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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.

Chapter List
- 16
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Chapter
Seventeen�Prime Danger

�� You need
to stay in the warded circle this time, Draco.�

�� Draco
drifted towards the circle that Harry had repaired yesterday with a faint,
insolent smile on his face. He had his head half-bowed and his eyes darting
around the room as though he was cataloging the position of the books, notes,
and experimental objects that Harry had gathered. Harry had to admit that made
him nervous. He swallowed and did his best to ignore it. This was the real
Draco, he reminded himself again and again, whenever he started to falter. This
was the Draco who would be left when he managed to remove the curse. If he was that uncomfortable with him, that was only another sign
that they would do well to part ways when the curse was gone.

�� Draco
stepped inside the circle. There was a sound like a faint puff of breath, and
the wards snapped to life around him.

�� Harry heard
uneasy stirring from the stairs, where Ron and Hermione stood. He turned and
gave them a hard stare. �If you can�t stay still,� he said, �then I�m exiling
you from the lab. I need absolute quiet for
what I�m doing here.�

�� Hermione
nodded, looking impressed. Of course, research into esoteric magic would always
do that to her. But Ron shook his head, his face pale enough to make his
freckles look like wounds. �What happens if he gets out and you need help like
you did last time, mate? I wouldn�t put it past him.�

�� As I
recall, Weasley,� Draco drawled, �the reason I broke free had to do with you
not being able to keep your hands off
Harry.� On the word �hands,� his voice cut down like a diving hawk into
darkness, and then he pulled back and stood there blandly smiling once more.
Harry gave him an uneasy glance that he couldn�t stop. Draco caught his eye,
and the smile increased to charming.

�� As long as
no one touches you but me,� he said, �I see no reason that they can�t be here.�

�� You can�t
tell me that Harry likes being
touched and groped by you,� Ron began, rising to the bait. Draco smiled at him
contentedly.

�� What did I
tell you about keeping quiet?� Harry snapped at Ron, and Ron lowered his eyes
and swallowed. Harry reckoned that either the expression on his face or the
pinch Hermione had given Ron on his arm had been taken as deeply threatening. Well,
good. Whatever worked. Harry was not going to have this fucked up because of the Weasley-Malfoy
rivalry. It was going to be hard enough as it was.

�� He spent a
few moments meditating, filling his mind with a great calmness and the confidence
that had hit him when he realized that his spell to banish magical infatuation
had worked on Draco. He had used multiple variations of the revealing charm to
show up Dark spells before now. He had even done it under more of a time limit,
as when he worked to save Ron�s life. He could do this.

�� He opened
his eyes, smiled, and moved his wand in the second-heaviest revealing charm for
Dark magic he knew. �Miror.�

�� The spell
rolled towards Draco and hesitated, barely, at the wards. Then it rippled
around him and revealed the parts of the spell that Harry knew about: the
jagged pieces on his shoulders, the crown of tendrils on his head, the snake
coiling above it all. Harry saw Draco clench his jaw, as if he disliked the way
that the cold spell felt moving over his skin, but he bowed his head and stood
there, patient. Harry shot him a quick smile and then began comparing the way
the curse looked now with his former drawings.

�� His heart
leaped. Yes, the snake was smaller than it had been, missing the �head��or the
end that he had chosen to call the head last time�as if someone had cut it off.
He was sure now that the snake was the magical infatuation the curse had
inflicted on Draco. It had been damaged when his spell had hit it, and still
hadn�t grown back.

�� Harry drew
in the edges of the curse, glancing at Draco from time to time and moving to a
new angle when he could, to make sure that he got a picture of the way the
curse looked all around Draco�s body. An unexpected bend in the snake where it
crossed his spine could destroy his plans, considering what those plans were.

�� The
revealing spell crackled and faded. There was something in the curse that made
it resistant to revealing charms, Harry knew. He cast the strongest one this
time, and Draco braced himself when it hit him, shaking briefly like a dog
immersed in water.

�� Are you
all right?� Harry asked quietly. He knew that he shouldn�t let himself be
distracted, but he was incapable of forgetting about Draco�s comfort, when
Draco was the one who would have to suffer from what Harry was doing.

