Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of Parsimony. Here's to sorting out last chapters and thanking the people who read to the end.

Chapter Thirty-Four—Coming to Rest

"Mr. Potter. This is…well."

Harry looked up at McGonagall and smiled in sympathy. To be fair to her, he wasn't sure what he would have said, either, if someone had walked in and laid this cluster of events he had just told McGonagall about on his shoulders.

McGonagall blinked a little, and used one finger to push her glasses up her nose. "You are admitting that you left school, bribed an Azkaban guard, dumped Pansy Parkinson outside the Ministry with a note that she had tried to kill you, and watched a duel near one of the lowest cells?" she asked, as if giving Harry the chance to back away and admit that those words weren't right, that something less damning was true.

Harry nodded, then paused. "Oh, right," he said. "I forgot."

McGonagall at once brightened.

Harry met her eyes and gave a wobbly little sigh. "I also decided that I'm going to reform Azkaban no matter who tries to get in my way," he said, and gave her a blinding smile as she sat there staring at him.

Finally, the Headmistress put her hand over her eyes and sighed. "I don't know what I can possibly do to you," she said. "It seems that betraying your secrets would mean betraying a good deal of others. There could be a panic attack, or a reaction from the Ministry, if it was known that Azkaban guards are so easily bribable. I would look silly for having hired a professor who was a bribable Auror, and the reputation of the Aurors would suffer. Not something that needs to be happening, now, as the Ministry is still trying to draw our world together. And there is the matter of what one would do with Mr. Malfoy, who did not kill anyone, and the wolfwere, who murdered a desire…"

"Yes, Headmistress," Harry murmured, bobbing his head as though that would keep the grin from breaking out across his face. "It's very hard."

McGonagall reared back and glared at him. "You are not to speak," she said. "Give me time to reason it out."

Harry thought about saluting her, but decided that would count as violating the order not to speak, and he had pushed McGonagall about as far as he could right now. He settled back in his chair and grinned instead.

McGonagall rose, and sighed again, and took her glasses off to dust on her sleeves as she paced back and forth. When she faced him again, though, those glasses were firmly in place, and she pointed one finger at him with the robe sliding back from her wrist like it was the hand of fate. Harry looked at her in polite interest and said nothing.

"There are too many reasons to keep this secret," McGonagall said severely. "From the general public, at least. You and Mr. Malfoy shall have detentions. Many, many detentions. From writing lines to scrubbing out the worst of Horace's cauldrons. If you insist on acting like children, then you shall be treated like them."

Harry knew she meant the sneaking out and the lying and the insistence on getting whatever they wanted when she spoke of childish behavior. He still had to bite his tongue, hard, to avoid asking her if she knew a lot of children who broke into Azkaban and bribed the guards. He just bowed his head penitently instead.

McGonagall grumbled something inaudible this time, and took her seat behind her desk again. "Do you think Mr. Malfoy will agree to this punishment, then?" she asked abruptly.

"Yes, Headmistress," Harry said at once, looking up. It was true that Draco would be preoccupied with the spell to separate his parents now, and winning back the affection of his friends, but Harry frankly didn't care. Skip this punishment, and something worse would happen. They had pushed the Headmistress as far as she could be pushed, and only the fact that she liked him had prevented a worse punishment, Harry knew. "I'll make sure he does."

McGonagall gave him a thin smile. "Good." She spent a moment with her fingers drumming, and although Harry would have liked to go back to the Tower and get some sleep, she hadn't dismissed him, so he didn't move. Then she leaned forwards, head cocked as if she was a bird going to peck him, and said, "Albus told me once that the Hat had considered you for Slytherin, but you chose Gryffindor. That's true?"

Harry nodded.

McGonagall shut her eyes, shook her head, and dropped against the back of her chair. "And now I understand," she said. "Albus told me the same thing had happened to him. I think you chose the House in which you could make the most mischief." She seemed to notice the grin Harry could no longer suppress out of the corner of her eye, and her voice turned cool. "Back to the Tower, Mr. Potter, and report to Mr. Filch at eight tomorrow evening for your first detention."

"I don't know what to do."

Harry looked up. He hadn't seen Ron and Hermione last night, since even they had given up waiting for him and gone to sleep by the time he reached the Tower. But he recognized the particular sharp tone in Hermione's voice as she leaned back from her book and rubbed her eyes, and he recognized the way Ron hovered over her, too.

After all, he had done that plenty of times himself with Draco in the past few weeks.

"What is it?" he asked quietly, switching seats to one by them and casting a Muffliato so other people at the table couldn't listen in. Ron nodded to him. Hermione, who usually still objected to that spell, rubbed her face, sniffed, and looked at Harry with a dull sheen in her eyes that worried him more than he had words to express.

