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Title: Corybantes (9/12)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, OC character death, profanity, sex, mentions of random fetishes and suicide. Ignores the DH epilogue.
Summary: A mysterious death has occurred at Draco Malfoy’s club, Corybantes, which specializes in using magic to make its clients’ deepest fantasies come true. As Auror Harry Potter investigates, he finds himself admiring Malfoy’s courage and determination in achieving success. Which could be a problem, as there’s a fairly large chance that Malfoy is the murderer.
Author’s Notes: Corybantes were servants of the goddess Cybele who worked themselves up into ecstatic trances with drumming and dancing. Though applying to a different kind of ecstasy, it seemed a fairly good name for Draco’s club. This story will be about ten or twelve chapters long.
Chapter One.
Chapter Nine—Edges and Precipices
Harry sat in a chair near his hearth with his hands pressed against his face. He wouldn’t have risked coming back to his house, except that it was unlikely they would look for him here when they had thoroughly searched it once already.
Besides, he had dismantled the alarm wards Ron and Hermione had left strung across the door and windows that would have let them know he was entering.
The chair was still. Harry concentrated on that, and the stillness of the house in general, the comfortable way the chair molded to his bottom, and the solid weight of the fireplace across from him.
The thought of the way the house, and everything else on the planet, was whirling along through space at thousands of miles an hour tried to intrude. Harry shuddered and banished it. He needed immovable things around him right now.
Because the center of his brain was one enormous whirling confusion.
What—what, how, what the fuck—
He couldn’t believe how badly that had gone. He had been infiltrating buildings in Polyjuice disguises since the earliest days of his training. It was simple. It was effective. He could vanish into another person for short periods of time, all he required to be to talk to someone else and get the information he needed, even though he was no actor. It all depended on listening to what his instructors told him and then plotting out reasonable behaviors and plausible lies for his new persona.
Malfoy had walked into the room, and he hadn’t behaved as though he recognized Harry at first, because there was nothing of Harry there for him to recognize. Even when he became suspicious and summoned the potion or spell or whatever it was that would dismiss the Polyjuice, Harry thought he hadn’t expected to find Harry underneath Madam Perrin, just someone trying to enter Corybantes illegally.
How had he known? What had Harry done?
The answer was swift and cruel. Since he left Corybantes, more than confusion seemed to have entered Harry’s mind; there was an iron desire not to spare himself, and to confront his mistakes so that they wouldn’t happen again.
You know what it was. You sat there staring at him like an idiot when he asked a question, instead of answering at once like the straightforward and fussy Madam Perrin would have. He had reason to suspect that something was wrong. Here’s a woman who demanded complete rest and quiet immediately, even when speaking to someone who wasn’t the owner of Corybantes, and then she can’t ask for it when she has the actual chance to get it?
Harry groaned and drew his hands down over his face. He felt shaky and feverish, though he didn’t know if the sickly heat that seemed to be pounding through his head was real or not. He licked his lips and found them dry. He lowered his hands and looked towards the kitchen, thinking he should get some water.
But he didn’t move. The whirling in his head had invaded his limbs now. He didn’t know what would happen if he tried to stand up.
His merciless conviction of himself continued.
You’ve handled this case wrong from the beginning. You’ve pursued strange suspicions and listened to Malfoy far more than you needed to. And why? This isn’t a more violent murder than many you’ve seen. You didn’t know Keatson. You want to give peace to his family, but you haven’t done what was most effective for getting that accomplished, either.
And why?
And why?
Harry couldn’t flee from the question any longer. He gave up the answer with a groan, as if it had been tortured from him. In fact, he found his hand moving to a scar on his shoulder inflicted by such torture during one of his cases before the words of the answer echoed through his head.
Because he’s the only person I’ve met in a long time who might be able to give me what I want, things I could never ask of Ron or Hermione or Kingsley. He sees fantasies fulfilled every day. He wouldn’t back away from mine.
And then it turned out that he wanted me back, and I was thrown into confusion because I knew that he wouldn’t see me as one more person with strange fantasies to present, he would see me as a disappointingly flawed version of the Harry Potter he’d imagined, and I had to back away and try to become part of the case again, the perfect Auror, but I couldn’t—
Harry shook his head and forced his eyes open. Yes, he had been stupid, but at least he understood the reason for his behavior now.
However, he was dismayed at himself. He had thought he had the fantasies under control, so far from the surface of his mind that most of his dreams didn’t even contain them anymore. How had they escaped and begun to obsess him so much?
Your weakness. It was nothing Malfoy did. It was simply your weakness. The same thing that got you in trouble during the cult case, when you almost fell in with them. The same thing that got Roberts killed. The same thing that always opens up a chink in your armor, these stupid fucking emotions that you can’t suppress.
