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Forgive Those Who Trespass	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20650 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- 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.

Chapter List
- 5
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Thanks again for all the reviews!

Chapter Six�Slurry

�� Harry didn�t
like trusting Malfoy. He hated it even more when the corridors beyond the room
with the Pensieve proved to split into a twisting, weaving mess. He halted and
closed his eyes, trying to recall the memory of the pattern Malfoy had drawn on
the wooden table, but he only remembered stray flashes of straight lines and
gentle curves, nothing that would form connections and show him the way out. He
opened his eyes with a hiss of frustration and turned to face Malfoy.

�� Malfoy wore
a very faint smile, as if he were enjoying the attention and trust Harry was
forced to lavish on him but didn�t like to say so. He caught Harry�s eye and
then glanced demurely away, his mouth twitching.

�� Yes, very
funny,� Harry said. �I suppose that you do
remember the way through this maze, Malfoy, and you�re not lying?�

�� The other
man snapped a glare at him. At first Harry thought it was because he�d been
called a liar, and then Malfoy lifted a hand and repeated the rib-slapping
gesture he�d used earlier when they lay close together.

�� Oh, for
God�s sake.� Harry pushed a hand
against his forehead and ran it up through his hair. �Why does it matter so much what I call you, Malfoy
or Draco?�

�� Malfoy
folded his arms and glared. Harry could read the retort in his eyes: if it didn�t
matter what Harry called him, then Harry
could bear the burden and name him Draco without causing any difficulty.

�� Fine,�
Harry said, but he scowled, so that Malfoy would know how much he resented
this. �Draco. You know the way through the maze, don�t you?�

�� Malfoy
nodded and brushed past him. Harry flinched when he felt a brief touch from the
sponge-like flesh along the man�s sides. At least Malfoy was walking more
easily now than he had yesterday, or what felt like yesterday, thanks to good
food and good rest.

�� I hate this, Harry thought, trailing
behind him. I want to despise him, but I
can�t when I see how much he�s suffered. And then I want to pity him, but I can�t
because I don�t have any idea what he might have done to people more deserving of that pity. And I can�t ask him
for details because of the inadequacies of the communication sphere.

�� The best
they could hope for at the moment, Harry thought, was to find another Pensieve.
Hopefully it would have more memories this time, and they would be less
confusing. And then he could finally decide which Draco was just a creation of
his imagination, the victim or the torturer, and treat him accordingly, while
banishing the false one.

�� He walked
on a few more steps, frowning fiercely to himself, before something occurred to
him.

�� You just called him Draco in your mind. With
no prompting.

�� Harry
shuddered and shook his head violently. That was not a good sign, and not because he particularly cared what name he
gave the git. Auror Rosethorn, their instructor in Psychology, had told them
that Aurors couldn�t afford to become too intimate with those they chased down
and held, even if they thought the criminal had been wrongfully accused. And on
the list of signs she�d given the trainees that indicated they were becoming
too invested in the fates of individuals instead of in justice was the calling
of a suspect by his or her first name.

�� I�ve got to retain my emotional distance, Harry
lectured himself as he marched after Malfoy. Malfoy, Malfoy, it was definitely Malfoy in private, no matter
what he had to call him aloud. I can�t
afford to act like he�s my friend, especially after this.

�� Because the
corridors around them were simply plain stone and Malfoy was moving through
them with no sign of hesitation, Harry busied himself with two things: casting
spells that would detect traps and magical creatures, and making up a list of
questions that he wanted to ask the bastard the next time they stopped walking.

*

�� Harry had
long since lost track of where they were in the maze, and admitted to himself that
he couldn�t have found his way back on his own. Hermione would have been sure
to scold him for that, but of course, she
would have been taking notes on the route as they went. Her memory was
excellent.

�� See, that�s yet another of the many reasons
that I need to rescue her, so that she can do my thinking for me, Harry
told the small section of his mind that had succumbed to pessimism and tended
to swing into despair whenever he wasn�t watching it. I can�t get along without her. And I can�t get along without Ron,
either.

�� The thought
of life without his friends, much less the reactions of all their friends and
family that he would have to face if he went back up without them, made him
shudder. There was�there was no point to living that life. He would find Ron
and Hermione down here and rescue or avenge them.

�� Or die trying, maybe.

