Chapter Thirty-Three of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- Dearer Than Liberty

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Thirty-Three—Dearer Than Liberty

Draco halted in front of the door to his room and closed his eyes. His heart was beating so loudly that he thought he wouldn’t have heard Harry if Harry had spoken just then. His mouth was dry and bitter, and sweeping his tongue across his lips didn’t help.

He opened his eyes and stared unseeing at the door for long moments. The plate of cobalt was still the same when his gaze focused, and so was the dragon’s head in the center, surrounded by a braid of gold. Now, he could hear Harry stirring beside him. To avoid looking at the door for a moment, Draco turned around and looked at him. Harry was squinting as if he had tried to stare into strong sunlight.

“What’s the matter?” Draco asked, watching the shadows darting across his face in fascination.

“It is like the Chamber of Secrets,” Harry whispered. “Both of them guarded by serpents. Both of them with something dark inside.” He looked at Draco, as if against his will; his left eye lingered on the door for long moments after his right had transferred its gaze. “There is something dark in there, isn’t there, Draco?”

Draco tried to speak, but his dry mouth prevented him. He settled for taking Harry’s hands, murmuring into his ear, “Believe nothing you see or hear,” and stepping forwards.

His illusory defenses surrounded him at once. The ground trembled and tried to close over him like quicksand. The voices danced on the edge of his hearing and laughed and lied. The heat of flames tried to burn his eyes out of his head, tried to turn his lips to ash, tried to turn his fingernails to drifting black fragments.

Harry uttered one huge gasp, a sobbing breath like someone about to drown in mud. Then they were through, and Draco opened his eyes.

Once again, he could not bear to look at Harry. Once again, he stood gazing forwards and awaiting Harry’s reaction, though this time fear had cramped his spine and the muscles of his belly until he thought he would vomit.

*

For some reason, Harry noticed the luxurious furniture and wall coverings in a blaze of gold and gems and glory first, and then dismissed them. He should have stared the way he had stared at the furnishings of the Manor when he was new to it, but he couldn’t. Perhaps he knew instinctively that riches were not what Draco had brought him here to see. Draco would not be nervous about displaying treasures to him.

No, the glass cases caught his gaze, and held them.

Harry put a hand to his mouth. He hardly knew what he was trying to hold back. Words? Bile? Blame?

He moved slowly towards the cases, and, somewhere along the way, dropped Draco’s hand. He stooped, and stared at his own face flickering across the photographs that the Daily Prophet had published and other people had taken of him, small images of himself riding brooms, making speeches, laughing, tossing his head back, leaning a shoulder against a wall as he gave some brisk post-arrest discussion of a criminal’s finer techniques. Every Harry, he soon noticed, kept his eyes carefully away from the torn edges of the pictures, as if he could remain unconscious of his imprisonment if he did so.

He turned his head slowly, wondering what could come next, what could be worse than the photographs preserved under glass as if they were precious things instead of the detritus of a wizarding society that had made him its one true celebrity. And he discovered that worse was the detritus of his own daily life. Crumpled invitations, crumbs of bread and cheese, memos in his handwriting, cups which enchantments must have preserved with the imprint of his lips on the side, dirtied bars of soap, twists of cloth he didn’t even remember but which he must have used at some point to dry his hands or carry food on…

Or, he realized as he saw the stains of blood on one of them, bandage wounds.

He lifted his head and moved to another case, and looked at more of the same. His movements were slow and deliberate, and he thought Draco, watching him, must assume Harry was doing that to torment him.

He wasn’t. He hadn’t yet let the reality of the situation break over him like a cloudburst, because, when he did, he thought he would lose something precious.

He looked up at last, to the platform of jade that stood in the center of the room, raised above the other objects, to the glittering portrait frame that brooded there, and the scene of the Quidditch pitch that it enclosed, and the figure of himself that stood in the center of it with arms folded.

There was horror and weariness in his pictured self’s eyes to rival the horror and weariness that would come from spending a lifetime among the Death Eaters.

Harry swayed, and put out a hand. He found a shoulder beneath his fingers, a hand clasping his—Draco, ready to lend support.

Harry, without even thinking, tore his arm loose and spun about. “Don’t touch me,” he whispered, his tongue scraping like one of the dry, tattered parchments Draco had preserved against his teeth. “Oh, don’t touch me.”

*

Draco felt as though the best thing of his life had turned to tears and salt and melted through his fingers.

He stepped back from Harry and folded his hands, staring at the floor. The dryness had invaded his eyes. He knew he should weep for the ending of the love he had hoped for, but there was no question of that. He shivered again and again, and didn’t dare to lift his head and look at Harry, in fear of what he would see there.

But of course he had to look up again, because he had pictured the meeting between the real Harry and his portrait—in other contexts—for too long not to observe it.

