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Heart in Azkaban	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2201 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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"He's been asking for you, Potter."
The guard who spoke the words, Julius, kept his face averted. In general, he talked so little that Harry wasn't even sure of his surname. He nodded back once and turned to make sure that he'd sealed the last door behind him.
Procedure, always, except when it came to Malfoy. The Ministry might be watching him, but they weren't going to find a flaw in his performance, not when it really mattered.
He wants to be called Draco now, not Malfoy, Harry remembered, and shook his head a little as he made his way towards the right corridor. It still puzzled him that Draco trusted him this much, even when Harry hadn't defended him strongly enough and had been the bane of his school existence for years, but he didn't want to question it.
After what he's been through, he has the right to any strange preference he likes.
*
The stag Patronus was long gone when Harry came into Draco's cell, which made him grimace a little. Still, he couldn't hold it all day. He cast it most mornings, and it would probably stay an hour or three. Harry was practicing in his off evenings; he hoped to eventually be able to maintain it for a day.
Draco lay curled so small under the weight of the blanket and cloak that he looked as if he'd lost weight. Harry bent down beside him and touched his shoulder.
There was no warning. Draco simply rolled over and straight into his arms. Harry froze in surprise, and Draco bundled himself closer and closer and said, in a strained voice, "Don't turn me away."
Harry breathed out and shook his head. "Of course not," he said, and he tugged Draco over until they were more or less sitting close together, Draco draped across his lap. Harry's ears burned, but if Draco wasn't embarrassed, he reckoned he couldn't be, either.
"You came for me."
Draco's statement was simple, but Harry could only imagine how many hopeless cries lay behind those words. He knew his voice would betray him if he tried to speak, shake or crumble or show his pity, and so he nodded and gathered Draco closer.
"Will you always come for me?" Draco asked, and the question sounded almost philosophical. But his arms tightened like strangling ropes around Harry when Harry hesitated. "Will you?"
"If you need me to," Harry said, and rocked Draco back and forth, eyes locked on that bland, icy grey wall that was all Draco had to look at, other than the picture of the dragon Harry had brought him, and Prongs and Harry when they were there. "As long as you want me to. I will."
"That's all I want," Draco said drowsily, and his arms tightened again. He squirmed around until his head was beneath Harry's chin. "You're the only one who gives a shit about me. You're the only one I want here."
"Draco, no," Harry began, despite knowing it might not be a good idea to contradict him. "Your mother wants to come--it's just that the Ministry has forbidden her to visit--"
"The only one." Draco lifted his head.
His eyes looked so feverish that Harry found himself nodding, despite not being sure if this agreement was good for Draco. What happened when his sentence was done? Would he distrust his mother, who had longed to do so much for him, but found herself held back by the same restrictions that would have held Harry back if not for his name?
At the moment, though, with Draco wrapped so close that it was hard for Harry to tell where his own breathing and heartbeat ended and Draco's began, it seemed like no price could be too much to pay for his happiness.
*
"Mr. Potter. I understand that you have been spending a large amount of your time with Mr. Malfoy."
Listen to them call him Mr. Malfoy, as if they actually respect him. Harry kept his back and shoulders straight and his gaze level, though, mimicking the posture of a soldier as best he could. It was the one power he had over people like the one sitting in front of him, the new Temporary Governor in Charge of Azkaban.
Kingsley Shacklebolt was a good man, but he couldn't be everywhere, and some of his delegates were mistakes. Like this one, Gerald Jackson, who had lost Muggle relatives to the Death Eaters and wanted them all dead.
But not cleanly dead, which was a motive Harry could at least accept because he'd felt it in battle himself. He wanted them tortured and starved. He'd already got a reprimand from the Ministry because he'd tried to restrict the food rations given to prisoners.
Harry just hoped that Jackson never found out it was Harry who'd reported that, or Harry would probably not be able to help Draco at all.
"I suppose someone has to do it," Harry said, as if doubtfully. He shook his head a little when Jackson stared at him. "It's just--sir, if I don't do this, there are certain factions in the public who will dare to question my image. They'll say that I don't care for defeated enemies, or some such." He sighed slowly and shook his head. "I have to stay with him for now. Until the eye of the public turns away from me, at least."
