Chapter Twenty of 'For Their Unconquerable Souls'- Strongly Shining

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty—Strongly Shining

Narcissa sighed and pushed another book of Dark Arts curses away from her, shaking her head. It should have been easy to find a curse that would repay Emptyweed for the agony he had caused her son. She had seen him close, and knew there was nothing redeeming about him except perhaps his Healing talent, which she had never seen in action. Any revenge that took that away would be justified.

And there were spells that would accomplish that. Spells for the draining of power. Spells that would make the headaches he had inflicted on Harry look like a love-bite.

But whenever she let her eyes fall on the printed words, it wasn’t them Narcissa saw. Instead, she pictured how Harry’s face would look if he ever learned that it was Narcissa who had caused that pain to Emptyweed.

Her son…

Her other son, Narcissa amended in her mind, laying her head against the back of her chair and half-lidding her eyes so that she saw the gleaming colors of her room as a dizzying kaleidoscopic swirl, lived by a different code of morals than the one Narcissa was used to acknowledging. She found him an intriguing puzzle, and not an easily-guessed one. It was entirely possible that he would not want someone to take vengeance for him, even if he had suffered heavily at the hands of someone else.

And would he agree that he had suffered? He had put up with the headaches—not gracefully, but he had put up with them. And after seeing the hospital and the ways of those who worked there, Narcissa thought that Harry would think endurance a prime value. What mattered was bearing pain, not being free of it.

Perhaps he would even say that no one was ever free of pain, so only endurance could exist.

Narcissa twitched her head and sat up in irritation. It was one thing to slip into the mold of Harry’s mind so that he might figure out his thoughts, but she would not start thinking that way herself. It was all too seductive a pattern. It convinced the thinker that he was doing the right thing at all times. It was no wonder Harry had fallen victim to it. Narcissa had learned one thing for certain from her observations of Harry so far, and that was his passionate, burning need to do the right thing.

Later, perhaps, he could be brought to acknowledge that unthinking compliance with one set of rules was not the way to do that.

For now, Narcissa, Draco, and Lucius would have to wreathe the good they intended to do him in coils of “evil” behavior, and make Harry think that they were acting just as he had always expected the Malfoys to act. He’d look away, content that they behaved as they did out of self-interest, and not see how they conspired to heal him.

Narcissa almost smiled.

A conspiracy to heal someone. Not something I believe I have ever been involved in.

So she put the Dark Arts books aside, and set herself instead to thinking of how she could help Harry fit in, be comfortable, and become a part of the family almost without realizing it. If Harry was so inclined to endure and put up with things as he found them, then he would eventually learn to put up with comfort.

*

Draco bent over the sheet of parchment that Lucius had handed him, his breath coming fast. Not even his father’s news that they owed this copy of Harry’s student records to Edward Leeds, who would demand payment in Jason’s Draught, a fiendishly complicated potion, stopped his excitement.

He had found what he hoped he would find—and more.

The record did indeed contain the names of Harry’s Muggle relatives and their address, or at least the address they’d been living at when Harry was in school. Along with that came more than he’d dared to dream of: an assessment of Harry’s physical condition when he arrived at the beginning of each year, or a few weeks afterwards. He knew that Madam Pomfrey had performed those assessments when high-risk students found their way to the infirmary, but he hadn’t been sure they would be kept in the same place.

Evidence of long-term malnutrition. Shyness around others. Distrust of adults. Low self-esteem. Difficulty understanding his own place in the world or how other wizards regard him. A grasping after magic.

The last two sentences were underlined. Draco half-closed his eyes and envisioned the mediwitch writing them with a concerned frown on her face, as she wondered about the spectacle of a Savior of the Wizarding World who didn’t understand his fame and who took to magic like a child to sweets, rather than a child to a birthright.

