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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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Chapter Thirty-Two—About Teddy
            “I’ve more than done my part in leaving you alone, I think.”
            Harry looked up from his book. He was still in the wing of the Manor that Malfoy had told him would be his as long he wanted to stay there. It had its own library and study and bedrooms, so Harry had thought he was safe.
            But here Malfoy was, strolling into the library as if he owned it—well, technically he did, but the point was that he’d agreed to leave Harry alone here—and sitting down across from Harry, clearing his throat as he stared expectantly at him.
            “You have,” Harry finally said. “But that means you can go on leaving me alone until I ask to see you. I think that was the bargain.”
            “I’d like to make a better one.”
            “Of course you would. I’m not ready to abandon the original one.”
            Harry turned back to his book. Malfoy’s library, or his for right now, held even more books on Arithmancy and Ancient Runes than Hermione had lent him. Harry was working his way slowly through a book that they apparently used in third year at Hogwarts. It made him feel stupid and homesick at the same time. If he closed his eyes and only listened to the fire, it was easy to imagine he was back in the Gryffindor common room.
            Admittedly, it would have been one of the rare pauses without Ron talking or Hermione flipping a page of her book or someone else laughing at a game of Exploding Snap. But it still felt like home.
            “What are you thinking about?”
            “Hogwarts,” Harry answered truthfully, before he remembered who he was talking to. He leaned back and scowled at Malfoy a little. “If you try to take advantage of that somehow, then I’ll curse you. I’ll add some Runes to it, too.”
            Malfoy frowned. “You don’t know enough runes to add them well to a curse.”
            “Exactly. Just imagine how much more powerful it would be to be cursed by someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing, and how the runes would probably be impossible to undo because anyone who tried would work by the rules.”
            Malfoy paused. Then he said, “You seem younger, somehow. Like reading these books is causing you go back in time to the days when you had homework.”
            “I wish I could be back in those days,” Harry whispered, and then buried his head in his book again so Malfoy wouldn’t see his eyes. Nothing they’d shared so far let Harry think that Malfoy would handle him about to cry with any tact or sensitivity. “I wish I’d opened my eyes after a long sleep, the way I thought I had at first when I woke up in St. Mungo’s and saw Hermione, and it was tomorrow.”
            “Tomorrow?” Malfoy echoed.
            “The day I thought I was waking up to,” Harry explained dully. He drew in a breath, and the stupid temptation to cry disappeared. “The day when I was going to start arranging things and helping people after the war. The day I thought I was going to return your wand.”
            Malfoy sagged back in the chair as if Harry had hit him, which was more the way Harry had thought he would feel after finding out the truth about the way Old Harry had really returned Malfoy’s wand. “Oh,” he whispered.
            Harry nodded. “I would give a lot to live those years over. To do different things, to tell people the truth about me, to convince myself that I didn’t need to care so much about what the public thought of me.”
            Malfoy sat still. Then he said, “There are potions that could help with that.”
            “But I would never ask you for them,” Harry pointed out. “Because I did sort of get that second chance. I have the ability to face people down now and fight them if I have to—the ones like Kelvin, I mean. The Ministry might not even prosecute me for Old Harry’s crimes. I have the ability to live free of constant fear.”
            Malfoy looked away with a faint frown. Harry went back to reading. He could see some of the ways that Arithmancy equations could be expanded to include runes, or he thought he could, but it was still hard to be sure, and the book didn’t explain much about it. The author was patting him on the head and reassuring him that he would learn all about the nice runes later in Ancient Runes class, Harry realized with a roll of his eyes.
            “Harry?”
            “Yes?” Harry looked up again and tried not to sound dismissive. He really wanted to get back to reading, but he also didn’t want Malfoy to feel as if Harry was hostile to him.

            Malfoy faced him slowly. He’d been looking at the shelves and around as though he didn’t know what books were in this library. But now he had a strange, determined look on his face, as though he’d found a mask he could put on which fit him well. Harry looked back as neutrally as he could, and slid a hand beneath the table to grasp the Elder Wand.
            “There’s someone I could introduce you to,” Malfoy said slowly. “One person that you kept up ties with and I kept up ties with, but we never went there together. And you haven’t mentioned him at all since you—came back.”
            “Who are you talking about?” Harry couldn’t think who Old Harry and Malfoy would have had in common as a friend, except perhaps a Potions brewer such as Kelvin—someone else he wouldn’t want to know.
            “Teddy Lupin.”
*
            Harry had told himself, based on the information Malfoy had given him, that of course Teddy wasn’t a tiny baby. That Harry only ever remembered seeing him that way in a photograph didn’t matter. Ten years had passed for everyone except him. That was the point Harry had to keep pounding into himself, and then he had to add that the years had passed for him, too, just not pleasantly.
            But it was still an utter shock to see a ten-year-old boy standing in Andromeda’s house staring at Harry. He had brown hair and brown eyes at the moment, but even as Harry watched, he choked, and his eyes bled to blue. He turned away and walked towards the stairs.
