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Chapter Three—The Tension of Bees

"Do you really think that matters to me?" Malfoy's voice—except that Harry thought of him as Draco in this dream, which was ridiculous, because he'd never done that before except when other members of his family were around and he had to think of Draco by his first name or get lost in the constant stream of Malfoys—was crisp and haughty, but Harry knew him well enough by now to hear the slight undertone of hurt.

That's mad, I don't know him, this is a dream—

But the weight fell on his mind like honey, and drew him back into the midst of what he knew couldn't be real. He was standing in a large ground floor room in Malfoy Manor, with sunlight showering through the windows. Over the year he'd spent here with Draco, it had come to seem more and more like a home, but right now it felt to Harry like the building where Hermione had been tortured.

"I don't think it'll work," he said, pacing back and forth with his eyes on the floor. If they were on the floor, no one could expect him to look into Draco's face. "We've tried, but we still argue all the time, and we can't just have sex at the end of every argument as if that solves something." His hand rose and waved in the air. It was a daring, extravagant gesture, and he hoped it would suffice to make Draco think he was brave, because he still couldn't look up. "And you hate my friends, and they—dislike you." He really wasn't sure about Ron; there might have been hatred there, not least because he rarely got to see Harry now. "So I think it's best to—just end it."

He wasn't aware that Draco had started to stride across the room until a pair of painful, gripping hands caught his shoulders. He looked up with a gasp, and found Draco's mouth a few inches from his. But Draco didn't try to kiss him, the way that he usually would to heal any row. Instead, Draco held him there, and struck him with forceful words.

"You've never actually accepted that I'm in this as much as you are, have you, Harry? Always thinking I'll desert you at a moment's notice, always believing I'll think more of my friends' opinions or your friends' opinions than just yours, always certain that this is a temporary fling for me or all I get out of it is sex."

Harry tried nervously to back away, because he had never seen Draco this angry. Draco just held him in place without effort—and normally, Harry was stronger than he was. Harry felt a strange shiver run through him, golden as the sunlight, and stopped trying to move. He just stared, and let Draco's words fall into his mind like stones into a pool.

"This matters to me just as much as it does to you. I won't give up on it easily. And neither should you."

And his lips came down on Harry's, and Harry felt, in that moment, a surge of wonder that swiftly turned into a surge of greed. He brought his hands up and linked them together behind Draco's neck, moaning aloud in what probably sounded like desire, but was more than that. He didn't just want sex, at the moment, he wanted the life with Draco that he could see gleaming in the distance like buried treasure, wanted it so much that he thought he would die if he didn't have it—

Harry's eyes flew open, and he gasped before he started coughing. He'd just breathed in a huge lungful of dust, since he'd fallen asleep with his head on the old book on life-debts that he'd been pondering since three in the morning.

He lifted his head, shook it, wiped the dust from his glasses and his eyes, and canceled the Lumos on his wand, since it was daylight now and he could see perfectly well. Then he turned at the sound of a slight cough, and found Ginny in the doorway of the library, watching him with a faintly sad expression.

In her left hand, she held Narcissa Malfoy's letter.

"When were you going to tell me about this?" she asked.

Harry flushed, a bit, and rose to cross the room and kiss her. Her lips felt distinctly different than Draco's in the dream—

Stop! Stop comparing them! That's just a dream, just part of whatever strange curse it is that makes you see Draco bloody Malfoy in mirrors, too, and you don't need to think about it!

"I didn't want to wake you," he whispered against her lips, when he drew back, holding her with one arm around her shoulders, and Ginny had relaxed against him. "That arrived by owl around three, and I knew how hard your day had been. I didn't want to wake the kids, either."

"Considerate of you," Ginny murmured, but her voice hadn't entirely lost its sharpness. "You have to answer, don't you?"

Harry nodded, and gestured back at the book he'd been reading. "That says that whoever decides to fulfill or call on the life-debt first has the choice of how it's paid. The only exception is if the debtor or the person the debt is owed to dies, and then the survivor has to choose what to do." He thought for a moment of Snape, who had apparently fulfilled his debt to James Potter by protecting Harry during his first year.

Or did he do it even then just because I had my mother's eyes?

Harry shook his head. He had never sorted out his own feelings about Snape, beyond deciding that he'd been the bravest man he ever knew and giving Severus as a middle name to his second son—a choice Ginny had argued strenuously against, until Harry had shared Snape's memories with her. It was disconcerting, and hurtful, to think too much more about it.

