The Depths of Winter

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The Depths of Winter

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Chapter seventeen

Memories

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Harry was the first to stir the next day. He opened his eyes slowly but quickly shut them again as the light assaulted his eyes and made his head pound. He couldn't quite remember the night before, which was why he was a bit startled to find that he was still sitting up, with someone lying on his lap.

As soon as Harry began moving, he moaned, "Ugh, my head."

Draco woke up from the sound and movement and he groaned, covering his eyes with his hands.

"I don't suppose you have a hang-over potion?" he asked, eyes still shut.

"Unfortunately not," Harry said. Then he added, confused but not unhappy, "Why are you on my lap?"

Draco opened his eyes slowly and squinted up at Harry. "I think it has to do with the amount of alcohol we drank yesterday."

Harry considered this and nodded, then groaned, "Shouldn't move."

Draco gave him an equally pained smile. "Shouldn't drink."

They sat in silence for a few minutes while they grew used to their pounding heads and the queasiness. Myra and Darius both still seemed dead to the world.

"Why don't they get together?" Draco asked, turning slightly so that he could look at them.

"Because neither one dares to say anything to the other," Harry said.

"Should we play cupids?" Draco asked, a sudden evil look passing over his features.

"You?" Harry asked. "A cupid?"

"Why wouldn't I be able to be a cupid?" Draco asked, pouting at him.

"Cupids are supposed to be nice little lovable things," Harry said, grinning at him.

"Are you saying I'm not?"

"Well," Harry said after thinking about it for a few seconds. "You are little."

Draco brought his hand up and slapped Harry's chest.

"Rude," he said.

Harry grinned. "I learned from the best."

"Oh, I feel so proud," Draco said, rolling his eyes.

"Whoever said I was talking about you? 'Mione can be quite evil. Especially when she teamed up with Ginny," Harry said and Draco pouted again.

It was closer to half an hour before they managed to get off the couch. Myra and Darius slept on, oblivious to the world around them.

"One would think that we put a sleeping charm on those two," Draco said, raising an eyebrow at the should-be couple.

Harry helped Draco into his wheelchair and they staggered over to the kitchen, where Harry put on a pot of coffee. Draco fetched the newspaper and they sat down by the dinner table, where dirty plates and glasses still stood. They had put most of it away the night before, but then the couch had looked more inviting.

"They've finally stopped writing about us," Draco said, sipping his coffee while looking through the newspaper.

"That's nice to hear, considering it's been over three weeks ago since it happened," Harry said.

"They still haven't got any idea who was behind it," Draco continued, recalling the old articles he'd read. "Mona has disappeared from the face of Earth."

Harry shrugged. "It's like finding the needle in the haystack," he said. "No one's got a picture of her, not even Espresso House where she worked, so the public can't recognize her."

"It's strange," Draco said, "that no one knows anything about her."

Harry shrugged, more interested in getting rid of his headache than spending more time thinking about Mona.

Draco cocked his head to the side. "Do you think she's a witch?"

At this, Harry's head snapped up. "A witch?"

"It would explain why there aren't any pictures of her," Draco said. "She might even have gone to Hogwarts."

"I doubt it," Harry said. "She didn't look more than nineteen or so and the police told you she'd been in psychiatric care for years. She couldn't have been in both psychiatric care and gone to Hogwarts."

"How is it that the psychiatric ward where she was doesn't have a picture of her?" Draco asked, frowning. "Don't they usually?"

"Not always, I suppose," Harry said. "It seems they didn't in this case."

"She could have used a charm to make herself look younger," Draco suggested.

Frustrated, Harry raised his voice slightly. "But why would she want to kill me? Why would she want to blow my apartment up? Whether she went to Hogwarts or not, she had no reason to--"

Suddenly, Myra stirred. She looked up from the couch and Harry immediately snapped his mouth shut.

"'Morning guys," she said, her voice thick.

"Good morning," Harry said.

"Coffee?" she asked and Harry stood up to pour her a cup. As Myra got up, Darius woke as well. He rubbed his eyes, moaning.

"I'm never drinking again," he vowed.

