lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2008-09-17 08:53 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2008-09-17 08:53 pm
Chapter Twelve of 'The Same Species As Shakespeare'- Out of This Nettle, We Pluck This Flower
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twelve—Out of This Nettle, We Pluck This Flower
Harry stretched his muscles and leaned over backwards to ease a kink at the base of his spine. The conjured bed in Draco’s room was comfortable enough, but sitting in a chair in front of Kingsley’s desk whilst he was lectured on the latest business of the Auror Department—Kingsley having decided that Harry could do paperwork on other cases even if he couldn’t move far from Draco’s side—always made him uncomfortable.
He had left the Manor reluctantly, carrying a silver ring with a simple enchantment that would make it heat up if Draco’s life was in danger. Kingsley had even agreed to lower the wards around his office so that Harry could Apparate back to the Manor immediately instead of rushing down to the Atrium and Flooing. Harry had looked at the ring many times during the meeting with Kingsley, admiring the way that the silver looked beside the copper of the one that let him communicate with Hermione.
But nothing had happened, and Harry was beginning to think that perhaps the imposter had given up and left the country when he realized that nothing he did would let him snatch Draco’s life away. That was perfectly fine with him. He could remain a few days longer in Draco’s company before Draco, who was still involved in his research, would grow suspicious and begin to think he was lingering for unprofessional reasons.
And who knows? Harry thought, as he walked slowly across the moonlit lawn towards the Manor. Maybe he will decide that we should pursue the desire that sprang up between us in his office and—go to bed together.
The words had too pressing a weight in Harry’s mind; he could almost taste the breath that he would use to form them, and he could feel anticipation gathering around his heart, in his lungs, at the base of his brain. He had told Hermione he would be content if he could have sex with Draco, fulfilling the physical desire that plagued him.
He had been lying, though at the time he hadn’t known that.
His fascination with Draco had deepened and cooled over the past few days, turning from fleeting fiery passion into a rooted, growing flower. He watched the way Draco bent over a sheet of parchment on which he was drawing the plans for the Keller house and he could nearly glimpse the thoughts that flew beyond those bright eyes. He knew the way Draco looked now when he was planning an improvement to the design that he hoped would particularly surprise or delight his client.
He understood that Draco’s way of looking demurely away from the house-elves when they carried dinner in from the kitchens concealed suppressed laughter. It seemed that Draco had never got over finding house-elves slightly ridiculous, a quirk which made Harry like him more.
He understood now that Draco liked to go to bed so early because he preferred to lie awake in bed an hour or so before he had to face the day. Hermione would no doubt say it was due to laziness, but Harry had listened to Draco’s relaxed breathing in the morning—the sunlight coming through the windows, the air between them thick and still and silent—and he thought he understood. Draco wanted time to collect his thoughts and calm the whirling of his brain. Most people did that before they fell asleep, or over a glass of Firewhisky or butterbeer in the evenings, but Draco seemed to collapse straight into slumber from a high. No wonder he needed some time in quiet before he was ready to act again in the mornings.
And Draco drank his tea in the morning with a gentle, absorbed expression, as if his thoughts had left behind beautiful patterns on the back of his eyelids that he needed to memorize before they disappeared.
No, Harry wanted more than the bare minimum of sex and desire from Draco.
And maybe it would be better to have nothing at all than too little.
Harry paused and tilted his head back to stare at Malfoy Manor. He had Apparated to such a distance from it so that he might have some solitude of his own to calm his whirling brain, but also because he had wanted to see what it looked like in moonlight. Maybe Draco had taken some of his inspiration for his other houses from it, and so the glimpse of the house like this would let him understand Draco better.
Harry caught his breath when he saw it now, the stones glinting with separate small sparks of light, the roof and walls a continuous silver stream of radiance even though they were made of easily discerned separate pieces. Yes, Draco had taken some of his ideas from this place. But even those ideas had been bent and reformed and reshaped into new pieces, so that the other houses he made were not imitations of Malfoy Manor anymore than a child is an imitation of its parents.
Someone moved in the moonlight near him. Harry turned around casually and saw Draco standing at a short distance, watching him with an intense gaze and a faint half-smile on his face. He looked once at the Manor, and then back at Harry. The faint smile widened.
