Chapter Thirty-Seven of 'Changing of the Guard'- Shatter

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Thirty-Seven—Shatter

“I’ve never known you to dance that well.”

Harry kept his eyes half-closed as he leaned against the tree to which Draco had guided him. His smile was lazy and carefree and a masterpiece of deceit. “We’ve only danced together twice before this,” he said. “You don’t have much of a basis for comparison.” He straightened then and opened his eyes fully, despite the fact that doing so made it more likely Draco would figure out something was wrong. He seemed able to tell Harry was lying when he looked him in the face. On the other hand, hiding his expression would be an even surer indicator.

Things would be so much simpler if I didn’t have to lie to him.

But telling the truth about Ron’s appearance at the party would mean that Draco would change his mind on Harry’s ability to confront his friends alone, and he would demand to come along. And then Harry would have to refuse the request, and that would hurt Draco further, and put distrust between them that hadn’t existed before.

This is the only way, said a voice that might have been Gerald’s, or Elizabeth’s, or Horace’s. It won’t be for long. If you need help after you’ve confronted Ron or Hermione, you can always owl him then.

“Still.” Draco stretched out a hand to him, face still glowing softly, as if with the reflected light of the moon. “That was something special, wasn’t it?”

Harry brushed the center of Draco’s palm with two fingers, and thought of the way they’d whirled around each other on the dance floor, briefly dependent on each other for existence, brilliant because of and for each other, like two binary stars. He nodded.

“Let’s get some food,” Draco said, and slung an arm around his shoulders, and walked him towards the benches.

Various people stopped them on the way. They had questions, complaints, suggestions for further plans, praise for Harry and Draco’s dancing and for the way Harry had guarded the gap in the wards. Harry let his mouth and one small part of his brain deal with them. The majority of his mind was occupied with ways he could cushion the blow of the confrontation coming, the words he could speak to let Ron and Hermione understand how sorry he was whilst still preserving his own position. Giving up his relationship with Draco simply to please them was impossible, but he was prepared to say farewell to a good many other things.

God, I love them. I’ve lied to them for years, and avoided their company when it meant they might find out my secrets, and not felt free to speak of things I’ve said to other people without thought, but so much of that was because I love them and it would kill me to lose them.

Maybe he could say just that, and it would be enough. He was convinced Hermione would be the reasonable one, at least, and restrain Ron. Even if she had given that spell to Ron to prove that Harry was under an enchantment, she’d probably reckoned it would fail. But Ron would need magical proof before he consented to listen to Harry’s reasons.

The rest of the evening proceeded softly and sedately outside Harry’s head. Within, he built strongholds, chose and then discarded words, looked at memories and recoiled from them, all the time trying to soften what he knew he could only endure.

*

He’d arrived back at Grimmauld Place twenty minutes ago and managed to convince Draco, with a well-placed yawn or two and a wobble on his unlocking spell, that he was suffering from magical exhaustion and needed to sleep alone to recover. He’d removed the dark green robes, chosen some of the patched, fading Muggle clothes he was more likely to wear around his friends, and sent an owl to Ron and Hermione saying he had something important to tell them.

Now he was pacing the study he’d chosen for the meeting and trying to listen to anything other than the crazed beat of his heart. There’d once been an annoying clock in this room that he’d told Kreacher to remove because the tick interfered with his reading. He would have been grateful for its presence now. He opened his mouth to order Kreacher to remove it from storage, then turned around when a whoosh from the fireplace announced the opening of his Floo connection.

Harry braced himself with a hand on the back of the couch. Maybe he wouldn’t tremble so badly when he had support.

Hair appeared in the fire, turning bushy and brown as it moved outside the green flames. Hermione stood up, shook soot from her robes, and turned to assist Ron. Harry was glad she hadn’t looked at him immediately.

On the other hand, that was a bad sign, wasn’t it, just like their long silence was a bad sign? Hermione usually wanted to confront a problem as soon as she could, and castigated Ron and Harry when they avoided talking. Harry winced and shuffled his feet, then bit his tongue when his throat tried to release a moaning noise without his permission.

