lomonaaeren | Chapter Twenty-Three of 'Soldier's Welcome'- The Real Thing

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (23/?)
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-Three—The Real Thing

“I’m going to ask you again to wake up, Trainee Potter.”

Harry hastily forced his drooping eyes open and sat back in the chair. Auror Pushkin stood in front of him, shaking his head slowly and tragically back and forth. He tapped the crystalline sculpture that sat on Harry’s desk with one fingernail. The sculpture rang as though it was a cymbal.

“You have had more than enough time to do your observation,” Pushkin said crisply. “How many spikes does this object have?”

Harry cursed under his breath. He was getting better and better at noticing individual small details, like the singed side to Ron’s sleeve that he’d seen when his friend came storming into Observation and meant to ask him about, but he couldn’t count a huge number of things at a single glance. It was one time that Harry would have been glad to be Hermione.

“Um, thirty?” he said.

Pushkin simply stood there considering him. Harry looked down at his desk and pushed his quill back and forth. Dearborn’s silent looks of condescension set his teeth on edge, and the other instructors tended to scold. Pushkin was the only one whose silence made Harry feel the way he used to when yet another birthday passed without presents.

“A hundred and sixteen, Trainee Potter,” Pushkin said, his voice chill and gentle. He removed the sculpture from Harry’s desk and stepped out of the way, waving his wand at a blank wall. A picture appeared there, a confusing tangle of colors and shapes to Harry’s tired eyes. “This is an image of the Forbidden Forest at the height of summer, a place that you might find yourself fighting in someday if you are lucky enough to survive the training program.”

Harry swallowed down the urge to tell Pushkin that he’d been fighting there last night and that was why he was so tired. He was almost sure the Observation professor wouldn’t care that Harry was trying to keep a madman from taking over the world. Pushkin probably would have insisted on counting the number of threads in Voldemort’s robe before he killed him.

“What should I be looking for, sir?” he asked instead. He heard Draco snicker from the side, or was sure that he did. Harry tightened his left hand down into a fist at the side of the desk and made a mental note to curse every pair of Draco’s socks to tie themselves together later.

“This image has been altered,” Pushkin said crisply. “Find the animals and the geometric shapes that have been added to the trees and branches.”

Harry wanted to laugh. Are you bloody kidding me? This is the kind of game that Muggle children play.

But apparently Aurors had to play it, too. Harry leaned forwards, straining his eyes, and made out a square in the trunk of the nearest tree. He announced it. Pushkin nodded and gestured with his wand again. A faint pink number 1 appeared on the wall next to the picture.

“How many are there, sir?” Harry asked, feeling a bit better.

“Eighty-nine,” Pushkin said at once.

Harry glanced at the rest of the class out of the corner of his eye, wondering what they would have to say about this, and felt his face burn when he realized that the room was empty. Pushkin had let him sleep through most of the exam, then, and awakened him only when the last student had left.

Clearing his throat, Harry applied himself to disentangling the shapes of leopards and griffins and circles from the surprisingly dense picture of a forest in midsummer.

*

“Malfoy. I wanted to talk to you.”

Draco raised his head, and his eyebrows. The voice had been polite, and that was a feat in itself, when no one but Potter and the instructors spoke to him except through gritted teeth. He pushed his tray aside and nodded to the speaker. “I have time.” The dining hall was open at all hours during exams, giving harried trainees time to snatch meals in between frantic bouts of study. Draco wouldn’t admit to himself that he was sitting here, long after he had finished his meal, and waiting for Potter.

The woman sat down across from him and looked at him seriously. Draco looked back at her, noting the tight lines around her mouth that meant she hadn’t approached him voluntarily, and said, “Catherine Arrowshot?”

“Yes.” Arrowshot clasped her hands on the table in front of her. She looked weary, her eyes rimmed with red, but Draco reckoned they were pretty eyes enough, deep blue. Her hair, though, was brown and stringy and hung over her shoulders as though she’d forgotten to comb it. Draco kept from curling his lip with an effort. He preferred hair darker than that, and with a will of its own.

