Chapter Thirty-Nine of 'Changing of the Guard'- An Actor and a Liar

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Thirty-Nine—An Actor and a Liar

“I want to tell you what happened to me to make me start Metamorphosis.”

Those were the first words Draco heard after Harry began to act uneasy in his embrace, and they shifted the balance of tension. Suddenly he was the one who felt he might fall backwards down the stairs if a pair of arms weren’t holding him up. He lifted his head and stared at Harry. Harry looked back, and despite the wariness around the edges of his eyes and the sharp lines surrounding his mouth, it was unmistakably Harry, the same man who had spoken to him about Metamorphosis after Draco awakened from his injury.

“You don’t have to,” Draco said, and then wondered why in the world he had spoken those words. Of course he wanted to know why Harry had chosen the extreme tactic of his personas combined with disdain for his original self, instead of simple reclusiveness. “I want you to tell me because you’ve actually chosen to do so, not because you think you owe me another debt.” He had regained his composure now, and stepped backwards, gently withdrawing from Harry’s arms. “Besides, don’t you want to stop Granger before she reports you to the Healers at St. Mungo’s?”

Harry shook his head slightly. “The hospital has someone on duty during the night as well,” he murmured. “She’s probably already told them.” A shadow darkened the back of his eyes, and Draco blinked; it was like standing in a room from which all the sunlight had suddenly vanished. “Besides, I can handle her, but my plan for doing so depends on my remaining calm and apparently untroubled until she appears.

“As for this being my choice—“ He reached out and hooked an arm around Draco’s neck, drawing him smoothly closer. In moments, their foreheads rested against one another’s, and their breaths mingled. Draco found himself shivering. The mere gentleness of Harry’s touch could do that to him.

If my father could see me now, he thought, but that failed to break the strange mood brewing within him, as he had intended it to. He did wish Lucius could see him at the moment; that might make him acknowledge defeat at last.

“I’ve never been more certain of what I want to do in twelve years, since I killed Voldemort,” Harry said. “I’ve never been more certain of my self in twelve years. Let me do this, Draco. I want to.”

And that was what Draco had been waiting for, after all. He relaxed, and raised his hands to lightly encircle Harry’s wrists.

“All right,” he whispered.

*

Harry doubted that any of his words would be enough to really convey his guilt and self-loathing to Draco, particularly when they were seated in front of a fire, in comfortable chairs, with glasses of Firewhiskey in their hands. One of his personas, Jocelyn the Amazing, was a fine storyteller, but she would not be able to reveal these experiences; they had not happened to her.

Slowly, his eyes on the flames more often than they were on Draco’s face—if his words inspired pity, Harry did not want to know it—he told the stories. There were many of them. Any one of them by itself was a small occurrence, not sufficient to break his determination to simply exist after the war, and avoid the mantle of hero again. He wanted to live and love among his friends and family. That was all.

But he could not have that. Because, one after another, his friends and family asked favors from him, normal favors, small ones, not because he was Harry Potter but because they valued and knew the real him.

And he failed them. Each and every one of them.

He could not be the husband and father he’d always envisioned, because he wasn’t straight and couldn’t marry Ginny. Ginny had taken the news well after her initial fit of weeping. She’d cleaned herself up, nodded to Harry, and agreed that they should keep Harry’s orientation a secret from her family, with the exception of Ron; it would only trouble them and make them uncertain as to how to react to Harry.

But in the moments when she wept, her head against his chest, her tears making the cloth damp and warm in uncomfortable ways, and whispered that she had only dreamed of marrying him for years—that she hadn’t wanted many other things because that was the one desire for her—Harry had felt guilt stab him. The wound it opened stayed there, stinging.

His life had cost his parents theirs. His attendance at Hogwarts and the way he looked had meant pain every single day for Snape. Dumbledore’s love for him had cost the old man peace of mind and had made him make mistakes with regards to the prophecy and the way he fought Voldemort.

Harry had hoped, when the war ended, that simple things about him, private things, which should affect only himself and the people he loved most, would stop exacting a price.

He shouldn’t have been such a fool.

