lomonaaeren | Chapter Ten of 'Corybantes'- Conversations and Recoveries

Title: Corybantes (10/12)
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.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ten—Conversations and Recoveries

Harry woke so slowly that at first he couldn’t distinguish the dream from the reality. He had dreamed of lying on something soft, with warm arms around him. He would have been content to stay in that world for longer than his mind wanted him to. It was close to some of the fantasies he’d had, close to some of the gentler dreams, and he knew he wouldn’t find anything like that in the real world.

But when he did finally open his eyes and focus blearily on the wall opposite him, he found that the soft thing had accompanied him. He ran his hand over blankets that someone had Transfigured and blinked. The spring that usually pressed into his back was gone. The pillows behind his head felt more yielding, too.

And though there were no warm arms wrapped around him, there was a warm hand resting on his shoulder.

Harry turned his head, shivering. The hand ended an arm, and the arm extended up to a body, and the body turned out to belong to Draco Malfoy, who was sitting in a chair next to his bed. Harry thought dazedly that he looked too fresh to have been sitting in the chair all night. Maybe he’d had monitoring charms that alerted him when Harry moved. Harry stared at him and said nothing. The remembrance of what had happened between them last night dried most of the saliva in his throat.

“Hullo,” Malfoy said quietly. “I hope that you feel well enough to sit up and eat a sandwich. Do you?”

“I thought toast was more traditional for breakfast.” Harry could hardly keep track of what he was saying. The words simply seemed to tumble out of his mouth.

“So it would be,” Malfoy said, his voice warmer now, “but seeing as it’s nearly noon, I thought you might prefer to have lunch instead.”

Harry winced and struggled to sit up. Even though he’d remembered that Kingsley had sacked him and so he didn’t have to be to work on time, he still found the thought of lying around while other people were up and about disturbing. Too self-indulgent. And when he was self-indulgent, bad things happened.

“You didn’t have to make me lunch,” he muttered, looking down at his hands. More and more memories struck him every moment, burning like cinders. He flinched when he recalled that he’d shed at least a few tears on Malfoy’s shoulder.

He knew he had to repair the barriers that had held him away from the rest of the world, because there was no way that he could live with this sickening vulnerability. He just didn’t know how to repair them.

Malfoy placed a hand beneath Harry’s chin and tilted his head up. Harry stiffened in shock as Malfoy slipped his glasses over his face. It hadn’t occurred to him that Malfoy would touch him like that. Comforting and soothing was one thing, but the hands that helped him out of bed now felt…authoritative.

Harry swallowed down his completely inappropriate reaction and tried to stand on his own. His body wasn’t really weak, he thought, just groggy from his long sleep. “You didn’t have to make me lunch,” he repeated, because he hadn’t seen or heard any response from Malfoy the last time he said it.

“I know that,” Malfoy said. His voice was too close to Harry’s ear, but if he noticed the shiver that sped down Harry’s body, he was much too polite to mention it. “I did it because it’s my pleasure. I know that you’ll need some time to recover and decide what to do with yourself, and I won’t pressure you to fulfill the rest of my fantasies right now. But helping you, advising you if I can, making sure that you don’t slip back into the automatic responses that you showed before…yes, that will please me.”

“But you don’t have to,” was all Harry could think of to say. Most of his attention was taken up with the fact that it sounded as if Malfoy wouldn’t let him become the person that he needed to become again.

Malfoy simply shook his head and then urged him into one of his kitchen chairs. Harry sat down in self-defense and reached for the sandwich that Malfoy handed him. Biting into it nearly choked him, there was so much cheese and ham and pickles piled on it. Harry licked his lips to get rid of some of the juice and gave Malfoy a glance that he knew he was incredulous. He didn’t care. If Malfoy had killed Keatson with strange magic, obviously he didn’t mind trying more mundane means on Harry.

Malfoy frowned. “Don’t you like it? I assumed that you liked all these ingredients since you had them here, but perhaps I was wrong.” He looked thoughtful. “I don’t know that much about making things from scratch, since the house-elves do so much for me. For you, I’d be willing to try, but that doesn’t mean my first effort was any good.”