"I've tried all the charms that I can think of to find my parents," she whispered. "Blood-based, location-based, charms that are supposed to find any Muggle in the world for you, and different memory charms. I can't find them. They're just gone."

Harry hesitated for a second. Then he said, "You did try the Muggle ways, right? Looking their names up in the directories and lists that Muggles keep?" He winced as Hermione glared at him.

"Yes, of course I did," she snapped. "But either they took false names—that was one of the suggestions I gave them, although I don't know if they followed it—or they don't appear in the records I've checked. And I've checked everything I could think of." She bowed her head and sniffed. "And there's a limit to the stories I can tell people to get them to let me look at records. I'm not all that good at lying."

Ron met Harry's eyes over her head for a moment of incredulous disbelief. Harry just shrugged back. Lying for her friends or to survive in the middle of a war was a little different from lying to find her parents, he thought, at least for someone like Hermione.

"Then use spells to make them ignore you," Harry said, quietly but firmly. "Break into the offices they won't let you into, and look at the records they'd keep from you. I know," he added, when Hermione gaped at him, "you don't want to. But this is serious, Hermione. It'll destroy you not to get them back, I know. Your life is at stake."

Hermione wavered for a moment. Then she said, "The Australian Ministry would still notice me and arrest me for using illegal magic on Muggles."

"Not if none of the spells you use are actually illegal." Harry grinned at her. "You'd have to study the laws and find out what those are, but if you avoid them, and act contrite if they catch you, and agree that you won't do anything again, and are careful in general, it should work."

Hermione blinked. Then she said, "And if I needed help, I could tell them about my famous friend who has good friends in the British Ministry?"

Harry shrugged. "I don't know how many friends I'm going to have in the Ministry when I start working on it. But you could certainly tell them you have a famous friend. I'm going to be even more famous than usual pretty soon, when I start making a nuisance of myself."

Hermione frowned. "What are you going to do?"

"Change Azkaban," Harry said. "No one deserves to be there, the way it is. Change the Ministry from the inside so that conflicts between the various Departments don't overrule their duty to the public and prevent them from releasing information that would help keep us safe, the way they're doing right now. Make sure that people know some of the stupid things the officials might do when they select Wizengamot members." A few of the things Klein had hinted about to him made him grind his teeth when he thought about them. "Get fairer treatment for the Death Eaters and the children of Death Eaters. Come up with alternatives to Memory Charms on Muggles and fairer ways to treat magical creatures." He paused, then added, "Well, that's the start, anyway."

"Oh, Harry." Hermione was looking at him with her eyes shining, but also with a certain wariness in her face. "I thought you wanted to be done with that. You told me once that you were just going to help your friends, after this past summer."

"This is helping my friends," Harry said, thinking of Draco, and Snape, and the wolfwere, and Hermione, who might still face blood prejudice if she ever wanted a job in the Ministry, and Ron, who might become part of the corrupt Aurors if things were left as they stood. And even Draco's friends, who might become his friends, too, in a cautious way. "This is something that can't be left to go on."

Ron chuckled. "I think the Ministry's going to regret that you survived the war more than You-Know-Who ever did."

Harry grinned fiercely at Ron and then turned to Hermione before she could start scolding Ron for not speaking Voldemort's name. "Will you try, Hermione? What I suggested, with the Muggle officials?"

She spent a moment frowning at nothing, and then she met his eyes and nodded.

"I don't know if it'll work," Harry had to add, feeling almost sorry as new hope sprang to life in her face. He'd hate to promise her something and then not have it work out. "But I hope it does."

She squeezed his hand and just nodded. Ron took his hand from the other side, and Harry leaned back, safe and content and loved.

Harry opened his eyes and yawned. He didn't see an owl sitting on his bed, and for a moment, he was about to disregard the sensation that a message was waiting for him as just a delusion and go back to sleep.

Then he realized that a letter was lying next to his pillow. Harry stared, then snorted. It would be just like Snape to send him an owl, but have it leave again if no response was expected. And given what he had said the last time they spoke, Harry thought it was highly likely that he would never see Snape again.

He unfolded the parchment and studied the gleaming blue letters by the faint light of his wand, after making sure his bed curtains were drawn so the light wouldn't wake anyone up.

Potter,

I know what happened when you visited Azkaban. Draco has sent me a long letter that rambled on in far more detail than I would ever have wished to know about his parents, and the spells he cast, and your heroic actions.

Harry had to grin despite himself. It was a little hard for him to picture Draco talking about him as a hero, but it was very easy to picture him annoying Snape, since Harry thought most of his students had done it on a daily basis.

