𝐔𝐍𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐄𝐑𝐕𝐄𝐃

Chapter 14

Please Don't Tell

Harry stared out the darkened window as a hard-faced, early-lined woman placed a hand on his elbow. Harry could see her looking at him sternly from his periphery; she tempered this with a softness at her mouth. She really could be quite pretty when you couldn't see the lipstick on her teeth, the 'I just stuck my finger in a light socket' hair, or the batty over-large glasses.

She was holding a clipboard in her other hand and she looked down at it before pursing her lips and sucking unattractively at her teeth. Harry cringed and the movement caused her to look up at him again. She scratched at her thin frizzy hair with the open end of her pen (Harry didn't think she'd noticed) and fiddled with her gaudy headband.

Harry thought maybe if she didn't dress so strangely and cake on so much make-up, and maybe got contacts – flashes of Trelawney, he could have set her up with a few guys at the Ministry. She straightened her glasses from where they were settled crookedly upon her long nose and finally cracked the silence that only the light pitter-patter of rain had intruded on before her.

She spoke indulgently, as though she were a teacher reminding students of what they had already learned last term. "These sessions have no chance of success if you don't at least attempt to open yourself up to the possibility that they might actually help you."

Who actually talks like this? Harry thought morosely as he settled his chin more firmly on his propped up hand, still continuing to gaze unfocusedly out into the lightning slashed sky.

"I would like you to go home tonight, Harry," She said after only the slightest of pauses. She adjusted her glasses again so she could see him more clearly. "And think of something to share with the group. It doesn't have to be anything terribly personal, but something to get you started. Anything," She reiterated obligingly as she seemed to realize Harry was not giving her the fullest of his attention.

Harry liked that about her. It was one of the few things. He liked that nothing seemed to faze her because she had seen it all before. He liked that she not only knew when Harry was not going to respond but understood and glossed over it.

She gave him an appraising look and clamped her lips together for a moment. "Okay, Harry?"

Harry shrugged and stood up and he saw her make some sort of mark on her clipboard, looking pleased, before he pulled on his jacket and walked out into the storm.

~*~

Harry held his ever-cooling styrofoam cup of stale coffee between his shaking fingers as if it were a lifeline. He could see others around the group, some just as disconnected, others just as angry, still more that were similarly jittery, and hated that he could feel at home amongst them.

He nearly dropped his cold coffee when Gwendolyn turned to him, adjusted her glasses, and announced with a kindly smile, "Harry, how about if you share tonight?"

Harry couldn't quite catch the impulse that was as inherent to him as breathing – self-preservation and all that – and immediately took to shaking his head. However, at the hardening of the lines around Gwendolyn's mouth it quickly morphed into a nod. "I – All right," He croaked, wishing he were anywhere else. He hadn't paid any heed to when anyone else in the group had shared about their 'addictions,' enough to gauge that their experiences were nowhere near as bad as his, and had no idea where to start.

He cleared his throat uncomfortably, knowing he couldn't half-arse this. He'd just have to be honest. Surprisingly, it wasn't as hard as he'd thought it'd be. "I think I – Well, I think I started drinking because it was easy to lose myself in it, and I don't mean that everything else would fall away. I mean I would fall away. The man that I am... I don't think he's who anyone expected and he's certainly not what my parents would have ever wanted for me." Harry's mouth twisted cruelly. "Personally, I'm disgusted with what I've become and drinking always numbed me to it, made me cease to care, at least for a few hours."

Harry winced but Gwendolyn gave him her encouraging smile. He had already explained to her why he didn't like the idea of sharing at one of their previous sessions. He felt that by saying it out loud, he was justifying it. And the last thing he wanted to do was justify what he'd done. He owed both Draco and himself far better than that.

He glanced over at Gwendolyn's introspective nodding and took a deep, steadying breath. "I've spent so much of my life angry at everyone around me just to avoid tearing myself apart. I used to be something and now I'm – not nothing, it's gone beyond that, I think. I'm just this gaping abyss of futility and ineffectiveness." Harry took a breath and saw that everyone in the group was staring at him with an intensity that made him want to crawl out of his skin. He swallowed bracingly. "Despite that, despite this... monster I'd become, I had someone who loved me, whose world started and ended with me. I could never really figure it out, I was a mess and I was – I was cruel to him but, even so, he never wanted me to be anyone else, he thought I was... perfect exactly as I was."

Harry closed his eyes, feeling somehow as if he were gutting Draco's memory by limiting him to his badly encompassing description. He would never be able to fully represent Draco's brilliance, to include all that he was, with his restricted vocabulary. Therefore, no one else could understand exactly what he'd been to Harry nor would they understand the howling pain of having him ripped away.

