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Ingenium Est Fas	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7240 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Ingenium Est Fas
- 1
Title: IngeniumEst Fas

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Rating: PG-13

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Warnings: Character death (not Harry or Draco), language, some violence, preslash.

Summary: To say that Harry is bewildered to find himself attending the reading of Lucius Malfoy’s will is an understatement. Then an unknown curse is cast on him. To make matters worse, the organization of the Malfoy library, the only likely source of information on the curse, is rubbish. And then there’s the bit about being trapped in Malfoy Manor with a Malfoy…

Author’s Notes: Happy belated birthday, megyal! Somehow your prompt of a set of encyclopedias turned into this plotty, preslashy thing. I hope you had a good birthday (er, three weeks ago) and that this fic makes you happy!

IngeniumEst Fas

It was a strange feeling, to know without doubt that one was dying.

Lucius leaned his head against the wall, savoring the chill of Azkaban, now that the fever that inhabited his body had cursed him with such heat. He was staring out the small, barred window that some careless oversight had placed in his cell. He drank in the sight of the moon setting across the ocean, wrinkling the waves with a trail of silver light. When he blinked, small dancing spots swarmed in front of his eyes; he had no idea if they were actually specks of moonlight or simply signs of delirium.

But he had called for Greyson long ago, when he was in his right mind, and it was the solicitor’s soft step he heard behind him, as well as his throat being hesitantly cleared. Lucius hauled himself up with an elbow braced against the wall and turned around, pulling dignity around him like a clean garment—the only one he would have, here. He had carefully saved his breath today; having practiced yesterday, he knew exactly how much he could speak before the liquid bubbling in his lungs would make audible noise.

Greyson was staring at him with clear pain in his dark brown eyes. Lucius glared at him, and he tried hastily to smooth his face. He didn’t succeed, completely, but Lucius could ignore that. He was striving to believe in his own dignity, not his solicitor’s composure. One believed in the things that one wanted other people to believe—only for as long as they were useful, of course. And his dignity was taking more effort than usual, right now.

The bubbling in his lungs did not come out in his voice when Lucius said, “You have done as I asked.” Neither did he let the words become a question. He was pleased with both things.

Greyson nodded and pulled out a sheaf of parchment, which he held helplessly, the way Lucius imagined he would act around a baby. “I’ve done it,” he muttered. “But I wish you’d reconsider, Lucius. You know that—“

“I am confident that everyone involved will do the right thing,” said Lucius. “I wish to examine the will.”

In silence, Greyson handed the parchments over. Lucius took them, and hid his trembling fingers both by moving the top sheet over them and by turning his back so that he could walk to the window and read the words by moonlight.

He smiled when he saw the newly inked phrases on the paper. Only one thing had had to be changed, but that one thing had two parts. Leaving either one out would have ruined Lucius’s purpose.

“I can’t persuade you to reconsider,” Greyson said. He used the resigned tone that had concluded most of their battles over the years—battles Lucius always won. Lucius hid a smile and turned around again, shaking his head.

“You cannot,” he said. “But you have done as I asked, and that is the utmost anyone can do in these circumstances. You’ve pleased me, old friend.” There was no higher praise he could give, and from the way Greyson ducked his head, he understood that. Lucius handed the papers back, then folded his arms and leaned casually against the wall, as if he were doing it by choice and not to support himself against a sudden wave of dizziness in his head. “The reading of the will is to be held two days after my funeral.”

Greyson nodded; that was only confirmation of earlier instructions Lucius had given him, and not a new one. He hesitated, then cleared his throat again and hurried on. “Lucius—I spoke to Narcissa the other day. She has no idea you’re dying.”

Lucius raised an eyebrow. “Perceptive of you, Greyson.”

“Neither does Draco.” Greyson started to say something else, something immediate and probably angry, and then checked himself. Lucius smiled. Greyson was likely naming the Hogwarts Founders in his head, a trick Lucius had taught him for delaying outbursts that would do no one any good. “Lucius, what are you doing? Why haven’t you told them?”

“Because neither one of them deals well with grief,” Lucius said quietly. “It is better not to force them to confront it before my death as well as after. And because, in the immediate aftermath of my death and how it will change their lives, they will need the strength of hating me for a little while.”

“I’ve never known any man so cold,” said Greyson, but even that was a compliment.

“Nor will you again, I think,” Lucius said. “My breed is dying, in more ways than one.” He turned and looked up at the moon through the window. “Leave me, Greyson, or they’ll begin to wonder what’s taking us so long.” It had been only by continued bribery, using all the Galleons Narcissa had managed to smuggle in to him in the lining of her robes, that Lucius had managed to persuade the Aurors they should allow his solicitor to visit him.

Greyson nodded. Lucius knew he would have closed his eyes before he did it; the way he turned towards the door of the cell, his hand faltering out and grasping at the stones blindly for a moment, confirmed it.

His wife had spoken so often, during her visits, of what would happen when he was free and they were together again. Lucius had listened, but had not participated in the spinning of her fantasies. He was a little selfish. Though he would be dead and it could not matter to him, he wanted her to forgive him at some point, and that would be harder if she thought he had deliberately misled her than if he had simply lied by omission.

Greyson’s footsteps faded. Lucius coughed only then, his whole body shuddering as it bent. He opened his eyes and studied the liquid on the floor by the moonlight as he had studied the writing on the will. Yes, it was black, where last night it had shimmered sickly green, and that meant blood.

His end was coming, but it would not be from a Dementor’s Kiss—the Dementors had all abandoned Azkaban before the war and had not returned—or from the Dark Lord’s wand. That was enough of a triumph for Lucius.

He coughed again and again, more irritated about than fearful of the bubbling liquid in the back of his throat that made it impossible to catch a full breath. Then he sank slowly down the wall. He would not fall, even now.

He lifted his head and lodged it under an overhanging stone in a position that would not allow it to move easily. When they came in the morning, they would find him staring out the window, at something grander and higher than those who had imprisoned him. It was the moon now; it would be the sun then. His eyes could escape the prison if the rest of him could not.

Finding some satisfaction in imagining his death and the curses the Aurors would give when they found he had slipped away from his justified punishment, Lucius closed his eyes.

*

“I have to go where and do what?”

Ron backed cautiously away from Harry. Harry reckoned he did look rather alarming with his face so red and his arms waving about. But how was he supposed to react, after the letter Ron had just read aloud to him because Harry had a mouth full of porridge and hands sticky with his latest attempt to get a potion right?

“Don’t blame me, mate.” Ron held out the letter to him. Harry snatched it, not caring at all about the purple fingerprints that he left on the expensive creamy parchment, and stared at the words for himself.

Dear Mr. Potter:

I am writing on behalf of the late Lucius Malfoy, who requested your presence at the reading of his will. The reading is to be held in Malfoy Manor, at two-o’clock this afternoon, in accordance with his last instructions. If you cannot attend, please owl by ten with the name of the time at which convenience permits you to come and the reading will be postponed until then.

Sincerely,

Julius Greyson

Solicitor

Greyson, Wetworth, & Welkin.

“This is a joke,” Harry announced, flinging the letter into the middle of the table. “A childish one. Who thought I would be enough of an idiot to fall for that?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Ron muttered. “After your latest stunt…”

“Who chose the route through the obstacle course?” Harry said loudly. “Remember that when you accuse me of making us fall into the bath of Quick-Stick Mud.” Ron had the good grace to look embarrassed. Harry scowled at the letter again and shook his head. “Have you heard of this Greyson before?”

Ron snorted. “Once. When Malfoy was threatening to bring a lawsuit against Dad for brushing against him in the middle of Diagon Alley.”

Harry gave a shudder. He hadn’t wished Lucius Malfoy dead for years now, but all the same, he thought the world would be a better place now that he was out of it. If anything, Malfoy’s survival after the final battle was an anomaly; they could have spared him better than Fred, and Remus, and Tonks—

Effortlessly, Harry cut the thoughts off and shuffled them into the part of his brain that dealt with such things, usually by making him get drunk and maudlin or restless with nightmares. “Well,” he said, “it seems I have an engagement for this afternoon.”

“You’re actually going to go?” Ron stared at him and then took a step back, as if whatever madness Harry had was catching. “But it could be a trap. And even if it isn’t a joke, it could be a trap that Malfoy—the younger one, I mean—decided to set up.”

“I think he’s probably too busy grieving to try something like that,” Harry said. He was inclined to give Draco Malfoy a little more credit for humanity after the way he’d seen him hug his parents when reunited with them after the final battle, and the look he’d given Harry, long and steady, when Harry returned the hawthorn wand. “I’ll go, but if I’m not back in four hours, then come after me, all right?”

“With curses flying,” said Ron, eyes bright. He, like Harry, was impatient with the slow pace of their Auror training. Their instructors seemed to have decided that the best thing they could learn was how to file paperwork and question suspects; other than during their disastrous pass through the obstacle course, they hadn’t cast a spell in months.

Harry clapped Ron’s shoulder and ducked into his bedroom to find that pair of formal robes he’d bought when he thought he was going to be engaged to Ginny. Unlike Ron's, his room was actually fairly organized; he’d never lost the habit of living as though only a small portion of space were his. The dark green robes were crumpled on the bottom of the wardrobe, though, and Harry tried to straighten them several times, muttering imprecations.

His first instinct in such a situation, he realized after a long moment of staring glumly at the robes, was still to call for Dobby.

Harry shut his eyes and swallowed. Generally the pain of all the deaths blended together into one overwhelming pressure, but when he thought of them individually, he had discovered that each was really different. The pain of Dobby’s death was tied up with memories of all the selfless things the house-elf had done, and the guilt came from Harry’s knowledge that he hadn’t properly appreciated those things when Dobby was alive.

He allowed himself to wallow for exactly two minutes. It wasn’t night-time, and Ron had taken to keeping Firewhiskey out of the flat ever since that time he’d thrown up on Hermione. He opened his eyes and Summoned the book of common household charms Ginny had got him as a new bachelor’s gift. He would find the charm for straightening wrinkles out of robes in time if it killed him.

*

“Darling,” said Narcissa to the door of Draco’s bedroom, her voice muffled by the charms Draco had cast the moment he’d locked himself inside, “it’s only for the reading. He’ll have no reason to stay. And I’m sure he won’t taunt you. Not even Potter could have that little sense of the solemnity of the occasion.” Her voice sounded doubtful, however.

Draco cast another Throwing Jinx. The crystal vase that sat on the table beside his bed—a birthday gift from one of his father’s distant relatives—hurled itself through the air and crashed against the far wall. Its splinters, and a fine shower of dust, joined the remains of the other things he’d already thrown. The house-elves would find his room a graveyard for “treasures” he had never liked, Draco thought spitefully.

“Draco, that had better not have been Aunt Aminta’s vase.” Narcissa’s voice had taken on an edge.

“If I wasn’t destroying the things in my room, it would be the house!” Draco screamed back at her.

He could almost hear her raising one well-bred eyebrow at the door. He didn’t care. At least whilst she was doing that, she wasn’t saying anything. He pressed his hands against his face and breathed deeply, unevenly. He hated the sound of his own breath at the moment, and the pain it caused in his chest.

Did Father feel that pain before he died?

Draco opened his eyes and cast a curse that imitated the effects of a thousand busy termites. The delicate table beside his bed crumbled. The pain in his chest didn’t vanish, however, but tied itself into a harder knot.

He could destroy everything he wanted to. He could make all the demands of his mother he liked—and in the mood she was experiencing at the moment, she would probably do what she could to gratify them. But none of it would make his father come back. None of it would tell him why Lucius had chosen to keep the illness he was dying of a secret.

Did he not care enough to survive for us? Had he already decided that death was better than life because he would never have what he had before the war?

The thought tied the knot harder and harder. Draco slid down the wall, gasping for breath. He put a hand over his laboring heart and closed his eyes. His mother thought he was objecting most of all to the fact that Potter apparently needed to come for the reading of the will. Let her think that. She had her own pain, yes, but it was different from Draco’s. She could stand on her own, away from Lucius, if she needed to.

Draco had thought it would be years before he would need to.

*

Harry eyed the gates of Malfoy Manor with loathing and wished he’d left himself enough time before the reading of the will that he could dawdle on his way to the front doors. But he hadn’t, and so he strode briskly up the gravel path, wincing as the white peacocks strutting along the sides of the path assaulted his ears with their harsh screeching. The grass and flowers he passed were immaculate—the work of house-elves, no doubt. For the first time, Harry thought he could see Hermione’s point about house-elves. They shouldn’t be employed to create perfection like this for a family of gits, thus ensuring that said gits need never do a moment’s work.

Dobby had been kept here and used like this.

Harry threw a cloak over the memory and knocked on the door with the brass knocker provided. It was a serpent’s head, or perhaps a dragon’s, holding a wand-like lever in its mouth. Of course it was.

The elf who opened the door appeared just as ill-treated and cowering as Dobby had eight years ago. Harry gritted his teeth to keep from saying something ill-advised and furious, and hoped he wouldn’t be required to say anything. As the elf simply invited him to the dining room, however, and Harry could follow it through any amount of gleaming corridors, past flashing mirrors and polished floors and walls and ceilings, all was well.

He gave the dining room a cursory look as he stepped into it, more interested in the people gathered there than yet another ostentatious display of Malfoy wealth. The walls were a deep blue, nearly the color of an evening sky. The table in the center was a polished cherry monstrosity with carved legs and low chairs around it that Ginny would have hated; she was always shifting restlessly when they ate, banging her knees on the bottom of the table.

