Chapter Thirty-Eight of 'Changing of the Guard'- Containing Multitudes

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Chapter Thirty-Eight—Containing Multitudes

Draco stood alone in the middle of his flat, head bowed, fingers laced together, and eyes closed. His mind was racing as it had the day when he tried to analyze the wand movement Harry used to disguise himself as Brian.

This time, the conclusions were just as fragmentary, drifting in and out of each other, snapping into place briefly and then whirling apart again as Draco realized they didn’t quite fit. He shook his head frequently, but he didn’t open his eyes and he ignored his own impulse to hurry.

Something had been wrong with Harry when he emerged from the last attack tonight, the one Draco suspected had been led by Aurors. His face had been a touch too pale, his manner too careful. Draco hadn’t noticed it at the time, but he’d been caught up in his pride at the way Harry had handled the attacks, and then in the grace with which he moved during the dances.

Since when has Harry ever seemed as perfect as he seemed tonight? Since when has he managed to do everything right, or anticipate your desires as he was doing? This is the man who didn’t understand why you would want him to stop sleeping with clients, because he couldn’t accept the idea that you would want exclusive possession of him.

Draco’s head came up, and he felt himself snarl more than heard it. Harry had been showing him a persona, much like Brian, sculpted to fit Draco’s needs, doing what Draco required because he required it. There was no reason for Harry to retreat behind a mask like that unless something really had gone wrong during the party, and he needed his inner strength to deal with that whilst he delegated the persona to deal with Draco.

Why wouldn’t he tell me? What could have been bad enough that he would break the promise he made to tell me the truth? He didn’t hurt me, so it couldn’t have been the same impulse as the one that made him give me the truth after he injured me with his magic.

Who else mattered to Harry that much?

And Draco began cursing, because he could not believe that he had been that blind. He swung around and charged out the door of his flat.

Harry’s friends mattered that much to him. Weasley could have been among the Aurors, because he worked with them. And Harry’s over-dramatic acting at the door of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place probably indicated that he was meeting with them tonight.

Meeting with them when tired, stressed, over-balanced by whatever had happened between him and Weasley as well as by the effort of arranging the party, and so worried about what Draco wanted and needed that he had taken up more of his own energy lying to Draco and keeping him at bay.

Draco was going to tear someone apart. Whether it was Harry or Weasley depended on who was standing when he got there.

*

Amanda Pearson, Potions expert, eyed the bubbling cauldron for a moment, and then glanced back at the dark Pensieve, unlocked from its cabinet by the name of a long-dead Dark Lord and his snake. Really, the man who had originated them all had the strangest ideas sometimes. Amanda would have chosen more secure passwords for a secret this mighty, ones that no one else would ever guess.

But her concern wasn’t the passwords for the moment (even if she couldn’t help thinking about them; her mother always had said that she had a wandering mind). It was the potion dancing in the cauldron, without which their originator couldn’t complete the process of transforming himself into someone else. She had to make sure it reached exactly the right temperature before she added the next ingredient, a handful of porcupine quills. She spent some moments counting under her breath and more estimating by eye, then tossed the quills in. The potion flared once and turned orange, and the most difficult part of the brewing was done.

Brian leaned over the cauldron and sniffed once. It smelled right to him from the notes spread out in front of him, like cedar shavings, though really, he wouldn’t want to drink it anyway.

But this was what Harry wanted, and Brian could only agree and pity him. Harry had thought he would always have two things to depend on, whilst everything else in his life changed on a daily or weekly basis: his friends and Metamorphosis. The third, Draco, had come too late for Harry to have the same confidence in him. Now Ron and Hermione were trying to destroy Metamorphosis, and his relationship with Draco was not strong enough to reassure Harry on its own.

Brian believed he was wrong on that last, actually, but his reasoning couldn’t make headway against Harry’s despair and the anxiety of the other personas to survive. He was only active at the moment because he was the calmest of them, the most level-headed, and thus the most fit to handle the potion and begin revising the spells they would need for the moment when Harry performed the transformation.

Has he even chosen who he wants to be?

Brian snorted. Of course he hadn’t. Harry wanted to be as many people as possible, but he also wanted to be someone who could survive the relationships he believed were ending. That cut any version of Harry Potter out of the equation. So he would have to think and choose the best of them for the situation, the one clever enough and discreet enough to vanish and start up a business like Metamorphosis elsewhere.

