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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 Four--The World Upside-Down

            Harry woke with his head resting on the table. He blinked and pushed his glasses up his nose, staring at his left hand for a long moment. Something strange had happened with it, he remembered that much. He remembered a voice speaking to him, and his determination to be free, and power traveling in and out of him as if he was a sieve through which sand had been poured--

            And then memory returned and stomped him in the face the way that Malfoy had stomped on his nose in sixth year.

            Harry shuddered and stood up so suddenly that the book nearest him went flying. It thumped to the floor just as Hermione opened the door of the library and blinked at him. "Harry? Are you all right?"

            How was he supposed to answer her with his head full of thunder and light, full of the knowledge that he had nearly died opposing Malfoy, that he had tried to shatter Malfoy's soul, and that he had come back from that, not dying and with the Mark still on his arm--no, it would be on his shoulder now, he could feel the soft burn of it there--because of Malfoy?

            It was impossible.

            So Harry just said, "No, Hermione, I'm not all right," and brushed past her, running towards his room, hearing the solid thump of his feet on the stairs as though they belonged to someone else. He wasn't sure what he would do when he got to sanctuary, but throwing up and pounding the walls while screaming in frustration were both high on the list.

            "Harry, I don't understand!" Hermione was following him, and her voice was pitched high with what Harry thought he recognized as fear, but after being away from her for so long, who could tell? She wasn't the same person, and neither was he. He was a lot Darker than his friends realized, to an extent that could hurt them if they did learn about it. "I want to help you, but you keep brushing me aside. What in the world did you do? What's happening to you? Does it have something to do with the medical magic that you're looking--"

            Harry shut the door to his bedroom, shutting out the noise, and flung up a ward that he knew would take even Hermione some time to get through. Then he paused. His wand was humming lightly in his hand, and it felt as though some blockage had been cleared out of his veins, so that the power traveled more normally through him.

            It had to be the result of his encounter with Malfoy.

            Harry began to pace back and forth, faster and faster, until he was practically running around the room. He circled the bed, leaped the chairs, and dashed himself against the walls, ready to burst, ready to wear away some of the mad energy that battered through him.

            He didn't want to owe his life to Malfoy. He didn't want to be Marked, even if it was on a less noticeable place than on his left arm. He didn't want to think that he had shoved that power at Malfoy, his free gift, his to do what he liked with, and he had given it back.

            He especially didn't want to think about that part.

            Oh, Harry could see Malfoy saving his life rather than letting him die. He had taken that option even when Harry had wounded several of his people and had shown that he would prefer to run himself to death rather than submit. But he couldn't see Malfoy giving up power. He had Marked Harry and the others because they were strong in their own right, strong in their magic, and commanding them and owning their lives was the next best option to having that power in his own body. He would never yield magic he didn't have to pay the price of a fractious subordinate for.

            Or so Harry had thought.

            He rather thought that he didn't believe that, now. Or that it had changed.

            But he couldn't allow the change to matter, he told himself the next moment, fiercely. Because Malfoy still wanted surrender, and Harry would never allow that.

            Someone pounded on his door. Harry turned around, neck bristling with startled hair, and raised his wand. It still moved differently in his hand, and Harry found himself wondering what Malfoy's wand would feel like. And that memory led back, like too many others lately, to the feel of Malfoy's hand wrapped around his cock, Malfoy's body moving against him.

            If I was strong, I would have found some way to resist him and still win the information I needed.

            Shame occupied him enough that he didn't stop Hermione from undoing the ward in time. Then she stepped into his room and stared at him, and Harry discovered that it wasn't only Malfoy who could make him feel like a bug being watched.

            "You need to tell me what's going on." Hermione's voice had a layer of steel, but on top she sounded so concerned that Harry thought she was going to cry. "Please, Harry. You're suffering, I can understand that much, but I can't do more without knowing more."

            "Why do you need to know more?" Harry snapped, and found himself faced by a pair of large eyes so brilliant with astonishment that he squirmed and looked away.

            "How can you ask that?" Hermione whispered. "I'm your friend, Harry. Ron's your friend. If something's happening to you, something we can help you fight or save you from, then of course we want to know about it."

            Harry lowered his head and nodded. That truth still lay between them. He had thought virtuously that he wouldn't involve Ron and Hermione, but he had sheltered in their house, eaten their food, done his research among their books even as he thought that. He had depended on them to be there for him, and he couldn't do that and shut them out of the information loop at the same time.

