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The Curse	By : Samaelthekind Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2828 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: JK Rowling's Harry Potter series and its associated works and characters are not mine, and I do not profit from their use!

Chapter List
- 1-The Curse
- 2-Part 2
- 3-Part 3
- 4-Part 4
- 5-Part 5
- 6-Part 6
- 7-Part 7
- 3
- 4
- 5
The Curse (Part 4 of 7) by Samayel

"Having him underfoot that much was something I wasn't ready for, but after losing track of him for a few days I didn't want him out of my sight for so long. You might be chuckling to yourself over how I feel about having him near, but Granger, I made good use of his proximity. I used that ass of his like the streetwalking tramp he really was. I thrashed him as savagely as I pleased, used him morning, noon and night, and let him sleep on the floor near the bed rather than let something lower than a house elf sully it except when needed for my own convenience.

How you fanciful folk would have blanched, to see the things I've done with your precious hero. The things he's endured, and even begged for! They'd shock the naive, titillate the secretly wicked among you, and horrify the genteel! After a week or so of being a convenient toy for me to vent with...he barely bothered with clothes, just scruffed about the flat in his underwear, smudging a bit of kohl on here or there, watching the Muggle telly the flat came with, or making food for himself when he felt peckish...only dressing and going out to score drugs and liquor or to check in on his cache of belongings.

It was about then that I figured it out, dancing around his moods, showing enough constant contempt to keep him from sniffing out my desire for him. You have to live with someone before you can really know them, and I got to know him well enough to see something truly amiss. It nagged at me, in the back of my head, that his responses were always so different than anyone else might have been. He never showed the slightest bit of sexual excitement. You know what I mean...blushing virgin I'm not...so I'm used to seeing people who share my tastes show some interest in it, and not just a smile. It isn't always about orgasm, but there's usually some hint of sexual lust or need in every person looking for a partner. It's often buried or sublimated by a need for stimulation other than boring old pleasure, but it's there...just not in him.

Always the same, even when he was drugged to the eyeballs on whatever, he'd respond to our trysts with compliance, and then relief, but not lust...and that bothered me more than I liked. I pushed the edge of my interests in ways that would send you screaming from the room, and I savored every second of it, but Potter...only ever showed the kind of look one would expect from a junkie who had just gotten a desperately needed fix.

In a way, I brought this to a head, because I moved things far enough along that he wasn't getting by on a few rough tricks every night or two. He had an endless supply of what he needed, and I gave it to him freely. All the abuse and violation he could handle, as often as I could dole it out, and he took all I could give and eventually started to need more. In just a few months we spiraled out of control. He was getting restless, even in the few hours between sessions I can only describe as bestial. What he needs, no one can give him enough of, and it started becoming clearer to me in these last weeks.

Getting a spell past him is no small matter. He may not keep his wand handy, but his senses are sharp even through the drugs. In the end I had to spell myself while I was out of the house, then drift back in nonchalantly and examine him with Charmed senses. I found nothing the first time, but I was sure there was something at work that I couldn't explain.

No one behaves like he does, enraged even by affectionate thoughts that haven't been voiced or shown, utterly desperate for pain at constantly higher levels, unresponsive to pleasure except for vague relief when being hurt. I have never once seen him exhibit even marginal amusement at anything. He isn't 'pleased' by anything that I've ever seen, just relieved of some kind of burden that I can't detect. That isn't submission, that's inhuman, Granger!

It took some trips home to the manor to pick the libraries clean, but I found it...and there's a reason it's damned near undetectable, Granger. He was cursed, and I'm sure of it now, and once you read what I've read you'll know what I do."

Draco pulled a slim leather volume from his inner coat pocket and slid it across the table. The book was clearly old enough to have been bound in the era of vellum parchment and soft calfskin, and there was no title or writing on its exterior. When Hermione flicked it open and began leafing through its pages she turned paled and nearly dropped the book with disgust.

"Malfoy, do you have any idea how illegal, how Dark, a book like this is? It's a couple of hundred years old if its a day, and these are unquestionably Dark curses that haven't seen daylight since then!"

Draco placed his head in his palm and sighed with exasperation. "Yes, yes, yes...dark, evil, book of curses, totally illegal, etcetera, etcetera...can we move on to the part where you're damned lucky I even had this to find? I tore apart the family library during the few hours a day I claimed for estate management needs, just to keep Potter from wondering where I was off to so regularly.

It was largely true, too, since I let the elves gather anything I need to sign and pile it in the study until I drop by and clear the desk of paperwork, then I usually just head home, but I was able to scour the stacks while I was there...and what I found is on the twenty-third page in. Just read it, already!"

Hermione Granger gulped her tea and flipped to the pages concerned, holding the book with evident distaste and flinching while she read the handwritten notation and descriptors that someone had painstakingly penned at least two centuries before. It was clearly the product of a truly vile mind, and her hand shook slightly while she absorbed the meaning in the words. It dawned on her that Malfoy was likely right. It was small wonder no one had ever heard of such a spell...given that anything this loathsome would have been destroyed by the Ministry if found.

