Chapter Four of 'Chosen Chains'- A Culmination of Desires (1/2)

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Three.

Title: Chosen Chains (4/5 to 7)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Heavy angst, bondage, D/s elements, violence, sex, profanity. EWE.
Summary: Harry has spent the last two years in semi-exile from the wizarding world after bitter arguments with the Ministry and his best friends. Now the Ministry summons him back, since they can’t run the school without the cooperation of Dumbledore’s portrait—and Dumbledore will only talk to Harry. Draco, summoned to talk to Snape’s portrait at the same time, meets a Harry he hasn’t expected, one who’s going to request something strange from him, and perhaps require more than that.
Author’s Notes: This will be an irregularly updated story of, probably, five to seven parts, with fairly long chapters. The Dominance/submission elements are limited, but an important part of the story, and I haven’t often written them before, so please don’t read it if that bothers you.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Four—A Culmination of Desires

Harry paused in the act of pulling himself out of the lake when he saw that Ron and Hermione were two of the people waiting for him. Then he completed the pull, but he made sure that they saw the boredom on his face and the utter lack of urgency in his movements.

They can’t make me do anything. They’ll never make me do anything again.

Hermione would probably think that was strange, since she thought he needed orders to live. But Harry had a very definite idea of who he should allow to command him, and it didn’t include any of the people around him. It probably included no one, since no one seemed to want the job.

Harry grimaced and made sure that no trace of his thoughts showed in his expression when he glanced at the other woman waiting behind Hermione, who must be Covington from Malfoy’s description. He couldn’t afford to show his personal weaknesses to someone who wouldn’t hesitate to take advantage of them.

“Madam Covington, I assume?” he said, and saw the slight flicker of surprise around her lips as her smile faded a bit.

“Mr. Potter,” she said. “Have your investigations borne fruit?”

“What a strange way of putting the matter,” Malfoy’s voice said in an effortless drawl, and then he came up and stood at Harry’s shoulder as though he belonged there. His hand even rested on Harry’s back with a brief, violent press, as if he was telling Harry silently to let him handle this. Harry stared at him from the corner of his eye. Malfoy chose to take no notice. Instead, he went on speaking in a slightly dry voice that said they had been partners for years and invited Harry to share the joke. “We are not trees. We are a highly skilled Potions master and former Auror, looking into a private matter for the sake of private loyalties, rather than at the request of the Ministry.”

“Pardon me,” said Covington, with a bow that Harry thought would have done credit to Umbridge when she was trying to impress someone. “I had thought you would not have known about this chance but for the Ministry.”

Malfoy’s nostrils flared a bit, but Harry wasn’t sure why—unless maybe Covington was hinting that Malfoy had spies in the Ministry or some other way to hear about the riddles and the task of finding the key to the wards. He might even, for all Harry knew. But Harry really wouldn’t have known about this without the letter from the Ministry.

That meant he could take the lead in the conversation without any self-consciousness, and Malfoy could stay silent. We actually do make good partners in that one way, Harry admitted to himself. “We don’t owe the Ministry a debt because of that,” he said. “Not when you sacked me and irritated Malfoy because you said that you might shut down Slytherin House.”

Malfoy tensed behind him, then relaxed again. Harry pressed hard against his hand, trying to send a message without words. She has to know that you’re interested in Slytherin by now. It’s not a weakness to say so.

“We obviously have different interpretations of the word ‘debt.’” Covington inclined her head in a shallower bow. “Have you found what you sought?”

“Why should we tell you, when it would be more useful for us to strike a bargain with the Ministry?” Harry asked, and then waited for her reaction.

Covington pursed her lips as if tasting something sour. Then she shook her head slowly. “I am not empowered to make those bargains.”

“Then you understand that we can say nothing until we meet with someone who is,” Malfoy said, and made the words sound smart and sophisticated and polished, as if he were handing over chunks of pure silver. Harry gave him a sideways look of admiration that Malfoy unexpectedly met. “Come on, Harry. Pick up your robes and shirt and let’s discuss what we should do next.”

