Chapter Twenty-Seven of 'The Same Species as Shakespeare'- In Virtue, In Vengeance

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Twenty-Seven—In Virtue, In Vengeance

A scramble and a punch and a cry and a stab. Draco was fighting a creature as pitiless and mighty as one of the Greek Furies.

And he was losing.

He knew that from the contemptuous ease with which the imposter kept any wand away from him, with the rapidity of the elbows and fists slamming into his ribs and shoulders, with the way the other man’s legs flailed beneath him and how he cried out curses without a pause for breath. He hadn’t managed to unleash any magic yet, given how close they were—he must fear that he was going to hit himself with the backlash as well as Draco with the actual spell—but he was causing Draco pain anyway.

Draco thought about letting himself be driven backwards. He could lie on the floor, gasping, his hands raised in surrender. The imposter would pause a moment and glare at him in wrath, and in that moment Draco could—

No. Draco doubted that would work. As maddened as the imposter was now, he would probably rape Draco’s mind with Legilimency before Draco could decide what to do, and he would certainly read the intention to attack on Draco’s face. Draco no longer thought he was subtle enough to fool someone who had studied him so long.

You did once before, his mind hissed at him as the imposter briefly pinned him to the floor and almost held a wand to his throat. Draco coiled a leg around his hips and kicked him in the arse, and the man lost his balance. Draco scrambled away and then behind and grabbed him around the throat. Nails raked across his forearm.

Draco tried to wrench to the side and throw the imposter to the floor again, but the man snarled at him and bit his hand. Draco jerked it free automatically—he had been taught to respond that way to pain, and then wait until house-elves could deal with whatever had hurt him—and the imposter turned and pointed the wand directly at his eyes.

“This is the end,” said the stranger, his voice muffled but the hatred clear in his eyes. “Your obsession with Potter has corrupted you to the extent that you could hurt me, the new version of you, the only one in the world who wants what is best for you.” Hurt joined the hatred, and Draco stared at him, baffled, not wanting to die at that moment because he wanted so badly to understand what would make someone act that way. “He’s flawed you. He’s twisted you and broken you, and you can’t even value a peaceful death.”

Draco, keeping his eyes steady on the imposter, started to shift a foot to the left. If he could just whirl around the man’s body fast enough, he might be able to snatch his hawthorn wand, which he could see sticking out of a robe pocket.

The imposter shook his head, blond hair flapping around his tragic expression. “And now I understand things so much better,” he said. “You will never end your obsession with Potter until you see him lying dead at your feet. How fortunate that he is now here.”

And he turned and Apparated away. A moment later, Draco felt the snap as powerful anti-Apparition wards locked into place.

*

The blue flame coiled around Harry and burned him from the inside out.

He tried to keep his lips shut on the screams, but it didn’t work. The flames found their way through his skin and then turned backwards, so that it felt as if he were suffering from hundreds of ingrown nails all at once. And then the pain snapped past that, expanding and racing throughout his body until he was entering new horizons of pain, new landscapes of agony, throbbing and dancing and shivering clouds of anguish.

Over his screaming, he heard someone chanting spells, but the pain only grew sharper and spikier, and Harry thought he felt something within the cradle of his skin fall into ashes and ruin. Perhaps his liver. Perhaps his heart.

The thought of losing his heart reminded him of Draco, and he forced himself to rise to his feet by the simple expedient of pushing his hands against the ground and concentrating on the motion of his muscles. The pain was real, yes, more real than anything he had experienced in his life—except his love for Draco.

Ron and Hermione won’t like me naming it love, he thought distantly, and the thought led him further still from the pain. He had a gasping moment, a breathing space, when he wasn’t at the mercy of the fire and the flames had paused as though unsure how to proceed. He had to remember that Draco had likely suffered more than this, and needed Harry to come to his rescue, however proud and stiff and ungrateful he might be at first.

And then he realized the reason he had a space amid the flames was that they had stopped burning. He blinked and looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of the boulder. It seemed to have vanished. So had Lucius and Snape and Ron, as a matter of fact. A wall of white wind enclosed him from all sides. Harry warily held up his wand, wondering if this was some new manner of ward. His hand shook with spasms of lingering pain, and so he clasped his fingers around the shaft of the wand and braced his elbow on his side.

“Potter.”

The word had a cool tone, but Harry had yearned for the warmth that lay under that coolness. He looked straight ahead, and Draco stood in front of him.

And it was his Draco, the Draco he had imagined, with a reluctant half-smile tugging at his lips and his head tilted to the side, with a small piece of hair falling in front of his eyes, as if he needed it to shield him from the terrors Harry’s gaze might pour out. Harry took an eager, sidling step towards him, and then stopped, unsure.

