Chapter Thirty of 'Forgive Those Who Trespass'- Widening the Circle
Thanks again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Widening the Circle
“Ah, Harry. Come in.” Agarwal looked up from a sheaf of papers she was consulting. She probably meant her smile to be pleasant. Harry could not find it so, but he decided he would allow the woman her delusions. “I was just reading a few statements that your friends prepared for me.”
Harry stiffened. He’d been about to sit down on the couch across from her, but what she had just revealed didn’t make him comfortable enough to do so. This was his first session alone with Agarwal, which made him jumpy already, but this… “You’ve been talking to my friends about me behind my back?”
Agarwal raised her eyebrows. “I gave you the chance to talk about yourself. Every time I came to your room, you turned your face to the wall and were silent. Mr. Malfoy has told me many things, but those are mixed with his own problems and not always reliable. And when I asked you to write me a letter instead of speaking to me face-to-face, you refused the opportunity. Yes, I talked to your friends, because it was the only way I could learn anything about you.”
Fuming, Harry folded his arms. He finally decided to sit down, because he felt ridiculous towering over her and Agarwal evidently wasn’t intimidated; she just leaned back in her chair and gave him a steady, considering look. “You still could have told me that you were doing it,” he muttered.
“I assumed it would be obvious.” Agarwal sighed when he glared at her in outrage. “How clear can I make this, Harry? You. Need. Help. I thought you had agreed with me after your argument with Draco the other day. I should have known better, shouldn’t I? You’re still fighting this with every breath in your body.”
“I know that I need help to help Draco,” Harry said stiffly. “But you still could have been honest.”
“And you could have avoided being stubborn,” Agarwal said. “It seems that neither of us is about to get our dearest wish.”
Harry turned his head away. Agarwal had no windows in her office, but she did have a large glamour of a seascape that constantly changed positions: now focusing on the blue-green curl of the waves and the foam building up on them, now on the beach where wizarding children chased each other with shrieks of laughter and cast clumsy spells with practice wands whilst their parents relaxed in the shade. It was probably meant to relax him, too. It didn’t. “What did Hermione tell you?”
“You’re that astute, at least, to know that Miss Granger gave me better information than Mr. Weasley did,” Agarwal said calmly. “Good.” Harry heard the rustle of paper. “She told me that you had trouble accepting your sexual orientation even before you went into the maze, and were convinced that it would pass if you simply refused to date men. Well. That would explain why you flinch subtly every time Mr. Malfoy touches you in a way that isn’t an embrace.”
“You’ve been watching us when we’re not in your office, too?” Harry whipped around and glared at her.
Agarwal raised her eyebrows at him. “Your supply of outrage should run out soon,” she said. “Yes. Why is it so hard for you to accept reality? I am determined to help you. I am more determined, in the end, than you are not to be helped.”
“Look, if I answer your questions straight out, will you stop spying on me?” Harry wrapped his arms around himself. Was a cold breeze pouring out of the seascape? He could swear it was.
“Very well,” Agarwal said agreeably, a tone of voice that Harry immediately distrusted. Her next words proved he had reason. “Tell me. How do you feel about being physically intimate with Mr. Malfoy?”
Harry drew a harsh breath and closed his eyes. Draco wasn’t here to listen to him, he reminded himself, and couldn’t be hurt by his words. One thing Agarwal had made very clear was that their private sessions would be private, and Draco would not learn Harry’s secrets, or vice versa, until they were ready to tell each other. And Harry still trusted her to keep that promise, as untrustworthy as she was proving about everything else.
And even if it did feel odd not to know everything Draco was thinking and feeling with just a glance to the side. Harry had found that he seemed to be losing his ability to read Draco’s features now his voice had returned. He knew it was probably just because Draco no longer tried to convey every nuance of his feelings with his expression, but still, he kind of missed it.
“Harry? I’m waiting.”
Harry swallowed nausea and said, “I’m still uncomfortable with it. There? Is that what you want to hear? I get embarrassed when he kisses me.” Draco had done it twice yesterday, when he visited Harry’s room. Harry, though he had to practice walking with his newly restored foot because the Healers said so, had accepted the kisses thanks to Draco’s intense distress when he tried to pull away. “I can’t even think about more than that. I don’t want to think about more than that.” He fell silent.
“And yet, you love him.”
“As a friend,” Harry mumbled. “And I tried-I tried to tell him that that was all it was. I tried to explain how bad it made me feel, that I was gay and couldn’t give him everything he wanted. But I’m horrible at explanations. And he didn’t listen.”
“Have you tried to explain it to him since you left the maze?”
“No!” Harry turned around and stared at her again, bewildered. “Why on earth would I do that? Do you think that’s really what he needs right now, when he’s trying to regain his balance and stop depending on me so much? When he’s so fragile?”
