Chapter Seven of 'Incandescence'- Insight
Title: Incandescence (7/12 or 13)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Angst, profanity, manipulation. Takes place fairly far in the future after DH, but ignores the epilogue.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, Luna/Neville, Lucius/Narcissa.
Summary: Draco has become a successful writer by novelizing the lives of heroes from the war with Voldemort. He’s managed to charm the most difficult and reticent into talking to him. Now he thinks he’s ready for the ultimate challenge: persuading Harry Potter, who’s notoriously close-mouthed, to give him both the material and the permission for a novel based on him.
Author’s Notes: This is intended to be a fairly short novel, probably around 50,000 words (12 or 13 chapters), but I won’t rule out going longer.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Seven-Insight
“I do want to know what this mysterious person has been writing to you about.”
Potter tensed when Draco spoke those words, but didn’t look up from the cup of tea in front of him. It had been five minutes since Draco had given him that tea, and yet he hadn’t stopped studying it as if he thought it was poison. It would have to be a slow-acting poison when he’d taken three huge gulps of it, Draco thought.
“You want to know,” Potter said, and finally looked up. His eyes were blank, as if he were trying desperately to mute his emotions behind them so that Draco couldn’t catch a glimpse of what he really thought. “But I don’t want to tell you.”
Draco’s first instinct was to explode. He’d risked his life for Potter and his stupid secrets, and yet Potter still wouldn’t tell him the secret that had started it all? That was unfair, and since this was the only reward that Draco had asked for so far, ungracious of Potter at well.
Luckily, Draco restrained his temper in time. Bursting out now with an angry tirade would only confirm Potter’s worst suspicions of him. He sat on his hands, as well, for some moments, and then said in a calm, fragile voice, “All right. I’ll accept that. But your holding your peace will probably hinder me from helping you fully. How am I supposed to know who the writer is if I don’t have a clue what the secret is? The writers I know would have very different motivations for threatening you depending on that.”
Potter’s look became mulish. “I can tell you enough about this person without that.”
“Really?” Draco raised an eyebrow. “How many of the people on the list I gave you do you know anything about?”
Potter grimaced. “None of them, but-”
“None?” Draco sat forwards and stared at him. He could understand not enjoying some of the fiction that the writers who frequented the Labyrinth produced, and no one under the sun needed any excuse for not enjoying Boot’s or Wrexby’s poetry. But the rest… “Potter, don’t you read?”
Potter flushed and drew himself up into what he probably imagined, wrongly, was a haughty and intimidating stance. “Excuse me for not having much time to read when I’m busy saving the world,” he snapped.
“Oh, come off it.” Draco slapped his hand down on the table between them. Since the table was only about the height of his knees and made of a thick dark wood that absorbed sound, this didn’t produce a very satisfying thunk. He scowled at Potter and surreptitiously shook his hand out behind his back. “I know that you don’t believe your own heroic propaganda. I went back and looked more closely at the old newspaper photographs. You don’t accept any of it, do you? Not the accolades that other people try to heap on you for killing Voldemort, and not the reputation you’ve gained as an Auror.”
Potter sat up and stared at him. “I didn’t realize that you’d managed to persuade yourself to say his name,” he said.
Draco rolled his eyes. “It’s been sixteen years, Potter. Of course I say it. Now, to return to the more important subject. How is it possible that you’ve lived in our world for those sixteen years and never managed to read a single word written by any of those authors?”
Potter shifted his shoulders defensively. “I read newspapers,” he muttered. “I read file reports. And I read that novel you wrote about Hermione. I think that’s enough to qualify me as literate.”
Draco snapped his mouth shut, choking on the words that he would have spoken next. His mind had arrayed Potter in such solid opposition to doing anything that would have pleased Draco that he hadn’t expected Potter to touch his books. “You liked Fire in the Darkness?” he asked at last, pleased that his voice didn’t tremble.
