Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of Stepping Stones. I hope you've enjoyed it.

Chapter Four—The Fourth Step

Harry was glad that he had a lot of experience in living with pain, because that was what he had to do for the next little while.

He allowed himself five minutes of standing in the corridor, alone, after Draco had left him. Then he went home and told the triumphant story of the case to Ginny. She laughed and gasped in all the right places, which meant Harry had to smile in the right places himself and pretend to be as proud of the case as she was of him.

She wanted to celebrate in bed. Harry had never felt less like sex, and for once, he didn't try to drive himself to the extremes he usually did. He pleaded tiredness, and Ginny kissed him and snuggled against his shoulder to fall asleep with an understanding smile.

Meanwhile, Harry stared at the ceiling and decided, carefully, how the next few days would go.

He spoke to Wellington the next morning by Floo and asked for a holiday. He hadn't had one so far, and no doubt Wellington, from her tolerant smile, thought he would use this one to stay at home and celebrate with the wife he almost hadn't made it back to. Harry let her think so, and hoped Wellington wouldn't check on whether Ginny had gone to work herself. But then, Wellington seemed to watch him and Draco more closely than the other partnerships, because she knew Harry had had doubts about it from the beginning.

More doubts than ever, now, Harry thought, and spent a bit of time with the back of his hand pressed to his eyes before he stood up and moved on to the next part of the plan.

He finished the report on the Stegton case and owled it to Draco for his signature. Then he spent some time looking up laws on private duels, and more advertisements than he had known existed in the Daily Prophet about what kinds of private dueling instructors already existed. If he was going to make his living this way—and he couldn't go on being an Auror—he would probably need some classes.

Amazingly, though, it seemed he didn't need any of that. The duelists recommended themselves on the basis of "ancient secrets" and "good performance in Defense Against the Dark Arts." (The names above some of those claims made Harry smile for the first time since his parting with Draco). People probably chose the ones that sounded best or most exciting and took their chances from there.

He would have more clients than he could handle, he thought, just because of his name. He'd have to choose carefully.

Prices that the dueling instructors charged for their classes also seemed to vary. Harry decided to set his somewhere in the middle. He wanted payments that would put his wages somewhere close to what they had been as an Auror.

After all, the hardest part of this was going to be convincing Ginny that he hadn't lost his mind and wanted to change his career for a reason.

Then he set about writing his resignation letter. He had to keep pausing during it, but that was all right, because no one else was at home, or peering through the window.

He spent the pauses thinking about Draco, and what Draco would think when Harry sent in the letter.

It was cowardly, Harry admitted to himself, and he would be lying yet again when he said that the Auror career had finally struck him as too dangerous. But he couldn't imagine working with Draco as matters stood. Either they would dance around each other, which would cause the friendship and trust that made their partnership strong to crumble, or Draco would give the kind of defensive speech about how he was straight that Harry couldn't bear to listen to. He knew that already. He had only told the truth because Draco had asked.

Would you leave Ginny if he asked?

But that question didn't matter, because he never would. Harry smiled bitterly at nothing and finished the letter, though he didn't send it off yet. He would talk to Ginny this evening, and he was confident that she would at least see genuine unhappiness on his face, even if the cause wasn't what he said it was.

"I don't accept it."

Harry stared at Ginny with his mouth open. She stood in front of the fire, arms folded and eyes hard. The flames behind her made her hair seem to glow with rich light, and Harry admired her absently even as his brain reeled from the words she'd just spoken. He'd laid out his case, explained that the risk to his life from Stegton last night had shaken him more than it should and shown him he wasn't cut out for Auror work, and that he was going to do something else, not rely on her to support him. It sounded convincing. It should have convinced her.

Why hadn't it?

"But I really don't want to be an Auror anymore," Harry began, wondering what else he could say. "I'm starting to think I jumped before I was ready, before I knew enough about myself to make that kind of decision. Everyone thought I would be an Auror, and I decided that I should, too. But it's not what I really want."

"How can you know that based on one case, which wasn't as difficult as some of your others?" Ginny planted a hand on her hip and looked at him skeptically, gnawing on her lip the way she sometimes did when she was trying to figure out the way his brain worked. "I don't see why this should change your mind."

"It was the last straw," Harry said, grateful to Hermione for having said that the last time they were at the Burrow, to explain why she had given up on working with one of her more prejudiced colleagues after a tiny remark. "Not the case itself, but the weight of the case combined with everything else."

"How?" Ginny sat down this time, which was at least an improvement over the way she'd been standing, though the intent gaze she fixed on him wasn't. "Tell me how."

Harry hadn't prepared that elaborate a structure of lies. He stumbled through something about not wanting to lose his life, and how Newnham had been mad, and how he had only solved the case by coincidence and felt inadequate about that. In fact, all those were true, but they fell one by one into Ginny's listening, obdurate silence and failed to dent it.

"I don't think so," she said at last, voice calm but inflexible. "I want you to reconsider this decision, and talk to Wellington tomorrow. If she agrees, then maybe I'll agree. But I think right now that you're running away from a difficulty."

"What difficulty?" Harry knew his voice was too harsh from the way Ginny turned her head and focused her eyes on him.

"I don't appreciate it when you talk to me that way," she said coolly.

"Sorry," Harry said, and massaged his face. It felt hot, and he wished he could claim ill health on account of a fever. But the fever burning in his blood was impossible to explain to Ginny. He had sacrificed his partnership; he really wanted his marriage to last. "But I don't know what you mean."

"The difficulty is working with Malfoy." Ginny's voice softened and became kind. "Look, Harry, I've noticed that you don't talk about him as often in the last few months as you used to. I think that's a telltale sign that you're not enamored of him, that you wish you didn't have to spend time with him. But make it through a year, and then we can see about you being reassigned to someone else. Surely they'll notice if your solve rates go down because of how useless he is."

"He wasn't useless yesterday," Harry snapped, while he mentally reeled from the idea that not talking about Draco meant he wasn't enamored. Why did she have to phrase it that way?

"Whatever you say," Ginny said. "But you were the one who solved the case, and I've noticed that you're usually the decisive factor, the one who actually does with the case what the Ministry wanted done with it. And I think you don't really want to quit. You just want to be away from Malfoy."

Harry touched his forehead, and wished that he still had the scar as an excuse for the hot poison burning through him. Ginny had hit on the right reason, but by a wrong chain of reasoning—so elaborately wrong, in fact, that he wanted to sob with laughter and curse at the same time.

"You could be right," he said. "But if I find it intolerable to work with him right now, how am I going to survive the rest of the year?"

Ginny moved then, coming over to him and wrapping her arms around him. "I don't know," she whispered into his ear. "I'm sorry. I didn't realize what it was like for you. Talk to Wellington, and maybe she'll agree to assign you elsewhere."

Harry pulled back to look her in the eyes. "And if she doesn't, and I can't stand it?"

Ginny took a deep breath and glanced at the table next to him. "Well. Then you have the resignation letter."

The conversation with Wellington was a disappointment. She simply gave him a serene look all the way through, her expression never altering, and Harry was finally turned away with a vague promise of changing things if they became "truly intolerable" and advising him to think long and hard about whether he wanted to destroy a partnership this good.

"Have you thought about whether Auror Malfoy wants to be forced to work with me?" Harry tried that last tactic on the threshold of her office, where she'd gently escorted him. "He might not."

Wellington looked into his eyes, and then at the resignation letter he still carried in one hand. "If you can get Auror Malfoy to sign this, then I will reconsider my decision."

So Harry was striding down the corridor to their office again, his back prickling with sweat and all his careful contrivances flown out of his mind. He had wanted to avoid a confrontation with Draco. Just thinking about it made his head whirl. The pain in the center of his chest, constant ever since Draco's rejection, throbbed like a newly-open wound.

He stood in front of the door for long moments before he could make himself knock. His skin was cold and slick. He knew he was a coward, and he didn't care. Being brave got him hurt.

And got other people hurt, too, he thought. He didn't believe Draco would have run away from him the other evening if he had felt only indifference or amusement at Harry's suggestion.