            It was time to tell them, no matter whether the full truth caused them to turn their faces away. Then, at least, Harry would know that they weren't his friends anymore, and he could leave with a clean conscience.

            But he suspected they might stick by him. They might.

            "Fine," he said. "When I broke away from Malfoy to come here--it was with the help of an artifact full of magic that he'd stolen. I didn't escape the way I told you, though. I went with Malfoy to torture Robards. He was the one who sent me to Fox Valley to die, and I wanted revenge against him."

            Hermione watched him with shadowed eyes, but said nothing. Her wand had started twitching in her hand, however.

            Harry watched it as he spoke. He owed his friends the truth, but he wasn't going to allow them to arrest him and keep him here, no matter what he had done. He'd made his choices. If he would fight for his freedom against Malfoy, he was certainly going to do so against the Ministry, who would never seek to own him in the way Malfoy would. "I ended up torturing Malfoy and killing Robards. I cast an Unforgivable Curse on Malfoy, too. Then I used the stolen magic to make a really powerful Portkey that would transport me between continents."

            Hermione made a thick sound in the back of her throat, as though she was choking on bones. "Harry," she whispered. "Murder? Torture?"

            "I'm not the person I was, Hermione," Harry said quietly. "I started learning Dark magic from the wizards I arrested, and some of them, I killed without bringing in, if their crimes were awful enough or I thought they might escape when they were taken to trial. I think you could all me a Dark wizard now. Or evil. Or corrupted. I don't know what the best choice of word is."

            Hermione's gaze never wavered. "You murdered the Head Auror," she whispered in wonder. "I thought you revered him."

            Harry shook his head. Trying to reconcile with his friends would never work if they insisted on seeing only the past versions of him. "I used to," he said. "But he played on my guilt over a case I worked, and he intended me to kill Malfoy or die trying. I was glad enough to see the end of him. I was the one who gave Malfoy the knowledge he needed to get into the Ministry, past the wards that might have caught him."

            Hermione took a step away from him. Harry locked his hands behind his back and waited.

            "Oh, Harry," Hermione said. "I see now--why you didn't tell us." She hesitated, then said in a rush, "But that doesn't explain why you were looking at the books of medical magic."

            "I know," Harry said. "Malfoy's here in Australia. I surprised him the other day, searching magically for me. I must have managed to cut off the trail that would have led him to me, or he'd be here by now. But I surprised him again this afternoon, and he fought me. I tried to kill him by shattering his soul and then forcing so much magic down the link between us that it would destroy the Mark, which he said was linked to my core and my soul." He swallowed. The look on Hermione's face almost didn't bother him now, because it was only a pale reflection of the tumult that burst through his head and heart and veins. "He gave the magic back. He saved my life, and changed the Mark." His hand shook as he pulled up his shirt to show her the fox on his shoulder.

            "This is too much," Hermione said, and sat down hard on the bed.

            "Sorry," Harry said, which was hopelessly inadequate. But he had no words other than that. He watched her sit there, and she watched him as if he was going to attack.

            "You need help," Hermione said. "You are becoming a Dark wizard, Harry, and that kind of magic is addictive. The more you use it, the more you want to use. It makes everything seem so simple, but when you start using those spells, they drain more of your power than ordinary spells do and they damage your magical core."

            Harry snorted. The propaganda was familiar from the Ministry, but he had used enough spells that were categorized as Dark Arts by now to realize that that last part was a flagrant lie. "They don't damage your core, Hermione. That's a lie that the Ministry came up with a century or two ago, in hopes that people who wouldn't listen to moral reasons for avoiding the Dark Arts would listen to a practical, physical one."

            Hermione half-twitched and held up her hand. Harry wondered if she was going to make some sort of sign against evil, the way he had heard that ignorant Muggles did. "Harry...that's not true."

            "Scan my magical core," Harry said. "See if there's any damage to it."

            Too late, he remembered that there probably would be, thanks to his duel with Malfoy, and opened his mouth to rescind the invitation. But Hermione had already performed the complex curlicue flourishes of the scanning spell and murmured the incantation. Then she leaned back to await the result, her face set in a frown so fierce Harry wondered if he would regret telling her.

            Not unless she betrays me or tries to keep me here.

