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Bloodstone Heartbeat	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2901 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
Title: Bloodstone Heartbeat
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco (mostly preslash)
Warnings: Gore, violence, issues of disability (Harry is blind), Draco being a bastard, dysfunctional relationship
Wordcount: 7700
Rating: R
Summary: Sequel to ‘Mighty Have Fallen.’ Draco brews the Dark potions that might restore Harry’s eyes, and Harry listens to the heartbeat of time.
Author’s Notes: This was written for an anonymous request (and a bunch of less anonymous ones) for a sequel to ‘Mighty Have Fallen.’ Read that one first. This fic does not end the story; it will continue in further one-shots in the Bloodstone Potions series. Meanwhile, both Harry and Draco are fairly fucked-up here.
Bloodstone Heartbeat
            “This is going to hurt, Potter.”
            Harry recoiled. He had reached out to touch the latest stone that Malfoy had said he was going to pulverize into the potion, and it had turned out to slit his finger open. He promptly stuck his finger in his mouth, and Malfoy laughed. His laughter made blooms of black and red stir to life behind Harry’s eyelids.
            He kept them closed most of the time. Malfoy said that he didn’t want to see the green glass orbs that the Healers had fastened to Harry’s eye sockets because they were the wrong color. Harry wouldn’t know.
            “What the fuck was that?” he asked, and Malfoy chuckled the way he always did when Harry swore.
            “Obsidian,” said Malfoy, and Harry listened to him crossing the room, the flat sound of his footsteps on stone, and the first enormous bang of the pestle. Malfoy pulverized all the stones they needed for this potion using a mortar and pestle, not the spells that Harry would have thought he’d use. Malfoy said it retained the magical properties of the gems better. Harry wouldn’t know that, either. “It has an edge like a knife. They used to make lots of knives out of obsidian. It’ll absorb some of the violence the Carrows did to your body.”
            “You enjoyed that,” Harry said, and groped carefully to the side. He’d put a towel on the counter earlier, to absorb some of the water he’d spilled. He wrapped it around his finger. “Bastard.”
            “Of course,” said Malfoy, which surprised Harry a little. He usually retorted to that particular insult with an intricate retelling of the Malfoy genealogy. “But you’ll learn to need it.” He began to count under his breath, in time with the mashing pestle.
            Harry stood still, listening. He listened to the crackle of the fire in the hearth, too, and the whisper of wind stirring the ivy on the walls of the cottage, and his own heartbeat.
            No matter how he stirred and blinked, there was no light. There would never be light, if he could believe the Healers.
            Malfoy didn’t believe the Healers.
            The sound of the pestle stopped, and Harry heard Malfoy upending the mortar into the cauldron. He grunted a little. Malfoy usually took a lot more time than that to add the crushed gemstones to the potion. “You needed my blood on the edge of that obsidian shard,” he said.
            “He does have ears,” Malfoy remarked to no one, although Harry half-jerked, thinking he might have brought someone along to the cottage with him. It wasn’t as if Harry would have seen. But no, Harry would have heard some horrified comment before now. And Malfoy was as anxious as Harry not to have anyone find out that he was brewing Dark potions. “Yes, Potter. I explained once. These are potions that work with blood magic.”
            Harry said nothing, but turned around to use the towel to mop up the edge of the counter. When he ran his fingers along it, it was hard to tell if it was still damp or just cold.
            Malfoy paused in the regular sounds of his stirring. “You’re a wizard. Use your bloody wand.”
            Harry said nothing, again. His wand was of little use when he couldn’t see where he was aiming it. That was why he no longer used it to light fires—too much chance of burning the mantel or his clothes—or warm himself—too much chance of warming up the wall instead—or boil tea—too much chance of hitting the side of the kettle and heating it in a way that would give him a nasty burn later.
            The sharp sounds of Malfoy’s strides came towards him, and although he braced a little, the same thing always happened, it was no use; Malfoy always grabbed him just before or just after Harry braced, never just on time. This time, it was after. Malfoy shook his tense arm and leaned close to hiss into Harry’s ear. “It’s going to get worse before we’re done, and it’s going to take a long time. And you’ll have to contribute more blood before we get to the end of it. What will it be worth if I use the potion and then find out that you’ve let your magic drain out of you?”
            “You can’t stop being a wizard just because you don’t cast spells for a little while,” Harry mumbled. He felt as if he didn’t even know where his tongue was, now that he couldn’t see. It banged against his teeth in the weirdest places, and he cut it now and felt some blood flowing. Wincing, he lifted a hand and felt at the cut.
            “You can turn into a useless one, though.” Malfoy’s breath razored along his earlobe, not feeling that much different from the shard of obsidian. “I’m not going to have that happen. I’m going to have my rival back.”
