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Chapter Eight—A Shattering Moment
"I understand that you've been to see my nephew."
Harry looked up in startlement. He'd just settled Teddy in the back garden with James and Al under his supervision on toy brooms—for some reason, even though his godson had little patience with the two younger boys in other activities, he loved teaching them how to fly—and was rocking Lily, who had a bottle in her mouth and sucked enthusiastically. He hadn't expected a visitor, and certainly not Andromeda Tonks, who had entered the house quietly.
The past ten years had been kind to her, though sometimes Harry surprised an expression in her eyes that made him sure she was thinking of her husband or daughter. She moved more stiffly than before, and stared off into space for long periods of time, and had more of an air of reservation even than Narcissa Malfoy did. But she loved Teddy, and Harry was confident he had a good home with his grandmother.
"Andromeda," he said, and smiled at her, shifting Lily to his shoulder so he could put his hand out to shake hers. "I hadn't realized it was so late. I'll call Teddy." He started to stand.
Andromeda gestured for him to stay where he was—in a chair near the hearth in the large drawing room beyond the kitchen, the center of life in the house—and sat down across from him. "I came early on purpose, Harry. I wanted to know if it was true that you'd been visiting with my nephew and—" Her mouth quirked for a moment, as if she'd bitten into a biscuit with too much sugar. "My sister."
Harry nodded slowly, then moved Lily about again as she fussed. She was done with the milk, so he patted her over his shoulder until she burped, and then stood her upright in his lap. More and more, she liked to be on her feet when she finished eating, her head turning slowly back and forth and her eyes moving over every object with a baby's silent wonder. Harry tickled the soft folds of her neck while he wondered what else to say.
"And how is Narcissa?" Andromeda asked at last.
"Fine, from what little I saw of her," Harry said. "Energetic." He hesitated, then, because he still couldn't figure out the purpose of Andromeda's visit but thought this might be what she wanted to hear, added, "I don't see her much, because I'm working mostly with Draco. He was the one accused of murder, after all."
"And you don't think he did it?" Andromeda lifted her head, back straight, as if she would easily absorb the impact of a positive answer.
"I don't think he did, no," Harry said firmly. "There are too many strange things about this case for me to believe that. The only evidence was a piece of cloth with the Malfoy crest on it found at the scene—entirely too convenient." He had little compunction in telling Andromeda the details, since he doubted that she was either going to go to the press or to Malfoy Manor. She had tried to make up with Narcissa after the war, but her sister had rejected the reconciliation for reasons that Harry had never been comfortable inquiring about. "The Aurors are making no progress. And Draco's alibi for the night Esther Goldstein was murdered is tight." Except for one hour, but Draco had answered Harry's other questions too truthfully to permit him much suspicion. "He's not violent, not a killer. Voldemort had to coerce him to torture people during the war."
Andromeda closed her eyes and nodded her head, with a small sigh of resignation. "Thank you, Harry. That does—make things easier." She glanced towards the window that looked out on the Burrow's back garden with a small smile. "And I don't think I'll fetch Teddy quite yet. He should have some time to play with his favorite cousins."
Harry smiled. Teddy called James, Al, and Lily his cousins even though that was true only distantly or by courtesy. He listened for a moment, and heard Teddy saying authoritatively, "You never fly that way, James, unless you want to fall from the broom and break your head open."
"Maybe I want to," said James, to whom everything unfamiliar was a grand adventure, and who was probably picturing the piles and piles of sweets and presents he'd get from his parents if he was "sick."
I wish I was that young, sometimes, Harry thought, jogging Lily, and had never known what death was.
But if he were that young, he could never have had his children, much less been a good father. There were compensations for every loss.
Lily's hair smelled sweet. Harry closed his eyes and lost himself in it.
Draco prepared himself for dinner with some smugness. It had been the best day he could remember in a long time. Marian had absented herself in her own bedroom, sulking; he'd won an argument with his mother; and he'd discovered more information about life-debts that could prove useful to dissolving the curse that connected him and Potter.
