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"It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." - Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, chapter 18.
His tortured and bleeding body lay broken and twisted on the ground. He was wrecked and could not move. In the distance, he thought he could hear voices but he was beyond caring. He didn’t want to fight anymore. He had done what he had set out to do and he was tired, so very tired.
The battle was long and arduous. It was worse than any altercation with his nemesis so far. Voldemort had developed a more vicious streak, if that were at all possible, but there was something like grudging respect in every one of his taunts to Harry. In the end, though, Voldemort’s overconfidence was his downfall. Thinking he had Harry at his mercy, it would seem that Voldemort forgot that he was battling someone who had learned to fight just as dirty as he in order to win the war. Voldemort’s forgetfulness led to his own demise.
Attempting to separate himself from the physical torture his body was enduring, Harry tried to catalogue his injuries in case he was still conscious enough to tell a medic when they arrived. If one arrived at all.
Starting from his toes: left ankle, twisted, possibly the knee too, after a curse sent him flying; right hip, dislocated, but popped itself back in as he fell in a heap; internal injuries? Undoubtedly; arms, sliced to blazes, barely functional; head, still attached but cut and bleeding from somewhere on the scalp and blood was dribbling in his ear; brain, exploding in agony, the cause of which he didn’t know.
He closed his eyes in an attempt to alleviate some of pain behind them and, as he did so, memories came before him. Harry observed these memories with something akin to indifference even though they were moments that helped to shape his life.
“Draco, he killed my parents!” Harry grabbed handfuls of his own hair in frustration and turned toward the fireplace, away from his friend. The Common Room seemed to suddenly get colder than it had ever been in the seven years since he first arrived.
“That’s not important in the grand scheme of things-”
“Not important?” Harry turned to face him once more, the expression on his face incredulous. “Are you saying that you would support him, do his bidding, be his lackey even if he killed your entire family?”
Draco’s face clouded over and he looked down his nose at Harry. “If they died for the cause, absolutely. Be careful what you say here, Potter. I’m not the only one here who supports the Dark Lord.”
Realising that the walls did indeed have ears, Harry took a physical and metaphorical step back from the argument. A look of hurt flashed across Draco’s face when Harry stepped away from him before he replaced it with a sneer. Harry knew he was meant to see that look. They would never agree on this point and it pained them both to know that there was something that would come between them.
Dumbledore held his hands up to try to calm down the assembly seated around the table. There were more people attending the meeting than Harry imagined there would be, and everyone was crowded in the drawing room of his godfather’s house.
Harry watched everyone present and gauged their reactions to Dumbledore’s announcement. A girl from his year at school, Granger he remembered her name as, was looking at him shrewdly; many redheads were shouting against the proposal, a few of them even using profanities which were met with harsh words from the woman Harry presumed to be their mother; a scar-faced, wild-looking man was staring at him expressionless, one beady eye and one magical eye fixed firmly on Harry’s face. Sirius was the only one not looking at him. He had his face in his hands as if in despair.
Harry knew that Sirius didn’t want this for him. He had said as much not long ago when Harry first approached him to join in the fight against Voldemort. Sirius had already lost James and Lily, Harry’s parents, because of one of the darkest wizards the world had ever known. He didn’t want to lose Harry, especially not now when they were just getting to know each other.
“He’s a bloody Slytherin!” One of the redheads exclaimed and Harry recognised him from school. He may have been in his year, but Harry wasn’t sure. They all looked alike. “They’re all in league with You-Know-Who!”
“Not all, Weasley,” Harry corrected. “He killed my parents. He needs to die. I don’t care about anything else.” He said this quietly, but his voice cut through their protestations like a knife.
“Your reasons for joining the Order are your own, Harry. You are here to help us now and that is the only point of importance.” Dumbledore turned from Harry and addressed the rest of the group. “We need to plan what we’re going to do next effectively. Having Harry join us is not an eventuality that Voldemort would have anticipated, I expect. Voldemort has been sitting under a false sense of security for the last eight years and we can only hope that he has become careless.” The tone in his voice suggested that Dumbledore didn’t think that Voldemort had become careless at all.