Harry sighed. One of his instructors during his training had told him that, in his opinion, Harry was “too Gryffindor” to make a good Auror. Harry had dismissed that as mindless prejudice because the instructor had been a Slytherin himself, and anyway, what did the Houses matter beyond Hogwarts? They only got to determine seven years of your life, not the rest of it.
Now, he thought he knew what Bluegill had meant.
Something knocked against one of his windows. Harry sat up immediately, dizzy with the way his heart pounded. If Ron or Hermione had found him already, or if that was a note from Kingsley telling him he had to go to St. Mungo’s—
But no. It was an owl, yes, but an unfamiliar white one with blue edges to some of its feathers. Harry stood up in wary curiosity and approached it. When he opened the window, the owl flew through it but simply landed on a table and extended its leg with the message. Harry cast several charms before he touched the parchment, looking for the spells that would make it Dark or turn it into a Portkey. None of those were present and, at last, he unrolled it and looked at it for himself.
The message shimmered when he looked at it, strange colors chasing over some of the letters. Harry blinked. He must be more tired than he thought.
Dearest Harry,
This is magic of the kind that was first perfected in the fantasy rooms of Corybantes. Be assured, though, that everything it shows you is in fact real. If you don’t believe me, then you can come to Corybantes again and I’ll be happy to show you the memories in a Pensieve. For the moment, though, I don’t believe that I could lure you near me, and I rather want to keep the memories in case this doesn’t convince you and you never return.
I want you. With time it could mature into love. Please believe me.
Draco.
Harry, frowning mightily, had just reached the signature and begun to wonder what he meant by magic when the colors collected in a pinwheel of blue, red, and green around the signature. Harry reached for his wand, but found his body had gone still and lax. Then his mind seemed to leap out of his skull and dive into the pool of color forming on the page.
His last thought before he fell into the mental world the magic was creating for him was that at least Malfoy knew how to do his villainy with style.
*
Harry caught his breath and looked around. It felt as though he’d had a far more abrupt “fall” into the memory than he usually did with a Pensieve, but the only difference he could immediately see was that he seemed to be fixed in one place.
He recognized it after a moment. He was near the entrance to Corybantes that for so long he had thought was the only one, in an alcove that faced the dark central space. Harry knew from the shadows the torches threw that it meant he could see without being seen.
Malfoy was beside him. He took a deep breath as though he were about to jump off a cliff and arranged his cloak carefully, then strode out into the corridor. Harry followed him, wondering if he was going to see Keatson’s murder without much hoping for it.
Instead, he watched himself come through the entrance and pause, contemplating the alcoves and the sign in the middle of the ceiling for a brief time before Shadow approached him.
Harry frowned. He had felt strong when he started into Corybantes, hadn’t he? After all, he didn’t know then how much confusion and tangled mystery would await him. He had anticipated a fairly straightforward case, with only his dislike of Malfoy to cloud the prospect. He should have looked cool and confident, his gaze expressing disdain.
Instead, he looked—half-wild. Uncomfortable. The way he craned his head back to look up at the sign and the way he stared at the murals would have made Harry think someone else who did it was plotting a crime here. And then he twitched when Shadow spoke to him and responded to her with his eyes fixed on her face and his hand clutching his wand the whole time. Harry searched his memory helplessly and couldn’t recover the nervousness that it seemed his past self was feeling.
More than the emotions themselves, he was dismayed that he had revealed them so easily to other people.
It was even worse when Malfoy stepped forwards and they had their conversation. The Harry Potter of the memory, whom Harry was reluctant to admit was himself, seemed to spend the entire time looking away or meeting Malfoy’s eyes with an expression equal parts hungry and lost. He licked his lips when Malfoy made a small motion to brush the hair out of his eyes. He looked at Malfoy’s hair, his cheeks, the lines of his wrists and collarbone, and his arse when he turned around too much.
Harry could understand, now, why Malfoy and the Corybantes employees might not have taken him seriously when he denied that he had a need to express his fantasies. Despite his Auror robes, he seemed to want the services of the club, to be there only for that.
The image blurred, and Harry found himself confronting Malfoy in that moment when Malfoy had pinned him against the wall. The Harry Potter of the memory had eyes that were on fire and a mouth hanging loose and slack.
Harry shuddered. Well, yes, being pinned like that came close to some of his fantasies. But why was he exposing himself? He knew what he wanted was abnormal and irrelevant to the case.
He hadn’t thought he was pushing it into people’s faces like that.
Malfoy caressed his arm as he withdrew his hand. Harry didn’t remember that, or the way his pictured self shut his eyes and shuddered. Or the look of hopeless longing that he sent after Malfoy when Malfoy moved to the other side of the room.
Yes, all right, Harry thought as the images blurred a second time. I can accept what it must look like. But how do I make him realize that I didn’t really feel those things? That it’s simply a case of unfortunate expressions and a context where Malfoy has almost no choice but to interpret them that way?
I can’t really feel those things. I didn’t.
