Title: Cross Fire

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco preslash

Warnings: Angst, violence in flashbacks

Rating: PG-13

Wordcount: 4000

Summary: Draco is trying to create a unique display of magical history based on war survivors' memories as part of his effort to resuscitate History of Magic at Hogwarts. He has a specific idea about what memory he wants from Harry Potter, but he isn't sure whether Potter will give it to him.

Author's Notes: Another of my Advent fics for celestlyn, who asked for creative Pensieve use, interesting potions and spell creation. She also mentioned liking Harry and Draco as Hogwarts professors. Here you are!

Cross Fire

For a long moment after Minerva asked him, Potter stood with his back to Draco, looking out the enchanted window in the Headmistress's office. For the moment, the window showed a view of Dumbledore's tomb in sunlight.

Draco couldn't imagine what he found so fascinating in the vision. He knew that Potter visited the tomb every Saturday, to talk quietly to the man buried there. But he had asked for Minerva to help him with this interview precisely because he was afraid of approaching Potter the wrong way. He folded his hands in his lap and stayed quiet.

Hell, he should know about patience. Hadn't he finally been the one to herd Binns out of his position by talking about all the history Binns would find to teach after he had investigated the afterlife?

"I would be willing to give you the memory if it was just for private research or something," said Potter abruptly, and made Draco jump. He smoothed down his robes and tried to look as though he had never been startled. Potter turned around and fixed him with a moody green gaze of the sort that Draco had got used to seeing peer from the front page in the last eight years. "But you said that people are going to see it."

"Yes, Potter," said Draco, and he was really proud of himself for keeping the sarcasm out of his voice. From the way that McGonagall frowned at him, she heard the passion he was suppressing. Draco ignored that, and stared at Potter instead. "That's rather the point of this project."

"You want to set up Pensieves that other people can look into." Potter's voice was flat.

"The project only begins with Pensieves." Draco didn't know if Potter would be any more receptive to his explanation the second time he made it, but he was willing to try, and at least this way, Potter couldn't complain that he had got into this without knowing what it entailed. "The memories will project out of the Pensieves to create three-dimensional, shining images, complete with color and sound. And the potion I'll have you drink when you contribute the memory will mean that anyone who steps into the memory will feel what you felt during that moment."

Potter closed his eyes. "Choose someone else."

"I have to choose you," said Draco. Again, he sat on his impatience. He wanted to succeed more than he wanted to get back at Potter, or even than he wanted to curse Potter for his apparent inability to let old grudges go. Draco had let old grudges go. He had sent Potter a thank-you note for testifying for him and for sending his old wand back, and they'd had no contact since then. "You're a central part of the war. I hope that you might even be persuaded to contribute more than one memory, so people will know what it was like to be there."

Potter opened his eyes. He looked weary. "And how different will that be from the constant public demand that my emotions be on display at all times? How many other requests for interviews and the like am I going to get after this?"

Draco blinked. He hadn't thought of it that way. While he knew Potter had changed—become a decorated Auror and divorced his little Weasley girlfriend, among other things—he supposed part of him had preserved the erroneous view that Potter liked the fame and attention that came to him.

Really erroneous, Draco thought, after a glance into Potter's eyes and a skim of Legilimency across his surface thoughts.

Potter jerked his head back, his mouth twisting into a snarl. "You could bloody ask if you're going to read my mind, Malfoy!"

Draco winced. That was another thing that had changed. Professor Snape had described Potter as devoid of all talent in Occlumency, absolutely unable to realize when someone was touching his memories.

"Language, Mr. Potter. Courtesy, Professor Malfoy." Minerva leaned forwards from behind her desk. "Harry." Her voice softened, and Draco marked another thing that hadn't changed: her affection for this particular Gryffindor student. "I think that the particular memory Professor Malfoy asked you for is a reasonable one. If anything, the moment that you helped him escape from the Fiendfyre makes him look bad."

"And I felt horror and fear and anger." Potter's voice was flat. "I told you, I don't want my emotions on display to the public."

Minerva glanced uncertainly at Draco. "Perhaps Professor Malfoy will be willing to forego the potion for this particular memory."

"No," said Draco instantly. "If anything, people need to understand what you were feeling more than they need it with other people, Potter. They'll understand that you're not the stuck-up hero they think you are that way."

Potter rolled his shoulders. "It's horrifying enough. That moment."

Draco shook his head. "I need it." He couldn't explain how badly he wanted the exhibit, the display, to come off, and show Potter and everyone else in the same light. Or he could try, but he would fumble it if he tried to use words, the way he apparently already had with his Legilimency.

"Who else have you asked?" Potter leaned against the chair he had been sitting in until Draco made his request, and folded his arms at the wrists, staring at Draco.