The thoughtful look and the near-apology—as well as the implication that Malfoy could admit his own mistakes—made Harry feel as if he’d fallen straight back into the surreal mood from last night. He took a smaller bite of the sandwich, chewed a few times to work it down his throat, and then laid the sandwich back on the plate. “I appreciate it, Malfoy,” he said. “The sandwich is fine. But I think that you need to go back to your club now, and I need to go back to my investigation.”

For long moments, Malfoy did nothing but survey him. Harry felt a flush mount his cheeks. Did he have more pickle juice on his face?

But he knew it came from a deeper source than that. No one needed to look at him that intensely, with an expression that said he cared about the smallest things Harry did and experienced. He wanted it to happen, but that was one more selfish desire that could be stuffed under the surface and ignored.

The moment he got past the…fall that had happened to him last night.

“Listen, Malfoy,” he said, and ate another bite of the sandwich. “I appreciate that you were there for me. I needed someone who was.” Malfoy gave him a smile that Harry had to look away from. “But you’re right that I don’t trust you enough to let you into my mind and start describing all my faults to you.”

“That’s far from the first time you’ve acted as if you’re horribly twisted and wrong for having fantasies,” Malfoy said, his voice less tense than Harry would have expected. “Why? I know that you’re disgusted by Corybantes, but you seem to be harsher on yourself than on people who want to experience sex with their mirror image or have a dozen people kneeling to them and worshipping them.”

“Those people are…ordinary,” Harry said, after a long struggle that he hoped would let him find a better word. Nothing came to mind. “Not Aurors with lives depending on what they do during their cases. I don’t mind if they want to indulge themselves, as long as I don’t have to watch it.”

“But why is it wrong or disgusting to indulge fantasies in the first place?” Malfoy’s chair creaked as he leaned forwards. Harry still refused to look at him, but he could tell what he was doing. “That’s what I want to know.”

“It shows that you’ve lost control,” Harry said. He was fumbling for words again, but how could he help it? After all, he had said that he didn’t want to trust Malfoy with his secrets, and he couldn’t explain his reluctance without explaining the cases he had been involved in, the cases that had taught him to hate the corruption most people carried around in the depths of their minds. He thought a moment, and then smiled. Maybe Malfoy would understand this comparison. After all, even in Corybantes people seemed to perform their most sexual acts in private rooms, not in the entrance hall.

“It’s like masturbating in public,” he said, looking at Malfoy triumphantly. “You wouldn’t want to watch someone doing that, would you?”

Malfoy’s eyes widened, his pupils dilating. “For me,” he said, voice deep, “it would depend entirely on who was doing the wanking.”

Harry caught a glimpse of what he thought Malfoy was thinking—not because he was good at Legilimency, just because it was clearly written all over his face. He had some idea about Harry masturbating. He probably thought Harry did it wildly, jerking himself with quick and painful motions, his head tilted back and one hand clapped over his mouth to stifle his moans—

Harry turned away again, his face painfully flushed.

“But that’s what it’s like for me,” he mumbled, though he had little hope that Malfoy would pay attention to him. “I don’t want other people to see me masturbate, and I don’t want to walk in on them doing it. It’s so private. Why would you want someone else to see you doing that? I don’t—I don’t get that.”

Malfoy said nothing for long minutes. Harry continued eating the sandwich. Once again, as had happened last night when he said that he hated himself, his words were echoing in his mind, and he thought of the many ways that Malfoy could take them. None of them were ways that Harry wanted them to be taken. It would probably sound like he was a prude or repressed, and that wasn’t true.

Lovers probably watch each other wanking all the time.

Harry shook his head and reached for the next sandwich Malfoy had made, a much smaller one with corned beef on it. His jaws were grateful that they wouldn’t have to stretch around another huge gulp of food, he thought wryly.

“Harry.” Malfoy spoke quietly. Harry grunted to show that he was listening, but didn’t turn to look at him. “I meant what I said. I want you to have the time and space away from me to work these things out if you need to. At the same time, I’m not sure that anyone else would have the zeal to dig under the layers of deception that you’re setting up to safeguard yourself.”