And if he was alive right now, who knows what he would be like?

People can change so much in ten years.

Maybe Malfoy has, too—

Harry slammed the door of his mind abruptly on that thought. He would travel to Malfoy Manor, because he had no choice, but he would deal only with Narcissa. Draco bloody Malfoy could fucking well wait.

"And how are you going to fulfill it in the face of all the other things you have to do?" Ginny's voice was lightly exasperated, but Harry heard real fear there. She didn't want him to run off and leave her by herself with the children again.

Harry smiled and kissed her cheek. "I've already sent off an owl to ask George to come and stay with them," he said. George still ran Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes by himself, but he was prone to taking half the days in the week off without explanation, and to sit up until all hours working on new pranks. He would be happy enough to come and spend some time in the Potters' house, Harry knew; the children always cheered him up. "And I'm only giving my mornings to this life-debt business. There's just too much else to do."

Ginny's arms closed around him in a tight embrace for a moment. Then she murmured into his ear, "You are the best husband ever, and I'd make breakfast for you right now if Glynnis hadn't told me that practice starts at eight this morning."

Harry briefly drew out Fabian Prewett's watch to examine the time: half past seven. He nodded. "I'll manage well enough for myself and the kids until George gets here. Go on." He gave her a gentle push in the direction of the door.

She waved to him jauntily, and then went to fetch her broom and uniform and a few pieces of toast to eat on the run. Harry spent some moments rubbing out the crick in his neck.

Then he heard a thump from down the hall. A loud cry announced that Al had fallen out of bed again, probably in the course of one of his dreams, and then James began his singsong declaration that Al was a baa-aaa-aaby.

Harry rolled his eyes and went to fetch his children, glad that George hadn't arrived yet. Al tended to join James in unmanageable behavior until he'd had his breakfast.

"He's coming, dear."

Draco tried not to make it look as if his shoulders were hunching defensively when his mother waved the letter from Potter at him. "Really?" he muttered into his porridge, and turned another page of the Daily Prophet. Not that he cared about Quidditch scores, and not that it was easy to forget that the story of "his" crime was the lead article, but it was better than pretending to be happy that his old rival was coming.

Old rival and new torment.

If something ten years old could be considered new.

"Yes. He says that he'll only give the mornings to us, because he has—" Narcissa sniffed to show what she thought of the next phrase "—other things to do. But he's coming, and he promises to investigate the crime to the best of his ability."

"Of course," Draco said, and then yelped as the paper was ripped away from him. His mother stood glaring at him, shaking her head.

"You should at least clean yourself up a bit before he arrives, Draco," she said, and gave a toss of her long blonde hair as if to show how clean she wanted him to be. "And put your memories of the night that that girl was killed into a Pensieve, so that Potter can see you have a perfectly good alibi."

"Mother—" Draco began, determined to try and make her understand, yet one more time, that he couldn't see Potter because of the mirrors.

"Up, Draco!" And his mother clapped her hands and shoved at his shoulders the way she might have tried to train a naughty Crup puppy, if the Malfoys had ever been undignified enough to stoop to having pets.

Grumpily, Draco went to his private loo. It had been carefully redone in green and silver tile with dimming charms cast on it, so that none of it reflected him. They'd found no way to detach the enchanted mirror from its place, but a cloth cast over it prevented Draco from seeing strange visions in it.

He showered, bending his head down so that the warm fingers of water could rake through his hair more easily. Then he used his own fingers, pausing, as always, when he went through some strands and trying to figure out if they were actually thinning and falling out, or if it was just his imagination. Marian had said they were, but Marian would say nearly anything.

It hadn't been like that, once, the relationship between him and his wife, Draco thought as he turned so that the shower could rake across his back. They hadn't ever loved each other, but they'd understood each other, and their companionship had been settled and strong. They'd been united in a desire that Scorpius should have the best life possible, certainly, and Marian didn't care if he had male lovers as long as he didn't bring any diseases back to their bed.

And then she'd tried to kidnap Scorpius, and things had—

Well.

Things changed.

Draco faced forwards again, and this time the shower caressed the scars he'd got from Sectumsempra, the bloody curse that Severus had invented but Potter had used. Severus had explained to Draco in short tones as he healed him that the curse was "for enemies," and Potter probably hadn't known what it would do.

Not that that was an excuse, to Draco's mind. Who simply used an unknown spell on someone else, without having the slightest idea of what it might do, even if it might backfire on him?

