Chapter Eighteen of 'Forgive Those Who Trespass'- The Fifth Pensieve

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Eighteen—The Fifth Pensieve

Harry halted a few steps away from the fifth Pensieve on its pillar of rib bone. He had come near enough to see the shadow of the letters at the base—ex—and the full, shimmering glow of the basin. But he saw no reason to go with Draco into the memories this time. If this Pensieve followed the same pattern as the others had, this one would hold images of Draco torturing other people and acting like a fool. He would surely prefer privacy to confront them. And now that Harry knew he could trust him, why should he intrude?

Draco continued forwards alone, and then appeared to notice that Harry’s footsteps no longer echoed along with his. He turned and tossed Harry a single, intensely annoyed look.

“Well,” Harry said, and then found he didn’t have the words after all. Or, at least, the words that sounded so good in his head would sound stupid when he spoke them aloud. He coughed. “I mean, you don’t really want me to see this, do you? I had to see it before, because I had no idea what kind of man you were. But I trust you now, and—“

His voice trailed to a stop, because Draco had stalked a few steps nearer, and his eyes reminded Harry of a maddened werewolf’s. He probably was trying to growl, though of course Harry could hear nothing. He shook his head twice, as much to announce to the watching world that some people were idiots, and then grabbed the communication sphere and held it up suddenly enough to make Harry flinch. His fingers said, Why?

“Why what?” Harry blinked.

Why are you an idiot?

Harry folded his arms. “Excuse me for trying to give you some privacy,” he snapped, feeling his skin prickle up and down his spine. He didn’t really want to argue with Draco, but at least doing that was easier than acknowledging what had passed between them in that section of tunnel. “I thought you would want to choose what I saw, instead of my just forcing myself into everything—“

Why? Draco’s fingers asked again. It was amazing, how the sound of his hand tapping the globe and the force of his stare had the ability to shut Harry up as effectively as any voice.

“Because I didn’t give you the choice before.” Harry rubbed his forehead and sighed. He almost wished his scar did hurt. It would be a welcome distraction from this confrontation he really didn’t want to face, but which Draco wouldn’t let him escape from. “Look, I’m sorry. If you want me to come with you, I will. I just wanted to give you the choice this time—“

Draco gave him a single freezing look, and whirled around, stalking towards the Pensieve. Harry winced and trailed after him. He could translate that look well enough. You didn’t give me the choice when I really wanted it.

Harry rubbed his forehead again. He knew he could explain things to Draco if he could just find the words. But he’d never been particularly eloquent.

Together, they halted in front of the Pensieve, and Harry cast the Sticking Charm to bind his feet to the floor almost absently. He glanced at Draco, who raised an eyebrow and gave him a single nod, so aristocratic Harry felt a little shiver of—

Well, he could call it desire to himself at least. That didn’t mean he had to act on it. After all, if things fell out as he now suspected they would, he wouldn’t have the chance to do anything. What he felt was still wrong, still not what he wanted, but what he felt mattered less than how he acted.

He cast the Sticking Charm on Draco’s feet, and then they lowered their heads into the Pensieve.

*

This room was painfully bright. Harry blinked and squinted and fought the temptation to shield his eyes. The Unspeakables seemed to favor either unbroken darkness or unvarying light. He had no idea why. If it was meant to disconcert prisoners, still, it couldn’t be very comfortable for them.

In the center of this room, on a raised platform crackling with wards that looked as if they would incinerate her should she step off, sat a young woman with hair so long and tangled and dirty that Harry could only surmise she was another Azkaban prisoner. There was no way to tell the color of that hair, either; it simply resembled a living mane of ground-in dirt. She wore a tattered gray robe, and sat with arms wrapped around her knees, head bowed over them, spine arching like a hedgehog’s. Harry shivered in intense pity. He had felt that urge to crawl and cower into himself; he was feeling it now, whenever he thought too long about what had happened between him and Draco.

Draco leaned heavily against his side. Harry put an arm around him before he realized what he was doing, and then it was too late to retract the gesture. From what he could see just by peering at Draco’s profile, the other man was pleased, a faint smile curving his lips, but he kept his gaze centered on the filthy girl, so Harry did, too.

The past Draco stepped out of the shadows. He had all of his fingers and he walked in such a way that Harry knew he must have all his ribs. His lip was curled in a sneer as he looked at the girl. Harry wondered idly if he could have considered her so beneath him if she were properly washed.

“You have had your chance,” the past Draco said softly. “It’s been explained to you, over and over, that willing participation in a few of the lesser spells would win you your freedom and the thanks of thousands of witches and wizards. Yet you still drag your feet. Can you blame us, then, for dragging you in turn?”

