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Writ on Water	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3959 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Eleven—Memories in the Gate

            “There are various ways that we can heal your mind.”

            “None of which, I notice, are actually doing it,” Harry snapped, while keeping his elbows tucked in close to his sides and his eyes on the Healers around him. He still had the memory of Draco drumming faint and insistent behind his eyes if he closed them, but he didn’t put it past the Healers to cast a spell that would deprive him even of that.

            Matron Isral gave him a strong look. It had no emotion in it, but it made Harry pull in his elbows even more. “I wished to explain the procedure before I simply began it,” she said, “with the idea of giving you some context for what would happen to you when we entered your mind. Must you be so difficult?”

            Harry didn’t duck his head and fuss with his fringe, because that would have meant giving her words too much credence. He just held her eyes and nodded. “Sorry.”

            Matron Isral nodded back and then appeared to at least jump ahead in her list, to Harry’s pleasure, instead of discussing all the methods they could use and weren’t going to. “The particular spell we have chosen requires intense cooperation. Between Mind-Healers, and with the patient, Auror Potter. You will need to lower your Occlumency barriers and allow us to look at everything within your mind.”

            Harry gave her a pleasant smile. “If a story about what I think shows up in the Daily Prophet next week, then should I sue you individually or collectively?”

            “Every Mind-Healer here makes an oath about patient privacy,” Isral said, and smiled back at him the way that Harry thought Voldemort would have smiled, if he was ever sane enough to find humor in a situation involving Harry. “If someone violates that trust for the Prophet’s Galleons, I shall speak to her myself.”

            Harry just nodded. He wondered for a moment if this was how he would normally act, if this was the person he had become in the months that separated him from Lionel’s death. If his memories were gone, would the person he was because of them cease to be? Or did a personality exist separately from a few memories here and there?

            It was the kind of question Hermione would have been interested in, and probably could have spent hours talking with him about. It wasn’t the kind that Harry had ever expected to concern him this closely. Dying and coming back to life had created all sorts of philosophical tangles for him if he really thought about it, but he didn’t think about it, and in the rest of his life, he was mostly normal.

            As much as I can be.

            “Since she knows you best, Mind-Healer Estillo will lead the expedition into your mind,” Isral said briskly, and the woman who had brought him here in the first place moved forwards. Harry nodded to her. He didn’t think it was because of any leftover memories, since he didn’t seem to have any leftover memories, but he did find her non-threatening.

            “Thank you, Harry,” Estillo said, as though the nod had been an embrace, and then took a step back and cocked her head at Isral. She must have given some sort of sign that Harry didn’t see, because Estillo drew her wand.

            Around her, the other Mind-Healers drew their wands in concert. Harry tried to keep from flinching, and failed. In his world, such coordinated actions suggested enemies with a dangerous level of organization.

            “Do not fear,” Isral said, locking her eyes on his and obviously trying to make the words into an order.

            Harry hated being accused of cowardice, and he hated orders. He stared challengingly at her and missed the moment when Estillo cast the spell that probed into his mind. He felt it as a delicate touch, the way that a hand rested on his shoulder at Lionel’s funeral had been from anyone who touched him. Not even Ron and Hermione had wanted to come that close when they could sense the emotions that burned through Harry.

            But he felt, like a punch, the spells that bound the Healers together into one strong entity who would move through his mind. He gasped as they poured through the room, cool, strong elastic bonds that linked hand to hand. All their wands gestured at the same moment.

            Which they managed just a few minutes ago. Is that the only effect it’s going to have?

            But then the power shifted, and the flexible net gripped him and pulled, and Harry found the world falling away, drifting in the direction of a mind studded with memories like the night with stars.

*

            “Our guest must be hungry.”

            In spite of all the ways and times and years that had intervened, and in spite of the fact that Draco knew she would be happy to use it as a weapon against him right now, he had to smile at his mother’s voice when she rustled into the bedroom that held Jourdemayne. It was so perfect. Flawless silk over steel, where the metal could cut the silk and be in the open to wound at any time it wanted. People had courted invitations to his mother’s parties and feared them at the same time, wondering when Narcissa would say something that would leave them bleeding internally for days.

            “I’m not,” said Jourdemayne, with her eyes closed and her face turned to the wall. Her forehead was covered with a sheen of sweat. Draco wondered for a moment if she might be sick, but the house-elves would have reported anything like that.