The door opened at once. Harry stepped in, half-hoping that Draco would be snogging Astoria against the wall and he could leave. Or drop the resignation letter on the desk and run. If this was in the middle of an awkward moment, then surely Draco wouldn't have any trouble—

"Where have you been, you bastard?"

Once again, Draco's hands closed on his arms. Once again, he practically hurled Harry into the wall. Once again, Harry felt his eyes flutter and his face burn when Draco pressed close against him.

This time, though, the pain was stronger. He looked at Draco long enough to make out his salt-pale face and very wide eyes, and then shoved him away. He held up the resignation letter. "All you need to do is sign this," he said. "And then we can leave each other alone, hopefully for the rest of our lives."

Draco seized the letter, so hard that Harry feared he might rip it. Then he turned his back to read it. Harry rubbed his aching arms and wondered what someone would think if they walked by and saw him hunched against the wall like that. On the other hand, he wasn't about to shut the door when he was alone in a room with Draco.

Something that will never happen again. And instead of a balm to the wound in him, that made it burn all the harder. Harry shook his head. He didn't understand why he had fallen in love with Draco, he didn't understand why he didn't just fall in love with Ginny since he was capable of that kind of passion, and he didn't understand his own reactions.

A right mess, I am.

"Do you know what this says?" Draco turned around with an expression on his face Harry had never seen before, but he was wise enough to know that it meant he should try to get out of the room with his limbs intact. He licked his lips and compromised by moving a step away from Draco, in the direction of the door.

"Of course," he said. "I wrote it, after all."

All of Draco's living, snarling movement became stillness in an instant. Harry peered at him warily from under his fringe. Ever since he broke up with Astoria, Draco's moods had changed like that. Maybe he needed a girlfriend to keep him steady and sane. He would need one to make him happy in the future.

Harry's throat burned at the thought the way it had when he had seen Astoria with Draco at the Ministry party, but he did his very best to ignore that. His path will always lie with someone who's not you. The very least you can do is try and be happy for him in turn, and never show your jealousy the way you were foolish enough to show your other feelings.

Then Draco was pointing his wand at Harry, who dived out of the way instinctively. The spell flew past him, slammed the office door shut, and covered it with what looked like a great, fuzzy mass of bread mold. Harry, staring at it, had the unhappy impression that no sound would pass in or out.

"You thought you could avoid this," Draco's voice said from behind him, so thick that Harry worried about him in turn. He stood up and put his back to the door, reluctantly, only to find Draco moving towards him with light predator's steps. His lips were pulled back from his teeth in an expression that didn't inspire confidence, either, and his eyes…Harry had never seen his eyes look like that. "I'm the one to tell you that you can't. I'm the one you should have been responsible to, in the first place. You should have come in and fucking told me. You shouldn't have thought that you could leave this behind."

"You're not yourself," was Harry's response. It had to be. Saying something violent and angry would simply upset Draco further. He had one hand down at his side, canted around his hip and his wand, but he wouldn't draw it unless it became necessary to defend his own life.

"I'm more myself at the moment than I've been since we left Auror training," Draco retorted, though he did stop a few feet away and rock there, staring at Harry. "How could you—I didn't think you were a coward. Not that."

"How long did I keep the truth from you?" Harry said, despite the pain clinging to the mention of the idea. If he could make Draco think about the thing that troubled him most, then maybe he could make him see why he had to do this. "I'm a coward. I always knew that. I never wanted to be a coward to you, but it happened, and I have to go away to keep it from happening again."

Draco gave that unnerving smile again and came closer. Harry clenched his fingers around the wand, but, like an idiot, didn't draw it. Ron would say that he was an idiot, at least. He must be. He had to be.

Draco reached out and planted a hand on the wall directly above Harry's head. He leaned closer, and his breath raked over Harry's face. It didn't smell the best, to be honest, as if he'd been eating strong cheese.

"Do you know why I'm more myself right now than I ever have been since the end of Auror training?" he whispered.

"Why?" Harry asked back, also in a whisper. His training was telling him that he shouldn't be doing this; Draco had all the dangerous signs that they'd been told to watch out for in Dark wizards or others who might kill Aurors. But he was drawn hopelessly along, at least while Draco spoke like that and didn't actually try to kill him.

Even then, I might not fight.

"Because the end of Auror training was when they partnered me with you." Draco's teeth were all showing now, and he looked Harry straight in the eye without blinking, instead of off to the side as he usually did. "That partnership was the beginning of what changed me. Corrupted me, I would almost say, except that the ending is going to be different."

Harry ignored the last words, which he didn't understand, and focused on the ones that seemed likely to make Draco agree. "I know," he said. "It corrupted you because I worked with you. I'm sorry."

Draco shook his head, and went on shaking it, long past the point where he should have stopped. Harry remembered something Hermione had told him once, years ago, or something he had read, that said bears shook their heads like that to express anger. He would have shivered, except that he still couldn't move.

"I'm more myself now," Draco whispered, "because you were lying to me, and now you're telling the truth. I'm more myself now because I know that you're in love with me." He grinned again, as if that was the most exciting news he had ever heard.

Harry cast a worried glance at the door, and then remembered the fuzzy spell Draco had cast over it. He relaxed.

Draco followed his gaze, and laughed, nastily. "Afraid that someone might overhear you? What's the matter, you don't have the strength to confess that to anyone but me?"

"No, I don't," Harry said, deciding, once again, that the truth was the best road to take, and not only because it might give Draco pause. Harry just didn't have a lot of other options when dealing with Draco. Too much of his soul was bound up in the man. "I married Ginny knowing I didn't love her. I assumed Voldemort had damaged something in me and I'd lost the ability. I wanted to make her happy. And then I realized I was jealous over you when you dated Astoria, and I realized what that meant, and since then, I've just been struggling to live with it. But I can't be your partner anymore, now that you know."

Draco stared at him in silence for long minutes. His expression had gone completely unreadable. Harry started to edge to the side, assuming that Draco would let him go, but Draco reached over and seized his upper arm, squeezing to hold him in place. He didn't seem to notice when Harry winced.

"I'm the only person you've ever been in love with," Draco whispered. "You're not struggling with half your heart in your wife's possession and half in mine. It all belongs to me."

"You don't have to be nasty about it," Harry said, stiffening his shoulders. If he couldn't stand up for himself because of guilt that he had lied to Draco, he could still stand up for Ginny. "Yes, I fucked up. Now, will you sign the bloody resignation letter and let me out of here?"

"You don't even know what I'm talking about, do you?" Draco's grin was a little less terrifying, but still present, and he pushed himself against Harry's body as though he thought they would fuck through their clothes. Harry glanced aside, wondering why he'd believed Draco had got rid of his meanness from Hogwarts.

"No, I don't," Harry said, when he realized Draco hadn't paused for dramatic effect but because he really wanted an answer. "Let me go." He reached up and pushed against Draco's shoulders, hoping that would convince him to back off.

Draco shook his head. "I've been thinking about it," he whispered. "I think we could get along. In fact, this might make our partnership even better." He traced one line from Harry's collarbone up towards his ear.

Harry had never realized that that skin could be so sensitive. He gaped at Draco for a moment before he grabbed his hand and threw it off. Draco winced, but didn't back away. He remained near, staring into Harry's eyes, his breathing still fast.

"You're mental," Harry snapped. "I'm not going to cheat on Ginny with someone who rejected me."

"Does this feel like rejection?" Draco leaned forwards and fastened his lips on the corner of Harry's jaw, lightly sucking.

Harry pushed him off again, pained and furious and hard. He took the chance to slip away from the wall and wheel around in the center of the room, between their desks. Draco watched him, cheeks bright.

"You're not in love with me," Harry said, and tried to pour as much scorn into the words as he could. "Maybe you just really don't want our partnership dissolved. Don't worry; I'll tell them that you did an exemplary job." At making me want to pound you into the desk. "Maybe you want to make me cheat on Ginny. I'm not going to let that happen, either." He drew his wand and aimed it at Draco. "Get the fuck out of my way."

Draco leaned one hand on his desk. His eyes were enormous, drowning, the expressions in them difficult to read. "I could be," he said.

"What?" Harry had been listening for an actual response to his questions, and so he stared at Draco, knowing his face was blank.

