Chapter Nineteen of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge?

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Chapter Nineteen—If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge?

The figure of Potter cowered in the corner of the photograph as Draco’s Cutting Curse approached him. He gave Draco one pitiful glance, desperate, his lips moving in small silent pleas, before the curse sliced the picture apart, and him with it.

Draco drew a deep, satisfied breath, and then felt the anger crash into him again. No matter how many pictures might look like that, the real Potter never would.

And the taunting words of his letter rang in Draco’s head again: You thought that this would destroy me? How stupid of you.

Screaming, Draco whirled around and aimed a curse at a case of food and scraps of clothing on the far side of the room. It also contained a table from a restaurant that Potter had once frequented before money troubles forced it to close. Draco had appeared on the day of the sale and requested that they sell him the table Potter spent most of his time sitting at and staring out the window from. The owner had done it gladly, never once suspecting that he was looking at the man who had engineered the collapse of his restaurant through a few successful bribes. Draco could not bear the thought that something giving Potter so much pleasure as a favorite restaurant should exist.

The table flew apart into splinters, tossed aside from one another as if flung by the hand of an angry god. Draco snarled, showing his teeth and not caring that he did so. That revenge was my finest. Original, not pathetic—

If that revenge was your finest hour, snarled the voice in his head that had Potter’s face and his own bitterness, what was the moment when you went to the papers?

Draco turned away from the glass case with a low scream. He could not, he would not, admit how deeply Potter had hurt him.

Of course not, because I’m not hurt at all. Why should I be? I got what I wanted. Potter is devastated and will be for the rest of his life. Those words he wrote to me were just a desperate attempt to bandage the wound that’s already killing him.

And Draco would have been satisfied with that explanation, if not for the fact that the words had infuriated him so much. Potter must understand him better than Draco had given him credit for, and that suggested an intelligence and a level of careful observation that Draco could not reconcile, could not, to the image of Potter that lived in his head.

He’s stupid. He deserves everything that happened to him. I’ll get over him and go on.

The bitter voice laughed at him, and Draco knew, as he had known during the moments when his world seemed to fall in on him as he read the letter, that Potter was too smart for this, and that he did not deserve to be tormented if he retained so fine a spirit and so high a pride as to reject Draco’s attempted control over him, and that Potter’s last letter had revealed him as someone who could mark Draco’s heart, too.

Again he screamed, and again, as it had all morning when he didn’t listen to it with deluded ears, it sounded like the noise of a vulture caught by one leg in a steel trap.

He turned in circles, his fingers crooking, his wand almost dropping to the floor several times as his hand flexed anxiously around it. There had to be something he could do, some strain he could relieve, some outlet that would allow him to be really angry without constantly bringing up the thought that he really had no right to be angry at all.

But the bitter voice laughed again, and the thoughts he had been avoiding for years—because he had never known himself well enough to entertain them, because he was careless as well as clever, because he had always seen the defeat of Potter as an end in itself and not something he, as well as Potter, would have to live past—closed in on him, swift and relentless as a hound pack tracking a fox.

*

Harry opened the door to the knock on it out of stubborn pride. No matter what happened, Malfoy should not hear of him brooding in his room and refusing to see anyone. Harry would face this with his head held high, and in the end the scandal would wear away, as scandals always did.

It was pleasant, of course, to be caught in an embrace instead of having a chattering reporter asking him embarrassing questions. Hermione had been at the door. Harry buried his head in her shoulder and clung back, hands so strong that he felt Hermione wince. But she didn’t say a word about his hurting her.

“I saw the article,” was all Hermione said, and Harry tensed, because he did wonder if she was going to scold him, and tell him that she’d always known Malfoy was no good for him. He was anticipating a speech like that from Ron. But all Hermione did was run a hand through his hair and say, her voice infinitely gentle, “Is there anything I can do?”

Harry sighed. “Do you know any place we could go that isn’t closed-in, but where people wouldn’t stare at me?”

“I do, as a matter of fact.” Hermione had a little smile on her face, mostly in her eyes, when Harry pulled back to look at her. “There’s a woman who almost got in trouble with the Department of Magical Law Enforcement a few years ago for poisoning a customer, but I was able to prove that it had been accidental; in fact, the silly woman who got poisoned ignored warnings that the food had ingredients she was allergic to in it. Ever since then, the restaurant owner, Lily Balfours, has owed me a debt, and she’s given me a private place to come and sit and eat and think whenever the pressure of the Department is too much. Come with me.”

The woman’s name, Lily, seemed like a good omen to Harry. He took Hermione’s hand and stepped out his door.

