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Hephaestus	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16287 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Four�Hephaestus�s
Revenge

�� Scorpius,
I never want you to do anything like that again.� Draco paced up and down in
front of the bed where his son sat, the same bed he had looked at Scorpius
sitting in earlier that afternoon and pictured as the perfect setting for the
perfect jewel of his son. Since then, Scorpius had shown so much will, and
contradicted him so many times, that Draco looked back on his own earlier
impressions in bewilderment. �You shouldn�t visit someone like Potter without
my permission. You shouldn�t tell strangers secrets without knowing if it�s
safe for them to know those secrets. And you especially shouldn�t beg so persistently for sweets in front of a
guest.� He swung towards Scorpius and delivered his verdict with an especially deadly
stare. �It isn�t polite.�

�� Scorpius
usually cowered when he was informed that he�d been rude, and he asked penitently
for some way that he could make it better. But now, he only lifted his head and
gave his father a strong stare that Draco thought impudent.

�� I wasn�t
rude,� said Scorpius, his tones edged with the polite disdain Draco thought he
must have picked up from his mother. Certainly it couldn�t come from the Malfoy
side, given how careful his education had been. �I only asked for sweets. And
you�re in love with Mr. Potter. He�s not a stranger.�

�� Scorpius.�
Draco gave an unblinking scowl at his son. �Your mother told you about him. I�ve
never mentioned him. Why wouldn�t I mention him?�

�� Don�t you
know?�

�� Draco
ground his teeth. Then he thought of what sort of lessons his clever and
imitative son would pick up from that,
and made himself stop. It was not in his plans for Scorpius to have less than
perfect teeth.

�� I didn�t
mention him because we argued, and I was angry at him,� he said. �The way I
shall be angry at you if you don�t start behaving better.�

�� Scorpius stared
up at him with wonder and something like pity in his shining eyes. Draco
bristled to see it.

�� For the
first time, he wondered if he should have refused his anxious parents when they
told him they wanted to perform certain spells on Scorpius that would enable
his intelligence to develop faster than a normal child�s, and let him
understand and retain learning that was usually forgotten by children twice his
age. It had seemed a good idea at the time, because of course his son was to be
superior in everything, including
cleverness, and when he got into Hogwarts, he could astonish and dazzle his
teachers if he had knowledge that belonged to the upper years. A prodigy was
one means of rescuing the Malfoy family from disgrace, and no one could say
that they�d done anything illegal in obtaining their fame. Draco had let his
parents cast the spells�which he knew they had researched to make sure they
wouldn�t hurt Scorpius; Narcissa and Lucius would not damage their grandson�and
train Scorpius hard in reading, music, and other subjects a Malfoy heir should
know.

�� But he hadn�t
had the keen edge of that intelligence turned on him before. It was that which made all the difference.

�� But,� said
Scorpius calmly, �that�s a stupid reason.�

�� Draco
slammed his hand down on the edge of the bed. He didn�t know he was going to do
it until it happened. He had never been violent around Scorpius, or at least he
had always explained the cause of his bad temper and made sure Scorpius understood
it wasn�t directed at him. Scorpius pushed himself back across the bed until he
was leaning on the pillows and glared at Draco as if he were some strange
creature who had come crawling into Morningswood in order to interrupt Scorpius�s
good time.

�� He looked
at Draco, in fact, much as Draco knew he had looked at Harry when he first saw
him in the dwarves� shed.

�� Draco found
he had lost his stomach for the argument. He turned away, shaking his head, and
said peremptorily, �You aren�t to go near Harry again. I�ll know if you do, and
you�ll be punished.� And he stepped out of the room, just barely remembering not
to slam the door behind him.

�� For some
moments he stood where he was, shaking, his eyes shut, and then he popped them
open as a thought occurred to him.

�� He was still fascinated with Harry, more
interested in him than he should be. But now he knew why that was. He had never
allowed himself to think enough about those scars in the years that separated
him from the person he had been, Harry�s lover. He needed to confront them, and
then they would lose their hold over him.