Harry's mind supplied him with the images from last night's nightmare and he stumbled a bit as he worked himself up to it, "I guess – I'm supposed to share a memory or something, aren't I?" No one answered him, in fact, Gwendolyn seemed to have frozen in her concentration. It was a bit odd speaking into the chasm of lacking encouragement but he managed it after a bit. "He had this tattoo on his forearm, this remnant of a time he wasn't particularly proud of and I – I hated it, it infuriated me every time I saw it." Harry did his best to explain the Dark Mark to Muggles but this was another thing they could never fully understand.

Harry dropped into his memory, his speech working on autopilot as his brain sunk into images Harry had told himself he would never again relive. "One night, I had been drinking – what, I don't even know. All I know is it was way too much and yet never enough. I was waiting for him when he finally stepped through my door and hung up his coat and I saw it on him and suddenly I wanted nothing more than to rid the both of us of it forever."

Harry could remember the fierceness in his gaze, the frighteningly clouded reason. "I dragged him into my bedroom, tore the cord from the blinds, threw him down and twined it around his bicep as tight as I could to cut off the circulation to the rest of his arm. I yanked it so hard that I could see the flesh bulge on both sides of the tie." Draco was writhing beneath him, pushing at his chest with his free arm as hard as he could. He screamed when Harry pulled tighter, asking what he'd done, bargaining with promises of what he'd do if Harry would only stop. "He was whimpering and crying and begging me to stop but my mind was so soaked in alcohol I could barely understand him. I was so sure he would thank me when we were finally rid of that fucking mark and that soon-to-be useless bit of his arm."

"I looked into his eyes and I saw the comprehension there and then I knew why, of the questions he'd been shouting so hoarsely at me, mingled with the pleas to stop, that 'why' wasn't among them. Soon there was resignation there too and he stopped fighting me." All the fight seeped out of Draco and the hand on Harry's chest fell away. For a moment, Harry had thought – had feared – that he had killed him. He had promised him that he would never hurt him like that again and he had failed, but then he met Draco's deadened thunderheads of grey and all he saw was submission. "He went so limp and I realized that he would let me do anything to him, not just then – but-but always. And I knew, even if I took his arm, he would stay with me. He would still love me."

Harry felt bile rise up in his throat at the thought. "I – I remember being... aroused by that. The thought makes me want to vomit now, that I'd broken him so much, manipulated him to a point that — I leaned down and kissed him and his eyes had gone all glassy and dull and I adjusted the bind on his arm and it slid around smoothly and I realized that I had constricted it so much that I had cut him pretty deep and he was bleeding rather badly." Harry's eyes darted to the side and he saw the blood. He looked down at Draco and saw that he had noticed too, and it wasn't with horror or pain, but with a saddened acknowledgment. He cradled Draco's chin softly in his other hand and said tenderly, 'Soon now, Draco. Soon.'

Harry closed his eyes and hunched forward in his seat, feeling clammy and light-headed. "I crooned to him that it would all be over soon and that he would be pure soon, and neither one of us would have to live with his taint anymore. I don't think I really realized what I was doing but I do know that a rather large part of me did just want to hurt him, even though I told myself I was saving him from his past and that he'd be grateful. I think I wanted to hurt him for loving me, for ever thinking I was good enough. I wanted to hurt him for caring what happened to me."

I beat that the fuck out of him though, didn't I?

Harry shook his head, as if in answer to himself. "Being on top of him like that, moving so much to get the criss-crossed cord as tight as humanly possible – so tight I felt like his skin might burst – looking at his blank eyes combined with all the alcohol I'd consumed made me dizzy and I couldn't keep up the pressure. Eventually, I passed out without being able to achieve my goal. When I woke up, he was still there, curled around me like I was the only thing in the world that had ever or would ever matter."

Draco's gaze was wary as he pinned him with those doe-like grey eyes, the cord was still dug deep into his arm and Harry could tell he had not even attempted to remove it. With a sick lurch, Harry realized it was because he was waiting to see if Harry wanted to continue – because he would let Harry continue. Harry's mouth tasted like oncoming sick. "And I hated him for that, just like I hated everything he did to show me his affection. I hate him."

Harry could feel hot tears building behind his closed eyelids and he hoped no one was suicidal enough to challenge those words.

