on April the 8^th will be perfect. I’m glad we can celebrate Teddy’s birthday on the actual day. It works out nicely that it falls over Easter break. Draco and I will be staying at Grimmauld for that week, so we’ll be coming separately from the Weasleys. But if you need any help with preparations, all you have to do is ask, and we’ll be there. By the way, is there anything in particular Teddy wants or needs by way of presents? I have some ideas of my own but I thought I’d ask.
I had another thought, though I’m not sure it’s my place to say anything about it, so if I’m overstepping my bounds feel free to tell me off. But I did hear from Draco that you and Narcissa were corresponding again. You haven’t mentioned it yet, so I don’t know if it’s going well, but if it is going well I thought it might be nice for Narcissa to attend the party as well.
He paused in his writing. Did he really want to go there? Would Andromeda resent him for it? Would Narcissa even want to attend her great-nephew’s first birthday party? Draco hadn’t been sure when Harry brought it up, although he did eventually admit that his mother might be pleased by the invitation, at least, even if she ended up declining. And there was some niggling part of him that couldn’t help but want to do a bit of match-making between the two sisters.
When had he become such a meddler?
Footsteps on the stairs distracted him, and Harry looked towards the boy’s staircase, wondering who he would see descending. He was quite surprised when it turned out to do be none other than his brown-eyed, bushy-haired best friend. He smiled at her as she came into view.
“Morning, ‘Mione,” he said.
She paused for a moment, surprised, but then she smiled back.
“Morning, Harry. I didn’t expect to see you up so early.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” said Harry. “You?”
“I’ve just come from Ron’s,” she said, turning a bit pink.
“I figured,” said Harry with a smirk. “You were locked up in his room practically all day yesterday.”
“Talking,” said Hermione pointedly.
“Sure,” said Harry. It didn’t matter to him. He was simply glad they were interacting again.
“Anyway,” Hermione went on. “I didn’t particularly want to leave, but I have more work to do than I thought possible and I wanted to get an early start.”
“Well good on you,” said Harry. “Ron won’t be up for another three hours or so, so this is prime, distraction-free work time, I guess.”
“Exactly,” Hermione replied. Instead of heading to her side of the dormitories, though, she curled up in the armchair across from him. “What are you writing?”
“A letter to Andromeda. I’m trying to decide if I should suggest she invite Narcissa Malfoy to Teddy’s birthday party in April.”
“Oh, that’s a good idea,” she said. “It would be nice if they could reconcile, wouldn’t it?”
“It would,” Harry agreed. “For their sake, but for mine and Draco’s as well. The way things are going, Narcissa and I might end up being family someday. And Andromeda is already practically family, and it would just be awkward if they couldn’t get along.” He looked up from his parchment to see Hermione smiling at him. “What?”
She shook her head. “Nothing, Harry. It’s just sweet, that’s all.”
Harry felt himself blushing. “Yeah, yeah, all right.”
“I’m not trying to embarrass you. It’s just nice to see you so happy and feeling settled. You deserve it.”
Harry found himself snorting. “Settled” hardly seemed to describe him at the moment, although Draco had nothing to do with that. “While I’m definitely happy with Draco,” he said, “I’m not exactly settled on anything else. My life feels like one giant question mark right now, to be honest.”
“The apprenticeship?” Hermione asked tentatively.
Harry shrugged. He didn’t feel much like talking about it, the dream still fresh in his mind. “It isn’t that I’m not getting something out of it, I just… I’m not sure I want to teach Defense. And if it turns out I don’t, that crosses off one more item on my very short list of things I might be interested in doing.”
“You’ll figure it out, Harry. I’m not worried.”
“That’s what Draco always says.”
“Well Draco is quite smart, it turns out.”
Harry laughed. “Who would have thought?”
She laughed along with him. “It is quite funny, when you think about it. The whole situation is. If at eleven years old someone were to tell you that it would be Draco Malfoy you would be shagging senseless every night seven years in the future, you would have laughed them out of the room.”
“Hexed them out of the room, more like. And ‘shagging senseless every night’ is a bit of an exaggeration.”
“Not the way Blaise tells it,” Hermione replied, amused.
“And what would Blaise know about it?”
“Theo told him. He overhears you all the time, being next door to Draco’s room and all. He says you two have quite a bit of sex, and aren’t at all quiet about it.”
“We put up silencing charms!” Harry said, alarmed.
“Silencing charms can fail when one is not paying attention,” said Hermione. “And I bet you forget them, sometimes. Especially in the mornings, apparently.”
Harry considered that. Yes, that was very likely true. “No bloody privacy,” he grumbled.
“Oh, no one cares, Harry. Half of the 8^th years are paired up by this point. More than half, even. We all overhear things.”
“Who are you overhearing, then?”
“Padma Patil’s next door to me. And she’s at it with Ernie Macmillan quite frequently.”
Harry made a face. “I really don’t want to think about what MacmIllan is like when he’s having sex.”
Hermione grinned. “It’s quite funny. He sort of sounds like-“
“I don’t want to know!” cried Harry. “I seriously, seriously don’t want to know.”
Hermione had a good laugh at Harry’s expense, while he pretended to go back to his letter.
“I like it,” she said finally. “I think it’s a good sign.”
“You like listening to other people having sex?” Harry said with a grin.
Hermione blushed. “I didn’t mean it like that,” she said. “I only meant that I like that people are pairing up. I think it’s indicative of true peacetime. People are coming together; they’re building their futures. It’s not that no one had relationships while the war was going on, but everything was so uncertain it felt like things could fall apart any day. There was so little hope. Honestly, that’s one reason I held off on telling Ron my feelings for so long. I couldn’t bear the thought that I would finally have what I wanted most of all and then suddenly lose it. There was a good chance that one or both of us would die and I just couldn’t…”
“I think you would have been devastated either way,” Harry said. “If something had happened to you or had happened to Ron, the other would have been devastated, because you loved each other even if you hadn’t told each other.”
Hermione thought about that. “You’re right.”
“I know.”
“How would you have felt if something had happened to Draco during the war? You didn’t love him yet. Would you have felt something, do you think, if he had died?”
“I don’t know,” said Harry. He didn’t like thinking about that at all. It gave him the creeps. It made him want to run back upstairs and check on Draco, just to make sure he was safe. But he resisted, knowing that would only disturb the blond’s well-deserved rest. “Maybe I would have, maybe I wouldn’t.”
Hermione nodded.
“So, speaking of the future,” Harry said, looking to change the subject. “Does this mean that you and Ron have officially patched things up?”
Hermione smiled a small smile. “We’re on our way. That whole situation rattled us both a lot more than we thought possible.”
“Yeah,” said Harry. He had seen the truth of that firsthand.
“He has to find his way to trusting me again, trusting that I’m invested this time, for real. That will take some work, on both our parts. But I’m clear now about what I want. So I’ll do whatever work I have to do to make it right.”
Harry nodded. “How did you get there, if you don’t mind me asking? To that clarity, I mean?”
“I thought about what Draco said. Or rather, what he made me say to myself. I realized I was spending all my energy trying to figure out my feelings, when, funnily enough, I already knew my feelings. I already knew I loved Ron and that I had an attraction to and mild interest in Blaise. The problem wasn’t what I was feeling. The problem was what I assumed those feelings meant. On the one hand, I couldn’t see how it was possible for me to be completely in love with Ron and have feelings for someone else at the same time. On the other hand, I also couldn’t see how I could justify ending things with Ron, who I knew I was in love with, for Blaise, who I could have fallen in love with but was not guaranteed to. It was when I stopped thinking in those terms and started thinking about who each of us were as people, and how I would fit with each of them, and what kind of person I was with each of them, that I started to find clarity about it.”
