Chapter Eighteen of 'The Descent of Magic'- Permission and Pardon
Chapter Nineteen.
Title: The Descent of Magic (18/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings: Issues of disability, angst, epilogue-compliant.
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Harry/Draco, past Harry/Ginny and Draco/Astoria
Summary: Harry Potter, retired Auror, is also a budding magical theorist who likes a quiet life. When he discovers what seems to be a possible reason that so many pure-blood families are losing their magic and having Squib children, he keeps it quiet, because he knows it would only cause a storm of controversy. But an equally budding acquaintance with Draco Malfoy might change his mind.
Author's Notes: The title of the fic and a few details of Harry's life are taken from the story of Darwin, who was also reluctant to publicize the details of his evolutionary theory, knowing the controversy that would result. Both Harry and Draco are older in this story and have had their epilogue marriages, so avoid if that's not something you like. Chapter lengths will be variable, and this will probably be somewhere around 18 or 20 chapters.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eighteen-Permission and Pardon
“You have the Pensieve memories the Healers constructed?”
Draco kept his voice harsh, his head lifted. He had triumphed over Astoria this morning, but that feeling had faded as he worked on the potion. The way the ingredients went into the liquid seemed to twist under his hands, and he’d had to wear two bezoars against his skin this time in order to protect himself from the curse that warped his memories of the damage to Potter’s knee.
That kind of savage hatred left him shaken. He wondered who Potter’s enemies like that could be, now that the Dark Lord was gone and Draco had become his ally.
“Yes.” Potter reached for a basin behind him that resembled the standard Pensieve, but was twice as big. The way he leaned, he was going to drop it and the brimming dark liquid inside, so Draco stood up and moved around his chair to help him retrieve it. Potter smiled at him, and Draco’s stomach hammered briefly against his ribs.
I will not permit this. He wouldn’t be sick in front of Potter. His potion, if it did not work, was possible to rip apart and reconstruct. And the only other thing of note that had happened this morning, his conversation with Astoria, shouldn’t make him feel like this.
“Why is the memory-liquid dark?” he asked, staring into the Pensieve, glad for a question he could ask that wouldn’t make him sound like a child, or reduce his voice to a squeak. “I’ve never seen a Pensieve that didn’t look silvery.”
Potter shrugged. “The Healers told me that when so many memories are gathered together, they sometimes take on the color that fits the emotional mood of the people feeling them. Red for anger, and that kind of thing.”
Draco sneered. “And I suppose these are dark because they felt so much sorrow that they couldn’t cure you?”
Potter glanced at him. “No,” he said quietly. “Sorrow looks the color of a stormy sky. This is fear.”
Draco narrowed his eyes, but said nothing more as Potter laid the basin on the low table in front of his chair and Draco leaned forwards, immersing his head into it. He felt a brief choking sensation, as though he had placed his neck into a garotte, and then the familiar disorientation that always accompanied his fall into a Pensieve.
And then he stood, or floated, in front of a memory that was no ordinary memory at all, but a glimpse of what the Healers had seen when they used their spells to look at Potter’s knee.
Draco’s eyes watered. If anything, looking at someone else’s memory was worse than looking at his own, or the real thing. He could make out the spell now, wheeling around him, snapping at the lines of thought that he tried to put together to link up the lines of damage and force them to make sense. Every time he established a connection, it stood a chance of being severed.
Moving his hand slowly, feeling as though he fought currents circulating through the Pensieve, Draco laid his hands on the bezoars that he kept next to his skin.
The bezoars flared with an arctic light he’d never seen before, and then fizzled out like stars. The spell turned towards Draco. He caught a glimpse of so many writhing dark lines that he flinched and flung up a hand in front of his face.
The hand had an imprint on the palm, he saw. Something like a bezoar reversed, with an outline of the chain he had used.
The lines attacked him-and faded. Draco could at least bend closer to this memory and study it, marking down the distances in his mind and noting how many small pieces of bone and joint had shifted over time.
Then the memory became another one, and the spell was there again. Draco swore softly and clapped his hands on the bezoars at once, and this time, the effect that let him study the curse without having to fight the memory-eating seemed to last longer.
He could only face one new one, however, because this time the curse attacked with renewed vigor, and Draco swore again and tugged his head out of the memories. He wheeled to face Potter, who blinked at him. Of course, he’d been sitting in his comfortable chair for the last-twenty minutes, Draco estimated, with a quick glance at the golden clock that stood on the table-and hadn’t been battling the magic lodged in his flesh.
“Who were these enemies, who did this to you?” Draco demanded. “Because I’ve never seen someone hate another person so much.”
*
Harry grimaced. He hated to think about the things that had happened to him as the warlocks’ captive, and Hermione was convinced that that was what had delayed the healing in his knee. Face up to it, she argued, accept the damage, and he would remember more as well as be able to accelerate the healing.
