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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.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Five�Lamentable

�� Wasn�t I
right, mate?� Ron nodded enthusiastically to Harry over Rose�s head. Rose was
curled up of her father�s lap, currently absorbed in the adventures of Martin Miggs,
the Mad Muggle. She could only read that when Hermione was away from home, as
she was now, involved in a protracted case at the Ministry; Hermione thought
the books encouraged �dreadful preconceptions.� �Malfoy was exactly the way we
always thought he was. He was shallow. He didn�t change at all.�

�� You were
right,� Harry murmured, and poured a shot of Firewhisky down his throat. He
didn�t ordinarily drink so much, but for the moment, he was encouraged by the
thought that he had an awful lot to forget.

�� Always
thinking of himself.� Ron laughed shortly, and then visibly cut himself off
from whatever he was about to say next, with an anxious glance at Rose. Harry
concealed a smile. Ron would happily give Rose chocolates before dinner and
Martin the Mad Muggle to read, but he didn�t want her picking up certain words
that she might repeat where Hermione could hear them. �Always locked into his
own perfect picture of what the world was like,� Ron went on, in a whisper. �Always
certain that you would come crawling back to him because you couldn�t find
anyone better.�

�� Harry
scrubbed his tongue around his teeth and wondered if he should tell Ron that he
had essentially gone crawling back to
Draco, at least to the point of eating dinner at the same table and admitting
his own surviving love. But he decided against it. This conflict was between
Draco and Harry, and Harry doubted that Draco would ever hear or care for Ron�s
opinion. �Yeah,� he said instead, and finished off the bottle of Firewhisky,
then Summoned another one.

�� Are you
going to get drunk?� Rose asked, lifting her head and peering at him. Her eyes
were a brilliant brown that could have come from either Hermione�s side of the
family or Ron�s, but uncomfortably sharp. Harry was certain that Hermione had
never looked at him and Ron with such sharp eyes, even when they were all in
Gryffindor and he and Ron were begging to copy Hermione�s notes.

�� No,� Harry
said, and carefully put the cork down on the table near him. �Why would you
think that, sweetheart?�

�� It says
here,� said Rose, and laid a delicate hand on the pages of her book, �that Martin
has to rescue some people from drunk Muggles some of the time. And people drink
when they�re angry.� She had a way of pausing at the end of her sentences that
Harry was certain Hermione had taught her.

�� And she
sounded like Scorpius, even though she was five and Scorpius was two. Harry
swallowed angrily against the recollection and shook his head. �I�ll just drink
a little,� he said. �And I�m not
angry. I�m disappointed.�

�� He blinked
when he heard himself say it. It was true, but he had not imagined himself
voicing his dissatisfaction in just those words before.

�� Are you?� Ron asked, leaning forwards
and blinking at him. �But why, if you agree that he�s all the things I said he
was?�

�� Harry
rubbed his tongue around his teeth again, and listened to the crackle and
stretch of skin on his cheeks as he did so. His skin behaved oddly even by the
standards of flesh cursed with the Dark Arts, the Healers had told him. Sometimes�most
of the time�it was inflexible and sharp and simply motionless, meaning that
Harry had to do hard labor with his mouth and eyes to show an expression. Other
times it pulled and bent as if it were newly burned. �I don�t know,� he said at
last. �I shouldn�t have expected anything else from him. And yet I do.�

�� Do?� Ron�s eyes widened until Harry
thought, if he looked into them hard enough, he would be able to see Ron�s
brain at the bottom of them.

�� Did,�
Harry said. �I meant did, of course. There�s no way I would go back to Malfoy Manor
to be tormented by him again.�

�� Ron seemed
satisfied with that, and set about asking Rose what part she had reached in the
book and chuckling with her over it, answering her serious questions, and
inviting Harry to join in the fun with offhand remarks. Harry sat back in his
chair and responded absently, whilst his brain ran around and around his skull
in quest of an answer.

�� Why should I want more from Draco than he
can give me? Why can�t I be satisfied that he�s really as shallow as his own
words proclaim, and give up?

�� But Harry didn�t
know if he was capable of giving up on someone who had once mattered so much to
him, and the more the word disappointment
tolled against his eardrums, the less he was certain that he could do it
now.

�� So the thing to do is keep your distance, of
course. Go back tomorrow morning early, to forge the last sigils Morningswood
should need, and then leave before he can see you. And no, that doesn�t break
your promise to Ron, because you said that you wouldn�t go back to Malfoy Manor
again, rather than Morningswood.

