Chapter Two of "A Reckless Frame of Mind"- The Cassandra Curse
Link to Part One.
Chapter Two-The Cassandra Curse
Harry imagined half-a-dozen pairs of eyes peering in through the window in the walls that he knew must be there, gawkers watching him at all hours of the day and night, speculating on what could have driven the Great and Wonderful Hero of the Wizarding World to try and commit suicide.
It wasn’t the most comfortable sensation, but imagining that kept him away from betraying any signs of his true condition. He examined his wrists and stared at the ceiling and made sure to do nothing remotely interesting.
Was it really so different from the life he’d been living for the past year?
Harry didn’t think so.
He’d been under the Cassandra Curse, a spell from which there was no escape, finally, except the one he’d chosen. And this was only the first part of his plan completed. He had the second still to go, and doubtless the Mind-Healers, or the Psyche-Divers, or whoever else they assigned him to in St. Mungo’s, wouldn’t want him to enact that second part.
Harry didn’t care. He’d had a lot of practice in not caring about others’ opinions in the last year, too.
He closed his eyes now. It would look like he was sleeping. But instead he plunged into intense memories, memories that would never be shared with anyone else. He had felt better when he had learned to stop trying.
*
He had noticed the effects of the Curse almost at once, of course. It was hard not to, when you were condemned to speak the truth but have everyone around you react to it as if it were a lie.
He’d told Ginny that he’d be home late for dinner that night, since he had to finish the paperwork for a case he hadn’t yet tidied up after. She’d turned around, hands on her hips, and stared for so long that Harry had begun to feel uneasy. Then she’d shaken her head and said, “Harry, if this relationship isn’t enough for you and you have to go fuck other women, why don’t you just break up with me now?”
“What?” Harry’s jaw had literally hit his chest. He stared at her for some moments, then said, “Ginny, I’m not-not fucking anyone else.” The word felt strange in his mouth. It was certainly the first time he had ever heard Ginny say it, along with the first time he had ever said it in front of her. “I don’t want any woman but you.”
Ginny’s hands tightened on the cloth she’d been using to wipe her plate. “Oh, yes,” she said bitterly. “And I suppose the way you turned your head to gape after that witch we met in Diagon Alley the other day-the one who just happened to be an adoring fan-was coincidence?”
Harry took a step backwards, uncertain what had happened, but knowing Ginny had to be under a spell of some kind. Was it a spell that would make her attack him? He couldn’t be sure, not until she whipped her out her wand and launched a hex, but he wanted to be ready. “I don’t even remember her,” he said.
“But you do,” Ginny whispered. “You must. You gape after her like a fool, and then you say that you’ll be late the next night?” She laughed harshly and then turned away as if to prevent him from seeing the sparkle of tears. “I’d wish you’d just say something, honestly, so we could both leave each other and go on to more satisfying lives.”
“I really don’t want anyone but you,” Harry began, and put a hand on her shoulder with the notion of taking her into his arms to show her how much she meant to him. She whirled around, though, and slapped him across the face, eyes blazing.
“And now you’ll try to kiss away the insult?” She tossed her hair. “I’ve let you get away with far too much, Harry. Not this time.” She turned and walked out of the kitchen steadily, though Harry could see the heartbreak on her face.
Thoroughly bewildered, Harry had Flooed Ron and Hermione. Perhaps Hermione, who was steadily becoming an expert in Dark magic as she worked her way up the ranks of the Hit Wizards, would have some idea of what spell could cause results like this.
*
In his hospital room, Harry rolled his eyes and snorted, rubbing his bandaged wrists gently but steadily. He imagined a Healer taking notes through the window-he finds his situation amusing, a sign of great mental disturbance-and snorted again before he could help himself.
It hadn’t been just Ginny.
*
Harry had explained the situation to Hermione as fast as he could, words tumbling over each other, when she’d come running to the hearth with her hair still dangling in wet curls around her face. She’d said nothing when he stopped, and Harry licked his lips. “Do you need me to explain again?” he asked, his heart suddenly sounding in his ears. “Or do you think it’s incurable?”
“I think you’re making up excuses,” Hermione had said, her eyes narrowed in distrust and dislike that Harry had never seen directed at him. “That’s what I think. I agree with Ginny. If you want to leave her, Harry, leave her, but at least be honest about it. The thought of you sneaking around behind her back and asking some other witch to be your bit on the side-it’s despicable, frankly. Did you know that in Dark Spells, Dark Ages it says that adultery between wizarding couples was once a crime punished by death?”
