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Nothing Like the Sun	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 35148 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Six—Determination

            Draco lounged on the couch in front of his fireplace, his hum so faint and distant that he wouldn’t have known he was humming at all if he didn’t know himself. That he hummed in contentment was one of those things not many people recognized about him. His Slytherin friends probably wouldn’t have thought to betray the secret to anyone else, because they wouldn’t think it important enough to be a secret, and his lovers had rarely been around him when he was like this.

            Now, one of them will be.

            Draco extended his hand lazily towards the fire. The firelight played on the delicate bones of his wrist, making them glow and gleam with an artistic precision that Draco admired. He wondered when Potter would learn to admire them that way, would learn to look at other parts of Draco’s body than his cock.

            It might take a while. But he will achieve it in the end. I will not yield until he can do it.

            A sound startled him out of his trance. He turned around and saw a house-elf popping into the room, bowing deeply. On the elf’s hand sat a brown post-owl, stirring and flapping as though its flight hadn’t worn the restlessness from its wings.

            “That will be all, Oddly,” Draco murmured, studying the owl in the meantime, to make sure that he didn’t recognize it. He didn’t think so. None of his friends would use an owl like this, not when they had standards to maintain, and Draco knew the birds of most of his casual correspondents, including other Potions masters. It was probably a communication from a client who didn’t want to be recognized.

            Draco sighed as his elf disappeared and the owl soared across the space to him, landing on the couch arm. The commission would probably be for a love potion. Draco accepted such things for the money and the chance to keep one set of skills in practice, but he resented the damp letters and the eager, wobbly words and the coy circumlocutions and the repetitive motions of cutting and dicing for this particular potion. Perhaps he wouldn’t take this one on. He had Potter in hand now.

            But the letter turned out not to have a seal, and the owl took off the minute Draco removed it from its leg, not waiting for a response. Draco blinked after it, then opened the envelope.

            The writing inside slanted to the left in a strange way, and made Draco think of someone not writing with their dominant hand. He knew he didn’t recognize it, even when he twisted the paper and tried to make up for the strangeness by examining it from another angle. Both paper and ink were utterly common, not distinctive in any way.

            And in the meantime, while he tried to figure out who had written it, Draco couldn’t help reading what it said.

            Dear Draco,

            I know that you have worries and fears aplenty, and one of them is probably trying to sort out the truth that surrounds Harry Potter. You’ll have heard so many rumors that trusting any one of them, unless you hear confirmation from his mouth or one of his lovers’, is a foolish mistake. And I don’t think you a fool.

            I do think you more than a little infatuated, more than a little in love, and as the kin of someone who had their heart broken by him, I want to tell you something about Harry Potter.

            You might have heard that he has nightmares that put some of his lovers off. That is the absolute truth; take it from someone who’s slept beside him. Or rather, from me, who heard the truth in heart-broken sobs from someone who’s slept beside him.

            The content of those nightmares, though, might surprise you. He doesn’t always dream of the war and his confrontation with You-Know-Who, or his friends who died in that war. Instead, he also dreams of his childhood, when he lived with Muggles.

            The Muggles were members of his mother’s family, her sister and that sister’s husband and son. They didn’t know magic, they didn’t like magic, and they didn’t want Potter to grow up knowing it. They made sure that he was forbidden to say the word magic, and although sometimes he did things that he couldn’t explain, they didn’t tell him of his heritage. He was the smallest and skinniest child in his primary school, without friends.

            He came into the wizarding world having learned about magic and his parents’ deaths only a month before. He seized the first friends that came to him, and never attempted to make any others. You would know about that yourself, having been on the sharp end of his refusal to see the world in other than black and white terms.

            And he never grew beyond that, beyond being ignored and abandoned to magic by the Muggles. He spent all his time during the summers daydreaming of the wizarding world and escaping to it. But when you treat magic like a daydream, then you tend to see only the good aspects of it and forget about the bad ones. Worse, you start acting as though it’s a disappointment when wizards are people, too, and not perfectly helpful to you all the time.

            That’s the problem with the relationships that Potter tries to have with wizards. He can never see them whole, only in partial flashes. He’s in love with them at first, and then grows disgusted with them as time goes on. Safe yourself from being impaled by his expectations, and get away as soon as you can.

            I see no reason to sign myself as anything but:

            A friend.

            Draco put the letter down and stared at it. Then he waved his wand, concentrating, and a copy of it appeared next to the original, a simple charm he had first learned when studying Potions recipes. He put the copy aside on the table next to the couch.

            Then he ripped up the original with long, deliberate motions, watching the pieces of parchment as they landed on the carpet around him. Oddly appeared to clean them up with a squeak of dismay, but Draco snarled at him, and he vanished without touching them.

            Draco lay there with eyes narrowed, watching the snowdrift. He had the feeling that he knew who had written that particular letter.

            And he did not appreciate it.

*

            “How are you?”

            Harry managed to put down his report and smile up at Hermione. “Wow, this must be serious,” he teased her gently. “Given that not just Ron but you show up to give me significant glances this morning.”

            Hermione didn’t smile, but leaned over and peered earnestly into his eyes instead. “Ron told me a little bit about what you and Malfoy said to one another yesterday,” she murmured. “I want to know how you are.”

            “And what you want in that mood, you get,” Harry muttered. He rubbed his eyes, rubbed his ears, rubbed his mouth, and only gave in when he noticed Hermione’s foot tapping and knew there was nothing more he could rub without being disgusting. “I’m all right. I went home and ran. Then Malfoy showed up, and we talked.” He had thought about hiding that, but Malfoy would be coming back at least once—Harry didn’t think the letter he’d written to him would be enough to put him off forever—and his friends deserved to know what they had talked about.

