Chapter Twenty-Seven of 'Soldier's Welcome'- Christmas

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (27/?)
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-Seven—Christmas

Harry scowled at the ceiling in the bedroom that Draco and Narcissa had given him. His neck hurt from trying to find some comfortable position on the pillow. He reckoned that most people would consider it just fluffy enough, but when you’d been used to sleeping on hard ground and inside a cupboard in the past, it was difficult to feel like you were sinking into feathers.

He was thinking about the party, and the way that Draco had avoided his eyes after it, and the way he called him “Potter” with almost a sneer in his voice, as if he was still remembering the times he had said it at Hogwarts.

He probably is, Harry thought, his fingers digging into the pillow until he thought he’d rip the cloth. A few months of friendship can’t overcome seven years of hating each other.

He didn’t want Draco to call him that.

But if he told him that, then Draco would probably ask why and want some detailed and complex argument, crystalline with logic, the kind that he was fond of using when he thought Harry was being stupid. And Harry didn’t have one of those. He just knew that he didn’t like the way Draco said his last name.

Harry sighed and turned his head to the right, closing his eyes. He began counting his breaths, which sometimes helped him fall asleep. But his mind touched on a treacherous thought first: that it was probably a good day he was going to the Burrow for Christmas Eve through Boxing Day. It would give him and Draco some much-needed time away from each other.

I wish I could trust that if I told him I don’t like the way he says my name, that would be enough to make him stop.

*

“Draco, darling, you are positively petulant. What’s wrong?”

Draco blinked and sat up straight in his chair. He’d had a book spread on his lap for the last half-hour, but he hadn’t read any of it. Surely, though, his mother couldn’t know that. He had been in the library, and she had been in the drawing room writing a letter to his father in Azkaban.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said, and then tried to fix a look of cool and yet sympathetic interest on his face. It was the only sort of expression that would make his mother talk about what Draco knew must be a trial for her. “Have you owled Father? I hope that they’re taking proper care of him there, and not trying to feed him that filthy gruel a house-elf couldn’t survive on.”

“I have some hope of better treatment for him, now that I’ve given them the latest bribe.” Narcissa seated herself on the chair nearest the door. Today she wore deep blue robes that made her eyes look like sapphires. Draco wondered wistfully why he hadn’t inherited her genius for looking like that in dark colors, instead of looking washed-out. “But you can’t distract me, Draco. Even if I thought you had been studying, I’ve heard the sighs at mealtimes and the way you exploded at Daffy yesterday for laying his finger on your plate as he put it down. The poor thing was still ironing his ears this morning. What’s wrong?”

Draco glared at his book. It was humiliating to have his mother make him confess his feelings as if he was still a child, but it would be more humiliating still to lie when she would know perfectly well that he was lying. “Potter,” he muttered.

“Did he say something to you before he left?” Narcissa frowned and leaned back in her chair. The diamond earrings that hung to her shoulders swayed back and forth with slight tinkling noises. Draco had known many pure-blood women who would have looked ridiculous wearing them. Once again, his mother defied the laws of nature. “I must say, I had thought you were getting on better in the last few days. He had more semblance of manners.”

Draco smiled in spite of himself. That would matter to his mother. “It’s not that,” he said. “It’s—strained and tense between us, and every time I try to figure out some way that I can breathe the air more easily, he shuts me down. I’ve tried to ask the questions I need to ask, but he won’t let me ask them. He denies so effectively that it’s as if he’s anticipated all my questions beforehand.”

Narcissa raised her eyebrows, but she was perfectly sensitive to Draco’s tone, and she would know from it that he would have specified those questions and the source of strain if he wanted her to know what they were. She nodded. “Can you not simply press the inquiry in spite of his denials? Have you tried Veritaserum?”

Draco snorted, then had to work to hold back his laughter. Meanwhile, his mother more and more resembled a statue with a slight glazing of ice, so Draco hastened to clear his throat and explain. “He’d think that was a betrayal, Mother. I’d break his trust by doing something like that.”

