lomonaaeren

Chapter Twenty.

Title: Nova Cupiditas (21/?)
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 Twenty-One—High-Handed

What is the way that you can know if impulses in your head are yours or coming from a curse?

Draco drew a line on the floor around him with his wand while he thought about that. The line shone red for long moments before it finally faded back to a dull scarlet glow. Draco studied it for some time. The book that had described this particular series of spells hadn’t said that the protective circle should do that.

On the other hand, it had said the circle might look a bit different if the person creating it was under a mind-controlling spell. Draco snorted to himself. He suspected that half the Nova Cupiditas curse still counted.

He sat down on the floor inside the circle, because he didn’t know how long it would take to cast this series of spells, and then checked the door one more time. He’d raised the wards on it before creating the circle, since the whole purpose of the protective circle was not to let magic out, but he could still imagine someone intruding all too easily.

Silence. He was going to keep all of this silent if he could.

Draco turned back to the center of the circle and closed his eyes. He could have brought the book into the center with him, but it had once been a point of pride with him that he could memorize any spells he needed. And he doubted that Harry had needed to look up the spells; the notes he had studied in his lab had a different purpose.

Jealousy drifted through his head like a wandering flame. What is he doing there right now? Who’s with him?

Draco stifled the impulse, with some difficulty, to spring to his feet, dash the circle apart, and go to see, and began to chant instead. The books he’d consulted had suggested that he start the spells when a manifestation of the mind-control spell occurred, and short of waiting for a blast of the lust, Draco couldn’t think of a better time.

The spells were complex, long strings of Latin that wound through his head like chains. Draco had to concentrate on them, but his mind roamed back and forth in the meantime, picking up other images and threading them together.

He could see Harry the way he had seen him today, with his eyes wide and his hands clutching uselessly at the air as though he wanted to reach for his wand but wasn’t sure it was the appropriate response. That uncertainty was his biggest ally, Draco thought. If Harry decided that something was right and he didn’t have to doubt, he would move heaven and earth to make it happen. But he didn’t know at the moment, and so he had to hesitate.

Neither did Draco know. That was what the spells he was chanting at the moment were designed to help him find out.

He saw Harry the way he had looked when he was on the bed in Draco’s private house, trembling on the edge of yielding, his whole face so raw with emotion that it was like staring at an extra layer of nakedness beneath the skin. Draco tried to consider dispassionately what would have happened if Harry had given in, the disasters that would have resulted, but that was hard when lust blazed around the edges of his thoughts and his groin swelled.

Had he lost track of the latest spell? No, he hadn’t. Draco did take a deep breath and go back to concentrating, though. He didn’t want to lose his balance and be forced to repeat the whole series of spells over again.

He could see Harry the way he had looked when he was trying to plead with Draco not to hurt his father, not to hurt the Muggleborn fanatics. Not his finest moment, Draco acknowledged with the rational part of his mind. He could even say that it made him weak and sick with panic and revulsion, and he would be speaking the truth.

But there was still part of him that thought the most important thing was to protect Harry, and couldn’t regret anything he had done in the pursuit of that goal.

Draco shook his head, not hard enough to make him lose track of the spells he was spinning, and kept on chanting. He would do what he could to subdue those impulses, but first he had to understand how deeply they were woven into his brain.

The last syllable passed his lips, and a sharp crack cut across the air. Draco started, but kept his eyes closed. If he looked now, the book had warned, it was possible that he would have to begin over again because he would be so distracted.

The air next to him grew warm, and Draco could see light playing across his shut eyelids, as though the sun was shining in through one of his bedroom windows. Since they were all enchanted and showed only what he wanted them to show, he doubted that was the case. But he had nothing else to do other than control himself, it sometimes seemed, at least when it came to living with the curse, so he sat still and continued to breathe in and out.

He finally heard the sound that the book had told him to watch for: a loud, shrill whistle splitting the air outside the circle, which died down to a sigh. When Draco opened his eyes and saw the shining image in front of him, he let his own breath out in a sigh that nearly matched it. He was more impressed with himself than he had ever been, seeing what he had created just now, on the first try and with no prior training.

The image of his head was near-perfect, threaded with shining strings of red and white. The red represented the effects on his brain from a mind-control spell, and the white represented the spell itself. Draco had expected to see the picture of his head overcrowded with both.

Instead, he saw the white strings clustered in just one spot, towards the front of his brain. What part that was, he had no idea. He would have to do some more reading. But the red strings spread throughout, deepening into dusky or wine-colored shades in certain areas.

