Darker Magic

Chapter 4:

Impedimenta

The wind was too cold, clipped with ice and frosted thoughts of darker places. The grass was too lush, too green, the hair he was stroking soft as down, the mouth he was kissing so much warmer than the winter sun. Harry's cloak was wrapped around him, sliding off. Harry's mouth, Harry's hair, and it was so much, and Harry's hands... Harry's hands...

Harry's hands.

They had drifted up under his shirt, fingers small points of flushed heat on his skin. Draco felt caught in a riptide, being coaxed and pulled, and not entirely wanting to fight it. His head began to ring, an incessant warning beating its way through the delicious mist he was lost in. Harry was at the center; he, Draco, would be alright if he could only be near him, if he could continue to touch him, to be touched, to drink Harry, breathe him in, taste--

Draco pulled out of the kiss and grasped Harry's wrists under his own shirt, guiding them away because... because Harry Potter is naïve, childlike, has no idea what he is getting himself into.

Because in five more seconds, no power in the world of magic or beyond would be able to stop Draco from--

Draco jerked his head and saw the confusion in Harry's clouded irises. He looked away, keeping his face as neutral as he could manage. "Harry."

That name... brought chills he sought to banish from his body, the thought woke him from deepest slumber in a vague frenzy of desire. And yet it sounded so cold in his ears just then. Was that what he was trying for? To leave the name bereft of the magic it possessed? Draco didn't think he could stomach the day when he heard it fall dully through the air, powerless and... normal. But no more than that could he stand the ripple that name sent through him. It threatened a loss of control he could barely fathom.

A name could do that. And the actual person...

"Draco," Harry murmured, confusion softening his voice. "Are you..."

Draco pulled him closer, adjusting his body so the other boy was leaning comfortably against him. "I just need to be near you right now."

Harry's silence was uneasy but unbroken as he relaxed into Draco's embrace. Draco closed his eyes, knowing how unconvincing he was being, and how cold he sounded. Detesting the barrier he was desperately constructing between them.

But it would be better. Easier. Because he was Draco Malfoy. He couldn't go that far. He was headed elsewhere, alone.

* * *

Indulgence.

That's what it felt like with Harry. As if he were allowing himself to have something that should not be experienced, that was too great, too wonderful for any one human being. He was safe, wrapped in two arms that, by all rights, should have pushed him away, leaning against a warm, taut body that simultaneously calmed him and sent his nerves into a frenzy.

And the kisses. They were nothing short of... well. He had kissed others before, many others. But Harry's kisses granted him things he had never looked for with the other people, and he was slowly realizing that those things had never really been there in the first place. He did not have to search for anything with Harry; the Gryffindor gave it over so smoothly Draco had to remind himself that this was not natural, that he should not be feeling this, for Salazar's sake. There were walls that had to be maintained, secret spaces kept only to oneself, and here Harry was, opening every one of his doors to Draco's scrutiny.

But as often as he was reminded of this breach, he could never bring himself to end it. Harry's doors remained open, and Draco walked through them every time the boy with mussed black hair tentatively offered him a kiss that left the last wonderful, earth-shattering, unbeatable kiss in the dust.

It was not until another month had passed that Draco let the steadily building unease within him surface to a level where he could actually see it again. He continued to think of it as a part of the oddity that was Harry: that the other boy's openness and blatant refusal to shut him out was something he would never get used to, and something he would never stop craving, like some sort of strange drug for his soul. But there was something else beneath it, something that woke Draco in a heaving sweat in the middle of the night.

Just about every night.

What little he had maintained of his resistance was failing, slipping silently away into a black void. Whenever he was around Harry, and especially when the other boy touched him, he felt himself caving somewhere inside, giving in little by little to a thing he had feared for months, unconsciously.

He needed Harry.

Not his kisses, as gloriously heart-stopping as they were. Not even his mere presence. He was beginning to see that what had fulfilled him so completely before was not enough anymore... and he noticed with a dull anxiety that Harry was no longer fulfilled either. The way the Gryffindor would forsake any sort of verbal communication and pull him forward into hungrier kisses that left Draco unable to breathe properly; the way his eyelids would dip and rise just from looking at him, as if he were losing himself to something deep within. Harry's hands on his body had taken on an urgency that Draco was unwilling to admit to himself, even as he had to still his own similar impulses.

Stroking his face, sitting with arms around him, holding him against his body in silence; touching Harry this way was no longer enough. Draco knew it, and he resisted this knowledge because to give into it in any small way was to burn a bridge he had desperately been trying to keep intact ever since he'd given up his fight in the infirmary so long ago. But that one kiss had lit the fire that was consuming this last crucial passage, flames slithering up the fortified foundation posts. He had been a fool to think otherwise.