There were raised voices coming from the office and Harry slowed down to listen. He didn’t want to announce his presence too soon. Even though he was due to meet Professor Snape to submit his essay, Harry wanted to find out what they were talking about.
“You have no idea, Lupin, how satisfying it is to know that Potter’s son is in my House and not his precious Gryffindor.” Harry didn’t know that his father was a Gryffindor. Inter-house rivalry between Slytherin and Gryffindor had been occurring for centuries; this was not news to anyone. Harry was strangely undisturbed, however, by the idea that his father was a Gryffindor.
Snape was continuing with only vaguely disguised triumph, “It is vengeance, of a sort and I am relishing the taste of it. Potter is actually not as abhorrent as I would have thought him to be, especially considering how alike he and his father look. He seems to be getting along extremely well with the other members of my House and fitting in nicely.”
Harry raised his eyebrows and was pleasantly surprised that Snape thought so highly of him. Compliments were few and far between from the Slytherin Head of House and this was a very large compliment indeed. Snape’s words about his father worried him a little, but he pushed those worries to the side and decided to think about them later.
Harry leaned toward the gap in the door to see what was happening. Snape had his hands down, leaning across his desk toward Lupin. The other professor simply stood with his hands in his pockets.
“I rather thought you would see it that way, Severus. You and James never did get on well.” Lupin sounded tired and he rubbed a hand across his face. “If you wouldn’t mind, I would like to take my potion and be out of your way.”
Harry frowned. Potion?
Picking up a goblet that was faintly steaming, Snape handed it across the table to Lupin. “This potion is a very difficult one to brew. I had to exercise my not-too-inconsiderable skills in order to perfect it. I hope you understand how I had to dedicate myself to this.”
“I understand you perfectly, Severus," Lupin replied, taking possession of the goblet.
Seeing Lupin make a start for the door, Harry leaped away from the door and ran back down the classroom to stop in the middle of it. He wanted to intimate that he had just walked in the room and didn’t hear the exchange.
Breathing was becoming difficult. It seemed like there was a weight on his chest preventing him from taking a lungful of air. Desperate to move, he was unable to force his body to comply to his will. Shapes were blurred and he wondered vaguely if he was wearing his glasses. Shifting his head a fraction he could feel them digging into his temple. If he was wearing his glasses, why couldn’t he see?
The weather was abysmal. Blustery wind whipped around his robes. Frigid rain bludgeoned his face, tearing at his skin. The imposing island fortress rose up before him, towering above the rocks, dominating the landscape. He stood motionless while he waited for the prisoner to be released. He didn’t have to wait long.
Harry was nervous, although he would never admit it. He was about to meet the man who had spent nearly sixteen years in Azkaban for murders which he didn’t commit, and who was the only link Harry really had to his parents. His Slytherin sensibilities were telling him not to trust anyone, but deep down there was a part of him that craved to be included in a family and this may be his chance to finally have a family of his own. Harry had never counted the Dursleys as family.
The fortress doors opened and an emaciated man walked through. He had a mass of filthy, matted black hair that hung past his elbows, waxy skin stretched tightly over the bones of his face and yellow teeth. His robes were tattered and torn. There was a luminosity to his eyes however, as his gaze fell on Harry, that contradicted his appearance.
Harry stepped forward to meet his godfather.
The potion was a thick, gelatinous, sickly-grey coloured goo that bubbled like mud. Harry looked at it with distaste. It was supposed to be pink and creamy. He looked over at Draco who shrugged and continued to grind the moonstone in a mortar and pestle.
Snape came over to check their progress and ‘tutted’ at them, but moved on to the next table where Weasley and that moronic Longbottom were fumbling over their cauldron. Harry stole a quick peak at their potion. The contents of the Gryffindor’s cauldron looked just as bad as his and Draco’s did.
