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Loup-garou	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 8099 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Ten—The Spirit and the Letter

            “Are you all right, mate?”

            Harry grunted and took another mouthful of the pasta that Hermione had made. He hadn’t cooked once since he’d got here, he thought in some distraction. He ought to do something about that. Back at the Dursleys’, he would have cooked every meal and cleaned up afterwards.

            He froze with his fork halfway to his mouth. That was an odd thing to think. What was wrong with him, comparing his best friends, no matter how uncomfortable they made him, to the Dursleys? He put down the fork with a hand that shook and stretched it out so that he could watch the tremors.

            “Harry?” Hermione this time, rising from her seat and leaning forwards as though she thought he was going to have a heart attack at the table. “Are you all right? You have an expression on your face that says you aren’t.”

            Harry clamped his teeth down on the speech he wanted to make about how it took his expression to tell her that, when she knew all the other things that were going wrong in his life because of Malfoy and the Mark and their bloody refusal to accept that he was a Dark wizard. He hadn’t given them much chance to accept it, he reminded himself again. He’d dropped suddenly into their lives after almost two years of no contact and expected them to catch up in a hurry with events he was still struggling to understand and react to himself.

            Instead, he shook his head and said, “Something happened today that I’ll need to think about. That’s all. But the food is good,” he added, and made himself go back to eating dinner like a normal human being.

            Ron and Hermione exchanged significant glances. Harry ground his teeth again, and then stopped as it really started to hurt. He applied himself grimly to the meal. He didn’t know what they were thinking about him, he reminded himself, and it wouldn’t have mattered even if he did. The important part, the part that his mind was still spinning around, was what had happened between him and Malfoy today.

            That was the part he didn’t know how to react to. That was the part that had scared him so badly that he’d spent hours pacing the garden outside before he could force himself to come in for an evening of ordinary food and talk with his best friends.

            But no matter how he thought about it, it was like trying to chew rocks. They didn’t change, and they only broke his teeth.

            “Harry, I found something I think might help you.”

            Harry returned to the world with a bump and looked up, only then remembering that he’d told Hermione to do some research on various ways of removing the Mark from his shoulder. Research that he didn’t need now, he thought, because Malfoy really had kept his word and taken the Mark away. But he couldn’t tell that to Hermione yet, so he would have to come up with some plausible story for her.

            “Oh.” He fetched up a smile from some deep well of his imagination and presented it. From the look on her face, Hermione wasn’t impressed. Harry coughed and managed to grope up a few more words. “Thanks! Did a book arrive from Britain, or is it something from a book that you had here?”

            “From a book here.” Hermione reached down and picked up the thick tome that was lying next to her chair, pulling out a fringed silk bookmark from an inside page and turning to the actual page immediately, before she could lose her place. Harry wanted to shake his head in admiration, but he was aware of Ron’s eyes on him, and he was afraid of how he might interpret the gesture, so he kept his head still and his face bland. “Look, it looks as though some Dark Lord in the past had the same idea.”

            Harry leaned over to see the picture on the page. It showed a grandly dressed wizard in the center, sketched so realistically that Harry wouldn’t have been surprised to see him turn around and fire a cool glance at his audience. By contrast, the figures that surrounded him were nearly cartoonish, joined to the wizard with glowing red lines.

            “Dark Lords have always distrusted their followers more than any enemy they were fighting,” Hermione said. “It seems they’ve always invented traps to take them and wards to watch them, even when they told them that watching wasn’t in the plans.”

            “What can you expect?” Ron finished his meal and leaned over to join them. “The people who follow Dark Lords are Dark wizards, and since when is one of those bastards trustworthy?”

            Harry tensed in spite of himself. Ron glanced at him a moment later, studied him, and then said, “Sorry, mate,” in the same tone he’d used to speak of the Dark wizards. Harry nodded, feeling like a puppet, and made an encouraging gesture at Hermione, who was looking between them unhappily.

            “Most people do it with specialized wards at a distance, or on objects that they carry,” Hermione said. She made a face. “Voldemort’s a bit stupid, really, and so is Malfoy, to give his followers a visible Mark. If one of them’s taken alive, they’d have to answer some hard questions about it.”

            “Depending on the follower, they might be willing enough to do that,” Harry said. “Not everyone is there by choice. Remember Snape.”

            “He went willingly at first,” Ron said. “Wasn’t that what you told us, when you told us about his memories of your Mum?”

