Thank you again for all the reviews!
Twenty-Nine-Consequences
When Draco opened his eyes, his first thought was, I'm warm.
It was only his second and later thoughts that traveled into the realm of Shit, What have I done?, I can't believe I did that, and similar things, despite what he tried to tell himself later.
He turned around slowly, though that was hard as a clutching arm was draped over his waist and Potter shifted complainingly, muttering, when Draco moved. But he went back to sleep in the next instant, or at least Draco assumed he did; the wrinkles smoothed out of his face, his eyelids dropped straight down, and he began to breathe in long, slow, deep breaths. Not quite a snore, Draco thought. He must not have snored at all. Draco had slept beside him most of the night, and he would have woken, since he was sensitive to things like that, with the delicate refinement of a Malfoy.
He was a Malfoy.
Who had just slept with a Potter. Who had his parents free because of that Potter, and still alive on sufferance because of a Potter.
Not just any Potter, this Potter, who had played such a large part in destroying his father's freedom and ambitions.
The father who didn't care for him anymore, who had exasperated him enough last night that he had come here looking for a pity fuck. Draco took a long breath and then released it in a loose, shuddering laugh that he only kept soft so as to avoid waking Potter up.
God. He was a mess. He was in a mess. He didn't know what to do next, what to change in the hope that its falling, its changing, wouldn't mess up something else that he depended on.
He didn't know who he was anymore.
And that was the main reason that he was here in Potter's bed; he could admit it to himself if no one else. He was still looking for someone who would help him define himself, by opposition if nothing else. He had spent so long in his father's shadow that it was laughable, pathetic. His father had taught Draco who he was in this constantly shifting world, he had sheltered Draco and let him dream of the day that he would become someone on his own.
But that day had never arrived. Lucius and his protection and teaching were stripped from his life suddenly, and Draco had sought them again, instead of seeking something to replace them.
The way he should have.
But the admonition had the same problem with all the admonitions that Draco had ever heard directed at him: from Snape, from Dumbledore, from the Death Eaters who had thought he could be a worthy servant of Voldemort or should be, from Potter, from the Ministry. They arrived too late. Draco was already standing among the crumbling pieces of his life by the time he received them, with no hope of picking up those pieces and starting again.
I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do.
The words hammered in his skull, and he tried to breathe and found that the breath had locked up in his lungs. Draco reached out and caught the edge of the bed, flailing, his words coming out as fluttering whimpers.
"Draco?"
That was Potter, the one sitting up behind him, the one who sounded alarmed for him, the first person Draco had heard in days who did. He turned and buried his head in Potter's chest, and his breath came rushing out of him, as though the hands that Potter put gently on his back a second later were hammers or paddles. Potter rocked him back and forth, saying nothing. Draco wondered how he knew that silence was needed. There was a lot Potter knew or understood about him that didn't seem easy to guess.
Or maybe it was, and his parents were simply ignoring it to focus on their own special, exclusive bond, one that Draco had never belonged to, one that his mother had chosen over her only child...
The feeling of suffocation descended on him again, and he punched Potter in the shoulder. "Why did you have to be the one to rescue them?" he whispered, pulling back so that he could stare into that old-young, wise-foolish, green-eyed face. "Why did you have to be the one to change my life? It couldn't be someone who didn't hate me, it couldn't be someone neutral, it had to be you."
"I don't hate you."
Draco shut his eyes, turned his head away. The words continued to flow out of his mouth, relentless, like diarrhea. "That makes it worse. Worse. Because that way, I have no one to blame because my parents don't care for me. I came to you last night because I wanted someone to fuck the pain away, someone to look at me with that light in his eyes that my mother uses when she looks at my father. And now I know that you really did that, and that I can't be angry with you, and that I'm getting angrier at you as a result of it."
Potter was silent for so long that Draco tensed. This was it, Potter was going to kick him out of bed, and part of Draco's mind would be relieved even as the rest of him wailed in loss. That would confirm the prejudices that were starting to take root in Draco's mind, the long-held prejudices about Potter and how much he hated what Draco represented, and although he would be alone again, at least he would have something to define himself against. He would know who he was.
"Well," Potter said at last. "I won't deny that I'm a bit disappointed by this."
Draco leaped out of the bed, trying to ignore the fact that he was naked from the waist up and that he could still feel a bit of crackling stickiness in his pants from the come that they hadn't cleaned off, and pointed a trembling finger at Potter. "Stop doing that!"