            “How did he find you?” Hermione had perked up, and Harry wasn’t sure whether it was the evidence that someone cared about Harry or the chance to learn about unknown magic.

            “You know, I’m not sure.” Harry frowned as he realized he hadn’t asked Malfoy, but decided he could forgive himself. He’d bloody well been distracted at the time. “Some kind of locater charm, I imagine. It had to be sophisticated. He Apparated right to me.”

            “It’s not important.” Hermione leaned forwards again, enough to endanger her perch on his desk. “And what did you talk about?”

            Harry scowled slightly. This would show up, of course. But Ron was watching from the other side, his wand still in his hand even though he had finally finished casting the Privacy Charms, and Harry couldn’t escape the intent gaze of his two best friends.

            Nor would he really want to. These were the only people in his life who loved and understood him, Harry had accepted. The Weasleys, minus maybe Ginny, whose life he had destroyed, loved him, but they didn’t know about all the horrible things he had done, the way Ron and Hermione did.

            “We talked about the reasons I shouldn’t date him,” Harry said, his voice clipped. “He didn’t accept any of it. I took him back home, and told him I would allow him one chance to show me what I was missing by not accepting him as a lover.”

            Ron gagged a little, and Hermione glared at him. Ron sighed and shook his head. “Just—I’ll listen to the details if I have to,” he said. “And it’s not even that it’s you, mate, it’s that it’s Malfoy.”

            Harry nodded, smiling. He had no doubt of that, since Ron had managed to listen to the details of Harry’s other confessions, when he really had to, without flinching. “He tried to teach me how to kiss,” Harry said. “It went all right, I suppose.” Not even to his best friends would he confess that a simple kiss got him hard. It just showed how starved he was for contact with wizards and other things he couldn’t have. “But he wants to come back, and I can’t allow him to do that.”

            “Why not, if he wants to?” Hermione sounded breathless. Harry met her eyes, and sighed.

            “I don’t have a hero, Hermione,” he told her quietly. “There’s not someone out there destined to save everyone. I thought you’d accepted that, when it came to me.”

            “But there might be someone who wants to try,” Ron added, unexpectedly enough that Harry turned to face him. “And I told you before that you were patronizing Malfoy by thinking you know what he wants, mate. What if he wants to be your hero? Can you really justify stopping him?”

            Harry wanted to put his head between his hands and hold it there. Or, better, he wanted some way to project his thoughts directly into his friends’ minds and let them see what he saw, imagine what he did, feel what he felt.

            But no wizards had invented magic that would help with that, not even Pensieve memories. He had to do what ordinary people all over the world did, just try to explain and hope they understood him.

            “It probably doesn’t matter,” he said, looking up. “Not that I understand why Malfoy would want that in the first place, not that I understand why he’s trying so hard to teach me how to kiss, but anyway. I already sent him a letter that explained some things about me that he didn’t know. That’ll scare him off.”

            Hermione sounded breathless for a different reason this time, Harry was sure. “You did what? What did it say?”

            “It tells him about the Dursleys.” Harry had done harder things than meeting Hermione’s gaze evenly, he was sure. It was just hard to remember them right now. “About my nightmares and the way I grew up without even knowing about magic. I don’t think he’ll want to be with someone emotionally as well as physically scarred.”

            “If he’s spoken with you about the things you say you discussed, he couldn’t have missed the emotional scars,” Hermione whispered. “I don’t know why he’s pursuing you so hard, either, but you think that letter is going to put him off?”

            “He doesn’t know I sent it,” Harry said, and winced and blushed and wished that he could turn away when Hermione’s eyes drilled him. “It’s—Hermione, I need to do this. It’s my life. I get to make the decisions.”

            “I know,” Hermione said, and closed her eyes, and drummed her palm for a second on the side of the desk before she straightened up and gave him a sweet, short smile. “I remind myself of that all the time. Even when I think that you’re making bad decisions.”

            Harry grinned back. “Thanks. And remind me never to tell you what I think of the decorating scheme in your drawing room.”

            “Potter.”

            Jesus Christ, Malfoy, pick a better time and place. Harry could already sense heads turning just because of the conjunction between that voice and his name. Hadn’t Malfoy already learned the lesson about confronting Harry at work and the audience they’d attract?

            Or maybe he didn’t care, because that would make him more likely to get what he wanted. Harry didn’t care about the reasoning, and he turned around, his own hands braced flat on the desk, his mind already bounding.

            Malfoy was clutching a sheet of parchment in one hand. It didn’t look like the letter that Harry had sent, but Harry couldn’t see the writing on it, either, so he didn’t jump to conclusions. The look like white steel on Malfoy’s face was what he had to concentrate on.

            “You wanted something, Malfoy?” he asked, stepping outside the Privacy Charms Ron had cast and raising his voice. He was going to be in control of the confrontation this time, he promised himself. If Malfoy started talking about something that shouldn’t be talked about, Harry would raise the charms at once. If Malfoy dared to accuse him of something, Harry would spread a bit of vicious gossip concerning Malfoy’s skills in bed. He didn’t deserve to be hunted and hounded like this. Malfoy was a lover that Harry hadn’t hurt by kissing or fucking the way he had the others; he had never promised Malfoy a lifetime together or an exclusive commitment. Harry had a perfect right to stand up to him.

            Which didn’t mean that part of him didn’t quail when Malfoy marched up and stood there in front of him, swaying on his heels with the force of his emotions. But he kept that weak part locked away, and met Malfoy’s eyes with a faint smile.

