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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 Four—Harry Tries to Have a Row

            Harry stalked back and forth in his room. It was the morning after their assault on the Ministry, and he had showered, slept fairly well, and now only awaited word from Batty that Draco was awake and ready for breakfast.

            But he could not feel content, despite all that and despite the scattered pieces of information that they had learned from their venture into the Ministry yesterday. After all, he continued to remember how he had collapsed like a child tempted by a promise of a sweet and given in to Draco’s teasing.

            It was impossible, of course, that Draco could have actually wanted to touch him. But he had not been above teasing.

            And that meant that Harry had no allies here. (How had he fooled himself into thinking he did?) Draco would do whatever he wanted, and Harry’s own body was conspiring with him against Harry. It could not be allowed to happen again.

            But it might if Harry was hurt and then Draco decided it would be funny to tease him again.

            So!

            He had to do something. But his options were limited. After all, Draco was the only one who could understand him in any respect. Writing to other people, the way he would have liked to write to Hermione and Ron, wasn’t an option because they would see lies on the parchment. Escaping from the house would only render him mute in a world of people speaking a different language. Investigating on his own would deprive him of all the resources, including a safe hiding-place and a regular source of food, that Draco had at his disposal.

            What could he do, then?

            Suddenly, Harry lifted his head. Of course. Really, the past had been such a resource to him during his initial year under the Cassandra Curse, with his constant resort to the companionship of the dead, that he should have thought of it before. What had he done when he was helpless against the Dursleys, when he knew they had the power of life and death—or at least food and an empty stomach—over him?

            Simple. I angered them. Then they shouted at me and forgot to hold back and play teasing little games, like the one where they pretended I might get food for dinner and then told me they hadn’t promised. Make Draco angry, and it won’t free me from the curse, but at least it will take away some of his pleasure in teasing me.

            As for how to make Draco angry…

            Harry smiled, and the smile was evidently grim enough that Batty, who appeared and stared at him a few moments later, took a step backwards. Harry acknowledged her reminder of breakfast with no more than a simple nod.

            That would be as easy as escaping from the curse wasn’t.

*

            Draco was growing tense and annoyed.

            He didn’t like being either, and so he attempted to retain coolness on his face even as he cut open the light and flaky fish that Batty had brought him; breakfast was rather late this morning, because Draco had slept in and then taken a long, leisurely shower. He would have to go to St. Mungo’s today and explain his extended absence, and then he would have to go to the Ministry and explain as much of his “cousin’s” conduct as he could. The breakfast therefore had some of the attributes of a lunch, and was a more substantial meal than usual.

            No matter at what time the food had come, though, it had to be better than the bland and boring meals that Harry had been served in the hospital.

            But he stared past Draco’s shoulders moodily, responded to none of the conversational sallies Draco offered him with more than a grunt, and batted at the food as if he had become one of Umbridge’s kitten earrings more than he ate it. And then he dropped his cutlery on the plate with a loud and indecent clatter and stood, stalking out of the dining area back towards his wing.

            Draco rose to his feet. “What in the world is the matter with you?” he asked Harry’s back.

            Harry yawned, loudly enough for Draco to hear, and then kept walking. He had already almost vanished around a corner by the time that Draco, stupefied, hurried after him.

            I made more progress with him than this. I know I did. And what does he do? Act as if he would rather do anything than acknowledge that.

            Draco stepped up behind Harry, and stopped himself just as he was about to grip Harry’s shoulder and shake him. It would do no good to show how thoroughly he hated being ignored. Instead, he stroked Harry’s arm with a light, caressing motion.

            Harry jumped as if his arm had been on fire, and backed against the wall. His eyes were standing out like a terrified house-elf’s, the whites around them so prominent that Draco thought he looked a little ridiculous.

            I didn’t mean to scare him that badly. Slow, now. Smile. Show him that there’s nothing to be afraid of. Offer to talk if he wants it. I know that he said he didn’t want to a few days ago, but I think he’s trapped his emotions and his suicidal thoughts so thoroughly inside himself that he might really be going mad.

            So he smiled, and made sure his manner was careful and comfortable as he spread his hands to either side of him. “If you don’t want me to touch you, I won’t, Harry,” he said. “But I do want to say that if there’s anything you need to talk about, my door always stands ajar for you. In the middle of the night, even.”

            Harry narrowed his eyes. The tension grew thicker and thicker in the air between them, and then began to hum.

            Draco smiled. The piece of his soul in Harry’s had begun to sing, trying to snap the anger apart. Surely Harry can’t resist that, can he? I’ve never heard such a beautiful sound, and I…

            For the first time, it seemed that the piece of soul was trying to pull them together even though they stood a few arms’ length apart and knew exactly where the other one was. Draco followed the forming connection, which felt like the longing he had sometimes conceived for a particularly toothsome sweet after dinner when he was a child, and stepped forwards to wrap his arms around Harry.

