lomonaaeren | Chapter Twenty-Two of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- Fortune's Fool

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Chapter Twenty-Two—Fortune’s Fool

Draco woke slowly, wincing as he laid a hand against his throat. It felt as though he had been running in winter air and trying to swallow knives at the same time. He sat up, and winced again as his head throbbed.

“Welcome back.”

Draco looked up quickly. Faustine sat in a chair across from him, her legs crossed as she sipped a steaming drink from a small silver cup. Her eyes were dark with knowledge, her face creased in lines of calm amusement.

Anyone else in Draco’s position would have looked around for the opal and the wheel. Because he knew Faustine would expect him to do that, he kept his gaze fastened on her instead, and tried to match her tranquility as he sat upright in the chair. A puddle of drool had formed on the table where his chin had rested; he Vanished it without drawing attention to its existence. Then he laid the wand next to him and said, “I want to know what you did to me.”

His voice was remarkably controlled. Draco felt proud of himself for an instant. Then he thought of what Harry would likely say if he were here, and the remembrance of contemptuous green eyes and power that argued down any lie he could present in his own defense sobered him at once. He dug his fingers into the underside of the table to escape Faustine’s sight, almost not caring if he received splinters for the action.

“I did what I said I would.” Faustine inclined her head in a manner that reminded Draco irresistibly of the way his mother had bowed to the Dark Lord when he made a point she disagreed with, the day she died. “Tore the truth from you, and made it impossible for you to lie to yourself any longer.”

“Am I under a permanent trance that mimics the effects of Veritaserum, then?” Again Draco was proud of himself. Severus would have snapped at the notion like a cornered dog; his father would have flown into rages like the madman he was. Draco—Draco Malfoy was cool. He even raised his eyebrows, smiling slightly, inviting Faustine to give him the right answer so that she could share in the joke.

“Nothing so likely to make you think yourself innocent.” Faustine reached down to the chair beside her and lifted something into view.

At first glance, Draco thought it was a fishbowl—at second glance, a Pensieve. Then he realized the silvery sides weren’t solid, and indeed bulged and rippled in such a way that he couldn’t understand what kept them vaguely in place. They seemed ready to flow down the sides of Faustine’s cupped hand as the opal had flowed down its wheel. He pushed himself back slightly from the table, and then made out white letters floating in the middle of the silver. He hesitated.

With his attention, the letters sharpened. He caught a glimpse of the words I need Harry Potter, and then he snarled and jerked his head back. The words once again became amorphous.

“What have you done?” he asked, and once again his voice was the soulless thing that he knew it needed to be if he was to break Faustine for what she had dared to inflict on him. He had picked up his wand without realizing it, and part of him was regretful for that, because it ruined the subtlety of the threat he wanted to make. But that didn’t matter. He leaned forwards, his hands braced on the table, one digging splinters into his fingernails again. “This is some joke, some trick.”

“Do you know that the Romans discovered some magic they didn’t bother to pass on to their descendants in Latin incantations?” Faustine asked dreamily. “We’re limited by thinking Latin the source of all magic and tracing so many of our traditions back to Rome. The Greeks knew things, in their time, that made Roman civilization look small—as the Senate and the Emperors themselves acknowledged. Speaking Greek, and reading old Greek manuscripts, will get you surprising results.”

Draco sneered. Faustine didn’t deserve even that much acknowledgment from him, but a voice in the back of his head whispered remembrance that she knew how to contact Potter. Maybe if he looked more human, more breakable, more approachable, he would get assistance from her still. Draco was not above manipulating the pity that others might lavish on him. “And yet, you made Rome the theme of your restaurant. It’s plain to see what you most value.”

“And because you build beautiful houses,” Faustine asked him, her voice almost a sigh, “is beauty the only thing you value?”

Draco tried not to stiffen, but fastened his hands on the edge of the table and said evenly, “Go on.”

“I have learned Greek,” said Faustine. “And I have learned magic in that tongue that is parallel to the magic we’ve learned to wield in Latin and English. The road of Latin and English produced Veritaserum. But that potion has drawbacks. It can’t pull truth from the drinker that he doesn’t know himself, and a determined subject can still lie by omission and by guiding the questions with the truths he reveals. It can’t pierce the truth in the soul.” She nodded to the side, and Draco followed her gaze to see the red-black wooden box on the shelves again. “The Greek magic can, and it brings forth the truth that the Veritaserum drinker would be able to deny, if he was skilled in lying to himself.”

Draco snarled at her. “And of course you would have me believe you.”