            “What do you want?” he repeated, when a few seconds had passed and Malfoy hadn’t launched into the tirade that his expression promised. Harry could feel the general breathless silence gathered around them, off to the sides, and wanted to disappoint it. Still, it was odd that Malfoy would think about disappointing it, too, when he had marched up to Harry at work in the first place.

            “I want you to come to my office with me,” Malfoy said, and lowered his voice in a careful emphasis that fooled neither of them, and probably didn’t fool Ron or Hermione, either, but might the gossipmongers. “That potion we discussed? We have to discuss it some more.”

            Harry smiled pleasantly. All right. They would have the argument in private. That was at least more considerate than Malfoy had been last time. “Very well,” he said, and tipped a wink at Hermione and Ron as he followed Malfoy down the corridor to the Potions Division.

            Ron shook his head at him. Hermione held up a clenched fist in response. Harry snorted. He supposed that could either be encouragement or Hermione telling him not to be stupid.

            He didn’t know, so he chose to turn his back on it and walk along with Malfoy, instead.

*

            The fury that had roared inside Draco from the moment of receiving that letter had picked up to a single, steady flame ever since he realized Potter was walking beside him entirely unaffected by it. That he hadn’t glanced twice at the letter in Draco’s hand, that he showed no apprehension in coming with him, that he hadn’t mouthed an apology when he caught Draco’s eye.

            He thinks he did nothing wrong in writing the bloody thing.

            Or, worse, he thought he had fooled Draco with his stupid pretense of anonymity, and expected Draco to believe it.

            Draco smiled. He thought that Potter would quail a bit if he caught sight of that smile, but Potter kept his gaze straight ahead. One of the apprentices who had ruined a Draught of Living Death yesterday did see the smile, squeaked, and ran past Draco with his head bowed as though he was a mouse escaping from a hawk.

            Keep walking, Draco thought, and the thought made the muscles in his legs clench so that he walked harder and faster. He could do nothing until he and Potter were in private. He had learned that much, after yesterday’s disaster.

            Potter showed no hesitation about stepping into his office. Draco locked the door audibly and stepped up beside him.

            Potter still didn’t turn around. “You have more room than I realized on the last visit here,” he said, looking at Draco’s desk with approval. “Suited to your importance as the Head of the Division. I like it.”

            Draco laid a hand on Potter’s shoulder. It shook, a little, and he held it there until it stopped shaking. Potter did nothing but turn and look at him, his eyes so calm that Draco wanted to rake them out.

            But he was the one who was at a disadvantage in this contest if he was angry. He made himself lean forwards and speak into Potter’s face instead of striking him. “I can’t believe you thought that would fool me.”

            Potter blinked. “You think I’m lying about my regard for your office? But it’s very nice.”

            Draco held up the letter. “You wrote this,” he said. “You pretended to be some idiot concerned for my welfare if I got involved with you. And it’s not going to work, Potter. I know all about your emotional damage. I have comparable damage of my own. It hasn’t stopped me from being successful and dating people, and it won’t stop you, either.”

*

            Shit.

            Harry hadn’t thought Malfoy would figure it out, not this fast. Where was the recoiling? If anything, it was more likely with Malfoy than with someone like Veronica, who was less fastidious, or with Frank, who was Muggleborn. Malfoy should have higher standards. The least hint of dirt or taint should make him turn away with his lip curled and disgust in his eyes.

            But he hadn’t. That meant it was up to Harry to deal with what he had found here. He straightened his shoulders, rolling them, and went on the attack.

            “Why do you care?” he demanded. “You could find ninety percent of the wizarding population with less stubbornness and determination to drive you away. What does it matter to you who I date? How I kiss? Whether I have emotional damage or not?”

            Malfoy fell back a step, and Harry pressed the attack, walking right up to him and sneering in his face. “I asked you a question,” he whispered. “You haven’t answered it yet. Yes, you can talk all you like about how I have a sense of humor and defended you against Greengrass, but you didn’t know that I would do that when you started pursuing me. So, tell me. What the fuck does it matter to you where I go or what I do?”

            Malfoy reached up and caught his wrists. Harry could have thrown him off with any of half a dozen moves, tossed him to the floor or wrenched free.

            He stayed still, though, because Malfoy was staring at him with his mouth open in what looked like a pant and his eyes glazed. Harry wondered what the hell that meant. Had Malfoy been cursed with a lust hex? It would at least explain some things.

            Not the gentleness with which he had handled Harry’s face and mouth when he was teaching him how to kiss, though. Lust hexes made the victim think about nothing but getting the other person naked.

            “I’ve wanted to be acknowledged by you for a long time,” Malfoy whispered. “Not a nod when we pass in the corridors, not the kind of absent smile that I know you give to everybody who doesn’t actually publish scandalous articles about you. I wanted to be important.”

            Harry sighed and closed his eyes. “Yes, Ginny had a bad case of that, too,” he muttered. “But she was my friend, as well as my lover, and when she realized that I couldn’t be what she wanted, she was able to give it up. Do you think you can give it up, too, Malfoy?” He winced when he heard the sound of his own voice, but he told himself he was pleading for Malfoy’s sake and not his own. He only hoped the great git would listen.

            “Why should I?” Malfoy’s grip really was crushing, and Harry shifted in his hold, as a gentle hint that he would rather Malfoy let him go. Malfoy really should no inclination to do so, which Harry thought was irritating. “I have you right here, and you’ve sucked me off, and I want more from you.”

            Harry sighed again. “That blowjob was a mistake, wasn’t it? I should have refused you when you first came up and asked me for a date.”

