Chapter Eleven of a "A Reckless Frame of Mind"- A Dome of Many Colors
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Chapter Eleven-A Dome of Many Colors
Draco cursed softly as he paged through the book. There was information on the Cassandra Curse, yes, but it was scattered over and among and through the descriptions of other curses, other madness, and other impossibilities. He would have welcomed a writer less addicted to making comparisons between different kinds of Dark magic than this one was.
So occupied was he with thoughts of how he would prove Potter’s madness-or sanity, as the case might be-and how he would fool the enemy who had stolen a march on him that he nearly turned past the relevant information. He stared at the paragraph, licked his lips, read it, and then sat back against the pillows on his bed and heaved out a tight breath. Yes, this was it; this was what he had been looking for.
If any of it was real.
Draco told his doubts to be quiet, and bowed his head to the book so that he could read the truth in more detail.
The Cassandra Curse is said to be even more of a pernicious influence on minds than the Thought-Twister. The Thought-Twister harms only those people the caster wishes ill-will upon, but the Cassandra Curse is believed to affect the minds of everyone who comes into contact with the victim. According to the ancient terms of the curse, it warps the truths the victim speaks, and makes them sound as lies to the ears of anyone who listens to him or her. Others interpret the lies, and even simple gestures, in the most violent and repugnant terms possible. Those who do not know the victim will react with milder versions of the same emotions. For this reason, the Cassandra Curse was often rumored to be used on wizards who had great public name recognition, so as to kill their character in the eyes of many people rather than simply friends and neighbors. Of course, such claims are often impossible to distinguish from more ordinary claims of character assassination.
Draco licked his lips. Disregarding the fact that the author didn’t seem to have information on everything that had happened to Harry, and disregarding his doubt about his own research, this fit with a great deal of what Draco had experienced and seen the mediwitches and Harry’s friends experiencing. They heard lies-
His statements are lies.
It took a great deal of concentration, but Draco could feel the impulse in his head that was saying those words and urging those thoughts on him now, and it wasn’t him. He fought back with focus so intent that he felt sweat break out on his brow, but the thought retreated, snarling. He had his mind back again. Draco gave a sharp nod of satisfaction and looked again at the book in front of him.
…and even simple gestures, in the most violent and repugnant terms possible.
That would explain why even those who hadn’t interacted directly with Harry were speaking of him as if he were the most troublesome patient in the hospital. And his general air of arrogance-that wasn’t real, it was Draco’s twisted mind interpreting his body language in accordance with some other purpose.
A mental block tried to close off the thought. Draco didn’t let it, though this time, when he managed to establish mastery of his own mind again, he was breathing hoarsely.
Could that be why Harry had tried to commit suicide? Not because of isolation-though Draco would not blame him if he had indeed done it for that reason, if the curse was real-but because he knew that any ordinary call for help would go unheeded? But if he cut his wrists, in a particularly violent and brutal manner, they would know that something was wrong and have to put him in St. Mungo’s.
Draco gave a small, grim smile. There was a chance he might still be wrong, shoving curse in his head and all. He had seen stranger varieties of madness. He had learned never to make a solid guess unless he had proof from multiple sources. One obscure book and his own perceptions of Harry, which he couldn’t trust anyway if the curse were real, were not much to go on.
But the only way he would learn anything further would be to go to Harry and complete that final Psyche-Dive, the one that would put himself at risk.
Draco closed his eyes and tried to think about it rationally, but he was incapable of that. His skull buzzed and vibrated, as if he had bees inside it. He had thought, before, that only a Gryffindor-like impulsiveness would get him through this, and that seemed to be true.
He did eat a solid lunch and look up the incantation he would need for this last and greatest Dive one more time. Then he Apparated to the hospital. His heartbeat made him feel lightheaded with its speed.
*
Harry had cooperated with the mediwizards who brought him lunch, and as a result his stomach was full of warm soup and a badly-made cheese sandwich. He would have refused if he thought he could safely do so, but his body would need all its strength.
