Archive of Our Own

Mother of Pearl

Take refuge in pleasure; just give me your future, we'll forget your past - Roxy Music

:~:~:~:~:

 

Narcissa Malfoy was on her knees doing what she did best—throwing herself at the mercy of yet another man and wondering how far mere words would take her this time. She knew Amycus and his sister had got there before she had and that there was much damage to undo.

"He did more than anyone could have expected for someone so young," she said. "He was clever enough to get Death Eaters into Hogwarts. Because of him, Dumbledore is dead."

"At Snape's hand," Voldemort said. She couldn't read the emotion behind it.

"Nonetheless, without Draco, he would still be alive to plague us." There was no disagreement, so she forged on. "Draco may have hesitated but he's young. And loyal. Please, my Lord, give him another chance to prove it. For my sake."

The Dark Lord looked at her then, a hard, piercing gaze that nearly took her breath away. Then slowly a thin, white finger reached down to close the small space between them and touched her.

:~:~:~:~:

"I look a right tosser," Ron mumbled, just loud enough for Harry to hear. Harry chuckled but didn't risk an answer.

"Oh, dear, don't be like that," Ron's bedroom mirror admonished him in a metallically chipper voice. "You look wonderful, all dressed up like that. Of course you do! But you've left a button undone, just—there, that's it."

"I never got why dress robes have to be so nancy," Ron griped. "Er—not that there's anything wrong with that," he added nervously.

"Well, they're loads better than your last ones," Harry said, ignoring Ron's disclaimer. Ron's first paycheck—after beer and rent, of course—had gone to replacing his wholly regrettable hand-me-downs. Not a speck of lace was to be seen. Harry thought Ron looked rather nice and almost told him so, but he didn't want to spoil Ron's good mood.

Ron refolded his velvet collar and peered into the mirror, checking his teeth. Harry looked away quickly.

"Although you could have done with a haircut," the mirror chided.

"Oh, quiet, you. Hey, Harry, grab my invite off the desk, will you?"

"Yes." Harry took one look at the random pile of papers, books, unwashed cups, and Floo tokens. "Give me a hint?"

"I think I was using it for a bookmark. Buggering hell, I nearly forgot my medal, too. Be pretty stupid to show up to an Order of Merlin dinner without the proper hardware. Mum'd kill me."

Harry shuffled aside three Cleansweep catalogues (Early Spring Preview!, Spring! , and Almost Too Late For Spring! ) until he found a worn copy of Daring Dives that had a rich-looking parchment wedged between its pages. The card felt like his own—creamy and thick, with deckled edges—but the handwritten words were not the same.

Trumble and Trimble
Number Three, Dizzem Alley

Exclusive Providers of the
NeoLethe Restorative Treatment

Client - Ronald Weasley
Date of Treatment - March 15, 2000
Date of Memory - March 15, 1999
Your Keyword - Rampion

"Ron—"

The discomfort in his voice caught Ron's attention, and he glanced at Harry and then at the card. "Got it? Let's make tracks, then—"

"No, this isn't—. This is something else." Silently he handed the card to Ron and fought down the queasiness in his stomach.

Ron didn't say anything for a long time.

"March 15th was the day your father was killed, wasn't it?" Harry finally said. "Did you—"

"That's right, Harry, I did. Great detective work."

Harry ignored the edge to Ron's voice. "I'm sorry, I wasn't trying to snoop. NeoLethe?"

"You know what it is."

"Well, yeah. Wiping out memories. But isn't it dangerous? I mean, letting these people mess around with your head. NeoLethe is still pretty new and—"

"And now you're an expert on it, is that it?"

"Well, no. I've just been reading about it in the Daily Prophet like everyone else. Hermione was talking about it last week and I—"

"Yeah, I was there. You weren't too keen on the idea, I remember. A crutch, didn't you call it? No better than a drug."

Oh, shit. "I didn't mean..."

"Me?"

Harry tried to backpedal, knowing there was nothing easy he could say to get himself out of this. He didn't want to have a row with Ron—especially not tonight. If it were up to Harry, they'd have a few loud words and then it would be over and done, but Ron had a way of holding on to his anger for days.

"I'd just heard that some of their results were dodgy. They say the Ministry is looking into the whole business. They may ban it altogether, after what happened to Jason Jiggs."

"That was in the early days. Nothing like that has happened since. So what's your real problem with it, Harry? Why do you care what they say? You make it sound like Dark magic, and it's not. Or maybe you're just worried about the competition."

He was talking to Ron's back. "I'm just surprised you did it. After what happened to you with that brain at the Ministry in fourth year. And knowing what happened to Lockhart, after his Memory charm backfired."

"It's not Obliviation. I can go back any time I like and undo it. All I need is the keyword." He was waving the card around as if it bore a sharp-edged blade.

"It's none of my business."

Ron finally turned to face Harry and his expression was ugly. "Oh, don't give me that shite, Harry! You think I was wrong to do it, so you might as well say so."

Harry finally gave in to his own growing anger and his voice was harsh. "Okay, so maybe I don't like the idea of you wiping out any memories, good or bad, that's all. Is it any surprise after what the Dursleys did to me? For the first eleven years of my life they fed me lies about my parents and stole any chance I had of any memories of them. So yeah, I'm a little opinionated about it. In fact, you're right, it bothers me a lot."

"So stay away from Trumble and Trimble, then! No one's saying you should go. But I'm not you, Harry. And you weren't there the day when Dad was murdered right in front of me. When that curse hit him—you don't know what it was like to watch him die."

Harry felt his anger evaporate at the tormented look on Ron's face. "No. I don't."

"It turned him inside out. Literally. And I just watched, knowing that I couldn't help him. I was too busy throwing up—" Harry couldn't tell whether the tears threatening to spill from Ron's eyes were from anger or grief. Both.

"Listen, Ron. I wasn't—"

"So go ahead and call me weak if you want to. I spent the past year with that image in my head. It was my last memory of Dad, and he was—. Yeah, well. After a year of nightmares, I finally decided I didn't want that in my head any more. NeoLethe seemed a better bet than insanity."

Ron sounded as though he was trying for composure, so Harry met him halfway. "You sound like you still remember how he died, though."

"Yeah, I remember everything except that moment and what it was like to see it happen right in front of me. Memories are tricky things, really. There's the memory of the event, but then there are memories of thinking about the memory, too. Oh, it's hard to explain—"

"No, I think I get it. You have multiple memories. Kind of like echoes of the original one."

"Yeah. I still know what the curse does and how horrible it must have been, but I don't have that picture in my head anymore. It's gone. And the echoes of it are faint. I can live with those."

"Listen, I'm sorry. It's really not my place to say what you should have done. Especially not—" He almost brought up the one point that would definitely have them at each other's throats and bit his tongue instead.

"Yes, thank you for not insisting that what you do for the Ministry is completely different." The accusation hung there in the sudden silence, then Ron gave him a half-smile. "I know you wouldn't ever go to a place like Trumble and Trimble, Harry, but you know what? I'm glad I did it. I'd do it again, too."

"I didn't mean to sound like I was judging you. I was just worried about you, that's all. It's an old habit." He saw Ron visibly soften at his words.

"I'm fine. Better than fine. Be honest, would you ever have known about it if you hadn't seen that card?"

"No."

"Well, then." Ron began rummaging through a wobbly stack of books, but Harry saw him rub a quick hand over his eyes to erase any trace of tears.

"Does anyone else know?" He deliberately didn't say 'Hermione'.

"No. I didn't exactly broadcast it. And if it's all the same to you, I'd like to keep it that way."

"Sure. Really, Ron, I never should have spouted off. I don't know anything about it. I was just talking out of my arse."

Ron looked at him carefully for a moment, then said, "It's all right. I heard the scare stories about it, too, so I checked it out pretty well. After what I found out, I decided I would only use it once, and I don't plan to go back."

"Why? What did you hear?"

"Some people overdo it, that's all. I reckon they think they'll eventually be happy if they get rid of every bad thing they remember, so they keep going back again and again."

"God, that's a scary thought. I can see why the Ministry's worried."

"Well, there's good and bad in everything. That's what Dad used to say, anyway. And here's my sodding invite," Ron said, with false cheeriness, flourishing it in Harry's direction. "Come on, let's get weaving or else we'll face the wrath of Hermione for leaving her waiting."

"Yeah, I'm right behind you. We'll leave the fashionably late grand entrance to someone who's used to it, like Malfoy."

:~:~:~:~:

He and Ron were late enough to get a stern look from Hermione, but not late enough for the accompanying lecture. Luckily, she'd connected with a group of her colleagues from the Ministry, and from the sounds of it, they'd kept her fairly well entertained.

"Those robes look good on you, Ron," she said, and Ron beamed. "Yours too, Harry. I see you held out for coming solo after all."

"I told you I would. It's not exactly the kind of thing I'd bring someone to that I didn't know that well."

"I kept telling him that Ginny would've come with him as a friend," Ron said. "She doesn't hold it against you, you know. Well, not much, anyway."

"Then she wouldn't have been able to come with Dean. She deserves a better date than her ex-boyfriend. It's fine. I'm happy showing up with both of you. We can give Witch Weekly more fodder for their nasty gossip about what the three of us get up to in private."

"Harry, you're incorrigible!" Hermione said, but she was fighting a smile. "Just for that, I'll make you get us our first round of punch. Might as well get the rumours of our excessive alcoholism out of the way first."

