+Mens mea cupit cantare formas versas in nova corpora.+
(Ovid)
CHAPTER FIVE
"My father had one of the house elves take that one Christmas," Draco said, gesturing to the photograph. "We were in Malaysia, visiting witch doctors over winter holidays. I even got to leave school a few days early."
Belatedly, Harry realized he was still clutching the picture and he hastily set it down, in the blind hope that if he set it down quickly enough, Draco wouldn't have seen him snooping after all.
"Did you know that they have ten different versions of what we call the Avada Kedavra curse?" Draco asked. Harry shook his head wordlessly, and Draco grinned a bit at that. "Well, they do. Unfortunately, my father couldn't buy any off of them - they weren't interested in the usual stuff. Although..." he paused, and there was a momentary flash of the old calculation in his eyes, "some of my father's friends would have offered anything to have a chance at getting any one of those spells."
"So there are ten ways to utterly destroy a person's soul?"
"More than that, and not all of them involve magic," Draco said. "In fact, I'd probably say magic is in the minority, when it comes to that."
Harry nodded again, wishing the gesture were more eloquent. He glanced wildly around, fidgeted a moment, and ultimately decided on putting the picture back. The blond child in the picture offered him an unexpectedly bright smile; he caught himself on the edge of smiling back at it.
The silence in the room threatened to return to its crypt-like depths, and Harry struggled for the words to keep it from going back to that. Still, the inherent stillness of the room fought against him, that and the cool, calm face with which Draco Malfoy favored him. He cast about his mind, searching for something to say, wondering where all the words he'd imagined had fled to, and was on the verge of despair when Draco rescued him.
"Come on," he said. He turned on his heel and headed out the door into the bright hallway beyond, barely giving Harry time to collect himself and follow. "I've never liked this room much - too stuffy for me. There's a nicer one just down the hall here," Draco continued as Harry caught up. "Mother never really let me in there - it was too full of stuff I could break, she said."
"My Aunt Petunia never let me in the sitting room," Harry offered, wincing a bit at the knowledge that Aunt Petunia's valuables had mostly consisted of porcelain 'collectibles' and multiple framed portraits of Dudley. "I remember when I was trying to escape from my cousin once and ended up crashing into this side table... I managed to break the pig she had on top of it."
"Pig?"
"Porcelain pig," Harry said, grinning a bit at the blank expression on Draco's face. It was not something he usually associated with Draco, and seeing it... "She wasn't very happy," he added hastily, in an attempt to get his thoughts back on track. "I got a week in the closet for that."
"The closet? Is that some sort of Muggle expression?" A smile teased the corner of Draco's mouth.
"No..." Harry wondered why Draco, being Slytherin and an ex-Death Eater and all, seemed totally unfamiliar with the concept of cruel and unusual punishment, or else amused by it. /Maybe because nothing was cruel and unusual for them./ "I mean it literally - a week in the closet under the stairs."
"For a porcelain pig?" Draco asked, casting a doubtful look at Harry.
"Indeed, yes," Harry said. "For a porcelain pig."
"Muggles," Draco said at last, in a tone of voice that Harry could not quite interpret. Judgment? Mystification?
Draco paused by a closed door, so abruptly that Harry walked two steps past him before he could react. A pale hand searched through folds of black robe, searching for what Harry could not guess, until he saw the briefly sorrowful look pass through Draco's eyes, and he realized it - and knew it, because he had seen that expression from across a packed and jeering courtroom as the Minister of Magic himself, bristling like a particularly ferocious little dog, took Draco's wand from him and snapped it two.
The whipcrack of ash splitting had obliterated the reedy babble of voices. Even so, Fudge had had to call for assistance in severing the dragon's heart-string. Harry had seen, over the heads of a gaggle of vindictively muttering witches, the wild hope on Draco's face as the man watched Fudge struggling with a pair of magical scissors to cut that filament. He had seen that hope die as the shears snicked through it at the last.
There had been a puff of smoke as the heart-string evaporated and splinters of ash rained upon the floor. And Draco's eyes, gray as dead coals, followed them downward. Fudge had swept aside the splinters with a foot then gestured for the black-clad knot of Aurors to take away the prisoner. Draco had not resisted.
Now Draco scowled and pushed the door open, and the bang of wood contacting with the wall startled Harry out of memory. "I always forget that I don't lock this room anymore," Draco said over his shoulder as he stepped inside. Whatever sorrow or memory had been on his face had vanished. "Would you like some tea? Crumpets, scones, and all that?" His lips twisted in a dry smile - for a moment Harry was captivated - and he said, "My mother was always on me to be the perfect host, at least until I got a wife to take over the social calendar."
"It looks like you managed to avoid that."
"Oh, yes, yes," Draco agreed vaguely. "Becoming a Death Eater was a surefire way to keep me out of every witch's little black book... And it worked, didn't it?"