Costing Ginny her dream was only the first of the prices other people paid. George had asked Harry to accompany him to Fred’s grave. George visited it more than anyone else in the family thought was healthy. Of course, George blamed them for trying to forget about their grief by avoiding the cemetery entirely.

But Harry had a violent nightmare about Fred’s death the day before he was supposed to go with George, and he’d hidden in his bedroom for hours, vomiting and trembling. He hadn’t owled George to tell him he wouldn’t be coming.

He’d received a Howler in return, and then a much quieter, sadder letter saying that George understood if the trauma was too much for Harry; it was too much for him, sometimes. Still, Harry could have told him before making George think, if only for the space of a day, that promises didn’t matter to him.

Another open wound. Harry and George still weren’t entirely easy around each other now, and never would be.

Neville had asked Harry to tend to a special plant of his whilst he went on holiday with his grandmother. Harry had forgotten about it completely, and the plant had withered and died. Neville hadn’t even scolded him, but Harry never forgot the devastation on his face when he came to the door of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place and saw, past Harry’s shoulder, the plant sitting in a brown mass of crumbling leaves on the shelf where he’d placed it.

Kingsley had asked Harry to attend one Ministry party, small and intimate and filled mostly with people Harry already knew and who would respect his privacy, as a favor to him. Harry had made his plans to go, he really had, and even chose a set of formal dress robes that would suit him, with Hermione’s help and approval. Then he’d had a panic attack after a score of reporters working together somehow rooted through the wards around Grimmauld Place and cornered him in his study, yelling so many questions so fast that they faded into one stream of noise in Harry’s ears. He hadn’t attended the party just like he hadn’t visited Fred’s grave with George, and he’d embarrassed Kingsley in front of several prominent guests, some of whom had since decided that they distrusted the Minister in general.

There was no end to the consequences of small actions. Harry had known the truth of it before that year, but he had never had such heavy proof.

When he did try to make up for his mistakes, to prove to himself that he really wasn’t as cowardly as all that, his actions skewed; things went more and more wrong. He had visited two of the last Death Eaters held prisoner before they went to trial, because his panic attacks and fevered memories of the war were so ridiculous. He had faced Voldemort without flinching, he hadn’t even suffered torture in the way that Hermione or other Muggleborns had; how in the world had the war come to affect him so strongly?

But one of the Death Eaters had a second wand hidden away, and he risked drawing it when he saw Harry. The first thing he did was free his companion. Harry had dueled with them both and killed them; a flash and roar of magic through his body had knocked him out, and he woke up to find them dead. He had tried to convince himself he’d killed them in self-defense, but when one of them didn’t have a wand, the words rang hollow. He’d sneaked out of the Ministry, and left Kingsley with a mess to clean up, and himself with the conviction that he must never allow his own magic to get so far out-of-control again.

And he’d murdered two people.

That might be the wound that went deepest, the one that still woke him up sometimes in the middle of the night when he was being Harry Potter. Harry Potter was the killer of the Dark Lord, maybe, but what he really was was a murderer. That action was so easily avoidable, along with most of the things he’d done to those who loved him. Why had he done it?

Other failures stung him that year. He’d been in Diagon Alley when a child fell from a roof, and he hadn’t been able to stop her in time. What good was magic if it couldn’t do such a simple thing? Bill had asked him to try and heal the scars on his face when Harry admitted he was now more powerful than he had been during the war; Harry couldn’t do that either, and the disappointment on Bill’s face hurt him so deeply that he Apparated home without another word. Mrs. Weasley had shoved him together with Ginny, and Harry couldn’t come up with convincing lies—then—or tell her the truth without dissolving her into a storm of tears. So he hovered awkwardly between stupid words and silence, and Mrs. Weasley cried anyway when she realized Harry was lying to her.

Owls poured in every day, asking for help with diseases, collapsed wards, Dementor attacks, sudden and inexplicable loss of magic, reversing Dark curses—all those things the wizarding world had a firm faith Harry Potter could cure. And Harry really could have helped with some of them. He’d scattered dozens of Dementors at a time with his Patronus. But it was never enough. There were always other people who had died in the meantime, and the press and admirers who followed Harry inevitably got in the way and curtailed what he could do.

