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Parsimony	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 14122 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Chapter Eighteen—Embarrassment and Other Potential Embarrassments

            “Will you hush? You woke him up!”

            Harry opened his eyes to light that hurt, and sat up right away, because the last thing he could remember was someone firing curses at him. Or probably at Draco, considering that some of the Slytherins who had hurt him were in Charms, too.

            His head promptly tried to fall off his neck, and the ache spread throughout his temples and his scar, and he screwed up his eyes and pushed his hands into them. A glance around showed him enough white that he knew he was in the hospital wing. There was no one in the beds besides him, which was a relief.

            Then he thought of Draco potentially being hurt badly enough to need a private bed, and that was worse than the headache. He flung back the sheets and tried to scramble to the floor, looking desperately around to find his glasses and his wand as he did so.

            “Mr. Potter! You are quite safe, and so is everyone else.”

            Madam Pomfrey had dealt with him often enough in the aftermath of the war to know what would worry him. He relaxed with a little sigh and leaned back on the pillows just before she would probably have cast a spell to push him there. “What was the curse that hit me?” he asked. “Us? Who cast it?”

            “Someone who should be extremely glad that she fled the school immediately afterwards, or she would have been expelled,” Madam Pomfrey said grimly, bustling around the room. Harry watched her for a second, then looked around for a sign of whoever had woken him up, or at least whoever she had been talking to. He would have expected Ron and Hermione, maybe Professor Klein come to see if it was another Death Eater attack.

            Instead, Draco sat in a chair, his face pale and still. He nodded to Harry when he caught his eye, and then leaned back in the seat and crossed his arms over his chest. He looked cold, Harry thought, studying him. Had the curse stolen his body heat?

            No, because Madam Pomfrey had said that no one else was hurt, and she wouldn’t have lied about something like that. Harry finally turned his head and saw the potion she was holding out to him, something the color of mint. He knew it wouldn’t have that flavor, and so held his nose while he tipped it down his throat. Madam Pomfrey shook her head at him, smiling a little, and took the vial back.

            “Miss Parkinson cast the curse,” she said quietly. “It was meant to change your memory, as nearly as we can figure out. If she threatened you, she perhaps wanted you to forget it.”

            Harry kept from looking at Draco with an effort. “She did,” he said. “That’s it, Madam Pomfrey, I’m sure.” He rubbed his head. “But why does my head hurt if she didn’t succeed in getting what she wanted?”

            “Because you hit it against the table leg,” Madam Pomfrey said. “And nearly gave yourself a concussion! Trying to wake you up and listening to the yelling and screaming was enough to give me a fit. But we did wake you up long enough to determine it wasn’t a concussion, and the best thing then was to let you sleep. Do you remember waking up before?”

            Harry frowned. “It seems like a dream,” he admitted. He could see Draco’s face hovering in front of him if he concentrated, but then, it did that all the time in his waking thoughts anyway. And Ron and Hermione had been here, hadn’t they, watching him with wet, wide eyes? “Were my friends here?”

            “Yes, but I sent them away again when they couldn’t be sensible,” Madam Pomfrey said. She glanced at Draco, and her voice softened. “Mr. Malfoy understood—until the last few minutes, at least—that quiet is best for patients in your condition. I want to keep you for a last few diagnostic spells, Mr. Potter, and to make sure that you rest, but there’s no reason you can’t leave the hospital wing tomorrow.”

            Harry nodded, and looked helpful and blinked slowly until she bustled off to attend to something else. Then he rolled over on the bed and locked eyes with Draco.

            “A memory charm,” Draco breathed. “Well, mixed with something else, or it could never have caused the damage it did.” He swallowed. “She’s starting to remember. Or she’s starting to have a notion about what I did to her.”

            “Are you sure?” Harry asked. “I mean, I think it’s the most logical explanation, too,” he added, when Draco glared at him. “I just want to know if it’s the real one.”

            “We can’t get any clearer answer, except by asking Pansy,” Draco said. “And she did run away. I think she knew that she’d gone too far when you jumped into her line of fire. She could get away with attacking me, maybe—although it was still insanely risky to try it in the classroom—but not the Chosen One.” He exhaled painfully and uncurled his fingers from the tight grip they had on the flesh of his other wrist. “I’m just surprised she tried it at all. So far, she and the others have kept the sneers and threats and assaults in private.”

            “She did threaten me earlier,” Harry said quietly. “Told me to stay away from you. I think her real target was you, but she wouldn’t have minded taking me out of the game, either, or screwing up my memory of her threat, or whatever else she was trying to do. And as far as why she tried it in Charms, she probably was going to excuse it as a Triad Charm gone wrong.” He shook his head. “But then she panicked because I wasn’t moving, or she decided that an assault on the Chosen One by someone who wanted to throw him to the Death Eaters was never going to get passed off as a mistake. Who knows?”