Draco moved restlessly about the room, footsteps muffled by the thick carpeting, and in watching him, Harry found a chance to take in his surroundings. More of the same opulence, he saw, wondering if Draco ever got tired of it - the host of portraits looming over them, their mouths moving soundlessly, the decorations done in precious gems and metals, and even a large tapestry in which the ornate knotworks and interlace designs moved and shifted with each passing second. He glanced up into the towering vault of the roof, and saw that on the second story there were shelves upon shelves of books, their chains glinting dully in the light from recessed windows. Dust motes played about idly on the heights.
"Would you like some tea?" Draco asked again. The look he sent Harry as he said this was almost pleading, and Harry found himself nodding. "Blinker!" Draco called, raising his voice only slightly.
Blinker appeared with a resounding crack and puff of smoke. "Master called?" he squeaked, buggy eyes darting back and forth between Draco and Harry. "What is Master needing?"
"Tea," Draco said curtly.
"Right away, Master," Blinker said, and vanished.
The echo of Blinker's disappearance had time enough to fade and die before Draco spoke again.
"I didn't thank you yet for coming," he said. The words were unexpectedly soft and heartfelt. Harry felt something twinge deep within him, a subterranean and fugitive sensation, a tremor. "And your letter," Draco added. "I got it along with some stuff that Weas- that Ron sent... I have to admit that I wasn't expecting it."
"I told you that I'd owl you," Harry, who could remember the entirety of their last conversation, said.
"Lots of things happen to keep people from keeping promises," Draco said. The lack of feeling in his voice disturbed Harry. Was it sadness? Resignation? Cynicism? What was behind those words? An unexpected smile softened the lines of Draco's face. "But, for what it's worth, I was hoping that you'd be able to get something through to me - I don't exactly have an open post here, and I can't imagine Fudge being very happy if he knew what was going on."
"Did Ron talk to you?" Harry knew very well that Ron *had*, but he wasn't about to say anything. As far as Draco knew, that fragmentary conversation outside door of Harry's hiding place had gone unheard by any snooping third party, such as Harry Potter.
Immediately, the gray eyes became guarded. "If you mean he told me you were coming, yes, he did talk to me," Draco answered. The caution vanished as swiftly as it had appeared. "And you know, as awful as it is, I think I owe the Weasel something for this..."
"For what?"
Blinker appeared with another pop and smoky exhalation, forestalling the answer - although from the trapped, confused expression on Draco's face, that answer might not have been forthcoming. Draco jumped, scowled so fiercely that the house elf took a couple hopping steps back and nearly tripped over its tea cozy, and pointed to a low side table. Blinker understood the silent command and darted to place the tea service (silver and expensive-looking, naturally) atop it, setting it down with an expensive-sounding clatter, and then vanished again.
Neither one of them made a move for the tea set. The question hung unanswered in the air, and it was on Harry's tongue to ask it again when Draco spoke.
"For making your promise possible, I suppose," he said in a voice so soft and strained it was difficult to hear. "When I told you that you'd be welcome back, I was almost half-hoping that you wouldn't, or that maybe the Ministry wouldn't make it possible for you... so I wouldn't have to be saying this right now." His mouth firmed slightly, and the words became stronger. "But you're here now, and I'm happy."
A laugh jolted out of Draco, startling in the lull. "Happy, can you believe it? Happy!" He took a couple of agitated steps over to the tea tray, turned a cup right-side up, fussed a bit with the thick potholder and the sugar tongs before setting them back down. Harry watched all this in silence. "Happy," Draco repeated, rolling the word off his tongue like a strange taste. "Never in my life did I think your presence would ever make me happy."
"I suppose you could say the feeling was mutual," Harry said.
"Yes, I could say that," Draco agreed. He poured a cup of tea and set it back down. "When I said I couldn't ever resent you... After awhile I realized that was true. In the beginning, I think I would have. But now I'm trying very hard, and I can't. Believe me, this is as good as it's going to get."
Harry took a moment to absorb the disjointed speech, so strange and ungraceful coming from Draco, who had always made a habit of smooth, calculated movement, and speech just as refined. "It could get better, though," he offered after a space of thought. "Things can always get better."
"I'm not sure if I could let them," Draco said.
It occurred to Harry that they were talking across a wide breadth of room, standing very nearly at dueling length from each other. He wanted to move closer, but was unsure how. His body rebelled at the possibility of movement, even as something deep within him cried for it.
"Just having you here now is enough." The tea was cooling, ignored on its stand, and Draco was looking at him with something indeterminate in his eyes. "When I got your letter, I thought that would be enough for me - just knowing that you had wanted to see me, even if you never would... Imagine how that would feel. I mean, ignore the fact that I'm a Slytherin, a former Death Eater, the person you've hated most of your life... And just think about it."
It was a rare thing, being offered a chance to see the world from Draco's eyes. Harry took it, and upon that taking felt that small, hidden thing inside him twist again in sympathetic pain. He remembered what it had been like, to be an exile, chained to the dark confines of a closet not big enough for any living being let alone a boy undeserving of such a thing... And even though Draco had earned his punishment - by his own admission he had earned it - what it must be like, to exist from day today without simple human contact, or what contact there was had been made of jeers and reminders of his exile... And he had lost his parents, had watched them die. Harry's mind circled over and over the thought.
