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Nova Cupiditas	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 37321 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

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Chapter
Thirteen�Baker�s Dozen

�� Draco woke
to heat, and hatred.

�� He didn�t
know what had happened to make him feel that hatred, which seemed something
outside of himself, hovering on his shoulder like a
bird and able to fly away again as easily. But it was there, and it was enough
that, when he turned his head and tried to focus his eyes on the bubble, Harry
wasn�t sitting beside him. In fact, when Draco carefully listened, he didn�t
think Harry was in the room.

�� That made him snarl. He tried to sit up and reach out with
the sense in his chest that made him aware of where Harry was at all times, and
ran into an invisible barrier. There was something in the house that kept him
from probing after Harry, and Draco briefly wondered if Granger had cast some
spell.

�� Then he
realized that the simplest explanation was the likeliest, too: that he couldn�t
feel Harry because Harry wasn�t there.

�� His
full-throated howl of rage made Granger come pounding into the room, her wand
held out in front of her and her eyes bewildered. Draco ignored her. He had his
attention on the bubble surrounding him, the first of the walls that he would
have to pass if he wanted to find and catch up with Harry again.

�� The
jealousy had swept in and cleared his mind, the way Draco vaguely remembered it
doing once before. The lust blinded him. The jealousy made him think
rationally, because he had to find a way to take Harry away from whoever might
be touching or holding him at the moment.

�� Harry had
said last night that the Weasel had left the house. What if Harry was at his
house with him? Or with his sister? Draco had seen the
way they touched, Harry and the Weasel, casually intimate. That could mean that
Harry romped pretty often in the sister�s bed, or the brother�s, or�

�� He had
thought about that deliberately, not because he couldn�t help thinking it, and
it worked as it had worked when he was in the warded circle in Harry�s lab. The
rage and hatred built in him, sinking deep claws and flexing, and unleashing
the restraints that usually kept his magic imprisoned, like the magic of any
adult wizard who had got used to using a wand and climbed
past the accidental outbursts of childhood.

�� Draco
screamed his fury, and the bubble fell in ringing shards around him. He stood
up, shook himself, and looked around, but he didn�t spot his wand right away.
He turned to Granger, barely noticing the wand in her hand. It seemed like an
annoyance now, more than anything. If she had information about where Harry
was, if she�d hidden him away deliberately so that Harry could cavort with the
Weasels, he would torture that out of her, but for now, he needed his wand more
than anything else.

�� My wand,�
he said.

�� Malfoy,�
Granger said. �What are you doing?� She had walked backwards so that she was
against the doorway, and stood there as if she intended to bar his passage
beyond it with her life. The sight made Draco want to smile, but he snarled
instead. Granger was too likely to get in the way and prove a distraction from
his important task of finding Harry.

�� Searching
for what�s mine,� Draco said. He could barely speak the question. The lust
hadn�t come back, but the jealousy was close to choking him, because his sense
of Harry had not only confirmed that Harry wasn�t in the house, it was reaching
out and not finding a trace of him anywhere.
Not in the streets nearby, not in the buildings that
stood within reach.

�� Where is
he?� he demanded of Granger, even as his desperately reaching magic found his
wand and brought it skimming into the room between Granger�s legs.

�� She leaped
and stared at him, more cautious than ever around him because he was armed now.
�He�he went to the Manor to see if your mother had any information on the curse
in her books,� she said, testing each word as if she thought it would make
Draco attack her. �He should be back soon.�

�� Draco
snarled again. There was Lucius at the Manor, who wanted to hurt his Harry, and
who looked enough like Draco that Harry might be forgiven for straying thoughts�if
Draco was the kind of person to forgive.

�� But a
moment later, as his thoughts fixed on the house, he received a clear
impression of it standing open and empty. His mother wasn�t there, and his
father was hiding somewhere on the grounds, and unless they had killed Harry
and buried his body in the gardens, Harry wasn�t there, either.