Harry blinked, then picked up the clothes with a frown. Why did he call me Harry? To make the others think we’re closer than we are, I reckon. I just wish he hadn’t done it without asking me.

“You’re not going to do that,” Hermione said in a piercing voice, stepping forwards so that she blocked their way to the school. Covington was particularly happy to let her do it, Harry noticed. Interesting. “I know that you found something, or you wouldn’t have a reason to search the lake, and I want to know what it is.”

She still thinks she’s entitled to know everything I do and say, Harry thought, baring his teeth at her. His magic crackled up around his sides and arms, this time manifesting as a faint blue mist that wouldn’t be noticeable to anyone until they stepped closer to him. Then they would notice it by force. Probably wants to take notes on my actions and report them to some Healer friend of hers.

“What a mindless bitch you are, Granger,” Malfoy said, in a tone so bored it took Harry a moment to realize what he had said. “Of course we could search places and not find the clues. Do you think that because the lake is a more unusual place, it’s automatically the one where Dumbledore and Severus would have hidden the key?”

Hermione’s confident look faltered. Ron was the one who flushed and said, “See here—”

“I don’t have to,” Malfoy said, with the kind of quiet voice that Harry suspected probably made his customers listen to him when they wanted some impossible potion and he refused to brew it. “I don’t have any obligation to you. You’re only two teachers at Hogwarts among many, and my contemporaries at that. You have no seniority.” He gave Harry a half-smile. “And if Harry has any obligation to you, he hasn’t told me that.”

Harry swallowed through a dry throat and held his head up. The pleading look in Ron’s eyes still had the power to touch him, maybe because Harry had argued with him less directly than with Hermione.

But he couldn’t pretend that the conflict between them had never happened, which seemed to be what they wanted. They could come to him with apologies, and maybe then he would listen. This wound was too deep to be papered over, though.

“Yes, I don’t think I do, Draco,” he said. The name was less difficult than the words, or watching Ron’s eyes shut as he looked away, a deep sigh rattling up from his chest. “They used to be my friends. They lost the right to call themselves that, and they haven’t made it up to me yet.”

Hermione trembled and then abruptly broke out into words that Harry hadn’t thought she would use, since she preferred to keep their row as private as possible. “I don’t think that what you do is wrong!” she shouted at him. “I think it’s wrong for you. With all the manipulation and abuse you went through, the way adult men told you to do things that were good for you and you did them—you still haven’t sorted out what you feel about Dumbledore, and you probably haven’t gone and talked to his portrait yet, either—you still think that what he did was excusable, and you’re still messed up in the head—”

Harry felt pure panic storm through him. Ron already knew what Hermione would say, of course, but for the Ministry representative and Malfoy to hear would mean the end of his life as Harry understood it.

He gestured, closing his hand into a fist. A bolt of pure magic, blazing-white, leaped from his fist and struck Hermione in the throat.

She stopped, her hands flying up as she clawed at her neck. Then she coughed. She coughed three times, and a large, curved piece of brass fell out of her mouth and landed with a clang on the grass.

Then she did it again, and more brass came out, and silver, and gold.

Harry licked his lips. He was shaking, but more in control than he had been since he saw Ron and Hermione waiting for him, because he had caused this, not someone else, and if the silence was terrible, at least they were staring at him in terror rather than because he was cowering from it.

“Think about what you say,” he told her. “When you do, then you can speak in something other than carved metal again.”

He turned and made for Hogwarts at a fast, smooth walk, because he thought someone would stop him if he began to run. His hands were sweating, and he could feel the magic working down his face as grains of something that turned out to be salt when he wiped it away.

He was so caught up in his own emotions that it took him long minutes to realize Malfoy was walking beside him, all the way, as if they had practiced this before, his hand on the small of Harry’s back.

Harry spun around to face him when he thought they were beyond the point of being heard and asked in a low voice, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Malfoy wore a faint smile. Harry would have felt reassured if it was amused, or contemptuous, or any of the other easy feelings that he had expected Malfoy to experience around him.

It was speculative instead.

And curious.