They did do something to him. I know that no more than occasional wizards can have had contact with him before he came to Hogwarts. He as good as told the papers, multiple times, that that was Dumbledore’s plan: for him to grow up at a distance from our world, so that knowledge of his own fame wouldn’t become arrogance. And I think it’s likely to be true, because he was saying that to defend Dumbledore, and not to give more details about his Muggle relatives.

Draco shivered and opened his eyes. He could hear breaking bones and screams if he concentrated.

Except that he couldn’t go that far, because Harry would hate him if he discovered it.

Draco sighed longingly. All right, then. He would take some other form of vengeance. Besides, it would help if he could be sure about what Harry had suffered. Evidence of psychological abuse was annoyingly non-specific.

Of course, it would be enough for vengeance that the Dursleys—Draco sneered at the common Muggle name on the report, and liked to think that even Madam Pomfrey’s hand, recording the name, had slanted with disapproval—had starved him. It at least explained why he regarded food as a matter of indifference, as fuel rather than a feast of tastes. Draco would help him to overcome that.

And the formal dinner his mother had planned for tomorrow would be a good place to start.

*

Lucius did have to admire the bloody clever set-up his wife had chosen for this dinner.

First, she was using the most formal dining room in the house, the one wearing a medley of pale colors that emphasized the darkness of the oak table in the middle. Lucius didn’t think Harry would appreciate the contrast on an aesthetic level, but then, it wasn’t his sense of beauty they were courting. It was his comfort in this environment. Narcissa believed he had made some advancements, after the way he had acted in Lucius’s bedroom a few days ago, because he had been receiving lessons on Malfoy conduct from Rogers. They would use the formality to test him, to learn what lessons he had absorbed and which ones he had imperfectly learned as yet.

Second, Narcissa sat at the head of the table, with Lucius on her left hand and Draco on her right. Harry seemed to trust his wife the most of anyone in the house, and it would reassure him to see her in a position of power.

Third, there was no place set for Harry. Another test, to see if he was comfortable enough to ask after one, or demand it.

And fourth, Narcissa had made sure the house-elves selected Harry’s robes for the evening. He would have no excuse not to come because he didn’t have clothes fine enough.

And, Lucius understood when Harry appeared in the doorway of the dining room and stood staring down the table at them in the muted glow from the walls, there was yet another reason for the house-elves commanding the robe choice. Draco’s eyes flashed with ill-concealed interest and intent. Narcissa was not above helping her first son seduce the second, but she also, obviously, wanted to make sure that Draco would not back away in the middle of the seduction and undo their careful work to make Harry part of the family.

Plots within plots. Plans within plans. Lucius smiled and touched the outside of Narcissa’s palm under the table, in appreciation. She half-turned her head, and he saw her smile dart across her face and vanish underneath it again like a lizard burrowing in sand.

It was why he had married her.

*

If Draco had been left in charge of dressing Harry, he would have selected dark green robes, to match his eyes and bring out their unusual brilliancy. Or perhaps simple black. That would have emphasized his pale skin, complemented his dark hair, and made the eyes stunning in another way.

But the house-elves had chosen gray robes that made Harry look as if he were wrapped in shadows as he stood on the threshold of the dining room, head back and eyes bright and wary. The color harmonized with the ones around them and wrapped Harry in velvet and a not-unpleasing cobweb fragility, belied by the strength Draco knew he possessed. He looked as if he had melted out of moonlight to grace their dinner party.

Draco had to control himself sharply, because otherwise he would have plunged forwards to touch and take and possess, and he knew that would be too impulsive for these delicate circumstances. He settled for rising to his feet, smiling at Harry, and drawing out the chair next to him.

He thought he saw his father frown as he did so. He serenely ignored that. Indeed, for the next few minutes, he intended to behave as if he and Harry were alone in the room, because that was what he wanted to do and what the situation called for. His parents could turn away if they didn’t want to watch.

Draco half-expected Harry to run; he had tensed when he entered the dining room, maybe because he didn’t have a place already set. He expected, at best, a squint before Harry came forwards and accepted his offer.

Instead, Harry strode in as if he and Draco had met for the first time and wrung his hand hard enough to make the bones creak.

