Twelve Steps

Chapter Six

"Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character."

-Al-Anon Family Groups

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For all of his esteemed Gryffindor veracity, Harry Potter could bend the truth like a Slytherin.

"Like, er, Damien here," Potter said, with a slightly sardonic inflection on Draco's pseudonym, "I had a rival at school--er, Malcolm, shall we call him? When we were in classes together, I thought he was a horrid little prat. He teased me and my friends relentlessly, and he and his minions were always pulling pranks and then laying the trouble at our door."

Draco rolled his eyes; Potter could be so blinkered sometimes. The Slytherins had framed them on only a few occasions! Potter and his insatiably curious Gryffindor comrades had gotten themselves into most of their scrapes.

"Things only escalated as we got older," Potter continued, settling his elbows comfortably on the arms of his chair. "This other bloke--well, he sort of joined up with a bad lot. It just cemented my dodgy opinion of him. At about the same time, I also had a run in with his...his uncle, Vincent."

Draco's eyes widened. Vincent? Crabbe had been a good many things, but he certainly wasn't clever enough to replace Voldemort, even in a lousy story.

"Anyway, Vincent was a complete nutter, and he had it in for me even worse than my school rival. When I was in fifth year, I had a black dog, and Vincent...he killed it. He was always skulking about, finding ways to make my life miserable. I knew that Malcolm was in with Vincent, so I blamed him for a lot of things. But then I heard from several of my best mates that he'd suddenly repented and was going to snitch on the others, including his uncle, for some of the, er--the drug smuggling that they were doing."

His breath hissing out through his clenched teeth, Draco waited. He noticed that Potter's voice had nearly broken when he had mentioned the dog.

"I realised, with the help of my mentor at school, that Malcolm hadn't really had much choice. You see, he was from a very posh, highbrow family, and he was expected to agree with whatever they did. It was really quite a miracle that he decided not to follow in Vincent's footsteps. But he did; he came to work for my mentor, and he put in a lot of valuable time. Even I started to trust him."

Wait a minute. Potter had started to trust him? Draco hadn't even been permitted to see Potter during his stint as a Death Eater spy; Dumbledore had insisted that it was much too dangerous. Although he had agreed, Draco had privately suspected the Headmaster had said so because Potter would attack him if they did meet. And who in the bloody hell did he think he was fooling with this black dog business?

Clearing his throat, Potter went on. "Things came to a head with--Vincent--this year. My mentor suggested that I try to talk some sense into him. We researched some, er, Latin debate methods, and my mentor told me to go to Vincent's mansion when he said that no one else would be around. We thought," he clarified, evidently noticing some of the Muggles' blank expressions, "that Vincent might hurt people if they were in the same room when I provoked him."

Potter paused, slipping his glasses off in order to polish the lenses, which had somehow gotten smudged. The frames left tiny pink indentations on either side of his rather nondescript nose. As he brushed his fringe out of his eyes, the jagged scar made a brief appearance. "I went to talk to Vincent, and I used all of the techniques that my mentor had taught me. But I didn't realise until afterwards that D--Malcolm was there. I should have known; after all, it was his family's house. But I had trusted my mentor. Now I suspect that he must have sent Malcolm there to keep an eye on me. At any rate, Malcolm heard the words that I had with Vincent, and some of them were pretty ghastly. He must have thought I was insulting him, too, or maybe even his entire family, and not just Vincent. But I really didn't mean it that way at all."

"So, you see," Potter concluded, "that I'm in the opposite of Damien's situation. I'm still not keen on having this bloke as my best mate, because he really is a bit of an arse sometimes. But I can't seem to get him to sit still long enough to explain that I didn't mean to say any of that stuff to him, and that I'd like to make amends."

Rain, who had been on the edge of her seat for the duration of Potter's monologue, slipped bonelessly back into the upholstery. "Oh," she breathed, enraptured. "What a lovely story, Hugh. It's so wonderfully illustrative of Step Eight, which we will be discussing in more detail later this week."

Whatever he's got that gets the women in a tizzy, it must not be magical, Draco thought sourly. He shot Rain his own version of an admonishing glare for being such an unprofessional twit, but she seemed not to take heed of his warning. The other Muggles all appeared to be emerging from a similar daze, although that might have been because the vast majority of them looked completely trolleyed. He wondered how the Muggle drugs, which he himself had steadfastly refused, could cure them of their addictions. These 'antidepressants' seemed to mimic the effect of the substances from which they were trying to abstain!

