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Sister Healer	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2860 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Eight—Eight Blasts of Truth

            Draco watched Potter tumble to the ground, engaged with the jackals, and smiled against the murder in his heart. Well. That was it, then. He could go back to Miranda and report that one of his rivals was gone with a clean conscience.

            But would she want him gone? For the first time, Draco hesitated on that score. Miranda might favor Potter and need him close for some as-yet-unfathomed reason that Draco would find out later. He wanted to do whatever made her happy. If taking Potter away made her unhappy, then Draco and only Draco would be responsible for that, and she might dismiss him from her company because of it.

            He clenched his fists in front of him, and then pulled the jackals off Potter with a sharp backwards blow of his arm. Their every bite furthered and increased the confusion Draco had sent spilling into Potter’s mind. By now, he should be dazed enough that Draco could interrogate him with no further danger to himself.

            The jackals snarled, but obeyed him. They were his companions, after all.

            There was something disturbing in the thought, and Draco paused to contemplate it.

            At that moment, Potter surged to his feet and aimed his wand at him.

            Draco opened his mouth to bark, or laugh, at him for his presumption, for thinking that he could manage a spell that would bring Draco down now, when Draco was the only one in the room who knew what was going on—

            “Expelliarmus!”

            The spell tore Draco’s wand away from him, and sent it flying to Potter’s hand. Potter smiled at him, and although he was wobbly on his feet and his eyes were crossing, he still staggered towards Draco, panting something about how he would always be the better one and Draco should just understand that and give up now—

            Draco snarled and snapped his hand out again. From Miranda to him to Potter, the confusion poured down. Potter wavered to a stop and then put both hands to his temples, pressing the wands up against his ears.

            “You can’t stand against me,” Draco whispered. “You cannot replace me with Miranda. There would be many other ways I would be willing to let you go and live your life, but not this time, not in this way.”

            Potter, weaving back and forth exactly as though he’d had too much Firewhisky, raised his eyes to Draco. Draco didn’t expect the understanding and grief and anger he saw in them, none of it. He charged back and forth between all emotions except his love of Miranda, why shouldn’t Potter do the same thing when affected by Draco’s magic?

            His flaw.

            “You’re a twisted,” Potter whispered. “She turned you into one. I don’t believe it. She did. I never thought of that. A twisted whose flaw is making other people who spend time with her into twisted. I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. Possibly she can’t control it. Oh, Merlin.”

            Draco roared and struck at him again, so he shouldn’t know which direction was up, or which down, or whether the room was standing still or swaying. Perhaps he couldn’t even see, now, with all the colors that had to be swimming across his vision. “Shut the fuck up, Potter,” he whispered, his voice savage with his hatred. “You don’t have the least notion of what you’re saying. You don’t understand.”

            “I understand more than you think,” Potter said, and his face still had an arrested expression, and he still sounded as though he was pursuing an intelligent, reasoned line of conversation, although Draco should have made both those impossible. “The symbol. That was why it mattered to me, why it nagged at me and wouldn’t go away. She doesn’t have one. But she has a flaw, and I’ve never seen her heal. If she did, she might have used Dark Arts, the way Jerome was trying to.” He frowned a moment and stared into the distance. “But her companions?”

            “Shut up!” Draco had lost control of this conversation that shouldn’t even be a conversation somehow, and he didn’t know how. Another step nearer, another blast of Dark magic at Potter—

            His left arm ached, and for a moment he remembered the Mark and how long it had hurt, that it made him hurt when it sensed Dark magic, and that he should—

            No! Not possible. Not real. Miranda wasn’t using Dark magic. She hadn’t had a chance to pick up a wand since Lewin tried to kill her. Draco hadn’t seen her cast a spell yet. She was herself, the innocent woman who had given a chance to him, a less than innocent man, and he wouldn’t let Potter slander her in this way.

