Thank you again for all the reviews!
Part IX. Reconcilation.
For some reason, after a day of brilliant sex and then a night of brilliant sleep, Harry opened his eyes the next morning with the realization that he had never told Draco the full details of why he had begun this hunt for him in the first place.
He propped himself up on one elbow and stayed there for long moments, mopping at his face and hair. He always spent some time sweating when he slept so close to someone else. But now he took much longer than he needed to wiping at it, and then remained still, his eyes deliberately shut.
I never told him about Kingsley, or the dead Aurors, or the way that I was supposed to kill him if I couldn't bring him back alive—
Harry sighed and rolled over to look down on Draco sleeping. He dozed with his mouth open, his lips parted to the point that Harry could practically see down his throat. He shuddered a moment, his body stirring as he remembered one point yesterday when he had felt down Draco's throat.
But his thoughts stole the pleasure from the moment, and his cock sagged back into stillness. Harry shook his head and reached out to caress Draco's face, sliding his fingers around the other man's mouth and tracing the curves of his nostrils. Of course he had to tell him the truth; he couldn't live with himself if he tried to conceal it. And Draco would eventually grow curious and ask why Harry had tried hunting him now and not before.
Why didn't I? Lying next to Draco, it seemed unthinkable that he hadn't missed this, hadn't foreseen that he'd want Draco, somehow, and charged forwards to what he needed.
But he hadn't, and Draco had spent God knew how long wandering in that changing landscape, not understanding what was going on, with no one else to see as he saw, no one else to fight with him and try to win him free—
Harry winced. It seemed that, no matter what kinds of thoughts he had this morning, guilt would haunt him.
But he was thirty years old. He no longer believed that fucking up meant the end of the world. He would ride through this and get through it. He could accept that he'd done wrong, and now he had to make it right.
If Draco will let me, he thought, as Draco opened his eyes, smiled at him, and sucked Harry's finger into his mouth.
*
Harry obviously was having heavier thoughts than he liked.
Draco had got to recognize the signs when they were friends in Britain. Harry would come into the pub after a case where the victim had died, and sometimes even when he had to kill the criminal, eyes on the floor and feet dragging. Then he would sit across from Draco, sigh, drink too much tea or coffee, and dig his fingers into his palm until Draco forced him to say what was wrong.
And Draco felt he had a better right now than he used to to force Harry to talk. Weren't they lovers? Weren't they going to stay together? Draco didn't have many doubts on that score now. Not with the way Harry looked at him, not with the way his hands kept straying across the table to touch Draco or reached back when Draco passed behind his chair, not with the way he'd woken him this morning.
"You won't make it better for putting it off," said Draco, blowing across the surface of his tea to cool it, and Harry tossed him a startled glance. Draco rolled his eyes. "Oh, come on, Harry. I know what you're like, and you brood and fret and stamp around the place like a restless horse until someone talks you out of your melancholy. I've had enough of that this morning. I want to sit back with a big silly grin on my face and stare at you like an idiot, as is traditional after brilliant sex." He crossed his eyes and produced the requisite big silly grin, which at least had the effect of making Harry laugh. "Come, now." He made his voice soft and coaxing, and leaned forwards. "I think you can tell me what's wrong."
Harry swallowed and nodded, though Draco hadn't been aware there was anything in his mouth; he'd only been picking at the eggs and toast the house-elves had seen fit to serve them this morning. "Two things," he said at last. "I never came hunting you before this. I left you to suffer." He looked at Draco's face, and he couldn't have looked guiltier if he'd murdered someone, but Draco was used to the effects of Gryffindor martyr complexes, and only snorted. Harry promptly looked upset, as if Draco's contempt was contempt for genuine pain. "No, you don't understand. I didn't know what was happening to you, so it's not like I ignored it, but I could at least have tried to communicate with you and find out what was happening. I should have sent more owls to France. I should have—"
"After I ignored one or two?" Draco lifted an eyebrow. "I don't remember everything that happened to me in France, Harry, but I do know that I was immersing myself in research on both the Black and Malfoy families, trying desperately to ease this sense of belonging 'nowhere' that I had. I ignored owls because I thought they weren't relevant, unless they were owls from people sending me genealogical information. I had this obsession with proving to myself where I belonged, and then returning to Britain in triumph." He rolled his eyes. "Don't ask me why I thought it would be triumph. But you weren't the only one who let that relationship lapse, Harry. We were both perfectly ignorant of each other's lives for the same amount of time. And now we're together, and I don't see much sense in reliving the past, except for the way in which it might give me some control of my ability."
Harry's face softened as he stared at Draco, and it took Draco long moments to recognize it as a look of adoration he wore. Draco felt a shiver of pleasure as great as having sex with Harry run through him. Yes, he could—get used to being looked at like that.
Well, it's almost as great as having sex with Harry, at least.