From the middle of the circle he heard Gwendolyn's slightly shocked yet even voice say, "Harry—"

Harry wrenched his eyes open and glared at her furiously. "What right did he have to care if I lived or died?" He demanded of everyone else in the circle. "What right did he have to make me feel something for him, to make me dependent on him? What right did he have to make me need him just to abandon me? What fucking right!"

Harry stood up so quickly and so vehemently that he knocked over his chair. He fisted a hand in his hair and shouted, "I was fine without him and then he — I fucking despise him." Harry was breathing so hard his chest was heaving and he felt as if he had run a mile with how red his face was. Everyone was staring at him in naked surprise and even Gwendolyn's mouth was hanging open oddly. Harry gritted his teeth and stared menacingly at every individual person as if demanding a contradiction, an answer, something, and finding nothing he hissed, "I'm leaving," and stormed out of the room.

He could vaguely hear Gwendolyn's squawks to come back but Harry was so far beyond the ability to listen. He felt like he just might explode with how keyed up he'd become and he was still panting noticeably when he got outside and began searching his pockets for the first cigarette he could find. His fingers brushed against ridged gold and, throwing caution to the wind, Harry closed his fist around it and squeezed his eyes shut.

He let go, pulled out a cigarette that had been floating around loosely in his jacket pocket, and took a deep inhale once he'd got it lit, nearly jumping three feet in the air when a deep voice behind him commented in falsely daunted amusement, "Ballsy move, storming out of session like that."

Harry turned around to find a wiry man who looked to be almost 6' 6" with a grin that seemed to take up two-thirds of his face. Harry placed his back to the man, hoping he'd get the message. And if he didn't, then Harry added a hearty, "Fuck off," for good measure.

To Harry's intense annoyance and building dismay, the man's tone was still light and amused. "You're new to the program, right?"

Harry shrugged.

The man moved so he was standing in front of Harry and stuck out his hand. "Well, you'll need a sponsor. Name's Tobias, but everybody calls me Toby." Harry didn't reach for his peace offering and instead stared at the offending limb as if it were toxic. The man – Toby – moved his hand back toward himself and scratched his scraggly brown hair with it.

Apparently, he had a temperament that just could not be brought down and his grin only widened as he added, "Well, except for my Great Auntie Mildred who has taken to calling me Fido but, uh, I have a feeling that's more due to the dementia than any real desire for a new nickname for me."

Harry could see that this man, Toby, was truly trying to help him out. And, really, after what he'd just admitted he was capable of, what right did he have to judge? He took a drag on his cigarette and blew out a plume of smoke. "Listen, it's nice of you and all, but I honestly don't think I'll be back."

Toby's face became more serious but he still had that good-natured look about him. He nodded solemnly and said in a knowing way, "You're thinking about drinking now, huh? I don't blame you, that was, well, intense is a word for it I guess."

Harry's lips curled viciously. "So is demented and twisted and fucked up." He laughed without humor and said inquiringly, "Well, no, I suppose that one's two words for it, or is it a hyphenate?"

In the blink of an eye – with Seeker's reflexes – Toby had reached between them, plucked Harry's cigarette from his fingers, and held it out in front of him. Harry stared at him in grudging admiration and blanket surprise. "Listen, this?" Toby said, indicating the cigarette before he crushed it beneath his heel. "It's just replacing one addiction with another and if you want your too-good-to-be-true boy back, then I doubt that's going to impress."

Harry squared his shoulders and winced as his voice came out more petulant than intended. "Who says I want him back?"

Toby smiled at him. "You did. Many times during that little speech."

Harry shrugged, feigning an indifference he would never be able to feel in reference to Draco. "He'll never come back, that's not even – it was just the tip of the iceberg, that. I wouldn't deserve him if he did anyway. Would probably just make me resent him, or think he's immature," Harry added, in a way he hoped sounded both convincing and casual.

Toby was apparently an expert in bullshit as well. "Do the excuses make you feel better, more at peace with the fact that if you go through all this and he doesn't fall into your arms that you'll be absolutely fine? Have you told yourself you never really expected him to anyway so that you can survive the rejection?" Toby seemed to be speaking from personal experience, there was a little too much that rang true and a little too much bitterness in his otherwise optimistic demeanor. "'Cause there's nothing that'll prepare you for that. Makes it easier though, knowing – even though you can't really – that he's never going to return to you, to take that first step towards intoxication, doesn't it?"

Harry's face felt hot. He crossed his arms over his chest and he stuck his chin out the way Draco had done when they were at Hogwarts and he felt threatened. "What do you know about it?"