“And in the end you decided you fit better with Ron?”
Hermione tilted her head and considered the question. “Not quite. Because I think I would have fit with Blaise, too, just in a different way. A very different way. That was what it came down to, in the end. The relationships I could see unfolding with each of them were so drastically different that it turned out to be not that hard to determine which I wanted more, which I would be happier in.”
“And why not Blaise, then?”
Hermione sighed. “Blaise is wonderful. He’s intense, and quite serious, and remarkably intelligent. He’s driven, ambitious, thoughtful, mature…”
“He sounds like you,” Harry said.
Hermione smiled. “Exactly. On some level, that was appealing, the idea of being with someone so much like me. I certainly never want to be with a partner who turns me into someone I’m not. He would have reinforced many traits that I like in myself. And yet, that’s dangerous, in its own right. When I look back on the time I spent with him, I remember intense discussions, being intellectually stimulated, forced to think about things in new and exciting ways, but I don’t remember laughing very much. I don’t remember joy, or light-heartedness, or playfulness. I don’t remember relaxing, or letting go of things that didn’t matter. Those are the things I get with Ron, and it’s good for me, because I don’t always do them on my own. He… it’s like I’m an anchor, and he’s a buoy. I keep him grounded; he lifts me up. It’s a symbiotic thing.”
“And in this metaphor, Blaise is also an anchor?” Harry asked. “Meaning he weighs you down, to some extent?”
“Nothing quite so dramatic as that,” Hermione replied with a roll of her eyes. “But in some sense, yes, Blaise is also an anchor. So we would be grounded together. But who would be lifting us up?”
Harry thought about that, and wondered if the metaphor could apply to him and Draco. He didn’t quite think so. But it worked nicely for Hermione and Ron. “Ok, then,” he said. “So you’re Ron’s anchor he’s your buoy. And Blaise… well, Blaise might be better served finding a buoy of his own.”
Hermione looked at him. “Precisely.”
“Makes sense to me.”
“I do feel quite bad about Blaise, though. I hope we can figure out a way to still be friends.”
“He took a risk, pursuing someone who was already in love with someone else.”
“Yes, he did. But still, I think he was upset, although he did his best not to show it.”
Harry nodded. Draco had predicted as much. “You couldn’t make Blaise, Ron, and yourself all happy simultaneously. It was impossible.”
“I know.”
“But you did the best you could. You thought about it, at least. You gave him consideration. That’s a lot more than some people would have done.”
Hermione gave him a small smile. “Thanks, Harry,” she said. “You know, I thought at first you might be mad at me.”
Harry took a moment to answer, trying to decide if he was going to get into the full truth with Hermione or not. He wasn’t sure how helpful it would be. “I was upset at first. For both your sakes. But Ron was the one I saw first, and he was pretty torn up and I… felt for him. But I also knew it had to be hard on you.”
Hermione nodded and bit her lip.
“I just want you two to be happy,” Harry went on. “At first I believed it meant that you two should be together. But then I realized that if you needed to be apart to be happy, then I would support you.”
“That’s how I felt about you and Ginny,” Hermione said. “I could see that you were happier without her. And I could see that, even though she was heartbroken and confused, it was more about trying to understand what happened, and understand herself, than it was solely about losing you, if that makes any sense.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, remembering the awkward encounter at Christmas.
“That told me the breakup was the right thing for her, too.”
They contemplated that for another minute or two, until Hermione declared it was time for her to get to work. She summoned her entire bookbag from her room and began spreading books and notes in front of her. Harry went back to his letter, and they worked in companionable silence until he had finished it. He decided to keep in the suggestion about Narcissa and the party. Andromeda, he knew, would take it or leave it. But at least he’d put in his two knuts worth on the issue.
Morning light was streaming through the windows by that point, and Harry figured Draco would be waking up soon, if he wasn’t awake already, and was perhaps wondering where Harry had gotten to. Leaving Hermione to her runes translations, he made his way back up the stairs to Draco’s room.
When he opened the door, however, it was to find that Draco was not alone. Blaise was sitting on Draco’s bed, much like Hermione had done on Harry’s a week earlier.
“Oh,” he said, surprised, as Draco’s blond head and Blaise’s dark one both turned to look at him. “Sorry. I’ll just… meet you downstairs, then, shall I?” This was aimed at Draco, who was giving him a soft smile.
“No,” said Blaise. “That’s all right. I have work to do anyway.” He slid gracefully off the bed. “We can pick this up later,” he said to Draco, and Draco nodded. Blaise crossed the room to the door, and Harry stepped aside for him. “Potter,” he acknowledged with a nod.
Harry nodded back, then closed the door and turned to Draco. “I really didn’t mean for him to have to leave. I could have waited. I’m sure he had some things he needed to talk about.”
“It’s fine, Harry,” Draco said, scooting over to make room for Harry in the bed. Harry accepted the silent invitation, sliding in next to him. “I’ve been up for a bit. We had plenty of time to talk.”
“If you say so.” He put a hand on Draco’s knee, and they sat in silence for a few moments.
“Are you all right?” Draco asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“I was surprised when I woke up and you weren’t there.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry. I woke up really early and I couldn’t get back to sleep. I didn’t want to wake you up, so I went downstairs.”
He was aware that Draco was staring at him, but he kept his eyes fixed on the other side of the room.
“Bad dream?”
Harry swallowed. How did Draco pick up on that so easily? “Yeah.” He chewed on his bottom lip.
“What about?”
Harry shrugged. “What it’s always about.”
“Him.”
“In one form or another. In this case he was a virtual opponent I was fighting in Kemp’s training room.”
Draco put his hand over Harry’s. “That must have been scary.”
Harry shrugged again. “I don’t remember most of it. Just enough that when I woke up I knew I didn’t want to go back to sleep.” He felt Draco run a hand up his back and into his hair and knew his boyfriend was trying to find some way to comfort him. “It’s fine, really,” he said. “I hardly ever have nightmares anymore. They’re bound to pop up once in a while, and it’s been a stressful week.”
“Sure,” said Draco.
“Anyway, I’m sorry I wasn’t here when you woke up. I was planning to be, but I got sidetracked in a conversation with Hermione. And given everything, I wanted to see how she was doing.”
That made Draco smile. “So while you were talking to Granger about Blaise, I was talking to Blaise about Granger.”
“Basically, yeah.”
Draco chuckled. “I’ll be glad when this whole debacle is behind us and we can move on. I’m a bit burnt out on my friends and your friends coming to us with all of their feelings.”
“I’m with you there.” Draco’s hands had still not left his hair, and he was giving Harry’s scalp a good scratch. It felt quite nice, and Harry tried to resist the urge to nuzzle into it like a cat. “So how is Blaise doing, with everything?”
Draco sighed. “At this point, he’s trying to convince himself that he and Granger would have never worked out anyway. But I don’t think it’s going all that well.”
“Yeah.” Harry felt a small stab of guilt. He hadn’t spared much thought before now for Blaise’s feelings in the whole situation. Part of it was that he was focused on Ron and Hermione, and another was that he had sort of seen Blaise as the villain in the whole thing. But he could recognize now that that wasn’t really fair.
“All in all I think he’s feeling pretty discouraged. He’s never been in a serious relationship before. They always fall through after a few weeks. Granted, that’s often because he loses interest, but still… it’s making him reexamine everything. After all, the only common denominator in all those failures is him.”
