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Starfall	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 32486 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
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Chapter Twenty-Nine—Discretion
            “You’re sure about this.”
            Potter made it a statement, but it still sounded like a question to Draco. Draco merely nodded and glanced once more at the closed door that cut them off from entrance to Healer Brandeis’s office. “Yes. Healer Brandeis is the most discreet person I know. She treated my mother.”
            Potter stared at him in surprise, and for once stopped bouncing his foot off the edge of the soft blue chair he was sitting on—a chair that was far more comfortable than Potter’s bouncing would indicate. “What? I never knew your mother had needed a Mind-Healer.”
            “See?” Draco asked in triumph, and the door opened.
            Healer Brandeis stepped out. Potter leaned forwards and studied her. Draco wondered what for. He couldn’t possibly see her as a threat, even with Auror training. Perhaps she was simply smaller than he had expected.
            Draco could understand that impulse. Healer Brandeis was a short woman, her soft brown head coming no higher than Draco’s shoulder. She would probably be shorter compared to Potter. She had neat braids, the pale green robes that Mind-Healers tended to wear, pale skin, and blue eyes that surveyed Potter with a calm, bird-like curiosity.
            “Thank you for coming, Mr. Potter.” She stepped back and gestured into her office. “Would you like to come in?”
            Potter nodded and stood up. He seemed more than startled when Draco stood up to walk with him. Draco raised an eyebrow at him. “I left Scorpius with his grandparents for the day. I’m surprised you think I would have needed that time simply to walk you to Healer Brandeis’s office.”
            “I didn’t…” Potter frowned and shook his head, then entered the office without speaking. Draco followed him. He did his best to tame his smile under Brandeis’s scrutiny, but it was difficult.
            No, he wasn’t going to limit his contributions to Potter’s Mind-Healing merely to recommending a Healer to him. There were other things Draco was eager to see go into effect.
            Healer Brandeis’s office had changed little from what Draco remembered. The walls were still wood paneling, unusual for St. Mungo’s, but everything had been painted a soft blue. Streaks of white in the blue suggested clouds without actually forming their shapes. The interior was all one large space, instead of broken up with storage cupboards, tables, and chairs the way Draco had seen in a lot of Healers’ offices. Healer Brandeis did have chairs, but they were distributed almost randomly, and all of them had wheels that ran easily over the thin rugs of gold and pale pink, colors that reminded Draco of a sunrise. Healer Brandeis had said they were a Muggle innovation when Draco asked about the wheels. Hesitation about what his father would say was the only thing that had kept Draco from adopting some of the chairs for himself.
            Healer Brandeis sat down in the chair nearest the small fireplace, which was made of shiny blue stones streaked with white and gold. She leaned forwards and swept her hand at the other chairs. “Wherever you’ll feel comfortable, Mr. Potter.”
            Potter hesitated one more time, and then took the chair furthest from her. Draco sat next to him, earning another odd look. He shrugged at Potter in response. He couldn’t help it if Potter didn’t understand all of Draco’s purposes in coming here.
            “Now.” Healer Brandeis looked at Potter as if Draco had ceased to exist. Draco had felt the effect before when he accompanied his mother on visits, and didn’t mind it. He was interested to see how Potter would react if he forgot that Draco was in the room. “What problem are you seeking help with?”
            Potter blinked. “You don’t just assume that it’s the war?”
            “Assumptions are a dangerous state of mind in my business.” Healer Brandeis nodded as though keeping time to unheard music, eyes still fastened patiently, immovably, on Potter’s face. “Which one is it?”
            “A combination of Dark hexes that makes me unable to have children.”
            That did at least surprise Brandeis, and Draco saw Potter relax; keeping his secrecy was still important to him. Draco frowned, but said nothing. Potter would have to learn, someday, that secrecy wasn't the most important thing he could focus on.
            But today, he had other things to learn. Healer Brandeis said, "I see. And this would be the cause of your recent divorce?"
            "Three years ago, yes." Potter's tone took on a dryness Draco hadn't known it could have. Well, when Potter was around him, it almost always had emotion of some kind. "And in large part behind the new business I've started."
            "Time doesn't mean as much to a Mind-Healer as it does to other people," said Brandeis, with a small shrug. "I spend so much of my days in minds that don't always track time the same way." She was studying Potter as if seeing tics and imperfections invisible to Draco. "There is no hope of reversal?"
            Potter grimaced. "No. It was entirely accidental, and they don't even know what the combination was, only what it did. If it had hit in a different place on my body, it wouldn't even have had this effect."
            Potter's voice now had a bitterness that was stunning. Draco didn't want to look away from him. He had never thought he'd lost something by having Potter as an enemy instead of a friend at Hogwarts, at least once he got over the sting to his pride that was Potter refusing his hand. But now he knew he'd at least lost the chance to see Potter express a full range of emotions.