            Draco narrowed his eyes. “You don’t seem interested in why she did it. You should be. If my spell’s hold is weakening on my friends’ memories, or changing, then it’ll affect what we can do to—change them.” He’d decided not to say “help them” at the last minute, Harry decided.

            “Because she’s gone,” Harry said. “And I don’t think you have any idea about where she’s gone, do you? Or you would have shared it with someone.”

            Draco stared at him. “How do you know that?” he asked at last, his voice hushed. Perhaps it was only because of what they were talking about, but Harry didn’t think so. Draco’s face was too pale for that, and once again he was digging his fingernails into his wrist. “I might have kept quiet because if someone finds out about that spell—”

            “But she’s a threat to you, and to me, and she could tell someone else about the spell when she’s away from school, too, if she’s really starting to figure out things,” Harry pointed out quietly. “Or that she hates you, at least, and she might get someone interested in that even if they don’t think it’s strange. So you want her back. You would have told someone if you knew. The only option we have is to watch Zabini and Goyle and the others, and figure out whether their behavior is changing, or the spell is changing, from them.”

            Draco closed his eyes, then opened them again. “I had no idea that you knew me that well,” he said, and his eyes were clear, but the sneer he tried to pair with that was false. “You—haven’t shown it so far.”

            “Didn’t want to freak you out,” Harry said peaceably, and changed the subject. “What happened right after the curse hit?”

            “Granger and Weasley screamed like you were dying,” Draco said, with a faint, scornful smile that reminded Harry of something he hadn’t remembered often before: that Draco had seen his share of death and torture and pain during the war, and wouldn’t scream like that just because someone was lying unconscious on the floor. “Someone yelled that it was Pansy, but I think I was the only one who heard them. Everyone was more worried about you than about her.”

            Harry grimaced and nodded. He still thought Parkinson had probably aimed more for Draco than him, but a side-effect of her victim being the Boy-Who-Lived was that he’d get a lot of attention right at first and serve as a nice distraction.

            “And then someone else figured out that you were unconscious, but not dead, and they became interested in hauling you up to the hospital wing.” Draco shrugged and leaned back in his chair, his face shutting as he stared up at the ceiling. “They brought me to the Headmistress. She seemed to think I would know something about the attack.”

            “Sorry about that,” Harry said. “Suspicion falling on you, I mean,” he added, when Draco’s eyes darted back to him and his expression plainly said that he had no idea what Harry was babbling about.

            “You didn’t cause it,” Draco said, and his voice twanged like bent metal. “And you could have done nothing to prevent it, unconscious as you were.”

            “I’m not allowed to say sorry just because I feel sympathy for you?” Harry asked, and grinned at him.

            Draco stood up from his chair so fast that it skittered backwards, and for a moment Harry thought Madam Pomfrey would come out and tell Draco to be quiet again. He was prepared to defend Draco if it happened.

            Perhaps he should have been prepared to defend himself from Draco. Draco was right in his face, his nose brushing Harry’s, his mouth close enough that Harry could smell a slight, sour fish smell to his breath. He blinked, and wondered what in the world Draco had been eating. If he’d had dinner since the attack, then Harry made a mental note not to eat anything that smelled like Draco’s breath.

            “Don’t treat me like this,” Draco breathed. “Don’t you dare treat me like this.”

            “Sympathetically?” Harry tried to hold onto the grin, but it was crumpling. He ground his teeth. He was trying to be patient, he was trying to be helpful, especially since he had done some things wrong and Draco needed help, but he was aching with the effort to stay that way now. Draco had been stupid, and here he was, acting stupid again. “You’d prefer me to yell at you all the time and say that it was your fault?”

            “You can’t treat me like your friend,” Draco continued, his voice so thick and obsessive that Harry was sure he hadn’t heard a word Harry had said. “I’m not one.”

            “You’re someone I need to help, and you’re someone who tried to help me, with Klein and other things,” Harry countered. If this was an argument, he was going to win it, and it looked like the best way to win it would be to continue to annoy Draco. His anger made him smile again, and Draco was an idiot to stare at him, because he should have understood the smile better than that. “I think I’ll continue treating you like a friend when it annoys you so much. To annoy you, I must be doing something right.”

            Draco moved forwards until their foreheads bumped. Then he grabbed Harry’s shoulders and shook him. Harry grabbed his arms and stopped him from doing that; his head still hurt, no matter what potion Madam Pomfrey had given him.

            Draco was hissing into his face now, in a voice that made Harry want to ask if he was sure he didn’t speak Parseltongue. His breath filled up the space between them, and yep, there was that stink again. Harry bit his tongue to keep from asking what the hell it was.