Harry considered that for a moment, and Hermione’s anchor/buoy metaphor popped into his head. “Maybe he’s pursuing the wrong kinds of women.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, from what you’ve said about it in the past, it seems like he’s always pursuing academically minded, serious types, yeah?”
“That’s the general trend.”
“So maybe he needs to think outside the box a bit, try pursuing someone not so serious, or not so studious. Someone really different from him.”
“But those aren’t the kinds of women he’s attracted to. He knows what he likes.”
“He thinks he knows what he likes,” said Harry. “But can we ever really know what’s good for us until we get it?”
“Someone’s waxing philosophical this morning.”
“It’s just something Hermione said, about how she and Blaise were almost too similar. She said it would just reinforce the aspects of herself that were already there, rather than bring out the things she wants to be there but don’t always come out naturally. For her, there’s something really satisfying about being with someone different from her. Maybe Blaise would have the same experience if he gave it a try.”
Draco snorted, then pursed his lips, then really considered what Harry had just said. “Perhaps you’re right. But there’s no telling him that.”
“Why not?”
“He’s a stubborn bastard, that’s why.”
“Well…” Harry threw up a hand. “I guess that’s it then. There’s just nothing to be done. I guess Blaise is stuck pursuing the same kinds of women and being disappointed over and over again for the remainder of his life, since he’s so stubborn it would be impossible to even mention the possibility of trying something different.” He heard Draco sigh heavily, but didn’t let that stop him. “I hadn’t realized that Blaise is so stubborn that it renders you incapable of saying any words related to giving him advice he might not want to hear. I hadn’t realized that Blaise’s stubbornness had the power to turn you mute on the subject. Thank you for that information. That’s helpful.”
“You’ve made your point, Harry. Honestly, when did you turn into such a snarky git?”
Harry grinned, finding it hard to believe that Draco had set him up so nicely. “When I started spending all my time with you.”
“Walked right into that one,” Draco said under his breath. “All right, you have a point. Maybe I will float the notion by him, at some point. But I can tell you right now that I don’t think it will do any good.”
“Well, at least then you will have tried. And that’s all we can do, isn’t it?”
“Yes, you’re right.” Draco’s hand cupped the back of Harry’s neck and he kneaded the muscles gently for a moment. “You can always wake me up, you know, if you have a nightmare.”
Harry glanced at him and then away, a bit rattled by the turn in conversation. “It’s not a big deal. Draco. I wouldn’t want to bother you with it.”
Draco didn’t say anything, though his hand kept working. Harry closed his eyes.
“I know you don’t want to bother me with it,” Draco said quietly after a few minutes. “And I understand. I just want you to know that you can.”
Harry squeezed Draco’s knee in thanks. He knew he would probably never take Draco up on the offer. But sometimes simply knowing the offer was there was enough.
***
Over the next week, things started to get back to normal, or about as normal as they were going to get anyway. The friendship between Blaise and Hermione had cooled considerably, to no one’s surprise. Although she said nothing about it, Harry knew that Hermione was saddened by this, but also understood the inevitability of it. And at the moment she knew she needed to put her energy into her repairing her relationship with Ron, rather than her friendship with the Slytherin.
Blaise didn’t make a scene or appear to harbor much animosity, at least. He stuck mostly to his Slytherin friends from then on, though he was still cordial to Harry and quite friendly with the 8^th year girls that Pansy had been befriending over the course of the term, most notably Hannah Abbott, who Pansy had partnered with for the Potions project. Harry was glad that the drama with Blaise and Hermione hadn’t struck a heavy blow for inter-house unity, and did his part in trying to get to know Blaise and Pansy as much as Draco had made an effort with Hermione and the other Gryffindors.
He couldn’t help but feel relieved, though, that Hermione and Ron were making amends, and not just for their own sakes. While Ron had tried very hard not to let the situation affect his role as Quidditch captain, it had made a small impact that could be felt amongst the whole team. But now he was back on his game, just in time for the match against Hufflepuff.
It wasn’t that Harry, or anyone else on the team for that matter, was concerned that they were going to lose to Hufflepuff. While the badgers had themselves a roster of decent Chasers, their Keeper was mediocre at best and their Seeker was a rookie. The bigger concern was walking away from the game with a large enough point margin to give them a fighting chance against Slytherin in the finals.
“Don’t catch the Snitch too soon,” Ron reminded Harry for the millionth time at their final practice before the match. “I’d like to see it when we’re eighty points up, at least. Even more, if we can manage it.”
“I know, Ron,” Harry said, resisting the urge to throttle his best mate. The only thing holding him back was remembering how stressful it was being captain. He reminded himself to be grateful he didn’t have to do it anymore.
Harry wasn’t nearly as nervous as he was before the Ravenclaw match. Rather he felt that jittery excitement that always came on match day, and he was mostly just eager to get out there and do what he did best. And, perhaps, show off for his boyfriend a bit.
“Are you even going to be cheering me on?” Harry asked Draco over breakfast that morning. “You’re not wearing any red or gold, I see. Or carrying that little lion flag Dean gave you.”
Draco gave him a look. “You know I’ll be rooting for you. I even agreed to sit in the Gryffindor section with Granger. But I wouldn’t be caught dead wearing or waving Gryffindor colors. There are some lines I simply can’t bring myself to cross.”
Harry chuckled. “I suppose I’ll take what I can get.”
“Besides,” said Draco. “Do you really need the moral support? You’re going to crush them.”
Harry shrugged. “Let’s not make any assumptions. I don’t want to jinx it.”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Please.”
Draco had been right, of course. From the moment the first whistle blew, it was clear that the Gryffindor Quidditch team was far from jinxed. Ron had gotten his Chasers operating like a well-oiled machine, using quick passes and last-minute assists that disoriented the Hufflepuff Chasers and made it nearly impossible for their Keeper to block shots. They were fifty points up within the first ten minutes, and Hufflepuff had yet to score a single goal.
Harry stuck to his assigned role, though, and was thankful for it, since there was a bit of a near miss early on when he spotted the Snitch hovering not far from the far right Hufflepuff goal post. Gryffindor was only up twenty, at that point, and Harry knew that Ron would not be happy if he caught the Snitch so early.
Pretending to see the tiny gold ball towards the Gryffindor end, Harry went into his favorite move, the Wronski Feint, a spectacular, high speed dive that made his blood hum in his veins and his stomach lurch with elation. The Hufflepuff Seeker tried to follow, but couldn’t keep up, not that it mattered, since Harry hadn’t really been going after the Snitch at all. He pulled out of the dive and looked back towards the Hufflepuff goal posts to see that his feint had had the desired effect. The Snitch had disappeared, and the Hufflepuff Seeker hadn’t caught even a glimpse of it.
As an added bonus, the entire Hufflepuff team was so distracted by Harry’s dive that it allowed Ginny to score again easily while no one was paying attention.
The game progressed beautifully from there, and when the score reached one hundred to twenty in Gryffindor’s favor, Harry began looking for the Snitch in earnest. It was about twenty minutes later, when they had a one hundred and ten point margin, that he spotted it again, and this time, he went straight for it, capturing the pesky little ball before the Hufflepuff Seeker had even begun the chase.
Elated at the easy victory, the Gryffindor team descended onto the pitch, making a big happy pile with their captain in the center. It was one of the easiest matches any of them had ever played, and the obvious skill and excellent collaboration of his team had Harry quite hopeful for the finals.
The best part, though, was seeing the heat in Draco’s eyes as he approached Harry after the match. It was clear that Harry’s spectacular dive had had quite a positive effect on the blond’s libido. As Draco brought Harry in for a scorching kiss (while the rest of the team looked on, cat-calling and wolf-whistling), Harry knew he is was in for an enthusiastic celebration that night, in the privacy of his own bedroom. His absolute favorite kind.
