Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Bloodstone Heartbeat	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2901 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you for all the reviews! This is the second and last part of “Heart of Knives,” although I’ll follow up with more stories in the arc.
“That’s torn it. You can’t really think that you’re going to go back to being friends with them, can you, Potter?”
Harry braced himself with one elbow against the table, and reached along it. Yes, there was the mug of Firewhisky that Malfoy had poured and brought over for him without being asked. Harry had known it was Firewhisky from the sound of the cork coming loose, and the smell. “Yes,” he said, and swallowed. His throat stung and watered.
Not my eyes. Not anymore.
“What are you talking about?” Malfoy’s voice was as low and threatening as a spider.
“Because Ron and Hermione have stood by me through everything.” Harry turned his head in the direction of the Floo. Even though it wasn’t open, he could almost imagine he heard the sound of Ron arguing with Hermione. They supported and bolstered each other. They would talk each other around when Ron heard what had happened.
“Not through this. I know that. I thought you believed the same thing. And now that she’s actually caught us…”
“They might still think of me as the innocent who’s being tricked. That was what Hermione was talking about before you came. That I might be under the Imperius or some other Dark spell. They won’t forgive you, but they could forgive me.”
Harry sipped the Firewhisky again through Malfoy’s ensuing silence. He missed the sting in his eyes.
“But if they arrest me or chase me away,” Malfoy finally said, “then you won’t get the potion that you want.”
“Yes,” Harry said, and slammed the mug down hard enough that he could imagine Malfoy starting forwards to grab it, even though Harry hadn’t shattered it. “That’s a dilemma.”
“You’re going to choose me. And the potion.”
But Malfoy didn’t sound sure, and Harry found he liked that. He sipped again, and smiled absently in Malfoy’s general direction. It might not be right at his face, but Malfoy had never shown that he cared about that. “Are you so sure? You sound a little unsure there, Malfoy.”
“You will. I won’t have put in all this labor for nothing.”
“And it’s labor to learn to use my other senses, too, and spells without being able to see where I’m aiming. You could argue that I’m the one wasting my labor in learning to be blind if I let you make the potion for me. You could always find someone else who needs that kind of potion and sell it to them.”
Silence. Harry listened, though, and he heard the way Malfoy was turning, and he knew what would happen, and he moved out of the way just in time when Malfoy tried to cut through the mug and leave shards and blood all over him.
The curse cut his arm instead, and Harry grimaced as he felt the blood flow. It was harder healing himself when he couldn’t see than he ever would have imagined. The last time, he’d overestimated the size of the cut and ended up making an entire good patch of his skin feel raw and sore.
“Damn you, Potter.” Malfoy’s voice was hoarse. Harry heard him shift his wand, and this time, he incanted the spell aloud as he aimed. “Episkey.”
Harry felt some of the skin mend, but not all of it. He snorted and swiped at the blood that was making his skin slimy. “Overestimated your own strength?”
“I’ve overestimated you, you madman. Goddamn you, burn you, scorch you, drive you to suicide—”
But Malfoy came up beside him, and Harry let him take the arm and extend it and cast a few more spells that would stem the flow of blood. Harry sighed and leaned his head back on the chair. His pleasure in taunting Malfoy had fled. He could only think of what he was going to lose, and it wasn’t pleasant.
Malfoy finished muttering the last of a string of curses that Harry hadn’t paid much attention to, and reached out and gripped his chin, turning his head. Harry had no idea why. It wouldn’t enable either of them to see each other any better.
“I am invested in you,” Malfoy said faintly. “I don’t want to brew this potion for someone else. I would take it and toss it out the window right now, and crush all my ingredients, if I thought you wouldn’t take it.”
Harry flinched, harder than he had when he realized Hermione was in the room with them, and Malfoy let out a breathless little laugh that was a lot like a rooster crow. Harry touched his arm and wondered if he was Malfoy’s basilisk.
“Yes, I thought so. It matters to you that I have this potion. And it matters more to you than your friends.”