The girl brought her head up with a gasp. Harry flinched. Her face was covered with a crusty mask of mucous, blood, dirt, and liquid that might have been any of the three. “You had every chance to realize what they’re doing,” she said. “Don’t you realize that what they’re doing is wrong?”

She surged to her feet on the last word and reached out as if to shake her fists at the wards. The past Draco raised an eyebrow and sighed, staring at her until she once again collapsed in the center of the platform. Her legs looked too weak to hold her up, Harry thought, keeping a tight grip on his emotions. She had been starved for a long time in Azkaban, and the Unspeakables could hardly have fed her much more.

“What we are doing is not wrong,” Draco said, “not when it will bring immense benefit to so many people—“

“You know the Unspeakables are going to keep it for themselves!” the girl screamed, throwing her head up again. “They’ve told you as much! Why do you still spout this rhetoric of benevolence? You know it’s wrong! But I forgot,” she continued in a mumble, dropping her face to her knees again. “You don’t care about anything as long as you get your Dark Mark removed.”

The past Draco’s face had hardened. Harry watched it and wondered for a moment whether he really thought he was fooling anyone. Contempt or boredom would have satisfied Harry that he truly didn’t care; lack of an expression meant he was fighting his emotions.

Of course, maybe I only know that because I can read Draco’s face so well.

“I think I don’t have to listen to the words of a prisoner, Marcellina,” the past Draco murmured. “And I don’t have to be kind, either. I only tried because it was the disinterested wish of my heart. But if you really don’t want this—“

“You’re just like the rest of them,” Marcellina whispered. “You have every chance to realize it’s immoral, and you’re still ignoring it.”

“I grow tired of this,” Draco announced loftily, and swished his wand. An iron harness appeared around Marcellina’s neck, and she raised her head with a small gasp. A muzzle, fitted inexpertly to the lines of her nose and jaw, locked her lips together and prevented her from speaking.

“You can at least be silent about my personal attributes, if you cannot praise them,” Draco said, and turned away. His face was expressionless again as he passed out of the room. Watching him, Harry thought that Marcellina was right. He must be uneasy with what the Unspeakables were doing, but he pushed away the realizations, argued that they didn’t exist, and refused to face them. This man was far more contemptible than the man who had gone along with torture because the Unspeakables had his family and friends under surveillance.

The memory dissolved into darkness. Harry felt Draco shift restlessly under his arm, and suspected the other man rather wanted to get a glimpse of his face, which wasn’t possible at the moment. Harry patted his side soothingly, and then winced as his fingers sank into flesh as soft as a fungus.

That Draco is not this one. He has learned better, even if the learning only came through suffering—and perhaps whatever happened to Pearl. And if I have to endure more memories of him behaving like a prat, at least I know that he changed his mind in the end.

The next memory took them into a room that made Harry’s skin crawl just standing in it. The ceiling dipped overhead, monstrously close; Harry thought he could have reached up and brushed it with his fingers, not even straightening his elbow fully. To make it worse, enclosed iron lamps hung on chains from it, causing Harry to strain not to duck as he and Draco worked their way towards the center. Once again, this room was dim, lit only by the smoldering coals of a fire; none of the lamps looked as if they had been used in centuries.

The past Draco sat at a large wooden table, his hands alternately playing with an open book and a knife. Harry tried to catch a glimpse of the cover of the book, but the other Draco refused to lift it, and of course Harry’s hand passed right through it when he reached out.

His Draco took his wrist and shook his head. Harry glanced back at him, and found Draco looking like a frog trying to swallow a fly. He gave Harry a sharp nod, and Harry understood. When the memory returned fully to Draco’s head, he would know the title of the book. They could wait to find it out.

Harry turned back to the past Draco in time to see him slam the book shut and stand, cursing viciously under his breath. He began to pace in a circle around the table, now and then looking towards the fire. He never, Harry noticed, glanced at the center of the room.

Well. That’s the next natural place to look, then.

It seemed his Draco agreed with him. Together, leaning on each other’s arms and shuffling more than was necessary, they turned around.

Marcellina lay there, stretched. Harry was sure there was some technical term for what the Unspeakables had done to her, but he didn’t know what it was, and he doubted he could have stood there and listened to an explanation of it. Her arms were pulled out above her head and extended to the sides, her legs pulled out until her ankles almost met her wrists. Her head was arched at such an unnatural angle that Harry could hear her struggling to breathe. There was a faint but persistent creaking from her, too; Harry wondered if it came from the wooden frame that held her or her bones.

Abruptly, she screamed, and one of her arms spasmed violently. Harry closed his eyes. One of her bones had broken, then.