Draco smiled sourly. He should have realized. Yes, his actions were influenced by the remnants of Nova Cupiditas, but in such subtle ways that he probably couldn’t say for certain which ones were free and which ones were constrained.

And even if they were influenced, did that mean that he had to stop and interrogate himself every time he wanted to do something?

Harry would probably say yes. Draco could see Harry hesitating forever on the cusp of commitment, worried about damaging Draco, or abridging his free will—although he hadn’t seemed to worry about that when he was on the verge of saying farewell forever, Draco thought sardonically—or raping him.

But if this was right—and he would need to cast more spells to be certain—Draco knew he had only two choices.

One was to spend the rest of his life obsessed, paralyzed, with the study of his own actions. Was he free? Was he a slave? Was he hurting someone else, or himself, or his family’s reputation, or what he could have, with the way he acted?

The other was to accept that he would need a small waiting period before he made important decisions or took important actions. That wasn’t the same thing as deciding that he needed to brood. And if he couldn’t ever be completely sure, well, he would live with that the same way he would have lived with the scars from self-mutilation that he had fully expected the curse to produce.

But will Harry be willing to live with it?

Draco shrugged. At the moment, he didn’t know the answer to that question, and he couldn’t let his speculations control his choices.

But he did know one thing. The curse had changed him. Of course it had. It would have been silly to expect to come out of an experience like that unscathed.

He thought the price of potential uncertainty worth paying for what he had now, and much cheaper than it might have been.

*

“Are you all right?” Hermione asked the moment she saw him step out of the fireplace.

Harry grunted under his breath and made a beeline for the kitchen. He needed to do something to get him over the encounter with Draco, he thought. He wanted to do research, or cast spells, or leaf through his notes and find those fascinating charms that he had written down years before and practice them. But that wasn’t a good idea in the mood he was in right now; he might make something blow up. Brewing potions was out for the same reason, and because Harry never had got that good at them.

But he could cook. He got out a bunch of vegetables that he had more or less randomly collected and placed under a Freezing Charm, and began to cut and chop them. He could have done that by magic, but after a short struggle, he had laid his wand out of reach so that it wouldn’t be a temptation.

“That bad?” Hermione asked from the doorway.

Harry took a deep breath. He wondered how much clearer he could make it that he didn’t want to talk. Ron would have understood, he thought. Or Remus, who had been so gentle that sometimes having him around in the background, talking soothingly, had been the best company that Harry could imagine.

Or Draco.

But Hermione was herself and wouldn’t turn into any of those people, so Harry stepped up what he was doing, because Hermione wouldn’t bother someone who was obviously busy. He thought he heard her sigh, but she also went into the drawing room, and that left Harry alone to make his enormous salad.

When it was made, Harry looked at the bright, clashing colors and realized he had no appetite for it right now. He cast a Freezing Charm, then changed his mind and cast a Stasis Charm instead. Freezing would probably ruin some of those ingredients right now, but Stasis would keep it perfectly intact until he wanted it.

That done, it was time to go into the drawing room and face the Granger Inquisition. Harry dusted off his hands and walked slowly towards her, wondering if he could actually put his feelings into words. He had succeeded in not thinking about it for a while, though, which was all he had wanted when he began the salad.

Hermione looked up at him and gave him a strained smile. “Are you ever going to see him again?” she asked.

Harry blinked. He hadn’t expected her to ask that. He sat down and looked at her, and Hermione did nothing but look, pale and agitated, back at him.

“I don’t know,” Harry finally had to admit. “I don’t think it would be good, because I don’t think he has any concept of how much the remaining curse is still influencing his actions. But he insists that he does, and that—by doubting him, I’m inflicting the same kind of pain on him that the Seekers of Justice did.” He winced when he thought about that. The accusation stung him in the deepest parts of his mind, the ones that had convinced him he had to do the best he could for everyone and that helping Draco was right.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione whispered. “You must know that’s not true. You’re right to be cautious about the things he’s doing as long as the curse remains.”

Harry looked up. “You think I wouldn’t have to if I could find a means to get rid of the curse completely?”

“Well, of course,” Hermione said, blinking a little, as if she hadn’t thought of that particular solution. “But I don’t think you can, and I do think that you should stop beating yourself up about it. You can move past this if you do it slowly. Keep away from him, and then you can’t be hurting him or dictating his choices.”

Harry sighed. “I don’t know if he’ll let me,” he admitted. Perhaps he had been wrong, and Hermione understood him better than he had thought. “And I’m not sure that I could even if I wanted to.”

Hermione did shoot him a quick frown then. “You have to do what’s best for your mental health, of course,” she said dubiously. “But ultimately, don’t you think it would be better for your mental health if you stayed at a distance?”