�� I need
more than that, Granger,� he said, stalking towards her. Had Harry told her to
conceal his whereabouts? He would regret that. He would regret anything but staying
by Draco�s side and putting him first. If Draco was going to commit himself to
someone like this, heart and soul, he deserved to have that commitment back.
�What plans did he mention other than that? Why did he leave the house in the
first place? Anywhere he went, we were to go together. He specifically promised me that.� He realized that he
was spitting and raving, but he didn�t care. Not if it frightened her enough to
make her tell him the truth.

�� Granger
backed away from him. Then she shook her head. �If he isn�t at the Manor, then
I don�t know where he is.�

�� Draco thought
she was telling him all she knew. And in any case, his sense of Harry had
expanded again, spiraling further and further away from the Manor and Harry�s
house, but still locking and orienting on details that felt familiar. Draco
turned his head, sniffing the air, trying to understand the impressions that
were pouring in on him.

�� And then he
did understand. He felt his mouth
relax into a pleasant smile. Granger gasped, as if the change in his face was
too great for her to stand. But Draco could ignore her easily. He knew where
Harry was, and what he was doing there, and who he was with, and how he,
himself, was going to respond.

�� Harry had
been taken by the same people who had taken Draco, and brought to the same
place.

�� Draco
strode out of Harry�s house and went to Apparate, deaf to Granger�s cries
behind him.

*

�� Well, this isn�t good, Harry thought.

�� He was
still in the sack, but he could hear the low, excited mutters around him, and
feel the casual way that they handled him: tossing him on the grass, turning
him over with a kick, crowding around him and laughing into their sleeves with
excitement. Harry pretended to be unconscious still, but he didn�t think they
were fooled. Someone had already come over, prodded him in the chest once with
a finger, and then retreated.

�� Harry had
had a bit of Auror training, not much, before he left the program. But he
remembered how to read criminals from their body language�one of the most valuable
things he had learned, he thought, because there were plenty of people who
would want to hurt him even after he became a research wizard�and this body
language said that they felt confident about their place and their plans and
weren�t anticipating any sudden betrayal, the way that Harry thought they would
have been wise to. Surely someone among them would think that the way they had
cursed Draco was wrong, or get nervous about snatching the great Harry Potter
and run tattling to the Ministry.

�� But it didn�t
seem so. Instead, they clustered around him and laughed, and then they yanked
the sack from his head with a suddenness that left Harry gasping.

�� A figure
wearing a black cloak bent over him. Harry couldn�t see her face, hard as he
stared, and she had fastened something on either side of his head so that he
couldn�t turn it. The sounds and the smells, though, were the same as those of
the meadow he had visited with Draco the other day. He thought that might be
their first mistake, bringing him back to the same place they had cursed Draco.

�� Then again,
no one knew where he was. They had snatched him before he could Apparate from
his own street, which meant they must have been watching his house for some
time, and he hadn�t managed to go to the Manor. Ron and Hermione wouldn�t panic
until hours went by without his return, and maybe not even then, if they
thought he was engaged in a long talk with Mrs. Malfoy. Why should he think
rescue was coming?

�� He drew in
a sharp breath and fought away the despair. Something would happen. They had
made one careless mistake. They could make others.

�� Mr.
Potter,� the figure said. Harry wanted to say that it was a woman, but really,
given the thick hood and the auditory glamour he had no doubt she was using on
her voice, it was impossible to tell. �You should have left well enough alone.
I don�t think I recall another case in the literature where someone helped the
victim who was cursed to lust after them. It�s procedure in these cases to feel
sorry and to ignore them. After all, there�s no cure for Nova Cupiditas.�

�� You don�t
believe that,� Harry said. �Not completely. Or you wouldn�t be upset that I was
researching it.�

�� The woman
paused. Only a slight hesitation, before she laughed, but Harry would remember
it. Yes, they weren�t completely perfect, no matter how marvelous their
snatch-and-grab techniques were. If nothing else, continued success might have
made them overconfident. They could have protected themselves better if they
had simply stayed far away from him altogether.