            A moment later, he found himself facing Harry’s wand.

            Draco narrowed his eyes. “What the fuck?” slipped out of his mouth. He couldn’t help it. Harry was acting as if they were strangers, or as if Draco’s last action had been to punch him instead of offer to sleep with him.

            There’s letting him heal at his own pace, and then there’s ignoring him when he has obvious problems.

            “What do you want from me?” he demanded of Harry.

*

            I could ask him the same thing, damn him!

            Harry was shaking, and only hoped that he had managed to keep the tremors from his arm, so that his hand wouldn’t quiver as if he were holding a toy wand on Draco. He had never been so upset.

            He had forgotten about the piece of soul that Draco had buried in him.

            A beautiful sacrifice—and a thing like a Horcrux, a thing that he didn’t even ask me if I wanted before he planted it. Maybe it had some purpose in the hospital, when it could guide him to me before I got found by someone else. But surely, now—

            “Can you take it out?” he asked abruptly.

            “Take what out?” Draco blinked, as though he couldn’t guess. Of course, for him, Harry thought bitterly, the piece of soul inside Harry would be exclusively a beautiful and noble and becoming sacrifice and all that rot.

            “The piece of your soul.” Harry gestured at his chest, though he was vague about where exactly the core of his soul resided. “You’ve convinced me that you’re really good at heart—“ ha “—and it’s not as though I can run far, as long as I stay in the confines of the Manor. So shouldn’t you have it back?”

            Draco shook his head slowly. “It doesn’t work like that, Harry,” he said, and his voice had gone soft again. I knew I shouldn’t have said anything, Harry berated himself. He was growing angry, getting there, and now he thinks I’m some terrified creature who needs tenderness again. I can see it in his eyes. “Once that spell is performed, it’s permanent.”

            “How do you know?” Harry asked. “Have you ever done this before?” At least, if he knew that many people were walking around with fragments next to their hearts labeled “Draco Malfoy,” he would feel less self-conscious than he did.

            “No,” Draco said quietly. “That was the first time I performed the spell.”

            Harry smiled triumphantly. “Then you don’t know it’s permanent—“

            “The book I pulled it from described it that way, and also said that it could be dangerous to try and integrate a fragment of your soul back into you after it had spent some time in another person’s core,” Draco said, still calm. “And you haven’t finished listening to me, Harry. This is the first time I’ve done it because you’re the only person in the world I would ever consider trusting this way—the only one special enough to deserve that gift.”

            The words tore at Harry’s defensive walls, trying to pull them down, trying to tell him that what Draco offered was true—

            It is not. This is a teasing game just like the one he played yesterday. What does he have to gain from meaning what he says?

            Harry narrowed his eyes, and ignored the melting sensation that wanted to invade his chest. He was not melting. He was not some playtoy, and he would not become one. “I don’t believe you,” he said.

            Draco’s look grew indignant. “You think that I hand out fragments of my soul like smiles? I’ll have you know that incantation is both powerful and dangerous—“

            Now it was guilt that awoke, squirming like a lizard around Harry’s heart. He risked so much for you, and this is how you repay him?

            It’s how I have to repay him, he answered himself shortly, if I don’t want to become a Malfoy marionette. He’ll still have his life when I’m done with this. What loss would I represent? And I’ll have my life, too, and won’t become the petted lapdog that he so clearly intends me to be.

            “No,” said Harry, forcing the words up his throat like shards of broken glass. “I know that you’re telling the truth about—that part. But you can’t be telling the truth about why you gave it to me.” He laughed, and though the Cassandra Curse wouldn’t allow him to lie, he could throw words like acid into Draco’s face. “You want me to believe that Draco Malfoy, Psyche-Diver and pure-blood and all-around success story, finds anything to value in the shards of an Auror who’s cracked as a dropped pot? Pull the other one, Malfoy, it’s got bells on.”

*

            Draco understood, now, and he was cursing himself for not seeing it at once. The best defense he could give put up was that he had not realized, until now, how deep Harry’s fear ran. The man in front of him was a breath or two from full-blown panic.

            Almost any move that Draco made right now would be interpreted as an attempt to control him. The game yesterday hadn’t just been a game to Harry, and he hadn’t interpreted it as the initial stages of seduction, either, the substitution for the real thing until he got over his distrust and gave himself to Draco of his own free will. He had thought Draco intended to fuck him for fun, and abandon him when he was finished.



            And even the piece of soul would be thought of as a hook, if Harry was watching the world through that particular lens.

            Draco stared into the blazing green eyes, and wondered how in the world the Dark Lord had ever thought that he could break or divert Harry Potter when he wanted something. This was a man who had been denied control of his life in so many different ways that, when he found someone else trying to snare him again, he would break free of the trap or die trying.