Harry shuddered. He didn’t want to think that. He didn’t want to think that he was a horrible person. He’d been able to stand up under Hermione’s accusations and refute them because she kept talking, at the same time, about what he should do differently, and Harry couldn’t stand that. Not when she didn’t know what it was like.
But this way, it sounded horrible. Surely he couldn’t give up friends who had been with him since childhood because he wanted to see again?
“Maybe you don’t like to hear it put that way,” Malfoy said. His hands were moving restlessly over Harry’s shoulders and arms, sometimes clasping them, sometimes sliding down, as if he assumed he would get more of an answer the more they moved. “But it’s true. You’re still mine. In my debt.”
“Your rival,” Harry muttered. He posed a question he never had before. “If there was a way that you could get your rival back without brewing this potion, you would stop right now, wouldn’t you?”
“What a stupid question, Potter. There’s no way to get you back without this potion, so that means—”
“But you could find someone else to be your rival, someone whole—”
Malfoy’s punch literally staggered him, and made his mouth bleed. Harry fell against the table, reaching up to feel his lips. He’d cut both them and his tongue on his teeth. He ran his fingers around the small holes in his tongue.
“You’re an idiot,” said Malfoy, with an air of finality so, well, final that Harry blinked at him in the privacy of his darkness. “You think I’m going to walk away and find someone else so perfectly matched to me?”
Harry snorted, then flinched as it brought his bloody tongue up against his teeth. “Careful, Malfoy. If someone was listening to you without knowing that you were giving me back my eyes just so I can see to beat you at Quidditch…”
“I know what they would think. I don’t care. What matters is what you think.”
Harry’s heartbeat was painful. He sought around for some means of distracting Malfoy. “You’re going to take all this time to brew this potion. Years, you told me. And what happens if I don’t want to be your rival?”
“You will.”
“What are you counting on, my Gryffindor sense of fair play? Because I think that died when I agreed to let you start brewing this potion for me.”
“No,” said Malfoy. “I’m counting on the fact that I’m going to make it good for you, so good that you’ll never want to walk away.” His voice was breathy, and he leaned his arm against Harry’s chest, his face so close that Harry could feel it even without a direct touch. “I know what I can do. I know what you used to do. Together, that will make an irresistible combination for the Harry Potter I restore to life.”
Harry swallowed. Malfoy was probably tracing the motion of his throat with as much eagerness as he was listening to his words. And Malfoy reached out now and touched Harry’s Adam’s apple with such gentleness.
He could crush it, and I couldn’t reach my wand in time to stop him.
It wasn’t the first time Harry had had that sort of thought, but it was the first time it had ever made him so hard. He swayed towards Malfoy, who slid a confident hand down to his groin, and chuckled, and said, “Again?”
Harry nodded, his throat too dry, and bereft of the words anyway.
Malfoy pushed him upright with a casual shove, and shook his head in such a way that Harry could hear his hair rustle against his collar. “Not yet. I have a critical stage of the potion to concentrate on, and you have packing to finish.”
“Packing?” Harry hated sounding like a parrot, but it was hard not to when Malfoy’s mind leaped and flashed between subjects faster than Harry’s thoughts could follow.
“Of course. If you want to get away from here before those so-called friends of yours get the courage to confront you, then you should hurry. And no, I’m not going to help you. All that labor that you supposedly put into learning to be blind? Let’s see the results.”
Harry gaped at Malfoy’s back, or what he assumed was his back. He thought he’d heard Malfoy turn around to face his mortar and pestle again, and the slight sound of them going, crushing another of the innumerable gemstones the potion required.
Of course, Malfoy could have been crushing something from the ease of long practice, and looking back at him over his shoulder. It drove Harry mad that he couldn’t be sure of little things like that anymore.
“I haven’t agreed to go anywhere with you, Malfoy.”
A snort.
“And we couldn’t go to Malfoy Manor, anyway. That’s the first place they would look, now that Hermione knows you’re behind the brewing of the potion.”
“Did I say that we would go to Malfoy Manor? Nothing wrong with your hearing, I thought. Or do you need a potion to correct that, too?”