Shortly afterwards, drinks in hand, the three of them walked among the tribute set up to honour those who'd achieved posthumous medals. Ron reached the portrait of his father first; Harry hung back for a moment.

"Hey, Dad."

"Ronald! Oh, don't you look handsome. I see you kept your mother at home while you picked out those robes. Very masculine! Oh, don't tell her I said anything—"

"No, Dad, I won't."

"And Hermione. Nice to see you again. How are the wedding plans coming? And is that Harry, too?"

"Yes, hullo."

Harry found himself paying closer attention to Ron than he would have an hour ago. He had to admit he hadn't seen his friend so relaxed in far too long. If a trip to Dizzem Alley was what it took, then who was he to split hairs over how it happened? Feeling guilty for challenging him earlier, he gave Ron's arm a friendly squeeze and followed it with an apologetic smile. Ron looked surprised, then returned the smile. All was forgiven, and Harry finally loosened up.

They said their goodbyes to Mr Weasley and headed towards Dumbledore's portrait. Someone had seen fit to display it right next to Snape's ugly black glare, but happily, another group of wizards soon obscured his scowls. No matter how many times Hermione reminded him that Snape had followed the headmaster's orders and had been a trustworthy member of the Order all along, Harry still harboured a healthy contempt for him.

An unwelcome voice interrupted his dark thoughts. Closer inspection of the two men with Snape's portrait showed one of them to be Draco Malfoy, looking decidedly more stylish than he had during the war. Older, too, with a hint of self-satisfaction about him that seemed inborn. Harry didn't know the other man.

"You remember Lloyd McGill, don't you, Professor?" he overheard Malfoy ask the portrait in his most unctuous, butter-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth voice.

"Of course I do. I remember you never quite fathomed the difference between cattail stems and dogwood roots, did you, Mr McGill?"

The man laughed loudly, a feigned effort clearly made for Malfoy's benefit that set Harry's teeth on edge. "Eventually I managed it, sir. I can't believe you remembered that!"

"I remember much more than that," Snape replied quietly, and McGill's laugh cut off abruptly.

Harry stopped listening altogether when McGill's hand crawled up Malfoy's back and his stubby fingers kneaded Malfoy's neck, out of sight of the portrait. The action was nothing like his own platonic gesture a moment earlier with Ron. This one was both deliberately possessive and indiscreetly carnal, and Malfoy, instead of being offended, was leaning into it. All through his own conversation with Dumbledore, Harry kept sneaking glances at what was happening just a few feet away. Unfortunately, Malfoy happened to turn his head at the wrong time, and Harry had to force a polite nod towards him. Malfoy stared back a little too long before returning his own wary greeting.

Dinner gave him no reprieve, either: he found himself seated only a table away from Malfoy and his boyfriend. Hermione and Ron had got themselves wrapped up in conversation with the witch nearest them, and his own neighbour apparently had a bad case of intimidation-by-the-Boy-Who-Lived, so he found himself keeping an eye on Malfoy all through the soup course. He managed to duck his head every time Malfoy turned his way to say something to his boyfriend. Out of boredom, he let himself make a game of it.

There was a pleased gasp from the crowd when the main course appeared simultaneously before each one of them. Harry peered down but didn't see what all the fuss was about.

Ron seemed impressed, though. "Wow. Roast dragon!"

"Dragon? As in...the flying and fire-breathing kind of dragon?" Harry asked.

"Do you know any other kind?"

Still, Hermione looked surprised, too, so Harry didn't feel that foolish having to ask. "So what's it taste like?"

"Dunno. Never had it before. It's too up-market for me." Ron dove in, forking up a huge mouthful. "Nnnddd." Harry translated that as 'good'.

Hermione poked tentatively at her plate. "I'm hungry enough to eat anything at this point. Just so long as it's not flying or breathing fire at the moment." She took a much smaller bite.

"Well?" Harry said, trying and failing to gauge her reaction.

"Not bad. Tastes like chicken."

Harry noticed that Malfoy took his roast dragon in stride. The prat probably ate it every day growing up.

Halfway through the meal, McGill abruptly swapped places with Malfoy, who looked a bit put out but shifted over without comment. Harry was left to stare at the back of his blond head.

Hermione leaned over and said, "I was wondering if Malfoy's date was ever going to do anything."

"What do you mean?"

"Don't tell me you didn't notice—Malfoy's been staring at you practically the whole meal. Honestly, it's like being back in the Great Hall."

He tried not to look flustered. "No, I didn't notice."

"He's still trying to get your attention, just like he used to," Ron said with a scowl in Malfoy's direction. "No wonder his boyfriend's hacked off. He acts like he's bloody eleven, not twenty."

At the moment, Malfoy was ignoring McGill. Instead, he was unpinning and repositioning his Order of Merlin rather ostentatiously, Harry thought. It was as if Malfoy needed to remind everyone in the room of it.

"Do you know what Malfoy even did to get his medal?" he whispered to Hermione.

"Or who he did—" Ron muttered.

"Ronald!" she whispered in a faux-shocked voice, but Ron just sniggered. She turned her back to him and pointedly spoke to Harry alone. "No, I don't, but I assume someone knows. Whoever put him in for it. But I never heard what it was for."

Ron leaned over to add, "Maybe they'll say something about it when they introduce us all."

But even though Shacklebolt, playing host for the evening, went on at length about each of the rest of them during their lengthy introductions, when he reached Malfoy's name he only said, "For exemplary service to the Order of the Phoenix and to the Ministry," and left it at that. Harry couldn't explain why he was so irritated not knowing more. What did it matter anyway?

He found himself right behind Malfoy on the way out the door. He was half-listening to Ron rather belatedly complimenting Hermione on her dress—better late than never—and trying to decide if the dragon was agreeing with him or not, when McGill's wandering hands caught his attention once more. He wondered why he wasn't more surprised to learn that Malfoy fancied men. Wrapped up in thought, he was stunned when Malfoy unexpectedly turned around, gave a him a flirtatious half smile, and winked.

:~:~:~:~:

Harry wrote off Malfoy's strange behaviour at dinner to, well, Malfoy being Malfoy. For an uncomfortable moment, Harry thought Malfoy might have heard something about him and that Irish bloke that Charlie Weasley had brought to Grimmauld Place, but no-one knew about that—not even Charlie. Not that he expected to run into Malfoy any time soon and ask him what the hell he thought he was proving with that wink. Before that evening he hadn't seen Malfoy since sometime near the end of the war, over a year ago, when Harry had mumbled some half-arsed condolences about Malfoy's father that they both knew he didn't mean. But at the time Malfoy had been hanging around the Order, for reasons no-one he asked seemed able to explain, and Harry thought he should acknowledge the fact that he'd switched sides. He couldn't think of anything else to say—'Surprised to see that you wised up after all, even though you fucked up in spades the night Dumbledore was killed, and even though no-one in the Order really gives a rat's arse about you,' didn't seem like quite the thing to say under the circumstances.

So he definitely didn't expect to find Malfoy at his front door two weeks after the dinner, dressed to the nines in dark robes that probably cost more than Harry's monthly pay at the Ministry. His own shock was reflected in Malfoy's expression.

"I—I'm looking for Remus Lupin," Malfoy finally stammered. Coming out of anyone else's mouth, the words might have been an apology, but Malfoy made them into a challenge. "Isn't this Number 12 Grimmauld Place?"

Harry took the parchment that Malfoy thrust at him. He recognized Lupin's scholarly handwriting: the carefully symmetrical loops, the 'i' in 'Grimmauld' dotted with mathematical precision. "Oh. Right. Come in then."

"So you live here too?"

"Yeah," he said, closing the door behind Malfoy and trying not to think of that wink.

That exhausted any small talk. Luckily, at that moment Remus poked his head around the corner, saving Harry from having to cough up some neutral remark about the weather.

"Mr Malfoy. Please come in. We'll be meeting in the study, just come this way. Thank you, Harry."

Through the open study door, he could hear some quiet conversation at first, and then the pretentious voice of Malfoy practising first a waterproofing spell and then a packing spell. Sixth-year stuff. Harry had to wait well over an hour, though, for Malfoy to leave and for Remus to offer an explanation.

"He needed a tutor, and he offered to pay well."

"So he came to you? I thought he couldn't stand you." Harry winced; that had sounded tactless. But Remus merely gave him a Cheshire-cat smile.

"No, he came to Professor Flitwick, who owled me. Malfoy missed learning a lot of the spells taught in his seventh year, and he wanted to make it up."

"He must have forgotten a lot, then. I definitely remember him in class the day Flitwick taught us that waterproofing spell. Malfoy kept conjuring up jets of water to test Neville's spell, and Neville ended up completely drenched. Malfoy got into a shoving match with Ron over it. Funny he'd forget that."

"I suppose he was humouring me on our first day, then. I'll keep that in mind, though. No sense teaching him things he already knows."

"Listen, Remus, you don't think he's expecting you to teach him any, well, Dark stuff, do you? I mean, he remembers what you used to teach."

"No." He almost sounded amused. "Look, Harry, I know you two didn't get along very well in school, but I think after all he did for the Order, we need to cut him some slack."

Harry sat down with a noisy sigh, and the leather sofa squeaked its protest. "That's just it. What exactly did he do for the Order? No one I mention it to seems to know. Do you?"

