The Echoes Of Yesterday

The Echoes Of Yesterday…by Samayel


Chapter 27: The Hard Truth

‘I always imagined a week of bed rest as increasingly relaxing. Another bloody day of this and I’ll be positively mental! Wait…heh…that’s how I wound up with the time off in the first place. Bugger. I really do have all the luck, don’t I? Is there a level you can go that’s past barmy?’

Harry nibbled impassively at his meal, pillows under his back and piled high to make him comfortable in bed. There were other things to do, but there were only so many books to be read, and there were other small annoyances that had become clearer as the days whiled by in relative solitude.

He had talked to a few people. Ron and Hermione, Minerva, and a brief visit from Hagrid…who had gotten a bit teary eyed about Harry being sick so long. Cho Chang had passed through a day ago, and Neville had dropped by again, this time far less ferocious than before. All in all it wasn’t that bad, but Prewett had become more relentless in his ‘conversations’ with Harry, and Harry knew full well that John was in ‘counselor mode’. Every chat this week had hinted at drawing out details from the past, dredging things up from the depths of Harry’s mind that weren’t simple cut and dried issues.

These things had been close to his thoughts for days, hovering near like buzzards over a man lost in the desert. He’d pushed so many thing aside for such a long time, but here, alone, there was no place to hide from his own thoughts. Or from his memories.

He’d managed to deal reasonably well while talking about the killings. It had been more appetizing than speaking of Draco, and Harry’s mind was already inflicting enough memories of those times on him as it was. The Dreamless Sleep had worked and worked well, and Harry had to admit that physically, he felt genuinely better, rested and energetic, restless and eager for things to occupy his time. More than fit enough to work.

But Dreamless Sleep had its price.

So much time on his hands, so little to distract him. The daydreams came easily, and often. Especially just upon waking, or just before bed while he rested quietly. He knew from experience that it would only get worse as the days passed. Dreamless Sleep suppressed the capacity to dream, but the human mind was a fickle and demanding mistress. A person needed to dream to be healthy, and in the absence of traditional REM sleep, Harry’s memories came back to him in fleeting snapshots and hazy musings, all at random during the day or evening.

John had taken to asking about them, expecting answers beyond Harry’s hesitant excuses. They weren‘t really such terrible memories. They ought to be happy ones, right? Draco alive and well and healthy. Making love whenever they could find time alone. Talking quietly in bed. Harry could remember the mornings he’d made breakfast for them when Remus finally left Grimmauld Place.

He’d always hated making breakfast. At least when it was for the Dursleys, who had never appreciated him despite his efforts to please. He wasn’t exactly sure which day it had started, but after Remus had gone, Harry started cooking for himself and for Draco, and it had been one of the only times he could remember being grateful for the ability to make a decent breakfast.

That musing was almost enough to touch off a full scale daydream. The sound of sausages frying on the big, black skillet he’d used. The scent of toasting bread and the tart sweetness of orange juice. Draco was always amazed by the way Muggles lived and ate, and the small differences in diet often amused and distracted him. Not that he really complained. He ate everything that Harry served, almost always with a smile on his face.

They didn’t bother with much in the way of clothes then. Just pajama bottoms and slippers for comfort. Draco had developed a keen appreciation for food after his time away from school, before Snape had delivered him to the Order. A few weeks of serious hunger had transformed the once famously irascible Draco Malfoy into an appreciative and cheerful diner, with impeccable manners, using ’Please’ and ’Thank you’ with a very believable air of gratitude about him. Cooking for someone who, along with having already gotten you off twice that morning, showed their appreciation by kissing your neck while their hand slipped into your pajamas…well…it was a hell of a lot better than cooking for the Dursleys!

So many hazy little moments, and so few of them without at least a hint of the warm and ever-present sense of affection and closeness between them. That was it…that was what ultimately made the end so painful. How could anything like that…how could it have ended?

’I did something. Something wrong. Or didn’t do something I should have done right. I thought…I thought I deserved it….being that happy. I didn’t. Maybe saving the world doesn’t qualify you for any discounts on having a happy life. Maybe I’ll never understand it. Why? Why did he…want something else?

I wasn’t good enough. Somehow…someway. I thought I tried. I thought he was happy. He was quiet sometimes, but he seemed happy. Then he…he…he asked for that. How could he think I’d want that? He had to know I was in love with him, didn’t he? If he didn’t like me saying it out loud, it didn’t stop me from showing it every way I could.

He always showed me what he liked. Wasn’t I a good enough lover? I was a virgin a few months before that! He taught me everything…and I thought I made him happy. He certainly wanted more often enough!

