Chapter Eighteen of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Eighteen—These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

Harry woke alone.

He opened his eyes slowly, wincing from the unexpected stab of a beam of moonlight straight into his face. Then he turned his head from side to side, and found the grass beside him empty, the grass beneath his feet empty, and the chairs at the table empty. His hands were still bound above his head.

Harry half-shut his eyes again and forced himself not to react with the panic and loneliness that wanted to surge through his veins. He was a trained Auror, and he had been in worse situations than this. Besides, he had not forgotten the way the magic had brought him what he wanted last night (or early this morning; he had lost all track of time with the motionless moon and stars overhead). He concentrated, and a shower of silver dust fell on his bonds and weakened them, letting him sit up.

His wrists tingled fiercely, and for long moments Harry concentrated on rubbing them and didn’t think about anything else. Then he stood with a small shake of his head and staggered back towards the table. His limbs were stiff as they always were when he spent the night on the ground. He’d been asleep for some hours then, at least. He knew that much.

And then he smiled as he remembered that he could solve one problem, at least. He pressed his palms flat against his knees and willed magic into them. The aches in his muscles flowed out and into the ground like water. Harry tilted his head back with a sigh and clasped his hands above his neck, stretching them and flexing his fingers. He could feel the last of the pain leave him.

The pain in his body, at least.

Had Draco abandoned him here? Why? Looking about, Harry could see no sign of him or the Clearstar broom, and any depression his body might have made at rest in the grass was long gone. Harry reached out, and a flagon of fresh water appeared on the table to his desire and his hand. He sipped, slowly, whilst he considered what had happened.

Draco could have left for no common reason. On the other hand, considering the isolation of this place from the rest of the wizarding world, Harry doubted he could have received word from his father. And leaving Harry—who was his bodyguard—behind made no sense if he’d been attacked by the imposter. Neither did not leaving word make sense.

So the best guess was that he’d been frightened by something that had happened during the lovemaking last night. Harry emptied the flagon and nodded with some determination, then sat down in front of a slice of thick white cheese that had appeared in the middle of the table. The phoenix song was rising again, though more subdued than he had heard it last night.

And that left the question of what that thing had been—a question Harry didn’t think he could answer yet—and how he was going to leave.

The phoenix song adopted an urgent tone, quivering in his ears like a harpstring, and a swift glow of purple light formed around him. Harry smiled slowly, holding back the emotions that wanted to crash over him with the sheer pressure of his own mind, and spread his arms out, cocking them like a bird’s wings.

In moments he had risen from the ground and hovered above the table, the magic obeying his unspoken wish that he not go higher for now.

Did Draco know about this? That he didn’t need a broom to come here?

Harry doubted it. Otherwise, he surely would have brought Harry down this way, to impress him the more and enslave him with—what? What did Draco imagine Harry needed that he had not already given to him?

For a moment, the image of what might have been stained Harry’s mind. He pictured himself and Draco swooping down hand in hand, their gazes touching as much as their fingers, their eyes then returning to the island below. Yes, Draco would have brought him that way, if he’d had any notion of it.

But he hadn’t.

Harry rose higher and higher, his body swaying slightly, his lonely gaze now taking in the island, the table, the chairs, the inlet of moonlit water around the table, the peace in which he and Draco had dined. Yes, this was a wondrous place, and he never would have known it existed if not for Draco. He wondered if he could understand Draco a little better if he thought of his soul as contained in the beauty here. Had he borrowed from it, or from his understanding of it, to shape the beauty that was his houses?

But such thoughts could not push back the emotions for long. Harry thought of Draco’s potential, of the choices he could make, and of what might have happened if he had come to such an important crossroads alone.

He could not think on it. The implications were too large, too demanding.

He rose further into the air, magic and warm wind alike caressing him, and a silvery tear opened in the sky ahead of him, taking him where he wanted to go.

*

Draco leaned back and closed his eyes. In front of him stood a post owl, carefully nibbling on the piece of bread he had offered it from his own plate, and beside it lay a rustling paper that he feared as much as he had feared the letter from the first patron who hired him as an architect.

Bitterness twisted within him, and he could not even say whom it was directed against. That was the first time that had happened, too, in many years.

But he had made the only decision he could have, and the shock of doing so would pass in time.

Draco rose and opened his eyes. He wanted to visit his room beneath the Manor, the one that contained the relics of Potter and had taught him what Potter would look like in defeat. He would soon have the chance to compare the expression on the face of the portrait to the expression on the face of the real one.

