Chapter Twenty-Seven of 'Nova Cupiditas'- Split Three Ways

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Twenty-Six.

Title: Nova Cupiditas (27/30)
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-Seven--Split Three Ways

Draco stood at the window of his house and idly watched the enchanted image he had chosen for it cycle through its manifestations. First a full moon shone over a pine forest; then the moon waned and set; then the sun rose over the same forest, only now it had turned into a tossing sea that had the same deep greens in the waves that the trees had carried in their needles. The waves faded, fell, and died, and the same cycle repeated, only this time the sun set in splendor so that the full moon could sail out of the rippling red and gold.

Draco tapped his fingers on the sill. He had chosen that image because he liked the way it represented the same beauties coming around again and again. When people mourned and babbled about how quickly beautiful things died, Draco could turn to the image and realize that not everything died. He reckoned it was his version of his father's own obsession with permanence and immortality, the obsession that Draco believed he had really begun following the Dark Lord for, far more than for the promise of a world free of Mudbloods.

And I would never have been this introspective before the curse.

Draco let a faint smile curl his mouth, come, and go. No, he might never have been this introspective, but he also didn't think that the curse had brought him anything new, beyond confusion and desire for Harry. It had merely awakened what had always been there, the way that the sunset revealed the stars that had always been in the sky.

Even the feelings for Harry might have developed in time. He would never know because the Seekers of Justice had cursed him instead of leaving him alone to see if the feelings would grow. But he refused to spend as much time worrying about their origins as he sensed Harry would have liked him to.

I'm not him. He's not me. That's one of the reasons that we'll make such a strong and permanent match.

Then Draco lifted one shoulder in a shrug, irritated at the direction his own thoughts were taking. Even if it wasn't permanent, he still thought it would result in some pretty bloody intense fucking and satisfaction, and that was the important thing right now.

But there were other, less important things that still had to be settled first. Draco turned away from the window and crossed the room to open the door on the far side, the one that pointed most in the direction of Malfoy Manor.

He had certain misconceptions, and preconceptions, to speak to his father about. That conversation might actually be less successful than the one with Harry. Draco had complained about Harry's masochism, but it had helped in the sense that Harry had mostly stood there and taken Draco's words before he started to argue back, because he believed, deep down, that he deserved the blame and the pain Draco was laboring to lay on him.

Lucius would not believe that, and would not be so silent.

Draco felt a thin, confident smile lift the corners of his lips nonetheless as he stepped out of the house. He had been through a hell that most people would never experience. He had fought, and won. (With help, it was true, but Harry could never have succeeded in the first place if Draco hadn't fought the feelings produced by the curse, and then fought for Harry to reconsider instead of slinking quietly away. Do that, and the curse would simply have grown back without anyone to notice it). He was wiser than he had been a month ago, more adult, more wary.

And less inclined to accept a load of bollocks from anyone, even his father.

Draco spun in place and Apparated.

*

"I think you're well off without him, mate." Ron spoke through a mouthful of potatoes, gesturing wildly with the hand that held his wand. Harry winced and prepared to duck if he had to. Ron had been holding onto his wand ever since dinner began, as if he thought Draco would leap out of the dessert at him. "Why would you want him back, anyway? After the kinds of things that Hermione told me he said to you?"

Harry ate his own potatoes and didn't answer. The fact was that, while his friends could listen and sympathize, he wasn't sure that either of them could help him.

Not everything Draco said could be true, surely. Not all the time. How had Harry ever kept a friend or lover for longer than a month if it was?

But he did have to admit that he was a lot more comfortable thinking of Draco as someone unattainable than someone he might be able to fancy and have fancy him back. There was something to be said for keeping him at a safe distance. And yet, Harry didn't know why. Why should having him come closer be so terrifying?

I still fear hurting him.

Into his mind, then, came Draco's retort about how Harry had never learned that hurting someone wasn't unforgivable. Or at least it didn't have to be, which Draco hadn't said but which Harry could extrapolate from his words well enough.

If I hurt him, he might still want me. He might accept an apology rather than some enormous sacrifice to put things right again. He might want to get along with me like someone normal rather than holding me up to another standard just because I once saved the world.

Harry's face burned, and he had to take a hasty drink of water, because the thought was ridiculous. When had Draco ever treated him like someone special because of his fame? That trait, at least, was consistent between his old and new selves, or his personality when Harry had first known him and his personality under the curse. Harry could even look on it as a sign that the curse was really gone, the things that Draco had said to him once he was free of it.

