lomonaaeren | Chapter Thirteen of 'Soldier's Welcome'- A New Way Forwards

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (13/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairings: Harry/Draco preslash, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Violence (and plenty of it), profanity, references to sex, takes account of DH but ignores the epilogue, heavy angst.
Summary: It’s the first year of Auror training for Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and…Draco Malfoy, But with Hagrid, Snape’s second Pensieve, rogue Death Eaters, Auror classes, and someone trying to start a second war to worry about, Harry might not have the time to pay that much attention to Malfoy. At first, anyway.
Author’s Notes: This story is the first in a trilogy called Running to Paradise, which takes its title from a W. B. Yeats poem. Each story will be novel-length, and each will cover a year of Harry and Draco’s training as Aurors. Though there are a lot of fics out there about them acting as Auror partners, there aren’t as many about their training, so I hope to cover some original ground there. I’m indebted to a reader named SP777 for suggesting a training fic for me to write.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirteen—A New Way Forwards

“So,” Ron said, too casually, his eyes fastened on the diagram in front of him that showed the proper way to heal the wound from a Stinging Hex—at least if he’d taken the correct notes from Portillo Lopez’s lecture, Harry thought half-maliciously. “Did you talk to anyone today?”

Harry leaned his head back on the chair and squinted absently at the problems Hestia had set them in Auror Conduct. For each specific situation on the chart, they were supposed to give both their own likely response and the response the Auror Code called for. Harry was curbing his natural honesty, because he doubted that he wanted Hestia to die of a heart attack when she read what he would really do. A watered-down version of it would work. “Of course,” he said. “You. Hermione. Darien West. He knows more about Combat than I thought he did, and he managed to show me that one strike that I can never perform when Gregory demonstrates it. I think I’ll surprise her the next time she pits me against Malfoy.”

From the corner of his eye, Harry saw Ron stiffen, probably at the mention of Malfoy. Harry hid a hard smile as he began to write his response to the question, What would you do if you saw your partner bleeding on the ground at the same moment as the Dark wizard you were fighting began to flee?

Ron hadn’t made this easy for him. Harry didn’t see why he should make it easy for him, in return.

“But no one else?” Ron was fidgeting. His notes from Portillo Lopez’s lecture fell onto the floor, and he bent and picked them up with a low curse.

“Why, no.” Harry looked up with a perplexed expression that he’d practiced in the mirror for several minutes after Malfoy left. Ron frowned at him in return. Harry snorted and fixed his eyes on the list again, “Were you expecting a firecall or something? Hermione spent most of the day with you, so I would have thought she could give you a message then if she wanted to do it.”

“Come off it, Harry,” Ron said. “I know this was the day Ginny was supposed to firecall you, and I reckon that you’re just trying to get out of talking about it.”

The anger that struck Harry was as sharp and stinging as a bite at his fingernail that made the quick bleed. He slammed down his sheaf of paper on the arm of the chair, and Ron jumped, dropping his notes again. Harry might have thought it was funny, but for the moment, the expression on Ron’s face and Ginny’s and Malfoy’s remembered words were the world for him.

“You set your sister on me,” Harry said lowly. “You know we don’t talk anymore since the breakup. You ought to be enough of an adult to handle your problems by yourself. Especially,” he added, with slow, ripe contempt while Ron’s face darkened to tomato, “a problem that comes from your petty little jealousy of Malfoy.”

“I’m not jealous of the bastard!” Ron yelled, springing to his feet. “Or at least,” he added, when Harry just glared at him and didn’t say anything, “I wouldn’t have to be if you didn’t treat him like a friend.”

“He was unconscious for two days, almost, because I pulled on his compatible magic,” Harry said. “I drained him without his asking. He wasn’t angry about that, and that’s worth being angry about a lot more than a decision the instructors made and you can’t change. I told you we could change it in the future, if Malfoy and I can’t get along as partners, but you’re throwing a fit about not being able to change it now. I thought you were better than that by this point in your life, Ron. I thought you were an adult.”

Ron leaned towards him. “What would you say if they partnered Hermione and me? Are you trying to tell me that you wouldn’t be upset?”