"I could be in love with you," Draco said. "If you give me the chance. If you let me learn. I already know that I'm closer to you than anyone else, and when I was dating Astoria, my thoughts were always straying to you."

"Of course they were," Harry said. He hated the hope he was feeling. Hope hurt. And it really wasn't the right reaction in this situation. He didn't think there was one. "We work together."

"I love it when you act jealous over me," Draco continued, moving closer. His eyes had narrowed a bit now, and he looked as if he never intended to glance away from Harry ever again. It was horrifying. It was nerve-racking. It was arousing. "There's nothing I'd rather feel than you against me. I trust you with my life, and I'll trust you with more than that."

"Stop it," Harry said, but his voice croaked. His will was weak. If it had been strong, he'd have ended the partnership with Draco the moment he realized there was a problem. Instead, he was still letting it go on.

"I know this could be the best thing in my life," Draco said. He had dropped the rictus-smile, and all that was left was the intense focus. "Let me in. Please."

Harry closed his eyes, pictured Ginny, and blurted out, "If all that's true, then why did you run away at first?"

Silence. At least Draco didn't try to lean against him and kiss him, which might have defeated Harry's argument in ways and for reasons that he hated to think about. After a moment, Harry forced his eyes open and looked.

Draco hovered near him, still, but he was frowning. Harry held his breath, hating and hoping, both at once, that he had managed to force reason back into Draco's skull.

"I was afraid," Draco said finally. "I'd teased myself with the conclusion that you might like me as more than a friend and partner, played with it, based on some of your behavior, but I didn't dare actually believe it. To have it come true in front of me was more than I could handle. So I had to get away." He looked back up at Harry as if suddenly realizing he was still in the room and gave him a lazy smile. "But I'm here now, and fully willing to be."

Harry stopped him with an outstretched arm when Draco started to move forwards again. "And what's going to happen the next time you're frightened? If we face opposition when this becomes public? If people accuse you of stealing me from Ginny, the way they will?"

Draco hesitated. Then he said, "It doesn't need to become public."

"Yes, it would have to." Harry found he was on steadier ground now, and Draco's physical presence seemed a little less overwhelming. He folded his arms, to keep his hands out of temptation's way, and glared. "I won't date someone who wants to treat our relationship like a dirty little secret."

"I only meant—" Draco half-turned away and touched his fingers to his temple as if fighting a forming headache. "It doesn't have to become public right away. And your wife might not mind."

"Oh, yes, she would," Harry said softly, thinking of the way Ginny had sounded when she was talking to Hermione and hadn't known he was there. Devastated just because she sensed his attention straying. If he actually strayed… "She would very much."

"Why?" Draco demanded, eyes narrowed as though he had suddenly seen a way to punch through Harry's reluctance. "Don't tell me she doesn't have someone on the side herself."

That broke the trance that had still gripped Harry. He leaned back and sneered. "She doesn't. And you, meanwhile, want me to risk my marriage for someone who's afraid to be with me, and who has to insult my wife rather than focusing on the rightness of what we're doing together."

"You've already risked your marriage, falling in love with me," Draco said.

"But that was involuntary. The actions I choose to take have to be of my own free will." Harry threw the resignation letter on his desk. "I'm leaving."

"Please don't." Draco stepped back from him, but squeezed his eyes closed as though the step had been a different one, off a very tall building. "I don't think I can get along with you. I know that I can't function with a different partner."

That was what made Harry almost turn back. The hints of vulnerability in Draco's perfect-seeming mask, the trust that he showed to Harry by allowing him to see those hints in the first place…

But he thought of Ginny, whose vulnerability was pledged to him in marriage, and the fact that Draco still didn't really know what he wanted and might just be lonely, and pulled himself back again.

"I'm sorry," he said gently. "I would have stopped myself from falling in love with you if I could. I think it'll only fuck up both our lives. But leaving is my attempt to stop it from fucking them up quite as badly as it could have."

Draco looked at him bleakly. "You won't stay for me, as your partner and friend, if not your lover?" he whispered.

Harry looked at him across the expanse of the office, his slowly reassembling pride, and saw the man he had fallen in love with. Draco had had his moments of cowardice, but Harry had had whole months and years of it, refusing to tell Ginny the truth, and then refusing to acknowledge what it meant when he fell in love. Harry couldn't despise Draco for not being sure of what he wanted.

"I'm sorry," he said again. "There are some sacrifices that just won't make anyone happy, and only delay the inevitable."

"And this is another of them," Draco said lowly.

Harry pretended he didn't hear him as he left.

It was stupid, how useless he felt.

Ginny had looked at him long and hard when Harry informed her he'd stopped being an Auror, but suggested that he take a few days to decide what he wanted to do before he started accepting clients as a private dueling instructor. After all, perhaps that wasn't what he wanted after all. She would hate for him to make an impulse decision, she said, and then spend the next few months or years suffering because of it.

Harry tried to ignore the tone in her voice when she said that, and the way she watched him out of one corner of her eye.

Ron and Hermione didn't take the news any more calmly. Ron stared at Harry for a long time the night he announced his decision at the Burrow, and after his parents had stopped fussing and turned to listen to the news of Fleur's next pregnancy, he tugged Harry aside into the drawing room.

"Really, mate? You're leaving?" Ron shook his head, then paused and shook it again, as if the shaking would make the truth pop loose and let him understand Harry's perspective. "Why? Did Malfoy drive you out?"

"Nothing like that," Harry said hastily, because he didn't want Draco to pay the price for his leaving at the end of Ron's fists. He didn't want Draco to pay any price at all. This was Harry's fault, Harry's mess, and he would have to clean it up. "I decided that I'd rather live a calm life, that's all. I spent enough time fighting Dark wizards in the war. I don't want to do that for years on end."

Ron stared him in the eye for so long that Harry's own eyes started watering with trying not to blink. Then Ron shook his head yet again, and said, "Yeah, I don't buy it."

Harry said, "Why?" and he thought he said it in a calm and collected manner, too, though his voice was squeaky enough for Ron to give him a wry look.

"Because," Ron said, "you don't change your mind overnight about something like that. I could buy it if you'd been an Auror for years and the cases got to you, but a few months after we finished training? No."

"I didn't think it was going to be like this in training," Harry muttered, which was true. When he'd been in training, he'd always assumed that he would have Ginny as a partner and that he would never have to face a mistake as fundamental as whether or not he'd married the wrong person. "I have the right to change my mind."

"Maybe, but I think you're lying to yourself and you'll miss it," Ron began. Then he must have seen something in Harry's face, because he exhaled and grabbed him, hugging him hard. "But if you have to, then you have to. I won't trouble you anymore."

Hermione summoned him to the Ministry and her office and quizzed him there, up one side and down the other, in between a series of flying memos and documents that required her signature. Harry tried to talk about how apparently she was high up in the hierarchy of the Ministry already, but Hermione waved a hand.

"That's just hard work," she said. "And people gave up after I shouted at them. Now." She leaned insistently forwards. "I know you wanted to be an Auror. Not even all the attention you got after the war and the difficulties of training made you give up. Why now?"

Everything would become instantly comprehensible if I could just tell them about Draco, Harry thought tiredly, closing his eyes.

But that would be a betrayal of both Draco and Ginny. Draco didn't deserve Harry's friends thinking he had done something to lead Harry astray, when nothing could be further from the truth, and Ginny didn't deserve her husband confessing to being bent when he'd never leave her anyway.

"I don't know," Harry said, and stared at her bleakly. "Haven't you ever felt like you just had to make a decision, whether or not it was the right one, because staying in the condition that you were in at first was intolerable?"

Hermione paused with her hand on the nearest memo, and her face softened, for the first time all day. Harry sighed in relief. That meant she was about to be easier on him.

"Of course," she said. "I felt like that when we were traveling around in search of the Horcruxes and not finding them. And when Ron kissed me during the final battle and then didn't do another thing for months and months, so I had to coax him along."

Harry choked. That had been a bit more information than he ever wanted to know about his best friends. Still, that had its uses.

"You see?" he asked quickly. "If it's happened to you—and you've usually known what you wanted more than I did—then it could happen to me."