Harry whipped around then, and winced as a piece of corned beef flew away from a bitten corner of the sandwich and hit Malfoy’s face. Malfoy wiped it off with a napkin. Harry whispered, “Sorry.” Then he remembered why he had turned around in the first place, and snapped, “I’m not lying.”

“Not consciously,” Malfoy said. “I know that. And your lies are good enough that someone else, like a Mind-Healer, might be fooled by them. They’re certainly good enough to fool you. But do you remember what you said last night? You hate yourself.” His voice fell to a whisper that Harry inched towards him to listen for. When Harry realized what he had done, he was disgusted with himself, but Malfoy’s words captured his attention again. “That’s not normal. You can feel disgusted by other people’s public display of sexuality without having any problems with your own, but it’s all too clear that you do. And with your ability and right to indulge in pleasure in general. I think some of your fantasies aren’t sexual, but you feel just as uncomfortable with them, don’t you?”

Harry shut his eyes. Malfoy’s words had got into his head, and rattled around the center of his skull. No matter how many different explanations he thought of to put Malfoy off and challenge his interpretations, he knew that none of them would convince someone determined to disbelieve them.

More than that, Harry no longer thought that he could believe those explanations himself.

He swallowed. No. No, I really think that the shameless indulgence I see from so many people is disgusting.

But was self-loathing really a sane response to that?

“I don’t want to answer that,” he said, and his voice snapped and rasped like a claw along stone. “I don’t have to answer that.”

“No, you don’t,” Malfoy said quietly, and then stood. Harry opened his eyes and watched him from behind his last sandwich as Malfoy went into the kitchen and opened the cupboards. When it looked as if he was making himself soup, Harry sat up, frowning. After the resignation in Malfoy’s voice, he had thought the git would leave.

“If you know that I won’t talk to you about this,” he asked, “then why don’t you go back to Corybantes? I’m sure there are clients there who need you.” He clamped his mouth shut the moment he had spoken the last words, because they came out with shocking bitterness, and he didn’t want to think of why.

“My employees know how to handle Corybantes in my absence,” Malfoy said. He was smiling as he cast a Warming Charm on the soup, and then a charm that Harry didn’t know but which seemed to stir it at high speed. “I think Shadow was rather relieved, actually. She doesn’t want me in Corybantes trying to attend to clients and decide whether certain dangerous people should be allowed in when she knows that I’m stewing about you.”

“But you could leave for other reasons,” Harry said, thrown off again. “I won’t give you what you want, so there’s no reason for you to stay.”

Malfoy paused for a moment, though all he had been doing was leaning on the counter and watching as the invisible spoon of his magic sped around and around the bowl of soup. Then he looked up and straight at Harry. Harry shuddered back from what he saw in his eyes and dropped his gaze to the table.

“Would you say something like that to your friends?” Malfoy asked. Harry both longed and dreaded to hear a sneer in his voice, because of what it would mean, but Malfoy sounded gentle and tragic and tired. “Would you assume that anyone who wanted to share your life and help you would only do so as long as you would gratify them?”

Harry swallowed around a tongue that felt too large. Even suggesting something like that was unfair and disloyal to Ron and Hermione. He knew it. But they were friends from Hogwarts, and anyone he’d made friends with more recently seemed unlikely to stay with him just because he needed help.

But why? his inconvenient curiosity, which Malfoy seemed to have stimulated, asked a moment later. Why should the friends you made at Hogwarts and the friends you made later in your life be so different? You know that there’s no rational reason for that difference.

Harry leaned back in his chair and took a long, careful breath. He felt as if he was about to fall apart again. The pieces of his brain trembled in his brain. He would lose control of them if he moved. He had to sit still.

“Harry? Are you all right?” Malfoy came up behind him, soft-footed so that Harry didn’t hear him until it was too late to hide the expression on his face, and laid his hand on Harry’s shoulder.

Harry caught his breath, and knew it was on the edge of tears. He turned around, intending to get up and flee to his bedroom.

Malfoy caught him and steered him back into the chair. Harry put his hands over his face. Malfoy didn’t try to remove them, but shoved his own chair close and sat there with his arms around Harry. Harry took slow, deep breaths, furious with himself for collapsing twice in twenty-four hours.

