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lomonaaerenChapter Two.
Title: Nova Cupiditas (3/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco
Rating: R
Warnings: Attempted rape, issues of consent, violence, gore, sex, heavy angst, profanity. Ignores the epilogue.
Summary: Nova cupiditas—the curse that makes the victim desire someone they hate. There is no cure, and the consequences grow increasingly violent the more the desire is denied. And now someone has cursed Draco Malfoy to desire Harry Potter.
Author’s Notes: This is a very dark story. It will probably be between twelve and twenty chapters.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Three—Third Time’s the Charm
“But, really, Harry. Malfoy?”
Harry rolled his eyes tolerantly and turned back to cooking breakfast. Hermione hadn’t said anything but variations on that line since she’d stepped through his door. She hadn’t come over just to chat, either. She’d already heard that he’d been seen with Malfoy at St. Mungo’s. Harry thought that ought to have prepared her for the confirmation that Malfoy was here.
Or at least, the first half-a-dozen confirmations. Harry hoped the smell of eggs would summon Malfoy out of bed soon. Hermione seemingly wouldn’t believe this until she got a look at him for herself.
“Yes,” Harry said, and reached over to check the bacon, already cooked, that was waiting under a Warming Charm. He smiled when he felt the heat against his hand and started paying attention to the eggs again. “You know that he’s a pure-blood, and that makes him a prime victim of Muggleborns who want revenge for what happened during the war.” He gave Hermione an intense look.
Hermione sighed and stared at the floor. “Can I help it that I sympathize with one side over the other?” she asked. “No, I agree, using that incantation on any person whatsoever is a crime, and it should be punished. But I can understand the intense anger that might drive someone to use it.”
Harry shook his head. “That’s the difference between us, Hermione. I don’t care about the emotion and whether or not someone understands it. There’s still a difference between feeling something and acting on it. If I think about bashing your head in, fine. If I actually did it, then I would be brought up under a charge of murder.”
Hermione blinked. “That reference to bashing my head in wasn’t random, I take it.”
“No.” Harry lifted the eggs’ pan away from the fire and began to arrange them on the three plates he had standing ready. “He really is here, and he really is under the spell that I said he was under, and I really am going to help him.”
“Fine,” Hermione said, with a dubious look. “But I think it’s a bad idea.”
“Because of the way we used to hate each other?” Harry yelped as he burned his finger on the side of the pan, and cast a minor healing charm on the burn before Hermione could fix it. She put her wand away with a disgruntled expression. “It’s unusual, yeah, but the Healers had already given up on him. You could see it in their eyes. If I hadn’t helped him, then probably no one would have.”
“I didn’t even mean that,” Hermione said, and fell silent, forehead wrinkled, apparently because she was trying to figure out what she did mean.
“Tell me when you know what you’re trying to say,” Harry advised her, and looked down the corridor towards the bedroom he had given Malfoy, wondering if he should go wake him up.
Then Malfoy appeared in the doorway of the kitchen, so it seemed that the smell of the eggs had done its work after all. But Malfoy had clothes on only from the waist down, and his gaze was fixed on Harry with a glaze that Harry had already come to recognize from last night.
He raised a hand to Hermione, who had risen to her feet with an exclamation. “Don’t,” Harry warned her. “The spell seems to work like this, seize him the way that—I don’t know, the way that you might suddenly come down with a bad headache. He wants to hold back, but he has trouble doing it.”
“I want you, Potter,” Malfoy said. His voice was strained, hard as marble, and Harry thought he was working to hold back the anger that otherwise might have prevented him from saying anything at all.
“I know,” Harry said. He stepped towards Malfoy and flicked his wand once, draping a thick barrier of blue light between him and Hermione. It still let her see a bit of what was happening, so she wouldn’t panic and think Malfoy was murdering him, but it also preserved Malfoy’s dignity. And Harry’s, for that matter, though he wasn’t as concerned about that in front of a woman who had held his head while he vomited. “You can have me if you need to.”