Harry had moved forwards and rested his hands on the jade platform that held the frame, staring up at his other self with desperate pity. That other self was examining him with a rapt expression that had driven out its own fear, which Draco had seen on its face from the day that the enchanted portrait awakened.

“How long have you been here?” Harry asked, the words rising and then falling on a slight breath Draco knew he would never have heard if he hadn’t been concentrating intently on doing so.

The portrait opened his mouth, but the Silencing Charms Draco had embedded in the frame so long ago kept him from saying anything. He twitched his cloak around his shoulder and glared pointedly past Harry at Draco.

Harry didn’t even turn around to look at him; that was the most heartbreaking thing, Draco thought later, when he could think properly. He simply drew his wand and tapped it against the frame, muttering a few countercharms. The portrait drew a deep breath and lifted his hand, laying it against the surface of the painting like someone stroking a pane of glass. Harry at once lifted his hand in response, but his fingers hovered a few inches above the streaks of paint; perhaps he remembered that he couldn’t touch his other self no matter what happened.

“He’s kept me here for years,” the portrait Harry said, softly but fervently. “He had spells on the frame so I couldn’t get out and couldn’t speak. The portrait of his mother dissipated those spells recently, or I wouldn’t have been able to move around at all.” He trembled and shut his eyes. Then he said, “I think he changed when it came to the real thing, but, Harry—are you sure you can be happy with him?”

“I’m not sure,” Harry said, his voice loud and rough and broken.

Draco licked his lips and then spoke, because not even the dryness of his mouth could block the aching of his heart at that point. “Harry. Think of the way we’ve rescued each other and spoken to each other in the past few days—“

“Think of the way he abused me,” said the portrait Harry, tossing his hair out of his eyes and revealing the lightning bolt scar. Draco remembered how careful he had been to insist on that particular detail making its way into the painting. Harry wouldn’t really have been Harry without that scar, and Draco had had to have a realistic image to look at in lieu of the real thing. “For years. Can anyone change that fact? I don’t think so.”

“I can,” Draco said, “now that I have the real thing.”

“Listen to you,” Harry said, whipping around to face him. His arms were folded, but Draco thought the movement was defensive as much as it was angry. His wand scraped along the inside of his arm, pointed towards his body, and his shoulders hunched as if he were gifted with wings. “Have. As if I were a bloody object!” His hair stood on end with the wandless magic whipping around him, a transition so sudden that Draco blinked in startlement.

“It’s only an expression,” Draco said. He could feel anger threatening to break through his calm, and he willed it away. He thought getting angry now would only provide the portrait Harry with a chance to point out to the real Harry how dangerously unstable he was. “Harry, I love you. It’s true that I didn’t only love you for a long time, I wanted to possess you, too, but you felt the same way towards me. Why is this so different? We’ve both cleared the rubbish out of our emotions, we can be honest with one another—“

“I never felt anything like this.” Harry shuddered, his shoulders rolling this time as if he stood on a ship. “Nothing like this.”

“But it was similar,” Draco argued, stepping towards him. He felt as if he had to reach out and snare him with his hands, as if Harry would vanish at any moment—despite Draco knowing that he had spells to prevent anyone else from Apparating in on the room—and at the same time, he didn’t quite dare to touch him. “Harry, please. I love you. The real you, not the person I thought you were. That person was the one I collected these clippings because of, that person was the one I fought the war for. But you’re the person I attacked the imposter for—“

“Convenient, then,” said a replica of his own voice from the other side of the room, “that I can destroy you both at once.”

Draco turned, but not fast enough.

A purple mist encircled him, and then a cold sensation struck to the center of his being—rather the way his nightmares had included the Dementor’s Kiss happening, sometimes, when he dared to dream about such things. And then he was falling, and there was no bottom under his feet at all.

*

Harry saw the imposter standing with his wand triumphantly raised, and then the purple mist turned away from punishing Draco and surged towards him. Draco lay motionless on the floor, his mouth open and his eyes blank. Harry thought he saw something, a whirling scum of stars, shine through the purple smoke. Then it vanished.

Harry felt an immense anger, sparking red-black, fill him. He might have decided not to love Draco anymore and leave him alone to wallow amongst the manky remains of his obsession—but he was the one who should make that decision, and not this obsessed creature with the mad genius for spells in front of him. Harry flung his magic towards the imposter, partially through his wand and partially through the air.

The storm ripped into the imposter and tossed him off his feet. He rolled and smashed into one of the glass cases, which shattered at once so neatly that Harry suspected a Reparo had been used on it recently. But he was back on his feet in a moment, and a blue smoke rose from his wand and sailed on enormous bat-wings towards Harry, whilst the purple smoke that had stolen the essence from Draco moved up behind him.