And for no good reason. Malfoy wasn’t threatening him; Harry even half-believed him when he claimed that he didn’t want to force Harry to talk. He’d made lunch for him and stayed with Harry during the night. Harry knew better than to think there was anything diabolical or inhuman in all that. Malfoy might still have diabolical motives, but they weren’t coming out in his actions.

Yet Harry sat there, on the edge of breaking down, trembling as though someone had tortured him—yes, it was like the Dreisenberg and Coli cases—his defenses breaking, his mind on the verge of shattering, his sensibilities punished.

Hating himself.

Harry knew the answer, then, and he stopped shaking to consider it. Malfoy only moved closer, his voice a formless murmur as he wrapped his arm around Harry’s shoulders. Harry was too involved in the thought of what was happening to him to resent the gesture, and he leaned on Malfoy’s shoulder before he thought about it.

The thoughts in his head were too large to leave room for anything else.

Malfoy was right. Hating himself for having fantasies and emotions and lacking superhuman control wasn’t a normal response, and it was a stupid one. Harry had felt that last night; now he was thinking through it rationally.

He hated what was happening to him, but the easiest way to face it was to go through it instead of trying to ignore it, because it just threatened his control again when he ignored it. He could face it, and trample through it, and beat it down, and stop letting himself react this way.

If he acknowledged that Malfoy was right, and that he was sick and tired of chastising himself for mistakes that weren’t mistakes to anyone else.

Harry shivered. The hard part was that he would need to trust someone else with his fantasies if he was going to do this. He didn’t need to do them, but he needed to at least discuss them. And that would mean giving the other person a chance to laugh at him.

Talking to Malfoy might actually be an advantage, though. He had probably seen worse fantasies. Looking at his desires as he clearly could with his reluctance still in the way, Harry had to admit that what he wanted wasn’t so unusual or strange or repulsive.

Maybe. It would depend on what he says.

One thing was sure: Harry would rather talk to Malfoy, who ran a club and was used to negotiating with his clients over how to fulfill fantasies that might hurt them or someone else, than he would a Mind-Healer. And talking to Ron and Hermione about things like this was impossible if he ever wanted to look them in the eye again. Harry cleared his throat and shifted his head, hoping that Malfoy would let him up.

He did. He watched Harry with the same gentle eyes and smile as before. Harry stared back and saw the sharp glint under the surface of those eyes for the first time. Malfoy was concerned about him, but he was trying hard not to show it more than he already had. Harry wondered if that was delicacy or common sense. After all, Harry hadn’t exactly acted grateful for everything he had done so far.

Harry spent a few minutes thinking carefully about how to phrase this. Then he said, “I—reckon you’re right about at least one thing. Trying to act like everything is normal and I can go on as I have been doesn’t work. I was on the verge of a breakdown just now, and I wasn’t even sure why.”

Malfoy snorted. “Finally,” he said, the word seeming to burst out of him as if he’d been repressing it as much as Harry had been trying to repress his emotions. When Harry frowned at him, he grimaced and shook his head. “Forgive me,” he murmured, lifting a hand so that he could stroke Harry’s hair. Harry let his eyes fall shut and struggled to keep from moaning. Just having someone touch him gently like that was one of his minor desires. “But yes, it’s not going to work, Harry. The only question is who you’d prefer to have help you. There are Mind-Healers in St. Mungo’s that you’ve worked with before, I know. Would you like one of them? Shacklebolt may have alerted them already.”

“No,” Harry said. “I can’t talk about this with a stranger.” He grabbed the flimsy sort of courage that was the only kind he had left these days and looked Malfoy in the face. “I’d like to talk about this with you.”

Malfoy blinked several times, then shut his eyes and bowed his head. His hands moved to Harry’s shoulders and tightened there. “Don’t say this if you don’t mean it, Harry,” he whispered. “I’ve longed to hear you say that, but I would rather you do what’s best for you. Don’t dangle hope in front of me and then yank it away.”

“Is that what you feel like I did?” Harry whispered.

