The Goodness of Their Hearts

Draco didn't bother reading the newspapers, but Perona kept him up to date on what they said. The private investigator Zimmer had hired spilled all. He had thought that he had been hired as part of research into a biography that was being written about Harry Potter, and resented, apparently, the fact that he'd been lied to and used. Or so he claimed.

Zimmer had tried to implicate others in his little scheme. Weaver and Hilton and bookies and even a politician. And they'd all been investigated, with a lot of secrets coming to light. But in the end there was no proof that anyone other than Zimmer had been behind the letters and the sabotage.

There was outrage over the incidents. People calling for new regulations. A few investigative reports. Then they forgot about it. Because this player was pregnant by the very married Lord Salsbury and that player had been taking performance enhancement potions and Oban was facing charges pursuant to her little gambling problem and in the meantime there was the World Cup to think about.

Hypocrites.

Harry Potter had disappeared, after giving statements to the Aurors. He had left a message with the Aurors that he wasn't dead, and he'd appreciate it if people left him alone. Then he was gone.

Draco tried not to worry about him.

Draco went to Malfoy Manor. He went to one of the rooms under the ground floor, a room he had gone to only once before, as a child. He called it the globe room, though his parents had called it the catacomb. From the dark ceiling, suspended by ropes of blackened silver, hung tear-drop globes glowing with the last traces of magic left by his ancestors.

He had stood before the globe that held the magical remains of his mother. He had thanked her for bearing him, and for her contribution to his childhood and youth. He didn't regret avoiding the funeral. It would have been artificial for him to attend.

He had gone to Azkaban. His father had refused to see him, but Draco didn't think it was a wasted trip. Perhaps, knowing that the son was willing to see him, the father would eventually change his mind.

He had gone to Spain, traveling light, sometimes falling in with students touring between semesters - though not to the point of sleeping in youth hostels. He listened to live music in small taverns. He played pick-up Quidditch if he happened to stumble across a game. He spent a bit of time in the sun. He got drunk a few times, with no ill effects.

He refused to think about work.

He didn't even try to avoid thinking about Harry Potter. He liked to hope he never deluded himself, and if he spent a pathetic amount of time remembering what Harry's skin felt like under his hands, and his mouth around his cock, well, he was the only one who knew about it.

Now he was home, just arrived. He went through the messages that had collected at his door.

Nothing from Harry.

He tried not to be disappointed.

He read a newspaper. Not the front pages or the national headlines. He went to the local lifestyle section. There was a concert in three days' time that he might like to attend. A display of ancient staves, carried by wizards and witches before the fear of Muggles had forced them to use the more discrete wands, was being brought to a local museum. A class on Divination was being offered. He had never bothered with Divination in school - it seemed a joke - but why not look into it? It might be fun.

Maybe he could meet some people who had nothing to do with work. Wouldn't that be a stark change?

He drew in a deep breath through his nose, smelling home.

It was quiet.

Maybe too quiet.

He would listen to his fountain for a while, perhaps.

But before he took a second step towards his relaxation room, a piercing ring warned him that someone had crossed his wards.

He smiled and headed for the living room, heart rate picking up a little. He told himself not to expect it to be Harry. He would only be disappointed.

He expected it anyway.

Harry Potter slid out of the fireplace with a bit of a stumble. He brushed powder off his shoulder automatically, his gaze skittering about the room. He saw Draco.

And he grinned. "You're home."

Draco pulled in a quick breath. He was there. He had come back. And just seeing him - gods - he had no rules about sex in the living room.

"You ought to be more careful with your floo, Malfoy," he said. "Anyone can get in."

Draco swallowed so he could sound somewhat normal when he spoke. "No, Potter. Anyone can't." Merlin, he looked gorgeous. Green shirt open at the throat, the silver torque gleaming through. Hair a complete mess, as always when he wasn't in uniform. And the eyes, something about the eyes. They were there. Harry was there.