Jackson stared at him, his fingers doing a slow drumroll on the desk beside him. Harry kept up the posture of good little soldier. The papers were already losing interest in him, and of course helping Draco had nothing to do with them, but it was the only sort of "excuse" some people would accept.
Finally, Jackson said, "I suppose I can accept that. As long as you're not doing it from some kind of romantic motive."
Harry lost his composure and visibly started, he knew. "Romantic?"
"Ah." Jackson leaned further back and nodded. "I thought you hadn't heard that rumor. There are a few people saying you were obsessed with Malfoy in school. Enough to take visible risks for his sake, perhaps."
That Jackson thought spending time with Draco in prison a visible risk passed without his saying. But Harry knew he wasn't a Legilimens, so he just smiled at Jackson with a slight shake of his head. "I know what I'm doing, sir. Enough to try and make the public perception of me work in my favor, for once. If people are stupid enough to believe I was in love with Malfoy, they're stupid enough to believe any pretense."
Jackson only nodded again, and the double sense of Harry's words sailed right past him. Harry had to admit that he did enjoy it when that happened. "As long as you're apprised of the rumors, Potter. I thought you wouldn't enjoy hearing them any more than I did."
"Thank you, sir. You're right, I don't." Harry inclined his head to the man and headed out of the barren little office that he had to report to every few weeks, in order to convince Jackson he was carrying out the bastard's plan for revenge in a more subtle way.
Soon he would have to go home and take a shower. Being near Jackson was fouler, in some ways, than being near a Dementor. A Dementor had to follow its nature; a human had the ability to know better.
But in the meantime, he knew he would go and see Draco again. Because if he didn't, who would?
*
"Get away from him."
I suppose that answers that question about who else would visit him, Harry thought as he aimed his wand at the guard who'd been bending over Draco, and who straightened up hastily when he saw Harry in the doorway. Draco looked as if he was unconscious, but that could have been from the proximity of Dementors.
Then Harry saw the black bruise on the side of Draco's neck, and purest dark rage took over his actions.
"He's mine," Harry said, and managed to control his next words if not his curses. His nonverbal Blasting Curse slammed the other guard into the wall, and made him wail as his wand went flying from his hand. Harry stalked towards him and snapped his teeth in the other guard's face. "My source of bribes. Did you think that I would stand by and say nothing while you abused him? Did you?"
"Potter--"
"Did you?"
His magic broke out of him, the way it sometimes had since the war, although usually only when Dementors were nearby. It circled him in a dark, rising wind that Harry thought he was the only one to really be able to see properly, as black streamers that had wings and claws and fangs. But others could certainly feel something was wrong, and the guard began to choke long before the black streamers came near him.
"Potter, he's alive and my family is dead!"
"I don't care," Harry snapped. "I know for sure he didn't kill your family, or he would be here for a lot longer than he is. I know the exact length of his sentence. Did you think I didn't? Did you think I would take bribes from someone whose crimes I didn't know, didn't understand?" He stalked towards the guard and jabbed his wand into his Adam's apple, making him choke for a different reason. "Someone who I didn't know exactly how to punish?"
"You aren't punishing him," the guard mumbled. "You just coddle him and bring him things and try to--"
Harry hit him with the Memory Charm so hard that the guard's mouth fell open and he started drooling, and Harry was worried that he'd reduced him to Lockhart's status for a second. But then he started recovering and looking less distressed, so Harry said, "You came in and had a talk with me about Malfoy, and I told you I knew very well how to punish him, and you were satisfied. Leave now."
The guard stumbled on the way out, but he was out. And Harry knelt down by Draco and healed the bruise, and cast a charm at the door that would veil any sight inside, and drew Draco into his arms.
Draco came back to consciousness slowly. The first Harry really knew of him being present was when he stirred and mumbled, "Told you."
"What?" Harry cast a Warming Charm, and Draco's shivering eased.
"Told you that you would always come when I needed you," Draco mumbled, and turned his face into Harry's arm, and went back to sleep.
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Heart in Azkaban