When in Rome

Authors Notes: Sorry for the long delay! I'm sure you've heard it all before so I'm not even going to go into it. Let's just say RL is a bitch sometimes! I'll be back with more updates as soon as I can. Remember unless I say otherwise, both this fic and any other WIPs by me, will be continued even if I don't update in ages.

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For a few moments after Harry collapsed, Draco’s world seemed to move in slow motion. The torrent of emotions welling within him made him feel sick to his stomach. He was awed for the warrior Harry became; angry for the betrayal to the Wizarding World that Harry’s leaving had signified; struck by a sinking epiphany of how much had changed; superior because Harry now knew very little compared to him; concerned. Concerned about the fact that Harry didn’t seem to be breathing.

Although Draco had seen the scene unfold before him with such clarity that it seemed to last minutes not seconds, in reality pandemonium had broken lose. Elise emitted high pitched squeal after squeal and had dropped her glass all over the floor. Kai hushed her in an irritated tone as he tried to run towards Harry but tripped over a chair in his haste. In the time it took for him to pick himself up again, and for Elise to find her feet to join him, Draco had made a snap decision.

He could have pretended he had never met Harry before — no one could prove that it had been him that caused Harry to collapse. He could have muttered a simple Enervate, as his healing skills helped him sense that Harry was still alive. This may not help the man at all, but Draco’s conscious could be semi-clear. Then he could have left, packed his things and Apparated the hell away from the resident Boy-Who-Lived-To-Become-The-Man-Who-Slayed-Voldemort or whatever such rubbish he had been dubbed by the tabloids at the time.

But something stopped him. Instinct? Draco doubted it. His gut feeling was to run whilst he still could — he had never lost that Slytherin sense of self-preservation and if ever there was a personification of danger, it was Harry. But then there was his curiosity. So many questions flooded through him, and the need to know rather than speculate hit the blonde so hard that it practically burned inside him. Ironic, Draco considered, as he had spent the only time he had been around Harry James Potter speculating and presuming rather than getting to know him.

In one fluid motion, the man stood up. His clothes didn’t so much as crease; his chair made no sound as he moved it from under himself, and he walked as though gliding toward Harry. Elise had reached Harry by this point and was crying as she tried to rouse him. Kai was fending off the small crowd of people who were trying to get a better look.

Draco knelt gracefully beside him, placing a hand on each of Harry’s shoulders. He was accurate in his assessment of Harry’s ailment. Anyone who had left the magical world for so long either went mad, lost their powers or, in the case of a powerful witch or wizard, locked their powers away where they lay dormant — intensifying in strength — until the person could shield them no more. Draco presumed the latter was Harry’s problem because any such jolt of remembrance back into the magical world would cause a similar break down. Harry, of all people, had both the power and the past. What shocked Draco, however, was just how strong Harry’s magic was.

Normally when grounding someone’s magical energy, Draco noticed a slight tingling sensation — a kind of magical charge. From the moment he centred himself and lowered his hands to Harry’s shoulders, the sensation was phenomenal. The acrid scent of electricity and singeing hair, flooded Draco’s nose and clung to the back of his throat as though he were breathing a dense and noxious fume. The pleasant heat of the Roman morning was spirited away and replaced by an unnatural chill. It was as though Harry was absorbing all of the heat energy around him in an attempt to rebuild the walls that had locked in his magic. It took all of Draco’s considerable strength to will Harry’s defence mechanism to reverse.

It was like verbal persuasion. It took a lot of it to bring forth results but when it succeeded, Draco could feel the compromises and eventual give of Harry’s shields. Years of restraint had caused his powers to limit themselves exclusively to his magical core. The build-up had caused his magic to try and ‘escape’ but it had forgotten how. Harry’s magic was still shielded within himself and, for a wizard of his power, this was not healthy.

Draco concentrated harder. He traced his hands lightly up from Harry’s shoulders towards his neck, lightly brushing his jawline with his fingertips before pausing gently on Harry’s brow. He found the last bit of restricted magic, and the source of Harry’s unconsciousness, clogging his crown chakra. A final mental push and that diffused, leaving all of Harry’s chakras in perfect alignment

The chill faded and the magical system was finally returning to normal. Instead of flowing inside Harry, it now coursed through him, around him, within him — still stemming from his magical core but now flowing up from chakra to chakra before leaving Harry’s physical body in a parasol of energy from his crown chakra. From here, the magic weaved around Harry’s aura before some returned back to his core whilst the rest dispersed into the atmosphere. Muggles would call it completing the circuit, but Wizards knew it was more than that. It was part of a balance, a harmony which nature strives to protect with every budding shoot and every living breath. Harry’s supply of magic would never run dry because his core was constantly fed by the very nature of magic itself — the free-flowing force that surrounded everything, but could only be unlocked by a few.

