Chapter Eleven of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- Not Passion's Slave


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Chapter Eleven—Not Passion’s Slave

Lucius watched Potter and Draco closely when they came back to the Manor, though neither knew he was there. Draco sat on a couch in a room that Narcissa had liked to use for the reception of guests whom she didn’t particularly want, but which Draco had always liked for the heavy wooden shelves on the walls and the glass windows that shifted back and forth in permanent enchantment, glowing with jewel-like light. Potter sat on a chair in front of him, leaning forwards with head bowed. They seemed to be arguing, but only rarely did their voices rise enough for Lucius to make out the words.

At one point, Potter said, “But of course I think the imposter is doing what he’s doing with magic. There’s been no sign of anyone helping him—“

“It doesn’t mean it can’t happen,” Draco said, and flipped his hair behind his shoulders with a look Lucius knew well. Once it had signaled that Draco was about to start bellowing for a toy or a sweet. Now, his tone only grew tighter. “You may have missed something in your investigations. An accomplice. A link to me. You certainly missed a Malfoy relative, if he can pass so easily through the wards.”

“You don’t seem to believe there are any unknown Malfoy relatives—“

“But maybe there are, and of course if they were unknown, then I wouldn’t know about them, either, no matter how well-educated I was in the history of my family—“

Their voices sank again, and Potter leaned further forwards, eyes fixed on Draco as if he were the sun rising after a long, thick night. Lucius hissed under his breath. Potter, of all people, ought to be safe from Draco. He had vigilant friends who hated Draco’s family and no need to depend on the Malfoys’ wealth or fame when he had plenty of his own. But no, of course Potter had become attracted to Draco, or maybe even fallen in love with him.

Lucius had seen that shining-star look in faces before, most recently in his own mirror when he thought of Narcissa, but before that whenever he glanced at Bellatrix daydreaming of her Lord. It could lead to nothing good when its subject was alive.

In Bellatrix’s case, it led to—

Lucius shook his head, sternly forbidding himself to think about that, and then blinked as Potter stood up and strode out of the receiving room, leaving Draco to pout by himself. Maybe they’d had enough disagreement for one day, or maybe Potter needed to leave Draco to do some research for himself. Whichever it was, it represented a chance. Potter was making straight for the doorway where Lucius leaned.

He took a step back, so it would seem as if he had naturally passed by and not as if he were waiting for Potter, and listened to the beat of his own heart for long moments.

*

Harry paused curiously when he noticed Lucius Malfoy waiting in the doorway that led to the staircase. He really had no reason to distrust Draco’s father, he supposed, but on the other hand, he doubted that Lucius had a reason to like him, either. He let one hand hover above his wand and inclined his head, courteously enough, he hoped.

“Hello, sir,” he said. “Can I do something for you?”

“Why are you leaving my son alone?” Lucius glided a step forwards, and Harry wouldn’t have been surprised if his own hand was resting on his wand, too. “I thought you were supposed to protect him at all times whilst this attacker moves about.”

“Yes,” said Harry. “But he’d had enough of my company for today, and he wanted to do some research in a family library that he apparently can’t share with me.” A glance over his shoulder revealed that Malfoy had already left.

“And you are willing to risk his life?”

Harry regarded Lucius thoughtfully. “How secure do you think the wards on the Manor are, Mr. Malfoy? Your son seems to trust them for the present. Now that you know how our enemy entered, surely you can prevent it from happening a second time?”

“That is the problem,” said Lucius, speaking roughly, as if he had made a belated decision to trust Harry. “We don’t know how he entered. Severus says that his inspection of the wards reveals that it is as if Draco himself entered. The wards welcomed him like a member of the family they had temporarily forgotten.”

“Well, the possibility of Malfoy blood—“

“They parted too smoothly for him to be a distant relative.” Lucius set his mouth in a grim line. It didn’t improve his face, which in turn showed traces of the insanity Draco had hinted at, Harry thought. He looked as if he had spent long nights squinting at candles and into mirrors and reading books of Dark Arts. “Besides, I have done my own research. We have no such distant relative.”

“There’s always the chance that someone missed something.”

Lucius laughed. “This is the kind of mistake that my ancestors were extremely unlikely to make.”

Knowing the Malfoys’ obsession with pure blood, Harry could see that. But he had to hold out hope that he could solve the crime. “A distant relative remains our best guess,” he said. “Unless you think the man I’ve been around for the last day isn’t your son.” That would at least explain the oddities of Draco’s behavior in the Imperatrix.

