Glad that everyone liked the last chapter so much! I'd been waiting to unleash some of those revelations for a while.
And in this one, we finally find out what has been up with Draco. And, um, well, some more revelations. Because I never said that Harry didn't have nasty secrets too.
Chapter Eleven: The Lure of PowerDraco sighed and closed the book he held in his lap, rubbing at his eyes. They had begun to blur, and not even adjusting the color of the Lumos Charm would hold off the inevitable watering that would follow.
He could hear his mother's voice if he concentrated. Never read in the dark for more than an hour, dear. It will make you squint the next morning, and Malfoys are not supposed to squint.
But she was the one who had sent him the books, the one who had told him—via notes placed in the books at strategic spots—what was going on, the one who had shown him why he had to draw away from Harry for a time. Draco wondered gloomily why she had sent such fascinating books if she didn't expect him to be up until all hours of the morning reading them.
He put the book on the table next to his bed, and took a moment to stare through the opened curtains at Harry's bed. The curtains there were tightly drawn, as always. He could hear the soft breathing that marked Harry's sleep. He never snored. He sat up with a scream more often than a snore, or he would suddenly cease breathing altogether, and Draco knew he was lying still, terrified or tense, probably waiting for the appearance of enemies.
There had been more than once in the past month that Draco was tempted to go to him and soothe his nightmares, even if it was with something as simple as a handclasp.
But then he would have to explain why he had stayed away so long.
And Draco didn't yet know a way to tell Harry the truth without destroying him.
He put his hands behind his head, let out a long breath, and lay staring at the ceiling.
The first book had simply been fascinating—mostly explanations of the compulsion power that ran in several pureblood family lines, including the Black one, and explanations of what it could and could not do. Draco had wondered why his mother wanted him to have it. Did she just want to insure that any compulsion power he used was trained? That made sense, but Draco really didn't think he had the gift. It usually manifested by the time a wizard was twelve, the book proclaimed, and Draco's thirteenth birthday had been the fifth of June.
He remembered it as a miserable day, mostly, given that Harry had been dozing in the hospital wing at the time, recovering from the damage to his mind, and he'd only wanted to be at his side.
Then he found the first note, tucked in between two pages of a philosophical argument about whether using the compulsion gift was ever moral. He unfolded it and recognized his mother's handwriting at once.
Draco, my darling—
I am hopeful that by now you will have figured out why I sent you these books. The compulsion gift is not irresistible, but it is subtle, and often changes the course of a wizard's mind without his realizing it.
Draco frowned when he was done reading it. Not irresistible. Fine, then. But what did she expect him to do with this information?
He flipped through the rest of the book, and found no more notes. He put that one down and picked up another with a rearing silver serpent on the front. Draco spent a few minutes staring at that. He knew he'd seen the symbol before, probably on a few artifacts around the Manor, but he couldn't remember what it indicated.
He opened it, and a folded piece of parchment fell out from between the cover and the first page. Draco picked it gingerly up and unfolded it, shaking dust off it. This book must have been packed away for a long time, wherever Mother had managed to find it.
Draco, my dearest—
There are other forms of compulsion than the compulsion gift. Sometimes, a wizard may not even realize that he is compelling others to follow his will, but he may do so unconsciously.
Once again, it was unsigned, but once again, Draco knew her handwriting. Wondering what this was all about, he settled back with the silver serpent book to read.
He quickly figured out that it was a history of the Guile family, whom he had indeed heard of. They'd managed to survive for centuries, playing Dark Lords against one another, never quite coming into the service of the Light Lords but making themselves appear innocent, until the last of them had died in the Dark Lord Grindelwald's armies.
But this was not a usual history. There were no musty family trees, no lists of great things that family members had done that were now forgotten, no lectures on what magical gifts might have been linked to their blood. This was a treatise on how the Guile family had survived the powerful wizards, what signs they had noticed that they were being compelled or swayed against their wills and how they had dealt with them.
Draco read the first few pages, and came upon the sentence Yet it was hard for Serpentina Guile to figure out what had happened to her at first, though she was a great witch. She finally noticed that whenever she was around the wizard Falcon and grew angry, he had only to grow angry in return to calm her. At once her feelings would be soothed, washed away in the tide of magic that rose with his rage, and she would obey whatever he asked of her.
Change the names, and it was a perfect description of what always happened lately when Draco grew angry at Harry.
