Chapter Eight of 'Nova Cupiditas'- Numberless Problems

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Seven.

Title: Nova Cupiditas (8/?)
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 Eight—Numberless Problems

“Potter.”

“Draco.”

Harry regretted the curt tone in his own voice. Then again, sympathy and warmth would have its own problems, considering the curse Draco was under. He kept his attention on the porridge that he was preparing, but he was also aware of the steps that indicated Draco was coming further into the kitchen and then stopping. He sounded tense and unsure from his steps, uncertain of his welcome.

That’s probably as it should be, Harry thought, and kept his wand ready to raise a barrier spell if he needed to do it. His voice was calm and regular, though, because he had thought of a subject he could talk about and Draco would probably be glad to listen to. “Two-part spells are something of a specialty of mine. I wondered why I needed only one spell to see them but more than one spell to pull them apart or work variations on them.”

“Did you.” Draco’s voice was flat and unencouraging.

Harry still didn’t turn to face him, checking instead that the porridge wasn’t burning and then casting a simple Summoning Charm on the milk so that it wouldn’t fly over to him spraying liquid everywhere. “Yes. And since I’ve seen that the curse is a two-part spell now, I know that I’ll need to develop several spells instead of only one to cast on it. It’s good to know that the solution is complex. It keeps us from seeing simple ones in every shadow.”

Draco grunted. He seemed disposed to be uncommunicative. Well, Harry couldn’t really blame him. He poured a glass of milk for his own, braced himself, and turned around. “Did you want milk, or something else?” he asked.

Draco looked terrible. His face was thinner than it had been yesterday, Harry was certain, and paler. His hair spread out over his shoulders with the color and consistency of a spiderweb. He was swaying, one hand poised as though he would have to reach out and clutch at the wall for support any second. Harry swallowed his distressed cry and kept his gaze steady, almost unseeing. He thought Draco would prefer that to an acknowledgement of his weakness.

“Pumpkin juice,” Draco said. “If it must be any liquid other than saliva from your mouth.”

His face altered suddenly, the weakness burning away as though it had been only a mask, or a mist. Harry saw the terrible hunger there, and was doubly impressed that Draco had managed to stay in his bed during the night instead of seeking Harry out. Of course, with some of the wards Harry had raised, it was possible Draco had pounded against them and he hadn’t noticed. He swallowed queasiness and shook his head.

“I would,” he said. “If there weren’t strong ethical objections against it, and if nor for the nature of the curse, then I wouldn’t hesitate.”

Draco rolled his eyes. Harry was pleased to see that his brain seemed to be able to respond to jokes and make them. It concealed the hunger in his expression. “Which is just the same as saying you can’t do it at all.”

Harry nodded. “I won’t be a rapist any more than I’ll let them make you into one. And you would recover from the curse—recover your mind and rationality—for a short time after you came, but you would feel more disgusted with yourself than anything. I won’t let that happen, either.”

“You a rapist.” Draco moved restlessly against the counter. “If I give you permission to touch me? Any disgust I have to face afterwards will be better than the burn I’m feeling right now.”

Harry shook his head. He had envisioned this argument, luckily—among the few consequences of the curse that he had done his best to foresee—and he knew exactly what to say. “You’re only giving me permission because you’re actually under the curse right now. You never would if you were in your right mind.” He paused, because Draco’s eyes, turned to him, were tormented, and added gently, “I know it’s hard, but it’s for the best, really. This is only another way that they tried to humiliate you—make you beg for sex from someone with dirty blood.”

Draco’s eyes fired. “I told you not to refer to yourself that way.”

“Yes, you did,” Harry said. “Because you’re under the curse.”

Draco turned away, head lowered, licking his lips. “It’s so hard,” he finally murmured, “to know what’s me and what’s the magic.”

“I know,” Harry said, and poured pumpkin juice for him. “We should go back to the Manor today. You never did fetch clothes for yourself, and you’ll probably feel better, visiting your parents in a room away from me. And there are books in the library that I think I could use.”

