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Loup-garou	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 8099 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three--Between the Worlds

             In another moment, Draco knew, he would have had the information he wanted. He had thrown the light rings of his breathing around Harry, and Harry had continued ignorant. Draco could have snared him, and then he would have pulled the information free, as easily as plucking a hair, and they would be back together before Harry had time to regret his rebellion.

             Not that Draco would not have made him regret it later.

             But Harry had sensed him--how, Draco still didn't know--and leaped to his feet, seizing his wand. And then Draco felt a blast of magic travel towards him, a feathery white ray that he watched approach without any clear idea of what it would do to him.

             The ray struck and Draco shrieked in pain. Harry had somehow tossed back at him all the agony that had ever flared through the Mark, all the punishments that Draco had handed him. How he drew on them--memory, the connection between the Mark and the way that Draco's hand rested on his left arm, good luck--Draco didn't know. He drew himself up and flicked his will like a whip, aiming it through the Mark to crack down on Harry's back.

             Harry shrieked, too. Draco was glad. He should shriek. He had sent the sensation of having one's spine broken, which he remembered from a curse that an escaping client had hurled at him.

             But Harry never properly paused to consider pain, which meant he countered instantly with a blue stream of light Draco tried to dodge. He couldn't. The Mark and the connection it forged between them acted like a conduit, like a chain, bringing down the same sensation, only multiplied, through Draco's limbs.

             Harry sprang again, launching his third attack as Draco still writhed. This time, he concentrated it on the Mark itself, and Draco sensed many small and busy teeth ripping at the skin that he'd branded. They would gnaw off the Mark or the arm that bore it, he thought. Harry would be nothing but glad.

             With breath that came short with pain, Draco laughed. The gnawing paused. Draco spoke down the distance between them, pacing his words so that Harry would think the hesitations in his voice came from the laughter and not from the anguish he was still experiencing.

             "Do you think amputation will free you? The Mark is tied to your magic and your soul. It will manifest again on your right arm if the left one is chopped off. Harry, you are mine. Submit, and I'll ride you gently at first."

             "Then there's only one solution," Harry said, his voice, even as grim and focused as it was, familiar and long-missed enough to make Draco's balls tighten and rise.

             "If you want to see it that way, yes," Draco said. "But I would call it not a solution, but a life. If you submit to me, then both of us have what we've always wanted. I, someone who can match me. You, someone who can tame your excessive guilt and shelter you from its effects. And I promise that you will have more than that. A lover who can give you pleasure that you've never imagined. A master who can give you goals that you would not have set for yourself, and insist that you meet them. Someone who can--"

             A tidal wave hit him. That was the only description Draco could give it. It crashed into him, crushing his body, drowning him. He opened his mouth to take a breath of air, and found that he had swallowed water instead. It swirled into him, through his lungs, into his chest, traveling deeper.

             It took a grip on his soul.

            Draco had known pain in his time, through the studies that he had undertaken to learn how to construct the lenses that would drain magic, and the curses that his enemies had cast at him, and the pressures put on him by his family and the Dark Lord. He had known nothing like this, fire and ice both sinking claws into him, chaos and order tossing him back and forth between them, all the world gone in violent music.

*

            If Robards or anyone else in the Ministry had known that Harry had learned the Soul-Severing Spell, he would have been sacked at once. And possibly tried and committed to Azkaban.

            Then again, Robards had been Darker than he knew, one of Malfoy's pets. Harry might have confessed to him, if he had only known it, and worked out some deal to free him from Malfoy in exchange for immunity from prosecution.

            But Harry had never dared to confess anything like this to anyone, for fear of being named a Dark wizard and sent to either the Dementor's Kiss or the rumored device the Wizengamot possessed that would take away someone's ability to practice magic. He had hoarded his secrets and used them against the other Dark wizards who were the Ministry's foes instead.

            When he spoke the incantation, Animumfrango, he did it nonverbally, though it meant he poured far more churning power into the spell than he would have done had he spoken it aloud. That didn't matter. It was important that he get it right the first time, because he knew that Malfoy would probably cripple him with the pain if he survived, but wouldn't kill him. And freedom was what Harry wanted more than anything else.

            One way or another.If Malfoy had told the truth and the Mark was buried in Harry's magic and soul, then the harm he was wreaking on Malfoy might rebound back on him. But he would rather be dead than a slave.