None of the books stated it outright, but Draco had put the information together from the clues between the lines. Life-debts pulled least urgently when there was only one of them and they were fulfilled willingly and promptly. Add multiple life-debts, their fulfillment delayed for years, and Potter still only helping Draco's family because Narcissa had asked him to…
Draco grinned at the shrouded mirror. Perhaps he should tell Potter that they should share a bed for three nights, and that would fulfill the other three debts that hung between them. He might have to claim the debt that Potter owed him for not exposing him to his enemies when Greyback captured him first, but Potter would take the same payment for the debts Draco owed him once he realized how good Draco could make him feel.
It will never happen, Draco thought, as he finished drawing on the soft formal robes that he was wearing to dinner that night to please his mother, but it's fun to dream about. I wonder if the visions really did give me true hints as to his preferences? If they had, then he knew Potter had a sensitive neck and ears that he would make his first targets. Perhaps he should contrive to "innocently" blow on Potter when he made his next visit tomorrow morning, and watch what happened.
He turned to the door of the loo, humming, and reached out to open it.
It resisted him.
Draco took a step backwards, his eyes narrowing, and drew his wand. Perhaps Marian had chosen this evening to play a joke on him. If so, he was less appreciative of it than she had no doubt hoped.
He cast Finite Incantatem, and then the Opening Charm. The door remained firmly locked when he rattled it—no, stuck. The handle didn't turn. The wood didn't move. It was as if it had expanded to fit the frame. Yet when he cast a spell to reduce the action of water or air magic that could have caused the wood to warp and swell, they didn't work, either.
He shook his head and resigned himself to calling his mother for help. It was humiliating, seeing the disapproval in her eyes—she was of the opinion that he should have been able to control Marian, and even live happily with her—but it was better than staying locked in the loo because he was too proud to do it.
A buzzing filled his ears as he lifted his wand to cast Sonorus on his throat. Eyes narrowed further, Draco cast the spell anyway, then turned to see whether Marian had cast a wasp's nest into the room with him, or something else equally ridiculous.
The mirror beneath the covering shroud was vibrating.
Draco backed up a step, forgetting for a moment that the door wasn't open and he couldn't simply leave. He swallowed twice, then aimed his wand at the mirror. He was capable of conjuring a Shield Charm, wasn't he? He would simply hold off whatever threat might be coming from the mirror.
Not that there was a threat coming from the mirror.
The mirror continued to vibrate; Draco could feel the ripples traveling into the walls. He conjured the Shield Charm, unwilling to wait for whatever might be happening behind the cloth to actually happen.
And then the cloth tore open, and the last thing Draco saw for what seemed to be eternity was a storm of glass shards flying at him. He threw his arm up in front of his face, instinctively, and felt slices open in his wrists and fingers and palm. The Shield Charm had not defended him.
He screamed, and it echoed oddly in his ears.
Oh, the Sonorus Charm, that's right, he thought dazedly, and then pain came soaring on the heels of the shock. He thought he got off one more scream before blood loss dragged him into blackness.
Harry started when he heard a voice shouting his name from the Floo connection in the drawing room. Hardly anyone disturbed him and Ginny at dinner; Ron and Hermione knew the time and would wait to contact them unless it was a genuine emergency. Of course, it probably was an emergency. Harry had thrown himself out of his chair and run madly into the drawing room before Ginny even moved.
He stopped dead, however, staring, when he realized that Narcissa Malfoy's face was projecting from the fireplace. He started to shake his head, started to say something about how he had given his mornings to the Malfoys and he didn't intend to give any more time; she had probably only contacted him to shriek about some Ministry insult, anyway. She had struck him as rather excitable.
"My son has been wounded," she interrupted his attempts at speech. Her eyes were far too wide, and there was a strange shine to them, like fever, but she was not yet weeping. "A mirror in his loo exploded, and the glass shredded his arm open. I have tried to staunch the wounds, but they will not stop bleeding. He keeps moaning your name." She leaned back and stared at him expectantly.
"Call St. Mungo's," Harry said, the first thing he could think of. "Can you do that?"
Narcissa lifted her chin, and he saw a trace of her sister in her, after all. She had endured the years since the war with the same dignity and sense of loss that Andromeda had, he was now certain. "I will not let a stranger past my family's wards at this critical time unless I have no other choice. And you misunderstand me. I can make the wounds stop bleeding for a time, but they open again a few moments later. These are magical wounds. And I believe—I believe that you may have something to do with them." She turned her head to look over her shoulder, and then whispered, "Draco," and propelled herself up from the hearth.