�� He had
thought he was doing that at dinner, but then he hadn�t been close enough. And
then Harry had cast the glamour over his face�

�� Draco
chopped that thought off at the knees. He was good at thinking about what he
wanted to think about, and right now he wanted to think about those scars, not
the glamour. He needed to be close. He needed to touch them, perhaps, assuming
Harry had cast some spell on his face that would ensure Draco�s flesh wasn�t
sliced to ribbons immediately.

�� And he
needed to hear the full story of the torture. Harry had never told him,
preferring to selfishly keep it to himself with claims that he wasn�t ready to
talk, and the papers had never managed to penetrate the confidential talks
Harry had with the Minister on the subject.

�� Draco
lifted a chin that only trembled a little and strode firmly to his room, to
collect a Quick-Quotes Quill and sheaf of parchment.

�� He was
going to win himself free of this injurious fascination. He was going to show
Harry that he could not win the long contest between them.

�� And woe to
Harry if he tried.

*

�� You are
not concentrating.�

�� Harry
closed his eyes and nodded. He was crouched in the middle of a series of
cinders and circular burns on the dirt floor of the shed, all that remained of
the latest pattern he had tried to forge. It had exploded in the middle, drops
of molten metal leaping in several directions. Harry had furiously controlled
the most dangerous section, the middle, which was afire, until Grishnazk could
clean up the drops and come to help him support the burning coils of steel.
Then he had dropped straight to the ground, spent, and remained there since.
Grishnazk had allowed him to have five minutes of silence, which Harry knew was
generous of the dwarf.

�� I lost my focus. That was all that
mattered to him at the moment, rather than the person whom he had lost his
focus over. Merlin, he had escaped into metal-dancing because he wanted to
leave Draco behind him. And then he came here, to a place he had known would be
hard to visit before he accepted the commission, and his concentration was
fracturing as if someone had taken a hammer to it. It was unacceptable. Harry
opened his eyes, mopped some sweat from his brow�as much as he could; some
would collect in puddles on the half-hidden pieces of flat skin and need a
towel to reach them�and nodded to Grishnazk, who stood hammering some platinum
flat without even looking at the steady motion of his arm.

�� That�s what I need to be like, Harry
thought. The worker, effortless about his
work. Metal-dancing is something I�m good at, something where my looks don�t
matter. I can�t allow Draco�s perceptions to control me. He surged to his
feet. So what if I�ll probably never have
another lover? I haven�t spent the past three years brooding about that, even
after I broke up with Ginny. I�ll finish the patterns they need me for and then
leave this damn estate, and leave the past behind me, too.

�� I know,�
he said. �It won�t happen again.�

�� Grishnazk
studied his face doubtfully, one eyebrow arched, as if he were certain of Harry�s
good intentions but not of his ability to keep his promise. Harry nodded again
and tried to look as hard and competent as he could.

�� Very well,�
said Grishnazk, and then hammered once more at the platinum and held it up�a simple
circlet, because they couldn�t afford as much platinum as they could copper and
silver, even with the bargains on Galleons that the goblins were giving them as
a business owned partially by non-humans. �You�ll forge this?�

�� Harry
nodded, and Grishnazk tossed the circlet at him, a deliberate test. If Harry
used his hands to catch it and keep it from falling to the ground, he knew
Grishnazk�s opinion of him would suffer.

�� He was too
wise to try. Instead, he opened his mouth and sang a single, pure note, and the
circlet jerked to a stop, wobbling from side to side.

�� Harry
backed up a step, his hands flipping through several swift circular patterns,
his attention never wavering from the metal. Platinum was not like silver, an
excellent conductor of magic, or copper, flexible and with a long history of
use. It was harder to work with, more stubborn, more temperamental�more cautious,
as the dwarves would say, who were fond of attributing personalities of their
own to the various kinds of metal and gems they worked with.

�� Harry
whistled, now, coaxing the platinum to relax and soften around the edges, so
that the circlet became a ring at the top of two long drooping streams of metal
like tears. The ring vibrated, and a low chiming note worked its way out of it,
which Harry wove into the substance of his song; it was easier to work with
platinum if one used its song as a way to charm it. Twice up, twice down, a run
of notes that blended into the metal and came back with a hard clang. Harry
frowned. He had forgotten that, once past the outer surface of the platinum, it
took more effort as well as more noise to find a workable compromise.

