Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Years Before Love	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 5027 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
- 3
Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two—The Meaning of Peace
            “You look like you’ve slept.”
            Harry raises both eyebrows at Ron and yawns pointedly as he reaches for a cup of Molly’s great tea. It’s one of the things Harry would like to learn to do for himself but never has, make a cup of tea that good. And what with the cold wind blowing straight through him when they played Quidditch, Harry especially savors it. “You wouldn’t say that if you knew what nursing Teddy was like.”
            “Not slept-slept. Rested.”
            Harry considers that as he sips. He suddenly can’t remember if he told Ron that he and the Malfoys are sort-of friends now. He’d mentioned they were visiting Andromeda, and Ron made faces and all the right sort of sympathetic noises. But this would be different.”
            “What’s on your mind, Harry?”
            “If I made a truce with the Malfoys, what would you think?”
            “So long as it’s not with Lucius.”
            Harry shakes his head. “He’s in Azkaban and I don’t know if he’ll ever come out. But Malfoy and his mother are over at Andromeda’s all the time, and—well. I call them Draco and Narcissa now.”
            Ron nods back. “As long as it’s not a truce with the man who tried to kill my little sister, I don’t care.”
            “Even though Draco tortured you all through school?” It’s hard for Harry to remember that, sometimes, when he’s sitting with Draco in the nursery and watching Teddy change his hair colors. But if Ron was in the room with them, he might change his mind.
            “There are some things that more important than others. Giving Ginny a diary that’s going to possess her is one of those things.”
            Harry nods slowly, impressed. Sometime in the interval when he wasn’t looking, Ron grew up. Like Hermione says, they all got busy with other things and it—changed.
            But that doesn’t mean they have to be bad changes.
            He and Ron sit and talk for a little while more, but after about ten minutes of Ron talking about his NEWTS (which he’s doing private studying and tutoring for, instead of going through Hogwarts) and what marks he might get and what jobs he wants, Harry raises his hand in mock surrender and stands up.
            “I’ll think that Hermione’s possessed you if I stay here much longer.”
            Ron laughs, but then he gives Harry such a serious look that Harry can’t just walk out the door of the Burrow the way he planned on. “Mate. I know you don’t want to go back to Hogwarts or take your NEWTS right now, but what are you going to do?”
            Harry shrugs and smiles at him. “I’m figuring it out.”
            And Ron grins, like he understands exactly what that means, and Harry goes home happy. Everyone seems to understand him better now. Even if what Teddy mainly understands is that Harry feeds him.
*
            “What’s wrong with you, Potter?”
            “Harry,” Harry corrects with a scowl, but before he can work up the rant that Draco deserves, an enormous sneeze both interrupts him and tells the story for him.
            Draco, who’s been leaning on the doorframe of Harry’s bedroom (and honestly, who invited him there? He’s supposed to be with Teddy), straightens up at once, his face going blank. Harry scowls at him again and flops over to face the wall. Stupid cold. It’s only supposed to be the running nose and maybe a slight cough that Harry used to get all the time when he was with the Dursleys. It’s not supposed to be a headache and a fever and a throat that feels as though someone’s scraped it raw with frost, too.
            “Andromeda didn’t mention you were sick.”
            Harry jumps in the air, even lying on his side, and his carefully accumulated handkerchiefs float down towards the floor. Harry groans and reaches for his wand. Most spells are agony to speak right now. At least he thinks he can manage a decent wordless Accio.
            But Draco’s there instead, picking up the handkerchiefs and staring at the side of Harry’s face as if it’s the front. Harry finally, reluctantly, rolls around to face him.
            “Seriously, she didn’t mention it. Why?”
            “She knows. It’s a cold. She knows that.”
            Draco raises one eyebrow and looks at the handkerchiefs and the small blanket that Harry’s rigged up to prevent the late autumn sunshine from stabbing at his eyes. It’s nearly December, it’s not supposed to be this ridiculously sunny, Harry thinks, but tell that to the weather.
            “And she didn’t offer you a Pepper-Up Potion?” Draco leans over and puts his hand on Harry’s face, then pulls it back with a hiss. “Or a fever reducer? Potter, your fever is dangerously high.”
            “Does that mean you’re a hallucination and you’ll turn into a purple elephant soon?”
            Draco walks around the bed and stands between it and the window, staring at Harry. Then he shakes his head. “Aunt Andromeda doesn’t know.”
            “Yes, she does, I just told you—”
            “She doesn’t know how bad it is, does she?”
            Harry looks away. He can feel his face burning, not from the fever.