"It could." Hermione touched the back of his hand as though she thought he would get angrier at a heavier touch. "But I don't think that that's what happened here."

Harry ground his teeth. "Why not?" He tried to keep his voice polite, but Hermione leaned forwards and peered into his eyes as if she could see words written there that would tell her what Harry had tried to conceal.

"Because it's too sudden," Hermione said. "I know that you loved your job. It was all you talked about. And even your partnership with Malfoy couldn't have been that bad, although you didn't mention him often after the first few months." Yeah, well, Harry thought rebelliously, let's see you fall in love with someone other than the person everyone's assumed you should be with and see how well you handle it. "Did something else happen? You can tell me, if you want. I won't tell Ron."

But there was no promise to keep silent to Ginny, and in any case, Harry didn't think he could betray the secret without Draco's consent, now. He shook his head, lips pinched shut, and Hermione sighed in that way she always did when she was trying to help people out of the goodness of her heart and they simply would not cooperate.

"I just hope that you're right about the silence, Harry," she said, and turned back to her complex but not complicated world as Harry slipped out of the office.

It was hard because those were the first few weeks, Harry told himself. It would be easier, much easier, once he had grown used to this decision, and then everyone else would, too.

Ginny adjusted and started encouraging him to look for dueling instructor jobs. Ron and Hermione gave him curious glances, but seemed to have waited until he was ready to discuss it. Mrs. Weasley sent him several plates of food and invitations to talk, and then got distracted by other events in her huge family.

He had forgotten there was one more direction from which an objection might come.

The knock woke Harry at once, although it was a single, muffled sound. He had trained himself to sleep lightly not long after he began in the Auror program. Who knew when hearing one small sound could be the difference between life and death?

He sat up, reaching for his wand, and looked anxiously at Ginny. But she slept on, even when the knock repeated.

Harry didn't think it was anything dangerous, by now, or the wards would have reacted. He rubbed sleep from his eyes, put on his glasses, flung on a robe that was lying over the back of the bedroom chair, and cautiously went down the stairs.

The ground floor of their house looked strange and dangerous in the moonlight, though Harry had seen it like that plenty of times before. He told himself it was the lingering remnants of his dream and his fear, and opened the door.

Draco stood there, back turned to Harry, arms wrapped around himself as though he were freezing, even though it was a summer night.

Harry knew the feeling.

Then Draco turned around to face him, and his eyes were so wide and face so white that Harry thought he must have come about something related to Auror business after all. He moved back, holding the door open, and whispered, "What's wrong?"

Draco shook his head and remained in place, trembling now. "Not there," he whispered. "I won't enter the house where you live with your wife."

Stung, Harry stepped out to join him and shut the door behind him. "What is your problem, then?" he asked in a voice that he kept low. He didn't want to alert Ginny, but at the same time, he didn't want to act as though he was hiding a dirty secret with Draco. He had nothing really to hide, now, not since he had made his decisions and done the best he could to live up to them. "Why come here if you hate this place?"

Draco remained silent for so long that Harry considered going back inside. And then Draco replied, in a flat voice that nevertheless thrummed along Harry's nerves.

"I need you."

Harry shut his eyes and told himself that this was not what he had wanted for so long, that it might meant any number of things. After some attempts that ended in dry chokes, he found his voice.

"You can learn to work with a new partner. Give yourself time. If the new one is someone who doesn't like Death Eaters, then—"

"Don't be an idiot."

That sounded more like the Draco he knew, assertive and snappish. Harry looked again. Draco leaned towards him, one hand extended and laid flat as if he was touching an invisible wall that loomed between them. Well, no matter what he thought, the invisible wall had to stay there, Harry thought, staring back.

"If it was only the work," Draco said, "the way I thought it was at first, I wouldn't feel like I'm missing a limb. I wouldn't be constantly turning to share a joke and realizing you're not there. I wouldn't lie awake at night tormenting myself with fantasies of what we could have and then crying out in misery when I come, and come back to reality."

Harry's lips were so dry that he had to push at them before he could speak. "But—but that doesn't mean that you're in love with me," he said.

"What the fuck does it mean, then?" Draco's voice was savage. He pushed forwards, and Harry had the sudden, terrifying vision of the invisible wall between them disappearing. He should move backwards, prove it was still there and would be no matter how Draco pushed, because the wall was made of his will. But he couldn't force his legs to work as he listened to Draco's tirade. "I've never been in love before, either! I don't know how it works. I only know I want you, lust after you, struggle to stand on my own without you, like you, want to be with you. There's no other name to give that, no other name I know, except love."

Harry shut his eyes again, because that was the only way he could deny what was happening. "It sounds unhealthy to me," he said, desperately clinging to some of the language Hermione had taught him. "Have you seen a Mind-Healer? You need to be complete in yourself, not dependent on me—"

"Fuck that."

Draco covered the distance between them, as though the wall had ceased to exist. Harry opened his eyes and stared, because it should have held—

And then he realized, in the same moment as Draco's hands closed on his arms and Draco leaned forwards to shove his tongue into Harry's mouth, that the wall was made up of Draco's fear, too. Without that, and because Harry's will had wavered, there was nothing to hold him back.

And Draco's fear was gone.

Harry moaned and lost himself for long minutes to the way Draco pushed at him, the shove of tongue and the grip of fingers digging into his arms and the taste that seemed driven straight into his nostrils and lips by the way Draco kissed him. He couldn't describe that taste more accurately than "hot," but that didn't seem to be a problem. Nothing mattered but the clench and the push and the shove.

Then he felt the press of wood against his back, and wondered what it was, and remembered the doorframe.

That they stood kissing in front of his house, wide open in the night to anyone who wanted to see them, anyone who might be lurking around the Chosen One's house in the hope of capturing some amazing shot.

The house he shared with Ginny.

Harry had to find the same strength he'd discovered in the office, buried deeper this time, to push Draco away. And it was even harder because Draco braced his feet and pinched cruelly rather than stop the kiss. Harry nearly gave in, luxuriating in the touch and the satisfaction of having who he wanted, at last.

But it wasn't enough. It never would be, when he would ruin Ginny's life right along with everything else.

So he pushed Draco away, and stood there panting, raising one hand. He thought he should wipe his lips, to express rejection. He thought he should do something to show Draco that he didn't just accept what Draco had chosen to hand him.

He couldn't do it. He was licking his lips too much, savoring the taste there, and Draco was looking at him with rage, scorn, something close to hatred, lust, and triumph.

"I knew it would be like that," he whispered. "Or more intense. Like that." He stepped forwards again, one hand curving as though he held an invisible wand. "What's going to happen if I touch you again?"

"I don't know." Harry's voice was so hoarse, so ragged and broken. No use pretending that he hadn't participated. He had sinned against Ginny. The only thing he could do was make sure that it never happened again, by exiling Draco from his life.

"No, you don't." Draco's expression shifted, becoming both softer and slyer. The hatred was gone, but the triumph burned so bright Harry cast an instinctive glance upwards, thinking it would awaken Ginny. "Because you've never been touched in that way in your life before, and neither have I. We both need this."

Harry lifted both hands to form as much of a wall as he could, though the barriers felt shattered and he didn't know that he would ever get them back in the same condition again. "I can't do that. I married Ginny. She loves me. She depends on me. She would be devastated if I left."

He had thought that argument would have one of two effects: either Draco would storm away in disgust or get so upset he couldn't argue coherently. Instead, Draco's smile sharpened with amusement, and he leaned one shoulder against the door. Harry's breath quickened. He couldn't help it, he thought defensively. Draco looked like the perfect mixture of the schoolboy Harry had known, the cold man he'd met that first day in the office, and the partner and friend he'd come to know.

Harry had sometimes had the impression before that Draco was fragmented, showing only those facets of his personality in the Auror office that would be acceptable there, suppressing his tendency to break the rules along with half the rest of himself. Now, for the first time, all the aspects of Draco Malfoy were whole, complete.

Integrated.

"And your absence does worse than that to me," Draco said. "And from the weight you've lost since we parted, I dare say it does the same to you."