*
Draco had to close his eyes when he felt the thrum of the relief traveling through him from Potter’s words. The curse seemed to want willing compliance from the object of desire, which made no sense to Draco. Given that it would drive him to rape Potter if he resisted Draco’s advances, why should it matter whether Potter lay back and thought of the wizarding world or not?
But such questions became purely secondary considerations when Draco got his hands on Potter’s flesh again. He pulled Potter’s shirt over his head at once, disordering his hair and catching his glasses in the cloth, and pressed their bare chests together. Potter made a small sound when their skin touched.
Draco chose to take it as a whimper. He tugged the shirt up one more time, sending Potter’s glasses flying, because he had to get to Potter’s mouth, too. The sweetness that followed the meeting of their lips made Draco stagger. He wanted to bring his groin together with Potter’s, but he didn’t think he had the strength right now.
He moaned and waited until he was sure Potter’s tongue wouldn’t flick out to touch his. The curse needed more response than this. He trailed a hand down Potter’s chest and found one of his nipples, pinching it.
Potter jumped and tore his mouth free. “Malfoy, what the fuck?” he demanded. “Who thinks of doing that?”
Draco smiled, and he had no idea whether the smile was his own or the product of the curse, but it felt like his. “You little innocent,” he said. “No one’s ever done that to you?” He touched his tongue to Potter’s neck next, discovering what his soap tasted like and the scent of his shampoo.
“No,” Potter said, with a thoughtful tone that proved the academic side of the question was seizing his attention again. “I wonder why the curse makes you think things like that?”
Draco snorted in disgust and tightened his teeth on Potter’s throat, worrying it hard enough to make Potter gasp and lift a protesting hand. Draco moved back just enough to breathe on the marked spot and murmured, “That’s something I always knew about. Don’t put it in your files. I’ve had male lovers before, and I’ve pinched their nipples. This curse can’t add knowledge I don’t have. It only draws on the sexual instincts I do.” He looked around for a place to lay Potter down. Speaking of sexual instincts, he badly needed Potter beneath him.
“That’s important,” Potter said, and his hand twitched, apparently looking for the notebook that was never far away.
Either the curse or Draco was annoyed at the way Potter was disregarding his presence; once again, he honestly wasn’t sure which one it was. If he had to make love to Potter, Potter could pay him the tribute of acknowledging his existence. “Never mind that now,” he said shortly, and this time slid down so that he had a knee propped on one of the chairs. That way, he could take Potter’s nipple in his mouth.
Potter did stiffen this time, and in more than one way, his breath quickening. Draco could feel the chest beneath his hands heaving. He smiled and bit down.
Potter cried out. Then he stepped away from Draco and lifted a barrier of blue light between them when Draco tried to pursue.
Draco swallowed. He noticed for the first time that another barrier of blue light closed off the end of the kitchen and that there was someone pounding on it, but the thought couldn’t cling to the surface of his brain. What mattered was that he was parched and empty the instant Potter left him. He reached out, despite knowing that his hand would rebound from the barrier.
“Potter,” he said. He hated the way his voice frayed. He had to speak anyway. “Let me through.”
“It was getting to be too much,” Potter said. “Not for you, for me. I got distracted and started thinking more about what I felt than about the process of observing you and taking notes on your condition. I’m sorry.”
He sounded so perfectly sincere that Draco knew he had to be speaking the truth. It didn’t matter to his body. Draco had started to make a series of unpleasant discoveries, which was how he learned that a cock could be hungry, something he had never known before.
“Please,” Draco said. The faint sound of fists drumming on the other barrier reached him again, and left. He touched the barrier between him and Potter with a hand that he knew would form into a fist if he let it go long enough. He had to avoid that if he could, avoid turning into the madman that he knew lurked just under the surface of his mind. “Please, let me touch you. Just a few minutes more.”
