Chapter Nine of 'For Their Unconquerable Souls'- Break the Dam

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Nine—Break the Dam

So far, Draco didn’t think Harry deserved the serious consideration that Draco would put into trying to persuade someone who had listened to him in the past and was set on doing a single stupid thing. Harry did stupid things all the time. Draco would treat him like a child for right now, the way he was begging to be treated, and see what response that provoked.

“Oh, Potter, you can’t get up yet, of course not. First, I think your friends would murder me.” He simpered and gave a sickly sweet smile, secretly enjoying the way Harry stared at him. “And second, we need to find out what that curse is and who cast it. I won’t allow you to risk your health whilst you’re still treating my father—“

“I know exactly what that curse was and who cast it,” Harry said. Then he looked at his watch, as if the time were more important than Draco. Of course, he thought everything in his life, probably including dust, was more important than Draco, so Draco didn’t know why he was surprised. “You must not have associated with many mediwizards before, if you’re used to people who are unable to recognize spells when they feel them.”

Draco felt his jaw pop open slightly before he could stop himself. Downplaying the curse, yes, he’d expected that, but—was Harry aware of what his back looked like? Any curse that could do that deserved to be followed by a day or so of bed rest, but Harry didn’t deign to name it, though he claimed to know its identity.

Which meant he didn’t know what it was, or at least that was the most logical conclusion Draco could reach. And that was all the more reason to confine him to bed, until he could teach Draco a few simple diagnostic spells and Draco could cast them.

“And you’re doing such a marvelous job with the curses cast on my father.” He spoke the words with cutting deliberation, eyes fastened to Harry’s face. Let him lose his temper. It would be the easiest reaction to deal with right now.

Harry tried to look haughty in the way that Aunt Bellatrix had once tended to do when speaking of Andromeda Tonks. It made him look like a constipated goldfish. “Are you really still questioning my competence? Then you should be fighting to get another Healer assigned to the case.”

Draco clasped his fingers around his forehead and rubbed gently, in a lesser version of the massage he would have given Harry for his headache the other day, if the suspicious bastard had let him. Merlin, he hoped none of the Malfoys’ enemies ever got hold of Harry. They’d learn the fine art of confounding Draco’s family from him, and they wouldn’t be safe even behind the strongest wards.

But in the meantime, it was obvious that insults wouldn’t work, and neither would the sickly sweet falsehoods he had counted on provoking Harry into an obviously childish rage, which would give Draco a good excuse to tie him to the bed. So. Try partial honesty, then. At the very least, it can’t hurt, and he might take pity on me if he sees how bewildered he makes me.

“That was unfair of me.” Draco made sure to speak quietly, and to look at Harry with at least half as much earnestness as he really felt. “I keep forgetting—sometimes I think you’re the boy I knew at school, because you don’t look that different. But if I can change in the years since then, surely you can. You have.” Yes. You madden me even more effectively, now. “I—” He smiled and cupped air in his hand, because Harry would probably take those gestures as charming admissions of his weakness. “I don’t usually lack eloquence like this,” he said. “I think it’s because I know I’m strongly attracted to you, but you’re not someone I can flirt with the way I usually would. You want different things. I’m still getting used to providing them.”

For example, it would be nice if I knew how you wanted to be treated. You deserve kindness, sympathy, and care as someone who would risk your life and your blood for the Malfoy family, but you don’t seem to care about that at all, and in fact, you charge forwards into danger and pain as though you were paying for some unknown sin. What do you want, Harry? That’s different from what you need, obviously, but I’m unsure how far I should ignore your wants in order to give you what you need to survive.

He didn’t say those words, of course. They were a bit too bloody betraying.

“The important thing,” Harry said, as though he had tried many times to get the point across and Draco was simply not listening, “is that I know that curse. I’ve seen patients come into the Spell Damage ward suffering from it. It’s called the Beetle’s Bite, apparently because there’s some magical beetle in Germany or the like that spits acid—“

“Acid?” Draco didn’t try to prevent himself; he reacted as he would if Lucius or Narcissa were hit with acid, and he had the right, when Harry was part of his family. He grabbed Harry’s shoulders and spun him, shuddering harder than ever as he looked at the wound in the middle of his back, and considered how much worse it could have been.

