lomonaaeren | Chapter Nineteen of 'Soldier's Welcome'- Explaining the Absences

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (19/?)
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 Nineteen—Explaining the Absences

“A little help, here?” Draco was grateful for his own coolness when he heard how sharply and crisply his voice emerged. It made the two figures he’d seen in front of him and recognized turn around, surprised, instead of already being prepared to meet him. That gave him a better chance at being in control of the situation.

Portillo Lopez turned first, but Dearborn was hardly behind her. Portillo Lopez hissed when she saw the way Potter was dangling off Draco’s shoulder and came forwards, her eyes traveling back and forth between his face and Potter. “What happened?” she demanded as she drew her wand and conjured a stretcher.

“An unfortunate encounter with one of the imprisoned Death Eaters,” Draco said blandly, making sure that he was speaking to Portillo Lopez but watching Dearborn. His face was anxious, however, and had been anxious since Draco first saw it. He gave an inwards shrug and gave up on the hope that he would win some reaction from Dearborn. “We received a mysterious letter telling us that they were still in the Ministry and would target us. We went to interrogate them, and one of them exploded into red and black magic of the kind that threatened us before. Potter was injured. His magic was drawn from his body, and I had to draw on compatible magic to put it back.”

That was not the whole story, but mingled with enough truth that it would hold instead of pulling apart immediately the way a fabric of lies would. And Draco did not think he wanted to tell them the true way he had returned Potter’s magic to his body, any more than he wanted to reveal that they’d decided to interrogate the Death Eaters on their own.

“Where is the letter now?” Dearborn asked quietly while Portillo Lopez bent over Potter. Draco took a step back so that he could keep an eye on both of them at once—and catch a glimpse of the spells that Portillo Lopez was using. It was his partner she was muttering over and brandishing a wand at, after all.

“It destroyed itself the moment I finished reading it,” Draco said flatly. He shuddered and bowed his head. “A burst of strange-colored fire. Much like the red and black magic, it had to a new kind of spell, because I didn’t hear the wards clang that would have reacted to Dark Arts.”

He was looking up enough to catch the faint, quick frown on Dearborn’s face and the puckering of his forehead. He obviously had no clue what the “strange-colored fire” might have been, or maybe he didn’t like Draco’s guessing that the grief magic wasn’t entirely Dark Arts.

Draco didn’t care. He had come to several conclusions when he was dragging Potter towards a more inhabited part of the Ministry, and the most prominent of them was that he didn’t trust any of the instructors. At a minimum, they had kept information secret from him and Potter that they should have shared, since he and Potter had consistently been the targets of this magic.

At a maximum, one of them had helped the Death Eaters into the trainee barracks. Yes, any of the full-fledged Aurors could be a good candidate for that, but the instructors were the ones who spent the most time around the barracks and could be counted on to understand its defenses.

“Mr. Potter will need extensive recovery time,” Portillo Lopez said, looking up. There was a tightness around her mouth that made Draco think she was none too pleased with them, but at least she spoke calmly, and Draco thought they would probably avoid a scene. “You pulled on him the way he pulled on you last time, didn’t you?”

Draco inclined his head. “I would apologize, but it was the only way to survive,” he said.

Portillo Lopez sighed and straightened. She exchanged a look with Dearborn that seemed full of meaning, though Draco didn’t know what that meaning was and had to hold himself patiently still. Then she said, “I think you should tell them. Someone clearly wants them to know,” and began floating Potter away in the direction of her infirmary.

Draco planted his feet and swung to face Dearborn. He did want to accompany his partner, but he knew that whatever Dearborn had to say might be of importance, and he and Potter had been left in the dark long enough.

“Understand,” Dearborn said, his voice tight, “this is confidential information.” He glanced to the side. Following his gaze, Draco saw the remnants of letters on the wall that had almost faded. Probably he had been working with Portillo Lopez to remove them. “Most of the trainees will not know the details of what happened here,” Dearborn continued, drawing Draco’s eye again, “though some guessing is inevitable, certainly. After all, we have to have a new Combat instructor.”

Draco tried to make himself as still and as attentive as possible. “Something has happened to Auror Gregory, sir?”

Dearborn made a helpless, disgusted noise and let his head fall forwards into his hands. Draco thought some of the performance was genuine, but not all of it. “Yes, one could say that,” Dearborn said, his voice muffled by his fingers. “If by ‘something happened’ one means our discovery that she has thoroughly betrayed the Ministry.”

Draco caught his breath. He had wondered at first if Gregory was connected with the Death Eaters and the grief magic, since she hated Potter so much, but he had dismissed that as too obvious. Besides, some of the attacks had been aimed at him. On the other hand, Gregory might have taken a dislike to him once she realized that she could do nothing to disrupt his partnership with Potter. “How, sir?”

