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Universal Chaos	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13263 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

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Chapter Two—The Skilled and the Lonely

            The Snitch was just ahead. Draco dived around the Arrows’ Seeker and turned upside-down to avoid a Bludger one of the Appleby Beaters had aimed at him. Shrieks assaulted his ears. He ignored them easily and clasped his knees around the broom. He would need both hands to catch the Snitch, which fluttered its wings in dizzying patterns that Draco recognized as the prelude to a dodge.

            Sure enough, the Snitch went left. Draco smacked it with his left palm and started to close his fingers on it, but the Snitch darted right. Draco smiled and hit it with his right palm in turn, which seemed to stun it for a moment; the wings stopped beating. Then Draco clasped his hands together, securing it, and swung himself upright, lifting his hands high. The match wasn’t officially ended until his capture was announced.

            There came a breathless gasp before the voice of the announcer rippled out across the pitch. “And the Wimbourne Wasps’ Seeker catches the Snitch! Victory to the Wasps, with 410 points!”

            Rapturous cheering followed, mingled with a chorus of buzzes as the fans of Draco’s team showed their enthusiasm. Draco waved to them, and ignored the catcalls rising from the Arrows’ fans. Of course they would make the noise, but they couldn’t do anything to change the outcome. The Appleby Seeker still might, but Draco kept a careful eye out behind and below him as he flew down to his side of the pitch.

            She left him alone. Draco straightened and dropped one hand so that everyone could see the Snitch. When he waved it, two people in the audience fainted, and some of the more prepared fans hurled bouquets at him. The personal spell Draco always carried tightly wrapped around him changed the bouquets to the harmless scent of flowers as they reached for him. Draco winked at the throwers, and sincerely hoped that one of them, a young woman with blue eyes that reminded him of his mother’s, hadn’t actually peed her knickers in her excitement.

            Then his teammates were around him, and all of them, even that arrogant Lorenzo Aldais, were offering sincere congratulations. Draco accepted them with easy nods and murmurs, gracefully giving credit to the Beaters’ quick work in holding the other Seeker away from him until he could make the catch.

            All the while, his eyes scanned theirs for some hint of deep feeling, some warmth that would indicate interest in him as a person.

            As always, he failed to find it.

            Draco turned and waved to the crowd again, half of which was now applauding and jumping up and down, and concentrated on the bright flash of the Snitch to somewhat fill the hole in his heart.

*

            Harry cheered with all the rest, and clapped until his hands were raw. That had been a lovely bit of flying. He ought to know; he’d gone to more Quidditch games in the last year than he’d attended during his whole time at Hogwarts, and there were few Seekers who made their captures as gracefully as Malfoy had.

            Now to get near him.

            Harry studied the pitch thoughtfully as he stood up and made his way out of the stands, past chattering and arguing groups who seemed intent on discussing every play of the match over again. The Wasps had vanished into the far side, where the showers had to be. Several burly witches and wizards had taken up a position in front of the doors they’d gone through. Harry knew their job would be to hold away the overly inquisitive. He doubted that he could charm his way past them, especially given what the other Harry had told him about his fight with Malfoy.

            Harry rolled his eyes. Only I, or a second version of me, would manage to bring up the Fiendfyre incident, try to tell Malfoy that was where I fell in love with him, and end up flinging his life-debt in his face instead.

            The more he looked at things, the more he was coming to accept this as an alternate universe. He knew he would have heard if Malfoy had suddenly started playing for the Wimbourne Wasps, especially to such popular success. The last Harry had known, his version of Draco Malfoy had been sulking in the Manor with his parents, and the Wasps’ Seeker was a woman named Georgianna Brown.

            The other Harry was anxious to prevent them from being seen in public together, but as long as he stayed home and Harry only went a few specific places, he didn’t see why that should be a problem. He’d apologize to Malfoy the way his other self already should have, and then maybe spend a few days exploring this universe. Then he’d go back home.

            It was a nice holiday, in a way, from the concerns of his friends. He wondered idly if the other Harry would let him meet the other Ron and Hermione, and how much they would differ from his Ron and Hermione. The other Harry had told him that this Ron had shunned Auror training to help George with the joke shop. Harry found the notion endlessly entertaining, which meant he was going to bait Ron with it when he got home.

            This Hermione had apparently accepted a lowly post in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, with the intention of working her way up, instead of studying law. Harry had to admit that her perseverance and determination didn’t seem too different from the Hermione he knew, only the direction of her ambition.

            “I’m extremely sorry, Mr. Potter. You can’t go in.”

