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Easy as Falling	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 31246 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 15
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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Sixteen—Private Conversations

            Harry looked up as Briseis stepped into his office—well, the disused classroom he had started to make his office. Harry had to admit that the desk he had Transfigured from a stack of chairs wasn’t as comfortable as the Headmistress’s, but he wanted McGonagall to sit behind that one again if she could. “No luck?” he asked.

            Briseis shook her head briskly and came up to him. She was holding the Daily Prophet, Harry saw. He braced himself as she spread it on the desk and said, “I don’t think she’ll ever trust you again, my Lord. You took too much confidence away from her, and I also think that she’s privately disgusted she didn’t try to do anything to spare Hogwarts, my Lord. What is this, my Lord?”

            Harry had known what it would be from her tone of address if nothing else, and he looked at the photographs on the front page with only a few sharp leaps of his heart.

            “Someone’s idea of a joke?” he asked, but then he looked up into her face. He swallowed and glanced off to the side.

            “You knew this was coming,” Briseis said, in the kind of sweet tone Harry had sometimes heard when Hermione thought someone had stolen one of her books. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me. Even though I’m supposed to be your adviser.”

            “They were sent to Malfoy yesterday,” Harry muttered, standing up from behind his desk and pacing back and forth. “I think they were intended as a threat to make him back away from me. We had to wait to see what they did next, though. Maybe that was the way they were meant, but we couldn’t be sure.”

            “No, instead it’s a warning to the whole wizarding world to consider you as an abused child instead of a rational adult,” Briseis snapped, and leaned her hip on the desk, and scowled at him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

            “You were busy yesterday, and I didn’t feel like talking about it,” Harry said. “I already had to talk about it with Malfoy in front of some of his—friends.” He had been about to say “Slytherin friends,” but he had to remember that Briseis had been in that House, too.

            “No,” Briseis said a minute later, as they stared at each other and Harry tried to figure out why she hadn’t already responded. “I meant, why didn’t you tell me this was a factor? That someone might pry into your past and bring this kind of thing out? I could have had a countermove ready if you had.”

            Harry stared at her some more. Briseis made an impatient noise and snapped her fingers in front of his nose. Harry jumped back.

            “You really aren’t afraid of me, are you?” he asked, as he watched the floor mounding up beneath Briseis. She rode it as if she were surfing a wave, all the while never taking her eyes from him.

            “I can’t be if I’m to be your Death Eater,” she snapped. “Now, answer the question.”

            Harry blinked again, rubbed his eyes, and then shook his head and plunged into answering the question, because why not? He had already spoken about this in front of Malfoy’s friends, feeling that he had little choice when Malfoy had already taken some risks for him, and at least he thought Briseis was more loyal to him than Parkinson or Zabini would have any reason to be. “I wouldn’t have told you.”

            Briseis stared at him in turn. Then she turned and took a chair on the other side of the room, although at least she turned it to face the desk. She Vanished some of the dust around her with a single movement of her wand.

            “I see.”

            Harry winced. He hated the tone that had just come out of her mouth. He couldn’t stay still; he started pacing again, over to the other side of the room, where he resisted the urge to kick the wall. Hogwarts had been too good to him for him to take out his temper on her in petty urges like that.

            “It never—I never thought that anyone would get hold of anything from my Muggle past,” he said. “It should have stayed dead and buried. I never talked about it. Nor did anyone else at school, and there were people there who would have rejoiced in having rubbish like that to talk about. I thought no one knew.”

            “But it affects your behavior, past and present,” said Briseis. “It is the kind of thing I should have known about. Why did you not tell me?”

            “Because I’m ashamed of it,” Harry said. Get through this hard and fast, just like he had the initial admission of abuse to Malfoy and his minions, and perhaps it would hurt less. He turned to look at her. “Because there was never anyone who could stop it when it was happening, and then I came to Hogwarts and it wasn’t important anymore.”

