Inside Your Mind

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the Harry Potter characters, they all belong to J.K Rowling….Damn her….

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Chapter Eighteen – Family Issues

When Harry awoke to familiar eyes glaring down at him, he felt for a second as if he had been transported back to a time when all he had known of Draco was malice.

Upon a second and more coherent look, however, he realized that the gaze that stared back was not the same iridescent silver one that was imprinted in his mind. It was a duller gray, not seeming capable of holding the emotions that Draco trusted him with. Nevertheless, the gaze was cold and piercing in a way that only a Malfoy could perfect. Harry blinked, his head too cloudy to comprehend the meaning of this observation.

“Good. You’re awake.”

Once again, he was struck with the uncanny sense of familiarity, this time from the cool drawl that escaped the pale lips. Wait… Harry thought, the fog beginning to clear. That has to be a Malfoy.

His own eyes widened as he finally averted his gaze from the gray one to scan the person’s face as a sense of realization swept over him.

Narcissa’s smirk grew as she watched the boy’s startling eyes flicker slightly with hope and then confusion, finally narrowing in suspicion.

“Where am I?”

Narcissa just laughed, a hollow, lifeless sound that made Harry shiver.

Putting aside his growing confusion at Narcissa’s presence, Harry looked around. How the hell am I going to figure out where I am? The cream colored walls were spotlessly clean, as was the beige rug, setting off the black leather furniture that was located in the center of the room. The walls were lined with tall bookcases, all filled completely. There was even a book on the table next to Narcissa’s chair, a page marked with a piece of parchment. His confusion grew at these seemingly comfortable settings, and he sat wondering for a few silent moments. Then he raised a hand to smack himself in the head for his own stupidity; or, he tried to, realizing in the process that his arms and legs were magically bound to the black leather chair he was seated in.

How strange it is that I’m being held captive in a chair more comfortable any part of my room at the Dursleys, Harry thought, rather amused.

:Yes, Potter, because the comfortableness of your chair is really the part of your situation that you should be focusing on right now: Draco commented dryly.

:Wow, Malfoy, your concern is just so overwhelming.:

Harry could practically feel Draco rolling his eyes.

:Where are you?:

Hesitating, Harry replied :I’m pretty sure that I’m inside Malfoy Manor.:

When Draco finally replied, his voice was dangerously quiet. :I knew we never should have trusted my father, after everything why did I – :

:Draco. Your mother is sitting across from me.:

The blonde’s muttering stopped abruptly, as if he was frozen on the spot.

:She’s actually glaring at me very hard. I never thought facial expressions could run in a family, but I guess after meeting Lucius I should have figured it out –:

:Do you make a habit of prattling on about pointless things when you’re in these types of situations?:

:What else should I do?: Harry snapped, annoyed. :It’s not like I can just get up and walk away.:

:I know!: Draco yelled with a burst of frustration.

Harry was silent, giving the other a few moments to recollect himself, as he was sure Draco had just dropped down onto the edge of their bed, his head in his hands.

:Okay: he said quietly. :Any idea why your mother is glaring at me? I thought she didn’t support the whole Voldemort/kill-Harry-Potter-thing.:

:Potter!:

:Okay, sorry: Harry said quickly, sending Draco an image of himself holding his hands up in surrender, making the blonde laugh.

:Well…: Draco began slowly, :I’ve never really said this out loud before, but I have always thought that there was something about my mother that wasn’t quite right. It’s rather strange to say that out loud, partly because she’s my mother, but also because of who brought me up. I was never as strong or cold as my father was capable of being, no matter how I acted on the outside. But it was never my father’s punishments that made me try my hardest to be a Malfoy; it was always the cold looks of my mother that chilled me enough to become what I was expected. The looks that made me feel as if I wasn’t her son, like I wasn’t supposed to be part of her and my father’s family.:

:Wow: Harry commented. :Didn’t Lucius notice?:

:I think that on a subconscious level he did, but is far too in love with her to take them into consideration. Even though I have doubted my father’s love for me many times, I never in my life doubted his love for her.:

:So you think your mother is secretly following Voldemort?: Harry asked, confused as to what Draco was getting at.