            Harry looked up and blinked. He’d been so involved in his thoughts that he hadn’t noticed he’d worked his way down out of the stands and towards the doors where the Wasps had vanished. One of the burly guards stared at him warily now, as if wondering whether he would make a fuss. Harry smiled and shook his head. “I know that,” he said. “But I thought I’d wait for Mr. Malfoy, if you don’t mind.”

            The wizard blinked and drew himself up. He had bright blond hair that rivaled Malfoy’s and watery, suspicious blue eyes. “Look,” he said. “You know Draco doesn’t want to see you.”

            “Yes, I know,” Harry said. The other Harry had told him something about pointed reminders to stay further than thirty feet away from Malfoy at all times. “But I came to apologize. I hope he’ll see me now.”

            “After what you said to him last time?” The guard’s face hardened with something like contempt. “I don’t think so.”

            Harry frowned a little. I don’t think someone as proud as Malfoy would have made that argument public, any more than he had to. And from what the other Harry said, he hasn’t told a lot of people, either. He was too ashamed.

            Which probably means there’s some other time when they were in conflict—and the other Harry didn’t tell me about it.

            Damn it.

            Harry sighed and took a step back. “I’d like to apologize for that, too,” he said. “Please, will you just tell him that I’m here? He deserves the chance to make up his own mind.” Even though technically I’m deceiving him, and for the sake of someone who was too much of a coward to tell me the whole truth.

            Damn it.

            The guard watched him in hostile silence for long moments. Harry stared back at him, and wondered if there was anything he could do to change the bloke’s mind. But betraying too much ignorance of what had happened the last time his other self and Malfoy spoke would raise suspicions he couldn’t put to rest.

            “I’ll tell him,” the guard said at last, with a snort that showed Harry was lucky to be getting that much of a chance. “But don’t blame me if he only comes out to mock you. And you know what his tongue’s like.”

            I only wish I did. Harry was beginning to wonder if his sympathy for his other self had been deeply misplaced. It sounded as if Malfoy had had to put up with more provocation than was reasonable from the berk Harry.

            He stepped backwards again and leaned against one of the staircases that led up into the stands, shaking his head. The guard gave him a disbelieving glance. Harry arched an eyebrow. I can’t help it if I’m more patient than the Potter he’s familiar with. And I needn’t worry about it. It’s all part of my new and reformed image.

*

            Draco wished he could take comfort from the hot water that poured over his face, through his hair, and down his back. His muscles relaxed underneath it, but the greater and deeper tension that he carried in his heart never did.

            Let’s revise the options, he thought to himself, and so began the old, familiar, stinking spiral of his thoughts.

            My parents committed suicide rather than face the loss of their money and their freedom. Whatever comfort they taught me to take in family is no longer relevant.

            One of my best friends is dead in the Fiendfyre that he called himself, and which I only survived because of a stupid chance. And my other best friend thinks that that stupid chance was me deliberately leaving Vincent behind, and he doesn’t want anything more to do with me in consequence.

            Draco turned to the side and canted his head away from the shower spray so that his chest could get washed, as if that would keep him from remembering, and feeling, the sting of Gregory’s words.

            You could have turned back and grabbed his hand, Draco! I watched you! You had a minute, before Potter absolutely had to grab you! You could have done it! But you didn’t, because you were jealous about how well he’d adapted to working under the Dark Lord and of all the new spells he learned!

            Then Gregory had turned his back on Draco and marched away. And because Draco had cultivated dependency rather than friendship among the other Slytherins, there was no one who could replace him.

            I became a Seeker because I knew I was good at it and thought I might find someone who actually looked at me for myself. But that’s never going to happen as long as I’m so good. My team values my skill and ignores the rest of me because that might mean acknowledging my past.

            Chances for a future with a friend or a lover who gives a fuck about me: poor.

            Draco stepped out of the shower and shook his damp hair from his eyes with a flick of his head. As he wrapped the towel around his waist, he saw one of the guards from the doors, Daniel Thicknesse, approaching him. Draco adopted the mask of careless ease that he was famous for and smiled.

            “A more persistent visitor than usual, Daniel? Or is it the old case of the poisoned flowers again?” There were some people who didn’t have his team’s motivations to forget about the past.

            “Neither of those, sir.” Daniel scratched his forehead with one finger, looking perplexed. He truly did fit his last name, but his loyalty to preserving the team’s privacy was absolute. Draco could value him for that reason, though they would forever be incompatible as intellectual equals. “Harry Potter’s here. Says he wants to apologize.”

            Draco, opening his mouth to ask why Daniel had bothered to seek him out, paused when he heard that last bit. He turned it around several different ways in his mind, and still couldn’t make it make sense. Why would he apologize? That would mean admitting he was wrong, and God knows he can’t do that.