"Sure you won't," Myra said, rolling her eyes at him. "Mm, coffee."

Myra and Darius both took showers and drank water, clearing their heads enough for Darius to be able to drive back to their flats. Harry and Draco were left alone in the house and both knew that a continuation of both the conversation of yesterday and the discussion they'd had earlier that morning was bound to happen.

Harry busied himself with cleaning away everything that had been left out the night before. He knew he wouldn't be able to fool Draco, but he tried fooling himself that he was too busy; they didn't have time to talk now.

"Harry, sit down," Draco finally snapped from his place on the couch.

"You aren't--"

"Ordering you around? Yes I am," Draco said, annoyance apparent in both his face and voice.

Harry opened his mouth to say something but closed it once he realised he had nothing intelligent to say. He sat down instead, raising an eyebrow at Draco, who smirked at him.

"Good dog."

"Oh, shut up," Harry said, relaxing.

They grinned, briefly, at each other. Then silence fell as they both wondered who would start.

"Why did you leave?" Harry asked finally.

Draco was quiet, studying his hands yet not seeing them at all. "A lot of things happened," he said at last, his voice quiet.

A pause. "Tell me," Harry said, just as quietly.

"I was accused of murder," Draco said, looking up and meeting green eyes. "You know that."

"Ron."

Harry tried desperately to keep the memories back, to focus on Draco, but flashes of red hair and blue eyes passed before him, rolling over him like a tidal wave, unstoppable.

...A broken body on the ground...

Draco nodded, his eyes travelling back to his hands.

"But you were never - they couldn't prove it was you," Harry said. "And Professor Dumbledore vouched for you."

Draco smiled ruefully. "I had some contact with Dumbledore after I left," Draco said. "He was the one who told me to stay away, to stay hidden. It was too dangerous for me to come back."

Harry just watched him, eyes wide. "Did you-- were you--"

He couldn't get the words out; they stuck in his throat, thick like glue.

"I didn't kill Weasley," Draco said and he looked like he wanted to get up and pace, back and forth over the floor, as though that would help. "But most of the Wizarding world didn't believe that. And the people who did kill him were after me because I was a traitor."

...The wind made his messy hair even messier, blowing it into his eyes. Harry didn't notice. All he saw was the white casket with a huge bouquet of flowers on top of it that was sinking slowly into the ground...

"The Death Eaters," Harry said thickly, tears filling his eyes at the memories of Ron's funeral. It was too much; he didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to remember; he wanted to keep it down, behind the bars where it had been for the last five years. He didn't want to think about it, didn't want to be reminded.

"My father," Draco said and Harry had never heard his voice so cold.

The newspapers screamed out the news: 'Prisoners break out of Azkaban'

Lucius Malfoy was free.

"What happened that night?" Harry asked despite the desperate voices in his head, telling him to not think about it, to forget it, to throw Draco out of the house and never think about any of the things he was telling him, ever again.

The other part of him knew that if he never found out, he would never find peace.

He desperately wanted peace.

"I asked Weasley - Ron - outside to talk to him," Draco said quietly. "He accepted, after several minutes of persuasion. I wanted us to bury the hatchet. I can't say I wanted us to be friends, because I doubt that we could ever have been friends. There was too much-- just too much."

Draco's voice was just as thick as Harry's, his head bowed as he talked, unable to meet Harry's eyes.

"But why him?" Harry asked. "Why not Hermione? Why not me?"

"Hermione?" There was no feeling behind the name. "It never occurred to me to talk to her. And you--you were still The Boy Who Lived; still raised to the stars. I could never have talked to you."

Harry didn't bother telling Draco that none of that was true; they both knew it now and nothing would change the past and how Draco had felt then.

"We went outside after dinner," Draco said, once more quiet. "I didn't want any of the Slytherins to overhear."

A small, distraught laugh escaped him. "I never knew that my father had placed a spell on me as a baby and that he would always be able to 'overhear' my conversations as long as I was somewhere surrounded by magic. He knew I was betraying the Dark Lord. He'd heard me speak to Dumbledore, just as he'd heard me ask Ron outside. He told my mother somehow and she told Voldemort, who broke him and a few of the others out of Azkaban; apparently it fitted with his plans and he was now convinced of my father's allegiances - and mine. Father was waiting for us, Ron and me, with Voldemort and six other Death Eaters, when we went outside."

