Promises to Keep

"It's my fault," Draco said miserably, wondering where Snape was going with this. "All of it. I'm the one who promised Voldemort I'd kill Dumbledore. I took the Mark, and I couldn't do it. I know that my mother made you swear an Unbreakable Vow. That's the only reason you were there that night. Otherwise Voldemort would've had you fight on the other side. Anything to keep your cover intact. It's because of me that they thought you were a traitor."

Snape said, softly, "What makes you think there is anything your mother could have done that would constrain me to make a promise I was unwilling to keep? Leaving aside the fact that Unbreakable Vows sworn under duress are not binding? You give Narcissa far too much credit."

And when Draco didn't smile, because it wasn't funny, he said, "Your father asked me to stand as your godfather, did you know? I told him it was too much responsibility for me. I never planned on loving you--." He got up and dug in the cupboard for the vodka, and poured three fingers worth into a glass. The look he gave Draco was half defiant, half sorry, but he drank it. "I never planned on loving you," he said again. "I loved your father. You know that. We were children during that first war, and we thought we were invincible-- and infallible."

"What made you change your mind?" Draco asked. He looked at the table, not at Snape, because the table was less likely to sneer at him for the desperation he could not quite keep out of his voice.

"People started to die," Snape said tiredly. There was no anger or grief in his voice for the men and women he had been friends with, long ago. He had not grieved for Dumbledore; he had not even grieved for Lucius Malfoy. "You have to believe in a thing to be willing to die for it, and I never did believe. I am a traitor, Draco, several times over." He rubbed his fingers over the label on the bottle, like a man holding a talisman.

Draco wished he'd never started this. He wasn't sure what he'd expected, but it wasn't Snape's quiet, echoing despair. It would have been easier if Snape had blamed him, if he'd yelled and screamed and cast Unforgivable Curses. Draco could have dealt with anything but the truth. "It's my fault you went to Azkaban," he said finally. "You know it is."

Snape seemed to realize he was waiting for something different. "Yes," he agreed, but he said it flatly, without the faintest hint of a smirk. "If you hadn't saved my life, I would never have gone."

"I didn't save your life," Draco snarled. "Since we're being honest with each other. I didn't mean to do it, okay? I tripped, is all that happened. I tripped and fell on their fucking mine, and now my legs are gone and my dick might as well be, because the only person who will sleep with me is Harry fucking Potter."

Now Snape sneered. He poured himself another drink, and raised it to Draco. "To the truth," he said. "Since we're being honest with each other, I don't want you in my house any longer, Mr. Malfoy. So why don't you shag Potter, since you're dying to anyway, and maybe he'll put you up for a bit. Then I can have a drink in my own kitchen, without you watching me and sighing reproachfully at me like Albus Dumbledore reincarnated."

"You're throwing me out?" Draco demanded. "Just like that?"

Snape smiled his old cruel smile, the one that accompanied unexpected exams and probably torturing prisoners. "No," he said sweetly. "I'm gambling you've got just enough of the Malfoy pride left, that you won't stay where you're not welcome. Don't worry. I won't die of loneliness if you leave me, although the boredom might kill me if you stay."

If he had been able to, Draco might have gone. But it was not so easy as that, not in the wheelchair. Snape was between him and the hallway, which meant that if he wanted his things, he had to wait, or try to push by. It would have been so satisfying to be able to stand up and walk away, close that door for good. He had told Snape once that Malfoys were known for pragmatism as well as pride, and by the time Snape and the bottle had gone, that was true again.

He sat at the table for a long time, Lucifer in his lap, wondering what to do. If Snape really wanted him to go, wanted it badly enough to insist on it, Draco would have no choice. Where he would go, was a different question entirely, and one he preferred not to think about until absolutely necessary. But he was not convinced that Snape had meant what he'd said.

He didn't want to think about what that would mean, leaving Snape alone in his shabby house with his stacks of books and his empty bottles, leaving him not to die but to live. He tugged gently on Lucifer's crooked tail, and then pried the cat's strong jaws off his wrist. "I'll take you with me," he told him. "I promise. I won't leave you here with Snape."

Someone banged on the door--Potter--and Lucifer jumped from his legs to the table and began licking himself. Draco smiled a little, despite his gloominess. Lucifer viewed Potter as a rival for Draco's affection, and alternated between ignoring him and acting as threatening as was possible for a cat weighing less than a stone.

Potter had not brought flowers or chocolate, thankfully, but he did have Chinese food and a bottle of wine. Draco helped him carry the lot into the kitchen. "You're early today," he said, testing. Were they going to pretend the night before had never happened? He resigned himself to following Potter's lead.

But Potter grinned shyly at him. "You don't mind, do you?" he asked. "I bunked off work. I haven't been able to stop thinking about you all day." He leaned over to put his bags on the counter, brushing Draco's shoulder as he did so, and Draco's stomach turned over. Lust, he thought, please be lust, and wished he'd managed to talk to Snape about that. it was a bad idea, and he knew it was a bad idea, but he couldn't help smiling back at Potter.

