lomonaaeren | Chapter Six of 'A Determined Frame of Mind'- Snapping at the Bait

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Chapter Six—Snapping at the Bait

Harry wondered if he should feel annoyed at the mood that overlay the entire (late) breakfast with Draco that morning. Everything seemed—careful. Draco spoke less than usual, and less sharply. Sometimes he glanced at Harry with a smile, though that was as close as he came to referencing what had happened between them in his bedroom. Harry could feel the hum of the soul piece whenever he was weak and listened for it.

He wanted to argue that he wasn’t weak, that he didn’t need this careful coddling and swaddling that Draco gave him.

But would you have enjoyed it so much, if you didn’t need it?

Harry gave a helpless shrug at his eggs. The year under the Cassandra Curse had left him confused about his own strength. He knew he needed to maintain it, but other than by writing the letters to his friends and accepting that his relationship with them had changed, he had no idea how. And even the idea of yielding to Draco seemed less an indication of helplessness than it had been mere hours ago.

He turned, at last, away from the thought of his own weakness—it led him nowhere, and occupied him too much—to stare at Draco from the side. It was one of those quiet pauses when Draco seemed entirely concerned with his own eating, and didn’t look up at Harry. Harry got to see the sunlight fall on his hair, and the slight white sheen it lent to his skin.

Does he never go outside?

But he couldn’t make the thought hold the contempt he wanted, either.

So weak you don’t even have control of your own emotions! Harry snorted and concentrated fiercely on his plate, which at least couldn’t contradict him.

But the contradiction he had become aware of remained, and ripened, and grew, until if Draco had spoken to him, Harry probably would have blurted it out. He could be grateful that hadn’t happened, at least.

If he believed everything he’d said about Draco in his letter to Hermione—if everything there was true, and Draco was no more capable of caring about him than a shark was of caring about a seal—then where did this comfortable coddling and swaddling come from? Why should Draco want to spare his feelings? He had no stake in that. He had a stake in seeing that Harry recovered as soon as possible, in fact, so that he could claim his reward of fame and prestige.

Things never made sense, no matter how Harry turned them.

Perhaps Draco wanted to make Harry trust him and then gloat about it later. But the gloating would be a small reward for so much work. And if he wanted to appear in public as Harry’s ally and savior, then it would have had to be kept between them, anyway.

Harry passed a hand over his face. He was tired, and confused, and the late breakfast hadn’t helped at all.

“You want to rest?” Draco asked him. Harry looked up, and told himself not to notice the curves of Draco’s cheekbones. Nothing of the gentle expression that had been on his face when Harry interrupted his beauty-sleep—

Beautiful sleep—

remained. He was alert, predatory, hunting. Harry’s shoulders fell from their tense posture, and he replied, “No. I’d like to go for a walk in the gardens, but I know you said it’s dangerous for me to venture outside the physical protection of the Manor at all—“

“Batty will go with you,” Draco said. He snapped his fingers, and the sullen house-elf popped up. Harry smiled at her, and she stared at him suspiciously, moving her mouth in silent imprecations which Draco didn’t appear to notice. Of course, Harry welcomed her because he thought she might help him recover his balance and his cautious, critical distance from Draco, but neither one of them needed to know that. “I’m afraid I can’t attend you, since I have a patient this morning.”

Harry snapped his head around. “A patient? But aren’t you going to St. Mungo’s?”

Draco shook his head. “I resigned. Remember?” he added, and Harry was forced to recall that they had discussed it, along with Draco’s plan to set Harry’s letter afloat in the Ministry. “My patient will come here.” He licked his lips, giving the impression of a cat who had been promised a pleasant meal. “It certainly didn’t take long for the news that St. Mungo’s best Psyche-Diver had left to spread.”

“But won’t this patient see me?” Harry asked. “Most of the windows in the Manor look out on some part of the gardens.”

“Not the one I’m going to use,” said Draco, and gave him a slow smile. “Besides, you have your wand. I trust you to cast a glamour in time, if you heard shouts and saw someone flying towards you. I’ll set another house-elf up as a warning system, just in case.”

