Chapter Eight of 'Secondhand Heroes'- Courage

[lomonaaeren]

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This is the last chapter of Secondhand Heroes. Thank you for reading along!

Chapter Eight—Courage

Harry was sure he looked like an idiot, gaping at Malfoy, but he needed a moment to take this in. He put his hands to his head, gripping his temples hard between his fingertips, and whispered, “You had help all along?”

“Some help,” said Malfoy, and his voice held a sediment of bitterness and wry humor that Harry would not have expected to hear from him. “My people could only do so much without revealing themselves, and I had commanded them to stay hidden until we had a sure chance of destroying the Troublestone. They were too valuable to risk in any lesser endeavor.”

“Including rescuing you from torture,” said Harry, opening his eyes and staring straight at Malfoy.

“Yes.” Malfoy sighed and ran a hand up his face. “Not one of my most brilliant plans, I admit. I only wanted to learn about those Death Eaters who hadn’t agreed to join the Order of the Dragon, and find out what they intended to do about the Ministry’s increasing paranoia. They captured me instead and inflicted the scars on me that you saw. They thought me a traitor for not joining one of their groups that was trying to fight the Ministry.” He sniffed. “Idiots. Those groups will amount to nothing, because they have no coherent plan and they think too much of taking revenge.” He fixed his eyes on Harry. “I was almost glad, later, that I had those scars and those nightmares. They made you think of me as a hero, and I absolutely had to capture your sympathy before I could entrust you with the secret of the Order.” He made another sweeping gesture at the mass of silent, watching wizards and witches, all of whom now shone with a silver-blue light. Harry thought they must be blocking the Ministry’s wards.

“So you lied to me, then,” Harry whispered.

“About how I knew about the Troublestone? Yes. I had done the research and recognized its influence before I became a prisoner of those Death Eaters.” Malfoy was absolutely calm, his eyes glittering with the blue-silver light in a way that made Harry wonder if he had chosen it for his group’s signature color on purpose. “About how I felt about you, about how you became a beacon in those dungeons for me? No.”

“But you said—“

“Capturing your sympathy was an essential thing,” Malfoy said, his voice growing sharper. “We had to know that you were committed to this sacrifice. Tell me the truth, Harry. If I had suddenly appeared out of the darkness and told you about the Troublestone and that I had a plan to destroy it, but one which required your cooperation, would you have believed me?”

Harry swallowed slowly. Then he shook his head. He felt so strange. Not even his acceptance of what would have to happen to him in his friends’ memories had made him feel heavy and light at the same time, as if he were swimming underwater.

“Good.” Malfoy firmly took his arm. “My people will guard us and watch for any intruders whilst we perform the ritual to mimic your suicide and destroy the Troublestone.”

Harry went with him. The Order of the Dragon closed in behind them, still supernaturally silent, shining with shadow. They walked as in a dream before death down to the room where the sapphire awaited them.

*

The moment they stepped through the door into the Wizengamot’s courtroom, the Troublestone began to shift, the facets glittering with wild light. Harry could feel it reaching out to him again, a cold blade aimed at the center of his resistance, designed to destroy his loathing of it.

Malfoy laughed, a high, breathless sound that made Harry flinch; it reminded Harry far too much of the way Voldemort had sounded when he was happy. He set the basket of Dark artifacts down near his feet and raised his wand—and when had he acquired that? Harry supposed one of Malfoy’s followers must have given it to him when Harry wasn’t looking—to incant a spell that sounded like the slithering of wet fish against one another. A thin mist formed between them and the Troublestone, dimming its glitter.

“That won’t last for long,” Malfoy murmured as he lowered his wand, “although it’s one of the most powerful protective spells I know, a variant of what’s keeping the wards quiet.” He turned and grabbed both Harry’s wrists, drawing him down into a kneeling position. Suddenly they were close, and Harry could smell Malfoy’s sweetly sour breath and see the way his eyes contained and birthed fanaticism.

The sight made Harry ache with empathy. Malfoy had given himself to the destruction of the Troublestone in the way that Harry had given himself to the destruction of the Horcruxes, and in many ways the end result was the same: it had burned up some of the gentler parts of who they were. Harry freed one of his hands from Malfoy’s grasp and reached out to cradle his chin. Malfoy blinked at him.