Stop thinking of Potter. Among other things, he didn’t need to flush from the force of his own thoughts or the blood they sent to his cock and have Arrowshot think the blush was for her.

He tilted his head and adopted a quiet, supercilious expression. “What could be important enough to make you approach me?”

“Damn few things,” Arrowshot said, without smiling. “But I wanted to ask you about the red and black magic that you’ve confronted.”

Draco nodded without surprise. The instructors had tried their best to keep the content of Harry and Draco’s battles quiet, but of course that was impossible in a building of any size, and the trainee barracks had about a third the number of students that Hogwarts did. “Ask.”

“You can’t guarantee that you’ll answer, though.” Arrowshot peered at him through the outermost pieces of her hair.

Draco shook his head and darted another look at the door of the dining hall. He’d thought it amusing when he realized that Potter was asleep and Pushkin was letting him rest, but he wouldn’t have felt that way if he’d known how long he would have to wait. Come on, Potter.

“Did the red and black magic leave…remains behind?” Arrowshot spoke so carefully that Draco was sure she’d spent a long time picking out that word.

Draco gave her what she probably wanted: a sharp look and his attention. “What do you mean by that? You know about the letters on the wall and the Death Eaters, of course.” If she didn’t know that the Death Eaters had been fake, simply containers for the red and black magic—the instructors had presumably dispatched them, but they’d been moved out of the Ministry and Draco didn’t know their fate—then Draco wasn’t about to tell her. Nihil had corrupted trainees, hadn’t he? Arrowshot could be one of them.

Arrowshot sat still for a minute, agitatedly plaiting her fingers through her hair in a manner that told Draco how it had ended up looking the way it did. Then she snorted, said, “Ah, fuck,” and reached into her robe pocket for something that she slapped into the middle of the table.

Draco drew his wand and cast a Lumos spell so that he could see the object better than the dim lights of the dining hall allowed. He wasn’t about to touch it until he knew what it was.

It, or rather they, looked like plaster, at first. Jagged white pieces. Draco glanced at Arrowshot, and she nodded. “They’re safe to touch. I’ve done multiple spells on them, and they only exude residual magic, as if someone powerful touched them and then went away.”

If she was one of Nihil’s followers, that was just the sort of thing she would say. Draco cast a protective charm on his hands before he reached out.

They were silky in the middle despite their sharp edges, and it took Draco a long moment to decide what they reminded him of. “Eggshell,” he breathed. “They look like pieces of eggshell.” He looked up. “Where did you find them?”

“Inside the interrogation rooms where they were keeping the Death Eaters.” Draco knew he had blinked from the way that Arrowshot looked at him scornfully. “Do you think you’re the only one who has the courage to investigate inside the Ministry? Yes, I’ve been there, too, and so do other people you don’t need to know about.”

Draco looked thoughtfully back at the bits of shell, wondering if he should worry about this. Then he shook his head. He didn’t think so. After all, he and Potter had more knowledge about Nihil than Arrowshot could have. He was sure of that. They could allow Arrowshot and any little friends that wanted to run beside her investigate for them, make noise, and attract attention. Then he and Potter could come in behind and pick up the pieces.

“And are you sure that they aren’t ordinary debris?” He let his voice waver as he turned the bits over with his fingertips, memorizing the slippery feel of them in the middle. Arrowshot smiled proudly, as he saw from the corner of his eye. Good. If he pretended to be more interested than he really was, the advantage would lie with him. “Maybe a Potions master dropped them while he was carrying ingredients.”

“I’ve done the standard tests that Auror Jones told us about,” Arrowshot said, her voice as solemn and proud as though she was declaring that she’d mastered a rare and secret art. “They don’t match standard Potions ingredients. And I’m taking Battle Brewing,” she added, as if that had only just now occurred to her. “I think I would recognize them if they fell within normal parameters.”

Draco gave her an absent smile that he hoped would look impressed. He had finally accessed the odd sense memory that the bits of shell brushing against his fingers had reminded him of.

These are pieces from a roc egg.

