Chapter Three of 'The Same Species As Shakespeare'- Come Not Between the Dragon and His Wrath

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Three—Come Not Between The Dragon and His Wrath

“How is he?”

“Resting, Mr. Potter.” The Healer smiled and patted his arm. “Would you like to come in and see him?”

“I can?” Harry hesitated on the threshold of Malfoy’s room, suspicious. He hadn’t even been able to visit Ron the last time he was in hospital, until he was smuggled in amidst a crowd of Weasleys. St. Mungo’s had become fairly strict about visiting rules applying to kin only after several assassinations during the war, which made Harry suspect he was being obliged only because he was Harry Potter.

The Healer, a fairly young and pretty woman, blushed, which didn’t make him feel any better. “Well, you seemed so concerned,” she said, and her voice trailed off as she blinked at him. “Are you all right, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and stepped into the room, before he could change his mind about not taking advantage of his name—which he had done many times since the war, though this use of it was rather different than encouraging contributions to orphanages—or she could change her mind about permitting him access.

The room was as neat and as blank as any other in St. Mungo’s. The stark whiteness of the walls and sheets only further emphasized the pallor of Malfoy’s face and hair, which fanned around his head in a crown of tangled gold. Harry noticed that the marks of bruising had faded from his throat. He didn’t close his eyes and allow a sigh of relief to escape him, but it was a near thing.

“The bruises came about as the result of wandless magic,” said the Healer. Harry started. He hadn’t realized she was still beside him. “Unfortunately, when that happens, we can’t track the person who did it. What we can do is charm the pain away and put on a spell to ensure that no one similarly attacks him whilst he’s here.”

Harry smiled over his shoulder at her. “Thank you. And the fainting?”

The Healer chuckled. “The charm taking over, and shock. Don’t tell Mr. Malfoy this, but the attack seems to have overwhelmed him. His heart was beating far too fast when you brought him in.”

“Could that be dangerous?” Harry had to practically pin his eyes to her face so they wouldn’t wander over to Malfoy. He tried to focus on the sound of her voice, too, because Malfoy couldn’t speak to him right now anyway.

“It shouldn’t be,” she said, and nodded reassuringly at him. “He’ll have the best care whilst he’s here, Mr. Potter.”

“Someone did attack him once.”

“The security precautions have been much improved.” The Healer’s voice had lost its shyness; she was moving onto ground she knew well, Harry thought, and that meant she felt less temptation to defer to the famous Harry Potter. Good. Outside of deliberate showpieces and his job, he preferred to relate to people more normally, and to make them comfortable rather than apprehensive. “We’ll keep him so safe he won’t know he’s not at home, though doubtless—“ she flicked a wry glance around the room “—the accommodations aren’t what he’s used to.”

Harry bit his lip to stop from protesting that that wouldn’t matter. To Malfoy, it might. “Thank you,” he said, and she finally nodded and left him alone to approach the bed.

Harry conjured a chair without thinking; there was none in the room. He wondered for a moment where Lucius Malfoy was, but rumor said that he’d retreated completely into his Manor and led the life of a recluse. The news might not have reached him yet.

And, terrible as it was, Harry couldn’t force himself to leave Malfoy’s bed and go inform his father about it.

He let his gaze linger on Malfoy’s features, now that the man was no longer awake enough to object. Even more pointed than the photographs made them look; Harry reckoned Malfoy must deliberately adopt certain profiles to get the pictures the way he wanted. Well, Harry did the same thing. He preferred not to be photographed in the loo or with his hand down his pants, thanks.

His eyes traveled to Malfoy’s hands, lying folded on the coverlet, as if the Healers had realized it would be an indignity to let them flop limply at his sides. Harry reached out, his own fingers hovering a few inches above Malfoy’s knuckles. He couldn’t quite bring himself to touch.

He couldn’t quite believe he was this close.

It was Malfoy’s hands, and not his face, which had first fascinated Harry. He had watched Malfoy’s architectural career with puzzlement at first, even a sense of disdain. Who did he think he was kidding? No one would ever forget what had happened during the war. He could build all the manor houses he liked, but he would still be a Death Eater in the eyes of the public. Harry felt a bit regretful about that, since he thought Malfoy didn’t deserve the blame he’d get, but he considered it inevitable. He had thought Malfoy understood that, too, and so to see him trying to evade that blame made Harry think poorly of his intelligence.

Then the first manor, Pegasus Hall, was complete, and the Prophet published pictures of it and an interview with Malfoy that referred to his “dark and romantic past,” with no hint at all of what that past had actually entailed. Harry, irritated, Apparated to the site of Pegasus Hall one evening, determined to prove to himself that the wizarding public in general was shallow and far too forgiving of people who had let Death Eaters into Hogwarts and nearly killed Harry’s best friend.

