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Chapter Twenty-Eight—Transformations

He knew pain. He knew it as he had never known it before, and his horror and pity for Draco when he thought of the other man’s bones and memories and voice ripped away from him became purest sympathy.

He knew some of his bones separated from his flesh to become anchors for the maze. He knew some of his memories went. But the holes in his mind healed over so rapidly, and his mind itself was changing so much, that he couldn’t be sure which ones were gone.

He rolled over. Twice. He thought it was twice. And his body stretched out, flattened, and lengthened. He could feel himself growing rough, acquiring textures not natural to human skin. Stone pattered along his legs; wood crept up from his throat; his arms extended into the tree’s branches. The power of the magic he had used rolled along his veins, and then they weren’t veins anymore, but crossroads and corridors and paths for sneaking past obstacles. He heard his breathing stop, but his consciousness went on after it, so that was all right.

It was a change. It was a profound change. He was made over into something else, someone else, and he knew that none of those who loved him would ever be able to connect with him or identify him again. After all, he wouldn’t be able to distinguish their footsteps and voices from the many that would pass through him; why should their comprehension of him be any better?

His skin ripped and rolled apart, separating from the rest of his flesh in a smooth curtain. Harry was not sure where it was going. Pain was so much a part of his reality now that he looked through it, swam beyond it, and concentrated on what was happening next in preference to what had already happened.

He dived.

He rooted.

He was gone from the middle of what he had been, and in the middle of a new thing, the thing he was to be. He closed his eyes, or closed off parts of his awareness, and extended others. They all throbbed with the same steady beat that healing wounds did. Was there a heart in the middle of them? He didn’t think so.

And then his thoughts slowed and turned sluggish. He was stone. He was wood. He was the tree in the center, the tree that no longer contained the bodies of kidnapped victims like Ron and Hermione, the tree that simply ran with sap for the drinking of immortality.

He heard Draco’s voice screaming, and frowned. It was Richard who had Draco’s voice, so why would he be screaming? Perhaps he was being tortured. Or perhaps Draco had his voice back now and was crying out in loneliness. He would never have wanted Harry to become the maze. Harry knew that much, at least.

He experienced a small spasm of irritation. Everyone was always thinking he should have done something else, saved the world in a different way or made different choices. Well, this was irrevocable. He was beyond love and comfort, and he was beyond being punished or confronted over bad decisions.

I love you, Draco, he thought, or said, and then the inexorable weight of the transformation closed over him, and he didn’t know for a long time.

*

He had always been aware of that weight. In the first moments of turning, it had been the weight of magic. It was no small spell that would tear some parts of himself out of his body and make them into anchors for the maze, and turn the rest of him into the material of the maze itself, and at the same moment restore the stolen parts that had come from Draco. But now it was the weight of stone. He was part of the lower levels of the Ministry, after all, and eight other floors leaned upon him. Meanwhile, the tenth floor hung pendant below him.

But now the weight was shifting. Little by little it grew lesser. He no longer had any way of telling time, so he didn’t know how long it took. He only knew it was progressive; they never put any weight back, but always took it off.

Sometimes he heard voices, speaking words that he could almost understand, wandering and winding through him. He wondered for a moment if they walked in a maze open to the sky now. He wondered what it looked like for them.

And then his consciousness drifted and ebbed back into the consciousness of touches on walls and doors, the light footsteps that made their way through his corridors, and the dripping of the sap from the crack in his trunk, so far untasted.

*

Sometimes he heard people arguing and screaming at each other. It was so common that he no longer paid much attention, but he did focus on one particular voice that was familiar. It was saying, “You may be a genius, Granger, but if you’re going to give up on the research, then give me that book.”

And, wild with tears, another familiar voice, another beloved, but not in the same way: “We shifted the Ministry. But this book doesn’t tell how to bring a human back from such a transformation. It doesn’t, Malfoy. Look all you like.” Sound of fluttering pages, and then a thump on one of his floors as the book fell from nerveless, shaking hands. “You won’t find the answer, because there isn’t one.”

Silence, broken by soft, deep gasps as the other voice picked up the book and turned it around in hands that were far too firm and steady. The other voice was unnerved by that steadiness, he sensed.

“The Ministry wants us to destroy the maze altogether—“ the nerveless voice began.

“No.” Steady riffle of pages.

“It might be the best answer. Who knows what Harry’s suffering?” And he was amused, because the pain had never ceased, so he could almost bear the suffering. And he had chosen, hadn’t he? It was just like the nervous voice to go on questioning his choices even after he had made one she couldn’t affect any longer.