This time when Potter kissed him it wasn't much of a surprise. This time Draco opened his mouth, deepened the kiss, played for real. He got his hand in the back of Potter's untucked dress shirt, under his tee shirt, against the soft warm skin of Potter's back. Potter's thigh was between his legs, and Potter's hands were on his shoulders: the whole thing was awkward as hell and it had to be killing Potter's back, but it was so hot that Draco wondered if maybe this wasn't pure lust.

Eventually they had to stop, though, if only to breathe. When he'd more or less finished panting, Draco said, "I've been thinking about you, too."

"Really?" Potter demanded. He'd moved back a little, or Draco had, but they were still close enough Draco had to tilt his head back to look up at him. His eyelashes were startlingly long and dark against the green of his eyes, magnified further by the lenses of his glasses. "What were you thinking about me?"

Draco couldn't keep himself from blushing. "Oh," he said. "You know. About last night--."

"Yeah?" Potter asked. "You liked that, didn't you?"

"It was okay," Draco admitted. "As that sort of thing goes."

Potter started to protest, and Draco let the corner of his mouth twitch upward, just a little. Potter caught it. "You bastard!" he yelped. "You had me going for like, a tenth of a second. Okay! If it was just okay, you wouldn't have been dying to do it over again."

"I might have done, if I wanted to get it right this time," Draco pointed out.

"It was better than right," Potter argued. "It was brilliant. The kiss of a lifetime. A wizard's lifetime."

"You're a hero for our time," Draco said, and then winced. The words might be snide, but in this case they were true. Potter didn't seem to mind, though. "Look," he said, catching Potter's hand. "Harry--" and it almost sounded natural this time. "Let's eat while the food's hot, even if it is early. There's something I want to talk to you about. Besides the kissing thing, I mean."

"So you want me for more than my body, at least," Potter said happily, but he sat down and let Draco get plates and glasses and forks and knives. He'd seen everything in the kitchen a hundred times, but tonight he stared at the intricate flowers on the china, the crest on the silver, like he'd never seen any of it before. "Did you ever meet her?" he asked suddenly. "Mrs. Snape?"

Draco shook his head, struggling with the corkscrew. "She died before we were born, I think. In Azkaban. You're going to have to magic this, I'm afraid."

"Okay," Potter said obligingly, taking out his wand. "What charm should I use?"

Draco frowned at him. "I know you're Muggleborn, but how have you avoided learning that? Use Aperio."

Potter shrugged. "I never drink wine, you know that. I just thought it would be nice."

"It is nice," Draco said, taking the open bottle back from him and pouring. His mother wouldn't have cooked with English wine, never mind drunk it, but it was the thought that was important.

"She was a Death Eater, then?" Potter asked. One thing Draco didn't find at all attractive about him: once he started on an idea he was almost impossible to distract.

"No," Draco said shortly. "She wasn't a Death Eater. She married a Muggle. She obviously wasn't a big believer in racial purity."

"Snape is the son of a Muggle, and he was a Death Eater," Potter pointed out.

"He was in love with someone who joined," Draco said reluctantly. "I don't think he realized, in the beginning. Anyway, I get the impression that if his father was your only experience of Muggles, you'd hate them, too."

Potter frowned, and Draco knew he was thinking of his own family. Anyone else would have given up this line of inquiry as unproductive and risky, but Potter just put his head down and plowed on. "So why was she in Azkaban?"

"My father told me she poisoned her husband," Draco said. "Snape's father. She used a Potion to do it, so it fell under wizarding law. She was a Prince, a distant cousin of my grandfather's, somewhere on the Malfoy side, except I think they'd been disinherited. They were on the wrong side of the first war, I think. Hence the silver, and the poverty: she sold just about everything else worth selling to put Snape through Hogwarts, and when she went to Azkaban the Malfoys took Snape in. My father met her, a couple of times--he said she was mad as a Diviner." Lucius hadn't liked her, and he hadn't been kind, describing her. But whatever his faults had been, however he'd failed his wife and son, he'd loved Snape and been loyal to him until the end. "Anyway," Draco said, dishing prawns and squid and leaves onto plates for himself, Potter, and Lucifer, "I need your help with something else. Something Snape-related."

"Sure," Potter said easily. Draco set Lucifer's plate on the floor and the cat appeared from nowhere to eat it. Potter glared at him for a moment, until he noticed Draco noticing. "I'll help any way I can. You know that."

"I think he needs therapy," Draco said gloomily. "Snape, I mean, not Lucifer. I need you to sort something out with the Ministry. It might need to be residential, even." He pretended not to notice Lucifer twining himself around Potter's leg, and Potter kicking him away none too gently.

"Is that what's been bothering you?" Potter asked. "I'll talk to Remus. We'll sort out Snape, you'll see. Remus is great at this sort of thing. It's kind of his specialty."

"Great," Draco said, with a confidence he did not really feel.

"First thing Monday," Potter promised.