Letters

Finale: The Argentine Tango

'It was outside Dumbledore's office, after I tricked him into setting Dobby free. Dobby stopped him.'

'Merlin, he was willing to use the killing curse on a twelve-year-old. He told me other stuff, bits and pieces, but it was pretty garbled. He did explain how he plotted revenge when he found out about us, how he got the book because he knew the curse he wanted to cast...'

''The Curse of Poisoned Obsession',' Harry muttered. He read up on as Draco showered once they'd returned to Lily Cottage, to try and understand what Lucius hoped to achieve; it wasn't pleasant. 'The book explains that the moment I touched you again, my love would become obsessive; desire without trust eating away at me, destroying me with suspicion, jealousy and anger so that you were driven away from me. It would have been more than I could stand, I would have pined for you and my obsession would have goaded me into madness with feelings I couldn't fight. The only escape would have been my death...'

In that sense, the song they danced to was more than appropriate and when Draco suggested it, Harry immediately agreed. They chose 'El Tango de Roxanne' to banish what Lucius had tried to achieve, to overcome his mad dreams concocted in the shadows of darkness as he became obsessed with vengeance.

As if to confirm the curse, through the outdoor speakers, Jacek Koman rasped, 'without trust, there is no love.'

Harry twisted Draco so his back was pressed into Harry's chest, his lips on Draco's neck, Draco's arse pressed against Harry's groin, causing Harry to moan huskily. With one arm wrapped around Draco's waist, he dipped his hand down around Draco's inside thigh and lifted him; Draco's head dropped back onto Harry's shoulder and his legs hooking behind Harry in surprising neediness as they spun around in a fast succession of turns.

Ewan McGregor sang: 'His eyes upon your face, his hand upon you hand, his lips caress your skin, it's more than I can stand...' But they pulled together and it was their eyes upon each other, their hands upon each other, their lips brushing each other's skin as they danced. At times, yes, it was almost more than Harry could stand as his chest heaved and his heart burned with passion, at times he thought that maybe Lucius had succeeded after all, apart from it was both of them in this together and Draco's eyes betrayed the same intensity of desire.

There had been an inquiry, of course. Robards and Kingsley had come to Lily Cottage to talk privately with Harry and Draco the following day. It had been a long day behind locked doors with Ron, Mione, Peanut, Pansy, and Narcissa all crowded into Harry's study to determine events in the build up to Lucius's escape.

Severus did a wonderful job of sneering over the whole proceedings. 'It's just like the annual de-brief with Dumbledore at the end of every one of Mr Potter's years at school,' he drawled in a bored tone. Harry could tell it was superficial and he was as intrigued as everyone else.

Harry explained about how it started with their letters after the war and then Severus's Will reading; how he'd broken Draco's parole terms by duplicating the extra key in the Manor's Wards attuned specifically to his signature and that he'd hidden it amongst the House-Elf Wards, a fortuitous move considering he'd needed to use it to get into the Manor that night. He admitted to how he'd visited Draco on more than one occasion as their friendship through their letters tipped into more, insisting that neither Draco nor Narcissa were complicit in his actions, that his visits were never pre-planned and never more than twice a year. He told them about the missing illegal book which he'd neglected to register with the Ministry.

He shrugged. 'I guess I decided that as the book was mine by rights because I'd been bequeathed it by Severus that it was my problem to sort out.' He spoke about his suspicions regarding Langello, the mystery of the deceased Mr Abraha's key into the Malfoy Wards, the involvement of Abbott, his visit to Azkaban. 'My mistake was not realising that it was Lucius's not Mr Abraha's signature tune through the Wards.'