"I'd thought about writing you back." Draco was still talking, although the words were abstracted, coming as they were from something other than deep thought - they were wandering, musing, and the light in Draco's eyes was much the same. "I didn't know what to say, other than to ask a question, and that question was, 'What do you think of me now?' It was something I never got to ask you."
Harry felt his jaw begin to ache with the effort of keeping back words of his own. He wanted action badly, even though his muscles were frozen in immobility. He needed to move, to fly, to feel how the sun in the upper galleries felt on his back and in his eyes. /Answer the question,/ he told himself sternly. /He deserves it... and you need to answer it for yourself, because you haven't figured it out yet./
And as he spoke, he became aware that he was discovering the answer for himself.
"I think you're different than what you were before that night, when you could have killed me," Harry said. "Just after it happened - and until just recently - I couldn't figure out *how* it was, because I never got a chance to. I mean, it's not every day two bitter enemies get to talk over tea, is it?" He realized he was babbling and forced himself back to the subject. "But seeing you last time I guess was sort of a confirmation of what I'd been thinking all along - that you'd changed, and I suppose I was fascinated by it. I still am. I wanted to find out more about the person I met that night on the stairwell."
"What person was that?" Draco asked quietly. And the light in his eyes was so bright.
"A person I'd never met before in my life, who saved my life even though he had no reason to. A person who... looked at me and didn't see an enemy, but something else, and I wanted to know what that was."
"I told you that I didn't know what made me save you." Draco was whispering now. "But... but would it make a difference if I told you that I wanted to know about the person I was saving, and I wanted to know why I was saving him, when it meant that I'd be punished?"
"Not now, no," Harry said. He stepped a bit closer, nearly sighing with relief at allowing himself the movement. "It wouldn't matter because I think I'd do anything to find out about you, even if I had to do it myself and you wouldn't tell me anything. I think, in that moment, I realized something... That the war wasn't as black and white as I liked to think it was, and that people weren't that way, either, even the person I'd been told to hate for years. But hearing you say it now..." He shook his head, paused as Draco tensed when it seemed he'd gotten too close. "Now, it's like being at the beginning of something... again."
"The beginning of what?"
"I don't know."
"Do you feel like starting over?" Draco's voice was barely audible.
"Yes," Harry whispered.
Draco was the one to step closer this time, so close that Harry could feel the ambient heat of his body. Draco had no definable scent, or what there was of it was as colorless as his skin. In the late morning light his hair glowed faintly gold at the edges and Harry was briefly entranced by it.
"How long," Draco asked, the words little more than a breath against the skin of Harry's neck, "how long would you try to know me, assuming we're starting over again?"
"As long as it would take."
Draco nodded and stepped back a bit; the gray eyes he raised to Harry's were challenging. "Even if what you would know would be far worse even than what you got fed by Dumbledore's party line? Even if I told you the worst of what I did as a Death Eater - and even if I told you that I was never sorry for any of it?"
"Even that," Harry said. The fury in Draco's eyes did not abate. "Would you want to know me? What I've done... it hasn't been pretty either." He thought back to his brief stay in that crypt of a room, with its myriad relics, and thought again, /Would you know me even though I'm chipped and bruised and not clean.../
"But you're sorry for it," Draco said, although he did not sound angry at Harry trying to lay claim to some responsibility for bad deeds. "And I never was, not really."
"I'm not interested in what was," Harry said firmly. He paused, briefly surprised at his own resolve - a resolve he certainly did not feel - but kept going before Draco could interrupt. "We've talked about that already, and put it behind us, I thought."
"We never will - I don't think that would ever be possible, and if you ever thought of blinding yourself to that, Potter, think again." The hostility was back in Draco's voice in a flash, and he retreated even further back. Slight as his warmth had been, Harry felt its loss keenly. "Knowing me without knowing about my past... it can't be done. Just like knowing you without knowing you're the Boy Who Bloody Well Lived can't be done, either."
"But it's not the end of who I am," Harry said. He felt his back straighten, and tried without success to keep his voice from becoming defensive. "Ask Ron or Hermione - they'll tell you."
"Oh, I *know* that." The stony look Draco favored him with was liberally dusted with contempt, the same ice-cold contempt Harry could remember from years back. "I saw that for myself that night, when I didn't kill you. The Boy Who Lived..." Draco trailed off, closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were soft with feeling. "I could have obliterated him without a second thought, I *would* have, and gladly, but the other person I saw there - I never could kill him. Even if the Dark Lord himself stood over me... I never could."
"When I was at your sentencing trial," Harry said, "I saw you when Fudge broke your wand. And I still see that person - I think maybe I always will. I'm not saying that what you did doesn't matter, or that I would dismiss it out of hand... But I know you've changed."
Draco ducked his head and turned. Harry thought he was going for the tea, but Draco continued past it, heading for a corner bookshelf. Harry turned on his heel and watched as Draco sifted through the volumes, absorbed the unconscious grace of each movement as long fingers selected a codex and pulled it out, as they ran over the smooth leather binding of the cover. It was a plain book from what Harry could see, unexpected in a room otherwise full of finery, but the way Draco touched it bespoke that it was a treasured thing.
