Chapter Nine of 'Valerian'- Flooded

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Eight.

Chapter One.

Title: Valerian (9/?)
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 Nine—Flooded

Severus Apparated to the house where he had once watched Harry work. Well, he Apparated as close as he could. The shut doors and the forbidding crackle of wards held him back.

Severus moved nearer, ignoring the flutter of green lightning bolts near him, studying the wards closely. These were the sensitive kind that should—yes. There were minute cracks studded throughout them, filled with brilliant white light. They reacted to the distress of their master.

Severus smiled. “Do you want to hold me out when I can help him?” he asked.

The wards fluttered some more, but nothing happened as far as their coming down. Severus nodded. “You know I can help him. You know that he came here with his mind tipped to the edge of breaking, even as you are. Let me pass, and I will restore him, and you, to health.”

Years ago, Severus would have thought it ridiculous to address magic in this manner. Wards were part of the building, he had thought, in common with most of wizardkind, not the wizard who held the wards. It didn’t help that for most of his life he had dwelt in Hogwarts, a place where the responsibility for the wards truly was distributed among many people to avoid this exact situation. The Headmaster or Headmistress had been able to sense when something threatened the school, but the wards would not have come down because of that person being in poor physical health.

But in a property like this, and with the kind of wild magic that Harry had mastered and used without thinking, Severus would be willing to bet the relationship was the exact opposite. The wards would care for him as much as they could care for a human being, and that deep bond would be reflected in the amount of damage they were sustaining now.

The cracks spread even as Severus watched, in the pattern of broken glass. Severus shook his head. “Why resist me when you know that I can set matters right? Let me pass.”

One moment more, and two of the cracked shards of the wards pulled back and revealed a human-shaped hole near the bottom. Severus quickly sprang past, and listened for a second as the magic slammed shut behind him again.

Something else was audible the minute they had touched. The shrieks of a being in utter torment rose from the house. Severus sprinted, one hand falling towards his pocket to make sure he had the vials he needed.

He would stop this. Curiosity and irritation and anger and desire had collided in him and firmed into a single mass that assured Severus that Draco Malfoy would not win.

*

Harry twisted on the couch, or he thought it was a couch. It might have been a bed. It might have been a river. It might have been a bed of hot coals. His mind lashed out and tried to catch hold of something, and fell back from rough shards all around him.

He knew that he had been thinking something at one point, but it was gone. Ripping blades scattered through his mind, tearing apart connections. He knew that he had friends, and one of them was named Grange or something like it, but they were wearing away and his thoughts were fluttering like banners in the wind.

There was someone else he had sometimes depended on, someone he might reach out to now, but he didn’t know who they were or how to find them.

“Potter!”

Was that his name? It sort of reminded him of his name. Harry forced his eyes slowly open, and found a dark figure looming over him. He flinched back. He had memories of that figure standing over him in the dining room of his house, white and black-cloaked and having his snake eat people—

“Potter. Harry. I’m here.”

Harry hesitated, and then magic clamped him to the thing under him, which seemed to be a couch, and a hand reached out and gripped his head by the hair, tilting it back. Harry coiled, bringing all his magic under control and getting ready to lash out.

“Do you want me to help you or not?” asked a voice as harsh as an owl’s.

Harry swallowed and then opened his mouth. The blades were ripping through more and more of his mind. Another dim memory was reaching him now, of someone who had to spend the rest of his life inside four walls because he had lost control of his memories and his thoughts. Harry didn’t want to be like that person.

“Good,” breathed the dark figure, and a potion poured down Harry’s throat. It tasted awful, but he gulped it because he didn’t have much choice and he wanted to get rid of the pain in his head. “It won’t be much longer now.”

Harry gave a low wail. The blades had reached things that were deep inside his head, strings that had names on them he knew. James and Lily Potter. Sirius Black. They bounded and swayed inside him, and they were cut through.

“No,” said the dark figure above him, and forced his head back again. But this time, he met Harry’s eyes instead of pouring a potion down his throat.

Harry shivered with fear, because that might be even worse than a potion, given what was going on in his head, but he didn’t have a choice. The dark figure dived like a hawk and passed through his eyes into his mind before he could do anything about it.

*

Severus emerged into utter chaos, booming with agony so great that he had to steel himself so as not to be driven from Harry’s mind.

He could see the blades, and he could see immediately why Harry thought of them that way. They were sharpened shapes of pure thought, and they were indeed meant to cut through the deepest bindings of Harry’s memories and leave him little more than a shell.