“You came here wanting to know where Harry was,” said Faustine. “You seem to have something invested in my truthfulness. And besides—“ She tilted her small silver cup, and Draco beheld the milky sheen to the chocolate in it that he knew came from added, diluted Veritaserum.

“My price,” said Faustine, “for giving you the information that you need to contact Harry, is for you to look into that.” She nodded at the silvery blob hovering beside her. “And never dare to tell me that you don’t believe it, or that you can’t read the wording. It will come clear enough when you lean close and concentrate.”

Draco considered quietly for a moment, his eyes locked on Faustine. He didn’t want to give this woman, who might turn into an enemy as easily as an ally, a glimpse of him acting weak.

Then he remembered that he had fainted in her presence, and from a pain that he shouldn’t have allowed to affect him, even if she had been telling the truth and the magic was tearing the truth out of his soul. She had a low opinion of him for hurting Potter, too. He could not base his decision on what Faustine thought of him, especially when he didn’t have any idea yet if her opinion was worth having.

And whether or not he needed Potter, himself, he needed the chance to make things right between them. To apologize, if he must. To tell the truth, even, if Potter turned out to demand that.

He gritted his teeth and leaned forwards.

The silvery blob had drifted nearer, probably at a motion of Faustine’s wand Draco had been too occupied to notice. Now the sides were trembling and melting again, quivering so hard that Draco wondered if they would explode on him for a moment. But he felt nothing more than a passing coolness, like the touch of a strand of mist, even when a drop did leap off the fishbowl and brush against his forehead.

And then the letters formed.

I, Draco Malfoy, need Harry Potter. I have lived all my life thirsting after him, the only greatness I ever knew—the one figure described to me in fairy tales who sounded as if he might actually live in the real world under the sun. My father’s tales of the Dark Lord made me shiver, but I wanted Potter. I desired him as other people desire sunlight, or diamonds, or release from poverty.

Draco jerked his head away, but the protest he wanted to make died on his lips when he saw the smile Faustine regarded him with. Draco stared back at the letters again instead, and they surged towards him and crowded on his soul.

And then when I met him, and discovered that he was actually nothing like what I’d been told, I decided to punish him for being that way.

Draco sat back with an angry toss of his head, his fingers clutching the edges of his chair. “I was never that way,” he said, whilst the letters dissolved into strands of silver-white like hanging cobwebs.

“Yes, you were.” Faustine’s smile had grown remorseless, which was worse still. “Such a selfish, spoiled brat. You wanted a whole person to satisfy your cravings, when other people would be satisfied with attention, or a friendship. But not you. Not Draco Malfoy. Even if he hadn’t become friends with Ron Weasley, you would have been disappointed, because he was too generous to confine himself to you alone. He had to save others; he had to teach them, and sympathize with them, and be their friend. And you couldn’t have tolerated that.”

Draco felt his lips drawing back to expose his teeth. “You make Potter sound like a saint, and me like a dragon,” he said at last, when he thought he was in enough control of his anger not to simply explode at Faustine. “You must know that that is not true.”

Faustine ran a hand through her hair, catching it against imaginary curls and tangles there as if she wanted to avoid answering him. Only when she lowered her hand to the table again and fixed him with an even gaze did Draco realize that she might have been subduing anger of her own. It cheered him, but not as much as it would have under different circumstances. Faustine was still the one in control, and he had to yield to her power. He would never be happy as long as that was true.

“I know that Harry has his own faults,” she said. “I shudder to know what this spell would reveal as a glimpse of his soul, actually. But we are talking about you, Malfoy. And I say that you have the greed of a dragon. You weren’t born with it, no. You encouraged it to grow at every opportunity, and when you had the chance to turn away—as you did when your mother died and you were shocked, for the first time, out of absorption with yourself and into grief—you deliberately recommitted yourself to the selfish path instead. You received multiple warnings, from people concerned with you, not only Harry, to draw back when you began pursuing him. Of course you did not. The selfishness extended to your opinions. You could not believe that you, the great and mighty Draco Malfoy, might be wrong.”

Draco snarled and clenched a fist openly in Faustine’s sight. Why not? He had already revealed how much her words affected him. “I could have pulled away at any time I desired—“

“So blind,” said Faustine. “Until you are cured of that blindness, I’ll not let you anywhere near Harry.” She stood abruptly and paced towards the far side of the room, where she stood with her back to Draco. “Take as long as you like to look over the words in that glass, and unobserved by me,” she added over her shoulder. “You’ll need some time to accept what you see, that’s plain.”