The next moment Malfoy had chosen to send him was the one where the Polyjuice had melted away. Harry leaned forwards, because he was intent on learning the trick so that he could counter it if it happened again.
In the end, there was no trick. Malfoy made a slight gesture with one hand that Harry hadn’t noticed before, and spoke those spiky words at the same time. The ceiling above Harry shimmered and collapsed in a rush of stone that melted into blue sparks. When the blue sparks touched Harry, then the Polyjuice melted away from him.
And left behind desperation.
Harry knew that he had been feeling confused and upset and disoriented in those moments. He hadn’t realized what it looked like from the outside. Harry gazed into his own eyes and saw someone who was falling apart. It was no surprise that Malfoy’s face softened. He even half-stretched a hand towards the Harry in the memory, as if he wanted to pull him away from drowning.
Harry hadn’t noticed that compassionate gesture. He had noticed only the hunger that Malfoy stared at him with a minute later. But did he only do that because he knew it was what Harry would expect from him? Because he knew that Harry would deny that he was in danger or suffering at all, and that Malfoy was the one who could help him, instead of Harry helping Malfoy to find a Mind-Healer?
Harry watched his remembered self stumble through the rest of the conversation and had to fight to keep watching. It was all so very embarrassing. He had thought he was controlled; he wasn’t. He had thought that he would look like an apostle of calmness and the good that St. Mungo’s could do.
He didn’t. He looked like a madman. And when he dared to watch Malfoy instead, he saw the flickering little glances that Malfoy darted at him out of the corners of his eyes. He wondered if Harry was well enough to continue the conversation, that was plain. He pitied him and wanted to intervene, but he knew that Harry wouldn’t accept his intervention. He was visibly coming up with a plan. Harry had seen that expression on other people’s faces enough to recognize it now no matter how inscrutable he thought Malfoy was.
I’m the one who needs help. I’m the one who’s showing my deepest wounds off to everyone around me without realizing it.
Harry squeezed his eyes shut and squeezed his temples with his hands as the last memory dissolved. His breathing was rushed and painful, and the minute he started to accept that idea of himself, his mind spun and leaped and came to a new conclusion.
Malfoy must have tampered with the memories in some way. He must have. There’s no way that I could have looked like that. I’ve had too much experience controlling myself and being an Auror. I’m better than that. I must be.
I refuse to believe him.
And then his mind turned again and arched like a shooting star back to his original thoughts.
He saw what I was feeling. He saw what was true even if I never meant to show it. The way he reached out to me is an indication of that. I can’t measure the way I affect people any longer. I can’t stand on my own any longer.
Harry shuddered. A gasping sob rose through him, and then forced its way out of his throat as a harsh, gagging cry of fury and remorse and pain and helplessness.
I’m falling, and no one will catch me.
The world seemed to spin the way it had when he was tumbling through the memories. When he came back to some sort of consciousness, he was lying on the floor, though he didn’t remember how he’d got there, and the world still pivoted slowly around him, hazed with anger and pain.
I don’t have time for this!
But the sensation of falling took over again, and Harry realized, dimly and dismally, that his mind and body were in fact making time for this, making room for a breakdown.
He closed his eyes, though it seemed to make little difference whether they were open or shut. Perhaps he would feel more comfortable if he did so. His breathing sped up again, and Harry felt one hand rising, his fingers curling into hooks, as though he would claw the answers to his questions from inside his head.
Then arms surrounded him and held his hand down at his side. The voice Harry least wanted to hear at that moment said into his ear, “I thought this might happen. I’m here, Harry. I won’t leave you alone.”
Harry tried to sit up. The person who held him leaned back enough to let him do so, but continued cradling him, and the most Harry managed to accomplish was to lean against his chest. Harry noted dimly that the white owl was gone.
Of course the git would be an Animagus. Harry took advantage of the brief breath of clarity he was drawing at the moment and shoved at the arms encircling him. “Let me go, Malfoy. I don’t need your help.”
The lie withered on his lips when Malfoy kissed the back of his neck. Harry shut his eyes, and trembled, and hated himself. It had been a long time since he felt a gesture like that, yes, but that was no reason to let it undo him.
“So stubborn, even to the end,” Malfoy murmured. “No one should have to experience such a revelation alone, Harry. I won’t force my attentions on you, but I must insist that you let me help.”
“I don’t need help.” Harry listened to the echo of his words and wondered if they sounded proud and independent, the way he meant them to, or churlish and sullen. Malfoy gave a patient sigh, and Harry was afraid that he had his answer.
“Yes, you do,” Malfoy said. “Either you’ve locked yourself back into denial or you’re finally realizing what the rest of the world has known for years: that you’re driving yourself dangerously close to the edge of collapse.” He pulled, and Harry tried to use the pull to stand and shove himself away from Malfoy at the same time. His body didn’t cooperate, so Malfoy put him gently on the couch and sat down next to him.
“Pretend I’m not here if that’s what it takes.” Malfoy wrapped an arm around Harry’s neck and pulled him close, so that Harry’s head leaned on his shoulder.