            "No hope of reversal," said Brandeis, and for the first time, waved her wand and Summoned the large silver bowl of water that Draco was familiar with from his visits here with his mother. It floated over to her without spilling a drop, and Brandeis leaned over and spoke the words into it, making the bowl glow briefly. She faced Potter. "My means of keeping notes," she explained, tilting her head at the water. "It works like a Pensieve, except that it only shows the words I speak into it, and only to me."
            "All right," said Potter, and he sighed and lifted a shaky hand to rake his fingers through his hair. "I don't--I don't want to go on like this. I can have a successful business and I can spend time around other children, but I realized that I still felt desperate even after I'd helped a little boy who had nightmares and I should have been feeling pleased with myself, and successful. It's like I'll never be satisfied until I have a blood child of my own."
            "If that is impossible," Brandeis said, bending over the water and watching Potter with all the keenness of a predator, "explain your goal in coming to me."
            "I want to accept not being able to have children," said Potter. "Maybe you can convince me. I can think of all the things I could do instead, but it's not going to matter when there's no other voice speaking to convince me."
            Draco locked his hands on his knee to keep from responding that he could have provided that voice, if Potter had only come to him. What was he but someone who was the opposite of Potter in so many ways?
            On the other hand, Potter had come to him for advice about the Mind-Healer. Perhaps that was enough of an honor.
            "Very well," said Brandeis, and smiled at Potter. "It's good to have a concrete goal. We'll begin with simple narrative today, where you explain to me what you want to tell of your injury and the circumstances that led up to your divorce, and I make a few suggestions that might have immediate effect." For the first time, she looked at Draco, and her look was gently inquiring. "Do you want Mr. Malfoy to stay while you're speaking?"
            Potter blinked and turned around. Draco told himself not to be insulted that Potter had basically forgotten he was there. It might be a sign of trust.
            "Oh," Potter said, and then shrugged. "I trust him not to use it against me. He can stay."
            It wasn't a ringing endorsement, but it was more than Draco had thought he would get. He leaned back against the chair and listened as Potter began to explain the circumstances three years ago to Brandeis. He noticed that, as yet, Potter had mentioned nothing about Ethan Starfall. Perhaps he simply wanted to wait and see if he could trust Brandeis.
            Either way, it meant Draco held one secret of Potter's that no one else did.
            It was strange, how important that was to him. And enlightening.
*
            Harry sighed and sipped at the glass of water Healer Brandeis had given him. It seemed as though telling his story had taken hours, although when he glanced at the clock on the wall, barely thirty minutes seemed to have passed. His voice was probably more hoarse from emotion than use, he decided.
            Healer Brandeis had leaned back halfway through the story, and other than murmuring words to her recording bowl now and then, she hadn't paid attention to anything except him. Her eyes were wide and thoughtful.
            "How angry are you at your ex-wife now?" she asked.
            "Angrier than I thought I was," Harry said tiredly. He wouldn't have been able to admit this a few weeks ago, but then, a few weeks ago all this...mess hadn't happened and he hadn't even considered going to a Mind-Healer. "She's pregnant, and I'm more jealous of her than I can say for having a baby, a blood child of her own." He shut his eyes, and tried not to envision a beaming, pregnant Ginny, who he hadn't actually seen anyway. "And sometimes I wonder if I was wrong. Maybe I could have accepted one of her children as my own. I'll never know now, it's too late, but I wonder."
            "How can you think--"
            That came from Malfoy, astonishingly, and not Healer Brandeis. Harry opened one eye to look at Malfoy in slight shock, then shrugged and said, "Because it's a situation where I have to. Everyone behaved badly. I knew where I assigned the blame at the time, but now that I'm more distant from it, how can I not wonder?"
            Malfoy pinched his lips together and shifted in the chair. Harry thought about telling him that maybe he needed to see a Mind-Healer about his own divorce from Astoria, but he didn't say it because he wasn't suicidal.
            "It's mature of you to be able to see that your ex-wife isn't entirely to blame, Mr. Potter," said Brandeis, drawing Harry's attention back to her. "But we must make sure that you nurture no fantasies of getting back together with her. That could impede your own progress in reconciliation to your fate."
            "I don't," Harry said shortly. "She's happy with her new husband, and I'm envious of their happiness, but there's no way I want to destroy it or convince her to give it up."
            Brandeis watched him for a moment as if considering the truth of his words, then nodded and tapped her wand on the rim of her recording bowl. That caused a ringing sound that seemed to travel much further than Harry had expected it to, and then a twisting tower of light and color, intertwined threads, rose from the water. Harry tilted his head back so he could watch it.
