A Certain Kind of Memory

Who was it that said the best laid plans...?

Harry Potter, July, 2006

It seemed that being in urgent need of advice didn't automatically ensure you an immediate appointment, even if your name was Harry Potter. He'd had to wait three hours to see his Healer and by the time he was eventually shown into the consulting room, he'd convinced himself that there was nothing further to be done anyway. The feeling and movement had not returned to his arm, and he had the impression that it was permanent. No matter how much potion he took now, there was no hiding it anymore, no putting it off, and the sheer magnitude of that impact almost had him on his knees.

"I'm sorry, Harry, there's nothing more we can do," the Healer said, visibly upset. She was running her wand over Harry's head, casting the revealing spells to detect the size of the tumor and how much it had integrated itself into Harry's brain.

He merely nodded; it confirmed his own opinion. "How long?" he asked.

"A few weeks at most," she said, subdued into a barely audible response.

Harry gave a wry smile. "And so it ends."

"Harry, there are places you could go to get the palliative care you need. They'd look after you until the end, make sure you weren't in any pain..."

"No," he said, shaking his head. "If there were any hope...but there isn't, so what's the point of becoming so dependent on someone to take care of everything for me? I'd be a shell. There's no quality of life there. None. I don't want to wreck what's been the best year of my life by living through that, when I won't ever get better."

She hugged him and he allowed his despair come to the surface then and let it out, crying on her shoulder in gulping shudders for a few minutes, before thanking her for everything she'd done for him and saying goodbye.

"That's another reason I don't want to hang around. I'm terrible with good byes," he feebly joked, choking on the smile.

"It's been an honour, Harry," she replied, hugging him again, before letting him go, which in the end he found difficult to do, because it meant he had to go home and break up with Draco.

And somehow that hurt more than knowing there was a bottle of pills secreted in his bottom drawer for later.

***

By the time Harry stepped back though the Floo to go home, the last thing on his mind was how long he'd been away and whether or not Draco was going to be home when he got there.

So to find him sitting at Harry's desk, reading something on the computer screen was a complete shock to him. Fuck.

He paled as Draco turned to face him, a look of such utter betrayal and pain in his eyes that it physically hurt Harry to look at him. It left him speechless, unprepared to deal with this at all. Despite the niggling thought that maybe exposure had done his work for him; he still felt the shame spreading itself through him.

"How long have you known?" Draco's quiet, tightly controlled voice cut across the room.

Harry swallowed hard. "For about a year now," he replied.

"Were you ever planning on telling me or was I supposed to wake up one morning and find you..." He broke off, shaking his head.

"No one was supposed to know," Harry said. "I didn't want anyone to know."

"Why?"

Harry gave a one sided shrug; it seemed like his shoulder wasn't working now, either. The pain of this scene was a dull ache in his chest; shame and regret combining to fatigue his already overloaded psyche. "I didn't want--"

"It's always about you, isn't it?" Draco sneered at him. "I can't believe I ever thought you were any different than in school. You're still the same selfish, arrogant, self-centered arse that thinks the world revolves around him."

Harry scowled, face reddening in anger. "I'm the one dying here," he retorted. "I'm not going to apologise for wanting a say in how I spent the last months of my life! Not to you, not to anyone."

Draco stood up from the desk, his whole body radiating confusion and anger and loss. He paced; hands, long pale fingers, pushing relentlessly through his hair. Fine blond hair that Harry loved to let slide though his fingers. Harry stayed silent; this was Draco's arena in which to rage and confront and battle the cause of his pain.

"Did you never think of me? Did I not have a right to know before you...before we...Oh god, before I fell in love with you?" Draco's voice broke and the last words were virtually sobbed.

"I'm sorry," Harry said. It wasn't enough; this was one time there wasn't anything he could do to fix things. For every imagined or real upset this past year, where he'd been there with words or time or money, there were some things he couldn't repair, or make right, or hide from.

Perhaps he'd been hiding from his illness the whole time; but that was what he'd chosen. To live his life how he wanted.

"Explain it to me, Harry," Draco demanded, getting himself back under control. "Explain to me why you would deliberately start a relationship with me when you knew you were dying." His voice caught on the last word and Harry couldn't bear to look into his eyes; couldn't bear to watch them shatter with acceptance.

Before he answered, he moved to the couch and sat down, lifting his left arm with his right, to sit it in his lap. "I didn't expect to fall in love. I didn't expect you to, either. When we started all this, we were first and foremost friends. Neither of us thought we could have a relationship, let alone fall in love with each other. I thought you'd be able to treat it as losing a friend rather than losing a great love." Harry spoke quietly, resigned. After all, apart from hurting Draco so much, there was nothing else he regretted, not even withholding the information from his friends.

"You're a selfish arse, Harry," Draco hissed. "You selfish, selfish, selfish bastard! Everything was a complete lie! The bet...the offer...oh, now I get it. I was just someone you used so you had a convenient fuck."

"No, Draco, no." Harry shook his head miserably, knowing that it was true. Essentially. It had started as companionship, an easy casual relationship. Crude though Draco made it sound it was no less the truth.

"I hate you, you disgust me," Draco said scornfully.

