Chapter Eighteen of 'Nova Cupiditas'- Eighteen

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Seventeen.

Title: Nova Cupiditas (18/?)
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 Eighteen—Eighteen Times

The pain had grown so bad that Draco found it hard to remember how he had come to be lying on the floor. He was more than happy to be lying on the floor, though. He suspected he would have a much harder time of it if he tried to stand up. He shut his eyes and groaned instead.

His head ached with a throbbing, burning pain that made stars of white and yellow light flicker and flash behind his eyelids. His hands were burning off. He had extra bones everywhere, and they cut into his lungs and his ribs and his chest and his intestines. He could feel every muscle of his body separately, and they were all shredding slowly and delicately, as though under the touch of a master torturer.

He hurt. And Harry, who was supposed to save him, hadn’t appeared to make it stop.

Draco couldn’t even feel bitter about that, though, because his emotions towards Harry altered so much and so suddenly from moment to moment that they sometimes distracted him from the pain. There was hatred and contempt as he thought about the way Harry had promised to be a hero and obviously couldn’t fulfill that role. There was lust as he thought about the warmth that would surround him when he pushed into Harry’s body, more than enough to make up for the agony he suffered now. There was jealousy, which brought with it a furious despair, because he had to burst through the incoherence that cocooned him and make sure that no one had taken Harry away, but he was incapable of doing it.

And there was the love.

Harry had been wrong to think that he could wave his wand and make an end of it. It was everywhere, and it filled Draco’s world with a clear and shining light, and the pain that touched him was mingled with that light, so that he knew he would never be able to remember one without the other.

Assuming that there was anything left of him to remember, after this.

I love you. I’ll go to my death loving you, Harry. Draco fixed his mind firmly on that, because yes, going to his death mattered to him even if no one else in the whole world thought it did, and waited for death or the end of the pain.

They might be the same thing, now that he thought about it.

*

Harry lost track of the charms and the curses that he yelled, trying to put his plan into action. Nothing seemed to work. Most of the spells he cast simply vanished into that sea of magic that surrounded Draco and so very effectively muted his effectiveness. Draco writhed on the floor, blood spilling from his mouth where he had bitten his tongue, his screams so high and thin and voiceless and frantic that they no longer sounded human. Harry wanted to tear at his own skin with his fingernails, wanted to fall on the floor and weep, but he knew that wouldn’t be productive.

No, he had promised Draco that he would save him from Nova Cupiditas, and Harry still planned on doing that. It was just going to take him a bit longer than he had thought, that was all.

He fell back on one heel, took a deep breath, and turned around to fetch another of his notebooks down from the shelves. Horrible as it was, he would just have to ignore the shrieks issuing from Draco’s throat for the moment.

He met Hermione, with tears streaming down her cheeks and her wand pointed at the warded circle. Harry barked out a wordless warning, which did its job, because Hermione’s hand jerked and her wand fell to the floor.

“Mate,” Ron said. He both looked and sounded breathless, his eyes starting practically out of his head. “You have to see that this can’t go on. He has to die, and it would be better to give him a clean death than—”

“I wasn’t trying to do that!” Hermione snapped, spinning on Ron.

Harry shook his head. Sometimes he thought his best friends would bicker if the world ended because they would disagree about how it was ending.

He snatched the notebook and opened it to the very back pages, to the project that he had been starting when Draco had come along and taken precedence. The words stabbed and sparkled up at him. Harry blinked, and then realized that they were doing that because of the tears in his eyes as he listened to Draco scream. He dashed them away and bent down closer to the page, reading what he had written so long ago.

Yes. And yes again.

I don’t think it’s possible to shatter some of the large, ancient curses, the ones that were designed to endure or be the last spell that was ever cast on a victim. But it might be possible to break them and leave something behind that wouldn’t threaten the victim.

Harry spun away from the notebook a moment later, after he had used that moment to memorize some of the drawings he had put there. He strode back to the warded circle and lifted his wand.

He made his mind, as much as he could, into a hard, sparkling crystal where the only thing that mattered was getting the spells right. Too much sympathy would cripple him right now. He had to do his best whether or not he succeeded, whether or not he ended up with Draco loving him or not.

“Dimidatus!” he cried.

*

There was a change in the pain. Draco suddenly hurt less than he had before. He blinked, and came back to some sense of his body as an object rather than an infinite microcosm of different kinds of suffering.

Not that it worked completely. The pain was still there, slithering around his spine and finding new and interesting ways to probe into his brain, and Draco doubted that he would ever go to bed again without shivering in terror of his nightmares about it. But the option to do something other than lie there and scream was nice.