            Harry struck out, clumsily, managing to hit Malfoy in the shoulder and drive him back. He didn’t always. “That’s what this is all about! Your stupid rivalry! You don’t care about me, you just want someone who can give you a good challenge at Quidditch!” He flailed again, and smacked Malfoy in the face.
            Malfoy laughed, soft and exultant. He loved it when Harry acted like this. Harry knew it, which was one reason he sometimes resisted, so he could feel Malfoy’s harsh grip on his arm and his words that close.
            “That’s right,” Malfoy whispered, close enough to make Harry reel back. “I care about someone who can give me a good challenge at Quidditch, that’s right. And that someone is you.”
            Harry would have liked to say something cutting, but he couldn’t think of anything. All he could do was mash his nose against Malfoy’s face and hiss, “You won’t like it when I’m back on my broom and beating you.”
            “Yes, I would,” Malfoy said. and his voice dipped to that level that Harry still couldn’t understand and which always drove him the most mental about having lost his sight, because he couldn’t see Malfoy’s expression. “Yes, I will.”
            Then Malfoy danced back, gone again from immediate reach, and laughed at him, and said, “I’ll bring the bloodstone next time.”
            And he flicked the side of Harry’s head. Harry, of course, didn’t move his temple out of the way in time. How could he, since he couldn’t see? But Malfoy seemed determined to train him how to.
            Harry sat down at the kitchen table and listened to Malfoy packing the cauldron and the mortar and pestle away. The potions he said he would need to restore Harry’s sight took so long to brew that he had to make them in stages, and other than some elementary brewing that he said he could do at home, all the important parts took place in Harry’s cottage.
            Today, Harry was finally curious. “Why do you always come here to crush the gemstones, Malfoy? You could just come here when you needed my blood or the other body ingredients for the potion. Or I could even owl a vial of blood to you.”
            Malfoy sniffed. “As though I would trust you to get your blood into the vial instead of all over the cottage. The next thing I would read about in the Daily Prophet would be your friends finding your body stiff and dead in the middle of the floor.”
            And Malfoy walked out the door, Harry knew that by its opening and closing, and left him alone. But the crazy thing, the bloody mad thing, was that he always left Harry with a grin on his lips.
*
            “That’s awful, Ron—don’t tell him about it—”
            “Don’t tell me about what?” Harry hadn’t perfected the art of using magic without his vision, or sharpening all his other senses, but he had perfected the art of sounding chirpy and innocent when he broke into one of Ron and Hermione’s conversations like that. Since his blinding, there were all sorts of things in the Prophet that Hermione didn’t want to tell him about, since he couldn’t read them anyway.
            Then you could avoid mentioning them in front of me, too. But Harry didn’t blame his friends for not knowing how to deal with his blindness. It wasn’t like he was perfect with it, either, and he was living behind those burned eyesockets.
            Sometimes he remembered the burning, the Dark curse that the Carrows had used to roast his eyes out of his head. And sometimes he thought the memory was manufactured, because he couldn’t have survived such pain without going mental.
            You already are, Malfoy’s voice told him.
            “Oh, Harry,” Hermione whispered, and leaned towards him. Harry felt her breath on his chin. “It’s awful. Someone attacked someone else with—not with the same curse the Carrows used on you, but it was pretty similar.”
            “What?” Harry found himself stretching out a hand as if he could take the newspaper and read it, and pulled it back with an embarrassed little groan. But he was honestly concerned. If someone was attacking people with the same curse as he had endured, or copying the Carrows, then he wanted to do something about it.
            “Well, maybe not exactly the same.” That was Ron, his rough voice and the scent of his hair making it easier for Harry to orient on him. He heard the scrape as Ron pulled his chair back and sat down. “But they did cut into a wizard’s eyes and drain a bunch of liquid out of them. Apparently St. Mungo’s can put it right, but it’ll take a few days.”
            Harry’s breath caught so hard that he coughed. “Who was the wizard they attacked?” he asked.
            He heard the rustle as Ron shrugged. “Dorian Yaxley. Related to that Yaxley who was a Death Eater, but I don’t think he was a Death Eater himself.”
            No, Harry thought. But someone who was might know the way around his wards.
*
            “Did you take the liquid out of Yaxley’s eye, or not?”
            “I told you the potions were Dark, and they required some vitreous humor,” said Malfoy. Harry heard the clinking and the splash that meant he was pouring something liquid into the cauldron, and grimaced. Malfoy had said that almost all the base of this part of the potion was crushed gemstones, minus the blood that he took from Harry. That meant he might be pouring that vitreous humor into the cauldron right this second. “You don’t have any left, since your eyes are entirely gone. And you smashed all the Time-Turners a few years ago, too, so I couldn’t just go back in time and get some from you. Most inconvenient. Next time you invade the Department of Mysteries, consider whether or not you’re going to have your eyes burned out in a few years and make your Potions master’s life seriously difficult.”