A whirring noise, a scream that sounded like it was breaking from a throat torn by previous cries, and then the imposter was upon him.

*

Draco sat with his hands clenched into fists and folded into his eyes.

He was trembling, and there was cold sweat on his brow. He couldn’t lift his head without feeling an ache in his neck and at the corners of his eyes. Every now and then the trembling built to a shudder that made him feel as if he were sitting in cold water.

He saw now, clearly, what the nature of Potter’s regard for him and his regard for Potter had been.

He saw that he was a fool.

How many years had he thought of revenge against Potter every day, even when there was no article in the newspaper to remind him of the Chosen One’s existence? He had done it at the height of his own triumph in constructing beautiful, prized houses. He had accepted congratulations and the tributes of lovers and the admiring glances of people who couldn’t help looking at his physical beauty even if they hated the Dark Mark on his arm, and still thought only that none of them were as beautiful as Potter’s submission would be.

And then he had received that submission, and it had broken him.

Draco didn’t understand how, because the strength he knew lay in conquering and breaking and destroying, but Potter had contrived to make giving and unhesitating acceptance a stronger force yet. He had smiled up at Draco with his body sated and exhausted and still bound—he had not asked Draco to remove the ropes that tied his hands to the rock in Avalon—and his eyes were glazed. Draco could have killed him in that moment and received no resistance. And still, he won.

Draco experienced a moment of bitterness licking down his throat. It was Potter’s luck, of course. That was the problem. No matter how many enemies came against him, he would always experience some lucky chance that would deprive them of the power to actually hurt him.

And then Draco winced. No, that wasn’t true, was it? Potter hadn’t been able to prevent his other lovers from going to the papers, and he had said it to Draco in the letter: a betrayal like that hurt him. So he didn’t escape unscathed. He escaped unbroken, but that was a different thing.

The thought leaped around the corner and stared at Draco with the brilliant eyes of a hunting leopard, and he could no longer avoid it.

Potter had escaped heart-whole because of Draco’s own weakness. Because Draco had wanted things that he didn’t even know he wanted. Because he had not acknowledged what it meant that he mused about consuming Potter and owning him at the same time.

Even now, with Potter reaching out to sever any connection between them, Draco couldn’t let him go.

And that was the most pathetic thing of all.

*

Harry was aware that he’d shoved Hermione aside, and that his wound had opened and was paining him again, and that the imposter was running towards him with his wand out and he was probably about to be hit with a curse.

But he had to admit, at the moment was paying more attention to the words that were tumbling out of the imposter’s mouth.

“You spoiled it!”

A violent green curse came for him, forked lightning that Harry thought in dread was the Killing Curse. But he didn’t know anyone who could cast it nonverbally, and indeed, when the lightning hit the wall beside him as he instinctively twisted aside, all it did was crack stone and make a puff of dust rise up. The Killing Curse had no effect on anything non-living it struck. Harry heaved a sigh of relief and tossed his sleeve, settling his wand in his hand.

“You ruined it! You ruined him!”

Harry was glad for the expression the madman wore: distorted, his voice a harpy’s scream, his hands stuck out and fingers crooked as if he were about to rip the flesh from Harry’s sides. This was a way that Draco would never look. He had probably received Harry’s letter, looked struck and uncomfortable for a moment, and then laughed coolly and gone back to his habitual expression of impatient amusement.

This man was not Draco, no matter how much he might wish he was.

Harry aimed at his feet and whispered a spell that Percy, of all people, had discovered and used during the war when he had to incapacitate others without their noticing. The imposter didn’t notice, either, too interested in trying to open Harry’s face with a Permanent Scarring Curse. Harry ducked, and then noticed Hermione standing up and drawing her wand.

He nearly barked at her to get down, but then realized the madman was focused on him, and probably wouldn’t see her. Harry kept one eye on her and realized she was raising her wand, twining it slowly. A series of golden bubbles flowed out of it. Harry smiled and matched her movements—this was a spell she had designed, but to be truly effective, it needed two wizards to cast it—and watched as his first spell took effect and the imposter’s foot began to vanish, toe by toe.

“You were the one who came between me and him, between the reflection and its reality,” the imposter was ranting now. He circled in front of Harry, never looking to the right or the left, which meant he didn’t see Hermione, and never even looking down, which meant he failed to notice the golden bubbles emerging from Harry’s wand. They probably wouldn’t have meant anything to him if he had. The spell was not widely-known, and Harry didn’t think this fool had much respect for magic that didn’t involve the Dark Arts. “You were the one who prevented me from making my face into his, from breathing life into his skin, from being what he was and what he should be. You, you, you, that is all everyone can talk about, and that is all Draco Malfoy can talk about. But no more! When you’re dead, then his obsession must cease—“

Enough of his toes had vanished that he suddenly tripped and stumbled, and at the same time, the net of golden bubbles flowed into being around him.