Harry pictured all the time they would spend together and winced. This was why he wasn’t any good at staying angry with his friends, most of the time. He could see their side—

And part of him was still the scared little boy Dudley kept from having friends in primary, he acknowledged grimly to himself. That little boy thought that if he irritated his friends too much, they would walk away and abandon him.

But if he wanted Ron to act like an adult, then he had to dismiss the boy and act like one, too. Harry made himself sit up straight and speak quietly. “I’d be upset, but I’d try to understand. You would have something special that made you work together well. You’d have to, if they paired you up this early. And I’d expect you to tell me I was being a prat if I kept on acting like it was your fault.”

Ron’s hands made the wood of the chair creak as he grasped it. “What you and Malfoy have isn’t special,” he said.

“I reckon compatible magic is around every corner, then?” Harry demanded. “And that’s how come none of the other trainees have it?”

“I don’t like you using the word special,” Ron said, in that stubborn tone that meant he was simply going to ignore everything anybody said until he got his way.

“Too bad, I used it,” Harry said. “And I’m going to go on being partners with Malfoy, and I want you to stop acting like a prick. You saw the way we can fight in Dearborn’s class. You can’t stand there and tell me that that isn’t special.”

“This is exactly why I wanted Ginny to deal with it!” Ron shouted at him, snatching up his notes and marching towards the door. “Because I knew that she would know the right words and I wouldn’t!” He spun around in the doorway and pointed one finger at Harry. “But just because I don’t know the right words doesn’t make me wrong!”

He slammed the door. Harry heard a few muffled protests from trainees up and down the corridor, but he didn’t bother getting up and going to reassure them. He just sat there, shaking his head and thinking how right Malfoy had been.

Ron was acting like an idiot. He could barely admit that he was jealous. He saw nothing wrong with setting Ginny on Harry, and then he got offended that Harry was offended. He would probably run to Hermione and tell her his side of the story, and that would cause trouble between Harry and Hermione. Or, at best, it would catch Hermione in the middle, the way she had been during their fourth year at Hogwarts.

Harry sat and waited for regret to bubble through him. Fighting with his two best friends was not the way he had intended to start his December.

But instead, he found a smile playing on his lips, and he sat down and worked right through the Auror Conduct problems with a clear conscience.

*

“Malfoy. Potter.”

Gregory called them up to the front of the room to face each other, of course. Draco had to admit that he went somewhat warily. Potter had made a promise, a promise Draco wanted to trust, but so far Potter giving his word to a Malfoy had meant nothing in particular. He might have changed his mind over the weekend and decided that Monday should begin with a re-commitment to ignoring Draco.

Draco thought that until he got up to the front of the class and turned to face Potter, unconsciously drawing in a deep breath as he did so.

And then he caught sight of Potter’s face, and his eyes widened in spite of himself. Potter was grinning at him. The grin had a friendly edge to it. A desperate edge, Draco thought, as he studied Potter’s face some more, but even that kind of friendliness was more than he had ever been accustomed to receive from Potter.

“I’ve been studying,” Potter whispered. “Prepare yourself.”

Gregory snapped the command to go before Draco could answer. And anyway, he thought, as he lunged and aimed a kick at Potter’s midriff, it wouldn’t do to waste breath on a taunt.

Potter spun out of the way of the kick and then leaped forwards and jabbed out with one hand. Draco answered the move before he thought about it. Potter was staring too intently at Draco’s left side for him not to mean it.

Or so Draco thought until Potter stepped back neatly and he realized it had been a feint after all. Potter had learned to lie with his face some time in the last few days.

Or maybe he changed his mind and decided to put in enough effort, Draco thought dimly as Potter spun on one heel and kicked him in the back of the leg, dropping him neatly to the floor.

There was silence for long enough that Draco began to worry he’d hit something vital in his ear and was now deaf. Then he lifted his head and realized Gregory was staring at Potter, and the rest of the class was holding its breath, not wanting to irritate Gregory by applauding.

Idiots, Draco thought as he shook his head and worked his way back to his feet, gingerly testing his knee. It would support his weight for the rest of class, he thought, but he would heal the injury as soon as they left Gregory’s room and were allowed to do so. They should encourage good work, whether or not they know the instructor hates the student who did it. Where’s their bravery and their pride?

