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Learning Life Over	By : Meander Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 69712 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 38
- 39
- 40
Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

Chapter 39- What He Did During the War

�� Harry knew
his request had surprised Draco, but he truly hadn�t known any other way to
make it. How did one soften something like that? He�d thought for an
hour, and still not managed to do it, so in the end, he�d decided honesty was
preferable to Draco misunderstanding him or managing to deflect the subject.

�� Now,
luckily, whether it was due to Harry�s bluntness or something else, Draco
didn�t seem as if he were going to avoid it. He nodded, and stepped into the
room, shutting the door behind him. �I think it would be best if we were alone
for this,� he said.

�� The tone of
his voice made Harry think that Theresa had remained in the Manor, though he
had no idea why she would. He forgot about it when Draco sat in a chair in the
corner, though, leaving him the bed. Harry sat down and crumpled the blanket
between his fingers. He had a lot of practice at that. He�d been doing it for
the last hour.

�� He knew
what he heard might be difficult or painful- for himself as well as for Draco.
But, well, he had to know that he could trust Draco even with the difficult or
painful things. Perhaps especially with those, since the rest of his healing
would hardly take place overnight.

�� I fled
from Hogwarts with Severus,� Draco said. Harry felt his face move into a
grimace of its own accord, and Draco�s voice sharpened. �He was good to
me, Harry, you don�t understand. He did what he had to do to keep me safe. He�d
sworn an Unbreakable Vow to my mother that he would, but really, I think he
would have done it without that. He was- fond of me.�

�� Harry
waited for Draco to elaborate on that, but he didn�t, so Harry nodded. He even
thought he understood now, which he certainly wouldn�t have when he was
sixteen, the way that Snape might have been fond of Draco. Draco had done well
in Potions, and probably not all of it was due to the professor�s
favoritism. And Draco had been part of his House, of course, and able to
maintain a demeanor that was a lot like a younger Snape-in-training.

�� So he took
me to the Dark Lord,� Draco said, and swallowed nervously. �It- there aren�t
words for what he was like, Harry.�

�� I know,�
Harry said shortly.

�� Draco�s
face softened, and he reached across the bed. To Harry�s surprise, though, he
didn�t take his hands, but shoved back the fringe from Harry�s forehead to
reveal the lightning bolt scar, and gently traced it with a fingertip.

�� Of course
you would,� he breathed.

�� Harry tried
not to shrug the hands off, but wait patiently for the rest of the story. Draco
seemed to recall, after a moment, that he wanted to hear it, and his eyes
darkened, his hands falling away from Harry�s face.

�� He lied
for me,� he said. �I knew he was an Occlumens, but the sheer power of
the story he told, blending the fact that Dumbledore had fallen with what it
would mean for the Dark Lord�s future power and what help I�d managed to give
the Death Eaters- he walked a line I don�t think will ever be walked again. He
lied and told the truth and exaggerated all at once, and made the Dark Lord so
happy that he forgot about most of the punishment he was going to assign to me.
Not all of it, of course.� Draco drew in a shivering breath of fear. �He
subjected me to the Cruciatus three times before Snape took me out of there.�
Draco�s smile didn�t reach his eyes. �My �lying low� during June and most of
July was just trying to recuperate from the curse.�

�� I
understand,� Harry murmured, mind full of memories of a graveyard and a knife
slicing into his arm, followed by a pain curse that he could still feel the
echoes of if he tried.

�� Once I was
back on my feet,� Draco continued, �I wanted to help Snape with what he was
doing. I�m still not sure if he did what he did then out of concern for my
tender young soul and what remained of my innocence, or the Unbreakable Vow, or
because he was afraid I would find out he was working for your side. He sat
down and laid out my incompetence in plain and simple terms. What I�d succeeded
in doing was solving a difficult logistics problem, how to get the Death Eaters
into Hogwarts. I was not, and never would be, a killer.�

�� Harry gave
a brief nod, forcing his neck to move even when it wanted to remain stiff. He
forced himself not to see the scars on Bill�s face, or the expression on
Dumbledore�s face as he�d fallen from the Tower. He knew, now, that Dumbledore
had been dying long before he fell.

�� And as for
Bill-

�� Well, he�d
died a few months later.

�� So I
couldn�t help him,� Draco concluded with a gusty sigh. �I raged at him. Had a
regular fit. He wouldn�t yield.� Draco�s face suddenly turned red, and
his voice dipped. Harry leaned forward for a hint of what was coming next.
�When he, um, when he got tired of me, he tied me up and left me to dangle from
the ceiling of his house.�

�� Harry
stared at him for a time. Finally he said, �And how long did he leave you
hanging there?�

�� Until I
passed out from the blood rushing to my head,� Draco muttered, his ears turning
red in turn.