"Stop what?" Potter leaned an elbow on the bed and frowned at him. The frown was good, Draco thought. It looked as threatening as any scowl that Potter had tossed him in school, now that he knew what Potter was capable of. "Being honest? If I did that, then I'd have to lie to you, and I'm neither good at lying generally nor doing it to people I like."
"You're acting as though it's reasonable, what I'm doing," Draco said bitterly. "You're acting like you can forgive me for sleeping with you when what you really want is some grand, romantic love affair. Why aren't you sneering at me for not being a perfect Gryffindor? Why aren't you kicking me out?"
Oh. I know what he wants, now.
Harry had seen the same hunger in the eyes of some of the people he'd debated with the other day. Draco hungered for simple answers. He wanted someone to tell him what was wrong and what was right, although maybe not for the same reasons as other people. If Harry tried to explain the whole complicated, tangled, messy, complex truth-such as that he'd fucked up and was trying to make up for his mistakes now, or that he wanted Draco despite knowing that he wasn't perfect-then it took time and they got more and more agitated.
But it was the truth, that was the problem. And the truth was complex, at least in this situation. For a moment, Harry found himself envying people like Lucius Malfoy. Their lives probably seemed pretty simple and straightforward.
Harry nodded. He would give the truth, and hope that was enough, if Draco would let him explain it.
"Because I've already changed from the person you're talking about, the one who wanted the grand, romantic love affair," he said. "I can't-I know I can't have that with someone like you. But I want you anyway, because you burn with the kind of determination I need."
"So it's a selfish longing then?" Draco's face wavered. He didn't know if he should laugh or get angry, Harry thought, and his magic purred beneath his heart, telling him that Draco's heart was going far too fast and that he was less calm than he appeared.
"Yes," Harry said, dryly. "You could call it that. But you could also call it admiration. I would."
"Because you're deluded."
Harry rolled his eyes and bit back the sharp words that wanted to escape, about how Draco would always find the one copper Knut in a heap of Galleons. "You want to think that because you're not used to this," he said quietly. "And because the one I want is you. That's it, isn't it? Because your parents are turning away from you, and they're the only ones who ever wanted you, you can't believe that someone else would."
For a second, Draco's face was stricken, and then he turned away as if he would bolt, lost shirt and all. Harry sprang up from the bed and brought one hand down, and a new ward appeared over the door of his room, blazing with light and heat in a way that left no doubt about what would happen should Draco come closer.
Draco jerked to a halt and stood there, shivering and panting as though he assumed Harry would strike him. Then he turned around and lifted his chin, his eyes shining with hatred. Or at least, it looked like hatred. Harry ignored that, focusing on the way Draco breathed. This was about more than his own feelings, far more. It was about what Draco needed.
"Going to keep me prisoner here, then?" Draco asked, his voice cracking down the middle. "Like father, like son?"
"That would be too easy for you," Harry said. "No. All I want to know is what you intend to do next. Should we get you out a second way, so that no one sees you emerging from my room and draws conclusions you don't wish them to draw? Are you going to pretend this never happened?" That would hurt, but as long as it was actually Draco's decision and not something that happened simply because no one was brave enough to pin him down, that would be fine. "Are you going to walk out hand-in-hand with me?"
"Definitely not the last," Draco said sharply. "That would mean more people would hate me than ever, and that it would be harder for you be taken seriously when you talked."
Harry smiled.
"What are you grinning for?" Draco hunched his shoulders as though bearing into a strong wind. "You have every right to get angry at me."
"I'm a little angry," Harry admitted. "But at least you're doing something other than panicking right now. Fine. We'll keep it secret for now, and a repeat is up to you. But that means you should get back to your bed before someone checks up on you and then comes hastening to tell me that you ran away." He raised his hand, and the stone wall next to his bed trembled and rippled. The fire that burned it softened the rocks, pushing them back at the same time, so a tunnel opened.
Draco swallowed and stared at him. "Tell me that was there a moment before," he whispered.
Harry shook his head.
"Tell me the owners of this manor built it, and I'm just now seeing it." Another whisper.
"Why should I help you lie to yourself?" Harry asked. "If anything, I'd rather encourage you to be more honest with yourself. No. I created this tunnel, but it's not very long. It'll travel with you, opening before and behind, and then close after it leads you into your room."