            “You must be,” Narcissa said, in the same disconcertingly gentle manner, as though her words could change reality. And they could, Draco thought, remembering faces that had paled and hands that had clenched. Narcissa drew a delicate stool towards herself and fussed for a moment with placing the platter of food, mostly containing a cake showered with flakes of coconut, precisely in its center. Then she stood back and smiled at Jourdemayne. “Come, my dear.”

            “Not hungry,” Jourdemayne whispered, and dug into her blankets like a sulky child.

            For a moment, Narcissa’s face changed. Draco shuddered in spite of himself and moved a step away. Narcissa merely picked up the platter and carried it to the table beside Jourdemayne’s bed, however, where she spent exactly the same amount of effort as before setting it in the middle. “I see, dear. However, where hunger cannot tempt you, politeness must prevail. We made this cake for you, and it would be discourteous not to try a piece.”

            Draco thought he could have read the threat in her voice if he was dying of disease. Jourdemayne either couldn’t—which wouldn’t surprise Draco; pretensions to pure blood wouldn’t convey real breeding—or was too caught up in her own misery to try. She drove the heels of her palms into her eyes and whispered again, on a sharp exhale, “Not. Hungry.”

            “That doesn’t matter,” Narcissa said. “I am sure that your mother would wish us to know that she raised you with manners.” She cut a slice of the cake, thick and tempting not-quite-chocolate under the film of coconut flakes. As she passed Draco, Draco cast a handful of the potion that would persuade Jourdemayne to speak among the coconut. In powdered form, the potion would taste and look no different.

            Jourdemayne shivered, and curled up so that her face was entirely out of sight beneath the covers. “It’s very kind of you,” she said, in a voice that strained and cracked in the middle. “But I’m not hungry.”

            Narcissa sank down beside her and smoothed her hair from her brow with a tender touch. Draco felt an unexpected ache at the heart, and transformed it into an ache of amusement that, when they all knew what was going on and why they wanted Jourdemayne to eat the cake and what it would do to her, his mother still insisted on the importance of the charade. “Then why don’t you lie there, you poor dear, and let me feed you? Just a piece.” She dipped the fork into the slice of cake and sank it deep, then drew it back. Draco had to admit that his mouth watered when he saw the way the icing clung to the fork. He had missed many things during his exile from the Manor, but the cooking of his parents’ house-elves was at the top of the list.

            Jourdemayne tensed. Draco knew what she would do and tightened the bonds on her limbs in the moment before she tried to explode, so that her attempt to roll over and send the cake and his mother both flying turned into nothing more than a useless flopping of her arms.

            His mother nodded at him, less appreciation for his quick wit than acceptance of a favor that she deemed her own, and then held the piece on the fork closer to Jourdemayne’s mouth. “You will please me by eating,” she said softly, as though pleasing her was an end in itself. Draco knew many, not all his father, who would have agreed.

            Jourdemayne stared at her and said nothing. She was staring as intently as though her eyes alone would be enough to stop Narcissa from doing whatever she wanted, but her hands didn’t move. To be fair, Draco wasn’t entirely sure they could, any more.

            “Open,” Narcissa said, in the same coaxing tones that Draco remembered from his own childhood.

            Jourdemayne half-closed her eyes and gave another of those hysterical laughs that she’d used earlier when Draco challenged her. Narcissa, though she perhaps could have, didn’t dart her fork into the gaping mouth and stab it down. She kept it hovering instead, with an expression that made Draco’s throat dry.

            Of course she doesn’t think she needs to snatch any chance that comes her way. She’ll wait for the best one, because snatching happens to other people.

            “Why should I struggle?” Jourdemayne whispered. “Why does it matter? That’s the bad part about knowing the future, you know,” she said conversationally. “You become obsessed with it. You think you can prevent it, or you spend all night coming up with plans to make sure it never happens, but—I opened my door to you,” she told Draco. “I fought you. I let myself be brought here, instead of killing myself to prevent it. Why did I do that?”

            “I wouldn’t know, I’m sure,” Draco said in a drawl, standing with his arms folded and his gaze still. He wanted to know what she meant, burned with curiosity to know it behind his restrained façade, but he also didn’t intend to let his mother know that he felt that way.

            “Why?” Jourdemayne asked, and now she looked up at Narcissa with trembling lips, as if she was the young daughter of a pure-blood neighbor waiting to receive advice from her hand. “Please, can you tell me why?”

