lomonaaeren

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (16/?)
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 Sixteen—Staying the Course

“Good luck, Harry.”

Harry squeezed Hermione’s shoulder when she looked as if she wanted to stay at his side and even follow him into their rooms. “Thanks,” he said. “But I don’t think I’ll need it. Ron sounded ready to listen to reason, didn’t he?”

Hermione gave him a troubled glance. “He did, but…”

“I know,” Harry said. “It’s sometimes hard to get him to the point where he can absorb reason even if he listens.” He paused, but Hermione didn’t smile; she just continued watching him with an anxiety that Harry privately thought was unfounded. “I’m going to do my best,” he said at last, because that was all he could promise in the face of her appeal. “And I won’t abandon him because he’s a bit stubborn.”

Hermione smiled for the first time since they’d left class. “I know that,” she said. “Well. I have an appointment with Portillo Lopez to ask about a few of the stitches in Battle Healing that I don’t understand.” She hitched the stack of papers she was carrying more firmly into her arms, inclined her head to Harry, and turned around, stalking up the corridor as though she was going to challenge a breeding dragon.

Harry knocked on the door, and waited until Ron called for him to come in before he opened it. He thought it best if Ron felt in control of this confrontation. It would give him some confidence and willingness to listen, and Harry didn’t mind—unless Ron started trying to assert actual control, and if he did he would get a nasty surprise.

Ron was sitting in the middle of his bed, his arms folded and his wand lying on the blanket next to him. Harry dragged a chair up so that he could see Ron’s face comfortably and dropped into it. Ron stared at him, and Harry stared back. He had decided that he would let Ron make the first move, too.

“You and Malfoy,” Ron said finally, picking at his back teeth with what Harry knew he desperately wanted to be a casual gesture, and which came across as nothing of the kind. “Who would have thought you could ever like him?”

“He’s been more agreeable to me than he ever was in the past.” Harry leaned back and crossed his ankles, sprawling in the chair. “If he’d showed me that side of himself at Hogwarts, then we probably would have made friends when we were third years or something.”

Ron turned his head sharply and glared at him. “Even if he was still insulting my family? Even if he was still calling Hermione a Mudblood?”

“Has he done that since he came here?” Harry asked. “I really want to know.” He could remember a few times that Draco had snapped insults about “Weasel” and so on when they were in private, but he couldn’t think of a full-blown argument in public. Draco seemed to be working under the assumption that he wouldn’t get ahead in the Aurors if he let his prejudices show, and Harry agreed with him wholeheartedly.

Besides, that did make him more pleasant to be around. No matter how much he liked Draco, Harry doubted he would have tried so hard to become his friend if Draco was insulting his mother at every turn. There was a certain point where you had to stop making excuses for people and expect them to act like adults.

“He might not say it that often,” Ron said grudgingly, and then leaned forwards and stared earnestly at Harry. “But he still thinks it. I know it from the way that he looks at me, and Hermione.”

“And I know that you think he’s a horrible pointy-faced little git with horrid parents,” Harry said. “But you don’t go around saying that. And you should get some credit for that, don’t you think?”

Ron rubbed his mouth and scowled at the wall for so long that Harry began to wonder if he needed some more time to think about this. He shifted in his chair. Ron’s eyes came back to him at once, and he said, “He’s still trying to take my best friend away from me.”

“No,” Harry said, dead certain of this if nothing else. “I don’t think Draco has thought much about you since we came into the Auror training program, Ron.” Ron’s face was screwed up every time Harry said Draco’s name, but at least he wasn’t protesting verbally yet, and Harry thought that was an important beginning. “He wants to affect me. He doesn’t care as much about you and Hermione.”

“He wants to change you by taking away your best friends!” Ron punched his fist into his palm. “I don’t know why you can’t see that, mate. He would be so much happier if you never did anything but stand next to him and give everyone this vacant smile—” he imitated a smile that made Harry’s eyebrows rise, because he knew he didn’t like that “—and duel when he wanted you to. That’s why I hate him so much, why I keep objecting to him. Because even if he just wants you as his partner right now, he’s changing you and cutting you away from us. Why do you think he’s got you to call him by his first name and argue with me? Those are the first steps! Eventually he’ll control your life and we won’t have any part in it.” Ron’s face was flushed as he reached out and grabbed Harry’s arm, shaking it. “I was so angry because I can see that and I was trying to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

Harry counted to ten in his head twice before he could trust himself to speak. Ron not only had the wrong idea about Draco, he was making insulting assumptions about Harry and attributing to Draco a bunch of the things that he had done, whether he realized it or not.

“Draco doesn’t want that,” Harry said finally. “I was the one who made a choice to start calling him by his first name. If you’d turned around in the dining hall the other day, you would have seen how surprised he was when I called him that—”

“You didn’t make the choice,” Ron interrupted him. “He did.”