�� But dying
along the way was a better alternative than trying to live without them.

�� The loss of
his friends as traveling companions, as research partners, as comrades-in-arms,
as themselves, was especially acute
when he contrasted them with Malfoy. Until he found out the truth�and Malfoy
had no particular reason to tell him the truth about anything�he wouldn�t know
how to treat the man. He would always be uneasy, flickering back and forth
between two attitudes, certain he was being too hard one moment and too soft
the next.

�� Ron and
Hermione balanced him, he thought.
They had solid ground of their own to stand on, very different but
complementary pieces. They showed him what it should look like. Without them,
he swayed back and forth with any thought that struck him, or with any emotion,
any fear.

�� Maybe he
could have built some solid ground of his own if he had stayed with Ginny. He
had worked hard on it, at least. But this, this thing, this knowledge that he was gay, had reared up and hit him in
the chest instead. He�d gone back to floundering.

�� Go away, he thought at his sexual
orientation, or preference, or choice, whatever the hell it ought to be called.
He was no good with terminology, either. Go
away, and leave me alone. Then I can make a marriage, have a family, and be on
steady terms with something in life
other than Ron and Hermione and my Auror training.

�� He stopped
abruptly. Malfoy had come to a halt in front of him, one hand lifted
commandingly for silence. Harry controlled the impulse to complain that he had proceeded in silence and listened
instead, carefully positioning his wand so that it pointed around Malfoy�s body
into the tunnel beyond.

�� Nothing
audible. But when Harry had concentrated for some time, trying to subdue even
his breathing and heartbeat to the push of the silence, he made out a faint,
compelling tingle of magic. His mouth tightened. There was something powerful up
ahead. An artifact, perhaps, or a cursed room. Harry knew of nothing else it
could be.

�� Malfoy fell
back towards him and leaned his face as close to Harry�s as possible�quite unnecessarily,
Harry thought, since it wasn�t like anything would hear his voice. I remember this place, he mouthed in
exaggeration. Danger.

�� Harry gave
him an exasperated look.

�� We can�t bypass it, Malfoy continued
calmly, and then had to repeat that when Harry shook his head, not
understanding the first time. We�ll have
to go across it. Be careful.

�� Harry
nodded. �What kind of danger?� he whispered, his words more breath than sound.

�� Malfoy made
an open-palmed shrug, less impressive than it should have been, given his
shorter fingers. Harry nodded again and moved ahead, then paused when he saw
Malfoy�s incredulous look.

�� Are there
any more turns of the maze between here and there?� he asked.

�� Malfoy
shook his head.

�� Well,
then. I�m the only one who has a wand. I should have thought it was simple
enough, even for the likes of you, Draco.�

�� He received
a scowl in return, but it was a thoughtful one. Harry rolled his eyes and
turned away, irritated with himself for bothering to read nuances in his enemy�s
face. Maybe he could say it was a tool for keeping them both alive, but it also
felt uncomfortably like that intimacy he was trying to keep away from.

�� Malfoy�s
hand reached out and rested on his elbow, an odd, cool shape, the stumps of his
fingers barely able to cover the bone. Harry took the hint and moved slowly
enough that the other man could keep the touch intact.

�� His body
ran with small shivers, the same kind that had plagued him last night when he
lay down with Malfoy in his arms. Harry told himself that now was not the time, and lifted the globe of
light in front of him as the walls of the tunnel abruptly opened up and drew
back.

�� The room in
front of him was immense, and the floor was oddly patterned. Harry frowned down
at it for a moment before he recognized the pattern. He controlled the impulse to
laugh. Apparently, the universe liked irony; he�d had to cross a huge
chessboard to get to the Philosopher�s Stone in his first year, and now here
was another one in front of him.

�� But without
chess-pieces, he noticed, as he took another, longer look. The only light came
from soft, subdued white globules that hung from the ceiling, so high above
Harry had no idea what they were made of. The floor beneath him gleamed, solid
enough when he conjured a small stone ball and rolled it across the tiles. Of
course, that didn�t prevent some of it from being illusion, but a spell to
discern glamours provided no results.

�� I don�t
like this,� Harry hissed to no one.

�� Malfoy�s
hand squeezed his elbow, proving that he wasn�t alone in more than one sense.

