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A Reckless Frame of Mind	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 15025 -:- 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 Eight—An Obnoxious Potter

            “But I don’t want soup.” Harry folded his arms, to the point that his hands were sticking under his armpits, and frowned at the mediwitch who had brought his lunch. This wasn’t Laura, the one who had so disliked him, but an older woman, probably in her forties, with a deep weariness in her eyes that made Harry suspect she disliked her patients in general. She had brown hair streaked with gray tied in such a tight bun on the back of her head that it must have hurt. Harry liked to think that that was what caused the pain on her face, and not him.

            It wasn’t as though he looked forwards to hurting people or making their days hard. But he was damned if he would stay in St. Mungo’s long enough for Malfoy to figure out the truth, and escaping before he had to use his own wandless magic for it was starting to look better and better.

            “Please, Mr. Potter, just eat it.” The mediwitch rattled the tray, on which the soup and two small scones sat, temptingly. It had been a long time since breakfast, which Harry had refused anyway, and Harry felt his stomach rumble. But he kept his gaze fixed on her face and shook his head anyway.

            “I want eggs,” he said, doing his best to try for a two-year-old’s tone.

            The woman’s mouth twitched, and then settled into a firm line. She gave a glance at the door, as if to reassure herself it was shut, and then turned back to him with her wand raised. Harry tried to calm the immediate mad pounding of his heart. The sight of someone else with a wand out when he didn’t have access to one tended to agitate him, but this time he had invited it, and he thought the woman kind enough that she wouldn’t do him permanent harm.

            He thought.

            The mediwitch moved the wand in a pattern of linked star-shaped lines, and Harry found himself abruptly bound to the bed, his folded arms tied around his chest so tightly he couldn’t move them, his legs crossed in the same way. He could only move his mouth and blink, and a moment later a spell settled in what seemed to be his vocal chords. Harry suspected that trying to speak wouldn’t be very productive right now.

            “There,” said the woman in great satisfaction, laying her wand aside. “That’s what we use for babies when they won’t eat. It should work just as well for you.” She picked up a spoonful of soup and joggled it at him. “Now, Mr. Potter, open your mouth wide for the Hogwarts Express!”

            Harry had to open his mouth, since he didn’t like the metal edge of the spoon and the hot soup nudging at his lips, but there was no law that said the soup had to stay there. The moment the spoon started to withdraw, he spat the soup back out over the mediwitch.

            She gave a little shriek as the liquid dripped down the front of her neat blue robes, and then stared hard at him. Harry tried his best to look sullenly triumphant, though his heart was pounding harder and harder as his muscles flexed, trying to find some way out of the restraints.

            “What a naughty baby you are,” the mediwitch breathed, and then picked up her wand and cast another spell. Harry felt it slide across the muscles of his throat, but couldn’t tell what it did until he tried to swallow and failed to do so. He felt the panic suddenly rear up in his chest like a living being, clawing and screaming and demanding an outlet.

            “You can swallow, but only when I touch your chin,” said the mediwitch firmly, and put the spoon back in his mouth.

            Harry squeezed his eyes shut as the soup invaded his throat, and for a moment he imagined drowning in steaming chicken. What would happen if she wasn’t fast enough? Or if she let him struggle for a moment just to prove her point, and that moment was a moment too long—

            She touched his chin. He swallowed with a click of abused muscles, and glared at her. She simply chuckled and raised the spoon for another try. Harry felt a sickness creep through him. He hated this.

            But he had chosen this course, and not all the mediwitches would be as pleasant or long-suffering as this one. He set himself to endure.

*

            Draco frowned at the book in front of him. It was the sixth one that had told him the Cassandra Curse was not real, only a nightmare invented by a few mad wizards who might have believed they could actually use the incantation, but had never proven able to do so. It was a good candidate for the cause of madness in Potter, that was certain, but why couldn’t Potter have picked up a book and read for himself that it wasn’t real?

            Unless the madness prevents him from admitting the truth of anything that might break his delusion.

            The more he learned about what seemed to have happened with Potter, the less sense it made.

            Draco shook his head and leaned across the table to put the book on the Cassandra Curse back, stirring a frown from Madam Pince. He stared coolly back, and she finally flushed and looked down at the tome in front of her.

            He’d come to use the Hogwarts library because it was the most extensive archive of information on such magic—far larger than his store of books at home, which was impressive but focused mostly on the spells and Legilimency he had used to create Psyche-Diving. He had hoped for one book, just one, in the Hogwarts library that would help him to understand Potter’s symptoms, especially the ones that managed to make him look sane even as he lied reflexively and denied the truth when he heard it.