            He doesn’t—know why he didn’t tell Andromeda. Except that it wasn’t as bad this morning, and Teddy was fussy all night, and he knew the Malfoys were coming, and just, she had enough to deal with, and it’s not that bad. It’s not like he’s going to die. Draco and his muttering about dangerously high fevers notwithstanding.
            “She may not have a Pepper-Up Potion,” Draco continues briskly. “That’s all right. I’m sure she won’t mind going to Diagon Alley and either buying one and a fever reducer, or the ingredients to brew them. I’ll do that, because you would be pants at it even if you didn’t have a fever.”
            “Hey—”
            “And then I can use some of the leftover ingredients to make you a draught to soothe your throat. They overlap a lot. And even a potions lab as underused as this one is has to have some essentials.” Draco looks almost happy, although Harry doesn’t know why. Maybe he’s just delighting in Harry’s suffering. “Then you can actually start recovering like a wizard should.”
            “I took care of myself just fine for years.”
            “Yeah,” Draco says, taking a step towards the bed and then away, as if he hasn’t made his mind about what direction he wants to go. Harry would definitely taunt him about that if he felt better. “But now you don’t have to.”
            Harry gapes at him. Draco smiles a little and adds, “But I don’t know what potion you need to heal a dislocated jaw, so you’d better close it.”
            Harry obliges, his head still spinning. Later, he will decide a lot of it was the sickness. Because Draco is strange.
            But he knows he doesn’t imagine the Malfoys staying that night, and he doesn’t imagine the hand on his shoulder when his fever is at its worst, and he doesn’t imagine the potions he swallows that make him feel better almost immediately. He even thinks that when he drifts into the first untroubled sleep he’s had for two days, there’s a hand cupping his cheek or stroking his head. Maybe both.
*
            Harry finds his tea fascinating. There’s colors in it from the potions Draco insisted he take for the next two days, even though Harry already feels so much better that he thinks the cold is all gone. They make swirls that Harry can mistake for milk and cream, maybe, if he concentrates.
            Of course, when he actually drinks the tea, he’s going to taste the difference at once, but he tries not to think about that.
            “Harry.”
            And then there’s the thing that he dreads even more than the prospect of foul-tasting potions. He drags his gaze up to Andromeda’s face. She has one hand on the table as though she started to reach for him and then stopped.
            “Am I really that terrible, that you didn’t want to face me?” she whispers.
            Harry catches his breath. He should have known she would feel something like this, even though it hadn’t occurred to him.
            “And stop blaming yourself for this.” Andromeda stirs her hand between them, eyes bright with a spark of Black temper. “Just explain why you didn’t tell me how bad your cold was.”
            Harry manages a swallow of tea after all, but it doesn’t do its work by making his throat close up so he has an excuse not to talk to Andromeda. And in the end, he doesn’t want to avoid talking to her. He just doesn’t want to sound stupid.
            Well, if he can’t avoid it, he’ll have to go ahead and do it, as Hermione would say.
            “I always took care of myself when I was sick,” he muttered, eyes on the cup. It has a pattern of roses around the top that makes him think it must have belonged to the Tonks family instead of being a Black family heirloom. Catch a “proper” Black drinking from a cup that doesn’t have deadly nightshade on it or something like that. “I mean, as a kid. I was pretty much never sick at Hogwarts.”
            “How did you do it?”
            How, not why. Maybe he can do this.
            “I had a blanket I blew my nose on. And I took pieces of it with me to school. And I had a little bowl I kept water in so I could rub my face when it got sore and drink some to soothe my cough. And I lay there and dreamed about my parents.”
            Andromeda says nothing. Harry finally looks at her when he can’t stand it any longer, and finds that she looks as if she’s not angry, but rather, terribly sad.
            “I want you to know,” she says, when a few drops of rain have splattered the window and Harry has almost started wishing the Malfoys back, “that you can always come to me with something like that, Harry. If I don’t have the potions, I’ll go and buy them. I want—I want you to feel at home, here. And you don’t need to suffer.”
            Harry blinks and relaxes. It’s a lot better than he thought this confession would go. Less embarrassing.
            Of course, who knows how much Draco is going to taunt him the next time he shows up? But that’s not today.
            Today is rain, and a second cup of tea without nasty potions in it, and Andromeda talking softly to him about her own childhood—it was hemlock, but otherwise his guesses about what plants would be on Black teacups were right on the mark—and then Teddy crying imperiously to remind them what’s really important here.
*
            “You’re up for some Quidditch, Harry?”
