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Universal Chaos	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13263 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eight—Two Weeks and Two Harrys

            “Where are you going?”

            Draco didn’t like the tone that his own voice had taken on: jealous, sharp, searching, as though he suspected Potter of running off to his own universe that very moment. But he hadn’t expected to walk around a corner into the breakfast room and see Potter packing the trunk of clothes that the house-elves had altered to fit him.

            Potter glanced up at him with a small smile. “I’ll be taking a journey this afternoon, to confront the other Harry again,” he answered. “I just can’t leave him like that. He deserves some compassion. Or at least someone to kick him back into shape,” he muttered. Draco wasn’t sure that he had been meant to hear that last part.

            “Even if he hurt me?” Draco braced himself; he felt as if he were hurling himself over a high cliff with those words. He didn’t want to sound needy. He didn’t want to sound as if he might require someone else’s presence to climb out of his self-pity. But if he denied those things, Potter would assume they were true anyway. It was simpler to admit that he didn’t want Potter to help the version of himself Draco was most familiar with.

            Potter shut the lid of the trunk and leaned against the table, his eyes intent on Draco’s face. “I felt like that, too,” he said quietly. “When I first went to confront him three days ago, he insulted you, and I hit him.”

            Draco stared. He wanted to say something, but his lips were dry and his breath seemed to have deserted him. No one else had fought for him in so long that his mind had been wiped blank and he stood there staring, subject to emotions instead of words.

            “Yeah, I know,” Potter said, swiping his hand through his hair and ducking his head in what looked like embarrassment. He must have interpreted Draco’s stare in a different way. “It was stupid of me. So I’m going back to him, and I’ll try to persuade him to accept my help. If I can tell him that none of what he thinks about me is true—”

            “So you didn’t intend to steal me from him?” Draco broke in. He was dizzy with confidence now that he knew what Potter had done for his sake, and that gave him the courage to speak. “Not that he has a right to use that word, since he never had a claim to me in the first place, but you don’t want him to woo me?”

            Potter blinked and shifted his weight carefully from leg to leg like someone bracing for a duel. “That’s not…I told you that it was possible for me to fall in love with you, Draco. That doesn’t mean it’ll happen.”

            “I asked you a different question than that,” Draco pointed out. He gloried in the feelings flooding through his body. For the first time since his parents’ suicide, he felt like himself, the Draco Malfoy who had walked past other people with his nose in the air because he knew that he was better than they were. “Do you want him to court me? Are you trying to heal him because you think that I might accept him in the future? What would you do if I did?”

            Potter scowled at him. Draco wanted to laugh. The scowl didn’t frighten him. Really, it was good to see that Potter wasn’t a saint, even in a different universe than his own, and still had some human emotions. “I would stand back, of course,” he said. “Because your choice is your own, and no one should interfere with it. God knows enough people have tried to do that already.”

            Draco sighed. No, he’s not perfect, but his principles might end up making a martyr of him anyway. “All right. That’s what you would do. Now, what would you feel?”

            He waited. Potter scuffed a foot on the floor, and cleared his throat, and shook his hair into his eyes as if he thought that could somehow get him out of answering Draco. Draco waited with his arms folded and his eyebrows raised. Things would be much simpler if he would stop trying to run away from a simple question.

            “I don’t see that it would matter,” Potter said at last, helplessly. “How could it? I wouldn’t interfere with your choices. I wouldn’t push you to act or feel a different way because of how I felt.”

            “Yes, yes, we’ve established that you’re noble beyond anyone’s reasonable expectations.” Draco waved his hand to dismiss the words that he thought Potter was only blowing as smoke to protect himself. “Now, imagine that you didn’t have to exercise that nobility. Or perhaps you’re temporarily impaired. You’re drunk, say. What would you do if you followed your desires instead of your principles?”