Potter gave him a level look through the blue light. Draco had never imagined that, either. If he had ever envisioned something remotely like this situation—which he never had—than he would have thought he would be the rational one, understanding the limitations and meaning of the curse, and Potter the one who wanted to leap impulsively into bed. Draco’s mouth watered the more, and he did end up clenching his hands into fists. What else could he do?
“Do you know what will happen if we sleep together?” Potter asked. “Do you remember?”
Draco’s mind jerked to a halt, caught by the notion of sleeping together. It warped the world around it, that idea, so beautiful and so radical that the ache between Draco’s legs eased a little. “Could we?” he whispered. “Potter, please?”
He should be disgusted that he was begging. The disgust hit his mind like raindrops against glass and slid away again.
Potter shook his head. “I thought you might not remember,” he said, which was cruel, because how could he expect Draco to remember anything so silly when Draco’s brain hummed with the vision he had just summoned? “If we sleep together, then your hunger will get worse.”
Draco flinched. “Worse?” he whispered. “How could it possibly—it can’t.”
Potter’s eyes were full of compassion now. “I don’t know. I can’t feel it. But it will, and I’m not willing to make that sacrifice. It would be rape, on one side or both. I won’t let you.”
“Of course I don’t want to rape you,” Draco said soothingly. Was he speaking with his voice, or was the curse? He didn’t know. He began to pace along the barrier of blue light, pretending to keep one eye on Potter, although he was really studying the barrier. There had to be a weak spot somewhere. “I want to fuck you. That needs your permission.”
“I would be a rapist if I slept with you when you’re like this.”
Draco halted in place and laughed aloud. Potter’s delicacy deserved no other response. “You wouldn’t be,” he said. “I accept it. I invite it. I give you permission to do whatever you want with my body.”
Potter’s face half-crumpled. Draco didn’t know why. Wasn’t he capable of imagining, the way Draco was right now, the beauty and the brilliancy that would come from them sleeping together? Draco had never thought him that innocent. “You don’t—oh, Draco,” he said, and his voice was soft with what sounded like tears. “You really don’t remember right now, or it doesn’t matter to you.” He fell silent, frowning, as if he contemplated a problem that had no solution.
Draco decided that, yes, he was the more imaginative one at the moment, and that meant it was his duty to show Potter the way. He leaned against the barrier and smiled at Potter. “Step one. Remove the barrier. Step two. Get naked. Step three. We fuck. You see, it’s very simple.”
Potter didn’t pay attention to him, instead standing there with his eyes closed and his lips moving. Draco studied a point in the barrier that looked like the edge of a faceted jewel. He thought he could break it, that it was a weaker fold of magic than the rest. And he had to break it. He was so hungry. Potter wouldn’t expect him to stay across the room from a loaded buffet table when he was starving, would he?
On the other hand, Draco had already seen what Potter’s delicate and refined sensibilities looked like.
Someone from a distant room was crying out and hammering on a wall with their fists. Draco could hear them, and he wished they would stop. He aimed his wand at the facet and murmured, “Confringo.”
The barrier shuddered, but didn’t fall apart. Draco cursed mildly. At least he knew he could affect it. That helped to lower the anxiety thrumming through him. He would get through it in a moment.
Then Potter jabbed his wand at Draco through the barrier. Draco opened his mouth and flapped his tongue back and forth, attempting to show how good he could make it for Potter.
“Aqua alsia,” Potter murmured.
It felt as though someone had just dumped a tub of freezing cold water right over Draco’s head.
*
Harry winced as he watched Malfoy spluttering and dancing on the other side of the barrier. The Cold Shower Curse didn’t involve the literal application of water, but it did force the victim’s libido into submission for up to seventy-two hours. It was painful and disorienting, and it would surely contribute to the embarrassment that Malfoy would already feel because of the situation.