Harry stirred. He felt an almost overwhelming sense of clarity and well-being. It was one of those experiences when one never truly understands how ill they were before until after they regained full health. For a moment he rested, arching marginally towards the cool touch at his brow, feeling more than a touch — a connection between two people like he hadn’t felt in years. It wasn’t an emotional nor physical connection; it was a connection of magic.

Eyes snapping open, Harry tensed and his heart rate accelerated as he remembered his last conscious thoughts: Draco Malfoy. And sure enough, there the man was, kneeling aside him with his hands resting calmly on Harry’s forehead. The man looked deep in meditation and Harry felt a slight adjustment being made to something deep within him as Draco checked that Harry was properly grounded and centred.

Then, simultaneously, Draco’s eyes fluttered open and his hands slipped to a more restful position against the rapid rise and fall of Harry’s chest. His eyes were stormed over with strain and his breathing was laboured. Regaining composure, he struggled to his feet before dusting down his immaculate clothing and turning away from Harry — and the crowd of baffled onlookers. He started to walk away and, as he did so, spoke for the first time that morning in drawl that hit Harry with a wave of nostalgia.

“You should rest Mr. Potter, or Mr. Evans rather. As I recall, that is the name you’ve taken as your penname, correct? No matter, I’ll be staying here for a while. You know how to find me when you’re ready. We need to talk.”

“What exactly would you, of all people, have to say to me, Malfoy?”

Harry’s response was instinctual and not well thought out — nothing Malfoy could possibly want to say to him was something he wished to share in front of his Muggle friends. Plus, if Malfoy did still intend him harm even after healing him — Harry wouldn’t put it past the git to heal him, question him and then kill him — provoking him was not a good idea.

The blonde turned around briefly and saw the regret etched onto Harry’s face. Emotive as ever, he considered. His eyebrow arched and his face lifted into a pleasant smirk.

“Scared, Potter?” he quipped as he walked back over and offered his hand to the man still sitting on the floor.

The significance of this was not lost on the raven-haired man. He distinctly remembered their first year ruckus upon entering the castle, when Harry had rejected the Malfoy heir’s hand of friendship to defend his first true friend, Ron Weasley. A grin spread across Harry’s face — the likes of which neither Kai nor Elise had ever witnessed before.

“You wish, Malfoy,” Harry retorted smoothly before accepting the hand.

After he was helped to his feet, he completed the handshake properly. Both men gazed at each other analytically; it was unclear to the onlookers whether they were sizing up the opposition or noting the changes time had graced upon an old acquaintance. But it was an indisputable gaze of intensity, of a troubled past and a questionable future. The blonde’s smirk increased as he nodded to Harry coolly and swept from the room.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Harry’s stare had followed the tall, angelic man out of the room. When he turned around, he noticed that the crowd had realized he was okay and had dispersed. Everyone was, however, chatting hurriedly to each other about the peculiarity of the situation whilst eyeing Harry interestedly. Elise and Kai made as if they wanted to hug Harry, but froze mid-motion with shocked gazes.

The man they saw before them was not the Harry they knew. His change of hairstyle that they had both noticed that morning had a whole new significance now. This was who Harry had been hiding under a façade of novels and artwork. It was an instant feeling of certainty that struck both Kai and Elise — every side of Harry’s enigmatic persona that they knew and loved was now enhanced to some greater magnitude and infused with something reminiscent of pure power.

He offered them a sheepish smile, as though he knew what they were thinking, and took them both by the hand and led them towards the lift. A clumsy, multi-lingual out-of-order sign was printed on the door and so he pulled them towards the stairs and bounded up them three at a time.

Harry stopped outside his room and was fumbling around his pockets for his key when Kai and Elise caught up with him.

“Harry, I think we really need to talk. I have a million questions to ask you — about today and about your past. I don’t want to hurt you and I understand if you can’t answer some of them. It’s just…”

Kai seemed to be struggling to maintain his usual, diplomatic self-control. Harry gave a sad smile, more to himself than to his friends, before shrugging and saying, “...time to tell you what I can?”