:Not really: the blonde replied, staying silent for a moment as if he too were unsure of where his observations were leading. :It can’t be that…why would she need to hide that from my father? That would be pointless:

:Unless: Harry returned :she knows something’s not quite right with your father now. Maybe she thinks she has an advantage over Lucius by being involved when he is turning to the other side.:

Shaking his head, Draco sighed, before remembering that Harry couldn’t see him. :If she were in ranks with Voldemort, she would have been there long before my father’s loyalty ever wavered.:

Just then the door opened, and Lucius walked in, stopping short when Harry entered his line of vision. His cool expression wavered to shock for a split second before quickly reverting to a slight sneer.

:I don’t think your father had anything to do with it.:

:Why?:

:He just walked in and he looked just as surprised to see me as I am to be here.:

“Narcissa?”

The blonde woman finally erased her icy glare and looked up at her husband carefully. “Yes?”

“Why is Harry Potter bound to a chair in my library?”

“I thought you might want him there.”

Lucius looked surprised at her for a moment before continuing. “How did this happen?”

Narcissa’s smile looked demented, and immensely self-pleased. “Seventh-years are so helpful.”

:Seventh-year Slytherin: Harry said quickly. :And I’m in your library.:

:I think it was Nott: Draco seethed. :I’ll fucking kill him.:

“Narcissa, what’s going on? You don’t support what I do, why would you bring him here?”

Watching closely now, Harry noticed as Narcissa’s expression shifted for a moment. “I thought it was time that I looked at the other side,” she replied, but with a shred less composure than before.

Lucius sighed. “Our son will be none too pleased.”

Narcissa’s expression wavered more forcibly, this time at the words our son, finally landing on a look that clearly said Why should I care?, making Harry’s eyes widen.

:Draco… I don’t think that this actually has anything to do with Voldemort.:

“Potter.”

Turning his head to meet Lucius’s gaze, Harry saw a fleeting hardness in the silver eyes; almost like a promise that he would not be there for long. Then Lucius raised his wand and muttered the counter-curse to release him from his bonds. Narcissa’s eyes narrowed, but she said nothing and followed her husband when he walked from the room.

Standing up from his chair the moment the door was closed and locked, Harry took another look around the Malfoy library. It really was wonderfully breathtaking, but he had to admit that he would expect nothing less of the Malfoys.

:This place is amazing: he said appreciatively, walking toward the closest bookcase and running his hands along the smooth spines of many books. :Hermione would love to be in my position.:

:She would love to have been abducted by my mother, Potter?: The comment was definitely one where Draco’s eyebrow would be raised, and the mental image of Draco stranding there, eyebrow raised and gazing at nothing, made Harry laugh.

:You know what I meant, prat. How do I live with your sarcasm?:

:You love me too much to live without it.:

Harry rolled his eyes. He had been traveling the huge library, walking around rather aimlessly, until his eyes fell on a row of rather plain leather-bound books on the very bottom shelf of one bookcase. Bending down to reach one, he pulled it out carefully and opened the cover.

The name Narcissa Black stared back at him.

Maybe these are diaries, he thought to himself.

:Harry, are you snooping around in my library?:

:No!: he protested defensively. :I’m just walking around.:

:You’re not picking out any books and looking at them, then?:

:No…:

:So what were you thinking might be diaries? The bookshelves? Or perhaps you meant the table.:

:Fine, I’m looking inside a book! Are you bloody happy now?:

:I believe I am: the blonde replied smugly, making Harry sigh. :Let me guess – a row of black leather-bound books on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, belonging to my mother.:

:You’ve looked at them?: Harry asked, surprised.