“Why?” Harry was curious about what she would say. He had run his own arguments through his head so many times that they had grown stale and tired.

“Because,” Hermione said, and made a sweeping gesture with one hand that Harry thought was meant to encompass all the many and varied reasons she couldn’t put words to right now. “He nearly raped you. Can you forget that?”

“I don’t want to,” Harry said. “I want to confront it, and I think the only way I can do that is in his company.”

Hermione sighed and spread her hands wide again. “Fine. I may have phrased myself badly.” That would have been an occasion for Harry to tease her on any other occasion, but now he could only manage a wan smile and wait for the next part of the interrogation. “Can you forgive him? Trying to have a relationship with him is worse than self-destructive if you can’t. And I think there are some crimes that shouldn’t be forgiven. If he used a Dark curse on Ron, then you might—”

“You can’t have it both ways, Hermione,” Harry said impatiently. “Either he’s not in control of his actions and I should stay away from him because I might be hurt, or he knew what he was doing all along and he’s responsible for his crimes, which means that he can also restrain himself.”

“Either way, it means you should stay away from him,” Hermione said, though she had the good grace to blush as she spoke. “I don’t know whether or not to hold him responsible for cursing Ron and trying to rape you. These are serious crimes, Harry, and whether or not he’s charged for them doesn’t really matter. Can you know what he did and look at him without it coming between you? How can you? It might be kinder to leave him behind now than to promise him a future you can’t make with him.”

Harry shut his eyes. She was right about one thing: he could still see Ron and Lucius writhing on the floor under the curses that Draco had cast on them when he closed his eyes. He accepted that Draco had been under Nova Cupiditas and not responsible, but that only turned the blame in a new direction.

Onto him. If he had taken Draco’s wand away and sealed it in a secure place, then those curses wouldn’t have happened. Harry could have dealt with Ron’s antagonism towards Draco and Lucius’s attempts to kill him on his own.

He sighed. He thought sometimes that he was in love with Draco, sometimes that he only pitied him, but either way, he didn’t know what his emotions meant, and this wasn’t a good time to try and figure it out.

“I’ll do the very best I can, Hermione,” he said. “But I can’t leave him with no word, either.”

“Then send him word by an owl or a firecall.” Hermione’s voice was kind, but firm. “I absolutely agree that he needs to understand what you’re doing, so he doesn’t come after you again. But being in his presence seems to affect your brain too much. Doing it from a distance is best.”

Harry shivered. He didn’t want to leave Draco behind, but how much of that was real affection and how much was concern that Draco couldn’t stand on his own because he still didn’t know what effects the torn, tattered half-curse might have?

He didn’t know.

He didn’t know how he would ever live with the uncertainty.

He stood up, shaking his head. Hermione stood up, too, as if she would come with him, but Harry smiled at her in a strained way that made her lift her eyebrows and stare at him. “I’m sorry,” he said hoarsely. “I’m not good company right now. But I think that you should stay here. I have to think it over.”

“From the way I saw you making that salad, thinking it over is the last thing you’ll do,” Hermione said, her face darkening. “You’ll run from it and do something else that occupies so much of your thoughts you have none left over.”

Harry hunched his shoulders and turned away from her, glad when she didn’t pursue him. She might be right, but he didn’t see what else he could do. He needed someone’s help to work through this, but there was no one he would have trusted except possibly Draco—whose help was the last he could have. He should avoid thinking about it until he was more sure, but how was he to become more sure?

I can’t live with this uncertainty.

That was the only insight to come out of this muddle of thoughts that he trusted, and so Harry caught it, grasped it, held it. He wanted certainties to stand on. He knew that he didn’t want to hurt Draco. He knew he wanted to see Draco again. He knew that he couldn’t stand to love Draco if his feelings turned out to be delusions, much less self-delusions.

He would tell that to Draco the next time he saw him, and ask if Draco had any good way of differentiating his actions under the half-curse from the actions he would naturally have taken in the situation.

Harry suspected that he knew what the answer would be.

*

“I need your decision on the matter of your marriage soon, son.”

Draco raised his head and regarded his father across the breakfast table. Lucius had a faint, polite smile on his lips, but Draco didn’t think it would stay polite for long. He was too obviously looking for the scroll and the photographs that he had given Draco the day before.

“I have made one,” Draco said, and dabbed carefully at the bits of egg left on his lips with his napkin before putting the plate aside. Lucius waited until the plate had vanished with its attendant house-elf before he leaned forwards and gazed at Draco searchingly.

“You seem more confident this morning,” he remarked.

