Draco's brow furrowed in the expression of confusion Harry knew so well. He blinked slowly, seemingly quite unsure if what he was seeing was real.
It was Zacharias Smith's indignant mumbling that took his attention away from Harry.
"Bloody fool!" Smith glared up at Harry as he tried to stand up. "Why did you have to knock me down?"
Draco swiftly pulled out his wand and brandished it towards Smith as a smirk pulled up the corners of his lips. "Merlin, prats like you do age badly, Smith. Just look at yourself!"
"Lemme go!" Smith twisted his body, desperately trying to escape the clutches of the ropes tightening around his torso and legs. "Lemme go!"
"Are you alright? I trust catching Smith wasn't too difficult." Draco shot Harry a grateful look, brandishing his wand to cast a Warming Charm on the three of them. It was freezing out there.
"Nope, wasn't difficult at all," Harry said gruffly, overcome by Draco's nearness. He had forgotten how stunning young Draco was, Harry realized as he covertly cast lustful glances at his silky blond hair, unlined face, and slim body. "Matter of fact, I used a version of the Wronski Feint."
"That must have been quite a sight." Draco licked his lips at the sight of Harry's tanned face. He looked a bit stockier, his hair lustrous as ever, even if it had sprinkles of grey in it.
"You stupid prats!" growled Smith.
Draco nudged Smith with the tip of his boot before he bent down to crouch above his writhing body. "Now tell us, where is Vane?"
Smith gasped; his lanky frame stock still before he shuddered. "Don't mention her! Poor Romilda is… dead."
"I'm sorry." Harry bent down, his green eyes conveying all the sympathy he could muster. Even if Romilda had behaved wickedly, he could empathize with Zacharias' feelings. "How did it happen?"
"Romy and I ran to the Muggle world and tried to hide in it," Smith mumbled in a despondent voice. "The Aurors were after us and we couldn't contact our families. Romy…" He gulped. "Turned out to be a bright girl. We moved to Ireland and while I worked as a reporter for a local Muggle paper, Romilda went to University. She got a degree in Computer Science and got a good job."
The woeful tone of Smith's voice when he spoke about Romilda hinted at his feelings, so Draco fixed him with a probing stare. "You loved her, right?"
Smith closed his eyelids and two lonely teardrops fell from his eyes, running down his cheeks until they fell to join the snow. "She was feisty, independent and willful, and we had our obsession with Harry in common. We slowly fell in love, and with the money she had saved from her job she founded a software company, Cyclops. When we had enough money in the bank, we got married."
Harry leaned forward and awkwardly patted his shoulder. "I'm sorry. I know what it feels to lose a loved one."
"You would, wouldn't you?" Smith said, his voice wrecked as he stole a glance at Draco, and then he let out a mournful sigh.
"So what happened to her?" Harry said. "If you don't mind my asking."
"Her company flourished, she was a whiz at dabbling with all those zeros and ones, but one day a car hit her. They rushed her to the hospital and the day after the operation, the doctors told me the damage was too great." Smith spoke in a tight, controlled monotone voice, as if afraid to let go and express his grief. "They did all they could to save her - money was no problem - but it was in vain."
"Didn't you try to go to St. Mungo's?" Draco said slowly, his gaze soft as it fell on Smith.
"I brought Healers to see her." Smith shrugged listlessly. "They examined her but the result was the same; there was no magical cure or potions that would save her."
"So why did you turn against the wizarding world?" Harry patted Smith's shoulder, knowing he could glean more information from a cooperative Smith.
"Don't you see, Harry?" Smith shrugged. "The wizarding world chased us out, kept us from our families." Then he said through gritted teeth, "Worst of all, they couldn't save Romy. What's the good of all that useless magic when it couldn't save my wife? Magic deserves to be stamped out!"
"So you used the company to develop software that would expose us?" Harry said wonderingly.
"That's right. It worked pretty well."
"When did you start sending letters to the past?" Draco said softly.
"I heard a rumor in Dublin about the strange behavior of the Hogwarts wards. I came here incognito and sent an owl to… Romilda." He shivered violently, and Draco exchanged a glance with Harry before waving his wand and freeing Smith from the ropes.
"You wrote to her," Harry repeated tonelessly, recalling with a shudder Luna's words about visiting his office in a time stream where he had lost his Draco. Harry knew he would behave in the same fashion, and wondered for a brief instant if that was the reason he had started sending letters to the past.
"Told her some tidbits, helped her get a good start on things," Smith sat up on the snow, raising his hand to rub his cold knuckles against his wet cheeks. "Guess it was mostly an excuse for talking to her." Smith cocked his head at the castle. "Grabbed the chance to hop on a broom and visit Hogwarts here in the past just to see her face one more time." Pained sobs wracked his body as Smith hid his face between his palms.
"Come on, up you go. You're freezing here." Draco tugged on Smith's arm to lift him up and the wizard readily complied.
Draco's open palm gently shoved Smith's back so he ended up facing the castle. "We'll go to McGonagall. I'm sure she'll provide good advice and a way to improve things." He turned to Harry then. "Please wait for me here, Harry. If you come inside and the students see you, it'll create a lot of confusion."
"Of course," Harry said.
Draco nodded at him and started trudging in the snow, Smith by his side.
Harry crossed his arms and watched their dark silhouettes dwindling in the distance as they made their way to the castle. With a sigh, he cast another Warming Spell on himself and then bent down to grab his broom before walking towards a copse of trees, where he leaned his back against a sturdy oak.
Snowflakes were beginning to fall when he saw Draco, his shoulders hunched against the cold wind as he trudged through the snow towards him.