Dearborn cast a privacy ward around them with a quick flick of his wand. Draco told himself to remember that Dearborn was powerful enough to cast a spell like that nonverbally, something he had not been sure of before. “We discovered materials in her room that show she is responsible to someone outside the Ministry,” he said. “Letters, documents, and magical binding contracts going back several years. It seems that she has corrupted several of the trainees and even some of the full-fledged Aurors—though since they were cautious enough to use false names, we cannot yet be sure of how many.” He grimaced and shook his head. “Many of the trainees idolized Astraea because her skills in Combat were rarer than certain kinds of powerful magic, and not as many of them did well in her class as in classes like mine or Hestia’s. It would have been easy for her to lure them close if she wanted. But we never saw her associating with many of them. In fact, she rarely offered to mentor any, seeming to disdain people who were younger than she was.” He chuckled, but Draco could hear the rusty, bitter sound to it. “I expect we should be more cautious in the future than to judge by appearances.”

Draco frowned. No, he had never seen Auror Gregory catch anyone’s eye in a way that would have given him suspicions of her, or smirk knowingly in the way that he knew many Slytherins with “secret” plans often did, or display the openly mad desires for revenge and pain that many of the Dark Lord’s followers had.

On the other hand, he already knew that Nihil was considerably more clever than most of the Dark Lord’s followers.

“How did you discover that she was the guilty one, sir?” he asked.

“I’d noticed, during the last few days, that some of the wards that should have alerted us when Dark Arts were used were disabled.” Dearborn sighed and began to pace back and forth, running his fingers through his hair. “I wasn’t suspicious of it at first. After all, I often do the same thing myself when I want to show curses to third-year trainees and don’t want to bring the entire Ministry piling into my classroom. But every time it happened, it was in a room that Astraea had recently entered. I began to watch her more closely. Still, though, I couldn’t see anything that would give ground to my suspicions. As I told you, we didn’t have a clue about what she was doing to corrupt trainees.

“Then Maryam came to me with disturbing news: she had found a young woman, one of the trainees who had left the program in order to win a job elsewhere, stumbling about outside her office. It seemed that she had been subjected to the Imperius Curse or some other mind-altering magic, and had come instinctively to a place where she thought she might find help. She could only repeat Astraea’s name. The rope burns on her ankles and wrists and the way she acted made Maryam think she had been held captive for a long while.

“We went to question Astraea—without letting her know that we were doing so, of course. We smelled smoke from inside her room, and Maryam was concerned enough to blast her door open without knocking.” Dearborn shook his head again. “I wouldn’t have done so, but in this case I can only be grateful for her impetuosity. Astraea was burning several documents in her hearth. We are simply lucky that we intruded before she had managed to destroy a majority of the evidence. When she saw us, she drew her wand and attacked.”

Draco nibbled his lip. It didn’t sound as if Gregory was Nihil, because why would Nihil do something as clumsy and as easy to detect as that? Still, it was entirely possible that she worked for Nihil and had been spooked by the escape of one of her prisoners.

“Did you find anything about the nature of the red and black magic in the documents, sir?” he asked. “Or why she might have wanted to target Potter and me?”

“Not yet,” Dearborn said. “On the other hand, they haven’t been thoroughly examined. We had quite a time holding off Astraea long enough to secure them. She knows Combat as well as wanded attacks, after all.” He rubbed his shoulder in a way that Draco thought indicated Gregory had hit him there. “But we will let you know.” He hesitated, then added, “I think now that we were overly cautious in keeping the information about the Death Eaters from you, when you were the main actors concerned. Especially since we had already indicated that we had an unusual amount of trust in you by making you partners two years before your time.”

Draco’s throat boiled with the need to make a sarcastic remark, but he managed to hold it back.

“On the other hand,” Dearborn went on with a sharper accent, “we need the real cause of Astraea’s treachery to be held secret for the moment—especially since she managed to flee, and we do not know where she is or what she is doing yet.” He came closer, staring intently into Draco’s eyes. His onyx ring didn’t flash, which meant he wasn’t flailing his hands about to make it do so—a sign of how serious he felt at the moment, Draco decided. “Can I count on you for that?”

Draco nodded. “Of course, sir. Since it intimately concerns our health, and I agree that Auror Gregory might have contacts still here among the trainees who would be interested in hunting down people who angered her.”

Dearborn’s face relaxed into a smile. “You will make a good political actor yet, Malfoy, and a fine Auror.”

Though Draco listened closely for some trace of animosity when Dearborn spoke his last name, he heard nothing.

“And now.” Dearborn raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps you could explain a bit more about your interrogation of the Death Eaters? We had left low-security measures on them in the first place, since we were trying to lure their leader or the traitor in the Ministry into rescuing them, but since Astraea has fled and you have managed to pierce the wards, we will need to replace those in any case.”

