MEMORY VIAL 11: PROFESSOR LUPIN'S ADVICE (YEAR 3)

"Tell me about your Patronus," Professor Lupin said, after Harry had begged him not to resign from his Defense Against the Dark Arts position. "From what the headmaster told me this morning, you saved a lot of lives last night, Harry."

And so Harry told him all about the Patronus he had created while defending his other self and Sirius Black against an endless swarm of black-cloaked dementors.

"I thought about my dad mostly," Harry said wistfully, after Lupin had shared with him his own thoughts about the resulting Patronus. "And the fact that I knew I could do it because I already had. But… for a split second… I also remembered the feeling I'd gotten when I realized the boy I like might like me back."

It was a lie; he hadn't really thought about Draco, but he wanted to put the focus on the other thing he wanted to discuss. Harry tensed, expecting some kind of horrible response, but Lupin was unfazed by the admission that he liked a boy, and, in fact, Lupin smiled kindly from over a fully packed suitcase after waving his wand to clap it shut.

"I doubt that had much to do with your Patronus last night, if it was only a split second of remembrance," Lupin commented, "so I can only assume you're telling me this to get some kind of advice."

Harry blinked anxiously, fearing he would be told that feelings for other boys were extremely inappropriate and should be curtailed at all costs. But he trusted Lupin even if he was going to tell him something he didn't want to hear. Harry nodded firmly, hoping that his feelings would be understood by the best teacher he had ever had so far.

"I need help, Professor."

"Alright," Lupin said, "I can't make any promises about giving any good or useful advice, but I will do my best. If you don't want me to pry, or if you want me to shut up at any point, I'll understand. But I'm curious… this crush of yours, is it the boy who's been picking on you all year, Mr. Malfoy?"

Harry affirmed his guess with a wordless nod. He was so anxious now that he couldn't stand still.

"Yes… I wasn't sure until just now, but I saw the way you two were behaving in class when you were hexed, which is why I convinced Severus we shouldn't formulate a counter-charm. It would have been a shame if we'd dispelled it."

Harry opened his mouth, then stammered. "W-Wait… you both knew how to make a counter-charm?"

"Of course we did, Harry. A contractual hex like that is tricky but not impossible to unwind. I'd suspected something was going on for a hex like that to have ever occurred between you two; I didn't think it would be helpful if we interfered too much. As long as you were both getting your work done, I didn't see the need. Only, I had hoped your time being stuck together would have lightened the death grip Mr. Malfoy's maintained over you all year." He shrugged and then sighed tiredly. "But I suppose that was too much to hope for."

There was a lull in the conversation while Harry pondered that, remembering what Draco had written, that he was afraid to loosen his grip.

"Sir… I was hoping you could tell me what to do…"

"How do you mean?" Lupin raised his eyebrows. "I'm going to need more context about what you're asking me to address."

Harry shut his eyes for a moment, then decided he had come this far and ought to relay the facts as he understood them currently, to lay everything out in front of Lupin so that his answers might be more useful.

"Right. Um… sorry, Professor." Harry scratched his neck, then yanked on the collar of his robes. His hands were sweating, and his arms were going numb. "It's just difficult because… well, I'm so angry and confused… and I feel like I don't even know what I should feel…"

"I understand, Harry, take your time. There's no need to rush this sort of thing."

After a long interim of silence, Harry eventually felt grounded enough to get on with explaining the situation.

"Alright," he said determinedly. "Draco Malfoy" —he smiled on reflex— "is such an arrogant snob that I can't stand being around him most of the time. But we always wanted to be friends ever since we met. I rejected him, though, because he was mean to one of my friends and expected me to ditch Ron to be with him, so he's been at my throat ever since. He still wanted to be my friend though, I think, at least for a couple of years… I think he was just biding his time, waiting for me to come crawling back to him or something—as if I'd abandon everything and everyone just to be with him." A grimace swept over Harry's face and then was gone. "But the weird thing is, as cruel and spiteful as he's been, he has these off moments of niceness towards me that are hard for me to make sense of."