            Potter closed his eyes, sighed, and stroked his forehead. Draco watched him without pity. He’d relentlessly pushed Draco to face his grief and step out of the house. Now, Draco was the one who wanted him to admit certain simple things. It didn’t need to be this traumatic for him. If he would only answer…

            “I would say that I don’t want him dating you,” Potter admitted in a soft voice. “Because—for so many reasons. Because of my own desires and because I don’t think he would be good for you.” Then he snapped his eyes open as though he had just confessed to wanting to have sex with dogs, and added hastily. “But that wouldn’t change the fact that it would still be your own choice. Always. I would never try to interfere if you were happy.”

            Draco smiled slightly. “Then go and visit the other Potter after you’ve eaten,” he said. “Though you never did explain why you were packing.”

            Potter gave him a cautious smile and sat down on the other side of the table. “Because I thought you might want me out of the house after I told you where I was going.”

            Draco shook his head, sighed, and said, “Sometimes you don’t understand me at all.” And then he turned to the house-elf who appeared beside the table with the first plate so that he might collect it and hand it across the table to Potter.

            Throughout breakfast, Potter surveyed him with a cautious expression. Draco kept his attention on his food and his smile present but enigmatic, and talked entirely of other things than Potter’s upcoming departure from the Manor.

            Intrigue him, said his mother’s voice in his head, giving him advice about flirting. That way, he will always be fascinated enough to come back.

            Not until after Potter had left, with many a glance over his shoulder at Draco, did Draco realize that he had heard his mother’s voice without pain for the first time since her death.

*

            Harry sighed and settled down on the conjured chair in front of the other Harry’s door again. He’d come here once for a day for four days now, and each time the wards—which had been adjusted so that Harry himself couldn’t get through them—remained strong and impervious, without a sign of flickering. Harry had tried knocking with his magic, knocking with his fist, and charming obscene messages to appear on the windows, where they should infuriate the other Harry into at least looking out. He’d called the other Harry’s name and explained things in a level, reasonable voice that he had no doubt his other self could overhear if he wanted to.

            Nothing had happened.

            You don’t want to try more annoying tactics, even though you know you could, because you don’t really want to convince him, his conscience accused him. You were willing to do anything to get Draco to come out of the Manor. Why aren’t you willing to do anything here?

            Harry sighed again. He wanted the other Harry to be a villain. He wanted to be justified in going away and ignoring him. He didn’t know how much time he had left with Draco; to spend hours talking to a door and walls that showed no signs of opening was a waste.

            That last thought was the one that made him most uncomfortable, because it didn’t augur well for his chances of escaping from this universe with his heart free.

            Worry more about Draco than about yourself, he thought. And the other Harry.

            A new idea came to him. Maybe acting like a Mind-Healer with Draco worked, because he hadn’t had the chance to associate with someone who would listen to him instead of despising his words or hearing only what they wanted to hear. But the other Harry had specifically refused the help of Mind-Healers. Harry should start with a confession of his own frailties and vulnerabilities, and see if that attracted any empathy from the other Harry.

            “Do you know how hard therapy was?” he asked the silent house. “I would have stopped going if someone had explained to me at the beginning how difficult it would be. And there were plenty of times when I wanted to give up. Luckily, I could stumble through each day individually instead and tell myself that it would get better tomorrow. Sometimes that was the truth.

            “I moved from Healer to Healer, because no single one of them could help me with all my problems. I had trouble with my temper, and inappropriate reactions to the grief of other people, and nightmares, and paranoia from all those years of Voldemort hunting me, and those suicidal feelings you told me that you had, too. I struggled with all of them, and sometimes one was the worst problem and sometimes another one was. When Healer Ellison first told me that I needed help for more things than just grief, I broke down in tears. I didn’t want to hear that. I wanted a simple solution and to end the therapy in a few months.