            Malfoy shook him. Harry let his head flop back and forth on his neck, not trying to resist. A kind of heavy pity was moving through his throat, coming near to choking him, dampening his eyes. He always felt sorry for the people who wanted to come close and warm themselves by the fire of his fame. Harry had nothing to give them, no way to make them famous, too, which was what they really wanted, and no way to make them feel like the center of his attention.

            Frank had explained that, although Harry hadn’t given his words the importance they deserved at the time. That was early in their relationship, when Harry was deliriously happy and thought he was making Frank that way, too.

            I know that you can’t make them heroes, Frank had said, leaning forwards over the table and rapping his fingers against Harry’s plate to get his attention. They were in a restaurant to celebrate their six-month anniversary, and Harry had preferred to dreamily gaze at Frank’s face rather than listen to his words. But that doesn’t mean you can’t give them your attention, and they can get at reflected glory that way.

            That had been Frank’s way of saying that he didn’t feel Harry was giving him enough attention, that he wanted to ensure he held the center place in Harry’s meditations and not just a peripheral one. But Harry hadn’t known that at the time. He’d had some feeble argument about how he couldn’t pay attention to everyone who crossed his path.

            Frank had leaned back, arms folded in the way that Harry had learned to dread. I know that. But you have the duty and the responsibility to try. To make them feel, for just a second, what it’s like to be close to greatness.

            But that had been flawed, too, in its own way, Harry thought. Frank hadn’t known yet that Harry didn’t have a heart that could encompass someone else, or a brain that really wanted to make other people happy. Once he knew, then he had told Harry the truth and left.

            “Are you fucking listening to me?”

            Harry focused his eyes again. Malfoy had a simple hold on his shoulders now, instead of the crushing one that he’d had before, and he was staring into Harry’s face as though he really thought Harry would faint or something. Harry shook his head and clasped Malfoy’s hands for a second before moving away.

            “No,” he said. “Not right now. Is there a way that you can explain to me, in simple words, what you want? And then I can tell you why I can’t give it to you, and maybe you’ll finally believe me and let me go.”

*

            He was somewhere else. And that he never noticed I was shaking him, that he didn’t react with any signs of pain…

            Draco felt his breath coming short, his eyes squinting as though to deny himself light. He swallowed and stepped away, pacing to his desk to stir his papers with one hand.

            “Don’t do that,” Potter murmured from behind him. “You’ll mess your paperwork up.” He came up beside Draco and began to arrange things into neat piles, sorting and stacking the edges.

            Draco turned and stared at him. “If I’m the one who messes it up, I’m the one who knows where to find things.”

            Potter glanced at him sideways, and then sighed and faced Draco fully, setting down the latest pile of paperwork he had when Draco gestured at him. “Look. You want more from me. I get that. But I’ve told you again and again, in all the ways and words I know, that I don’t have more to give. So you must have something else you want to say, something you think you haven’t told me about yet. It’s not going to be anything I haven’t heard before, but I need to know what it is, so I know how to answer you.”

            “You arrogant bastard,” Draco said, a little stunned.

            Potter sighed and looked at the door. “If you understood how many of these conversations I’ve been through,” he muttered, “from people who thought they wanted to date me, and all the people I see in clubs who ask if they can see me again, and even the wizards I did date, then you would understand.” He glanced back at Draco, his eyes so weary that they hurt Draco. “I’ve had a lot more conversations in my head than aloud, even. I know all the ways this can play out, and all the ways I can hurt someone. I’ve hurt you already. I apologize for the letter. I did think it would make you back off, though, and that was all I really wanted at the time.”

            Draco licked his lips. He had to find something to say, or Potter would think it was all right to discard Draco and go about his business. It was going to be a bit hard, however.

            But only a bit.

            He leaned forwards, holding Potter’s eyes, and firming his gaze when Potter only stood there as if he had no idea what Draco might want to discuss. “I want you to be with me. In body and spirit. To let me give you more lessons. To let me give you pleasure.”

            “And what about this acknowledgment that you mentioned before?” Potter stood as motionless as a heron, and his voice slipped out of his lips softly, word by word. “That you wanted to be important to me?”

            “That, too,” Draco said. “But the way I want to earn that importance is by making myself someone you can’t live without.”

            Potter blinked at him, then fell back a step as though he assumed that would make Draco let him out the door. Draco just turned his head to track him.

            “That isn’t going to happen,” Potter said. “Do you think that, if there was anyone I couldn’t live without, I would be like this?”

            “I don’t know what you mean.” Draco was proud that he was able to say that honestly.

            “I thought I couldn’t live without Frank,” Potter said. “He was the one who opened my eyes to what I really was. And I thought I couldn’t live without Ginny, at one point, and I even dared to hope for a life where I was never parted from Veronica. But they all made me see that I could live without them, that I had to live without them, because I was hurting them. They deserved their freedom and their safety more than I deserved someone to spend my life with.”

            “You want someone to spend your life with,” Draco said calmly, ignoring the incredulous buzz in his own veins that he was standing here discussing this sort of thing with Harry Potter. “And I want to make myself important to you. There should be no conflict between us.”

            Potter took a long, slow step to the right. He was flushed, the color traveling down his face to his neck. Draco found his eyes following it, wondering exactly how low the flush might dip.

            “You called me a bastard, and maybe you’re right, but I am going to do at least one thing right,” Potter said. “The thing I couldn’t do right all the times before this, not because I didn’t want to, but because I didn’t have the eyes to see. I’m going to make sure that you don’t hurt yourself.”

            “I’ve talked before about how patronizing I find that attitude,” Draco said easily, turning to face Potter head-on again. Did Potter hope to make him nervous with all this circling and pacing, as if he was building up to a duel? Ridiculous. “Just like I found it patronizing for you to send me that letter.”

