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A Determined Frame of Mind	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16811 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter Twenty-One—Doing and Undoing Damage

            Harry’s whole body was twitching.

            He could feel his heart thumping irregularly, his breath speeding up, his muscles trembling with the effort of holding himself back instead of simply exploding in joy. And his soul was dancing to the beat, as well; he thought he could feel the domes of bright blue-green Draco had told him about pulsing like moths’ wings.

            He had never had anyone whom he loved like this. He had never had anyone make him a promise and then keep it under such desperate circumstances. He had never had this kind of belief in another person flood him with gold, the sensation of opening his eyes after a long nightmare and seeing the sunrise through the bedroom window.

            That was what gave him the strength to reach up, take Draco’s wrist, and shake his head gently when Draco looked at him.

            “I don’t know what you were about to do,” he said quietly. “But I saw the expression on your face. You would have cursed him with something that would darken your soul. I don’t want that to happen. You have a beautiful soul, Draco. I don’t want you to ruin it.”

            Draco snarled and said, “You don’t understand. You’re mine.”

            Harry cocked his head. “I’m not sure what that has to do with it.” Because he had been forced to attune himself to the other two people in the lift, he could feel their shifting moods: Lila nodding in stern approval, Scrimgeour looking from face to face and daring to hope that he might get out of this unscathed after all.

            That won’t happen, Harry thought. On the other hand, I won’t let Draco destroy himself to destroy Scrimgeour.

            Then Draco’s hand lifted to cup his cheek, and Harry forgot everything else for a moment. He tilted his head back to see Draco’s eyes shining like rain running down Muggle windows, terribly beautiful and terribly bright.

            “No one else has ever been mine like you have,” Draco murmured to him. “I’ve never loved anyone else like I’ve loved you. I have to take vengeance for you, and it has to be the most horrible vengeance I can conceive. I must—“ And he shook his head and fell silent, either unable to say the words in front of other people or unwilling to say them aloud at all.

            Luckily for him, Harry could fill in the words. I must do this because this is the way I show love.

            “There are other ways,” Harry said softly, and kissed Draco. He felt a shiver run through the other man in the moment before his mouth opened and his tongue brushed against Harry’s. Harry smoothed a hand down his spine, delighting in the play of muscles, in the flex of a whole and unharmed spine. That Draco was healthy made him happy to an excess of giddiness. “For example, threaten him enough to get him to remove the Cassandra Curse—that’s something I can’t do, since he cast it out of fear of me, and he won’t reverse it just because of more fear—and then we can talk about a different form of vengeance.”

            Draco was all but vibrating under his hands. Harry laughed softly into his frustrated lover’s mouth. “Draco,” he said, and his voice was soft and dreamy. Let him see, if he can, that I don’t have any objection to being his, just to some of the ways he expresses it. “For my sake, do something else.”

*

            Draco’s rage had not calmed. If anything, it increased as Harry held him and spoke to him, utterly open, utterly relaxed. This was what Scrimgeour would have made him forget, would have taken away from him. That deserved punishment. The punishment should be permanent and neverending. Harry’s little ethical objections, and whatever Lila might say, were so many straws in a whirlwind.

            But then Harry asked for that.

            Draco licked his lips. He knew that he couldn’t get away with this, not without hurting Harry. If he tried to use the curse on Scrimgeour, Lila would attack him, and he would have to hex or Obliviate her. And that would hurt Harry, who never wanted anyone to suffer.

            It was just that Scrimgeour needed to suffer so much.

            Maybe he could reason his way out of this.

            “The spell I wanted to use is not precisely Dark Arts,” he murmured to Harry, and let their tongues brush again. Harry’s eyes widened, the depths in them brimming with excitement. Good. He’s not exactly rational when he’s this full of lust. “My great-grandfather invented it. That counts for something, doesn’t it? The Ministry has to recognize and label a spell for it to become Dark Arts—“

            “It does not,” Lila interrupted, her voice deep and filled with steel. “The Dark Arts are those spells intended primarily to cause pain and harm to other human beings.”

            Draco hissed and glared at her. Why did the woman who sees the world in black and white have to choose this moment to develop a complicated morality?