There was a brief pause then Draco continued quietly, "They told me to kill him. To prove my alliances. They'd heard too many of my conversations; they knew I was on Dumbledore's side.

"I couldn't kill Ron, of course. So they-- they killed him instead."

Draco looked up, his eyes wide and shining with unshed tears. "They cursed him with curses I'd never heard before. He screamed-- I stood paralysed. I-- I couldn't do anything--"

Red hair, clashing with the grass... blood everywhere...

"It is too late," the Headmaster told him. "He is dead."

He is dead...

Harry remembered. He buried his head in his hands; he didn't want to remember.

"Anyone else sitting there?"

First year, both eleven years old and on their way to the biggest adventure in their short lives - Hogwarts.

"Are you really Harry Potter?"

Nights spent at the Burrow, watching the players in the Chudley Cannon posters move around; laughing over a game of chess; fighting when the Tri Wizarding Tournament took place; sighing over homework; hating Snape with a passion.

"What do you think of Hermione?" Ron asked.

"What I think of her?" Harry, being the thick-headed boy that he was, didn't understand the question. "Hermione is our friend. What am I supposed to think about her?"

Ron blushed. "Do you think - do you think she's, you know, pretty?"

Harry looked at him oddly for a moment and then asked, "Do you fancy 'Mione?"

Ron turned an even deeper shade of red. "No," he said defensively. "I do not."

But he did and after that night, they both knew it. Them and the rest of the school - everyone but Hermione. Although Harry caught her staring at Ron every now and then with a dreamy look in her eyes.

Then he remembered tears. Blood and tears, mixed with dirt and a horrible feeling that it was all wrong.

Hermione, standing next to him, grabbed his hand in a bone-crushing grip as the dirt was thrown on the casket. She turned her head away, buried it into Harry's shoulder as the casket was put into the ground, shoulders shaking.

Harry could not look away, couldn't cry...

And suddenly the walls broke.

The tears ran down his cheeks and he fell forward, to the floor, lying there, shaking as sobs wracked his body and his heart broke all over again. Tears that should have been shed years ago were finally allowed to flow freely and they did. Harry cried and cried, crystalline tears making his eyes red and puffy, pounding his hands into the floor, making them hurt; he didn't care. He only wanted the horrible feeling of complete anguish washing over him to disappear, to get an outlet.

He felt someone slide down next to him and pick him up, pulling him close. Words were whispered into his ears, words with no meaning but so reassuring, telling him that it was all right to cry, that it was okay to feel scared and little and not be the hero. Harry held on tightly, not caring, barely even remembering, that it was Draco who was comforting him. Draco kissed his forehead, stroked his cheeks with gentle hands.

"Shh, it will be okay - just let it all out..."

Harry only took what was freely given; Draco's caring, gentle tone, the warm breath of another human being on his cheek. Harry relaxed against Draco, the tears still leaking down his cheeks, wetting the fabric of Draco's shirt.

Harry didn't know how long he lay there, held tightly against the other's chest, and he didn't care. He just lay there, letting himself relax, letting a strange sense of calm wash over him, letting Draco pet his hair, soothing him.

He must have fallen asleep in the end, because when he opened his eyes again, the room was darker and Draco was sleeping.

Harry had never felt so safe.

He lay completely still so that Draco wouldn't wake up. He remembered their conversation and his breakdown, the tears that he had finally shed, five years too late.

He wondered why he'd let himself break down in the company of Draco, rather than with Hermione.

Draco stirred, moving slightly. His eyes opened and he winced.

"Am I that bad to wake up with?" Harry asked jokingly, his voice still thick.

Draco smiled softly at him. "Not at all," he said, surprising Harry. "But my back is killing me."

"Oh," Harry said, sitting up abruptly. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Draco said. "It's just not the most comfortable way to sleep."