/Snape's diaries./ Harry didn't know how he knew it, only that they *were.* He remembered his own words to Draco, words that had sounded like an accusation - /You wouldn't treasure Snape's diaires like you do - he would have been just another casualty Dumbledore's side would have to take, am I right?/ Aloud, he said: "I remember the last time we had talked, I told you that you knew what I was telling you was true... and I'm saying it again. *Listen* to me, Draco."
He could see the terrific tension in Draco's shoulders, even though the shapeless drapery of his robes masked his body. It radiated off him, was marked by a dozen little things - the sudden, taut silence, the tensing of his fingers on the cover of the codex, and the sudden hitch of breath that scarred the air between them.
"Nothing." The word was faintly whispered, but Harry still caught it. It drifted aimlessly, a specter with Draco's voice behind it. "I was right," the words were still ghostly, "it was all... nothing."
"What was nothing?"
"Everything." Draco turned around, and his face was so relaxed, so... open, Harry was surprised. The gray eyes were unbarriered, and he found himself thinking back to that last talk they had, when Draco had asked him, with such unexpected shyness and hopefulness, to perhaps come back some day. "Everything was... nothing." A weak grin played at the corners of his lips. "Nothing," he repeated.
"I've given myself too much time to think about this," Draco continued, sobering a bit. "Not, I suppose, that I had much choice in the matter - but I kept thinking about what I would do if I ever got to see you again, and I have to say, my dreams were not much like what's happening right now... but then, I guess that's why they call them dreams, isn't it? And I had enough time to tell myself that they were just dreams, things made of nothing that were even less important than that - and I had enough time to doubt everything that you'd managed to convince me of just before you left me."
"What sorts of things were you, uh, dreaming about?" /And were they anything like mine?/
A secret grin this time. "Oh, the usual... I would end up pouring my heart out to you and you would do the same to me. We would have tea and talk like civilized, happy people, and then move on to other things - and usually at that point, I'd wake up and tell myself that I was slowly going insane from isolation." Draco shrugged dismissively. "But I guess, when it comes down to it, I'm mostly happy to have you... to have you any way I can get you." A faint tinge of pink touched his cheeks as he said this.
"Any way?" Harry barely recognized the squeak that was his voice. "I - I - look at me!"
Draco swept his gaze up and down Harry's body. "I *am* looking," he said with a voice so deceptively neutral it sent a chill skittering up Harry's spine. "And I'll take that, too, someday, if you don't mind."
"What... why?"
The book was laid gently upon a table, traced fleetingly by pale fingertips. The light was suddenly bright, magnified by gold-edged hair. The paintings framing the door moved in distorted ripples, dreamlike. And in the midst of such confusion Draco himself was a solid reassuring thing.
"Leave me that much for now," he said, so close now Harry could touch him with a shaking hand. He clenched them by his side, felt the calluses on his fingertips, ten other, smaller flaws he added to his catalogue. "For now, at least."
And now those cool fingers were against the bony ridge of his cheekbone, and although cool they sent a fugitive warmth stealing through him. The slight pressure of Draco's thumb against the sensitive skin of his temple was electrifying in its clarity - he had not, Harry realized, felt anything in such a way for years. The small thing within him quaked in earnest now, something long dormant that was stirring, awakening, reaching for the heat offered by Draco's touch.
Those fingers across his face ignited him, and he saw with perfect clearness every detail in the smooth, marble face before him - he saw with his hawk eyes, not his imperfect human ones, how there were the faintest lines at the corners of gray eyes, lines of deep worry and too many sleepless nights; he saw the slight flare of nostrils, the way his jaw tensed as if keeping back a thought, the ebb and flow of blood pulsing beneath the skin, the humanity lying closer to the surface than that.
Draco pulled away slowly, with a slow lingering brush of fingers over the line of Harry's jaw. There was wonderment on his face, the expression of a man who has unexpectedly found something long-sought for. "That you've said what you have is enough for me," he said slowly, the words rich with feeling. "It's weird, a Malfoy believing there's such a thing as 'enough'... but right now, I can't imagine myself wanting any more."
Deep fulfillment swept over Harry, hearing Draco's words. The sensation of Draco's fingers on him was still clear, imprinted upon his nerves as though it would never leave, and his words settled just as deeply. He found himself unprepared for the depth of it; for all his fantasies and even the wildest of his hopes, there had been no way to anticipate this, how the soul could be sated with such simple contact... with such a little thing as having spoken truth to another person desperate to hear it.
/I... Thank you, Harry./ Old words, exchanged at their first meeting, one of the first times Draco had ever thanked him for anything and meant it. Yet they were so much more than that.
And to be satisfied with so few words spoken, too - Harry knew that there were many things they could say to each other, but what would those things be, except further elaboration? /I understand him,/ he thought, staring to Draco's eyes, memorizing their depths, how the light changed them from slate to storm and back again. /That's where the important things are,/ he thought absently.
For a time they stood there, Draco bathed in the light from the high windows and Harry too, although to Harry's eyes Draco looked the more dazzling. For a time they stood there, motionless, under the eyes of the paintings and the patterns in the tapestry shifted like a dream.
