Chapter Nineteen of 'Nova Cupiditas'- Indivisible

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Eighteen.

Title: Nova Cupiditas (19/?)
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 Nineteen—Indivisible

Harry sat down that evening to make a list.

Hermione and Ron were asleep in the guest rooms down the corridor, though not the one that Draco had used. Harry had promised himself that he would pitch a fit if they asked, but they were wise enough not to. Or maybe they hadn’t wanted to sleep in the same place that someone they despised had.

Harry had wanted them to go home, but Hermione had said they weren’t leaving him, and Ron had nodded firmly. Because Harry had a job to do, and didn’t want to waste time arguing, he had nodded and accepted their decision. At least they didn’t try to argue with him over anything else, once Draco had left.

Ron had even gripped his shoulder tightly, once, and fumbled awkwardly for words. Harry had smiled at him sadly, and in the end Ron had nodded and gone to bed, though he kept glancing at Harry as he did so.

Then Harry pulled out ink and parchment, and began to make a list of the things that he needed to do to make sure that Draco wouldn’t get accused of murder, rape, or something even worse, including all of Draco’s crimes.

Draco had murdered eight people in the meadow. He had tortured two. He had attacked Ron with a Dark spell, and he had cursed Lucius. Harry didn’t think Lucius would bring that attack to the attention of the authorities, given that it was revenge for his murder attempt on Harry, but the others would almost inevitably show up. There was simply no way to hide the shedding of that much blood for long.

Harry paused when he’d finished, wondering if he had to include his own near-rapes in that list. Then his hands closed down into fists despite himself, and he shook his head firmly.

No. He wasn’t—there was no way that he would let that happen. He would lie, coldly, to the Minister’s face before he would allow Draco to be arrested for something that wasn’t his fault, but the fault of that bloody curse. And Harry had resisted successfully. If he had actually been raped, he might feel—different. But he didn’t. He had to deal with reality, instead of imaginings of what had happened.

And that included imaginings about Draco, he told himself, when he found his mind wandering in that direction again. How cold Draco had looked when he left. The way he held himself.

It had to be this way. They were separate people again, and this way, Draco would be able to decide for himself what he wanted to happen. Healing, in Harry’s company or out of it. Or simply forgetting about the curse, putting the past behind him, and moving on with his marriage to some pure-blood witch.

Especially considering the method that Harry intended to use to solve this list of problems, it was for the best if Draco kept his distance.

Harry sat back and regarded the list for a moment. Then he smiled.

*

Draco had expected to sleep like the dead that night. But he didn’t. He simply leaned against his pillow, staring into space, and thought again and again of the reception he had met with when he came home. It wasn’t at all what he expected.

He had stepped into the Manor and listened to the door closing behind him, thinking it was like the door of a tomb. Then he told himself not to be stupid and walked forwards. He was alive, with sacrifices paying for that, and he wouldn’t belittle them with his morbid thoughts.

“Mother?” he called. “Father?”

A rustle from the side startled him, and he turned in time to see his mother coming out of the library, a large book balanced on her arms. She paused, staring at Draco with eyes that widened and went on widening until Draco thought she would faint. Then she turned and called sharply for Lucius, not listening to Draco’s stuttering attempt at an explanation.

Draco’s father limped out of the library. He was carrying a huge book, too, and he used his cane as if he needed it more than usual. He paused when he saw Draco, nostrils flaring, and laid the book down on a mahogany table that stood next to the door.

“So,” he said. “You have returned home to die?” Then he seemed to study Draco’s eyes and the outlines of his face. “No, I don’t think so. You would suffer at being apart from Potter too long.”

Draco licked his lips. He could see Harry’s face in a flash as vivid as a bolt of lightning when his father spoke the name “Potter,” and with it came the hunger. But it was so diminished, compared to the way he had felt before, that he could ignore it without trouble. “He cured me, Father. He managed to cut the spell in half, and what is left can’t control my life anymore.”

His mother closed her eyes, and although she didn’t move, Draco was careful to avoid looking at her. He knew the strength of her emotions probably embarrassed her. Lucius leaned forwards, studying the knuckles of his hands and the way he held his arms.

Then he said, “You’re not lying.” The faintness of his voice was comparable to the way that Narcissa had closed her eyes.

“No.” Draco gave him a hesitant smile. Lucius didn’t smile back, but Draco thought it was due to his stunned astonishment rather than because he actually resented the miracle Harry had managed to perform. “I—it’s hard to explain, but Harry’s a magical researcher. He came up with a spell that let him see the shapes on my shoulders, and then one that let him cut the web of the curse around me. And so, the spell is gone.”

