Chapter Thirteen of 'Forgive Those Who Trespass'- Thereby Hangs a Tale
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Chapter Thirteen-Thereby Hangs a Tale
Harry waited until they were beyond the room with the endless portraits of Josephine to ask the questions that burned in him. Draco was still shivering and didn’t want to look up; Harry had the impression that he might have a less than receptive audience if he spoke now.
But when they were in a section of maze that looked almost exactly like the corridors they’d passed through so far, neatly-fitted stone and flame-like patterns on the walls and all, Harry gently touched one of Draco’s shoulders and waited until the touch and the lack of motion was noticed. Draco blinked up at him. His face had grim shadows of exhaustion.
Harry shook his head a little. “I was going to talk to you about the maze and the Unspeakables, but I think you should rest first,” he muttered.
Draco scowled at him and flapped his palm for the communication sphere. Harry sent it floating to him; Draco selected Not tired.
“Really.” Harry thought his sarcasm skills must have improved from being around Draco, because he had never managed to put that much polite doubt into a single word before.
A more pronounced scowl this time, and Draco folded his arms ostentatiously and stepped away from the communication sphere, to show he didn’t have anything else to say. Harry studied him narrowly, but it was true that he didn’t sway on his feet or show any of the more ridiculous signs of tiredness that Harry had when his Awareness Charm had worn off.
“All right,” he said. “What do you remember about this area? Is it dangerous? Can we pause here and talk for a time?”
Draco stared upwards for a moment, perhaps scanning the ceiling. Harry looked up, too. After the attack of the bone-drinking creatures from beneath the floor, it wouldn’t do to assume something couldn’t drop on them from above.
But Draco nodded and sat down with his back close to a twist in the corridors, where he could see danger coming from more than one direction. Harry approved of his common sense, but made him budge up a bit, so that he could lay a blanket on the floor beneath him. This won him a cool look from Draco, neither pure gratitude nor pure annoyance-more like consideration, Harry thought. His newfound trust meant he didn’t have to worry and tease out every emotion Draco felt to be perfectly comfortable.
“So.” Harry took his place on his own blanket and tucked his legs beneath him, in a posture that Auror Donaldson had drilled him and other trainees in. He should be able to spring from such a crouch to his feet without pausing on the way up. “I know our means of communication are limited, but I think it’s time for you to explain to me what you can of the magical theory behind the maze and what you think has happened. Use small words,” he added.
A tired smile came and went on Draco’s face. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep breath-gathering strength, Harry imagined. He looked very small and very heroic against the stone wall, the only scrap of life in sight except for Harry.
Well, Harry thought, remembering what they’d encountered so far. Human and mortal life, anyway.
His attention was caught by Draco opening his eyes again. He gestured for the communication sphere. Harry let him have it, paying so much attention that he saw the fine blond hairs standing up on Draco’s arms. He wondered for a moment why the Unspeakables hadn’t shaved him, and then wondered why they would have. But then, why had they chosen to take his fingers and ribs and voice?
That’s the problem. I know what happened, at least some of it, but I don’t know enough of the why.
Unspeakables tortured me, Draco began. Harry nodded encouragingly when he paused. Always because. Draco struck the floor beside him with one palm, as if to add emphasis to the last word.
Harry frowned. “Because-what was the reason?”
Draco frowned back at him, and Harry remembered that they hadn’t included a word like “purpose” on the globe. Draco was doing the best he could to show the torture was purposeful, not done to indulge a random love of pain and sadism. Harry shuddered. Another difference between Richard and Voldemort, and one that made Richard, or his servants, more dangerous, because they wouldn’t be tripped up by their own indulgences.
“What was the major purpose?”
Maze.
Harry nodded. He ought to have known that, really. “What I don’t understand is why the maze required suffering,” he said. “I know that a maze that makes the people who walk through it immortal should be difficult to build, but I don’t get why this Sir Galen wanted to make horror and suffering part of the foundation.”
Draco pointed two nubs at Harry’s satchel. Harry opened it and pulled out the books they’d taken from the room where the Malfoys attacked them. That must be what Draco meant; he would have signed that he was hungry or tired if he wanted more food or blankets.
Draco waited until Harry held up The Ethics of Human Sacrifice, then nodded vigorously. Harry gave the book to him. Draco laid the edge of his hand under the word Sacrifice, and looked narrowly at Harry.