*

�� Draco gave
Harry a tight smile and an equally tight nod. He wasn�t sure what else he could
say. The revealing charms didn�t hurt, although it did feel as though giant,
invisible hands had tugged him out of his clothes.

�� Has the curse become so interwoven with me,
that having it revealed feels like nakedness?

�� He
sincerely hoped not. The curse needed to remain
separate, or they were never going to be happy to take it off. Harry acted calm
and confident all the time, but Draco was a realist, and he knew what it meant
for a curse to sink into one�s skin and soul and bind itself there, to the
point where it couldn�t be removed.

�� Worse,
flashes of emotion had begun to pass through him, as though the curse were reminding
itself of what it could do by producing brief spasms of jealousy and lust. At
one point, he thought the room would tilt sideways and he would faint if he
didn�t touch Harry right this instant. At another, he had to clench his fingers
into his palms because Granger and Weasley stood too close, too close!

�� The
emotions passed in instants, and his rational mind reeled after that,
fascinated and appalled. Was that what he seemed like to someone outside
himself? Would his face twitch and go through convulsions when he felt the lust
and the jealousy?

�� Perhaps
there was a reason that Weasley and Granger watched him with revolted distrust.
Harry might be able to look past that, but Draco doubted that they could.

�� And if he
was honest, if he had had a friend who was trying to help someone under the Nova Cupiditas curse,
he would have advised that friend to abandon the other person at the first
near-rape, never mind all the other attacks Harry had endured from him and the
times that he had made life difficult for Harry by attacking the people around
him.

�� Another
flash of jealousy passed through his mind, and Draco closed his eyes hard and
waited until it was gone before he continued the thoughts. Harry was chanting
something else, whether a revealing charm or part of the spell he was trying to
invent to counteract the curse Draco didn�t know, but he did know that his thoughts from before were ridiculous.

�� He wasn�t
anyone else, and Harry was who he was. As long as Harry was willing to be a
ridiculous hero and a martyr by trying to discover a cure, then Draco would do
everything he could to urge him along. He wanted to be free of this curse. That
meant not caring as much about how dangerous it was for Harry personally. Draco
wasn�t generous or saintly enough to step back and say that he should die in
pain, eating himself, because that would keep Harry or his precious friends
safe.

�� But if I could touch him once�

�� Draco
recognized a new intrusion of lust, but it was more powerful than before and
forced him to open his eyes, unwillingly, so that he could stare at Harry
again. Harry stared at him with unseeing eyes, frowning at the curse�s
pieces�or so Draco assumed, since he could see nothing�on Draco�s shoulders and
head. He didn�t see Draco at the
moment, which made Draco wish for more attention, but also gave him the
opportunity to look his fill without Harry blushing self-consciously and
ducking his head. He had a bad habit of doing that.

�� Harry would
never be the best-looking bloke, the sort of wizard Draco had dreamed about. No
bulging muscles, no lithe glory like the kind that Quidditch players
exhibited�it was years since Harry had been a Quidditch player�and his skin had
plenty of minor blemishes and scars even without the scar. His nails were ragged and bitten. His hair, of course,
escaped any restraint precisely the way it always had. Draco tried to envision
it lying flat, and couldn�t. He tried to envision it looking wilder than it
did.

�� And that was no problem. It would look
wilder than it did right now if he shagged Harry, if Harry stopped complaining
for once and let Draco fuck him hard enough to make them both come.

�� Draco
widened his stance subtly so that he could accommodate his growing erection. He
couldn�t stop staring, and he didn�t think it was his fault. Harry shouldn�t
gnaw his lip like that if he didn�t want people to stare. He shouldn�t frown
and let his eyes flicker back and forth between Draco�s shoulders and the
notebook with subtle intelligence. Draco had thought Harry was stupid in many
ways�because he was self-sacrificing, because he was a Gryffindor and actually
believed most of the world was noble and true, because he had flung himself
into the middle of so many dangerous situations�but he was far smarter than
most people gave him credit for. His chosen career showed that. Better to be a
magical researcher and have the honor and glory of creating new spells and
finding variations of spells than be an Auror. Anyone could be an Auror. No one
else could do what Harry was doing.

