Chapter 11 of 'An Alchemical Discontent' - Arguments With a Weak Man
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Halfway through the story now, and at a tipping point.
Chapter Eleven-Arguments With a Weak Man
Harry recognized the Local Earthquake Spell a moment before he began sprinting forwards to do something about it. His mind was one steady stream of swear words, save for the part of him frantically wondering if Draco could have been somewhere else tonight.
But he had no surety of that. And he did have powerful magic, which had not actually increased in strength since he started taking his potion but did hover closer to the surface and become easier for him to access.
He aimed his wand at the door and the walls of the shop, which were tearing themselves apart in accordance with vibrations that began in the stone itself, and roared the incantation for a Stasis Spell. For a moment, everything paused, though the Local Earthquake was still working and had already started to butt up against his control.
It will not break through, Harry vowed, and wished for a moment that he had his broom with him. But he didn’t, so he would just have to make do.
“Draco!” he bellowed, breaking the wards with a pop like a soap-bubble, stampeding through the front door, and making directly for the door that concealed the staircase to Draco’s upper rooms. The wards in here were still intact. Harry swore under his breath and spent a few precious moments wrestling with them, before he decided that, given everything, he would prefer to rely on brute strength.
He called up as much magic as he could wield without random flares of light breaking through his skin, and flung all of it directly against the ward that prevented strangers from Apparating inside the shop. With a roar, he broke through the ward and landed in the upper rooms, spinning around to analyze the chairs and couch quickly.
Not in his sitting area, not in his work area, not at the large table where he and Harry had done most of the strategizing for the potions committee. Damn it. Harry raced towards the one area of the house where he hadn’t yet spent a lot of time, Draco’s bedroom.
The Stasis Spell broke on the way there, and the earthquake started up again. The floor tilted, and several of Draco’s smaller pieces of furniture slid between the gaps that had appeared in the stones. Harry forced himself to ignore that. Saving Draco’s life was more important than saving his knickknacks.
If he was here. If Harry hadn’t raced into a collapsing building for nothing.
He stabilized himself by catching the sides of the doorway into the bedroom, and then jumped directly over the hump forming in the middle of the floor and landed on the bed. It had extra charms to keep it still even if someone on it thrashed around in his sleep, and thus it wasn’t moving right now.
And there was a lump under the sheets. Harry seized what he thought was Draco‘s shoulder and screamed into his ear, amazed that he had managed to sleep through the racket so far. “Wake up! Your house is falling down! Wake up, you stupid bastard!”
Draco snorted and turned over, but still too slowly. Harry thought the charms on the bed would only last a few more minutes, and he danced up and down with impatience, swearing aloud. Draco yawned and spoke in a voice thick with cotton. “Harry? What-what are you doing?”
His eyes were glazed. He was on some kind of potion, Harry thought. He swore again and snatched Draco up into his arms.
Draco cried out in pain. His leg was broken and dangling, Harry saw, and he was wincing and trying to crawl away from Harry’s tight clasp on his torso, too, indicating that there were more wounds there.
Just what was his creditor doing to him?
But that would have to wait. Harry wrapped Draco in a tight hug, supported his leg as much as possible, and Apparated to his own flat. He broke his own anti-Apparition ward on the way, and landed on the floor shaking and exhausted, so covered with sweat that his first attempt to lift Draco simply failed due to the slickness sliding between them.
Draco lay limply on the floor for a moment, then lifted his head and stared around at the walls. “Your place,” he said accusingly to Harry. “We’re at your place. This isn’t my bedroom. And my leg hurts.” He gave a little whine and put a hand on his knee.
“I know,” Harry said as soothingly as he could. He thought of trying to explain, and then decided that Draco was too out of it to listen to him. He was already muttering about how Harry should have left him in his bed to just ride the pain potions out. He obviously had no idea what had happened.
Best and simplest if he sleeps. Harry waved his wand and cast a Sleeping Charm that Draco would have been able to resist in an ordinary state. That he slumped down and started snoring at once showed how badly he needed rest.
Harry carried him in and tucked him into the bed where Hermione had spent so many weeks resting. Harry had never conceived at the time that Draco would ever require his help like that. For a moment, he stared at the spray of blond hair across his pillow, and sighed. He had imagined it there often in the last few weeks, but always in, well, slightly different circumstances.
He turned away and flopped into the chair he’d set beside the bed when Hermione stayed here and still hadn’t moved. Then he put his hands over his face and shook.
His potion subdued rage, but did nothing about fear and guilt. Draco could have died. Harry might as easily have decided to go home after dinner at the Garden of the Hesperides, and then what would have happened?
Death.
