Chapter Five of 'Hephaestus'- Lamentable
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Chapter Five-Lamentable
“Wasn’t I right, mate?” Ron nodded enthusiastically to Harry over Rose’s head. Rose was curled up of her father’s lap, currently absorbed in the adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle. She could only read that when Hermione was away from home, as she was now, involved in a protracted case at the Ministry; Hermione thought the books encouraged “dreadful preconceptions.” “Malfoy was exactly the way we always thought he was. He was shallow. He didn’t change at all.”
“You were right,” Harry murmured, and poured a shot of Firewhisky down his throat. He didn’t ordinarily drink so much, but for the moment, he was encouraged by the thought that he had an awful lot to forget.
“Always thinking of himself.” Ron laughed shortly, and then visibly cut himself off from whatever he was about to say next, with an anxious glance at Rose. Harry concealed a smile. Ron would happily give Rose chocolates before dinner and Martin the Mad Muggle to read, but he didn’t want her picking up certain words that she might repeat where Hermione could hear them. “Always locked into his own perfect picture of what the world was like,” Ron went on, in a whisper. “Always certain that you would come crawling back to him because you couldn’t find anyone better.”
Harry scrubbed his tongue around his teeth and wondered if he should tell Ron that he had essentially gone crawling back to Draco, at least to the point of eating dinner at the same table and admitting his own surviving love. But he decided against it. This conflict was between Draco and Harry, and Harry doubted that Draco would ever hear or care for Ron’s opinion. “Yeah,” he said instead, and finished off the bottle of Firewhisky, then Summoned another one.
“Are you going to get drunk?” Rose asked, lifting her head and peering at him. Her eyes were a brilliant brown that could have come from either Hermione’s side of the family or Ron’s, but uncomfortably sharp. Harry was certain that Hermione had never looked at him and Ron with such sharp eyes, even when they were all in Gryffindor and he and Ron were begging to copy Hermione’s notes.
“No,” Harry said, and carefully put the cork down on the table near him. “Why would you think that, sweetheart?”
“It says here,” said Rose, and laid a delicate hand on the pages of her book, “that Martin has to rescue some people from drunk Muggles some of the time. And people drink when they’re angry.” She had a way of pausing at the end of her sentences that Harry was certain Hermione had taught her.
And she sounded like Scorpius, even though she was five and Scorpius was two. Harry swallowed angrily against the recollection and shook his head. “I’ll just drink a little,” he said. “And I’m not angry. I’m disappointed.”
He blinked when he heard himself say it. It was true, but he had not imagined himself voicing his dissatisfaction in just those words before.
“Are you?” Ron asked, leaning forwards and blinking at him. “But why, if you agree that he’s all the things I said he was?”
Harry rubbed his tongue around his teeth again, and listened to the crackle and stretch of skin on his cheeks as he did so. His skin behaved oddly even by the standards of flesh cursed with the Dark Arts, the Healers had told him. Sometimes-most of the time-it was inflexible and sharp and simply motionless, meaning that Harry had to do hard labor with his mouth and eyes to show an expression. Other times it pulled and bent as if it were newly burned. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I shouldn’t have expected anything else from him. And yet I do.”
“Do?” Ron’s eyes widened until Harry thought, if he looked into them hard enough, he would be able to see Ron’s brain at the bottom of them.
“Did,” Harry said. “I meant did, of course. There’s no way I would go back to Malfoy Manor to be tormented by him again.”
Ron seemed satisfied with that, and set about asking Rose what part she had reached in the book and chuckling with her over it, answering her serious questions, and inviting Harry to join in the fun with offhand remarks. Harry sat back in his chair and responded absently, whilst his brain ran around and around his skull in quest of an answer.
Why should I want more from Draco than he can give me? Why can’t I be satisfied that he’s really as shallow as his own words proclaim, and give up?
But Harry didn’t know if he was capable of giving up on someone who had once mattered so much to him, and the more the word disappointment tolled against his eardrums, the less he was certain that he could do it now.
So the thing to do is keep your distance, of course. Go back tomorrow morning early, to forge the last sigils Morningswood should need, and then leave before he can see you. And no, that doesn’t break your promise to Ron, because you said that you wouldn’t go back to Malfoy Manor again, rather than Morningswood.
Harry winced. The dishonesty made him think himself a sneaking, craven bloke, someone who would mutter technicalities to excuse himself when being led to Azkaban.