�� Harry
couldn�t help it; he snickered.

�� It really
wasn�t funny,� Draco said, a trace of a whinge in his voice. �It bloody hurt.
But after that, I listened to him, and he let me down. I spent most of the rest
of the war brewing healing potions. I never knew which side they went to help.
Smug bastard still won�t tell me. What?� he added at Harry�s raised eyebrows.
�Severus is a smug bastard. I never disagreed with that part of what you
felt for him, you know.�

�� Most of
the rest of the war, you said,� Harry murmured, latching on to the nuances of
the words as he�d learned to do during Auror training. �What about the small
part of it you didn�t?�

�� Draco
stared at his hands.

�� Draco?�
Harry reached out and squeezed one of those hands, waiting in patient silence
until Draco looked back up at him again. Then Draco leaned across the space
between them and kissed him, slowly and thoroughly and in search of comfort.
Harry accepted it, even tilted his head so that his mouth could welcome Draco�s
tongue.

�� Draco drew
away, murmuring, �I wanted one last chance at glory. And to save my parents. I
didn�t know what was happening to my mother throughout most of the war- it
turned out that she�d been in the Dark Lord�s dungeons, and he was just looking
for any excuse to torture her, when he wasn�t using her social contacts to his
advantage- but I knew he�d left my father in Azkaban. Idiot that I was, I
thought I could still manage to impress him enough to spare Lucius.

�� I went
through a great deal of trouble and effort to spy on one of Severus�s meetings
with my aunt Bellatrix, and I learned they expected an Order of the Phoenix
attack on one of the buildings the Dark Lord had recently captured. It happened
to be in an area near Diagon Alley I knew, because I�d gone there shopping with
my mother. I planned to Apparate in before the attack began, hide, and then- I
don�t know. Kill you, I think, if you were there. Since there were rumors of
you flying everywhere, I thought you were as likely to be there as elsewhere.�

�� Harry
nodded. If his sense of Draco�s timeline was right, the attack would have
happened somewhere in late August or early September. He had been still hunting
the Horcruxes then, and since he hadn�t shared more than the most basic
information with anyone else, no one had been able to track the rumors of his
appearance with any regularity, or know which were truth and which desperation.

�� I wasn�t
thinking.� Draco gave an unhappy laugh. �Describes most of what I was doing
that year, really. I Apparated in early, and found a doorway to ambush them from,
and settled down to wait. I can only remember feeling excited, which shows you
what an imbecile I was.

�� Then
cloaked wizards and witches appeared and attacked, shouting, and Death Eaters
appeared in defense. I drew my wand and sprinted out into the middle of them. I
cast a Stunning Charm. I downed someone- I never knew who. I hadn�t known
battle was that confusing. My clearest memory of the battle at Hogwarts
is the Tower, you know. Everything else pales after that.

�� And then I
felt this stunning blast of pain go through me, and my left arm went
numb, and I dropped. Half the people in sight were screaming. I looked up
through watering eyes, and the sun was coming down, and I remember thinking
that that was the last sunset I was ever going to see.� Draco gave a smile as
thin as the edge of a knife-blade. �I was, well, surprised to wake up and find
out I was in Azkaban.

�� I�d chosen
a bloody idiotic time to get myself involved in an attack. That was the last
skirmish of the war. You defeated Voldemort then, Harry, and the Aurors caught
me with a wand in my hand.�

�� Harry
swallowed. It felt strange to realize that, during the moments when the Aurors
were probably collecting Draco and carting him off to Azkaban, he had been
burning his Invisibility Cloak, staring into the flames, wishing he could find
a place in the Muggle world where people had never heard of him but it was
still possible for him to use magic.

�� He�d
overcome that momentary madness, of course, and the very dark three heartbeats
that had followed it, when he had wished for nothing more in the world than to
die, and the obsidian heartbeat that followed that, when he�d lifted his wand
to cast the Killing Curse on himself. He�d remembered how he felt when he
killed Voldemort. There might be a use for a gray passion like that in the
wizarding world, he thought, and so he�d decided to become an Auror and bring
Dark wizards to justice. But he�d known how it felt to have death pass him by
so close he could feel its breath on the back of his neck.

�� Was that
how Draco felt, staring up at the sun?