Harry put one hand defensively over his belly. Weight? What was Draco talking about? He had noticed that his robes draped a little more loosely over him lately, but—

Then he saw the way Draco was moving closer, step by step and inch by inch, and recognized the words for the distraction technique they were. His throat throbbed and his cock, which he'd been able to ignore until that moment, was warm enough to almost compel him to squeeze it.

"Her happiness is built on a lie, anyway," Draco breathed. "I'll see that lie shattered and you where you belong."

"I've lied so many times," Harry said. "To you, to myself, to her. But this was the original lie. I married her because I didn't think I could fall in love with anyone, that Voldemort had damaged me because I had a Horcrux in my head. She never would have married me without that. It was my own fault. Why can't I preserve that one lie, the lie that makes her happy and my friends content?"

Draco paused, eyebrows rising. "I ought to know that you wouldn't have married her for a selfish reason," he murmured. "But that doesn't answer your question, or mine. You did fall in love. You belong with me. Right now, three people are unhappy, since I can't imagine that she hasn't noticed something. Come with me, divorce her, and two people will be happy, and only one distressed."

"A lot more than that," Harry said bitterly. "The Weasleys will be upset. I'll probably lose my best friends. I—"

"You're not really afraid of that."

Harry swallowed. He looked back at Draco's face, proud and calm, and the bright eyes that never wavered. He wished for a dark moment that they had never been Auror partners, that Draco had never learned to read him so well.

"I—no," he said.

"Then I don't understand why you stay." Draco ran one finger thoughtfully along his temple, tracing the line of an old scar that Harry had often followed with his eyes but never asked him about. "You've admitted that you're not in love with her. You can't care about hurting her more than you care about hurting me." Harry had to close his eyes at the simple, proud assurance in Draco's voice. "Why, then? What is it that you're so determined to protect?"

"I made a stupid decision," Harry said, feeling as if he were falling off a new cliff with every word he spoke. "It was ignorant and selfish, and I shouldn't have made it. But the least I can do is stick by it now that I've made it, instead of changing my mind."

"Oh, of course," Draco said, a flare of contempt returning in his eyes. "I should have known. It's your willingness to play noble martyr that keeps you here."

"I don't want to play that role," Harry snapped. "It hurts, you arse."

"I'm sure." Draco looked him over in a leisurely fashion. "Merlin knows why I fell in love with you. Easy on the eyes, yes, but the masochistic streak is rather wide for my preferences." Then he chuckled. "But you've taught me a new emotion. I feel sorry for your Weasley, since I'll win in the end."

"You can't be sure of that," Harry said, clutching with desperate hands to his wavering hope.

"Yes, I can," Draco said. "I can see your eyes." He turned to walk away.

"Where are you going?" Harry called, and cringed. His voice had come out as an abandoned wail.

Draco gave him one more leisurely look. "I'm not going to betray you to your wife," he said calmly. "I think you should make this decision on your own. And your cowardice has to cease being an obstacle between us of your own free will, or there's no reason to think that you won't break and run from me, too."

"You're different," Harry said, impulsively.

Stupidly.

Draco's smile was slow and dazzling. Then he faded into the darkness, and left Harry with the ruins of his life falling around his ears.

He didn't go back up to Ginny. He didn't think that he could stand to lie in the bed beside her and know that he was pretending, that he would wake up to a lie in the morning and a lie in the evening and a lie the next night after that, when they were making love.

He sat in the drawing room instead, and lit a small fire, and eyed the bottle of Firewhisky Ron had got him for a "retirement" present. But then he decided that his thinking was muddled enough already, and turned back to look into the flames.

Even then, Harry really couldn't think. His emotions were in too much of a knot. They tangled themselves around his heart and tugged in sixteen separate directions.

Fear. Despair. Anger; how could Draco ask him to hurt Ginny like this? It was only possible because Draco really didn't care about Ginny, and Harry knew that, but it was still shitty, that he was willing to hurt Harry by asking him to leave his wife.

The wife you don't love. The wife you lied to and tricked into marriage.

Harry put his head in his hands. He felt as if he was falling, and on the way down, he tried to grab all the justifications that he'd had for marrying Ginny in the first place.

She won't be happy with anyone else. She said herself that she'd never fall in love with anyone else.

The merciless response came back, tolling like a bell from hollow walls. And she could be wrong about that, just as you were. You certainly weren't called on to make her life a joke and your life a sacrifice to her happiness. She never asked for that. She would have laughed at you if you really told her what you were doing.

He fell, faster and faster.

I fit in so well with her, and with her family. Leaving would devastate everyone—her parents, my friends, her brothers, and her. How can I cause so much hurt for the sake of a happiness that might not last very long anyway? Draco's prickly and offensive, difficult to get along with. I don't know that I'll spend the rest of my life with him. Most likely I'll end up alone and feeling stupid because I made another sacrifice and it didn't work.

The answer this time was like the thrust of a sword.

You're causing more pain by keeping things this way, even if they don't know it yet. Your marriage will fall apart someday. It won't last beside the strength of your own longing, and Draco's. It's better to give in and at least not be cheating on Ginny with Draco, juggling your life with her and your life with him, and lying about that, too. You've never been unfaithful to her in body. Don't start now.

Tumbling, and twisting, and it was as though a vast wind was blowing around Harry that no one but him would ever feel.

I do love Ginny. Isn't that enough?

No pause this time between question and answer. Not enough for you. Not for her. Not for Draco. And you know that your cowardice has grown to the point that it's interfering in your life. Do you want it to start causing them the kind of pain that it's causing you?

Harry reached the bottom, and an enormous, silent crunch seemed to surge through his body, the knowledge of his own wrongdoing cramping his muscles, breaking his bones.

He had been wrong. He had been stupid. He had known it was a mistake when he made it, that marriage, and he went ahead and made it anyway.

There, at the bottom of the night, Harry drew in one painful breath, and then another.

He had been wrong. He had been stupid. He had known it was a mistake when he made it, that marriage, and he went ahead and made it anyway.

But that wasn't the end. It couldn't be. If it was, then the rest of his life would be only guilt and blame, and no atonement.

And he had to make up for his cowardice and lying in the only way he could: by gathering up his courage, and telling the truth.

Harry lifted his head. The fire had died away to embers. He hadn't noticed when that happened. His breath honked in his lungs. He touched his cheek and came away with tears on his hand that he turned back and forth, staring at them in fascination by the weak light.

He'd always lied this way and tried to avoid the consequences of his mistakes because he was afraid those consequences would be too painful to bear. For a long time, it hadn't seemed as though there was any reason to face up to them, anyway. Why? Everything was going along perfectly well. And then he had fallen in love with Draco, and things had changed, but part of him had still believed the old deception, that what could happen was worse than what was.

Harry smiled. Only now did he realize how very effectively he had lied to himself, along with everyone else.

He touched his face, finding that his nose wasn't broken, his cheeks not shattered, his skull not staved in, despite the overwhelming, hot pressure of his guilt.

Things weren't going to be easy. Never that. But they would be better than the way things were right now.

That was why he made the decision, in the end: not because he had realized on his own all the nobility and purity of principle that he'd been neglecting lately, not because he had gazed into Ginny's eyes and realized he couldn't deceive her any longer, but because he was more afraid of one type of pain than another.

But it was better than some other ways the consequences might have fallen out. It was better than Ginny catching him with love bites on his neck, or catching him and Draco fucking.

Harry took comfort in that, and in the fact that he still breathed despite the iron weight of the guilt, as the fire and the night both wound to an end.

"Ginny? We have to talk."

She knew immediately that tone meant he was serious, and her eyes became quiet. She sat down in the chair in front of the fire, the one Harry had been sitting in when he fell, and stared at him.

Harry spent a minute watching her before he started talking. She had her hands clasped on her knees and was biting her lip to hide her apprehension. All those little gestures he knew, all those little gestures he had no right to. If Ginny needed to be in love with and marry someone, he should have left that position open to someone who would appreciate her. And she might do just fine on her own.

"I've been lying to you for a long time," he said. "I think it's time I told the truth."

"You're fucking someone else." Ginny said it flatly, as if that would diminish her pain, but Harry saw the way her hands twisted together. "I should have known, from the way you were trying to avoid sex with me."

Harry shook his head. "No," he said. "But I am in love with someone else, and I'm not in love with you. I married you under false pretenses, to give you a happy life, and because I thought I was damaged and couldn't really love anyone."