            Potter shook his head. “I already apologized. I won’t be doing it again.”

            “What exactly did you hope to accomplish with that?” Draco pressed, ignoring the issue of apologies for now. After all, words weren’t what he wanted from Potter. “You know that the personal aspect of our relationship is important to me. You really ought to have known that I would decide I had to learn more about you, not be pushed away.”

            Potter made a face. “Yes, but you’d want to know more about someone fascinating or interesting. I’m not that.”

            Draco’s eyes darted to the scar on Potter’s forehead, because he couldn’t help it.

            Potter’s sigh sounded like a rattling leaf. “You’re smarter than that, Malfoy.”

            “I can’t find you fascinating or interesting outside the scar?” Draco cocked his head and moved closer. “But if I did take the scar into account, then you would decide I was shallow and only looking to fuck you based on your fame. Either way, you’re protected against having to deal with someone else’s genuine lust, aren’t you? They’re always either fucked-up people you wouldn’t want to date anyway, or fools.”

            Potter’s smile was fleeting, but there. “Now you understand.”

            Draco halted in front of him. “I’ve never met someone who protected himself as well as you,” he murmured.

            Potter met his eyes. “You never met someone who had the need, either.” When Draco just waited, he added, “Because you never met someone who was as dangerous to other people’s mental stability.”

            Draco snorted. “What, you think you’re the only person who ever hurt someone?”

            “Who ever hurt so many people, for so long,” Potter corrected, and his jaw projected a good distance beyond his face. “I can’t control it. I didn’t even realize it was happening. I’ve already hurt you, haven’t I, when my only thought was to spare you pain? So you should back off and leave me alone.”

            Sophisticated, Draco had to acknowledge, his ability to protect himself. He could see now why Potter said he was good at imagining the ways conversations would go in his head. He could imagine the course of arguments, too, and he had already thought about objections that someone could make to his plans, and with them, ways to dismiss them.

            Draco no longer thought he would get through Potter’s barriers by smashing straight ahead. He circled around to the side instead.

            “What exactly was so horrible about your past that it makes you wake up screaming at night?” he asked. “The war, yes, but everyone knows about that, and other people suffered during it, too.”

*

            Harry straightened up and examined Malfoy again. He stood there, a more slender man than he seemed at first, but with the ability to project so skillful and intimidating an aura that Harry wasn’t surprised he had ended up as Head of the Potions Division.

            He wondered if he should share the details of his past with Malfoy. He had only used enough in the letter to make it sound simultaneously horrifying and pathetic, which had carved deep scars but which he should have got over. Did he really want to expose the truth to Malfoy? It was his to keep.

            But the alternative was to have Malfoy coming after him, closer and closer, and getting stung by Harry’s stupid actions each and every time.

            “Do you have a Pensieve?” he asked.

            Malfoy blinked and put a hand on his desk. Harry chuckled despite himself. In a flash, Malfoy was standing strong again, still for a second before he strode across the room and unlocked a cabinet on the far wall.

            Harry waited, drawing memories of his past with the Dursleys and his battles with Voldemort to the surface of his mind. He needed certain strong, specific ones, ones that could make his past seem horrible—so horrible that Malfoy wouldn’t want to stick around to deal with it. At the same time, he had to avoid provoking pity.

            Maybe he didn’t have to worry about that, Harry admitted as Malfoy came back with the Pensieve and held it out to him. Malfoy’s gaze was bright and steady, and his jaw gave a little tick now and then. He didn’t look as though he did pity.

            Harry closed his eyes and tapped his wand against his temple. He drew out the memories of Ripper chasing him up a tree, his battle with the basilisk, watching Quirrell disintegrate and burn when he touched Harry, a long session in the cupboard without food, and the night Dumbledore had died on the Tower. He might not have tried that last one with someone else, but Harry knew its value as a weapon against Malfoy.

            He laid them all in the Pensieve, stirring his wand around a little so that they would separate, but also flow into each other seamlessly, forming a single, dark landscape for Malfoy to walk through. Then he stepped back and stared at him.

            “You want me to view these?” Malfoy laid his hand on the edge of the Pensieve, but never took his eyes off Harry.

            “I wouldn’t have given them to you otherwise,” Harry said, and in case there was a misunderstanding lurking in there, added, “Nothing you did could have forced me. Nothing you did could have bribed me.”

            There was a flash of a smile like winter sunshine on Malfoy’s face before he nodded and turned to plunge his head beneath the surface of the memories. Harry picked out the most comfortable of the chairs in the office and settled down to wait.

            While Malfoy was busy, a few people knocked on or rattled the handle of the locked door, but Harry reckoned that was Malfoy’s problem, and he could take care of it when he came back.

*

            Draco caught his breath and looked around. He stood in the obsessively neat garden of a small Muggle house. It had to be Muggle, because all the corners looked sharp and the air was too thin—not with height, but with look of magic. Draco could make out other houses that looked the same in the distance, and a cramped, mangy look to all of them.

            Draco curled his lip. Just knowing that Potter had grown up here, away from the magnificent expanses that should have been his heritage, explained a lot about him.

            “Get him, Ripper!”

            Apparently the memory he was here to watch was happening behind him. That often occurred with Pensieves, Draco had discovered, or at least it was his luck with them. He turned around and reoriented himself.

            Potter was scrambling across the grass. Draco caught his breath. Potter didn’t look much smaller than he’d been the first time Draco saw him, but passing years had dulled the memory and let it have a new impact when Draco saw him like this now. His overlarge clothes flapped around him as if he was going to take off, and his eyes were bright and desperate and alive. Draco found himself moving forwards as if he could aid in the chase.