            There was nothing, however. The scant descriptions of the wizards who claimed to have “invented” the Cassandra Curse made them sound incompetent to function in normal society. And Potter had managed to live for a year under this curse, even survive dangerous missions on which he must have worked alone.

            Draco abruptly paused and cocked his head. Could that be part of the source of the trouble? He’d been proposing complicated psychological and magical explanations, and yet he’d ignored the evidence of simpler troubles right in front of him. Draco disliked that tendency of his brain. It had been happening more and more often on this case.

            Potter had spent a year alone. The only time his friends had felt any deep concern for him, according to the file Draco had read, had been a time when he was hexed by an unknown assailant in Knockturn Alley and nearly died. But the moment he had properly come out of danger, he had started lying again, so their sympathy had faded back into sad exasperation quickly enough.

            One of the descriptions of the Cassandra Curse said that it can waver when its victims are in extreme danger.

            Draco pushed the thought away. He had no time to admit the truth of legendary Dark magic right now. He was on the track of a thought.

            Potter was naturally independent anyway—Draco had seen that in the risks he ran at school, when any normal child would have broken down and cried for an adult—but he had needed his friends. Draco imagined him gritting his teeth and adapting to what would have been, in his twisted version of reality, a sudden and unwarranted isolation, slowly stripping himself of his immediate reaching-out to his friends, accustoming himself to danger—

            And what would have happened if he were hurt while living with his new and twisted mindset? He would have decided that he’d alienated his friends with his “truths,” and he would “know” that he couldn’t go to them for help. He would have had to heal himself, outface dangers without flinching, and suffer any consequences and side-effects, such as nightmares and the pain of recovery, by himself.

            The man who had refused to relax in Draco’s arms yesterday no matter what he did suddenly made much more sense.

            Draco licked his lips. He was not dealing just with madness. He was dealing with the legacy of a year under that madness, one that had managed to bend and twist Potter’s perceptions of the rest of the world outside his own head but not entirely destroy them. It was, indeed, a combination of insanity and clear-eyed evaluation of his own circumstances.

            It was a challenge.

            And if Draco could conquer it…

            It would make his heroics in merely healing Potter look like nothing. Just dispelling the madness, he understood now, would not return Potter to a productive position in the Ministry; he probably couldn’t trust any other Auror enough to work with a partner now. The legacy of what had happened would linger between him and his friends. But Draco could change that.

            Now that he understood.

            He plucked one more book on the Cassandra Curse from the shelves and went to Madam Pince to check it out. He would consult it, certainly, but his skin burned now with the desire to confront Potter with his new comprehension.

            Could he hold out against gentleness and an offer to meet him on his own ground, respecting his difficulties and countering them? If he could, he was not human.

*

            Harry wheezed, trying to breathe around the constriction in his throat. It loosened a bit, and he gratefully gasped in air, but in the next moment it tightened again, and the edges of his vision flashed with red. He controlled the impulse to hiss in Parseltongue, the way he had during the war when Voldemort set pythons on him.

            He had thought that not every mediwitch would be as calm and patient as the one who had fed him breakfast, and he was right. Laura Fallowchilde was not a tenth as patient and calm.

            She flicked her wand, releasing the Strangling Spell again for a few moments, and then said sweetly, “Are you ready to tell the truth now, Mr. Potter?”

            Harry glared at her. He knew he must look a sight, with his eyes still bulging and his face bright red and his sweat so slicking down his hair that his fringe needed no extra encouragement to lie flat over his scar. But he didn’t care. He hadn’t surrendered to Voldemort, either, even when the bastard had attacked his mind during the war with visions of Hermione and Ron being raped and tortured.

            “Fuck you, bitch,” he said.

            And then the Strangling Spell tightened once more, and he couldn’t say anything else. He dropped back on the bed, his lungs laboring, his legs twitching and his heels beginning to drum. He clung to his resolve in the middle of a descending whirlwind of black and white, as if he were in the middle of a storm of stars. He would not yield and make them think him tame and compliant. That would only result in their wanting to keep him in St. Mungo’s longer.

            He wondered, dreamily now, as if he were falling asleep in snow, what would happen if Laura let the strangulation run too long. Perhaps she would kill him. Well, he had been risking death since he sliced his wrists open. This might not be too bad…

            “Release him!”

