Chapter Six of 'A Reckless Frame of Mind'- Scouting Mission
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Chapter Six-Scouting Mission
Draco gave a gusty sigh and pushed his fingers into the creases at the corners of his eyes, massaging gently. He knew the signs of impending headache from studying too hard-he had experienced it often enough while cooped up in Spinner’s End with nothing to do but read-and he knew he would have to end another afternoon of trying to find the solution to Potter’s neurosis.
It had been more than a day since he’d talked to the wanker. Perhaps leaving him alone and letting him believe himself unwatched would encourage him to display some behavior that might give Draco a clue to his secret. But every time he’d passed the observation window and paused to look inside, no matter whether he timed his observations five minutes apart or fifty, all Potter did was sleep, or eat, or pick at the bandages on his wrists and stare at the ceiling with a frown.
Draco briefly considered leaving instructions with the mediwitches on duty that night to watch Potter carefully, but then dismissed the notion. There was no doubt they would watch Potter carefully anyway, since most of them disliked him. The ones who didn’t had said, often in Draco’s hearing, that he deserved whatever punishment he received for the way he had failed the wizarding world.
He did have to wonder if Laura, the mediwitch who had wanted to mistreat Potter, was the only one of her kind. Perhaps he would have to order special wards on Potter’s room soon, the kind that kept track of anyone who moved in and out. The Healers would likely refuse a request for anything more than that until and unless Potter was hurt, but at least such specialized wards would give them a list of suspects.
Draco shook his head and snorted softly as he gathered up the books on suicidal behavior he’d been studying, to take home and read there. Who would have thought he would not only be acting as Psyche-Diver to Potter, but trying to protect him from bodily harm as well?
If I don’t, I doubt anyone will. He’s made his friends bugger off, too.
In defiance of his own instincts, he stopped at Potter’s observation window one more time and stared in at him. Something must have changed. He remembered Potter as so restless in school that he could hardly sit through five minutes of Potions class without fidgeting. He would be going mad in confinement like this.
If he is not mad already, of course.
But Potter lay on his side, his face turned into the pillow, his breathing loud and deep. Draco frowned. That breathing made it sound as if Potter were feigning, but it told Draco nothing concrete about why he wanted to, any more than the numerous small signs of something wrong had added up to a larger picture as yet.
Draco closed his eyes and shook his head. He would reason better once he’d been home for a time, and taken off his formal robes, and spent some hours thinking about anything that was not Harry bloody Potter.
*
Harry sighed into his pillow. He didn’t want to move. It was almost comforting to lie in bed, knowing that on the morrow he would rise and see Malfoy or perhaps his friends, and that they would fail to understand him as always, and that nothing would change. Temptation nibbled at him in the form of letting Malfoy give up on him and put him in the Janus Thickey ward. People would still dislike him, but that was nothing new. And at least he would have food and shelter there, and he could remain in the wizarding world, instead of fleeing to the Muggle one.
But then he growled. No, that was the same sort of temptation as the one that had told him, when he was preparing his plan to leave the Ministry, to simply use the Killing Curse on himself in a quiet place so he wouldn’t bother waking up. Whoever cast the Cassandra Curse on him had probably wanted him to give up on life. And Harry wouldn’t.
He would survive. And though he was saddened that his friends couldn’t play the role in his life anymore that they used to, he would adapt to that along with everything else. He would live, and escape, and become someone other than Harry Potter.
And now, he had to take a risk. Though it was past midnight and the likelihood of someone glancing in on him through the invisible window was small, it was still a possibility. He couldn’t tell. He would just have to hope that no one was at the moment.
He closed his eyes and tapped deep into his wandless magic, the force that had sometimes carried him up to fleeing suspects faster than human legs could move, and which had Apparated him uncontrollably away from a rogue werewolf the Ministry assigned him to chase moments before it charged him. He’d spent the last few days eating full meals and resting. If there was any time his wandless power should be at full strength, it was now.
Harry pictured the wards on the door, the tangled knot, dissolving in the same way that the wards on the doors of Azkaban did when he escorted a prisoner there. They should part seamlessly, leaving no traces of themselves behind and triggering no alarm to warn anyone in St. Mungo’s bound to them. He envisioned the exact sequence of the knot melting and parting, again and again, until his magic stirred in him like a lazy snake and sweat stood out on his forehead.
“Open,” he whispered, again and again, not worried if someone watching through the window heard him muttering it. After all, one couldn’t perform magic simply by wishing it.
If one were a normal wizard, at least, and even for Harry, it was a struggle-like trying to lift an enormous rock with one hand. He drove his teeth into his tongue and panted, then bit down at the same moment as he drove his magic forwards.
