Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

The Dust of Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20632 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 36
- 37
- 38
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-Seven—Drama in the Rain

            “Master Harry.”

            Harry woke so suddenly that it was as if someone had jerked him out of slumber. But when he sat up, the only one at the end of the bed, staring at him with alert eyes, was the Lucius house-elf.

            Thinking of him as the grey-eyed house-elf might be better, Harry decided irrelevantly, and gasped, “What is it?” The Elder Wand already buzzed in his hand, although he couldn’t remember picking it up.

            “There is someone here to save you.” The elf bowed, and Harry tried not to think about echoes of Lucius in that motion, if they were even there. He could probably drive himself more insane looking for them.

            “Who?” Harry swung his legs out of bed and reached for the clock that stood on the table beside the bed, ignoring the humming of the Elder Wand as it begged him to cast a Tempus Charm. He wasn’t going to use the evil thing until he had to.

            It was three in the morning. Harry’s stomach coiled with tension. If it was one of the Weasleys, it had to be serious.

            “He is announcing his name as Rob.”

            Harry groaned and buried his head in his hands. The elf was staring at him when he looked up again. Harry knew it—he—was probably wondering what in the world was wrong with a wizard who groaned at the simple naming of a guest.

            Harry, meanwhile, was wondering what was wrong with Rob. Harry didn’t return his letters, didn’t respond well to his confessions, cast spells on him, and wouldn’t agree to be his lover. Did he need a literal kick in the arse before he would decide that this reawakened Harry wasn’t the perfect one for him?

            “Does Master Harry want me to send him away?” asked the elf, when Harry had sat there staring at his hands and hating this particular part of his life for a while.

            Harry gave the deepest sigh he could fetch, mostly for his own sake, and stood up. “I want to meet him,” he said. “But outside the Manor. And I want you with me, standing behind me but out of sight of Rob, in case he gets violent. Can you follow those instructions?”

            The elf looked more than slightly offended. “I will follow my orders, Master Harry,” he said with dignity. “Master Malfoy is not wanting this Rob to come onto the Manor grounds. The rest will not be a problem.”

            Harry smiled a little. He wondered when exactly Draco had given those orders to his elves, and decided that he didn’t need to know. “Right. Then show me where he is.” He held out his hand, and after a moment to eye him further and seemingly decide that Harry was as sane as he would get, the elf nodded and took his hand.

            The sensation of Apparition got no better when an elf was doing it. Harry opened his eyes in a dark, rainy field. He cursed softly and set up an Impervious Charm over his head, then cast a drying one on his clothing.

            “Harry?”

            It was Rob’s voice, all right. But Harry was glad that he had a house-elf waiting behind him, given some of the things Rob had done in the past. “Yes, I’m here,” he said with resignation, stepping forwards. “Why did you decide to come and bother me, Rob? I’ve made it clear I don’t want to be with you.”

            “I came to reject you forever.”

            That made Harry a little happier. But still… “You couldn’t have done that with an owl? Then we could both have stayed inside, at least.”

            Rob turned around and stared at him. He had wide eyes, but Harry couldn’t see much more in the darkness. “Did you think I wanted things to end like this?” he demanded. “But since you imposed these terms on me, you’re the one who has to put up with them.”

            Harry held back the urge to roll his own eyes. He folded his arms. “Right. Get on with it.”

            “You’re ruining the mood.” But after a moment of stalking back and forth with his arms folded and his frown directed more at the elements than Harry, Rob seemed to decide that wasn’t important. He turned and faced Harry. “No one has ever treated me as badly as you did.”

            Knowing some of what Old Harry had done could still make Harry flinch. He nodded and said, “I’m sorry.” That ought to be safe, considering Rob had summoned him specifically to reject him.

            “Not even him. He was the one I loved and who insisted we had to keep our relationship secret and break up so he could date someone else for his strange pretense of normality. But you still hurt me worse, since you woke up without your memories.”

            Oh, this ought to be good. Harry was wise enough not to say that aloud, though, and a little shocked at himself for thinking it. He only blinked at Rob, hoped he looked like he made sense, and said nothing.

            “You were the one who’d gone back to the man I first fell in love with,” Rob whispered. He was once again gazing off into the darkness, and Harry wondered what he saw there. It sure as hell wasn’t Harry, the person. “And I thought, well, I’ll give you time. You couldn’t even remember the time when you found men attractive. You weren’t going to take up the life and marriage that he had. I would let you come back to yourself and then decide how you would reconcile your crimes and the like.

            “And then I found out you don’t intend to reconcile those crimes. Just leave them behind like clothes you’ve outgrown. And you moved in with another man, and you’re lovers with him from what I can tell.”

            Then you can’t tell much. But Rob spun to face him just then, and demanded, “I’m right, aren’t I? You’ve gone back to Malfoy, someone you used to conspire with, and decided he’s a better person than I am!”

            “I don’t think he’s a better person morally,” Harry said, thinking of the mistakes Draco had made. And the lies he’d told, and the Horcrux portrait, and how long it had taken him to decide that he could actually rescue his father. “I think he’s better-suited for me to spend my life with, though.”

