Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!

This one is very talky.

Chapter Fourteen: Bearing Gifts

Conscience is like a scorpion, Harry thought.

It was a thought he was having only because he still lay awake, his hand folded behind his head. He wouldn't be having it if he could just close his eyes and go to sleep. He was being silly. Everything had worked out. Vince had been too much in shock to talk at first when they returned to the Manor, and later Harry had seen him alone and convinced him not to tell the Malfoys anything. Vince had agreed tamely. He kept staring around him with wide eyes, as if he believed that his father would appear from around a corner at any moment and kidnap him back.

Harry had awaited a summons to the Ministry with some dread, thinking he might have to account for his actions, or perhaps testify that his attackers were Death Eaters. The only communication, however, came via a polite owl from Scrimgeour, informing him that the Aurors had transported the cages of blue light back to the Ministry's new prison, Tullianum, and were currently keeping them there. The cages would be even more secure than prison cells for the Death Eaters, right now. They might summon him when they wanted the cages dissipated, but for the moment, everything was well.

Except that it wasn't.

Harry rolled over and closed his eyes more tightly, so that the very faint moonlight coming through the window didn't make any impressions on his eyelids. Argutus slithered briefly across him, reacting to the change in position, and then relaxed. Harry waited to go to sleep.

He didn't.

His conscience went on stinging him, whispering various truths that Harry had thought he would be able to bear better than he was currently bearing them. You know that you lied. You know that you took enormous risks. You know that Draco and Narcissa would see you as acting like a sacrifice again, though Lucius might not care.

But I wasn't acting like a sacrifice, Harry argued back strenuously. I never meant to die, and I wouldn't have given up my life to save Vince. I was sure that I could get him out.

How sure?

Fairly sure! Harry almost wondered if Regulus had come back, since he would argue and scold like this, too, but he also knew that he would have recognized the older wizard's world-weary voice.

But what would have happened if something went wrong?

Nothing did. And if I worry about the consequences to every action, then I'll only drive myself mad with the uncertainty, always wondering if I could have done something better or faster than I wound up doing it.

The voice fell silent, but it didn't need to speak. Harry's conscience could sting him with guilt alone, and that was what it was currently doing.

He had lied to Draco.

He felt guilty about it. He really wished it hadn't been necessary. On the other hand, if he told him about it now, Draco would rage, and if he had told him about it before he tried to rescue Vince, Draco would never have let the rescue happen at all—and then Vince would have gone on suffering Merlin knew what, and likely ended up with a brand on his arm. Harry didn't know what he could do, since it seemed he lost any way he turned, and this was just the smallest set of losses he could choose. Everything he did would offend Draco.

Then don't choose for him. Choose for you.

Harry went still, his eyes actually popping open. There was a new idea.

He'd been thinking in terms of losses. What would happen if he thought about it in terms of gain? If he stopped thinking for just one moment that every step he took would tip him into a pit, and started thinking about which would ease the sting on his conscience most?

Put like that, the way out was simple. It would make him feel best to tell Draco what had really happened today, and take the rage or the scolding that followed. Harry winced as he remembered what Sirius's pride and unwillingness to reveal what he had truly suffered had cost him. Speech led to suffering—he knew that, too, after what Snape's speaking had done to his parents—but silence led to greater suffering.

And there was a concrete goal, too, something to strive for other than just his own peace of mind. Harry smiled a bit as he stood, gently tucked the complaining Argutus into a corner of his left arm, and then made for the door. He would confront Draco right now, so that Lucius and Narcissa couldn't interfere and Draco would be a bit off-balance.

He wasn't the only one who had a silence to break.

Draco awoke immediately when Harry knocked on his door. He knew it was Harry without having to check, even though his empathy was only letting him feel the strongest of emotions now. He had been having odd dreams in which Harry featured prominently, and before that he had replayed the scene in Diagon Alley over and over in his head, trying to figure out what was missing. He knew something must be missing, but he could not figure out what. It was so typically Harry: not thinking before he did something to help a classmate, using weapons at hand, and using the Portkey that had been meant for his own safety to rescue Vince.