            Briseis turned her head silently to the newspaper.

            “Yes, well, it’s artificially important because they made it so,” Harry said, and turned his back. The magic inside him crackled and sang. He listened to the humming of power through Hogwarts’s wards because that was better than exploding in a storm of thunder and lightning. “But if they had never brought it up, I would never have told you.”

            Silence, but not the silence of Briseis getting up and walking out of the room, which was honestly what Harry had expected to hear. He turned his head and eyed her cautiously, wondering why she hadn’t.

            “Have you told anyone else?” Briseis asked. She sat upright on the chair now, her hands clasped in her lap. She looked like a parody of Aunt Petunia, the way she used to sit in church during that brief period when she decided it was important to being normal to go.

            “I told you. Malfoy and—”

            “No,” Briseis said. “I meant—I don’t know, the Headmaster, when he was alive. McGonagall. Your friends. That Weasley who keeps the joke shop. Anyone else you trust, anyone who could have helped you.”

            Harry turned slowly back towards her, resting his hip on the wall the whole while. Briseis sneaked a look at him, bit her lip as if she wanted to turn away, but kept looking. She didn’t stop biting her lip, and Harry felt he was about to start.

            “No one could stop it while it was happening,” Harry told her. He felt—strange. As though he had to handle Briseis gently, even though she was the one who wanted to know if he had sought comfort for his stupid emotional wounds. “I had to go back to that house every summer because my aunt lived there, and being with her renewed the blood wards.”

            “If she didn’t take you in willingly, then they wouldn’t have been worth much,” Briseis said, almost inaudibly.

            Harry shook his head. “There was little to no love lost between us, but she did accept me of her own free will. I know—I heard something once that convinced me of that. I know.”

            Briseis did some more frowning. Then she said, “Someone like McGonagall could have made things easier for you, even if you did have to go back there.”

            Harry shook his head again. He felt tired, as though someone had strapped a lead weight to the back of his neck. There was a reason that he hated talking about this, and this was the main one, the way everyone would be all horrified and insist on exploring options that had closed a long time ago. “She couldn’t have done anything. Dumbledore was the one who placed me there. He apologized, once, for doing that. He would have overruled McGonagall if she tried to do something. And anyway, threats didn’t work on the Dursleys when I was a kid. By the time I was fifteen or so, they’d mostly stopped doing it. It was over.”

            Briseis continued sitting still for some moments. Harry used the time to recover himself. He hadn’t told anyone this before, either. He was sure that Hermione would have stared at him in silence and Ron would have turned red before stammering out promises to do something.

            But what could they do? Harry wasn’t the little boy in the cupboard anymore, who could be benefited by a wizard climbing through the window. Just like Dudley wasn’t the fat boy who had beaten him up anymore, and Harry didn’t want him punished for that. They’d both changed. They’d both grown up.

            Briseis finally stood and said, in an empty voice Harry had never heard from her, “I shall consider the pictures and come up with a viable course of action.” She picked up the paper and glanced at Harry.

            After a second, Harry realized what she was waiting for and waved his hand. “Yes, I’ve looked at it as much as I want.”

            Briseis faded away with the paper. Though she did pause on the threshold of the room, and turn around to bow to him.

            Harry didn’t know what kind of gesture he gave in response, a flap of his hand or a nod. He only knew that the door closed, and he was alone again, with the sluggish mud of his memories drifting up and down in his mind.

*

            “So, what they did was send the photographs to the paper.”

            Draco said the words because they were the easy ones to say, and he’d come here to discuss the photographs—well, as far as Potter knew, anyway—and because Potter hadn’t said anything to him since Draco entered his new office. Draco disapproved of the new office. There was still a taste and scent of dust in the air that Draco didn’t think would ever be entirely gone. The new desk Potter had Transfigured wasn’t as handsome as the one in what he insisted on calling the Headmistress’s office. But Potter wouldn’t listen to him if he talked about that.