�� He didn�t
give up hope. He adjusted his voice instead, intoning a variation on a lullaby
that he sometimes sang to Ron and Hermione�s children, but so loud that it
rocked the walls of the shed and made Grishnazk take a step backwards.
Irritated at himself for still noticing things happening outside his dance with
the metal, Harry refocused his eyes and made himself become lost in the
gold-white-silver sheen that broke from the platinum.

�� Gold-white-silver.
He had worked with gold, and he had worked with silver. Could it be possible to
adapt the songs he used with them to speak to the platinum? This was an unusually
stubborn piece; it had melted no more than a few drips, and now the drips were
solidifying again.

�� Harry
whistled as though to call up the wind, the note he always used to start his
silver songs, and then darted sideways and left into the lullaby again, approaching
from the back in a slow spiral. The glow from the platinum altered, growing
brighter; the center boss was melting at last, metal rising like ropes to twine
about itself. Harry felt the sweat start under his hair and flow down the back
of his neck. This was going to be a new pattern, then, unlike the others, which
usually started with figure-eights and built up variations on that. Well. He
was ready.

�� He began to
move backwards and to the side, allowing his wounded leg to drag the way it
needed to. All the time, he never ceased whistling, coaxing, circling in,
dashing sideways when the platinum�s dance showed signs of slowing in order to
herd it back towards melting like a sheepdog herding sheep. Sharp notes,
intermingled with small pauses and leaping sounds like whipcracks, seemed to be
what the platinum responded to best.

�� The
original circlet had dissipated entirely by now, and what Harry had was a
spiral, in response to his voice, ornamented with small whorls which dizzied
the eye when he tried to follow them. He felt a tremor low in his chest, near
his lungs, and responded to it with delight. He at last had a pattern he�d been
trying to create for some time: one that would cause an entirely illusory
experience inside a Muggle�s mind, and send them away with pleasant but bewildered
ideas about where they had spent the day. They might spend the rest of their
lives searching for a way to recapture the feeling, but Harry thought that no
bad thing. It would force some of them to be more industrious, and others to
realize that happiness lay in ordinary things far more than it did in material
possessions.

�� He dropped
his voice, low and pleading now, and the platinum responded to the loss of
volume by hardening in its new shape. Three more notes, fluted between Harry�s
parted lips whilst his throat burned, and the thing was done.

�� And Harry collapsed,
lying full-length on the floor of the shed, his chest heaving and his mind
pleasantly blank.

�� At least
until Draco�s voice said from behind him, cracking the mood like a stone thrown
at a large mirror, �I�ve come to hear the story you were too cowardly to tell
me when we broke up.�

*

�� Draco had
to admire, in part of his mind, how swiftly Harry uncoiled from the floor.
Draco never saw his knees touch it. He only knew that one moment Harry was
sprawled there like some common drunkard, panting, and the next moment he was
on his feet, sagging to the side because of his bad leg, and had cornered Draco
against the wall. Draco had no time to draw out the parchment and quill.

�� Suddenly,
and without the amount of preparation and effort he had envisioned, Draco found
himself close to the mask of Harry�s face. It reminded him of a blasted volcanic
landscape. He stared at the gray pits in the midst of the black ridges with a
sick fascination, and winced when his eyes lingered on the horn-like
projections and sharp points those ridges formed.

�� He couldn�t
get used to it or appreciate the crawling skin all over his body the way he
wanted, though, because Harry was storming at him, in a way that caused flecks
of spit to leap out of his mouth and stain Draco�s own perfect skin. It did seem that Harry always had to be
contaminating him in some way, Draco thought, drawing a hand over his mouth.

