A/N: Sorry for the delay! I just got back from my trip and I wanted to re-read this a few more times before posting.

Weeks passed. We inched closer and closer to opening night, and the gala that preceded it, until we were mere days away.

We hadn't heard back from the investigative reporters.

I was working miracles to keep Harry and Beauchamp apart in the studio. I made sure he was only scheduled to rehearse with the master tutor, Joni. Kenneth would have had my head if he weren't so stressed over administrative details. Things had completely fallen apart without Liam's steady hand to guide the company.

Beauchamp had his hands full with Gigi, who he criticized and mocked relentlessly. While critiquing her solo in Act Two, he told her she was too fat to execute the grand adage properly. Gigi wasn't a schoolgirl anymore. She fought back. Their screaming matches reverberated throughout the whole opera house and were sure to become legendary.

Two days before the gala, Harry received an email from one of the reporters that said she had witness testimony that corroborated his story about Kiev. He wondered who the witness was and what they said. We found out the witness was Harry! Fifteen-year-old Harry. And what he said was simply his own name. The reporters went to Kiev to interview the staff at Beauchamp's old apartment and the curmudgeonly landlord said that the furniture that came with the unit had been vandalized during Beauchamp's stay. Someone had carved their name into an antique desk. It was Harry's name. RBS had paid for a separate apartment for Harry in Kiev, as was the school's policy. This desk placed Harry exactly where he said he was and where he shouldn't have been. In Beauchamp's quarters. This act of impropriety may not have been enough to indict Beauchamp in court but it was enough for the paper to vet the story and avoid a defamation lawsuit.

Boris and Vladimir had signed their own warrants. Each had been embroiled in sex scandals with minors before and after the incident with Harry. The Kiev ballet swept these indiscretions under the rug. But Harry's name was too big, the story too scandalous to be ignored. Their names in connection with the piece would ruin them.

Mags had to get creative with the Zhuk cousins. There was nothing tying them to the incident with Harry. One of her Ukrainian subsidiaries had been investigating them for insider trading and fixing the market with a competitor in Russia. What would have been a footnote buried in the business sections of UK and American papers was now headline news. Harry and I watched gleefully as stocks for their mining company plummeted.

Harry's story would be on the front page of the arts section in Mags' newspapers all over the world. The reporters told him that they would be running the story soon but they didn't say when.

If Harry was nervous he didn't show it. I was nervous for him. I cried when he gave his interview to the reporters.

Harry didn't have any more tears left for Beauchamp.

I couldn't believe someone so private would go public with such a personal story, but my discovery about Harry's past had a snowball effect. Once I found out and believed him, he had the courage to go to Mags, then to the reporters, now the world.

On the day of the gala we woke up early in Harry's bed. It took me a moment to remember where I was before I felt the satin bedspread and saw Harry beside me on a mountain of pillows.

We had been living between our two flats, which was as wonderful as it was inconvenient. We could never find any of our stuff because we'd forget which things we brought where. I was convinced I'd forgotten something but I couldn't figure out what.

I had my suit dry-cleaned and my shirt pressed. Harry bought me a new tie that cost more than my first car. It was silk and sky blue. He said it matched my eyes. Harry wore a velvet paisley suit in black and gold that made him look like a matador.

I raised my eyebrows.

"Too much?" he said.

"Not for you." I smoothed my hands over his lapels.

Unlike Jeffrey, Harry did not want us to dress alike. I'm sure if he saw someone wearing the same thing as him at an event, he would throw a fit and immediately run home to change. He adored couture and fussed over every outfit, which wasn't the case at all when he was younger and wore the same tattered hoodie every day. I was charmed by this new side of him. It was one of the few nice things he did for himself, so I encouraged it.

Besides, I didn't need to dress like Harry to feel connected to him. We weren't the same person and we didn't want to be. We were two distinct entities, a planet and its moon, drawn together by a gravitational force out of our control, spinning around each other in perfect synchronicity.