Draco glared at her, and then glared at the silvery blob. Nothing changed. The words continued to swim, and he decided that he might as well read them. Why shouldn’t he? He was the one who would decide whether they affected him or not.

He leaned nearer, and the words sprang into existence as if they had been waiting for his eyes. Draco told himself that he had not really seen any viciousness in the motion. This was magic. It wasn’t alive, it didn’t determine itself, and it was most probably a trick that Faustine had made up. She had said herself that Veritaserum could only pull out truths the victim knew to be truths. Someone had probably lied to her about the real nature of the Greek magic, and she was faithfully repeating those lies to Draco, under the impression that they were true.

I could have been free of him. The only rivalry we truly shared was the Quidditch rivalry, and other members of the Slytherin team didn’t hate Harry Potter so much. And we were on opposite sides of the war, but so were other people. They fought for their beliefs, as Potter fought for his; they didn’t fight for hatred of him. And he didn’t fight for hatred of me, as much as I tried to tell myself he did at the time.

A flash of outrage traveled through Draco, but it was transient, because he did indeed remember thinking such thoughts during the war. He’d caught a glimpse of Potter from afar across a battlefield, and thought smugly that those green eyes focused on him for a moment and shone with loathing. Yes, he’d thought he was the reason that Potter drove so furiously at Malfoy Manor during the war, and finally made the most important battle happen there.

The Dark Lord had also been at Malfoy Manor during that same time. Rationally, Draco knew that, and he would have agreed with anyone in public that that was the reason Potter had been so desperate to reach the house.

But in private, he had hugged to himself the secret of Potter’s wartime obsession with him.

Now it lay open and shattered, as pitiful as the limbs of a broken doll Draco had seen lying on the floor in the Malfoys’ cellar once, accidentally Apparated with a Muggle victim. He stared at nothing for long moments before he could look at the blob and convince himself to read on.

I could have been free of him. It was my conviction that he needed to be defeated in order for my life to mean anything that made me cling to my hatred when the war was done. I started training as an architect, but my full heart was never on the job. I kept an eye cocked over my shoulder, wanting to see Potter standing there, wanting to see him be impressed. And when I found out he was, it still wasn’t enough for my hatred of him. I wanted to see him broken for the crime of ever daring to care more about someone else than me, and for the crime of still caring about his job instead of falling worshipfully at my feet when I deigned to notice him.

Draco turned his head. He felt as if he wanted to spit, the liquid boiling up in his mouth and resting against his tongue, but there was no possible way he could spit out his disgust with himself, and that was what really needed to go. He rested his forehead against his palm and closed his eyes for a moment.

Did I—

But he knew he had really done that. If nothing else, the sense of familiarity in his chest when he read the words confirmed it.

Familiarity, and a squirming, stinking nausea. This time, when he swallowed, he choked down bile.

He opened his eyes and continued reading, almost certain that he was numb, that no revelation could hurt him now.

When I found out he was obsessed with me in return, it was cause for only a moment of joy. I had to have more than that. I had to have him enslaved to me, twined around me, and softer than it turned out he was. I had to make him break and shatter. If I had achieved my goal, if I had been right about him, he would never have managed to write me the letter that so insulted me in the first place.

Draco sat back and ran his hand across his face. He felt the temptation to stare vacantly into the air nearly overcome him, and shook it off so suddenly that he felt as though an earthquake had run across the territory his shoulders occupied.

Blind. I was blind. The blob doesn’t say it, but if I had been right about Potter, and it had turned out he was that soft and pliant, I would have despised him, and despised myself for obsessing over him in the first place. I wanted to be the sun of his universe, but I would have found no satisfaction in being so.

Draco gave a chuckle that sounded hollow and rusty even to him. Again he ran his hands across his face. Sweat had broken out on his brow, but it was cold to the touch, and his fingers shook so severely he nearly poked himself in the eye.

This is actually the best thing that could have happened. Now I only need to despise myself for misunderstanding him so greatly, and misunderstanding my own motivations, rather than despise myself for my emotions.

But the blob had said nothing about the way he needed Potter since the first sentences Draco read in it. Maybe there was one thing he hadn’t mistaken. Maybe he was less stupid than he appeared. Draco leaned forwards again, and the words swirled and rushed at him for a vengeance.

I’m the next thing to in love with him. I’ll never rest easily until he admires me and returns as much emotional investment to me as I feel in him. Even if I know that he’ll never bow down at my feet, still, the moment of triumph when he let me do as I liked to him in bed was too sweet not to be repeated. I need him beside me if I’m ever going to move on from the obsession with him and think about other things.

