lomonaaeren | Chapter Fourteen of 'Bloody But Unbowed'- Healing Is Sometimes a Battle

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Chapter Fourteen—Healing Is Sometimes a Battle

It was only as he leaped down the staircase to the third floor that it occurred to Harry that he’d sent his Patronus to the Malfoys and not Ron and Hermione, who once would have been the natural candidates to know he was in danger.

He scowled, and then gripped the banister and flipped over it to dodge yet another spell that skimmed above his head like a Muggle bullet.

And he didn’t bloody have time to think about it right now. He planted one foot on the steps outside the banister and propelled himself over it again, but this time sliding down, his chest and his arms hugging the smooth wood, his legs flailing. His robes tangled around his feet, but Harry was strong and healthy enough to disentangle himself without trouble when he reached the bottom. He hoped.

Several confused calls sounded from above him. Then Harry heard a shout in which he clearly understood the words, “other staircase,” and guessed that his pursuers had split, some of them heading down the staircase at the other end of the fourth floor to wait for him. He smiled.

They’ll need luck they don’t possess to catch me, he thought, and then he reached the bottom and a curve in the banister that required him to scramble in an undignified manner to prevent himself from flopping to the floor. He was up again in two seconds and dashing towards the middle of the third floor.

This was the Potion and Plant Poisoning ward, and Harry had spent a large portion of his time here, since Emptyweed found most cases of plant poisoning boring and delighted in reminding Harry that he wasn’t competent in potions. Harry snorted as he sped down a corridor past shut doors—and a few open ones, lined with gaping faces—and turned left. They should never have let him reach this part of the building if they really wanted to capture him.

Ahead was a room that was as good as an armory.

This time, someone cast a spell that managed to arch over his shoulder and form a glowing net in front of him. Harry saw it too late to slow down. He wrapped an arm around his face, curled in to protect his vital organs, and bulled through.

The net gripped him, strained, and then broke. Harry swore in pain as lines of blood in the pattern of the net broke out on his shoulders, upraised arm, and the unprotected parts of his chest and legs. But though the wounds stung, they were not as bad as they could have been. None were mortal; none would keep him from fighting back. He lowered his arm, shook his hands briskly to remove the blood from his fingers in case he needed to get a tight and swift grip on his wand, and then sprinted forwards again. The door he wanted was just ahead.

Behind him, his pursuers had stopped and sounded like they were arguing. Harry hoped he had surprised them with his breaking through the net; something in their voices suggested he had. But he hardly had time to stop and see.

He grabbed the door of the room and tried to swing it open. It didn’t move, and for a moment he thought his hand was slick with blood after all and had slipped on the knob. Then he realized it was locked. It was spelled to respond automatically to the touch of anyone who worked at St. Mungo’s, but Harry had left some days ago, and obviously Emptyweed or one of the people behind him had taken the time to be sure that the locking spell wouldn’t accept Harry any more.

Harry took a deep breath. He did not have time for this!

A powerful unlocking spell he’d read years ago exploded in his mind like a firework, and he pointed his wand at the door and snapped, “Exsuscito!”

The spell snapped the door open so fast that Harry swayed in the wind of its passage. Harry smiled grimly and then ducked into the St. Mungo’s Potions cupboard.

He had no ability to brew most of the potions on the shelves, and even their proper application was sometimes beyond him. But he could often recognize the finished produces, if only by the color of the vials and the labels on them. He snatched several promising blue and red vials from the shelf nearest the door and slipped them into his robe pockets—he would have to hope that the cloth would help cushion them from shattering against each other—and then grabbed a handful of green ones to juggle.

The wounds on his hands hurt. Harry shrugged. He simply didn’t have the time to stop and tend to them, not if he wanted to survive. And he was sure that Ron and Hermione would agree having him back at all was more important than having him back in perfect physical health.

Footsteps pounded outside the Potions cupboard. Harry spun, uncorked one green vial, waited until he saw a hand emerge around the corner of the door—wand leading, good tactics—and then tossed the potion.

The invisible wizard or witch howled in agony and retracted the hand sharply. The wand was already splintering, becoming so much useless wood in their grasp. Harry grinned, and knew it wasn’t a pleasant grin. That particular set of potions was kept as a last resort for restraining mad patients who had somehow got hold of a wand.

Someone else shouted, and a silvery spell bounced off the corner of the wall and came in at Harry. He had time to note that it was vaguely shaped like the lightning bolt scar on his forehead before it slammed into him.

His lungs promptly contracted as every bit of air fled his body. He began to cough frantically, or tried, but he couldn’t make a sound. His tongue was stuck to the roof of his mouth. His head rang and red began to bloom in front of his eyes, persistently taking over his vision, as if he were drowning.

