Chapter Eight of 'Bloody But Unbowed'- The Healer May Become the Patient

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Eight—The Healer May Become the Patient

Harry raised his head slowly and then groaned. The most incredible pain was lancing through the back of his neck, and the inside of his mouth felt dry and sticky at the same time, as if he’d spent the hours before he slept trying to swallow crushed velvet. It took him long moments to summon his mind out of the sweltering chaos of weariness it was traveling through.

He’d fallen asleep with his forehead leaning on the table in front of him and his neck sharply bowed, he realized at last. He massaged the aching muscles with a sigh. He knew a few charms to remove such pains, but they all required a level of concentration that was usually beyond him—and he was especially reluctant to try when he’d spent the night sleeping in a chair instead of a proper bed.

But then he began to grin as he remembered how adroitly he’d avoided the temptation that bed represented, and what he’d found in one of his own books and then confirmed with two from the Malfoy library.

Harry sat back in his chair and stretched, wincing as that bent his neck the wrong way again. The library loomed around him, sober enough that Harry could approve of it, reluctantly. The dark bookshelves were all made of the most expensive wood, though, and the chair had shifted to mold and cradle him better when he sat down. Harry frowned at it disapprovingly. Really. Why would the Malfoys waste magic on such a thing? Yes, they’d wanted to make the best books available to him so he could treat Lucius’s condition, but the chairs must have been sitting in the same room for years, visited only by house-elves.

They could explain it to me for years with informative diagrams, and I still wouldn’t understand them. We live in such different worlds.

No matter. He’d achieved the goal he’d stayed up half the night for. He had a good idea, now, what sort of pattern of linked spells occupied Lucius’s mind, and how he might destroy that pattern and free Lucius from the curse.

Harry stood and strode towards the loo. He wouldn’t use that luxurious tub—the thought of it made his flesh creep—but he could do with a short shower and some Refreshment Charms to remove the pattern of ink and wood oil he was sure was imprinted on his cheek and forehead.

Only when he reached the central bedroom did he hear someone knocking on the door. It sounded like a polite, almost timid knock, though Harry thought the strength of the wards would reduce any noise to a faint vibration.

Suddenly annoyed, he crossed the room to the door and laid his hand on a seam in the wood to unlock the wards. Suppose he had missed vital news about Lucius during the night because he hadn’t heard the messenger sent to convey it to him? It was all very well for the Malfoys to be concerned about his comfort, but Harry didn’t want the gifts they handed him if they interfered with practicality. Healer Pontiff had warned him those gifts were heavy; she’d said nothing about how useless they were.

And uselessness, in Harry’s opinion, was much the greater sin.

He flung open the door as the wards crumbled into glittering powder, and found Malfoy waiting on the other side, impeccably attired in forest-green robes that he seemed to have chosen to match Harry’s bedroom decor. He blinked a little when he saw Harry, but didn’t make one remark on his disheveled state.

“I’ve brought you breakfast,” he said, gesturing to a silver tray supported by a house-elf behind him. “And a few more books from the downstairs libraries that I thought you might need. And a map to my father’s room.” He unfolded a piece of parchment from his pocket, about the size of the Marauders’ Map. “I understand the Manor can be a little overwhelming for someone not used to it.” He grinned suddenly, which gave his face the same softened look Harry had admired yesterday from up close. “I wouldn’t want you to get lost down in one of the cellars and starve. Imagine me trying to explain that to Granger when she came hunting for you!”

Harry blinked at him suspiciously, but Malfoy remained calm and polite and helpful, even gazing at him with one eyebrow lifted, as if to ask why Harry didn’t invite him in. And Harry remembered the thought he’d had last night, about how little he really knew the entire family, even the son.

He could make an effort to be gracious, since they were so obviously doing the same for him. And it would be more pleasant if they managed to coexist in the same house instead of being at each other’s throats all the time. Besides, maybe Malfoy had realized he couldn’t successfully win Harry by flirting and wanted to move on to being friends.

