family, bound to his bidding, whatever he might ask. His lightest request would be her law. She would come and go at his pleasure. And when he died, she would pass, like an inherited trinket, to the next in the family line.
You look curious. You want to know, I imagine, what would happen if there were only daughters. But there are never daughters. Draco never told you? Malfoys only have male children. It is a peculiarity of the line.
But I digress.
All these spells and bindings the wizard laid upon the child. At the end, he bound her with sympathetic magic. Should she harm the Malfoy she served, should her disobedience or failure cause him pain, she would feel that same pain herself. And the farther she was, physically, from the one she served, the weaker her powers would be. Eventually she would feel it as a physical debilitation. She could not stay away long.
When he was done, he lifted the child up in his arms and kissed her once, on the forehead, and then he set her down inside the golden cage which had killed her mother, and he walked away. He did not speak to his daughter again for ten years.
And now you look sad. Have I made you sad? It is a sad story, I suppose, although it is my story, so I rarely think of it that way. And all love stories are sad, especially for you mortals. You have such short lives.
What's that? Well, of course it was a love story. Isn't a love story, after all, just a story about love? Must the story end happily for the love to have been real? There are many kinds of love, after all. Love that cannot harm and love that never abandons and love that cannot imagine betrayal. And then there is love that corrupts, and love that destroys, and love that works in the blood like poison. And they are not so far apart as you might think.
Harry gave a little gasp of astonishment, but other than that, remained perfectly still. He did not move away as Draco scrambled to his feet. He stood where he was and stared at Draco, and Draco, feeling stupid with relief and shock and exhaustion, stared right back. He hadn't seen Harry in so long — or at least it felt as if years had passed, although he knew perfectly well that it had been a matter of days — that all the words he had wanted to say turned to dust in his mouth.
He looked around instead. They were in a small room paneled in plain wood. There were no furnishings (unless one was to count the destroyed door lying in the middle of the floor, which Draco didn't.) Harry was standing by a small table on which sat a what looked like a bronze paperweight. A gold chain lay coiled around the base of the table. He held an open padlock in one hand.
Draco coughed. Harry was still staring at him. For some reason, Draco could taste blood in his mouth. Maybe he had bitten his lip. 'Harry,' he said, finally. The name sounded odd. 'Are you all right?'
Harry said nothing. Draco became aware of the way that Harry looked. He looked ragged. He was wearing a torn and filthy shirt and there were tears in the knees of his jeans. His shoes were caked with mud. His black hair straggled over his face in damp and tangled strands, and he was flushed, the hectic color high in his cheeks. He wasn't wearing his glasses. One of his hands was bleeding, although not badly.
'Harry?' Draco said, and got to his feet.
Harry seemed to come alive. With a jerk, he stumbled back, putting himself between Draco and the table behind him. 'Don't,' he said vehemently. 'Don't come any closer.'
'It's me,' Draco said. 'It really is me — '
'I know it's you!' Harry half-shouted, startling them both. 'I can't believe I ever-' He broke off and shook his head. He looked sick to his stomach. 'I know it's you, Malfoy,' he said, more quietly. 'How do you know it's me?'
'Oh, for God's sake, Potter,' said Draco. 'Could we possibly have this idiotic conversation later? Like, once we're out of this pit? And what the hell are you protecting there? A paperweight? You're acting like it's the last Portkey out of Azkaban.'
'It is,' Harry said, 'a Portkey.'
'Oh,' Draco said. He swallowed. 'Well, where does it go to?'
'I've no idea,' Harry said flatly. 'Away from here.'
'You don't need to use it,' Draco said, very quickly. 'I can get you out -
Hermione's got a Portkey, she can get us all out — '
Harry looked shocked. 'She's here, too? You brought her here?'
'We had to come,' Draco said. 'We had to see if we could find you — '
'You can always find me,' Harry said, a sort of factual desperation in his voice. 'I don't know why I bother running away. You keep finding me and finding me. Everywhere I go, every corner I turn, in crowds, on trains, in bloody bookshops, I keep seeing you. And when I don't see you, I hear you in my head.' He shivered, and Draco saw how weary and exhausted he looked. 'If I asked you to stop looking for me, would you?'
'If it was me that went missing,' Draco said, 'would you stop looking for me?'
'Yes,' Harry said.
Draco stared at him. It had been one thing reading the letter, disconnected as it was from the actual Harry. It was another thing to have Harry standing right in front of him, completely familiar from his tangled hair to his scarred hand to the faint twist at the corner of his mouth that meant he was saying something he didn't like having to say — to have Harry right in front of him, and to have him confirming that everything Draco had hoped was a mistake was not actually a mistake. 'What?'
'If you asked me to, I would,' Harry said. There was a faint sulky tone in his voice. 'If it was important — '
'Liar,' Draco said, with all the venom at his disposal.
'I left,' Harry said. 'I left, and it practically killed me to leave, you know that? I look back and I can't believe that I did it. And now that you've found me, what? We get to say a friendly hello and then I leave and it kills me all over again? If you cared about me at all — '
'If I what?' Draco exploded. 'You fucking hypocrite, Potter, it's amazing you don't choke to death on that bloody double standard of yours. And all this time I thought you were so honest — '
'I tried to be honest,' Harry said. His voice sounded worn away at the edges, like one of his eternally frayed shirts. 'I wrote you a letter. Did you…not read it?'
'I read it,' Draco said, and into those three words he poured every ounce of bitterness and misery and rage in his heart.
It was enough to make Harry flinch. 'I meant every word,' he said quietly.
'I don't doubt that you did,' Draco said disgustedly. 'As if that's something to be proud of, Potter.' He felt his hands curl into fists at his side. It wasn't that he wanted to hit Harry. He didn't want to hit him. It was just something to do with his hands. 'And the amazing thing about you,' Draco added, 'is that you probably thought you were being helpful.'
He expected Harry to look angry or defensive. Instead, Harry merely looked stricken. 'I'm sorry,' he said. 'I wanted you to know.'
'Well, now I know,' Draco said. 'And it doesn't change anything.'
Harry continued to look stricken. 'You didn't understand?' he said. 'You really didn't understand why I had to go?'
'I understood why you had to go,' Draco said. 'I didn't understand why I couldn't come with you. You promised me you would wait for me and I believed you. I guess I thought you wouldn't lie to me. I trusted you. I never trusted anyone else in my life. But I trusted you.'
Harry's mouth opened in almost comical surprise. And Draco felt the same astonishment. He couldn't believe he had just said what he had said.
He was so used to evasion, misdirection, showing what he felt without saying it, expecting others to read his motives from his actions, that having so blatantly just stated exactly what he was thinking felt as if he had exposed a part of himself, cut his wrists open and bled on the floor at Harry's feet. He wondered what the hell had possessed him to say it.
Harry pushed a damp lock of hair out of his eyes. He was shivering. His thin shoulders shook as he took a deep breath. 'If you read my letter,' he said, his voice set and firm, 'and you still don't understand, Malfoy, then it's probably because you don't want to understand. I told you the truth.
