The Echoes Of Yesterday

The Echoes Of Yesterday…by Samayel

Chapter 31: The Pendulum


“Isn’t there a way…we could…bypass this? Couldn’t you believe that it won’t be what it sounds like? Tell them that…that Durmstrang made it sound like it was only my fault. It would be true. I swear it.”

Draco wasn’t looking him in the eyes anymore, and the tone of his voice wasn’t even plaintive. It was hopeless. Harry sighed softly. There were truths at play here that outweighed personal feelings, and Draco had long since shown that while his feeling ruled him, careful logic would win his attention…and his respect.

“I’d accept that…if that means anything to you, but it won’t change their minds about much. It isn’t about being against you, though. It’s that we have people to answer. The Ministry, the Board, the parents of the other children here. I have enough influence to make this easier for you, but I have to be able to relay something that they can use to deal with this in a way that helps you. Just trust me that no one here wants to demonize you, and remember that anything written by an official from Durmstrang will be viewed with a skeptic’s eye.

“Besides…you’ve already had a glimpse of the darkest parts of my life…it only seems fair. Ask yourself if whatever you may or may not have done stacks up against some of the colossal blunders I’ve made over the last two decades…and I’ve made some that were just stunning! At least I can promise you that you won’t be removed from here without your case being heard, even if I have to act an your advocate myself.”

Draco nodded, eyes still fixed at the surface of the table.

“I understand. It can’t be helped, can it? I want to leave because I don’t want to talk about this. Master Prewett…and I…we’ve talked about a few thing I’d rather not have shared, but this…I don’t know. Do you really want me to stay? You’d do all of that to help me…no matter what I said?”

The answer came automatically. “Yes. I haven‘t promised anything I can‘t give. I can make sure that everything is looked at as fairly as possible. I‘m not promising to lie for you or do anything inappropriate just to help you. I am promising to help in any way I can. I can and will follow through on that. Alright?”

Draco took deep breath and finally raised his head. Grey eyes were boring into green, and Harry didn’t like the distraught timber of Draco’s voice anymore than he liked the nervous body language Draco showed. How bad could it have been?

“When it started…I was in my second year at Durmstrang. I wasn’t…popular…but I wasn’t that different from others. Better at schoolwork and spells, and really, until your third year, you’re really of no account there. The classes are mostly introductory, like here, but there’s more emphasis on physical and mental endurance. Exercise, long practice hours…and the usual punishments for failure. I didn’t get noticed much, because I didn’t fail. I just…didn’t feel comfortable around the others much. I still don’t.

My grandparents. They didn’t…like me…or want me…which is why I think they sent me to Durmstrang, even though I found out later that my father would have wanted me to come to Hogwarts. Their house is beautiful. Everything is old, because theirs is an old family. My rooms were very lavish, and it isn’t like I wasn’t looked after, but it was just me, and them, and an elderly pair of house elves. I was always alone…or reading, because they left me alone as long as I was quiet. I used to be locked in my room when they were cross with me, sometimes for days or a few weeks, with elves to bring me food or books. I just couldn’t leave my suite. That was all. They were cross with me a lot, usually over small things, but a lot more so when I tried to argue with them. I know that’s part of why I don’t…deal well…with others. Sometimes I think I just don’t know how. I make it up as I go along, but I don’t know what I’m supposed to do. I’d just rather avoid it entirely.

Near the end of second year…I started noticing…changes…in myself. The same things everybody notices. You can’t live in dorms and not know that everyone else is going through the same thing, some early, some late. That didn’t really matter so much, but it caused…complications. There was someone I started to ‘admire’, but I hadn’t thought anything of it more than that. I just started to smile more when they were around, or stare at them overlong when they weren’t looking at me.

The reason I’ll tell you all this…it’s because you’ll understand part of it…at least…at least the start of it. I’m more like my father than anyone knows…even if I didn’t know that then. His name was Yves. He was in his fifth year, and he was the rising star of the Quidditch team. I was a complete fool for him, smiling, gawking, and trying to impress him by bragging about my classwork. When he asked for a little help with his classes, I fell all over myself trying to toady to him. I didn’t even fully understand why I was doing his homework every night, but I did it just the same, because he’d smile, say a few kind words, and let me speak to him in public, which, for a second year student at Durmstrang, is just unheard of.

I know what you’re thinking…what you must think. He didn’t do anything. Not really. He knew that I idolized him, even if I didn’t yet understand why. He didn’t…he wasn’t like me. He wouldn’t have had anything to do with me if it hadn’t been for the assignments I finished for him. Unlike here, relationships between students are strictly prohibited, because it’s an all male school, and they take pains to discourage ‘friendships’ they think might go to far. They teach that it’s weakness, and I still think…I think Yves’ classmates, his real friends, pushed him into it…into making a joke of it.

That’s how I got my first kiss. He lured me into it, saying he was grateful for what I’d done, while his friends were hidden. He said…wonderful things…I thought my chest was going to explode, because nothing had ever felt better than hearing those things from another person. As soon as my lips touched his, he pulled away, and the others popped into view. They laughed…called me every name they could imagine…and he laughed the hardest.

The most amusing part…I think…is that I didn’t want revenge. I’d figured out what I wanted, and what I was, even if they’d made it an insult. I pined for days, and because I was young, and blind to the truth, and had more skill than most, I found a way to get what I wanted. I wanted him to want me. Everyone knows the warnings that come with love potions and spells. I knew them all by memory. I didn’t care. I cast one anyway. I wasn’t careful about the strength of it either. I wanted him to kiss me again, this time with no one laughing. I thought that would make it real.