Harry shoveled more food into his mouth and stared at the candle in the center of the table. He thought Hermione had lit it to make the room more cheerful, to fill it with light and flame and the soft smoke that had the smell of cinnamon. At the moment, Harry thought of it as a fire that was burning in his mind and destroying the thoughts that had come before, the stupid and unbelievable ones about Draco wanting to walk away from him and never look back.

Because he saw now that they were stupid and unbelievable, whatever he thought of the source of Draco's feelings.

I couldn't let him go when I did believe that I'd got rid of the curse forever by halving it. Experiences like those do bond people. Maybe not permanently, but I was stupid to think that we would be able to part as if nothing had ever happened.

Harry frowned and dug his fork viciously into his plate. Yes, that part might be right, but that didn't mean he had to accept Draco's words at absolute face value. He was still worried about the curse, especially since Draco didn't seem to be.

Why couldn't we have a friendship, an intense one maybe, instead of fucking? It's not inevitable that we should have to, when the curse gave Draco that idea in the first place. He can claim otherwise all he likes, but I know that he would never have looked at me like that if not for the curse.

Harry sighed, then, as another thought drifted across his mind, hazy as the smoke but as real.

Yeah, he could accept that, maybe, with the passage of time. But I couldn't.

He'd thought too much of Draco's hands on his skin, felt too much of it, to accept a friendship at face value. He couldn't do it honestly, and Draco seemed to want honesty from him. And courage. And real compassion, rather than the kind that would let Harry wallow in the thought of what a nice person he was and what kind of service he was offering to Draco.

He ate another mouthful of potatoes, half-aware that his friends were exchanging exasperated glances over his head. Well, he knew that he wasn't providing good dinner conversation, but they had to know why he was like this, and for once, Harry decided that he would think as long as he needed to, without beating himself up about it and deciding that he couldn't because other people needed his attention.

This is so fucked-up. Any relationship that we'll get out of this is bound to be fucked-up. We'll argue all the time.

That, too, was true. Harry sighed into his food.

And then he paused, blinking. A new thought had come to him, one that he hadn't had before. It sounded almost as if it had been spoken in Draco's voice. Did that mean that he was beginning to see things as Draco saw them?

Does that matter? I could always end the relationship if it was too much.

Harry was shaken enough that he had to push back his plate, stand up from the table with a muttered apology to his friends, and rush into another room where he could pace back and forth, thinking about what he had just decided.

He had literally never thought that he could end a relationship first, at least not without making it the other person's decision as much as it was his own. He had always been so afraid of hurting someone that he had flinched, despite all the growing up he had done or thought he'd done about the war and his profession, away from watching the devastation on someone else's face.

At the same time, he had never questioned the right of anyone else to walk away from him if that was what they wanted or needed.

Harry touched a shaky hand to his forehead and his hair. If he had suddenly awakened with a different face, he wouldn't have been surprised, because surely only that could have sparked this blazing feeling of newness inside him. But no, same old worn scar, same old drooping eyelids. He frowned and shook his head.

Why did I treat myself so differently from anyone else? When did I start thinking my perspective and feelings didn't matter?

He didn't know, but he did know that it would have to stop, and that it was the first solid step he had made towards agreeing with Draco.

Maybe, in time, he would even stop feeling so tentative and ridiculous about it.

*

"You say that the curse is gone this time. Why should I trust your words any more than I did at first?"

Lucius sat facing the fire with his back to Draco. Draco studied the dove-grey material of the chair for a long moment before he answered. He could not afford to lose his temper with his father. It would be too easy for Lucius to then dismiss Draco as a spoiled little boy who threw temper tantrums until he got something he wanted.

"You need not trust me, any more than you trust gravity," Draco said at last. "When you see that a certain thing is real, then you must live with it. I live with the unchangeability of the past and the sudden closeness I gained with Harry because I must. You'll learn to live with them the same way."

As he had hoped might happen, those casual words brought Lucius out of his seat and made him wheel around, eyes flaring and hands clenched at his sides. "You will not speak to me in such a manner," he hissed.

Draco smiled blandly back at him, heart hammering with excitement. He had made Lucius lose his temper instead, and he was unlikely to regain it, with the turn that the conversation would take now.