A pity I don’t have a house in Britain which would do, Horace Longbottom thought, carefully smoothing down the page of notes that contained the spells necessary to make the transformation. But there is too much chance of being discovered if I go to one of them, and even Ireland is too near. Germany would be the best choice. Horace had made some contacts there over the years, mostly pure-bloods and half-bloods who were interested in how to integrate their culture with Muggle culture; they would have to be quiet about it, as violating the International Statute of Secrecy from a position of inferior power would bring the other European Ministries down hard on all their heads.

The top spell on the list had a smudged letter in the second word of the incantation. Horace leaned over and carefully cleared it up, then squinted and decided he couldn’t really tell whether it was an ‘e’ or a ‘u’. He sighed. He would have to fetch the original list of spells and make sure.

As she left the room, Amanda glanced at the cauldron and made sure the potion wouldn’t overflow in the next five minutes. A small squirming of excitement moved under her breastbone. Even though use of this potion could mean her destruction, she was always excited to watch something new work.

*

Draco stood on the doorstep of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, knocking. No one had answered so far, and he was beginning to lose the urgent impulse that had driven him here. Maybe Harry really had told the truth when he said he was tired and wanted to go to bed alone, because if he and Draco went together, they would do something other than sleep. If Harry was having a confrontation with his friends, there ought to be raised voices, surely? And the flash of spells? Though Draco thought the spells would come solely from the Weasleys, because he couldn’t imagine Harry lifting his wand against them.

Maybe they’ve been and gone, and he needs help.

He tried the door. It was locked. Draco whispered an Alohomora and tried again, but the knob still clicked stubbornly against his best efforts. He proceeded to more and more powerful unlocking and unwarding spells, and still nothing let him inside. And now he was growing steadily more worried, especially at the thought of the time it would take up if he returned to his flat and tried to Floo in, on the off-chance that Harry had left his fireplace unblocked even though he had made sure to lock the door.

“Can Kreacher be helping Master Draco?”

Draco turned around with his most radiant smile as the house-elf appeared on the threshold next to him. If he had been a praying man, he would have given thanks then. “Yes,” he said. “I was supposed to visit Harry tonight, but he had a shock earlier and may have forgotten about it. I’m sure he wouldn’t bar his door against me ordinarily. Could you let me inside?”

Kreacher nodded, his ears flapping against his head. “Master Harry is being most busy,” he said. “But his face is not normal. Master Draco could soothe him!” He snapped his fingers, and though Draco hadn’t felt the house-elf touch his arm, they both vanished and reappeared in the entrance hall of the house, well inside Harry’s wards.

“Thank you, Kreacher,” Draco said. He didn’t stay to see the house-elf’s happy bow. He had already turned towards the stairs, and his wand was aimed up them. The throb of Dark magic that traveled through the house made his teeth hurt. What in the world did Harry think he was playing at? Draco didn’t recognize the specific spell being used—he had never spent enough time using curses for that, though he knew Lucius had a library of them in his head—but he didn’t need to. That spell, whatever it was, needed to be stopped.

Harry appeared on the stairs above him. He halted when he saw Draco and stared at him with wide eyes. And Draco felt any uncertainty he’d had about the situation clench and crack, because the movement with which Harry placed a hand delicately on the banister and the way he stared without blinking or looking around for an advantage didn’t match the man Draco had fallen in love with. He was facing some other persona.

But since when does Harry keep the same face and clothes when he’s assuming another persona? Though he wasn’t wearing the green robes he’d left the party in, Draco couldn’t help but note. He was swimming in baggy, rubbish-looking Muggle clothes of the kind he’d often worn during school.

“Harry,” he said gently. “Is something wrong?”

“I’m not Harry right now,” said a precise, high-pitched voice. “My name is Dave.”

“All right,” said Draco, though he wanted to shout. He made sure to keep his hand well away from his wand when he realized how closely “Dave’s” eyes were tracking him. “Do you know if Harry’s in trouble? I can sense Dark magic here, and he put up locking spells on the door strong enough to keep me away, which isn’t something he’d do ordinarily.”

Harry gazed at him intently, then nodded. “Some of the others like lying,” he said. “I’ve never approved of it. I’m on my way to look at a spell that will help transform Harry into one of his personas for good and all. We don’t know which one of us it will be yet,” he confessed, blushing lightly, as if sharing a secret. “But whichever one he chooses, he’s not going to remember being Harry Potter anymore.”

