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lomonaaerenThis chapter has been split in two for length reasons. Don't start reading here.
Chapter Five.
Title: Chosen Chains (6/7)
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 Six—The Room of Lost Things
Hogsmeade had no locksmith.
It also didn’t have any shop where one could purchase ropes, chains, ordinary locks, locking spells, leashes for dogs, wrist cuffs, or any of the other substitutes Harry had thought might have a soothing effect on him, if he couldn’t have a locksmith make him specially shaped personal chains.
Harry closed his eyes and leaned against the wall of his room, wondering how long it would be before he exploded, and if anyone would ever have any idea what had destroyed the town. He had already slammed a hole clean through the wall of a robe-maker’s shop to the outside world, his fist driven by the strength of his magic. The staring woman hadn’t finished cowering when Harry had mumbled an apology and run out of the place, his arse literally on fire.
Now his mind spun and listed badly, and fragments of the thoughts that had plagued him when he was victim to the centaur’s arrow danced in and out of his awareness, making him flinch whenever he encountered them.
All this time, he had basically believed that Ron and Hermione were right and that he was wrong. He should have been stronger. He shouldn’t need this as much as he did, but should have been able to stand on his own two feet and wrestle his anger back under control like a normal person. Hermione had similar habits sometimes, too, at least if her liking for being held down during sex was any indication, but she did that for pleasure, not because it was the only way she could feel like herself.
Only this morning, he had been thinking that Malfoy had done such a good job that he was unlikely to need another session like that for months. Harry would have laughed at the ironies of his life, but he knew the laughter wouldn’t stop.
Something knocked against the window. Harry looked up. His owl, Catherine, was sitting there, holding two letters. Her feathers were all on end, probably because his magic filled the room with the kind of powerful, brooding presence that even an owl could sense.
“You can leave those on the table,” Harry said. His voice sounded as if he chewed gravel for a living. He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to incinerate you, and I might if you come too close.”
Catherine flew across the room, ignoring him, as she had a habit of doing, and dropped the letters on the floor. Harry glanced down. The first had Muggle stamps on it and looked as though someone had fought for possession of it with Catherine. It was probably Annie Crompton’s, Harry thought. All the Muggleborn children had difficulty adjusting to owl post at first.
The second one was just a sheet of parchment, folded, with his name on the outside of it. Harry picked it up and unfolded it, blinking.
The words inside were as simple as his name, and had no signature attached. Of course, for the kind of threat they contained, there was no reason they should.
I know about your abnormal sexuality. Flawed but normal, I believe was the wording? I wonder what the wizarding world would think if they knew their hero was anything but.
Harry leaned his head back against the wall and laughed after all. He fell into the flames, and he laughed. He fell into the darkness, and he laughed. He wheezed and gasped, and someone pounded on the wall from the next room to let him know that the noise wasn’t appreciated, and still he laughed, because what else in the world could he do?
Catherine was the one who brought him out of it, gripping his ear and pulling it. Harry came back to himself with a gasp and the fear that he would lose a vital part of his body. But the moment he reached up to free himself, Catherine leaped away and flew to the windowsill, where she sat judging him.
“Fine, then,” Harry said. “I’ll carry on like normal as long as I can.” He picked up the anonymous letter and glanced at it again. “Flawed but normal was the phrase I used when I was talking with Dumbledore’s portrait in the library. Someone must have listened in, and it was probably Covington. I don’t think Malfoy would admit anything, since it makes him look bad as well as me, and Ron and Hermione wouldn’t have a reason to hint.”
He stood up and put Annie’s letter aside to read for later, then shook his head at Catherine. She made as good an audience as anyone else, and right now, he really needed to talk this out. “I really believed what I was saying at the time I spoke to Dumbledore, you know? Flawed but normal. That I wasn’t a fantasy hero. And I still think it’s true that I’m not the hero or the person that Dumbledore and my friends wanted me to be.
“But I still want to be that person. That desire is stronger than the desire to just get my life under control. I want to be able to do what they want. I want my friendship with Ron and Hermione back. I want a family. I want a regular lover.” He scrabbled his fingers through his hair. “All that’s a lot more comforting than what I have now, where I’m only calm and happy for a few days after a session, and then my anger starts building up again. I just don’t know how to achieve any of what I want and don’t have.”
Catherine hooted derisively.
“I know,” Harry said. “I know. That’s the last thing I should be worrying about now. But it’s the only new thing that the centaur’s arrow brought out in me. I already knew that I felt guilt about the deaths I caused and all the rest of it. It’s the thing that’s going to be the hardest to deal with—except for the magic that might destroy me or other people.”
He leaned his head back against the wall and began carefully rebuilding his torn barriers. At the moment, that had to be his priority. He and Malfoy would finish the riddle quest as soon as possible, because that would enable Harry to get away as soon as possible and back to Bradley or his paid Muggles. And he would show Covington’s threat to Malfoy in the morning and ask how they should deal with it.
For a moment, just a moment, the thought crossed his mind that he could go back to Malfoy and beg to be bound again.
But he knew Malfoy would refuse, for all sorts of reasons, and why shouldn’t he?
Catherine chose that moment to screech and leap off the windowsill, soaring in the direction of the Owlery. Harry watched her go and wondered if she had sensed what was going through his mind, and what she thought about it. Her cry really didn’t reveal much one way or the other.
*
Draco should have worked with his sentient potion that evening, but he was too disturbed, even if it was by something that shouldn’t have disturbed him. He settled into the chair in front of the fire in Severus’s rooms instead and thought.
The first thing he had to admit was that he had no rational explanation for what he was thinking and feeling, not at all. Once he got that out of the way and dispensed with, then the emotions could creep to the surface, where he could entertain them.
He was worried about Potter.
He wished that Potter had come back with him to Hogwarts so that they could speak about what had happened in the Forest and come up with a strategy for handling it.
He was still not going to bind Potter to the bed, however, or fuck him, or do anything else for him that would help settle his magic, unless Potter begged him. Because he had had enough of not being desired or wanted for himself, of only being second best or someone else’s bad choice.
The conclusions were all clear enough in his mind, sharp enough to glitter like jewels, or knives made of colored glass that Draco had once seen in a very select shop in Knockturn Alley. But that didn’t give him any idea of what would happen next. He sighed wistfully. Was this really only infatuation with the best fuck of his life, the kind of childish belief that he should have been cured of long before?
“I know that your mind is not on potions.”
“What gave it away?” Draco murmured, not looking up. “The lack of a bubbling cauldron in the room, or the sheer fixed stare?”
He could hear the swish of Severus’s robes as the man paced slowly towards the other side of his portrait. Limited art or not, Draco thought, the painter had done an absolutely magnificent job. “It should be,” Severus said. “Potions, or the job that you are doing here. I never thought you one to succumb to a foolish infatuation with Potter.”
Draco winced. Well, he had only himself to blame if his expression or actions had given away his preoccupations. “Yes, I know,” he said.
Severus paused, and when his voice spoke, the sneer in it couldn’t conceal his surprise. “What? No rebukes that you are an adult man and can fancy whoever you wish? No denials that Potter does not occupy your thoughts?”
“What would be the point?” Draco glanced up and managed a smile. Surprising Severus was its own sort of victory. “You would know I was lying, and I prefer not to be caught in any lie so obvious.”
Severus smiled back after a difficult moment when Draco thought that he might be told to leave the room. Then he turned back to his brewing, and Draco returned to his thinking.
The clarity of his conclusions did not vary, and at last he gave up and resigned himself to thinking that he would simply have to wait until Potter came and asked for help of his own free will. It might get them burned to death in the meantime, but at least Draco could say that he went to death clinging to his pride.
And that ought to make him Slytherin enough for even Severus’s approval.
*
“This came by my owl last night.”
Draco barely got his hand up before Potter tossed the letter at him. Draco unfolded it and read it, noting that the edge of the paper was crumpled, as though Potter had crushed it in a fit of passion, but only the edge. At least he had enough sense left to recognize important evidence he should preserve.
“This looks like Covington’s handwriting,” Draco said, covertly watching Potter as he paused near the enchanted window and stared out over the lawn. Potter wasn’t covered with any ghostly flames at the moment, but he did look as if he were tense to the point of snapping. Draco wondered if he should want to be nearby when Potter snapped or not. “How much do you think she knows?”
“With luck? Only the conversation in the library.” Potter spoke in a flat voice. Draco found himself looking for clues in that, and told himself to stop it. “In which case she knows that something is abnormal about my sexuality, but not exactly what. I didn’t see the need to blurt out all the details of my sex life to anyone listening.”
“Good,” Draco said. He could have made other comments, but he left it at that. “Then we can still outface her.”
“Not if she intends to go to the papers.” Potter turned around, pressing his back flat against the wall. “She could talk to Ron and Hermione and learn more details then, and they might tell her. They have no reason to remain silent and protect me now.” He lowered his head and closed his eyes. His face wore a defeated expression.
Draco had to search for the will to render his voice cool, but he managed it. “Well, you can go home, then.”
“Huh?” Potter did look better confused than despairing. Draco told himself to remember that, should he ever have need of such knowledge in the future.
“If you can’t think of a means of fighting her, and won’t,” Draco said, tossing the bubble that contained the next riddle and next keyword from hand to hand, “then you might as well leave. That means that I’ll face her alone. I, at least, am not afraid.”
Potter stood up, and every inch of him bristled with defiance, reminding Draco of the way that he had looked under the chains. Draco bit back the temptation to roll his eyes when he had that thought. He sincerely hoped that the rest of his life wouldn’t be defined by the way that he had had sex with Potter. With luck, his next Potions obsession would knock this one out of his head. “I’m not afraid,” Potter said. “But I won’t be able to stay here if she finds out and exposes the details.”
“I don’t think she would do that,” Draco said. “It’s to her advantage to husband the knowledge. But if she did, your life wouldn’t literally come to an end.”
Severus cleared his throat behind Draco, though he didn’t say anything. Draco knew what the wordless message was meant to convey: Severus’s conviction that he was going too far, recklessly racing after answers that he didn’t want and would pay too much for.
“It might as well,” Potter said, and his voice was sunk in gloom. “They would laugh at me.”
“So?” Draco asked. “I had the impression that you lived at the edge of the wizarding world anyway. You’ve already lost your friends, and they’ve already sacked you from being an Auror. What else can they do?”
Potter glared at him. The glare was far more heated than the one he had given the wall at the mention of Covington, and Draco thought he knew why. Covington simply wanted to hurt him. Potter was used to that. But Draco had the gall to try and make him face himself.
“What else can they do?” Draco repeated, more softly this time, because he was interested in what Potter would say. He stepped forwards, a hand resting on the wall. It was the closest he had been to Potter since the disastrous end of their time together in the Room of Requirement. “Tell me.”