Or perhaps she only did that because she was eating with you that year.

That memory went away, too, when Harry commanded it to. He saw Narcissa Malfoy sitting along the right side of the table, her hands clasped in front of her and her spine very straight. Beside her sat a witch with graying hair Harry didn’t recognize, and beside her an old wizard in mauve robes who he couldn’t believe Lucius Malfoy would admit to knowing. Facing them was a single empty chair, presumably for Harry himself. At the foot of the table, nearest Harry, was an anxious-looking wizard in black robes and with a ream of parchments in his hands who was presumably Greyson, the solicitor. He scuttled forwards to shake Harry’s hand, babbling welcomes Harry didn’t bother to pay attention to.

His eyes were locked on the man at the head of the table, who had looked up and sat staring at him now, his gaze so hard Harry thought he could feel it boring holes in his skull.

Draco Malfoy looked far different from the man Harry had met when he came to return his wand to him, more than two years ago now. He’d grown at least three inches since then; his features had become sharper and thinner, but also paler, which made them look chiseled instead of a pointy accident of nature. His hair hung to his shoulders and had paled, too, so he actually looked like an albino instead of merely blond.

But the expression of dislike on his face hadn’t changed at all. Harry felt a peculiar warmth creep up the middle of his chest. At least he would have one anchor to cling to in the middle of this strange adventure, beyond the memories of how much Dobby, and Hermione, had been tortured here.

“—just have a seat in that chair there,” Greyson finished, and Harry flashed him the smile he had practiced for dealing with the press, Ministry officials, and young witches who wanted to marry him. Greyson seemed suitably impressed. Harry stepped around him and sat in the chair.

“Malfoy,” he whispered, because Greyson was busy rattling papers and clearing his throat in an impressive manner, and Harry doubted he would listen. “Do you have any idea why I’m here?”

“Not in the slightest, Potter.” Malfoy spoke whilst barely parting his lips, all his attention apparently on Greyson. “I thought you had done Father some unknown favor in the last few days of his life, truth be told.” For just a moment, his eyes cut sideways, and Harry was both startled and shaken by the contempt in his gaze. “Eased his time in Azkaban, perhaps. He was sick, did you know? It would have been like you to try to purge the guilt for some sin you felt you’d done him, or to try and score points with the people who matter by pretending to care.”

Harry didn’t see any reason to hide his own furious scowl. Malfoy glared back, and then his eyes wavered and he averted them.

And suddenly Harry understood the contempt Malfoy carried for him better than he wanted to. He had been like that in the first few weeks after the war ended, when he attended funerals and always wanted everyone to leave him alone so he could grieve in peace.

He doesn’t want me here. I’m an intruder, and he probably thinks I’ve come to mock his love for his father.

Harry wished he could catch Malfoy’s eye and show that he understood and forgave him for his initial harsh reception of Harry, but Greyson started speaking then, and it would probably be for the best if Harry pretended to show some interest in the proceedings.

“The last will and testament of Lucius Malfoy. I swear on my wand and by my magic that I am of sound mind.”

After a single startled moment, Harry realized Greyson only sounded as if he were speaking like Malfoy because the will was written that way, and he was reading it aloud. He shifted in his seat, and he was certain that Malfoy—Draco’s—eyes darted to him in scornful amusement.

“My legal heir and the son of my body is Draco Malfoy. My wife is Narcissa Black Malfoy. My nearest living relatives are Dame Aminta Malfoy Cottington and Caracalla Malfoy-Penner. They are all present now to receive their legacies.”

Harry blinked. Not a word about him. Why had Lucius wanted him here, then? Just to make sure the Ministry couldn’t think he was leaving Dark artifacts to anyone? He should have chosen a better representative of the Ministry, Harry thought uncharitably. Despite their best efforts, Harry still refused to be anything more for them than a trainee Auror. He appeared at charity functions, but unpredictably, and had so far refused every invitation to a party the Ministry had tried to hold in his “honor.”

“To my son, Draco Malfoy, I leave three-fifths of the Malfoy fortune. Spend it well, Draco, and do not forget the lessons learned in the last four years of your life.”

Harry shot a swift glance at Draco, knowing his last four years would have been the same as Harry’s last four—from the time he was sixteen to the time he was twenty. Draco was staring at his hands, a muscle in his cheek jumping.

Greyson cleared his throat impressively. “To my son as well go my books, every magical artifact found in my study, all Malfoy family heirlooms that can only be passed to an heir of the blood, my house-elves, and the portraits of the Malfoy family.

“To my wife, Narcissa Black Malfoy, I leave one-fifth of the Malfoy fortune, all magical artifacts in the bedroom we shared, all jewelry that is not an heirloom of the Malfoy family, all the furniture of Malfoy Manor excepting two pieces only, and the small summer cottage in the Lake Country. May she not grieve more than she can help; she is still alive, and she will find more than she expects in the life that is to come before she joins me.”

Harry looked at Narcissa now. She sat very still, her eyes shut. Harry wondered if she was struggling against tears or outrage. No one had known Lucius was sick, the Prophet had said, and though Harry usually trusted the papers about as far as he would Pettigrew, he had to wonder if they were right. Was this as great a shock to her as it had been to Harry, as it seemed to be to her son? Would she have given up everything Lucius had left her in order to have her husband at her side once more?

Harry squirmed. He didn’t like attributing human emotions to people he’d been quite happy to ignore once the war was done, but on the other hand, he was here, in a room thick with sorrow, and this woman had saved his life in the Forbidden Forest.

“To my great-aunt, Dame Aminta Malfoy Cottington, I leave half of the remaining one-fifth of the Malfoy fortune, the furniture of the smallest bedroom on the upper floor of the Manor, and several phoenix eggs I collected when I was a young man. You will find them in the smallest Malfoy vault at Gringotts.”

The woman with gray hair nodded, looking satisfied. Looking at her, Harry had to picture her as someone who had come here not expecting very much. The wizard in mauve robes was leaning forwards, he saw now.

“To my cousin, Caracalla Malfoy-Penner, I leave the remaining half of the remaining one-fifth of the Malfoy fortune, my wand, and my Pensieve. This is also in the smallest vault at Gringotts. You have leave to do whatever you’d like with the memories in the Pensieve, Caracalla; you would, in any case.” For a moment, Harry thought he could hear Lucius Malfoy’s dry tones through the solicitor’s voice.

The wizard leaned back in his chair and chuckled. “Lucius knows I wanted to write a book about him,” he said in a loud whisper to Aminta, who looked disapproving. “The memories will be useful."

Harry looked around the table. It sounded as though all the artifacts Lucius had to dispose of had been disposed of. Draco had a violent frown between his brows, though, and Narcissa had looked up as though she were a deer scenting the wind. Wondering if he had missed something, and if so what it was, Harry turned back to face Greyson again.

It’ll be just my luck that I’ve inherited some dangerous Dark magic artifact they all wanted. Harry shuddered at the thought. Since the war, he’d had a greater sensitivity to Dark magic, to the point where being around some curses could make him sick to his stomach. He hoped he wouldn’t be required to touch whatever it was.

“To Harry Potter, who proved himself a hero beyond expectation,” Greyson said, and paused to clear his throat. “I leave Malfoy Manor and its grounds; he will stay within them until he can research the meaning of the following words. Ingeniumest fas!”

Too late, Harry saw the motion of Greyson’s wand, and then he felt the magic coil around him. It hummed loudly in his ears, as if the spell were examining the suitability of his body to host it, and died away a moment later.

The next moment, the room exploded in shouting. Harry put his hands over his eyes and resisted the urge to bang his head against the table.

*

Draco sat still, every muscle in his body tense, his throat so choked that he doubted he would have been able to force any words past the blockage—not Aunt Aminta’s outraged cries, not Cousin Caracalla’s bluster about the insult to an ancient and noble family that leaving the Manor to a half-blood implied, not his mother’s quiet pleas for order.

Instead, he stared at Potter, who at least had the sense not to look around the room with a smug grin on his face. He had his hand over his eyes and his head bowed as if he were praying, instead. Indeed, listening closely, Draco thought he could hear a steady litany of words falling from his lips, but they were curses if they were anything.

He waited for the moment when one of the eyes in the storm came and everyone was resting their voices in preparation for another row. Greyson was standing at the foot of the table still, his expression distressed but stubborn. He looked up when Draco rose to his feet and projected his voice.

“Is it possible that my father was not, after all, of sound mind when he authorized this change to the will?” he asked politely. He thought he had read Greyson’s mood correctly. The solicitor had also thought that Lucius’s leaving the Manor to Harry Potter was mad. He would seize on the chance to change the will if he could.

But Greyson had also been his father’s friend, and loyal to him. Draco thought he should have remembered that when he saw the solicitor’s slow, tragic shake of his head.

“I argued against the change to the will, which was the last one made, in Mr. Malfoy’s dying hours,” Greyson admitted, staring at his hands. “I questioned him as to his reasons. He would give me none. But he was quite specific on the wording. He said that both the bequest and the spell should be in the will—“

“What was that spell?”

Draco lifted an eyebrow in reluctant admiration as he turned to face Potter. He’d acquired the ability in the past year to make his voice sound threatening without raising it. Draco knew how to do that; so did his father, and so did Severus. But they were the only three wizards Draco had known who did. The Dark Lord had prepared to shout, and Dumbledore talked in a normal voice until you wanted to hex him simply to receive a change.

“Ingeniumest fas?” Greyson coughed. “He would not tell me the exact purpose of the spell, I’m afraid, Mr. Potter. I know the translation of the incantation, or as exact as a translation into English from Latin can be. Ingeniummeans constitution, character. Estmeans is, of course. And fasis a divine law or command, but also sometimes fate or destiny. ‘Character is destiny,’ I think we would say. Of course, you must remember that this spell was created by an English-speaking wizard in the beginning, so what he had in mind is more important than the exact translation from the Latin. A Roman wizard would no doubt have chosen different words to achieve the same effect.”

“And what is that bloody effect?” Potter’s voice was beginning to soar now, and a mottled red flush had broken out all over his face. Draco sighed, oddly relieved that Potter still resembled the hothead he’d known from their schooldays. Potter scowled at him, and Draco supposed he must have heard the sigh and thought it was the beginning of a laugh. Draco grinned widely to reinforce that impression. It wouldn’t do to disappoint Potter, after all.

“Ah,” said Greyson.

Potter slammed a palm down in the middle of the table, making it creak. Draco thought he saw a sparking line of fire curl about Potter’s fingers for a moment, and hoped irritably that the cretin remembered most of the furniture in the Manor had gone to Narcissa; he did not have the right to abuse it. “What does ‘ah’ mean?”

“It means that the spell’s nature is unfamiliar to me, though Lucius and my own scholarship provided me with the translation,” Greyson admitted. “That is the meaning behind Lucius’s bequest. The Malfoy library should contain knowledge of the spell. I believe it’s where Lucius discovered it in the first place. You are to search until you find knowledge of the spell and understand its workings. Only then will you be able to give up the Manor and its grounds to someone else, or—“ He paused.

“Or what?” Potter’s voice had dipped again. Draco considered him from the corner of one eye. He looked rather fetching with a muscle twitching convulsively near his upper lip.

“Or leave,” Greyson said. “I suggested a different wording for the bequest, but Lucius was most insistent. It seems as though you can leave from the way he ordered me to write it, but you, ah. Can’t. Not until you discover the meaning of the spell and understand it fully. The front doors are the furthest limit of your venturing.”

Potter stared at Greyson with absolutely no expression on his face.

Then, being Potter, he tried to Apparate out.

Draco rolled his eyes as he watched Potter vanish—only to appear a moment later seated firmly in the same chair, flashes of lightning still playing around him. His hair was singed and his glasses were clinging to his face by one earpiece alone. He took off the glasses and cleaned them absently on his robes, staring at them as if the didn’t understand why the lenses had cracked.

Under ordinary circumstances, of course, Potter would have been able to Apparate from the Manor if he wanted to. The wards that prevented Apparition were obedient to the will of the wizard or witch who owned the building—

(My father, Draco thought. My father, who is gone, and will never be here again. The hurt welled up again).

--And they would have transferred their loyalty to Potter when Lucius bequeathed him the Manor. But the spell was a powerful one, and Lucius had always meant what he said. Draco rolled his eyes again. Trust Potter to think he could defy the will, in more than one sense, of a wizard who used Dark magic in the middle of the Ministry.

Potter sat with his eyes shut for long moments. Then he stood up, and looked at Draco, and nodded. “Malfoy,” he said. “You’ll help me search for the meaning of this spell.”

“I?” Draco said, raising his eyebrows.

“Yes, you,” Potter snapped. “You know the library better than I do. You’ll be able to help me find it faster. And then I’ll give the Manor and the grounds to you, and leave. The arrangement should benefit everyone.”

“I never thought you one for brilliant plans, Potter,” Draco said, smiling in spite of himself. This was the first thing, other than throwing Malfoy heirlooms against the wall, that had interested him since Lucius died. “But everyone is owed one idea in their lifetimes.”