Harry closed his eyes and turned his head away.

“Harry?” And there was concern in Draco’s voice. Well, of course. Couldn’t allow the goose that laid the golden eggs to die too soon.

“I’m all right,” Harry whispered, and thanked God that his voice didn’t crack in the middle. That, he would have had a hard time explaining, as he would the tears that pressed against the undersides of his eyelids.

Draco trusted him to protect himself.

Draco didn’t think he was so weak and so useless that he needed to be watched over and assisted in every movement of his life.

Not even Harry’s doubts could devalue that gift.

*

Draco stood near the window of what had once been his mother’s conservatory, gazing out on the gardens. The windows had been shrouded under powerful spells so that not as much sunlight would intrude. At the moment, it provided the perfect vantage for Draco to watch Harry unobserved.

Harry appeared perfectly content to amble around the Manor’s gardens with Batty, though he stared rather too obviously at most of the flowers, and showed himself an absolute novice in walking the neatly tended sands of the paths without disturbing them. Draco quelled the impulse to step out of the house, take his arm, and show him how it was done.

He could hear, if he concentrated, Batty’s shrill, squeaky voice. She was giving the standard botanical lecture that had been meant to impress visitors to the Manor in his grandfather’s time. Draco rolled his eyes. She really was a relic.

Harry will be all right.

Still, he lingered by the window, and it was harder than he expected to turn away. Distance between them had become a fluid thing since the scene in the bedroom this morning, wavering and contracting and expanding when Draco least expected it.

While he waited for his patient in the impressive library—loaded with most of the books he had used to develop Psyche-Diving, and the honors that St. Mungo’s had been forced to give him for developing it—he closed his eyes and thought about that distance. It was no longer just due to the piece of soul in Harry’s core.

If it ever had been.

Draco was not blind to his own self. He had been forced to learn it rather invasively when he was practicing the techniques of Psyche-Diving; he had no one to practice them on but himself, of course. It was one reason he had always laughed when the Healers spoke of coaxing someone gently back to health. Draco didn’t have the kind of soul that would let him get away with that, even if it was the better course. If his behavior or his mind underwent a massive change, he knew it would be reflected in his soul.

The intense attention he had paid to Harry in hospital, and continued to pay, rather argued that something had changed. He drew his wand, aimed it at himself, and whispered a modification of the simplest soul-reading incantation. In the case of someone else, he entered through the mind, but of course one could not use Legilimency on one’s own thoughts.

The world around him wrenched harshly to the side, and then reformed itself in the familiar arches and domes and whorls of his soul. Draco nodded, as at an old familiar friend, to the chips of black and purple and gold that surrounded him. But the background of his soul was the jagged green mountains, and he almost reckoned that he could breathe in the fresher air that hovered around them.

Not purer air. Draco would never claim that. His soul was no purer than anyone else’s. But he knew, as so many people did not, the source of his own emotions and impulses, likes and dislikes. What he did not lack in was explanations. What he never gave was excuses.

He glanced around for the sign of the change, and froze the moment he saw it.

Over his mountains arched a glittering curve of blue-green, shaped like a rainbow. Its end was somewhere far away, so far that Draco thought he would need to swim towards his core to reach it. The nearer edge was a few inches away, as he conceptualized distance in the soul, and he stretched out a hand, shaking with eagerness, and ran his fingertips through the edge of that glinting and cool light.

The same deep inherent goodness struck him as had struck him when he swam through Harry’s soul. The blue and green mingled like this formed an unusual shade, and just like any color that inhabited the soul, it had more than one meaning. There was something of compassion there, and understanding, and the same thoughtlessness that occupied so much of Harry, so that he charged ahead first and invented reasons for his conduct later. Draco knew, dimly, that he should be appalled that he had turned into so much the reckless Gryffindor. He should see this as a flaw in his soul.

He did not. He could not.

Harry had not given him a piece of his soul, not the way Draco had gifted him with a fragment of his, or Draco would have felt it—and he and Harry would have needed to talk about the Psyche-Diving abilities that Harry had apparently kept concealed from him. But in becoming so invested and interested and entangled in Harry’s life, part of his soul had altered to mimic the qualities that he found so appealing in Harry.

