Chapter Thirty-Three of 'Soldier's Welcome'- Unexpected News

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (33/?)
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 Thirty-Three—Unexpected News

“But there’s no magic that can bring back the dead.” Harry knew his voice sounded hollow and pitiful and ridiculous, but he had to speak anyway. What Draco was saying was impossible.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

Harry lifted his head in surprise. He’d been so preoccupied with his own thoughts—which included the image of Nusquam fading and dying in Draco’s yellow light, and sometimes strayed in other directions, directions full of longing—that he hadn’t paid attention to the way Draco reacted to his words. Now he saw Draco with his arms folded and his head lowered slightly in that way he always adopted when he was feeling aggressive.

“No!” Harry said quickly. “I know what you saw, and I believe that you saw her. It’s just that—we know our enemies can take on other faces. Couldn’t it have been someone who chose to look like Nusquam?”

Draco snorted and began to pace back and forth. Harry watched him in quiet curiosity. He didn’t know why Draco was so determined to believe that someone had come back from the dead.

He doesn’t have the reasons that I do to wish that could be true. Harry clenched his hand tight so he wouldn’t have to remember that, somewhere under the Ministry, sat the veil that had swallowed Sirius.

“If that’s the case, then who’s to say we killed the original Nusquam?” Draco turned his head and spoke over his shoulder. “Maybe it was someone who wore her likeness, and the one I saw was the real one.”

“Or maybe Nusquam and Nihil and Nemo aren’t real people after all,” Harry said. “Remember that the man who handed me the note about them wasn’t real, either. Could they be just names and images our enemies have made up?”

Draco took a deep breath and trailed his hands down his face. “I didn’t think of that,” he said. “Maybe.”

“I think it’s also kind of strange that she would want us to know she had managed to survive,” Harry went on, taking a step closer to Draco and studying his face in concern. He didn’t know how he had managed to miss it earlier, except that Draco was always so pale that a touch more of pallor on his face didn’t make a great difference. But now that Harry really looked, he could see the tiredness worked into Draco’s skin like wrinkles. Harry put a hand on Draco’s shoulder and watched him open his eyes and blink as though fighting sleep desperately.

Harry made up his mind.

“I’ll think about it,” he said, when he saw Draco opening his mouth to answer his latest protest. “Lie down for now.”

Draco could still lift his lip in a magnificent sneer when he tried, though Harry hadn’t personally seen one aimed at him in days. “So that you can have your wicked Gryffindor way with me?” he asked, and curled his tongue towards Harry’s fingers.

Harry flushed and stared at him. They hadn’t talked much about the kiss or the confessions that Harry had made and Draco had hinted at afterwards. There was so much else to do. And Harry had begun to think that Draco didn’t really know how to respond to Harry’s interest and was grateful to let it die. God knew Harry himself felt awkward and fumbling and didn’t know what would be acceptable.

But his eyes went back to Draco’s face, and he shook his head. Time for this later, when Draco was rested.

“You wish,” he retorted, and gently urged Draco back towards the bed. “No, it’s because you’re about to fall over with weariness, and I want you to lie down and sleep the way you should.”

“I am not—”

A yawn stole Draco’s words. Harry chuckled and folded his hands gently over Draco’s, lifting his wrists above his head. “I think you are,” he whispered. “I think that you can’t think of much except soft, fluffy sheets and soft, fluffy pillows and the way the bed is going to feel under your back when you finally let yourself go.”

Draco moaned and tilted his head back. His hair fell around his cheeks, shimmering slightly. A faint flush rose into his cheeks, and Harry had to swallow and tell his inappropriate responses to go the fuck away for right now.

“It sounds wonderful,” Draco whispered.

“Well, that’s where you are.” Harry pulled back and let Draco sink into the pillows. Draco sighed and moved his head and limbs lazily from side to side, gradually working himself into a more comfortable position. Harry pulled off his boots and set them beside the bed. “There’s nothing else that you have to worry about right now.” He kept his voice quiet, gentle, thinking of the way he had soothed Hermione to sleep a few times when they were hunting for Horcruxes after Ron had left. “Absolutely nothing…”

Draco’s breathing evened out, and the hand he had flung above his head, as if he wanted to grasp something and stop himself from falling into slumber, relaxed, the fingers flexing wide. Harry smiled and sat there for a few minutes, looking at him. It was the kind of thing he wouldn’t have dared to do if someone else might intrude, but Timmons and Redworth had agreed, after long arguments, that they would stand outside Harry and Draco’s rooms and guard the door instead of coming inside.