            Behind Potter came a dog, squat and low to the ground and far uglier than any Crup Draco had ever laid eyes on, although one heard stories about some of the inbreeding lines. Potter leaped up into a tree and caught a branch. The dog, barking as though it was about to go mad, leaped after him. Draco thought he saw the dog scrape a line down Potter’s leg with a tooth, but it was difficult to be sure about that.

            Then the Muggles came out of the house and laughed at Potter. Draco scanned them dismissively. All large except one of the women, and she clutched her long neck and laughed right along with the others. Draco did take note of how much bigger the boy was than Potter. Potter probably hadn’t been the one in charge in this household.

            The dog leaped and danced beneath him and barked and yelped, and Potter clung to a tree branch and looked miserable.

            Draco raised his eyebrows. So, this memory indicated that Potter’s family hadn’t treated him well, but Draco would have expected it to give him a disdain of Muggles and a distrust of dogs. What else was Draco here to witness?

            The end of the memory, apparently, because it blurred, and then Draco stood in front of a giant, rearing snake that dived straight down at him, fangs aiming for his head.

            No amount of chanting It’s only a memory, it’s only a memory, to himself was going to keep him still for that one. Draco dived and rolled, and came up battle-ready on the other side of the enormous underground room.

            The basilisk hit where he’d been standing, and Draco turned to see that the fangs had found a target, after all, in the arm of yet another small and scruffy boy with intense eyes. Darker eyes than the boy of the first memory, though, Draco had to admit. He scrambled up and tried to stand in front of the basilisk, but his knees wavered and he fell back.

            There was someone else there, too—besides Weasley’s sister slumped against the wall where Draco had landed, that was. A darkly handsome boy with wide eyes filled with a sick excitement, who stood with his hands on his hips and began to brag about the ways that he would profit from Potter’s death.

            Draco found it hard to listen to him. Instead, his gaze was on Potter, and not even the phoenix and the Sorting Hat that circled the room a moment later could distract him.

            Potter ignored the probable pain when the Sword of Gryffindor fell on his head, although it was surely bad enough to give him a concussion. Instead, he used the Sword to attack the basilisk. And then he stabbed the basilisk fang through the book that lay at his feet. The spirit of the other boy must have been connected to the book, because he began to shriek and scream and fade, and Potter closed his eyes and drooped for a second before he forced himself back to his feet, stumbling over to Weasley’s little sister to check her pulse.

            Draco saw the determination and the fury, blazing bright, and shook his head. Even with a phoenix and a Sword to help—and the phoenix had blinded the basilisk, Draco saw, when he could bring himself to look at the snake’s face—this was still a remarkable achievement for Potter. And he thought the memory would put Draco off from wanting to date or help him? Why had he chosen it?

            If anything, it only made Draco’s curiosity burn brighter. When and how had that fire gone out of Potter? Why would he be content to live on ashes and blowjobs now, when he’d fought so hard in hopeless situations before?

            The memory melted and rolled into another, and Draco frowned as he recognized Professor Quirrell. The purple turban flapping around his head could belong to no one else.

            But there was Potter beneath his fingers, and it slowly occurred to Draco that he had never seen Quirrell with the turban unwrapped. And then—

            Then he turned his back, and Draco made out the face in the back of his head, and he wanted to vomit. He really might have, if he hadn’t been in a memory and hadn’t known from experience that the vomit would end up all over the Pensieve instead. Not a way that he wanted to distinguish himself.

            He retreated a step, and then stared in fascinated horror as Quirrell began to burn. He was shrieking to the Dark Lord, calling him “Master,” and many things Draco hadn’t understood about the end of his first year at Hogwarts clicked into place. The Dark Lord’s hissing voice, worse in some ways than the one Draco had heard when he was alive again, implored Quirrell to keep clutching Potter.

            Even though he was burning and disintegrating as he did.

            Potter collapsed just as the final death took Quirrell, and then Dumbledore rushed from behind a stone pillar and picked Potter up. Draco curled his lip automatically, but he didn’t know how anyone who’d watched the memory was supposed to remove their eyes from that small boy, still with his hand jammed in his pocket. Probably protecting the Philosopher’s Stone, which Draco knew, because of guarded words from his father, that the Dark Lord had sought to take at one point.

            So you fought a man and he died when you were very young, Draco thought, following Dumbledore and Potter to the door of the chamber. Is that supposed to make me angry? Disdainful? Pitying?

            Maybe that was it, he thought slowly. This memory had happened mostly when Potter was unconscious, and Draco knew he hadn’t cast the spells that brought about Quirrell’s death, although he wasn’t exactly sure how it had happened. Maybe Potter thought that memories of helplessness would drive Draco away.

            He doesn’t know me.

            Draco walked through of the door of the room in which Potter had confronted the Dark Lord and Quirrell, and found himself in another place altogether. A different memory, he decided after glancing around. It had to be. But it was hard to see anything. He appeared to be in a cramped room, with only the faint lines of light around the door to illuminate the interior. Draco settled back against the wall and waited for his eyes to adjust.

            Something sniffled in front of him.

            Draco leaped and drew his wand before his mind snapped, Memory, remember? He lowered the wand again and took in a deep breath.

            Either the memory had become clearer on purpose for Draco to see things, or his eyes had finally adjusted, because he made out the boy sitting on the small bed in the middle of the room, head bowed in dejection. Even smaller than the first memory, Draco thought, when he’d been chased by the dog. Potter might be six or seven years old here.

            His skin was an unhealthy pale, Draco decided, dropping to one knee to see better. Potter continued to stare dimly past him. His clothes were as big as the ones he’d worn in his flight across the garden, and Draco now thought he knew why. Potter’s cousin was considerably bigger than he was, after all.