"Can you explain some of those moments to me?" Lupin asked.

Harry thought. "Well… he once lied to keep me from getting into trouble… he took the blame, in fact, and I was grateful because everyone knew I might've been expelled. And then he let me carry him to the ward when he was injured, after I insisted of course, but Hagrid would've been faster. He confided in me when we were alone, and a lot of the things he shared at the time sounded really personal. If I were to be honest with you, sir," Harry's cheeks went slightly pink, "I wanted to hold his hand when he was sharing all that… I wanted to kiss him, actually… get close to him… or something. It was really quite lovely, and I thought that we'd connected and that things were going to be different.

"But then he bullied me harder after all that, and now he's saying he doesn't even want to be my friend, which has got me all confused because I'd like to be his friend if he'd stop being such a git…

"I haven't told anyone about any of this, not even Ron or Hermione. And—I mean… I don't have to date him or anything, but I just…" This was the most embarrassing part, but he decided to blurt it out as quickly as he could. "I'm obsessed with the idea of kissing him now, even though I'm so mad that I could kill him. And I've started having these dreams," his expression grew worried, "wonderful but horribly confusing dreams where we're fighting each other in front of the whole school but then we…" He couldn't say it, but Lupin seemed to understand.

Harry lowered his gaze, blushing furiously. "In front of everyone," he reiterated in a despairing voice, "as if we don't even care who sees us. And in all these dreams, Voldemort is lurking somewhere just beyond the crowd, but he can't see us, and Malfoy starts telling me it has to end now, but we… we can't stop, and I almost don't care if Voldemort kills me because everything feels perfect the way it is…" He glanced nervously at Lupin. "And I want these dreams to come true. Not the Voldemort part, obviously, or the crowd, but I want to be with Malfoy even though I don't even understand how it's supposed to work.

"But I shouldn't even like boys, right?" At this, Harry hoped Lupin would tell him otherwise. "Ginny's pretty, and I love the thought of Cho—I dream about her too. But then it's like all these pretty girls don't exist anymore when he's around, and everything I thought I ever wanted is just him."

Judging by the distraught note in Harry's voice, Lupin could tell the boy was clearly overwhelmed. He was nodding, having closed his eyes at some parts as if he were remembering something from his past.

"This story sounds familiar to me, Harry, so I will tell you what I think. But first, I want to lay the foundation. Are you sure that you like him? Even knowing who he is?"

Harry thought of Lucius Malfoy, Draco's father, but his face still stretched into a smile. "A lot, sir… I hate him, but I also can't help but like him. I love looking at him, it gives me butterflies…" Harry bit his lip, then murmured shyly, "He's really cute… I love how he does his hair, and I enjoy his mind when he's not using it to hurt someone."

"Well, then… It sounds to me like you might be falling in love."

"It feels like it, sir," Harry admitted glowingly, but still with an anxious and worried expression. "I've never felt like this before, but at the same time he infuriates me…"

Lupin chuckled at that. "I don't see how he couldn't. He really knows how to push your buttons, and I think that's something he enjoys."

Harry rubbed the back of his neck. "I think he likes me back, but he's always driving home how much he hates bent wizards. I heard him saying awful things about them once, that they shouldn't even be allowed to live. Not to mention he's said some terrible things right to my face. But if the love letter I got on Valentines Day was from him—"

"Wait, you think Mr. Malfoy wrote you a love letter?" Lupin's eyebrows shot straight up.

"I think so." Harry removed the parchment in question from the pocket of his robes, and his head was swimming at the thought of a teacher reading his private mail like this. Harry handed it to Lupin who scrutinized it for a couple of minutes.

Harry broke the tense silence with: "I've been unable to match the handwriting to Malfoy. I figured you might know if it was him… He says the professors get on him for using language like that, to smokescreen when he doesn't know the answer to something in his essays. He wrote me another note just over a week ago, and I was hoping to compare the handwritings, but the note isn't in cursive. It's just a rushed sort of scribble…"

Harry was talking way too much, but he wanted to know for sure that it was Malfoy even though he knew he couldn't get a guarantee. He hoped he wasn't betraying Malfoy by sharing the letter, but Lupin had always been so kind and sympathetic about special circumstances when it came to Harry's personal life. A potential relationship between him and another boy in an environment that was largely hostile to such pairings seemed to qualify as special.