The effort ripped a moan from him that he muffled in the pillow, but it worked. Harry felt the sudden absence of a tingling power in the air that he’d almost come to take for granted. The wards on the door had parted, and he was free to move.
He stood, concentrating on the image of the separated wards all the while to hold them while he slipped towards the door. He opened it cautiously, despite his strained magic shrieking at him to hurry. No alarms sounded, and no mediwitch stood on the other side with her hand uplifted to point accusingly at him.
With a harsh breath of relief, he stepped into the corridor, and relaxed the grip of his mind and magic. The wards snapped back together. Harry turned to stare at them critically, and noticed the red and gold colors ricocheting back and forth through each other. After a moment, however, they settled again. It would take a long, hard glance and a deep familiarity with ward magic for any onlooker to know they had been altered.
Harry glanced down at his clothes. He still wore the robes he’d been brought to St. Mungo’s in, since he’d steadfastly refused to change into the hospital pyjamas they’d tried to give him, and none of the mediwizards liked him well enough to coax him into changing. He licked his lips, wincing as his bitten tongue throbbed, and then concentrated on his magic once more.
It would be exhausting to keep a Disillusionment Charm on himself as he traveled up and down the stairs, but there was simpler magic he could use. Thinking intently of clean clothes, he whispered, “Scourgify.”
The magic washed reluctantly over him this time, a cold feeling just as pervasive as the Disillusionment Charm would have been, but with a far different effect. The wrinkles in his robes smoothed out, the dirty feeling vanished from his hair-leaving his scalp stinging with the effects of the spell-and a small shower of dust and lint fell away from him and cascaded to his feet. Harry began to stride down the corridor towards the stairs, making sure to keep his head bowed a little, as if he were in the throes of grief.
Auror robes and concealing his scar might be enough to keep him safe until he could reach the first floor and look over the defenses of the hospital. He would just have to hope that the mediwizards and Healers who might be on night duty would notice the clothes first and not think of looking into his face.
Of course it was risky. But Harry had no better ideas.
He reached the third floor and glanced around. He could make out the same gleaming red-gold knots of wards on the patients’ rooms, but on the walls was a long, thin strand of magic that made him narrow his eyes. He moved towards it, staring up.
It was bright blue, and looped down to touch each door in turn. Now and then it pulsed as if it were a vein bulging with traveling blood. Harry shook his head in bewilderment. He hadn’t seen anything like it before, and wasn’t sure what it did. For all he knew, it took a photograph of each person who paused to study it and sent it directly to the Healers.
He controlled the impulse to touch it. No matter what his Gryffindor instincts said, sometimes it was best not to poke something unknown and dangerous.
Holding his breath, he passed beneath it as he made his way towards the stairs on the far side, studying the wards all the way to make sure that none of them varied from the general pattern. The thin blue line continued to pulse above him, but did nothing else. Harry began to relax slightly.
Then he heard the sound of footfalls from down the corridor, coming towards him.
Harry stiffened and lifted his head. Here comes the first test.
*
A good dinner, a half-hour of soft, soothing music from the Melodious Network on Wizarding Wireless, and comfortable silk robes had helped Draco’s body immensely, but done nothing for his mind. He still lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling while notes of the “Giants’ Concerto” floated into his ears, and pondered the problem of Potter.
At least he could do it without a headache now.
Too many fractured, jumbled pieces. A truly suicidal man should have tried again to kill himself by now-unless he was waiting to lull everyone into relaxing around him, but, from Draco’s observations, a truly suicidal man would not have been able to maintain Potter’s calm. And he would have been more placating towards his Psyche-Diver, too, wanting to be seen as the model patient. Potter had replied to him with sarcasm and cynicism.
Potter’s symptoms didn’t fit with most of the irrationality Draco had studied. He reported no hallucinations, seemed to understand cause and effect, showed insight and empathy into others’ behavior, and had submitted to Draco’s touch-which a paranoiac could not have permitted himself to. Even though he still continued lying and had tried to end his life, Draco might almost have been moved to declare him sane.
It would almost make sense if what Potter had said about the Cassandra Curse was true.
Draco shifted uneasily, and scoffed at himself. He would be thinking that leprechaun gold lasted more than one day next.
There was only one tactic that had brought Potter out of his tight defensive shell for even a moment, and that was speaking to him as if he were a friend and touching him gently. Potter was starved for contact. Coax him along that way, Draco suspected, and he would respond because he wouldn’t able to help himself.
It went against his principles as a Psyche-Diver to do so. He worked by domination and control, merciless refusal to let the patient deny the reality outside his own head.
But this time, since even Potter’s soul defied him…
He might try gentleness tomorrow, he supposed. For a few minutes, at least.