Draco read hastily through the rest of the Guile book, and the other books that his mother had given him—a history of the Black family in particular, a book of laws that the Ministry had at one time enacted against those with the compulsion gifts, and a biography of the lives and magic of the Light and Dark Lords. It only took him three days, and by the end of those three days he had not only the books but a large array of parchment notes from his mother, folded and placed into the books at various key points, to enable him to put the puzzle together.
Draco took a deep breath that Wednesday night in September, and picked up his mother's last and lengthiest note, found very near the end of the book on the Light and Dark Lords.
Draco, my beloved son—
I am sorry to have to hurt you like this. However, when Harry was at the Manor with you, I recognized the signs. You were gentler and sweeter than I had ever seen you be, even as a baby. You cared for him as if he were your world. Such attachment is not natural, is too fierce, in a child your age. And what had he done to cause you to grow such an attachment? I know that he saved your life in first year, but even before that, you still spoke of him in your letters, chattered as if you were obsessed with him. He became more than a figure of fun. He became your best friend.
I do not think it is all his magic, to be perfectly honest. I think you genuinely do see something in him that would have caused you to become friends even without that. But you could sense his power earlier than most of the others could, even when it was chained and held down by his webs. Malfoys have always been more magically sensitive. I fear that this caused his power to have a hold on your mind that it would not if you were one of your duller peers.
My darling, my dearest, I will not say that you should break your friendship with him. I will not say that merely because some of this is the effect of his magic, all of it must be. I will say that I want to see you free to make your own choice, not dragged along by Harry's magic, however subtly or unconsciously that may have happened. If you need this, if you decide that you need this, you must make the decision independent of the effect he has on you. The only way to do that is to withdraw from him for a while, and see if you can raise barriers against his power. You have the inheritance of the Black compulsion gift, and compellers themselves, as you will know from your reading, are immune to the effects of another's compulsion, and take less damage even from other spells that affect the mind, such as the Fugitivus Animus that Harry performed. Perhaps you can use that to your advantage, to help you resurrect your free will.
I have already said I would move mountains to help you, my son. I will. Should you decide that Harry is, after all, a true friend and not merely an incipient Lord who managed to draw you into orbit with his power, then the world will shudder and fall before I see you parted, or see either of you harmed again. Only tell me.
I will see that you have your freedom. Without freedom, nothing matters.
With all my love,
Narcissa Black Malfoy.
Draco had closed his eyes. He was upset already, and he'd only been distant from Harry for three days.
But he could feel other effects as well. He felt more clear-headed, the cool distance that had always been his gift before he came to Hogwarts returning to him. He felt more like his father's son than he had in years. He felt as if he could make sarcastic comments to Connor Potter without looking guiltily at Harry first to see if he would approve of them.
But he had to keep taking out his bottle anyway and staring at it, to see that despite the faint red traces of irritation that crept into the colors from time to time, the overwhelming colors were still purple—Harry's protectiveness of him—and green—Harry's fondness for him.
Draco ground his hands into his eyes. He didn't want to do this. He didn't.
But he had to know how much of his friendship with Harry was just magic. He could see the way that that magic was beginning to attract other people too, now, see the way heads turned when Harry entered a room (Harry was utterly oblivious, of course). He could see the same thing with Dumbledore. What Draco had accepted as evidence of a presence or aura the Headmaster projected was actually his magic. Wizards—pureblood wizards, at least, he corrected himself with a sneer—turned to meet it like flowers to the sun, or planets spinning around a star. Draco was starting to think from the book about the Light and Dark Lords that that was the main reason so many people grumbled about Dumbledore but didn't actually do anything to oppose him. The sheer strength of his magic lured them and soothed them and told them it would be impossible before they tried to accomplish anything.
How much of me is really Draco, and how much is Draco-because-of-Harry?
Draco decided he would have to find out.
"What's your favorite color, Harry?"
Harry blinked and turned to look at him. Draco kept his face as emotionless as possible, even though he wanted to make a joke that would ease the bewilderment in Harry's expression. This was a test that one of the books had suggested, and he wanted to see if he could pass it.
Though I am not sure what would count as passing or as failing, in this instance, he thought, and didn't move.
"Green," Harry said at last, still blinking.
Green, a voice whispered in Draco's mind an instant after that.
Draco swallowed and glanced away from Harry, picking up his pumpkin pasty. That was a bad sign, that voice in his head. Harry's magic was not only around him but within him, within the webs of his mind, or whatever he had in place of webs. It was a way that Lords could control their followers, making sure those servants knew them so well that they would do what they wanted before the Lords even commanded it.
Draco decided he would make a few more tests, and then he would have to withdraw from Harry almost completely.
