Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

All Desire in a Day	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9359 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 2
- 3
- 4
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Three—Memory and Desire

            Draco opened his eyes to brightness, so much so that he squinted from side to side at first, wondering if he was in St. Mungo’s. Perhaps Harry had found him in the middle of his circle once the ritual ended, hadn’t recognized the implements around him, and had rushed him to the Healers. At this point, Draco thought he could welcome a visit there, if only to obtain a headache draught he wouldn’t have to brew himself. Malfoy’s behavior had been idiotic enough to make his temples pound.

            But no, he was hovering in the bright sunlight—or Malfoy was, on a broom high above the Pitch, while the rest of the Slytherin team encircled him. Flashing opposite from him on the brooms were the scarlet robes of the Gryffindors.

            Harry never became Seeker in this reality.

            There was a shout and a roar that seemed to come from all the throats around him at once, his own included, and then the Snitch flitted towards him. The Gryffindor Seeker, a huge, clumsy oaf Draco didn’t recognize, blundered towards Malfoy, his hand stretched out, and Malfoy avoided him easily. Draco felt his contempt and his excitement as thorn-edges in his mind, nearly the same emotion.

            Perhaps I can win for once!

            He couldn’t have said who thought that, him or Malfoy. At the moment, they were close to the same being. And then Malfoy dived and rose, and pulled off a complicated twisting maneuver that Draco knew would look much less impressive than it really was to those below, and the Snitch hit his palm with the most satisfying noise he’d ever heard.

            This time, the roar was loud enough to almost knock him off his broom.

            Malfoy came lightly to earth and looked about. Draco, perforce, followed his gaze, and saw his yearmates sitting in the second row of the stands. Malfoy arched his neck and made a preening gesture so unconscious it startled Draco; he must have done the same thing a hundred times and never realized how obnoxious it would look.

            Malfoy looked at Harry. Harry looked at his friends, Weasley and Granger, who Draco knew in an instant from Malfoy’s memories had accompanied Harry that morning because they wanted to sit with him and not because they wanted to watch the game, and talked to them, and gave no sign that he’d noticed Malfoy’s grand catch.

            The jealousy and fury that ran through Malfoy’s veins made Draco feel as if he were being boiled alive in hot tar. He remembered Professor Snape in his own history complimenting him for his control, and Madam Pomfrey doing the same thing when he’d come to her with the hippogriff scratch. Had he mastered his emotions at all, or did he manage to keep them mostly hidden behind a mask?

            “You have no good words for your House’s Seeker, Mr. Potter?” Snape asked. Malfoy beamed. Draco could feel more memories, piling on top of each other, teaching him that Snape knew Malfoy wanted Potter’s attention, although he might not understand the reasons, and so Snape sometimes attempted to get it for him.

            Harry turned his head and gave Snape a look of bright scorn, and no more. He never looked at Malfoy. He had mastered his emotions, and no longer responded to Malfoy’s best taunts about his friends and parents. He only ever defended himself in times of physical attack, in fact.

            This is what we’ve made him by this point, Draco thought, and controlled a sigh. Not that anyone would hear it in the depths of Malfoy’s mind, anyway. Someone who sticks to what he considers “his own kind” and ignores the people he considers his enemies, because he knows it’ll drive them mad.

            Then Malfoy’s teammates swamped him, clapping him on the back and yelling, and Malfoy tried to drown his sulkiness in their congratulations. Draco knew he would succeed only for a few hours. Then he would go back to dreaming of Potter, scheming for some way to make him look, make him speak, make him notice.

            That was another result of having Harry in Slytherin, then: to make Draco more obsessed with him than he remembered being in his own history.

*

            “It’s the Heir!” Malfoy paraded up and down the corridor, carrying Draco in his head because he had nowhere else to go, and pointing at the Petrified Mrs. Norris and the letters that gleamed on the wall. “He’s come back!”

            Malfoy stopped in the middle of the crowd of students and waited for someone to notice him. Someone spoke, the one soft, hoarse voice that Draco had given up on hearing.

            “What do you mean? Who is the Heir of Slytherin?”