"Weasley. My mother. Minerva." Draco tilted his head at the Headmistress, without taking his gaze from Potter. He thought he might convince him if he just kept staring. "Other Hogwarts professors. A lot of survivors of the battle here. A few Death Eater sympathizers who didn't go to prison. Dumbledore's and Professor Snape's portraits."

Potter's eyebrows went up. "You invented a potion that can take memories from a portrait?'

Draco smiled a little. "The person who possesses the memory drinks the potion, while I extract the memories. In the case of the portraits, I just put a little liquid on the surface of the picture, and extract the memory that way."

"I can think of one important person you forgot," said Potter, and now he sounded as if he were struggling against mirth.

"Make fun of me all you like," said Draco. "Don't make fun of my project." He bit down on the impulse to say more, to defend the discipline of History of Magic and how fascinating it would be if he was just allowed to go ahead with this.

Potter tilted his head, then nodded. "But you did forget someone." He leaned towards Draco, and his eyes glinted. "What memory are you contributing, Malfoy?"

Draco stared at him. "I wasn't anybody important in the war."

"That memory you want me to contribute argues otherwise." Potter turned his head with slow stubbornness to the side. "It shows me rescuing you and the formation of a life-debt, as well as a tragic death and a horrifying Dark spell. I think that if you want that particular memory, then you have to agree that you're also on a certain level of importance."

Draco opened his mouth, shut it, and finally said, "I can't contribute a memory. The person who drinks the potion can't take the memory out. So I couldn't do it to myself."

"I would be willing to," Potter offered, with an angelic smile. "In fact, I'll make you a bargain. You contribute a memory, and I'll give you the way I saw and felt the day of the Fiendfyre." He turned the smile on Draco. "Otherwise, no deal."

Draco leaned further back in his chair, and heard Minerva clucking off to the side. Or maybe she was chuckling. She had never really believed in Draco's ability to persuade Potter, and perhaps she hadn't intended to persuade him herself, either, although Draco had thought she would.

He drove a hand down against the chair, and nodded shortly. "Fine. I still think I'll make the most undistinguished display in the exhibit, but fine. I'll contribute one."

Potter started and stared at him. He didn't expect me to agree, Draco realized, and felt a bit of smugness that he had managed to surprise Potter. "Why?" Potter whispered. "Why is this so important to you?"

"Do you know how many similarities there are between the rise of Grindelwald and the rise of Voldemort?" Draco asked. It had taken him a long time to be able to say the name, but oddly enough, the study of history had helped. Grindelwald's name had once been feared, and now it wasn't. The passage of time should be doing the same thing to the Dark Lord's.

Potter blinked. "No."

"Many," said Draco, and he could feel his cheeks flushing, and suspected he might look a little silly to Potter. Well, so be it. When he was talking about the discipline that had become his passion, he could afford to look a little silly. "If we knew more about the history, we might have avoided falling into some of the traps that we did during this war. I want—I want to teach children about history, and I also want to remind people about the history. We won't do that by avoiding the lessons."

Potter watched him with slitted eyes, and then he nodded. "That's understandable. Although I have to warn you, you might find my memory more uncomfortable to navigate than you're thinking right now."

Draco shrugged. "I'll deal with that when I come to it. What memory did you want from me?"

"Oh," said Potter, his mouth curving slowly, "I'm sure you'll think of something."

"Me?" Draco wished his voice didn't sound so much like a squeak.

Potter grinned at him. "You're the historian. You pick." Then he stood up and gave a little bow to Minerva. "In the meantime, I want to get this finished. I'm expected back at the Ministry for work. Shall we?"

"The potion is perfectly safe," Draco said, when Potter made a face at the vial of thick green liquid that Draco held out to him. Draco knew the smell was like rotting vegetables, but he didn't control that. It was a necessary component of the dung that he'd needed to use as a paste to hold the other ingredients together.

Potter raised reluctant eyes to his face. He was sitting on the bed in Draco's quarters, because the impact of the potion was powerful and would knock the drinker back into the memory. He hadn't paid any attention to the bookshelves or the rugs that Draco had on the floor, which had at once insulted and soothed Draco. "How does it work?"

"It plunges you back into the memory and calls it to the forefront of your mind. Then I'll have an easier time drawing it out." Draco shook the vial at Potter. "Are you going to drink this or not?"

"All right." Potter swallowed and reached for the vial, then swigged the potion down much faster than Draco had thought he would, all in one go. His neck bulged for a second, and then his eyes did. He sagged back onto the pillows, his mouth and eyes wide open, and Draco knew the memory had begun, probably as soon as the potion cleared his throat.