In the dimness, with death pressing as close to him as any lover, licking at him and murmuring in a voice like Francis’s when he was aroused, it was Healer Pontiff’s advice that came to his rescue once again.

Healing is sometimes a battle, she had told him. It was the night Harry lost his first patient and had spent hours standing motionless, staring at the empty bed, wondering what he could have done to save him. Healer Pontiff had approached him when no one else would, laying the back of her hand on his shoulder, as if she knew he couldn’t bear the touch of palm and fingers right now. Not always—and those who think it is, who regard death as an enemy, are mistaken—but sometimes you have no choice but to fight. The most important part is deciding where to spend your strength. Use it where it’s needed, not in a wild and desperate struggle that will exhaust you just when you must pull hardest.

With an enormous effort that bunched his muscles and made his head explode with pain, Harry forced himself to ignore the fact that he was dying. He reached out and aimed his wand at himself, also ignoring the confident man in dark blue robes who had just stepped through the door into the cupboard. His magic sharpened in his mind, waiting on the nonverbal command he was intoning.

Finite Incantatem.

Nothing happened. Harry repeated the words in his mind, feeling his fear nearly break the iron shell he’d built to contain it. He was on his knees, he knew, and the wizard was coming towards him to snatch the wand from his hand. But still he concentrated, and still he repeated, Finite Incantatem. Finite Incantatem. Finite—

And the hold of the spell broke. Harry reeled as air flooded him, cool and forgiving. He dropped limply to the floor, needing a moment to recover. Incidentally, it kept his wand from the grip of his tormentor a bit longer. The man cursed mildly and knelt down, bracing a hand on Harry’s side as if to roll him over.

Harry shot out a foot and caught him in the groin. The wizard collapsed, gasping, and Harry snatched his wand, too. He had dropped several of the green potions, so he settled for sticking the captured wand in his pocket and whipping around the prone wizard, straight towards the door of the cupboard. Merlin, but his wounds were starting to hurt.

Someone tried to punch him as he came through the door; someone else tried to curse him. Harry lashed out with fists and feet, and kicked the cursing person in the shin, so that her spell flew wild and she yelped. The punch caught him in the jaw, though. Once again Harry had to grit his teeth and roll through the pain. He forced himself to remember the direction of the staircase and turn towards it. His best chance was still to get outside, so that one of his pursuers didn’t get the bright idea of taking a patient hostage and using him or her against Harry.

He heard more shouts up the corridor. The second group of pursuers! He had been so confident, so sure they could never catch him in time. Well, he would just have to hurry, that was all. He lowered his head and put on another burst of speed. His aching muscles whimpered and twinged at him, and he knew he would pay for this later.

But he would gladly pay that price then, because it meant there would be a later for him.

The shouts grew louder as he reached the stairs. Harry snarled. How had they got ahead of him? He was sure they had been behind just a moment before. But he braced himself and dug into one of his pockets, towards the cached red and blue potions.

The second group appeared on the stairs, keeping out of each other’s way with a practiced grace and charging upwards with an almost military precision. They didn’t wear the dark blue robes Harry had seen before. Instead, they had the regulation, precisely-cut black robes of Aurors.

Harry wanted to close his eyes and drop in relief, but unfortunately he had enemies behind him who would probably only grow more frantic to kill him when they realized who was coming. And then one of the Aurors broke from the rest and raced ahead with the enthusiasm of youth, and Harry knew he had someone else to protect. That Auror’s eyes were already widening as he stared beyond Harry’s shoulder.

Harry spun and hurled one of the red potions vials to the floor. The glass shattered, and the scarlet liquid spreading in a puddle on the floor hissed and promptly began to release a brilliant gas that filled the eyes and nostrils of Harry’s attacker; Harry himself closed his eyes and held his breath. But his ears were still open, and he heard the thump and the snore that told him the sleeping potion had worked as intended.

When he looked again, the gas was floating in dissipating threads down the corridor, and one of his other enemies had fallen. The rest were backing away, their faces set and hard and dismayed. Harry scanned them quickly, but he didn’t think he knew any of them. The young Auror charged up and balanced precariously on the top step beside him, brandishing his wand.

One of the blue-robed wizards stepped back, pulling the others into a formation that looked oddly like a protective circle. He began to chant something sweet and strong. Harry blinked. Was it mist rising around them? Fog? He didn’t know, but either way, it was the result of a spell he hadn’t seen before.

The mist grew more and more brilliant, as if a full moon were shining through it. Then it exploded inwards like a pillow someone had punched, and curling, drifting wisps of it became flying tatters. Harry’s enemies were gone.