***
Harry was glad to have the match out of the way, knowing the team didn’t have to worry about the finals until May. As they entered March he had little time to worry about anything other than schoolwork, as studying for mid-term exams got into full swing.
He was still going to his apprenticeship once a week as well, and after that one rough day was determined to not let his other obligations get in the way of his daily practice. He did want to get better at dueling, even though he knew for sure now that he would never want to enter competitions. But being good enough to teach was even harder than being good enough to compete, in his opinion, and he hadn’t written off the idea of becoming a teacher quite yet.
Kemp had started having him participate in his sessions with student in a more hands-on way, letting him teach certain moves or explain things. Harry liked this. He was remembering what he had enjoyed so much about leading the DA, getting to see the direct impact of his effort when a student caught on to something they weren’t getting before. It was concrete, measureable, and highly satisfying.
It also showed that Kemp had faith in him, believed that he was capable, even though the dueling master wasn’t always good at conveying that in their lessons. Harry had to believe he was doing something right, to have been promoted from mere observer to teaching assistant.
But he was still quite surprised when, once he arrived for his last session before Easter break, Vesper informed him that Kemp wanted Harry to lead an entire session with a student himself.
“He thinks you’re ready,” she told him as she sorted through one of the filing cabinets behind her desk. “This guy is a beginner. Just started about a month ago, comes in twice a week. But he has promise.” She finally found the file she was looking for and brought it out. “Anyway, they’re working on basic defensive spells right now. His notes are in here.” She held out the file.
“Where’s Kemp?” Harry asked. “He’ll still be there, won’t he?”
“Of course. He’s just finishing up another session. He’ll supervise, but he wants you to take point.”
Harry, his eyebrows raised, opened the file and looked at the notes. It all seemed straightforward, exactly as Vesper had described. Harry knew plenty about defensive magic. This would be a good fit for his first time.
Which wasn’t to say that he wasn’t nervous. This student, Jaime Vilar, wasn’t any younger than him. He hoped he didn’t see Harry as being too much of an amateur.
He studied Kemp’s notes on Jaime’s footwork, spell work, and overall learning style before returning the file to Vesper.
“All set?”
“Yeah, I think so.”
“Great. Oh, and I wanted to confirm with you… you’re not coming in next week right?”
“Yeah, it’s mid-terms,” said Harry. “It will just be too insane. And then the week after is Easter break, so I won’t come in then, either.”
Vesper nodded. “Right. Then we’ll set you up for three weeks from now.” She opened the day planner.
“Perfect.”
“Doing anything fun for the break?”
Harry smiled. “Draco’s coming to mine for the week. I have a house that I’m almost done renovating. We’ll go to my godson’s birthday party on Thursday, but other than that, I think we’re just going to stay in and relax.”
“That sounds nice,” Vesper said wistfully. Then she grinned and wiggled her eyebrows. “And you’ll have the place all to yourselves.”
Harry grinned back. “That’s the idea.”
“You’re so lucky,” Vesper said with a sigh.
“Don’t I know it.”
“I wish I had time for a boyfriend. But I’m here all the time, training, or working for Aurelian. And then I travel for competitions, of course. This year has just flown by, really.”
“You should make time,” said Harry. “Go out once a week or something. I bet Kemp would let you.”
“Oh, it’s not him stopping me,” said Vesper. “I just… you know, I don’t know that many people here to go out with, and I don’t want to go alone. It’s a vicious cycle. I don’t know anyone, because I never go out. And I never go out, because I don’t know anyone.” She looked at Harry. “I sound pathetic.”
“No,” said Harry. “I get it. You should come out to Hogsmeade with me and my friends sometime. You’d get along great with them.”
“Really?” Vesper’s face lit up. “I’d love that. Are any of your friends single… and cute?”
“Er, they’re an attractive bunch, I suppose. But I’m not setting you up with any of them!” He pointed at her, so she’d get the message. “I don’t do that matchmaker stuff. If you hit it off with someone, you hit it off. I don’t take responsibility.”
“Wise man,” Vesper said.
“I’ve just had enough of being in the middle lately,” said Harry, thinking of Hermione and Ron.
Jaime arrived then, which put an end to their conversation as Vesper put on her slightly more formal professional façade and Harry prepared to introduce himself to the student.
“Good afternoon, Jaime. I hope you’re well,” said Vesper warmly.
Jaime smiled as he approached the desk. He was a couple of inches shorter than Harry, with dark hair, olive skin, and a Mediterranean nose. “Buenas tardes, Miss Vesper,” he said in a Spanish accent. “You are looking beautiful as always.”
Vesper gave the student a small but knowing smile. “Always the charmer, aren’t you?” Jaime grinned wider. “Welcome back. Mr. Kemp will be out shortly, but he wanted me to introduce you to Mr. Potter. He’s an apprentice here and he’s going to be leading your session today.”
Jaime turned to look at Harry, and Harry held out his hand. “Harry Potter. It’s great to meet you, Jaime.”
“I know who you are,” Jaime said. “Everyone this side of the Atlantic knows who you are.”
“And most people on the other side, too,” Vesper said with a wink at Harry.
Harry sighed and nodded. “Fair enough. I like to introduce myself anyway, and not make any assumptions.”
“Like a true gentleman,” said Jaime approvingly. “I like that.”
“Well, that’s good. You’re from Spain?”
“Madrid, but currently living in London. I’m on an exchange program with your ministry. I thought, for fun, I would learn some self-defense; I was always decent in school. Kemp says I have a lot of promise. He is encouraging me to enter competitions, when I am… how he says…? ‘Up to snuff.’”
“Sounds about right,” said Harry.
“You compete?”
Harry shook his head. “That’s not really where my interests lie. I want to teach Defense. That’s why I’m training under Kemp.”
“Yes, he is an excellent teacher, I would say.”
“Proof positive right here.” Harry indicated Vesper. “She’s been training under him… how many years now?”
“Five,” Vesper said, eyeing Harry quizzically.
“She’s the best I’ve ever seen,” Harry said.
“I know,” Jaime leaned in conspiratorially. “I saw her practicing the other week. She is like… is called… el relámpago. I do not know the English word.”
“I don’t know that one,” admitted Harry. He turned to Vesper. “Do you?”
“Lightning,” she said, blushing.
“Yes, yes! That is it. Lightning!” Jaime flourished his wand arm and imitated the sound of a lightning strike. “Pow! One second, you’re dead.”
“It’s all over. You don’t stand a chance,” agreed Harry.
“Precisamente.”
“All right, well if you two are done talking about me like I’m not here…” said Vesper, fighting a smile. Jaime winked at her, then turned back to Harry.
“I look forward to our session Mr. Potter. For now I find the changing room.” He held indicated the messenger bag slung across his back. “I come straight from work and did not have time to change.”
“Sure. I’ll see you in there.”
Once Jaime was out of sight, Harry turned to Vesper. “What about him?”
“What do you mean?” Vesper asked with wide, innocent eyes.
“You know exactly what I mean. He’s quite good looking.”
Vesper pursed her lips. “Really? I didn’t notice.”
“Yeah, right. I saw the way you were looking at him.”
Vesper whacked him on the arm. “That’s a vivid imagination you have there. As if I would ever ogle a client. I’m a professional.”
“Yeah, but he’s not your client, he’s Kemp’s.”
“Same thing.”
Harry shook his head in disbelief.