“Please come in,” he said, and stepped out of the way. The house-elf scurried in first and floated the tray towards the end of the bed. Harry’s puzzlement lasted only until the elf grasped hold of a handle projecting from beneath a fringed green coverlet and pulled. A flat surface slid out, and magical legs immediately materialized from the bottom and sagged to the floor. The elf laid the tray triumphantly on the tabletop and whisked the cover away. Harry’s mouth watered as he caught sight of sliced fruit, small bowls of butter and cream, and several pieces of steaming toast.

When he recovered from that and turned towards Malfoy, he realized he should have cast some rumpling charms on the bedcovers. Malfoy was facing him, leaning on the side of the bed and frowning in concern.

“Were the pillows not to your liking?” he asked. “Or the colors, perhaps? Whilst my mother chose a room she thought you would appreciate, we don’t at all mind if you alter the colors of the covers and pillows. This is your room for the duration of your stay in the Manor.”

Not “for the duration of my father’s illness,” Harry thought. Well, it’s a relief to know I won’t be kicked out the moment I finish healing Lucius. I might need some time to get my money affairs in order and decide on the location and name of my practice. “It’s all beautiful,” he said. “As it happens, I fell asleep in the library, working on several clues that I think might give me an insight into the curse plaguing your father.”

Malfoy gave him a direct look that made Harry squirm a little, though until he heard the words that followed he wasn’t sure why. “So you would rather sleep in a library chair than in a bed my mother offers you?” Malfoy asked softly.

“I—“ Harry stopped short. The rationalizations that sounded so convincing in his head or in a conversation with someone who had the otherworldly sensibility of Healer Pontiff sounded rather stupid when he tried to voice them aloud. He cleared his throat. How can I say that I’m afraid the bed would corrupt me and not have him burst out laughing?

“No, I think I understand.” Malfoy had the same faint smile as his mother did, Harry noted dimly, except that his had a tinge of bitterness. “You can’t believe we would give you something like this, can you? You’re looking for the trick, the trap, the poisoned half of the apple. And my mother makes a convincing evil queen.” He ran a hand over his hair and sighed.

“You’ve read Muggle fairy tales?” Harry blurted before he could stop himself.

“Let’s say that even a book of those looks good when it’s within reach and you’re trying not to wake a sleeping baby in your lap.” Malfoy continued before Harry could dispute the amazing implications of his words, which seemed to indicate that Malfoy had visited Andromeda and Teddy. “I’ll swear any oath you like that we’re not trying to hurt you, though. What you did when you shared your blood with Father—it’s special.”

“I still don’t really understand why.” Harry folded his arms and tried to shake off the persistent sense that he must look ridiculous confronting Malfoy, who was as neatly attired as a statue the house-elves had just polished that morning. “If I’d used another spell that transferred my blood into his veins, would you have acted this way? Or is it only the Heart’s Blessing Spell that’s so special?”

Malfoy bowed his head and smiled. “It’s the blood,” he said simply. “It’s a symbol we can respect and appreciate. Without it, you can offer us many other favors and we would still have to keep you at a distance.”

“Who says that?” Harry asked irritably, though he suspected his life would have been easier if the Malfoys had kept him at a distance. “The Special Committee to Make Sure All Pure-Bloods Follow the Rules?”

“You would be surprised by the attempts there have been over the years to create organizations that approximate that one,” said Malfoy wryly. “But no, we’re acting in accord with a sense of tradition. Stupid, perhaps, to not be able to respect ourselves without a sharing of blood, but there you have it.

“We’re embattled in wizarding society, Potter, and have been for years.” He shook his head when Harry opened his mouth to protest. “I know it seems otherwise, but a few powerful individuals placed in the Wizengamot and the Ministry are only enough to mask the reality, not change it. We have fewer and fewer families we can safely marry into if we want to keep our bloodlines pure. Many of the classes that taught our children what we needed them to know have been dropped from the Hogwarts timetables. More than the fair share of pure-blood criminals occupies Azkaban, when you consider what a minority we are in wizarding Britain. So we have to treat our homes as fortresses, and the rest of the world as enemies, or at best tentative allies.”