�� Harry finally
decided, reluctantly, that they had no other choice but to go forwards. As
Malfoy had said, the tunnel�s walls spread out to become the room�s, and there
was no way for them to bypass it. Of course, perhaps there was another way in
the maze that they could use, but if Harry turned back now, he might as well
admit that he didn�t trust Malfoy to lead him through at all. And with his
luck, he would just get lost and stand there futilely banging his head against
the rock until Malfoy came to rescue him.

�� The image
was an unpleasant one. Harry liked to be the rescuer, not the person in
distress.

�� He glanced
back at Malfoy, wondering if any other memories of the place had come to the
git, but he only shook his head. Harry stared ahead, licked his lips, and then
began the walk across the smooth chessboard.

�� It was
surprisingly unpleasant to step on, given that it was solid and his spells hadn�t revealed any hidden death-traps.
Perhaps it was simply Harry�s paranoia talking, but he didn�t like the
smoothness of the dark squares, or the grainy nature of the pale ones. More
than once, the pale ones shifted under his feet, though they never slid away.
They seemed to be made of particles of something packed solid. Harry shuddered
with the thoughts of what the something could be, and quickened his steps.

�� He and
Malfoy reached the halfway point. It was only there that Harry noticed Malfoy
was timing his steps carefully, so that they never fell far behind Harry�s
strides. Harry frowned at him, but Malfoy only offered a hands-wide gesture and
a shake of his head. He felt he should do it, Harry translated, but he didn�t
really know why.

�� Something grabbed
his foot.

�� The next
moment, pain like nothing Harry had ever known flared through his body, from
his foot up. He screamed and fell to one knee, trying desperately to get his
wand in position, turn his body to protect Malfoy, and see what was happening
all at once.

�� When he
glanced down, he saw a dead-white tendril, barbed and edged with transparent
hooks, curling out of the floor and into his foot. The barbs were sunken into
his skin, pulsing and quivering, yanking on his bones. Harry had time to notice
that much before the pain flared again and he tipped his head back, screaming.

�� Malfoy
clutched at him, probably demanding reassurances soundlessly, but Harry couldn�t
give them, and he couldn�t move.

�� And then
the�

�� The pain
was gone, and so were the bones of his foot.

�� Harry
stared down, dazed with disgust and horror to the point where he could only
watch. The hooks were no longer translucent, but bulging and rippling with some
thick and pasty concoction. They were also still buried in his foot, and from
that and the way they quivered, Harry thought he knew what had happened. This creature
had somehow melted his foot bones, transforming them into a kind of slurry, and
was drinking them.

�� Rage
provided the spark that fear had made impossible. Harry aimed his wand at the
tendril and intoned the Cutting Curse.

�� The spell struck
the tendril, but didn�t slice straight through, as Harry had thought it would.
Instead, the tendril chipped and scattered. Harry stared, sick, and finally
realized what it must be made of: bone itself. The tendril withdrew into the
floor, its barbs flailing and spilling the liquid remains of what had been his
own bones a few moments before in every direction.

�� Malfoy
cried out, and Harry whipped his head around. More tendrils were emerging from
the floor, white legs that hauled more and more legs up behind them. Harry
couldn�t see any heads to the creatures, whatever they were. There were only
endless, jointed, flapping legs, like the limbs of spiders, and the angles and
the barbs that protruded from them, aiming straight at Harry and Malfoy.

�� Harry
dulled his own fear again. This was a situation for a hero. He knew what he
needed to do.

�� First, he
cast a spell that Transfigured the slopping, pudding-like mass of his foot�a
pouch of flesh without bones to anchor it, in a jelly-like casing�into a block
of light wood, which would slow him down much less when he attempted to walk.
Then he seized Malfoy around the waist, cast a Feather-Lightening Charm on him,
held his wand out, and shouted, �Adlevo
meum!�

�� The spell
curled around him with a sharp snap,
hauling him off the ground so fast that Harry experienced a rush of dizzy
disorientation for a moment. But he wasn�t on his broom, and he knew how to
control this spell�one of the first ordinary spells, outside the realm of those
countercurses and charms specific to Defense Against the Dark Arts, that he had
proven good at during his Auror training. He stuck out his legs to slow his
momentum, all the time clutching Malfoy with one hand and his wand with the
other. They turned in a gentle circle, raised fully twenty feet above the
crawling creatures.