“Once again Longbottom, you have completely failed to grasp the most basic of potions. How you even managed to get this far without killing us all is beyond me. Ten points from Gryffindor and you and Weasley will write an extra two feet of parchment on calming draughts and their effects. I wouldn’t protest, Weasley,” Snape added, with a menacing gleam in his eye just as Weasley had opened his mouth to complain, “or that will be another ten points.”
Harry and Draco shared a smug smile.
“You'll soon find out some wizarding families are better then others, Potter. You don't want to make friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there.” The blonde boy stuck out his hand for Harry to shake. Harry took it. This was his first opportunity to make friends who were not influenced by Dudley and he was going to make the most of it, regardless of their prejudices.
Twisting his head to the choking sounds behind him, Harry could see Ron turn a spectacular shade of red. It was a colour that would have made Uncle Vernon proud. Ron looked Harry up and down dubiously and he turned his back on both Harry and Malfoy to begin talking to a boy with sandy hair.
Harry merely shrugged, shared a look with Draco and faced the front of the room. He had had ten years of Dudley dictating who should be friends with him, which amounted to none at all. No one was going to do that to him again if he could help it. It was unfortunate that this should be Ron’s response after the fun they had on the train, but Harry was tired of being alone.
He was going to get that stinking rat if it was the last thing he did. Every morning for the last month, Harry had woken up to find Weasley’s stupid rat on his bed, dirtying up his bedclothes, invading his personal space and generally being a pain in the arse.
Surreptitiously pulling his wand off the bedside table, Harry sent a hex flying. The rat emitted a rather loud squeal, waking everyone else up in the dorm. Before his very eyes, the rat had changed shape into a man and began to run for the door.
His dorm mates were too quick for the man-rat. With a speed and inventiveness that surprised everyone, Crabbe and Goyle planted themselves between the man-rat and the door. With wands pointed at his back by Harry and the rest of the boys in his dormitory, the man-rat had nowhere to go.
Despite how often they were together it was always like this. Their hands were all over each other, feeling every surface, worshipping the feel of the others skin under their fingertips. Sometimes it would lead to more but, at other times, this was all they needed.
Harry was astounded how long it took them to realise what they felt for each other was more than friendship. Throughout their time at Hogwarts, they had shared their hopes, dreams, disappointments and even heartaches. They had had their share of arguments it was true, and fired a few hexes at each other to alleviate their frustration. After that, they went back to being firm friends, all traces of animosity forgotten.
It wasn’t until after they left school that their feelings morphed into something more, which suited Harry just fine. His friends had become his family and this particular relationship was one that complimented Harry in a way that he never thought possible.
“Potter, you feel so good.”
“You always say that,” Harry replied with a smile.
“Do I? Well, it’s true.” Lips met Harry’s briefly before continuing, “Now would be a good time to tell me how incredible I feel.”
Harry smiled and brushed his lips across his lover’s as he whispered, “Why do that, Draco, when you know already?”
Something jerked him and Harry cried out in pain. Opening his eyes he could just make out a man struggling with people who were trying to hold him back. Holding him back from what, Harry could not guess. He watched disinterestedly as the man hit and kicked at the wizards restraining him.
The searing pain tore through his body again and a howl tore itself out of his throat, scraping it raw. Harry was vaguely aware of hands touching him, but he couldn’t really feel them. His brain function was impaired by the new agony he was in. He closed his eyes and began to give in to the need for his body to shut down. All he wanted was to rest. Fighting to stay conscious was becoming too hard. Fighting anything at all was becoming too hard.
“Harry!”
His name cut through the fog and he recognised Draco’s voice. He called out Draco’s name, but he could not manage anything above a whisper.
Swallowing his anguish, he tried to call out again as he opened his eyes. The man had broken free of his captors and was running toward him. Harry knew who the man was now. Draco was here and alive. That was all he needed to know.
Harry closed his eyes and stopped fighting.