            Harry heard the shout from far away. He wondered if it had something to do with him. Perhaps it did. But it had come too late. He knew what the blackness of death felt like—he had felt it licking at him when he killed Voldemort, and again last year in Knockturn Alley—and this time there was no Hermione to save him.

            Abruptly, the constriction on his throat fell away. Harry might have blinked if he still had the strength.

            An enormous force slammed into his back, jolting his lungs. Harry gasped, and then began to cough. The force—a fist—hit him twice more, as the owner was apparently quite interested in violence, and then a pair of arms wrapped around him and pulled him against a strong chest. Harry couldn’t convince his own arms to work, or he would have embraced the shape back.

            He could hide his face against warm skin, though, and he did, enjoying even the sensation of small hairs tickling his cheek as he panted and breathed and panted again.

*

            Draco didn’t clearly remember what had happened after he stepped through the door into Potter’s room. He had seen the mediwitch with her wand raised, and seen the blueness of Potter’s face. He knew what that meant. Potter wasn’t breathing; someone had used the Strangling Spell on him. It had been a common trick in the Slytherin common room.

            But no one ever went this far.

            Draco had known that the mediwitch must hate Potter. She swung around when he entered, and her eyes were bright and wide and guilty. He had recognized her, vaguely, as the woman who suggested mistreating Potter because he deserved it.

            And as had not happened since he was eleven years old, Draco’s accidental magic exploded.

            The mediwitch’s wand went flying, and the Strangling Spell ceased in the same moment. The woman herself staggered, and a sudden red handprint appeared on her cheek—the same slap Draco wished he could give her. She made a thin sound of fear, but Draco didn’t look at her. He was moving rapidly across the room, all his attention focused on Potter, whom he did not want to die.

            If he perished, he promised himself, he would turn and loose such anger on the mediwitch as would have made his father proud.

            He hit Potter hard in the middle of the back, doing it until he heard the git’s wheezing breath, and then dragged him upright and nestled him against his chest. Then he turned his head to glare over his shoulder at the mediwitch.

            She had been standing up, inching to the side to retrieve her wand, but her hand fell nervelessly back to her side as she stared into his eyes.

            “Go,” said Draco quietly. He had never heard his own voice sound like that. There was menace in it that did not need to be louder, any more than the swaying of a cobra needed to have sound. “Go now, and if you dare come near Potter again, I will break every single one of your fingers.”

            That dried up whatever words she might have spoken to excuse herself. She simply closed her eyes, nodded, and then opened them again and backed out of the room, as if she wanted to make sure he would not spring on her if she turned away.

            Draco drew his own wand, then, and carefully cast a few spells that tested the regularity of Potter’s breathing and eased any pain he might be feeling in his throat; those were also standards in the Slytherin common room, as the solutions to the Strangling Spell. Then he ran his fingers through Potter’s hair, delighting in his ability to touch him without protest, and bent down to murmur in his ear, “It’s all right, Harry. I’m here now.”

*

            If only that were true.

            The surge of his own loneliness struck Harry by surprise. He had got to the point where he would depend on anyone, even Malfoy, for the reassurance and company he so desperately needed.

            No, he reminded himself. The reassurance and company you think you so desperately need. There’s a difference. And you should be ashamed for even thinking that someone who once called Hermione a Mudblood is a person you can depend on.

            With an enormous effort, he forced strength back into his muscles and managed to pull away from Malfoy. The other seemed reluctant to let him go; his fingers trailed through his hair, and he made no effort to remove his other hand, forcing Harry to shift away from under it until it dropped limply to his side. Then he folded his arms and regarded Harry with glittering, emotionless eyes.

            “Thank you for saving my life,” Harry said. He knew his words were too stiff and formal, but that didn’t matter when Malfoy would hear them as mocking anyway, and probably interpret them as resentment that Malfoy hadn’t let Fallowchilde finish the job Harry had started himself. “You didn’t have to.”

            Malfoy took several deep breaths. Harry prepared himself to be yelled at. It shouldn’t hurt, after all. This was Malfoy. His stupid, weaker side wanted to lose sight of that, but Harry wouldn’t let it happen.

            Malfoy’s hands came out. Harry braced himself for a slap. Instead, Malfoy slid his palms gently around Harry’s cheeks. Harry shivered. They were cooler than he had expected, the skin smoother.

