Chapter Eight of 'Valerian'- Shattered Lenses

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Seven.

Chapter One.

Title: Valerian (8/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Severus and Draco/Astoria, past Harry/Draco
Content Notes: Angst, manipulation, past infidelity
Rating: R
Summary: Harry dated Draco until Draco fell in love with Astoria, and never really got over his broken heart. Now Draco is getting married, and wants Harry to construct a unique magical gift for his bride on the grounds of Malfoy Manor. As Harry labors on his creation, telling himself not to be petty, Severus Snape watches to make sure that he doesn’t mess it up—and also, soon, for other reasons.
Author’s Notes: Several people are angsty and not at their nicest here. Don’t read if that bothers you. Also, this is a sequel to my short fic “Aconite,” which you should probably read first, and while this will be much longer than that story, it will be irregularly updated.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eight—Shattered Lenses

“Sir? I’ve come to ask you to help me.”

Severus frowned a little as he watched the man standing on his threshold. It should have been good news, that Harry had sought him out before Severus could send a carefully-worded invitation. But the pale state of his face and the crackle and buzz around him, as if his magic was host to a swarm of disturbed bees, did not speak of any good luck.

“Come in,” Severus said, choosing to offer nothing else for now. He stood aside and watched as Harry walked over and braced himself for a moment with one hand on the back of a large couch.

“What happened?” Severus found himself slightly crouching, wand ready to cast a number of spells in case Harry should fall.

Harry said nothing, but Severus actually found that encouraging. A denial, a quick attempt to protect Draco, would have worried him more. Harry took his time arranging himself on the couch, and then said, “I—I somehow lost a portion of my memory. Or had a hallucination. I thought I heard a house-elf telling me to follow her into the house.”

“Malfoy Manor?” Severus took a vial from his pocket without removing his eyes from Harry. With any luck, Harry would drink the Calming Draught in his tea without complaining. He needed it.

“Yes. And it’s strange, because I was told I shouldn’t go into the house for any reason, but I can only remember questioning this elf a little. I just followed her. Isn’t that weird? What kind of mental break does that indicate?” Harry looked up, his eyes squinting and tired behind his glasses.

Severus held his suspicions on the “mental break” to himself. “Go on.”

“So I went into a room that I shouldn’t have, and I saw Draco and Astoria having sex.” Harry’s voice lowered, as if this was something sacred he shouldn’t have been speaking about. “I can’t believe I did that. I just stood gaping like a fool instead of looking away soon, too. And it reminded me—it reminded me…”

“Yes?” Severus kept his voice strictly neutral, even as he Summoned a cup from the kitchen wordlessly and then poured some of the tea he’d prepared for himself into it. The Calming Draught joined it an instant later. He handed the cup to Harry, who kept it between his hands as if warming his palms.

“It reminded me of the first time that I saw Draco having sex with Astoria because he needed some intimacy from someone who wasn’t broken.” Harry shook his head and sipped the tea. “That memory keeps hitting the front of my mind as if it’s a fly on a windowpane. And I think I might be losing my mind. So I came to ask you for help.”

“Potions?”

“No. I want you to read my mind and see my memories and decide if I’m losing it.” Harry set the teacup decisively aside, although he’d swallowed enough of the potion to be breathing more normally, with more color in his cheeks. “I need to know.” He glanced at Severus and removed his glasses. “Is this easier?”

Severus kept his thoughts on the ease of looking into Harry’s eyes to himself. He nodded. “I must tell you, if your mental shields are in as bad a state as I thought I saw before, this will be highly painful.”

“That’s nothing compared to the pain of knowing I betrayed Draco. Or that I might be going mad.”

Well, at least one fate is mentioned right behind the other, Severus thought, and then forced himself to close his eyes and release his irritation, clearing his mind. He would hurt Harry all the more if he went into his thoughts while exasperated with him.

“Severus? Please.”

He should not be begging me for anything. Unless it was fully of his own free will. Severus sighed and opened his eyes. “We will need a more comfortable room for this,” he explained, gesturing around the corner at his own sitting room. “I think you should be lying down, on a couch, and I will sit in a chair beside you.”

“Whatever you need.”

How can he be so trusting, when he knows how I have mistreated him in the past, and with what Draco has done to him? But they were hopefully on their way to solving that mystery. Severus nodded and gestured again, this time asking Harry to lead the way.

*

The blue leather couch was comfortable enough, Harry supposed. He blinked his eyes shut and opened them again. It didn’t waver or change position.

“Harry?”