*
Harry had come here expecting not—
Not understanding, not sympathy. He was wise enough to know that all the emotions Malfoy felt like that, he would reserve for himself. But he had thought that he would get some rough good advice about what to do with Covington’s letter, and perhaps Malfoy would be able to keep him so focused that he wouldn’t need to think about what the centaur’s arrow had done to him.
Instead, he got a challenge and open mockery. And Malfoy was asking questions as though he assumed he had the right to an answer.
Harry held his breath in response. It wasn’t done to annoy Malfoy; he doubted that Malfoy would even notice. But he shut his eyes and clung to the stilled motion of air in his chest and the heat that started to build up in his throat and face, the pressure behind his skin, the desperation of lungs reaching for air, until that filled his world and he could think of it instead of the anger.
That didn’t work often, but it did now. From the floating nest of calmed panic that was his mind, Harry answered, “They could make my life a constant parade of Howlers and mocking letters. I was content to sink out of sight when I realized that I couldn’t change the Ministry’s mind about Hogwarts. I don’t want to come back to the public’s notice like this.”
“Indifference breeds indifference,” Malfoy said, as quickly as if he’d anticipated Harry’s answer and had his own ready. Harry felt a swirl of slow rage build up in him. Why did Malfoy insist on this? Harry hadn’t forced him to discuss the past. There was no reason to unless Harry’s magic actively endangered Malfoy, and it wasn’t doing that so far. “If the public has been content to ignore you for this long, I think it would take something a lot more compelling to bring you back to their attention.”
Harry choked back the words that he wanted to speak, that his sexuality was compelling and just scandalous enough to tickle people’s interest. He would sound as though he thought everyone in the world should be interested in him, and he could guess what Malfoy would say to that.
He can’t continue the argument without me. Why should I let him take advantage of me like that?
Harry opened his eyes and said, “We should string Covington along, I agree. But we need to come up with a specific lie to tell her so that she’ll think I’m cooperating, rather than plotting to take revenge.”
For a moment, Malfoy’s face shone with exquisite frustration, as if he didn’t know what to do now that Harry had cut their argument off. Then he lowered his eyes and nodded. “Tell her that you would be willing to let her have the keyword,” he said, “but that you can’t do it yet, in case I get suspicious. The line should be that you’re betraying me without my knowledge. She’ll like the thought of having one over on me.”
Harry nodded. “If she presses me for the keyword?”
Malfoy shrugged impatiently. “You can give her a false one, and tell her that they’re useless until we have all four, which I’m sure is true.”
“It is,” Snape said from his portrait.
Harry opened his mouth to ask how Snape knew that, when he didn’t seem to know much else that was useful, but Malfoy rushed on. “We should open the bubble now and see what the third riddle is. We haven’t done so yet.”
Harry nodded again, stepped forwards, and let his hand rest on the bubble. Malfoy caressed his fingers with a lingering motion. Harry drew in a breath of annoyance, but otherwise didn’t react, and after a moment, Malfoy moved his hand in the twist that would draw the bubble open.
The keyword came out, and Malfoy stared at it and then gave a small smile. “Silver instruments,” he read.
Harry had caught the riddle, and he stared at it.
Go to the room where the things were lost that are most precious to Rowena, and draw forth the word from that which is most precious to Helga.
Harry blinked and handed it over to Malfoy to see if he had any idea of what this meant. But Malfoy only frowned at the riddle, and turned the parchment over in the next moment to see if anything was written on the other side. Nothing was.
“I don’t quite understand,” Malfoy said, leaning back and cocking his head as though he expected the parchment to reveal the answer just to oblige him. “Ravenclaw favored cleverness, and Hufflepuff loyalty. But those are abstract virtues. You can’t draw forth anything from them, and you can’t find a place where they were lost.”
“Then we should be looking for things that represent them,” Harry said. The solution seemed obvious to him.
Once again, he got a crushing look from Malfoy. But Malfoy only nodded and said, “What represents them, then? And what room in Hogwarts contains them both? We could go to Ravenclaw Tower, I suppose, but I find it hard to believe that they would have an emblem of Hufflepuff House anywhere among their artifacts.”
“Yes, it doesn’t seem likely,” Harry had to agree. “If we could even get into the Tower. I know that a riddle unlocked the door the last time I had to get in, but I don’t know if we could answer it or if anyone’s set a new one.”
Malfoy started to respond, but then paused and turned towards the door to Snape’s rooms. Harry followed his gaze and saw a shadow pass under it. Someone was waiting in the corridor, perhaps to speak to them, perhaps to spy on them.
Malfoy would have stepped forwards, Harry thought, but he moved more quickly, and was glad to have the distraction from the anger that was beginning to build up in him again. He flung the door open, hoping Covington was on the other side of it.
Hermione was, and Ron hovered behind her. She flushed painfully when she saw him, and cleared her throat. Harry waited for a lump of metal to fall out of it, but nothing did.
“I finally managed to cure the curse you put on me,” she whispered. “Can I speak with you, Harry?” She looked over his shoulder, found Malfoy with her eyes, and then turned her head away again, obviously dismissing him from her reality.
“What in the world could we possibly have to say to each other?” Harry asked. He was still angry as he stared at them, but more than anything else, he was weary. If he spoke to them, he knew they would pull down some of the barriers he had put up against the centaur’s arrow, and that meant reliving those agonies over again. He didn’t want to. He didn’t think he had ever been so tired.
“Listen to her,” Ron said, and nodded at Hermione, who then didn’t speak but spent a long minute gnawing her lip.
“Well?” Harry demanded when the minute had passed. Anger was a sustaining force right now. It gave him the strength to step back and grasp the door. “If you can’t come to the point when you were the one who approached me in the first place and asked to talk to me—”
Apparently that was what Hermione needed to force her out of her silence. “No, wait!” she said, eyes wide with something that looked like panic. “We want to work with you on putting Hogwarts back together again.”
Harry sneered automatically, turning to Ron. He was aware of Malfoy stepping up behind him, but saw no need to respond to that. “What? Don’t you think getting rid of Slytherin House is an acceptable compromise anymore?”
Hermione winced, but persevered. The hardest part had always been the beginning for her, Harry remembered. Once she was past that, she could stick to breaking the rules or researching dragons or whatever it was they were doing with thoroughness that outlasted his or Ron’s. “No. We don’t. We’ve—we’ve discovered some things about what the Ministry wants to do that are unacceptable. We want to work with you,” she repeated.
Harry sneered again. “And what makes you think that we want to work with you?” he asked. He badly wanted to swing the door shut, and he did move it an inch or two.
“There are two of us,” Malfoy said. “And you haven’t asked whether I share your opinion in all things, Potter.”
*
Potter turned around looking like a coiled snake, his head bowed, his eyes so bright that Draco thought he would have liked to kill Draco by the sheer force of his glare alone. Draco glanced calmly back—in this case, the one who remained calm would be the one who won—and then faced Granger and Weasley again. Their faces were alight with a pathetic hopefulness.
“I don’t want to work with them,” Potter said, and his voice was charged with emotions that Draco would have wanted to hear from him a few minutes ago. But Weasley and Granger’s entrance had changed things.
“But I want to,” Draco said, and nodded pleasantly to the Weasel and Mudblood, who both watched him as if they couldn’t believe their good fortune. “We could use help to get around the Ministry, Potter, as we were discussing earlier, and we might be able to use help with the riddle.”
“Not their help.”
Draco looked at Potter, astonished to find that he was the composed one for once, which didn’t seem to happen often in their arguments. Potter stood with his arms folded, his body forced away from Draco as though he could lessen their connection by putting physical distance between them. His eyes were brighter than before with hostility.
“Why not?” Draco asked. “We don’t need to tell them everything. Simply what would make them useful to us.”
“And what makes you think we’d put up with that?” Weasley demanded.
Draco turned back to in time to see Granger clamp a restraining hand down on Weasley’s wrist. Draco didn’t need to do anything but smile. Granger was mistress here, and she would make sure that Weasley acted in a reasonable fashion, he thought. Weasley turned a deep red and looked away, which was all the acknowledgement of reality Draco would get from that quarter.
“You’ll put up with it because Granger wants to work with us,” he said. “And once she adopts a crusade, I know that she’s relentless. I remember how hard she worked to try and make everyone stop abusing house-elves.”
Granger flushed. Why not? Draco thought. She wasn’t to know that he retained those memories because they were among his most amusing, not because he had been impressed by her dedication.
And then Granger spoiled it all by turning and looking at Potter, as if he were ultimately the one who had to make the decision about whether they worked together or not. “Harry?” she asked anxiously.
Ah, yes, precious Harry, Draco thought, and glanced at Potter. “What about it, Potter?” he asked. “You were saying yourself that we don’t have any idea where to begin with this latest riddle. Perhaps Granger could help with that, too.”
Potter stared at him with trembling muscles before he looked away and shut his eyes. Draco wondered whether the rejection in that gesture was meant to cut him as deeply as it did. But he thought not, on the whole. It was meant for Granger and Weasley.
“Fine,” was what Potter said, his voice clipped. “Come up with lies to tell Covington and solve the riddle, too. I’m sure that you’ll have it done before dinner.” He slipped away and was in the corridor before Draco thought to stop him.
“Harry!” Granger cried after him again.
“You’re being rather childish, aren’t you?” Draco asked in his most detached voice.
Potter stared at him over his shoulder. His eyes had darkened from their dangerous shine, but Draco wasn’t sure that he was intended to find much reassurance in that. Potter seemed poised on a quivering edge, though Draco was not quite sure what would happen when he fell from that edge.
“It’s my privilege to choose to be that way,” Potter said. “In fact, I don’t see why anyone needs me any longer, since speaking to Dumbledore’s portrait isn’t necessary at this point.” He stared at Granger and Weasley then, and whatever they saw in his face made them recoil, Weasley uneasily drawing his wand. “But if I try to work with them, they’re going to tear up all the barriers I’ve built and destroy all the progress I’ve made, and it won’t be long before Hermione is recommending Healers. No.”
“I won’t, Harry,” Granger whispered, with sincerity as far as Draco could tell. “I promise I won’t.”
“You say that, but I can’t trust you,” Potter said, and walked away.
Granger looked as if she would faint. Weasley caught her in his arms and stood there looking as small and lost as she was. Draco rolled his eyes and took over before these two could hurt themselves trying to think on their own. “We should try to solve this riddle,” he said. “Will you come in and work with me?”
Weasley looked closely at him, as if trying to find the poison hidden in Draco’s offer. Then he sighed and tugged Granger after him. Granger followed him, but her face was still pale and shocked when she took the seat in front of Severus’s portrait. Severus, Draco was glad to note, had the sense not to say anything at all.
Draco waited a moment for Granger to emerge from her trance, and, when she didn’t, took up the riddle and turned to Weasley. “We need to find the room where something precious to Ravenclaw was lost, and within it, something important to Hufflepuff,” he said.