Hermione had based this spell on things she’d read about humpback whales, which would breathe air bubbles together underwater to trap their prey. The net of bubbles took some time to form and was inherently fragile until it had joined, but once made, it was firmer than it seemed. Now the net crowded in on the imposter and drove him backwards, then around in circles, until the net sealed and stuck to the wall.

The imposter raised his head and screamed. Harry stared. There were tears streaking his face now, and he no longer looked mad; he looked the way Draco would have if he could ever shed genuine tears.

And then he was gone, Apparated out. Harry gave a startled curse. At the very least, Hermione’s net should have prevented Apparition.

He stared at Hermione, who shrugged, said, “We’re dealing with a genius here, Harry,” and began casting charms to heal the wound in his side, which he barely felt. She kept her head down, but her hands shook, and it took a long time for her voice to return to its usual briskness. “Now, do you still want to visit Balfours’s restaurant?”

Harry nodded distantly, his mind more preoccupied with the words that the imposter had spoken, which Harry thought must be a clue to the puzzle. Ruined him? Spoiled him? The idiot thinks I did something to Draco? But he couldn’t possibly have known about the letter, even if he crept through the wards; it would have gone to Draco and not him. And why does he want to kill me and not Draco now?

Then Harry took a deep breath. It was highly likely that he wouldn’t have to worry about this, anyway; Kingsley would certainly drag him off the case now with a warning for unprofessional behavior, and Harry would have protection from the imposter. And he had cast Draco off, and of course there was no chance that Draco would ever try to resume the connection.

Malfoy. I have to remember to call him Malfoy now.

*

So. Now that you have decided all this is true, what are you going to do?

Draco took a heavy breath and brought his hands into his lap, where he could stare at them. He could feel curious gazes on him, from the portrait and the remaining photographs he hadn’t destroyed, but he ignored them. They could stare at his face; it wouldn’t reveal the tenth part of what was passing in his head.

Draco was angry at himself, laceratingly angry. And he could not pretend that his anger would be soothed by trying to destroy Potter again, not now. Potter had survived the worst revenge Draco could think of on the spur of the moment, and he and his friends were alerted now, and would defend against others.

Why was that the worst revenge you could think of? You knew that he’d had lovers go to the papers. You never would have devised something so simple and—pathetic—in a saner moment. Why did you do it?

And the answer to that question hit him with the force of the letter. Draco let himself slump forwards until his face rested in his hands.

I cared too much about him to do something more permanent, something that stood a chance of doing him harm he couldn’t recover from. The very fact that other lovers had done this in the past was a recommendation to me.

Would there never be an end to his folly and the bitter revelations he was uncovering every time he blinked? First he was more affected by their fucking than he wished to be, then Potter escaped able to heal, then he realized that he was just as hurt by the ending of their affair as Potter was—or more, since he could not have brought himself to write such a letter—and now—

He shied from the words, but the thought was there, bubbling beneath the surface of his mind, even if he wouldn’t speak it.

I care for him too deeply to do much to hurt him. I have to have him back not because I’m weak, or not only because of my weakness, but because he’s part of what I need to go securely about my day-to-day life.

Draco shuddered in revulsion. He would not have thought himself able, at one point, to ever make an admission like that.

And this is the thing Snape warned me about, the reason my father sometimes looked at me with pity in his eyes, the reason Weasley curled his lip and snarled but didn’t attack the way he should have if he suspected I was going to kill his precious friend with heartbreak. All of them knew me better than I knew myself.

All of them knew that I couldn’t live without him.

Draco spent a lot of time relaxing the muscles in his body, one by one, to come to terms with what he’d just thought, and what must have been true for years, if his father had had time to notice.

*

Lucius sank back in his chair and stared up at the empty portrait frame. There was no sense of a listening presence when he began to speak, but he was used to that. So long as she could hear, he would forgive the not-listening.

“I have failed, Narcissa,” he said, and then shook his head. “No, I don’t think that’s true. I have not protected Draco from himself, but I do not know that anyone could. He had to learn the lesson the way he learned it, through running headlong into the noose, and then learning how much the trap hurt when it tightened. The moment I saw him with Potter, I knew it would end no other way.

