Part Two of 'Twin Knives'
Chapter One.
Title: Twin Knives (2/3)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, past Harry/Ginny and Draco/Astoria
Warnings: Violence, angst, somewhere between EWE and epilogue-compliant
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3800
Summary: Draco has narcolepsy-and violent dreams. Harry has insomnia-and enemies. It takes Draco a while to figure out how their problems are connected, but once he does, it’s their enemy who should watch out.
Author’s Notes: Another Wednesday one-shot, based on a prompt from enamoril: Harry has been cursed with insomnia, and Draco with selective but debilitating narcolepsy. Draco frequently dreams of Harry trying to kill him during his sleeping moments, and discovers that the curse placed on them came from the same source... someone whose trying to drive Draco to kill Harry, who is overworked in the Auror ranks. Non canon-- Divorce from Ginny due to work obsession before any kids were conceived. Draco lost Scorpius to Astoria in his recent divorce due to incompetence from the narcolepsy. Also, I'd like them to end up together. Otherwise, take it where you will :3. Due to the length and complexity of the prompt, this one-shot will have three parts, one posted this Wednesday and the others during the following two weeks.
Thank you for all the reviews!
Part Two
The moment Malfoy fell, Harry was moving.
It was as though all the grimness and blankness of the insomnia had blown away the minute he had someone to fight. He was alive and panting, and his heart was thrumming inside his ears like a hive of excited bees.
The spell the figure cast was a familiar one, and told Harry in an instant who their culprit was. He blocked it with his own specialized Shield Charm, and watched the silvery light that would have turned him into glass reflect off into a corner of the office. Then he turned around and faced the other Auror again, who seemed to want Harry’s attention, enough at least to wait before he struck a second time.
“Algernon,” he breathed.
Algernon Sithicus bowed from the waist. He was a tall man, lean with muscle under his Auror uniform, with black hair and cool grey eyes and a fondness for glass and mirror magic. He shook his head tragically as he paced into the office.
“Such a shame that you didn’t figure it out before,” he said. “I would have enjoyed the challenge of facing you if you knew.”
Harry knew Algernon well enough to realize that wasn’t sarcasm. It was pure truth. He circled slowly to the side, and Algernon stood watching him do so, his eyes narrowed as if he was fighting against pain.
“Is this really all about that defeat I handed you in our duel last year?” Harry asked. He had no doubt of the culprit now, at all, but he did have to wonder about the motivation. Algernon had shaken his head after the duel and congratulated him for winning it. Algernon was the sort who wanted to win almost anything, but unlike Malfoy when they had still been in school, he wanted to do it without cheating. He was the sort to study ferociously and then come back later and challenge Harry to a rematch when he was certain he could triumph. This was cheating if Harry ever saw it.
“That was only part of it,” said Algernon. “You’re holding the Aurors back, Harry. We’ve become a public service, now.” The contempt in his voice was as cool and brisk as an autumn wind. He finally began to match Harry’s movements, not letting Harry get behind him. “We need to be the slight mavericks we were before. Investigating actual Dark wizards and dangerous crimes, not every loss of a kitten up a tree.”
Harry had nothing to say to that. He was watching Algernon’s wand hand instead. He had probably studied as well as using this Twin Knives curse to try and bring Harry down. And he had already been dangerous enough. Harry wondered how to tell him that it wasn’t superior skill that had really let Harry win their duel, so much as the intuition that let Harry know when a spell was coming and he should dodge. It was the sort of thing he found it hard to teach, even to the trainees who were most hopeful about learning it.
Algernon’s wand twitched, and Harry dived to the side. A second later, he recognized it for a feint.
Algernon cast a nonverbal spell again. Luck was the only thing that let Harry pivot away from the stream of flying mirrors, which arced around like Muggle flying disks and came to strike him again. Harry rolled under them this time, and hissed the countercurse. The mirrors shattered into glass dust.
“Yes, you can do magic properly when you want to,” said Algernon, and sighed a little. “Of course, the insomnia didn’t have any of the usual effects on you. It couldn’t, not if I wanted Malfoy to kill you.” He turned to look in a disappointed way at Malfoy. “Although he probably would have dropped his wand due to falling asleep at the wrong moment.”
Harry struck when Algernon was standing with his shoulder turned to him, but Algernon spun back and shook his head as he caught the spell on a shield that, of course, looked like glass. “You need to be faster than that to catch me napping, Harry,” he said, and reflected the spell straight back at him.
Harry shuddered as he ducked under his own Stunner. That would be embarrassing, to be taken out by his own spell, and he would probably never hear the end of it.
That is, he wouldn’t if he lived past whatever Algernon was planning to do to him. And he suspected he wouldn’t, if the careful way that Algernon took aim at him was any indication.
But he had noticed something he didn’t think Algernon had. He edged back towards his desk, raising a Shield Charm in front of him in case Algernon tried to do something permanent on the way.