“How the—how can you say that?” Harry snapped, deciding that swearing at Ron now would only make him more stubborn and more prone to do anything other than actually listen to Harry. “I’m sitting here and telling you that I’m the one who made it. I know I did. I can throw off Imperius, so you can’t possibly think that he cast a spell on me or something. And why does it matter so much anyway? Of course you start calling people by their first names when you spend more time with them.”

“You never called Snape by his first name, even though you spent a lot of detentions with him.” Ron looked at Harry triumphantly, as if he had proven his point.

“Snape was my teacher.” Harry stood up, his muscles locked against the temptation to hit Ron. Then he realized he was getting ready to walk away, and sat down again. He had promised Hermione that he wouldn’t leave. Besides, if he did, he thought it was unlikely that he would get Ron to talk to him again so openly.

Maybe I should just say what’s on my mind and force him to accept it instead of dodging around the issues and letting him choose what to talk about.

“Look,” Harry said. “You say that Draco wants to control me, but you’re the one who wants to, from deciding what I can call Draco to trying to make me deal with your sister.” Ron opened his mouth, looking outraged, but Harry bulled ahead. If he was going to say this, then he was going to say it all as one piece. “No, Ron, hear me out. You’re the one who wants me to do certain things and stay at your side and never walk away from you. We can have a life outside each other. We can be friends, but that doesn’t mean that we won’t have other friends. Besides, you need to start paying more attention to Hermione. You would have seen how much she was suffering if you paid attention.”

There.

Ron’s face was mostly white, with a small spot of red in each cheek, as though Harry had slapped him. “Hermione isn’t suffering!”

“She is,” Harry said. “Trying to keep up with all her classes and stay cheerful and perfect all the time so that she could help you.” He watched as enormous flushes of red traveled across Ron’s cheeks, and then added, as much because he wanted to as for any other reason, “I didn’t notice, either. But then, I’m not her boyfriend.”

“And you’re not Ginny’s!” Ron said, voice suddenly sounding so thick that Harry could have reached out and plucked his bitterness from the air. “The way you should be! You’re more likely to end up as Malfoy’s lover at this point.”

“You brought up the other thing I wanted to talk to you about without any prompting,” Harry said, swallowing his anger with difficulty. He knew that Ron had been disappointed when he and Ginny broke up, but he hadn’t suspected this level of resentment. “How convenient. You don’t have any right to call in Ginny to fight your battles, or for any other reason. We’re not dating anymore.”

“You should,” Ron said. “You bloody well should.”

“What, to protect me from Draco’s uninterested clutches?” Harry rolled his eyes and snorted. “He might be my friend, but, Ron, think about it. Do you think someone like Draco would really want to date someone like me?” He spread his arms, inviting Ron in silence to look at him. Scruffy and scrawny and untidy and irritating—Harry had several times seen Draco look at him with something that he would have called romantic interest in another person, but that was silly, because he would never meet Draco’s standards.

Besides, they were both blokes. Harry knew that that might not matter to some wizards, because Hermione had explained that along with so many other things to him in the past year as they got ready to enter the Auror program, but it would sure as fuck matter to Harry.

Ron paused and blinked as though Harry’s words had been a punch to the gut. Then he tilted his head back and forth, surveying him from several different angles. Harry placed a small, confident grin on his face and waited.

Ron looked at him and said slowly, “No offense, mate, but you don’t look like something Malfoy would snatch up.”

“That makes your suspicions sillier than ever,” Harry retorted. “Don’t you think? I’m not going to be Draco’s boyfriend. I’m his friend, and I can be a friend to as many people as I like. You don’t need to compete over me.”

Ron swallowed and lowered his head. “Yeah, mate, but you can only have one best friend. And I’m afraid that—he might be that.” His voice sank, and he rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth.

Harry stared at him, stunned. He couldn’t remember the last time he had heard Ron admit fear.

But, more than that, he finally understood why Ron had been so against Draco from the beginning. He thought there was something special and exclusive about his friendship with Harry, and he thought the friendship Harry and Draco shared would surpass it or change it.

He’s right about the first part, but not the second part, Harry thought, as he stepped up and put his hands on Ron’s shoulders and stared into his eyes. Ron lifted his head and peered back at him, almost timidly. Harry wondered if he thought he would find condemnation in the steady stare Harry gave him.

Not that he hasn’t done plenty to deserve it.

But the fact that Ron was afraid, which Harry never would have thought of—he had thought jealousy and anger were at the bottom of everything—made Harry look beyond condemnation. Ron had little in his life that was his alone, little that he could be proud of. He was like Harry at the Dursleys’. His clothes and his wand and his rat had been hand-me-downs. Harry could remember the wonder he felt when Hagrid took him shopping in Diagon Alley for the first time as if it was yesterday. He had fresh, new things that he didn’t have to share.

