Dementor Kiss

Chapter 19 – Curse

It smelled of potions, herbs, disinfectant...

"A hospital."

He had been wounded enough times not to recognize the characteristic smells now.

"Harry, are you awake?" Hermione's voice.

The first thing that came to Harrys mind was that Ron and her must have gotten help in time, since he was still alive. He smiled faintly. Would Draco be in the hospital, or would he have been left in any of the cells at the Aurors headquarters? He was still a prisoner after all.

But not for long.

The auror was determined to reopen the Malfoy case. He had been there when Draco had been unable to kill Dumbledore, and if the blonde had not been able to commit murder, how bad could the crimes in his record be? Surely not so terrible that he would have to stay in Azkaban any longer. He had been imprisoned for seven years already, God!

And if Harry had to use his stupid reputation to pull some strings... he would.

Draco was not going back to that hell again.

Green, determined, eyes, opened.

Immediately he recognized the white walls of the clean, quiet, Auror medical rooms. Beside the bed and waiting for him to wake up, Hermione and Ron were seated on identical sterile chairs.

As they realized he was awake, Mione hugged him, just like every other time he woke up in medical. He smiled against his friend's bushy hair.

"I'm fine Hermione, but if you keep squeezing me so I´m going to lose my breath." He laughed when Mione quickly pulled away to give him some room.

"Hey, I 'm glad to see you're okay. But let me call the nurse just in case" Ron offered with his usual grin.

"No, no. It´s not necessary Ron, really, I just feel bruised, nothing else." It was great to be out of Azkaban, and it reflected in his mood.

Sunlight streamed through the window, brightening the room with light and warmth, something he had missed dearly. Some birds could be heard singing outside, along with the noise of people walking down the street. Harry had never realized how much alive the world really was, until he had to leave it behind for a month.

It felt peaceful…

"Where´s Draco?" He asked and looked around expecting to see the white dementor resting at one of the other beds. Harry had suddenly remembered that, even if he himself had been the mainly wounded one, Draco had not been in good shape either. Good thing they were now safe.

He could not wait to take Draco outside. The young blonde would love to be able to enjoy the sun again, maybe even some quidditch? Although it would have to be somewhere private ... Harry didn´t think that a dementor would be welcomed at a quidditch field.

A dementor…

He had seen Draco swallow the soul, the moment he let go of humanity, but he could not stop loving him, even when Draco was no longer human. Harry had been in love with the white dementor way before knowing he was a man, and his feelings where not so weak as to change now. But surely there must be a cure. He was sure of it, and if not ... well they'd have to figure out some way to communicate, since Harry was not going to give him up, and unfortunately he did not understand the dementors language.

He looked at his friends expectantly, when a few seconds had passed, and they hadn´t yet answered his question. Ron and Hermione were looking at each other, like deciding which of the two should give the news. Harry frowned, he knew those silent communications, always meant bad news.

"Harry ... Draco 's not here." Hermione began. Her almost pleading look, more than enough for the dark haired auror to think the worst.

He closed his eyes and took a deep breath, steading himself, before gazing at her again.

"Is he dead?" his voice felt icy and numb. This was the method he used to guard his feelings, when a case was particularly bloody. Handling the situation in a more professional way, made it easier for him to talk about the horrors he had seen. Inside, his heart felt about to stop.

"No, he isn´t" Hermione rushed to reassure him. Harry didn´t dare suck in a breath of relief; he knew something almost as horrible must have happened for Mione to put that drained face. Guilt and worry could be read in the way she looked away, the way her fingers played with the hem of her coat ... "Draco is not here ... because he´s still in Azkaban."

Harry gritted his teeth. What were they thinking to have Draco abandoned in that hell? Did they not know the kind of monster the Dementor Lord was?

But before he opened his mouth Ron intervened.

"It was the only thing we could do. Malfoy is no longer human, is a dementor, and dementors cannot get out of Azkaban. Kingsley had enough getting the Dementor Lord," Ron shuddered just thinking about the creature, "to let you go. He wanted to kill you!" The condescending tone Ron spoke about Draco... as if he really cared very little what the young prisoner had been abandoned... infuriated Harry.