*

Harry did wonder if he should have tried a fireplace, or simply the front doors, as he and Malfoy made their way to the library. But when he paused along the way and laid his hand on one of the mantles, a spark of green energy shot out and stung his palm. He pulled it back, hissing. Simply glancing in the direction of the front doors produced a strong compulsion to stay away from them, and the smell of burning in his nostrils.

“Still so stubborn,” said Malfoy, but he didn’t glance at Harry when he said it, and Harry could pretend he hadn’t heard.

This was nearly the most bizarre situation he had ever been in, he thought, as he trailed around a set of free-standing pillars that seemed to exist merely to be ostentatious. The ones involving Voldemort had been more perilous, but he understood what his enemy was doing when he was in them. Here, Lucius Malfoy seemed to have left the Manor to an old enemy merely to annoy him.

There’s probably some more convoluted, Slytherin purpose to it, Harry thought as he ducked under a curving arched doorway. For some reason, although all the other doorways he had seen in the Manor had been large enough for a unicorn to walk through with uplifted horn, this one was barely house-elf sized. But I’m not going to waste time on trying to reason it out.

They reached the library at last, and Malfoy went in front of him to fling the door open. Harry thought about complaining that this was technically his house now and thus he should be the one making the dramatic gestures, but doing so would probably make him look like a prat. He really did try to avoid that lately. It was bad enough obsessing over the deaths of people he had loved without acting like a prat to the living.

And besides, this way any tantrum Malfoy threw about the predicament his father had placed them in would be entirely his fault.

The library, surprisingly, was a warm, golden room, with the furniture and the frames on the gilded mirrors alike worn to a comfortable faded brown. The walls were the color of melted butter, or sunlight on waves, and the sunshine coming in through the large windows seemed softened by it. Harry frowned. He had thought a cold, white room like the infirmary in Hogwarts or perhaps one done in icy blues would be more Lucius Malfoy’s style. Maybe his wife had decorated this room.

There was a certain amount of intimidation, of course. The shelves crowded the entire western wall, fitted into curved alcoves so as to accommodate more books. Harry could smell the dust and leather from the doorway. In front of the shelves were three desks, evenly spaced apart from each other. Harry wondered sourly if Lucius had chosen them for different days of the week or for threatening different people.

He cleared his throat, since Malfoy was standing quite still in front of him, staring into the room and probably overwhelmed by memories of his father, and didn’t seem inclined to help yet. “Where should we start looking?”

Malfoy turned to face him. He still had a pointy nose, whatever else had changed, and at the moment he was looking down it at Harry. “How have you managed to spend this amount of time with Granger and still not know the answer to that question?” he demanded. “We begin with books of general knowledge, of course. We don’t know whether that spell is a curse, a hex, a jinx, medical magic—“

“A curse, of course.”

“We don’t know that.”

“Your father wouldn’t waste time healing me.”

Malfoy stalked a step closer. He was trying to loom, but the effect was lost, given that they were exactly the same height. He did frown ferociously at Harry, though, and Harry frowned right back.

“You have no knowledge of what my father was capable of,” said Malfoy, his voice gone soft and cold. “And I say that this spell is unlikely to be a curse. He wouldn’t leave Malfoy Manor to someone he wanted to curse.”

“If he wanted vengeance, he would,” said Harry darkly. He did feel somewhat bad for arguing with Malfoy a week after his father’s death, but on the other hand, Malfoy could have been pleasant and simply told him where the books of general knowledge were. Obviously he needed this argument. He probably hadn’t got his daily dose of being a git with only his mother and the house-elves around. “Maybe the spell’s one that will melt me slowly into the walls and leave me alive forever, screaming, as part of the foundation stones.”

Malfoy gave him a blank stare for a moment, and then disconcerted Harry by smiling slightly. “You’ve quite the imagination, Potter.”

“That’s an idea I got from Muggle literature,” Harry said, louder than he meant to. He could be nice to Malfoy if he must, he could argue with him if he needed that, but he refused to live in a world where Malfoy spoke words to him that could be imagined as compliments.

As expected, Malfoy’s face darkened again and he turned away. “These are the volumes on general spells,” he said, and led Harry to the bookcase nearest the door. He ran his fingers over a set of dark-bound books on the second-lowest shelf. Harry’s heart sank when he realized how many books there were, looking exactly the same as far as weight and heft went, and how many thin, gold-edged pages each was crowded with. “The complete set of Resteasy’sSpellwork Encyclopedias.”

Harry relaxed at the last word. This might not be as hard as he’d thought. “Then we only need to look under I, don’t we?” he asked. “Since the first word of the spell was Ingenium? Or maybe it’s under the middle word, or the last?”

Malfoy tossed him a confused glance. “What? What do you mean about looking under I? If that’s some weak sexual innuendo, Potter—“

“No!” Harry said in exasperation. Good God, Malfoy could turn the most reasonable statement into an argument. Of course, maybe it was Harry’s fault because he’d forgotten to take into account how badly Malfoy failed at the simplest tasks. “Encyclopedias are ordered by letter, and so we find the I one—“

“In the Muggle world, they might be,” said Malfoy. He gave a little laugh. “Alphabetized? What a strange idea.”

Harry stared at Malfoy. He recalled Hermione’s statement about most wizards having very little logic, but he had never seen it proven true so dramatically. “So what are these encyclopedias ordered by?”

“Effects of the spell,” said Malfoy, and paused, his tone so thick that Harry could hear the imaginary “Of course, you imbecile,” hanging in the air.

“But we don’t know what the Igeniumest fas is,” said Harry, trying to keep his voice patient when it wanted to crack under the strain.

“No, we don’t,” said Malfoy reasonably. “Hence why we’ll have to read through every encyclopedia until we find the description of the spell.”

Harry felt his temper slowly overcoming his effort to stop it. Yes, he was trying, but Malfoy was too much. “That could take months,” he said. “Don’t you want your home back before then?” His voice was rising. “And Greyson described part of the effects of the spell, so we should be able to eliminate some books. And who uses ‘hence’ anymore, Malfoy, other than solicitors and Hermione? Tell me that.”

Malfoy stood there regarding him with exactly the expression that Harry thought a lizard he had tried to chase off a sun-warmed rock would choose. Cold-blooded, Harry thought, glaring back at him. Maybe I was wrong about him, and he isn’t feeling grief over his father after all. It would be just like him to feel bitter because he had to get up early for the reading of the will.

Even knowing that that wasn’t just, he didn’t think he cared. Maybe Hermione could be just, but Hermione was not cooped up in a manor for months with no one but a bunch of books and Malfoy relatives for company.

Finally, Malfoy spoke. His control only set Harry’s teeth on edge all the more. “I want my home back, yes. That makes it imperative that we solve this problem calmly, without resorting to hysterics. We’ll have to read the books, and we’ll have to take notes, and we’ll have to research in a way I suspect you never did, since you somehow got into Auror training with a substandard NEWT Potions score.” Harry opened his mouth to demand angrily how Malfoy had known that, but Malfoy was going on, gazing down meditatively at the encyclopedia he’d pulled from its place. “As for the spell and its effects, I don’t think we can trust Greyson’s translation. Sometimes the most obvious incantation for a spell isn’t the one that’s actually used. Consider Alohomorafor example, and the many simpler Latin words that it could have been. This spell and its description are even more vague.”

He looked up and arched an eyebrow. Harry realized he was breathing fast, his hands closed into fists at his sides as if he were about to step forwards and punch Malfoy in the face. A small, contemptuous smile curled around the corners of Malfoy’s mouth.

“At least you’re about to use physical violence on me instead of Dark curses of unknown strength and effects,” he said idly, and turned his back. “I suppose that’s an improvement.”

Harry closed his eyes and fought the red, whirling tension in his head. It hadn’t struck him this badly in some time. In Auror training, you had to learn how to hold your tongue against the temptation to blurt out questions about all the stupidity and traditional knowledge surrounding you, and he’d got quite good at not thinking about deaths or feeling his own grief during the day. What he did in the privacy of his own bed was no one’s business.

His mind flinched away from the subject of Ginny as if it had been burned, but that only brought his anger at Malfoy back full-force. Still, he suspected this wasn’t the time to indulge it. Two people reading the books would go faster than one.

He opened his eyes and just caught the encyclopedia Malfoy threw at him in time. He cradled it, cracked it open, and looked down at the first page, which contained something about Transfigurations and seemed to start in the middle of a sentence. Maybe the sentence was continued in the book that had come before this one in the set, Harry thought tiredly.

“You never did explain about ‘hence,’” he said to Malfoy, because he was going to burst if he didn’t say something.

“I wasn’t interested in commenting on the small size of your vocabulary,” Malfoy murmured. He was already deep into his study, frowning at the page he had open in front of him and shaking his head. He snapped his fingers, and a house-elf appeared, laid ink and parchment on the table next to him, and vanished again without a word.

Harry swallowed and turned to the book, suspecting he would be lost in a moment without Hermione. But, of course, he would have to grit his teeth and muddle through it, because he didn’t want her to come here and help him. She had her own job and her own research to keep up with, and one instance of “Mudblood” out of Malfoy’s mouth would have Harry smashing his teeth in.

“Pass me some of the ink and parchment,” he told Malfoy, not looking up. He would pretend that he already knew the meaning of ‘transmigration of souls’ if it killed him. When there was no response, he looked up and added, “Please.”

Malfoy snorted and glanced at him briefly. “You own the Manor now, Potter,” he said. “The house-elves were left to me, but they serve the man who owns the building as well, and they’ll be much happier now that they have an official master. Just snap your fingers and concentrate on what you want.”

Harry concentrated ferociously on the image of five quills—which were about as many as he tended to break in a few days of writing—a full inkwell, and ten sheets of parchment. They appeared on the table beside him, so fast he didn’t even see the house-elf go.

Harry chose a quill and a sheet, then dipped the quill in the ink. No, he wouldn’t ever be able to invite Hermione here.

*

Draco had long ago perfected the art of reading with half his brain and still understanding what the book was saying, thanks to his third year, when he had already known most of the spells his slower peers were studying before he came back to Hogwarts from the summer holidays. So he read and took notes and studied Potter out of the corner of his eye at the same time. The man—no, boy, because he still looked ridiculously young despite how much growing he might have accomplished in the last few years—chewed his lip as he stared at the book. He shifted and sighed when he didn’t need to, jouncing the encyclopedia and his parchment both. His grip on the quill was too tight, and his hair was a disgrace.

Draco tried, as he had been doing for the last hour, to dive into the morass of Lucius’s brain and pluck out the reason he might have chosen Potter as the new owner for the Manor. Nothing emerged, unless the prisoners were allowed to smuggle Firewhiskey into Azkaban.

If the spell had been different, had allowed Potter to leave the Manor and go to the newspapers, then Draco might have thought Lucius was arranging protection for Narcissa and Draco. The Wizengamot had given them back their wands, left them out of Azkaban, and not put them under house arrest, but that was very far from saying that the name of Malfoy was still approved in wizarding society. Draco hadn’t been inside another wizard’s house for two years. He only went to restaurants with menus transparent to spells that would test for the presence of saliva, poison, or interesting potions in the food. And there were certain shops where he had simply accepted that he wouldn’t be welcome. Recovering the Malfoy reputation, as Potter could probably do, seemed a worthwhile endeavor, one that Lucius might not have told his wife and son he planned on because they would argue that they could protect themselves.

But binding Potter inside the Manor? What would that accomplish? It made him more snappish and irritable than a curse allowing him to move about would have.

Draco shook his head and returned to the encyclopedia, which was now covering incomplete Vanishing spells and curses that mimicked Splinching. Potter was sucking on his quill, and the sound disgusted him, but Draco had managed to ignore worse.

Like, for a little while, the fact that his father was dead.

He breathed lightly through his mouth and nose until the grief retreated. The last thing he wanted was to weep in front of someone else. Even the breaking of Malfoy heirlooms had happened behind a shut door. There was no way he could show that much emotion without incurring judgment.

And Draco had spent enough of his life as the object of someone else’s curiosity and shame.

Potter finally made a frustrated sound next to him and slammed the encyclopedia shut. Draco glanced up at him, glad for the presence of a target that made it easier for him to focus on his anger. “I hope you marked your place, or you’ll have a long and wearisome trudge back to that page,” he drawled.

“I’m hungry,” Potter said sullenly, avoiding Draco’s gaze as he stood and stretched. “I want food.”

“You can ask the house-elves to bring it to you here,” Draco began, and then looked around the room and imagined what Potter would do with liquids of any kind around valuable books. He shook his head. “No, it might be better for you to eat in the dining room after all.”

Potter said nothing, though Draco had anticipated that he would immediately charge out the door and seek the food he so wanted. Instead, he pivoted to face Draco. Draco immediately, and casually, laid a hand on his wand, which clung in a hidden sheath to the side of his leg. Potter had an expression on his face that had never boded well when they were about to play Quidditch or cast hexes at one another.

“I don’t understand you,” Potter said.

Draco found himself laughing; what he had expected to hear out of the idiot’s mouth was so much worse. “Given what you are, and the size of your comprehension as well as your vocabulary, I don’t think I’m very worried, Potter,” he said.

The other man shook his head, staring intently at Draco the entire time. “No,” he said. “I mean I don’t understand you morally or intellectually or emotionally. You’re like something that crawled from under a rock.”

Draco winced in spite of himself. He hadn’t had so many people comforting or supporting him in the last two years that the insult could go without stinging. And, well, this was Potter. Draco hadn’t forgotten how intensely he had once longed for the approval of the Boy-Who-Lived, though he had hoped he had.

