Drarry Oneshots

Only A Fantasy

That last sentence was as honest as the sunlight around them. It was cloudy, maybe, but it would never hide itself.

Harry reached out. For a second, he touched Malfoy's damp, sweaty palm, before Malfoy curled his fingers in.

He looked ravingly happy. But he didn't jump up and down and say that. Instead, he sat there, and kept it all inside. All he did was breathe a little harder and tilt his head back so that the sunlight fell more fully on his face.

That might have been the moment when he fell in love with Draco, Harry decided later. It was hard to tell, because by the time he knew he was in love, it was hard to go back and say when the fact began. Or when the fact started mattering to him. After all, he held back for a little while, sure that Draco wouldn't care to know.

But it was a good candidate for a moment like that, when Draco was still Malfoy but looked happy.

*****

"Draco told me to ask you something difficult and humiliating in return for your help. So I came up with the most difficult thing I could think of."

Lucius Malfoy nodded. He sat on the other side of bars so heavy that Harry could hardly see him through them; they were buzzing with magic. The Dementors hadn't come back to Azkaban, so the Ministry seemed to have decided they needed a lot more enchantments.

"I want you to apologize to the Weasleys," said Harry. "For things like giving the diary to Ginny especially, but also for trying to get Arthur sacked, and for all the stupid comments you made about them to Draco. Draco was the one who carried on that ridiculous feud you have between the two of you in school, with his remarks to Ron."

Lucius didn't respond to that, simply stared at him through the bars. Harry was about to repeat himself, assuming Lucius hadn't heard him, when Lucius whispered, "That is all you want?"

"Well, no," said Harry. Lucius nodded. "You'll also have to pay for the specialized Mind-Healing that Ginny wants to get. She's tired of having the echoes of the diary hanging around in her head, but she can't pay for it herself. And there's a special fund George set up in memory of Fred. He died in the Battle of Hogwarts, and George wants to make sure that never happens again. So he's paying to set up a special kind of spell around Hogwarts that means no one can cast offensive spells that strong there again."

"Could that not be rather a problem with Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"It permits the countercurses, just not the curses," Harry said, a little dryly. He wondered how serious Lucius actually was about that objection, or if he was just saying it to maintain his reputation as a "real" Malfoy. "A future professor, assuming they find a good one, can always go outside the school to show those spells to their students. But it's the same kind of spell they have up at pubs like the Hog's Head and some of the shops in Diagon Alley. There's no reason it wasn't already at the school except stupid objections like yours."

Lucius didn't even object to that characterization of his objections. He just lowered his head a little, and said, "I agree."

"What, no conditions?"

Lucius looked at Harry again, his head twisted as if there was an invisible chain around his neck. "My wife has already been here to discuss my options with me thoroughly," he said. Harry felt his lips twitching in sympathy. "I can have no conditions, not if I want you to help me." His eyes were bleak suddenly. "And more to the point, if I want you to help my wife and son."

Harry shook his head. "I owe them life-debts. I'm only helping you because Draco begged me to. You're the one I'm helping under protest."

"But even with life-debts, I might make you a little less forgiving or willing if I set conditions, and then Draco or Narcissa might end up with severe penalties. So I won't set them."