"You have so much power," Draco said, his voice so low Harry had to concentrate to hear it at all. "Why would you do this for me?"
Harry smiled. The magic sang in him, strong and pulsing beneath the surface like a volcanic explosion of its own. "Because I want to, and it hurts no one else."
Draco stood there looking at him for a moment more, as if he didn't consider that an adequate answer. Then he shook his head and walked past Harry into the tunnel. Harry got ready to manipulate the stone so it would drop shut behind Draco and close him in. While Draco was the one more likely to suffer if someone found out what had happened, Ron would probably come to check on Harry soon, too.
"Why?"
Draco had turned to look back at him, his arms folded as though he was cold-or as though he could hold the weight of the revelation that Harry would hand him away with that simple gesture. Harry met his eyes and shook his head.
"You know the reason," he said. "I've declared it several times now, and if you didn't hear it, it was because you didn't choose to listen."
Draco closed his eyes. "Say that I'm listening now," he muttered, voice as harsh as a raven's. "Say that I want to know, and that I don't think you've told me clearly enough yet."
"I'm in love with you," Harry said. "There's a lot that I would do for you, not much I wouldn't. But you're the one who has to decide how much you want that to mean. If it doesn't mean anything more than last night-" He took a deep breath, and tried not to reveal how much effort it took to do so. The thing was, of course he had to let Draco make the decisions, there was no other way that this would work or could go, but it still hurt. "Then it doesn't."
Draco turned and fled down the tunnel. Too much honesty, Harry thought dryly as he listened to Draco's heartbeat moving through the wall, so that he knew when he should melt more stone and when he should solidify that part of the passage Draco would no longer need. Did the poor little Slytherin get scared?
But even that wasn't fair, because Draco had endured far more than Harry had in the past seven years, and he had never been as bad as Harry thought even when his House affiliation was all Harry saw.
"I'm sorry," Harry whispered, and leaned back on his pillow, closing his eyes. He'd had little sleep last night, for a variety of reasons, and it would be wise to get some now. "But I hope you make up your bloody mind soon."
I think we have it this time.
George snorted and studied the design on the piece of parchment, most of which Fred had drawn by working through his hands. "That was what you thought we had last time, and it didn't work out."
You didn't let me help last time.
"I did so! I listened to your bloody stupid suggestions, and that mess is what resulted." George gestured around him to where the scorch marks and the marks of the chains still shone on the walls. "If you'd let me plan everything-"
It's not my fault that you're stupid at maths-
"Thinking lightning could be caught in a cage, hah, if you'd remembered symbolism was important we should have used some other way-"
You've always ignored the obvious, Fred snapped, in that way he had of dragging a conversation completely off target. You approved the cage, too. So we need to find some way of capturing it that isn't a cage. What then, Mr. Genius? George knew Fred was looking out of his eyes at their new design on the parchment, which rather resembled the Muggle things Hermione had told them about once, called roller coasters. I think this is going to work. It's as wild as the lightning, but it'll channel it.
"If the problem is that you can't control lightning, then one design won't work any better than anything else," George complained. "And you know that Hermione told us these roller coasters are-are used for entertainment. I don't think the lightning wants to be used that way, either."
Then come up with another way, little brother, Fred goaded him. You think that you're so much smarter than I am? You think that you understand all the intricacies of the symbolism that I don't? Then come up with your own design.
"I will!" George turned his back on the new design in a radical declaration of distrust and paced up and down the room, ignoring the needling sensation that was Fred poking about in the back of his brain.
You can't figure out a way to make lightning dance on the head of a pin, let alone at Harry's command. Give it up and let me help. Fred paused, as the full force of George's thoughts bounced back to him, and then added, In a few hours, when you're sorry for that, I'll come back. The sensation of him vanished.
George closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. There had to be some way through the paradox that he and Fred had discovered. They had to control the lightning, but lightning hated to be controlled. Or couldn't be controlled, which amounted to much the same thing. George wasn't entirely sure if they were dealing with magical sentient lightning or only a natural phenomenon that he and Fred had the same feelings about, but either way, it could cause problems.
What they almost needed, he thought grumpily, was a way to design lightning bolts themselves, designs that changed second by second, contenting any wild intelligence the lightning had and at the same time putting the kind of limitation on it that Harry would need to wield it...
George's head jerked up, and his eyes flew wide.
It might be possible. Might.
There was a sulky stir from Fred in the back of his head. George ignored it as he ran to his desk and started flinging parchment to the sides in feverish haste, looking for an unused piece.