            “Teddy!” Andromeda called after him. She had threads of grey in her hair Harry didn’t remember before, but otherwise, she looked almost the same as his few memories of her painted her. She smiled painfully at Harry and held out her hand. “You look different, dear.”
            “Do I?” Harry didn’t know how much they knew, how much they’d heard from Ron and Hermione and the rest, and how much they had ever known in the first place. Malfoy had been able to tell him that Old Harry often visited his godson and Andromeda, and that he didn’t want Malfoy to come and visit when he did, in case they betrayed that they were more familiar than distant schoolmates.
            “Yes, you do.” Andromeda scanned him from head to toe once, then nodded firmly. “You look as though your shoulders are carrying less weight and there’s more light in your eyes.”
            “You look different from my godfather.”
            Teddy had come back to the table. Harry turned to him, heart aching. Here, he really felt the passage of time most keenly. Ron and Hermione’s children were still too young to remember much of anything, and Harry knew he had seen Bill’s children often but probably not as often as Teddy. And now he had to be godfather to a boy he only felt eight years older than.
            Teddy had grey hair and amber eyes now, so like Remus that Harry blinked and said, before he could stop himself, “Do you have photographs of him looking like that?”
            Teddy fell a step backwards as if shocked. “Who are you talking about?” he asked, and looked at Andromeda, what seemed instinctively.
            “Your dad,” said Harry. “Remus Lupin. He looked like that sometimes. I just wondered if you had a photograph and you were copying it on purpose.” He could feel how hot his face was just sitting at the table. Malfoy shifted a little behind him, and Harry found himself turning and looking up. “Does he have one?”
            “You should ask me that question, not my cousin.”
            Harry turned around. He was going to mess this up, all up, and then—“You’re right,” he said, as calmly as he could. “Sorry.”
            Teddy fell a single step back. He stared at Harry with wide eyes, then shook his head and bolted for the stairs again.
            Andromeda opened her mouth, and Harry assumed she was going to call him back, but Harry shook his head. “Let him go for now. I need to know a little more before I talk to him.” He folded his hands on the table. “How much did you know of what’s appearing in the papers now?”
            “You thought I would have known and permitted you to continue visiting Teddy?” Andromeda seemed to swell, but she didn’t move, and her voice only grew a little colder. “I would have moved to another continent before I let someone who was enslaving people speak to Teddy. I didn’t leave my family over their abasement to You-Know-Who just to get back into that.”
            Harry blinked. Then he nodded. Andromeda’s answer was fiercer than he’d expected, but fierce like a cold wind he could face into and accept the sting of on his cheeks. “Good. Then that makes one person who’ll be glad that I changed.”
            “I cannot believe Ron or Hermione would want you to keep doing those things.”
            “No. But they miss the façade Old Harry had.” Harry was aware of Malfoy prowling around behind him. He finally chose a chair to Harry’s left and sat down, which was a relief. “They keep wanting to know how he could have lied to them so perfectly and done all these things behind their backs. And I don’t have an answer for them, because I don’t remember them.”
            Andromeda considered him carefully, then Summoned over a small plate of scones. Harry relaxed. He felt he’d passed a test.
            “He was an excellent liar. I never knew that.” Andromeda leaned back in her chair, nibbling at a scone. With a wave of her wand, a jar of marmalade and a small dish of butter also floated over. Harry waited what he thought was a polite moment before he began spreading the butter on his scone.
            “I know it sounds as if they’re doubting you.”
            Startled, Harry looked up. Andromeda leaned towards him with huge, compassionate eyes. One of her hands patted his.
            “I think they’re doubting themselves more than they are you, wondering how in the world they could have missed secrets that huge. But they’ll get past it. And you’ll do the same thing.”
            “I understand exactly why they would feel that way,” Harry said. “I mean, I was horrified when I found out about it. But thank you,” he added, when Andromeda’s smile started to look a little pinched. He ate half the scone, then set it down.
            “How bad was his relationship with Teddy?” he asked.
            Andromeda didn’t pretend to misunderstand him. “Harry and Teddy were close. He came over every week at least, and usually more often than that. He taught Teddy to fly, gave him his first Snitch, took him to his first live Quidditch game. He took Teddy traveling in the Muggle world. He told him that his parents would be proud of him and sympathized with him when he was fighting with me.” Andromeda took a deep breath. “I would never have permitted that Harry to visit Teddy if I’d known about his other secrets, but I can at least say he was a devoted godfather.”
            Harry closed his eyes. It was the first time he’d heard something good about Old Harry that he could actually believe.
            “And so, for Teddy,” he whispered, “his devoted godfather is dead.”
            “I thought it would be that way as soon as I heard you didn’t remember anything of the past ten years.” Andromeda shook her head. “It’s not your fault. But Teddy can’t accept it. I think he hoped that you were ignoring us because you were getting your memories back, and then you would come in and everything would be back to normal.”
            Harry swallowed. There was pain in his chest as if he had swallowed shards of glass. And this was a pain that he had caused, not one that Old Harry had caused and Harry had to try and clean up on his own.