Ron kept his eyes on the floor. He was unnaturally quiet, which Harry could welcome only because it wouldn’t mean shouting. Hermione whispered to him for a moment, then embraced him with one arm and looked straight at Harry.

There was pity so intense in her eyes that Harry had to glance away.

“Two of the most important things you already know,” he made himself say, “and you’ve known for a few days now. I’ve been dating Draco Malfoy, and I’m involved in the rebellion to ensure the rights of gay wizards and witches.”

Ron swung his head up. He looked haunted, as though the sleep spell Harry had cast on him had given him nightmares. “And isn’t that enough?” he said. His voice was at normal volume, but so filled with hurt Harry began to flinch and found he couldn’t stop. He would have been hurt worse if I had let Draco come with me, Harry thought, but he could not make himself believe it. “Harry—why? If you had to date someone, couldn’t you do it discreetly? And if you had to date another bloke, did it have to be Draco Malfoy?” He rubbed his cheek, where a bruise was forming, and looked wistfully at Harry.

Harry licked his lips. “No,” he said. “I was tired of lying, of hiding who I was—“

“But it’s worked for ten years!” Ron exclaimed. “Not so much as a hint of a buggering for ten years! If it worked for that long, why couldn’t it work for longer?”

Harry felt anger flare to life in him like the fire flaring in the hearth to let Ron and Hermione through, and immediately suppressed it. If his best friend wasn’t yelling at him, he wouldn’t be one to yell, either. “Because the reason I kept quiet was out of guilt,” he said. “Guilt for failing Ginny in the first place, guilt because I couldn’t live the kind of open life I wanted without publicity following me everywhere but I should have been brave enough to risk it, guilt because I was doing the easy thing and not the thing my conscience most insisted on. Recently, I began to realize that I shouldn’t feel guilt for something I can’t help.”

“You can’t help your orientation,” said Hermione. Her voice was quiet, sad, but nonjudgmental. Harry looked at her. He could see hurt in her eyes as there was in Ron’s, but it didn’t seem as deep or as personal. Well, women often didn’t feel the same way about gay men as straight men did; Harry had noticed that. “But you can help your behavior. Why didn’t you come to me, Harry? I could have helped you set it up so you emerged into a mood of acceptance. It would have taken longer than the rebellion you’re organizing now, but it would also have had less of a chance of getting people killed.”

“Because it’s not just personal anymore,” said Harry. “I didn’t want to emerge and be an anomaly, tolerated as gay because I was the Boy-Who-Lived.” He leaned forwards, striving to call up memories now, seeking the light of them in Hermione’s eyes. His eighteenth year was not as painful to remember as his nineteenth. “Besides, do you remember what happened when the war ended and the press swarmed Hogwarts? I don’t think you could have made much of a dent in that.”

“The way you’re acting now, anyone would think you’d planned for the greatest public exposure possible,” Ron muttered.

“I did.”

Silence, so thick and heavy that Harry could feel it pressing on his shoulders as a physical weight. Hermione was nodding, but Ron burst out, “Why? That’s what I don’t understand. You didn’t care for ten years. Why now? Why now?” He ran his hand through his hair in agitation, and Harry was absurdly glad to see how well he moved. That fall after the sleep spell took him had not really hurt him, then. “And why Malfoy?”

“Malfoy was the one who got me involved in the rebellion,” Harry said. Telling the simple truth behind his actions was easier than explaining his motivations. “He wanted to come out as gay to get his father to disown him—“

“That makes no sense.”

“If you knew him as I know him, it would,” Harry said, striving to sound unruffled. “And I hope you’ll have the chance to learn to tolerate each other.”

“I don’t want to,” said Ron, but it was a mutter and not a yell, and Harry dared to hope that his friend would be amenable to the idea. Eventually.

“He respected my decision to remain behind glamours—“ And then Harry stopped, because this was the story he had told to Therris and other reporters and Nusante’s group, but it was not the story as it had actually happened. To reveal the full truth meant revealing the third secret he had to tell them.