“Hermione!” Harry felt as if the room had tilted and he were about to fall out of the fire through which he’d been speaking to sprawl on the floor. “First of all, I haven’t cheated on Ginny. She only thinks I did, and I don’t know why. That’s what I want you to find out. Second, she and I aren’t married-“
“Oh, and now the excuses come out, do they?” Hermione folded her arms and looked away. “I still think you should have told her, Harry.”
“I’m not-I don’t-“ Harry slapped his hands on the stones of his own fireplace in frustration. And then Ron, perhaps attracted by the noise, wandered into the room, and Harry seized on a desperate notion. Perhaps the spell, whatever it was, only affected witches. He might be able to tell Ron the truth and have his best friend believe him.
“Ron!” he said. “Both Hermione and Ginny think I cheated on Ginny, and I didn’t, and I don’t know what-“
Ron stiffened suddenly, and then he moved over and stood close beside his wife. “I did suspect it,” he murmured into her neck. “I just didn’t want to believe it.”
“What is wrong with everyone?” Harry didn’t dare open his mouth too wide, or he would start to either scream or laugh hysterically. “I didn’t cheat on Ginny! I’m telling the truth-“
He paused abruptly, and narrowed his eyes. Could he have been given some tainted version of Veritaserum? He didn’t know who would have had occasion to slip it into his food or drinks, and he’d never heard of a potion that made everyone suspect the drinker was lying at the same time, but he had to try.
He tried to say, “Yes, I cheated on Ginny. You caught me.”
The words twisted halfway between his brain and his tongue, and what came out was, “I’ve never wanted anyone the way I want her, and I plan to stay faithful to her for the rest of my life.”
“The rest of your life except for your flings on the side, you mean?” Hermione’s voice was scathing. Ron put an arm around her waist as support.
“I don’t have any,” Harry said. He wanted to reason things out, but his ability to do so was rather slipping away in the face of the heaviest rejection he’d ever received from his best friends. “I’ve never wanted any side-effects of my fame, you know that, but the worst is everyone assuming I want to sleep with other people.”
“I think you dislike the others, just not this one,” said Hermione, and her voice was patient and disgusted, the way it had been when she found out one of her co-workers carried the anti-Muggleborn prejudice. Harry winced. That tone of voice felt as if it were opening small lacerations all across his skin. “And nobody’s perfect, I know, Harry, but I did think that you had morals enough to announce it if you were living with someone else.”
“I’ve never lived with anyone but the Dursleys, you, and Ginny, and the other Gryffindor boys when Hogwarts was in session-“
“The lies just get worse and worse,” Ron said, and then he took out his wand. “Come back when you have something worthwhile to say, mate.”
And when he moved his wand, the Floo connection closed abruptly, and Harry sprawled on his kitchen floor, covered with soot, his ears ringing with the depths of his loneliness, as though he were underwater.
*
Harry rolled his eyes at himself. He’d thought he was lonely then?
Try living with everyone else disbelieving you even though you can’t say anything but the truth for more than a year, he advised his past self. Then we’ll talk.
*
His lies-they said-cost him any partners. He found himself on dangerous solo missions, chasing feral werewolves, maddened giants, and Dark wizards who had tried to go down the same route of immortality that Voldemort had sought.
When he complained, they said that he couldn’t be trusted with anyone else at his back, and in any case, didn’t he want the glory?
When he screamed that he didn’t want these kinds of assignments, which was only the truth, they said he was lying and sent him back out into the field without a word.
When he tried to get the help he needed for some of the wounds his opponents had inflicted, the Healers had immediately assumed he was trying to get more attention, the kind the Daily Prophet had always pegged him as wanting. Harry had managed to live, but only by spending nearly all his spare time studying medical magic-which made those who caught him at it assume he wanted to know it so that he could torture suspects when he brought them in-and getting used to the accumulation of scars and bruises.
He’d come up with all sorts of supposedly brilliant plans in those first days. He’d tried to write the truth. He’d tried to pantomime it. He’d tried to owl people who knew him as a celebrity, in the hopes that the curse only affected the wizards and witches who saw him face-to-face. He’d cast spells to alter his appearance and his magical signature, certain that if the curse was embedded in one of them, it might fade when they changed.
Nothing worked. His written words were also assumed to be lies. The worst possible interpretation went to each gesture; when he tried to hug Ginny, nearly sick with longing for someone else to touch him, she drew her wand on him and screamed that he was trying to choke her. The spell was weaker on owls, but the moment his correspondents found out they were talking to Harry Potter, their attitude became tinged with distaste. Any glamour charms or other disguising magic only made others suspect that he had something disastrous to hide. Harry had already spent two nights in the Ministry holding cells, with other Aurors searching him grimly for some sign of the Dark Mark.
