CHAPTER FOUR
+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+
(Ovid )
Several days of anxiety combined with the distressingly spicy casserole the house elves had served the previous night had combined to generate an unhappy ferment in Harry's stomach. He awoke that Sunday morning after a night of fitful sleep, fingers digging into the flesh of his abdomen as though he could reach through his skin and remove the offending organ, along with the worry that had set up residence inside it.
His mirror commented on his unnaturally pale face, but Harry ignored it - although, privately, he knew absolutely that he looked as bad as he felt. What had once been euphoria, so bold and unexpected in the grayish monotony of academic life, had transformed into *this*, this sick, acidic feeling deep inside him. Like acid, it worked through his body, shredding him into so many frayed nerves, so that by the time he finished dressing all he wanted to do was find a bottle of Living Death, crawl inside, and never come out.
/You're not backing down,/ he told himself forcefully as he opened his window. He'd planned to fly to Hogsmeade and Apparate directly to Liber's, but even the promise of flying held little attraction - for first time in a long time (probably the first time *ever*, he amended), he balked at transformation. /You're not backing down,/ he repeated. /Ron's done too much for you to... to chicken out. *You've* done too much. You *promised.*/
Well, he hadn't exactly promised anything, but remembering the last words that had passed between himself and Draco, and the difficulty of writing his letter made him realize he *had*, in a way. He had offered himself hope - worse, he had offered Draco hope... And hope, although it was so insubstantial, the farthest thing removed from a promise, was the cruelest promise there was.
"You're welcome to stay," Draco had said.
Looking back now on those simple words and the reaction they had evoked, Harry wondered how he had managed to keep from... exploding at them. He had felt so many things - fear, joy, pleasure in the simple request, annoyance that it had taken so long, an exultation so strong... and terror at that. For a brief moment, he had not seen the unexpectedly sober, still-wary young blond-haired man - he saw the boy the man had been, his gray eyes alight with cruel mischief, his sleek, silvered voice dripping hatred so casually. It had been enough for him to wonder, irrationally, why he was so pleased, so *exultant* at the invitation of an enemy.
What *was* Draco Malfoy to him? He knew what Draco Malfoy had *been*... but now? He could not say. So, for the first time since they had met again, he retreated, furious with his cowardice.
"Thank you. I really do need to get going, though - I need to finish preparing a test to torture the fifth-year Ravenclaws." And as he had spoken, he had thought: /I don't know how to handle this. I want it, but I don't know what to do with it... please understand this, Draco. If you don't understand anything else, understand this./
And Draco had said, in a tone of voice Harry could not quite place, but that hovered between being happy and being sad, the bitter, terrible kind of hope: "Come back, then." He had paused, then added, "Any time. You're always... that is to say, you're welcome here."
Something unfamiliar had flickered through those gray eyes. It was not malice or hatred or bored superiority - and it wasn't frightening, no, it was beautiful and gave Harry the courage to say, "I will."
Now he held fast to that courage and the simple resolution that had gotten him through years of life with the Dursleys and years more of war - everything had come so far. He had come so far, Ron had, Draco had maybe come the farthest... He couldn't let that go to waste. Not for the first time, he wondered what Draco had lost in the war. He knew the tally for his own side, of course, had recited it during the courses of many sleepless nights. /Bill and Ginny Weasley, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, Parvati Patil, Severus Snape, Stewart Ackerley.../ The list would drone on and on, and never once had Draco entered into it, until recently.
Until he had seen the pain in Draco's eyes when he had spoken of his father and mother, and knew that pain because it was his own - except maybe this pain was crueler for Draco, who had watched both his parents die, whereas he had been a baby, crying in an abandoned and desolated ruin, but crying just as much from cold and hunger as he had been from sorrow. But still, however it happened... orphans, the pair of them.
Harry *knew* that loneliness, and knew he couldn't keep existing in it - and Draco, whatever he had done, could not exist like that.
That thought was all it took for him to throw himself out the window.
He felt the merciless hand of gravity seize him, the split-second reflex of his transformation rippling through his body, and the arms he had stretched out in reflexive desperation became wings that caught the air, embraced it, and propelled him upward. On he flew, past Hogsmeade, heading south and east into the opalescent fire of the dawn, flying on and on until his internal clock told him the inevitable: that he had to land and change and Apparate, all to meet his best friend, and someone else who was not a friend, but almost - was something less, and more.
* * *
Liber's had not changed in the three years between Harry's first (and only) visit and the present day. It was a little grimier, if that was at all possible, but the clientele was as disreputable-looking as ever, and several of them eyed him appraisingly. He was, Harry supposed, an easy "mark", or whatever the street-talk was for the stupid tourist-type person who wandered into the wrong part of town, what with his being short, dressed in robes a bit too big for him, and looking utterly lost.
And of course Ron was *late.* Only by two minutes, but *still*... It was two minutes too many, in Harry's opinion. He had been unnaturally jerky and ill at ease after his transformation, having lost the reassurance of flight, and the anger that came on at the slow imperfection of his body had him on a short fuse. Steeling himself against the pain of walking as normally as he could manage, he opened Liber's peeling, weather-beaten door and stepped into a common room that did not look much better.
It occurred to him, looking around the cramped and dim confines of the place, that he should leave right away. Instead of doing the sensible thing, he skulked through the shadows and found a place at a corner table. He took the seat that faced the door so he could see Ron when he came in - and so he could see the rest of the room, which had apparently taken an apathetic interest in him. Two demonic-looking beings sitting at the bar glared at him distrustfully but after a moment of silent study, turned back to their drinks.
The man who was presumably the barkeep, a living boulder with arms to rival Hagrid's, stumped up to where Harry was sitting at a darkened corner table and trying to be inconspicuous. He eyed Harry evilly from his great height, his expression made even more menacing by the wild black hair framing the craggy face - a face very much like Hagrid's as well, but completely without the warmth. There was a tense moment of silence during which Harry tried not to make eye contact.
"You ain't jus' gon' sit here all day, are yeh?" the man demanded, his voice rolling over Harry like a tidal wave. "This place is for *payin'* customers - and if you ain't payin', you ain't stayin'. So what's it gonna be? You got five seconds to answer or yer out on yer skinny lil' ass."
"Uhhh... it's a bit early for me," Harry apologized, racking his brain desperately for something to get him out of this. Where the bloody hell was Ron? Ron! "I'm waiting for a friend," he said in what he hoped was a steady voice. "He should be along in a minute. He'll get something."
"Right, mate," said the barkeep, "and I'm the bloody Minister of Magic. Who's this friend o' yers, anyway?"
"Him!" A bright red head appeared in the doorway, a beacon of salvation, and Harry seized on it, pointing wildly in its direction. Ron turned immediately, as if drawn by the magnetic force of the desperation emanating from Harry's corner, to where his best friend sat half-hidden by the gigantic body of the bartender, who turned ponderously about to see what Harry was pointing at so wildly.