"I love you," Harry replied, feebly. "I never expected to, but I do."

Words were useless against Draco's right to be angry.

"I can't even hit you." Draco sneered, disgusted, and turned to try and punch a hole in the wall instead. He yelled, screaming in rage and pain and Harry finally broke down and sobbed as Draco's harsh cries became quiet, lost sniffles of loss and he heard him sliding down the wall to sit on the floor.

When Harry looked at him after minutes of the soft sounds of broken lives and dreams, it was like looking at the Draco of his sixth year at school, only this time he wasn't standing, he was slumped against the wall, legs splayed carelessly in front of him. The trauma of the tragedy was fresh on his face; the desperate, haunted, lost look of desolation were all the same. And this time Harry wished Draco would cast Cruciatus at him. He wouldn't even fight back.

"You didn't think I should be able to choose whether or not I involved myself in a relationship with you, knowing that you were going to die?"

"There was always the chance you'd pity me and be with me because I wasn't going to be around forever. With us being good friends, can you tell me you'd have said no, knowing it was something I wanted and you'd only have to do it for a year?"

"I should have had the choice," Draco insisted in an oddly flat voice. He stood, nursing the hand that had met the wall so forcefully, unsteady on his feet, like his whole world had tilted on its axis and wasn't where he thought it was any more.

"And if you had, would you still have been with me?" Harry enquired, asking the question that was impossible not to ask even if he was too afraid to know the answer.

Draco stood for a while, inhaling deeply as if re-centering himself in this new world, and when he turned and looked at Harry, the shutters had come down over his eyes.

They told that Draco was rebuilding his shield; that the hard won openness he'd learnt and fought for since the war, was being hidden as if it were corrosive, under a cool exterior of impassivity.

It hurt, but he expected it. He hated himself for being the cause of Draco needing that.

'That's a ridiculous fucking question, Potter," Draco snapped. "How can I answer that now? I wasn't in love with you back then. The perspective is different." He thought for a moment and then turned suddenly. "Actually, I can answer that," he said briskly, as he walked over to stand in front of Harry, who had to look up to see Draco's face, he was that close. When he saw Draco's eyes, grey as steel, hard as nails, he wished he could look away. "Speaking of altered perspectives. The answer is no, Potter. Is that what you wanted to hear to vindicate your manipulation of the relationship?"

Harry could hear the lie in there; the need to lash out, for revenge at something, and with his hand already obviously hurting and the avenue of hitting Harry removed from his choices; he'd gone for words.

Harry held Draco's gaze for long enough to let him know he knew it was a lie. Eventually, Draco issued a sound of frustrated defeat and looked away. "Because I wouldn't have been able to watch you die, Harry. I still can't." His shoulders slumped; the so recently erected shield ruined already.

"I wouldn't have let you. Never." Harry ended on a whisper, his throat full of sorrow as Draco retreated back to the desk chair.

When he sat, his gaze caught the computer screen and he groaned and stabbed at the off button.

"So, how was I supposed to find out? After you were dead?" Bitter tones broke through the grief and Harry winced, not at the words but at the tone. He shook his head.

"I was coming home to end it with you tonight." In more ways than one, that was, but Draco didn't need to know that.

"Why?" The shock on his face, now, showed his confusion.

"Because the potion I've been taking to mask the symptoms isn't working anymore and I only have a few weeks left," he said, quietly. "I didn't want you to watch that."

Draco jumped up again and began pacing, lithe body even now drawing Harry's eyes inappropriately. "Weeks?" he said faintly.

"If that." Harry nodded.

Draco shook his head. "I can't...can't just watch you go, now. I..."

"Just go, Draco. I want you to."

"Just so you know, I hate you, now. You made me fall in love with you...all the plans we made, all the fun we had and now I have to just go on without you. I hate that you've done that to me. I don't care what justification you have for it; it changes nothing, Harry."

Harry merely nodded, heart broken and eyes bleary from the tears that were somehow filling them like a dripping tap.

"I'm going to Pansy's. I can't be here anymore. I can't be with someone who used me and manipulated me like that. It's not honest, Potter. You're not honest and I worked too hard and too long to go back to being someone that's not me."

"The love isn't fake, Draco. Never think that," Harry said, standing up, protesting. "It was never fake, I love you more than I've ever loved anything in my entire life!"

Draco held up his hand. "Stop. I don't want to hear it. It doesn't matter now. It's over. Over." Draco stood there as if he'd said the word automatically, and having said it, also realised the awful truth of it. "Over," he repeated, nodding.

And he Apparated away.

***

It was really for the best, Harry knew it was; he'd told himself over and over that this was the way it was always going to be. No one had told him how hard it was to let go of someone who had the other half of his soul. The reality of it hit him worse than the diagnosis of his illness. Maybe because he wasn't only hurting himself - he'd hurt someone else. He could only imagine how much Draco was hurting right now and his heart grieved for his love.