Draco raised a hand, and then let it fall again. Harry wasn’t sure if it was a gesture of protest or not. He didn’t intend to find out. He turned back to his own breakfast and moved out of the way so that Draco could reach his porridge and juice.

Draco passed closer to him than he needed to so that he could reach the food. Harry ignored that. He knew that Draco couldn’t help it.

He also knew that Draco would feel better, would feel normal, if Harry wanked him. But that didn’t matter, because of how badly he would feel after it. Harry had to keep the real Draco, the Draco who was humiliated yesterday after Harry restored him to himself, in mind. He couldn’t think of this Draco as the real one, any more than he could think of Draco as sick forever if this had been a disease.

“Are you all right?”

Harry was surprised enough by the question to blink and glance over, although he half-suspected Draco had only asked it to make Harry look at him. Draco’s eyes were overly bright, his hands clenched on the edge of the counter. “What do you mean?”

“That spell Weasley cast.” Draco shook his head. “I can’t believe that I only thought of that now. What effect did it have on you? Are you all right?”

“Yes,” Harry said, smiling at Draco in spite of himself. Draco’s concern for him was—well, touching. Sweet. He could almost forget that it was the result of a spell, although not for long. “It was a spell that was meant to make the mind spin and get distracted, instead of focusing on the things around you. But I had a strong reason to pay attention to the present. So it made my heart speed up as the conflicting impulses fought in my brain and my body.” He shrugged and took a spoonful of porridge. “So, ultimately, it didn’t work.”

“I never thought to hear you say sentences like that,” Draco said, and turned to his own breakfast.

Harry nodded. “Keep thinking like that. We can get you back to normal more easily if you focus more on the things that separate me from you, I think, and make you remember that you once hated me.”

*

But I don’t want to focus on those things.

The thought returned forcibly to Draco as he watched Potter bending over the books in his library that afternoon, after Draco had arranged with the house-elves for his clothes to be taken to Potter’s home. He watched Potter’s hair rustling against his cheek and felt abstract desire; the burn in his chest was so familiar by now that he could almost forget about it.

But he also remembered the way it had felt to think of this man as Harry, and it was the ease of that moment he hungered for more than the taste of Potter’s flesh.

Draco took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Relief waited only a few fingerspans’ length away. He had kept himself from intruding into Potter’s bedroom at night—well, yes, he had gone once, but the wards had stopped him. He’d had to watch Potter sleeping and think in vain of all the more interesting things they could be doing instead.

But if Potter would cooperate with him, then neither of them would be a rapist. Potter wouldn’t be unwilling, and Draco discarded out of hand the argument that Potter could really force him against his will, when everything in him craved the movement of Potter’s legs opening to him, the moment of his head falling back against his pillow.

Potter made a soft sound. Draco started to his feet, and then realized that it was the sort of noise someone would make when interested by research, rather than a sexual one. He slumped back again and closed his eyes, his breath shaky with frustrated longing.

Potter turned his head, and Draco felt pierced by those green eyes. His cock stirred. He stared at the smooth skin on Potter’s face and hands, the pale color of his lips, so much that he nearly missed the words Potter spoke. “Draco, why don’t you go find your mother? I think that would do you the most good right now.”

“I’m not a child, to be spoken to like that,” Draco snarled. He could feel the jealousy surging to life in his chest, a warmer whirlwind than it had been, and it made him wonder what Potter wanted him out of the room for. Did he intend to use a house-elf to send a message to the She-Weasel? Draco had told the elves that they were to hold themselves ready at Potter’s orders, but he would revoke that before he would allow communication with a rival.

Potter sighed and massaged his scar as if Draco made his head ache. Draco could feel his defensiveness rising to the surface and swallowed hard, trying to keep it down.

“Sorry,” Potter said. “But I think it would do you good to talk with her. You can’t help me here, and you’re getting more and more agitated.”

“Because you won’t let me have you,” Draco said. He thought Potter was being rather thick-headed for such a brilliant research wizard if he didn’t know why Draco was anxious. “For no other reason.”