But when he reached out, he could feel the vibrations of the hawthorn wand. The wand was stuck in Draco’s robe pocket, and Harry laughed aloud. Draco at once drew back and away from him, his hand hovering above the wand, as if he were going to draw it if Harry were amused at his expense.

“No, no!” Harry whispered. He wavered from the pain again, but this time he didn’t care. He could drop his own holly wand to his side and stand free from fear. Draco had managed to rescue himself. “I was laughing because—because it’s you, and you’re whole, and I didn’t even need to come into the rock and save you.”

“You’ll never need to save me,” said Draco, with a twist to his voice that Harry imagined implied Draco thought Harry would need saving himself.

“No, I don’t reckon I will.” Harry took a deep breath, because he was remembering the letter now, and the articles, and the way that he had felt when he woke in the grass amid the dew and under the moon after Draco had slept with him and then abandoned him. He almost wanted to clench a fist and punch Draco; he almost wanted to lunge forwards, grab his shoulders, and kiss him.

He knew he didn’t want to do the responsible thing, which was what he did next. He nodded to the wall of white wind orbiting around them. “Do you know how to drop this thing?”

Draco blinked, twice, his long lashes—why had Harry never noticed how long they were before? And he called himself an expert on Draco—brushing his skin and then rising slowly again. “Why would I know how to drop this thing?”

“Because I thought the imposter might have told you. Or maybe you discovered it when you broke free.” Harry glanced in irritation at the wind wall. Ron must be frantic by now, and Lucius would be imagining what could have happened to his son, and Snape—Snape was probably preparing his best lecture for the moment when Harry appeared again. “You didn’t, did you? Then I’ll try.”

He lifted his wand, and once again his hand shook wildly. And this time Draco stepped towards him, resting one hand on his arm and smiling. “Harry,” he murmured. “You have to rest. Whatever you encountered on your way to not-rescue me must have taken much out of you.”

“Yes,” said Harry, but he was looking at Draco’s face, and the way Draco looked at him without a hint of resentment over the letter. He was thinking of Draco’s voice, and the way he had called Harry by his first name.

No hesitation, either. Even though, when they had first seen each other just a few minutes ago, he had spoken “Potter,” also without hesitation.

Harry thought Draco might love him, someday, when he had grown the sensitivity to do so, but he didn’t think they could have a placid relationship yet, without addressing the issues of the letter and Draco’s betrayal.

“Why are you staring at me as if I were about to knock you down and snatch the Snitch from you?” Draco asked, his voice soft, mild, amused. “Let me handle this, Harry. I want to be free of it as much as you do, and it’s clear at the moment that you would be—incompetent to handle it, let us say.”

Too smooth. Harry gave a great shudder, and the wound in his side throbbed, as if to remind him of what had happened the last time he mistook the imposter for the real Draco.

And yet, was it beyond imagination that Draco would want to avoid talking about those things until they were out of danger? The wards and leaving the imposter’s neighborhood were more important than threshing everything out right now.

“How did you defeat the imposter?” he asked.

Draco stiffened, then sighed. “You won’t approve of it when I tell you,” he said. “I’m trying to avert an explosion for the moment. Let me think of dispelling charms right now, won’t you? And you mustn’t mind if I use Dark Arts.” He raised his wand and murmured an incantation too soft for Harry to hear. The whirlwind shrank, but unfortunately contracted inwards as its walls lowered, so that Harry was forced a step back towards Draco.

That sounds like something Draco would say. And it’s like Draco not to get the incantation right the first time. He’s not as great a wizard as he sometimes thinks he is.

So many clues pointing the one way. So many clues pointing the other. And Harry had to worry, too, about what Draco would say if Harry made the wrong decision and attacked him, and it turned out he was the real one after all.

Harry swallowed and said, “There’s one thing I have to know first, because it’s plagued me since you disappeared.”

Draco gave him an indulgent look out of the corner of his eye even as he lifted his wand, which must be the imposter’s stolen wand, for another try. “What’s that?”

“How did you react when you first received my letter?”

And there was a momentary blankness in Draco’s face, which could have been startlement or wariness or mere surprise that Harry would bring up something like that at a time like this, but Harry thought he knew what it really was, and he wasn’t about to take the chance that this Draco might not be the real one, not now.

He attacked.

*

Lucius fell back a step when the white wind surrounded Potter. The suddenness of the ward’s rising gave him no time to consider reactions. He lashed out with a Lightning Curse that had broken stronger wards in its time than most Death Eaters would ever know; it was how Lucius had smashed the defenses of several of his rivals in the original war, so that the Aurors could find them. A Malfoy’s faith was always qualified.