But that still left the question of how they had come there. Roc eggs were not simply lying about anywhere for anyone to snatch up. Their use was carefully restricted. And Draco thought that these had been used in some unusual way, if residual magic lingered about them still.

“I don’t know what they could have to do with Nihil,” he said, not quite truthfully, as he pulled his hand back and pushed the bits of shell towards Arrowshot again. “But they could be an important clue. Maybe.”

Arrowshot dipped her head. “That’s all I wanted to know.” She scooped up the pieces of eggshell and made them vanish inside her sleeve with a complicated motion that told Draco she could be a dangerous duelist. “This way, at least I can help Sarah.”

Draco blinked. “Who’s Sarah?”

Arrowshot froze in the act of rising from the table and gave him a sharp glance. “You don’t know who Sarah Manders is?” she asked, as if the girl was the reincarnation of Merlin.

Draco gave her a steady gaze back. As always when someone tried to put him at a disadvantage, the temptation to throw them off-balance instead was irresistible. “How many people do you think talk to me and exchange friendly information?” he asked with a drawl, tilting his head from side to side so that Arrowshot would have to take in the empty tables around him, and the turned backs beyond that.

“I’m sorry,” Arrowshot said, so quietly that Draco would have missed the words if he hadn’t been listening intently for her every breath. He blinked again, but Arrowshot had gone on before he could respond, and he thought she found the apology distasteful and was glad to get it over with. “Sarah Manders is a second-year trainee who was one of Auror Gregory’s mentees. Everyone thinks that she must know something, and they keep questioning her and refusing to let her participate in some of the higher-level training that she needs if she’s going to become a third-year trainee on time.” Arrowshot’s jaw tightened. “You haven’t been treated fairly, Malfoy. I acknowledge that. But she hasn’t been treated fairly, either.”

Just someone else whom I don’t care about. But Draco had learned how highly pretenses of compassion could be valued. Potter seemed to approve of the way that Draco “tolerated” his friends simply by keeping most of his thoughts to himself.

Besides, he was beginning to think that Nihil’s web was laid stronger and deeper than he and Potter had believed it was. It would not hurt to have allies, if they could make them and if they held them outside that inner circle of trust he still believed should exist between himself and Potter only.

“Tell her that I hope her name is cleared,” he said politely.

Arrowshot gave him a smile that was out of all proportion to the gesture and nodded. “Thank you,” she said again, and turned and strode from the dining hall. In her face was a familiar kind of passion. Draco usually saw it in Potter’s expression when he contemplated defeating evil.

“Why were you talking to her?”

Draco smiled and took a moment to revel in Potter’s tone. There was a compressed spark there, something pounded flat that might take Potter months to acknowledge, but which Draco knew was jealousy. That made up for the fact that he had not heard Potter approach.

“Because she showed me bits of eggshell that she had found in the interrogation rooms and wanted to know if they had something to do with Nihil,” he said, turning around. Potter flopped into the seat beside him, and Draco shuddered a little. It was a miracle that his attraction to Potter could survive individual movements so graceless. “What kept you?”

“Pushkin made me do the Observation exam,” Potter muttered. He glanced at the tray in front of him and dug a finger into a bowl of something limp and yellow that Draco hadn’t been able to identify and therefore hadn’t chosen. It looked like custard, but it also looked like fresh vomit. Potter gave a grimace of resignation and picked up his spoon.

“I’m amazed that you fell asleep,” Draco said quietly. He leaned closer so that no one else would overhear, though given the way everyone continued to pointedly ignore him, it wasn’t likely. “We were out late last night, but I didn’t think you were that tired when we got back.”

“I wasn’t,” Potter said. He pulled up a long, sloppy strand of custard and swallowed it with a noise that made Draco shudder. “That was the problem,” Potter said, and Draco reached over and pressed his jaw shut so that he wouldn’t take with his mouth full. Potter rolled his eyes at him.

“Manners,” Draco said, as gently as he could when he both wanted to laugh and to concentrate on the warm, smooth skin under his fingers. “Tell me that you know what they are.”