“Well, it’s disturbing me, and I have to work,” Potter said, turning back to the book on the table. “Will you leave?”

Draco snapped his head down and stomped away, caught between a weirdly conflicting set of feelings: respect for Potter, that he had shoved Draco away rather than giving in to Gryffindor niceness and keeping him around when he couldn’t help; resentment that Potter thought Draco couldn’t stay near him and control himself; and raging desire to see what would happen if he leaned forwards and took those pale lips with his own.

So far, I’ve done better at controlling myself today than I did yesterday, Draco thought, wandering through the corridors that led past spectacular views of the gardens and rooms where he could sit and doze in the sunlight. Neither of those was what he wanted, though. The gardens would only have been tolerable if he could have shown them to Potter and then fucked him on a flowerbed in front of the staring peacocks, and Draco was quite warm enough already. That’s unusual, when the curse is one day further advanced than normal.

He turned a corner, and ran straight into his father.

Draco stopped at once, and they stood there staring awkwardly at each other. Lucius leaned on his cane now, the way he had since he came back from Azkaban. Since he showed so few physical changes otherwise, Draco wasn’t sure if that was an affectation or not. Perhaps not, because he did move more slowly.

But mentally, he had changed. He had given up all hopes for himself and pinned them all on Draco. Draco had to smile bitterly when he considered whether the Mudblood fanatics who had done this to him could have known that. They were taking away two lives at once by casting the curse on Draco, a revenge they wouldn’t have had if they had used it on Lucius.

“Draco.” Lucius’s voice was very still. “Your mother told me everything.”

“About the curse?” Draco asked. He could keep his voice still himself. He watched a shaft of sunlight coming in through a nearby window and thought for a few moments. “And that Potter’s helping me?”

“Yes.” From the corner of his eye, although he was mostly focused on the sunlight, Draco saw Lucius’s hands tighten on the cane. “Son—are you sure that he can help you? Do you think he might be in with those Mudblood freaks who did this to you? He appeared on the scene awfully conveniently, from what your mother says.”

Draco turned around, snarling despite himself. “Don’t say that about him.”

Lucius acquired an extra layer of polish and poise, staring at Draco. Draco tried to slow his breathing down, and discovered it was hopeless. He settled for ramping his glare up another notch, instead.

“Ah.” Lucius bent forwards, over the cane, and studied the floor for a moment. Then he looked up with intense eyes. “You are under the curse,” he said. “But I did not know it would affect you this deeply. I thought that it might leave you the pride due to your blood.”

“That pride,” Draco said, feeling as though someone was prying out the words from deep inside him, “would leave me separated from Harry. That is not something I ever wish to happen. I want to be with him.”

“Because of the curse,” Lucius said. For some reason, the further Draco went into the magic that he knew was overspreading his mind—but was hard to resist, because it felt so much like his own thoughts—the more relaxed his father seemed to become. “I know that you felt differently about him once.”

“Very differently,” Draco said. It was no hardship for him to acknowledge that. “But I want to fuck him now.”

His father winced, but Draco thought it was mostly at the crudity of his language rather than the sentiment expressed. “Very well,” he said. “Then you must continue to exist under the curse until Potter finds the cure that does not exist.” He grimaced delicately.

“He’ll find it,” Draco said. “You don’t know him as I do. You don’t understand what he’s like or how intelligent he is.” He found his mouth watering as he thought of exhibiting Harry’s intelligence in front of his father. Perhaps then Lucius would bow his head and accept the inevitable, that he had a Potter for a son-in-law.

Lucius watched him with half-lidded eyes. “The curse mimics a certain degree of insight,” he murmured. “I had not realized that. It persuades you that some things are true, or that they feel true, and you cannot distinguish between your thoughts and the thoughts of the magic.”

“I know that I need Harry, no matter what the reason,” Draco said. “And I know that he’s far more intelligent than I supposed, far more beautiful, far more compassionate. Don’t try to take him for yourself,” he added sharply, suddenly thinking of one reason that his father might be asking all these questions about Harry.