He opened the door for Harry, and was startled to find that he walked in with a decisive stride, his Omen snake coiled on his shoulder. Draco went to retrieve his wand so that he could cast a Lumos, but Harry flicked his hand, and the lamp beside the bed lit with a flash and a flare.

"Show-off," Draco muttered, turning and staring blearily at Harry. "What did you come to talk to me about?" He knew it must be talking; Harry would have been in much more of a hurry if the Manor had been attacked.

"About what happened in Diagon Alley today," said Harry. "I lied to you."

And just like that, Draco knew what the lie must be, and what it was about. He narrowed his eyes and took a long step away from Harry. Anger made his hands shake, but he clasped them behind his back and fixed Harry with a glare.

"I came to say that I'm sorry," said Harry. "I shouldn't have done it. I thought you wouldn't let me go to rescue Vince if you knew, and that was the only plan I could think of that would let him get close to me. So I told you that I brought the serpent Portkey along just in case there was trouble, but I knew Vince and probably several Death Eaters would be there. I studied the angles of the alley so that I could hang Shield Charms that would trap me inside with their spells, but something still could have gone wrong. It was stupid, as well as wrong, and I'm sorry." He paused, waiting for Draco to say something.

"There are times I hate you," Draco whispered.

Harry winced, but waited.

"You always apologize too late, and you never seem really sorry for it," said Draco, beginning to gather the wind into his wings. He could remember feeling more enraged with Harry, but not feeling this strong curdling of bitter disappointment at the bottom of the anger. "You know that I love you, yet other things seem to matter to you as much as I do, or more. You promise not to lie to me, and then do it again." He knew what he said next wasn't entirely fair, but he was angry. He was allowed to be unfair. "Sometimes you really are your father's son."

Harry's eyes began to glitter, but he held his peace. That only made Draco angrier. Most people would begin shouting at him, and then he could have the satisfaction of knowing that a passion existed which matched his own. Harry only stayed quiet, and while that made it easier to yell at him in some ways, it also made him seem as if he were keeping his temper.

"And you keep doing stupid things, too," said Draco. "When you realized that you'd been abused, I expected you to stop this, Harry—"

"Why?"

There it is. Harry's voice carried a knife's edge. Draco relaxed a bit. Angry as he still was, he knew that he was in control of the conversation now. He was making Harry respond, while his anger and disappointment were manageable.

"Because you aren't just acting out unconscious training any more, that's why!" Draco was startled to hear his own voice break in the middle, into a ragged, raw note of fury. Perhaps I'm less in control than I thought. "You know, and yet you keep putting yourself in the middle of dangerous situations. This wasn't worth it, today."

"What wasn't worth it?" Harry moved a step forward, his head lowered and his gaze direct. Harry was still shorter than he was, but Draco nevertheless felt as if they stood eye-to-eye, and a good deal closer than they were now.

"You know what I'm talking about," he said. "This rescue. Nearly sacrificing your life to save Vince. He wasn't worth it—"

"That's the line," said Harry, and a brief burst of magic exploded from his body, sparking and then vanishing. "Other lives are as important to me as my own, Draco. Not more important. That's the only difference, now. Would you have said the same thing if I were rescuing your Mum, or you?"

Draco hesitated. He had the impression that he'd just edged onto dangerous territory, but he didn't know why. He persisted anyway. He knew he was right. Hadn't Harry admitted he was wrong?

"No," he said. "That's because she's my Mum and I love her, and of course I would want to be rescued. But I wouldn't want you to die rescuing me, Harry!"

"Well, good," said Harry, raising his eyebrows in an utterly infuriating way. "I'm not so eager to die anymore, either. But you're saying that Vince isn't important enough for me to take the risk, aren't you?"

"You're being unreasonable about it," said Draco, retreating into the cold haughtiness that he had seen win an argument for his father several times. "It's just that—well, he could be a spy, Harry."

"Vince?"

