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Forgive Those Who Trespass	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20650 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- 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-Six�Trouble Shared

�� Ennervate!�

�� The spell
sputtered and fizzed out. Draco didn�t move. Harry clapped a hand across his
eyes and breathed for a long moment. If he could see Draco just then, he�d
probably start crying and not stop.

�� He had to
concentrate. He had to avoid panicking. He had to help Draco, and he
wasn�t going to do that by moping around and wailing. What he was suffering at
the moment, as he tried to make sure Draco didn�t die here, was nothing to what
Draco would suffer if Harry couldn�t wake him, or the pain that Draco had fled
into his mind in the first place to avoid.

�� His
breathing calmed, and the darkness behind his eyelids began to be darkness instead
of the vision of Draco�s unsleeping, unmoving face.

�� And then
words crawled across it. Harry stiffened, wondering for a moment if a trap had
sprung at last, or if Richard had come in through the far door of the Pensieve
room and cast a spell on him.

�� But no, they were only the remembered pages
of a book. He�d once read a spell that could work in circumstances like these,
he was certain, a spell that Healers used to help with deep catatonia. But he
didn�t have Hermione�s memory, and of course he couldn�t remember the
incantation.

�� On the other
hand, he did have the notebook he�d brought with him, filled with notes
on his Auror training. The chance that it contained a helpful spell was very
low, but he could at least look; he had absolutely nothing to lose,
considering he�d tried all the other things he could think of.

�� Harry
dropped his hand from his face and reached into the satchel that hung from his
shoulder. His gaze focused again on Draco, making sure the small, faint motions
of his chest still endured. He was breathing, wasn�t he? Yes? Good.

�� If he
does nothing more than breathe�

�� Harry�s
hands shook so badly that he dropped the notebook back into the satchel when he
found it at first. Again, he forced himself to sit with head bowed and eyes
shut, thinking of nothing, until he felt calm enough to pick it up again. He
flipped through the pages, turning at once past what he felt would be useless
but lingering over any slightly unusual spell.

�� Nothing,
and nothing, and nothing. How would casting one of the twelve variations of the
Blasting Curse or the spell that revealed an animal as an Animagus help now?
But there were sections he�d copied from Hermione�s notes on the days he�d been
too ill or injured to attend class. He didn�t know them as well as the rest of
the material. Perhaps he should read those.

�� Damn, what
did those abbreviations mean? If they ever got back to the surface in one
piece, Harry was taking time to write out the words in full, instead of
abbreviating them a.p. and o.y. They could mean anything. They
could contain the seed of an answer, but how in the world was he to know that
when he scribbled them down carelessly and forgot the meaning the next night?

�� And he�d
kept no key, of course.

�� A sudden,
gunmetal-gray wave of self-loathing rose up in Harry, and he ground his teeth
and held back the impulse to simply scream curses at his past self. Screaming
would feel good, but if he started now, he wasn�t sure he�d stop. And he would
miss the moment when Draco stopped breathing, as Harry expected to happen any
moment now, or if some creature or Unspeakable started sneaking up on them.

�� Go back
to it. Concentrate. Try to figure out the abbreviations from context. Can you
do that?

�� With a lot
of squinting and trying to think like his past pissed, maudlin, or impatient
self, Harry puzzled out a few of the abbreviations. a. was almost always
�application,� a note Hermione used often to designate the spell�s usefulness
from its effects. c. was curse. v. meant a variant of a spell
that usually had a broader reach, and j. was jinx, of course.

�� But some
letters seemed to be used for multiple words. Harry leaned back and checked on
Draco again.

�� He was
breathing. He was staring. That was all that could be said for him, really.

�� For a
moment, Harry imagined him being like that for the rest of his life, lying in
bed at St. Mungo�s, never seeing anything but the ceiling, never having
visitors he could hear or speak with, never having the chance to experience the
sunlight and happiness denied to him for the past year�

�� He�d
started to hyperventilate before he noticed and stopped himself. Every instinct
urged him to go faster, to find a cure now now now, but this was
exactly the kind of situation where rushing would mean he was likely to
overlook a cure.