But then, his hope in Draco was like that, too: low and sneaking, unworthy of being entertained, but somehow managing to create a place for itself in his soul anyway. Harry thought he would probably continue to feel it for years. The relationship he had had with Draco shouldn’t have worked, and the obstacles it had jumped-disapproval from his friends, the press’s relentless inquiries into their lives, Draco’s own prejudices and Harry’s-made too great an impression in his mind. If they could overcome that, then, the hope whispered, they could overcome this. So Harry felt it.
But you don’t have to act on it.
*
Draco didn’t know how long he remained still, staring at the place Harry had stood when he made that mad proclamation, after Harry left. Even when the crack of Apparition reached his ears, he only blinked once and went on staring.
I’m not worth it?
Wonder edged the wound, preventing the pain from fully reaching him. Did Harry really think that? Could the passion Draco had seen in him and heard in his voice really have come to this? Did Draco’s compassion mean nothing?
Was he going to lose?
The dread of failure tried to overwhelm him then. Draco shook his head, drew a deep breath, and stood up straight. He was a Malfoy. They didn’t succumb to the most intense pressures. They found a way around them, including pretending humility if they had to-as his father had in front of the Dark Lord, as all of them had in front of Potter’s side after the war-and in the end they got what they wanted. Two days ago, Draco had thought that was freedom and life in peace with his perfect son.
But Scorpius was less than perfect, and Harry could toss words at him that hurt and then walk away, which was unacceptably less than perfect.
Draco shook himself at last and started walking back towards the house, glancing at the forges and the small tents where the dwarves still labored on as he went. He tried to imagine Harry laboring there, and rejected the vision. No, Harry wouldn’t stoop to work like that. And his wounded leg and small arms wouldn’t let him muster the necessary force to swing a hammer. It was magic he was meant for, graceful enchantments like the one Draco had seen him weaving with the metal earlier that evening.
Or no work at all. He can live with me whilst we seek a cure to the scars that cover his face.
Draco could see that life, and he never saw anything so clearly that wouldn’t come true. Harry leaned in a chair near the fire, one hand propping up his chin and the other holding a book open so that he could easily see the pages as he mouthed the words to himself. The fire played across his scars and made them look more like the effects of shadows; Harry could change them by shifting. Scorpius would be sitting on the carpet nearby, practicing simple spells and wand motions, and Draco would correct him occasionally. But mostly he would read his own books, and sometimes rise and walk across to Harry, so that he could tangle his fingers in Harry’s hair and sniff the back of his neck to draw in the scent that lingered there.
From behind, he won’t look so horrible. And I think he rejected the offer I made to try and help him find a cure because he was afraid of trying again. Afraid I would betray him, afraid that we would find a cure and it would hurt. He can’t be afraid of looking in the first place, because he looked with Granger.
He does still want to be healed. He wants to be free of this affliction as strongly as I want him to be free of it.
Draco’s head came up, and he smiled. Already his heart was beginning to beat with hope again, and he could consider the words Harry had spoken to him and reject them easily.
He meant I wasn’t worth it only as a slip of the tongue, the same way I called him a monster. Yes, it’s painful. Yes, he shouldn’t have said those words, and I shouldn’t have said that word.
But we didn’t really mean them, and they can be forgotten and forgiven, as long as the person who hears them has the will to do that. I’ll forgive Harry. Then I’ll persuade him to forgive me.
Humming under his breath, Draco stepped into the entrance hall of Morningswood. Not even a house-elf appearing before him and bowing in agitation worried him. After all, Harry might have come back and demanded to see him, and the house-elves would be worried that they didn’t have a guest bedroom already prepared for him. Elves did give Harry the most laughable reverence.
“Master Draco,” the elf squeaked, “Master Scorpius is hurt.”
*
Harry lay with his arms behind his head and stared up at the ceiling. This was the same guest room that he had every time he stayed at Ron and Hermione’s house, and most of the time, its familiarity comforted him. He liked the enchanted window that always showed six scenes-a meadow, a forest, and the ocean by daylight, and then the same ones by moonlight-and the large bed that gave enough support to his scarred leg that he didn’t have to feel that he was walking whilst he lay down. He liked the smell of the sheets, rose petals, because of the household charms that Hermione had made Ron study. He liked the bookshelves, even though the books that filled them were ones Hermione had chosen and Harry couldn’t bring himself to be interested in.
He appreciated the fact that there were no mirrors.
But now he could only think of an older familiarity, the way he had once lain in bed knowing that Draco was in the next room, or with Draco beside him, sprawled on his shoulder, drooling in his hair. Draco had always denied, indignantly, that he drooled. Harry had rolled his eyes and put up with the lie for the sake of keeping the peace in the bedroom.