�� You�re the
Savior,� she said. �I suspect we should have thought of the possibility that
you would try to help him first, the boy who had always tormented you.� She
paused, and Harry glared at her. He didn�t see any possibility of trying to
placate her. If they already knew that he wanted to help Draco, they wouldn�t
be fooled by him widening his eyes and saying in an innocent tone that he
didn�t want to.

�� But you
should understand one thing,� she went on, and her voice was low and ugly. �Draco
Malfoy and people like him insulted and ruined the chances of many more people
than they ever touched in the war.�

�� Harry
pretended to listen to her. In reality, he was only listening insofar as any
clues would come through her words or the references she made. He wanted to
find some way out of this situation, and the longer she talked, the longer he
would stay alive.

�� He thought
she wanted to persuade him his actions were wrong, rather than simply kill him,
or, worse, cast Nova Cupiditas
on him in turn. He could nod and make encouraging noises sometimes, like
someone who could be persuaded, and then he would take her information and
twist it against her like a weapon.

�� If he could.

�� They
barred the acceptance and entrance of Muggleborns into the Ministry and the
wizarding world for a long time after,� the woman went on. �Now the children
who come into the wizarding world for the first time are frightened by rumors
of the war and the truth about what happened to people like
them, and many of them go back to their parents and give up magic. The
people who have the courage to stay, like your friend Hermione Granger, are
rare, and they shouldn�t have to have
that courage. No one is asking the pure-bloods to face death and destruction.
But someone should.�

�� Harry shook
his head. �That�s what I don�t understand about your methods, though,� he said,
trying to focus his eyes over her head while not making it obvious that that�s
what he was doing. �I mean, why not go after the worst pure-bloods? Lucius Malfoy
is bad, true, but Draco didn�t really do anything.�

�� The worst
ones are in prison, dead, or fled,� someone else murmured from beyond the
restraints that kept Harry from turning. �We couldn�t hurt only them unless we
wanted to confine our revenge unacceptably.�

�� Be still,
Worthy,� said the woman in front of Harry, not unkindly. Harry vowed to
remember the name, though he doubted that it was a real one. �All pure-bloods
are part of this culture that keeps Muggleborns estranged from their rightful
heritage, Potter, not just the worst ones. To let some go unpunished would be
tantamount to admitting that there was no point in hunting any of them.�

�� Harry
didn�t understand the logic, but he would argue only as much as he needed to to keep the conversation flowing. He thought he had an
idea, and so he flexed his fingers next to his hip and began to concentrate on
his anger.

�� Why use
that curse, though?� he asked. �There must have been worse things you could do
to them. More painful.�

��

�� That death
is painful,� the woman said. �But what matters more is humiliating them. Making
them see that people of different �blood� can still be desirable, even if it is
magic that makes them feel the desire. We make them pollute themselves, and
then they can�t talk about their precious purity.�

�� Of course that�s what matters, Harry
thought, and struggled not to roll his eyes. He watched her face instead, or
the blankness in the hood where her face should be, and moved his hand a little
more at his hip. He had used wandless magic once, when he was young and stupid,
and blown up Aunt Marge. He ought to be able to use it again now, when he
understood what was at stake, and when the same people who had persecuted Draco
had taken him.

�� But is
pollution enough?� he asked. �Do you care about the suffering you cause people,
like me, who might feel compassion for them�and for you, if your methods were
different, or kinder?�

�� The woman
drew breath to answer. Harry tensed, thinking he would wait until she had
spoken a few sentences and was obviously engrossed in what she was saying, and
then attack.

�� He never
got the chance.

�� The air
ripped open behind her, and Draco came through it, storming silver with madness
and death.

*

�� The first
thing Draco saw when he Apparated in was someone bending over his Harry, close
enough that her chest could have touched his. She had boards fastened around
his head so that he couldn�t turn away, and she was practically feeding him her
breasts.

�� Draco
raised his wand and destroyed her.