Algernon strolled along, clucking his tongue and shaking his head. “You have such a great faith in the simple things, Harry,” he said, and began to rotate his wand, making the air around it turn smooth and fog-like. “You should have forgotten that you’re not dealing with a simple opponent.”
“What made you show up right now?” Harry asked. “Did you have an alarm spell set to let you know if the twin people in the Twin Knives spell got together?” He was sure it was that. Either an alarm spell on the both of them that would trigger only when they were in close proximity or one on Malfoy.
“That’s not important,” said Algernon, with a sort of sigh. “Believe me, Harry, no one regrets this more than me. If I could have spared you, I would have. You would be a great asset to a properly-run Department. But as it is, they spare too many resources to holding you in check and supporting you when the public wants to talk to you or see on a certain case, and I’m forced to do this instead.” He aimed his wand. “If you held still, I promise I wouldn’t hurt you as much. The Twin Knives curse was already a blandishment to speed, but it’s not proven very efficient.”
It was about then, with Algernon focused solely on Harry, that Malfoy, whose eyes Harry had seen flickering, lunged to his feet and held out his wand in Algernon’s direction, spitting, “Cavea!”
The spell was a Cage Curse, which Harry wouldn’t have tried, since it had a reputation for being slower to show up than most spells. But it was a good try, with the stone bars sprouting from the floor right around Algernon’s feet, where they needed to be.
Unfortunately, Algernon had plunged forwards the moment he saw the bars rising, or maybe the moment Malfoy pronounced the curse; Harry wasn’t sure which. The cage slammed together, and Algernon was outside it, turning to launch the transparent spell he had prepared at Malfoy instead of Harry.
Harry cast the quickest spell he could think of on the spur of the moment, the Wailing Lights, which combined a quick bunch of red and green and yellow lights flaring off the end of his wand accompanied by a piercing cry like a baby’s. It worked the way he wanted to, in that Algernon’s hand jerked, and his spell crashed into the floor instead, turning the stone to a sludgy glass.
Harry backed up so that Malfoy was right behind him. He hoped Malfoy wouldn’t fall asleep again soon, but he had to be prepared for the possibility. He could conjure a stretcher to help carry Malfoy along if he had to.
“Everything would be better if you only understood,” said Algernon. He was grimacing. It wasn’t a good look on him. Then again, Harry didn’t think triumph would have been, either.
“Surely Mr. Malfoy can understand,” said Algernon, and bizarrely turned towards Malfoy. “In a well-regulated Ministry-”
From the subtle movement of his hand, it was another trap, and Harry didn’t intend to stay and listen to the end of it. He flicked his own wand up and to the side, in a spell he could perform nonverbally, and the invisible clothesline knifed into the back of Algernon’s knees and spilled him to the floor.
Harry ran at once out the door, tugging Malfoy with him by the arm. He wanted to send a Patronus to someone to let them know what was going on, but Algernon was too dangerous to linger near, and this late, they were unlikely to run into a lot of people in the Ministry. They would have to run until he found a quiet place they could defend for a bit.
Sure enough, a Knife Curse went by underneath his boots, and Harry hissed and cursed and hopped. Algernon was dangerous even lying on the floor and firing beneath the desk. Well, of course he was. He was a fully-trained Auror.
And even though Harry also was, he had to protect someone who wasn’t. He was sure that was going to take a toll on him.
“Potter?”
It was Malfoy, panting loudly against his ear. Harry shrugged a shoulder back to indicate he was listening, but kept running, and kept pulling Malfoy with him. Malfoy might or might not have the sense to keep running if Harry let him go; Harry was certain he didn’t have the skill to keep surviving Algernon’s curses.
“We could go up to my Department. There are a few people left there-”
The corridor ahead of them shuddered. Harry cursed with shock. He knew this spell, but he was stunned that Algernon would try it here, with the weight of so much stone on top of them.
Maybe those floors would also be gone in a “properly-organized” Ministry.
“Be quiet for right now, Malfoy,” Harry muttered to him, and hooked an arm around Malfoy’s waist, and rolled them both into the left-hand wall of the corridor at the same moment that the floor rose up beneath them.
Malfoy shouted and yelped. Harry didn’t listen to it because he didn’t have to. Instead, he sent them rolling into the right-hand wall, as the left-hand one snapped down into the floor behind them like the maw of a great beast.
By then, Malfoy seemed to understand the nature of the Earthquake Stomp curse. He cooperated when Harry reeled away from the right-hand wall, and he didn’t jump when it came down behind them with a clomp. He grabbed Harry’s arm and nodded to a hump of risen floor in front of them.