“Mister Potter has been studying,” Gregory said at last. Her voice was harsh as a crow’s, and she couldn’t manage a smile the way she did for most people when they won a contest—or beat Potter. She turned away with a grudging nod and focused on the other students. “Cadwallader, Snowpoint, up here.”

Draco had to conceal a smile as he turned to limp back to his place. Gregory’s partiality for anyone but Potter had caught her by surprise this time. She had decided, the way Snape had, that Potter would never be good at her subject, but she shouldn’t have had that confidence. Potter was naturally better at physical things like Quidditch, Draco thought. It was only his wariness of Gregory that had kept him from doing better in Combat before now.

Someone grabbed his arm and slung it around his shoulders. Draco turned to stare the person into stammering embarrassment.

It was Potter, who caught his eye and snorted, rolling his own. “You’ll have to do worse than that to make me back down, after what we talked about the other day,” he whispered, and assisted Draco back to his spot. Draco had to admit, if only to himself, that it was easier to walk with companionship. Potter had hit his knee harder than he knew until it started to send a pounding ache up his leg.

He wondered what would happen when Potter dropped his arm. Would he sit down near Draco, proclaiming his change of allegiance to anyone who cared to watch, or would he sit down by his friends again, trying to reconcile them to his growing friendship with Draco? Draco could think of good reasons for both actions.

Potter did neither. Instead, he took up a new position in the group, next to Catherine Arrowshot, a high-strung, brown-haired girl he’d been cultivating for the past few days. Arrowshot looked at him shyly. Potter made a joke of some kind, from the way his eyes shone, and Arrowshot laughed.

Only when Draco crossed cold stares with Weasley did he realize that the spot of floor Potter had picked was halfway between his friends and Draco.

Draco was the one who had the problem with not sneaking sideways stares at Potter for the rest of class. A Potter who had proven himself capable of deception and diplomacy was unexpectedly attractive.

*

“I received very interesting responses,” Hestia said, rifling through the sheets of paper that they had handed her containing their answers to her problems. “Very interesting indeed. I think we need to have a discussion of some of them.” She looked up, and for an instant Harry thought he caught a gleam of mischief in her eyes, but it was gone so quickly he couldn’t be sure. Besides, she had looked mischievous when she assigned them the problems, too, and they had turned out to be hard work.

Half the class groaned. Hestia laughed. “Oh, I’m not going to have you simply talk to one another. I’ll split you up into pairs and ask you to act out one of the situations on the list.” She smiled sweetly. “And because you can’t always anticipate what you’ll meet when you go into the field, I’m going to give one of you the situation, and withhold it from the other one. The other partner will simply have to react.”

Now it was a murmur of excitement instead of resentment that stirred the class. Hestia nodded. “I also have a reason behind my choices, random as they might seem to be at first.”

Harry glanced at Catherine, wondering if he would be paired up with her, but his name was the first Hestia’s called. “Potter and Granger, please.”

Harry hesitated before he stood. He had been sure that Hestia would either pair him up with someone completely new or with Malfoy. He couldn’t help glancing at Malfoy, and found him watching with narrowed eyes.

Malfoy raised a brow when he saw Harry watching and extended his hands palm-up, as if to say that he had no idea why Hestia hadn’t put them together. Then he cocked his head and nodded beyond Harry, and Harry turned hastily back to face Hermione. She already looked sad and angry, as she had most of the morning. Ron had explained his side of the story to her first, of course. Harry hoped, as he moved slowly forwards to stand opposite her, that he wouldn’t have to hurt her or do something else that would deepen the argument.

Hestia handed a scrap of paper to Hermione. Harry could make out the strokes of thick letters through the paper, but not what they said. Hermione read it, and took a single deep breath before she faced Harry.

“Harry,” she said softly.

Is this part of the discussion she wants to have with me? But Harry remained on his guard, because he didn’t really expect Hermione to ignore the rules in public, or try to sabotage her own performance in class. “Yeah?” he asked, letting his hand fall onto his wand.