“How can I, when you’re sitting like that?” Harry could feel his arms shaking. He’d hoped that he would get control of his behavior around Malfoy, but, of course, his body and mind seemed determined to defy him. He thought again of the way he had walked into Corybantes, the needs he had immediately betrayed, and choked.
I don’t know what I’m showing the people around me anymore. I don’t know what I’ve kept to myself and what other people know. What happens if Malfoy can already guess some of my deepest secrets? He didn’t show me his memories of everything. If he learned—if he guessed—
Harry tried frantically to pull away, but Malfoy held him still and murmured into his ear, “You need someone here. I’m here.”
“I need to be alone,” Harry said, but his voice broke at the end. Thought after thought of all the things he could no longer do if he didn’t have control of his facial expression crowded into his head, suffocating him. Investigate criminals, track Dark wizards, interrogate witnesses who couldn’t realize why the questions were important, do undercover work, use spells that were meant to pass undetected…
“This is the end of my life,” he said.
“Of the end of your life as you knew it, yes.” Malfoy pulled him closer again, until Harry’s face rested against his shoulder in warmth and darkness. “But that life was unhealthy, and close to mad. The moment you came into contact with someone you thought could help you, you appealed for that help. Some part of you is still sane, Harry, and determined to escape that repression you’ve enforced on yourself.”
Harry shook his head. His eyes burned. His hands wanted to shove Malfoy away from him, but he had no strength anymore. His head wanted to stay where he was. His mind divided, warring against itself. This was intolerable, but so was trying to continue on as he had been, when he might lose command of his expression at any instant.
“Are your fantasies so repugnant?” Malfoy whispered. He stroked Harry’s hair with a constant, regular motion. “Do you think I would turn away from you if I knew what they were? That’s the look I saw in your eyes sometimes. Self-loathing. You hate so much of yourself, Harry, and you don’t deserve that hatred.”
“Yes, that’s exactly it,” Harry said, grateful to grasp the excuse. The two halves of his mind united for long enough to let him speak. “My fantasies are stupid, Malfoy. They’re ugly and wretched, but even more than that, they’re petty. You would despise me for having them.”
“If you care nothing for my opinion, that ought not to be such a terrible fate.” Malfoy’s voice was absolutely calm.
“I don’t want anyone seeing them!” Harry snapped. “I don’t want to look at them! I hate them! I hate so many things about what I want, about what I believe, about what I do and can’t keep myself from doing, about what I am—”
His ears caught up with his brain then, and he shut his mouth.
“Ah,” Malfoy said. “Yes. I thought so. And even you ought to be able to admit, Harry, that you don’t deserve that level of loathing, after all the good you’ve done.”
Harry swallowed. He couldn’t speak.
“I wasn’t sure, at first,” Malfoy murmured, voice as soft and abstracted as if he was speaking to himself. “Sometimes you could recover your balance for a time, and I thought I might have been mistaken. And when I took the lowering of your inhibitions for conscious encouragement and tried to show you the force of desire I felt, all I did was scare you away. And then sometimes you seemed exactly like the prat I had known back in Hogwarts, determined to deny and sneer at me for nothing more than pursuing my ambitions, so I had to leave you alone to control my temper. It took me several days to see how those might be facets of a single being.”
His hand moved down to cup the back of Harry’s neck, and he whispered, voice more direct this time, “Why do you hate yourself, Harry?”
“Because—because—” Harry still hadn’t planned on talking, but once again part of his mind and his mouth had acted without the command of his conscious will. “Because I ought to be able to do the right thing without faltering. And I can’t. I ought to be strong and independent and take care of other people, not need to be taken care of myself. And I can’t.”
“I wondered how many of your fantasies involved that.” Malfoy’s voice deepened and warmed. “I want to take care of you, Harry. Fulfilling your fantasies means fulfilling mine. And if you want to wait, if you want to go to St. Mungo’s first or if you need some time apart from me, then that’s fine. Just as long as we can meet and talk some time in the future.”
Harry shuddered, and Malfoy sighed. “I’m being greedy and urging you too fast again,” he said. “For now, you need some time to think about what you just learned.” His voice altered to a gentle, coaxing tone. “For now, rest.”
Harry didn’t think he could do such a thing. He hadn’t realized he was carrying that much resentment against himself around, and now that it was past the barriers and he couldn’t forget what he’d said, he wanted to remain awake and consider it. Build new barriers, maybe.
But the soothing, continuous motion of Malfoy’s hand on his hair and the back of his neck, and the words he murmured with pauses of two heartbeats in between, made Harry close his eyes and succumb to sleep.
His hazy thought before he drifted off was that he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone to sleep in someone else’s arms.
Chapter Ten.
Title: Corybantes (9/12)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, OC character death, profanity, sex, mentions of random fetishes and suicide. Ignores the DH epilogue.