Harry nodded back. They would have to risk it, even though the curse would likely bring the ceiling down on top of them next in an attempt to crush them. The walls were buckled too close all about them.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t ease the journey, though. Harry whispered a spell that made his hand begin to shimmer, and gestured Malfoy forwards with his head. Once Harry’s own spell fully took effect, then Harry would have a hard time grabbing onto Malfoy’s elbow.
Malfoy ran, or floated, over to the top of the risen floor, and began to climb. Harry looked over his shoulder, but the geography of the corridor had changed so much that he couldn’t see Algernon at all.
The ceiling came slamming down at Malfoy once he was on the top of the mound, and he cried out and covered his face with his hands. Then he seemed to realize he hadn’t been hurt. He drew his hands back and stared right through them, at the floor.
Drifting up beside him, Harry took a moment to smile at the astonished expression on his face. “Yeah, I turned us into ghosts for a little bit,” he agreed. “But it won’t last long.” He eyed the corridor in front of them, which led towards the lifts. It was normal. Algernon had either come to his senses-unlikely-or he had realized that using the Earthquake Stomp in a more populated area of the Ministry wasn’t a good idea. “Come on.”
Even as he and Malfoy slid down the other side of the mound, they reformed. Malfoy stumbled and muttered something under his breath as he caught a foot on a zigzagging crack in the stone.
“It’s all right,” Harry reassured him. “You can swear, I don’t mind.”
Malfoy gave him a scathing look. “Have you considered where we’re going to go to lose this madman?”
Harry nodded. The respite from dodging side to side, as brief as it had been, had let him think. Going into an area with more people was as much a gamble as staying away from them; Algernon could plausibly eliminate the witnesses and blame it on Harry and Malfoy once he had killed them. “There’s a small corridor just outside the Department of Mysteries that they sometimes use when they’re making deliveries of things that don’t need to be sealed in solid silver or cold water or something. Do you know it?”
Malfoy paled and looked around. “How far is it from here?”
“Pretty far,” Harry said gently. He hated the frightened look on Malfoy’s face. Malfoy had done his time in the war, and he shouldn’t have to feel this now. “I won’t lie to you. But we can make it if we move. And we can seal it off.” That was for when the deliveries didn’t turn out to be as harmless as generally suspected.
Malfoy shuddered once, and then nodded. “Let’s go.”
Harry did pause for one moment as they headed towards the stairs that almost no one used, having relied on the lifts for so long. Couldn’t he send a Patronus from right here? Algernon didn’t seem as if he was chasing them anymore. Maybe he’d given up-
Instinct more than anything else sent Harry suddenly sprinting ahead, and made him grab Malfoy and dive to the floor. A curse went past his head that would have taken his spirit into the nearest mirror and trapped it.
“You would have been easier to deal with if you would simply give up,” said Algernon.
Harry didn’t hesitate to cast the spell he had in mind. It dived in front of him, burrowing straight into the stone. Unlike the Earthquake Stomp spell that Algernon had cast, it wouldn’t bring down the building. In fact, the tunnel was already reaching back for him. Normally, it would only take the caster down into whatever depth the tunnel bored into.
Normally. But Harry hugged Malfoy close to him, and the magic yanked him into the tunnel as well. Behind him, Algernon spat something, but even he couldn’t change the nature of the spell and get into the tunnel before it closed smoothly behind them.
They plunged down through the stone, dizzying and moving so fast that Harry knew they would die if they crashed into something. But they wouldn’t. The magic would prevent it.
From the way he was struggling and snarling in Harry’s arms, Malfoy didn’t believe it.
“We’re going straight down!” Harry hissed into his ear.
“That’s what I’m worried about!”
“It’ll stop when it gets to a place that’s big enough!”
Malfoy paused as if he was willing to listen to that despite his general lack of trust in Harry, and then the spell spat them out into the Atrium. Harry blinked. For some reason, he had forgotten they would hit that first. He had thought it would be the Department of Mysteries for certain.
But since they were so close to the Floos, they could get out. Harry ran straight towards the nearest fireplace, and Malfoy braced his feet as if he would stop Harry’s rush, but Harry shook that hold off and grabbed his elbow instead.
“I’m tired of you hauling me around like your doll!” Malfoy tried angrily to shake off the arm across his shoulders.
“If you didn’t have a tendency to fall asleep every other minute, I wouldn’t have to,” Harry snapped, and threw so much Floo powder into the fire that drifts of it scattered all around the hearth and there was a sharp pop and snap from the center of the flames. “Come on.” He herded Malfoy up in front of him, where he would be less vulnerable to curses if Algernon came out of one of the lifts or doors, and called, “Potter’s Hideaway!”
The last thing Harry heard before he whirled away from the Ministry was the angry cry of a hunting Algernon behind him.
*
The first thing Potter did when they arrived in his ridiculously-named flat was to draw his wand and conjure a glowing silver stag. Draco flinched back, remembering all too well what it was like to have that stag charging down his throat. And it looked at him like it remembered that time, too, and would treat it as good sport.