“You wanted to see where I get my inspiration from?” he asked. His voice was soft, as if he thought speaking loudly would disturb the wrong ghosts in the moonlight.
Harry nodded. “It’s—wonderful,” he said, and left it at that, because he couldn’t think of a better word to describe it.
Draco faced the Manor again, and Harry made out a stark expression of naked yearning on his face. It surprised him. He hadn’t seen Draco so open with his emotions since they’d come to the Manor. Even the gentle expressions in the morning that now told Harry so much weren’t understandable in the same way that a smile from Hermione or a clasp on the shoulder from Ron would have been. Harry knew them because he had learned to speak Draco’s language. But this looks liked emotional English.
“I wonder sometimes what it would be like,” Draco whispered, “to have that gift of creation in my hands. To make something like—that.”
Harry felt absurdly honored. Draco could only mean that he considered Malfoy Manor better than any house he’d built. The admission couldn’t have been an easy one to make, and that he was allowing Harry to see it…
“I can only know the faintest shadow of it.” Draco’s voice had acquired a sharp edge that made Harry wonder if he was scolding himself, because that was usually the way he sounded when speaking to idiots. “Who would have thought it was so hard to learn? As much time as I spend with books and walking on prospects and watching the way that people react to other homes, there’s a substance to it that escapes me.”
“I’m sure you’ll build a house as good as this one someday,” Harry murmured. He fought the urge to step forwards and lay a hand on Draco’s elbow. In the past week, he and Draco hadn’t touched at all. Harry was afraid it would send mixed messages, and Draco seemed too occupied with his quest to find a real answer to the mystery of the impostor to notice.
Draco bowed his head and sighed. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“Why not?” Harry did move closer this time. The moon really was brilliant, perhaps aided by an enchantment the Malfoys had added to the outside of the Manor; Harry hadn’t had occasion to be in this part of the grounds before and wouldn’t know. “I’ve seen you work. You have at least as much talent as the builders of this house did. Not the same kind, perhaps, but the degree isn’t different.”
Draco stiffened for a moment, as if Harry’s long speech had reminded him that someone else besides him was here to witness his disgrace. Then he gave a weary little laugh and shook his head. “I don’t even know why I’m telling you this,” he said. “You know all of it already.”
“No,” Harry whispered. “I might have suspected it, but I didn’t know it.”
“And hearing it from my mouth makes it so much more real to you?” Draco stepped towards him, head lifted and eyes wide. Harry thought he looked as if he were moving in a dream. He wondered if he shouldn’t wake him up.
But Draco’s hand fell, weed-light, on his arm, and then he leaned forwards, and Harry decided that he didn’t care how dream-like Draco felt right now. Maybe he’d found the answer he needed. Maybe he thought as Harry did, that nothing else was likely to happen now and Harry would be removed from the case any minute. Either way, Harry wanted this to happen too much to stop it. He curved his arm around Draco’s waist and pulled him close, then closer still, full of warmth and sudden harsh breathing and quickening heart—
And without the familiar vibration of the hawthorn wand.
Harry held Draco still for a moment, though Draco made a little frustrated sound under his breath and strained towards his lips. Harry felt his thoughts tumbling and reorienting, and he swallowed.
“What’s wrong?” Draco asked, opening his eyes and staring into Harry’s. “You can’t have changed your mind in the last week, can you?” A jeering, incredulous tone entered his voice, which suited the Draco Harry was familiar with much better. “You can’t have decided that you didn’t want me?”
“I want you,” Harry said, and thought for a moment that Draco might have left his wand in his room. He could consider the family grounds safe enough to walk without it—
But no, he wouldn’t. Not after the imposter bypassed the wards so easily. He might have been incautious at times, but he’s not stupid.
Harry debated asking if Draco had the wand with him, and then discarded the notion. His Auror instincts had forbidden him from revealing that he could hear the wand even to Draco so far, and he certainly couldn’t chance revealing it and forfeiting his advantage in front of a man who might not be Draco.
“Then what’s the problem?” Draco made another straining motion, intent on getting to Harry’s mouth. Lines crimped around the edges of his lips, white lines of frustration that Harry had seen when Draco stared at a plan moments before crumpling it violently up and flinging it into the bin.
He almost kissed him then. The lines were Draco, the voice was Draco, the air was Draco; this was Draco in his arms.