"Why not? It's not as though you can do anything to me now." Draco began to move slowly to the right, not taking his eyes off his father. He wanted to be sure that he wasn't near anything especially flammable if Lucius lashed out with a spell, and his father sometimes favored fire spells when he was angry. "I've grown beyond you. I have my own independent fortune, even though I've never spent it. I don't have to marry to gain your approval, when that approval is less important to me than my relationship with another. And I have a source of income available to me that I did not have before."

His father squinted at him. "What is that?"

Draco kept his eye on Lucius's fingers, which played over the head of his cane. He knew certain dangerous movements they could make, and wanted to make sure that he didn't miss any of them. "Why, letting the Healers from St. Mungo's study me to see how to get rid of the curse completely. Particularly with Harry's help to see the spell signatures, they might be able to analyze how to Heal Nova Cupiditas in others." He arched his brows. "I would charge them each Galleons for the privilege, of course."

His father looked as if he might have apoplexy at the mere mention of this. His fingers clenched on the cane hard enough to make it dig a furrow in the carpet this time, and he gurgled. When he loosened the clutch of the fury on his throat, he spluttered, "Are you--Draco, you must be mad. I shall look into having you declared dangerous and subject to confinement."

Draco laughed softly at him. This was an even better reaction than he had hoped for. "Why is that?"

"No Malfoy in his right mind would agree to serve as an experimental animal for Healers," Lucius said, his lip curling. "You would rather die than do such a thing if you were sane. Perhaps Potter has cursed you to feel that a relationship with him and the lingering effects of the spell are a good thing, and that is why you are acting so against your character." The mere notion seemed to comfort him, since he was standing up and his face was losing its dangerous color. "Yes, that is what must have happened," he added, sounding as if he was talking to himself.

Draco waited for a moment, curious to feel the effects of his father's declaration on his emotions. If the curse was not completely gone, then he thought he would feel the urge to lunge at him and defend Harry's honor.

Nothing happened, though, except an increase in his weary contempt that felt entirely natural. Draco lifted his head and eyed Lucius back until his coming smile faded.

"You want me to do the same thing," Draco said softly, "except as a breeding and not an experimental animal. What am I to you at the moment but someone who can breed you grandchildren? And you would see them, in turn, only as a continuation of the Malfoy line, not as individuals in themselves."

Lucius shook his head. He looked perplexed now. "You are more important than that, Draco. Of course you are. You are my son."

"But you still value me as the continuation of the line," Draco repeated. "Because I wish to make a different decision, you see that as a betrayal."

Lucius extended one finger to point at him. Draco eyed it warily, but Lucius didn't hold his wand in that hand, so he decided that he didn't have to worry about flames flying towards him in the next few seconds. "That I am willing to see you as my son at all after the way you cursed me argues for a large and healthy tolerance on my part."

Draco controlled his impulse to laugh and nodded earnestly instead. "Yes," he said. "And I am sorry for that."

His father stared at him in astonishment that just increased Draco's hilarity. The best part about apologizing, he thought, is how much it startles people.

"You--mean that," his father said, after a pause in which he seemed to have rolled the apology around in his mouth to see how it would taste.

Draco nodded. "But that doesn't mean that I'll give in and do as you want," he said. "Perhaps I'll marry someday. If the curse has taught me anything, it's that I can't predict the future. But I don't want to marry right now, and I won't do it merely to have children. I will be with Harry instead."

Lucius closed his eyes, but his face was expressive enough to show Draco the complicated mixture of distaste and confusion he was feeling. "Why should that be what you want?" he murmured. "I hardly think that he has treated you the way a Malfoy should be treated."

"It's what I want," Draco said, thinking about the intensity with which the curse had bound him to Harry for a time, and the way he had tortured and killed--willingly--for him. That was still something he wouldn't have done if he had a choice, but the fact that it had happened bound them close. It would take something equally strong to sever the bond. Harry not appreciating him once the curse was gone would do the trick, but Draco didn't yet know if that was going to happen. Deciding to live with uncertainty has all sorts of benefits. "Perhaps someday it won't be. Right now, it is."

"Surely that should be enough."

For a moment, Draco thought he had spoken those words himself. Then he realized that his mother had come into the room behind him and was standing still there, her eyes bright but her face composed.

Lucius gave her a more betrayed look than he had given Draco. "You agree with this--this madness, then?"

"Not all of it," Narcissa said, moving forwards to stand slightly behind Draco. Draco turned so that he could keep both his parents under observation at once. So far, his mother didn't seem threatening, but her support was so unexpected that he didn't know whether it was a mask for something else. "I will undoubtedly think that Draco should give Mr. Potter fewer chances than he will. But this is something that our son wants, and it is hard to see how it could work out to his disadvantage politically. That means he should have it."

