Chapter Twelve of 'A Reckless Frame of Mind'- Trust
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Chapter Twelve-Trust
Harry skidded out of his room and used the momentum and a slap of his hand against one wall to turn him in the direction of the “normal” ward where he had last stayed. His mind was running in frantic circles in his head, and he knew that he had to master it and follow the track of his clear thoughts. Dash around St. Mungo’s like a wild thing, and he would just be captured and shut up in some ward even more secure than the Janus Thickey. And this time, they wouldn’t leave him alone as much as they had when they didn’t know that he possessed wandless magic.
But it was so hard to think with fear running in his veins like hot tar, and when his legs knew where to go for the first part of his journey, and when his thoughts had a good reason to be frantic.
Malfoy knew.
Harry’s last bit of privacy was stolen. There could be no doubt but that Malfoy would urge him to stay in St. Mungo’s now, and work with the Healers to establish links with the outside world again. But since Malfoy was the only one who knew the truth, he was the one who would have to mediate between Harry and the Healers. Harry would be as helpless as a baby, or a Muggle who spoke another language and couldn’t use a translation charm.
He had had enough of being helpless in the past year. He had finally managed to achieve some measure of control over his life, he’d put his plan into effect, and Malfoy was choosing now to interfere?
Where had he been when Harry most needed him, then, if he really wanted to help so much?
Harry was aware, somewhere in himself, that he was being unfair, since Malfoy hadn’t known that Harry had any problems before he ended up in St. Mungo’s for attempted suicide. But he didn’t care. He was allowed to be unfair.
But not stupid.
He caught himself just as he was running towards the lifts. Of course he couldn’t take them. The Healers controlled them, and all they had to do was command the one he chose to stop, and then he was trapped. And it was a confined space, one where he couldn’t maneuver and duck spells, or lead his pursuers a merry chase.
He listened intently. Yes, there were the steps of his pursuers now, pounding up the stairs at the far end of the corridor, past the room where he’d first been kept. He flared his nostrils and turned for the stairs on the other end. That would carry him through the Janus Thickey ward again, but that would be good. They wouldn’t expect him to plunge back into the trap he’d escaped. They would waste time securing the lifts and the other end of the fourth floor first, and any extra moments he had would be appreciated.
This path would take him past Malfoy again, too, of course.
A dull, throbbing pain appeared in his chest when he thought of Malfoy. Harry shook his head in irritation and sped up. Why should he feel as if he were carrying part of Malfoy around, and now there was a stretch between them, a distance that shouldn’t increase more than a few feet at a time unless they both gave permission for it to do so?
He shouldn’t. And he didn’t feel that way. He was overstrained and overexcited right now, and it wasn’t surprising that he was interpreting the sensations he did feel in the oddest ways.
He knew exactly where Malfoy was as he ran back past his room: sprawled on the floor. Harry ignored that, and shoved away the implications of the knowledge when they tried to make themselves known to him, writhing through his mind like serpents.
It’s not real. I can’t trust him. We have nothing to do with each other anymore.
*
Draco had found his first moments without a piece of his soul and with clear evidence of Harry Potter’s wandless magic…interesting, to say the least.
He felt a cascade of searing pain across his hand, and then he was on the floor with the wind knocked out of him and his head stinging as fiercely as his hand, and a part of himself was far away. It was annoying, as though he’d misplaced an eyeball. Even shaking his head and staring hard at certain corners of the room didn’t rid him of it.
Well, he would just endure.
And then the knowledge of Harry’s escape came fully to him, and Draco cursed silently. He knew exactly why Harry had run, and he had only himself to scold for not predicting those actions. He knew Harry had been suffering for a year in intense isolation, caging God knew how much emotion and helplessness under a mask of careless indifference. He had no outlet. And now he was offered one, but not with a person he had ever loved or trusted. Of course he would run away, and then do his best to keep away from that person as well as the rest of the staff at St. Mungo’s.
Draco felt a clenching surge around his heart, as though he were about to have an attack there. But when he pressed his hand there, it grew no stronger, and his heart was laboring no more than normal. This was just the result of the connection between him and Harry, he thought. He knew, vaguely, the direction Harry was in, and he could feel the pull if he got closer.
But if Harry got outside the hospital…
Draco wasn’t sure he could track him down again, unless he came near Harry by accident. And he had to track him down. He had literally invested part of himself in Harry now. There was no way to end this but by breaking the Cassandra Curse for everyone-which meant finding the caster and demanding he or she remove the spell.