Harry’s voice dragged with weariness and strained patience. Draco wanted to hit him, or maybe snog him. Anything to lay him flat on the bed and keep him there for a bit.

“Not actual acid,” Harry said. “The shock and the burning sensation combined feel like a bite from the beetle, that’s all. You took care of it with your cooling potion. Thank you.” He hunched away from Draco’s hand. Draco twitched with the temptation to close the distance, but he had to wonder if it would make him look weak. “And as for who cast it, it was either Xavier or someone who had Xavier’s help. The house is warded, but Xavier is still keyed into the wards.”

Draco’s head spun, his vision turned white, and he thought for a moment that he would find out it was possible to expire of exasperation. Then the moment passed, but it was imperative to catch Harry’s eye and tell him of his stupidity.

“Pay close attention, Potter,” he said. As I attempt to explain to you something every pure-blood child above the age of three understands. “There are points where courage becomes stupidity. This is one of them. Keep it in the back of your head for all future references, and perhaps you won’t have to actually experience one of them again.”

“It was easier to let him have access to the house to take his things back than to deal with his whinging when I kept him out,” Harry said. Draco tried to say something about how Harry should never have had to deal with Xavier’s whinging in the first place, but Harry spoke with his head bowed, staring thoughtfully at his hands, and didn’t notice Draco’s mouth opening. “Besides, I have a house-elf. Kreacher keeps him from stealing anything, setting traps, or poisoning the food. I never thought about his attacking from the outside, through the wards, because I never thought he’d actually want to harm me physically.” He gave Draco a wink that he obviously thought was lascivious, and proved how few competent teachers he’d had in the art of things lascivious. Doubtless he’d never experienced Harvey’s Never-Ending Orgasm Spell, either. “He rather likes me physically. On the other hand, that didn’t prevent him from leaving me.”

Well, yes, that’s because he was an idiot, Potter. And you’re another for dating him.

But Harry seemed disinclined to listen to talk about sex right now, so Draco pursued a different tactic. If it got Harry to feel guilty, then Draco might be able to use that to manipulate him into taking care of himself. “And is this Xavier likely to prove a threat to my father? My first thought was that someone had tried to kill you to harm him.”

“The Beetle’s Bite doesn’t kill, though it can render those who are more sensitive to it in enough pain to go to St. Mungo’s,” Harry said. He sounded as if he were reciting. He doesn’t apply those words to himself, Draco thought, and uncomfortable pity resonated through him. He doesn’t really think about himself as suffering that kind of wound, only his patients in the abstract. “Xavier is unlikely to prove a threat, no. He just wanted me to know that he was annoyed with me.”

“He hurt you.” And now Draco was uncomfortable because he was partially in sympathy with Brandeis. Of course, the member of a family had the right to inflict pain on another member of the family if it were necessary, because they would also take over the care and healing of the wounded one.

“And so what? I’m used to pain—”

Draco recoiled. No Malfoy ever gets used to pain. Pain is always an insult, a slap from the world, an inappropriate reminder of the power of events and people that lie outside our walls. That Harry should have become used to it is only a sign of how twisted he is by relying only on himself, and those friends of his, who are too easily fooled by his lies and his protests that he’s feeling better.

“—and there was no lasting damage. If anything, I owe it to him, as a reminder to tighten my wards and stop allowing him access to my home.” Harry held up a hand, though Draco was not aware he had done anything more than step forwards. “Before you can ask, that doesn’t mean I like pain. I tend to squirm and kick when someone tries to bind me, and you wouldn’t want a bruise disfiguring that pretty jaw of yours, would you?”

And with that, he hopped out of bed and hurried into the library where he had been attacked. Draco snatched at him as he went by, but didn’t succeed in catching him. He ran after him instead, mind filled with the taunting words that his father’s enemies would surely speak if they could see him now. A tagalong to a Potter, they would say. Surely that’s the role he’s wanted to play for years, if the tales that came out of their school years were true.

