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Easy as Falling	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 31246 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Thirty-Six—Shot and Staggering
            “I don’t know whether I should go with her or not, mate.”
            Harry continued standing with his back to Ron, facing the solitary window in the rooms Ron had taken. It overlooked the Quidditch pitch, and showed the rain drizzling steadily down, then hesitating, then taking over again. Everything out that window looked grey and crushed green and brown. Harry wished it was winter. Then it might look white instead. “You have to make the decision,” he said, in a voice that sounded alien even to him. “You know I won’t keep you here against your will.”
            “Cut that out, will you?” Ron came up behind him and dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder. “You know I don’t want to leave. I don’t want to,” he qualified, when Harry turned and stared at him.
            “But you are,” Harry said.
            “I just said I don’t know whether I should or not.” Ron leaned a hip on the windowsill and stared down with him. Harry turned around and watched the pitch again. He wondered if Ron was remembering Gryffindor practices, the way he was, and the way they had flown in their games, Ron as Keeper and Harry as Seeker. Life had been simpler then, Harry thought. He had never seriously entertained the idea of a permanent break between him and his friends, no matter how annoyed he was.
            “What’s her problem, anyway?” Harry asked dully. He had replayed the conversation between himself and Hermione a dozen times over in his head since they had it, and still he couldn’t find the key as to what had set her off this time. “I mean, I’ve fought back against the Ministry before this. Why is this the last straw?”
            “It’s not the Ministry,” Ron said quietly. “She can accept you defending yourself, even if she disagrees with you about how you ought to do it. It’s the election.”
            Harry shut his eyes and rubbed the back of his neck. “She’s afraid that I might interfere with it to make sure that Malfoy is elected.”
            “You can call him Draco in front of me,” Ron said. “I’m a lot less blind than either you or Hermione think I am. I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
            Harry opened his eyes and turned to face him. “He saved my life at the Ministry today, Ron. Or at least my mental clarity. He’s sacrificed some of his campaign to come and be with me. He’s not as evil as she thinks he is.”
            “It’s not even evil,” Ron said, sounding a little sad. “She holds the electoral process sacred. If she knew about the Ministry doing something underhanded to make sure Tillipop is reelected, she would want to stop that, too. She fought for votes for house-elves, remember? But she does think that you let personal feelings run away with you. You could sacrifice all your principles for Malfoy, and it wouldn’t surprise her in the slightest. It’s the fear that you might that means she has to go away and think.”
            “She’s afraid I might do that because I would sacrifice them for you and her,” Harry muttered. “The way she thinks I did with taking over Hogwarts.”
            Ron nodded. “I reckon she decided she could live with that because you bonded with Hogwarts, and no one can change it.” Some of the stones beneath Harry’s elbows, where he leaned on the windowsill, vibrated as if to reassure him that they would challenge anyone who tried. “But she doesn’t want to see you change the whole—the whole way that voting works. That’s the way she thinks of it, as the free choice of people. You can give students the freedom to come to school. You can’t take away their freedom to vote for who they like.”
            Harry stared down at his hands and sighed. “And she doesn’t trust me not to do that.”
            “Not with someone personal involved.” Ron’s voice lowered. “Has he asked you for anything like that, mate? And would you do it to make him happy?”
            “No, and I don’t know,” Harry said. “If I thought it would really make him happy and I could come up with some way to make sure that no one else would be hurt by it…” He shrugged, and looked into the distance. He had found a ritual that would free Draco from the spell on his mind, but it had to be cast exactly at sunset, and he still had almost an hour, from the angle of the light. “I might.”
            “That’s exactly what she’s afraid of,” Ron said. “That she couldn’t even talk you out of it or make you stop it because your power is so great.”
            “What about you?” Harry turned so that he could see Ron and Ron would hopefully miss the way the muscle in his jaw was jumping around. “Do you think that I would hurt someone who tried to stop me?”
            “Unless it was one of us, I could see you doing it, for someone else you love.” Ron met his eyes fearlessly. “But I would want to be there to try and stop it. As for your question, no, I’m not going with her. I want to stay here and see what happens. If someone needs to oppose you, I reckon they need to be right here to do it.” He extended his finger and poked Harry in the shoulder. “And I want all that money you promised me.”
            Harry closed his eyes, needing the support of the stones on the windowsill now as his legs nearly dropped him. “Thank you.”
            “I have to go tell her now,” Ron said, swinging away from the window and towards the door of his room. “Pray for me.” He flashed Harry one smile and was gone.
*
            “Draco? Draco, it’s time to open your eyes now.”
            Draco slowly and obediently forced his eyes open. It had been comforting, to lie still on the couch that was in his master’s room, and not have to do anything else. He didn’t even feel hungry, he realized with a little start. Maybe his master had told him not to feel that way. Draco couldn’t remember.