            For a second, there was silence except for the rain dripping between them, and Harry didn’t have to see the stunned expression on Rob’s face to feel it.

            Well. I didn’t know I was going to say that. It’s like one of those words you know until someone asks you to define it. Except in reverse.

            “You’re right,” Rob whispered at last. “I was a fool to come here. I didn’t want—I wanted to get an apology from you. And I see now that we’re different. Maybe the man I loved was always an illusion, no matter if he was Old Harry or you. Because you’re not moral enough to accept being with someone who actually loves you, and just wants you to be a better person.”

            Harry sighed and didn’t roll his eyes, because he thought Rob would probably hear that in his voice even though he was facing the opposite way. “I don’t know what I can say to change your mind or even if I should, Rob. I’m not going to date you again, or fall in love with you. I hope you can make your peace with that however you want.”

            Rob turned around. His face was strained, but in the low light of the charm that had started glowing on his wand, he looked more human and less dramatic than he had sounded when he was reciting Harry’s crimes.

            “Do you know how painful it is,” he whispered, “to think you have your second chance come to life, and then have it snatched away again?”

            “I don’t know exactly how painful that is,” said Harry, and made his voice as calm and steady as he could. “But I do know that I have to learn how to live my life again, and nothing I’ve learned about you since I woke up has made me decide to spend it with you.”

            Rob closed his eyes. “I should have realized. When your memories vanished, they took with them what caused you to love me in the first place.”

            “Probably, yeah.” Harry took one glance behind him to make sure the Malfoy house-elf was still there, and then faced forwards again. “I hope you find peace,” he repeated. It sounded like a lame wish, but it wasn’t something he could change.

            Rob studied him a few seconds longer, then said, “Tell me one thing. I promise,” he added, maybe because Harry’s eyes had flickered in spite of himself, “this is the last question I’ll ever ask you. I have no desire to bore you, after all.”

            “That’s sweet,” Harry said, and put no emotion in his tone. “Ask, then.”

            “Have you just given up on being a good person? Or is Malfoy a good match for you for some other reason?”

            “I’ve given up because I can’t atone for whatever it was,” Harry said. “No one person knows the whole truth, and my old self hid so many things in so many different places…I might not even have found all of them. What happens if I stumble on a cache of papers years from now that changes the way I feel about things, or even reveals new crimes? What should I do? Go to Azkaban for crimes I can’t remember? Allow my enemies to kill me? You have one idea of how I should repent, but it isn’t the only one. Other people would have different ideas. And the Ministry has all but declined to prosecute me. Maybe because it would make them look bad and have people questioning their past decisions more than because they like me,” Harry had to add. He didn’t really think Kingsley would keep silent just because Old Harry had been his friend. “So I probably couldn’t go to Azkaban even if I wanted to.”

            “You didn’t say anything about Malfoy.”

            “He was the one who supported me and told me that I didn’t have to go on living in Old Harry’s shadow for the rest of my life.”

            “But what you did was wrong.”

            “Right. And I can spend the rest of my life thinking that and deciding that nothing I could do would be enough to make up for it, for the reasons I just detailed to you. Or I can let go, the way I did of Ginny and my Auror career, and move on with my new life.”

            Rob paused. Then he said, “I suppose we just have fundamentally different notions of what it means to do wrong and right.”

            “Yes,” Harry agreed, relieved that Rob had managed to put it so simply to himself. “And that means we wouldn’t be good for each other.” He held out his hand. “I meant what I said about allowing yourself to find someone different. Old Harry only chose Ginny because he thought he had to. You hoped he would come back to you, and then you hoped I’d come back to you, out of stubbornness and old love. I think you can find someone better-suited to you. The way I have,” he had to add, when Rob only hung onto his hand and stared at him with searing intensity.

            Rob bristled a little. “If you think I was celibate for the last five years, I can assure you that’s not true.”

            Harry grinned. “Good. Then you already have a good foundation for being able to move on from me.”

            Rob paused again. Harry met his eyes fearlessly. What Rob wanted to see and what was there were obviously different, and Harry wouldn’t make up truths to make him feel better.

            “All right,” said Rob, and his voice was defeated. “You already have moved on.”

            “Easier when this person I am now feels like he never knew you,” said Harry. He didn’t have to be mean, he thought, just absolutely intent on convincing Rob he was never going to yield to him. And there was a different tone in Rob’s voice now. Harry thought he believed it. “Easier for me to change into someone else altogether.”

            Rob started to speak, stopped. They stood there in the rain for long enough that Harry considered pulling his hand away and asking the house-elf to take him back to Malfoy Manor. This was probably the end of it, and nothing else either one of them could say would change the other one’s mind, either.

            Then Rob whispered, “As long as you are completely different and not the kind of person I would want to be with anyway…it stings less now that you chose Malfoy.” One more hesitation, and then he nodded and let go of Harry’s hand. “I wish you well.”