Remus looked thoughtful. "No, now that you mention it, I can't say I do. Shacklebolt probably does."

"He was awfully close-mouthed about it the other night, if that's true. Didn't you notice? The rest of us each got a long-winded speech, but Malfoy, nothing. It just seems kind of odd."

"Odd or not, the Ministry didn't just hand out the Order of Merlin to anyone with a clever tale to tell about the war. Well, except to you, I suppose. The rest of us had to go through any number of hoops. I know I spent a good couple of hours going over all the proof they'd got for my case."

"But Malfoy was always the type to brag about the smallest thing. It seems strange he didn't arrange for it to come out in some Daily Prophet exclusive."

"Maybe he's changed," Remus said. "Wars have a way of doing that to people."

"Or maybe he's hiding something. I mean, he hid the fact that he was gay, didn't he?"

Remus lifted his hand to his mouth and turned his head away, but Harry saw the smile. "Did he? He didn't do a very good job of it, I'd say. Oh, come on, you mean you didn't work it out long ago?"

"No. I must have missed that particular Howler." He was proud of himself for not adding anything about being busy fighting Dark Lords instead, but from the tolerant look on Remus's face he might as well not have bothered.

:~:~:~:~:

Lucius Malfoy had learned in his year at Azkaban not to move quickly when one of the human guards approached. They tended to be a jumpy lot who reacted with wands first and words later. Not that he blamed them. Working near Dementors left them rather poor company.

This guard was fairly new, and therefore unpredictable, which meant Lucius allowed him to enter his cell without moving an inch. For a moment he thought he might receive a beating anyway, because the thuggish man came within inches of his face and began muttering quickly. It took another moment before Lucius could grasp what he was saying.

"—sent here from the Dark Lord."

"Who are you?"

"A friend with a message. I hear your son made a right mess of things a few days ago."

Lucius shot up from his pallet. "Draco? What do you mean? What happened? Tell me!"

"He was supposed to kill Dumbledore, but he got cold feet, so Snape had to finish the job."

Lucius, starved for news of any kind, felt like a beggar at a banquet but managed to ask, "Dumbledore's dead?"

"Yes. Follow along, won't you? I don't have much time."

"And what about Draco?"

"In disgrace. And in hiding for the moment. Your wife sends you her love, though. And this."

To his astonishment, Lucius felt the press of warm wood against his fingers, and they curled in happy response to the nearly forgotten feel of his wand. His wand!

"She's sending your son to tell you what to do with it." The guard turned to go.

"Wait! What—"

"That's all I know." And he was gone.

:~:~:~:~:

Harry never thought he'd come to look forward to Malfoy's evening lessons. Well, not the lessons, particularly, or even Malfoy, but the good-natured laughter that had become more and more a part of Remus's repertoire. Harry could tell that Remus loved teaching again, even if he had only a single student, and he was oddly grateful to Malfoy for the improvement in his housemate's mood.

The Harry who existed before the war wouldn't have spent the time during Malfoy's lessons casually reading magazines and listening in on the unstrained exchanges between teacher and student. He'd have been meticulously totting up Malfoy's sins, both of omission and commission, and indisputably of great number. That Harry definitely wouldn't have been trying to come to grips with his own sexuality while listening to Malfoy's light, careful drawl and imagining him doing wicked things to his insipid boyfriend, McGill.

Lupin was right: war had a way of changing people. Nowadays, Harry was too busy working off his own sins to weigh someone else's.

Malfoy showed up at the door on the eve of the full moon. Harry had heard Remus rearranging their schedule during their last lesson, but Malfoy had obviously forgotten.

"Remus isn't here," he said awkwardly. Malfoy had that peculiar expression he often wore these days—polite, civil, even cautiously pleasant—that seemed to say he hadn't even known Harry before meeting him at this very door a few weeks ago. It was such a contrast to the boy he remembered who always seemed ready to take offence at the slightest thing that he almost believed it too.

"Oh. Right."

It was raining again, he noticed; a cold, skin-soaking rain that had already begun to penetrate Malfoy's cloak in the short stretch from his Apparition point to the door. He heard the nagging voice of Aunt Petunia and found himself inviting Malfoy in as if he were watching it happen in one of the Dursley's television programmes.

He made drinks, too.

When he came to his senses, he realized that this was the first time he'd been alone with Malfoy since—well, ever. Even during the war, they'd spent no time together. He'd been too busy collecting and destroying Horcruxes, and Malfoy had done whatever it was that Malfoy did and no one talked about. Before that, at Hogwarts, all their interaction seemed to be played out in front of an audience of friends (in Harry's case) or minions (in Malfoy's) or, worse, teachers.

But the idea of chatting up Malfoy about his war years and getting an answer to his riddle was too tempting. Harry was determined to get to the bottom of that secret one way or another. Which is why, he told himself later, he'd even bothered to suggest they go out for a pub dinner and a drink. Or maybe it was some strange way of saying thanks for Remus's laughter.

Although he'd be buggered if he could work out why Malfoy agreed.

Muggle or wizard pub was his first concern, but he opted for Muggle in the end. No use giving the wizarding news any more gossip for their front pages. He didn't give Malfoy the chance to object, and his made-up justification turned out to be for nothing: Malfoy never said a word about his choice of pub.

The Ship and Shovell was a mix of casual drinkers and burned-out office workers, who at this hour were indulging in rather drunken one-upmanship. He opted for the non-smoking half of the pub, and the beer wasn't too warm this time. He expected Malfoy to ask for some snooty drink they didn't have, but he settled for the same thing Harry ordered.

They talked about Lupin; they talked about the new faces at the Ministry; they talked about the crowd around them. For a while they talked about nothing, simply sipping and fetching refills and looking at the faces hemming them in. After a few pints, he felt that peculiar clarity that sometimes came over him right at the tipping point of just enough to drink and too much. It almost made chatting up Draco Malfoy in a Muggle pub seem commonplace.

Malfoy wasn't a bad-looking bloke, he decided out of the blue, watching him thread his way to the bar for two more. He imagined McGill waiting somewhere for Malfoy to come back, then he imagined what their reunion might look like. A tingle shot down his back, but it didn't feel at all like disgust. When Malfoy squeezed up against him to slip back into his own chair, he stopped thinking entirely.

The pub was very noisy by this time, and he had to lean forward to be heard. "Bit posh having dragon at dinner the other night. Even at an Order of Merlin dinner."

"You've never had it before? Lloyd hadn't either—oh, Lloyd McGill, I mean. He was sitting next to me."

"Doing more than sitting," Harry said, feeling bold.

Malfoy looked blank at first, then unexpectedly coy. "I suppose that dinner was a bad place to bring someone on a first date. He got a bit touchy over something during the meal, and I haven't seen him since. Still, it was better than going solo. How'd that work out for you?"

"Dull," he admitted. He'd planned to have just enough to drink tonight so that he wouldn't feel awkward when he brought up the war, but he decided he'd already passed that point a few pints ago. Now he felt the reckless overconfidence of the slightly hammered. "Shacklebolt does ramble on sometimes."

"Oh, I know. He sounds like he's running for Minister for Magic."

"I noticed he didn't say much about you, though. How did you get your Order of Merlin, anyway?"

Malfoy had his glass in a chokehold and was looking down at it as if he was surprised not to find it empty already. Instead, he took a slow drink and set it back down in the same watery ring on the table. When he did look up, his expression was guarded, his eyes unreadable. For a disorienting moment Harry felt like he was looking at a young ghost straight from fourth year, instead of Lupin's overaged pupil.

"Look, Potter. I don't like to talk about the war. Somewhere I got the impression you might feel the same way. If you don't think we can talk to each other without bringing it up, maybe we should just call it a night."

Harry suddenly didn't want that, and it left him feeling somehow wrong-footed, because in his drunken blur, leaning so close to Malfoy this way, he realized just what it was he did want. Nothing he should want or could ever have. "No, it's all right. We can talk about something else. You start."

Which is how he found out how clever Malfoy was at mimicry—imitating the voices of nearly every Hogwarts professor. Not in the sarcastic, mean-spirited way he would have guessed, either, but sharply accurate and witty. He remembered Lupin's assessment of how war has a way of changing people. It intrigued him.

"So what do you do with yourself all day long, Potter?" Malfoy eventually asked. Harry heard the same careful articulation he was using himself—a universal sign of the nearly drunk. "Ministry, Lupin said, and imagine my shock. But Ministry what?"

"Magical Accidents and Catastrophes. I work around Muggles, mostly, because of my upbringing."

"With Granger?"

"No, she's on the Invisibility Task Force. Well, she works with Muggles, too, but with a different group."

Malfoy huffed as if he'd like nothing better than to reorganize the Ministry so that it made sense to him. Well, Harry would back him on that.

"So you're a paper pusher."

"No, not really. I spend most of my time out and about. In London, for the most part."

That caught Malfoy's attention, and he raised his head and asked, "You're not an Obliviator, are you?"

Harry had to admit it. He didn't like messing with people's memories, but it was necessary sometimes, if only to protect the wizarding world from unwanted discovery. Anyway, Arthur Weasley had eventually persuaded him that the job was better suited to someone like him who was less than enthusiastic about it. "But only until I can swing a job in the Department of Magical Games and Sports."

