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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 Twelve—To Make Anew

            Harry shivered and glanced at the silver dome again. He wasn’t at all sure that he liked the idea of being shut away from the world while he and Malfoy were working on the magic—especially when he was alone with Malfoy.

            But on the other hand, he had no reason at the moment to think that Malfoy was going to hurt him. He tried to straighten his shoulders and calm down. When he looked at Malfoy, the bastard simply stood still, arms folded, obviously waiting for him.

            “If we’ve already combined our magic,” Harry demanded, “then what is the next step?”

            “Think of the way that your magic feels when you use it,” Malfoy murmured in return. His voice was soft, hypnotic, but that just made Harry open his eyes wider and watch him suspiciously. Malfoy rolled his eyes and smiled back in return. “Can you imagine that? The soft hum of a successful spell, or the high that you get when you’ve cast a Dark spell and the wizard who hurt you is writhing on the ground?”

            Harry flushed. “I don’t think I ought to think of that,” he muttered. “You were the last one I hurt in revenge.”

            “Revenge for something I hadn’t done,” Malfoy responded calmly. “It doesn’t count. Think of a time before that. Any occasion when you could feel your magic as something separate and distinct from you, hurrying under your skin, or flowing under it, or flooding through it. Remember a time when it brought you joy.”

            Joy had been a foreign emotion for Harry for a while, but he closed his eyes obediently and remembered a Dark wizard he had chased just before the case that made the ceiling collapse on two innocents and cost him the respect of the Auror Department as well as nights of restful sleep. He could see the corridor where it had happened in his mind’s eyes, a heavy underground series of chambers that the wizard had modified for his own use. The stones loomed together like the stones of Hogwarts. They were bright grey with white streaks, except where the tunnel bent towards the potions lab. They were black there, and Harry had to be careful of the way his feet came down, scattered as they were with irregular edges and fragments from Potions accidents.

            The wizard, Hubert Torrington, had turned to cast a spell over his shoulder. Harry had lifted his wand and responded with a spell he had learned only a few weeks before, one that filled Torrington’s mouth and throat with the feeling of fire and made him concentrate on trying not to burn to death from the inside.

            Torrington wavered and went down, choking desperately. Harry laughed. The spell had whipped through him and out of him as easily as a rope flowing after a dropped stone. His body had felt filled with life, and he had taken the hex off as easily when he wanted to bind and Stun Torrington. He had been full of calm, clean happiness, the belief that, as long as he could use his magic to stop people like this man, the world was a better place.

            He remembered the feeling and held onto it, as well as the sensation of the rope whipping past him. He could hold onto it, but his palms would be burned. He cradled the sensation against him again, and felt as though the magic was there, right in front of him, burning through him at the same time, and visible to other people—

            “Open your eyes, Harry.”

            Harry did, and gaped. There was a cloud of shifting, flaming energy in front of him, burning blue and red and white and orange and gold, the shades of fire. He reached out a hand and held it near the cloud, and felt a faint, distant warmth, the heat of a contained hearth, beating against it.

            “Interesting,” Malfoy said, studying it and cocking his head as though he didn’t recognize the shape of the cloud o or, more likely, the magic that Harry had used. Although he might know some Dark spells, he couldn’t know all of them. Harry wondered what to do with the pride that flooded him at that thought, but put it aside to focus on Malfoy’s next words. “Powerful magic, but what’s important is the feeling.”

            Harry flushed again. Had he done something wrong even here, when it seemed so simple to follow Malfoy’s instructions? “You said to think of a time when my magic brought me joy,” he said.

            Malfoy smiled at him, a smile that invited Harry into a partnership he had no notion of accepting. “Yes,” he said. “And you chose a Dark spell, although I’m sure that you employed it for what seemed to you good reason. That says, to me, that Dark magic brings you joy, and you’re less pure than you thought you were.”

            From the way Malfoy jumped when Harry began laughing, he hadn’t expected that response to his accusation. “Yes, I am,” Harry said, when he could get the laughter under control. “And the important thing is that I can accept and acknowledge it, and not be taken aback by it when you try to use the term to insult me.”

            “It wasn’t an insult,” Malfoy said softly.

            Harry turned away from the warmth in his eyes. “You now,” he said harshly. “Or is there no time when magic’s brought you joy? Is power the only thing you can think of that tempts you?”

            “Magic is power, too,” Malfoy murmured in a distracted tone. He stood there with his eyes closed, searching for something in his memory, it seemed. Harry jammed his hands into his pockets and said nothing else, neck arched away from the bastard, trying to think of nothing but the joy.