Well, no. Draco had to admit, considering the clumsy, shy boy he'd known for most of his life, who had been closer to the older students than any of his yearmates after Gregory Goyle went to Durmstrang, that he found it hard to imagine. Vince was loyal in a typical Slytherin way, and he could keep things hidden behind a stoic mask, but he wasn't able to interweave himself into someone's trust the way that a spy would have to be. About the best he could hope to do was observe things unnoticed, and the chance that he'd be able to get the drop on Harry was very small.

Still, his father had no reason to know that about Harry. He might have sent Vince anyway.

"That doesn't matter," said Draco. "It could apply in other situations. What if you spared a Death Eater, Harry, and then he turned on you? You'd still be taking a risk when you didn't have to. You're still doing that, in fact," he added, thinking of the cages of blue light that Harry had put around his attackers earlier that day. "You didn't use any lethal spells against them. You just banged them around a bit and captured the ones you could."

"I would prefer not to kill," said Harry quietly, some of the angry light in his eyes dying. "I've done it three times, and that's enough to make me hate it."

"Three—"

"Rodolphus, Mulciber, Dragonsbane Parkinson." Harry listed them all as if he spent time thinking about them at night.

Draco would almost have expected pity to overcome his rage, but the rage was way too strong. And a good thing, too, he thought. Harry needs to hear this. "You can't count Rodolphus and Mulciber."

"Can't I." Harry's voice was flat.

"They were both trying to kill you," Draco said. "Well, one was trying to kill you and the other one would have turned on you. It was self-defense, Harry."

Harry shook his head, his face gone calm and quiet. "There are things I'm willing to try and change, Draco," he said. "The lies I tell and the risks I take, for example—"

"You've said that before, too." Draco was unable to keep the bitterness out of his voice.

Harry nodded. "I have. And I suppose I'm asking you now if you think that I can really make the changes—if you trust me."

Draco turned away and paced to the other side of the room. His hands were still shaking when he lifted one to touch his hair in a gesture of nonchalance, and he wished he'd kept it behind his back. He had to swallow several tumbles of words that wouldn't have made sense before he could speak.

"Why is the decision always up to me?" he asked, words catching like a hook in his throat. "I'm the one who takes all the risks, Harry. I'm the one who has to do things like pull you back from the edge and convince you that you're worth something, each and every t-time. I'm the one who told you that I loved you first, and I've gone all this time without much reciprocation. And now you're asking me to trust you without any proof. To make another sacrifice. You're not just performing sacrifices, Harry, you're requiring sacrifices of me."

"Then you need to step away." Harry's response was instant. "You need to breathe your own air, and take your own risks, and stop concerning yourself with what movements I make. Think about what you're going to do for yourself, Draco. What NEWT subjects do you want to take? What do you want to do other than just sit in Malfoy Manor all day? That wasn't enough for your father. Will it be for you?"

Draco ground his teeth. "You still don't get it," he said. "That's another sacrifice, Harry, requiring me to give up your company."

Harry laughed.

Draco twisted around. "How dare you—"

"Because you're being ridiculous." Harry's words were crisp, and his voice light and cutting as a whip. "You've twisted the idea of sacrifice into an all-encompassing one, Draco. No matter what I do, you can say that you're always right. If I give you trust and love and promises, and keep them, you can say I'm making sacrifices that I don't really want to make. If things stay the same, they're sacrifices of both myself and you. If I move away so that you can grow in your own sunlight, that's another sacrifice of yourself. That's not something I can argue with, and it points to very little trust or faith in me. If you think I'm making a sacrifice of everything, if you believe that's always my motive, then it doesn't matter if I really change, does it? You'll always be distrusting me, waiting for me to change back."

"But you haven't really changed so far!" Draco shouted, feeling himself backed into a corner. It was inconceivable that Harry might win this argument. He was wrong. He'd said so. "And you keep saying that you might, and then never keeping your promise!"

"What kind of action would inspire you to trust me?" Harry asked. "And when would I stop being suspected and tried in your mind?"

"I don't want to tell you! That's the kind of thing that you should be coming up with on your own! You're the one in the wrong here, not me! You were the one who lied and put your life in danger!"