“He is, I think, less fragile at the moment than you are,” Agarwal said softly.
“Oh, I like that.” Harry sat up, glaring at her. Had he given some impression of weakness? She had better rethink her estimate of him, and right quick, too. “I’m not the one who went through three dozen tortures courtesy of Richard. I’m the one who was able to start walking around just a week after Healing. I’m the one who protected him down there, who wasn’t afraid of the pain that came with the transformation into the maze-“
“You are the one who’s been running away from your problems as hard as you can,” said Agarwal. “You are the one who chose death or eternal suffering-eternal, Harry, think about what that means-rather than confront an emotional situation that made you uncomfortable. You’re the one who still thinks he is somehow less than necessary to Mr. Malfoy, that you’ll part soon, when you know very well he looks on you as more necessary than air.”
“You said you were working with him on that! You said that he needed to realize he couldn’t be as obsessive about me-“
Agarwal stood. Her face was so hard with anger that Harry flinched a little, the way he did when Hermione was angry. Agarwal either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
“I am a realist,” she said. “A very good quality in a Mind-Healer, too many of whom enter the profession with idealistic dreams of curing everyone they meet, whether or not those people need the cure. I realize that there is no way you and Draco can become what you were before the maze-entirely separate, entirely independent. We will work to lessen the obsession and give you the chance to experience your own lives as well as life with each other. That is only right, only humane. But you will always be necessary to one another because you are the only ones who truly understand what you endured. And I would thank you, Potter, to stop fighting me on this, and learn how much you are still damaging yourself and the man you claim to love.”
Harry clenched his hands at his sides on the couch. The urge to hit Agarwal was strong-they still hadn’t let him have a wand-but stronger still was the urge to leap to his feet and flee from the room. If he couldn’t hear her words, then he wouldn’t have to ponder the slight chance that they were real.
And there you are, thinking about running again.
Harry blinked, and his hands unclenched. Agarwal, watching him intently, raised one eyebrow and sat down again.
“Yes,” she murmured, “do think about it.”
Harry was, flinching a little as the memories came down on him like a landslide. They seemed to have been merely waiting for the moment when he started thinking about them to escape their bounds.
The times he’d nearly refused human comfort to Draco, who badly needed it, because he was afraid of becoming too physically close. The triumph and joy and relief he had felt when his plan had occurred to him-the relief stronger than the sadness he felt at leaving Draco. How patiently and eagerly he had convinced himself that sacrificing his body to become the maze was the only way, because it solved everything, and not just the problem of Draco being bound there. How he had wanted to pretend he didn’t need sleep, because someone who did was more helpless and more human. How he had decided that he could express a few gestures of physical affection towards the end of their journey because they couldn’t be permanent anyway.
His own mind condemned him, more thoroughly and better than Agarwal could have done. Harry closed his eyes, disliking it, almost nauseated again at the thought of how thorough a prat he’d been, but left with no choice save acceptance.
“My God,” he whispered.
“I hope that this is the last time we will have to go through this particular battle?”
Harry jumped and opened his eyes. Agarwal stood directly in front of him. He flushed. He’d been so caught up in his mental contortions that he hadn’t even heard her move closer.
“You have fewer problems than Mr. Malfoy does,” Agarwal said, staring him down. “That is the case. But one thing I am trying to prepare you for-because, as I said, I am not enough of a fool to think you can be parted with no ill effects-is living with a partner who himself will need therapy for the rest of his life. You will need to get over your pride and your fastidiousness, or whatever else it is that truly makes you so uncomfortable with your sexual orientation, in order to be good for him. Will you do that? Or must I attempt the impossible and convince Mr. Malfoy he would be better off alone than with someone who cannot balance him because he is always tripping over his own feet?”
Harry swallowed, and felt his blush grow worse. “I just always assumed I would be normal,” he whispered. “After Voldemort, I mean. That would be the last heroic thing I’d have to do. Then I could get married. I didn’t envision-I didn’t think I’d have to go rescue my best friends again, and I really didn’t think I’d ever have to get used to living with a man.”
With a small smile, Agarwal stepped away and sat down on her own chair again. “Ah,” she said. “Now I think we can make progress. You are not entirely reconciled to your own extraordinary qualities, are you?”
“My own abnormality? No.”
Agarwal swished her wand and cast a spell that made Harry feel as if his wrist had been slapped. He yelped and rubbed his stinging hand. Agarwal lifted an eyebrow at him.
“What we call things is more important than most people think,” she said. “Names limit and define the character of things in our minds. Now, I will thank you not to call yourself abnormal, or a freak, or any of the other list of negative terms that your friend Miss Granger has so scrupulously provided for me after hearing you say them. Extraordinary will do.”
“How am I supposed to talk about this if I can’t even use the words I want?” Harry muttered, still rubbing his wrist, though in reality the sting had faded.