And now Lucius was gone. There was one less person in the world who had always believed that Draco was worth something.

None of that, of course, gave Potter an excuse for insulting him. He lifted his head and managed a credible sneer. “Of course you don’t understand,” he said. “You never had to make hard decisions.”

“Yes, I fucking did!” bellowed Potter, and took a step towards him. Oh, excellent. His cheeks had gone red, and his eyes were twitching so spasmodically Draco doubted he could see clearly enough to cast a spell. “When Dumbledore died—“

“You were chasing someone who had to kill him even though he loved him,” Draco snapped, pushing the encyclopedia out of the way as he rose to his feet. “And you were chasing me. I had to choose between murder and saving my parents. Would you have found that so easy?” He paused for a moment, then added, “Not that you’d know what having to sacrifice to save your family is like.”

Potter leaped across the table between them, and Draco realized he had forgotten that Potter liked to use his fists instead of his wand sometimes. He fell over with Potter on top of him, flailing frantically and slamming punches into his ribs. He grunted breathlessly, grateful that Potter’s fury seemed to make him want to strike everywhere at once, and grappled for Potter’s wrists, intent on holding him off.

Potter screamed into his face, loudly enough it actually stunned Draco for a moment, and then grabbed his neck and slammed his head into the floor. Draco cried out and then bent away, breathing, or trying to, whilst Potter’s fingers wormed harder and harder into the skin of his throat.

For just a moment, he felt as helpless as he had in that moment on the Tower when Dumbledore had offered him another choice, yet another decision to make after Draco had already spent a year making important choices that closed off all the other options.

Then he remembered he had legs, for God’s sake, and plunged a knee into Potter’s groin. Potter rolled away from him, making sounds somewhere between curses and sobs, and Draco felt a moment’s grim satisfaction over the fact that he’d hurt him.

Then Potter snarled and lunged back at him, and Draco barely had time to draw his arms up so he could protect his stomach and face. The punches seemed heavier now, and Potter was using his nails and teeth and elbows. Draco would have sworn himself if he had breath left in between his frustrated, frantic dodging.

What did they teach him in Auror training?

*

Harry didn’t know how he had descended into this sea of rage, but he had, and he didn’t think he could wake up from it any time soon. If he pulled back and let Malfoy go, he would start screaming, and he would go on until his throat split open and his body tore itself apart. Probably his sanity would go with it.

So he fought, and it helped that he knew the man he was fighting had harmed other people, had stood aside when he could have made decisions, had jumped too late and into the wrong side when he’d moved at last, had used the Imperius Curse, had almost killed Ron, had let Death Eaters into the school, had changed his mind too late and not in time to do anything—

His anger focused itself, a pure pulsepoint of rage so white and hot that Harry was breathless with the force of it.

And then it was gone.

Harry paused in between one strike and the next, with his fist raised above Malfoy’s chin, and blinked. Then he rolled away automatically before Malfoy could get a blow in, but that was Auror training and Death Eater-dodging instinct more than conscious decision. He raised himself on his elbows and listened to his own harsh, panting breaths with something like incredulity.

Malfoy started to crawl towards him. Harry held up a hand and shook his head. “No,” he whispered. “I—I’m sorry. I don’t know—what happened, but it’s gone now.”

The apology stopped Malfoy more than the tone of his voice had, Harry thought. He still angled himself away from Harry, and his voice crackled with disbelief and bitterness when he spoke, but he wasn’t using his wand. At the moment, Harry was prepared to accept that as a very big advantage. “That’s supposed to excuse what you did, is it?”

“No,” said Harry. “I don’t think just words can.” He sat up with his hands strongly gripping his knees, his head bowed almost to meet his knuckles whilst he tried to figure out what in the world had happened to him. Malfoy watched him with fingers wrapping and unwrapping nervously, his body coiled in a tense position that could launch him in any direction.

“It happened too quickly,” he said softly, more to himself than Malfoy. “I didn’t have any reason to be that angry. And I was hungry, and I wanted dinner, but—“ He tried to concentrate, to capture the moments when anger had welled up in him. “I think it was the spell,” he whispered.

“That’s stupid, Potter.” Malfoy’s voice was stripped free of the sophistication he’d used to mock Harry earlier. Harry concealed a smile. There was the arrogant boy he knew. “Why would my father put a spell on you that would cause you to attack me? He loved me. He never wanted me endangered.” His voice fell off to the end, and he turned his head away in a gesture that made Harry swallow awkwardly. The thoughts he’d had earlier, about Malfoy not having any ability to grieve for Lucius, suddenly seemed petty and self-serving.

“Because I doubt that’s the primary purpose of the spell.” Harry rubbed the back of his neck. “What if the interpretation Greyson hinted at, the simplest one, is also the right one? ‘Character is destiny.’ The spell is bringing my character out, or allowing me to express myself.”

“And your true self is a murderer,” said Malfoy, rising to his feet and righting the table Harry must have overturned in a wild leap he barely remembered. His emotional sensations were clearer than the physical ones, though now he could feel the shin he must have bruised and the rawness in his throat that told him he’d been screaming after all. “Well done, Potter. I’m sure Azkaban will be interested.”

“My true self is short-tempered,” Harry corrected him, grimacing as he remembered his disastrous fifth year and the time he had shouted “Voldemort” that had ended up bringing him, Ron, and Hermione to Malfoy Manor. “Not always, but—I’ve been trying to give up my anger lately, to play the good little Auror who gets along with everyone and can listen to lectures for hours on end without talking to his friends or making some sarcastic comment.”

“Sarcasm was an art I never knew you’d mastered,” Malfoy remarked, apparently to the wall.

Harry hissed out between clenched teeth, but the urge to express his anger was much less strong than the one he’d first experienced when talking to Malfoy about the encyclopedias. Even then he’d been trying to pick a fight. But it had felt completely like his own natural impulses.

Is this spell only recognizable when you think about it later? Wonderful.

“I think that’s it,” he said more firmly. “Doesn’t that mean I can leave the Manor? I realize what it does now, and it’s probably for the best that I’m not near you any longer, considering how much bad history we have.”

“You didn’t listen to the wording of the will,” Malfoy said, turning around and glaring at him. “You have to stay here until you research the answer, Potter, not simply divine it. And then there’s the fact that we don’t know why my father assigned Greyson to cast that spell on you at all.”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” Harry said. “Why should it? He’s—“

“He’s dead,” Malfoy said, far too quickly for the neutral tone of his voice to convince Harry, “and it matters.”

Harry held his eyes, and then slowly nodded. Maybe Malfoy was right, and it did matter. At the very least, Harry thought that Malfoy was not going to let him simply leave, even if he found the answer to his question in these damn encyclopedias tomorrow.

And with his conscience stinging him so badly over attacking Malfoy and disregarding his grief, he felt that it was only right to figure out what Lucius Malfoy had done and wanted, and put the man to rest that way.

*

Draco leaned against the wall with his arms folded, out of sight, and listened to Potter trying to firecall one of his friends and explain the situation to him. From the sound of the frequent pauses, it was Weasley, though Draco was back far enough not to be able to see the face in the fire or hear the other side of the conversation.

“Yes, I think—no, not really. Because it might not be a curse. I can’t leave the Manor anyway. Yes, I know it’s bloody ridiculous, but here I am! No, not a Malfoy conspiracy, he seems just as unhappy about it as I am. No, not Lucius, of course not, he’s dead. I meant Draco.”

Draco tried to remember if he had ever heard Potter speak his first name aloud. He couldn’t. It gave him a shock like cold water being splashed in his face. Could that be the way Potter would have addressed him if they had been friends in Hogwarts? Not Malfoy, with the sneer and the intent to murder in his eyes, but Draco, as a prelude to asking about a game of chess or discussing the girls he hoped to see in Hogsmeade that weekend?

Not that he would have got far, talking about girls with Draco. Draco was more likely to spend time discussing boys with the girls, the only ones he could be sure would respond with appreciation instead of disgust. Well, there was a chance that Theodore Nott might have been sympathetic, but Draco never had figured Theodore out for certain. Gregory thought it impossible that men would have sex with men or women would have sex with women in the way that he thought most things except the basic facts of life were impossible, Blaise had a skittishness towards any form of sex outside marriage, and Vincent…

Draco tensed his shoulders. He did not like to think about Vincent, not least because every dream he had of him involved Draco being burned to death.

And that was a fate Potter saved you from.

Draco stirred restlessly and slammed a fist into the doorframe. What did you have in mind, Father? I can’t see that Potter will think being bound in the Manor is a good enough excuse to protect Mother and me. As far as recovering the Malfoy name, his not being able to go out in public rather closes off that option. And if the reporters come here, would they bother to interview him sympathetically, or would it just be a case of something else the Malfoy family did to oppose the great Boy-Who-Lived? Potter’s fame had been tricky enough that Draco was vaguely surprised his father would have tried to use it at all.

That spell must do something else. And we’ll find it—provided Potter has the patience for research.

“No, Ron, really, Hermione couldn’t help.” A longer pause than before, and this time Potter’s voice grew sharp with irritation. “Of course not, she was tortured here, remember? I can barely stand the thought of living here for months myself, I think I’ll see Bellatrix Lestrange every time I walk around a corner.”

Draco came to startled attention. Did Potter really feel that way? Of course, Lucius could have put such considerations aside when he was choosing someone to inherit the Manor, but on the other hand, Draco could not believe his father would have missed the connection between the house and negative associations for Potter. He’d had too much time to dream up this plot in Azkaban.

Whilst he was dying.Maybe he wasn’t really sane, no matter what that will says.

Draco twisted restlessly, and then blinked when he realized Potter was standing in front of him. He must have ended the Floo call when Draco was busy trying to figure out, yet again, the twisted intricacies of Lucius Malfoy’s mind.

“You were listening to me,” Potter said, but his voice was mild and not really angry at all, compared to the way he’d yelled at Draco earlier.

“Yes, I was.” Draco decided that he might as well take charge of the conversation, so Potter wouldn’t have a chance to make it into another excuse for wrestling on the floor. “Why did you want to firecall Weasley?”

“Do you want him showing up at the gates of the Manor demanding to see me, or claiming you murdered me?” Potter raked his hand through his hair, which promptly made it stand up on edge like the quills of a maddened hedgehog. “The main problem will be my Auror training program. I don’t think they’ll let me delay some of the training exercises on account of inheriting a Manor.”

“Tell them about Ingeniumest fas,” Draco suggested. “Curses do happen.”

Potter raised an eyebrow at him. “You said it wasn’t a curse.”

“I said it might not be,” said Draco. “And if Greyson, who’s fairly well-educated in Latin, doesn’t recognize it, the chances are good your instructors won’t, either. The Ministry doesn’t hire Aurors for their intelligence.”

“No, they hire people going into magical law for that,” said Potter, with a fond smile that meant he was probably thinking of Granger.

Draco tried not to gape at him. This was the most civil conversation he’d ever had with Harry Potter, and his not taking umbrage with the insult to the Ministry was a wonder. It was that, and the hope that he might be able to figure out the spell from observing Potter’s behavior, that made him suggest, “It’ll be less work for the house-elves if we both dine at once.”

Potter looked up sharply. The small sitting room in which he’d used the hearth was a dim one, and its windows faced east; there was little light now, at sunset, to let Draco identify the way Potter’s eyes, suddenly hard and thoughtful, glittered at him.

“Yes,” Potter said at last, with a tone in his voice Draco didn’t understand, either. “To spare the house-elves. Of course.” He shook himself, and grinned slightly. “It’s what Hermione would advise.”

*

Dinner was awkward, but considering the many other things it could have been, Harry didn’t think he could complain.

So long as he kept his eyes strictly on his plate and glass, the memories that crowded around him and haunted Malfoy Manor were not too pressing. He could eat the delicious duck the house-elves had prepared, taste the complicated flavors of the sauce, and munch his way heroically through the vegetables that arrived after the duck whilst thinking of Bellatrix’s torture of Hermione only once or twice. He didn’t even have to look Malfoy in the eye, or do much more than smile weakly at him when they happened to glance up at the same time and were looking at each other by default.

Yet the dinner wasn’t very satisfying, either, as far as thoughts about Ingeniumest faswent and how he would break free of it. Indifference towards Malfoy was better than rage, less likely to hurt him, but would the spell let him maintain it? And indifference would help their research less than civility. Malfoy hated to be ignored. Perhaps he would find a trace of the solution and keep it to himself because he found Harry irritating.

Harry scowled at his plate, and picked through the last shreds of the vegetables. He would have liked to say that they were less cooked than the others, but the Malfoy house-elves were very nearly as talented as the ones at Hogwarts. He was picking through them because, when they were gone, he would have to face Malfoy again.

Why does it have to be up to me initiate the civil conversations? he whinged in his head.

Because he’d been the one who attacked him, and he’d been the one who intruded into Malfoy’s mourning for his father, even if he didn’t want to. And he was also the one who bore the curse, but maybe it would be mollified if Harry tried to be polite to Malfoy. Like Draco himself, Harry couldn’t really believe that Lucius had meant to hurt his son.

So Harry counted to three under his breath and shoved his plate away from him. Malfoy, who had been gazing past his shoulder at a certain fascinating spot on the wall, turned back to him at once, lifting an eyebrow.