            And the possibility that magic could free him from guilt, remote though it seemed.

*

            Draco had absolutely no trouble deciding what he wanted to think of. How he had felt when he was in Harry’s mind and soul, holding the power to destroy worlds in his hands, and knowing all the while that he would surrender it, even though it would hurt, because a greater power awaited him.

            The power to make Harry look at him without flinching, approval shining in his eyes.

            Draco laughed even as he thought that, because he knew there was some time to go before Harry fully accepted him enough for that to happen. But he held the image and the hope anyway, and when he opened his eyes and hands, the cloud of his own emotions was there, softly curling green and silver. He spread his arms, and it drifted up to hover beside the fire-colored cloud that Harry had conjured.

            “Looks like poison gas,” Harry muttered.

            Draco rolled his eyes, determined not to let Harry’s bad mood ruin the moment for him. “We have the concentrated emotion now,” he said. He gestured to the silver dome that enclosed them away from the world. “And we have the concentrated power. All you need to do is give me your hand.” He held out his own, his stance steady and unwavering.

            Harry froze, staring at him. Draco huffed. “Is the instruction that hard to follow?” he snapped. “You’ve managed harder things already.”

            “That doesn’t make sense,” Harry said. “I thought we would need—some ritual, some artifact, some means of channeling and directing the power.”

            “If we did, then we would be no different from any other partnerships who’ve raised power over the years,” Draco pointed out. He saw Harry grimace at the term partnership, and knew he would have to fight against the temptation to use it ever more often. “But what’s different about us is that we can create magic.”

            Harry just looked at him skeptically.

            Draco sighed. Harry was the only person he knew who would demand an explanation of magical theory right in the middle of making that theory come to life. On the other hand, he was also the only one who could offer Draco access to that power, so Draco took a deep breath and settled down to explain, staring at Harry through the shifting veil of colors their magic offered.

            “Yes, you’re right—ordinarily. Ordinarily we would need an artifact or a ritual, because the power wouldn’t come from our cores, or would come from them only indirectly. The ritual or whatever else we used would act as a conduit, but it would also shelter us from the force of raw magic. Wands work on the same principle, and it’s the reason that you can’t pick up any random stick and make it into a wand. The combination of wood and core in a wandmaker’s hands makes a shield, and the shield is more valuable than just about anything else the wand does.”

            Harry looked as though he were calming down. Draco paused, but it wasn’t a temporary aberration; Harry gestured for him to go on, looking no more tense than before. If he was reading sinister motives into Draco’s pause, he kept that idea well-hidden.

            “We don’t need the shield,” Draco said softly, “any more than we need to be shielded from our own cores. The magic is part of us. We can create it anew, with no more fuel than our dreams and imaginations.” He took a step closer to Harry, unable to resist the temptation as his own words moved him, although he saw Harry tense again. “They say that nothing can come from nothing, but dreams do. What are they born from but ambition, concentrated ambition, and desire? The same thing is true of emotions—”

            “Get to the point, Malfoy.” Harry looked over his shoulder as if he were considering running, although the dome was small.

            “My point,” Draco said, “is that our magic comes from the same category this time. We need to learn how to control it, but once we have this, this visual representation of what we’re aiming for,” and he nodded at the colored clouds, “then we can be sure that the magic will know what to do.”

            Harry blew out his breath hard enough to make his fringe ripple and shook his head. “I don’t know, Malfoy. It still sounds mental.”

            “Then it’ll do no harm to try something and see how it works, will it?” Draco reached out a commanding hand, and Harry stepped towards him, less fearful, he thought, than reluctant for form’s sake. “Come, just take my hand—yes, hold on the wrist, that’s right—and think of the goal of being free of the guilt. Close your eyes if it’ll help,” he added, because Harry had started to close his eyes and then abruptly yanked them open again.

            Harry peered at him suspiciously. “How can you envision me being free of guilt?”

            Draco laughed silently at him and slid a hand around his flank. Harry jumped but didn’t move away, and Draco’s heart pounded. He had known that desire hid under Harry’s sharpness, if only the desire to stop running and face the truth for once. His friends had been stupid to drive him from them. If they had been calm and conciliating, then Harry might have listened to what they wanted to say.

            As long as it didn’t involve the complete condemnation of him, of course. Draco thought that the kindest, mildest soul would rebel at that, and Harry had one of the fiercest souls he’d ever known.

            “Believe me,” Draco whispered, “it’s no trouble at all.” And he moved his hand back to Harry’s shoulder, and held it there until Harry nodded shortly, convinced, it seemed, and let his eyes flutter shut.