            “I’ll talk to him,” he said. Whenever he lowered himself to considering his life with self-pity, he always felt awful afterwards. At least honest anger would burn some of the awfulness away. “Let me get dressed first.”

            Daniel lingered, staring at him in concern. “I think you’re giving him more of a chance than he deserves, sir.”

            Draco gave him a small grimace-smile. “Yes, but it’s my choice. And at least I know the kind of bitterness and anger Potter’s capable of.” It will even be refreshing, after getting the rough side of my own thoughts.

            Daniel gave a noisy sigh, as if to say that he didn’t understand why people with smaller muscles insisted on making stupid decisions, and then lumbered away. Draco turned his head upside-down to reach the water hiding at the roots of his hair, and murmured a quick Drying Charm when he realized that he couldn’t reach some of it.

            I won’t look less than my best in front of Potter. I won’t look pathetic. I won’t look as though I need the miraculous gift of his ‘compassion.’

            Draco snorted as he remembered the desperate way Potter had stared at him when they had their first vicious argument a year ago. Potter had babbled about life-debts, and how Draco wouldn’t have survived if not for him, and how Draco owed him “some consideration.”

            Yes, Draco thought, as he spun around and reached for the black robes he wore in public, his concession to the Wasps’ black-and-gold color scheme when he wasn’t flying, in some ways it will be a positive pleasure to see him again.

*

            Harry straightened when he saw Malfoy’s unmistakable figure striding towards him past the guards. The arrogant tilt of his head was the same as in Harry’s universe, and the pale shine of his hair, and the thin, tight lips. Harry suppressed a stirring of instinctive dislike. This wasn’t actually the boy he had fought with and hexed and rescued, but an analogue of him. He wasn’t responsible for the mistakes Harry’s Malfoy had made, or that would make Harry really responsible for the mistakes he’d come to apologize for.

            “Well, Potter?” Malfoy stopped five feet in front of him, hands braced on his hips, head tossed back as though he was offering his throat as a target. “Have you got up your courage again after the last time, when you ran away howling dismally? I don’t think people on the Continent heard you then.”

            Harry cleared his throat. His words aren’t really about you, remember. “I wanted to apologize,” he said. “I had no right to say the things I did.”

            “Forgive me for not believing you,” Malfoy purred disagreeably, and moved a step closer. The other Harry would probably have fainted in delight at that moment. Harry just watched Malfoy with a jaundiced eye, and he seemed to notice, because he paused and blinked. But his words went right on. “You seemed to believe you had a perfect right to—how did you put it? oh, yes—remind me that I wouldn’t be here if not for you, and that every breath I drew and every catch I made was yours. So the least I could do was grant you a moment of my miserable time.”

            Harry fought the urge to bury his head in his hands. Is there anything that one of my selves can’t mess up? Even falling in love with Malfoy? “I shouldn’t have said that,” he muttered when he thought he could talk instead of groan. “Your life is your own. I don’t want to claim the life-debt.” Maybe that was going a little far, but the other Harry seemed sincere in his desire to reconcile with Malfoy, so Harry thought it was safe to promise that. “Just—I hope that you’ll think about me a little more charitably in the future. If you can. You don’t have to.”

            He waited a moment more, but Malfoy seemed to have no retort to his latest words, if the way he was gaping at Harry was any indication. Harry shrugged and turned away. He figured the apology had gone about as well as it could have.

            Now to speak to the other Harry about keeping the truth from me.

            “Wait!”

            Harry turned around, surprised. Does he really want to take up the ‘charitable thoughts in the future’ thing now? I thought I’d stunned him enough that he would take a few minutes to get his breath back.

            But Malfoys were never where you wanted them to be, and this Malfoy now jerked to a stop behind Harry and stared at him with what looked like agony. “You can’t just say something like that,” he said.

            “Yes, I can,” Harry said. “I think of the words, and, since I know English, I form the sounds with my teeth and tongue, and—”

            “But you said the last time,” Malfoy whispered, as if he were conveying some grave and awful secret, “that you would never apologize, because you were right. You can’t expect me to believe that you mean it now.”

            Why does he not tell me these things? Harry was going to march the other Harry into a corner of his flat when he returned and make him recount his every conversation with Malfoy, so that he could understand exactly how many mistakes he was supposed to correct.

            “I changed my mind,” Harry said. “What I said was stupid.” There, take that, other Harry. “Maybe you won’t believe me, but I can still say that I was wrong, for my own peace of mind.” He turned away again.

            Malfoy caught his arm, pinching his flesh with unexpectedly sharp fingers and turning him around. Harry wondered what sort of comedy routine they must look like to the guards, and concealed his snort. Malfoy would think it was amusement at his expense if Harry revealed it too openly.

