The Tiger

The day after Terry Boot was formally checked into St. Mungo's for depression, Draco Malfoy received a letter from his solicitor.

The letter was formal and polite, notifying him of certain possibilities, potentialities, options, laid out in concise legal language. Draco read it three times over before consigning it to the fire in his study, and the following morning he wrote out his reply.

His solicitor was a thoroughly decent sort of chap, with the slight tendency of solicitors to be just that little willing to do whatever was necessary when large sums of money were involved. That did probably make him somewhat indecent in the long run, but he could be trusted to keep his mouth shut and he was more honourable than most, so Draco kept him on retainer.

The other reason for his choice of legal representation was that the solicitor's firm was the archrival of those previously employed by his family, and there was nothing Draco approved of more than sticking it to someone who he thought deserved it. And besides, he did have the most picturesque set of offices in Chancery Lane.

The cost was of no concern; Draco did have money to spare. His family made him wealthy; his marriage made him exorbitantly rich, and he'd never seen the reason to rest on his laurels. Malfoy Industries was renowned throughout wizarding Europe from the Baltics to Ireland for generally sticking its nose into everything it could possibly do and doing it very well. Draco had the vision and the charm; his wife had the determination, practicality and accountancy skills. She was after all, a past master at the double entry, and nothing untoward beyond taxation fraud was implied by that.

She came from good solid French stock that had a rumoured touch of the Veela about them, and they were pureblood from generation upon generation, although unlike the Malfoys, the Trebuchets had no history of suspect associations. Jacqueline was light and quick with her tongue and serious when needed; she and Draco had three darling children, blond and sylvan like their parents. The boys were Marc and Roget (and Draco had not wished for more English names, like Harry or Terence, not at all), but the girl was Lily, and if Jacqueline had wondered why, she did not ask.

A week later, and Draco made the series of apparitions necessary to take him from his home in the south of France to London, or more specifically, St. Mungo's. Security was tight for his visit, as there was a war going on, and Draco Malfoy was considered something of a celebrity, or perhaps that should have been cause celebré. No-one talked of it as a war, after all, but people walked quickly on the streets and stayed in at nights, and hoped not to be numbered amongst those found dead in the morning, or counted as one of the Disappeared. The Ministry said there was no cause for concern, and that they were doing all they could, but the Aurors were an army, and no army could fight what it could not see.

Despite the ever so dodgy accounting, Malfoy Industries - which remained one of the few multinationals not to pull out of the U.K. since the beginning of the Period of Emergency nineteen months ago - still made a rather lot of money, and one of things it did to write that off was to invest in charitable causes. Besides actually owning a variety of orphanages, community centres, educational institutions, hospitals, health facilities and the like, Malfoy Industries often gave.

And on this day it was giving a nice far cheque to St. Mungo's. More specifically, the Mental Health department, which had only just been formed. Psychology was an experimental science to wizarding kind; wizards tended to hate mysteries, and the workings of the brain had usually been restricted to the kind of instinctual and sympathetic magics that left any half decent magician scratching his or her head over exactly what it was he'd just done. But wizards suffered from all the standard traumas of the ensouled; apathy, madness, psychosis, schizophrenia, neurosis, despair, depression and despite, and as wizards often did, they had decided Something Must Be Done. The growing links with the Muggle world were benefiting this new area of magical study, Draco was told, and he nodded at all the right places, shook the right hands, and handed over a (very symbolic) large cheque to the new chief Healer of the facility that afternoon, with the flashes from cameras going off in all directions.

He didn't ask about any specific programmes, or patients, or prognoses and didn't mention the fact he heard a footfall in one of the emergency access corridors which no-one had a right to be in.

Draco had rather good hearing; it had come in useful over the years.

Later that night, after the long and complicated series of apparitions that took him back home, Draco kissed his children as he tucked them into bed, bade goodnight to his staff, and told his wife he'd be doing some work in his study and not to expect him to bed that night.