“You didn’t need the scars and the nightmares to make me think you were a hero, Draco,” Harry whispered. “I would have called you one for freeing me from my apathy and making me think about someone besides myself for a change.”

“Really.” Draco’s voice was emotionless, but Harry understood why. Harry had offered him something he wanted deeply without showing clearly why he’d changed his mind. Harry smiled, and he didn’t care if the smile was desperately sad. He gently stroked Draco’s cheek.

“Yes. You are a hero, and you’ve helped me remember what it’s like to be one. And you—“ Harry shot a swift glance around the Wizengamot’s courtroom, determined no members of the Order of the Dragon had followed them in, and looked back at Draco. “You gave me the first taste of pleasure I can remember in what seems like a thousand dark and formless months. Thank you.”

His face was burning by the time he finished, but he still said the words. Draco stared at him with wide, greedy eyes, as if wanting to remember the way Harry’s face had looked as he made the declaration for the rest of his life.

“Will you come with me, when this is done?” he whispered. “Will you stay with me?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Harry said steadily, whilst the memories of what Draco had acted like in the past few days played through his head. How much of that had been a necessary art, as he thought, in order to try and bind Harry to the cause of destroying the Troublestone, if only because he pitied someone who had suffered as Draco had? How much had he concealed beneath the surface, during times when he’d probably been in communication with the Order of the Dragon? “If you think you need me, if you don’t mind that I want you in different ways—“

“Yes, and no.” Draco licked his lips, eyes feral for a moment, and then glanced sideways. Harry followed his gaze and realized the mist that protected them from the influence of the Troublestone was fading.

“Let us do this,” said Draco, seizing both of Harry’s hands again in a crushing grip. “We will have time to talk of the details and the consequences later.”

Harry gave him a small smile, and nodded. Draco leaned forwards, bit Harry’s lip until he drew blood, and then pulled back, licking carefully at it. Harry held still; Draco had told him to expect pain in the first parts of the ritual.

Draco recited several Latin words of which Harry could only make out one he thought meant “blood.” The Troublestone flared at them. Draco ignored it serenely and brought his hands around Harry’s throat.

Harry felt his heartbeat speed up, but he held still again, his hands hanging defenselessly at his sides. Draco had told him that the initial stages of the ritual mimicked several postures of death, such as being choked, leading up to the final moment of “suicide” with the blade.

Draco purred another string of Latin words into his ear, and Harry had the odd feeling that he was being seduced in the middle of a powerful Dark magical ritual. He would have laughed if the moment didn’t feel so tightly-strung already.

Then Draco had him lie back on the floor whilst he plucked the horn from the basket of Dark magical artifacts and sounded it. Harry shivered at the noise. It roused echoes from the corners of the room and then multiplied them, so that they gained strength instead of losing it. He arched his neck and found himself exposing his throat to Draco out of instinct. For a moment, one of Draco’s hands descended to caress it.

When the time came for Harry to stand again, he thought he would rise himself, but instead Draco grabbed his wrists and dragged him upright. Harry found himself standing with his back to Draco’s chest, surrounded and clasped firmly by the other man. Harry could feel a hard pressure against his arse, and he shivered, though whether it was with fear or desire he didn’t know. He tilted his head back so it rested on Draco’s shoulder and felt nothing disgusting, this time, about the stirring in his own groin.

Draco whispered the next phrase into his ear again, and then smeared a handful of the oil he’d found in Grimmauld Place along Harry’s cheeks and forehead. Harry shuddered. It felt heavy and sticky in a thoroughly unpleasant way, and it was as warm as blood. Draco’s fingers spread it in swarming puddles, and as if he knew what Harry was feeling, he ground into Harry’s backside again.

For just one moment, twelve words in English slipped in among the Latin. Harry would have worried that Draco was disrupting the ritual for the sake of reassuring him, except that he knew Draco’s dedication to destroying the Troublestone was absolute and so such a thing would never happen.

“I promise you more pleasure, and I expect more pleasure from you.”

And then Draco was turning him around as if they danced so that Harry faced him, and he handed him the knife.