Harry snarled. He didn’t care. He didn’t care. Draco was lying on the floor, bereft of his soul or something else important, and the imposter was smiling as if he didn’t care that he had just done something like that, and Harry’s stomach was churning with the thought of what Draco’s obsession must have meant—it was much worse than the people who followed him around asking him for autographs—and his head hurt and his magic rang and he had lost the love he had thought he had found and he wasn’t going to take this.

He cast a spell that Hermione had designed and then promptly forbidden him to use. The air in front of him darkened and solidified and became a large, bird-winged creature with a body like a dragon’s and a head like a donkey’s. It opened its mouth and sucked at the air, and the blue smoke compressed itself and hurried into the tunnel its lips formed.

That left the purple smoke. Harry turned towards it and balanced his wand on his palm, panting lightly.

“Give up,” hissed the imposter. “Just give up. You’ve found out that he never cared for you in the way you thought he did; why would you want to stay with him?”

But Harry heard the crackling edge of desperation in the man’s voice, and had to keep from smiling triumphantly. His eyes stayed locked on the purple smoke. He moved backwards a step, as if frightened, and the smoke surged in.

Then Harry sprang to meet it, and flung his magic in another uncoordinated fashion. He was already shaking with the exhaustion that always followed any lengthy use of wandless magic, but his anger was so great that he didn’t care. And besides, he knew exactly what he wanted to happen, when the condition that usually attended any use of wandless magic was desire unshaped by will.

And now I’m starting to sound like Hermione. Maybe it’s appropriate when dealing with a genius madman.

The magic surrounded the purple smoke in a shining, snapping net, the way that Harry thought a fishing net might look if it was alive and aware and able to take an active part in capturing its prey. It writhed and flung hooks and limbs in all directions, and the purple smoke screamed. It shredded, and the silver, shining thing Harry had briefly glimpsed before, the thing that belonged to Draco, flew out and into the open air.

The net turned to pursue that, and the imposter pointed his wand.

Harry jumped up and caught it the same way he would have caught the Snitch in a Quidditch game.

The silver thing hissed and coiled around his hands, as wonderfully alive as the snakes that Harry had once worked with when the Aurors had interrupted an illegal shipment of cobra-Runepsoor hybrids on the way back to Africa. But this time, Harry could feel a stronger warmth under the scales, and he knew that what he held lived in a deeper way than any mass of scales and muscles ever could.

“Give me that.”

Harry looked up. The imposter stood a few feet away from him, and his wand was leveled. At Harry, not at the prone Draco lying on the floor. Harry gave a slight, contemptuous smile. Genius madman he might be, but he hadn’t yet figured out that threatening Draco was more effective than threatening Harry himself, who had faced death almost daily for years.

“Not unless you tell me what it is,” he said, betting on the man’s own obsession to make him want to explain himself, or at least talk about his ruling passion any chance he got.

“It’s his memories,” the man whispered obligingly, staring at the silver mist Harry held. “The innermost ones, the ones I couldn’t get when he was my prisoner because he tricked me.” His voice made that crime sound worthy of the Dementor’s Kiss. “The ones that will really tell me what it’s like to be Draco Malfoy. The most important perceptions, the influences that crept into his mind before he could speak, and the emotions that will linger on his mind when he dies.” He stepped forwards, one hand out. “Give them to me.”

Harry swallowed and clasped his hands together. That didn’t crush the memories, of course; they foamed over his palms and clung to his fingers, twining, restless, moving, living. Harry dropped his eyes to stare at them for a moment.

“You can give them to me, and that will end the problem,” the imposter said, smiling at him. “I wanted to kill you, but why should I? I have no doubt, now, after I’ve seen this room, that his passion for you is rooted deep in his soul. But if I take it into me, it will become mine. And I’m not the one who collected these mementoes of you, who made this shrine to you, who destroyed his soul in the pursuit of you.” He stepped closer and lifted a hand as if he would lay it on Harry’s cheek. “You could have the man who loved you whilst knowing, at the same time, that he wasn’t actually the one who did these horrible things.”

Harry felt a moment’s surge of pity. The words were a temptation, yes, but only in the way that an offer of a million Galleons would have been a temptation. It appealed to only a part of him and only for a moment.

Because the scales had fallen from his eyes as he gazed at the material of Draco’s obsession, the differences it had from his own and the similarities, and he understood himself better than he ever had.

The thing he had always wanted was for Draco—as he was, cold and supercilious and talented—to acknowledge that he loved Harry. That was why the fantasy had been impossible, because Draco as Draco was couldn’t do that. And Harry had allowed himself to believe the charade of Draco’s feelings in the last few weeks because he had wanted it in spite of knowing it was impossible.

