lomonaaeren

Thanks again for all the reviews!

Chapter Seventeen—Into the Light

There was nothing around him, above him, below him, behind him. He (was he a he? Was he an it?) floated in still air, dead air, and his hands touched nothing. He didn’t think he had hands left to touch anything. He was light, and light could touch nothing but light.

He reached out. Nothing, and nothing, and nothing. He could feel splinters, fragments, of memory coming loose and drifting around him, and there were emotions, too—fear, love, gratitude. But he couldn’t feel them thrill or thrum through his body; he could only identify them, not remember what they had pertained to. They scattered about like tadpoles with small drumming tails, and his essence went with them.

What had his name been? He still knew the concept of name; it was one of those more deeply buried in him, and so it took extra pulling to make it work loose. But he couldn’t remember that, either. Did light have a name? Did light need a name? If he separated, every atom from one another, and flew to the furthest corners of the universe, who would remember what he had been, or be able to recall him?

And yet…

There was something.

If he did not have a center anymore, then something else might. And it was that center he drifted towards, and orbited around, and felt grasping for him as curiously as he groped towards it.

Here was gravity, weight, consequence. Even light obeyed the law of gravity. He could obey it and yet be true to his new nature.

(Was he a he anymore? Was he not rather an it?)

The thing exerting the gravity cried out in distress. He listened more closely, and though he still could not see that center—because light did not see, it was seen by—he decided that this was not a physical sound. It came from somewhere within the center, a sound that he would utter if he could.

He? The center was a he. He wondered how he knew that, this creature of light, clinging together only by habit and not by memory. But it was a thing he knew, and it remained blazing in his mind, even as the magic pulsing through him (it) urged the bits of him further and further apart.

The center was feeling. Believing. Thinking. Remembering. Focusing as intently as it (he) could on what the light had used to be, the form it had had, the memories it had been gathered around. The cry of distress sounded again, written on the glass of the center’s mind as it could not be uttered aloud. Ancient knowledge belonged to the light. He had taken the form of the sun, and the sun knew things about humans, as the center was, that fate could only envy. It crossed the world every day, after all, and looked down on them all the time.

The light, it-he, gathered as many thoughts as he had left and focused them all on the center, reaching back.

The center thought, and thus gave to it-him, an image of himself as he had been. Embodied in a physical form, oddly limited, with black hair that went everywhere as it-he was now going everywhere, and eyes that reflected green in the visible spectrum of light. His eyes had often shone with anger or impatience. But his hands were gentle, and the center, having no true fingers of his own, was grateful for the touch of them on his hair and his cheeks. More grateful than he had ever wanted the it-he, the person the light had been, to know, but now he reached out and freely offered those secrets. If the light would only come back, and resume the form the center had known!

But it-he did not see how it-he could become a he again. How was it possible? The separating force had lessened, but it was still there, throbbing like a heart. The center was only a temporary distraction or diversion. The moment the thoughts written on the clear glass of his mind ceased to shine, then the light must be borne apart, and lose its own truth in the sum of all that was.

But now the center was thinking of something else. The image was in a brilliantly lit room; the center, who was a blond man with empty flaps of skin at his sides and empty air where his fingers should have reached and an empty throat, crouched at the end of a chain and shivered. And then the light’s physical form revealed himself, messy hair and eyes that shone green in the visible spectrum of light and all, and the center’s immediate reaction was great and sudden joy. Hope had been dead in him; now it came crawling back, flapping tender wings, sunning itself in the radiance that the light seemed to exude. That was the first time the center had begun to believe that he might survive, that he might be safe. He had an odd form of trust in the person the light had been. No matter what happened, he survived; he encountered trials and came through them whole. Someone working beside him would have a much better chance of living than anyone working alone.

The words no matter what happened, he survived, beckoned to the light. It-he darted around them, and it-he almost thought the sensation of maleness, of being locked in a body and not separating as the magic bid him do, was becoming stronger.

But how could he do that, when the magic was there?

No matter what happened, he survived, the center pleaded, without sound, simply through the mingled medium of mind and light that they had become. And then he paused, and reached out again. Recall what you were. Share what you were with me. Make some return for what I have risked for you.

Hesitantly, the light tried to pull some of his own memories back to him. It was difficult; they had shot away on so many different trajectories. Yet those trajectories still obeyed physical laws, and they could be made to flow backwards, and slam into him, and become part of him.