            Potter fell to one knee, now with his fingers trembling so badly on the wands that surely he would drop them any second. Draco tensed to lunge forwards, ready to snatch them up and carry them away if he had the chance.



            But Potter didn’t drop them yet. He reared back with a cry, his mouth so open that Draco had to turn his head away or stare down his throat, and whispered, “The others she corrupts, the ones she turns into twisted. Those are her companions. I know from the historical cases that sometimes they’re enchanted people instead of charmed animals or specters. Like the Death Eaters who served Voldemort.”

            “Shut up, Potter,” Draco said gently. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” The thought had come to him that if he wanted Potter to shut up, the best thing really was to go and do it himself rather than wait for his flaw or something else—something miraculous, it seemed to him at this point, would be needed—to do it. He took a step forwards and lashed out with one foot, hitting Potter in the gut.

            Potter wavered and fell. Draco snatched up his wand and thought for a moment of stepping on and splintering on Potter’s holly wand. But there would be time for that later. Right now, he wanted to punish Potter more than he wanted to cripple him.

            And crippling was pointless when he would die soon in any case.

            He gestured the jackals forwards.

*

            Harry wanted to weep as he lay there, and he didn’t know why. He knew he had lost something, but not what. Draco was turning against him, but that had always been going to happen. He had known it in some part of himself, from the moment he and Malfoy became partners. Why should he mourn it now?

            But he did. In some way that he didn’t know, and didn’t understand, he did.

            He had the sense that the revelations he had come to were more important, though, and so he stubbornly clung to them as teeth raked the arms he raised to defend his face, laying open skin to the bone, sending the blood flowing. A jackal’s teeth locked gently on his groin when he would have kicked, and so he lay there, screaming as they bit him, but with his mind not screaming, just drifting in and out on gentle, overlapping waves of confusion.

            The confusion hurt, but that didn’t matter, nothing mattered except that he had been right about Healer Alto. She was a twisted, but of a unique kind. She didn’t reach out to control people far away from her the way the unknown twisted with blue eyes did. She did it to the people right beside her, and made them into more traditional twisted than she was herself.

            Harry closed his eyes. He was losing skin and flesh. Then one of the jackals bit down, and he knew a finger was gone, because there was no other explanation for the stunning pain in his hand, and it ached, and he hurt, and he wept, and there were thick, bloody-dark tears on his cheek.

            He would probably die here, and then none of those revelations would matter.

            And because he had endured pain in his life and survived it, because he was accustomed to surviving no matter what happened, and because lying down and dying would feel like cheating when he joined Lionel, he relaxed some of the barriers he kept up and let go.

            The force of magic that flooded the room was uncoordinated and ungainly, the awkward thumps of an adolescent who had no skill with his fists, or at least with his wand. The walls trembled, Harry did know that, and something fell off a shelf with a thump. The jackals flew away from him, and Harry felt the warm drip of blood across his face where one of them, still gnawing, sprayed him with some of the flesh it carried with it. He heard a shriek that was probably Draco slamming into the desk and breaking something.

            Harry closed his eyes and continued pumping out more magic, sheer raw strength, the very thing he had been told never to do when he passed through his Auror training. There was nothing for it but this. There was nothing that mattered but this. He knew he was hurting Draco, but he found it hard to care, when Draco had cared so much more about hurting him. He let go the long processes it had taken him to master his wand, the way he had learned not to use Dark magic where most people could see it, the way he had learned to cope with his visions.

            Hell, it wasn’t as if the visions of other victims’ murders would be useful to him in the future, when he was dead. They sure hadn’t warned him about the tortures he would suffer. He pushed them out, too, and his head felt clean and dry and empty.

            Empty of confusion.

            He rolled up to one knee, bracing himself carefully with the hand that was missing the second finger, and saw Malfoy crouched against the far wall. His arms were around his head, but not in the way that they would have been if he was trying to shield himself against future attacks, Harry thought. He looked like someone clinging to a physical spar, or trying to, against a battering mental sea.

