Harry Potter 1. Harry's Purpose

**Title: **Universal Chaos

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairing: **Harry/Draco

**Rating: **R

**Warnings: **Profanity, sex, some angst, and more than your recommended daily dose of philosophy. It also takes place (in both universes) after DH, but does not take account of the epilogue.

**Summary: **Harry has figured out several things about his life, and is feeling quietly good about himself. Naturally, this is the time he gets summoned to another universe by an alternate version of himself who's in love with Draco Malfoy but can't mend the breach between them. Harry agrees to apologize for the other Harry, leaving that self a free chance to win Malfoy's affections.

**Author's Notes: **This will be a thirteen-chapter story, probably around 60,000 words. The first chapter is fairly confusing, but I promise it gets clearer from there if you hang on.

**Universal Chaos**

"If the universe was created by God, for God's purposes, then all the purposes we can find in it must ultimately be due to God's purposes. But what are God's purposes? That is something of a mystery."—Daniel Dennett,_ Darwin's Dangerous Idea._

_Chapter One—Harry's Purpose_

"Another one, Harry?" Tom held out a glass of butterbeer hopefully in his direction.

Harry smiled and shook his head as he pushed his chair back from his table. He never knew exactly why Tom was always so eager to see him stay in the Leaky Cauldron, other than the fact that Harry always brought a crowd of friends with him and attracted a lot of people eager to get a glimpse of "the Chosen One."

_Come to think of it, maybe that's enough._

"No, thanks," he said, when Tom continued to offer the glass. "I have a meeting with the Minister in the morning, and I need to get _some _sleep before then." It was already almost midnight, according to the new clock that Tom had hung proudly behind the bar, and his meeting with Kingsley was at eight.

"Harry!" Ron waved frantically from the other side of the table, as though he was a mile away and Harry would somehow have trouble seeing him. "You goshing—going to enter Aursh—Auror training? Finally!" he added, for the benefit of the other people in the group. Seamus, still nursing a single mug of Firewhisky, snorted, but Dean and Neville and Terry Boot looked up in interest.

"I don't know yet," Harry said. "I think the Minister will offer me a place, but maybe that's not what I want to do anymore." He shrugged when Ron stared at him incredulously. Ron had been in Auror training for almost a year, and, according to him, it was the best thing since Hermione's agreeing to marry him. "I had enough of chasing Dark wizards during the war."

"N—not the sh—same," Ron said, and then hiccoughed and passed out in the middle of the table.

Harry rolled his eyes. "You can see him home?" he asked Seamus.

"I'm seeing the rest of this lot home," Seamus said. "What's one more?" He smiled and waved a hand at Harry. "Good luck, mate, whatever you decide."

Harry smiled, waved back, and ducked out of the Leaky Cauldron. Though Seamus would never replace Ron as his best friend, he was the one who had been the most understanding over the past two years as Harry worked out what he wanted and how that might have changed from the time he was in his fifth year at Hogwarts. Ron was going to become an Auror; Neville was working in Herbology; Dean had taken up training as a professional artist; Terry Boot hoped that McGonagall would manage to persuade Binns to retire so that he could become the History of Magic teacher at Hogwarts. All their adult lives seemed comfortably connected to and continuous with their childhoods.

Not for Harry.

But that wasn't a bad thing, he thought as he wandered slowly down Diagon Alley in the direction of Weasley's Wizard Wheezes. He had started staying with George after Fred's funeral to keep an eye on him, and it had evolved into an arrangement that suited them both. Harry made sure George's drinking and self-blame didn't get excessive, and George didn't ask Harry the questions about his future that he found so uncomfortable from Ron and Hermione.

_Honestly, why does everyone need to know by the time they're twenty what they're doing for the rest of their lives? I don't yet, that's all. Maybe I will become an Auror, and then Ron would be worrying about nothing._

Harry lifted his head so that he could watch the stars. They were dim and distant above Diagon Alley as they were above all of London, thanks to the lights from the Muggle parts, but he could pick out a few more constellations now, thanks to paying more attention to Astronomy during his "eighth" term at Hogwarts. Orion. Draco. Sagittarius.

_I made some strides. I know what I _don't _want to do._

One of those things was to spend his life in endless grief. So Harry had made himself attend all the funerals, as hard as it was, even Fred's, and then go to a Mind-Healer when he still had nightmares about Voldemort and dreams where he _almost _saved Remus, or Snape, or the other people who had died. It had taken more than a year and a half, and the _Daily Prophet _ran some stories speculating on whether Harry was mad. Harry had known that would happen. He put up with it, even though he hated it, and eventually the nightmares diminished.

He would always miss the people who had died. He didn't see any reason to pine himself to death over them.

And he had decided, regretfully, that he didn't want to date Ginny. There was too much of an invisible barrier between them. She'd grown up and developed other interests whilst he went to the Mind-Healers, and even if that hadn't happened, there was that year during the war they'd spent mostly apart. Too much distance there. The things she wanted weren't the things he wanted, except maybe a family and for the Weasleys to be happy.

Harry had decided that his life was his own, and he wasn't willing to marry Ginny just to have children or please Molly.

Molly, and Ron, and Arthur, hadn't been too pleased about that. But Ginny, the one who really mattered, had looked at him, given him a small smile, and started dating Dean a month later. She didn't want to give up her life for other people, either, no matter how happy her mother would have been had she married Harry.

So Harry weathered that, too. Now both Ron and Hermione seemed to accept that Harry and Ginny wouldn't miraculously get back together, and the rest of the Weasleys didn't mention it except to tease them.

Harry frowned and hunched his shoulders a little against the oncoming cold. It was the thirty-first of May, but an unusually chill night for it.

What Ron and Hermione _couldn't _accept was that Harry didn't have any idea of what he wanted to do if he wasn't going to become an Auror, or who he wanted to date if he wasn't going to date Ginny.

"But don't you want to do something?" That was the question Hermione always asked him, her eyes wide and her hand on his arm gentle. "You might be all right at the moment, but what will happen when you start feeling bored? You need _activity _and _life _around you, Harry. You've always been busy. I know a lot of people start doing poorly once they leave the structured routine of Hogwarts. I don't want you to be one of them."

Harry appreciated the concern, but then she would start trying to recruit him into SPEW, which had its own offices now, and he would start looking for some escape.

Ron was even worse, dropping references to Auror training into every conversation and asking whether Harry liked every pretty girl who walked past them. Their worst row had come when Ron had said that Harry should just adopt Teddy, who spent the majority of his time with Andromeda. If he didn't want to adopt Teddy, Ron implied, then he had no reason to avoid Auror training, because a family was the only reason to do so. He wouldn't listen to reason when Harry had pointed out that he didn't want to take Teddy away from his grandmother, and they'd punched each other a few times over it.

Harry took an irritated breath and managed to settle his shoulders with a slight shake. That had been three weeks ago. He and Ron were friends again. He didn't want to think about the fight now.

They were all so busy, everyone around them, still cleaning up from the war, or mourning the dead, or moving on with their lives. They seemed puzzled that Harry didn't quite fit into any of those categories. Come to that, Harry was a bit puzzled himself, but he didn't see a reason to be _worried _about it. Eventually, he'd make up his mind and move in one direction or another, choose something to do and do it.

_Maybe even tomorrow, if Kingsley makes the Aurors sound attractive enough. _

For right now, he liked his simple, uncrowded life: seeing Teddy three times a week so he could give Andromeda some time to herself, staying with George, having dinner often with the Weasleys, drinking with Ron and the rest of the lads on the weekends. There was no _reason _for him to hurry himself out of that.

As he reached the joke shop and pulled out his key to unlock the door, he looked up at the stars again. A streak of light moved across them. Harry caught his breath and smiled. Was a meteor shower starting?

No. It was something else. It had to be, because there were multiple streaks of light moving across the sky, in all directions. The stars themselves were blurring, whirling, and changing. Harry stared at them and even moved a few steps forwards, as if that would somehow make his view better, his mouth hanging open. _What the fuck is happening? _

The streaks of light unfolded suddenly. Now Harry watched a long series of springs or tubes coiling through space, folding back on one another and jumping apart from each other again, tumbling and rising and arching in configurations that seemed to require more than three dimensions. His eyes ached, but this was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. He couldn't look away.

The springs collided in the air above his head, brewing together like a maelstrom. Harry caught his breath—

And then he couldn't breathe. He flailed his arms, his lungs laboring and his eyes fluttering frantically. Not only couldn't he breathe, he thought there was an odd weight squatting on him that was forcing him flat, squeezing him the way Side-Along Apparition did.

Then he was gone.

*

Harry opened his eyes and scrambled to his feet at once, reaching for his wand. Thankfully, given his last memory, his wand was where he had left it, in his right sleeve. Harry flicked his wrist so that it dropped into his hand and then spent a moment looking around, trying to determine where he was.

A dust-colored circle surrounded him, and shone with yellow light that rose into place like cage bars. But the circle itself was drawn on a perfectly ordinary blue carpet, and the rest of the space—four walls with portraits hung on them, chairs scattered around on the carpet, a couch with lots of cushions, a ceiling about eight feet above his head, a broom leaning in the corner—indicated a wizard's flat. Harry blinked and relaxed a little. _Did someone bring me here? Why? How was the vision I saw connected to that? _

Then Harry Potter stepped up to the edge of the circle in front of him, and things got strange again.

"Who are you?" Harry asked, aiming his wand. "And don't tell me that you're me, because I know myself, and you're not me." _That made sense in my head, so I'll stick with it. Besides, it's probably someone using Polyjuice or Transfiguration. _

The other version of himself smiled wryly, just the way Harry had smiled when he hugged Ginny for the last time on the evening they discussed dating and decided to give it up. "This is harder than I thought," he muttered. His voice was Harry's voice. He pushed his hair away from his forehead, and there was a scar. But the scar would be there with Polyjuice, too, Harry reminded himself; he'd learned that the hard way after someone impersonated him a year ago and ran around sleeping with random star-struck women. "And there's no easy explanation. Can you sit down?"

"On the carpet?" Harry echoed. Maybe it wasn't a very sound test, but he wanted to see what would happen if he complained. Would his captor care about his discomfort or not?

"Oh, sorry!" The other Harry flushed the way Harry knew he would if he forgot something important, like Hermione deciding to be vegetarian, and flicked his wand. A chair sprang into being in the middle of the charmed circle. Harry sat down cautiously in it. It was made of wood, but it had a Cushioning Charm on the seat.

"What about lowering the cage bars?" he asked next.

The other Harry coughed and shifted from foot to foot—and that was the way Harry would have handled the meeting with Kingsley if Kingsley tried to press him to enter the Auror Corps. If this was an imitation, Harry had to admit reluctantly, it was a bloody good one. "I'm afraid I don't want to do that just yet. If you refuse to help me, then you might want to attack me. And even if you don't, then it's easier to leave the bars up so I can send you back to your own universe. Otherwise, I'd have to start the spell all over again, and that's a nuisance."

"My own universe," Harry said flatly. He was glad that he was already sitting down.

"Yes." The other Harry edged closer and smiled at him. "I bet you saw a lot of tubes or springs spiraling through space right before you came here, right? They were probably among the stars if it was at night." He looked embarrassed for a minute. "I wanted to cast the spell at night, but it's tricky to tell time between the universes. It's even tricky trying to find a universe enough like my own so that I can bring over a version of myself who would help me." Suddenly he paled. "I say, awfully sorry if you _can't _help me."

"I still don't understand this." Harry tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. "What the fuck kind of spell did you cast? How do I know that you aren't someone impersonating me and trying to blackmail me or make me look like a fool?"

The other Harry's flush shifted to one of anger. "Listen, I wouldn't have done this if I had any _choice_," he snapped. "But it's a matter of life and death, all right? I want to spend the rest of my life with someone, and I can't if I don't know how our argument went in other universes, so I know the way to make it up to him."

Harry put his head in his hands. He wasn't actually sure what bewildered him the most out of that speech: the reference to other universes, that the anger was also a good counterfeit, or the fact that this version of himself was apparently in love with a "him."

"Explain," he said. "Slowly."

The other Harry conjured a chair for himself, and did. Harry thought, as he listened, that he was _starting _to understand, though he still would have liked to talk to Hermione to hear what she would say about this.

Apparently, there were all sorts of universes, each focused on a person. Whenever someone was born, then their universe began with them. Sometimes it stayed single, for a while. But at different points, events would "cascade," and then there would be more than one universe—each following a different path.

"Our parents could have lived when Voldemort attacked them," the other Harry said soberly, and Harry could see shadows of old pain in his eyes. This was someone who had been through the war, he decided cautiously, whatever else was true. "That would have been one universe. Or maybe all three of us could have died, and then that particular universe—the one that came into existence when we were born—would have died, too. Or what we know happened to us could happen, and then there would be _this _universe, the one where we both survived the Killing Curse." He cast Harry a sharp glance. "You did survive the Killing Curse, right? I thought I was reaching out to a universe like mine, with a Harry Potter like me, but I wasn't sure."

"I did," Harry said. The other Harry relaxed and smiled. "So some universes are more like each other than others?"

His other self—Harry was starting to think of him like that even though he knew he shouldn't yet—nodded enthusiastically. "Yeah. So universes where our parents lived would be close on the spectrum, and universes where they died would be close to each _other_, but not near the ones where they lived. Do you see?"

"I think so," Harry said. It made his head hurt, but he thought he could better understand the vision of springs and tubes he'd had spiraling. Those were the alternate universes seen from outside, constantly moving, constantly changing. "How many times can events cascade?"

"An infinite number of times, as long as the events are significant enough." The other Harry shrugged, but he was tense again, his eyes miserable. Harry frowned. _Why's that? _"There are universes where we defeated Voldemort in a different way than by dying because Snape's memories told us to and then hitting Voldemort with an _Expelliarmus._" He glanced quickly at Harry, and smiled again when he nodded. "Or we didn't defeat him. There are universes where we never found out about the Horcruxes, or where he made fewer of them. And in some of the universes, we never became friends with Ron or Hermione. Of course, all the universes go on changing and developing themselves, so a universe where we never had them as friends would be really different from the ones we live in now."

"We're probably dead," Harry muttered.

"Yeah, I tend to agree." The other Harry leaned forwards intently. "And about a year ago, there was another big event. I had an argument with Draco Malfoy."

"Malfoy?" Harry echoed blankly.

He was about to ask something else, but his own words seemed to have unleashed a torrent of memories for the other Harry. He leaped to his feet and paced back and forth.

"I've wanted him for so long," he whispered. "Ever since the war, when I realized that he'd been brave enough in his own way, and that he was the only one who still wasn't impressed by me even though I'd become the Slayer of Voldemort. And then a year ago, I had the chance to speak to him and I—I said stupid things. It blew up into this nasty row, and ever since then, he refuses to see me, and I can't apologize, and I can't—I'm afraid of what would happen if I tried, because I would only say stupid things instead." He swung around and stared appealingly at Harry. "I need to know how you solved the argument, or how you avoided it. I mean, by now you must be living happily ever after with your own version of Draco."

Harry licked his lips and fought the temptation to bury his head in his hands. _At least this shows that he really is me. I'm the only one who would mess up this sort of dimension-spanning spell this way._

"Er, not really, mate," he said. "I haven't seen my version of Malfoy—" he wondered when he would become used to speaking those words—"since the war."

The other Harry stared at him. Then he turned away and collapsed onto the couch, drumming a fist into the pillows. He was swearing loudly enough that Harry still heard him even through all the cushions.

"Does that really matter?" Harry asked, when this had gone on for a while and he was staring to get impatient. "I mean, just send me back home and use the spell again to call a Harry who's had a row and managed to get over it." _A Harry who's gay would also be a start. _

"You don't understand," the other version of Harry whispered, and turned over. It was fairly obvious now that he'd been crying, too. Harry barely kept from rolling his eyes in disgust. _Merlin save me from ever getting like this over someone. _"I can't perform the spell again for another year, except to send you back. And in another year, Draco might be married to someone else. He's a star Quidditch player, people throw themselves at him—" He shuddered and covered his eyes with one hand.

Harry sighed and rubbed his chin. On the one hand, he really had no obligation to this poor sod, who seemed to have created all his own problems. Harry knew that mere anger and not wanting to apologize wouldn't have stopped _him_, if he was determined to patch up a row with someone he loved. And this bloke had snatched Harry away from his own universe without even thinking of the consequences.

On the other hand, Harry just about believed him, partially because of the vision he'd had before the magic snatched him and partially because he'd never told anyone else about having to see Snape's memories before he knew how to die and defeat Voldemort. Someone could read his mind to get that information and construct a plausible explanation centered on alternate universes, but if that was the case, then Harry would find out sooner or later. He could punish the other Harry if that happened.

And he had his life settled. His friends would worry, of course, but he had the time and energy to help other people again, instead of collapsing in a wet mess.

"Listen," he said.

The other Harry took a few deep, sniffling breaths, and then nodded to show that he was listening, after all.

"What would happen if I went to your Malfoy and apologized for the row?" Harry asked. "I can do that easily, because I don't feel the shame and anger about it that you do. And then, once he was willing to talk to you again, you could send me back home and _you_ could be the one to try and get him to fall in love with you."

The other Harry froze for a moment. Then he whispered, "That's—that's the perfect idea. Once I tell you about the argument, and we work out other details you need to know, he'll never know you're not me."

Harry managed to keep from rolling his eyes this time, but it was a struggle. _This other me is a bit of a berk. _

On the other hand, he couldn't understand why Ron and Hermione had fallen in love, when they ought to have driven each other mad. How could he judge this version of himself for falling in love with Malfoy? The worst that would happen was that he would get his heart broken, and by then Harry would be safely back home and he wouldn't know anything about it.

"Why are you so willing to help me?" the other Harry asked then, a bit of suspicion in his voice.

Harry examined him thoughtfully. _Yeah, there are shadows in the back of his eyes he's never taken care of. I wonder if the cascade that split our universes apart wasn't the row with Malfoy, but the fact that I decided to take care of my grief and he didn't._

"Because I can," he said. "I think you're silly for having a crush on Malfoy, but the reason's none of my business. Now, are you going to tell me about this argument or not?"

As the other Harry began to describe the row in a trembling voice—trembling with happiness, Harry thought—he rubbed the back of his head and gave a wry smile. _Well, here's something to concentrate on for a while, though I doubt it's what Ron and Hermione were envisioning for me._


	2. The Skilled and the Lonely

Thank you for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—The Skilled and the Lonely_

The Snitch was just ahead. Draco dived around the Arrows' Seeker and turned upside-down to avoid a Bludger one of the Appleby Beaters had aimed at him. Shrieks assaulted his ears. He ignored them easily and clasped his knees around the broom. He would need both hands to catch the Snitch, which fluttered its wings in dizzying patterns that Draco recognized as the prelude to a dodge.

Sure enough, the Snitch went left. Draco smacked it with his left palm and started to close his fingers on it, but the Snitch darted right. Draco smiled and hit it with his right palm in turn, which seemed to stun it for a moment; the wings stopped beating. Then Draco clasped his hands together, securing it, and swung himself upright, lifting his hands high. The match wasn't officially ended until his capture was announced.

There came a breathless gasp before the voice of the announcer rippled out across the pitch. "And the Wimbourne Wasps' Seeker catches the Snitch! Victory to the Wasps, with 410 points!"

Rapturous cheering followed, mingled with a chorus of buzzes as the fans of Draco's team showed their enthusiasm. Draco waved to them, and ignored the catcalls rising from the Arrows' fans. Of course they would make the noise, but they couldn't do anything to change the outcome. The Appleby Seeker still might, but Draco kept a careful eye out behind and below him as he flew down to his side of the pitch.

She left him alone. Draco straightened and dropped one hand so that everyone could see the Snitch. When he waved it, two people in the audience fainted, and some of the more prepared fans hurled bouquets at him. The personal spell Draco always carried tightly wrapped around him changed the bouquets to the harmless scent of flowers as they reached for him. Draco winked at the throwers, and sincerely hoped that one of them, a young woman with blue eyes that reminded him of his mother's, hadn't _actually _peed her knickers in her excitement.

Then his teammates were around him, and all of them, even that arrogant Lorenzo Aldais, were offering sincere congratulations. Draco accepted them with easy nods and murmurs, gracefully giving credit to the Beaters' quick work in holding the other Seeker away from him until he could make the catch.

All the while, his eyes scanned theirs for some hint of deep feeling, some warmth that would indicate interest in him as a person.

As always, he failed to find it.

Draco turned and waved to the crowd again, half of which was now applauding and jumping up and down, and concentrated on the bright flash of the Snitch to somewhat fill the hole in his heart.

*

Harry cheered with all the rest, and clapped until his hands were raw. That had been a lovely bit of flying. He ought to know; he'd gone to more Quidditch games in the last year than he'd attended during his whole time at Hogwarts, and there were few Seekers who made their captures as gracefully as Malfoy had.

_Now to get near him. _

Harry studied the pitch thoughtfully as he stood up and made his way out of the stands, past chattering and arguing groups who seemed intent on discussing every play of the match over again. The Wasps had vanished into the far side, where the showers had to be. Several burly witches and wizards had taken up a position in front of the doors they'd gone through. Harry knew their job would be to hold away the overly inquisitive. He doubted that he could charm his way past them, especially given what the other Harry had told him about his fight with Malfoy.

Harry rolled his eyes. _Only I, or a second version of me, would manage to bring up the Fiendfyre incident, try to tell Malfoy that was where I fell in love with him, and end up flinging his life-debt in his face instead. _

The more he looked at things, the more he was coming to accept this as an alternate universe. He knew he would have heard if Malfoy had suddenly started playing for the Wimbourne Wasps, especially to such popular success. The last Harry had known, his version of Draco Malfoy had been sulking in the Manor with his parents, and the Wasps' Seeker was a woman named Georgianna Brown.

The other Harry was anxious to prevent them from being seen in public together, but as long as he stayed home and Harry only went a few specific places, he didn't see why that should be a problem. He'd apologize to Malfoy the way his other self already should have, and then maybe spend a few days exploring this universe. Then he'd go back home.

It was a nice holiday, in a way, from the concerns of his friends. He wondered idly if the other Harry would let him meet the other Ron and Hermione, and how much they would differ from _his_ Ron and Hermione. The other Harry had told him that this Ron had shunned Auror training to help George with the joke shop. Harry found the notion endlessly entertaining, which meant he was going to bait Ron with it when he got home.

This Hermione had apparently accepted a lowly post in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, with the intention of working her way up, instead of studying law. Harry had to admit that her perseverance and determination didn't seem too different from the Hermione he knew, only the direction of her ambition.

"I'm extremely sorry, Mr. Potter. You can't go in."

Harry looked up and blinked. He'd been so involved in his thoughts that he hadn't noticed he'd worked his way down out of the stands and towards the doors where the Wasps had vanished. One of the burly guards stared at him warily now, as if wondering whether he would make a fuss. Harry smiled and shook his head. "I know that," he said. "But I thought I'd wait for Mr. Malfoy, if you don't mind."

The wizard blinked and drew himself up. He had bright blond hair that rivaled Malfoy's and watery, suspicious blue eyes. "Look," he said. "You know Draco doesn't want to see you."

"Yes, I know," Harry said. The other Harry had told him something about pointed reminders to stay further than thirty feet away from Malfoy at all times. "But I came to apologize. I hope he'll see me now."

"After what you said to him last time?" The guard's face hardened with something like contempt. "I don't think so."

Harry frowned a little. _I don't think someone as proud as Malfoy would have made that argument public, any more than he had to. And from what the other Harry said, he hasn't told a lot of people, either. He was too ashamed._

_Which probably means there's some other time when they were in conflict—and the other Harry didn't tell me about it._

_Damn it. _

Harry sighed and took a step back. "I'd like to apologize for that, too," he said. "Please, will you just tell him that I'm here? He deserves the chance to make up his own mind." _Even though technically I'm deceiving him, and for the sake of someone who was too much of a coward to tell me the whole truth. _

_Damn it. _

The guard watched him in hostile silence for long moments. Harry stared back at him, and wondered if there was anything he could do to change the bloke's mind. But betraying too much ignorance of what had happened the last time his other self and Malfoy spoke would raise suspicions he couldn't put to rest.

"I'll tell him," the guard said at last, with a snort that showed Harry was lucky to be getting that much of a chance. "But don't blame me if he only comes out to mock you. And you know what his tongue's like."

_I only wish I did. _Harry was beginning to wonder if his sympathy for his other self had been deeply misplaced. It sounded as if Malfoy had had to put up with more provocation than was reasonable from the berk Harry.

He stepped backwards again and leaned against one of the staircases that led up into the stands, shaking his head. The guard gave him a disbelieving glance. Harry arched an eyebrow. _I can't help it if I'm more patient than the Potter he's familiar with. And I needn't worry about it. It's all part of my new and reformed image._

*

Draco wished he could take comfort from the hot water that poured over his face, through his hair, and down his back. His muscles relaxed underneath it, but the greater and deeper tension that he carried in his heart never did.

_Let's revise the options, _he thought to himself, and so began the old, familiar, stinking spiral of his thoughts.

_My parents committed suicide rather than face the loss of their money and their freedom. Whatever comfort they taught me to take in family is no longer relevant. _

_One of my best friends is dead in the Fiendfyre that he called himself, and which I only survived because of a stupid chance. And my other best friend thinks that that stupid chance was me deliberately leaving Vincent behind, and he doesn't want anything more to do with me in consequence. _

Draco turned to the side and canted his head away from the shower spray so that his chest could get washed, as if that would keep him from remembering, and feeling, the sting of Gregory's words.

_You could have turned back and grabbed his hand, Draco! I watched you! You had a minute, before Potter absolutely had to grab you! You could have done it! But you didn't, because you were jealous about how well he'd adapted to working under the Dark Lord and of all the new spells he learned!_

Then Gregory had turned his back on Draco and marched away. And because Draco had cultivated dependency rather than friendship among the other Slytherins, there was no one who could replace him.

_I became a Seeker because I knew I was good at it and thought I might find someone who actually looked at me for myself. But that's never going to happen as long as I'm so good. My team values my skill and ignores the rest of me because that might mean acknowledging my past. _

_Chances for a future with a friend or a lover who gives a fuck about me: poor._

Draco stepped out of the shower and shook his damp hair from his eyes with a flick of his head. As he wrapped the towel around his waist, he saw one of the guards from the doors, Daniel Thicknesse, approaching him. Draco adopted the mask of careless ease that he was famous for and smiled.

"A more persistent visitor than usual, Daniel? Or is it the old case of the poisoned flowers again?" There were _some _people who didn't have his team's motivations to forget about the past.

"Neither of those, sir." Daniel scratched his forehead with one finger, looking perplexed. He truly did fit his last name, but his loyalty to preserving the team's privacy was absolute. Draco could value him for that reason, though they would forever be incompatible as intellectual equals. "Harry Potter's here. Says he wants to apologize."

Draco, opening his mouth to ask why Daniel had bothered to seek him out, paused when he heard that last bit. He turned it around several different ways in his mind, and still couldn't make it make sense. _Why would he apologize? That would mean admitting he was wrong, and God knows he can't do _that.

"I'll talk to him," he said. Whenever he lowered himself to considering his life with self-pity, he always felt awful afterwards. At least honest anger would burn some of the awfulness away. "Let me get dressed first."

Daniel lingered, staring at him in concern. "I think you're giving him more of a chance than he deserves, sir."

Draco gave him a small grimace-smile. "Yes, but it's my choice. And at least I know the kind of bitterness and anger Potter's capable of." _It will even be refreshing, after getting the rough side of my own thoughts. _

Daniel gave a noisy sigh, as if to say that he didn't understand why people with smaller muscles insisted on making stupid decisions, and then lumbered away. Draco turned his head upside-down to reach the water hiding at the roots of his hair, and murmured a quick Drying Charm when he realized that he couldn't reach some of it.

_I won't look less than my best in front of Potter. I won't look pathetic. I won't look as though I need the miraculous gift of his 'compassion.'_

Draco snorted as he remembered the desperate way Potter had stared at him when they had their first vicious argument a year ago. Potter had babbled about life-debts, and how Draco wouldn't have survived if not for him, and how Draco owed him "some consideration."

_Yes, _Draco thought, as he spun around and reached for the black robes he wore in public, his concession to the Wasps' black-and-gold color scheme when he wasn't flying, _in some ways it will be a positive pleasure to see him again._

*

Harry straightened when he saw Malfoy's unmistakable figure striding towards him past the guards. The arrogant tilt of his head was the same as in Harry's universe, and the pale shine of his hair, and the thin, tight lips. Harry suppressed a stirring of instinctive dislike. This wasn't actually the boy he had fought with and hexed and rescued, but an analogue of him. He wasn't responsible for the mistakes Harry's Malfoy had made, or that would make Harry really responsible for the mistakes he'd come to apologize for.

"Well, Potter?" Malfoy stopped five feet in front of him, hands braced on his hips, head tossed back as though he was offering his throat as a target. "Have you got up your courage again after the last time, when you ran away howling dismally? I don't think people on the Continent heard you then."

Harry cleared his throat. _His words aren't really about you, remember. _"I wanted to apologize," he said. "I had no right to say the things I did."

"Forgive me for not believing you," Malfoy purred disagreeably, and moved a step closer. The other Harry would probably have fainted in delight at that moment. Harry just watched Malfoy with a jaundiced eye, and he seemed to notice, because he paused and blinked. But his words went right on. "You seemed to believe you had a perfect right to—how did you put it? oh, yes—remind me that I wouldn't be here if not for you, and that every breath I drew and every catch I made was yours. So the least I could do was grant you a moment of my miserable time."