"And that's supposed to make leaving Draco there good?!" He sat up. Could not but throw his friend a look that said, plainly, how much his words disappointed him.

"Merlin, it´s Malfoy we are speaking about!" The redhead rolled his eyes. "Not some unjustly imprisoned innocent!"

"Well I don´t see the difference! He has already paid more than enough for letting the Death Eaters into Hogwarts! And to my knowledge he has not committed any other crime!" Both men looked furious. It looked like sparks were about to erupt between them any second now.

"Enough!" Hermione stood from the chair to put herself between them. It took her a few seconds of glaring, but finally they let the pull drop.

With one last scowl, both returned to their seats; Harry to the bed and Ron to his chair. At last, Hermione let her worry show as she turned to her best friend.

"Harry, I know you believe that Draco is the only one for you." She began softly, reassuringly. "But you have to realize that it's over. Draco is not even human anymore." Mione laid her hand on Harrys shoulder trying to calm him, even though he tried to resist the gesture. Harry didn´t want to hear it, but Mione didn´t let herself be put aside. Her friend had to hear what she had to say, and understand the truth of it. "The Dementor 's Curse has no cure. The case we were sent about is solved. It's over." She tried to make him see, against the pleading look on his face. "You did everything you could, you can´t do anything else. I know it sounds cruel... but you have to let it go. Let Draco go." She finished as delicately as she could.

Harry looked away from his two friends.

"Harry…" They could not see his face.

"Leave me alone." Harry said. His voice had an empty dye that concerned them both. Ron opened his mouth to ask... but Mione put a hand on his arm urging him to shut up.

"Okay ... we will be back in a hour. Maybe them you will feel better." She whispered to her friend.

Ron and Hermione left the room. Harry needed space, or so she told Ron when he asked her.

But what Harry really wanted was to forget this entire nightmare.

oOo

It had been a month, a month without Draco.

The room was a chaos of books stacked on the table, the chairs, the floor ... most of the books were so old that, if not for the spells that bound them together, they would have fallen into rotten waste powder many years ago.

Papers smudged with notes, written and rewritten, outlined, circled and stuck to the walls. Tests, spells... were scattered all over the surface of the desk. Several leaves had fallen from it and landed on the floor.

In the chair, before it all, a man sat lost in thought, holding a feather between ink-stained fingers.

Harry.

His wrinkled and somewhat dirty clothes, much messier than usual filthy hair, the dark circles that outlined his eyes... all this spoke of the long nights without sleep and the waking hours devoted to the search of something that could help him save Draco.

When Kingsley had refused to help, even forbidding him entry to Azkaban, saying it was for his own good… that it was too dangerous. Harry had only remembered the pain filled face of Draco, when he had abandoned him on the cell as the blonde confessed his love… and he could not take Kingsleys words and let it rest, the ache of his heart too great to ignore, even if he had wanted to do so.

He had tried discussing the pact of the Dementors with the minister, but Kingsley had made the impossibility of making any exception for the fragile blond, hard and very clear. That Draco was a dementor and no longer the ministry's responsibility. That if Harry tried to enter Azkaban again the barriers would prevent it.

Kingsley had cancelled his prison pass, according to him, for his own good. Harrys best chance was to forget Draco.

The auror had been furious, but he had not given up, and put in body and soul to the search of a cure for the curse.

He had read all what he had been able to find on it. Both in the Hogwarts library, thanks to Macgonnagal, and in all the books he had managed to buy, as well as in the old diary of the guard from where Tomas had taken the curse.

But there was no sign of a cure. Very little information had survived the initial sweep mad by the ancient wizards, and what was left was incomplete. And anyway, all traces of information seemed to agree that there was no cure.

The changes in the body, magic and soul, during the mutation process, were too arduous for it to be reversed.