Draco got his wand into position near Potter's temple, to draw out the memory. But either he had done it too slowly, because of Potter's unexpected quickness in drinking the potion, or he had got into the wrong position, or his own curiosity betrayed him, because the spell he whispered wasn't the one that worked with the potion.

It was a simple "Legilimens."

Draco disappeared into the memory along with Potter, and the foundations of the castle seemed to tremble around him as he did.

The fire seared his lungs. Draco coughed and stared around. He was in the middle of the Fiendfyre, which had become a writhing chimera near him, and was turning slowly to stare at him. He was shorter than he remembered being, with paler skin.

The memory had turned him back into his own younger self. And Draco gasped as the fear and the panic overran him when he realized he didn't have his familiar hawthorn wand.

He flung his head and his hands up, desperately searching the sky—the ceiling. He knew that Potter's broom would come and rescue him, because it had once before.

But the fear and anger were curling around him like Fiendfyre in the blood, overwhelming him, and he choked as he realized that coming back into the memory like this might have confused things. He had his own memory of this moment, and perhaps the clash of the two would change things now that he was here.

He might die trapped in Potter's mind, and because the potion had worked so safely before, no one would ever know what had happened.

The lack of knowledge infuriated Draco. "Help!" he screamed as loudly as he could, and then coughed again as acrid smoke flew into his mouth.

He tried to scramble to the top of one of the piles of broken furniture and other things, but those piles were tipping and burning from the bottom up. Draco flung his hands around something that scorched him, and he pulled them quickly back. Still the fear and the anger ached in him, and he wondered if, now that he was adult, he resented the fire that had destroyed the knowledge and artifacts in the Room of Hidden Things even more.

Then he looked up, and he knew.

Potter was circling towards him on his broom, and the fear and anger were his. Draco was feeling some of his own emotions, since he had shared his own side of this memory, but a lot of the sensations were Potter's.

The rage was incandescent. The fear was deep, blasting water. Draco caught his breath. He had never known that being inside Potter's passion was like this.

He had never known that Potter was capable of feeling such fear and anger when Slytherins, of all people, were in danger.

He held up his hand. It wasn't even memory that guided him this time. It was what he knew he had to do, and he watched Potter's hand speeding towards his as he hadn't been able to do the first time around. Then, he'd been scrambling and trying not to burn and in utter fear for his life.

This time, he knew what would happen because it had to.

He could watch his fingers curl around Potter's, and feel the relief, searing like the rage. There was no real relief in the midst of Potter's emotions, in the midst of the memory. Draco felt as though a giant was swinging him up onto the broom, so giddy with feeling and sensation that he missed the moment when he settled his arm around Harry's waist.

But he felt Harry's hand reaching back and settling on his arm, pinning it in place, or reassuring him, or keeping him from falling off. All those motives were there, and so was the soul-deep need to destroy Voldemort, and the utter lack of fear when it came to speaking or thinking that name, and the way that Harry was rising, the instinctive control of the broom, the almost impatient grace.

Draco wanted to faint with the pull of the tide. But he knew the memory was ending, since they were already heading out of the room, and he needed to be free of Harry's head before it did, or risk being trapped in a loop of memory forever.

He's Harry now, and not Potter.

But that was only one more distraction, and Draco forced his mind to surface from the images of fire and smoke and clawing animals and collapsing furniture and flying brooms like a crocodile leaping from water. He found himself on his bed beside Harry, gasping, one hand wound around Harry's as though he was going to break it if he was pulled away.

Harry opened his eyes a second later, and turned his head. "Where's the Pensieve that you put the memory in?"

Draco flushed. "I forgot to put it in," he admitted. "I was in the memory with you, feeling what you did."

Harry stilled at once, and his eyes shut. "Then you know that I felt absurdly strongly about that," he whispered. "You understand why I don't want that particular memory on display."

Draco reached out and swept the hair back from Harry's forehead so he could see the lightning bolt scar. That got him one open eye and a hand on Harry's wand. Draco shook his head. How Harry could feel that much rage at the prospect of Draco dying and at the same time distrust Draco enough to think he would attack was a mystery to him.

"I don't feel exactly comfortable with that memory being on display, either," he said softly, holding Harry's gaze.

Harry's other eye opened, and he stared at Draco with slightly parted lips. "Then why did you ask for it?"

Draco sighed and put his head down on Harry's chest, listening to the beat of his heart with an absent fondness. "I thought it was one of the most dramatic, and it would show that when it came to death, a lot of things ceased to matter. It would show that the most prominent Gryffindor hero could rescue a Slytherin who had tried to kill him, and that would send an important message of unity—"

"Liar," said Harry, in a choked voice. "That's not the only reason."