            He could feel Malfoy's soul weakening and shredding as he brought down a hammer of pure magical energy against it, again and again and again. It required far more strength to break down a soul than it did to split it with murder. Voldemort and the others who had created Horcruxes throughout history had done this of their own free will. Malfoy hadn't given Harry permission to cut his soul in half.

            That was why it would kill him. That was why it would make Harry free.

            That was why it was worth paying any price to learn, and cast, as Harry had.

            Malfoy's soul writhed and twisted under his blows like a live thing, which Harry reckoned it was, in some ways. Malfoy cried out, and the shout rang in Harry's ears and traveled a distance that seemed impossible. But Harry had lost track of where they were now and what was possible. He only knew what would kill. He reared back and brought the hammer down again.

            Someone seized his arm, or at least that was what it felt like. Harry, twisting, stared over his shoulder. The only thing he could think of was that one of his friends had caught him and was holding him back. They would have had to recognize the spell in the first place, but that might not be impossible, either.

            Instead, a misty shape that resembled Malfoy in the hair and eyes hovered behind him, and said in a hissing breath, "By what we have shared, by what you have spilled, I have this much hold over you. Stop."

            Harry tried to shake off the spirit and return to his hammering. He knew Malfoy's soul had come close to cracking, and next to that, not all the strange warnings in the world could hold him back.

            But the spirit's hold strengthened, and then he dragged Harry off whatever perch he'd been sitting on and hugged him close, hissing more words in his ear that Harry didn't recognize. Both of his arms were around Harry's chest, and he held him so strongly that Harry couldn't even struggle. He tried anyway, with little flexes of his arms and shoulders that would have translated into harsh blows if he’d just had the freedom to act as he liked.

            Malfoy is taking my freedom away.

            It maddened him, and he started to call on his wandless magic, which would exhaust him, but what did he care about exhaustion when he was on the verge of becoming Malfoy's slave again? But the spirit pressed closer, so that it felt as though part of its mist had passed inside Harry's body and started chilling his liver, and whispered more words he could understand.

            "You shall not do this thing."

            "Says you," Harry snapped back, and closed his eyes, ignoring the cold, still drawing on his wandless magic. He might not be able to accomplish the shattering of Malfoy's soul with this strange defense--what was it?--holding him like this, but he would do something else just as crippling and just as likely to make Malfoy back off.

*

            Gasping, Draco hurtled back to the surface of his thoughts and floated there, part of him still joined by magic to Potter but from a distance, while he drew in breaths of air he could feel and his hair stirred against his neck again. His skin crackled with magic, hard enough to make him feel as though he was holding a lightning bolt.

            And he might as well have tried to grab a lightning bolt as to have tried to wear Potter down by force, he understood now. If it hadn't been for the fact that they'd slept together and a special property of the Mark had been invoked by Potter's spilled semen on Draco's hand--the same one that would have been had one of his Marked ones turned against him after Draco had felt their spilled blood and healed their wounds--then he doubted he would have lived.

            The spell was an old variation of sympathetic magic, and Draco had made sure to wind it in as a special underlayer to the Mark from the very beginning. He had thought it unlikely that any of his Marked ones would find the will or the wit to defy him when he could send enough pain through the Mark in an instant to bring them to his knees, but unlikely didn't mean impossible.

            Knowing Potter was held back for as long as necessary, Draco took a few moments to smooth his hair down with a trembling hand and check the wards on the door of his room. The last thing he wanted to do was alert Higgins or someone else with shouts or the effects of his escaping power. But the wards were intact, and finally Draco had the leisure to consider what had just happened.

            Idiot!

            He wished he could say it to Potter's face, but he had to settle for that thundering shout down the corridors of his mind. The Soul-Severing curse would have rebounded and killed Potter, too. The Mark connected his soul and Draco's. He had probably felt the first intimations of that pain, as deeply as he'd driven the spell, but he had persisted anyway.

            And he hadn't cared.

            Draco paused to think about that, his fingers hanging forgotten in a clump of his hair until he saw them, shook his head, and brought them down again to rest on the arm of his chair. It wouldn't do to have a servant venture in and see him sitting like that, not when the loss of dignity might be irreparable.

            Draco had known that Potter didn't want to be his. The desire had mattered no more than Lisa's desire to have him stay in Fox Valley. What his Marked ones did, they did by his pleasure, or risked his punishment. Draco had admired the way Potter resisted him while being sure that that resistance would crumble the moment Potter understood his lack of escape. Hadn't he been on the point of yielding to Draco several times while they still struggled back in Fox Valley?

            But this...

