Chapter Forty-Six of 'Starfall'- A Test of Will
Chapter Forty-Five.
Title: Starfall (46/50 or 52)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Harry/Ginny, past Draco/Astoria, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Angst, manipulation
Summary: When the truth about a seemingly minor Dark hex Harry has suffered leads to the dissolution of his marriage with Ginny, Harry spins into a downward spiral. His private consolation is creating a fantasy life for himself in his journal as Ethan Starfall, a normal wizard with a big family. When he receives a random owl Draco Malfoy has cast into the void as a plea for help with his son Scorpius, Harry replies-as Ethan. There’s no reason, he thinks, for an epistolary friendship with Draco to go further. But Draco might have different ideas about that.
Author’s Note: This is likely to be a long story, updated fairly regularly. It is, however, very angsty.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Forty-Six-A Test of Will
“I don’t know if you can help my son,” said the heavyset woman who was settling herself in front of Harry. She gave him a challenging stare. “But no one else has helped him yet, either. So I want to see what you can do.”
Harry nodded in response, in respect. He could see why this woman wanted to test him before giving him a chance. And at least he thought he would be able to pass the test, because this black-eyed woman had done what no one else had so far: she’d brought a little file with her about her son, including his photograph and an Auror report that made Harry’s fingers itch.
The first thing that really caught Harry’s eye was the photograph, pinned on the file’s first page. The boy was small, maybe eight or nine, with brown hair and black eyes like his mother. “His name is Brandon Melitt?” Harry asked, considering the boy again, and noticing the way that he seemed to flinch away even from the camera as it turned towards him.
“Yes,” said the woman, still watching him.
Harry nodded, and read on. He found her name a little further down. “You’re Angela Helester, then.” He gave her a quick, curious glance, wondering why she and the boy didn’t share the last name, and if he might have been adopted from another family, despite how alike they looked.
Helester stretched her mouth in a sharp grin. “I divorced Brandon’s father. Originally, that worthless piece of shit said that he would take care of Brandon, so I changed my name back to my birth name. But then I found out he was abusing my son, and I took him back. I thought about changing Brandon’s name, too,” she added thoughtfully, musing, “but by that point, he’d been through enough changes.”
Harry nodded and read on. The file was brief and stark. It said that Aurors had been called to the home where Brandon lived because one of Brandon’s primary school teachers, a witch, had noticed the taint of Dark magic on him. Brandon’s father had been arrested for practice of the Dark Arts on a minor, and the list of suspected spells…
Harry’s gorge rose. “I hope his father is in prison,” he whispered.
“He is,” said Helester, and her eyes shone. “There was a slight accident the first day he was in Azkaban, in fact.”
Harry blinked at her. Helester inclined her head. “You know the Ministry doesn’t have Dementors patrol Azkaban on a regular basis anymore. But there was one on the shore the day my worthless ex-husband arrived, you see. It just happened to be hungry, and the Aurors who were escorting him just happened not to be proficient in the Patronus Charm. So sad.”
Helester slapped her hands together sharply, once. “His body lies in prison now,” she said. “And long may his heart beat.”
Harry shook his head a little. At least he could hope that a woman this ruthless would fight for her child as fiercely as she would fight others to protect him. “Then you think I can undo the effects of the spells his father used on him?” he asked, and looked at the list. “Suspected spells?”
“The bastard never spoke the incantations aloud, in case Brandon tried to report on them later.” Helester’s hands rested in her lap for a second. “They knew the kind of curses, though, if not the specific spells. Pain curses, like milder versions of the Cruciatus. Spells to damage the vocal cords.” She met Harry’s eyes. “My son doesn’t speak, Mr. Potter. I hope he can someday.”
“I can try to help him,” said Harry. From reading over the file, he already wanted to. He put the file down carefully and pushed it back across the desk to Helester. “But there’s something you should know. I’m no Mind-Healer. In fact, I’m under the care of one myself right now.” He winced a little as he thought about that. He hadn’t made an appointment with Healer Brandeis since he’d told the public the truth about not being able to have children. He should go soon.
“I could hardly miss the news when that came out, Mr. Potter,” said Helester dryly. “That’s one reason I chose you. I thought someone who had been through a lot of shit himself would know more about what Brandon was feeling.”
“Have you taken him to Mind-Healers?” Harry countered.
Helester nodded. “A few were able to ease some of his more permanent nightmares.” Her jaw tightened. “The bastard had given Brandon images of crimes and perversions that he couldn’t erase, so he saw them every time he closed his eyes.”
Harry found himself glad that Helester’s husband was dead, or he would have been tempted to finish the job himself. And he didn’t need any more scandals cluttering up his reputation.