�� I want him.

�� Draco half-shuddered. The lust had returned, but instead of
blowing through him and vanishing, it was hovering under his skin, tainting
everything he saw with a faint rose-red aura. But perhaps Harry�s spell that
banished the magical love had been better than he knew. Draco could feel the
lust, but he retained his rational mind around and under that, so at the same
moment he could also clearly remember the period of his life when the idea of
touching Harry would have been anathema.

�� Not now.
Draco felt half-ashamed of his stupid earlier self, who had never seen the
worth of what Harry was and could offer him.

�� He still
knew that Harry wasn�t pure-blood. He still knew that he wasn�t the sort of
partner Draco�s parents had hoped for, the sort of partner who would make the
Malfoy name blaze like a newly-risen star. But that didn�t matter. He wanted to
hold him down and fuck the life out of him. He wanted to make Harry forget any other
lover he�d ever had.

�� It was a
less desperate lust than before. More real? Draco
didn�t despise the thought of going to bed with Harry, even though he was
perfectly well-aware that he would never have considered it if not for the
curse.

�� Harry
looked up and caught Draco�s eye. For a moment he blinked, uncertain, and Draco
felt an odd, old thrill. It was the same thrill he had felt at Hogwarts, when
Potter would turn and look at him during a Quidditch game or a random fight in
the corridors or a time when he was taunting the Weasel and the Mudblood. To
have a person that normally oblivious of him paying attention was worth
everything.

�� And it
didn�t come�or it didn�t all come�from Potter being famous. It came from the
way his eyes sparked and the way he held himself and the fact that he rarely
paid attention to anyone except his
friends and sometimes the professors. Draco was part of an exclusive,
restricted little world in those moments that he rarely gained entrance to.

�� Draco was
certain, in that moment, that he would still want Harry when the curse was
gone. He tried to relax his guard, to show that, and to let the emotion beam
through his smile and his eyes.

*

�� Draco was
giving him an odd look. Harry didn�t know what to make of it, and so simply
nodded cautiously back and then turned away so that he could check on his notes
again.

�� Something
wasn�t matching up.

�� He didn�t know
why, but the curse looked to have a fourth component. He couldn�t see it when
he looked at Draco, but the drawings he was making today didn�t match exactly
with the old ones. The old ones showed empty space behind Draco�s shoulders,
and when Harry squinted, he couldn�t see empty space there.

�� It was hard
to say exactly what he did see,
though. Not a glitter. Not a shimmer. Not part of the three components that had
somehow got left out of the �official� drawings. Just
a�shadow. That might be the best word. No matter how hard he stared, he
couldn�t see anything but nothing, and yet he couldn�t see through the air that
should have been empty to the walls and wards behind Draco.

�� It was hard
to describe. But then, magic always had been. Harry sometimes thought that was
the reason more people hadn�t entered the field of finding spells� magical
signatures before now. It was so hard to write books about. Harry had more
success just describing the incantations and wand motions for his new spells
instead of trying to tell people how they had worked and where they had come
from.

�� Hermione
took a loud breath from the stairs once, and Harry hunched his shoulders. Let her not interrupt, please. He didn�t
want the unpleasant scene that would result if he had to scold her, but much
less did he want his concentration broken because Hermione couldn�t keep her
opinions about his procedures to herself.

�� Luckily,
she did, and Harry jotted down a few more notes and then stepped back, shaking
his head. Well, strange shadow or not, he couldn�t make it come into focus no
matter how long he stared, and the fourth component of the spell�if it
existed�didn�t seem to affect Draco�s behavior. Harry would get started with the
three that he knew about.

�� He laid the
drawings side by side, correcting his exaggerations where he saw them, and began
to consider. He had to make the coils of the snake smaller and the puzzle
pieces larger, and he had to count the tendrils on the crown that sat on
Draco�s head. But he began to see his way through the mess, and took a deep
breath of relief.