He took a potion from the crate at his right and he gulped it down. The headache that had been starting to harass him disappeared, but not the worry, not the pain in his heart.

He felt empty, lost and grey.

The afternoon light flooded the room through the large windows, giving everything a golden and warm colour. And yet, it was ironic that, because of one man, he would have felt much more alive in the shady atmosphere of Azkaban, than here.

Every day Harry got up with determination to find the cure. But it was getting increasingly difficult to maintain hope. A month was too long a time. So much so for Draco to be safe… or even healthy. The Dementor Lord... he did not even want to think about what this monster could have done to the fragile blond.

He took the guards worn diary and opened it again.

Phrases like no cure, eternal Curse , or a punishment reserved only for the worst criminals, seemed to want to jump off the pages laughing at him.

"It's been a month, and I'm no closer to a solution now than I was at the start."

A wave of hopelessness wanted to swallow him but he managed to resist.

Hermione had come almost daily to aid in the research, when she was not working on her own, and tried almost daily too, to make Harry pay attention to anything else besides Draco and the curse, without success.

Even he could not fully understand his love for Malfoy. But it was love, right? He couldn´t stop thinking about him every hour of every day and night.

The auror missed the white dementor desperately. Without Draco by his side life was missing something vital. Without his shy voice, delicate figure, tenderness, love and funny irony... Harry felt devoid of life.

The shy blonde had entered his life without being called, and suddenly Harrys whole world had been completely misplaced. Draco had given it a whole new meaning, had made Harry feel things he never thought he would come to feel again. Harry could die to save anyone, but Draco made Harry want to live for someone. He made the prospect of dying for an innocent not worth it, not if it meant being separated from him; an idea that Harry, submerged in the hero role everyone expected from him, had never even entertained until now.

No one had ever made him appreciate life enough to hold on to it, rather than risk it for helping another. Draco crafted his will to live into something stronger than it had ever been, just the idea of breathing beside him made Harry happy.

And now that he had lost him... it seemed that nothing had meaning any longer.

Harry leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes tightly, preventing the escape of the tears that wanted to spill across his cheeks.

"Mourning is not going to solve anything." He straightened and stared at the paper. "There has to be some way to get him back. Has to be!" Harry began to review the text again, he had already read it many times over the weeks. He could recite it from memory, and had studied it from every possible angle, could not have missed anything…

It had no weaknesses, there was nothing that he had neglected to review in it, the curse was unshakable.

The Curse of the dementor was perfect.

The sound of the barriers being opened alerted him to the arrival of Hermione. He did not want to see anyone, but maybe she 'd learned something new. Although Harry knew it was unlikely, he came down the stairs to the living room where his friend was waiting.

Mione tried to smile as he entered, but failed miserably.

"Good morning Harry." She said dejected at the end. In her hands she held the thick notebook where she had been taking notes about the curse.

"Good morning Hermione... I guess" Harry dropped himself in one of the overstuffed chairs, telling his friend to do the same. "Would you like something to eat? I have not eaten yet."

Mione nodded. "I could use some tea."

Harry asked Kreacher, who brought them sandwiches and a teapot, before turning to her again. "Did you learn anything new?"

Hermione shook her head sadly. "We've been looking for a month and we are no closer to a solution than we were at first. Even the Gryffindor diary said the curse has no cure" She looked pleadingly at Harry. "You have not left the house, not spoke with anyone but me or Kreacher since returning home. You dwell on this all the time. Harry… I know you don´t want to, but please, you have to forget Draco. You cannot be with him, and thinking about it only hurts you. Please Harry… you have to at least try."

The dark haired Auror refused, his expression tortured.

"I can´t. Hermione ... I cannot even explain it. But ..." Again he refused, could not find the words to convey everything he was feeling.

She put her hand on his friends one, offering him support.

"I'm sorry ... if only it had not been completed yet ... maybe the curse could be reversed."

Harry just nodded. If only Draco had not become a dementor...

They did not even belong to the same species now. For Draco and he could to be together, he would have to be...