But Draco would, in fact, have rather played the role Harry had just accused him of enjoying—though he would have bound Harry to keep him safe from himself, and not in some debased sex-play. Draco preferred willing compliance with his desire in every aspect, and could you be sure of the movements in the mind of a lover who was bound? Perhaps he would decide that he wasn’t interested anymore, but thanks to the ropes, he might as well stay where he was and pretend to want the fucking. That wasn’t good enough for Draco. He would have someone who relished every nuance of the game, including ropes if they appeared, or he would have no one.

And perhaps that was why Harry attracted him so relentlessly, he admitted to himself. He might have glanced at him even if he hadn’t been Lucius’s mediwizard, as long as they crossed paths again. Winning submission from ordinary lovers was a game that Draco had become almost too skilled at. He needed someone who would bow his head, the unconquerable who would accept the conquest.

And that’s why I can’t let him sacrifice himself mindlessly, the way he’d like to do, Draco told himself as he finally caught Harry’s arm again and let his fingers brush the smooth skin clothing the muscles for just a moment. This is the only chance I’ll ever have, the only person who challenges me so much and will ever become a part of my family, the only one who’s made me think so many different things and feel so much at once in years. He’s perfect because he’s mine, and he’s mine because he’s perfect.

“Potter, you should be resting,” he said, and made his voice all that was gentle and soothing. Harry should have tipped his head back and relaxed in it the way a cat would relax in a stream of sunshine.

“A hint,” said Harry, and tried to elbow him in the solar plexus, the berk. Draco moved in time to avoid that, but the elbow still hit him in the ribs, which hurt far more than it should have. Harry kept them specially sharp, he thought, half in incredulity, as he wrapped his arm around the injury. “In general, I’m not fond of lovers who sound like my mum.”

He’s still stuck on the sexual relationship, isn’t he? He doesn’t even see what more we could be to each other. Perhaps that isn’t surprising, as disappointing as his experiences so far have been, but I do wish he would put as much effort into contemplating me as I do into contemplating him.

Harry had already approached the hole in the wards, and repaired it with the Defenso spell. Draco closed his eyes in resignation. Of course Potter would not have gone further in trying to find out ways to protect his home, when he had confessed that that protection mattered so little to him, but it only added to the list of things that Draco had to teach him. The Dark defensive wards that the Malfoys had specialized in from the time that one of their married sons betrayed his sister to his wife’s family were essential.

Meanwhile, Draco was consumed with the impulse to make Harry stop and slow down, so that for a bit they could simply talk together, and so that Harry would avoid aggravating his wound any further than he had already done. He spread his arms across the doorway, bracing himself so as to withstand the charge that Harry would undoubtedly make when he saw him.

But he turned around and smiled under a raised eyebrow that made Draco wonder absently how Brandeis and Adoranar had managed to avoid snogging Harry the instant they saw him.

“Did you know the adult human male arm is not actually strong enough to resist the determined charge of another adult human male?” Harry asked conversationally. “Xavier found that out the hard way. He really should have taken a course in mediwizardry before he started dating me. It would have prevented a number of unpleasant surprises from affecting him the way they did.”

Draco shook away the thought of Harry and Xavier rolling on the floor together, because the mere thought of Harry thrusting against someone else was not a pleasant one, and he was tormented by quite enough unpleasant thoughts already. “You were just wounded, Potter,” he said, and spoke slowly, enunciating the words, so that Harry could think about the sharp edges of them if he wouldn’t think about the actual words themselves. “Pardon me for being more concerned about that, and for thinking you should be flat on your back—“

“Not with that curse,” Harry chirped.

Draco cursed himself for forgetting that. Of course Harry would pick up on something like that and carry on about it at ridiculous length. Besides, his own slip gave him the distracting thought of what Harry would look like resting on his stomach instead, glancing over his shoulder with lowered eyelids—

“It was just an expression,” he said.

“But we’ve had the discussion before, about how important it is to be specific.” Harry cocked his head, and Draco could hear the sharp cluck of his tongue. “You don’t know about specific wording, you don’t know about the specific strength of arms, and you can’t find the words to tell me exactly why a spell that shares life force between two people is so important. I’m afraid that you must excel rather more at the practical part of your potions mastery than the theoretical one.”