And if Harry got away from him and out into the Muggle world or wider wizarding world, perhaps the caster would have better resources to search for him than Draco would. He’d have a reason, the way he’d had a reason to move Harry into the Janus Thickey ward and try to leave him there to rot. He wouldn’t be obliging enough to sit back and wait while Draco stumbled about looking for Harry.
Enemies never stay still, Draco thought, something he had learned while he was still in Slytherin, and then he was on his feet and acting like a Gryffindor, again, going with the impulse that had popped into his head while he sorted through his options. He pulled a button from his robes, tapped it twice, and cast the spell that would turn it into a Portkey.
Then he slid it into his pocket and went Harry-hunting. He knew he had come back through this ward and started to take the stairs. He would be heading downwards, of course, since there was only the visitors’ room and teashop above them. And he would be aiming for the front doors, since wandless magic wouldn’t be strong enough to allow him to Apparate and he wouldn’t dare go near a Floo connection-
Draco blinked twice. He wondered if the piece of his soul planted in Harry had truly given him more insight into the man, or if he was only thinking things that would be common sense to anyone even slightly acquainted with Harry.
He wants his wand, of course. He won’t leave without that, especially if he doesn’t intend to come back.
And of course he didn’t intend to come back. So far as Harry was concerned, the wizarding world was closed to him, especially if he wouldn’t take Draco’s hand. He would want his wand with him when he ran. As long as he had that, he had the basics of making a new life elsewhere.
Draco couldn’t permit that, because Harry would transform himself into some cringing creature living in the shadows, fearful of any contact with his neighbors, and Draco thought he deserved better.
He began to run himself, hoping that he got to Harry before the staff of St. Mungo’s-or someone working for his enemy-did.
*
Harry flattened himself on the stairs as a Body-Bind curse shot above his head. It spattered harmlessly against the far wall, but he knew he wouldn’t be so lucky with every spell sent his way. For the moment, the Healers were still confused about what had happened, and they had to move from room to room, checking to make sure all the patients were where they were supposed to be. But some of them had seen him now, and the information would be relayed to every mediwizard in the building. It’s Harry Potter we’re hunting. Focus on him.
And to make matters worse, it wasn’t as if he were escaping from Death Eaters, and could fling his wandless magic about with impunity. Harry didn’t want to hurt them.
If only they would understand that he had no chance here, and just wanted to go free!
If Draco-
Harry severed the thought before it formed. Malfoy’s just like the rest of them, and why would he tell them the truth? It would be so much more fun for him to claim that he had no idea what I was talking about, after all.
He’d been right. Life with one person who could understand him but refused to help was worse than a life where everyone stared at him in hatred.
A more serious curse, a jet of purple light, attacked from above. Harry shook his head, telling himself to move, and began to navigate the rest of the stairs to the third floor.
*
Draco closed his eyes, dangerous though it was, as he ran past the Healers who were chattering like frightened birds and towards the stairs. Most of them would recognize him on sight-it was the hair, Draco had always thought-and he couldn’t take the lifts right now, they’d be too crowded.
He’s on the third floor.
Draco leaped over several steps, opening his eyes to do that, and nearly collided with a mediwizard who had his wand out and was peering around the corner. The man drew himself up with an offended huff, but Draco had no time for the niceties of communication.
“Harry Potter is my patient,” he said. “I need to know if he came this way.” The connection pulsing in his chest told him that, yes, Harry had, but he would prefer that others know he was on the trail, so that he was not stopped or hindered.
“He escaped from one of your sessions, did he?” The mediwizard had a sneering mouth and crooked eyes that Draco disliked, and not only for their ugliness, at first sight. He returned a cold stare that cowed the man a bit, at least enough to make him step back.
“He did, in fact,” Draco said. “I didn’t know that he could use wandless magic-“
“Wandless?” Sudden panic gleamed in the back of the mediwizard’s expression like foam blown from the top of waves. “We thought he’d got his wand back somehow, that someone brought it to him out of misguided compassion. But if he ripped open the wards by himself-“
“And did this,” said Draco, glad of the wound now as he extended the hand. If it would keep more people away from Harry and give him the time to approach him in relative calmness and isolation, he would be grateful.
The mediwizard studied the cut, his experience telling him how deep it was, though the blood had stopped running by now and so it looked less gruesome. He swallowed, then said, “What do you want me to do?”