Harry fought the urge to bury his head in his hands. _Is there anything that one of my selves can't mess up? Even falling in love with Malfoy? _"I shouldn't have said that," he muttered when he thought he could talk instead of groan. "Your life is your own. I don't want to claim the life-debt." Maybe that was going a little far, but the other Harry seemed sincere in his desire to reconcile with Malfoy, so Harry thought it was safe to promise that. "Just—I hope that you'll think about me a little more charitably in the future. If you can. You don't have to."

He waited a moment more, but Malfoy seemed to have no retort to his latest words, if the way he was gaping at Harry was any indication. Harry shrugged and turned away. He figured the apology had gone about as well as it could have.

_Now to speak to the other Harry about keeping the truth from me._

"Wait!"

Harry turned around, surprised. _Does he really want to take up the 'charitable thoughts in the future' thing now? I thought I'd stunned him enough that he would take a few minutes to get his breath back._

But Malfoys were never where you wanted them to be, and this Malfoy now jerked to a stop behind Harry and stared at him with what looked like agony. "You can't just say something like that," he said.

"Yes, I can," Harry said. "I think of the words, and, since I know English, I form the sounds with my teeth and tongue, and—"

"But you said the last time," Malfoy whispered, as if he were conveying some grave and awful secret, "that you would never apologize, because you were _right. _You can't expect me to believe that you mean it now."

_Why does he not _tell _me these things? _Harry was going to march the other Harry into a corner of his flat when he returned and make him recount his every conversation with Malfoy, so that he could understand exactly how many mistakes he was supposed to correct.

"I changed my mind," Harry said. "What I said was stupid." _There, take that, other Harry. _"Maybe you won't believe me, but I can still say that I was wrong, for my own peace of mind." He turned away again.

Malfoy caught his arm, pinching his flesh with unexpectedly sharp fingers and turning him around. Harry wondered what sort of comedy routine they must look like to the guards, and concealed his snort. Malfoy would think it was amusement at his expense if Harry revealed it too openly.

"Not good enough, Potter," Malfoy snarled into his face. "I want to know what _made _you change your mind."

Harry hadn't expected this. Mocking disdain or sneering insults were more Malfoy's style, not a demand that sounded sincere.

_Let's see, what would someone say who was in love with the git? _

"I changed my mind because you deserve better than that," he said. _Well, that was easy. Anyone deserves better than the treatment it sounds like the other Harry gave this version of Malfoy. _"Once I wasn't looking at you any more, it was easier to admit my mistakes. But I did still have to get over my own pride, or I would have apologized before." He met Malfoy's eyes and held them, wondering what in the world the desperation in his gaze meant. "I know that sounds stupid, but I can't offer any better answer. Just that I finally thought about how you would see things, and how different it was likely to be." He hesitated a moment more, then laid his hand against Malfoy's cheek. "You deserve nothing but the best," he whispered.

Malfoy jerked away from him as if burned and stepped back, finally drawing his wand. Harry thought, now, that it was peculiar he hadn't drawn it before. "Get away from me," he snarled.

_Well, that's torn it, _Harry thought ruefully as he nodded to Malfoy and turned to walk out of the pitch. _I shouldn't have touched him. I'll have to hope that the other Harry can repair the mistake. _

He straightened his shoulders as he remembered the other Harry's apparently numerous lies.

_If he deserves to have that chance. I was amused, but at the moment, I'm a little less than amused by his part in all this. _

*

Draco shut the door to the team's private changing room behind him and fell against it, raising a hand to touch his cheek. It still burned where Potter's hand had touched it, the way his eyes seemed to burn from staring into eyes that had actually been…concerned.

_You're delusional. You know what sort of man Potter is, and he's not one that deserves a moment of your time, for any reason._

But there was something else bothering him, and after several minutes of thinking, Draco straightened with a growl.

_That wasn't Potter. It simply wasn't._

He didn't base that conclusion on Potter's vow never to apologize. Yes, it would have taken effort more appropriate to rolling a mountain over, but he _might _have changed his mind.

But this Potter didn't react fast enough when Draco started insulting him and reminding him of his mistakes. He had looked—chagrined, yes, but more as if he couldn't believe he had done something like that. And though the eyes and the scar and the walk and all the rest of it were the same, he wouldn't have come close enough to touch Draco's face and look into his eyes like that, either. He simply didn't have the confidence. Draco had seen Potter enough since the war, and read enough newspaper articles that seemed based in _some _facts, to know that Potter had lost a great deal of his confidence with the death of the Dark Lord. He couldn't seem to find a place or relevance in a world where he'd already done the greatest deed he ever could.

This man had been confident. This man had winced over his mistakes and sounded sincere when he said that Draco deserved the best.

_Then the simplest solution is that it was someone else._

Draco rolled his eyes and snorted. Potter had hired an actor, or bought Polyjuice Potion. He must think that Draco was a fool, or so desperate for companionship that he would accept the apology at face value.

_He might be right about that last. _

But Draco stood up straight and practiced his best defiant sneer in the mirror on the wall. Even if Potter had somehow guessed that Draco was plagued by loneliness, he wasn't the person Draco would choose to relieve that loneliness. He would just have to play up to someone else with his suffering martyr act.

_If the man he hired was to offer you more sincere sympathy, though…if he was to offer to listen…_

Draco threw the conclusion away impatiently. Someone who worked for Potter like that could never offer him sincere sympathy.

And really, it was Draco's own fault that he yearned for someone to spend his life with. If he had learned his lessons in the way that Father had always warned him he should, he would have been a cold, perfectly poised statue by this point in his life, his heart beating solely at his command, not needing anyone else.

_I'm not that, so I'll just have to put up with the fate that my own weakness has earned for me. _

*

"Why didn't you tell me that you said you would never apologize? Why didn't you tell me you'd had other rows with him besides the first one? He couldn't _believe _I was you come to apologize, because you'd said you were right and never would!"

Harry paced back and forth, ranting at the other Harry, for several minutes before he paused and looked to see what impression his words had made. It wasn't promising. The other Harry sat on his couch with his arms folded and his lip pushed out in a sulky pout.

"I didn't mean I'd never apologize," the other Harry muttered, when Harry had been silent and staring pointedly at him for a little while. "That was an exaggeration, like saying I was going to kill him when we were in school. He should have known that."

"You stayed away from him for months at a time," Harry snapped. "He had a pretty good reason not to believe you."

_And I can't believe that I'm defending Malfoy, but that's the way my life works out, sometimes._

"I—look, I know I made mistakes," the other Harry said earnestly, and leaned forwards. "But can't you take that as a given, and go on from there? How did Draco take your apology? Did he look like he could stand to give me another chance, someday?"

Harry studied him narrowly. He knew that particular combination of haste and eagerness. The other Harry hadn't decided that he'd made mistakes. He was looking to have it both ways: to think that he was right and still get back the person he'd offended and wanted.

Harry thought about demanding to be sent home right now. He wasn't amused, the way he'd thought he'd be, but angry. And he wasn't sure that Malfoy, git though he might be, deserved to be saddled with the other Harry.

But then he thought of the glimpses of suffering he'd seen in Malfoy's eyes, the way he'd reached out to Harry when he could more easily have let him go, and the brief panic that had flared across his expression when Harry touched him. A new conclusion came to him, and he blinked as it settled firmly into his mind.

_Could he secretly be in love with the other Harry, too? He came out to talk to me even though the guard thought he wouldn't. He jumped at the touch like a scalded cat. He was looking at me with his eyes wide all the time, appealing—though I don't know for what. _

Harry rolled his eyes, his amusement swirling up again. _It would be like me to walk into the middle of this comedy of errors and confuse two people who secretly want each other but won't admit it. _

Either way, he thought he should stay a little longer. He had nothing urgent waiting for him at home. And he had interfered now, and probably made a bad situation worse. If he left, perhaps Malfoy would be further hurt by his other self. Either way, Harry owed it to Malfoy to try and make sure things came to a peaceful conclusion.

_Maybe I can teach my other self to be less self-centered, too. It's worth a try._

"He might be receptive," Harry said. "I really don't know. He looked as though he wanted to leap up the wall when I stroked his cheek."

"You need to go talk to him again," the other Harry said intensely.

Harry stared at him. "Why won't you? You said that you only wanted me to apologize to him!"

"I know, I know." The other Harry avoided his eyes. "But—I was just thinking—the apology isn't complete. He doesn't believe you. And I need a little more time to gather my courage."

"You need to stop being a pissant little coward, is what you need to do," Harry said bluntly. He saw his other self tense, and smiled. Now there would be a row, and then his other self might start acting more like Harry Potter should act.

Instead, he just shrank in on himself, and whispered, "I know."

_Something is seriously wrong. _Harry sat down in front of him and reached out to clasp his other self's hands. "Look, what happened to you?" he asked. "Did someone attack you after the war and put a fear curse on you?" Someone had done that to him once, and it had taken him two long sessions of shivering with the Mind-Healers to figure it out. "That's the only thing I can think of that would make you act like this."

The other Harry shut his eyes and shook his head. "I don't think you can understand," he whispered. "I already hurt him once, badly. I don't think you've loved someone the way I love him, from what you told me about your Ginny. And now I want to heal the wound—I want that more than anything in the world—but I'm so afraid that anything I try will only make it worse. Everything I tried before you came only _did _make it worse. That was why I took the risk of calling another of my selves from an alternate universe, because I thought the strategy he had to heal the wound _must _work, since it worked once." He reached out, groping about until Harry found and took his hand, and then he squeezed hard. "Please," he whispered. "Just give me a little more time."

Harry sighed. He hated to see people suffering. The other Harry might deserve every bit of suffering he got, but Malfoy didn't.

"All right," Harry said. "_One _more time. That's all."

He had never known how brilliant his own smile could look from the outside. Harry smiled back, while mentally having to laugh at himself and the whole ridiculous situation. _Only a pair of me could do something like this._


	3. Harry Tries Again

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Three—Harry Tries Again_

Draco woke slowly, and stretched his arms and legs out to every corner of the immense bed in Malfoy Manor. As always, the sheets rustled gently against him, the blankets adjusted their temperature and the pillows their softness with a thought, and the feathers filling the mattress grew crisper or molded themselves to his body with a single cast spell.

As always, the bed was empty except for him.

Draco closed his eyes and spent some time looking at the darkness on the insides of his eyelids. It was as good an activity as any other on days when he didn't have practices or matches, and unfortunately there would be more of those days than not for the next few months.

At last he sat up and turned his head. The window next to his bed covered half the bedroom wall, and looked out over a perfectly sculpted garden. The grass was clipped short in some places and left to rise high in others, always green and rich gold. Here and there, artificial hills reared, each decorated with an acacia. Paths curved from tree to tree, and between the scattered pools, and in a maze away from the central river that wound through the garden.

Most of the time, the view calmed Draco. This morning, it failed. There were birds flitting through the garden and deer and antelopes wandering through it, but there were no _people._

Draco wanted someone to share this with. He had laughed when he was a boy at tales of people who had died from a broken heart, but now sometimes it didn't seem worth the effort to keep his heart beating, and he had to wonder if that would be his own fate.

Sitting here wouldn't accomplish anything, though. He had to stand up, and move about, and eat something, and try to come up with activities to fill all the empty, sunlit, stormy days stretching ahead of him.

His parents hadn't told him they were considering suicide because of their shame over their lost prestige. They had simply done it, and Draco had been left to find their bodies, hanging from silken ropes in Lucius's study. Draco had shut up the study and never used it anymore.

But the image remained to him. What struck him most about it, after almost a year and a half, was the way their arms had been locked around each other, their heads leaning on each other's shoulders, their hair mingling. They were shutting him out as effectively as the rest of the world.

Now that he thought about it, he remembered protectiveness from his mother towards him, and a mingling of pride and disappointment from his father. He was uncertain if they had ever _loved _him. They seemed to reserve love exclusively for each other.

_You're becoming maudlin, _Draco told himself, and rose from the bed, turning for the shower. He would feel better, maybe even ready for a walk in the garden, once he had bathed and eaten breakfast.

He had just stepped into the bathroom when a soundless shock jolted the house. Draco put his hand on the tiled wall and gaped at the air. Thousands of enemies in the Manor's history had flung themselves against its wards without hurting it. What in the world was going on?

The shock came again, and Draco drew his wand and mentally dipped into the network of wards that ran all over the Manor, glittering lines and nets, angles and sunbursts, that responded to his will, or the will of anyone with Malfoy blood given the right to command them. That right had passed automatically to Draco when Lucius died.

_Perhaps it will never pass anywhere else again—_

Draco savagely garroted the thought. He was facing a potential threat, and he still insisted on exposing himself to the anxious martyrdom of his mind? He had been alone too long. Tonight, he was going to accept the standing invitation several of his teammates extended to him after every match and go out to a pub. At least he would be _doing _something.

He reached the center of the network of wards and looked along the ones that led to the front door. Some wizards could cast spells that would affect the spirit and mind as much as the body. Draco was not anxious to venture further into the web until he knew there wasn't a wizard like that at his door.

A sunrise-colored cloud of magic glittered there instead. As Draco watched, it leaned forwards again and thundered on the wards.

_It's knocking, _Draco realized in amazement. _Someone with a lot of power is causing a commotion simply to make sure that I can't overlook his presence._

That left Draco blinking and unsure how to respond. But he decided to take a chance. If the wizard was polite enough to announce his presence, it was unlikely that he would use a spell that devastated Draco's soul.

Draco sent his spirit speeding along one ward like a wire that stretched above the doors and acted like a camera. He opened the "eyes" of a carving above the door and looked down, hoping he would know whoever it was.

He realized almost at once that the angle wasn't good enough to allow him to see anything more than the hair. But since the hair was an eminently recognizable mop of shaggy black, he knew who it was anyway.

Draco snapped himself back into his body and hurried to throw on a robe, not caring about the unwashed mat of hair still hanging around his own face. Potter didn't deserve the courtesy of a washed heir to the Malfoy line anyway.

_I'll make him leave me alone. I'll use the Dark Arts if I have to. He won't dare complain, as much damage as he could have caused my wards. I'll tie his ankles to the back of his neck. I'll give him heart problems that'll last for the rest of his life. _

His blood was pounding, his heart was singing in his ears, and he tried to ignore the delicious anticipation that filled him. He doubted Potter, or the actor Potter had hired to impersonate him, would go away that easily.

That was the good part.

*

Harry "knocked" again with his magic, and then stepped back to count a hundred breaths before he did it a fourth time. He'd learned this technique from things Ron had said about Auror training. Harry wasn't about to deny that Auror training was useful sometimes; he just didn't want to devote his life to it.

He paused and thought about that. It seemed to imply that he'd made a decision since he left his own universe.

_Maybe I don't want to devote my life to it. _

At the moment, he was prepared to spend most of his morning butting his head against the stubborn, unyielding wall that was Draco Malfoy's will. Not because he believed his other self was the best man for Malfoy—what did he know about it, when he didn't know this Malfoy's history and had never been interested in a man himself?—but because he did want to convince Malfoy the other Harry was sorry and he wanted to make up for whatever part he might have played in Malfoy's suffering.

The count of a hundred breaths was almost up. Harry moved forwards and "tilted" his magic towards the house again.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you, Potter." The voice was cold and haughty on the surface, but sounded as angry under that surface as Hermione got when she talked about house-elves.

Harry stepped back and grinned a little as Malfoy came out the front door. He wore a fuzzy blue robe that had probably seen better days. His hair was fuzzy, too, mashed and muddled in the way that Harry's hair got when he slept on it. He aimed his wand with precision, though, and his eyes shone with fury that held no trace of sleep.

"What the fuck do you think you're _doing?_" Malfoy asked conversationally as he halted on his front step.

"Trying to wake you up," Harry said cheerfully, "and get you out here so that I could apologize to you." He couldn't stop grinning. The sight of Malfoy was—_endearing._ He looked normal, the way that Harry could envision looking on a morning when he'd slept late, the way he'd seen his friends look.

Every moment with the other Harry was a moment of intense emotion, as the other Harry took everyday things and obsessed over them to heights of drama that Harry found incredible. He'd decided, as he studied this version of himself, that a big part of the problem was that he'd spent too much time alone, chewing over his mistakes like stale vomit. If he would go out, ride a broom, and scream at the heavens, he would probably feel better.

But he simply said that he couldn't feel better until "Draco" believed his apology when Harry told him that, so Harry shrugged and set off to make the apology.

"And you thought knocking my house over was the best way?" Malfoy took full advantage of his pointy nose to look down at it at Harry.

"No," said Harry. "But if I didn't do it, I thought you would just hide behind your wards and refuse to come out and see me." He used his wand to conjure a rock and leaned his shoulder on it. He suspected this conversation would take a long time, and he might as well be comfortable. "Wouldn't you have?" he added. "After all, you do have a lot of things to resent from me." The other Harry had told him more details of the numerous arguments he'd had with Malfoy, and the gifts he'd tried to send to make up for them. Harry was frankly disgusted.

He turned his mind away from that, though, and contemplated Malfoy instead, who was a much more interesting subject. Malfoy's mouth was slightly open, and he looked at Harry as if a purple giraffe stood there instead of an ordinary man. Harry smiled at him, wondering if _this _was what the other Harry had seen and appreciated in Malfoy. Harry couldn't imagine someone falling in love with Malfoy just for his looks or his Quidditch prowess. What sorts of reasons were those for falling in love with someone?

"I suspected it," Malfoy said, his words careful and proud, etched on the air as if he were carving them into the stone Harry had made. "After the last time I spoke with you. Now I know."

Harry grinned more widely. Even Malfoy's habit of speaking in announcements was cute. "What is it that you know?"

Malfoy pointed a finger straight at him. Its purpose appeared to be to terrify him. It didn't work very well. "That you're not Harry Potter. I know his way of speaking to me, and what he wants from me—no, what he _demands _from me. You're not him."

Harry blinked and stood up a little straighter. The rock suddenly felt uncomfortably rough. "I don't know what you mean," he said, honestly enough. _He can't possibly think I'm from another universe. _He pushed back his hair so that Malfoy could see the scar, shining plain on his forehead. "I am Harry Potter. That was the name I was born with, and here's the scar that came with it."

Malfoy shook his head in a series of small, quick jerks. "No. I know Harry Potter, I told you, and he'd like me to know him more intimately still." He muttered those last words. "But you're not him. You speak with more confidence. He's a crawling coward, except when he's angry, and then he snaps out hurtful words. You may have noticed," he added with an acidity that Harry flinched from. "You're not him. That's an easy conclusion. Now, the only interesting thing for me to figure out is why you agreed to act as his proxy in this matter." He folded his arms and gave a scowl that was far more impressive than his finger-pointing.

Harry let out a careful breath, never taking his eyes away from Malfoy's. Malfoy would think that meant he was admitting something.

_Well. Both the other Harry and I underestimated how smart he was. Now what do I do? He didn't give me any suggestions from this, and I'm not sure I would know how to react to it even from my own Malfoy._

Harry considered Malfoy for several minutes. Malfoy seemed content to stare at him and wait for him to speak. Maybe he thought he had finally found an unanswerable argument and Harry would turn and slink away in humiliation.

Unluckily for Malfoy's wish to be left alone, Harry had given up on thinking his own humiliation was important some time ago. He'd had to do some fairly humbling things in therapy with the Mind-Healers. You either did it or you got left behind and suffered from your problems forever. Harry had a vivid illustration of what would happen if you did that, now, in the other Harry. More and more, he was convinced that his attempt to deal with his problems had split their universes.

"All right," he said quietly. _He deserves honesty. He might still not believe me, but that's his own fault. _"I'm not Harry Potter as you know him."

"I _knew _it," Malfoy said, and actually performed a ridiculous little dance, shuffling a step in place and brushing a hand through his hair. Harry smiled despite his worry. He was seeing more and more clearly how the other Harry could have fallen in love with this man.

"I'm a version of Harry Potter from another universe," Harry said. "There are spells that span the dimensions, and he called me from a universe that was sufficiently like his—he thought—to produce someone who would give him advice." _No need to tell Malfoy what that advice was; he can probably figure it out on his own anyway. _"While I was here, he decided to pressure me into apologizing to you." He shrugged, seeing that Malfoy was staring at him with his mouth open. "I know it sounds silly, but that _is _what happened."

Malfoy seemed to waver between gaping and breathing for some moments. Then he said, "Why wouldn't he apologize on his own?"

_Not the question I expected him to ask. _But Harry blinked and answered. "Because he's every bit the coward you described him as. He needs a potion that induces confidence or something. I don't know what happened to make him like that, but he's too worried about hurting you again to try and make up for the hurt he's already caused."

Malfoy leaned forwards, eyes hard as fish scales. "And why did you agree to come and apologize for him? Why not force him to do it himself?"

"I thought it would be a simple task." Harry gave him a rueful smile. "I didn't realize how much he'd wronged you, at first. Then I thought I should make up for the hurt that _I _did to you."

Malfoy leaned his forehead on his palm and appeared to be thinking. Harry stood still and let him.

He found himself mildly entertained. He'd never thought Malfoy could ask this many unexpected questions—let alone that he was insightful enough to realize the difference between one version of Harry Potter and another. This was fun.

*

Potter could not be telling the truth, of course. It was overreaching the entire point of hiring an actor to impersonate him in the first place. Instead of the sordid little truth, which at least would put Draco and Potter on a more equal footing with one another, he concocted something so grand it simply _couldn't _be believed.

On the other hand, using a dimension-spanning spell and attempting to press his other self into service was just the sort of thing Potter would do. He'd got into one mishap after another in the past few years: waking up drunk with strange men and women, claiming that the Dark Lord was coming back and then having to look foolish when he retracted the claim, making accusations of being a Death Eater against a pure-blood who'd supported Dumbledore's side. Draco could believe that Potter would be that stupid.

He was also a powerful wizard, as unfair as Draco thought that. He would be able to manage a spell like that, if one existed.

But all of that was less important than one other important fact, and so could be considered later. The important fact was that this man, whoever he was, seemed to care about Draco's suffering.

Draco was not completely willing to end the conversation with him yet.

"How much did the man you call my Potter tell you about my history?" he asked.

"Not much," Potter, or the man who had replaced Potter, said, blinking his green eyes in an intimately familiar gesture. Draco added a point to the side of the equation that said this man was from another universe. It was either that or he'd spent a lot of time studying Potter's gestures. "Just that you had started to play Quidditch rather suddenly, after everyone thought that you'd become a politician."

Draco snorted. "_You_ try being a politician in a Ministry where no one has any respect for your name whatsoever."

Surprisingly, the man in front of him nodded. "Or when people have too much respect for it," he added. "They've asked me to be part of the Auror program for years at home, even though I'm not perfectly qualified for it. I was supposed to have a meeting with the Minister and talk to him about it the morning after the night when your Harry snatched me away."

Draco eyed him. That wasn't the kind of intelligent thing that he would have expected Potter to produce.

_But they could have known I wouldn't expect that, and they may have worked that expectation into their plot._

"My parents are dead," Draco said harshly. He wondered if he should betray this much, then reminded himself that Potter had never shown even a rudimentary understanding of his personality, so he couldn't have coached an actor to take an interest in it. "They committed suicide rather than live with the loss of their money, the loss of their name, the loss of—everything. I found their bodies—"

"Oh, Merlin."

Suddenly the actor was looming in his face again, much the way he had the other day when he'd dared to come up to Draco and touch his cheek. Draco flinched, startled by the sudden movement, before he could stop himself. The actor checked himself in reaching out to Draco this time, but he hovered just in front of him, looking at him with frantic, wistful eyes.

"I don't—_no one _should have to survive that," said the actor, with a fervency in his voice that made Draco want to forget he wasn't Potter. This was the way Potter would have sounded had he considered Draco's pain worth his time, if he'd been his friend, the way he should have been. "I can't believe you're still smiling as much as you do and walking around sane. I'm so sorry."

Draco took a deep breath. The sympathy eased a little, a very little, of the pain that had lain aching in him so long he had forgotten what relief felt like. He had to stifle the temptation to reach out and lay a hand on the man's arm, to make sure he was real.

_Of course he isn't real. He's just the actor Potter hired, and every bit of his sympathy could be faked._

But if he was holding true to his theory that Potter didn't know him at all, then no, it couldn't be faked, because somehow this actor, unprepared by Potter, would have to know Draco better than a man who'd chased him for a year did.

Uncaring about the thoughts racing through Draco's mind, the actor shook his head. "If I'd known that, I would have refused to help him at all," he muttered, sounding revolted. "You need healing. You don't need someone to argue with you about your experiences in the war and try to force repayment of your life-debt on you." He paused and thought about it for a moment, then peered at Draco. "I've been through sessions with the Mind-Healers. I don't know enough to help you completely, but I could try."

Draco stared at him with his mouth slightly open. Then he shook his head. "You can't do that," he said, in a slight croak, because this sounded too much like one of his dreams coming true and the loneliness vanishing. He _knew _that couldn't happen. "Why would you turn your back on—on Potter like that?"

"Because he doesn't need my help as much as you do," the actor replied, looking at him as if he were mad. Those green, green eyes had a familiar dedication in them, too. That was the way Draco had seen Potter look when he dueled the Dark Lord and defeated him with an _Expelliarmus _alone. "Of course. If I anger him enough, then I reckon he won't send me home, but simply helping you shouldn't anger him. Maybe you'd be more likely to consider his proposals if you felt better."

Draco backed away and aimed a trembling wand at the man. "Don't come after me," he said, in a voice that cracked, when the man took a step closer anyway.

Potter—Draco's thoughts broke through the barriers that he was trying to impose on them and referred to the actor that way in spite of him—stood still and looked at him with a calm gaze. Draco supposed he could, so strong was his magic. "But why?" he asked. "You're hurting. You need help. You _deserve _help. I understand that you might be too proud to ask for it, but you have a prime example of the stupidity of clinging to the past and not looking for the future in front of you, with my other self. This is something I want to do and I can do, at least a little. So you should let me help you."

Put like that, it sounded reasonable. Too reasonable, Draco thought. There had to be a trap here, even if it wasn't obvious to him. "You want to help me because you feel sorry for me," he said.

Potter blinked. "Um. Yes. Is that a problem?"

"I don't want pity." Draco stepped away again so that his back was to the doors of the Manor. "I don't want you to look at me and sigh because, oh _poor _Draco, he's suffering so much from the deaths of his parents, he just needs—" He cut himself off because his own tone was creeping towards hysteria.

"It might begin as pity," Potter said quietly. "What else could it be? I don't know you as an individual yet, and I'm _not _going to let my perception of the Draco Malfoy from my universe control my interactions with you. But later, maybe it could be friendship." He hesitated, then added carefully, "The Mind-Healers and the other people I asked for help helped me get my strength back. Now I can offer some of that strength to you. I want to do it. Why shouldn't I?"

It was everything Draco had dreamed of: understanding, horror at what had happened to him, a quiet offer made without his having to demand it or do anything but expose his pain. Strength he could lean on. Someone who had solved enough of his own problems not to require Draco's constant care in return, the way that Potter would.

Except that this was Potter. Or it couldn't be. It was someone else, someone Draco didn't know and had no reason to trust.

"Stay _away _from me," he whispered harshly, to emphasize his rejection, and then turned and leaped into the Manor. He slammed the door behind him and stood there, eyes closed, until he could control his shaking.

He wasn't really weak. There were days when he hardly thought of his parents. He had made a life for himself instead of curling up and dying. If he was lonely, well, everyone was lonely sometimes.

He was not going to compromise his dignity, because he wanted to compromise so much.

*

Harry stood looking thoughtfully at the Manor for a moment. Then he shook his head and turned to Apparate back to the other Harry's home. He could conjure most of the other things he needed, but he required food and something to drink.

He would camp outside Malfoy Manor, knocking every hour, until Malfoy agreed to accept his help.

_Sometimes, you just have to be stubborn._

He thought about confronting the other Harry, and then shook his head. His lying and omissions and self-centered behavior were less important than Malfoy.

_Not that I wouldn't like to know what the source of the differences between us is._


	4. How Like a Mind Healer

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Four—How Like a Mind-Healer_

"I don't understand why you need to stay there and watch his house." The other Harry's words were heavy and slow, and when Harry glanced up from the pack of food and water he was preparing, he turned away and tucked his head into the back of the couch.

Harry took a deep breath and thought about saying something for a long moment. But he had to wait until his voice was calm instead of irritable. After all, he was borrowing the other Harry's things, and maybe he even suspected that Harry was trying to take Malfoy away from him. Nothing could be further from Harry's intentions; he wanted Malfoy to get well. Then maybe the other Harry would even have a better chance with him, because Malfoy wouldn't be so preoccupied with his own pain.

But Harry had explained that already, and the other Harry hadn't listened. In fact, his nostrils had flared and his eyes had narrowed as if he thought Harry was lying to him in revenge for _his _lies.

"That's not possible," he'd said. "I know him. I would have known if he was suffering such extreme pain."

Harry had pointed out that Malfoy was a private person and wouldn't see any need to confess his deepest feelings to someone who had hurt him, but the other Harry had refused to listen and had drifted off into a dream world where he and Malfoy already lived together. Rather like the universe he had thought he was calling Harry from, actually.

