lomonaaeren | Chapter Thirty-Five of 'Soldier's Welcome'- The Bracelets

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (35/45)
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-Five—The Bracelets

“Trainee Potter, Trainee Malfoy, see me after class.”

Draco looked up sharply when Dearborn spoke. There was a drawl of cold disdain in his voice that made him wonder what they had done wrong. But when he saw Dearborn’s half-lidded eyes and the slow tilt of his head, he thought he understood. The instructors probably wanted to meet privately with them to discuss the group that would fight Nihil, and no other instructor was capable of asking them to stay and talk with as much nonchalance as Dearborn.

Draco nodded back, magically nudged Harry in the ribs to stop him from staring, and then bent over his notes again. This was a day for studying battle positions rather than practicing in groups, since most of the trainees continued not to understand what was required when they moved to working with more than one partner. Draco understood in theory, but in practice, he thought he and Harry did better when they were allowed to work alone. They inevitably dominated the group, anyway, and that produced jealousy and resentment.

Sometimes wanting to be fair to everyone has to yield to practical necessity, he thought, as he dipped his quill in ink and crossed out one of the positions Dearborn had demonstrated with an illusion. It required him and Harry to work opposite each other, casting not in tandem or one after another but at random times. The compatible magic limited them from doing it. At the very least, their spells wouldn’t have the power their companions had come to expect unless they could do otherwise.

And that gives Dearborn a perfect excuse to ask for us to stay now, Draco realized. Everyone knows that we haven’t been doing as well as he would like in the practice training exercises.

Draco relaxed and was able to concentrate again, at least until Harry’s elbow nudged him in the side and Harry’s voice whispered in his ear. Even though Dearborn had separated them today, they had learned spells that would let them speak to each other as if they sat no more than a few inches away.

“Why does he want to see us?”

“Business for the Fellowship or the Order or whatever it’s to be called,” Draco said, enough under his breath that no one else could have heard him. He raised an eyebrow as he heard a quill snap somewhere behind him. Hopefully that hadn’t been Harry, but someone else concentrating so hard that they destroyed their quill rather than used it properly. “Perhaps the instructors have finally decided on a battle plan.”

Harry said nothing more for the rest of class. When Draco glanced up as they prepared to meet Dearborn, however, he saw Harry’s shoulders slumped.

What is the matter with him? Draco refrained from rolling his eyes in exasperation, but only because Harry—or Weasley, who watched him more closely than ever nowadays—would see and misunderstand. He was the one who wanted to be included in their plans, the one who said that he could offer leadership and survival experience. Sometimes I don’t understand him at all.

Dearborn stood at the front of the classroom, his arms folded. He turned a blank look on them as they came up to him. Draco marveled. Not even his father could have shown so much disdain by refusing to show any disdain at all.

“Auror Ketchum has located an artifact in the Department of Mysteries that he believes will assist us in determining Nihil’s adherents from Ministry loyalists,” Dearborn said, barely moving his lips. “If you wish to be part of this, then you are to meet us in Auror Portillo Lopez’s office at seven this evening.”

“Yes, Professor,” Draco said. Harry nodded in silence.

“Good.” Dearborn went on staring at them with an unreadable expression. Draco was happy to see that Harry, wisely, stayed still instead of assuming that they could simply leave. He’d made that mistake more than once before.

“While you may have been distracted by what has been happening to you,” Dearborn said abruptly, “I will not allow that to take your attention from your studies. You should remember that you are here to become Aurors first of all, and not Dark wizard hunters.”

Draco held back a laugh and nodded. What are Aurors if not Dark wizard hunters? It was best to nod and look solemn when a professor contradicted themselves like that. Not even Professor Snape had always been right.

He felt a small squirming in his conscience when he thought about that. Professor Snape’s Pensieve still sat in the back of his closet, where he had moved it when Harry came to share his rooms. Draco wondered if he was afraid to look at it, and didn’t think he was.

But then, why hadn’t he done it yet?

I’ve been a little busy in the past few months, he thought defensively, and then realized Dearborn had waved a hand to dismiss them. Harry took his arm and hauled him out of the classroom, hurrying him towards Auror Conduct. Draco walked slowly, though, and forced Harry to slow down. Harry sighed and took his hand away.

Draco caught his arm in turn. Harry glanced at him. “What?” he asked, sounding grumpy. “Hestia might forgive me for being late, but she doesn’t like you that much.”