�� Harry
winced. The dishonesty made him think himself a sneaking, craven bloke, someone
who would mutter technicalities to excuse himself when being led to Azkaban.

�� But then,
his hope in Draco was like that, too: low and sneaking, unworthy of being
entertained, but somehow managing to create a place for itself in his soul anyway.
Harry thought he would probably continue to feel it for years. The relationship
he had had with Draco shouldn�t have worked, and the obstacles it had jumped�disapproval
from his friends, the press�s relentless inquiries into their lives, Draco�s
own prejudices and Harry�s�made too great an impression in his mind. If they
could overcome that, then, the hope whispered, they could overcome this. So
Harry felt it.

�� But you don�t have to act on it.

*

�� Draco didn�t
know how long he remained still, staring at the place Harry had stood when he
made that mad proclamation, after Harry left. Even when the crack of Apparition
reached his ears, he only blinked once and went on staring.

�� I�m not worth it?

�� Wonder
edged the wound, preventing the pain from fully reaching him. Did Harry really think that? Could the passion
Draco had seen in him and heard in his voice really have come to this? Did
Draco�s compassion mean nothing?

�� Was he
going to lose?

�� The dread
of failure tried to overwhelm him then. Draco shook his head, drew a deep
breath, and stood up straight. He was a Malfoy. They didn�t succumb to the most
intense pressures. They found a way around them, including pretending humility if
they had to�as his father had in front of the Dark Lord, as all of them had in
front of Potter�s side after the war�and in the end they got what they wanted.
Two days ago, Draco had thought that was freedom and life in peace with his
perfect son.

�� But
Scorpius was less than perfect, and Harry could toss words at him that hurt and
then walk away, which was unacceptably
less than perfect.

�� Draco shook
himself at last and started walking back towards the house, glancing at the
forges and the small tents where the dwarves still labored on as he went. He
tried to imagine Harry laboring there, and rejected the vision. No, Harry
wouldn�t stoop to work like that. And his wounded leg and small arms wouldn�t
let him muster the necessary force to swing a hammer. It was magic he was meant
for, graceful enchantments like the one Draco had seen him weaving with the
metal earlier that evening.

�� Or no work at all. He can live with me
whilst we seek a cure to the scars that cover his face.

�� Draco could
see that life, and he never saw
anything so clearly that wouldn�t come true. Harry leaned in a chair near the
fire, one hand propping up his chin and the other holding a book open so that
he could easily see the pages as he mouthed the words to himself. The fire
played across his scars and made them look more like the effects of shadows;
Harry could change them by shifting. Scorpius would be sitting on the carpet
nearby, practicing simple spells and wand motions, and Draco would correct him
occasionally. But mostly he would read his own books, and sometimes rise and
walk across to Harry, so that he could tangle his fingers in Harry�s hair and
sniff the back of his neck to draw in the scent that lingered there.

�� From behind, he won�t look so horrible. And
I think he rejected the offer I made to try and help him find a cure because he
was afraid of trying again. Afraid I would betray him, afraid that we would
find a cure and it would hurt. He can�t be afraid of looking in the first place,
because he looked with Granger.

�� He does still want to be healed. He wants to
be free of this affliction as strongly as I want him to be free of it.

�� Draco�s
head came up, and he smiled. Already his heart was beginning to beat with hope
again, and he could consider the words Harry had spoken to him and reject them
easily.

�� He meant I wasn�t worth it only as a slip of
the tongue, the same way I called him a monster. Yes, it�s painful. Yes, he
shouldn�t have said those words, and I shouldn�t have said that word.

�� But we didn�t really mean them, and they can
be forgotten and forgiven, as long as the person who hears them has the will to
do that. I�ll forgive Harry. Then I�ll persuade him to forgive me.

�� Humming under
his breath, Draco stepped into the entrance hall of Morningswood. Not even a
house-elf appearing before him and bowing in agitation worried him. After all,
Harry might have come back and demanded to see him, and the house-elves would
be worried that they didn�t have a guest bedroom already prepared for him.
Elves did give Harry the most
laughable reverence.