            Potter was more willing to lose his soul than he was to submit.

            Yes, other people could say that, including Lisa, but Draco hadn't known what they meant. He had taken it for granted that Potter's defiance was half-show. No one could really want to lose his soul or commit suicide rather than give in to Draco's reasonable demands.

            But he remembered a story his father had once told him, of a wild winged horse one of his friends had owned who refused to be broken to the bridle. When they tied its wings, it galloped away. When they tied its legs, it raised and broke its wings. When they tried to heal its wings, it lashed out at the men crowded around them with its teeth, making them hesitate one moment, until it could turn to the barn nearby and bash its head in.

            Potter might be like that. Human rationality--what little he possessed, Draco thought in some distaste--could be drowned by the sheer and stubborn will to liberty.

            He would have to reconsider his tactics, and perhaps bend a little.

            Draco turned to go back into the mists of imagination and magic where he and Potter had met and where his defense was holding Potter back, prepared to offer words of healing and reconciliation, presuming that Potter would accept them. Perhaps Draco could learn to mean them.

            Then magic grabbed him around the waist, a crackling rope that Draco could see, sparking golden and white in its depths, so thick that Draco's startled snatch at it didn't manage to break it.

            The magic smelled of Potter, and tasted of him when it dripped down Draco's tongue and to the chair arm. Small, smoking holes appeared where his saliva touched. Draco started to stand, not wanting to be burned to death.

            The rope tightened again, and yanked him back into the battle.

*

            "You cannot do this!"

            The spirit, the replica of Malfoy with its arms around Harry's waist, wailed that again and again while Harry shoved magic into it and through it. But its hold was weakening, its voice already indistinguishable from the hiss of smoke.

            Harry had studied magical connections in Auror training, a part of theory left over from days when battle had been different and the Aurors smaller, often fighting against family members who shared similar power. A connection acted as a conduit to pump energy into you and weaken your heart or shatter your bones, but nothing was ever one-way. You could pump magic back, and your enemy was as likely to weaken as you were. At some point, it became a race to see who would succumb to the assault of magical energy first.

            Harry would make sure it was Malfoy.

            He continued shoving magic through, pouring power, envisioning it as white sand that would drown the whole of the vast black spiderweb of connections that tied them together. Because he could. Because he wanted to.

            Because he would rather be dead than a slave.

            The spirit had faded enough by now that Harry couldn't feel it touching him, let alone hear its voice speaking. But someone else was, roaring at him, shouting his name in between spitting mouthfuls of sand. Harry grinned and "replied"--what did words mean right now, floating in this strange land that the Mark had created between them?--with a voice that sounded real and cheerful.

            "I don't think so, Malfoy. You can't talk your way out of this one, and any price you can take from me, I've already thought about paying and decided is worth it. And if I die, at least I can be assured that that will put an end to the Mark."

            He had more power than he'd ever dreamed, ever known. He had thought he was exhausted when it came to escaping Fox Valley, but then, he'd paused in between using his magic to run away from the Marked ones who accepted their slavery, so part of his fatigue had been physical. This was like a great and gaping flow of blood that he could just watch go, because he didn't care about staunching the wound. Why should he? This was the end, one way or the other.

            He did spare a brief, regretful thought for the fact that he was going to die in Ron and Hermione's house. He'd have liked to have kept them from finding his body. But then again, they would have been questioned about their complicity in hiding him if anyone had ever discovered the truth about Robards and come hunting. So maybe it was better this way.

            Malfoy seized the thought and used it to reel himself closer, like a rope. "Listen to me, Harry," he said, but the desperate calmness in his voice couldn't hide the quiver, and Harry laughed. "No, listen. You want to live with your friends, don't you? You want to go on living, though you seem set on dying right now. If you could live free, then that would be best of all, wouldn't it? You didn't just try to kill yourself and despair in Fox Valley. You fled from me in a way that you thought would save your life."

            Harry laughed back at him. "You've made it clear that I can't flee from you and live. So I'm dying now." It was a little harder to speak the words. Harry assumed he was coming to the end of his strength. Well, that would be fine. He'd drown Malfoy, and then his core would run out and he would die. Or maybe he would live and the Mark would fade because it no longer had anything to attach to. He didn't care. It was wonderfully freeing, not caring. "Goodbye."

            He shut his eyes. The last of the magic was pouring out of him now, and he felt like a shattered, ruined husk. He wondered dreamily if he would go to his death feeling like that, or if something would change at the last minute.

            "Harry. Harry, listen to me."