Harry took a deep breath. The ritual wasn’t complete without blood shed from him, and from one of the major veins. He cut his wrist carefully, so that the blood began to pour, and barely heard the spell Draco cast to close the wound immediately.

The blood fell on the floor of the courtroom, and a single puff of red smoke rose from it. The echoes of the horn returned, once again growing stronger, and Harry felt the oil on his face dry and pull into a stiff mask.

The Troublestone went mad.

Suddenly lights and noises were going off in Harry’s head, and from the way Draco looked, the stone had done the same thing to him. Draco started to bend at the waist. Harry knew the ritual would be disrupted, or probably disrupted, if Draco dropped his wand or fell unconscious.

He stepped forwards and embraced Draco, drawing him up to rest against his shoulder as he’d done before when he thought he simply nodded comfort, and wrapped his hand around Draco’s on the wand. Draco had told him that Harry could perform no magic with his own wand in this ritual, or his friends stood a chance of recovering his magical signature and not forgetting him. But the hawthorn wand was an old friend, and in some ways seemed to fit his palm and his magic better than his own.

Harry murmured the words of his own most powerful protection spell, learned in the last year when he’d had the crazy idea that he could somehow protect and free prisoners, and a ball of golden light flew out of the wand and hovered between them and the Troublestone. A flat golden spiderweb spread across the air between them, the strands growing thicker. Harry lowered the wand with a sigh.

“There,” said Harry, and stepped back from the Troublestone, looking at the basket. The sapphire bracelet lay inside, but Draco would have to be the one to actually use it, along with the potion. He had described the ritual to Harry only in outline, not in detail. “What do we need to do next?”

Draco stretched like a leopard in his grasp and turned back to him, eyes shining. He traced one patch of oil on Harry’s face for a moment, but said nothing as he snatched up the sapphire bracelet. The Troublestone pulsed again, and one line of the golden web cracked. But it wasn’t through yet, Harry judged with a quick glance, and it would be some moments yet before it was.

“As the small is destroyed, so shall the large be,” Draco whispered. He pried one of the sapphires from the bracelet, dropped it on the floor, and then took out the vial of potion from his robe pocket. It had a glimmering, shifting light inside it, more like fire than any liquid Harry had ever seen. Draco uncorked the vial and tipped the potion onto the sapphire.

The sapphire dissolved, becoming small blue bits floating in a waste of orange and gold. The Troublestone flashed with a dazzle that made Harry blind for a moment and broke several more threads of the golden web. Then they were staring at a puddle of blackened, scorched floor with no trace of the sapphire left, and Draco was chuckling.

“It doesn’t like that,” he said. “It sees its own fate in the fate of its smaller cousins. As the small is destroyed, so shall the large be,” he repeated, and took out another sapphire, placed it on the floor, and poured the potion over it. “You need to take up the knife,” he added.

Harry picked up the blade and then nearly dropped it in surprise. It was hot, and the silver inlaid along the edge of the blade shone with a glinting light that was not a reflection of the potion. “What does this mean?” he muttered.

“The knife is the chosen instrument of your faked death,” Draco said, never taking his gaze off the second dissolving sapphire. The Troublestone shone brightly enough now that Harry had to keep his eyes averted from that part of the room. “It’s tasted your blood, and it’s getting ready to taste more than that. Your friends’ memories, your life in their imagination. As the small is destroyed, so shall the large be.” The potion consumed a third sapphire. The echoes of the horn sharpened and came back again, making Harry worry for a moment whether the Order of the Dragon could really keep the Ministry from noticing what was happening here.

The knife vibrated in Harry’s hand, growing hotter and making his arms twitch with the magic. He coughed as smoke poured into his lungs and backed away from Draco. But the knife came with him, and it seemed to absorb the fire and bathe him in it. The warmth grew to a sensation just short of pain.

Draco destroyed a fourth sapphire, and a fifth. Harry looked up, eyes watering, and wondered if that was the end of them, but no, Draco was clutching a sixth gem and stepping towards him. The Troublestone was pressing through the last of the golden web now, a brilliant presence that made Harry flinch.

“We need to do the last step,” whispered Draco, and placed his free hand in the middle of Harry’s chest. Following his push, Harry lay down. Stone beneath his back, he thought hazily, and stone above him, as Draco brought the sapphire close to his face. And fire, fire everywhere, in the smoke and the Troublestone and the knife in his hands and the shine in Draco’s eyes.