As he had thought it might, the prospect of a question to answer—a non-obvious question—woke Granger up. “Let me see the exact wording,” she said with fragile authority, standing and extending her hand. “Depending on the wording, there are a few things that it could mean. Ravenclaw valued wit, and intelligence, and learning, and study, and books, and riddles…”
Draco leaned back in his chair and watched her with some amusement. Granger had her head close to Weasley’s and was whispering intensely to him, now and then pausing to glare at the riddle as if she thought the wording might have changed between then and her last glance at it. Then she would whisper again, and Weasley would nod. He was devoted to her, Draco thought. Whatever cracks had appeared in the foundation of their friendship with Potter, nothing had happened to affect their bond.
He could wish he had a bond like that.
Draco snorted, though it disturbed neither of the pair across the room. Yes, and he could wish that he had a dozen fully-worked out sentient potions and a calm, tamed Potter kneeling at his feet and awaiting his instructions. As long as he was wishing.
*
Harry went back to his room in Hogsmeade. He could have gone to the Forbidden Forest or elsewhere, but he was tired, and he didn’t want to work on the difficult process of soothing his anger. He wanted a place where he could get drunk in peace.
When he ended up in his room with a bottle of Firewhisky, he realized that someone had been waiting for him. Catherine was on the windowsill, her tail spread out as though she was catching the last rays of the sun. She gave him a single commanding look and turned her back. Harry had no idea why, but he followed the line where her beak had been pointing and saw Annie Crompton’s letter lying on the table.
Harry laughed. The sound made Catherine ruffle her feathers in irritation, but she didn’t turn around. “Oh, yes,” he said. “That letter is going to solve all my problems. The innocence of children, yes? Or the answer to the riddle and the way to control myself will be there, and I would never have known if I hadn’t looked.”
Catherine’s back remained stubbornly turned. Harry had the feeling that he could commit suicide and she would never notice or care. He reached out and picked up the letter, turning it around. It was definitely from Annie. His name was written on the outside of the envelope in painfully neat letters that he could picture her bloody repressed parents making her write over and over again until they were perfect.
A slight smell of singed paper filled the room. Harry shook his head, angry that he couldn’t even hold a bloody envelope without causing some kind of damage, and then tore it roughly open.
The letter had the same painfully neat writing. Harry lit the fire in the hearth and then leaned towards it so that he could have enough light to read; his aimless wandering during the afternoon and then his inability to find Firewhisky strong enough to drown his sorrows on the first try meant it was dark now.
Dear Mr. Potter:
I don’t know if I should write to you. It is very hard. I want to know about the magical school but maybe I don’t want to go there. What is it like? Will I have my own room? How will I learn magic? Are the teachers mean? What was it like when you were a boy? How long would I be away from my parents?
Sincerely yours,
Annie.
Harry shook his head at Catherine, not that she turned to look. “There’s nothing in here but questions,” he said. “Questions that I can’t answer, since I have no idea what professors still work at Hogwarts, aside from McGonagall and Flitwick. And I have no idea what Ron and Hermione would be like as teachers.”
Catherine spread her wings, stood a moment gazing across the town, and then swooped off. Harry went to the window to watch her fly. She soared silently over the roofs and towards the distant forest. Harry could imagine her becoming lost there, only one more hunter among the dark and tangled branches.
He wished he could fly away from his troubles as easily. Going up on a broom no longer soothed him, or he would have done it long since.
He stayed there with his arms folded on the windowsill, long after he couldn’t see Catherine anymore, long enough for the moon to come up. Then he turned and stared again at the letter on the table, with the jug of Firewhisky beside it. Ideas and thoughts chased themselves around his head and subsided almost before he could see what they were.
Would Annie want to hear from someone as screwed-up as he was, someone who couldn’t even face his own problems without exploding? Someone who had come to Hogwarts intending to try and open the school again on its own terms, not as a place the Ministry could hold power, and had failed?
He wasn’t a hero.
Harry shut his eyes then and, still so near the wall so that he could feel it against his back, slid slowly down to the floor. His ideas solidified and hovered in his head like a huge cloud. He couldn’t see around it. He had to walk through it.
He wasn’t a hero. He had told that to Dumbledore, and at the time, like so much else he had said during the conversation in the library, he had thought he believed it. But he didn’t. He did think that he should be a hero. He should handle all his problems perfectly, leave no way for them to hurt him, and make everyone else as happy with him as they could be when he hadn’t defeated Voldemort the first time he met him, the way a perfect and shining hero would.
Harry dropped his head on his knees and folded his arms around it.
Did it matter that people weren’t happy with him? But of course it did. Ron and Hermione’s disapproval of his method of coping hurt, because they were his friends and Harry wanted them to approve of something he did. Random people in the street could shout curses at him and he would laugh, but his friends were in a different class, an exalted one.
That was the root of the problem, and why he couldn’t work with them when they offered. Sooner or later they would get around to disapproving again, and he would be hurt again, and he would lash out, and that would increase the disapproval, and bring around the whole circle of emotions again in a vicious cycle.
He wished, fervently, that he had never told anyone about what he did to subdue the anger. Then he could have gone on living a normal life in the wizarding world, fighting the Ministry until Hogwarts was free, and choosing the kind of discreet partners who never spilled their clients’ secrets because their reputations meant more money for them in the future than the quick and dirty rewards of blackmail would.
His mind quivered, and he frowned. Someone else had spoken words like that to him recently. Who?
Of course. Dumbledore.
I wished to see you have the life you would have had without your parents’ death and without the scar on your forehead.
“That’s impossible,” Harry whispered. “My parents’ death and my scar have been part of me from the first days I can remember.”
And the fact of his confession to Ron and Hermione had been part of his life for two years now. Why hadn’t he faced up to it yet?
Harry drew a slow, tearing, painful breath, and then climbed to his feet and limped across the room to answer Annie’s letter. He didn’t want to think anymore about what he had just thought, although he knew the cloud would hang in the back of his mind until he did.
And it did. He wrote simple, mechanical answers to most of Annie’s questions, confessing that he didn’t know certain things when he really didn’t, and then sent the letter off with Catherine, who had reappeared silently on the windowsill as if she knew when he’d done something productive. He sat up on his bed and watched the moonrise, and then he watched the shadows creep across the walls, and he fell asleep with the cloud in the back of his mind.
It was only when he woke in the morning that he realized he hadn’t needed the Firewhisky.
*
The spiral staircase that led up to the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room looked as though no one had dusted it in years. Draco curled his lip and silently changed his mind about the Ministry not having interfered with the house-elves.
The door had nothing on it but a brass knocker in the shape of an eagle. Granger rapped it confidently, her eyes shining. Draco wondered idly if it was the activity that pleased her or the chance to show off her intelligence. It required no great brains to decide that the Ravenclaw common room was a likely hiding place for the third keyword, but it might require them to answer the riddle the eagle would ask.
Weasley hovered behind them both. Draco tried to ignore his uneasiness over that. He still had no idea what had motivated Granger and Weasley to offer their help, but he trusted that the spells in his mind and the potions concealed here and there under his robes would protect him if they intended treachery. In the meantime, they were less annoying to work with than Potter was, and Draco intended to keep ahead of the Ministry before he did anything else.
The knocker spoke in a soft, hesitant voice, clearly female. Draco wondered if it was meant to be Rowena Ravenclaw’s. “What makes an Animagus choose his form?”
Granger appeared to grow three inches taller. “He doesn’t choose,” she said. “The magic chooses for him, but an individual’s magic is part of that individual, and often appears the same as his personal will and desires.”
The door swung open. Granger walked in still strutting, and Draco shook his head in amusement as he followed her. If nothing else, working with her, and knowing how to handle her peculiar pride, meant that he would keep his mind on his work more effectively than he had with Potter.
Potter was…
Exasperating, Draco thought firmly, in place of the other adjectives he could have used, and then turned and looked around slowly at the Ravenclaw common room, searching for a likely hiding place for the next riddle and keyword.
The room was still bright and airy, despite the layer of grime on the windows and curtains. The ceiling, painted with stars, caught Draco’s eye first; he examined the constellations pictured there, wondering if Severus and Dumbledore were thinking of a symbolic representation of cleverness. On the other hand, most of the legends Draco knew about the figures who had become the constellations didn’t portray their intelligence at all, but rather their brute strength and bad luck.
“Could it have something to do with Ravenclaw’s diadem?” Weasley asked in what he, laughably, must imagine was a whisper, close to Granger’s ear. Draco could hear them, of course, although they were over near the largest window and he stood in the center of the room. “That’s something Ravenclaw lost.”
“Don’t be silly, Ron,” Granger said, with an inflection in her voice that told Draco those were four of her most frequently spoken words. “If Professor Snape and the Headmaster had known about the diadem, then we wouldn’t have had to seek it out. They would already have found and destroyed it.”
Memory stirred in Draco’s head of the Room of Hidden Things and a diadem he had seen once before, slung carelessly over the ear of a statue. But he shook his head, because thoughts of the room would lead to thoughts of Fiendfyre, and that would lead to thoughts of Potter. He was not prepared to deal with them or their distraction from his work yet. “Ravenclaw valued intelligence,” he said aloud. “Hufflepuff valued loyalty.”
“But that’s not the only thing each Founder is famous for,” Weasley said. He seemed determined to prove that he wasn’t a complete waste of space. “Ravenclaw had patience, too, and determination. All those study skills and the hours that you have to spend on research. And Hufflepuff wanted to teach everyone, so she valued inclusivity.” He chewed his lip, an expression on his face that proved he was reaching very deep indeed for all these thoughts. “The riddle said that Rowena and Helga valued these things. We should be thinking about the Founders themselves, not the Houses necessarily.”
Draco inclined his head, impressed in spite of himself. Keep Weasley and Granger away from discussions of sexuality, and they proved their worth. Perhaps that was Potter’s original mistake. “Very well,” he said. “Find me a monument to patience or intelligence or determination in this room, and I’ll concede that you’re right.”
“We shouldn’t be looking for that,” Granger said. “After all, this is the Ravenclaw common room. The whole House embodies virtues that Rowena Ravenclaw believed in. We should be looking for something important to Hufflepuff.” She peered at the windows and the floor with an expression of slight perplexity, as if she thought the relevant feature would announce itself to her.
“Very well,” Draco said, with an elaborately polite tone that neither of them seemed to realize was an insult, though Weasley gave Draco a glare on general principles. “Do you see anything that would symbolize loyalty and inclusivity?”
More inconclusive peering about. Draco himself thought they were in the wrong place—the Ravenclaw common room would be too obvious, and Severus and Dumbledore had meant to make the riddles difficult—but he didn’t yet have a better suggestion, so he held his peace. Weasley cast spells on the curtains while Granger murmured a few specialized charms at the chairs.
