Chapter Eleven of 'Nova Cupiditas'- Running Out of Time

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Ten.

Title: Nova Cupiditas (11/?)
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 Eleven—Running Out of Time

“You can’t do this alone, Harry.”

Harry firmed his lips but didn’t say anything as he continued to stare into the fire. He wanted to point out that Narcissa was his ally, but he had said that already, and Hermione had valued that at what she evidently thought it was worth. He had to admit he hadn’t made as much progress on the curse as he would like. In that respect, Hermione was right. He needed someone to help him research, because inevitably, he would be distracted some of the time with helping Draco.

But he didn’t think she was heading in that direction. And sure enough, when she leaned forwards and put her hand on his arm, he saw, from the pity in her eyes, what she was going to suggest before she said it.

“Harry, St. Mungo’s—”

“No!” Harry wrenched himself away and leaped to his feet, pacing around the comfortable drawing room where he tended to sit when he had finished a project or wanted to read without having immediate access to the results and notes and objects he had gathered in his lab. “They’ll treat him like a ravenous animal, and try to learn things from him rather than learn things that would help him.”

“He is an animal now, mate.” Ron stood on the opposite side of the room, as if he was afraid to come too close, even though Draco was still sleeping under a protective half-dome near the fireplace. Harry glanced at him. Ron’s face was pale enough to make his freckles stand out against his skin like the marks of an explosion. “You can’t handle him. He’s a danger to you and anyone who comes near you or touches you. You don’t deserve this, Harry. Just because someone cursed Malfoy, you have to be dragged into it? I say we give him to the only people who might be able to make his passing less painful, the Healers, and let you go back to your normal life.”

Harry stared at Ron. Ron frowned back instead of flushing and looking at the floor, as Harry had thought he would. God, was he listening to himself?

“What if I had said the same thing about the wizarding world?” Harry asked softly. “No one deserved to be saved from Voldemort, either, by that logic. What do I care that he was cursing people? I could have run away, or lived my life in the Muggle world, and only defended myself if he came after me. But that’s not the way it was, and that’s not the way it is. Malfoy is still a human being. He still deserves protection and humane treatment.”

“I agree with you there,” Hermione said, giving Ron a stern look that said they would be talking later. “But Harry, I don’t think you’re able to do it. You’re too close to the situation. You’re too—I’m sorry, Harry, but you’re too inclined to be sympathetic to him. He needs someone who can give him harsh treatment when necessary, so that he’ll stop hurting himself and stop attacking you.”

“Or other people who he thinks get in the way,” Ron muttered, rubbing his shoulder. He probably still felt the lingering effects of the curse Draco had used on him, Harry thought, and winced. He was sorry for that. He hadn’t dared tell them about Draco using an Unforgivable on his father, because they would probably think that that meant Draco was too far gone to save.

They already think that, whispered a laughing, cold voice in the back of his head. You were stupid to ask them for help. All they can think of is taking Draco away and letting him live his last days in a cell, until he goes mad and manages to kill himself.

Harry locked his lips together. That was not going to happen, no matter what the eventual outcome of the curse was. He had promised Draco that he would give him a clean death if necessary, and he still meant to keep that promise.

“I can work with this,” he told Ron. “If you help me, as long as you don’t touch me directly, then I think I can cope.”

Hermione lowered her head. Ron was more straightforward. “Excuse me if I’m not willing to watch my best mate kill himself for the sake of someone who was a git to us in school,” he snapped. “I would support you if it was someone else, Harry. If Ginny had been cursed, sure. But not this way.”

Harry smiled a little. Ron had left an opening in his arguments, even if he didn’t know it. “All right. So you think it’s possible that I might find a cure for this, even though you keep saying there’s no cure? You would want me to try if it was Ginny or another member of your family? It’s only Draco that you object to?”

Ron glared at him. Hermione shook her head. “You can’t catch me that way, Harry. I do think it’s hopeless. You’ve done some remarkable things, but people have been studying this curse and trying to work around it for years. It’s a death sentence, that’s all.”

“The way that Voldemort was of course going to take over the wizarding world,” Harry said. “The way we should just have given up the moment we learned that he had six Horcruxes and how much effort it had taken to destroy them.”

Ron and Hermione exchanged another series of silent glances. Harry turned away and stared at Draco, sleeping under his dome.

No—not sleeping under his dome. As Harry watched, he stirred, his eyes flickering madly under their lids and grumbles of discontent coming from his lips. Harry cursed silently. No other spell had lasted as long as it was supposed to with Draco while he was under the influence of Nova Cupiditas, including the Cold Water Curse, so he reckoned he shouldn’t be surprised that the sleep charm had begun to fade before its normal time as well.