�� You�ve
made it clear that you don�t want me anymore! I was trying to respect that, if you can believe that,
and do the job you hired me for whilst I stayed out of sight! I know you think
I�m ugly. I know that you only care for the way I used to look, and not for the
way I look now. What do you want,
Draco? Why the fuck would you still come here? And your accusing me of
cowardice, when you could barely look at me last night�that�s rich, that�s
fucking rich! Why should I tell you the story of what happened to me or
anything else?�

�� Draco
stared at Harry and managed to force his voice out past his lips, as much as he
wanted to recoil from the scarred thing
being shoved at him. �Because I still have the right to know.�

�� The right
to�� Harry shut his eyes for a moment and shook his head, with an expression so
weary that Draco hoped he had seen common sense and was about to give in, if
only to get rid of Draco the sooner. But when he opened his eyes again, there
was still a tiresome flame in them.

�� You gave
up all rights to me when you walked away,� he said. �Astoria Greengrass is more
your taste in lovers, isn�t she? Go back to her, or someone like her, and
forget me. You don�t want to share my bed, Draco, and I know now that that was
all our relationship ever was to you. So you have no rights��

�� It wasn�t!� Draco interrupted, unable to
believe that Harry remembered it that way. �I stood up to everyone who wanted
to separate us or who thought it would be a good idea if we separated, don�t
you remember that? My parents wanted me to marry someone like Astoria from the
beginning, and to stay married to
her, not to just have a contract to produce a child, the way we did with Scorpius!
The papers thought it would make the best story of all if we split up. My
friends couldn�t understand what I was doing with you. Compared to theirs, the
protests of your friends were small!�
He shoved at Harry�s chest and made him stagger a few steps away, which removed
that charred landscape from his immediate sight and gave him the chance to
catch his breath and think�except that he was too angry to think at the moment.
�Would I do that for someone who did nothing more than warm my bed?�

�� You�d do
it for someone who warmed your bed first,�
said Harry, his voice low and ugly. He folded his arms and glared at Draco. Draco
had to reluctantly admit the effectiveness of the glare, which once wouldn�t
have frightened him, was increased by his scars. �Once that was gone,
everything else we�d built on top of it collapsed.�

�� You were
still the one who walked away in the end, not me,� Draco retorted. He brushed
at his shirt, in case any flakes of dead skin had fallen there.

�� Because you
called me a monster!�

�� Harry�s
voice was layered with years of hurt. Draco stared at him in astonishment. He�s that hurt over one slip of the tongue?

�� Well, it
was fortunate for Draco that he was. It provided Draco with a strategy for
winning him back. He ducked his head and smiled up at Harry from beneath his
eyelids, making his voice breathy. �I might not think so,� he said, �if you
told me the details of what happened to make you look like this.�

�� Harry
stared at him impassively for a few more minutes. Then a smile curved his lips.
Draco frowned. It was an unpleasant smile.

�� Well, why
not?� Harry said, and his voice had become flat and pounded, in a way that made
Draco think of the ashes that would need to litter a mountain to make it look
like his face. �Why not? You�re absolutely right. You deserve to know.� He turned, rubbing hard at his head, and took a
step away.

�� Silence
followed, for so long that Draco thought Harry had forgotten the promise he
just made. Then Harry turned back around again and hurled the words at Draco
the way he would once have used his wand to hurl a curse.

�� They cast
spells that turned my entire flesh into sluggish liquid, sometimes,� he said
conversationally. �Liquid glass, if you will; the Healers think that�s the best
comparison for it. Then they sculptured it into what they wanted and let it
harden again.� He tapped one of the ridges above his ears. �This is the result
of one of those experiments. I�m just lucky they didn�t get rid of my ears
altogether. They discussed it, but Greyback said that they should leave them so
I could hear their plans for me.

�� They
smothered me with my own flesh, once, when they closed off my nostrils and my
mouth. Do you want to know what it�s like to lie choking because you can�t
breathe, and to know that there�s nothing you can do about it, that your
enemies might be able to make you die at any moment?

�� And my
leg? They conjured lightning bolts and bolts of fire and passed them through my
leg. They had specialized spells, Healer�s spells, that let them locate the
muscles and the nerves and destroy them one by one. Once they removed several
chunks of flesh entirely and left my leg dangling by a strip of skin. But they regrew
the skin. Greyback made them.� Harry�s smile flashed for a moment. �He was the
leader. He was also the one who decided it would be more�dramatic�to leave my eyes and mouth the way they were. He wanted me
to be able to see what was done to me, and scream without restraint.�

�� Draco had
started biting his tongue to choke back the bile some time ago. His entire body
was shuddering as if to the beats of a drum he could feel more than he could
hear. He wrapped his arms around himself. It didn�t help.