Ginny sat up straight, her cheeks draining of color, her eyes so big that Harry winced and immediately wished he had broken the news another way. The problem was, he couldn't think of any way to break it that wasn't insensitive. It would have been a lot better if he could just have controlled his actions and feelings in the first place.

This isn't the first time you've fucked up, he reminded himself, and met her eyes.

"That can't be true," Ginny said, but her voice had a pleading tone to it that Harry knew well. She would believe him when she heard the evidence, although she might not want to. "Is it?"

"It is," Harry said. "I thought I was damaged by Voldemort, because he made me into a Horcrux." Ginny nodded, lips firming as though she was facing a dangerous trek down a cliff. "I tried so hard to date people, to date women or men, to fantasize about people when I wanked, and still, nothing. So I just decided at the end that I wouldn't ever fall in love, and then I heard you talking to Hermione about how I was your one person that you would feel comfortable loving or marrying. I wanted to give you what you wanted."

"You had no right to use that knowledge against me that way," Ginny whispered. She stood up, shaking, and clasped her hands together. Harry kept an eye on them. He wouldn't blame her if she wanted to hex him, but he drew the line at things that could kill him. "No right."

"I know," Harry said. "I'm sorry."

"That doesn't make up for the fact that our marriage is a sham!" Ginny spun to face him, her hair flying. She looked ready to kill. Harry told himself that he wasn't really in danger, that she had far more right to be upset than he did, and managed to continue sitting. "You never felt anything for me, did you?"

"The same kind of love I felt for Hermione," Harry said. He kept his body relaxed, his face open, with an effort, because he had just remembered that Ginny had the same kind of Auror training that he did, the training needed to take down suspects and inflict injuries that would slow them but not kill them. "And concern that, if I could be doing something about your situation and didn't, that would make me a criminal."

"So you decided to do something far worse instead." Ginny shut her eyes and snorted through her nose. "Do you deny that it was worse?" she added suddenly, opening one eye and focusing on Harry.

Harry shook his head.

Ginny gave him a look filled with fire and loathing, and Harry winced again, but sat there and took it. So far, he'd got off more lightly than he had any right to expect, and he would do what Ginny asked: explain the situation to her family, give her the house if she wanted it, give up some of his Galleons (though he really didn't think Ginny was that petty). She might demand more than that, once he answered the question she saw gathering in his face.

"Who is it?" she demanded. "It has to be an Auror, because you wouldn't have quit the Auror program without that motivation." Her head moved in a tiny, irritated flick, and Harry knew it was at herself, for failing to put the pieces together.

"Draco," Harry said.

He'd wondered if she would be surprised by the news or just nod grimly. He hadn't realized how much he'd been expecting the second reaction until she staggered back, gripping at the couch, nearly shocked off her feet.

"That's impossible," she whispered. "You said that you tried dating men and they didn't do anything for you."

"Neither did women," Harry said. "If you had been a man, and my friend, and in love with me, I would have settled down with you for the same wrong reasons. It really didn't matter to me."

"It must have," Ginny said, her eyes and cheeks gathering furious heat again. "That's why you couldn't love me, isn't it? Because you're bent." Harry flinched at the way she spoke that word, but he reminded himself it wasn't personal, that she was angry at him and not at every man who might be gay.

"I don't know," he said instead. "Maybe that's part of it. But Draco's the only person I've ever been in love with, so I don't know. I'm so sorry, Gin—"

"All this time," Ginny said, "you would have been happier if I had blond hair, and hated you, and had a cock."

"No," Harry said. "That's not what drew me to him. It's just the way he trusts me, and the way I worked with him—"

This time, she slapped him. Harry ducked his head, clutching his cheek, and wondered why he'd thought it was a good idea to enumerate Draco's attractive features in front of the wife he was leaving.

"I don't want to hear it," Ginny said coldly above him. "You're going to get out of this house, and go off to your precious lover. I'll tell my family, because you can't be trusted with the truth, obviously. Don't try to owl me, or firecall me, or do anything else until I contact you."

Harry could feel the rising urge to justify himself, to argue. But once again, he really was getting off too lightly. He nodded, stood, and walked towards the door. He had nothing but the clothes he was wearing and his wand, but that was enough, considering who he was going towards.

I really have no right to feel so happy, he thought as he opened the door.

"Potter."

Harry closed his eyes, feeling the shattered edges of his loss grind against him for the first time since his fall, and looked over his shoulder.

Ginny was standing in the middle of the drawing room, arms folded, glaring at him with eyes that had tears around the edges but were cold in the middle. She was fighting her grief with her rage so very hard, and Harry ached. He would have gone over and taken her in his arms a day ago—hell, half an hour ago.

My life is changed, but hers is destroyed.

"I'm never going to forgive you for this," Ginny said, and her head dipped for a minute as if she was going to bow it, but she ended up staring at him again. "I want you to know that."

"I'm not going to forgive myself, either," Harry said. "Everything would have been easier if I'd faced up to the truth and had the courage of my convictions in the first place."

"I hope I can fall in love with someone other than you," Ginny said bluntly. "And I hope that you and that bastard don't last."

"Just blame me, not him," Harry said. "I'm not going to blame you for anything you want to do to me short of actual assault. But if you hurt him, then I'll make sure you can't anymore."

Ginny made a choked sound and turned away. "Get the fuck out of here," she said, her voice filled with so many emotions Harry could have spent a lifetime naming them all.

Harry went.

His first stop was Gringotts, to pull out enough Galleons to live on for a few months. He didn't know what would happen there, what Ginny would demand or do or ask. His vault was hers, too, under the marriage agreements, and it wasn't impossible that she would empty it.

But it was hard to think about that, when he was thinking about the future instead.

You are selfish, he accused himself as he ducked through Diagon Alley and into the Leaky Cauldron to get some breakfast. Think about Ginny and feel sorry for what you did to her, rather than plotting what's going to happen next.

He was wise enough about his former lies to know what would happen if he tried, though. He would invent excuses to think about Draco, excuses to pity himself, and excuses to be rude to Ginny when she contacted him. It was better to acknowledge that he was flawed and do what he could to make up for actual crimes, rather than trying to control his thoughts.

I can go to him now, Harry thought, and licked crumbs off his fingers as he finished a meat pie. Assuming that he wants to see me.

He did hesitate then, wondering if he should find a place to live first, or owl and see if Draco actually wanted to meet with him. But then he stood up, shook his head, and deposited a handful of Galleons on the table to pay for the meal.

I have to get used to acting bravely again, and making apologies rather than excuses.

The gates of Malfoy Manor were shut when Harry first Apparated onto the path that led to them, but by the time he looked up from dusting himself off, they had opened. Harry raised an eyebrow. The only way he knew of doing that would be to tune the wards to him.

He walked slowly down the path, watching the white peacocks. They fanned out their tails and released agitated cries when they saw him. Harry wondered what the Malfoys kept them for. Sure, they made noise, but there were more efficient alarm systems. He couldn't imagine they added much to the decorative effect of the grounds, either, not with what they must produce in shit and scattered feathers.

Then he realized that was something he could ask Draco about, if he wanted to. He had that ability now, that permission. Harry smiled and quickened his pace.

Before he could knock at the door, a droopy-eared elf opened it and eyed him dubiously. Harry nodded to the little creature. "Could you tell Auror Malfoy that Harry Potter is here, please?" If Lucius was here at the moment, he thought that would clear up any confusion about which Malfoy he wanted.

"Harry?"

The voice made Harry shudder. He craned his neck over the elf's head and saw Draco standing halfway down the stairs, foot apparently extended to move to the next step, his eyes wide with wonder.

"Hullo," Harry said, and felt absurdly shy. He became aware that his clothes were rumpled, his hair unwashed, his mouth stinking of morning breath. He stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down at his boots. "I left Ginny. I thought I'd come here."

"Left her?" Draco utterly disregarded the house-elf as an audience, coming further down the stairs and watching Harry with greedy eyes, and so Harry did his best to straighten his shoulders and do the same thing. "Or left the house?"