His Draco leaned against him, using a stillness that was worse than shivering, and reminding him that he was not the only one affected by the scene. And since he could hardly do anything for Marcellina or the past Draco now, Harry turned to comfort the one person he could. He kept his hands in light, constant motion, up and down Draco’s arms, up and down from the base of his neck onto his spine, murmuring endearments when he thought he could get away with it. Telling him not to watch was useless; telling him that it would be over soon wouldn’t lessen the horror. Variations on his name were the safest and best words to use.

The past Draco had briefly paused when Marcellina’s arm broke, but had forced himself to pace on. Then he sat down and picked up his book again, staring at it with a rigid concentration that Harry knew well from the times he had tried to convince Hermione that he really was studying for his N.E.W.T.’s and not just fucking off.

Hermione. Harry was wildly glad that he wouldn’t have to see her in Draco’s memories, that she and Ron had been kidnapped well after Draco had performed these crimes. He really didn’t know how he could have maintained his compassion for the man by his side if he’d seen his friends here.

A door Harry couldn’t really make out opened on the far side of the room, and Richard ducked in. He walked over to Marcellina first, and crouched down, staring at her broken arm and shaking his head slightly. Then he touched his wand to the wooden frame and adjusted it. Marcellina gave an exhausted little whimper. Harry doubted he had done something to make her more comfortable.

Richard went over to Draco next. He didn’t demand attention, but simply leaned on the table and gave him a friendly, waiting look until Draco slammed down his book and glared at him. Harry felt his hands itching for his wand. He despised the man Draco had been, yes, but he hadn’t met someone for several years whom he wanted to curse as much as Richard.

“How many minutes ago did her arm break?” Richard inquired.

“Three,” Draco said, and started to say something else in the same neutral, exhausted tone, but abruptly he growled and pushed himself back from the table. Richard blinked and lifted an eyebrow.

“Something wrong?”

“I want to know why in the world I have to do this,” Draco said, in a low, intense tone that might have fooled someone who didn’t know him. Harry knew he had folded his arms to keep his hands from shaking, though, and he was fairly sure that Richard realized it as well. “What can we learn from all this suffering? She accused me of standing aside and ignoring immoral activities, and I—“

“You know that you do not, of course,” Richard said, with a faint tone of wonder in his voice, as though he couldn’t believe that Draco would confront him over something so trivial. Harry heard his teeth grinding, and a moment later, his Draco gave a massive flinch. He started and loosened the tight clutch of his arm, stroking Draco’s back softly in remorse. “I have told you before, Draco. This is necessary in order for us to learn what we can about endurance and suffering before we begin our true research. If we know what wizards and witches can endure without snapping, then we will understand better the things we can endure when we become immortal.”

“But I only want the Dark Mark removed,” the past Draco whispered. He still stood at a distance from the table, but already the fight had gone out of him. Harry bit his lip in vexation, though he tried to remind himself that Draco had had no support at the time, and no way to know who among the Unspeakables might help him if he rebelled.

“That is true,” Richard said calmly, “but you knew from the first that Sir Galen’s spell was adapted to creating a maze that would grant the people who walked it immortality. You had chance after chance to quit before you came this far. And you didn’t.” He rose, glancing at Draco’s left arm. “The research is important in another matter, as well. We might be able to remove your Mark with our current knowledge, but extracting the Dark magic from your body would hurt you greatly, and perhaps result in the removal of your arm. If you allow us just a few more months of research—and aid in it, of course; it is only right that those who help should receive the first benefits—then we stand a much greater chance of allowing you to pass through a painless operation.”

Draco stared at Richard, and for a moment, Harry thought he was going to tell the Unspeakable where to shove it. But then he turned his head away, lowering it submissively, and his hair fell across his face.

“If you’re certain that it’s just a few more months,” he muttered.

Richard patted him on the back as he passed. The Draco under his arm flinched. Harry stroked him again, trying to touch the same place Richard had, and hoping his own hand could banish the foul memory.

“That should be all we need.” Richard paused near the door, his head tilted back and his eyes fixed on the unlit lamps as if he were watching the descent of an angel. His face was pure, peaceful. Harry still wanted to punch him in the mouth. “And then, Draco, imagine it. We can ensure that no wizard or witch suffering an illness ever dies of it again. We can take away the pain that comes with losing a limb, with the worst cases of accidental magic, with extreme Splinching. We can make the truly valuable people, the ones who will most aid our world in the future, immortal.” His voice sank reverently. “Can you tell me that you look forwards to the deaths of your mother and father? Do you not want them to live, even if you don’t crave immortality for yourself?”

Draco didn’t reply, but Harry doubted that Richard really needed an answer. He wandered out of the room, following his own vision of blissfulness.