�� Ron,
Hermione, I wish you were here right now. Draco, I wish you were awake. I�d
even welcome Richard, since there�s the chance he�d want to save Draco to
suffer more than he can when he�s asleep like this.

�� Not
asleep. If he were asleep, then I could count on his waking up when he was
rested enough. Gone. Unreachable.

�� Harry
reached out and ran a hand over Draco�s forehead. It felt like slick marble
under his fingers. Blood had left Draco�s face, and he looked not attractively
pale but nearly dead. Harry turned away with a short shake of his head.

�� He couldn�t
lose Draco. He couldn�t. Draco had become frantic when he thought Harry
was fading into shadow, but Harry had been able to accept that calmly. He
didn�t care about losing his life as long as he was the only one who died.

�� Draco had
joined Ron and Hermione in the select group of those whom he couldn�t bear to
see die, even as he would die to save them, Harry realized dimly.

�� He wrapped
his arms around himself, shivering. He stood to lose a friend, not to distant
torturers or unseen Unspeakables, but right in front of him, if he
didn�t do something. What good was it if the wizarding world hailed you
as its savior, if you couldn�t save one person when it really counted?

�� Stop
that. Self-pity and self-loathing won�t work, either. If you wallow in guilt,
then the next thing you know, you could look up and Draco could be dead. He�ll
need to eat fairly soon, and what will you do about that? You really don�t
think you can break the catatonia that grips him? Then think about something
else productive.

�� Harry felt
his stubbornness flare. Perhaps that was what he had really needed: a challenge
from the part of himself that didn�t believe he could do this. And he wanted to
save Draco.

�� That was
all the more reason to show that, yeah, he could.

�� He reached
out and picked up the notebook again. This time, he tapped the pages with his
wand and cast a spell that Hermione had taught him to pick out all the various
references to a certain subject. �Spells relating to mind,� he said aloud, when
the light from the spell swirled up into a green question mark, asking him what
he wanted to look for.

�� The
notebook flipped open, each pertinent page turning green. There weren�t many of
them, and most of them were in the sections taken from Hermione�s notes,
crowded with abbreviations he hadn�t understood. Harry grimaced, took a deep
breath, and picked up the book.

*

�� Forty-five
minutes later, he was near despair again. He�d tried, and still most of
the spells were locked in abbreviations he couldn�t figure out or variants on
Legilimency, which he knew he was pants at.

�� Are you?
How long has it been since you tried?

�� Not that
long,� Harry whispered, but he knew he was lying. It had been the better part
of a year. He lowered the notebook to his lap and stared unseeing at its pages
a moment more, then turned to look at Draco again. By now, he thought he could
have created a perfect drawing of the other man without one glance during the
process of painting�assuming he had any artistic talent in the first place,
which he didn�t.

�� But what
about damage? You�ve never even heard of Legilimency being used on an
unconscious person. What if you hurt him worse? The way he is now, there�s at
least the chance that someone from St. Mungo�s could help him. Without that�

�� Harry
hesitated, caught in the horrible temptation of stealing away to the center of
the maze, confronting the man he suspected waited there, and enacting the plan
that would unbind Draco from the maze whilst Draco was unconscious and unable
to oppose him. Surely, he would wake up physically whole and able to walk away,
and then�

�� Then? Harry
shook his head, disgusted with himself again. There�s no guarantee that he
would wake up even if you sacrificed yourself. And there�s no guarantee that
someone would be around to help him. Richard certainly wouldn�t. And even if he
could get back to the surface, if, say, your sacrifice freed Ron and Hermione
as well and they carried him, no one would know why he�d gone unconscious.

�� The longer
Harry sat there and pondered, the longer his fears and worries pushed him
towards Legilimency. And the more he worried over it, wondering what would
happen. Draco had his life now, at least. If Harry pressed further, if Draco
felt the protective shell that surrounded him cracking, could he pull away and
will himself to die, perhaps?

�� Harry had no
idea. He just didn�t know enough about this.

�� And did he
have the right to push on, in his longing for a quick solution? Wouldn�t that
be just like listening to Draco�s demands that Harry stay by his side no matter
what, when Harry knew the best idea was to give Draco everything else he
deserved?