He disappeared into his room.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Harry lolled onto his bed whilst his friends nestled into the chairs next to his small table. It was a set-up that reminded Harry of his old therapy sessions, for what little they had helped. It had been a long time since Harry had noticed that he had a gift for self-therapy and for analysing his own actions. Yes, it was unnerving at times and other times sparked bouts of denial that could last months. But in the end, Harry had always been able to sort himself out to the extent that he could live an almost normal life.

It was this self-preservation streak, or his Slytherin nature as others had dubbed it in the past, that went hand-in-hand with his gut feelings: he had to tell Kai and Elise what he could now, to prevent them from leaving him all together. They had stuck with him through a time of healing and mood swings, and he owed them what little he could give them.

He waited for an onslaught of questions, but none came. He took this as his cue to start explaining.

“Okay guys, I know I owe you an explanation of some sorts. It will be patchy, and some areas will sound damn right fantastical, but you have to believe it’s the truth — what little I can explain to you, that is. I’ll probably leave you with more questions than you started with but that’s the risk you’ll being taking.”

Kai and Elise seemed lost for words. What Harry was saying had an odd sense of gravity about it, a weight that made it all the more serious. They wanted to reassure him — to say that whatever little he could comfortably part with would be more than enough for them — but the words seemed to be stuck in their mouths.

Strangely enough, Harry seemed to understand their intentions and smiled at them warmly and knowingly. Too knowingly. His eyes carried such a depth of experience and knowledge that they were almost penetrating their minds.

“I’ll start at the beginning — like all good stories do — because that’s what my past was to so many people: a story. The story of the one-year-old boy born to loving and gifted parents in a time of….umm…..hidden political turmoil, shall we say? Lily Evans and James Potter, my parents, met at school. This school was where I was to go when I turned eleven, where I met the man you saw downstairs in the breakfast room, and was where the man who murdered my parents developed his thirst for power.”

Elise’s eyes, so blue in some light and dusty grey in others, now shone clear with open shock and hurt for her friend. She had always suspected that Harry’s past must have been bad, and a painful topic to broach but, at the same time, her method of dealing with problems was to always look on the bright side of things — to distract herself and her friends with fun antics.

The hollowness of Harry’s voice reverberated around the still room like a deep pit of sadness so embedded within Harry that it couldn’t be relieved; it had become a part of him and there could be no Harry as he lay before her now without it.

“This school isn’t the start of the full story, but it’s the start of my story. Without it, so many events that have shaped my life would not have come to pass. It is a select school, private and enterable by invitation only. To go to this school, you don’t have to be particularly strong academically, or of rich birth, but you do have to possess a certain gift.”

“A gift? What d’you mean by ‘gift’? I know of an old school back in Ireland that only admits amazing athletes and…”

Kai’s voice faltered at the look of dry satire in Harry’s face. Something about his friend was far more expressive than usual. He had thrown away his masks, lowered his guard and opened his true self. It was evident from his expression that Harry almost wished his school-life had been so simple.

“No. Not all of the students are athletic. This gift incorporates a large range of skills that different students excel in to different levels. The entire curriculum is different and it is the fundamental details of this gift and curriculum that I can’t divulge to you. The gift is largely genetic and vast bloodlines of ancestors have possessed it. However, the gift is becoming increasingly common in people who have no genetic disposition for it.

“These children — my mother herself was one of them — receive a letter around the time of their eleventh birthday explaining to them the details of this school and their heritage. Most embrace these people as equal to those who can trace this gift through many generations — inaccurately named purebloods. Some, however, do not embrace them and that was where the problems started.

“Now, people who are born like me don’t only appear in Britain; there are schools such as this one worldwide. But the school I attended is undoubtedly the most world-renowned and, arguably, the best of them all. About sixty years ago, a student — an orphan like myself — was accepted into this school. He had no knowledge of his background, but extensive research on his part led him to discover that he was the direct descendant of one of the schools four founders.

“This particular founder was famous for his dark practices using our skills and for his bigoted views against non-purebloods, or Mudbloods, as they became insultingly known as. This young boy became steeped in evil and began recruiting followers from his own school house. People willingly followed him. He had such immense power and control over our skills. He was indirectly responsible for the murder of a non-pureblood girl at the school, but he framed someone else.”

“Murder?! Mon dieu, Harry! What kind of school did you go to?!” Elise’s eyes were practically twice their normal size such was her excitement. Forget scandalous affairs, this was far more interesting!

“One of a kind, my love. One of a kind.” Harry’s voice was pensive as he spoke. For a moment or two he became lost in a swell of memories. Absent mindedly, he shook his head before continuing.