            Useless to explain to Harry that Draco wanted the same things he did, and would be happy to strive beside him as he achieved them. Freedom and solitude would be the things to calm Harry down, right now.

            And promises which, after all, Draco didn’t have to keep if Harry changed his mind about making him keep them.

            “All right,” he said.

            Harry staggered a bit, as though he’d been pressing against a wall which blocked his way forwards and had suddenly vanished. “All right, what?” he asked warily, stepping back and training his wand on Draco’s chest.

            Draco spread his hands wide, only a bit regretful that he couldn’t have them on Harry’s skin right now. This was still a man who needed healing of his conscience and his soul right along with his body. “I’ll take the piece of my soul out of you,” he said. “But it will take some time and study. First of all, the book I learned the incantation from in the first place is one that I modified for Psyche-Diving. I’ll need to research the magic in other volumes, to make sure I’m not ignoring some crucial step. But I’ll also need to learn how to keep myself safe as I reintegrate the piece of soul into me. You wouldn’t want the only one who knows you’re speaking truth in the entire world to die and abandon you, right?”

            Tightly, Harry shook his head. The hope in his eyes was so painful. Draco again had to control the impulse to reach out and gather the shaking, suffering man against him. He wanted to trust that Draco would keep his word, but clearly, that was impossible for him right now.

            How much strength must he have to simply get up in the morning and face the day? And how long has he been counting on it? It might be nearing the end at last.

            “Good,” Draco said. “So. I’ll study. And I also need you to write a letter for me.”

            Harry cocked his head. “Why? Anyone you show it to will simply assume that it’s lies.” Bitterly, he added, “You wouldn’t believe how many different ways around it I tried when I first learned about the Cassandra Curse. They assumed Veritaserum was water. They assumed all my writing was deceptions for the sake of fun, too. And as for spells that would tell the truth, like the Revealing Spell itself…nothing worked. It’s always twisted.”

            Fear lurked in his voice, though Draco thought Harry had become so used to that terror that he didn’t notice it any longer.

            No, I can’t blame him for being afraid of disappointment again, frustrating as it is for me. If he still gave his trust blindly, he would have died months ago.

            “I know,” Draco said softly, “but this time, we’re going to use the curse to your advantage, since I do have to explain the mess I made in the Ministry yesterday.”

            Harry set his mouth in a firm line. “Explain it to me, first.”

            So Draco did, and watched as Harry’s stance grew a little less cautious and, once, he laughed aloud. Draco shivered at the sound of that laughter, and later lingered as much as he could over his changing of the bandages on Harry’s wrists.

            It was the only chance he might get for months to slide his fingers over bits of Harry’s skin, no matter how ragged.

            This will kill me, won’t it? he thought regretfully, but there was nothing to be done with it. In his own twisted way, Harry had been right, and the decisions he could make about healing were the only right ones for him.

*

            “I—surely you can’t be serious, Healer Malfoy?” Grunhilda Sporesby, one of the most important people in St. Mungo’s, gaped at him. Draco was silently impressed with himself, since he’d never seen that ancient, gray-haired matron ruffled.

            “Psyche-Diver Malfoy,” Draco corrected firmly. “And yes, I am serious. I find that St. Mungo’s no longer suits my career needs.” He nodded to the piece of parchment she held, one of the two precious letters he’d carried here in his robe pockets. “That is my resignation, and as you can see, it’s effective immediately.”

            Grunhilda coughed. Her office was large and cheerful in an inane way, showing photos of smiling patients on every wall. It hadn’t escaped Draco’s notice that most of the photos were slowly acquiring a faint glaze, as happened to the oldest of wizarding pictures. The days when Grunhilda had worked with patients herself were long past.

            “I—know that your reception in St. Mungo’s has not always been everything that could be wished,” she began. “But to abandon your sacred duty of caring for as many sufferers as possible—to stop looking into the cores of souls because a few people were rude to you, a few times—“

            She stopped. Draco doubted that his expression of contemptuous irritation was easy to address, no matter how hard she tried.

            “Let us not pretend, Healer Sporesby,” he said. “The Healers of St. Mungo’s hated me because they thought I wasn’t here for their altruistic reasons. And they were entirely correct in that, as it happens. I have to choose a place that will suit me on my way to greater fame and wealth, and I’m sick of putting up with the insults of my inferiors for the sake of the few advantages that the hospital offers in that vein.”

            She looked as stunned as though Draco had just walked up and slapped her across the face. Draco savored it.