Draco’s arms folded before he could stop himself, which meant Harry slipped and wriggled past him, pressing his hip most distractingly and shamefully against Draco’s. He should know that it’s hard to explain the importance of the Heart’s Blessing spell, Draco thought, as he followed Harry downstairs and into yet another library. Otherwise, my father would have done so at the moment he used it.

And how was he to explain that without explaining many other things first? There was an entire context that Harry was missing: the history of pure-blood families and their relationships to one another; how no ally ever did anything for another without gain, which made selflessness both distrusted in general and loved when it did appear; how Harry could command what he wanted now that he had made the appropriate sacrifice to join the Malfoy family, but how the family would not like Harry treating the benefits he had won so cavalierly, as if they didn’t matter to him.

Draco despaired of explaining it. More, he despaired of making Harry listen, when he couldn’t listen enough not to flex his back like that.

“You are the single most stupid person I know,” he said. It wasn’t what he had meant to say, really—he was trying to think of how to broach the subject of Harry’s ignorance—but it was what slipped out, and Harry, Harry-like, seized on it.

“Does that mean you want someone else treating your father?”

Draco scowled. “It’s not—it’s not traditional stupidity,” he said. He knew he was groping after words, and he hated it. He was always unattractive when he was trying to decide what to say, and that meant he wouldn’t impress Harry either as a potential lover or as a representative of the family he had joined. “You have knowledge of mediwizardry that I never will, that’s more than plain.” He snorted, and hoped Harry would take that as enough of a compliment. “But you can’t care for yourself in the most basic matters, where even Goyle would have no trouble—Potter, are you listening to me?” He had just looked up to realize that Harry was holding a book he had obviously Summoned during the course of Draco’s stammering attempts at eloquence, and which he was considering with more interest than he had used to attend to Draco’s words.

I make the effort, and then he can’t respond to it. Draco was not used to investing so much of himself in another person without getting something in return. He hardly refrained from running a hand through his hair. He knew he couldn’t, because it would make him look awful, but the temptation was there, which it hadn’t been in years.

“Every overdramatically emphasized word of it,” Harry said, and marched into yet another library. Draco was losing count. The Manor had more, though, if Harry was interested in them. It also had more books, and it did not have the doxies’ nest that Draco could see hanging in one corner under the fireplace.

“You can’t—” Draco began, weary. He felt some sympathy for Weasley and Granger for giving up, if they had to fight through stubbornness as thick as what confronted him now. It didn’t look as though Harry gave a damn for anyone’s worries about his health. The obsession with his patients’ pain was a strange form of selfishness.

“No legal authority prevents me,” Harry said.

Draco lost his head a bit, then; he could admit that, later. “Then let common sense have some authority!” He grabbed Harry’s arm. A tiny sigh was his only warning before a spark of magic half-cooked his nails and made him let go perforce. He leaped back and stared at his hand. No mark—which only confirmed the wandless nature of the spell, which only made him desire Harry more, which only made him think about the obstacles and want to beat himself to death with the stone upon which the doxies’ nest hung.

Harry had already turned the flames green with Floo powder when Draco looked up again. Draco felt briefly the dizziness, one step removed from nausea, he’d experienced when Gregory dragged him onto some Muggle technological toy that tilted the rider in a hundred directions at once. Yes, he would go to hospital still injured, wouldn’t he?

“I have a good mind to stay here,” Draco said. “You’ll run into trouble without me. That might teach you to reflect on what I’ve done for you and be grateful.”

Harry sighed and glanced back at him. He had a look on his face as if he were the one who had to deal with himself, instead of Draco. “Malfoy, don’t you understand? I didn’t ask for this protection. I didn’t want it. Your father isn’t different from any other patient to me.”

“I know you dislike him.” Draco scowled warily at him, wondering what the dunderhead was talking about.

Harry leaned forwards. “I won’t let that dislike prevent me from treating him,” he said precisely. “It doesn’t matter when I’m his mediwizard and he’s my patient. You don’t need to stick to my side. You don’t need to honor me. You don’t need to think the Heart’s Blessing spell was an extraordinary thing to have done. It’s not. I’ve done the same thing for a few other people before, and I’ll do it again in the future. Taking care of your father is mundane for me.”