            The scanning spell felt like a bone-deep tickle. Harry set his face so he wouldn't laugh and made sure that his wand was near at hand. But then he remembered the light in his body and decided that he could probably hold Hermione in place with sheer wandless magic if she cast Expelliarmuson him.

            The scanning spell gave a faint ring, and then a shining image appeared in front of Harry. It looked like a gold cylinder set with brass rings at top and bottom. The light that filled it would tell Harry or Hermione or anyone looking how much magic he retained. All the way to the brass rings at the top meant a healthy core; anywhere beneath the rings on the bottom would indicate severe damage. Harry was expecting a half-full cylinder at best, with the dark spots and gaps in the light that would reflect his wounds and the way Malfoy had patched him back together.

            Instead, the whole thing shone full, up to the top, with some radiance spilling beyond the edges in a sparking mist that made Harry flinch, fearing it would light the room on fire, even though it was only an image.

            Hermione went still, staring at the thing. Then she swiveled around and stared at him. Harry did his best to look calm and mysterious, even though he was astonished as she was and she probably knew it.

            "See?" he added, because he had to say something. "I knew that it didn't damage anything in my magical core."

            Hermione took a deep breath and seemed to come back to herself. "This has to be the result of the magic that you told me Malfoy gave back to you," she said. "I'm sure that if we actually looked at your core after you used a Dark Arts spell, we would see the damage."

            Harry shrugged. "Fine. Wait a few hours and look again." He was confident that she would find nothing incriminating, since he had used the scanning spell himself in the past, right after casting a Dark spell, and seen no change. The Ministry's lies were, perhaps, lies told for a good reason, to stop the use of magic that would put a lot of people's lives in danger, but they still weren't true. "Anyway, we're getting away from the subject. So things have changed now, and things changed for me a long time ago. What are you going to do about it?"

            "Think," Hermione flung back at him, getting up from the chair and waving her wand in a way that made the cylinder's image vanish. "You've given me so much to think about that I hardly know where to begin."

            Harry paused, then bowed his head. "That's fair," he said. Things had altered for him in a riotous rush, but he knew Hermione hadn't had the same experience. Among other things, the revelation that Dark spells didn't automatically "corrupt" or "drain" him was old for him, and Hermione didn't have the close connection to Malfoy that the Mark implanted in Harry, so no reason to take him as seriously as Harry did.

            Hermione flounced out the door. Harry crouched down in place on the floor and slowly blew out his breath.

            Well. Less positive than I'd hoped, more positive than I'd feared. It seems she and Ron aren't going to throw me out quite yet.

            But they might fear him, and that might make them change their minds. Harry really didn't know what was going to happen next on that score.

            He returned to the puzzle turning in the center of his mind, the changed Mark and the evidence of--well, no, not of good-will, but of a different personality than he had thought Malfoy had, because he had given the magic back instead of trying to keep it.

            In the end, though, Harry kept running up against the same two conclusions. First, yes, Malfoy was different.

            Second, Harry was not going to think about him any differently than he had before, as long as Malfoy stood in the way of his getting his freedom and getting away.

*

            Draco opened his eyes and stretched his limbs. He had slept for several hours, by the great gilded clock on the wall, and had expected the usual, heavy grogginess that he got in his head when he did that.

            But instead, light seemed to fill his limbs and propel him onto his feet. When he tried a step, his foot moved as if it would break into a dance on its own. And he felt smug and glorious in the way that he had once when he wore shimmering peacock colors and Lisa and Thalia both found themselves unable to take their eyes from him.

            Draco paused. He knew the source of those changes, at least on the surface: the exchange of magic with Harry. It made sense that it would have strange effects, and that those effects would fade with time, as his body became used to the realigned magical reality between them.

            And yet, he had experienced such things before when he had used stolen magic--granted, never after so intense a stealing--and they did not feel the same. He usually felt then as if he had eaten a heavy meal, not as if he wanted to run about in circles simply to use the energy.

            Draco cast a scanning spell, and watched in disbelief as his full core hovered before him. There was no way it should have been full, after the magic he had poured into Harry. He leaned back against the bed and reconsidered, frowning. Perhaps the changes in his power level were severe enough to disrupt the scanning spell and make it show a false image of his core.

            But numerous other scanning spells, which used different images and more complicated incantations, failed to show anything different. According to them all, he was in the best of health and the most full of power that he'd ever been. Draco stared at the last, fading image, a circle that blazed with purple light, and turned his wand over in his fingers, considering.

