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The Dust of Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20634 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-One—Choosing His Path
            “You’re more excited about this than anything I’ve seen you study in years,” Hermione said, staring at him. Then she put her hand over her mouth. “Sorry.”
            Harry grinned at her and bent down to pick up Rose, who was staring at him as if trying to figure out whether this was the Uncle Harry who recognized her or not. “It’s all right. We need to acknowledge that you remember things I don’t. I think that’s what drove Ginny and me apart from each other.”
            “I thought what drove you apart was the lies.”
            Harry turned to Ron. He sat with his arms folded and his legs kicked up on a stool in front of him. Harry looked at him calmly. He knew Ron had more than just the crimes against the Aurors to hold against Harry. There were also all the ways he’d pretended to love Ginny.
            “Those, too.” Harry shifted his hold on Rose, and wondered absently if it was possible his body remembered things his mind didn’t. He certainly seemed to know how to hold a little girl. “I couldn’t remember why Old Harry loved her. I couldn’t remember what I’d told her and I hadn’t, and then there were all those secrets I instinctively hid from her when I started finding them scattered around the house.”
            “Yeah. That, I don’t understand.” Ron sat up and let his feet thump to the floor, ignoring the looks Harry was sure Hermione was giving him. “Why didn’t you go to Ginny right away, if you loved her so much?”
            “Because I must not have loved her that much,” Harry said, shaking his head. He shifted a little when Ron started to speak again. “Hear me out.”
            Harry thought Ron was doing it more as a favor to Hermione than him, based on the warning look she gave Ron, but Ron grunted and made a little motion with one hand.
            “Thank you,” said Harry. “I know you don’t want to hear this, Ron, but I don’t think I was ever that in love with Ginny. I broke up with her before the end of the war, and then it was five years before Old Harry decided to date her. Even then, it was mostly because he wanted a ‘normal’ life. He thought it would make her happy, and you and Hermione happy. It wasn’t because he wanted her more than anything else.”
            Ron’s face had turned so pale that Harry was glad he was sitting down. “I—that’s mental, mate.”
            “I think Old Harry went crazy a long time ago.”
            “But he must have known—he must have known we wouldn’t want that for him.”
            Harry licked his lips. This was the part where he had to tread carefully, especially because he didn’t have a lot of the memories that would make it make sense for his friends. “I think he thought you did. I mean, you obviously hoped he would marry Ginny and live happily ever after. And Ginny did, too. She wouldn’t have agreed to go out with him otherwise.”
            “She thought it was romantic. I mean—the way he turned around and told her that he’d taken forever to see how important she was to him, but there she was, waiting for him.”
            Malfoy would think that was pathetic.
            But what Malfoy would think could have no place in this discussion. Harry held Ron’s eyes, and said simply, “But he could have turned around and seen how wonderful she was at any time in the past five years. I think she is wonderful. I also think that he thought he was satisfying everyone’s expectations in dating her, more than his own.”
            “You think she’s wonderful, but he was only doing it to please us.”
            Harry shrugged. “I think she’s wonderful. I can’t tell you exactly what Old Harry thought.”
            “Funny.” Ron stabbed him with a glance. “For a minute, it sounded as though you were trying.”
            “All right. All right.” Harry closed his eyes. “I can tell you what I think. But this is only what I think. It isn’t guaranteed to be right. I don’t think I can ever tell you for sure what went through his head. Based on what I’ve found out, though, I’m starting to understand him more than I did.”
            Ron and Hermione stayed silent. Rose squirmed, and Harry put her on the floor so she could go back to playing. Harry didn’t blame her at all for being bored with the adult conversation.
            He would have run away if he could. But he didn’t think anything Old Harry had done so persistently was a good idea.
            “I think,” Harry began at last, “that Old Harry was frightened by these impulses he had in himself. To use Dark spells, to use his power to hurt other people. He started out thinking he would only hurt Dark wizards, or blackmail them, and that was all right, wasn’t it? And then it slid into: I can blackmail good people and use potions on them, because, well, it won’t hurt them permanently, and maybe they did something wrong even if not as wrong as Dark wizards like Kelvin.”
            They were tense and still, listening. Harry opened his eyes, but found that he couldn’t look at his friends. He had to stare into the fire. The meaningless shapes the flames made were still more soothing than the silence in his friends’ faces.
            “And it turned into,” Harry whispered, “him not being able to face the consequences of his own actions. He couldn’t bear to have someone bring them up. He couldn’t bear to think about it. He couldn’t bear to have someone find out. So he lied more and more, and at the same time he tried to convince himself he was a good person by, oh, doing things like dating Ginny. Look at him doing all the things that a good person is supposed to do. He must be good if he did that. And if it kept suspicion off him, all the better.”
            “Like he could be the hero everyone wanted him to be if he pushed the mask hard enough into his face,” Hermione whispered.