            At least Draco is back to calling him Harry. But that doesn’t mean Harry can’t tease him. He doesn’t look up from his book on the theory of Transfiguration. “Hmmm.”
            Draco throws the Snitch at him. Harry twists back in his chair, startled, and catches the little ball before it can slam into his head.
            “Come on, then,” says Draco, and grins at him as he turns away. “I’m not going to let you catch it so easily next time.”
            Harry hesitates, fingers sliding over the Snitch. The wings thrum against his fingers.
            It’s not that he doesn’t want to. For one thing, he knows Andromeda and Narcissa are downstairs and have Teddy with them, and Harry doesn’t need to worry about him needing something. For another, he’s always ready to play.
            But he worries about the bad memories the games might bring back for Draco. Harry always won at Hogwarts, after all.
            “I’m not going to tell you again, Potter.”
            Harry immediately stands up and goes around the corner of the bed to grab the replacement Firebolt he bought himself a month ago. He isn’t going to let Draco retreat to Potter, the way he tried to do when Harry was sick.
            He thinks about bringing up that moment as he runs out through the door into the back garden—waving absently at Andromeda’s yell to wrap his scarf around his throat—but Draco is taunting him, already off the ground, and Harry lets it slip away for the excitement of the game and the first dancing snowflakes of the season.
*
            It’s a game.
            Harry swings his broom around and around, and dives, and laughs, and watches how the wind streaks Draco’s cheeks into a brilliant flush, and corkscrews, and finds the Snitch in his palm a second later.
            He’s almost sorry to turn and show it, both because it means the game is at an end and because Draco might feel bitter.
            But Draco is already heading towards the ground, calling over his shoulder, “I think I’ll be the first to a cup of hot chocolate.”
            Harry can’t let that stand, either. If Draco can put up with it, there’s going to be no victory for him today. Harry dives, and the snow beneath him sparkles and flurries up around him as he lands, and he runs for the door.
            “Are you crazy?”
            That’s Draco’s voice, from behind him, a little awed. Harry looks back. “That was a perfectly ordinary dive!”
            “Not that way you do it.”
            Draco’s voice is lower, still tinged with that strange emotion. Harry ends up snapping his gaze away and heading for the doorway of their house. His skin prickles, and he feels as if someone’s sliding a warm hand up and down his back.
            Inside, it’s easy to laugh and forget about it, especially with the way the hot chocolate slides warmth through him instead and Draco makes rude comments about Harry’s Firebolt being the only reason he succeeds so well.
            But it comes back to him when he’s tucked in bed, and Harry decides he’s not warm enough and flicks his wand at the fire. He rolls over, cheek pressed against his roasting pillow, and thinks about Draco, who can’t build up the fire so simply without a wand, who might be lying in his bed right now and shivering.
            Don’t be stupid. He would have house-elves to do it for him.
            But the image still troubles Harry for a few minutes before he succumbs to sleep.
*
            “I was thinking of getting this for Teddy,” Andromeda says, and holds out the glossy pamphlet to Harry. “But then I remembered his age. It might be something to think about for when he’s older, though.”
            Harry picks up the pamphlet and manages to drag his eyes away from the pictures of extremely colorful toys by telling himself he’s too old for them. Well, but on the other hand, he has plenty of money, and owl post can be discreet. He might order them and just not tell anyone that he’s ordering them. It doesn’t have to be anyone else’s business.
            Andromeda has to tap the page before Harry can actually focus on what Andromeda intended for Teddy’s Christmas gift. And then he blinks. It looks like a practice wand, but there’s a shiny yellow handle on it and a hole in the top that looks like it’s stuffed with paper.
            “Why that?” Harry asks, even as he tries to read the description. It’s tough. The letters twine around the top and sides of the picture, and everyone in the wizarding world seems to like calligraphy without actually knowing how to write in it.
            “Because it’s a sort of practice wand that you can implant with spells,” says Andromeda. “Three of them. You write the incantation for the spell on the paper and put it in the hole in the top, and then you use your own wand to cast the spell on the practice wand. After that, the spell happens whenever a certain specific stimulus happens—for example, if Teddy cries, then the wand might Summon his bottle. If we put the Summoning Charm in the wand with the word ‘bottle’ written after it. Apparently, it can get complicated describing what you want to happen. There’s all sorts of warnings.” She leans around Harry to look at the picture again.
            She’s right that it’s far too complicated a toy for Teddy, Harry decides. And Teddy can’t give enough distinctive cries for the wand to respond to, anyway. He doesn’t always fuss when he needs his nappy changed, for example. From the wistful look on Andromeda’s face, she was mostly thinking of being able to have a spell do that for her from a distance.