This room was larger than the one he’d had in the temporary ward, though it had fewer pieces of furniture. Harry suspected that residents in the Janus Thickey ward had fewer visitors. And the observation window was visible, an enormous glass pane that stretched along one wall of the room and hummed with wards to prevent patients from smashing it.
Harry preferred it that way, actually. He always knew when he was being watched, even if the shapes of the passers-by were dim and fuzzed images on the other side of the glass. He would know when the best time had come to make his escape.
One shape passed his room, striding briskly, and Harry watched it idly, tempted to make up a story about who it was and where he was going. He would have, except that he couldn’t afford to drift into the listless immobility that marked someone resigned to staying here. He had to be alert, had to focus on reality.
When Malfoy stepped into the room, that became much less difficult. Harry was very focused on the reality of knocking his teeth in.
“Hello, Malfoy,” he said, imitating the bastard’s drawl as much as he could, and not bothering to rise from the bed. “Did the latest patient you wanted to fuck turn you away, so that you had to come to me instead?”
Malfoy bared his teeth, but oddly enough, Harry didn’t think he was doing it out of anger. His eyes were fixed and brilliant, staring through Harry and out the wall. Harry controlled the impulse to turn and follow the path of his gaze. He knew he would see nothing there. Malfoy seemed to have chosen an odd form of revenge against him, trying to make Harry think he was mad.
“I’ve learned to listen,” Malfoy said at last, and drew his wand. Harry rolled his eyes.
“Listen to my insults, you mean? Let’s see you try your best Body-Bind, then.” Harry could feel his wandless magic building and churning in him. A morning of rest and an excellent meal had restored it to full potential. He wanted to rest still further, so that he could leave during the night when there would be fewer people around, but it was comforting to know that, if Malfoy did restrain him somehow and leave him that way, he could throw off the spell.
“To your words,” Malfoy said softly, and his face had softened, too. Harry found himself crawling backwards, pressing his shoulders to the wall. “And to your gestures. To all the little things I should have attended to, when I was first trying to learn the truth, but let the curse distract me from.” He seemed to force the word curse through his lips, and his forehead prickled with sweat as he said it.
No!
Harry lunged past Malfoy, towards the door, but it seemed that he didn’t need to be perfectly still for the spell to take effect. “Legilimens,” he heard, and then there came the needle-like pain in his eye again, and he knew that Malfoy had slid past his shields and was thrashing about in his thoughts.
Wishing now that he’d put much more effort into Occlumency when he first tried to learn it from Snape, Harry dived after him, determined to haul him out.
*
Draco needed to sink deeper more quickly than he liked. Harry’s uncoordinated attempts to remove him wouldn’t do anything, of course; Draco was the best Psyche-Diver in Britain, and Harry hadn’t even had elementary training in Legilimency. But this being his mind gave him something of the advantage of home ground, and Draco had to make sure that he couldn’t interfere, or distract him at a crucial point.
So Draco did need to approach the problem like a Gryffindor after all, and use the incantation that he had been avoiding all his professional life and certainly had never contemplated using on Harry Potter.
“Anima frango!”
And his soul splintered.
*
Harry cried out as an intense shuddering sensation coursed up and down his body. It didn’t hurt, but it rattled his ribs in their settings, made his teeth jangle like silver spoons ringing against wineglasses, and spilled him to the floor. It took him long moments of dizzy turning to realize he was staring at the ceiling.
He pinched his palms to bring himself back to reality, and then scrambled up and stared at Malfoy. Of course, he stood there like a Muggle statue, his head sagging on his chest, his eyes fixed and dead. His wand stood rigidly in his hand, pointing at Harry, turning like a compass needle wherever he moved.