“Thank you,” he said, in a voice that sounded as if he thought he would be judged on resonance. “I’m not used to treatment like this, but in trying not to take it for granted, I think I went too far in the opposite direction.”

He didn’t even have enough time to let Draco get over that shock before he bowed his head, staring at Draco with burning eyes, and flicked his tongue lightly against Draco’s skin

Draco felt his eyes shine and deepen, and his free hand, locked on the back of Harry’s chair, shook as if he had a palsy. It was an effort not to reach out with the one Harry had just licked—he had licked it, he had willingly touched Draco in a sexual manner—and grab the back of Harry’s head, hauling him into a kiss.

But that would indeed be too much, as ecstatic as Draco was at the moment, as half-sure as he was that Harry would welcome the gesture.

“You’re welcome,” he whispered, and let his voice shake, too, so that Harry could see how much he had affected Draco. He deserved that honesty.

Harry smiled at him again and sat down in the chair, and Draco pushed it in, resisting the urge to tangle his fingers with Harry’s hair. Not time yet. When he sat down, however, it was in a position that would easily allow him to see Harry. He wouldn’t deny himself that.

Nor did he make his movements to pick up the forks and knives as fast as usual. Harry had cast the table one bewildered glance; Draco didn’t want to confuse him now, when they were getting on so well. He would give Harry some clues as to table manners.

The courses came and went. Draco couldn’t have said what the first one was, because he still couldn’t take his eyes off Harry’s face. But he noticed when they had bread with butter and a string of butter dripped on Harry’s robes. Harry grimaced in a way that said he should have expected that and tried to swab it up.

Draco could, perhaps, have stopped himself from moving when he noticed that butter coated Harry’s wrist as well as the cloth. But it would have been akin to stopping an earthquake. Nor could he keep from whispering, “May I?”

Harry flushed and darted a glance at Draco’s parents. Draco grinned, not needing to look. Lucius and Narcissa would be studiously ignoring everything that happened across the table from them, as long as Draco kept within certain limits. Boldness was its own answer to awkward questions, and Harry had been bold from the beginning. Of course Draco needed to do the same, or risk having Harry think he was weak.

Not that Harry would think that, anyway.

Draco was exhilarated with more than the chance to touch Harry. He was thinking in two modes at once, the Malfoy one and the clear-sighed, simple way Harry saw the world, and they braided and danced in his head, spiraling paths of light.

Of course, by now Harry’s eyes were so wide that he looked like he might faint. So Draco whispered to reassure him, “Oh, I can’t do what I’d really like to, not in company. But that doesn’t matter.” He drew his wand and trailed it softly up the sleeve of Harry’s robe, Vanishing the butter.

Harry lowered his head and fixed his eyes on the robe and wrist where the butter had been, giving one slow, enormous blink and then another. It was evident from the fierce flush of his face that he’d been thinking Draco might lick it up.
“There,” Draco said, and angled his head to brush Harry’s wrist with his cheek before he slipped back into his chair. “All better.” He added a purring tone to his voice that Harry had better damn well appreciate.

“You approve of the robes, then?” Harry murmured.

Merlin and the Seven Dead Wonders, Draco thought, staring into Harry’s eyes and seeing the darting uncertainty there. He’s so uneasy about his looks that he imagines house-elves would dress him so as to make him ugly.

“You have no idea how you look, either,” he said. He had to say something; the words would cut his throat if he kept them inside. “I’ll help cure that, don’t worry.”

It would have to go further than that, he understood a moment later. He had a need to reassure Harry, but Harry might let himself be embarrassed. So he looked across the table, where his mother was feeding his father from a fork. Harry coughed and promptly stared at his plate.

Draco bent down until he could touch his tongue to Harry’s lips. Harry stared at him in silent fascination, his blush so red now that Draco thought he could have found him by it under a full moon.