�� Harry
tilted his head to the side. �My magic finally couldn�t take it anymore. That
was on the day they were planning to fill Ginny�s spine, slowly, with boiling
lead, and see how much she could take before she started to die. And then I was
the center of a maelstrom, and when I could see again, I realized that the
walls were covered with flesh that had been scrambled and cooked like eggs.�

�� He stepped
towards Draco, his voice dropping to a croon. �That�s what they did to me. That�s
what made me into the monster you see before you. Maybe you�re right to call me
one, even.� His laughter emerged, a sharp bark that made Draco leap; it sounded
like stones clashing together. �Isn�t it only monsters who can slaughter other
monsters?�

�� Draco�s
mouth was so dry his tongue stuck to his teeth. He worked it slowly loose,
still staring at Harry.

�� For the
first time, he was really focusing on the emotions in those green eyes, and not
on the fact that they still existed, more or less perfect, in the middle of
devastation. And he wondered how he could never have seen the despair and the
rage there before.

�� Harry�s not glad this happened. He�s not
reveling in it. I thought he was. I thought he was overjoyed at the chance to
be a martyr for something other than his childhood. But he�s angry.

�� He�s angry the way I would be if this was
done to me.

�� Draco
experienced a surge of fellow-feeling that carried pity with it, and anger, and
a hunger that grew as he imagined Harry looking, again, the way he would with a
glamour over his face. He took a step forwards. Harry�s lips shone in that unpleasant
smile again.

�� Going to
faint on me, Malfoy?� he asked softly, mockingly. �Or going to run away?�

�� Draco shook
his head and took a deep breath. �Neither,� he said. �I�I�ve heard of Dark Arts
like those before, Harry. I think there are ways to heal them. Maybe not known
to the Healers in Britain, but the Healers in Britain aren�t the only ones in
the world. There are excellent ones in Italy who�ve been known to cure wounds
that everyone else insisted were untreatable. They won�t see you without a
hefty amount of gold, but I can provide that.�

�� Harry
hissed and retreated a step, stumbling over his bad leg as he went. Even that
might be curable, Draco thought, the vision of Harry on a broom blazing in his
mind.

�� I told
you, Malfoy. The Healers said��

�� Within the
limits of their knowledge, they couldn�t cure the scars,� Draco acknowledged. �But
there�s wider knowledge out there. We can look for it. I would do anything to
have you back, the way you looked before.� He blinked as he heard the words,
then shrugged and forged ahead. They were said, and trying to retract them now
would just make him look weak. �Please, Harry, let�s try. I�d be willing to let
you live with me whilst we did. You like Scorpius and he likes you, and I do
still care for you. Let�s find closure to this in the way we should have long
since, by seeking an end to the scars.�

�� Draco was
shaking as he finished the speech, shaking with pride in himself and hope and
his dazzling visions of the future. He should have listened to Harry�s story
before this, he thought absently. He should have insisted that Harry tell it to him. The things his imagination had
conjured were much worse than the reality. These were Dark Arts. Dark Arts
could be reversed.

�� Not always, whispered his mind, but he
refused to listen to it. Listening to it was the kind of thing Harry did.

�� Harry stared
at him, then shook his head.

�� You won�t
even try?� Draco heard his voice rise
in a betrayed wail.

�� I have to
live with reality, even if you don�t,� Harry snapped. �And I�ve�looked. Hermione�s
helped me. I think that if there was a solution out there, I would have found
it by now.�

�� But you
can�t have looked everywhere,� Draco argued. �And the Malfoy money opens doors�even
the Malfoy name, sometimes. We can try. Say you�ll try.�

�� Harry
turned and limped away instead.

�� Why are
you always fucking walking away from
me?� Draco yelled at his back, his anger surging in him like the beat of brazen
wings. �Why won�t you even try?�

�� Harry
turned his head. Anger sparked in his eyes, cutting Draco the way his story
hadn�t been able to.

