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Loup-garou	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 8101 -:- 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 Eleven—Tense as a Wire

            “Where are you going, mate?”

            Of course, the one time Ron decided to check on him and prevent him from leaving the house would be the most important time, Harry thought in resignation. He turned around and put his back to the door, trying to smile. Ron didn’t look as though he was buying it, but at least he hadn’t drawn his wand yet or called Hermione from the ground-floor library where she was researching.

            “Out,” Harry said. “I need—to get away from here for a while, I think. To walk and think about the Mark and what I’m going to do once it’s gone.”

            Ron didn’t smile and nod him on his way, although he still didn’t call Hermione, either. He simply narrowed his eyes and shook his head. “I wish that I could believe you, mate,” he whispered. “But I can’t.”

            Harry frowned. “What do you mean?” He kept himself from bolting or lashing out by sheer force of will, the same kind he had used to keep himself still under Malfoy’s hands when the bastard was removing his Mark.

            “I mean that you haven’t shown as much interest in the Mark during the last few days as you should have,” Ron said. “I mean that you left before, and went to a Muggle city. That’s the one of your trips out I know about, though I’m sure you’ve made others. One of my acquaintances keeps an eye on any new wizard in Australia, since so many of them run here thinking they can escape from the laws in their home countries. And he felt two magical signatures together, not one. You met with Malfoy.”

            In the silence, Harry made out his heart, beating so hard in his ears that the sound hurt.

            “Mate,” Ron whispered. “What the fuck are you doing?”

            “You can tell Hermione that she can stop looking up books on the Mark, if you want to,” Harry said. “It’s gone.”

            Ron’s eyes widened, and that was the one comical thing that had happened between them so far, the one thing Harry was glad he’d seen. “But Malfoy would never have agreed to take it off,” he said. “I can believe you meeting with him for that, but if he couldn’t help you—what did you do? Was it more Dark magic?” He sounded as if “Dark” was a thorny, prickly word that he couldn’t hold in his mouth without damage to his tongue and cheeks.

            “Always the suspicion,” Harry said, but his light tone shook, and he cursed himself for speaking at all. His head rose, and he felt the energy that had first shown up several days ago, when he and Malfoy exchanged cores, stir in him. It was rising in a whirlwind, and if he wasn’t careful, he would reach out and engulf Ron with it. He didn’t want to do that. He had no reason to do that. He had to stand here and sound as calm and cool as possible and not attack his best friend for asking a question he had reason to be concerned about, if the Australian Ministry’s rules were really that strict.

            “The truth,” Ron said. “The Mark was a piece of Dark magic. I don’t think even Malfoy could have removed it just like that, given what you told us about him and it and how it was meant to last. Mate.” He shifted a step closer, and Harry might have been comforted by the implication that Ron could still stand to be near him, if he didn’t recognize the way his hand hovered above his wand. Ron wasn’t an Auror anymore, but he had been trained as one. Harry could still defeat him, he was certain, but that he might have to was enough to make his head spin and his vision tighten. “What are you doing? Just tell me, and—and we can help. We can help you get away from it.”

            “Away from it,” Harry said flatly. He no longer recognized his voice. He wondered if this was the way the creature who cursed Malfoy might have spoken. “What are you talking about, when you know the Mark has gone?”

            “Away from the magic you’re using.” Ron’s voice was very soft, his eyes shining with some emotion that Harry didn’t instantly recognize but which he was fairly sure was pity. “We can help you, Harry. We know how addictive Dark magic can be, but it doesn’t need to be that way. We can free you. Come on.” He extended his hand, the way, Harry thought, that he would try to pull back someone who was dangling over an abyss. “All you have to say is that you want help and come with us.”

            Harry stared at him again. “Really,” he said, his eyes flickering down to where Ron’s fingertips now touched his wand.

            Ron sighed. “Well, and surrender your wand. I’m sorry, but now I understand what we’re dealing with. You’re an addict. You don’t take what addicts say seriously or let them have their wands when they’re mentally ill.”

            “Ill,” Harry said. “You keep changing your mind. I’m a monster. I’m a Dark wizard, and responsible for it. I’m an addict, and not responsible for it. You know, if you do take the last position, you’ll have to surrender your moral indignation over what I’ve done.”

            Ron winced. “Yeah, I know,” he said, not looking away. He inched another step closer. “I mean, using Dark magic in the first place, you could have helped, but not what you’ve done since then. And I know that your desperation was probably driven on by the fact that you wanted to find some way to get the bloody Mark off.” He smiled at Harry. “We can understand. We’ve done dumb things in our lives, too. Remind me to tell you some time about what we tried to do to apply for Australian citizenship when we first got here. It’s a laugh.”

            Harry stared at Ron’s hand. He could accept it—

            No, he couldn’t, not with the oath biting into his throat like a piano wire.