Draco contented himself with showing his gratitude by a single bright smile in his mother's direction. Narcissa nodded back, and then glanced at Lucius, who stood staring between them as if both his hands had suddenly refused to do something he wanted them to.

Remember that he lives through you, Draco told himself. It's understandable that he would be upset that his dreams for you aren't working out.

Understandable, but not worrying enough for Draco to let it control the whole of his life. He merely waited, and after some time, his father shifted and glanced away, a sneer working across the corners of his mouth.

"I will postpone the notion of marriage for now," he said. "Believe that I will be awaiting the collapse of your relationship with Potter eagerly."

Draco smiled. He didn't care that his father's concession probably had more to do with his mother's support than Draco's own arguments. Now that he had said something like that, it would be doubly hard for him to take it back.

"Thank you, Father," Draco said, with a very elegant and correct bow, and then turned away and walked towards the dining room. He could use a meal, he thought, to refresh him and prepare him for the battle with Harry he fully expected to have either later today or tomorrow.

"Draco."

Draco paused and glanced back. Lucius had decided, this time, that he should lock one hand into place on his cane and one on the back of his chair. His glare had intensified as a result.

"I will not tolerate him hurting you forever," he said coldly. "If you wish to protect your lover, warn him that he should learn to treat you better soon."

Draco knew that his smile matched his father's glare for coldness and intensity. "I intend to teach him that lesson myself, Father. Don't worry."

*

"But with Malfoy, mate."

Ron just left the sentence there. He didn't need to say more, Harry thought wryly, especially when Hermione's emphatic nodding was doing the talking for both of them. Harry had told them that he intended to try and be with Draco, and both of his friends had been disappointed, although Hermione seemed less surprised than Ron.

"He cursed me," Ron said logically. "He tortured and killed other people. He tried to rape you. And you still want to be with him?"

"Yes," Harry said, although he found himself instinctively avoiding Ron's eyes. It did sound awful, when it was put like that.

But Harry didn't see any way that he could think only about those facts without turning into the martyr that Draco had accused him of being again. How to make up for the murders and the torture? How to make up to Ron for the fact that Draco had hurt him? A few days ago, those questions would have obsessed Harry the moment he took his mind away from the pressing matter of what he was going to do about the curse.

But...

Draco had apologized to Ron. The Seekers of Justice had been people who had cursed Draco and would probably have killed Harry, if they hadn't simply laid Nova Cupiditas on him in turn. And surely it was up to Harry if he wanted to forgive Draco for his actions under the curse, which, yes, had included attempted rape.

Harry shifted in his seat. It was still strange, this idea of a limit to guilt--strange both because it was so alien to the way that he would normally think and act, and because he couldn't believe that he hadn't thought that way before.

Why had he drowned himself in guilt and decided that he was so different from other people? Why had he thought that he couldn't be happy if it meant that one other person might be miserable?

The only answer he could come up with was that he had been so worried he would do something wrong otherwise. And that wasn't good enough. Among other things, it meant that he didn't trust other people to say when they thought something he did was wrong, or to defend themselves.

His ethics and some of his fundamental ideas didn't always work. He would have to adapt them if he wanted Draco.

And he did.

"I just don't understand," Ron said plaintively, rescuing the conversation from silence.

"I do," Hermione said, breaking silence at last. Harry thought it had probably only lasted so long because she couldn't choose which of the thoughts that crowded through her head to voice. "I know that intense emotions can bond people. It can feel as though they can't live without each other after they've been through a war, or a cave-in, or a sojourn in a prison cell. But Harry...it's one thing to read about that in fiction, and another to base your life on it."

Harry took a deep breath. "I know. But if it doesn't work out, then it doesn't work out. I want to try at least."

Hermione blinked. "We don't want to see you get hurt," she said, but she was looking thoughtful.

"I'm going to be anyway," Harry said, smiling at her. "Whether I try to let Draco go or to be with him. This is painful. It started with Nova Cupiditas. There's no other way for it to be. I want to try the route that at least promises some happiness."

"Yes," Hermione said. "Yes, I can understand now."

Ron sighed explosively. "I reckon I can, too," he said. "But Malfoy?"

"That's the way it is," Harry said firmly, "so that's the way it has to be."

I just hope that I can remember that, later.