Chapter Ten of 'A Reckless Frame of Mind'- Recommendations
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Chapter Ten-Recommendations
It had taken Draco hours to calm the pain churning in his gut and biting at his soul. He had remained in his office, staring with unseeing eyes at the parchment he shifted back and forth again and again, before he finally stood with a curse and returned home. And once there, he had proceeded to do nothing but sit in his favorite chair, sip Firewhiskey too fast, and relive the final moments of his joining with Harry.
You went too far, he accused himself in his head. You rushed into things. You should have spent at least a week studying him first, learning his temper and how much he distrusted anyone offering him help. Instead, you plunged in, confident that you knew him and that he’d open with an appeal to his personal sympathy, and you were rejected, just like you were when you approached him as an ignorant child. This is your own fault.
And maybe that was true, but the endless self-recriminations didn’t make him feel any better.
Draco swallowed his Firewhiskey and clenched his left hand in front of him. If he just kept pressing his fingers into his palm, then perhaps he could pretend he didn’t care, and that this was solely about anger, and not hurt.
He’d been stupid. He’d shown too much of himself to Potter. He’d believed, naively for a man with his experience of life in general and Potter in particular, that, after seeing his soul, the other wizard would give him a fair judgment. But of course he hadn’t. This was Potter. He’d sunk himself into arrogance and self-delusion, particularly now, when he thought he was the victim instead of the people he lied to.
Draco could put it into words, but that didn’t make the pain go away. It went on sinking into him, growing worse the more time passed since the confrontation. Draco had reached for the one thing he’d most wanted since he’d become a Psyche-Diver: admittance into the soul of someone who fascinated him, rather than being the usual piddling challenge that his patients were.
And he’d been slapped away.
No, worse than that. Cast away, shoved away, thrown down and trampled on. And Potter didn’t even have the courage to look him in the eye afterwards.
Draco curled his lip, and returned to drinking.
He’d made a mistake, that was all. He had assumed that Potter was capable of changing, when he should have paid more attention to the testimonies of the people who’d been around him for a year. Even his dearest friends were convinced that something was wrong and he needed Healing in St. Mungo’s. And what did Draco do? Assumed some sort of sanity in a man who had continually lied for the delight of it.
He had been wrong.
He had to face that, and stop raking over Potter’s actions in his mind as if they would mean something else if he just looked at them a bit differently.
And, of course, he had to decide what he intended to do about Potter now. He was still the Psyche-Diver. He was still the one with the power to make the judgment in this case.
He squinted his eyes shut. Unlike the last time, he didn’t intend to rush in and do something stupid because of his haste. He would, instead, evaluate his options sanely and make the best possible decision.
His hurt pride urged him to transfer Potter to the Janus Thickey ward immediately. But his hurt pride wasn’t the only factor to consider.
Coldly, carefully, Draco leaned back in his chair and decided what Potter’s fate would be.
*
Harry thought he was dreaming, at first, when he opened his eyes. His room had a soft light glowing in the middle of it, though he knew it was long past the time when all the light but that of the wards went out, and behind the Lumos¬-lit wand stood Ginny. He’d wanted this so often in the past year that it was possible his mind had granted him the vision just to spite him.
He licked his lips and forced himself up on his elbows, not caring now who might be watching him through the observation window. “Ginny?” he whispered.
And then she moved forwards and embraced him abruptly, and he realized that he wasn’t dreaming. No vision could be this warm, this vital, this real. He wanted to reach up and hug her back, but his arms were frozen with wonder.
She stepped away from him, and left Harry’s body feeling stretched. There shouldn’t be this much distance between them. He opened his mouth to speak, then remembered she would only hear lies and swallowed, hesitating.
“Harry,” she said, in a low voice. He had never heard her so rational since the day the spell took effect. “I thought at first I would just let you find this out through Ron and Hermione, but Hermione said no, I should come and tell you myself.” She took a deep breath, and it seemed to make her shiver, as if she were a gauzy curtain instead of a human being. Harry lay still, watching her, not sure what would happen next, but sure it was nothing good.