He attempted to get up on the couch, but failed as he wasn't strong enough to pull himself up. Harry, who now sat on his knees before Draco, placed a hand on his knee. "Let me help you."

Draco regarded Harry for a moment, searchingly. He nodded. "All right."

Harry picked him up, placing Draco on the couch, movements gentle. He sat down on the couch at Draco's feet.

"What happened then?" he asked, remembering where they had left off. The topic had been opened and needed to be continued and eventually closed.

Draco also, obviously, remembered.

"They left us," he said. Their voices were quiet, as though the subjects were such that they were best discussed softly. Maybe it was true. "Left him, dead - and they left me there to be found by the Professors and to be prosecuted as a murderer. They'd used my wand to kill him; it was all the evidence anyone needed, really."

"But you left," Harry said.

Draco looked up, eyes filled with sadness. He nodded. "The Headmaster was the first one out there. As I had already told him my plans to talk to Ron and I'd already helped him and the Order with details that not even Severus could get, he knew he could trust me. I told him what had happened; he told me to go."

"Just like that?" Harry asked, disbelievingly. "After you risked your life for our cause, he just told you to go."

Draco looked down, then met Harry's gaze. "It was for the best. There was too much proof of my guilt if they found me with my wand next to Weasley, for even Dumbledore to be able to clear me. Without the wand, they didn't have any evidence at all."

"What did you do? Where did you go?" Harry asked. "How did you survive?"

"I-- I stayed in the Wizarding world for a few months," Draco said, looking down again. "I never stayed at one place for more than a night or two. I didn't have any money. I got some help, but after several close calls with attempts on my life - both light and dark wizards were against me, after all - I decided to leave and go into the Muggle world instead."

He said it so matter-of-factly that Harry could barely believe that this was Draco Malfoy, the spoilt brat who hated Muggles and called Hermione a Mudblood.

"I still didn't have any money, but at least I could stay in the same place for more than two days in a row," Draco said. "I-- I applied for a job at a café, one just like Espresso House, and I got it. I worked there for a little while, trying to scrape together enough money to leave England. I couldn't use magic; my father would know where I was immediately."

"Then the war ended when you killed Voldemort," Draco said. "I found a copy of the Daily Prophet. It was, according to the papers, just like the night when you were a baby - the wizards and witches were out, even in the Muggle world, celebrating. I understood what had happened."

Harry remembered.

'Harry Potter defeats Voldemort!'

It was screamed from the rooftops; it was everywhere. His face was on posters, in the papers, in the magazines, on every wizard's or witch's mind. He was a hero, The Hero, their saviour.

It was suffocating.

Harry wanted nothing but to disappear, but the Wizarding world wouldn't allow him to go.

So he ran away.

"I found out that my father had been captured and thrown into Azkaban again, along with most of the inner circle, except, of course, those who were dead."

Ron, Sirius, McGonagall, Dumbledore, Fred, Seamus, Padma, Tonks, and so many, many more.

Magic killed; Harry knew it then.

He ran away.

Without the scar on his forehead - it disappeared when Voldemort was finally killed - it was easy to avoid being recognized. He let his hair grow out from the short cut he'd had for the war, he changed his glasses and often wore contacts. He escaped to the Muggle world and changed his last name.

"I knew I could stop running. But I found I didn't want to go back. It held too much of my past and I didn't want to be the person I'd been then."

Pally found him and he stayed with her for the first few nights, until he managed to find an apartment.

Then he stayed inside, in his flat and just wrote. Wrote page after page until his first novel was finished and his hard-drive was filled with short stories. He let Pally read it and she took it to the publishers.

The rest was history.

"So I stayed in the Muggle world. I continued working at the café for a little while, but it bored me, so I tried other things. I worked in a store, a fashionable men's clothes-store - the one where we got you those pants, actually."

Harry looked down, startled by the sudden tie to reality Draco had made.

"I stayed in different places, found apartments and stayed until they threw me out because I couldn't pay the rent. After the job in the men's store, I got a job at one of the small, local libraries, which is where I read your book the first time."

"This is absolutely amazing, Mr Evans. We would like to publish this."