            “Sometimes,” Narcissa said, and stroked the crumbs of cake down Jourdemayne’s cheek in a sensual gesture, “it’s best to give in.”

            A cracked laugh escaped Jourdemayne’s throat again, but she parted her lips, and Narcissa eased the cake into her mouth. Jourdemayne swallowed, half-closing her eyes.

            “This is the way it begins,” she whispered. “I thought it would taste worse, somehow. But—how was she to tell me? Given her first action.”

            Draco took a step towards the bed in spite of himself, in spite of knowing that there was no way that the potion could work this quickly and relax her inhibitions. He had chosen that way instead of Veritaserum, because Veritaserum inhibited the subject’s emotions and made them recite everything in the same bland monotone. Draco wanted to see what was moving through Jourdemayne’s mind at any given moment.

            He was wondering now if it was worth it. If she was lost in the depths of madness, then any information she provided would be useless.

            But his mother gave them both a smile, and then murmured, “You said that your Order studied time travel, my dear. Is that true?”

            “Oh. Yes.” Jourdemayne smiled, and there was a drowsy, sunny smile on her face, something Draco was aware of from the list of the potion’s first common effects. He let some of the muscles in his legs relax. “And more than that. I was High Priestess, you know.”

            Draco narrowed his eyes. Given all Jourdemayne’s seriousness and dignity when she spoke of her Order, her determination not to betray its secrets, perhaps he should have suspected that, but she still seemed unsuited for the role.

            “How interesting,” Narcissa said, her voice soft and her eyes liquid. “I want to hear all about it, dear.”

            Jourdemayne gave another of those soul-quaking laughs, and nodded. “You want to know,” she said, “and I want to tell you.”

*

            Harry winced as they tugged him past yet another memory, this one showing the Dursleys engaged in one of their myriad celebrations of Dudley’s birthday. How many were they going to look at? He accepted that the Healers had to hunt to find the mysterious “place” in which his image of Draco said the twisted had put his memories, but still.

            They’d seen memories of his childhood, adulthood, partnership with Lionel, hunt to find the Horcruxes—that was one of the times that Harry hoped like hell the oath the Mind-Healers had supposedly sworn really was strong enough—and Auror career, but no memory that ever hinted Draco had existed. Harry reckoned that was because they were gone, that there was nothing they could do with empty places, but it still irritated him.

            How deeply involved in my life was he?

            Now things were changing, at last. Harry felt a resistance, a push back, against the Healers in his mind that had definitely not been there before. He hissed and reached up to touch the back of his neck, wondering if there was tension there he could smooth away. He had tried to be good so far, really he had, in holding back his Occlumency barriers and not hiding memories, but he might be nearing the limits of his tolerance.

            “Hold steady,” said Matron Isral, but Harry had no idea if she was saying it to him or not.

            He forced his eyes open and looked around. The Healers were pressed around him in a circle, one that might have made Harry feel safe if he had feared outside attack. As it was, he felt his heart speed up to the point where he had to close his eyes again. Matron Isral’s wand was a few inches from his face, tracing back and forth in the air like a dowsing rod.

            He hadn’t known she was that close. How much had the spell confused his senses, his perceptions? Most of the time, he would have reacted instinctively when someone tried to get that close to him with a wand.

            Not this time.

            “We have reached the limits of the spell,” Matron Isral said, and Harry wanted to correct her and tell her it wasn’t a spell, it was the Dark magic of Nancy’s flaw, but he kept quiet and chewed his lip instead. “There will be—there will be—” For a moment, she closed her eyes, and her lips moved in something like prayer. Now Harry was watching her from under his eyelids again, and he wondered if she was incanting a spell he couldn’t hear or an actual prayer.

            He knew the answer when the air inside and through and under his head seemed to wrench sideways, and he found himself gasping for breath, falling through a space that was nevertheless still beneath his feet. The floor was moving—no, he was—no, the floor was. He shut his eyes and kept them shut, because he thought seeing the room dance right now was more than his stomach could bear.

            “Hold steady,” Matron Isral said, but Harry had no idea who she was talking to this time. “Tempus confringo.”

            The wrenching sensation happened again, and Harry screamed as the barrier broke.

*

            “I was the one who chose what to study,” Jourdemayne said, still gazing faithfully into Narcissa’s eyes. She hadn’t looked at Draco once since she began her confession. “I was the one who decided that we could travel in time based on my gifts as a Seer.”