“I’m trying to see whether I can sense any signs of my mind having broken,” Harry said, and sighed a little as he lay down on his back in the middle of the couch. It was easily large enough to hold him, even when he stretched his legs out. “But I suppose that the person whose mind is breaking is the last one to notice things, huh?”

He looked up, thinking he might get a laugh or a sarcastic comment, and saw Snape’s jaw tightening in what might have been anger instead.

“Severus?” Harry asked cautiously, barely managing to change the instinctive “sir” to the name Snape had requested halfway through.

Snape blew what sounded like an angry blast of air out. Well, Harry already knew that this request would have irritated him. It was amazing that he had consented to look into Harry’s mind at all, given that.

“Yes, I am here,” Snape said, which struck Harry as an odd reassurance, but Snape’s hand was resting on his brow and turning his head, and Harry went with it. Hopefully it wouldn’t take him long to figure out what had really happened.

Snape’s eyes loomed above him, huge and black, and Harry’s mind filled with memories of fifth year. He tried to force them away. The last thing he wanted to do was get Snape more irritated. That would probably make this hurt even more.

“Legilimens,” Snape said, his voice whispering past Harry like some lonely wind.

Then his mind was reaching through Harry’s, and Harry screamed in pain.

*

It was worse than Severus had feared.

Everywhere he looked were more shattered lenses, memories and thoughts scattered and crushed and bumping into one another. Crazed edges of time overlapped, and faces turned to look at him from broken mirrors. Frankly, Severus would have been surprised that Harry had as much sanity left as he did, except for one thing.

All the faces in the mirrors were Draco’s.

Harry had built his mind into some semblance of sanity—as long as it did not concern Draco, or their relationship. The closer one came to that past or to Draco in the present, the more his mind decayed. Yet even the most monumental defenses must fall, and if this state endured, Severus knew Harry would succumb to madness at last.

He reached out and found the source of greatest pain, which he drew on quickly, forcing himself to ignore the agony he could both feel around him like a heat shimmer and hear coming out of Harry’s mouth. He would lose the nerve to do this if he waited much longer. He drew out the shard that had stabbed into Harry’s mind.

He turned it around, and saw within it a scene that seemed to take place before two backgrounds. One was a parlor in Malfoy Manor where he had been many times. The second one was the wall of what seemed to be a flat or a small house.

But in both, Draco leaned forwards and put his mouth between Astoria Greengrass’s legs.

Severus grimaced in disgust and drew his own magic around the edges of the shard, smoothing it, shaping it. When it was an ordinary piece that contained only as much of both memories as he thought Harry needed to keep, he slid it back into the place he had taken it from.

And then he stepped back from Harry’s mind. There was only so much torture he had ever wanted to inflict after he stopped being a Death Eater.

Right now, true, there were two bodies he would have liked beneath his wand. But he waited, his hand on the now-unconscious Harry’s face, until he saw Harry begin to stir. There were more important things than torture.

“What—what happened?” Harry’s voice was hoarse enough that Severus Summoned a glass without moving, then used the Aguamenti Charm to fill it with water. When he held it out, Harry almost snatched it. But he only drank three swallows before he froze.

“Yes?” Severus asked. Although he had done the best he could with that shard of memory, it was possible that Harry had noticed some differences in his recollection instead of merely differences in pain.

“I—you’re touching my face.”

Severus nodded and eased his hand backwards. “My apologies. I was not certain how you would feel when you woke up.” He studied Harry for a moment, eyes tracking his movements as he lifted the glass of water to his mouth again. “I found the memory that you spoke of in the Manor, as well as the one that was possibly the first time you saw Draco and his fiancé making love.”

Harry coughed, then steadied. “Why were they so close to each other? Did my madness impinge on reality or something?”

“No. One reminded you of the other. What you saw in the Manor this morning really happened, Harry.”

Harry closed his eyes and held so still for a long moment that Severus found himself reaching out. He hesitated, then ended up simply resting his hand on the arm of the couch. Just because he thought Harry might need support didn’t mean he did. He might need to fly apart, or break, or rage alone.

In the end, Harry’s eyes opened, stormy but so accepting it stirred Severus’s temper. “Then something must have gone wrong with the house-elf’s orders. She misunderstood something about Draco wanting me in the house.”

“Or Draco did want you there.”

“What? But that makes no sense. Why would he want me there to interrupt a private moment he was having with Astoria? He was angry enough the first time I interrupted them years ago, and that was an accident.”

“Has it occurred to you,” Severus said, “that that first time was hardly an accident?”

“I mean, it was, though,” Harry said, in the sort of condescending, kindly tone that Severus himself had used with some Slytherin students when they were homesick in their third year. “He thought they would be finished before I got home, and they weren’t.”