Harry tucked a few sandwiches into place between places of parchment impregnated with Preservation Charms and kept his voice as calm and friendly as possible. "Because if he sees that I'm constant in my attempts to help him, then he's more likely to actually _let _me help."

"Have you thought about the fact that you're here to help _me_?" The other Harry turned around again and folded his arms like a sulky child, glaring at Harry. "Not him? You haven't done a lot of that lately."

Harry threw up his hands. He'd been trying not to get angry, really he had. At the back of his mind was the reminder that he still needed the other Harry to send him home across the universes. But it seemed that the other Harry was determined to be stupid no matter what Harry did to soothe him. "I can't help you unless you let me help you! At least there's the chance that Malfoy might do that. I offered to listen to you while you told me why you hadn't faced your problems after the war. Do you remember what you told me?"

The other Harry turned his head away again and didn't answer.

Harry answered for him, and for once he didn't care about how merciless his voice was. He was finding _Malfoy _more sympathetic at the moment, because Malfoy at least acknowledged he was in pain. "'I don't have problems any more. I've dealt with my grief and moved on, in a way that you didn't. You were weak enough to need Mind-Healers.' I don't _enjoy _being called weak. And I learned something in the offices of the Mind-Healers you're so scornful of. I learned that it's impossible to give someone something they won't accept. That ranges from potions to sympathy. I still have hope that Malfoy will accept my sympathy eventually. _You're _determined not to."

The other Harry took a deep breath. "I have got over my problems from the war." He ignored Harry's incredulous snort. "I wasn't talking about that kind of help." Harry rolled his eyes this time, because that was such an obvious lie. "I was talking about your helping me to win Malfoy."

"You never will until he's able to think of other people as more than just sideshows to his pain," Harry said slowly. He was explaining something he had already explained several times before, but of course the other Harry showed no signs of listening, any more than he ever had. "He's self-centered at the moment, but it's understandable. What happened to his parents was horrible. You ought to be thanking me for getting him past that. He'll be able to concentrate on you and consider you as a lover eventually. Just not right now."

"I would have known if he was in that much pain." The other Harry stood up from the couch. "I think you're just trying to steal him from me."

_And so the accusation is made words, _Harry thought tiredly. He wondered if sympathy might not be the best way for him to communicate with the other Harry right now after all, though he wouldn't be able to make as sincere as what he offered to Malfoy.

"Look, what happened to you?" he asked. "I _know _that something had to have happened. You were brave when you defeated Voldemort. You're not afraid to use powerful magic to summon yourself from another universe, even though you had to take the chance that I would be angry and wouldn't want to help you. You even have the kind of courage that it takes to pursue Malfoy, when you must know that a lot of people won't like you having a relationship with him." _Even though you don't have the courage to apologize. _"I don't understand why you're acting like such a coward right now."

The other Harry's face closed. Suddenly Harry was looking at one of the best blank expressions he'd ever seen, especially on his own face. The Mind-Healers had all told him that he was no good at looking expressionless. The other Harry was.

_Something must have happened, _Harry thought in frustration. _But if he won't tell me what it was—_

"Go help Draco," the other Harry said, and fell face-down on the couch, so his words were muffled. "Maybe you're right, and he can love me later. Just _go._"

Harry stood there a few minutes, eyeing him and waiting for him to stand back up. But nothing happened. The other Harry kept his face buried, and lay still with a stubbornness that said he knew Harry was just waiting for him to do something.

_Honestly, _Harry thought, as he finally gave up, packed a few more bottles of water, and then went out to Apparate back to Malfoy Manor. _He's exactly like a sullen teenager at times. He's twenty, and he survived a war. He should act more adult than this._

*

Potter was actually _camping _near his front doors.

Draco watched him through the eyes of the carving above the doors again. Potter had conjured a chair, with an umbrella stretching out above him in case of rain. Next to him was a box from which he had so far taken two sandwiches and a big glass of water. Maybe his wooden cup had come out of the box, too, but Draco didn't think so. It looked exactly like the sort of rough work that Potter would conjure.

He took large bites of the sandwiches and large gulps of the water. Draco felt a sharp ache pervade him. It had been a long time since he had taken that much delight in his food, let alone food so simple.

When Potter finished eating, he stood up and walked towards the front doors. Draco braced himself, and wished he could brace the wards, for the shock that Potter was about to inflict on them, but all Potter did was knock like a normal person, with his fist. He did it four times and stood waiting for an answer. Draco didn't intend to give him the satisfaction, of course, and remained still.

Potter shrugged when a few minutes had passed and set a _Tempus _Charm in the air beside him. Then he walked over to his chair, leaned his head on the back, folded his arms behind his head, and _went to sleep._

Draco watched him for half-an-hour. Potter went on sleeping. He looked perfectly peaceful as he lay there, which was another reason to believe that he was either an actor or from another universe as he claimed. Draco couldn't imagine the Potter _he _knew losing the sulky expression on his face even in sleep.

Now and then he shifted, and sighed when he did it, or at least Draco thought he was sighing from the motion of his lips. But he didn't seem to suffer nightmares. He didn't seem to be lonely.

Draco would have given anything to have traded places with him.

He was displeased with himself when he had that thought. It was dangerously close to wishing that he could accept Potter's help so he could be like him. And Draco had to remember that accepting help was the worst thing he could do. It would all turn out to be a plot and a betrayal. Neither his parents nor his closest friends had stayed with him in the end. Why was he supposed to think _Potter _would?

He went out to walk in his garden, convinced that he wouldn't look out the carving above the front doors again.

*

Harry opened his eyes when the _Tempus _Charm shrilled in his ear to tell him an hour had passed. He yawned and sat up, then spent a moment looking at the front doors to see if Malfoy had relented and come out.

Of course he hadn't.

Harry shook his head and smiled as he stood up. Well, after all, he hadn't expected that this would be easy. He was prepared to wait and do some fast talking when Malfoy was finally annoyed enough to see him. It would be more a process of wearing down than of persuasion, but Harry was confident of his ability to make himself pleasant to Malfoy _after _that.

_Unlike with the other Harry._

Harry scowled as he began walking towards the Manor's doors again. What was he supposed to do in that situation? He asked for information, and the other Harry lied. He asked again, and the other Harry shut his mouth and stared off into the distance. He insisted that he knew himself and Malfoy better than Harry did, and maybe he was right, but when he wouldn't _tell _Harry what he knew, it was less than useless to talk to him.

_I am surrounded by exasperating people and by fools. _

But that wasn't much of a change from his own universe, either, where his friends had sometimes annoyed him—

Harry paused thoughtfully. _His friends. Could I try contacting the Ron and Hermione of this universe, anonymously, since he doesn't want me to meet them, and asking what happened? I'd have to be able to give a convincing picture of myself as someone concerned rather than someone who just wanted to sell gossip, but I think I could do it._

It was an idea. For right now, Harry put it away and spent some time studying the front doors of Malfoy Manor. He didn't want to hit the wards with his magic again, because that was what Malfoy expected him to do, and people became used to things if you repeated them often enough. Harry wanted to do continually surprising things, so that after a while Malfoy would come out and yell at him in sheer exasperation.

Abruptly, he grinned.

_I'm being rather childish in squatting outside Malfoy's doors until he does something about it, so I might as well indulge my childish fantasies._

`Harry waved his wand, and a pair of brightly colored quills appeared in front of him. Another spell filled them with ink that would be hard to get off. Red and gold ink was Harry's first choice, but after a minute, he changed that to blazing purple and pink. The whole point of this was to annoy Malfoy, rather than trying to prove some Gryffindorish superiority the way the other Harry would probably try to do.

Harry whispered a third spell, and sent the quills flying at the doors.

*

As Draco sat on the bank of one of the pools in the garden and tried desperately to think of nothing, he felt a slight tug at the wards. It was less strong than the ripples on the pond in front of him where a butterfly had landed, and he could have ignored it if he wanted to.

But maybe not-Potter was trying to sneak in, so Draco drew his wand and sent himself speeding through the maze of magic to the front doors again.

This time, he couldn't see anything when he looked through the carving except Potter standing there and grinning like a fool, so he slid further down and looked through the doors themselves.

He was promptly almost poked in the eye with a quill.

Draco pulled his awareness back in sheer shock, then reminded himself that damage from this end wouldn't physically harm him, and cautiously pushed forwards again. He glanced down, and squawked.

Potter was creating an enormous flower design on his front doors. The design was pink and purple, and could have been seen from Draco's broom. Potter cocked his head critically to the side as Draco watched in speechless outrage, then began to write letters next to the flower. Draco continued to watch, frozen, until the message was finished and he could read it. _Home of Draco Malfoy. He has drawn this happy flower to express what he dares not say aloud._

Then Potter started writing something else beneath that.

Draco snapped back into his body, leaped to his feet, and Summoned his broom without even thinking. That would allow him to reach the front doors more quickly than running through the house from the garden would. When the broom hovered beside him, he leaped onto it and kicked off from the ground.

A brief rush of joy hit him, as always. There was more than one reason he'd become a Quidditch player, although the attention he'd thought he would get would always be the most important reason. It was one of the few things he could still be proud of his skill in, and which made him happy.

He soared over the garden walls, circled around the corner of the western wing, and then dived like a hawk towards the front doors. Potter had just stepped back from his latest piece of immature graffiti and was smirking at it as if it were a work of genius. Draco angled so that his feet would brush the top of Potter's head and knock him from his feet.

Blast him, he heard the broom's buzz through the air and ducked neatly out of the way. Draco circled around with all his breath gone because of rage again—especially when he saw that the new message was in capital letters and covered with magical sparkles.

_COME TO DRACO MALFOY'S HOUSE FOR A GOOD TIME!_

"You _bastard!_" he screamed, and dived at Potter again. This time, Potter stood there and let him come, and Draco thought he would hit him in the stomach and knock him over.

Instead, Potter leaned forwards and performed a complicated gesture with his hands, and suddenly Draco was swooping along a foot or so above the grass, with Potter clinging to the front of his broom like a monkey and laughing like a madman.

Draco screamed at him again, and rolled upside-down. Potter promptly lifted his feet so that he didn't kick himself in the head and pulled his head inwards so that _that _didn't hit the ground. He was still laughing.

Draco yelled at him from a distance of a few inches, which was enough to make Potter's hair twitch and which ought to impress him. "_Stop it!_ Do you think I'm happy that you came to my house and made me look like a fool?"

"Nobody's here to see it," Potter said back, as calmly as if they were sitting together in chairs in one of Draco's studies, with cups of Firewhisky in front of them. "Though that might change when I conjure Golden Snidgets and send them out with invitations to the party, I reckon."

"_Leave me alone!_"

"All that does is make you unhappy, because you're lonely," Potter said. That argument was the same thing Draco had often thought of himself, and it was the shock alone that made him not resist when Potter twisted his body and flipped the broom back upright. Potter, meanwhile, waited a moment to catch his breath and then went on talking. "I don't want you to be unhappy. So I have to intervene, in ways that will make you angry. At least you're feeling something other than pain."

"I'll show you pain," Draco snarled, and flicked his fingers so that his wand leaped into his hand.

Potter twisted again, and suddenly Draco found himself with his hands clutched in Potter's. Potter steered the broom with his knees while he pressed firmly down with his thumbs, until Draco's hands opened and his wand plummeted uselessly to the ground below.

"A Mind-Healer taught me that," Potter explained happily. "He thought it would be good for me to have a way to defend myself and take out stress at the same time. Most of the time I practice on balls or stones, but it's really _made _to work on the hands of people who are trying to harm me, don't you agree?"

Draco couldn't answer, since he was speechless with a mixture of pain and rage. Potter twitched his left leg, and the broom slowed and grounded itself. Draco made a mental note to speak to the broom's manufacturer. He had promised Draco that _he _was the only one who could control his broom.

Of course, maybe all broom manufacturers built in secret controls for Harry Potter, just in case he ever deigned to _honor _them by playing on their inferior products.

Draco was starting to make himself sick, so he did his best to tug his hands free. It ought to have been easy. He'd been playing Quidditch continually for eighteen months, and Potter, whichever Potter this was, hadn't done that. But Potter kept hold of him easily and looked at Draco with a mild scolding expression.

"I don't think I'm done teaching you the particular lesson I want to teach you yet," he said, and dragged Draco off his broom and turned him to face the east.

Draco tried to kick him in the groin. Potter avoided that adeptly and said, "Look up at the sun. The sky is so bright. The clouds are the most brilliant shade of white I've seen in a long time. This is the kind of beauty that I want to teach you to appreciate again. I'm sure that you have plenty of pretty things in your house, but it's not the same."

"I can have a Perpetual Breeze Charm whenever I want it," Draco said coldly. He would have laughed, except it would have sounded too hysterical. It sounded as if Potter was telling him he would feel better if he went outdoors more often, which was frankly ridiculous. "And I get enough wind and enough sights of the clouds and sky and sun playing Quidditch, thanks."

"But when was the last time you paid _attention _to them, instead of to the Snitch?" Potter's thumbs rubbed back and forth over Draco's skin, as if he thought that he would actually manage to comfort Draco. "You're playing a game when you fly, and that's all. But I saw your skill on the broom. Have you considered flying for its own sake, instead of just to practice for your team?"

"You're mad." Potter wasn't the only one who had learned a little self-defense because of people trying to harass him. Draco edged backwards with one foot, trying to slip it between Potter's ankles and kick him.

Potter finally released Draco's wrists and took a step back. Draco whirled around to face him, hand rising, only then remembering that he didn't have his wand. He scowled at Potter, who grinned back.

"I don't think I'm mad to suggest that you might enjoy flying," Potter said. "I'm sure that you have places inside your walls large enough to allow you to do it, if you don't want to fly in public."

"I have the most magnificent garden inside the walls, and right outside my bedroom, where I can fly to my heart's content," Draco snapped. Maybe the reminder of his considerable wealth would shut Potter up. The Potter had been rich, but it was still nothing like the wealth of the Malfoys. Some was left even though his parents committed suicide—

(Which only proved how stupid they had been to do that, but Draco always shut up such thoughts as they traitors they were when they appeared).

And he had added to it with his Quidditch winnings. "I can see it when I wake up in the morning," he continued. "And I could circle in it a hundred feet off the ground, and you still wouldn't be able to see me."

Potter cast him an admiring glance, and Draco had the sudden sinking feeling that even _this _wasn't going to work out the way he had wanted it to. "That does sound magnificent," Potter agreed. "And I assume that you have trees to circle around and pools that you could potentially fall in when you fly low?"

Draco nodded, his eyes narrowed. There was no point in lying about it, but he still felt uneasy. Where was Potter going with this?

"Good. Let's go see it," Potter said, and then he jumped on the broom and sent it blasting forwards with what seemed like no more than a thought, scooping Draco up from the ground so that he was sitting on the broom in front of Potter. Potter's arm was locked securely around his waist, his hand splayed possessively on Draco's stomach.

That made Draco struggle wildly, because he remembered, suddenly, Potter rescuing him from the Fiendfyre. That was the thing he had thrown in Draco's face again and again when they met, insisting that Draco remember his life-debt and that, in a way, everything he had done and become since then belonged to Potter.

"This isn't the same," Potter whispered into his ear, freezing Draco for a moment because his breath was so _warm._ "I know he said those things to you, and I'm sorry he did. But you were behind me and hanging onto me that time, remember? It's not the same. Your life is your own, and free to enjoy. But I want you to be able to _enjoy_ it, instead of hiding from it all the time."

In the time it took Draco to think about that, they darted over the walls and around in circles. Potter was obviously looking for a large open space, and in less than a minute, he saw the garden and swooped down into it. They landed on the grass with the faintest bump, and then Potter leaped off and started looking around.

Draco whirled around.

Only to see an expression of such deep admiration on Potter's face that he faltered. Then Potter turned the same expression on himself, and another of those deep, aching wounds lost some its ache. Draco had forgotten what it was like to see someone admire him because of his possessions. Indeed, once the prestige of the Malfoy name was gone, he had assumed he would never receive one of those looks again.

"This _is _beautiful," Potter said. "And it can't have had many guests. Will you show me around?"

Draco stared at him, caught off-guard again. He had no reason to say yes, of course. Potter had practically bullied his way in here. Why did he assume that he had any chance of getting a positive answer?

Potter waited, though, his eyes patiently locked on Draco's. He had leaned slightly away as the silence wore on, and now his body pointed towards the wall. He looked as if he would actually depart if Draco gave him a negative answer. He'd come this far under the pressure of his own energy, his body language said, but Draco had to be the one to decide if he went any further.

It had been years since Draco was offered a _choice _like that.

Draco took a deep breath of air, and gave Potter a mocking little bow, mocking his own hope that this time would be different as much as Potter himself. "Welcome to my garden," he said.

The sheer force of Potter's smile almost knocked him over.

*

_God, he's resilient._

The quality that he'd been missing in the other Harry filled Malfoy in abundance. As hard as it must have been, he was allowing Harry into one of his private sanctuaries. Oh, he was prickly about it, holding his head aloft as though any moment he expected an insult. But he was still doing it.

He was moving forwards. He was doing what the other Harry, perpetually stuck in the past and his failures, couldn't do.

Harry experienced a sort of warm melting feeling in his belly as he turned and walked along the nearest path beside Malfoy.

That feeling was new, he thought in curiosity.

He put it away to think about later. For now, he wanted to listen to Malfoy's voice as he began to explain the wonders of the garden.


	5. A Night at Malfoy Manor

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five—A Night at Malfoy Manor_

Harry smiled and stretched full-length beside one of the pools in Malfoy's garden, trailing his hand in the water. This was the kind of use wealth _should _be put to, he thought lazily. Who cared about jeweled daggers and golden watches and some of the other silly things he'd seen pure-bloods carrying about? There was no _reason _for that sort of thing. It made much more sense to create beautiful outdoor places that other people could appreciate, and which would always be changing their beauty when you went to look at them.

"You look as though you'd never known a day's unhappiness in your life."

Harry rolled over, not taking his hand out of the water, and saw Malfoy staring down at him with a twisted expression on his face. Harry knew the twisting came about more because of pain than because of jealousy or anger, and so he answered more calmly than he would have answered the other Harry if he said the same thing.

_Face it, you don't like the other Harry. _

But the thought wasn't relevant at the moment, so Harry put it away. He would much rather concentrate on Malfoy.

"I have," he said. "I went through the same things that my twin from this universe went through. Well, up until two years ago, anyway. Then I decided that I wanted to get help for my grief, and I reckon he shut himself up and did nothing except fall in love with you. And study magic to bring me over from my universe, I suppose."

"I don't want to talk about him," Malfoy said, dropping into a crouch beside him. Harry knew that he did well to hide his expression of delight. That was _much_ more undignified than he had thought Malfoy would act this soon, but Malfoy would get offended and stiff again if he saw Harry liking that part of him. "I want to talk about you. Why did you decide to get help? Why is the decision so easy for you to make and so hard for me?"

Harry stored his questions for later. It did seem that Malfoy might know something about the other Harry—perhaps even the things that the other Harry was so reluctant to share with him—but Harry didn't want to press him. Malfoy had suffered more than enough pressing from people named Harry Potter.

"It wasn't an easy decision," Harry said. "I lay awake for nights worrying about it even after I started meeting with Mind-Healers. I worried it would change me, somehow, from the person I was into one I didn't want to be." He shivered. That was still a fear, and one of his worst fights with Ron had come when Ron said that he didn't know or understand Harry anymore since he got therapy.

Harry had gone frantically to Ares Ellison, the Mind-Healer who had helped him most, when he heard that, and Ellison had told him that no one could figure out whether he was changing and whether he wanted to change but himself. Harry finally managed to decide that he liked what was happening, and he had the perfect counter to Ron's next accusations.

_I reckon I grew up._

Ron had gone red in the face and yelled more loudly than before, but he'd eventually come and apologized. He was afraid that Harry changing meant Harry might not want to be his friend anymore, that now he would think Ron was too immature for him. It didn't take a lot of words after that to soothe his fear.

"I don't worry about that," Malfoy said, scornfully. Harry looked towards him and saw him wavering back and forth on his heels, staring into the pond. "Why would I? I would give anything not to be the person—" And then he shut his mouth tight and stared at Harry distrustfully.

Harry could complete the sentence without trouble. _Not to be the person I am now._

"Who are you?" Malfoy demanded with his eyes narrowed. "Are you a Mind-Healer yourself? Did you cast a charm? I'm talking to you in a way that I've never talked to anyone, at least not since my parents died."

Harry rolled over on his stomach and kept his gaze fixed on Malfoy's face to show that he was serious, though his hand stayed in the water. It felt nice and cool on his fingers. "Maybe it's time," he said. "I'm who I told you I was, and I haven't had time to train to be a Mind-Healer."

Malfoy scoffed. "I know that you aren't really Harry Potter. You could be a Mind-Healer for all I know, and fifty years old behind that glamour or that permanent Polyjuice or whatever it is that you're using to look like him."

Harry raised his eyebrows. It seemed that Malfoy wasn't willing to listen to the truth. _Maybe logic will work. _Ellison often lobbed logical questions at him when he was acting irrationally, and eventually Harry would calm down enough to listen. "Why would I choose Harry Potter's face to help you? You have every reason to hate him."

Malfoy turned suddenly red and scuffed at the ground with a foot. Since he was squatting already, that almost toppled him over. "That's not important. Or interesting."

"Yes, it is." Harry sat up this time and reached out for Malfoy's hand. Malfoy snatched it impatiently away. Harry let him do that. _He hasn't had many choices. _"I'd rather know more about you, the most I can. And knowing why you choose to respond to me even though you don't believe me is both important _and _interesting."

Malfoy glared at him. "Do you never get angry? Do you always have the patience of Professor Flitwick?"

Harry shrugged. "I can get both angry and offended." He thought of his fights with Ron and the one with the other Harry that morning. "But I'm better able to control my temper and decide what I should get angry and offended about." He glanced pointedly towards the Manor. "I'm getting hungry again. Are you going to invite me in?"

*

Draco hadn't had someone pay him this much personal attention in a long time, and it was unnerving.

Oh, sure, his fans always stared at him, and swooned when he smiled, and followed his every movement as reported in newspapers with vicious fervor. His coach would stare at him with narrowed eyes and then condemn him for a move that had one percent of something wrong with it. Muggles who didn't know him—Draco had ventured into the Muggle world a few times—would admire him with a sideways stare that they seemed to think was subtle.

But he hadn't had someone ask questions that Draco should have been able to fend off easily but which he floundered with now because it had been so long since someone asked them. He hadn't had someone nod as if his every response was interesting, even the ones that were no more than grunts. He hadn't had someone ask about the history of the house and expect normal answers, instead of ones that they could twist to their advantage or take away to add to their infatuation with him.

It didn't fit Potter. Even, Draco thought, one from another universe, who would still be like the Potter he knew in some ways—had to be, if he had the same parents and the same face.

But neither did it fit a Mind-Healer. Draco had inquired into seeing one—not that he was about to tell this stranger that—not long after his parents committed suicide. The descriptions he received terrified him. They began to dig, and went on digging until they had every bit of your pain rescued from underground stores, and then they made you face it all at once.

He knew he couldn't stand that. He would either run away or break apart and weep in front of the Mind-Haler, and either was humiliating.

But this Potter—actor—man—Healer—whatever—dropped questions that he saw Draco getting uncomfortable about, and talked as much about normal things as he did about healing and pain. He closed his eyes with delight when he tested the meal of chicken and swan that the house-elves had prepared, though if he had ever had swan before, Draco would be very surprised. He laughed when Draco told him jokes, though they were halting jokes and years out of date. He turned around in his chair and craned his neck back so that he could see the ceiling of the dining room when he wanted to look at it.

Draco didn't understand it. Not the man himself, and not the way he permitted him to stay in the house instead of sending him away at once, the way he should have.

"What do you really want from me?" he was comfortable enough to ask when Potter twisted around again in his chair from staring at the ceiling. "Not just to heal me. I know better than that."

"You shouldn't ever have had to learn that."

Neither the soft voice nor the shining eyes was something Draco had expected. He cleared his throat and looked back at his plate, but the soft voice pursued him.

"You deserve to believe that people will always be interested in you—interested in healing you, interested in helping you achieve your best."

"Will you _give over_?" Draco stood up sharply enough to tilt his chair over backwards. He thought he would have banged his head on the chandeliers if any hung low enough, but of course his ancestors had foreseen accidents like that and hung them higher. "What you're saying _sounds _good, but there's no way it can be true. There's no way that you can care that much about me."

"Why not?" Potter blinked at him, a string of swan meat hanging absurdly from his lips. Draco had to control the temptation to march around the table and snatch it away from him. He didn't think touching this Potter—this version of Potter—damn it—was a good thing at the moment. "I don't think that you're the only one who deserves that, you know. Everyone does. I have it. You don't. That means you should have it, too."

"You're not making any sense," Draco snapped, and turned around to prowl into the sitting room near at hand. He wasn't hungry anymore. "The only people who care that much about each other are family and friends."_And lovers, _he thought, but he wasn't about to say that in front of a man who was probably still out to win him as a lover for Potter. "You're not my friend, and I think I would remember if I had a brother."

Potter laughed, and sat there finishing up the swan. Draco shut the door of the sitting room behind him, not inviting Potter to follow.

*

Harry grinned a little as he pushed the door of the room where Malfoy had gone open and found him sitting in a chair before the fire, a book spread on his lap that he was staring at intently. He wasn't reading, of course. Someone who was reading turned pages every once in a while.

Harry didn't intend to confront him directly. Instead, he leaned out the door and clapped his hands, which Malfoy had told him proudly he could do at any time to summon the house-elves. One of them appeared at once, bowing so fast its ears repeatedly flopped into its face and it had to pause to adjust them before it could focus on him. "Master is wanting something from Ipsy?"

"Yes," Harry said. "A pack of Exploding Snap cards, please. I'll right wait here while you get them for me."

Ipsy shot him a startled glance, as though he wasn't used to having people promise to stay in one place, and then vanished. Harry leaned his shoulder on the doorway and thought of the Mind-Healer he had worked with for the shortest amount of time, Elizabeth Arundel.

It had nothing to do with her skill. Arundel simply blasted through her patients' barriers, either deciding that she could help and then applying her skill to give them that help, or saying right away that she couldn't do anything and sending them on to another Mind-Healer. Harry had gone to her in a sulky and slightly triumphant mood; he was sure that she would say she couldn't help him and send him back to Ellison, who was his favorite.

Arundel had come into the room, ignored Harry entirely, and started to play a wizarding chess game against herself with a chess set and pieces that Harry had never seen before; they all looked like dragons. Harry had sat and glared at her for a while, then scowled. Each time, she concentrated on the game as if she had forgotten he was there. Finally Harry gave in to his curiosity and came over to see what she was doing, and from there, they managed to get done what they needed to do, which was mostly confronting his unnecessary guilt.

Harry didn't think he was anywhere near as competent as Arundel, but imitating one of her tricks might work wonders.

Ipsy returned in no time with the pack of cards, and Harry smiled at him, nodded his thanks, and stepped into the sitting room. Malfoy hunched up and buried his nose further in his book at once, though a moment before, he'd been looking out the window at the now-rainy garden with a forlorn expression.

Harry glanced around the sitting room. Though two walls were covered with bookshelves, one with the window, and one by the large fireplace, he thought he'd have enough room to conduct his experiment. He knelt down in front of the fire and took out the Exploding Snap cards.

"That's a children's game," Malfoy said, sounding irritated, as though some ancient Malfoy ancestor had forbidden playing children's games on Malfoy property.

_One of them probably did, _Harry thought, and then fixed his attention on his hands. With a concentrated frown, he laid one card on the floor and considered it for a moment. Then he laid a card next to it and stood a third on top of that one. Then he moved over and began piling three cards into a cautious tower next to the second.

"That's not the way you're supposed to play," Malfoy said, sounding superior. "Why would you start another tower when you haven't even finished the first one yet?"

Harry ignored him again. When he had three cards in the third tower, he moved on to the fourth one, using five cards this time. The pattern he was using was simple—prime numbers—but he wondered how long it would take Malfoy to catch on to that.

"Didn't you hear me?" There was a creak as Malfoy leaned forwards in his chair. "I _said_, that's not the way you're supposed to build card towers."

Harry ignored him again. The five-card tower worked, but the seven-card tower toppled over and exploded in a shower of sparks. Harry didn't pull his hand back quickly enough to avoid getting singed. He laughed, shaking his fingers, and then scooped up the cards and shuffled them again. His private rules said that you had to start all over when one of the towers collapsed.

"Potter, are you listening to me?"

The plaintive tone in Malfoy's voice almost made Harry reconsider. He really wanted someone to listen to him, and he might end up storming out instead of coming over to join Harry, because he was so angry. But then Harry steeled himself and returned to the game. If this didn't work, then he would try something else, that was all. He didn't have Arundel's skill, and so it was no surprise if he got something wrong, even something important.

This time, he got to eleven before the whole thing fell apart. Harry rolled his eyes and started to gather up the cards again.

"Why not start over with thirteen?" Malfoy's voice said suddenly, quite close. "That's the pattern you're following. All of them are numbers that are divided only by one and themselves."

Harry turned around, making sure to keep his face calm and bland, as if he'd expected this to work all along. "Yes, that's the pattern I'm using," he agreed. "But I think it makes sense to start over with one each time. I want to be able to build all the way from one to forty-seven, at least, but I've never made it that far."

Malfoy snorted and snatched the cards away from him. "Then start with thirteen, you dimwit. That's the only way that you're ever going to reach forty-seven that I can see, with your level of skill."