He swore.

The young Auror beside him patted him on the back in commiseration. And then the other Aurors were there, and everyone was talking to him at once, and Harry resigned himself to answering questions and having people exclaim over his wounds (which looked worse than they were or other people thought them, including the young Auror, who had stopped patting him and was staring at his bloody hand in horror).

*

“And you’re sure you have no idea who they were?”

Harry sighed. The Auror in charge of the investigation, Ernest Muffinworth, wasn’t a bad sort, just the perennially suspicious sort who refused to let anything go. He believed Harry, he said, but then he would peer at him and ask another penetrating question, designed to stimulate memories that Harry didn’t know he had.

“I think they were associated with the hospital hierarchy, based on what Healer Emptyweed told me, and that he was afraid for my coming here,” Harry said. He mopped with the third cloth they’d given him at the threads of blood decorating his face. It seemed a bit of the net spell had got through after all and cut his forehead above the lightning bolt scar; he’d been sodding lucky that blood hadn’t rolled down from it and got into his eyes during the fight. “Talk to the Healer if you want to know more.”

Auror Muffinworth grunted and leaned back against the table in the empty Healers’ cubicle they’d claimed. He was a stolid man in waist and shoulders and robes and, Harry was beginning to believe, intellect. “Emptyweed’s disappeared. Had Aurors searching the hospital on every ward for him, and we can’t find him.”

“Of course,” Harry said. “Because God forbid anything go right in my life.”

Muffinworth’s answering look was wry. “Welcome to my job, Potter.”

Harry smiled wearily. He was about to ask a question of his own—namely, whether the Aurors had found any trace of wounded patients or Healers—when a strident, unwelcome voice spoke form the door to the cubicle. “And I demand that you let me see him. Mediwizard Potter is working privately with our family, and we’re owed some explanation as to what’s happened here.”

Harry hissed and drew himself upright. He was not in the mood to deal with Draco right now. He glanced at Muffinworth. “Do you think you can keep that man busy until I get away?” he asked.

“Bad blood?” Muffinworth asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Lovers’ spat,” said Harry, not wanting Muffinworth to treat Draco as part of the investigation. He slipped over to the far side of the cubicle, far bigger and more comfortable than the one he’d had, and opened the door there. Draco was arguing with someone, probably the Auror Muffinworth had placed on guard, about how very ready he was to complain to authorities if he didn’t get his way. Harry rolled his eyes.

Draco is used to getting his own way too often, which is the reason that any relationship we did try would never work out. I can see the headline now: ‘Two Most Stubborn Lovers in the World Choke Each Other to Death.’

He opened the door of the cubicle and stepped into the corridor beyond, taking a moment to breathe the air gratefully. This corridor, at least, was blissfully free of the presence of Draco Malfoy.

Then Narcissa Malfoy stepped into the light coming from the lamp in the cubicle and faced him.

Harry froze, his hands dropping nervelessly to his sides. The cubicle door slipped from his grasp and banged shut. Draco’s voice rose triumphantly, but Harry couldn’t be concerned about that right now. He could only stare at Narcissa’s utterly blank face in dread and wonder at his own sense of helpless guilt.

Then he reminded himself that that was ridiculous. If Narcissa had been in on the plan to restrict him to the Manor, and if she agreed with her son, Harry was as angry with her as he was with Draco. Her sex and the fact that she might have been a mother figure in his life if things had gone better made no difference. He returned her cool look with an unfriendly stare and said, “Look. I’m willing to give you the information I’ve found concerning the Mirror Maze on your husband. We can hold the consultation by Floo if you like. I was about to return to Grimmauld Place and firecall you to give you that choice. Or I can give you a Pensieve with my memories in them.”

“You are a fool.” Narcissa’s voice was ice-covered iron, that flat and that hard and that cold.

“For leaving the Manor?” Harry sneered at her. Surely, if the Malfoys had taught him anything, it should be how to muster an effective sneer. “Or for suggesting ways in which I can save Mr. Malfoy’s life without our having to meet?”

Narcissa glanced around, then flicked her wand. Harry blinked as the air around them turned faintly blue. She had just cast the strongest privacy ward he knew, which was semi-illegal for anyone but Ministry officials to use.

“For thinking that we would cast you out of the family because you had a disagreement with our son,” said Narcissa.