"You mean they wouldn't give you what you wanted right off? Or more likely you wouldn't ask for it. Bloody stupid of you. I'm not surprised, though. Self-denial is one of those useless traits you always seemed to admire."

"Whereas in my shoes you would have demanded to be put in charge of the Ministry straight away."

"Of course. But I'm not you. Not likely to ever be mistaken for you, either. Not even on a dark night."

Harry laughed. "Still, my new job's better than my old one. I started out as an Apparition examiner—yeah, I know, not the best choice for me. If those kids weren't nervous enough taking their first test, they were a wreck the minute they saw me."

"I take it the failure rate was astronomical."

"Exactly. They thought they'd better shunt me off somewhere else." Not that he was any happier as an Obliviator, but he didn't want to tell Malfoy that. "I didn't notice you in the Head Minister's job, so what are you doing these days?"

"As little as I can," Malfoy said with an easy smile. "No, actually, I've set up an owlery at the Manor. I breed and train owls."

"Really?"

"Yeah. Keeps me off the streets." There was a world of hidden meaning behind that throw-away comment. He toyed with opening it up but was interrupted by the call for last orders.

"It's already near eleven?" Malfoy said. "Time flies when...."

Harry finished the sentence in his head. "Yeah. Funny, that. Who'd have thought." Not for the first time that evening he fought down a sudden wave of irrational desire. In his current drunken state, he was starting to grant Malfoy a batch of good qualities he didn't really have.

Malfoy hesitated at the door, and Harry rested a guiding hand at the small of his back to direct him to a spot secluded enough to Apparate from. He forced himself not to think of McGill's hand there before his, or anyone's hands anywhere. He told himself it was only the alcohol driving his libido—wasn't it a cliché that one's companion got hotter with each drink? Not that Malfoy needed any help there.

"Good thing I have an Apparition instructor with me," Malfoy was saying. "I probably shouldn't even be doing this. Not all the way to Wiltshire. I hate to say it, but I might have had a bit too much tonight."

And that had to be one of the most subtle invitations he had ever thought of accepting.

"You could stop at my place," he said. "Lupin won't be home."

Malfoy said if you're sure. He said all right, yes. He said a great deal besides with nothing more than a half-lidded glance.

And Harry didn't say anything. But the chill evening air brought with it some sobriety and a flash of clarity, and he thought that whatever happened next might just be, in some way, inevitable.

:~:~:~:~:

The certainty that Harry had when leaving the pub dissolved when he walked through the door of Grimmauld Place, and he stood confounded in the entryway like a man who'd misplaced his keys or his wallet or maybe just his sanity.

Malfoy had stopped too, his face a mask in the dim light. All his uncertainty was telegraphed by his posture. Harry knew it was unfair to have got him this far only to freeze in his own front hall, but he felt as though he'd lost his voice for good, and he couldn't make his limbs move.

Meanwhile, Malfoy waited, with a patience that Harry didn't remember in him. Malfoy was looking at him now as though he'd misread everything in the pub; that it finally occurred to him that Harry was only offering him a place to sleep it off, and he'd made an embarrassing mistake at taking it otherwise. As Harry continued to stand and stare, not knowing what to do next, Malfoy finally turned away and closed the door behind them.

The click released him like a dog who hears the snap of the leash being taken off. One step, and another, until he was close enough to feel the heat of Malfoy's body. He suddenly found himself wanting Malfoy to know that he wasn't mistaken. But he was dizzy from drink and from the sudden emotional swings.

"I didn't know—," Malfoy said, while Harry, at the same time, said, "Do you want—," and they both laughed awkwardly at their tangled speech, but mostly at their situation.

"Come in," Harry said, feeling like someone entirely different, and then they were in the sitting room. He started to add something else, but there was too much to say and none of it worth saying right now. Besides, he couldn't stop staring at Malfoy's mouth.

In the end, Malfoy had to make the first move. He slowly raised his hand, his two fingers extended like a saint's in a Russian icon. For a second Harry thought he was going to touch his scar and it startled him, but instead Malfoy simply stroked the side of his cheek, once, then again.

"Is this really what you want?" Malfoy said.

He felt the intoxication of the touch and laughed. "Not just this."

"Good," Malfoy said, a private smile beginning to light his face. "Good."

Their hands found each other, then their mouths. With his eyes closed like this, Harry felt the room spinning, telling him, yes, you're still really very drunk, or maybe it was, yes, you're really kissing Malfoy. Whatever it was telling him, it was fine, good—remarkable, in fact—and he felt himself letting go.

Just when Harry feared he had no power over Malfoy, he was surprised to find that wasn't the case at all. Because Malfoy was making these incredible noises like they were coming from somewhere so deep inside him as to be primeval.

Malfoy pulled away long enough to say, "Oh, God, I'm—" but he dove back in without letting Harry know just what he was. But the way Malfoy was clawing at Harry's shirt gave him a good intimation of it—one that he fully endorsed—and he clawed right back until Malfoy's shirt lay heaped with his own on the floor.

The intimacy of skin against skin turned out to be exactly what Harry needed. So were the teeth that began as a soft threat against his earlobe, then his neck, until they finally settled on a point just above his collarbone and bit. He sucked in his breath, and an apologetic tongue washed away the sting before the teeth struck once more. Tongue, teeth, again and again, a slow advance across his skin until he was left breathless.

Between his arousal and his intoxication, he started to sense things in fragments. One moment he was smoothing his palms over Malfoy's chest and threading his fingers in the spaces between his ribs. The next he was crushing his mouth against Malfoy's and holding on with both hands, letting go just long enough to listen for the soft sighs of encouragement. Somehow they made it to the sofa. Somehow they shed the rest of their clothes. Somehow he wrapped one leg around Malfoy and pulled them together, face to face, chest to chest, cock to cock.

"How do you want me to—?" Malfoy said, his voice ragged.

"I don't know." Which was honest but not very useful. His brain was too fogged to form sentences, but in between his own gasps he managed to add, "I've only done this once and we didn't..."

Malfoy seemed to work something out from that, because he said, "All right." And then ohogodyes his hand was palming Harry's cock, slowly and rightthereohyes, and between the pressure building in his balls and the frantic gasping in his ear, he fuckfuckohgod wasn't going to last long at all. Then Malfoy had the brilliant idea to slide Harry's cock between his own thighs and to begin to rock and squeeze ohshityes, and Harry couldn't hold out any longer and came hard, only to discover that sometime during all that, Malfoy had done the same.

He kept his eyes closed and waited for his heart to stop racing and his head to stop reeling and his chest to stop heaving and his brain to stop shrieking, "Do you realize what you just did?"

His eyes flew open, though, when he felt something soft wiping away the mess on his stomach. Malfoy's effort. Harry's underpants.

"Wouldn't a cleaning spell work better?" he said.

"My brain's mush. I don't think I can remember it. Feel free, though."

"I don't know where my wand is." He was more than aware that saying that to Malfoy in the not-too-distant past would have been a singularly bad thing. At the moment, it didn't bother him at all. He'd at least die a happy man.

Malfoy wadded up Harry's pants and tossed them somewhere in the vicinity of the nearest chair, missing by quite a distance. "Not great, but better. Still need that spell."

"Listen, Malfoy—"

"Look, don't get started, all right?"

"What?"

"It's just that I think it's a very bad idea right now to start asking why we're doing this. I know all the reasons why we shouldn't. But I'm going to ignore them anyway, so why even start?" Malfoy raised his head from the cushion enough to look Harry in the eye. "Isn't that what you were going to say?"

"No. I was going to ask if you were getting cold."

"Oh." Malfoy's head flopped back down. "Yeah."

"Anyway, I'm still too drunk to ask questions like that," he lied.

"Good. Me too."

He took a breath, hesitant to ask the next question, not knowing the response he'd get. Was Malfoy the sort who'd leap up as soon as Harry found his wand and the cleaning spell was uttered, mouthing something about needing to be home? Or would he still be in Harry's bed come morning, looking bewildered or mortified or maybe just unconcerned?

"There's a bed with at least three heavy blankets on it just down the hall. Shall we make a run for it?"

Malfoy took longer to answer than Harry wanted, but he finally said, "All right."

"C'mon, then." Tugging Malfoy off the sofa by the arm, he urged him down the chilly hall, both of them stark naked and laughing like kids running from the scene of a prank. By the time they were buried under the duvet they were both breathless.

It turned out Malfoy wasn't a cuddler, but then neither was Harry. At least he didn't think he was—it occurred to him that he hadn't had a lot of opportunity to find out. But Malfoy wasn't retreating to the far corner, either. He was simply lying on his back with his eyes closed, arms propped under his head and elbows jutting out like wings.

Harry let his finger trace just above Malfoy's nipple, right where his Order of Merlin had hung. He was watching so closely that he noticed the moment when Malfoy dropped off to sleep.

Who is he now, Harry wondered. He thought he'd caught a glimpse once the alcohol had started to wear off, but as he drifted off to sleep himself, he had one last thought: that it would be so easy to guess wrong.

:~:~:~:~:

In the first flush of their affair—for Malfoy had stayed the night, and the next and the one after that—Harry tried to be ruthless against that unfortunate voice in his head demanding answers. No good could come of it. For the first time in a long while, he was happy.