“You need to cut your own throat with the knife.”

Harry felt a moment of terrified rejection flood through him. How could Draco expect him to do that? He had agreed to sacrifice his friends’ memories of him, but not his life. And even when he had walked into the Forbidden Forest to die at Voldemort’s hands, as he thought, it had not required him to face such pain. He had known that Voldemort would use the Killing Curse.

Draco’s free hand rested on his shoulder now. “Trust me,” he said, his voice thick and hot, like smoke, like stone. “You will live. The knife will be bathed with your blood and create the false impression of a suicide, but then it will heal you again with the magic that I’ll release when I destroy the last sapphire at the same time. The fear you feel now is the Troublestone interfering, trying to make you panic, as it fights for its existence.” He smiled into Harry’s eyes. “Trust me.”

Harry raised the knife, staring into Draco’s eyes, and fell through a single spiraling moment when he thought about Ron and Hermione and Kingsley and all the people who wouldn’t see him again, even if he saw them.

And Draco.

It always came back to Draco, first wizard of his own age he’d met and the last one he was seeing now.

Harry pulled the knife across his throat. He caught a blurred glimpse of Draco pouring the potion over both his fist and the sapphire, and he heard a roaring scream like the earth grinding apart. He thought he caught a glimpse, though how he could have with the angle of his head he didn’t know, of the Troublestone fracturing and flying apart, an enormous smoking hole blasted in its side, through which something transparent and sooty and evil fled.

And then it was over.

*

Harry opened his eyes slowly. His throat hurt. He lay in a bright place that dazzled him without his glasses. Or did his eyes have smoke damage, perhaps? he thought, as the last memories before his dying returned.

My not-dying. Draco was right about my survival.

Harry started to turn over, and then a hand was on his shoulder and Draco’s voice was murmuring, “Shh. The wound was symbolic and didn’t kill you, but it still went deep. You’ll have to be careful whilst you heal from it. Since it was created by Dark magic, blood magic, it’ll have to heal in the normal way.”

Harry nodded and lay back on the thing that cradled him—couch? Bed? “Can I have my glasses?” he whispered, careful to keep his voice low and non-threatening.

“Of course.” Draco held out the glasses to him, or a twist of blur and silver wire that might have been his glasses, and Harry accepted and fumbled for them, slowly slipping them over his face. At once he could see again, and he could see the expression on Draco’s face as he leaned above the silver-blue bed that cradled Harry, reflective and proprietary.

“Did it work?” Harry whispered.

Draco smiled and reached to the side, to a table that Harry didn’t feel like turning his head to see, coming back with a triangular shard of dark blue stone. Harry touched a finger to it, and shivered. He didn’t need to be particularly sensitive to feel the Dark magic beating from it, and it was still hot. A light caught and glinted on one edge for a moment, like the light that the Troublestone had flashed to try and capture him, but that went away the moment it reached the break.

“The Troublestone is gone.” Harry had no words for the depth of the peace and the exultation in Draco’s voice. “The thing I worked for the last year to accomplish is done.” He sighed, his face soft as he gazed at the shard of sapphire.

“I thought I saw something flee from it—“

“The Dark intelligence, yes, trying to find another home.” Draco smirked. “You don’t need to worry that will cause any trouble. That was one reason my people remained behind. They were watching for it, and they caught it in a crossfire of very effective curses. It’s gone.”

“Oh.” Harry swallowed, and winced. He supposed he had a thick, ugly scar across his throat at the moment. He wondered idly if it would remain. “And—where are we? How long has it been?”

“Two days,” said Draco quietly, his face assuming a more serious expression as he laid the bit of Troublestone on the table again. “We’re in one of the Order’s safehouses.”

“The place you said you could bring me,” said Harry, closing his eyes. “And I wondered where that could be, since I knew the Ministry confiscated all your family properties.”

“Yes.” Draco’s hand wandered into his hair, playing with it. Harry could feel tension behind those fingers, but he didn’t know why. As Draco said, he had done what he most wanted to do.