�� He didn�t
know. He had no idea.

�� And if he
made the wrong decision, the only one he had to blame was himself.

�� Draco
twitched a moment, and Harry lifted his head hopefully. But Draco�s bladder had
just let go. He continued to lie in the same position as before, his hands
sprawled uselessly to the sides of his body.

�� Harry
winced in intense pity and banished the urine with a wave of his wand, then
stared at Draco some more. He could feel resolve building up in him like a head
of steam, but this time he wasn�t so sure what he would decide to do.

�� His
stubbornness flared again.

�� He wasn�t a
Healer. He wasn�t a master Legilimens in the way that Dumbledore had been.
Maybe he should have been; maybe those would be good traits for someone who
wanted to become an Auror, too. Maybe he could learn them when they got out of
here�

�� Harry
snorted and reminded himself of his future sharply. No, like it or not, he
would have to heal Draco, if he could, with his own set of present skills, and
he would face Richard the same way. As long as he could learn the spell that
bound a person to the maze, then he didn�t think that second part was beyond his
abilities.

�� He had to
do what he had to do, and the consequences be damned, because there was no
better choice.

�� He turned
back to the notebook and the particular incantation he�d spotted which
announced that a wizard could show his own thoughts to another person,
as a way of securing trust�a very gentle and non-invasive contact between
minds, an elementary telepathy. Hermione�s notes said that the spell wasn�t
much use because no one had ever been able to develop it further than that.
Legilimency was still needed to read minds.

�� Harry�s
opinion was that, if he could use it to show his thoughts to Draco, then it
would work just fine. Draco lay in darkness right now, non-responsive to
anything around him. Harry�s plan was to show him something interesting enough
to make him respond.

*

�� Harry
glanced at the notebook one more time, then moistened his lips and the inside
of his mouth with his tongue. Just one mispronunciation could cause this to be
a disaster.

�� More
than it already probably will be�

�� Harry
turned away from his own doubt. He had no time for it.

�� Lux in
mente mei,� he said, and the confidence in his own voice impressed him. He
held the wand halfway between himself and Draco, as the notes on the spell had
instructed, and wobbled it back and forth, so that the ends tilted up and down
like seesaws.

�� A cocoon of
warm, brilliant white light enwrapped him. Harry blinked. If Legilimency with
Snape had been like this, he might have paid more attention to the bastard�s
efforts to teach him.

�� Then the
light shot forwards. Harry was borne helplessly along with it, and for a moment
he thought he knew what it was like for a sunbeam to fly through the
atmosphere. He was dissolved, burned to ashes, and reborn again, and the
process continued over and over, until abruptly he was lost in darkness, and
the light scattered to the farthest corners of a large, empty room.

�� Harry
stared around. He thought he recognized the sensation of being in someone
else�s mind from his brief trips into Voldemort�s thoughts, and his even
briefer experience of pushing back into Snape�s head, but there was no living
presence to confront him, no push the way he�d sensed before. Only
darkness, and the feeling of deadness. He might have made this an extension of
his own mind, if he were a master Legilimens, and no one else would have
opposed him.

�� Harry
shivered, but by then the light had spread out, and it had begun to show
certain memories he remembered well from various vivid parts of his life.

�� He had
thought about trying to confine the spell to happy memories, so he wouldn�t
alarm Draco into further flight, or ones that showed him in a bad light, so
Draco would laugh. But, according to the description of the spell, because its
purpose was to let another person get to know the one casting it, Harry
couldn�t actually choose the memories. The spell would choose the ones
that made him who he was, and narrate them as a story, informative but not
invasive, for the audience.

�� If there
was an audience in this case, Harry thought miserably, and then turned to face
the stream of images.

�� Of course,
the first one was of the flying green light of the Killing Curse, and his
mother�s scream ringing in his ears. Harry shivered, and hoped Draco, if he
could sense this, had no complementary memories of his own that would make him
decide hiding was best.

