Chapter Sixteen of 'Nova Cupiditas'- Lucky Number

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Fifteen.

Title: Nova Cupiditas (16/?)
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 Sixteen—Lucky Number

Harry knew that he had been right. He knew that he had done the best thing he could, casting the spell that ended Draco’s unnatural love for him. He had thought about the emotion that made Draco hold and touch him like that, and known that it couldn’t be only lust, or Draco would have simply shoved himself inside Harry, the way that he almost had that first time in the meadow. It couldn’t be only jealousy, or Draco would have acted more rational and demanded reassurances that Harry was over any lover. And Draco had talked about it being love.

So Harry had used the spell that he had wrought himself, a variation of the common spell to end incantations, which had some power to ease the hold of love potions and make people think more rationally when they’d been hit by some of George’s pranks that induced infatuation. And it had worked.

Draco sat, in a thicker and less transparent robe now, on the couch near the fireplace of the drawing room, head turned away, and barely said a word when Harry sat down next to him, but it had worked.

“I think this is what’s happened,” Harry said, and sipped from the hot chocolate that he had found and made in the kitchen. He had asked Draco if he wanted some, but Draco had refused with a mute shake of his head. “The curse has at least three parts. I don’t know if the third part grew from the other two, or was always there and I didn’t see it at first, but it’s present. Lust, jealousy, and love.”

Draco tensed and still didn’t answer. Of course, Harry could understand that. His mind reeled when he thought about what they had been through in the last few days, and if he would be a long time in recovering from his own new scars, he could only imagine what would happen before Draco could overcome his.

“I thought it was probably the love that had taken over from the lust and the jealousy, since you were acting so differently,” he said. “I used the spell that ought to neutralize that part of the curse for a brief time. And it worked.”

Draco turned to face at him at last. He was clutching the pillow he’d sat next to close to his chest, and he had a shattered look in his eyes that Harry remembered from times that he’d tried to stand up to Dudley. Harry winced again, but took a deep breath. He owed this to Draco, at least, for not concentrating on the curse, for not taking precautions to ensure that Draco couldn’t curse him before now, for playing around and hesitating rather than doing what needed to be done.

“You never believed that I loved you,” Draco whispered.

Harry winced, but shook his head. If they were going to have to start over again from the beginning, it would be just as well to be honest from that beginning, and show Draco what he really felt and thought. “No. Not when it came on so fast, when your original feelings for me were so different, and when the curse was there. And because I—I wanted it to be true,” he added hesitantly. He tried to laugh a little. “I know how that must make me look. Who wants to be loved by someone they’re trying to help, someone who needs their care and compassion instead? It’s pure selfishness. But that’s the way I felt. I wanted it to be real, and that’s part of how I knew it wasn’t.”

*

Draco stared steadily at Harry. He could feel the great emptiness in him where the love had been rebounding from the clash of other emotions, but it wasn’t either lust or jealousy that was trying to overpower him now. It was pure frustration.

I was wrong about him enjoying the attention in school. He’s not a big-headed hero. He’s a masochistic little pissant instead, who doesn’t believe that he deserves anything and distrusts all his desires.

Rationally, Draco knew that he should be grateful for those traits. It meant he hadn’t been raped. It meant that, if Harry could cure the curse, than he would have one less bad memory when he went back to trying to live a normal life.

But he didn’t feel that way. He wished Harry had let them sleep together. He wished he knew what it was like to feel the heat inside Harry that he had been dreaming of so intensely. He wished that he could have what he wanted because of the curse—Harry’s loyalty and devotion in return for his own—and also what Harry wanted for him, freedom from the curse and to govern his own actions.

Yes, it didn’t make a great deal of sense. That didn’t matter. Draco still knew what he wanted, and it wasn’t the compromise Harry offered.

Harry was wearing a complete set of clothes, Transfigured and altered from ones that Draco had left here. Draco could see, in one way, why he’d wanted to put them on, but then again, it wasn’t cold in the cottage. The clothes were a barrier of cloth between them, one that Harry seemed to think he would always need.

To keep his teeth from grinding, Draco asked, “But how does that lead you to knowledge of how to cure the curse?”

“I started thinking about the way the curse looked,” Harry answered, lowering his mug of hot chocolate to his lap so that he could gesture with one hand. Draco wanted to take that hand in his, lap between the fingers, and then suck them until Harry was begging. He had suffered the torments of denial; Harry should, too. “The pieces on your shoulders, the jagged ones I think are the jealousy, look like puzzle pieces. There are open spaces between the tendrils that entwine your head from the lust, too, and that coiling thing—the false love—leaves gaps. I think I can design a spell that will exploit those gaps, wrench them apart.”