            For a second, Draco thought he wouldn’t listen to him talk about this, either. Potter was standing by the far wall and staring at the stones as though they contained the answers to all the questions Draco wanted to ask.

            Not these. Draco turned to a chair that had a stack of books holding up the broken leg and reconsidered sitting down in it. He had thought he could put Potter at his ease by acting casual, but now he doubted it.

            “Yes,” Potter said, turning around. “So I think they gave up on driving you away from me when you didn’t write back.”

            Draco studied him for a moment. Potter’s face was so tense that Draco wanted to snap his fingers and see if he jumped. But then, as a vibration moving in the floor under his feet warned him, the school might attack him. Draco didn’t want to see what Potter would do enough to risk injuries.

            “How could I write back?” Draco asked. “Their owl was gone.”

            “So maybe they really wanted the public exposure all along,” Potter said, stalking past him without deigning to notice that. Draco turned to follow him as he paced. Potter wore dark blue robes today. Draco wondered if he had someone to interview. They were decidedly too ornate a costume for a private conversation with an ally. “But then why send the photographs to you first? That’s what I can’t figure out for sure, even though I have some ideas.”

            Well, Potter had acted like a Slytherin with his political analysis. Perhaps it was up to Draco to act more like a Gryffindor and push the direct route. “Potter.”

            It seemed, the minute the word was out, that Potter knew what he had come to say. He wheeled to face Draco, and his breath was low and fast. His hand rose, clenched in a fist, as if to hit or strike or defend.

            He lowered the fist, of course, because he wasn’t stupid, and because he must have known that he couldn’t escape it. But he only nodded and said, “What did you want to tell me?”

            “You were abused,” Draco said.

            Potter blinked and clasped his hands behind his back, rocking in place a little, like a toy someone had pushed. “Yes. I told you that the other day. Is this your plan now? To repeat facts to me until I crack?”

            Draco made himself stare into Potter’s eyes until Potter started fidgeting in place and looked uneasily the other way. Draco nodded. “You were abused, and you were more worried about it getting out than you wanted to show,” he said. “You looked like you wanted to faint when you first saw the pictures.”

            “That was childish of me,” Potter said quietly, staring at Draco as if daring him to disagree. “Because this is only another trick to try and make me look unstable, and I should have known it.”

            Draco took a step towards him. He had come prepared for a battle, after all, if not quite this thick a wall of denial. “I think you should be more honest with me than you’re allowing yourself,” he said.

            “Explain what that means, and I will.” Potter’s voice was clipped enough now to make Draco wince.

            Draco sighed. It was just as well he had made the commitment in his head to Gryffindor recklessness, because subtlety wouldn’t have got through. “You were hurt,” he said. “Hurt badly enough that I know how great your courage must have been to pretend that there was nothing important in those pictures, especially with two friends of mine listening.”

            Potter held his eyes, and then looked away. Draco saw a quick flash of something that might have been agony. But it got buried, again, and Potter stepped away from the small pile of wood that rose out of the floor as if inviting him to sit down.

            “Look,” Potter said softly, to what could as easily have been the walls or the desk instead of Draco. “I know I’m at risk of being unstable. I think that’s been true since I was a year and a half old. I remember part of the way Voldemort killed my mother. That’s what I see when Dementors come near me. But I promise I’m not going to crack and endanger your campaign. If I start, then Briseis will pull me back.”

            Draco moved nearer. “And you don’t believe I came to speak about that, either,” he murmured. “You’re so frightened of what I really came to talk about that you’re putting as many obstacles in the way as you can.”

            Potter swung around, and now there was an ugly snarl on his face, of the kind that might get Draco thrown out of the school after all. “What else were you going to talk about? Accuse me of deliberately keeping this a secret from you, the way Briseis did?”