"Quite a lot actually," Toby said sadly, with a resentful twist to his lips. "I drove away my wife in the same exact way. Last I heard she was living in some suburb in Dorchester with her husband and two kids, couldn't be happier I'm told."

Harry could recognize the truth when it was being thrust into his face and realized that perhaps this man did understand better than Harry had given him credit for. He shook his head and his voice was embarrassingly hoarse as he pontificated, "If he doesn't come back—"

"Then at least you're healthy," Toby finished determinedly. "Listen, Potter, bottom line: You shouldn't be doing this for anyone but you, it's good that thoughts of someone else – someone you care about, pushed you into the program but, in the end, it's gotta be you."

Harry wished he had his cigarette back and glanced at the wet pavement where it was crushed, useless now. "I don't matter," He muttered lowly.

Toby's face lit up and he tried to rally him. "Clearly there's one person out there who thinks you do, and I'm betting there's a lot more than that besides."

Harry snorted. "You mean 'did,' don't you? Till I drove him away," He said under his breath. He had the feeling Toby had heard him anyway though.

Toby's voice was a bit more forceful this time. "So prove to him he was right, prove to him you're worth it."

"I don't even know where he is," Harry admitted.

"Well, you're in no state to see him anyway." Toby's words were a way of waving him off with complete unconcern and Harry could feel himself getting annoyed. "You need to work on you, and I'm betting he's taking the time to do the same with himself."

And once he figures out he's better off without me, what then, Mr. I'm So Positive Sun Shines Out Of My Ass? But Harry couldn't bring himself to say it for fear of giving it life.

"So," Toby announced, clapping his hands together, seeming to have reached the point in the conversation he had most been looking forward to. "I'm not so horrible a guy, and I make a kick ass sponsor. Modest, too." He grinned terribly wide. "What do you say we go catch the last of the session, I'm betting we've missed the worst of it – Scratchy Susan's droning voice and Twitchy Larry's gaseous emissions."

Harry gave the man a penetrating look but could no more discern the future by peering at him then he could staring into a crystal ball in Professor Trelawney's hot and stuffy classroom. He sighed undecidedly. "I'll think about it, yeah?" He relented finally. "But – I can't go back in there tonight. I have to – I don't know – clear my head or something."

Toby seemed to understand this and plunged his hand into his front jean's pocket before pulling out a tiny scrap of paper and shoving it toward Harry. "Well, listen, here's my pager number. It's always on and I'm always available so beep me whenever you like, no matter the time or what's going on. You need help and I'm there to offer it, regardless of circumstance."

Harry made a show of placing the paper into his own pocket and said in a somewhat agreeable manner, "Yeah, all right." He didn't think he'd ever use it.

Harry had started to walk away when he heard Toby call out to him, "Hey, make sure you do keep your head clear! Alcohol's only gonna mess you up more!"

We'll see about that, Harry thought defiantly as he strode away.

"Whatever," He called back without turning, thinking he should get out another cigarette as he entered an alleyway that cut between the two main streets. He was only slightly surprised when a shadowy figure seemed to appear out of nowhere with a loud crack.

"Hermione," Harry acknowledged, his tone flat. "You came."

"You asked me to," She said, affecting the same tone as Harry as she held up her twin gold Galleon. Harry couldn't quite believe that the Protean charm hadn't faded at all since Hogwarts, just went to show how brilliant Hermione was. He didn't know what to say, but he was genuinely grateful that Hermione had shown up even though they weren't really speaking at the moment.

Once Hermione had assessed that he hadn't called her here to fight, she pointed in the direction he had been walking and fell into step with him. "Bad one, tonight?" She didn't seem to know which tone to use as she didn't yet know the tone of the conversation and Harry could tell she was uncomfortable and grimaced.

Harry couldn't remember the last time he'd felt uncomfortable or unsure or as if he might say the wrong thing around Hermione, or vice versa. When had things gotten so fucked up between them?

Harry answered in a cool voice, "Pretty bad. Gwendolyn got me to share tonight."

Hermione nodded in a way that reminded Harry unpleasantly of Percy and her lips were thin like McGonagall's. However, both of these actions seemed to be directed at the situation and not Harry himself. "Was it as awful as you'd imagined?" She asked lightly.

"Worse," Harry stated without inflection, wishing things weren't so fucking awkward.

Hermione stopped and faced him and, after a moment's hesitation, Harry did the same. She bit her lip. "I'm so sorry, Harry. But, well, for what it's worth – and I realize it may not be much these days – I think you're doing a really good thing here."

Harry scuffed his shoe on the concrete and stared at a rotting banana skin on the ground, raising his eyebrow challengingly even if he couldn't meet Hermione's eye. "Even the reason I'm doing it?"