Let him know how appealing I find him. “I’m learning how you taste,” Draco whispered. “I hope you don’t mind my going slowly. I prefer to appreciate the favors individually.”

Harry swallowed, his blush grew fiercer, and he had to stare at his food to recover for minutes after that. Draco knew he was doing it to keep from thinking about his embarrassment, or looking at Lucius and Narcissa, but gradually his movements slowed and he actually savored the tastes of the fruit and fish and soup he swallowed. He uttered a tiny sigh when he finished the candied apples that made Draco thrust his hips involuntarily towards Harry. He had long since hardened, simply from watching Harry’s tongue dart across his lips to pick up the crumbs of bread and butter and sugar.

Draco could have watched Harry eating, and enjoying what he ate, for months.

Of course, that was the moment his father had to ruin it all.

“Harry.”

Harry looked up at Lucius, and his unselfconscious pleasure fell away. “Sir,” he said. Lucius gave him an annoyed glance, and Draco wanted to fall out of his chair because Lucius was showing his annoyance, but Harry only smiled. “Lucius,” he said. “You have the information you owled about?”

“Yes.” Lucius’s mouth grew tight as he clapped. Draco marveled in silence as a house-elf appeared next to Harry and handed some letters over. His father was following Narcissa’s advice better than Draco had at first, showing his emotions so Harry could learn to know and trust him, when he construed most emotion as vulnerability. It might take Lucius a moment to grasp the necessity of a new action, but when he did, he moved to undertake that action with a purity and grace that humbled Draco. “And I must admit, what I learned disturbed me.”

Harry bent his head over the paper, and Draco found another pleasure. Harry was a responsive reader, too, and he didn’t believe in hiding his emotions for any reason whatsoever. He swore steadily under his breath as he read, and his face turned red and pale and sharp with annoyance by turns. He once even clenched a fist and drummed it on the table next to his plate. Draco wondered for a moment what his face would look like when they were making love, utterly transparent with the feelings flitting over it, and his hips thrust again.

Harry swept a hand through his hair, finally, and sat back as if he would like to set the letters on fire with just his gaze. “I see the Ministry’s tradition of corruption marches on unchecked,” he muttered.

“Then all the better that we’ll bring justice where they’ve failed to,” said Draco. Let Harry take warning from that. We protect our own, and that means him, too.

Harry glanced at him. Draco had arranged himself so that he had his hands folded behind his head, a vulnerable posture—but not when contrasted with his eyes, which he knew were burning ice. Harry quivered a bit, and tilted his head to the side, his expression bright and curious and intrigued. Draco wanted to preen.

“What specifically do you find disturbing?” Harry asked, glancing at Lucius. “Do you have any idea who the woman might have been?”

Woman. Draco concealed a sigh. Of course, his father had not told him the content of the letters yet. He had insisted that it be shared with Harry first. But from the steady way Narcissa looked at her husband, she knew.

“No,” said Lucius. “And that is the first worrisome thing.” He leaned heavily back in his own chair, his brow bearing a faint sheen of sweat. Draco watched the expression on his mother’s face, and wavered on the edge of reassurance. “The second is that I never once thought about someone visiting Lestrange in prison, or about his having knowledge dangerous to me. Someone has outthought me. I do not like that.”

“Do you have the information about the Death Eater refuges?” Harry asked.

Draco took a deep breath to control his jealousy as he watched another elf appear with another stack of parchment. This was the information that his father had never given him, insisting that it was almost valueless after the war, and that in any case Draco would not understand half the code it was written in. I would wager he translated it for Harry, though.

Harry ran quickly down the lists. Draco let himself forget his irritation in the darting of those brilliant eyes and the wrinkle of the frown lines that spread over his head. Now and then Harry murmured a name to himself, memorizing it. He was so engaged and so alert that Draco wondered for a moment what would happen if he put a hand over the papers Harry looked at; he would probably slap Draco’s hand away without even thinking about it.

Then Harry sat straight up in his chair and stopped breathing. Draco hated the immediate fixed, wild stare of his eyes. Harry shouldn’t look at anyone or anything except him like that.