"Mr. Weasley!" The basso voice skipped up a couple octaves. "We didn't know you were coming."
"It's no big thing, Aurel," Ron said as he strode casually up to "Aurel," offering a hand that was engulfed in one of Aurel's massive paws. "How have things been?" he asked, looking around curiously. Harry watched, a bit stunned.
Aurel's face split in a terrifying leer Harry supposed was his version of a smile. "It's goin' pretty good, Mr. Weasley," he rumbled, caressing Ron's last name like a lion purring. "We got a pretty steady business here, and it's gotten better since the war ended." Real pride touched his voice at that.
It did not take much effort for Harry to keep from saying it didn't look like things had improved much. He glanced around at the dingy, shabby room and the equally dilapidated creatures that inhabited it. A large, shadowy figure moved in the far corner, a massive lump about Aurel's size. A half giant? Another one? Harry tried not to keep gawking, but it wasn't easy. Inwardly, he was convinced that two of the beings at the bar were not fully human either. /You'd think you were... what? Some snot-nosed first year stumbling around Knockturn Alley./ He amended that to 'second year.' /Not everything's bloody peaches and roses Potter - you should know that./
Ron's voice pulled him from his consternation. "I'm glad to hear it, Aurel. Could I get... uh, pumpkin juice?"
"Of course, sir," Aurel said placidly, but the look he turned on Harry was anything but. "Anything f'r yer friend?"
"He'll have a pumpkin juice too," Ron said before Harry could get his mouth open. "And he's okay, Aurel - this is Harry Potter." Aurel's rocklike face twisted in surprise. "Harry, this is Aurel Jotunwulf. He runs the place."
"It's very good to meet you," Harry managed, holding out his hand.
Aurel's hand closed around his in a powerful grip. "Blimey! Harry Potter." The deep voice quavered upward a bit at Harry's name and the beady gaze searched through the thatch of Harry's hair for the ever-famous scar. "It *is* an honor. Uh, sir."
"The juice, Aurel," Ron said softly. He dropped into the seat across the table from Harry, and the wooden chair creaked in protest - but, fortunately, did not give out. Aurel, after releasing Harry's hand from custody, muttered apologies for the misunderstanding and stumped off to disappear into the gloom of the back room. For a moment, Ron watched him go, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth, before turning back to Harry. The smile vanished.
"Everything's all set," he said softly, leaning a bit closer. Harry sank down in his seat and waited for Ron to say anything more. Finally: "We have to take a Portkey there - I got a friend in the Department of Magical Transportation to arrange it for me. From there, I'm heading to the manor directly, you'll have to transform and come an hour or so later - the other Ministry people should be gone by then. By the time you get there, a window in Draco's study on the lower floor should be open. You'll have to find it."
Aurel materialized with their juice before Harry could say anything. He hovered for a moment, mostly to assure Ron that he didn't have to pay anything - it was on the house, sir, and thanks again - and then drifted away uncertainly to tend to the mysterious figures at the bar.
"This is harder than setting up a blind date," Ron sighed. He tossed down the glass of juice in one swallow - "knocking back a shot" was how George would have put it - and set it down to stare at it moodily. "Remember the time Dean and Seamus tried to set you up with Susan Bones during sixth year?"
"I don't know how they decided the dungeons would be a romantic place to meet." Harry sipped at his juice, wincing at the taste - what *kind* of pumpkin was this anyway? - and the memory of the date... and Dean and Seamus, who were dead. Susan had been about as surprised as he had been at finding each other in the otherwise deserted dungeons, abandoned by their friends, but she had recovered far more quickly. After talking for a painful half hour or so, she'd sent him back to his common room with a kiss on the cheek ("She kissed you like she'd kiss her brother!" Dean had lamented) and a smile that said it was nothing personal.
"Seamus wouldn't have known romantic if it had bitten him on the nose," Ron said with finality. He reached across the table, filched Harry's glass out from under his nose, and swallowed half of it. At Harry's indignant sputter of protest, he smirked and said, "I saw you - I know you don't like it. And I'm dying over here."
"What *is* this place?" Harry asked. He made no move to claim his stolen glass.
Ron snickered. "You asked that the last time we came. It's not a bar, really... more like a, oh, I don't know. Aurel's a half-giant who came over with Hagrid to help during the war - that's his wife, Yasmina, over in the corner, doing the receipts." The gigantic, shadowy hulk now identified as Yasmina raised its neatly-coiffed head; Ron waved in its direction, and it waved back before returning to its business. Ron continued in a somewhat more quiet tone: "He and she got money from the Ministry to set up a place where all half-humans or non-human sentient beings could come and stay after Dumbledore convinced the Ministry to issue a general amnesty. There are a few vampires here, a couple werewolves, goblins, and things that live here. I guess they figure there's safety in numbers still."
"They seem to think you're okay," Harry said doubtfully.
"The Aurors helped protect them during the war," Ron said. "I was assigned here right after I finished training." A precariously soft expression crossed Ron's face, and for a moment, Harry's irritable best friend looked almost... *sentimental*, if 'sentimental' and 'Ron Weasley' could ever be in the same room together.
"Well," Ron said a bit too loudly as he made a show of studying his watch, "I think it's time to get going."
"Right." Harry thought he did a pretty good job of keeping his voice steady despite the mutinous shuddering in his heart. Numb suddenly, too overwhelmed by what was about to happen, he stood and trailed Ron through a side door leading out of the bar, steadfastly ignoring Aurel's suspicious gaze following them. The door banged shut behind him, echoing with absolute finality in the tiny, abandoned alleyway.
He hovered uncertainly as Ron poked around for a minute. The scraping of garbage and random junk was harsh in the silence, and he could hear the tiny, furtive skitterings of rats fleeing from their disturbed havens. Harry glanced in the direction of Diagon Alley, which seemed to be very far off, still quiet on a Sunday morning - and it seemed *too* quiet, suddenly. His heart gave one terrific thud, jolted out of its humdrum pace by adrenalin.
For a moment, he was back in the war, sneaking, running, hiding, spying, attacking, the taste of a curse on his mouth, tripping over a loose stone, looking up into pale gray eyes as astonished as his own, feeling hatred and despair sweep over him.
And then he was back, with Ron's hand on his shoulder. His gaze darted from the hand on his shoulder to the one holding the battered cowboy hat to Ron's shadowed, concerned face.
"You okay, Harry?"
Harry licked his lips and swallowed twice before nodding.
Ron's expression told him he was in doubt about that, but he did not press. Instead, he held out the Portkey - almost, though, as one would hold out a challenge - and Harry, swallowing his sudden fear, placed a hand upon it.
For an infinite second, the world remained exactly the same. Just as Harry opened his mouth to ask if there was something wrong, he felt the inevitable tug just behind his navel, as if something had hooked him through the gut, the world whirled, vanished, and reappeared again, this time made of trees and a cold breeze and the smell of open air.