Draco had seen this happen before, when he’d spent weeks immersed in someone else’s history and personality. But it had always been temporary, and usually lapsed back into the normal colors the moment he was out of regular contact with his patient. This—Draco hadn’t read Harry’s soul since the day he’d brought him home, more than a week ago.

This might be permanent, a change that he had adopted because he’d wanted it.

Draco’s knowledge of his soul was inadequate to describe the feelings spiraling through him, and he didn’t try. He just watched the blue-green arch in silence, until the pop of a house-elf far away warned him that his visitor was probably here.

That Harry had given him something so beautiful…

Draco took a moment to calm himself before he ascended and had to deal with someone who wasn’t his Harry. He could put on a mask of cool indifference even when these kinds of emotions filled him. He’d had long practice in hiding savage glee when the Healers at St. Mungo’s had to learn that his methods were superiors to theirs, after all.

It was harder hiding exaltation, he discovered.

Because that was the emotion’s name.

But eventually he managed it, and opened his eyes to direct a nod to his house-elf, Tinky. Tinky gave a little squeak and vanished, and a few moments later Draco’s patient was hesitating in the door of his library. He was a tall, weary-looking, stretched-thin black man, whom Draco might have thought to be Blaise’s cousin if he didn’t know better.

“Regis Jones?” Draco asked.

Regis nodded, and Draco came forwards to shake his hand. “You’re welcome to sit,” he said, drawing the professional mantle of the Psyche-Diver around him like a cloak, “and tell me about the—problems—that you think plague you.” Hesitating delicately there, both to avoid naming it as insanity and hinting that the problems might not be as serious as the patient thought they were.

Never let it be said that Draco Malfoy didn’t know how to manage his patients.

Save the most important one, perhaps.

*

“And over here are night-blooming roses.” Batty sniffed audibly. “Not that Master Harry Potter would know what they are, as Master Harry Potter comes of dirty blood and these are not Muggle flowers.”

Harry laughed to himself. He had survived a year with everyone he knew and loved best hating him. Why should he let the taunts of a house-elf make any difference?

The gardens were more tranquil than he had expected, even though Batty was seizing every fountain and sundial and flowerbed as an opportunity to make him feel inferior. The sunlight had lost the foreign, enchanted tinge it had had for Harry earlier that morning, when it had made Draco glow like a divine image, and was just ordinary, honest light now. The blue of rare roses, the white gleam of narcissus, the green stone that several leaping dolphin statues were carved of, the intense red gleam of butterflies darting over the flowers…he let it pass into him and soothe him.

And he didn’t even try to avoid thinking about Draco. The thoughts were going to come anyway, so why not let them? And it did seem as if he could think more calmly and sensibly in the sunlight.

So. One thing he knew. The spoiled, self-centered boy he had known would not have grown into a man who tried his best to rescue Harry and take him from St. Mungo’s. Harry didn’t know for certain what had changed him. It could have been his sixth year at Hogwarts. It could have been the war, which had had the effect on Harry of almost numbing him to death and loss, while pressing him ever closer to those he loved who were still alive.

And now you’ve lost them all.

Harry ground his teeth. He was thinking about the present now, not the past. He would use the letters for talking. His dialogues with himself were all circular or pear-shaped, anyway.

He didn’t know what had changed Malfoy. It didn’t matter. He’d changed.

Has he changed enough for me to trust him?

And there’s the rub.

“These benches are made of marble older than Master Harry Potter’s paternal line,” Batty said, and then turned around and scowled at him when he absently brushed his hand across them. “Batty humbly suggests that Master Harry Potter refrain from touching them. Master Harry Potter would not want to smudge them.”

Harry shrugged at her. With his thoughts actually taking a productive course, the inside of his head was more interesting than the outside.

Harry didn’t know for certain if he could trust him. After all, he kept tripping and falling against the one essential thing, the question that had no good answer, or else an answer that would do him no good: what benefit could Malfoy derive from pursuing this so far and for so long?