“I said that I read it,” Potter said, rubbing his scar. Draco felt offended. If there was anyone in the room with an excuse for a headache, it was him. Potter was sidetracking the conversation and still refusing to tell him anything that Draco could use to prevent the threatening letter writer from striking again. “That doesn’t imply liking, you know. I could have hated it and torn it up.”
“People who did that sneer in a particular way when they say they’ve read something,” Draco responded instantly. “I should know.” He’d encountered the tall Weasley who worked in Gringotts more than once, and he had that kind of sneer when he talked about Draco’s work. “I think you finished that particular book. I think you liked it.”
Potter clenched his hands on the teacup until Draco feared he would shatter it. Perhaps it wasn’t the best idea to taunt Potter when he was near Draco’s possessions.
“I finished it,” Potter said in a low voice. “I…respected it. I wouldn’t say that I liked it. I like Hermione better than you do.” He stared into Draco’s eyes. “Is that why you write about the particular subjects you do? Is it a way of getting revenge on the people who were on the opposite side during the war?”
Draco stared at him, then snorted. “Yes, Potter. I write about the people I hate as heroes.”
“Hermione-I mean, Millhouse wasn’t a heroine.” Potter shook his head. “You made her into this hard, cold, angry person, determined to do what she wants at any cost. I don’t see Hermione that way.”
Draco smiled a bit and leaned back against his chair. This was an old objection, one that Angela had given him when she first became his copy-editor. Draco’s explanation had satisfied her, and she was a much more critical reader than Potter; he thought his words should please Potter as well. “And do you not think that someone looking at Granger from the outside might see her that way? She’s determined to free the house-elves at any cost, even though she faces rather a lot of opposition from the Ministry. She’s often hard and cold to people who aren’t her friends. As to that anger-well, I do stir some creativity into the mix, you know, or I would be writing biography and history instead. I don’t know how often Granger is angry. But she admitted to me that she was angry often during the war. I simply made Astraea angry about different things.” Draco shrugged and sipped at his tea. “I’m distant from all my characters, Potter, but I’m also fair to them. I sympathize with them. That doesn’t prevent me from seeing how wrong they are most of the time. If you fall in love with a character, then what you write are those horrid sticky romances that most people won’t admit to reading. Nothing is too good for that character, and because the writer is the god of the story, he can give them whatever they want. But I prefer writing stories that I don’t have to shower afterwards.”
When he finished, he found that Potter’s eyes were indeed fixed on him, but not with the emotions he had expected. Angela had looked thoughtful. Some of the other people he’d explained that to, usually those he wanted to become the protagonists of future novels, were flattered and required more elucidation to flatter them further. Potter looked…
Puzzled.
Were the words too big for him? Draco wondered, and opened his mouth to repeat himself. But Potter interrupted him with a soft confused tone.
“I don’t-Malfoy, the person I knew you as during the war would never have become someone who could do that.”
“It’s all right, Potter,” Draco told him kindly. “Since you work with the Aurors and don’t read, I rather assume that your world has been deficient in experiences of seeing people grow up.”
Potter made a rude gesture with both hands at once. “I’m serious,” he said. “What made you become a writer? Why in the world would you want to make someone into a hero of your novels? Why would you-why would you pick me?”
Draco thought for a moment about bringing the topic of the conversation back to the threatening letters, but he enjoyed talking about himself too much to do that immediately. Besides, since Potter was so reluctant to give Draco any of the information he needed, perhaps it would sweeten him up if Draco pretended to ignore that for a while and instead gave Potter what he wanted. At the very least, he should have more reason to trust Draco if Draco stripped his heart naked the way he had wanted Potter to do.
“Not because you’re the most famous hero from the war,” he said. “I was surprised myself at how long it had taken me to think of you once the idea came to me.”
Potter jerked his head in a sharp nod. He wasn’t taking his gaze from Draco, and Draco had to resist the temptation to preen. Potter didn’t seem to like conceited people.