�� Harry
stared down at them. They had oriented on him and Malfoy, and the nearest bone
limbs were raised in greedy desire, the barbs on them flexing and curling like
tiny arms. Harry waited, tensely, to see if they were about to climb on top of
each other and attempt to reach him and Malfoy that way, but they didn�t seem
to be that bright.

�� He wondered
for a moment why his spell to detect magical creatures hadn�t found them, and
then made a face at himself. He�d only checked this room. The creatures had
been waiting in a room below.

�� And, too, they might not exactly fit the
spell�s definition of �creature.�

�� Draco,� he
asked, keeping his eyes firmly on the nearest stamping and circling
spider-things, �can I kill them?�

�� Malfoy,
scared and shaken though he must be�especially if these were the creatures that
had drunk his bones out of his chest�still managed to summon the communication
sphere and hit the facet that signified immortality
of body.

�� I thought
so,� Harry said sourly.

�� He thought
it through, his eyes narrowed. The creatures hadn�t ventured beyond their room
into the maze, which could be a sign that they were bound to remain here. On
the other hand, they could obviously sense food; the one that had attacked him
had probably done so because the bones of his foot had finally come close
enough to trigger its appetite. He and Malfoy might leave the room by the
doorway that Harry could see on the far side, only to draw the things after
with the promise of a free meal.

�� Can they
get through stone?� he asked Malfoy.

�� A helpless
shrug.

�� Damn,� Harry
said, and forbore to say that Malfoy was being extremely useless right now. He hadn�t thought of a plan, either.

�� Except�

�� Do you
know a spell that will enable me to find out what something is made of?� he
asked.

�� For that suggestion, he received a stare
that suggested he was mad and a touch on the bones of Malfoy�s wrist.

�� Yes, I
know they�re made of bone,� Harry said patiently. With commendable patience,
really, considering the circumstances. �I was talking about the floor. I want
to see if it�s stone. If it is, then they can eat through stone, and trying to
conjure a stone barrier in their way when we get out of here won�t work.�

�� Once again,
he got a look that needed no translation: I
am impressed, Potter. Then Malfoy mouthed the incantation at him, over and
over again, with Harry softly repeating it until Malfoy nodded
enthusiastically.

�� Harry aimed
his wand at a patch of clear floor immediately beneath them, which the
spider-things kept shoving each other out of, and yelled, �Discribo!�

�� The beam of
blue light the spell produced shot straight down, hit both a black and a white
square, and bounced back to him. Harry blinked, suddenly overwhelmed by the
sensation of knowledge.

�� The black
material was the remains of flesh, the white of bone marrow. Harry swallowed, a
bit sick. He and Malfoy had literally been walking across the mangled layers of
the creatures� last meals.

�� Then he
forbade himself to feel sick. The important thing was that it seemed as though
the creatures couldn�t digest stone. And he and Malfoy, if they got out of
here, could hide behind a conjured barrier that should fill the mouth of the
next tunnel.

�� If they got out of here. The main
drawback of the Self-Lifting Charm was the same as that of weightlessness:
there was no way to go anywhere unless one had a solid obstacle to push
against. Harry and Malfoy were hanging in midair far from the walls and the
floor, and Harry was not about to descend long enough to push off from one of
the bone creatures.

�� He conjured
another stone ball and dropped it into the middle of the bone creatures while
he tried to come up with a plan. For a moment, they scrambled madly after it,
but then pulled back when they realized that it wasn�t bone. The stone ball
rolled away unmolested. Harry nodded. His plan to block the corridor with a
stone wall ought to work, then�and a good thing, too, since he doubted that he could
conjure a bulk of wood or any other material dense and weighty enough to
fulfill the same purpose.

�� Auror Gillyflower is always telling me that
I need to be more diverse in my spellwork. And now I can see why.

�� All right,
Draco,� he said, once again catching himself just in time and substituting the
right name. �We�ll have to sort of swim and sort of fly to the other doorway.
But we�ll have to work together and push off each other�s bodies, since
otherwise there�s no way that we can pick up speed. Do you understand?�

�� Malfoy
blinked, and then touched his chest.