Whilst he could not respond directly to Potter during the group session, as Rain was constantly chiding, Draco gave the other man an affirmative tilt of the head and then allowed his eyes to flicker in the direction of the door. Potter relaxed visibly and returned the nod.

When they joined the prayer circle this time, Potter's hands were warm and dry against his own. He did not dwell on the frisson of sensations that coursed up his arms at the touch; not long enough to identify them, at any rate. It would not do to let his mind linger on the emotions that Harry Potter engendered in him. He had done that at Hogwarts, cultivating his resentment and envy, and this was the result.

After the others had left, they remained comfortably ensconced in their respective armchairs. Draco was the first to break the ice. "So you didn't know I'd be there?"

Potter gave a shaky laugh. "Of course not, Malfoy. I didn't even see you there, in the garden, until after I'd spoken the words to invoke the spell. By then, it was too late."

"You thought the wise and venerable Headmaster would send you alone? To kill Voldemort?"

"What was I supposed to think?" Potter demanded. "All right, I admit it. I was naive. Call me a fool; plenty of other people have done. But I was terrified of anyone else getting killed on my behalf, and Dumbledore said he wouldn't send anyone with me. He said the spell only needed my sacrifice..."

"Just what was this brilliant spell of yours?" Draco queried. "I thought one of you had to die in order for the other to live, and Voldemort...well, he may have looked a bit peaked when I last saw him, but he definitely wasn't in ghost territory."

"That wasn't him! It was...well, you must've met Wormtail a few times over the years."

Draco blinked at him in silent comprehension. Voldemort's ickle rat?

"Anyhow, Voldemort's spirit was inhabiting him; he'd been searching for a proper body to take over, but we drove him out of all of the suitable ones. The spell I used was something that drained his magic. Without his power, there was no way for his spirit to cling to Wormtail's body and it finally went--well, it went wherever spirits go. But Wormtail went a bit barmy after that. He thinks he is Voldemort, now--delusions of grandeur and all. Snape told me they've locked him up in St. Mungo's with Lockhart now."

"That's fascinating, Potter," Draco said, his tone indicating otherwise. "But your spell description is about as detailed as your reports for Professor Binns. What, precisely, was involved in this spell?"

Hesitating, Potter finally shook his head. "Does it matter now? What's done is done, and I can't take it back. There is no counter spell, especially not over a month after the fact."

"It matters to me. And you don't know that it can't be undone." Looking down, Draco found that he was clenching his fists into tight balls. With a conscious effort, he let his muscles relax, fingers splaying loosely across the dark fabric of his trousers.

"I am absolutely certain. It was a Detraho potentiam." Draco stared at him, nonplussed, but Potter quickly plunged into explication. "It's an entirely new field of magic; it will revolutionise the Ministry, I think, once Dumbledore can perfect it. They won't need Dementors anymore. You see, instead of just drawing on a wizard's ambient magic, it leeches away their inherent magical talent and lets it dissipate into the ground. So you don't have to steal someone's soul or their mind in order to neutralise them. The only problem is that the spell doesn't distinguish between the person who cast it and the one who was intended to be the victim. Also, it causes a bit of an earthquake at the time..."

"...and you and Dumbledore knew this, and you still went ahead with it? Had you both gone completely mental?" Draco interrupted.

Potter's eyebrows twitched; Draco wasn't sure if he was amused or apologetic. "I went ahead with it, Malfoy, because it was the only way, and we'd tried everything else. You were there when we tried everything else. You might recall that we are the only two surviving members of our entire class."

Draco was silent. No, he would not forget cradling Pansy Parkinson's shattered head in his arms, blood trailing in streaks through her blonde hair like a beauty transfiguration gone wrong, nor would he forget the mingled pockmarks of glee and regret that erupted on Ron Weasley's face at the sight. He had not seen Granger's broken body after Pansy had completed her handiwork, but he thought he had caught a glimpse of it in the Weasel's eyes. He saw no reason to inform Potter that both Gregory Goyle and Vincent Crabbe were still amongst the living, awaiting sentences in Azkaban. There was also no point in telling Potter precisely how many of their classmates he had personally disposed of prior to the untimely realisation that his loyalty to the Malfoy bloodline ran only skin deep.

"I really didn't know, Malfoy. Dumbledore swore that it would only drain Voldemort and me, and I thought...I've never really belonged to your world, anyway. I thought I did, when I first escaped from the Muggle world, but I was just having myself on. I was only there to fix what had gone wrong before, and I've managed to muck that up too."