Harry didn’t bother to hide his shudder. If Malfoy thought being curious about him was the route to a deeper alliance and solving these riddles faster, he could shelve the notion, because the last thing Harry wanted was Malfoy prying into his life.

*

It never would have occurred to Draco to make Granger’s own words literally choke her, and he wasn’t sure that he would have had the power if it did. But it was appropriate and amusing, and Potter had acted without that much provocation, compared to what Draco would have thought it would take.

Potter grew more interesting by the minute.

He kept his hand in place on Potter’s back until Potter turned around, pinned him with a gaze that was obviously meant to intimidate someone less strong of will than Draco was, and whispered, “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

Draco took his time about answering. He examined, in a leisurely fashion, the way Potter’s hair curled, the brightness of his eyes against his pale skin, his long legs and the lean muscles in them, and the flicker of magic that still snapped around his hands. Draco could feel the buzzing aura of that power raising his hair to stand on end, although he stood at least two feet from Potter now.

By the time he finished the inspection, Potter was shifting like a horse with a stranger handling its feet. Draco looked into his face as he gave him the answer. He felt that Potter deserved at least that much from him.

“I think that I’m confirming our alliance in the eyes of others,” Draco said. “What would they think if I dropped my hand from your back the minute we stopped speaking to them? This way, we can encourage them in false beliefs profound enough to influence the way that they interpret everything else we do.”

Potter gritted his teeth. “I understand that,” he said, as if Draco had been planning to accuse him of a lack of understanding. “The problem is, why did you choose that gesture to establish that suspicion?”

“The gesture of the hand on your back?” Draco asked, and moved his hand in as if he would reassume the position.

Potter’s power formed a series of bright blue spearheads, lining his back and pointing straight at Draco. Draco nearly gasped aloud as a new vision came to him, of a potion that might allow him to achieve the same effect.

Potter was an artist, a creative spirit, in the way he used his magic if nothing else. Trouble was, Draco thought, sneaking another glance at his face, he didn’t mean to be so. It wasn’t something consciously planned or controlled. He just lashed out with his magic and let the impulse of the moment guide him.

“Why does this bother you so much?” he asked. “And have you ever tried anything to control your magic? Perhaps you should, before we face another enemy like the water-snakes. We cannot depend on the coincidence of your Parseltongue to save us every time.”

Potter’s gaze grew diamond-like with loathing. Draco wondered if it was the person asking the questions or the questions themselves that he resented, but given that he had been able to get along with Draco before this, if during limited periods of time, he thought it was the questions.

And isn’t that interesting?

“I’ll get it under control,” Potter said, between teeth that he seemed determined to wear down with their grinding. “Now. Don’t you think we should look at the riddle and see what it is? We’ll want to solve it as quickly as possible, before the Ministry comes up with some new way to make us investigate.”

Draco nodded and followed Potter into the castle, more than willing to show that he could be reasonable. When Potter started up the entrance hall towards the doors of the Great Hall, though, Draco took his arm and steered him towards the dungeons, where Severus’s rooms were.

Potter shied at the touch, but seemed to yield when Draco put pressure on him and thus dragged him along more firmly. Draco glanced at him and saw that his eyes were closed, lashes fanned out on his cheeks as though he were nothing but a child asleep. His breathing had softened and slowed down, too.

Then he opened his eyes, realized Draco was watching him, and jerked away so hard that he broke one of Draco’s nails and stung all his fingers. Draco refused to show that it hurt, holding Potter in a firm gaze instead. He knew the source of Potter’s strange behavior was here somewhere, and he would like to ferret it out if possible.

“I’m coming with you,” Potter said, and bounded off ahead of him, seeming to welcome the darkness of the dungeons as it wrapped around him.

Draco clucked his tongue as he followed. Yes, there was something strange here, and he thought it all—Potter’s difficulty with controlling his magic, his odd relaxation when Draco touched him coupled with violent rejection of those touches a moment later, his refusal to answer questions—connected.

I have to find the binding thread before I can begin to unknot it, however.

Severus would want to know why he should unknot it, when Potter was no more than a somewhat annoying waste of time. Draco could have said that he was doing it to fend off boredom or to make sure that his ally didn’t do something embarrassing in front of their enemies, and Severus would have accepted either of those.

