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Roses, Made by Hands	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7790 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Title: Sculpted Light

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco pre-slash

Warnings: Ignores the epilogue, “eighth-year” fic, light angst.

Rating: PG

Wordcount: 2000

Summary: Harry comes back to Hogwarts and watches the students gathered there the first night in the Great Hall, knowing this is the night that will define some of them and break some of them—including Draco Malfoy.

Author’s Notes: This is the sequel to “Roses, Made By Hands,” a fluffy little fic posted earlier this year. Don’t read this story without first reading that one.

Sculpted Light

            Harry leaned an elbow on the Gryffindor table and nodded absently at the excited chatter going on around him. He had learned to do that, over the summer. Reporters would chatter at him, and friends, and people he slightly knew but had fought in the Battle of Hogwarts with, and Teddy when he was excited, and Mrs. Weasley trying to pretend she could ignore the empty chair at the table, and Harry could make the right responses, when he needed to make them.

            It left him with an ear open to listen to the really important words, like Headmistress McGonagall’s decision to invite Draco Malfoy and the other Slytherins who hadn’t gone to prison back to Hogwarts.

            And to listen to the silence, come to that.

            The first-years were filing in now. That meant all the older students, including the ones, like Harry, who had missed the last year or had their educations interrupted, were already at the tables. And above them, the Great Hall’s ceiling poured down a brilliant sunset, gold and orange and rose, with here and there a touch of red. It reminded Harry of the mosaic of flowers in the Museum of the War, where he had found Malfoy to deliver McGonagall’s invitation.

            He leaned back and looked up at the light for a second. At the moment, the Slytherins huddled close together on their benches, not threatening or being threatened by anyone. Harry could ease his protective gaze on them and enjoy the sheer magic that the ceiling had brought into existence.

            Clouds sailing across the sunset, the early stars coming out, the full moon rising in one corner, and the first-years gasping aloud as they walked into the room and looked up to see the first huge magic most of them would ever have seen…

            I want to keep it like that for them. I told Malfoy I wanted to find something beautiful to make, and that’s mine. Make sure they can grow up without learning half the things I had to learn. Adults should fight wars, not children.

            Harry looked down, feeling his heart pound with its own mixture of wonder and excitement, and met Malfoy’s eyes. Malfoy leaned forwards with his elbows on the table as if he would spring off it in a second and dash away. Maybe charge at Harry, maybe charge out the door. Harry found it hard to tell.

            He looked curiously back, waiting. Maybe it was just because of the decision he had made, but he felt passive and at peace. Malfoy could do either of those things, and Harry would either defend himself or go after Malfoy and talk him into returning. Either would be fine. He could do either. He could do anything.

            But Malfoy shook his head and turned away, and just then Harry saw the glow of a spell at the far end of the Gryffindor table, where Dennis Creevey was sitting.

            Harry brought his wand up and down smoothly. A Shield Charm formed in front of the table, a new kind that Harry had spent the summer designing, and ate the curse like a python eating a deer. Several of the new students waiting in line for the Sorting Hat laughed and applauded, but other people turned around and stared.

            Harry leaned around Ron and Hermione and Seamus and a bunch of other people so Dennis could see him. He was in time. Dennis was starting to jump to his feet with his mouth open, but he sat down when he saw Harry.

            “I know where that curse was aimed,” Harry told him, keeping his voice pleasant and conversational. He couldn’t whisper this, and he couldn’t shout it. He wanted everyone to know there would be no secrets and no advertising. “The Slytherin table. You know that no one sitting there killed Colin.”

            Dennis was silent for a few seconds, his face so dark with his scowl that Harry was impressed in spite of himself. He waited, and sure enough, Dennis’s voice snapped out, flashing like the curse. “They were with the people who did it! And they’re here and not in jail where they belong!”

            “Yes, they are,” Harry agreed quietly. “They’re here. They didn’t deserve to go to jail. The Wizengamot said they didn’t, and Headmistress McGonagall invited them back. So it isn’t your place and it isn’t mine to say they shouldn’t be here.”

            A cough behind him made him glance over his shoulder. McGonagall was setting the Sorting Hat down on the stool, and giving Harry a significant look. Harry nodded back. It was important to make sure that everyone knew Harry and the Headmistress wouldn’t stand for anyone treating the Slytherins wrong, but they also didn’t want to terrify the first-years or make them focus more on House battles than on their Sorting.

            Harry turned back and lowered his voice so only Dennis and the few people that sat between them could hear him. “I’ll make sure I Disarm them and Stun them if it turns out they’re trying to hurt someone, Dennis. I already told them I wouldn’t tolerate them attacking me because we won the war, or attacking my friends.” Dennis blinked up at him, probably because Harry had called him “friend.” Harry smiled warmly back at him. Yes, the Creevey brothers had been annoying when they were in school together, but compared to some of the stupid people Harry had met this summer, they were shining beacons of light. “But that means we have to do the same thing. No attacking them. No insisting that we can curse them and they can’t curse us, because somehow it’s okay when we do it. It isn’t okay. We have to make sure that the war doesn’t start again.”