It hurt not to be included in whatever had happened between Harry and the Headmaster, hurt that Millicent was the one who had escorted him to the hospital wing, hurt to see Harry talking to Millicent and Pansy as if they had always been his friends. Draco wondered sometimes whether it was worth the pain. Perhaps he should just tell Harry the truth now and let him make up his own mind about the strength of his magic.
But then he remembered that that was a sign that he was still very firmly under Harry's control. He turned back to the book on the Guile family and read until he came to a passage marked in a very firm hand. Someone had owned this book before the Malfoy family, he thought, or at least before his parents. This was not either of his parents' handwriting.
The passage said, And of course the emotional pain that Frederick Guile felt when he could not go at once to Grindelwald's side was a sign of how deeply the Dark Lord's magic had crept into his being. Why should he have felt such emotional pain, with him a pureblood and the Dark Lord no friend or child or sibling of his? But he did, and he could not stop shivering and longing to be a part of his life until he had Apparated to become a part of his battle. Distracted by what he was feeling, as no good pureblooded wizard should be, Frederick Guile lost his life in that battle.
The note in the margin said, Merlin take my magic if I am ever such a bloody fool.
This time, Draco noted the small letters near the end of that passage. A.M. Abraxas Malfoy, then, his grandfather, Lucius's father.
He wouldn't be proud, would he, to see a grandson of his going to a new Lord's side the moment he felt a slight disconnection from him? No, he wouldn't. Draco turned on his side and punched his pillow, and pretended it didn't tear at him when Harry came up and got into his bed without a word. He had to fight his way free. It had half-destroyed Harry to be tangled, bound up in someone else's magic. Draco would not do the same thing. If he had to leave Harry behind—
Panic clawed at his skin, made it break out in sweat and gooseflesh, and his heart raced. Draco drew the bottle from his pocket and stared at the green glow, threaded with red, until he was calm again. Then he deliberately finished the thought.
If he had to leave Harry behind, then he would. He knew it was for the best, the only way he could have a completely free will. And he knew it was what Harry would want, in that case. Harry would be horrified to think of someone else being a slave to his power.
Draco closed his eyes abruptly, feeling as if a hot brick had just dropped into the middle of his chest.
Even if I decide for him and renew our friendship, how am I ever going to tell him? It would kill him, to know that he had a part in altering someone else's mind and personality. How am I ever going to get him to see that he didn't mean to?
"Harry. We want to—"
"Talk to you."
Draco looked up intently around the corner of the book he was only pretending to read; by now, he had memorized most of the passages about the history of the Guile family. He had wondered when the Weasley twins, who could unquestionably feel Harry's power but preferred to just hover around him and follow him everywhere, would approach Harry. It seemed that that time was now, on an evening in the library very near the end of September.
Draco could have told them it wasn't a good time. Harry had been looking deeply stressed the last few days, ever since Professor McGonagall inexplicably started meeting with him and Professor Snape had taken to ignoring him. Harry seemed to know why. Draco had heard him come into their bedroom one night, radiating so much anger and so much power that the stones strained in the walls, and fall on his back on his own bed, muttering something about "Dumbledore." But he had not confessed it to Draco, or to anyone else that Draco knew of. Millicent tried to talk to him about it, and got a snarl that had her backing down very fast.
There was a small and selfish part of Draco that had cheered at that.
But the snarl had never quite gone anyway. Harry spent more time than ever studying these days, and kept his interactions with other people—except his brother—on the level of chill courtesy. His magic spent a lot of time expanding out from his body in rippling waves, and drawing more attention than ever. Draco had caught some of the Gryffindors staring hard at him the other day, including Granger, who seemed to have taken to sneezing whenever Harry was around. Harry, of course, didn't notice.
He was looking at the twins now with a distinctly unfriendly expression, but that didn't daunt them. Draco had long since come to the conclusion that a rampaging dragon would not daunt the Weasley twins. They would probably throw Dungbombs at it, just to make it even angrier, before taking it down with some brilliant and utterly unfair trick. Draco scowled. It was unfair for Weasleys to have that much sheer magical skill.
"We want to know what—" one of them began.
"You're planning to do with your power," the other one finished, and then they leaned forward and gave Harry identical piercing gazes.
Harry sighed and shook his head. "I don't know. Everyone keeps asking me that, and I just don't know." He rubbed a hand over the center of his forehead. Draco had seen him washing blood off his scar the other day, and had had to work very hard to keep himself from asking what was wrong. "But it probably wouldn't be to play jokes and pranks, so you can go away." He picked up the book he was looking at again. Draco frowned. What would Harry want with a book on the history of the First War with the Dark Lord? He had thought Harry knew all that already.