At least, he didn’t know why until Draco said, “Do you forgive me for lying? I’m sorry, but I had to know I could trust you before I told you about the Order, and I wanted you to myself for as long as I could have you, knowing that I might not be able to have you at all when you learned what my plan was—“

Harry felt a great burst of compassion move through him, not unlike the one he’d felt when he’d seen Draco’s scars for the first time. He reached up and wrapped his arms around Draco’s shoulders, bringing him down until his chest touched Harry’s. Draco opened his mouth in a hot gasp of surprise against the side of Harry’s neck.

“I forgive you,” Harry whispered to him, rocking him back and forth—or maybe just shifting him. There was only so much rocking one could do whilst lying in a bed beneath someone else, after all. “What you did was forgivable in the name of saving the world—“

“I don’t want it to be only that to you—“

“I know.” Harry forced his eyes open and found himself staring into Draco’s. Harry took a long, shivery, nervous breath, for so many reasons, and ran his fingers down the side of Draco’s face. “I still don’t really understand the process by which I became essential to you. Was any of that a lie?” he added belatedly.

Draco ducked his head. “Some of it,” he muttered. “Some of it was exaggeration so that you would feel sorry for me. But not what I did to you after the battle—“

“What we did.” Harry tugged a lock of his hair. “Speaking otherwise makes it sound like you raped me.”

“What we did,” Draco said, and seemed utterly unable to keep a slow, delighted smile from stretching across his mouth. “Yes, that was true. And I do need you. I do want you. I did dream about you in the dungeons, though by then it was partially because I understood how necessary you would be to destroying the Troublestone.”

Harry nodded. And Draco hadn’t felt he could trust him with this—well, in his place, Harry wouldn’t have trusted Draco, either.

“I can accept that,” he said. “I can accept—everything.” A strange, light, falling sensation invaded his body. He was gone from the minds of everyone who knew him, dead and to be mourned, but he was also free of the expectations and the burdens the wizarding world had wound about their hero, and the embarrassing worship that would have continued in some form or another, if not as intense. “I want to stay with you. I don’t know if I’ll ever be exactly what you need me to be, but—“

His voice was cut off as Draco kissed him, thrusting his tongue savagely into Harry’s mouth. Harry lifted his head and gasped, reveling in the intensity of it, and did his best to kiss back, though the angle of their heads made it difficult.

“You already have been,” Draco said when he pulled away, his voice thick with satisfaction.

“And you’ve been—what I needed,” Harry said, thinking of the way Draco had brought him back to life, made him feel sudden and strange pleasure, brushed him with fire from a distant world he hadn’t realized existed. “Yes, I’d like to keep on trying.”

Draco shut his eyes. He seemed to be falling asleep, as though Harry’s declaration had relieved him from an enormous weight of tension. “Stay with me,” he murmured. “Stay with the Order. We still have problems that we need to solve in the wizarding world, Harry, things that need to be healed and put right. The Troublestone is gone, but not the shame and horror that people are going to feel now they’ve woken up. The wounds between Muggleborns and half-bloods and pure-bloods need to be healed.”

Harry felt a cold trickle of fear move through him for a moment. To stay in Britain where his friends might still meet him—

But Draco had explained that they simply would not be able to see him, their minds unable to form new memories of him past his “suicide.” And Harry could put up with an occasional meeting to have the chance to do good, useful work, and maybe continue being a hero, since the world didn’t stop needing one just because the great evil was defeated.

And to be with Draco.

Draco was asleep, breathing and drooling, though surely he would deny that, into the corner of Harry’s neck. Harry kissed his cheek and closed his eyes.

I don’t have guaranteed happiness, but I have a chance at it, no matter how difficult. And I’m free. And I’m with him.

How many people could say the same?

End.

Comments

[brknhalo241.livejournal.com]

How intriguing! Brings new meaning to the phrase "for the greater good" and I especially enjoyed the veils of secrecy involved. And the sacrifices made here combined with the potential for losing everything in pursuit of righting what is wrong.....well, it only seems right that these "accidental heroes" manage to save each other while saving the world. Another wonderful story!

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

Draco deliberately and coldly set out to be a hero, but in a deliberately non-heroic way. I thought that was a good complement to the way that Harry sort of stumbled into heroism and then found all his best qualities doing so.