            “Your sacred duty—“

            “Oh, fuck my sacred duty,” said Draco, and for a moment wondered if the profanity would actually cause her to have a heart attack, and whether he would be able to summon a Healer to attend her before she fell over if so. When it seemed, disappointingly, that she was sure to live, he went on. “I might have had a duty, but it’s to myself, and no religion I know of calls that sacred.” He smiled, making sure it was only a faint curve of his lips. “And visiting the souls of the truly insane, randomly assigned to me, is unpleasant. I would prefer to entertain those who actually wish to make use of my services and can pay for it.”

            “If someone is sane enough to think they need your help, they’re probably sane,” said Grunhilda accusingly.

            “I know.”

            “That means that you’ll be treating people who can give you money, more than experience. Rich hypochondriacs who just believe they’re mad.”

            “I know.” Draco produced a smile for her delectation.

            “I thought I understood you, Draco Malfoy.” Her voice was actually shaking as she pushed a curl of gray hair behind her ear. “I defended you to the others when your mere presence here made them question my hiring practices.” She shook her head, and then her eyes closed as if in sharp pain or shock. “I thought I understood you,” she repeated in a whisper.

            “You know,” said Draco, pivoting towards the door, “many people have made that mistake, but, funnily enough, never the same people twice.”

            He left her sitting there, and slipped free of the hospital to breathe the clean air outside, already looking forwards to a future without the constant suppressed waves of hostility and jealousy around him.

*

            Umbridge stared at the letter Harry had written. “Ingenious,” she breathed. “Harry Potter is far more daring and clever than I ever gave him credit for.”

            Draco drew himself up. “And spiteful,” he said, letting his voice shake. “To make a fool of me…” He shook his head.

            The letter was a taunting masterpiece—it should be, since Draco had thought of all the best insults—and claimed that Harry Potter had kidnapped the real Albert Malfoy, taken his place with Polyjuice, and accompanied Draco into the Ministry to learn what he could about himself. Yes, he’d slipped up when he’d nearly revealed himself to Lila Ambernight, but he was safely beyond their reach now, hiding in the isles of northern Scotland, where they’d never find him.

            Since the letter would, of course, read as a lie, Umbridge and whoever else she appointed to the hunt for Harry would assume that he was still hiding in London, perhaps Muggle London, and would probably try another assault on the Ministry.

            The letter accomplished three things at once. It got people looking in the wrong direction entirely; it made Draco seem like another of the outraged parties, quieting suspicion that he might have been the one to remove Harry from St. Mungo’s; and it was a bit of bait cast in bloody waters, temping response from those most interested. Draco did not yet know who would snap at it, but it would be supremely entertaining, and informative, to watch.

            It might even have a fourth advantage, now that Draco thought about it. It made Harry seem like a mastermind, with plots laid far in advance of when he needed them. They would be looking for a Harry who acted on his own, an isolated genius, not someone who had a partner.

            “I shall make this known to the Minister at once, Mr. Malfoy,” Umbridge said importantly, and picked up her speaking tube.

            Draco gave her a bow, and then exited the office. He wasn’t surprised to see Lila Ambernight look up from her desk and study him with cool eyes as he passed.

            A fifth advantage, even. It will inspire her to involve herself in the hunt, too, and thus keep our two major suspects both close. If she has a master, it could show up him or her.

            He resisted the temptation to smile at her. It might give the game away.

*

            “Master Malfoy does not care for Master Potter.”

            Harry looked up from the book he’d been trying to read on Malfoy family history while he waited for Draco to return, more than a little amused. Part of that was the fault of the history—it stressed the lengths that Draco’s ancestors would go to to seduce the lovers they wanted, including abduction—but most of it centered on Batty. She had been muttering “idle” imprecations on Draco’s character under her breath as she cleaned the library.

            “I know that,” he said. “He’d just like to fuck me and then drop me, if he gets the chance.”

            The house-elf turned around and stared at him with bulging eyes. “Master Harry Potter is having a foul mouth!”

            “It can get fouler,” Harry assured her.

            She vanished with an echoing crack, and left him alone.

            Harry chuckled and turned a page. I don’t need warnings from interfering house-elves. I know that Draco doesn’t care for me and that I can’t trust him, none better.

            But that didn’t mean they couldn’t work together, Harry thought, now that he had calmed down a bit and could consider the matter rationally. Draco would get his fame. Harry would get his freedom.

            All in all, a mutually beneficial arrangement.

*

            KLS: Well, Harry’s reasons get rather twisted up here, as you can see. It’s an open question as to whether he’s better off without Draco’s “interference” or not.

            rAiNwAtEr: Thank you! Draco’s psychological insight will come in handy an awful lot.

            Mangacat: As answered here, the Revealing Spell would be a simple way around the Cassandra Curse—and so the Curse is designed to circumvent it.

            Paigeey07, jbj1031965, thrnbrooke, Myra: Thanks for reviewing!
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A Determined Frame of Mind