            Harry gave her a grateful smile for phrasing it like that. “Exactly. Even though the mask was only a thing he had made up anyway.”
            “We never asked him to act like that,” said Hermione. She stretched out a hand to Harry, but didn’t get up from the couch where she sat. “We never—he made it up. All of it, including the idea that it was better for him if he never faltered or failed in being a proper hero. Sure, he smiled all the time, but I thought that was because what his personality had naturally turned into.”
            She’s calling Old Harry “him.” Not “you.” I think she can accept that I’m a different person, now.
            “I’m not blaming you,” Harry told her. “One of the reasons it’s hard to understand him is because he was surrounded by people who never demanded anything heroic of him. He simply assumed they did, and went from there.”
            “If we were,” said Ron brokenly, and Harry turned to look at him. He was rubbing his forehead with one hand. “If we were really his friends,” Ron finally whispered, “we should have noticed.”
            “How could you, when he was lying all the time, and would have lied even if you’d asked him directly?” Harry shook his head. “You believed him because you were his friends. Working around his lies and refusing to believe him would have been more the action of an enemy.”
            “You know,” said Hermione thoughtfully, “I think I’m starting to understand why you’ve spent some time with Malfoy.”
            Harry thought about, and discarded, the idea of telling them the truth about the way Malfoy obsessed over him. “That could be,” he said, and then faced Hermione. “Now. I wanted to ask you about some books on Ancient Runes and Arithmancy.”
            The way Hermione’s face lit was worth everything, including having to go through the conversation in the first place and Ron’s pretend frustrated groan.
*
            Harry drew his wand the minute he stepped into the Leaky Cauldron. He could see the pallor in Tom’s face, but more than that, there was someone in a dark, hooded cloak sitting in a chair visible from the door.
            The person stood up, though, and tossed the cloak back. Draco’s face shone as he stalked towards Harry and stared at him. The few other customers in the pub started whispering.
            “Can you please come back to the Manor? I’ve spent the past few days thinking you’re going to die from someone trying to kill you here. It’s not safe.”
            Harry drew a slow breath and forced himself to ignore all the noisy speculation. No matter what he did, people would talk about him. The only weapon he had was in going past that moment, pushing into the one where he could make his own decisions.
            Remember that Old Harry did most of what he did to avoid the public. You can’t do the same thing.
            “I won’t come back yet. But I will invite you up to my room so we can discuss it.”
            Malfoy nodded once, and whirled towards the stairs. Harry followed him, and wondered for a moment whether Royal had come back from his latest delivery. Probably not, or he would have followed and found Harry at Ron and Hermione’s house.
            But perhaps Royal was simply too proud to do that. When Harry opened the door to his room, it was to see Malfoy shouting and ducking from the stab of mighty talons.
            Harry hid his smile and closed the door behind him. “Royal, enough,” he said, without raising his voice. “This is Draco Malfoy, a friend of mine. You carried a letter to him yesterday. Calm down.”
            Royal swung away from Draco and landed on Harry’s shoulder. Harry winced and reminded himself to actually cast the charms that would toughen his skin and clothing there. Royal’s feet slipped in the blood even as he hooted threateningly at Draco and spread his wings so that one of them was behind Harry’s head, pulling it towards him.
            “That’s not an owl,” said Malfoy, staring at Harry as he drew his wand to begin casting healing charms on himself. “That’s a monster.”
            “No reason he can’t be both,” Harry said mildly, and nodded to Royal. Royal swung back to his perch, curling one talon up to his beak as if he wanted to lick off the blood.
            “Your shoulder.”
            Malfoy sounded horrified. Harry smiled a little and cast a healing charm of his own. “He didn’t mean to. Which is more than I could say for Kelvin or someone like him.”
            “Kelvin or someone like him is the main reason I want you to come back to the Manor. You’ll be much safer behind its walls.”
            Harry shook his head a little. “I wouldn’t be safe from my own heart if I came back with you now.”
            Malfoy’s breathing seemed to stop. He moved a step forwards and then stopped. “You care about me that much.” He sounded a little dazed.
            “What I mean is that I don’t trust my own emotions around you,” Harry said with a sigh, but he could see where Malfoy had got his different interpretation. He glanced around the room, then pulled out a small loaf of sweet bread he’d bought that day in Diagon Alley and had been keeping for dinner. “Do you want something to eat?”
            “Not particularly. I think it would only distract me from the conversation I want to have.”
            Royal hooted warningly from his perch in the corner. Harry found himself closing his mouth and smiling instead of getting upset. “Just keep in mind that Royal might interfere if I don’t want to have the conversation.”
            Malfoy gave a single stare at the owl, turning away before Royal could return it, and then focused on Harry. “Your letter wasn’t that coherent.”
            “It was as clear as I could make it. It isn’t my fault if you chose to misunderstand it.”
            “I didn’t choose to misunderstand it.”