Draco leaned back on the wall and closed his eyes. Yes, what the Founders had valued mattered, but so did what Severus and Dumbledore thought of the Founders valuing. Very few direct historical records remained of the Founders’ time; it wasn’t even known for sure why Slytherin had left the school, though of course every House had its own tradition. So what about Dumbledore and Severus? What would they have believed? Draco wished that the portraits had enough memories left to answer that question.
What had they both feared losing most?
That answer was easy. The war. But Draco had to admit that he couldn’t immediately see the connection between losing the war and losing something precious to Ravenclaw.
Go back to that year in your mind, he command himself. Think about what Severus said to you concerning the war when you were alone together. Think about his effort to rescue you and keep you from killing Dumbledore. It wasn’t about preserving the old man’s life. You knew that, later, It was about preserving your innocence, your soul. They would have worried about people losing their souls.
But there again Draco ran aground, because that wasn’t something Ravenclaw, as far as he knew, had ever cared about. The traditions of Slytherin said that Ravenclaw thought souls were in books, if they were anywhere. She would have run to save the library before any one individual student.
I wish I could talk with Potter. Dumbledore might have said something he would remember.
Draco rejected the notion instantly. For that matter, he could speak with Dumbledore’s portrait himself, assuming the daft old man would come when Draco called. And Potter wasn’t likely to offer them any help.
He, Granger, and Weasley spent hours in Ravenclaw Tower, but came to no conclusions. Granger finally led the way down the staircase, frowning.
“I was so sure,” Draco heard her muttering to herself. “Where else would they have put it? There’s no other area in the school strongly associated with Ravenclaw, unlike the Chamber of Secrets with Slytherin. Where is it?”
Draco smiled grimly. At least he could be sure that he and Granger had one emotion in common that might serve to bind them together: frustration.
*
The cloud was waiting for Harry to work through it when he sat up in bed the next morning.
He could have left, of course. There was nothing to prevent that, not really. But he felt as if there was. The cloud of emotions and dreads crouched between him and the door like a wild beast, refusing to let him out.
Fine, Harry thought, leaning back on the pillows and closing his eyes to block out the light from the window and thus the temptation to look at it. Is there anything I can do to come to terms with my shame over needing to be tied?
He couldn’t think of anything. He ought to be able to keep it private if he wanted to. Considering the disastrous consequences that had followed when he confessed the truth to Ron and Hermione, and the threat Covington was holding over his head from the minor knowledge she possessed, keeping it private was the best course.
But the reason for that privacy?
Harry winced. This was the weak point where Malfoy would attack him, and he knew it. If he could come up with the arguments to counter it, then he would be prepared both for the chance that he might meet Malfoy again and for the nights when he lay awake in his bed and wondered if he could have done anything different.
“I shouldn’t have to keep it private out of shame,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have to keep it private because I’m afraid of the way people will look at me once they know what I need. I shouldn’t have to keep silent about it for anything other than my own choice.”
So much for the arguments Malfoy would make. The objections crowded Harry’s throat—objections that all came from himself, and not from arguments that other people had tried to feed him. That made it a lot easier for Harry to take them seriously. He had always needed this, maybe, time to sit down and think about it by himself instead of the talking that Hermione and the Mind-Healers thought was the right thing.
You still wouldn’t be doing this if the centaur’s arrow hadn’t forced you to face it.
Harry silently acknowledged that and then put aside the thought. So maybe he wouldn’t have done this on his own. The important thing was that he faced what was happening, surely, not why. He would worry about the motive behind it later.
What were the reasons against keeping his needs silent merely because of his choice?
“I don’t want to need this,” he whispered, and then paused, listening to the echoes of his words die away in his empty room. They did much the same thing in the empty confines of his skull.
That was the root objection, the one that all the other, defensive and offensive arguments came from. He could argue to Hermione that it was the only thing that worked and therefore he had to accept it, which was true. But if God had woken him up tomorrow and offered him a different choice, to be someone who wasn’t fucked-up like this, then Harry knew what he would have chosen.
So. What do I do about that? Do I really have to be “comfortable in my own skin,” the way that Hermione would phrase it, all the time?
Harry leaned back against the headboard and gave the answer to that one aloud. He wasn’t even sure which side of the argument he was on anymore; he just knew what the answers to certain questions were. “I don’t have to be. I can feel discomfort about my choices. But I need to be able to act so that I’m not constantly getting in my own way, or burning down buildings, or endangering other people.”
In his bitterer moods, he’d been pleased when people backed away from him, staring with wide eyes at the flames that coiled down his sides. But that wasn’t the way he wanted to live. He wanted to sit in a Muggle home that reminded him of the Dursleys’ and concentrate on the effect the parents might have on their magical children, rather than simply roiling about in a sea of his own memories.
But there wasn’t a way, that Harry knew of, to become more comfortable with the dreaded, stupid, ugly thing that he needed. Why should there be? Normal people didn’t do that, and Harry had wanted to be normal, had wanted to be “just Harry,” for a long time.
He winced suddenly.
That’s what I told Dumbledore I was. Flawed and normal. But I’m not. I’m not a hero, and I’m not normal in the way he wanted me to be, but I’m not normal in the way I thought I was, either. I’m—strange.
The thoughts after that came slowly, as if Harry was pulling a thick rope out of caverns choked with rot and slime. He’d got so far easily because these were conversations that he’d often had with himself before. But now he had to think new thoughts, and test them for truth, and slowly work them into congruity with the ones that had come before.
It took a long time.
*
“I don’t know where else to look.”
Draco arched his eyebrows. Granger admitting defeat was a large thing, for her, and probably novel, from the way she sat on the chair in Severus’s quarters with her head slumped into her hands. Draco studied her for a moment, then turned to Weasley, waiting to see if he was any more hopeful.
But Weasley was staring at the wall with the pathetic-puppy look that Gryffindors pulled off so well. Draco kept his scowl behind the placid, perfect mask of his face. He had run into the limitations of working with Weasley and Granger, it seemed. Potter was more sullen, but he also had more ideas. Draco had accepted Weasley and Granger’s help because it seemed they would help him move closer to the end of his task more quickly, but what good was that if they gave up at the first obstacle?
Well, one gives up and the other sits down because she thinks for him, Draco amended conscientiously.
“There must be somewhere else,” Draco said. “I know that you’ve read Hogwarts, A History.” Draco had seen her carrying around the enormous book more than once when they were students, and as far as he knew, she was the only one who ever took it out of the library. “Is there a historical event during which Ravenclaw lost something? Faith, her family, an artifact that was important to her and that Professor Snape and the Headmaster would have known about?” He was not going to call Severus by his first name in front of this pair.
Granger shook her head. “I’ve already thought about everything like that,” she said, and went on before Draco could do no more than stare at this frankly incredible claim. “There was one possibility, but the professors couldn’t have known about it. It had to do with defeating Voldemort, you see, and I’m sure they would have done it on their own rather than leave it for Harry and us to do during the war.”
Draco carefully tucked away that statement as something he wanted to ask Potter about later—if there was a later, with them—and shrugged. “Then I suggest we spend a few hours apart and think on it in private.” If Weasley can, when his brains are in your skull. “Perhaps we will have more ideas when we come back together again.”
He thought Granger would object, but she didn’t, only nodding wearily and leaving the rooms with Weasley trailing after her. Draco shook his head. Perhaps Granger was one of those people who needed to brood on an idea until it came to her in a brilliant flash, the way that Draco’s solution for the riddle the day before last had come to him.
And then again, perhaps she was good at puzzles related to homework and the Dark Lord and nothing else.
Draco was about to summon a house-elf to bring him food when someone knocked at his door. Draco paused. He didn’t think that was Potter repenting of the way he had treated Draco or Granger rushing back with an unanticipated answer. It sounded official.
Covington.
Well, Draco had wondered when she would attack. No surprise that she would wait until what seemed the breakup of a discussion of allies and then come along and “politely” inquire what progress they might have made.
He strolled to the door in a leisurely fashion, but Covington showed no impatience when he opened it. In fact, she gave him a simple smile and made a deprecatory gesture with one arm. “You might already have eaten,” she said, “as it’s rather late for a noon meal, but I would invite you to lunch if you haven’t.”
Draco measured her with his eyes for a long, silent moment. Covington retained her smile and showed no sign of impatience.
Strange that she would be attacking me instead of Potter. He’s the weak link in any defense, with his terror of blackmail. Draco gritted his teeth against the surge of contempt that swept over him. But perhaps that’s the point. She’s sure of success there, and she’s come to try and gain the same sort of foothold with me.
“I would be delighted,” he said, and turned to gather up his cloak, in case she wanted to eat outside.
“Have you seen Potter today?” Covington asked his back. “I had important matters to speak with him on, but he seems to be avoiding me.” There was a tone of concern in her voice, not hurt, which Draco had to applaud her for. She knew as well as he that she wouldn’t get away with sounding hurt that Potter was refusing something to the Ministry, or rather, to the Ministry through her.
“I haven’t, actually,” Draco said, and decided that Covington might as well share his worry. “He might be leaving the school. He said something to that effect yesterday.”
He was in time, when he turned back, to see her standing there with staring eyes and down-drawn brows. But she recovered so quickly Draco wasn’t sure if she was worried or only surprised, and held out her arm to him. Draco took it and tucked it through his.
He did glance back before he left the room, but for once, Severus had no words of advice.
*
By the end of several hours of concentration that left him as weary as he had sometimes got working outside in the garden on Privet Drive, Harry had come to several conclusions.
First, he was always going to be strange and different. His one big chance to fit in to the normal wizarding world had come after the war had ended, and he’d botched it. He hadn’t stayed an Auror, he hadn’t married and had a family, and he couldn’t be just a normal bent wizard, either. That was the way it was.
Second, he had to put up with needing to be bound. If he was lucky, it would be once every few months the way it had always been. If he wasn’t lucky, it would happen more often. He could complain, he could hide it, he could accuse Ron and Hermione bitterly of any crime he liked, but he wouldn’t change it.
Third, things would be more comfortable if he had a regular lover who was willing to put up with his strangeness and help him. But Harry had no idea who such a lover could be or what he could offer in return.
Fourth, he was going to try again with Ron and Hermione. He hadn’t been the only one at fault, but he’d been a lot more ashamed than he’d thought he’d been. So he would tell them that, explain, apologize, and emphasize that he was not going to become Hermione’s therapy project, and that would have to do.
Spent, Harry lay back against the pillow and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what came next, at least in the immediate sense. He had paid for his room until tomorrow and didn’t need to move or even go down to fetch dinner if he didn’t want to.
But restlessness hammered against his sides and his skull, and eventually, when he felt he could, he stood up and went to take a shower that should relieve the aches and pains.
And after that…
Harry reckoned he could do worse than going up to Hogwarts and seeing if he could corner his former best friends.
Part Two.