Harry let a mildly indignant tone enter his voice. "I did better the second time than the first time. And you can't say anything about my level of play from only seeing those two times."

"Yes, I can," Malfoy said flatly. "You _fumble _them, and you're barely even checking to see whether you have two identical cards." He jumped when a sudden explosion occurred in his palm, and then went straight on as though nothing had happened. "Placing two identical cards too close together can cause them to explode more often."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "I never heard that."

"Well, it's true," Malfoy said, sounding smug. "And if the point is to win a game, even one as stupid and self-imposed as this one is, then you need to cheat a bit." He squinted at the cards in his hands, then began to build a thirteen-card tower. Harry lay down next to him and watched him.

Now and then, he puckered his lips as if to blow the tower down. Malfoy shot him a dark glance each time, and shook his head in a way that said Harry wouldn't like what would happen if he so much as dared once. Then he would turn back to the tower and concentrate fiercely, biting his lip as each card was added.

Harry rejoiced in the happy expression on his face, even more than the way he singed his eyebrow when his forty-seven-card tower fell over one card away from completion.

*

Potter was staying for the night. Draco wasn't aware when he had made the decision, only that he had, and that when he offered a room, Potter gave him a tired nod and said simply, "Thanks, that would be nice."

Draco gave him a small room in the western wing. Potter smiled at the window that looked out over the garden, smiled at him, and then asked him, "How do you feel now?"

Draco blinked slowly. He'd spent a few hours thinking about something other than his parents, and he knew that had been Potter's intent. As a matter of fact, he did feel better, and he was more inclined to trust Potter than before. Why else would he let him stay inside his house, sleeping on sheets that were fine silk and had belonged to Draco's grandmother? It made no sense if he still hated him or thought he was an actor hired by Potter to torment him.

But he didn't have an answer for why he was doing this or why he had taken to Potter so suddenly, so he simply said, "I feel different."

Potter the infuriating just tilted his head, said, "Well, I should hope that you do, with food inside you and a friend inside the walls," and reached out and trailed a hand down Draco's cheek. Draco shivered. The softly moving fingers were nothing he hadn't felt before; plenty of the people he had dated, or tried to date, had touched him in the same way. And those were people more attractive than Potter by a long shot, certainly richer, and with identities firmly established.

But for some reason, Draco had never felt his pulse leap at such a simple touch from anyone else, never felt as though he were on the verge of shattering apart or leaping over a cliff to see if he grew wings before he hit the ground.

Potter pulled his hand back and cleared his throat awkwardly, as if the touch had also affected him. Draco _hoped _so. He refused to be the only one who reacted like that.

Potter shook his head a little, as though he had heard Draco's thought and rejected it or wanted to recover, and said, "Good night." Then he shut the door between them. Draco listened, and thought he heard him flopping down on the bed a moment later.

Draco turned and went thoughtfully on his way, wondering if he should feel happy or not. He showered, ate the bowl of raspberries that he always did before bedtime with more attention to the taste than usual, and climbed into bed and shut his eyes without having found the answer to that question.

His dreams were chaotic, full of intertwining stars and springs of light, and two figures on a broom chasing each other relentlessly across a brilliant blue sky.

*

Breakfast had gone well, Harry thought. Malfoy had barely looked him in the eye, barely spoken—he seemed to communicate in grunts in the morning—and clutched his chair and his plate as if they were secure anchors in a wild sea, but when Harry said that he thought he should leave now, Malfoy stood hastily and said, "No!"

Harry blinked at him, hiding his pleasure, and Malfoy, looking as if he already regretted the yelp, added with stiff formality, "Not—you may depart, of course. But it would serve my—pleasure—if you stayed and allowed me to show you more of the hospitality of the Manor."

Harry was happy to accept. He hadn't thought he should leave Malfoy alone so soon, but he _had _thought that Malfoy might be getting tired of him and happy to see him leave.

He was incredibly happy to stay, he thought, as they walked on the lawn outside the Manor where he had camped yesterday and watched the white peacocks stalking back and forth. Malfoy wasn't talking at the moment, but his face had eased from some of the tight lines that had worried Harry yesterday. He walked with his hands behind his back, his shoulders as straight as though someone would be along to judge him at any moment, but Harry didn't think those hands clutched at each other quite as hard.

The warm, melting feeling entered his stomach again when Malfoy started talking, hesitantly, about his mother and father. It was just small sentences—about how his father had decided white peacocks were the only birds regal enough for a Malfoy, and about how his mother had loved rosebushes—but they meant far more than would whole speeches from someone else. Harry listened, and looked at Malfoy's pale, suffering, determined face, and he wondered what the warm feeling meant.

"I _knew _it!"

Malfoy's voice cut off with a strangled choke. Harry was angrier about that than about the interruption itself as he whirled around.

The other Harry stood near the iron gates that permitted entrance to the Manor as if he couldn't come any further, though Harry knew there weren't wards there; the wards started far closer to the house itself. Malfoy had probably lost enough money that he couldn't maintain expert magical protection for the whole estate. But the other Harry lifted balled fists and struck the gates three times as if he were being held out. His face was white with rage.

"You _are _trying to betray me!" he yelled. "You're trying to make him fall in love with you! I _know _Draco, and I know exactly how someone would try to trick him out of falling in love with _me _and considering some stranger! Why did I ever bring you here?"

Harry felt Draco tense, and he stepped in front of him without thinking, wanting to shield him from the other Harry's anger.

The other Harry pounded on the gates with his fists again. His voice this time was a growl instead of a howl, but Harry could still hear the words easily, despite all the distance that separated them. "You're trying. You're falling in love with his pretty face and his beautiful hair and his easy manner and—and everything! But I won't let you do it." And then he turned away and stormed off a few steps before Apparating.

In the silence, Harry could easily hear Malfoy say, in a low voice, "_Are _you trying to trick me into falling in love with you?"

Harry turned around again. Malfoy had his arms braced on empty air as though he was going to fall over and the air would hold him up. His eyes were empty, wide, and staring, and Harry felt his heart ache as he looked into them.

"No," he said. "If you fall in love with me, I want it to be of your own free will and because you really think I'm the best partner for you, not because of a trick. The same way I would fall in love with you."

Malfoy went paler still and stood staring at him. Harry blinked again. He hadn't realized he would add that last sentence until it was out there.

_Oh. That's what the warm feeling in my stomach is. _

_Oh._


	6. Confrontations

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Confrontations_

Draco fought to control his breathing. He was notabout to pass out like a child because he had just seen two versions of Harry Potter in front of him, and that seemed to confirm the story that Potter had been telling him.

_Of course, he could still be partners with the Potter I know in some bizarre plot. _It would be like the Potter he knew to show up at his gates, rant, and then Apparate without even attempting to confront them.

But Draco remembered all too clearly that Potter's passion for him and the embarrassing consequences that had come of it. Besides, he doubted that the man would be willing to let a rival for Draco's affections this close to him, even with the ultimate goal of wooing Draco around to accept Potter.

_And he _is _a rival for your affections, isn't he? The only competitor on the field at the moment, as a matter of fact, since you will hardly accept the Potter you know at any time or for any reason._

Draco put the difficult thought behind bars and faced Potter, the one he reckoned he had to call the Potter from a different universe for the moment, until a better explanation presented itself. Potter had been staring at the grass as if he were absorbed in contemplation of his final words about falling in love, the way Draco would have been if he didn't have better things to do. He looked up in surprise when Draco snapped his fingers.

"I want to know everything," Draco said harshly. "That means why you sought me out in the first place, why you pretended to be Potter at first, and why you haven't talked to me more honestly about him since you got here."

"It didn't occur to me to talk about him." Potter blinked as he examined Draco. His face remained open, surprised and with a softness to the corners of his eyes that Draco couldn't pretend was there all the time. It seemed to appear mostly when Potter looked at him. "I would much rather talk about you. At first, yes, I did mean to coax you into talking to him by pretending to be him and apologizing."

Draco swallowed. He felt as though someone had smashed a glass sculpture he valued in front of him.

"I changed my mind," Potter whispered, "when I realized that he wasn't the one I should feel sorry for. At first, you were no one to me but a variation of the Malfoy I knew, who hasn't crossed my path for two years, and my other self was someone in such a mess that I thought I could heal him. Then he lied to me about what he'd done to you, and I saw that you needed healing far more, and my sympathies swung."

"So you didn't come here just for me." Draco was hissing by the time he reached the end of that sentence.

"Of course not." Potter looked more surprised than ever. "I've told you. I had no idea who you were at first, what kind of person. The only way I could get to know you was by agreeing to this task and then changing my mind with more information." His eyes turned hard suddenly, and it was Draco's turn to blink, momentarily diverted. "You're the only one who's given me that information. All the other Harry has given me is lies and more lies."

"Maybe _you're _the one who was lying to _me_," Draco said, determined to seize control of the conversation again. The most remarkable thing about this version of Potter was the unselfconscious way he seemed to talk about the hardest subjects, so that Draco found himself distracted from what he'd meant to do half the time. "Maybe you really have a different purpose in all of this."

"What purpose would that be?"

Faced with those guileless green eyes, Draco found himself faltering again, as much as he hated to. It was true that he couldn't think of many reasons for a Potter from another universe to want to get close to him. Yes, he could be trying to get revenge on Draco for ignoring his universe's Potter for so long, but why would he want to do that? What would someone from so far away care about a conflict between two people that, as he'd pointed out, he'd never met?

He could be this universe's Potter, come to woo Draco in a good disguise—

But Draco rejected that thought immediately. He simply didn't think the impatient, obsessed man he'd known since the war could have turned himself around so thoroughly in a few months. And if he _had_, all he would have had to do was come to Draco as himself, explain that, and then set about trying to court him.

So there remained the possibility that he was an actor, not from another universe at all, and part of a revenge plot. Draco hadn't seen him taking Polyjuice, but anything was possible.

"You said that you could fall in love with me," he said, and sneered. Potter only gave him another blink and nodded. "Then you'll be willing to undergo some tests to prove that you're who you say you are."

"If they're not too painful," Potter said, with a small smile that Draco hated himself for liking. "I have an aversion to my own pain, after I spent so long healing it. I like helping other people better than I like suffering myself."

Draco spent a minute driving his nails into his palms, to get rid of the temptation to smile. Then he said, "I want you to spend an hour bound in a chair, so that I can see that you're not drinking Polyjuice. I'll cast spells at you that will remove glamours and Transfiguration, and you'll take Veritaserum."

"All right," Potter agreed instantly, and turned back towards the Manor.

Draco gaped at his back for a moment, then hurried after him. "Why are you so happy?" he demanded. "You know that this could hurt, especially if you're on Polyjuice and it wears off suddenly."

Potter raised an eyebrow at him. "But I'm not on Polyjuice, and thus I have no reason to fear." He gave that small smile again. "Besides, it means that I'll get to spend some more time with you. I'm very happy about that."

Draco turned his mind sharply to the spells he could use to detect Transfiguration and glamours on Potter. It was far easier than thinking about his own feelings and what they would be if everything—the sympathy, the story Potter had told him, and the rest of it—turned out to be genuine.

*

Harry sighed and squirmed a bit in the ropes. They were uncomfortable, but he supposed that, to Draco, the discomfort was part of the point. Any slack in the ropes would mean that he could reach the Polyjuice he supposedly carried with him.

Draco had taken his wand, too, of course. Harry propped his chin on his arms and wondered if a full hour had passed yet. At the moment, he wanted his wand most not to defend himself but to ease the aches in his bound limbs and cast a _Tempus _Charm.

The door of the small room where Draco had put him—a high one with only a narrow slit window, which made Harry imagine that it was some hiding place of ancestral Malfoys when Muggles with torches came hunting them—remained stubbornly shut no matter how long he stared at it, though, so he rolled his head down to the most comfortable position he could achieve and shut his eyes.

He reckoned he could use some inner contemplation at the moment. (So could Draco, really, whatever his opinion on the matter).

_Am I in love with Draco or not?. _

That was a question he realized almost at once he couldn't answer yet. Yes, the warm feeling was like being in love, but it also was like being _about _to fall in love, the way Harry had felt with Ginny sometimes. He'd always liked women, too, and he hadn't known this Draco for very long. So he moved on to the next and more interesting question.

_What am I going to do about it? _

Not press Draco to commit to anything, of course. That would be the very worst thing he could do right now, when the other Harry had chased and crowded Draco like a dog chasing a cat. The choice had to be his. Harry would watch over him and offer help and sympathy and try to deal with his own feelings in the meantime. If Draco asked him about those feelings, he would answer honestly. He wouldn't shove them in Draco's face, though.

_And what am I going to do next?_

Harry smiled grimly. The answer to that was simple, too. He thought he'd allowed the other Harry to get away with lying for long enough. It was time to chase him down and demand some answers.

The door of the room suddenly burst open. Harry sat up and saw Draco standing there with his wand in one hand and a vial in the other, which probably contained Veritaserum.

"_Finite Incantatem!_" Draco snapped at him, a dangerous sound in his voice. Harry, opening his mouth to say something, shut it again and felt the tingling of the spell settle over him. A few charms in his robes that made them soft and colorful stopped functioning. The watch Mrs. Weasley had given him for his seventeenth birthday suddenly felt a bit heavier. But no other spells ended, because Harry didn't have any other spells clinging to him.

Draco tried several other spells, which sounded as if they hurt his throat. Harry sat patiently through each one, though the last hurt as if sand stung his skin and he couldn't help giving Draco an irritated look. As though that were some sort of signal, Draco stood very straight, dropped his wand on the floor, and opened the vial.

"I have to put three drops of Veritaserum on your tongue," he announced.

"Yes, I know," Harry said. "Snape was very insistent on us knowing about that, even though we never learned to brew it."

Draco stared at him, then shook his head, muttered something about Veritaserum and idiots at Hogwarts, and squeezed out the drops. Harry stuck out his tongue and kept it from contact with Draco's fingers, much as he was tempted to do otherwise so that he could see what Draco tasted like. That would count as pressure.

A silvery haze spread over his mind, and he barely heard the questions Draco was asking. They were all about the other Harry and alternate universes and whether Harry really wanted to help him. Harry went dreamily along with it, and was glad he'd come to a decision already when he heard his dazed, unembarrassed voice explaining that he would wait and see what happened. Maybe he would fall in love with Draco, maybe he wouldn't, but either way it really had to be Draco's choice about falling in love with him.

The crack of glass roused him from his daze, and he blinked. Draco had dropped the vial on the floor as he edged away from Harry. Now he stood, back against the door and arms spread across it, eyes wide as moons.

"What's the matter?" Harry asked, as gently as he could when his tongue felt huge against his teeth.

"You can't be real," Draco whispered. "I must have made a mistake—I must have brewed the Veritaserum wrong—" And then he stopped and shook his head. "But I didn't brew this," he said then, as if that were a mystery instead of a memory.

"I told you that I was telling the truth." Harry hoped that he didn't sound too smug. He'd been patient because this was obviously something that Draco needed to do, but the ropes hurt and taking Veritaserum and having spells fired at him wasn't the easiest thing in the world. He flexed his shoulders. "Do you think you can let me out of these now?"

Draco's wand trembled, but he managed to move it, and the ropes around Harry collapsed. He stood up and stretched, clumsily. Then he asked, "Do you need to rest for a while?"

"Get _out!_" Draco's voice soared into a hysterical yell.

Harry looked carefully at him. He wondered if he could reason—

But Draco's face was flushed, with one spot of red in each white cheek, and his hands shook, and he had snatched up his wand again and was aiming it. He really didn't look amenable to reason at the moment.

"I'll see you later," Harry said, resolving to make that come true if Draco couldn't, and then turned and stumbled out of the room. He'd summon a house-elf to guide him to the front doors of the Manor, right after he Summoned his wand.

*

Draco held his hands over his face and took deep breaths. It was still long moments before he could stop shaking, even when Ipsy came to tell him that Potter had most definitely left the house.

The Veritaserum and the spells and the lack of transformation despite two hours, more than enough time for the Polyjuice to wear off, all pointed to one thing. The story Potter had told Draco was true, and there were two of that particular maddening madman in the world now.

That meant that the rest of what he had said was true, too, since Draco had taken care to ask about that. He felt sympathy for Draco. It might be on the verge of love. Potter was trying to think about that without having the words, and so he rambled as much as anyone _could _ramble under Veritaserum.

There was someone in the world who cared about him again.

After a year and a half of grief, and sometimes gloomy satisfaction, that no one would ever understand him again, that he was suffering under a sorrow that separated him from the rest of the world for eternity, he had discovered someone who would make the effort to understand, and do a damn good job of it, too.

Draco had not realized how unprepared he was to emerge from his private emotions and start sharing them again.

*

Harry smiled grimly as he stepped through the other Harry's wards. The one nice thing about dealing with a version of yourself from another universe was that the wards set up for his benefit would be convinced you _were _him, and let you in despite all his attempts to keep you out.

The other Harry, as usual, was face-down on his couch, in a particularly dramatic fashion this time, with his shoulders shaking. He rolled over and sat up, staring, as Harry bulled his way in. Of course, he flushed and surged to his feet.

"Oh, were you able to take enough time away from seducing Draco to rub my face in the fact that I've failed?" he snapped. Harry had never known that his face could look so miserably angry, his eyes squinted and his mouth pouting. "How long did it take you to work your way into Draco's bed, and what did it cost? Did you promise him an autograph?"

It was as if Harry's body and his emotions had agreed on what to do next, without consulting his brain at all. His backhand hit the other Harry hard enough to make him reel into the wall. Harry strode up after him, and, mostly to restrain himself, cast a net of spells and invisible barriers around the other Harry that should keep him from moving.

"Do you realize," he asked conversationally, when he thought he had calmed down enough five minutes later, "that you just called the man you claim to love a whore?"

"There's no other way that you could have seduced him that fast!" The other Harry lunged forwards and bounced from the barriers, reeling into the wall again. Harry heard a nasty crack as his head connected and forced himself to ignore it. If the other Harry had been honest with him from the beginning, this could all have been avoided. "I must have been mistaken. He wouldn't be right for me. No one who would sleep with someone he barely knows could be."

"As a matter of fact, we haven't slept together yet." He hated telling the other Harry even that much, but Harry couldn't stand here and let him slander Draco without responding. "We might never. That doesn't mean you _will_ sleep with him. It doesn't mean that he would have fallen for you if I was never here. Especially since you don't have the courage or the common sense to fucking _talk _to him." By the end of that little speech, Harry's voice had risen, and he didn't try to control it. He was infuriated on Draco's behalf, and the other Harry's flushed face and stupid words called forth an answering anger from him, and maybe if he'd confronted the other Harry like this from the beginning, there wouldn't have been such a stupid runaround.

"You have no idea what it was like—"

"What happened?" Harry demanded, in a tone that made the other Harry stop speaking in mid-rant. He blinked like a befuddled toad, and Harry rampaged ahead, letting the first words he thought of flow off his tongue. "What made you into this—this sneaking, stupid, wailing, whinging _imbecile? _I'm embarrassed to think I share a name with you! You're an idiot, and—"

"I lost my place, and I couldn't _find it again!_"

The sudden outburst snapped Harry free from his own rage, at least. He was glad. He hadn't found it comfortable to be that angry, with no safe way of taking out the emotion. He folded his hands together behind his back and glared at his other self.

"That's not an answer," he said. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that after I defeated Voldemort, there was nothing left." The other Harry was speaking rapidly, and Harry had the impression that he was glad to be talking about this at last; his words spilled out like pus from an infected wound. "I had no place in the world anymore. I wasn't a hero, or I was a hero who did what I was supposed to, and that was the end of it. I didn't have a hand to wield me anymore. Dumbledore was gone, and he didn't turn out to be as perfect as I thought he was. Snape was dead, and I never got to apologize. I owed life-debts and was owed them, and Ron and Hermione were moving forwards with their romance, and I tried with Ginny but I couldn't, and there was nothing the same and no place for me anymore."

He leaned forwards, his hands clenched now around the bars of the main spell that kept him trapped. "I flew to Hogwarts on my broom and went up to the top of the Astronomy Tower. I almost jumped. Did you know that? Do you have any idea what it's like, to contemplate suicide because you know that no one would miss you, just the idea of you?"

Harry started.

As a matter of fact, he knew exactly what it was like, because he had taken his broom outside the Burrow one evening soon after the war, the evening he realized he would never love Ginny the way he wanted to, and sat on it, wondering if he should fly to Hogwarts. The thought of the Astronomy Tower was taking shape in the back of his mind, but he had barely admitted that to himself.

But he'd never done it. He'd thought of Ron and Hermione and the rest of the Weasleys, and Snape and Dumbledore and Sirius and his parents who had died for him, and even the people like the Malfoys who might be prosecuted worse than they would if he were gone. He thought of what his best friends' faces would look like when they realized he had killed himself.

He'd climbed down from the broom, shaken and sobered by the realization of how far his self-pity extended, and then gone back into the Burrow and lain down in his bed in Ron's room. In the comforting company of Ron's snores, he'd sorted through his choices and decided that he needed to get help. No matter how hard it was to ask for that help and then go through with it, it had to be less hard than leaving his friends behind to grieve for him forever.

_That has to have been what changed us into two different people, the event that started the cascade and the fracturing of the universes. _

"I know what that's like," Harry said in a voice without much inflection, because to try and explain all his emotions would have taken hours and he didn't think the other Harry would understand them anyway. "What did you do after that?"

The other Harry spent some time staring at him, during which his face became a normal color again, and then he offered a mocking bow. "What do you think I did? In fact, precisely what you think already. I thought of the connections holding me to life. One was the life-debts that Draco owed me. I determined to do what I could to stay alive, if only to see him fulfill those."

His voice softened. "And then, as I watched him, I fell in love with him. I realized that he was exactly what I needed to bring me back to myself, because he could teach me how to love life again. He didn't have much of a life himself in the shadow of the war and his parents' suicides. His career isn't serious. He has _time _for me, in the way my friends don't, because they're so busy living already." His voice grew corrosive towards the end.

Harry closed his eyes and said nothing. He felt sick. There were too many things wrong with what the other Harry had just said.

_He saw Draco as a tool to serve him, no more. _

_He never thought about Draco's own suffering and sorrow. _

_He chose to do all this, to try to ruin someone else's peace and privacy, because he was too much of a coward to ask for help._

And all of that told him what must have happened, the event that he thought was central to the way the other Harry related to Draco but had been missing.

"You tried to force him to fulfill the life-debts, didn't you?" he whispered. "You demanded something impossible of him, and told him that he would pay with his life if he didn't comply. Then he probably did the research and found out that the life-debts _are _heavy, but can only be fulfilled if the person who owes them gives free consent. I can't think of much else that would make Draco despise someone the way he despises you." He shook his head and finally managed to open his eyes and look at the other Harry. "No wonder he didn't believe you when you claimed to love him later."

"I _do _love him," the other Harry said hastily. "Now. I didn't when I first tried to force him, no. But now I do." Then he paused and gave Harry a glance that was far too keen. "And you must have considered trying to force your world's Draco. I don't think you could have guessed the truth so quickly if the thought hadn't passed through _your _head, too."

"It did," Harry said softly, "as a means of getting vengeance on the Malfoy in my universe. And it was one of the things that made me decide I should get help, because I was contemplating ruining someone's life—especially if he didn't think to do the research—for a little petty vengeance."

"That's the difference between us," the other Harry interrupted quickly. "For you, it would have been petty. For me, it's a necessity."

Harry shook his head. "You could have gone to Mind-Healers the same way I did. Perhaps our two universes would even have been the same if you had."

"Not every version of us has your strength," the other Harry whispered. "I've peered into universes that would shock you and seen crimes committed by people with the name and face of Harry Potter that would chill your soul."

"I'm sure you have," Harry said. "That doesn't mean you need to commit them yourself."

He spent some time considering the other Harry, and his mingled feelings of disgust and pity did not lessen. The other Harry need not have turned out this way. He could have controlled himself. He could have helped himself.

And yet…

Should Draco also have been able to control and help himself? Should he have had to overcome his immense grief on his own, without help?

Another thought whispered and drifted through Harry's mind like fog, as well.

_He could have been me. It almost was. _

He banished the spells that caged the other Harry. Then he shook his head and turned away. "I'm going back to Draco."

The other Harry said in a ragged voice, "Have you considered that this universe isn't yours, and this Draco isn't yours, and that you'll have to go home sooner or later?"

"Of course I've considered it," Harry said, and then walked out of the house before the other Harry could say anything else.

As he prepared to Apparate back to the Manor and talk to Draco, he sighed. He had once thought that healing himself, and so gaining the strength to spare to help other people, was enough. It didn't appear to be now.


	7. Learning to Help

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Learning to Help_

Draco thought about not answering the door when he realized that Potter had come back. He was only knocking, not leaning on the wards with his magic. Draco had the perfect excuse for curling back up in his bed and going to sleep.

Except that he was tired of pretending to sleep, and also of lying still and staring up at the ceiling, which was his usual method of dealing with depression. He flung the covers back, gripped his wand, and sent his mind speeding along the network of wards towards the front doors.

Potter seemed to be the same Potter. When he realized Draco didn't intend to answer the door, he stepped back, conjured himself a chair, and sat down. But this time, he ripped his fingers through his hair and muttered savagely to himself. Draco had no spells that would let him hear what someone was saying near his doors, as opposed to seeing what they were doing. He violently wished, at that particular moment, that he did.

_Something must have gone wrong when he went to confront the Potter I know. _

Draco bit his lip. He wished he could stop caring. He wished he could stop thinking about what his life might be like if Potter kept his promises and _really _helped Draco to bear his grief and emerge from his house.

But he couldn't stop doing either, and he had grown tired of self-deception even before Potter showed up at his door.

He snapped his consciousness fully back to his body, and dressed, darting nervous glances at the mirror. He had no idea how Potter would react to the sight of him. He had been patient and calm so far, but he seemed upset now, and it _could _be that he was upset about how Draco had treated him the last time they'd seen each other.

At the same time, what else could he have done? He had to decide if he could trust Potter or not, and there were so many magical ways of fooling someone that he had needed to investigate them all.

_Or only the Veritaserum. That would have forced him to tell you right away if he was on Polyjuice or using glamours to disguise his face. _

Draco pushed his own thoughts away. He didn't want to think about that right now. In fact, he was pretty bloody tired of thinking altogether, of the endless questions that chased themselves through his head and his endless doubts where Potter was concerned. When he was with Potter, he felt more relaxed and happy than he had in a long time. At a distance from him, he couldn't help deciding that the happiness was a delusion and that nothing was ever going to rescue him.

_I know which way I prefer to feel._

It was terrifying to embrace something that might not last simply because it made him feel good, but Draco couldn't see that immuring himself in his house and hanging suspended in the midst of paralyzing doubts forever was a better choice.

*

Harry scrubbed his fingers through his hair, in the hopes that irritating his scalp would make his thoughts leap faster and thus cause them to make more sense. So far, it wasn't helping, but he kept hoping that it would. He scratched faster.

The first flush of his anger was gone, and so he had to wonder if he should do something to help the other Harry.

He wanted to. The very thought that he could have become that person made him feel sick and faint, and he did pity the other Harry from the bottom of his heart. As he had told Draco, pity wasn't the best emotion to begin the process of helping someone else with, but sometimes it was the only thing possible.

But a truth the Mind-Healers had drummed into his head when he was going to St. Mungo's for treatment also recurred to him: _You cannot help someone who absolutely does not want to be helped. That is the reason we accept only the willing. We won't be responsible for someone who starts out wanting to remain exactly the same, fails the tests on purpose, and then blames us. _

The other Harry certainly didn't act like someone who wanted to be helped, and Harry didn't know of any successful case where a person had been dragged into healing kicking and screaming. Even worse, he wasn't an experienced Mind-Healer, who _might _be able to manage it.

"Potter?"

_And for now, it's best to concentrate on the person that you can help. _Harry took a deep breath and pushed his hair out of his eyes, then stood up with a faint smile for Draco. He was leaning against his front door, brow wrinkled as if he didn't know whether or not he should interrupt Harry's private mourning. "Hullo," he said. "I know that I didn't stay away as long as I thought I would."

"I was unaware that there was a length of time agreed upon," Draco murmured. He hesitated, then stepped out of the door and walked towards Harry. His hair was rumpled, as though he'd spent some time in bed. It reminded Harry of the first day he'd come to the house, and he smiled. Draco returned the smile tentatively. "What happened? Where did you go?"

"To see the other version of myself and try to learn what he'd done to you," Harry answered. "And what made him such a right wanker in the first place."

"Did you learn?" Draco had come to a halt and stuck his hands in his pockets. His shoulders were hunched, as if he believed that he was about to be rejected in favor of the other Harry.

"I did," Harry said. "And I've decided that it's nothing I can help him with right now." He walked straight up to Draco, hesitated a moment when an indescribable shadow flickered across his face, and then reached boldly for his right hand. "I'd like to help you instead."

Draco licked his lips, and said, "I don't know how to do this. I haven't had any friends since my parents died and Gregory rejected me. I'll make a right hash of it." His left hand opened and then relaxed. His right one twitched spasmodically in Harry's hold, as if he were trying to reach out and grasp an invisible rope that would haul him out of deep water.

"I'll do what I can to keep you from making a right hash of it, then." Harry smiled at him. "And Gregory? Gregory Goyle?"