He looked directly at Harry and gave a dazzling smile that left him blinking and dazed. It was as though a miser had just ushered Harry into his private treasure vaults and told him to make free with the money there. Come to think of it, Narcissa had acted like that, too, Harry thought. He envisioned an invisible weight swinging on a cord above his head for a moment, poised to descend and crush him. Weren’t treasure vaults always trapped?

“You broke past those barriers in one of the few ways you could do so,” Malfoy said, “by mingling your blood with ours and defending our family at the same time. The second says that you’re a possible ally; that in combination with your blood makes you a part of the Malfoys.”

“But look,” Harry said as patiently as he could, “that doesn’t make sense.” He might not understand a lot outside of basic mediwizardry training and how to stay friends with Weasleys, but he did know that one’s life didn’t change overnight because of casting a spell he’d cast half a dozen times before. “You can’t—adopt someone because he offers you his blood.”

“Yes, you can,” Malfoy said. “In the old days, it was how pure-blood families conducted all adoptions. A freely-given gift of blood was precious, considering how much effort each family went through to keep the line pure and ensure that enough children survived for long enough to produce the next generation.”

“But I did it accidentally.”

“That makes it better still. We can be sure you weren’t scheming to win a place in the house or come closer to our fortune.”

“But you don’t really know me.”

“We know what you did.” Malfoy cocked his head to the side. “That’s enough. That’s all that’s important.” He gave Harry yet another smile, this one slower and warmer and exposing as many possibilities as it did teeth. “And perhaps you don’t know us all that well either, hmmm?”

Since that was the conclusion Harry had come to last night, he couldn’t really disagree without lying. He smiled reluctantly back, and Malfoy’s face softened still further, until Harry thought it might be no great hardship to call him Draco after all.

“At any rate,” said Malfoy, briskly breaking the mood between them, which Harry was grateful for, “I’ll escort you to my father’s rooms after you finish refreshing yourself and eating. Are your notes available in the library?” He turned towards the room, but paused courteously, as if the place really belonged to Harry and it were his privilege to say who entered the library and who didn’t.

Harry wanted to gape, but he shut his mouth and swallowed hard. “Some notations in the margins of the three books there, but I don’t know how well you can understand them,” he warned.

Malfoy smiled again. “I’ll still make an effort. I should know more about healing than I do, given that I’ll be a Potions master and healing potions are the largest percentage of any brewer’s stock.” He stepped into the library and left Harry alone with the tray of steaming food, the anxious house-elf, and the temptation of the loo.

Harry paused for long moments, trying to calculate how much time the shower would take him. Could he just use a few Refreshing Charms and get away with that? He wouldn’t want to keep Lucius waiting.

“Master Harry Potter is bathing now.”

Harry jumped. The house-elf was glaring at him sternly, arms folded and enormous eyes blinking. Harry shook his head and leaned nearer. “What’s your name?” he asked as pleasantly as he could.

“My name is being Rogers. And your name is being dirty.”

Harry reared back, blinking himself. He’d never heard of a house-elf having a name like Rogers, or using sarcasm on a wizard. “Er,” he said. “Look, Rogers. You want Master Lucius Malfoy healed, don’t you?” The elf nodded at once. “Quickly?”

“No. Well.”

Of all the problems Harry had thought he might confront in the Malfoy house, an emphatic house-elf who wouldn’t let him escape some of the temptations was not one of them. He pondered, scratching at his hair. Rogers watched him with a mutinous expression. From the library came the sound of softly turning pages. Any moment, Harry thought, Malfoy was going to notice that he hadn’t gone into the loo.

He scratched at his hair again, and felt grains of something crunch beneath his fingernails, and sighed. One shower couldn’t hurt.

“Will you keep the food warm for me?” he asked, turning towards the loo.

Rogers gave him a horrified look and waved a hand. Steam immediately began to rise from the toast again and from a mug of some hot drink that Harry hadn’t noticed before but which smelled wonderful. “Of course! Rogers is not letting food get cold. Nasty icky cold food would be making Master Harry Potter sick.”

Harry shook his head and retreated into the loo.