            Harry blinked, hard. Then he remembered it didn’t matter. It was just the useless movement of eyelids over glass.
            But at least it reminded him of what he wanted to ask next. “Why did you choose Yaxley?”
            “He annoys me.”
            Harry tried to stop it, he really did. It wasn’t like Ron and Hermione were here, or knew that Malfoy was helping him, and even if they did, they would only object to Malfoy’s methods, not his goals. But the small laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
            Across from him—now he knew the location of the table where Malfoy brewed well enough, having bruised his hips on it any number of times—he heard Malfoy sniff as though he was drawing in the scent of a delicious perfume.
            Harry leaned his head down in his hands, and didn’t ask any more questions, even letting Malfoy slice his hand with the sliver of quartz that he needed bloodied without raising any comment. He pressed on his eyelids and told himself he was imagining the bursts of light that raised, and listened to his heartbeat.
            Only when Malfoy left again did Harry realize that he hadn’t brought any bloodstone this time, the way he’d said he would. Harry vowed to ask him why next time.
*
            “They’re calling him the Eye Killer.”
            Harry kept his back turned. He had learned to use a Warming Charm, after all, after Malfoy threatened to break either his wand or his wand arm if he didn’t. “I’m really not picky, Potter.” As long as Harry kept his wand firmly in hand and his elbow on the edge of the counter so that he knew it was aimed in the right direction, it wasn’t that difficult.
            Right now, he was making a stew with chunks of rabbit meat Malfoy had brought him. According to him, one of his peacocks had pecked it to death. Harry had his severe doubts about that, but he was learning only to ask certain questions of Malfoy.
            Harry didn’t really know for sure how well he controlled his expressions were anymore, since he couldn’t see them. Best to keep his back turned and not show Ron anything untoward.
            “Really?” Harry thought his voice was the blandest of the bland as he listened to the stew boil and cast a modified Tempus Charm. It would beep at him when the stew was done boiling. “I thought he hadn’t killed anyone?”
            “He’s attacking people and draining liquid out of their eyes, Harry. I think it’s justified.”
            Harry swallowed. Right. It wasn’t as though he could tell Ron why he thought it might be. And maybe it wasn’t. Maybe he should be horrified that Malfoy was attacking random people and draining his potions ingredients out of their eyes.
            But maybe just because his eyes had been burned out of his head and he couldn’t weep anymore, he wasn’t.
            “Still feeling up to eating, after those horrific stories?” he asked, and gave the stew one final stir as the Tempus Charm beeped.
            “I can always eat, mate, you know that.” Ron sighed, and there was the rustle of him putting the paper down, probably right where Harry intended to set the bowl of stew on the table. “It’s just…it’s so horrible a crime, and it’s so weird. I hope they catch him soon.”
            Harry jerked his head in what he hoped would seem like a nod of agreement, and turned around, cradling the bowl of stew in his hands. That was another thing he had practiced at Malfoy’s request, feeling around his bowls and cups with his fingers until he knew the size of them all and was unlikely to spill any liquid contents. Malfoy said that he wanted Harry to be able to hold a basin to catch his own vomit, because he would need it after Malfoy punched him in the solar plexus as hard he could. That would be when he could see again.
            “Move the paper, Ron, will you?”
*
            “Finally brought the bloodstone?” Harry didn’t bother to turn his head when Malfoy came into the room, instead listening to the falling of a small fountain that Hermione had brought him. She had described it for him: several small brown rocks arranged into ledges, with a jet channel for the water. The water wound its way down into the basin of the fountain, then was gathered up by a simple spell to leap from stone to stone and reach the top of the channel again. Harry of course couldn’t see any of that, or the soft rainbow that Hermione said was always enchanted to shine through the back of the little waterfall, but he didn’t think it mattered much. He could still listen.
            “It’s taken me a long time to find the right one.”
            Harry cocked his head. He still didn’t think he had sharp enough hearing to do all the tasks that Malfoy thought he should be able to, but there was only one way to describe the tone in Malfoy’s voice as he banged his cauldron down on the table and set out the mortar and pestle, and that was sulky. Harry leaned back in his chair and wondered what the expression on Malfoy’s face looked like right now. Perhaps he shouldn’t have refused the little spell that the Healers at St. Mungo’s wanted to give him, the one that would whisper into his ear a description of faces.
            “What’s wrong?” Harry finally asked, when some minutes had passed and the bangs had continued. Malfoy didn’t usually treat his Potions equipment like that, especially the cauldron, which was apparently pewter. He wouldn’t let Harry even come near the table when he was there in case Harry bumped into something.