"Yes," Harry said, shaking himself, "but I should have tried harder." Draco scowled, recognizing one of the incoming explosions of Gryffindor guilt. "I should have realized that you would need help—"
"When my parents didn't realize it? When I couldn't communicate with anyone outside the bubble of land I was in?" Draco shook his head. That caused his hair to fall over his ears, and he noticed the way that Harry's eyes followed it and widened slightly. He hid a smug grin. He would have to keep his hair at least long enough to do this in the future. "No. If you keep blaming yourself, then I might start yelling at you, and we don't want that, do we?" he added, when he saw Harry open his mouth again.
Harry swallowed, then reached out and gripped Draco's hand. "Thank you," he whispered. "But there's a second thing I have to tell you, and I don't think you'll hear this with so much equanimity."
"That's one pleasant change, at least," Draco mused. "Granger has rubbed off on your vocabulary."
Harry frowned. "Draco, I am trying to be serious here."
Draco pushed himself back from the table, though he kept his hand in Harry's. "And have you thought that I don't want to be serious about this? Of course I'll fight to stay with you. That was never in question." Harry blinked, and Draco realized then that, though Harry might have intended sticking with him, he also could have thought that Draco was ready to abandon all this at a moment's notice. "But I'd rather be serious about trying to control this errant magic I seem to have. The threshing out of guilt and confessions about something you did because it was natural at the time and you had no idea I'd get hurt in the future can wait for later."
"All right," Harry said, and looked down at the table for a minute. Draco hoped he was trying to hide a smile. "But haven't you thought about why I suddenly came and found you now? What drove me to this in the first place, when I had no idea you were suffering?"
"I have thought about that," Draco said, "when I brooded yesterday and—the day before that? Before we went into the black desert, anyway." He'd never given that imaginary place a name, and he would have felt odd trying to come up with one now. "It has to be something to do with your Auror work. That's the only thing you'd be so reluctant to mention, and you'd have said something if it was my parents."
Harry caught his breath, and then shook his head a little. "I keep forgetting how smart you are," he said.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Draco said, "and not as your statement that I don't normally display this intelligence."
Once again, Harry stared at him with a look of adoration. "How can you do this?" he asked then. "You've been hunted for so long. You were almost incoherent with terror just a few days ago. You didn't know that I was who I said I was. And now…"
"Because you're here, and I can see you as human, and I trust you to help me." Draco cocked his head to the side, puzzled. If there's anything that Harry ought to be used to, it's the consequences of his actions helping people. He is a hero, plain and simple. "I'm no longer hopeless."
Harry nodded this time, at least seeming to think that the statement made sense. His thumb rubbed for a moment over the back of Draco's hand. Then he drew a deep breath and said, "Yes. Three Aurors had died tracking you, and their bodies were found in strange places, or with strange wounds. Kingsley wanted me to find you and bring you in if I could, or kill you if I had no other choice."
Draco flinched and tried to withdraw—an instinctive reaction, not because he thought Harry would have agreed to kill him—but Harry held on hard to his hand. "I knew you couldn't be a murderer," he said fiercely. "I knew it. And I wish Kingsley had put me on the case from the beginning, because I would have been the one to find you and that could have prevented those other Aurors from dying. And I knew the moment I sensed wild magic in the meadow where the latest body was found that it wasn't as simple as a curse you were casting that got out of control."
"But I did ask for more magic than I could handle." Draco gave up on tugging his hand away and leaned towards Harry; he needed the comfort too much, especially with pain and remorse churning in his gut. "I was responsible for the deaths of those Aurors. If I hadn't asked my Black ancestors for—"
"You couldn't anticipate this," Harry said. "No one could have, given how rare the talent is. It certainly wasn't covered in Dark Arts instruction during my training. You weren't any more responsible for the deaths of those Aurors than a rainstorm or an earthquake is responsible for the people it kills, Draco."
"And if it happens again?" Draco demanded, wondering, for a moment, just when their roles had reversed and Harry had taken on the role of protector.
"If it happens now, after you know something about what you're doing, then you would be responsible." Harry's gaze was serene and clear. "But we're going to work together to make sure it doesn't happen again, aren't we?" He squeezed Draco's hand.
"Right." Draco shook his head and blinked a little, then said, "Not that I have the first idea how to begin controlling it."
"From what I read yesterday—" Harry paused to think about the time, which made Draco smug. It wasn't every lover he managed to bedazzle with sex like that. "Yeah, yesterday, there are other members of the Black family who had the talent. They must have controlled it, or the chaos they caused around them would have been noticeable and there'd be records of that somewhere that we must have found. So we'll look in the books first, and then it's on to performance."
"I think you'll find," Draco said, so confident for the moment that he felt as if he were playing Quidditch, "that I'm very good when it comes to performance."
"Oh, marvelous," Harry said. "Then I can count on the next five or six decades of our lives not to be boring."
Draco reached for his tea, triumphant, smug, and fighting the urge to drag Harry back to bed again.
He had to eat the rest of his breakfast with only one hand, because Harry didn't seem to be inclined to let the other go.