Chapter Five.
Title: Chosen Chains (6/7)
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 Six—The Room of Lost Things
Hogsmeade had no locksmith.
It also didn’t have any shop where one could purchase ropes, chains, ordinary locks, locking spells, leashes for dogs, wrist cuffs, or any of the other substitutes Harry had thought might have a soothing effect on him, if he couldn’t have a locksmith make him specially shaped personal chains.
Harry closed his eyes and leaned against the wall of his room, wondering how long it would be before he exploded, and if anyone would ever have any idea what had destroyed the town. He had already slammed a hole clean through the wall of a robe-maker’s shop to the outside world, his fist driven by the strength of his magic. The staring woman hadn’t finished cowering when Harry had mumbled an apology and run out of the place, his arse literally on fire.
Now his mind spun and listed badly, and fragments of the thoughts that had plagued him when he was victim to the centaur’s arrow danced in and out of his awareness, making him flinch whenever he encountered them.
All this time, he had basically believed that Ron and Hermione were right and that he was wrong. He should have been stronger. He shouldn’t need this as much as he did, but should have been able to stand on his own two feet and wrestle his anger back under control like a normal person. Hermione had similar habits sometimes, too, at least if her liking for being held down during sex was any indication, but she did that for pleasure, not because it was the only way she could feel like herself.
Only this morning, he had been thinking that Malfoy had done such a good job that he was unlikely to need another session like that for months. Harry would have laughed at the ironies of his life, but he knew the laughter wouldn’t stop.
Something knocked against the window. Harry looked up. His owl, Catherine, was sitting there, holding two letters. Her feathers were all on end, probably because his magic filled the room with the kind of powerful, brooding presence that even an owl could sense.
“You can leave those on the table,” Harry said. His voice sounded as if he chewed gravel for a living. He cleared his throat. “I don’t want to incinerate you, and I might if you come too close.”
Catherine flew across the room, ignoring him, as she had a habit of doing, and dropped the letters on the floor. Harry glanced down. The first had Muggle stamps on it and looked as though someone had fought for possession of it with Catherine. It was probably Annie Crompton’s, Harry thought. All the Muggleborn children had difficulty adjusting to owl post at first.
The second one was just a sheet of parchment, folded, with his name on the outside of it. Harry picked it up and unfolded it, blinking.
The words inside were as simple as his name, and had no signature attached. Of course, for the kind of threat they contained, there was no reason they should.
I know about your abnormal sexuality. Flawed but normal, I believe was the wording? I wonder what the wizarding world would think if they knew their hero was anything but.
Harry leaned his head back against the wall and laughed after all. He fell into the flames, and he laughed. He fell into the darkness, and he laughed. He wheezed and gasped, and someone pounded on the wall from the next room to let him know that the noise wasn’t appreciated, and still he laughed, because what else in the world could he do?
Catherine was the one who brought him out of it, gripping his ear and pulling it. Harry came back to himself with a gasp and the fear that he would lose a vital part of his body. But the moment he reached up to free himself, Catherine leaped away and flew to the windowsill, where she sat judging him.
“Fine, then,” Harry said. “I’ll carry on like normal as long as I can.” He picked up the anonymous letter and glanced at it again. “Flawed but normal was the phrase I used when I was talking with Dumbledore’s portrait in the library. Someone must have listened in, and it was probably Covington. I don’t think Malfoy would admit anything, since it makes him look bad as well as me, and Ron and Hermione wouldn’t have a reason to hint.”
He stood up and put Annie’s letter aside to read for later, then shook his head at Catherine. She made as good an audience as anyone else, and right now, he really needed to talk this out. “I really believed what I was saying at the time I spoke to Dumbledore, you know? Flawed but normal. That I wasn’t a fantasy hero. And I still think it’s true that I’m not the hero or the person that Dumbledore and my friends wanted me to be.
“But I still want to be that person. That desire is stronger than the desire to just get my life under control. I want to be able to do what they want. I want my friendship with Ron and Hermione back. I want a family. I want a regular lover.” He scrabbled his fingers through his hair. “All that’s a lot more comforting than what I have now, where I’m only calm and happy for a few days after a session, and then my anger starts building up again. I just don’t know how to achieve any of what I want and don’t have.”
Catherine hooted derisively.
“I know,” Harry said. “I know. That’s the last thing I should be worrying about now. But it’s the only new thing that the centaur’s arrow brought out in me. I already knew that I felt guilt about the deaths I caused and all the rest of it. It’s the thing that’s going to be the hardest to deal with—except for the magic that might destroy me or other people.”
He leaned his head back against the wall and began carefully rebuilding his torn barriers. At the moment, that had to be his priority. He and Malfoy would finish the riddle quest as soon as possible, because that would enable Harry to get away as soon as possible and back to Bradley or his paid Muggles. And he would show Covington’s threat to Malfoy in the morning and ask how they should deal with it.
For a moment, just a moment, the thought crossed his mind that he could go back to Malfoy and beg to be bound again.
But he knew Malfoy would refuse, for all sorts of reasons, and why shouldn’t he?
Catherine chose that moment to screech and leap off the windowsill, soaring in the direction of the Owlery. Harry watched her go and wondered if she had sensed what was going through his mind, and what she thought about it. Her cry really didn’t reveal much one way or the other.
*
Draco should have worked with his sentient potion that evening, but he was too disturbed, even if it was by something that shouldn’t have disturbed him. He settled into the chair in front of the fire in Severus’s rooms instead and thought.
The first thing he had to admit was that he had no rational explanation for what he was thinking and feeling, not at all. Once he got that out of the way and dispensed with, then the emotions could creep to the surface, where he could entertain them.
He was worried about Potter.
He wished that Potter had come back with him to Hogwarts so that they could speak about what had happened in the Forest and come up with a strategy for handling it.
He was still not going to bind Potter to the bed, however, or fuck him, or do anything else for him that would help settle his magic, unless Potter begged him. Because he had had enough of not being desired or wanted for himself, of only being second best or someone else’s bad choice.
The conclusions were all clear enough in his mind, sharp enough to glitter like jewels, or knives made of colored glass that Draco had once seen in a very select shop in Knockturn Alley. But that didn’t give him any idea of what would happen next. He sighed wistfully. Was this really only infatuation with the best fuck of his life, the kind of childish belief that he should have been cured of long before?
“I know that your mind is not on potions.”
“What gave it away?” Draco murmured, not looking up. “The lack of a bubbling cauldron in the room, or the sheer fixed stare?”
He could hear the swish of Severus’s robes as the man paced slowly towards the other side of his portrait. Limited art or not, Draco thought, the painter had done an absolutely magnificent job. “It should be,” Severus said. “Potions, or the job that you are doing here. I never thought you one to succumb to a foolish infatuation with Potter.”
Draco winced. Well, he had only himself to blame if his expression or actions had given away his preoccupations. “Yes, I know,” he said.
Severus paused, and when his voice spoke, the sneer in it couldn’t conceal his surprise. “What? No rebukes that you are an adult man and can fancy whoever you wish? No denials that Potter does not occupy your thoughts?”
“What would be the point?” Draco glanced up and managed a smile. Surprising Severus was its own sort of victory. “You would know I was lying, and I prefer not to be caught in any lie so obvious.”
Severus smiled back after a difficult moment when Draco thought that he might be told to leave the room. Then he turned back to his brewing, and Draco returned to his thinking.
The clarity of his conclusions did not vary, and at last he gave up and resigned himself to thinking that he would simply have to wait until Potter came and asked for help of his own free will. It might get them burned to death in the meantime, but at least Draco could say that he went to death clinging to his pride.
And that ought to make him Slytherin enough for even Severus’s approval.
*
“This came by my owl last night.”
Draco barely got his hand up before Potter tossed the letter at him. Draco unfolded it and read it, noting that the edge of the paper was crumpled, as though Potter had crushed it in a fit of passion, but only the edge. At least he had enough sense left to recognize important evidence he should preserve.
“This looks like Covington’s handwriting,” Draco said, covertly watching Potter as he paused near the enchanted window and stared out over the lawn. Potter wasn’t covered with any ghostly flames at the moment, but he did look as if he were tense to the point of snapping. Draco wondered if he should want to be nearby when Potter snapped or not. “How much do you think she knows?”
“With luck? Only the conversation in the library.” Potter spoke in a flat voice. Draco found himself looking for clues in that, and told himself to stop it. “In which case she knows that something is abnormal about my sexuality, but not exactly what. I didn’t see the need to blurt out all the details of my sex life to anyone listening.”
“Good,” Draco said. He could have made other comments, but he left it at that. “Then we can still outface her.”
“Not if she intends to go to the papers.” Potter turned around, pressing his back flat against the wall. “She could talk to Ron and Hermione and learn more details then, and they might tell her. They have no reason to remain silent and protect me now.” He lowered his head and closed his eyes. His face wore a defeated expression.
Draco had to search for the will to render his voice cool, but he managed it. “Well, you can go home, then.”
“Huh?” Potter did look better confused than despairing. Draco told himself to remember that, should he ever have need of such knowledge in the future.
“If you can’t think of a means of fighting her, and won’t,” Draco said, tossing the bubble that contained the next riddle and next keyword from hand to hand, “then you might as well leave. That means that I’ll face her alone. I, at least, am not afraid.”
Potter stood up, and every inch of him bristled with defiance, reminding Draco of the way that he had looked under the chains. Draco bit back the temptation to roll his eyes when he had that thought. He sincerely hoped that the rest of his life wouldn’t be defined by the way that he had had sex with Potter. With luck, his next Potions obsession would knock this one out of his head. “I’m not afraid,” Potter said. “But I won’t be able to stay here if she finds out and exposes the details.”
“I don’t think she would do that,” Draco said. “It’s to her advantage to husband the knowledge. But if she did, your life wouldn’t literally come to an end.”
Severus cleared his throat behind Draco, though he didn’t say anything. Draco knew what the wordless message was meant to convey: Severus’s conviction that he was going too far, recklessly racing after answers that he didn’t want and would pay too much for.
“It might as well,” Potter said, and his voice was sunk in gloom. “They would laugh at me.”
“So?” Draco asked. “I had the impression that you lived at the edge of the wizarding world anyway. You’ve already lost your friends, and they’ve already sacked you from being an Auror. What else can they do?”
Potter glared at him. The glare was far more heated than the one he had given the wall at the mention of Covington, and Draco thought he knew why. Covington simply wanted to hurt him. Potter was used to that. But Draco had the gall to try and make him face himself.
“What else can they do?” Draco repeated, more softly this time, because he was interested in what Potter would say. He stepped forwards, a hand resting on the wall. It was the closest he had been to Potter since the disastrous end of their time together in the Room of Requirement. “Tell me.”