Remus came home and walked into the kitchen that third day to find Draco wrapped in both Harry's tartan dressing gown and Harry's arms. During all the mumbled apologies that resulted, Harry never saw a single instant—and he was watching carefully—when Remus looked less than complacent about the new state of affairs. After Draco had gone back home to, as he called it, 'do owlish things,' he lingered downstairs in the slight chance that Remus would expect an account of the past few days. He should have known better—Remus was nothing if not well-mannered, and he was wearing an unreadable expression.

It was up to him, then. "Where do you want me to start, Remus?"

"Don't feel as if you have to explain anything to me."

"I think it would be more awkward if I didn't."

"In that case, if you want to talk, I'm happy to listen." He leaned over the table to switch off the dulcet tones of the Wizarding Wireless, as if to reassure Harry that he had nothing else he'd rather be doing than hearing about Harry's messy new liaison. Which put the ball back in Harry's court.

"Er... I'm not sure what to say, exactly. Which are you more shocked by—that it's a bloke or that it's Malfoy?"

"Neither. Does that come as a surprise?"

Flustered, Harry circled around the subject, trying to come up with answers that sounded more rational than racy. In the end he realized he mostly talked about who and when and how and hadn't said anything about why. Remus probably knew he was sorting it out as he talked, but the hard fact of it was he didn't really know why he was so attracted to Draco Malfoy, of all people. He doubted Malfoy knew either. Frankly, when they were together they didn't spend a whole lot of time in conversation.

After the first night, he'd almost expected a sobered-up Malfoy to run off and broadcast the fact that he'd slept with Harry. But he hadn't; he seemed as reluctant for exposure as Harry was. Lupin was their only exception.

The next few weeks were a time of discovery. How had Draco changed, how had Harry, who were they now? How did their tangled and damaged pieces fit together? Every day, it was more and more obvious to him that his feelings for Draco were growing stronger. Occasionally he found himself laughing out loud for no reason at all, from the sheer delight of being together. Why had no one ever told him it would be like this?

Harry had grown restless in Draco's bed that morning. He was traipsing around Draco's room at Malfoy Manor with no real aim, while Draco lay in tasteful luxury, idly watching him. Whenever Harry showed interest in something, it would be acknowledged with a laconic history that he suspected was made up from whole cloth. He paused in the pale morning light of a north window to finger the dusty fringe of a tapestry.

"There's one like this at Grimmauld Place," Harry told him. "It belonged to Sirius's family. His mother blasted half a dozen names off it, though. This one's still in one piece."

"My mother gave it to me when I turned eighteen. All the Blacks have one." Draco was obviously bored with Harry's blatant curiosity and allowed himself a languid stretch. Harry knew he was provocatively posing, tempting him back to bed. For the moment, he pretended not to notice.

"Prewett, Weasley, Longbottom—"

"And Potter, of course. What an incestuous bunch we purebloods are. We're related, did you see? Distantly. Not within the bounds of indecency. My great aunt Dorea Black married your grandfather."

Harry stifled a laugh: at this point, family was about the last thing that mattered to either one of them. At least, that's what he thought at the time.

A box caught his attention, about the same size and shape of Uncle Vernon's cigar humidor. Draco's box had been decorated by a young hand, embellished with long-fanged beasts and a crooked, handwritten warning: 'Keep OUT! or you will be HEXED TO DEATH! by D.M.'

Draco was perched up on one elbow. At Harry's questioning eyebrow, he said, "I used to keep my chocolate frog card collection in that."

"Definitely worth the dire threat, then."

"Oh, it was terribly valuable. I had three of Paracelsus alone. Pansy once promised me anything if I would give her one."

"I don't want to know," Harry said, laughing and covering his ears.

"Don't worry, I still have all three. The promises of an eight year old aren't worth even a dinged-up Circes card." Draco had given up arranging himself amidst the sheets and slipped out of bed, fully naked. He entwined his arms around Harry from behind and tugged him closer. "Come back to bed," he said, his voice soft and full of promise.

Harry did.

:~:~:~:~:

Lucius tried not to weep when he heard Draco's voice at his cell door. But it had been too long since he'd seen his son, and the guard's mention that he was in disgrace with the Dark Lord had worked their way into him and festered like a splinter. It was all right, though, because Draco's tears were falling, too.

"Father."

"Draco." The joy of their reunion pulled the Dementors towards them, and Lucius forced himself into numbness to keep them at bay. "Tell me what happened."

Draco didn't look at him. "I failed, Father. I failed our Lord and I failed you. What's worse, I ran away. But I'm not going to hide any longer. I've come to ask your forgiveness before I go to Lord Voldemort as a Malfoy and as your son. And whatever he chooses to do with me I 'll willingly accept."

:~:~:~:~:

Harry had convinced himself that Draco's ban on war talk only held for people he didn't know well. From time to time he made oblique hints to test his theory—mentioning certain places or names sure to jog a memory or two. Draco merely looked at him with the long-suffering forbearance of a priest towards an errant postulant until Harry changed the subject.

But the war had taught him the proper care and feeding of suspicion, and even though the sex was good—and the sex was very good—he finally reached the point where he needed answers about how Draco had gone from pariah to redeemed prodigal. And growing up with the Dursleys had taught him a thing or two about being sneaky.

Susan Bones owed him a favour, too. Not the ambiguous gratitude of the Wizarding population for getting rid of Voldemort, but a more specific gratitude for saving her parents the month before the war ended. She didn't bother to ask him why he was curious about Draco Malfoy; she was eager to tell him anything he needed to know. If she'd heard any rumours about him and Draco, she kept it to herself.

"I never heard what he did to earn his Order of Merlin, but it should all be in here," she told him, leafing through a cabinet with authoritative ease. She looked about seventeen months along, and she leaned backwards in that awkward way pregnant women have of keeping themselves stable and upright. "Well. I'll be damned."

"What?"

She tugged out a folder and waved it at him. "Empty. Just a note. 'Official inquiries re: D. Malfoy to Minister of Magic.' Looks like Malfoy's Order of Merlin's a pretty serious secret. Sorry, Harry."

"There's nothing else?"

"As far as I know, the Ministry's record on him is pretty thin. Not like Malfoy pêre. About the only thing I remember seeing around here with Draco's name on it is a list of visitors to Lucius Malfoy in Azkaban. And it's only listed once, the night before his father killed himself."

That was definitely news to Harry. "Did they think Draco had anything to do with that?"

"At first, the timing kept everyone wondering," she replied. "Especially when the Death Eaters managed to breach Azkaban just a few days later. If Lucius had still been alive, who knows what damage he'd have done back at Voldemort's side."

"I remember Moody talking about it," he said.

She was leafing through another stack of papers that seemed to have an organisation to them that only she was privy to. "Oh, here's that list of his visitors. Not too long a list, of course—none of them ever are."

He peered at the sheet. On the last line he saw Draco's signature, twice, beside the times he presumably went in and out. Twenty-three minutes separated them.

"Did anyone ever connect these visits to Lucius's death?"

She was happy to explain. "They checked it out, of course. But it was pretty definitely proven that one of the guards slipped Lucius his wand. It was kept where only the guards had access to it, and one guard confessed the whole thing later under Veritaserum."

"So Malfoy gets his wand back and kills himself? That doesn't sound like a very cunning plan to me."

"Not to me, either. I don't know, maybe he saw the futility of trying to escape. Even with a wand, Malfoy wouldn't have got far by himself. Or with a single guard."

"So what was the point of giving him a wand in the first place?"

She smiled sadly for him. "Good question. The answer's tightly locked up, though, in the Minister's safe. But to tell you the truth, I think it's probably just a bunch of speculation. In the end, no-one really cared about Lucius Malfoy, except to be glad that he was dead."

:~:~:~:~:

Draco's bedroom had a huge fireplace with a mantlepiece that looked as if an artisan had spent the better part of a lifetime carving it. Draco liked to complain that it never drew properly, regardless of the Galleons it had cost.

"All beauty and damn little use," he said. "Like its owner."

Badmouthing himself was a recent quirk of Draco's that Harry didn't much care for, but he played along. "I wouldn't call you useless. Not at all."

"I meant outside the bedroom."

"Stop it. Your owls might hear and stop laying eggs for you."

When Draco had first mentioned breeding owls, Harry thought of it as just a rich man's hobby. He imagined Draco going to see and be seen at an owl auction or two—if that was where one got owls in the first place; he had no idea—and dropping in on his owlery once or twice a month, for appearance's sake. But Draco had taken to it with the devotion of a monk to his prayers. He spent mornings and evenings training the fledglings and long afternoons working on his owls' genealogical records.

Draco finished coaxing the evening fire to life. "Thanks for reminding me. Goneril's ready to deliver her first message tonight. I'd better open the window for her."

Draco tugged and shouldered the leaded glass pane open, and Harry felt the sharp, cold air fill the bedroom. Fed by fresh oxygen, the fire leapt higher, and he moved closer to it and rubbed his arms against the chill.

A sudden rush of beating wings filled the window.

"Good girl," Draco crooned. "You made it. You deserve a treat—oh, you know it, too. "

The owl sat still as Draco's fingers caressed her head, but when he moved away in search of an owl treat, she took flight into the room.