�� As he had
told Draco, his strategy was based on understanding the exact shape of the
spell�s magical signature�something no one had ever figured it out before
because it was fucking complicated, from
what Harry had seen. He couldn�t blame those ancient researchers when you had
to count twice over to make sure that you were really finding all the tendrils
and not just mistaking the sharp curve that one took for the beginning of a new
one.

�� Once he
knew the shape, then he would design a neutralizing shape, or, more probably
considering the complexity of the curse, several shapes. He would fasten them
into the gaps between the shapes on Draco�s body, sinking them under the
surface of the skin when necessary, and wrench them open�casting another spell
that would change their shapes�so that the impenetrable wall of the curse would
shatter.

�� If he could. It was a good theory, but Harry had never done
something like this before, and he honestly wasn�t sure if it was going to
work. It had only come to him in the first place because the shapes showed with
so many gaps between them.

�� He focused
on the jagged puzzle pieces of the jealousy first, because he thought those
would be easiest to match. They had so many little gaps along them that he
would have to be careful with his counting, but they weren�t wrapped around the
other shapes in the way that the snake and the tendrils were caught in each
other.

�� He raised
his wand, carefully searching through the spells he knew for the one that would
be likeliest to work. Then he nodded slightly. If his first try didn�t work,
then he would have to try something else. He would remind himself, again and
again if he had to, that a first failure didn�t mean he had to condemn himself
forever.

�� He would
have to avoid hurting Draco in the process, though.

�� Harry
winced. The reminder was like claws scraping along his heart.

�� He faced
the warded circle once more and nodded to Draco. �I�m going to cast the first
spell now, Draco,� he said. �Do you need anything before I do?�

�� Why would
I?� For a moment, the strange light that had flared in Draco�s eyes lately, and
that disturbed Harry, faded, replaced by what looked like honest confusion. �Of course not. Do your worst, Harry.�

�� Harry
half-smiled, nervously, and shook his head. �I just wondered if you wanted
water. Or reassurances. Or food.�

�� I want my
freedom.� Draco�s gaze was unmoving.

�� Harry took
a relieved breath.

�� And you,�
Draco added.

�� Harry�s
breath left him in a disappointed sigh, and he nodded. He had to spend a few
moments in meditation before he was back in the calm frame of mind that he
needed to cast a spell like the one he was attempting.

�� Creo enormitates,�
he breathed.

�� The spell
rose above his head, billowing in circles like smoke, shaped by the wand
movement and the words, as most magic was, but also by the will embedded in his
thoughts. Harry narrowed his eyes and kept them fixed on the cloud, while his mind
repeated, over and over again, the shapes that he had thought would work best
to sink into and then drive apart the puzzle pieces of the jealousy.

�� It wasn�t
easy to envision the puzzle pieces in reverse, and he sighed with relief when
they appeared, two glittering blue things that had gaps where the puzzle pieces
on Draco�s shoulders bulged, projections where the puzzle pieces of the curse
sank, straight notched arms where those puzzle pieces had straight arms with
opposing notches. He cast another spell, nonverbally this time, and moved them forwards, through the warded circle and into the middle
of the air above Draco�s head.

�� What are those, Potter?� Draco asked. He
hadn�t backed up a step, but his muscles were tensed as if he would have liked
to.

�� Potter. That�s a good sign. If he�s calling me by
my last name, that must mean that he doesn�t want to
be intimate with me anymore. Harry held firmly on to the joy that he told
himself should make him glad against the trembling of his heart in his chest.
�The things that will break the jealousy,� he said. �Stand still so they can
work.�

�� Pushy,
pushy,� Draco muttered, which was another good sign, but he stood still and
closed his eyes. The puzzle pieces Harry had created drifted down and settled
into place. Harry stood on tiptoes, straining to see, and muttered an
instruction for Draco to turn around that he was barely aware of giving.

�� You can
see my arse any time you ask, Harry,� Draco said, with a bright smile, and
turned. Harry had to ignore the tone, the words, and the hopes that both of
them stirred in him, all at once. He pinched one arm until the temptation to
respond was past, and then studied the way his created shapes, sketched in
faint blue lines on the air, matched the dark, heavy
solidity of the curse�s shapes.