Narcissa stepped forwards to embrace him then. His father remained where he was, still looking painfully bewildered. Draco hugged his mother and decided that if it took time for Lucius to accept this, then that was fair. Draco hadn’t begun to recover himself, yet, or deal with the unexpectedly doubled set of memories in his head. He had assumed that he would forget his sensations and emotions under the curse once he was cured.

Instead, it seemed as if he could react both like himself and like the cursed persona he had become, and remember his motivations for acting as he had, even as he judged them harshly.

Narcissa took him into the dining room—the largest dining room—and made him sit down at one end of the grand table, while she clapped her hands and ordered the house-elves to come back with food for him. Draco tried to say that he didn’t need an elaborate meal, but Lucius, who had drifted in behind them, caught Draco’s eye and shook his head sharply. Draco shut up. He understood the silent message. Let his mother do what she needed, to make the situation normal again. He could assert himself when his survival was less new.

And sure enough, when his mother sat down across from him and gazed at him with devouring eyes, Draco knew the advice had been good.

He explained what Harry had done, as far as he understood it, while they waited for the meal. When it came—a steaming potato soup, slices of thinly cut lamb in a sauce that made Draco’s mouth water even though he wasn’t really hungry, a slice of chocolate cake big enough to make his teeth rot looking at it, and a glass of Draco’s favorite white wine—he was too busy eating to talk.

His parents didn’t seem to mind that. His mother sat back in her chair and watched him as if she was getting used to the idea that he would live. His father, who had long since sat down, tapped his fingers against the cane and watched.

When Draco swallowed the last bite of lamb, Narcissa leaned forwards and asked, “What do we owe Potter, for saving you?”

Draco blinked. It hadn’t occurred to him that she would immediately think in terms of debts, but of course she would. He would have himself, if he was completely normal. Pay Potter off, and they would free themselves from the heavy burden of gratitude as well as cut a connection that could prove embarrassing in the future.

“I’m not sure that he would want to be paid,” he said, stalling for time while he played with his fork and drank his wine. Those were methods of stalling, too, but ones that his mother was more likely to see through. “He doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would appreciate that.”

“Doesn’t seem?” Narcissa cast him a sharp look. “I had thought you would know him well by now, Draco. What would he take from us?”

Draco sighed. His parents wouldn’t like this answer, but he knew it was the true one. “Only our thanks.”

Lucius shook his head briskly, making the light flash off the head of his cane and even his eyes, as if they were made of silver. Draco had forgotten, or not remembered, or never noticed, how cold they looked. “That is not good enough. He has performed a miracle. That requires more than mere words.”

Draco nodded to his father, but he didn’t share the conviction. He knew what lay behind Lucius’s insistence. Cut the tie. Don’t leave a way open for him to make a claim on us in the future.

“He solved it without our help,” Narcissa added softly. “Without access to our library or the spells that he might have been able to discover there. That makes the debt all the more pressing and urgent.”

“I agree,” Draco said. “But Harry won’t.”

“Son.”

A single warning from Lucius was all he would get, Draco knew. And he knew what it meant. He had to stop calling Potter “Harry.” He had to stop speaking of him with that regretful tone in his voice, too, or his parents might think he was less grateful for his survival than frustrated over the fact that he could never touch Harry again. Draco looked back at his plate and pushed around the last scrapes of sauce, at least until a bowing house-elf appeared to take it away.

He would have to get used to that, again, he thought as he handed the plate over. Constant service. He had lived that way most of his life, but after the days under the curse, it felt distant.

More than anything else, he wished he could have time to think. To get his head in order, to understand his own emotions. But he knew, from the imperious way that his father gestured when he rose in addition to everything else, that he wouldn’t get that.

“Come and join me for a glass of wine in the library, Draco.” It was less an invitation than an order, and Draco nodded, standing.

His mother came to him first, though, wrapped her arms around him, and kissed him hard enough that it left his lips bruised. Draco touched his mouth and looked after her in wonder when she left the room. From her hurried steps on the stairs, he knew she was going up to her music room, where she would presumably play a symphony in gratitude for his survival.

If she was that worried about me, then perhaps she can be persuaded to understand why we can’t just shrug Harry off and forget about him, Draco thought hopefully as he followed his father into the library.

The tables were still crowded with books that his parents had obviously been working through, but Lucius paid no attention to them, beyond clapping his hands and ordering the resulting house-elf to pick them up. Then he sat down on the chair in front of Draco and studied him so keenly that Draco’s dinner curdled in his stomach.

“You cursed me with an Unforgivable,” Lucius said, the first passage of swords in the duel.

Draco returned the gaze calmly. He remembered doing so, and again he had a doubled set of memories: horror and agony, triumph and joy. “You nearly killed the man who, it turned out, saved me.”

Lucius thought about that. Then he turned his hand over. “I find the offenses equal. Can we forget about them?”