You took foolish risks, and once again have escaped with the reward of your neck and the punishment of only a few detentions. I would congratulate you, but at the moment, I find that old memories are too much for me.

Harry rolled his eyes. Snape was probably thinking of the fact that the Marauders hadn't really been punished for nearly sending him in to his death where Remus was waiting. Well, Harry was sorry for that, but he wasn't going to worry about it now.

Do not expect me to save you again. If you choose to redeem the debts that I still owe you, an owl addressed to me will find me, as Draco's owl did. But I will give no Floo address, and no name under which I now intend to sell my potions, and I will thank you to reveal my existence to no one.

No signature, of course. Harry regarded the letter for a minute, and then, even though Snape would probably have told him to throw it away or at least burn it, folded it up carefully and stuck it under his pillow.

Perhaps someday, he would reach out to Snape again. But not to ask for help, the way that Snape would probably suggest. Simply to redeem the debt, and to help him, in any way he could. He wondered if Snape would ever contact him.

And then he snorted, and closed his eyes. If there was anything the last few months had proven, it was that there was nothing predictable about Severus Snape.

"Harry, can I talk to you?"

Harry's stomach clenched, and he had a moment when he wanted to pretend that he hadn't heard Draco's hesitant voice and simply walk on. But the voice had had a low, cautious, rustling tone in it, and Harry nodded and turned despite himself.

Draco, whom Harry hadn't seen much of over the last month since McGonagall had started assigning them separate detentions, stood leaning against the wall of the side corridor down into the dungeons with his arms folded, staring at Harry. Harry could feel the lump building up in his throat. He knew Draco had been busy with his parents and his friends, but to ignore Harry's greetings and owls and turn away when he saw him…Harry thought he knew where this was going, and it probably wasn't any place he wanted it to go.

But Draco had always been the one who had to make the choice in the way they did things, at least once he recovered his strength and mental balance. So Harry just held his eyes, and waited.

Draco licked his lips, shuffled his feet, and nodded. "I think it would be best if we did this in private," he said, and turned towards the Room of Requirement.

Harry took a moment to steady himself before he followed. His heart was going so fast that his face felt hot, or maybe he was flushing and Draco just hadn't said anything because he was involved in his own emotions. Either way, Harry marched to what he thought was probably his doom with his head held high and his feet echoing the way his heartbeat blazed through and shook him.

Draco closed the door of his room behind them and turned to face Harry in the middle of it. Harry had thought they might sit down in the chairs they'd used the night Draco had confessed lying about the Memory Charm, but no. This was probably going to be a short interview, then. Harry locked his hands in front of him and waited.

Draco muttered to himself and shook his head for a moment, then sighed and said, "I don't know how to tell you this."

Yeah. He never loved me. He doesn't want me anymore. Harry reminded himself, again, that he could get over this and go on in the end, and managed to smile. After all, Draco didn't seem to feel much better about this than he did. At least that was an argument that he had felt something at one point in time, even if he didn't now. "Just say it in the simplest words possible, then. I've found that that's the best way."

Draco blinked at him. "Really? But some of what you say—I mean, what you've said—it was eloquent."

"Not on purpose." Harry turned away to study the room's immense fireplace. "I didn't plan it to be that way. Things just kind of popped out and kept going. And then I felt strongly about others, like you getting a second chance and the wolfwere not being killed, and it proceeded from there." They hadn't been back from Azkaban for six seconds before the wolfwere bolted for the Forest. Harry doubted that they would ever see him again. His involvement with the human world had ended, and he probably thought that escaping alive was the luckiest thing that had ever happened to him.

"Do you think you could teach me that?" From the sound of his voice, Draco had moved closer to him.

Harry blinked and looked over at him. Draco's face was a very pale pink, but he met Harry's eyes and went on meeting them. At least he didn't intend to cut off all contact, then.

"I could try," Harry said, still cautious. "But like I said, I don't plan it, so it's not as though I could come up with things to teach you, really. It's just a matter of recognizing the right moment and saying the right thing."

"I could use some help in recognizing the right moments, then." Draco swallowed, and picked his way closer. "I have to tell you this. I wish you could tell me how." He exhaled hard, and licked his lips.

Harry held his eyes, and tried to smile, while inside it felt as if he might shake himself apart, not from heartbreak but from nerves. "Simple words, remember."

"Right." Draco nodded, and Harry thought he could see the same steely determination settle over his expression that he had seen the night they were in Azkaban, which might or might not be a good thing for Harry himself. "Then—I'd like to date you, but I don't know how to do it, with my life such a mess."