“There are variants that are milder, of late,” Narcissa said thoughtfully. “I heard the names of some mentioned at the Abranes’ party. I didn’t make many notes of suppliers, as we were after rather different prey, but I remember them. We could attempt to acquire them, and then he need never know that he had been under the potion. The new variants compel only some partial truths and don’t produce that wretched mental state that’s such a telltale.”

Draco took a deep breath. “I appreciate the offer, Mother,” he said. “But I don’t think that he would forgive me if he found out about that, either. And I can’t promise that I would be able to keep it from him forever.”

Narcissa opened her mouth slowly. She turned the motion into a yawn, but Draco knew what the expression meant, and stored the memory of it away as consolation against what she had just realized. She’d been startled. He had taken her aback. He did that so rarely, especially now that he was grown-up and couldn’t startle her by getting into childish messes, that he would note the date.

“This is far more serious than I realized,” Narcissa breathed. “If you’re adopting his moral standards, Draco, you aren’t just thinking about friendship.”

“Could we put this aside for now?” Draco shut his book and stood up, keeping his eyes carefully averted from his mother’s face.

“Ah, Draco.” Narcissa had a smile in her voice, which Draco would have objected to, except that he thought he had embarrassed himself quite enough for one day. “I’ve been through the same thing myself, though I was younger than you were. Of course.”

Draco strode out of the library and up to his room. The house was quiet, of course. It always had been, even when his father was living here. Lucius wasn’t the sort to conduct noisy Potions experiments or crash his broom through a plate glass window, and his Dark Arts experiments that might go wrong were always conducted in the most secure of laboratories.

There was no reason for the silence to feel wrong, as though someone was missing who should have belonged there.

*

“Come on, Harry!”

Harry ran gratefully out into the cold, carrying his broom, behind Ron. His new Weasley jumper embraced him warmly, and he smiled as he watched his breath form in front of his face. A little practice Quidditch was just what he’d needed. It seemed as though no one really knew what to do with themselves on Christmas Day once they’d exchanged their presents and eaten. The empty chair at the table didn’t help.

Besides, Ginny had given him several meaningful glances and made a point of announcing loudly that she was going up to her room after the meal. Harry didn’t want any part of that right now.

It’s not that I hate her, he thought, as he kicked off from the ground and felt the spiraling wind envelop him. Ron was already hovering near the edge of the Quidditch pitch that George had built last year with the money that was beginning to come in through Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes. George had admitted that he didn’t know what to do with all the Galleons, since he couldn’t keep every single one for re-investment in the shop, and so he might as well make his family comfortable.

I don’t hate her, Harry thought again, as Ron tossed a Quaffle at him and Harry caught it, then lobbed it back at him. It’s just that she thinks one way about things and I think another way, and we’re not ever going to come to an agreement.

He and Ron flew for a long time, taking opposite sides and trying to toss the Quaffle through each other’s goals, and then competing in dives. Hermione came out to watch before the end, clapping her hands when Ron managed to jerk out of a plunge just in time—though he went so low his boots plowed trails in the snow—and looking more relaxed than Harry had seen her since the start of Auror training.

I think this has been good for them, at least. Harry twisted to get out of the way of Ron’s broom, watching Hermione smile and cheer from the corner of his eye. Her cheeks were red from the cold, and he thought that she’d forgotten to cast her Warming Charm, which might be a good sign. It wasn’t usual for Hermione to get so caught up in a game that she called foolish and silly. They have some time to relate to each other and not think about homework.

On the other hand, he’d heard them arguing the other night. Harry hadn’t tried to listen in—why would he want to?—but he’d been sure the argument hadn’t lasted long. There was that.

When they landed, Hermione ran up and kissed Ron on the lips. Harry watched for a moment before he looked away, jealousy twisting his stomach. I wish I had someone who would care for me that way, who would keep going with me against all the odds.