Severus stared at him. “I saw that memory. It looked deliberate to me. Planted. Just as this one was.”

Harry flinched backwards so hard Severus thought he would tip the couch over for a moment, but luckily he didn’t. “You can’t be serious. I—Draco loves Astoria. He would never do something like that to her.”

“And you?”

“Me what? He has every right to punish me for interrupting them and—all the other things I did.”

“You were insistent that he had loved you but you simply didn’t know how to return that emotion.” Occlumency kept Severus’s voice steady and calm when he wanted to shout. “Would you say that something like this is an act of love? Not at least making sure the door was locked in your flat? Telling his house-elf to lead you to the room where he was—busy?”

“No! He didn’t do that. The house-elf misinterpreted his orders. You’re trying to turn me against him.”

“I?” Severus was glad, for once, of the disdain he could pour into a single word, although not glad to see the way Harry flinched beneath it. “Why would I wish such a thing? I have enough to do of my own.”

“I—I don’t know. It just doesn’t make sense, though. Draco wouldn’t do something like this the way you’re saying he did. He wouldn’t hurt me or Astoria on purpose.”

Severus stood up and walked across the room, back to his own cup of tea. He wanted to strike out at something, and he would if he remained near Harry right now. He sipped the tea, and turned around. Harry was staring at his hands, looking lost.

“Do you wish me to return to your mind and try to find more proof of either contention?” Severus asked quietly.

Harry turned pale. Then he nodded. “It’s the only way. But do you have a painkilling portion I can have first?” He seemed to misinterpret the expression on Severus’s face, as he winced and drew back. “I mean, you don’t have to. I was probably wrong to ask. I haven’t done anything that would entitle me to—”

“You prepared a gift for me when no one has ever done that. I will fetch the potion.”

Severus turned and left the room, letting the door fall shut sharply behind him. It was the only thing he could afford to do right now expressing his feelings.

No one should need a painkilling potion after a simple Legilimency probe. That Harry did said far, far too much about the damage Draco had inflicted on his mind.

And it strengthened Severus’s suspicions that he had been looking in the wrong direction. As did Draco’s care to set up the scene Harry had “stumbled” upon exactly the same way as that two-year-old one that Harry had also “stumbled” upon.

“I shall have to find more proof before I can be certain,” Severus murmured, sure that Harry wouldn’t hear him, as he opened the door of the cabinet where he kept the pain potions. “But if I can find it, then I will make them suffer.”

*

“Thank you. I—thank you.”

Harry had decided that making all sorts of elaborate gestures of thanks would only embarrass both him and Snape, so he cut himself off. Snape only nodded to him with his face hidden behind that cold, efficient mask again, and handed him the shifting green-flecked white potion in its flask before he settled himself on the chair next to Harry again.

“I’m sorry,” Harry murmured as he swallowed the potion. “I know that I ought to be stronger than this.”

“I think you are incredibly strong,” Snape said, briefly, as if he didn’t know what to say, either, and reached for Harry’s wrist as Harry blinked at him in astonishment. “Are you ready to try again?”

“Yes,” Harry said. It was a struggle to keep his eyes open and focused on Snape’s, knowing what was likely coming, but he had come this far. And he did want to stop suffering the pain, and he did want to have—something different happen. He wanted to know that he wasn’t going mad.

Of course, he also wanted to know what to say to Draco when he saw him again. But this seemed so much more achievable.

“Legilimens.”

Harry felt himself whirling into the depths of his own brain again, but this time, it didn’t hurt as it first had when Snape probed at him. He still held his breath in anticipation of it as he saw, for a moment, the scene from earlier today, and then the scene from two years ago, and then Snape soared past that and looked at other memories of Harry interacting with Tibby, the house-elf that hated him.

Harry sighed with cautious relief. Maybe this would just turn out to be Tibby’s fault. Maybe she hated Harry so much that she had decided to try and get him thrown off the Manor grounds altogether, although it was still odd for an elf to disobey her master like that—

“What is this?”

Harry started, not sure, for a second, what was real and what was someone speaking in a voice of his memories. But then someone seemed to physically turn him around, and he found himself staring at a black dome seemed with white cracks in the center of his mind. It looked almost like a stone underwater—

The scene rushed away, and Harry opened his eyes to find himself staring up at Snape’s cold black ones. Well, cold most of the time. Right now, Snape looked shocked out of his skull, and he must be if he was allowing Harry to see it.

“Do you know what that was?” Snape whispered.

Harry restrained the temptation to snap that he wasn’t good at Legilimency, which was why he needed someone else to peer into his head in the first place. Snape was doing him a favor. He shook his head and waited.