            Harry looked around for the jackals, and didn’t see them. It was possible they didn’t exist when Malfoy wasn’t concentrating on them, he was such a new twisted. Larkin, whom they had chased on their previous case, hadn’t always been accompanied by his own personal companions either, especially when they arrested him.

            Malfoy was a twisted.

            And the mission of the Socrates Aurors was to kill the twisted.

            Harry shifted his weight. He looked around and found his wand lying on the floor a short distance away. One stretch, and he would have it back in hand. He could use it to kill Malfoy then, and no one would blame him, not when they saw the messy red ruin of his finger, not when they heard the story.

            No one would blame him, except himself.

            “Malfoy,” Harry said softly. He was wary of intruding into that struggle Malfoy looked to be having, but at the same time, he didn’t know any other way to catch his attention. And he would need help from Malfoy himself to combat the influence Alto had used on him. “Wake up and tell me what happened.”



            Shadows stirred in the corners of the room, shadows with teeth and bright eyes. Harry ignored them as best he could, and took a step towards Malfoy. Malfoy made a whimpering noise low in his throat and promptly scooted away from him, raising his hand as though to shield himself against a blow.

            So I’m the scary one now? What the fuck? Harry hadn’t seen other twisted act like this, but then, he had barely been around them before they attacked, so he hadn’t had the chance. And they were mad by definition, and might do anything at a split second’s notice. “Malfoy?” he repeated, and stepped closer to him.

            “Go away.” Malfoy’s voice, but with an edge to it Harry had never heard before. It pointed itself against his throat, and his fingers closed around his wand without meaning to use it. Then he grimaced. With the slot where his finger had been still dripping hot and useless and slippery against the wood, he might not be able to use it, but of course he hadn’t thought of that before.

            “You don’t understand,” Malfoy said, before Harry could decide what to say in response. “Go away. You can’t understand about Miranda. You can’t understand about Daphne. You don’t care about me. No one does, except her.” Then his head jerked to the side, and he made an ugly noise that sounded like it should have shattered one of his teeth. “But I have to—she’ll leave me. So she doesn’t know, either.”

            Harry licked his lips, and took a risk, settling back on his heels so he was at Malfoy’s level. If Alto had made Malfoy into a twisted, she had done it awfully quickly, far more quickly than she had with the other people Harry had read about in the files, all of whom had worked with her for months. Possibly the effect would wear off more the longer Malfoy spent away from her. Harry didn’t know if he could help, or if his help would only make things worse, but he knew that he wanted to help.

            He glanced over his shoulder. The jackals had faded again, but the teeth were still there in the distance, a glimpse of flash and snap.

            “You’re afraid I might replace you at her side?” Harry asked. That was taking a risk, too, reminding Malfoy of his mad ravings, but it was something that had to be done. He might have come up with a way to lead Malfoy back to himself, but it would only work if he was right about what Malfoy’s problem with him was in the first place.

            Malfoy’s teeth snapped at him, and the jackals snarled more loudly from the corner. Harry forced himself not to glance back and see if they were turning solid again. The important thing was to keep his eyes on Malfoy.

            “You will,” Malfoy whispered. “You’re the hero who saved her life, after all. And you’re not the one she took to task about the Dark Arts.”

            Harry nodded. Well, he doubted everything was so straightforward as Malfoy made it sound, even if Alto had spoken to him about Dark Arts use, but that didn’t matter. What mattered was bringing Malfoy back from the edge and ensuring he didn’t go over it again.

Which might mean facing Alto alone.

Harry shrugged and cast a spell that numbed a bit of the pain in his missing finger as it tried to claim his attention. He would do that if he had to. He was so used to doing things if he had to that sometimes he thought doing something because he wanted to might be a novel experience.

“I would never, ever seek to replace you with her,” he said. “Do you want to know why?”