“Fit a spell into the gaps like a piece into a puzzle,” Draco said flatly. He made himself listen to the words and the concept behind them, how dry it was, how unromantic. He hadn’t wanted it to be unromantic. He had imagined that he might end the spell by convincing Harry that Draco really loved him.

The love was gone now. But the anger remained, and the hope that felt pathetic and fragile without that false love to support it.

Harry gave him a pleased smile and nodded. “Exactly! I think it will take more than one try, and I’ll have to experiment a lot with static fields of magic and other spells to hold them in place. But we’ll get there eventually, Draco.” He hesitated, then reached out and squeezed Draco’s knee. “You’ve been so brave,” he added softly, as though Draco was an old dog with an injured leg. “But we’ll get you free.”

“That’s not what I want,” Draco said.

Harry’s face tumbled through a complicated mixture of expressions, then settled on staring disbelief. “What?”

“What I want,” Draco said, “is you looking at me the way I looked at you. Is you writhing under me and calling my name out, choked by your own sobs of pleasure. Is you away from anyone else, forever, kept far away from them, held there for me. Do you understand?”

Harry lowered his eyes and nodded. He looked so uncomfortable, so pitying, that Draco wanted to strike him. “I know. I understand. That’s the three components of the spell talking, and I know that—”

“That’s what I feel,” Draco interrupted him, reaching out and curling his fingers around Harry’s wrist. “I don’t care if it’s false. I don’t care if I wouldn’t feel that except for the curse. That’s what I feel right now, and I want you to respect it.”

*

Harry took a deep, conflicted breath. He didn’t—well, he knew what Draco meant, but he had no idea what he could say to it.

He couldn’t pretend the curse was real, and that the love it inspired in Draco was a beautiful thing rather than a problem. The spell he had used was temporary, and had only worked because the false love was the emotion dominating Draco strongly then, rather than lust or jealousy. The way Draco immediately altered towards him told Harry that the “love” was all the curse’s fault.

I want him to be the real person he should be. At the moment, he’s convinced that that’s this cursed one who’s in love with me, but he’ll realize better when I end the curse.

“Does that mean that you won’t let me experiment with the magic I need to end the curse?” he asked carefully. He pulled his wrist back into his own lap. Draco’s hand came with it, which meant that Draco ended up leaning closer to Harry.

Harry had to close his eyes. He hadn’t properly smelled Draco, before, caught up as he was in the reactions of his own body, and, before that, protected by the Cold Water Curse. It filled his nostrils like the heavy scent of roses now, and Harry had to keep his mouth shut so that he wouldn’t ruin a serious moment by letting slobber spill over his tongue.

“No,” Draco said. “I’ll let you do that.” He turned his head and breathed on Harry’s earlobe, which was dizzying and stupid. Harry couldn’t contemplate why he wanted Draco so much when he knew the source of that longing and Draco’s feelings towards him. Draco might think they were real; Harry never could. “But in the meantime, I want you to treat me as if I were an adult and not a child.”

“I need to protect you,” Harry said, forcing his eyes open and pulling back a little. That much, he thought he could do. “You can’t—don’t deny me that, Draco.”

Draco’s eyes widened and then grew dark again as he smiled. “Now you know how it feels,” he murmured, “to be frustrated.”

Harry sighed and, this time, took Draco’s fingers from his wrist. “Listen,” he said. “You have to keep in mind how much the curse has changed you. I doubt that you would ever want me if you were in your right mind, even if you saw me naked. Do you remember a lover that you had? I don’t know if you had one or not.”

“No one for a while.” Draco’s gaze was immovable. “You’re not doing as I ask. Treat me like this is real.”

“Then I can’t do as you ask,” Harry said, and made sure that his eyes were steady. “I have to think of the curse first, rather than keeping you comfortable.” He gestured around at the house. “Thinking of your comfort before ending the curse is what got us into this mess in the first place.”

*

Draco tore himself away, although his skin ached when he stopped touching Harry. He paced back and forth in front of the couch, and Harry watched him with his smug little purity and moral righteousness clutched to him like a toy doll.

Draco spun back towards him and launched the words that he needed to speak, whether or not they made a difference. Knowing Harry, they probably wouldn’t.

“You’re being absurd, Harry. How many people out of a thousand, out of a million, would think and act the way you’re thinking and acting right now? You distrust everything I say. You want me to go back to being some ideal Draco Malfoy, someone you don’t know, rather than letting me be who I am right now. You’re just as bad as the people who cursed me in your own way.” (The mention of the Seekers of Justice reminded Draco of the people he had left bound and sleeping in the meadow, which did nothing for his temper). “Nothing about me is worthwhile unless you’ve processed it though your stubborn mind.”