He turned his head and saw Harry standing on the edge of the circle, his wand darting back and forth. Silvery filaments surrounded him, stalked by dark waves. As Draco watched, more magic flooded away from him and out of the circle, going over the wards, blending into the sea around Harry.

What does he think he’s doing? Draco’s thoughts were slow and confused as they came together, but there was nothing wrong with his brain that a good rest wouldn’t fix. He can’t possibly be doing what I think he’s doing—

But it seemed that Draco was wrong, because more and more power went to Harry, stalking around him like a ring of leopards he had somehow taught to dance. Harry’s face was set in an expression of fierce concentration, and Draco suffered another spark of abstract lust. To see Harry look at him like that when Draco was pounding steadily into his body—

But there was something else going on now. Harry began to turn in a circle, never taking his eyes from the magic (except when he completed the turn and would always snatch a quick glance at Draco). The silver and the dark ribbons followed him, rippling along the floor, rising to wrap around Harry’s legs and shoulders.

Fear pinched Draco’s heart. If he’s trying to take the curse away from me and into himself, I’ll kill him.

But the pain remained, and sometimes, with the craziness of his anguish, Draco thought he could even glimpse a curve of the shapes on his shoulders and head out of the corner of his eye. No, whatever Harry was doing, it wasn’t that.

Harry froze in place and snapped his wand down.

The silver and the black streamers, or some of them, dived into the floor and didn’t rise again. The rest kept stalking Harry, curling around his ears now and eddying in front of his eyes as if they sought some way inside his head.

Harry visibly gritted his teeth and turned to face Draco again. This time, Draco could hear what he said, and clung to his voice the way that he would to a rope that someone tossed him from a boat. “Dimidiatus!”

*

It had worked. When he cast the spell that would pull the magic out of the circle where he could and over to him, Harry had cast another spell at the same time, one that would cause him an echo of the pain that Draco was suffering.

It hurt. It hurt so much that his sight blurred and his head pounded and he wondered if this had been a good idea after all.

But he had proved his point. He had, after all, proved that his technique would work. When he cast the Cleaving Curse again, half the spell was gone, and what remained of the pain was bearable.

The Cleaving Curse was usually used on people who were powerful in battle, reducing their magic by half so that their enemies could destroy them. It was meant to be temporary. Harry would have to work out a permanent variation in the next five minutes, at the most. He estimated he had that long before Draco’s body and brain would simply begin to shut down under the intense pressure of the pain.

He could be wrong. He might have more than that time. He might have less. But he wasn’t going to force himself to think about it, because it would be more devastating, in the end, to lose Draco because he had rushed through what he was doing and fucked things up than because he had made an honest mistake.

He turned his wand over and focused on Draco again. He had done one good thing, at least. When he borrowed the magic of the curse from the warded circle to make his experiment, he had halved Draco’s pain, and he had also halved the wards. It would be easier to reach Draco now as well as easier to work with him.

He hoped.

Ron and Hermione’s voices briefly surged into his consciousness. They were rowing about something, as usual. Harry ignored them and moved closer to Draco, crouching down so that he could see him face-to-face.

Draco’s eyes were focusing. Harry cast the Cleaving Curse yet again, and his gaze sharpened still more. But Harry knew that he couldn’t just keep doing that. The single biggest step had been taking away half of Draco’s pain at the beginning. He could halve what was left, but it would continue to be a smaller and smaller amount, until he was making virtually no difference at all.

So he had to come up with a variation of the Cleaving Curse that would take away half of everything, and all the pain. It would leave part of the curse clinging to Draco, but Harry thought Draco could bear that. He would be more in control of his actions than he had been so far, and it was possible that Harry could try again in the future for a more permanent solution.

Two minutes.

Harry bowed his head, closed his eyes, and reached out with all his will. He knew the Latin words better than he had ever known them in school. He knew what the incantation for a permanent Cleaving Curse ought to be, and he would throw his will towards it and make the wand movements that instinct demanded, and hope that was enough.

No, not a wild guess. It’s my best chance.

Fixing his confidence in front of his mental eyes like the pole star, Harry threw up his wand, swept it back and forth over Draco’s body, and shouted again, “Dimidatus! Dimidatus semper!”

*

The magic blazed in Draco, and it was like standing in the center of a star: glory and pain both shone through him to the point that it made his limbs tingle and his mouth dry out, and he couldn’t remember anything, for the barest instant, except what was around him.

Then they were gone and he was staggering and stumbling along some kind of road of clear light, expecting to land or brush against something at any moment, and doing neither.