            “I will not let you use it, whatever it was,” said Lila, and her hand tightened on her wand until Draco could see her knuckles straining against the skin.

            “You don’t even know what the spell is meant to do,” said Draco, and gave her his most charming smile. It physically hurt, because he thought that expression really should have been reserved for Harry. “I haven’t described it to you.”

            “No,” Lila said, and for a moment she smiled back. It was, Draco thought, the kind of smile a guardian Crup would probably give. “But I, too, saw the expression on your face when you thought you would be unopposed.”

            Draco shook his head and started to argue, but Harry touched his hand again, and Draco turned away again, stooping solicitously over the man he was in love with. He tried to convey to Lila with the expression on his face this time, and the motion of his body, that she would never get anything like this from him. From the looks of it, Lila was profoundly unimpressed.

            “His greatest fear was that I was going to take his political power away from him,” Harry murmured. “So let’s make that happen.”



Draco blinked. “You want to become a politician? I’m sorry to tell you this, love, but you’d be terrible at it. Of course, with me behind you—“

“Draco, don’t start plotting now,” Harry said, though his voice was flavored with laughter the way cider was flavored with apples. “I meant that you should make him reverse the Cassandra Curse, and then cast a spell that ensures everyone knows what he did and why he did it. Showing everyone the truth should be quite enough.”

“Ah,” Lila said, sounding pleased. “You are adopting my plan after all.”

Draco licked his lips and took a slow, deep breath. “I might be able to live with that,” he said. “But even that wouldn’t necessarily prevent him from coming after you again.”

Harry chuckled. “I have made him take an Unbreakable Vow not to hurt you or any of my friends or interfere in my life again by any means. Give me credit for some clever and original thought, if you would.”

Draco clenched his teeth and looked quickly back and forth between them. It seemed that this was the best he would get. Arguing too much longer would only firm Harry’s stance and perhaps lose him his chance at vengeance altogether.

“Very well,” he said. “But may I choose the truth-telling spell?”

Harry gave him a cautious look. But Lila nodded with her eyes squinted shut. “There is no truth-telling spell that is Dark Arts,” she said, as if that should be the one circumstance that Draco should consider in choosing it.

            Draco smiled and stepped forwards, spinning his wand between his fingers, fixing his attention on the Minister’s face. “And in the meantime,” he said, “I do get to frighten him into reversing the Cassandra Curse.”

*

            Harry shook his head, amused and wondering just how Draco had managed to turn his disappointment at not being allowed to use his Dark Arts curse into what sounded like keen anticipation of the reduced punishment.

            Draco lowered his head to Scrimgeour’s, and began to whisper. Harry strained his ears, but couldn’t overhear what he said no matter how hard he listened. From Lila’s frown, she was having the same problem.

            Scrimgeour’s face grew steadily paler as Draco talked on. Harry folded his arms and smiled. He couldn’t pretend to any love for the Minister. If Draco could have managed intense vengeance without damaging his soul, then Harry would have agreed to it.

            It was a wonderful feeling, knowing just what he did and didn’t care about.

            Draco finally stepped away from Scrimgeour, and the Minister nodded and said, with spittle flying from his lips at the force of the words, “I’ll do it. Give me back my wand, Potter. I—I’ll remove the Cassandra Curse.”

            “What did you say to him?” Harry asked, even as he reluctantly passed Scrimgeour’s wand back over. They still hadn’t retrieved his holly wand, which Scrimgeour had said was in a private office on the fifth floor.

            “Only described the curse that I would have used, if our good friend here hadn’t prevented me,” said Draco, and bowed his head in Lila’s direction. “It made him—quite cooperative.”

            “I didn’t know it was that bad,” Harry murmured, trying not to tense up as Scrimgeour pointed the wand at him. But he couldn’t interfere in his life by any means, or he would die. He could only remove his interference in Harry’s life. Harry was fairly sure that Scrimgeour wanted to remain alive to pursue his political career more than he wanted the satisfaction of seeing Harry suffer under the Cassandra Curse. “It’s a good thing that I stopped you from using it.”