“I have someone else now,” she said.
Harry dug his fingers into the blankets beneath him, and told himself that he hadn’t hoped for forgiveness anyway.
“You’re not getting better,” Ginny said, her eyes large and wet. “You won’t relent towards me. You won’t tell me the truth about whatever made you start lying in the first place.” She looked aside from him, and Harry could see her throat moving nervously. She was swallowing, too. “I deserve better than someone who will do that to me. So I started dating-well, it doesn’t matter what his name is. I don’t want you attacking him.”
“I wouldn’t!” Harry blurted, horrified that she could think such a thing of him, and then she faced him and smiled sadly, and he realized that she had heard the exact opposite of the truth he’d meant to speak.
“Maybe you wouldn’t mean to,” she said. “But I remember how jealous you could get, when you thought you had cause.” She hesitated, then added, “I didn’t want to tell you like this. But I had no idea if I would ever see you again. And God help me, I’m still in love with you, even though I have no reason to be.”
Harry said nothing. What in the world did one say?
“I hope you can find the Healing you need here,” Ginny said, and came forwards, giving him one last hug, and one last kiss on the cheek. Harry didn’t miss the way she shuddered violently when she did it, as if the very touch of his skin disgusted her.
“Good-bye, Harry.”
And then she had turned and slipped out of the room, and Harry lay down on the bed and shut his eyes. He would not weep. He had no reason to. He had given up the belief that Ginny might return to him long ago. Honesty was important to her, and even if he had an explanation she believed in for the lying, she wouldn’t have put up with him doing it all the time.
But he had still hoped, it seemed, in one part of him, and that made the blow all the worse. It was like cutting a tendon he hadn’t known he still depended on to walk.
He hoped, distantly, that he had at least provided a good show for whoever used the observation window right now.
*
What are the advantages to putting Potter in the Janus Thickey ward?
Draco had leaned back in his chair, his head and neck supported and cradled, his hands folded comfortably in his lap. He had deliberately deepened his breathing and concentrated on his heartbeat, until it sounded more slowly and powerfully in his ears than normal. He would make his choice with a clear head.
There are other residents there who are suffering long-term spell damage. Potter’s lies wouldn’t affect them, and they’re unlikely to hate him as much as normal people would, either. He can find friendship and companionship there, or an acceptable substitute for it. He wouldn’t be troubling the mediwitches and the other people who have to take care of him, if they knew that he wasn’t about to leave. And I could work on his soul at my leisure, assuming that I still want to do it after this.
He was not sure that he did. Potter’s soul had taken on the effect of a glittering bauble waved before a child and then continually snatched away. Why should he want to know what lay at Potter’s core, if the denial happened every time?
And that’s exactly what a child does, too: eventually he pouts and pretends he never wanted the toy anyway.
Draco gritted his teeth. “I’m not a child,” he said aloud. “I’m making the only choice I can that will let me keep my sanity.”
Coward, the voice of his thoughts taunted him. You’re giving up on him because he managed to hurt you. He’ll be the first patient you’ve ever lost, the first one you didn’t heal.
But when he was in the Janus Thickey ward, Draco could work on his soul still. He might even have more success then, because in his eagerness to be out of the ward, Potter would look forwards to any relatively sane company he could get.
But if he’s relatively sane, what business do you have putting him in that ward?
Draco groaned softly into his hand. It seemed that the longer and harder he ran from his emotions, the faster they caught him up. He was, now, not sure that he would be putting Potter where he belonged out of compassion, or putting him in an unsuitable place out of sheer frustration with his rejection.
Or would it be the place he belonged because of frustration? And if you made a commitment to continue to work with him-in a few weeks, perhaps, when he’s had time to become used to his new status and you’ve had a chance to let your temper cool?