            Harry serenely ignored him. Nothing Malfoy could say was of any interest to him, because he would only try to bargain for his life, and Harry didn't want to give it to him. He felt his breath slowing, his heartbeat fading. Suicide had seemed distasteful just a few short hours ago, but he hadn't understood the foulness or the depth of what Malfoy had done to him, then. It was better than living as the bastard's servant. It had to be.

            "There's a way we can both live and still have this connection."

            Harry did laugh, then, and find enough strength hiding somewhere within his drained body to reply. "I'm sure there is. All I have to do is give you the control, then lie back and think of England, right? Or Malfoy, as I'm sure that you'd rather I did."

            "No..."

            But Harry's sense of hearing faded then, and he drifted into a great and peaceful darkness, where there was no longer any voice, any magic, any Malfoy.

            Any dreams.

*

            Shit!

            Draco could feel the flickering flame that was Harry dying down, fading out, drowning in its own wax. And all the while his own body ached with power, barely tamed or absorbed by the Mark, and he flailed and clutched at nothing, accomplishing nothing, his fingers slipping as he tried to hold onto Harry's soul.

            He had never envisioned this. He had never understood. Harry had seemed so burning, so vital, so alive, so determined to strike back and change him, that Draco had assumed he would strive to live no matter what.

            But now the understanding was there, as unignorable as a blade in the gut. Harry would rather die than be his. And Draco...

            Draco would rather that not happen.

            So he reached out with all that power, and the connection that still existed between them even now that Harry had drained his magical core, the connection binding Mark to soul and thus Harry's soul to Draco's. Draco cradled it and twisted it with giant, clumsy silver fingers, snapping the thread of the Mark.

            From far away, he could sense Harry's confused response. He knew something had happened, but he wasn't sure what.

            Draco acted hastily, because even now he thought Harry might come back and assert his presence, and Draco didn't want him slipping completely free, either. He wove a new connection between them, a lesser one, soul to soul this time, placing the Mark of the Fox on Harry's shoulder. Without the connection to his magical core, Harry wouldn't be tempted to surrender his power so that he could get rid of Draco.

            And then Draco breathed the power that Harry had given him back down that lesser conduit, and into Harry, saving his life.

            He knew Harry had intended to kill him, drown him, and had thought that he wouldn't be able to survive it. But Harry, though he might know something about ordinary magical connections, couldn't know everything about the Mark, which was Draco's invention and consisted of a number of intricately woven threads, one of which had channeled the magic harmlessly into Draco's own power. He might be stronger than he had ever been, but he wouldn't die.

            Draco gave the power back.

            He could feel the ache and the reluctance to do so in every part of him, humming in his blood and traveling through his arms like threaded nerves. He hoped that Harry understood the magnificence, the sheer scale, of what Draco was doing for him. He could have conquered the world with that much magic. And none of his Marked ones would have complained if Draco let Harry go and used that power to accomplish his goals.

            Whatever they were.

            Harry had revealed to him, too, that part of his life was hollow, and that he couldn't fill it solely with collecting lenses and storing artifacts.

            So Draco breathed it all down, curling rose-colored waves and leaden ingots and fiery golden flowers and blue-feathered falcons, gave it back to Harry and challenged him to live at the same moment. Harry's breath stuttered and came back to life. His heart beat. His core greedily swallowed the magic, because that was what it was meant for.

            By the time that Harry seemed to sense what was going on and started to fight sluggishly against him, the connection was already tight between them, shining with power, and Draco had to set up a barrier so Harry, the greedy thing, wouldn't drain him. He hovered over Harry for a little while longer, cradling him with the newly-woven connection, treasuring him, guarding him, imagining the moment when Harry would accept Draco's caresses on his own skin.

             Draco had no fear that that would never happen. His determination to have Harry remained the same. But it would be on different terms, with a new Mark and a less possessive touch.

             Because just as Harry had fought to hold onto his life but would give it up rather than be a slave, Draco had fought to have him but would rather have him partially than completely.

             "Remember this," he told Harry, wondering how Harry was hearing his voice. "Remember me. I gave you back the gift I could have kept. I shared life with you when I could have survived and let you die. We're tied together in ways that you don't understand, that I might not understand now that I've put the Mark elsewhere and the tie is different. You can live like this, Harry. And so can I."

             If I have to.

             Then, he was weary beyond weary, so he let the connection drift away and opened his eyes to his bedroom again. He was asleep before he could move out of the chair.

*

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