He’d come too close to losing Draco tonight, Harry thought, as he dropped his hands and stared at the figure in the bed again. He wasn’t sure who had done this, Nott and Diggory or the mysterious creditor-and perhaps Draco’s wounds and the collapse of the house had been caused by two separate sources. But he couldn’t allow it to go on, no matter how much Draco argued against him, no matter how much he fought.
Resolved, Harry stood and Apparated back to the remains of the shop, to see if there was anything that could be salvaged.
*
He came back two hours later with a heavily warded trunk full of Draco’s clothes that had managed to survive the fall from his rooms, a number of his potions books-also heavily warded, to the point where rubble had hovered above them instead of crushing them and made them relatively easy to find-and a few unbroken vials of potions. Harry didn’t know what kind they were, though none of them had the blue-green tinge of Desire.
He hadn’t been able to distinguish Potions ingredients from the general debris scattered about, and so in the end he hadn’t picked up anything of that type. And of course the shop was a complete loss, as well as the larger pieces of furniture.
Draco’s life as he had known it was gone, destroyed in a few minutes.
Harry’s back hunched with tension and worry as he made space for Draco’s books on his shelves and Draco’s clothes in his closet. What was he going to do? He’d invested thousands of Galleons in that shop and in those ingredients, and now they were all ruined. He would have to find new investors.
Maybe. But with this creditor dogging him, I imagine he’d be reluctant to do that. What kind of debt is paid in blood and pain?
He would have to have a new center to sell Desire out of; they couldn’t very well make it Harry’s flat, not when he had Muggle neighbors. He would have to find another place to live. Harry wondered for a moment if he would go back to Malfoy Manor, but he doubted it. Draco had made it clear that his independence from his parents was too important to him, though Harry thought Lucius and Narcissa would have been willing to provide for their son more than Draco thought they would.
He wrote a letter to Hermione detailing what had happened when he was done with the chores of moving Draco into his flat, and asked her not to tell anyone else what she knew. The story would be all over the Daily Prophet tomorrow morning, but of course no one would know what really happened.
Hell, Harry himself still didn’t know what really happened. The cloaked figure could have been anyone.
Maybe someone who could come here, who knows where I live, and who might try and kill Draco again.
Harry set to work on his wards. First he fortified the ones that protected the flat. Then he set up a new assembly on the bedroom, connected to Draco and designed to let Harry know when he was hungry, sleepy, in pain, or merely stirring. Then he went to strengthen the building’s foundations. What their enemies had tried once, they might try again, and Harry had no intention of letting a Local Earthquake destroy his home.
*
Draco stirred slowly and stared at the ceiling for a long, sluggish moment before memory caught up with his eyes. He sat up at once and stared around, not needing much prompting to recognize Harry’s bedroom. This was where they had conducted a few of the early experiments on Desire.
Sitting up reminded him that his ribs ached, and so did his leg. They were on their way to mending, but neither would heal without regular doses of pain and healing potions.
If I’m here, I have to assume that I won’t have access to my regular stocks.
And then he caught brief, blurred glimpses of Harry’s face, and he remembered the shaking of his bed, and-
The door opened, and Harry came in at a low run. He came to a stop quickly, though, and sighed gustily in relief, putting his drawn wand away. “Thank Merlin,” he muttered. “I felt you in pain, and thought maybe your attacker had come back.”
“My attacker?” Draco asked, ready to deny that anyone had inflicted these wounds on him against his will. Given Daphne’s spells, he rather had to do that.
“The one who knocked down your shop with an earthquake spell,” Harry said soberly, sitting in the chair next to the bed to regard Draco. “Maybe the same one who weakened your wards, too.”
Draco swallowed. “My shop?”
“Gone.” Harry exhaled hard. “I’m sorry, Draco. I managed to save a few things; I have them for you. But your home and the Desire potion are gone completely.”
Draco closed his eyes and sat very still. The shop was the largest and most important symbol of his independence from his parents, of the life that he had made for himself even when everyone was screaming and arguing with him, claiming that he couldn’t live free and he should stop trying. And now it was gone. Whether Daphne had destroyed it, or Diggory and Nott, he couldn’t say.
But Harry might know.
“Who did it?” he asked quietly.
“Figure in a cloak,” said Harry. “It had to have been someone who’d observed you closely, though, to know you were lying upstairs dosed with a pain potion and couldn’t get away.”
Which eliminated no one, of course. Diggory and Nott could pay people to work for them. Daphne had a sophisticated spy network, and maybe she’d got bored of the uncertainty of spells and wanted to try this new way to kill him.
“I owe you my life,” Draco whispered.
Harry said nothing, so Draco opened his eyes in time to catch the tail end of a nod. Then Harry looked straight at him with the same calm, implacable expression he’d sometimes adopted around Granger, during the days when depression had rendered her unable to move.