Harry took a shaky breath and looked away. Draco watched him, hating and hungering for the sight of his face.

“Listen,” Harry said finally. Draco listened closely to his tone, but couldn’t tell just from that whether it would be another stupid denial or not, so he let Harry proceed for now. “I don’t know—Draco, I really don’t know what’s you and what’s not. But I do know that I don’t want to find out I hurt you later, after you’re free of the curse, because I didn’t respect your dignity sufficiently or witnessed your humiliation.”

“You’re hurting me now,” Draco said.

Harry pulled at his hair. “Oh, fuck,” he said. “There’s no way to do this.” He started to rise from the couch, with that agitated manner that Draco knew meant he would stride out of the room.

He took a casual step towards the door, not really putting himself in Harry’s way but ensuring Harry would have to pass close to him to get out. “Listen to me, Harry,” he said. “There’s a way to do this, if you stop thinking about the future and think about the present. I’ll cooperate with you so that you can work on ending the curse, yes. But it would be better and easier for both of us if you stop thinking that something is wrong with you for not being perfect, and with me for not being disdainful of you.”

Harry stopped and stared at him. Then he said, “You mean that. As far as I can tell, given that you’re still under the curse, you really mean that.”

Draco fought to keep from rolling his eyes. “Yes, I do.” He reached out and cupped his hand gently around Harry’s cheek, smoothing his thumb back and forth, up and down. It was a struggle not to take more, but given what he would gain if he could just get Harry to believe him, he would restrain himself. “Are you going to help me, or help this ideal that you’ve impressed into your stubborn brain?”

*

Harry rubbed the back of his neck, trying to use it as a counterpoint to the smooth caress Draco was inflicting on his face, trying to wake up from the daze that caress threatened to cast him into.

But it was practically useless. Harry knew that Draco was right. He had decided, without thinking about it or asking Draco’s input, that he would just have to do the opposite of whatever Draco demanded. But even that was a promise he hadn’t kept, because he had listened to Draco’s objections and taken them seriously.

And he couldn’t bear the thought of hurting the man he had come to know more than he already had. He would just have to keep in mind that Draco’s attitude was likely to change when the curse was gone, and that no matter how much it hurt, Harry would have to let him go and return to his normal life.

“All right,” he said. The words were thick and blocky in his throat. Harry cleared that and forced them out. “Fine. Let’s go back to my house, then. Ron and Hermione will be frantic, and we’ll have to use my lab and my notes.” He paused then. “What did you do with the Muggleborns who cursed you?”

Draco smiled. The smile flashed across his face and then lighted his eyes like the sun casting rays before it on the water. Harry shook his head and told himself not to be so stupidly poetic. Draco touched his cheek once more before he stepped away. He was moving more easily, Harry thought, and he didn’t think it had to do with the potion that Draco had taken for his bruises earlier. It came from confidence that Harry was no longer looking to run out the door as soon as he possibly could.

Harry bit his lip. He had a silent, fervent hope that Draco would really value this moment later as much as he seemed to right now, rather than cursing himself because he’d had a chance to distance himself from Harry and didn’t take it.

“Hmmm.” Draco rotated his head on his neck. “I left them bound, asleep, and invisible. I should go there soon to renew the sleeping charms, but we can go back and question them whenever we like.”

Harry frowned. “And you don’t think anyone will raise a clamor because so many of their relatives have disappeared at once?”

Draco snorted. “If they’re all Muggleborn, their relatives are outside the wizarding world, and won’t realize they’re gone for several days, most likely. If they’re not, or if they have friends who might be looking for them, I think those friends will be sensible enough to keep quiet.” Then he paused, raising his eyebrows, and added, “And if they’re not, then that’s another trail we can follow to them.”

Harry nodded. “Why don’t you go renew the sleeping charms? I’ll go to my house.”

“Make sure that you have both Weasley and Granger with you at all times,” Draco said, drawing his wand.

“Afraid that they might try to snatch me again?” Harry asked. “I would hope that the other members of the group wouldn’t know what’s happened yet.”

“No,” Draco said, and his eyes slid all the way down into blackness. “Because, if both of them are with you, you’re unlikely to be having sex with the other.”

Harry nodded, keeping all the objections that he could have voiced to himself. This was the way it was, while Draco was under the curse.

No longer than that.

*

Draco appeared on the grass of the meadow and cast the charm that would reveal the sleeping forms to him. Already some of them were stirring and grumbling, though Draco wasn’t greatly bothered by that. He had taken their wands away, and they weren’t going anywhere without them. They didn’t have the strength that the curse gave him sometimes, to reach out and snatch his wand back when he needed it.

And they won’t enjoy Harry’s company, either.