Harry had only a moment to choose his course. He had no real choice, of course. Even if he and Malfoy hadn't decided to become friends, even if this curse hadn't concerned him, he could hardly leave an innocent man to die.
He snatched a handful of Floo powder from the dish on the mantle, flung it into the flames, and shouted, "Malfoy Manor!" just before he stepped through, hoping the fact that Narcissa had contacted him meant that the way was open and he wouldn't bounce back into his own drawing room stinging from the wards.
He landed safely in an immense vaulted room at the Manor he hadn't seen before, however, and choked in the soot and reeled with dizziness. Then he remembered what he had come for and staggered across the room towards one still form and one kneeling, frantically casting form.
Harry tried not to knock into Narcissa as he rushed over to Draco, though he wasn't sure he entirely succeeded. He could see blood flowing across Malfoy's arms and robes from this near, and there were so many cuts, and here and there buried glass splinters flashed like the eyes of insects. Harry drew in a breath that sounded horrified even to himself.
He had seen worse things when working for the Blood Reparations Department, and he had certainly seen worse things during the war. But in most of those cases, he hadn't seen those people alive and well just the day before. This was more like—like Dobby's death than anything else.
He waved his own wand, muttering one of his inexpert healing charms, and heard Draco murmuring the same words over and over: Harry Potter. Harry Potter. The notion that he might have caused this damage somehow made him feel worse.
His left hand groped out and slipped into Draco's.
Gold burst inside him and out. His vision dimmed, and he seemed to be rushing down a vast tunnel that shone like light refracted in diamond patterns on water. His chest ached. His arms stung and burned fiercely, as if he had taken the glass on them.
If I could have stood between him and the mirror…
The air in his mouth seemed to solidify, and Harry wondered for a moment if death was coming for him in turn, since he had made his impulsive wish to take the harm that had befallen Malfoy on himself. But the solidity was simple sweetness, melting and warm on his tongue. Harry blinked, and the golden vision vanished, and he was kneeling again above Draco, fingers entwined with his as if they had always done this.
He would have thought the fading had begun again, but there was none of the same disorienting, terrifying feeling this time. There was only sweetness, and warmth around his lips when he inhaled, and a deep, violently beautiful scent when he exhaled. The scent was emanating from Draco—or was it emanating from him? He bent over Draco, staring at his arm, wondering if he had healed the skin over the splinters and shards of glass that were still stuck in the wounds.
Draco's arm was entirely free of blood. It was covered with a fine network of silvery scars, as faded as the words that Umbridge had made Harry carve into his skin with her quill. He stared at them in wonder and disquiet, and then noticed something fluffy and white resting in Draco's hair. He reached out to pluck it away, before his conscious mind could convince him that it was glass Transfigured by the magic that had just taken them.
It wasn't glass, Transfigured or not. It was a single feather, so soft that it hurt him to touch it. An owl's feather. Harry hadn't forgotten the texture or the shape or the color from his days of owning Hedwig, though he had refused to make a pet of another owl since. He stared at the feather, and could think of absolutely nothing to say.
"Mr. Potter?" Narcissa's insistent voice dragged him back to reality. "What happened to my son? How did his wounds heal so quickly?"
Harry shook his head, and brushed at Draco again. More feathers came off on his hand, prickling at his palm as they drifted away. He tried to free his tightly held left hand so that he could shoo them off, but Draco curled his fingers around it, and Harry couldn't bear to deprive him of that comfort so soon after his probable death.
"I don't know, Mrs. Malfoy," he said quietly, frowning at the man on the floor, and trying to downplay the concern that still raged through him. You don't really know him. You didn't know this would happen. Stop feeling guilty. "But I think you have to accept the reality of the curse that plagues him now."
It was the burning of his scars that woke Draco.
He opened his eyes slowly. He was stunned to see the faint light of dawn making its way through his curtains. He had stared out that window often enough during the year when the Dark Lord made the Manor his headquarters to recognize the color of the sunrise, but he'd usually slept in later since he married.
The memories came back then. The mirror. I—
And the soft burning that he had associated so long with the legacy of Potter's spell came from his chest, but also from his left arm. And, come to think of it, his fingers were cramped, as though someone held them.
He turned his head.