“It was the sacrifice that was important, wasn’t it?” Harry mused, leaning back against the wall. He felt almost as he did in the moments when Hermione illuminated some obscure subject for him. “Not so much the pain. But the idea that someone would willingly agree to suffer immense pain for years, or forever, makes the maze appropriately difficult to build and also invokes powerful magic. The victim would really have to love the builders of the maze to agree to that.” He found himself briefly touching his scar. He ought to know, if anyone living did, the ability of a loving sacrifice to call up protective energy.
Draco nodded again, until Harry was worried he’d hurt his neck. Then he touched the missing skin where his ribs were.
“They pulled out your ribs because-“ Harry said, leaning forwards.
It took him a moment of struggle, but Draco flipped the book open and hunted through its pages. Harry remained patient as pages flipped, glancing back into the rooms they’d traversed now and then; he’d thought he heard the scuffle of a footstep.
Draco opened his mouth in a soundless exclamation of triumph at last, and held the book out to Harry, tapping the top of a page. Harry squinted at it and hoped like hell he’d actually understand.
The ethics of human sacrifice are inextricably tangled up with certain powerful symbols, not because these symbols are the only ones that work to channel magic but because the human mind believes they are the only ones that work, thus giving them the an enhanced power. The altar is one such symbol, both sacred and unassuming, but absolutely necessary, most think, to have a place on which to lay the sacrifice. In certain Muggle religions, an altar of stone was commonly used. Wizarding beliefs, based on magic less wayward, early gravitated towards an altar of bone instead.
Harry swallowed and glanced up at Draco. “Your ribs are the altar for-your memories, another kind of sacrifice. And I suppose they thought removing the ribs but still keeping you alive would be easier than removing the bones of your limbs or your spine,” he muttered.
Draco nodded again, and clapped his palms imperiously for the book. Harry held it out, wincing inside as he watched Draco balance it on one knee and search through the pages. What would happen if the heavy tome should slip and collide with his chest? How badly would it hurt him, with no ribs to meet it? Harry knew how necessary the ribs were to protect the heart and the vital inner organs.
A troubling thought made him try to remember whether the Unspeakables had removed the ribs from the man Draco had tortured to death. Harry shivered and shoved the image away. He didn’t want to think about it, and until the moment came when he must, he shouldn’t have to.
Another page was offered up to him, this time with Draco selecting a paragraph near the middle.
Don’t think of “offered,” Harry commanded himself, and read.
The human sacrifice that most people think of is the giving up of the life, often by cutting the throat or pulling the heart from the body or decapitation. However, such sacrifices are most useful when the person making them desires a single powerful effect. For lingering magic, pieces cut from the larger body are just as useful, though their power individually is not as strong. Such pieces must matter to the victim and be important in his life (the sacrifice of the appendix is not generally recommended). Common choices are fingers, vital organs such as the liver, some of the intestines, an eye, a limb, or an ear. Careful preservation is necessary in order to retain their virtue. They are most useful in binding the victim to the will and project of the wizard directing the sacrifice.
“So the fingers tie you to the maze,” Harry said, when he thought he could get through a sentence without spitting up bile. “Just the way that the-the man you sacrificed was tied through his vital organs.”
Didn’t work, Draco signaled laconically on the sphere.
“Because they were vital organs?” Headshake. “Because he wasn’t willing,” Harry said, and received a nod this time. He frowned at the book. “This seems clearer and less arcane than I was expecting. You’d think the Unspeakables would have noticed before now how important the willingness was to the success of their final project.”
Draco rolled his eyes, expressing, Harry knew, his opinion that the Unspeakables would not notice reality if it danced back and forth in front of them wearing red silk and spangles. Harry smiled and gave the book back when Draco motioned for it, studying him absently as he turned clumps of pages towards the end. He moved his tongue in soundless obscenities now and then when the pages slipped from the clumsy non-grasp of his aborted fingers, but he kept trying.
Healed, with a chance to sleep as long as he likes and get some proper food in him, he’ll be rather good-looking.
Harry chased the thought into the furthest, darkest corner of his mind and shut the door on it. It was wrong to be thinking such things of a man who had been broken down and beaten and hurt so badly. He would have felt offended, wouldn’t he, if someone had noticed his looks when Hagrid was carrying him into Hogwarts after Voldemort had “killed” him?
Well, no. Not as long as the person looking at me was a girl.
And that just made him decide, all over again, that he was confused and this gay thing was more trouble than it was worth. He held his tongue to avoid offering Draco, who was still turning, help, and waited until he held out a page towards the very end.