The urgent expression on Draco’s face was the first time that Harry had ever wished he’d taken Hermione’s advice.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “They took me suddenly and silently, and they never revealed their faces to me. I was rescued by chance, because Ron and other Aurors put clues together, and I think one member of the group broke and confessed that they had Harry Potter captive.”
“You think one member of the group confessed?” Draco’s eyes narrowed. He looked haughty and magnificent and far braver than Harry felt. Harry had to take a deep breath and remind himself about Astoria’s article. She had thought Draco weak enough, at one point, to be destroyed by the petty little truths she’d revealed. Draco was much stronger than his wife or son thought, but he wasn’t without fear, and Harry could relax in front of him, not have to defend himself.
“Someone confessed,” Harry said. “I don’t think Ron and the others ever knew whether she was a member of the group or just a witness. They acted on the rumor, and rescued me. But no names, no faces, no concrete information.” His jaw ached from the memory of the teeth-grinding he’d done when he heard that. “I think I probably intruded into their business interests, somehow, in the course of my Auror work. I arrested an awful lot of people in illegal Potions brewing in the months prior to the capture. But that’s really all I know.”
“So they could still be out there,” Draco summarized.
Harry nodded, and tried to ignore the throbs coming from his knee. He knew that at least part of that was his own paranoia, not real physical pain.
Draco bowed his head, lip caught between his teeth. Then he said, “The memory-erasing spell is the problem. I find it hard to tell what’s changed in your knee, and from what angle. I could put all the pieces together one by one and find out that way, but it’s taxing, time-consuming, and not something I can see devoting days to.”
“Of course not,” Harry said, surprised that Draco thought Harry was suggesting that. “You’re brewing the potion for me, but you also have to continue living and working, and we have the theory about house-elves to spread.”
Draco gave him a sharp look. It didn’t last, but it left Harry pierced like a needle and longing to know what lay behind that.
I want him.
It was a weird thing to think, but true. Harry reminded himself again that there were more important things, though, and waited for Draco’s real response, other than the needle-sharp look.
“I was thinking, I meant,” Draco said, words grinding like rocks, “of trying to remove the memory-altering spell altogether. Then I, or the other Healers who might look after your knee in the future, could at least watch the progress of our healing without losing our memories of the damage so far.”
Harry winced a little. Then he said, “I hate to watch you put yourself in danger like that.”
Draco turned his head to the side, and there was no mistaking the stiff line of his neck and shoulders. “You think I can’t do it.”
There was no question in his voice, either. Harry found himself shaking his head and reaching out to touch Draco on the arm. “Not what I meant,” he said. “I think you can. But it’ll take a lot of time and effort, and don’t you have more valuable things to devote that to? It’s the same thing I said a minute ago. I don’t expect you to spend all that time on my knee. I didn’t expect you to spend what you have so far. I’m awed and grateful. That’s it. That’s the only thing.”
This time, Harry got a softened expression and slightly opened mouth. He hoped that was a good thing. He smiled back, tentatively.
*
Stupid Potter.
Stupid Potter to be confusing the issue and making Draco think about other things. He would have to pull back and reassemble his courage to tackle this if he thought too much about what Potter had said, so he lowered his head, cut the sight of Potter’s smile out of his field of vision, and coughed harshly. “Very well. You think I can do it, and I think I want to.”
Potter hesitated, then nodded. That made Draco’s resolve firm again, because it was still possible that Potter doubted him. Doubt was easier for Draco to face than belief.
And what a sad statement that makes about your life.
Draco winced as that particular thought pierced deeply into him, and pushed the needle out by refusing to think about it. “I’m going to cast the spells that should reveal the memory spell to me,” he said. “I wouldn’t put it past people like the ones that you describe to have put in other curses that will hurt you when someone begins investigating the memory aspect. Are you prepared to face the pain?”
Potter firmed his legs around his leg as he extended it. “Yes.”
Just one word, no more, but looking at the man’s face, Draco found that he didn’t want to question that quiet resolve. He simply nodded, took out his wand, and crouched down beside Potter, fixing his eyes on the twisted lump of bone and flesh that made up his knee.
He went through the same mental paring and stripping process that he used when he was brewing a complicated potion: he cut out of his mind all the excess distractions, the worries, the fears, the compelling plans for tomorrow. Then he reached out and laid his hands on either side of Potter’s knee. Even that light touch on the skin made Potter grimace.
Draco paused. He had never been distracted before by the thought of someone else’s pain, even when brewing a potion that would cure someone by inflicting agony.
Now, though, he had to breathe in, breathe out, and dismiss it. His fingers sank into the skin to maintain a firmer grip, and he began to speak the long incantation, Dark magic mingled with normal spells, that would show him the memory curse.