Potter looked away and gave his shoulders a shake that told Draco how irritated he was. Draco dropped his hand at once. When he touched Potter, his mind was going to be fully on what was happening to him, or Draco wouldn’t give him the gift.

Potter finished licking his lips and defiantly ate two more spoonfuls before he said, “I couldn’t fall asleep. And now I think something is wrong because Ron came into Observation with a singed sleeve, and I have to talk to him. And the thought makes me tired.” He bowed his head as though someone had pressed the weight of the world on his shoulders.

“If he makes you that tired,” Draco said, “why do you keep his friendship? I wouldn’t be friends with someone who caused me only pain.”

Potter glared at him. “He’s done a lot for me,” he said. “He’s always been my best friend. Just because he’s being a bit of an arse now doesn’t mean I want to turn my back on him.”

Back off, Draco. Draco stifled a sigh. Potter would be so much easier to deal with minus his tagalongs, but Draco didn’t think he was going to get that wish granted any time soon. It would need far more outrageous behavior from the Weasel before Potter consented to abandon him completely.

“All right,” he said, “I don’t want to talk about Weasley, anyway. I want to talk about Nihil and what we’re going to do.”

Potter ran his fingers through his hair, which didn’t improve its appearance, and sighed into his dinner. He had put down the custard spoon, Draco saw. He stored the information that Potter apparently didn’t eat well when he was stressed in the back of his mind. It was the kind of thing that it would be useful to know about his partner in the future.

Or my lover.

The thought swirled around his mind like delicate morning mist and was gone as quickly. It was a thought that Draco dared not entertain until he had far more concrete proof than he possessed right now of what Potter might someday mean to him.

“Finish your ludicrous meal,” he said, “and we’ll talk.”

Potter shook his head, refusing to reach for his cutlery out of sheer bloody-mindedness, Draco was sure. “I’m tired of that, too,” he said. “We have to start somewhere, but I think we’re running around in the dark. We keep picking up threads, and then the threads are attached to something else, and the whole thing unravels, and we’re left with a bunch of dirty cloth and no idea what to do next.”

“Poetic, Potter,” Draco muttered, but Potter kept on in such a way that Draco was sure he couldn’t have heard. Draco’s words deserved more attention than that.

“What do the beasts have to do with Nihil? What were they looking for on Hogwarts grounds? Why would they give Chester to Hagrid—if Nemo was Nihil—and then try to take him away again? What is the red and black magic exactly? What is Gregory’s connection to this whole mess? What do the instructors know? Why would Nihil want to reveal his name like that? Why the attacks on us, before we’d done anything but destroy one of his illusions? So many questions.” Potter dropped his head against the back of his chair with a thunk that made Draco wince and stared at the ceiling. “No answers at all. I think we’re running in circles.” He glanced sideways at Draco, his eyes hopeless. “And now eggshells. Where do they fit? Probably nowhere.”

Draco drummed his fingers on the table. He reckoned he could understand why Potter was feeling overwhelmed; it was simply inconvenient of him to give way to those feelings now, of all times. Draco was used to stepping lightly through the dark, gathering the threads together, and then looking for the place where they would make sense in the larger tapestry, and they had more threads than ever before.

But Potter needed some goal.

Draco took a deep breath. “The eggshell means living things,” he said. “I could tell that it was the shell of a roc egg, though altered somewhere. And we at least suspect that Nihil has been breeding himself servants like the beasts that you met in the Forest.”

Potter rolled his head towards Draco, his eyes brightening. “Yes.”

“So let’s start with them,” Draco said. “If someone breaks the Experimental Breeding Ban, they’re going to leave traces. And I know people—or my mother knows people—who could try to find those traces for us. Meanwhile, we can try to figure out what was done to that eggshell and what kinds of spells you would need to give something two faces, and why you would want to.”

Potter frowned. “What would the price be for the people your mother knows?”

Draco grinned. “You do have your moments of common sense.” Potter raised an eyebrow, and he gave in. “Probably no more than an exchange of favors at some time in the future. Imagine what they could do if they had the Boy-Who-Lived in their debt.”