But there was the wand that Draco should have carried and Harry should have felt but didn’t. And there was the confession to him in the open air. Harry wondered now if the “gift” that Draco had spoken of not having wasn’t the gift to build a house like Malfoy Manor, but instead the talent for architecture at all. The imposter could feign much, but Harry doubted he could feign an instinct like the one Draco had for houses.
“Come on.” Draco leaned nearer still, and there was sweet desperation in his voice and his fingers squeezed Harry’s arms and his teeth snapped a few inches from Harry’s throat.
“I want Draco Malfoy,” Harry told him, going with an instinct he couldn’t have named aloud, purely to see what would happen. “You’re not him.”
Draco’s head appeared almost to split, so wide did his mouth open in a snarl. He jerked back from Harry, flying, and he screamed wordlessly, and this time Harry could hear the difference in his voice. He’d probably spent those days he was in hiding perfecting his imitation of Draco’s intonations and manner, but he still wasn’t Draco.
Harry went for his wand.
Before he could, blinding pain ripped down his side. He screamed. He could hear the skin parting, being slickly slit open, popping and ripping. He dropped to one knee, still trying to lift his wand and strike back, but the pain of the wound—which felt as if it ran from his collarbone to his waist—was too great.
He collapsed. The imposter stepped towards him, trembling and blazing and holding his wand as if he intended to use it like a knife to open Harry’s throat.
“You don’t know who I am,” he said. “No one does, and no one shall, until the day when everyone in the world knows.”
Harry, panting, his hand soaked with blood where he’d placed it over the wound without even realizing he was doing so, told himself he would remember this riddle, and that he really should untangle it. But he couldn’t, not when cold was pouring into him where the blood had flowed out and a low, dull, persistent ache had settled into the middle of his body. He had never realized he could feel so empty, he thought absently. Well, there was that time Alecto Carrow had cast the Scooping Curse and torn half his guts out of him before he blinked, but then—
“What the fuck is going on here?”
*
Lucius cursed as the air in front of him turned thick and red with a haze like blood or anger, and as his hands began tingling fiercely. He sprang to his feet, seized his wand, and stormed towards the entrance of the house.
He met Severus on the stairs, and Severus nodded to him. “Intruder,” he said, and then opened the front doors and sailed out onto the lawn without pausing to wait for Lucius. Occasionally, Lucius thought as he ran after him, he was reminded that Severus had qualities he used to admire. Being as no-nonsense as a Dark Lord could desire was one of them.
The potions to tell them of a breach in the wards had worked better than expected, if they had caught the intruder in the open, Lucius thought as he raced behind Severus, who could move like a sprinter even in his long black robes. Severus had been sure they would alert them the moment the imposter appeared within the physical walls of the house, but the gardens and lawns of the Manor were wide, and protecting them completely probably impossible, given the recent development of Severus’s potions.
And then he saw the blaze of moonlight on fair hair that made Lucius want to call out for his son. He shook his head. No, here there would be only the intruder and not Draco. Draco was still in bed for the evening, as far as Lucius knew, having retired early the way he usually did on nights when an architectural problem was bothering him.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
That was Severus. Lucius nearly lost a moment staring at him in astonishment, but the attacker seemed to react with anger only. He snarled and launched a curse at Lucius, a burning green one shaped like an arrow that Lucius hadn’t seen since the nastiest days of the Dark Lord’s occupation of Malfoy Manor.
He cast the proper countercurse to deflect it, a glittering yellow net that swept up the arrow and tore it to shreds with a dozen clamping, clapping mouths. Then he cast a spell of his own devising that would cause painful bites to spring out all over his opponent’s body. He suspected it would be fairly quickly matched, but he could use even a momentary diversion to appease his curiosity about what Severus was doing.
Severus had fallen to his knees and was moving his wand in rapid passes, chanting urgently. Lucius saw the spread of blood in front of him then, and felt sick, wondering if the attacker had managed to lure or smuggle Draco out of bed, before he saw that the wound was on the body of one Harry Potter.
You had better be saving him, Severus, and not ensuring the murderer was successful, Lucius told his old friend silently. If the Boy-Who-Lived dies on Malfoy property, I’ll be in Azkaban faster than I can blink.