Rationally, he knew he should forgive himself, knew that he wasn’t the hero everyone had always imagined he was and that he had decided not to go in for Auror work anyway. But there was one truth that whispered in his head in the middle of the night, over and over again until it almost drove him mad. Maybe he could have done everything that needed to be done, saved everyone, if he had taken up the Elder Wand. Was his refusal to do so actually the good act he had always assumed it was? Or was he merely being selfish? He could take the Elder Wand out sometimes, and then put it back to rest in Dumbledore’s grave. Why wasn’t he doing it? He had never been someone to respect the rules before.

Mistake after mistake. If he had been normal after the war, then he could have said he simply couldn’t be perfect. But here was his late-blossoming magic, mighty, faultless if he wielded it correctly, to mock his assertions and always remind him he did have the power to change things; he’d only let exhaustion and fear overcome him, and those were not good excuses.

Who was more evil, the person who actually committed vile acts or the person who saw those vile acts happening and wouldn’t lift a hand to stop them?

And so, in the end, Harry had created a number of perfect selves, personas who could do their jobs and give people what they wanted, because they were limited. Harry Potter was a pathetic, magically weak recluse who had killed the Dark Lord by good luck and could provide a sympathetic listening ear to his friends. Gerald was the trained bodyguard who didn’t have to be good at listening or at Quidditch. Jocelyn the Amazing told her stories with a laugh and a wink, and if she wasn’t amazing at ducking and dodging curses, no one held it against her.

Metamorphosis worked miracles. No one asked them of Harry, but he could still perform them on a limited basis. And that had saved his life and his sanity.

*

At the moment, Draco was very glad he had extended empathy to only a small number of people throughout his life. He had been flinching almost constantly since the beginning of Harry’s story, and it hurt now as though his muscles were spasming.

You know that’s not what hurts.

Draco leaned his forehead against his glass of Firewhiskey and was still for long moments when Harry finished the recitation, until he heard an anxious shifting across from him and looked up. Harry had clenched his hands together and was pulling steadily on his fingers. Draco knew he had to say something soon, or Harry would begin doubting whether he should have revealed this at all. Perhaps he would even think that Draco was too disgusted to spend any more time with him.

He leaned over and put a hand on Harry’s knee. At once the fear-edged green eyes focused on him and Harry went utterly still. Draco wondered if he was still talking to the same man who told him the story, but he doubted it mattered. Harry had listened to him even when he longed to disappear altogether, when he was in the thrall of the most self-hating persona he had. He would listen to Draco now.

“I can only imagine what it would have been like, because it wouldn’t have affected me the same way,” he told Harry quietly. “I’ve never been that concerned about failing the people I love, and I didn’t have a heroic reputation to live up to. But—if what you suffered was even a tenth of what I did when I realized you were in danger of losing yourself tonight, I can only shudder. And I’m sorry.”

Harry said softly, immediately, “That’s enough. Hearing that you can imagine it, and not try to laugh it off as an overreaction or tell me I should be rational and not affected by it, is enough.” He stood and came to a stop sitting on the arm of Draco’s chair, bending his head until their lips brushed.

Draco would have liked to pursue talk about those other reactions. Were they the ones Harry feared from Weasley and Granger? Were they the ones he’d actually received if he’d tried to talk about what had happened to him when he was nineteen?

But as Harry pressed him backwards more insistently, Draco decided he could let the conversation go for now. He and Harry would have other chances to talk, something in severe doubt when he’d first Apparated to the house. He set his glass of Firewhiskey blindly on the floor, and thought his leg might have knocked it over a moment later. When Harry put his focus into a kiss, Draco felt as if he were caught in the midst of open flame. It wasn’t the skill that mattered. It was the attention, the sure and certain knowledge that a dragon could have barreled into the room right now and it would still be secondary to Draco in Harry’s attention.

“I want to make love to you,” Harry whispered to him. “Will you let me do that?”

Draco stiffened for just a moment. He remembered the way Harry had made love to him in the guise of Brian, distantly, as if he were a machine using his body to make Draco feel good and no more.