Agarwal bared her teeth in a shark’s smile. “Try.”
*
When Harry stepped into the blue office that supposedly housed Odd Robert, the therapist who worked with restored Animagi, the first thing he saw flying at him was his wand. He reached up and out towards it eagerly.
It spun past his hand and struck him under the eye. Harry yelped the way he had when Agarwal stung his hand this morning, and stepped back. The wand dropped to the floor with a light clatter.
“Now,” said Odd Robert, his voice distorted by distance, Harry thought, “they tell me you were one of the best Seekers in Hogwarts history. Surely you could have caught that as easy as catching a Snitch, on any normal day?”
Rubbing his face, Harry peered towards the dangerous lunatic who had somehow become a Mind-Healer. He had gray hair that clung obediently to his head for the most part, but frizzled on the ends and in his fringe. He wore square glasses, and Harry couldn’t see anything of his face because it was bowed over a board, and he was tapping the board with his own wand.
“I’ve been out of practice,” Harry said stiffly, and bent down to pick up the wand. It felt rough and familiar and very welcome in his hand. “A Seeker’s game every other weekend isn’t the same as constant practice.”
“Bollocks,” Odd Robert said, and stood up. Harry wondered irritably why he was keeping himself down at the other end of the room, but he didn’t offer to approach any closer. “You’ve moved past the initial relearning of your body functions-the easy ones, like a bit of walking and shitting. Now you’ve got to relearn the more complicated ones, like catching a Snitch. And performing magic,” he added, nodding to the wand in Harry’s hand. “Didn’t anyone tell you why you’ve been restricted from casting spells since you returned to human form?”
Harry scowled and shook his head.
“It was probably that Sheldon’s fault,” Odd Robert muttered. “He’s always thinking the patients should be coddled.” He looked up at Harry. “All right. Listen. When you were changed, your body got used to performing magic differently. And you were like that for three months, which frankly is at the outside of what even my normal patients go through. And at least those patients usually have limbs and eyes and all the rest. Well, all right, there was the bloke who got stuck as a Flobberworm, but he was the exception. So now you’ve got to convince your brain and your body that you actually are a man, not a bloody great mass of walls and stone and doorways and things. See the problem now?”
“What happens if I try to cast a spell?” Harry demanded. So far, he hadn’t had trouble doing any of the simple physical exercises the Healers insisted on. Yes, all right, so they had been very simple at that, and it did sometimes seem as if they flinched when he tried to walk too fast or go to the loo by himself, but that didn’t mean he needed therapy for this.
“Try it.” Odd Robert sounded as if he were smirking. “Something simple, though, Lumos or the like. We can’t have the building collapsing.”
“I was never that strong, no matter what you may have heard,” Harry muttered, and then cast Lumos.
Nothing happened. Or, correction-nothing happened in his wand. Harry felt a peculiar thrum of warmth travel down the middle of his body, as though his nerves had somehow become the phoenix feather core, and then light began to glitter out of the right wall. Harry stared.
“See that?” Odd Robert inquired. “Sympathetic resonance with the last morph-or, to put it into terms that non-specialists can understand, your magic still reaches out to walls, doors, and the rest, because they’re the last portals it escaped through. Likewise, a witch who’s spent a long time as a cat will try to cast magic through paws and a tail she doesn’t have, see? And account for whiskers she doesn’t have, either, come to that. You’re a little luckier than the rest in one respect only. We don’t have to fetch an animal for you to have around at all times. You can cast in a normal room. On the other hand, it makes things trickier because I’ve never handled a case like yours before, and the last thing we need is your magic tampering with the structure of the building.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. So something might be off about his magic, but surely-he darted towards Odd Robert, who just blinked and watched him come.
Halfway there, he fell. His legs simply froze and refused to cooperate, and he pitched over. Harry wheezed and gasped, and took a moment to pound his chest with one hand. It seemed he’d stopped breathing.
His breath started again, and the tingling that had begun to travel up his legs subsided, but he was still stunned, in shock and in pain such as he had never thought to experience.
“See there?” Odd Robert was crouching over him now, casting a few spells on Harry’s legs and shaking his head. “Your body isn’t used to quick movement any more. And when you tried to force it to behave that way, it retaliated by regressing even further, and stopping your breath. You wouldn’t need to breathe as a bloody great building, after all.”
Harry shuddered. He hated being helpless. Confinement to a hospital bed for part of the day was bad enough.
“How do we cure it?” he whispered.
“We have to bring the brain back into alignment with the body you actually have,” Odd Robert said, sounding cheerful, though he looked tired when he sat back on his heels and regarded Harry. “And, after that, bring your magical core back along behind it. I know the procedure, though I’ve never worked with a case exactly like this one. It’s what I’ve done all the other times, though. We’ll be working with memories first, so that we can both enter them at the same time and I can study what happened from the outside.”