:I’ve looked at them, not in them. To be honest, I have never really wanted to. Although…find the one of her last year at Hogwarts and the one right after it. They’re in order and they start in her fourth year, I think.:

The Gryffindor found the requested books with a minute, and asked Draco what he was supposed to do with him. :It’s not as if I can just hold them and let your parents see that I took them.:

:Of course not, git. Use a shrinking spell and put them in your pocket.:

No sooner had Harry done as Draco had requested, than Lucius had walked back into the room, without Narcissa. Harry quickly stepped back from the bookcase, acting as though he were just passing it in his exploration.

“Potter, do you think anyone knows that you’re gone?”

Harry jumped, startled. It hadn’t occurred to him to ask Draco about that.

:How many people know I’m gone?:

:Dumbledore and me. You’ve only been gone for a few hours; Dumbledore didn’t want worry the others just yet since you’ve only been gone a few hours. They all just think we’re in our room together. He didn’t even seem that worried. I asked him why, and he just shook his head and said that you would be fine.:

“It’s only been a few hours, so probably just Draco and Dumbledore.”

Nodding, Lucius crossed the room a few strides while saying, “Come with me.”

Harry followed him across the library. “Why am I even here?”

For a long moment, Lucius didn’t say anything. They reached the other side of the room and stopped in front of a large, bare section of wall. After muttering several spells, a door appeared and Harry looked up at Lucius, alarmed. He was about to ask what this was when Lucius replied. “Narcissa insists that she wanted to do me a favor.”

“You don’t believe her.”

The other looked at him. “No, I don’t.”

“Why, then?”

“There’s a lot you don’t know about Draco, Potter.”

“These things I don’t know – are they things Draco doesn’t know as well?”

Lucius looked at him thoughtfully. “Maybe I don’t give you enough credit, Potter.” Then, he motioned for them to enter the room that the door revealed. Shutting the door behind them, he turned towards it and said a few more spells, making the door blend back into the wall.

“Those diaries you took” – Harry blanched, and Lucius smirked – “read through them with Draco. These are not things I can tell either of you.” His smirk faded into a rather bitter expression. “I will say this. Do not let Draco read them on his own. He will need you.”

Harry’s expression grew rather confused. :There is definitely something strange going on with your family.:

“Now, Potter,” Lucius said brusquely, “This fireplace” - he waved a hand towards it – “is connected to Dumbledore’s office.”

:Go to Dumbledore’s office, Draco. I think your father is taking me there.:

“The Dark Lord does not know of your presence here; the quicker I get you out of here, the better. I am coming with you.”

A pot of Floo powder was placed roughly in Harry’s hands, and, getting the message, he took a quick handful and gave it back.

“Just say ‘Dumbledore’s office.’”

Harry stepped into the green fire and spoke. He was, as always, hit with the revelation of how much he hated traveling by the Floo network. And, as always, he fell out of the fireplace gracelessly, filthy and without his glasses.

He replaced his glasses just in time to see Lucius step from the fireplace ideally, his expensive robes without a speck of ash.

“Can everyone bloody do that except-?”

Draco, who had thrown himself towards Harry and was currently hugging him so hard that he was having trouble breathing, cut off his complaint.

“Um – hi – ” Harry managed to choke out, his face turning an interesting shade of red. Dumbledore looked on the verge of laughter, and even Lucius had a smirk, his eyes seeming amused.

He finally managed to extract himself from Draco, looking into his silver eyes that were filled with love and relief. “I was only gone a few hours.”

Draco hit his arm rather hard. “You say that as if you had just gone somewhere and forgot to tell me – which better not happen, by the way.”

Even Harry was amused now, and it showed in his glittering emerald eyes. “Of course it won’t,” he said, his tone placating.

Draco’s eyes narrowed, seeing his boyfriend’s amusement. “It’s not funny.”

“Boys.” Dumbledore’s voice shook them from their own world, and they turned to him. Draco’s arms were still attached firmly to Harry, who didn’t look as though he minded this at all.