"Thank Merlin that worked," Ron muttered, folding up the hat and tucking it safely into his robes. "This is set for another two hours from now," he continued, "but I'll be taking it by myself. You'll have to continue straight back to Hogwarts, however you want to do it."
There was something of... washing one's hands of the situation in Ron's tone that made Harry vaguely uncomfortable. A small warning stirred deep inside him, and were this anyone other than Ron, he would have thought to feel his scar twinge. But this was *Ron*, who was looking at him again with an expression that reminded him of their old school days - sort of concerned, partly clueless, but determined to find out what was going on.
"I've never been in love with my worst enemy," Ron said at last. He turned on his heel as if that were the end of discussion, then paused and turned back. "Well, maybe I *have* been," he added ruefully. Harry squelched the jealousy that rose at seeing Ron lightly touch the band on the third finger of his left hand. "I don't think, though, that this is the same thing."
/It's not the same thing./ Ron's words touched on something that had been harbored deep in Harry's mind, the formless thing to which he had been trying to give shape. It was that thing that had haunted him, turning his happiness to fear, worrying at his confidence until it had become nothing. /This isn't the same thing... but when have you ever been scared of the new and different?/
"You're right," Harry said sturdily, surprised at his sudden confidence. "It's not."
/This is something different./
/What happened to wanting *normal*, Potter?/ The snide little voice made one last rally, but Harry ignored it.
Ron grinned and straightened a bit, looking more like Harry's best friend than he had in many days, and Harry took some more confidence from seeing his friend back again. "Variety is the spice of life," Ron commented with a bit of a smirk. "I'll see you later."
His best friend vanished almost before the last word left his mouth, leaving Harry alone to kill an hour or so worth of time in the forest. It wasn't difficult to do: a few minutes later, Harry transformed and coasted the idle breezes of the forest before angling up through the treetops. He kept low, skimming over the very roof of the trees, darting like a ghost through the shadowy, uncertain light there.
The forest was ancient, the remains of what had probably once been a single, massive body of trees stretching from corner to corner of the sky. Fields intruded here and there, but they were tiny squares of cultivated land, uncertain intrusions upon a much older place. To his east, the light-drinking bulk of Malfoy manor stood blackly against the sun, casting its shadow over its manicured lawns and gardens. Harry shivered inwardly, thinking of his first daunting walk up to that place, his amazement that Draco had been at home in such monstrosity.
Slowly, the sun ticked off an hour and Harry angled back in the direction of the house, seeing the edges of the building, rising from the blanket of shadows, begin to bristle with the forms of gargoyles and sheela na'gigs, hideous and leering faces with bodies distorted as though stretched upon the rack. For a moment, he wished for his human sight, the sight that would allow him to see everything in blurs and vagueness, not this... not this, with all those writhing beings yawning their greetings at him with howling mouths.
Unable to look at those things any longer, Harry tucked his wings against his body and freefell, losing his fear in the shocking rush of wind and gravity pulling at him. The world sped away from him, vanishing in a ripcurrent of wind through his feathers. He saw, dimly, the sky and horizon whip past him faster than they ever had when he'd been on a broomstick, or so it seemed.
A heartbeat later he pulled himself out from his headlong dive, sweeping in a parabola across the grass and over the lake placed before the castle, the tips over his feathers playing over the unreflective surface of the water. The lake flashed away beneath him and he banked sharply to skim the shadowy walls of the house, keeping a sharp eye out for the open room Ron had promised him, and found it after a few minutes of searching. It was hidden in an alcove and shrouded by a heavy cloak of ivy and climbing weeds.
The window was open enough for him to land on the ledge and wriggle his way inside it. He flapped clumsily onto a tall curio stand, gathered himself, then launched off it and transformed.
Again, the shock of shape-changing hit him.
Harry blinked and passed a hand over his eyes. Going from a hawk to a human had caused the dimness of the room to shatter his vision like a hammer blow, and he reeled for a moment, lost, before he regained himself. This always happened, this cruel sloughing-off of sight, and though it always happened he never got used to it. Even with the horror of the damned, stony beings clinging to the castle walls so clear in his mind, he wished for the invincibility of vision and lamented losing it again. He always felt powerful in his other form, confident in himself. And it was enough for him to think for one swift, perilous moment that he would always be this clear-sighted, omniscient as it were, that nothing was hidden from him.
And he exulted in his power as he wheeled through the sky, the tips of his feathers like razors through the clouds - it was always that way, and so it was inevitable that when he returned to the leaden weight of his human form and the gravity of logic, the perfect clarity of his vision, the brightness of it, vanished.
Blinded by what was, to his imperfect human sight, total darkness, it took time to recover - time to think /This is normal, this is natural, it's okay, it's fine, just close your eyes and count to three/ and to do as he commanded himself. After seconds passed, each one punctuated by the panicky thudding of his heart against his chest, Harry opened his eyes cautiously.
The dark, shadowy place had resolved now into a badly lit display room of sorts, elegant and expensive-looking even in its gloomy shroud. What little of the morning light that made it through cracks in brocaded drapes was transformed into a sullen sort of halo around the edges of furniture and decorations. Harry looked around, half-whistled under his breath, at what he saw.
Gold and silver, old green-tinged copper glinted here and there where the light strayed in the shadows. Ivory, silk, a beautiful egg decorated like the Faberge eggs Harry had read about in one of his aunt's oversized coffee table books. The near-darkness of the room seemed criminal for the way it hid such beautiful things. Twice, Harry almost pulled out his wand to provide some light, but twice he made himself stop - he didn't know who was watching, or who would know when, or if, magic was being done.
He contented himself with wandering, then, peering into glassy display cases and examining the larger works that were left free-standing. Feeling more than a little guilty about snooping through someone's private things - never mind that they were Draco's, and /What if you caught *him* going through *your* things?/ he asked himself - Harry poked around the room. In a corner was a parquetry-worked cedar bureau and atop it stood a crystalline sculpture, glittering even in the darkness. Thoughts of improper touching and going through things filtered out of Harry's brain when he saw it.
Almost before he knew it, he stood before it, and a moment later - barely time enough to process the thought - he had it in his hands. It was light, unexpectedly so, as though it was nothing more than a shell and nothing solid, shaped in graceful curves and loops his eyes couldn't follow. Over and over, he traced the path of one of those arcs, only to lose it as it braided itself with other strands just as graceful and bewitching, or as light danced at the edge of a prismatic surface to distract him from his study.