"Left them both behind, probably for good, unless she doesn't want the house in the divorce," Harry said, and met his eyes squarely. "I chose you."

He'd imagined Draco would fling himself into his arms, but he should have known better than that. Draco wasn't so demonstrative (unless he was crazed with longing and the fury that came from Harry running away, it seemed). He took a deep, quiet breath now and unfolded his hands, as if he'd been holding something captive in them he finally let go.

Then he came down the stairs and reached for Harry's arm. Harry walked past the house-elf into the maze of twisting corridors that seemed to take up the ground floor of Malfoy Manor and tried not to be overwhelmed by the marble and ivory and alabaster splendor of it all.

As it turned out, that was easy. He couldn't spare much attention for those riches when Draco's body pressed a blazing line against his side.

They ended up in a small room that might have been a library or a study or something in between. Two shelves of books stood against the wall furthest from the window, but comfortable islands of chairs and tables dotted the wide carpet leading towards the fireplace, and the windowsill was broad enough to serve as another seat. All of it was decorated in white and gold. Harry caught a brief glimpse of the gardens before Draco pushed him into a chair and stood over him, staring down.

"You came," he whispered. "I never thought you would."

Harry looked at him, and let his anger rise to the surface instead of suppressing it because he had no right to feel it over something Draco had done. He could do that now, he told himself. It wasn't the most thrilling freedom he had experienced since confessing the truth to Ginny, but it was one of the best. "What was all that snogging and snarling about, then?" he asked. "If you thought you didn't have a chance at getting me to wake up and see how much I was hurting everyone involved—"

"I never thought it would be like this," Draco interrupted, with a shake of his head. "I thought you would sneak away from your wife at least once. I thought there would be a speech about how we couldn't sleep together when your lips were still swollen from sucking my cock." His eyes met Harry's, direct and honest although his words were scathing. "I thought, in other words, that you'd continue to act exactly the way you have all along."

Harry winced. He deserved that one. But he still shook his head. "No," he said. "You woke me up. I went through—a revelation last night. I couldn't make Ginny happy, and that would have been the only reason to stay married to her. And I can't ignore being in love with you. If I could, I would probably still have tried it," he added.

Draco scowled in turn. Well, it's better to be honest than anything else right now, Harry thought, but he felt a tremor of fear. Ginny could be right. He and Draco might not last.

But he and Ginny never would have.

"I'm kind of amazed that you fell in love with me," Harry said, and managed to laugh despite everything when Draco rolled his eyes. "Really, how did you? I was acting like a friend most of the time, and then like an arse the last few months."

Draco sat down on the table right in front of Harry's chair, his knee jogging. Harry wondered why he didn't take a chair himself, and realized a moment later that the table was the closest piece of furniture to him. He smiled, swallowed, and waited.

"I could see the compassion you had for me shining through despite all that," Draco said. "Once I got over thinking it was pity—which wasn't easy, let me tell you—then I started to appreciate it. You made an honest effort to work with me, against factors greater than I knew about at the time. You defended your friends without acting like I was evil or stupid for criticizing them. You trusted me. You were a good Auror." He abruptly turned his head and pinned Harry with a hard stare. "You are going back to that."

"Probably," Harry admitted. "Of course, they might not let partners be partners." If that's what we are.

"I know," Draco said. He stood up. Harry waited for him to turn away or pace in a circle; he was moving as restlessly as though he intended to do that.

Instead, he bent down and kissed Harry again, more fiercely than he had when driving him into the wall outside Ginny's house.

Harry groaned, "Fuck," in return, which made Draco chuckle, and reached up to wrap his arms around Draco's neck and drag him onto his lap. Draco gave in with a gasp, and then Harry was holding him in place and could snog him all he liked.

His tongue went deeper. His hands learned a million different textures of Draco's hair, and then he forgot them all in the middle of Draco's taste. He grunted and tried to get closer still, while Draco's elbow nudged him in the gut and his knee caught Harry's shoulder in odd places.

"Yes, this," Draco panted when Harry released his mouth for a moment to find a more comfortable position. He didn't explain what he meant, but he didn't need to. He bit Harry's chin, licked soothingly at the mark he'd left, and then pushed Harry against the back of the chair in return.

Harry didn't think it was fair, how breathless he was getting or how hard. He reached under Draco's shirt and pinched his nipple in retaliation.

Draco cried out in shock, and Harry pinched again. Then Draco imitated the tactic, and Harry groaned and sighed and whimpered, releasing all the sounds that he had been obliged to fake with Ginny.

I'm not thinking about her right now, Harry decided, and thought instead about the bluntness of Draco's nail as it scraped over the edge of his nipple.

They got out of the chair and towards the bedroom somehow. They stumbled into walls on the way, bruising their elbows and heels and heads, but it didn't matter. Harry could so easily dissolve pain into pleasure that even the teasing thoughts of Ginny melted away at last, and he was left with Draco's restless hands and bright, frantic eyes.

Only when they fell onto a large bed with soft sheets, after a progression through doors and stairs that Harry couldn't have traced by himself, did he realize that they hadn't agreed on what to do, what would happen next. He pulled back a little from Draco's mouth and hesitated, gasping in air as much as courage.

"Oh, for the love of—" Draco lifted himself to one elbow and managed to make it seem as if he was looming above Harry, even though he was just lying beside him. "If you tell me that you're having an existential crisis about this now, after everything we've gone through to get here, I'm going to kick you out of bed."

"You wouldn't do that," Harry said, grinning in spite of all the doubts. "You want me too much."

"Then maybe I'll Stun you and fuck you that way," Draco retorted, blinking hard to get the sweat out of his eyes. "There are options, you know."

Harry laughed and reached out to kiss him again. He had wanted to hear that voice, he thought, sounding exactly like that. He had wanted to hear Draco being upset and indignant and irreverent. He wanted to hear him sounding irritated and happy and tired, too, for the rest of his life.

I thought I would be with Ginny for the rest of my life.

Harry reminded himself that he was allowed to consider other things sometimes besides how badly he'd fucked up, and turned his head so that he could eye Draco more closely. "How about I fuck you first, and then you fuck me?"

"No," Draco said. "The other way around. This is the first time I've done this."

Harry blinked, started to open his mouth, and then remembered that he had been with men before, at least, when he was trying to figure out what was wrong with him. Besides, he had to admit to a stir of curiosity about what would happen if he let Draco inside him first. Not that it would make Draco perfect, or anything, but he wanted to know, with the same devouring, greedy eagerness that he'd felt since he'd come into the house today.

"All right," he whispered, and lay back, pulling the rest of his clothes off. Draco knelt there for a moment, either transfixed by Harry's naked skin or astonished that Harry had agreed to let him go first, and then shook his head and got up from the bed.

Harry looked around when he'd dropped all the clothes off the side of the bed, and blinked. The bedroom was—calmer than he'd thought it would be. Draco seemed to like landscape paintings, most of them showing tame green park-like settings, small single trees, and pools of water. The ceiling was curved and arched, along with the canopy of the bed, but not in any outrageous way. Here and there was a touch of gold or bronze or jade, but Draco seemed to have much better taste than Harry had known.

"Here," Draco said, and clambered back into bed with him, carrying a little sealed pot of blue liquid. Harry picked up a dab on his fingers and wrinkled his nose at how cold it was. Draco apparently took the expression in another way and drew back, folding into himself like a crab.

"If you can't do this," he said, but Harry grabbed the back of his neck and bit his lips until he got the idea and rolled the lube between his fingers to warm it. Then he reached down, fingers skimming between Harry's legs and back.

His other hand, with no warning whatsoever, closed over Harry's cock.

"Fuck," Harry said, and dug his heels into the bed, and thrust up. He had no idea what direction Draco was in; the room had started spinning lazily, and he wanted to keep his eyes closed, anyway. It seemed to be the only way to deal with the sharp-edged sensation flowing through his body, like warm wire.

"Yes," Draco said, and he could have meant the word in any of several senses. He dug into Harry's arse with his fingers, and Harry would have said something about roughness, but combined with the stroking on his cock it felt like the best thing in the world.