Then he had stood on the wide lawn and looked up at Pegasus Hall by the light of a full moon.

The heavy white walls had shone, crouched there, displaying graceful arches of stone and a lightness of construction that hadn’t been visible in the pictures. Harry thought it looked like a dragon who might take flight at any moment. Here and there, a twist to the foundations, an arch to the façade as if it were a long serpentine neck, a ripple to the wings of the building that resembled actual wings, made him think Malfoy had had the same vision.

Harry had stood still for a long time, staring. What finally brought him back to reality was his wand slipping from his hand and dropping to the ground with a clunk. Harry blinked and stooped to retrieve it without taking his eyes off the house, which meant he groped through dew-dampened grass for long moments before he found it.

When he stood again, a net of wards had sprung up shimmering around the house, delicate linked chains of brilliant blue and green that reflected in the white walls like St. Elmo’s Fire in the waves of the sea.

Harry lost part of his heart that night. Even stranger, he had known it at the time.

The man who could create such beauty was not the weak one Harry had imagined, not that guilty but not blameless either, who was interesting only because of what Ollivander had told him about the connection between Malfoy’s wand and his. Malfoy had an artist’s hands, and an artist’s soul, too. Harry had watched him even more intently after that, because he wanted to understand how such capacity for greatness could coexist with the spite and the selfishness he knew he had observed in Malfoy during their years at school together.

Each time he thought he started to understand the paradox, he found himself needing to do something else: collect another photograph or watch Malfoy more closely when he was at work in his office, trying to separate the grandeur in him from the grime it was mixed with.

Slowly, he had come to accept that Malfoy didn’t have a split personality, that somehow both grime and grandeur came from the same source. And by then he was fascinated by the man’s attitude changes, sometimes humble, sometimes arrogance cloaked in a mask of humility, and the way he stood in pictures, and the way he worked for money and to specifications and yet stamped his own personality on every house he built. So many traits, all twined together. Harry never would have discovered the initial ones without having listened to Ollivander or going to see Pegasus Hall, though.

It was vain for Hermione and Ron to tell him that great artists could still be awful people. Harry had lost track of the number of biographies Hermione had given him, exposing the hatreds and fears of writers, painters, scientists, and politicians. None of those people were living under Harry’s eye; he hadn’t seen their flaws firsthand, and he hadn’t seen how they grew past their flaws. Malfoy was different, because Harry had seen the worst and then the best. Harry could be sure the best was real.

The houses carried pieces of Malfoy’s soul with them, and because they existed, Harry could not see him as evil.

He didn’t know if he should ever hope for anything more than distant admiration, but that was enough to keep him watching by Malfoy’s side after the attack. And he remembered the way Malfoy had touched his hand and examined the ring earlier that evening, and had to rub his arms briskly as a rippling wave of gooseflesh traveled up them.

Those hands that lifted stone into a solemnity and perfection comparable to music had entwined with his.

Harry would have to be blind and deaf not to want more.

*

Draco lay with his eyes firmly shut and his body so relaxed that even the Healers had thought he was unconscious. It was a trick he had learned during the war; it allowed him to survive more than one Death Eater conversation they would have killed him for overhearing. He had practiced it even longer than he had practiced making the bruises on his throat appear with wandless magic.

Both had worked.

Draco could feel Potter’s presence next to the bed the way he would have felt the presence of a bonfire. Every shift and sigh and word to the Healers found their echo in Draco’s brain. Yes, he longed to say, yes, I knew you would act like this, I know you. I could pluck out your heart, and I know exactly how it would beat in the last few moments before it stopped.

Then Potter reached out as if he would touch Draco, though in the end he didn’t. Draco could tell where the hand was at every moment. He was glad that no Healer was in the room then, because although he could keep his breathing and his face serene, his heartbeat had sped up enormously.

He had expected to court a wary and suspicious Potter. Instead, he found one already opening up to him, watching over him as if he were a beloved friend, and anxious for his health. Of course, Draco had foreseen this reaction, too; he had merely not known it would appear so soon. As Severus would say, even a potion you knew well could sometimes surprise you when you varied the amount of an ingredient or the pace of your stirring.

He’s drawn to me because he can’t help himself. I’m still the most significant person he’s ever known in his life, because I’m the only one who didn’t bow down to him and offer him either honor or paranoid fear. Even Severus had that unfortunate interest in him because he was friends with Potter’s mother. Because he’s Potter, he wants to know why I don’t feel those extreme reactions.