“I know,” said the steady voice. “And I know that we are not going to destroy the maze. We have to make Harry want to come back to his body.”

“How? And how would you do it, even if you could, without becoming immortal or dying as the maze collapsed?”

“Unlike you, Granger, I’m in love with him. That means I’ll find a way.”

“Things don’t always work out that way.”

“Go the fuck away, and leave me alone.”

The nervous voice walked out of him and left the steady one alone. He would have liked to remain and observe, but puffs of dust were traveling about in the most distant parts of him, and a new corridor was opening slowly like a birth canal, and there was nothing to hear now but breathing and the turning of pages. He let himself be swept away.

*

Soft. Slimy. There was something soft and slimy hanging over the limbs of the tree. He had not felt it before because some of the loops had been perfectly balanced, but now they shifted, and started slithering towards the floor. It was constant irritation, enough for him to work to open eyes in the tree and look, though hearing and touch were the easiest senses for him to use.

Oh. The glistening pink and red flesh of human intestines was draped over his branches. Endless coils, endless knots. He thought he remembered hearing that every human had yards and yards coiled in his guts. Not him, not with the transformation, but whoever had been killed and hanged on him did.

Or were they dead? When he concentrated, he could follow a faint whimpering sound to the corner of the room with the tree. It was on the opposite side of the trunk from the sap, which explained why his fugitive consciousness had never noticed it before.

A human figure lay on the floor, staring upwards, its hands making feeble clenching gestures over the slit in its belly. Now and then it would thrust out an arm and try to crawl away, but its arms were glorious with intestines, too. And its face was familiar, though no matter how long he stared, he couldn’t remember a name. It was an older man, and he thought the man had had a smooth reason that explained the maddest things as if they were sanity and a smile that could persuade others to follow him. He’d had another voice, once, too.

Now his voice was his own, and he lay there screaming. No matter how much his guts crawled out of the slit in his belly and wound themselves around the tree, he couldn’t be severed from them, and he couldn’t die. The spell cast on him wouldn’t let that happen.

As he watched, the man’s intestines slithered free of the tree’s branches and to the floor. Would he die now? Had the spell eased? From the way the man lifted his head and stared, he was wondering the same thing.

But the pink and white sausage links twitched, and began to climb over roots and twigs and trunk once more, aiming for the highest boughs. They tore themselves on the way, and spilled red and milky fluid, but they never stopped dragging along. It was the process of a horrific gut wound repeated over and over again.

Gut wounds are the most painful any human being can suffer. That’s why he chose this spell, I’ll bet.

But the meaning of the words and his own interest in the continually dying man were waning. He turned away and slid into the depths of the maze again. It was quite a business, keeping all the walls balanced, all the corridors straight, all the doors in their places and the rare windows staring where they should be staring.

*

Footsteps. Light, hesitant ones. He focused his consciousness on them, pleased. Was someone coming through the maze to become immortal at last? All the people who had entered the maze so far had taken sidelong routes, meaning they wouldn’t walk the direct path and have their bodies changed, purged of their dying.

But the figure stopped and rested a hand against a wall, and his attention oriented on that instead. The figure seemed to be getting ready to make a speech. Why? There was no one else here. Or perhaps there were ghosts caught in his walls that he hadn’t sensed, or perhaps this figure—man—was mad and about to speak to no one. In his curiosity, he formed a pair of eyes in the wall to look.

The man who stood there with his head bowed was blond, thin, with a set of dusty robes gathered about him. He looked up, and his face was pale, his eyes haunted with shadows. Had he not slept well? The spirit of the maze could feel himself growing concerned. People who were less than perfectly healthy would not survive the trek through him.

“I found the key at last,” the blond man whispered. “It was under my nose all the time. I didn’t bother to read the whole of Sir Galen’s book, because the part that concerned the creation of the maze was the only one that mattered. Damn me for an idiot.” He took a deep, gasping breath. “And then Richard removed the relevant pages and hidden them in his chambers, but still. I uncovered them at last, once I realized where the chambers would have to be inside you.” He shivered.

Richard? Sir Galen? Those were names that mattered, though the spirit of the maze couldn’t remember why. But he still blinked his eyes, and he still kept himself there, fighting the temptation when his attention would have drifted to other matters.

“A willing sacrifice is done out of love,” the blond man whispered. “There’s no other reason someone would agree to suffer for eternity and grant immortality to others but for love. And usually, someone who masterminded a transformation like this would want that and only that.” He paused to take a deep breath. “But what if the person who received the sacrifice didn’t need that? What if he needed something else, something more important?”