The lightning rebounded and came back at him. Lucius knew it would have struck him if Severus hadn’t already erected a shield, a glittering blue diamond that dissipated the lightning harmlessly along its surface. Lucius let out a long breath and turned to thank Severus.

Severus hadn’t waited to be thanked. He had stepped past Lucius and begun to chant something in a strong, rolling voice, but no language Lucius knew. His wand was aimed at the white wind, and Lucius calmed, knowing that Severus could break it if anyone could. They had only to wait.

And, in the meantime, look for the boulder. Lucius knew he ought to be able to see it still past the relatively small circle of the whirlwind, but it had vanished as though it were illusion or a spell like Severus’s shield, meant to last only until it was no longer needed. Lucius frowned and took a step to the side, peering.

Weasley nearly knocked him down. He was groaning, and swearing, and yelling, “Harry? Harry, come back here, you mad bastard!”

To Lucius’s disgust, his voice held the sound of tears. Lucius rolled his eyes and snapped, “Weasley, your weeping can’t help him now. Help me find the boulder. The man who attacked him lives there. If we can find him, we can make him drop the ward and free Potter.” And free my son, he thought, but he doubted that argument would have convinced Weasley.

After a breath that made him sway on his feet, the red-haired menace nodded and aimed his wand beyond the whirlwind. He chanted a Seeking Spell that ought to find the presence of any stone in the vicinity, if Lucius was construing the Latin right. Reluctantly impressed—he had not supposed that Aurors knew such useful magic—Lucius cast the Seeking Spell in another direction, and waited.

Nothing came back to them, no report. Perhaps the boulder had indeed vanished, or had never existed in the first place.

Lucius was about to shed some of his own blood and cast the Seeking Spell again, this time to seek the presence of similar blood—Draco’s—when Severus finished his spell. A black cloud appeared out of nowhere to engulf the white wind. It appeared like an eclipse, and steadily darkened like one, until Lucius had to look away. The thin rim of light around the darkness threatened to blind him.

And then it stopped. And Severus cursed, with that rarest of notes in his voice: disbelief.

Lucius looked back at the ward, and saw that it had grown smaller and tighter, but had not vanished, as Severus’s spell seemed to have been designed to make it do.

And that it was swaying back and forth, like a sack full of cats fighting.

*

Draco had found the stone room where the imposter had first brought him without trouble, but from there, he could find no exit. He crossed the central floor five times. He banged on all the walls as high as he could reach, looking for a hidden door. He cast a wandless spell that should have revealed the presence of steps to him. He tried to Apparate, envisioning the last place he could clearly remember the imposter bringing him before they emerged into this hidden lair, and reappeared in the same place.

But we Apparated to get in here! I know we did.

The image of the way the imposter could be torturing Harry made his head ring harder than the fear itself. He darted wildly in several directions, like a rabbit running from a hawk’s shadow, before he slowed himself with a forcible jerk and a fierce breath.

I can’t let myself be consumed by this. I’ve got to remember that Harry’s depending on me, and so that gives me more responsibility to keep my head, not less. I know certain spells can mimic Apparition, and it’s by one of them that we must have traveled. What one would the imposter be most likely to use, given what’s here and what I know about him?

A leap through darkness, Draco’s old reading whispered to him. That was what Apparition was, the simplest description of it, if one ignored the squeezing sensation and the distance crossed and the magical theory that hummed in the back of one’s mind and polluted one’s understanding of the act. (There had been a period when Draco couldn’t Apparate because he had paid too much attention to the impossibilities of it as expressed in magical theory and didn’t trust his body and his wand anymore). A leap through darkness had to have light to lead it. Some spells that mimicked it traveled by sun or stars or moon, harnessing the light of heaven to pass through wards. The lights of heaven laughed at wards.

And so could other light.

Draco snapped his eyes open and stepped towards the fireplace, laying one hand on the cool stone. He spoke the incantation that mimicked Apparition through fire, concentrating solely on the syllables as he rolled them and released them, so he wouldn’t panic himself by trying to remember if he actually remembered or by thinking of his wandless state.

And then the spell seized him, and he was tumbling through a darkness brilliant with tiny sparks of light, like the night sky spangled with stars, and triumphant words rang in his head.

I do use logic to solve problems, most of the time. I don’t fight like Harry after all.

And then he was in a tight, narrow space with someone who looked like him and a charging figure that looked extraordinarily like Harry, and there were white walls around them, and the hawthorn wand was directly in front of him as the imposter flung up a spell that scorched across Harry’s face.

Draco snatched at the wand. His first instinct had been to fling himself between Harry and the imposter’s magic, but he would be useless with only flesh instead of magic to block it.

*

Harry had thought the imposter a mad genius before, when he was fighting to defend himself and kill Harry.