“Nott is the one who attacked Potter.”

“I knew it!” Draco said, not sounding at all happy.

“Who told you this?” The question came from Dumbledore, who was learning forward in his chair, regarding Lucius with a probing expression.

The elder Malfoy looked uncomfortable, and it took him a moment to answer. “Narcissa.” This was said as if Lucius very much regretted that it was her name he had to say.

“How does she know this?” Dumbledore’s voice was eerily calm, like he was only going through these questions to confirm what he already knew.

There was another moment of silence. “She’s the one who sent him to do it,” he replied finally.

“At the request of Voldemort?”

Appearing even more troubled than before, Lucius uttered a quiet no.

“Then why?”

This time Lucius was silent for minutes, and it became clear that he was not going to answer in Harry and Draco’s presence. Dumbledore quietly asked them to leave.

As they walked in the direction of their rooms, Harry commented, “It looks like we have a new problem on our hands. Rather ironic, don’t you think, that it has nothing to do with Voldemort.”

Draco sent him a sideways glance. “How are you so sure?”

“I asked your father why I was in Malfoy Manor. His response was ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about Draco.’ I asked him if there was a lot you didn’t know as well, and he told me that maybe he should give me more credit, which I took as a yes. There is definitely something going on that we don’t know about. My guess is that the only ones who do know are your mother and father, and probably Dumbledore now.”

“So I was right when I thought that there was something off about my mother,” Draco said quietly.

“I think so. Oh, he also knows I took the diaries.”

Draco opened his mouth to speak, his eyes becoming fearful, but Harry didn’t let him speak.

“He told me to keep them and read them through with you. He said that these were not things that he could tell either of us, and that I should always be with you when we read them.”

Reaching their room, Harry said the password and they entered quickly. He felt a surge of joy at being home so quickly. “I must say, that kidnapping certainly didn’t last long.”

Rolling his eyes, Draco pulled Harry by the arm toward their bedroom. “What are you doing?” the other asked.

“I’m fucking tired of all this serious shit,” Draco said, shutting the bedroom door behind them. “The only thing I want to think about right now is you. The only thing I want to feel is how I feel when you’re with me. I can’t deal with all of this right now.”

With that, he dropped down on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. Harry sat down next to him and placed an arm around him, but he still didn’t look up.

“Draco?”

“What,” he replied, looking up reluctantly, obviously thinking Harry was going to say something to try to lighten the mood. However, Harry knew that nothing he said would help at the moment, so he did the only other thing he could think of. He kissed Draco, trying to infuse all of his love for the blonde into one passionate, breathtaking, rather desperate kiss.

Immediately wrapping his arms around Harry, Draco pulled the other as close to him as possible. When they were almost fused together, he ran his hands up and down Harry’s back before tangling them in thick raven hair.

One of Harry’s hands was placed on the back of the blonde’s neck, pushing his mouth forward in order to kiss him harder. The other was lifting Draco’s shirt, and they broke their kiss only long enough to remove both of their shirts. They fell backward onto the bed, side by side, neither wanting to be dominant; for once, they didn’t want to compete.

They fumbled with each other’s belts, and a moment later both pairs of pants and boxers sailed to the floor beside their bed. Draco hooked his leg over Harry’s, pressing their lower halves together roughly. Harry moaned into his mouth, and he smirked, repeating the action. This time, Harry reciprocated, and both lost any individual feelings they had, as happened whenever they were together. They thought everything together, felt everything together; every part of them moved in sync to the other’s body.

As they moved against each other in the darkness, their mouths never left each other’s. Harry knew that this was the blonde’s way of telling him that he was scared for him, even if it had only been a few hours; through his emotional kisses, through the way one of his hands held the Gryffindor’s face as he kissed him, through the way the other ran up and down Harry’s side and chest, memorizing each part. Harry couldn’t remember ever feeling this needed or cared about, and he knew that no one else would ever be able to make him feel the same way.