Panic made Draco’s hand slip where it gripped the banister. But he cleared his throat and managed to stay upright, if only by sheer concentration. “What made him want to do this?” he asked. “Do you know?” That question might show he had an interest in Dave himself, and disguise his burning ambition to leap forwards, wrestle Harry to the floor, and Stun him.

“He confronted his friends and told them about you and his involvement in the rebellion, along with Metamorphosis,” Harry said. “They didn’t take the news well.” He frowned and shook his head. “I could have told him they wouldn’t. I’m a lot like that Hermione woman, and I know I’ve lost myself with my face in a book too many times. She thinks the answers are all in books about Mind-Healing. She’s gone to St. Mungo’s to ensure that the Healers there know about Metamorphosis and can stop Harry.”

Ah, no. Draco felt so helpless that those were the only words his mind could repeat for long moments. Meanwhile, Harry Summoned a book and opened it, flipping slowly through the pages, looking for a particular one. Then he smiled, muttered, “Yes, it’s spelled with a u. I thought so,” shut the book, and started back up the stairs.

“Harry,” Draco whispered. “Please. Wait. I love you. I love you, not just the personas or whoever you choose to become.”

Harry’s back stiffened. Then he glanced over his shoulder at Draco, and his eyes had gone emotionless, so Draco couldn’t be sure whether he was wearing the Dave persona or someone else. “But you’d agree with Hermione,” he said. “You’d want me to stop using the personas.”

“I want you to be in control,” Draco said. “I want you to remember who you really are at all times.” He dared to climb a step, not watching his footing, not watching the bob of his wand in his sleeve, not watching anything but Harry. “That’s not the same thing as wanting you to stop using the personas. What scares me is when you vanish into them completely, the way you vanished into Horace Longbottom the day you rescued me from the Ministry.”

“But you’d still want the one you think is the real Harry out,” said Harry, his voice as cold and empty as the Malfoy dungeons. “You’d want me to wear the others like masks, instead of immersing myself in them.”

Harry had heard enough lies for one day. Draco said simply, “Yes.”

“You wouldn’t want me to use the Pensieve I have upstairs.”

Pensieve? “No.”

“Ah,” said Harry. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

Draco had no warning. Suddenly the air around him was solid, thick with magic like a snowfall. He tried to raise an arm and found it frozen in place on the stair railing. His legs froze, too, even though he was in an awkward position, with one foot crooked and the other resting not quite flat on a step. The air in front of his eyes flickered and then turned crystalline, as if he were seeing Harry through a heavy film.

“That will keep you still,” said Harry, and put his wand away. His voice had a faint tone of satisfaction to it now. “You can decide what to do when my new self comes down the stairs. Decide you’re in love with him or not, as you choose. I don’t have anything to do with you anymore.” He turned once more.

Draco made an enormous effort and managed to open his mouth. It seemed Harry had paralyzed him only from the neck down, because he could blink his eyes and move his nostrils as well. “Harry,” he said. “Wait.”

Harry sighed and turned around. “You can stop pretending, you know,” he said.

“Pretending? I don’t understand.” Draco had no coherent plan. He only knew that as long as he was talking to Harry, Harry wasn’t walking up to the Pensieve that was waiting for him.

“You don’t need to pretend to like Harry anymore, to want the real one.” Harry waved his arm impatiently. His eyes were fixed and staring. Draco had never heard anything as bitter as his voice. “You don’t want him. One of the other personas would have suited you better. Why couldn’t you be content with Brian?” The eyes flickered to Draco for a moment, but they were an alien’s eyes. “Then you never would have had to know the truth, and you could have gone on your way at the end of the job, like an ordinary Metamorphosis client.”

“I want Harry,” Draco said. He didn’t think saying I want you would be a good idea at the moment. Better to humor Harry, to treat the persona as real.

For a moment, Harry glanced up the stairs. Draco found himself panting, but Harry turned back to him. “My potion will have boiled over,” he said. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter. I can brew another one. Amanda will be happy to help. I’m more curious about this at the moment.” His eyes sharpened, and he retreated two steps down towards Draco. “Why do you want that Harry?”

*

He was a broken man, and he called himself by the name of Harry Potter only because he deserved no other.