            Malfoy swung around and stared at Harry. Harry stood with his arms folded, his gaze fixed on the words as though he could make them stop being real that way. But Malfoy stared at him and said nothing, until Harry looked at him. Even Draco, who didn’t know as much about their relationship as he did about the relationship between himself and his Harry, could see Harry had learned something else by being in Slytherin: the ability to convey contempt with a sideways flick of his eyes.

            “No one knows,” Malfoy said triumphantly, and then backtracked as Harry started to turn away. “I mean, no one knows the name. But he’s someone who’s going to get rid of all the Mudbloods in the school! That’s what my father said! Return it to being just pure-bloods, the way it was in Slytherin’s time.”

            Draco winced. He couldn’t blame this version of himself for believing what his father said, because he had done it, too. But he could wish he had bothered listening to the Sorting Hat’s songs. They said clearly that the other Founders had taught people who weren’t pure-blood. Malfoy ought to have weighed history against his father’s opinion, at least.

            “Well,” Harry said, and turned away completely. He was already settling his shoulders and neck like he would have to haul a heavy wagon up a cliff.

            “Potter, wait!” Malfoy called, rushing after him.

            Harry didn’t walk any faster, but he didn’t turn around, either. Malfoy panted along beside him for a moment, and then decided that was enough and turned him around. Harry obliged, but his eyes had a slight glaze to them. Draco had seen the same look when he tried to explain Potions theory to Harry.

            “What?” Harry asked.

            “What are you going to do?” Malfoy glanced up and down the corridor. Draco had already seen there was no one near them, and tried to remember when he had started being that observant. Not when I was a stupid little second-year obsessed with the Heir of Slytherin, that’s for sure. He lowered his voice. “You looked like you were walking away to do something.”

            Harry blinked at him, and for once seemed like he was human, not some monument to suffering and enduring Slytherin torments. “You said someone was going to destroy the people like me in the school. I’m going to stop him. Them. Whoever they are.”

            Draco frowned. That hadn’t been the kind of thing his Harry would have said. He was sick of the attitude people adopted towards him and wanted to avoid becoming a hero as much as he wanted to avoid those convinced he was on the Dark Lord’s side. Had they really taught this Harry to be a hero, the House and Housemates he hated so much?

            “You can’t do that,” Malfoy said, shaking his head, and Draco mentally apologized to Granger and a few other people he’d met down the years who apparently couldn’t stand the sound of his voice. Heard from outside, that drawl was annoying. “You can’t stop the Heir of Slytherin.”

            “How do you know?” Harry asked.

            Malfoy blinked for a bit, but as always when he—they—didn’t know something, he couldn’t admit that. “I just know,” he said. “It’s obvious, isn’t it? He’s powerful, and he Petrified someone already—”

            “A cat,” Harry said, and his voice grew thick. “A bloody cat. You’d think he could have demonstrated on someone else if he was as powerful as all that.” He glanced over his shoulder, and grinned at something. “Besides, I doubt Mrs. Norris was Muggleborn.”

            “You’re making fun of the Heir, and that’s dangerous,” Malfoy said, pointing one finger at Harry. “You ought to know—”

            “Piss off, Malfoy,” Ron Weasley said, shouldering up to Harry and nearly knocking Malfoy off his feet. Of course Harry had been smiling at him, Draco thought, and shuddered, his jealousy twanging utterly in agreement with Malfoy’s emotions. “Harry, do you want to meet us in the library tomorrow? Hermione’s said that she knows some books on Petrification, and she thinks we could find something.”

            “Sounds great, Ron, thanks.” Harry’s eyes brightened as he stared at Weasley, and Draco wasn’t surprised when he felt Malfoy’s arms cross in indignation. How come Weasley could make Harry so intense and bright and interested when a Slytherin who should be his best friend utterly failed to do so?

            But it made sense. Harry could keep going when his whole House and his Head of House hated him because he had friends in other Houses. Draco should have known that Harry would always find his way to Weasley and Granger; it didn’t matter that they’d been Sorted elsewhere from him.

            It made sense. But it didn’t lessen the pain, either Malfoy’s as he stood and watched Weasley drag Harry away, or Draco’s as he remembered the numerous times Harry had turned his back on him when they were boys to go with the one who had stolen his friend.