�� Master
Draco,� the elf squeaked, �Master Scorpius is hurt.�

*

�� Harry lay
with his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. This was the same
guest room that he had every time he stayed at Ron and Hermione�s house, and
most of the time, its familiarity comforted him. He liked the enchanted window
that always showed six scenes�a meadow, a forest, and the ocean by daylight,
and then the same ones by moonlight�and the large bed that gave enough support
to his scarred leg that he didn�t have to feel that he was walking whilst he
lay down. He liked the smell of the sheets, rose petals, because of the household
charms that Hermione had made Ron study. He liked the bookshelves, even though
the books that filled them were ones Hermione had chosen and Harry couldn�t
bring himself to be interested in.

�� He
appreciated the fact that there were no mirrors.

�� But now he
could only think of an older familiarity, the way he had once lain in bed
knowing that Draco was in the next room, or with Draco beside him, sprawled on
his shoulder, drooling in his hair. Draco had always denied, indignantly, that
he drooled. Harry had rolled his eyes and put up with the lie for the sake of
keeping the peace in the bedroom.

�� Now he
thought, bitterly, that it was only one more sign that Draco wasn�t able to put
up with anything less than perfection. If he couldn�t attain it, he would
persuade himself that he had it anyway, or he would ignore the signs that it
didn�t exist. And if he couldn�t ignore it, then he would shove the person who
reminded him of imperfections violently away.

�� Harry
lifted a hand and touched the skin around his mouth. It had hardened again, and
only poked his finger, instead of crackling beneath his touch like pork fat.

�� He should
stop thinking about Draco and go to sleep. Thinking about Draco was to give him
more consideration than he deserved.

�� On the
other hand, he argued mentally, he was doing this for his own peace, trying to figure out what about Draco still fascinated
him, and it didn�t mean that he would go crawling back to Morningswood with the
dawn. He could owl Grishnazk and ask him to send the prepared metal to Ron and
Hermione�s house. He would perform the dance here and send the completed sigils
back. He could ask Hermione to Apparate with the patterns to the dwarves. He
wouldn�t trust Ron not to take the opportunity to march into the house and tell
Draco what he really thought of him, but Hermione was steady.

�� But he didn�t
want that. He wanted to go back. He wanted to stare at the house, no matter how
much the sight of the walls�the walls that shut out everything imperfect,
everything flawed�tormented him.

�� Why?

�� Harry
sighed and touched his face again. There was only one answer that had ever made
sense to him. It was the same answer that had rescued him from despair when he
walked away from Draco, and the one that had sent him into the pursuit of
metal-dancing.

�� Because even if he�s not worth it�and I�m
not sure about that�I am. I have more conscience and a desire to help and to
hope. So I�ll exercise it, because that kind of desire is worth exercising.

�� He needed
to be himself. If that meant making excuses for people his friends thought
weren�t worthy of excuses, then so be it. He reminded himself that Ron and
Hermione had never thought Draco was worthy of him in the first place, even
when Draco had gone through fire and water to stay with Harry. Their opinion
was understandable, since Draco had tormented them both so much in school and
had never been more than polite to them afterwards, but Harry couldn�t make it
his own.

�� He broke when the moment came, though. I
needed him, and he left. Doesn�t that prove Ron and Hermione were right?

�� No, Harry
had to admit. He thought he might have broken, too, under similar pressure�

�� And then he
sighed, because if he was going to be honest to himself, he should be honest
about everything.

�� No, I wouldn�t have. There are other things
that could have made me walk away, but not that. I�m too loyal, as Ron and
Hermione will say when they hear about me clinging to Draco. I don�t care
enough about beauty, the way Draco does. I don�t care about things being
unmarred. When I entered the wizarding world, I was so relieved to find people
who accepted me as a friend instead of turning their backs on me that I forgave
them all their faults.

�� But the reason I love Draco is that he�s not
me. He has strengths I don�t, faults I
don�t. And he has to be left to shine with them, or else I�m forcing him into
an unnatural mold and destroying the man I loved in the first place. That self
of his was what I loved, that he was himself more strongly than anyone I knew.

�� What I can�t live with is his disgust
towards me, and his pinning all his hopes on a cure. I�ll make it plain to him
tomorrow. If he only wants to be with me again because he�s sure I can be
healed and look exactly like I used to, then I�ll walk away. He�ll have to live
with uncertainty.

�� Harry hesitated,
the thoughts turning over in his mind as numerous and sharp now as the folds on
his face.