“I wanted to say again that I’m sorry,” Harry began, picking his way delicately. He was rubbish at this. When he’d had arguments with his friends, dangerous circumstances ended them. But here there was much less active danger, unless he wanted to count the chance of being hit on the head by a falling book.

Malfoy only looked at him, his hands folded on the table in front of him. Harry self-consciously removed his elbows from the tablecloth and watched as his plate vanished before he tried to continue. The room was quiet enough that he could hear Malfoy’s breathing, and the shafts of late sunlight through the windows made his face look colder, which Harry was fairly certain was opposite the natural order of things.

“And since we do have to work together—“

Malfoy snorted. Harry controlled the immediate leap of his temper, and sighed. Why did he have to do this? Because Malfoy wouldn’t. And in the interests of getting out of the Manor as soon as possible, Harry would rather reach out now than sit around waiting smugly for Malfoy to make the first move. He valued freedom more than satisfaction.

And that is who I really am.

“Then let’s try not to insult each other,” Harry said, and waited to see if the words would make him, or Malfoy, spontaneously combust. They didn’t, so he went on, “We had a civil conversation right before dinner. If we can do that, keep to plans that will help me get out of the Manor and you inherit it again, we’ll be all right.”

“Gryffindor optimism,” Malfoy said.

“The pessimistic alternative is spending the rest of my life here,” Harry said, rising to his feet. “Yes, I want to be optimistic.” He hesitated, then walked around the table and held out his hand. “Truce until I get out of here? No insults, and we talk to each other about research. We don’t have to extend our conversation beyond that.”

Malfoy closed his eyes. He could be thinking of a lot of things, Harry thought—his father, his grief, the past wrongs Harry had done him, his desire to go to bed. Harry had no idea.

To his surprise, that irritated him, just as having no idea what Malfoy had been up to during sixth year had irritated him. Maybe he really didn’t like mysteries involving Malfoy.

A deep sigh returned Harry’s attention to the Malfoy in front of him instead of the one of his memories. Malfoy put out a hand and clasped his, shaking it limply and turning away as soon as possible. “Fine,” he said.

Don’t overwhelm me with your enthusiasm, Harry thought, but he wouldn’t be the one breaking this agreement. Concentrating on keeping his voice steady and pleasant, he said, “Which room should I take for the night?” Ron had passed him some pyjamas, robes for the next day, and other necessities through the Floo, arguing loudly against it all the while.

Malfoy shot him a sudden startled glance, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that Harry’s staying in the Manor for more than one day would necessitate his finding somewhere to sleep. Then he waved a hand. “You own the Manor now, Potter.Take my father’s bedroom.”

“I wouldn’t want to put your mother out—“

“She never slept there,” said Malfoy, with a chuckle in the back of his throat. “And she was never one to stay in a house she couldn’t be sure of a welcome in. She’ll already have gone to the house Father left her.” He shrugged. “When Father gave you the Manor, he really gave you complete dominion of it. You could turn me out of my bed, if you wanted.” He waited, eyes on Harry’s face.

“Of course you’re going to test me.” Harry rolled his eyes. “No, thanks.” He turned away and clapped his hands to call a house-elf to take him to the bedroom. He was yawning as though he’d spent a whole day dodging through the obstacle course. Research didn’t usually do that to him, even if he had had a tendency to fall asleep in the library at Hogwarts; he thought it was dealing with Malfoy.

The house-elf led him up sweeping stairs, down sweeping corridors, and through a series of connected rooms that made Harry wonder absently if no Malfoy had ever worried about making a quick escape from his house. Lucius Malfoy’s bedroom was enormous—it would have contained Harry and Ron’s flat twice over—and, of course, sweeping, with curved walls done in absolute, icy white. Oddly, Harry found himself relaxing more than he had when he saw the golden library. This was the kind of room he would have expected a man like Lucius to have.

The bed was large and had dark blue sheets done up with dancing, cavorting figures of magical creatures, with curtains of soft silky material probably worth more than Harry had earned in a year. He couldn’t have cared less at the moment. He collapsed into the middle of it and barely remembered to set his glasses aside before sleep consumed him.

*

Since his mother was no longer home, Draco didn’t have to confine himself behind a door to avoid talking. He could roam through the house at will, only using his wand when he passed through a crowded room and didn’t want to give himself the indignity of stumbling over furniture. Most of the time, his knowledge of the Manor and the moonlight through the windows was enough for him.

He stopped for a long time in the sitting room his father had favored when speaking to people from the Ministry or others who might be touchy about the Malfoy name and history. It had a single window only, a narrow one; Lucius had said often that he didn’t like the temptation to distraction a large view represented. Still, since the window looked east, it showed a good view at the moment of a wide lawn spotted with light from the rising moon. Draco leaned his elbow on the sill and stared at his father’s desk, holding tidy stacks of correspondence that he would never read. Draco made a motion towards them with one hand, then let it drop.

He resented the fact that Lucius hadn’t told them he was sick. He was baffled his father had left the Manor to Potter. He didn’t want to be placed, without choice, in a situation where he had to do endless research right after his father’s death. He wished the funeral would have held off longer. His grief stirred and muttered in his heart like a sea withdrawing from the shore at ebb-tide.

At the moment, though, he thought his primary emotion was shock. He still turned around, saw a dust mote out of place or an unshelved book, and wondered what Lucius would think. He still heard his mother’s voice lilt as she scolded a house-elf and imagined his father’s voice saying something soothing in response.

He had gone to Azkaban, but that had been a place, a location not that far from the Manor in physical space and time. Draco could imagine Lucius coming back from it. And now he was never going to come back, and each time Draco reminded himself of that, the announcement of the death bit him with sharp teeth all over again.

He stirred a hand restlessly through the stacks of paper on the desk, then turned to leave. If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well pick up the encyclopedias again and continue research on the spell his father had laid on Potter.

He paused when he came around the corner and realized the lamps in the library were lit. Had Potter left one on when he went to firecall his friends? But no, the house-elves would have entered to extinguish it. Draco held up his wand again and inched slowly closer, grateful for the lack of windows, rugs, and low stools in the corridor.

When he peered around the door, however, he exhaled hard in disappointment. Potter was sitting on the same chair he’d used before, staring determinedly at a book. Now and then he took notes; now and then he rubbed his eyes. But his jaw stuck out, and he never looked towards the door as if longing for his bed.

Draco watched Potter without moving or indicating his presence for long moments, resenting him for stealing the sanctuary that Draco had imagined he would find in the library. That Potter hadn’t known he was coming here didn’t matter. How many times had he done something in school not knowing that it was exactly the thing Draco wished he wouldn’t do? It didn’t matter to him. He only had time for his friends and the sycophants who praised him.

The resentment rose—and crested. Draco frowned and tightened his fingers around his wand, but this time he was trying to imagine what his father would have said about Draco clinging tightly to a schoolboy grudge given everything that had happened in the past few years, and the past few days.

Why did he care so much about what Potter had done to him, compared to his father’s death? Why wasn’t he thinking more about helping Narcissa through the aftermath of the grief they shared? Why, for that matter, had he spent the past few years pretending that nothing had changed and life was going to be exactly as he had always known it any moment, Hogwarts and all?

Because I was still waiting for Father to come back.

Draco closed his eyes and shivered. The shock was leaving him now, and his grief seeped through him, turning up revelations he had always known but preferred to ignore.

Lucius could make life all right again. He would take charge of the burdens Draco didn’t want—making his mother happy, facing the world that had no use for a Malfoy, the glares and hisses in public places, supervising the house-elves, answering letters from old friends, arranging for Draco to take the NEWTS. Draco had hidden in limbo because it was so much simpler, really, than admitting he had to do things Lucius had done without his father’s experience or the grace or the wisdom to back him up.

But he’d been lying to himself. Even if Lucius had lived, he would have stayed in Azkaban for thirteen more years. Draco couldn’t have hidden from his responsibilities forever.

Among the many, many reasons Lucius might have decided to leave the Manor to Potter and cast this spell was to force his son to wake up, and give him a chance to prove himself. Draco would have to do many things in the future worse than getting along with a person who had hurt him in the past. He would have to show that he had the sort of self-control and composure his family’s difficult position in the world right now demanded.

Draco lifted his head. Lucius wasn’t there to see him, but he liked to think his father would have been proud of him anyway as he walked into the library, picked up the encyclopedia he had left lying on his own chair, and took his seat with a nod to Potter.

Potter tensed the moment he saw him, and watched him with a mixture of suspicion and hope when Draco stepped past. Draco found himself exquisitely aware of the way Potter’s eyes tracked his movements and the way his hands shifted over and around the chair arms. The other wizard could be about to fire a curse at him, and Draco wasn’t entirely sure that he would know it. But perhaps he could get out of the way in time if he listened to the way his hands moved.

After some moments, though, Potter cleared his throat and said, “You couldn’t sleep, either.”

“I had to come to some decisions,” Draco said. He would be polite, but there was no reason to tell Potter all his deepest and most personal secrets. “And then I found myself here, and here you were, as well.” He looked up. “Was the bedroom comfortable enough?”

Potter’s narrowed eyes scanned his face, obviously looking for some sign of mockery, but Draco intended to make the question as neutral as he could. He had to show some kind of relation to and interest in Potter; he would have to make small talk with many more important people in the future. He kept the polite expression on his face, and at last Potter nodded and said, “Surprisingly comfortable, actually. But I’ve always had trouble sleeping.” He shrugged once and looked back at his book.

Draco hesitated, wondering what the best choice was. He could continue to probe, which Potter might take the wrong way, but which would give him good practice for those conversations when he might be even less inclined to show sympathy for someone else. Or he could keep silent and return to the book, which would at least show that he had the wits to do the research and keep the truce he and Potter had agreed on.

Perhaps it was because he’d already done the second today that made him risk the first. “Nightmares?”

Potter responded almost immediately; only someone as perceptive as Draco was trying to be at the moment would have noticed the instant’s hesitation before he did. He looked up and nodded. “Not surprising, is it?” His mouth curled in a smile Draco decided was cynical rather than bitter. “At least Voldemort isn’t still alive. He was my biggest source of them at the time.”

“You dreamed of him killing you?” Draco asked, fascinated in spite of himself. The Dark Lord had had an obsessive enough focus on Draco during those moments when he ordered him to torture other people. Draco couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have that maniacal attention bent on one all the time.

“Sometimes,” Potter said. “Sometimes I dreamed of him killing my friends.” His face hardened for a moment. “Sometimes of things that had already happened, like him killing my parents. But I dreamed—I dreamed of what he was doing at the moment, too.” He paused, long enough to make Draco’s skin break out in gooseflesh and his shoulders tighten defensively. “I saw him ordering you to torture people.” The words were quiet, and Draco knew he could ignore them if he wanted to.

He didn’t want to. He needed to show his father, and himself, and maybe even Potter, though he was likely to be the least appreciative audience for it, that he could be brave. He drew himself up and said, “You saw that I didn’t want to, I hope.”

“Well, that was obvious,” Potter said. “You looked scared to death.”

Draco bit his tongue to stifle the instinctive response to that, and nodded. “Being in his presence made me so…uncertain,” he said finally. “I never knew if he would be pleased or not, and sometimes whole meetings went by without his paying attention to me. And then he would focus on me, and it hurt. Not physically, but mentally. I always thought there had to be something I could do that would make him leave me alone and get me perfectly out of danger, even though I rationally knew there wasn’t.” By the end his voice had sunk, and Draco’s throat felt tight with something that was not tears.

“I know.” Potter made no move towards him, but his voice was low and fervent. “Believe me, I do know.”

Draco blinked at him, before nodding a little. Well, Potter would, wouldn’t he? And he was the best person to talk about it with. Most of Draco’s friends hadn’t spent as much time around the Dark Lord, most of the other Death Eaters had been loyal and as hungry for their Lord’s notice as they were afraid of it, and the time near him was one of those things Draco and his parents never talked about. Nor could he imagine talking about it, really. He didn’t want his father to know he was scared, and he didn’t want his mother to think he needed protecting.

“I believe you,” he said, and turned to look down at his book again. The conversation had already gone on long enough to make him uncomfortable. He stared fiercely at the words, and tried to make himself think only of abstract magical theory rendered concrete in the various spells the book described.

Potter said nothing for some time, but Draco started when a hand squeezed his shoulder. He hadn’t even heard Potter cross the distance between them. He twisted to look up, but Potter was already retreating.

He could probably blame that on Potter’s lack of eloquence in sensitive situations, Draco thought.

Or perhaps he could take it as it seemed to be intended, a gesture offered in silence so that he could respond as he wanted, without feeling cornered by words.

Draco stared thoughtfully at his book again.

Maybe Potter doesn’t understand sensitive situations, but there’s the possibility that he can understand me.

*

Harry removed his glasses and rubbed his face several times, knocking all the sleep out of his eyes—or at least he hoped so—before he put them back on. The words were starting to blur in front of him, but he was determined to have something substantial to report before he firecalled Ron and Hermione today.

It had been a week since the reading of Lucius’s will and Harry’s trapping in the Manor, and his friends were getting more and more worried. Hermione had given him a series of charms to cast that she hoped would break the spells holding Harry inside the Manor. None of them worked, whether cast on the fireplaces, the front doors, the wards, or the roof, which Harry had hoped to fly from after Ron sent a broomstick through the flames for him. Harry was always bounced back, smarting and singed, and with less inclination each time to test the boundaries again.