Absently, he looked around the study. There was a faint buzzing noise in his ears. Had Kreacher hidden the clock somewhere in the room instead of getting rid of it? Sometimes he indulged in such small rebellions, not because he disagreed with Harry’s orders, but because he could convince himself the Black home looked better with the original artifacts more nearly in their natural place.

He had told Draco the truth. He loved Draco. He loved his friends, and not less than he loved Draco. They deserved to know the full truth as well.

One, two, three, he thought, clinging to the passing moments before he would have to speak as long as he could. But when they passed, he began speaking, clearly so Ron and Hermione could understand him, but fast enough that they shouldn’t have a chance to interrupt him. Break off this recitation, and he was not sure he could begin again.

“We originally met because he went to Metamorphosis and hired me.” He looked Ron in the eye, then Hermione. “I assume you’ve heard of it?” He didn’t wait for acknowledgment, though for some reason Ron’s eyes were widening whilst Hermione only frowned lightly. “I had no way of knowing which actor he would choose, but he chose a persona I created that was very similar to me in personality, and even appearance. So I played Brian Montgomery for a little while. And then I came out, and we adapted. He’d already learned I was Harry Potter by that time, though, and learned about my connection to Metamorphosis.”

“You own it, don’t you?” Hermione asked softly.

Harry swallowed. “That’s why you stayed silent so long,” he said. “You were doing research on Metamorphosis and trying to find out who actually ran it.”

“Yes,” Hermione said. “It’s hard. You were secretive.” She didn’t smile. “But I remembered that you’d been interested in studying Transfiguration and glamours that last year we spent at Hogwarts, and I picked up other hints you’d dropped during the years, and I remembered questions you’d asked Bill about setting up false Gringotts accounts and creating good paper trails. It didn’t bother me when you asked those questions. You deserved your privacy from the public, and the Daily Prophet doesn’t need to know every little thing you spend your money on.” She drew in a quivering breath. “But it was for Metamorphosis, wasn’t it? How many of the actors are you, Harry? Two? Ten? Twenty?”

Ron was glancing back and forth between them as if lost, but Harry couldn’t spare the time to attend to his mystification. He was still riding the high tide of that courage he would have to pay for later. He held Hermione’s gaze, and said, “All of them.”

Hermione’s eyes filled with tears. They fell quietly down her face and dropped off her chin. She made no attempt to stop them. Harry braced both hands on the back of the couch this time and concentrated hard. He had to hear any words his friends spoke past the whirlwind that had come to occupy his head.

“Oh, Harry,” Hermione whispered. “You’re sick, so sick and you don’t even know it.”

Harry had to fight to keep from sinking to the floor. This had been the reaction he’d known and feared from Hermione for years, even when he dared to hint at concealing his features under a glamour or going into the Muggle world on a lesser scale. She said she understood his need for privacy, but when he actually took some steps to secure it, she disapproved of them and thought he should go out unshielded and just somehow deal with the storm that fell on him when he did so.

The spark of anger caught and began to burn in spite of Harry’s best intentions. He heard himself breathing, so loud and so noisy that it sounded like sobs, but it wasn’t, yet, and he wouldn’t let it become crying. He would not shed tears. He had done enough weeping.

“Why?” he demanded. “It’s kept me sane for years. It’s a challenge, a game. I can become anyone I want, produce any effect I want. That’s something I can never do as Harry Potter, where all shades of gray vanish from anyone’s mind the minute they hear my name.” Hermione was shaking her head, but she hadn’t said anything to oppose him, so Harry went on, his voice growing louder and harsher as he did so. “I control the nuances, the reactions. That’s all I wanted to do. I can pass for normal if I want to, or extraordinary in a way that I choose, or eccentric, or much older than my actual age, or—“

“You wanted to play hundreds of people?” Ron asked. He wasn’t dumb, but he did seem to absorb revelations more slowly than Hermione did.

“Yes,” Harry said.

“That’s—mate, that’s mad.”

