𝐁𝐄𝐋𝐎𝐍𝐆

Part 14

Dissolution

For the next five days, Draco slaved over the object that he hoped would release his mother from her torment. It was a small amber charm, very much like the diamond and amethyst one that had both solved Draco's problems years ago and was now causing his current dilemma. But this charm was all browns and yellows, swirls of ancient sap, bits of disintegrated wood, tiny, petrified bubbles and one tiny trapped insect, curled upon itself, its wings spread wide. Where the diamond charm was clear and elegant, the amber charm was flawed, uneven in spots, with constantly shifting colours. Harry imagined that it was smooth and light, unlike the weighty, cold sphere he had carried in his pocket years ago. Harry watched Draco whisper strange words over it, so close it nearly touched his moving lips, its shiny surface dulling with the fog of his breath. It sat on the windowsill for a time, bathing in sunlight in the mornings, projecting a small, fuzzy yellow circle on the hardwood floor.

When he wasn't working with the charm directly, Draco kept it in a small glass box, locked with charms, so that no one else would touch it. Ron was somewhat offended by this; as if his fingers could cause such havoc, such dramatic destruction, as if Draco couldn't trust either of them to leave it alone. Ron harrumphed, watching him lock it away, but Draco simply looked at him coldly and continued with his work. Harry knew better. Anyone who touched that charm would have a key to whatever would lie within it, and would be forever to linked with it. Draco was tired of dangling guilt and unintended victims.

He set it carefully on the bedside table in the evenings, between sliding off his shoes and hanging up his sweater. It glowed oddly in the light of the dull lamp above it, ethereally gleaming orange light onto the table top beneath it. Harry found it both reassuring and disturbing, but said nothing. Draco thought about the charm constantly, and their normally comforting evening walks had become more hurried, more tense; Draco spoke about formulas, incantations, pronunciations, matrixes, his hands waving in the air describing possible victory, possible failure. The tone of his voice was hitched up, he spoke more quickly, twisted his fingers around each other in his lap while he was thinking. He woke up occasionally in the night, grasping for the charm on the bedside table, knocking Harry's glasses to the floor and jolting Harry awake. On finding it still safe, Draco would turn to Harry, press his lips against that scarred forehead, curl his arms tight around him, and tremble into Harry until he fell asleep again. Harry would lay awake longer, pushed out of his fuzzy dreams into a shocking and overwhelming new reality. There was a sense of trust and fear in these small movements of Draco's that shook Harry's marrow, sent curling fingers of dread inside his belly and roped themselves around his spine, fluttering with hot need into his brain. Harry was also afraid; afraid of Draco and afraid for him. He did not feel strong. He felt small. Sometimes he felt something akin to a sob rising inside Draco's chest, and his arms would grip Harry a little tighter, a little longer, trembling travelling from Draco's body into Harry's. He would hold that quivering body, and whisper soft words into his ear ("Shhh," "Sleep now," "It's okay," "I love you.") and feel like collapsing himself. But he would not collapse, not now, not when Draco needed him so much. Harry began to need naps before dinner.

And then Draco was finished. It happened suddenly, as if it were unexpected. The deed was done, and from all accounts, it had been done properly and well. He practiced summoning the charm from one side of the apartment to another, from outside on the balcony, from underneath the invisibility cloak. He found no errors in his calculations. He sighed deeply once he realized that there was little else he could do, fidgeted on the couch for about fifteen minutes, and then headed straight into the kitchen. He still had four days to go until he could go into St. Mungo's with the paperwork Lucius had carefully prepared for him, and nothing left to do in the meantime.

That evening, Ron had brought Hermione and Ginny home with him. Hermione and various members of the Weasley clan, had become almost constant fixtures in their flat in recent days. Ron had been finding the tension simply too much, and welcomed any and all distraction from it. While Draco was entirely consumed with creating this goblin charm, snarling at attempts to engage him in conversation and generally being in a foul mood, he had stopped his usual stress-relieving activities, much to Ron's dismay. But once Draco finished work on the charm, he resumed his frantic baking and cooking. Ron had been shocked on more than one occasion to see Draco throw out entire meals worth of food for no apparent reason ("Too much salt," "Overdone", "Underdone", "Just awful."). But this meal seemed to have met Draco's expectations, fortunately for Harry, who was famished, and for Ginny and Hermione, who had spent a whirlwind afternoon with Ron, seeing a Quidditch game, buying new robes, picking up a few things here and there for Harry and Draco, and general gossiping like mad. Ginny lifted her spoon to her mouth, arched an eyebrow, and mouthed, 'Are you sure it's not poisoned?' across the table to Ron. He giggled. Harry gave Ginny a dirty look. Hermione watched the whole scene, bemused.