*
The Healer who came into sight was an older man, with a halo of silver hair around his head, and a long sheaf of parchment in his hand. He was consulting it as he walked, now and then glancing up at the thin blue line on the wall and shaking his head as if it worried him. Harry walked past him with a strong stride, only offering a half-nod when the Healer glanced towards him.
His fists clenched. He didn’t dare use any more magic now; he would need all the power he had remaining to open the wards on his door when he returned. If the Healer saw his scar and called for help, Harry would need to subdue him with his bare hands.
But the Healer, like most people, saw the Auror robes, assumed a patient couldn’t possibly be wearing them, and simply toddled on, with a half-nod of his own back. Harry could hear him muttering something that sounded like, “can’t even keep their own records.”
He nearly collapsed in relief when he came to the head of the stairs and heard no sudden shouts of realization after him. So far, he had escaped.
So far.
He went carefully down the stairs, muscles tensed, ready at any moment for a ward to cross him and erupt in noise or a violent vibration of color that would alert anyone concerned that someone was out of his room who shouldn’t be. Or would he hear or see the ward at all? Perhaps it only rang for Healers-
Harry cut that chain of thought off. It wasn’t doing him any good. He settled onto the second floor, and glanced about carefully.
No other, unusual wards, and no thin blue line, either. Harry licked his lips. It seemed impossible that St. Mungo’s would be so careless with its security. After all, some of the patients were violent, and Harry himself had seen the criminals he caught imprisoned in rooms that were little better than cells.
Deciding that this was another risk he had to run, he walked away from the stairs and to the first observation window he saw. Carefully, he arranged himself next to it and peered in at the woman who lay in the bed, her head swollen to twice the normal size.
After long moments of study, he realized that the air around her shimmered oddly, with odd pearly undertones that might just be reflections of light off the white sheets-and then again, might not. The undertones adjusted themselves any time the woman shifted or muttered to herself, and when she rolled onto her side in a useless search for a comfortable place to sleep, Harry could actually see the whole of the glittering cocoon before it spun, settled into place, and then went nearly invisible again.
That’s how they do it, then. Wards on the doors, but also wards on the patients themselves. No wonder I’m not being detected; the majority of the spells here are oriented towards one individual only, and don’t concern themselves with me.
Harry snorted lightly as he wondered what wards were on him. Almost certainly some spells that would warn the Healers if he had suicidal thoughts or made violent moves towards his person again. It was just too bad for them that he really hadn’t had the desire to kill himself.
He walked the length of the second floor, satisfying himself that nothing here could hurt him, and then prepared to go to the first floor.
*
Draco lay on the bed, holding his temples. He once more had a headache, and his eyes burned from long peering into a Pensieve. Silently, he asked himself if this aggravation was worth it. Usually, he left work at the office. It was just a patient, after all-just Potter.
But he also felt he was on the brink of a revelation, and given his quest to understand Potter’s mad behavior, that was nothing to sneer at.
He dropped his hands to his sides, since massaging his head wasn’t helping, and focused his mind once again on what he’d learned from surveying his memories of his conversations with Potter.
It was at least possible that the statements could be the truth, despite the mocking tone behind most of them. Or truths of a sort, Draco amended silently to himself, since he was not yet willing to entertain the idea that Potter had been only pretending to lie all along and had managed to make a fool of him.
And the Cassandra Curse would explain-
“The Cassandra Curse would explain nothing,” Draco said aloud, frowning at the ceiling, “because the Cassandra Curse does not exist.”
But it was easier to think about it, here, away from Potter and his infuriating tendency to make Draco’s head spin with anger. If it did exist, it would explain a great deal. But then, if it were possible to drink unicorn blood without being cursed, that would explain some of the miracles that had happened in the wizarding world in ancient times, too. Draco couldn’t throw out reason and sanity simply because one of his subjects had a delusion that things must be different. He would never get any work done if he did.
If it had happened-
Say something like it had happened. That wasn’t impossible. And say that Potter sincerely believed himself to be under it.
Draco’s eyes opened wider. That could be true. Perhaps someone had suggested the Cassandra Curse to Potter, and in his madness he’d latched onto it and started acting as if he were under it. That could explain everything, from the darkness at the center of his soul-he was preventing himself or anyone else from accessing the truth, just as Draco had thought he would-to his lies. He could tell the truth, if he wished, in the sense of retaining the ability, but he had convinced himself that he couldn’t. And of course he reacted snappishly to everyone else, because to him, he was the only clear-sighted one in a world of people under the spell.
Draco smiled. He knew the smile was thin and vicious, and he did not care. I’ve got you, Potter. I just need to undermine that stubborn conviction, and I can heal you.