The worst stigma came from his attempts to discover exactly what kind of curse he carried. That their hero was studying Dark Arts was more than the wizarding world could bear. Harry had grown almost indifferent to Howlers six months later, since the range of insults that other people could think up was rather limited when one received twenty of the letters in a day.
Harry might have despaired if he hadn’t discovered, by accident, the thing that eventually led him to the way out.
*
Would it have been so awful to die that day? Harry thought wistfully now. It would have spared me some pain.
But then he shook his head. He’d always been a survivor, and even if no one alive right now knew anything real about him, there was always the past. Harry had turned more and more to his memories of the dead as his nightmarish year continued. His mother had sacrificed her life for him. Sirius had died trying to rescue him. Dumbledore had trusted him, had believed he would be safe with Harry.
Harry would not betray them by simply giving in and dying.
Coming close to death, however, was acceptable.
*
“But if you could just tell me where-“
“I have no reason to tell you anything,” Borgin had interrupted him, turning away to shove the Dark Arts book Harry had tried to purchase back into its place on a high shelf. The man’s back was tight and his voice clipped with disgust. That had happened even before Harry pulled his hood off, as if the curse were a body odor that other people could sense. “Don’t know why you’re in here, anyway. The press would have a field day with their precious savior coming to Knockturn Alley, wouldn’t they?”
“I don’t know what part of the Prophet you’re reading, to think that anyone has a positive opinion of me anymore,” Harry muttered, and rubbed his face. His scar never hurt him anymore, but the gesture was one he’d adopted in the past year to soothe his own frustrations.
“And crocodile tears won’t work on me, either,” Borgin said sharply. “Get out, now, before I call the Aurors.”
Laughable as that was, when Harry was himself an Auror and Borgin had much more to lose if they came here than he did, Harry turned away. Arguing made no difference. He’d tried Veritaserum on himself by now, managing to purchase it from an apothecary who wasn’t that picky about whom she sold her wares to, and it neither cured his inherent truthfulness nor made anyone else think he wasn’t lying; even Hermione just thought it was water, and this was Harry’s idea of a funny joke. When Harry had encouraged an Unspeakable with Legilimency to look into his mind, the man had wrinkled his nose and proclaimed he’d never seen such foul, distasteful thoughts in all his life.
Harry was near giving up.
Perhaps that was why he didn’t react fast enough when someone on the opposite end of the street hurled a curse at him as he stepped out of Borgin’s doorway. He never saw who it was, or even what spell. One moment he was striding along the dirty paving stones, heading for the entrance of the alley; the next he lay on his side, his lungs laboring to draw breath with a strange whooshing sound, his back covered with a warm liquid that he knew must be blood.
He closed his eyes. He didn’t think he could rise to his feet, whether or not he wanted to. The pain had come on the heels of the surprise, but right now, what he felt more than anything else was numbness. It would consume him, and when it reached his heart, things would be over.
He heard someone scream in distress, and frowned, wondering fuzzily if he’d been caught in the edge of a duel. After all, the person screaming couldn’t be concerned about him.
And then there were warm arms around him, and a frantically casting wand flicking above his face, and Hermione’s voice whispering, “Oh, God, Harry, I’m so glad I tracked you today, I don’t even care what you went into Borgin and Burkes for, just hold on, please, please don’t die-“
Because a side-effect of her spells kept him awake even as she did her best to heal the wound and then whisk him away to St. Mungo’s and scream at the Healers until they treated him, Harry heard the concern in her voice. It seemed that the enormous hole in his back had overcome the resigned irritation with which Hermione now treated him.
The effect hadn’t lasted long. As soon as the Healers proclaimed Harry out of danger, he’d seen the same mask fall over Ron’s and Hermione’s faces, and Ginny, who had visited for the first time that day, had turned away from the bed in silence. Harry had felt the new rejection like a blow to the stomach.
But he had learned something valuable, something that let him finally determine what curse he labored under. It was the Cassandra Curse, one he’d marked in his Dark Arts reading but hadn’t been sure of, since there were several other curses that closely resembled it. It did indeed make the victim always speak the truth but sound as if he were lying to others, the way that the priestess Cassandra of Troy had been ignored and dismissed for her warnings of the future. His research had indicated that the curse could only be broken by the caster, but since the magic was capable of altering memories and perceptions of Harry in the minds of everyone he came into contact with, the caster had likely forgotten he’d ever used the spell. Harry had no idea who that person might have been, in any case.
But the Cassandra Curse was limited in its influence over people the victim had never met before and who never knew his real name-and it could not prevent others from being concerned over drastic actions.
Such as a deep injury.
Lying in his hospital bed, tended by trainees who flinched away from him as if his condition were catching, Harry had formulated the first steps of his plan.