*
And one more time.
Harry once again built up the walls that had sustained him during the past six months, since he’d made his plans to commit suicide so the Ministry wouldn’t hunt him in the Muggle world, and shoved the ragged emotions that would weaken him behind those walls.
He had said that he would go through with this plan whatever it cost him. The curse had already stripped his friends and his family and his fiancée from him. Ginny’s appearance earlier this evening shouldn’t have hurt. That it had said he wasn’t strong enough yet, and he might collapse on the brink of victory.
He would not.
He searched his soul-Draco wasn’t the only one who could do that-and crushed the last unrealistic vestiges of dreams. Time and time again he had thought he had done this, and it turned out he hadn’t.
He thought of visions of reconciliation with Ron and Hermione, and then set them on fire in his mind. He thought of the curse fading away someday, and then reminded himself it would never happen. He thought of Ginny’s arms around him, cradling him in honest love, and then heard her words from earlier this evening. She’d found someone else, moved on with her life when it became obvious they couldn’t share theirs anymore. Could he be less brave?
He could do this. He would do this.
The very last temptation was that of rescue from an unlikely source: Malfoy. Harry smiled wryly at himself. It was no wonder that that fantasy had fascinated him so strongly. Why wouldn’t it? His enemy, brought at last to admire his virtues and admit that Harry’s bad luck was not his own fault…
And you failed to let him help you. If you were stronger, you would already have found a way of breaking the curse on your own, and you could have lowered the barrier when he asked you.
Harry rubbed his face in his own failure, and held back the tears that wanted to emerge. He crossed his wrists, so that he could feel the bandages rubbing against the wounds and remind himself that he did have strength when it counted, and even courage. The curse had done its very best to deprive him of both, but it hadn’t succeeded, had it? And that meant his mysterious enemy hadn’t succeeded, either.
He would not allow any enemies to win any victories over him.
And that included Malfoy.
Harry leaned back on the pillows and managed a peaceful smile. He hoped someone was watching through the window, so that he could practice. He would have to maintain as calm a demeanor as possible when he was among the Muggles. There would still be some hostility aimed towards him, particularly if he had to communicate often with his neighbors and they found themselves lied to.
But the curse worked less well on those who did not know his true name, as Harry had discovered by gaining some help when he wrote anonymously. When he became someone other than Harry Potter, he would receive dislike, but not outright hatred.
No more assassination attempts. No more wild cases for the Ministry.
It might almost be relaxing.
And, once again, he repeated the most essential truth to himself.
It’s not the life I would have chosen, but it’s a life. It’s much better than dying in the war, or at the claws of some deadly beast. And if someone in the Ministry did cast this curse on me, then he or she should be glad that I’m gone, and won’t have any more reason to hunt me. I’ve arranged the vaults so that enough money should flow to me to keep me alive. And there must be jobs in the Muggle world where people disliking me won’t matter.
He was uncomfortably aware that he hadn’t spent enough time in the Muggle world since he left the Dursleys’ house at seventeen to be sure of that, but on the other hand, he remembered people even in Little Whinging who had been tolerated as long as they did jobs that no one else really wanted to do. He could take one of those jobs.
Hermione would say that I’m wasting my potential or something else equally pretentious. Dumbledore would, too, I’m certain. And I don’t want to think what my parents and Sirius would say.
But that was the whole point, wasn’t it? Though he loved the dead, and he still loved his friends, none of them were here right now. He couldn’t go on living his life by what they might have said, any more than he could go on living in dreams of what might have happened if the curse weren’t cast.
Smaller, calmer, quieter, more ordinary, less ambitious. That was what his life would be from now on.
After long hours of furious concentration, he had managed to beat himself into believing that, and so he could look up almost with a smile when the door to his room opened. Two mediwizards he hadn’t seen before stepped in, followed by a Healer who was shaking her head as she studied a sheaf of documents.
