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Chapter 36- Draco's Plans Go Ahead

Draco was prepared for panic when he woke up, but he found Harry just lying beside him on the bed, one arm slung down so that his hand trailed across the carpet. His fingers scraped it now and then; Draco thought it was that faint sound which had awakened him.

He propped himself up on his elbow, and only then realized that the cleaning charms had been less than fully effective. He grimaced as sweat and stickiness pulled across his skin. Harry looked sorry, and hastily waved his wand, cleansing Draco quickly and thoroughly enough to satisfy his needs. He nodded, and focused his attention on Harry's face.

"No regrets?" he asked quietly.

Harry blinked. "After sex like that?"

Draco was surprised into laughter, but he had to watch Harry through it. Harry's expression looked genuinely puzzled, but Draco had experienced his lies by omission before. "I just wanted to know," he said. "Have you come to terms with being gay? It wasn't something you were entirely comfortable with a few days ago."

Harry shrugged. "It does have its minor discomforts." He shifted and reached down, gingerly, to touch his obviously sore arse.

"There are healing spells for that, you twit," said Draco, barely able to contain his exasperation. It seemed Harry would still rather lie there and suffer than complain and let someone help him. He spoke one of the simpler spells, which he'd used after the rare lovers who insisted that they fuck him, never the other way around, and Harry gave a soft gasp, his eyes widening.

"Much better," he said, giving Draco a faint smile. "Thanks."

"And the other discomforts?" Draco pushed, because he wanted to know. He wasn't content with a secret relationship- though God knew how it could be secret, really, now that he'd kidnapped Harry from the middle of the Ministry and insured that everyone thought they'd been sleeping together for months. "Can you call yourself my lover? Admit to it outside the bedroom?"

Harry snorted. "Sod off, Malfoy. You sound like Theresa."

"I want to know," said Draco, feeling consumed by urgency. "I deserve to know. Because, Harry- well, I could change my mind in a few months, maybe, but right now, it feels like this is it. What I want to have for the rest of my life."

Harry stared at him, then laughed weakly. "You can't- Draco, we've fucked once, or twice if you count the first time as fucking, and I haven't even lasted as long as some of the others you mentioned- "

"You've lasted two years longer than anyone else, already," Draco reminded him.

Harry flushed. It figures, Draco thought. Now that fucking doesn't embarrass him as much, he finds something else to be embarrassed about.

"That was different," Harry said stoutly. "I was different, then. As I become more myself again- as I heal- well, Draco, you might find that you don't like me very much." He lifted his eyes and locked them with Draco's, with a courage that had seemed beyond him just at that moment. "You didn't like me very much in school, as I recall."

"And there you were different yet again," Draco muttered. "And so was I. Different, I mean."

"Will you tell me more about that?" Harry asked, with an eagerness that showed Draco how badly he wanted to deflect the conversation away from their current topic. "More about what you were like, I mean. I can't imagine that you just did homework and what the Prefects and Snape told you to and were always happy except when you were torturing me."

Draco let the conversation go for now. Right after they'd fucked properly for the first time wasn't the best minute to approach it, he had to admit. It would wait until Harry had fucked him, too. The thought distracted him with a bolt of pleasure to the groin, and he had to think for a long moment before he could shift the ground of his thoughts to what Harry wanted to hear about.

"No, I hardly spent all my time in the common room working on my essays like a good little boy," he said, thinking of a story Harry would probably like to hear. How he'd found out just how completely stupid Pansy was was always good for a laugh. "There was exploring the school, too, and getting Hufflepuffs in trouble."

Harry frowned. "I don't remember Hufflepuffs as being in trouble especially often."

Draco waved a hand loftily. "It wasn't the same kind of trouble Gryffindors got into. You probably didn't even notice it. But it was fun to make them lose points for screaming at nothing." His smile widened. He couldn't help it. This memory was still amusing, one he had pressed between the leaves of his mind so that he could take it out and peer at it whenever he liked. "Especially when we made them scream right outside Professor Sprout's office."

Harry laughed aloud. "I can't even remember where Professor Sprout's office was."