            “Not good enough, Potter,” Malfoy snarled into his face. “I want to know what made you change your mind.”

            Harry hadn’t expected this. Mocking disdain or sneering insults were more Malfoy’s style, not a demand that sounded sincere.

            Let’s see, what would someone say who was in love with the git?

            “I changed my mind because you deserve better than that,” he said. Well, that was easy. Anyone deserves better than the treatment it sounds like the other Harry gave this version of Malfoy. “Once I wasn’t looking at you any more, it was easier to admit my mistakes. But I did still have to get over my own pride, or I would have apologized before.” He met Malfoy’s eyes and held them, wondering what in the world the desperation in his gaze meant. “I know that sounds stupid, but I can’t offer any better answer. Just that I finally thought about how you would see things, and how different it was likely to be.” He hesitated a moment more, then laid his hand against Malfoy’s cheek. “You deserve nothing but the best,” he whispered.

            Malfoy jerked away from him as if burned and stepped back, finally drawing his wand. Harry thought, now, that it was peculiar he hadn’t drawn it before. “Get away from me,” he snarled.

            Well, that’s torn it, Harry thought ruefully as he nodded to Malfoy and turned to walk out of the pitch. I shouldn’t have touched him. I’ll have to hope that the other Harry can repair the mistake.

            He straightened his shoulders as he remembered the other Harry’s apparently numerous lies.

            If he deserves to have that chance. I was amused, but at the moment, I’m a little less than amused by his part in all this.

*

            Draco shut the door to the team’s private changing room behind him and fell against it, raising a hand to touch his cheek. It still burned where Potter’s hand had touched it, the way his eyes seemed to burn from staring into eyes that had actually been…concerned.

            You’re delusional. You know what sort of man Potter is, and he’s not one that deserves a moment of your time, for any reason.

            But there was something else bothering him, and after several minutes of thinking, Draco straightened with a growl.

            That wasn’t Potter. It simply wasn’t.

            He didn’t base that conclusion on Potter’s vow never to apologize. Yes, it would have taken effort more appropriate to rolling a mountain over, but he might have changed his mind.

            But this Potter didn’t react fast enough when Draco started insulting him and reminding him of his mistakes. He had looked—chagrined, yes, but more as if he couldn’t believe he had done something like that. And though the eyes and the scar and the walk and all the rest of it were the same, he wouldn’t have come close enough to touch Draco’s face and look into his eyes like that, either. He simply didn’t have the confidence. Draco had seen Potter enough since the war, and read enough newspaper articles that seemed based in some facts, to know that Potter had lost a great deal of his confidence with the death of the Dark Lord. He couldn’t seem to find a place or relevance in a world where he’d already done the greatest deed he ever could.

            This man had been confident. This man had winced over his mistakes and sounded sincere when he said that Draco deserved the best.

            Then the simplest solution is that it was someone else.

            Draco rolled his eyes and snorted. Potter had hired an actor, or bought Polyjuice Potion. He must think that Draco was a fool, or so desperate for companionship that he would accept the apology at face value.

            He might be right about that last.

            But Draco stood up straight and practiced his best defiant sneer in the mirror on the wall. Even if Potter had somehow guessed that Draco was plagued by loneliness, he wasn’t the person Draco would choose to relieve that loneliness. He would just have to play up to someone else with his suffering martyr act.

            If the man he hired was to offer you more sincere sympathy, though…if he was to offer to listen…

            Draco threw the conclusion away impatiently. Someone who worked for Potter like that could never offer him sincere sympathy.

            And really, it was Draco’s own fault that he yearned for someone to spend his life with. If he had learned his lessons in the way that Father had always warned him he should, he would have been a cold, perfectly poised statue by this point in his life, his heart beating solely at his command, not needing anyone else.

            I’m not that, so I’ll just have to put up with the fate that my own weakness has earned for me.

*

            “Why didn’t you tell me that you said you would never apologize? Why didn’t you tell me you’d had other rows with him besides the first one? He couldn’t believe I was you come to apologize, because you’d said you were right and never would!”

            Harry paced back and forth, ranting at the other Harry, for several minutes before he paused and looked to see what impression his words had made. It wasn’t promising. The other Harry sat on his couch with his arms folded and his lip pushed out in a sulky pout.

            “I didn’t mean I’d never apologize,” the other Harry muttered, when Harry had been silent and staring pointedly at him for a little while. “That was an exaggeration, like saying I was going to kill him when we were in school. He should have known that.”

            “You stayed away from him for months at a time,” Harry snapped. “He had a pretty good reason not to believe you.”