“Decide whether you’re going to help me or not,” he snapped, making his way across the room so that he could crouch beside the dome. “But you should know I’m not going to give up on Draco, no matter what. I’ll fight you if you try to take him away to St. Mungo’s. Stun me and do it, and I’ll never trust you again. So you’ll have to decide what’s worth more to you, prejudice against the Malfoys or the loss of my friendship.”

Ron and Hermione still wore anguished looks when Harry created a hole through the dome just big enough to admit his arm and reached in so that he could lay his hand on Draco’s shoulder. He thought he should be safer this time, with the Cold Water Curse still in operation on him. But no amount of danger would keep him from being at Draco’s side when he woke up.

*

Draco turned his head to the side. He felt cold. Why was that? He was lying down, and he ought to have been in a bed with blankets over him.

And with a warm body beside him.

Wait. There was a single spot of heat, on his shoulder. Draco reached up and entwined his fingers with the fingers he found there, tracing his way up the arm until his hand bumped into a solid barrier just where the shoulder would be.

He opened his eyes.

The air seemed sharper and clearer than it had in—years, although he knew that wasn’t right. Draco blinked and would have sat up, but there was a silver dome not far above his hand, and he knew from experience that bumping his head on one of them wasn’t pleasant. He got to his knees and turned his head instead, never relinquishing his hold on the hand. It seemed that he couldn’t, though he didn’t know why.

Potter was staring at him with a desperately pale face and depressed expression.

Draco shuddered and closed his eyes. He was back to himself, for the moment, and he remembered what had happened when they returned from the Manor like something he had done in a dream. It was exquisitely obvious now why he was under a dome, with Potter only touching him safely from the far side of a wall. But he still wasn’t inclined to let go of Potter’s hand.

“There’s no way to beat this,” he whispered.

“Yes, there is.” Potter’s reassurance was instant, and Draco had the temptation to pick Potter’s hand up and rub it against his cheek, which told him the curse was still there, burning, under the surface. “We’re going to. But I’m sorry, Draco, I’m so sorry what you’ll have to go through on our way to doing it.”

“I hate that I humiliated myself like that,” Draco whispered. More details were coming back to him now, like details noticed from the corner of his eye. He winced when he remembered the stupid declarations he had made to Harry, sounding like a lovesick fool. Of course Harry didn’t love him in return.

But he also remembered the melting look in Harry’s eyes and how he had hesitated instead of throwing up a barrier right away. He hadn’t wanted to close Draco away from him. He had wanted to yield.

Draco licked his lips. He thought he should despair over that, because how could he hold strong if Potter gave in? But smugness and pleasure wound through him instead like a gleaming snake. Yes, the curse was still there.

“I need help, though,” Harry continued in a steady voice. “If you—go mad again, then I’ll need someone who can work on the research while I handle you and make sure that you don’t hurt yourself. Will you allow my friends to help?”

It came as a nasty jolt to Draco to realize that Granger and Weasley were in the room, staring at him, in more ways than one. Once, he would have known they were there without a doubt, even if he happened to be distracted by Harry. He leaned against the barrier and around Harry so that he could see their faces.

They glared at him with loathing. No, at his and Harry’s joined hands with loathing. Draco snarled in spite of himself. The jealousy was darker and thicker than he remembered it, warmer, spreading through his chest and his limbs and banishing the cold feeling he had awakened with. His fingers closed down hard enough to leave dents in Harry’s skin as he cradled Harry’s hand against his chest. He wished the stupid barrier was gone so that he could stand between Harry and his friends as a living wall.

“How long were you alone with them?” he demanded.

“I was never alone with them,” Harry said steadily. He didn’t object to the way Draco held his hand, and that was good. That was important. Draco stroked the skin between Harry’s fingers with his thumb in response. “We were all gathered in this room with you asleep in the corner the whole time.”

“God, Harry, don’t make justifications to him!” Weasley sounded disgusted. He’d probably wanted to fuck Harry for years, Draco thought scornfully. Wasn’t he just disappointed to high heaven that it was a Malfoy who finally won Harry? “I told you, you don’t have to do this. No one could expect you to.”

“I expect me to.” Harry’s tone and face were flat, his eyes shimmering with stubbornness. “And I promised Draco I would. That’s two people right there.”

Draco swallowed. There was another, strange feeling spreading in his chest. It didn’t have the tarry heat of the jealousy or the salty warmth of the humiliation that had ripped through him when he thought about telling Harry Potter that he loved him, but it made him feel as if he were standing in sunlight nonetheless. He wondered what in the world this was. Some new manifestation of the curse?