            "This is the sort of tower that your words form," Brandeis explained. "The colors represent different ideas, the brightness of the light how emphatically you spoke of them." She touched her wand to one long red strand and it vibrated, and Harry heard a ghost of his voice speaking Ginny's name. "In general, I'm satisfied that your hatred towards your ex-wife is only resentment now, and will not get in the way."
            She touched her wand to a long blue strand that seemed to spiral up and down most of the tower. "But this. Your longing for blood family. This is still alive and impeding you dreadfully."
            Harry nodded slowly. He reckoned that was still the source of it all, all the hurt and all the dread. "Yes, I know. If--if that hadn't been there, I could have reconciled with Ginny and her notion of having children with someone else after all."
            Malfoy stirred, frowning, but didn't say anything. Harry was still trying to work out why he cared when Harry talked about impossible situations. After all, this situation was the best for him. If Harry had stayed with Ginny and her children, then Harry wouldn't have been Ethan for a while, wouldn't have been available to help Malfoy, and wouldn't have got to know Scorpius or played with him or be leaving him Grimmauld Place along with Teddy.
            "Or you could have found pleasure in your godson and your friends' children," said Brandeis, with a small frown at him, and Harry wondered what he'd done wrong. Perhaps she thought his resentment against Ginny would become an impediment if he kept talking about it. Brandeis added, "Why do you have such an attachment to the idea of blood family?"
            Harry took a deep breath. This was going to be somewhat embarrassing. "My parents dying when I was young meant I idolized them. I never knew what they were like, but I kept imagining...something great. So I thought if I couldn't be with them, I would at least have children of my own. And I could take them on holidays and teach them Quidditch and get them practice wands and all the things that my parents never got a chance to do with me."
            Shit, his eyes were stinging. Harry closed his eyes, with the silent promise to Malfoy that he would hex him if Malfoy teased him about this. "But then I realized I wouldn't get to do that, either, and it was like this double blow. I couldn't get over it. I still don't think I have. I know it's impossible, as impossible as it is for my parents to come back to life, but I never stopped wanting them, and I don't know if I can ever stop wanting blood children."
            There was profound silence for a moment, without even a shift from Malfoy to show he was bored and impatient. Harry still had to wonder why he was here at all, but he did acknowledge that Malfoy was being awfully polite about all the silliness Harry was feeling.
            "Forgive me, Mr. Potter," Healer Brandeis began, sounding as careful as though she was circling around armed trip spells on the floor. "But I was under the impression that you grew up with blood family. If you did, why couldn't they ease your loneliness? If you didn't, why did they not manage to ease you past this focus on blood?"
            Fuck, this part. Of course, this part. Harry stared at his hands, which was easier, even when he regarded the scarred knuckles and chewed fingernails and other things that made them ugly, than looking at a face right now.
            "My blood family was my Muggle aunt, my mother's sister, and my cousin," he said. "And my Uncle Vernon lived with them, of course."
            Silence, silence that Healer Brandeis seemed to know better than to break. Malfoy was over on the couch breathing like one of the dragons he was named for, but he didn't break it, either. Harry braced himself. He hoped Malfoy was going to be gratified by this, because someone should be.
            "They didn't like me. They didn't like magic. They didn't like--lots of things. Anything strange, or weird, or freakish." Speaking the word hurt less than he'd thought it would, like peeling a scab off an old wound. "There was a lot of the time when I dreamed about my parents coming back to life or about them having some sort of secret life where they were heroes because I wanted to be away from that life so badly, where I was just the unwanted freak."
            "It must have helped to learn that your parents were heroes, after all," said Brandeis, very softly.
            Harry looked up at her and shrugged. "Yes, it did. At the time. I knew they loved me enough to die for me. But I still wished they were alive more than I wished I'd known that. And I didn't think that much about it when I was eleven, even. I was dealing with knowing about magic for the first time and being the Boy-Who-Lived."
            Malfoy was as stiff as a lamppost in his seat. Brandeis peered at him and asked, "You never knew before that?"
            Harry shook his head. "I knew strange things happened around me, but not why. I knew they thought I was a freak, but not why."
            "Tell me what else happened, Mr. Potter." Brandeis considered him for a long moment more, as though measuring his resistance to the idea, and then added gently, "Please."
            That was more than Harry could resist. He dipped his head and murmured, "I slept in a cupboard. I had a bedroom, but only after I received the Hogwarts letter and they thought someone might report I wasn't normal. I didn't get birthday presents, or get to go along when they went out, usually. There was--there were a lot of bad times."
            "Define them, please."
            Harry rolled his shoulders, wondering why talking with a stranger about this was so much more comfortable than it would have been talking about it with Ron or Hermione. He reckoned that it was because Brandeis would use the information to help him recover, rather than not being able to do anything with it except hug him. "I did a lot of chores and I didn't get much to eat."