TBC.
(Ovid)
CHAPTER FIVE
"My father had one of the house elves take that one Christmas," Draco said, gesturing to the photograph. "We were in Malaysia, visiting witch doctors over winter holidays. I even got to leave school a few days early."
Belatedly, Harry realized he was still clutching the picture and he hastily set it down, in the blind hope that if he set it down quickly enough, Draco wouldn't have seen him snooping after all.
"Did you know that they have ten different versions of what we call the Avada Kedavra curse?" Draco asked. Harry shook his head wordlessly, and Draco grinned a bit at that. "Well, they do. Unfortunately, my father couldn't buy any off of them - they weren't interested in the usual stuff. Although..." he paused, and there was a momentary flash of the old calculation in his eyes, "some of my father's friends would have offered anything to have a chance at getting any one of those spells."
"So there are ten ways to utterly destroy a person's soul?"
"More than that, and not all of them involve magic," Draco said. "In fact, I'd probably say magic is in the minority, when it comes to that."
Harry nodded again, wishing the gesture were more eloquent. He glanced wildly around, fidgeted a moment, and ultimately decided on putting the picture back. The blond child in the picture offered him an unexpectedly bright smile; he caught himself on the edge of smiling back at it.
The silence in the room threatened to return to its crypt-like depths, and Harry struggled for the words to keep it from going back to that. Still, the inherent stillness of the room fought against him, that and the cool, calm face with which Draco Malfoy favored him. He cast about his mind, searching for something to say, wondering where all the words he'd imagined had fled to, and was on the verge of despair when Draco rescued him.
"Come on," he said. He turned on his heel and headed out the door into the bright hallway beyond, barely giving Harry time to collect himself and follow. "I've never liked this room much - too stuffy for me. There's a nicer one just down the hall here," Draco continued as Harry caught up. "Mother never really let me in there - it was too full of stuff I could break, she said."
"My Aunt Petunia never let me in the sitting room," Harry offered, wincing a bit at the knowledge that Aunt Petunia's valuables had mostly consisted of porcelain 'collectibles' and multiple framed portraits of Dudley. "I remember when I was trying to escape from my cousin once and ended up crashing into this side table... I managed to break the pig she had on top of it."
"Pig?"
"Porcelain pig," Harry said, grinning a bit at the blank expression on Draco's face. It was not something he usually associated with Draco, and seeing it... "She wasn't very happy," he added hastily, in an attempt to get his thoughts back on track. "I got a week in the closet for that."
"The closet? Is that some sort of Muggle expression?" A smile teased the corner of Draco's mouth.
"No..." Harry wondered why Draco, being Slytherin and an ex-Death Eater and all, seemed totally unfamiliar with the concept of cruel and unusual punishment, or else amused by it. /Maybe because nothing was cruel and unusual for them./ "I mean it literally - a week in the closet under the stairs."
"For a porcelain pig?" Draco asked, casting a doubtful look at Harry.
"Indeed, yes," Harry said. "For a porcelain pig."
"Muggles," Draco said at last, in a tone of voice that Harry could not quite interpret. Judgment? Mystification?
Draco paused by a closed door, so abruptly that Harry walked two steps past him before he could react. A pale hand searched through folds of black robe, searching for what Harry could not guess, until he saw the briefly sorrowful look pass through Draco's eyes, and he realized it - and knew it, because he had seen that expression from across a packed and jeering courtroom as the Minister of Magic himself, bristling like a particularly ferocious little dog, took Draco's wand from him and snapped it two.
The whipcrack of ash splitting had obliterated the reedy babble of voices. Even so, Fudge had had to call for assistance in severing the dragon's heart-string. Harry had seen, over the heads of a gaggle of vindictively muttering witches, the wild hope on Draco's face as the man watched Fudge struggling with a pair of magical scissors to cut that filament. He had seen that hope die as the shears snicked through it at the last.
There had been a puff of smoke as the heart-string evaporated and splinters of ash rained upon the floor. And Draco's eyes, gray as dead coals, followed them downward. Fudge had swept aside the splinters with a foot then gestured for the black-clad knot of Aurors to take away the prisoner. Draco had not resisted.
Now Draco scowled and pushed the door open, and the bang of wood contacting with the wall startled Harry out of memory. "I always forget that I don't lock this room anymore," Draco said over his shoulder as he stepped inside. Whatever sorrow or memory had been on his face had vanished. "Would you like some tea? Crumpets, scones, and all that?" His lips twisted in a dry smile - for a moment Harry was captivated - and he said, "My mother was always on me to be the perfect host, at least until I got a wife to take over the social calendar."
"It looks like you managed to avoid that."
"Oh, yes, yes," Draco agreed vaguely. "Becoming a Death Eater was a surefire way to keep me out of every witch's little black book... And it worked, didn't it?"
Draco moved restlessly about the room, footsteps muffled by the thick carpeting, and in watching him, Harry found a chance to take in his surroundings. More of the same opulence, he saw, wondering if Draco ever got tired of it - the host of portraits looming over them, their mouths moving soundlessly, the decorations done in precious gems and metals, and even a large tapestry in which the ornate knotworks and interlace designs moved and shifted with each passing second. He glanced up into the towering vault of the roof, and saw that on the second story there were shelves upon shelves of books, their chains glinting dully in the light from recessed windows. Dust motes played about idly on the heights.
