Chapter Nine of "Forgive Those Who Trespass"- Rescuing the Rescuer

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Nine—Rescuing the Rescuer

Harry forced himself to relax as the Malfoys gathered around him with the knives. He thought he recognized them, or at least their general shape; they were made for cutting and tearing flesh, not with surgical neatness but with pain and the tendency to leave scars. If he tensed up when they cut him, as his Auror instructors had taught him during the instructive sessions on the typical tactics of Dark wizards against captured Aurors, then he was likely to suffer twice the pain, which would be detrimental to any effort at escape.

His hand clenched on his wand, hidden under the fall of his robe sleeve. With as firmly as the two Malfoys behind his chair held him, though, he knew he wouldn’t be able to move it in any pattern, even though he could perform some spells nonverbally.

The first Malfoy, whom Harry thought might be the one he’d cursed, held up a knife in front of his eyes. Then he turned and held it up in front of Draco’s.

“Don’t hurt him,” Harry snarled, surging upright hard enough to make his wooden foot clunk against the bottom of the chair. For a moment, he dared to hope he could wrestle free, but the Malfoys just readjusted their grip and held him until the pressure made his tendons creak.

The first Malfoy didn’t hurt Draco. He just held up the knife until he seemed satisfied that Draco comprehended it and what its purpose was, and then turned and cut down Harry’s chest with a single smooth movement.

Harry sucked in a breath and closed his eyes. The cut stung, and a moment later he winced as the pain slid deeper and deeper into his torso. He wouldn’t put it past the Malfoys, or the Unspeakables, who were ultimately responsible for this, to have enchanted the knives with pain-causing curses. Or perhaps it was just the barbs, which had traveled too fast to stick in his skin, that hurt so much.

He heard a brief struggle from the other side of the room, and opened pain-hazy eyes to see Draco pulling against the hands that held him, his face frantic.

Harry tried to smile reassuringly, but he barely had a chance before the knife came back again, and cut another wound parallel to the first one. A horrible vision of himself so carved that he simply fell apart like a piece of meat came to Harry. He swallowed and then yelped as the knife made another cut, this one on his forehead, perilously close to his eyes. A flap of skin hung down into his line of sight, and he grimaced. Head wounds were as likely to blind him with blood as to knock him unconscious.

Draco struggled again. Harry peered at him instead of watching the knife—he didn’t think he was that brave—and saw Draco’s face twisted, his eyes narrowed in that calculating look again.

Trying to figure out why they’re doing this?

It was a good question, and one that Harry would have liked to know the answer to himself. He wrapped his hands together in the folds of cloth around his waist and breathed shallowly as the fourth cut opened a slice along his arm. That one bled so freely he thought it must have hit a vein directly.

The Malfoys kept cutting him. Harry locked down as much of his mind as possible, and endured. He’d gone through concentrated pain like this before, when Dudley and his friends pursued him at school—that had been compounded by the laughter of other kids as they watched—or when Voldemort used his Cruciatus on him in the graveyard. In those circumstances, he’d had to be up and ready to move as soon as possible, no matter the pain he was in. The same thing would probably happen this time.

There came an impressive crash.

Harry blinked his eyes open. Draco had dragged a leg free from his captors’ hold and lashed out to catch a poker that stood near the fireplace. It had fallen over, and all the Malfoys were turned around and blinking stupidity at him. Harry tensed. Was it now? Should he move?

But he still couldn’t find the laxness in the hands holding him that he would need.

Draco lifted his chin and splayed his own shortened fingers, pointing at his chest. Then he nodded emphatically when the Malfoys made little inquiring sounds in their throats, and went on nodding until the Malfoy holding the knife on Harry blinked and backed off.

Harry shook his head to clear blood from his eyes and watched closely as the Malfoys crowded around Draco. They were touching him with the same wonder they had shown in the room with the Pensieve, their eyes huge and glistening.

“What did you do?” Harry croaked.

Draco reached for the communication sphere, which the Malfoys let him have; they seemed oddly solicitous of him, though they still held him so he couldn’t rise from the chair. Me, he tapped on the facets. Maze. Free will.

“Yes, I know that—“

Draco shot him an irritated glance, like someone interrupted in the midst of a speech, and went back to tapping out his message. Torture you. Because of me. Maze. Free will.

Harry understood then. The Malfoys had tortured Harry until Draco agreed to become the sacrifice for the maze of his own free will. It seemed they wanted to complete the work the Unspeakables had begun.

“What part of ‘you’re weak and unable to run very far on your own’ did you not understand?” Harry raged at him.