Harry took a deep breath, and his lungs expanded and exhaled, and his heart lifted and beat its wings like a bird.

"That you want to date me is enough," he said. "At least, if you're sure. You know how difficult it's going to be, once everyone finds out."

"I know that, yeah," Draco said. "Daphne's already yelled at me for wanting to be with you, fit to bring down the dungeons on our heads if not for all the spells that Slytherin used to strengthen them when they founded the school."

Harry smiled, distracted from himself for a second. "So Daphne is your friend again, then?"

Draco hesitated, then nodded. "And Gregory. And Millicent. And almost all the others except Blaise."

Harry sighed. "Does he attack you? Prank you? Complain about you where the others can hear?"

"He did try all of that." When Draco smiled, he looked inexpressibly more confident than the boy Harry had seen on the Hogwarts Express at the beginning of the year. "But I fought him, and pranked him back with better ones than he came up with, and pointed out that I had given him as many apologies as I could. He'd started to mock me for the apologies, too," Draco added in a low voice, clenching his hands for a moment in front of him. "I gave him as much as I intend to give. He can take it or leave it."

Harry understood why Draco had barely talked to him for a month, now. Coming up with other pranks and fighting Blaise and working on getting his parents back must have taken all the time he could find.

"What about your parents?" he asked quietly.

Draco hesitated. Then he said, "My father—the one I took home—talks more and more like my father every day. I bribed Chervets with another dose of that potion, and he let me in for long enough to see my mother." He fell silent.

Harry waited as long as he could, and then prompted him, "She's no different?"

"Her face looks different," Draco conceded. "Her eyes. And once or twice, when I provoked her, she talked to me the way that my mother used to talk." He pushed his hand over his face, from his fringe to his chin, as if he could scrub some of the things that he was saying away. "But I don't know if I can ever get her out of that body."

"I could help you research, if you like," Harry offered, when a few more moments had passed in silence and he thought Draco might not reject him. "We made a pretty good research team when we were working on the Memory Charms, even though you solved that problem yourself."

"You were the one who gave me the time and the courage to," Draco said quietly. "Including time alone, and knowing when to stand back."

Harry's heartbeat soared again at what he saw in Draco's eyes, but he tried to keep both his smile and his words simple, the way he had told Draco to, instead of reaching out and being disappointed. "Well. You know. That was the hardest thing for me to learn. Letting someone stand alone, instead of trying to guide and guard them all the time."

Draco snorted gently and rocked on his heels. "You did a fine job. I think the lesson you haven't learned is when to be selfish."

Harry snorted in return. "I came back at the beginning of the year with every intention to be. I thought I was only going to help my friends. But that flew out of my head when I saw you on the Hogwarts Express."

"And now?" Draco took a step nearer, his voice eager again. "Have you stopped?"

"No," Harry admitted. "I want to change Azkaban, and the Ministry, and the way that the Aurors act, and the way that our whole bloody society treats magical creatures. That's because that's what I want, because Azkaban and Klein and the way that Klein thought of the wolfwere offended me. But Hermione still seems to think it's not very selfish."

"Maybe you need someone to help you think that way, then," Draco said, with the worst attempt at casualness Harry had ever heard. "You know. Just someone who can help you along with the worst of it. Someone who can ensure that you get the rest you need and don't exhaust yourself trying to save people who will never accept you anyway."

Harry found himself smiling. He didn't plan it. He would have held it back if he had, because he thought a smile at the moment would probably scare Draco off. But he found himself reaching out, too, his fingers trailing through Draco's fringe and lingering on his forehead as though he was the one with the lightning bolt scar. Draco shut his eyes and stood there, tense as a wild thing.

"I'd like that," Harry whispered. "As long as that person would love me, and let me love him."

Draco's eyes opened wide. He swallowed. Then he visibly grabbed his courage by the ears and said, "H-he might."

They moved at the same time, forwards and forwards, and then they were kissing hard and fierce enough that Harry knew he wasn't the only one who had missed this. He sighed into Draco's mouth, and tightened his hands on Draco's shoulders.

They could be each other's strength. He knew it. Ron and Hermione would maybe point out that Harry had done the most supporting of Draco so far, but look at the way Draco had stood on his own when he was rescuing his friends and during the battle with his father. He didn't lack courage or determination; he just needed someone else to be there to help him shine out with them, sometimes.

And didn't Harry, and didn't everybody?

Draco's hands closed down on Harry's shoulders in return, and while Harry couldn't be sure of the exact wording of his thoughts, he knew it had to be close, had to be similar. They weren't letting each other go.

And Harry kissed him again, in celebration of and tribute to a future that was looking increasingly likely.

The End