“Why don’t you go after him, then, if you think he’s so good looking?” she added.
“Because I am quite happy in my relationship. Besides, I prefer them tall and blond and almost obnoxiously snarky.” Vesper rolled her eyes all the way to the ceiling. “And he was flirting with you, not me.”
“He was not flirting.”
“He was. It’s just that flirtation is a permanent state of being for you, so you’ve lost the ability to read the signs.”
“You are so full of shit, Harry Potter. I can’t wait for the day my uncle lets me kick your skinny ass all over the training floor.” She shoved him playfully, and he shoved her back.
The door opened and Kemp and his student walked through, and they stopped giggling abruptly. Kemp eyed them both.
“Vesper, kindly help Liana schedule her next session. Potter, with me. Is Jaime here yet?”
“Yes, sir, he just went to change. He said he would come back when he’s ready.”
“Perfect,” said Kemp. “Let’s get a move on.” Harry followed him through the door. “That session ran over. Liana has some challenges with following instructions and I made her run extra drills. Did you get a chance to look at my notes on Jaime?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Good, then we can get started right away. You’ll lead. Start with basic defense moves, Shield Charm and the like. Chances are he knows some of it already, but when they learn in school they almost always develop bad habits, so be prepared to do some correcting.”
“Sure,” said Harry.
Jaime was already in the training room when they walked through the door, looking comfortable in sweats and a t-shirt.
“Hello, Jaime,” Kemp greeted him. “Thanks for waiting.”
“No problem, sir.”
“I believe you’ve already met my apprentice, Mr. Potter?”
“Yes, we were introduced.”
“Great. Then, if it’s all right with you, I’m going to have him take the lead in this session.”
“No problem,” Jaime replied, giving Harry a friendly smile. “I’m sure I will learn a lot from him.”
“Then let’s get started.”
Harry began where Kemp suggested, with the Shield Charm. As usual, Kemp’s instincts were right on the money, and Jaime did in fact have some issues with his shield technique. But Jaime was good-natured about it and quite receptive to feedback.
“If you want a really strong shield I find it’s best to push it outward with your magic a bit,” Harry explained to Jaime. “You will feel a natural resistance from it, but that’s ok. That tension means more powerful hexes are less likely to penetrate the shield.”
“Push with both hands to be most effective with that,” Kemp said from the outskirts of the floor, where he was observing the lesson.
Harry nodded and turned back to Jaime. “He’s right. Even your non-wand hand will help you here.” Of course, I was getting to that, if I’d just had another couple of minutes, he thought, but didn’t say aloud. He knew Kemp wasn’t used to turning over the reins, and probably had a compulsion to put in his two knuts worth every now and then. Harry could live with that.
They practiced the charm, with Harry throwing hexes at Jaime and Jaime trying to block them, for another twenty minutes, and Jaime steadily improved. He was far from perfect, though, but as they were practicing Harry found it harder and harder to get his chance to give the student feedback before Kemp jumped in to do it first. Part of the problem was that yelling instructions from the sidelines was Kemp’s style most of the time, whereas Harry preferred to watch the student do the move from start to finish and give feedback afterwards.
“Your feet, Jaime!” Kemp yelled. “You’re flat-footed. We’ve talked about this.”
Jaime’s shield wavered a bit and finally failed.
“It’s all right, try again,” said Harry. “And you do want to stay on the balls of your feet. I know it seems like having them firmly planted will help you stay grounded, but it won’t. Focus on keeping your weight in your core, not your legs.”
“He knows this already!” Kemp called.
Harry resisted the urge to roll his eyes or exchange an irritated look with Jaime. That would be unprofessional. But he was sorely, sorely tempted. He saw Jaime give him a small smile of understanding, and that was enough.
“Again?” Harry asked, and Jaime nodded.
It finally got to the point that Jaime could produce a fairly strong shield, and Harry decided it was time to move on. He didn’t want to make the student spend the whole session on one charm.
“Good work. Keep practicing that at home,” he said. “Let me show you something else. This is one of the best spells I have in my defensive arsenal. It’s called the Impediment Jinx.”
He heard Kemp clear his throat and turned towards the noise. “I don’t teach Impedimenta as part of my curriculum. Better to move on to the Deflection Charm.”
“Deflecto is a lot harder to learn than Impedimenta,” said Harry. He knew that this was only one session he was leading, and Jaime was Kemp’s student, in actuality, but why on earth couldn’t he learn how to use the jinx? “In fact, Protego is harder, too.”
“That’s because defensive spells in general are more challenging. They require a more nuanced use of energy and impeccable technique. The Impediment Jinx is offensive, so it is easier.”
“It’s technically offensive,” argued Harry, “but in actual usage it’s more defensive.” He turned back to Jaime. “It freezes an opponent for up to ten seconds. This is perfect if you have to make a quick getaway, or keep an attacker from hurting someone else. It leaves them vulnerable to charms like Incarcerous, so the attacker can be captured easily.”
“Which would be useful if Mr. Vilar here was training to be an Auror. But in competitive dueling circles the jinx is considered a bit gauche.”
“Gauche? Why? I imagine it could be very effective in dueling as well as self-defense.”
“It’s just not done,” said Kemp. “For one thing, it can be shaken off or blocked easily, if a person has had practice. And for another… it’s just considered a bit crude. Judges have been known to frown upon it.”
Harry shook his head. That didn’t make any sense to him. Many of the so-called “rules” of competitive dueling seemed completely arbitrary, in his opinion. “Well, it can’t hurt to learn it. It really isn’t difficult, and it’s one of the best things to have in your repertoire for defensive purposes, out in the real world.” He figured Jaime would appreciate this, especially since he had come to Kemp for self-defense lessons in the first place.
“Move on, Mr. Potter,” Kemp said, with finality. “To the Deflection Charm, or something else, if you have it in mind.”
Harry hesitated. On the one hand, if Jaime wasn’t going to get to practice the Impediment Jinx once he learned it, then what was the point? On the other, Jaime could practice at home, if Harry showed him the basics. And it was a useful spell. And this was his session, not Kemp’s.
“Sir, can I talk to you for a minute?” Harry asked.
He saw Kemp’s jaw tighten, but the man nodded.
“Keep practicing your shield,” Harry told Jaime. “I’ll just be a minute.” He walked off the floor and towards Kemp.
“Interrupting a student’s session to have a chat?” Kemp asked with an eyebrow raise. “We don’t want to waste Mr. Vilar’s time. The time he is paying for.”
“Sir, I’m just trying to understand why you’re so against me teaching him this jinx. He doesn’t have to practice it with you, but at least he’ll be able to practice it on his own. What can it hurt?”
“Time,” Kemp said simply. “Time spent in the session today, time spent practicing at home, when he should be working on his shield. Time. There is a competition coming up this summer that I want Jaime to be ready for. Why would he waste his time on something he isn’t even going to use?”
“Because he might use it. Yeah, maybe not in competition, but, if he’s ever attacked-“
“Attacked? Do you really believe he has to worry about that? And even if he does, that all of the other dueling skills aren’t going to prove more useful? It’s a pointless jinx to learn, end of discussion.”
“This is my session, sir.”
“With my student. If you want to teach it to your own students, be my guest. You can build your entire defensive curriculum around the Impediment Jinx, if you like. But you won’t teach it here.”
Harry felt his temper coming to the surface at Kemp’s stubborn dismissal of the issue. “If you were just going to teach from the sidelines, sir, why bother pretending to let me take the lead at all?”
“Excuse me, Mr. Potter?”
“You’ve been interrupting the entire session, always with feedback that I would have given Jaime anyway, if you’d given me the chance.”