"And you're the one who's kept silent about a change in your empathy," Harry snapped.

Draco could feel his face pale. He honestly hadn't thought about himself as lying in that regard. It was just a lie of omission. He did plan to tell Harry the truth, as soon as he could find the right time to do it.

"This is an argument about you," he tried.

"And it would have remained that way, if you hadn't tried to take the moral high ground." Harry's voice went on whipping down. "I can accept that I was wrong, Draco. I can accept your conditions. I cannot accept that you're blameless. If I owe you honesty and no sacrifices and somehow manage, impossibly, to both give you what you want and not involve you in the process of giving in any way, then you owe me the same fucking things."

"I can't," said Draco. "You're making me sacrifice." But his voice had sunk, and his urge to turn his face to the wall was strong.

Harry threw up his arms. "If you're not going to tell me, then we're equally balanced, I think," he said, with a snort. "We've both given sacrifices, and you've given me a lot more than that, while not involving me in the process of giving, you said. And now I've given you honesty, but you won't hand that back. Fine, Draco. Stew in that. I'm going to bed." He turned towards the door.

Draco felt a surge of astonishment. "You don't walk away from arguments," he said. "And you were wrong. You said so."

Harry glanced over his shoulder. "Yes, I did. And now what?"

"I could punish you—"

"I am not a child, Draco, and you aren't my parent," Harry said, voice dropping into a growl that caused a not entirely unpleasant shiver to run up Draco's spine. "The usual course among adults is to accept the apology or tell the person apologizing that that isn't enough, and that they'll need time or a specific action or whatever. Not punishment. You don't get to put another monitoring spell on me. I'm sorry that I allowed the first one. It obviously set a dangerous precedent."

"If I tell you what would make me forgive you, then I'm sacrificing again," said Draco.

"I told you to get rid of that idea. It does no good. And you should decide what you think I am, too." Harry's face had settled into a scowl. "A child to be punished, and accept the punishment meekly, or someone old enough and strong enough to make harsh changes in himself and stick to them. I think what you want is someone who'll be silent under what you say, but also someone who'll guess your every want before you express it, and fulfill those desires. Probably silently, too."

The injustice of that claim fired Draco's blood again. "I never said that I wanted you to be quiet!"

"Then what do you want from me?" Harry leaned forward. "I am sick of this fucking guessing game. And oh, yes, start and stare at me because I'm using language that you don't want to hear. You've created a world where everything I do is wrong, Draco, everything is something you don't want me to do, and I'm sick of it. It works no better than the little games you played last year, waiting for me to guess your love instead of telling me straight out. I hate head games. I hate manipulation. I hate making honest efforts and being told that no, I don't know what I'm thinking, and it must be coming from some motive I didn't know I had. I've contributed to this mess. Now we can either stand here asking whose fault it is, which frankly strikes me as a boring way to spend an argument, or we can try to settle the mess. I'll show you what I want to give and to do, and you meet me halfway, Draco."

Draco could feel himself breathing faster. He felt as if he stood on the edge of a cliff, and were about to plunge off. He had no idea how Harry could keep going if he felt the same way. And if he didn't feel the same way, wasn't this just another sacrifice that he was demanding of Draco?

"I've done so much for you, Harry," he began.

"I'm not interested in discussing that." Now Harry's voice was a rapid staccato. "I've already chosen my direction, Draco—forward. Frankly, I think the only way we'll ever really love each other is to think about and deal with all of this. Constantly. That means that we speak about the future as well as the past, and right now, the future is more interesting to me."

"But I want to talk about the past," said Draco.

Harry folded his arms and stared at him with a measuring glance. "Then talk."

Draco scowled. "I shouldn't have to," he said. "I know that you've done wrong things in the past, and I can't trust that you won't keep doing them, Harry. I just can't." He knew his voice sounded pathetic on the last word, but he was thinking of Harry dying in the War, or at the end of the War, or confronting Voldemort, and not dealing with it well.