The dangerous, unstable, mad situation. Harry shuddered a little. He had seen the look in Malfoy’s eyes. It went beyond the normal level of desire that people focused on him because he had saved the world and so they wondered what fucking him would be like. This was the level Harry had seen in the eyes of people who really believed that they and Harry were destined to be together, and that they had to kill anyone else who came near him.
There were no words for the horror of that, for the fact that Nova Cupditas had already forced Malfoy that far in the direction of insanity. Harry shook his head, avoided the other man’s eyes as he looked up, and then turned and removed the barrier that kept Hermione away from him. He knew that she had almost cracked it anyway, and that he would hear about it if she had to smash through rather than have him lift it.
Hermione stepped into the main part of the kitchen and looked at Malfoy where Harry couldn’t. Her expression was tightly controlled, her voice low. Someone listening to her from a distance, distinguishing the tone but not the individual words, would probably think she was perfectly calm. “Harry. You have to call St. Mungo’s. Now.”
“No,” Harry said. He had known the conversation would go there when Hermione saw the effects of the curse. He was prepared.
Hermione didn’t look much less wild than Malfoy. “Harry. You have no choice. He’s dangerous. I saw you. If you hadn’t been perfectly ready for him, he could have raped or killed you. And I would have stood on the far side of that wall, helpless to help you.” Her hands clenched around her wand. Harry winced again. He knew that not being able to help one of her friends was her biggest nightmare. He’d inadvertently made it come true this morning. “You have to—you can’t take care of him by yourself.”
“Do you think the Healers at St. Mungo’s would be any gentler?” Harry asked her. “Do you think that they’d use less than fatal curses to stop him, if they thought him a danger? There are people there who have still never managed to forget that some pure-bloods were Death Eaters, and plenty of others who think that pure-blood means Death Eater. No, Hermione. They’d lock him up in some room like an animal, or try to perform experimental cures on him that won’t do anything to help—”
“Nothing can help this curse,” Hermione interrupted. “I’m sorry, Harry. But that’s the way it is. If you admit that now, to yourself and Malfoy, then you’ll be a lot less disappointed when the time comes.”
Harry shook his head.
“Harry.” Hermione was leaning over him, using the inch or so of height she still had on him to good advantage. Her hand would leave fingerprints on his arm, Harry knew. “I don’t want to see you get your heart broken.”
“I know how to take care of my own heart, Hermione,” Harry said, and turned to nod to the door. “I’m sorry that I’ll have to send you off without breakfast, but I think it’s best if you go now.”
“Harry. No.” Hermione planted her feet as if she thought he might try to shove her out the door by main force.
“I wouldn’t have taken Draco into my house if I thought I couldn’t help him,” Harry said. He would call Malfoy Draco now. There should be one person in the world who thought of him that way, one person who hadn’t given up on him. “I’ll help him, and in the end, if I really can’t, then I’ll ask him what he wants to do.”
Hermione gave a glowering look at the barrier where Draco stood with his head in his hands. “By then, he won’t want to do anything except fuck you.”
Harry shook his head. “There are other things that can give the victims of this curse back their minds, for a short time. I’ll give his back to him and ask what he wants. And I’ll perform it, whatever it is.”
Hermione’s gaze snapped back to his face as though someone had slapped her. “What if he asks you to kill him?”
Harry took a breath that rattled against the sides of his throat. “He might, I reckon. Some of the pure-bloods are like that. Then I’ll do it.”
“You can’t, you can’t, Harry, please—”
Tears were getting into Hermione’s eyes, and Harry winced again. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to discuss anything with her while she was like this. He put a hand on her shoulder and pushed her gently but firmly towards the door. “You need to go,” he told her. “I’m sorry, but you do. When we can speak about this rationally, then I’ll come and visit you, all right? Go for now.”
He didn’t think she would have if Draco hadn’t lifted his head then. Hermione was smart enough to see into the open wounds that were his eyes. She bowed her head back, in what Harry liked to think of as a nod of acknowledgment or tribute, and then turned and opened the door, fleeing.