�� We�ll be
as careful of that as we can,� Harry said. �But feel free to shove against me
all you like. Think of it as a return to one of your favorite pastimes,� he
added, knowing Malfoy might find strength from humor. �After all, what would
you have given in school to be able to hit me as hard as you could?�

�� Malfoy�s
face shut down and became unreadable. He raised a hand and laid it against
Harry�s chest, over his heart. Harry braced himself for a shove, but Malfoy
just left his palm there, staring at him, his face still absolutely expressionless.

�� Harry was
the one who turned his head away, his cheeks flaming for no apparent reason,
and said gruffly, �All right. Kick against me, now.�

�� Malfoy did
as he suggested, and at the same moment, Harry kicked away from him, retaining
only a hold on the other wizard�s wrist. They spun apart like a couple of
dancers, and half-tumbled, half-floated towards the far doorway. Harry spent a
moment wondering whether he would lose hold of his satchel, but in the end the
weight stopped dragging at him, and it swung back into line.

�� Harry
braced his heels against Malfoy�s legs and pushed,
and Malfoy gave a little yelp as that propelled them forwards a few feet. Next,
Harry pulled Malfoy hard in against him, angling himself so that Malfoy�s
delicate chest and lower body were aimed away from him, and they drifted
towards the door again, clasped together like�

�� Like lovers, Harry thought, and then
banished the comparison. He was working hard enough as it was, physically,
without dealing with the consequences of a thought like that.

�� Little by
little, yanking and tugging and angling and plunging like fish, they managed to
attain the doorway. Harry lowered his head to Malfoy�s and spoke quietly, just
in case the bone creatures, who had followed them in a hungry crowd across the
floor, could understand English. �This part is going to be tricky. Go limp and
trust me for a minute, then be ready to run the moment your feet hit the floor.
All right?�

�� Malfoy
blinked at him, then nodded. Harry smiled.

�� Then he
canceled the Self-Lifting Charm and dropped them both like stone balls.

�� Malfoy was
probably crying out, but he still had the Feather-Light Charm on him, and he
did nothing but bounce softly when he hit the floor. Harry dropped into a
crouch, spinning around on his knees and haunches, shoving Malfoy away from him
and pointing his wand towards the bone-creatures in the same moment. He heard
Malfoy gain his feet and start running away. He smiled briefly. For some things, you do want a Slytherin. A Gryffindor
would have stood there and argued or tried to help.

�� He watched the
hooks and barbs coming for his arms with a clear, cool head that he never had
anywhere else but the middle of life-threatening danger, and then conjured a
stone wall right in front of himself.

�� The sudden
displacement of air threw him back down the corridor. Harry heard the wooden
lump that had taken the place of his foot clack
as it hit the walls, and he rolled back upright hastily, to make sure that the
stone wall was big and broad enough to cover the entire mouth of the tunnel.

�� It was.
Then Harry waited for any barbs or tendrils to come curling through, as the
bone creatures tried to overthrow the wall to follow their prey.

�� Nothing happened.

�� Except a
sudden hug from behind him, Malfoy�s arms curling around him as if he would
never let go.

�� When Harry
looked up, Malfoy�s eyes were tightly shut, and the rest of his face wore an
expression of such gratitude that Harry had to glance away. He would have to
move soon, to make what arrangements he could about his foot and to ask Malfoy
questions, but for right now, he thought both of them would have found words
too awkward.

*

�� Paigeey07:
Heh, thanks. And Draco does know what the maze is supposed to look like, but
not everything they�ll encounter along the way.

�� WeasleyWench:
Thanks! There�s a lot of minor tensions before the complex, though.

�� Graballz:
Thanks for the reviews! It will be a while before Harry starts trusting Draco
again; as you can see here, his impulses towards both trust and distrust are so
strong that he doesn�t know which set to listen to. And as for Draco�s role in
the creation of what the DoM became, that has to wait for the proper moment to
be revealed.

�� Mangacat:
Not in this case. Those were all the memories in the Pensieve.

�� Dreiad:
Thank you. I�m having fun with the images and descriptions in this story�not least
because I don�t often get to use them in other stories I write.

�� Thrnbrooke:
Thanks for reviewing!

�� Myra: Harry
would feel better if he knew that Draco really did regret participating in the
torture for itself, instead of just regretting his own pain.
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Forgive Those Who Trespass