His study was on the second floor of the ancestral Trebuchet household. It was technically a castle situated above the Aude valley, but as it was only a small castle, Jacqueline told him it was best to call it a chateau, as her family had for generations. The bookcases were filled with parchment, scroll, vellum and manuscript, and there were two arched doors that lead out to a balcony that overlooked the river and surrounding countryside. Local wisdom said the chateau was haunted; that it carried the spirits of the Cathar heretics who'd been burnt not fifty paces down the hill. There was a small shrine located at the point of their deaths, but Draco knew that the heretics had been wizards, and kept a vigil there sometimes for his own, darker purposes.

As he worked into the night, Draco poured himself a rather fruity Merlot from the family vineyards and tried not to notice the chilly breeze that blew in from the open doors, or the way it made the curtains dance tantalisingly just out of his sight.

Sometime after two, the door slammed open with a bang, startling Draco from his slumber amongst paper and parchment, ink and quill. The cold ran down the neck of his robe and he shivered all over, reaching for the wine glass in the haze of his vision. The glass was empty save for the dregs of his wine, and Draco blinked a few times to clear his vision. After a few moments, he succeeded.

"I'm surprised you didn't lock your door, Draco," Harry murmured from the balcony doorway, and Draco didn't turn to see him there. He didn't need to.

"I was expecting visitors."

"You always thought I was predictable."

"More comfortable than anything else, I think you'll find." Draco replied, and was reassured by the weight of his wand in the pocket of his robe.

"And yet you still left." Harry's tone was light, but there was no mistaking the import of his words.

"Wasn't entirely my choice."

"Makes you sound as though you had some choice, though, doesn't it?"

"Well, I could have stayed. And we all could have been terribly unhappy. Or I could have left you two to be happy."

"Draco, Draco, Draco." There's hot breath on his neck now, but Draco doesn't flinch. He wants to of course, but it wouldn't seem right. "You always did love playing the martyr. Maybe I should give you what you've always wanted."

There's a few moments while Draco considers his words. All that past before was just the past, and every moment that occurs is an infinite now. He isn't about to get a second chance at this. "The threat is alright, but really a bit showy, Harry. I'd almost expect you to start twirling a moustache at any given moment; you really should get some tact. Someone of your gravitas hasn't got the flair to pull that sort of thing off."

"And you know everything about flair, don't you, Draco?"

"You might as well learn from an expert, Harry." Draco makes himself smile; feels it shape his face and his tone. "Or should I call you Tom now?"

There's a broken laugh at that, and the breath retreats from his neck. "If we knew what our name was, we would tell you."

Draco finally does turn, and examines the figure sitting on the armchair with a combination of compassion, pity and scientific detachment. "I'm assuming that's not the royal we."

"You knew?" Harry asks him, threats gone with the power of Draco's revelations, although perhaps they were never so powerful at all.

"I suspected. I still have some contacts amongst the Death Eaters, and I studied the recent attacks." He looks up at Harry, looking tired and sad and defeated. "The Longbottoms were killed last night, weren't they?"

"They affronted us," spat Harry, back to that terrible quiet rage. "Thinking we were human and ephemeral and in need of human contact when we were young. We were weakened by his presence, but we are weak no more." His body spasms; face twisting, snarling like some wild beast, and he shifts as shudders ride through his body. It's a wonder his glasses stay on his face, really, and Draco is somewhat amused by the mundane aspect of his observation. "I killed him, you know. Tom. Volde-" But for some reason that name causes another spasm, and he gasps as he rides through it. "But this was his counterstroke. We were always connected, but this- this is madness. He's in me and he won't get out and half the time - half the time I don't know who I am."

"But he does," Draco counters evenly. "Are you sure it's him in there? Or just all your rage, all your hate, all your fear, all your loss finally brought out into the open. You remember, Harry, I've seen you angry." He grins at that, but it doesn't touch his eyes.