*

Harry appeared outside the door of his flat and spent a moment leaning against it before he removed its wards. His back prickled and emotions rasped up and down his throat like waves of tears that could not be shed. His mind reeled towards comprehending what Draco might have done, the enormity and the breadth of it, and then turned away again, shuddering.

For a moment his hand dug into the door, and then Harry drew it carefully back before he could gather splinters under his nails. He really had no proof. Draco might, after all, have heard something from his father or Snape, and Harry knew he cared for Snape if not for Lucius. Harry could manipulate the magic of that place, but he was not a pure-blood, and there might still be hidden channels of communication in it that required knowledge as well as will to use.

Until he knew why Draco had left, he would not think the worse.

But on the other hand, he could not bring himself to go back to Malfoy Manor. Not yet. Ron was there, and he could serve as a guard to Draco, and, for that matter, to anyone else in the house if someone had happened. He was not as good with spells as Harry, but that would matter little against someone as skilled with magic as the imposter was. And he would protect the Malfoys or Snape until he died, no matter how much he might hate them. Harry knew Ron’s heart and how he’d grown in the past few years. Revenge was no longer as important to him as protecting the innocent.

He stepped towards the perch he kept for visiting owls and noticed there was already one there, plucking scraps of meat with a Preserving Charm on them out of the bowl at the end of the perch and bolting them. Harry reached out a hand. It trembled. He drew it back and breathed carefully until he could pick up the folded bundle the owl had brought him without dreaming that it contained news of Draco’s death.

But it was not a letter. It was the Daily Prophet, which Harry had not read in some weeks, thanks to their preoccupation with talking about Penelope and the sordid facts she’d carried from their shared bed to Rita Skeeter’s eager ears. Harry wondered for a moment why the owl had delivered it now. Sometimes, in the past, he’d taken the paper again when he could be reasonably certain that people had lost interest in the scandal, but he couldn’t remember leaving those orders this time.

And then he saw the headline, and he stood very still. For a moment, a whirlwind of black and red devoured his vision, but it passed, and he saw the headline again, and the picture beneath it, pale and sharp-featured and fair.

BOY HERO ‘A GENTLE, TREMBLING FLOWER’ IN BED:
Draco Malfoy Reveals All

Harry looked again at the photograph. It showed Draco tossing back his head and laughing, his head framed against a square, sunlit window. It must have been taken this morning, Harry thought; this was the evening edition of the Prophet, now that he thought to check. Draco had left him on the grass and gone straight to—yes, Skeeter’s byline was on the article.

Harry closed his eyes. The whirlwind had not come to him again, but now he swayed on his feet as if he’d skipped two meals. The water he’d drunk earlier threatened his throat and mouth in a molten, bitter mass for a moment. Then he staggered forwards and put his back to the wall, fingers putting dents in the page as he read.

It was with considerable pleasure that I sat down with Draco Malfoy this morning. This supremely talented architect, survivor of the war against You-Know-Who, and half-orphan, following the tragic loss of his beloved mother and his father’s retreat from the world, now has another distinction, one that he’s eager to explain and exploit.

“I never really expected to lie down with Harry Potter,” he told me, drinking a delicate white wine that filled the room with sweetness. “I certainly never expected to lie down with him underneath me.”

“Then he prefers the submissive posture?” This was a detail I have pursued for long and patient years, as my dear readers will know, but in vain. His first lover would speak only coyly, and his lovers willing to be truthful since then have mostly been women.

“Prefers it?” Mr. Malfoy laughed and put down his glass. I was glad to see him in such fine spirits. He deserves it, after everything he has survived. “It’s necessary to him. I bound his hands, and he moaned. Then he thrashed when I started removing his clothes.” He leaned forwards, and I knew I was about to be the recipient of a great confidence, as I was just a few moments later. “You should have seen his eyes. Eyelids trembling, neck strained back, hair tousled around his head—but the most unforgivable thing was his eyes. I could see passion and desire and fear rushing through them, and I truly believe he would have wet himself if I walked away then. Who knew the Chosen One was a gentle, trembling flower in bed?” He shook his head in wonder and reached for his wineglass again.

Harry licked his lips. His throat was so dry, and there was a heavy, dark buzzing in his ears. He relaxed the grip of his fingers, which threatened to tear the paper before he could read the article fully, and continued. He couldn’t have looked away if Draco had walked through the door at that moment, apologizing.

“Unforgivable? That seems an odd word to use.”