"What happened to Smith and… Smith?" Harry raised his eyebrow.
Draco stopped in front of him. "McGonagall flooed the Head of the Department of Mysteries; they're bound to solve that."
"I hope they do," Harry said in a low voice. "Loathed Smith with a passion, but after hearing his story, I can't help but sympathize with the pain of losing your loved one."
"Does that mean that…?" Draco stopped, unsure of how to proceed. Now that he had the older Harry in front of him, somehow he felt as shy as a newly born hippogriff.
Seeing Harry's look of confusion at his obvious hesitation, Draco took a deep breath and plunged ahead. "What I mean to say is – are we still together in your future?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"It's that sometimes I believe this is a fairytale." Draco lifted his arm to wave towards the castle. "That I'm dreaming of one of those tales of Beedle the Bard, and I get the hero at the end."
Harry's gaze caressed the smooth alabaster cheeks whose taste and texture he knew intimately.
Thinking about Harry's words about facing his father on Christmas, Draco glanced shyly at him. "Tell me, do we get to spend Christmas together?"
Harry let out an amused snort and stepped towards Draco, lifting his hand to squeeze gently his shoulder. "Do we ever! I reckon I'd better tell you how we broke Lucius' resistance. One Christmas, after Ron told me about Pureblood customs, I showed up at the Manor with a Yule log, neatly tied in a tartan ribbon with pine cones, sprigs and a sheaf of wheat. It had a note all prim and proper wishing your family the best year."
"Father must have loved that," Draco said softly, gazing into Harry's eyes.
"He surely did." Harry smiled fondly. "Even if he hadn't, there is no force that could keep us apart. Remember when Luna said…?" Harry trailed off and let out a self-deprecating snort, realizing she had that conversation with them in this Draco's future. "Anyway, one day Luna will tell us that you and I are bound by tides of magic, that there's this invisible bridge that has always connected us."
"Is that so?"
"It is true." Harry leaned forward to rub his forehead against Draco, breathing in the woodsy, musky scent that was Draco. Thinking about the lengths that he would go to if Draco was taken from him, Harry closed his eyes and, as snowflakes feathered his cheeks, he whispered against his ear, "If fate should tear us apart, we'll reach blindly towards each other, finding our way together. Not Fiendfyre, not Voldemort, not even death can keep me from you." Feeling the slim body shivering against him, Harry growled low in his chest and lifted his hand to cup Draco's chin between his thumb and forefinger, piercing him with an intense stare. "And if I do not ravage you in the snow right now, it's because I'm afraid my younger self will show up and blast me to pieces."
Belying his words, Harry nibbled on the seam of Draco's mouth, his tongue laving the pouty lips he loved. When Draco opened his mouth, Harry dove in, tongues entwining in the fiery passion that would never grow old. Holding Draco in his arms like this was paradise, and Harry lost himself in the moment while he basked in the unquenchable fire that had always sparked between him and Draco.
The hooting sounds from an owl in the trees above caused him to stop the kiss, though. It reminded Harry of his school days and his penchant for discovery, and thus the possibility that younger Harry would show up.
Draco let out a groan as Harry stepped back, his hand caressing alabaster fingers before he bent down to retrieve his broom.
Draco sighed deeply, his fingers absently rubbing his swollen lips. "I hate goodbyes."
Harry flashed him a winsome smile and cocked his head at Hogwarts. "It's not goodbye. I wait for you in the castle, and in my future you are waiting for me, too."
"You're going to fly through the wards," Draco said with finality.
"I will, it's a rough ride but it's the only way back. If I don't return, you will surely come here and kill me," Harry said wryly as he mounted his broom.
"Take care, Harry."
"Always." Harry waved goodbye, leaning backward as he swung the broom in a graceful arc that took him higher in the air until he had cleared the woods, and then he shot towards the clouds.
Harry leaned his torso, his knees nudging the broom towards Hogsmeade to pass through the wards surrounding the school and return to his time. He squinted as the air around him appeared to shimmer; spots of color dashing in towards him as his vision constricted to a tunnel in front of him whose walls pulsed like a heart.
He wasn't prepared for what happened next, though. Instead of the bobbing motion he'd felt during his flight to the past, a strong wind buffeted him. He hugged the broom, clinging tightly to the wood as the fierce pressure yanked and jostled him from side to side until he lost control of the broom and sank towards the ground, his vision slowly returning to normal.
Harry poured all his magic into controlling his descent, swinging the broom in a tight arc towards the Black Lake. If he couldn't gain control of his broom, at least the water would ameliorate his fall.
He shook his head as he flew past some stone huts below him which stood in the place where he expected to see the Quidditch Pitch. Harry didn't have time for speculation, though, as he lifted the nose of the broom and tried to stall his fall.
His tactics managed to slow his descent enough that when he hit the ground he didn't break any bones. Harry was used to taking a fall in his games of Quidditch, and he leaned his shoulders in such a way that the broom's last spurts slowed his fall. With a grunt, he made contact with the soft snow and tumbled over and over. Luckily the blanket of snow was inches deep and Harry didn't twist his shoulder. He was out of breath, completely knocked out by the fall when he rolled to a stop in front of a rough stone wall. Harry groaned, blinking up at the sky, everything just a blur. His fingers searched blindly for his glasses, and then he glimpsed the blurry outline of a man trudging in the snow towards him.
Harry panted harshly, his fingers closing around the rim of his glasses as the man stopped in front of him.
With trembling fingers, Harry fumbled with his glasses until he managed to put them on.
A guttural, harsh voice reverberated in the snow and the last words Harry heard before he passed out were, "Whence comest thou?"