Neither lasted very long; both were too full of thoughts of the other to bother taking their time. They came at the same instant, both crying out and then collapsing onto each other, breathing shallow. Five minutes passed before their breathing became steady, and Harry looked down at the blonde head on his shoulder. “Draco?”

There was no answer; Draco had fallen asleep, his breath warm and constant on Harry’s bare shoulder. Smiling down at the blonde, Harry pulled the covers over both of them. Then, he reached next to the bed to get his pants, reaching into the pocket and retrieving the two shrunken books. He whispered the spell to return them to their normal size and placed the later one back on the floor.

He opened the diary of Narcissa’s seventh year at Hogwarts and began to read.

There weren’t that many entries. Narcissa only wrote once or twice a month, but the entries were rather lengthy. The first few months of the diary only talked about school and friends. In about the middle of January, however, she began to talk about Lucius.

January 13

I spoke to Lucius again today, this time at dinner. He sat beside me and started talking about the latest story in the Daily Prophet. I thought I was the only one our age who bothered to read actual news. It was a very pleasant surprise, and I am glad that there is more to him that just his perfect features.

For months, all she spoke about was Lucius; their conversations, their time alone, her feelings for him. Their relationship seemed rather perfect. It reinforced Harry’s belief in what Lucius had told him on Halloween.

When he got up to the time around graduation, her entries were written hurriedly, as if she didn’t have much time to even be writing. She spoke about going to stay with Lucius for a while after graduation and finally meeting his parents. When graduation finally rolled around, Harry was as anxious for her to go to Lucius’s as she had been in the diary. On graduation day, Lucius proposed and the entry from this day was filled with nothing but words of happiness and the future that lie ahead of her. It was obvious that she truly loved Lucius.

Finally, Narcissa and Lucius left Hogwarts. She wrote of how charming his parents seemed, and how they seemed to have an air of coolness and calm. It really must run in the family, Harry thought. Taking this thought as a quick distraction, he took a moment to look at the clock and was surprised to discover that he had been reading for two hours. I’ll just read the last entry about her visit with the Malfoys. If only he had known just how much that one entry held.

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July 9

Lucius keeps asking me what’s wrong. How could I possibly explain this to him? How in Merlin’s name would I ever tell him what happened last night?

I woke in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I got up and opened the door to Lucius’s room. I’m not sure where I was going, all I knew was that I couldn’t sleep and needed to move around. I opened the door and the sight that greeted me was one that I am sure that I will never in my life forget. Lucius’s father and a man I had never seen before, with black hair, kissing in the corridor.

I couldn’t help it; I gasped. They broke apart, the unfamiliar man looking alarmed, and Lucius’s father just stood there, glaring at me with the most hateful look I have ever encountered. He turned his attention to the man and, quietly yet firmly, told him to leave. The man quickly left, and I became scared, for now Lucius’s father was completely focused on me.

I can barely write this. My hand is trembling, for I cannot believe that someone so closely related to Lucius could do these things. But I must face that he did.

He placed a silencing spell on me and grabbed my arm, leading me for what seemed like hours, until he pushed me into a room and followed. He bound me to the bed, and then he…oh God…he raped me.

I struggled, of course, despite the binding, but it was no use. When he was finished, he pulled out and unbound me, leading me back to Lucius’s room. All of this went on without him saying a word. Finally, when we reached the room, he roughly turned my head to meet that hateful gaze of his. His words were icy, emotionless, and deadly.

“If you ever tell anyone what you saw or what happened tonight, I will tell Lucius that you were willing. Who do you think he will believe, you or his own father?”

Those words, those awful words, are staring back up at me from this page, making me feel as if I’m burning from the inside, for he is right. Lucius’s loyalty to his father is unwavering; he looks up to that man like no one else. He will not believe.

But there is one thing that frightens me above all else. Above this horrible act, above having to hide that I saw Lucius’s father kissing a man. He used nothing, meaning no protection spell. And that scares me out of my mind.