The tub took up a third of the room, an enormous dark green basin that could have been made of jade, set into the floor so that its rim was flush with the tile. The faucets were shaped like dragons, Runespoors, Ashwinders, wyverns, and other variations on the theme of snakes. Harry wondered for a moment what would happen if he talked to them in Parseltongue, and then shuddered. They would probably answer, that was what, and given the temper of this house’s servants so far, they would insist on helping him scrub his back.

He worked his way carefully past the tub and towards a whole row of showers, all of them with gleaming silver faucets and glass doors that could be drawn shut against water escaping into the room. Harry relaxed. Take a few fixtures away and these weren’t so different from the showers he’d used after Quidditch games.

That relief lasted until he opened the glass shower door and realized that, in fact, the door was a folding one sculpted to look like it was made of many individual panels. Why, Harry didn’t know. It was yet another aesthetic effect that was lost on him. He stared at the shower thus revealed in consternation. An army could have bathed here, or one of those dragons that the Malfoys regularly invited if their entrance hall was anything to go by, and not have noticed any crowding.

Sighing, he stepped into the shower, and immediately his clothes disappeared. Harry yelped and tried to clasp his hands together over his cock, but the showerheads had already oriented on him, and presumably whoever was behind them got a fairly good look in the instants before they sprayed him.

Not only jets of hot water descended, but also fragrant smoke—presumably to make the bathing experience more pleasant, Harry thought with furious resentment—softly bubbling soap that smelled sometimes of lavender and sometimes of apples, something rough that felt like blowing sand, and a heavy spray that flicked apart into five streams of water when it was still some distance from him and raked through his hair like fingers. Harry had never felt so thoroughly scrubbed in his life. He wriggled and ducked and dodged, but the sprays followed him, and when he finally stood still and tried stoically to let it wash over him, he discovered just how pleasant it was.

His eyes drooped shut, and he moaned. Then he slumped against the glass door. The motion of the water through his hair alone rendered him half-drugged. The alternations of water and soap and sand against his skin made him feel luxuriously clean without feeling either scoured or left with particles of dirt and sweat clinging to him. (Harry was quite sure particles of dirt and sweat would never survive this assault). The smoke curled and eddied in his nostrils, making him smell roses and hyacinths and spring leaves and other smells he couldn’t identify.

In short, the Malfoys knew how to shower.

The Healer may become the patient. Healer Pontiff’s voice sounded in his mind suddenly, like silver ringing off glass. We sometimes suffer as we seek to restore the balance of another’s health. Stretch ourselves too far, and we can collapse. That is one reason you must take care of yourself, Harry, even when it seems unimportant. You would not want to put the further strain on a sick person of making him watch you collapse.

Harry opened his eyes, which wanted to stick shut, and looked suspiciously at the showerheads. Was he sure the smoke didn’t have any drug-like properties? Perhaps it was meant to trigger certain memories in his mind, memories that would make him more susceptible to obeying the Malfoys’ will.

Yes, outwardly it sounded ridiculous, but then outwardly the Malfoys bringing him here because he had contributed blood to Lucius and for no other reason sounded ridiculous. And yet Malfoy claimed it was the real reason. Harry frowned and shook his head, moving towards the folding glass door. Maybe if he got out of the shower and away from all the—stimuli—he would be able to think more clearly.

But the door wouldn’t open, and the next moment, a gentle wash of warm air traveled over him. Tiny individual breezes plucked at the water droplets and stole them from his body. Harry knew without looking to confirm it that they would leave his body’s natural moisture alone, to avoid drying him to a dangerous extent. He sighed and stood as patiently as he could whilst a dedicated wind blew his hair up and down, chasing the water that might be hiding in his scalp, and a brisker wind cleared the air of the scents he’d been smelling during the shower itself.

Long before the glass door opened and released him back into the loo, Harry’s fingers were drumming impatiently on it. How could anyone put up with this? If it was ridiculous to suspect the Malfoys of trying to corrupt him, it was even more ludicrous to think that they’d waste all this magic on him and not expect some kind of return. Maybe not an evil return, but a return nonetheless. If he was part of the family, did that mean he had family obligations? Would they expect him not to speak ill of them in public, or look the other way if Lucius did something despicable? Would they expect him to break off his association with the Weasleys?