“You’re going to tell me the truth now,” Harry said, “even if I have to drag it out of you. Of course I’ll help you set up your new life. But I won’t have you risking it again at a moment’s notice because you won’t tell me who your enemies are.”
Draco clenched his hands in his lap. There was so much he wanted to say, and all the words bubbled at the end of his tongue behind an impenetrable barrier. Of course, even explaining the reasons why he couldn’t talk about the danger his life was in was impossible.
Harry folded his arms and stared at him steadily. Watching him, Draco thought for a moment that you didn’t really need anger to have an argument-one of the things that he thought had kept Harry from pressing him so far. You only needed to have iron patience and a resolve great enough to wear down the first defenses someone might try to establish.
But he didn’t know if Harry really had that kind of resolve. In fact, Draco rather thought he didn’t, since his compassion for other people was so great. Draco could be honest about his pain, and that would save him being honest about his fear.
“I really don’t want to talk right now,” he whispered. “I need pain potions for my ribs and my leg, and I’ll need to buy them since I can’t brew them right now. Will you go to Diagon Alley for me? I’ll give you a draft on my Gringotts vault for as many Galleons as you’ll need to purchase the potions, and a good description of them, so you don’t stand a chance of buying others by mistake.”
Harry’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment Draco had the horrific feeling that he was considering letting Draco suffer just so that he could get his answers. But in the end he stood, nodded shortly, and went to fetch ink and parchment.
*
Harry was very careful. He bought the red and green potions that Draco advised him to get, and bought duplicate vials from a few different shops, just in case one set had been poisoned. He checked several times to make sure that no one was following him. He ducked out of sight the moment someone tried to make a fuss over Harry Potter.
He got home, and gave the vials to Draco, and watched carefully as he sniffed them. He evidently didn’t find any foreign ingredients, for he drank them down at once and then sighed in contentment. Harry put the extra vials in his cabinet in the loo with the rest of his own potion, and then prepared a corned beef sandwich for Draco, who ate it hungrily.
Then he sat down in the chair again and said, “Tell me about what happened to your ribs and leg.”
Draco closed his eyes and murmured, “I’m so tired, Harry. Can’t I rest just a little longer? I really don’t want to talk right now.”
For a moment, Harry was paralyzed with rage. Draco knew how important this was, and yet he kept putting it off! How the fuck was Harry supposed to save his bloody life if he didn’t even know which enemies to watch for-
And then the rage slid away, because his potion sensed and subdued it. Harry was left shaken and determined, but not sure that he would be able to carry out his determination.
“Don’t go to sleep, Draco,” he said grimly. “We’re going to talk about this now.”
Draco opened his eyes and stared at him for a moment. Harry supposed he’d really thought his little act would get him out of talking about this. He averted his eyes then and started picking at the blankets.
“These potions make me loopy and sleepy, Harry,” he whispered. “You saw the effects yesterday. I took the same potions then that I took now, so-“
“But we have some time before you go to sleep.” Harry clenched his hands together to keep from shaking Draco. “Come on, Draco. Tell it as shortly and clearly as you can.”
“I can’t,” Draco whispered.
Harry opened his mouth to retort, and then paused, studying Draco’s expression. There was a hint of pallor to it, a hint of terror. And there was a hint of subdued pride, too, but Harry thought that was the smallest ingredient.
“You magically can’t, right?” Harry said flatly. “There’s some kind of spell that will invoke consequences on you or me if you do.”
Draco met his eyes, an expression of relief running across his face like rain. “Yes, that’s exactly right.”
Harry shook his head. “And you think that the same enemy collapsed your building last night as did this to you?” The rage was rising again, though the potion fell on it like soothing balm and kept melting it away. The conflict of emotions made Harry rather dizzy, struggling for balance.
“I don’t know about that,” Draco said. “I suppose she-“ And then his breath came out in a great wheezing rush, and stopped.
Harry refused to allow his fear to overwhelm him, or his conflicting rage and calm to make him slow. He pointed his wand at Draco and cast a charm that would force his lungs to labor and move, providing oxygen to his body, even if his throat closed up, which he thought was the thing happening now.
Draco gasped harshly, and then began to breathe in a normal pattern again. He nodded to Harry, thumping himself on the chest.
“You don’t know what the spells’ limitations are, or you could just talk around them,” Harry said, more flatly than before. Draco nodded. “Even identifying your enemy in writing might do that to you?”
Draco hesitated, then nodded. But no spell reacted. Apparently simply replying to Harry’s random guesses was safe.
“You stupid fucker,” Harry said, but there was less heat than he wanted there to be behind his voice. “Why in the world did you let it get this bad? Why didn’t you talk to me before these spells settled into place, or set up precautions of your own?”
