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The Echoes Of Yesterday	By : Samaelthekind Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male Views: 17654 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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
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The Echoes Of Yesterday...by Samayel
Chapter 43: Time For A Change

Draco thundered back into being-ness, suddenly aware of a fleshly form after what had felt like an eternity of crackling through layers of reality. Even wrapped in heavily spelled grey robes, including a grey turban, thick gloves and boots, and even goggles that spared his eyes, the physical toll of such travel was daunting. He was flopped on wet grass under moonlight, gasping and retching, desperate to make his limbs move and half blind from agony and exhaustion.
It took him longer than he could have imagined just to make his hands work and his limbs flex. The punishment upon his body, even spell-guarded as it had been, was more than he had bargained for and then some. It took the greater part of ten minutes just to reach his satchel and open it, then to open and quaff the potion he'd stored in case he needed it. It had been a wise choice. When the liquid poured through him, he was suffused with energy and able to force himself to move, albeit with difficulty.
He tore the goggles from his eyes and looked about, lurching to his feet and staggering with the effort.
<i>Damn! I'm miles off. I've got to Apparate to one of the sighting points. I need a landmark I can fix on! The moon...the timing is right...there isn't a lot of time left. I need a hilltop where I can view the landscape. That way...definitely that way!</i>
It took every iota of will he had to do it, but he was the soul of discipline in the face of pain. He had known that this was a risk. Precise location was almost impossible to achieve when bending space and time around him. The best he could have hoped for was this...to be near enough and close enough in time to make a critical difference. Everything hung in the balance. A misstep and all would be wasted!
Apparating hilltop to hilltop, sighting by landmarks carefully studied for months but made slightly different by decades of slow change, Draco finally sighted the location he'd been looking for with such desperation. One last Apparation and he popped into place, approaching the small cottage from which only screams could be heard.
As Draco looked through the open door of the lonely cottage on the seaside, he could make out two standing forms and two prone ones. The two standing held wands in hand, and laughed cruelly. They were black clad and clearly in charge of the situation, while the blond man on the floor held the body of a woman next to him, weeping openly and slumped with an air of abject defeat.
<i>Minutes! I missed them by minutes! Mother! They've killed her! Father! I can still save him. Forgive me, Father...I was late by minutes! I'll make them pay! I'll make them pay...dearly!</i>
Rage exploded in Draco's breast. Driven mad with the lust to kill, he reached out with wand and will and snatched the two men literally into the air, dragging them out of the cottage with shocked expressions and flinging them high into the air. Then with the blackest and foulest spells he'd ever studied he deliberately burst them, each screaming in agony, into bloody pieces, scattering hunks of their bodies across the hillside in a savage, thunderous display of magical wrath.
All that the blond man on the floor could see was a stranger garbed in grey, with a turban that hid his face save for the eyes. The eyes were a leaden gray that looked red-rimmed with exhaustion and grief, but the man had defeated the two Death Eaters with what seemed like almost no effort, and was striding in with wand pointed. A hasty spell later, the sole survivor of the attack had been healed enough to move and was handed his wand back.
Draco, Lord Malfoy, composed himself despite the pain that wracked his body from Crutiatus and the grief that wracked his heart from the loss of his wife, Claire, and addressed the stranger.
“Sir, I do not know you, but I owe you my life. All that I have is yours if you ask it of me. Who are you, and how can I repay you?”
The stranger in grey replied curtly while fishing through a heavy leather satchel. He handed Draco a single letter, wrapped and sealed, and its very touch carried the feel of powerful magic.
“There isn't much time. The events I've set in motion are already unfolding around us. Nott betrayed you. Here is a Portkey. It will take you to the Ministry immediately. I am only sorry that I did not make it here sooner. It was my hope to have saved you both, but the way here was more difficult than you could possibly imagine. The letter is spelled to guard itself against a hostile environment that would seek to erase its existence. Should you open it and read it, it will very soon cease to be. You will know when you should read it. It will come to you in time. You owe me nothing, but do this: seek out Harry Potter. It might be difficult, but he will forgive you, and he will see to it that you are safe. You will not regret this. He has always loved you, and always will he be your friend. Give your child a good life, and my actions were not wasted.”
Draco looked into the eyes of the man that had just saved his life, and who inexplicably knew things that could not have been known easily. He wondered if he been Legilimized, but he'd felt no intrusion of any kind.
“Who are you? How do you know these things? Who do I thank for...”
Even as the words left his mouth the man was fading into nothingness, not Apparating, but slowly evaporating like mist until nothing was left at all, and Draco could only wonder at the things that had just happened. He could not stay here and grieve. There might yet be other assassins about. He tucked away the letter, gathered up his slain wife in his arms with the strength he had left in him, unwilling to leave her in so ignoble a place, and triggered the Portkey.