“Don’t you start.” Potter regarded Draco with distaste, as if he imagined that Draco would grow the long, flowing hair and starry eyes of one of his female fans.

“You’re not like everyone else,” Draco said, flinging his words like stones. “We discussed that already. It’s time that you started acknowledging the power of your position and using it, instead of letting other people use you.”

Potter frowned, opened his mouth, shut it again, and bit his lip.

Draco was content to move on from the subject. Just like his point about Potter’s friends, it was best to leave this seed to grow in Potter’s mind instead of continually poking at it. “Come with me to the library tomorrow. We can start looking up information about the Experimental Breeding Ban. And then I hope that you won’t be opposed to sneaking out again tomorrow night, since you seem to make quite a habit of it.”

Potter flushed, but only asked, “Where are we going?”

Draco grinned at him. “If you’re going to work with my mother, shouldn’t you meet her?”

*

“Mate?” Harry called softly as he stepped into their room. He knew from the tingle of magic—something he had just realized he was able to sense a few days ago—that Ron was here. But he didn’t respond to Harry’s words, and Harry had walked into the middle of the room before he saw him.

Ron lay face-down on his bed. Harry found himself clutching his wand and staring hard. Then he realized that Ron’s back still rose and fell gently with his breaths, and there was no sign of blood. He lowered his hand and cleared his throat in embarrassment.

Ron rolled over and stared at him. Harry took a step backwards. Ron’s face had red patches on the skin that looked like burns, or else caked makeup, and his nose was large and protruding more than it had that morning. His fringe had turned white.

“What happened to you?” Harry asked in some awe. “Did you get in a duel with one of the second-years?” The only exams that might have caused something like that to happen to him, Dearborn’s and Ketchum’s, were already over.

Ron shook his head miserably and tried to croak something. His voice sounded like a toad’s. Harry hastily waved his wand and muttered a Finite that made most of the damage recede from Ron’s face, although the enlarged nose stayed. That must have been a Transfiguration, Harry thought absently as he sat down in the chair nearest Ron.

“Hermione,” Ron said, putting a hand across his eyes as if he thought that would keep Harry from looking at him. “We got in an argument over—it doesn’t matter, really.” Harry opened his mouth to protest that Ron thought Harry’s love life was his business, then thought about it and kept quiet. If he didn’t want Ron telling him who he should date and how to make up after fights with his girlfriend, then he couldn’t do the same thing to Ron. “But she cast spells at me just like she did during sixth year at Hogwarts and then stormed off, telling me she didn’t want to date me if I wasn’t going to do my own bloody work.” Ron sounded injured.

“Ah,” Harry said. At least that told him the fight had probably been over Hermione’s newfound effort to keep Ron from using her notes. “Is there anything I can do, mate?”

Ron started complaining about Hermione, which made the answer clear enough. Harry listened and offered sympathy when he could, mostly by shaking his head and making noises in the right places.

For some reason, his thoughts were on Draco and other things unrelated to how happy Ron and Hermione were in their relationship. He wondered if he and Draco would curse each other if—

And then he stopped, horrified, because he knew exactly where the thoughts were leading.

If we dated? That’s what you were thinking, Harry, wasn’t it? And it’s wrong. You know that nothing like that will ever happen. You shouldn’t want it to, not when it would make everyone around you unhappy and Draco doesn’t want to date you.

Harry swallowed and shook his head. He didn’t understand his own imagination sometimes, or want to.

“That’s what I said!” Ron exclaimed.

Harry tried to pay attention to the conversation that was happening in front of him, the real thing, and not the imaginary things that his brain was trying to conjure up for him to look at. He and Draco were good partners and getting to be good friends. They argued, sure, but no one was perfect as far as that went.

To think of more than that was—

Dangerous. Stupid. Nonsensical.

Harry didn’t even understand why he was thinking it, because, as far as he knew, he wasn’t gay.

And if he wasn’t gay, he couldn’t really be attracted to Draco.

He sat back in relief and let Ron’s familiar problems wash over him. At least they were real.

Chapter Twenty-Four.