“I am supervising, Mr. Potter. You were not expected to lead a perfect session, of course, and I jumped in when necessary to fill in the blanks.”
“I would have filled in those blanks myself, sir. Everything you said was something I already knew.”
“I see,” said Kemp, his eyes flashing dangerously. “Two months with me and you’re already an expert. Well you must just be a prodigy, then.”
“I had plenty of experience before I came here,” countered Harry. “Sure, I didn’t know about the correct way to bow before a duel or which spells earn you the most points but I knew plenty about defending myself.”
“Yes, with sloppy technique and simplistic jinxes,” Kemp said coldly.
Harry gritted his teeth. “I’m alive, aren’t I, despite many people’s best efforts? I’ve used that jinx against more Death Eaters than I can count. How many of Voldemort’s followers did you fight against, sir? I’m guessing not many, considering you skipped out on the war altogether.”
That, it became immediately clear, was quite the wrong thing to say.
Harry saw Kemp’s eyes bulge for a moment. “Mr. Vilar!” he barked suddenly.
“Sir?” Harry heard Jaime say behind him.
“I’m very sorry, but we’re going to have to cut this session short. See Vesper about it when you leave and she will compensate you for the time lost. I sincerely apologize.”
“No problem, sir,” said Jaime. “Thank you for the lesson.”
“You are most welcome,” said Kemp, not taking his eyes off Harry.
Jaime passed them on his way out the door and gave Harry a fearful look. Harry nodded at him, hoping he appeared reassuring. He could handle Kemp, one way or another. He was hardly scared of him.
When Jaime closed the door behind him and they were alone, Kemp looked Harry up and down, as if sizing him up. The silence stretched on. Harry made sure to never look away.
“Some disagreement I can tolerate, Potter. But outright insolence, in front of one of my students, no less? Where do you get the nerve?”
Without thinking about it, Harry held up his hand where the scar from his detentions with Dolores Umbridge was still visible, especially when he tightened his fist. I must not tell lies.
“I learned during the war, sir, that the most important thing I could do is always speak my mind, even when it’s something no one wants to hear. Holding back the truth does a disservice to everyone, and keeping Jaime from learning something simply because you didn’t believe it would be useful would be a disservice to him. He told me within two minutes of having met me that he was interested in self-defense, and didn’t even think about the possibility of competitive dueling until you told him he should. I thought the best education possible I could give him-“
“That’s quite enough,” Kemp interrupted. “How very noble of you. And yet, at the same time, so arrogant. You really do buy into the legend of the Boy-Who-Lived, don’t you? You really do try to live up to all the things they say.”
“I don’t care about what they say,” said Harry, the temperature of his anger rising by the second. “I don’t give a damn about my public image. But I do give a damn about doing right by other people.”
“I see, and you believe I don’t?”
“I believe Jaime came to you for self-defense lessons, and you pushed him into dueling-“
“Pushed him. How dare you speak like that about something you know absolutely nothing about? I did not push him. I barely had to nudge him. Jaime, for all his outward nonchalance, has quite the competitive spirit. As do you, for that matter. Yet you are afraid to use it.”
“I’m not afraid. I’m just not interested.”
“I cannot possibly begin to understand you.”
“And I cannot possibly begin to understand you, sir. Because it seems you, too, are afraid. But of what, I don’t know. Of actually standing for something, I suppose.”
Kemp’s back straightened so that he loomed over Harry, a steely glint in his eyes. “You seem to be under the false impression that this sort of behavior makes you a man, Mr. Potter. I can assure you, it doesn’t. I can see now that you have become little more than a self-righteous infant turned unwitting hero. What a disappointment.”
Though Harry would never admit it aloud, those words stung considerably. But he knew what would hurt Kemp even worse. “And you are nothing but a coward who flees the country to save its own skin and only returns when the rest of us have made it safe for him. So I suppose I’m a bit disappointed too, sir.”
Kemp’s face got slowly redder and redder. Harry thought for a moment that he might spontaneously combust. But instead he said in a low, icy voice. “We are done here.”
“Yes, we are.”
Harry turned on shaky legs, making for the door. In fact, his entire body appeared to be vibrating. Part of it was anger, he knew, but another part had to be disbelief, because he couldn’t really be sure what was happening. He made his way down the hall and out into the waiting room, where he immediately heard Vesper’s voice.
“Harry? What the hell was going on in there? Jaime just came out and said…” She went on, but Harry hardly heard the words. He turned around and looked at her.
“I’m sorry, Ves,” he barely managed, aware that his voice sounded tight. “I can’t.”
“What? Harry-“
But Harry was already at the floo, tossing a handful of powder into the fire like he was throwing a grenade.
***
Harry couldn’t get his agitation to abate, hard as he tried as he made his way to the 8^th year common room. There was a scathing and unrelenting monologue cycling through his head that he couldn’t get rid of, and it kept his blood pounding away in his ears. He flexed his hands and rolled his shoulders, trying to ease some of the tension, but there was nothing for it. He was worked up, good and proper.
Fuck Kemp. Fuck his arrogance and his obduracy and his self-serving nature. Fuck him for trying to turn me into something I’m not, something I never wanted to be. Fuck him for never listening and for always thinking he’s right. Fuck him for fleeing England when he should have helped us fight, and fuck him even more for not even being ashamed of it.
And on, and on, and on…
He didn’t have to say a thing when he entered the 8^th year common room and his friends caught sight of him. They knew immediately that something had happened. Ron and Hermione looked at Harry with identical expressions of alarm, and Harry saw Ron grip Hermione by the arm as she made to stand up and go over to him, seeming to instinctively understand that this wasn’t the wisest move.
Harry locked eyes with Draco, who was sitting with his fellow Slytherins and watching Harry with a furrowed brow. The glance was only a second, but it was enough. As Harry made his way up the stairs to his room, he knew that Draco would follow. He unlocked his room and left the door open, and was only pacing for a few seconds when he heard the blond enter with cautious steps.
“What happened, Harry?”
Harry shook his head. He had no words, not yet.
Draco closed the door behind him and came further into the room, seating himself on the edge of Harry’s bed. Out of the corner of his eye Harry could pick up on the relaxed body language that was meant to convey Draco’s infinite patience, though he knew in actuality his boyfriend was probably anxious for an answer. Harry stopped pacing and turned to him.
“I got angry. Said some things. But they were justified.”
“Tell me.” It was a gentle command, but it was a command all the same. And, for some reason, that it made it easier to respond.
“Kemp, he… he was going to let me lead a session with a student. I thought it was a good sign, like he’s finally letting me take the reins a bit. And I was glad to finally get to try it for myself, see if teaching is really what I want to do.” He began pacing again. “He was a beginning student, had only been coming to Kemp for a few weeks. He was just learning the basics, easy stuff, stuff I can do in my sleep. I knew exactly what we should work on, and it was going fine, except that Kemp kept jumping in and correcting things, even though I had it perfectly under control. It was irritating, but I could have tolerated it. Except that when I got to the point that I wanted to teach the student Impedimenta, Kemp wouldn’t let me. I tried to find out why but his explanation was complete bollocks. It made no sense. So I pulled him aside and asked him why he had even bothered to let me lead the session, if he was just going to try and lead it himself from the sidelines. That really pissed him off. I guess I was a bit… insolent about it. But I was annoyed!”
He looked over at Draco to see that the blond was listening with an impassive expression. “I don’t blame you. It sounds annoying,” he said. “What happened next?”