            Draco tossed his head. “If I had been allowed to,” he said, “you would have seen how much you matter to me. I love you, Harry.”

            Hearing the unabashed tone of affection in his voice made Harry reach up and clutch his arm. “You’ve already done more for me than I have any right to ask for,” he said.

            Draco’s face, oddly, reflected alarm at that. “No,” he said. “You should ask for more. I want to do everything that I possibly can to make your life better and better, Harry. If you don’t ask for things, how will I know I’m doing that?”

            Harry bit his lips in an effort to hold in the snort, he really did, but it made itself known anyway. Draco stepped back and gave him an offended look.

            “Sorry,” Harry muttered. “But just being here next to me works, Draco. And—“

            He felt a tingling flow of magic wash over him just then, and the hum of a spell that had endured so long he didn’t notice it anymore stopped. He blinked, then said, because it was the most immediate test he could think of, “My name is Severus Snape.”

            And the lie emerged from his mouth untwisted, unforced into truth by the magic of the Cassandra Curse.

            Lila nodded in satisfaction.

            “Oh, Harry,” Draco said, his voice breathy. “If Severus could hear you taking his name in vain, he would not be pleased.”

            And then he crushed Harry to the wall of the lift and crushed the breath out of him with one enormous, hungry kiss. Harry returned it, feeling his heat rise in a way that it never had when he kissed Ginny.

            I suppose I’m not straight anymore.

            I can’t wait to tell him.

*

            Draco kissed Harry until the temptation to simply drop him on the floor and fuck the life out of him was almost too strong to resist. Then he broke loose with a gasp and turned to Scrimgeour. The man was clutching his wand as though he thought he would get to use it on one of them after all, but it would never happen. Batty was keeping an eye on him, as Draco had known she would, and muttering soft threats about what would happen should the Minister hurt “her master’s Harry.”

            “Now,” Draco said. “I have chosen the truth-telling spell that I want to use.” He raised his own wand, and felt the hunger for vengeance thrumming through his body like flame. “Not widely used because it’s not usually terribly effective, and more embarrassing than hurtful. But now? Now, it will be all those things.”

            Lila’s eyes widened, and she chuckled. The Minister simply frowned. Draco sneered. Of course, he would not have paid much attention to spells that enabled others to hear his voice speaking truth. He is interested only in the absolute perversions of free will, as exemplified by the Cassandra Curse.

            “What spell do you want to use?” Harry asked, bright curiosity in his voice.

            Draco caught Harry close to him and kissed the top of his head. He could forgive Harry for not knowing, because Aurors were in general not supposed to be as educated as the Minister of Magic, and in any case Harry was just reeling from the unexpected lifting of the Cassandra Curse. “A spell that causes a misty image of the victim to appear to everyone he has ever had contact with,” he said. “He confesses the truth about whatever crime the spellcaster chooses. In most cases, as I said, it’s more embarrassing than effective. Few wizards have large circles of close friends, and of their acquaintances, few will care that a relative stranger is telling them he cheated on his wife or stole a few Galleons. But with the Minister of Magic having contact with so many people, and with the crime being something like the casting of the Cassandra Curse on the living icon of the war with the Dark Lord…”

            Harry chuckled into his shoulder, but did say, “Could you not call me the living icon of the war with the Dark Lord? I hate that kind of thing.”

            Draco had deliberately chosen a title so ridiculous he thought no one would ever have used it, but he didn’t comment. Harry would have to get used to being called worse pet names than that by the time Draco was through with him and had reduced him to a pile of shivering jelly.

            “Do not do this,” Scrimgeour said, and though Draco knew he was frightened, his voice was still powerful and resonant. “I can give you many other things that you want. I have already made my promises never to hurt anyone Potter cares about again. Why would you want to take more from me?”

            Draco stared at the man. Scrimgeour stared back, the practiced politician’s look, confident, with the fear mostly hidden. He seemed to think that he could still bargain or trick his way out of this after all.

            Draco, for a moment, let go of the fury that he’d been tamping carefully down inside since the moment when he recovered his memories. Scrimgeour looked into the eyes of the man who had destroyed several of his own possessions and could not care less, though possessions were wealth and property to a Malfoy.