            “It was hard, being open all the time, trying to listen to what they told me instead of only plucking out certain relevant details and putting my own interpretation on them.” Harry couldn’t help glancing at the house when he said that, because he thought that, except for the temptation to hurt Draco because he could, was the other Harry’s major problem. “I still don’t manage it now, because I’m not perfect. But at least now I know I can listen and hear other people’s voices, that they don’t need to hear mine all the time. At least I don’t always get angry or start grieving when I hear about someone else’s anger or grief.”

            He paused. The door stayed shut.

            Harry rose to his feet. “I think I’ve done enough for today,” he told the house. “I hope that you consider what I’ve said.” He paused, wondering if he should stay after all, but as he had just told the other Harry, he wasn’t perfect and didn’t want to torment himself by giving up more time to someone who was so utterly unresponsive.

            He deserves help, but I deserve some things, too, Harry thought as he Apparated back to Malfoy Manor.

*

            Draco could not remember the last time he had been so happy.

            Potter—and Draco thought he might begin to start calling him “Harry” in his head soon, if not aloud—was with him every day, and those days flowed like water. Potter walked with him in the garden, and ate meals with him, and shared books, often asking Draco to explain some wizarding term in the books that he’d never heard of. He read history flat on his back, fairy tales lying on his stomach with his feet kicking behind him, and a pompous, absurd novel that he couldn’t finish for laughing with his head tilted to the side and his eyes screwed up dubiously.

            Gregory came over more than once, and Potter watched them play Quidditch. He didn’t volunteer to play himself at first, seeming to understand what the sight of him on a broom might do to the two people who had seen him rescue Draco from the Fiendfyre.

            Except that this wasn’t the Potter who had rescued Draco from the Fiendfyre—but Gregory didn’t know that. Draco had explained that Potter had redeemed himself, since trying to explain the alternative universes and two versions of Potter to anyone who hadn’t seen the evidence as he had held no appeal. Gregory had never known the details of how Potter made himself obnoxious to Draco, so he accepted the idea easily.

            Meanwhile, Draco watched Potter-Harry covertly and wished he had been the one who had rescued him from the Fiendfyre. It would have been pleasant to owe life-debts to someone like that, and if they were part of the same universe, then Draco need never fear losing him.

            Finally, he handed his own broom to Potter-Harry one day and said, “I know perfectly well that you love flying. Unless that’s a trait that the two of you happen not to share.”

            Potter gave him a reserved smile and shook his head. “I think our universes would have to be considerably more unalike to produce a Harry Potter who didn’t love to fly.”

            “Then why don’t you?” Draco pressed the broom forwards until Potter’s palm brushed the smooth wood. “I know that I haven’t misjudged that yearning expression on your face all the times you’ve watched Gregory and me.”

            “I thought it might remind you of unpleasant memories.” Potter’s hand clutched the smooth wood of the broom handle almost convulsively, and he swallowed. “Besides, you’re the professional Quidditch player. I didn’t want you to feel like I was challenging you.”

            “But you want to fly with me anyway,” Draco said, pitching his voice as low as he could get it without sounding ridiculous. Potter gave him a look out of glazed eyes and nodded.

            “Yeah. I—it wouldn’t mean much, going up in the air over your garden without you there.”

            Draco bowed, careful not to show how pleased he was, and then climbed onto the broom behind Potter, looping his arms together around his stomach. “The way we did last time,” he said, and then paused in confusion.

            “The way you and my other self did last time,” Potter said, without a trace of resentment. He kicked the broom high, and suddenly they were spinning through the air with a grace and speed that Draco had never known existed.

            Of course, he was a professional Quidditch player, and he had seen Potter play at Hogwarts, so his flight techniques weren’t a complete surprise. But Draco had never realized before that Harry’s body anticipated the broom’s movements, leaning smoothly this way and that a moment before it would have become necessary to correct their course, and spinning between heaven and earth as if they were all air. Draco was panting to catch his breath after five minutes aloft, not with fear but with exhilaration.