One evening when he met Harry on the edge of the forest, he nearly gave up and let it take him. To hell with the consequences. They had been apart for too long over the summer, and Draco had been battered with the emptiness, the darkness riddling his family home; it was returning in his dreams. He'd felt himself sinking again, and his image of Harry's face that one day the year before, the day Draco had made his final feeble attempt to run, when Harry had caught him and held him... Harry's full, green eyes had kept him from sliding over the edge into the meaninglessness that was set before him. He ached every night, locked away in his cold room in the manor, and he had relished the pain because it told him he was missing a piece of himself, something Voldemort would never gain. Something to be kept sacred, apart from the mess that was his soul. Something he'd left with Harry Potter.

Harry's form had appeared out of the twilight gloom under the forest's edge, hair shifting in the breeze, eyes shyly searching his features. Draco had reached out for him without a word and crushed his body to him, unable to fill the hole within him. He needed Harry Potter, needed him like he had that first week, in spite of himself, but at the same time it was different. His kiss had been rougher than usual, coaxing something that he refused to recognize for what it was.

The dark dilation in Harry's eyes after he finally released him illuminated the elusive... thing... so completely Draco had been shocked into utter silence. It was there in Harry's eyes as well, in the way his hands clutched at Draco's waist for balance, in the catch in his breathing. Draco saw it so clearly and despaired at what it meant.

He could not go where he wanted to go, do the thing he so wanted to do. If he gave in, it would be over. He would not be able to go back.

He pushed Harry away.

Not that night at twilight. That encounter had been complete with quiet embraces, kisses that left no doubt in Draco's mind that the piece of himself he had given over to Harry was still safe, perhaps safer than it had ever been. Harry was guarding it like a treasured secret. But it had bred something else, a new hole that needed to be filled, and Harry had no scruples about showing Draco that he knew exactly how that should be accomplished and was more than willing. Light touches that left Draco gasping. Heated movement against his body that he immediately felt like reciprocating, and elevating. But he refrained.

The next day, Draco's subconscious began a concerted effort to avoid that hole. Not to leave it empty, because he had it inside him and it hurt quite a bit. Just to ignore it, to pretend it was not there; pretend there were still walls up between him and the boy who kept flinging doors open.

He pushed Harry away.

* * *

It was, perhaps, one of the greatest of silencing charms in existence, hanging over the Hogwarts library, Draco mused. Of course, he did not feel any ripple of magic in the place. He could hear the quiet murmurs of students; the place was not silent by a long shot. But it was peaceful, and that was something he could not find anywhere else in the school. The soul was silent here at least, if not the voice, and that was a feat Draco had never witnessed the accomplishment of, not in seventeen years.

He did not enjoy the Slytherin common room any longer. His self-prescribed detachment from his housemates, while never questioned by most, was not enough to separate them. Many still feared him, certainly, as any good Slytherin should a Malfoy. Draco was to be feared; he had earned the right long ago, had nourished and cultivated it for the distance it provided. But that distance was slowly being encroached upon by the one person in his house from whom he most wanted to pull away.

Draco's moments of solitude in the common room were no longer his own. They were hunted, hovered over. Watched. Nott had taken to folding his thin frame into the high-backed chair directly across from Draco's whenever he found him there. Pale, spindly fingers tapping a wan cheek, eyes the color of the frailest periwinkle boring from deep, ghostly sockets... Nott settled into the shadow of the huge chair like a spectre, ever present, ever watching. Ever silent. The absence of Nott's reedy voice rang in Draco's ears, and though he could always easily feign disinterest in the unblinking gaze and choking presence, he could never concentrate. The heavy shroud of Nott's gaze jerked things loose inside him and then toyed with them between nimble, claw-like fingers. He could feel Nott's presence even when he was alone under the cowl of dreams.

His nightmares, if they could be called that, were returning.

Draco stood now in the library, leaning over a long, empty table, his fingers pressed against the open pages of an ancient charms text. He could sense the presence of other students, but it was a warm, earthy presence, not the wraithlike chill of those eyes on him. The distraction he desired was complete here. The words of long-deceased magic users flowed through his brain like soothing ointment, numbing the ever-present uneasiness. He leaned over the scrawled words, thumbing through pages, absorbing everything he could and letting it cloud his mind with lyrical entities and phrases. He worked it in until it covered everything, seeking a release until sleep claimed him each night.

