Cursed

Ianto went on to talk about Dumbledore’s Army, the Battle of the Astronomy Tower, Albus Dumbledore’s death, and the year the Death Eaters took over Hogwarts.  He spoke of the guerilla war he helped to wage from within the very walls of the school, and finally, he talked about the Battle of Hogwarts. 

Jack pulled him closer as he spoke of the horror of being burned alive, though thankfully no real harm had been done.  The feeling of Gryffindor’s sword landing in his grasp as though it was an old friend reaching out to take his hand.  The rightness of swinging the sword, killing the snake.  The pain whipping through the air as the horcrux was destroyed.

Then he spoke of finishing school and becoming an Auror.  And finally, he talked about being captured.  How the hope of being rescued shriveled and died, the longer he was held.  How the unicorn blood tasted, how it felt in his veins.

“It’s still there, you know,” Ianto said quietly.  “I will always carry it.”

“Is that like a curse as well?” Jack asked, worried.

Ianto shook his head.  “No, the creature understood that I was not the one to blame.  I think it…  I think it tried to give me strength and… and maybe… luck?  I think it tried to give me goodness when it saw its blood was being forced on me.  The same way it would inflict a curse, if I had been the one harming it.”

“So then is it bad, that you will always carry that goodness?”

“Not bad,” Ianto shrugged.  “But…” he trailed off, shaking his head.

“Maybe…  Maybe look at it as honoring the creature’s choice to make the best of a bad situation.  It obviously knew what was going to happen to it.  Seems to me you’ve been given the gift of being able to honor the creature they tried to defile.”

“I like that,” Ianto nodded, smiling.  “That’s a lovely way of looking at it, Jack.  Thank you.”

Jack kissed his temple.  “Does it still feel strange, in your veins?”

“I’ve gotten used to it,” Ianto replied.  “It’s kind of… fizzy.  If I get still enough, I can feel it buzzing in my veins, like… champagne bubbles.  And sometimes it gets cool.”

“Like when?”

Ianto hesitated.  “When someone is lying to me, or trying to use me.”  He looked away from Jack.  “That’s how I knew it was still Lisa.  It didn’t start freezing until that night, and by then I just… couldn’t stop.”  He looked at Jack, his eyes sad.  “I’m so sorry, Jack.”

“Ianto, you’ve apologized enough for that.  All is forgiven.”

Ianto nodded, swiping at the tears as he continued to talk about his imprisonment.

“And then they just dumped me in the alley behind my flat.”

“What did you do?”

“I’d been missing for weeks.  It was the middle of the night.  I went to Hermione and Ron.”

“And they attacked you.”

Ianto nodded.  “Then Harry and Ginny, then back to Hermione.  And Luna, but…  Then to my gran.”  He rubbed absently at the burn scar across his ribs.  “Finally, I gave up.”

“How did you disappear into London?” Jack asked.

“You met my parents.  Did you also know Mad-Eye Moody?”

Jack nodded, grinning at the memory of the gruff Auror.

“Well, our third year, Dumbledore got him in as our Defense Against the Dark Arts instructor.  Except it wasn’t him.”

“It was a Death Eater in disguise, right?”

“It was Barty Crouch, Jr.,” Ianto said, his voice flat.  “What’s crazy is that he was a good teacher.  One class, he showed us the Unforgivable Curses, and I… it was just a spider, but to see it tormented by the same curse that put my parents here,” he sniffed.  “I was in shock, after.  A bit sick, and he took me to his office.  Gave me a cup of tea.  Told me how Professor Sprout had said I was good at Herbology.  Gave me some interesting books about plants…  And he was one of the ones who... did that… to my parents.” 

Jack pulled Ianto close, hating the cruelty the young wizard had known.

Ianto shook his head.  “I don’t understand.  He was kind.  Was it some kind of joke?  I don’t think it was remorse.”

“He was playing a part,” Jack said, understanding all too well.  “Running a long con.”

Ianto nodded.  “I suppose so,” he muttered, defeated.  “It just sucks that one of the only memories I have of a teacher – other than Professor Sprout – going out of their way to be kind to me…”  He shook his head, unable to finish the thought.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said, kissing his head.  “But because of him, you were able to escape the wizarding world?”

Ianto nodded.  “He said it was always good to have a stash of money available, in case you need to disappear, or lie low.  Even after I found out who he really was, I took his words to heart.  Once I started working, I spent as little as possible, saving and stashing everything I could.  And I read the muggle studies books.  Even made some contacts, for forged documents, and such.”

“So you had an emergency plan?”

Ianto nodded.  “I amassed what I needed, converted it to muggle money, and started salting it away in a muggle bank safety deposit box.  Even stashed the key.”

“Where?” Jack asked, his lips showing the ghost of a smile at Ianto’s cleverness.

“Taped it under a low shelf in a neglected corner of the city library.

“So you had the funds to start a new life as a muggle?”

“Pretty much.  I got my identification paperwork sorted and had to figure out how to enroll in university, but once I got in, I felt fairly well hidden.  I mean, Neville had never been much of a scholar, so why would he end up at university?”

“Did you think they’d come after you?”

“I was convinced they would.  I lived in terror, those first couple of years.  But then I realized that their aim was to punish me, and that would best be done by leaving me, alive and exiled.  But then my worry was that they’d try to find me, to gloat.”

“So you chose the immersive class, and hid in Wales?”

“And came to love it as my own,” Ianto nodded.

“Susan and Bill say that you used the curses to root the Welsh-ness deeply into your identity.