The attacker recovered then and roared back at him in a whirlwind of magic and screaming, and Lucius was forced to pay attention to him instead. Lucius’s respect increased as the moments passed and none of his spells could convince the other man to back off. This was a wizard who had studied, and who had probably managed to achieve some unique effects in his time. The idea that he had somehow contravened the bloodline wards on Malfoy Manor was less puzzling now.
Given that, Lucius was all the more puzzled that he should have chosen to waste his time on a series of petty crimes designed to discredit Draco.
Finally, one of Lucius’s other self-made spells, which tore the kneecaps apart, got through, and the attacker snarled again—it made his face look as if it would split in half when he did that—and Apparated. Lucius stood with his head bowed and his arms swinging for long moments before he sighed and rose to make his way towards Potter and Severus.
“Nice of you to help me,” Severus snapped as Lucius crouched down next to Potter.
“I figured that, by now, his life was either saved or spent,” Lucius explained simply, and then looked at Potter. His face was so pale that Lucius would have suspected him of vampirism if he didn’t know the cause. Potter’s lightning bolt scar and the dark lashes of his shut eyes lay like wounds against that papery skin. Above the long rip in his side—which made the edges of his skin and cloth both flutter like ragged paper—hovered a half-dome of purple light. Lucius turned and stared at Severus. That was another spell he hadn’t seen since the war, and when he had last seen it, it was enclosing blonde hair and legitimately pale skin.
The silence asked his question for him. Severus hated Potter. And yet he’d done this, using a powerful healing spell that always exhausted him, to save him.
Severus only glared at Potter through a dangling mop of hair and refused to answer Lucius with either word or gesture.
Lucius sighed and said, “Apparently the imposter attacked Potter. Can you tell with what spell?”
“I can,” said Severus coolly. “And since I have already healed him, I do not think the attack matters so much as knowing how the attacker managed to get past the wards in the first place—“
“I thought we had agreed that we couldn’t know that yet—“
“Potter managed to communicate to me,” Severus said, his lip curling. Perhaps flecks of spit from Potter’s tongue had touched his robe when it happened, Lucius thought in faint amusement. “Whilst I was—casting on him. He said that he had been talking with this pretender for at least five minutes before the attack. And the attack was what alerted us.” He swung his head to look at Lucius, and Lucius stifled the impulse to tell him to push that ridiculous mane of greasy hair out of the way. He could have done it at one point, when he was friends with Severus, but that friendship had died with Narcissa. “I specifically constructed the potions to warn us of any intrusion, not only a hostile one, so he cannot have triggered their warning merely by the use of hostile magic. What is the difference, Lucius? What about the attack was so different that it brought us out here?”
“Potter didn’t say anything else?” Lucius asked, holding back his private wonder that Potter had managed to say anything at all with a wound so fierce. Of course, Severus had always despised Potter, and so he wouldn’t have been particularly gentle with his healing. It was more than likely that Potter had awakened when he felt the harsh magic on his injury and gasped out the words that he thought might make Severus back away.
“No.” Severus sighed and rose to his feet, levitating Potter’s body along with him. Lucius watched him covertly as they made their way back to the Manor. Potter could have jolted and jounced along; that was common enough with even the most skilled levitation. But perhaps Severus didn’t want to have to do all the work of his healing over again if Potter’s wound tore open, because this levitation was simple and placid. “And I fear that examining the broken wards will not tell us anything, either, if he managed to slip through the net without alerting us.”
Lucius firmed his mouth into a thin line. The imposter’s attack on Potter, if Draco was his real target, confused him, but perhaps he sought to eliminate the most formidable defense Draco possessed, since he had shown the wards were nothing to him. Either way, Lucius thought it advisable to protect Potter.
And maybe he would be more persuadable in a sickbed than he was stubborn and healthy.
*
Harry remembered little of the time immediately after he was wounded. He did remember gasping out the truth to Snape, so that someone besides him would know that the imposter wasn’t an immediate arrival. Someone had to protect Draco.
He remembered Snape’s answer, too, snapped and hissed at him just before unconsciousness claimed him.
“You are a protector, not a hero.”
He couldn’t remember it without a feeling of confusion, especially when he woke and found that Snape had done a first-rate job of healing him, but still the memory sat in his mind and refused to be moved.
*
Draco looked down at Potter, and then away. But the sound of the other man’s troubled breathing pursued him even so, as did the realization of how easily silence could have claimed and ended that breathing.