Harry squinted through his glasses, still smudged from Draco’s steam-writing, and read:
The sacrifice of memories is as time-honored a tradition as the sacrifice of the body, though not as common. The most usual methods of gathering memories are mirrors and Pensieves. The memories must be significant to the purpose of the sacrifice and important to the victim. As with all sacrifices, willingly given memories will be much more potent than those snatched in the midst of pain.
“At least that explains why all the memories we’ve encountered so far have something to do with the maze,” Harry said, pushing his glasses up his nose and holding the book out to Draco. He shook his head, indicating he was done with it, so Harry tucked it back into the satchel. “I wondered if that was part of the Unspeakables’ trap-if those were false memories, for example.”
Draco gave him a tolerant look and selected Pensieves and truth from the communication sphere.
Harry nodded. Pensieves did usually tell the truth, and he’d had some experience with recognizing when memories had been altered.
“So, just one more thing I don’t understand,” Harry said. Draco raised an eyebrow, and Harry laughed and resisted the temptation to shove him. “All right, many things, but just one more thing important to the formation of the maze. Well, two.” Draco let his head drop back on the wall behind him in a parody of abject despair. “Where are the Unspeakables? And where did the immortal creatures come from? The shadow-wolf and the bone-eating spiders?”
Unspeakables trapped in maze, Draco told him via the communication sphere, and jerked his head back towards the room with Josephine’s portraits. Many ways.
Harry nodded slowly. He could see that. Some might be trapped in their own forms, or something vaguely like them, as Josephine had been. Some might have been eaten by the creatures trapped in it with them, or destroyed in the other traps that Harry and Draco had managed to avoid.
“What about Richard?”
Draco shook his head and pursed his mouth. No memories, his fingers said, moving so slowly over the communication sphere that the first word hung endlessly in Harry’s head.
“And Pearl?” Harry thought he had some things to say to the woman who had persuaded, or tried to persuade, Draco that the torture the Unspeakables put others through was for a higher purpose.
Another headshake, but this time Draco looked aside. Harry narrowed his eyes, nearly spoke, and then held his peace. He trusted Draco now, he reminded himself. And if Draco wanted to remain silent on Pearl’s fate for some reason, Harry trusted that it would not be a reason damaging to their quest.
“What about the creatures?” he continued.
Experiments. Immortality of mind. Immortality of body.
Harry sighed and nodded. The Unspeakables had tried to find all kinds of shortcuts around the very simple and straightforward requirements of the maze. It only made sense that they had studied what immortal creatures they could find and capture, and then tried to adapt the knowledge taken from them. Of course, if the best they could derive from their study was the Malfoys, their conclusions and not just their methods were flawed.
Draco started shifting as if he would rise from the floor. Harry touched his arm to detain him. Draco stilled and looked at his hand with another of those piercing gazes, this one so intent that Harry decided his touch must be unwelcome and pulled away, his hand curling into an uneasy fist at his side.
“The Unspeakables were recruiting heavily just before the Department became unreachable to the rest of the Ministry,” he said. “That was the reason Ron and Hermione came here in the first place. Do you have any idea what that was all about? Why would the Unspeakables want more recruits here before they tried to make the maze?”
Draco’s face grew almost kind. One of the facets of the globe he had just touched came to life again as he stroked it.
Experiments.
“Do you know that? Or are you just drawing conclusions from the knowledge of the Unspeakables that you have so far?” Harry hadn’t realized his own voice could sound so thin and desperate.
Draco gave a helpless shrug, and then reached out to rest his incomplete left hand in Harry’s. Harry gripped the hand and choked, bowing his head. He blinked furiously, and tried not to see Ron and Hermione suffering the same tortures that Draco and the burning woman and the man in the robe of the Azkaban prisoner had, and failed.
Then he reminded himself he was strong, he was, he had managed to survive and help Draco survive, and he should not be taking comfort and strength from a man who needed them both more than he did. Harry lifted his head, blinked bravely, and said, “Thank you for telling me.” He touched Draco’s throat this time, a light, glancing brush, the tangible equivalent of a glimpse, simply to steady himself before he pulled away. “And your voice?”
Draco’s eyes went hooded and dark. He shook his head once more. Harry controlled the impulse to press a kiss to his cheek in reassurance-Draco would start thinking he was gay next-and rose to his feet, turning to face the maze of corridors. “You’ll rest when we reach the next Pensieve room,” he said, not intending to brook any argument.