            Simple words to hide a lot of sins, probably. But Harry didn't think he could say it any other way.
            "I see," said Brandeis. She was giving him a deep look, somewhere between compassion and thoughtfulness, and rapping her wand over and over again on the rim of the bowl. The tower of light had dissipated, folding back into the water, and Harry stared at her face through the air where it had been. "And this continued all the time that you lived with your blood family?"
            Harry nodded. "Well, until the time I went to Hogwarts. Then it was only the summers." He supposed he could have pretended that it had stopped when he was eleven, and neither Brandeis nor Malfoy would have known the difference, but the point was supposed to be getting better. That wouldn't happen if he hid the truth and pretended that everything had been fine when it wasn't.
            Malfoy seemed off in some private world of his own. Brandeis leaned back with one hand on the rim of the bowl as though holding it in place, or clasping the magic to the place she had tapped it, and asked, "And you never told anyone?"
            Harry shrugged. "My friends suspected it." They had, from the bars on the window and some things they had said to him since, but... "No, I didn't tell any adults. I eventually knew that I had to stay there because of the blood protection my mother had granted me, and before that, it just didn't come up or seem possible. I stayed at Hogwarts for all the holidays, though."
            Brandeis remained sitting in silent patience for some time, but Harry had told her all he had to say. She finally nodded back at him, as if acknowledging the end of a conversation, and murmured, "It seems as though your blood family did indeed drive you back into embrace of your parents' memories, although you couldn't remember them well. I understand your problems better now. Have you had any contact with your family since the war?"
            Harry lifted his head. "With respect, madam, I don't think of them as my family."
            "That also is important." Brandeis tapped her wand on the dish again. "But have you?"
            Harry shook his head. "I wasn't on bad terms with my cousin at the end. But my uncle and aunt never apologized, and I don't really want to see them again."
            "Understandable." Brandeis smiled at him, and leaned her head on her fist. "Well, for the next week, I'd like you to practice a spell that I'll show you. It works to dull some emotions, to stop them from being like knives that dig into you. You may use the spell on whatever emotion you want to, eventually, but for the moment, it'll work on whichever one is strongest. That'll probably be your grief over not being able to have blood children."
            "I don't want to just give up those emotions," Harry objected. That was what it sounded like, to him. "That's why I said I want to be reconciled to it and not just--just delete it out of my memory or something."
            "I understand your reasoning, but for the moment, I think that reasoning is clouded and distorted by the presence of your grief," said Brandeis firmly. "It will be better when you can see more clearly, which you'll be able to when some of it is gone out of your head."
            Harry considered that, then nodded reluctantly. He couldn't fault the logic, although it wasn't the way he would have chosen to go about things. But then, there was a reason that Healer Brandeis was a Mind-Healer and he wasn't. "What's the spell?"
            The wand movement and incantation turned out to be simple enough, and Healer Brandeis stood up afterwards and came over to shake his hand. "I hope that you'll see me next Tuesday, Mr. Potter, at one? You can come sooner than that if you need to, on Friday. I had someone decide the other day that he doesn't want appointments with me anymore."
            Harry smiled a little. He could see why someone might decide that. She was brusque. "Tuesday will be fine."
            Healer Brandeis held his hand still for a moment, searching his eyes. "I believe we can get you past this," she said softly. "It will just take work."
            "I'm not afraid of work," Harry told her, and she nodded as if satisfied, before they separated and Harry stepped out with Malfoy right behind him. He took a deep breath. Talking about that had been painful, but he did feel better now, as if he'd unstrapped a heavy rock from his shoulders.
            Before he could decide whether to Apparate back home or to his office, Malfoy stepped up beside him. Harry blinked and glanced at him. Malfoy's face was pale, his jaw set.
            "Come home with me," he said.
            Harry considered it, but he thought he needed time alone. "I appreciate the invitation, but I need to--"
            "It's not an invitation," Malfoy demanded. "And it's not because I need you, or because Scorpius needs you. I have to talk to you."
            Harry considered Malfoy with careful eyes, because that sounded like a contradiction. Why would Malfoy have to talk to Harry if he didn't need help? But in the end, Harry found nothing that alarmed him, only surprised him, and he shrugged. "All right."
            Malfoy spun on one heel and stalked away. Harry followed, studying his back and wondering what the hell this was all about.
            Does it bother him that much to have his old views about me contradicted? Why, I wonder?
*
            Meechypoo: Yes, Andromeda feels simultaneously that she wants Draco there and that he's doing too much. She would like to be the one to help Harry recover, herself. And there's a teeny part of her that's hurt that Harry keeps insisting on blood children and can't be content with helping her raise Teddy.
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