Now he thought, bitterly, that it was only one more sign that Draco wasn’t able to put up with anything less than perfection. If he couldn’t attain it, he would persuade himself that he had it anyway, or he would ignore the signs that it didn’t exist. And if he couldn’t ignore it, then he would shove the person who reminded him of imperfections violently away.
Harry lifted a hand and touched the skin around his mouth. It had hardened again, and only poked his finger, instead of crackling beneath his touch like pork fat.
He should stop thinking about Draco and go to sleep. Thinking about Draco was to give him more consideration than he deserved.
On the other hand, he argued mentally, he was doing this for his own peace, trying to figure out what about Draco still fascinated him, and it didn’t mean that he would go crawling back to Morningswood with the dawn. He could owl Grishnazk and ask him to send the prepared metal to Ron and Hermione’s house. He would perform the dance here and send the completed sigils back. He could ask Hermione to Apparate with the patterns to the dwarves. He wouldn’t trust Ron not to take the opportunity to march into the house and tell Draco what he really thought of him, but Hermione was steady.
But he didn’t want that. He wanted to go back. He wanted to stare at the house, no matter how much the sight of the walls-the walls that shut out everything imperfect, everything flawed-tormented him.
Why?
Harry sighed and touched his face again. There was only one answer that had ever made sense to him. It was the same answer that had rescued him from despair when he walked away from Draco, and the one that had sent him into the pursuit of metal-dancing.
Because even if he’s not worth it-and I’m not sure about that-I am. I have more conscience and a desire to help and to hope. So I’ll exercise it, because that kind of desire is worth exercising.
He needed to be himself. If that meant making excuses for people his friends thought weren’t worthy of excuses, then so be it. He reminded himself that Ron and Hermione had never thought Draco was worthy of him in the first place, even when Draco had gone through fire and water to stay with Harry. Their opinion was understandable, since Draco had tormented them both so much in school and had never been more than polite to them afterwards, but Harry couldn’t make it his own.
He broke when the moment came, though. I needed him, and he left. Doesn’t that prove Ron and Hermione were right?
No, Harry had to admit. He thought he might have broken, too, under similar pressure-
And then he sighed, because if he was going to be honest to himself, he should be honest about everything.
No, I wouldn’t have. There are other things that could have made me walk away, but not that. I’m too loyal, as Ron and Hermione will say when they hear about me clinging to Draco. I don’t care enough about beauty, the way Draco does. I don’t care about things being unmarred. When I entered the wizarding world, I was so relieved to find people who accepted me as a friend instead of turning their backs on me that I forgave them all their faults.
But the reason I love Draco is that he’s not me. He has strengths I don’t, faults I don’t. And he has to be left to shine with them, or else I’m forcing him into an unnatural mold and destroying the man I loved in the first place. That self of his was what I loved, that he was himself more strongly than anyone I knew.
What I can’t live with is his disgust towards me, and his pinning all his hopes on a cure. I’ll make it plain to him tomorrow. If he only wants to be with me again because he’s sure I can be healed and look exactly like I used to, then I’ll walk away. He’ll have to live with uncertainty.
Harry hesitated, the thoughts turning over in his mind as numerous and sharp now as the folds on his face.
And so will I. I’ll have to accept the idea that something might be able to heal me, and endure the hope, for Draco’s sake.
Harry tried to envision the future stretching before him, and found it hard to imagine. He’d have to fight an endless battle, to maintain hope and patience whilst educating Draco to look beyond looks, and to think of the quest of healing himself seriously, rather than as a diversion to entertain and soothe Draco.
But he didn’t think he knew what life would be like without a battle. Maybe that was part of the reason he had chosen Draco in the first place, and had endured the insults and the prurient curiosity about his injuries instead of hiding himself away. The other things would be too easy, and with all the leisure the lack of fighting would afford, he wouldn’t know what to do with himself.
You’re probably delusional, he told himself.
But he fell asleep smiling-until the sound of the Floo opening called him from slumber.
*
“Master Draco is being angry at Hinky-Hinky is a bad elf, and Hinky knows it, and-“
Draco shut the door, because he couldn’t bear to listen to the elf’s babbling one more minute. A wail and a thump indicated that Hinky had taken to punishing himself by hitting his head against the wall.
And then Draco forgot about him, because he was gazing at his son.
Scorpius lay swaddled in deep green and silver blankets, as if the colors of Slytherin could somehow protect him from what had happened today, an adventure that would not have disgraced a Gryffindor. Across his face ran a diagonal burn, and the hair that clung above his left ear had been singed. Draco could have lived with that. Burns would heal, and there were spells to restore the natural look of skin that had been touched only by fire and not by Dark Arts.