Draco tried to withdraw, but Harry held on to his hand and forced it open again when it almost clenched into a fist. After he had lavished attention to Draco's palm and fingers in silence for perhaps five minutes, Draco closed his eyes and let out a loud, shuddering breath. "Yes. He blamed me for leaving Vincent behind in the Fiendfyre. But I didn't," he added, loudly, as if to convince a doubting audience. "I would _never _do that. I didn't have the time to grab him when you—when Potter snatched me up. But Gregory didn't believe that. He claimed that he saw, and I had plenty of time. I didn't save him because of pure selfishness and jealousy, he says."

"That's the place to start, then." Harry kept his voice soft and low, watching as Draco relaxed. "Why don't we go talk to Goyle and explain that you'd like his friendship again? It sounds like his rejection really hurt you."

Draco's face hardened. "I did try to talk to him," he said shortly. "I told you, he rejected me. When he met my words with curses, I didn't see the point of trying."

Harry winced, thinking of the way he had given up on the other Harry without even curses. _But that's only for a while and only until you see some way of helping him, _he told himself firmly. _Stop thinking about it. If you blame yourself for it completely, then you exonerate him completely, and I think he's already had enough versions of himself doing that. _"I'm with you this time," he said. "We'll talk to him." Draco gave a little pull on the hand that Harry held, but didn't complain verbally. Harry smiled at him. "What can it hurt?"

"My skin?" Draco asked in a flat tone, but when Harry pressed him for the Apparition coordinates to the Goyle home, he gave them without hesitation. Harry wrapped an arm around Draco's shoulders and drew him close for a Side-Along Apparition.

Just having Draco this close made Harry feel warm and contented. And, more than that, _anchored. _The goal he'd been seeking for the last two years without being able to define it was in sight now. He wanted to help people with their mental health. He thought the same thing would continue being true even when he went back to his own universe.

But for the moment, he wanted to help _Draco._ And Draco was helping him as well, arousing his passion and stopping his drifting.

With a smile, Harry drew his wand, closed his eyes, concentrated, and made them vanish.

*

Draco looked up at the Goyles' massive house and barely managed to restrain a shiver. It looked like it was made out of one huge boulder. Unlike the Malfoy ancestors, who loved marble, the Goyle ones had favored granite. Draco eyed the huge arched doorway with resignation and remembered with burning clarity the words Gregory had hurled at him the last time he came here.

_Selfish. Jealous. _

Neither of those was true, but the more Draco argued, the more certain Greg had become. And Draco couldn't stand forever outside his house pleading and waving his hands, not when he had his own pride to salvage and his own life to live. He felt his nostrils flare, and glanced sideways at Potter. "You're sure this is such a good idea?" he muttered.

"Yes." Potter had his head lifted, his bright eyes darting across the façade of the house. What he noticed about it, Draco had no idea—only that he would take those facts and fit them somehow into his strange tilted world-view that was so hard to second-guess. "I know a lot of people have a dread of these confrontations, of trying to repair mistakes and misunderstandings." He turned his head and gave Draco an astonishingly sweet smile. "I've found that the reality is never as horrible as the anticipation. Come on." And he went striding up the long, gray path that wound between tangled green walls of hedge to the doors.

Draco shuddered and followed. He kept a careful eye on the hedges. The last time he was here, Gregory had turned them into weapons—swords, tridents, knives—and set them on him. He still bore a few scars on his shoulders and chest from them.

_Right next to the scars Potter gave you in sixth year. _

Draco studied the man walking ahead of him and wondered if he had given those same scars to his version of Draco Malfoy. According to what he had said under the Veritaserum, their two universes had been one recently, so he must have. Draco bit his lips and tried to decide how he felt about an injury to a version of himself—but to a version of himself he had never met.

Oblivious to his insecurity, Potter reached the doors. He studied them for a moment, then grinned. He drew his wand. Draco braced himself for Potter to start drawing flowers and bright sparkly letters on Gregory's doors the way he had on Draco's, but instead, he whipped his wand in a flourish over his head and then brought it down in a slashing motion.

A gap appeared between the doors, destroying their perfect symmetry. At once, wards sprang into motion, crying out and flickering on and off like a maelstrom of yellow and pink light. Draco stared. Such a simple spell shouldn't have set off that many alarms. He knew the Goyles were proud of their home, but really, spoiling its _symmetry _was enough to get their attention?

"I recognized some of the wards they were using," Potter said, grinning wildly when he saw Draco looking at him. "Beauty wards. They're designed to alert the house-elves whenever dirt builds up in a certain area or a wound occurs to the house." He shrugged modestly. "I thought doing something like this would draw their attention and help to convince your friend of our non-hostile intent. After all, I could have used a much more powerful spell that would have inflicted real damage."

Draco chose to shake his head. "I don't think Gregory will be convinced that I'm not hostile no matter what you do," he muttered.

"Let's just see, shall we?" Potter asked, as the doors swung open and two house-elves sprang outside to examine the gap and decide what to do about it.

When they saw Draco and Potter, they paused and stared, confounded. The one on the right pulled on his ears and said, "Master Malfoy is not being welcome here. Master Goyle _said._" He looked dolefully at Potter. "And Master Harry Potter is not being a usual guest, and we has no orders about him. Oh dear, oh dear."

"If you'd just tell Gregory Goyle that we'd like to speak to him," Potter said cheerfully.

"Master Malfoy must be waiting off the grounds," said the elf, with a low bow and a flapping of its fingers at the same time.

"But he's with me, and you said that you had no orders concerning me," said Potter. "Together, we make a unit you don't have any orders about either. _Both _of us are waiting on the grounds. Go ask Gregory Goyle if he'll speak to us. The unit of Draco and Harry," he added, with a relish that made Draco look at him speculatively.

For long moments, the house-elf tried to work this out. His companion was busy smoothing the gap by adjusting the way the doors hung from their hinges, using almost imperceptible bursts of magic. The other elf banged his head on the doors, tugged on his ears again, and then said, in a deep, doleful tone, "Whimsy will ask."

"Thank you, Whimsy." Potter nodded as if the elf were doing him a courtesy instead of acting under orders before Whimsy disappeared. Then he glanced around and up at the house and gave a theatrical shiver. "Gloomy place, isn't it?"

"The Goyles have always been like that," Draco muttered. He hesitated, then stepped up to Potter. "Listen, if Gregory comes out and starts flinging curses, then you can leave. There's no reason for both of us to risk our skins."

Potter stared at him, his mouth open. Draco stared back in some frustration. _I've finally managed to surprise him, and as usual, I have no notion of how I did it._

"I'm going to pretend you didn't say that," Potter said at last, in a grave tone, "because it's so very stupid."

"But _why_?" Draco shook his head and stopped himself from running his hand through his hair just in time. He didn't want to appear disheveled in front of Gregory. Too much out of the ordinary, and he was likely to decide that this was a trick. "Even if you want to help me, that doesn't include taking a wound for me."

"Of course it does," Potter said, blinking at him. "The Mind-Healers I went to were ready to restrain me if necessary, and they could have been hurt doing that. Some of them dueled with me to relieve my tension. That could have hurt them. A few provoked me to magical rages because they thought I needed to learn how to control my temper and learn the difference between something worth getting angry over and something stupid that I allowed myself to snap apart over without sufficient provocation. They could have been hurt doing that. I want to _help_ you, Draco, and that doesn't include running away the moment it might get a little hard."

Draco didn't get the chance to retort—and he wasn't sure which of the many thoughts swirling through his head he would have picked to say, anyway—because the doors opened and Gregory stepped out onto the front stoop and stared at them mistrustfully.

Draco's heart tightened. He hadn't thought about the way that two years would have changed Gregory, but of course they had. He was taller now, with a more looming presence than Draco remembered his own father having. He had long dark hair that he wore tied back with a single leather thong, the way that some of the older Death Eaters had worn it. His eyes were dark and hard, with what looked like a glazed sheen of painful experience. His hands formed into fists as he watched them; Draco noticed scars and burn marks and calluses on those hands that hadn't been present two years ago.

_I've missed him._

Maybe Gregory and Vince had never been Draco's best friends in the ways that Granger and Weasley were Potter's best friends, but they had still come with on him expeditions to steal food from the kitchens, to play pranks, to make up secret jokes that the rest of Slytherin would go mad trying to figure out. They had practiced spells with him. Draco had lost count of the number of times he had explained Potions to them. That was important. Such things made a bond between people.

Death had severed the bond in one direction. Draco hadn't realized until this moment how much he hadn't wanted choice to sever it in the other.

He stepped forwards, clearing his throat awkwardly. "Hullo, Gregory," he said. "I was wondering if I could talk to you."

Gregory opened his mouth, and then glared at Potter and shut it again. "Not in front of _him_," he said. "What are you doing, flaunting the way you survived at me? No. We're going to go behind the house and talk."

Potter stirred. Draco reached out, put a hand on his arm, and shook his head. "If he wanted to murder me, then he would do it in front of you," he said, hoping as he spoke that he was correct and Gregory hadn't changed _that _much. "I'll be fine. This is something I need to do on my own."

Potter looked at him with wide, earnest eyes when he said those last words, and Draco tried to muster up a smile that might convince him. Potter stared at him for a time that seemed to stretch until Draco could imagine Gregory giving up and going back into the house. Then Potter nodded and clapped him on the shoulder.

"I think there are things that everyone has to face by themselves," he said. "The Mind-Healers who helped me knew where to stop, and that's the thing I'm still learning." He gave Draco a smile, Gregory a narrow considering look, and the back of his own head a slap, as if to scold himself for inappropriate thoughts. Then he turned away and went to look more closely at a few of the hedges they'd passed on their way to the front door.

Draco licked his lips, told himself to stop breathing so fast, and then followed Gregory around the side of the house. It took them some minutes of walking to accomplish that, the manor was so large. Then he turned to face Gregory, ready for anything: harsh words, a punch, a curse.

He wasn't ready for the way that Gregory said simply, "Thanks for coming back," and held out his hand.

Draco blinked at it, then at Gregory's face. He saw those hard eyes start to narrow, as if he thought that Draco might be rejecting him again. Draco promptly reached out and clasped his friend's hand, though he would have liked to cast a few charms that would detect curses first. Gregory had been good at embedding curses into his skin once upon a time, one of the few pieces of Dark magic that he showed a talent for.

"I would have come back a long time ago," he said. "But I was hurt, and I thought I'd probably hurt you further if I did."

Gregory shook his head. "Vince—he died, and he should have lived. But I realized after a while that I had to blame myself for surviving, too, if I was going to blame you. I was just angry, and upset, and it seemed like you were the one with the better life." He paused reflectively, scratching the back of his neck. "I realized when I heard about your parents that that wasn't true."

Draco gave a shallow nod. "Thanks." He still thought he would disgrace himself if he talked about his parents' suicide, so he wasn't going to. "It sounds like we were both waiting for the other person to move first, huh?"

"Yeah." Gregory gave him a small smile. "I wasn't angry after a few months, like I said, but I don't think I could ever have come to you. It was just too _much_, you know?"

Draco nodded again. Gregory's blunt words were a better summary of what had happened between them, and why Draco hadn't sought out his friend again, than any of the more complicated words Draco had come up with. "I know. So…" He hesitated, afraid of looking stupid again, and then began, "What have you been doing with yourself?"

Gregory turned to stroll across the lawn towards a clump of yew trees, bringing Draco with him. "Designing brooms," he said. "I've made one that's going to give the Beaters lots of speed and force, if I can get it off the ground…"

Little by little, Draco relaxed and began to listen, still half-unable to believe that he was walking here, with one of the people he had considered a friend since he was a child, and the prospect of recovering more of his life beyond that.

_Maybe. I think—I think I could start doing it by myself, but it would be easier if Potter was with me and supported me. _

_I hope he stays._

*

Harry took a deep breath and leaned back against the side of the manor house. He'd used a Mirror Charm to peer around the house and make sure that Goyle wasn't hurting Draco. It was one thing to let someone face hurtful words alone, as more than one Mind-Healer had told him, and another to let them face physical assault.

But it had begun. Draco had only taken one step, but it was an important one. He had emerged from his Manor, where he seemed to huddle most of the time like a snail inside its shell, and got one of his friends back. They would probably need to fumble around a bit before they attained an easy friendship again. Harry didn't think that was necessarily a bad thing. Draco would distrust an experience that didn't have at least a bit of pain intermingled.

Harry smiled. Then he sighed.

_I'm glad that he has a friend back. It will help sustain him when I have to leave. And I'll have to._

So far as he knew, there was no physical limit on the amount of time that two versions of one person could stay in the same universe; the other Harry had seemed willing for him to take as long to woo Draco as he needed. But there was a limit on the time the other Harry would remain willing to send him home, and there was a limit on the time that Harry's staying here would be healthy for Draco. He didn't want Draco to become _too_ dependent on him, the way Harry had almost become on Healer Ellison. He would need to stand on his own two feet and take control of his own life.

_Another fortnight, maybe, or a month. That should give me the time to start both Draco and the other Harry on a path of healing. I can't do everything for them, but I can introduce them to reality. _He rolled his eyes. _Or, in the case of the other Harry, smash his head into reality until he consents to see it. _

_And then I can go home, to my own friends, who must be frantic. _

_And if I fall in love with Draco in the meantime…_

Harry squared his shoulders. If that happened, he would just have to live with it. He was strong enough now to live with a lot of wounds.

Helping Draco was more important than deserting him too early because Harry was worried about falling in love with him.


	8. Two Weeks and Two Harrys

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight—Two Weeks and Two Harrys_

"Where are you going?"

Draco didn't like the tone that his own voice had taken on: jealous, sharp, searching, as though he suspected Potter of running off to his own universe that very moment. But he hadn't expected to walk around a corner into the breakfast room and see Potter packing the trunk of clothes that the house-elves had altered to fit him.

Potter glanced up at him with a small smile. "I'll be taking a journey this afternoon, to confront the other Harry again," he answered. "I just can't leave him like that. He deserves some compassion. Or at least someone to kick him back into shape," he muttered. Draco wasn't sure that he had been meant to hear that last part.

"Even if he hurt _me_?" Draco braced himself; he felt as if he were hurling himself over a high cliff with those words. He didn't want to sound needy. He didn't want to sound as if he might _require _someone else's presence to climb out of his self-pity. But if he denied those things, Potter would assume they were true anyway. It was simpler to admit that he didn't want Potter to help the version of himself Draco was most familiar with.

Potter shut the lid of the trunk and leaned against the table, his eyes intent on Draco's face. "I felt like that, too," he said quietly. "When I first went to confront him three days ago, he insulted you, and I hit him."

Draco stared. He wanted to say something, but his lips were dry and his breath seemed to have deserted him. No one else had fought for him in so long that his mind had been wiped blank and he stood there staring, subject to emotions instead of words.

"Yeah, I know," Potter said, swiping his hand through his hair and ducking his head in what looked like embarrassment. He must have interpreted Draco's stare in a different way. "It was stupid of me. So I'm going back to him, and I'll try to persuade him to accept my help. If I can tell him that none of what he thinks about me is true—"

"So you didn't intend to steal me from him?" Draco broke in. He was dizzy with confidence now that he knew what Potter had done for his sake, and that gave him the courage to speak. "Not that he has a right to use that word, since he never had a claim to me in the first place, but you don't want him to woo me?"

Potter blinked and shifted his weight carefully from leg to leg like someone bracing for a duel. "That's not…I told you that it was possible for me to fall in love with you, Draco. That doesn't mean it'll happen."

"I asked you a different question than that," Draco pointed out. He gloried in the feelings flooding through his body. For the first time since his parents' suicide, he felt like _himself_, the Draco Malfoy who had walked past other people with his nose in the air because he _knew _that he was better than they were. "Do you want him to court me? Are you trying to heal him because you think that I might accept him in the future? What would you do if I did?"

Potter scowled at him. Draco wanted to laugh. The scowl didn't frighten him. Really, it was good to see that Potter wasn't a saint, even in a different universe than his own, and still had some human emotions. "I would stand back, of course," he said. "Because your choice is your own, and no one should interfere with it. God knows enough people have tried to do that already."

Draco sighed. _No, he's not perfect, but his principles might end up making a martyr of him anyway. _"All right. That's what you would do. Now, what would you _feel_?"

He waited. Potter scuffed a foot on the floor, and cleared his throat, and shook his hair into his eyes as if he thought that could somehow get him out of answering Draco. Draco waited with his arms folded and his eyebrows raised. _Things would be much simpler if he would stop trying to run away from a simple question._

"I don't see that it would matter," Potter said at last, helplessly. "How could it? I wouldn't interfere with your choices. I wouldn't push you to act or feel a different way because of how I felt."

"Yes, yes, we've established that you're noble beyond anyone's reasonable expectations." Draco waved his hand to dismiss the words that he thought Potter was only blowing as smoke to protect himself. "Now, imagine that you didn't have to exercise that nobility. Or perhaps you're temporarily impaired. You're drunk, say. What would you do if you followed your desires instead of your principles?"

Potter closed his eyes, sighed, and stroked his forehead. Draco watched him without pity. He'd relentlessly pushed Draco to face his grief and step out of the house. Now, Draco was the one who wanted him to admit certain simple things. It didn't need to be this traumatic for him. If he would only _answer…_

"I would say that I don't want him dating you," Potter admitted in a soft voice. "Because—for so many reasons. Because of my own desires and because I don't think he would be good for you." Then he snapped his eyes open as though he had just confessed to wanting to have sex with dogs, and added hastily. "But that wouldn't change the fact that it would still be your own choice. Always. I would never try to interfere if you were happy."

Draco smiled slightly. "Then go and visit the other Potter after you've eaten," he said. "Though you never did explain why you were packing."

Potter gave him a cautious smile and sat down on the other side of the table. "Because I thought you might want me out of the house after I told you where I was going."

Draco shook his head, sighed, and said, "Sometimes you don't understand me at all." And then he turned to the house-elf who appeared beside the table with the first plate so that he might collect it and hand it across the table to Potter.

Throughout breakfast, Potter surveyed him with a cautious expression. Draco kept his attention on his food and his smile present but enigmatic, and talked entirely of other things than Potter's upcoming departure from the Manor.

_Intrigue him, _said his mother's voice in his head, giving him advice about flirting. _That way, he will always be fascinated enough to come back. _

Not until after Potter had left, with many a glance over his shoulder at Draco, did Draco realize that he had heard his mother's voice without pain for the first time since her death.

*

Harry sighed and settled down on the conjured chair in front of the other Harry's door again. He'd come here once for a day for four days now, and each time the wards—which had been adjusted so that Harry himself couldn't get through them—remained strong and impervious, without a sign of flickering. Harry had tried knocking with his magic, knocking with his fist, and charming obscene messages to appear on the windows, where they should infuriate the other Harry into at least looking out. He'd called the other Harry's name and explained things in a level, reasonable voice that he had no doubt his other self could overhear if he wanted to.

Nothing had happened.

_You don't want to try more annoying tactics, even though you know you could, because you don't really want to convince him, _his conscience accused him. _You were willing to do anything to get Draco to come out of the Manor. Why aren't you willing to do anything here? _

Harry sighed again. He wanted the other Harry to be a villain. He wanted to be justified in going away and ignoring him. He didn't know how much time he had left with Draco; to spend hours talking to a door and walls that showed no signs of opening was a waste.

That last thought was the one that made him most uncomfortable, because it didn't augur well for his chances of escaping from this universe with his heart free.

_Worry more about Draco than about yourself, _he thought. _And the other Harry. _

A new idea came to him. Maybe acting like a Mind-Healer with Draco worked, because he hadn't had the chance to associate with someone who would listen to him instead of despising his words or hearing only what they wanted to hear. But the other Harry had specifically refused the help of Mind-Healers. Harry should start with a confession of his own frailties and vulnerabilities, and see if that attracted any empathy from the other Harry.

"Do you know how hard therapy was?" he asked the silent house. "I would have stopped going if someone had explained to me at the beginning how difficult it would be. And there were plenty of times when I wanted to give up. Luckily, I could stumble through each day individually instead and tell myself that it would get better tomorrow. Sometimes that was the truth.

"I moved from Healer to Healer, because no single one of them could help me with all my problems. I had trouble with my temper, and inappropriate reactions to the grief of other people, and nightmares, and paranoia from all those years of Voldemort hunting me, and those suicidal feelings you told me that you had, too. I struggled with all of them, and sometimes one was the worst problem and sometimes another one was. When Healer Ellison first told me that I needed help for more things than just grief, I broke down in tears. I didn't want to _hear _that. I wanted a simple solution and to end the therapy in a few months.

"It was hard, being open all the time, trying to listen to what they told me instead of only plucking out certain relevant details and putting my own interpretation on them." Harry couldn't help glancing at the house when he said that, because he thought that, except for the temptation to hurt Draco because he could, was the other Harry's major problem. "I still don't manage it now, because I'm not perfect. But at least now I know I can listen and hear other people's voices, that they don't need to hear mine all the time. At least I don't always get angry or start grieving when I hear about someone else's anger or grief."

He paused. The door stayed shut.

Harry rose to his feet. "I think I've done enough for today," he told the house. "I hope that you consider what I've said." He paused, wondering if he should stay after all, but as he had just told the other Harry, he wasn't perfect and didn't want to torment himself by giving up _more _time to someone who was so utterly unresponsive.

_He deserves help, but I deserve some things, too, _Harry thought as he Apparated back to Malfoy Manor.

*

Draco could not remember the last time he had been so happy.

Potter—and Draco thought he might begin to start calling him "Harry" in his head soon, if not aloud—was with him every day, and those days flowed like water. Potter walked with him in the garden, and ate meals with him, and shared books, often asking Draco to explain some wizarding term in the books that he'd never heard of. He read history flat on his back, fairy tales lying on his stomach with his feet kicking behind him, and a pompous, absurd novel that he couldn't finish for laughing with his head tilted to the side and his eyes screwed up dubiously.

Gregory came over more than once, and Potter watched them play Quidditch. He didn't volunteer to play himself at first, seeming to understand what the sight of him on a broom might do to the two people who had seen him rescue Draco from the Fiendfyre.

Except that this wasn't the Potter who had rescued Draco from the Fiendfyre—but Gregory didn't know that. Draco had explained that Potter had redeemed himself, since trying to explain the alternative universes and two versions of Potter to anyone who hadn't seen the evidence as he had held no appeal. Gregory had never known the details of how Potter made himself obnoxious to Draco, so he accepted the idea easily.

Meanwhile, Draco watched Potter-Harry covertly and wished he _had _been the one who had rescued him from the Fiendfyre. It would have been pleasant to owe life-debts to someone like that, and if they were part of the same universe, then Draco need never fear losing him.

Finally, he handed his own broom to Potter-Harry one day and said, "I know perfectly well that you love flying. Unless that's a trait that the two of you happen not to share."

Potter gave him a reserved smile and shook his head. "I think our universes would have to be considerably more unalike to produce a Harry Potter who didn't love to fly."

"Then why don't you?" Draco pressed the broom forwards until Potter's palm brushed the smooth wood. "I know that I haven't misjudged that yearning expression on your face all the times you've watched Gregory and me."

"I thought it might remind you of unpleasant memories." Potter's hand clutched the smooth wood of the broom handle almost convulsively, and he swallowed. "Besides, _you're _the professional Quidditch player. I didn't want you to feel like I was challenging you."

"But you want to fly with me anyway," Draco said, pitching his voice as low as he could get it without sounding ridiculous. Potter gave him a look out of glazed eyes and nodded.

"Yeah. I—it wouldn't mean much, going up in the air over your garden without you there."

Draco bowed, careful not to show how pleased he was, and then climbed onto the broom behind Potter, looping his arms together around his stomach. "The way we did last time," he said, and then paused in confusion.

"The way you and my other self did last time," Potter said, without a trace of resentment. He kicked the broom high, and suddenly they were spinning through the air with a grace and speed that Draco had never known existed.

Of course, he was a professional Quidditch player, and he had seen Potter play at Hogwarts, so his flight techniques weren't a complete surprise. But Draco had never realized before that Harry's body anticipated the broom's movements, leaning smoothly this way and that a moment before it would have become necessary to correct their course, and spinning between heaven and earth as if they were all air. Draco was panting to catch his breath after five minutes aloft, not with fear but with exhilaration.

Harry glanced over his shoulder at him with a soft smile, and then laughed aloud and shot them straight upwards. Draco pulled back a bit to slow the broom. It obeyed him, even as Harry tugged it impetuously upwards again and Draco had to struggle to balance it. They worked so well together as a team that it took Draco several minutes to realize that they _were _working together that way.

The broom straightened out at the top of its flight, hovering as neatly as a hummingbird. Draco couldn't remember the last time he had been this high; sheer height wasn't helpful for practicing Quidditch maneuvers, since he would become too cold to dodge about and too far away from the other Seeker to see if he or she spotted the Snitch. But to gaze down at his garden and his house, it was the perfect distance. Draco leaned his head against Harry's back, staring down at the mass of shining white and green.

"We can see half of England from here," Harry whispered, turning his head so that his hair rasped against Draco's cheek. "We're so high we might almost be able to see the future. I want you to be able to do that. You deserve to possess the future."

Draco had no answers that would make any sense, so he simply wound his arms more tightly about Harry's waist in answer.

*

"I have a bargain for you."

Harry, mentally braced for another day of useless waiting in front of the other Harry's house, blinked and turned around. The other Harry had his head poking around his door, and his hand, gripping the side of it, was white-knuckled. Harry decided to stay where he was now and speak as politely as possible. Anything else would probably result in the door slamming and the wards going back up.

"All right," he said, although he was longing to ask what had changed. He had been coming here for a fortnight, and this was the other Harry's first remotely positive response. "I'm listening."

The door opened fully. The other Harry stood on his threshold, watching Harry with eyes that tried for cold and distant and didn't quite make it. He looked as if he'd spent long nights sitting awake and castigating himself for ancient mistakes. Harry had seen that same expression often enough in the mirror to recognize it.

"I want to change my life," the other Harry said. His voice was savage, the emotions fighting for expression just under the surface. Harry made sure that his hand was near his wand. He wanted to move quickly and get out of cursing range if that temper—his temper—exploded. "My current one isn't doing me much good. But I still want Draco, and I still don't want you to steal him from me."

"What's the bargain?" Harry asked. "I assume that part of it is your getting help. What do I have to do?"

"You go back to your universe immediately." The other Harry's voice was stark. He swayed for a moment, as though he would fall down, and then clutched again violently at the door. "You leave Draco to me. You leave me a chance to _have _him, honestly, as a lover and not as the prop that I wanted to make him into."

Harry closed his eyes and stood still with his head bowed. He had no idea what to say. He knew that he would have to return to his universe eventually, and he did want the other Harry to get help. Everyone deserved a chance to repair their souls. So the Mind-Healers had taught him, and so he believed.

But if the price was to walk away and leave the other Harry to pursue Draco, who might or might not welcome the pursuit, and who was sure to ask why Harry had had to leave so abruptly…

Harry shook his head. "I can't accept that," he told the other Harry. "I can't be sure that you'll keep your promise, and I can't stop helping one person because that would benefit someone else."

"I'll go into therapy today," the other Harry snapped, his hands clenching into fists. "That should be enough to show you that I'll keep my vow. As for Draco, you're only refusing because you're selfish and want him for yourself. You would walk away from him in an instant if you weren't in love with him."

"I'm not in love with him," Harry said evenly.

"_Liar_." The other Harry pushed a hand towards him, as if he would physically shove Harry off his feet despite the distance that separated them. "I know what love looks like on my face. I've seen it in the mirror."

Harry managed to laugh despite the choking sensation in his throat. "You only wanted to use him. If you've seen the same expression on my face, I'm sorry for Draco, but that only guarantees that I'm not in love with him."

The other Harry shrank into himself like a coiling serpent. "You don't understand," he said. "You wanted me to get help, and I'm offering to do that. And you had to know that you would return to your own universe in the end."

"Of course I did," Harry said. "But I never planned to leave while Draco still needed me."

"Another excuse. He might never stop needing you." The other Harry shuffled towards him off the step, moving as clumsily as an Inferius. Harry kept a close eye on his hands and tightened his own grip on his wand. The other Harry was staring at his face with wide, pathetic eyes, though, and didn't seem inclined to curse him. "Besides, what if _I _need you to leave so that I can have a chance with the love of my life more than he needs you to stay?"

Harry hesitated, torn.

_I hate this. I don't know what to do. What if I'm being selfish and I don't even know it?_

Then he found himself smiling, despite everything. If he didn't know he was being selfish, then he might as well ignore the possibility. He couldn't make a decision because of a _lack _of knowledge.

"I still hold the principle I mentioned before," he told the other Harry. "I won't pit one person's health against another's. Draco would never understand or forgive me if I left now, and—"

"That's the part that really matters to you, isn't it?" The other Harry curled his lip. "And here I thought you really did put his welfare first, before what he thought of you."

Harry raised his eyebrows. "I recognize you now," he said calmly. "The Healers told me about people like you, people who try to distort the mental health of others by continually insinuating that they're lying and can't really trust themselves. Well, I'm not buying it. My actions are both selfish—because they make me happy—and selfless—because I want to help Draco. I won't leave him. So there."

"I could banish you back to your own universe now!" The other Harry raised his wand then.

"_Expelliarmus._" Harry caught the other wand as it hurtled towards him. The other Harry gaped. Harry felt a deep pity. "You should have anticipated it," he told this version of himself gently, "since we both used that maneuver to defeat Voldemort."