Harry bit his lower lip so that his jaw wouldn’t fall. That isn’t fair. How did she know I was thinking that? “I didn’t—“

“It is obvious from your expression, and from your manner to me,” Narcissa said. Behind the privacy ward, her face had relaxed, though she still didn’t show the friendly openness that Harry suspected she would have if they were within the walls and wards of the Manor. “You speak as if we were once more employer and employee only, and as if you expected us to reject everything about you but your skills as a mediwizard.” She paused for a moment, studying Harry as if she hoped that the words she had spoken so far would convince him. When Harry simply stared at her, she continued, more of the ice in her voice melting. “Harry. We are your family. We will not cast you out simply because you have your own opinions about the way your life ought to be lived.”

Harry really wished there was a bed nearby, so he could collapse into it and sleep until the world started making sense. Failing that, he would have settled for raking his hands through his hair, but though Healer Pontiff had tended to his wounds, she had warned him that moving too suddenly would reopen them. And the last thing Harry needed was Narcissa and Draco clucking over that. Narcissa had already frowned as if she were noticing flakes of dried blood on his skin.

“I thought you had very definite opinions on the way my life ought to be lived,” he said. “Or why bother having me learn to act like a Malfoy?”

“We want you to learn those laws, yes,” said Narcissa, still not turning a hair or varying her gaze. “But that does not mean you cannot argue. Arguments will give us the chance to explain our reasoning to you and try to persuade you that our laws make sense.”

Rational Malfoys. Will the wizarding world ever stop providing me with wonders? But Harry had thought of something else, something that made him more nervous than the thought of how much he still had to understand about this adopted family. “If both you and Draco are here,” he said, “who’s protecting Lucius?”

Narcissa gave a faint frown. “The wards on the Manor and the house-elves are even more fanatical about guarding the family when a family member is alone there,” she said.

“It’s still not a good idea.” Harry took a step forwards. “Listen, I’ve survived and had my wounds healed. I meant what I said about consulting you through the Floo, but for the moment, I’m going to return home and go to sleep—“

“So soon?” Narcissa let the corner of her mouth rise in a pleased smile.

Harry blinked, and then realized she thought he was referring to the Manor as home. “No,” he said flatly. “I’m going home to Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, and that way you and Draco can return and guard Lucius.”

Narcissa gave him a disapproving stare that made Harry feel as if he’d swallowed ground glass. If I’d grown up with a mother, would this be easier?

“The closeness of blood does not diminish so easily as that,” she said. “We are not angry at you, Harry—“

“Draco is going to be smug and brag about how he was right and my life was in danger—“ Harry began.

“If Draco does any such thing, then I shall set him down.” Narcissa moved a step closer to him, and now she had an emotion in her eyes Harry had never seen there before. “I have already scolded him for being so foolish as to send you fleeing when he should have done anything to keep you close.” She hesitated. “You have been attacked, and I believe you do not understand how powerful the instincts are that command me to take you behind walls at once. Having a family member in danger like this makes me feel as if I were in danger.”

“You probably are,” Harry said reluctantly. “I’ve found evidence that indicates a large number of people knew Lucius was cursed and wanted him dead. But that’s all the more reason for you to return to the Manor and add a human presence to the wards and the house-elves.”

“Come with us,” said Narcissa.

The door of the cubicle opened, and Draco burst through. When he saw Harry standing there talking to his mother, he paused suddenly and tried to make it seem as if he hadn’t been running. From the room behind him, Muffinworth’s voice said, “You’re not supposed to go through there.”

Draco ignored him entirely, staring at Harry with greedy eyes. From the way they narrowed, Harry was sure they’d found the same small flecks of dried blood Narcissa had seen. He put his chin up stubbornly, ready to snap the moment Draco gloated about having been right.

But Draco said only, “I understand that it was one of your former lovers who alerted the Aurors. I think it’s the first time I’ve felt grateful to one of them.” He moved a step closer, so lightly Harry almost missed the motion. His gaze had returned to Harry’s face, but it was still just as greedy. “Now. Are you ready to come home?”

“No,” Harry said.

Narcissa made an anxious movement. Draco didn’t look at her, however, and Harry didn’t feel comfortable taking his eyes away from him. “And why not?” Draco asked quietly. “It makes sense for the family to be together when something upsetting has happened to them, and now you’ve been hunted and persecuted like Father.”

Harry gave the cubicle a glance, half-hoping that Muffinworth would emerge and spare him this confrontation. But no one moved. Perhaps the Auror had decided the Malfoys could have no obvious part in the conspiracy, since they hadn’t been in hospital when the chase began, and had gone to hunt Emptyweed.

Draco stepped towards him again, almost within touching distance now.

And Harry stiffened his spine and reminded himself that he did have the right to speak up and complain about the situation, especially when he had decided that he couldn’t possibly return to the Manor right now. Maybe it made the most sense to the Malfoys, but it didn’t make the most sense to him, and he had already admitted that he wouldn’t fit into their lives no matter what happened. Why should he try to obey their prescriptions?