But then he thought about Ginny again, and snorted, shaking his head. Yeah, like that would work. He was probably better off waiting until he was through the Auror program and knew both himself and anyone else who would want to date him a little better.

“Are you all right, Harry?” Hermione had come up beside him and was studying him with an anxious expression.

Harry told himself that neither of his best friends had any reason to think he was less than deliriously blissful to be with them. He hadn’t told them he’d come from Malfoy Manor because—well, because. He dredged up a smile and said, “Of course. Although I still don’t understand how to work the gift you got me.”

There was a time last year when Hermione would have taken offense if he said something like that. Now, she looked absolutely thrilled at being asked to explain. Harry had asked partially to give her something to say, and he listened contentedly enough as she dragged him inside the house and showed him the book.

It was a plain, small book, with a leather cover. Harry had thought at first it was another homework organizer like the ones she’d got them for Christmas at Hogwarts one year. But when he opened it, the pages were blank and remained stubbornly blank no matter what spell he cast. When he tried to write on them, the ink drained into the parchment. That reminded him of Tom Riddle’s diary, which made him queasy, and Harry had decided not to write any more in it until Hermione could show him what to do.

“Look,” Hermione said importantly. She tapped the front of the book twice with her wand, and added, “I used the same principle that’s behind the Marauder’s Map. You have to tap it, twice, and speak a specific phrase, or it’s not going to work. I thought I included that phrase on the paper with the gift, but I wouldn’t be surprised if someone tore it off in his haste to get to the gift.” She gave Harry a pointed look.

Harry flushed, but compensated for it by rolling his eyes. “Forgive me for wanting to see what it was,” he muttered. He didn’t say, even though it was true, that he had caused such a fuss with the wrapping and the noise as he ripped into it because he wanted everyone’s eyes focused on him. That way, Ginny wouldn’t get a chance to start a private conversation with him under cover of everyone else’s chattering and excitement.

“I will,” Hermione said magnificently, “if you just attend to what I’m showing you, so I don’t have to show you more than once.” Ron leaned over Harry’s shoulder to watch, since he’d got the same kind of thing, though Harry thought Hermione had already showed him how to work his. “The two wand taps, like I said. And then, I am going to make it through the Auror program.” She looked at Harry out of the corner of her eye.

Harry refused to give her a reaction the way she wanted, but just looked interested. A moment later, he didn’t have to pretend to be interested, as the letters My Notes appeared on the front of the book. Hermione flipped it open and touched her wand to the first page. “Think about one of the subjects we’ve studied,” she said.

“Er,” Harry said. “All right. Defensive and Offensive.”

Words began to race across the first page. Harry took a step back, thinking about Tom Riddle again, and then realized that he knew that writing. It was his. He leaned in, uneasily fascinated, and studied the lines.

Duel in pairs—the Ministry makes D. Arts illegal because—he’s talking too fast…

“As you can see,” Hermione said, “it comes up with the notes for that subject you’ve studied. All of them, no matter where the notes are now. It interacts with your thoughts and your memories. You remember a lot more than you realize. It’s just that the memories get stored in parts of the brain where they’re not recalled easily.” She gave a modest little shrug as Harry stared at her. “It seemed simple enough. I was studying Memory Charms in my free time—”

“What time?” Harry asked, cupping his hand around his ear, but he knew that Hermione would always make free time to study something if she was really interested in it.

“And it just seemed like it would work. After all, this is parchment and words, and so are the notes you take. All parchment and all words are in some sense connected.” Hermione looked at the book with a little frown. “I don’t think it would work for notes that you’d scribbled on Muggle paper, though. That isn’t the same as parchment.”

“Hermione, you’re brilliant,” Harry said, because he wasn’t sure what else to say, and because it was a wonderful gift, and because he liked seeing her turn Weasley-red.