“I wish I knew how to get you to respond.” Hermione stared at Harry with large, heartsick eyes. “You’re drifting further and further away from us, and I don’t know how to bring you back.”

Harry stiffened, but then he saw Hestia out of the corner of his eye. She looked pleased instead of frowning, so he didn’t think Hermione was violating the rules for whatever the situation was supposed to be. She was probably just adapting it, taking the chance to say some of the words she wanted to say without revealing to everyone what had happened between them.

That’s something, at least. She and Ron want to keep this private.

And like a flash, the memory of one particular situation on the sheet came back to him. It was that of an Auror trying to coax a partner who had been incapacitated by the Imperius Curse or one of the mind-control artifacts that Dark wizards sometimes favored. Hermione could be playing either role, but Harry was sure that that was what she was doing.

He let his wand fall into his fingers as he watched Hermione, sparing a fleeting thought for the fact that he didn’t remember the last time his mind had worked this quickly, this clearly, this consistently. He didn’t know what had caused it, but he wanted to hang onto the clarity.

“Don’t you have anything to say?” Hermione asked. Her voice broke with frustration. She took one step forwards, so quick and smooth that Harry hardly saw it. “Why are you leaving us behind?”

I think she’s the one who’s under the curse, Harry decided. And even if she wasn’t, my reaction should still be the same, because either I’m trying to rescue her and I have to ignore what she says, or I’m the one under the curse and I won’t be paying attention to her anyway.

He swiftly cast a Body-Bind, and Hermione wavered and started to fall. Harry cast a Cushioning Charm on the ground in response, and though Hermione toppled over like a statue, she didn’t get hurt.

“Very good, Mr. Potter,” Hestia said, looking pleased. “What made you decide to react the way you did?”

“I thought she was either under an Imperius Curse or convinced I was under one,” Harry said, glancing sideways at Hermione. Her face was frozen in an expression of hurt dismay. He nearly sighed aloud, because he knew that would mean an argument later, but sighing would rather give the game away. “She wasn’t actively hostile, so I didn’t want to fight her, and it’s not her fault if she’s under an Imperius Curse.”

Hestia nodded. “What made you decide that was the more likely option?”

“Her vagueness,” Harry said. “She could have attacked at once if she thought I wouldn’t listen to her, and she wasn’t trying to tell me something specific, like that the people who had enchanted her were friends. Whoever cursed her probably knew that I wouldn’t fall for something like that.”

Hermione shut her eyes.

“A good piece of logic,” said Hestia. “Let her up now, Mr. Potter.”

Harry released the Body-Bind on Hermione and turned away instead of watching her climb to her feet. He didn’t want to see the betrayal he knew would be in her eyes. There would be another argument—there would always be another argument, Harry was beginning to think now—but for the moment, he simply wasn’t interested in continuing it.

Instead, he found himself seeking Malfoy’s eyes.

Malfoy looked stunned. Harry scrutinized his expression carefully for some hint of pleasure, using all the skills that Pushkin had taught them in Observation, but couldn’t find it. In the end, he shrugged, slightly annoyed at himself, and sat down again in his seat.

Maybe Malfoy’s trying to be an adult as well.

*

Potter was getting more interesting by the minute, which was the only reason Draco didn’t roll his eyes when, once again, Ketchum partnered them in Battle Tactics.

They didn’t work together in this class the way they did in Dearborn’s. They had to act as a team not in dueling enemies—or not in dueling enemies only—but in scrambling up staircases, dodging falling obstacles, watching for spells from Ketchum’s second- and third-years, and protecting each other from ambush. He and Potter pulled in opposite directions when the instructors tried to yoke them like that. Of course they wouldn’t do well without the bond of the compatible magic between them.

But now Draco was wondering what this changed, interesting Potter might try.

“Listen up.” Ketchum didn’t need to extend his hands over his head and clap to get the class paying attention to him—they already were—but he did it anyway. Draco had noticed that the Mudblood was fond of dramatics. “This time, I want you to get to the platform up there.” He pointed towards a floating, slender block in the upper left-hand corner of the enormous room, already crowded by five of his trainees. There were no staircases that led to it. “Both you and your partner have to reach it at the same time, or it doesn’t count. Meanwhile…” He flourished his wand, and boulders zipped out from chutes in the walls, hanging suspended in midair as if from invisible wires. Flying torches danced among them, changing direction at unpredictable intervals, while ropes wove lazy patterns around them. Spikes popped in and out of the walls. “These obstacles will be trying to stop you,” Ketchum said casually. “And my trainees will fling spells, of course.”