That was it; the book was published and Harry found himself back in the spotlight, though far less than he'd been in the Wizarding world. He kept to himself, was a private person. He filled his days with writing his second book.

Then he started studying and met Darius Alden.

"I was offered a job at a publishing company. That was a year ago. I worked there, even enjoyed it sometimes."

School was school. Harry enjoyed being back in the Muggle system, learning Muggle subjects. He stopped thinking of them as 'Muggle' and began thinking of it as where he belonged.

He made friends with Myra Pryderi and her friend Candy Mignon.

He felt alive.

"I was offered a job higher up just five months after being hired. I accepted, although it wasn't what I wanted to do. But it paid well and it could be a fun job, at times. I got a pay raise and bought the motorbike and - well, I found a new freedom."

He looked up. "The rest you know."

A motorcycle entered the intersection and the crash could not be avoided.

Harry saw as if in slow motion as the driver of the motorcycle was thrown to the side, landing on the ground with the motorbike over him. The driver of the car stood on the brakes, but couldn't stop the vehicle from running over the man on the ground.

The sound of metal cutting into metal was deafening.

His mouth fell open and his eyes widened as he saw who the unconscious man on the ground was.

His world was turned upside down as he realised that it was Draco Malfoy.

"I do," Harry said.

The house was quiet, as thought the world around them was afraid to breathe, suddenly. No sounds were heard; no birds singing, no electricity buzzing in the air. It was silent.

"Shouldn't you have called your job and told them? Or did you do that?" Harry asked finally.

Draco looked as though he was about to say something sarcastic, but changed his mind. "It is strange," he said. "The same day that I was in the accident, I had quit my job."

Harry frowned. "Why?"

Draco smiled slightly, a crooked grin. "Got into a fight with my arsehole boss."

Harry chuckled. The air around them was suddenly less loaded, less tense.

"I guess that some part of me knew that it was a day of new beginnings," Draco said.

"Some new beginning, crashing into my life like that," Harry said. "I wasn't prepared for it. I was just going home that Wednesday afternoon to have a quiet night, studying and writing a little. And then you came along."

"You just wouldn't leave me alone," Draco said, smiling slightly.

"I have never had anyone scream 'get out' at me quite so many times." Harry smiled back. It was an easy thing to do.

"Of course not, you're Harry Potter." Draco rolled his eyes. "But there has to be a first with everything."

"I guess it does," Harry said. "What happened to your apartment? I'm assuming you lived somewhere?"

Draco shrugged. "It wasn't the best of places, if I put it that way. The landlord didn't know much about who lived in the house - if you paid the rent you got to stay, if you didn't, you were thrown out, so I'll assume that it just ended when I didn't pay."

The silence spread again, comfortable like a warm blanket.

"Do you think whoever placed the bomb in my apartment intended to kill you, not me?" Harry asked.

"The thought has crossed my mind," Draco said quietly. "That was why I was wondering if Mona could have been a student at Hogwarts. If she were, it would have been very possible for her to have a Death Eater for a friend or relative, or even a Light someone that she was getting back for."

"You mean that she recognized me as Harry Potter when I came to the café?" Harry asked. "But she would have needed to know that you were staying with me."

"It is possible that she'd been watching me before that," Draco said. "I don't know."

Harry nodded, pondering this new way of looking at the attack.

Draco's stomach rumbled and he looked up, his cheeks red with embarrassment. "I guess my tummy is hungry."

Harry laughed.

"What?" Draco asked, annoyed.

"You said 'tummy'," Harry said, still giggling like a girl. "I've never heard you say 'tummy' before."

"What's wrong with my saying 'tummy'?" Draco's irritation grew.

Looking at Draco, Harry only began laughing harder. "It - it sounded so - so cute," he said between fits of laughter. "'My t-tummy is hungry'." His eyes were tearing up; it felt so liberating to laugh.

"Potter has gone insane," Draco muttered to no one in particular, but he was beginning to feel the same bubbling, free laughter build within him and a few moments later, he began laughing as well. Harry was clutching his stomach, tears of laughter rolling down his cheeks and Draco laughed with him.

It was a time for healing.

To Be Continued...