Draco bared his teeth. If he reached back to his memories of life before the curse, he knew that he wouldn’t find such viciousness. Oh, yes, sometimes he had wished for the power to hurt his enemies, the way that anyone else would, but he hadn’t actually put it into practice. It was a matter of reading Dark Arts book and idle daydreams.

And now he had used those spells, in many cases for the first time.

Draco paced among the sleeping forms, renewing the charm, and feeling touches of hatred and anger like the pawing of heavy hands, urging him to use those spells again. Harry had been distraught when he’d finished the battle. He wouldn’t notice if one of their victims went missing. His nostrils flared with the thought, and his wand seemed to orient itself on the chest of the sleeping Ariadne Kitchen of its own free will.

No, Draco thought. I can’t do that and expect Harry to continue to take me seriously. He’ll just decide that’s one more sign that I’m more disturbed than he likes by the curse, and he won’t listen to me.

So in the end, Draco simply renewed the sleeping charms and then Apparated back to Harry’s house. As he ducked in through the door, past the wards that were still weakened enough to welcome him, he heard raised voices. He rolled his eyes. Only Weasley and Granger would great the story of Harry’s kidnapping with a row.

When he stepped through the doorway into the drawing room, two wands turned to train on him. Harry—whose body burned in Draco’s sight like a firework—reached out a commanding hand.

“Draco, please give me your wand,” he said.

“Why don’t you tell me a bit more about what’s going on first?” Draco asked, and leaned back on the doorway to await events.

*

“Harry, he’s mad and dangerous.”

“You can’t let him hurt you again, mate. Frankly, I’m surprised that you let him get away with it this long.”

“I still think that you should take him to St. Mungo’s.” Hermione’s face was pinched and earnest. “But if you really don’t want to, then at least take his wand away, so that he can’t hurt anyone else when you start testing him.”

Ron had said nothing in response to that, but nodded so hard that a moment later he cursed softly and rubbed the back of his neck.

And so Harry had reluctantly yielded to their suggestions, and promised that he would ask for Draco’s wand the moment he came back in. He’d told them some more details about the Seekers of Justice and what had happened in Draco’s house as they waited.

But not everything. Not nearly everything. Nothing about how Draco had tortured the Muggleborns and killed so many of them, and nothing about how he and Draco had nearly raped each other.

There were some things that he simply couldn’t tell his friends right now and hope to have them understand. Harry was sorry for that, but he tried to pin the blame where it belonged—on the people who had cast the curse in the first place—and simply asked for Draco’s wand when he came in. Ron and Hermione were still urging him to do more than that, but they settled for shutting up and pointing their wands at Draco instead.

“Why don’t you tell me a bit more about what’s going on first?” Draco’s voice was deceptively mild, his eyes calm and bright. He held the hawthorn wand in a loose, relaxed grip, as if he wasn’t sure about what he should do with it, but Harry could see the way his fingers tightened when Ron stepped closer.

“We have to restrain you,” Ron said. “I know that you did something to Harry, no matter how much he just says that you had a discussion.”

“I see,” Draco said, and his eyes came back to Harry’s, “Have you agreed to this?”

“As long as you can stay rational, then you don’t have to be restrained,” Harry said. “But I do need your wand, and I do have to restrain you if you start losing your senses. Tie you up, maybe.” He hadn’t done that because he had thought it would hurt Draco and because he had believed the wards were sufficient. He tried to keep his voice firm now, so that Draco would know that he was actually considering it.

“Hmm,” Draco said. “More promising than I expected from you, Harry.” He tossed his wand underhanded, and Harry had to scramble to catch it, he was so shocked. Ron looked not much less shocked, but Hermione had a suddenly thoughtful expression.

“In what way?” Harry had to ask. “Because you didn’t think that I’d protect myself?”

Draco laughed in his throat, and once again his happiness brightened his eyes like a running wildfire. “No. Because it might mean that you’re open to certain things, later, once the curse is removed.”

Harry caught his breath, and then told himself not to be stupid. He still knew that Draco’s mind would change after the curse. He might not hate Harry—he’d certainly stayed away from him well after the war for someone who hated him—but he wouldn’t want to have sex.

Get your mind off your groin, Harry scolded himself a moment later. He’s under a curse that makes him lust after you. What’s your excuse?

Then again, listening to the buzz of Draco’s laugh in his throat and seeing the gleam of his hair as he turned his head, Harry wasn’t sure that he needed an excuse.

“Come down to the lab,” he said, a bit harshly, and led the way, making sure to cast a few charms on Draco’s wand that ought to prevent it from flying out of his hand even if Draco Summoned it.

*

Draco used the trip to the lab to watch Harry’s arse and dream. There was no law against dreaming, no matter how much Harry liked to pretend there was.