And where would Draco have been? Powerless, inside the house, considering different variations of spells to banish the intruder back to his own time, not realizing that death had come and gone on the Manor grounds.
He claimed he was obsessed with Potter, and yet he didn’t even know for certain when he was being wounded.
Draco’s hands clenched into fists on his knees. He had come close to forgetting his desire to destroy Potter in the last few days, because the new problem of banishment had occupied his attention, along with the wish to build the Keller house correctly. He had assumed without thinking that Potter’s own fascination would keep him within reach, and when Draco wanted to reach out and wrap his hand more firmly around his soul, Potter would be there.
Now he had received proof that might not be so. Lucius had told him, with a raised eyebrow at the demanding tone of Draco’s question, that Potter had gone to the Ministry for an Auror briefing.
Potter felt able to venture away from him, under the conviction that the danger was not so great after all. How long would it be before his superiors assumed the same thing and yanked him off the case? And then all of Draco’s delicate, clever machinations might smash like the instruments in Dumbledore’s office that Potter had destroyed at the end of his fifth year, and Potter would be beyond his reach again, surrounded with people who would struggle to diminish his obsession with Draco.
No. He could not allow that to happen. Regardless of the pace at which the imposter acted, he was not Draco’s true enemy. The only person who had ever challenged him for possession of his freedom lay in the bed in front of him.
Death would have been kinder for him. Death would have been an escape from Draco’s vengeance. It was not surprising Potter should prefer it, but Draco could not allow him to flee into it.
And at that moment, his lips contorted as the vengeance was chosen and sealed in his heart with a snap like a steel wire taking a hare’s neck.
Nothing like the shock of the familiar to damage you, he thought, and leaned back in his chair to wait for Potter to wake up. He knew that his eyes on the other man’s face were bright with rage.
Chapter 13.
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By the end of the chapter, it feels as though this Draco is turning into his doppleganger, or at least, heading down that path
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I don't know if Draco's thoughts are actually getting more intense and crazy or not. He has them a lot more often now that he's decided on his vengeance, though.
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Thank you!
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The impostor character is getting more interesting, especially if he is indeed Draco from a different dimension.
Cool story!
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And no, Draco isn't well. But then, healthy people don't create a basement room centered around their obsession's hair and clothes and food, either.
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UGH, talking to characters in a fan fic is so not a good sign. The things you do to me.
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Of course, Draco not understanding his own feelings is precisely the problem. If he did, then he could stop himself short of falling into a trap even if he did still have sex with Harry.
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So how does fake!Draco know so much about Harry and real!Draco's conversations?
The attack was great, and Snape to the rescue! I didn't see that one coming, but it's early in the morning and I'm not quite awake yet I guess.
And the ending scene - what is Draco's plan for revenge???
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Some of what fake!Draco said is probably just luck. But remember that he's apparently put in a lot of time observing Draco and trying to learn what he's like.
There's more Snape in the next chapter.
Draco's plan will probably make you laugh. With frustration or glee, I'm not sure.
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Draco would be utterly certain that anyone trying to treat him was only doing it because they favor Potter so much.
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Another fabulous chapter!
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i really liked the moment between harry and the impostor before the attack. and the way his appearance changes when he's angry so nicely distinguishes him from draco. and confirms he's insane. :P
i loved the strangeness between snape and harry. it may turn out to be something totally different, but i'm a sucker for when snape has a begrudging respect and fondness for him.
as for draco, i must admit i want nothing more than to wring his neck at this point. he just seems...crazy. and his single-mindedness is troublesome, to say the least. i just don't see how this can end well with his being so mentally unbalanced. i know you said it likely wouldn't end well, in the traditional sense, but i was still holding out hope. now...
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I don't know that I would call the "normal" Draco completely sane, either, but I know what you mean. :)
Snape has a particular reason for having changed his mind about Harry here, but it takes Harry a while to pick up on it.
It's not a happy-sunshine-and-flowers ending. But I still maintain that neither of them dies, and it's in a way that they can both learn to live with.
re: Same Species as Shakespeare 12
As for the two Dracos - splinched-off personality is my guess now. Although the words of impostor!Draco imply some broader plot. But it seems the real Draco is so absurdly clinging to his hatred for Harry, as if he's in fact trying desperately not to fall for him. Thanks for telling this fascinating story!