Some wizard had ironed out the basic principles of the human capacity for pleasure and pain...and had found a way to warp them. The spell left no lingering magic to be found, it did its work and was gone, but the damage it did only showed itself as an appetite for self destruction, a slow crawl into madness that others would not see as anything but tragic.

It carved away at the ability to tolerate the comfort of friends or family, turning those simple pleasures into agony, inducing the cursed to drive away anyone who would have taken the time to help or care. In time, it eroded the capacity to ever feel at ease, until every waking moment was a painful hell of its own, and the victim of the curse would surely self destruct rather than endure such a life.

"Oh...oh God. Harry...he's..." Hermione fought the urge to vomit while Malfoy somberly tucked away the small volume and sipped from his brandy.

"I know. You don't have to tell me. I've been living with it for months, living with knowing it for a week. That's not the end of it, Granger. If you read it all, read between the lines. He should have been dead years ago...just months after the spell was cast. I checked the book by Charm to see who else had opened it. It was Bellatrix Lestrange. Before she'd gone to Azkaban this book once found its way into her possession. It likely landed among my father's things when the others were jailed...and it's been there ever since, but she had Potter all to herself for a while at the end of the war. He wasn't the same when you freed him, was he? He should have been grateful...glad to have been rescued by a friend...pleased to see the war over with and start a new life, but he wasn't, was he? That's when you fell out, wasn't it? You cared, worried over him, showed it...and he lashed out, didn't he? Said something unforgivable, chased you and everyone else away, took off on his own...and by the time he left, everyone was happier to see him gone. No more harsh words, or flaring violence, no more epithets spewed at anyone who tried to help. Just conveniently gone.

The thing is, I don't think he knows he's cursed. It's instinct that's kept him alive all this time. He found a way to dim the pain, and anyone who wasn't a powerful wizard couldn't have done it. The booze, the drugs, the pain and isolation...they're all remedies for what he's enduring. He's been fighting off the worst effects of the curse...by picking a life that offers no comforting emotions and relief through pain, instead of from it. Anyone else would have dropped years ago, taken their own life, or died of disease or overdose, but he's still hanging on, using magic to heal himself.

There's an irony here that a person like you just wouldn't see, Granger. I thought I mastered him, made him my own because my strength was a perfect match for his weakness. Don't you see it? I never once ruled him...not even a little. He's stronger than any of us, and he only needed what I could give because it would keep him alive and able to function. I have what I thought I wanted...but it's killing him slowly...and as far gone as he is there can't be more than months to go before he runs out of strength and falls apart...but if I want to see him cured and alive...I have to let him go, because without that curse, I'm less than useless to him."

Draco poured the last of the brandy into his empty teacup and sighed, sinking into the cheap chair when the last of the tale was out of him and spoken. Hermione Granger was silent while the man in front of her gulped the last of the brandy to wash the bad taste of brutal honesty away. Her head was whirling with everything she'd taken in, horror mingled with hope, disgust blended with empathy.

"No...", she said softly, "I get it. There is a way to undo this...reversals are a whole field of study I've worked in extensively...and, Malfoy...Draco...you were right, I was wrong. I needed to hear this. Harry can be brought back to normal...but unless his memory is erased he won't ever be the same, and we can't erase that much of his memory without damaging his mind, so that's out. It won't be easy to pull this off if he knows people are trying to help him.

Somehow...you're going to have to catch him unawares and immobilize him if we're even going to attempt this. He will fight back, and fight hard, if he catches wind of what we're trying to do. He may not even live through the reversal. If that spell you showed me is what Bellatrix did to him, it was done with pain and hatred, and to break it it will take the opposite...and that will put Harry through hell in the here and now, right up until the spell takes hold. He may not forgive anyone who put him through agony like what we're talking about.

I know what kind of symbolic acts are normally required, but this will take more than that. This isn't a penny ante curse from a Diagon Alley witch...it won't be answered with just symbolism or substitutes. We'll have to be in the exact place the curse was set, and to counter the hate, the rage and pain that were used to fuel the original curse...it will take love. Not desire, not lust...unselfish, unfettered love. The kind where someone else's well being is more precious to you than your own. The only question is this: do you think you have it in you to bring that to the spell? It doesn't matter what you call it, but you cared enough to unravel this when no one else could...and enough to show up here and risk a hexing to get me involved. How far are you willing to go?"

Draco sat in perfect silence for a moment, eyes downcast and heart heavy. He'd opened doors he'd rather have kept closed just to get this far...and some of the time he'd kidded himself about what he was after, what he desired from all this, but he wasn't kidding anyone any more. Certainly not Granger, who couldn't have been brought into this based on falsehoods. He couldn't even afford to deceive himself, because a false footing on this path meant failure, and he wasn't a great fan of failure...in fact, if forced to choose between failure and honesty, he'd take the honesty. He put the cup down and looked up.

"As far as I have to, Granger. Just give him his life back."

TBC
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The Curse