Draco looked unguarded. Harry wasn’t sure he’d ever seen him look that way. Maybe he did when he was alone at home, talking with his mother, but Harry’s presence in the Manor over the holidays had disrupted that. His lips could part and he didn’t worry about tightening them; his hands could open and he didn’t worry about clenching them into fists or wrapping them around his wand. His body lay there, prone, and Harry ached to run a hand lightly up his chest, for the sake of feeling muscles that he wouldn’t get to see otherwise unless they were tense.

But Draco would probably wake up if he did that, so Harry sat back and contented himself with looking. It was a harmless pastime.

Especially since it would keep his thoughts from straying in those other directions that had occurred to him the moment Draco seriously argued for Nusquam coming back from the dead.

*

“I have news.”

Draco stiffened, but managed to keep staring ahead as if he was intrigued by the boring lecture that Jones was giving them in Auror Conduct. Jones had realized a week or so ago that they didn’t have enough time to cover all the rules before the end of the term if she didn’t stop illustrating every single one individually with illusions and dramas. Now she mumbled her way through the lists and spent a large part of the class chasing around the parchments that she had scribbled on but apparently not numbered.

“What news?” he breathed back. Harry had the good sense to not move from his slumped posture, hand beneath his chin, other hand lazily tracing the quill over the parchment, even though he could surely hear Arrowshot’s whisper to Draco.

“I overheard what I’m certain are some of the trainees who are sympathetic to Nihil’s cause,” Arrowshot said. “They were talking in a corridor that most people don’t know about, but which I found a while ago, because my cousin who works in the Ministry told me about it. They were mentioning ‘the power and the urge to live forever.’”

Draco exhaled. At last, a clue. His eyes darted sideways to Harry, and he noticed the stiffness of his shoulders. Yes, he had heard, and he was as excited about the importance of this information as Draco was.

“Will they hold another meeting soon?” he asked.

“I think so,” Arrowshot said. “The moon quarters seem to be special times for them, and the moon is going to be new this week.”

Draco took a deep breath and flexed his fingers against the desk. The new moon was in just two days. Not much time to prepare, especially if Arrowshot was right and this was a gathering of several of Nihil’s servants.

He tried to tell himself immediately that there was an excellent chance she wasn’t right. What were the odds that trainees who followed Nihil would leave themselves unguarded like that, when they had access to the kind of Dark magic that Nusquam could use to defend herself? But even if they were only people speculating about the possible consequences of fighting someone who could break into the Ministry and murder people, they might have information Harry and Draco didn’t have.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

Arrowshot didn’t move back into her desk the way he had thought she would. Partially that was because Jones still scrambled through her notes and so they’d been able to have a longer conversation than normal, but Draco understood the other half of it when he twisted around and saw the stubborn expression on Arrowshot’s face.

“I want to go with you.”

Harry twitched a bit, but said nothing. He faked a yawn instead and left Draco to handle this as he saw fit. Draco felt a tingle of warmth pass through him. Harry had been more considerate and caring in the last few days than Draco could ever remember him being.

“Absolutely not,” Draco said.

“Why?” Arrowshot’s hands clenched into fists. “I’m the one who found this out. I have a perfect right to go with you if I like.”

“We have advantages that you don’t,” Draco said, and then wondered if he should have. His secret training with Harry over the holidays wasn’t something they’d mentioned to anyone. On the other hand, from the way Arrowshot snorted and rolled her eyes, she thought he just meant their compatible magic.

“I’m a trainee, too, and I’ve received the same lessons that you have, and I’m just as determined to hunt them down as you are,” she said flatly. “If you don’t take me along, then I won’t show you where to find the corridor.”

Draco smiled in spite of himself; that was something he hadn’t considered, and it was his own fault he hadn’t got the information from Arrowshot first, before she demanded a price like this. He nodded. “All right. We’ll meet in the morning.”