            “The fucking friends you have, Potter.” From the sound of it, Malfoy had spun to face him, and banged his hand into the table, too. He was making little swearing noises, and Harry could feel his glare even if he couldn’t see it. “Did you know that Weasley is heading up a task force to capture me?”
            “But no one knows it’s you—”
            “To capture the Eye Killer, then.” Malfoy stalked towards him; the crisp sounds of his boots could mean nothing else. “They can’t leave well enough alone!”
            A defense of his friends would sound wrong, when he had agreed to let Malfoy brew this potion in the first place, and a defense of Malfoy would just sound stupid, so Harry stayed silent.
            “Look at me.”
            Harry flinched, not from the words but from the way that Malfoy had seized his hair and wrenched his head back. He lifted his eyelids, a gesture he didn’t bother doing most of the time anymore. Even Ron and Hermione were uneasy around his glass eyes, Harry thought, although they wouldn’t say so.
            “That’s right,” Malfoy breathed, and Harry felt the breath, but couldn’t tell from the tone who he was talking to, Harry or himself. “Remind me of why I’m doing this.”
            Malfoy’s other hand had come to rest on Harry’s shoulder, gripping it, and Harry was fairly sure he wasn’t holding anything delicate. So he reminded Malfoy of why he was doing this, and punched Malfoy in the stomach.
            Malfoy let him go, although not until Harry had almost got dragged out of the chair with him, and staggered around the room from the sound of it, wheezing. Harry propped his feet up on the table and listened to Hermione’s fountain.
            Malfoy went on wheezing until Harry was tempted to ask him if he’d broken anything. But he would probably mock Harry for his sympathy. So Harry just stayed silent.
            Then Malfoy straightened up and went back to the table, from the noise of his hands moving among the ingredients and cauldrons. “As I said,” he murmured, “it’s taking me a long time to find an acceptable number of pieces of bloodstone. I have to bring them to you, and you have to choose between them. Only the ones that you think are right are going into the potion. You have to mark them with your hands.”
            Alarmed, Harry blurted it out before he thought. “But how can I pick the right ones when I can’t see what they look like?”
            Silence from Malfoy’s direction this time, probably marked by one of those stares that Harry suspected was meant to roast along the side of his face, and actually did. He flushed and lowered his head.
            “As I said,” Malfoy said, “you have to mark them with your hands. But you have to have a lot to choose from, because we need a lot of the right ones for the potion. I’ll bring the pieces of bloodstone when I have enough.”
            Harry sighed and nodded. It seemed he was forgiven for whatever transgression he had committed in Malfoy’s eyes. Probably being weak—he kept saying that Harry shouldn’t let the blindness affect his life or make him less than he’d been, because having a weak rival would make Malfoy look weak.
            “How are you paying for this?” Harry added, as the sound of the fountain beside him, which Hermione said had been expensive, roused him to another concern. “The bloodstone and the obsidian and the rest of it? It must be expensive.”
            “Of course it is, Potter.” From the abstracted sound of Malfoy’s voice and the sloshing as a stirring rod moved through liquid, he was completing one of the less complicated steps in making the potion, stirring it a certain number of times in a certain direction. Harry had told him that he didn’t need to do those steps in Harry’s cottage, that he would trust him if Malfoy wanted to do them elsewhere, but Malfoy had only slapped him for that. “Gemstones always are.”
            “Well?” Harry drummed his fingers on the table, sure the sound wouldn’t be loud enough to cover up Malfoy’s reply.
            “I’m selling some of the Potions ingredients that I don’t need.”
            Harry tried to stare at Malfoy’s back, but given that he didn’t know if Malfoy was standing with his profile to Harry or not, that was slightly less effective than he wanted it to be. “What?” Harry finally asked. “You’re selling people’s—people’s eye-juice on the black market?”
            “Only you, Potter,” said Malfoy, with a sigh in the back of his voice that made him sound like Professor Snape, “would refer to the Potions ingredients I am collecting as eye-juice.”
            “Well, that’s what it is!” Harry shook his head, thinking. He didn’t want to risk Malfoy’s wrath by asking about something he knew perfectly well wasn’t going to happen, like for Malfoy to stop attacking people. “Could you Transfigure something else into the vitreous humor that the potion needs?” He thought Malfoy ought to be damn proud that Harry had remembered the name of the eye-juice.
            There was silence, except for the clinks of Malfoy’s stirring rod against the cauldron, for long minutes. Harry was tempted to cast a Tempus Charm to keep track of them for him, but he didn’t. He just remained there, his hands linked together, waiting. That was something he had got a lot better since he lost his sight. Too bad it wasn’t the sort of skill that Malfoy had wanted him to practice.
            “You know,” Malfoy said slowly, “that might just work.”