Perhaps someone faced with an enemy trying to cast the Cruciatus Curse on him?

Draco told his conscience to hush—it was a very inconvenient mind-part to have—rinsed one more time, and stepped out of the shower. A charmed towel already waited for him, fluffing around him, and heating and drying his skin in all the right places. A comb and brush fluttered above his head, carefully using his mother's judgment to decide how best his hair should look. Draco hated the way they felt, but since he wouldn't look into mirrors, it was a necessary spell.

Not that his avoiding mirrors mattered, of course, since he would see Potter in the flesh in a few hours anyway.

His eyes rose and locked on the enchanted mirror covered with a cloth.

A surge of unaccustomed bravery—or perhaps just longing to see if it was as bad as he remembered, since he hadn't looked in so long—made him reach out and violently rip the cloth aside, exposing the glass.

For a moment, he saw only himself, exactly as he looked now, scars partially exposed, towel moving around him like a snake, and he exhaled loudly in relief. And then Potter appeared behind him, head bent as he mouthed at the nape of Draco's neck, his eyes half-closed, his lips moving in the words of some joke that Draco, of course, couldn't hear.

His scars began to tingle, including the cuts in his palms that still remained from the exploding mirror a few weeks gone, and a high singing invaded his ears, like the humming of bees disturbed in a hive.

"Accio cloth!" Draco yelled, and the cloth rose and went back into place. At once, the vision of himself and Potter vanished.

The pain in the scars only slowly subsided.

Draco closed his eyes as the comb and brush and towel continued to tend to him, and tried with all his heart not to think about what would happen when he saw Potter again.

"Hello?" Harry slowly pushed in the door of Iris's Gallershop and looked around, although he could already tell the large front room only had easels and palettes and half-finished portraits in it. "Luna?"

Bare feet sounded on the wooden stairs, and Luna danced into view a few moments later, her blonde hair braided with so many different kinds of flowers it looked as if she were wearing a garden on her head. Her eyes were bright and dreamy, with the kind of serenity that Harry knew only came to her when she was panting. She had a smock on, but only partway; it had come untied from her left shoulder. Daubs of paint covered her face, hands, and arms as messily as the ice cream that George had fetched James and Al from Florian Fortescue's this morning. "Oh, hello, Harry," she said, and gave him a slightly more "present" smile. "You came because you heard the yellow singing?"

"Yes," Harry agreed, because it was best to agree when he had no idea what Luna was talking about. "And to give you payment for that portrait that Dean was doing. He said it was completed--?"

"Oh, of course!" Luna flung away the paintbrush she was holding, paused to consider the splotch of blue where it had slammed against a wall, and then seized his hand. Harry resigned himself to doing cleaning charms when he got home, but he was smiling in spite of himself. Luna's happiness was very hard to resist. "How could I have forgotten? Except that the Wrackspurts do steal thoughts, you know, and keep them in their nests. If I could discover one, I'm sure I'd find all sorts of interesting things I've forgotten, like my father's middle name. The portrait's upstairs."

She pulled him upwards at a rapid rate, and Harry came briefly eye-to-eye with many finished and half-finished paintings before they emerged into the first floor of what Luna called the gallershop and Dean called the gallery or the shop, depending on his mood at the moment. Here there was much more light, thanks to the three enormous windows overlooking Diagon Alley, and ceilings so airy that Harry had often thought it was the only indoor space in wizarding Britain, other than the Great Hall at Hogwarts, where one could have a good game of Quidditch. An enormous mural occupied one wall, twining in and out of Luna's dazzling colors and Dean's more subdued style. Though they were both fine artists on their own, Harry liked the paintings they worked on together best.

Dean looked up from a canvas across the room and gave Harry a little wave, but he was immersed in creation from the blank-eyed look of him, and so Harry just nodded back instead of trying to talk. Luna was dancing him past a series of paintings showing what looked like the Quidditch Pitch of Hogwarts, and finally settled like a small whirlwind before a portrait.

"This is the one?" she asked solicitously, as if someone else might have requested a portrait of Harry's family.

"Yes," Harry said, quietly, and not just because the painted children were dozing. He had to take a moment to admire how it had come out. Ginny sat in a chair in the forefront, with Harry leaning on the back of it, bending over her to whisper in her hair. James stood beside him, since he'd insisted on standing while Dean painted him—though this version of James was currently asleep on his father's hip with his mouth wide open. Al and Lily sat in Ginny's lap, at the moment collapsed together with their hair mingled. Harry felt another pulse of fierce love strike through him, and he smiled. It had been an excellent idea to have this painted, and though he knew he would sometimes regret the noise the children in the portrait made on top of the noise the real ones made, he could only commend Ginny for coming up with the idea.