Draco kindly refrained from commenting on the absurdity of Potter's guilt complex. What he thought in the privacy of his own mind was quite another matter.

"All I've done is wreak havoc on everyone I've met," Potter continued, directing his woebegone gaze up at the cracked ceiling. "This way...this way, at least a few good wizards are still alive, but none with enough power to become the next Voldemort. Not even me. And I thought maybe here, no one would know me as the Boy Who Lived or stare at my scar like I'd grown a horn in the middle of my forehead."

"But the Muggles still stare at it," Draco said, a grin flitting across his face before he could suppress it. Potter smiled back, the corners of his lips twisting in irony.

"I know."

"Doesn't it disturb you that your revered mentor deceived you?"

Potter froze. His eyes slid up slowly, unwillingly, to meet Draco's. He spoke with deliberate care, his tone laced with low, sombre urgency. "Yes, it does, but not for the same reasons it would have bothered you. Listen. I may not have been particularly fond of you, Malfoy--"

Understatement of the century, Draco thought.

"--but you were on our side, after a fashion, and I took every step possible to ensure that there would be no further casualties. I reckoned that if even Snape could be reformed, so could you, and I wanted to give both of you time to sort things out. I think... I think Dumbledore must have known that. He's been watching me all of these years, assessing my strengths and weaknesses. He knew that I couldn't do it alone, obviously. And he knew that if I went out there with anyone by my side, knowing that they too would be permanently burned out and shunned by the other wizards, I'd have faltered. I wouldn't have been able to go through with it. So while I'm not exactly chuffed about what he did, I understand it. And I can understand if you would prefer to have nothing more to do with me, but I wanted you to know what happened. You should know that I'm really, really--"

"Potter," Draco interjected, before the Boy Who Lived could sink further into the endless mire of self-castigation that he was so fond of creating for himself. "I've sussed it: you're really, really sorry. You can stop yammering now. Don't expect me to grovel at your feet like a mealy-mouthed Gryffindor lackey composing odes to your noble sacrifice, but I shan't consign your soul to the fires of hell, either."

"Oh." Potter sighed beatifically. "Does that mean--"

"I still have a question for you." Well, several, he added silently, but those can wait.

"What is it?"

"If you knew I had been at Malfoy Manor that day, why was it such a surprise to see me here, without my magic? Why didn't Dumbledore mention anything? Did you think he'd just turn me over to the Aurors?"

There was a long pause; Draco took the opportunity to pick at one of the thicker scabs that decorated his arms like embossed paper. For once, he was grateful for the ill-fitting Muggle clothing; the long sleeves draped over his injuries in a protective curtain, and he wasn't in the mood for another one of Potter's lectures on the immutable truth of their current situation. Potter, after all, was far from an expert on Potions. When his Potion of Restoration had fermented, perhaps he might share a smidgeon of it with the sceptical Boy Who Lived--if he was appropriately penitent, of course.

When he next spoke, Potter's voice sounded far away, as though he had gotten lost while traipsing through his memories. "I thought you were dead."

Draco blinked rapidly. Potter's half-choked words from the previous evening echoed in his mind. You're the only one left...

"I don't know why he didn't say anything. He had me stuck in the Room of Requirement to keep the reporters from the Daily Prophet away, and I didn't see much of anyone except for Snape, who brought me the Potions every night... he told me that the aftershocks from the spell had decimated everything in sight. I just assumed that meant you as well."

"He locked me in the Shrieking Shack," Draco murmured. Potter looked stricken. "To keep me safe from the Ministry, Potter, not to torture me, you prat. But I knew you were alive."

They both rose from their seats; Potter lightly, as though a weight had been lifted from his too-scrawny shoulders, and Draco hauling himself up with a lethargic heave. As they halted at the door, dithering over who would be the first to exit and who would stand aside, Potter gave him a searching look. Draco could envision several dozen questions shining in the reflection of Potter's spectacles, none of which he wanted to answer: Do you forgive me? Are you going to give up this silly notion of reclaiming your magic? What did I say when I was asleep last night? Why did you betray Voldemort when you were one of his top minions? Would you think me a total ponce if I told you I'm glad you're alive?

May I call you Draco?

A shudder overtook him at that last thought; he decided that he'd been reading too much into Potter's expression. Then Potter opened his mouth to speak.

"Just stuff it, Potter," Draco snapped, before Potter could get a word in edgewise. "We're both knackered, and a Slytherin can't tolerate too much candour at one time. Let's go have a kip, all right?"

Nodding his assent, Potter tried in vain to stifle a yawn.

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