“Where else are we going to go, Malfoy? I know that your family lost all the properties other than the Manor in the war. And most of their money. Which is why you have to steal the vitreous humor from other people’s eyes rather than buying it, right?”
“You remembered what eye-juice is called!” Malfoy clapped his hands. “I’m so proud of you!”
Harry made a noise that only made Malfoy snort again. “Why do you think I didn’t get caught, Potter? I have a few safe places set up that I could Apparate to when the Aurors were trying to track me. Boltholes. Not as large and comfortable as your…abode.” The pause was so delicate Harry could imagine all sorts of words there. “We’ll be going to one of those. As soon as you pack.”
“And I still haven’t said I would go anywhere with you.”
“Your friends will either try to talk to you down, or take you somewhere by force. Probably St. Mungo’s, since they’ll be convinced you need a Mind-Healer.” By the absent sound of his voice, Malfoy was paying more attention to whatever gemstone he was about to crush than he was to Harry. Harry ground his teeth. “Either way, you’ll lose any chance I can offer. Of course you’re going to come with me. Because you’re not stupid.”
Harry slammed his eyelids shut, reminded in that moment that he couldn’t even do something as simple as close his eyes in frustration. Or concentration. Just another thing the Carrows had taken from him.
Malfoy was offering him that back.
Was it worth more than the friendship that Ron and Hermione offered? Could he really walk away from his friends without a farewell, because they had discovered something—unusual? He could try to talk them around. They would listen to him in the end. Especially if he yielded and went along with them to a Mind-Healer.
Who am I kidding? Hermione will want me to acknowledge how wrong this was. What a mistake I made. They won’t be happy until I say that, no matter what they say about learning to live with blindness.
Harry shivered. Part of him thought that, no matter what his friends said, he should be able to stay with them. Because they had been through so much together. Including things that were tougher than this.
Were they?
And the more he thought about that, the more uncertain he was. He had once thought the worst pain in the world was the basilisk biting him. Then the pain that Voldemort sent through the scar. Then watching Cedric die. Then watching Sirius die. Then Dumbledore. And then realizing he’d been raised to go walking up to Voldemort and die.
There was so much warmth pulsing in his throat, as if he had a mouthful of blood he was going to throw up.
Now, he knew. Right now, the worst pain in his life was the remembrance of the Carrows burning his eyes out. There were still nights he had to take a Throat-Soother because he woke up screaming so hard.
“I’ll pack,” he whispered.
“Good,” said Malfoy, a hard, simple word, but one that acted like a pair of hands against Harry’s spine, spinning him around and urging him into his bedroom where he would find most of what he needed to take with him.
*
Draco closed his eyes and slumped against the counter as soon as he was alone. Yes, he ought to have been able to do it anyway, because Potter couldn’t see him, and so on, but Potter was surprisingly quick to pick things up from faint sounds.
He hadn’t been sure he would win the debate.
If he’d been dealing with someone like himself, it would never have been in doubt, of course. Any Malfoy would have been packed even before the sounds of the Floo closing behind Granger faded.
But the whole point was that Potter wasn’t him, that he was something—someone—Draco could never understand, and that Draco wanted to return him to someone worth fighting.
So. Now you have Potter. What are you going to do?
Draco wished they had time to arrange a false death scene. As long as Potter’s friends knew he was still alive, they would follow him no matter where he went, sniff out trails, and bay at the door for him to forgive them. But they had no time. The only thing they could do was vanish, into one of the places Draco had set up that neither Death Eaters nor Aurors had been able to find.
And not even Weasley was a full-fledged Auror as yet.
We’ll be fine, Draco thought, and turned his head as he listened to things whistling around in Potter’s bedroom. Although maybe I should go and help him pack before he breaks half the things he wants to bring with him.
He stepped into the room and ducked a book that was heading for the trunk. The book smashed into the wall and then fell into the trunk with its spine cracked. Potter cursed half-heartedly and leaned against the wall, his useless eyelids fluttering.
“Let me help.”
Potter straightened and gave Draco a look at those false eyes he hated. “You don’t have to! I didn’t ask you to! You can go back in the kitchen and grind up whatever gemstones you need to!”