“What is it, Harry?” Lucius asked, once, and then again. Harry didn’t react. Draco reached out and put a hand on his back. Then he leaned towards him. He would support Harry, no matter what he had discovered in the parchments, what terrible news he had to impart. He doubted he could do anything else, especially when Harry dropped his head onto Draco’s shoulder briefly. This kind of trust and need was too precious.

Draco had long thought that people who needed others were weak. Now he was learning the difference, he thought. The need of the strong was inherently different from the need of the feeble.

And now Harry was taking too long to return to the real world after he had made his gesture of need, so Draco tugged on his hair and pulled him in so that their faces were touching, forehead to forehead. Draco’s brow rested against the scar that had saved the wizarding world. “Tell us,” he murmured. “No burden is so terrible that the effect does not lessen when it is shared.”

Harry’s eyes closed in one steady blink, as though to refute that, and then he looked at Lucius and said, “How much dreambane was at this refuge?”

“Which one?” Lucius frowned for a moment.

Draco’s mind was springing like a rabbit. Dreambane. Dreambane was a potions ingredient. But he wouldn’t have expected Harry to recognize the name, or the effects. He was terrible at Potions…

“Venom’s Reach,” said Harry.

“The Dark Lord came up with that name,” Lucius murmured. “And there were several bales of it. Perhaps also vats. They reached the ceiling in one case. Why?”

Harry closed his eyes and let his head droop down as if he were exhausted, as if the yoke on his neck had pressed too deep, as if he were finished.

Once, Draco had thought that sight was all he wanted. Now it made him sick to his stomach to see it.

“Harry.” Draco snapped; he couldn’t help it. He wanted Harry to stop having that reaction and be strong again. “I know dreambane. It’s used as one of the ingredients in a powerful version of the Dreamless Sleep potion, one that banishes thoughts that might become dreams. How could it have hurt my father? He’s been dreaming.”

“It has another, little-known use,” Harry whispered. His voice shook; so did his body, as if he had chills. “When combined with a Cutting Curse, it strengthens the wounds and makes the body remember them. I don’t know how else to explain it. Even if the wounds seem to be cured, they burst forth again sooner or later. And they become the worse for the delay. It can also strengthen other spells, though I’m not sure of all of them, because they’re Dark magic and there was a limit to what St. Mungo’s wanted me to study.” He stared at Lucius. His eyes were crazed and dark with fear and pity. “I’m afraid some of them might be spells that are part of the Mirror Maze, and so the dreambane would render it more subtle. When we think it’s gone, or even if we actually remove it, the wounds will come forth again and kill you.”

Draco wanted to scream. He settled for tightening his hold slightly on Harry, instead, and holding him until the storm of horror blew over and past, and he could hear his father’s reply.

“And what can be done about this dreambane? How can we be sure it has been introduced into my body? I am sure Smythe gave me no potion.”

“It could have happened before the curse was cast,” Harry said, “if he had an accomplice. Or—did he spit on you?”

“Yes, he did,” Lucius said quietly.

Harry nodded. His hair rustled against Draco’s cheek; his head bumped Draco’s and made it sidle and slip. “That’s probably how he intended to do it. Dreambane can ride within human body fluids and be absorbed by the skin.”

“And what are we to do?” Narcissa asked. Draco wanted to close his eyes again at the sound of her voice. Perhaps Harry would think it perfectly smooth, like a frozen lake, but Harry did not know his mother yet.

Harry drew a breath like a dragon getting ready to belch fire. “There’s a potion that can purge dreambane from the body,” he said. “But I don’t know how to brew it, and I don’t think I would trust myself if I did. My potions skills have never been the best—“

Draco found he could breathe again.

He gripped Harry more tightly still. “And here I am, nearly a Potions master,” he said, “and devoted to helping the family. Isn’t that convenient?”

