Chapter Twenty-One of 'Soldier's Welcome'- Problems Aplenty

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (21/?)
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 Twenty-One—Problems Aplenty

Harry shut his eyes and sat still, waiting for the Calming Draught to work. He was almost glad that the exams were happening now, even though it gave him a hundred other things to worry about. Hermione didn’t suspect the real reason at all when he asked for Calming Draughts or for charms that would force him to slow down and breathe for a few minutes.

He had to do that because there was no way that he could go to anyone for help on this, which meant he had to devise a plan on his own. And if he fucked up the plan, then he would fuck up Hagrid’s life.

The words of the letter flamed in his mind. Luckily, with the Calming Draught in his system, there was no way that Harry could panic. He had to think about the words instead and all their implications.

Harry,

Chester’s escaped! And now there are evil wizards sniffin around after him, and McGonagall is askin questions, and I’ve heard about new laws for anyone breakin the magical breeding ban. Yer have to help me find him and get him out of the country. Yer the only one I trust.

Hagrid.

It had only taken a few idle questions to Hermione—who was so delighted to see him interested in anything that she would chatter about certain subjects by the hour—to confirm that Hagrid was right. Apparently some of Voldemort’s plans had included breeding Dark magical creatures to fill out the ranks of his army. No matter that those plans had never got off the ground; they’d still panicked the Ministry, which tightened the Experimental Breeding Ban to the point that simply being found with books about crossbreeding magical creatures was likely to get you arrested. Hermione had filled Harry’s ears with indignation about it, but Harry had barely heard her, paying more attention to the furious thundering of his heart.

He had to save Hagrid. For his friend to be sent to Azkaban again would probably break him. And now Harry had to wonder if Nemo, the mysteriously-named “nobody” who had given Chester to Hagrid, was connected to Nihil. He didn’t want anyone who could use grief magic anywhere near his half-giant friend. Hagrid wasn’t a fully-trained wizard like Ron or Hermione or Draco. He would fuck up.

At the same time, Harry knew that he couldn’t just rely on someone else to solve the problem for him, the way he’d been doing so much of the time. Hermione would insist on appealing to authority because she still had that deep-seated faith in authority Always Being Right. Harry couldn’t do that when it might get Hagrid in legal trouble.

Ron would be eager to help, but Harry simply didn’t trust him enough right now to ask him to go along.

And Draco…

Harry chuckled bitterly and shook his head. Why should Draco care? He’d made it clear that Hagrid was nothing more than a half-breed and a big, clumsy oaf to him. Harry hadn’t thought about it in much detail, but that was something that would always be a problem and a limitation for his friendship with Draco in a way that it wouldn’t for his friendships with Ron and Hermione. Draco didn’t care about people in the way that Harry thought was normal. They had to do something for him first.

So Harry had to do this alone.

Luckily, by swiping some of Hermione’s own Pepperup Potion supply that she used when she wanted to stay up at night studying, Harry had managed to gain enough time to study for his exams and look up things that might help Hagrid. He thought he knew some spells that would help him find Chester and get him safely into custody. Then they could see about the evil wizards.

Harry started gathering up the things he needed to take with him. He’d already written back to Hagrid, so his friend would know to expect him tonight.

He really wished he could tell someone about this. It no longer felt right to be slipping off on his own. All of Hestia’s lecturing about Auror teamwork had drummed its way into his head, he reckoned.

But there was no choice, just like he’d had no choice about facing Voldemort alone, so Harry made the best of things.

*

“I don’t understand, sir.” Draco frowned at the shimmering shield that hung in the air. It was slightly bigger than the one created by Protego and darker around the edges, but otherwise, Draco couldn’t see any difference. “What does this spell do that the Shield Charm can’t?”

Dearborn smiled and walked to the opposite end of his office. A spell that Draco had already admitted the usefulness of had shoved his desk, his tables, and his bookshelves back and up the walls, so they had plenty of space to practice in. “Stand behind the shield and I’ll show you. Resist the temptation to strengthen it, however much you might feel that temptation.”

Draco narrowed his eyes. He didn’t think that he trusted Dearborn not to hurt him.

On the other hand, what was a bit of pain compared to learning a spell that Dearborn had praised to the skies? Draco stepped behind the shield.

Dearborn waved his wand and whispered a word. Draco strained his ears, but didn’t manage to catch the word, and then his attention was rather taken by the grey smoke gushing out of the end of Dearborn’s wand.

The smoke eddied and thickened, and reared up and up and up—and up. Draco had to tilt his head back to properly view the dragon that the smoke solidified into. It seemed to be made of metal, its scales tiny overlapping steel plates.