“Are you sure, madam?” one of the mediwizards asked. “I hadn’t thought Psyche-Diver Malfoy had quite finished examining him.”
“Oh, I’m sure,” said the Healer absently. She looked up, and Harry saw both kindness and weariness in her blue eyes. “All the appropriate decisions have been made, and all the appropriate documentation has been filed. Mr. Potter will be spending-well, quite a bit of time in the Janus Thickey ward from now on.”
Harry didn’t offer any resistance as the mediwizards gathered him up, held his arms behind him, and escorted him down the corridor. The Janus Thickey ward was on the same floor as the temporary Spell Damage ward, and so had essentially the same protections. And the magic in the ward itself was actually weaker, because so many of its residents weren’t coherent enough to take advantage of said weaknesses.
He could still escape, and tonight, he would.
For now, though, he would rest, because a night of beating his own hope into submission wasn’t conducive to the strength and speed he would require.
*
In the end, Draco’s stubborn pride had indeed had things all its own way, but not quite as he’d suspected it might.
He strode through the doors of St. Mungo’s with a new urgency. The witch behind the desk where the wands floated, caged, blinked and gave him an odd look, but she was always giving him odd looks, since she was one of those who thought patients had to be coaxed and lectured into health, instead of bullied into it. Draco nodded to her anyway, and then took the stairs. His energy was too impatient this morning to stand the confinement of a lift.
He didn’t want to put Potter in the Janus Thickey ward after all. He wanted to force the stubborn bastard to accept that, yes, they’d shared their souls and it meant something after all, that he wasn’t like everyone else, that Draco had an innate talent for seeing Potter that should be respected and honored.
That was what he meant by Potter owing him. He’d never invested this much of himself in a patient. He deserved to get the same investment back. In fact, he wanted it. He’d awakened from a dream of Potter’s soul, and an aching desire had spiraled through him, concentrated in his chest instead of his groin.
He reached Potter’s room, and stopped outside the invisible window. Doubtless, Potter was staring at the ceiling with his usual frown on his face, or pretending to sleep. Well, Draco would go in if he was and say one of the most unexpected things possible-perhaps a cheery greeting-so that Potter would need to turn towards him with green eyes opening wide and a response in his face-
Except that it wasn’t Potter in the bed at all. It was a woman who appeared to have two heads.
Draco felt a sharp shiver run through his body. He stepped back and glanced up at the soft blue numbers hovering over the door, wondering for a moment if he had come to the wrong room-even as he knew he hadn’t, because stopping beside Potter’s room to look in on his patient had become instinctive.
Potter had been moved.
Without Draco’s express consent.
He could feel his blood pulsing through him like a second heartbeat, but he didn’t explode. Either this was an innocent mistake, which he couldn’t react like a child to, or something more sinister had happened-and he couldn’t show that he suspected it.
He reached his office and wrote a memo asking to see Laura Fallowchilde about matters related to Harry Potter. No one should think anything of that, since she was one of the mediwitches who had attended on Potter. He sent it winging off with a tap of his wand, and then settled behind his desk to wait.
Fallowchilde showed up not long after, hatred and fear fighting in her face. The fear was winning, and that was all Draco required. He tapped his fingers on the desk until she began to shuffle in place, and then said, “I want to know why Potter has been moved from his room without my express knowledge and consent.”
Fallowchilde’s mouth dropped open to form a small circle. Draco suspected she was surprised. He began to speak the words that would send her sorting through patient records, to find Potter’s altered files and bring them back to him. A normal thing to ask for, and it would involve less exposure than asking for them himself.
But Fallowchilde said, her voice bewildered, “He’s been transferred to the Janus Thickey ward, of course, Psyche-Diver. I saw your name on the paperwork that authorized the move.” She was watching Draco more warily than ever now, as if he might grow an alternate personality and attack her at any moment.
Draco felt a surge of rage so enormous that for a moment he imagined it could float him out of his chair and let him hover over the desk without the aid of a broom. Fallowchilde took a step away from him, staring all the while.
