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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-Eight—With Hermione

            “Are you only talking to me because it’s a requirement of this ritual Fleur designed?”

            Caught off-guard, Harry blinked at Hermione. She didn’t blink back. She stood there and regarded him with an absolutely level stare. Harry cleared his throat and felt a bit of a blush start up his neck.

            “I would have come and talked to you without it,” he said weakly. “The way I talked to Ron.”

            “But it was Fleur who gave you the idea. I noticed that you haven’t sought me out since you talked with Ron.”

            Drifting somewhere between truth and awkwardness, Harry stood there helplessly. Hermione finally shook her head, taking him out of it, and turned aside. “Come on. We’ll be here all afternoon if we don’t make a decision. Ron and Rose and Hugo are with Molly,” she added over her shoulder.

            Harry followed her into a bright kitchen that seemed unusually still; then he realized he’d never been here (that he remembered) when it was so empty of people. Hermione warmed up some cups of already-made tea and set one in front of him, then sat down in the chair across from him.

            “You’re going to need to explain why I should cooperate with this ritual.”

            “Are you that angry that I didn’t come and talk to you?” Harry sipped the tea and decided that she wouldn’t have put Veritaserum or anything in it. She would just be very direct and look at him with that disappointed look until he spoke. “I didn’t really come and talk to Ron, either. He was the one who visited me in Malfoy Manor.”

            Hermione glanced off to the side, playing with a strand of her hair. “I thought you would come and visit me after that. Within a day or two, at least. No later than that.” Her voice sank. Then she turned back towards him, and Harry saw the intense pain in her face.

            “Are we just going to be casualties of your memory loss?” she demanded, and then swiped angrily at her eyes. “I mean—we’re the ones who have to make all the right movements, and you’re the one who gets to walk away from us if you want? If having us around isn’t convenient for you?”

            Harry reached out and caught her hand, holding it silently. When he thought Hermione had stopped sniffling and was ready to listen to him, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “I want you to be part of my life. Not just because this is the ritual Fleur was preparing. I want to talk to you the way I did to Ron the other day. I’m sorry I didn’t come before.”

            “Someday, an apology isn’t going to be good enough.”

            “Then if it isn’t, tell me and I’ll walk away,” Harry said, feeling a ragged, tearing pain in his chest. “I mean—I’d hate to, Hermione. I still want to be friends with you. But I don’t want a friendship that’s going to disintegrate the next time I make a mistake. Either because I’ll give up on it or because you don’t want it anymore.”

            Not to mention what it could do to the ritual if she goes into it with those complicated feelings. But he was—just barely—smart enough not to mention that.

            “No,” Hermione said, in a whisper that Harry didn’t even feel from where he sat. “No. I want it.”

            She stood up and came around the table, standing in front of his chair. She ran her fingers through her hair one more time and then reached out and put her hand on his chair. Then she moved it to his arm.

            Harry grabbed it and held it steady.

            “I didn’t know until this moment how much I missed you,” Hermione whispered, “because I missed you so much.”

            And then she started crying, and Harry learned that his arms were big enough to hold her after all. Even if they weren’t Old Harry’s arms. Even if Hermione was different than she had been, and so was Harry, and there was no way they could be the same.

            It was okay. They could survive being different.

*

            Maybe ten minutes later, Hermione was sitting down across the table from him again, sometimes still blowing her nose on the handkerchief she’d conjured, and smiling at him in a silly way. Not that Harry minded that. He thought he was probably smiling back in a way just as silly.

            “Okay,” Hermione said. “So the most important thing you have to know is that any story Ron told you about our wedding wasn’t true.”

            Harry laughed. “And he told me the most important thing was that you would say that.”

            “Oh, God.” Hermione ducked her head and put her hands up across her face. “Then you know about the flowers?”

            “Yes. And Ginny’s hair.”

            “And the way the flames got out of control when Ron gaped at Fleur.”

            “And how you made a promise to Molly to name your daughter Rose that you denied remembering the next morning, because you said you were drunk on Ron’s lips and no one should be expected to remember anything after kissing him.”

            “That is not true!”

            Harry sat back and smiled at her. They had memories to share, memories that filled his chest with a soft amber glow, and it felt wonderful.

            “I didn’t say that,” Hermione murmured weakly. “I know I didn’t. It’s just so—silly and unlike me.”

            “Well, sometimes we need silliness,” said Harry. He stood up and hugged her again. She was already moving before he really thought about it, leaning her head on his shoulder and uttering one more trembling breath.

            “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you more,” she whispered. “I mean—not that you can remember the times that I missed dinner with you and Ron because I was rushing out to tend some patient who needed my help, but I wish I had even more memories that we could share together. That I could tell you about.”