The dragon lowered its head and opened its mouth. Draco tightened his muscles to keep from running. He knew that the dragon had to be at least partially illusion, which would limit the damage it could do. No one could simply conjure a real dragon from his wand, or most of the wizarding wars Draco was aware of would have been considerably bloodier.

He thought so, anyway.

A noise like the creaking and roaring of a bellows made its way out of the dragon’s mouth, accompanied by a blast of foul, reeking air. Draco pinched his nose shut and caught a glimpse of something bright and burning white in the back of the dragon’s throat. The next moment, a lance of fire was traveling straight at him.

Over the top of the shield.

Draco dropped to one knee so that he could get under it.

Then the shimmering shield extended itself, or grew outwards, or perhaps simply made a part of itself visible that had been invisible before. Whatever the right name for the procedure was, it caused an arc of shady silver light to form above the upper rim of the shield, and the next moment the dragon’s lance of fire was bouncing back at it. The dragon writhed in silence as the flame hit it and melted two of its scales off before Dearborn flicked his wand and the illusion dissolved.

“You see?” Dearborn murmured. “The Fortress Shield will stand up to anything, including the charge of a dragon, and modify itself based on happenings in the immediate battle. A trick worth learning, do you not think?”

Draco nodded. He knew the incantation for the Fortress Shield, having heard Dearborn use it, but at the moment, he was more interested in something else. “What about the spell that brings the dragon into existence, sir?”

“That?” Dearborn laughed modestly and shook his head. “An illusion, as you must have surmised. The fire would have scalded but not seriously burnt you.”

“It could still be useful to distract someone,” Draco said, and made his eyes worshipful when Dearborn’s glance turned searching. Draco spent a lot of time flattering Dearborn, trying to make him think that Draco was more in awe of him than he really stood. “And you must have invented it yourself, sir.”

“Well.” Dearborn shrugged so that the cloth around his shoulders rippled. “I did.”

“Then might I know it?’ Draco ducked his head and made sure that his eyes were wide when he looked up again. He couldn’t play the appealing innocent too strongly, or Dearborn would begin to suspect, but he thought he could use a little of it. Add in the respect that he didn’t have to feign—someone who could invent a spell like this and figure out how best to use it was worthy of admiration—and he would surely persuade Dearborn.

Dearborn stood still for some time, gazing thoughtfully at Draco. Then he smiled. “I have never taken a mentee before this because I did not trust them to use the secret as it should be used,” he murmured. “But I am interested to see what you will do, as I was when I helped pair you with Potter. Yes, I will teach you the incantation.”

Draco nodded his thanks, and then jumped and turned his head. It felt as though someone had pricked him with a pin. There was no one there, of course, and he didn’t think Dearborn was the kind of person who would hide another trainee under a Disillusionment Charm and have him frighten people who were getting above themselves, which was said to be one of Ketchum’s tricks.

“What is it?”

Dearborn’s voice had that high-pitched strain that it got when he thought someone was making fun of him. Draco turned back to him, shaking his head in apology. “I felt as though someone were stinging me,” he said. “I apologize, sir.”

The sensation came again as he spoke. Draco shifted in annoyance. The pain faded quickly, but now he was anticipating it, and that made the minor sting far worse.

“I have heard of things like this,” said Dearborn, his eyes shrewd. “It feels as though a single pin is being pushed into the skin just under your right shoulder?”

“Yes, sir.” Draco hoped that it really was Dearborn’s reading that had told him what Draco was feeling, and that the way he moved hadn’t revealed the secret. That would be humiliating.

“The person who shares compatible magic with you is in trouble.”

Draco blinked, deliberately keeping his movements slow as he reached up to rub at the itching place on his arm. His heart had kicked into a gallop when he heard Dearborn’s casual words, but it would have been the height of folly to show that. Draco had not survived the war by carrying his emotions around in public for anyone to see. “Are you sure, sir? I know compatible magic is capable of accomplishing much, but surely not that.”

“It always has an element of defense,” Dearborn said, falling into the natural tones of a lecturer. The needle poked Draco. He clenched his right back teeth and kept his face unruffled. He would have to hope that Dearborn’s lesson did not take long. “It is rarely so neatly split as yours is, with you having an affinity to the Dark Arts and Potter a talent for Defense magic, but that element is present or it cannot be classified as compatible magic. And therefore it will tell you when your partner is in trouble, so that you may defend him.”

“I understand, sir.” Draco glanced towards the door with an expression of distaste. “I reckon that I should go and see what’s happened to him this time.” Make Dearborn think that I care more about missing the end of his lesson than I do about Potter.

“Yes, I suppose you should.” Dearborn leaned back on the wall and gave his head an amused shake. “This time, try to arrange something that does not involve breaking into interrogation rooms.”

Draco gave a bow and noted the subtle reminder that his misdeed had not been forgotten before he walked out of the room. Once in the corridor, he began to run.