Draco began to speak, making a mental note to catch up with Potter and acquaint him with the story before Dearborn could question him alone.

*

Harry rolled over restlessly. His arms dragged when he did, and it felt as though they weighed fifteen stone. He scowled. He hated being this weak and this ill when there was no physical wound on his body. At least he was willing to lie quiet when he had a broken arm or something, because he remembered what had happened every time he looked at the injury.

But not this time. And thinking too much about what had happened to weaken him only reminded him of how Draco had returned his magic to him.

Harry coughed, his face turning red, and once again carefully excised that thought from his brain rather than allowing it to remain. Then he rolled over again and stared moodily at the far wall.

“Mr. Potter. You will be still.”

Harry reckoned he should have been intimidated by Battle Healer Portillo Lopez. She was much less kind than Madam Pomfrey, and half the time she would cast diagnostic spells on him and then shake her head instead of explaining the results. Besides, he had the feeling that she cared more about Healing as a discipline than she did about teaching it to students.

But spending enforced hours with her had taught him that she was good at two things: speed and efficiency. When he asked how long it would take him to get out of the infirmary and she would deign to answer, she could give him a precise estimate, down to the hour. When he asked how long it would take him to improve with the Strengthening Potions she was forcing down his throat, then she could tell him to the minute. She was very good at what she did, and Harry had to appreciate that.

“All right,” he said. “But it’s boring. I wish there was some way that I could continue to work or fight or train or cast spells or—do something.”

Hermione was walking in the door at that moment, so Portillo Lopez simply tilted her head towards her and didn’t reply. Hermione’s face, of course, flooded with rapture. “Do you want something to read, Harry?” she demanded. “I can give you all sorts of things! I’ve been reading the most fascinating history of Battle Healing, for example, and that way you can keep up with at least one of your classes while you’re lying down!”

Harry stifled a laugh, wondering how much Hermione’s choice of the book she mentioned was because of the instructor with him. “Thanks, Hermione, but I don’t think I could concentrate on reading right now.” Hermione and Portillo Lopez gave him disapproving glances together. “I should be out of the infirmary tonight. I want you to tell me how Ron is. Is he really angry? He visited once, yesterday, but he hasn’t come since.”

“Not angry,” Hermione said, sitting down in the chair by the bed, which in Harry’s opinion was ridiculously big and overstuffed. Draco had seemed to like it, of course. “Busy. He somehow managed to forget that we have an exam in Auror Conduct next week, and naturally he hasn’t studied for it so far. So he’s wearing himself out working on that.” She sat up a little and gave Harry a significant glance that was not lost on him. “But,” she went on, lowering her voice, “I’m sure it doesn’t help that he doesn’t have my notes to copy anymore.”

Harry regarded her with admiration. “You took those away? Why?”

“Because that was the reason he was doing so much better in the classes than I was.” Hermione folded her hands on her knees and spoke grimly. Only the deep line between her eyebrows told Harry how distressing she found this, and how much she would probably have liked a different solution. “I was struggling to do all the work and then struggling to make the notes perfect for him, and so he got the benefits of all my thoughts clarified without ever having to think himself.” She paused and stared at the wall. Harry had no idea what she was seeing there, and was content to wait in silence until she said something. She shook her head after a moment and focused on him. “I still love him,” she said with conviction, and a faint blush. She hadn’t forgotten Portillo Lopez was in the room, then. Harry had thought she had. “But he needs to change some of the things he’s doing and stop relying on me so much.”

“What if he can’t?” Harry asked quietly, thinking of how stubborn Ron could be when he decided he was right, and the way he would probably try to rely more on Hermione now that Harry was “best friends” with Draco.

“We’ll deal with that when we get there.” Hermione said the words firmly, but suddenly clasped her hands together and gave him an anguished glance. “Do you think I’m being unreasonable, Harry?”

Harry smiled at her. “No. The way he was behaving is unacceptable. But—well, trying to change someone usually doesn’t work.”

“I know that.” Hermione ran her fingers through her hair hard enough to make the curls ruffle. “But I have to try something, because just going along with whatever he wants also isn’t working.”

Draco cleared his throat from the doorway. Harry knew it was him before he looked around, and then paused for a moment and wondered how. Hermione promptly rose to her feet, blushing all over, and left with a muttered greeting to Draco that could qualify as friendly if you stretched the term. Portillo Lopez had moved over to the other side of the room and was studying what looked like a large chart. Harry sneaked a glance at her and started to sit up to welcome Draco.

“Lie still, Trainee Potter,” Portillo Lopez said, voice precise as the chime of a clock. “Unless you want to extend the time when you’ll have to stay here by an hour.”