Draco quickly selected Small and simple-minded fool from his list of sarcastic phrases, and Harry swallowed. Yes, all right. So Draco could easily have pretended compliance to fool the Malfoys.

“And—“

You, wand, Draco chose. The Malfoys chuckled as if he had made a good joke. Harry wondered if they could understand, but he doubted they would still be stroking Draco’s hair and shoulders admiringly if they could.

“All right,” Harry whispered.

Draco glanced up at the Malfoys and adopted a hopelessly innocent expression of suffering martyrdom that Harry had to admit had at least improved since Hogwarts, when he had tried to convince everyone that Buckbeak had almost taken off his arm. The copies holding him released him. He rose carefully to his feet, then beckoned imperiously to the Malfoys holding Harry. Their hands sprang away from Harry like suddenly severed shackles.

Harry was ready.

He rose and whirled on the Malfoys, pointing straight at the knives first. The Malfoys were dangerous in their sheer numbers as well as their immortality, but he would be humbled before Draco before he’d leave weapons in their hands. Calling on his memories of Transfiguration class, he transformed the knives into feathers.

The Malfoy who had cut him stared at his hand for a helpless moment, and Harry seized the chance to do something that Auror Gillyflower had always told him specifically not to do. He Transfigured the Malfoy into a chicken, who flapped his wings and stretched his neck with a long crow as though the sun was rising in front of him.

He made a handsome rooster, Harry thought dazedly. Of course, a Malfoy, even a copied one, would expect no less.

The others began to rush at him then, one of them seizing the poker from the fireplace, another taking up a heavy glass paperweight from one of the tables in the background, the rest relying on their hands. Harry dropped out of the way, into a crouch in front of the chair, which made him wince as his wounds tore open but also caused the one holding the poker to bash in the head of the one with the paperweight. The rest of the Malfoys stared, seeming torn between laughter and outrage, and Harry Transfigured the two armed ones into chickens, too.

That left seven Malfoys, who promptly reoriented on Harry, and who only gave him a moment’s respite by getting in each other’s way.

Harry dived under the table behind the chairs, ramming his leg on its leg. His motion dashed half the birdcages off the table, which made some doors fly open and added canaries and parakeets to the general chaos of the room. A few of the Malfoys must have stopped, maybe confounded by the mess or attempting to recapture the birds, because Harry heard the footsteps pursuing him lessen.

A pair of powerful hands grabbed him and attempted to drag him back into the open.

Harry whirled around. Sure enough, a single Malfoy was crouched behind him, frowning fiercely, and he yanked on Harry’s leg again, which made yet more of the wounds tear open and rippled blood into Harry’s eyes.

Perhaps that was the reason why his Transfiguration wasn’t so successful this time. It produced a rather large chicken with flesh-colored plumes. But it didn’t have hands or the size to hurt him, and that was all Harry cared about. Besides, the main problem with Transfiguring humans into animals—the concern that it might hurt them unless done by an expert—hardly applied here. Even if Harry hurt the Malfoys in the Transfiguration, they wouldn’t die.

He scrambled up onto the table and then leaped high, trying not to notice the pain that assaulted him any more than he would notice hits from the Bludgers in Quidditch. His fingers locked on the edge of a shelf, and he hauled himself higher, his legs swinging. Of course, someone else seized his leg, and this time the tug precipitated him right down on top of a struggling body, which simultaneously tried to strangle him and break his wand.

Harry, acting on sheer instinct, yelled, “Magna!”, the same spell he had used against the shadow-wolf, and flicked the wand in the limited motion that was all he needed.

He shut his eyes as fierce light stormed the room, and the Malfoys screamed. The one under him stopped trying to kill him and put his hands over his eyes. Another swift Transfiguration, and the chicken strutted away and Harry came up, squinting fiercely, scanning for his enemies.

Four of the Malfoys were staggering in circles, mewing and burping pitifully. The last one had an arm around Draco’s throat and was staring in Harry’s direction with a deeply satisfied expression on his face, even given his shut eyes.

Harry growled in the back of his throat and acted without thinking. “Imperio!” he shouted.

Nothing happened. Harry bitterly regretted his stupidity a moment later; the things were mindless, so of course an Unforgivable Curse to control the mind wouldn’t work on them. And neither would the Killing Curse, since they were immortal of body.

But he had seen they weren’t immune to magic. And the light spell proved they were not immune to pain.

The Malfoy began to strangle Draco.