But now he understood the difference between the charade and the reality, and he wouldn’t allow himself to fall back into pretense.

Understanding Draco, loving Draco, would be difficult, given what he now knew. But Harry’s own love had grown on irrational grounds, and persisted, if twisted into a new shape, when he learned that Draco had betrayed him. It would not leave. It would not wither. It would not die.

He had to live with it, and he had to live with Draco as he was, the same way Draco had to live with the knowledge that Harry now possessed of his relics room.

Draco, bizarre and ugly, strong and beautiful, was reality.

Harry turned and tossed the silver thing he held in the direction of Draco’s body, hoping that his skin would retain the feeling of it, so he could remember what it was to have literally held Draco’s life in his hands. The imposter cried out, his eyes following the motion, his wand flying out as if he could prevent it.

And Harry, without hesitating, cast the spell all Aurors knew and none were supposed to that splintered the man’s wand.

Perhaps even then he might have escaped, he was so mad and so powerful, but Harry Stupefied him, put bindings on his magic and shackles on his ankles, and immediately dragged him out of the room to Apparate back to the Ministry with him and put him in a secure cell.

The man put up no resistance, strangely. He was crying, and his hands moved in small, useless motions. Harry stared at him as they Apparated, wondering what had happened, and why an expression of infinite bitterness twisted his face. Why wasn’t he fighting to get away and complete his task again?

And then he remembered, and smiled.

Snape’s Curse Potion. A bitter fate, I think he said.

And what fate was there for the imposter more bitter than to realize that he had lost his chance to replace Draco, and to lose his magic, and perhaps even his knowledge of spells, at the same time?

*

Draco opened his eyes and slowly sat up. The memories of the last minutes before his soul had been drained—or had it? because he seemed to be living—flickered through his mind. He shook his head and stared around.

The relics room was empty except for the Harry in the portrait.

Draco shuddered and wrapped his arms about his knees. So Harry had killed the imposter, or taken him elsewhere. But either way, he had made the decision to put that task above spending time with Draco. He couldn’t have spoken his choice more clearly if he had left it scrawled on the wall in bloody letters.

He had rejected Draco. He wanted no part of him.

Draco lost track of time as he huddled there. He tried several times to lift his head and walk out of the room, but each time his body betrayed him and he collapsed further. Finally, he thought, he had been struck a blow that he was helpless to recover from. He hoped Harry was satisfied—

But even the anger of that thought deserted him, because he had brought this on himself, by not understanding the depth of the feelings he was dealing with.

Footsteps sounded on the shining floor. Draco lifted his head, and blinked and stared when he realized that Harry was walking towards him. For a moment, he had to wonder if it was a hallucination born of his hope.

“Why are you still sitting here?” Harry reached his hands down to him, frowning. “I would have expected you to sit in one of the chairs, at least. It isn’t every day that you have your soul sucked out of you and then returned the way it was, and you could use some comfort.”

Draco shook his head, his tears blinding him and filling his mouth. He caught Harry’s hands and stood, and then stepped forwards and embraced him, silently, desperately. Harry hesitated, then embraced him back.

“Listen,” Harry whispered. “It isn’t going to be easy.”

Draco moved a little to signify that he was listening, but didn’t say anything. Now he thought it was happiness drying his mouth.

“I—I didn’t know you’d gone this deep,” said Harry. “And it changes the way I look at you.” He sighed and shivered. “Being obsessed with me I can forgive. But keeping a reflection of myself prisoner—torturing it, him, the way you did—“ He sighed again. “That’s going to take some thinking to come to terms with.”

“If you can come to terms with it at all,” the portrait Harry murmured rebelliously.

“I’m sorry for what you suffered,” Harry said, and turned in Draco’s arms to look at the picture. “But I can’t change it. What I can try to do is change the future, learn what I can and can’t accept, and what Draco can and can’t alter about himself.” He hesitated again, then reached out and stroked Draco’s face. Draco hated the way his mouth trembled as he stared at Harry, but he reckoned one moment of humility wasn’t such a terrible price to pay for having his future walk back to him.

“Do you agree?” Harry whispered. “Do you agree that we’ll need to work on this, and slowly make our way back into complete confidence with each other?”

Draco nodded furiously, then found his voice and said, “Yes. I love you.”

“And I love you,” Harry said. “Strange and painful as it is, nothing like the love I thought I would have at first.” He rested his hands on Draco’s shoulders and stared into his eyes. Draco, not sure what he was looking for, stared nervously back.

“But nevertheless,” Harry said softly a moment later, “it’s the love I have.”

And he kissed Draco, nodded to the portrait version of himself, and guided Draco away from the room, never looking back.

Chapter 34.

Comments

[agr8fae.livejournal.com]

ahhhhh *rushes on to the next chapter* Amazing!