            “You haven’t had a lot of choices, Harry,” Malfoy whispered. “I understand now. What it must have been like, to work by yourself, disbelieved by everyone, healing your hurts on your own, never knowing if you’d survive from one day to another without help against some of the dangers you faced. And you couldn’t even tell anyone. You didn’t keep a journal. You didn’t have a single friend who stood by you against the world, since the curse affected everyone you came into contact with. People less strong than you are would have exploded by now. That you haven’t is testament to your strength.” His fingers moved, wandering gently to the corners of his jaw, the hollows behind his ears. “I could never have done the same thing in your place. I don’t know one person in a hundred who could have.”

            Harry was frozen more effectively than he had been by the mediwitch’s spells this morning. He just stared at Malfoy. He’s figured it out. I can’t run. I can’t do anything now but whatever he wants, repeated in his brain.

            He tried to ignore the feeling of relief rising in him. If Malfoy knew everything and was about to take hold of everything, at least Harry would not have to be in charge of it anymore. He could nearly relish giving up control of his own life now, since he had done such a poor job of using it.

            “And then you tried to kill yourself because it became too much,” Malfoy continued, voice hypnotic. “You need not feel badly about that. It was selfish, yes, as suicide always is, but you must have thought you had no one left to hurt. And you had taken so much, and endured so long.” His fingers closed down a little, as though he wanted to memorize the shape of Harry’s face. “But you don’t have to be alone any longer, Harry. I’m here.”

            So deep was the tone that it took Harry a moment to listen to the words. When he did, he wanted to shout with both amusement and disappointment.

            He doesn’t know everything.

            Malfoy still didn’t know why he had tried to kill himself. He had no clue that Harry wanted to run away and live in the Muggle world. He thought Harry was simply a strong weakling broken at last, not someone who even now continued his plans to live and thrive by himself.

            Harry showed his teeth and ripped himself away from Malfoy’s grip. That grip had become easier to feel, he thought clinically. He suspected Malfoy had overplayed the card of touching him, to the point where he was starting to gain a partial immunity to it even as Malfoy was starting to gain a partial immunity to the curse.

            “You’re still wrong,” he said coolly. “I’ll still never let you in. And you can stop touching me any time now. If I didn’t know better, Malfoy, I’d say you were bent.”

            He rolled away onto the bed and buried his face in the pillows. Maybe that would get rid of the odd, tingling flush that seemed to have overcome it.

*

            Draco blinked at Potter for a moment, then smiled slightly. He should have expected that response, really. Along with incredibly courageous and incredibly strong, Potter was also incredibly stubborn. He wouldn’t trust that someone was on his side just because that person had said so. Draco would have to prove himself.

            He could do that.

            He stretched his arms above his head, never taking his eyes from the turned back of the figure in the bed. Potter had said he was wrong. But he was lying, which meant that Draco wasn’t wrong.

            He already had a new tactic to try. He was a Psyche-Diver who had gone for several days without Diving. He would use one of the rarer spells to get himself inside Potter’s soul tomorrow.

            “I’m still here for you whether you believe me or not, Harry,” he said. “And as for bent—well. If it were possible, you’re the sort of bloke who could turn a straight man bent, just to keep you.”

            He reached out, let one hand glide down that set shoulder, and then turned and strode from the room. It was time to see what Fallowchilde would do for him in return for not having her appalling treatment of a patient reported.

*

            Harry had to spend ten minutes after Malfoy’s departure battling hope. He finally strangled it and shoved its corpse in a closet.

            He’s lying. He doesn’t want anything to do with me. All these compliments and touches were just to get a hold over me so he could repay me for my victories in Hogwarts.

            Two more days.

*

            Mangacat: Well, it’s preslash in the sense that, while they touch, they don’t have a romantic relationship in the true sense of the word or explicit sex before the end of this story.

            MadnessWithinMe: Well, how do you feel about the possibility of Harry doing it to himself after this chapter?

            Draco_Harry_lover: Draco’s fairly sure he understands Harry’s situation now, so he’s unlikely to go nuts. And I won’t tell you who the caster is because that would be cheating. :)

Whiterage: Thank you! Detail is something I pride myself on. And yeah, it can definitely be confusing trying to keep track of how Harry’s statements appear to different people, but I hope I’ve provided enough coherent explanations.

Vixyanna: Since you left an e-mail address, to the update list you go!

Paigeey07, KLS, jbj1031965, Perona, thrnbrooke, Black_silken_kitty, Crio: Thanks for reviewing!
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A Reckless Frame of Mind

Chapter Eight—An Obnoxious Potter