Harry glanced longingly at the door. He could still run through it, and anyone who came to investigate might be more concerned with Malfoy and his strange behavior than they would be with Harry’s escape-
Then he reminded himself, savagely, that he couldn’t afford to lay his escape against such chances. Might was not acceptable. It had to be would, and his best chance of escape still lay with the night and the inattentive mediwizards that would walk the Janus Thickey ward then.
Besides, wherever he went, he would carry Malfoy’s consciousness within him, and God knew what the consequences of that might be.
Grimly, Harry closed his eyes. Did he figure it out? He sounded like he’d figured it out.
Well, not for long.
And he bore down again, seeking some trace of Malfoy, willing to swat and hunt like a cat after a fly until he found it.
*
Draco writhed in pain as the spell cut through him at the deepest levels, crunching and tearing like a hawk’s talons into a mouse’s flesh. But he didn’t cease the magic, though he could have at any time simply by casting Finite Incantatem. Instead, he gritted his teeth and kept his thoughts alert past the pain, for the moment when the process would be complete and a small shard of his soul would be torn free of the rest. After some of the stranger things he had seen in patients’ minds, that should be easy.
Or you thought it would be.
But, as it turned out, he knew the time after all, because the pain abruptly ceased. Draco cast desperately after the piece of himself now drifting away.
This was the dangerous moment, he knew, the one that the books cautioned him against, and the reason why he’d never used this spell. Tearing one’s soul was a component of the darkest magic, something that normally only happened with murder. Including a spell like this in the books meant to teach Psyche-Divers had occasioned all sorts of protests, and Draco had fought long and hard-emphasizing the unlikelihood of anyone ever using the spell, and its healing purpose in this case-to have the right to print it.
He caught the piece of his soul, and instead of letting it disintegrate, as a careless murderer would, or fastening it to an object, as was the way of most Dark magic using it, he made a gift of it, consciously willed it to go-
To Harry.
In the strange darkness and imagined space that occupied the center of another person’s mind, Draco saw the piece of his soul, glowing like a snowflake lit from behind by intense winter sunshine, drift downwards and downwards. Draco dived after it, his hands stroking over memories, feelings, sensations, contradictions. The piece of his soul should go exactly where he thought it should, but, on the other hand, he’d never used this spell before. Practice might be rather different from theory.
Further, and then the darkness shredded away from him, melting like black snow in the wake of an ultramarine sun. Draco drew a deep breath of satisfaction when he realized he was once more among the blue-green arches of Harry’s soul, but didn’t take his eyes off the piece of his soul in front of him, and didn’t stop swimming. If he looked away now, he might very well lose his gift; it would take on protective coloration to become part of the man he had given it to.
And that started to happen; his soul-fragment slowed, lights dancing and flickering through it, and the harsh blue color began to fade. Draco knew it would look for a place to settle and then fasten there, like a bit of ice becoming part of a larger glacier. Or at least, that was what he supposed would happen, having researched the spell before but never used it.
He couldn’t allow it to happen. Not yet.
Reaching out, he snatched up the fragment of soul. It felt strange in his hand, burning and repulsing him, but so familiar that letting go of it would be as hard as releasing his own severed limb on a battlefield. He aimed it at the core of Harry’s soul, where the darkness-
Call it what it is, Draco.
-of the Cassandra Curse would still crouch. But Draco had a weapon now, one that could shelter him and take him through that shield without the risk of losing his own sanity.
He hoped. This was still more theory than practice.
Once aimed in the right direction, the piece of his soul began to blaze and tug, pulling him along with it. It could have fastened itself anywhere in Harry’s soul and slowly made its way to the core, but it would settle there first, given choice. Draco closed his eyes and concentrated on making the rest of his soul, the parts that still belonged to him, as much like this shard as possible.
He focused his attention on Harry, on how easy it had been to give his efforts over to this man he hadn’t seen in nine years and had hated for far longer than that. Never had he become invested in any other patient so quickly. Never had he started dreaming about another’s soul, with the hunger to enter it again and again; he had had to fight not to find excuses to start Diving when he didn’t really need to. Never had he derived such powerful pleasure from so simple an enjoyment as holding Harry in his arms.