            “We will make the new ones,” Harry said, and decided that it wouldn’t sound silly for him to tell her what one of his worst fears had been. “That was what was worst, you know.” Hermione pulled back and looked a question up at him, and Harry continued. “About the idea of losing your friendship. The thought that we wouldn’t get to make new memories together, things that would actually be a part of my own life as more than stories.”

            Hermione lowered her head and nodded. Then she sat back and said with deliberate lightness, “Then I suppose you want to know some of the embarrassing things that Ron did at the wedding?”

            Harry grinned and sat down in his chair again, casting the charm that would heat his tea once more. “That would be excellent.”

*

            “You always look so happy whenever you’ve spent time with your friends.”

            Harry blinked a little and looked up from the book on Arithmancy. To his surprise, Arithmancy was now more interesting to him than Ancient Runes. He couldn’t remember being good at maths in primary school, and he’d never taken the class at Hogwarts, but perhaps a new start had given him new abilities.

            “The way your face glows,” Draco said. He had come in and taken a seat in the library without Harry even hearing him. He looked at Harry with a bittersweet smile, swinging his feet back and forth. “You always know where you stand with them, and it’s obvious that you’re happy to stand there. Whereas I don’t think that you’ve decided what to do with me even now.”

            He leaned back, hands folded calmly in his lap, but his eyes still showed the storm raging inside him. Harry put aside his book.

            “I thought we’d decided that,” he said. “We’re going to live together no matter what happens. We’re going to bring your father back. We’re going to work and laugh together. And make memories,” he added. “That’s part of what made me so happy today. Hermione told me about some things I wouldn’t have wanted to forget, and we made another memory together.”

            Draco opened his mouth, then slowly shut it again. “You never stay the same,” he complained.

            “What?” Usually Harry knew why Draco was complaining, but in this case, he literally had no idea.

            “You were always the same when you were him.” Draco looked out the window as if he would find an answer there, but Harry thought he would only see Royal snatching up mice and crunching them. Royal seemed to like to hunt outside the library window when Harry was in there, and sometimes bring him bloody presents and drop them all over whatever book he was currently reading. “You always had the same demands. You always wanted the same things.

            “And now you keep changing,” Draco said, and whipped back towards him. “You wanted to be away from your friends. You want to be with them now. You kissed me and made love to me, and then pulled back and said you needed some time, and moved out, and then back in. And you say you want to live with me, but you’ll barely touch me.”

            “I’m afraid I’ll keep changing for a little while longer,” Harry had to say in apology. “There’s no way to stop it. I’m just learning what I want to do with my life, and learning to say no when someone asks me to be Old Harry again. I was able to send Rob away, at least, which I didn’t want to do when I woke up.”

            “Why not?”

            “Because I didn’t know what I owed him, and what he could tell me about Old Harry.”

            Draco folded his arms. “So you might actually have gone back to loving someone or dating them because you thought you had to?”

            Harry nodded. “I might even have come close to it with you. If your connection with Old Harry had been more romantic, and I felt I owed you something.”

            Draco’s expression was revulsion so deep that Harry grinned. “I would never want you to do that,” he said. “I don’t know what you—I don’t want to know what kind of compromises you had with Weasley and that idiot you just mentioned. But you’re never going to have that kind of obligation with me.”

            “Agreed,” said Harry, standing up, and then he walked around the table and over to where Draco was regarding him with a jaundiced eye. Harry smiled and kissed his hand. “Is this a good start?”

            “You did better than that in the Weasleys’ house the other day.”

            Harry kissed him on the lips this time, until Draco was lying back over the table with his hands clutching at air. He was too dazed to put them on Harry’s actual shoulders, which Harry thought was a real compliment. He kissed Draco again, long and lovingly, as he pulled back and stood. “Do you think you can accept what I can give you now?” he asked. “And ask if I’m missing something? I don’t always know what you want. And if you don’t want me to feel I owe you something, you need to ask.”

            Draco blinked several times before he could get his reactions under control. Then he sat up and nodded regally. “I’ll ask,” he said. “For example, right now I have a request.”

            “Yes?”

            “More kisses like that,” Draco gasped, and drew him back down, into an embrace that more than satisfied them both.

*

            “This house-elf of yours is a fascinating study,” said Fleur, bending down to look into the grey-eyed house-elf’s face.

            The elf stood perfectly still. Of course he would, Harry thought. He didn’t have any sense that he’d once been a Malfoy, or he probably would have shown it by now. He remained motionless with his hands behind his back, looking straight ahead, while Fleur took some notes and asked some questions.

            Hermione sat on the chair near the back wall, looking distressed. Harry knew it was about the elf that might, in a way, be Lucius and not about the ritual. She had wanted to come and look over the ritual when she and Harry had reconciled. She was interested in all aspects of magical theory even though, most of the time, she only had free hours to study Healing magic.