Harry laughs at that; but it's painful and shuttered, more like he's forcing the good humour than anything else, desperate and afraid. "You know me far too well, Draco. We were right to come here and put you out of our misery."

"I don't remember Lord Voldemort being so clichéd," Draco comments, and leans forward into the light from the standing lamp that sits near the armchair, scratching his nose. "But then we didn't have a lot of contact."

"Do you want me to kill you?" Harry asks him, his skin covered with a slight sheen of sweat, and he breathes as if he's been running a race.

"Good. You said me. Keep thinking that way. Now, how did you get here?"

"Apparated," pants Harry.

"All the way from London?"

"We - I - picked up a few tricks of late. We - I, dammit - am probably the most powerful wizard in the world now."

"As if you weren't before. You realise I could never be with someone who outshone me."

Miraculously, Harry manages to chuckle at that, and it's not so strained this time around. "I always outshone you," he accuses, a sense of his old self.

"Showoff," Draco parries, and they share a moment of what was. "Why did you come here?"

"He came to kill you," Harry murmurs, breathing hard, words all over the place. "Stupefy you and kill your servants, your children, your wife, all in front of you. Then to kill you very slowly, and savour it."

"Why?" Draco doesn't need to know the answer, but it buys him time.

"You hurt Terry. You left him. And you left me. And here you have a family, a wife, children, when you should have stayed with me, with us. Should have known better, Draco. You. Shall. Live. Alone."

"Very good. Very nice. Very Freudian. Oh, the mediwizards would have a field day with you."

Harry laughs again, still sounding like he's lost hope. "The muggles would do better. They have names for my...condition."

"Which are?" Keep him talking, and Draco may just live. May.

"Scitzophrenic. Multiple-personality disorder. I am a house divided against myself, Draco, and the house cannot stand. Every minute I lose more of myself to him. We are becoming one, and the I that remains...." He breaks of, shuddering, and turns away so Draco can't see the tears in his eyes. A gloriously futile gesture, but then everything they ever did to each other was. "Look upon me, ye mighty, and despair...I am the man with two brains." He starts laughing at that, hysterical, chest convulsing as the tears run down his cheeks in rivulets, and find he can't stop.

"Is that why you didn't kill us today?" Draco asks sharply, brining Harry back to himself, whoever that is currently, and Harry does calm.

"Yes. Yes. You weren't in the right place; the justice needs to be poetic as well as final. And Terry - Terry's still mad, mad from grief and loss. He thinks I've gone; he thinks I had a choice in leaving him. He fails me, even in that, and so he deserves what he will get. No point in killing someone if they're mad. But he'll be fixed in time, and then we - no, I - I - will be free of all the weakness I ever had."

"You were stronger than I ever was," Draco offers, his voice raw and barely a whisper.

"And which one of us got broken when you went away?"

Draco can't ignore the pain in that voice, or the truth in those green eyes, so he turns away.

"You said you'd always take care of me," Harry starts to cry, and Draco can't stop himself from reaching forward and kneeling in front of the armchair, cradling that small form against his. One arm goes round Harry's waist, and the other cradles his back, hand cupping his head as he kisses that thick unruly hair.

"I did. I'm so sorry, Harry. I will, I promise." They're both crying now and Draco's saying everything he's ever meant, even if it means nothing. Perhaps he's saying it because it means nothing. Perhaps he's saying it because they're nothing left to say.

"I know what you did to your father." Draco doesn't allow himself to stiffen at that, barely allows himself to think of the implications, just keeps kissing Harry's hair; his forehead, his eyes, and then his mouth.

"Harry," he says softly, pulling back just a bit to look him over. "Why did you come here, Harry?"

"Because I knew, Draco. And because I know you."

That's all the answer Draco needs, and so he stands, offering Harry a tight smile. "Well, as you are about to kill me and my family at any time, could we at least go onto the balcony? The view is beautiful out there, even at night."