            “That would make sense, that a Seer would have some control over time,” Narcissa said, and her hand caressed the hair back from Jourdemayne’s forehead with a control and gentleness that Draco couldn’t help but envy. “I wonder—my dear, did you foresee where the Order’s experiments would lead you?”

            Jourdemayne shut her eyes, and her shoulders bowed as if she was trying to pull in wings “Yes.”

            Draco frowned. Something was wrong, he thought, something urgent. But Jourdemayne wasn’t threatening his mother, and if she had tears running down her cheeks, well, the potion was supposed to deprive the person who took it of control over her emotions. Draco retreated a step towards the door anyway, glancing over his shoulder. A house-elf appeared in response to his silent command, and bobbed its head.

            “I foresaw all of it,” Jourdemayne whispered. “How she would come back, and who she would come as. The people who would try to capture her and change her. But I couldn’t stop it. Any Seer knows that. When you see something with the force of a real prophecy, you might not know how it will come true, but you never doubt it will.”

            “So you can’t use time travel to change the future, then?” Narcissa asked, but she didn’t seem to need Jourdemayne’s nod, rustling as it was against the pillows. “But you can travel to the future?”

            “Not all of us,” Jourdemayne whispered. “Just me. I thought that was because of my Seer’s gift. I thought—how wrong I was.” She fell silent, shivering, and her tears were flowing faster now, melting down her cheeks as if she was a glacier losing its ice in the summer sun. Draco flinched and drew his arms around his chest, and then wondered why. It wasn’t like Jourdemayne had done anything particularly threatening.

            “If not your gift, what was it?” Narcissa asked.

            Jourdemayne opened her eyes, blinked, and began to speak rapidly in Spanish. At least, Draco thought it was Spanish, from some of the sounds. It was—it was a way of defeating the potion, he realized a moment later, with impatience and admiration commingling in him. Jourdemayne had finally gained enough self-control to realize what she was saying, and although the words still had to tumble from her lips, she could make them tumble in a different language.

            Narcissa drew back, her eyes burning luminous. She touched her wand. “There are spells I could use,” she said, gently. “I didn’t use them because I wanted to give you a chance to talk freely. But if you would prefer…” She slid her wand out of her sleeve, and watched Jourdemayne’s face.

            Jourdemayne laughed, another of those laughs that made Draco think something had cracked in her brain. “The present joins the past,” she said. “I should have known it. That was why she did it to you,” she snapped at Draco. “Not him. Because you were the one she was afraid of.”

            “She was afraid of me?” Draco asked, shaking his head. “I didn’t desire to capture her any more than my partner did.”

            “But,” Jourdemayne said, and then turned her head and looked at Narcissa, as if she had the answer.

            “I would answer my son’s questions,” Narcissa said, in a gentle, anxious tone, as if she was giving a girl good advice on her dress. “Otherwise, there are…well. I would hate for us to be on opposite sides, my dear.”

            Jourdemayne shook her head, but Draco didn’t think that was the answer to his mother’s question. Instead, Jourdemayne reached down and rubbed her bound hands as hard as she could against the bed.

            “Trying to escape?” His mother carefully aimed the wand. “I can tell the potion is wearing off. You can have more cake, if you want.”

            “Saying farewell,” Jourdemayne said. “I won’t ever have this again.” She stared into the distance, and shivered.

            Draco opened his mouth to tell his mother to wait. There were things here that he didn’t understand, and needed to, if he was going to make sure that Jourdemayne was telling them the whole truth.

            But his mother spoke first, her voice a gentle tone that fell like a small bell into the waiting world, waiting for pain and who knew what else. “Crucio.”

            Draco jerked. He hadn’t known his mother would risk one of the Unforgivable Curses, even behind wards. And again he wanted to open his mouth, to ask her to wait, to determine if this was really the best means of proceeding—

            But he didn’t have the chance, because the pain spell hit Jourdemayne, and she jerked and shrieked, and Narcissa gave a smile that Draco knew meant it would be worse than useless to ask her to stop now.

            The pain went on for a minute. More than a minute. More than two minutes. Draco finally gritted his teeth. Jourdemayne couldn’t speak until his mother lifted the spell, and Draco thought she had suffered more than enough to convince her that confession was the best option. He stepped forwards, opening his mouth to tell his mother that enough was enough.

            And then Jourdemayne, the helpless woman on the bed, broke, and shivered, and seemed to change as if some great winged thing was leaping out of her skin—

            And vanished.

*

            SP777: Good guess!
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