            Harry sighed a little. “And Transfigured ingredients wouldn’t have any effect on how well the potion worked?” That was something he ought to have thought of already. He’d assumed it was the reason that Malfoy wasn’t simply Transfiguring other liquids into the vitreous humor in the first place.
            “What? Oh, no, I’m still going to use what I collect from people’s eyes in the potion,” Malfoy said. “I was just thinking that I could sell Transfigured water to raise money, and no one who isn’t a Potions master is likely to know the difference. Hmmm. That means I wouldn’t need to go out after sources as often, and that means I could spend more time brewing the potion. And less chance of being caught by Aurors.” Harry heard him set the stirring rod down, so he was prepared when Malfoy came over to him and clapped him on the back. “Well done, Potter. Sometimes you have a good idea.”
            Harry sighed a little. At least he might spare some people from being attacked. And he had to admit that since all of Malfoy’s victims so far, except the first one, had been Death Eaters, he had trouble feeling sympathy.
            Still…
            “Would the Transfigured ingredients you sell make the potions they’re used in any less effective?” he asked.
            “What should I care if they do?” Malfoy asked, and from the sound of it, took up another stone that clicked softly against its mortar. “It’s a Dark potion, Potter. Banned for a reason. They ought to know some of the risks they’re taking.”
            Harry buried his head in the edge of the table and let Malfoy make acid remarks about his weak stomach. It would be worse if Malfoy could hear the faint snorts he was making, and knew it was laughter.
            Harry knew he shouldn’t. People were being attacked, Malfoy was so nonchalant about it, they were engaging in Dark magic right in the middle of Harry’s cottage, and things were so horrible. Harry never would have done anything like this a few months ago, when he’d still been a fairly normal Auror trainee.
            Then again, maybe you were allowed to change in some ways when your eyes had been burned out.
*
            “Who is that owl from, Harry?”
            Harry froze for a second, wondering if Malfoy had been foolish enough to send him an owl about the potion when Ron and Hermione were here, and then shook his head. No, he would remember what some of the people closer to Harry still had trouble remembering sometimes, that Harry couldn’t read. “I don’t know,” he said, listening as the owl settled on Hermione’s arm. His own heartbeat was faster than normal, banging against his ears, a product of his shock. “You don’t recognize it?”
            “Well, it has a letter on it that says it’s for you, but no,” Hermione said doubtfully. Harry heard her trying to wrestle the letter free, and a second later, she burst out in a bout of swearing that was really quite impressive for Hermione.
            The owl took off, from the heavy shushing sound of its wings, and Harry tensed his shoulders. That was all he had time to do before the owl landed on the right one, and made Harry list and nearly fall off his chair. He hissed at the feeling of talons stabbing deep, and heard the swish of tea in Ron’s cup as he thumped it down.
            “Do you need help, mate?” Harry had got good at hearing when someone was drawing a wand, and by the sound of scraping cloth, Ron was doing exactly that. “I don’t know who the bloody thing’s from, but it’s practically trying to eat your ear off!”
            “I presume it’s not succeeding,” Harry said dryly, and turned his right arm sideways, while he gently reached up and towards what he thought was the owl’s leg. After a moment of fumbling—still embarrassing, but not as long as it would have taken him only a month before—he found the letter. The owl was holding out its leg, as steady as a rock.
            “My compliments to your master,” Harry murmured, as he unbound the scroll from the owl’s leg. “Not many birds can be trained that way.”
            The owl took off with nothing more than a brush of its beak against his face. That didn’t draw blood, but it could have, and Harry had to smile. He knew who it was from.
            Not that Malfoy wasn’t stupid to send him a scroll when he knew Harry couldn’t read. But at least he was probably discreet enough not to sign his name.
            Harry unfolded the scroll, trying hard to remember the exact incantation that would make the letter read itself aloud to him. Hermione had taught him the spell, but she and Ron always read Harry everything that he needed to know from the Prophet anyway, so it wasn’t like he’d had much occasion to use it.
            Before he could scour his memory bloody, however, the scroll unrolled in his hands in a precise way that could only be the result of magic, and a soft, sexless voice began to speak the message aloud.
            “The pieces of the stone are ready. Testing will ensue soon. You will be informed. You will be ready. Practice with your wand.”
            Then the voice fell silent, and Harry could feel the pressure of Ron and Hermione’s bewildered silence calling him to explain. He ignored it, instead tilting the scroll back so it crinkled in his hand. Although he still hadn’t developed the sort of sensitivity in his fingertips that the Healers had promised he would, he thought he could feel a distinct lack of ink on the silky parchment. The message had probably vanished the minute Malfoy’s charm finished reading it.