And some other things, said Hermione’s voice in her head. Harry hoped he concealed his leap of startlement by shifting his weight. She had gone away for a time to devote herself to her own studies, and he had accepted that he wouldn’t hear her voice anymore today.

“I do not think that,” said Lucius. “But I would tell you to be careful of him nevertheless.”

Harry had to roll his eyes. “I think he’s hardly going to harm me, Mr. Malfoy.”

“You have no idea what sort of conversation he has haunted me with over the past few years.” Lucius leaned forwards and spoke urgently. “He turned as dark as thunder every time your name came up, or muttered and swore about how he would defeat you someday. He started his business in the first place because he knew it was something you’d never been connected with. That was why he refused to become a curse-breaker or a Quidditch star, because he believed that others would always mentally compare him to you.”

Harry felt a squeezing flutter in his chest, but it was sympathy, and not hope. That life was not a kind he would have wished on anyone. He might have mourned because he couldn’t have Draco, but he had also kept abreast of politics, arrested criminals, contributed to carefully selected charitable organizations, and found—and lost—lovers. Besides, if Draco had a ruling passion, then surely it was the power he obtained from the building of his houses, and his pride in how graceful and beautiful they were. Harry, if he even counted on that scale of Draco’s achievements, was surely a small dot.

“You don’t believe me.” Lucius’s voice broke into his musing. Harry looked up to see him shaking his head in wonder. “Has Draco got to you that quickly? Has he convinced you that everything I say must be false?”

“I’ve been around him the past day,” Harry said. “He’s done some strange things, yes, but he’s in danger of losing his life and he has to deal with someone he hated for years. Strangeness is to be expected and excused.”

“You trust his actions more than my words.” Lucius again shook his head. “Though Draco is very good at lying with his body. I cannot tell you how many, both men and women, have thought he was in love with them.”

That’s not what I want, Harry thought instantly, not what I really want.

I thought it was. Hermione sounded confused.

I want Draco to be happy, and free. I want to stop him from being hurt. If I could play a part in the latter, that’s enough for me.

Oh, Harry.

But Hermione, even if she was privy to her thoughts, wasn’t privy to Harry’s deepest and fondest wishes. He hadn’t shared them with anyone but Ginny. Harry didn’t think he could keep himself from falling in love if Draco offered his heart, but Harry doubted that would ever happen—not to him. Sleeping together would have to be enough.

And now you’re willing to compromise your morals and your wish for a deeper connection with him just for sex. Hermione sounded caught between amusement and despair. Harry, have you listened to your own thoughts lately?

“I will attempt to bring you proof,” Lucius was saying, “proof that his emotions for you run deep and are not always positive. I would wish you to be more alert, but it does not sound as if that will happen.” He turned and walked away down the corridor with a dignity that Harry had to admire, in a broken man.

Harry climbed the staircase and lay down on his conjured bed in Draco’s room, closing his eyes. Thoughts darted and threaded through his mind: Draco’s hair shining in his office, Faustine’s words in the Imperatrix, Hermione’s worries, the way Ron had teased and cajoled and shouted at him that morning.

He tried to quell his worries about Draco and the feeling that he might be attacked whilst Harry wasn’t with him. The times Harry had been with him, he had been able to hold the imposter off, but not to stop him Apparating away. And he had to rest at some point; the wounds he’d taken earlier and two battles in twenty-four hours had exhausted him.

Besides, Draco had said that the only people who could enter the library he was going to were him and Lucius. He ought to be safe.

I’ll look into the mystery of how someone could appear to be Malfoy himself, Hermione said suddenly. I hope it might help. And get you away from Malfoy more quickly.

Harry grunted his thanks, and then drifted into an uneasy sleep. He dreamed of flapping parchments, for some reason, each covered with secrets that he had to read before they disappeared—but Draco, standing on the other side of the room and covered with a cloak of braided red ribbons, kept tearing them to shreds before Harry could capture them. His face was utterly emotionless.

*

The philosophy of an unerring Time was widely accepted among wizarding experts in the sixteenth century. This was the view that any mistake with a Time-Turner or a traveling spell was not fatal, because Time would simply absorb the mortal who had tried to change it and resume its natural course. But others have argued that we could not be sure what the “natural course” of Time was, and we might believe that it was exactly as it had always been simply because our memories altered with changing Time…

Draco sighed and leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms above his head and wringing his shoulders from one side to the other. The author he’d been concentrating on for the past hour, Parcelsus Greenblatt, wasn’t the most exciting writer in the world, and so far he seemed more interesting in recounting various theories of time travel than asking what would happen if a mistake was made.