�� That was
what your trial was based on, wasn�t it?� he asked quietly. �That final
battle?�

�� Draco gave
him a shallow nod. If he�d noticed Harry�s distraction into his own memories,
he was good enough not to comment on it. �Yes. That, and letting the Death
Eaters into Hogwarts, and some exaggerated rumors that claimed I�d been the one
to kill Dumbledore and not Snape after all. Of course, once Snape came forward
and proved he�d been working for the Order of the Phoenix all along, that was
enough to clear me.�

�� He took a
deep breath and flexed his fingers. �So there you have it, Potter.� He strove
for nonchalance in his tone, but Harry didn�t believe it. �The harrowing tale
of my woes and worries during the Second War with You-Know-Who. I�m sure it
doesn�t compare to what you endured, but- �

�� And Harry
was suddenly, savagely, murderously angry.

�� Don�t say
that,� he snapped.

�� Draco
stared at him for a moment. �What?� he said, finally, as though he didn�t understand
English.

�� You
endured enough,� said Harry. �You were in Azkaban, for God�s sake. You
were under the stress of thinking your parents were going to die any moment for
more than a year. You were assigned two impossible things, and you did one of
them.� He stepped over the remembrance of what those impossible things had
meant for him, personally. �No, you didn�t have the quest I did, but that
doesn�t make what you suffered little, Draco. It never can.�

�� There was a
look in Draco�s eyes that Harry didn�t properly understand, or maybe was too
upset to understand. �I was essentially a failure, Harry,� he murmured. �No
need to downplay that. Didn�t do one thing, didn�t do the other, was caught in
the stupidest action of my life at the very worst moment I could have been.
Maybe it�s good that I never became a killer, but at least, if I�d been a
killer, I would have been something, instead of a squirming bit of
nothing.� His voice showed how old and deep this bitterness ran. Eleven
years� worth of it.

�� You would
be less than you are.� Harry crossed the distance between them, and gripped
Draco�s shoulders, shaking him. He didn�t feel tender enough to manage an
embrace at the moment. He felt dry-eyed and fierce. �And look at you now. You
survived- all that. You became someone who could decide to heal someone you�d
disliked fervently for six years, and all because you thought I needed it, that
I deserved it. Draco- � He bit his tongue before the words inside his mouth
could tumble over it, and then decided that he was a Gryffindor and didn�t need
caution. �Do you know how few people in the world would have done that
for me? No one else did that for me once my friends died. You matter.
I�m thankful that you survived the war the way you did, since it helped turn
you into the person you are now.�

�� Draco was
staring at him with wide gray eyes, still crowded with that unfamiliar emotion.
�Harry,� he murmured.

�� No. You�re
going to listen to me, damn it.� Harry gave him another shake. He felt
as if he were trying to reassure Ron he was good enough to outshine the rest of
his family, or Hermione after she received a failing mark on an exam. But more
than all that, because-

�� He refused
to examine the �because.� It was hard enough to find the words.

�� I like the
person you are,� he told Draco. �I really like him. He�s good enough for
anything that matters. He�s done good things. He could do great things if he
wanted.� He shook his head and abandoned the third person. �You could do great
things if you wanted. Just because you haven�t done them so far doesn�t mean
you can�t. And I�m glad you couldn�t kill. There�s nothing special about being
able to kill. It just means that you had to give up part of your soul, and I
wish it had never happened to me.

�� No more of
this nonsense about not being special enough or smart enough, all right? I know
it�s rare for you, but that doesn�t make it any easier to listen to. You�re Draco
Malfoy. You don�t need anyone�s pity, do you? And that includes self-pity. Doesn�t
it?�

�� Draco
murmured something Harry couldn�t make out. Harry shook him hard enough to
rattle the teeth in his soul.

�� Yes,�
Draco said, loud enough to hear now.

�� Harry gave
him a kiss without tongue, but with rather a lot of tooth behind the lip.
�Good,� he said. �Good. And if, someday, you do think about taking another
lover, don�t take one who won�t say the same things to you- �

�� Draco
seized control of the kiss, and bore him backwards onto the bed. His breath
gusted over Harry�s earlobe in hot waves as he whispered, setting up a dense
wave of shivers in Harry�s body. �You think I�m ever going to let you go?
You�re mad, Harry. I�m never letting you walk away from me.�

�� And then he
was trying to roll Harry over so that he was in a position for taking his robes
off.

�� Harry
resisted. He shared the same feeling that had come upon Draco- a surge of
leonine ferocity- but he wasn�t going to be a passive victim, or someone who
only provisionally accepted what happened between them. This time, he would be
in control, fully committed.

�� I
suppose this is the part where I really admit I�m gay.

�� Gladly, he
went to meet the challenge.

***********

�� chantalmalfoy:
Sorry. It has to happen. Anyway, Draco has already lied to Harry, if only by
omission.

I�ll be glad to add you to the
update list, though.

�� Rhiannon
Uerch Llewelyn: It�s all rather primed for a nice explosion, isn�t it? I like
explosions. They make plot happen.

�� Jojo: Hope
this was soon enough!
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Learning Life Over