            And I can’t believe that I’m defending Malfoy, but that’s the way my life works out, sometimes.

            “I—look, I know I made mistakes,” the other Harry said earnestly, and leaned forwards. “But can’t you take that as a given, and go on from there? How did Draco take your apology? Did he look like he could stand to give me another chance, someday?”

            Harry studied him narrowly. He knew that particular combination of haste and eagerness. The other Harry hadn’t decided that he’d made mistakes. He was looking to have it both ways: to think that he was right and still get back the person he’d offended and wanted.

            Harry thought about demanding to be sent home right now. He wasn’t amused, the way he’d thought he’d be, but angry. And he wasn’t sure that Malfoy, git though he might be, deserved to be saddled with the other Harry.

            But then he thought of the glimpses of suffering he’d seen in Malfoy’s eyes, the way he’d reached out to Harry when he could more easily have let him go, and the brief panic that had flared across his expression when Harry touched him. A new conclusion came to him, and he blinked as it settled firmly into his mind.

            Could he secretly be in love with the other Harry, too? He came out to talk to me even though the guard thought he wouldn’t. He jumped at the touch like a scalded cat. He was looking at me with his eyes wide all the time, appealing—though I don’t know for what.

            Harry rolled his eyes, his amusement swirling up again. It would be like me to walk into the middle of this comedy of errors and confuse two people who secretly want each other but won’t admit it.

            Either way, he thought he should stay a little longer. He had nothing urgent waiting for him at home. And he had interfered now, and probably made a bad situation worse. If he left, perhaps Malfoy would be further hurt by his other self. Either way, Harry owed it to Malfoy to try and make sure things came to a peaceful conclusion.

            Maybe I can teach my other self to be less self-centered, too. It’s worth a try.

            “He might be receptive,” Harry said. “I really don’t know. He looked as though he wanted to leap up the wall when I stroked his cheek.”

            “You need to go talk to him again,” the other Harry said intensely.

            Harry stared at him. “Why won’t you? You said that you only wanted me to apologize to him!”

            “I know, I know.” The other Harry avoided his eyes. “But—I was just thinking—the apology isn’t complete. He doesn’t believe you. And I need a little more time to gather my courage.”

            “You need to stop being a pissant little coward, is what you need to do,” Harry said bluntly. He saw his other self tense, and smiled. Now there would be a row, and then his other self might start acting more like Harry Potter should act.

            Instead, he just shrank in on himself, and whispered, “I know.”

            Something is seriously wrong. Harry sat down in front of him and reached out to clasp his other self’s hands. “Look, what happened to you?” he asked. “Did someone attack you after the war and put a fear curse on you?” Someone had done that to him once, and it had taken him two long sessions of shivering with the Mind-Healers to figure it out. “That’s the only thing I can think of that would make you act like this.”

            The other Harry shut his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t think you can understand,” he whispered. “I already hurt him once, badly. I don’t think you’ve loved someone the way I love him, from what you told me about your Ginny. And now I want to heal the wound—I want that more than anything in the world—but I’m so afraid that anything I try will only make it worse. Everything I tried before you came only did make it worse. That was why I took the risk of calling another of my selves from an alternate universe, because I thought the strategy he had to heal the wound must work, since it worked once.” He reached out, groping about until Harry found and took his hand, and then he squeezed hard. “Please,” he whispered. “Just give me a little more time.”

            Harry sighed. He hated to see people suffering. The other Harry might deserve every bit of suffering he got, but Malfoy didn’t.

            “All right,” Harry said. “One more time. That’s all.”

            He had never known how brilliant his own smile could look from the outside. Harry smiled back, while mentally having to laugh at himself and the whole ridiculous situation. Only a pair of me could do something like this.

*

            Jo: Thanks for reviewing.

            butterpie: This fanfic won’t explore the world quite as much as it could have given that the other Harry doesn’t want his friends to know our Harry is here (since then word would probably get back to Draco), but I hope I’m starting to hint at interesting differences.

            Thrnbrooke: Thanks!

            SP777: Thank you. And yes, “berk” is an insult, though often used in stronger contexts than “idiot.”

            SamuraiSaaya: Thank you!

            As Harry noted, he’s convinced for the moment. If he found reasons to distrust the other Harry, he would. But now he’s seeing that either he must be in a different universe, or he’s having deep and intense hallucinations about weirdly specific things.

            Black Padfoot: Thank you!

            SilverLion: Sorry, but I don’t think I’ll make this a threesome story. I have different ways of writing for a threesome and a pairing, and this one has already started out as a pairing story.

            Mehla Seraphim: Thank you!
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Universal Chaos