Would Malfoy expect Harry to climb into bed with him and comfort him, because that was what “family” did?

But then Harry paused. This “adoption” Malfoy had told him about might have one unexpected good consequence. The other man’s behavior had changed almost completely since last night. What if he thought of Harry as his brother now? A brother could not be a lover, of course.

Of course not. Harry relaxed and tapped the glass door again. This time, it folded outwards and let him escape. I was worrying about nothing. And even if they tried to keep me here and make me do certain things, I only have to refuse them. I can even refuse the Galleons, if I have to. He had never tried to set up his own practice because, though he might have the money to begin it, he was not at all certain he had the money to purchase healing potions, plasters, soothing plants, and the other resources of St. Mungo’s, or the books that would let him continue to expand his knowledge. But he would be able to call on his friends and other patients; some had even encouraged him to do so. It was only his hatred of favors, his desire to be independent, that had kept him at hospital so long.

And your desire to do good to the people there.

Much more cheerfully now that he had some reminder of his own power, Harry stepped into the loo and found a new set of robes reappearing on him the moment his foot connected with the tile. Of course the robes were much too rich for him and that same deep shade of green that his bedclothes were, but that was inevitable. Harry settled for rolling his eyes and continued into the bedroom, where Rogers had drawn up a chair for him at the table fastened to the end of the bed. Harry tried to recall whether the chair had been in the room before, and couldn’t. He could easily have missed it in the overwhelming mass of other furnishings, in any case.

The hot drink tasted of several of the flowers he’d smelled in the shower, but for all that, it wasn’t disgusting. Indeed, the tastes were fleeting and then would vanish into the background of the drink again, which was a kind of thick tea. Harry poured butter on the toast and watched it melt instantly. Then he took a bite of the fruit smeared with cream, which included several round red berries of a kind he’d never met before, and nearly went over backwards in his surprise. The berries were sweeter than the fleeting tastes in his drink, and had a lingering tartness under the surface that made him try to picture how Lucius would eat them without success. No one could keep a straight face when devouring food like this; one would be compelled to sigh and blink in surprise and pause with eyes closed whilst one savored.

Harry began to alternate bites of hot buttered toast and berries with cream, and was so occupied that he never noticed when Malfoy stepped out of the library.

“Enjoying yourself?”

The words were soft, not mocking, and Harry opened his eyes and stared without understanding at Malfoy for a long moment. The other man had his finger resting in one of the books Harry had been studying last night, his glance amused as he surveyed the remains of the breakfast. Harry colored and wiped his mouth on the napkin at the edge of the plate, knowing he had berry juice and cream all over his lips, and convinced he must look like a rabid animal.

“No, no,” Malfoy said. “Your expression is so much more open when you’re enjoying something.”

Harry paused, eyes narrowed. The compliment sounded different, more sincere, than most of the ones Malfoy had given him, and he didn’t follow up on it. Instead, he sat down in a chair that Rogers might have conjured out of thin air and tapped the book he’d carried out of the library.

“Your thought is that it’s the Mirror Maze, right?”

“Not—exactly,” Harry said, and regretfully pushed the rest of his breakfast away from him. He had to concentrate on work, not on how good the food tasted. The Malfoys might interfere with his job without even knowing it. “The spell I cast looking for Mansuefacio might have revealed the presence of that Maze, and certainly would have found the presence of that same spell reflected, as the Mirror Maze ensures.”

Malfoy frowned and shook his head. “I don’t understand. I thought the Mirror Maze was just a group of spells woven around a person in a certain pattern and designed to trigger one another when the right commands were given.”

Harry grinned, delighted with the temptation to show off his superior knowledge for once. This was of course information that Emptyweed and most others in hospital had mastered long ago, but it was new to Malfoy. “No, that’s the definition of a spell maze in general. There are different patterns. The Mirror Maze is named because it uses the same spells reflected and repeated rather than completely different ones. It can be devastating when the command to trigger is issued, because the victim receives double the power of that particular curse.”