That was what let Draco knew that he had to restrain his emotions, just in case he ceased to intimidate Fallowchilde and she carried the news of his fury to someone else. He sighed and flipped a hand. “Yes, but I wished for one last interview before he was transferred there,” he said. “I left instructions for him to be brought to my office, and it was not done.”
“Oh.” Fallowchilde relaxed. “And you wish me to fetch him?”
Draco performed some rapid calculations in his head. Whatever odd enemy had done this-someone wishing, perhaps, to wreck his prestige and position in the hospital-would be watching to see his reaction. Open rebellion would probably promote more open interference. On the other hand, if Draco kept his reactions muffled, he could lull his enemy into a false sense of security, making them think that he cared more about fitting seamlessly into the hospital than claiming his rights.
“It does not matter this one time,” he said. Do you have listening wards on my office, whoever you are? Take that into your ears and keep it in your brain, then. “I had largely given up on Potter. But I would not like to see a habit of disobeying my requests crop up.”
“Of course not, Psyche-Diver.” Fallowchilde inclined her head, seeming glad that he didn’t require any hard task of her. “And may I leave now? Only, I left work unattended that shouldn’t go unattended long.”
“Yes, you may go,” said Draco, as if indifferent, and she turned and hurried out of the room.
Draco leaned back in his chair and began to flip idly through the documents that contained the interviews with Potter’s friends, as if attempting to settle the information one more time in his head before he began the next case. His mind had taken a different track, of course, but it was still beyond even a skilled Legilimens to read his thoughts from a distance.
Who would have the authority and power to transfer Potter to the Janus Thickey ward before Draco gave permission?
A Healer, of course. But Fallowchilde had said his permission was written on the paperwork, and a Healer could have acted openly, without the necessity of that subterfuge. Of course, someone who did not want Draco to know who she was might not have done so, but even then…
No, Draco did not think it was a Healer. Someone like that who had decided to challenge his authority and legitimacy as a Psyche-Diver would have done it openly, with most of the hospital behind her, so hated was Draco.
But that cut down the number of suspects considerably. One of Potter’s friends could have contested Draco’s authority, but they were frankly all too honest and acted too much like Gryffindors to do so.
And then Draco’s head came up, and he felt his nostrils sniff like a hunting beast taking in the scent of a hot trail.
What if he was looking in the wrong direction? What if it was not a mysterious enemy of his who had done this, but a mysterious enemy of Potter’s?
Someone in the Ministry.
Someone who wanted to reduce the embarrassment of one of their best Aurors going mad and trying to kill himself, by ensuring that he would never leave St. Mungo’s?
Or someone who hates him. Perhaps enough to have cast the Cassandra Curse on him.
This time, perhaps because he had spent so much time thinking along the same lines, Draco felt it. There was an intangible pressure in his head, pushing at him, trying to force his thoughts back into the mold of deciding that the curse was not real. It was subtle, powerful, and clever, but Draco fought back with all his own stubbornness. He was good at fighting back, at least since the war.
A headache began to spread through his temples. He felt sweat break out on his face. And then the pressure retreated, instead of dissolving. Draco felt as if he were drifting between conclusions, wanting to think the Cassandra Curse was real but without enough evidence to prove even to his own satisfaction that it was.
And then he remembered the book on the matter he had taken from the Hogwarts library, and not read since.
Once again, he stood and strode out of his office, frantic energy coursing through him. He would find the book, which he had left at home. He would read it. He would fight back against the pressure if it returned, and decide once and for all if it were real.
And if it were, then he would break down both metal doors and shut doors in the soul to open the darkness at Potter’s core.
There was still one more, deeper kind of Dive that he had not tried.
Because you have never tried it, whispered the voice of his Slytherin caution.
Draco did not care. There were circumstances that warranted acting like a Gryffindor, and this was one of them.
Chapter 11.