Summary: A mysterious death has occurred at Draco Malfoy’s club, Corybantes, which specializes in using magic to make its clients’ deepest fantasies come true. As Auror Harry Potter investigates, he finds himself admiring Malfoy’s courage and determination in achieving success. Which could be a problem, as there’s a fairly large chance that Malfoy is the murderer.
Author’s Notes: Corybantes were servants of the goddess Cybele who worked themselves up into ecstatic trances with drumming and dancing. Though applying to a different kind of ecstasy, it seemed a fairly good name for Draco’s club. This story will be about ten or twelve chapters long.
Chapter One.
Chapter Nine—Edges and Precipices
Harry sat in a chair near his hearth with his hands pressed against his face. He wouldn’t have risked coming back to his house, except that it was unlikely they would look for him here when they had thoroughly searched it once already.
Besides, he had dismantled the alarm wards Ron and Hermione had left strung across the door and windows that would have let them know he was entering.
The chair was still. Harry concentrated on that, and the stillness of the house in general, the comfortable way the chair molded to his bottom, and the solid weight of the fireplace across from him.
The thought of the way the house, and everything else on the planet, was whirling along through space at thousands of miles an hour tried to intrude. Harry shuddered and banished it. He needed immovable things around him right now.
Because the center of his brain was one enormous whirling confusion.
What—what, how, what the fuck—
He couldn’t believe how badly that had gone. He had been infiltrating buildings in Polyjuice disguises since the earliest days of his training. It was simple. It was effective. He could vanish into another person for short periods of time, all he required to be to talk to someone else and get the information he needed, even though he was no actor. It all depended on listening to what his instructors told him and then plotting out reasonable behaviors and plausible lies for his new persona.
Malfoy had walked into the room, and he hadn’t behaved as though he recognized Harry at first, because there was nothing of Harry there for him to recognize. Even when he became suspicious and summoned the potion or spell or whatever it was that would dismiss the Polyjuice, Harry thought he hadn’t expected to find Harry underneath Madam Perrin, just someone trying to enter Corybantes illegally.
How had he known? What had Harry done?
The answer was swift and cruel. Since he left Corybantes, more than confusion seemed to have entered Harry’s mind; there was an iron desire not to spare himself, and to confront his mistakes so that they wouldn’t happen again.
You know what it was. You sat there staring at him like an idiot when he asked a question, instead of answering at once like the straightforward and fussy Madam Perrin would have. He had reason to suspect that something was wrong. Here’s a woman who demanded complete rest and quiet immediately, even when speaking to someone who wasn’t the owner of Corybantes, and then she can’t ask for it when she has the actual chance to get it?
Harry groaned and drew his hands down over his face. He felt shaky and feverish, though he didn’t know if the sickly heat that seemed to be pounding through his head was real or not. He licked his lips and found them dry. He lowered his hands and looked towards the kitchen, thinking he should get some water.
But he didn’t move. The whirling in his head had invaded his limbs now. He didn’t know what would happen if he tried to stand up.
His merciless conviction of himself continued.
You’ve handled this case wrong from the beginning. You’ve pursued strange suspicions and listened to Malfoy far more than you needed to. And why? This isn’t a more violent murder than many you’ve seen. You didn’t know Keatson. You want to give peace to his family, but you haven’t done what was most effective for getting that accomplished, either.
And why?
And why?
Harry couldn’t flee from the question any longer. He gave up the answer with a groan, as if it had been tortured from him. In fact, he found his hand moving to a scar on his shoulder inflicted by such torture during one of his cases before the words of the answer echoed through his head.
Because he’s the only person I’ve met in a long time who might be able to give me what I want, things I could never ask of Ron or Hermione or Kingsley. He sees fantasies fulfilled every day. He wouldn’t back away from mine.
And then it turned out that he wanted me back, and I was thrown into confusion because I knew that he wouldn’t see me as one more person with strange fantasies to present, he would see me as a disappointingly flawed version of the Harry Potter he’d imagined, and I had to back away and try to become part of the case again, the perfect Auror, but I couldn’t—
Harry shook his head and forced his eyes open. Yes, he had been stupid, but at least he understood the reason for his behavior now.
However, he was dismayed at himself. He had thought he had the fantasies under control, so far from the surface of his mind that most of his dreams didn’t even contain them anymore. How had they escaped and begun to obsess him so much?
Your weakness. It was nothing Malfoy did. It was simply your weakness. The same thing that got you in trouble during the cult case, when you almost fell in with them. The same thing that got Roberts killed. The same thing that always opens up a chink in your armor, these stupid fucking emotions that you can’t suppress.
Harry sighed. One of his instructors during his training had told him that, in his opinion, Harry was “too Gryffindor” to make a good Auror. Harry had dismissed that as mindless prejudice because the instructor had been a Slytherin himself, and anyway, what did the Houses matter beyond Hogwarts? They only got to determine seven years of your life, not the rest of it.