            “Do you want me to call him down?” Andromeda asked gently.
            Malfoy’s hand was squeezing Harry’s shoulder, providing him with an anchor of sorts. He leaned back and shook his head. “I don’t think we would accomplish anything that way. I have to go to Teddy, not the other way around.”
            Andromeda raised her eyebrows high enough to endanger her forehead. “Well, that’s different from the way I’m raised him,” she murmured. “But I think in this case, you’re the one who knows best.”
            Harry tried to ignore the palpable doubt radiating from her, and nodded. “Thank you.” He stood and turned for the stairs.
            “Do you want me to come with you?”
            Harry looked over his shoulder, waving Malfoy back into his seat. “No, thank you. I have to do this alone.”
            Malfoy sat back down, but Harry could feel his eyes like two nails digging into his back all the way upstairs.
*
            It had taken Harry a moment of searching to find Teddy’s room. Andromeda seemed to have a number of spare bedrooms, although only one bathroom, and a number of cupboards used for storage of clothes and blankets. Finally Harry found the door that had a small design of brooms around the knob, and knocked.
            “Go away.”
            “I’m here if you want to talk to me,” Harry said, taking a step back. “That’s all.”
            “You’re not him.”
            “No,” Harry agreed, and for the first time since he’d started learning what Old Harry had done, he regretted it. “I’m not.”
            Teddy ran across the room, from the sounds, and opened the door. He glared at Harry through eyes that had gone brilliantly yellow, like a wolf’s, but his hair was purple, as if he had decided to be the perfect combination of Remus and Tonks for the moment. “Why did you even come here?”
            “Because I felt like I’d been ignoring you since I woke up, and I didn’t want to do that anymore.”
            “You should have gone on ignoring me.” Teddy bowed his head, and his hand shook where it held the doorknob. “It would have hurt less that way. You can never be him.”
            “I know. But I’d like to have a try at helping you and loving you.”
            “Why, when you don’t even know me?”
            “I don’t know you yet. But we’re both still alive. There’s a chance I can get to know you, if you talk about yourself.”
            Teddy eyed him in silent hostility for a minute. Harry waited, and hoped he wasn’t doing everything wrong. He supposed he never would know if he was, until such time as Teddy made the decision.
            “I don’t want to hear about you. And I shouldn’t have to talk to you. Harry knew all about me. He’s been there since I was born.”
            Harry breathed carefully. Teddy could take anything the wrong way, including a huge sigh. “I know. I’m sorry. Do you still want to talk to me about things like how much you like Quidditch or whether you have a favorite branch of magic?”
            “No. You’re not my godfather.”
            And Teddy slammed the door. Harry stood there for a second, wondering if he should knock again, ask again, but—
            Not now. He’s right that I’m not Old Harry. And he’s ten years old. I can’t expect him to just start rejoicing that all the lies Old Harry told are coming back to haunt him. Teddy is going to be one of the people still haunted by those lies.
            In fact—
            Harry winced. Maybe Teddy was even having to ask himself, if Old Harry had lied about everything, whether he’d ever lied about loving Teddy. Andromeda would have tried to reassure him, but Teddy didn’t seem like the kind of kid who got easily reassured.
            Harry moved slowly, heavily, down the stairs. The one thing he had enough of, he thought, was time. He would go and do as he must, and give Teddy some time, and maybe they could have a relationship again someday.
            Andromeda and Malfoy waited at the kitchen table, talking softly. Andromeda turned around at once when Harry came in; Malfoy glanced up more slowly. But Harry still had to shake his head in the face of their probing eyes.
            “He can’t. Not right now. He hurts too badly.”
            Andromeda covered her mouth with one hand, but nodded, even as her eyes filled with tears. Malfoy got up and moved around the table to take Harry’s shoulders.
            “I’m sorry that things didn’t work out,” Malfoy whispered to him. “I’ll help you any way I can.”
            Harry looked at him wordlessly. Malfoy was the one who had reminded him of Andromeda and Teddy’s existence, who had decided to come with him here, who was apologizing now. Harry couldn’t imagine Rob doing the same thing, and not many other people, either.
            Maybe only Ron and Hermione. If the rest of the Weasleys had a relationship with Harry that would have let them sympathize like Malfoy was doing, Harry had forgotten it.
            “For now,” Harry said, “take me home.” He paused and turned back to Andromeda. “I’m sorry. I’ll come and talk a different time.”
            “It’s fine.” Andromeda managed to smile even though it looked difficult and her eyes still gleamed with traitorous tears. “You couldn’t help it. Any of what happened, Harry.”
            Wishing he believed that, wishing, again, with all his heart, that Old Harry had been a better person, Harry still nodded and let Draco take him home.
*
Severus1snape: No, Harry isn’t interested in other lovers right now. And I think this story will probably be another ten or fifteen chapters.
moodysavage: Thank you!
SP777: I really have no idea. I think it’s something to do with the new look of the website.
sera21: Well, do you think you were?
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The Dust of Water