I couldn't find my cufflinks. I must have left them back at my place.

"Here," Harry said, "borrow a pair of mine." He went into his walk-in closet and found a pair in his dresser. They were two gold swans. Fitting, I thought.

He took my wrists and fastened them to my cuffs, his fingers lingering over the fabric.

"Louis, I know it's way too soon, and we've only been together a few weeks but..." he batted his dark lashes. "I would really like you to move in with me."

I was surprised but happier than I ever knew I could be. "Harry! When we were in school I asked you to move in with me after a few hours!"

He shifted in his shoes. "Is that a yes?"

"Yes, I'd love to live with you again."

He breathed a sigh of relief, as though he'd been trying to build up the courage to ask me for a while. "Okay, good."

"But," I glanced downstairs, "we need to get some furniture for this place."

"Can't we just use yours?"

"My furniture is crap."

He ruffled my neatly coiffed hair. "I like your crap furniture."

It was warm out and the sun hadn't yet set, so we decided to walk to the opera house. I got excited thinking about how we could walk to work like this every day now that we lived together. Then I remembered that after Friday night's performance, Harry would have no need to go to the opera house every day because he would no longer be a dancer.

I squeezed his hand a little tighter.

When we rounded the corner of Exeter Street, our phones suddenly blew up. We began getting texts and calls from family, friends and colleagues. The story had dropped.

We stopped at a newsstand on the corner of Tavistock and Bow. I paid the three quid for the evening paper but I couldn't bear to look at the article.

Harry opened up the paper. His face remained impassive. His hands trembled.

God, this was the absolute worst moment for the story to come out. We were about to enter a room full of our peers. I had no idea what the reaction would be. I was beginning to understand Harry's fear of telling.

"We don't have to do this. Let's go home."

"No," he said, tucking the paper into his breast pocket. "I want to face them. I'm not ashamed."

In mere minutes, news of the article had spread like wildfire. All eyes were on us as we entered the bold red interior of the Crush Room. Everyone went quiet. The only sound was the faint clinking of wine glasses and cocktail forks.

I stroked Harry's arm soothingly. "It's okay. It's going to be okay."

He held his head up. "You believe me, Louis. That's all that matters."

Then slowly our friends and colleagues approached.

Gigi was first, the spaghetti straps of her evening gown falling off her shoulders as she barreled toward us. "Motherfucker. I knew he was evil but I didn't know he was that evil." She wrestled Harry into a hug.

Eleanor was tearful, her mascara running down her bronze cheeks. "I drove you to the clinic when you got back from Paris. I knew something was wrong but I didn't say anything. Can you forgive me?"

Harry patted her shoulder. "It's not you fault."

Zayn's dark eyes were mournful. He touched Harry's face. "I was so hard on you in school. I told Louis you couldn't be trusted. I thought you hurt him but you were protecting him. You're a better friend than I ever was."

"You were a good friend too!" Harry insisted. "I'm glad Louis has you."

Niall had the emotional range of a golden retriever but even he felt compelled to speak. "That interview took guts, Harry." He cleared his throat. "I'm proud to know you and work with you, even if we do have our disagreements."

Harry shook his hand. "I hope we can put all that behind us now."

Then one by one everyone in the company, even Jeffrey, clapped his back and said that they too supported him.

Harry was genuinely shocked. He had prepared for the worst. He still thought, like he did when he was fifteen, that nobody would believe him and when it slowly became clear that the whole room was on his side, he was humbled by the support.

The things he kept hidden from the world for fear that everyone would hate him actually connected him to the world and brought him closer to everyone in the company.

Even Kenneth appeared to be siding with Harry, though that may have had something to do with the crowd of angry patrons crowding around him demanding that Beauchamp be fired immediately.

Beauchamp wasn't there. I could see Harry watching the doors and tapping his foot anxiously.