Draco blinked slowly, feeling his hold on his jaw weakening again. He had hoped that Harry at least understood that what he’d done was extraordinary from the way the Malfoys reacted, but apparently not.

“And that’s why you don’t need to offer to protect me,” Harry finished, “or offer me potions, though I’m grateful you did. And that’s why I don’t find it necessary to accept your companionship in bed, either. That’s my personal life, outside of the interactions of patient and mediwizard, and I get to say what I do with it. Don’t rely on the Heart’s Blessing spell or my position as regards your father to soften me. If you and I ever were lovers, it would have to be because I liked you, not simply because we were in close proximity.” He hesitated, then added as if he were choking on the words, “And you’re handsome and witty enough to find someone who actually likes you as a person, rather than chasing futilely after someone who’ll always reject you.”

He turned around and whirled into the flames with a call of, “St. Mungo’s lobby!”

Silence descended where he had been.

And the world changed for Draco.

*

He sat on the couch in the library from which Harry had departed some time after—it felt like an hour, but was assuredly only five minutes—and combed his fingers through his hair, thinking with some incredulity of how badly he had been mistaken.

No, he had not found the words to introduce Harry to the context of the Heart’s Blessing spell and the world of the pure-blood families. But he had come to understand Harry’s context, in words that Harry probably hadn’t meant to deliver the blow they had.

No wonder Harry found it hard to understand Draco and Lucius and Narcissa, let alone their family’s ideals. He was acting in a world as free from those entanglements as it was possible to be. He had never had to make a choice and wonder if doing so would hand that other person the key to his family’s safety, if there was some information he had missed that would explain that lover’s motives as less than pure.

Or, at least, he had not done so, although the Dark Lord’s legacy should probably have made him more wary. Draco could admire his stubborn perverseness. The Chosen One had refused to let the Dark Lord’s choice control his love life.

And if he had chosen against sense—well, Draco could see how that one manifestation of obstinacy might be carried into other areas of his life, too. He would refuse to consider his own safety because it was what he “should” do, what he would be “expected” to do in the wake of the war and the threats against his life. Draco had been wrong to think he did not understand the pure-bloods’ danger. He did, but he had decided to ignore it because he hated the consequences, the caution he would have to practice otherwise, more than he hated physical pain.

He needed someone who could teach him that he could retain his freedom without having to act as if he never considered the consequences. His friends must have understood only part of that. Or else they didn’t have the power over his heart they’d need to prevail on him.

Draco did not have the weakness of Granger and the Weasels’ excessive compassion—and he was sure he could establish the needed power over Harry’s heart. Harry had handed him the key himself, though he didn’t realize it.

If you and I ever were lovers, it would have to be because I liked you, not simply because we were in close proximity.

Draco had gone wrong by trying to approach Harry’s seduction in terms of what they could offer each other. Harry wouldn’t think of that. He hadn’t sat down, as Draco would have, and weighed Adoranar’s good looks against the annoyance his ingratiating ways would cause. He had chosen, probably, because Adoranar was handsome and nice to him.

Draco smiled wryly. Yes, Harry had changed since Hogwarts, but not that much. He really ought to have recognized that mode of operation from their second meeting. Harry had chosen Weasley because he liked him and because Weasley was nice to him, not because he was thinking of the potential political advantage. Reared by Muggles, he would have been ignorant of those political advantages, in any case.

Draco could not blame him for his ignorance. He couldn’t expect Harry to somehow intuit the truth from Draco’s actions and vague hints. Harry would need to be taught, explained to but not condescended to—

And he would need to see what was likeable about Draco, not simply what was desirable about him.

Draco stood straight and stretched his arms over his head. Yes, it was a different order of business than what he usually dedicated himself to when he began a seduction, but he thought himself equal to it. After all, this was not a seduction with the view of spending two or three nights, or a few fortnights, in bed with the same person.

Harry was Draco’s. It was time to show him why he should be interested in making Draco his.

Chapter 10.

Comments

[nonajf.livejournal.com]

LOL! Harry is driving Draco completely nuts. It's really amusing reading the two working and thinking at such cross purposes.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I think the funniest scenes are yet to come, when Harry is beginning to admit that Draco has a point and yet refuses to give in completely right away. It will frustrate Draco so much.