*

            “Serpensortia!”

            I thought I was so intelligent.

            And he had, Draco remembered, watching the snake that sprang from Malfoy’s wand and coiled writhing on the floor. What better way to show off his spellcasting abilities in the Dueling Club than by conjuring an animal the way that only fifth-years and up could supposedly do? And making it the symbol of his House, too.

            He remembered Harry hissing at the snake in his second year, and not knowing what he was saying, or realizing that his words sounded like unintelligible Parseltongue to everyone else. Draco listened despite his gloom, because Harry rarely spoke Parseltongue even now. It didn’t fit his image of himself as someone who had no Dark gifts, who was good at the innocent sport of Quidditch and the Light-based Defense Against the Dark Arts.

            But this Harry blinked once at the snake and then stepped directly into its path. He rattled off the hissing syllables like he was born to them, and knew he was born to them, and reached one arm down. Draco remembered his commanding the snake to stop still instead of attacking one insignificant Mudblood—what was his name? Draco couldn’t recall—but this time, the serpent coiled around Harry’s arm and laid its head down in the crook of his elbow, giving something that might have been a whispering sigh.

            Harry stared around the Great Hall. Everyone stared back at him. Lockhart dropped his wand. Snape stood as though Petrified by the basilisk. Harry’s friends had backed a step away and now hovered at the edge of the clear space preserved for the duel, looking at him. Malfoy stood still, too, but it wasn’t fear that thundered through his mind, although everyone other than Draco might think so.

            There was jealousy, as usual, so familiar that Draco thought he would carry the word etched on his skin like ink made of acid by the time he exited Malfoy’s head. And there was hatred, and hope. Hope that Parseltongue might be learnable, that he could know how to do that and he and Harry could talk in snake-language.

            Draco didn’t remember that hope among his own thoughts at the time. But then, this version of himself was different from him in a lot of ways. Stupider, for one thing.

            He knew that this incident made everyone think Harry was the Heir of Slytherin, and so he waited for the whispering to begin, and for Harry’s blank expression to come. He’d seen a lot of it lately, that was true, but that was mainly because it was the weapon Harry adopted to defeat Malfoy’s curiosity. This time, it would be real.

            Instead, though, Harry said something else to the snake and wrapped it around his shoulders. Then he turned and walked out of the Great Hall, his steps so firm that Draco imagined he could feel them shake the ground.

            He blinked, and blinked again when he noticed Harry’s friends slip out after him. Go follow them, he thought as hard as he could at Malfoy. I want to hear what happens!

            Malfoy made his own decision in the uproar that took over the Great Hall; no one was going to notice him when they had something new to gossip about where it concerned the Boy-Who-Lived. And he wanted to witness Weasley rejecting Potter at last. That would serve Potter right, and show him where the right kind of people, the ones who could appreciate his gifts, lived.

            Draco nearly sighed when Malfoy tripped over the trailing edge of his cloak as he emerged from the Great Hall, but luckily, no one noticed. Harry was standing with his back to the Hall, and Weasley and Granger stood across from him, totally preoccupied with him. Or maybe with him and the snake Harry kept petting.

            “Everyone’s going to say you’re evil, you know,” Granger whispered. “Parseltongue is considered a Dark Art.”

            “I know,” Potter said, and touched the snake’s neck and hissed something else when it tried to climb down his arm. Malfoy hoped it would attack Granger; Draco, with his previous experience of watching Harry command snakes, sighed again. Sure enough, the creature subsided and stared at Harry again.

            “You know? Mate…” Weasley’s voice trailed off.

            “I spoke to a snake once when before I came here,” Harry said, and his face went distant in a way that made Malfoy’s curiosity resonate with Draco’s. Draco, though, did know about the Dursleys; he just didn’t remember Harry telling him about a time he’d spoken to a snake in front of them. “When I got here, I remembered that and looked it up. Yeah, I know about Parseltongue.”

            “Then you have to know what it’s going to make everyone think,” Hermione whispered. “That you’re evil, that you’re the Heir. You-Know-Who can talk to snakes.”