He forced his eyes open, because there were sights he didn't want to miss no matter how good it felt, and saw Draco studying his erection with his forehead wrinkled as if he was afraid that he might touch it wrong. That was the same expression he used when he was worrying over the details of a case, and Harry remembered, as strongly as he'd ever remembered anything, the way Draco had felt pressed against him as they crouched under Disillusionment Charms in a dirty alley, waiting for their target to reveal himself.

"It's all right," Harry said.

Draco snatched his head up in one jerk and sniffed. "I know that," he said, but Harry'd seen the flash of his eyes and knew how grateful he was for the reassurance. "Like this—let me—down, right?"

And then Harry was swept up and caught up in a new experience. Whatever Draco might think, this was as new for him as it was for Draco. Harry had always felt vaguely pleased whenever someone fucked him or fingered him, but it was missing that passion he saw in other people's faces.

Now he felt it himself, and it was like being pressed against sweaty skin, caught up in a dream, with no way out, no way to draw back. He gasped and whimpered and cried, and that was before Draco had more than a single finger in him. When Draco started to ease his cock in, Harry realized, for the first time, that he could break apart, not just make someone else break, the way he had with Ginny.

He reached up and clutched Draco's shoulders. Draco paused in slinging one of Harry's legs around his waist and stroked his hand. "It's all right," he whispered.

Harry wondered when he'd started reassuring instead of challenging, but he was thinking more about the edge of the cock in him, the keen pleasure cutting at him, sawing at him, and the way that he could lose himself in just the way Draco's eyelashes trembled and fluttered with the beginning of sensation.

"It's so sharp," Harry said helplessly. "Why is it so sharp?"

Draco caught his breath, and then triumph flushed his face. "Because that's the way it's supposed to be," he said, sinking home in Harry and groaning and sighing his way around the words. Harry knew he must have paused at least once to speak the longer sentences, but that wasn't the way it was in his memory, where the words and the wordless sounds mingled. "When you love someone."

"Oh," Harry said quietly, and then arched his back again as he realized, really realized, that Draco was inside him and there was no escape.

No moving away from this, no releasing himself from the clutch of Draco's arms around him, tight and gripping, the clasp of someone else's embrace, the bite of teeth here and there, the tangle and trap of Draco's hair around his fingers, the wideness of his eyes and the helpless clucking of his tongue.

No moving away from the weight of his tongue inside his own mouth, and the openness of his arse, and the pleasure and the pain and the passion that swept through him and drowned him, again and again and again, as implacable as sickness.

No moving away from how he felt when Draco's grip tightened and he hammered home, or when Draco froze and quivered, or from the orgasm that stalked him, stroked him, and shook him as if it would break his neck.

There was one way, Harry thought as he lay there in the aftermath, that sex with Ginny had been good for him, too. He'd been safe. He could watch Ginny's face as she broke apart and enjoy physical pleasure without being caught up like this.

He was never going to be safe again.

"Stop thinking about her," Draco ordered, and seized Harry's chin to kiss him, drowning Harry's denial that he hadn't been, not really.

"There aren't any words for what you did."

Harry nodded. He was standing in the Burrow, in the middle of the day after he'd been accepted back into the Auror ranks. Ron was standing in front of him, his back turned as though he could make Harry cease to exist by not looking at him. His arms were folded so tightly they made his shoulders bulge.

Harry was getting used to that by now. Draco's parents had decided that nothing remarkable had happened and their son was not dating Harry Potter, and looking in another direction that wouldn't force them to meet Harry's eyes was one of their favorite tactics.

"Ginny's going to be years recovering," Ron said, and stared at Harry hostilely over his shoulder. "And I don't know if we can be friends anymore."

"I know," Harry said. "I'm sorry. I really would have liked it if things could have worked out differently."

"They could have," Ron said, turning around and laying his hands on the kitchen table as if he was going to rock it on its foundations. Harry would have preferred that. All his friends and all the Weasleys had been quietly disgusted and self-contained. He could have dealt with accusations accompanied with hexes. But they were on the reasonable side, and he wasn't, and he had to keep remembering that. "Don't you dare tell me that you couldn't have resisted Malfoy's seductions. I know the git, remember? He isn't that attractive."

Harry blinked a little. Then he said, "I fell in love with him. If I'd been honest and the kind of person I really thought I was, I would have told Ginny the minute I realized."

"If you'd been honest and the kind of person I thought you were," Ron said harshly, "you never would have married her in the first place."

Harry stared at the floor. He didn't understand his emotions. He thought either his guilt or his happiness should have been steady, but instead he went back and forth between self-scorn that left him feeling lacerated and joy that ripped pieces out of him. "I'm sorry."

"That doesn't make it better," Ron said.

"I know," Harry said. "Would anything?"

Ron did rock the table this time, and his face flushed. Harry was glad. He felt like he was dealing with his best mate again, not some polite stranger. "You wanker. If you think we're going to start liking you again because you offer us money or—"

"That's not what I meant," Harry said. "I mean, does Ginny want anything specific in the divorce settlement? Or is there anything I could do that would make you lot more comfortable?" Ron stared at him, and Harry stared back, trying to drop whatever masks across his face were keeping Ron from seeing what he really felt. He was distressed. He was sorry. He wasn't going to walk away from Draco, and he'd been wrong in the first place, but he wasn't cheerful about his losing his friends and his wife and his adopted family, either.

Ron licked his lips. "Leave him."

"No," Harry said.

"You said anything," Ron said, and folded his arms.

"It wouldn't really solve the problem," Harry said. "You know it wouldn't. I would still be in love with him, and not with Ginny."

"Why not?" Ron drew his wand. Harry kept his hands tucked down. He didn't think Ron would really hurt him—maybe turn his tongue green or temporarily blind him, but no worse than that. Ron was just as hurt and bewildered and caught between difficult choices as Harry was, if not more. "Why couldn't you fall in love with her?"

"I don't know," Harry said. "It was just—something that happened. And my falling in love with Malfoy is just something that happened. I think it's best that I finally stopped lying. Ginny deserved better than everything I did to her, but she especially deserved better than any longer in a marriage that was a lie."

Ron gripped his wand hard enough that Harry was afraid he would break his fingers. "You had some preparation. Her life just fell apart one day."

"I know," Harry said. He hadn't seen or heard from Ginny since the day he'd walked away from her, a fortnight ago now. He thought maybe it would be best for both of them if they never did meet again. "I'm sorry."

"You keep saying that." Ron leaned his palm against his forehead. "And the answer is that I don't know either, all right? I don't know what Ginny wants yet, other than to be divorced as fast as possible. I don't know what to make of you. Hermione doesn't want to speak to you again. Mum wants to try. It's just—it's very complicated."

"All right," Harry said gently. He had come to this meeting today hoping to settle everything, but he realized now that that'd been stupid. If they could go along by little, small steps, one at a time, that would work best, and maybe they would someday get back where they needed to be. "I'll wait for your next owl."

Ron nodded at him, and then turned violently away and pretended to study a spiderweb on the windowsill. Harry walked out of the Burrow, into the light drizzle there, and then paused as he felt a hand touch the small of his back.

"I know you're there, Draco," he whispered. "Under that bloody Disillusionment Charm. I told you not to come."

Draco moved up beside him, from the sound of the footsteps, and murmured, "He might have hurt you badly. I couldn't allow that."

"Ron wouldn't do that," Harry said, but he could already picture the doubtful look on Draco's face, even without being able to see it. He shook his head and extended one arm. He couldn't blame his friends for distrusting his lover or vice versa, not when he was the only link between them right now. "Come on, let's go home."

Draco's fingers closed down tightly on Harry's arm, the way they always did when Harry called Malfoy Manor home. And he was the one who Apparated them, the wetness on Harry's face translating abruptly to the shaded dryness under the portico in front of the Manor. Draco dropped the Charm and turned to face him, holding out his arms.

Harry stepped forwards, deciding that Ron wasn't the only one who'd needed the confirmation that he wouldn't walk away from Draco, and then drowned him in a kiss. Or tried. He thought Draco was still better than that, since he'd felt passion long before Harry had.

But he was learning.

Draco's taught me about courage, he thought as he pulled back and stared into Draco's face. And honesty. And love. But he can't teach me everything. I think I'll always be learning.

That was the fourth step.

The End.