Now he was fighting for his life, and he was brilliant.

Lightning stabbed the darkness around them; light coruscated and became burning fire; showers of earth rained to earth and rose up again as water; rose petals fell on Harry’s face, stung him with small thorns, and then became buzzing bees whose stingers dripped a deadly green venom that Harry knew he didn’t want on him. Crack and flash and alteration and change, and Harry could barely defend himself.

He tried the academic means of defense that the Aurors had instilled in him, carefully paced Shield Charms and offensive spells and absorption spells and Vanishing spells alternating, and found himself scorched and limping in under a minute. So he gave in to instinct and listened to his body, and he was soaring in seconds, driving back the imposter’s attacks with a glittering array of his own, spells uttered before he knew what he’d choose or heard the words on his tongue.

But he was only holding his own—which, though impressive enough in itself, wouldn’t free him from the cage of this ward, or stop the imposter from hurting Draco, or stop the imposter altogether.

He needed something else, something that would compensate for the lack of ground here, and the imposter’s genius, and the other wards and defenses that he probably had buried around the boulder and would call upon in a moment.

And then he was there, the real Draco, breathless, with his hair flying around his face, and he snatched the hawthorn wand out of the imposter’s pocket, handling it as if the wand had been with him from childhood.

As it had.

Harry relaxed and smiled. A doubt he wouldn’t have admitted he had, even under pain of death, melted away from him, and as the imposter stared at him, he snarled another Shield Charm and let down part of his guard as if he were faltering from weariness at last.

In the meantime, Draco struck him in the back with a spell shaped like a silver dagger and edged with blue flame.

Harry couldn’t even feel that it was dishonorable for the imposter to go down like that, not when the white ward faltered the moment he did and left them in the open air again, and not when Draco caught his eye and grinned, sleek and savage and shining, a predator.

If he can still smile like that, Harry thought, smiling back, dizzy with pain and relief and exhilaration, then he wasn’t hurt too badly.

That, at the moment, was a wonderful gift all its own.

*

Severus had awaited the moment when the ward would fall, and the fighters inside would be revealed to him. He was sure Potter was one of them. Potter would fight if the sky were falling and the sun burning out; he had a dogged stubbornness that did not know what it meant to give up.

Of course, if he were fighting Draco himself, then Severus would have killed him. But no, when the ward fell, he and Draco were meeting each other’s eyes, and a third figure sprawled on the ground between them, his eyes fixed on the sky and his lips moving in what could have been a prayer but which Severus was certain was a malediction.

Weasley gave a shout of relief and rushed forwards, no doubt to gather his friend in his arms and slap him on the back in some Gryffindor ceremony of greeting.

(No one had ever done that for Severus. Even Lily did not often embrace him, and when she did, it felt as if it were a gift granted from heaven, which meant Severus stood stiff and unresponsive in her arms, trying to memorize every nuance of the moment, and did not enjoy it).

Lucius was not far behind him. His face shone with a subdued light no one would see if he were not familiar with it, and which Severus himself had not seen there often since Narcissa died.

(Should he say ‘was killed?’ Died seemed too sanitized, as if she had died of old age instead of being murdered by Bellatrix. But on the other hand, Narcissa had done a stupid thing in rousing Bellatrix’s jealousy).

Severus ignored them both. In a moment they would be in the way and would interfere with his vengeance, but they were not yet. He made a subtle gesture with his wand that he had memorized when he first studied most of the Dark Arts books that crowded his shelves. Some of the products of his lab were simply too dangerous to touch as one administered them.

The circular vial containing the Curse Potion shot forwards, darted around Weasley’s shoulder and under Lucius’s arm, and smashed into the man lying on the ground. He leaped back to his feet as if at the shock of cold water, and blinked at them all for a moment. Draco and Potter fell together, wands leveled.

But the imposter did not try to attack. He merely stared, and then he Apparated away.

Shouted remonstrance came Severus’s way. He was sure Potter would have cursed him himself, if he had dared.

Severus looked away and flicked a bit of dust from his sleeve. The Curse Potion was the only appropriate vengeance, and if the imposter seemed free at the moment, he would not remain so. His cursed fate, instead, would ensure that he ran until he felt an inexplicable compulsion to return and confront Draco, and then the potion would take effect.

He had the illusion of freedom, but not the reality.

(Severus knew what that was like all too well).

Chapter 28.

Comments

[valkyrie17.livejournal.com]

I liked the fact that both harry and Draco were fighting for each other:)
Maybe there's some hope for them.

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

There's actually a way to go before they align. Harry has explained his hang-ups in the next chapter, but he's not yet convinced Draco that this is the best way of doing things all the time.