“Anyway, this man….after leaving the school, he gained more power and more followers. He wanted some kind of ethnical cleansing I guess, to rid our kind of all non-purebloods. It was ludicrous, particularly considering his father never even had the gift like my mother did and was completely normal like the both of you.

“A war began, hidden from people like you by our government. We made it sound like freak accidents. In reality, there were soldiers on both sides and many lives were lost. My parents had thrice defied this evil man and so, when I was just one year old, he tracked them down, murdered them and destroyed our house.”

Harry seemed to take on the tone of the prophecy subconsciously. Both friends picked up on his odd phrasing but, of course, neither knew why. It only added to their confusion and to the strength of Harry’s words

“He was, however, almost fatally wounded in the process. He went into hiding; I survived — how is irrelevant — and I was raised by my mother’s sister’s family, people like yourselves.

“When I was eleven, I started at the school. This was where I met the man you saw earlier. He and I were schoolyard rivals. We were from rival houses, played the same position on rival sports teams. I was infamous because of who I was and who my parents had been; he was extortionately rich because of his parents and their involvement with my parents’ murderer.

“When I was in fourth year, this man returned. The second war started, only now it was the war of my generation. School-aged children were fighting alongside adults and against an opposition of twice their ability. I played an active part in this war and, once we had won, I turned my back on that world and joined yours as Harry Evans, not Harry Potter. A part of me died; I locked away my abilities for good, or so I thought.

“Then, over a period of a day or so, the glances of Malfoy at the airport, the sensing of knowing someone from my past was around, awakened me to what I was. I have seen things you couldn’t even imagine, things I couldn’t even begin to explain. But the long and short of it is that you have only ever known a fraction of me. Unfortunately, that is all I will ever be able to share with you.”

Silence greeted the end of Harry’s speech. He exhaled slowly, as though releasing tension and preparing himself for the fallout of his words. He studied his friends carefully. Elise seemed on the brink of falling of her chair with excitement; her face still showed traces of concern, but it was plain to see that she was in her element. Government cover-ups, a hidden war, a poor, orphaned Harry thrown into the middle of it with a dishy schoolyard rival to boot — it all sounded terribly like some of the trashy novels she had read!

Kai’s reaction was pensive. He absent-mindedly rubbed at his temples, flicking his hair away when it fell in his eyes. It sounded like the perfect work of fiction — but it had to be true. Harry wouldn’t make up something like this in relation to something as serious as his past. He wouldn’t throw Kai’s friendship back in his face. Kai knew Harry well enough to be certain that, whatever aspects of his personality had been repressed before, Harry’s love for his friends was more genuine than he had ever seen in anyone else. Being orphaned so young and fighting in a war would have done that to someone, right? Harry was still Harry. He just had slightly more to him than the Irishman had realised.

Consolidated, he broke the silence first.

“I’m not gonna sit here and pretend that what you just said doesn’t sound completely mad. But, at the same time, I believe you. I can’t pretend that I understand why you can’t be more specific about the details of your school. But, nevertheless, I’m going to take your word for it. I’m not going to pretend that I like the idea of adjusting to this complete you, but I’m willing to do so anyway. All I ask in return is that you answer whatever we ask when we come to ask about things, to the best of your ability, that is, and that you remember that we are always gonna be here for you.”

Elise fervently nodded her agreement before adding, in a tone and accent identical to Kai’s, “I can’t pretend I understand the whole schoolyard rivals thing but, nevertheless, I can understand that you and your mystery blond must have had lots of angsty sex.”

A pillow promptly collided with her head.

“Hey, I’m sorry, mon Coeur, but you two obviously have more unresolved sexual tension that any two people I have ever seen. Ever! You are not telling me you never shagged, are you?!”

“Which part of rivals did you confuse with either lovers or simple fuck-buddies?” Harry groaned dryly, cringing inwardly at the suggestion of either.

The corners of Kai’s mouth twitched slightly before his expression turned serious and he added, “You know how I hate to ever agree with Elise about such trivial details regarding your love life….but in this instance…”

“Say another word and die, McCarthy!” Harry sat up, grinning menacingly.

“…I agree with her one hundred percent….umph!” A second pillow hit him square in the face.

“Now that this whole thing is over, I know two things for sure about you.”

“These things are…?”

“Firstly, your constant abuse of our surnames must be deeply rooted in your boarding school days. And secondly...” He nodded conspiratorially towards Elise, “You obviously have no sense of strategy or you wouldn’t have left your opposition with the weapons!”