But the truth was simply that he was interested, and in the silence of his head, he didn’t see why he needed any other motive.

*

“You survived the first battle? Wonderful news, my boy.”

Harry bowed his head in front of Dumbledore’s portrait and said nothing. He was still far too aware of Malfoy, who was on the other side of the room in front of the closed door. He could feel the way his fingers had clamped down, how they had resembled, for a minute, the cuff of the chains Harry needed, and the imaginary blast of cool air that had passed through his body in response.

“I would not have imagined that you could pass through without a scratch,” Snape’s sneering voice said from behind him. “It is highly probable that Mr. Malfoy did most of the work, is it not?”

Harry turned his head, glad for a challenge that he could respond to. “As a matter of fact, the trap was snakes, and I still have Parseltongue.”

Snape looked properly stunned. Harry turned back to Dumbledore with a feeling of gratification, only to see Dumbledore shaking his head.

“Will you never make peace?” he murmured, as if in appeal to powers that Harry couldn’t see or understand. “Am I doomed to see the two people who did the most to bring about our victory in the war always quarrel?”

“That isn’t Snape,” Harry reminded him. He didn’t care if his voice sounded brittle and bitter, the way he knew it did—enough that Malfoy, moving up beside him, gave him a quick look of wonder. “It’s a reflection. And we’re not here for you to lecture us. We’re here to read the riddle and the word that unlocks the wards and hear anything that you can tell us about either.”

Malfoy’s arm briefly touched the small of his back, the place where his hand had rested when he escorted Harry up to the castle. Harry arched away from it and turned, holding out his hand.

Malfoy looked at it politely. “We can shake, if you want,” he said, “though I thought we knew each other enough by now not to require it.”

“I want the bubbles that we found in the ring,” Harry said, and his voice was soft and polite and couldn’t crack steel, the way he wanted it to. Alienating Malfoy while he still held the riddle and the first keyword wasn’t smart. But Harry intended to leave as soon as he could, walking away from Hogwarts and talking a long, hot shower in his own bathroom to wash off the sting of contact.

Until he could go back home, though, his lodgings in Hogsmeade would have to do.

“As you wish,” Malfoy said, and dropped both bubbles into his palm. Harry stared at his face, but Malfoy looked calm and guileless, if a bit bored. Harry shook his head and started to examine the bubbles. They looked like they were made of a hard, transparent plastic, but they felt soft and whispery against his palm, like foam.

“We hid the bubbles in Severus’s ring?” exclaimed Dumbledore. “Wonderful! I never would have thought to look there.”

“The ring hardly mattered to me,” Snape drawled. “That would be the reason we used it for the deception in the first place.”

“Thus the point of my remark, my dear boy, that I never would have thought to look there.”

“You included me under that heading,” Snape said. “I would have remembered the insignificance of the ring to my former self and thus thought to look there, because I retain my former self’s memories of placing emphasis on meaningless objects in order to distract the eye of an enemy watching.”

Harry turned the bubbles over and managed to focus on them to the exclusion of the conversation between the portraits. He thought he would go several kinds of mad if he tried to follow it.

The bubbles had subtle, hidden hinges on the side. He ran his fingers over them and muttered a complaint when he realized that they wouldn’t simply spring open.

“Let me try,” Malfoy said, and reached out, his hand covering Harry’s where it gripped both bubbles. Harry tried to pull back, but he didn’t go far enough or fast enough, and the bubbles bounced around between the closed area of their fists. Harry opened his mouth to shout.

The bubbles rolled over of their own accord, and then the tops came off. Harry stared down, and didn’t even try to hide his astonishment.

“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten that,” Dumbledore remarked. “All of the people who find the secret have to have hold of it at the same time, or the bubbles won’t open. You both found it, so you both have to hold them. I think we arranged the hiding places of the other secrets along the same lines,” he added thoughtfully, “but I can’t remember. I don’t mind saying that the lack of those exact memories is an inconvenience to me.”