Harry sighed and accepted the Mind-Healer’s help up. “Why were you all the way on the other end of the room from me?” he thought to ask, since not asking about noticeable things seemed to be a problem.
Odd Robert grinned. “I wanted to have enough distance for safety in case you brought the roof down on top of your fool head, of course.”
*
Harry paused. He’d been on his way to visit Draco, who had a room on St. Mungo’s fourth floor not far from his. Draco had paid all the visits so far, and Harry had thought-well, Agarwal had suggested, and he had agreed-that it would be nice for him to return the favor.
But now, just outside Draco’s door, his palms had begun to sweat. He wiped them absently on his trousers. They went right on sweating.
If you cross that threshold on your own, his mind, which often couldn’t be trusted on things like this, was gibbering, then you’re showing him you have no intention of backing away again. And that’s what you want? You’re prepared to give up all dreams of anything else to be with him?
Harry swallowed. If Agarwal was right, though, he’d made his choice, hadn’t he? Or had it made for him, in the maze. It wouldn’t have mattered if he and Draco had come out of the maze hating each other’s guts and determined to flee to opposite sides of the country. Their shared experiences tied them together.
Except that hatred would have made your therapy different, and separation possible, as you know very well, Hermione’s voice told him. She had come back to full residence in his head a few days after he woke up. You came out of this in love with him. Isn’t it about time you faced what that means?
In love with him.
Yes, I am.
Damn it.
Harry knocked. He heard Draco’s weary voice call, “Come in,” after a moment of silence. Harry wondered if he still had trouble speaking words aloud, and had paused for a glare at the door, before he remembered he could talk again.
Then he had crossed the threshold into the room, taken the step that seemed so final, and there was no turning back.
Draco lifted his head. When shock wiped his face clean, Harry knew that he hadn’t had the slightest suspicion Harry would be his visitor. He really had got too used to being the one to initiate contact, at least outside of their therapy sessions. Harry felt a little squirm of guilt, and smiled hastily.
“Hullo, Draco,” he said.
Draco stood up slowly, his arms hugging his chest. Harry took a moment to drink in the sight of him, physically healthy if not mentally. The rounded corners and edges in the room were noticeable, and Draco obviously hadn’t been trusted with his wand. (Of course, neither had Harry; that remained in Odd Robert’s hands).
But his chest was full of ribs again, and his fingers were long and elegant, and his voice was there, murmuring hoarsely, “You came.”
“Yes.” Harry edged a little closer. It had seemed very easy, this morning, with Agarwal, to speak of how uneasy he was with the idea of physical intimacy. But in the same room with Draco, such thoughts were shaken out of his head as if by the blast of a clean spring wind. He hesitated, then stepped into the other man’s personal space and wrapped his arms around him.
Draco made an impatient noise, yanked free-Harry reeled in shock for a moment, because whilst they were still in the maze, Draco definitely wouldn’t have had the strength to do that-and reached up. His hand closed on the back of Harry’s neck, and he pulled him down into a desperate, greedy kiss.
Harry gasped, and Draco didn’t hesitate about giving his tongue free play in Harry’s mouth. The same sensations that had arisen when they kissed before chased through Harry’s mind and body, but this time they were cutting, keen, impossibly strong-
They were in the light, and not in the maze where they might die at any moment. These feelings could continue, and Harry knew he would come if they did.
He pulled back with a gasp, and retreated to the length of his arms, keeping his hands on Draco’s waist. Draco peered up at him, panting, his eyes wild and dark and lost.
“We’ll wait,” he said. “We’ll go slow. But I need to know that you’ll try, Harry. If you-if you plan to leave me-“ He flinched and shut his eyes. “You need to go, right now, and not ever come back.” His voice was ugly with his need.
Harry swallowed with some difficulty. This was the challenge Agarwal had talked about. No matter how healthy Draco grew, there would probably always remain an element of obsession in his love for Harry. Harry would always need to deal with emotions that wouldn’t be part of a love relationship with anyone else, even another man.
And Draco needed someone strong enough to handle that.
Harry was trembling as he moved in. Draco didn’t look up until Harry had embraced him securely and rested his chin on top of his hair. Then he tensed.
Harry said, “I’m not leaving.”
It became true as he said it, if it hadn’t been true before. Agarwal’s words and his own memories had convinced him intellectually. The way Draco leaned against him, trusting his full weight to Harry suddenly and completely, convinced him emotionally.
It was an honor to be trusted this much. Harry wanted it. He might never have the level of need Draco did, but he had the same desire.
Draco would never be easy. Harry wasn’t sure he would know how to handle someone who was.
And when Draco began to weep, Harry held on.
Chapter 31.