Draco bowed his head, but he knew that what Lucius was asking for was essentially impossible. He would, perhaps, forgive his father for trying to kill Harry with one part of his brain; Lucius had been desperate to find the cure, and it was possible that the curse would have faded once Draco no longer had someone to focus his obsession on. With the other part of his brain, he remembered what had happened and regretted only that Lucius had not died under his Unforgivable.

But they couldn’t ignore what had happened, and he was mildly contemptuous of his father for thinking they could. He didn’t say that, of course. He sat still, and sipped the new glass of wine that the house-elf had brought him, and waited for his father to speak of the real purpose in their coming here.

Lucius finished his wine before he spoke again. The fire, newly-lit, flickered on his face. He looked thoughtful. Draco was never sure whether that was bad or not until he heard what Lucius had to say as a result of his thoughts.

“You must know,” Lucius said, looking suddenly at Draco, “that we cannot have anyone suspect that you committed crimes while under the curse. It would destroy your reputation, and I want you to live a full life.”

What does that full life entail? Draco thought, warned by the way his father’s words had trailed off. But he nodded. “Potter said that we would work on that tomorrow,” he said, careful to articulate the name he should choose.

Lucius’s smile was his reward. Draco tried not to contrast it with the one he thought Harry would have given him. “Good. Then the second step can be proceeded to. We must distance you from this curse, Draco. I have read about the lingering effects it has on the brain and personality of the affected for what seems like a week.”

Draco narrowed his eyes. “What do you mean, Father?” he said, careful not to sound accusing. He would need to be careful around his father for some time now; he could see that, simply given the direction of this part of the conversation. “No one has ever cured Nova Cupiditas before. There is no reason to think we know what will happen to me.”

Lucius shook his head. “Forgive me. I meant spells like it, curses that are curable. They linger and create a double set of memories, a double life. Some of the testimony of victims, and about them, says that they were torn apart.”

Draco grimaced and nodded. He could see why traveling between two opinions, two arguments, two voices in one’s head—both the fragments of one personality, but unable to reconcile—might drive someone mad.

“You need a new interest in your life,” Lucius said softly. “One that trades on some of the same obsessions as this curse, one that you ought to have taken up long since. You are going to marry.”

Draco had just put the wineglass down, and he was glad. His hand didn’t tremble, but he would have squeezed it to shards. He shook his head slightly. “Did your reading really say that a regular shag improves one’s chances of survival after a curse like this, Father?”

Lucius didn’t smile. “You do not understand, Draco,” he said, fingers flexing slowly open and closed like the claws of a great cat. “You need a new interest because this curse was sexual. The reading I have done say that usually the curses’ cure, the cure for this obsession and double-sidedness, is to replace the unnatural interest the curse created with one that resembles it, but is natural. For a curse that encouraged constant talking, the recommended cure might be a holiday with talkative friends, or a new pet. For a curse that required constant jerks of the body, taking up Quidditch or some other physically demanding hobby. And so on.”

Draco lowered his eyes and nodded as though he were seriously considering his father’s solution. In fact, he had rejected it without hesitation the moment he heard about it, the center of his brain feeling as though it was pushed up against a wall.

And why should that be? he thought a moment later. I don’t doubt that my father’s magical theory is sound. A wife probably would help me to get over the sexual aspect of the curse that was directed towards Potter. I have to distance myself from Harry, and I know that.

Because he didn’t want anyone else. That was the simple truth, and no matter how much Lucius—or Draco himself—didn’t like it, it still remained true. Draco didn’t feel the overwhelming lust for Harry that the curse had given him when first cast, but he did want to sleep with him. He wanted to touch him, see what it was like to suck him off or be buried inside him, and even, perhaps, experience Harry’s cock up his arse. He didn’t want to share his bed with anyone else. The delicate, refined pure-blood witch with a core of steel that his father would probably look for was especially unsuited.

He needed someone male, passionate, devoted. Someone who had fought beside Draco and risked his life for him. Someone who could look Draco in the eyes, unflinching, after Draco had nearly raped him.

It was the lust that told him that, but the rational part of his brain agreed with his darker half. Too great a rupture from Harry right now would simply doom his attempts to recover.

Draco shook his head slightly. He knew that wasn’t what his father wanted to hear, and, quite honestly, Draco didn’t think it was what he wanted to tell him, either. He lifted his head and looked critically at his father, pondering whether he could survive the shock of hearing the truth.

“You haven’t yet agreed with me, Draco.” Lucius had a sharp smile when he was being threatening, and he wore it now. Of course, he would never offer a simple threat, Draco knew. He loved his son. The threat would come soaked in bribes, wrapped around with temptation. “I hope that you know I’ll offer you a choice of several women? I would never order you simply to marry someone whom you might not favor.”