“Why so early? The meeting I saw was in the evening.” Arrowshot pushed her hair back behind her ears as she frowned at him.

“Yes, but there’s no guarantee that the next one will be,” Draco pointed out grimly. “We’ll need to set up alarms and wards on the corridor so that we can be alerted when someone enters it, and the best time to do that is in the morning before classes.” Most of the trainees would apparently rather sleep than do anything else, and so they were unlikely to be observed if Harry, Draco, and Arrowshot had to sneak around then.

Arrowshot gave him a vicious smile and sat back just as Jones straightened up with a triumphant air and went on with her lecture. Draco returned to his pretense of taking notes, eying Harry’s tense shoulders and wondering if he approved of the bargain.

Then Harry glanced over his shoulder and smiled, and Draco felt as if he was standing in sunlight.

Mine. That smile is mine. The strong possessiveness he hadn’t felt since the early days of their friendship passed through him.

He has many friends, but he will have only one lover.

*

Harry hissed in exasperation under his breath as he stared at the letter in his hand. What was Ginny about? Harry thought he had made it clear that he had no intention of ever communicating with her again. But this was the third letter she had sent him since term began, and this was only the first week of February.

He tossed the letter up in the air and pointed his wand at it. “Incendio!” he snapped.

The flames surged towards the letter—and then bent back. Harry had to duck so they couldn’t scorch his face. He stared at the letter with his eyes narrowed as it slid out of its envelope and Ginny’s voice spoke through the room. It was the same sort of thing he had seen happen with a Howler, but Ginny wasn’t yelling. Instead, she sounded resigned more than anything else.

“Harry, I know you have no reason to believe me, but I do still care about you. I want to be your friend if I can’t be your lover. You took my advice about making Ron happy—I could see that at Christmas—and that’s pleasing.”

Harry bared his teeth. “Ron said absolutely nothing to you about why he’s feeling better, did he?” he asked, but Ginny’s words simply continued. Apparently the letter wasn’t enchanted to respond to what its recipient said.

“But I want more than that. Please. The way we broke up was unavoidable. Could you please acknowledge that it was for the best? And I’d like to hear more from you, about you. I want to be friends.”

The letter fell into place on the table in the middle of the room. Harry stared at it, fists clenched, breath coming fast.

“What was that about?”

Harry twisted his head, blinking. Draco stood in the doorway of their rooms, his face wearing an expression of mild questioning. But the expression in his eyes wasn’t mild at all.

“Ginny won’t leave me alone.” Harry began to pace. His hands rose once or twice as if he would smooth them through his hair, but he didn’t, because he had seen how much that annoyed Draco. Besides, the mood he was in would probably leave strands of hair all over the floor. “What does she want? She insulted me, she broke up with me, and now she’s upset because I’m ignoring her letters?” Harry laughed bitterly, feeling as though walls were about to fall in on him. “And I can’t even ask Ron to make her stop, because I’m sure that he wouldn’t understand.”

A heavy footstep sounded, and Harry started and glanced over his shoulder. Draco stood right behind him. Harry had been so involved in his own ranting that he hadn’t heard him cross the floor between them.

Draco lifted his hands, fingers delicately spread, and laid them on Harry’s shoulders. Harry shut his eyes and sighed. The fingers didn’t massage him, but a comforting warmth spread from them as if they had.

“Do you want me to tell her?” Draco whispered into his ear.

Harry sighed again, this time longingly. The vision of Draco telling Ginny off was one that sprang full-formed into his mind and which he knew he would think of often from now on. He could see the expressions on both their faces—the sternness Draco would wear, the absolute astonishment from Ginny—and he tightened his clasp on Draco’s hands as he thought about it.

“Only say the word.” Draco gave his ear a touch so light that Harry honestly wasn’t sure if he’d licked it, nuzzled it, or merely brushed it with his nose.

“No,” Harry said, after long moments of wrestling with temptation, opening his eyes. “That would be giving her too much attention. I think I should just ignore her.”

“A good answer,” Draco rumbled at him, his hands tightening. “Because you’re mine now.”

He turned Harry around, the motion as inexorable as gravity. Harry blinked up at him a moment before Draco bent and kissed him.