Draco sat back and closed his eyes. Then he laughed again.

The next thing to in love with him? At the moment, I’m the next thing to broken.

And now he wasn’t numb, but he was alive to pain, and he wanted to know what could hurt him worse than what he had just experienced. He leaned towards the blob, feeling as if he were daring someone to torture him whilst being mentally prepared for it.

There was no more. The letters in the blob melted together and ran down the insides of the silvery walls like hot wax. Then the whole thing burst, and Draco flinched before he could stop himself; the thought of all that truth flying at him was more than he could bear. Nothing touched him this time, however. He caught a glimpse of dissipating streamers of silver, and that was all.

He looked up. When he was laughing and combating the truths the blob had revealed to him in his mind, he had forgotten Faustine was in the room. Now he remembered, but the embarrassment he would ordinarily have felt at experiencing those emotions in front of her was muted and chased away by the fact of his own folly.

I could have had everything I wanted. I had the chance. Potter was in love with me already. I could have coaxed him and brought him along, bit by bit, showing him my good qualities until he forgot the bad ones. I’m the one who destroyed this, and not him.

The truth coated the inside of his mouth with a metallic taste, and caused a twinge in his chest. Draco rested a hand absently over the skin there. He wondered if this was what people meant when they talked about a broken heart.

“What happened to the truth?” he asked.

Faustine inclined her head. Her eyes revealed nothing, no matter how hard Draco looked at her. “It will travel with you. Should you start doubting what it revealed, it will reappear.”

Draco’s breath caught, and he stared at her. “And you’re not going to force me to reveal it to Harry?”

“I don’t have that power.” Faustine dropped her eyelids over her eyes and gave a very faint smile. “Greek magic doesn’t turn our unhappy endings into happy ones any more than Latin and English magic does. I could only force you to confront yourself and stop lying.” She considered him quietly, her head on one side and her fingers traveling steadily over her arm. “Harry isn’t perfect,” she said. “I am not one of his closest friends, which means I’m more likely to look at him with my eyes open. But he’s not the one who almost destroyed what you shared together. That’s you. Only when you faced those truths could you come together on a more equal footing. As long as you remember them—“ her voice sharpened until Draco winced, thinking he felt it dig into his skin “—then you carry only as much guilt as he does.”

Draco said nothing for long moments. It seemed too simple, even after the pain he had suffered to attain it. “And that means you’ll tell me where he is?” he asked.

Faustine raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know his exact location. But he gave me the means to send him news even when he’s isolated, out of the country, or behind powerful wards. We’ll put a special tracking spell I know on the owl.”

Draco shook his head. “Why are you doing this? Do you really have that much invested in our relationship working out?” He stopped the moment he finished speaking the words. A tone of spite had crept into his voice, and if he was unable to stop his stupid, self-destructive behavior, at least he recognized it when it was happening.

“I want to see Harry happy,” said Faustine. “He has done some lasting things for me, and I have rarely been able to repay him with more than temporary information that cools quickly. But, more, this neutralized you.” Her eyes shifted and changed, and Draco wondered if he should be afraid of the emotion that appeared in them now. He thought he might have been, before the pain he suffered in reading the blob. “Now either you will approach him like an adult, and in full cognizance of the information you’ve learned, or you’ll slink away and not bother him again.”

“What makes you think I won’t approach him and make as big a mess of this as I ever did before?” Draco demanded.

Faustine flicked her wrist. A second blob appeared out of the air, paler than the one that had haunted Draco, but with the same words more brightly sketched in it.

“The opal makes two copies,” Faustine said. “One for the person who needs to face the truths of his soul, and one for the person who questions him.” She smiled at Draco’s reluctantly horrified glance. “If you try to lie to him again, I’ll simply send this to Harry. It’s not a foolproof means of solving the problem, no, but I have to at least let you try to approach Harry.” Her voice showed her reluctance clearly now. “He’ll never be happy until he has you—or until he’s convinced that you’re beyond redemption. And he will be, if you try to hurt him again and then he reads this.”

Draco bowed slowly, never taking his eyes from her. He could admire her, in a way. And he was more annoyed with himself than her, for not facing these truths in the first place. He could have dealt with them privately on his own, if he had known himself as well as he always thought he did.

Indeed, that’s the most galling thing, he thought, when he stood outside the Imperatrix again, with Faustine’s promise that she would contact him when her owl returned ringing in his ears. Everyone was always telling me that I lacked self-knowledge. I ignored them, because they weren’t inside my head and they couldn’t read my soul. And it turned out they were right.