Harry absently wound his fingers over and through the piece, entranced by the near liquidity of the crystalline curves against his skin, the way it all weighed so close to nothing, little more than air made into something shining and beautiful - or like moonlight or sunlight on water. Had it been made by a wizard sculptor who could somehow give shape to those sorts of things? He examined the sculpture, looking for a maker's mark or signature, but found nothing. It *seemed* magical, though, with its impossible twists and involutions - yet did something need to be made of enchantments to be magical? He worried at the knot of the question for a time, turning the sculpture over and over in his hands, seeing the lovely intricacy of it and *not* seeing it at the same time.
That such a thing was in the Malfoys' manor house gave him to believe this was something magic, whether made from it for made to use it - unless, of course, he had stumbled across the Malfoys' secret Muggle shrine. And it was true enough, all the other objects in the room could have been found in any Muggle museum or a wealthy collector's private stash, and the Malfoys Harry knew would have killed themselves before owning any of it.
But... could they have ever loved beauty - or anything at all - for its own sake? Had any Malfoy - Lucius, Narcissa, Draco, the hundreds of Malfoys that had come before - looked at this sculpture and loved it because it was a beautiful thing?
Would Draco ever look at *him* and simply love him because Harry, who was certainly not beautiful and was damaged goods with his glasses and scar and bad leg, at least might be something different in Draco's eyes?
He despaired of the answer and put down the sculpture. A stray beam of light danced upon a sleek curve for a moment. Harry saw, in that same light, that the rich cedar of the bureau was covered in dust; his fingers and the cuff of his sleeve had left tracks it, just three fine slash marks that revealed the wood beneath its gray coating, like shiny new skin beneath the dead layers.
Looking around some more, he saw that the rest of the room was encased in dust as well, shrouded by it. The dust drank the little light the drapes allowed inside, and lay like a blanket of thin, dirty snow over every surface. Harry stood frozen for a moment, listening closely, and his breathing seemed unnaturally loud to him in the utter silence of the room - the dust had drunk up everything, he thought irrationally: all the light, the beauty of the place. It was like standing in a tomb.
The silence disturbed him deeply. Suddenly restless and needing movement, Harry paced the room despite the ever-present pain in his left leg. /Don't think about it,/ he told himself fiercely. /Don't, under any circumstances, think about it./ The room began to close around him, tight and smothering. The treasures it held now seemed more like the relics of some person long dead, things that should not be disturbed.
A flash of movement snagged his attention.
He froze, staring closely. There was nothing for a moment, then something moved again. Curiosity worked its way through his surprise, and he walked in the direction of the oddly beckoning little thing, which proved to be a wizard photograph in an improbably ornate gilt frame, a wizard photograph of three pale-haired people - two adults and a child of about four or so.
It didn't take much to recognize Lucius Malfoy - Harry would know those pale, condescending eyes anywhere. The woman next to him, dressed in expensive robes, would be Narcissa. /She died, too,/ Harry thought absently, picking up the photograph, feeling the heft of the heavy frame. /She died because you lived./ She did not look as haughty as he remembered from the few times he'd run across her. Instead, she looked almost... happy, if Harry could ever ascribe such a human emotion to a Malfoy.
/That was low,/ he chastised himself.
His gaze drifted to the four-year-old boy in trousers and a white shirt, the figure that had caught his attention in the first place.
It was strange looking at a younger Draco, because Harry could not think of Draco as ever having been young. At school, Hermione had sniffed condescendingly over his juvenile behavior (to be fair, Harry decided, he and Ron hadn't been much better), but as the years wore on, something in Draco had changed. His taunting had stopped at the end of fourth year, and a cold watchfulness had replaced it. The frigid laughter had vanished into silent mockery, and when Draco had moved through the Great Hall, he'd seemed to suck up the attention from its occupants - the way he walked, the silence and calculatedness of it... Harry hadn't recognized it at the time, but he remembered being vaguely frightened of such a figure - it had been instinctual, maybe, but from fifth year on, he had never thought of Draco as being a fellow teenager, but rather something that had worn teenaged flesh.
He'd tried to talk with Ron about it, but his best friend had dismissed it with a wave of his hand and typical "Sod Malfoy, anyhow." Hermione had looked at him and said in her best, stating-the-perfectly-obvious voice, "Well, he's a *Malfoy*, Harry. I suppose he just finished selling the rest of his soul to Voldemort." Her tone had darkened. "What was left of it, anyway."
Now, looking at the photo, Harry found it difficult to connect the little boy with the young man he'd known in school - and the man he knew now, whose eyes held a light somewhere between the nearly effusive happiness of that long-ago picture and the cruel superiority of his school-day self... and a light that was something else, not made of either age.
/What is it?/ he wondered, thinking back to his few conversations with Draco, and the ones between Draco and Ron he'd eavesdropped on at Hogwarts. /What's there?/
Most people would have dismissed this as irrational, but Harry Potter was not most people. He *wanted* to find out, although the prospect set his heart pounding irritably at the wall of his chest again. Terror leeched through his bones, cooling his blood. /You're not afraid, are you?/ the tiny, silky voice asked. /What could the Great Harry Potter possibly fear? That he'll turn you into something like him?/
/I'm already like him./
Voices echoed in the hallway beyond the door, and he heard footsteps drawing closer, hollow on marble tiles. He could pick out Ron's nearly ghost-like tread, the more substantial but still light sound of Draco's feet. Their voices rose above them, twisted a bit by the high ceiling of the hall. Harry caught his breath, listening.
"I don't buy it, *Weasley*," Draco was saying. Harry could almost see his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Fudge is a Slytherin through and through - didn't you *know* that?"
"Of course I *know* that," Ron said back, plainly annoyed - and probably near the end of his rope. "And I also know that Fudge would rather put his eyes out than see the forest for the trees." He sounded like he had said this many times before.
"So you're..." Draco paused and his voice lowered. Harry tried to catch the following words, but heard nothing except a low, sussurant whisper.
"If I am?" Ron's voice rang like a bell in the silence. "It's none of your damn business *Malfoy*."
"Just so we're clear on that," Draco answered.
Tensely, Harry listened for any more, but if more words were exchanged, he didn't hear them. Instead, he only heard Malfoy commanding one of the house-elves to show "Master Weasley" the way out - "Master Wheezy will come this way, sir," the house-elf squeaked - and Ron's already faint footsteps becoming fainter as he strode down the hallway.
Harry wondered if Ron had known he was hiding in here like some sort of criminal. Well, he *was* a criminal, wasn't he? Of a sort, granted... he wasn't breaking and entering, but consorting with a known, if former, Death Eater counted for more than just being a misdemeanor in the Ministry's book. Resolutely, he pushed the fear of his law-abiding self away, and squared himself for what was coming.
/Listen to you! Do you think you're going to have a bloody wizards' duel?/ He tried to make his posture less defensive, but it didn't seem to work very well, and as Draco opened the door, spilling light into the darkened room, he had again the distinct sense of ungracefulness, that he was awkward and uncertain Harry Potter, standing in a roomful of beautiful things, watching Draco Malfoy watch him with those keen gray eyes.