He turned to Draco and Potter. “Malfoy, you’re the leader this time.”

Draco’s breath caught. Usually, Ketchum decreed that Potter would be the one making the decisions, or he gave both of them equal rights. But now Potter had to do as he said.

The next moment, Draco’s curiosity to know how Potter would take this became more interesting to him than the fact of his command. He turned his head and stared at Potter.

For a moment, Potter seemed to swallow and struggle with a sour mouthful of envy. Then he grinned and bowed to Draco. “Lead on, captain.”

Ketchum fell back. Draco enchanted the flagstones beneath him and Potter with a muttered spell that, to his pleasure, Potter listened closely to. The stones rose beneath them, flattening and curving, and formed a passable imitation—but only an imitation, and therefore legal—of a flying carpet. It was a spell Draco had studied the night before, and he trembled in gladness that it had worked. The stones circled them up through the air towards the platform.

Potter pressed his shoulder and leg against Draco’s, half-shielding him, half-shielded, and awaited orders. Draco, his confidence making him feel lighter than flying did, said, “Summon one of the torches, please, Potter.”

He got a sideways glance for the please, but Draco wanted to show that he could make small sacrifices, too.

Potter nodded, and the next moment a torch was flying towards his hand—

Pulling a boulder right behind it.

“Concentrate on what you’re doing!” Draco snapped when he saw Potter’s wand rising. He ducked around him and used a Blasting Curse that sent the boulder flying apart in smithereens. Potter lifted a hand and caught the torch in an easy grip, then sent an impressed look towards Draco over his shoulder.

Draco’s mouth dried out at that look.

He would have to think about that later, he decided. They had circled too near the wall, and one of the popping spikes had carved a bit of stone off the side of their “carpet.” Draco adjusted its course with a word, and they dipped around two ropes and straightened out in a flat run for the platform.

Making perfect targets for the trainees’ spells, of course.

“Defense, Potter!” Draco said, because he knew Potter was stronger on that. Potter nodded and raised a shield around them that deflected the first hexes. Draco knelt beside him and aimed his wand along the line of Potter’s hip, through a small gap in the shields, waiting for the recoil of the compatible magic to hit him.

It did, but carrying a new sensation with it this time. Draco felt as if he were wearing Potter like a skin cloak, a second awareness around his own. He could feel the stone carpet under a second pair of feet, another pair of lungs drawing breath, glasses around his own eyes.

He didn’t let it distract him. Instead, he muttered, “Creo fluctus!”

The spell charged out of him, not stronger than usual but faster, silkier, smoother. The wave of mingled water and air it made caught up the torch and swept all the trainees off the platform at once, and then doubled back and swept Potter and Draco off the stone.

Draco felt his crow of triumph stick in his throat as they whirled along for a moment, nothing but sparkling foam and thick air and mingled fire between them and a fall all the way to the floor, and then they landed on the platform, at the same time, and clutched each other to keep from tumbling.

From below came dazed silence and then clapping, both thin with distance. Potter steadied himself with a hand on Draco’s shoulder and leaned across to murmur to him in the moment before Ketchum called to them.

“Thank you. There’s no one else I could do that with. I know that now.”

Draco whipped his head around to look at him. Potter’s smile was warm, if a trifle aloof. He was trying.

Draco had no words for his feelings and could only give a single, convulsive squeeze of his hand.

His thoughts had no words, either. But his determination to keep Potter close burst into bud like a flower, and hardened like stone.

Chapter Fourteen.

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

maple88.livejournal.com

I freakin love Harry Potter!
Seriously, he decided to grow up and not let his so-called friends dictate what he should want or do. Way to go Harry!
And Draco and his growing attraction makes me tingle in happiness ♥
Great chapter, as usual!

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Chapter Thirteen of 'Soldier's Welcome'- A New Way Forwards

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