Now, he thought he knew what Bluegill had meant.
Something knocked against one of his windows. Harry sat up immediately, dizzy with the way his heart pounded. If Ron or Hermione had found him already, or if that was a note from Kingsley telling him he had to go to St. Mungo’s—
But no. It was an owl, yes, but an unfamiliar white one with blue edges to some of its feathers. Harry stood up in wary curiosity and approached it. When he opened the window, the owl flew through it but simply landed on a table and extended its leg with the message. Harry cast several charms before he touched the parchment, looking for the spells that would make it Dark or turn it into a Portkey. None of those were present and, at last, he unrolled it and looked at it for himself.
The message shimmered when he looked at it, strange colors chasing over some of the letters. Harry blinked. He must be more tired than he thought.
Dearest Harry,
This is magic of the kind that was first perfected in the fantasy rooms of Corybantes. Be assured, though, that everything it shows you is in fact real. If you don’t believe me, then you can come to Corybantes again and I’ll be happy to show you the memories in a Pensieve. For the moment, though, I don’t believe that I could lure you near me, and I rather want to keep the memories in case this doesn’t convince you and you never return.
I want you. With time it could mature into love. Please believe me.
Draco.
Harry, frowning mightily, had just reached the signature and begun to wonder what he meant by magic when the colors collected in a pinwheel of blue, red, and green around the signature. Harry reached for his wand, but found his body had gone still and lax. Then his mind seemed to leap out of his skull and dive into the pool of color forming on the page.
His last thought before he fell into the mental world the magic was creating for him was that at least Malfoy knew how to do his villainy with style.
*
Harry caught his breath and looked around. It felt as though he’d had a far more abrupt “fall” into the memory than he usually did with a Pensieve, but the only difference he could immediately see was that he seemed to be fixed in one place.
He recognized it after a moment. He was near the entrance to Corybantes that for so long he had thought was the only one, in an alcove that faced the dark central space. Harry knew from the shadows the torches threw that it meant he could see without being seen.
Malfoy was beside him. He took a deep breath as though he were about to jump off a cliff and arranged his cloak carefully, then strode out into the corridor. Harry followed him, wondering if he was going to see Keatson’s murder without much hoping for it.
Instead, he watched himself come through the entrance and pause, contemplating the alcoves and the sign in the middle of the ceiling for a brief time before Shadow approached him.
Harry frowned. He had felt strong when he started into Corybantes, hadn’t he? After all, he didn’t know then how much confusion and tangled mystery would await him. He had anticipated a fairly straightforward case, with only his dislike of Malfoy to cloud the prospect. He should have looked cool and confident, his gaze expressing disdain.
Instead, he looked—half-wild. Uncomfortable. The way he craned his head back to look up at the sign and the way he stared at the murals would have made Harry think someone else who did it was plotting a crime here. And then he twitched when Shadow spoke to him and responded to her with his eyes fixed on her face and his hand clutching his wand the whole time. Harry searched his memory helplessly and couldn’t recover the nervousness that it seemed his past self was feeling.
More than the emotions themselves, he was dismayed that he had revealed them so easily to other people.
It was even worse when Malfoy stepped forwards and they had their conversation. The Harry Potter of the memory, whom Harry was reluctant to admit was himself, seemed to spend the entire time looking away or meeting Malfoy’s eyes with an expression equal parts hungry and lost. He licked his lips when Malfoy made a small motion to brush the hair out of his eyes. He looked at Malfoy’s hair, his cheeks, the lines of his wrists and collarbone, and his arse when he turned around too much.
Harry could understand, now, why Malfoy and the Corybantes employees might not have taken him seriously when he denied that he had a need to express his fantasies. Despite his Auror robes, he seemed to want the services of the club, to be there only for that.
The image blurred, and Harry found himself confronting Malfoy in that moment when Malfoy had pinned him against the wall. The Harry Potter of the memory had eyes that were on fire and a mouth hanging loose and slack.
Harry shuddered. Well, yes, being pinned like that came close to some of his fantasies. But why was he exposing himself? He knew what he wanted was abnormal and irrelevant to the case.
He hadn’t thought he was pushing it into people’s faces like that.
Malfoy caressed his arm as he withdrew his hand. Harry didn’t remember that, or the way his pictured self shut his eyes and shuddered. Or the look of hopeless longing that he sent after Malfoy when Malfoy moved to the other side of the room.
Yes, all right, Harry thought as the images blurred a second time. I can accept what it must look like. But how do I make him realize that I didn’t really feel those things? That it’s simply a case of unfortunate expressions and a context where Malfoy has almost no choice but to interpret them that way?
I can’t really feel those things. I didn’t.
The next moment Malfoy had chosen to send him was the one where the Polyjuice had melted away. Harry leaned forwards, because he was intent on learning the trick so that he could counter it if it happened again.