Harry had given him as much. More, even. But now it was not so simple.

The history of the oldest charms was as much a protective spell as the charms themselves. Draco could almost see the intricately woven pulse of the incantations that pulled defensive auras from the bodies of the ancient magic users. These were spells older than the human race itself, as old as the very earth beneath their feet. They held the heat of stars and molten rock, and as much fury and power as those forces. It was not a question of creation, but rather of finding the magic, discovering what it was exactly that held the fibers of the world together. Bending it just so, learning to harness that sublime power before it consumed.

Fidelius: the intertwining of a secret into the very soul of a human being. A binding at the most basic tier, one soul to another, in secrecy, in fellowship, in love, forsaking all else... and finally, even in betrayal.

Priori Incantatem: the reversal of a spell at the root of its magic, at the moment of formation from nothingness. A dismantling of the very essence of the spell, and sometimes so formidable it dismantled the magic user's power as well.

And the Unnamed Incantations. Magic that had no words, no pulse, no tangible appearance. All it needed was a body to house it. The oldest and most primal of enchantments, binding by love, by hate, protective or destructive with no awareness in of itself. It was the most perfect of imbalances, brought forth by the caster in the darkest moment when the self ceased to matter, and then infused into the very bones of its target. In that moment, absolute protection could be assured; complete destruction could go uncontested. The pouring of one person's magic into another, the only magic strong enough to overpower the killing curse.

Draco's body stiffened.

The night before, the moon had been bright, rising over the treetops like a huge golden lantern. Harry's face was thrown into stark relief, and Draco had pulled away from the kiss and seen it, gleaming just beneath his tousled bangs. He'd lifted a hand, gliding up the skin of Harry's cheek over his temple, across the raised surface of the scar. It had not felt important to know its origins; he knew who had carved that thin mark upon the Gryffindor's skin, and why. The deeper details deserved to remain hidden, and Draco would never ask after them; the outcome would not be any different if he knew. He would still be touching the face of this boy, kissing lips that by all rights should have been seventeen years cold in the earth. He would still have Harry, whether he knew the darkest secrets of that scar or not.

But...

Draco bent over, gazing intently at the weathered text. The only magic strong enough to overpower the killing curse. A slow, sad smile pulled at his lips.

"Malfoy."

Draco raised an eyebrow and straightened, letting his fingers trail over the rough texture of the page. That was Granger. Even the way she spoke his name held a note of snobbish superiority. He closed the book lazily and laid his fingertips on top of the dusty cover before turning to face her.

"Yes?" he intoned, narrowing his eyes at her.

She stood before him, back even straighter than normal. Her wayward hair was tucked behind her ears, aided by small metal barrettes at her temples. Draco had intended to stare her into silence, even into leaving, if possible. But when he got a good look at her, he felt a certain curiosity flutter in his chest. The expression on her face was... unique. For Granger. Her mouth had a distasteful downturn to its corners, but the tilt of her head and the wide gleam in her eyes fought with it. She didn't want to be there, that much he could tell. He could empathize: he didn't want her there either. But something had driven her here and was driving her still. Draco peered at her, fascinated. Soon it would drive her to...

"I know what you're doing."

Draco sniffed, curled his lip. "Interesting. I wasn't aware I was doing anything, aside from reading."

"With Harry." The words shot out of her mouth. Her eyes widened as if she hadn't intended to say them. Then she frowned and set her lips in a determined line. Draco almost sneered. He liked Granger much better this way, when she was intent on her mission.

"If you do anything to hurt him, I'll kill you, Malfoy."

He studied her. Her face was hard, made of stone. He could feel the frustrated anger emanating from her like curling puffs of magic.

"You know," he said, leaning forward until the brown of her eyes was all he could see, "I think you actually might, Granger."

He picked up his book and left her there, standing with one small hand placed lightly on the table top. He did not look back, but he knew she was looking at him. He felt around for humor in her words, loathing, a need to injure, but all he found was truth. It was refreshing to see it, even if it did not stem from his truth.

* * *

"Are you angry with me?"

Draco snorted, running his fingers through the messy black hair on his lap. "Don't be ridiculous. Why would I be angry with you?"

Harry shrugged. In the dim light, Draco could see his lips purse together. He lowered his eyelids until Draco could not see the glimmer of green. "No reason. I just wondered."

Draco opened his mouth, then closed it, feeling stubborn irritation twitch within him. If Harry wanted silence, then he would damn well leave it as it was. He looked up at the torchlight playing over the stones of the ceiling. The sounds of chattering echoed through the halls, the murmur of students passing on their way to dinner, but Draco knew they were a few hallways away and that their voices echoed, threading through the corridors like wind.