            Harry glanced over his shoulder at him with a soft smile, and then laughed aloud and shot them straight upwards. Draco pulled back a bit to slow the broom. It obeyed him, even as Harry tugged it impetuously upwards again and Draco had to struggle to balance it. They worked so well together as a team that it took Draco several minutes to realize that they were working together that way.

            The broom straightened out at the top of its flight, hovering as neatly as a hummingbird. Draco couldn’t remember the last time he had been this high; sheer height wasn’t helpful for practicing Quidditch maneuvers, since he would become too cold to dodge about and too far away from the other Seeker to see if he or she spotted the Snitch. But to gaze down at his garden and his house, it was the perfect distance. Draco leaned his head against Harry’s back, staring down at the mass of shining white and green.

            “We can see half of England from here,” Harry whispered, turning his head so that his hair rasped against Draco’s cheek. “We’re so high we might almost be able to see the future. I want you to be able to do that. You deserve to possess the future.”

            Draco had no answers that would make any sense, so he simply wound his arms more tightly about Harry’s waist in answer.

*

            “I have a bargain for you.”

            Harry, mentally braced for another day of useless waiting in front of the other Harry’s house, blinked and turned around. The other Harry had his head poking around his door, and his hand, gripping the side of it, was white-knuckled. Harry decided to stay where he was now and speak as politely as possible. Anything else would probably result in the door slamming and the wards going back up.

            “All right,” he said, although he was longing to ask what had changed. He had been coming here for a fortnight, and this was the other Harry’s first remotely positive response. “I’m listening.”

            The door opened fully. The other Harry stood on his threshold, watching Harry with eyes that tried for cold and distant and didn’t quite make it. He looked as if he’d spent long nights sitting awake and castigating himself for ancient mistakes. Harry had seen that same expression often enough in the mirror to recognize it.

            “I want to change my life,” the other Harry said. His voice was savage, the emotions fighting for expression just under the surface. Harry made sure that his hand was near his wand. He wanted to move quickly and get out of cursing range if that temper—his temper—exploded. “My current one isn’t doing me much good. But I still want Draco, and I still don’t want you to steal him from me.”

            “What’s the bargain?” Harry asked. “I assume that part of it is your getting help. What do I have to do?”

            “You go back to your universe immediately.” The other Harry’s voice was stark. He swayed for a moment, as though he would fall down, and then clutched again violently at the door. “You leave Draco to me. You leave me a chance to have him, honestly, as a lover and not as the prop that I wanted to make him into.”

            Harry closed his eyes and stood still with his head bowed. He had no idea what to say. He knew that he would have to return to his universe eventually, and he did want the other Harry to get help. Everyone deserved a chance to repair their souls. So the Mind-Healers had taught him, and so he believed.

            But if the price was to walk away and leave the other Harry to pursue Draco, who might or might not welcome the pursuit, and who was sure to ask why Harry had had to leave so abruptly…

            Harry shook his head. “I can’t accept that,” he told the other Harry. “I can’t be sure that you’ll keep your promise, and I can’t stop helping one person because that would benefit someone else.”

            “I’ll go into therapy today,” the other Harry snapped, his hands clenching into fists. “That should be enough to show you that I’ll keep my vow. As for Draco, you’re only refusing because you’re selfish and want him for yourself. You would walk away from him in an instant if you weren’t in love with him.”

            “I’m not in love with him,” Harry said evenly.

            “Liar.” The other Harry pushed a hand towards him, as if he would physically shove Harry off his feet despite the distance that separated them. “I know what love looks like on my face. I’ve seen it in the mirror.”

            Harry managed to laugh despite the choking sensation in his throat. “You only wanted to use him. If you’ve seen the same expression on my face, I’m sorry for Draco, but that only guarantees that I’m not in love with him.”

            The other Harry shrank into himself like a coiling serpent. “You don’t understand,” he said. “You wanted me to get help, and I’m offering to do that. And you had to know that you would return to your own universe in the end.”