Ron said the same thing, but in a reverent whisper that made Harry get out of the way before he could be caught between them. Then they were kissing again, with plenty of loud smacking sounds, and Harry stepped back and told himself to stop feeling jealousy. He used to almost never feel it, except over Ginny when she was dating Dean, and suddenly it seemed that it was braiding up his insides every time he turned around.

You have no right to feel it. And you don’t want to feel it over Ron and Hermione. You’re not interested in either of them. Or Ginny either, for that matter.

A slippery, treacherous thought whispered and hissed to him that it knew who he was interested in.

Shut up, Harry told himself, and went to admire his Christmas presents again.

*

Draco glanced up at the golden and pearl clock that hung over the fireplace. Potter wasn’t late, not yet, and Draco didn’t want to remember that he’d looked at the clock thirty times in the last ten minutes.

He got up to take some healthy exercise instead, which was not pacing in front of the fireplace. Not at all. Only people jealous of his grace and beauty would say that.

The green flames flared up in the hearth, and Draco could see a spinning figure appear in them. He relaxed, then stepped out of the way. He had seen Potter travel by Floo before, and he knew what was likely to happen when he did.

Sure enough, Potter staggered out in a rain of soot and sagged to his knees on the carpet, coughing. When he stood up again, Draco tried to conceal a wince, and suspected he didn’t succeed from the wry way Potter looked at him. He was dripping more soot all over the floor. Of course, the house-elves would soon take care of that, but it was the principle of the thing.

“Oh, yeah,” Potter said, and pushed something into Draco’s hands. “I was even more off-balance than usual, carrying that thing.” He nodded to the box and then started stamping more ashes off his boots as if they were snow.

Draco looked down, opening his mouth to make a scathing retort about how Potter was blaming innocent inanimate objects for his own clumsiness. But he shut his mouth and swallowed when he realized that the box was (badly) wrapped in green paper with small silver snakes on it. He looked up into Potter’s face.

“Where did you get this?” he whispered.

Potter laughed at him. “That would be telling, wouldn’t it, when you haven’t even opened it yet?” He folded his arms and grinned. His face was radiant with delight, and Draco found it as hard to look away from as it had been to look away from the box a moment before. “Just open it already. It’s your Christmas present. And if you mean, where did I get the paper, I just saw it and bought it. I thought it’d be something you’d like.”

Draco shook his head. His hands were shaking and his heart felt too large against his ribs as he tore the paper off.

Inside was a plain wooden box without markings that didn’t tell Draco anything. He tried to lift the top, and then realized it was tied down. With an impatient motion, he drew his wand and cast a quick Diffindo that sliced the string off.

“I see that you don’t forget that you’re a wizard, not for one bloody second,” Potter muttered.

Draco had no time for the git’s irrational resentment right now. He tipped the lid of the box back and peered inside, wondering for a moment why he was holding his breath. It was a Christmas present, for Merlin’s sake, not something really important and fascinating, like the key to the Nihil mystery.

Inside, a tiny, perfect dog turned its head to regard him, then stood up on its paws and yawned to let him know that it was awaiting his attention.

It was smaller than Draco had known a dog could be, even the miniature Crups that Draco had sometimes seen in the handbags of wealthy witches as they paraded through Diagon Alley. It had pointed ears and a dangerous-looking pointed muzzle, and it looked as if it was made of pure silver. Logically, Draco knew that its coat must be grey, because dogs didn’t come in silver, but it looked that way. It even shimmered wetly like water when Draco turned the box back and forth.

It had fangs so sharp and white that Draco knew they would pierce someone’s skin and not cause any pain immediately, although they would certainly slice skin from bone. (Aunt Bellatrix had had a set of knives like that. He was trying not to think about them). And no ordinary dog had a tail like a scorpion’s. Maybe it could have a silver coat after all.

He looked up at Potter, and his expression must have been more hostile than he meant it to be, because Potter hastily began a fumbling explanation.