Severus reacted at once, flattening and spreading his mental form like an octopus’s mantle. He would get nothing done unless he managed to shield some of the more vulnerable parts of Harry’s mind.

The blades were made of clean white bone, or so it looked like here, and every single one of them was etched with Draco Malfoy’s name. They chopped into Severus, and he grimaced at the pain, but it did not hurt him in the way it had been designed to hurt Harry. They had been shaped to fit into certain holes in Harry’s mind, and they drew on the twisted emotion that Harry was pleased to call love.

Severus entertained neither the holes nor the emotion.

The blades bounced from his defenses. Leaving part of himself in place so that they could not continue forwards, Severus whirled and spread out the rest of his thought down the blades, seeking their origin.

The dome in Harry’s mind had burst like an abscess, Severus thought, and grimaced. Nor were the leaking memories spreading out into the rest of Harry’s mind much less damaging than infected pus. He pushed himself further on, around and down, having to stretch further and further to leave the blades coated with magic that made them harmless.

He arrived at the pulsing center of the broken dome, and stared. There was a memory of Narcissa Malfoy’s face, smiling, that he knew Harry would never have seen in an unguarded moment. How had it come here?

But then he saw another memory, of the Dark Lord standing in Malfoy Manor. Harry might have glimpsed that one as a vision through the Horcrux scar, but not from the angle that it showed, of someone crouched and shivering on the floor in front of his doom.

These were Draco’s memories. Planted, deliberately, and concealed under the dome of the Obliviate so that even someone who had come looking for them would not see them.

What has he done?

But Severus only had to watch for a moment, and see one of those memories stretch upwards like gleaming claws raking at everything and nothing before he understood. It was a technique that he had read about but never seen, this transformation of one’s memories into a weapon.

And it could only happen when someone trusted the practitioner so much that they had willingly let him plant the memories.

Severus snarled. They had a relationship so intimate that their minds were open to each other, memories flowing back and forth. Or rather, that was the relationship Harry thought they had. Draco probably never revealed his true self that way, but because Harry is pants at Legilimency, he wouldn’t have realized that. He thought what he was allowed to see was the full extent of things.

Severus knew enough about mind magics to read what had happened next, as easily as if someone was printing the story in front of him on parchment pages.

Draco had probably been happy and smug about that relationship at first, when it had been sincere. Harry could think it was intimacy flowing both ways, but it was one-sided, and Draco controlled what Harry saw while having access to all of Harry’s secrets.

And then…something had gone wrong.

But what? Until Severus knew what lay at the center of all this, he couldn’t lance the abscess.

And Harry, still writhing in pain beneath him, would be no help.

No sooner had the thought blazed through Severus’s mind than an enormous well of magic rose up beneath him, coating the blades, adding to his own strength, smoothing his way for whatever still lay beneath him in the center of the exploded dome. Severus didn’t waste time reflecting on the miracle, but swam forwards.

*

I know now.

It was strange, that in the middle of what Harry felt as a whirlwind of pain, he had found a clear place. He lay there, and he remembered what had happened in the last few years, and he remembered Severus as a being separate from Voldemort, and he knew Severus was trying to help him.

Even calling him “Severus” was not as painful as he’d thought it would be.

Down and down Harry reached, and he knew that he could only do this because of the protection Severus was offering, but he did it anyway. He offered his strength, and Severus accepted it without the hesitations and arguing that Harry knew would have happened if it was, say, Hermione in the middle of his mind.

He could remember Hermione as someone other than “Grange.”

Harry smiled, and then he frowned. He could feel the pain building again behind one corner of his forehead, but it honestly wasn’t about that.

It was about the fact that Draco had inflicted something on him that would have taken all of that away from him, his memory and his friendships and his ability to live an independent life. He had no doubt of that, remembering the flickers of St. Mungo’s that he’d thought of and the parting of deep strings in his mind.

And Draco had done that to him.

In that clear moment, Harry thought of Draco Malfoy’s name, and he felt hatred, black and strong as tar.

*

There was something shattered and shining underneath him, something Severus had to reach if he was going to do anything.

The swell of magic behind him pushed him forwards, and Severus gentled his own Legilimency even as he reached forwards. He really would curse himself if he damaged what he wanted to protect at the last moment.

Through the shattered pieces he moved, and then he saw the image before him that made him sneer in disgust: Draco kneeling with his mouth between Astoria’s legs. But it was reflected, more than once, and those memories shimmered with an age that meant one of them could not be the memory from today.