More important? The spirit of the maze was bewildered. He didn’t know what could be more important than immortality.

But he did remember, suddenly, that he had sacrificed himself for love of the blond man. That love even pulsed alive in his heart like a hidden egg, in a sacred secret chamber where no one else would ever come, a source of warmth and comfort when the pain grew too great. So he knew he had to listen.

“A willing sacrifice can reverse itself,” the blond man whispered. “It can always reverse. It can always be changed. The reason it wouldn’t change is the determination that made it a sacrifice in the first place; the person would have to be convinced that he could do more good not killing himself or going off to war or abdicating the throne.” He lifted his head, and his eyes were so dark. That couldn’t be healthy, certainly. That couldn’t be good for him.

“I need you to come back,” the blond man said, with pleading in his voice that the spirit of the maze abhorred. Hadn’t he transformed so that the man would never need to plead like that again? Hadn’t he done this to end his pain? Why was he still in pain, then? “We’ve shifted the lower levels out from under the Ministry, cut them away. There’s nothing above us that will fall in now if you transform back. And if this place does start to crumple when you come back to human form, I can Apparate us away. There aren’t any wards preventing that, now.

“I want—“ He paused, his throat working. The spirit of the maze was caught, transfixed, captured, and the love in him blazed like a star. “I want you to be human, Harry, damn it.”

Yes, my name was Harry.

“What you did was noble and so breathtakingly stupid I would have killed you a moment later, if I could.” His eyes flashed. “You left Richard for my punishment—and I could punish him. He only controlled so much of the first maze, the one he made out of me, and could erase the letters on the last few rib bone pillars and so on, because he had my voice, an extra linchpin, a final anchor, the only part of me he took with permission. He made a sacrifice of his own, and replaced his voice with mine. He believed that would give him control over me if I ever tried to rebel, and he could use it to taunt you to despair.

“But when you became the maze, my fingers and my ribs, my voice and my memories, came back to me—“ He paused and shuddered for a moment. “You thought I would be satisfied with freedom, and wholeness, and justice.”

And the only other thing I can offer you is immortality, the spirit of the maze thought.

“I’m not,” the blond man continued, fiercely. “I want you. You have to come back to human form and be with me, because it’s what I need. I can’t heal if you’re not there. I can’t live my own life, because you’re part of that life, now. Punishing Richard is a pleasure that palled quickly. You have to be there, to yell at and pummel and argue with and love. So. You made a sacrifice for me, once, based on such deep love as I didn’t understand at the time. Now I ask you to make it back.”

The spirit of the maze hesitated. He still remembered very little of the events the blond man was talking about, but he could remember the emotions he had felt. He had gone to the sacrifice with a glad heart. It not only let him save the man he loved—

Draco. His name is Draco.

--but also avoid something. A horrible fate. Or was it just something he was wary of? Something he could have borne but didn’t want to bear?

“Come back to me.”

Draco was on his knees, his hands and his lips pressed flat against the wall, Harry realized in horror. He looked as if he was ready to kneel here forever, and kiss cold, unyielding stone, and keep whispering. He had to leave the maze and go back into the sunlight, didn’t he see? He had to find someone else to love, because no matter what happened, even if he came back to human form, Harry wouldn’t be enough for him, wouldn’t be good enough, wouldn’t be what he needed.

“Come,” Draco whispered, and his voice cracked down the middle with longing.

Reluctantly, Harry realized that Draco didn’t believe the same things he did. He could go on without Harry, but he wouldn’t let himself do so, because he was too occupied with that ridiculous conviction that he couldn’t stand on his own. And that he needed more than the sacrifice Harry had already given him.

Harry wanted to tell him he was being silly, but he had no lips to do that anymore. Even summoning the desire to do it brought his human side surging forwards.

“Please,” Draco whispered. “Come to me, come with me, be with me.”

Perhaps it was only Draco’s belief, but beliefs could be as paralyzing as reality. Harry knew that. And no matter how he willed peace and satisfaction, health and happiness, into Draco’s life, he wouldn’t take it. He would ignore all the sweet water around him and keep crawling through the desert. Gifts meant nothing if the person they were intended for wouldn’t pick them up.

Harry could feel his annoyance growing. Really, he had thought he could rest content here. He had given his life for Draco. No, more than that; he had consented to be alive and suffer forever for Draco. What greater gift was there than that? What more did he want?

But even as the annoyance surged through him, Harry was reminded of the great distance that lay between them now. And obviously, no one who was currently human and in Draco’s life had been able to change his mind.