“I know that, Father.” It was the first simple sentence that had passed between them since they came into the library, Draco thought. He picked up his wine again and took what he hoped was a thoughtful, judicious sip.

Lucius leaned forwards. “But I will order you to marry, Draco. The continuance of our family and your world depends on it. I should have ordered it some time since. You will have stability and someone to share your life as well as someone to help you forget about Potter.”

I never can.

The lust pounded beneath his heart. The jealousy bounded beneath his skin. Draco thought the effects might be temporary, but he wasn’t willing to bet on it, not without more magical help. Of course, that didn’t have to come from Harry. It was possible that St. Mungo’s might be able to do something, now that the greater curse didn’t threaten him, but only a lesser shadow of it. And he could stay away from Harry and hope that the urges would lessen as they didn’t come into physical contact and the memories from the curse’s influence faded.

Could, but don’t want to.

So that was it, then. Draco would have to murmur meaningless nothings to content his father for now, but he was going back to Harry, and he would work out either a permanent solution or—well, a permanent solution. It simply remained to be seen what kind it would be, not whether it would happen.

“I know that you can order me to marry, Father,” he said calmly. “But I have been through not only the cure to the curse today, but also nearly raping Potter, which he was good enough not to hold against me, and rescuing him from the group of Muggleborn fanatics who cursed me in the first place. Can I rest rather than speak with you any more about it?” He stood up from his chair.

Lucius visibly checked a motion to stop him. “What group—” Then he seemed to take a better look at Draco, and ended up nodding. “Of course, son. God knows that you deserve some chance to rest, especially since you now have a future to look forward to.”

Draco gave him a tired smile and clasped his hand in a quick, tight shake before he climbed up the stairs to his bed.

Where he had been since, wondering what he ought to do and reviewing his family’s reception of him. His mother, he thought, might support him. She seemed to have a better sense of exactly how much they owed to Harry. His father wanted simply to get past it, for these things never to have been.

It was an understandable reaction, but not one that Draco could condone.

In the morning, he would see Harry. Draco reminded himself of that and closed his eyes. It was enough. He would force it to be enough.

*

“Harry.” Kingsley Shacklebolt’s face was surprised, but he managed to mask the yawn that threatened to crack his jaws open. “I’m glad to hear from you. And glad to hear that you’ve survived,” he added.

Harry nodded. The gossip would have spread when he left St. Mungo’s with Draco, of course, and Ron and Hermione might have said something to Kingsley, too. “I have a favor to ask, Minister,” he said.

Kingsley blinked. “You know that I’m always happy to do anything I can for you, Harry,” he said, and then smiled. “Is it another Order of Merlin?”

Harry shook his head, though he relaxed enough to smile back. He’d campaigned for a posthumous Order of Merlin for Snape until he managed to pin one on the stubborn git’s portrait in the Headmaster’s office. “No. Actually, I need your word that you’ll seal the record of crimes that someone performed under a curse.”

Kingsley blinked and stared at him. “Harry,” he said softly, at last, sounding as though Harry had knocked the wind out of him. “You can’t—the crimes need to be at least tried, even if we ultimately decide not to convict.”

“There are two things that I can offer you,” Harry said. “The first is that I cured Nova Cupiditas today. I want to share the knowledge with the Ministry, and I’ll offer it to you free of charge and immediately, writing down all my notes—but not if I know that someone who committed crimes because he wasn’t in his right mind is going to be treated like a criminal.”

Kingsley blinked again. Then he said, “That serious, eh? And what’s the other?”

Harry pulled back the fringe over his scar. Kingsley gave him an inquiring, baffled scowl, and Harry, having lowered his voice even further than Kingsley’s had gone, said, “I know that you once said that all Britain owed me a favor because of this scar and what it means. I never called in that favor. I’m doing it now.”

After that, it was all over but the spluttering. Kingsley didn’t like it, but he knew well enough the scandal that Harry could create if he wanted to, and since both Harry and Draco had survived and Harry was willing to testify that he hadn’t been raped, Kingsley’s greatest fears were allayed. He did pale when Harry recounted the murders of the Seekers of Justice, but Harry reminded him that the Aurors hadn’t caught the Muggleborns before now, which might point to some corruption among them, and that they would have the means to reverse Nova Cupiditas for anyone the Seekers of Justice used it on in the future. Kingsley gave in, with bad grace.

The Floo connection closed, and Harry sat back on his heels and shook for a while.

It was done, something he despised himself for. He had never traded on his fame. But he couldn’t bear the thought of Draco suffering for something that hadn’t been his fault, that had been the curse’s violent manifestations, and was Harry’s fault if it was anyone’s. He should have tied up Draco and deprived him permanently of his wand much earlier.

He could give Draco this final gift, to ensure that he could return to his normal life untouched.

But he would still meet Draco tomorrow. To say good-bye.