"Oh no, come here," Draco said a little sharply, then followed it with the chuk chuk sound peculiar to owl owners. "Goneril—"

She was beginning to panic, trapped as she was in unfamiliar territory, and flew from wall to wall searching for a welcome perch and not finding one. Trying to find purchase atop a lamp, she instead sent it crashing to the floor. Thoroughly frightened by the noise, she took off again, slamming into a mirror and then skimming along the dressing table. Draco's box of chocolate frog cards toppled and spilled its contents all over the floor.

Draco finally managed to get a hand on her legs and he skilfully gathered her to himself, still talking to her in that calming voice. "It's okay, girl, settle down, it's all right."

Harry knelt down to scoop up everything that had fallen out of the box. Right away he saw that they weren't chocolate frog cards at all, but a sizable number of parchment announcements. He turned one over and read: Trumble and Trimble, Number Three, Dizzem Alley, Exclusive Providers of the NeoLethe—

The card fell from his hand to join the dozens of others just like it, a river of parchment waves flowing across the floor. Each was a telltale drop in the flood of days Draco no longer remembered.

Curiously, all he could think of in that rooted moment was something Sirius had told him once by way of godfatherly advice: A question can't hurt you until you answer it.

Draco stood frozen in place for a moment, then turned his attention back to his owl. "Go back home, girl," he urged, lifting his arm in perfect synchrony with her take-off, watching her fly across the darkened field. He stood motionless until Harry was certain he could no longer see either bird or owlery. And still he didn't move.

"Say something," Harry finally said. "Or have you forgotten how to talk, too?"

It was a sucker punch and he knew it even before he said it, but all he could feel was sudden anger, like an upwelling of something hot and destructive. He expected—wanted—Draco to react with the same cleansing anger, but Draco instead fell into his old role of sarcastic bastard.

"Haven't you heard the Malfoy's unofficial motto: 'Overdo it or don't do it at all.'"

"Don't you dare joke about this."

"It wasn't a joke," Draco snapped back, and yes, that was much better.

"Were you planning on telling me about this?"

"No. I thought you got that message after the dozenth time you asked me your bloody questions and I didn't answer."

Harry wondered when it was he'd developed the ability to let Draco disappoint him. The thought clawed at him that he'd let himself fall in love with a fraud, someone who was erasing not just one or two memories the way Ron had, but dozens. Hundreds. And wilfully, deliberately, like a junkie craving more and more drugs. The mere thought of it made him ill. Through gritted teeth, he managed to say, "Just one question more, though. Why?"

Draco seemed to find that funny. "I don't know, do I? That's the whole point."

He was still facing away, pronouncing his words out of the open window like some minor pope. Harry suddenly had his fill of Draco's evasiveness and had his fists gripping Draco's shirt before either one of them realized he was across the room.

"Don't! Let me go!" Draco struggled with real strength behind it, and Harry's response was to latch on harder.

"Tell me something—"

"Why does it matter to you?"

"Do you remember me at all? Or is this the only reason why we can even be together?"

"What are you talking about? Of course I remember you. The great Harry Potter, saviour of the wizarding world, slayer of Dark Lords, blah fucking blah..."

Hearing rubbish in that caustic tone from Draco enraged him: a raw, ugly emotion far beyond his earlier wave of anger. "No, that's not what I meant and you know it! I meant everything else. Don't you remember how much you hated me?"

"You hated me, too."

"Then what happened? Did you change your mind? Or did you just forget?"

"Shut up!"

"I need to know, Draco. I need to know that I can trust you."

"No, Harry. You only need me to tell you it's okay that you don't."

Harry tightened his fingers on the point of Draco's shoulders and watched him wince. "You know that's not true."

Draco had stopped struggling and was smiling a terrible smile, which he turned fully on Harry. It was a face from the past. "Then why are you running around behind my back asking questions about me? Did you think I didn't know? So tell me then. Which is worse—lying to yourself because you can't remember or because you can't face up to the truth?"

"What do you mean? I'm not—"

"I mean"—he drew out the vowel into something sounding obscene—"that you seem bent on proving me a traitor, but somehow that doesn't seem to be stopping you from fucking me every night all the same. Why is that, Harry?"

"You're barmy!" He tried to take a step back, but this time it was Draco grabbing and holding on.

"I don't think so. What I can't work out, though, is what's in it for you. Besides the obvious, of course. Are you only waiting to see me fall, or are you really waiting to punish me afterwards?"

"I just want to know what's going on." He was pressing Draco against the wall, not knowing how he'd come to that point, but somehow wanting to squeeze the ugliness out of him and stop the words that hit him like blows.

Draco took the hand that wasn't pinned down behind his back and grabbed Harry's crotch, obscenely rubbing his palm up and down against his flies. To Harry's shock, he was already hard.

"This. This is what's going on."

What Harry had thought was anger all at once became unrestrained lust. He lunged against Draco, who thrust back against him just as fiercely, and they moved together clumsily at first. Harry's hands against the wall became Harry's hands gripping Draco's back, desperate for more friction, more connection, more everything. He leaned in to kiss Draco's scowling mouth and was repaid with a sharp nip. He shoved Draco back angrily and leaned in once more. This time there was tongue.

Draco had undone Harry's zip and was tightening his fist into a rough caress around Harry's cock. Harry could only push into the circle of his hand again and again, face buried in Draco's hair, helpless to stop his building release. Letting out a raw, deep groan, with a final hard thrust, he came.

He was still coming back to himself when he heard Draco's voice harsh in his ear: "And apparently this is all that's going on."

:~:~:~:~:

Harry woke up alone and unsurprised by that. He was surprised, though, that Draco hadn't hexed off his bits during the night. Draco, Draco's wand, Draco's second-best robes, and Draco's newest cloak were gone. And Draco's hand-decorated chocolate frog box with its offending collection of death-white cards was gone as well.

Dizzem Alley wandered off from Diagon Alley like a misbehaving child. It was lined with parvenu businesses which hadn't quite enough capital to sit on Diagon Alley proper. The shop housing Trumble and Trimble crowded close to the corner, as though it would spring into more respectable quarters some night when no-one was looking.

Harry pushed open the door.

The receptionist gave that look of startled recognition that he knew all too well, remembered herself, and belatedly smothered it with a polite and counterfeit smile.

"Good morning, sir," she said. "Welcome to Trumble and Trimble, exclusive providers of the NeoLethe Restorative Treatment. How can we help you?"

He didn't often turn on the charm, but he thought he might need to now. "Actually, I'm looking for a friend of mine. I think he might have been here earlier. A Mr Draco Malfoy?"

Her eyes made her lie obvious. "Oh, Mr Po—. Er. I'm not allowed to say anything about other clients. You understand. Privacy issues and all."

"Of course. It's just that I'm a bit worried about him. He was angry when he left, and I'm afraid he might be thinking of doing something stupid."

"Oh. But still, I can't—"

"No, I understand." Harry was speaking to her but his attention was all over the room. He strolled beyond the counter separating them, and her obvious nervousness racheted up.

"I could lose my job if I were to say anything," she offered weakly.

"No, I wouldn't want that." He stopped short, his entire attention caught by the words scrawled in a familiar hand on the discarded box in her dustbin: Keep OUT! or you will be HEXED TO DEATH...

"Sir, please, you really shouldn't be back here."

He finally brought himself back from his confused thoughts. "Oh, sorry," he said automatically, dragging his eyes back to hers. "You've been very helpful."

She looked puzzled at his sudden capitulation but answered, "You're welcome, I'm sure."

:~:~:~:~:

Two days later, he hadn't caught up with Draco, and Remus was bearing the brunt of his frustration.

"He's still not back," Harry complained. "And I don't know where else he might have gone. I thought he'd miss his owls at least, but the house-elves have got them under control."

"He'll come home eventually. I'm afraid you'll just have to outwait him."

Harry laughed. "Me? Remember who you're talking to here."

"Right. Noted. Well, I can't give you any more useful advice than that. I know Malfoy's habits even less than you do." He set a cup of steaming tea in front of Harry, who grunted his thanks.

"Is it such a sin that I wanted to know what Draco had got up to during the war?"

"Of course not," Remus replied, just as he had every time Harry had asked that question in the past couple of days.

"It's not like he had a long history of backing us."

"I'm not the one to know."

"And see? That's exactly my point! Doesn't it seem strange that not a single member of the Order of the Phoenix knows a damned thing about what Draco did during the war? It does to me."

"I hadn't thought about it. I was away myself so much then, trying to muster up other werewolves against Greyback. Although—"

"What?"

Lupin still hesitated. "I'm not sure it matters now if I tell you this or not. I used to run across him at Hogwarts from time to time. I'd see him on his way to Professor McGonagall's office."

"Hogwarts? Why would he go there?"

"I don't know. I never asked. But I got the impression he was getting his marching orders from Dumbledore's portrait."

:~:~:~:~:

Harry didn't use the Marauder's Map, not right away, even though he'd made sure to tuck it in his bag before coming to Hogwarts.

Everything looked smaller, less imposing, in that odd way that schools had of seeming diminished in the eyes of its former pupils.

He'd owled ahead—barely—and Professor McGonagall greeted him with the knowing smile that meant she didn't expect him to have come to see her. "It's always nice to see you, Harry. You've missed dinner, but I've sent for tea. I just have a few things to attend to in the hospital wing. Professor Dumbledore's waiting; you won't be disturbed."

"Thank you."

He never looked at Dumbledore without missing him. Even though a portrait wasn't the same as a living person, this one carried enough of Dumbledore's strong personality that Harry felt as if he were sometimes chatting with the real thing. "Hello, sir."