Harry didn’t know why Ron didn’t resent sharing Harry’s friendship with Hermione. Maybe he thought it was different because Hermione was a girl. Or maybe he didn’t see Hermione as Harry’s best friend in the way that he was.

But either way, Harry knew what Ron was feeling now. It was the same way he would have felt if Dudley came to the wizarding world when they were eleven and tried to drive off Ron and Hermione like he’d driven off all the kids in primary school that Harry wanted so badly to befriend.

“You aren’t going to lose me,” Harry said. “It doesn’t matter how close I become to Draco, or how much like a prat you act. Though I like you much better when you aren’t acting like a prat,” he added, just so that Ron wouldn’t think this was free permission to be annoying. “I can be everyone’s friend.”

“Even though we both dislike each other?” Ron muttered the words and stared at Harry as if he thought this would be too great a challenge for Harry to find a way past.

“Even though that’s true,” Harry said. “I’ll just ask him not to insult you. And in the meantime, you don’t get to insult Draco, either.”

Ron made a face, as if Harry had handed him an earwax-flavored Bertie Bott’s Bean to eat. “Do I have to call him Draco?”

“Not unless you want to.” Harry tightened his grip on Ron’s shoulders. “This is all about choice. That’s what I’m trying to get across to you. I’m calling him Draco because I want to, not because he forced me to. And I’m his friend because I want to be. You saw how hard I struggled against being his friend before I made up my mind. And I broke up with Ginny because I wanted to,” he added, more or less against his better judgment. Still, Ron had to understand that Harry wouldn’t be getting back together with his sister any time soon.

“You were perfect for each other,” Ron said mulishly.

“No. We weren’t.” Harry made his words stern enough that Ron nodded, even though he still frowned. “Leave it alone. All right? Or else we’ll have to have another stupid argument, and I really don’t want to. I hate having arguments with my first and best friend.”

Ron’s grin was slow to emerge. When it did, though, Harry felt as though his life was normal again for the first time since he discovered he had compatible magic with Draco. That magic was exciting and fulfilling, but it was very much not normal. “Right, mate,” Ron said. “So long as I’m that.”

“Always.” Harry smiled back in relief, and then turned away to gather up his books.

“Where are you going?” Ron hovered next to him as though he thought Harry was about to write a letter to Ginny and he didn’t want to miss it.

Harry gave him an even look. “To study with Draco.” They weren’t going to study, of course, but investigate. Still, if Ron knew that, he would insist on coming with them. Harry wasn’t ready for that yet, and he doubted Draco was, either, whatever casual remarks he might make about not minding Weasley’s presence.

Ron sighed and nodded. “Just come back early so that we can talk about Battle Healing,” he said. “I’m having trouble in there.”

“Sure thing, mate.”

Harry thought it was all right to make that promise as he slipped out the door, even though he fully expected the investigation to occupy him and Draco for several hours. He felt so light at the moment, and as though the impossible balancing act that seemed to have become his life wasn’t so difficult after all.

*

“I trust that you won’t tell Mr. Potter about these sessions, Mr. Malfoy?” Dearborn’s face was anxious as he tucked his wand back into his sleeve. “I fear that he would not understand.”

Draco gave him a small smile. “You can count on me, sir.”

He reckoned that promise might have sounded ominous to someone who didn’t know why Dearborn had asked it, but Draco knew exactly why, and he agreed wholeheartedly. Dearborn had confessed to Draco—not that it had come as a large surprise after his class, where he had presented his outline of the history of how certain spells had become illegal—that he didn’t agree with the Ministry’s classification of Dark Arts. The Unforgivables should never be used, of course, and there were others, spells meant only for torture, that were unspeakable. But Dearborn did not see why spells that forced someone to tell the truth were forbidden. Why, they were the same thing as Veritaserum, which the Ministry used freely.

Dearborn was looking for people who agreed with him and would seek to relax the Ministry’s more restrictive laws by unrelenting pressure and proof that they could use the less illegal Dark Arts for good. Draco was more than eager to help with that. He did not like the idea of giving up half the magic he had learned because of archaic prejudices that few modern wizards shared.

But Potter would go mad, and Draco knew why. Potter still had certain simplistic notions of good and evil that he had not modified.

Contact with me should modify them.

But that not happened yet, and Draco was not enough of an idiot to force Potter to go against his conscience. So when Dearborn had asked for private history sessions where he would explain to Draco more about what he intended to do and what spells should be chosen from the Ministry’s vast repository of interdicted magic for testing, Draco had agreed.