“Leave Potter to me,” said Draco as smoothly as he could, while joy hammered its wings in him. “I can make him stop and listen to me. I triggered his reaction in the first place by asking a question I shouldn’t have asked, but I also know what will calm him, and I’ll talk to him until he is calm. Tell the others. Make them back off and stand ready if I need them. Close off Potter’s escape routes, but don’t approach him, no matter what nonsense I seem to be saying.”
“As long as he doesn’t get out of St. Mungo’s,” said the mediwizard, looking torn between duty and his desire for any excuse not to confront a wizard who could do wandless magic.
“He won’t,” Draco said, and turned his attention back to the stairs. “I have no reason to want him gone.”
He touched the Portkey in his pocket as he plunged on. Let the watchers assume he was drawing his wand if they wanted. He knew the truth.
*
Harry had had to duck onto the third floor to avoid an alert mediwitch with a drawn wand, and then he’d had to hide further behind a bed left outside an observation window, because Healers and mediwizards and trainees and the rest of the lot were pelting up and down the corridors, asking each other impatient questions. He ground his teeth as his panic subsided and his clearer thoughts told him what a mess he’d made of everything.
If you’d managed to wait, and just convince Malfoy that you didn’t know what he was talking about…
But the bastard was too persistent and too perceptive, and if he really knew the truth, if he really had been at the core of Harry’s soul, there was no hiding anything from him anyway.
The pulse in his chest beat as if in agreement. Harry shook his head. The moment he was out of the hospital and had Apparated to safety, he’d cast a spell that should diagnose whatever was wrong with him and get it out.
Abruptly, he realized the corridors had cleared, or at least this one had. Harry lifted his head cautiously and turned it in several directions, then decided that he wouldn’t get a better chance to run and started to emerge from behind the bed.
With a soft humming noise, enormous curtains of light appeared, draped over the walls and floor in front of him. Harry shrank back, staring at them. After a moment, his Auror training came to his aid, and he cursed softly at the recognition.
They were red and yellow, the side that faced towards him always crimson, the one that faced away always gold. They were wards, but not designed to keep someone in his rooms, the way that the wards he’d torn had been. Instead, the red side would mark the fugitive with a visible aura, and the gold side would weaken his muscles and stir his brain into a slow dive towards sleep. Passing one curtain wouldn’t mean his capture, but passing the ten or more he probably would have to cross to get out of St. Mungo’s would.
Harry gave vent to his feelings for one of the first times since he’d come here and screamed in rage. No one responded. Of course, they didn’t want to come too near him when he was like this. They were just waiting for the double wards to sedate him so that they could approach him comfortably.
None of them, except perhaps Malfoy, knew what they were dealing with, and if Harry had any luck in the world, Malfoy was still unconscious on the floor of Harry’s room.
Harry stood up from behind the bed. He spent a few moments standing in plain sight, breathing hard, gathering up every bit of hatred and rage and fear and desire to be free he’d felt since he was brought to this place. And then he reached further back that, reliving the sharp, jagged memories of his year without anyone else. The emotions swirled in the middle of his chest, building, compressed into a small space and getting more explosive by the moment.
Harry raised his hands, facing the doubled curtains of light, and let the emotions fly, as magic.
Enormous flashes of brilliance, quick and bright as lightning, filled the corridor. Harry smelled the scent of singing cloth, and the hiss and bubble that followed the smell suggested he’d succeeded in burning at least a few holes in the stone. Purple whips cracked around him. Dazzling afterimages flared across his sight. Smoke lay heavy on his tongue.
But when he could see again, the crimson-and-gold wards were gone.
Harry took a grim smile, and a single step forwards.
He nearly pitched onto his face, just in time bringing his arms down to support himself. His muscles trembled like marmalade, and he cursed again. He was exhausted, and he didn’t know if he could get to the desk where his wand hovered in the cage with all the others.
Yes, you could, said the same implacable will that had kept him alive through numerous desires to die and flee the wizarding world before he had assurance that the Ministry would not come after him. You will.
With a sob of pain-the spell had backlashed and burned his legs-Harry Potter forced himself to his feet again and began to walk, building into a shaky trot.
*
Draco shook his head as he slowly lowered his hand from his face. He should have suspected that a trapped Harry would manage to do the impossible and break St. Mungo’s strongest wards, but he hadn’t enjoyed the discovery. He was still stunned, slightly blind and slightly deaf from the burst of magic.