“We worry about your safety, Harry,” Granger said. She spoke in a gentle, bookish tone, the way she always did, but Draco wasn’t fooled. Granger wouldn’t have been worried if it was someone else under the dome. If the Mudblood fanatics had cursed her precious husband, she would be begging and pleading for Harry to find the cure. “How can we leave you alone with him? But that’s what you’re making it sound as if we’ll have to do, if we leave the house to do research or gather clues.”

“Yes, that’s potentially what has to happen.” Draco could feel Harry’s hard, anxious pulse in the wrist he held. He wanted to bow his head and lick it, but he managed to subdue the impulse for the moment, since he wanted to listen to what Harry was saying even more. “But I don’t think it’ll really be necessary, Hermione. At least, not for long. If you go out and do research, Ron can stay here with me and Draco, and vice versa. If I have to leave—”

“I’ll go with you,” Draco interrupted.

Weasley snorted rudely at him. “Are you mental, Malfoy? You’re just as likely to start molesting Harry in the middle of Diagon Alley as you are to do something actually useful.”

Draco welcomed the flood of irritation that broke over him, because it was a normal emotion, without reference to Harry, which made it rather rare and to be welcomed. “I have few choices left, Weasley,” he said. “If I am with Harry, he can help soothe me, and it’ll mean that at least I’m involved in looking for the cure.”

Whether the curse had told him to say those words or not—and Draco was honestly puzzled as to what was the curse anymore and what was him—they had been the right ones. Harry’s face grew open and yielding, and he nodded. Draco looked back at him, drinking in the sight of Harry with his eyes wide open, mentally cursing that Harry couldn’t have yielded like that when he held him.

But then again, he would be the victim of rape or a rapist if it had happened. No matter how much his body ached to hold more than Harry’s hand, Draco thought it best that things had worked out the way they had.

I can trust him.

Maybe that explained the warm feeling buzzing through him. Draco lost himself in the soft, steady caresses of Harry’s palm and the webs of skin between his fingers, ignoring the way Harry fought with his friends. As long as he could touch Harry like this and as long as Harry fought for him, everything was going to be all right.

*

Harry sighed and resisted the temptation to go back to bed. It was late in the evening, and Hermione had started off for the library at Hogwarts, where she had a standing invitation to do research, armed with the information Harry and Draco had explained to her about the way the curse had changed. Harry had seen reluctant interest in her eyes when they explained that, but he also knew she didn’t think this was a hopeful sign. If the curse changed at all, she would decide, it was only so that Draco could get Harry into bed more easily.

Now Harry was down in the lab, with Draco in the repaired and warded circle once more, and Ron behind him. Ron grumbled and fidgeted the entire time, mumbling to himself about how unfair it was that Harry was doing this when he wouldn’t have put forth the same kind of effort for anyone else who was cursed.

That part, Harry could ignore. He knew that he would have tried to help anyone else who was cursed, too. As he had told Draco, the integrity of being human was important to him.

But Ron’s mere presence made Draco unhappy, and that made it harder for Harry to concentrate on the revealing charms he would have to cast. He thought the curse had changed, too, and that meant it should look different from the original picture he’d seen. But it was one thing to do that, and another thing to decide on the spells he should use and pronounce them when Ron was there.

Draco glared through the wards at Ron. Ron glared back. Harry shook his head. He knew that Ron was worried for him and the worry was manifesting as anger, the way it so often did with the Weasleys, but he only hoped Ron would be smart enough to follow the instructions Harry had given him. Despite any temptation, Ron had to stay on the other side of the lab and not cross it to touch Harry.

It wasn’t something he was inclined to do naturally, but Harry could picture him doing it out of sheer stubbornness.

“All right?” he asked no one in particular. “If certain people will calm down and stop behaving like children, I can get started.”

“You heard him, Weasley.” Draco sounded almost normal when he spoke to Ron. Harry concentrated on that. That was the Draco he was trying to restore: the one who issued insults from a center of self-confidence, the one to whom Weasleys were only enemies to be despised.

The Draco who hated him.

The thought still hurt. But it wasn’t as if Harry was unused to pain, after all.

“How do you know he wasn’t talking to you, Malfoy?” Ron snarled back. Harry shut his eyes and wished he could shut his ears, but he didn’t want to miss danger signals like Draco starting to beg. He did begin to incant the first revealing charm, though, holding the embers of a spent fire lit by a Dark wizard in his left hand. The curse seemed to have more affinities to heat than to cold.

“I’m cursed,” Draco said, in a light, mocking tone. “That means I’m not in control of my actions. Haven’t you been listening?”

Harry reached the end of the spell and whirled to face the warded circle fully. The moment he could see Harry’s eyes on him, Draco lost all interest in taunting Ron. He reached out a yearning hand instead, and then halted when it crashed against the wards. But his body and his mind were both focused on one goal, and his heart was in his eyes. It was possible that he did love Harry when he was under the curse.