�� They
matched. Hole by hole, peg by peg, line by line, they
matched. Harry took a step back and bowed his head in profound relief.

�� Harry.�

�� Draco�s
voice was quick. Harry looked up, wondering if something had gone wrong, if Draco
could feel harmful side-effects from the magic when he shouldn�t have been able
to feel anything at all. But Draco was standing there with wide eyes trained on
him.

�� Is it
working?� he asked, his voice so soft that Harry knew
what he said more from the movements of his lips than his words.

�� Harry
nodded. �I think so. We�ll find out.� He held up his wand. �Confringo!�

*

�� A shudder,
deep as the soul or the bones, ran through Draco. He staggered and reached out
automatically to catch hold of the nearest thing.

�� There was
no �nearest thing,� only the wards. They pricked and spat at his fingers, and
Draco staggered back the other way, trying to understand the ringing in his
head and ears and heart.

�� Draco?�
Harry called, but his voice was distant. Draco put his hands up to his ears as
if that would stop the ringing, but it made it worse. He dropped them again and
turned his head, trying to see what the blue shapes Harry had conjured were
doing on his shoulders.

�� Battle with
something invisible, it seemed to him. They surged back and forth, flowing like
liquid steel, twisting around the invisible force that opposed them. Draco
squinted, but the shapes of the curse were still as invisible to him as when
he�d begun.

�� Harry said
something else. Draco didn�t know whether it was a command, a new spell, or
something else, but he couldn�t hear anyway, so he would have to do what came
naturally to him.

�� The problem
was, what he really wanted to do was
touch those damn blue shapes. He had to clench his fingers into a fist to keep
from reaching out and yanking them away. He did that, taking a few deep, harsh
breaths and closing his eyes.

�� The ringing
grew worse. Now it felt as though he had an extra beat to his heart and extra
bones in his legs. Draco locked his teeth together and shook his head. He could
survive this, he thought, since there was no pain yet, but he wished that
Harry�s spell had had a different result. They would probably have to start
again�

�� Then the pain came.

�� Draco screamed.
It felt now as though his brain was sloshing inside his skull, and someone was
opening up the top of his head and pouring in still more. He clawed out at the
blue shapes, and whether he affected them or not he didn�t
know. He just knew that the pain was driving him to his knees, and he
didn�t care how much he damaged Harry�s efforts to save him right now, he just
wanted it to stop.

*

�� Harry
stared in horror, watching as dark waves rose above Draco�s shoulders, lashing
down on top of him and sinking him deep enough that it looked for a moment as
though his feet were being driven into the floor. They weren�t, but the magic
was rising around him and made it seem so. Harry had never seen so much magic
unleashed all at once.

�� He shouted
another revealing charm. Nothing happened. Harry rushed to the side of the room
where he had kept some powdered basilisk scale in a jar and pulled it out.
Basilisks were his symbol of something powerful and evil he had barely
defeated, and he had used it before to assist him in figuring out the
signatures of Dark spells.

�� He threw it
towards Draco now and shouted the revealing charm a second time.

�� The dust
leaped over the wards and settled on Draco, thickly mantling his hair and
shoulders. He was screaming, but without sound, as though the leaping flames of
magic around him swallowed everything.

�� Harry could
see clearly now. The shadow or shimmer he had seen before was the connections between the different
components of the spell.

�� The snake
representing the false love didn�t merely lie coiled on top of the other puzzle
pieces. It was linked to them. The tendrils wrapping around Draco�s head also
wrapped around the bottom of the puzzle pieces. The puzzle pieces supported the
snake.

�� Harry swore
shakily. He couldn�t take apart the spell piece by piece. He had to take it all
at once or not at all. The extra magic was pouring from the broken connections
between the components, shattered when Harry had tried to break apart the
puzzle pieces.

�� He would
have to do something. Harry raised his wand, consumed by the desperate idea
that had just come to him and ridden by fear for Draco, and began to cast.

*

�� Review
responses can be found at http://lomonaaerenrr.livejournal.com/7365.html

��
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