            That broke the mask, at least. Scrimgeour flinched and looked away.

            “That is why,” Draco said, and his words emerged only a little lower than the cry of some ravenous beast. “Because you kidnapped my lover, murdered my memories of my time with him, cost him his friendships, and made him nearly commit suicide. This is too good for you, but for the sake of others—not you—I will allow it. If we were alone, you know that you would become my slave in a worse way than any Imperius Curse would allow for.”

            The Minister said nothing.

            Draco lifted his wand and cast the Truth Reflected spell.

            He felt the energy of the magic speeding away from him, multiplying itself many times over as it realized how many reflections there would have to be. Thousands of people in the British wizarding world would have had contact with the Minister of Magic at one time or another, if only briefly at Ministry functions or official celebrations and speeches. Further and further away the cone spread, growing in size as it traveled.

            The first reflections appeared in front of them, three Scrimgeours explaining in calm, simple terms that they had cast the Cassandra Curse, a spell which forced the victim to speak truth but have everyone else hear what he said as a lie, on Harry Potter. They explained, also, that they had done it to further their political ambitions and prevent Potter from becoming a threat to their positions. The sheerest and baldest explanations were always the best; Draco had heard of poor results when someone tried to force the Truth Reflected spell to carry the nuances of a delicate situation.

            Simple—and utterly devastating. Once an hour was past, Scrimgeour’s political ambitions would be effectively dead. Draco knew the Wizengamot had the power to try someone, even a person as highly placed as the Minister, who used a Dark Arts spell of this kind. And Harry’s enormous and obsessive group of followers would demand no less as reparations for their hero.

            Draco took almost as much pleasure in the thought that, right now, Harry’s friends would be hearing the truth from the Minister’s own mouth. He imagined Weasley collapsed back into his chair, face slack with astonishment. He imagined Granger weeping.

            A surge of vicious satisfaction went through him. He curled himself close to Harry and stroked a hand through his hair. Harry’s friends had been curse victims, yes, but Draco couldn’t help but think they should still have served Harry better. The friendship that couldn’t survive something like the Cassandra Curse was no friendship at all.

            “Gentlemen.”

            Draco blinked and looked at Lila, startled. If nothing else, he had never expected that she would address him that way.

            Lila smiled. “I am perfectly happy to remain with the Minister and explain the truth to anyone who shows up,” she said. “I believe I know the room where the Minister has locked your wand, Mr. Potter. If you would prefer to retrieve it and leave the Ministry for now, I can deal with the publicity.”

            Draco raised an eyebrow. She must have seen his twitching hands and the possessive spark in his eyes.

            Maybe she does have some modicum of sensitivity after all.

*

            Harry wouldn’t have believed that coming to Malfoy Manor could have felt like coming home.

            But what other home did he have, now? Even with the curse gone and Scrimgeour’s crime confessed to Ron and Hermione and Ginny, his place with them would never be the same again. He couldn’t simply return to his flat, not when the last thing anyone knew he’d tried to commit suicide and then run around the country like a madman—

            Harry gave his head a firm shake. No. He was not going to think about how much he had lost because of the curse, not right now. This was a day of victory, in more ways than one and despite Draco wanting to use whatever curse it was that had made Scrimgeour pale. He intended to share that victory with Draco.

            He started to say that, but Draco said in a strangled voice, “I’m sorry, Harry, I just—have to—“ And then he turned Harry around to face the wall next to the hearth they’d come out of after Flooing from the fifth floor of the Ministry, and closed his teeth on the nape of his neck.

            Harry gasped, his head falling back, and then forwards as Draco nudged impatiently at him to get his hair out of the way. His entire body writhed, and his erection was so immediate it almost hurt. Feeling Draco renew the mark that had sustained him in the cell was—intensely intimate, but also intensely erotic. Harry had enjoyed the gesture before, but it hadn’t been anything special to him. Now it was. He could feel his body’s craving for more.