He had to understand this. Severus ignored the urgency that rushed through him at the thought of those slashing blades breaking free, and wrapped his magic around himself like a warm cloak, and studied the images.

There was something wrong with the old one, the one that would have been from two years ago. It seemed as if it was made of thicker glass than the other one, if he was committed to thinking of them as mirrors. As if…

It had layers. As if something was behind it.

Severus reached out with the combined strength of his own and Harry’s magic, and broke the mirror.

*

Harry screamed as the pain rose up in the center of his mind. It felt like moving a limb he’d been lying on for years. The agony made him want to loosen his hold on the magic he was feeding to Severus and curl up to protect himself.

But no. That was what Malfoy would have wanted. For him to be weak, and then be torn apart in an attempt to shore up that weakness.

Instead, Harry summoned up more power. He forced himself to remember all the times that he had achieved something modern magic theory said was impossible—and those had been his achievements, not Draco’s. He had found a way to make the Draught of Peace more potent. He had created the enchantments that could pull the “sense” of someone from a treasured possession and infuse it into a gift. He had been the one who had come up with the idea for a potions stand for Severus that would be nothing like any that had ever existed before.

The achievements blazed like stars in his memory, and he fed the memories, and the pride, and the recovered wonder, and the magic, everything, to Severus.

*

With both of them working together, Severus found it easy to catch the shards that wanted to stream past him and dig into the tender parts of Harry’s mind. He strung them up in a net before him and stared at the new image.

There was Draco with his mouth between Astoria’s legs again, but only for a moment. Then he went sprawling on the floor, knocked down and held prisoner by something invisible. Severus heard shouting, the words distorted by age and where they were, but Severus reached out and slipped his hands into the mirror, and he could hear the voice.

“…the fuck do you think you’re doing, Draco?”

Severus sighed. That voice was Harry’s, and it soothed something in him to hear it speaking like that.

“You never give me anything I want,” Draco said, his voice as sulky as it had been when he was in sixth year and accusing Severus of stealing his “glory” by interfering in the assassination attempt on Dumbledore. “I want to have two lovers. Why not? What’s wrong with it?”

“I said no, that’s what’s wrong with it.” Harry’s voice had gone as cold as the surface of the mirror. “That’s it. This is over. We’re done. Leave. Get out.”

Severus reared back, trying to free himself from the sheer voices to see what was happening as well. He saw Harry standing in front of Draco, staring down at him with a fine contempt that it would have done Severus good to see animating his eyes now. Astoria had shrunk against the wall and covered herself with a robe that had been lying over the back of a chair. Her eyes were wide, and she said nothing.

“You can’t say that to me!”

“I already did, Draco. I can’t believe I had the bad sense to date you! Ron and Hermione were right about you. Wait until I tell them—”

And that was when Draco struck, whipping his wand up and shouting, “Legilimens!”

Severus watched intently. He had been right when he said that it was a Legiilmency attack, but it seemed that he had been wrong about when it happened.

And how it happened. He saw it clearly now, how Draco’s will went flying with the spell, and he dug into the mind behind Harry’s eyes without due care. Harry screamed and slumped to the floor, his eyes still wide open and unseeing.

Astoria gasped. “You killed him!”

“I didn’t—I didn’t! I just broke something, that’s all. I have to fix it.” Draco fell to his knees next to the Harry in the image and turned him over, breathing fast in the way that Severus remembered when they had confronted Albus atop the Astronomy Tower. Draco had always been a coward in the face of death.

Severus could have sneered as he watched Draco’s fumbling attempts to “fix” Harry’s mind. There didn’t exist a Legilimency wound that could be healed by things like that. All Draco did was sort through memories and peel them back, and hastily snip strings that should not be snipped.

That was because, of course, as his running commentary revealed to Astoria, he wasn’t really trying to fix what he had ruined. He was trying to bury the memory of Harry seeing him and Astoria together.

“I have to. Do you know what it’ll do to my reputation if it gets out that the Boy-Who-Lived broke up with me? Do you know how I’ll be derided in the papers? Not to mention that I’ll lose access to all his money.”

“But I thought that you wanted to be with me.” Astoria was wrapped in the robe now and sitting down in a chair as she watched Draco working. “You said that you were going to break up with him. I even thought it was good that he walked in on us. You want to be with me, don’t you?”

Draco smiled up at her, and there was something genuine in his smile, but Severus suspected it was not love of Astoria so much as Draco’s love of having whatever he wanted. “Of course I do, darling, but this way, we get everything we want. I’ll erase his memories and then also put in commands—”

Severus roared in fury, and then had to impose his will strongly on himself. He would lose what he was hearing if he went around yelling like that.