"There are other things to do with power like that than just play jokes and pranks, mate," said one of the twins, taking a chair across from Harry. Draco restrained the impulse to simply rush up and yank them away from him. His magic's affected me even more strongly than I thought, he decided fiercely, and flipped through his book looking for some evidence of what it meant when someone else wanted to rush up and drag identical twins away from a powerful wizard.
"Yeah," said the other twin, who also took a chair. "Play tricks, for example."
Harry eyed them with a faint smile. It made Draco start when he realized that that was the first time Harry had smiled in days. And he ignored the sheer boiling jealousy that immediately rushed up from his stomach, over the fact that it was the twins who had made Harry smile. He didn't care who made Harry smile. He was strong. He was independent. He was staying away from Harry so that he could rebuild his free will.
"I don't want to do that, either," said Harry. "But I appreciate your concern. Really, I'm not going to do anything with it. Not just yet. Ron suggested I put up signs, and I'm not going to do that. Just sit here with it for a while." He turned back to his book. Draco knew that was a way of suggesting he was done with the conversation. He scowled at himself and flipped through the Guile book again, wondering how they had resisted Lords whose slightest gesture they could read.
The twins exchanged glances for a moment, communicating with silent flickers of their eyes. Then they shrugged and stood. "Just let us know when you do decide to do something," said one of them.
"Yes," said the other, his eyes lighting up again. "We could help you chain the Headmaster up, maybe. It's obvious that you don't like him."
Harry looked up, the skin around his eyes tightening. Draco knew that meant he was anxious. Damn it, why can I still read him so well?
"I don't want to chain anyone," said Harry, his voice quiet but passionate. "Not at all."
The twins grinned and bowed. "Well, not gaolers, then," said the one on the left. "What about court jesters? Can we be Your Lordship's jesters?"
"Never call me that."
Draco would not have been surprised if every pureblood in the school felt the force of that command. It stabbed through his head like an iron sword, driven by the force of Harry's outrage. The twins staggered, and several books on the library shelves flew up and hovered in the air like silent sentries, as though they were eagles prepared to stoop on Harry's enemies.
Draco let out a long, slow breath, trying to recover from rejoicing at the sheer level of magic in the air, and then opened his mouth. This was a perfect test. The Guile book gave several examples of this. Once someone who was a Lord because of the level of his magic, whether or not he claimed the title, gave a command like that, it should be impossible for him to disobey it. The words shouldn't pass his lips.
"Harry, the Lord," he said, clearly.
He stared at nothing in particular as Harry stormed out of the library, his magic still sweeping around him like wings, and the books fell to the floor, and the twins scattered as Madam Pince came charging around the corner like the rampaging dragon Draco had been imagining earlier. She paid no attention to Draco at all, assuming that whatever had caused noise in her library, the Weasley twins were behind it. Draco was glad. She could have yelled at him, and he still would have sat there, glassy-eyed and staring.
He shouldn't have been able to disobey.
How could he?
Draco watched Harry more carefully than ever for the first two weeks of October. And he could only conclude that he must have been blind before, because whatever signs Harry was displaying of being a wizard who could command others with his sheer presence, he countered them with signs of being something else altogether.
He did influence people. He could make them back down and do what he said when his anger flared. He was so powerful that he drew attention wherever he went, by the mere fact of his magic. Draco practiced not letting his eyes turn towards Harry, and found it unexpectedly hard.
And he also never influenced people for long. Millicent avoided him one day when Harry had muttered something about not wanting her around, but there she was the next one, cajoling a reluctant smile out of him. When Draco concentrated through Harry's anger, he had no problem resisting whatever it was that Harry might want in that moment of his rage. He could look away from Harry. It took some effort, but there it was. It didn't take that much, really, not when he was practiced at it.
If Harry really was going to become a Dark Lord of the same kind as You-Know-Who or a Light Lord of the same kind as Dumbledore, none of those things should have been true.
Draco was confounded.
And then came a night at the second week of October, the night he had lain awake brooding about how he would tell Harry the truth even if he wanted to, and finally fell asleep staring at the ceiling of his bed.
"Draco?"
Draco blinked his eyes open, thinking this had to be a dream. There was no way that Harry would be standing there, framed in the curtains of his bed, his wand blazing with a Lumos, if it wasn't a dream. He hadn't reached out for Draco in the long weeks of their separation, not even when he had a nightmare or when he was obviously angry and hurting and barely talking to anyone else. Draco sat up, rubbing at his hair and his eyes and trying to think of what to say.