            There was another possibility, one that he had heard of when he studied mirror magic and rejected out of hand, because it required the bending of basic physical laws as well as ordinary theory. On the other hand, he had developed a spell that would test for such a thing should it ever appear.

            Heart feeling as if it beat right behind his teeth, Draco cast his developed spell.

            The air around him turned crystalline, with a red flush behind that broke through the crystal like the coming of dawn. Draco ducked his head as the light flashed over him and broke against the far wall. He turned around, knowing what he should see, convinced that the pattern in his head would never match what was actually displayed there.

            But it did. On the wall was a half-circle pattern of brilliant scarlet eyes, like the eyes on a peacock's tail, with slender golden lines connecting them to an orange dot in the middle. Draco had chosen primary colors when he created the spell, reckoning they would make a lot of sense for an event that violated the primary orders of nature.

            Draco felt his heart fill the room now with its beat, and fill the world. If anyone outside Thylacine's Lair had known what had happened here, or cared, they would have understood the feeling of celebration that consumed him. He didn't resist the desire to dance, now, though he made it a vigorous, spinning circle of kicks instead of one of the waltzes that his mother had tried to teach him. It expressed his feelings much better.

            He and Harry had done the impossible. Of course, as far as Draco knew, no one had ever created a test that consisted of both parties linking with complex magic, then one of them casting an even more complex Dark spell and giving his magic to the other, only to have the second one return the magic and change the bond that had connected them in the first place.

            He and Harry had created magic, not simply changed it. It was as unlikely, as unique--as impossible--as destroying magic, but there it was. There it was. There was more energy humming through the Mark and the bond between them now, and doubtless through Harry's body, than either of them had begun with.

            Draco, thinking as best as he could through the golden daze of excitement that filled him, doubted the effect would be permanent. It would fade, and he would feel ordinary once again. But he and Harry could duplicate it again. He would find a way to make sure that they could.

            It only proved that they were stronger together than apart. And it proved that he would be a fool to let Harry go.

            Draco pressed his knuckles to his mouth and forced himself to stop dancing. Someone might come to check on him and see. He had to think about this, about the longer implications for the future.

            He remembered his revelation about Harry, the sheer conviction that he would rather die than be a slave, something Draco had never believed before. He had changed the Mark in response, but that was only a first step. They would both have to compromise. Harry would have to learn to bow to a rope around his neck, because the moment Draco loosened it, he knew Harry would vanish.

            He had to be made to understand.

            Without the making, Draco thought, his mind calming a bit as he contemplated the long task in front of him. He cannot be forced. But he has to be coaxed along, because he'll never listen to me if I simply give him his freedom as a good-will gesture.

            Yet the thought of those plans couldn't hold him for long. He turned and flung his mind back into exuberance, listening to the song in his veins, the way that his blood danced to that new music.

            He and Harry had done something new. They had done something that Draco thought he could dedicate his stored magic, and his power, and his life, to. Here at last was a good reason for stealing the stored magic. If he hadn't done that, he could never have created the Mark, and that would have meant he'd never have made this discovery.

            The joy had to touch Harry, too. Or it would once he understood what had happened. Draco could not imagine a halfway intelligent wizard whom the news wouldn't fascinate, and Harry was far more than halfway intelligent.

            Far more than that, Draco thought, and his hand slipped down to his cock as he thought about it. Harry's passion in the battle, the way that he had given up his magic with a joyous laugh when he thought he would win freedom with it. Draco could not conceive of embracing death the way Harry had, but he could imagine what would happen when Harry turned that passion around and used it to hold on to life as hard.

            Draco thought further, of Harry willing, aroused in his arms, intoxicated and dazzled by the power, using it by Draco's side, creating more of it, exulting in the magic and exalted by it, his green eyes so bright that Draco could see them burning on the far wall beside the telltale pattern, the--

            Draco came with a gasp. The orgasm forced itself out of his body, given extra strength by magic and joy, and Draco collapsed on the bed. When he tried to sit up, he fell back again.

            Oh, Harry, he thought, and closed his eyes, more than ready for another nap. With luck, he would dream of Harry. With even more luck, he would dream of a way to convince Harry to pursue what they had.

            And after all, is not my luck greater than that of any other wizard alive?

*

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