Lupin took his time absorbing all that information with the very little clues he had about the two boys already. When he was satisfied that he could provide an adequate response, he refolded the letter and then handed it back.

"You've thought a lot about this, haven't you?"

Harry shrugged, blushing once more, hoping that it wasn't a bad thing.

"First off, I have to tell you that I can't be sure if that letter was from him. But you're obviously taken with him, so I don't think anything I have to say is going to stop you from doing what you want to do. That said, I want you to be cautious if you go after him. You don't want to rush things with a boy like that, even if he does have feelings for you. Based on what I've seen, you ignite a lot of very strong emotions in him—as he eloquently expressed in that letter if it's from him—but whether those are feelings of love or something else, I couldn't say. He's a tempest of emotion, and his father will not be kind to him straying from the path he's likely already laid out for him. If you want to be with Mr. Malfoy, you're going to need to be brave but also patient. To say nothing of the fact that Mr. Malfoy hasn't been kind to you all year."

"He was wonderful on the last day we were hexed," Harry said in Malfoy's defense, feeling discouraged by what Lupin was telling him. But then again, he hoped he hadn't misinterpreted their interaction by the Great Lake as something more than what it was. "He confided in me… said he wanted to have dinner with me sometime and send a private carriage and everything—and he didn't have to be alone with me that night, but he dragged me off with him, and it was so—"

Harry fell silent at Lupin's stern look.

"You're falling in love, Harry… You're falling head over heels in love with a boy who's done little more than hurt you. Be careful. I don't want to dissuade you from following your heart, but if you're wrong… If he doesn't have the same feelings—and even if he does—you don't know how he will react if you come rushing at him with your heart exposed like this. I have no doubt that he hates bent wizards like you said, and that's a tricky thing to deal with, especially if he's bent. It might not make sense to you, but to a boy like him, it would make all the sense in the world. This attraction you feel towards him is innocent and sweet, and I want to encourage you where your feelings seem to be leading you. But even you're confused right now just like you said, so can you imagine a boy like him, what the state of his mind must be?

"If it turns out you both love each other, I want to encourage it, I truly do. But given the circumstances—knowing who his father is—I have to warn you or else I wouldn't be your friend. Take it or leave it as you move forward. My only request is that you consider what I've said."

Harry nodded, feeling wholly determined to take all of that into account.

"Enjoy what you're feeling," Lupin said, putting on his most caring smile. "Don't let anyone take that away from you, not even me. And if you want some practical advice, I'd tell you to get Mr. Malfoy to make the first move, that way he can't lie to himself about it later. Give him a subtle opening, one that will tempt him to be straightforward. Harry, make him own his actions and feelings so that he knows and understands if whether or not he truly loves you. Otherwise, he might chew you up for everything you've got and then discard you after convincing himself that you'd worn him down. Worse yet, if he exposes you."

Harry wiped his sweaty palms against his robes, feeling less anxious now that Lupin was voicing his support. "If you don't mind me saying so, sir… but you say all that like you've experienced it yourself. Like you've lived this once before…"

Lupin sighed, then massaged his forehead. "Please understand, Harry, I don't mean to patronize you when I say this, but you are so young… You're still a child, and you don't know what the world is really like yet… You don't fully understand how it treats people who are different…"

"People like you?" Harry hoped to nudge Lupin to be more precise with his language.

"Yes, Harry, people like me… You remember everything I told you about myself in the Shrieking Shack? Even your own friend, Ron, was repulsed by me being a werewolf. He reacted so strongly that it actually quite hurt, to say nothing of the man who exposed me just this morning." He smiled sadly. "But not only that, Harry… I'm different in more ways than just that…"

Harry could have guessed as much. "Are you… are you in love with a man, too?"

Lupin nodded in a defeated sort of way, as if he'd been caught with another undesirable trait. Harry waited for a long while, hoping he would elaborate.