Harry’s voice soared around him, chanting the same spell again and again. Draco was counting the times it spoke before he knew what he was doing. It was the only reality in the world besides the light and the pain.

“Dimidatus semper! Dimidatus semper! Dimi—”

For a moment, Draco lost track, but he was certain that Harry hadn’t stopped speaking. No, he would be faithful to his charge. Instead, Draco’s ears were simply filled so much with the ringing and the roar of magic that he couldn’t hear. He put his head down and bulled forwards through the curtains that wanted to swing closed around him, swearing under his breath.

“Dimidatus semper! Dimidatus semper!”

By Draco’s count, that was the sixteenth and the seventeenth cry. And he did feel different, in other ways than the burning of his eyes from the radiance that surrounded him and the strange feeling that the pain was pulling back, like a tsunami, leaving him alone but about to crash over him soon. He stood on a high mountain cliff, or so his mind told him, the air thin and burning in his lungs.

“Dimidatus semper!”

The eighteenth time.

The wave broke.

Draco screamed, or tried, but there was no air left in his lungs. It was all burning around him, burning, burning, and he didn’t know how to make it stop and it was brilliant at the same time that it was agonizing and he wanted to suffer from it until the second that it killed him, which couldn’t be far away.

The light flared up around him and separated into silver candleflames. Harry was nearby; Draco could feel him, from something that he would have called the pressure of the soul if someone had demanded a name for it. He was there, resting a hand on Draco’s shoulder, or dancing with the flames, or inside his mind. His voice no longer sounded, but it didn’t matter. They were so deeply connected that Draco thought he could have sensed him from the other side of the world.

Up and down the flames spun, and then flattened towards Draco, laid out like paving stones. The pain flew out from him, and Draco had the odd impression of watching himself explode as chunks of spell were ripped from his head and his chest and his heart. Red-black in color, terrifying like blood and flesh, they coiled and turned and split and fell apart, and the flames sprang back up again and burned their refuse.

Draco shouted. The echoes of his voice turned into silver, clanging rods that fell down around him, singing sweetly when they touched the ground the flames had hardened.

They hit the thing that sat on his head like a crown, squeezing his temples—something of which Draco was only aware then—and cracked it. Draco reeled, his hands clutching, and this time someone did reach out and clasp them, holding him upright, while Harry’s voice said, “It’s almost done, Draco. Almost.”

His shoulders trembled, and the pain that scraped through them was like someone tearing out the marrow and then replacing it. Draco sank with a cry, but his knees touched nothing but a silvery mist that continued.

And Harry’s voice said, “That’s it. That’s as good as I can do.” There was an exhaustion deeper than Draco’s pain in it. Draco reached out instinctively to comfort him, and then paused.

The overriding compulsion to do that was gone.

*

Harry scrambled up and stood on wavering legs. His eyes watered, and he blinked them, making the star-like images that had been suspended in front of them shatter. He stared at Draco, casting another revealing charm at the same time that would let him see whether any pieces of the curse were left on him.

Of course I had to cast the spell eighteen times, he thought, with the only part of his brain that didn’t feel fatigued to death. There were eighteen tendrils on the crown that represented the lust, and I think that was the most deeply-rooted part of the spell. It showed up first…

Then his thoughts stuttered to a halt, and he was examining the revealing spell thoughtfully. If he was right, it should show a certain, very specific result. If he wasn’t right, he didn’t like to think about what would happen.

But no, the result was what he had thought it would be. A faint, dark shadow lingered over Draco’s head. Slightly stronger silhouettes of the puzzle pieces glowed on his shoulders.

The false love, the transparent snake, was entirely gone.

Harry closed his eyes and slumped back, exhaling in relief. But there was nothing to lean against, so he sat down rather hard on the floor. He rubbed his arse and winced. Then he told himself that it was nothing compared to what Draco had suffered in the past hour, and took his hand roughly away.

“Harry? What did you do?”

It was Hermione who asked it, and not Draco. Harry was glad for that. He hadn’t been able to rid Draco completely of the curse, but he had reduced it so that he thought Draco could control the residue of what was left. It was still easier to explain that to someone else than to the person who had suffered so greatly because of his mistake, though.

“I halved the spell,” he said, and swallowed. His throat was raw. He hadn’t noticed that before. Had he really cast the spell that many times? “There are still traces of lust and jealousy left in Draco’s head. I couldn’t get rid of them completely, because the spell was designed to spill its magic and kill the victim with pain if someone tried.” Harry shivered. He couldn’t imagine what the person who had created the Nova Cupiditas curse must have been like. What had been his purpose?