Malfoy was still clasping Harry’s hand, and staring at him. Harry wrenched his hand away and let the bubbles fall to the floor. He didn’t think it mattered if they broke, and he knew the parchment they contained would flutter harmlessly.

The gesture distracted Malfoy and made him look down. Harry picked up the parchment that had fallen near his feet, leaving the other twist to Malfoy, and looked at it randomly. He wasn’t sure why, but he had expected to see the word that would unlock the wards.

Instead, he’d got the riddle, and he saw at a glance that it was considerably longer and more baffling than the first one that Dumbledore and Snape had given them. The writing was large, and careful, block capitals.

UPON FOUR LEGS IT GOES IN THE WORLD,
UPON EIGHT LEGS AND TWO TAILS IN OUR LEGEND.
CROSS THE SKY WITH THE SUN AND YOU WILL NOT SEE IT,
BUT MORNING AND EVENING IT FLOATS IN BEAUTY.

The last line was isolated from the rest of the riddle and in urgent, small, cramped letters. Look unto the last.

Harry turned the paper over and cast a charm that ought to reveal any other letters hiding behind the ostensible ones, or invisible lines that would alter the message and make it more meaningful. Nothing happened, of course. That was the riddle they had received, and it was the riddle they would have to deal with.

Then he looked up at the portraits and made sure to shake his head at both of them. “I think you both liked driving people mental in life.”

“Let me see,” said Malfoy, and passed the parchment he held to Harry as if it were the natural thing to do, while he took the riddle. Harry bristled, but it was hard to have a row with someone who refused to acknowledge the existence of the thing causing the row, so he looked at the keyword with a grunt.

Sorting Hat. Harry rolled his eyes and wondered if the Ministry had tried something that simple as a password. Probably not. They would have decided that it was complicated and proceeded to more and more arcane guesses, assuming they even knew of the existence of the wards.

“Strange,” Malfoy said. His eyes were glinting when he looked up, though, and he resembled someone who thought this was a good thing. Harry studied him warily. He had had one partner like that during Auror training, someone who took that “thrill of the case” nonsense seriously. He would hit Malfoy over the head if he had to, just as he’d hit Trainee Belladonna, to get him out of the way. “What can have four legs in reality and eight legs in legends? Wizarding legends generally change to reflect the reality once we know about it.”

“Right,” Harry couldn’t help but say, thinking of how many stereotypes there still were of him as a flawless hero out there.

“When we know about it, I said.” Malfoy’s voice rose to a slightly higher pitch, the only sign that Harry was irritating him. “What are your first theories about this riddle, Potter?”

Harry stared at him. Malfoy looked prepared to settle down to a debate of several hours, and then go right out and fight the battle to the death that they’d encounter if they solved the riddle tonight.

“I have none,” Harry said. “I’m going back to my rooms, getting something to eat and some sleep, and then sleeping some more. I’ll join you in the morning.” He turned towards the door, hoping that Malfoy would have the sense to let him go. Secretly, in the bottom of his heart, he must be as eager to be rid of Harry as Harry was to be rid of him.

“Stay.”

Malfoy’s hand caught his arm at the same moment as his voice sounded in Harry’s ear. He was pressing close, literally leaning on Harry this time, as if he meant to crowd him into the corner. Harry felt his head tip to the side and his eyes flutter shut.

Then he remembered who he was with, and the potential audience to this—a man who had done his best to taunt Harry with any knowledge he possessed of him when he was alive, another man who had manipulated Harry faultlessly and with the best of intentions, and one who would come up with cruel, subtle insults and try to use this as an advantage if he discovered Harry’s hidden needs, because that was just the kind of prat he was.

Harry let his elbow swing into Malfoy’s gut, and took an easy step away from him while he was doubled-over and gasping. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” he said fiercely.

The flames were crawling up his arms again. It was all he could do to make it out the door without the wood catching fire in his hands.

And, to make matters worse, Ron and Hermione were waiting for him in the corridor. Harry glanced up and down quickly, but saw no sign of Covington. That was the only good thing about this situation, he thought grimly as he faced his former best friends and prepared himself for battle.