*
Harry had come here expecting not—
Not understanding, not sympathy. He was wise enough to know that all the emotions Malfoy felt like that, he would reserve for himself. But he had thought that he would get some rough good advice about what to do with Covington’s letter, and perhaps Malfoy would be able to keep him so focused that he wouldn’t need to think about what the centaur’s arrow had done to him.
Instead, he got a challenge and open mockery. And Malfoy was asking questions as though he assumed he had the right to an answer.
Harry held his breath in response. It wasn’t done to annoy Malfoy; he doubted that Malfoy would even notice. But he shut his eyes and clung to the stilled motion of air in his chest and the heat that started to build up in his throat and face, the pressure behind his skin, the desperation of lungs reaching for air, until that filled his world and he could think of it instead of the anger.
That didn’t work often, but it did now. From the floating nest of calmed panic that was his mind, Harry answered, “They could make my life a constant parade of Howlers and mocking letters. I was content to sink out of sight when I realized that I couldn’t change the Ministry’s mind about Hogwarts. I don’t want to come back to the public’s notice like this.”
“Indifference breeds indifference,” Malfoy said, as quickly as if he’d anticipated Harry’s answer and had his own ready. Harry felt a swirl of slow rage build up in him. Why did Malfoy insist on this? Harry hadn’t forced him to discuss the past. There was no reason to unless Harry’s magic actively endangered Malfoy, and it wasn’t doing that so far. “If the public has been content to ignore you for this long, I think it would take something a lot more compelling to bring you back to their attention.”
Harry choked back the words that he wanted to speak, that his sexuality was compelling and just scandalous enough to tickle people’s interest. He would sound as though he thought everyone in the world should be interested in him, and he could guess what Malfoy would say to that.
He can’t continue the argument without me. Why should I let him take advantage of me like that?
Harry opened his eyes and said, “We should string Covington along, I agree. But we need to come up with a specific lie to tell her so that she’ll think I’m cooperating, rather than plotting to take revenge.”
For a moment, Malfoy’s face shone with exquisite frustration, as if he didn’t know what to do now that Harry had cut their argument off. Then he lowered his eyes and nodded. “Tell her that you would be willing to let her have the keyword,” he said, “but that you can’t do it yet, in case I get suspicious. The line should be that you’re betraying me without my knowledge. She’ll like the thought of having one over on me.”
Harry nodded. “If she presses me for the keyword?”
Malfoy shrugged impatiently. “You can give her a false one, and tell her that they’re useless until we have all four, which I’m sure is true.”
“It is,” Snape said from his portrait.
Harry opened his mouth to ask how Snape knew that, when he didn’t seem to know much else that was useful, but Malfoy rushed on. “We should open the bubble now and see what the third riddle is. We haven’t done so yet.”
Harry nodded again, stepped forwards, and let his hand rest on the bubble. Malfoy caressed his fingers with a lingering motion. Harry drew in a breath of annoyance, but otherwise didn’t react, and after a moment, Malfoy moved his hand in the twist that would draw the bubble open.
The keyword came out, and Malfoy stared at it and then gave a small smile. “Silver instruments,” he read.
Harry had caught the riddle, and he stared at it.
Go to the room where the things were lost that are most precious to Rowena, and draw forth the word from that which is most precious to Helga.
Harry blinked and handed it over to Malfoy to see if he had any idea of what this meant. But Malfoy only frowned at the riddle, and turned the parchment over in the next moment to see if anything was written on the other side. Nothing was.
“I don’t quite understand,” Malfoy said, leaning back and cocking his head as though he expected the parchment to reveal the answer just to oblige him. “Ravenclaw favored cleverness, and Hufflepuff loyalty. But those are abstract virtues. You can’t draw forth anything from them, and you can’t find a place where they were lost.”
“Then we should be looking for things that represent them,” Harry said. The solution seemed obvious to him.
Once again, he got a crushing look from Malfoy. But Malfoy only nodded and said, “What represents them, then? And what room in Hogwarts contains them both? We could go to Ravenclaw Tower, I suppose, but I find it hard to believe that they would have an emblem of Hufflepuff House anywhere among their artifacts.”
“Yes, it doesn’t seem likely,” Harry had to agree. “If we could even get into the Tower. I know that a riddle unlocked the door the last time I had to get in, but I don’t know if we could answer it or if anyone’s set a new one.”
Malfoy started to respond, but then paused and turned towards the door to Snape’s rooms. Harry followed his gaze and saw a shadow pass under it. Someone was waiting in the corridor, perhaps to speak to them, perhaps to spy on them.
Malfoy would have stepped forwards, Harry thought, but he moved more quickly, and was glad to have the distraction from the anger that was beginning to build up in him again. He flung the door open, hoping Covington was on the other side of it.
Hermione was, and Ron hovered behind her. She flushed painfully when she saw him, and cleared her throat. Harry waited for a lump of metal to fall out of it, but nothing did.
“I finally managed to cure the curse you put on me,” she whispered. “Can I speak with you, Harry?” She looked over his shoulder, found Malfoy with her eyes, and then turned her head away again, obviously dismissing him from her reality.
“What in the world could we possibly have to say to each other?” Harry asked. He was still angry as he stared at them, but more than anything else, he was weary. If he spoke to them, he knew they would pull down some of the barriers he had put up against the centaur’s arrow, and that meant reliving those agonies over again. He didn’t want to. He didn’t think he had ever been so tired.
“Listen to her,” Ron said, and nodded at Hermione, who then didn’t speak but spent a long minute gnawing her lip.
“Well?” Harry demanded when the minute had passed. Anger was a sustaining force right now. It gave him the strength to step back and grasp the door. “If you can’t come to the point when you were the one who approached me in the first place and asked to talk to me—”
Apparently that was what Hermione needed to force her out of her silence. “No, wait!” she said, eyes wide with something that looked like panic. “We want to work with you on putting Hogwarts back together again.”
Harry sneered automatically, turning to Ron. He was aware of Malfoy stepping up behind him, but saw no need to respond to that. “What? Don’t you think getting rid of Slytherin House is an acceptable compromise anymore?”
Hermione winced, but persevered. The hardest part had always been the beginning for her, Harry remembered. Once she was past that, she could stick to breaking the rules or researching dragons or whatever it was they were doing with thoroughness that outlasted his or Ron’s. “No. We don’t. We’ve—we’ve discovered some things about what the Ministry wants to do that are unacceptable. We want to work with you,” she repeated.
Harry sneered again. “And what makes you think that we want to work with you?” he asked. He badly wanted to swing the door shut, and he did move it an inch or two.
“There are two of us,” Malfoy said. “And you haven’t asked whether I share your opinion in all things, Potter.”
*
Potter turned around looking like a coiled snake, his head bowed, his eyes so bright that Draco thought he would have liked to kill Draco by the sheer force of his glare alone. Draco glanced calmly back—in this case, the one who remained calm would be the one who won—and then faced Granger and Weasley again. Their faces were alight with a pathetic hopefulness.
“I don’t want to work with them,” Potter said, and his voice was charged with emotions that Draco would have wanted to hear from him a few minutes ago. But Weasley and Granger’s entrance had changed things.
“But I want to,” Draco said, and nodded pleasantly to the Weasel and Mudblood, who both watched him as if they couldn’t believe their good fortune. “We could use help to get around the Ministry, Potter, as we were discussing earlier, and we might be able to use help with the riddle.”
“Not their help.”
Draco looked at Potter, astonished to find that he was the composed one for once, which didn’t seem to happen often in their arguments. Potter stood with his arms folded, his body forced away from Draco as though he could lessen their connection by putting physical distance between them. His eyes were brighter than before with hostility.
“Why not?” Draco asked. “We don’t need to tell them everything. Simply what would make them useful to us.”
“And what makes you think we’d put up with that?” Weasley demanded.
Draco turned back to in time to see Granger clamp a restraining hand down on Weasley’s wrist. Draco didn’t need to do anything but smile. Granger was mistress here, and she would make sure that Weasley acted in a reasonable fashion, he thought. Weasley turned a deep red and looked away, which was all the acknowledgement of reality Draco would get from that quarter.
“You’ll put up with it because Granger wants to work with us,” he said. “And once she adopts a crusade, I know that she’s relentless. I remember how hard she worked to try and make everyone stop abusing house-elves.”
Granger flushed. Why not? Draco thought. She wasn’t to know that he retained those memories because they were among his most amusing, not because he had been impressed by her dedication.
And then Granger spoiled it all by turning and looking at Potter, as if he were ultimately the one who had to make the decision about whether they worked together or not. “Harry?” she asked anxiously.
Ah, yes, precious Harry, Draco thought, and glanced at Potter. “What about it, Potter?” he asked. “You were saying yourself that we don’t have any idea where to begin with this latest riddle. Perhaps Granger could help with that, too.”
Potter stared at him with trembling muscles before he looked away and shut his eyes. Draco wondered whether the rejection in that gesture was meant to cut him as deeply as it did. But he thought not, on the whole. It was meant for Granger and Weasley.
“Fine,” was what Potter said, his voice clipped. “Come up with lies to tell Covington and solve the riddle, too. I’m sure that you’ll have it done before dinner.” He slipped away and was in the corridor before Draco thought to stop him.
“Harry!” Granger cried after him again.
“You’re being rather childish, aren’t you?” Draco asked in his most detached voice.
Potter stared at him over his shoulder. His eyes had darkened from their dangerous shine, but Draco wasn’t sure that he was intended to find much reassurance in that. Potter seemed poised on a quivering edge, though Draco was not quite sure what would happen when he fell from that edge.
“It’s my privilege to choose to be that way,” Potter said. “In fact, I don’t see why anyone needs me any longer, since speaking to Dumbledore’s portrait isn’t necessary at this point.” He stared at Granger and Weasley then, and whatever they saw in his face made them recoil, Weasley uneasily drawing his wand. “But if I try to work with them, they’re going to tear up all the barriers I’ve built and destroy all the progress I’ve made, and it won’t be long before Hermione is recommending Healers. No.”
“I won’t, Harry,” Granger whispered, with sincerity as far as Draco could tell. “I promise I won’t.”
“You say that, but I can’t trust you,” Potter said, and walked away.
Granger looked as if she would faint. Weasley caught her in his arms and stood there looking as small and lost as she was. Draco rolled his eyes and took over before these two could hurt themselves trying to think on their own. “We should try to solve this riddle,” he said. “Will you come in and work with me?”
Weasley looked closely at him, as if trying to find the poison hidden in Draco’s offer. Then he sighed and tugged Granger after him. Granger followed him, but her face was still pale and shocked when she took the seat in front of Severus’s portrait. Severus, Draco was glad to note, had the sense not to say anything at all.
Draco waited a moment for Granger to emerge from her trance, and, when she didn’t, took up the riddle and turned to Weasley. “We need to find the room where something precious to Ravenclaw was lost, and within it, something important to Hufflepuff,” he said.