            Still Draco couldn’t figure out where they were. This must be Potter’s bedroom, but the size and shape and darkness of it made no sense. Even if the Muggles regularly locked Potter in a dark place as a punishment, Draco was fairly sure that they didn’t build Muggle homes without lights in every room. It was what the pitiful things had to do, since they couldn’t bring up light whenever they felt like it.

            The door with the lines around it suddenly flew open, and once again Draco jumped to his feet. He resisted drawing his wand, although no one but him would ever know. He had his pride.

            The boy on the bed looked as if he did, too, because in the seconds before the thin Muggle woman thrust her head into the room, he scrubbed frantically at his face to remove tear-tracks and sat up straight and tall.

            “Get out, boy,” the woman said, her voice like the whine of a hungry dragon hatchling to Draco’s ears. “I want the breakfast cooked. I want Dudley’s bedrooms cleaned. And then I want you to get down here and back into your cupboard before anyone else sees you, understand? Mrs. Pruitt is coming over to visit today, and you’re not to let her see you.”

            “Yes, Aunt Petunia,” said Potter dismally, and unfolded his legs. The woman had slammed the door again before he got all the way down, but he opened it without pausing to complain and went out after her.

            Draco blinked as it swung shut again. Yes, a cupboard, perhaps in an awkward place somewhere in a Muggle home, such as under the stairs. That would make sense.

            That Potter had to live in it, of course, didn’t make sense. But Draco was able to understand more of what he said, now, about being too damaged to live with.

            Not that Draco should have to let Potter make the decision about what he was willing to put up with.

            He stood up, with a smile that felt rough on the muscles in his face, and opened the cupboard door, reckoning the next memory waited beyond it.

            It did indeed. The second he stepped out of the door and onto the top of the Astronomy Tower, Draco saw his own ashen face and the even more ashen one of the old man he confronted, and knew exactly what he would see here.

            Cruel, Potter. That was cruel.

            But that was the point, wasn’t it? Potter wasn’t showing Draco these memories for his health. He was trying to make Draco leave him alone. And it made perfect sense, from that direction, that he would choose these memories.

            Draco grimaced and stepped forwards. He had little choice but to watch the memory play out. He thought he could make out a shimmer off to the side, indicating a Potter hidden under an Invisibility Cloak. It was the only way he could have had this memory and not interfered, Draco reckoned. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be his memory. It would be Draco’s, and they would be having some words about prying into other people’s heads without permission.

            He had wondered where the determination to beat the odds and defy the rules that he’d seen in the younger Potter had gone. He thought he knew now. It had all gone into his barriers, his desire to protect himself. He had built them and laid them so wide and strong that everything became fodder for them. His memories. His desires.

            People trying to help him.

            Draco had no intention of becoming masonry.

            He listened and watched in silence as the memory proceeded, but he had thought that it would not end with Potter rushing out of hiding to change something, and he was right. It ended with Dumbledore falling over the wall of the Tower, and then Professor Snape and Draco taking off.

            Then the blackness took form around Draco, and he rose from the Pensieve quiet and utterly steadfast.

            He might think that he can get rid of me the same way he can everyone else. But it’s time for him to learn that I’m not everyone else.

*

            Harry looked up. Malfoy had been bent over the Pensieve for so long, Harry had begun to wonder if something had gone wrong with the memories, or with Malfoy’s brain. But then he was shaking the silvery drops from his hair, picking through the strands to remove the last bits. Harry came forwards to reclaim his memories, keeping his eyes on Malfoy the whole time.

            He didn’t look up, wouldn’t look up. Harry had to admit that he felt a little stab of disappointment. Was Malfoy reluctant to face him and show him the pity in his eyes? Assuming that Harry’s memories had managed to inspire that emotion.

            Then he lifted his head and turned to face Harry, and Harry’s wand nearly dropped from his hand.

            Malfoy’s eyes were grey and unyielding. But not with the disgust that was one emotion Harry had imagined him taking away from this.

            “How dare you show me that last memory,” Malfoy whispered. “How dare you try to manipulate me.”

            Harry couldn’t help laughing, though he had to admit that the laugh was as dry as flint. “You thought I was above that when I wrote you that letter? I already admitted that I wrote you the letter. The wonder is that you continue to act as though I’m the shining Gryffindor hero that they always thought I was.”

            “You’re not a hero,” Malfoy said. “But I would expect most people to be above that.”

            “You manipulated people all the time,” Harry pointed out. The anger in the center of his chest was unexpected, but welcome, and much better than the anxiety that might have been there instead. “You laughed in their faces while you did it. Hell, you did it to me, to try and make me admit things to you that I didn’t want to admit, and so that you could teach me to kiss.” He wanted to laugh more and more as he thought about how hypocritical it was of Malfoy to act like manipulation was a crime. Probably he only thought of it that way when it happened to him. “I’m your match, if you like. Not worse. And if you do think I am, that’s all the more reason for you to back away.”

            Malfoy watched him, unflinching. That was the best word Harry could think of to describe him right now. And it was a frustrating one. It seemed that no matter what Harry did, Malfoy would continue to avoid what was only for his own good and try to hammer his way in through Harry’s barriers.

            If he did…

            It hurt Harry, to think how much Malfoy would hurt in return.