+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+
(Ovid )
Several days of anxiety combined with the distressingly spicy casserole the house elves had served the previous night had combined to generate an unhappy ferment in Harry's stomach. He awoke that Sunday morning after a night of fitful sleep, fingers digging into the flesh of his abdomen as though he could reach through his skin and remove the offending organ, along with the worry that had set up residence inside it.
His mirror commented on his unnaturally pale face, but Harry ignored it - although, privately, he knew absolutely that he looked as bad as he felt. What had once been euphoria, so bold and unexpected in the grayish monotony of academic life, had transformed into *this*, this sick, acidic feeling deep inside him. Like acid, it worked through his body, shredding him into so many frayed nerves, so that by the time he finished dressing all he wanted to do was find a bottle of Living Death, crawl inside, and never come out.
/You're not backing down,/ he told himself forcefully as he opened his window. He'd planned to fly to Hogsmeade and Apparate directly to Liber's, but even the promise of flying held little attraction - for first time in a long time (probably the first time *ever*, he amended), he balked at transformation. /You're not backing down,/ he repeated. /Ron's done too much for you to... to chicken out. *You've* done too much. You *promised.*/
Well, he hadn't exactly promised anything, but remembering the last words that had passed between himself and Draco, and the difficulty of writing his letter made him realize he *had*, in a way. He had offered himself hope - worse, he had offered Draco hope... And hope, although it was so insubstantial, the farthest thing removed from a promise, was the cruelest promise there was.
"You're welcome to stay," Draco had said.
Looking back now on those simple words and the reaction they had evoked, Harry wondered how he had managed to keep from... exploding at them. He had felt so many things - fear, joy, pleasure in the simple request, annoyance that it had taken so long, an exultation so strong... and terror at that. For a brief moment, he had not seen the unexpectedly sober, still-wary young blond-haired man - he saw the boy the man had been, his gray eyes alight with cruel mischief, his sleek, silvered voice dripping hatred so casually. It had been enough for him to wonder, irrationally, why he was so pleased, so *exultant* at the invitation of an enemy.
What *was* Draco Malfoy to him? He knew what Draco Malfoy had *been*... but now? He could not say. So, for the first time since they had met again, he retreated, furious with his cowardice.
"Thank you. I really do need to get going, though - I need to finish preparing a test to torture the fifth-year Ravenclaws." And as he had spoken, he had thought: /I don't know how to handle this. I want it, but I don't know what to do with it... please understand this, Draco. If you don't understand anything else, understand this./
And Draco had said, in a tone of voice Harry could not quite place, but that hovered between being happy and being sad, the bitter, terrible kind of hope: "Come back, then." He had paused, then added, "Any time. You're always... that is to say, you're welcome here."
Something unfamiliar had flickered through those gray eyes. It was not malice or hatred or bored superiority - and it wasn't frightening, no, it was beautiful and gave Harry the courage to say, "I will."
Now he held fast to that courage and the simple resolution that had gotten him through years of life with the Dursleys and years more of war - everything had come so far. He had come so far, Ron had, Draco had maybe come the farthest... He couldn't let that go to waste. Not for the first time, he wondered what Draco had lost in the war. He knew the tally for his own side, of course, had recited it during the courses of many sleepless nights. /Bill and Ginny Weasley, Dean Thomas, Seamus Finnigan, Parvati Patil, Severus Snape, Stewart Ackerley.../ The list would drone on and on, and never once had Draco entered into it, until recently.
Until he had seen the pain in Draco's eyes when he had spoken of his father and mother, and knew that pain because it was his own - except maybe this pain was crueler for Draco, who had watched both his parents die, whereas he had been a baby, crying in an abandoned and desolated ruin, but crying just as much from cold and hunger as he had been from sorrow. But still, however it happened... orphans, the pair of them.
Harry *knew* that loneliness, and knew he couldn't keep existing in it - and Draco, whatever he had done, could not exist like that.
That thought was all it took for him to throw himself out the window.
He felt the merciless hand of gravity seize him, the split-second reflex of his transformation rippling through his body, and the arms he had stretched out in reflexive desperation became wings that caught the air, embraced it, and propelled him upward. On he flew, past Hogsmeade, heading south and east into the opalescent fire of the dawn, flying on and on until his internal clock told him the inevitable: that he had to land and change and Apparate, all to meet his best friend, and someone else who was not a friend, but almost - was something less, and more.
* * *
Liber's had not changed in the three years between Harry's first (and only) visit and the present day. It was a little grimier, if that was at all possible, but the clientele was as disreputable-looking as ever, and several of them eyed him appraisingly. He was, Harry supposed, an easy "mark", or whatever the street-talk was for the stupid tourist-type person who wandered into the wrong part of town, what with his being short, dressed in robes a bit too big for him, and looking utterly lost.
And of course Ron was *late.* Only by two minutes, but *still*... It was two minutes too many, in Harry's opinion. He had been unnaturally jerky and ill at ease after his transformation, having lost the reassurance of flight, and the anger that came on at the slow imperfection of his body had him on a short fuse. Steeling himself against the pain of walking as normally as he could manage, he opened Liber's peeling, weather-beaten door and stepped into a common room that did not look much better.
It occurred to him, looking around the cramped and dim confines of the place, that he should leave right away. Instead of doing the sensible thing, he skulked through the shadows and found a place at a corner table. He took the seat that faced the door so he could see Ron when he came in - and so he could see the rest of the room, which had apparently taken an apathetic interest in him. Two demonic-looking beings sitting at the bar glared at him distrustfully but after a moment of silent study, turned back to their drinks.
The man who was presumably the barkeep, a living boulder with arms to rival Hagrid's, stumped up to where Harry was sitting at a darkened corner table and trying to be inconspicuous. He eyed Harry evilly from his great height, his expression made even more menacing by the wild black hair framing the craggy face - a face very much like Hagrid's as well, but completely without the warmth. There was a tense moment of silence during which Harry tried not to make eye contact.
"You ain't jus' gon' sit here all day, are yeh?" the man demanded, his voice rolling over Harry like a tidal wave. "This place is for *payin'* customers - and if you ain't payin', you ain't stayin'. So what's it gonna be? You got five seconds to answer or yer out on yer skinny lil' ass."
"Uhhh... it's a bit early for me," Harry apologized, racking his brain desperately for something to get him out of this. Where the bloody hell was Ron? Ron! "I'm waiting for a friend," he said in what he hoped was a steady voice. "He should be along in a minute. He'll get something."
"Right, mate," said the barkeep, "and I'm the bloody Minister of Magic. Who's this friend o' yers, anyway?"
"Him!" A bright red head appeared in the doorway, a beacon of salvation, and Harry seized on it, pointing wildly in its direction. Ron turned immediately, as if drawn by the magnetic force of the desperation emanating from Harry's corner, to where his best friend sat half-hidden by the gigantic body of the bartender, who turned ponderously about to see what Harry was pointing at so wildly.