Glory, he’s said. But the glory was uncertain, and far in the future; Harry had no idea how long it would take to break the Cassandra Curse, or if they’d ever manage it. Draco had given up a comfortable job—

His profession, for God’s sake, which he helped develop himself.

—and a piece of his soul, and time alone, and space in his own home, to help Harry. That wasn’t even talking about what he’d taken on by doing it. Harry would have defied Draco to put up with him for half-an-hour when he was healthy and sound of mind. Now, he wasn’t fit company for a sick rat. And there was the danger from the Ministry, and possibly from St. Mungo’s. Harry wasn’t sure what the hospital would or could do if they found out Draco had abducted one of their patients, but at least the legal consequences couldn’t be comfortable.

And what was it all for? Harry moodily kicked a bench. He didn’t know.

“Master Harry Potter is not to be kicking benches,” Batty said, her voice rising in a screech that Harry idly thought was probably like a Victorian maiden’s on discovering her bridegroom had lost the wedding ring. “Master Harry Potter is to be respecting the benches, and the flowers, and all the other ornaments of the garden!”

Harry shrugged at her again, and she turned her back and marched on before him, the hairs in her ears bristling.

What does he want? What can be worth this?

Harry sucked the inside of his cheek, ignoring Batty’s comments about how it was a filthy Muggle habit, and shook his head. There was at least one dark possibility: that Draco had seized what, in his mind, was a glittering diamond, and that when he realized it was paste, he would turn viciously on Harry. Any trust Harry had given him would then become a weapon, and Harry knew he probably wouldn’t survive Draco turning on him.

He threw back his head, and considered the sky overhead solemnly. It was a light, banded blue, crossed with several blazing clouds.

But isn’t that true anyway? Even if he turns on me for another reason, and not that one, I won’t survive. The point is that I need to get myself into a strong position from which I can survive, no matter what happens. I was almost there when I entered St. Mungo’s—and then I ran into Draco.

Harry narrowed his eyes against the sunlight and let Batty’s monologue become part of the background.

To get there… to become strong again…

The conclusion is the same no matter how I come at it. I need to trust him.

Not blindly, of course. He could still be plotting to betray me just for the fun of it, or he might see a better chance in turning me over to the Ministry than retaining me. But for the moment—with the proviso that I’ll pull back in an instant if I see anything too suspicious—I’ll rely on him a bit more than I do. Just a bit more.

Relaxing, Harry turned his head and looked towards the front of the house, wondering for a moment whether Draco’s patient had departed. Luckily, given their late breakfast, he wasn’t really hungry for lunch.

And then he stood straighter, because something was wrong. It took a sharp command to shut Batty up and long moments of listening, sensing, and filtering out the different impressions of the Manor’s wards before he realized what it was.

Harry had worked in the Auror Department for six years now and had several different partners. Granted, he’d spent the last year alone and on the most dangerous cases, but that didn’t take away his knowledge of the previous five. And he’d been around some of his colleagues even longer than that, since they’d mentored him through the three-year training program.

He knew their magical signatures.

And the magical signature of a familiar Auror was written on the air around the Manor in squirming letters. Harry drew his wand and cast a glamour on himself, that of a nondescript brown-haired, blue-eyed man he’d used on several cases, and then relaxed as much as he could, opening himself to the signature in order to identify it. Probably it was someone incompetent. After all, wouldn’t the Ministry be using most of its resources to hunt him in London or the North? Spying on Draco in Wiltshire, after he’d seemed to cooperate with the Ministry so well, would be grunt work.

And then he identified the signature’s location—the house—and the particular person the magic came from.

Kingsley Shacklebolt, one of the most competent Aurors the Ministry had.

Harry began to run.

*

“It’s the voices,” Regis was explaining in a tone of grave conviction. “I know they’re probably not real, but—“ He paused and shot Draco an intense look. “You know how sometimes it sounds like the voice of your conscience is a separate person? Well, is it really all that different? My mother could be in my head. Or her voice could be. I know she’s really not, she’s still alive, after all—“

Draco held his tongue and fought the temptation to give this idiot a lecture on the theory of how wizards became ghosts, which certainly would not include haunting the inside of a beloved son’s head.