Harry suddenly lifted his head and sat up, drawing his knees to his chest. Draco blinked at the sudden loss of warmth. He did not like the vacancy created or the distance Harry had drawn away. It was only an inch or so, but Draco was very aware, quite abruptly, that they were no longer touching.

He frowned at the other boy's profile, and then sighed and focused his gaze on the wall of the disused corridor instead. It was dusty and shadowed, and highly able to sustain his attention in his irritation. He would just look at the wall and let Harry explain himself when the silence grew too thick for the Gryffindor to handle.

Harry finally sighed and turned to look at him. "Is it your father?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Why are you in such a bad mood?" Harry asked, his voice a little more flat. Draco looked at him briefly, then turned back to the wall.

"I wasn't aware I was in a bad mood, Potter."

Harry's face contorted in the corner of Draco's eye. "Well, you are. Tell me what I've done and I'll apologize."

Draco snapped his head to look at Harry incredulously. "What makes you think you've done anything?"

Harry fidgeted and wrapped his arms around his legs. "I just... I don't know. You don't seem to want to..."

"To what?"

Harry's answer was so soft he barely heard it. "To touch me."

Draco froze for a beat, then swallowed and looked away. He studied the misshapen furrows he had made in the dust with his shoes. How could he possibly explain to Harry that that couldn't be farther from the truth? Draco shook himself and got angry. "What are you talking about? I was holding you a second ago. You're the one who moved away."

Harry's lips moved, but the light had gone from his eyes. He settled his chin on his knees and bit his lip. Draco felt a rush in his chest. The dejection in Harry's body was something he had not seen since fifth year. It was as if all the energy had been drained from him and he was lost in some dark hallway with a failing torch. Draco reached out before he could think about it and touched Harry's cheek. The other boy's eyes shifted to his in silence. Draco slid his hand down to Harry's chin, remembering the softness of his skin there, right at the curve of his jaw, and lifted his head.

"I do want to touch you," he said softly. Harry's eyes looked at him, disbelieving. Draco's stomach lurched at the betrayal there, the sudden lack of light. He felt sick at the thought that he had done this, smothered the fire in that body. Draco steeled himself.

It was nothing. Just a kiss. He could control what happened, bring it back to what it had been those first few weeks out by the forest the previous year. Then it was reassurance, the knowledge that someone else was sharing the pain he once thought wholly his own. Harry needed that just as much as he did.

Draco shifted closer, bringing his body alongside Harry's. The Gryffindor watched him with luminous eyes. Draco leaned in hesitantly, a teasing whiff of lemon zinging in his nose, and touched his lips lightly to Harry's. The contact was brief and warm, and Draco felt Harry's breath across his lips when they parted. For a moment, they stared at each other across the scant inch separating them. Draco was caught in Harry's eyes, in the hopeful flare. He wanted that back. He wanted it to touch him and burn him and leave its mark, and before he knew it, he closed the distance again. The kiss was different: still soft, but needy. Harry's lips were warmer than before and Draco fetched up against them, feeling the first uncomfortable flame in his body, the pulsing ache drifting downward. His mind struggled with it, and Harry moved a hand up to the back of his neck and tilted his head. Draco's thoughts went into a hazy shudder. He had to touch him, and his hands flew over Harry's back, his throat, his hair, searching for that place, that moment that would finally quench the burning. It had to be there somewhere. The kiss grew deeper and deeper, more passionate. Harry pulled his glasses from his face and pressed himself against Draco's chest, and Draco's body was beginning to shake uncontrollably, the recognition long since past, the dread beginning to build.

His fingers traveled upward and touched Harry's scar.

Footsteps. Much closer. Draco broke away with a strength born of surprise and found Harry looking at him, shaken, cheeks flushed and lips swollen. He tore his gaze from the other boy and scooted back, pulling himself to his feet. The footsteps echoed louder, approaching. Harry jumped up and brushed himself off, searching for his glasses, shoving them onto his face when he found them. Draco gave him one last haunted look before turning and taking the first hallway he came to. He walked and walked until he had no idea where he was going. But the thud of his heart did not slow. Neither did the burn in his body subside.

* * *

When he got back to his room late after Astronomy, his eagle owl was waiting for him, crouched on top of his wardrobe like a harpy over a carcass. The owl eyed him beadily, and Draco untied the letter from its leg with an empty sensation in his chest. The decryption charm was a mere reflex to his well-trained fingers.