“Another gift of the unicorn.  It was like it gathered everything that reinforced the new identity and locked it in.  I think it was to anchor me.  Help me settle into my new reality.”

“I may have mentioned this before, but…” Jack nuzzled Ianto’s neck, causing him to smile, “I like it, that you’re Welsh.”

“Good thing, because I’m pretty sure it can’t be undone,” Ianto grinned.  “The… transformation also rendered me incapable of speaking with an English accent, once the Welsh one was locked in.”

Jack ran his knuckle down Ianto’s cheek, savoring his smile.  Then he remembered something Ianto had mentioned.

“But what’s this about Herbology?”

“I was really good at it,” Ianto said, miserable again, all of a sudden.  “Even fantasized about teaching it at Hogwarts, once Professor Sprout retired.”

“And that’s… bad?” Jack asked, confused.

Ianto sighed.  “The curses changed me,” he whispered.  “Everything… shifted.  My eyes went from green to blue.  My hair, my height…”

Jack nodded.  Bill had explained this.

“Well, it did the same to my aptitudes and interests.  I went from loving Herbology and being really good at it, to having very little interest in or affinity with plants and having a black thumb.”  He looked down and sniffed, and Jack saw more tears falling than during the rest of their conversation.  “I miss that.  Having something that I loved, and was good at.”

“But if everything shifted, then surely something replaced Herbology,” Jack reasoned.

“Yes, but I miss how much I loved that.  It was just one more thing…”

“That they took from you,” Jack sighed.  “Ianto, I am so sorry.”

He held onto the younger man for a while, noting that thankfully, every tear Ianto shed seemed to lighten his load.  The room was even feeling brighter and clearer.  After a while, he decided to ask another question.

“So what else changed?  I mean, I know your courage and loyalty haven’t budged.”

“Based on my research, it seems that basic character traits are anchors.  They don’t change.  Can’t change.  But the ways they may manifest might.  And, as I mentioned, aptitudes and interests.”

“So you went from plants to James Bond,” Jack said, trying to make Ianto laugh and relieved when it worked.

“I went from being terribly forgetful to having an eidetic memory, which they may have done on purpose, because having perfect recall can suck, sometimes.”

Jack made a sympathetic noise.

“And I went from not being very good at school to thriving at university.  I mean, I hadn’t been unintelligent, but my intellect sort of came to the fore.  And I was suddenly organized.”  He said it with such surprise that Jack realized it still came as a shock, despite it being what he would have sworn was one of Ianto’s defining characteristics.  But apparently, Neville had not been very organized, at all.  Jack was beginning to think that, other than the whole war hero gig, Neville had been a bit of a lovably bumbling mess.

That led to another revelation.  Jack could never have fallen for Neville Longbottom, and he wasn’t sure how he felt about that.  But his thing was for the neat, organized, buttoned-up Welshman who was absolutely incandescent when he came undone. 

“What about sex?” Jack blurted.

Ianto blinked, startled at the force of the question.

“I mean, how does Ianto differ from Neville, in terms of passion?”

Ianto actually blushed.  Jack took a moment to kiss him senseless, because he was only human (well, mostly), and how was he supposed to resist that?

“I was clumsy in a lot of ways,” Ianto confessed.  “And too…” he frowned.  “Something kept me very superficial, in that area.  Like I couldn’t just let loose.  So I didn’t.  I was a bit wet, actually.”

“Have a little compassion,” Jack admonished.  “What you’ve described to me is not a far cry from abuse and neglect, and you were given a crippling sense of self-doubt.  But as Ianto, it seems like you were able to bury that, when you left Neville behind.”

Ianto nodded.  “I did have this sense that, if I had to be a different man, then by Merlin I’d be a different man.  I promised myself not to lock any part of myself away.  Well, not from someone I could trust, anyway.”

“Except that you’re a wizard,” Jack said, not meaning to scold, because he knew Ianto couldn’t have spoken of it, because of the curses.

“But I wasn’t a wizard, was I?  Cursed and spellbound, my magic may as well have not existed.”

“What was that like?” Jack asked quietly.

“Agonizing,” Ianto whispered with a shudder.  He was silent for a long moment, and Jack was sure that was all he would say on the matter.  But then he continued, “I carried around a tin of potions for seven years, so I could end it, when it got too much.  Because it was always just a whisper away from being too much.  Jack, there were so many days…”  He shook his head and sniffed.  “Where’s the tin?”

“In the drawer,” Jack reached for it and handed it to Ianto.  It was empty now, the phials disposed of.  A memory tickled the back of his mind.  During Ianto’s suspension, Jack had often found the younger man, half frozen and incoherent, sitting by the water and turning that tin over and over in his hands, as though considering…

He shuddered at the realization but was brought back to the present as Ianto turned the tin over in his hand and looked at Jack.  “I made a mark.  One for every time I mixed the potions but didn’t drink.”

Jack looked down and saw the bottom of the tin etched in dozens of hash marks, but he couldn’t bring himself to count them.  “How many?” he asked, his throat tight with grief and sadness.

“Thirty-seven,” Ianto said, rubbing a thumb across the marks. 

“And every time, you found a reason not to?” Jack found Ianto’s resilience impressive.

“Most of the time, it was pure bloody mindedness,” Ianto shrugged at Jack’s questioning look.  “I just didn’t want them… the C-Carrows… to win.”  He paused, as though recovering from the shock of being able to utter the hated names.  “And then sometimes, it occurred to me that there might be something good that maybe I’d miss.”

“That sounds suspiciously like hope, Ianto,” Jack smiled.

“Hmmm.  Maybe,” Ianto said, yawning and snuggling into Jack’s chest.

***