"Mr. Weasley!" The basso voice skipped up a couple octaves. "We didn't know you were coming."
"It's no big thing, Aurel," Ron said as he strode casually up to "Aurel," offering a hand that was engulfed in one of Aurel's massive paws. "How have things been?" he asked, looking around curiously. Harry watched, a bit stunned.
Aurel's face split in a terrifying leer Harry supposed was his version of a smile. "It's goin' pretty good, Mr. Weasley," he rumbled, caressing Ron's last name like a lion purring. "We got a pretty steady business here, and it's gotten better since the war ended." Real pride touched his voice at that.
It did not take much effort for Harry to keep from saying it didn't look like things had improved much. He glanced around at the dingy, shabby room and the equally dilapidated creatures that inhabited it. A large, shadowy figure moved in the far corner, a massive lump about Aurel's size. A half giant? Another one? Harry tried not to keep gawking, but it wasn't easy. Inwardly, he was convinced that two of the beings at the bar were not fully human either. /You'd think you were... what? Some snot-nosed first year stumbling around Knockturn Alley./ He amended that to 'second year.' /Not everything's bloody peaches and roses Potter - you should know that./
Ron's voice pulled him from his consternation. "I'm glad to hear it, Aurel. Could I get... uh, pumpkin juice?"
"Of course, sir," Aurel said placidly, but the look he turned on Harry was anything but. "Anything f'r yer friend?"
"He'll have a pumpkin juice too," Ron said before Harry could get his mouth open. "And he's okay, Aurel - this is Harry Potter." Aurel's rocklike face twisted in surprise. "Harry, this is Aurel Jotunwulf. He runs the place."
"It's very good to meet you," Harry managed, holding out his hand.
Aurel's hand closed around his in a powerful grip. "Blimey! Harry Potter." The deep voice quavered upward a bit at Harry's name and the beady gaze searched through the thatch of Harry's hair for the ever-famous scar. "It *is* an honor. Uh, sir."
"The juice, Aurel," Ron said softly. He dropped into the seat across the table from Harry, and the wooden chair creaked in protest - but, fortunately, did not give out. Aurel, after releasing Harry's hand from custody, muttered apologies for the misunderstanding and stumped off to disappear into the gloom of the back room. For a moment, Ron watched him go, a faint smile at the corners of his mouth, before turning back to Harry. The smile vanished.
"Everything's all set," he said softly, leaning a bit closer. Harry sank down in his seat and waited for Ron to say anything more. Finally: "We have to take a Portkey there - I got a friend in the Department of Magical Transportation to arrange it for me. From there, I'm heading to the manor directly, you'll have to transform and come an hour or so later - the other Ministry people should be gone by then. By the time you get there, a window in Draco's study on the lower floor should be open. You'll have to find it."
Aurel materialized with their juice before Harry could say anything. He hovered for a moment, mostly to assure Ron that he didn't have to pay anything - it was on the house, sir, and thanks again - and then drifted away uncertainly to tend to the mysterious figures at the bar.
"This is harder than setting up a blind date," Ron sighed. He tossed down the glass of juice in one swallow - "knocking back a shot" was how George would have put it - and set it down to stare at it moodily. "Remember the time Dean and Seamus tried to set you up with Susan Bones during sixth year?"
"I don't know how they decided the dungeons would be a romantic place to meet." Harry sipped at his juice, wincing at the taste - what *kind* of pumpkin was this anyway? - and the memory of the date... and Dean and Seamus, who were dead. Susan had been about as surprised as he had been at finding each other in the otherwise deserted dungeons, abandoned by their friends, but she had recovered far more quickly. After talking for a painful half hour or so, she'd sent him back to his common room with a kiss on the cheek ("She kissed you like she'd kiss her brother!" Dean had lamented) and a smile that said it was nothing personal.
"Seamus wouldn't have known romantic if it had bitten him on the nose," Ron said with finality. He reached across the table, filched Harry's glass out from under his nose, and swallowed half of it. At Harry's indignant sputter of protest, he smirked and said, "I saw you - I know you don't like it. And I'm dying over here."
"What *is* this place?" Harry asked. He made no move to claim his stolen glass.
Ron snickered. "You asked that the last time we came. It's not a bar, really... more like a, oh, I don't know. Aurel's a half-giant who came over with Hagrid to help during the war - that's his wife, Yasmina, over in the corner, doing the receipts." The gigantic, shadowy hulk now identified as Yasmina raised its neatly-coiffed head; Ron waved in its direction, and it waved back before returning to its business. Ron continued in a somewhat more quiet tone: "He and she got money from the Ministry to set up a place where all half-humans or non-human sentient beings could come and stay after Dumbledore convinced the Ministry to issue a general amnesty. There are a few vampires here, a couple werewolves, goblins, and things that live here. I guess they figure there's safety in numbers still."
"They seem to think you're okay," Harry said doubtfully.
"The Aurors helped protect them during the war," Ron said. "I was assigned here right after I finished training." A precariously soft expression crossed Ron's face, and for a moment, Harry's irritable best friend looked almost... *sentimental*, if 'sentimental' and 'Ron Weasley' could ever be in the same room together.
"Well," Ron said a bit too loudly as he made a show of studying his watch, "I think it's time to get going."
"Right." Harry thought he did a pretty good job of keeping his voice steady despite the mutinous shuddering in his heart. Numb suddenly, too overwhelmed by what was about to happen, he stood and trailed Ron through a side door leading out of the bar, steadfastly ignoring Aurel's suspicious gaze following them. The door banged shut behind him, echoing with absolute finality in the tiny, abandoned alleyway.
He hovered uncertainly as Ron poked around for a minute. The scraping of garbage and random junk was harsh in the silence, and he could hear the tiny, furtive skitterings of rats fleeing from their disturbed havens. Harry glanced in the direction of Diagon Alley, which seemed to be very far off, still quiet on a Sunday morning - and it seemed *too* quiet, suddenly. His heart gave one terrific thud, jolted out of its humdrum pace by adrenalin.
For a moment, he was back in the war, sneaking, running, hiding, spying, attacking, the taste of a curse on his mouth, tripping over a loose stone, looking up into pale gray eyes as astonished as his own, feeling hatred and despair sweep over him.
And then he was back, with Ron's hand on his shoulder. His gaze darted from the hand on his shoulder to the one holding the battered cowboy hat to Ron's shadowed, concerned face.
"You okay, Harry?"
Harry licked his lips and swallowed twice before nodding.
Ron's expression told him he was in doubt about that, but he did not press. Instead, he held out the Portkey - almost, though, as one would hold out a challenge - and Harry, swallowing his sudden fear, placed a hand upon it.
For an infinite second, the world remained exactly the same. Just as Harry opened his mouth to ask if there was something wrong, he felt the inevitable tug just behind his navel, as if something had hooked him through the gut, the world whirled, vanished, and reappeared again, this time made of trees and a cold breeze and the smell of open air.