"Oh, near the Hufflepuff common room. Which wasn't far from the dungeons, of course. It was easy to slip across the entrance hall, scare a Hufflepuff, and make her scream. We learned the Notice-Me-Not Charm fairly young, you know."

"Pity that it never helped you against me," Harry muttered.

"Yes, well, you had the Invisibility Cloak," Draco retorted without rancor. "Unfair competition."

Harry's face shuttered. Draco blinked, as a connection in his mind fired. "Harry?" he asked. "What happened to the Invisibility Cloak? I haven't seen it since I started watching you."

"Yes, well, you wouldn't have, would you?" Harry's fists twisted in the sheets in front of him. "It's an Invisibility Cloak."

"Harry," Draco said softly. He recognized that expression on Harry's face from the time he'd spent dealing with Auror partners who actually tried to make friends with him, and it irritated him to have it turned on him. "What happened to it?"

"You were telling me your story," Harry pointed out. "I think we've spent quite enough time covering my various dysfunctions."

The hardness behind his tone, however light it was, told Draco that the story of the Cloak was not a happy one. He hesitated for a moment, staring at Harry, wondering if he should try to worm it out of him, and then decided to tell his story first. It might relax Harry, and induce a sense of obligation that would make him tell the truth when his turn came.

Besides, it was funny.

"Now, usually, it was me and Gregory and Vincent scaring the Hufflepuffs," Draco began, and saw Harry relax. He probably thought he'd been let off the hook. Not even close, Harry. "But Pansy begged to go along one evening. This was in third year. She'd just discovered flirting, and I think she regretted the hours when I was out of her reach."

"Were you ever engaged to marry her?" Harry asked curiously.

Draco gave him a small smile and didn't reply to the question. "Well, we didn't know how much help she'd be, but we thought she could at least hold the Dungbombs while we threw them. Our plan was to make it seem as if the Hufflepuffs had been hoarding Dungbombs and were setting them off near the common room."

"And Professor Sprout would believe that?" Harry asked, lifting his eyebrows.

Draco laughed. "There were two Hufflepuff seventh-years who were always after each other. One of them would have done it, and we'd already worked out the means to plant them under his bed, earlier, when we found out the Hufflepuff password. So, yes, she'd believe it. So would the rest of the House and the rest of the school, for that matter."

"I don't remember that at all," Harry muttered.

"Yes, well, you wouldn't, would you?" Draco asked, trying to quell his resentment at the memories of Harry running about the school with Ron and Hermione and ignoring him entirely. "Always self-involved."

Harry looked away.

"Oh, no, you don't," Draco breathed softly, grabbing his chin and tilting his face back. "I've worked too hard to let you go back into your shell now. It was a joke, Harry. I know you had better things on your mind that year. Like having a murderer after you, for example."

Harry just nodded, and Draco couldn't tell if he as grateful for the reinterpretation or not. "What happened?" he prompted.

"So we had the Dungbombs planted," Draco went on, "and Pansy, Vince, Greg, and I waited outside the common room door for a group of Hufflepuffs to come out. We were in a side-corridor. We'd scare them, cover their robes with filth, make them scream, and then make the seventh-year look bad when Sprout searched the common room. It was the perfect plan.

"But Pansy decided to chatter when a good-sized group was in the corridor. As if they couldn't hear her, just because they couldn't see her!" Draco shook his head. Pansy had sometimes been a good friend, but never to have along on a prank. "And of course they heard us, and turned towards us."

He grinned. "I immediately started saying, 'Pansy, I am shocked!' I was loud enough to wake the dead. Of course Professor Sprout came out of her office, and there was Pansy red-handed, with all the Dungbombs. And, even better, she shrieked and flung them at Sprout when she saw her."

Harry snickered. "Did she hit her?"

"Oh, yes." The sight of the Head of Hufflepuff with brown stains on her robe and a complicated look of exasperation on her face was perhaps the best part of the memory. "I took the time to explain that of course the prank had all been Pansy's idea, and we came along hoping to talk her out of it. Vince and Greg backed me up. And Pansy couldn't say anything until it was too late- she's never been good with reacting quickly when she's surprised- and then she was one against three. She lost House points and got detention, and more detention when they searched and found those Dungbombs in the seventh-year boys' room. No one believed that Pansy hadn't done it. Professor Snape was just angry at her for getting caught."