As to my memories, there is something of a discrepancy concerning my year in Azkaban. I would gladly attribute that to the days that ran into nights, into days and nights, into nothing, but to describe it to one who has not yet experienced it is a bothersome chore unworthy of my time. It is, and always shall be, in the past.

I will say that there was a sense of lightness to the air the day the last Dementor tugged itself free of the spells warding it in. I could taste it in the water when I remembered to drink. There were sounds in the corridors again; they echoed off the stone walls. Yet the cells did not lose their darkness, the gloom thrumming down did not dissipate, and the sounds I heard were the same as the sounds I had heard all along in my head: tortured, vile voices.

You would not understand the pall those voices place on a person. Oh yes, Draco, the Dementors do speak, with tongues too rotted to move, throats too shredded to scream. They whisper and call in the darkness, their voices bleeding into your head until all you can do is return the eerie cries, the hiss of fetid air. Those sounds came from prisoners' mouths, lungs, throats, hearts as soon as the Dementors' voices died away.

Is it the Dementor who clouds the room with ice and horror, or is it the room that changes the Dementor? They flock to the Dark Lord by the hundreds, the most hideous of wraiths: those bent on living when their lives have long been imprisoned, wrenched from their grasp forever. They have no real ties to this world, simply hovering in that liminal space of unappeasable hunger, unable to cross over. They seek themselves in their victims, lusting for it, ever searching for that spark unique to each of them when it has already been utterly disintegrated. The Dark Lord would seek them, but instead they hunt him as ghouls follow blood, and one must wonder if they wish for the end of their suffering in him, or if the world wishes for the end it could never give their spirits by bringing them to the Dark Lord.

I suspect the moment I realized the last Dementor had departed was the day I remembered your name again. The day your face came back to me.

You have my face, and your mother's keen knowledge of how to twist it. The months I did not know you were the months I would have looked into a mirror and seen nothing but vacancy. A head on a pedestal. He seeks to put you there, Draco, on my shattered pedestal, even as I try to stand upon its shards once more. He will raise you to very cold heights, heat you with the light of comets and suns, but you will always feel the miasma of frost bellow, for that is where the Dementors will wait, drifting in the warm updrafts, stretching rotted fingers for that simulacrum of a spark. Remain on your pedestal, and let him reward you, for it will be generous and great, and fit for one such as yourself when I can no longer receive it.

His is the power, the only power I acknowledge now. You, by fate's bitter twist, are the only being who holds my attention. Logic dictates the two must go together.

Draco let the letter drop from his hands. The writing vanished as soon as it lost contact with his fingers. He knew if he picked it up, the looping scrawl would appear again as if it had never been absent. But he left it on the floor and got into bed. He stared fixedly at the drapes until he fell asleep.

* * *

He stood in the window of one of Hogwarts' towers, staring down at the grass beneath him. It was vibrant green, icy and vivid, glowing with some inner light. Fumes seeped from it like acid vapor, and the smell carried to him on the updrafts was rank and heavy, the spice of death. As he watched, something came over the grass from the forest, winged shadows darker than the blackened sky above. Thestrals, moving in silent steps over the smoldering lawn. Wherever their hooves set down, the grass hissed and burned away, leaving trails of greenish smoke hovering and swirling between their wasted bodies. One turned its lamplike eyes toward him, and then another, and another, until all were looking up unblinkingly. He was caught in their stare and the smell of death flowed around him like a mantle, woven with the tart scent of lemons. He felt heat at his back, and when he looked around, the castle was burning, white hot flames licking up each turret. The walls were oozing a dark liquid that glowed red in the firelight, and still the thestrals stared as ash and smoke rained down around them, illuminating their gaunt, twisted forms.

There was someone behind him. He tried to run but his hands were fixed to the window ledge. He turned his head and saw Granger, her clothing afire and her eyes opaque white. Her jaw fell open, creating a hollow in her face, and words came, gibberish that dropped around him like stones. But he knew the green light that flowed from her outstretched wand and soared toward him. And oddly, he could see the thestrals at the same moment, and they all opened their mouths, yawning chasms of putrid air and blackness, and let forth a keening cry.

Draco opened his eyes wide and sat up with a hiss. His bedclothes were tangled around him, the room dark and cool. He could see the flames behind his eyelids still, and he blinked and breathed deeply. His mind slowly left the haze of dreams.

In the dim space where his curtains had parted, Draco could see Nott sitting up in his bed. The Slytherin's pale eyes were fixed on him, gleaming in the soft moonlight from the windows. Draco stared back wordlessly, the thin scent of sulfur ghosting in his nostrils.