"He's the most precious thing in the world to me now," Lupin said. "I wouldn't give up being a werewolf if it meant I could never be with him."

Harry's face twitched into a smile. It sounded romantic. It sounded beautiful, but also tragic…

"Before I fell in love with him, I had another lover who couldn't endure the relationship after we were found out. We were about your age, and it lasted a couple of years, until we were fifteen… We always met in secret, but he was in deep denial, and the fact that we both liked girls really confused him. He kept telling me it was a temporary frolic which we both needed to grow out of, but I told him I would be with him for as long as he wanted me. It was my way of saying 'I love you,' but I always knew his heart belonged to someone else. Then one day, someone walked in on us being… affectionate. He turned on me instantly and said that I'd bent him into complying with my perversions. I couldn't defend myself, and I've rarely felt that kind of heartbreak since…"

"That's terrible," Harry said, feeling depressed at such an outcome. He couldn't fathom someone betraying the person that they loved, but then was reminded of Peter Pettigrew's comparable disloyalty.

"Harry, if you find out over the course of time that Mr. Malfoy loves you, then promise me you will never abandon him even when he's at his worst. Protect him. Be patient with him and love him fiercely, while trusting he will love you back, even if it doesn't feel like it in the moment. No matter who you end up loving in the future, remember that love cannot exist separate from pain and sacrifice. Remember the magic your mother cast over you, and don't discount the possibility of a miracle—especially when you are at the end of your rope, because that is when the magic is most likely to take hold."

Like my Patronus, Harry thought. "I promise, sir," Harry said, just as the headmaster knocked on the open door with Professor Snape standing malevolently beside him. Harry stuffed the recovered Marauder's Map and Invisibility Cloak into the pocket of his robes.

"Your carriage is at the gates, Remus," Dumbledore announced. Lupin thanked him in a strained voice before requesting that he and Harry both leave him and Snape alone for a few minutes.

Lupin chuckled at the concerned look Harry was giving him. Everyone knew what Snape had done, that he was the one who had outed Lupin to the Slytherins. "I requested to see Severus for five minutes before I left," he explained, "and now that he's here, I can't go until I've had a word…

"Severus," Lupin said, casting his glance high over Harry's head. Professor Snape did not so much as nod at the mention of his name. "I hope you're okay with us chatting in private for a while."

Snape merely narrowed his eyes at that, but it was apparently enough for Lupin, and Dumbledore promptly turned to leave.

"Good-bye, Harry," Lupin said gently. "Remember to love well. And don't be sad. I feel sure we'll meet again sometime."

Harry glared at Snape as he passed him through the doorway. The last thing he wanted to do was leave them together alone like that, and so he stared back over his shoulder just as Snape swept his cloak out in a gesture with his wand to shut the door. Lupin smiled sorrowfully when the other man stepped further into the room.

Harry heard a barely audible, "I didn't think you'd come," followed by Snape's silky response: "How could I not…"

The voices became muffled when the heavy door settled into its frame, shielding the two enemies from view. Dumbledore placed his hand on Harry's shoulder for reassurance, and Harry smiled painfully up at him, puzzling over what Lupin could possibly have to say to a rat like Snape behind closed doors.

When Harry got back to his dormitory that evening, he found a distinguished-looking owl scratching at the window near his bed. Curious, since he had never seen the white-dappled bird before, Harry let it in.

It flapped onto Harry's bed with an imperious hoot, a clinking satchel tied around its ankle. "You're a pretty bird," Harry said observantly as he pulled the string free from the owl's leg. The owl swiveled its head in a violent way and hooted angrily, to which Harry grinned and said, "Alright. You're a handsome owl?" The owl relaxed his puffed-up feathers almost instantly, making Harry chuckle. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say you belonged to a certain prat in Slytherin…"

The owl gave him a bored look as Harry opened the satchel; several Galleons spilled onto his scarlet eiderdown along with a quickly scribbled note:

Potter, this should cover your broom's repair. Have a third-party inspect it after to make sure it's good as new. Also, do me a favor over the summer, will you?
Eat dung and plant your face into a Gorgonpus.