Harry hissed in satisfaction and reached up to clasp the back of Draco’s neck. God, this felt so good. Not as hard as the kiss he’d given Draco the night they faced Nusquam, but that meant he could think about it a little more and breathe through it and get the taste of Draco’s mouth unmixed with blood on his teeth.

He let himself revel in the kiss for long enough that his legs seemed shaky and his head too small when he pulled back. It seemed as if he still should have been breathing in Draco’s scent, tasting his tongue. Draco left his hands in place and blinked as though he, too, had forgotten how to stand on his own.

“There’s no way that I would ever accept her back,” Harry told him flatly. “You don’t need to kiss me just to make sure of that.”

Draco smirked at him. “I kissed you because I wanted to,” he said. “As well as to make sure that you never think of her again.” He stepped away from Harry and turned to retrieve the map of the secret corridor that Arrowshot had drawn for them, missing the way Harry rolled his eyes. “The wards sounded five minutes ago. We have to leave soon.”

Harry nodded shortly. His heart was still beating with reaction, and, when he glanced at Ginny’s letter lying open on the table, with anger. But that was better than the fear that had been haunting him since he heard about this gathering of trainees who were supposedly loyal to Nihil. He couldn’t help wondering what would happen when he and Draco finally caught up with them.

If they existed. If Arrowshot hadn’t mistaken what she heard.

Draco straightened, shaking his head a little and swatting at hair that had got in his eyes, and Harry stared, transfixed. Draco looked like someone framed by light at the moment, and the knowledge of how very far he was from that sometimes—when he used Dark Arts, when he stared at Harry with anger, when he was stupid and thought Harry’s manners and appearance were more important than anything else—made Harry feel a warm sense of pleasure at how well he knew Draco. He couldn’t be fooled by outer appearances, not any more.

Draco glanced up, his mouth open as though he was going to say something, and then caught sight of the expression on Harry’s face. Harry didn’t know exactly what it looked like, but it was enough to make Draco stare at him and then lower his eyelids across his eyes in pleasure.

His hand traveled across the distance between them and caught Harry’s. Harry squeezed it in a fervent grip and tried to say something. He didn’t think he could, though, so in the end he just shook his head again and swallowed.

“We don’t have any need to fear them,” Draco whispered, his voice so low that Harry had trouble making the words out, “by each other’s side.”

It was what Harry was thinking, but he couldn’t have phrased it so well, so he squeezed Draco’s hand again.

*

“This way.”

Arrowshot had performed a Disillusionment Charm on herself, but Draco could track her by her voice and the trailing edge of her robe, which made a shifting patch of slightly darker air against the walls. He pressed forwards, Disillusioned himself, with Harry right behind him. Harry, in addition to his own Charm, carried his Invisibility Cloak, in case they were spotted and had to make an escape.

Draco licked his lips, which were absurdly dry. On the one hand, he was right to fear people who would sign up to serve Nihil, even if Auror Gregory had played a part in tricking them. On the other hand, Arrowshot covered her fear with rage and Harry had plenty of practice going against his fears to act with courage. Draco would not be the only one who trembled like a child if he could help it.

Arrowshot stopped suddenly. Draco dug his nails into his palms and tried to calm his breathing, wondering if they had been wrong to trust her after all. He didn’t recognize any of the corridors around them, and this would be an excellent set-up for a trap.

Of course, he and Harry had known that and chosen to come anyway. But Draco would never have Harry’s blasé acceptance of danger.

The short corridor ahead of them narrowed out beyond Arrowshot, with no doors. Draco couldn’t imagine what it had originally been built for. Perhaps simply a passage from one place to another, swallowed up by stone walls and offices piled on top of offices as the Ministry grew. Draco wondered absently if anyone who worked in the Ministry knew how far it actually extended.

Whatever had alerted Arrowshot, it seemed it had passed. She relaxed after a minute and took a few cautious steps forwards. Draco followed, his neck uncomfortably tense as he listened. Still there was nothing but the beating of their hearts, and Harry’s noisy breathing behind him, and the scuffing of their feet.