“What does that mean?” Hermione insisted.

Harry sat up, then stood up, hanging onto the nearest table. He was outside the warded circle, he noted with half his brain. That was interesting. He must have crossed over the line of the wards when he left Draco after the last time.

He looked at Draco before he answered.

Draco sat there, staring at him, hair hanging in his face as if he had been half-drowned. Given how much pain he’d suffered, and the sea-like nature of the spilled magic, Harry thought that was a good comparison. And there was a look in his eyes that made Harry wince and bow his head.

“I’m sorry,” he said, in a voice that he hoped would be inaudible to Ron and Hermione, to anyone else except Draco. “I did the best I could. I know it’s not enough, but I hope that it will be in time.”

“Tell me what you did.”

Draco’s voice was absolutely flat. Harry wistfully contrasted it in his mind with the way that Draco had sounded when talking about him just a short while ago, and then shook his head. No, he had known this would happen. The only thing he could do was keep going and face the consequences.

“Halved the curse,” he said. “I got rid of the false love completely. You shouldn’t be feeling that anymore. It was the weakest component. But some of the lust and jealousy will remain. They’re controllable, though. You’re going to feel like sleeping with me or hexing someone who touches me at times, but you can ignore it.”

Draco just continued to stare at him. Harry wrapped his arms around his own chest in comfort, because he felt dreadfully cold.

*

What Harry said made no sense.

He could feel—Draco could feel emotions twitching in the back of his head like snakes suddenly deprived of their heads. Lust and jealousy came and went, pale echoes of what had gone before.

But he hadn’t expected this. He had thought that he might go on desiring Harry for the rest of his life, if Harry couldn’t do anything about the curse, or he had thought it possible that he would get over it completely. But to be caught halfway between one state and another wasn’t what he had anticipated.

It would take some getting used to.

Draco reached out one hand. He thought he was the only one who would have noticed that Harry hesitated before taking it, but then Harry pulled firmly and he was on his feet, and he was feeling, at one and the same time, the uncomfortably warm scorch of Harry’s skin against his and the strange feeling of lightness that haunted his head and shoulders, as if he had been freed of burdens that he didn’t know were there.

He stretched out his arms, and they seemed to travel past barriers that had been there before. He swallowed.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t do more,” Harry said, watching him with wistful eyes. He became aware that he was still holding Draco’s hand and stepped back, dropping it. Draco clenched his fingers against his palms and nodded shortly.

Harry closed his eyes and seemed to fall into himself for a moment, reaching for strength the way Draco knew he had when they confronted each other on the bed in his private house. That had been just hours ago, and yet his skin ached with the memory, as if they had been lovers years before.

“Now,” Harry said, opening his eyes, by all appearances restored to his former self, “we need to decide what we’re going to do about the people who captured and tortured you, and the ones we still haven’t caught. That needs to come first, for various reasons.” He caught Draco’s eyes emphatically, and Draco knew that he was thinking about the way Draco had murdered eight people.

Murdered them.

Draco licked his lips. There were two sets of memories in his head. One of them was horrible as he watched blood spraying across the air and spells he had never thought would emerge from his wand flying to cause more of it. The other was thick with satisfaction at the thought that he had protected Harry.

Harry, whom he had to go back to calling Potter. Harry, whom he had to resign his claim to.

“All right,” he said. “Give me a chance to relax and get something to eat.”

“We can do it tomorrow,” Harry said at once, his eyes fluttering shut, as if he found something unbearable in Draco’s face. Probably doesn’t like to look at me anymore because I’m not in need, Draco thought bitterly. “I should have thought before of how long you’ve been on your feet. Of course we can do it later.”

“We shouldn’t wait too long,” Draco said, and tried to ignore both his own urge to stay here because Weasley and Granger might get their hands on Harry otherwise and the way that he despised himself for the idea. “Otherwise, someone might find them, or I might have to go and renew the charms again.”

“…Yeah,” Harry said, and then nodded at Draco and turned back to his friends as if he had ceased to exist.

Draco clenched his fingers again. He understood what Harry was trying to do. Put distance between them, let Draco have the distance, because touching now would be counterproductive in so many ways.

But he was scarred by what he had gone through. Of course he was. And he didn’t think that ignoring the wounds was a good first step in the healing process.

“Farewell, Potter,” he said stiffly, and turned and made his way out of the room.

His being trembled and bounded between two poles: one grateful for his freedom, the second wanting to rush back in and embrace Harry. Draco wondered how long it would take him to get used to that.

*

Harry kept his eyes closed, because letting anyone else see what he felt right now was a stupid idea.