�� And so will I. I�ll have to accept the idea
that something might be able to heal me, and endure the hope, for Draco�s sake.

�� Harry tried
to envision the future stretching before him, and found it hard to imagine. He�d
have to fight an endless battle, to maintain hope and patience whilst educating
Draco to look beyond looks, and to think of the quest of healing himself seriously,
rather than as a diversion to entertain and soothe Draco.

�� But he didn�t
think he knew what life would be like without a battle. Maybe that was part of the
reason he had chosen Draco in the first place, and had endured the insults and
the prurient curiosity about his injuries instead of hiding himself away. The
other things would be too easy, and with all the leisure the lack of fighting
would afford, he wouldn�t know what to do with himself.

�� You�re probably delusional, he told
himself.

�� But he fell
asleep smiling�until the sound of the Floo opening called him from slumber.

*

�� Master
Draco is being angry at Hinky�Hinky is a bad
elf, and Hinky knows it, and��

�� Draco shut
the door, because he couldn�t bear to listen to the elf�s babbling one more
minute. A wail and a thump indicated that Hinky had taken to punishing himself
by hitting his head against the wall.

�� And then
Draco forgot about him, because he was gazing at his son.

�� Scorpius
lay swaddled in deep green and silver blankets, as if the colors of Slytherin
could somehow protect him from what had happened today, an adventure that would
not have disgraced a Gryffindor. Across his face ran a diagonal burn, and the
hair that clung above his left ear had been singed. Draco could have lived with
that. Burns would heal, and there were spells to restore the natural look of
skin that had been touched only by fire and not by Dark Arts.

�� But the right
side of his body�

�� Scorpius
had wandered into one of the sheds where dwarves were forging metals, and they
had been too occupied in their tasks to notice him. (They should have, Draco
raged internally. How could anyone, even a wretched magical creature, not
notice the small version of perfection near them?) He had stooped down to
examine a fire, and got caught, when he touched an ember, in the loop of one of
the spells that the dwarves used to keep the flames hot and give their craft
its special polish. The magic had run through his body for perhaps a minute
before someone had noticed and managed to stop the pounding in time to get Scorpius
away and carry him to Morningswood.

�� Draco
gently moved the blankets back so that he could stare. Scorpius was deep in a
healing sleep that the elves had cast on him the moment they had seen how bad
the damage was; Draco knew that he wouldn�t disturb him.

�� Scorpius�s
neck was twisted, turned into a slender column of bone and flesh that couldn�t
support his head. His right hand had suffered the same process, the fingers
fused and melted together as if by a far greater heat than they had in fact
endured�or than they should have been able to endure without burning to ash
altogether. The right side of his face had turned into a fried mess, which
continually shed drops of blood and juice like dripping fat. Draco didn�t know what
it would look like when it cooled, but if it looked better than Harry�s face,
it would only be by chance.

�� Harry.

�� The thought
of him brought Draco to his feet. He had not yet summoned Healers, too stunned
by what had happened to his son and how the vision of perfection had changed in
an hour into a vision of ugliness.

�� All because you would cast spells that made
him smarter, able to get out of the house and evade the elves when they looked
for him.

�� But Draco
had no time for self-blame right now. He had latched on to Harry. Harry, who
was burned in a similar manner. Harry, who must know about dwarves� fire because
he had worked with them, and whose opinion Draco would trust more than he would
the fine things the dwarves might say to get themselves out of trouble.

�� Harry, who
still seemed to care for him.

�� Draco knew
he would have gone to his friends� house, as surely as he drew breath. Harry
sought out company when he was suffering extreme pains, however much he might brood
over minor ones. And Draco still had the Granger-Weasleys� Floo address.

�� He tore out
of the room, shouting for the elves.

*

�� Harry never
knew how he did half of what he did that night.

�� First, he
had to soothe Ron and Hermione and reassure them that Draco�s intrusion was not
really as unwelcome as it might have appeared. They slowly went back to bed,
Hermione looking steadily at Harry in the way that said she would demand an
explanation later. Harry could put up with that, because she also had a tight
grip on Ron�s arm that kept him from saying anything to Draco.

�� Second, he
had to hold Draco firmly in his arms and shake him until he stopped babbling
and told what had happened to Scorpius in plain words. Then he had to say that
he knew very little about dwarves� magical fire, and Draco should get Scorpius
to St. Mungo�s. But Draco was so insistent that he at least come and look at
Scorpius first that Harry agreed.