"That was- rather mean of you," said Harry, looking as if he were nobly attempting to sit on his laughter.

Draco waved a hand airily. "It had to be done," he said. "It was for the good of the species, really." He smiled and leaned towards Harry. "Did you know, by the way, that you look very good when you laugh?"

"And no time else?" Harry looked half-offended, or at least sought to, but he really wasn't convincing.

"Of course not," Draco breathed, and Harry shifted at the sound of his voice. "You look good to me any time. When you smile, when you collapse after sex, when you're flying." He let one hand rise and cup Harry's cheek, rubbing it. Harry leaned towards him, eyelids drooping, body conveying interest. Draco kept his voice light as he spoke. "Telling me about your past."

Harry closed his eyes a moment, and then sighed. "I should have seen that coming, shouldn't I?"

Draco nodded solemnly, and leaned forward, whispering, "I want to know, Harry. You're important to me. I told you that. Do you still doubt me?"

Harry shook his head. "It's not that. Just- " He shrugged. "You heard what I told Theresa, and you knew me in Hogwarts, and you've watched me for the past two years and found out what I did as an Auror. What else is there to know?"

"I want to know what happened to your Invisibility Cloak."

"That's not a pleasant story." Tension had coiled in Harry's muscles, but he didn't try to move away from Draco's stroking hand.

"Tell me," Draco said, lips an inch away from Harry's ear.

"I burned it."

For a moment, Draco thought he hadn't heard correctly. "What?" he asked.

"It was the night I killed Voldemort," said Harry, and his eyes were wide, but Draco could see that Harry was staring past him, not really seeing anything in the room. "I wanted him dead so badly. And then he was. And I was- well, I was satisfied. That was how I knew I wanted to be an Auror, because I didn't feel happy about my revenge then, just gladness that I'd been able to do my duty. I thought that was an acceptable motive for an Auror.

"But there was- there was this madness that came over me a few hours later. I don't know how to describe it. I just wanted to be free of most of the things I'd been carrying around with me, the things from my past, even the ones that helped me destroy Voldemort. So I made a bonfire and burned the Invisibility Cloak and a few other things." From the lines of tension along Harry's body, Draco knew better than to ask what those had been. "Not everything, of course. There was an album with all the pictures of my parents I had in the world. I kept that. But that was another reason I gave all my money away, I think. I didn't want to be who I'd been. I knew people were going to valorize me because I killed Voldemort, but everything else- I could get rid of things that I didn't want, possessions that tied me to the past."

Draco didn't say how unutterably sad he found the fact that Harry had wanted to shut out the memories of his friends and his parents rather than hold on to them. But, of course, that was part of what had led to his emotional repression of the years since. And- well. Harry had learned even before then, by the sound of what he told Theresa, not to value himself much.

"Was what you told Theresa about the Dursleys true in every respect?" he asked.

Harry jolted, and frowned at him. "I wasn't lying to her."

"No, but I think you made it sound better than it was." Draco didn't move his hand. "They neglected you, you said. Starved you some. Made you do chores that you shouldn't have to do." He paused. "Made you sleep in a cupboard. Told you lies about your parents."

Harry bared his teeth. "Yes. And that is all they did, Draco." His voice was clipped and harsh. "They never hit me, they never raped me, they never did the awful things that you hear about, the things that you see, when you're called in on a child abuse case." He moved his face away from Draco's touch for the first time. "Wizards can do a lot worse things to children than Muggles can."

Draco said nothing, because it was so obvious that Harry didn't want to talk about this. He'd left the past behind. If he could have burned his memories of the Dursleys the way he'd burned the Invisibility Cloak, Draco was certain that he would have.

That meant he would never take revenge on the Dursleys.

So Draco had to take revenge for him.

They did abuse you, Harry. They twisted your mind. They're the source of a good many of your problems, I can tell.

And for that, they'll pay.