            And besides…he doubted that he would have taken Ron’s hand even if he wasn’t bound by the oath. He had recognized, yesterday, that he was a far more integrated being, far more in charge of his actions, than he had wanted to think about. The price of not being a slave was being a free moral agent.

            Harry bowed his head and sighed. Ron came a step nearer, as if he assumed the sigh was permission of a sort, though Harry didn’t know how he had mistaken it for anything other than what it was.

            “Mate,” he said eagerly. “You’ll come back with us? You’ll—”

            “No,” Harry said, looking up and blinking. “I’ve already chosen my course, and I’ve made promises that I can’t turn back from. If I follow the road far enough, then I think I’ll be at peace. Not entirely,” he added hastily, because Ron’s face was darkening and Harry knew that he might think Harry was making fun of him. “But eventually I’ll come to terms with what I’ve done. That’s what I have to do, Ron, not hide from it and pretend that I can ‘heal’ somehow when I can’t change the fact that I might need Dark spells someday.”

            “But you don’t,” Ron said. “That’s what we’ve been trying to tell you! If you stay here, away from Britain where the Death Eaters might hunt you down, who would ever come after you again?”

            “Malfoy,” Harry said. “The Mark’s gone, but I made a promise that I would still—associate with him.” He didn’t feel up to telling Ron that he expected to be able to create magic with the bastard, not when Ron’s face was already twisting in confusion and disgust. “I didn’t particularly want to!” Harry added. “But that was his price for taking the Mark off, was that I make a promise like that.”

            “I don’t even know what to say,” Ron said. His extended hand clenched into a fist. “You’re rejecting the chance to become—to become better, to get away from your illness, because of him?”

            “Not just because of him,” Harry said. “I mean, a lot of it’s him, but.” He rubbed the back of his head, and wished that he had had someone else to explain this aloud to before he tried with Ron. Then again, his audiences were fairly limited. Malfoy might have listened to it, but there was no way Harry would share it with him until he was forced to.

            “I’ve realized that I’ve been lying to myself,” Harry said. “Pretending I was a monster sometimes and couldn’t change, and pretending that I felt this enormous guilt other times, when I knew perfectly well that I wasn’t to blame. I’ve been lying. I’d like to try and stop. I’d like to find someone who can help me.”

            “You think Malfoy can.” It wasn’t a question. Ron had locked eyes with him and folded his arms back across his chest, which Harry thought ended the chance for him to reconcile with his friend. He licked his lips.

            “Not so much in himself,” Harry said. “But because he won’t let me hide behind my lies, because he’ll make fun of them, yeah.”

            Ron closed his eyes and bowed his head. His posture was so weary that Harry winced again, because he didn’t like hurting his best friend like this.

            Since pleasing him is apparently impossible, though, I think I’m going to hurt him no matter what I do.

            “I don’t understand this,” Ron said, and his voice snapped and snarled, then found something that it broke on. “How you can go to him when he was the one who hurt you, and we’re the ones who offered to help you.”

            “It’s because of circumstances,” Harry said. “Because he was the one who enslaved me, and the one who I had to make this promise to to get the Mark off.”

            “You could have waited for Hermione to find something in the books,’ Ron breathed. He had taken a step closer again, but Harry doubted it was to extend the hand of friendship. “You knew she was looking. How desperate were you, that you couldn’t wait a few days to give her a chance?”

            Harry shook his head. He wanted to say something, but he knew that Ron wouldn’t take it seriously no matter what he tried, and he knew that he didn’t really deserve to be taken seriously.

            “You made a devil’s bargain with Malfoy,” Ron said. “This time, you don’t have the excuse of the Mark. He didn’t make you do this. You only did it because you were impatient, and you didn’t trust Hermione. You didn’t trust Hermione,” he repeated, as if that was a crime on a level with murder—or using Dark magic, Harry reckoned. “After all this time.”

            “Too much time,” Harry snapped. He didn’t want to be standing here and discussing this with Ron. He wanted to get to the bloody meeting with Malfoy and see how his ideas actually stood up in the fire the bastard would cover them with. “We’ve sort of stopped being friends, don’t you think, Ron? We’d have to try hard to get back to where we were two years ago, and I don’t know that I want to.”

            Ron flinched, his eyes widening. Harry stood there, stunned himself. He hadn’t known he thought that.

            Well, if one lie and one wall is breaking down, then I reckon that it’s only fitting that it should happen to others at the same time.

            “You can’t mean that,” Ron said at last. “We’re your friends. Not him. What can he offer you that we can’t?”

            Harry shook his head. “It’s not about that,” he said. “It’s about what I have to do and the fact that he understands the reasons I used Dark magic. He might not agree with all of them, but he understands. You tell me that I just shouldn’t use it, I’m an addict, I’m ill, and don’t offer me any answers.”