The Ministry was floored by the sudden appearance of Draco Malfoy, limping into the atrium with his murdered wife in his arms, shouting out for aid and insisting that they call for Harry Potter, and in the chaos and dithering the Aurors summoned for the occasion inspected Draco's own wand, sure that somehow he was responsible, but the tests showed that his wife had been slain by use of Unforgivable, and that Draco's wand had cast no such spells. His tale of capture and near death was recorded and he was placed in a heavily guarded room, while the body of his wife was carefully seen to so that evidence would be preserved...and so that funerary preparations could be made for a woman of substance.
When Harry Potter received word of the events of that evening he dressed himself in his Auror's robes and hurried to the Ministry, dreading what he'd heard but almost sure that it must be true. Aurors had already been dispatched to Calais with orders to record and study the scene of the attack, but they would be gone for hours, and in the meantime Draco was being held under guard, still partially suspected of the murder of his wife, largely because any man with the Mark still upon them was considered highly suspect, and not without good reason.
When Harry opened the door he found his ex-lover sprawled across a rude cot that had been set up for him, staring blankly at the ceiling, eyes puffy and red from tears, and face still wan and pale from shock. Crutiatus had reportedly been used on him during the attack, and Harry was familiar with how debilitating the aftereffects could be. Draco saw Harry enter the room and sat up immediately, turning his head away and pushing a hand through his hair.
“They...they killed her, Harry. I...should have...I couldn't stop them. I wasn't...strong enough. They took us by surprise...and they killed her in front of me...laughing all the while! Merlin help me, I should have sent for you. If I'd been less a fool, I'd have sent for you. I should have begged for your help. She'd be here now...if I hadn't...I've failed her...like I failed you! It should have been me! Not her!”
Harry looked at the man sitting on the cot. Draco was overwrought with shock and horror. Pale and shaken from pain and loss. Harry had felt hatred for this man, a smoldering resentment that he'd been abandoned for a woman and a life as Lord to an ancient family. This was the man who'd deserted him at the moment he'd first felt like the future was his. Now he looked at Draco and saw only sorrow, and loss, and shame in his eyes. He couldn't...he couldn't keep his anger alive while looking at a person he'd loved so dearly, and who now was wracked by such grief.
Harry nodded to the Auror at the wall, and the man quietly nodded back and left the room, closing the door behind him, leaving Draco and Harry alone. Harry sat down beside Draco, still torn between the feelings of the past and the present, but he knew what was right. He placed an arm around the exhausted and grieving young man's shoulders, and pulled him into a rough embrace.
“I'm so sorry. I know...I know you loved her. This...it's got nothing to do with you having done wrong. It's got to do with a lot of black robed maniacs who kill and hurt because they enjoy it. You got that? We'll sort this out. We'll get your son here safely. I'll go with you and a team to bring him here, alright? Just...get it out. Let it out, Draco. Everything...it'll all be alright. You'll see.”
And Draco wept, bitterly and openly, without shame, into the shoulder of the man he'd left behind and feared he'd never see again. The words of kindness opened a floodgate in him, and while his shoulders shook and he sobbed long and loud in the little room, Harry muttered the same words of unwavering support he'd once uttered two years before in a little room Grimmauld Place, and he meant them just as much now as he had then.
At the last, Draco had flopped gracelessly across the lap of his much missed friend, resting softly in the aftermath of his breakdown. He looked up at last, into green eyes he'd dearly missed, and whispered hoarsely while he reached a hand up to touch Harry's face.
“Please...forgive me, Harry. I know that I wronged you. I am so very sorry for what I have done. I have already lost too much...please tell me that, if I have nothing else, I still have my friend. I deserve nothing...but I beg you just the same...forgive me?”
And Harry looked down, sighed deeply, and let his hand have the luxury of stroking the tear dampened hair from his long absent lover's face. “If I couldn't have forgiven you...I wouldn't be here, Draco. I'd have sent another to take my place. Whatever else might pass between us, you will always be my friend. Never less. I forgive you. Just...try to forgive yourself. You carry too much on your shoulders. I know...because I do the same stupid thing.
Draco breathed a single deep breath and sighed enormously, letting drooping eyelids finally close. “Thank you. Thank you, Harry.”
Within a minute, the thoroughly worn out gentleman in Harry's lap was unconscious in slumber, having been pushed past his ability to remain upright long before. Harry stayed just as he was, wondering at the strangeness of life, still amazed that it had come to this. He would never have wished ill on Draco's wife, even as enraged as he had once been at Draco himself. Now he wished he could have met her, this woman for whom his friend mourned so tearfully. It was an unfairness of the war that had given him this chance to hold Draco in his arms again, and the future was a great uncertainty in front of them now, but it would have to be faced soon, starting with the retrieval of Draco's son, as well as the arrest and interrogation of Theodore Nott.
Harry had read the hasty reports that had been written up so far. There was much that would have to be seen to when the daylight came. Until then, he was content to take what little rest he'd have right here, with Draco held close to him again. It was more than he'd dreamed of as possible, but it had come to pass just the same.

TBC!!
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The Echoes Of Yesterday