His mother must love him, because I think no one else would.

As he had suspected, his first patient was some fool convinced he was insane and rich enough to waste Galleons on purchasing the services of a Psyche-Diver to confirm that. It wasn’t a serious case, or at least, it wasn’t one that Draco contemplated Diving into the man’s soul to solve. As he had also suspected, they’d spent this first session in talk. Regis only wanted someone to babble to about his “problems,” and Draco would use the time thus gained to persuade him to consult an ordinary Mind-Healer.

Of course, he showed none of his boredom. From long practice in all sorts of situations, his mask of calm concern was perfect, and he knew exactly how to hum at pauses in the conversation to show he was still listening.

“And sometimes they tell me to do—shameful things.” Regis blushed, and Draco hoped he wasn’t to be treated to a recitation of the bloke’s sexual indiscretions. “For example, Expelliarmus!”

Draco reacted too late as his wand was snatched away from him. He started to rise and clap his hands for a house-elf, but the man in the chair across from him cast several hexes in swift succession, and Draco found himself in an expert Body-Bind, gagged, thoughts shifting sluggishly under a sedation spell that he’d used many times himself in St. Mungo’s. The house-elves wouldn’t sense any distress from him and wouldn’t receive any signals, and unless one of them intruded into the room by accident—which they would never do, knowing their master had requested not to be disturbed—he wouldn’t be found.

Shit, he thought, struggling to think. I have to—I have to—

But he couldn’t remember what he had to do, what was so urgent that doing it was absolutely paramount. He breathed in and out instead, and found his eyes focusing dully on the pattern in the carpet. In the back of his head, he cursed himself for a fool, even though he knew full well it wasn’t productive.

Regis, or the Auror—and even coming to that insight took him labored moments—turned away from him, and towards the door.

And then there came a strong, confident voice shouting, “Stupefy! Obliviate!”

The body of the Auror fell down and lay still. Draco stared at it. He wasn’t sure he could wonder about the cause; his mind had just agreed with him that the voice was indeed strong and confident.

Quick footsteps hurried to the chair, a wand waved, and suddenly Draco was free and thinking clearly. Also furious with himself, but that was a given.

“Are you all right?” Harry asked quietly, surveying him. It was Harry’s voice, though it emerged from an unfamiliar, coarse-featured, blue-eyed face.

Draco nodded once. To his gratitude, Harry believed him without more nagging questions, and faced the Auror again.

“Who is he?” Draco asked, hiding his curiosity as to how Harry had known behind a carefully constructed mask of calm. He’d made a mistake, yes, but it had turned out all right. Now wasn’t the time to scold himself for it.

“Kingsley Shacklebolt,” Harry said, casting a few more spells that removed some glamours on the man and melted his face into one vaguely familiar to Draco. He chuckled. “It looks like your bait caught a shark, Draco.”

He turned around and grinned, and the gleam in his eyes cut through all glamours to let Draco know it was Harry Potter—and a Harry Potter with faith in himself he hadn’t seen since he first confronted him in St. Mungo’s, a Harry Potter who made his breath catch. Yes, now was definitely a time to avoid scolding himself.

Harry nudged at the Auror with one foot, and continued, never removing his eyes from Draco’s, “We can send him back to the Ministry with any tale we want, now. This is about the best thing that could have happened.” His face altered a bit, and he added, “Except that I would rather you hadn’t been put in danger.”

And there was more than one new thing in Harry’s eyes and voice, now.

Draco spent a moment wondering what he had done to deserve this good fortune, and then recalled the very long tale of his excellent qualities and couldn’t help but return the smile. Besides, it wasn’t good fortune so much as skill and planning and knowing how to take advantage of chances.

He set out to take advantage of another one.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

firedraygon97.livejournal.com

Hahaha, Shacklebolt parading around pretending to be a crazy rich guy is just so wonderful. I love how it's Harry to the rescue this time! ♥ Finally he gets a 'rebirth' in this fic. XD Haha, great work with this chapter. Please write more soon!

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Chapter Six of 'A Determined Frame of Mind'- Snapping at the Bait

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