He hadn’t been this aware in quite a long time, because every second of his existence was one of screaming pain. He’d been awake for a month at the end of Harry’s nineteenth year, bitterly looking over week after week of failures, trying to swallow the sourness in his mouth and knowing he never could. He had stayed awake just long enough to organize the first efforts towards Metamorphosis and introduce Harry to the joys of playing characters who could go on jobs, characters who were unlike him in history and looks and personality. Then he had wrapped himself in darkness and only risen towards the surface when there was no other choice, when Harry made the mistake of thinking his life could be normal or he could tell someone else the truth.

He was the only one who understood that Metamorphosis was an atonement, an ongoing sacrifice, as well as a game.

He had not been pleased when Draco Malfoy discovered the truth about Brian and then forced the truth of Metamorphosis from Harry, but on the other hand, it was an action he had to reluctantly approve, since it satisfied the debts Harry owed Draco. But this—this was intolerable. Draco couldn’t want the broken, tattered thing, the dying butterfly on a withered leaf, that was all that remained of Harry Potter. So what did he really want? Did he not understand the extent of the truth?

If not, then Harry would be happy to reveal it to him. But perhaps Draco did understand his brokenness and possessed an answer. If so, then Harry wanted to know the answer.

“Why do you want that Harry?” he repeated, when Draco only stared at him as if the question had been above his hearing range. He looked ridiculous frozen like that. Harry experienced an enormous surge of mingled self-loathing and satisfaction. It was another debt, another unforgivable mistake, and soon enough Harry would settle all those debts by stripping away the person who owed them. He would be dead in truth as he had been for all but random moments during the last ten years.

“Because that Harry is the one who told me the truth,” Draco said softly, at last. “The one who came up with the personas in the first place. He’s clever, brilliant, giving, intriguing, and my match in every way that matters.”

“No, you don’t understand,” said Harry. “That Harry doesn’t exist, either.”

“Who does?” Draco said at once, as if he had awaited just that statement, which he couldn’t have, because he didn’t know the broken man existed. “I thought all your personas were equally real, and if that’s true, then the Harry I fell in love with also exists.”

He hesitated, confused. Then he shook his head slightly and said, “You can’t fall in love with a person just for a few qualities. You’d have to love them through their faults, too, and that’s impossible with me.”

“Tell me your faults, then.” Draco swayed as though he would fall down the stairs and break his head open. Harry hastily strengthened the spell holding him in place. Hurting someone else was intolerable to him when it was not done in self-defense. And he had hurt Draco, and he had hurt Ron and Hermione.

He could not commit suicide when so many other people depended on him for their existence. But he could do the next best thing.

“I’m the Harry who lashed out at you with my magic when you cornered me,” the broken man said swiftly. This was like pouring a tide of poison into Draco’s ears, but the truth often did hurt. If this made him understand, it was worth it. “I’m the Harry who lied to you this evening and told you that I wanted to be alone, and concealed from you the fact that Ron and Hermione were coming over, because it was the easiest thing to do. I’m the Harry who almost Obliviated you when you announced that you knew me as we lay in bed together. I’m the Harry who’s made so many mistakes I can’t count them all. I’m the Harry Nusante scolds, the one who had a chance to be a hero, and lost the chance.” He laughed, though the sound scorched his throat. “The very first thing I ever failed at was being a hero.”

“Maybe I don’t want the hero,” Draco said, and again his response was too quick. “No, I’m sure I don’t want the hero, except insomuch as he’s part of you. And what I hear from you now is a catalogue of impulsive moments and cowardly ones—“

“The worst of me.”

Draco looked him straight in the eye. “If that’s the worst of you, then I should burn myself alive.”

The broken man began to tremble, but he did not allow himself to shatter, because that had already happened. “I’ve lost my best friends,” he said. “One of them thinks I’m sick and she’s gone to tell the world, and one of them can’t accept that I’m gay. And didn’t I deserve to lose them? I lied to them for ten years, and when I did come out, I told you first, and then many other strangers. I should have told them first. At least if I go away and become someone else, I can’t hurt them anymore.”

*

Draco drew a deep breath. He’d spoken the right words so far, but he doubted his good luck could last. He had to say the right thing because he had consciously chosen to do it, not because he was hitting out randomly.

“I want to help you face them,” he said.

“Of course,” said Harry, and in his voice was so much pain that the corners of Draco’s eyes stung. “You would want to harm them. You always have wanted to harm the Weasleys. And I hurt them further by falling in love with someone they have reason to distrust.” His voice recoiled, once again, on himself. This version of Harry hated only one person in the world, Draco knew, and it was not him.

“I want to help you win their friendship back,” Draco said.