This was something special he could do. Dearborn had chosen Draco for his background, not against it, and not simply as part of the irreducible double unit that included both him and Potter, because he had said that he would like to mentor Draco before the instructors had partnered them. Draco needed this individual evaluation and adulation in the same way that Potter needed his friends.

There was no question but that Draco would bring Potter into it someday, because he didn’t think their friendship could survive many secrets. But for now, it was private. Special, the same way that Professor Snape had sometimes invited him to brewing sessions where he was handling delicate and experimental potions.

Draco licked his lips at the thought of Snape. He still hadn’t found the courage to look into the Professor’s Pensieve. He would, someday, but not until he had decided what memories Snape might have sent him and thus decided on the best mindset for facing them.

“Sir,” he asked, to distract himself from such thoughts, and because Potter had not come to fetch him yet for their investigation, “what would you say if someone accused you of being like the Death Eaters because you use some Dark Arts?”

The smile vanished off Dearborn’s face as though Draco had tried to choke him. Then he said in a strangely altered voice, “What do you know of my brother?”

“Your brother?” Draco blinked. “Just that you had one.” His mother had had him memorize enough of the pure-blood lineages that he knew that. After a moment of ransacking his memory, Draco remembered something else, and added, “And his name was Caradoc.”

“Yes.” Dearborn’s voice was a soft hiss. He rubbed his fingers for a moment over his onyx ring, then lifted his head. Draco tensed his muscles to keep from recoiling. Naked pain was visible on Dearborn’s face. Draco wanted to shift uneasily, and didn’t only because he knew it would seem like weakness.

He didn’t want to see pain like this. It was meant to be endured and suppressed in private. Only to Potter, perhaps, when their friendship had advanced more than it had right now, would Draco express his emotions openly.

He tried to imagine dealing with a revelation of similar agony from Potter, and experienced twin and unwelcome sensations. On the one hand, he wouldn’t want to see a crack in his partner’s defenses like the crack in Dearborn’s.

On the other hand, he would be jealous if Potter took his pain to someone else.

Dearborn spoke then, and stole Draco’s attention back to the present moment. “He worked with the Order of the Phoenix. He vanished during the war, and everyone assumed Death Eaters had killed him.” Dearborn closed his eyes and breathed carefully. With faint horror, Draco recognized the pattern of breathing he had used himself to keep back tears. “Everyone also assumed that his fate would never be known for certain because no one had found his remains.

“I found them.”

Dearborn glanced at Draco, and seemed to understand the dislike he felt. His pain vanished behind shields of smooth expression in the next instant, and he made a courtly bow from the waist. His voice was half-mocking. “Do I distress you? Do not let me. What I found was enough reason to keep me from wishing to use the Darker Arts forevermore. I hate the Death Eaters and wish to see them slaughtered.”

Draco lifted his left arm between them. He wasn’t brave enough to bare the Dark Mark, but that didn’t matter. Dearborn would understand well enough what he meant. “Does that include me, sir?”

Dearborn caught his breath. His eyes widened, and Draco could see the lashes trembling as he stood still, apparently in contemplation. Then he shook his head. “No,” he said at last. “Good God, no! I let my tongue run away with me sometimes.” He glanced aside, at last using a delicacy that Draco appreciated. “Forgive me,” he said, with a soft laugh. “I have had so few people to whom I can talk about my plans to change things, to reform the Ministry and make the Aurors more effective. The trainees who come in are usually so stupid, or intelligent but blind, like your partner.”

Draco watched him carefully. Dearborn was less effective than Draco had thought him: more impulsive, more passionate, and perhaps more likely to make a mistake.

On the other hand, he had got past Draco’s misdeeds, despite excellent reason to hate him, and was willing to work with him. It was more than many would be willing to do, particularly among the instructors. Draco saw no reason not to use Dearborn to climb higher. Later, he could turn on him if he needed to.

“Forgiven, sir,” he said. “Now, will you excuse me? I need to meet Potter to train.”

He was always meeting Potter for something or other, and Dearborn let him go with a wave of his hand. Draco shut the door to Dearborn’s office behind him and strode quickly and quietly along the corridors of the Ministry, something other than his mentor’s inconsistencies occupying him as he walked.

When he was with Dearborn or talking to his mother or studying for classes by himself, he felt much as he had ever done since the war: determined, strong, powerful, committed grimly to the ideal of making something of himself.

When he was with Potter, he was more open, more confiding, more patient and pliant and soft in a way that he had never thought he could be.

Even now, just walking towards Potter instead of being in sight of him yet, he could feel his mind swelling with things he wanted to tell him, jokes he wanted to exchange, and eager possessiveness to have Potter’s time and attention to himself.

I have to be careful. As I change him, he is changing me.

Under the influence of the emotions flooding his mind, Draco could not but think that a good thing.

Which is probably a sign that I am not in my right mind.

Chapter Seventeen.