�� He could
never remember what spell he had used afterwards. It didn�t matter. What
mattered was that her head ripped from her shoulders and her body slumped over
Harry, limp and dead and no longer a rival for his lover. Draco turned away for
the moment and focused on the dozen other people who stood around the meadow.

�� They
started scattering and yelling. Draco smiled. It didn�t matter. They had been
here, and he thought he could track them to the ends of the earth if necessary.
The jealousy rode him, shining and powerful, and kept the lust at bay. Like
this, he was rational.

�� And like
this, he was the doom of those who had tried to doom him.

�� His wand
flickered, and bodies leaped apart in front of him. It flickered again, and
chopped off the hand of someone who had crept up behind him, reaching for his
wand. Draco pointed it at the ground, and the earth opened and then clamped
shut like a set of traps around the legs of his enemies.

�� He wanted
to save a few for later, so that he could torture them for information and then
kill them slowly.

�� In high
good humor that almost eclipsed the anger, he bounded after the people who
stumbled over each other, too terrified to Apparate, or too slow. Or maybe they
hated him too much to try. Draco didn�t mind. He was moving. He was protecting
Harry. He felt better than he had since these bastards had cursed him. He was
taking an active part in his own
preservation again, where, before, he�d simply had to sit around and wait for
Harry to come up with something, or sleep behind the wards because he would
fatally distract Harry otherwise.

�� He licked
his lips, tasted something salty and stinging, and realized there was blood
there. Draco shrugged and strode with a spring in his step back to Harry. It
didn�t matter. He would share a kiss with Harry, and teach him to love the
taste of blood if he didn�t already. Harry had been a soldier; Draco thought he
would understand.

�� Love,� he
said, and the word buzzed in his mouth, making it holy. Harry would have to
believe him after this, he thought. He no longer thought the curse was gone,
but he believed it could be a source of strength. He reached down and
unfastened the binders from either side of Harry�s head, then dragged the limp
body of the woman he had killed off Harry. Once again, he held Harry safe in
his embrace, and he closed his eyes as the curse filled him with an
indescribable feeling. He could cut off his hand sooner than he could go back
to not loving Harry, not holding him, not having rights to him that no one else
had.

�� I�� Harry
pushed at Draco�s chest, and his eyes were wide and panicked. Draco didn�t
understand that. Hadn�t he shown that there was nothing to be afraid of? He had
taken care of all the attackers, and no matter how he looked around the meadow,
no more appeared. Perhaps some had fled, but Draco didn�t think so. The blurs
of light pushing and passing through his memory included no Apparitions. Eight
people were dead, five trapped moaning in the ground.
He thought he had seen thirteen when he came into the meadow.

�� Tell me
what�s distressing you, Harry,� he coaxed, and stroked the backs of his fingers
across Harry�s cheek. He wanted to kiss him, but he would wait until Harry had
spoken the words that obviously troubled him. It was a bit difficult to speak
with one�s mouth full of tongue, after all.

�� But when
that was done�

�� I have to take him.

*

�� Harry
couldn�t breathe.

�� In a few
seconds, Draco had appeared, and had done all this, and then�

�� It had
ended.

�� Harry
stared around him, at the people with their bodies cut in half and their heads
lying fifteen feet away from them and holes through the center of their chests.
He didn�t recognize most of the spells Draco had used, despite his Auror
training and the research he had done into obscure spells since he started
becoming a research wizard. Draco had tossed Dark magic around as though it was
a handful of straws, and then he had come over and tugged Harry up with his face
covered with blood, his hair plastered with it, his eyes shining like galaxies.
Harry doubted that he noticed anything but the feel of Harry�s own skin, given the
restless way he was running his hands across it.

�� I need to
know why this happened,� Harry said. �I need to know how you found me,� he
added, because he had only just then realized that Ron and Hermione hadn�t come
with Draco, or Mrs. Malfoy. It would have made sense if someone else could have
directed Draco, or tracked Harry, but it stunned Harry�s imagination to think
that Draco had come here by himself.