It isn’t a love he would have chosen, Harry reminded himself as he waited for some results from the spell. That’s the part I have to remember. Draco under the curse can say and do anything he likes, but it isn’t real.

And right now, he really had to pay more attention to the results of the spell and less to his own stupid feelings, didn’t he? Harry leaned forwards and watched the way the spell slithered through the wards and hit Draco’s head and shoulders. He had focused it there since that was where he had seen the jagged pieces and the ugly, tendril-entwining crown that had manifested before.

This time, the jagged pieces and the crown appeared again, but there was a third piece coiled on top of them. Harry narrowed his eyes. Did that represent the change in the curse? Or was it only that he had used a different spell, a better one, this time, and had its continuous existence revealed to him?

“Harry?”

Ron was asking a question, but Harry had to draw the third piece of the spell before it vanished. “Just a minute,” he said, and scrambled madly for the parchment. The third thing looked like a dozing snake. Its “head” rested in the tendrils that wrapped Draco’s face, while its body writhed and coiled and redoubled back along the top of the pieces on Draco’s shoulders. Harry wanted to make sure that he scribbled down every coil. It could be important.

Why?

Harry licked his lips, silently cheering. He knew that kind of certainty in himself, the gleaming and rippling thought that refused to rise to the surface of his mind as yet. Somewhere, in the depths of his mind where he couldn’t reach it right now, he had an idea. He would get there. He would find it in the end. And right now, he knew it was important that he draw all the coils. He moved to the side so that he could see the coil draped over Draco’s ear; from this angle, he couldn’t tell if it was single or twisted around itself like a cord.

*

Draco leaned on the warded barrier, sniffing. He knew that he couldn’t actually smell Harry from behind the wards, but it seemed as if he could, and the air shifted around him when he sniffed. That was helpful. It kept him from trying to push through the wards the way he had once before and interrupt Harry at his work.

Harry was beautiful when he was working. Draco didn’t think he knew that—and he knew Weasley didn’t, because he kept whining and whinging and wanting Harry’s attention, acting as though the research was a dream that Harry needed to wake up from, instead of the center of his life.

I want to be the center of his life.

Draco swallowed. Well, he was right now, because he was involved in Harry’s research. And Harry had said that he would stay with Draco, stand beside him, and struggle as hard for the removal of the curse as Draco could do himself. Draco used that remembrance to calm his jealousy so that he could go on studying Harry.

His eyes were narrowed, and they flickered continuously from the parchment in his hand to the air just above Draco’s head and shoulders, to the spell signature that Draco assumed he could see. That didn’t hide their beautiful green color. His hair was messy, but Draco knew now it always looked that way and wasn’t a sign that he’d just shagged someone, which also helped to calm the jealousy. His hands were steady, his jaw set in determination, and his body moved like a dancer’s, aimed at the end that would help Draco most.

Draco reached out automatically, and his hand bumped against the wards again. He pulled it back and listened to the Weasel’s whining with half an ear. It seemed the Weasel was talking about Harry staying at their house tonight, leaving Draco chained up behind a dome of some sort. Draco knew that Harry would never listen to that, so he didn’t have to worry about it.

He looked at Harry again. Harry had finished his drawing and was leaning back on his heels, shaking his head. His skin was stained with sweat, and he wiped it away, his open, honest expression expanding into a smile as he looked at Draco.

“We’ll solve it,” he said. “I did see a change in the curse now. I wonder if it’s new, or if my spell didn’t show it before? Whatever it is, more information about the curse can only be good.”

Draco opened his mouth to agree, but Weasley intervened. “Mate. Are you sure that you won’t consider coming to my house for the night?”

Harry shook his head again. “I’m grateful that you and Hermione have volunteered to help me, Ron. But I can’t leave Draco alone.” He looked back at Draco, and the smile was gone, but the intensity that remained in his eyes was perfectly acceptable. It almost made up for the wards and domes that had been continuously between them since Draco awoke. “I never will.”

Draco had to shut his eyes. The warm, trembling feeling invaded his limbs like the touch of sunlight.

He didn’t know how to name it. He didn’t know where it came from, the curse or his own soul. He didn’t know how to tell the difference between those two things now.

But he did know what he would have liked, at the moment, if Harry had lowered the barriers and if he could have controlled himself and if Weasley wasn’t in the room.

To take Harry in his arms and kiss him, simply and easily. To touch his face and learn the shape of the bones there. To take him to bed so that they might discuss the curse together with the easiness of intimates.

He couldn’t name the source. If he tried, he would be confused, ashamed, and disgusted, though not enough disgusted. He only knew the feelings.