Draco badly wanted to open his mouth and run his tongue along the edge of his front teeth in anticipation, but that would spoil his perfect rendition of a helpless patient. He must give Potter a chance to play the hero. The impostor who wanted to hurt him and smash his reputation was no plan of Draco’s, but Draco was not averse to using him. It would rouse Potter’s protective side all the more quickly.

I’ll have him. I’ll have him even more thoroughly if I just remain still for a little while, and let him speculate about how badly I was hurt.

The things I’ll do. The vengeance I’ll take on him. People will talk about it for years. He won’t be able to look anyone in the face again. Maybe he’ll commit suicide—

But Draco stopped that train of thought. He’d never been comfortable with the notion that Potter would escape the grief and pain Draco would cause him that easily. No, Draco must leave him with the will to live, if only because he wanted to stare after Draco in hopeless bewilderment.

Become fascinated with me, Potter. Become bound to me. Then you won’t die as long as I live, but you won’t escape my shadow, either.

*

Lucius stepped out of the Floo at the Manor and removed his glamour with a grateful sigh. Actions he had once taken without a pause for thought, like disguising himself, unaccountably irritated him now.

Or not so unaccountably, said that voice like a silken handkerchief in the back of his mind. Before, you knew they were for the good of the family the way you know winter is cold. And then Narcissa died, and you found out how differently she thought, and now you can’t help second-guessing yourself, as if that would give her opinion another chance to live.

Lucius scowled and ducked into the corridor outside the anteroom, absently handing his cloak to a house-elf on the way. The wing he had moved into after Narcissa’s death was the western one, cramped and small and dark in many of its rooms and connections between its rooms, with windows that looked out on pine trees and a stretch of grass that always appeared brown no matter the season. (Family legend said an ancient Octavius Malfoy had immolated himself there, and the grass refused to grow in mourning). Draco rarely visited it, and Lucius had assumed that he would be alone now.

Instead, Severus stood waiting for him in the corridor, leaning against the wall with all the poise of a carrion crow. Lucius clenched his hands into fists and willed his bounding heart to slow.

“Yes, Severus?” His voice was brittle, and he knew he would not be able to make it sound natural. “You wanted something?”

“Where’s Draco?” Severus’s eyes traveled to the door Lucius had left open, as if he had really expected that Draco would take the same Floo home as his father.

“He played a nasty trick on Harry Potter and his gracious host and got the hero to believe he’s sick.” Lucius ran a hand through his hair, more irritated by the remembrance of what he had seen Draco do than by the fact that Severus had startled him. “He’ll be fine, of course. When is he ever anything other than fine?” He paused and took a long breath. One thing he and Severus never agreed on since the war was what Draco should make of himself and how much time he had to do it in before he would become irredeemably a small and shallow man. Lucius thought he could do much better than he was; Severus had declared that Draco had surpassed all his expectations by not retreating into the house and sulking. Lucius, who could read those words well enough as applying to more than one person, chose not to open the argument often.

“You are sure he was not injured?” Severus cleared his throat. Of course, he could not admit he was worried about Draco without criticizing Lucius’s powers of observation at the same time.

“There was an unexpected attack,” Lucius admitted. “That same fellow we’ve been seeing in the papers, by all accounts, trying to use Draco’s name and face. But Potter saved him from it. And after that I watched Draco, not Potter. He didn’t have a wound on him. And he had that small, secret smile he gets when he’s plotting, at least until Potter came back from fruitlessly hunting the criminal. Then Draco pretended to faint. Yes, he’ll be fine. I simply wish he knew what he was playing at.”

Severus started to answer, and then paused. “The wrong pronoun, perhaps?” he asked.

Lucius shook his head and strode past Severus towards the door of the study where he sat to relax—brood, Severus would call it—and think about Narcissa’s diaries when he was not actually reading them. It was a dark room, made of obsidian and wooden paneling that had been stained black by the use of judicious Smoke Spells. Above the fireplace, the hearth of which took up a third of the room, hung an empty portrait frame with a chair in it. Lucius regarded it moodily for a moment, then sat down before the hearth. A house-elf appeared at once, lit the fire, vanished, and reappeared again with a glass of white wine for Lucius. Lucius sipped it and closed his eyes. Dragon’s Bane. It had been his favorite wine even before Narcissa’s death. In some things, at least, he hadn’t changed.

“I know perfectly well what Draco’s doing,” he said. “The same thing he always did in school. Trying to win the Potter boy’s attention.”

Severus laughed sharply. “You should leave him to it. Either he will never succeed and use the failure to lash himself on to new heights of achievement, or he will succeed and have what he’s always wanted.” He paused. “A true Slytherin wants such things for the children he has in his care.”