Draco closed his eyes. "Fine. I told you that I didn't think I was important enough to have a memory on display. This was a way of showing that I was in the war and that I mattered, that I was—important enough to have someone rescue me."

Harry was silent, except for the thrum of his heartbeat and his breathing. Draco felt an odd comfort knowing he couldn't cut those off.

Then Harry stirred and murmured, "What if we chose a different memory? For me, and for you?"

Draco blinked. "You would be willing to contribute a memory when I peered at the one you were going to give me? And when you would have to drink the potion again?"

Harry snorted. "Believe it or not, that had nothing on a Pain-Killing Draught. Why do you think I managed to drink it so quickly?" His hand curved around Draco's elbow. "I—think I could suggest another memory."

"Yeah?" Draco whispered.

"The one where I stood in front of Voldemort and took the Killing Curse for the second time. Lots of people have already seen it, maybe even some of the ones you interviewed, like your mother. And I think that it would emphasize the importance of peace to more people than the Fiendfyre memory would." He tightened his arm when Draco made a little motion of protest. "I wouldn't want to show them the walk into the Forest. That—that was private. But this would make the point unsubtle enough that everyone should grasp it."

Draco nodded slowly. He didn't want to relive that memory himself, but he didn't need to, not right away. This time, he would stay out of Harry's head when the memory was right at the forefront. "And what one are you going to choose for me?"

Harry hesitated. Then he asked, "What about the one where you refused to identify me to the Snatchers?"

"Yeah?" Draco found he was smiling. "Why that one?"

Harry turned his head, and Draco finally looked up and met his eyes when it dawned on him that was what Harry was waiting for. "Because it changed the course of the war," Harry said, confused. "You could have handed me over to Voldemort, and my friends would have been imprisoned, and no one could have continued the quest we were on."

"Someone else couldn't have killed him?" Draco slid his hand slowly over Harry's shoulder and into his hair. He marveled that it was soft and feathery, instead of hard and bristly like he'd thought it would be.

"Not everyone knew the secret of killing him. We did."

Harry was getting tense again, the muscle stiffening and flexing uneasily under Draco's touch. Draco leaned back and whispered, "You can tell me later. And yes, I can use that memory in the display."

Harry's smile was long and slow. He opened his mouth, and Draco held his breath, hoping he would speak soft, tender words.

In the end, he didn't, but he rested on Draco's bed with his arms around him for long minutes before he suggested they try again.

"I never knew."

Draco turned around and smiled at Blaise, who had decided to visit on the first day that the display at Hogwarts opened, despite not answering Draco's owls when Draco asked for a memory.

"I don't think anyone did," said Draco. "No one individually could know as much about the war as everyone together could." He glanced around and then added honestly, "Not that even I knew it would look like this."

All around him, in the Great Hall from which the House tables had been cleared for the day, the huge projected memories shimmered, the small Pensieves at their bases that had been their source made insignificant in the flash of color and motion. Harry's Fiendfyre memory wasn't there, of course, but Draco saw fire elsewhere—some of those memories involved people's last sight of Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix—and the great trees of the Forbidden Forest from his mother's memory of saving Harry's life, and the crumbling walls of Hogwarts, and the brightness of curses that Flitwick had given him, and the charge of the werewolves, and the army of marching furniture that Minerva hadn't even had to think twice to pick up.

Near his mother's memory stood the Pensieve that produced Harry's. Draco had to put it there, of course. It made too neat a segue, and while he was most passionate about the power of history, Draco knew the power of a good story, too. The longest line waited to enter Harry's.

A not-much-smaller one waited to enter Draco's. If that was mostly a line made of his own students, still, Draco was satisfied.

Blaise opened his mouth to say something else, and then stopped, staring. Draco leaned back into Harry's arms as they slid around his waist, and arched his eyebrows at his friend. His small revenge for Blaise cutting off contact had not been telling him about the new and comfortable relationship he had with Harry.

"How much longer do you need to stay here and curate the memories?" Harry murmured to him.

Draco shrugged against him. "It shouldn't be much longer. It's not as though the memories can't explain themselves." He let his voice turn teasing. "Why? Did you have something else in mind?"

"Yes," said Harry, and kissed the back of his neck.

Draco winked at Blaise this time, who had a smile of faint appreciation on his face, and turned around. "I'm ready when you are."

"Maybe I'll send a memory to the next one," Blaise called after him. "This one felt too personal."

Draco called back a wordless reply, and caught Harry's eye as they headed for the entrance hall. "He doesn't know the half of personal," Harry whispered.

Draco grinned. He and Harry were going to make some more memories that were definitely not for public consumption.

The End.