�� After that
came glimpses of the Dursleys, mostly the times he�d used accidental magic or
discovered, with varying degrees of pain, that they really didn�t love
or care for him in the same way they did for Dudley. He raced across the
playground away from Dudley�s gang; he flew into the air without meaning to;
Aunt Petunia cut off his hair and screamed as it grew back. And then came the
memory of Hagrid knocking down the door that separated him from Harry, telling
him he was a wizard and revealing another, special, sunlit world Harry hadn�t
known anything about.

�� Harry
smiled, though the joy in his heart was torn with pain. The eleven-year-old
staring up at the half-giant with awe hadn�t known a thing about what
his life would turn into. He�d envisioned a special school for people like him,
and people who were, well, like him, not conceited pure-bloods or
Muggleborns who understood their place in wizarding society better than he did
or the children of Death Eaters who sulked and smirked at him.

�� But there
could no be leaving this world once he knew about it, and, in a way, Harry was
grateful for that. He didn�t belong here completely, but he belonged
here more than he did anywhere else, and so deeply that anyone trying to drive
him out would have a hard fight. That was probably the best he could hope for.

�� He rose on
a broom for the first time, and felt the deep thrill in his heart as he
realized he had one natural talent that had nothing to do with the scar on his
forehead and which no one could take away from him. He helped Ron rescue
Hermione from the troll and cemented a friendship. He rescued the Philosopher�s
Stone, and cowered as he heard and smelled Quirrell burning above him, and caught
a glimpse, for the first time, of how terrible his destiny really was.

�� Second
year, and Draco, if he was watching, could have seen Harry ride in the flying
car and gradually work his way up to facing the basilisk. Was he
watching? Harry turned away from the memories that, after all, he knew
perfectly well, and cocked his head, trying to reach into the darkness with
whatever senses a master Legilimens would have had in this situation.

�� Draco?� he
called.

�� A spark. A
flicker. Harry caught his breath. Probably it was only a reflection of light
from the spell he had cast, and he told himself not to hope. What were the
chances that flinging himself into Draco�s mind like an idiot had actually
yielded anything, after all?

�� But, on the
other hand, taking wild chances had sometimes worked out well for him in the
past. He edged deeper, trying to make his entire presence welcoming and calm,
so Draco wouldn�t think he needed to run away just to stay sane.

�� Definitely
a spark and a flicker this time. Harry stopped where he was and glanced
over his shoulder; the memory now at play was his capture of the Snitch in the
final game of his third year. He winced, because Draco would probably remember
how that game had meant Slytherin wouldn�t win the House Cup, but he had to
trust their bond forged by the maze was stronger than the childhood rivalry.

�� Draco?� he
called again, into that realm of darkness where no one seemed to wait to push
back and force him out. �Can you hear me?�

�� He felt the
first brief, tentative push. Harry spread his hands and backed away. �I�ll go
if you want me to,� he said. �I�ll take the memories away if you want me to.�

�� The
darkness around him quivered. Harry paused. Was that eagerness for him to be
gone, or was that desperation at the thought that he might leave?

�� He decided
to wait for an unequivocal sign. He settled on what, for lack of a better word,
he had to call the floor, and watched as the stillness around him came slowly
and pulsingly alive.

�� The
memories appeared to have lured Draco out of his self-imposed seclusion with
simple curiosity. Harry could feel the very edges of what seemed like an active
mind staring, taking note of his presence and the memories, and then growing
stronger, as if the fact that the memories were not Draco�s own had finally
become clear. Odd crackles like heat lightning shot past Harry and towards the
images. He tensed. Does he want me to go?

�� And the
next moment, he knew the answer, as the presence wrapped around him like one of
Draco�s hugs.

�� No.

�� Harry
spread his arms, unsure what he could embrace here, if anything, and felt
heavy, soft coils drape over him. He hissed in relief and held tight. More and
more coils went on falling; the darkness around him came more and more to life
with shadowy figures that Harry suspected were parts of Draco�s imagination and
past, like actors filing in for one last rehearsal before the play began.

�� All at
once, the darkness started and jerked. Harry saw white light flare, and
suspected that Draco had remembered the pain that had driven him away in the
first place. The presence tried to flee.