"Thank Merlin that worked," Ron muttered, folding up the hat and tucking it safely into his robes. "This is set for another two hours from now," he continued, "but I'll be taking it by myself. You'll have to continue straight back to Hogwarts, however you want to do it."
There was something of... washing one's hands of the situation in Ron's tone that made Harry vaguely uncomfortable. A small warning stirred deep inside him, and were this anyone other than Ron, he would have thought to feel his scar twinge. But this was *Ron*, who was looking at him again with an expression that reminded him of their old school days - sort of concerned, partly clueless, but determined to find out what was going on.
"I've never been in love with my worst enemy," Ron said at last. He turned on his heel as if that were the end of discussion, then paused and turned back. "Well, maybe I *have* been," he added ruefully. Harry squelched the jealousy that rose at seeing Ron lightly touch the band on the third finger of his left hand. "I don't think, though, that this is the same thing."
/It's not the same thing./ Ron's words touched on something that had been harbored deep in Harry's mind, the formless thing to which he had been trying to give shape. It was that thing that had haunted him, turning his happiness to fear, worrying at his confidence until it had become nothing. /This isn't the same thing... but when have you ever been scared of the new and different?/
"You're right," Harry said sturdily, surprised at his sudden confidence. "It's not."
/This is something different./
/What happened to wanting *normal*, Potter?/ The snide little voice made one last rally, but Harry ignored it.
Ron grinned and straightened a bit, looking more like Harry's best friend than he had in many days, and Harry took some more confidence from seeing his friend back again. "Variety is the spice of life," Ron commented with a bit of a smirk. "I'll see you later."
His best friend vanished almost before the last word left his mouth, leaving Harry alone to kill an hour or so worth of time in the forest. It wasn't difficult to do: a few minutes later, Harry transformed and coasted the idle breezes of the forest before angling up through the treetops. He kept low, skimming over the very roof of the trees, darting like a ghost through the shadowy, uncertain light there.
The forest was ancient, the remains of what had probably once been a single, massive body of trees stretching from corner to corner of the sky. Fields intruded here and there, but they were tiny squares of cultivated land, uncertain intrusions upon a much older place. To his east, the light-drinking bulk of Malfoy manor stood blackly against the sun, casting its shadow over its manicured lawns and gardens. Harry shivered inwardly, thinking of his first daunting walk up to that place, his amazement that Draco had been at home in such monstrosity.
Slowly, the sun ticked off an hour and Harry angled back in the direction of the house, seeing the edges of the building, rising from the blanket of shadows, begin to bristle with the forms of gargoyles and sheela na'gigs, hideous and leering faces with bodies distorted as though stretched upon the rack. For a moment, he wished for his human sight, the sight that would allow him to see everything in blurs and vagueness, not this... not this, with all those writhing beings yawning their greetings at him with howling mouths.
Unable to look at those things any longer, Harry tucked his wings against his body and freefell, losing his fear in the shocking rush of wind and gravity pulling at him. The world sped away from him, vanishing in a ripcurrent of wind through his feathers. He saw, dimly, the sky and horizon whip past him faster than they ever had when he'd been on a broomstick, or so it seemed.
A heartbeat later he pulled himself out from his headlong dive, sweeping in a parabola across the grass and over the lake placed before the castle, the tips over his feathers playing over the unreflective surface of the water. The lake flashed away beneath him and he banked sharply to skim the shadowy walls of the house, keeping a sharp eye out for the open room Ron had promised him, and found it after a few minutes of searching. It was hidden in an alcove and shrouded by a heavy cloak of ivy and climbing weeds.
The window was open enough for him to land on the ledge and wriggle his way inside it. He flapped clumsily onto a tall curio stand, gathered himself, then launched off it and transformed.
Again, the shock of shape-changing hit him.
Harry blinked and passed a hand over his eyes. Going from a hawk to a human had caused the dimness of the room to shatter his vision like a hammer blow, and he reeled for a moment, lost, before he regained himself. This always happened, this cruel sloughing-off of sight, and though it always happened he never got used to it. Even with the horror of the damned, stony beings clinging to the castle walls so clear in his mind, he wished for the invincibility of vision and lamented losing it again. He always felt powerful in his other form, confident in himself. And it was enough for him to think for one swift, perilous moment that he would always be this clear-sighted, omniscient as it were, that nothing was hidden from him.
And he exulted in his power as he wheeled through the sky, the tips of his feathers like razors through the clouds - it was always that way, and so it was inevitable that when he returned to the leaden weight of his human form and the gravity of logic, the perfect clarity of his vision, the brightness of it, vanished.
Blinded by what was, to his imperfect human sight, total darkness, it took time to recover - time to think /This is normal, this is natural, it's okay, it's fine, just close your eyes and count to three/ and to do as he commanded himself. After seconds passed, each one punctuated by the panicky thudding of his heart against his chest, Harry opened his eyes cautiously.
The dark, shadowy place had resolved now into a badly lit display room of sorts, elegant and expensive-looking even in its gloomy shroud. What little of the morning light that made it through cracks in brocaded drapes was transformed into a sullen sort of halo around the edges of furniture and decorations. Harry looked around, half-whistled under his breath, at what he saw.
Gold and silver, old green-tinged copper glinted here and there where the light strayed in the shadows. Ivory, silk, a beautiful egg decorated like the Faberge eggs Harry had read about in one of his aunt's oversized coffee table books. The near-darkness of the room seemed criminal for the way it hid such beautiful things. Twice, Harry almost pulled out his wand to provide some light, but twice he made himself stop - he didn't know who was watching, or who would know when, or if, magic was being done.
He contented himself with wandering, then, peering into glassy display cases and examining the larger works that were left free-standing. Feeling more than a little guilty about snooping through someone's private things - never mind that they were Draco's, and /What if you caught *him* going through *your* things?/ he asked himself - Harry poked around the room. In a corner was a parquetry-worked cedar bureau and atop it stood a crystalline sculpture, glittering even in the darkness. Thoughts of improper touching and going through things filtered out of Harry's brain when he saw it.
Almost before he knew it, he stood before it, and a moment later - barely time enough to process the thought - he had it in his hands. It was light, unexpectedly so, as though it was nothing more than a shell and nothing solid, shaped in graceful curves and loops his eyes couldn't follow. Over and over, he traced the path of one of those arcs, only to lose it as it braided itself with other strands just as graceful and bewitching, or as light danced at the edge of a prismatic surface to distract him from his study.