Harry froze and stared at him.

“I want to help you do everything,” Draco said. “Argue with me, heal me, make up for your mistakes. Find the best way to face the world as the owner of Metamorphosis and a hundred masks, if Granger really does tell everyone.” Was the pressure of the magic against his chest lessening? He thought it was. He forced his left foot up a step and managed to relax it so it lay flat. “Make love to and with me. Sit at the Weasleys’ dinner table and manage to do no worse than scowl at a thoughtless comment. Outface the nightmares. Come to peace with yourself and keep your personas.

“Harry, what you’ve done is brilliant. You might think I only admire you because I’m a Slytherin, but it’s more than that. So dazzling. An art played out under everyone’s noses for your own private joy and satisfaction, whilst at the same time giving so much to others. And you master the personas, keep them under control and sustain them.” Most of the time. Given the loathing with which Harry spoke of himself for hurting Weasley and Granger, Draco thought the shattering blow must have been the loss of his friends. “And you chose to let me into that secret first. Me.”

“I should have told them first—“

“Why? I was the one who was there, and I was the one you owed the truth to, and I was the one you were beginning to fall in love with.”

“That was a mistake. I don’t deserve—“

“Maybe just this part of you doesn’t deserve it, no,” Draco said fiercely. “This part of you is small, Harry. You’re wide. You contain multitudes. You’ve shown me that. Choosing to be just one of them would do all of you a disservice.”

“I—I could become someone who remembers most of them—“

“And that would destroy Harry Potter. You announced your intention of doing that.” His legs were moving now, carrying him closer and closer, by nothing more than an effort of his own will. Now he was in front of Harry, framing his face with his hands, and those beautiful green eyes were staring at him in shock. “I don’t want any of you to die. Not a whit, not a one. I don’t want you to change simply to have me in your life. I don’t want you to lie to me just because you might hurt me if you don’t.”

“I could fail you.” Whispered, choking words.

“I don’t think you will. And if you do, then we’ll storm and scream about it for a while, and you’ll apologize, and we’ll go back to balancing again.” Draco drew in a breath that dragged against his teeth, let it out. “I know you won’t ever be stable or sane in the sense Granger probably means. I’m prepared to accept that, and more, to love you for it. I’m prepared to let you weather the moments when you blame yourself, and to weather, for myself, the moments when you change personas. I won’t like all of them, no, but you don’t like everything about me, do you?”

“You’re so stubborn,” Harry murmured, which could have been an answer.

“There you are,” Draco said. He combed his fingers through Harry’s hair, gathering up a palm of it and tugging him forwards enough so that their brows rested together. He could feel the scar lying between them, and wondered how many people had ever touched it. “Harry, don’t die or go away before I get the chance to meet all of you. Please.”

*

He floated deep in a stinking sea of blackness—

And then he blinked and was in the light, shaking, uncertain, nervous, the Harry who had guarded the wards during the party and supervised the nonviolent attacks against their attackers and walked into the middle of the entrance hall beneath them to tell everyone he was gay and loved Draco.

His hold was fragile yet. He could feel the personas swarming beneath the surface, and the dark Pensieve called from above him, compelling as a lost child. But he was there, and this was—this was the persona he liked best, he thought, with support from the others.

This is who I would have chosen to be if I were honest, he thought suddenly, in wonder. This is the only one big enough to hold all of me.

Even if he had plunged into the dark Pensieve, he could not have rejected Draco, or Ron, or Hermione, or all the past that had gone into making him. He flinched from the memories of his nineteenth year, but they were not all of who he was. He was Dave, and Amanda, and Horace, and Brian—Brian, who did not want to die—and the weak self-loathing Harry and the meek one whom his friends knew and the proud one who had faced the press when he had to and the one in front of Draco now.

For so long, the only thought that had taken place in his mind in regards to his personas was, I am all of them. And he had hugged his secret to himself, secure in the knowledge that no one else could accept it.

But Draco had accepted it, and then he had taken the thought and turned it around for Harry.

All of them are me.

It was—

He had brilliance, and cleverness, and strength, and bodyguard instincts, and Potions knowledge, and self-confidence, and the ability to make others happy. They might be incarnated in other people, but they belonged to him. They had come from him in the first place. If he was all of these things, so many of them so good, then Harry Potter did not have to die.

The world was made anew.

He grabbed Draco and squeezed him tight, tight, shutting eyes too hot for tears.

Chapter 39.

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