The corridor turned at last, and Draco saw a single door ahead. It was made of wood, with a fan-shaped series of holes in the upper panel. Draco sneered at it. A door of such a foolish shape wouldn’t be found in any self-respecting Malfoy home; someone would certainly try to spy through it.

That seemed to be Arrowshot’s idea. She laid her eye against one hole and motioned Draco and Harry to take up positions at the others. Draco chose one in the middle, and Harry the lowest one on the left, exactly opposite Arrowshot. Draco was glad that he could feel the warmth of Harry’s body next to his, even though he saw only a faint shimmer when he glanced in that direction.

The room Draco saw through the holes contained very little in the way of furniture. A single chair stood near the far wall, with a desk in front of it. A group of excited trainees paced back and forth between the door and the desk. Draco looked carefully, but didn’t see anyone he knew. These were all third-year trainees, he thought, or possibly second-years. No one among the group seemed to have come in with them.

“Watch,” Arrowshot hissed. “That’s the same one I saw leading the meeting last time.”

Before Draco could ask what she meant—she hadn’t said anything about a leader one way or the other when she conveyed this information to him—a door opened behind the desk and a cloaked figure strode in. Draco’s eyes began to water when he tried to focus on it. A glamour was wrapped around the figure, he was almost certain, and yet he couldn’t see it. His head simply pounded with a steady ache whenever he tried to see the person’s features clearly.

The figure’s entrance made the milling trainees immediately form into two lines. As they did, Draco could see there were fewer than he’d thought, or feared. Only about twenty, which didn’t matter much next to the vast amount of people in the Auror program.

Of course, if Nihil controlled this many, then he could recruit more, through their offices if nothing else. Draco licked his lips and tried not to duck or shiver when the figure’s invisible gaze, contained behind that painful shimmer, swept over him. The Disillusionment Charm would hide the sight of his eye pressed against the hole in the door, too.

“Welcome,” said the figure. Draco started. Its voice wasn’t the brassy yell he’d somehow expected, but a pleasant, melodic one on the edge of music. He thought an auditory glamour was probably responsible for that, rather than nature. “If you will please be seated?”

The trainees sat on the floor in the same lines they’d formed standing. The figure surveyed them until the least trace of movement ceased, and then nodded and lifted his hood from his face.

Even that didn’t lessen Draco’s pain as he tried to see. He could make out a male face, but the color of his hair shifted constantly, from auburn to brown to purest white. His face was high, his eyes round and bugging out. Then he wore glasses. Then his face was disfigured with a jagged scar down the chin. He could have been anyone.

Like Nusquam, Draco thought, tightening his jaw in frustration.

“I am the one of whom you have heard,” said the man. That made Draco sure they were looking at Nihil, or one of his masks. “And I have a pleasant surprise for you tonight, someone in a position of some power who has been brought to join our ranks.” He turned and gestured at the door he’d come through.

Samwise Ketchum limped in, head bowed, limbs moving heavily as if he were being controlled in spite of himself. Draco bit on his lip to control his gasp. Arrowshot wasn’t that lucky, but the clapping and cheering from the trainees in the room was enough to cover the sound.

It might have been a mistake to tell Kepler of our plans, Draco thought grimly, since she is Ketchum’s trainee.

“Another instructor has agreed to join us,” said Nihil complacently. “Of course, he will need your help and cooperation. If you—”

That was when Ketchum whirled around and kicked Nihil in the stomach.

Chapter Thirty-Four.

Comments

[jtsbbsps-dk.livejournal.com]

Iiiiiih!!! Another signature Lomona cliffhanger!!! *FLAILS*

God, I really love you sometimes! XD

And OMGSQUUUEEE!!!! Another kiss!!! ♥ Most most MOST magnificent! ♥ *loves*
I absolutely ADORE how Draco notices that Harry is becoming more considerate and how Harry refrained from tousling his hair! They're really trying to compromise/work things out! 'Tis makes me so happy! :D

Omg, can't wait to see what happenes!!!
And *flail* new Practicing Liars chapter tomorrow! XDDD

[lomonaaeren.livejournal.com]

Sorry!

Thank you!

It's kind of odd that Harry refraining from ruffling his hair is something that will make Draco happy, but hey, whatever works. :)