            “At first,” Harry said. “And he told Voldemort about the prophecy willingly, too, as long as he promised not to kill my mum. Too bad that didn’t work out.” He tried to lose himself in that old pain for a moment, the idea that he might have had at least one parent to take care of him, rather than thinking about the thing with Malfoy.

            It didn’t work. His wound at the loss of his mum and dad was so scabbed over that it took picking—in the form of a direct insult, usually, which almost no one in Britain had offered him in two years—to make it bleed. The wound with Malfoy was fresh and bloody, and there was a large share of salt around to rub in it.

            “It’s all right, Harry,” Hermione said softly, apparently under the impression that he was still hurting from that old wound. “Snape did what he could to make up for that.” She patted his arm and gestured again at the picture. “What we have to do is break the bonds. The Mark itself is annoying, yes, but it’s the less important part.”

            Harry blinked. “You mean removing the physical Mark might not be possible?”

            “Possible or impossible, it’s not what’s important,” Hermione said. “The connections the Mark has embedded in it—or, sometimes, represents—are what actually bind you, or anyone else, to a Dark Lord. You could remove the Mark without removing those connections. That would leave you free of the suspicion that other people direct towards you—”

            Although not the suspicion in your eyes, Harry wanted to say, and then bit his tongue violently. He probably deserved that suspicion, given what he’d done to Malfoy today.

            “But still enslaved.” Hermione shut the book with a snap and produced a parchment covered with notes from the inside of her sleeve. “Another book I read suggested ways to break the connections. They all depend on the assertion of free will. It’s very much harder for someone who got enslaved willingly to struggle free.”

            “No problem there,” Harry said, a sluggish stirring of hope inside him. What if Malfoy had removed the Mark but hadn’t broken the connection? That meant that he was what Harry had always thought him, still a monster, who would consider going back on the oaths they’d sworn and have a way to keep Harry bound while assuring him he was free. That way, he could still have access to Harry’s power, too.

            “I know there isn’t.” Hermione’s eyes were soft now. “No matter what you’ve done, Harry, I know that you wouldn’t agree to follow him and just let him have you.”

            And that’s what I have to keep in mind, Harry told himself fiercely. I’m someone who can’t yield, because that would validate everything Malfoy told me. I can’t give in to him, no matter what he does for me.

            “How can I break the connections?” he asked.

            Hermione began to explain, and although she used theoretical magical terms that Harry didn’t understand, she also used words that made sense, calm and commonplace words that relaxed him and gave him something new to think about. It would be relatively easy to perform the experiment. That way, he could get rid of any traps that Malfoy had left buried beneath his flesh and soul.

            Any? You know bloody well that he must have left some, Harry. It would be unrealistic of him not to try it, at least.

            Yes, that was true. Harry had spent too much time already drowning in guilt for stupid things. Feeling guilty for resisting Malfoy, for protecting his life and freedom, was another of them. He turned his mind firmly away and listened to Hermione.

            Things can change back to the way that they’re supposed to be. I can be friends with my friends again, and I can have the magic and the life that I want. Malfoy might not even contact me again. Why would he want someone who lashed out at him with Dark magic?

            But that was another part of the things that Harry had decided not to think about, so he whipped the doubts into submission and continued soaking up the Light magic, the right magic, the good magic, that Hermione was teaching him about.

*

            Draco hissed as he eased himself out of the shower and into a padded chair of the kind that were common in Thylacine’s Lair. At the moment, he was glad they were common. He wasn’t sure that he could have walked fast or far.

            The Cruciatus Curse had assaulted him unexpectedly, with no chance for him to brace for it, and it had gone deeper and hurt more because of his shock. He had never believed that Harry would use it against him.

            Draco extended a hand in front of him and watched it shake with clinical detachment. He was thinking.

            Harry’s resistance was in part an instinctive thing, he decided, probably born of the long years when he had been Dumbledore’s pawn and used in the war against the Dark Lord. He would hate anyone who had tried to control him even when they relaxed that control and proved they wanted an equal relationship with him. He would lash out, and Draco could see now why he felt such guilt over an accident like the one that had caught two people in a fire while Harry managed to Apparate out. He probably equated it to the times, like now, when he was at fault for using a spell deliberately. He would be left with the same trapped, hopeless feelings in both cases.