Sincerely, Draco

P.S. Next year, for once try not to show off.

Harry watched as the handsome bird swooped elegantly onto the window ledge where the breeze ruffled his feathers. He looked up at Harry from over his glossy beak, made a hoot that sounded like a harrumph, and then nosedived into the open air, where he was chased by a snowy bolt of feathers that Harry recognized as his own Hedwig.


When Draco disembarked with his friends onto Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, he wished them all farewell and gave Pansy his usual minute-long embrace. "Write to me?" she said as he ruffled her hair playfully.

Draco smirked and pinched her in the side, while saying gruffly, "Get a move on, little leech," when he noticed her parents coming toward them. "And you know I'll write, every other day as usual."

Draco caught sight of Harry as he was climbing off the train. Their eyes met for a brief moment when Pansy threw herself into Draco's arms and kissed him on the mouth. "Don't let Astoria anywhere near you, you hear?"

"Pansy, there's not a girl in the whole school that'll come between us," he said honestly. "You can relax. I'm not interested in Daphne's little sister." He spun her brusquely around and then pushed her towards her mother, catching Harry's gaze through the crowds of people one last time before pressing his way towards where his own parents usually stood waiting for him. They welcomed him with their usual warmth: his mother unabashedly affectionate, his father cold and aloof but still proud and pleased to see him.

Upon arriving at Malfoy Manor, Narcissa said to Draco, "We've got a special dinner planned for you, dear, replete with all your favorite entrées, soda drinks, and desserts."

"Really cool, what for?" Draco asked curiously. But neither of his parents mentioned anything until they had all finished with their pudding.

His mother gazed at Draco somewhat anxiously while his father sipped his third glass of Aurum Amaretto.

"Darling," Narcissa said, making Draco jerk his drooping head up to show that he was listening and that he wasn't about to let his manners slip up at the table.

"Do you remember all the times we explained to you why we sympathize with the Dark Lord?"

Draco nodded with conviction, furrowing his brow. "Sure. It all made sense to me. He was more of a hero than anything else with all the things he wanted to do, and he was more aligned with us than anyone else."

"Indeed," Lucius steepled his fingers in front of his empty plate as one of the two house-elves rushed over to retrieve it. "Now that you're old enough and have proven yourself faithful to our values, your mother and I have agreed that it's the right time to tell you the truth about our involvement with him."

Draco had known for years that it would have been better if the Dark Lord was still in power expanding his reach. His parents had taught him that it was tragedy he'd ever been defeated, although they never fully admitted to being his willing servants.

But even now, while his parents were waxing poetic about their hatred of Muggles and admitting to Lucius's obedience to the Dark Lord, Draco was thinking about Harry Potter with his perplexed green eyes, lightning bolt-shaped scar, and stubborn disposition. He thought about Harry standing angrily under the moonlight by the Clock Tower, and he felt like a gulf was stretching out between them, now that Draco understood his family had always been on Voldemort's side.

He remembered Harry begging Draco to stop punishing him, and Draco wished he had explained why he had abused Harry all these years, for his own good, and to make Harry understand that the riffraff he hung out with would be the ultimate limiting factor for him. He also wanted to teach Harry not to disrespect or humiliate him ever again, but all these tough-love lessons hadn't panned out well so far. Harry had only become angry and distraught by them, but Draco didn't have any other methods to get through to him.

Which was probably just as well. If Harry was with him right now, Draco probably wouldn't be able to resist the physical pull he felt towards him. In fact, he might end up doing regrettable things that his father would beat him for if he found out.

Draco thought of Harry even while he listened to his parents waffle on. He imagined pulling him close in the Slytherin common room—which had become one of his favorite dreams as of late—whispering "I like you," with all the drawling sweetness in his voice that he could muster. He had never spoken to Pansy like that, but all his affection was wrapped up in one boy, and his heart ached as he reflected on the fact that any friendship with Harry had been doomed from the very start, if for no other reason than the fact that Draco would never have been satisfied with just that.