"You have to go back eventually," the other Harry whispered through what sounded like numb lips. "You know that."

"I know that," Harry agreed. "But I won't go back until I know that I won't tear open any wounds irretrievably by going. Another few weeks, and then I think Draco will be able to stand on his own. I'll contact you then."

He turned his back, but paused and looked over his shoulder. "I do think you should get help," he called over his shoulder. "Consider visiting the Mind-Healers. Or owl me when you feel ready to accept my help in a way that doesn't depend on your hurting Draco. Trying to hurt him again and again isn't a good argument for the idea that I should back off and let you woo him, you know."

He Apparated, filled with an overwhelming sense of relief. He had done everything that he legitimately could. The other Harry bargained and denied and attacked and threatened someone who was under Harry's protection and still recovering from his own mental wounds. Harry didn't owe him any more consideration than he had already given him.

If the other Harry called him and explained the situation in a calm voice, then Harry would be ready to listen.

Until then…

_Your suffering doesn't give you an excuse to be a bastard. That's the lesson I learned, and that's the lesson he'll have to learn, too. But I'm done with sitting outside his door in an attempt to teach it to him._


	9. No Unscathed Heart

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine—No Unscathed Heart_

Harry was quiet at dinner that night, staring at his food as if he didn't know what it was for, and then picking as if he'd suddenly lost his appetite. Draco watched him in silence for most of the meal, trying to convey that his silence was welcoming and Harry should feel free to say anything to him. But the staring and the picking went on, and Draco decided that it was unlikely Harry would freely confide in him without an invitation.

"You know," he remarked, apparently to the ceiling, "true friends help each other with their problems."

Harry looked up, blinking. "Yes, I've always thought so," he said. In a moment, his smile was warm, and he pushed his plate away with what looked like relief. "What kind of problem are you having?"

"Oh, no," Draco said, even as he reached across the table and gathered one of Harry's hands in his. "I'm having problems no worse than usual. You're the one who looks like you could use a conversation with a friend."

Harry hesitated. Then he muttered, "It's such a small problem. I should be relieved. I don't see why I should have to trouble you with it."

"Trouble me," Draco said. Harry still looked doubtful, so Draco assumed a hurt expression and drew away. "Of course, if you still don't trust me enough to tell your secrets to me because of the horrible relationship you have with the Draco Malfoy in your universe, I understand." He dropped his voice on the last words and glanced down.

"That's not it!" Harry exclaimed, sounding half-panicked. Draco smiled to himself. _That will always work with someone like Harry. _"I just—the other Harry tried to bargain with me. He said that he would go to the Mind-Healers if I let him send me back to my own universe. He made it very clear that he'd pursue you the minute I did so."

Draco felt as though he'd fallen from his broom and broken his arm in pursuit of the Snitch and was now being told that he couldn't play for three months. His breath came short, and he had to close his eyes so that he wouldn't see too much and throw up.

"Draco?" Harry was around the table in a moment, his hands on his shoulders. "I'm sorry, I _knew _telling you would—"

Draco shook his head furiously and reached out to clench his hands down on Harry's arms. Come what may out of this, he didn't want Harry to regret confiding in him. He didn't want Harry to regret anything associated with him. "I'll be all right. But the thought of him coming after me again—I know that my balance is still fragile, and that he could destroy me if he tried—"

"I refused the bargain," Harry said. His voice was deep and soothing, as soft as the hand that he was using to smooth up Draco's spine. "I'll stay as long as you need me, and he'll have to show me that he really wants help before I talk to him again. It was despicable of him to try and make me value one person's healing over another's."

Draco tilted his head back and opened his eyes when he was sure he would be looking directly at Harry's face. "And what if I was to say that I needed you to stay for months?" he whispered. "For years, even?" He lifted his hand to touch Harry's jaw. It wasn't a gesture he'd made before, but he'd _thought _about making it, and it unfolded as he'd imagined it. Better, even, given the soft warm skin and the hard line of bone and stubble beneath his touch.

Harry blinked, and then gave a small smile. "You're not that fragile, Draco. I know you'll recover your mental balance before years are up."

"Very well," Draco said, snapping a little in his anxiety, and knowing that he didn't appear very fragile or needy as he was doing it. "Then substitute a certain verb, and say that I _want _you here instead of _need _you here. Would you stay?"

Harry narrowed his eyes. "I told you I was from another universe. You always knew that I would have to go back there, Draco."

His tone was gently chiding, exactly what Draco did not need right now. He had scolded himself more than once down the years for being so weak as to obsess over his parents' suicide. Harry had to take him more seriously than that.

"Then I'm asking you the same question I asked you two weeks ago," he said. "What do you feel about this? Would you stay if you had a choice, or would you hurry back to your own universe and wash your hands of me?"

Harry sat quite still, his eyes hazy and his hands on Draco's body comfortless. Draco bit his lip. _I should have remembered that he's very different from the Potter I know and of _course _he'll have to consider this in some detail. He won't give a hasty answer, no matter how much I might appreciate a heartfelt declaration of loyalty._

"I have friends and a home in my own universe," Harry said at last, his words coming so slowly that it sounded as if he were having to fetch them up one by one from some deep well. "I couldn't have my friends here. The Ron and Hermione in this universe, and everyone else, know and presumably love the other Harry."

"But you would have a home with me," Draco whispered. "The Manor. You could stay as long as you want." He winced at the eagerness in his tone, but he wasn't capable of keeping silent out of pride and thus letting Harry think that he didn't really matter to Draco.

"I'd have that," Harry said, and his eyes were focused outwards again. "And I can't deny that there's one attraction in this universe that I'm never going to have in my own." He leaned nearer, as if he wanted to examine the shape of Draco's nose. "You."

"That's what I've been waiting to hear you say." Draco whispered those words, too. He wanted to speak them more loudly, but his voice didn't seem to be up to obeying him at the moment. He found himself reaching up, clenching his fingers in Harry's hair, drawing his head down towards him. Harry went, uncomplaining. His eyes were very wide and very green, and Draco couldn't tell, looking into them, exactly what he was feeling.

Draco kissed him tentatively, feeling the way out with his lips, trying to decide if this was all he desired right now. Yes, it seemed so. Harry's lips were dry and bitten in places; that was a nervous habit he had, but Draco hadn't thought he'd scarred them so terribly. He ran his fingers along them and drew back so that he could murmur, "You must let me do the biting, if there's biting to be done."

Harry's eyes were drowning now, his pupils wide, his breath rushing and hot. He seized Draco's mouth again without speaking, and Draco moaned in surprise as Harry's tongue swept out and against him. He opened his mouth, and the surprise turned to pleasure. Harry wasn't a refined kisser, but the sheer determination he brought to the business had its own kind of charms.

They wavered and then suddenly toppled over. Draco grunted as his head hit the floor. He'd forgotten that he was sitting in a chair at the table and that Harry was leaning over him. As Harry had pushed more and more forwards, they'd lost their balance more and more comprehensively.

"Are you all right?" Harry's words were hurried as he stroked and caressed Draco's cheek. "I'm so sorry—I never realized—I didn't mean to do that—are you all right?"

Draco nodded. He felt more composed now, instead of flustered, as though kissing Harry had cleared some of the tension out of the air. "I just bumped it, and in a minute the afterimages will go away." Harry looked more worried, so Draco rolled his eyes and pushed up against him. "I'm fine, you great prat. Let me sit up."

Harry sat back on his heels, and Draco pulled himself up with his hands on Harry's shoulders. Harry promptly wrapped his arms around Draco and held him still, studying his expression. Draco let him do it, even passively tilting his head when Harry put a hand under his chin and turned his face back and forth.

"I don't know," Harry whispered. "I like you, I want you, but I'm not sure that we should do this."

"I understand that," Draco said. He refused to panic, both because Harry wasn't tearing out of the room at the moment and because he knew that Harry was powerless to refuse someone something when that thing had a real impact on their happiness. "But I think we should at least experiment. How can we decide whether or not we should do this without some basis of comparison?"

Harry smiled faintly, but his eyes were still distant. "I don't want to leave you heartbroken, if you do fall in love with me, when I go back to my own universe."

Draco winced. He hated to hear Harry talking about that as if it were a sure thing, both that he would go and that Draco would be heartbroken. It made him feel as if he were clawing for breath, the way he had when he saw his parents' bodies. "Always about what I feel," he said. "And never about how you do. Don't you think you could fall in love with _me_, and then you would be the heartbroken one?"

"I think that," Harry whispered. His fingers played up and down Draco's arms. "More often than I like."

This time, when he stood up and walked out of the room, Draco let him go. He needed to spend some time by himself, to recover and think about whether Harry's reservations were enough to make him back away.

*

Harry had hesitated, but Draco _had _said that Harry was welcome to use his broom whenever he liked. So Harry had taken him at his word, and the house-elf who brought him the broom didn't object.

Harry spun over the garden, and hung upside-down in the shade of a drooping tree, and spiraled around the ponds, and sat for a while on the bank of a tiny stream and looked into it. His reflection looked back at him, eyes wide and solemn. Harry had hoped to see that he looked calm and collected.

_No, I look like I did when I was in the hardest parts of therapy._

Frowning, Harry climbed onto the broom and took another turn around the garden.

One of the things he had wanted to do when he came out of therapy was to live without causing other people pain. It sounded simple in principle. In practice, it was the hardest thing he'd ever done, and it was one of the main reasons he paused and _thought _about things so often now. He had to consider whether some of his actions might have unforeseen consequences.

Most of the time, it worked fairly well. But he hadn't been trapped in a situation like this before, where no matter which way he turned, someone was going to be hurt.

Draco wanted him to stay. Harry knew he needed to leave. But if he left before Draco was healed, that would be one kind of hurt, and if Draco fell in love with him and _then _Harry left, that was another kind of hurt. He didn't know which one would be worse, honestly, seeing the state that Draco had been in before Harry interfered.

And then there was the other Harry, who might need help getting help even if he decided on it, and who might keep trying to go after Draco even when Draco had made it abundantly clear that he didn't want his attentions.

Harry put his head in his hands. _Such a mess._

He sat on the bank of a pond for a long time trying to think of a possible solution, and nothing came to him. Perhaps it was the sort of thing that one could only work out when certain other circumstances had fallen into place and he knew more about what was supposed to happen.

_I hope so, anyway. Because right now, I don't think I'm capable of making this decision on my own. It affects too many other people. I can hope that something definite happens, like the other Harry owling me that he's ready to accept help or Draco getting tired of me, but I have to keep in mind that it might not. _

_And how long do I tread water? _

For no good reason except that it would give him a definite deadline, and that was what he most needed right now, Harry decided to wait a week. If something hadn't happened to change his mind one way or the other by then, he would talk seriously to Draco and set a date to return to his own universe.

The thought of walking away from Draco made him feel as though he were trying to yank out one of his own limbs.

Despite himself, Harry chuckled. _It looks like it's already too late to get out of here with my heart unscathed, no matter what happens. _

*

Draco knew what he wanted, and for the first time in years, he felt strong enough to reach out and grasp it. The last major decision he'd made was trying out to play professional Quidditch, and that was driven more by grief and loneliness than because he actually wanted to do it. Now, his desire was clear and uninhibited, and he was living in the same house with the person he wanted.

It ought to have been easy.

But for some reason best known to himself, Harry was playing a waiting game.

He came up with endless suggestions to deflect any quiet time alone together which might have led to fucking of the kind that Draco wanted and he imagined Harry was only too eager to engage in. They played a Seeker's match. They had a long argument about house-elves that Draco, to his astonishment, came off worse in. They went to see a play that starred Gregory's current girlfriend. They went out to wander for an evening through Muggle London, with Harry wearing a slight glamour so that anyone who saw him wouldn't recognize him. It left his eyes clear, though, and Draco saw them widening often above a slight, pleased smile when Draco had gaping reactions that he couldn't control to the sights around him.

Draco accused him of being more than a little unfair. Harry answered that Draco was just unworldly, and that was fuel for another argument that Draco thought he won, but which he went to bed feeling unsure about.

At any time, especially in the middle of a crowd of Muggles that didn't know them and weren't paying much attention to them, it ought to have been easy to reach out, grasp Harry's chin, and draw his face down to Draco's.

It should have been. It wasn't.

Draco found himself beating back doubts around the third day. Maybe Harry had changed his mind and didn't want him anymore. Maybe he had decided that he was definitely going back to his own universe and didn't want the encumbrance of a lover who was native to another one. Maybe he was being noble again and thought that he would somehow spare Draco by never making love to him.

Of all his hypotheses, Draco thought the last one the most likely to be true, simply based on the nobly stupid behavior that Harry had shown so far. He'd waited outside Draco's house until he persuaded him to come out; he'd battered down the walls around Draco's heart so that Draco could actually take a few deep breaths and start thinking of real life again. There was no reward for him in that. He'd done it because it was the right thing to do. And he'd gone back to confront the Potter Draco knew the same way.

So being noble was what Harry wanted and desired—or at least what he thought was right enough to use it to combat his wants and desires.

But Draco was formed of a different kind of stuff, and if he was going to be in this relationship with Harry, he thought _his _wants and desires ought to matter as well.

He had a different view of the universe—all the universes—from Harry. He decided, four evenings after Harry had kissed him, that it was time to press home that point.

*

Harry found himself staring often at Draco as they ate dinner. Draco was scowling at his plate, his hand formed into a fist on the fork, his head constantly snapping up at the small sounds that the house-elves made Apparating in. Harry wondered if the other Harry had contacted him again. It was the only thing he could think of that would make Draco this irritated.

Deciding that Draco would already have spoken about it to him if he wanted to talk, Harry did his best to keep up an amiable, constant flow of chatter, and leave openings all over the conversation for Draco to join in. Draco's scowl deepened.

_It must have been the other Harry, and a bad letter at that, _Harry thought. _He's done more to damage his chances of having Draco for a lover than I ever could have. _He mentally rolled his eyes and continued talking. It seemed that it would take a little while longer to soothe Draco back to calmness, but Harry had never failed at it so far, and he didn't intend to fail at it now.

"And when you think about the way that Quidditch teams differ, I'm surprised that they haven't founded a fourteenth team in Britain. Even if they think that they don't have room for more matches, they could use that fourteenth team as a place to draw reserve players from. This is my idea, and Ron doesn't agree with me, because he thinks—"

Draco rose to his feet and strode around the table. Harry promptly stood, concerned but also wary. The dark look on Draco's face indicated that he needed to take his anger out on someone, and though Harry was sympathetic, he wouldn't let that someone be him.

"Draco?" he asked. "What's wrong?"

For answer, Draco stuck a hand into Harry's hair and hauled his head forwards. Their mouths met and their teeth clicked before Harry could think of a single word to speak in protest.

Harry moaned. This time, he had more idea of what to do with his tongue than last time, because Draco was fully engaged, darting his tongue in circles around Harry's, scraping the back of his mouth, urging him further and further. Harry put his hands on Draco's shoulders to hold him in place and kissed him back until he felt as if he would drown. He had never kissed a man before, but that just made the experience more exciting, because it was so new. He leaned forwards, letting Draco take his weight, glad that they weren't sitting down this time and wouldn't topple over.

Considerations chased themselves through his mind. He should pull away. He had to go back to his own universe. He should warn Draco again about the ways that he could be hurt—

But when he pulled away far enough to look Draco in the eye, he saw the pure white light of determination. He'd seen it on his own face when he got past feeling sorry for himself and actually started appreciating the Mind-Healers' efforts.

Draco had had to spend far too much time living with the consequences of other people's choices. He deserved the right to make some of his own.

So when Draco put his hand over Harry's mouth and hissed, "I don't want you to protest," Harry bit his palm in answer and reached out to caress the front of Draco's trousers.

The expression on Draco's face was a revelation.

Harry had to wrestle Draco's trousers open one-handed, because he couldn't take his other hand away from caressing and stroking his cock. When he caught a glimpse of it, he felt his mouth water. Red and thin-skinned and glistening wet, it wasn't something Harry had ever pictured himself desiring.

But that made it _better._

He kissed Draco again and turned him so that he was pinned against the back of Harry's chair, which promptly tilted into the table. Draco, who looked both stunned and delighted that Harry had taken the lead, gasped a bit, but didn't interfere.

Harry started rubbing.

It was _fun_ to make his fingers turn in different directions and watch the thrashes and gasps that he got out of Draco when he did that. Harry had always found himself treating sex as a deadly serious business, so this was a revelation, too. He leaned in for a sloppy kiss as he closed his fingers down in a circle and tugged hard on Draco's shaft. Draco bucked against him and reached out with a wavering hand as if he wanted to hold Harry's fingers still and make him stop at the same time, and couldn't decide what he wanted.

Then his hand found Harry's shoulder and crushed down on it so that Harry thought Draco might break his collarbone, and Harry felt soft spasms ripple across his palm. Draco was coming. He looked down, disappointed that he hadn't got to see more than the last few drops of white semen leaving his cock.

Draco dragged in some deep breaths and then _shoved_, sending Harry sprawling to the floor. Harry panted up at him, not entirely displeased. "You really like having me on the floor, don't you?" he asked.

"Shut _up_." Draco was on him then, restless elbows and jabbing knees and squirming fingers and all. Harry lifted his hips to make it easier for him, and very sternly held his laughter inside. He didn't think Draco was of the kind to appreciate the fun of the situation yet.

Then Draco started rubbing him through his pants, so urgent that he didn't even attempt to get them all the way off, and Harry lost his laughter in the rhythm of his thrusts.

It was all so surreal: his body and the pleasure coiling through it, Draco watching him with greedy eyes and avaricious fingers gripping and stroking and squeezing, the cloth rasping and catching against his cock, and the whispered message that he couldn't stay playing in the back of his head.

When his orgasm struck him, Harry was actually taken by surprise. He'd been paying too much attention to other things. He shuddered and threw his arms around Draco, clinging to him the way he would cling to a floating piece of wood in a shipwreck. Sobs and whimpers left his lips. He'd never felt this intensely, and it was a pleasure on the edge of pain.

In the aftermath, Draco put his mouth to Harry's ear and whispered.

"I don't care if you eventually have to leave. For now, I want this. And I think you do, too."

Harry stared up at him. The last words, and the way Draco's eyes darted away from him, betrayed his uncertainty.

Harry brought his eyes back by the simple expedient of kissing him, and then stroked the back of his neck as he thought about it. Yes, he wanted this, too, and it was already too late for him to get out of there with an unscathed heart.

He had wanted someone else to make a decision so he wouldn't have to do it all on his own. Well, Draco had.

_I'll do my very best to make him happy in the long run, _Harry thought, as he cupped the back of Draco's head and Draco shook against him, _and, strangely enough since I thought it would, I don't think making him unhappy in the short term will help. _

_This will still be hard. _

_But it always would be._


	10. Calls Across the Distance

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten—Calls Across the Distance_

Draco woke early that morning and glanced across the bed at Harry, who, he had discovered, slept with his mouth open and his nose pointed at the ceiling as if he were adopting all the haughtiness in sleep that he kept away when awake. Harry had been strangely shy about sleeping in the same bed as Draco, even though by then they had already snogged and had each other's cocks in their hands. Draco put it down to Gryffindor prudishness and stared at Harry until he admitted sheepishly that that _was _a strange thing to balk at and climbed in.

This was one of the few times that Draco had had a chance to watch Harry without him glancing up; he always seemed to know when eyes were on him. So he folded his hands beneath his chin now and stared to his heart's content.

Harry had a slight hitch in his nose from where it had healed from breaking. _Maybe from where his version of me stomped on his nose in sixth year, _Draco thought. His eyelashes were absurdly long, making Draco's old schoolboy instincts itch to pull one out. His lips were a very pale red, almost the color of the scar that Draco could see between his curls. Haughty expression or not, he was still very young, and it showed.

_Strange that he acts so much like an adult despite that. _

But…

Draco rolled to his back and stared up at the ceiling. These weren't the kinds of thoughts that he could have while staring at Harry.

_Not so much like an adult after all. Would an adult need constant reminders to consider his feelings as well as the feelings of others? _

Draco sighed and linked his fingers together on his chest. He did better if he had something to rub when he got nervous—and, he sternly told his rebellious mind, Harry's cock was out of the question at the moment.

Harry's very selflessness and patience and gentleness made Draco uneasy. He wascapable of getting angry, since he'd told Draco what had happened when the other version of Potter insulted Draco. If he hadn't heard about that, Draco's uneasiness might have built to fear.

_Potter did always like to think he was in the right. _Even looking back on their days in Hogwarts and acknowledging how much of what had happened between them was his fault, Draco knew he was right about this. And Harry had been the same person as Potter until the last few years, if what he'd told Draco about the separation between their universes was correct. _He wanted to believe he was doing the good thing, the necessary thing. He was in love with being a martyr, wrongfully persecuted. Look at the way he suffered through what Umbridge was doing to him in our fifth year, when he had every right to go and tell someone._

Here Draco had to pause to contend with a wave of guilt. He had been one of Umbridge's Inquisitors in that same year, after all, pretty firmly on the opposite side from Harry. And the thought of having contributed to any of the pain that Harry had suffered made him sick.

_That wasn't you, _he reminded himself. _That was another version of you. Take what comfort you can from that._

Draco took a deep breath and glanced sideways. Harry was stirring in his sleep, turning his head from side to side as if looking for a place to rest his nose. He would probably wake up soon, and Draco wasn't sure that he would be able to finish his thoughts when he did. Harry had such a _persuasive _manner. He allowed Draco to focus on himself and his own needs, and no one had done that in so long that it was addictive. Draco would want to bask in the sunshine of Harry's presence and not think about the stormclouds.

He had to, though, especially if he and Harry were to remain together.

_I think he's still in love with being a martyr, to a certain extent. He still doesn't want to complain about the hurt he suffers. But instead of gritting his teeth and walking through it like that, he just doesn't let it rise to the surface of his mind now. And that's not a much better coping mechanism._

_The therapy made him better able to cope with what he suffered, but it didn't make him perfect. I think he thinks it did._

Draco sighed. He didn't think it was fair that he had to help Harry when he was still in need of help himself.

But his parents' suicide had forever shattered the illusion that life would be fair to him because he was a Malfoy. That was the insight he'd spent the last eighteen months resisting. He'd hidden from it in professional Quidditch and in his anger at Gregory and at Potter, the Potter of his universe. He needed to face up to it now, and he needed to show that he was strong in the way that his parents had taught him to be, the way he had thought sometimes, before their suicide, that he could become.

_I'm not really as fragile as I told Harry I was. I won't shatter if he left. I could face the Potter of my universe and face him down._

Draco sneered, his remembrance of his conversations with that Potter coiling like an adder in his stomach.

_But I'll never take him as my lover. Never. He tried to force me to fulfill my life-debts to him. That's an offense against my magic, and against my life, and against my freedom. And he thought that was perfectly all right. No. Maybe someday I won't hate him, but I could never be in love with him. I could never look at him and not wonder if he'd started seeing me the same way again, as a reward for his suffering._

Draco shook his head and made his decision as Harry's eyes fluttered open and he gave Draco a sleepy smile. _I'll need to do something to help Harry as well as his helping me, and to cope with his having to return to his own universe. There are some books in the Manor library that might help with that._

"Good morning," Harry murmured.

"And a very good morning it is." Draco smiled at him and slid down his body, lapping gently at Harry's hip and the crevices of his groin. Harry gasped and spread his legs. Draco looked up at him from between his knees, feeling his smile deepen as Harry gaped down at him. For once, his face bore the wide-eyed, startled expression that Draco remembered from Hogwarts when he got detention.

"I've—Draco, you don't have to do that," Harry breathed.

Draco felt his eyes narrow. _Yes, he still likes being a martyr. He can't comprehend that I might want to do this willingly._

"Watch me," he snapped, and lowered his head.

*

Harry wandered out of the breakfast room in a daze. Draco had sucked him off as though he'd been doing it for years, and then climbed up, pinned Harry to the bed with his weight, and fucked his hand until he came. Then he gave Harry a bright, snarling, triumphant look, and climbed out of the bed to go shower. It was long minutes before Harry could bring himself to stir and follow him.

At the table, Draco was bold and challenging, offering speculations on magical theories and Quidditch teams that Harry felt unable to answer properly, especially because he wasn't familiar with the record of Quidditch teams in this universe. Draco sighed at him and rolled his eyes, but also gave him soft smiles that Harry was sure weren't feigned and reached across the table several times as if he wanted to play with his fingers. Harry would willingly have let him, but Draco drew his hand back each time and assumed an unreadable expression for a moment before launching himself into another rhetorical flight.

_What's got into him? And why don't I find it more objectionable that he wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise? _

As though the universe had sensed his good mood and was determined to ruin it, an owl fluttered through the window and down to Harry. Harry stared at the messy writing scribbled on the outside of the envelope, and sighed. It was the way his own hand would have looked if he was drunk. He knew who it was from, therefore, before he opened it.

But it was for the best to open it. Harry hoped that Draco's new signs of strength signaled that he wasn't going to succumb to such a deep depression again, no matter what the other Harry did to him.

_Potter, _said the scrawl at the beginning, throwing Harry oddly back into memories of Hogwarts and Snape, who had been the only person to write his name with that much blotted hatred.

_I've decided. I would rather that anything happen than that I go on this way. Come to me so that we can talk about therapy. The Mind-Healers at St. Mungo's should be roughly the same as they are in your universe. I want you to tell me which ones are the best. _

There was no signature. Presumably, he had thought that none would be needed.

Harry swallowed. He traced the letters with a finger for a moment, and then turned and walked towards the library, where Draco had vanished after breakfast. His steps were lighter, and his head was filled with a heady mixture of anger and hot hope.

_I can believe that he's changed as far as I would like. But I won't know for certain until I go and talk to him._

He opened the door of the library and peered in. Draco looked up from the depths of a leather chair that made him look almost magisterial. His expression softened at the sight of Harry, though. Harry smiled, wishing he had the daring to step forwards and push Draco's hair back from his face.

"The other Harry finally contacted me," he said. "He might be serious this time. I'm going to his house." He hesitated, wondering if he should set some time limit on his return. On the one hand, there was the possibility that the other Harry would try to curse him; on the other, it was plausible that they would need some hours to choose the best Mind-Healers at St. Mungo's.

Draco raised an eyebrow and flicked his wand at Harry. Harry blinked and looked down at himself as he felt the tingling of a spell, but he saw nothing visible. "What did you do?" he asked, surprised for a moment that he was so calm about it. _I reckon that shows how much I trust Draco not to harm me._

"That's a curse that ensures any harm he tries to do to you will be redirected back at him three times," Draco said calmly, and then looked back at his book.

"Thanks," Harry said, pleased and dismayed both at once. _That was probably Dark Arts—but I'm not fool enough to object, and of course I would be a fool to expect Draco to use anything else. _"I hope I'll be back in a few hours."

"Do that." Draco lifted his head and gave Harry a single intense glance. "I have some plans for this evening."

Harry found himself blushing like a teenager, and he actually stood there for a moment, staring at Draco, before he nodded and cleared his throat. "I—all right, then. I'll see you." He waved one hand and walked in a daze towards the front doors of the Manor.

*

Draco couldn't believe how much different he felt from only three weeks ago. It was as if he had been flying with a weighted broomstick for years, and only recently learned how to untie the weights.

That made him pause a moment and wonder if his depression had been real. If he could have ended the chokehold that seeing his parents' corpses had placed him in at any time, if a little help had been all he needed to recover from it, then why should he assume that he'd done anything for the past eighteen months but feel sorry for himself?

Draco sneered and dug his fingers into the leather of the chair. _No. I won't think like that. That's something the Potter I knew said to me, one of the last times we met. That would imply that I had no right to mourn, no right to feel as I did. And I won't do anything to validate his opinion._

_I still needed help and dedicated attention. Maybe I could have recovered at any time, but if so, then no one in my life cared enough to give me the help. That would speak far worse of them than it would of me. _

Satisfied, Draco returned to his reading. He snorted softly as he came upon a passage that confirmed his suspicions. Potter had told Harry that the spell to call someone from an alternative universe was difficult and could only be performed at intervals of a year.

As usual, Potter had done the difficult thing instead of the simple one.

The spell he'd chosen was one only used in times of desperation, when someone needed a very specific kind of help from another version of themselves. There were far easier spells that would permit a few hours or days of contact, and with people from other universes that were not versions of oneself.

Draco traced the page. _This spell will let me visit Harry at times when he goes back to his own universe. _

_That is all I require. _

He leaned back in his chair and shut his eyes. Harry could not stay here forever; he had his friends and his home in hisuniverse, and Potter wouldn't permit it. Draco had thought about leaving his universe to go with Harry, but that had its own problems. He did not think he would be able to endure not playing for a Quidditch team. He did not want to leave Gregory behind. He would have to contend with another version of himself, who would have the Manor—

And whose parents were probably still alive.

Draco shuddered and shook his head. _No. I don't think I want to see them. I would either break down weeping or be jealous of myself. And either conclusion is undesirable. _

Now that he had his strength back, Draco intended to retain it. It was not exactly ideal that he thought he was entering a love relationship with someone from another universe, but nothing about his situation had ever been ideal. If he could have chosen, he would have switched Harry and Potter's places.

But then, if he could have chosen, he would never have endured the Dark Lord's tortures and his parents would still be alive.

Draco smiled and opened his eyes.

_I have my life back again. This time, I intend to cling to it with both hands. _

_Harry is perhaps the most precious thing in that life to me, but he is not the only thing. I wonder if will be able to accept that?_

*

"I do want to get help."