            “What was that?” Hermione asked, and Harry tightened his fingers on the scroll a moment before she would have snatched it from him.
            “Isn’t it polite to ask before you borrow something, Hermione?” he said pointedly, curling his fingers in when it seemed as if she might try again, given the brush of her hand against his arm. “Even from blind people?”
            “I didn’t—Harry, I’m sorry.” Hermione sounded like she was blushing. “I just wanted to know who it was from. It didn’t sound like anyone we knew. I was afraid that it was a Howler that might taunt you for getting tortured by the Lestranges or something.”
            “Is it red?” Harry let the scroll dangle from his fingers so she could see it again, but made it clear, he hoped, from the way he held it, that she wasn’t welcome to borrow it. “You would have to be the one to tell me that, of course.”
            “You’re being a prat, mate.” Ron’s voice was low, and came from a different direction than Harry had anticipated. Harry must have been so focused on the argument with Hermione that he hadn’t heard Ron move. He was on the opposite side of the table from where he’d been now, not far from Harry’s left shoulder. “Hermione only wanted to help.” He hesitated, and Harry waited, because that silence meant more was coming. “You’ve changed a lot ever since you got your eyes burned out, even.”
            Harry began to laugh, and it seemed the heartbeat that he heard so often when he sat in the cottage alone had moved into his throat and turned the laughter thick and ugly. “I’ve changed since I got my eyes burned out?” he finished, half-hysterical, choking with the hysteria, his head wobbling with the impact of the laughter. “Wow, I never would have thought of that!”
            The silence this time was stricken, and Harry managed to shut off the laughter by gripping his jaw and closing it. He shook his head when he was done. “Of course I’ve changed,” he said, when he could speak again. “Of course I have. And I don’t enjoy being treated like a child who might have grabbed something too dangerous for me to have. I can hold my own bloody post!”
            “What was that all about?” Hermione hadn’t forgotten the original source of the argument. Harry noticed her voice was meeker.
            He also noticed that she didn’t apologize. Neither did Ron.
            “An experimental Healing technique that I’ve been in contact with a Healer in Germany about,” Harry invented on the spot. The voice hadn’t sounded German, but then, it hadn’t sounded British, either. It was the words rendered the way magic would read them, without an accent any more than they had a sex. “He’s the only one who practices it. He was telling me that he’s gathered the granite chips from the standing stones in Germany that he thinks might help me.” There. That ought to do it. No denying the stones, since Malfoy’s message had mentioned them, but that ought to make them think in a different direction than gemstones.
            What Malfoy meant, of course, was the bloodstone. Harry’s fingers tingled with the desire to see them.
            “Standing stones?” Hermione’s voice, predictably, was rising. “Harry, that’s dangerous! You don’t know what kind of magic might have been worked with them, what he might—”
            “I don’t fucking care if it’s dangerous.”
            Harry said it simply, but just like his laughter earlier, it shut them up. He heard Hermione shifting in her seat, and Ron moving again, this time, towards her. Harry pictured them exchanging silent glances of support for each other, Ron putting his hand on her shoulder. That they would have done that in front of him even if he could see did nothing to improve his temper.
            “You still have your life,” Hermione murmured. “You still have something you could throw away if you drink an unknown potion.”
            “It’s not much of a life,” Harry said. “Not being able to read anything, barely being able to cast spells. No job, and no ability to have one. No ability to fly. My best friends treating me like a child or silent with shock and pity half the time.”
            “But you’re still alive,” Hermione whispered, as if she thought the mere mention would set him off again. Well, maybe it would have. Harry found it hard to tell what he was going to say next. Maybe he was more influenced by Malfoy than he would have thought, to find his best friends this annoying. “That way, you can plan for the future.”
            “Can you think of a job I could do from my cottage?” Harry asked, trying to bring his voice back to normal. If Malfoy was influencing him, that might not be the best thing. And who was to say that the potion he was brewing to give Harry back his sight would work, or that Malfoy wouldn’t get bored in the middle of it and go work on something else? He had told Harry that it was incredibly complicated and would take a long time to brew. “Something where I wouldn’t have to see?”
            The hesitation was thick. Harry nodded. “Everything involves owl post, and I would have to make sure that I could tell exactly where the letter was and cast the spell you taught me.”
            “You could do it! You were doing okay with the spell last week!” Hermione leaned across the table, from the scrape of her elbows, and squeezed his hand. Harry didn’t jump because he was expecting it, but it was still a bit annoying. “I know that you’ll get better with it if you just try!”
            “And maybe I don’t want to try,” Harry said. “Maybe I just want things to go back to the way they were.”
            “They’re not, mate.” Ron’s voice was short, but kind. “They’re not going back. You have to figure out how to live with what you have.”