But the connection in his chest told him Harry had reached the second floor, and certainly, if Draco didn’t get to him, no one else would. Someone had probably alerted the Aurors by now, and the Healers would remain safely in hiding until they came.
And with the Aurors might come Harry’s enemy from the Ministry.
Draco commanded his legs to bear him, and they did. He made it to the staircase that led to the second floor, and cast a Feather-Light Charm on himself, so that he could bound from step to step like a gazelle. The sound of the spell seemed to be the only one in the stunned and waiting hospital.
Second floor, a pause and cocking his head. No, Harry had gone on to the first. But from the richness in his soul like blood in his mouth, Draco thought he wasn’t that far ahead. The effort to tear the wards had taken a lot out of him.
And sure enough, he turned a corner, and there was Harry, a few steps beneath him, one shoulder leaning on the wall as he limped gamely on. His robes were still smoldering.
“Harry!” Draco shouted.
*
Harry had known all along that Malfoy was getting closer-he could divine it through the importunate push in his chest, whatever he wanted to tell himself-but he had hoped that the bastard would remain out of sight until Harry could fetch his wand and cast a Strengthening Charm on himself. But since when was his luck good?
He tried to keep walking, but his momentary pause had made the burned skin on his legs tear open. God, it hurt. His eyes watering from the pain, he turned and faced Malfoy. If he was going to be sent to his death or endless imprisonment in the Janus Thickey ward, at least he’d do it with eyes open.
“What do you want?” he snarled. “Come to mock me some more for my helplessness?”
Malfoy gazed at him without answering for long moments, as if he thought that would intimidate Harry or wanted to give other Healers a chance to catch up. Then he reached into his pocket, took out his wand-
And laid it on the floor.
Harry stared at him, not understanding. He had no choice but to hear Malfoy’s next, soft words when he spoke them, however.
“I gave you a piece of my soul,” said Malfoy, his eyes and hair shimmering to make him look like some unearthly thing. If it hadn’t been for that wand lying on the floor, Harry would have been certain he was a hallucination. “That is the reason I could find you so easily. And it means that I saw your core, Harry.”
“Shut up.”
“No,” said Malfoy, with a slight shake of his head. “How can I, when I saw what you’re dealing with, and bearing so bravely? How can I, when I know the Cassandra Curse is real?” He took a few steps nearer, ignoring Harry’s tension, and caught his breath before he spoke, as if he weren’t certain of what came next, after all. “How can I, when I know that you tried to commit suicide because you wanted to get away from the Ministry and whatever enemies you have there, and that you’re fleeing because you want to hide in the Muggle world?”
*
Those last two had still been a guess-at least about the Muggle world instead of a different part of the wizarding world-but they’d done perfectly. Draco saw Harry sag, his head bowing, as if the fact that someone knew everything he’d tried to hide had bereft him of all strength. He controlled the impulse to rush forwards and take him into his arms. Harry would have to come to him.
Harry would have to learn to trust.
“What do you want?” Harry whispered now, his voice as dry and papery as a fallen leaf.
Draco kept his own voice soft and understanding, the voice he used to speak to his mother during the rare times when she firecalled him. “I want you to let me help you. Not here. There is an enemy of yours somewhere in the Ministry-someone who had the power to move you to the Janus Thickey ward when I never authorized it, at least-and he or she will try again to have you declared mad, I’m certain. I want to help you find that person, and force him or her to remove the spell.”
Harry’s head came up, his green eyes wide. “But the caster would have forgotten casting the spell.”
Draco shook his head once more. “I don’t think so. The Cassandra Curse changes perceptions, but it also strengthens negative emotions. Whoever this is still hates you. Maybe he doesn’t remember the exact cause of his hatred or what else he’s done in pursuit of it, but that doesn’t matter. He could hurt you. And…call me disinclined to see someone who has a piece of my soul inside him die.”
Harry swayed. Draco knew it wasn’t only the weariness of destroying the wards and running through the hospital that had got to him. He was also remembering all the other times he’d reached out for help and been slapped away.
“How can I know this is real?” Harry whispered.
“I’m hearing everything you say as the truth,” Draco murmured.
Harry jolted. He stood with head bowed for long moments before he looked up once more. Draco licked his lips. There were so many emotions fighting in those green eyes, including some that he knew Harry had tried to leave behind.