In the end, there was no trick. Malfoy made a slight gesture with one hand that Harry hadn’t noticed before, and spoke those spiky words at the same time. The ceiling above Harry shimmered and collapsed in a rush of stone that melted into blue sparks. When the blue sparks touched Harry, then the Polyjuice melted away from him.
And left behind desperation.
Harry knew that he had been feeling confused and upset and disoriented in those moments. He hadn’t realized what it looked like from the outside. Harry gazed into his own eyes and saw someone who was falling apart. It was no surprise that Malfoy’s face softened. He even half-stretched a hand towards the Harry in the memory, as if he wanted to pull him away from drowning.
Harry hadn’t noticed that compassionate gesture. He had noticed only the hunger that Malfoy stared at him with a minute later. But did he only do that because he knew it was what Harry would expect from him? Because he knew that Harry would deny that he was in danger or suffering at all, and that Malfoy was the one who could help him, instead of Harry helping Malfoy to find a Mind-Healer?
Harry watched his remembered self stumble through the rest of the conversation and had to fight to keep watching. It was all so very embarrassing. He had thought he was controlled; he wasn’t. He had thought that he would look like an apostle of calmness and the good that St. Mungo’s could do.
He didn’t. He looked like a madman. And when he dared to watch Malfoy instead, he saw the flickering little glances that Malfoy darted at him out of the corners of his eyes. He wondered if Harry was well enough to continue the conversation, that was plain. He pitied him and wanted to intervene, but he knew that Harry wouldn’t accept his intervention. He was visibly coming up with a plan. Harry had seen that expression on other people’s faces enough to recognize it now no matter how inscrutable he thought Malfoy was.
I’m the one who needs help. I’m the one who’s showing my deepest wounds off to everyone around me without realizing it.
Harry squeezed his eyes shut and squeezed his temples with his hands as the last memory dissolved. His breathing was rushed and painful, and the minute he started to accept that idea of himself, his mind spun and leaped and came to a new conclusion.
Malfoy must have tampered with the memories in some way. He must have. There’s no way that I could have looked like that. I’ve had too much experience controlling myself and being an Auror. I’m better than that. I must be.
I refuse to believe him.
And then his mind turned again and arched like a shooting star back to his original thoughts.
He saw what I was feeling. He saw what was true even if I never meant to show it. The way he reached out to me is an indication of that. I can’t measure the way I affect people any longer. I can’t stand on my own any longer.
Harry shuddered. A gasping sob rose through him, and then forced its way out of his throat as a harsh, gagging cry of fury and remorse and pain and helplessness.
I’m falling, and no one will catch me.
The world seemed to spin the way it had when he was tumbling through the memories. When he came back to some sort of consciousness, he was lying on the floor, though he didn’t remember how he’d got there, and the world still pivoted slowly around him, hazed with anger and pain.
I don’t have time for this!
But the sensation of falling took over again, and Harry realized, dimly and dismally, that his mind and body were in fact making time for this, making room for a breakdown.
He closed his eyes, though it seemed to make little difference whether they were open or shut. Perhaps he would feel more comfortable if he did so. His breathing sped up again, and Harry felt one hand rising, his fingers curling into hooks, as though he would claw the answers to his questions from inside his head.
Then arms surrounded him and held his hand down at his side. The voice Harry least wanted to hear at that moment said into his ear, “I thought this might happen. I’m here, Harry. I won’t leave you alone.”
Harry tried to sit up. The person who held him leaned back enough to let him do so, but continued cradling him, and the most Harry managed to accomplish was to lean against his chest. Harry noted dimly that the white owl was gone.
Of course the git would be an Animagus. Harry took advantage of the brief breath of clarity he was drawing at the moment and shoved at the arms encircling him. “Let me go, Malfoy. I don’t need your help.”
The lie withered on his lips when Malfoy kissed the back of his neck. Harry shut his eyes, and trembled, and hated himself. It had been a long time since he felt a gesture like that, yes, but that was no reason to let it undo him.
“So stubborn, even to the end,” Malfoy murmured. “No one should have to experience such a revelation alone, Harry. I won’t force my attentions on you, but I must insist that you let me help.”
“I don’t need help.” Harry listened to the echo of his words and wondered if they sounded proud and independent, the way he meant them to, or churlish and sullen. Malfoy gave a patient sigh, and Harry was afraid that he had his answer.
“Yes, you do,” Malfoy said. “Either you’ve locked yourself back into denial or you’re finally realizing what the rest of the world has known for years: that you’re driving yourself dangerously close to the edge of collapse.” He pulled, and Harry tried to use the pull to stand and shove himself away from Malfoy at the same time. His body didn’t cooperate, so Malfoy put him gently on the couch and sat down next to him.
“Pretend I’m not here if that’s what it takes.” Malfoy wrapped an arm around Harry’s neck and pulled him close, so that Harry’s head leaned on his shoulder.