            “Of course I did,” Harry said. “But I never planned to leave while Draco still needed me.”

            “Another excuse. He might never stop needing you.” The other Harry shuffled towards him off the step, moving as clumsily as an Inferius. Harry kept a close eye on his hands and tightened his own grip on his wand. The other Harry was staring at his face with wide, pathetic eyes, though, and didn’t seem inclined to curse him. “Besides, what if I need you to leave so that I can have a chance with the love of my life more than he needs you to stay?”

            Harry hesitated, torn.

            I hate this. I don’t know what to do. What if I’m being selfish and I don’t even know it?

            Then he found himself smiling, despite everything. If he didn’t know he was being selfish, then he might as well ignore the possibility. He couldn’t make a decision because of a lack of knowledge.

            “I still hold the principle I mentioned before,” he told the other Harry. “I won’t pit one person’s health against another’s. Draco would never understand or forgive me if I left now, and—”

            “That’s the part that really matters to you, isn’t it?” The other Harry curled his lip. “And here I thought you really did put his welfare first, before what he thought of you.”

            Harry raised his eyebrows. “I recognize you now,” he said calmly. “The Healers told me about people like you, people who try to distort the mental health of others by continually insinuating that they’re lying and can’t really trust themselves. Well, I’m not buying it. My actions are both selfish—because they make me happy—and selfless—because I want to help Draco. I won’t leave him. So there.”

            “I could banish you back to your own universe now!” The other Harry raised his wand then.

            “Expelliarmus.” Harry caught the other wand as it hurtled towards him. The other Harry gaped. Harry felt a deep pity. “You should have anticipated it,” he told this version of himself gently, “since we both used that maneuver to defeat Voldemort.”

            “You have to go back eventually,” the other Harry whispered through what sounded like numb lips. “You know that.”

            “I know that,” Harry agreed. “But I won’t go back until I know that I won’t tear open any wounds irretrievably by going. Another few weeks, and then I think Draco will be able to stand on his own. I’ll contact you then.”

            He turned his back, but paused and looked over his shoulder. “I do think you should get help,” he called over his shoulder. “Consider visiting the Mind-Healers. Or owl me when you feel ready to accept my help in a way that doesn’t depend on your hurting Draco. Trying to hurt him again and again isn’t a good argument for the idea that I should back off and let you woo him, you know.”

            He Apparated, filled with an overwhelming sense of relief. He had done everything that he legitimately could. The other Harry bargained and denied and attacked and threatened someone who was under Harry’s protection and still recovering from his own mental wounds. Harry didn’t owe him any more consideration than he had already given him.

            If the other Harry called him and explained the situation in a calm voice, then Harry would be ready to listen.

            Until then…

            Your suffering doesn’t give you an excuse to be a bastard. That’s the lesson I learned, and that’s the lesson he’ll have to learn, too. But I’m done with sitting outside his door in an attempt to teach it to him.

*

            Thrnbrooke: Thanks! Harry’s friends are getting very worried, and the Draco of Harry’s world is not in a similar situation because his parents are still alive and he is currently sulking in Malfoy Manor.

            polka dot: Goyle mostly doesn’t like Harry because he thinks that Harry should have tried to save Crabbe as well.

            And Harry isn’t committed to the thought that he isn’t gay so much as the idea that he doesn’t want to hurt Draco.

            MewMew2: SP777 wants me to tell you that the song “Getting to Know You” is from the musical The King and I. Thanks for reviewing.

            butterpie: Thanks! This is a huge step for Draco, because Goyle is the only living best friend he still has. When he was hostile, Draco felt that he really was alone in the world, since Crabbe and his parents were gone.

            SP777: Well, I wouldn’t discount help for the other Harry quite yet. Harry is trying to help. Now the ball is in the other Harry’s court. Harry feels that he’s shown all the compassion he can, and it’s up to the other Harry not to make a decision that will hurt other people in his own desire to get help.
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Universal Chaos