Redeem Me

DISCLAIMER: Warning! I make no claim to any property of J.K. Rowling's, and am in no way profiting by this. I do offer her my sincerest thanks for allowing us this garden of the mind in which we play. Further Warning! This story...and likely any I ever write…are dominated by gay themes and characters. That's how it is, if this in any way makes you uncomfortable...do not read further.

Redeem Me…by Samayel

Chapter 19: Bad Luck and Bad Dreams


‘Just my luck. I’m under investigation by the Ministry, Molly is furious with me, and she wants ME to apply Scaradicate Salve…to Draco…the first person I’ve been attracted to in more than a year…and he’s a fucking homophobe! Now if Voldemort will just pop out of my ass and Crucio me, my day will be perfect!’

Harry stood at the bottom of the stairs, holding a fresh pot of salve and chewing his lip. Molly was housecleaning and arranging rooms for her soon-to-be visiting children, and Arthur was back to work, so that left Harry to tend to Draco. At least Molly had seen to breakfast for him, but she’d hovered on the brink of scolding him all morning. Only Harry’s hasty surrender on the subject of treating Draco’s scars had prevented a morning meltdown of legendary proportions.

He’d found Draco already awake in the morning, and the blonde boy had taken his meal in bed, still tired from the fit he’d had yesterday morning. Harry blamed himself for this fix. If he hadn’t stayed out so late, or scared the hell out of Draco to start with, this state of affairs never would have come to pass. He hadn’t even meant to argue with Kingsley, but the man’s tone had just set Harry’s teeth on edge, and harsh words had come out before he even realized what he was saying.

Molly had been freshly outraged when Kingsley stormed off, and she had only spoken to him this morning out of necessity. All in all, Harry’s head was spinning from the number of problems on his plate, and the day was only starting. As it was, he had only one advantage in his corner this morning. He’d wanked in the shower for the first time in days.

His libido had been pre-occupied for several days, ever since it had shocked him by responding to thoughts of Draco. This morning he’d finally acknowledged its insistent call, and had one off while the shower was running. It had been long overdue, and this time he’d let his guard down and just enjoyed the flickering images of Draco that slipped through his mind’s eye.

He could remember what Draco looked like during their last year at Hogwarts, before everything had fallen apart, and war had rocked the wizarding world. In retrospect, with the anger he’d felt then distant and meaningless, Draco had been beautiful. Lean and sleek, fair and full of vitality. Only the cruelty in his smirk, and the barbed tone of his voice, had spoiled his presence.

Comfortable in a haze of steam, Harry indulged himself in memories of Draco during their time at Hogwarts. Walking, sitting in class, or soaring above the Quidditch pitch, and then he let his imagination take flight, transforming the images into things that had never been. Closeness that almost smothered, hungry lips working against one another’s, and dark, calloused hands against velvet soft, pale skin, unmarred by war and the savagery of others.

It hadn’t taken long, given that it had been days since his last wank. Harry had stifled a groan, eyes clenched shut, and spilled his seed onto the floor of the tub, letting the pouring water rinse the small blobs of white down the drain. He’d leaned against the wall to catch his breath, and lamented that his fantasies were hopeless flights of fancy that were just never meant to be. Then he dried and dressed himself, took a short jog around the property, after making sure that Draco was awake for breakfast, and returned less than a half hour later, only to receive instructions from Molly, who wasn’t brooking any opposition from him. Apply the salve to Draco’s scars.

Dark, calloused hands against velvet soft, pale skin…

Somedays, even being the most powerful sorcerer of recent times couldn’t stop a day from being a complete wreck. Harry trudged up the steps to meet his destiny, footfalls as heavy and rueful as the slamming doors of crypts.

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Draco hovered on the brink of consciousness. He’d tried to stay up all night, warding off nightmares of the like he’d had the night before, but after breakfast, which had been delicious as always, the nervous edge that hunger brought evaporated, and it got harder and harder to remain awake.

During the night, he’d mulled over so many things. Questions he had for Harry had crossed his mind a hundred times. He’d wondered if he’d been right to reject Kingsley so quick, and he wondered if the flash bastard had been subtly fishing for information about Harry, as well as former Death Eaters. The notion that the Weasleys, especially Molly, weren’t sickened by the idea of homosexuality, had played heavily in his mind as well. Now he languished on the borderland between dreams and the waking world, and without a fresh dose of Dreamless Sleep, the worst of his nightmares took root and grew like a wildfire.

It was always ‘Mr. Malfoy’ now. Never Draco. MacNair came the most often, glutting his darkest lusts on Draco, who had long since given up hope of struggling, and he had learned that the greater his show of discomfort and pain, the sooner MacNair would finish. Not that it was hard to act his part, since every encounter with the hulking and brutish MacNair was terribly painful already, and always ended with Draco being dragged back to his cell, sometimes by his hair, and flung onto his straw pallet, where he was left to whimper, ache and bleed, MacNair’s recently spent seed still trickling from him, mingled with his own blood.

Anti-Apparition Wards were in place, and his wand had been snapped in front of him, for Rodolphus’ amusement. He was left no implements with which to free himself, and his cell had become his only refuge. Hunkered in a pile of straw and wrapped in the same stinking blanket he had since he'd been first confined here, this was the one place that had come to symbolize rest, and the brief end of torment. He’d tried to kill himself several times, only to wind up being healed and revived by his captors, and after the punishments he endured in the wake of those attempts, he abandoned even that final desperate hope of freedom.