“How can I, when you’re sitting like that?” Harry could feel his arms shaking. He’d hoped that he would get control of his behavior around Malfoy, but, of course, his body and mind seemed determined to defy him. He thought again of the way he had walked into Corybantes, the needs he had immediately betrayed, and choked.
I don’t know what I’m showing the people around me anymore. I don’t know what I’ve kept to myself and what other people know. What happens if Malfoy can already guess some of my deepest secrets? He didn’t show me his memories of everything. If he learned—if he guessed—
Harry tried frantically to pull away, but Malfoy held him still and murmured into his ear, “You need someone here. I’m here.”
“I need to be alone,” Harry said, but his voice broke at the end. Thought after thought of all the things he could no longer do if he didn’t have control of his facial expression crowded into his head, suffocating him. Investigate criminals, track Dark wizards, interrogate witnesses who couldn’t realize why the questions were important, do undercover work, use spells that were meant to pass undetected…
“This is the end of my life,” he said.
“Of the end of your life as you knew it, yes.” Malfoy pulled him closer again, until Harry’s face rested against his shoulder in warmth and darkness. “But that life was unhealthy, and close to mad. The moment you came into contact with someone you thought could help you, you appealed for that help. Some part of you is still sane, Harry, and determined to escape that repression you’ve enforced on yourself.”
Harry shook his head. His eyes burned. His hands wanted to shove Malfoy away from him, but he had no strength anymore. His head wanted to stay where he was. His mind divided, warring against itself. This was intolerable, but so was trying to continue on as he had been, when he might lose command of his expression at any instant.
“Are your fantasies so repugnant?” Malfoy whispered. He stroked Harry’s hair with a constant, regular motion. “Do you think I would turn away from you if I knew what they were? That’s the look I saw in your eyes sometimes. Self-loathing. You hate so much of yourself, Harry, and you don’t deserve that hatred.”
“Yes, that’s exactly it,” Harry said, grateful to grasp the excuse. The two halves of his mind united for long enough to let him speak. “My fantasies are stupid, Malfoy. They’re ugly and wretched, but even more than that, they’re petty. You would despise me for having them.”
“If you care nothing for my opinion, that ought not to be such a terrible fate.” Malfoy’s voice was absolutely calm.
“I don’t want anyone seeing them!” Harry snapped. “I don’t want to look at them! I hate them! I hate so many things about what I want, about what I believe, about what I do and can’t keep myself from doing, about what I am—”
His ears caught up with his brain then, and he shut his mouth.
“Ah,” Malfoy said. “Yes. I thought so. And even you ought to be able to admit, Harry, that you don’t deserve that level of loathing, after all the good you’ve done.”
Harry swallowed. He couldn’t speak.
“I wasn’t sure, at first,” Malfoy murmured, voice as soft and abstracted as if he was speaking to himself. “Sometimes you could recover your balance for a time, and I thought I might have been mistaken. And when I took the lowering of your inhibitions for conscious encouragement and tried to show you the force of desire I felt, all I did was scare you away. And then sometimes you seemed exactly like the prat I had known back in Hogwarts, determined to deny and sneer at me for nothing more than pursuing my ambitions, so I had to leave you alone to control my temper. It took me several days to see how those might be facets of a single being.”
His hand moved down to cup the back of Harry’s neck, and he whispered, voice more direct this time, “Why do you hate yourself, Harry?”
“Because—because—” Harry still hadn’t planned on talking, but once again part of his mind and his mouth had acted without the command of his conscious will. “Because I ought to be able to do the right thing without faltering. And I can’t. I ought to be strong and independent and take care of other people, not need to be taken care of myself. And I can’t.”
“I wondered how many of your fantasies involved that.” Malfoy’s voice deepened and warmed. “I want to take care of you, Harry. Fulfilling your fantasies means fulfilling mine. And if you want to wait, if you want to go to St. Mungo’s first or if you need some time apart from me, then that’s fine. Just as long as we can meet and talk some time in the future.”
Harry shuddered, and Malfoy sighed. “I’m being greedy and urging you too fast again,” he said. “For now, you need some time to think about what you just learned.” His voice altered to a gentle, coaxing tone. “For now, rest.”
Harry didn’t think he could do such a thing. He hadn’t realized he was carrying that much resentment against himself around, and now that it was past the barriers and he couldn’t forget what he’d said, he wanted to remain awake and consider it. Build new barriers, maybe.
But the soothing, continuous motion of Malfoy’s hand on his hair and the back of his neck, and the words he murmured with pauses of two heartbeats in between, made Harry close his eyes and succumb to sleep.
His hazy thought before he drifted off was that he couldn’t remember the last time he had gone to sleep in someone else’s arms.
Chapter Ten.
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Date: 2009-09-25 12:27 am (UTC)It was hard to write. On the other hand, I knew that Draco would be there to help him.
I have some fondness for this dynamic, too. I think it's because I've read so many Harry-saves-Draco stories that they seem more common to me.