But the right side of his body…
Scorpius had wandered into one of the sheds where dwarves were forging metals, and they had been too occupied in their tasks to notice him. (They should have, Draco raged internally. How could anyone, even a wretched magical creature, not notice the small version of perfection near them?) He had stooped down to examine a fire, and got caught, when he touched an ember, in the loop of one of the spells that the dwarves used to keep the flames hot and give their craft its special polish. The magic had run through his body for perhaps a minute before someone had noticed and managed to stop the pounding in time to get Scorpius away and carry him to Morningswood.
Draco gently moved the blankets back so that he could stare. Scorpius was deep in a healing sleep that the elves had cast on him the moment they had seen how bad the damage was; Draco knew that he wouldn’t disturb him.
Scorpius’s neck was twisted, turned into a slender column of bone and flesh that couldn’t support his head. His right hand had suffered the same process, the fingers fused and melted together as if by a far greater heat than they had in fact endured-or than they should have been able to endure without burning to ash altogether. The right side of his face had turned into a fried mess, which continually shed drops of blood and juice like dripping fat. Draco didn’t know what it would look like when it cooled, but if it looked better than Harry’s face, it would only be by chance.
Harry.
The thought of him brought Draco to his feet. He had not yet summoned Healers, too stunned by what had happened to his son and how the vision of perfection had changed in an hour into a vision of ugliness.
All because you would cast spells that made him smarter, able to get out of the house and evade the elves when they looked for him.
But Draco had no time for self-blame right now. He had latched on to Harry. Harry, who was burned in a similar manner. Harry, who must know about dwarves’ fire because he had worked with them, and whose opinion Draco would trust more than he would the fine things the dwarves might say to get themselves out of trouble.
Harry, who still seemed to care for him.
Draco knew he would have gone to his friends’ house, as surely as he drew breath. Harry sought out company when he was suffering extreme pains, however much he might brood over minor ones. And Draco still had the Granger-Weasleys’ Floo address.
He tore out of the room, shouting for the elves.
*
Harry never knew how he did half of what he did that night.
First, he had to soothe Ron and Hermione and reassure them that Draco’s intrusion was not really as unwelcome as it might have appeared. They slowly went back to bed, Hermione looking steadily at Harry in the way that said she would demand an explanation later. Harry could put up with that, because she also had a tight grip on Ron’s arm that kept him from saying anything to Draco.
Second, he had to hold Draco firmly in his arms and shake him until he stopped babbling and told what had happened to Scorpius in plain words. Then he had to say that he knew very little about dwarves’ magical fire, and Draco should get Scorpius to St. Mungo’s. But Draco was so insistent that he at least come and look at Scorpius first that Harry agreed.
Third, he had to keep from vomiting for pure pity when he looked at the damage the fire had wrought to Scorpius’s body. Magic, he remembered thinking, the words fluttering through his mind. What good is it when it creates damage like this instead of healing it? And I don’t think the Healers will be able to help him.
Fourth, he had to look at Draco and say firmly, “I think there’s some hope. But we need to get him to St. Mungo’s now.”
Fifth, he had to go ahead, at Draco’s express request, and call for a Healer whilst asking that a private room be prepared for Scorpius so that no one needed to see him come in. Draco was sensitive to what gossip would say.
Sixth, Harry had to practically shove Draco into the Floo carrying Scorpius; Draco was afraid that because one kind of magical fire had harmed Scorpius, another might. Harry had to take a deep breath, and understand the anxiety, and convince Draco to go through the flames by thrusting a hand into them himself.
Seventh, he had to contact Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy and tell them what had happened to Scorpius, and give as many details as he could in a cold and unflinching voice, whilst Lucius wept without tears and Narcissa without sound.
Eighth, he had to go to Morningswood, reassure the dwarves that he would prevent Draco from attacking them in words or in the papers or with magic, and order them home until he was able to resume his own work with the protective patterns.
And finally, he stood and stared at Morningswood under the moonlight for long moments, searching for the strength in himself to help Draco-and Scorpius-through this trial whilst still unsure if Draco would inflict the same rejection on his son that he had on Harry.
He won’t. He loves Scorpius.
But I thought the same thing about his emotion for me. And maybe he loves beauty more.
Harry shook his head and Apparated to London, his bad leg sending spasms of pain up to rack his spine.
I have to be strong for him. For him and Scorpius both.
The thought that followed that one crept unwelcome into his mind, and if it hadn’t been for Harry’s newfound honesty, he wouldn’t have permitted himself to listen to it at all.
I just wish someone could be strong for me.
Chapter 6.