“It just… escalated. You know how I am.” He managed a wry smirk, which Draco returned. “And it turns out Kemp has a bit of a temper, too, because before I knew it we were throwing insults at each other, and by the time he was calling me a ‘self-righteous infant hero’ I decided I would be well shot of him, so I said… well… I said something quite nasty back. And that was the end of it. I left. Stormed out, more like.”
“And how are you feeling now? Still angry?”
“Yes! I can’t seem to...” Harry made himself take a calming breath. “I feel like I have more to say to him, but none of it is something he would want to hear. It’s better that I left, I think, because it really could have gotten ugly. But now I have all this pent up frustration and I don’t know what to do with it.”
Draco grinned. “I can think of some things you could do with it.”
Harry gave him a look. “I’m not going to shag my anger away, Draco. It’s not that kind of frustration.”
“Frustration is frustration,” Draco said, earning another look from Harry. “Oh, I’m only joking… mostly.”
Harry managed a small chuckle and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Well, do you just need to vent, then? You can tell me all the awful things you were thinking about Kemp, since I won’t get upset or judge you,” Draco suggested.
Harry thought about that. “What I really want is to understand.”
“Understand him?”
“Understand why it isn’t working. It’s like we’re… I don’t know. It’s like we’re different in all the wrong ways and similar in all the wrong ways too. It’s like the exact opposite of my relationship with you.”
“Hm,” Draco said noncommittally.
“You get on with your potions master, don’t you?”
“Sure,” said Draco, sounding surprised at the question. “He’s no Severus Snape, who I was always planning on apprenticing under, but he’s quite good. And he treats me with respect, even though he could easily hold my former Death Eater status against me.”
Harry snapped his fingers and pointed at Draco. “You know, that’s part of it, I think, the respect thing. I don’t feel like Kemp respects me. Or he doesn’t treat me with respect, anyhow.”
“In what way?”
“He doesn’t listen. He just talks. Barks orders, more like. And there’s no flexibility. You either do everything his way, or you leave. Learning isn’t… a conversation with him, it’s a lecture. You know, when Dumbledore was helping me get ready to fight Voldemort, he rarely ever told me what to do. He would usually talk me through to my own conclusion about things. He would guide me to the truth, not push or drag me there. And Remus, when he was teaching me he used to give suggestions, correct my technique, help me see what I was doing wrong, but he never barked them at me. They were more like reminders, and they didn’t distract from what I was trying to accomplish. He had a calming presence, which made it easier to learn.”
“It sounds like you just don’t mesh with Kemp’s teaching style, perhaps.”
Harry sighed. Was that it? He wasn’t sure. “He’s a good teacher in many ways,” he countered. “I’ve learned a lot. He knows so much, and he has a good eye, and he’s good at explaining things. But it just isn’t… I just think a relationship between a mentor and a student has to be one of mutual respect. And I don’t feel any respect from him.”
“Do you show him respect?” Draco asked carefully.
“Yes,” said Harry. “Yes, of course.”
Draco looked at him for a moment. “Let me ask it a different way. Do you respect him?”
Harry opened his mouth, but found he didn’t have an answer. Or perhaps not a fully honest one, anyway. He really considered the question. “I respect his talent as a duelist. I respect many of his abilities, like how he can watch a student for five minutes and already tell everything they’re doing wrong…”
His saw Draco’s mouth twitch, ever so slightly. “But…”
Harry closed his eyes in a slow blink of realization. “But I’m not sure I respect him as a person. He’s made some questionable, selfish choices in his life. Not just choices that I wouldn’t make myself, but choices I can’t understand anyone making. He has attitudes, too, about dueling, about his business. It’s about what serves him, not about what’s good for other people, for his students.”
Draco didn’t say anything, perhaps trying on Dumbledore’s technique and letting him come to his own conclusions.
“I suppose the question is,” he said, after a minute or two. “Is my lack of respect for him in those particular areas coming through in the way I act towards him?” He looked at Draco, who looked back with an expression of warm curiosity, as though he were waiting for the answer. “And, honestly, I don’t know. Maybe it is, and I wasn’t realizing it. Maybe he’s been picking up on that, and treating me accordingly.”
“I don’t think it’s that simple,” said Draco. “But I do think whatever this relationship is, it’s a bit dysfunctional.”
Harry snorted. “Yeah.”
“So I would argue that the real question is, what are you going to do about it?”
Harry looked at him blankly.
“Are you going back?” Draco pressed. “Are you going to work it out, or sever ties? Are you quitting or staying on?”
“I don’t know. I feel like I have plenty of reasons to quit.”
“And what reasons are there to give it another go?”
Harry sighed. “I haven’t fully explored this teaching option, and if it’s something I would want to do. I was learning a lot about dueling, and improving my technique. I get on with his other apprentice, and I think she could teach me a thing or two as well.” He felt a pinch of regret at the thought of Vesper. He’d been really enjoying their burgeoning friendship. Would he lose that too, if he cut ties with Kemp?
Draco nodded. “And your reasons to quit?”
Harry gave him an incredulous look. “Aren’t they obvious?”
“Name them,” Draco said. “Just try. Say them out loud.”
“Kemp’s a twat.”
Draco burst into laughter, but then gave Harry a knowing look. “Be more specific, Harry.”
Harry sighed again. “Fine. He… We… it’s not… it wasn’t the relationship I envisioned. I don’t have the kind of relationship with him that I was looking for with a mentor.”
“And what were you looking for?”
“I guess… something more like what I had with Dumbledore, or Remus?” He hadn’t realized that until he said it aloud, but he suddenly understood that it was true.
Draco nodded. “Or Sirius?” he asked tentatively.
Harry looked at him sharply. “What do you mean?” Sirius had never been his teacher or his mentor.
Draco shrugged. “Every man, with the exception of Arthur Weasley, I suppose, who has ever been close to a father figure in your life has died, Harry.”
“You think I’m looking for some kind of father replacement?” Harry asked. “That’s taking it a bit too far with the psychoanalysis, Draco.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “It might not be that simple. But for you, who never had a father, the lines between father and mentor are a bit blurry, aren’t they? I’m not trying to psychoanalyze,” he said, in reaction to Harry’s blank stare. “I’m speaking from experience, as someone who never truly had a father either. Why do you think I was so attached to Severus? He listened to and supported me more than my own father ever did. The two roles conflated quite naturally in my mind. Losing Severus, in the end, was much more painful than losing my father to prison. Only one of them really loved me.”
Harry took a step towards Draco, wanting to comfort him, but Draco waved a hand. “I’m sorry. I’m not trying to make this about me. I’m only pointing out that it’s natural for you to want to find a man in your life, someone older than you, who can teach you, guide you, even… love you, like a father does for his son. And if that’s what you’re looking for… well, you’re obviously not going to find it in Kemp. But that’s not his fault. Nor is it yours.”
Harry’s natural inclination was to argue. Of course he hadn’t believed he would find some sort of pseudo-godfather in Kemp. But he made himself consider it, because he was learning how wise Draco was about these things, and because Draco’s personal experience was relatable to his own in many ways.
“I don’t think I was looking for a replacement for Sirius,” he said finally. “But I think I was looking for another Dumbledore or Remus, maybe. And considering how extraordinary those two men were and how well they knew me and my history, I suppose those expectations were unfair to put on someone new. But that doesn’t change the fact that Kemp… Kemp isn’t just a disappointment he’s… the opposite of what I’m looking for.”
“So, what does that mean going forward? Are you going to quit?”
Harry grimaced. He hated the idea of being a quitter. It was not his usual way of doing things, to quit when it got hard. But the idea of going back there, of facing Kemp again…
“I don’t know,” he said. “I just don’t know.”