            Dennis stared at him, then glanced down at the floor. “But when the first-years come in, they’re just going to hear everything,” he said. “If they don’t know it already. You can try to protect them, Harry, but it’s not going to work.”

            Harry raised an eyebrow, surprised and impressed that Dennis knew he was doing this just as much for the first-years not Sorted into Houses yet as for the Slytherins.

            “I can’t protect them from everything, no,” he said. “I can’t protect them from other people telling them other Houses are stupid and their House is the best.” He glanced up and down the table. “But I can speak against it happening in Gryffindor,” he added.

            Seamus flushed and looked away. Ron just nodded, serious and determined, and Hermione put her hand on his sleeve and nodded with him.

            “That’s all I can do,” Harry said, returning his gaze to Dennis. “All I can. Make sure everything is as fair as possible. It’ll never be completely fair, but it’s not going to start with a Gryffindor cursing a Slytherin. Not when I’m right here and I can stop it.”

            Dennis scowled at his empty plate, but said nothing. Harry stepped back and sat down again, just as the Hat called out “RAVENCLAW!” for a little girl with hair almost as red as Ginny’s. She put down the Hat and scurried over to her table, now and then glancing up at the ceiling with an expression of awe.

            Harry looked up at it again, and smiled, too. He didn’t know if he could make something as beautiful as that ceiling, but at least he could try.

            Looking down, he caught Malfoy giving him a flat look. Harry shrugged, and sat back in peace to watch the rest of the Sorting.

*

            “Potter.”

            Malfoy spoke with the confidence of assured command, and Harry turned back to face him with one eyebrow raised. Since when had Malfoy sounded like that? He’d looked broken every time Harry saw him since the end of the war, and like a sulky teenager when he spoke.

            But he was standing with his legs braced and his arms folded now, and Harry could practically feel the Gryffindors compressing into a private army behind him. He winced and held up one hand. That forced some of them—except the first-years, who just watched everything wide-eyed—to look at him instead of concentrating on Malfoy’s arrogance.

            Well, they would see it as arrogance, anyway. Now that he looked closely, Harry could make out the pinched lines at the corners of Malfoy’s mouth, and could see how his eyes looked practically squeezed out of his face by his emotions.

            “It’s all right, you lot,” he said. “Malfoy just wants to talk to me, and we’re going to leave our wands behind. See?” He flipped his wand out and tossed it to Ron, who stared at him but caught it. Then he waited.

            Malfoy stared back at him, tilted his head, but seemed to understand without speaking, in fact without words. He tossed his wand high, and Parkinson was the one who caught it. She backed away from Harry immediately. Harry made a note of that. He would have to find some way to show that he didn’t resent her for what she’d said about throwing him to Voldemort. Lots of people had said things like that.

            Then he motioned out into the corridor beyond the Great Hall, and Malfoy walked with him. He waited until they were beyond the archway to turn around and speak in a low, passionate voice.

            “You did it.”

            Harry blinked, his first thought that Malfoy was somehow blaming him for Dennis’s curse. “Sorry?”

            “You stopped the curse,” Malfoy said. His stare was quite piercing, when Harry thought about it. It made him feel as if he were pinned to the wall behind him. He moved to the side, but Malfoy followed him with the gaze, rendering that movement useless. “Even though a Gryffindor cast it.”

            Harry blinked again. “Was that all?” he asked. “Of course I did. I told you I would.”

            Malfoy took a sudden step towards him. Harry couldn’t keep himself from tensing, but he didn’t have his wand, so that didn’t have bad consequences. He just looked, and Malfoy halted.

            “I didn’t think you would keep your word,” Malfoy whispered. “Now—I’m trying to think what it means, that I might have a future.”

            Harry smiled. He remembered how Malfoy had looked standing before the mosaic of roses, and he thought he might regret telling Harry how he felt in a second. He just nodded, said, “I think that’s pretty common right now,” and turned to the side to leave Malfoy alone with his emotions.

            Malfoy reached out and caught his wrist. For someone thin and pale, he had skin that burned, like parchment on fire. Harry blinked and met his eyes again.

            For a moment, he thought Malfoy would say something. Instead, he reached up and cupped Harry’s jaw.

            It was a brief moment, but it made Harry ring far more than it should have, setting up a vibration in his bones, making the stubble on his jaw stand on end, making him feel as if he, or Malfoy, were the one made of light, rather than the ceiling of the Great Hall.

            It was just a brief moment, and then Malfoy dropped his hand, and moved away, and said, “Thank you,” in the tiniest of voices, and went back to his friends to retrieve his wand.

            Harry swallowed, and reached up to rest his hand where Malfoy’s hand had rested. Ron looked his questions, and Hermione asked hers, when he went back to them, but he couldn’t answer them. He was thinking.

            He took one more look at the light in the Great Hall before he turned away. He had wanted to create something grand and beautiful like that, something people could admire for generations.

            It had never once crossed his mind that he might already have begun.

            The End.

*

            unneeded: Thank you!

            Moonlove: Thank you! I hope I kept the same characterization here.

            SP777: It probably won’t be very fast-paced, but I think it’ll be a nice break from some of the other stuff I’m writing.
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Roses, Made by Hands