Lucius opened his eyes to offer Severus another glare. At times he didn’t know why he had taken the Potions master into his house. No matter how skilled at brewing, no matter how good a friend he had been to Draco after they had fled Hogwarts together at the end of the boy’s sixth year, he could not forgive Lucius what he saw as lapse after lapse in his principles and his love for Draco. Constant sarcasm was not Lucius’s idea of a fit trait in his companion. He preferred someone who could offer unexpected stabs of wit but would let him have the mastery when he preferred.

Someone like her.

Lucius’s hand did not tighten around the glass and shatter it into fragments, because he had that much self-control. “Draco does not know when he goes too far,” he said. “He invited me to the showing of this house tonight because, he hinted, I would see something special. That special thing was his meeting of Potter, who had come to the party on his specific invitation, from the talk I heard around me. Tell me, Severus, does a young man who is self-confident about his victories and able to say what they’re worth to him need his father’s eyes to give such a victory value?”

Severus flicked a hand. “I doubt your eyes are the sole value of the thing for Draco. He probably wanted to silence your doubts on the subject of Potter by letting you watch as he captured him.”

Lucius choked on his wine and barely managed to set it down on the broad arm of his chair before he began to chuckle. The laughter felt like it tore something as it raced through his chest, but Lucius kept it up anyway. It had been a long time since he had the chance to see Severus’s face freeze in such an offended expression.

When he finally chose to put himself under control, he said, “Draco can’t capture Potter without being captured by him. I know what he feels, Severus, and he doesn’t. That is what worries me. If he had chosen to mesh himself in obsession or hatred, counted the costs beforehand and liked the equation those numbers produced, I would not interfere. But he has no idea of the depth of his feelings for Potter. He thinks this is a small part of his life, and that he won’t change if he destroys the man. He will. Pardon me if I find such a lack of self-knowledge in my heir distressing.”

Severus snorted softly. “Potter has few exemplary qualities,” he said. “I would count luck first among them. Draco will come to know him better, and find how shallow he really is, how unworthy of an obsession. You need not fear Draco falling in love.”

“I fear Draco falling,” said Lucius. “And Draco does not have the depth of soul to admit he was wrong about staking so many of his emotions on someone shallow. Instead, he will try to build Potter up into a worthy foe even if he isn’t, and talk himself into a headlong tumble before he realizes it.”

Severus stood still for some time, his eyes half-shut. “It is true that hatred can be as consuming as love,” he said.

“Only as consuming?” Lucius arched an eyebrow. One of his few advantages over Severus was that the man had spent his first days in the Manor under the influence of powerful healing potions, recovering from the Flaying Curse that had almost killed him. Lucius had learned many secrets from Severus then, including how much of his bitterness had stemmed from insults hurled by schoolboys twenty-five years ago.

Severus had an unattractive manner of flushing, all over his brow and down the sides of his face in splotches, as if he had broken out into fever. Lucius picked up his wine and sipped again, enjoying the equal footing he had reestablished in the conversation.

“If you fear so much for your son in Potter’s clutches,” said Severus at last, his voice clipped, “you might extricate him. Go to St. Mungo’s, where Potter has doubtless taken him in a fit of misguided heroism, and bring him home.”

Lucius shook his head. “Draco also won’t brook my guidance. I might succeed in alerting Potter, but I couldn’t keep Draco away from him, and he would probably spin some story to Potter about how his dreadful father is harassing him so he can’t repent and become a paragon in British wizarding society the way he wants to be.”

“So you’ll stand back, shaking your head and clucking your tongue sadly, and watch your son dash himself to his death?” Severus brought his head back in the exact posture that the Dark Lord’s Nagini had once held before she struck. “I did not know you had a hobby of repeating history.”

Lucius stood up so suddenly he knew he had no chance of feigning coolness. Instead, he simply stared at Severus until his eyes lowered, and said quietly, “And who did not watch Bellatrix, so that such history was possible in the first place?”

Severus turned and walked from the study.

Lucius sat down, staring down at the fallen wineglass, and the wine that had soaked into the carpet. His fingers twined together, and he could feel them shaking like an old man’s. It had not been his fault that Narcissa died. He had seen her taking risks to protect her son, but he had never thought she would do—that.

You never knew her, said the silken-handkerchief voice. As you are learning now.

But Severus might be right about one thing, much as Lucius hated to admit it. Perhaps Draco would destroy himself as thoughtlessly, for the gratification of his passions. Lucius might be able to interfere in such a way that Draco wouldn’t sense his hand and therefore work against it for the mere pleasure of foiling his father.

“I will take care of Draco,” he whispered aloud into the silence of the study. “Even if he doesn’t want me to.”

He spent some time watching the empty portrait, but no one walked into the frame.

Chapter Four.