With little risked, there is little gained.
Draco understood that, now. He thought he had when he opened his soul to Harry, regardless of the fact that the Cassandra Curse had prevented Harry from answering him fully just then. He’d felt Harry’s willingness to let down barriers. He would coax them to fall-but only by giving more of himself, only by showing that he wasn’t afraid and didn’t think Harry should be, either.
So this fragment of soul, this ultimate gift, which Harry would have to cherish and hold forever when its work of guiding Draco through the darkness was done.
The brooding whirlwind of the Cassandra Curse was ahead of him now, and the tendrils rose and cracked like bullwhips as Draco floated near their edges. He shivered a bit. One reason he had been unwilling to dare the darkness before now was a simple lack of information about what would likely happen to him inside it. And he still didn’t know. After all, Psyche-Diving hadn’t been real when those ancient wizards had invented the Cassandra Curse, so it wasn’t surprising that the books contained no answers.
But the fragment of soul was determined to go home, and Draco would have to trust that it would serve as a shield, partially masking his presence by glowing so strongly of Harry.
And then he had a chance to find out, since the pull to Harry’s core grew more intense this close in, like gravity, and he had crossed the barrier into the maelstrom before he was quite aware of it.
All around him was silence.
*
The sensation of Malfoy’s intruding presence abruptly vanished from Harry’s awareness. He opened his eyes and twisted his head around, staring at Malfoy’s motionless body. Had he come back, then? Would he speak of some further disappointment in a moment?
But nothing happened. He stayed as mechanically still as ever, but when Harry edged to the side, the wand swung as mechanically to follow him.
Harry clenched his hands into fists on his knees. The thing that most irritated him was that he had no idea what Malfoy was doing. Why had he attempted this again? What did he think he could do that he hadn’t done the other two times?
Harry waited to be forced into the soul-blending process again, forced to face the fact that he had hurt yet another person.
But nothing happened. Moments passed as soft and numerous as snowfall, and Harry leaned his head back against his bed, the cords in his neck stretched to the breaking point.
*
Draco had never been more isolated. Blindness engulfed his eyes. The piece of soul felt like nothing under his hands; he was only sure that he still held it because without it, he thought the curse would have swallowed him. There were no smells or tastes-there never were inside someone else’s soul, unless he was blending his with theirs as he had on the last Dive into Harry’s psyche.
But worst was the silence.
It muffled him, not only his voice but his sense of himself. Draco couldn’t draw a breath without imagining high glass walls cutting him off from everyone he’d ever loved. It was easy, here, to think that his mother was dead instead of merely in France, that he had lost his every friend in the war, and that Harry would never look at him with friendliness in his eyes. Death would have hurt him less, because at least then he would not feel this pain.
Draco wanted to curl up, tuck his hands to his chest and strike wildly in any direction, seeking for a way out. Only the fact that his fingers were curled so tightly about the soul-shard he couldn’t loosen them prevented him from trying it.
And then his head came up-he knew that, in spite of the curse’s attempts to make him forget how his body moved-and he understood.
This was the same isolation that Harry had lived through for the past year. The Cassandra Curse, after all, affected mostly his communication with other people, their interpretations of his language and the sounds he made. Even Draco himself hadn’t been immune to that; he’d bought Harry’s lies along with the rest of them.
But Harry had existed under this silence, under this loneliness. He’d fought his way through it and come out the other side, heavily scarred but still alive.
Draco could not do less. He would not have anyone else say that Harry Potter had done something he could not-not here, not in the soul that was supposed to be his special knowledge and domain.
Besides, if he was going to share part of his soul with Harry, he had to show him that their stubbornness was equal.