Harry grinned again. Then he was across the room, sinking his hands into Draco's hair and kissing him. Draco opened his mouth and groaned into the onslaught, brain shut down as his blood screamed through him. The next thing he knew he was pressed against the wall, a tongue in his mouth and slim hips pressed against his own. He parted his legs and ground into those hips, feeling Harry hard and heavy against him. His hands, of their own accord, rose up to rip buttons off that slippery green shirt.

A hand that wasn't his slid down and pressed against his cock. And good as it felt, he wrenched his mouth away. "I'm not letting you do this to me again." He pushed Harry back a pace. "It seems you didn't learn enough last time. This way."

"Oh! The fountain room!"

"No! Barbarian."

His bedroom. White sheets. Probably not as clean as he would have liked - he'd been away a while - but right then he didn't care. "Shoes off."

"Yes, sir."

He'd come back. He'd come back he'd come back he'd come back. Draco would not be stupid enough to send him away again. Draco had spent the last little while figuring out where the imbalances in his life were and fixing them. So what if Harry was still screwed up? One out of two wasn't bad.

He yanked on the buttons, tearing them all off the shirt.

Harry laughed. "Draco! What's gotten into you?"

"You. And it's time I returned the favour."

Harry groaned. "My god, Draco, that's one of the worst lines I've ever heard."

"Shut up, Potter, and attend to your lesson."

"Where is the part where you tell me why you want me and convince me you're worthy of having me?"

Draco loved Harry's stomach, it was so flat. He knelt down and dragged his tongue over the lines of the muscles. He started to move lower.

He felt a hand in his hair. Not clutching, just soothing, stroking. A short tug, then, and he looked up.

Harry was looking down at him. Draco felt Harry's fingers lightly sliding over his cheeks, over his mouth. "Is there somewhere you have to be soon?"

Draco frowned, not understanding the question. "No."

"Me, neither." Harry tugged on the collar of Draco's shirt. "I think I might have learned something after all."

Getting the hint, Draco stood up. Harry slipped into his embrace, wrapping his arms high on his shoulders.

The kiss, at first, was gentle, slow, exploratory, light nips with teeth and lips, soft strokes of the tongue. Lips lingered longer. Mouths opened wider, pressed harder. Tongues thrust deeper. Breath came harsher. Hands grabbed and clutched and tore into clothing. Hips twisted against each other, rocking faster and more desperately.

Harry pulled his mouth to breathe and Draco bit his throat.

"Oh god," Harry gasped. "Clothes off."

Clothes were yanked free with no patience. Harry backed up onto the bed, dragging Draco with him. They collapsed into the sheets, limbs sprawling around each other. Harry immediately wrapped his legs around Draco's waist.

"I thought you'd said you'd learned something," Draco muttered.

"I lied."

"Are you sure you aren't Slytherin?"

"No." With that enigmatic answer, Harry curled his hand around Draco's cock and stroked down it, grip tight enough to be just this side of painful.

Draco gasped through his teeth and, taking care for that most sensitive part of his body, forced Harry's hand away. "Then I must repeat the lesson, to make sure it sticks."

Draco then proceeded to kiss and lick and suck and bite, rendering Harry Potter into a shivering, straining, swearing mess before thrusting into him. Having that lean, powerful body arching and bucking beneath him was one of the most powerful experiences of Draco's life, and his orgasm was devastating.

"God, Draco, you're amazing," Harry panted.

"Why? Because I'm good at sex?" Draco demanded, a little sharply.

"You make me feel," Harry said. "Amazing. You were always so unapproachable at Hogwarts."

"Aren't you the one who's always saying people change after school?" Draco moved off of Harry, collapsing beside him.

Merlin, he felt boneless.

He'd come back.

"You look good," Harry said after a while. "You have some colour. And you're less tense. What have you been up to?"

Draco didn't want to talk. He wanted to go to sleep. Preferably curled up around one Harry Potter. "I could ask the same of you. No one's seen anything of you."

"Remus Lupin's. You remember him?"

"The werewolf." And their third year DADA professor. That had been a bit of a ride.