Potter slumped in a chair next to the bed, snoring, his glasses jammed between his nose and his chin. His wand still rested in his lap. His left hand was tangled with Draco's own, his fingers resting not far away from a spidery lacing of silver scars.
Draco licked his lips. He thought he could piece together what had happened, scant though the clues were. The curse had locked him in the loo, to make sure that he would be wounded, and then shattered the mirror. The Sonorus Charm he'd cast on himself had alerted his mother when he screamed, or he might have remained the loo until he'd died of blood loss. She'd been able to rescue him because the curse had been done with him by then.
Or—perhaps not quite. His mother must have contacted Potter, though Draco didn't know what symptoms during his blood loss might have prompted her to do that, or whether Potter was simply the one outside person she trusted at this point. Potter had arrived and somehow saved Draco's life, the way he was so good at.
Had that created a fifth life-debt to tie them together?
Draco did not want to think about the probable consequences of that.
And now he had scars in two places on his body that reacted to the presence of the curse.
Draco licked his lips again and shifted position, and that woke Potter. He sighed deeply and groaned, then lifted his head and massaged the back of his neck with his free hand. He tried to use two to do it, and only then seemed to realize that he still clasped Draco's wrist. Draco saw the tide of color sweep over his cheeks, and realized that the mirrors had not lied about one thing. That really was the way Potter looked when he blushed: his eyelids fluttering as if he wanted to close them, his ears turning red just a moment later than the rest of his face.
Of course, in Draco's visions he had usually started to pant with pleasure first, or he was screaming in the middle of some magnificent row. He didn't usually look embarrassed.
"Morning, Draco," he said. "I—how are you feeling?" He leaned to stare at the scars on Draco's arm as if he didn't know how they'd got there, either.
"Curious," Draco said, and stared pointedly at him.
Harry mumbled out an explanation of last night's events, looking even more embarrassed when he recounted how Draco had kept muttering his name. Draco didn't see why he should look that way. Those words were what had made his mother summon Harry, and thus had saved his life.
"But I don't know what the scar means," Harry finished, "or the feathers, or the scent I smelled. It was like—rotting roses, really." His eyes narrowed, and Draco got a glimpse of the same stubborn Gryffindor he'd seen whenever they both chased the Snitch. "But I can promise that I'll try to get to the bottom of this."
Draco nodded slowly. "Good. I think there's some research that we should at least look into to counteract this curse."
"What's that?"
"Life-debts." Draco raised an eyebrow when Harry made an incredulous little scoffing noise. "You don't think so? There are four of them tying us, counting the one that you're fulfilling right now for my mother. And since my mother thinks of herself as part of the Malfoys, that's a debt that you owe me just as much as you owe her."
Harry closed his eyes, as if thinking over the memory of that year of the war, and then winced and nodded. "You're probably right," he said, and finally reached down to his glasses and pulled them back up his face. "We should look into it." He hesitated for one moment, then added, "And the scars, though I'm afraid I don't know why yours would burn along with mine."
"You have a curse scar," said Draco, and glanced at the words he could see faintly cut into the back of Harry's right hand. "And that—well, it must have been made with a cursed object, right? The scars on my chest come from a Dark Arts spell—"
"And I have a mark on my chest from a Hor—I mean, a cursed object," Harry said hastily, cutting short Draco's attempt to ask what he had been doing with a prostitute. The dawning excitement glowing in Harry's eyes was too good to tease him about, anyway. "And this." He turned his arm, and Draco made out the mark of fangs. "Voldemort's snake bit me. She was a cursed object, too, in her own way."
"Then that leaves out only the mirror that scarred me like this." Draco nodded at his arms. "Perhaps you could count it as an honorary Dark Arts object, since it was acting as the conduit of our own special curse."
Harry laughed aloud—not mockingly, but with the pleasure of discovery. Draco caught his eye again, and Harry grinned at him. Draco smiled back, and knew it was with genuine happiness on his own part. This putting together clues had an exhilaration to it. He could learn to like it.
"Stay to breakfast?" he asked, when Harry's stomach gurgled.
Harry hesitated as if he would refuse, then smiled again and nodded. "I should. And since I give mornings to you lot anyway, I'll get in some research with you before I go home. Just let me firecall Ginny. She must be going frantic with worry."
It was only when he shifted and drew his hand gently away that Draco realized neither of them had made an effort to let go of each other since he woke up.