As he walked around the flat, putting things to rights, straightening a cushion on the couch, picking up a stray coffee cup and washing it awkwardly in the sink with one hand, he thought about their history and how much they'd both changed and grown since that day in Madame Malkin's robe shop. His eyes lingered over photographs of the two of them taken during this year. He'd been a little manic about taking photos - maybe for them all to remind themselves how happy he'd been this past year when they got despondent about him being gone. They'd given him memories he wanted to keep always and if he could, then he wanted this last year to come with him.

Sitting at the desk he withdrew a number of sheets of parchment and wrote his goodbyes before heading into the bedroom where reminders of Draco surrounded him with their warmth, sheltering his grief with the love they'd shared. No, he didn't regret one moment of the last year. Not one, and he'd do it all over again, too, given the chance. Except that he'd hurt Draco and that was truly a regret. He hoped that the memories they'd made would eventually break the surface of Draco's grief and give him some comfort.

The goodbye letter had not been as hard as he'd thought; though he guessed that the trauma he'd just experienced with Draco would have been enough to dull any further sharp pain. And he'd felt a moment's thankfulness that the loss of function in his arm was his left arm and not his right; he'd wanted his letter to be handwritten, not the impersonal print of the computer.

There wasn't really anything left to do. Mr. Tort was well briefed on all things legal and he'd made sure that everyone was taken care of and all the legal things tied up. He'd written a note about his affairs and attached it to the back of his goodbye/explanation letter to his friends. He'd written a separate letter to Draco, though everything had already been said, it was more a thank you note.

Thank you for the gift of your love and best year of my life.

Some, he knew, would regard his actions as cowardice, giving in and going the easy way, without a fight or a battle, being defeated without being conquered. Maybe it was pride that he wanted no one to see what he'd be reduced to. When people remembered him they should remember him as young and strong and if not beautiful, then not ruined or ravaged or disfigured or disabled from a disease, at least. Get out while the going was good. Wasn't that the saying? Leave while you're on top and not wallowing in the mire of paralysis, physical and mental disabilities that would render him completely incapable of speech, coherent thought and action.

Maybe it was a desire not to see himself like that. Not to be conquered - maybe he just didn't like to lose. And seeing as there was no beating this, he was going to take from it the only way he could. The control of when he died was his. As much control as he could grab, he'd take and that meant choosing the time of his own death.

In the silence of the flat, he poured himself a glass of water. Where silence had once been his enemy, now he welcomed it. Silence never really was silence, was it? It was filled with the echoes of memory, the rich cadence of the sounds of laughter rippling through the walls kept captive by the boundaries of his mind.

The pills were in his bottom drawer and he extracted them reverently and placed them on the bedside table. His Healer had reluctantly given them to him after they'd discussed every nuance of his desire to do things this way. He sat on the edge of his bed, smiling at the memory of her acquiescence when she threw her hands in the air and stormed out of the room. His stubbornness seemed to have that effect on people.

It was time. Coward or not, his time had come and the calm that had accompanied him since Draco left, fluttered and twisted and finally settled again. There was a picture on the table near the lamp by his bed of himself and Draco at Christmas, in amongst all the exploding fireworks George had let off and the mess on the table. He'd been laughing and Draco moved to his side in amongst the chaos and put his head on Harry's shoulder and laughed as well, eyes alight with amusement and peace. Happiness. The picture Harry and Draco turned and waved to him, then kissed before a balled up serviette clocked Harry on the head and they returned to the chaos. It always made him smile remembering that almost perfect day. There had been so many over the past year. Now, he ran the tip of his finger along picture Draco's jaw and sighed. "Goodbye, love."

It was time.

***

The door banged open just as he was lifting the pills to his mouth.

He looked up in shock at Draco standing in the doorway, eyes puffy from crying but wide open and desperate.

"What are you doing?" Draco cried. Harry was so stunned he didn't even move, let alone answer him. Draco took the pills from his hand and tossed them away.

"Why did you do that?" Harry yelled. "If you've come for your things, get them and leave me alone!"

"I've not come for my things you bloody fool. Against my better judgement, I've decided that I can't bloody stop loving you after all," he said, sounding terribly put out about it.

"Well, I don't want you here, so it makes no difference."

"I'm not going anywhere, Harry," Draco insisted and sat down on the bed beside him.

"Draco, no..." Harry said, shaking his head. No, this was not happening.

"I mean it, Harry," Draco replied, pulling Harry into his arms. "When I said I loved you, I meant it and I mean to go on loving you until you're not here to love any more."

Draco was shaking and Harry could hear how hard it was for him to get those words out, but he couldn't believe this was happening and he still didn't want Draco to watch him deteriorate.

"Draco, please, I don't want you to see me die."

"And I'm not ready to let you go, Harry. I can't explain how much of a difference you've made in my life, but you're everything to me. Please, let me say goodbye properly?"

Harry turned and buried his face in Draco's shoulder, craving the strong arms around him and the hard chest under his ear.

"I don't know if I can," he sobbed.

"Just give me one more day? Just give me tomorrow?" he asked, whispering the words against Harry's cheek, warm loving breath wafting across his skin and marking the words as a plea he couldn't deny.

He nodded and Draco let out a soft sob and they held each other while the tears flowed silently down their faces.

The next day, Draco begged for one more day and Harry sobbed his reply into Draco's chest.

And the next.

And the day after that...