The warning gave him no clue where Potter was, that was the problem. But not for nothing had he watched the Death Eaters use sophisticated tracking spells during the year of the war. He only had to get outside the Ministry to use them.

*

Harry put his back to a tree and shut his eyes to listen. Then he opened them again with a soft curse. Listening didn’t do much good when the terrified pounding of his heart overrode anything else.

If he concentrated, he thought he could still hear Hagrid crying, “Chester!” at a distance and ringing the bell that he claimed he had trained the little beast to respond to. But Harry was more concerned with something else.

Like the tread of soft paws and the snuffling of large, wet nostrils.

Harry had arrived at Hogwarts two hours ago, reassured Hagrid, and promised to help him search the Forbidden Forest for Chester. He hadn’t thought it would be that difficult. His reading had told him that dragons and hippogriffs had been crossed before, and they tended to like things that smelled strong and scorched—a result of coming from two beasts that stank, the book suggested. Harry had brought garlic and the glands from a polecat’s tail, which Hermione had in her room for a Battle Brewing assignment, with him, and then he’d cast Incendio on them. He’d been sure the smell would bring Chester running.

Except it hadn’t. Except it had attracted something else.

Harry shifted his weight and glanced around thoughtfully by the light of his subdued Lumos, trying to imagine what Pushkin would tell him to observe about this scene, and the way that Ketchum would recommend that he use it to evade his enemies in the Battlefield Tactics class. He stood between two thick roots the height of his waist, in a tiny cove carpeted with fallen leaves and pine needles. He couldn’t move quietly, but if the things hunting him tracked by scent, the way Harry thought he did, that wouldn’t matter. He was more interested in the possibilities of how he would make this a defensible position.

At least they could only attack him from the front.

Unless they can climb.

Harry shuddered and began to Transfigure some of the leaves and pine needles into additional wood. The roots rose higher and higher around him, and finally Harry was content they couldn’t come at him from the sides. He thought about adding a roof in case they scrambled over the tree, but ended up shaking his head. No, that would restrict his movement, and Ketchum would have a fit if he did that.

The thought brought a brief smile to Harry’s face before he heard the deep sniff he’d been waiting for. He worked his way slowly to the tiny gap he’d left in the eastern wooden wall and pressed his eye to it.

One of the creatures who had attacked him shortly after he lit the garlic on fire stood five feet from the root, its head tilting back and forth. Harry had only seen before that it had a body like an enormous wolf and a pair of twisted horns on its head and fangs that stuck out of the sides of its mouth; that was quite enough. Now he made out the human shape of the face and shuddered.

Werewolf? No, I know they don’t have horns, and it’s not a full moon tonight.

The head turned. Now Harry was staring at a second face that apparently occupied the back of the first one. His heart twisted and so much adrenaline flooded his body that he nearly leaped out of his safe little hiding place.

Quirrell, and Voldemort, and the Stone—

But he forced his memories back into their proper places with a quick, vicious application of one of the calming techniques Portillo Lopez had taught them and made himself watch the face rationally. This one was human, too, but mutilated, the cheeks visible only as torn strips of flesh, the forehead smashed in, and the nose turned upside-down. Large patches of grey that looked like burns clung to the lips and eyelids.

The upside-down nose sniffed, and then a perfectly pleasant, bell-like voice said, “This way, boys!”

Something long and supple shot past the face at the same moment as the head twisted to bring the “normal” face around again, and Harry recoiled. It took him a moment to understand that it was the thing’s tail, rattling in a way that suggested it was a scorpion’s.

And by the time he had understood that, the things were upon him.

Two of them at once came over the root walls, one on either side, scrambling and leaping up them, their claws hooking and cutting into the wood. The one Harry had been watching rustled and pounded the earth. Harry knew it was trying to circle around the front and ambush him there, so he would be caught between three at once.

I’m going to die.

Somehow, Harry managed to retain the wits to figure out what to do, maybe because that thought was hardly a new one. He lifted his wand and swept it around at shoulder height, chanting so fast that his own words blurred in his ears. “Stupefy! Stupefy! Stupefy!”

The two beasts climbing over the walls dropped when the red light hit them. Harry spun around in time to see that the third one had ducked, letting Harry’s own protections defend it from the spell. Now it stood back up and prowled slowly forwards. It had pivoted its head around completely so that the mutilated face was looking at him.

Harry planted his feet and lifted his chin. He would have Apparated out of there if Hogwarts’s anti-Apparition spells didn’t extend all across the grounds. He missed Draco and wished he was there. He wasn’t ashamed to admit those things.

The face licked its drooping lips with a pointed blue tongue and spat a sharp gout of liquid at him. Harry reacted with a Shield Charm before it got fully out of the creature’s mouth. When he heard the way it splattered and hissed as it hit his shield, he was glad. It was either poison or acid, and he knew that he didn’t want it to touch him.