*
Draco felt a flicker of guilt. It did hurt to remember how stupid he’d acted around Daphne, how confident and naïve he’d been to believe that he could simply bore her into ending the liaison at any time he chose, and therefore he didn’t need limits or restrictions. She was in control now precisely because of that.
But at the same time, answering Harry’s questions would mean talking about Daphne. And Harry already knew he couldn’t do that. And Draco had no wish to be reminded of his own stupidity when he was already dosed up on pain potions.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said again, and shut his eyes.
A hand settled on his shoulder, inescapable, too firm. Draco opened his eyes. “You’re hurting me,” he whispered.
“I don’t believe that for a second,” Harry said. “If your shoulder was hurt, you would have told me and had me get a separate potion for it.” Draco silently cursed his own detailed descriptions of the pain potions. “Now. I want to know as much information as you can tell me about this person, and how to keep you safe.”
“I can’t tell you!” Draco snapped. “What do you want me to do? Keep speaking and keep running into the limits of spells that might do anything, make me stop breathing or cause me to have a heart attack or chop my arm off?”
“I need to know what you can tell by any means possible,” Harry said calmly. Always so calmly. God, that pissed Draco off. “Hermione has some skill at Legilimency, though she doesn’t like it, so she doesn’t use it often. She should be here in a few hours. I want you to let her have access to your memories-“
“She’s a Legilimens, idiot!” Draco snapped. “Why do you think I don’t know anything about these spells? She’s altered my mind so I can’t remember them! And God knows the traps that Granger’s unsophisticated poking around in my mind would spring!”
He stopped, panting for breath, and surprised he’d managed to get that much out without one of Daphne’s spells biting him. Maybe she didn’t care that her enemies knew she was a Legilimens. Maybe that would make the confrontation between her and Harry inevitable, and bring him into a trap.
Fear seared Draco’s skin. Yes, that had to be the explanation. There was no way that she would have simply forgotten one of the major clues that might point out her identity.
And Harry was standing with his head cocked, eyes bright as a hunting hawk’s, obviously already making provisions to hunt Daphne down.
“A female Legilimens,” Harry said. “Someone you felt comfortable enough with to ask for a great deal of money. That certainly does narrow down the candidates. I can easily have Hermione do the research.”
“Harry, you’ve got to give it up,” Draco whispered. “I don’t want to lose you, too. I like you. I’d like to start dating you-“
“Really?” One of Harry’s eyebrows shot up. “And here I thought the idea was repulsive to you, the way you reacted when I reached out.”
Draco hissed between his teeth. Well, he’d made one mistake by speaking the truth. Might as well follow that up and compound it with more.
“What I find repulsive is that potion,” he snapped. “How in the world you can stand to be on it, to be so calm and inhuman all the fucking time, is more than I can understand. You don’t look at all different when you take Veritaserum, did you know that? And what I want is you the way you were in school, sparking temper and excitement and passion. I can’t have that as long as you’re on the potion.”
Harry had fallen a step back. To Draco’s outrage, though, he didn’t appear to be greatly affected. His other eyebrow had risen to join the first, that was all.
“Well,” he said. “If what you want is the Hogwarts schoolboy, you can’t have that anyway, even if I was off the potion. That boy has matured out of existence. I wouldn’t get the same pleasure from calling you a sneaky Slytherin now.”
“Not just that,” Draco said. “Will you comprehend it better if I say that I want the whole of you, that not knowing some of you is driving me mad? That I like jealous lovers, and you could be that around me, and I wouldn’t mind? That I find your magic arousing, and even being so close to something powerful and Dark wouldn’t change me the way it changed your she-Weasel? That what’s most important about that incident to me is that you stopped?”
“Stop talking,” Harry whispered, watching Draco intently.
“What I want is you,” Draco said. “Not some inferior, potion-altered version of you.”
Harry turned and walked out of the room. Draco let his head fall back on the pillow and closed his eyes. It was for the best the argument had stopped when it did, anyway. The pain potions were whirling and buzzing in his head, and making it whirl and buzz in response.
*
Harry couldn’t get his breath. He tried twice to write a letter to Hermione about hunting a female Legilimens, and in the end he had to put his head between his knees and breathe deeply until he stopped hyperventilating.
Draco wasn’t afraid of him.
Draco wasn’t afraid of him.
He had heard the worst possible truth about Harry, and whole, not in broken bits and pieces the way he’d confessed it to Ron and Hermione, and still he wanted to be with him.
Harry had no idea what to do about the new, fragile feeling that opened in him at the words, or the way that feeling exalted him, or the way it depressed him.
But calm was a habit of six years’ standing, now. In a few minutes, he managed to soothe his troubled breathing, lift his head, and reach for the quill and ink.
Chapter 12.