            Harry swallowed. There was sense in what Ron said, more sense than in some of the things Malfoy said. When Harry was with Malfoy, so many of the things he talked about seemed to make sense, but thinking about them later, they didn’t. Did Harry really want to be friends with someone whose main reason for wanting Harry to see again was so that Harry could duck his punches?
            “I just don’t know that I can,” Harry whispered. “How can I live once the money in my vault runs out?”
            “Owl post.” Hermione was firm, and as irresistible as Molly when she thought she was right—which was most of the time, Harry had to admit. “You have to learn to cast the spell, sure, but it’ll work, and in time the owls will learn how to hold their messages so that you can always cast it in the right direction. And you can use your name to good advantage. There are people who will want to order what you make just because you’re Harry Potter.”
            “Do you know a spell to dictate words onto parchment when you can’t see and correct them, then?” Harry asked, smiling weakly. “Because I would need to be able to write back to them, and that’s one thing I can’t do right now.”
            “Another spell to look up,” Hermione promised, and her bag rustled as she dug the parchment out. “McGonagall said that I could have any access to the Hogwarts library that I needed, you know—I could find any book that would help, look up any spell that I thought would do you good.”
            It hurts. But that’s no reason to be snappish with them. It’s not everyone who has two friends like this.
            Harry knew, for example, that Malfoy didn’t.
            “Thanks, Hermione,” he said, and meant every word.
*
            “What did they do to you?”
            Harry blinked. Malfoy had been in the cottage for half an hour, mixing his potion without approaching Harry. Harry had wanted to ask about the pieces of bloodstone, but the owl had said that further testing was needed, and it was best not to disturb Malfoy when he was in this euphoria of fierce concentration.
            Which made it all the more unusual that he was the one who had chosen to address Harry. And that Harry had not the least idea what he was talking about.
            “Who?” Harry asked. “If it’s the Carrows you’re talking about, you know perfectly well what.”
            There was the sound of something slamming on the table—something crystalline or glass, by the sound. Harry hoped that Malfoy hadn’t broken another stirring rod. He’d whinged endlessly about the last one he broke, even though it was his fault. He’d tried to claim Harry snorted at the wrong time.
            “Your friends,” said Malfoy, and his voice was a low hiss. “I know that they were here when my owl delivered my message to you, because he came back with his feathers all ruffled. He only does that when he’s been around strangers. What did they say about the potion I was brewing?”
            “I made up a story about a Healer in Germany who was chipping pieces off standing stones for me,” Harry said. “Don’t worry about it. In the meantime, are you going to let me hold these pieces of bloodstone you keep going on about, or not?”
            Malfoy didn’t answer. Harry cocked his head. Malfoy did that the first time he needed Harry’s blood in the potion, but by now, he just took it. Harry wondered why he would hesitate.
            Maybe it’s not blood he needs. At least Harry knew he was safe against Malfoy taking his eye-juice.
            “The bloodstones need to be selected and sorted, yes,” said Malfoy. “But they also need something special from you.” Another pause. Harry was about to tell him to stop being a melodramatic arse and get on with it when Malfoy spoke again. “Heart’s blood.”
            Harry fluttered his eyelids, the substitute he did now instead of blinking. “And you have a spell that will enable you to take it safely?”

            “It helps if you’re—distracted when I do it,” Malfoy said, and from the sound of it, he’d picked up a pile of clinking things from the edge of the table. Probably the pieces of bloodstone. Then Malfoy came towards him, shifting his balance, probably because of the bloodstone in his arms. “If you have some pleasure to dull the pain.”
            Harry opened his mouth to ask what that meant, but then Malfoy’s mouth slammed into his, and Harry had to splutter between the impress of teeth and the taste of blood. He jerked his head back enough to speak, and said, “Well, that’s not pleasure, let me tell you right now!”
            Malfoy’s mouth followed him, even as his arms descended on either arm of the chair, caging Harry in. Harry darted his head around, but Malfoy found him again easily. Harry shoved at his chest, but didn’t hit hard enough to push him away. At the moment, he hated being blind more than he had at any time since he’d actually lost his eyes.
            “You’re so,” Malfoy hissed, as if he was the one who spoke Parseltongue. His hands dropped, fumbling at Harry’s lap. “I hate to see what they do to you when I come here after they’ve been. Your whole head droops. You look as though they’ve convinced you that you’re useless and pathetic. And you stop practicing the spells that would actually let you live an independent life.” Harry opened his mouth to deny that, since Ron and Hermione actually wanted him to practice spells that would let him live independently, but Malfoy was there to suck at his lips, and he had to stop. “Do you know how many times I watched you almost drop the bloody teacup today?”
            Harry shook his head, a little interested in the answer in spite of himself.
            “Too bloody many,” Malfoy said, and then his mouth was on Harry’s again while his hand reached Harry’s groin and squeezed.