            Now, though, he had to sit up when his master gestured, and follow his master to the center of the room. On the floor was a single white stone. Draco stared at it. A part of his mind that didn’t have to listen to anything, that had its own memories of Potions ingredients and the days when he brewed, murmured recognition. It was a piece of quartz, and it flashed and glowed in the light from the candles that flickered along the walls.
            “This is a ritual,” said his master’s voice. Draco turned and found him right at his side, his green eyes as bright as the stone, and focused on Draco himself. There was a time he would have been puffed up with pride at that, Draco thought, but he couldn’t remember why. “You have to trust me. All right?”
            It was either a command or something Draco already did, because he nodded without any trouble at all. “All right.”
            “Good.” His master held out his hands, and motioned that Draco was to take them. Draco did, and his master murmured something that included the word “heat,” but it wasn’t loud enough for Draco to hear, so he didn’t have to pay attention. “Hang onto me, and don’t let go, whatever happens.”
            That was definitely an order. Draco obediently locked the muscles in his arms, so that he would stay still.
            His master didn’t draw his wand or start chanting, the way Draco would have expected of a ritual—though he also couldn’t remember where he had learned that about rituals. Instead, his master closed his eyes, and pure magic rose from his body, from his clothes, even from the stones at his feet, swirling and dancing around him. Draco watched with his mouth open. His master hadn’t forbidden that, at last.
            The magic was colorless sometimes, and bright curls of white like the quartz sometimes, and as dark as the night other times, and a few swirls Draco couldn’t see, only glimpse them by what they pushed, like wind. They all waltzed around his master, and his master began to speak in a droning chant. Draco couldn’t hear whether it was an incantation or not. He couldn’t take his eyes from the pure magic.
            It might not be so bad to serve a master so powerful, after all.
            When did I think it would be a horrible thing to serve a master? Draco wondered, because most of the thoughts that had filled his head in the last half-hour weren’t like that at all.
            But his mind was changing. He could feel it. The magic was whirling around him as well as around his master—whose name, he remembered with shattering abruptness, was Harry—and he could feel it carving back the curtains that had hung over his thoughts.
            Why had he allowed the curtains to stay there? This was much better, the sensation of clean wind blowing through crystal air in his mind.
            Because he had been enchanted.
            Yes, he could remember it now. He had snatched Harry and borne him to the floor of the corridor in the Ministry when the spell went off above them. It had been hard to tell what it did, but he had known that he needed to save Harry anyway. There was the possibility that Harry could save Draco if the magic harmed him, but Draco wouldn’t be able to do anything for Harry if Harry was the one stricken.
            And then Harry turned to him and looked deeply into his eyes, and the last compulsion to call him master and obey him frayed.
            Draco clenched his hands on Harry’s of his own free will now, because he understood how important the ritual was and that he mustn’t break free. He flinched a little as the magic soared over his shoulder and slammed into the wall of the room. He didn’t know why it did that, or what kind of ritual Harry was constructing that focused solely on that little piece of quartz, but that didn’t really matter. He could feel the power of it.
            Harry dropped his hands and turned back to the piece of quartz. Draco swallowed and observed him. Harry’s face was narrow and dark, his eyes closed. He made two slashing motions with his hands, and the walls of his office rippled around them.
            The piece of quartz shattered.
            Draco ducked, but the flying splinters slammed into an invisible shield he hadn’t even realized was there in front of him. Draco lifted his head slowly. He nodded once to Harry and said, in a voice that was hoarser than he had thought it would be, “I owe you my mind as well as my life, it seems.”
            “I don’t know about you owing me your life recently.” Harry gave him a tired smile. “And this was just me repaying the debt that I incurred when you pushed me to the ground out of the way of the spell. Thanks.”
            Draco reached out and ran a hand through Harry’s tangled mess of hair, down his cheek and to the side. “How are you? Really?”
            Harry caught his hand and turned it over to plant a quick kiss on the palm. “Fine. The main problem is that Ron and Hermione are both questioning my—my commitment to you, and Hermione decided to leave.”
            Draco narrowed his eyes. “Over you being in love with a Malfoy? Or another man?” He hadn’t thought Granger the sort to abandon her best friend over either short-sighted complaint.
            Harry shook his head. “Over me being in love with a candidate for Minister. She thinks that I’ll influence the election for you.”
            Draco sighed. “Not that I didn’t think about asking you to do it, but it would only make you unhappy in the end, and I would have to bear the consequences if we ever had a fight and a falling-out.” He paused, his hand tightening on Harry’s. “What happened when you went in to confront the Wizengamot?”