Harry kissed him more frantically, sliding his tongue around the back of Draco’s teeth, and whispered, “Not like before. Not anything like before. I was still trying to prevent you from finding out who I was then. My focus was still on myself, even though I pretended it was on your pleasure. Now, I want to show you how much I really do appreciate you.”

Draco nodded and raised his hand to brush his fingertips along the back of Harry’s skull, pushing through the thick hair until he touched skin. “How can I say no?” he asked.

Harry sat back at once, and stared him in the eye. “You always can,” he said. “If it ever becomes too much for you, too painful, too close to your heart, you can walk away from me. I’ll handle it.”

“Such a liar,” Draco said, and dug his fingertips deeper, making Harry close his eyes and whimper. Draco relaxed. That was enough for him to be sure he was affecting Harry as well when he touched him.

“Take me to bed.”

*

Harry’s hands shook when he undressed Draco, and that was something he never would have allowed ordinarily. But it was all right now, because Draco had heard the deepest and at the same time the weakest secrets of his soul, and hadn’t rejected him.

Harry kissed his way down Draco’s back. Draco lifted his hips lazily towards him. He was thrusting into the bed with every other movement, but with no more than desultory interest, as if he cared more about how Harry’s hands felt on his skin than the sheets against his cock.

That isn’t possible, but it’s a beautiful illusion.

Harry spent so much time learning Draco’s body with his hands and tongue that he lost track of time entirely. The world seemed to lengthen and run around him, soft as strings of stretched cheese or butter. He urged Draco onto his back at last and lapped at the salt and sweat in his groin. Draco huffed a laugh that made Harry wonder if he was ticklish there. He hadn’t noticed that at Clothilde Castle.

Harry lifted his head and met Draco’s gaze. Draco’s eyes had gone sleepy and dazed in the same way Harry’s sense of time had. Harry felt the air around them crackle and shift as the magic that could connect them reached out. He broke the enchantment with a little shake of his head. For the first time he, instead of Brian, made love to Draco, he wanted no artificial conduits between them.

He used lubrication as slowly as he’d done everything else, keeping his eyes on the flex of Draco’s muscles and the bob of his neck as he tossed his head back on the pillow, rolling his entire body downwards on Harry’s hand. Harry let his fingers spread wide, play and wander, until finally Draco clenched his thighs hard, trapping his hand. His eyes were dusky gray, almost frightening in the intensity of their lust.

“Enough teasing,” Draco said, his words so soft and hoarse Harry wouldn’t have made them out if there had been any other sound in the room.

Harry smiled, and stood. When he guided himself into Draco, Draco winced. Harry held still and tried not to think of this as yet another mistake he would have to add to the long tally of them he kept in his head.

Draco chose to be with me. And hurting him slightly isn’t unforgivable. He would be rolling out of the bed and grabbing his clothes right now if it was. Draco wouldn’t let himself be used like that just to soothe my pride.

Sure enough, Draco nodded a moment later, and though he had Harry wait one more time, he never grunted or shrieked with pain. When Harry did pause and try to let him have some more time, Draco shook his head and stiffened the muscles in his legs. A sharp gust of pleasure blew through Harry, weakening him so he almost slumped on Draco’s chest. He licked his lips and realized he was panting. He hadn’t realized until now how much the mask of the persona distanced him from his body and kept him from feeling simple physical pleasure.

“Move,” Draco said, and the single, sole voice in Harry’s head, the voice of his greedy and demanding body, echoed him.

It wasn’t perfect, wasn’t the miracle of skill and technique that he’d used in the past to bring his partners to orgasm without touching them. He did have to wank Draco as well, and then his hand moved too fast and slipped off, and he left bruises on Draco’s hip, and he had to control the impulse to thrust madly and wildly until he found his own completion without having enough care for Draco.

But the orgasm swept all thought from his mind just as the one in Clothilde Castle had, and when he did drop to rest on Draco’s chest and close his eyes for a moment, he felt as he had during the moments when he was speaking the real truth to Ron and Hermione—hollowed, empty at last of the guilt he had carried so far and for so long.