But now he understood, fully, and it made sense why the sight of Draco and Astoria having sex in the Manor had tipped the precarious balance of Harry’s sanity. Draco had pinned the commands to this particular image. He had set up the situation in which Harry had “finally” discovered the cheating, years after it had actually happened, when he was ready to break up with him.

Every time that image of Draco kneeling with his mouth between Astoria’s legs recurred, it also invoked the commands that the mirror-Draco was now whispering into Harry’s ear. It dimmed Harry’s senses, it upset him so much that he couldn’t defend himself with logical arguments, and—

Yes. It broke his mind, further and further, although the result Draco had intended, from his hissed words into Harry’s ear, was merely for Harry to do whatever he was told to do.

But the piling of that many commands onto each other, and above all the linking of them to an image that corresponded to an Obliviated memory, required Legilimency skill so powerful that Severus knew the Dark Lord would have hesitated to use it. Draco did not have that skill. He broke Harry further each time he raised the image.

And then came the last moment, before the mirror-memory dissolved.

“If you do ever start discovering the truth and reversing the Memory Charm,” Draco breathed, “then you’re going to unleash all the pain from each time you see the image at once. It’ll be as if you’ve multiplied that image in front of your eyes a thousand, thousand times. I’ll give you a few of my memories, and they’ll spread throughout your mind and break it apart, and fill it with my will. Do you understand?”

Harry moaned and nodded. Severus suspected that his thoughts had already been splintering at that point, reforming themselves around the commands.

Then Draco took out his wand and made the characteristic motion of the Memory Charm, but the glass shattered, and Severus was dropped back into the storm that Draco’s final weapon was generating. The breakage had halted while Severus and Harry both concentrated their will on understanding the source, but now it had to be faced.

Harry would fully have to accept that memory he had seen, that he had uncovered Draco and Astoria’s cheating long before the “end” of his relationship with Draco, and he would have to overcome the obedience and love Draco had poisoned him with.

“Can you do that?” Severus asked into the maelstrom of Harry’s mind. “Can you accept that you should not forgive him and that your relationship with him was not love, never had been from the moment he decided to shatter your sanity?”

“No problem.”

Startled, Severus turned his awareness around. An image of Harry floated next to him, so pale and shining that he was barely distinguishable from the torrent of magic around them.

“This is my mind,” Harry said. “He tried to take it from me, and he took five years of my mind. I discovered him cheating with Astoria very early on,” he added, catching Severus’s eye. “I recognized the wall in the memory. And then he made me forget, and he took my independence from me, and he only succeeded where the Imperius Curse didn’t because I loved and trusted him. And he wove that love and trust into a net for me, he made my own emotions hold me hostage, and told me I was incapable of love, and that if I was really a good person I would obey him—”

Harry screamed, and a noise like the cry of an eagle shuddered from one end of his mind to the other.

“I hate him.”

The words lashed out and shot up around them, and then came another wave of magic.

And Severus had the immense privilege, as he phrased it to himself later, of seeing what happened as that magic meant the blades of destruction Draco had embedded in Harry’s mind coming the other way.

It dissolved them. The blades were coated in magic for a moment, and then they cracked and burst asunder. For an instant, Draco’s memories whirled past Severus, images of Narcissa’s face and the Manor and Astoria and white peacocks.

Then Harry stooped down on them like the eagle he was then and destroyed them, too.

The abscess was purged, but not by Severus’s actions, as he had imagined. The clean fire of Harry’s hatred for Draco burned it clean, the remnants of the Obliviate and the commands Draco had left behind and the Legilimency wounds he had created.

Severus himself would have had trouble accepting that his actions had been under someone else’s influence and that he had done stupid things in the name of love, but Harry looked those memories in the face without flinching and accepted them, too. Or so said the fact that the flame of his hatred still burned clear and black, like obsidian lit by the volcano that had birthed it.

In the end, Harry held out his hand, and Severus clasped it, and the mental world faded around them and they were back in the physical one again, with Harry on the floor and Severus stooping over him.

Harry caught Severus’s wrist and smiled up at him. Severus stared, not having realized how good it would be to see green eyes bright with untrammeled emotions.

“Thank you,” Harry breathed, before his strength fled him and he fell asleep. His grip on Severus’s wrist weakened as he lay there, but Severus didn’t move away.

He had to sit, and he had to think, and he found it was best to keep touching Harry while he did so.

Best. He wouldn’t let himself think any other words yet.