            Harry put his head back, gasping. It was the first time a hand had been there since the—Carrows. He had been too depressed to wank, and then too worried that he would embarrass himself doing it somehow and have to call in Healers. But now Malfoy was stroking him, rubbing, almost scraping at the end of his cock with a thumb as if he hated Harry, and it was so brilliant that Harry couldn’t tell whether Malfoy was doing it through his clothes or not.
            And he didn’t care. And he didn’t care that he remembered a moment later that of course Malfoy hated him, and he really should have been prepared for that.
            “You can be better than this,” Malfoy said into his ear, and nipped it. Harry was losing track of where his mouth was going; he was too busy focusing on that hand. “You’re willing to let me brew a Dark potion to regain your sight. But then they come, and they make you over into their perfect blind little Gryffindor.”
            “They—they don’t know about the potion—” Harry’s words faded into a long cry as Malfoy got his hand on Harry’s, definitely naked, cock now. The pulling sensations were to the right, and long, and harsh, and fast. Harry tried to remember if he liked to be wanked like that, if he’d wanked himself like that, and couldn’t. He only knew what was happening now, Malfoy leaning over him as he sat in the chair, the wooden back against his back, his cock against Malfoy’s palm, his tongue against Malfoy’s as Malfoy dipped his head down again.
            “Of course they don’t know I’m brewing it.” Malfoy snarled out the words, ground them out, the way his hand ground against Harry’s cock, pulling and twisting. “But Granger knows about it, I’m sure. She’s researched it. She researches everything. She’d know.”
            He slowed down, so that Harry had to hear the words between every pull. “The difference between me and you—” pull, jerk, scrape “—is that I understand what you’ll do to become—” yank, stroke, pull “—who you were, and she thinks that—” caress, smooth, tug “—you won’t do certain things. Because you’re good, aren’t you? And you haven’t changed. Even though those bastards burned out your eyes.”
            His words carried Harry back into the dungeons, and the moment when he lay writhing on the stone floor and saw the wand coming for his eyes and knew, knew, that he was going to lose them.
            And in between them, around them, behind them, behind his eyelids, came the glowing red beat that kept time with his heart.
            “Yes,” Malfoy breathed. “You’re going to be what you were, and you’re going to be better than that. Because you’ve changed. You can’t go through an experience like that and not be changed. They’re fools if they can’t see it.”
            Harry opened his mouth. He had no idea what he was about to say, if he was going to defend his friends or do something else, but in the end it didn’t matter, since all words vanished down a long and red and roaring tunnel. He was aware of faint pain in his chest as the pleasure moved through him, but it was like a candle next to dragonfire. He reached up and caught one of Malfoy’s hands, and sat there, shaking.
            “At least you’re shaking because of the impact that had on you, and not because you’re a coward now,” Malfoy murmured. There was a sharp sting in Harry’s chest, a sharper one, or just there because he didn’t have the orgasm to distract him this time, and he winced. Malfoy laughed like a wave breaking. “That was just me sealing the wound, Potter. I have the blood I need, from the lining of your heart.”
            While Harry was still sitting there, trying to comprehend it, Malfoy pressed several pieces of sharp-edged stone into his hand. “Now. Choose the ones that feel right, that tingle when you pass your fingers over them.”
            Harry opened his hands. He wanted to say something about Malfoy performing a potentially (potentially) dangerous spell on him like that while wanking him at the same time, and what would have happened if some of his blood had spilled out, or Malfoy had stabbed him with the wand, or what would have happened if the incision in the lining of his heart had remained open—
            But the red blood-beat was there, swelling and fading behind his eyes, filling the darkness with the only color he had seen in months.
            He spread his fingers over the bloodstone pieces, letting the heartbeat guide him. Some pieces felt flat and simple; he put them aside. The rest of them he let his hands linger on, and then nodded and picked up two pieces from the first set Malfoy had given him. “These. What does bloodstone look like?”
            “Different colors,” said the prat, picking up the bloodstone from him with a simple brush of his fingers. “But these are dark green shot with red. As if you’ve already bled on them.”
            Harry smiled.
            “Good choice,” Malfoy added, so softly that Harry could have pretended not to hear him, if he wanted.
            But Harry was thinking of the heart’s blood taken from his chest without killing him, and the pleasure that had roared through him, and the way that he had let Malfoy go on making this potion even when it was perfectly clear that he was hurting people to do it.
            He was thinking of red behind his eyes, and, maybe, someday, in front of them.
            “Yeah,” he said, turning his hand so that his fingers brushed the underside of Malfoy’s wrist as he took the bloodstone out of Harry’s lap. “I reckon it was.”
  The End.
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Bloodstone Heartbeat