            Draco fixed his mind on an image of Harry smiling, Harry laughing, Harry admitting that he had made mistakes but he didn’t have to torment himself about them for the rest of his life. It wasn’t nearly as hard as Harry had thought it would be, he knew, because Harry free had been one of his goals as well as Harry’s.

            They had simply thought of him being free of different things, that was all.

*

            Harry felt stupid standing there. He didn’t know what to think of. At least the memory of using magic on Torrington was a specific one. He might as well think of an abstract concept as think of himself being free of guilt.

            Then again, guilt was an abstract concept, and joy was an abstract concept, and he ought to be able to manage magic that represented them both if he could find it to represent one.

            Harry bit his lip and tried to ignore the sensation of Malfoy’s hand on his shoulder. The warmth of the fingers melted first, then their length, then their weight, and Harry’s mind swam and dived in the middle of a heaving sea of ideas.

            Guilt. It was like a stone, like a bridle around his neck when he wanted to run, like the bars of a cage holding him back. He had thought for a long time that he needed it to be like that, because otherwise he would do horrible things. He had a lot of power, given his magic and his name and his status in wizarding society. He needed something to hold him in check. What else would ensure the freedom of other people?

            Only recently had he started thinking about that and noticed some flaws in his reasoning. There was no reason that he had to take away the freedom of others; that wasn’t something he had ever dreamed of doing.

            Unlike Malfoy, he thought, and resentment tightened in his belly.

            But Malfoy had held back at the last moment, too, and Harry wasn’t supposed to be thinking about him; he was supposed to be thinking about the moment when he would be free of guilt, or at least what he would look and feel like then. With a determined huff, he turned away from the familiar litany of Malfoy’s flaws and back to his own, unknown self.

            Well, he had sacrificed the power of his name and reputation in Britain, he thought. If they had found out that he’d murdered Robards, he would be wanted for the crime. If they hadn’t, they probably thought he was dead, and they would ask how he had survived, and not be pleased at the only truth he had to tell.

            Robards had been a popular Head Auror. Harry’s fame might survive even that blow for some people, but it wouldn’t for others. And even if Harry could prove that Robards had been in Malfoy’s service for years, there would still be sympathy for him; why had Harry escaped, and if it was possible, why hadn’t he helped Robards to win free?

            That was gone. He didn’t have to feel guilt for all the imaginary crimes that he might have committed by influencing people to act as they thought he wanted.

            That left his magic.

            But his magic was shared in common with Malfoy, and equal to Malfoy’s, and could only increase with Malfoy’s help. And Harry rejected the notion that he should labor in bondage forever because of that. He hadn’t asked for it to happen. He hadn’t even asked Malfoy to pour his magic back into Harry’s core.

            He could still feel guilt over hurting Malfoy with the Cruciatus Curse—

            But Malfoy didn’t want him to feel that. That was something, at least, and Harry gathered up the hope and held it close to him the way he had done with the joyous memory a short time ago.

            Ron and Hermione might say that he should feel guilty for using the Dark Arts. But Harry had already dealt with his own feelings about that, and acknowledged that it might happen again any time he felt threatened. Useless to put it, and keep it, on a list of things that he should suffer for.

            There were fewer things that he should suffer for than he had thought, Harry decided, and took a surprised breath.

            He shook with a feeling of relief. If he could let go of so much, then that meant—

            But he winced and stopped as he came to the memory of bringing the roof down on two people who hadn’t deserved it, two innocents. It had been a mistake, but it had happened because he mispronounced a word in an incantation. Shouldn’t he know his spells better than that? Or at least, shouldn’t he have stayed there and died with them, instead of Apparating out the moment the roof began to creak? He’d heard the sound and reacted with the instincts that the Aurors had trained into him, the way he was supposed to, but that also meant that he hadn’t grabbed the two people trapped there in the flames to take with him.

            He should have been able to hesitate. He should have reached out to them, and then they wouldn’t have died. He shouldn’t have made the mistake in the first place.

            He wavered, torn between the image of himself without guilt, and the image of himself as a criminal who had, at the very least, been negligent in his studies. He had warped instincts, a warped memory if he couldn’t hold onto spells—

            He thought that, and he bowed his head, and he wondered how he could overcome the weight of that particular guilt.

            It only hurts you because it’s recent.