Harry absently wound his fingers over and through the piece, entranced by the near liquidity of the crystalline curves against his skin, the way it all weighed so close to nothing, little more than air made into something shining and beautiful - or like moonlight or sunlight on water. Had it been made by a wizard sculptor who could somehow give shape to those sorts of things? He examined the sculpture, looking for a maker's mark or signature, but found nothing. It *seemed* magical, though, with its impossible twists and involutions - yet did something need to be made of enchantments to be magical? He worried at the knot of the question for a time, turning the sculpture over and over in his hands, seeing the lovely intricacy of it and *not* seeing it at the same time.
That such a thing was in the Malfoys' manor house gave him to believe this was something magic, whether made from it for made to use it - unless, of course, he had stumbled across the Malfoys' secret Muggle shrine. And it was true enough, all the other objects in the room could have been found in any Muggle museum or a wealthy collector's private stash, and the Malfoys Harry knew would have killed themselves before owning any of it.
But... could they have ever loved beauty - or anything at all - for its own sake? Had any Malfoy - Lucius, Narcissa, Draco, the hundreds of Malfoys that had come before - looked at this sculpture and loved it because it was a beautiful thing?
Would Draco ever look at *him* and simply love him because Harry, who was certainly not beautiful and was damaged goods with his glasses and scar and bad leg, at least might be something different in Draco's eyes?
He despaired of the answer and put down the sculpture. A stray beam of light danced upon a sleek curve for a moment. Harry saw, in that same light, that the rich cedar of the bureau was covered in dust; his fingers and the cuff of his sleeve had left tracks it, just three fine slash marks that revealed the wood beneath its gray coating, like shiny new skin beneath the dead layers.
Looking around some more, he saw that the rest of the room was encased in dust as well, shrouded by it. The dust drank the little light the drapes allowed inside, and lay like a blanket of thin, dirty snow over every surface. Harry stood frozen for a moment, listening closely, and his breathing seemed unnaturally loud to him in the utter silence of the room - the dust had drunk up everything, he thought irrationally: all the light, the beauty of the place. It was like standing in a tomb.
The silence disturbed him deeply. Suddenly restless and needing movement, Harry paced the room despite the ever-present pain in his left leg. /Don't think about it,/ he told himself fiercely. /Don't, under any circumstances, think about it./ The room began to close around him, tight and smothering. The treasures it held now seemed more like the relics of some person long dead, things that should not be disturbed.
A flash of movement snagged his attention.
He froze, staring closely. There was nothing for a moment, then something moved again. Curiosity worked its way through his surprise, and he walked in the direction of the oddly beckoning little thing, which proved to be a wizard photograph in an improbably ornate gilt frame, a wizard photograph of three pale-haired people - two adults and a child of about four or so.
It didn't take much to recognize Lucius Malfoy - Harry would know those pale, condescending eyes anywhere. The woman next to him, dressed in expensive robes, would be Narcissa. /She died, too,/ Harry thought absently, picking up the photograph, feeling the heft of the heavy frame. /She died because you lived./ She did not look as haughty as he remembered from the few times he'd run across her. Instead, she looked almost... happy, if Harry could ever ascribe such a human emotion to a Malfoy.
/That was low,/ he chastised himself.
His gaze drifted to the four-year-old boy in trousers and a white shirt, the figure that had caught his attention in the first place.
It was strange looking at a younger Draco, because Harry could not think of Draco as ever having been young. At school, Hermione had sniffed condescendingly over his juvenile behavior (to be fair, Harry decided, he and Ron hadn't been much better), but as the years wore on, something in Draco had changed. His taunting had stopped at the end of fourth year, and a cold watchfulness had replaced it. The frigid laughter had vanished into silent mockery, and when Draco had moved through the Great Hall, he'd seemed to suck up the attention from its occupants - the way he walked, the silence and calculatedness of it... Harry hadn't recognized it at the time, but he remembered being vaguely frightened of such a figure - it had been instinctual, maybe, but from fifth year on, he had never thought of Draco as being a fellow teenager, but rather something that had worn teenaged flesh.
He'd tried to talk with Ron about it, but his best friend had dismissed it with a wave of his hand and typical "Sod Malfoy, anyhow." Hermione had looked at him and said in her best, stating-the-perfectly-obvious voice, "Well, he's a *Malfoy*, Harry. I suppose he just finished selling the rest of his soul to Voldemort." Her tone had darkened. "What was left of it, anyway."
Now, looking at the photo, Harry found it difficult to connect the little boy with the young man he'd known in school - and the man he knew now, whose eyes held a light somewhere between the nearly effusive happiness of that long-ago picture and the cruel superiority of his school-day self... and a light that was something else, not made of either age.
/What is it?/ he wondered, thinking back to his few conversations with Draco, and the ones between Draco and Ron he'd eavesdropped on at Hogwarts. /What's there?/
Most people would have dismissed this as irrational, but Harry Potter was not most people. He *wanted* to find out, although the prospect set his heart pounding irritably at the wall of his chest again. Terror leeched through his bones, cooling his blood. /You're not afraid, are you?/ the tiny, silky voice asked. /What could the Great Harry Potter possibly fear? That he'll turn you into something like him?/
/I'm already like him./
Voices echoed in the hallway beyond the door, and he heard footsteps drawing closer, hollow on marble tiles. He could pick out Ron's nearly ghost-like tread, the more substantial but still light sound of Draco's feet. Their voices rose above them, twisted a bit by the high ceiling of the hall. Harry caught his breath, listening.
"I don't buy it, *Weasley*," Draco was saying. Harry could almost see his eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Fudge is a Slytherin through and through - didn't you *know* that?"
"Of course I *know* that," Ron said back, plainly annoyed - and probably near the end of his rope. "And I also know that Fudge would rather put his eyes out than see the forest for the trees." He sounded like he had said this many times before.
"So you're..." Draco paused and his voice lowered. Harry tried to catch the following words, but heard nothing except a low, sussurant whisper.
"If I am?" Ron's voice rang like a bell in the silence. "It's none of your damn business *Malfoy*."
"Just so we're clear on that," Draco answered.
Tensely, Harry listened for any more, but if more words were exchanged, he didn't hear them. Instead, he only heard Malfoy commanding one of the house-elves to show "Master Weasley" the way out - "Master Wheezy will come this way, sir," the house-elf squeaked - and Ron's already faint footsteps becoming fainter as he strode down the hallway.
Harry wondered if Ron had known he was hiding in here like some sort of criminal. Well, he *was* a criminal, wasn't he? Of a sort, granted... he wasn't breaking and entering, but consorting with a known, if former, Death Eater counted for more than just being a misdemeanor in the Ministry's book. Resolutely, he pushed the fear of his law-abiding self away, and squared himself for what was coming.
/Listen to you! Do you think you're going to have a bloody wizards' duel?/ He tried to make his posture less defensive, but it didn't seem to work very well, and as Draco opened the door, spilling light into the darkened room, he had again the distinct sense of ungracefulness, that he was awkward and uncertain Harry Potter, standing in a roomful of beautiful things, watching Draco Malfoy watch him with those keen gray eyes.