But Draco still thought it most likely he would find an answer here. After all, how could the imposter be anything but himself from an alternate time-stream? That would explain why he looked so much like Draco but had a few details wrong with him. Of course the Draco of that other century or other time would have developed differently. But his blood and his bone would still be Malfoy, and the house would recognize him. Even the wards on Draco’s office probably would.

He bent over the book again, skimming the long paragraphs until he finally reached one where it seemed that Greenblatt was going to talk about consequences.

The theory of Time I most favor argues that we each have a home, a place in the braided streams of time and space that we might call our own. We exist in many forms, and every major decision we make in our lives produces another stream, with a slightly altered version of ourselves existing in that world. Of course, the other versions of ourselves can die, and it would then be safe to visit that time-stream, because you would not be disturbing or replacing anyone. But I think the place that you were born in would still call out to you.

But what might happen if one came into a time-stream where a version of oneself still existed—where that person was at home and you were not? Then, I believe, the case would be very much altered. The other version would be the “real” version of yourself there, and you the ghost, the shadow. When one sees one’s doppelganger, runs the ancient legend, one is about to experience disaster or an evil fate. I believe many of those evil fates were the result of the time-stream reasserting itself, championing the rights of the version born in it to exist there and rejecting the false one.

What might happen to the intruder? Several things. He could be sent violently back to his own time. He might die in an accident—or his other self might die in an accident, because though Time and the world would champion the one born there, claim him as their natural child, that is not to say that he would not be destroyed in the convulsions of the moment as it tried to come right again. And of course the intruder might kill the version of himself who is truly at home there. Such tales are rife among the children of the wizarding world, in part because of the belief that all such intruders are fleeing the destruction of their worlds and time-streams—this is not true—and in part because of the daydream that we could escape into a better life for ourselves, complete with family and friends and all our best memories, if we only knew how. In the case of such a murder, I believe the alternate version of the self could settle comfortably into the old one’s place, as he could if he traveled to a world where the version of himself had already died.

Draco nodded slowly. This theory was a bit sketchy when applied to his imposter, perhaps, but it accurately explained everything: the minute differences from Draco, the way he’d grown increasingly desperate and tried to kill Draco directly—he must be afraid of Time’s vengeance catching him if he didn’t kill Draco soon—and even the minor crimes. He’d been trying to embarrass Draco enough to make him leave the country or withdraw from society, and then he would have had a much easier time claiming Draco’s place.

What to do about it?

Draco gave a small smile and began to flip pages towards the back of the book, where Greenblatt had listed a section called “Banishing Spells.” Those might help in exiling the imposter back to his own time. Draco had no particular wish to kill the bastard, when there was an entire Auror Department waiting for the chance to accuse him of murder, and he couldn’t depend on Time to choose his side instead of the other’s.

Of course, the best that could happen might be Potter killing him, and then my “falling” into bed with him, overcome with “gratitude.” He is such a Gryffindor that he might easily buy that.

But first things first, Draco told himself, and began to read the section on Banishing Spells, which indeed seemed to be what he had thought it was, though it would take a while to choose the best one.

*

Harry hesitated outside the blank door, staring at it. It was superficially different from the similar door he had once confronted in the dungeons at Hogwarts: it was made of shining golden-colored marble, a single flat sheet of it, and not ancient wood, and the corridors around it were also high and bright, not dripping damp stone. But nevertheless Harry thought he could feel cold and poison breathing out around it. If he sniffed hard enough, surely he would catch a hint of hemlock fumes.

He did not want to enter Snape’s private potions lab, he thought, even as he raised his hand and knocked. But he really didn’t have much choice.

Over the past few days, Draco had done continuous research, Lucius had continued to speak blunt warnings that Harry couldn’t believe, Hermione had given him a chattering stream of ideas about time travel and alternate worlds but nothing concrete, and Harry had driven himself slowly mad watching for further attacks that didn’t come. Kingsley had suggested, when Harry owled him, that three failed attacks in one day might have been enough for their criminal. He was withdrawn now, plotting a strategy that he thought would win him everything when he finally attacked.

That was what Harry was worried about, of course, because if he plotted well enough, he might really manage to kill Draco next time. But Kingsley hadn’t responded to the latest owl in which he suggested that, and Harry wanted to do something with his fear.

That left Snape, whom he hadn’t seen in several days, as the only source of information that Harry didn’t know for certain was uncommunicative right now.

No one had responded to his knock. Harry hissed under his breath and pounded on the door hard enough to rattle the marble in its frame.

The fourth or fifth time his fist descended, the door grew soft beneath it. Harry yelped in surprise as his hand sank into cloud, and then he was pulled violently after it. He tried to muster enough wandless magic to defend himself, but strips of choking mist wrapped around his mouth and crept down his throat, and he lost the impulse in the terrifying struggle to breathe.