"I brought the two hundred Galleons we agreed on—" he began, reaching into a pocket of his robes.

"It was fifty," said Luna.

Harry eyed her. "No," he said, "it was two hundred."

Nothing more futile than arguing with Luna, as her wide-eyed stare reminded him a moment later. "But it was fifty, Harry," she said. "We've already been more than paid by the enjoyment we had in painting it."

"Luna—"

"We aren't hurting, Harry," said Luna, and for a moment she was looking as keenly at him as someone "normal" would. "I promise, with our talents and as many people buy from us, we really aren't hurting." And then she slipped back into her dreamworld again. "The thought that it was two hundred is in the Wrackspurts' nest, too, I'm sure."

In the end, Harry had to shake his head and give over the fifty Galleons. He was sure that Dean had agreed with Luna, because Dean agreed with Luna most of the time. He only hoped the payment really was enough to cover the paints, canvas, spells, and time they would have woven into the work.

He enchanted the painting to hover behind him, nodded to Luna, and had started to turn away when she put her hand on his arm. Harry turned around. "What?" he asked. "Do I have a Nargle in my hair?"

Luna shook her head, even as she stared at him. No, not precisely at him, Harry realized a moment later—at the scar in the center of his brow. His skin prickled with unease, but he didn't draw away. One didn't do that to Luna, either, any more than they argued with her.

"You have two lives," Luna whispered.

Harry laughed in spite of himself. "More than that, I think, Luna, since I did come back from the dead after I defeated Voldemort."

"Two lives," Luna insisted, in the same breathless voice. "There is great happiness and great danger ahead for you, and even though you run from the danger, you hurtle towards the happiness. What you must learn to understand is that they both lie in the same direction." She gave a solemn little nod.

Harry swallowed. He hadn't told Luna about the mirror curse, because he wasn't entirely sure that she wouldn't have sallied off to confront Malfoy at once. Luna did that kind of thing for her friends.

"And, Harry?" Luna leaned close to him.

"What?" Harry whispered back.

"There are Crumple-Horned Snorkacks around the corner," Luna told him in exactly the same tone as before, and then turned and bounced across the room to resume work on the painting she'd abandoned.

Harry gave a little snort and relaxed. Luna wasn't a Seer; that had been proven true often enough, when her seemingly eerie predictions simply failed to come true. He had no reason to feel as if she had taken him out of the world and then ducked him back into a colder place than before.

He left the Gallershop—he tended to prefer Luna's name for it—with one final wave to Dean and determination riding in his mind. He would not allow things to be strange. He would go to the Malfoys', as soon as he had deposited the painting at home with George and the kids, and he would behave like a calm, rational adult, and if he felt strange on seeing Malfoy, so what? He hadn't seen the man in ten years, and he had never decided exactly how he felt about him. Some unease was to be expected. But no strangeness.

The fact that now both his lightning scar and his marks from Nagini's bite were burning didn't matter. It was just a fact, and facts could be ignored.

Harry Apparated in outside the ornate iron gates that fenced off Malfoy Manor from the rest of the world, and immediately had to lean against them, trembling, as a thick buzzing invaded his ears. His tension felt as if a dozen swarms of bees had left their hives and all settled on him.

Stop it, he told himself. This is only fear, and fear may be a legitimate emotion, but it's never stopped you from doing anything necessary. He took a step back and raised a fist, rapping on the gates.

He'd been expected, he saw, as the gates dissolved in a soft, pearly fall of mist and let him step through.

Harry crossed the gleaming gardens without a glance to left or right. Be damned if I let Malfoy impress me.

He reached the door at last, and let out a little sigh. He'd told Narcissa in his return letter that he wanted to talk to her, not Draco, using the excuse that speaking to the accused so soon would prejudice his conclusions. So a house-elf should meet him here and guide him to the mistress of the house.

He raised a hand to knock, and then the door swung in and he found himself facing Draco.

Their eyes met.

And everything around them—Manor, gardens, doorstep, the ridiculous white peacock stalking a few steps away—began to ripple and blur and weave and waver, and the tension of bees hung around Harry's neck like lead weights, and the only thing he could hear beyond the buzzing as he sagged to his knees was Malfoy's weak, hoarse cry.