“Please,” Hermione said in a whisper. Or at least Harry thought she meant to say that, from the way her lips moved. It was hard when she was choking on an ingot of brass that clanged to the floor a moment later.

“Release her from the spell, Potter.” Ron had his wand out and pointed at him, Harry vaguely noted. He thought he should find that threatening, or at least that Ron meant him to find it threatening.

In his current mood, with the danger that his own body posed to him when he was around Malfoy, the implied threat made him laugh.

Ron’s wand sliced down, and a brilliant flash of light cut across Harry’s cheek. He turned his face to the side to accept the blow, licking his lips as the blood from the slice ran down to his mouth. It gave him a focus and kept him from succumbing to the spinning world inside his head. The spinning had got worse since the first time Malfoy touched him today, and it made him think impossible thoughts and want impossible things. Harry was glad to be able to let it go and concentrate on a more immediate, if more active, problem.

He didn’t need his wand with all the flames and wild magic leaping about him. He closed his hand into a fist instead, and the flames boiled up and around his fingers, then formed into a solid spear of fire. Harry thrust out with it.

It caught Ron’s wand and slapped it out of his hand. The wand hit the floor and started to smolder. Ron would have scrambled for it, Harry thought, but the spear, which rested against his groin, kept him rather effectively in place.

He stared at Harry as he stood there. The effect might have been impressive if he wasn’t standing on tiptoe. Harry, with a slight, malicious sneer that he knew Ron would resent, stalked a few steps nearer. Ron’s eyes started to water.

“You don’t understand yet, do you?” Harry whispered. “I don’t give a fuck about your precious intentions, or your bloody concern for my mental health. Our friendship is over. Leave me the fuck alone.”

Ron coughed, and then managed, with that Gryffindor courage that turned into rashness all the time, “I didn’t think Hermione was right, but now I see she is. You are sick.”

“Sick for doing what I have to to control my anger and my magic and keep me from destroying everything in sight,” Harry said, with a nod. “Yes, that’s the right conclusion to draw. It’s not as though I tried everything else and it failed to work. Let’s blame me for what does?”

Hermione tried to say something and choked on the tin emerging from her throat. Ron wrapped his arm around her and sneered at Harry. “She would say that it’s not what you did that’s the problem. Other people could do that and get away with it, if they had to.” Ron shuddered. Harry could imagine why; in the days when they were still friends and would confess things to each other, Hermione had told him that Ron was always the one on the ordering side, not the ordered-around side. “But since Dumbledore controlled your life, and other people controlled your life, this is an unhealthy way of coping—”

Harry thought of all the other people who were in the castle at the moment, all the others who could overhear and might ask prying questions or simply guess what was happening from the general content of their conversation.

Fire soared up his spine and burst in his brain.

He had had enough.

He twisted the spear of fire, and Ron had to leap away with a squeal instead of standing there and righteously lecturing him. Harry extended his hand and cast another spell, trying to use up the magic that danced around him and knowing it would never be enough. Already the floor beneath his feet had developed cracks and the ceiling above him was trembling like jelly, as if about to fall.

“You can’t speak about this to anyone who doesn’t already know,” he told Ron, and as he spoke the words, they became true. Coils of wire manifested in the air and twisted around Ron’s throat, then sparked and vanished. “That ought to keep you from spreading news of it around the school like you did with my near-Sorting.”

Ron was gulping in breath as if he wanted to say something else. Harry didn’t stay to hear it. He took off through the dungeons, towards the stairs, trying desperately, through tears that evaporated the minute they left his eyes, to think of what he would do. He had to have the chains, but none of them would hold for long enough, and brief spaces of freedom and peace in his current mindset might actually be worse than nothing at all.

A miraculous thought occurred to him just as he reached the top of the stairs.

The Room of Requirement.

He altered his direction and ran towards the seventh floor.

*

“I still think this behavior is adolescent,” Severus said, bending over his cauldron.

“But it has revealed something interesting to me,” Draco murmured, bending down to cast a spell on his boots that would keep him from making any sound on creaking stairs or slippery stone, and then rising to add a Notice-Me-Not Charm to his body in general. “I wouldn’t have learned it if I hadn’t been listening at the door.”