            “Because you want the answers that mean we agree!” Ron yelled, his face flushing. “We can’t do that, not when it’s evil—”

            “I’m not going to speak to you about this anymore,” Harry said, lowering his voice so that something worse wouldn’t happen. “I have to go.” He turned and pushed the front door open, stepping into the air. Usually he thought it was too dry and stale, but right now, he gulped it down and felt his lungs expanding with a gratitude that he could barely express.

            “Harry!”

            Harry spun around. Ron was running after him, and his wand was in his hand, and his eyes were narrow. Harry didn’t wait to find out if Ron would try to curse him, or if he only wanted to apologize and had forgotten the wand was there. He Apparated.

            As he whirled through the blackness, his thoughts whipped back and forth, and he could only come to the conclusion that things were changing between him and his friends.

            And that he didn’t like where they were going to end up.

*

            “Malfoy.”

            Potter had landed a moment ago. Draco knew, because he had heard the crack of Apparition. He hadn’t bothered turning around, though, instead sitting with his legs dangling over the side of the hollow as he idly listened for the vibrations of old magic in the air, trying to make out what Dark spells had once been cast here. He had decided that Potter would probably like that more, because that way, he could pretend that he had taken Draco by surprise.

            When Draco turned around to face him, though, he doubted that Potter was thinking about him one way or the other. Potter’s face had a distracted look to it, and his eyes were broken like glass. He hunched down next to Draco and picked up a handful of sand to run through his fingers.

            “What happened?” Draco asked. Hinting around the subject would never work with Potter, and he didn’t think trusting to his natural desire to talk about it would work, either, not when Potter seemed so determined to ignore his own feelings.

            “Why would you assume that something happened?” Potter muttered, keeping his head bowed.

            “Because I’m not stupid,” Draco snapped. “And because I’m not one of your friends, to indulge your desire to stay coddled and hidden away from the world because your emotions need wrapping in cotton wool—”

            He stopped, because Potter was laughing. Horribly, silently, his shoulders shaking with the weight of it, his head bowed so that Draco couldn’t see the expression on his face. But Draco still knew the motions of laughter as opposed to sobs, and thus he knew what Potter was doing. He leaned forwards and slammed a hand down next to him.

            Potter reacted the way Draco had expected, bolting to his feet and whirling around as though he assumed that a magical creature or enemy wizard could have come this close without one or both of them sensing it. His fingers were so tight on his wand that Draco shook his head in disgust. “Someday, we’re going to have to cure you of your paranoia,” he said. “Talk about another emotion that has no right to be coddled.”

            Potter slowly sat back down, but still kept his wand out and resting beside him. He didn’t look at Draco, either, scraping his nails over his face as though he assumed he could shave off his stubble that way. “I’m not feeling too close to my friends at the moment,” he said. “And they’re certainly not coddling me.”

            “Ah,” Draco said, delighted with the inroad that anger had made. Now that Potter no longer had his mind fixated on the Mark and making Draco take it off, it was possible that he would talk about other things. “I assume they were too honest with you, then, about Gryffindor principles that I can’t understand.”

            “They were talking about treating me like an addict because of the Dark magic,” Potter said, his eyes flashing with brilliant, bitter light, and then he suddenly went still and turned his head to stare at Draco. Draco didn’t know why until he remembered the curse Potter had struck him with the last time they met.

            He sat still and smiled, saying nothing. Even if he had been inclined to demand an apology for that—and he could think of more useful things for Potter to use his mouth for than apologies—nothing he could ask for would match the exquisite meat hook Potter’s conscience had embedded in his mind.

            “Look,” Potter said, when a few moments had trudged past and he’d done nothing but breathe and stare, while Draco looked calmly back. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t—I shouldn’t have done that.”

            “I know,” Draco said. “Why did you?”

            Potter turned to stare at the ground. “Because I was panicked,” he muttered. “The idea that I was free didn’t mean what I thought it would.”

            “You expected it to be a moment of joy,” Draco said. “Instead, it changed things so much that you didn’t know what to think about.”

            To his surprise—Draco had been sure that he’d read both Potter’s expression and his body language accurately—Potter merely shook his head. “No,” he muttered. “It was—I—I didn’t expect you to give me back my magic and get out of my mind.” He raised his head reluctantly, inch by inch, until their gazes met again. “Why did you?”

            Draco kept his hands to himself, even though it was an effort. He needed no conscience to tell him how delicate this moment was, how close he was to scaring Potter off again with the wrong word or movement.

            “Because I knew that you wouldn’t let me near you if I took more power, or tried to keep it,” he said. “And with what you’ll help me create, I think I can have more power than your core contains right now, anyway.”