Ron had offered to come to the Manor and punch Malfoy out, on the theory that he was somehow keeping Harry there by staying awake; if he fell unconscious, then Harry would be free. Harry knew he shouldn’t have told Ron about their nightly meetings in the library. He’d refused Ron’s request, not only because he highly doubted Malfoy had anything to do with this but because he thought Ron’s presence would probably upset the fragile truce that endured between them.

Hermione had had Harry bring various encyclopedias to the hearth so she could cast a spell on them which should have revealed the presence of the Ingeniumest fas spell in each book at once, simply by tracing the pattern of letters. But the books were, of course, magically protected against such things. Malfoy had sounded baffled when Harry complained about that.

“Of course they’re defended against spells that could affect the ink,” he’d said. “Did you think my father would want them damaged if they fell into water or if someone decided to try and wipe clean every written document in the house?”

“This isn’t exactly water,” Harry had said, biting back his frustration. “It wouldn’t even do anything to the words, except locate them.”

“I don’t think the protective spells make a distinction,” Malfoy said, and then returned to his own reading and research. He’d gone through five of the encyclopedias now, whilst Harry had only succeeded in pushing himself through two because he’d spent much more time cursing the books, or trying to sleep without nightmares, or attempting to escape, or talking with Ron and Hermione in a futile attempt to come up with a solution that would actually work.

Finally, Harry had resigned himself to the fact that he would have to read through the books in Malfoy’s company, from cover to cover, and do so until he uncovered information about the spell.

He sneaked a sideways look at Malfoy, who was reading with one hand bracing the book open—he was near the end and the heavy pages would have a tendency to shut on their own otherwise—and his other hand constantly writing down words in a smooth, flowing script. He didn’t look tired. He never looked anything.

No, that’s not true, Harry thought. He didn’t want to correct himself about Malfoy, not really, but he couldn’t ignore the evidence of his own eyes. I saw the expression on his face when he talked about Voldemort that first night.

There hadn’t been a repeat of that, no returned squeezes on the shoulder or return confessions of secrets. Of course, Malfoy having the courage to speak to Harry about his fears even once was some kind of crossroads. Harry wasn’t sure that he could actually ask for more, or that he wanted to.

Oh, he wanted to know about Malfoy still, understand what he was feeling, in the same way he would if he were isolated for a long period of time with anyone he didn’t know very well. But he could live without knowing. Harry returned his eyes to his book.

When they strayed back to Malfoy, he knew it meant nothing. They would find the spell soon enough, and then any connection he and Malfoy might have been forging would be cut off in any case, no matter how much it had meant or was starting to mean.

*

Draco might not know everything about Potter, but he knew what that particular kind of restiveness meant by now, after a week and three days in Potter’s company. Potter was stirring in his chair, staring at his book for two seconds and then out the windows for ten seconds. As time passed, the moments when he was actually studying grew rarer and rarer.

The last thing we need is to spend extra time researching because of Potter’s lack of interest in books, Draco thought. He put his encyclopedia down reluctantly—he’d come to an interesting section on the process of reversing spells, including accounts of attempts to create an opposite to Cheering Charms—but reminded himself it would pay off in the long run. Draco wouldn’t be the one having to do all the work if he got Potter “outside” now.

“Come on, Potter,” he said. “There’s an interior garden that I should have introduced you to earlier.”

For a moment, Potter seemed to think that if he paid enough strict attention to the encyclopedia he was juggling, Draco would have to leave him alone. Then he lowered the book to his lap and glared. “I’ve seen all the gardens,” he said. “And I can’t leave the house to walk in them, either.” He flexed his hands hard enough to make a page tear; Draco winced. He should get Potter out of the library for the safety of the books, too. “When your father left the house and the grounds to me, I thought I’d at least have freedom to explore the lawns and the gardens.”

“He probably wanted to be sure you would spend some time in the library,” said Draco, biting his tongue against the temptation to remind Potter of how little time he’d spent in the Hogwarts library as opposed to on the Quidditch pitch. “But what really matters is the garden inside the walls. It’s not very big, but the light there imitates sunshine, and we have a small ceiling enchanted like the ceiling in the Great Hall at Hogwarts.”

“Why didn’t you say so before?” Potter tossed aside the book—Draco winced again—and surged to his feet as though someone had offered him the chance to destroy another Dark Lord. “I could have used that days ago.”

“I didn’t realize you’d want it,” Draco said, but his words went unheeded as Potter ran out of the library. Draco rolled his eyes and followed. Who was the one who knew where the garden was, anyway?

The garden’s door was in the eastern wing of the Manor, the better to have windows that could open to the sun. Draco unlocked the high door with a distinct sense of enjoyment; Potter was hissing behind him, shifting from foot to foot in impatience. Draco liked it when Potter paid attention to him.

Simply because you don’t have anyone else here with you to do it right now, he reminded himself. The house-elves don’t count.

The blank white door opened, and Potter burst past him and into the blaze of sunlight beyond. Draco heard his footsteps suddenly cease, and grimaced. Any moment now, Potter would make some complaint about how this was no substitute for being outside, no matter how beautiful it was.

Instead, he heard Potter laugh.

Draco stepped into the garden, blinking himself at the way the dazzle here contrasted with the relative dimness of the corridors they’d passed through. The enchanted ceiling shone boundless, brilliant blue, although the weather outside at the moment was rather gray and rainy. Despite what Draco had told Potter, the enchantment here was different from the one at Hogwarts; it didn’t reflect the weather so much as the moods of those who wanted to use the garden. “Rain” fell from magical clouds during the night or other periods when the Malfoys were unlikely to enter it.

Potter was spinning in place in the middle of a large expanse of blue tiles, which was formed by the small paths that started near the door and from several other places beside the garden’s walls. Around the tiles gathered thick, rich dirt filled with nutritive enchantments that had been a specialty of Draco’s great-grandfather. Lucius had admitted studying them to try and replicate them on the outside gardens, but he’d had no luck. In the dirt, neatly arranged by lines of wards that pruned them whenever they tried to grow outside certain boundaries, flourished flower after flower and tree after tree.

Draco’s grandfather Abraxas had chosen roses as the major flower to decorate this garden, but around them were the pansies his wife had favored, the deep purple irises Lucius had chosen when he wanted to make a contribution, and the blossoms Narcissa had added at different times, fickle as a bee in her admiration: hollyhocks, sunflowers, marigolds, petunias, gladiolus, and the narcissus of her own name. Small pools reflected the most beautiful ones, multiplying them in startling upside-down bursts of color. The smell was carefully curtailed by the wards as well, rendered far less overwhelming than it might have been.

The trees were taller and more slender than usual, as though set free from the constraints of gravity, and their branches brushed the sides of the walls just below the ceiling. Ashes, birches, beeches, oaks, pines, and a species of tree called a redwood that Lucius had imported from America stood carefully apart from each other, the hardier flowers gathered around them and cradled in their roots. Draco would have loved forests if they were all as light and airy as this; his first experience with the Forbidden Forest after his father’s garden had come as a shock.

And Potter was wandering away from him now, stooping to examine some of the blossoms with as much passion as though he’d always been interested in them. Draco trailed him, doing what he could to conceal his amused chuckles. Potter paused long enough by a cluster of drooping narcissus for Draco to catch up with him at last.

“I never would have taken you for a Herbologist,” Draco remarked.

“Sod off, Malfoy, this place is beautiful.” Potter tilted his head back and closed his eyes, bathing in the sunlight. Draco opened his mouth to remind him that it was only magic that produced the effect, that he wasn’t actually outside, and found himself shutting it again without speaking. Speaking those words would ruin the enjoyment on Potter’s face, and it was too pure for that.

“I can appreciate luxuries like this just as well as you can,” Potter said suddenly, scrambling up and turning in a circle, to stop standing in profile to Draco. Draco stared at him. His dark head was framed against the pale trunk of a birch, and his feet not far from heaps of roses. Draco had never seen him like this before. He wasn’t sure he had ever seen him calm, for that matter, or at least not so near, taking deep, quiet breaths, his eyes half closed as if in meditation. “I just wasn’t meant to own them.”

Then Potter burst into a run down a twisting blue path, and Draco found himself running after, but falling steadily behind. He hadn’t known Potter could sprint; it must have been the Auror training. He watched as Potter spiraled around unexpected clumps of flowers and leaped tree roots as if he knew exactly where he was going, and did his best to replicate the path. Potter splashed through a pool and suddenly flung himself down in the middle of a green glade that Draco thought his mother had constructed in order to observe the odd-colored pansies there. His rasping breath came to Draco’s ears as he worked his way steadily towards the glade and stood looking down at Potter.

“Why did you do that?” he asked.

“I wanted to,” said Potter, and closed his eyes.

Draco found himself without much to say to that. He sat down in the glade beside Potter and watched him, observing as the flush faded from his cheeks and his hair rustled back down his shoulders into something like order, until he thought an hour must have passed.

He resembled the Potter Draco had known in school in looks, but not in personality. That boy didn’t go running through gardens for fun. Of course, Draco didn’t know a lot about what Potter liked, other than beating him at Quidditch.

He put out a hand and trailed it through Potter’s hair for no reason before settling it on his shoulder. Potter rolled his head towards the gesture, but didn’t move. His legs kicked out lazily, as if chasing away an invisible animal.

“We should go back into the library,” Draco whispered. There was no reason to whisper, either, but he wanted to.

“Oh, all right,” said Potter, opening his eyes and wrinkling his nose, and Draco found himself smiling at the latter gesture without knowing he was about to.

*

“And how’s Malfoy been?”

Harry smiled slightly and leaned back in the chair he’d dragged in front of the fireplace for these conversations. After the second firecall with Ron, he’d got rather tired of kneeling on the floor, especially when he had an after-dinner glass of Firewhiskey. “Great, actually.”

Ron’s eyebrows drew together, and his head bobbed in the flames as though he were considering coming through into the Manor no matter how many times Harry had told him he didn’t need to. “That’s not a word I can imagine you using of Malfoy.”

“Not easily,” Harry conceded. “He’s not my best friend or anything. No one could ever replace you.” He reveled in Ron’s smile before he continued, “But he’s kept his distance when he could have mocked me instead, and he’s told me some basic information that makes using the library easier, and we actually discuss things that aren’t the books sometimes.” He didn’t want to reveal the substance of those conversations—about food, mostly, and the interior garden, and sometimes circling around acknowledgment of Draco’s grief over Lucius—for fear they would turn out to be nothing in the light of plain skepticism. If he played those conversations over only occasionally in his mind and in his bed, Lucius’s bed, before he went to sleep, they retained an air of significance that was much greater than it probably was in reality.

He could let the memories fade in a short while. It had been two weeks since the casting of the spell, and he and Draco had now gone through three-quarters of the encyclopedia. The spell couldn’t be hiding in very many more pages. And then Harry would be free, and chances were five hundred to one that he would ever see Draco again.

It doesn’t matter, he reassured himself, and blinked to chase away the sense of sadness plaguing him. There were plenty of people he would be happy to never see again. Did it really matter that Draco had become something like a friend?

Maybe it matters that you’re calling him “Draco.”

But it only made sense to be polite when you were stuck in a house with only one other person.

He exchanged only a few more words with Ron, mostly about the work he’d have to catch up on in the Auror training course when he got back, before an owl arrived on Ron’s end of the Floo connection and he had to leave. Harry sat watching the ordinary fire, sipping his Firewhiskey and trying to sort out his feelings.

His nightmares were diminishing. Malfoy had said something about how they were bound to, now that Harry was doing serious study for the first time in his life and exhausting his brain during the day, but Harry privately thought he was getting used to the house. His house, at least for the moment.

Harry shook his head and addressed Lucius Malfoy. “What did you think I would learn, exactly? Were you hoping I would become friends with Draco? Protect him? I could see wanting to do that, but you could have achieved the same results without leaving me the house. Or did you think I wouldn’t change unless I was trapped here? That could have backfired on you, you know. If I’d resented you too much to try and develop a friendship with Draco—“

“It’s always entertaining when you talk to yourself, Potter, but this is a rather long monologue for you to give a dead man,” a tight voice interrupted from the door.

Even before Harry put his glass of Firewhiskey on the carpet and turned around, he knew something was wrong. Draco’s voice was too tight, and he had a slight hiccough in the back of it that not all the Firewhiskey Harry knew he had drunk with dinner that night could account for.

Draco leaned against the doorway, his head bowed so that his face was in shadow rather than openly touched by the light of the fire. He had an entire half-empty bottle of Firewhiskey in his right hand which Harry eyed with concern. He was sure that that wasn’t the bottle they had opened to drink together.

You were drinking Firewhiskey at dinner with Draco Malfoy, Ron’s voice said in his head, with flat incredulity.

Harry shook his head and stood. For the moment, there was something in front of him that might mean something. Or—he hesitated; his thoughts always moved a little more slowly when he was drunk—maybe he could help Draco, Malfoy, with whatever hurt him.

“Did something happen to your mother?” he asked quietly. Knowing how protective Malfoy was of his family, it was the first thing Harry could think of that might make his voice sound like that.

“No.” Draco paused to drag air into his lungs. “I got a letter. From my father.”