Then all his blood rushed to his head as he was suspended upside-down, the sudden reversal of gravity making him quite ill. Harry shut his eyes and hissed again under the forming pressure of a headache, hearing no sound behind the beat of his heart for long moments.

Then slow, menacing boots stalked towards him. Harry opened his eyes and found himself staring at a pair of black-clothed legs.

“As usual, Potter, you have got yourself into a predicament that is no one’s fault but your own,” said Snape’s bored drawl. “You should have suspected that the door of a Potions master would be warded.”

“Could you let me go, sir?” Harry asked, and he thought his voice was polite. “I need to ask you some questions about the potions you’re brewing because of the case.”

Snape waved his wand and said a single word, and the spiderweb that had apparently held Harry to the door snapped and let him drop. He banged his head so hard on the floor that blackness swam in and tried to possess his vision. Harry gritted his teeth and rolled over, attempting to get his arms under him and think past the stunning pain.

“You should have known better than to knock on my door like a maniac with that in mind, as well,” said Snape. He had already turned back to his potions table, as Harry saw when he glanced up at him. He was moving a hand in what Harry reckoned were stirring motions, though his body blocked them and Harry couldn’t be sure. “A civilized confrontation in the corridors would have been preferable.”

“How could I do that, when you never leave this bloody place?” Harry was reasonably certain he didn’t have a concussion; he’d experienced several during his work as an Auror and knew what they felt like. That didn’t mean the crack on the skull didn’t bloody hurt. He braced himself on the wall with one hand and stumbled slowly back to his bruised and aching feet. “Anyone would think you’re avoiding me.”

Snape laughed, a bark sharp enough to make Harry wince away from it. Then he turned around and put his back to the table he’d been working at, still concealing the cauldron from Harry’s view. His eyes shone so hotly that Harry had to fight an impulse to retreat. The only time he’d seen Snape this angry was during his third year at Hogwarts, when Snape found out that Sirius had been spared the Kiss.

And he lived through the war, whilst Sirius didn’t. Harry felt a poisoned clench of anger around his heart, which enabled him to meet Snape’s gaze without looking away, though the temptation was great. Looking at Snape was like having needles driven into his eyes.

“I will say this once, and once only,” Snape whispered. “I do not know for certain why the attacker who threatens Draco’s life and reputation was able to get past the Malfoy bloodline wards. I have created potions that will alert Lucius and myself if he tries again, despite his apparent indistinguishableness from Draco. They took some time and work to develop, which is the reason I have ‘avoided’ you for the past few days, Mr. Potter.

“I know why you are here. You carry a bevy of feelings for Draco that would destroy his life were you allowed to express them. That must never happen. And you tempt Draco against his will into a self-immolation that he, perhaps, could not survive.” Snape sneered at him. “Of course, he is wiser than to become involved with you, but the danger is real. You destroy everything you truly care for, Potter, and you always have.”

“Ron and Hermione—“ Harry began, even as his brain screamed at him that it was stupid to argue with Snape, given his intractable prejudice against Harry.

“Name your friends, of course,” said Snape, with a flick of his fingers. “Their doom is delayed, but real.” He leaned forwards, and Harry flinched; now the needles were drilling into the back of his skull. “You will destroy him if you stay here. More than the imposter can do, you will do. You have destroyed Lucius’s peace and my own already. You might tempt Draco, little by little, and hint at what you can share together, and bind him, and drag him, and make him think foolish, unwise things. He has always noticed you, even when he should not have. You will destroy a bright and beautiful thing, and you will not even notice that you are doing so, because what, to you, is one more trampled butterfly?”

Snape’s spittle was hitting Harry’s face. Harry held on to his temper. He thought of Snape’s strange, self-contradictory ramblings—Draco could not fall to him, but would—and thought he knew what this was about.

“You’re afraid that I’ll do to him what you think James did to my mum?” he asked quietly.

The force of Snape’s slap carried him off his feet and made him reel back into the door, blind with pain. He moved his tongue along his lip, where a tooth had cut it, and spat blood.

Snape hissed a single word of Latin, and Harry stood in the corridor again, staring at the solidly closed door.

Harry shook his head, shut his eyes, and limped away in search of a book of healing incantations. He didn’t know why he still tried. Snape was never going to change his opinion of Harry, that was obvious.

As you thought Draco would never change his opinion of you?

Harry sighed. He knew why he tried. Even if Snape never changed, even if Draco was lying, Harry was still himself, and he would not have felt right unless he tried.