Harry rolled his eyes and let his head drop back. Draco, looking amused, damn him, sat down on the chair Hermione had left and sighed a little as he leaned against the cushions. “This is how every chair should be,” he murmured. “In our rooms and all of our classrooms.”

“Then half the class would be asleep every time we had class,” Harry snapped, uncomfortably aware that Draco loomed over him when he was lying flat like this. He tried to ignore it by clearing his throat and looking Draco in the eye. “Did you find out anything more about the red and black magic?” They wouldn’t call it the grief magic in public, since Draco had told him he’d concealed that discovery from the instructors.

Harry wasn’t sure what he thought of that decision, but he was going along with it for now. After all, as Draco had argued, if Gregory had been corrupted by Nihil, they couldn’t trust that other Aurors wouldn’t be.

“Auror Dearborn let me look through the documents.” Draco was always scrupulously careful to use titles before the instructors’ names in front of another Auror; he’d already said sharper things in private conversations with Harry. Harry was just glad that Draco had managed a quick private meeting with him so that he could whisper what he’d “confessed” and what story Harry should agree with. If they were going to deceive the instructors, at least they should do it with some skill. “The problem is, half of them use false names and a lot of them are in code. They have to be, because they refer to nonsensical things like ‘milking the blue cow.’” Draco rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “The one common part to the code is that they use colors in everything, so I’ve looked for references to red and black. But even those aren’t consistent, and I can’t tell what they mean.”

“Hermione might,” Harry said.

Portillo Lopez turned, her face so set that Harry winced when he saw it. “Only you two are being allowed to see these documents,” she said. “Not that I would have allowed you that much, after what you did when you broke into the interrogation rooms.”

Harry put his hand across his mouth to stifle a groan.

“Battle Healer Portillo Lopez is right, you know,” Draco said solemnly. “We should be grateful that we escaped worse trouble.”

Someone would have to be as close to him as Harry was physically to make out that his eyes were brilliant with subdued laughter. Harry rolled his eyes at him. He didn’t know how Draco had managed to pull it off—he suspected a lot of it was protection because Auror Dearborn was Draco’s mentor—but they hadn’t been punished, much, for breaking into the interrogation rooms. They would have to account for their movements for a week solid, and on absolutely no circumstances venture outside the barracks unless they were going to classes or the dining hall. And they would have to have an extra exam in Auror Conduct to prove that they knew all the rules they’d broken.

That was it.

“So, nothing concrete yet?” Harry asked, doing his best to put those thoughts out of his head. It was hard to be properly grateful for what Draco had done when he was confined to bed and Draco got to go around investigating.

“Nothing yet.” Draco sighed and sat still for a moment, staring at Harry. Harry raised his eyebrows back. There were limited conversations they could have with Portillo Lopez there. If Draco wanted to say something else, he should contrive a way of doing so. Harry had thought he knew that.

Draco scratched the back of his neck and said, with the air of someone walking forwards off a cliff, “We should discuss our compatible magic and the way we used it.”

“Yeah,” Harry said. “I’m not comfortable with the idea that we can drain each other. We might go too far someday.”

Draco leaned in, his eyes bright and intense again, but not with laughter this time. “We should also discuss,” he said, voice pitched low, “the way I put your magic back in your body.”

Harry shut his eyes as a slow flush crawled across his face. He hadn’t thought Draco would bring that up. After all, while he thought Draco had some kind of weird half-romantic interest in him, that didn’t mean it would ever amount to anything. The way he had “kissed” Draco was the best way to get his magic back. Any problem he had with it was his problem. Draco wasn’t going to bring it up.

Apparently Draco hadn’t got that silent message.

“Yeah, we will,” he said, opening his eyes and finding Draco still far too close. “But for what it’s worth, I’m sorry.”

Draco clamped his jaw shut. “Are you?” he said at last, with a sound in the back of his voice that told Harry he wished they could hurt each other with magic. “Why, I wonder?”

Portillo Lopez was watching them curiously. Harry was limited in what he could say. So he tried to compromise and muttered, “Because I think it—got you upset, and I didn’t mean to do that. It was just the best way I could think of.”

Draco kept staring at him, saying nothing, for long minutes. Harry saw the anger fade from his face, but he couldn’t tell what replaced it.

Then Draco jumped to his feet and strode out of the room.

Harry sighed. He hadn’t meant to do that, but then, he’d never meant to be involved in a situation like this in the first place.

He rolled on his side.

“Lie still, Trainee Potter.”

Harry groaned.

Chapter Twenty.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

sarasusa.livejournal.com

Enjoyed this as always...am fretting about who to trust among the instructors. Great emotionally-charged ending, with a touch of humor.

One possible typo: Did you accidentally substitute "decide" for "deceive" here--"If they were going to decide the instructors..."?

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Chapter Nineteen of 'Soldier's Welcome'- Explaining the Absences

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