"Would you like some tea?" Draco asked again. The look he sent Harry as he said this was almost pleading, and Harry found himself nodding. "Blinker!" Draco called, raising his voice only slightly.
Blinker appeared with a resounding crack and puff of smoke. "Master called?" he squeaked, buggy eyes darting back and forth between Draco and Harry. "What is Master needing?"
"Tea," Draco said curtly.
"Right away, Master," Blinker said, and vanished.
The echo of Blinker's disappearance had time enough to fade and die before Draco spoke again.
"I didn't thank you yet for coming," he said. The words were unexpectedly soft and heartfelt. Harry felt something twinge deep within him, a subterranean and fugitive sensation, a tremor. "And your letter," Draco added. "I got it along with some stuff that Weas- that Ron sent... I have to admit that I wasn't expecting it."
"I told you that I'd owl you," Harry, who could remember the entirety of their last conversation, said.
"Lots of things happen to keep people from keeping promises," Draco said. The lack of feeling in his voice disturbed Harry. Was it sadness? Resignation? Cynicism? What was behind those words? An unexpected smile softened the lines of Draco's face. "But, for what it's worth, I was hoping that you'd be able to get something through to me - I don't exactly have an open post here, and I can't imagine Fudge being very happy if he knew what was going on."
"Did Ron talk to you?" Harry knew very well that Ron *had*, but he wasn't about to say anything. As far as Draco knew, that fragmentary conversation outside door of Harry's hiding place had gone unheard by any snooping third party, such as Harry Potter.
Immediately, the gray eyes became guarded. "If you mean he told me you were coming, yes, he did talk to me," Draco answered. The caution vanished as swiftly as it had appeared. "And you know, as awful as it is, I think I owe the Weasel something for this..."
"For what?"
Blinker appeared with another pop and smoky exhalation, forestalling the answer - although from the trapped, confused expression on Draco's face, that answer might not have been forthcoming. Draco jumped, scowled so fiercely that the house elf took a couple hopping steps back and nearly tripped over its tea cozy, and pointed to a low side table. Blinker understood the silent command and darted to place the tea service (silver and expensive-looking, naturally) atop it, setting it down with an expensive-sounding clatter, and then vanished again.
Neither one of them made a move for the tea set. The question hung unanswered in the air, and it was on Harry's tongue to ask it again when Draco spoke.
"For making your promise possible, I suppose," he said in a voice so soft and strained it was difficult to hear. "When I told you that you'd be welcome back, I was almost half-hoping that you wouldn't, or that maybe the Ministry wouldn't make it possible for you... so I wouldn't have to be saying this right now." His mouth firmed slightly, and the words became stronger. "But you're here now, and I'm happy."
A laugh jolted out of Draco, startling in the lull. "Happy, can you believe it? Happy!" He took a couple of agitated steps over to the tea tray, turned a cup right-side up, fussed a bit with the thick potholder and the sugar tongs before setting them back down. Harry watched all this in silence. "Happy," Draco repeated, rolling the word off his tongue like a strange taste. "Never in my life did I think your presence would ever make me happy."
"I suppose you could say the feeling was mutual," Harry said.
"Yes, I could say that," Draco agreed. He poured a cup of tea and set it back down. "When I said I couldn't ever resent you... After awhile I realized that was true. In the beginning, I think I would have. But now I'm trying very hard, and I can't. Believe me, this is as good as it's going to get."
Harry took a moment to absorb the disjointed speech, so strange and ungraceful coming from Draco, who had always made a habit of smooth, calculated movement, and speech just as refined. "It could get better, though," he offered after a space of thought. "Things can always get better."
"I'm not sure if I could let them," Draco said.
It occurred to Harry that they were talking across a wide breadth of room, standing very nearly at dueling length from each other. He wanted to move closer, but was unsure how. His body rebelled at the possibility of movement, even as something deep within him cried for it.
"Just having you here now is enough." The tea was cooling, ignored on its stand, and Draco was looking at him with something indeterminate in his eyes. "When I got your letter, I thought that would be enough for me - just knowing that you had wanted to see me, even if you never would... Imagine how that would feel. I mean, ignore the fact that I'm a Slytherin, a former Death Eater, the person you've hated most of your life... And just think about it."
It was a rare thing, being offered a chance to see the world from Draco's eyes. Harry took it, and upon that taking felt that small, hidden thing inside him twist again in sympathetic pain. He remembered what it had been like, to be an exile, chained to the dark confines of a closet not big enough for any living being let alone a boy undeserving of such a thing... And even though Draco had earned his punishment - by his own admission he had earned it - what it must be like, to exist from day today without simple human contact, or what contact there was had been made of jeers and reminders of his exile... And he had lost his parents, had watched them die. Harry's mind circled over and over the thought.