            “You know me. You must know how long I’ve wanted you to be my friend. And now you’re only doing that because you pity me, and that’s worse than you never doing it at all.”

            Harry swallowed. Yeah, he didn’t have the urge to taunt Draco right now, or to laugh at him. He wondered if Draco realized that he had just told Harry something much deeper than Harry ever could have guessed, something he would curse himself for in a little while.

            But Harry had to say exactly the right thing here. He got his mouth open, but Draco was continuing, and it was clear that he wasn’t going to stop just because Harry understood him better than before and had something to say to him.

            “From that first day on, what I wanted from you was friendship. I took your attention because you gave it to me for taunting you and hexing you and following you around and trying to get you in trouble, but I was waiting for the day that you would turn around and see me and realize I was the friend you really wanted. For that, and nothing else. Until I woke up one day and realized what a pathetic fantasy it was. I wasn’t living in some story where the child who’s rejected by the all-powerful bully gets the bully to love and admire him at the end of the story because he’s so much better than the bully. You already rejected me, and you would reject me again if you found out what I was waiting for, and laugh at me.”

            He paused to gulp down air, and Harry stared at him. That was—that was so strange. He had known Draco hated him, felt embarrassed by him, blamed him for lots of things, sure, but he had never thought Draco would want anything like that from him. Why would he? Harry was a Gryffindor, and pathetic by definition. Draco had more money than Harry, and a loving family, and more friends, and a House he was proud of. Sure, Harry had the fame and attention, but Draco knew how that fame could change at a moment’s notice and how he could use it to hurt Harry. Otherwise, he never would have cooked up that plot with Rita Skeeter in fourth year.

            Harry knew lots of people who wanted something from him. And he had always thought that what Draco wanted was for him to curl up and die.

            Why should he want my friendship so much? Just because I was the Boy-Who-Lived?

            But then another thought occurred to Harry, and he interrupted Draco before he could get going again. “You only wanted to be my friend because I rejected you,” he snapped, and his heart fluttered wildly and he leaned in close enough that they bumped foreheads again. Draco glared at him, eyes frozen in fury, but Harry all but spat into his face. “If I’d been your friend, you would have been happy for about five minutes, and then you would have thrown me away like a broken toy. Because you got what you wanted, and that meant it wasn’t fun anymore.”

            Draco clenched his hands in front of him, which was preferable to having them clamped on his shoulders again, Harry thought, but only just. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I saw the way you were with Weasley and Granger. I might laugh and make fun of it when anyone else was around, but I saw. You were loyal to them, and you meant what you said, and you were miserable when they fought with you. I would have had that, if you had been my friend.”

            “How do you know?” Harry sneered at him. He was in the mood to smash Draco’s head open against the wall at the moment. It was the way he had felt years ago, and he had promised this summer that he would stop that, but at the moment, he didn’t care. “You probably would have corrupted me and I would have betrayed you and rejected you even if you didn’t do it to me!”



            “I wouldn’t have,” Draco began, and then choked on the words and fell silent for a long moment before he was able to continue. Harry felt the bitter, poisonous part of his rage begin to retreat, but he’d already said everything he was thinking, and it was too late to go back. “I wouldn’t have corrupted you,” Draco said at last, in a tone that Harry didn’t think could have got any more emotionless without special training. “I would have been friends with you, yes. I would have had that loyalty for myself.”

            “So you wanted someone who would follow you and not turn on you the way your friends have now,” Harry said. “Well, you’re right about one thing.”

            “What?” Draco looked over his shoulder as if wondering why Madam Pomfrey didn’t appear when she’d be welcome.

            “You aren’t going to have my friendship out of pity,” Harry said. “There’s nothing in the world I want less right now than to be friends with you, that way. You’re always thinking of yourself. You think—you think I would have been, what, your good little dog following you around? The way you’re going on about loyalty. You think I would have stood aside and let you do whatever you want because I was loyal to you. It doesn’t work that way.”

            “I never said anything about that!” Draco snapped, rising to his feet. His hair wisped around his head like dandelion fluff, and Harry pinched his arm to make himself stop thinking stupid thoughts like that. “I don’t want you as some little dog, the way you keep putting it. You would have been my friend.”

            “You know the reason I’m Ron’s friend?” Harry shouted. He knew Madam Pomfrey would probably come back any second and throw Draco out of the infirmary and tell him to get some rest, but not before he could say this. “And Hermione’s? And Ginny’s? And Neville’s? And everyone else’s, just not yours?”

            “What, then?” Draco braced himself as if he was going to walk off a cliff.

            “Because they’re loyal to me, too!” Harry waved his hands around, and ignored the renewed ache in his head. Madam Pomfrey said he didn’t have a concussion, so it was perfectly fine if he moved around and ignored the pain. And somewhere in the back of his head, that made sense. It didn’t matter. Things would be done in a few seconds and then he’d probably never see Draco again, because he was going to say the obvious thing that Draco would hate. “Because they’re my friends too! Because they helped me, and fought on the same side of the war, and they joke with me, and they don’t just expect me to help them all the time! They help me, too!”