            Harry stared at him with dull eyes. Draco wished that Granger and Weasley could be here right now, to see what their ill-timed “care” had done to their friend. Of course, some of it was probably Harry’s fault, but Draco thought that much of what they’d done was unnecessary. That made it worse than if they were quite to blame.

            “But that can’t be your motive,” Harry said. “You don’t think about the future. You only think about the power that you have in front of you right now.”

            Draco laughed softly and spread his hands. “Well, Harry, as you can see, that obviously isn’t my only motive, because I’m here, and your magic is still safe in your core, and I gave it back to you.”

            Harry nodded and seemed to make some effort to pull himself back from his forced contemplation of his shoes. Draco was glad. He didn’t want to spend their “conversation” time trying to soothe Harry’s baseless anxieties. “Yeah. Well. I reckon that I misjudged you, then, and we should start making magic.”

            Draco didn’t think that Harry’s feelings about his friends were anywhere near settled, but if he was willing to leave them alone for now, then Draco would, too. They would have the chance to speak more about this, thanks to the oaths. That was the wonderful thing. “Good,” he said. “I want to know what kind of magic you’d like to make first.”

            Harry gave him a faint smile. That was more than his friends had probably got out of him within the past week, Draco thought in some triumph. “You’re giving me first choice?”

            “You know what I want to make,” Draco said. “Weapons, and more magic. It hardly matters to me what they do, as long as they can exist. But I don’t know as much about what you want, now that you have your freedom.” He dropped his voice and leaned forwards, catching Harry’s eye. “I’d like to know.”

            “All right,” Harry said, after a long moment of fascinated staring, as though Draco had tried to hypnotize him. “I’d like the ability to get rid of this stupid guilt and stop feeling it every time I do something. What would help me do that? I’ve tried thinking about it, and letting it lie, and putting the memories into a Pensieve, and talking with other people. Nothing works.”

            “That’s because you haven’t tried a magical solution,” Draco said. “Well, other than the Pensieve, and they weren’t meant as solutions for things like this.” He held out his hands. Hesitantly, Harry clasped one. Draco eyed him, and he took the other, too. “I’m not going to bite,” Draco said. “Or excrete poison through my skin and make you fall over coughing and shaking.”

            “I know that,” Harry said. “Rationally. Emotionally, I think I still think of you as an enemy.”

            “I’m flattered,” Draco said, and heard a faint laugh from the direction of Harry’s throat, although the next moment he peered suspiciously at Draco as if to deny that he’d ever uttered such a sound. “Now. Close your eyes and think of your magical core. Use whatever image you want to picture it. I’m going to use the glass cylinder, full to the top with light, that the scanning charm makes appear.”

            “Hm,” Harry said, and nothing else. His breathing had gentled. Draco, the vision of the cylinder already perfect in front of his eyes, tried to control his impatience and give Harry a fair chance to get used to what he was doing, which Draco didn’t think he’d done before. When Harry tipped his head forwards in what might have been a nod, Draco whispered to him.

            “What does yours look like?”

            “A globe,” Harry whispered back. “Blue-green. It’s full. It’s hollow at the top, hollow inside. It’s full of water that I think might slosh over if it moves.”

            “That’s right,” Draco breathed back. “That’s perfect.’ He took a moment to study Harry, rejoicing in the knowledge that he was the only one who got to see Harry like this, head bowed, an immense measure of calm passing over and through him. “Now, you remember the cylinder from the scanning spell?”

            It took Harry a moment, but he did nod.

            “Good,” Draco said. “Now imagine the globe moving into the center of the cylinder. Move it slowly, so that the water doesn’t slop out. Imagine it hovering over the center of the cylinder. Imagine it lowering, until they fuse at the top and the light covers the bottom of your globe with shadows. Can you do that for me?”

            “Yes,” Harry whispered, and Draco closed his eyes this time, so that he could envision it for himself. It was startlingly real, but a moment later, he wanted to laugh at himself. Of course it was real. They were two powerful wizards working towards blending their magical cores, and opening up a pathway between them to compensate for the lost one the Mark had created. It was unlikely that they would do something so pathetic as to create false images.

            He saw the blue-green globe hovering, and then it dropped abruptly. Draco caught his breath, because Harry’s idea of water about to spill had told him that Harry had certain thoughts about how fragile his core was, which could ensure that the core would be damaged if he moved it too quickly.

            But the globe landed neatly, and its water leaked into the light that Draco pictured as rising from his own core.

            In instants, light filled them, paraded around them, and enclosed them inside a silvery dome like an egg. Draco opened his eyes, and it was the same, the pictures of imagination brought into being. Harry was with him, and he stared around at the dome with his mouth open, obviously trying to figure out what had happened.

            “What—” he began, when he caught sight of Draco.

            “Shh,” Draco said. “That was the first step. Now we can start making magic.”

*

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