"I'd thought about writing you back." Draco was still talking, although the words were abstracted, coming as they were from something other than deep thought - they were wandering, musing, and the light in Draco's eyes was much the same. "I didn't know what to say, other than to ask a question, and that question was, 'What do you think of me now?' It was something I never got to ask you."
Harry felt his jaw begin to ache with the effort of keeping back words of his own. He wanted action badly, even though his muscles were frozen in immobility. He needed to move, to fly, to feel how the sun in the upper galleries felt on his back and in his eyes. /Answer the question,/ he told himself sternly. /He deserves it... and you need to answer it for yourself, because you haven't figured it out yet./
And as he spoke, he became aware that he was discovering the answer for himself.
"I think you're different than what you were before that night, when you could have killed me," Harry said. "Just after it happened - and until just recently - I couldn't figure out *how* it was, because I never got a chance to. I mean, it's not every day two bitter enemies get to talk over tea, is it?" He realized he was babbling and forced himself back to the subject. "But seeing you last time I guess was sort of a confirmation of what I'd been thinking all along - that you'd changed, and I suppose I was fascinated by it. I still am. I wanted to find out more about the person I met that night on the stairwell."
"What person was that?" Draco asked quietly. And the light in his eyes was so bright.
"A person I'd never met before in my life, who saved my life even though he had no reason to. A person who... looked at me and didn't see an enemy, but something else, and I wanted to know what that was."
"I told you that I didn't know what made me save you." Draco was whispering now. "But... but would it make a difference if I told you that I wanted to know about the person I was saving, and I wanted to know why I was saving him, when it meant that I'd be punished?"
"Not now, no," Harry said. He stepped a bit closer, nearly sighing with relief at allowing himself the movement. "It wouldn't matter because I think I'd do anything to find out about you, even if I had to do it myself and you wouldn't tell me anything. I think, in that moment, I realized something... That the war wasn't as black and white as I liked to think it was, and that people weren't that way, either, even the person I'd been told to hate for years. But hearing you say it now..." He shook his head, paused as Draco tensed when it seemed he'd gotten too close. "Now, it's like being at the beginning of something... again."
"The beginning of what?"
"I don't know."
"Do you feel like starting over?" Draco's voice was barely audible.
"Yes," Harry whispered.
Draco was the one to step closer this time, so close that Harry could feel the ambient heat of his body. Draco had no definable scent, or what there was of it was as colorless as his skin. In the late morning light his hair glowed faintly gold at the edges and Harry was briefly entranced by it.
"How long," Draco asked, the words little more than a breath against the skin of Harry's neck, "how long would you try to know me, assuming we're starting over again?"
"As long as it would take."
Draco nodded and stepped back a bit; the gray eyes he raised to Harry's were challenging. "Even if what you would know would be far worse even than what you got fed by Dumbledore's party line? Even if I told you the worst of what I did as a Death Eater - and even if I told you that I was never sorry for any of it?"
"Even that," Harry said. The fury in Draco's eyes did not abate. "Would you want to know me? What I've done... it hasn't been pretty either." He thought back to his brief stay in that crypt of a room, with its myriad relics, and thought again, /Would you know me even though I'm chipped and bruised and not clean.../
"But you're sorry for it," Draco said, although he did not sound angry at Harry trying to lay claim to some responsibility for bad deeds. "And I never was, not really."
"I'm not interested in what was," Harry said firmly. He paused, briefly surprised at his own resolve - a resolve he certainly did not feel - but kept going before Draco could interrupt. "We've talked about that already, and put it behind us, I thought."
"We never will - I don't think that would ever be possible, and if you ever thought of blinding yourself to that, Potter, think again." The hostility was back in Draco's voice in a flash, and he retreated even further back. Slight as his warmth had been, Harry felt its loss keenly. "Knowing me without knowing about my past... it can't be done. Just like knowing you without knowing you're the Boy Who Bloody Well Lived can't be done, either."
"But it's not the end of who I am," Harry said. He felt his back straighten, and tried without success to keep his voice from becoming defensive. "Ask Ron or Hermione - they'll tell you."
"Oh, I *know* that." The stony look Draco favored him with was liberally dusted with contempt, the same ice-cold contempt Harry could remember from years back. "I saw that for myself that night, when I didn't kill you. The Boy Who Lived..." Draco trailed off, closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, they were soft with feeling. "I could have obliterated him without a second thought, I *would* have, and gladly, but the other person I saw there - I never could kill him. Even if the Dark Lord himself stood over me... I never could."
"When I was at your sentencing trial," Harry said, "I saw you when Fudge broke your wand. And I still see that person - I think maybe I always will. I'm not saying that what you did doesn't matter, or that I would dismiss it out of hand... But I know you've changed."
Draco ducked his head and turned. Harry thought he was going for the tea, but Draco continued past it, heading for a corner bookshelf. Harry turned on his heel and watched as Draco sifted through the volumes, absorbed the unconscious grace of each movement as long fingers selected a codex and pulled it out, as they ran over the smooth leather binding of the cover. It was a plain book from what Harry could see, unexpected in a room otherwise full of finery, but the way Draco touched it bespoke that it was a treasured thing.