But Potter was already speaking, a hectic flush on his cheeks. “Ron, Algernon Sithicus cast a spell on me and Malfoy that binds us together. Twin Knives. We’re at my house. Do something!” The stag whirled a minute later and charged through the wall, its antlers glowing softly. Draco only fully relaxed when it was gone.
“You couldn’t do that before?” Draco muttered. He was rubbing his arms before he thought about it. Potter’s flat was dismally cold.
In fact, it was dismal altogether, Draco saw as he looked around. There was no fire on the hearth, and there was only a single lamp on a table that might be lit. It looked as if this was the room where Potter practiced his tragic brooding.
“I couldn’t take the chance that Algernon would cast a curse at us while I was concentrating on the message,” said Potter shortly, and brushed past Draco to cast Incendio at the hearth. At least there was nothing wrong with his casting of that particular spell. Draco relaxed into warmth with a long sigh. “Anyway, I think that he was probably aiming to kill us. He took his sweet time with it with the Twin Knives. But now…” He let his voice trail off.
Draco turned to face him. “Why did he do it? I was unconscious when he confessed.” If he had. Maybe Potter just knew his fellow Auror so well that he had known why.
Potter turned around and put his back against the brick of the hearth, and at Draco’s look back and forth from the lamp to him, lit it with another flick of his wand. “He said that the Auror Department spent too much time and money on supporting my cases. He wants to reorganize things so that doesn’t happen.” Potter brushed a hand through his hair and laughed shortly. “I reckon you were right when you said the spellcaster was just focused on me.”
Of course I was, Draco thought, and said aloud, “Since the war, I haven’t really been worth anyone’s vengeance.”
Potter cast him a startled look, blinking. “That’s a hell of a thing to say about yourself.”
“But true,” said Draco, and wandered over to sit down on the couch. “Anyway. There’s only one way to undo the Twin Knives curse that I know of, assuming that we don’t want to go to the Healers at St. Mungo’s.”
“I don’t think we can until the morning,” said Potter. “But that ought to be safe…” Then he hesitated.
Draco nodded. “You’re thinking of the press?” He certainly was. No matter what they said, there would be someone who got hold of the Twin Knives aspect that made Draco have dream-visions of killing Potter, and they would manage to twist that into him being an actual attempted murderer. And Potter probably just didn’t want the publicity in general, even if it wasn’t negative for him.
“All right,” said Potter, and firmed his shoulders. “So what do we need to do to end this curse?”
“Overcome the twin knives of the curse,” said Draco. “If one of us was cursed with lust and the other with frigidity, we would have to have sex in a way that made sure the one with lust didn’t reach orgasm, and the one with frigidity did.” Didn’t that make Potter blush in an interesting way. He seemed altogether more alive and interesting than he had when Draco confronted him in his office at first, which lent Draco hope that this would work. “With this particular curse, with you having no dreams and me having violent ones of you, I’m sure that you have to meet me in my dreams and convince me you won’t hurt me.”
“Yes, that might be an interesting solution,” Potter agreed. “If I could bloody get to sleep.”
Draco started to answer, but Potter went on furiously. “And how do you know this, anyway? I mean, if this curse is so unique each time it manifests, how do you know that this is the right thing to do, and why should I trust you?”
Draco rolled his eyes. “You just spent so much time trying to make sure I lived, and now you ask that question?”
Potter ran a hand through his hair again and closed his eyes tightly. “That’s different. I don’t want you to die. But that’s different from sharing a dream with you, and-and I’m tired. For the first time in months.”
He flopped down on the couch beside Draco, then winced. Draco thought he had probably sat on one of the springs of the stupid thing. For the moment, he waited until Potter looked at him, and then said slowly and deliberately, “I know a spell that can be used to send you to sleep. It’s one of the spells that the Healers at St. Mungo’s would use to cure us.”
“Then why don’t we just do what they would do?” Potter sat up.
“Because neither of us know advanced Healing magic?” Draco asked dryly, and for once Potter thought before he spoke, and then nodded hesitantly. “So. Wait until I fall asleep again. Cast the spell on yourself right away.”
Potter sighed as though he was going to expel all the air in his lungs on an ill-advised attempt to blow Draco’s confidence to pieces, but he said, “What’s the incantation?”
Draco showed him, and then leaned back against the couch and waited for the next moment that would deaden his eyelids, keeping his gaze on Potter for lack of anything else to stare at. Potter looked back at him for a long moment, then snapped his head abruptly to the side and looked away.
Draco snorted breathlessly, and would have said something, but sleep took him again. At least this time, he heard a much more comforting sound than he had the last time he capitulated: Potter’s voice, steadily chanting the spell that should bring him to Draco’s dreams.
If we’re lucky.
But even that, Draco scarcely had time to worry about before sleep swallowed him.
Chapter Three.
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