A surge of hatred, fury, and desire to make the thing stop welled up in Harry and collided with other emotions—the pain from his wounds, the worry over his friends, and his utter frustration with the Unspeakables for creating the maze in the first place. Harry aimed his wand at the Malfoy, carefully over Draco’s head, and spoke the word with enjoyment he wouldn’t bother to deny to himself. “Crucio.”

The Malfoy went straight into convulsions, screaming like a stepped-on cat, and his arms fell free of Draco. Draco had to catch himself with one hand on the chair, but at least he was agile enough to do that, and smart enough to make straight for the sound of Harry’s voice, even if he didn’t dare open his eyes yet.

Harry quick-stepped around the overturned table and birdcages to come up to him, and looped an arm around his waist when Draco reached him. Draco leaned on his shoulder and pressed his wrist hard with one hand. Harry nodded, though he knew Draco couldn’t see the gesture, and Transfigured two more of the Malfoys running in circles. Then he lifted the Cruciatus Curse on the other Malfoy, but he was a rooster so quickly that it turned out not to matter.

That left two Malfoys, both of whom could see now in the quickly dimming room. They faced Harry with snarls on their faces. Their eyes were so narrow that Harry wondered how he could have thought them innocent. He controlled the temptation to hurt them, just because he knew they would have hurt Draco if they had the chance. They were stumbling towards him, perhaps too angry to recognize the danger his wand was.

Flick, and one was a chicken. The other wobbled to a stop and stared, then began backing away from Harry with his hands in the air.

To Harry, that was irrelevant. He’d still participated in this, and for all Harry knew, if he left one in human shape, he would chase them through the maze and try again. He Transfigured that one with positive glee.

Then he slumped over, breathing heavily, the adrenaline and the rage leaving him in one comprehensive rush. He spent a moment wondering dismally what Hermione would think of him, using the Unforgivable Curses again, and this time without the context of war to excuse and support them.

Should he feel wretched? Should he think less of himself? There were other spells that probably would have worked.

Except he hadn’t been able to think of them. Maybe Hermione would say that the most worrying thing wasn’t his use of the Unforgivables, but that he had turned to them so instinctively.

An elbow nudged him in the ribs. Harry looked up, blinking. Draco was reaching for his chest.

“It’s all right,” Harry told him. “It’ll scar, but it’s not as bad as it looks.”

Draco gave him a patiently disbelieving glance, and then began to mouth something. Harry squinted, and shook his head again when blood ran into his eyes. Draco visibly clucked his tongue, though with no sound, of course, and repeated the motion with his lips, until Harry finally understood he was mouthing the incantation for a comprehensive healing charm.

“Uh, yeah,” he said, blinking as he held the wand towards his torso. “I reckon I’d have got to that sooner or later.”

Draco rolled his eyes.

“Did they hurt you?” Harry added, when the worst of the cuts on his chest were taken care of and the skin on his forehead had been sealed back into place. There was still the cut on his arm, but he’d have to move his wand to his left hand in order to heal that one.

Draco shrugged, then pulled back his ragged robes to show a few bruises on his shoulders. Bruises were the worst of it, Harry surmised.

“Still, I can heal that.”

Draco shrugged again, as if to say he wouldn’t object, and held still while Harry touched the tip of the wand to his bruises and made them vanish. Then Harry shifted his wand to his left hand and promptly commenced struggling with the spell. His weaker hand wasn’t as good with the wand movements, and besides, they were all backwards from normal. He concentrated fiercely on healing the cut on his arm, and finally a cool wash closed over the wound and he felt the skin knit—awkwardly, jaggedly—back together. He sighed with relief and worked his limbs one by one, then bent and touched his toes, estimating how much mobility he still had and whether he needed another healing spell. No, he thought. The Cognosco was still working on him, which was probably why he had understood Draco’s plan in the first place and been able to see so well under the influence of Magna.

A chicken stalked towards him. Harry kicked it idly away. It ruffled its feathers and went.

“Now.” Harry glanced dubiously at the shelves surrounding the room. “Is there anything useful here?” He had no idea what, if anything, Draco remembered from these books. There could be something useful simply because this appeared to have been one of the Unspeakables’ centers of research. On the other hand, if Draco remembered nothing, digging through the archive until they hit something could waste valuable time. Harry swallowed some more regret that Hermione wasn’t with him.

He turned back to see Draco shrugging. Harry nodded resignedly. “How much time do you think we should spend looking?”

Draco appeared to consider, then tapped the communication sphere. A day.

“A resting and eating period, then?” Harry grinned. “Well, that’s fine.” He felt himself becoming impatient with restlessness already—he would rather be moving and fighting—but he had to acknowledge that walking away in this case was rather like ignoring a room full of weapons because you didn’t know exactly what enemies you would be facing.