            But that didn’t matter. It wouldn’t have mattered even if one curse was enough to make Draco want to pack up and leave Harry behind. They had their oaths connecting them, and they would both lose their magic and their lives if they didn’t fulfill those oaths.

            Draco had done as much as his oath asked him to do. The Mark was gone, Harry was free except for his sworn word, and Draco was only awaiting payment.

            He considered, mind blown clear with his new understanding, whether he should wait longer. Perhaps giving Harry time to recover and let his guilt grow would soften his resistance.

            But Draco didn’t think so. For one thing, that guilt would only give them another problem to deal with later, and for a second, Harry was good at putting aside and ducking and denying those things he really didn’t want to face, unlike the mistakes that would put him in the light of a martyr. He had probably already decided that this was Draco’s fault, in some obscure way, or that Draco hadn’t kept his word.

            Draco smiled and reached for parchment. He did have to wait a short time before his hand stopped shaking, but not long.

*

            Harry laid the wand against his shoulder, where the Mark had been, and then traced a straight line down to the place on his left forearm where the fox had originally rested. He hissed between his teeth, a long build-up to the incantation that Hermione had taught him, a meaningless sound that gave him time to consider his goal and gather his will.

            Then he burst out into flight with the words that had been building behind his teeth.

            “Volo! Voluntas! Volo liberatem!”

            The skin on his shoulder and arm where the wand had passed shuddered and jerked, and Harry felt magic pour through him, become a waterfall through him, spark and leap and sing. He could hear the shudders in his bones resolving themselves into a definite pattern, and he was afire with that ecstasy, with the trembling in his legs, with the way his head spun as he sank into a kneeling position on the carpet. Oh, God, it felt so good. He knew the magic was working because, Hermione had told him, it would be painful if he didn’t truly want to be free.

            He did want to. He wanted it more than anything, more than the guilt he had been scored with, more than the ability to stop being a Dark wizard, more than the pleasure and power Malfoy had tried to tempt him with.

            Abruptly, the magic ceased. Harry blinked and leaned back on his heels, his wand clutched in a trembling hand. He pulled back his sleeve, although he already knew the Mark was gone and wasn’t sure what he expected to see.

            Nothing, in fact. The skin was simply blank. Almost accusingly so, Harry thought, and then shook the strange thought away. He was trying to keep guilt from having as much of a place in his life as it had had so far.

            He turned around, and found the owl sitting on the edge of his bed, preening its feathers with small clips of its beak. It snapped to attention when it saw him and hopped closer, hooting softly.

            Harry knew who it would be from. But he was free now. He was strong now. He was sure the spell had destroyed any markers Malfoy had left on him, which meant that he was free to laugh at the bastard.

            He opened the letter almost eagerly, expecting a long missive that would justify its existence, only to find a few simple lines scribbled on the parchment.

            Harry,

            I would remind you that I swore an oath to free you, and kept my word. I would remind you that you also swore an oath, and you risk the loss of both magic and life if you don’t keep it. Come join with me to create our magic.

            Draco.

            Harry crumpled the parchment up into a ball. That was ridiculous. He didn’t have to keep his oath because Malfoy hadn’t kept his. He had removed the physical Mark, but left those connections and bonds buried in his flesh, as Hermione had said Dark Lords could do. And now he thought to trick Harry into surrendering by invoking an oath that Harry had made only on the condition that Malfoy keep his?

            Then something occurred to Harry. How could he have written a letter like this if he was really dying, if he hadn’t kept his promise?

            And then there was a soft, slicking pain along the side of his left arm, and he turned his head to find that a bloody wound had opened there, of its own accord, dripping onto the carpet as he stared at it.

            That meant…

            It meant that the oath was coming home to him. That he had to keep his promise. That Malfoy had kept his.

            Which meant there was no Mark left, and no connections and bonds that could tie him to Malfoy, except the word he had given while never thinking that he would need to keep it. How could you swear a solemn, serious oath to someone who you knew would find a loophole to wriggle through?

            Except now…

            There wasn’t.

            Which meant all Harry’s fears about Malfoy, that he could actually have changed his mind and be a different man than the one Harry had thought of, were true. And he had to keep his promise. And work with him.

            And not be free.

            Harry stood up and walked towards the parchment that he kept in a drawer, glad that the owl was staying and he wouldn’t have to think about another means to get a reply back to Malfoy. Along the way, he felt his wound close, and when he looked down, he realized that there was no sign it had been there, except for a few droplets of blood still shimmering on his skin.