"A dementor." Harry muttered.

He had thought about it sometimes throughout the month. But Draco had been for so long in Azkaban, had suffered so much… he deserved to get out of there! However it was becoming clear that that was not going to be. And since Harry was not about to give him up...

He knew it was dangerous, knew he would have to fight the Dementor Lord if he wanted Draco safe, and knew that the chances of dying in the transformation process were very high if the curse was not executed to perfection. But he also knew that all this was worth it, because living without Draco was not an option he could even contemplate.

Harry looked up suddenly.

Hermione gave him a puzzled look.

"Harry?"

"Hermione. I need your help, I can´t do this alone." Took her hand and stared at her seriously.

Mione frowned slightly.

"You know I 'll help you if I can. But why would you need my help?" She had a feeling she wasn´t going to like what was going to be said.

"I need you to cast the curse of dementor... on me."

"WHAT? "

oOo

(Draco)

It had been a month.

A month...

He buried his head on the crook of his arms resting on his knees.

The sheets around him were marred by unrest and night activities. His tunic was on the floor near the bed. But he made no effort to take it. What for?

The Dementor Lord liked to have him naked most of the time.

He shivered.

Draco could feel the sticky wetness between his thighs... and inside himself.

He hugged upper body tighter, did not know how much more he would be able to endure.

"At least Harry is safe."

Lady Margaret had told him everything. Harry was not in Azkaban, had been saved by his friends.

And he had not been.

He swallowed. Harry had already made clear at the time that he did not want anything with a pathetic Death Eater who had also been cheating him.

But then why had he tried to rescue Draco in the first place?

He supposed maybe because Draco had sacrificed himself for him. Harry was so noble as to do that.

Sadly he took out from under the pillow a folded piece of worn paper. The note that the Auror had left for him that single morning after their night together.

Carefully, Draco unfolded it and started to re- read it again.

These days the small piece of paper seemed to be the only thing keeping him afloat.

"At least I know you loved me... if only for a few hours."

I love you. The simple words, written with Harrys characteristic disorder, whispered to him under the sad consolation of the dying candles.

"Harry ..." He sobbed.

It hurt so much.

oOo

(Hermione)

"No, absolutely not! Harry, I´m not going to curse you, let alone with that spell. Have you gone mad?"

She got up taking the typical posture of Mrs. Wesley when scolding any of her children; arms akimbo.

Harry rose too.

"Hermione is the only way. You said it yourself, there is no cure. The only way that Draco and I can be together is if both of us are Dementors!" His gaze was unwavering in the intensity that was almost his official mark, every time a suicide mission was launched he had that same look. But he never got that look on par with such deadly seriousness as was happening now. She knew just by looking at Harry, that he had already considered and analysed all angles of the suicide idea, and had found it the only course left.

"No. Harry you may now not see it, but eventually you'll find someone else to love. You just have to be patient…"she tried to reason with him, almost pleading.

"Hermione, I´m twenty-four, and in all my life almost no one has looked at me as I am. I, Harry. Not the guy who survived, the golden boy or a weirdo. I. You and Ron are two of the few who know me, and of those few people left none has ever loved me as a man. Until now. Hermione this is not something that's going to simply fade, I do not know how to explain it, but... every time I 'm with him I feel like something had been wrong until the very instant we came together, and suddenly, the world is better, clearer; beautiful. I can´t explain it... but I feel we're meant to be together. I know it sounds cliché! I know it sounds stupidly romantic! But Hermione ..." He put a hand to his chest, the gesture almost of pain, pleading eyes, begging her to understand. "That's what I feel. That's the truth."

Mione sighed. She knew she would regret this.

"... I'll help you."

To be continued

Hi ^^ I´m at last back from my exams and work, with enought time to try to finish this fic. I hope I´m going to be able to do so during the summer. My idea is to write a chapter per week, we will see if I´m able to. ;) I will love to read about your opinions of my work, I can´t improve otherwise... and well I feel happy everytime I have a new review ^ w ^
See you soon.