Harry felt hope surge through his body, briefly making him feel as he had when he’d looked up in the Chamber of Secrets and realized Fawkes was flying towards him. Then he shook his head in confusion. He didn’t know why it would make him so glad to know that Lucius Malfoy wasn’t dead.

Well, of course. If he isn’t dead, he can take back the Manor, and you can go home.

“It was a joke?” he asked, taking a step forwards. Anger at the prank could have outweighed Draco’s happiness that his father was still alive. “He faked his death?”

“No,” Draco whispered. “He’s dead. He time-delayed it. Left it with a friend with instructions to post it to me when he’d been gone for a certain length of time.” His left hand swung into view suddenly, and Harry heard the sound of crackling parchment. “Read it.”

Carefully, Harry took the letter away, smoothed it out as best he might, and read it.

My dear son:

I trust that, by now, you will have begun to learn the reasons why I gave you almost everything except that which you most expected to have. It is a test of character. You have been less than you could have in the past few years. I feared that it would take a great shock to shake you loose of your denial of reality. My death will provide that shock, and a confrontation with the boy you have always considered your greatest rival should aid in it.

You are not sixteen anymore, Draco. The mistakes you made in that year will not define the rest of your life. But neither can I allow you to sustain the illusion that I will rescue you because you are young and I am your father.

The rest of your life will be lived without me. There will be suffering, which you have experienced and know how to live with. But there must also be moving forwards. I fear you have done little of that. The blame is partly mine, for spoiling you. But blame does not matter now, except for the slight and momentary satisfaction it may permit you. Instead, you must reach into mature emotions such as acceptance, no matter how hard it is, no matter how much you might wish to hide your head.

Live, my son. Accept my losses and your own. And do that which is harder than anything else for someone accustomed to following orders, as you were: do these things because you want to, of your own free will, not because I command it.

Your loving father,

Lucius Malfoy.

Harry’s eyes prickled suspiciously by the time he handed the letter back to Draco. He took a few moments to catch his breath. He wouldn’t have wanted his father to write a letter like that to him, he thought absently, even though he would have given almost anything to have a letter from either of his parents. Lucius had absolutely loved his son, but his cruelty was as great as his love, and Harry could not decide whether he envied or pitied Draco more.

Draco crumpled the letter further, and further, until Harry was sure it was the size of a dust mote. Then he began to breathe in a way that caused Harry to look at him in concern. When he looked up, though, his eyes were dry, if feverishly bright.

“I’m going to go up on the roof and break things,” he said, voice curiously conversational. “Come with me?”

*

The sky was full of scudding clouds, running as if they feared the faint light of the waning moon. Draco sniffed, and decided that the smell of the air meant there would be a storm shortly. He wondered if the lightning would be as violent as his mood, and then decided that he didn’t care.

He hardly cared about anything. His emotions were broken and shattered in him, and feeling anything was like walking across shards of glass. He laughed and threw up a hand. Then he aimed his wand at the first row of delicate glass jars he’d conjured out of thin air when Harry had refused to let him bring anything out of the Manor proper. Draco had argued that he owned most of the objects in the Manor and he could damn well break them if he pleased, but Harry had insisted he would regret it in the morning.

Harry stood some distance behind him now, wrapped in a cloak as if the early summer evening were cold, his eyes a heavy pressure on Draco’s back. He had mentioned something about being sensitive to Dark magic, not that Draco intended to let that stop him.

Draco laughed again, and cast a curse his father had taught him when he was fifteen. The air around the glass jars glowed red, and then they broke apart in a sparkling mist that disintegrated further and further as it traveled away from its origin, with a horrendous screeching noise like a dying rabbit’s.

“What the fuck was that?” Harry shouted. Draco glanced back at him again and saw that he had his hands over his ears.

“A custom-made Banishing Spell,” Draco said cheerfully. He could feel the Firewhiskey and his dangerous glee sloshing around his head with grief just underneath, but he didn’t have to acknowledge the grief if he didn’t want to. “My father invented it and then threw it away because he decided it was too dangerous to use in case the Ministry decided it was Dark Arts.” He tilted his head back again to stare at the clouds. “Just like he made me and then threw me away.”

Harry came up beside him, but said nothing. Draco did feel the brief touch of a hand on his back, but he didn’t have to acknowledge that, either. He continued to stare straight ahead, and then Transfigured one of the roof tiles into a rat.

Harry drew a quick, sharp breath. Draco glanced sideways at him and saw him shaking his head slightly, his hair rustling against the cloak. “Don’t,” he whispered. “Please.”

“Squeamish,” Draco sniped, but he Transfigured the rat into a wooden one and then took careful aim. This time, he used a Dark Arts curse he’d learned on his own, during those terrifying days when he still thought he had a chance of killing Dumbledore. A shrieking yellow light flew at the wooden rat, snatched it up, and then began to rend it, rolling through its body like a five-pointed guillotine.

Draco glanced at Harry again. He was standing quietly, his eyes fixed on the flying scraps of wood. From what Draco could see, there was no expression on his face, even though he had turned green.

Did Father look like that when he died? Did he hope I would look like that when I read his letter?

Dangerous billows of emotion once again closed over his head, and he held his wand high in the air and concentrated on his anger, pouring life into it, shaping the force lovingly, crafting it, and holding it back until the moment when it trembled with the need for release. Then he let it go.

The air above them burst open with a roar that knocked Harry to the roof. Draco kept his feet only because he’d been expecting it. He put a foot on Harry’s arm to brace him and keep him from sliding to the ground, but his eyes were on the storm he’d just created.

The rent in the air was growing wider and wider. Briefly, Draco glimpsed writhing red tentacles behind it, and then gleaming yellow eyes, and then a blue blob that might have been a head. A shapeless thing lunged out of the rent at him, gathering form as it traveled, so that by the time it had descended enough to brush the top of his head, it was definitely a hand.

Draco spoke another curse, his wand aimed negligently at one of the smaller fingers, and the hand whirred apart into carrion-smelling goo that dripped into Draco’s hair and eyes and ran along his skin, drying almost instantly to leave an itchy residue. Draco tilted his head back, accepting it, laughing and screaming so hard his throat hurt, tears crawling from his eyes to mix into the goo.

The rent in the sky had snapped shut, but it wasn’t enough. Draco lifted his wand to cast the spell again, this time to call up an opponent worthy of him, one he could feel better about destroying.

Harry stepped in front of him.

Draco stared at him, wondering when he had cast Lumos on his wand. The light was enough to make his face a mask of shadows, but there was no mistaking his pallor or his panting, and he stood braced as if he were about to cast the curse that had carved Draco’s chest into scars again. A horrible, painful, noisy joy filled Draco’s throat and ears, and he licked his lips, aiming his wand at Harry. Despite all the Dark magic he’d just seen him cast, Harry didn’t stir, only continued staring at him.

“Do you want to duel?” Draco said. He’d thought he was whispering, but his voice broke and popped, unexpectedly loud in his own ears. Perhaps the goo that had soaked down the sides of his head was affecting his hearing, he thought absently.

“No,” said Harry, without inflection. “I want to know that you can express your grief at your father freely, and then go back inside the Manor without damaging yourself or anyone else.”

Draco snorted. “That sounds like something Professor Snape might have said to me, the year that I was ruining my life and he was trying to keep me from ruining it.” Professor Snape was dead, too, he remembered idly. Everyone important to Draco died in the end. He shouldn’t see why he should be any different, and whether it mattered if he died now or later. “Or Madam Pomfrey, maybe. Which one are you?”

“Neither,” Harry said quietly. “Just someone who’s shared your house for the last two weeks and doesn’t want you to destroy yourself.”

“Your house,” Draco said, and his anger awakened again. He danced a little closer to Harry, feinting with the wand. Harry didn’t move or respond to any of his motions that could have been spellcasting attempts, for all he knew. “And that’s the problem, isn’t it? We wouldn’t have been here at all if my father had just done what he was supposed to do, and—“ He stopped, choking. His mind was too thick, hazy, swirling with emotions. He had no idea what he might have said next.

“Left the house to you?” Harry asked.

“Lived!” Draco shouted, and lunged wildly.

It was clear from the beginning of the fight that he wasn’t doing his best, and Harry could have defeated him easily. Draco’s magic was drained by the Dark Arts curses he’d used, and the man he most wanted to hurt wasn’t here or anywhere else. He cast hexes and jinxes and spells that would have made Harry’s lungs freeze in his chest and his eyes burst out of his head like grapes being forced from a winepress if they’d hit.

They didn’t hit.

Harry dodged just ahead of him, fast enough that Draco didn’t have to feel ashamed, but well enough that none of the spells came close to him. Then he whirled out of Draco’s sight. Draco halted, teetering a few feet from the edge of the roof. His feet slipped on the tiles, and he wondered for a moment if it had started to rain and he hadn’t noticed. Then he realized the slipping came only from the Firewhiskey and the dizziness and the vertigo and the pain.

Harry’s arms came around his waist, and Harry leaned his head against Draco’s shoulder, speaking firmly and calmly into his ear. “Drop your wand.”

Draco dropped his wand and stood still for a moment, eyes closed. He wondered if Potter would push him off the roof. He was holding him in such a fashion that Draco thought he could do it perfectly. And who would blame him? What friends did Draco have? Were any of the house-elves up here to witness the little accident?

Harry tightened his grip instead, and dragged Draco backwards. Then he turned him around. Draco wanted to keep his head down, the way he always did when he got a scolding, but Harry shoved his wand under Draco’s chin and muttered an incantation. Draco’s head jerked up and froze in position, and his eyes did the same. He couldn’t look away from Harry’s face no matter how much he tried.

“Listen to me,” Harry said. His voice sounded normal, at least, and perhaps the goo had finally melted out of Draco’s ears. “You’re grieving. That’s fine. But you don’t have to destroy everything in sight.” For a moment, a smile that Draco had seen before in the mirror crossed Harry’s lips. “I did that once. I don’t recommend it as a fulfilling experience.”

Draco shoved half-heartedly at his arms, but that didn’t change the fixing of his head and eyes, or the way that Harry’s voice went on, as compelling as hypnosis.

“You’re still alive. Your father is dead and won’t get to see what you did, true, and you can’t ask him why he did this. Or,” Harry added quietly, perhaps seeing the way Draco had started to open his mouth to interrupt, “you know why he did this and you don’t agree. Fine. Either way, spending your life in an argument with the dead is an activity I don’t recommend, either. Guilt, shame, fear, regret, longing—there’s so much you can do with them, but they’re better when they go towards the living.”

“Fuck you, Potter,” Draco said, and wished he could open his jaw wider so he could actually spit. “I have no one left.”

Harry’s eyes hardened. “You don’t care about your mother, then?”

Draco shut his mouth fast enough that his teeth caught his tongue.

Harry nodded, never looking away from him. Draco wondered if he had cast his own spell on himself to hold his head in place, but direct eye contact probably came naturally to him, hero that he was. “Like I was saying, Lucius is dead. You can’t resurrect him, you can’t ask him questions, you can’t change anything he did in the past. But you can try to master the consequences of what he left behind him, just like you can try to rise above what you did when you were young and stupid.” He paused as if considering. “Not that you’re not both those things, still.” His smile flashed before Draco could yell at him. “But so am I.

“So. You want to break things, fine. You want to cast spells, fine. You want to scream your pain out, fine.” Harry paused to breathe, though Draco hadn’t had the impression that speaking those words required all that much effort. “But eventually, you have to come down from the roof and live in the normal world again.”

“What made you think I wouldn’t?” Draco demanded.

“The way you were standing so close to the roof’s edge, for one thing,” said Harry. “The way you didn’t seem to care if you lived or died when that monster reached for you.”

“It’s called a flair for the dramatic, Potter.”

“But you could have died,” Harry insisted. “You might have died, if you had come up here alone.”

Draco rolled his eyes, or he tried, and found that the spell fixing them in place prevented that—a consequence Harry no doubt enjoyed. “You can’t really think this is the danger Lucius cast the spell to protect me from.”

“I have no idea what the fucker intended!” Harry screamed back, and Draco was glad to see the shine of frustration and temper in his eyes for a moment. It increased as he glared at Draco. “I don’t know how to talk you down and out of this. I don’t know how much danger you were really in. I don’t know why I like you so much when most of what we’ve done in the past two weeks is talk about dinner, or sit in the library and read books together. That wasn’t how I became friends with Hermione, for your information.”

“There was something about a troll, right,” Draco agreed. “And you saved her. Are you saving me now, Potter? Is that the way you make friends?” Part of him was distantly horrified at the way he continued to spout words he didn’t really believe, but he wouldn’t be himself if he had to shut up now. He would think up these words, and he would speak them to Potter. The terms of their truce had changed less than a day after he and Potter agreed on them, after all.

“I have no idea if I am,” said Harry, and Draco felt a bit of chagrin when he realized that Harry wasn’t just refusing to be baited, he seemed to feel no temptation to respond that way at all. “I just know that I like you and I don’t want to see you die, and I thought you might. And now I want you to come down from the roof and keep on living. If I can make sure you don’t do this again when I leave, then I will.”

Draco swallowed. He couldn’t close his eyes, either. He was shivering, and he thought it might just be muscle spasms from having his head fixed in one place for so long, but maybe it wasn’t.

He didn’t think anyone had liked him just because he was there. Never without the ties of blood, at least, which had ensured Lucius and Narcissa loved him.