Harry took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of his bed. His scar and his eyes were both vivid in the shifting light. "Draco," he said gently. "I—I was going to wait until you said something, because I don't know what I did to anger you." He bit his lip. "But I can't stand this anymore," he said, abrupt, low, and fierce. "I need to know why you're upset with me. I need to know what I did wrong."
Draco stared at him. None of the books had said anything about incipient Lords seeking people out to ask what had angered them, either.
And he had thought that Harry would not. He meant less to Harry than Harry did to him. That had always been obvious. Harry might miss him, but he would never try to repair an apparent breach in their friendship.
Except that, apparently, he did, said Draco, when Harry misinterpreted his silence and sighed.
"Look," said Harry. "I know I shouldn't have let it go on this long. But I really did notice that you were angry, Draco, and I've kept noticing, and I just—I miss having you for a friend, all right?" He turned his head away, and Draco could see the stinging blush on his cheeks.
"I am not good at this," he said in the next moment, his voice gone flat. "The only person I've ever really cared about conflicting with before was Connor, and I yield to him. But I can't just yield to you. But I want to know what's wrong. Is it something I can help with? Is it something I can listen to? Or do we have to just stop being friends, because of whatever it was I did?" He swallowed harshly, a little click that Draco knew Harry didn't mean for him to hear.
Draco closed his eyes. Shock was yielding to other emotions. He knew that Harry couldn't have come to him and said this last year. His webs wouldn't have let him. His focus on his brother to the exclusion of all else wouldn't have let him. The fact that he seemed willing to let Draco's friendship simply drop away from him when he came back from Easter holidays was a sign of that, too.
That wouldn't happen now, Draco was fairly sure. Harry would fight to keep their friendship intact, even if it took him more than a month to admit he wanted it to be intact.
Draco swallowed himself, and sat up to hug Harry. He felt Harry stiffen in surprise, then relax and even hug him back, his wand pressing awkwardly against Draco's spine.
"Are you going to tell me what got you so angry?" he whispered.
Draco closed his eyes. He still didn't know how to tell Harry the truth. He still wondered if he should try to pull away again, to achieve some semblance of independence.
But he no longer thought that all the answers could be found in books. And he had missed Harry, damnit. Now that he was aware of what Harry's power could do and prepared to make conscious decisions about it if Harry asked him to do something he didn't want to do, Draco thought he could have their friendship back. He certainly appreciated it more than he ever had.
And so did Harry.
"It's something that I think would hurt you to know about right now," Draco whispered. "Please? Can it wait?"
Harry started a bit, but then relaxed when Draco's arms didn't move away. "Of course it can," he said. "I just—you're my best friend, Draco, and I need to know that you're all right. I thought you weren't, and it was driving me mad." He chuckled painfully. "Millicent kept asking me about the sour expression on my face all last week."
"That was about me?" Draco asked incredulously. Harry had never answered Millicent. Draco had assumed the sour expression came from any one of the numerous pressures Harry was dealing with: controlling his magic, studying with Professor McGonagall, playing at a badly-feigned coolness with Snape, coping with the fact that his godfather was trying to be affectionate with him and failing, and cheering on his brother, whose compulsion gift Harry was more and more obviously uneasy with.
"Of course it was," said Harry, as if it should be obvious. "I was worried about you, Draco."
"Prat," Draco grumbled into his shoulder, hugging Harry tightly enough to make him squeak. "Stubborn, idiotic prat. You could have come and asked me."
"Yes," said Harry. "But it took me this long."
"And you're really willing to wait to hear about it?" Draco asked, once more, just because he had to be sure.
"Of course." Harry pulled away from him and blinked at him. "I trust you, Draco."
Draco made his decision in that moment. To Azkaban with Lords and whether he had to stay away from Harry to be completely independent of him. He would just go along, deciding day to day on his independence if he had to, and getting Harry ready for the news that his magic could compel people, or something like it, even if he didn't mean to. Someday, Draco thought, he would be ready for it.
He was free. He made this choice freely. Draco said so, and felt no chain or compulsion holding him back.
He hugged a startled Harry again. "Now tell me what's been going on with you," he said, and settled down to be startled and angry and amused and outraged all in turn, confident that he was where he wanted to be.
Dear Mother:
I know that I made this request of you once before, but I hadn't considered everything you sent me then. Now I have, and I've freely chosen, and my request is still the same.
Please, move the mountains.
Your beloved son,
Draco.