"A good friend of my father's. He's used to staying out of sight. I hunted him up."

"Why?"

Harry rolled over to his side, rising to one elbow and resting his head on his palm. "I want to find out about my parents."

"Oh." That seemed to come out of nowhere. "Don't you already know?"

Harry shrugged. "Not really. My aunt and uncle didn't talk about them at all, except to say they were freaks. The teachers didn't say anything except they were good at school or good at Quidditch or whatever. Sirius talked about Dad like he was some kind of hero. Snape, he hated him."

"That's normal enough. That everyone would have different images of your parents. People look only at the pieces that are relevant to them, or their interests."

"Yeah, but ...." He shook his head. "The pieces are so small. I can't put together any idea of what they were. And most of it's about my Dad, not Mum. And most of it is all Hogwarts and Voldemort. And me. There had to be more to them than that. So I'm going to go looking. Find out who knew them before they went to Hogwarts. And if they had any cousins. Whether my mother was a fan of the Beatles. Maybe she held on to some Muggle friends even while she was at Hogwarts. They wouldn't know anything about Voldemort. Or think there was anything special about me. They could tell me something interesting. So I'm going to go looking. That P.I. Zimmer hired made me think about it."

"Are you going to hire him?"

"No. I want to do it myself. See how far I get on my own. I got some ideas from Hermione."

"You've spoken to her about this?" And wasn't it illogical that he resented that, Hermione learning of this before he did. Hermione was Harry's lifelong friend. Draco knew that.

"She is the woman for doing research, and finding things out."

"And what about Weasley?" Draco asked, damning as he spoke the sharp edge developing in his voice.

Harry smiled. "He showed up at my place while I was here. You know, after the game and Zimmer and everything. He thought I'd been attacked or something and was getting ready to go to the Aurors when I went back. He tore a strip off me, for not telling him what was going on. Because he's used to this sort of thing, my getting threats from people. He knows most of the time it comes to nothing so he doesn't worry about it. I hadn't told him this time it was more serious. He told me the next time I pulled a stunt like that he'd track me down and beat me to a pulp himself." And in relaying this threat, Harry smiled again.

He had worried, Draco realized. For all his nonchalant dismissal of school relationships, his taunts that some had grown up even if Draco had not, he had been hurt by the belief that those relationships had ended.

Draco could have done without knowing that his future was likely to have Ronald Weasley in it.

If he were so lucky.

"What brought on this sudden interest?"

"It's not sudden. I've always wanted to know. But I've always expected people to just tell me. And I was sort of content with that. But it was as you said, everyone has been making decisions for me. I just abdicated control over my life to other people. And maybe one of the reasons I was so willing to do that was because I didn't really know where I'd come from." Harry grimaced. "I sound like I should be calling into one of those awful t.v. psychologists. But it's true, sort of. And I think this is the first time I've decided what direction I want to go in, on my own. And who knows, maybe I'll be good at it." He sighed. "It's something that has nothing to do with newspapers, or Voldemort, or Quidditch. Maybe people will forget about me. And maybe I'll learn something."

It was a predictable choice, really. A withdrawal from the public and an attempt to recapture a sense of family he'd never had. Maybe a step backwards rather than forwards, but it was perhaps a step Harry needed to take before he could move on.

"I missed you," Harry said.

He hadn't been expecting that.

"I've looked at my life and I realized up until I graduated from Hogwarts I always had someone slicing my ego to shreds. I didn't realize how much I liked that until you showed up."

"You bastard!" Draco pinched him under the ribs.

Harry fended him off, laughing. "Do you deny it?"

"Your ego needed deflating, Golden Boy."

"The same could be said of you, git."

That was done. To some extent. One way or another.

"So what now?" he asked.

"Well, do you have somewhere you have to be?"

Hadn't he already answered that question? "No."

"Me, neither." Harry turned over onto his stomach and buried his face into his crossed arms, with the unmistakable air of settling in for a while.

Draco looked up at the ceiling and smiled.

THE END