“I know you cared for him, dear one, but in one way, you can’t know him as I do.” His voice lowered, and Lucius was astonished to hear bitterness creeping into the words. Well, he was alone, and the occupant of the portrait was unlikely to walk back into it at the moment. “He’s become more self-satisfied in the years since the war, almost intolerably so. He thinks he knows everything about himself and everything about the world and everything about how to live as a Malfoy. He tells other people without faltering that I’m mad because I preferred to retire from the world and try to learn who you were through your diaries. He is blind to everything except the demands of art and his own soul.

“Selfish, Narcissa, to a degree that I can’t countenance in a son of my own line.” Lucius frowned; once he would indeed have been startled to hear himself speaking such words. Better selfish than losing one’s self, as his father had been accustomed to say about those who behaved like Gryffindors even when out of Hogwarts. But—“Draco is so selfish that he contents himself with what knowledge he possesses of his emotions and temperament already. It would take time and effort to look for more, and he wants that time and effort to do other things. And now—

“Now he’s learning what it’s like when someone else casts a hook into your soul and you never know it’s there until it rips out.”

Lucius closed his eyes. He had not seen his son since the Prophet containing the article about Potter had been delivered that evening. In fact, he was rather alone in the house at the moment. Severus had flung the paper down immediately and strode off to the Potions lab, pausing only to give Draco a cold look that Lucius did not understand. Weasley had used several dozen words that Lucius had never heard before, and then tried to Apparate out past the strengthened wards. At least he had received a severe shock, for which he had actually apologized, when the wards repelled him, but he had gone nonetheless. Probably to be with and comfort his grieving friend, Lucius thought.

And Draco?

Lucius did not know exactly where he was or what he was doing, but he didn’t need to. He had read the truth on his son’s face the moment he stared at the headline. Draco had looked sick and pale and weak with the strength of his own feelings, and the surprise of experiencing those feelings at all.

He had looked, in fact, as Lucius knew he had looked when he heard of Narcissa’s death.

*

“What are you going to do?”

Harry sighed and lifted his eyes reluctantly from his food to look at Hermione. The meal had been delicious; Harry wasn’t sure what kind of meat lay at the bottom of either his sandwich or his stew, but it was thick and naturally spicy and seemed to introduce his tongue to some new taste every time he took a spoonful. The sandwich had been covered with a white-red sauce that Harry was tempted to lick his plate to get every trace of. The drinks were plain water, but that tasted better with the stew, in particular, than he would have reckoned.

And there were carvings of lilies on the tables, on the walls, on the fireplace mantelpieces, on the chairs. It comforted Harry more than he would have thought possible to see his mother’s namesake flower in every corner.

Lily Balfours herself had taken one look at their faces, bowed, and escorted them to a corner table where they could be alone. Privacy wards kept Harry from worrying that reporters would chase him into the restaurant or that their conversation would be of interest to any other patrons.

But of course the end of the meal had to come, and, with it, the beginning of the conversation.

Harry grimaced, traced one finger through the sauce on his plate, and then shrugged. “I don’t know, actually,” he said. “Brave it out as best I can. The Prophet grew bored of Penelope eventually, and it’ll have to happen with Malfoy, too.” He was proud of himself for remembering to call the git by his last name, this time. “It’ll be harder since it’s spread across multiple days, but—“

“I didn’t mean about that.” Hermione leaned forwards and caught his hand. “I meant about getting revenge on Malfoy.”

Harry stared at her for a few moments, then snorted. “I don’t want revenge on him, Hermione,” he said. “I want him to take his slimy face and his pure-blood heritage and his sneering face and go away.” Stronger bitterness than he liked infected his words, but if he couldn’t be bitter in front of one of his best friends, who could he show his real emotions to? “I don’t want to see him or speak to him or listen to any flattery or excuses that he might dream up. And taking revenge on him would prove that I’m noticing him more than he deserves.”

Hermione bowed her head for a moment, then nodded, slowly. “I can see that,” she said. “But Ron will have a hard time accepting it.”

“I don’t care.” Harry slammed his free hand down on the table, making Hermione jump. “This is my life, and I don’t have to share it with Malfoy or Ron’s revenge if I don’t want to. And I’ll never want to share it with the first again.”

Hermione leaned forwards and stared intently into his face, probably trying to see if he was telling the truth. Harry stared steadily back, until she smiled and picked up her water, rubbing his hand with her thumb. “Good man,” she said.

Harry shrugged again. He was only doing what his natural inclinations told him to do, the thing that made the most sense. Why would he want to see Malfoy again? From now on, the idiot would always be dragging the dead ghost of the potential man, the one he could have become and whom Harry would have really loved, behind him.

I never want to see him again.

*

After hours of thought, only one plan was clear in Draco’s head, fluttering brilliant wings and bouncing up and down.

I need to see him again.

Chapter 20.