"He won't come," I said, taking him into my arms for the first waltz. "He's bound to have heard of the article by now. He wouldn't dare show his face here."

I was wrong. Moments later the grand oak doors swung open and Beauchamp entered in his signature shark grey suit, his arms extended. He entered every party as though it were being held in his honor. I felt a pang of the old me. A few weeks ago I would have been the first person in the room to run up and greet him. Now I struggled to see in him what I did then. It was like finding out your childhood hero was actually the monster under your bed.

At first I thought he might be arrogant enough to think the article wouldn't touch him. But he was too calm, too pleased with himself.

He didn't know.

Unlike the silence that Harry met upon his arrival, Beauchamp was met with whispers and jeers. Not a single person approached him. Even Kenneth seemed too revolted to ask him to leave.

He stood there waiting for his warm welcome until the smug expression on his face fell into a glare directed right at Harry.

I had a hand fixed on Harry's waist. He broke away from me.

"No!" I said, grabbing him. I didn't want him anywhere near Beauchamp. Even though he was an adult now he was still very much a child to me. I failed to protect him when he was younger, I couldn't fail him again.

Then I remembered what Mags had said to me in the greenhouse and I let him go.

Slowly, Harry crossed the room, his footsteps soundless on the plush red carpet.

He was face to face with Beauchamp, who was spitting fire. "What have you done, you stupid animal!"

Harry pulled out the newspaper from his breast pocket and spoke softly. "Don't be cross with me, Sir. I know you hate it when we fight." He kissed Beauchamp on the cheek and pressed the paper into his hand.

Beauchamp's eyes scanned the headline with horror, reading and re-reading it like he was trying to wake up from a nightmare. He crushed the paper and looked around the room imploringly—at the patrons, the dancers, the administration, all of his friends, old and new. "You don't actually believe these lies?"

They turned their backs on him, every last one of them.

Harry and I had been all wrong about Beauchamp. His power didn't stem from his family name or his money, his connections or his social standing. His power came from silence. The silence of his victims. Once that silence was broken so was the illusion of his power. He may as well have been standing there naked without a cent to his name.

That night in Harry's bed I held him tight, swaddling him with my arms and legs.

He hadn't said much over the course of the evening but I knew this must have been one of the hardest nights of his life. "It's all over," I murmured into the nape of his neck. "You faced your fears."

Harry froze. "I'm still afraid. I see him every time I close my eyes. He's on top of me and I can't move, I can't say no, I can't stop him..."

I waited for him to fall asleep. Then I brushed my fingertips over his eyelids and prayed for him to have sweet dreams.

We slept for only a few hours before Harry got a call on his cell phone. He sat up sleepily, my arm still draped around him.

I tried to listen to the call but couldn't make out the words on the other end. Harry's muscles tensed. He said the name Agnes, which I recognized because it was the name of one of the reporters that interviewed him for the article.

Harry hung up, leapt out of bed and quickly began to get dressed.

I rubbed my eyes. "What is it? What's happened?"

"A boy has come forward in Paris. His mother is pressing charges."

We were twenty-four hours away from opening night but Harry insisted that he had to see the boy right away. It couldn't wait.

We took the next flight out to Paris and arrived at the crack of dawn. Harry hadn't been back to the city since his trip with Beauchamp. He had a visceral reaction to the place, recoiling at its sights and smells. Even though he didn't love Paris, Paris loved him and he was famous here despite never having danced for the Paris Opera Ballet. Because of both his and Beauchamp's popularity in France, the article made a big splash.

We didn't know much about the boy. The family wasn't willing to speak to the press, but they were willing to talk to Harry.

He lived in a tiny garret in La Courneuve, a poor Parisian burrow with clotheslines hanging between the dilapidated buildings, bars on the windows and doors.

We climbed up the darkened stairwell to the boy's apartment. Both the lights and the elevator in the building were broken.

His mother opened the door. She was very young, dressed in a grey maid's uniform, about to leave for her job in the wealthy suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine.