He reared up and struck ahead boldly, accepting the fear that the silence inspired in him, but conquering it, too. He could let his lungs cramp and his cheeks freeze with unshed tears and his chest swell in panic without dashing off. He could follow the bit of soul and determine that he would keep following it, wherever it led him. He could do everything Harry had done: staking out a goal and holding grimly to it, come what may.
He could refuse to give up and lie down and die, which was what the curse had been designed, he now understood as it twined itself with him in intimate cruelty, to make its victims do.
Harry had survived it without going insane, perhaps the first person in history to do so. And Draco’s hunger to know him better increased exponentially at the mere thought.
And then he broke through.
He heard a long, dying scream in his ears, as though the curse were a living beast to be hurt by his hacking through it. He didn’t care. He was too busy drinking in the sight ahead of him.
Harry’s core.
It took the form of an arched dome of many colors, each gleaming bit of glass or tile set in exactly the right place to continue the form of an abstract, glorious design without end. Here were all of Harry’s flaws and virtues, most concentrated, and so there was obsidian and sunrise-gold and purple like the flakes of a geode among the jade and sapphire. But it blazed. Oh, how it shone.
Draco felt something shift and change in himself as he floated there. It felt small, a click around his heart, a new sound to its beat, but he knew its effect was forever. He didn’t try to analyze it yet, just drank in the sight of the beauty and enjoyed his triumph.
The soul-shard, through its insistent tugging, at last pulled free from his cramped fingers and fled towards the dome. It danced around the mosaic in dizzy spirals, then turned completely blue and settled into its proper place, a scale high on the flanks of the glass. Draco smiled. He couldn’t even recognize it as a separate entity after its light faded.
They would carry a part of each other within themselves now, both he and Harry. Draco was inclined to count the sight of Harry’s core as a gift, nearly as precious as his gift of a piece of his own soul.
Draco closed his eyes, and flung up his arms in celebration, and rose towards the surface of Harry’s soul, eagerly anticipating the sight of his face once he understood that someone understood him.
*
Malfoy stirred. Harry sat up, his jaw working. He wouldn’t play Malfoy’s games, whatever they were. He would answer insults with insults and false kindness with crudity, the way he had so far.
Malfoy opened his eyes. Harry stiffened at the sight of the victory in them. What does he want now?
“I broke through.”
“Broke through what?” After the exultant softness of Malfoy’s tones, Harry’s own voice sounded in his ears as harshly as a crow’s. He didn’t care. He wanted to know what the bastard meant. He had no right to sound like that, not after a dive into a soul he must perceive as befouled.
Perhaps he thinks soul-rot is pretty. It wouldn’t be surprising.
“The blackness the curse wrapped around your soul.” Malfoy smiled at him. “I didn’t break the curse for anyone else-only the caster can do that-but whoever invented that spell couldn’t have known that Psyche-Diving would be invented someday, too. I know the truth now, and I can help to convince others.”
Harry stared at him. Then he snarled, “You’re lying, Malfoy.”
“And that doesn’t make me angry,” the git whispered, “because that’s the truth as you perceive it.”
Harry’s head was brilliant with rushing, dizzy light. His limbs trembled and ached, and his throat itched with the urge to cry.
So many months, a year, I waited for help, and it comes now? Just when I’m on the verge of escaping from everything? And it would leave me utterly dependent on someone I wouldn’t even trust with the Apparition coordinates of my flat?
No!
Harry lashed out with his wandless magic, cutting open Malfoy’s extended hand and knocking him sprawling. Then he lurched to his feet and ripped open the wards that guarded the door and observation window, not caring about the alarms that immediately began to shrill.
He-
If he stayed here, he would become-
Weak. He would be weak. He would ask Malfoy for help, and the bastard would delight in cutting him open with the power he had over Harry.
And everything would have been wrong. And everything he suffered during the past year would have been for nothing.
Malfoy couldn’t have solved the problem when Harry had tried and labored so hard and hadn’t managed to. He couldn’t be Harry’s answer.
Harry was escaping now.
He ran.
Chapter 12.