            But Harry thinks of something else, someone else who might need something like this. He sneaks the pamphlet away when Andromeda isn’t looking, and places his owl order.
            And if he orders some things for himself along with the Christmas gifts, that shouldn’t matter. They’ll be his toys, anyway.
*
            “Happy Christmas, Harry!”
            Bill, of all people, grabs Harry around his waist and lifts him off the ground. Harry laughs and lets Bill spin him. Fleur is standing behind him, smiling and holding out Victoire. Harry seizes her when Bill puts him down, expertly balancing her the way he’s learned to hold a baby, snickering a little at Fleur’s astonishment.
            “I had not known that a man could do that,” Fleur says, and looks at Bill in a way that he might dread if he was paying attention. He’s not. He’s gone off to greet Ron and Hermione, piling through the fireplace behind Harry.
            “How have you been?”
            “Good.” Fleur examines him for a second. “And Bill, he was telling me about the Black family adopting you as one of their own. It has done you good.”
            Harry doesn’t get another chance to talk to her, because then Hermione hugs him, and Ron comes after her, scolding her mildly for not noticing the baby in Harry’s arms, and Molly comes out and gets flour on everyone with her hugs, and then she herds Ron and Bill into the kitchen to help her with the cooking, while Harry settles down to talk about her parents with Hermione. He must have done something right with the way he’s bouncing and cradling Victoire, because Fleur smiles and drifts off to the kitchen, too.
            The meal is enormous, the kind Harry used to dream about when he was lying in his cupboard at the Dursleys’. There are biscuits of so many different kinds that Harry thinks he’s going to rot his teeth out—Hermione looks somewhere between blissful and disapproving, as the daughter of dentists—and a cake so high he can’t see anyone over it and a couple whole chickens and bread soaked with melted butter and marmalade spilling from multiple jars and sausages that Ron chokes on, and the sounds of laughter and joking and Exploding Snap and Hermione pounding Ron on the back are everywhere.
            It’s so noisy and hot and happy that Harry almost melts. And there are piles of Christmas presents for him, everything from a new jumper from Molly to a complete set of seventh-year textbooks being used at Hogwarts that year from Hermione to a fierce little “attack hawk” from George that will supposedly only attack his worst enemies, to an actual diamond ring from Fleur’s parents, as “gratitude for saving the world that includes France.”
            It’s everything he’s ever dreamed of.
            But—and it almost feels disloyal to think of—he’s still happy to go home to the small, private Black family Christmas they’re having that evening.
*
            “Thank you, Narcissa.”
            Harry admires the small necklace he’s opened. Well, maybe an amulet more than a necklace; he can see there’s a small silver circle at the end of the chain where he could put a jewel. Knowing Narcissa Malfoy, Harry doubts the stone will be merely pretty.
            And in fact, the next package he opens, from Andromeda, turns out to contain a cut topaz that will fit it perfectly. The stone is crawling with so much magic that Harry’s fingers zing from touching it. He smiles at Andromeda. “Protective enchantments?”
            She nods, beaming, and then moves her foot again to rock the cradle Teddy is lying in. He wakes up and fusses if someone interrupts for one second, although he’s perfectly quiet even through all the unwrapping if he’s rocking.
            Then again, it’s not like the Malfoys are loud.
            “Thank you,” Harry repeats, and turns to Narcissa as she opens her gift. He doesn’t know her well enough to choose anything personal, and he hesitated over clothes and jewels before rejecting them because he doesn’t know what would they would say to her. But with her long and perfectly groomed hair, a hairbrush—one that contains enchantments to smooth and soothe and make her hair warm and dry after a bath—seemed a safe bet.
            Besides, it’s made of silver and has a small representation of the Black coat of arms on the back that Harry managed to enchant there after a strenuous evening of working with several spells. He knows Narcissa will appreciate the personal touch there even if she doesn’t think much of the gift on its own merits.
            “Thank you, Harry,” Narcissa murmurs back, and her fingers keep touching the Black coat of arms as if she can’t leave them alone. Harry smiles again and turns to watch Draco open his “practice” wand.
            Draco freezes as he stares at it, and Harry speaks quickly before Draco can think it’s a joke. “I know it looks awful, but I did enchant the handle to be a Golden Snitch. See?” he added, as small wings extend from the sides of the handle and flutter once.
            Draco smiles, a fragile thing. “So what does it do?”
            “You write the name of a spell you want on a piece of paper and stick it in the top.” Harry feels his tongue tangling around itself, although he ought to know what the stupid thing does; he read the description three times before he ordered it. “Then you have someone else cast that spell on the wand. After that, you can use the toy as often as you want to cast that particular spell.”