“But they couldn’t do any more,” Helester finished. “They said working with young minds is difficult, and they’d brought Brandon as far as they could. They suggested different sorts of healing with light and colors, but none of those has taken.” She gave Harry a strange sort of yearning look, as if she saw qualities in him that Harry couldn’t see himself. “Will you try, Mr. Potter? Come and meet Brandon? That might at least tell you whether you could help or not.”
“Yes,” said Harry, standing. There had never been a question, and not only because Helester was the first person who had made an honest appointment with him in days, rather than coming by to gape at him. “I want to go and see what I can do for him.”
Maybe I can’t do anything, but I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t take a look.
*
Brandon Melitt was a supernaturally quiet little boy who looked almost exactly like his photograph, complete with flinch when Harry walked into the room. Harry stopped and sat down near the door, wondering as he did so if Helester should have tried someone female. Harry might remind Brandon too much of the man who had abused him.
The room was large and cheerful, painted blue walls with white clouds on them. Harry saw numerous small doors, which were too numerous all to lead to other rooms. He looked at Helester, who had gone ahead of him to prepare Brandon for his visit, in confusion.
“Cupboards,” Helester told him. “Some for his clothes and toys, but mainly, he likes to hide in them.”
Harry swallowed painfully. He was becoming less certain by the second that he could help Brandon, because of the similarities between them more than anything else. He turned back to Brandon with his heart pounding painfully.
Brandon sat with his head bowed and said nothing. His breathing was low and even, but not slow. He cradled a small crystalline marble in his hand that he turned back and forth.
Harry looked at the marble. Most of the ones he had seen in the wizarding world had a magical design in the center, one that might resemble a chaotic, random pattern or a magical creature like a flying dragon. He thought this was the first completely transparent one he had seen. He squinted, and blinked when he realized that it wasn’t actually transparent; he couldn’t see Brandon’s fingers and hand through it.
“Where did he get that marble?” he asked quietly. “Is that something he plays with all the time?”
“Not all the time, but pretty often.” Helester cast him a keen glance. “If you’re thinking any of his toys are cursed, don’t. I burned all the clothes the bastard gave him and bought him new ones, and I bought him new toys, as well.”
“I wasn’t really thinking that,” Harry mumbled, watching Brandon closely nonetheless. There was something about the crystal marble and the way he held it that got Harry thinking. He hadn’t often seen clear marbles like that before, but he had seen something like it.
Then he knew. It resembled a miniature of Trelawney’s crystal balls that he had used so often in the Divination classroom. They had never been completely transparent, either. Only mostly, so that Trelawney could loom on the other side of them and sigh sadly about how many of them would never see the future.
Harry knelt down next to Brandon. He flinched again, but didn’t move away and didn’t take his eyes off the marble.
Harry drew his wand. He thought Brandon would move away from that, but Helester murmured from behind him, “I’ve tried to get him used to wand motions again. The bastard isn’t going to steal his gift of magic from him.”
Harry only nodded to show he understood, and cast a spell he didn’t like casting, because the effects were overwhelming. But at least those aspects would only be visible to him, and wouldn’t disturb Brandon further.
The room around him seemed to light up. Harry could see molecules orbiting in the middle of the walls, and a glittering bloodstain off to the side where someone had died in this room, and the trail of a crushed bug that someone must have killed relatively recently.
But people were the worst to look at, because they shone with blinding light-and darkness, if curses had been cast on them. Healers used this spell on a regular basis, to make out disease and the like, but they usually had to rest afterwards.
Harry narrowed his eyes so he would miss the glow from Helester, brighter because she had lived longer and been through more than Brandon, and focused in on the boy.
Despite his youth, the light zooming around him and coruscating off him was nearly as brilliant as Helester’s. Been through a lot, Harry thought, in the corner of his mind that was dazzled and nearly shouting with pain. I’d say so.
But he saw what he’d been looking for, the thing he’d been taught to look for in one Auror course with an eccentric old fellow named Tilvot who held nothing but contempt for “some of these old-fashioned notions they’re coming up with today.” He saw the thick, clear wall that was crouched to a low level in Brandon’s mind, the wall that should have been high and shining, and wasn’t.
Harry sucked in a breath. He doubted this was the reason that Brandon’s father had abused him, but it could easily be a reason that some of the effects of the abuse had lingered so long, and why Mind-Healers-who would be better at this work than Harry himself, he couldn’t lie-had been unable to help him more than a little.
Brandon abruptly looked up, and his eyes fastened on Harry.
His ringing, hoarsened cry made the visions explode, and Harry fell to the floor with a groan as the spell ended. Brandon was backed into a corner now, breathing faster as he stared at Harry. The crystalline marble lay on the floor next to him.
Helester put her foot down right next to Harry’s hand. “If you’ve harmed my son,” she said pleasantly, “then I’m going to break your throat open.”