I know he thought about his family…how they raised him, what they expected of him. But who…who the hell would ask someone they really loved to do what he asked of me? To stand aside and be a secret from a wife and the world?

And that was the heart of it. Harry felt tears leaking a small trail down his cheeks while he stared up at the ceiling, shaking his head to clear his thoughts. There was an ugly truth at the core of it. He’d avoided it as often as he could, and it hurt him the most when his memories forced him to brush against it. He knew the truth. He’d always known it…to some degree, but it hurt him more than he could describe when circumstances forced him to acknowledge it.

He’d hidden it from the world, avoiding the entire subject and everything related to it. It was muddled amongst the many secrets, where no one could find it and force that truth upon him. The silence regarding his sexuality, the clandestine nature of his time with Draco, the killings after the death of Draco and Claire. It all muddied the waters around a truth he’d skirted the edge of for nearly two decades.

’He didn’t really love me. Not the way I loved him. He must have…felt something. Like…or lust. Not love…or not enough love. He never lied to me. That’s why he never spoke about it. That’s why he always hushed me or changed the subject. He didn’t try to pretend there was more to it than there was. I did that. Ron was right. The others would have told me not to get involved with him. I didn’t want to hear it, because I didn’t want to believe it was true. There wasn’t anything else I could have done to make it work. I didn’t do anything wrong…not really. Except perhaps expecting too much.

I’ve kidded myself almost half my life…to keep this to myself. My great love affair with Draco Malfoy. It was just a teenage joke. We were together, and got on alright, and shagged as much as we could, but it wasn’t more than that. Not to him. If he’d really loved me…the way I loved him…he wouldn’t have asked that.

Have I been weak for not wanting to say that? For not wanting to admit it? Who would want to look back at someone they really loved and say that about them? Not me. I know what I felt. I know what I wanted to feel. It doesn’t make him evil…to admit this. I know he was a good person. Just…not…my good person.’

That was the truth. It had nipped at his heels every day of these last decades, and he’d fought back with spells and potions and finally whiskey, but it had never gone away. It was alright to cry, knowing this, now while he was alone. Some things just hurt because they did, and there wasn’t anything wrong with that. Oddly, he couldn’t quite help smiling and laughing a little at it all while he cried.

That was what had cost those men their lives. When Draco had died, Harry’s anger had been a convenient means to hide his pain. The reminder of his loss, never resolved. Maybe if they’d spoken to each other, been a little more honest, maybe a little more direct and clear, it would have just hurt and then healed. But they hadn’t, and it didn’t, and Harry had held that silent confusion and desperation to himself as a comfort when he was alone. And then Draco died. Three lives were snuffed out because he hadn’t wanted to face what he knew to be true.

Being angry had been preferable to being honest. He vented his rage in the way he could rationalize as ’fair’, and it hadn’t been enough. Even when he’d violated the last shreds of his dignity and his oath to the Auror Service, he still hadn’t exhausted that terrible gnawing canker in his soul.

It was long past time. John, Hermione and Ron, Neville, Minerva and all the others were right. It was time to grow up and put all that behind him. It was a different time then, the aftermath of a war that changed the world…and it had damned near killed him in the process. Those times were long gone, and life was very different now. People forgot, and forgave, and moved on. Now it was time for him to the same.

It had felt so real…that fleeting vision in his classroom. Draco, real and shimmering before him like some spirit guardian made manifest. He’d felt the echo of that closeness and warmth. Maybe he’d wanted to? Had that been the help that his exhausted mind had needed to stay sober? He’d been withdrawing from alcohol, dosed in Calming Potions, sleeping fitfully and dreaming of a dead lover for weeks while seeing Draco’s son each day. It wasn’t a stretch of the imagination to accept that he’d just gone ‘round the twist from stress. Either way, he hadn’t seen or felt any such thing since that horrible day, and he was almost grateful that he could claim relative sanity now.

Perhaps…perhaps he would leave Hogwarts. Maybe it was time to go home and start over again? Not just yet. He’d finish his treatments for his liver, and talk to John Prewett a little more openly than before. Something had shifted inside of him, and Harry felt that faint possibility of a better life in front of him for the first time in a long time. Maybe not a sunlit road, but hardly a darkened tunnel either.

It was alright…to talk about it. At least with Prewett, who would keep these realizations a secret. Harry could finally tell the truth, and even if that changed very little of his present, at least he could start on building a future that wasn’t bedeviled by the ghost of a love that never quite was.

And that would have to do.


TBC!!!