Severus sneered at him over his shoulder. “I question whether this information is worth the trouble you have taken to learn it.”

“You can do that,” Draco said, and stepped out of his rooms.

Weasley and Granger were shuffling up the corridor towards the entrance hall, bent like old Muggles. Draco passed them with a sideways glance that, if they could have seen it, would have stung them with its contempt. Their faces were worn with shock. Draco hadn’t seen what Potter had done—opening the door might have attracted unwanted attention—but he had felt the backwash of magic against his senses. Potter had left them alive and not covered their flesh with suppurating wounds, and that was all they deserved.

Draco came out into the middle of the entrance hall and listened avidly. Covington would probably be down the stairs to trap him in a moment; he thought she had only let them go by the lake because she had sensed that it would be unwise to push Potter just then. He had to locate Potter and learn what he was about before she showed up.

Potter wasn’t trying to be silent, perhaps because he thought his magic would warn anyone with sense to stay away from him. A pattern of stone-dust, accompanied by the pounding of feet and the shrieks of offended portraits, drifted down from above. Draco smiled and took the first staircase he saw.

*

By the time he reached the corridor on the seventh floor, Harry was sweating blood.

He turned and paced up and down in front of the wall, his head whirring with so many different thoughts that he wasn’t surprised when the door failed to appear after three turns. He shut his eyes, conjured a metallic wrist-cuff that closed down hard enough to render his arm numb and gave him a bit of clarity, and formulated his requirement carefully in his head.

A place where I can find what I need. A place where I can subdue my danger and my magic and get them both under control with the only method that works.

Holding the words to him as if they were precious glass heirlooms, he began to walk back and forth. Time shifted around him. The wrist cuff began to melt. Harry still held onto the words and remembered to count the turns with what felt like a superhuman effort.

He opened his eyes at the end of the third turn, and there it was, an iron door with a grated window that looked into nothing, like a prison. Harry opened it.

*

Draco realized quickly enough what Potter was making for, and began to hurry. If Potter managed to vanish into one of the tangle or maze of rooms that one room could become, Draco would never catch him.

And it was imperative that Draco catch him. He didn’t know why, but it was.

The iron door was still there when he rounded the corner, and Draco stopped and slowed when he realized that it wasn’t fading. He studied it thoughtfully. What could Potter want inside an Azkaban cell—that was what it looked like—that would so frighten and appall his friends? Draco had honestly thought Gryffindors were less judgmental than that.

Only one way to find out, of course.

Draco gripped the handle. It felt odd in his hand, sweaty, as though it retained moisture from Potter’s. Draco flung the door open, only to find that it wouldn’t fling, but came with an odd, slow shudder and a screeching of hinges.

He looked into the room, and stopped. He could feel surprise locking his feet to the floor and his throat shut.

The room was dim and low, the ceiling dipping until Draco wondered that Potter could stand upright in it. The floor and walls were made of iron, great, hinged plates of it like the one that made up the door. In the center was a bed with metal posts and a steel headboard that had rings projecting out of it, and which completely lacked sheets and pillows. Chains lay across the bed, ending in the rings on one side and cuffs on the other. Potter was frantically trying to lock the cuffs around his wrists, but it seemed they wouldn’t close.

Draco shuddered. The reaction rose deep in his feet and made its way to his chest without rhyme or reason. Draco couldn’t name the emotion that made him short of breath or made his limbs shake. He had never thought of a scenario like this before, never dreamed of it, but…

It made sense. Maybe that was why he did what he did next, because this sight created a matrix that rendered Potter’s odd habits when Draco touched him, the disgust of his friends, and even the vision Draco had had in the lake with Potter kneeling bound in front of him rational and comprehensible and as simple to understand as the properties of bicorn horn in first-year potions.

Draco stepped into the room and shut the door behind him.

As Potter whirled to face him, eyes brilliant with madness, Draco snapped his fingers and spoke to the chains on the bed. “Hold him.”

Part Two.