�� Harry
grabbed on and didn�t let it go.

�� But he knew
persuasion wouldn�t work right now, not in a situation this primal and this
agonizing, and merely showing his memories was no longer enough. He tried to
show more, to widen the pathway into his mind. He delved deep into his feelings
and draped them in front of Draco like brightly-colored cloths.

�� Draco mattered
to him. For all his own reluctance and dithering about his sexual issues,
Harry knew he could not lose him. The panic that had taken him when Draco fell
down in a coma was the same as Draco�s when he had thought Harry might fade
with the shadow plague.

�� So
important. You are the most important person in the world to me.

�� Ordinarily,
Harry might have qualified the words with right now, or with some
reference to Ron and Hermione, but there was nothing ordinary about this. Draco
needed the true depth of his feelings, needed to know their clarity, even if
their passage blistered Harry himself. He gulped in air and let all his
barriers down.

�� He showed
Draco how the physical attraction bypassed all the missing pieces of Draco�s
body, growing as a natural consequence of their spending more time together.
Harry could adjust himself to the quirks and rough edges of Draco�s personality
he would once have found unbearable. Draco�s needs were not matters for
resistance or regret on Harry�s part, but (mostly) matters for acceptance and
accommodation. And if Harry thought a need was truly unbearable, he could
always argue against it.

�� Harry could
no longer imagine a life where he simply shared his time with Ron and Hermione
and ignored Draco. The imagined, longed-for, dreamed-of girlfriend was far less
important than he was, real and solid and there. Harry still wanted to
be normal, but that had dropped from number three or four on his list of wants
to number ten. Various desires to make Draco happy occupied many places now,
just below the desire to save his life.

�� This flight
into his mind was horrible, not only for Draco but in what it implied for Harry.
He could not stand this, could not bear it, if Draco went away. He simply could
not�

�� A sudden
shove sent Harry sailing free. He gasped, and found himself falling backwards.
His body had remained in an upright position all this while, aiming his wand at
Draco�s chest, but a sudden exile from another person�s mind made him react in
the same way he had with Snape years ago.

�� He
scrambled back to his feet, and stared at Draco. A little color had returned to
his cheeks, but there seemed to have been no other positive impact. Harry
fought the temptation to close his eyes and weep.

�� And then
Draco�s eyes fluttered open.

�� Harry
didn�t remember crossing the space between them. It was enough that he had
crossed it, and now cradled Draco�s head in his lap, and whispered endearments,
and the tears were falling after all, whilst Draco traced his cheeks with one
finger and mouthed over and over again, in wonder, Mine.

�� Harry knew
iron bands of friendship and longing circled both their chests, linking them
together more effectively than any set of manacles. He was exquisitely aware of
Draco�s breathing, of his heartbeat, of the slide of callused fingers against
his face.

�� How can
I ever give this up? How?

�� But if his
real priority was to save Draco�s life, not merely make him happy�

�� Harry
closed his eyes, drowned in the embrace he had offered Draco and the other man
had hungrily returned, and refused to think beyond the moment.

*

��

�� WeasleyWench:
Thanks for reviewing! I can at least promise you that Draco is not a clone.

�� Hi-chan:
Thanks for reviewing!

�� SoftObsidian74:
Harry doesn�t trust Draco enough to talk to him about this plan, ironically.

�� Tepee712:
Thanks for reviewing!

�� GreenEyedCat:
Draco can maintain the maze no matter what condition he�s in, as long as he�s
still alive.

�� LarienMiriel:
The phrase is Life and death are different here.

�� Catsbee: At
the moment, I don�t know if a sequel is in the cards or not.

�� Graballz: Thanks!
And yes, I do work; I just have a lot of time in which I�m not working, and
irregular hours.

�� Lilith: Thanks
for reviewing!

�� Mangacat:
Heh, I understand.

�� QueenBoadicea:
Thanks for reviewing! And yes, I understand your feelings about Richard.

�� Thrnbrooke:
Thanks for reviewing!
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Forgive Those Who Trespass

Chapter Twenty-Six�Trouble Shared