Malfoy shook his head. “Not consciously. I know that you couldn’t help it, that you were suffering. But I’ve wanted to help you, to heal you, to care for you and have you care for me for so long, and I thought I would get the chance when you came to Corybantes to investigate Keatson’s death.” He stiffened for a moment, probably because he thought Harry would pull away from him when he mentioned the case, but Harry stayed still and Malfoy let out a shaky breath. “I want to know if this is the real thing or not.”

“It’s the real thing,” Harry said, as solemnly and as truthfully as he could.

Malfoy leaned forwards, slowly enough that Harry had plenty of time to withdraw if he wanted, and pressed his lips against Harry’s jawbone. He withdrew a moment later and said, “You don’t know what this means to me, but I’ll try to show you.” Already his eyes were brighter and his movements more confident. Harry smiled back at him. This was one of the best cures he could have, he thought. Helping Malfoy meant he didn’t feel entirely useless and as if he was a parasite sucking the life out of other people. “Now. I need to speak to you honestly if you can, Harry.” His voice dropped into sweetness on the last word, making Harry shiver. “What is it that makes you so frightened of losing control? I thought at first that perhaps your magic had gone wild and killed someone else, but I know that your first partner didn’t die from that.”

“My first partner died because I made stupid mistakes,” Harry said thickly. He closed his eyes against the flood of memories, and felt his mind shake and quiver again. This was going to be hard, not easy, he reminded himself, against the temptation to keep both eyes and mouth shut and not say anymore. “I—I’ve suffered through cases where I lost control.”

“What happened?” Malfoy’s voice was pitched as if he wanted to hypnotize Harry, and he started stroking the back of his neck.

“I was tortured,” Harry said. Malfoy’s hand faltered once, then resumed the stroking in a pattern that made Harry’s muscles relax. “And once I was undercover working with a cult, and I nearly became one of them. And I know Occlumency because of a case where a Dark wizard invaded my mind with Legilimency. I thought I had to be controlled, because otherwise I couldn’t keep my job. And then I started to feel that losing control was unnatural and wrong.”

“There’s nothing unnatural about losing control under torture,” Malfoy declared. Now his voice was rough.

“I know that.” Harry opened his eyes against the temptation to keep them closed. “But I didn’t feel that. It’s like the difference between knowing and feeling you were right. I have to have both of them in conjunction, or I can’t act.”

Malfoy fell silent, though his hand never ceased moving. Then he said, “Do you think it’s too early for me to try to fulfill one of your fantasies, Harry? A small one,” he added hastily, when Harry opened his mouth to protest. “Just a small one, so you can pull back easily if you feel like you’re losing control.”

“If we do that,” Harry said, feeling compelled to warn him, “it might open the floodgates. I don’t know if I could rest content with you fulfilling just one. I might demand more from you.”

Malfoy gave him a bright smile. “But that’s just what I want, Harry.”

Harry felt his will tremble again, but this time with a different purpose. He had fought so long against surrendering, seizing tools from his principles and his magic and his circumstances as an Auror.

But if his surrender was going to happen, it should happen in front of someone he partially trusted and could at least escape than in front of a powerful, enraged Dark wizard.

And—darkest of dark secrets, churning out of him like a monster out of a dark cave—

He wanted to surrender. He was so tired.

“All right,” he whispered. “All right.”

Malfoy lifted his hands to Harry’s cheeks and stroked them, his fingers widespread to touch many small places on Harry’s skin at once, for an answer.

Chapter Eleven.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

ldydark1.livejournal.com

This chapter absolutely touched me.
Over ten years ago I had two difficult,
life changing events happen to me.
I was devastated or close to it.
A good friend told me, and I never forgot
this, 'Don't fight the feeling or emotion
you are experiencing. Let it encompasses
you, and then let it flow through you, and
release it. Do this is often as you need.'
Showing emotion to me was a sign of weakness,
to let others who did not care about you view
your weakness.
What a sensitive, caring Draco and a sensitive,
caring well written chapter. Harry is scared,
this is a big step for him to admit and show
his vulnerability. I look forward to the next
chapter. So, very well done.

Edited Date: 2009-09-26 10:47 pm (UTC)

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Chapter Ten of 'Corybantes'- Conversations and Recoveries

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