Harry leaned one elbow on the wall of the other Harry's house and looked at him evenly. The other Harry stood up straight and took a deep breath, which was better than the sniveling lump Harry had left him as.

"But I don't want you to be the one who takes me to St. Mungo's," the other Harry said stubbornly. "I want Draco to do it."

"He has every right to reject your plea," Harry said.

"But _why_?" The other Harry spread his hands. "Is what I've done that unforgivable?"

"If you still don't see what you did wrong or if you still insist that you won't apologize in person," Harry said, folding his arms, "then yes, it is."

The other Harry sat down on the couch as though Harry had managed to take all the strength out of his legs. Then he sighed and buried his head in his hands. "I'm trying," he muttered. "But that takes more courage than I ever realized I had."

Harry hesitated, then crouched down next to him. "That's the first step, though," he said, and tried not to feel like he was chirpy and false. _Not every technique that every Mind-Healer uses works for every patient, _he reminded himself. "To realize that it's difficult and resolve to do it anyway."

"If I need someone to help me?" The other Harry peered at him through his fringe.

"I've already tried apologizing to Draco for you," Harry said sharply. "It didn't work. I won't try it again."

"I didn't mean that," the other Harry said, though by the way his eyes darted away to the side, Harry thought he had wanted to try his luck with such a request. "I meant that I might need some help from Draco. Would he meet me here? Would he promise to listen to my apology with a clear and open mind? Would he promise to offer me his hand, even a kiss, if I asked for one?"

Harry shut his eyes. He'd been able to listen to the rest of it, though with a steadily mounting sense of disgust, but the last request made his hand clench into a fist without his conscious mind intervening.

_And what right do you have to feel jealous? _he asked himself. _You knew from the beginning that any relationship you formed with Draco would have to be temporary. If Draco chooses to take the other Harry as a lover after you're gone, it's none of your business. _

Slowly, Harry forced his anger back under control, though it fought him like a wild horse, and opened his eyes to look at the other Harry again. "You can ask for those things," he said. "It doesn't mean he has to grant you them."

"How can he refuse to, if I genuinely need the help to apologize to him?" the other Harry asked. His tone wasn't belligerent, which was the only reason that Harry didn't walk out the door immediately. He folded his arms and looked shrunken in on himself instead. "If he wants the apology that badly, then he should be willing to give up anything to get it."

Harry drew in his breath harshly through his teeth. "You still don't understand," he said. "This isn't about Draco. You shouldn't be making the apology in hope of rewards from him. You should be making it _because it's the right thing to do, _and because it will help you to move on to healing. This has to do with you, and not him. He has no interest—not right now, anyway—in whether you recover or not. I think you could rot for all he cares. I have an interest in you because it hurts me to see any version of myself in such pain and acting so stupidly. Maybe Draco could have an interest in you someday. But you can't act simply in hopes of that. Acting like that got you into this mess in the first bloody place."

The other Harry had stared at him throughout his speech. Now he said, in a low voice, "So you didn't show the letter I sent you to Draco?"

"What good would it have done your cause if I had?" Harry demanded. He had to stand up and turn away, because his anger was so sharp that it was slicing at him and he doubted he could stay polite if he kept looking at the other Harry's witless face. "You didn't say anything in the letter about wanting him to help you."

"But it might have made him more sympathetic to me."

Harry lost it so suddenly that he didn't realize he'd done so at first. He whirled around and spat the first words that rushed into his brain, the way that he hadn't done in almost two years. "What the fuck _happened _to you? When did you start caring only about what one bloody person thought? I've never done that in my _life._ I didn't even do it when I worshipped Dumbledore and wouldn't act without him ordering me to! Why do you keep doing things this way? You have to see that they don't work. Stop ramming your idiot head against a brick wall and _stand up and act like Harry Potter!"_

After his words stopped ringing, the other Harry sat still, blinking. He didn't cower and start weeping or lash out in his own anger the way Harry had expected. Instead, he examined Harry attentively for what looked like the first time.

"I'm glad you kept that courage, that conviction," he whispered at last. "I'm glad you can still be Harry Potter. I'm glad for you."

Harry shook his head. "I don't understand you at all."

The other Harry closed his eyes. "I didn't tell you the truth about everything that's happened in the last two years since the war."

_There's a fucking surprise, _Harry thought, but by chewing on his tongue, he managed to keep the words in this time. He was already ashamed of losing his temper that suddenly, and over something that was only as exasperating and stupid as the rest of the things the other Harry had done. He managed to look attentive instead, or at least he thought.

The other Harry started talking in a low voice. "I told you I felt lost. I told you I almost committed suicide. I didn't tell you that Ron and Hermione found out about that, and tried to talk to me about it. I screamed at them and forced them out of my life. I didn't want anyone interfering with my attempt to use Draco."

"Wait a minute," Harry interrupted, his brain swirling dizzily. "What—first, what in the world could you have said to force Ron and Hermione away from you? And second, you're talking about your attempt to use Draco as if you _understand _it now?"

The other Harry shrugged. "I knew their weaknesses. I played on those, told Ron that I'd always thought he wasn't good enough to be my best friend and—other things. I implied Hermione wasn't really female because of her brain. And so on."

Harry wiped a hand across his mouth. He wanted to be sick merely hearing the words.

"And as for using Draco—" The other Harry opened his eyes and gave Harry a gentle, exhausted look. "I knew it probably wasn't going to work out. But I wanted so badly to solve one of my problems on my own, without Dumbledore's help, or Ron's, or Hermione's."

"But using Draco wouldn't be solving your problems on your own." Harry sank slowly to the floor and buried his head in his arms. His forehead ached to the point that he didn't know if he would be able to stand up any time soon.

"It was enough like it for me that I could forget that." The other Harry sounded as if he were giving that shrug again. Harry buried his head more fiercely still in his arms so that he didn't have to see it. "I wanted—I wanted to do things my own way, for once, without thinking about others, without thinking about how much I might _hurt _them or whether it was the right thing. I spent years doing the right thing. For it, I got death after death of people I cared about, and an abusive childhood, and being manipulated by the one man I had trusted and looked up to most. And then the wizarding world thought it had the same right to criticize me and call me mad after I defeated Voldemort that it did when I was a student at Hogwarts. I just—I _don't care _about the world any more, Harry. I don't care about being Harry Potter. In fact, I tried to act as unlike him as possible. I wanted to be selfish. I thought someone else should make the sacrifices for once. I wanted to act out for the sake of acting out. Of course, I never meant most of the consequences to happen. I thought Ron and Hermione would come back eventually, and I thought Draco would accept me as a lover, even if I lied to him about the life-debts. People have lived together under worse circumstances and been happy, and fallen in love with each other." The other Harry sighed longingly. "And it didn't work out.

"I think this is the end of it, though. There's nothing else I can think to demand that I would actually have a reasonable chance of getting, and—the pleasure of being friendless and knowing that no one understands you palls a little at times."

Harry lifted his head. The other Harry looked back at him with wide eyes that Harry thought were guileless at last.

_He's just like a child, really. A little boy who never came out of the cupboard. A teenager who never grew past his fifth year. He made the deliberate choice to be selfish just like I made the deliberate choice to try and attend to other people's problems, and if I believe the Mind-Healers, then maybe I can't even blame him for it, completely. He wouldn't have made that choice if other people hadn't dumped all their problems on his shoulders and expected him to solve them, whether or not he could._

Harry sighed.

"I'll owl Draco and ask him if he wants to come here," he said. "But I can't promise that he'll agree, or anything like it."

The other Harry bowed his head. His voice was quiet and ashen, as if he had finally given up all hope. "Thank you."


	11. Stampeded

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—Stampeded_

Draco stared for long minutes at the message that the owl had brought him, his fingers tapping on the chair arm and on the paper, dimpling it. The owl sat on the back of the chair, drowsing, its head tucked into the feathers of its back. It didn't seem to care whether he responded in a timely fashion or not, though Draco was certain it had been told to wait for an answer.

_Will you allow the other Harry to see you? I've learned now that he did this because he decided to be a selfish, spoiled child deliberately, and he used you as a victim in the same way that he thinks he was used by the entire wizarding world. He claims that he'll go to St. Mungo's once he's seen you, though I've talked him out of expecting any more than that. It's your choice, and I'll simply take him into hospital and leave him there if you decide you don't want to see his face again._

Draco had to smile, wryly, at the last line, even with all the other emotions running riot through him. Harry would never miss an opportunity to use dramatic words, it seemed.

He was of two minds about the request. On the first hand, he was sure that he knew Potter better than Harry did, and that this was only a mask for another desperate attempt to make Draco his. It would be a waste of time to invite Potter to see him, even on his own ground, because his optimism would make encouragement out of the smallest gesture, and it might seem as though Draco had an intention of forgiving him—which he didn't.

On the second hand, inviting Potter here would give him a perfect set-up for the confrontation he now knew he needed to engineer in order to shake Harry out of his feelings of martyrdom.

Draco smiled slightly as he considered the advantages of such a confrontation. It would do other things. On his own ground, it might at last allow him to impress both Potter and Harry with his power, to show them that he was not the weak being they had tried to dominate on the one hand and pitied on the other. And it would ensure that Harry knew more about his real nature. If he pictured Draco as soft and yielding, a "noble" person under a harsh exterior, the way Gryffindors had a habit of doing, then Draco needed to show Harry immediately that he was still more than a bit of a bastard, and they needed to part, no matter how much it hurt.

Draco was no longer capable of changing himself into a different person for someone else's benefit.

He turned the letter over and wrote on the back with a quill he had Summoned the moment he saw the letter, _Come ahead. I insist on your being there, and you need to tell Potter that he will not like what he hears. _

He signed his name with a flourish and a nasty chuckle. The warning, he knew, would mean nothing to Potter, with his stubborn determination to have what he wanted no matter what. He would probably even interpret it as another encouragement, the way he would probably think that Draco's agreeing to see him meant some kind of hidden tenderness for him in Draco's heart.

_And that means my rejection will crush him all the more. _

He wasn't good like Harry, he thought, as he woke the owl and sent it on its way with the message. He was too human not to take pleasure in the suffering of someone who had made him suffer.

And that would be another warning to Harry, to consider carefully before he tried to involve himself with someone who was so different from him.

*

"I can't believe he agreed to see me."

Harry eyed the other Harry worriedly as they Apparated onto the lawn outside the front doors of the Manor. His eyes had been brighter ever since he read Draco's tiny message, and he walked with a spring in his step. Harry could almost read the words floating in his mind, despite not being a Legilimens. _If he did that, he might do something else, and give me what I want._

"Neither can I," said Harry, and ignored the hurt look that he got in return for that. He steered the other Harry towards the front doors of the Manor, keeping a cautious eye on his wand hand. He had already seen a pale flash of hair that meant Draco was walking on the lawn.

Draco turned and stood still as they came towards him, his hands in his robe pockets and his eyes colder than Harry would have expected of him, since he had sent the invitation. His face had an expression on it, but it wasn't any expression that Harry had seen him wear before. It seemed like an assessing look.

_He's weighing him up, _Harry thought, and then, as the cold eyes turned to him, _Both of us._

He shivered and reached out to put a hand on the other Harry's shoulder, suddenly wondering if now was the right time to bother Draco after all. But the other Harry shook his hold off impatiently and hurried up to Draco, grinning like a delighted idiot.

"I knew you couldn't resist forever," said the other Harry. He halted in front of Draco instead of reaching out to embrace him, which showed that he had a particle of sense left, but he didn't alter the beaming imbecility on his face. "I knew that someday, you would want me as a lover."

"I wouldn't take you as a lover if you had a sudden change of personality and a cock ten inches long," Draco said.

His voice was simple and bored, which made the impact of the words all the greater. Harry winced, and saw the other Harry actually stagger from them. His mouth flapped open and his eyes widened. "I—what do you mean?" he asked. "I'm sorry about what I did. That's really all you need to know, right?"

"No." Draco began to walk slowly around the other Harry, reminding Harry of a cat who had cornered a mouse. "I won't give you another chance. Your words paralyzed my self-confidence and sent me spinning further into despair and loneliness at a time when I most needed sympathy. You tried to make me live my life out in slavery to you, hoping that I would be too stupid to research life-debts. You didn't care what I thought or felt or wanted, but you expected me to be endlessly attentive to all _your _desires." He halted and stared directly into the other Harry's eyes, which for a moment made Harry feel oddly as if he stood alone. "There is no forgiving someone like that, especially when he demands my presence before he goes into hospital for the treatment he so obviously needs."

For a long time, or what seemed like a long time to Harry at least, the air was hot and still, the loudest sounds the other Harry's quick breaths. Draco stood with his hands clasped behind his back. His expression would have been appropriate to a businessman refusing a risky proposition.

Harry wondered if he ought to intervene. Draco would be angry, yes, but could he mean to deny the other Harry his forgiveness for life?

Draco looked like a marble statue, secure in the poise that Harry had sometimes envied him when they were in school—or envied his universe's version of Draco Malfoy, he reminded himself in confusion. It was sometimes difficult to separate them. His life had been so consumed in trying to help Draco and put up with the other Harry for the past month that he had barely missed his own, ordinary world.

"I can't accept that," the other Harry said at last, but his voice was shaking and his eyes were cast down. Harry thought he was closer than he had ever been to simply believing that Draco wouldn't want him.

"You will have to." Draco began to move again, this time traveling behind the other Harry. He made no effort to stop Draco, instead staring straight ahead and gripping his fists together. Harry made sure that his hand was on his wand. If there was a time when the other Harry would lash out, it must be coming soon. "You ruined any chance you might have had with me by simply assuming that you deserved me. What was in it for me? Nothing. What would you have done if I had begun to love you back, against all odds? You would have been smug and proud, and probably mocked me for doing so.

"And now I hear from Harry's latest letter that this pose of yours, this childish and selfish pose, was a deliberate choice. Tell me, Potter, why I should pay attention to you ever again, when you can _choose _to act as you have towards me."

"I was suffering." The other Harry whispered the words clumsily, as though his lips had begun to go numb.

"So was I." Draco stopped in front of the other Harry again and stared at him. "Try again."

"I wanted a lover who would support me."

"I could have used one. But I didn't try to make someone else into an object and a slave." Draco moved a step forwards, a slash of a smile on his face. "Try again."

"I was worn out with saving the world." The other Harry flushed and folded his arms. "There. Match _that_, if you can."

"I was worn out with my parents' suicide," Draco replied, "and with my trial before the Wizengamot, and with being despised and hated by the world that revered _you_. You were the one who chose to squander that fame. You could have had someone who supported you simply by spending Galleons—"

"That wouldn't have been a real relationship!"

"But the one you wanted with me would have been?" Draco moved a few more steps forwards, his feet noiseless on the thick grass. "If all you wanted was support, then you had options unavailable to me. You turned your back on them because you wanted to pout. Excuse me for not being very sympathetic."

Harry, unable to stand it anymore, edged nearer. Draco looked at him at once, his eyes still cold and flat. "Draco," Harry whispered. "I—it makes you seem more petty and vengeful than you really are, to talk to him like that. Couldn't you find a bit of pity in you?"

The other Harry shot him an angry glance. Harry didn't know if that was for interfering in what he undoubtedly considered a "private" conversation or for mentioning pity. He didn't care. Once again, this was more about Draco than about either version of Harry Potter.

He held Draco's gaze and waited.

*

_I knew he wouldn't be able to resist that bait for very long._

But Draco also knew that he to control his glee, or Harry would sense that something was off and back away. He worked his face into a sneer, instead, and shook his head. "Why should I pity someone who's done to me what he's done?"

Harry hesitated. Draco could almost read his thoughts at this point. He was beginning to realize that the Mind-Healers had trained Harry to be inscrutable only up to the point where you understood his motives and could work your way into his mindset. Then he became as transparent as he ever had. Now, he was thinking, _Draco has the right to feel what he feels because he's in pain, but the other Harry is also in pain._

Then Harry's face hardened, and Draco nodded. Harry had told him that he wouldn't allow one person's mental health to be pitted against another's. This was where he would stop playing the game, as he said, and tell Draco that there had to be a way for Potter and Draco to get along.

But Draco didn't care about forcing Harry to make a choice between them. He was after something else instead.

"Draco," Harry began quietly, "there can be an end to angry words and hatred, no matter what you feel. If the best you can do is bite your lip and accept his apology, then that's the best you can do. But there's no need for—for torture." He glanced quickly at Potter. There was less compassion in his eyes than he might have thought was there, Draco noted. "Any more than he needed to ask you again and again whether you would be his lover."

"Ah, but he did," Draco said. "That merits a response on my part. And if I seem calm and conciliating, do you think he will give up pursuing me with requests for a relationship that I have no intention of accepting?"

Harry pinched his nose as though he thought restricting his breath for a moment would somehow clear his brain. "That's the risk you take when you try to be the better person, Draco," he said. "I would have expected you to understand that. You've been steadily improving as a person in the last little while, getting your friend back and sharing your space and possessions with me and learning to look beyond the sadness that was consuming you." He dropped his hand from his nose and gave Draco a hopeful smile.

_Strike, and strike quickly. _Draco shook his head. "I'm not morally improving because I could look outside my sorrow," he said. "I'm _healing. _And I accept you and I'm pleasant to you because you're pleasant to me, Harry. I wanted Gregory back as a friend because he'd been my friend before. If he was a stranger, I wouldn't give a fuck about him." Harry jolted as though that one word had been a lightning bolt to his spine. Draco turned fully towards him and folded his hands behind his back again. "This is the person I am—the person who doesn't care as much as you do about others, who restricts his affections to those he loves." He held Harry's eyes steadily, not showing how much of a sacrifice it was for him to speak those words aloud. "Can you still learn to live with me?"

Harry licked his lips. "What I want doesn't matter."

Draco smiled at him. "Then you shouldn't care how I act towards Potter. You should accept it as the natural convulsions of healing and leave us to settle this however we wish, as long as we don't use hexes or our fists."

"But I don't want you to," Harry began, and then paused.

"Ah," Draco said, very softly, because the gleam in Harry's eyes told him the light was dawning at last. "Yes, I thought you would see it, eventually. You have a habit of ignoring your own feelings, but that doesn't mean you're stupid."

"Thanks," Harry said, with what was probably intended to be dryness, but came off as shock. He was blinking so rapidly that Draco would have been concerned he was about to faint if he didn't see the color in Harry's cheeks. Potter, meanwhile, _did _look as if he were about to faint, but Draco thought measuring his length on the grass a time or two would be good for him. "This—Draco, I don't think it's a good idea for you to act so petty as to torment another person with your words, but that doesn't mean I want to interfere in your healing." He spoke as carefully as though each word were a glass bauble he had to place on a high shelf without breaking it.

"And that means more to me than you know," Draco said. "But at some point, Harry, there need to be limits. You need to feel comfortable telling me what you like about me—and do feel free to be lavish with your praise—and what you don't like and what you won't consent to. Particularly as I tend to be more adventurous in bed than you might be comfortable with."

Potter made a sound of paralyzed despair. Draco ignored him, keeping his eyes on Harry and the conflicting emotions that rushed and dashed across his face. He was the one who had to make the final decision.

Just as Draco would not allow Potter to try and make Draco into his perfect possession, and he would not allow himself to fall into the abyss of self-pity again, he would not allow Harry to escape responsibility for his emotions anymore.

*

_You are a strong person, _Healer Ellison's voice said in Harry's mind, _but your great weakness is that you put other people ahead of you at all times. It makes it seem as if there is something in your soul that you are afraid to face._

Harry had admitted it. It didn't seem hard to admit to a fault, then, when he was sitting in the comfortable, cool, mint-colored room that Ellison kept for his favorite patients and listening to a Mind-Healer lecturing him. Harry had liked the healing process, once he settled into it and began to see that it really would _help _him, because it was possible to get some distance from his problems and think about them like maths.

And that was the problem, here, because Draco was watching him with hot eyes and from a body of flesh and blood that Harry had touched and remembered feeling now, which made his palms tingle and his cock half-harden. There was no retreating. There was no pretending that he could think about this like an equation. There was no stretch of unlimited hours when Healer Ellison would leave him alone, if he liked, and let Harry think about the question he'd asked from all angles.

Harry had to risk hurting people and explain what he liked and didn't like.

It was like being asked to walk through the air when he'd only walked a tightrope before. Harry closed his eyes and hoped that he wasn't making a horrible mistake when he said, "It—I don't like it when you hurt other people, Draco. A sneer or a condescending remark is one thing, but not trying to hurt them for a prolonged period of time because you're angry at them, no matter what the reason."

"Good," Draco breathed. "And that is not the same thing as saying that I don't have a right to my anger. You've said that, and survived." Harry didn't dare open his eyes to see the smile he heard in Draco's voice. "Now. What else don't you like? What would you like to change so that you could be more comfortable when you're around me?"

"Um." Harry scratched the back of his neck. "I wouldn't like you to talk about blood and make me feel that I'm inferior for having a Muggleborn mother."

"Ah," Draco said, his voice soft and eager. "I haven't thought about blood politics in the past two years. I haven't had time for them, and they're not relevant any longer. I can promise that I won't try to hurt you deliberately." Then he paused, and Harry knew some other weighty pronouncement would follow. "But if I hurt you unintentionally like that, then I need you to _tell _me, all right, Harry? I can apologize, but only if I know you're hurt, not if you lick your wounds in private and tell yourself that they're unimportant."

Harry gave a tense nod.

"Good," Draco said again. "Now, is there anything you'd like to change about the way that we relate in bed so far?"

"I don't have to listen to this."

Harry opened his eyes at once and looked about anxiously. The other Harry had turned and was striding away across the lawn, hands clenched into fists at his sides. His face was as red as if he'd run a mile, and he stumbled now and then, which made Harry think he was blinded by tears.

Harry started to step after him, open his mouth, explain, try to make this look better than it was. His stomach was sinking as though he was going down too fast in one of the Ministry lifts. He had hurt someone again. He hadn't meant to, but—

The other Harry spun around to face him, his eyes wide and blinking rapidly, which didn't stop the tears from falling. "I _understand_, all right?" he said so loudly that Harry thought he must have hurt his throat. "I understand now that you're both in love, and that there's no place for someone like me in Draco's heart." He shot Draco a murderous glance that made Harry put his hand uneasily on his wand again. "He's talking so tenderly to you, and—and he would talk to me like that if he felt about me that way."

Draco gave a few sarcastic claps. "And it only took my repeated refusals and Harry's several dozen attempts to help you for you reach that conclusion, Potter," he said. "Try not to slice open your skull with that sharp mind of yours."

"Shut _up_!" The other Harry was barking the words now, the cords in his neck standing out with a rage that Harry thought was more like Ron than any time he'd ever lost his own temper. "I know now that you won't be mine, that you can't be mine, that you refuse to be mine, and would reject me if I were the last person on the planet."

"If you were the last person on the planet," Draco said helpfully, "then I wouldn't be around to reject or choose you."

The other Harry closed his eyes and bowed his head. Harry had some idea of the emotions he was fighting. He would have stepped closer and laid his hand on his shoulder, but he knew that his sympathy would be violently thrust away, and he didn't feel like getting his hand burned or cursed right now.

"Harry has to go back to his own universe," the other Harry whispered. "Would you—is there a chance you would—"

"Why should I, when I've found spells that will let us visit each other for brief periods of time?" Draco's eyes were dull with boredom. "And one of you isn't the same as the other. I won't replace Harry with you simply because you have some of the same looks and it would be more convenient."

The other Harry bobbed his head, utterly crushed, and turned to Apparate. Harry caught his eye, only to receive a tremulous smile in return.

"I'm going to St. Mungo's," he said. "I want someone who wants to help me, not someone who's only interested in ripping me to shreds." He gave a vicious, angry look at Draco, and then vanished.

Harry blinked. It looked like the last of the other Harry's illusions were dead and he would get help, but he did wish that the price hadn't had to be so heavy.

When he expressed that to Draco, Draco only snorted, said, "He was the one who forced it to be so heavy," and seized Harry's chin so that he could drag him into a kiss.

Harry went, though he hesitated at first. Draco was not exactly the kind of person Harry had thought he was: not so weak, not so helpless, not so forgiving.

_But then, you've just learned that you're not perfect, either. _

Harry closed his eyes and kissed back.


	12. There Are Fractures

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twelve—There Are Fractures_

"And you're sure that this spell would allow us to communicate?"

Draco smiled slightly as Harry bent over his shoulder. He knew that Harry didn't intend it this way, but the soft brush of his breath over Draco's ear was _very _pleasant. Draco shifted the book so that Harry could see better, and Harry leaned down, squinting. Draco shuddered as the breath went over his neck this time, but somehow managed to keep his voice calm. "Yes, I'm sure. Look. It allows the opening of a door to any universe at any time, though the time that the door can remain open depends on the power of the spellcaster."

Harry coughed nervously and pulled his head back, to Draco's disappointment. He was just getting used to small pleasures again, after emerging from a cocoon of depression. He thought that Harry should learn to respect that. "And what happens if the door closes and leaves you stranded in my universe, or me in yours?"

"Door is a convenient term, but it doesn't work like a room door that would shut you out," Draco said. He could see that he would have to be patient and literal with Harry. That was all right. Draco was used to the idea of flaws in versions of Harry Potter by now. "When the spell ends, the person who traveled will be snatched back to his original universe immediately."

"So we can never know for sure when our visits might end," Harry finished softly.

Draco shook his head. "Not until we've used the spell a few times, and we know more about our strength and skill in casting it."

Harry's hand tightened on the back of the chair for a moment, and then he stepped back and nodded. "It seems like the best solution," he said.

Draco put the book down carefully on the seat of the chair, and then stood up and rounded it so that he could see Harry's face. "I know that tone," he said. "A _but _is hovering on your tongue, and I'll know what it is." He actually suspected that he knew what it was already, but there was no point in giving Harry an inferiority complex with the swiftness of his wits.

Harry sighed in a way that Draco thought must surely clear out any real reluctance he was feeling, and then looked up from under his eyelashes at Draco. Draco resisted the temptation to offer a melting smile in return. Harry was a natural manipulator. It was for the best that no one had ever taught him how to use his charm.

"I simply wish I could have got out of this without hurting anyone at all," Harry muttered unhappily. "And now I don't know if the other Harry really went to St. Mungo's or not. Even if I went after him to ask, he's unlikely to welcome my help."

Draco put a hand on his shoulder as the safest compromise between the shaking that he wished to inflict and the embrace that would comfort Harry. "You can't live in this world without hurting people," he said. "Even if you do it accidentally. Even if you do it unintentionally. Avoid doing what Potter did to me, malicious harm that you don't _have _to inflict, and you'll be doing better than ninety percent of the people I know."

Harry gave him a troubled smile. "But I do feel that I acted out of malice. I disliked him, and I didn't want to spare him the way I've tried to spare other people, even the ones who tried to kill me during the war."

"Like me," Draco said, with a small nod.

"_You _weren't the one who tried to kill me." Harry stepped towards him, an intense look in his eyes that made Draco feel unexpectedly naked. "If this journey has taught me anything, it's how to distinguish people who might have seemed exactly the same to me otherwise." And he kissed Draco with a slow, burning force that made Draco decide that someone _had _taught Harry how to kiss before he came here.

He blamed his shock for the reason he stood there like an idiot when Harry dropped to his knees in front of him and drew Draco's trousers and pants down. There was a concentration in his face that was meant, Draco decided, to fight his shaking hands. He had never done this before, obviously, and it was just as obvious that he wanted to do well at it.

He held Draco's eyes as he sank his mouth slowly over Draco's cock, which he didn't need to touch to coax erect. Draco thought he would choke when he didn't look at what he was doing, but then Harry solved the problem by shutting his eyes and simply _feeling._

And Draco sagged back against the wall and gave himself up to feeling as well.

Harry's tongue was never still. Sometimes he scrubbed it up Draco's cock in swift licks, as if he wanted to get all the taste out of the skin he possibly could; sometimes he cupped it around the head and wriggled it temptingly back and forth. Meanwhile, the powerful suction of his mouth never varied, and Draco was finally reduced to gripping the chair for balance and giving several powerful jerks of his hips.

His voice deserted him when he tried to gasp a warning, but Harry seemed to understand, and swallowed most of his come. The white streak that dribbled down his cheek didn't last long, because Draco pulled him to his feet and licked it away.

And _that_, out of everything, was what made Harry look shocked, and what made Draco laugh.

*

Harry opened his eyes and lay still in astonishment. Something had just happened over the bed, an enormous crack like the boom of a hundred Muggle cannons. The sound was so overwhelming that Harry could feel the vibrations in his ribs.

And yet, when he turned over to ask Draco what that could be and if he thought the other Harry was attacking the Manor, he discovered Draco lying innocently still, his chest rising and falling in the regular breaths of undisturbed sleep.

Harry blinked and lay down again, trying to understand. Had he heard the sound in a dream? He would have thought that Draco was an unnaturally deep sleeper, except that he'd had the experience of rolling over last night and having Draco sit up out of a sound slumber and demand to know what was happening.

_Maybe he's under a sleep spell._

Even as he snatched up his wand, however, Harry knew that was ridiculous. Why would someone put Draco under a sleep spell so that he couldn't react to an attack on the Manor and then not do the same thing to Harry? He was probably more magically powerful than Draco, and he would fight to protect him as fiercely as Draco would for Harry.

He crept out of bed, listening to Draco mutter and roll over. As he walked towards the window, he felt more than heard the crack come again, rolling through his rib cage once more, and, this time, what felt like the bones of his legs and arms.