Rodolphus himself came only infrequently, but his softer steps terrified Draco far more than MacNair’s booted stomp. Rodolphus was never satisfied with mere pain of the flesh, and his every visit heralded a new horror for Draco, another hell of the mind that would only stop when his uncle grew bored. Rodolphus had studied more than one Muggle art. Aside from a familiarity with their drugs and a natural gift for abusing psychology, he was also fond of the crudities of Muggle medicine…most particularly, the scalpel.

Enervated, helplessly awake and horrifyingly conscious, Draco had often watched his uncle calmly commit vivisection, opening and displaying portions of Draco’s body, while Draco was forced to watch. All the while, Rodolphus would quietly discuss the past, speaking of Lucius, and of Narcissa, and of Bellatrix, who had died by Harry Potter’s hand months ago. Some of the sessions had lasted hours, and Draco would have preferred Hyde-Pratt’s penchant for whips and hot irons, or MacNair’s savage rapine, rather than face his uncle’s cool demeanor and dismissive tone of voice during mind-shattering torture again.

It never stopped. Once, after a week of being deliberately starved, he’d had the most beautiful dream. He was taken from his cell, found himself bathed and dressed in finery, his hair no longer matted and stringy, but as long and fine as his father’s had once been. He was guided to the dinner table by Hyde-Pratt, who pulled a seat back for him as a gentleman would for a guest. MacNair sat at one end, dining peacefully, Rodolphus sat at the other, sipping wine. A vast feast was set upon the table, and all he had to do was take his fork and spear some food for himself, and his starvation would be ended.

He touched the fork…and the world pulled away from him. He was Portkeyed back to his cell, and the glamour that had made him whole and beautiful again simply ended. It hadn’t been a dream. It was just Rodolphus’ idea of a joke. The soft, elegant steps of Rodolphus LeStrange were echoing faintly as he approached Draco’s cell, and though he always cringed, and feared the approach of the others, only his uncle’s approach caused him to break completely down. Begging had done no good, and Draco had wept until he couldn’t do so any longer. All that was left to him were screams, and the sound of his uncle’s approaching steps.

Harry’s boot steps on the stairs and in the hall snapped Draco to wakefulness, and he was past the point of screaming after dreams like this. He lay paralyzed with fear, soiling himself unconsciously, muted whimpers all that he could voice. He wasn’t truly conscious, even if he was awake, for in Draco’s mind, he was still in a stinking cell, waiting for a person whose art was inducing pure terror, and Draco was his chosen medium.

Harry entered the room, and found Draco in the same state he’d been in the morning before. A pitiful hibernation of the mind, which Harry knew he would have to break. It took only a moment to force Draco’s mind to full consciousness, but it took a series of spells to bring Draco to a state resembling sanity. Only then was it plausible to give him potions that would calm him, and Harry sat quietly while Draco sobbed for the better part of half an hour.

The part that really stung was not being able to reach out and touch him. Harry could clean him by spell, rescue him from the realm of nightmares with the force of his mind, and cast the spells that would make Draco able to function again, but he couldn’t hold him, or even touch him, without sending Draco into a panicked fit. It was frustrating, and helplessness in the face of a problem was not something Harry handled well. He propped his elbows on his knees, and placed his head in his hands, listening to the sounds of sorrow that came from Draco.

’Fucking helpless. All the power in the fucking world and I can’t make this better. I can’t touch him. I can’t tell him how I feel about him…I don’t even know what to fucking say! I can kill a Dark Lord, and finish off his minions by the score, but when I finally need to help someone for real, someone who deserves it, and it makes me sick to see them like this…I can’t do a bloody thing! Fucking pathetic!’

Harry let his hands run into his hair, and felt his face burn. His eyes stung, and he almost laughed when he realized that he was crying. He hadn’t cried in years, and he certainly wasn’t crying like Draco was, but it was a shock to him that he still could. He’d wept himself empty after Sirius had been killed, and Dumbledore’s murder had taken the last of his tears. Even the loss of Ginny and Hermione hadn’t brought new tears to his eyes, but his inability to help Draco had. Wasn’t that something?

Draco had wept himself out, quietly crying into his pillows, and when he finally risked a humiliated glance upward, he saw Harry holding his head and occasionally wiping his eyes. Harry Potter…the Boy Who Killed…was crying. It was utterly surreal. Especially since it was sometimes hard to tell if Harry actually wanted him alive or dead.

“What…why are you…you know?”

The words came out with a soft croak, and Harry sat upright and leaned back, staring at the ceiling with red-rimmed eyes.

“Because, Draco…I hate seeing you like this…and knowing I can’t help. I wish…I wish there were a spell for this, but there isn’t, and all I can do is watch. If I could make it all go away, I would. You know I’d do that for you if I could, don’t you?”

Draco stared at Harry in quiet surprise. He’d been the honest one so far, saying how he felt with no hesitation. It was the first time Harry had been so open with him. Harry’s anger was always quick to show itself, but he hadn’t let anything else show in front of Draco, and the subtle realization that Harry cared was stunning. It hurt Harry to see him in this state. Why that knowledge made his heart leap in his chest, despite the way he felt at the moment, he couldn’t say, and didn’t dare examine, but it felt good.

Harry looked down when Draco’s hand rested on top of his, catching him utterly off guard.

“You do enough just by saying that. Thank you.”

Draco kept his eyes closed, and held onto Harry’s hand while he let himself drift to sleep, feeling oddly safer, the warmth of Harry’s hand in his own driving away darker thoughts while potion-induced slumber overtook his senses.

Harry sat, unwilling to move an inch while Draco rested peacefully, a vice-like grip in place on Harry’s hand until he’d fallen completely asleep. Harry made himself as comfortable as he could, and mentally penciled a nap into his day’s plans, content just to quietly watch a pale hand, with soft and slender fingers, twined around his own tanned and careworn ones.

TBC!!!