He had it, but it was such a fleeting thought, it would twist out of their mind in a moment. They had to get it down, now.
And then they would see who was the genius inventor around here.
Hermione leaned back in her chair and shook her head at the stack of parchments that stood in front of her. In one corner of her mind, she wondered why the Minister had wanted her to investigate something so ridiculous. Yes, there were prophecies that could apply to Potter if one stretched one's thoughts in a new direction and then twisted them out of shape, but the thought that any of them actually would was laughable. She should be doing something else, something she had the time and talent to do.
Then her mind changed and flexed, and a hot flush of shame crossed her cheeks. Who was she to think that any task the Minister set her was ridiculous? Clearwater would have her reasons. Hermione was the ridiculous one, the one who should be punished for doubting the Minister.
A corner of her mind grabbed and seized the ideas she was thinking of, and held them close to her chest. They were important.
But two seconds later, she had forgotten why again.
Hermione shook her head and turned to the prophecies she had thought likely to refer to Potter. They were obscure, of course, and could cover any events in the several decades since they'd been given, but there were enough close correspondences that she thought the Minister would want to see them anyway.
One said simply Mabel Prism at the top, presumably the name of the Seer. (If one believed in Seers. Which Hermione didn't. But the Minister had set her to this task, which must mean the Minister did believe, which must mean that they had some value). Beneath it was a rambling collection of lines, several of them crossed out. Hermione didn't know if that meant Prism had changed her mind after reciting the prophecy or if the person copying it down had made mistakes. Probably the latter. She copied the canceled lines onto her master sheet of parchment anyway, and hoped that the Minister would be happy with her for it.
When the summer of the kings comes,
When they are ripest and fullest in flower,
When they swell and drip with the rot and fall to the forest floor,
There shall come a stream of clear water
And a fire.
The fire shall burn a new path,
Across the earth and across the sky,
And those who follow shall find
Their heart's desire at the end of that path.
The water shall seek to quench the fire.
The fire shall seek to evade the water.
The fire shall blossom from earth and from sky,
And take the fire-wielder far away.
The second line and the fourth and the ninth were crossed out. Of course the ninth was, Hermione thought scornfully. The idea that those who followed Potter would find any contentment or satisfaction, the sort that were supposed to accompany a heart's desire, were laughable.
(One part of her mind breathed rebellion and memorized the prophecy, canceled lines and all, and the other part of her mind refused to breathe the same air).
But the reference to clear water was too intriguing to pass up, so Hermione copied it. She felt a wriggle of pure pleasure pass through her, and smiled. Minister Clearwater might feel better when she realized that she was clearly meant to defend the wizarding world against Potter's ridiculousness.
The other prophecy she thought most important-in the sense that anything from a self-proclaimed Seer could be important (no, it was; yes, it was not)-didn't show anything like so clear, but Hermione had locked onto it because of the constant references to fire. This time, there was no Seer's name on the parchment. Hermione wondered if that meant it was older than the other one, so old that the person who made this copy had lost the original recording of the prophecy.
Summer turns. Summer fails. Summer dies.
The end of the summer has proclaimed once before
The fall of the dark one, dire at need.
Now the prophecy passes into ripeness,
And the fire swells forth, falling in fountains.
He destroys the dead, he laves the living
In fountains of fire, in deeds of destruction.
There are mountains he will move and make tremble;
There are islands he will isolate further.
He laughs with the lightning, he soars with the storm,
And like them he chooses his change from second to second.
Summer turns. Summer fails. Summer burns.
The moment when the wide wings sweep wider,
When the lightning laughs and the storm swings down
Is when he will choose his change for all time.
They might have until the end of the summer, then. The problem was that Hermione didn't know if the reference was literal or not. It sounded so in the second prophecy, but not in the first one, where the "summer of the kings" might be referring to the time of the Ministry, who had controlled the wizarding world like kings.
(Never. Never. She must never believe that).
Hermione gathered up her documents and left, shutting the door of the prophecy storeroom firmly behind her. She did wonder what treasures she might be leaving there, what prophecies might refer to Potter without her knowledge-
(There was one, a scrap of paper, she had glanced at and thrust down, to the bottom of the pile, forcing herself to forget-)
But she shook her head and carried the chosen documents carefully to the Minister. She was the one, with her superior intelligence and her ability to command, who must decide.