“And what would you know about it?” Harry demanded, his anger frightening him now, because it was growing and he didn’t know if he would be able to restrain it, even with the help of the merciless voice. “You’ve been able to do what you want, largely. You were feted as a war hero, but that ended, and you dated Hermione like a normal person and got married like a normal person and passed your Auror training like a normal person. You fought bravely in the war, but that’s not the only thing anyone remembers about you. Your life went on past the day when Voldemort died. Mine didn’t, because no one would let it go on. I refused to be tied down to the conception everyone had of me, that’s all. I made lives for myself. I’m good. I’m careful. Metamorphosis only handles one case at a time, as I’m sure you know. I retire personas on a regular basis, and some of them only exist on paper. I keep them separate from the real me in my head. I’m not losing anything. I’m creating it.”

The words sounded better than Harry had expected, because he hadn’t practiced them. They were the thoughts he’d had for years. They sounded free and good and strong and brave and proud, and he finished with his heart beating hard enough to ruffle the cloth of his shirt and his hands trembling and his body feeling lighter and more hollow than it had at any point in his life.

And then Ron spoke.

“You did have a chance to be normal,” he said flatly. “If you could really create personas that did anything, why didn’t you create one that was straight and could marry Ginny? You said you didn’t want to hide any more, to lie, but Harry, you’ve been hiding and lying for ten fucking years. Ten years!” He was yelling now, stalking forwards until he almost passed Hermione, but she touched his shoulder and he held back even if he didn’t calm down. “And then when you do come out, Draco bloody Malfoy is the first one to know and not one of us! God, I don’t— I don’t even have the words for all the ways you’ve betrayed us—“ He broke off, choking with pain and anger, and put his hands over his face.

Harry felt part of the firm ground on which he’d stood for so long crack like rotten ice.

“Why was Malfoy the first one to know?” Hermione whispered, her voice fragile for the first time. “Why not us?”

Harry closed his eyes. He could hear earthquakes if he concentrated. He was trying not to hear them. “He forced the truth out of me. Or, rather, he figured out I was Brian, and then I told him I was Metamorphosis. I—I’d hurt him. I owed him the truth—“

“But not us, I suppose?” Ron’s words were muffled because he still had his hands over his face.

“I did—I was going to—“

“Not soon enough, mate,” Ron whispered, and turned his back, slumping against the mantle with his head resting on his arms.

“There were so many things wrong with your life the last ten years, Harry,” Hermione said, her eyes large and yearning. “You could have told me you were struggling with being gay. I would have helped. You could have told me you liked Malfoy, were falling in love with him, even. I would have helped.”

“When I tried to tell you about why I wanted to hide behind Transfigurations and glamours in that last year at Hogwarts, you didn’t want to help,” Harry snapped, desperate to clutch at his anger and use it as a defense against the shattering that was coming. It approached on soft feet, but he could hear it. It surrounded him like the rumors of a snowfall, far-off yet but there, persistent.

“That’s wrong,” Hermione said firmly. “It’s all wrong for the kind of person you are—“

“You have no bloody idea who I am anymore!” Harry shouted.

Hermione went white. Ron stilled his trembling, but didn’t turn around. Hermione reached out a hand as if she would touch him, and then let it drop.

“I’ve shown you a mask for ten years, too,” Harry went on. He should stop. He knew he should stop. But like tearing a scab, pulling it away and showing the old and bloody wound underneath, he was past the first few moments of care, given in to impulse, and couldn’t have ceased his own painful digging if Draco had been present. “I gave you what you needed, because that was what I didn’t do for Ginny and George and Neville and all those other people after the war, I couldn’t give them what they bloody needed, but I learned, I learned, all right? And I got good at it. You’ve known a Harry for the last ten years, someone hardly anyone else got to see, but it wasn’t me. All of them are me and not-me. But that one is closer to the part of me that I despise, the part of me I hate, because he failed people again and again and again and again and again and again and—“

“Harry,” Hermione said. “Harry, be quiet. Please, be quiet.”

I’m on the edge of hysteria, Harry’s mind said in Horace’s voice. He shut his mouth hard and breathed through his teeth. Then he said, “I beg your pardon. But what I said is true, and being quiet won’t make it a lie. This is the truth, Hermione. This is everything I am. The man who could decide to make a leap into public as gay because he couldn’t take the hiding any longer and because Draco’s courage inspired him. The man who fell in love with the schoolyard bully who used to torment his best friends. The man who changes names and faces like other people change their moods. And all of it is non-negotiable. I won’t give up Draco or the rebellion because you don’t like him or Ron thinks being gay is disgusting—“

“I don’t!” Ron swung around again, and his face was streaked with tears and snot. “I just—do you have to do it in public, Harry?”