A weary blink answered him, and Draco braced his elbow against the wall he leaned on and scrambled up, too. Harry slung a rough arm around his shoulder, and they went down the corridor together, Draco pausing at each intersection but choosing the next path with a minimum of hesitance.
*
It took Harry some time to realize that Draco’s pause at one junction had gone on too long to be indecisiveness. He looked up, and licked his lips when he saw the lost, helpless expression on Draco’s face.
“Do you need to rest?” he asked. “Do you think you’d remember better with some sleep behind you?”
Draco turned to face him. His eyes were shut as if squinting against strong sun. He leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder and made no motion, his hands limp at his sides, which Harry knew was the same as someone else steadfastly shutting his mouth and refusing to speak.
So, we’ve lost our way. Harry stroked the tangle of Draco’s wild, soft hair and tried to think. Both pathways in front of them looked identical to his eyes, in everything from the width of their openings to the texture of their stone, but one twisted sharply to the right and one sharply to the left. Straight on, there was only a blank wall that Harry would hate to try and cut his way through. For all he knew, carving up one of the walls would do something detrimental to the stability of the maze.
Then he relaxed with a little chuckle. They were, after all, seeking the next Pensieve room, and there were certain characteristics that all the Pensieve rooms had in common. He drew his wand and flicked it, conjuring into being a tiny, extremely fast mote of blue light. Draco watched curiously as Harry leaned in and breathed on the mote. It stopped jumping and quivered in front of him, waiting for instructions.
“Quaero lucem albissima,” he told the mote. I seek the white light. He had to struggle for a moment to come up with the words, but a few common Latin words had been part of his training, and both “light” and the names of colors were considered important for Aurors to know. The blue spot bobbed in front of him and then shot away down the left-hand turning. Harry smiled as the trail it cast behind it shone like a brilliant thread.
He turned and offered his hand to Draco, with an exaggerated bow that made the other man stare at him in wonder. “Shall we?”
Draco rolled his eyes, but let Harry lead him. Harry followed his mote with confidence. The Seeking Charm would find the most direct route passable to humans on its way to its goal. There might still be traps, of course, and Harry kept his wand busy seeking them out as he and Draco walked. But at least he knew that they wouldn’t be required to travel through walls or the ceiling to reach the next Pensieve room.
Past more intersections and through hairpin turns that made Harry’s neck prickle with danger-sense, over a slender bridge that spanned a gaping chasm and under low ceilings, the mote led them. Harry kept a sharp eye on the trail; if it started to dim, then he would have to cast the Seeking Charm again. But his mind must have exaggerated the distance in the darkness, because the blue light still pulsed in front of them, as faithful as the North Star.
They came to another broad intersection, twin to the one where Draco had lost his way. Once again, the blue mote had taken the left-hand turning. Harry did give a cursory glance down the right-hand one as they went by, just in case an Unspeakable was standing there with his wand poised.
And then he stopped, so hard that Draco staggered as he walked into the crook of Harry’s raised elbow.
There was something small sitting on the floor a few feet inside the right-hand turning’s entrance. Harry could make out its existence, and the wavering shadow it cast, thanks to their light globe, but he couldn’t tell what it was. He swallowed several times and cast the spell that would detect magical creatures.
Nothing. But when he cast the spell to detect Dark magic, the object flared with a sunburst and set up a rattling and buzzing in his teeth.
“No choice,” he said to Draco, who gazed at him reluctantly. “We have to investigate it. It could be a clue to the Unspeakables’ disappearance, or maybe something they left behind. If it’s going to hurt us, I’d rather not leave it at our backs to do so.” He thought of the scuffing footstep he’d been sure he’d heard earlier. Could there be other ways through the maze? Draco knew the way to the center. That didn’t mean there weren’t other pathways, with other destinations.
Draco gave him the pointed look that said he was doing this under protest, and fully reserved the right to tell Harry it was a bad idea later, then followed him towards the object.
Harry halted again on the way there, because he had made out some of its color now. His breathing stopped, too. Draco pulled at his arm to no avail, partially because Harry couldn’t have responded if he wanted to and partially because he was running in the next second, then dropping to his knees beside the object, picking it up in his hands.
And yes, that might have been dangerous. But nothing in the world could have stopped him from doing it.
Red-haired, neck cut as smoothly clean and rounded as Draco’s nubs of fingers, it was Ron’s severed head.
Chapter 14.