            It had done that because he intended to keep his promise. To feel guilty for the monster who wasn’t a monster and serve the man who had wanted his service and nearly killed him to have it.

            Not for the first time in the past month, Harry wished that Malfoy had killed him in his initial flight from Fox Valley. It would have been easier to face that than—than this, whatever it was.

*

            Malfoy, fine. Tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it.

            That was all. Draco sighed and leaned back on his bed, shaking his head sorrowfully. The letter hung above him in one hand that no longer shook; a nap and a few potions had helped him recover wonderfully from the aftereffects of the Cruciatus Curse.

            It doesn’t have to be this way, Harry, he thought, wishing he could reach out and touch the object of his thoughts directly. But he’d given up that ability. I want your surrender, but your unwilling submission doesn’t have to be part of that, and shouldn’t. Even when I wanted to conquer you without any other goal in mind, I never wanted you to be some meek idiot taking whatever his master handed out. I wanted you enjoying yourself.

            Draco didn’t think he could explain that, though. In the first place, Harry probably wouldn’t believe him; in the second, he would only say that everything had changed now that the Mark had gone.

            That’s the problem, really. He doesn’t know how to react, and so he keeps lashing out.

            Draco had a meal delivered to him while he thought, and ate his way slowly through the thick salad, covered with bits of egg and walnut, closing his eyes whenever a lettuce leaf crunched in his mouth. By the time he finished it, he knew what he wanted to write back.

            We have to make those decisions together, Harry. Come to the hollow where we’ve confronted each other twice now if you want to, tomorrow at noon. If you want to choose some other place, then please do so. I’m not picky about where we meet. I only know that I’d like to see you again.

            Then it was dispatched, and Draco felt free to watch the owl flap away with the letter before his eyes fell shut and sleep consumed him.

*

            He leaves it all up to me. Or at least he pretends to. I’m sure this is all a ploy in the service of some goal that I can’t see yet.

            Harry prowled slowly back and forth in the middle of his room. It was incredibly hot, although he knew he could cast Cooling Charms, and at least some of the sweat pouring down his face didn’t come from the heat. The wonderful pleasure from the spell that he’d used earlier had been replaced by intense prickling in his arm and shoulder.

            He almost wished the Mark was there, because it would give him something to struggle against other than his own conscience.

            And that’s the problem. I was running so long on the fear and excitement of challenging or escaping from an opponent, and now Malfoy isn’t one.

            Harry sat down heavily on his bed. He would have liked to be able to deny that, to believe in the existence of conspiracies or traps that Malfoy had set and which he didn’t see yet. It was true that he thought he would be stupid to trust Malfoy’s reassurance simply because Malfoy said he could.

            But he had been the one who used the Cruciatus Curse, and Malfoy hadn’t scolded him, the way he could have, playing on Harry’s guilt. He sent letters, and letters that Harry could have refused or refused to respond to or set spells on his room to exclude. Harry didn’t know from those letters what Malfoy was doing at the moment, but he doubted that it was plotting against him, plotting to reduce him to a slave.

            Harry put his head in his hands. A frustrated noise broke from him.

            He wished it was two years ago. He would have asked to come to Australia from Ron and Hermione. That was what had started his downfall, he believed now: being alone, with no one to tell him that borrowing spells from Dark wizards and beating up on himself morally and mentally for accidents was a bad idea. He would have done fine if he could have been with them all this time. Leaving himself alone was asking for trouble.

            Well, trouble had found him. And Harry no longer believed that running from Malfoy was a permanent solution, not when he carried the oath in his body and blood.

            He swallowed and sat up. Then he reached for the parchment to write his letter back, because there were some things that had to be done and faced up to, no matter how much he might hate it.

            The hollow will be fine. There’s a resonance of our magic there now, and it’s distant enough from Ron and Hermione’s house.

            The letter was sent, and Harry made himself watch the owl fly away. Then he laid his hands out on his knees and took a few deep, calming breaths, holding in the impulse to fly apart at the seams he was feeling.

            He was a Dark wizard.

            He had used the Unforgivable Curses in circumstances where it would have been better not to.

            He was bound to Malfoy via an oath that he didn’t know he could fulfill.

            He had lied to his best friends about, among other things, the disappearance of the Mark. He would have to hope that they wouldn’t react too badly when they found out about that.

            He was committed.

.

*

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