“I became a writer because I wanted a way to make sense of my memories,” Draco said. “The war was chaos. I didn’t expect that. The battles I read about were planned. The history my father taught me always made sense of all the motivations and justifications after the fact. I thought any intelligent, rational person would plan a war against the Muggleborns in the same way.” He laughed at the expression on Potter’s face. “Yes, I know that Voldemort wasn’t rational, but my father made him sound so grand that I simply invested him with every virtue. Meeting him was quite a shock.
“And then my life was a carousel of fear and horror and being forced to do things I didn’t want to do. I hated that most of all. If I could have achieved one solid point, one place to stand that would make people react to me in predictable ways, one deed in the eyes of Voldemort that would keep my parents safe and give me back some of my self-respect, I could have endured all the rest of it. But I was thrown from fragmented moment to fragmented moment instead.
“I thought there had to be people out there whose experiences made more sense.” Draco rubbed his finger down his jaw and smiled wryly. Potter was staring at him, enthralled, and with a touch of awe that Draco thought probably came from hearing him recite his experiences so smoothly. Draco wondered what he would say if he knew that Draco had sat down years ago, with three novels existing, and carefully written out the narrative of his own experiences so that he would have a story to tell if he wanted.
Words are my tools, Potter. Is it really all that surprising that I can encapsulate reality within them?
“There were. Or I could make those people exist. I started talking to heroes I thought I could safely approach, like Dean Thomas, whose experiences were potentially powerful but also peripheral. It was a slow process. I had to learn how to coax them to talk to me. It was the thought of the story that kept me going, that taught me how to conduct interviews. Everything, for me, serves the story, Potter. I come up with plot and character and arc of emotion as one connected whole. None can make sense in isolation. They exist only in relation to one another.”
Draco’s voice soared with his passion, and for a moment, as Potter’s brows contracted, he thought Potter might make fun of him. But then he said, in a voice that rattled like thrown dice, “And so you’re going to make me serve your story as well. I see.”
Draco took a deep breath. He hadn’t wanted to say this so soon, because he was desperately hoping that there was still a way he could write his novel and not alienate Potter. But the words rushed through his lips as they did through his quill and his fingers when he was caught up in the climax of a tale. “I’ve decided not to make you into a figure in a book. You’re different from the rest. They needed to tell their stories, or have someone else tell them, so they could make sense of their experiences. But your story’s been told again and again, and I can only imagine that you’re sick of it. I’ll pass this time, and let you tell it in your own words, to yourself and whoever else needs to hear it.”
Potter sat so still that Draco feared for his breathing. Then his hand closed down on the teacup, and it creaked. Draco stirred uneasily. This was a matching set his mother had given him for his last birthday, and if Potter broke one of the cups when Draco hadn’t even had it a year…
“Are you real?” Potter whispered. “You can’t be. What you said sounds too understandable.”
Draco felt glad for the chance to throw his hands up. Potter confused him to the point that he didn’t want solemnity in their interactions. Potter was too solemn for his own good as it was. If he was sensible, he would have sought out help among his friends and solved the problem of the letter writer ages ago. “Make up your mind, Potter. You ask me for the truth, and then you declare it must be a lie. If I told you a lie, you would accuse me of deception and probably say that all authors do that. Just because I’m telling you that I think you should write your own story doesn’t give you permission to reshape mine.”
Potter set the teacup down on the table in front of him, carefully. Draco was at least glad that it would escape his wrath, should he go mad. “I don’t-I didn’t expect you to sound so understandable and reasonable, that’s all,” Potter whispered, and passed a hand over his face as if he sought to banish the shadows of sleeplessness and fear. “I still don’t know everything about you, but I do feel as if you could have become the person that you’re telling me you did since the war.”
“How nice of you,” Draco said, and leaned back against the chair again. He needed some distance between him and Potter right now, physical if not emotional. “Listen, about the letter writer, I need to know when you began to receive-”
“I see things,” Potter said suddenly.
Draco blinked and peered at Potter from behind his fringe. He was sitting up with his hands clenched in front of him, like someone trying to hold onto hope. Draco reluctantly put the image in the back of his head to use for a minor character, since he had promised not to base a major one on Potter. “What?”