Harry's face didn't soften. He just gave a short nod. "Then I can give you my promise and try to live one day at a time without getting into danger, Draco," he said. "But there are two things that are not going to change. I'm never going to think that someone who hasn't harmed me 'isn't worth it.' And I'm never going to be comfortable with killing. I'll do it because I have to. You can't control my attitude towards it, and I won't allow you to."

"But you'll be miserable otherwise," said Draco, feeling frustration curl like a worm in his stomach. "You have to get used to it."

"No, I don't."

"But that's the way it is!" Draco exclaimed. He'd been reading the histories of the Dark Lord's War—he supposed he should call it the First War, now, since Voldemort had returned again—and the things he'd learned sickened him. One thing was clear, though. Soldiers became numb and hardened, or they didn't survive. "You'll be bleeding from the heart with every wound, otherwise."

"That's how I'll know I'm still alive," Harry said. "And I'm not like other people, Draco. I thought we established this already. Now. We have to decide how to make sure that you can live the way you want to, without drowning in my shadow. I want to know what you like to do."

Draco just stared at him, feeling hopeless. "I don't know," he mumbled at last. "I know a few things I like, like Arirthmancy and Ancient Runes, but I haven't thought about a career, if that's what you mean. Malfoys don't have to have careers." He knew he sounded petulant. He didn't care. He was trying to figure out what had gone wrong. A day ago, he thought, if Harry had been speaking these words, he would have been ecstatic. But something had changed between then and now. He wanted something else from Harry.

He couldn't figure out what it was.

"I didn't necessarily mean a career." Harry's tone was inflexible. "I mean what you want to be able to say at your death that you did. And that means besides loving me."

Draco's heart slowly started beating again. Knowing that Harry considered them as having a shared future helped immensely.

"I don't know," he said. "Most people don't know right now."

"But most people haven't been as obsessed with a single person as you've been," said Harry, his voice but not his words going soft. "They might have some idea. Wanting to travel to France, or become an Auror, or date a boy from Ravenclaw. They're vague ambitions, they can change, but they have them. What are yours?"

Draco frowned. He was slowly moving past the fact that it was Harry asking him these things, and the part of his brain that demanded answers from himself was displeased. Did he really have no ambitions?

Well, no, that wasn't true. There were some vague ambitions, as Harry said, though Draco hadn't considered them worth anything because they didn't have the rock-solidity of his own parents' plans and dreams. And until tonight, he had thought more about the changes his soul had gone through than what the consequences of those changes might be. Grandiose visions of defying his father and becoming a hero in the War at Harry's side—somehow—were as far as he'd got along that path.

Asked to solidify them, could he?

Of course I can. That's a silly thing to ask.

"I like history," he said. "And I'd like to be able to create spells, but I don't know if I have the talent for it."

"A lot of that is desire," said Harry at once. "Some is power, too, of course. Snape created his own spells, and he's powerful. But pressing need could drive you to make a spell." A shadow fell across his face for a moment, and then he shook his head and dispelled it. "There are books in your library on it. Why have you never read them?" He was definitely curious now.

"I don't know," Draco muttered. "I guess I thought I wasn't strong enough in magic, so it didn't matter if I read them or not."

"Read them," Harry advised.

"What, you aren't going to show them to me?" Draco demanded.

"No," said Harry, "for the same reason that I haven't included you in every vates negotiation I've ever had. That's a part of my life that I sometimes want to share, but not always, and some parts of it you can't follow me into. I want you to be able to have something of your own like that. I don't have any special interest in creating spells. I'll listen to what you really want to tell me, but I won't support you step by step. If nothing else, I'm not sure I'll have the time," he added dryly.

"If this were a normal relationship, we wouldn't have discussions like this," Draco muttered. "We'd just grow into it."

Harry covered the distance between them and put his hand under Draco's chin, lifting it. That wasn't fair, Draco thought, not when he was shorter. "This isn't normal, Draco," he said. "It never will be. If you want someone normal, then you should look away from me."

His eyes were calm and honest, and Draco wanted to slap him. "Don't you care at all?" he asked.