The bezoars hanging on the silver collar around his neck burned against his skin. Draco took that as a sign that he was getting close to the curse itself, and continued speaking, his words tumbling fluidly around each other.
The bezoars ignited with a hiss, and Draco smelled burning skin and hair. Potter’s hand reached towards him as if he smelled the same thing and meant to take the collar from Draco’s neck. Draco turned his head and pinned Potter with a look that was sufficiently hawk-like to make him stop reaching.
Draco turned back and hissed the final part of the incantation.
The air around Potter’s knee shook and blazed, and then unfolded itself to reveal the spell, looped and blue-green, a strangling snake. Draco looked at it and reached out, tracing a pattern around it with his wand.
Potter screamed.
The sound was shocking and ugly, nearly as ugly as the spell in front of Draco. Only long training kept him from flinching. Potions sometimes erupted as suddenly, or bubbled, or made noises, or ejected poisonous fumes. Draco had to keep his eye on the goal, and he didn’t allow his wand to move other than along the steady line he was using to trace the trap around the memory curse.
Potter cried out again, but his knee didn’t pull back. That would have disrupted Draco’s spell for good, since the physical anchor of the memory curse was the knee, and Draco needed to weave his own curses all around it.
He allowed one hand to lightly trail down Potter’s leg as he leaned forwards and began the third spell, which from the sound of it sent another bolt of pain through Potter.
*
The memories that Harry hated were back, pouring through his mind like thick sludge, reminding him of what the warlocks had done, how they had touched him, how they had hurt him.
What they had whispered.
No one will find you. No one will come for you. They don’t know you’re gone. By the time they find you, you’ll be a twisted lump of bloody flesh with only a mouth left, and you’ll beg for death. And they’ll be happy to give it to you.
Harry hadn’t wanted to believe them, of course he hadn’t, but as time passed and no one came, it had become harder and harder to resist the suggestions. The words were twined with the other components of his reality, the slimy floor and the food and fluids forcibly spelled into his stomach and the spells wrenching his knee back and forth, even when the warlocks had left and shut the door behind them.
Drowning in a world of hatred, he had forgotten how to hope.
But there was hope here, and he remembered it with Draco’s light touch to his leg. He began to breathe again, and he reminded himself that the floor beneath him was his chair, and considerably softer than the floor of the cell where they had left him. He gulped and gulped, and some air made it into his starving lungs. He let his head fall to the side, and there was a pillow there.
And Draco had begun to speak.
It was the words of a last spell, but it was still a real voice and not an imaginary one, not a hostile one, and Harry reached out and grasped it. He used it as a line to hold onto as the pain sliced through him again, feeling as if it would disintegrate the bone that had struggled so long to stand up to it.
Pain, and fear, and fury, and the light glimmer of comfort all the way through it. But Draco was there, and right now, Draco was a friend and a bulwark, and Harry clung to him for both salvation and sanity.
*
Draco closed his eyes, rested once more at the summit of his achievement, and prepared for the last stage of the battle. His trap glimmered all around the memory curse, various spells that were anchored to it now, and would rip its anchors in Potter’s knee free. Once it lost that site it was bound to, Draco thought, it should dissipate altogether. It had only lasted this long because it had an object to twine around.
But it would probably hurt Potter more than anything had so far, to lose something that had been such a large part of the complex of spells that made his life hell.
“Potter,” he whispered. He heard a little whimpering grunt of acknowledgment, or chose to think that he had, and went on. “I’m going to take the memory curse off for good. But it’s going to hurt. I need to make sure that you want this, that this is something that you’re giving permission for.”
He had never asked a question like that before. Of course, most of the time he didn’t know the people he was preparing potions for. They were at a distance. Not in front of him, gasping and sweating and straining.
That wouldn’t have made a difference if it hadn’t been him.
Draco examined the insight, nodded gracefully to it, and then placed it aside. Yes, perhaps that was true, but it couldn’t be allowed to have any impact on what he was doing right now. He exhaled, he inhaled, and he waited for the moment when he would hear Potter grant him permission or refuse.
Silence. Then Potter said, “I trust you.”
It was permission and pardon all at once. It filled Draco like a blast of light from a distant explosion, and he reached out and ignited the trap around the memory curse before the unexpected feeling could consume him.
Potter’s wail as the curse was warped out of him had its triumphant side. Draco had to believe that.
He opened his eyes when no sound followed it, and saw that his trap and the memory curse were both entirely gone. The bezoars were cool against his skin. Draco reached up to them as he glanced at Potter’s face.
Potter had fainted, and he was white around the lips. Draco conjured a glass, cast Aguamenti to pour water into it, and lifted the glass to throw the water on Potter.
Then he hesitated.
Then he set the glass on the table beside the chair and leaned over to shake Potter awake. Potter opened his eyes slowly, trembling, focused on him, and nodded.
“Thanks.”
Draco was full of light again.
Chapter Nineteen.
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