But given Potter’s magic and the whirlwind defense he’d constructed, which continued to resemble nothing else Draco had ever seen, his usual method of digging into another’s soul and dominating it would be dangerous for the both of them. Potter might rip Draco’s mind apart in throwing him away.
And what pain would it cause him to have his whirlwind defense breached, when he’d put so much of his magic into it?
Draco sighed. This was making more and more sense; it would explain why Potter was resting so much since he’d been brought to St. Mungo’s. He had used his magic to hide the truth away from himself as soon as he realized what a Psyche-Diver did and what one of them might see, so his body had been weakened by the sudden stress.
But it all led back to the same conclusion.
His best chance was to persuade Potter to take down the barrier himself.
His best choice was still gentleness.
Draco folded his arms behind his head and scowled. His headache had finally started to subside. Trust Potter to change all the rules to suit himself.
*
The moment he stepped onto the first floor, Harry’s head swung. He licked his lips. Since the destruction of Voldemort and its brother wand-which Harry had snapped over his knee-he could sense his own wand of holly and phoenix feather at a much greater distance. And he could sense it now, radiating its magic from the direction of the far end of the corridor.
Of course, there were wards crawling on the walls and even the floors here, and certainly someone would be guarding the wands. He would have to be careful.
He ducked his head again, slid his hands into his robe pockets, and wandered down the corridor, doing his best to look like a visitor who’d just lost a best friend to disease. He slowed as he heard voices, and glanced out of the corner of his eye at the large desk that stood catty-corner to the entrance doors. They had changed some things since the last time he’d been here; for one thing, wands had once been kept on the ground floor.
Now they floated, suspended in blue light, in the middle of a large bone-white cage behind the desk. A handsome but iron-faced woman sat in front of the cage, talking with a witch appearing so bereaved that Harry guessed she’d lost a child. The only person he’d seen look remotely like that was Molly Weasley, when Charlie died in the war.
He slouched along the wall and stared at his feet, now and then looking up at the wands when he was sure their guardian was fully involved in her conversation with the grieving witch. There was his wand, circling among the others like an innocent memo in the Ministry of Magic. His mouth watered, and his fingers flexed. His yearning was so strong that he thought he might be able to call the wand to him, exhausted magic or no exhausted magic.
But then he let out a little breath, and shook his head. No more risks than necessary. He would take gambles when he had to, but he wouldn’t be careless and mess this up. He had only one chance to escape, really, and that would come while they were still unsuspicious of him wanting to escape at all.
And once he ran, he would never return to the wizarding world. Right now, his nerves were still jangling from the mere proximity of other people. The witches might turn around at any moment, feel the inherent dislike that the Cassandra Curse seemed to inspire, and accuse him of plotting murder.
He turned and walked towards the stairs, trying to mimic the pace of someone who had problems but had virtuously resolved to tackle them. He took the stairs all the way back up to the fourth floor this time, and was huffing slightly by the time he reached the top. Luckily, he didn’t meet anyone on the way.
In front of his door, he thought for a moment that his exhausted magic wouldn’t be able to open the wards, and panic surged through him. But strong emotion of any kind was fuel for the fire, and the knot reluctantly creaked open a moment later.
Harry glided through the door, shut it tightly behind him, and flopped down on the bed with a sigh. Perhaps someone had seen him missing and was even now reporting him; Harry hadn’t had the power to spare to leave a glamour of himself here. But he didn’t think so. He thought he had managed to get away with it.
And in a few days, he would get away with it completely. He would escape.
He closed his eyes and shivered, feeling for a moment as he had when preparing to cut his wrists. This was the brink of change. Once he fled the wizarding world, he would never come back.
Tension caught him along the edges of his eyes, and he wanted to weep. But then he shook his head, listening to the soft rustle of his hair against the pillow. He should get used to the sound, he thought. He would hear it for the rest of his life, since he highly doubted that he would convince anyone to become his lover. And he didn’t want one, now that he’d lost Ginny as a fiancée.
It hurt. But he had already made his decision, and it was rather late to go back on it now.
He would bear whatever came. He would live specifically because he thought the caster of the curse would not have wanted him to. And no one would stop him from doing that.
Not his friends, who honestly thought they were acting in his best interests.
Not the caster of the curse, who by now probably couldn’t even remember the level of hatred and hostility that had permitted him to throw the spell.
And certainly not bloody Draco Malfoy, who wanted Harry to think of all the things he had already determined not to think of.
Harry gave a grim smile, and wondered what someone watching through the observation window would think of it. They would deem it fiendish and write that he needed watching, probably.
Watch me all you like. I’m still going to slip past you-
Three nights from now.
Yes, that should work.
Chapter 7.