“He’s a Seer,” Harry said, and coughed when he heard the words come out hoarse. He must have been screaming himself, although he didn’t remember it. He sat up, careful to avoid looking at Brandon in case he set him off again. “That’s part of the reason that your husband’s abuse has lingered so long. The abuse was so severe that it broke down the barrier that would usually keep Brandon from seeing visions of the future and the past. But now he can, and so he’s seeing the abuse happen to him again and again, and probably a lot of future events, too.” He gave the staring Helester a faint smile. “I startled him because I cast a spell that let me see echoes of past events around people, and magical gifts and curses. I probably sort of strayed into the realm where he lives most of the time, and he saw me. My past wouldn’t have made for a pretty sight.”
Helester turned around and stared at Brandon. He had picked up the crystalline marble again and was gazing into it.
“Crystal balls can serve as an anchor for true Seers,” Harry told her, making her spin gracefully back towards him. “That marble probably calms him down and lets him see just the present or just some visions for a while. You should get a true crystal ball for him as soon as possible, though. A real one. Make sure you aren’t buying from a fraud. And if you take him to the section of St. Mungo’s that deals with people trapped in visions, they can probably help him. Or a Mind-Healer who’s worked with Seers.”
“My great-grandmother was a Seer,” said Helester, cocking her head. “It wasn’t something we liked to advertise, since it only led to people begging us to try and read the future for them. And none of us had inherited her gift.” She glanced again at Brandon. “Except for now. I should have thought of that before.”
“Why should you have?” Harry asked quietly. “It’s not an easy trauma to recognize. And I’ve never seen a child so young with that trauma.” He grimaced a little. What Helester’s husband must have done to hurt Brandon so much made him ill to think about. “I would tell you to give the bastard’s body a kick from me, but, well, he can’t feel it.”
“I might do it anyway.” Helester turned to study Brandon again. “Great-Grandmother was incapable of being around agitated people for very long,” she said suddenly. “Said their emotions stirred up her Inner Eye something fierce. Do you think Brandon might be the same way?”
“I suppose so,” said Harry, startled into the simple truth. “I didn’t study that in Auror training. I only learned that spell at all because sometimes you need it to see when someone is under a curse.”
Helester closed her eyes. “Then I suspect I have made his condition worse, with as often as I have been agitated when I was near him,” she murmured.
Harry reached out and touched her arm, making her open her eyes and turn towards him. “You didn’t know,” he said. “But I suspect that he probably would welcome less violence in his life, including less violent emotions.”
Helester gave him a strained smile. “And another visit to the Mind-Healers.”
Harry nodded. “Other than getting him a crystal ball, I don’t really have any ideas.” He looked at Brandon, who was staring into a corner of the room now. He might be seeing a vision of the crime that had left the bloodstain on the wall, Harry thought. The way he had calmed down so fast when the spell ended was as bad a sign, in its own way, as his silent staring was. “I hope that’s enough to help him.”
“You did what I hoped you could do, and gave me another avenue to investigate,” said Helester, pulling him towards the door, probably so that neither of them would upset Brandon more by feeling bad about his situation right in front of him. “What do I owe you?”
Harry hesitated, but he knew he had to accept money for this. It was part of moving on and operating the business. He gave Helester a small nod. “Ten Galleons.”
“Done,” said Helester, and left the room to get the money.
Harry lingered in the doorway, watching Brandon. He had gone back to looking at his marble, and was turning it from side to side as if trying to see the patterns that weren’t etched into its clear glass.
I hope he finds the help he needs. There’s probably nothing else I can do for him right now, but just hoping is hard…
*
“I saw Ex-Weasley today.”
“She has a name,” Harry muttered on the other side of the table. “And I knew you were going to see her.” He kept his attention on his plate as though the fish soup was fascinating.
But Draco could feel the way the tension in his body had changed. He smiled a little, and was about to continue when Scorpius, who had been chattering to them about how Teddy could cast a few simple spells using Andromeda’s wand now, looked up abruptly and said, “Who’s Ex-Weasley?”
Harry looked up quickly, too. Draco mouthed back, He has to know sometime, and turned to Scorpius. “She was the one who was married to Harry for a while,” he said. “The way that your mother used to be married to me.”
A wistful look overcame Scorpius’s face, and he hunched down in his chair a little. Draco could hardly believe that he had mistaken the signs before now. Scorpius did miss his mother, and he did want her back. Draco hoped that having another parent, and perhaps more frequent visits from Astoria, would help his loneliness.
And I’m glad that Harry taught me to see what he felt as loneliness, instead of just weakness unbecoming to a Malfoy.
“Oh,” said Scorpius. “And she and Uncle Harry don’t have kids.”
Harry laughed and held out a threatening hand as if he would ruffle Scorpius’s hair. Scorpius ducked out of the way, as usual, and put a protective palm on top of his head. Harry looked like he was snickering, Draco saw, and didn’t even try to hide it.