The easiest memories to pull back and blend with himself were the ones that complemented what the center had thought of. So he offered how much he, himself, had enjoyed touching the center’s hair and cheeks, how he had learned the softness of skin over again. He offered the swelling of pity and tenderness and horror he had experienced when he saw how badly wounded the center was. He offered corrections on details of his appearance that he had seen every day for years in mirrors and which the center had forgotten through not seeing him as often—

Draco. The center’s name was Draco. The light accepted it as a joyous fact, a bit of himself that had been attracted by the growing gravity of the clump—light, mind, physicality, Draco—and returned of its own accord. And then more and more bits began to attach themselves, and lose their individual character in the generality of a whole, and the person that had become light remembered his own name.

Harry.

Magic tore through him, boomed through him, and fled his body. Warmth of motion and flight became the warmth of skin. Harry opened his eyes, and blinked painfully, and realized he could no longer see words etched on the clear glass of Draco’s mind. He suffered an acute sense of loss.

But only until he realized he knelt there with his arms around Draco, and only until he remembered just what secrets he had betrayed.

Harry flushed, and remembered their enemies. He was glad of the excuse to whirl away from Draco, lifting his wand—which had been dispersed with the rest of him, and come back together with the rest of him—and calling up a curse to sit on his tongue so he could fling it at those enemies.

There was nothing, though. Harry blinked and turned his head from side to side. The wooden plank path on the right side of the room remained as it had been, but the planks that had held him prisoner, the corpses with hideous faces, and the basins of liquid skin, optical fluids, and blood had gone.

He turned to Draco. “What happened?” he demanded.

Draco’s face was very odd. It was more open than Harry had seen it, but also more determined, as if this trial had confirmed for Draco the sense of his own strength most of all. He reached out, touched the tips of his stumps to Harry’s chin, and then shook his head and motioned to the far doorway.

Harry opened his mouth, then decided that he could wait to question Draco, given how thoroughly Draco had kept him from dooming himself. He nodded, slung the satchel over his shoulder, and stood. Draco walked beside him, not taking Harry’s hand or elbow when it was offered for support. Harry kept sneaking glances at him. Perhaps some of the light that he had been had fled into Draco’s eyes.

*

They settled in a small bend of the tunnels outside the room of the pools, which Harry made into a secure chamber by casting a series of wards behind him that arched from floor to walls. Then he sat, his legs crossed beneath him, and looked up to invite Draco to sit the same way. He had to swallow harshly when Draco did it without invitation, closer to Harry than he had sat at other times, save when he wanted comfort. He presented that brilliant, calm, powerful face again, and Harry found he didn’t know what to say.

Draco didn’t reach for the communication sphere, though, or otherwise try to speak. He simply laid his severed fingers on his knees and scrutinized Harry’s face, slowly, from scar to chin. It was intensely uncomfortable, and Harry wriggled several times in place before he could bring himself to draw a deep breath and begin.

“I need to know what happened. I’ll have as much patience as I need to for as long as it takes you to tell your story—“

He stopped, because Draco had lifted his brows and widened his eyes. Even spoken, there couldn’t have been a clearer expression of Really? Harry thought, somewhat nettled.

“Yes,” he said, “I will. I promise you. Will you—that is, will you please tell me the story? What did that spell do? Why did you call me back the way you did, and—“ he felt a dull flush creep up his cheeks “—why did my responding to you work?”

A moment more of study, and Draco clapped his hands for the communication sphere. Harry sent it floating over to him gladly. Draco touched the facets that meant, Incantation wrong.

“I got that, thanks.”

Another magnificent stare that quelled Harry’s irritation enough to make his eyes drop. He had to look up hastily when Draco began mouthing again, though, so he could read his lips.

Fingere sol.

Harry coughed. “So, it wasn’t solis.” He didn’t dare pronounce the whole mistaken incantation aloud again, just in case something worse happened.

Draco shook his head. Sun spell, his fingers on the globe said. Not make you sun.

Harry nodded. He wasn’t enough of an expert in Latin to say just why the incantation had gone so desperately wrong, but he trusted Draco not to be lying about it, either.

There’s a line that I never thought I would be associating with Draco Malfoy.

“And it literally turned me into light, along with the enemies I was aiming at?” Harry asked. Draco nodded. “That’s—incredible. Why didn’t it touch you?”

Desire.