“That is a sign of an Obliviate.”

Harry had nothing to say. Every word that he had tried to say had dried up in his throat. He opened his mouth, and finally managed to croak, “But would that cause the same other symptoms that I have? The pain when you tried to read my thoughts?”

“No. It would not. Or I would have suspected its existence from the beginning,” Snape added with something that didn’t seem to be false bravado, just a fact. He shook his head slowly. “Plus, most Memory Charms simply appear as a blank space in one’s thoughts. This does not look like any other I have ever seen.”

“Then how do you know what it is?”

Snape raised an eyebrow, but Harry refused to back down, and kept on staring. For some reason, that made Snape smile a little instead of getting upset. Harry gave up on understanding why. Then again, he had never understood Snape anyway. “It feels like one. The cracks in the dome are also something I have seen before, running through that empty space that is more characteristic of the spell and marking it.”

“What are they?”

“Signs that memories under the charm are beginning to break free.”

Harry couldn’t breathe through the cool hope that coursed through him like a breeze. “Then—do you think—is it possible—”

“Speak up, Harry.” Snape was leaning forwards and staring at him as intently as he had used to when he thought Harry was lying at Hogwarts, but there was a different edge to his look this time.

Harry managed to ignore the sensation and the desire to find out what was different. This was more important. “My mixed-up memories are because someone Obliviated me? And they did the same thing to Draco? That’s why he doesn’t even remember giving the orders to Tibby! There must be—”

Snape slowly shook his head. “Memory Charms cannot be renewed in that way, so that they banish the same memories every time a similar situation occurs. The spell must be cast separately each time. What happened at the Manor has the simplest explanation. Draco told Tibby to bring you to him, and ensured you saw him having sex with Miss Greengrass, and then lied about giving the orders and told the elf to lie. You are not going mad.”

Harry shook his head back. His neck felt odd, mechanical, as if someone had broken into his spine and replaced part of it with steel. “No, that doesn’t make sense. Why would he do that?”

“To hurt you.”

“You don’t understand.” Harry forced his voice back under control. It wanted to soar to a high pitch and be incredibly watery and shrill, which was disgusting. “Draco loves me. He stayed with me for three years trying to fix me even though he finally acknowledged it was impossible. He would never hurt me.”

“He abused you for three years at least!” Snape leaned towards him, a much more familiar look back in his eyes. It reminded Harry of the times Snape had almost caught him sneaking around under the Invisibility Cloak.

“He did not. He was sleeping with Astoria to stay sane, and because he needed someone who loved him when I couldn’t.”

“No. He altered your mind. The deliberate set-up of the scene today proves that. There was no reason to do that unless it was meant to hurt you in a specific way. I suspect he was the one who cast the Memory Charm on you. It has the feel of his magic—”

“I know his magic, you don’t!”

“Really? When I have spent far more time at Malfoy Manor in the library and speaking with him in the past few years than you have? When I was his Head of House at Hogwarts?”

Harry shook his head. He could feel something staring him in the eye, and it was unspeakable. It couldn’t be true. Because if it was true, then he’d spent years living a delusion—

Something cracked in his head, and he screamed.

“Harry!”

The pain was already fading, like the agony of having a limb wrenched back into place. Harry breathed through the remnants of it, and stood up. He could barely see. The white flashes that had cut his vision when he saw—when he thought he saw—when he maybe saw—Draco and Astoria in the Manor were back. Snape was somewhere beyond them, spouting things that had to be lies.

“You’re lying,” Harry said, trying not to feel like it was what he hoped rather than what he knew was the truth. He stumbled towards the door.

“I can’t let you leave without—”

“You can’t stop me,” Harry said, and turned his head towards where he thought Snape was, pulling his magic up around him. It filled the air with dazzling globes of fire that he knew no wizard alive could pierce. “Stay back or I’ll burn your house. And you.”

There was silence. Then Snape’s voice said, in a tone of absurd gentleness considering what he’d revealed, “You’re in no condition to Apparate.”

“Try and fucking stop me!” Harry screamed, and did it.

He ended up on a couch in his own house, his hands clenched around his whirling head. The memories in his mind were dancing back and forth, stabbing into each other. He saw Draco smiling at him with Astoria’s eyes. Someone was singing to him while he was in a cradle, and when he looked up, it wasn’t his mother, it was Narcissa Malfoy. Malfoy Manor broke and tumbled past him in jagged shards.

He ran through the memories, fleeing the new ones he could feel breaking out of the dome at the center of his mind. His head was full of glass.

As badly as he feared what he faced right now, as badly as it hurt, the dome, he knew instinctively, contained something even worse.