Mr. Malfoy snorted and again set the wineglass down. I would have thought him nervous, but I could imagine what work those hands had had, to coax and settle a nervous hero, and I could not blame him. “Of course it is, but Harry Potter is an odd person. A hero—and I have to admit that he played the part as well as anyone could have.” An unusual bitterness twisted beneath the surface of his voice, but I believe I can reveal its source to my loyal friends. He was thinking of his mentor, Severus Snape, who was a hero during the war by some accounts that might be trusted, but has never been honored for it as he deserves, in spite of my arguments to the contrary. “But underneath, he’s so soft. So easily breakable. And he never seems to realize that baring that weakness could get him in trouble. He has to guard himself, given his celebrity. But he doesn’t.” He snorted and then gave me a lascivious grin. “Look at the way he tumbled into bed with me.”

Brightness. The haze Harry was seeing the article’s words through was as bright as the sun.

“Would you care to give me some details of what Harry Potter’s like in bed, other than gentle and trembling and willing to have his hands bound?”

“He likes to have the skin behind his ear bitten.” Mr. Malfoy winked at me. “Of course, I don’t know if anyone else will ever get close enough to him to try that after he sees this article, so let’s see what else I can tell you.”

I hastened to reassure him that of course Mr. Potter would have to understand and become reconciled with him. The natural curiosity of the public about its heroes’ sex lives has to be taken into account.

Mr. Malfoy chuckled softly and toyed with the stem of the wineglass. I feel sorry for everyone who has not seen him as I saw him in that moment, gazing moodily out the window in my office. There is something indefinable about those eyes, silver as mist on a February morning, and his hair shines quite nicely, too.

“He also likes being endangered, as well as bound,” Mr. Malfoy said then. “He let me close to him when he had to have some suspicion of me because of our legendary rivalry in school. He let me do things that could have caused him pain, even if they didn’t. It appears that he’s just panting to roll over and let someone else take control.” He paused and pinned me with a bright gaze. “Imagine what might happen among Britain’s criminals if they know that they only have to threaten him, instead of the innocents he goes mad with protecting, and he’ll melt like ice to their touch.”

Harry blinked. There was something light and wet on his cheek, and he lifted a hand to touch it, but that caused the side of the paper to dip, and he couldn’t read the words on the level anymore. He had to pick it up again, and let the wet thing trickle down his cheek unnoticed.

I murmured that it was certainly very shocking, and what else could he tell us about the way the Chosen One liked it in bed?

“Rough,” said Mr. Malfoy. He licked his lips, and I could only envy the pleasures he was reliving. “For all that he also appreciates gentleness, and you’d need a little of it to melt him. I was pounding him so hard that our skin squeaked, and still he kept tossing his head and gasping and begging me for more.” He paused thoughtfully. “He might, for that matter, melt if you pushed him into the wall, whether or not you’d threatened him beforehand.”

I laughed. “That’s certainly a delightful thing to imagine. I don’t think there’s a wizard or witch in Britain who hasn’t dreamed about shagging our hero.”

Mr. Malfoy’s tryst with Mr. Potter must have been wonderful indeed, because for a moment I caught a glimpse of an emotion I would have called jealousy on anyone less gracious in his eyes. But he shook his head, and it was gone in the next instant. I am confident it could not have been real. Mr. Malfoy is freely sharing information about Mr. Potter’s favors with the world, after all, instead of keeping them in the privacy of his head or their bed.

“He likes to be touched on the spine,” said Mr. Malfoy. “On the shoulders. On the stomach. His breathing would deepen and quicken when I merely brushed him there. For that matter, he would inhale sharply when I touched the back of his hand.” He flashed a smile, bright and malicious and utterly charming. “Can’t you imagine what must have happened to cause him to be that touch-starved? I’ve heard his Muggle guardians didn’t treat him well. And he must bear the marks of those scars on his soul.” He uttered a wistful little sigh. “If I had been able to touch it and mark it in the same way, then I would have counted myself well-satisfied.”

And more than this he revealed, much more. But, my dear readers, you must wait until tomorrow to read the rest of it. A lady never tells all at once!

Harry folded the paper and laid it down—or tried. He’d moved away from the table in the entrance without realizing it, and so the Prophet dropped limply to the floor. Harry breathed noisily through his mouth for a moment, looking out the window at the gathering light of sunset. He felt emotions battering at him, tearing at the walls he’d built up against the realization that Malfoy was anything other than what he seemed, what Harry had wanted him to be.