I didn’t want to be caught, so I’d taken care to learn it wandlessly. I could do that even then, but not as dependably as now. I didn’t use it in classes because I didn’t want to be seen failing at anything, so only a few people even knew that I had the potential for it. All anyone had seen me do was levitate small objects, or conjure light. I think…no…I know I botched the spell.

Yves…fell under the spell immediately, but he wasn’t loud about it, he was subtle. It seemed like it hadn’t worked at all, until he cornered me in an quiet hall. Whatever I did wrong…all I’d conjured was a violent ardor. He was tearing at my clothes when they stopped him. I was screaming for help, because I’d never imagined more than him kissing me, and I was terrified of him…like that.

He was expelled and sent home in disgrace. They couldn’t prove it was me, or even properly identify the spell because I’d mangled it so badly. Too many people had seen him in the hallway, with me screaming and trying to crawl away from him. It was the kind of incident that they dread there, but even if they suspected, and I don’t think they did, they couldn’t prove that I was behind it. They did blame me, though. The older students, the faculty, and others.

Yves was popular, and as they saw it, I must have led him on at the least. Since I was the victim of an attack, I was spared Veritaserum testing, or Legilimency, but between the public knowledge that I’d…I’d ’favored’ Yves…and the suspicion that I’d caused the incident somehow…I was a pariah by the end of the year. When they wrote the incident up, they kept most of the details out of it, so the official record only shows an ’altercation’ with an older student. I know that the paper they have in the other room…is probably the testimony of someone who was there, repeating the rumors of the time. That I’d seduced him, or bribed him for his favor, or blackmailed him into seeing me somehow and then turned on him when he didn’t do what I wanted.

I didn’t do any of those things. I’ll swear to it, or take Veritaserum and repeat what I’ve told you. It’s just…what’s pathetic is…I accidentally cursed him with a failed love spell, got him expelled, and probably ruined his reputation or his life…because of a kiss. I hated myself so much for that…for the blindness to what he really wanted, for the stupidity of still wanting him after he mocked me, for the failure to even cast the spell right…and for doing all of it…because…because…”

Harry had listened, rapt and attentive, brows furrowed with concern from start to finish, and in the flow of words he’d lost the sense of where Draco’s emotional state lay. It came back to him when he noticed Draco falter with the words, wide eyed and alternately gasping for breath or gritting his teeth while he restrained emotions that were building past the point of his ability to control them.

“Draco…it’s alright! You don’t have to…”

“I just wanted someone…anyone…to WANT ME! Something…something is wrong…with me…because no one…no one has…ever wanted me. Not here…not really…and not anywhere else. WHAT’S WRONG WITH ME?!”

The young man in front of Harry still had enough control of himself to remain still, but it was obvious that in the course of the tale, Draco had passed a line he’d drawn a long time before, with a question that had never been answered on the other side of it. Harry had seen more than a few meltdowns in his time, and more than one or two intemperate youths, and always he’d helped, with words, with directions or explanations, and he could give those now as well, but distance didn’t feel like the answer.

Draco had buried his head in hands, choking softly while he restrained what would have been sobs if he’d allowed them. Harry stood up and walked around the table quietly, not even remotely comfortable with what he was about to do, but unwilling to compromise once he made his first step. These were hurts he knew well, knew in himself just as Draco knew them. Desire, abandonment, confusion, and the haste of rage. He knew them all intimately, every one of them. He’d been older, and he’d known far more than a kiss, but he knew these feelings…these questions…and he only had one answer.

The young man was muttering despondently to himself still when Harry hesitantly touched his shoulder. Grey eyes, rimmed with red and still wet, snapped upwards when Harry’s fingertips made contact. The question in them was hung between pleading and defiance, and Harry winced inside, hating the little echoes of another time and another person that bedeviled him then, but he still got the words out calmly.

“It’s alright. There’s nothing wrong with you. I believe you…and I’ll vouch for you if…”

There was a faint flash of disbelief in Draco’s eyes before the young man leaped up and Draco’s arms were wrapped around his chest, a blond head buried in Harry’s chest. The muffled choking noises and the shake of shoulders left Harry gritting teeth quietly and bitterly hating the close contact that only reminded him of what he hadn’t had in so many years.

Only a minute or so passed before Draco quieted, his head still firmly pressed into place. His breathing had softened into even and rhythmic breaths, and his arms had softened their death grip on Harry’s chest. Harry wasn’t sure when he’d taken to stroking the back of Draco’s head, but difference was comforting. His lover of years ago had kept his hair so much longer than this. It was something to remember, to be reminded of the present by, and it was oddly calming to know that this was a very different person despite all the similarities.

A face upturned and grey eyes suddenly unsure and pleading. An impudent and desperate angel. Harry’s breath stopped cold when he sensed the question hanging on the tip of Draco’s tongue. He tried to stop the creeping sense of panic in its tracks, and shift things with a few words, but words didn’t come in time.

“When you kissed me…you were thinking of him. Even if you think of him…couldn’t you…”

‘Dear God! John was right…he wants…me!’

And the world screamed for an answer to be given, like a pendulum swinging between the reality of the now and the whispers of another, better time, and Harry’s heart swung with it.

TBC!!!