*
The door opened. Harry turned his head in that direction, and nearly smirked when he saw a nervous young mediwitch with blonde curls there. She looked straight at him as she walked towards the bed, as if he would vanish if she glanced away, then reappear on the ceiling and drop on her shoulders to bite her head off.
“How are you feeling today, Mr. Potter?” she asked, after several attempts to clear her throat and ask the question.
“Not suicidal,” said Harry, and watched in secret glee as her face contorted. Like all the others, she heard only lies. Like all the others, she would assume that he was in denial about wanting to die.
“Very well,” she muttered in heavy resignation, and then picked up a file between the tips of her fingers and dropped it onto the bed. Harry scooped it up, and she jumped as if she thought the thin parchment could cut through the bandages on his wrists. “You have an appointment at nine tomorrow morning with Psyche-Diver Draco Malfoy,” she continued.
Harry laughed in spite of himself. Of course it would happen that way; they would want to give him to the Psyche-Diver who hated him most, from what Harry understood of the profession, and Malfoy was a perfect candidate. The only good thing about it was that Harry would spend his last few weeks in the wizarding world around someone whose good opinion he sincerely didn’t want.
“I’ll be there with bells on,” he replied, and the mediwitch pursed her lips, probably already thinking about the extra security she’d have to provide so that Harry made it to his appointment on time.
Harry flopped back on the bed and grinned at the ceiling. They could increase their security all they liked. It wouldn’t make any difference in a few more weeks.
*
He stood in the corridor near his own office, his eyes closed and his heart pounding. Since he’d nearly died from that curse in Knockturn Alley, he had got his hope back, and that, ironically, made the only possible course of action open to him more distasteful.
But he had to do it. Yes, he had hope, but it wasn’t hope that could let him stay where he was and keep his friends. That was gone. He had to look to the future, not brood on the past.
And he had arranged everything perfectly. Dropped a few “suspicious” comments in front of Ron this morning, who was the only one in the Auror Department still visiting him, and chosen a place where he would be found before he bled to death.
Probably.
Harry moved quickly then, before he could change his mind. A snap of his wand, and the hinged iron jaws appeared. Another flick, and they were animated. He shook his sleeves back from his wrists and bared them.
The jaws went to work slowly chewing through skin and flesh and vein and tendon. Harry closed his eyes as the first drops of blood welled up.
It had to happen this way, he reminded himself as dizziness and instinctive panic took him over and he slumped to the floor. He flung his wand from him so he wouldn’t be tempted to use it to heal his wounds. Only a suicide attempt, and one brutal enough to make him look mad, would get him out of the Auror Department. He could say that he didn’t want to continue in the field, but of course no one would believe him.
Either he would survive and be moved into St. Mungo’s-
Or he would die.
Since it was out of his control entirely by the time blood loss wrapped his mind in red-black fuzz, either option sounded good enough.
*
Harry rubbed at his wrists again, and resisted the temptation to get up and do a little dance around his hospital room.
Obviously, it had worked. Ron had found him in time, stopped the bleeding, and got him moved here. The first part of Harry’s plan was accomplished.
The second was more complicated. Since no one at St. Mungo’s, Psyche-Diver or not, would believe him when he said he wasn’t suicidal, and he couldn’t lie and “admit” he was, they would keep a close watch on him. He would have to wait some time, learning the patterns of their security, before he could escape.
But escape he would. And he would perform a permanent self-Transfiguration then, rather than just a glamour spell, to make himself look different.
And he’d go to the Muggle world, adopt a new name, and owl home to the wizarding world anonymously for what he’d need. He still expected to encounter hostility from his neighbors, but all he learned about the Cassandra Curse pointed to one thing: its control over more drastic forms of magic, no matter what they were, was weaker. That meant a self-Transfiguration would not draw as much attention, nor as much open opposition, as his attempted glamours had done.
He would be-
Harry snorted. Not happy. Happiness isn’t for me anymore.
Self-pity tried to wash over him with that thought. Harry pushed it roughly away. He was alive, wasn’t he? And he would survive. And the Cassandra Curse had taught him, through more than a year of bitterness and isolation and loneliness so biting that he had awakened with tears in his eyes sometimes, that he could only depend on himself. He didn’t need help to escape, and he wouldn’t need help to live in the Muggle world, either.
Not an ideal existence. But all I can hope for.
Malfoy was not going to be able to find the truth, either, since Legilimency couldn’t-and even if Psyche-Divers were different from the Unspeakable Harry had contacted, Harry was not enough of a fool to believe that Malfoy would want to help him.
Just a few weeks, he reminded himself, and shut his eyes so he could get some sleep. It was important that he be well-rested for his escape. And then I’ll be free. Happiness and company are overrated, anyway.
Chapter 3.