“No, I don’t have kids with her,” said Harry, and if the emotion in his eyes for Scorpius wasn’t love, Draco would willingly eat a meal made by Molly Weasley. “You would have met them by now, Scorpius. I would never keep them away from you.”
“But I didn’t meet Teddy at first.” Scorpius looked around as though seeking someone to blame in the corners of the room. “I didn’t even know he was there until I was this old! Or I would have seen him before now.”
Draco cleared his throat, pulling Scorpius’s attention to him with a snap. “I’m afraid I was more to blame for that than Uncle Harry was, Scorpius,” he murmured. “I didn’t like the idea of trying to reconcile with an aunt and cousin who had never shown any interest in me.”
Harry watched him from the corner of an eye, but didn’t say anything. And anyway, Draco had had his own talks with Andromeda on the subject. He knew that the lack of interest was a complicated point. It was true, though, that Draco had thought at the time that Andromeda had no interest in reconciling with him, and although he had sometimes been idly curious about Teddy Lupin, he was the son of Lupin.
And Draco had had his own son to raise.
“Now, though,” said Scorpius, clutching his fork like a weapon. “You won’t take Aunt Andromeda and Teddy away.”
“No,” said Draco gently. “I won’t do that.”
“Good,” said Scorpius, and then he smiled, an expression that Draco felt immensely proud of, if only because he was used to seeing a cousin of it on his own face in mirrors. But Scorpius’s was more charming. “Then why did you go and see Ex-Weasley, if Uncle Harry doesn’t have kids with her?”
“Her name,” said Harry stiffly, “is Ginny.”
“Ex-Ginny?” Scorpius sounded a little confused now. He had been doing a good job keeping up, Draco thought, but this business of Harry’s ex-wife and exactly who she was would confuse some older children, as well.
And the reasons she divorced him ought to be confusing, anyway, Draco thought savagely, but managed to calm his anger down and answer in a pleasant manner. “No. Her last name was Weasley. Then she married Uncle Harry, and her name was Potter for a while. But now it’s Corner. She married someone else, and she’s having a kid with him.” That was about as clear as he could make it.
Scorpius thought about this in between sips of soup. Then he said, “People should just keep their names all the time,” and started a conversation about Teddy so different from what they’d been saying that Draco would have felt awkward trying to continue to talk about Harry’s ex-wife.
But Harry’s eyes rested meaningfully on him sometimes when Scorpius wasn’t looking, and Draco knew they were going to have a conversation about this after dinner, when Scorpius had gone to bed.
That was all right. Draco was looking forward to it.
*
“I think you did the right thing,” Draco said quietly, leaning forwards to pour more of the one wine they had found that Harry enjoyed into his crystal glass. The glasses had the Malfoy crest on the side of them, of course, but Harry was learning not to mind that, any more than he was the idea of drinking wine on a regular basis. “That’s one advantage of having someone with Auror training working with children. You can use spells that other people wouldn’t know and recognize conditions that other people can’t.”
Harry opened his mouth to protest that he hadn’t helped Brandon himself, only set him on the road to help, but Draco’s narrow look made him lean back and bask in the praise instead. Besides, Draco’s face went so soft and pleased that Harry thought it was worthwhile to accept the praise. He swallowed the wine and said, “Now we have to talk about something less pleasant.”
“My visit to-Ginny. Yes.”
From the strain in Draco’s voice, Harry knew how much it had cost him to call her that rather than by the nickname he’d adopted for her. He reached out and squeezed Draco’s knee in appreciation. “I don’t need all the details,” he said. “I just want to know if you think that she’ll hold back and stop tormenting me.”
Draco’s lips changed in the smallest direction of a quirk, which Harry knew was at least meant to resemble a smile. “She hadn’t told her husband about wanting to cheat on you when you two were still married. She tried to pretend she had and that he’d accepted it, but I knew she was lying. So we have that to hold over her head.”
Harry struggled with that for a silent moment, the fact that he had to rejoice in being able to blackmail, if necessary, the woman he had once loved. He was still struggling with it when Draco clasped his hand. Harry looked up at him.
“I’ve done what I know how to do,” Draco told him quietly. “If she continues to plague you after this, you’ll need to make one of two choices. Either you can do what you know how to do, and use your knowledge of her to hurt her mentally and make her shut up, or I’ll blackmail her and hurt her worse. And Harry? I’ll enjoy doing it.”
Harry winced. But not because he was thinking about Ginny, not this time. He didn’t want Draco to do that because his enjoyment, while fine for him, would hurt Harry if he had to see Draco’s face twisted like that.
That decided him.
“I’ll deal with it,” he said. “If I have to. And in the meantime, I think we have better things to discuss than her.”
“I don’t disagree with you,” Draco said, and leaned in to kiss him with shining eyes.
Chapter Forty-Seven.
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