Lucius laughed and shuddered at the same time. “If you could see into my mind at the moment, you would know how much desire I have to stay with your mother and see you, my son and heir, far away from him as well.”

Draco scowled at him, simultaneously satisfied and angry. “Leave me with him,” he warned.

“You won’t find the cure,” Lucius said. “He won’t find the cure. They used this because there is no cure and they knew it.” For a moment, he leaned more heavily on the cane and shut his eyes. Draco didn’t understand why his face aged like that. Harry would find the cure, after all, in spite of his father’s doubts, and then Harry wouldn’t be held back by these stupid morals of his from shagging Draco. “And if you were in your right mind, son, then you would thank me for what I’m about to do.”

About to do? Draco looked down and saw his father’s wand pointed at him.

“Stupefy,” murmured Lucius, and Draco found himself sliding down and down into darkness, reaching out and clutching without the ability to stop his fall, his heart rebounding against his ribcage with anxiety about what would happen next. It was for Harry and not himself that he was concerned.

Even on the edge of darkness, he had enough perception to note that that was really an unusual, unfamiliar situation.

*

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry marked the passage in the book he was reading with one finger and looked up, eyebrow cocked. “Mr. Malfoy,” he said. He hadn’t thought Lucius would come near him, or Narcissa either. No matter what they owed him for having spoken up at their trial, or because he was working on finding a cure for Draco, they wouldn’t want to see the man whom Draco had become a slavering lunatic for. “Yes?”

“Nova Cupiditas has no cure,” Lucius said. His voice was almost gentle. “You would know that if you had spent your time in true research rather than chasing wild dreams.”

“I believe that it does, and I can find it,” Harry said, his fingers tightening for a moment on the book. But he wasn’t going to allow Lucius to irritate him. Draco needed his parents’ support as much as he needed Harry’s help. “I’ve already discovered that it’s a two-part spell, made of lust and jealousy linked together, and I’m researching cures for similar curses, to see if there’s something there that can help us.”

Lucius’s eyes narrowed. “I have studied the spell intimately in the last day, and I have run across no mention of such a thing.”

“My field is seeing the magical signatures of spells,” Harry said. “I don’t think anyone else has ever viewed Nova Cupiditas the way I’ve viewed it.” He gave Lucius a sharp smile and bowed his head over the book again.

Lucius was still for a few minutes, and Harry hoped he had given him something to think about. But if he had, it apparently wasn’t enough to persuade Lucius to actually leave the room, because he leaned over the table and stared Harry in the eye. Harry looked back, counting numbers to himself to slow his heartbeat and his breathing.

“My son is the most precious being on earth to me,” Lucius said.

What about your wife? Harry wondered, but it was hardly up to him to arbitrate Malfoy affairs of the heart. “I can see why,” he said instead, and remained still, not flinching, even though Lucius seemed to expect him to.

“I would do anything to protect him,” Lucius went on. “I would do anything to set him free from the curse. He is the only Malfoy left, now, the only one of us with anything like a future. I will not see his future stolen from him.”

“The best thing you could do right now,” Harry said, “is to find out who the fanatics might be, and to keep them from stealing anyone else’s future in turn.”

“I don’t care about them,” Lucius said. “Only him. And it scores my soul to see him caring about you, rather than his family and the future of his line.”

Harry felt his eyes soften. This was a goal that he thought they could agree on. “Yes, I know,” he said. “It’s not befitting—the person he is.” He had thought to say that it wasn’t befitting a Malfoy, but then Lucius would probably snap that he knew nothing at all about being a Malfoy, and Harry wasn’t eager to get into that row. “When I heal him, then I fully expect him to go back to thinking I’m a lousy half-blood he would rather not owe anything to and avoiding my presence. I’m not after staying with him permanently,” he added, wondering if that was what Lucius was worried about.