            “All right. So you misunderstood it anyway, and you want to find some way to blame that on me.”
            “Why are you being so antagonistic?”
            “Because you aren’t paying attention to anything I said in that letter, including that I want to stay free for a while.”
            Malfoy opened his mouth, then stood up and began to wander around the room, trailing his hands over the books and trunks Harry had bought. Harry turned to watch him. It was nothing to him if Malfoy wanted to touch his things, although he hoped Malfoy was smart enough not to touch Royal.
            “Free of everything? Of any kind of commitment?”
            Malfoy asked that with his head turned away. Harry tipped a hand back and forth. “I wouldn’t mind having some. I reconciled with Ron and Hermione, as much as I can, today. We agreed that they won’t expect a miracle from me, and I’ll try to be my real self around them, instead of either Old Harry or the person he was trying to lie himself into being.”
            Malfoy whipped around so quickly Harry almost drew the Elder Wand. Then Malfoy stood still instead, and muttered, “You reconciled yourself with them and not me.”
            “They’re older friends,” Harry tried to explain. “The situation was more complex with you.”
            “Should I take that as a compliment or not?”
            “I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet what should happen with you.”
            “That’s obvious.”
            Harry rolled his eyes. “Then why did you come here to ask questions about it?”
            Malfoy shook his wrists for a second. Harry wondered if they hurt.
            “Because you’re important to me whether or not I want you to be,” Malfoy muttered, his head turned away. “And I think the least you can do is grant me the ability to decide what I want, as well as letting yourself decide what you want.”
            “I know that,” said Harry. “I never intended to force my company on you or anything like that.”
            “I was more talking about the ability to see you. To spend time with you.” Malfoy turned on him a gaze that Harry supposed was meant to be melting, and maybe was if you were the right person. “To be your lover.”
            Harry rubbed his scar, even though it hadn’t hurt for ten years now, he supposed. “The problem with that is that I still have to straighten my own head out. I’m not sure I’m good company for anyone right now.” He remembered the decision he had come to a few days earlier, and added, “And I don’t think that I’m going to visit or be with someone again just because they want me to.”
            Malfoy stood still. Harry watched him, thinking he would stalk through the door any second, a little surprised as seconds went past and he was still there.
            “The problem is,” Malfoy said at last, with a fragile little smile, “that just makes me want you more, when I hear something like that.”
            Harry grunted. “Really?”
            “Yes. It means that you’ve finally shed Old Harry’s obsessive need to care for what others thought of him.” Malfoy took a deep breath. “It means you’re a new person, a strong one, and I want you more because of that.”
            Oddly, Harry’s first thought was to wonder whether Rob would want him more. But he dismissed it. Not only was he done visiting Rob, he was done comparing Malfoy to Rob and wondering who was better.
            “That’s a good sign,” Harry said. “But I still need to spend time by myself, studying, and I don’t think your idea of being a dueling instructor is going to work. I don’t want to do something ever again that could result in someone taking the Elder Wand from me, and I don’t really want a violent career.”
            “I would feel so much better if you were safe. If you won’t consider—getting together—with me, would you consider coming back to the Manor? That would give you the protection of the walls, but the place is so big you could stay in another wing without seeing me at all. Unless you wanted to.”
            Malfoy finished the words with a gulp, and Harry got a sense of how much it must have taken him to say that. He blinked at Malfoy once, then nodded. “I can see that you’d really like something like that.”
            “Does that mean you’re going to do it?”
            “How welcome would Royal be?” As Malfoy’s lips framed the word, Harry jerked his head at the owl. Royal looked up and hooted warningly again, staring at the back of Malfoy’s neck as if he was envisioning his talons going into it.
            “Welcome. He doesn’t have to see me, either. Anyone who comes with you or visits you is welcome. Even—Rob. Or Weasley and Granger.”
            Harry hesitated. He wanted to say that Malfoy was only doing this because of his obsession, or because Harry had denied him something he wanted. Maybe he would pursue anyone this obsessively if they had refused his hand and beat him in Quidditch and then teased him for years while working with him on Dark potions.
            The thing is, Harry realized after a moment as he looked into Malfoy’s eyes, there is no one else like that.
            “If I can stay with Royal in another wing, and have my friends to visit, then I’ll accept. I’ll come and talk to you sometimes. Just not about being lovers or friends until my head is sorted out. And I don’t want to see Rob at all,” Harry added.
            Malfoy bowed his head and gave the ghost of a laugh, shaking his head a little. “Thank you,” he said. “That makes me happy.”
            And Harry discovered something about himself he hadn’t known, staring at those shining eyes: he liked making Draco Malfoy happy.
*
            Severus1snape: Thank you! And I promise that even though Harry is going back to the Manor, he will still be pursuing his own studies and amusements and friends.
            SP777: Rob isn’t evil, but he might do something desperate to get Harry’s attention.
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The Dust of Water