Harry felt his flush grow worse, and glanced away, rubbing the back of his neck. “Because I wanted to turn only a certain number of people into light,” he muttered. “And I wasn’t clear enough about my intention with the spell, so it took me, too. Or else it affected me automatically, because that’s that what that spell does to its caster.”

He turned back in time to see Draco smile at him, though there was still a reserve, an aloofness, behind his gaze that Harry was sure hadn’t been there before. Because I hadn’t made such a stupid mistake before, Harry thought, fighting the urge to turn away again. Or because I as good as told him that I like touching him, and that means he knows I’m stupidly attracted to men, too. I wish I could convey to him that I’m not attracted to men of my own free choice.

But as long as Draco didn’t refer to it directly, Harry saw no reason to acknowledge it, either. They’d both keep mum, and hope for the best.

“How did you bring me back?” he asked.

Memories, Draco’s fingers on the globe said. And then he sat smugly back, looped his arms together behind his head, and fixed Harry with the expression that McGonagall had used when he did something promising but not exactly right in Transfiguration. She waited to approve or disapprove further actions, but she would only tell him what he had done wrong, not what he did right, until he managed to arrive there by himself.

Harry growled under his breath, but the undeniable fact that Draco had saved him from his own stupid mistake kept the growl from being too loud. “You reached out with your memories of me,” he said softly. “And I responded—or what was left of me responded—to them. And if I hadn’t offered some memories of my own, and struggled to connect with your impressions of me, I wouldn’t have come back.”

Draco considered this for long moments before giving a slow, judicious nod. Then he spidered the nubs of his fingers across the bright surface of the communication sphere, gently picking out You give me hope.

Harry’s flush grew worse than ever. “Thank you,” he said. “For saying that. And for saving my life. There’s no way I can repay you, except to hope that we can both save each other in the future.” He could feel his muscles tightening with anxiety as Draco continued to stare at him, half-smiling, hand lingering on the facet that meant hope. “It’s really remarkable, what you did. I would never have discovered that solution if our situations had been reversed, except by accident.” He shifted and coughed; Draco’s stare hadn’t lessened, and he knew no way of making it do so except by giving Draco something else to think about. “I reckon we should move on now.” He planted his feet hard against the ground and started to shove himself up.

Draco’s hand closed around his, gently but persistently; Harry knew he could easily have broken the grip, but he found it hard to move. He could only gape as the remnant of Draco’s thumb rubbed over his pulse, and Draco gave him another even stare, full of meaning.

He didn’t need words to convey the invitation waiting in his eyes, on his lips, and on the edges of his hands. Harry shivered and would have wrapped his arms defensively around himself, but with Draco holding one hand, that wasn’t such a great plan.

“I,” he said aloud, and stopped, because voicing it would give it even more definite acknowledgment than the intense, trembling charge that hung between them.

Draco dropped his gaze for a moment, but when he lifted it, the charge had not vanished, only changed. He hauled himself to his feet with his hold on Harry’s wrist and lifted his other palm, hovering it above Harry’s cheek. His smile was gentle, amused, barely hopeful, but there.

It staked a claim and made an offer that—

That Harry couldn’t accept. That he was sure he could never accept. If he had been normal, then he could have rejected this with a pure heart. But he was sure Draco had seen only his attraction to men and not understood that Harry didn’t want it, or he had understood that part but thought it silly. And what Draco thought silly, he ignored.

Harry shut his eyes and turned his head away, holding himself there until he felt Draco’s hands waver and fall away from him. He didn’t turn to meet Draco’s gaze. All right, so he was a coward, but there had to be a point where courage ran out, and this was his.

Besides, even if they both had been gay, there was no reason for them to become more than friends to each other just because they were in a dangerous situation. What Draco needed, and gave, was help to survive. Harry needed, and gave, the same things. The fact that Draco had saved his life, and he had saved Draco’s, should be more important than anything else.

Ron’s laughter echoed in his head, the way it tended to whenever Harry deluded himself. You sure about that, mate?

But I have to be, Harry thought, picking up the satchel and taking down the wards over the alcove without a word, and carefully keeping his eyes aimed away from Draco. It would be immoral to ask commitment of him. He’s so badly hurt. I can do my best for him by listening to him, rescuing him when the beasts of the maze come hunting us, and escorting him to St. Mungo’s finally. Or make sure that he has the chance to reach St. Mungo’s, if there’s no way to free him from the maze but my plan.

“Which way?” he asked, still not turning around.