            “I know that, too. There was this dream…” But Harry shook his head, and chased the words away. Disappointment clanged like a gong in Malfoy’s mind, and Draco would have liked to know about that himself—another tidbit that his real Harry hadn’t shared with him. “But I’m still going to face up to this.”

            “Why, mate?” Weasley whispered. Malfoy sniffed. The least the git could have done was speak up. “If you could hide it, if you could convince everyone that they were mistaken—”

            “I’d never do that,” Harry said, his voice as flat as the bottom of a shoe. “I’m not going to pretend that it never happened, because they want to make up their minds about me. They want to put me in a category and have me stay there. They said I was a Slytherin, and they said I was the Boy-Who-Lived, and, and lots of other things.” His hands closed around the snake’s body; the snake hissed, and Harry sighed and let it go. “That’s not going to happen. They don’t get to choose who I am. I choose.”

            Malfoy sniffled and blinked and didn’t understand, but Draco did, and he stared.

            If this is the lesson that Slytherin taught Harry, to defend himself and think for himself, perhaps something good came of it after all.

*

            Again the smooth flow of images, and this time it was Harry walking into the Slytherin common room, his head up, his eyes shining even though he had a bandage wrapped around his arm. For a while he stopped and stared at everyone staring at him, and then he sniffed and turned his back, walking towards his bedroom.

            Malfoy stepped into his path.

            Draco watched in silence through his eyes. He knew that shining in Harry’s face; it meant he had survived an encounter with the Dark Lord. And this time it would be the basilisk, and he got to see the aftermath where, in their own real second year, he had been reduced to watching from a distance.

            But now, he did not know what would happen, and especially when Malfoy sneered and spat, “Well, gave Gryffindor a load of points again this time, Potty?”

            Harry laughed. Draco started, and Malfoy flinched. Both of them had forgotten the sound of Harry’s laughter, or never known it.

            “No,” Harry said. “Something better.” He turned, scanning for observers, and seemed satisfied when everyone except a few study-obsessed sixth-years looked up from their amusements.

            He doesn’t collect eyes like that. He doesn’t want to be the center of attention that way.

            But he had done it, with the snake and again here. Harry faced Malfoy again, and handed him a leisurely smile of the kind that even Draco at a few years older would have thought twice about confronting.

            “I found the Chamber of Secrets,” Harry said, and ignored the growing whispers. “I confronted Slytherin’s monster, which was a basilisk, and defeated it. And you know how I defeated it?” He leaned forwards until his nose brushed Malfoy’s.

            “No,” Malfoy whispered. Draco wished for hands to slap the side of his head this time. Malfoy was falling for Harry’s tricks as though his father had never drilled him in half again as many.

            “The Sword of Gryffindor,” Harry said. “Dumbledore’s phoenix brought me the Sword of Gryffindor.” He laughed softly, and held up his bandaged arm as though it was a badge of honor. “And the phoenix wept for me, so I survived the basilisk’s bite. The Headmaster said only someone who was a true Gryffindor at heart could have survived that way, or found the Sword.”

            He gave them all a glance that, this time, was bright with scorn, and looked again at Malfoy. “Against that, what are you?” he asked softly.

            He hasn’t accepted being part of Slytherin at all, Draco thought, stunned and with an aching at heart that he hadn’t expected. He just—uses it when he wants to, and denies it the rest of the time. He still wants to be a Gryffindor.

            A shiver of something like revulsion danced in the back of his head. His Harry never would have done something like that.

            And then the world dissolved again, into silver mist and green, and if his younger self managed a reply, Draco never heard it. He doubted it had happened, though. The force of Harry’s eyes and smile was too powerful, too persuasive.

            He won. Somehow, even here where he should have been more like me and more like the Dark Lord, he won.

*

            Talltree-san: Thank you! I’ve seen those stories as well, but I thought it would be fun to do a different take.

            Fullmoons_wings: Thanks! If Draco picks up on what you did, then he is going to be even more furious than he already is—but, well, too bad.

            AlterEquis: Thanks! I hope each chapter of this fic will be like that, because I intend to cover a year in each chapter.

            SP777: I don’t think just being put in Slytherin would change Harry all that much. He still has the fighting spirit, yes, and Draco has not a clue what to do about it.
- 2
- 3
- 4
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

All Desire in a Day