He would have to tell the truth to Potter and endure the prickling touch of truth’s fire on his soul—

Because if he didn’t, then he was likely to be wrong again, and he didn’t think he could survive the shame a second time.

“It was bad enough finding out I needed Potter,” he muttered, and began to walk, feeling, with each step, like a scraped sculpture just emerged from the glassblower.

But he had the chance to escape feeling that way. He had, in fact, the chance to attain everything he wanted.

Maybe.

Chapter 23.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I am...stunned. This was absolutely amazing, a chapter that the whole book hinges on. Faustine is amazing. I'm reading Pride and Prejudice in school right now, and this reminds somewhat of the chapter when Elizabeth realizes what an idiot she's been and says "Until tonight, I never knew myself." This same thing is true with Draco. He's forced to reevaluate his understanding of himself and everyone around him by an outside source, and it's a huge epiphany that he doesn't want to acknowledge. Wonderful chapter!

I so need to steelz ur icon. U mind?

Not at all, steal away!

Thank you!

In this case (somewhat unlike Elizabeth's), I think Draco never would have made the change without outside help. But I'm flattered to hear that this reminds you of Austen. :)

That icon has 'win' all over it ;o)

Thanks!

Draco Malfoy, thou art not subtle. Complicated. But not subtle. That is why we love you.

Truer words were never written.

omg, i'm so terrified because now i'm all hopeful and i have no idea how it's going to work out! *wibbles*

Well, I think both emotions are the correct response, actually.

(I tried to get in touch with you by e-mail, but I don't know if it went through. For your livelongnmarry fic, is it all right if I write a story where Harry's heavily scarred and he and Draco have to work through Draco's feelings and Harry's about that, or do you have a squick against that?)

Wow! That was intense! Faustine doesn't screw around.

Thank you!

And no. Not where the safety of her friends is concerned.

you go Draco!

He's feeling that way right now.

Wow! This Draco has grown on me as he's grown up. Now all of the boys can be grown up together ;-)

Thank you! Of course, Harry has to think about coming out of the Fidelius cottage first.

This fic reminds me why I love slash.

Awesome chapter!!

Thank you!

I suppose you've seen this:

I hadn't, because I don't usually watch vids. But thank you for linking it!

Finally! I've been waiting for this point, for Draco to finally see the truth. That was a wonderful description, I love it!

I honestly can't say why I haven't commented on this story until now, although I've been following it since the beginning. I guess I'll just blame it on the fact that most of the time I read it in the middle of the night, just before I go to bed. Even if I'd force myself to write something, I doubt it'd make much sense.

But I really have to tell you that I think that this is the best story I'm following at the moment. I find both Harry and Draco (and even Lucius and Severus) very uniquely characterized, but oddly still in character, in a sense that they could've ended up like this had the circumstances been the way they are here.

And again, your wonderful, beautiful descriptions of magic. Breathtaking, every time.

Umm, I'm not really sure, as I am not the most knowledgeable in the field of English grammar and such, but... I had to have enslaved to me? A little typo, isn't it?

Thank you!

And I'm really, really glad you like this story. It's a somewhat unusual plot for me, because usually stories where Draco betrays Harry like this are a big embarrassment squick for me (I find it really hard to read the part where the betrayal happens). So sometimes I think I'm not putting as much emotion onto the page as I could.

A word was indeed missing from that sentence. Thank you for alerting me to it.

Ah, that explains what I've asked in the previous chapter. Good write. *chus*

*chus* ^^

Wow - this is such an incredible chapter. The entire fic is more than I could have imagined, but this one chapter is so powerful. It gives the hope that everyone's been looking for.

Thank you so much! This chapter was difficult to write; I wanted it to give that hope, but I wasn't sure if it would work when it was essentially someone else forcing Draco to reconsider himself, rather than Draco coming to the epiphany on his own. On the other hand, I think this Draco never would have done that, so it was this or its never happening. And the second thing would be bad. :)

wow! faustine's spell was so creative! where DO you come up with these things? i hope draco stops acting the way he has been the entire story and is able to fix things with harry. i'm hoping for a happy ending but i've a feeling you won't let that happen :P

and what's up with the impostor? hmm!

Thank you! In this case, I just started writing, and that was the form the spell took. :)

Draco will still need to make a few more changes. I promise that the ending is not unhappy, though. Bittersweet, maybe.

Chapter Twenty-Two of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- Fortune's Fool

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Wow...

Re: Wow...

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