“I know that it looks odd, but you’ve been the target of some of Nihil’s magic, and I can’t be there all the time, and the other trainees might or might not try to protect you, and you’re alone in your rooms, and you could use another friend. I wouldn’t even have bought one, but the breeder saw me in Quality Quidditch Supplies and insisted that I take one because, he said, it would be good publicity for his business to have the Chosen One carrying it around, and they’re bred for personal defense—”

Draco held up a hand to stop him. He would have difficulty speaking if he tried. The quiet welling up in his throat would spill out of his mouth and envelop Potter. And maybe it would tell him too much.

You could use another friend.

That statement of Potter’s intent in buying the gift was nearly more precious than the gift itself.

“Thank you,” he said at last, and held out his hand to the dog. It sniffed him, and then consented to be scooped up and placed on Draco’s shoulder. Draco had already seen that its paws and nails were more like a cat’s, made for clinging and climbing. It stepped so delicately that it didn’t cut the skin, however, and sat as quietly next to his ear as the ornament made of silver and diamonds it looked like. There were some who would take it for that, and that would be an advantage. Draco took a deep breath and turned to face Potter again.

“How can I thank you?” he asked. “I didn’t get you a gift.”

Potter shrugged. He looked embarrassed now, his eyes darting away from Draco’s. Draco hated to see it. He wanted to shake the prat and tell him that he had as much reason to stand up and be proud as anyone else. “You don’t have to thank me,” he muttered. “It’s just—it’s just something I wanted to do.” He looked up half-defiantly. “You need more gifts in your life.”

Draco shook his head. His mouth was dry now, although he had the words to speak. The dog cuddled next to his cheek, cool and unmoving. Elegant. The kind of gift he had never thought Potter would choose. “But it’s Christmas, and I’ve got nothing for you. At least tell me what you want, even though it’s not going to be a surprise.”

He couldn’t explain the urgency that beat like sunstroke in his head. I have to give him something. I want to give him something. I want to give him something so badly that I have to.

*

Harry looked at Draco, and was content. The dog fit as well with him as Harry had thought it would when he’d first seen the little silver thing. And if Draco had ever had a pet, Harry didn’t think it had left any mark on him. He deserved to have one. Harry would have given the world for an animal, when he was living at the Dursleys’, and he thought Draco’s life right now was probably as hard as that.

Draco.

And then something broke in Harry, and he decided there was a gift that he would ask for after all. He flung up his head. Draco blinked at him and took a step back, but remained attentive, his chin turned slightly to the side.

“I want you to call me by my first name,” Harry said harshly. “You shove me away with my last name long after I started calling you by your first. Why is that? It makes me feel like—like we’re not really friends, like you just want me to be Potter the way you did when we were in Hogwarts. Call me by my first name.”

Draco’s eyes were very wide when he finished, and the silver dog bared its teeth at Harry. Harry was sorry a moment later. He’d spoken honestly, but what if Draco didn’t want to? Then Harry was like everyone else who kept shoving at Draco, trying to make him into someone he didn’t want to be.

He was just opening his mouth to apologize when Draco’s lips firmed and he nodded. He reached out and clasped Harry’s wrist. His fingers pressed cold and smooth against Harry’s warm skin, and that was like he silver dog, too.

“Harry,” he whispered.

Harry shivered. The words seemed to open a trap beneath him, so that he fell down and down and landed at the bottom of a pit with reality written on the walls.

At the sound of his name from Draco’s lips, he could no longer hide from what—and who—he wanted.

Even though he had not the slightest idea of what to do about it.

Chapter Twenty-Eight.

Comments

[jtsbbsps-dk.livejournal.com]

I DID!!

And now I didn't get to properly comment. It'll have to suffice to say that I bloody well WORSHIP YOU!!

The chapter updates for the two WiPs you are writing now are like shooting starts on the gray sky that is school/homework/getupinthemorning!