            Harry smiled and lifted his wand to touch his temple, pulling out a silvery strand of memory. “I think you need to watch the Pensieve memory to appreciate the full effect. I’m not sure that I could find the right words, anyway.”
*
            Watching Draco with his head in the Pensieve, laughing and spluttering at what he assumed were appropriate moments, Harry came to a decision.
            He would do his best to keep his power in check, to only do things that would protect and expand the school, as he had promised Hermione he would do. And he wouldn’t influence the election anymore. His relationship with Draco would have to stay a secret for a long time, perhaps forever. Or at least until Draco was done with the campaign or out of office, depending on which one came first.
            But he also wouldn’t back away from loving Draco, a man who had already risked more for Harry than Harry thought he would do for anyone except his parents. A man who had introduced Harry to his parents, taking the risk that things would go wrong between them given all their shared history.
            He still didn’t know what he would do if Draco asked him to intervene in the election, just as he’d confessed to Ron. On the other hand, he trusted Draco enough to think that Draco probably wouldn’t ask him to intervene in the election.
            On that trust, the balance had to hang.
            He blinked and swallowed, and Draco pulled his head out of the Pensieve and swung around to face him, eyes so bright that Harry wondered for a second what words would come out of his mouth.
            As it turned out, he didn’t need to worry.
            “That was brilliant,” Draco whispered, and stared at him for a second as though he expected Harry to make a proclamation of genius, or for magic to fly out of his ears. Then he smiled, and it was a disconcerting smile, all narrow and sharp and nearly as bright as his eyes. “Far more brilliant than I thought you could manage without me right there to talk you through it.”
            Harry laughed. “Yes, well, I do have a talent for those kinds of things, if you remember from the way I punished Fifernum. I don’t recall having your input on that, either.”
            “Mmm.” Draco eyed him for another second, and his smile slowly grew across his face. “Did you realize something?”
            “There are an infinite number of things that I haven’t realized, and nearly as many things I have,” Harry said loftily. “Which was this?”
            “Earlier, I said that you loved me,” Draco said. “That you were in love with me, perhaps I should put it. And you didn’t deny it.”
            Harry blinked. Well. That was unexpected. He had thought it was like Draco to say, this way, that he knew Harry was in love with him, but perhaps instead he should say that that kind of declaration had lacked Draco’s usual subtlety.
            “Yes, I do,” he said, staring at Draco and wondering if he would back down or break away. It seemed as likely as the fact that he would stay still and let Harry say it. “I love you for a lot of different reasons, and it’s sudden and probably going to make one of my best friends even more upset when I tell her, but I love you.”
            Draco said nothing for silent seconds. Harry didn’t know what was going to happen next, what he expected to happen. So he waited, and Draco came up and took his hands, the way he had during the ritual.
            “Thank you,” Draco whispered. “As close as I can reckon it—given that I don’t really have any experience at this kind of emotion—I’m in love with you, too. For your brilliance and your care and your power and the fact that you would take all kinds of risks for me.”
            Harry became aware he was shivering, and not all the firelight on the hearth, straining towards him as Hogwarts sensed his distress and interpreted it as being cold, would make him stop. He moved in towards Draco and still Draco watched him come, steadily, more courageous than Harry had ever thought he could be.
            He remembered again the risk Draco had taken. For him.
            Harry put out his hands and gently took Draco’s cheeks in them, his thumbs rubbing up near Draco’s eyes. Draco sighed and tilted his head back, neck falling, riding the motion.
            “Thank you,” Harry said back, and kissed him.
            The magic dancing through the kiss was more important to him than all the power that rose and danced around him in response.
*
            delia cerrano: I think the only thing that will prove Harry to Hermione is time: him holding back from interfering and letting the election run its course.
            kain: Oh, believe me, Harry feels on shaky ground without her, and he knows he owes her his life. The main thing he can’t let go is that she seemed okay with what he was doing, even when he was arguably interfering in the election, until she found out he cared for Draco. Even though Ron did his best to explain it to him here, Harry can’t help feeling that if it was someone different—like Ginny—then Hermione would be okay with him doing whatever he wants. To him, Hermione’s letting her personal distrust of Malfoy influence her more than any principle, just like Harry is letting his love of Draco influence him.
            Christopher: Hermione is more afraid of what she thinks Harry will do, rather than what he has done.
            BAFan: Don’t worry, Harry didn’t really understand either, until Ron explained it to him.
            Foxie: I think Ron could be that counter.
            SP777: She would, in fact, be fine with Harry using his powers for the liberation of house-elves. But interfering with the election is something she thinks is morally wrong, not just underhanded.
            moodysavage: Ron might be able to keep that from happening—maybe.
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