“I hate what you tried to do to me,” he told Draco. “I hate everything about it.”

Draco drew breath as if to speak, and then fell silent again. Perhaps Narcissa had made some sort of signal. Harry didn’t care. At the moment, he wasn’t in the Malfoys’ home and didn’t have any unwritten code, of hospitality or otherwise, to obey. He clenched his fists and continued.

“I hate that you think you have a claim on me, and that means you treat me like a possession. And just because you were right about my life being in danger doesn’t mean you were right in your way of dealing with it. If I go back to the Manor, it’ll be more of the same. More affection I don’t understand, more things I shouldn’t be paying attention to anyway with Lucius’s life still in danger, more Malfoy ‘laws’ that don’t make sense to me and which I’ll never learn intuitively the way you have. You made me feel like a prisoner. I won’t take that from anyone.”

Draco’s face was stricken. Harry rolled his eyes. “You didn’t realize this would have consequences? I don’t know what your lovers have been like in the past, but I don’t fancy letting someone simply have power over me without fighting back.”

“You accepted the other care I tried to give you,” Draco whispered. “The care that Rogers tried to give you.”

“Because I saw that it made sense,” Harry said impatiently. “I did start feeling better when I slept more and ate richer food. But it won’t make me feel better to spend the rest of my life in a gilded cage. And I wasn’t happy about it. I would have responded to rational arguments better.”

“And that is what we ask for the chance to give you now,” Narcissa broke in. Harry glanced over his shoulder and saw Narcissa leaning towards him with her hand extended. “We don’t want to cage you, Harry. But we do want you among us, to protect and persuade.”

“That’s the thing that makes the least sense,” Harry said tiredly. His barely-closed wounds were starting to ache. He wanted to go home and sleep the effects of the Healing off. “The Heart’s Blessing spell made me family to you. Well, nothing gave me that sense of family in return.”

Narcissa flinched for the first time, and a small shard of regret and guilt worked its way into Harry’s heart. “So, then,” she said in a very low voice. “None of what we tried to give you made any impression on you at all? None of it mattered?”

“It mattered,” Harry said, feeling trapped and wishing he could run. How did you reject compassion without seeming like a selfish arsehole? “But there’s no way I can repay it. I don’t know how to answer it. Letting you take care of me puts me into debt, and I don’t know what you want in return. Money for the time I spent under your roof? I can do that. But you can’t have my freedom, or my soul.”

“What we want,” said Draco, so earnestly that Harry felt turning fiercely on him would have been like turning on a child, “is your presence.”

Harry put his head in his hands. “Why?” he asked. There was a natural headache growing behind his eyes now, savage and hot.

“We like you,” said Narcissa.

Draco stepped up behind him and wrapped his arms around him, leaning his head in the center of Harry’s back.

That was probably as much of a manipulative tactic as anything else he’d done, but it was better-chosen than most words could have been. Still, it was Narcissa’s words that truly melted him. Harry jerked his head up, staring into her eyes. Narcissa looked back. Harry could see only sincerity, even when she lifted her hands as if to cradle his cheeks.

“We like you,” she breathed, “and we would take the chance to know you better, if we can. I am sorry if we gave you the impression that you must yield totally to the Malfoy laws to be part of the family. Surely you have noticed that not even Lucius obeys them all the time? And my son is hardly a shining example of them at the moment.” Draco flinched a little, but his arms tightened on Harry. “But none of that diminishes the impact of the blood. An argument cannot. We would mourn if you died, and be bereft in a way that we would not if an ordinary Healer or mediwizard sacrificed his life searching for a cure for Lucius. I understand that the sharing of blood is an unusual basis for family love for you. But none of that makes it the less important to us.” She paused, and then her hands descended and touched his cheeks. “Will you come with us, and give us a second chance to show you the best of what Malfoys can be, rather than the worst, how you may live in freedom and yet be part of something larger than yourself?”

Harry closed his eyes, because otherwise tears would threaten. And he nodded, because even if their offer turned out not to be real, he was incapable of not reaching for what it seemed to be.

Narcissa pressed a kiss to his cheek, Draco one to the back of his neck.

Chapter 15.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

valkyrie17.livejournal.com

Wow! Quite the battle. To borrow a phrase from Butch and Sundance..."Who are those guys?"
Glad Narcissa and Draco are getting a second chance to be Harry's Family:)

From:

Chapter Fourteen of 'Bloody But Unbowed'- Healing Is Sometimes a Battle

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