�� Because,�
Harry said, �you�re not worth it.�

�� And away he
went, leaving Draco to stare after him with his mouth open.

*

�� Tears
burned in Harry�s eyes as he limped to the far side of the shed and out, into
the moonlight. The clang of hammers resounded from around him, and the swirl of
soot, and the flicker of flames, and he used them to try to anchor himself as
he put his hands over his face and breathed deeply.

�� He wouldn�t
listen to Draco. He had put too much effort into accepting the inevitable and
coming to peace with himself. All that listening would result in would be a few
glittering years where Draco would chatter and investigate the possibilities and
hold out a prize, the eventual reconciliation, to Harry�

�� And then it
would come apart when Draco found out there really was no cure, and the names he had already called Harry would seem
like nothing compared to the words he would speak then.

�� Harry
shuddered, and then came out of it with a twist of his shoulders that nearly
wrenched his bad leg and sent him over backwards.

�� His friends
had tried to warn him against accepting this commission. He should have
listened.

�� To spare
Draco�s dreams and sanity as well as his own, he would have to leave now.

�� Let Draco have his perfect life, he
thought, staring at the manor house without resentment. His perfect son and his unmarred skin and whatever lovers he wants to
take to his bed. He does deserve it, for even trying to make it work a second
time.

�� And he spun
and Apparated, wishing he could ignore the feeling in the back of his head that
he was running away.

��

*

�� gentlenightrain:
Thank you!

�� DTDY: Glad
you like Scorpius. If he does seem unusually smart and articulate for his age,
I hope this chapter explains why.

�� SoftObsidian74:
Harry had forgotten that Scorpius was there, really. ;) And yes, he probably
has heard worse from Draco, in spite of Draco�s attempt to keep his ears �pure.�

�� Draco is
going to need a few shocks in order to be shaken loose of his hold on the �perfect�
Harry. Even now, though I think his attempt to help Harry cure the scars is
genuine, he doesn�t think in terms of what will happen if the cure fails. Harry
is probably right to suspect that he wouldn�t stay around at that point.

�� And yes,
there�s a happy ending.

�� linagabriev:
Harry aspires to be like the dwarves, consumed with work. It succeeded until he
came back into contact with Draco.

�� And I�m
glad you liked Draco. His seeing the glamour as a favor, as something Harry
would do if he loves him, is very IC, I think.

�� Glad you liked
Grishnazk. When he said �remember the forms,� he meant �remember the exact,
polite words Draco used.� And Draco was happy when he heard about Ginny
breaking up with Harry.

�� Oh, but
Draco gets angry at Scorpius later! Of course, it�s mostly because he can�t
face those truths.

�� Ladynight:
Draco has raised a child far too smart for him. In one way, that will be a slap
of its own in his face.

�� Thrnbrooke:
Thanks for reviewing!

�� harrydraco4life:
If it helps, Draco does love Harry, though it�s an extraordinarily selfish
love; he did stand up to the press and the public for him, but he expected a
lot in return for that. But I think you�re right that he hasn�t really changed.
He still wants Harry back the way he was, rather than being able to put up with
the reality that Harry�s scars cannot be changed.

�� yun: Thank
you! I think that is a big sign that Draco still cares.

�� And hey,
when I was a kid, I kept track of the days of the week by the books I was
reading, so�

�� Uke
Incognito: Thank you! Harry is the top and Draco is the bottom in this story,
but there�s only one sex scene, and that will be at the end of the story.

�� slashslut: Draco
actually thinks Harry will be happier with his scars hidden. Which, of course,
goes to show Draco�s utter ignorance of most of Harry�s thoughts and feelings.

�� SlytherinPrincess19:
Thank you. I think it will.

�� Myraa:
Draco thinks he knows better than Scorpius because he�s older. Of course, now
he�s getting more of a clue�but now Harry has been hurt too badly to listen any
longer.

�� And thank
you! I enjoyed that last scene (and the one in this chapter; the explosive
confrontations just keep coming).

�� Luvdonite:
Thank you! I�ve tried to put up enough material to enable any reader to easily
pick either side, though in this chapter, it�s arguably Harry who makes the
greater mistake.
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