There's a grace in Harry's movements; an elegant stately surety that Draco doesn't remember, and the smile he answers back with as he stands and leads Draco out to the balcony is lopsided and somewhat maniacal. His expression grows more guarded as they walk, more secure, more stable, and Draco knows he doesn't have much time.

A few lights from nearby Muggle towns and villages dot the landscape, and the river glistens black in the moonlight. If Draco was going to die, it's hardly a bad way to go, but it's not quite his turn yet.

With a devilish smile, he grabs Harry's wrist and pulls their bodies close together, one hand on Harry's hip as he leads them into a slow dance; something they never got, never did, never could do. Harry's body is warm and familiar against his for a few minutes as they dance in the moonlight, and then when Harry pulls back, Draco doesn't quite recognise the young man standing there anymore.

It's time.

He reaches down and jams his wand - still in his robe pocket - against the other man's body, and whispers incendio into raven hair. Fire blooms instantly, crackling yellow and red in the night, and Draco concentrates to shape the fire and keep it at bay from his own body. The thing that used to be Harry Potter screams and writhes but cannot escape, and the sheer force of the flames keeps it there, hanging in agony on the stone balcony. A terrible beauty is being born, but Draco cannot let it.

Draco forces himself to stare, to stand, even as the radiant heat blisters his skin and burns his face mildly, as if he were out in the sun too long. He makes the fire hotter, until even bones turn to ash, and then finally he steps back, gazing at the small pile of ashes that litter the balcony, before the wind sweeps them up and carry them into the valley. Burn marks etch the stone, and in a few places, there is still signs of something bubbling on the surface, something melted and misshapen.

He really will have to talk to the maid.

A few days of convalescence at a secure location, and Draco is right as rain, save for the peeling that covers his face, neck and hands. If anyone asks, he went on a holiday to the Costa De Sol, and not even Jacqueline questions his story. They trust each other, they love each other, and it all works out for the best. He's not happy, he's not passionate, but he's content and that's probably the best things were ever going to get.

Some time later - a few weeks, almost a month - and Draco makes some discreet enquiries into the healers at St. Mungo's. They are advocating a radical and innovative therapy for Terry Boot and those depressives like him, and there are a lot of those milling about due to the War that Wasn't. Boot's family signs off on it, and so Terry's memories are removed, one by one. Everything to do with Harry is erased, and all of Draco; both issues far too contentious, far too traumatic, and Old Man Boot has powerful friends and a lot of money.

Malfoy Industries could probably stop him, but Draco considers weighing all he has built for himself against the happiness of one man, and decides it's not worth the risk. Harry was right; Terry was a weakness, but Harry was wrong about whose weakness he was.

Terry's memories are replaced with something his father finds more suitable, and when an 'old school friend' Draco Malfoy visits (in a strictly professional capacity) two months after the therapy begins, he finds Terry to be roguish, charming and rather blunt. He has no idea why he carries a battered copy of Satre's No Exit around, but he did buy the story he was injured in a Death Eater attack, and does seem to check out one of the male nurse's arses when he thinks Draco isn't looking.

It seems that nature will undoubtedly win out over nuture, no matter how much Terry's father longs for a daughter in law and many male heirs, and so Draco is polite and distant. He wishes Terry good health and advising him of more Muggle literature Terry might be interested in, before retreating to his chateau, wife and family in Languedoc. His list to Terry includes the works of Thackery, Austen and the Shakespearean comedies; he doesn't mention the Bronte Sisters, George Eliot, Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, and recommends the Songs of Innocence rather than those of Experience, if Terry has a mind to poetry.

Draco has no doubt he would do any of it better the second time around, and this time there would be no Harry to clean up his mess. After a few months of correspondence, Draco abruptly stops writing to Terry Boot, and directs any further enquiries from the young man to his solicitor in Chancery Lane.

He never goes out to see the view from his balcony again, but still contents himself with work and a nice glass of Merlot every now and then.