“I don’t-you’ll hurt me again,” Harry said. “You’ve never liked me.”
“I’ve seen your soul,” said Draco. “I could never hate anyone who bore something so beautiful. And you’re a challenge.” He grinned. “We’ll be fighting against the entire Ministry, at least until we narrow it down to a few suspects, and I’ll have to fool St. Mungo’s at the same time. That sounds like a challenge to me.”
And it did. He hadn’t known how badly he wanted a change, until Harry came along. There had been too many years of the same thing: Healing people who were ungrateful for it, and having St. Mungo’s refuse to acknowledge his skill. If he was with Harry, one person would acknowledge him no matter what happened, and if they were successful in digging out the enemy, then maybe they all would someday.
He had some ambitions left to tend. They could be let out into the open if Harry was with him. He wanted Harry with him quite as much for his own sake as Harry’s.
“I get something out of this,” he added, when Harry went on staring at him. “But I want to help you, too.”
Harry shut his eyes. Draco felt his own smile fade as the connection between them stretched taut and trembling. He did not know what Harry would decide, and if he tried to press the matter, Harry would either lash out at him or fall senseless, and then Draco would have interference from others on his hands.
Though it was the hardest thing he had done in his life, he extended one hand, and then he waited.
*
Harry was so tired.
He almost wanted to lie down and let the hospital staff have him. It wasn’t such a great sacrifice, was it? One had to have a life and freedom that meant something to think that going into a ward was a sacrifice. He could have kind treatment within the curse’s limits, and regular meals, and no one chasing him around. And no struggle, ever.
He almost wanted to lift his wrists to his mouth and tear them open again with his teeth. Death would be the ultimate stopping point, the ultimate cessation of struggle. No one could bother him there. No one could hurt him. Guilt and regrets couldn’t pursue him.
He was so tired of fighting.
He wasn’t sure that he could muster up the will for one more battle.
But when he tried to make himself close his eyes and crumple to the floor, he couldn’t do that, either. The same stubbornness that had driven him through his trials so far rose up in him, and he hung in a void between his own fatigue and his own bloody-mindedness.
I don’t trust him.
But I trust everything else less than I trust him.
And…if I always have to do the hardest thing, the hardest thing right now is trusting him, not collapsing on the floor or turning my back and trying to go on.
The hardest thing is hoping.
From somewhere within himself, Harry’s strength rose to his call. He gave a weak smile. Malfoy-Draco-whose extended hand shook, shifted his stance to the side, as if he thought this was the beginning of an escape attempt.
“All right,” he whispered.
Draco’s face melted into a smile like his soul, and he came down the stairs even as Harry climbed them, shaking with every move he made. They met in the middle, and Harry leaned forwards, still half-expecting a trick.
But Draco’s arms were there, and Draco’s body was warm, and Harry leaned against him with a little sob of relief, his arms threading firmly around Draco’s waist. Hair and skin and fingers and chest-he’d forgotten so much about the simple pleasure of being touched by another human being.
He felt Draco stoop to pick up his wand, and then he whispered into Harry’s ear, “You have to go ahead of me, or they’ll suspect too much.”
Harry nodded, though he couldn’t make himself raise his head from Draco’s shoulder. But he felt Draco shift him gently until they were touching but free of each other’s embrace, and then something small and round was placed into his palm.
Draco murmured a word as he drew his hand back, and a swirl of dazzling colors grabbed Harry.
*
Draco, left behind on the stairs at St. Mungo’s, contorted his face into an expression of shock and whipped around, staring. He knew the angle had been perfect. There were Healers and mediwizards watching them, but none closer than the top or bottom of the flight. They would have seen him coax Harry in, and then they would have seen Harry vanish, but the angle of Harry’s body and the walls would have prevented them from seeing the Portkey.
The Portkey that had taken Draco’s patient straight to Malfoy Manor.
Draco stooped and picked up his wand with shaking hands. “He’s gone!” he shouted, and heard the immediate stir that produced.
There were several things to do now. He would have to retrieve Harry’s wand, answer questions from the Aurors and anyone else who wanted to ask them, and perfect his mask of horror that a patient had escaped. But then he could go home.
And he and Harry could-talk.
He just had to stop himself from grinning like a successful Psyche-Diver until then, and practice looking like a disappointed one. He’d seen several examples, though he’d never had the displeasure of being one himself. He could manage this.
Chapter 13.