A faint smile quirked Harry's mouth. "You're doing it again," he said easily. "You expect someone to get angry about this, so you get upset when I don't. But I do care, Draco." His arms abruptly tightened around Draco in an embrace. "I don't want to lose you. But if it would be best for you to love someone normal, then yes, I would let you go. How could I keep you in prison, when I would hate it myself?"

Draco wondered for one moment if Harry was hugging him only because Draco might want him to, or because Harry really wanted to—

And then he wanted to smack himself in the forehead. That was what Harry was talking about. If Draco distrusted his every action because he thought the notion of sacrifice might lie behind it, then he couldn't really claim to trust Harry at all. He had to listen to his words and try to give Harry the second chances that he would have wanted extended to him.

"I don't want to love someone normal," he answered, gently pulling himself away from the embrace. "That means ordinary, and Malfoys don't do ordinary."

Harry laughed at him, and then waited. Draco enjoyed looking at him, but had the uneasy feeling that Harry expected him to say something.

"The thing about your empathy that you were hiding from me?" Harry prompted gently.

Draco shivered and closed his eyes. Harry would hate this. He just knew it.

On the other hand, he wanted to tell him. And Harry was right that he couldn't expect honesty where he wouldn't give it. And Harry had brought the topic back up, when it would have been easier on both of them to just let it go.

"My gift's mutated so that I can possess people," he admitted quietly. "I possessed a Death Eater during the battle at the Weasels', and made her Stun herself. Then I accidentally woke up in my father's body the other day. My empathy's getting smaller, so I think it turned into this. But it's really close to compulsion, and I knew that you'd hate me."

There. He'd said it.

He promised himself a full count of ten before he opened his eyes. But he cheated and peeked on four.

Harry was smiling gently at him, with a smile that Draco was almost sure he hadn't meant to let Draco see, trailing one finger just above the spot on his forehead where a scar like the lightning bolt would have been, if he'd had one. His face was tender, and open, and so full of love that Draco's throat started aching.

Harry blinked, and caught himself, and started to close his expression again. But he'd already noticed Draco's open eye by then. He hesitated, and relaxed his face into the smile again.

Draco almost forgot to be nervous.

"I don't blame you at all," Harry said quietly. "It's not like you asked for this, and it's not like you immediately started trying to use it to harm people. You need to practice with it, obviously, and get it under control."

"Who would let me possess his mind?" Draco asked bitterly.

"I would."

Draco started to open his mouth to say that of course Harry would do that, because he liked sacrifices, and paused. Could he really believe that someone with that expression on his face was only doing this because he would have done it for anyone?

"I trust you," Harry confirmed calmly. "And my mind's complex, reordered and rebuilt—good training for dealing with a simpler one. I know that I can fight back if I ever really feel threatened. It's the best solution. If you agree, of course."

Draco swallowed. He didn't really want to speak, because he was sure that any words would not have conveyed what he was feeling—the mixture of wary trust and gratitude and love.

He leaned forward and kissed Harry gently instead. Harry permitted it, even tilting his head to welcome him in. Draco felt himself becoming more composed as they kissed, and by the time he broke away, he knew that his cheeks weren't as flushed and his breathing was less rapid.

On the other hand, he was pleased to see, both of those things had happened to Harry.

Harry coughed and glanced away from him. "Is there anything else you can think of that we need to talk about?" he asked.

The way that you retreat from touching me? But Draco was more than content to wait for their next argument for that. This time, he would be the one who had the advantage over Harry, he thought. There was one part of their bond that was as much a competition as anything else. "Not until morning," he said.

Harry nodded to him, then said, "I'm still sorry, and I still think you should be," and marched to the door.

Draco sat down slowly on his bed, and, for the first time, allowed himself to think about the fact that they'd fought with words alone, not fists or magic, and that Harry had taken the initiative to come and tell him the truth, even though he hadn't had to; he could have distracted Draco thoroughly enough that he would let the nagging doubts go, especially in his own doubt about his possession gift.

But it hadn't happened that way.

It might not be normal, but I think it's better than that.