“I am.” Draco remembered that vision of the red and white of the spell coiling through his head. I’m always influenced. I’m always making decisions that may not be completely free, because of that bloody curse. I’ll always have to question myself and wonder how much of what I’m doing, thinking, feeling, saying is real.

But he was wise enough to know that that had always been true. He was always in danger of doing something because of his father’s influence, or to please his parents, or because he wanted to avoid a confrontation, or because of the twisted ideals the Dark Lord had tried to implant in his followers, or because he didn’t have all the information about the circumstances that he would need to make a totally unbiased decision. The curse was different, and it had changed him differently, but complete freedom was an illusion.

He wondered if that would be easier for him to accept than it would be for Harry. Harry had had the idea that he could affect the whole world, that his free choice to confront the Dark Lord and defeat him would change things for the better. Draco didn’t think he would entertain the notion that Gryffindor House or his friends had probably influenced him as much in making that choice as his own innate goodness.

Not that his innate goodness isn’t pretty bloody strong, Draco thought with a faint smile.

“Draco. You said that you had made a decision.”

Draco blinked and looked up. Lucius was by now leaning forwards as if he would rise from the chair. Draco hadn’t realized that he was that dependent on Draco’s words, or that irritated by his silence.

“Yes,” Draco said. “I’ve chosen not to marry any of those women right now. Perhaps I will eventually.” It was always possible that his relationship with Harry wouldn’t work out, or that Harry would be unable to bear the uncertainty that Draco had embraced. Or he wouldn’t explain himself well enough, or something unrelated would split them apart down the road. Draco couldn’t see all the possibilities. He could only live with what he had decided was acceptable.

His father went still, and Draco would have known from that stillness, if he hadn't suspected it already, that his answer was the wrong one. The difference was that he had decided not to allow his father to influence him more than was absolutely necessary, such as the way that he was influenced simply by having Malfoy as a last name. Draco reached out a hand, and the house-elf had a glass of water ready and waiting for him by the time that his arm finished extending. Draco sipped from it, savored the clink of ice against his lips, and waited.

"You must choose now," Lucius said. He said it gently, as if he assumed that Draco would be more inclined to pay attention if he did that.

"Why?" Draco asked, looking up. "My name was recently in the papers as a victim of Nova Cupiditas. They won't be expecting any miraculous recovery right now, any marriage proposal. There's no reason that I can't wait a short time and find out what happens. Perhaps some of the families you wanted me to marry into will reveal their true qualities in their reaction to the news."

"Their quality is already assured." Lucius was speaking through grinding teeth, but Draco saw no reason why he should allow that to influence him. "As Potter's lack of quality is."

Draco nodded, unsurprised. He would have been far more upset if he had ever assumed that his father had another motive for the marriage, but he didn't. "Ah. So being an acknowledged hero and a clever research wizard and the man who saved your son is not enough for you to welcome him as a son-in-law."

Lucius's face shifted like a winter sea stirred by the wind. "You do not understand, Draco," he murmured at last. "The family is larger than the individual. He cannot give you children. He cannot bring you money."

"His body and his soul are all the wealth he needs," Draco said.

"And you cannot be sure that you are reacting to him free from the trammels of the curse," Lucius said, with the undertone of someone trying to reason with the mentally ill. "That must matter to you. Why would you want to sleep with someone merely to please the magic that constrains you?"

Draco's body burned with fiery ice at the thought of sleeping with Harry, but he thought he kept that off his face. He thought he did. "Why should I want to sleep with someone merely to please you?" he asked.

"I forbid it," Lucius said.

"If you're worried that he'll bring charges against you for trying to kill him, you need not be," Draco said in a bored tone as he rose to his feet. He didn't intend to listen to his father much longer. He intended to find Harry and learn what he had decided, and what he thought of Draco's decision. "He has already made some sacrifices to ensure that I won't be persecuted for what I did under the curse. He wants me left alone, and that will include my family."

"Perhaps that wish means that you should leave him alone?" Lucius asked, visibly grasping at straws.

Draco paused and gave him a cruel smile. Lucius didn't flinch, but his hold on his cane grew a bit more desperate.

"I choose not to relinquish anyone whom I want and who hasn't specifically asked to be left alone," Draco said. "Harry hasn't asked that. He is constrained by his guilt for not doing something before. But he hasn't refused. I am going to find out if he will."

He left. Lucius didn't shout after him, because he wasn't that undignified.

But Draco knew the choices were good that he would have to face a battle later.

He smiled and shook his head. Compared to the battle he would have to fight with Harry, he doubted that that struggle would be worth recording.