Harry sagged back against Draco again, obviously boneless with relief. He seemed to have thought he would be left to deal with Lucius’s poisoning, with inadequate Potions skills, on his own.

Draco lifted Harry’s hair and kissed the skin beneath his right ear, gentle and delicate and slow, giving and receiving reassurance with the gesture, making it a promise of hope and mutual aid.

And so this is love.

Chapter 21.

Comments

[yanagi-wa.livejournal.com]

Wow, that's quite a chapter. Very good. Poor Harry, he seems so lost. And that dreambane makes me really nervous. Great work.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[nimue-8.livejournal.com]

It's lovely to see Draco so in love, the Malfoys plot and Harry's unhappy past being slowly uncoverd by people who fiercly care.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I doubt Harry would like the notion of his past being uncovered, but, well, this is one of the reasons Draco is not directly involving him.

[tray-la-la.livejournal.com]

Great chapter! Draco and Harry at the table together were just jdhsdjjdjeheuksjdk!!!!! I love Draco's inner monologue and his reactions to Harry's progress.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[duchessa.livejournal.com]

That last line made me embarrassingly gooey inside. I think Draco is secretly a bigger sap than Harry. Ha.
And three malfoys pov at once! You're too good to us. I don't think I have a favorite for this chapter. Each offer something that made me squee.

I love that Narcissa is slowly coming to understand Harry better, I love the Lucius/Narcissa relationship, I love that Draco is so enamored (we got hints in BbU, but I don't think Harry is quite aware how strong Draco feels about him), I love love love that Draco got solid evidence of the Dursley's neglect of Harry. I like fics where the neglect (and the consequences) is explored as it is in canon. Some of the fics goes too far, i think (like those that has Vernon raping Harry). What they did in canon is bad enough. Is Narcissa aware of Draco's suspicion? So far, she seems to peg Harry getting inadequate care solely because he was raised muggle. Lucius knows, but has dismissed it before - did the letter changed his mind?

Oh , I can't wait for the upcoming Harry explosion. The Malfoys are doing good, but they're becoming too sure of themselves. It won't work if they take Harry's agreement for granted. Very much looking forward to the next chapter!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Hee, do not let him hear you say that. He would curse you to hell and beyond.

Harry definitely does not understand how strongly Draco feels about him. He thinks part of it is still purely sexual and another part purely possessive, or he would have been gentler with Draco in the original story.

There are times I like reading fic with heavy abuse, but it almost never satisfies me the way a well-done fic with lighter abuse does.

And yes, Narcissa is only slowly moving towards the idea of abuse. Lucius is not seriously considering it. Draco is the one who has been in closest contact with Harry and is seriously convinced that his behavior has been made abnormal somehow.

Thank you!

[firedraygon97.livejournal.com]

A conspiracy to heal someone. I really like that statement -- leave it to Harry to need people to plot in order to help him.

Draco reading the medical assessments is also so exciting. I like how you run multiple plots along in this fic. There's always so much going on! Please do write more soon!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Hee. thank you.

One reason I'm glad I'm writing this fic is the chance to explore perspectives I didn't get to touch in the original.

[kawanale.livejournal.com]

*sighs* it really is cool to read bloody but unbowed from a totally different perspective!

*claps hands in glee*

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

*sigh*

[glored13.livejournal.com]

"And so this is love"

Beautiful!

Re: *sigh*

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Oh, thanks!

[cassie-black12.livejournal.com]

So Draco's realised he's in love. I'm now waiting with baited breath for Harry to come to the same realisation.

Another great chapter.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

It takes longer for Harry, just because he has to be so suspicious of Draco's motives for touching him and wanting to be near him.

[sethra2000.livejournal.com]

Yes, another post... weeee.

That last line..*sigh*. can't wait for more.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[agr8fae.livejournal.com]

Such a great chapter!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[qumabh.livejournal.com]

I love this line: "Plots within plots. Plans within plans" That's the whole theme of the story with the sideways mirrormaze curse thing. Awesome chapter. Love the love.

~Mab