I still want to punch him, Harry thought, as he drew breaths that hurt his lungs. He wondered idly if he should hope more that Richard had died in the maze or been changed in a way that resembled Josephine’s portraits, or had survived, so that Harry could do worse than strike him.

Marcellina croaked. Harry wasn’t sure where she found the courage or the moisture in her throat to speak, but she did manage to say, “Water. Please? Water.”

The Draco at the table jerked once. Then he lowered his head and stared unseeing at his book, ignoring Marcellina when she called out again. Harry supposed that he had been told giving her water would interfere with her suffering and thus with the Unspeakables’ collection of data.

They stood there in the room for a few more intolerable moments. Then the darkness overcame them again, and dumped them straight onto a narrow stone rim that ran alongside a large basin. Harry barely grabbed Draco before he slipped in. Of course, since they were insubstantial in the memory, it would have made no difference—he certainly wouldn’t have drowned—but Harry appreciated that he didn’t need another bad experience to add to the collection he already had.

The basin was moving like a whirlpool, though Harry had seen at once it wasn’t full of water but the same liquefied flesh out of which Pearl and the other corpses had manifested in the room of pools. He shivered at the smell of burning and turned to put himself between Draco and the sight of the basin. Draco pinched his shoulder viciously and shoved until Harry reluctantly let him move up beside him. Then Draco hooked his arm through Harry’s, so it would be much harder to push him away again.

On the far side of the basin, the Draco of the past was standing beside Marcellina, who was once more stretched on a wooden rack. This time, he was skinning her.

Harry felt white lights expand around his vision, and he thought he would be the one to faint and slide into the pool. He steadied himself with one hand on the wall and by staring intently at his foot for a while. Then he raised his head and forced himself to study every motion of what Draco was doing. It could be important when it came to reversing the spell that had made the maze.

Draco was currently skinning her arm, which had already become a lump of mangled flesh, more red than pink or olive. He held up a strip of skin in front of his eyes, passed his wand over it, and murmured a spell. In moments, it softened and dripped out of his hand, which he held over the pool so it could join the rest of the liquid there. Then he turned and ran the blade down Marcellina’s shoulder, tugging loose a second strip.

Another pinch on his side caught Harry’s attention, and he turned to look at his own Draco, whose eyes were enormous, luminous. He shook his head and picked up the communication sphere with shaking hands; he would have dropped it if Harry’s spell hadn’t made it float. I’m sorry, he said, and when he’d chosen that facet, began to rap it over and over again, as if that would change the past.

Harry caught his hand and held it still, wincing when his grip nearly slid loose; he kept thinking Draco had longer fingers than he did. “I know,” he whispered. “I know why you did it. You were a different person then, and you didn’t listen when you should have, but that’s in the past now. Shhh.” He leaned over Draco, closed his eyes, and refused to watch the rest of the skinning.

Occasionally he heard the Draco across the basin gasp. Once, he threw up. But otherwise, nothing seemed to change. Harry wasn’t sure whether his Draco was still watching or not. He only knew that he himself had reached his limit.

And, holding Draco in the darkness of his closed eyelids, feeling the other man’s mutilated body shake and flinch at every sound, Harry came to know something else.

It’s no wonder that he was so pissy at my rejecting him like that. He lived for a year with no connections to anyone. Those he did forge were with people who turned out to be lying to him. When a prisoner tried to tell him the truth or reach out to him, he turned away. He doesn’t remember every reality of that, but he must have guessed the general pattern from the first Pensieve—and of course he can remember enough of the torture and the loneliness to know how isolated he was.

I can’t isolate him anymore. It’s one thing not to deceive him, and to avoid hurting him; it’s another to slap his hand away without telling him why.

I’ll just need to tell him the truth when we get out of here, and hope he accepts it.

The Draco on the other side of the basin vomited again. Harry closed his eyes more tightly and hung on.

Chapter 19.

Comments

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Trying to convey Draco's state of mind is difficult, because he was basically trying to set up crumbling walls against a threat he knew would overwhelm them eventually, and ignore that that was what he was doing. Kind of like someone building a house on the slopes of a volcano, understanding that it will erupt, but stubbornly believing it won't happen in her lifetime.

Harry actually didn't understand why his screw-up was so devastating to Draco until this chapter. He still thinks Draco has more pride than he does, and that he still has a lingering dislike of Harry from their schooldays, so he didn't get that he had that much power to hurt Draco.

It may or may not have been done to Pearl; Harry doesn't know that the corpses crawling out of that pool were actually ever living people.

There are other kinds of punishments...

It's very hard to estimate how many chapters are left. If the length of time spent on the last four Pensieves and the challenges after them is comparable to the length of time spent on the first four, the story will probably be around 30 or 32 chapters.