            “You have every reason to think that I’m not worthy of your help,” he said, making one last effort and trying to speak with everything in him, everything that Ron and Hermione, and maybe Malfoy too, would say was kind and decent. “And the final clincher, at least I hope so, should be that I don’t want it. Maybe I could be capable of a good relationship again if I worked with Mind-Healers for years and let you teach me. But every Mind-Healer I’ve talked to tried to betray me or failed to understand me sooner or later, and I don’t want to go through the pain of your teaching. That’s only from my side, all right, with nothing about what it would do to you. Back away now. Go away.” He hadn’t realized his voice had fallen into a whisper at the end of the speech until he heard himself speaking, but he hoped that would impress Malfoy.

*

            Draco stared. He had to applaud Potter, once again, on the effort that he put into his barriers, and how high he had raised them against being knocked down, how well he intended to protect them.

            It didn’t matter. Draco intended to bull his way through, after all. Nothing else would work. No one else had been clever or stubborn or persistent enough. Draco intended to be the one who showed them how wrong they were.

            Even if no one but Potter ever knows that I am.

            “I know a little more about what your childhood was like now,” he answered instead. “And what your wars with the Dark Lord were.”

            Potter stared at him, face shining like bone. “His name is Voldemort,” he said. “If you can’t even say that, how am I supposed to trust that you have the strength to take me through the healing?”

            Draco smiled back, letting his teeth gleam. “That’s another attempt to manipulate me,” he said. “If you don’t want me to help you, then you won’t be concerned about my strength in speaking the name or not. And I will call him whatever I please.”

            Potter waited in silence. Draco waited in silence, too. He was as determined as Potter was. Probably more so. Draco thought adding all his strength to the barriers probably hadn’t left Potter with much will for anything else.

            Sure enough, Potter succumbed first. “Fine,” he muttered. “Whatever. What does knowing more about my childhood teach you, then?”

            “That you’re not contemptible,” Draco answered, moving nearer. “That you’re strong—maybe stronger than anyone expected, to come through that intact. And that I want to help you all the more.”

            “It didn’t show you that I’m damaged?” Potter’s brows were creeping up his forehead.

            “No,” Draco replied

            Potter snorted.

            “Very well,” Draco conceded, “it showed me that you were damaged. It didn’t show me that the damage was so extensive that you don’t deserve to be helped.”

            “It should have shown you, if you paid attention to the message,” Potter said, his voice low and charged, “that I have too much damage not to hurt someone else. Even if I don’t mean to, even if it happens without my consent or knowledge. You said it yourself. I manipulate people. I put that last memory in there to hurt you. You want to be with someone who does that on purpose and lots of worse things without meaning to?”

            Draco smiled a little. “You are skilled at this,” he said. “At making someone who wants to help you give up hope. You even almost convinced me, and I’m more determined than any of the rest of them were.”

            “You think that separates you from the rest of them? Your determination?”

            Draco knew what Potter wanted him to say. He didn’t say it. He met his eyes instead, and smiled.

            Potter closed his eyes. This time, the silence held, to the point that it didn’t feel like losing when Draco broke in.

            “You’ve already shown me the memories,” he said softly. “More than you showed Tobley, at least, if what I’ve heard is true.” He waited, but Potter didn’t nod or deny. “You’ve taken one lesson from me. Why not let me in the rest of the way?”

            “Because I don’t want to hurt, and I don’t want to hurt you.” Potter’s eyes opened. Draco had to look away.

            “You won’t,” he said. “I can take care of myself. Can you believe me, trust me, that much? I won’t lie to you and expect you to read my mind the way your other lovers did. I can take anything you throw at me.”

            Potter gave the shadow of a smile. “You’ve almost convinced me.”

            Draco shrugged. “I won’t let you out of this office until I do.”

            The silence flickered around them, as charged as lightning. Draco knew what Potter was on the brink of saying—that he could break out of the office any time he wanted, if only by shouting for help, and both of them knew it.

            But they both also knew he wouldn’t, and why.

            In the end, Draco knew, his determination to win out was greater than Potter’s determination to keep him away—especially since he wouldn’t use all the weapons at his disposal to do that, for fear of really hurting Draco.

            Finally, Potter looked up and nodded. “You make no sense, but okay,” he said. “This all in search of that acknowledgment you want so much?”

            “Yes,” Draco said slowly, remembering the fire in the young Potter’s eyes. “And something else, too.”

            Potter stared at him, but Draco kept his own counsel. In the end, Potter shook his head and said, “I’ll let you. But you won’t like it.”

            Draco ignored that. “Come here, then,” he said, beckoning. “I want to start the next lesson now.”

            Potter backed away. “Not in the Ministry.” He turned and waited expectantly at the door until Draco unlocked it. “I’ll come to your house.” He cocked his head over his shoulder. “Or do you want to come to mine?”

            Draco met his blank face with a smile. “I’ll come to yours. I think you’ll feel more comfortable there.”

            Potter closed his eyes, waited a beat, nodded once, and slipped out the door.

            Draco shut it gently behind him and flopped into his chair. He wondered, for a second, if it was possible that he had overstepped his bounds and he would regret this.

            But then he made a slashing motion with his hand in the air. So what? He had done things that he regretted before. Regret was survivable.

            I wonder if Potter knows that?

*

            BAFan: Thank you! Draco is up to the challenge and more, I think. As long as Harry doesn’t actually use physical or magical force against him, and Harry would only do that in self-defense or if Draco hurt one of his friends.

            delia cerrano: Draco certainly does think that the way Harry is spending his life is a waste, and he’s determined not to allow that.

            neogetz: Thanks! I don’t think I can promise that it will happen quickly, but it will happen eventually.

            SP777: Harry really enjoyed it. That’s more of a point than Draco realizes right now.

            CareLessLover: Glad you’re enjoying yourself!

            Leens: Does it help that I like writing it, too?
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Nothing Like the Sun