            “Thank you,” Harry said, and waved as Rob walked away from him, looking back only once. When he reached some point known only to him, he Apparated.

            Harry turned and held out his hand to the house-elf, wondering once again how much of Lucius Malfoy remained behind the grey eyes fixed on his face. Maybe he would remember this later, and resent it. For now, though…

            “Take me home,” he said, and only realized what he had called Malfoy Manor when he had crawled into bed and was trying to fall asleep again.

*

            “If you no longer have feelings for this Rob person, then of course that changes the nature of the ritual I have to construct,” said Fleur, and became very busy with the map Harry had taken Draco to see, crossing out one thick black line and adding a series of lighter blue ones with a tiny paintbrush she had nearby.

            Harry relaxed and ignored the way Draco studied him. They had talked for a long time that morning about Draco’s father and the way he would have to think when he got to the essential stage of the ritual for breaking Lucius’s mind out of the house-elf. Harry hadn’t wanted to tell him about Rob and their final parting and upset what he thought was a fine balance, or worse, start an argument they no longer needed to have.

            “You do no longer have feelings for him?” Draco muttered out of the corner of his mouth.

            Harry gave a brief nod, and then shut up, because Fleur was turning to them and clasping her hands on the table in front of her. Her mouth was set, and she spent a moment glancing back and forth between them as if the ritual would begin when they looked at her.

            It didn’t, of course. But when she spoke, Harry felt for a moment as if it had, with the air charged with magic and flowing around them. “You should know that the ritual, although simple in conception, will be complicated in execution.” Harry had the sensation she had said those words before, and people hadn’t listened.

            He nodded, and Fleur continued with what sounded like less practiced but more hopeful words. “You will need people to help you. Harry, that can be the Weasleys for you. You would have to join with them anyway, to heal the gaps that the ritual proves exist between you.” She nodded at the drawing. Harry wasn’t even going to try to guess which line she’d drawn represented what. “But Malfoy has only one person already involved, yes? And he is the one who needs to be pulled out of the house-elf by the ritual. I do not know what he will do.” She turned to Draco and waited.

            Draco ducked his head so that he was looking at the drawing and neither one of them. Fleur made an impatient motion, but Harry put his hand on her arm. She hushed.

            Draco finally said, “I’ve abandoned most of the friends I had. They couldn’t take my walking the grey line. Some of them wanted me to go further into Darker magic, and some of them were disgusted that I did anything Dark at all.”

            “You must think of someone who would trust you enough to be part of the ritual,” Fleur said. “It will fail, otherwise.”

            Draco frowned some more. “Someone who I would also trust with an explanation of what the ritual does?”

            “It will be necessary. Of course.”

            Draco bowed his head. Again Harry and Fleur waited. This time, though, Harry wasn’t as convinced that they would get a positive answer. Draco was tapping his fingers and fidgeting in his chair.

            “It’ll have to be Pansy,” said Draco finally, lifting his head with a frown that Harry longed to smooth away. “She was always telling me I would go too far into the Dark Arts someday and do something I regretted. I stopped talking to her partially because I hated to prove her right. But I think she would come back, if only for the chance to gloat over it. And she wouldn’t report us to the Ministry.”

            “Then that will be one,” said Fleur. “You should have house-elves involved, too. The elves who have worked with the one that has your father’s essence and know him as his mingled self. You cannot claim to know him,” she added, when Draco opened his mouth. “Not as he is. Only as he was.”

            After a second, Draco nodded. Harry clasped his hand, and they watched Fleur’s face light up with a smile before she stood and glanced at her drawing of the ritual for a moment.

“Then I will begin to prepare the plan,” she said. “And Bill will prepare dinner.” She smiled at them once more before she went through a door into a room that looked like it was crowded with canvas and paints, calling out for Bill.

“What are we doing?” Draco whispered.

“Something not Dark, that will bring your father back. It’s the best thing.”

            Draco grunted, as if he didn’t agree but was willing to let Harry convince him, and then he glanced at him with hot, fierce eyes. Harry nodded in silence.

            “I told Rob I would never have feelings for him again,” he said. “He finally believed me, and he left. After telling me that I was too wrong morally to be with a person like him anyway.”

            “Did he say anything about me?”

            “That he couldn’t believe I would choose you over him.” Harry leaned slowly towards him, checking the doors out of the corner of his eye. Bill and Fleur were talking, but neither seemed ready to come back into the room yet. “I finally made him believe that I would, too.”

            “Did you?” Draco’s face was pale, except his eyes, which glittered with almost unnatural color. “And was it true, or just a way to make him leave you alone?”



“True,” Harry whispered, and kissed him.

In the way that Draco grabbed hold of him with twisted hands that almost resembled claws, Harry could taste his desperation. But the kiss tasted far more of triumph.

*

Severus1snape: Thank you!

SP777: No, my bird is far more about complaining that he doesn’t get enough treats and kisses and crackers than trying to eat my face off. There’s usually some shriek of “Gimme kiss!” or “Gimme cracker!” going on at any one time.
- 36
- 37
- 38
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

The Dust of Water