He bent down to retrieve their satchel. “By the way,” he added, now that he was no longer looking at Draco and thought he was less likely to sound pathetic when he said it, “thank you for saving my life.”

A warm hand clasped his shoulder. Harry thought it would squeeze and move away. It didn’t. It stayed right where it was, and Harry knew Draco was waiting for Harry to rise and face him. It was another forcing of intimate moments, just as when they’d shared the blankets together and the hug after they escaped the room of the giant bone-creatures.

Harry stood up slowly, not trying to dislodge the hand. Draco’s gaze caught him again. Harry wished, sulkily and privately, that Draco had his voice then, and not to make communication easier. Everything seemed so much more profound when expressed by a person who couldn’t talk. If Draco had had a voice to snipe and snap, or even just to say that Harry’s thanks weren’t particularly welcomed, then Harry would have known how to react.

Draco gave a small, mysterious smile a moment later, as if he had overheard Harry’s thoughts and were just as glad he couldn’t talk. Then he turned to the chairs and gestured Harry to the nearest one. Harry raised an eyebrow at him. “I’m perfectly healed, I assure you. I wouldn’t hide wounds.” He didn’t add that he would have liked to, and probably would have if Draco hadn’t seen them made and if Draco didn’t have to be able to trust him to be in good physical condition.

Draco rolled his eyes at him again and folded his hands under his cheek, closing his eyes. He wanted Harry to sleep.

Harry shook his head, remembering his earlier vow that Draco wouldn’t get to guard his sleep until Harry was more confident in him. “No, thanks. I cast the Awareness Charm on myself earlier. I doubt I’ll sleep for another ten or so hours at least.”

Idiot Gryffindor, Draco settled for saying, and flopped down on the chairs himself to resume his interrupted nap. At least he didn’t insist that Harry join him this time. Harry spent some time feeling grateful for that, then pulled open the satchel and meditatively prepared himself some kippers.

Why had the Malfoys been so insistent about Draco assuming his place as the foundation of the maze? After all, his transformation hadn’t worked the first time, so why had they assumed it would work the second time?

Then it was Harry’s turn to roll his eyes. It was a bit much to think of the Malfoys as assuming anything. They’d been mindless. They’d probably become fixated on the notion of the maze, especially if they really had been created to be Draco’s replacements at first. When Draco pretended to be willing, they accepted their good fortune without looking further.

But why had the Unspeakables wanted to sacrifice Draco? Was it the mere fact of his betrayal, because he was there and convenient? Was it a matter of vengeance for that betrayal? Was there some other quality about him that had made him an ideal candidate for the sacrifice?

Harry had no idea.

And, come to think of it, if Draco’s knowledge of the making and purpose of the maze had come from his regained memories, why had he waited until they were in this room to share it with Harry? Why not the moment he got the memories back, when he had to be full of them and he had to know that Harry would be a willing and sympathetic audience?

Harry sighed and leaned against the wall between the bookshelves, idly watching a freed canary pecking at the spines of the books in search of something to eat. His own research had to be in figuring out the motives for Draco’s action and judging them, it seemed. How much should his lack of understanding damage the trust he had built up in Draco?

For right now, he decided at last, a cautious posture was still best. He wouldn’t accuse Draco; he also wouldn’t trust him to guard Harry’s sleep alone. Judicious use of Cognosco and regular meals should keep him from having to sleep for quite some time. Hopefully, by the time he collapsed, he would have found information that would enable him to make some final choice about Draco.

As to how he would free Draco from the maze…

Harry munched the kippers thoughtfully. There was one particular and permanent solution he had immediately thought of. He was a little surprised Draco hadn’t thought of it, too. But maybe constantly dwelling in the middle of his situation, and hearing from the Unspeakables that there was no way out, had deadened his ability to look beyond it.

Harry just didn’t know if he wanted to try that solution, yet. He would need more information, more certainty that it would actually destroy the Unspeakables’ plans instead of accomplishing what they had wished for all along.

Draco’s arms soon appeared over the back of his chair, thrashing in the midst of a nightmare. Harry hurried over to him and embraced him around the shoulders, calming him down. This time, Draco simply let his head roll to the side and rest against Harry’s instead of waking up.

Harry closed his eyes. Suspending judgment for the moment and giving Draco what he needed, while being wary of what he might become or learn in the future, was painful and exhausting.

Maybe I’m more right than when I did nothing but judge him, though. I can hope.

Chapter 10.