Lucius gave him a sharp smile, all teeth. “No, you won’t be,” he said, and drew his wand.

Harry’s hands quivered, but he kept them in place, still thinking of Draco. He had to reduce this to a misunderstanding if he could. Draco needed all of them, not the one survivor of a duel between him and Lucius. “I’m not going to suddenly change my mind halfway through the process and let Draco dirty himself by shagging me,” he said, keeping his voice low. “That would make me a rapist, as much as it would make him one if he forced himself past my defenses and took me.”

“I lied,” Lucius said. “There is one cure to Nova Cupiditas. I told you that I had learned quite a bit about it in the last day.” He leaned forwards across the table, wand coming closer to Harry’s throat. “One might say the curse has a victim and an object. The victim, in this case, is my son. The object is you. One can counter the curse by the sudden removal of the object.”

Harry was smarter than he had been in school, more adult and thoughtful. He knew what Lucius meant, and he probably wouldn’t have if Lucius hadn’t babbled on about it beforehand. But that, and the wand, had warned Harry. He flung himself out of the chair and onto the floor just as Lucius said, almost lovingly, almost the way that he would say it to a real potential son-in-law, “Avada Kedavra.”

The green light went overhead. Harry rolled beneath the table and cast a charm that would make it rise up and smack Lucius in the face. He still didn’t want to hurt him, but he also wasn’t keen on seeing if the strange protection that had let him survive the Killing Curse twice was going to do it a third time.

Lucius let out a heavy noise as the table struck him. That might have been pain or only frustration; Harry didn’t intend to wait around and find out. He was on his feet in seconds, sprinting for the door out of the library.

“Colloportus,” said Lucius, and the door slammed shut and locked.

Harry changed the direction of his movement in a smooth instant, springing up and backwards so that he landed on another table not far from the door. He whirled around, half-crouched, ready to leap. Lucius was lying on the floor, but he showed no inclination to rise to his feet, perhaps because a huge, ugly bruise had spread across his jaw, and his head might still be ringing. His wand tracked Harry with leisurely grace.

“Your son,” Harry began, and then shook his head. It was no good saying that Draco wouldn’t thank Lucius for killing Harry. Of course he would. The minute Harry’s death occurred, if Lucius was right, the curse would end, and Draco would be free of all the unnatural feelings that the magic had engendered. He would probably regret dealing with the mess that Harry’s murder had caused, but he wouldn’t regret that Harry was dead as an individual.

That insight made Harry wince, a bit. He would have wished there was some way he could remain close to Draco, but of course, the Draco he was laboring to restore would find the memories intolerable and move away.

As if I need a reward, Harry thought, and then Lucius laughed and reclaimed his attention.

“I’ll go to prison for killing you,” Lucius said. “I know that. But it doesn’t matter. My son will remain alive, and free.”

Holy shit, Harry thought, staring into those grey eyes, sleek as hematite. He means it.

That meant Harry couldn’t stay here. He whirled around and cast a Blasting Curse on the door that slammed the wooden slab out of place and made it fly down the corridor. Then he tucked himself up tight to avoid a second Killing Curse, leaped, landed on the floor, rolled between the gaping hinges where the door had been, and started running as hard as he could in a crouch down the corridor.

Lucius made a noise behind him like a hunting hound. Harry lifted his wand and started to cry out, “Point Me Draco—”

But no, that was no good. Lucius must have done something to Draco to keep him out of the way, or Draco would have been here before now, challenging his father in an effort to protect Harry. Going to him could mean that he would get hurt from Lucius’s madness.

There’s only one person in the house who can actually interfere, Harry thought, since the house-elves will be on Lucius’s side, and I can’t just run off and leave Draco God knows where and Lucius intent on killing me.

“Point Me Narcissa Malfoy,” he gasped, and his wand spun and dragged him to the nearest stairs. Harry pounded towards them.

A sixth sense, or the Auror instincts, caught up to him and made him kink his body sideways, just in time, past a curse that boiled the wood where it struck. Harry swore and took the stairs two at a time.