She looked like she hadn't slept in days. She led us into the apartment, which was rundown and modestly furnished but tidy and warm, with lots of family photos on the walls.

The boy's name was Léo. He was small with dark shorn hair and a golden complexion. He was sitting on the couch doing his homework and jumped to his socked feet when he saw us. My heart ached.

Harry asked his mother how old he was.

"Twelve," she said.

Neither she nor the boy spoke English very well but between my broken French and their broken English we were able to piece together the whole story.

The boy was a student the École de Danse de l'Opéra in Paris. A few months earlier Beauchamp was a guest instructor for a day—a special treat that they had been promised for being so good. After class Beauchamp noticed Léo's Batman backpack and asked him if he would like to accompany him to the new Batman movie. Léo explained that he was at the school on a scholarship and that his mother couldn't afford to pay for a movie ticket. Beauchamp said not to worry, that he would pay for the tickets. But on the way there the driver drove right past the cinema to Beauchamp's apartment. He told the boy that he just needed to pick up a few things, but they never left the apartment that evening and they never went to the cinema.

When the boy got home at night he was listless and complained of a mysterious pain that he couldn't articulate to his mother. She knew something was not right. She took him to the hospital, where in the examination room, he explained to the doctors what happened. Léo told them everything except who had done this to him. Even after he had been brutalized, the boy still thought that Beauchamp was someone who should be revered. He was brought to the school as a treat for the students. He was elegant and important, not like Léo who lived in La Courneuve and couldn't even afford a ticket to the cinema.

All of that changed when Léo saw Harry's story on the front page of the newspaper. Harry was Léo's favorite dancer, his mother explained. He'd never seen him perform but he watched his performances from the Bolshoi online. Harry was what made him want to study dance. When he saw that the same thing that happened to him had happened to his hero, Léo decided to speak out too. He pointed to the newsstand and confessed to his mother that it was Beauchamp who hurt him.

Since the hospital performed a full examination and a rape kit the day it happened, they had all the physical evidence they would need to prosecute.

Harry took the skinny boy in his arms. Léo's hazel eyes were full as saucers. He couldn't believe Harry was in his apartment let alone hugging him.

This was the first time Harry had met another of Beauchamp's victims. He embraced him like a brother.

"Thank you, Léo. Thank you for being brave."

The boy wriggled free then took Harry's hand and pulled him toward his room. "Come, come, come," he said.

His mother gestured for us to go ahead. Bewildered, Harry and I followed the boy down the slanted hallway to his bedroom. Like the rest of the apartment it was cramped and it looked as though he shared the room with two other siblings. He hopped onto his bed and pointed wildly at the wall. There, amongst his drawings of Batman and Superman were dozens of pictures of Harry dancing. It was exactly like the collage I had of Beauchamp when I was growing up.

Harry held the boy's small shoulders.

Léo looked up at him. "I'm not so good as you," he said, in his lilting French accent.

Harry leaned down. "That's okay. I was a terrible dancer when I started at the academy."

The boy couldn't believe it. "Really?"

"It's true," I interjected. "He was rubbish. I was there."

Harry frowned but the boy thought this was hilarious!

We had to go and catch our flight back to London to prepare for opening night but Harry was reluctant to leave the boy.

"Léo," he said, looking at the pictures on his wall. "How would you like to see me dance in person?"

His mouth hung open.

"I'll pay for you and your mum to come to London and see Swan Lake. Would you like that?"

Léo hugged Harry's waist.

Neither of us had the heart to tell him that it would be Harry's last performance.

A/N: I've been looking forward to introducing you to little Léo! I hope you liked him and found his story moving.

In case you're wondering why I had Harry kiss Beauchamp, a kiss in literature can symbolize either love or betrayal. I see this as a Judas kiss. Beauchamp's boys were like disciples and Harry was the first one to betray him.

Only three more chapters left!