Draco grunted again. Harry rolled to the side and gathered him in his arms. Draco started some protest, maybe about the stickiness that clung to his chest, but the hollow feeling had dissolved into weariness, and Harry fell straight into sleep without enough of a pause between to evaluate the complaint.

*

Granger came to the front door the next morning with two Healers behind her.

Harry met them and invited them in, speaking in what Draco felt was an inappropriately happy voice all the way down the entrance hall. Draco was seated at Harry’s table in rather tatterdemalion borrowed robes, sipping a cuppa; he rose when he heard the voices and leaned against the doorframe to watch.

The nearest Healer had just refused Harry’s offer of tea. He drew his wand now and aimed it at Harry. Harry raised his eyebrows and held patiently still as the man cast several diagnostic spells at him. With each one that flashed with clear and radiant light when it was done, the first Healer looked more perplexed, the second Healer more intrigued, and Granger more upset.

“Stop lying, Harry!” she snapped at last. “I know you’re sick, and I’ve told the Healers the truth!”

“Hermione.” Harry glanced at her, and Draco was grateful to see that his smile did turn brittle around the edges. He would have been concerned for Harry’s mental health if Harry could confront her as if nothing had happened. “That was your interpretation of the evidence I gave you. I can’t lie to magic. Could you let me tell the Healers what happened?”

“Do tell us, Mr. Potter,” said the one who hadn’t been casting the diagnostic spells. She was a tall, deep-voiced woman who examined Harry’s face as if that would tell her something the spells couldn’t.

Harry smiled at her. “It’s true I do work for Metamorphosis,” he said. “I’ve been one of their actors, under various names, for some time now. It was a way to escape publicity.” He leaned nearer confidentially. “I’m sure you must remember one of the times I had to come in for basic health care and was trailed by half a dozen reporters who thought they had all the right in the world to know what was wrong with me.”

The Healers’ faces stiffened. Draco swallowed tea to prevent laughing. Harry had judged them correctly after only a few minutes of study. They would remember and resent the interference Harry’s publicity caused in their daily routines and the care of other patients, and that deflected their attention effectively from the Harry standing in front of them.

“But I only told Hermione that I ran the whole of Metamorphosis to spare a friend of mine, the man who actually runs it and needed some time to flee the country and make his business a bit harder to find.” Harry gave Granger a disappointed glance. “I’ll admit, that you believed it came as a surprise. But you’ve believed my lies over the years and haven’t listened when I told you the truth, so I don’t really know why I was startled.”

Draco stuffed a fist over his mouth this time. Those were Harry’s cutting words, the only ones he could deliver to Granger in the circumstances, and if she were wise she would listen to them.

“There’s a long distance between being an actor for Metamorphosis and being crazy enough to act as a hundred different people.” Harry faced the Healers and lifted an eyebrow. “Really, if I were like that, wouldn’t one of your diagnostic spells have shown it? Madness can’t be hidden so easily.”

The second Healer cast a spell at him without answering. It also flashed clear. She smiled. “That would have shown any hiding personalities in his mind who thought of themselves as separate people and whom he didn’t know about,” she said with some satisfaction. She glanced sideways at Granger. “Ma’am, I can understand why you were concerned, but there’s absolutely nothing wrong with him. You must have misunderstood, or simply believed the lie he wanted you to believe.”

Harry looked at Granger with open, shining, sane eyes. Draco sipped tea again. The spell, of course, was not designed to reveal separate personas who all knew about each other, and whom the true owner of the body controlled.

And Draco really shouldn’t have been so worried. Harry was an actor and a liar. It was no wonder he had been content to let Granger come ahead when he knew he could make her sound like the mad one.

“But he is Metamorphosis,” said Granger. Her eyes had started to grow cloudy, though, and Draco knew she was remembering the way Harry had lied to her for ten years and hadn’t let her notice. Would she really notice the difference if he claimed he was telling the truth and then didn’t?

Draco strode up the corridor and curved an arm around Harry’s shoulders. “I do think that’s enough,” he said. “Harry’s not mad, except in the way he spends his life serving people who don’t deserve it, and there’s no spell to find low self-esteem.”