“Funny,” Harry said. “That’s the exact sort of attitude Lucius Malfoy has, only he’s a little more honest about it.”

Ron looked at the floor. His shoulders were set and weary.

“I’m in love with Draco,” Harry said, staring at Hermione now. “I won’t give him up. I won’t let you abuse him. I won’t let you drive him away. He’s mine, and I’m his, and he’s changed my life for the better, and I don’t want to choose between you—“

“I won’t make you,” Hermione said. “But. Harry.”

Harry tensed up again. He had had a single blissful moment of relaxation when Hermione had spoken the first four words. “What?” he demanded.

“Metamorphosis is wrong,” Hermione said. “No one can sustain that many personalities indefinitely. It’ll fracture you. I think it already has, since you thought you needed a mask to lie to us.” Harry opened his mouth to argue that Ron’s dislike of homosexuality had in part made that necessary, but Hermione simply continued, voice quiet and very adult. “Being gay isn’t wrong, and I’ll take your word for it that you’re in love with Malfoy. But I’m going to go to St. Mungo’s and tell the Mind-Healers about Metamorphosis, because I don’t think I can make you stop on my own.”

Heart, blood, breath, mind, soul, they all froze. And then they shattered.

Out of the swirling chaos into which he’d been dropped, Harry heard Brian’s voice say, “Hermione, please don’t do this.”

“I’m sorry, Harry.” And she did look sorry, but also queenly and proud and calm. “It’s not good for you. I won’t make you choose between Metamorphosis and us, because that would be a stupid move, like making you choose between Dark magic and us. I’m going to get you help for your problem. I’m going to see you healthy again.”

“Hermione.” That was Elizabeth, her words, but not her voice, so they wouldn’t know. “Please. I need this.”

“You don’t, Harry. You only think you do.” Hermione put a hand on Ron’s shoulder and guided him to the fireplace. “We’ll talk more later. Probably tomorrow.”

And then she and Ron were gone, and she hadn’t lifted a hand to stop them. Well, how could she? They were her friends.

One of her personas’ friends.

Friends Harry had depended on and loved and cherished for ten years, friends he’d taken a risk for, and friends who had done the one thing that he had most feared they would do.

Confined. Forced into one person. My art taken away, my experiences, my strengths, my security, my job, my livelihood, my lives.

He was running. He knew it was upstairs he was running, but not in which direction. The air around him bloomed with the chatter of voices soon to be silenced, a thousand living people who clung to him and cried in fear.

Until—

Unless—

Unless—

Until—

Unless he did something to stop it.

There was smooth wood beneath his hand, and he didn’t hesitate, because all was lost anyway, wasn’t it? He had lost Ron and Hermione unless he wanted to magically coerce them, which was no keeping at all, and he would lose Draco when Draco found out he’d lied and that Harry’s personas were a sickness. He’d wanted to know all of Harry’s personas. They were going to die. He couldn’t know them.

“Voldemort,” a voice said. “Nagini.”

Chapter 38.

Comments

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Well...yes. :)

I think Harry might have managed the personas if Hermione had been a bit more understanding. That wouldn't have led him to doubt Draco's trust in and love for him, certainly. (He's doubting it now because part of him thinks Hermione spoke the truth about his personas being a sickness).

And thank you!

[hogwartshoney.livejournal.com]

He's doubting it now because part of him thinks Hermione spoke the truth about his personas being a sickness

Well, multiple personalities sure can be, eh? I suppose that both he and Hermione grew up in the Muggle world, so it might be just that much more strange and, dare I say, undesirable when taken from that point of view. Poor thing. Part of me just wants to make it all better, while another part of me wants to see him totally self-destruct, and Draco be the one who pulls him back together with acceptance and love.
/fluff-fest

:O)