“I’ve never encountered anyone who could explain that so clearly.”

Harry blinked suspiciously at him, but Malfoy was looking at the book, and once again he went on after the compliment, if it was one, without trying to press his advantage. “What do you think it is if not the Mirror Maze, then?”

“The Mirror Maze turned sideways,” Harry said. “That would conceal the presence of similar spells in your father’s mind. And it would explain why the Permanency Spell on those particular wounds he had is so strong. I’ve been thinking about it, and it doesn’t make sense that he should have severe injuries all over his body, even if part of the Mirror Maze’s purpose is to hand control of his body’s healing over to an enemy. At most, the ordinary maze should have reflected damage onto one particular part of his body, say the heart, like a lens focusing sunlight. Instead, we have wounds of almost equal severity all over the place. That would reflect a Mirror Maze turned sideways. There are similar cases in the literature.”

“And that’s more dangerous?” Malfoy’s voice had grown tense. Harry reminded himself forcibly that Malfoy might be annoying and given to flirtation in inappropriate circumstances, but that didn’t mean he felt indifferent towards seeing his father die. He was to be pitied.

“Yes, it is,” Harry said quietly. “It means that the maze can be bent in several directions at once, not only one, like a flexible lens. And until I can be sure of what the other spells in the maze are, I can’t dissipate it.”

Malfoy closed his eyes, and all the lines in his face went tense. Harry had seen the look before, on the faces of people trying desperately not to give in to tears or pain. And in that moment, Malfoy became a patient to him, and he reacted without thinking.

He reached out and put his right hand over Malfoy’s, then stood up and laid his left hand on Malfoy’s shoulder. “It’s all right,” he whispered. “It’s going to be all right. I’m certain I can figure this out.”

Malfoy opened his eyes and stared steadily at him. “I want to believe that,” he whispered, “but I find myself faltering.”

Harry smiled at him. “I know. It’s because I’m not a full Healer, and I used to be your enemy. But I promise—“

“That’s not it at all!” Malfoy snapped. “I just feel this way because he’s my father, and someone cursed him, and we don’t know who. You’re part of us now, and that means I can believe you’ll do a good job better than I can believe it of anyone in the world.” He stood up in the circle of Harry’s arms and leaned towards the right side of his face. Harry expected a whispered admonition in his ear to heal Lucius or else.

Instead, Malfoy brushed a delicate kiss against the skin beneath Harry’s ear, and then grabbed him and embraced him tightly. Harry blinked and tried not to squawk, and held him back.

Malfoy stepped away at last, gave Harry another faint smile without a trace of embarrassment, and then picked up the parchment map he’d shown Harry earlier. “Shall we?” he asked. “I thought I’d escort you to visit Father the first time. And he’ll want to hear from both you and me how you’ve spent the night.”

“Why?” Harry asked, turning his head self-consciously away, as if that would keep Malfoy from seeing his blush. The place beneath his ear that Malfoy had kissed was burning like pale fire.

“In case I’ve noticed an addition to your comfort that could be made, which you haven’t noticed yourself,” Malfoy said gently. “We treat members of our family well, Harry. Now. Shall we?” He held open the door.

Harry took a deep breath and followed Malfoy. He wished his head wasn’t whirling and his feet didn’t feel fit to stumble, but he was sure he would manage to act professional. He always did.

If not for the sidelong glances Malfoy sent him as they went along—admiring, but not trying to press the point, exactly the sort of looks Harry would have hoped to see from someone who liked him in a situation like this—he might even have convinced himself.

Chapter 9.

Comments

[ravenqueen55.livejournal.com]

I'm loving this story more and more with every word!

Poor Harry...he's so used to denying himself that comfort actually makes him uncomfortable.

Oh, and I'd like one of those showers, please and thank you. *nods*

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

That's part of it. Another part is that he really is worried about some of the magic obstructing him from caring for Lucius.

So would I, most of the time. Or at least that tub.