He was speaking both to Harry and Granger with those last words. Harry nodded against his chest. Granger looked at him with a tremble to her lip that said she couldn’t decide between hurt and surprise, and then looked away.

“If he was as you described,” the male Healer said to Granger, “he wouldn’t be able to talk to us like this, let alone hide it.” He turned away then, and his companion followed him to the door. Draco heard the sharp crack as they both Apparated. He was sure they would tell this story and laugh over it for days, but at least the secret of Metamorphosis was unlikely to spread far from them.

If it tries, then Harry can appear as the Manager again and ‘prove’ his existence to anyone who cares to inquire.

“I know you were telling the truth,” Granger whispered.

“You know no such thing,” Harry said. “You haven’t listened to me in ten years. Maybe part of that is my fault, for not making you listen—“

Draco controlled the impulse to shake him.

“But you also didn’t want to look.” Harry shrugged. “If you try to spread this story further, I’ll deny it. And I can deny it, and prove the separate existence of the wizard who owns Metamorphosis and his employees.”

“I don’t understand, Harry,” Granger said, and there were big tears in her eyes. “Don’t you want to be our friend anymore?”

“If you make me choose between your friendship and my own freedom and sanity,” Harry said, “you’re not going to win.”

Granger walked slowly up the entrance hall, looking back several times. When she Apparated, it was with a muted, chastened little pop. Harry sighed and shifted his shoulders, then looked back at Draco.

“Thank you for being here,” he said, “and for reminding me who else I wanted to protect.” He kissed Draco’s chin.

“Which persona were you using?” Draco asked, because he hadn’t seen Harry’s face for some of the conversation and wasn’t sure.

“All of them,” said Harry, and gave him a smile that was extraordinarily sweet. “After all, they’re all me.”

Chapter 40.

Comments

[tari_sue]

Oh well, seeing as how a discussion has opened and I love to stick my two penneth in…

I agree, when you have a real down on yourself, every little mistake you make gets blown out of proportion, you have endless sleepless nights worrying over silly things that anyone else would have already forgotten about, you become convinced that you are the worst person in the world and everyone hates you for some stupid little mistake and it's just one big downwards spiral until you're the lowest of the low and you can see no way out. Sometimes it's the little niggly things that do the harm, because nobody else knows what you're stewing about and you put masks up to hide it, with bigger things people can see it coming and try to help you out of the funk, like Draco did with Harry in the last chapter.

For point 2, Hermione might have meant well, but she might as well have kicked Harry in the chest and then jumped up and down on him, she was responsible for putting him on the verge of breakdown, even if it was unintentional, and she destroyed his fragile self belief and she destroyed if trust in her.

[melonbutterfly.livejournal.com]

I've just some things to say about Hermione; everything I thought about the not-really-MPD-thing has already been said.

One of the biggest mistakes Hermione did was that she based her actions and judgements on the Harry that was Metamorphosis for ten years, had no real life (didn't need one because he lived hundreds of other people's lifes) and hid the truth from them.
That's a huge difference between that Harry and the Harry that told her of Metamorphosis. The mere fact that Harry told them should have been an eye-opener for her. Then, Harry has a private life now that goes beyond existing and planning and guiding personas, he's out in public, he has a lover. She knows all those things, but she didn't take them into consideration.

Hermione simply assumes that Harry is sick (even tells him so, which isn't exactly the way mentally unstable persons should be treated) and her logic conclusion is that he needs help - by mind-healers.
That may be right, but the way she tries to achieve that is simply stupid.
She tells him that she's going to destroy everything he worked and lived for for ten years and then simply leaves.
I have no idea what she thought she was doing; I guess she simply didn't realise the impact that'd have on Harry, and that's just stupid.
Yes, she's only trying to help Harry. But she's not thought that through, and she does it in the most blue-eyed way. What did she think Harry would do after she left? Shrug and have a nice warm bubble bath? Go and cry into his pillow and wait for her?
I can't believe she was so... stupid. "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" is very fitting to describe it.