“Because you’ve never listened to her long enough to know how splendid she is!” Malfoy sat up and pointed a shaking finger at him; Harry watched his hand and wondered if he could spare one. “If you had, you would know that she’s tender and wonderful, and even offered to treat you after you were banned from hospital. And how do you repay her? By sneaking in and trying to get me to sign that bloody parchment!”

            Harry raised an eyebrow. “Do you want to sign it now? And I could sign a piece saying I’ll never go near Alto, if you like.” That would get him out of revealing what he was steadily suspecting he would have to reveal to Malfoy, and that was enough to make him clutch at the solution.

            Malfoy shook his head, looking like a wounded, cornered dog now. Harry heard another clash of teeth from behind him, and stiffened, trying desperately not to anticipate the way sharp fangs might close in the flesh at the base of his spine. “It’s no good, you idiot, don’t you understand? I have to—I have to—” He closed his eyes and lifted a hand as if he would claw at the shut eyelids.

            Harry sighed. So he would have to tell the truth, after all. Well. It was unlikely Malfoy would remember it or attach much importance to it, after, when they were dealing with the mess he had made as a twisted and the mess Alto had made of his life and the lives of everyone else who had come near her.

            “I would never want to be with her,” he said, “unless she cast some spell that made me want to—”

            Malfoy tried to stand, with a growl that made his throat vibrate, but only ended up sliding down the wall again. Harry nodded. That confirmed something he had suspected: the process of transformation into a twisted was nearly as exhausting as the process of trying to save someone from it. And Malfoy hadn’t been one for long, at least if the way he was acting was any indication. He still wasn’t easy with it, and the other twisted had shown the inclination to kill Alto and not other people, besides.

            “Because I was in love with Lionel,” Harry said.

            Malfoy paused, and his head lifted at that. “Your former partner?”

            My partner, now and forever. It would have been a crime to say that, however, just in case Malfoy did remember later. Harry swallowed and nodded, looking at the far wall.

            “Lionel Vane. He—he knew.” And never trusted me, had to wonder if I’d saved him because we were partners and friends or because I wanted us to be lovers and if that meant I wouldn’t guard his back as well from now on, tried his best to avoid the topic and what he could see burning in my eyes every time I looked at him… “Malfoy, it’s something that I try to forget, and it’s the central fact of my life. I loved him, and he died.”

            “So, you wouldn’t want to be with Miranda because you’re bent.”

            Harry sighed and nodded. “Yes, exactly.”

            Malfoy shoved himself forwards, then shook his head. “You can’t be. You haven’t looked at me the same way, and I know I’m enough to tempt any man.” Harry controlled his snort at that. He should be glad for the arrogance seeping through the words. It meant he had a chance of luring Malfoy further back into himself, instead of further away. “And I haven’t seen you look at anyone else, either.”

            “As if you’ve been looking,” Harry said, trying not to tense. He had promised himself that he would lay down his barriers if necessary to bring Malfoy back, because no one deserved the fate Alto would have made him suffer. Was he holding back on his promise now? Did he want to keep some scrap of privacy clutched to himself?

            Did I really think I could?

            “But you haven’t dated a man, either,” Malfoy continued obsessively. “It’s just this one, this Lionel, who wouldn’t look at you back?”

            Harry tossed his head up in spite of himself. Malfoy chuckled, but Harry put aside his instinctive reaction to the sound and scowled at him. “How do you know that?”

            “Because no one ever mentioned it. A crush the Chosen One had? That could stay secret—although I’m surprised it did—but not a date. Not a lover.” Malfoy pushed himself even closer, on elbows and knees, as though he’d forgotten what it was to stand. “He refused you. And you didn’t find someone else?”

            So he would have to tell it, after all. Well, Harry had been prepared for that, or he wouldn’t have started on this story in the first place. So he licked his lips and plunged into the heart of it.