"Harry, my boy! So good of you to visit." Dumbledore looked as if he were about to offer a lemon drop and belatedly realized the futility. "But somehow I already know you aren't here to trade stories and waste time. Not your nature."

"No. I wanted to ask you something; about the war. Well, about Draco Malfoy, really."

Dumbledore never gossiped and Harry knew that. But if the old headmaster had a piece of information that he thought you needed, he'd see to it that you got it, and plenty more besides. "I see. Have you considered asking him yourself?"

"Well, yes. I mean I've tried. Oh, I should tell you that we've become friends recently—" he managed to sound almost smooth saying it, although he found it necessary to look away to pull it off—"but even when I ask, he won't answer."

"Well. Has it occurred to you that maybe he has good reasons for his silence?"

"But if they're good reasons, I'd understand. Anyway, it's a lot more complicated than that. I found out that he's been having his memories erased. Even if he'd wanted to answer my questions, he couldn't. He doesn't remember himself. Or at least, he didn't remember—oh, bugger, I'm not explaining this very well."

"Just tell me what's going on, Harry. I'm not here to judge you."

"Okay, well, the thing is we're, ah, more than friends. And we've had a row and he's disappeared. I got worried and asked around, and Remus Lupin told me Draco used to come here consult with you. So here I am."

"And what exactly are you expecting to find here?"

"Answers, mostly. Like why his part in the war is such a deep, dark secret."

"And if the answers are not to your liking, Harry, what then?"

That was unexpected. What did Dumbledore know? "I don't know. It depends on what I find out. But I need to be able to trust him. That's why I asked him what he did in the war, why he got the Order of Merlin. No one knows. If he's got everyone fooled, I need to know." He said all of that in a single breath, like a schoolboy making excuses.

"Why would you suspect him of that?"

"You have to admit, it looks bad that he wiped out so much of his memory of the war."

"And you of all people know that looks can be deceiving. Think of the night I died. You might have thought Draco was a cold-blooded killer if you hadn't seen him lower his wand. And you did think that of Severus, until you found out later that he was acting under my order."

There were warnings aplenty in Dumbledore's words, but Harry couldn't work out where he was headed. "Still, if Draco did betray the Order later, he'd want to make sure there'd be no way for anyone to find out."

"If he did, then yes. But there are other reasons to erase unwanted memories. I do not think Mr Malfoy is the only person who's chosen that solution."

Harry thought of Ron. "No. No, he's not, but he's taken it a lot further. I saw proof that he got rid of hundreds of memories."

"I admit that concerns me."

"But it doesn't surprise you."

"No. Has it occurred to you that perhaps Mr Malfoy is not trying to hide his memories from others but from himself?"

"I—"

"Don't be so quick to judge him, Harry, until you find out for yourself."

"But that's just it—how can I when he's run off?" It came out sounding more petulant than he intended.

"I think you know he hasn't run far. There's a room, just past the entrance to the revolving staircase, marked by a portrait of Lord Stoddard Withers and his gryphon. It's a room where Mr Malfoy used to stay during the war. I believe you'll find him there."

"Then I was right. Draco's here."

"He's the only one who can answer your questions. But Harry...tread carefully. Remember that there are far worse ways to injure someone than with an unidentified curse."

:~:~:~:~:

For whatever reason known only to him, Dumbledore had intentionally planted the image of Sectumsempra in his mind, so much so that he was almost taken aback when Draco answered the door perfectly whole and untouched.

"Oh, God," he said, stepping back reluctantly to let Harry in. "I should have known you'd need to hunt me down."

The look on his face said he was going to be hard to reach; that the answers Harry needed from him would come at a cost. During the past few weeks, he had got the impression that Draco had spent his short lifetime repenting nearly everything he'd done. Was he here in this cell repenting his time with Harry, too?

"We need to talk."

"Then talk."

He tried to go slow, but the long, frustrating blankness that was Draco's past made him impatient. "Can we finally talk about the war, then?"

"Why do you keep asking me that? Fuck the war! Does it really matter now? Why can't you let it go?"

"Because I need to be able to trust you, if we're—"

"Then trust me! What's holding you back? What kind of proof could I ever give you to make you satisfied?" He was standing proudly beside the wardrobe, his eyes ablaze with anger, shoulders back and head up as if he was facing a firing squad.

How dare he be so attractive at a time like this?

Harry used a voice contrived to keep Draco at arm's length and ignored the desire clawing at his gut. "Some things aren't adding up. You wiped your memory of what you did during the war, and I want to know why."

"Why? Because I thought it was necessary!"

"Then why did you go back to Trumble and Trimble? Don't look so shocked—I was looking for you anywhere I could think of, and while I was there I saw your box in the dustbin. You remember everything again, don't you?"

Draco deflated in front of him. "Yes. I do. Every last rotten thing."

The capitulation made Harry soften, too. "Listen, if it's something about your father—. I know you went to see him just before he died. No one could hold it against you. He was your father, for God's sake. If you warned him, or tried to help him—"

And Draco finally began to talk, but not to tell him what he had done or who he had done it for, but why.

"You weren't supposed to—" He had a strange look on his face, one Harry hadn't seen before, like he was fighting back tears. "You weren't supposed to answer the door at Lupin's. You weren't supposed to ask me out."

"I don't get it. What's this got to do with—"

"Damn it, you weren't supposed to matter."

Coming at this tense moment in their conversation, it struck Harry hard. For the first time since he'd seen Draco again, he wondered if he should have ever set down this path and awakened old ghosts.

Draco had opened a panel in the opposite wall and pulled out a bottle of firewhiskey. Slowly, he poured a healthy measure into two glasses and thrust one at Harry.

"The confessor's cheap Veritaserum, they call it. Cheers. Oh, do sit down."

Harry took the edge of the bed opposite Draco, keeping silent as if the wrong word would make Draco change his mind and refuse to speak.

"It's your fault, you know," he began. "You and your 'How'd you get your Order of Merlin, Draco?' No one else ever cared. Why do you?"

"No one else knew."

"Moody does. But you obviously didn't go to him." Draco's mouth crinkled in a wry smile. "Can't say I blame you."

"No."

"The curious thing about erasing my memories is that I didn't even know what I didn't know. A conundrum. I couldn't tell you what I did during the war because I didn't remember myself. I was happy not knowing. Then you started in on me with your suspicions. It made me suspicious, too, you see. Had I done something horrible? Was I a traitor and did I try to hide it afterwards?"

"So you went back to Trumble and Trimble after we argued," Harry said quietly.

"It was the only way to find out, wasn't it? I knew I'd wiped my memories for some good reason—I know that much about myself—so I wasn't too thrilled to find out why. You made me change my mind and go."

He had turned his back to Harry. At length he relented, crossed to the bed, and sat down.
"I was thorough, anyway. I'd got rid of a lot of silly things, not just from the war. Arguments with Professor Snape after we left Hogwarts, fights with you over the years. And some other not-so-silly things—like the day you nearly killed me in the girl's bathroom sixth year. And—"

"The night on the tower when Dumbledore died?"

"You'd think so, but actually, no. That one I thought I needed to keep. Too much hinged on what happened that night—everything changed after that."

Harry was losing courage; recalling Dumbledore's murder had taken the wind out of his sails. Momentum alone made him doggedly ask, "So what was the memory that sent you to try NeoLethe in the first place?"

The strain was showing in Draco's face, knots of tension drawing his brows together and tightening his mouth. "You were right, Harry. It was about my father. How did you know?"

"I didn't. I was only guessing."

Draco took a long drink from his glass, refilled it, then sipped at it once more. "The week before my father died, my mother came to Spinner's End. I lived there with Professor Snape, and it was pretty clear from what he reported back that I was in disgrace. But my mother had found a way for me to earn back my place in the fold. She told me about a plan that the Death Eaters had worked up. A guard at Azkaban would smuggle Father's wand into his cell, and the Death Eaters would attack from outside. My task was to visit my father and to warn him to get ready to escape." Draco stopped, miles away, lost in his own memories.

"And then what happened?" Harry finally said, and Draco gave him an odd smile.

"I came to him the repentant son, just like my mother told me to. I confessed how I'd been a coward and a failure, how I hadn't been able to live up to the Malfoy name. I begged his forgiveness and told him I was going to the Dark Lord to allow him to do whatever he wanted with me."

"But you knew he'd probably kill you—"

Draco ignored the interruption and there was a hard brightness to his voice. "Such a worthy performance. I even cried. Very touching."

"So you told him about the plan to escape?"

There was a long silence, and when he finally spoke again the words came slowly. "No. I didn't. I told him something else. He showed me his wand—the guard had come through. And I knew how dangerous he'd be when the Death Eaters came to rescue him, and what would happen if he got back to Voldemort. And I told him—"

Harry couldn't bear to see him hurting like this, and he reached out to touch his hand. Draco didn't pull away; he didn't seem to notice Harry at all.

"What did you tell him?"

"That he was going to be Kissed the next day. That the guard was sympathetic and gave him his wand to help him do what he needed to do." He looked at Harry, but it seemed as though it was his father he saw. "And then we said our goodbyes and I left. He killed himself that night, just like we both knew he would."

"Oh, God."

Draco lifted his eyes and was back in the room again. "So that's what you wanted to hear so badly, Harry. I got my Order of Merlin for killing my father."