Harry would have to return to human form to do that. He would reverse the sacrifice, just long enough to explain the truth to Draco and give him that glimpse of Harry, that little taste, which would soothe his need and let him get on with his life. He had to reverse the choice he had made, because right here was someone who needed him to make a different one.

And he wanted to make a different one.

Pulses of weakness ran through the maze, like earthquakes. Draco started to his feet and stared around in wonder, but never stopped calling, his voice whispering and tugging and pulling, pleading.

Harry closed his eyes and rescinded his permission for his body to become the maze, his absolute and basic belief in the magic.

Stone ran down in waterfalls of dust. Wood dissolved. The pain that Harry had become used to when dissipated over endless distances and endless kinds of material coalesced into the center again and filled him, and Harry heard himself wailing with a human voice as he dropped, naked, beside Draco, his fingers and his ribs gone, gaps in his memories glowing to life. He still couldn’t entirely remember what had brought them to this pass, but he knew—

He opened his mouth to complain, to tell Draco that he had to let Harry go back, to scream—

And Draco snatched him up in a pair of arms less yielding than the walls Harry had become, and Apparated. Darkness yawned and swallowed them.

*

Harry woke so slowly that he groaned in impatience. But that changed neither the pace of his waking nor the debility that filled his muscles. His eyes fluttered open as if he was opening great doors, and he could barely turn his head.

He saw a room that looked like a room in hospital, in St. Mungo’s. His mouth was filled with the awful taste of Skele-Gro. And his whole body throbbed with endless, endless agony. He made a faint noise of discomfort, inexpressive of the sensations but all he could do for right now.

A shadow crossed his face. He looked up at Draco.

Draco stared at him in silence. His eyes were still full of shadows, but a little lighter than they had been. He reached out and closed a hand like a claw around one of Harry’s slowly regenerating fingers. Harry winced.

“Now,” Draco said in a conversational tone, “I can’t even tell you how angry I am that you chose to do something like that, giving me no choice—“ his voice abruptly rose to a shout on those words, and then died down again “—as to what would happen next. But don’t worry. You’ll get to know my anger quite well in the next few weeks and years, as you heal and we go through therapy together.

“There’s no chance of breaking us apart now. I hope you know that. If you don’t, then I’ll simply repeat it, and slam it into your head, and maul you and mutilate you, until you understand it. I’m yours, and you’re mine.

“I won’t tolerate stupidity like this again, do you understand? You’re going to be here, damn it. No running away. No deciding that sacrificing your life, or your existence, is better than standing at my side.”

“What—happened?” Harry whispered, and hoped Draco would understand his weak, small, croaking frog of a voice well enough to answer. Draco smiled at him. The smile was not a pleasant one.

“I was free,” he said simply. “I cast that spell on Richard. Your friends were free. They argued with me for quite a bit, but I had the wand, and I had Pensieves available to show them my memories. And your memories, too, by the way. I rescued those Pensieves before the maze collapsed. So you can know everything you may have forgotten about the reasons we belong in each other’s lives.

“Then Granger figured out a way to separate those lower two levels from the rest of the Ministry, by sinking them even further in the rock, but she was convinced I would never get you free. I researched until I realized that simply asking you to reverse the sacrifice was the best way. I convinced you I couldn’t live without you—which is true—and you popped out. But your anchors stayed, except the rescued Pensieves. So they’re having to regrow your fingers and ribs for you.

“What was left of the maze fell in on Richard, I assume.” Draco’s voice was cold now, his face without expression. “I neither know nor care. I wanted you back far more than I wanted him suffering forever. And he did suffer for three months whilst his intestines pulled themselves out of his body and arranged themselves in artistic patterns.”

His hand closed down again, and he dragged Harry’s finger to his lips and mouthed at it. “Now,” he whispered. “The important thing is that you’re here with me, and it will take us a long time to heal—together. Think about trying to leave me and I will open your chest and remove part of your lungs, then feed it to you.” His eyes narrowed. “You couldn’t call me normal mentally now, you know, and there’s no reason to disbelieve my threats.”

Harry shuddered, but his gaze was fastened to Draco’s face. Draco smiled at him, and there was possession and love and self-satisfaction in that smile.

Harry had to close his eyes and drop off into sleep in the next moments; just being awake had exhausted him. But his mind continued to worry and fret as slumber drowned it.

What if I’m still not the best choice for him? What if this doesn’t last? What if he really needs to move on from me in order to live the best life possible? I’ll need to talk to the Mind-Healers…

Chapter 29.