            Draco freezes again, but Harry knows it’s for a different reason this time. “So it can be anything I want,” he whispers.
            Harry nods. “Sure. Lumos and Incendio and Accio some specific item, or anything else. And there’s three more of the wands in there.”
            Draco looks up. Harry’s unprepared for what he sees burning in Draco’s eyes. “You got me a wand.”
            “Well, a toy.”
            “You got me a wand,” Draco repeats, and Harry has to glance down. He doesn’t know what to do with the words, the silence that follows them, the tone in Draco’s voice, anything.
            He would say “Sorry,” just in case, but Narcissa opens the package of toy wands that he got her then, and Andromeda opens the small clock Harry chose which will measure the time between Teddy’s feedings and reassure Andromeda that yes, he is eating correctly, and their pleased exclamations distract Harry from what’s happening in front of him.
            At the same time, he can’t help noticing that there’s no gift for him from Draco. But Draco brushes his fingers across Harry’s wrist and murmurs, “Later,” and Harry feels his heart lift to the point of soaring.
*
            “I wanted to give this to you in private.”
            Harry turns from contemplating the stars to watch Draco. It seems fitting that, once again, they’re in the back garden, but this time, under the light of fierce stars and a fiercer moon and snow that glitters and sweeps across the grounds. Harry heard Teddy start to cry when he came outside, but Andromeda gave him a significant glance as she picked Teddy up.
            Harry thinks he now also knows why Narcissa went over to help Andromeda at once, something she does a lot but not always so promptly.
            “What is it?” Harry asks, holding out his hand, because Draco’s package is small. He could make a lot of tasteless jokes, but he won’t.
            “Nothing to what you gave me,” Draco says softly. “Aunt Andromeda cast the spell for me, since I’m not—I wasn’t allowed magic.” He gives Harry a grin as fierce as the stars. “But I chose the rock and the memory myself.”
            Harry unwraps the package, surprisingly heavy for its palm size. Of course, if Draco chose a rock, that makes sense. But he still catches his breath when it’s revealed.
            It’s a piece of quartz, so crystalline that Harry can see his hand and the snow and the trees through it with barely any blurring at all. When he turns it, though, there are colors flashing in the bottom of it that make him wonder if it’s an opal or something. Red and green and black. He glances at Draco.
            “Not like a Pensieve,” Draco says softly. “You can’t view the memory. But you can feel what I felt when you hold it.”
            Harry obediently closes the quartz in both hands—it seems to be the thing to do—and shuts his eyes. He wonders for a second what Draco means. Will it be the cold of Malfoy Manor, or the heat of lying in a deliciously warm bed and watching the fire?
            It’s neither. Emotions swirl up and flood Harry.
            There’s deep-welling horror, first. And then cleansing shock. And then breathless tension that makes Harry feel as if he’s going to fly over a cliff, and flashing and surging over that, joy, and triumph. Finally, relief, sweet as peaches.
            Harry opens his eyes, dazed, to find Draco standing in front of him. He smiles at Harry.
            “What memory is that?” Harry asks.
            “The emotions I felt when I watched you come back to ‘life’ and duel the Dark Lord for possession of the Elder Wand,” Draco says quietly. “And then what I felt when I saw you destroy him.” He inclines his head. “I wanted you to know.”
            “It’s beautiful,” Harry says. “I’m sorry my gift wasn’t more personal.”
            Draco reaches out and seizes his neck, then his chin, then his cheek, his hand slipping and scrabbling clumsily. Finally he settles on Harry’s chin after all. His fingers are trembling, and it seems he has a hard time keeping them still long enough to hold Harry’s face there.
            “You gave me magic back,” Draco whispers. “Against that, my gift is—it’s what I wanted it to be.”
            “It’s beautiful,” Harry repeats.
            There’s such a long moment when Draco stands there, in the snow, and looks back at Harry, and Harry shivers in anticipation of something more. But in the end, Draco only bows his head, and drops his hand, and whispers, “Thank you.”
            Harry nods, and smiles, and leads Draco back to the house. He opens his mouth on the way there, wondering if this is the moment to bring up the way Draco touched him during his illness.
            But Draco turns around to look up at him in the light falling through the dining room window, and Harry realizes it’s not.
            No, now is the moment to bend down a little and kiss Draco lightly, on the cheek, because that’s what was missing. And Draco shivers as though someone’s strung a wire through him, and doesn’t back away.
- 1
- 2
- 3
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Years Before Love