            Harry started, and his eyes flew open. The first thing he had thought of was that Malfoy hadn’t removed all of the Mark after all, and was still speaking along the silent channel that its existence had opened up between them. But Malfoy shook his head, eyes narrowed, and Harry realized they stood in the middle of a clinging golden veil that didn’t resemble any of their magic thus far. From flickers of fire around the edges of it, though, he knew their joy had blended with the magic they were raising now.

            I can speak to you because that’s the nature of the connection that we’re forging. And you have other crimes to atone for—if you want to think of it that way—things that hurt you. People who died, and I know you blamed yourself for it as you blame yourself for these two dying. You got over those deaths, because they were years ago. That’s how I know that you have the capacity not to torment yourself forever. But you act as though you do. You forget forgetting.

            Harry winced. I can trust you to see me mercilessly, of course, he responded, trying to act as though he regarded the whole thing as a joke.

            But isn’t that what you wanted? Malfoy pressed closer, all bright eyes and snake-smile. Didn’t you want someone who would judge you and see you for what you really are, which you think is worthless? But when your friends judged you, and when I did, you found out that you didn’t want to be judged after all. You aren’t the saint or the martyr that you like to think of yourself as. Content yourself with that judgment, Potter: that you have a normal soul after all, magnificent neither for its goodness nor for its evil.

            Harry opened his mouth to retort—

            And found himself with an image of what he would look like free of guilt after all. It was unusual, because it didn’t look different from the face he saw in the mirror every day, but perhaps that was the point. Free of the emotions that crippled him, he would be an ordinary human being, the one that Malfoy said he saw, the flawed one that Ron and Hermione saw all the time.

            Except that he would be flawed unacceptably, in Ron and Hermione’s view, and that made him hesitate.

            What do you care about what they say and think? Malfoy stepped away from him and paced in a circle, his eyes never leaving Harry’s. Harry knew that he must have turned around at some point, so that he could see Malfoy walking behind him, but he never remembered the moment when he did turn. They’ve rejected you. They want you to stop using Dark Arts. They want you to pretend that the Mark never happened, that Robards never betrayed you, that you never felt the ability to make magic, to create it, throbbing through you like the flow of blood. You can’t do that.

            Harry bared his teeth. No, I can’t. And he reached out and gathered the vision close to his heart at last, his own face, as if seen in a mirror, his eyes wide and startled but not dark with shadows that he couldn’t explain, his soul flinching from the searing fire that Malfoy had exposed it to but otherwise undamaged, and showed it to him.

            Malfoy smiled and seemed to hold up a mirror at the same time. It reflected Harry’s image; it was Harry’s image, reversed, the same but with stronger prominence given to the light than the lack of darkness. Harry blinked.

            The images drifted away from their hands, floating in midair like the clouds of colored fire. Harry watched as they blended, uncertain what had happened so far, or what would happen next.

            This is magic, Malfoy whispered to him. The magic that you asked for. Awakening you to your needs, awakening you to the fact that you long for judgment but reject it when it arrives, letting you know that you aren’t better or worse than many others. Why did you fancy that you were?

            I had such power, Harry muttered, never taking his eyes from the images, or the single replica of his own face they had become, now. It turned around in midair and continued to drift. Harry thought it was heading for a definite destination, but he didn’t know what that could be. I could have misused it.

            But you didn’t, Draco murmured. Granger and Weasley are the sorts of people who think that actions count for nothing, that motivations are all. But you know they aren’t. You know that there exists a difference between you and the wizards you fought, in what they used their power for and what you used yours for. And you know that you feel more charitable towards me for freeing you from slavery, even though you don’t like why I did it.

            Harry tried to scowl over his shoulder at him, but Draco leaned heavily on him and pointed at the image. It had turned to face them again, and this time, a random, mild shimmer ran around it, green and gold. Harry could feel the charge building and thought they were close to the moment when the magic would act or react, for good or ill.

            Now, Draco whispered—when was he Draco? Harry hadn’t noticed the moment his mind made the change. We are both members of the same world with this—

            The image burst soundlessly, and Harry gasped as the light fell on him, settled into him, ran in glittering pinpricks down the side of his soul—

And he saw himself as Malfoy saw him, arrogant and hotheaded and wrong most of the time, but still someone who did much more good than harm.

How can I be sure that this is true? Harry whispered, as lightness nearly lifted him off his feet.

Consider it a corrective to your vision of yourself, Malfoy murmured to him. He sounded tired. Neither are true, but in between them, we can find the truth.

And Harry opened his eyes, and the guilt had taken its place among the other elements of his soul, neither overmastering nor nonexistent, and Malfoy stood beside him, swaying, and the silver dome was gone.

*

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