            Draco closed his teeth down a little harder, then drew back again. Harry knew he hadn’t pierced the skin; Draco had explained that he preferred the dark coloring of a bruise to actual blood. But feeling him lick and nip and kiss, accenting the bruise further, made Harry nearly faint with desire. He let his head collapse onto his trembling arms, and surrendered to almost pure enjoyment.

            At last Draco pulled him away from the wall and helped him onto a sofa. His hands never left Harry’s body for long, whether they were pulling Harry around to face him or touching and tangling with his fingers. Then he sat down in front of him and stared at him with eyes so full of passion that Harry blinked and looked away.

            Draco’s hand cupped his chin and turned his face back at once. “Oh, no, you don’t,” Draco whispered. “When you’re everything to me, you don’t get to pretend that you don’t deserve this.”

            “I didn’t think that,” Harry whispered, though to himself he couldn’t deny that that might have been a part of his averting his eyes. Recovered strength or not, one’s self-esteem, flattened by a year under a curse, didn’t recover because of a month of attention. “It’s just too—intense. Like staring into the sun.” With some difficulty, he met Draco’s eyes again.

            Draco looked pleased. And then that expression slid off his face, and he said, “I can’t begin to imagine what you endured in your captivity, Harry. I’m sorry—“

            “Not your fault.” Harry reached up and cradled Draco’s face, a section of his soul twisting even as the bond between them began to hum. It hurt to hear Draco saying things like that.

            “This time, it was,” Draco whispered. “I should have been warier of Eugenie, instead of just assuming that she would keep her side of the bargain. But I’m making a promise to you, Harry. From this moment on, I will never take chances with your safety again.”

            Harry opened his mouth, then shut it. He thought Draco had been about to say that he would never get hurt again, which wasn’t a promise he could keep. But this one he probably could, and more than that, he had needed to say it, to feel that he had made up in some way for endangering Harry.

            Even though his coming into the lift like that had been all the compensation Harry could have asked for.

            “It’s all right, Draco,” he whispered. “I forgive you.”

            Draco closed his eyes in sheer relief.

            “As for the cell,” Harry said, “it was hard, yes, especially knowing at the time that I’d never see you again.” Draco’s fingers tightened convulsively on his. “But I decided to live fairly quickly. The love we had shared still existed in our mind, and I remembered, even if no one else did, that I had promised you not to hurt myself. And I was ready to live off that memory for the rest of my life, if I had to.”

            Draco’s eyes slowly fluttered open. “Live,” he said, as if the words were foreign to him. “Off—a memory.”

            “Yes,” Harry said, wondering about the tone in Draco’s voice. “I know that I probably should have held more faith you would break the Memory Charm, but I didn’t know what kind of information you would receive after the fact, and—“

            Draco moved. Abruptly, Harry found himself lying on his back on the couch, with Draco on top of him. He felt his legs open of their own accord, cradling Draco’s hips. Draco seemed too concentrated on his face to notice.

            “You have no idea what that means to me,” Draco whispered.

            “Perhaps not,” said Harry. “But I think I could.” The desire and the trust had brewed together inside to fill him like some perfect potion. “Why don’t you show me?”

            Draco licked his lips. “You mean—“

            “Fuck me,” Harry said. “Make love to me.” He arched his back, trying to press his chest closer to Draco’s, wondering how to explain his desperation. “It—I already trust you so much. But I want it to go further. I want to know what it’s like having you inside me, because that’s one expression of trust we haven’t gone through yet.”

            His face burned as he spoke the words, so unlike what he could have imagined himself saying three days ago.

            But from the expression of pure hunger that overtook Draco’s face a moment later, he doubted his lover minded the blush.

*

            Mangacat: Well, there is still some punishment to be dealt out—specifically, Eugenie’s. And Ron and Hermione’s, if you think of their guilt as punishment.

            McAbacus: Thanks! That moment where Harry leaps into Draco’s arms was my favorite one to write.

            YoukaiHakkai: Thanks very much! After I finish ‘Determined,’ I’ll continue working on my WiP ‘I Give You a Wondrous Mirror’ and posting one-shots, though it will be a while before I start a new novel.

            Thrnbrooke: Thanks for reviewing!
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A Determined Frame of Mind