“But right now I don’t need to,” said Draco mildly, and then picked up another book lying on the floor that Potter had probably been trying to aim at the trunk he couldn’t see. It made him laugh inside to help Potter when he didn’t want to be helped. Doing things that Potter didn’t want was half the fun of “healing” him. “So do you want all these books on the shelves in my place? When you can’t read them?”
“There’s a spell that recites the words aloud.” Potter bowed his head, and Draco felt himself relax as those horrible, wrong green eyes disappeared from view once more. “I’m trying to learn Arithmancy right now. Since I never learned it at Hogwarts.”
Now that Draco thought about it, Potter’s other elective class had been Divination. He snorted. “Arithmancy doesn’t mean much unless you can do the equations yourself, Potter.”
“I know. I’m still working on the spells that make the books respond.”
Draco thought about it, then nodded. At least Potter would get more magic perfected by working with Draco. “All right. Then I’ll take the books on Arithmancy along, and anything else you didn’t study in Hogwarts.”
“What? But I want to look up some Transfiguration…”
“I have plenty of books on that. And I’ll help you with the spells that make the books respond. I don’t think you can master them on your own.”
Potter nibbled at his lips, then nodded. “Fine.” He turned to a cupboard in the wall. “And the clothes…”
“You can walk around naked for all of me. Your eyes are the only part of you I don’t like looking at.”
To Draco’s delight, the back of Potter’s neck flushed. “Not the point,” he muttered, and then began to gather the clothes up with swishes of his wand. They were mostly ordinary robes that didn’t flatter him at all, and some Muggle clothing Draco planned to burn at the first opportunity. But then, since he couldn’t see, Draco supposed it didn’t much matter to Potter what he wore.
Someday, it will. I’ll be the first thing he sees when he really opens his eyes, but he can see a good pair of robes second.
“I think that’s enough,” Draco said, as the trunk filled up. “Merlin knows that I have all the towels and toiletries you’ll ever need.”
“Of course you would, well-groomed prat that you are,” Potter said, in a mutter he probably hadn’t meant for Draco to overhear.
But Potter wasn’t the only one who had worked to sharpen his other senses. Draco gave him a dazzling smile and waved his wand, making the lid of the trunk slam hard enough to make Potter jump. “Sorry, what was that? How would you know how well-groomed I am, since you can’t see?”
“The shape of your hair against my face when you were leaning over me.”
Draco blinked. Of course, it was true that he took as much care of his grooming as he ever had. It suited his sense of what was due to him, and it also meant that he looked nothing like a criminal, in case anyone had ever connected him to the Eye Killer.
But he was startled to find that he believed Potter, and that Potter had sensed what he had. And the fact that he realized right after that made a stirring start below his waist.
Potter was noticing things other than his lack of eyes and his friends. He was committed to moving on in the world, recovering from his blindness, and standing up and reclaiming the greatness that had once been his.
Which would become reflected greatness on Draco, since he was Potter’s main rival.
He advanced quickly, making Potter stiffen but not step out of the way before Draco pinned him against the wall. Draco bent close enough that Potter could feel the neat shape of Draco’s hair against his jaw again.
“Is that so?” Draco purred at Potter, and rubbed his head against Potter’s for a second. As long as Potter didn’t open his eyes and reveal the glass, he looked a lot like the boy Draco had tormented at school and never beaten at Quidditch. “What do you feel now?”
It took Potter a few seconds to answer, but that only increased the thick beat in Draco’s chest. “Your hardness against my thigh.”
Draco laughed in delight and reached out to shrink Potter’s trunk and spell it into his pocket without letting go of Potter. Then he turned around with him in his arms and Apparated. He would return later for his mortar, his pestle, his gemstones.
For now, all he wanted to feel was Potter in his arms and Potter snarling out a defiant challenge against his cheek.
*
ANON: Thanks! It has been longer than it perahps seems like, and Harry has always been resilient in the past. Hermione and Ron are perhaps right to think he should pop back up. But this time is different.
SP777: Thank you!
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Bloodstone Heartbeat