            Draco paused, temporarily intrigued by the thought of asking how that conversation had gone. But then he shook his head. Once again, Potter was using it as a distraction from the main target. He would fling out personal revelations all day, it seemed, like the Dementor fact, to keep Draco from moving closer to the heart of things.

            “Why didn’t I hear anything about this before?” he asked.

            Potter stared at him. “Because I don’t like going on about it, and my friends know how to keep secrets?”

            “Not in that sense,” Draco said, although thinking about it, he had to admit he could see how Potter had come to that interpretation of his words. “I meant—why didn’t you speak to someone who could have helped you?”

            “You and Briseis and your bloody similar questions,” Potter muttered, folding his arms. “Look, I hate admitting it, okay? It makes me feel little and small and ashamed and helpless and powerless. I hate it. But it happened, and I’m okay now. I won’t make trouble.”

            “I’m not concerned about that.”

            Potter turned around, rapidly enough that Draco had to stiffen his muscles so he wouldn’t back up. Potter had stormed right up to him and was snarling in his face. Magic enwrapped him, in a crown of spiky yellow thorns that looked like a lion’s mane stiffened with blood.

            “Then tell me what you’re concerned about,” he hissed into Draco’s ear. “And then leave. I’m tired of you.”

            Draco reached up and put his hands on either sides of Potter’s face, ignoring the way the magic stung his palms. Potter hadn’t actually smacked Draco across the room with his power, yet, or flayed his skin from his body. That had to mean something.

            It meant that Potter stared at Draco for the next second, too, instead of attacking, and Draco could speak what was on his mind.

            “When I realized what had happened, I wanted to touch you,” he whispered. “I wanted to know so much more about what they did to you than what I could say in front of Blaise and Pansy. It meant I would have hunted down and hurt those Muggles, or I could have. If you’d talked to me about it.” He touched Potter’s hair, and tugged at it. “I wanted to protect you.”

            Potter gaped at him. Draco raised an eyebrow back. After the kisses they had shared, he hadn’t thought the announcement would be entirely unexpected.

            “But you know nothing about me,” Potter whispered, as if marveling. “And I told you that I dealt with it.”

            “People who’ve dealt with it don’t look as if they’re going to faint at the sight of a picture,” Draco whispered back, his lips an inch away from Potter’s. Their breaths whistled together. Draco’s hands tingled, and not with magic.

            “People who are political allies don’t want to punish other people they don’t know for the sake of something that happened in the past,” Potter snapped.

            Draco nodded. He suspected the smile creeping up over his lips made him look a little strange, but he didn’t care. Potter didn’t push him away, and that was what Draco wanted.

            “How right you are,” he whispered. “But people who are more than political allies might want that.”

            Potter’s eyes widened in shock, and Draco leaned in and kissed him again, this time feeling Potter’s tongue sharp-tasting and sharply-moving against his, and the way that Potter’s hands and magic rose as if they would push him away and then didn’t.

            Draco finished the kiss earlier than he’d meant to, because it was intense enough to knock him off his feet by itself, and he didn’t want that yet. He leaned his forehead against Potter’s instead and closed his eyes, wondering if anyone else knew the feeling of that rough, scarred skin above the lightning bolt the way he knew it.

            “Now,” he whispered, when the room had had time to stop reeling. “Will you tell me?”

*

            alexkdp: Thanks! Poor Harry, he does think he’s over it, but everyone else keeps insisting he’s not.

            Seiren: Draco is trying, anyway.

            qwerty: He’s hoping for help with the public reaction, actually, if people would just stop acting like he was helpless, they can do this any time now.

            delia cerrano: Yes, Harry thinks it’s the Ministry, since the pictures are old.

            SP777: Harry doesn’t want to blow up, because that would just confirm the idea that he’s unstable. But he’s feeling like blowing up at Draco and Brisieis, since they won’t let it go.

            Well, but Draco’s friends don’t see it that way, and they would have different reactions.

            Thank you!
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Easy as Falling