“All right,” said Draco. “You don’t have to know right now. Easter break is only a week away. You’ve got midterms and plenty else to worry about. Don’t decide now, if you don’t think you can. Take some time to think about it.”
“Yeah,” said Harry. “All right.” He looked at Draco, who gave him a soft smile.
“Come here.”
Harry did, and was a bit surprised when Draco immediately began undoing the lower buttons of his shirt, revealing the tan skin of his flat stomach. Draco leaned in and kissed around his bellybutton.
“Feel better?” he asked.
“Mm, a bit,” Harry said.
He felt the vibrations of Draco’s laugh through his abdominal muscles as the blond continued to place kisses there.
“What can I do for you?” Draco asked.
“You’ve already done so much for me, Draco,” Harry said, though his voice was a bit breathy as Draco’s lips skimmed the sensitive skin at the edge of his trousers. “Let me do something for you.”
But Draco shook his head. “I don’t think so. I’ve just realized how long it’s been since I made you come with my mouth.” He looked up at Harry, his gray eyes suddenly clouded with lust.
Harry’s breathing hitched, and he felt himself grow to full hardness almost instantly.
“I can’t complain, of course,” Draco went on, his voice getting darker and huskier by the second as he began to undo Harry’s belt and zipper. “I love the way you fuck me.” He dropped to his knees in front of Harry. “I love it when you come inside me.”
“Fuck,” Harry groaned. Draco’s words had him panting already, his cock throbbing painfully.
Draco peeled down Harry’s trousers and pants all the way to his ankles, then ran a finger from his perineum over the crack in his arse, making Harry buck uncontrollably. “But tonight I want to remind myself how good you taste,” Draco went on, before kissing the tip of Harry’s leaking cock.
Harry moaned, grabbing onto one of the posts of his bed for support. He knew exactly what Draco was doing, trying to distract him from his troubles, but he was way too far gone to care. He watched as Draco took the head of Harry’s cock into his mouth, all the while keeping his eyes on Harry, making sure Harry could see everything he was doing. Harry placed a hand gently on Draco’s head as the blond took the erection further into his mouth.
“Mm, Draco.” He had to close his eyes from the pleasure of that warm, wet mouth, that swirling tongue.
Draco sucked a little harder, then relaxed his mouth and throat, taking Harry even further inside.
“Gods!” Harry cried. It took all of his willpower not to take control and thrust with abandon. “You’re fucking incredible, Draco,” he managed, knowing how much Draco would like that.
His boyfriend hummed in appreciation, sending a wave of delicious fire up his cock and into his gut, where the pleasure was mounting, his bollocks already tightening, readying for release.
“Don’t stop,” he told Draco. “I’m so close.” It was incredible, really, that he would be climaxing so soon. But Draco was talented and knew how to work him into a carnal frenzy like no one else, so he supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised.
Part of him wanted to make it last, keep feeling the sharp, sweet pull that came with the rhythmic bobbing of Draco’s head, but he knew he couldn’t hold it off. That burning in his gut was peaking now, reaching the point of no return, and it was only a matter of time.
“Draco!” His hand tightened in that platinum blond hair as he hovered right on the edge. “Draco, I-“
Draco’s mouth tightened around him, and Harry tumbled over the cliff, his orgasm ripping through him as he pulsed into Draco’s mouth. Draco swallowed it all, not releasing Harry until he was absolutely spent.
His legs like jelly, Harry had no choice but to collapse onto the bed, though he was careful to avoid crushing Draco in the process. Working to get his breathing back to normal, he lay on his back and watched Draco, who was now removing Harry’s shoes and the clothing that was gathered around his ankles.
“Well this is just a full service kind of place here, isn’t it?” Harry joked, still out of breath, his legs now completely free.
Draco grinned. “I’ve got to give you some reason to keep me around.”
Harry didn’t honor that with a response. Draco already knew how much Harry loved him.
“Here, I’ll help you take off your shirt as well.”
There were just a few more buttons, and some finagling to get the sleeves down his arms, and Harry was completely naked.
“Take yours off too and I’ll return the favor,” Harry said.
“Hmm…” Draco looked at his watch. “Maybe, in a couple of hours, if you’re still awake. I have a runes translation to finish first.”
“You’re choosing Ancient Runes homework over a blowjob?” Harry asked incredulously.
“If you give me one now, I’ll fall asleep,” said Draco reasonably. “And then my homework won’t get done, and I’ll get bad marks, and fail out of Hogwarts, and then be unemployable, leaving us to live in destitution for the rest of our days.”
“All from one little blowjob. What a travesty,” said Harry. “Never mind, I suppose, that between us we have more money than we could ever possibly need.”
“Shhhh,” Draco said. “Not relevant.” He peeled the covers from underneath Harry and then began to lay them over his naked body.
“Are you seriously tucking me into bed right now?” Harry asked, though, since he still didn’t feel much like moving, he was not fighting Draco at all.
“I think you could use some rest. You’ve earned it, you don’t have any homework that can’t wait until tomorrow, and you’ve had a rough day. Just enjoy it.”
Harry huffed. “You know what would make me feel even better? Giving you a blowie. That would really get my spirits up.”
Draco laughed. “Don’t tempt me, Harry.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re so bloody tempting, and I’m only half a term away from perfect marks in Ancient Runes. Please don’t make me choose between your sexy, talented mouth and finally besting Hermione in this subject. That would just be cruel.”
Harry sighed but acquiesced, glad, at least, that Draco was finally calling Hermione by her given name. It had taken him long enough.
“Fine,” he said. “But I’m staying up until you get back.”
“Promises, promises,” Draco said. “I won’t hold it against you, you know, if you don’t make it.”
“Really. I’m determined to now. I’ll open my Charms text, get ahead on my reading. I’m sure it will keep me riveted.”
“Getting ahead on schoolwork!” Draco feigned shock. “I must be rubbing off on you.”
“You could rub one off on me right now, if you wanted,” Harry replied cheekily. “I’ll help.”
“All right, that’s enough of that,” said Draco. His expression sobered a little. “I love you.”
Harry, realizing that they were getting back into more serious territory and that Draco was really going to leave him to finish his homework, took Draco’s hand. “I love you, too. And thanks. For everything.”
Draco leaned over to give Harry a sweet, chaste kiss. “Anything for you. Always.”
Harry liked the sound of that. “Always,” he echoed.
He saw Draco swallow, trying to contain the raw emotion Harry could see reflected in his eyes. Then, with another kiss and a soft, “I’ll be back,” Draco stood and walked out, leaving Harry alone to pass the time with daydreams of what he would do to Draco when he returned.
goddess-of_dragons: Thank you! It’s so amazing to hear that! I hope this satisfied your curiosity a bit, though Harry still has a lot to figure out regarding the apprenticeship.
djaddict: Thanks! Lol yeah, if you’re not a fan of Ron then you probably didn’t love where that plot line ended up going. But I promise it’s not the end of the story for Blaise yet!
Book_addict_89: Thanks! Me too :)
Dedicated_Reader: I am basking in your forgiveness, and your praise for that chapter :) And I’m glad you’re feeling the mild D/s thing I have going on with them. It’s just the way things naturally unfolded in my mind. I have an idea for maybe taking it a little bit farther down the road. We’ll just have to see…
smn: Thank you! And you are definitely not the only one who is rooting for them. So am I! I wasn’t sure I would be, because I’ve never seen them as the most natural couple. But I’ve managed to convince myself through this plotline that they can actually work. I’m glad you were convinced too!
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