Draco brushed roughly by him, banging his shoulder against Harry’s hard enough to hurt. He paused in the middle of the corridor to give Harry a betrayed look, his eyes narrow and his nostrils flaring. The determination that saving Harry had given him was still behind his face, but twisted now into bitterness; he had expected a similar strength to meet his and been disappointed.

A moment later, he presented Harry with his back and strode straight on.

Harry lowered his eyes and followed.

*

Harry shuddered and put a hand over his nose. He knew it was only his imagination that the stench of blood and viscera lingered here—after all, the torture that Draco had performed was months in the past, and the room had probably been changed by the creation of the maze—but his stomach was rebellious and jumpy anyway.

There was no doubt that this was the place where Draco had ordered the Azkaban prisoner torn apart by the pseudo-horses, though. It was large, made of stone, and circular, with half-a-dozen doors other than the one they had come in by, evenly spaced along the walls. Harry could see scuff marks on the floor if he squinted hard, which might have been left by chains or hoofprints.

And for the first time, Draco looked truly uncertain, halting in the middle of the room and turning his head back and forth.

“Will the Pensieve-seeking spell help?” Harry asked, already preparing to cast the charm.

Draco held up an impatient hand, and Harry fell silent. This might be a part of the maze with different rules and laws than the rest, and it would be good not to talk in any case, so that they might hear their enemies coming.

He probably doesn’t want to listen to you babbling at him, after what you did.

But Harry ignored that. He would be just as happy not to bring up the issue again. He crouched in the middle of the room, an equal distance from all the doors, ready to aim his wand at any one, whilst Draco shuffled carefully from portal to portal, listening at all of them. Two he stepped away from decisively, with a shake of his head that caused his hair to fly, but near two others he lingered for a long time, and between the last two he halted with a frustrated look on his face, banging one fist softly on his hip.

Harry held his tongue, though he did guide the communication sphere over to float near Draco.

Finally, Draco mouthed something that looked like a curse, and stepped back from the two doors that had puzzled him, gesturing at Harry. Harry stood up and strode forwards. Draco pointed directly at the lock hanging from the door on the left, then mimed leaping back. Harry nodded to show he was aware of the danger, and whispered, “Alohomora.”

The lock sprang with a snap, and the door swung open at once, as though only the lock had been holding it from falling outwards. Harry flinched as a burst of screaming assailed his ears. They weren’t human cries, or he might have thought they’d stumbled into another torture chamber.

Hooves struck out into the open air, but didn’t hit the floor or come further, and Harry floated the light globe over to investigate why. He could see the pseudo-horses that had drawn and quartered the prisoner standing in narrow stalls, chained by their waists and their hind limbs; their voices were the screams, half-neighs and half-rage, demands for food. Their eyes gleamed madly and rolled. Their fangs champed and snapped as they stared at Harry and Draco.

Harry shut the door again and locked it. He turned to the door on the right, glanced once more at Draco, and surprised weariness in the gray eyes. But Draco shut them and turned away, just giving a small nod in response to Harry’s murmured question.

This door, too, sprang open at Harry’s unlocking spell, but it was smell and not sound that came to meet them. Harry covered his nose as the thick, fetid stink of rotting meat curled around him. Draco’s throat worked when Harry glanced at him, but he mastered himself and stepped imperiously forwards. Harry followed.

They walked between jars—collecting jars, the kind that the Unspeakables had put their victims’ organs in. From the smell, the organs still resided there, but the preservation spells had definitely ended. A narrow aisle of stone ran between the jugs towards the far end of the room. Draco trotted along it, never turning his head to the right or left. From what Harry could see of his profile, his eyes were tightly shut at least some of the time.

Harry followed, casting a few spells to lessen the scent.

Not that it seemed to help. And they didn’t at all lessen the horror of those stacked jars, row on row and height on height. Harry estimated the jars as being at least five rows deep, and probably more than that; he couldn’t see well in the dimness and crowded conditions of the room. And the jars towered above him and Draco by at least the length of a mature Hungarian Horntail reared on its hind legs.

All of them held organs. All of them contained the remnants of dead human beings, sacrificed to the Unspeakables’ quest for immortality.

Harry tried dazedly to remember how many jars there had been in that horrible memory. Five, he thought. But even if you assigned that many to each victim, dividing the amount of dead people in here by five…

The number was still overwhelming.

Harry was more than glad to reach the far side of the horror chamber and depart into the slashing white light of another Pensieve room.

Chapter 18.