            But to hear that a house-elf had been changed by the psychic imprint of a Death Eater was a little much for her.

            “What was his name, before you changed him like that?” she asked Draco. Harry, even though he was looking mostly at Fleur and the elf, couldn’t help overhearing.

            “We had different names for him,” said Draco in his snottiest voice. “Sometimes he was Tippy, and sometimes Tilly, and sometimes Timmy.”

            “That is not true,” said Harry with a sigh. Hermione had turned the color of a tomato, and honestly, she ought to know better than to let Draco wind her up. The Hermione Harry knew would have got angrily, admittedly, but the Hermione he was learning to know had eight years of experience with patients who got angry all the time. “I never heard Draco call him by a name, but I assume that was because he didn’t know which one to use. I think he has a name, right?”

            Draco sulked at Harry for spoiling his fun. Harry looked mildly back, and in the end, Draco surrendered with a bad grace and nodded, turning to study Hermione. “His name was Tilly.”

            “For a male house-elf?”

            “They don’t care what they’re called. They don’t have the same standards for names that humans do.”

            “I know, but they should have some dignity.”

            “God, I’m glad that I never got to be friends with you and invited you over.”

            Leaving them to bicker, Harry turned back to Fleur, who was trying to catch his attention anyway. “Yes?” he murmured, bending over, since she seemed to want to whisper.

            With a sidelong glance at Hermione, Fleur murmured, “I would like another house-elf involved in this. It is not strictly necessary for the ritual, but the blending of elf and wizard is more complex than I had d anticipated. Do you have one? Perhaps the one devoted to the clean-up of Grimmauld Place, yes?”

            Harry relaxed and nodded. “Yes. Kreacher. Hermione’s used to him, too, so that’ll make it easier on her. He’s gone back to Grimmauld Place since he recovered from the attack. I don’t really have anything for him to do in Malfoy Manor.”

            “That will do,” said Fleur, and moved over to make some more changes to the parchment.

            Harry lingered to look into the house-elf’s eyes for a moment. They only looked back at him. Other than their color and the way that this elf was considerably calmer and more liable to stand still than Dobby or Winky or even Kreacher, Harry honestly couldn’t see that much difference from a typical one of the creatures.

            “He’s not a thing, Harry, you don’t have to stare at him.”

            That was Hermione. Harry moved obediently out of the way. But he didn’t see much difference between the way he’d looked at the house-elf and the way Hermione did, except that she had a tender expression on her face. Harry supposed she could feel that way about any elf, and it being Lucius Malfoy didn’t really change anything.

            “Tilly, can you hear me?” If Hermione still disliked the name after talking with Draco, there was no trace of it in her voice. She reached out and put a hand on the elf’s thin shoulder. “Are you still in there?”

            “I can hear you,” said the elf slowly. “But I am not understanding the question.”

            “There was something done to you,” Hermione explained in hushed tones. She looked over her shoulder at Draco, who was looking determinedly off into the distance, and then turned back to Tilly. “Accidentally, but it was done. The essence of a human was injected into you. Do you remember that?”

            “I not remember it,” said the house-elf, with a slow shake of his head. “Master Malfoy?” He leaned past Hermione to study Draco.

            Harry wondered what emotion was uppermost in Draco’s mind as he turned back to give Tilly a reluctant smile. “It’s all right, Tilly. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

            “Then I am not wanting to answer questions,” said Tilly, and decided that he would look at the wall instead.

            “If only we could be sure exactly what had happened to him,” Hermione sighed as she went back to her bench.

            “We will know more when we can begin the ritual,” Fleur said absently as she bent over the design and changed the thickness of one of the lines with a little paintbrush.

            Hermione frowned, but at least she didn’t berate Draco, going over to join Fleur instead. Harry took her place on the couch and touched Draco with one hand when he seemed content to gaze at the wall.

            “Are you okay?”

            “She’s annoying.”

            But not intolerable, Harry thought, and Draco’s tone was no more than moderately weary. Harry put a comforting arm around his shoulders. “We’ll be done with this soon. And I told you. No matter what your father thinks, I know it was an accident. And you’re welcome to come and stay with me.”

            Draco leaned on his shoulder. Startled that he wanted to do so in front of Hermione and Fleur, Harry still wrapped his other arm around Draco’s waist, this time.

            Neither Hermione nor Fleur nor Tilly appeared to notice, but for Harry at the moment, the soft warmth against his side and Draco’s breathing on his collarbone was his world.

            I am going to continue to change. And this is part of it.

*

            Severus1snape: Yep. And now he’s done it again. ;)
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The Dust of Water