Harry was immediately bombarded with an onslaught of blows from both pillows. Feathers flew everywhere, coating the trio in a downy layer of white. Harry darted off the bed and made for the door, key in hand, planning to lock the pair away from him. He opened the door and pelted headlong into a groggy Stephan, who had been awoken by the commotion their pillow fight had caused. Stephan fell backwards onto the floor and blanched as Harry landed on top of him.

Every muscle of Stephan’s body tensed at the horror of having the resident gay of the group sprawled across his torso. His mouth uttered incoherent syllables of horror, while all that could be heard from Kai and Elise was their hysterical giggle fit from the doorway.

Caught in a wave of euphoria after his talk with Kai and Elise — and their subsequent pillow fight — Harry decided to play along. He raised himself up onto one arm and gently trailed the other down Stephan’s jawline.

“Well, isn’t this an interesting turn of events, sugar?”

Stephan squeaked in a terrified manner before Harry burst out laughing and jumped up athletically. Stephan’s sun-beaten skin turned a beetroot red before he stumbled up and squared up to Harry angrily.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

“Calm down, Stephan,” Harry replied calmly, not the slightest threatened by Stephan’s anger.

“You can’t just do…do…that to me and then tell me to ‘Calm down’!”

Stephan tried to shove Harry into the wall, but he stood fast.

“Look, I’m sorry if you can’t take a joke, but that’s all it was.” Harry’s voice invited no further say on the matter. His calm authority was clear for all to see. Furious that he had been humiliated and that Harry wasn’t begging for forgiveness, Stephan turned to Elise.

“As for you, I can’t believe that you encouraged such unacceptable behaviour. You’re supposed to be my girlfriend.”

Elise’s good mood seemed to freeze and she was about to simper an apology to Stephan when an airy voice broke into the conversation.

“We really must stop meeting like this, Potter.”

Draco Malfoy stood slightly offset from the gathered friends, leaning casually on the opposite wall.

“Au contraire, monsieur,” Elise answered for Harry. “After what Harry has told me about your old rivalry, I think the fact that you bump into each other at unplanned moments makes your relationship all the more entertaining.”

“Relationship?!” Harry managed to stammer out. “I would like to clarify yet again that Malfoy and I never had the kind of relationship that you are insinuating.”

Malfoy seemed amused by the passing events; he arched his eyebrows elegantly and smirked at Harry.

“I see your choice in friends remains a constant, at least, but your manners remain appaling.”

He stepped towards Kai before nodding his head and extending a hand. “My name is Draco Malfoy.”

“Kai McCarthy at your service,” replied the Irishman warmly.

“And you, sweet mademoiselle?”

“E..Elise,” she giggled with a flourish of her hand that Draco caught and kissed in a gentlemanly manner.

“Enchante.”

“And you,sir?” He turned towards a still-seething Stephan.

“You! I knew I recognised you! You were the jumped up, wannabe aristocrat that slipped in front of me at the refreshments queue at the airport! People like you make me sick. You waltz around, kissing other people’s girlfriends,” he gestured at Elise in a motion so exaggerated that he hit her round the stomach. “In general, you act like you think you are Lord of the Manor or something! Well I’ll have you know that my family…”

“…has insignificant wealth and power compared to mine, as I really am a Lord.” Draco’s eyes had stormed over.

He put a hand on Elise’s shoulder. “Are you okay?”

Stephan glanced uninterestedly at Elise. “She’s fine. Lord Malfoy? There is no such title that I am aware of. Certainly not in the circles that I associate with.”

“That,” Malfoy drawled in his most superior tone as he looked Stephan up and down distastefully, “does not surprise me at all.”

And with that, Draco gracefully turned around to face Harry.

“I know I said earlier that you could come and find me if you wanted to talk, but circumstances have changed. A situation has occurred which requires both of our attentions. Before we can handle it, provided you agree to assist me, of course, I need to fill you in on a few ‘minor details’ you may have failed to pick up on during your….ummm…..absence?” His voice was laced with sarcasm, as always, but he didn’t seem hostile.

Harry quickly assessed the situation, nodded his agreement, and asked Kai and Elise whether they would mind him leaving them for a bit. Stephan promptly piped up, declaring that it bloody well wasn’t alright that he was ditching him for that pompous git. Harry coolly pointed out that he wasn’t ditching them at all, just saying he would meet up with them later.

With that Harry followed Draco into an elevator. That was the last his friends, or indeed anyone, were going to see of him for a fair amount of time.