/Snape's diaries./ Harry didn't know how he knew it, only that they *were.* He remembered his own words to Draco, words that had sounded like an accusation - /You wouldn't treasure Snape's diaires like you do - he would have been just another casualty Dumbledore's side would have to take, am I right?/ Aloud, he said: "I remember the last time we had talked, I told you that you knew what I was telling you was true... and I'm saying it again. *Listen* to me, Draco."
He could see the terrific tension in Draco's shoulders, even though the shapeless drapery of his robes masked his body. It radiated off him, was marked by a dozen little things - the sudden, taut silence, the tensing of his fingers on the cover of the codex, and the sudden hitch of breath that scarred the air between them.
"Nothing." The word was faintly whispered, but Harry still caught it. It drifted aimlessly, a specter with Draco's voice behind it. "I was right," the words were still ghostly, "it was all... nothing."
"What was nothing?"
"Everything." Draco turned around, and his face was so relaxed, so... open, Harry was surprised. The gray eyes were unbarriered, and he found himself thinking back to that last talk they had, when Draco had asked him, with such unexpected shyness and hopefulness, to perhaps come back some day. "Everything was... nothing." A weak grin played at the corners of his lips. "Nothing," he repeated.
"I've given myself too much time to think about this," Draco continued, sobering a bit. "Not, I suppose, that I had much choice in the matter - but I kept thinking about what I would do if I ever got to see you again, and I have to say, my dreams were not much like what's happening right now... but then, I guess that's why they call them dreams, isn't it? And I had enough time to tell myself that they were just dreams, things made of nothing that were even less important than that - and I had enough time to doubt everything that you'd managed to convince me of just before you left me."
"What sorts of things were you, uh, dreaming about?" /And were they anything like mine?/
A secret grin this time. "Oh, the usual... I would end up pouring my heart out to you and you would do the same to me. We would have tea and talk like civilized, happy people, and then move on to other things - and usually at that point, I'd wake up and tell myself that I was slowly going insane from isolation." Draco shrugged dismissively. "But I guess, when it comes down to it, I'm mostly happy to have you... to have you any way I can get you." A faint tinge of pink touched his cheeks as he said this.
"Any way?" Harry barely recognized the squeak that was his voice. "I - I - look at me!"
Draco swept his gaze up and down Harry's body. "I *am* looking," he said with a voice so deceptively neutral it sent a chill skittering up Harry's spine. "And I'll take that, too, someday, if you don't mind."
"What... why?"
The book was laid gently upon a table, traced fleetingly by pale fingertips. The light was suddenly bright, magnified by gold-edged hair. The paintings framing the door moved in distorted ripples, dreamlike. And in the midst of such confusion Draco himself was a solid reassuring thing.
"Leave me that much for now," he said, so close now Harry could touch him with a shaking hand. He clenched them by his side, felt the calluses on his fingertips, ten other, smaller flaws he added to his catalogue. "For now, at least."
And now those cool fingers were against the bony ridge of his cheekbone, and although cool they sent a fugitive warmth stealing through him. The slight pressure of Draco's thumb against the sensitive skin of his temple was electrifying in its clarity - he had not, Harry realized, felt anything in such a way for years. The small thing within him quaked in earnest now, something long dormant that was stirring, awakening, reaching for the heat offered by Draco's touch.
Those fingers across his face ignited him, and he saw with perfect clearness every detail in the smooth, marble face before him - he saw with his hawk eyes, not his imperfect human ones, how there were the faintest lines at the corners of gray eyes, lines of deep worry and too many sleepless nights; he saw the slight flare of nostrils, the way his jaw tensed as if keeping back a thought, the ebb and flow of blood pulsing beneath the skin, the humanity lying closer to the surface than that.
Draco pulled away slowly, with a slow lingering brush of fingers over the line of Harry's jaw. There was wonderment on his face, the expression of a man who has unexpectedly found something long-sought for. "That you've said what you have is enough for me," he said slowly, the words rich with feeling. "It's weird, a Malfoy believing there's such a thing as 'enough'... but right now, I can't imagine myself wanting any more."
Deep fulfillment swept over Harry, hearing Draco's words. The sensation of Draco's fingers on him was still clear, imprinted upon his nerves as though it would never leave, and his words settled just as deeply. He found himself unprepared for the depth of it; for all his fantasies and even the wildest of his hopes, there had been no way to anticipate this, how the soul could be sated with such simple contact... with such a little thing as having spoken truth to another person desperate to hear it.
/I... Thank you, Harry./ Old words, exchanged at their first meeting, one of the first times Draco had ever thanked him for anything and meant it. Yet they were so much more than that.
And to be satisfied with so few words spoken, too - Harry knew that there were many things they could say to each other, but what would those things be, except further elaboration? /I understand him,/ he thought, staring to Draco's eyes, memorizing their depths, how the light changed them from slate to storm and back again. /That's where the important things are,/ he thought absently.
For a time they stood there, Draco bathed in the light from the high windows and Harry too, although to Harry's eyes Draco looked the more dazzling. For a time they stood there, motionless, under the eyes of the paintings and the patterns in the tapestry shifted like a dream.
TBC.