“You have resisted me so far,” said the bell-like voice. “I would expect nothing less of you. But you are young, and the many things your instructors have taught you cannot counter all my tactics at once.”

That was the only warning Harry had before the beast sprang at him, its shoulders bending with an obscene fluidity around the edges of the wooden walls, its claws and its teeth and its whipping tail and its poison all coming towards him at once. Harry fell back, saw his shield shiver and dissolve, dodged the poison, tried to raise another Protego and felt the reaching claws tear his wand from his hand, and prepared himself to die.

But before the tail could reach him, a sharp, peculiar cracking sound reached his ears. The beast simply stopped, and the tail dangled over its back like a drooping branch. Then its eyes rolled back under the patterned eyelids and it collapsed.

Harry stared down at the limp form of the beast. A giant sword was stuck through its back. As he watched, the sword turned into silver mist and flew away, rather like his Shield Charm. He knew it must be magic, but it wasn’t a spell that he had seen before, and no matter how many times he blinked, he couldn’t seem to get used to it.

At least he had enough intelligence to stoop down and pick up his wand where it had rolled against one of the wooden walls. He breathed and blinked and stood there trying to clear his brain and figure out who had done this.

“Draco?” he called tentatively into the darkness, and then wondered why he had thought automatically of Draco when someone protected him, rather than Ron or Hermione.

More cracks answered him, and then screams so loud and piercing that Harry shuddered. He couldn’t hear Hagrid’s voice among them, but that hardly mattered.

People were being hurt, maybe including the person who had saved him, and he was an Auror trainee and learning to save people. He leaped out of his hiding place and ran as fast as he could towards the sounds.

He stumbled as he came up a little hill he hadn’t seen in the darkness and caught a tree for balance. Then he froze again, because the battle taking place below him was frightening and awe-inspiring and not one that he could see himself joining right away.

A single figure in a heavy cloak whirled around and around in the center of a clearing made out of the Forest by slashing and burning spells. Around it, or him, circled at least seven wizards in the black cloaks and white masks the fake Death Eaters had worn. Harry saw two or three lying on the ground, in shriveled, crumpled heaps like the skin of the one the grief magic had come out of in the interrogation room.

It should have been an easy contest, seven against one, but the wizards encircling the central figure couldn’t get through. Harry saw one of them lunge and wave a wand, but the one in the middle swayed backwards like a reed and then launched a kick that made the wizard scream and stumble away, his arm dangling useless from the elbow.

The effort made the central figure’s hood fall back. Harry gasped. He recognized that face, and he probably should have recognized it before he saw it due to the level of skill. Obviously, there was a reason that Auror Gregory had been made Combat instructor.

Harry licked his lips and wondered who he should help, Gregory or the people fighting her.

But he glanced at the crumpled skins on the ground and made his decision. He knew the people fighting Gregory were Nihil’s servants. He didn’t know that for sure about Auror Gregory. And there was the fact that a sword spell was probably Combat magic and she had probably saved his life.

He was just getting ready to spring down the hill and try to insert himself in the fighting somehow when an arm curled around his waist. Harry tried to struggle, kick, and bite, furious with himself for being taken off-guard yet again.

Then he felt the tingling hum of compatible magic and heard Draco’s voice whispering in his ear, “I’m here. It’s me.”

Harry relaxed with a harsh huff of breath and hissed back, “Don’t do that next time.”

Draco’s arm around his waist tightened, and he hauled Harry close to his side again as if in defiance of that advice. “It was a way to get your attention,” he said. “Now, Auror Gregory appears to be on the opposite side from Nihil after all. Am I right?”

Harry nodded. “I think so. How do you think we should help her?”

Draco opened his mouth to reply. Sometime later, Harry found himself curious about what the words would have been.

Gregory lifted her hands and brought them down in a savage slash, her voice wild as she screamed a single word. “Segmentum!”

The body of every wizard facing her divided into two neat pieces, as though someone had swept the sword that had killed the beast straight through them at the waist. Harry felt his head swim and heard Draco gasp beside him. He didn’t need any more confirmation that Gregory’s spell was Dark Arts.

The bodies fell without any blood that Harry could see, just a wash of dark, oily magic. He gagged anyway.

Gregory turned around and raised her head to stare at them. When she saw Harry, she gave him a grim, bitter smile and a tight nod. Harry thought she was pleased to see him alive, despite everything.

Then she caught sight of Draco.

In an instant, her wand was aimed at him, and she had begun to chant a spell. Harry didn’t wait to hear her finish it.

He leaped down the hill, hurling himself through the air straight at her, and between Draco and her wand.

Chapter Twenty-Two.