Perplexed, Harry stared at the sky through the glass and ended up shaking his head. The night wasn't perfectly clear, but he could see enough stars to discount the thought of a storm moving in. And though he watched for moments that seemed endless, there were no flashes of lightning.

The crack sounded again. This time, Harry could envision it starting at the far end of a tunnel and shooting forwards down that tunnel until it screamed in the inside of his head, so deep and clangorous was it.

He held up one hand as if that could shield him from it and peered at the sky. It was coming from there as much as it was coming from anywhere, he supposed, though no matter how he squinted, he still couldn't see anything.

This time, the sound's echoes faded quickly. Harry kept his gaze steady for a few more minutes, wondering if it was retreating. Perhaps a magical storm? Hermione had told him that sometimes a large concentration of power built up around heavily warded buildings like the Ministry and then infected the atmosphere, seeding the clouds with magic.

Then he saw something, after all.

Racing and coiling above him was the same springing, sprouting mass of light that he had seen when the other Harry had pulled him from his own universe into this one.

Fear made Harry's legs lock. He hadn't yet arranged with Draco when their first visit would be, or who would make it. He hadn't studied the spell in detail. If he could find books that described this magic in his world, he wasn't sure that he would choose the right one. (Draco knew more about that than he did). They didn't know what the side-effects might be. He couldn't _leave _yet.

And then he realized, as the lights of the universes arranged themselves in a cascade that rolled magnificently from the top of the sky, that this couldn't be the other Harry sending him back to his own universe, both because the light show was different and because it hadn't riveted his attention and forced him to stare at it and only it yet. He was able to glance away from it and at Draco, still peacefully sleeping in the bed, when he wanted to.

Curiosity replaced the fear, partially because the light was so beautiful, and Harry leaned out the window to look more closely.

The light falling from the top of the sky resembled an alabaster waterfall by now, with foamy curls to either side of it that looked as if the alternate universes had decided to create the loveliest shapes they could. Harry lost track of how many there were, coiling back on themselves in a dance of celebration. His heartbeat eased as he stood there. No matter what this was, he no longer thought it was evil, the way he would have thought it if the other Harry had decided to send Harry back to his own universe before he wanted to go.

The waterfall dissolved, and instead a rippling banner of white silk traveled across the night. Harry took a deep breath. He thought he could smell thick and pushing spring, like newborn grass in the rain.

The scroll unfurled all the way, and turned the night to a crystalline blaze. The blaze seemed to catch on the stars and skip from one to another of them, spreading out in a thin and shining net. Harry blinked; he briefly had the impression of figures standing on the stars, hurling spears of light to each other.

And he had heard laughter. He _knew _he had. Infectious child's laughter, without a trace of the malice that he had heard in the voices of people like Voldemort or Bellatrix.

The net overwhelmed the whole of his vision, and spread down to touch the earth, like the lightning of the magic storm come at last. Harry gasped as the net began to revolve like a maelstrom, and struggled with the urge to close his eyes. He didn't want to miss a moment of this, but if he kept on looking, he wasn't certain that he'd stay sane.

Out of the whirling mass rose a shape that Harry thought was like a cross between swan and phoenix—a bird of radiance with a long, curved neck, and a crest nodding up and down like waving grass, and grasping claws tipped with webs and those spares of light the stars had thrown. It shook its head, and Harry saw it spread its wings.

Once more, the clamorous thunder echoed through Harry's bones and through the world, and the bird whirled and flew to the top of the sky.

And then the light was gone, and no matter how long Harry stood, he knew in the root of his heart, it would not come back.

He turned at once to wake Draco up. He had to get to the other Harry in hospital—assuming he'd really gone there—and tell him what he'd seen.

*

Draco was next to Harry as they walked into Potter's hospital room, making sure he had one hand on Harry's shoulder and one on his wand. He didn't really understand the story Harry had woken him babbling about, except that he thought it might mean Potter was trying to send him back to his own universe. Draco would prevent that from happening if he had to drive his wand through Potter's throat.

On the other hand, Potter had left orders for them to be admitted to see him if they showed up, and that gave Draco some pause. Maybe Harry's second set of suspicions was correct, and the occurrence had something to do with the spell Potter had cast, but wasn't a sign of that spell being cast again. Draco decided that his role during this confrontation was to protect Harry, and to keep silent if he wasn't doing that.

That wasn't because he wanted to be charitable to Potter, but because Harry did. And because the hope in his eyes when he spoke of Potter possibly having changed his mind and become someone different was so beautiful.

"Harry?" _his _Harry asked, breathlessly, as they stepped into the hospital room. It was a cheerful, bright blue, Draco noted in distraction. At least, it was probably supposed to be cheerful. Draco knew he would be driven mad before long if he had to spend many days staring at those walls.

On the other hand, Potter was already mad, so it probably didn't bother him.

Potter turned his head and looked up at them with tired eyes from the bed. Then he smiled. Draco stared. He thought that he saw something old and familiar in that expression, some echo of the boy Potter had been when they were in Hogwarts and then not again since. _This _was the man who had rescued him from the Fiendfyre, rather than trying to remind him of his life-debt. Draco was almost certain of it.

He stepped up cautiously beside Harry, to be ready in case this was an imposter using Polyjuice.

But Potter held out his hand for Harry to shake, and said, "So you saw it, too? I hoped you would, but I couldn't be sure if the sound would wake you up or not." Draco shifted from foot to foot in a silent protest that both Potter and Harry ignored. He was uneasy with all this talk of thunder he couldn't hear and light he couldn't see. He'd looked closely at the sky before they left the Manor to Apparate to St. Mungo's, and hecouldn't see a trace of the wild magic that Harry claimed was there. "Do you know what it was?" Potter continued, snatching Draco's attention back. He wanted to know the answer to that question, as long as Potter didn't try to put them off with more lies.

Harry shook his head, eyes wide with wonder and anxiety.

"A new universe being born." Potter tilted his head back against his pillow and closed his eyes. His voice was thin and exhausted, but still had a thread of strength under the surface that Draco would previously have thought impossible for him. "You and I were the only ones who saw it because we're versions of the person who brought the birth about. I told you about the fractures, the series of events that would build up to a breaking point, when they would shift and separate one universe from another. That's what you saw tonight." He breathed in silence for a moment, while Harry continued staring at him. Then he murmured, "I didn't think it would happen. I thought I—well, the person I used to be, was going to stay the same forever and never change. I think that would have been my fate, too, if you hadn't come along."

"I don't understand," Harry said, in the fragile tone that meant he desperately wanted to. Draco rubbed his shoulder blade soothingly, and looked away from Potter so that he wouldn't be tempted to hurry the man along.

Potter took a deep breath. Draco tightened his muscles. This sounded like the same person to him, the one who had to make everything unnecessarily dramatic, and all about himself.

"The event the fractures centered around tonight was my decision about whether I was going to come to St. Mungo's or not," Potter said. "I hadn't decided on it when I stormed away from you. I wanted to go home and brood, and then shut myself away from the world again so that I could hate you and Draco in comfort."

Draco stiffened in shock this time. A quick substitution of names, and that could have been him speaking, the way he had felt after his parents' deaths.

"But then I paused and thought," Potter continued. "I wondered what I would accomplish by doing that. If you and Draco were heartless enough to make it plain that you loved each other in front of me and would do nothing to help me ever again, then my hiding wouldn't make a difference to you. You'd give me up as a lost cause. Draco made it clear that he already had." Draco was sure Potter was looking at him, but he ignored the temptation to turn around. "So I might as well think about what would help me, instead of what would hurt you. And going into hospital and telling the Mind-Healers that I might harm myself or others seemed the best choice.

"I firecalled Ron and Hermione when I got here. I offered them apologies, told them what I was doing, and left it up to them whether they wanted to come see me or not." Potter's voice deepened with hesitant joy. "Hermione did."

"That's _wonderful_," Harry said. Draco reminded himself that Harry spending compassion on a few people who weren't Draco wouldn't lessen the store that he had to offer Draco. "How is she?"

"She's already nearly the Head of the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures," Potter said, with what Draco decided was pardonable pride, since he was speaking about someone else instead of himself. "She thought it would take her years to get that far, but they can't do without her. And Ron is taking over more and more of the work at the joke shop. They think—they think George might need to come here, actually. He isn't dealing with Fred's death at all well."

Harry sighed softly. "If there was one thing that I could wish was different between our two universes, then it would be Fred's death."

Draco shifted restlessly. He would have liked Harry to say that he would have wanted to keep Draco's parents alive, but then, it was true that his version of Draco was probably a prat and Harry hadn't known about Lucius and Narcissa committing suicide before he came here.

"How could it be?" Potter's voice was gentle, which made Draco peek at him and wonder if this wasn't Polyjuice after all. Potter was smiling at Harry, and at least he had the expressions correct. "Our universes were the same universe until the decision that split them." He hesitated, then added, "And now it's happened again."

Harry stared at him. "You mean—"

Potter nodded with a solemn expression. "I made the decision to come to St. Mungo's and get help. My counterpart made another decision. What it was, I don't know, but probably to go home and brood." A quick shadow in his eyes made Draco think that he suspected something else but didn't want to distress Harry with his suspicion. _Wise, _Draco approved. "That was a significant enough moment for me that the universes took two different paths. I'm in this one. He—the same person I was until earlier this afternoon—is somewhere else, in another universe, following out the consequences of his decision. Whatever it was," he added softly.

Harry bowed his head. Draco thought he was probably mourning that other Potter—and it gave him more of a headache to think about two versions of Potter than it did to think about two versions of Harry—and wondering if there was something he could have done to help. Draco shook his shoulder and entered the conversation for the first time.

"Why did the two of us end up in this universe and not the one where Potter made a bad decision?"

Potter raised one eyebrow at him. "But you _did _end up there. A different version of you, at least. When the universes first split, they're very nearly identical, in everything except whatever events caused them to multiply in the first place. But after that, those events and their consequences start piling up, and the two universes change to the point that they can become unrecognizable in a few years." He hesitated, and added, "And, of course, they can spawn new universes of their own at any time, at any age. I suspect that the other version of me is probably going to do that. He's just too unstable and changes his mind too much for it to be otherwise."

Draco couldn't keep the note of loathing from his voice, so he didn't try. "There might be a universe where I end up with him, then?"

"There might be." Potter gazed at him with a yearning that showed he hadn't entirely forsaken his hopeless passion for Draco. Draco curled his lip, and Potter looked away with an angry flush. _Not completely changed, then, _Draco thought in contentment. "In the future, if not now."

"I'm glad for you, at least," Harry said, his voice subdued. Draco wondered if Harry felt as odd as he did, thinking of another version of themselves cast out into a universe with the wild, anarchic Potter, where they might as easily have gone. "I hope that you'll be able to find the help you need."

"I think I can," Potter admitted. "I knew that you were right all along, which was the reason I resented you so much. I finally decided to stop lying to myself. Others of me—didn't." He shook his head, then grinned at Harry. "Really, when you think about it, this universe is as likely to be the new one as the one where the other version of me lives, since I think I made the more drastic decision."

"That makes my head hurt," Harry said, with a serious expression. He hesitated, then added, "In a few days, I think I'd like to go back to my own universe."

Draco took a firmer hold of his shoulder. "Don't I get a say in this?" he asked, as lightly as he could.

Harry turned and smiled gently at him. "Of course. We'll practice the visiting spells, too." He covered Draco's hand with his own. "But I do want to see my friends again, and reassure them that I'm all right, and I know what career I want after all." He glanced over his shoulder at Potter. "Thank you for bringing me here. You've changed my life."

"And mine," Draco said, loathe as he was to thank Potter for anything. He took some comfort from the fact that this was not exactly the Potter he had been confronting and hating for years.

"And mine," Potter said. He grinned again, this time more naturally. "We never know where the ripples of our actions are going to stop moving, do we?"

Harry shook his head. "But I like to think that the majority of the universes are joyful," he added. "What I saw tonight was a new universe exulting. It was glad to be born, no matter what happened to it."

"I like to think the same thing," Potter said, and smiled at him.

Harry smiled back, and Draco could see their faces, after all, as mirrors of each other's.


	13. All the Universes

Thank you again for all the reviews!

This is the last chapter of _Universal Chaos. _Thank you for coming through me with a story that twisted much more than I expected.

_Chapter Thirteen—All the Universes_

"One thing does concern me," Draco said, as they bent over the book where he had found the spell that would let them communicate between worlds.

Harry stared at him. "_One _thing?"

"I found it much easier to think about problems if I only admit the most urgent one to my mind at any single moment," Draco said, tossing his hair out of his face as he turned to Harry. Harry felt a painful squeeze in his chest. He had come to care far more than he had ever thought he could for the person with those pale, pointy features, that haughty nose, those wide and too-innocent grey eyes. "If you would do the same thing, then I think you could be both more effective and more realistic."

Harry shuddered slightly as he thought of the way that he would probably operate if only thought about one thing at a time. It would be what he had done before his therapy, when he was exclusively concerned with himself, but _worse. _

"I don't think that's a good idea," he said carefully.

Draco began to laugh, catching himself with one hand on the table where the book was laid. "You ought to have seen your face," he chortled, when Harry glared at him. "I could have held you upside-down over an abyss churning with evil monsters that were about to break out and eat the world and you would have been less horrified."

"I've faced the end of the world before," Harry said. "Well. The probable end of the world." He still didn't know how close Voldemort had come to destroying things, given that he couldn't have used the Elder Wand against Harry. "But when I was absorbed and obsessed with myself, it was other people who had to deal with the consequences of my actions. Not me, because I never paid attention to them."

Draco raised his eyebrows at him. "But trying to pay attention to what everybody wanted still led to your hurting them, didn't it? I don't see why you shouldn't try a different method for a while."

Harry flinched.

Draco sighed impatiently. "I told you," he said, "hurting someone doesn't mean you're an evil person. It means you're imperfect, and that's a comfort to me. A perfect, saintly partner would be impossible to live up to." He stepped up next to Harry and nudged his shoulder until Harry looked up. "And just think, now that you can admit you're imperfect, you have the chance to move forwards instead of remaining stuck as the same kind of person all your life."

Harry smiled reluctantly. That fit with one of the lessons that the Mind-Healers had taught him: that change was the one thing that never changed, the law of life, and he would go through it no matter how satisfied he might be with his current self. "You're right," he said, and bent over the book again. "What is it that concerns you? We wandered away into discussions of technicalities and never got back to the meat of the matter."

"How will I know that I'm opening the door to the right universe?" Draco swept his hand along above the page that displayed the spell, and, Harry had to admit, a diagram of alternate universes that looked simple compared to the mass of springs and tubes he was familiar with. "According to Potter, there are millions of these things. And your universe will riot and change and split in the future when you make important decisions. What happens if I come to one of those universes and find a version of you, instead of _you_?"

Harry read a few paragraphs down, because he couldn't believe that was a question the creator of this spell would have failed to answer, and smiled in relief when he saw the right words. "There's a targeting spell," he said, "which you need to cast before you open the door. It will lead you to the universe that you want to find." He hesitated, then added, "Or at least the universe that's most _like _the one you want to find."

Draco narrowed his eyes. "What does thatmean?"

"It means," Harry said slowly, because he was still struggling to understand the concepts himself and wasn't entirely sure that he had interpreted the paragraph in front of him correctly, "that I might split into different selves after an important set of events. So _neither _Harry that was in existence then might be exactly the person I was—the person you like. But one of them would be closer to him, so the spell would take you to that person."

Draco bowed his head and said nothing.

"It works the other way around, too," Harry said gently, reaching up to stroke his hair. "If this universe splits again, then I wouldn't be coming back exactly to _you_, but to someone like you. Someone who had all your memories, who had your personality and history. But not, I suppose, the pure concept of the person that we're used to thinking of as 'real.'"

"I almost wish I had never learned about the concept of alternate universes," Draco whispered. "It makes the concept of truth meaningless."

"Almost?" Harry flattened his palm out on Draco's forehead and held it there as if he were checking for a fever.

"I don't regret having met you," Draco admitted, looking up at Harry. "But it's hard." He paused a moment, then added, "Is there anything in there about universes reuniting? I mean, would I come to a Harry who had added himself to you as well as a piece of you that had split off?"

"Not that I can find," Harry said. "When the universes diverge, it seems to be forever, and then they change so much that it would be hard to form a seamless whole that contained all the _events _that had happened in both of them, even if it was technically possible to make a person with aspects of two personalities."

"One less thing to worry about, then," Draco muttered, and lifted his head to give Harry a wan smile.

Harry leaned forwards until their faces touched, and then tilted his head sideways so that he could kiss Draco gently on the lips. "Do you want to break apart now, then, before the universes can do it to us?" he whispered. "I would understand if you did. It won't be easy, knowing about all this and never being completely sure if the person you come to is the one you last saw."

Draco shook his head and opened his eyes. The determination in them took Harry's breath away. "No," he said. "I want to do this because you're the first person I've ever found who cared for me not because of old memories or family prestige or Quidditch skill, but just because I was human. And I won't give up until I see for myself that it's impossible—that one of us can't live with it."

Harry smiled and clenched his fingers around Draco's. "Then let's start studying this spell."

*

_How am I going to let him go? _

He'd been lying awake for hours staring at Harry, who rested peacefully in the bed beside him. Draco cupped one hand around the back of Harry's neck. That possessive touch would have awakened Draco, but Harry simply sighed and rolled over, brushing his nose against Draco's palm. At once he seemed to settle into a deeper sleep.

_I don't know that I can._

Draco bowed his head. He had put a brave face on in front of Harry that day, and it was true that he didn't want to give Harry up until he was forced to. But the mere thought of all those universes existing, twining through space, with no single Draco Malfoy and no single Harry Potter, but millions of them, billions, all as equally legitimate as each other, all equally real…

It made his head hurt, and shook his confidence in his uniqueness.

_It would have been easier if I had never learned anything about this and continued existing in ignorance. _

But of course, that wouldn't do, either, because that would have meant mourning his parents for the rest of his life, longing in his loneliness for someone who regarded him as more than a Quidditch star and settling for a bought lover in the end, and never reconciling with Gregory. Draco looked back on the person he had been a month ago and shuddered. Harry had changed him as much as a split in his personal universe would have.

He touched Harry's eyes this time, tracing around and down to the lashes, the bones of his cheeks, the arch of his nose.

_I can't let him go, no matter how hard it might be to live with him. I think I love him._

_I'll do my best to meet the challenge._

*

"Are you ready?" the other Harry asked, holding up his wand and aiming it at Harry.

Draco still instinctively tensed beside him. Harry placed a hand on his shoulder and pressed down hard. He had already done all the kissing and touching he could think of in Malfoy Manor, and he wasn't going to flaunt their relationship in front of the other Harry—much less create confusion in anyone from St. Mungo's who might peer into the room and wonder which of the three of them were in together. There had already been enough stares when Healers who had treated the other Harry realized who Harry and Draco were going to visit.

"As ready as I can be," Harry said. Draco nodded next to him, which caused the cloth of his robes to brush against Harry's. They had both practiced the spell that would allow communication between alternate universes until they were sick of it, and Harry was carrying a copy of the relevant pages that Draco had made using a Replication Charm. "But I don't want to hurry you. The last thing I want is to be spread between universes as bits of smeared flesh." He tried to smile.

The other Harry didn't smile back. "Splinching is impossible by this means of travel," he said seriously. "But you might be cast into a universe that's so far from the one where you were born that it would be impossible for you to survive there."

Harry swallowed his smile. "Yeah. All the more reason for you to take your time, then."

The other Harry closed his eyes and waited, as though he were recalling the exact syllables of the incantation. Meanwhile, Draco tugged on Harry's shoulder and pulled him around, staring desperately into his eyes. Harry knew that he would never admit the desperation, which made him value the honesty in Draco's gaze all the more. He put his hands on Draco's shoulders and smiled at him as contentedly as he could.

"Do you trust him?" Draco whispered. "_Truly _trust him? Because I might be able to find a spell to send you back."

Harry shook his head. "I trust him as far as a spell like this needs," he said. "Which means, more than I trust myself at this point." He took a deep breath and spread his fingers out along Draco's temples. "Because, if we decided to search for that spell and it took a long time to find it, I might eventually convince myself to stop searching. It would end up with me staying here, and that's not fair to my friends in my own universe. Or to him," he added, with a slight twitch of his head at the other Harry.

Draco sighed and bowed his head. "I forgot that one benefit of being self-absorbed is that you don't have to care about other people so much," he muttered.

Harry hooked his fingers gently beneath Draco's chin and brought his head up. "But you could never have stayed self-absorbed for long," he murmured. "You're better than that. Someone would have come along and helped you if I hadn't. Or you would finally have got bored with your life and helped yourself."

"To suicide, maybe." Draco's hand tightened on his, imprisoning it. His eyes were bright and bleak when he looked up at Harry again. "I owe you so much. I don't know how I'm going to let you go."

"I'm ready," the other Harry announced.

Harry brushed his lips against Draco's cheek, hoping that the other Harry couldn't see, and whispered, "You're better than that," one more time before he stepped away. Their hands remained clasped until Draco turned to stare at the wall, stone-faced, and forced his fingers open one by one. Harry caressed his shoulder, then nodded to the other Harry, who was watching him with a mixture of ruefulness and jealousy.

"Well." The other Harry tried to smile, and couldn't manage it, either. "I brought you here to change my relationship with Draco. It certainly did, but not in the way I thought."

"It changed me, too," Harry said quietly. "If you need revenge, then you could think of it like that."

"I don't know if I need it or not." The other Harry raised his wand. What followed was a long, incomprehensible roll of Latin.

The ceiling of the room turned transparent. Harry stepped back so that his last sight before his gaze was drawn irresistibly to the dancing mass of alternate universes was those two faces, one his own and one beloved, framed side by side.

And then he blacked out, and was gone.

*

Of course there were tears. Of course there were embraces. And, Hermione being Hermione, there was a mandated week-long stay in St. Mungo's so that the Mind-Healers could be sure Harry hadn't been kidnapped and held somewhere by his enemies, who, Hermione thought when she first heard the story, must have used Memory Charms and curses to make Harry think anything so strange had happened.

When they finally agreed that, yes, Harry was probably telling the truth, Ron leaned back on the couch where he was sitting beside Harry—both he and Hermione had shown a strong tendency not to let Harry out of the sight since he came back—and released a breath that had both a sigh and a whistle in it. "I reckon that must have been hard for you to leave him behind, mate," he said, shaking his head. "If you really _did _fall in love with him." He gave Harry a sidelong glance.

"I did, Ron," Harry said patiently. Ron had tried to come up with all sorts of theories that would mitigate Harry apparently falling in love with Draco Malfoy. Harry wondered if he would accept that it was Draco when Ron saw him for himself.

_If the communication spell works and Ron ever sees him. _

"It must have been hard for you, then," Ron repeated, sounding mollified.

"Of courseit was." Hermione leaned forwards, more intent, of course, on the theoretical aspects of the whole thing. "Do you think that the universe where your Malfoy and that Harry are has already split again? That Harry did say that he was unstable and would change things around again, probably."

Harry nodded. "Yeah, he did. But he also said that he thought the other him, the one who chose not to get help, was more unstable." He held his fears about what _that _version of Harry might have done to himself. He wasn't sure that the second version of himself, split from him at the birth of the new universe, would ever get home.

The other Harry's first words when Harry was questioning him and trying to understand the nature of alternate universes haunted him. _Our parents could have lived when Voldemort attacked them. That would have been one universe. Or maybe all three of us could have died, and then that particular universe—the one that came into existence when we were born—would have died, too._

If the unstable Harry committed suicide, would his newborn universe die with him? That was what Harry feared.

On the other hand, the other Harry had proven that he didn't understand everything about spells that crossed alternate universes. Harry was going to hope that he had been wrong about that part of the theory, too.

"I can at least research it," he muttered.

Hermione pounced on that. "Research what?"

Harry smiled at her. "Alternate universes," he said. "It's part of the research that I'll have to do anyway, probably, because I'm going to become a Mind-Healer and it would be useful to know when patients do have delusions about alternate universes and when they've had an experience like mine."

Ron's shocked comments of, "You're actually going to _do_ something, mate?" and Hermione's excited squeals decisively changed the tone of the conversation.

*

Draco took a deep breath and started to chant the syllables of the spell. They died into silence as he realized that his hand was shaking far too badly to move his wand in the right patterns. He lowered it and forcibly concentrated on the image of a still pond among reeds, under a grey sky, until he felt that he could continue.

_You want to visit Harry, don't you? Then you need to master this spell, and he hasn't cast it yet. _

Suspicions and fears crowded his mind, hissing. What happened if Harry had cast the spell and it had sent him to a different universe, to a Draco he was more capable of loving? What if he had decided that he no longer cared for Draco once he was back home and he'd drowned himself in the affairs of his friends and his training to become a Mind-Healer?

_Then I'll show up and tell him off, _Draco decided. _But I can't know that's what's happened until I at least _try _to cast the spell._

Determination restored, he sat back and fixed his eyes on the parchment, repeating the words silently to himself until the power rolled through him like dammed water and the spell demanded to be cast. Then he opened his mouth and let the words spill into the air. He'd already cast the targeting spell that should allow him to find Harry's universe among all the endlessly dancing billions.

A long curl of milky light shot out of his wand. Draco stared at it in surprise and pleasure. If this looked the way the light at the birth of the new universe had looked, then he could understand why Harry had fallen in love with its beauty.

For long moments, the curl snaked back and forth, like a piece of hair dangling from someone's badly shaven head. And then it straightened, and shot forwards, outlining a door in the air. Draco barely had the chance to see the door opening, glinting with alabaster light at the edges, before the curl shot back, latched around his waist, and tugged him forwards.

He was spinning through the darkness, and around and above and behind him were thousands of streams of light, glinting like the Milky Way, shining on their paths, utterly uncaring about the one traveler who flew between them.

Draco had a perfect and terrifying vision of what would happen if he should fail to complete the journey and die in this dark space, or somehow alter the course of his life by landing in a place he hadn't meant to find. The universes would continue spinning and dividing and hurrying along their courses.

They didn't care. They were too busy existing.

Draco began to shudder, and not with the deep cold that filled this space.

Then the curl unwound, and he passed through a soft haze that led to him standing in a room he'd never seen before, but which, from the calm colors of the walls, was probably in St. Mungo's. A considerably startled man in Healer's robes fell back a pace from him, blinking and pushing his glasses up his nose.

The other person in the room was Harry, who ran over with a glad cry and caught Draco in an embrace. The warmth of his arms helped burn away the cold vision that had filled Draco's head on the trip.

This was his Harry. It _had _to be his Harry. His skin felt exactly the same, his hair felt exactly the same, his eyes shone with the same light when he saw Draco, and his voice was the same when he whispered, with a catch in it, "I was trying to leave you alone in case you wanted to move on and find someone in your own universe."

The word _universe _made Draco shiver again. "I don't want that," he whispered. "I wanted to see you, and when you didn't come for a fortnight I thought—"

"No. Never."

Draco didn't know that that word was true—Harry couldn't predict right now what might happen to them in a year, whether he might not get tired of Draco or something else might occur—but he clung tighter even so.

The Healer's mild voice, saying, "Well, I have no choice but to believe your story now, Harry," made things thankfully more real.

*

Harry woke in the night, as he so often seemed to do when he was sharing the same bed with Draco, and looked over to watch him sleeping. Draco was curled on his side, instead of lying on his back as usual, and he had his arms folded closely to his chest. Harry thought he understood why. Draco had told him about his vision of the universes, that vast and magnificent indifference.

It fit with what the theories Harry was studying said: that yes, a universe centered on one person was born with them and died with them, and thus the originator of a universe could condemn it, and everything in it, to death. Death was constant.

But so was birth. Harry had tried to think of all the babies being born in all the different universes, and the new universes that would come into being with them, and how those universes would burst and change soon, and how some would end early, and how some would continue for decades or centuries, and how all, _all _of them, would split and change. Some of the books suggested that the same thing happened for particularly intelligent animals, or maybe all animals, or maybe animals and plants, or maybe animals and plants and other things like mountains and suns. The most comforting thing about the books was that no two of them were in agreement with each other on anything but the most basic theories, and certain specific facts such as the existence of communication and summoning spells to pull people from one universe to the other. Thus, Harry could choose to disregard some of the harsher aspects if he wanted to.

But not the basic fact. Life continuing, transforming, suffering, birthing, dying. Forever.

Harry shook his head and glanced down at Draco again, putting a hand on his forehead. Draco took a soft breath and his arms extended.

Against such a vast backdrop, with so many versions of oneself multiplying and no single one the _real_ one, the _original, _what did anything matter?

Harry would have to share his perspective with Draco in the morning.

Love mattered. Healing mattered. The decision to help others, or to hurt them, or both at the same time, mattered. What one chose to believe, and the attitude they took towards things like alternate universes, mattered.

The universes might not care. But human beings could, and human beings existed on the level of other human beings, subject to the same chaos and caprice in their ordinary lives that the universes had to obey. So human beings might as well find the same things meaningful when looking at the universes as they did when looking at pain or wounds, or the indifferent stars.

Or love.

Harry lowered his head and went to sleep again next to the Draco who was his Draco for the moment, as Harry was his Harry for now. No one could say what might happen in the future, because the future could not be controlled or predicted.

Only lived.

b**End./b**


End file.

Harry Potter, Angst, Romance