Harry wanted to tell him it wasn't true; that Lucius had killed himself, that Draco was right to have kept Lucius far away from Voldemort, and that he'd saved a lot of people in the end. But Draco had a dangerous look in his eye and the words evaporated.

"I told your bloody Order of the Phoenix I didn't want their medal or their thanks, but they damn well insisted. I told them it might have meant something if they'd believed me before the Dark Lord attacked Azkaban. My credibility had been an issue, though. They couldn't be arsed to send Aurors on the word of someone like me. Afterwards, they agreed to keep the details quiet—after I made a huge fuss, of course."

"They should have listened to you in the first place."

"Like you did?" He shook his head. "Anyway, a few months ago I saw the advert for NeoLethe in the Daily Prophet and I went. And it worked—one horrible memory of patricide, gone. But I didn't stop with that one."

He remembered how Ron had vowed never to go back to Trumble and Trimble, and a chill shot through him when he thought of the sheer number of cards that had covered Draco's floor. "You kept going back? Why?"

"Remember how it works. They promise they'll erase your worst memory. But after that one's gone, you still have a worst memory. Another bad memory has taken its place. So, yeah, I kept going back, and every time I did I felt a little better. I got along with the world better, too. I was blind enough to think it was doing me good."

"You could have told me."

"And have you think I was weak? No. You'd never go there yourself, would you? Not even with your own shedload of horrible memories. It's not in your nature not to suffer."

Harry couldn't help smiling. "I don't think you know me very well if you think that."

Draco seemed to be mulling that over with no small amount of seriousness, and he finally admitted, "That thought's crossed my mind a lot in the past few days."

"That you don't know me? I thought we were working on that. Unless—" It struck him at that instant that Draco was still hesitant about something, and he felt his insides churn with uneasiness and regret. Now that Draco remembered everything, did he also remember all the reasons why they didn't belong together? "What are you trying to say?"

"Well...to be honest, after the other night it hit me that I didn't know what you were doing with me in the first place. After all those memories were stuffed back into my brain, I realized that you used to think I was a rather nasty piece of work. Why Lupin didn't try to drag you off until you came to your senses is still a mystery. I thought—well, never mind."

"No, tell me."

"That you're doing whatever it takes to get your answers. It wouldn't be the first time I've been taken in." But his accusation had no emotion behind it. His earlier anger and grief seemed to have drained away.

"So that's why you're here," Harry said. "You convinced yourself I was using you, and you bolted."

"Well, I like to think of it as a strategic retreat. It was all too much—my father, the war. You. I came here to think. And to talk to Dumbledore's portrait. He warned me you'd come after me, by the way, but I didn't believe him."

"Didn't you?"

Draco smiled back for the first time. "Well, maybe I did."

"Are you glad I did?" Which was his backhanded way of asking if he was welcome to stay.

"That depends on what you say next."

That Draco had gone back to Trumble and Trimble to regain his memories for Harry's sake made it easy to say, "You don't expect me to give you up now, do you? After all this hard work?"

Apparently that wasn't what Draco expected. He looked bewildered, uncertain. Harry caught an unexpected glimpse of him as he was right then: unversed in life, hiding his weaknesses with false bravado, trying to fashion himself a place of refuge in a world he didn't always understand.

Just like Harry.

"Listen to me, Draco. You act like I should be shocked to find out you're complicated. But don't you get it? That's just what I want."

"Oh, come on. You're stretching it."

"No, really. It bothers me when you're so quiet about everything that we went through. I want to talk about the war with you. I want to hear you whinge and complain about how they treated you like crap, and how they sucked up to me, and how life's not fair. I want to argue with you about who had the worst time of it. I want to wake up at night and calm you down after your nightmares, and I want you to calm me down after mine."

"Harry—"

"I want you to remember it all with me. The good and the bad. Everything."

"Not everything. You don't know—"

His emotions took over, and he found himself saying, "Yes, everything. And then I want you to remember that it's over, and that we've got something better ahead of us."

"I think—" Draco swallowed and tried again. "I think I could do that. Seeing that forgetting clearly didn't work out so well. After…well…I don't trust myself to go back to Trimble and Trumble again, no matter how much I want to. Maybe I should try remembering."

"What you said the other night isn't true, you know. There really is something else going on here. At least there is for me."

Draco's sudden concentration gave him the appearance of someone faced with a knotty physics problem. Then his too-serious face shifted and reformed itself into a fond smile. "I—. Yeah."

The sudden shift made Harry's restraint evaporate like mist in bright sunlight. He pulled Draco to him, and Draco came willingly. Harry stroked him as carefully as if he were a fledgling owl and looked into his eyes for a long time. This time, he thought he could see what had been missing before.

They kissed slowly, moving almost lazily on the bed until they were fully reclined, bodies pressed side by side. There was no attempt to undress each other; no urgency compelled them to move beyond this casual exchange. It was a revelation, he thought, to discover a quietness they could share.

When they did begin to move together, it was as slow and deliberate as their earlier kisses. Three days ago, it had taken him only a brief second to inflict the yellowing bruise on Draco's upper left arm; it took over a minute of soft touches of his lips to sooth it. In this methodical, unhurried way, he did his best to erase all the marks he'd caused in his rage, and with a thoroughness that put NeoLethe's efforts to shame.

He'd worked his way down the length of Draco's body until he was carefully sucking on one long, pale toe after another. After each one was gently bathed, Draco gave a soft sigh, his eyes closed. When Harry had finished the last one, Draco raised his head and said, in a voice thick with desire, "Come here."

Harry responded immediately, shifting to stretch out beside Draco so quickly that Draco gave a soft laugh. "Come here," he said again.

Harry leaned over, his hair brushing against Draco's forehead, and this time kissed him intensely. Any last doubts that Draco might be having second thoughts vanished, because it was apparent that Draco wanted him very badly.

The few times they'd gone as far as penetration had made them both self-conscious as they worked out who'd do what, but Harry wasn't feeling that awkwardness now. Knowing that Draco had given up his own peace of mind by taking up his memories again changed everything. He'd done that for Harry. So now Harry was pleased to surrender himself in return. He just couldn't say it in words. Only one word was necessary, though—the lubrication spell he cast on himself, which made Draco's eyes widen when he heard it.

"Harry," he said, reaching for him.

"Come here," he replied, and rolled Draco on top of him. His legs wrapped around Draco's back, his cock straining to gain the friction he craved. He didn't want to slow down, not even to make it easier on himself.

"Hold on," Draco whispered, and tongued along the shell of his ear as his hand reached down between them. There was a sting as Draco's fingers breached him, and Harry tensed and then forced himself to relax, focusing on Draco's eyes boring into him.

"All right?" he heard, and he sighed back, "Yeah. Just…yeah."

Draco was trying to read him, but Harry didn't know how to give voice to anything racing through his mind. His hands clutched at Draco's back, pulling him closer, but all he could mutter was, "I want this."

Draco was pressed so tightly against him that he could feel their two hearts pounding together, and then suddenly there was an uncanny sensation of being filled as Draco pushed inside him with a groan.

Harry echoed the sound and began to rock back against the pressure. He ran his fingertips across the hot, damp skin of Draco's back, tattooing messages that willed Draco to feel the same overwhelming desire that Harry felt. Then Draco was moving, too; harder and faster, his breathing erratic and intermixed with sounds that were no longer words.

He could feel the pressure building in his groin, and he guided Draco's hand down between his legs. One stroke, two, and then he was arching his back and thrusting against Draco, coming with a cry of pleasure. Distantly, he was aware that Draco had quickened his own movements, digging his heels into the mattress for better purchase. He bucked his hips off the bed, and Draco moaned in his ear in response, then thrust one last time. Harry heard his breath catch, and he held on tight through Draco's orgasm, feeling so many things at once that he couldn't identify a single one of them.

Afterwards, they lay tangled together, sated and happy just to wrap themselves around each other for warmth. Harry was drawing lazy patterns across Draco's belly; Draco was combing through Harry's dark hair with his fingertips.

"You don't know what it's like, do you?" Draco finally said. "Feeling like no matter what you did, you were making the wrong choice. You never loved someone who everyone else thought you should hate."

Lucius. But then he thought about the careful way Draco had worded his remark and heard what was underneath it.

"Not yet," he said. "But there's a first time for everything."

The room was small and the bed narrow, but he didn't mind. He felt the soft exhale of relaxation when Draco slipped away into dreams, and he ached to follow him to that place where Draco could finally escape his secrets and himself. But there was something he needed to do first.

He didn't need to reach far for his wand. Pressing it softly against Draco's temple, he knew it wouldn't take long to find what he was looking for. Just a thread was all he needed, a scant twenty-three minutes of the past—there.

The memory was almost physical, and exactly as Draco had described it. Harry could feel the cold wind in the corridor, smell the rankness of unwashed prisoners and rotting food, hear the eerie pacing of Dementors. He saw Lucius's face just as Draco had seen it, alight with happiness then sunk in despondence, but he didn't let himself be moved by it. Instead, he remembered Ron's voice describing the brutal decision he'd made to wipe away a single memory that had grown far too painful to bear. He felt a surge of tenderness for the man in his arms and let that direct him.

Certain of himself for the first time in days, he whispered a single word.

"Obliviate."

:~:~:~:~:

The End