�� Third, he
had to keep from vomiting for pure pity when he looked at the damage the fire
had wrought to Scorpius�s body. Magic, he
remembered thinking, the words fluttering through his mind. What good is it when it creates damage like
this instead of healing it? And I don�t think the Healers will be able to help
him.

�� Fourth, he
had to look at Draco and say firmly, �I think there�s some hope. But we need to
get him to St. Mungo�s now.�

�� Fifth, he
had to go ahead, at Draco�s express request, and call for a Healer whilst asking
that a private room be prepared for Scorpius so that no one needed to see him
come in. Draco was sensitive to what gossip would say.

�� Sixth,
Harry had to practically shove Draco into the Floo carrying Scorpius; Draco was
afraid that because one kind of magical fire had harmed Scorpius, another
might. Harry had to take a deep breath, and understand the anxiety, and
convince Draco to go through the flames by thrusting a hand into them himself.

�� Seventh, he
had to contact Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy and tell them what had happened to
Scorpius, and give as many details as he could in a cold and unflinching voice,
whilst Lucius wept without tears and Narcissa without sound.

�� Eighth, he
had to go to Morningswood, reassure the dwarves that he would prevent Draco
from attacking them in words or in the papers or with magic, and order them
home until he was able to resume his own work with the protective patterns.

�� And
finally, he stood and stared at Morningswood under the moonlight for long
moments, searching for the strength in himself to help Draco�and Scorpius�through
this trial whilst still unsure if Draco would inflict the same rejection on his
son that he had on Harry.

�� He won�t. He loves Scorpius.

�� But I thought the same thing about his
emotion for me. And maybe he loves beauty more.

�� Harry shook
his head and Apparated to London, his bad leg sending spasms of pain up to rack
his spine.

�� I have to be strong for him. For him and Scorpius
both.

�� The thought
that followed that one crept unwelcome into his mind, and if it hadn�t been for
Harry�s newfound honesty, he wouldn�t have permitted himself to listen to it at
all.

�� I just wish someone could be strong for me.

*

�� linagabriev:
No, Draco wasn�t planning to go to the papers. He wanted to write down exactly
what was said, so that he would have a record of it.

�� Harry
researched with Hermione mostly for Hermione�s sake, although he doesn�t
mention that to Draco. By the time she insisted they do research, he and Draco
had already broken up, and he was no longer compelled to care about what Draco
wanted.

�� At the
moment, Draco is thinking more of other things than the torture Harry suffered.
But he will come back to that.

�� And he�s
thinking Harry�s words are a slip of the tongue. As I said: a way to go yet.

�� k: Thanks for
reviewing! Afraid I can�t draw, but I do have a clear picture of him in my
head; I�m just having trouble conveying exactly how he likes.

�� Ladynight:
Thank you!

�� Dezra: I,
too, think Draco would have a lot of trouble with a scarred Harry.

�� Myraa:
Draco�s own mind is protecting him at the moment from concentrating too much on
Harry�s torture. If Harry had told it to him calmly, then he would have
accepted it better, but right now he�s focusing on Harry�s words to him.

�� Draco has
been�rather distracted at the moment. But he�s going to be facing a crisis in
the next chapter where he finally has to choose between facing reality and
clinging to his beliefs.

�� Luvdonite: Harry�s
magic tore Greyback and the others apart. I�m sure that their deaths were
painful.

�� SoftObsidian74:
Thank you! Draco does see, in some ways, that Harry should have been paying
more attention to him, putting him first, and that Harry didn�t infuriates him.
Of course, even that is a sign of how much he still craves to have Harry back.

�� I hope
Harry�s decision in this chapter pleases you.

�� Werewolf
Mistress: Mostly, Harry fears trying again because he thinks Draco would only accept
him for as long as he thinks a cure could be found; if it couldn�t, Draco would
drop him all over again.

�� DTDY: Thank
you!

�� AyaWeissHunter:
Thank you so much! I agree that Draco should have just been able to let Harry
go if all he felt was repulsion�just as Harry should have been unaffected if he
was completely over Draco. Harry has made a big jump towards accepting his
conflicted feelings here. We�ll see if Draco can do the same.

�� I�m glad
you think they�re in-character, too. Harry is maybe too generous, but he�s still miles away from completely forgiving
Draco yet; he�ll have to do some serious groveling first.
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