            “It wasn’t—I’m not bent, as far as I know,” he said, and ignored the way Malfoy laughed. “I was just in love with him. Before, I had a crush or I was infatuated and thought I was in love, but after Lionel, I understand the difference now. He occupied my attention and my time. I would have done anything for him. Used Dark Arts, killed for him, died for him, betrayed my friends for him.” That was the night he had spent sitting up in bed, running his hands over his head and trying to understand what was happening to him. Ron and Hermione were more important to him than the women he dated or thought about dating, they always had been. Until Lionel. “I would have been happy if he hadn’t withdrawn from me, even if he wouldn’t date me. And since him, there’s nothing. I just got cut off from something that—I don’t know. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as wonderful as I think it would. But there’s been nothing since him, no interest, nothing.” He lowered his hands from his face and stared at Malfoy. “And that’s why I can assure you I have absolutely no interest in taking your place with Healer Alto. Whatever she’s done to you,” he added, because he still had no intention of letting Malfoy forget she was a twisted, if he did manage to get him back to normal.

*

            Draco didn’t think he’d felt that way about Daphne, and he had wanted to marry her. Or Miranda, and—the distance was tearing the answers out of him now—he didn’t think he could.

            Of course, he also thought Potter was describing obsession, not love, and he wanted to remark that Potter could as easily feel that for one person as for another, even if he was convinced at the moment he couldn’t.

            But his head was clearing, warping and turning and twisting, and he understood certain things that hadn’t been comprehensible to him only moments before.

            He had suddenly had companions. He had had a flaw. He had come here intending to kill Potter, although looking back now, his reasons seemed so flimsy that they shouldn’t have convinced him for an instant.

            He didn’t know if he could go near Miranda again.

            And what he had expected to be a tearing pain, like cutting off a limb, simply—evaporated from him.

            Draco shook his head and blinked and came back to himself, and that was when he noticed one of Potter’s fingers was gone.

            “Shit!” He scrambled to his feet and reached hastily for his wand, casting the Summoning Charm without thought. The finger, looking much more like a scrap of meat than it should now that it was separated from Potter’s hand, came soaring over to him. Draco cringed, but accepted it on his open palm. He reached for Potter.

            Potter shied. “You know the proper spells to attach it?” he demanded. “If not, then I’d just as soon do it, thanks.”

            Draco shuddered and stared at him. Potter looked back. Draco didn’t see the guarded walls he usually did, the barriers that held him away from all the tender places in Potter he might mock, but that didn’t mean he saw trust, either.

            He had tortured Potter. His eyes went to the other wounds, including the opened ones in his arms, one of which he had inflicted, and his gut twisted and heaved for the first time since the war.

            “We need to go to hospital,” he said.

            Potter snorted. “Exactly where I’ve been banned from, and where you can’t go. It’s not safe for you to be near her.”

            Draco had to shut his eyes and turn away for a moment, to deal with what Potter’s concern did to him after Draco was the one partially responsible for this. Then he shook his head and said, “Then we’ll find a Healer who doesn’t mind working independently.” He saw Potter open his mouth from the corner of his eye and said sharply, “Shut it. We’re dealing with this first, no matter what M—Healer Alto does next.”

            He expected an argument, or an insistence that a twisted on the loose mattered more than Potter’s own injuries. He had done that during the Larkin case.

Instead, Potter studied him with narrowed eyes, then nodded. “Fine. But let’s move quickly. We don’t know how conscious she is of her flaw, and we don’t know what she might do when you don’t return.”

He stood, and wavered, probably from loss of blood. Draco reached out to support him.

And that was when the last trace of the jackals faded from the shadows.

*

Mehla_Seraphim: Yep, you got it. Although Harry doesn’t know why Alto affected Draco so much faster than she affected the other people this happened to.

SP777: Thanks! But “lucky” just implied that Chapter 7 was not lucky for anyone, since 7 is sometimes said to be a lucky number.
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Sister Healer