“I see things,” Potter repeated. He licked his lips. “I handled the Resurrection Stone during the war, and I was briefly the master of all three of the Deathly Hallows. I’m-I saw the shades of my parents and their closest friends. That’s what the letter writer somehow found out about, although how I don’t know. And since then, I’ve also-I see death, all right? I usually know when someone’s going to die. I see the world of death that flickers behind the world of life.” He shut his eyes.
Draco gaped at him for a few minutes. Then he caught his breath and said kindly, “I think that would make a wonderful idea for a story, but you’re really not making very much sense. What do you see?” He knew that Potter would probably do better with a slightly hectoring tone right now than a purely gentle one, and sure enough, Potter shook his hair out of his eyes and looked at Draco defiantly.
“I see death,” he said again. “That’s one reason that I’m such a good Auror. I see grey outlines flickering around people’s hands when they’ve committed a murder. I see a gray aura replace their shadows when they’re on the verge of death themselves. I can anticipate and prevent some of those deaths, and I can catch murderers.” He licked his lips again and looked up at the ceiling, as if that would somehow lessen the weight of Draco’s fascinated stare.
“The world of death-it’s hard to describe. But it’s like this world is just a veil that covers others.” He gave Draco a distrustful glance. “I’m sure that you’ve heard and used that saying before, literary person that you are.”
“Heard it,” Draco said promptly. “Never used it. You couldn’t persuade me to write a character who would speak in such clichés.” Not now, at least. He hoped fervently that Potter would never read Self-Portrait With Roses.
Potter did smile at that, though the expression was hard and wary. “There are other worlds that I can only catch glimpses of, instead of seeing into,” he murmured. “But the dead-I can hear their voices when they welcome someone who’s newly dead among them. I can see a black sun that rises when ours sets, and immense volcanic plains stretching into the distance, and trees that have what I think are black peaches. And there’s a trio of silver moons, and shadows that eat souls and spit them out again, and wheels that blaze with fire and rotate with shades of the dead strapped to them. I think those are the people condemned to relive every incident of their lives.” Potter shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. “I’ve seen those visions again and again, and they were so consistent I thought they had to be real. But-but there’s nothing in the research about someone who’s held the Deathly Hallows being able to do that, and just because the visions are consistent doesn’t mean anything. What if I am going mad, and I’ve been doing that slowly for the last sixteen years?”
Draco tried hard to set his fascination aside and concentrate on what Potter was saying. He would have liked to ask more questions about the world of the dead, and would have had his viewpoint character do so if he was writing a novel about this, but Potter was a real person, not a character.
That is, in fact, most of the problem, he acknowledged to himself, and asked, “Did you think that you were going mad only because of the letters? Or did you have some idea before that?”
“It’s a fear I’ve had as long as I can remember,” Potter said slowly. He closed his eyes and tilted his head back, and Draco thought he was trying to pinpoint the exact moment when the fear started. Draco was impressed. A memory that good, and the skill to use it, was not something he would have credited Potter with before. “When I was a child, and something freakish happened to me, I didn’t know it was accidental magic, because I didn’t have any idea magic existed. I thought I must have imagined it when my relatives refused to talk about it, in fact.”
Draco swallowed his drool. Potter was letting Draco into his memories without struggle this time. “And when you were at Hogwarts?”
Potter gave him a long, slow, sardonic look. “The Prophet ran regular articles on how I was losing my mind. What do you think?”
Draco nodded to show that he should have guessed that, and proceeded. “And have your fears grown sharper since you used the Resurrection Stone?”
Potter rolled his eyes. “Of course. But I had managed to keep them to a manageable level until I started receiving these letters. A month and a half ago,” he added, when Draco leaned forwards and stared at him expectantly. “Always delivered by the same golden owl. I’ve never seen that breed of bird before, and I haven’t been able to learn anything about it.”