He had barely thought of his mother in two weeks. And why not? She did often deal with her grief in private, but they hadn’t had such a shared pain before. A sudden flood of loneliness and the desire to know how she was doing filled him. He swallowed again.

“I like you,” Harry repeated, quietly. “I don’t want you to die, or do something stupid that results in your dying.” He hesitated, as if debating the wisdom of his course with himself, and then waved his wand and muttered, “Finite Incantatem.”

Draco lowered his head and massaged his throat for long moments. His hand was shaking. He knew what he wanted to do next, but he wasn’t sure Harry would welcome it, or that it was the best thing to do.

Then he decided that this was worth the risk, just as it had been worth it to speak about his terror of the Dark Lord, and he lunged forwards and seized Harry around the waist and shoulders, hauling him close. He made sure to hold him hard, so Harry couldn’t mistake this for some kind of girlish hug. And he kept his head bowed, so that if any tears did escape his eyes for some childish reason, Harry couldn’t see them.

Harry held him back in exactly the same way, squeezing his spine hard enough to hurt. Draco listened to their rasping breaths intermingling, whilst the smell of rain in the air increased and he grew slowly used to the smell of Harry’s sweat and the rough material of his cloak and hair against his face. The smell of his own sweat was covered by the blue liquid that still covered him.

God, thatwas a stupid spell to cast.

One thing was certain, at least: none of the breaking and cursing and flinging and screaming had calmed him as much as just standing here, clutching at someone else and not being pushed away, even being held in, welcomed, as if he were liked.

Or loved.

*

Harry sat up, staring. He didn’t think he could have moved if Voldemort had reappeared in front of him at that moment. His eyes were locked on the writing on the newly-opened page, and his voice was frozen.

Finally, he managed to clear his throat. But even that sound was softer and less impressive than it should have been, and Draco didn’t look up from the encyclopedia he was ferociously scowling at. That book covered spells that affected the mind, mood, and emotions, Harry knew. Draco had been sure that it would include Ingeniumest fas, but he was halfway through and the scowl on his face deepened as he scanned each line and found nothing.

Nor would he, Harry thought. He was the one who had located it instead, in an encyclopedia he had privately thought about rejecting, because it was filled with spells that affected prophecy, Divination, and destiny.

“I found it,” he whispered at last.

Draco glanced up. His hair was more ruffled than it usually was. Harry didn’t know if that meant he’d had an unusually restless night’s sleep—Harry had hoped that he would sleep better after last night—or simply forgotten his grooming spells. “Hmmm?”

“I found it,” Harry said, and had to clear his throat again, because the words didn’t seem to want to make it out of his mouth. “‘Ingeniumest fas, or the Character Expression Spell, is regularly translated to ‘Character is destiny.’ It…’”

Draco was on his feet in moments, striding across the distance between them. He seized the back of Harry’s chair and bent over the book. Harry adjusted the angle of the encyclopedia so that Draco could read with him, and together they silently devoured the words.

Ingenium est fas, or the Character Expression Spell, is regularly translated to ‘Character is destiny.’ It is meant to activate an individual’s soul and potential in cases where the individual is ignoring what he could be or refusing to accept the simple facts that most matter in his life. One regular use for it was to ease the pain of arranged or forced marriages, because the Character Expression Spell does not only affect the one it is cast on. It influences those he comes into close contact with as well, causing those other people to respond to his expression of himself with the expression of their own needs, desires, and characters. Considered a spell that works with destiny because it enables the individual to meet that destiny, it nevertheless has unpredictable results. The true self of the person it is cast on may not meet the caster’s expectations, and cannot be forced into any one direction.

Harry leaned back against his chair. “I told you,” he whispered. “I told you that my temper tantrum that first day was caused by the spell. I showed the anger that I’d been holding back because I wanted to get along with you and because it’s necessary to hold it back in Auror training. Once that was out of the way, then I was free to be a little more polite—to be your friend.” He twisted and looked up at Draco.

To his astonishment, Draco’s face was pale, and he shook his head several times. “I don’t see why my father cast that spell,” he said.

“Really?” Harry found himself grinning. It would be a rare occurrence, he thought, when he knew more about someone in Draco’s family than Draco himself. “Lucius wanted you to be yourself, Draco. But he probably knew that having Greyson cast the spell directly on you would have made you angry with him, made you feel like you were being forced or controlled even if you read the description of the spell. By doing it indirectly through me, he gave you someone to respond to and ensured that you could develop a little freer of his shadow.”

“But—“ Draco worked his jaw. “Let’s say that’s true,” he said suddenly, slapping his palms down on the back of Harry’s chair. “Let’s just say that it is. But that means our whole reaction to each other is a sham, right? It never would have happened if not for the spell.”

“Oh, what bollocks,” Harry said, standing up and letting the encyclopedia drop to the chair. It fell shut, and for a moment he wondered if he would be able to find the page that described the Ingeniumest fas spell again. Then his rising anger at Draco swept that worry away. He stalked forwards a few steps, whilst Draco watched him warily, and then controlled himself with a jerk. It was probably not the best plan to punch in Draco’s jaw, no matter how tempting.

“You might as well say that our friendship is a sham because it never would have come about if Lucius’s will hadn’t trapped me in the Manor,” he said impatiently. “That statement is true, but it’s not interesting. For that matter, we never would have known each other if I hadn’t come to Hogwarts, or you hadn’t. We might have been born in different years, and then we’d have been unlikely to be rivals, except maybe on the Quidditch pitch. Or you could have been Sorted into Hufflepuff—“

“Liar.” Draco’s face was flushing pink now, and Harry liked that. He liked a lot of things about Draco, except for the ridiculous way Draco jumped to conclusions. And maybe even that would have been endearing, if they weren’t such utterly stupid conclusions.

“And I could have been Sorted into Ravenclaw, and then we wouldn’t have had the intense House rivalry to magnify our rivalry.” Harry shook his head. “Tell me, do you lie awake at night worrying about all the different turns your life could have taken and regretting that it didn’t take them? That’s not a productive hobby. You don’t know that those half a million other Dracos are happier than you are, and I’m not going to let you diminish the fact that I’ve got used to you by saying it was all caused by a spell, woe are we.”

Draco stepped closer to him, eyes narrowed and cheeks pinker than ever. He had his fists half-raised, but his wand was still in his pocket. Harry braced his feet, not sure if he was expecting a blow to the face or the midriif.

Instead, what he got were words as hard as either one of them.

“I do that,” Draco whispered. “I do regret that I wasn’t born later, when the entire war was over. I regret that my father chose to be a Death Eater. I regret every single moment of my sixth year at Hogwarts, even the ones I was proud of at the time, like stepping on your nose. Because, yes, whatever those half a million other Dracos are doing, most of them have to be happier than me.”

Harry closed his eyes. He felt as if he couldn’t breathe.

“But,” Draco said, decisively enough to make Harry look again, “I can’t regret this. And I can’t think of it as some sort of plot.” He ran his hand over his face and laughed, but Harry wasn’t sure what to label the laughter as, or who he was laughing at. “My father didn’t plan this. He just cast the spell and hoped for the best. He didn’t know what would happen next. Maybe he knew me that well, but I refuse to think he knew you that well. He wasn’t a Weasley, or Granger, or me.” He swallowed on the last words, and Harry heard a click in his throat that told him how hard those words had been for Draco to say.

“And so,” Draco said, in the voice of someone edging out on a tightrope over a void with no net or Cushioning Charm beneath him, “that’s why I’d quite like it if you would—come back to the Manor some time, even though you’ve fulfilled the conditions and can leave.” He was staring at Harry, eyes wide open, as though to memorize his expression in case he refused.

Harry didn’t even have to think about his answer, the way he hadn’t had to think about trying to save Draco last night. He was himself, and that meant he responded to gestures of grandeur and courage like this in only one way.

He held out his hand and took Draco’s, and said, “I’d like that. A lot.”

*

Draco closed his eyes. He still didn’t think he was ready to cry in front of Harry. But the exhaustion from last night’s emotional storm and the letter he’d written his mother, carefully, explaining and apologizing and crossing out twenty lines for every one he sent on, were making it difficult. He always had trouble controlling his feelings when he was sleep-deprived.

He stepped closer to Harry, feeling up his arm to his shoulder. Harry stood still and let him feel, then tentatively embraced Draco, as if he thought Draco might change his mind after all and back frantically away.

I’d like that. A lot.

Five simple words, and Draco thought he would be hearing them in his head every night for the rest of his life. They could be a weapon to fight the regrets with.

He bowed his head and dimly noted that he liked being this close to Harry, close enough for Harry’s hair to brush his cheek. Closer than friends, maybe. Friends didn’t hug each other all the time, did they? Unless they were Weasleys. Which he wasn’t.

Harry turned his head and sighed, letting his own cheek rest on Draco’s hair, and Draco felt a sharp thrill course through him, starting from his belly and streaking up to his throat like a rising star.

There were other things he liked, or would like.

Maybe they were things he could have.

*

Harry looked around his bedroom, cursing softly. Two bloody weeks back at his and Ron’s flat and away from the Manor, and the damn place still didn’t feel like home. Harry had become accustomed to having a lot of space in Lucius’s bedroom, and when he’d come back to the flat, he’d expanded without thinking about it, creating the clutter he’d been free of before. Now he’d found his glasses but lost his wand.

“Accio Harry’s wand,” he said without much hope, considering he didn’t have it in order to perform the spell.

Maybe there had been a slight wriggle under that pile of robes and exam books, though. Harry jumped on it and began digging enthusiastically, trying not to think about how late he was for his latest Auror class, and how he’d woken up that morning missing Draco, and the way in which his brain and body had evidently decided he missed Draco.

A sharp bang sounded at the window. Harry whirled around guiltily, certain he’d somehow knocked his wand flying away, or that a Ministry owl was here to tell him off for his lack of punctuality.

Instead, a black owl with tips of white to its feathers hovered beyond the glass. Harry drew in a thick breath and barely managed to walk over to the window and open the pane with shaking fingers.

He told himself not to be so ridiculous, just because it was an owl he’d seen around Malfoy Manor several times. Maybe it was from Narcissa Malfoy, telling Harry that merely making out an official legal document passing possession of Malfoy Manor to Draco wasn’t enough, and she needed to see him for some long, cold session in Greyson’s office where he wouldn’t understand one word in three.

But the owl landed on his arm with a gentleness that Harry thought it wouldn’t have bothered using if Narcissa had sent him a message, and extended the letter to him with a soft ruffle of its wings. Harry opened it.

Potter:

Your last letter to me whinging about your Auror training and that dinner with the Weasleys simply proves to me that you need to get out more. I’m having dinner in a small restaurant in Diagon Alley tomorrow. Not one I usually frequent, but one I intend to get used to my presence.

If you’d like to join me, send a response with my owl. I’ll give you the details with my next letter, as you would surely forget them if you read them now, so long before the actual meeting.

Draco Malfoy.

Harry spent a moment tracing the signature with his finger before he realized what he was doing and snatched his hand away. God, he was acting like some kind of lovesick git. And it was just a meeting in a restaurant, hardly a date, and with a boy at that.

But it was something he would like to do, very much. And maybe Ingeniumest fas was pushing his courage to greater heights than he would normally achieve, influencing him to be more himself, because Harry wrote the letter accepting the invitation calmly, and resumed searching for his wand before the owl had dwindled to a distant dot in the sky.

*

Draco appeared in Diagon Alley not far from the door of the restaurant he’d told Harry he would meet him at, the Evergreen Phoenix, and sighed when he saw the large crowd of people in front of the door. No doubt the word had spread that Harry Potter had actually deigned to set foot in Diagon Alley, and that meant Draco would have to fight his way through Harry’s admirers.

Then some people turned to look at him, and Draco heard the hisses and saw some witches drawing their robes ostentatiously away.

Draco spent one more moment dreaming of his father suddenly appearing at his side and clearing a path for him with his gaze.

Then he lifted his chin and stepped forwards, using his own version of the Malfoy stride and the Malfoy glare. And maybe Ingeniumest fas was pushing his pride to greater heights than he normally would achieve, because the people around him glared and muttered and struck him in the ribs with their elbows where they could, but they also got out of the way.

Draco paused in the door of the restaurant. It was dim inside, especially with the contrast between the brief splashes of sunshine around heavy thunderclouds outside and the cave-like interior lit with flickering torches. But he located Harry immediately nonetheless. He had barricaded himself in a corner where few people could approach him, and there was a lingering smell of ash from the same direction that made Draco think he knew why the people who were near him kept a respectful distance.

Harry glared at them all, his face just daring them to try something. Then he turned, and met Draco’s eyes.

Draco held his breath. He had told himself he would risk coming here because Harry had answered his letter, and tailor his behavior to the response he saw in Harry’s eyes. But that, of course, depended on showing his own interest first.

Again he stepped out over the abyss; this time he let his face show his interest and his hope and the odd loneliness that had dogged him since Harry left the Manor openly, in a way his father never would have done.

Harry stared back at him. The longest moments of Draco’s life passed under that gaze, which he told himself was critical and appraising, because it was better to know the worst truths first than to lie. He did still resent Lucius for never letting Draco know of his sickness, and that he’d thought Draco so woefully unprepared for life without him.

And then Harry smiled and beckoned for Draco to join him.

Draco could have sworn he crossed the last steps to Harry’s table in full sunlight.

End.
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Ingenium Est Fas