Ron was right. He did have revenge in mind, and obviously, this was his way of taking it.

Harry laughed wildly for a moment, until he clapped a hand over his mouth. He bit the center of his palm, savagely, several times, and began to struggle against the selfishness that wanted to drown him.

He couldn’t just feel what had happened to him, horrible though it was to realize that the scandal would be dragged across the front pages for days and days. He had to feel what had made Malfoy do this, what had made him disobey and deny the potential Harry sensed so deeply embedded in him.

The wave of emotions broke upon him, and Harry realized it was pity for Malfoy, an ocean’s worth of it.

He was trying to destroy me. He put too much effort into this for it to be a simple revenge plot, and he was too obviously pleased that I was infatuated with him. So, yes, he probably hoped I would crumple to the floor and sob my heart out, then lock my bedroom door and refuse to come out for months. He probably hoped I would never love again, or something equally as nonsensical and melodramatic.

Harry began to smile. He had the feeling that the smile would look rather distended if he confronted it in a mirror, but he had no mirror in front of him right now, and the thought tearing through him was desperately sorrowful, desperately pitying, desperately proud.

He doesn’t know me very well, does he?

Harry lifted his wand in the air and cast the spell that would summon one of the many available post owls in London. Then he turned to find the things he needed.

Ink. Parchment. A quill.

Words.

*

“You’ll be having company soon,” Draco told the portrait of Harry that hung in the center of his relics room, and drained the glass of wine he held. “I imagine that he’ll send me a Howler for my betrayal, as he sees it, and I’ll save that with all the rest. The final mark of his broken heart.” He paused thoughtfully. “Or maybe not the last. I might take a few photographs of him trailing about the city with his head bowed and put those in here to join you.”

The portrait lashed him with a look of loathing that would have made Draco afraid, if he were one of those superstitious fools who believed painted people could leave their frames and enter the real world. The painted Potter bowed his head and wrapped his hands around his eyes and mouth.

“You’ll see,” Draco said. “It’ll be glorious. You’ll see.”

He set his wineglass down abruptly and stood to pace about the room. Harry’s Howler was taking far too long. Surely he could not have spent that much time asleep in Avalon.

Draco stopped pacing and drew a deep breath. He didn’t like the way he was reacting. He didn’t like the hollow sound in his words when he spoke to the portrait, as if he were trying to convince himself. Even the interview he had given to Skeeter sounded less pleasant in his memory than it had been when he gave it.

But he could not question his revenge. He had made the only possible choice he could. He could not sacrifice himself, all of himself, for anyone, let alone Potter.

Then the soft swish of an owl’s wings announced a visitor. Draco raised his head, grinning, and trying to ignore the uncomfortable edges that the smile carved his mouth into. He had relaxed the wards enough that owl post could find him here in this room, just for the afternoon. It was not as though the bird would report anything to anyone.

The envelope it carried was plain, though, without a trace of the red color and smoking trail that a Howler would leave. Draco raised an eyebrow as the owl dropped the letter over his head and he caught it handily. Perhaps Harry had sent him a broken-hearted missive telling him he understood and begging Draco to take him back. That would be even better.

Draco nearly tore the single sheet of parchment inside in his haste to get the letter open. He paused and forced himself to count to fifty—though he cheated, and did it by fives—before he began to read.

Draco:

You thought that this would destroy me? How stupid of you. I’ve had lovers go to the papers before, and I’ve always survived it. Not only is your revenge pathetic, it’s not even original.

I have to thank you, though, for breaking your hold on me the one way you could: through disappointing me. You haven’t betrayed me, not really. You’ve betrayed all that’s best in you, your own compassion and honor and pride and dignity. And having done that, you have nothing left. You might imagine you’ll go on to a new phase of your life now, one where I don’t trouble you, but in reality you’ll always be doubling back and licking your revenge and whining like a lapdog sucking an old nappy.

I’m wounded, but I’ll heal. You’re hollowed-out, and you won’t. Everything you gave me was given unwillingly, making the best of a bad bargain. Everything I showed you was a gift.

I’m sorry for you, Draco, really. It must hurt to know that you’ve thrown away the best thing in your life. With all that’s befallen me, I’ve never done that.

Harry Potter (I still am that, with all that you did to make me yours).

And the world changed for Draco as inevitably and suddenly as though the walls of his room had fallen in on his head.

Chapter 19.

Comments

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you! Those were the two sections I spent the most time on; I wanted them to be as emotionally effective as they could be.