Hermione made an exasperated noise but answered calmly, which Harry thought was a big step for them, "We may not agree on what drove you here, but we are on common ground in that we're both glad you're here, right?"

Harry shrugged, finding it hard to talk to her when she wouldn't endorse his desperate bid to win Draco back. Though he did realize that might be a bit unfair. He didn't really care either way though.

"Can I ask you something, Hermione?" He said, hit by a sudden inspiration. His gaze snapped up to capture hers and he pinned her with his stare. "And it may never come up or be an issue in our lives again, but I just have to know."

She looked a bit uneasy but answered as if there was nothing tenuous between them, as if she were the Hermione who had encouraged him at every turn and stayed with him even when Ron had deserted them, "Of course, Harry," was all she said. The words warmed him.

Harry stared at his friend and appreciated her, for who she was and not who he needed her to be. He cleared his throat and said slowly, his dire question suddenly seeming less important, "If, by some miracle, he did decide to give us another go, would you encourage him to leave me again – would you tell him how bad I am for him, how he could do better – would you tell him to run?"

Hermione was quiet for so long that Harry thought she wouldn't answer. He was about to prod her when her shaky voice said pitifully but determinedly, "If you didn't get better, if you hurt him, if you tried to break him again, if you treated him like scum, then yes. I would spend every day of the rest of my life telling him to get as far away from you as he could."

She looked miserable and Harry realized this was because she was sure this would sever Harry from her for good, but Harry was too busy being grateful for having such a good friend. It wasn't so much what she'd said but that she'd been honest and stuck to her principles – the way Harry had always known her to *cough*S.P.E.W.*cough* – and, even so, she had clearly thought about compromising them for Harry's friendship. And, while Harry was glad she hadn't, the fact that it had given her pause, that she had wanted to keep him in her life, meant more than he could put into words.

He finally settled on a simple but heartfelt, "Thank you."

Hermione smiled at him and it was one of those all-encompassing smiles that involved one's whole face. Harry was surprised at how young it made her look. "I'm really proud of you, Harry."

Harry smiled back, if a bit less wide. "I know, Hermione." He gave her a swift hug, not feeling quite as awkward as he'd thought he would with their tentative truce still pressing in around them, and said in a lighter tone than he'd used all night, "I think I'll Apparate from here but, really, thanks for coming, Hermione."

Hermione patted him on the shoulder consolingly and declared unwaveringly, "Always, Harry."

Harry grinned at her, spun on the spot, and Disapparated with a booming pop, feeling better than he had in weeks.

Hermione sighed, feeling as if a weight had been lifted, and decided to walk the few blocks to her apartment, deciding the fresh air might do her some good and, perhaps, help her understand what had just happened with Harry. Only a few days ago her response that she would tell Draco to run would have made Harry screamingly livid and – maybe permanently – unreachable. But, today, all he'd said was 'thank you.'

She had been so sure that that would be the end of them and that Harry would never want to see her again. She bit her lip and ran straight into a rather crinkly solid object. She fell back and looked up to find herself staring at the last face she ever thought she'd see in London. Her mouth fell open and she hid it behind her hand as she whispered, "Oh my god."

The man she'd run into was picking up his grocery bag, muttering curses, and finally met her stunned gaze when he'd managed to fish everything out of the gutter and back into the ripped paper bags.

She squeaked, "Draco," feeling her stomach turn over in anticipation. Draco looked, well, there was no other word for it really. He looked good. There was none of the meekness in the set of his shoulders or the weariness behind his eyes from when she'd known him. God, she hadn't even known he was that tall. She had never seen him stand so straight or his posture so balanced. His hair had obviously been fussed over just as he had done at Hogwarts and it looked all the better for it.

He was wearing nice clothes, a designer shirt and trousers that fit him like a dream. He was terribly, intimidating-ly handsome and Hermione wondered how she'd never noticed before in all the time she'd known him. But it was his face that seemed to draw her in. He looked poised and sure of himself, not as open as he had before, more like it was something you had to earn now – world-weary to be sure – but cosmopolitan as well, as if he'd learned something from all that experience.

Hermione could feel the butterflies in her stomach and the blazing smile that nearly hurt her cheeks as he gazed at her with his wide, uniquely grey eyes and suddenly realized exactly what she was thinking and knew that it was very, very bad.

Draco seemed to shake off his cloak of utter and debilitating shock and his voice came out as little more than a croak. "Granger," He pleaded. "Don't tell H-Harry."