�� Draco gave
him a gentle, affectionate smile, and leaned in to kiss Harry�s cheek. Harry
tried not to flinch when he felt the still-sticky blood that his lips imprinted
there.

�� I woke up,
and you were gone,� Draco said. �I�ve had a sense of you that pulled me to you
before, when I was missing your body. The day we had the argument and you went
down into your lab, remember? Well, it happened again, and this time, it
reached out until it found you.� He gazed around the meadow contemplatively. �I
think it probably helped that they were stupid enough to come back here. I
wouldn�t have found you as fast as if they took you someplace unfamiliar, or
further away.�

�� Harry
blinked and shook his head. The prisoners were moaning. He knew Draco had left
them alive deliberately, but it made him start to think that Draco could have
left them all alive, and nothing productive would come of allowing his thoughts
to wander that way. He had to get back to something more productive, before he
collapsed of exhaustion or shock.

�� Or before Draco started trying to kiss him.

�� How could
you act like that?� he asked quietly. �Why wouldn�t you kill the person who was
on top of me and then snatch me up and leave? The lust�it shouldn�t give you
another choice.�

�� He held his
breath, in case referring to the lust would change Draco�s behavior, but Draco
simply gave him an adoring glance and smoothed down the hair on the back of his
neck, murmuring something about his scent that Harry couldn�t understand fully.
�I would have done that if the lust commanded me,� he admitted. �But it�s the
jealousy that gives me the ability to act like this, that made me able to break
the bubble, and that lets me think about something other than fucking you.� He
moved his hips forwards, and Harry felt his erection. He had to wonder how long
Draco had been like that, and how long since it had started to hurt. �Not that
fucking wouldn�t be nice.�

�� His eyes
had started to cloud over again. Harry spoke quickly, reaching up so that he
could clasp Draco�s neck in his hand. Draco arched towards him with the low,
moaning, rumbling noise that Harry had heard him make a few times before. �The
jealousy is stronger than the lust, you think?�

�� I think
so.� Draco smiled at him, his need plain in his face. Combined with the blood
and the casual way he had destroyed or captured thirteen people, it was
terrifying. �Harry, I�m ready to stop talking about this and start with you
now.� His hand slid down Harry�s body and squeezed at his arse.

�� Harry
caught his breath, gulped, and then shook his head. �I can�t let you do this,
Draco,� he said. �The jealousy makes you rational, and we have to question
these men and women while we have them.� He wouldn�t put it past whoever really
controlled this group to either rescue them or make them commit suicide.

�� Then he
took a good look at the prisoners and thought again. They all looked utterly
stunned. Their heads lolled, and they kept their eyes, which shone with tears,
away from the dead as if they had never seen death before. Harry remembered
that he�d thought them self-confident. Maybe too self-confident, to the point
that retribution had never caught up with them before.

�� Harry,�
Draco whined. �Please.�

�� Harry
winced and took a risk. If he was right, then he could use the jealousy against
the lust to make Draco pay attention to him. But if he was wrong, he might be
condemning himself to pain and the prisoners to death. �Draco, I want you to be
calm,� he said. �I might want someone else if you can�t be calm.�

�� Draco
straightened and glared at him. �Fine,�
he said. �I�ll be cool as a glass of ice water. But you�re going to owe me for
this.� His hand closed down, crushing Harry�s wrist.

�� Harry gave
him a fragile smile and tried to step away so that he could find his wand.
Draco let him get to the end of his arm and then restricted his movement with a
faint smirk on his face, as if asking Harry why Harry had thought that he would
manage to escape.

�� Harry bowed
his head tamely, and let Draco lead him.

�� All the
while, his brain raced, drawing conclusions and discarding them, trying to
understand the new evidence of the curse this series of events provided them
with, and trying to decide what he should do with it.

�� And trying
not to think about the murders Draco had just committed.

�� Because of him.

*

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Nova Cupiditas