“Not unexpected,” Draco murmured. His mind was working hard. The letter writer couldn’t simply want to reveal Potter’s secret, because the most effective course in that case would have been to go the papers. “Have any of the letters included a demand for money, or an interview?”
“I could have dealt with them better if they had!” Potter rose to his feet and paced back and forth, staring at the stone walls of Draco’s tower as if he thought they would grow horrid mushrooms at any moment. “At least then I would have some idea of what to expect. Instead, what I have is a steady stream of letters that seem to torment me for the sake of tormenting.” He whirled around to face Draco. “I’ve told no one because I would have to explain the situation, and other people would believe that I’m going mad.”
“Including your friends?” Draco gave him a skeptical glance. “I might not like Granger much, but she’s devoted to your interests. I doubt she would let you go to St. Mungo’s if she could do something to stop it” In the interests of diplomacy, he decided, he would say nothing about Weasley.
Potter gave him the ghost of a smile. “I told them a few things, enough to give them a few clues. But I never found the words I needed to tell the full story.” The smile grew stronger, and Draco suspected Potter had chosen that phrasing deliberately, to appeal to the writer in Draco. He wondered if he should be flattered or insulted, and in the end settled on a mixture of both. “Except to you.”
Draco bowed his head and said nothing for long minutes. His tongue had swollen, or felt as if it had swollen, so that it seemed to fill his mouth. The honor Potter had done him was great enough that his head hurt.
“And I’ve only done that because I think you can help me,” Potter went on briskly, as if he sensed Draco’s emotions and wanted to dissipate them. “So. Any ideas? Why would someone torture me in silence about this secret instead of selling it to the highest bidder?”
“Because it’s too unbelievable?” Draco asked, but ended up shaking his head. “No. I believed it.”
“Yes, you did,” Potter said, in a tone with a challenge underneath it, as if to say that believing his words suggested nothing commendable about Draco.
Draco flapped a hand at him, still tracing the list of names that Cassidy had given him over in his head. “And you have no idea where you might have met any of these writers, where they might have learned the secret?”
Potter gave him the most tired look in the world. “I meet a lot of people at all sorts of functions, Malfoy. No. I can only tell you that I’m sure I didn’t arrest any of them. I would have remembered that.”
“Do you have the letter I sent to you here?” Draco asked. Potter nodded. Draco held out his hand, and Potter gave it over, scarcely demurring. Draco noted that with wonder as he unfolded the paper. A little easy self-exposure, and suddenly Potter seemed almost to trust Draco.
He began to run his eyes down the list, relaxing his mind as he did when he was contemplating an outline for a novel, trying to let what he knew about each writer rise to the forefront of his mind as he looked at their names and blend with the information that Potter had given him.
Terry Boot. Gabriel Wrexby. Yolanda Timpany-
Draco froze.
“You have something,” Potter said, in the intent tone of a hunter talking to another hunter. “What is it? What have you found?”
Draco lifted one hand to stop him, while his mind spun in silence through what he could recall of Yolanda. He had never tried to know her that well, but of course he had read her stories. She wrote about madmen-
Of course.
Draco looked up at Potter. “I think it’s Yolanda Timpany,” he said. “And she’s either interested in your madness because that’s what she tends to write about, or in the fact that you’re a prominent public figure, because she likes to ruin them.”
Potter’s nails rasped on the table, and then he said, “I don’t think you have any proof of this.”
Draco shook his head. “No. Just intuition.” He felt a faint pulse of indignation that he had no intention of showing to Potter. Someone else had the idea of writing about him before I did?
Potter’s face went through several contortions before he settled on disgust. “Another bloody writer trying to corral me,” he said. “But her harping on my madness doesn’t make much sense, if she already knew about it. She could have gone ahead and included in a story that would ruin me.” He looked up. “I’m glad that you decided not to write about me.”
Surveying the battle-fire that burned in Potter’s eyes, Draco had to agree that it was one of the luckier decisions he’d made.
Chapter Eight.