As he had thought it might, the prospect of a question to answer—a non-obvious question—woke Granger up. “Let me see the exact wording,” she said with fragile authority, standing and extending her hand. “Depending on the wording, there are a few things that it could mean. Ravenclaw valued wit, and intelligence, and learning, and study, and books, and riddles…”
Draco leaned back in his chair and watched her with some amusement. Granger had her head close to Weasley’s and was whispering intensely to him, now and then pausing to glare at the riddle as if she thought the wording might have changed between then and her last glance at it. Then she would whisper again, and Weasley would nod. He was devoted to her, Draco thought. Whatever cracks had appeared in the foundation of their friendship with Potter, nothing had happened to affect their bond.
He could wish he had a bond like that.
Draco snorted, though it disturbed neither of the pair across the room. Yes, and he could wish that he had a dozen fully-worked out sentient potions and a calm, tamed Potter kneeling at his feet and awaiting his instructions. As long as he was wishing.
*
Harry went back to his room in Hogsmeade. He could have gone to the Forbidden Forest or elsewhere, but he was tired, and he didn’t want to work on the difficult process of soothing his anger. He wanted a place where he could get drunk in peace.
When he ended up in his room with a bottle of Firewhisky, he realized that someone had been waiting for him. Catherine was on the windowsill, her tail spread out as though she was catching the last rays of the sun. She gave him a single commanding look and turned her back. Harry had no idea why, but he followed the line where her beak had been pointing and saw Annie Crompton’s letter lying on the table.
Harry laughed. The sound made Catherine ruffle her feathers in irritation, but she didn’t turn around. “Oh, yes,” he said. “That letter is going to solve all my problems. The innocence of children, yes? Or the answer to the riddle and the way to control myself will be there, and I would never have known if I hadn’t looked.”
Catherine’s back remained stubbornly turned. Harry had the feeling that he could commit suicide and she would never notice or care. He reached out and picked up the letter, turning it around. It was definitely from Annie. His name was written on the outside of the envelope in painfully neat letters that he could picture her bloody repressed parents making her write over and over again until they were perfect.
A slight smell of singed paper filled the room. Harry shook his head, angry that he couldn’t even hold a bloody envelope without causing some kind of damage, and then tore it roughly open.
The letter had the same painfully neat writing. Harry lit the fire in the hearth and then leaned towards it so that he could have enough light to read; his aimless wandering during the afternoon and then his inability to find Firewhisky strong enough to drown his sorrows on the first try meant it was dark now.
Dear Mr. Potter:
I don’t know if I should write to you. It is very hard. I want to know about the magical school but maybe I don’t want to go there. What is it like? Will I have my own room? How will I learn magic? Are the teachers mean? What was it like when you were a boy? How long would I be away from my parents?
Sincerely yours,
Annie.
Harry shook his head at Catherine, not that she turned to look. “There’s nothing in here but questions,” he said. “Questions that I can’t answer, since I have no idea what professors still work at Hogwarts, aside from McGonagall and Flitwick. And I have no idea what Ron and Hermione would be like as teachers.”
Catherine spread her wings, stood a moment gazing across the town, and then swooped off. Harry went to the window to watch her fly. She soared silently over the roofs and towards the distant forest. Harry could imagine her becoming lost there, only one more hunter among the dark and tangled branches.
He wished he could fly away from his troubles as easily. Going up on a broom no longer soothed him, or he would have done it long since.
He stayed there with his arms folded on the windowsill, long after he couldn’t see Catherine anymore, long enough for the moon to come up. Then he turned and stared again at the letter on the table, with the jug of Firewhisky beside it. Ideas and thoughts chased themselves around his head and subsided almost before he could see what they were.
Would Annie want to hear from someone as screwed-up as he was, someone who couldn’t even face his own problems without exploding? Someone who had come to Hogwarts intending to try and open the school again on its own terms, not as a place the Ministry could hold power, and had failed?
He wasn’t a hero.
Harry shut his eyes then and, still so near the wall so that he could feel it against his back, slid slowly down to the floor. His ideas solidified and hovered in his head like a huge cloud. He couldn’t see around it. He had to walk through it.
He wasn’t a hero. He had told that to Dumbledore, and at the time, like so much else he had said during the conversation in the library, he had thought he believed it. But he didn’t. He did think that he should be a hero. He should handle all his problems perfectly, leave no way for them to hurt him, and make everyone else as happy with him as they could be when he hadn’t defeated Voldemort the first time he met him, the way a perfect and shining hero would.
Harry dropped his head on his knees and folded his arms around it.
Did it matter that people weren’t happy with him? But of course it did. Ron and Hermione’s disapproval of his method of coping hurt, because they were his friends and Harry wanted them to approve of something he did. Random people in the street could shout curses at him and he would laugh, but his friends were in a different class, an exalted one.
That was the root of the problem, and why he couldn’t work with them when they offered. Sooner or later they would get around to disapproving again, and he would be hurt again, and he would lash out, and that would increase the disapproval, and bring around the whole circle of emotions again in a vicious cycle.
He wished, fervently, that he had never told anyone about what he did to subdue the anger. Then he could have gone on living a normal life in the wizarding world, fighting the Ministry until Hogwarts was free, and choosing the kind of discreet partners who never spilled their clients’ secrets because their reputations meant more money for them in the future than the quick and dirty rewards of blackmail would.
His mind quivered, and he frowned. Someone else had spoken words like that to him recently. Who?
Of course. Dumbledore.
I wished to see you have the life you would have had without your parents’ death and without the scar on your forehead.
“That’s impossible,” Harry whispered. “My parents’ death and my scar have been part of me from the first days I can remember.”
And the fact of his confession to Ron and Hermione had been part of his life for two years now. Why hadn’t he faced up to it yet?
Harry drew a slow, tearing, painful breath, and then climbed to his feet and limped across the room to answer Annie’s letter. He didn’t want to think anymore about what he had just thought, although he knew the cloud would hang in the back of his mind until he did.
And it did. He wrote simple, mechanical answers to most of Annie’s questions, confessing that he didn’t know certain things when he really didn’t, and then sent the letter off with Catherine, who had reappeared silently on the windowsill as if she knew when he’d done something productive. He sat up on his bed and watched the moonrise, and then he watched the shadows creep across the walls, and he fell asleep with the cloud in the back of his mind.
It was only when he woke in the morning that he realized he hadn’t needed the Firewhisky.
*
The spiral staircase that led up to the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room looked as though no one had dusted it in years. Draco curled his lip and silently changed his mind about the Ministry not having interfered with the house-elves.
The door had nothing on it but a brass knocker in the shape of an eagle. Granger rapped it confidently, her eyes shining. Draco wondered idly if it was the activity that pleased her or the chance to show off her intelligence. It required no great brains to decide that the Ravenclaw common room was a likely hiding place for the third keyword, but it might require them to answer the riddle the eagle would ask.
Weasley hovered behind them both. Draco tried to ignore his uneasiness over that. He still had no idea what had motivated Granger and Weasley to offer their help, but he trusted that the spells in his mind and the potions concealed here and there under his robes would protect him if they intended treachery. In the meantime, they were less annoying to work with than Potter was, and Draco intended to keep ahead of the Ministry before he did anything else.
The knocker spoke in a soft, hesitant voice, clearly female. Draco wondered if it was meant to be Rowena Ravenclaw’s. “What makes an Animagus choose his form?”
Granger appeared to grow three inches taller. “He doesn’t choose,” she said. “The magic chooses for him, but an individual’s magic is part of that individual, and often appears the same as his personal will and desires.”
The door swung open. Granger walked in still strutting, and Draco shook his head in amusement as he followed her. If nothing else, working with her, and knowing how to handle her peculiar pride, meant that he would keep his mind on his work more effectively than he had with Potter.
Potter was…
Exasperating, Draco thought firmly, in place of the other adjectives he could have used, and then turned and looked around slowly at the Ravenclaw common room, searching for a likely hiding place for the next riddle and keyword.
The room was still bright and airy, despite the layer of grime on the windows and curtains. The ceiling, painted with stars, caught Draco’s eye first; he examined the constellations pictured there, wondering if Severus and Dumbledore were thinking of a symbolic representation of cleverness. On the other hand, most of the legends Draco knew about the figures who had become the constellations didn’t portray their intelligence at all, but rather their brute strength and bad luck.
“Could it have something to do with Ravenclaw’s diadem?” Weasley asked in what he, laughably, must imagine was a whisper, close to Granger’s ear. Draco could hear them, of course, although they were over near the largest window and he stood in the center of the room. “That’s something Ravenclaw lost.”
“Don’t be silly, Ron,” Granger said, with an inflection in her voice that told Draco those were four of her most frequently spoken words. “If Professor Snape and the Headmaster had known about the diadem, then we wouldn’t have had to seek it out. They would already have found and destroyed it.”
Memory stirred in Draco’s head of the Room of Hidden Things and a diadem he had seen once before, slung carelessly over the ear of a statue. But he shook his head, because thoughts of the room would lead to thoughts of Fiendfyre, and that would lead to thoughts of Potter. He was not prepared to deal with them or their distraction from his work yet. “Ravenclaw valued intelligence,” he said aloud. “Hufflepuff valued loyalty.”
“But that’s not the only thing each Founder is famous for,” Weasley said. He seemed determined to prove that he wasn’t a complete waste of space. “Ravenclaw had patience, too, and determination. All those study skills and the hours that you have to spend on research. And Hufflepuff wanted to teach everyone, so she valued inclusivity.” He chewed his lip, an expression on his face that proved he was reaching very deep indeed for all these thoughts. “The riddle said that Rowena and Helga valued these things. We should be thinking about the Founders themselves, not the Houses necessarily.”
Draco inclined his head, impressed in spite of himself. Keep Weasley and Granger away from discussions of sexuality, and they proved their worth. Perhaps that was Potter’s original mistake. “Very well,” he said. “Find me a monument to patience or intelligence or determination in this room, and I’ll concede that you’re right.”
“We shouldn’t be looking for that,” Granger said. “After all, this is the Ravenclaw common room. The whole House embodies virtues that Rowena Ravenclaw believed in. We should be looking for something important to Hufflepuff.” She peered at the windows and the floor with an expression of slight perplexity, as if she thought the relevant feature would announce itself to her.
“Very well,” Draco said, with an elaborately polite tone that neither of them seemed to realize was an insult, though Weasley gave Draco a glare on general principles. “Do you see anything that would symbolize loyalty and inclusivity?”
More inconclusive peering about. Draco himself thought they were in the wrong place—the Ravenclaw common room would be too obvious, and Severus and Dumbledore had meant to make the riddles difficult—but he didn’t yet have a better suggestion, so he held his peace. Weasley cast spells on the curtains while Granger murmured a few specialized charms at the chairs.