            “That’s—that’s—allies,” Draco said, and croaked the word. He was edging towards the door of the hospital wing, and if his eyes didn’t stop darting over Harry’s shoulder every few words, he was going to drive Harry quite mad.

            “No,” Harry said. “Allies are people who are just together because they do things for each other and no more. Friends are people who are together because they want to do things for each other.” His voice sank. Maybe the curse Parkinson had used had damaged his throat, too, even though Madam Pomfrey hadn’t said so, because he found it hurt to speak much above a whisper now. “I want to help you. But you want me to be loyal to you, and be your friend, and erase the last few years so I never chose Ron over you on the train, and—and I don’t have a fucking clue what else. That’s not friendship, and it’s not alliance.”

            He slumped back against the pillow and closed his eyes. He couldn’t even say why he was so angry, so disappointed, to soothe the nameless pulse pounding in his head. Maybe just because he’d helped Draco and thought it would lead to them burying this stupid hatred they used to have for each other. Maybe because he was an idiot and had thought that Draco meant the offers of alliance he gave in the Forest and when they stood against Klein together to be long-lasting.

            But, no. There were some things that Harry had to do himself, and arguing with Klein and helping Snape were two of them. He’d finish the research for the spell to replace Draco’s screwed-up memory charm, and then they would go their separate ways. There was nothing to hold them together.

            “That’s not true.”

            “What’s not true?” Harry pried one eye open. And his emotions had changed again, and now he felt a little ashamed of what he’d said. There was no reason for it. He was an idiot, to think that Draco would ever have told him the truth without being forced to, after the way he had lied to Harry in the first place. They were just going to part. They couldn’t be friends, and some of the stupid things Harry felt were just that, stupid, and he was a moody child. “I think everything I said was true.”

            Draco was standing near the bed again, and he had an expression on his face that…made Harry sit up. It was solemn. Other than that, Harry couldn’t read it. Draco folded his arms and stared straight at him.

            “It’s not true that I could never try that kind of friendship,” Draco said. “I just never understood it. I thought you were loyal, and that was the end of it.” He paused, gnawing his lip. “I do have friends, but it’s more like an alliance, the way you would describe it. We always had to keep in mind that we might have to turn against each other in politics or if our families didn’t like each other. Or our mothers might try to force us together and make us go on dates. Or someone might discover our blood wasn’t pure enough, a few generations back. Someone is always searching, you know, to discover a Muggle in someone else’s family tree. It’s a kind of game,” he added bitterly.

            Harry tilted his head. “But you think you could still be good at friendship, even coming out of a House like that?”

            “It’s not the House,” Draco corrected him sharply. “There are Slytherins who aren’t like that. It was our group, my year, growing up during the war.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Okay. You saved me, and it’s hard to get used to, and you forced me to tell the truth, and that’s hard to get used to. But we’re here now, and I’d like—I’d still like your friendship.” He made a sour face. “I don’t know if death will cure me of wanting that.”

            It seemed pathetic, and it was, in a way. Harry hadn’t thought he could be that important to anyone, and especially to someone who had despised him for most of their childhood. But that wasn’t the important thing.

            Not if they didn’t want it to be.

            “Then let’s start over,” he said. “We don’t lie to each other, we don’t think all the time about how we saved each other’s lives, and we don’t try to say stupid things to hurt each other. Does that work?”

            “That’s all the stuff we don’t do,” Draco pointed out, his eyes as grey as fog. “What do we do?”

            Harry was tired and his head hurt, but he knew an invitation when he heard one. He stuck out his hand.

            “We shake hands,” he said. “Like this.”

            The room was stifling hot, or seemed that way, during the moments when Draco stood there with his eyes darting from Harry’s hand to his face. Then he took a step forwards and clasped it, shakily.

            Harry caught a glimpse of movement from the corner of his eye, and smiled a little. It seemed Madam Pomfrey sometimes thought her patients needed some things more than they needed healing potions and bedrest.

            And that might include even the patients who weren’t currently in bed. Because Draco was looking at him, for the first time all year, with eyes that were really clear, not just in contrast to a glazed state but for themselves, and bright.

*

            ChaosLady: Thank you!

            unneeded: Well, Snape didn’t realize, either, so you’re in good company!

            SP777: I only know the answer to one of those questions. ;)

            Fullmoons_wings: Thank you! No, I haven’t really mentioned who Ginny’s with, I don’t think. Do you mean what Draco widened his eyes at near the end of the last chapter? He basically saw that Harry was starting to pay attention to him, and was startled by it.
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Parsimony