In a way, it was what Harry would have liked to do himself. But he had promised that he would see this through, and he intended to do. He stood there, rubbing his head for a few minutes, and then took a deep breath and lowered the barrier.
“The food should still be good, if you want it,” he told Draco, taking a quick glimpse to the side to confirm his words. Yes, it would need Warming Charms, but it hadn’t spoiled. He waved his wand, and the bacon hissed and spit again and the eggs steamed. He nerved himself, to turn and meet Draco’s gaze. “Are you hungry?”
*
“Don’t ask me that question, Potter.” Draco hadn’t known his voice could get that low. It sounded as if he was speaking out of a tomb.
Potter closed his eyes to hide what Draco thought was an upwelling of pain and compassion, and then nodded. “Right. It’s not fair. Well, there’s food there, if you want it.” He turned to get his own bacon and eggs.
It was a long moment before Draco moved in to do the same thing, and then he limped. His muscles ached with the suddenness of the curse’s leaving. The Cold Shower Curse had done what nothing else could at the moment: given him back his capacity for thought by taking away his capacity for lust.
It was still a savage thing to do, and by the careful way Potter kept his back to Draco, he knew that.
But what else could he have done?
Draco shook his head. Now that he knew who had been in the kitchen—Granger, and why had she stood so near Potter and touched him that way? There was a black whirlwind in Draco’s chest when he asked those questions—he was doubly humiliated. Of all the people to lose control in front of…
He had heard what she said. The barrier didn’t prevent the passage of sound. He had been sure Potter would agree with her. What kind of person could stand being attacked by a crazed houseguest every day?
Potter’s answers had filled Draco with humility. Unlike humiliation, that wasn’t a feeling he was familiar with.
He watched Potter’s back furtively as he ate. One thing hadn’t changed, although the curse seemed to have left him alone, for the moment: the food still tasted uncomplicated to him, or rather the taste didn’t matter. He was hungry for other things, which was why it wasn’t fair for Potter to ask him about food. Draco would eat because it would help him stay alive, and he was determined to do that and beat his enemies. But asking him to take pleasure in it was impossible now.
What kind of person not only put up with the attacks, but asserted that he would do anything possible to help Draco choose his own end?
If it comes to that. Draco swallowed a mouthful of ashy eggs. Let us hope it does not come to that.
But Potter…
Draco experienced a strange blank feeling inside himself. It wasn’t the relentless lust of the curse; it wasn’t the more familiar mixture of contempt and impatience with which he thought about Potter; it wasn’t even that black whirlwind, which Draco imagined was jealousy, urging him to strike and claim Potter for his own against anyone else who might try to touch him. He didn’t have a name for this emotion, because he had never before met anyone who would help him in the ways that Potter promised to help him, except his family. And that was expected and understood, and Draco had a place in his head to put the emotions. They were family. They were part of the same bloodline, the same tradition of glory.
What did he have in common with Potter?
Nothing except that they’d gone to school in the same year and been two terrified boys in the midst of the same war.
Potter turned around and saw him looking. He only nodded. “Do you want to begin another experiment this morning?” he asked.
Draco raised his eyebrows. Potter’s tone implied there was an alternative. “Or?” he asked.
“I thought we might begin to hunt for the people who did this to you,” Potter said quietly. “No, we can’t stop the curse that way, but taking revenge would keep us from feeling helpless, which in turn would make us able to keep fighting the curse.”
Draco stared at him.
“What?” Potter reached up and wiped at the corner of his mouth. “Do I have some egg there?”
“No,” Draco said. He was—how had Potter known that revenge would help Draco?
The same way he seems to know that the best way to handle my humiliation in front of Granger is not to discuss it.
Of all the people his enemies could have cursed him to desire, he thought, Potter might actually have been the best, not the worst, in a number of ways.
“Let’s hunt,” Draco said.
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Date: 2010-09-25 03:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-25 06:48 am (UTC)