Draco leaned back on the wall and closed his eyes. Yes, what the Founders had valued mattered, but so did what Severus and Dumbledore thought of the Founders valuing. Very few direct historical records remained of the Founders’ time; it wasn’t even known for sure why Slytherin had left the school, though of course every House had its own tradition. So what about Dumbledore and Severus? What would they have believed? Draco wished that the portraits had enough memories left to answer that question.
What had they both feared losing most?
That answer was easy. The war. But Draco had to admit that he couldn’t immediately see the connection between losing the war and losing something precious to Ravenclaw.
Go back to that year in your mind, he command himself. Think about what Severus said to you concerning the war when you were alone together. Think about his effort to rescue you and keep you from killing Dumbledore. It wasn’t about preserving the old man’s life. You knew that, later, It was about preserving your innocence, your soul. They would have worried about people losing their souls.
But there again Draco ran aground, because that wasn’t something Ravenclaw, as far as he knew, had ever cared about. The traditions of Slytherin said that Ravenclaw thought souls were in books, if they were anywhere. She would have run to save the library before any one individual student.
I wish I could talk with Potter. Dumbledore might have said something he would remember.
Draco rejected the notion instantly. For that matter, he could speak with Dumbledore’s portrait himself, assuming the daft old man would come when Draco called. And Potter wasn’t likely to offer them any help.
He, Granger, and Weasley spent hours in Ravenclaw Tower, but came to no conclusions. Granger finally led the way down the staircase, frowning.
“I was so sure,” Draco heard her muttering to herself. “Where else would they have put it? There’s no other area in the school strongly associated with Ravenclaw, unlike the Chamber of Secrets with Slytherin. Where is it?”
Draco smiled grimly. At least he could be sure that he and Granger had one emotion in common that might serve to bind them together: frustration.
*
The cloud was waiting for Harry to work through it when he sat up in bed the next morning.
He could have left, of course. There was nothing to prevent that, not really. But he felt as if there was. The cloud of emotions and dreads crouched between him and the door like a wild beast, refusing to let him out.
Fine, Harry thought, leaning back on the pillows and closing his eyes to block out the light from the window and thus the temptation to look at it. Is there anything I can do to come to terms with my shame over needing to be tied?
He couldn’t think of anything. He ought to be able to keep it private if he wanted to. Considering the disastrous consequences that had followed when he confessed the truth to Ron and Hermione, and the threat Covington was holding over his head from the minor knowledge she possessed, keeping it private was the best course.
But the reason for that privacy?
Harry winced. This was the weak point where Malfoy would attack him, and he knew it. If he could come up with the arguments to counter it, then he would be prepared both for the chance that he might meet Malfoy again and for the nights when he lay awake in his bed and wondered if he could have done anything different.
“I shouldn’t have to keep it private out of shame,” he whispered. “I shouldn’t have to keep it private because I’m afraid of the way people will look at me once they know what I need. I shouldn’t have to keep silent about it for anything other than my own choice.”
So much for the arguments Malfoy would make. The objections crowded Harry’s throat—objections that all came from himself, and not from arguments that other people had tried to feed him. That made it a lot easier for Harry to take them seriously. He had always needed this, maybe, time to sit down and think about it by himself instead of the talking that Hermione and the Mind-Healers thought was the right thing.
You still wouldn’t be doing this if the centaur’s arrow hadn’t forced you to face it.
Harry silently acknowledged that and then put aside the thought. So maybe he wouldn’t have done this on his own. The important thing was that he faced what was happening, surely, not why. He would worry about the motive behind it later.
What were the reasons against keeping his needs silent merely because of his choice?
“I don’t want to need this,” he whispered, and then paused, listening to the echoes of his words die away in his empty room. They did much the same thing in the empty confines of his skull.
That was the root objection, the one that all the other, defensive and offensive arguments came from. He could argue to Hermione that it was the only thing that worked and therefore he had to accept it, which was true. But if God had woken him up tomorrow and offered him a different choice, to be someone who wasn’t fucked-up like this, then Harry knew what he would have chosen.
So. What do I do about that? Do I really have to be “comfortable in my own skin,” the way that Hermione would phrase it, all the time?
Harry leaned back against the headboard and gave the answer to that one aloud. He wasn’t even sure which side of the argument he was on anymore; he just knew what the answers to certain questions were. “I don’t have to be. I can feel discomfort about my choices. But I need to be able to act so that I’m not constantly getting in my own way, or burning down buildings, or endangering other people.”
In his bitterer moods, he’d been pleased when people backed away from him, staring with wide eyes at the flames that coiled down his sides. But that wasn’t the way he wanted to live. He wanted to sit in a Muggle home that reminded him of the Dursleys’ and concentrate on the effect the parents might have on their magical children, rather than simply roiling about in a sea of his own memories.
But there wasn’t a way, that Harry knew of, to become more comfortable with the dreaded, stupid, ugly thing that he needed. Why should there be? Normal people didn’t do that, and Harry had wanted to be normal, had wanted to be “just Harry,” for a long time.
He winced suddenly.
That’s what I told Dumbledore I was. Flawed and normal. But I’m not. I’m not a hero, and I’m not normal in the way he wanted me to be, but I’m not normal in the way I thought I was, either. I’m—strange.
The thoughts after that came slowly, as if Harry was pulling a thick rope out of caverns choked with rot and slime. He’d got so far easily because these were conversations that he’d often had with himself before. But now he had to think new thoughts, and test them for truth, and slowly work them into congruity with the ones that had come before.
It took a long time.
*
“I don’t know where else to look.”
Draco arched his eyebrows. Granger admitting defeat was a large thing, for her, and probably novel, from the way she sat on the chair in Severus’s quarters with her head slumped into her hands. Draco studied her for a moment, then turned to Weasley, waiting to see if he was any more hopeful.
But Weasley was staring at the wall with the pathetic-puppy look that Gryffindors pulled off so well. Draco kept his scowl behind the placid, perfect mask of his face. He had run into the limitations of working with Weasley and Granger, it seemed. Potter was more sullen, but he also had more ideas. Draco had accepted Weasley and Granger’s help because it seemed they would help him move closer to the end of his task more quickly, but what good was that if they gave up at the first obstacle?
Well, one gives up and the other sits down because she thinks for him, Draco amended conscientiously.
“There must be somewhere else,” Draco said. “I know that you’ve read Hogwarts, A History.” Draco had seen her carrying around the enormous book more than once when they were students, and as far as he knew, she was the only one who ever took it out of the library. “Is there a historical event during which Ravenclaw lost something? Faith, her family, an artifact that was important to her and that Professor Snape and the Headmaster would have known about?” He was not going to call Severus by his first name in front of this pair.
Granger shook her head. “I’ve already thought about everything like that,” she said, and went on before Draco could do no more than stare at this frankly incredible claim. “There was one possibility, but the professors couldn’t have known about it. It had to do with defeating Voldemort, you see, and I’m sure they would have done it on their own rather than leave it for Harry and us to do during the war.”
Draco carefully tucked away that statement as something he wanted to ask Potter about later—if there was a later, with them—and shrugged. “Then I suggest we spend a few hours apart and think on it in private.” If Weasley can, when his brains are in your skull. “Perhaps we will have more ideas when we come back together again.”
He thought Granger would object, but she didn’t, only nodding wearily and leaving the rooms with Weasley trailing after her. Draco shook his head. Perhaps Granger was one of those people who needed to brood on an idea until it came to her in a brilliant flash, the way that Draco’s solution for the riddle the day before last had come to him.
And then again, perhaps she was good at puzzles related to homework and the Dark Lord and nothing else.
Draco was about to summon a house-elf to bring him food when someone knocked at his door. Draco paused. He didn’t think that was Potter repenting of the way he had treated Draco or Granger rushing back with an unanticipated answer. It sounded official.
Covington.
Well, Draco had wondered when she would attack. No surprise that she would wait until what seemed the breakup of a discussion of allies and then come along and “politely” inquire what progress they might have made.
He strolled to the door in a leisurely fashion, but Covington showed no impatience when he opened it. In fact, she gave him a simple smile and made a deprecatory gesture with one arm. “You might already have eaten,” she said, “as it’s rather late for a noon meal, but I would invite you to lunch if you haven’t.”
Draco measured her with his eyes for a long, silent moment. Covington retained her smile and showed no sign of impatience.
Strange that she would be attacking me instead of Potter. He’s the weak link in any defense, with his terror of blackmail. Draco gritted his teeth against the surge of contempt that swept over him. But perhaps that’s the point. She’s sure of success there, and she’s come to try and gain the same sort of foothold with me.
“I would be delighted,” he said, and turned to gather up his cloak, in case she wanted to eat outside.
“Have you seen Potter today?” Covington asked his back. “I had important matters to speak with him on, but he seems to be avoiding me.” There was a tone of concern in her voice, not hurt, which Draco had to applaud her for. She knew as well as he that she wouldn’t get away with sounding hurt that Potter was refusing something to the Ministry, or rather, to the Ministry through her.
“I haven’t, actually,” Draco said, and decided that Covington might as well share his worry. “He might be leaving the school. He said something to that effect yesterday.”
He was in time, when he turned back, to see her standing there with staring eyes and down-drawn brows. But she recovered so quickly Draco wasn’t sure if she was worried or only surprised, and held out her arm to him. Draco took it and tucked it through his.
He did glance back before he left the room, but for once, Severus had no words of advice.
*
By the end of several hours of concentration that left him as weary as he had sometimes got working outside in the garden on Privet Drive, Harry had come to several conclusions.
First, he was always going to be strange and different. His one big chance to fit in to the normal wizarding world had come after the war had ended, and he’d botched it. He hadn’t stayed an Auror, he hadn’t married and had a family, and he couldn’t be just a normal bent wizard, either. That was the way it was.
Second, he had to put up with needing to be bound. If he was lucky, it would be once every few months the way it had always been. If he wasn’t lucky, it would happen more often. He could complain, he could hide it, he could accuse Ron and Hermione bitterly of any crime he liked, but he wouldn’t change it.
Third, things would be more comfortable if he had a regular lover who was willing to put up with his strangeness and help him. But Harry had no idea who such a lover could be or what he could offer in return.
Fourth, he was going to try again with Ron and Hermione. He hadn’t been the only one at fault, but he’d been a lot more ashamed than he’d thought he’d been. So he would tell them that, explain, apologize, and emphasize that he was not going to become Hermione’s therapy project, and that would have to do.
Spent, Harry lay back against the pillow and closed his eyes. He didn’t know what came next, at least in the immediate sense. He had paid for his room until tomorrow and didn’t need to move or even go down to fetch dinner if he didn’t want to.
But restlessness hammered against his sides and his skull, and eventually, when he felt he could, he stood up and went to take a shower that should relieve the aches and pains.
And after that…
Harry reckoned he could do worse than going up to Hogwarts and seeing if he could corner his former best friends.
Part Two.