“Why are you depressed that they’re doing as you asked and including us?” Draco asked.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Harry shook his arm free. “Come on, I don’t want to show the Aurors that we’re not professional about being on time. They might take the wrong idea. You know that Portillo Lopez and Dearborn will have us out of the group if they can.”

“But—”

Harry strode ahead of him, not looking back. Draco hissed with exasperation and followed. He didn’t want to seem as if he was arguing with Harry. He knew Weasley, if not the Mudblood, was watching for just such an opportunity to come over and take Harry back. The Weasel would work any row into a permanent crack in their relationship, if he could.

He didn’t like Harry having secrets from him.

He wondered, then, what Harry would think if he knew about Snape’s Pensieve and how long ago Draco had received it.

*

“Regulation 2.53 specifically states that there is to be no conversation with arrested suspects who are able to charm through the voice alone, such as Dark wizards who have taken the Siren Potion…”

Harry scribbled away at his notes about the stupid things Hestia was saying, keeping his head bowed. He could feel Draco’s gaze burning into his back between his shoulder blades, but he didn’t look up. Hestia supported them, but she would probably think they were pushing their boundaries if they spent too much time talking or looking at each other in class.

Besides, Draco wouldn’t understand Harry’s anxieties if he voiced them. He was wondering if he had moved too fast in the meeting with the instructors two nights ago.

What did I really do, after all, except hunt Horcruxes? I didn’t fight Voldemort. I defeated him by dying. And Draco’s made it clear that I’m not to try that method of defeating my enemies again.

Harry found the spirit for a brief smile then, but it slipped away again.

Nihil is completely different. We have people to fight. I’m not the one who hurt Nusquam. That was Draco. What happens if I’m too arrogant in insisting on being included? I want to save lives, but what if I wind up destroying them instead?

That wasn’t all, of course, but Harry wasn’t ready to even think about the other secret that he was keeping from Draco yet. And when his thoughts slewed in the direction of something else again—the hope he carried at the bottom of his mind—he started wondering if any place in his brain was safe.

I’ll have to do the best I can. It’s too late to turn back now.

*

“The Unspeakables have been working on this artifact for a long time,” Ketchum said proudly, holding it up. “And now they’ve finally discovered how to make copies of it, so we can all have one.” He looked from face to face, beaming.

Looking around, Draco couldn’t see any more signs of enthusiasm. Dearborn appeared as grave as he had when speaking to Harry and Draco in class. Portillo Lopez had a cup of tea and sipped it as if finishing it was the most important thing in the world. Jones sat upright with her hands clasped in front of her, apparently trying to look older. Pushkin held a lens to his eye and examined the surface of the table, tracing a crack with a finger.

“Ah,” said Ketchum, apparently undaunted, “you look like that because none of you know what it does yet. Well, watch.” He clasped the jade bracelet around his arm and then nodded to Portillo Lopez. “Please, Maryam, as we discussed.”

The Battle Healer set the teacup down with a precise click and drew her wand. Draco stifled the urge to move out of the way, even though he was sitting on the other side of the table. The grim expression on her face seemed to require it. Harry, next to him, stiffened but didn’t retreat.

Portillo Lopez aimed the wand at Ketchum and said, as clearly as if she was casting the spell in front of the Wizengamot, “Commuto mentem tuam.”

The line of blue light struck Ketchum. His jaw started to fall, and a dreamy look entered his eyes. Draco hadn’t recognized the incantation, but he knew it must be one of the legal suggestion spells that were related to the Imperius Curse.

Ketchum had just started to draw his wand when a loud, urgent buzzing sounded from the arm he had placed the bracelet on. Then a circle of white light formed around it, and the buzzing grew louder, shrill enough to make Draco’s teeth ache. Ketchum cried out and dropped his wand, then flung himself down and rolled on the floor.

“I told him that he would get hurt,” Portillo Lopez muttered. She stood and walked around the table, moving faster than Draco would have thought; if she’d been willing to cast the spell in the first place, it seemed perfectly likely that she would leave him to suffer. But she probably had Healer ethics.

I would find that inconvenient, Draco decided as he watched Portillo Lopez press her wand against Ketchum’s temple.

He stopped rolling immediately. The bracelet had already stopped buzzing and glowing. Draco frowned in confusion as Ketchum stood and beamed at them all.

Ketchum probably saw the confused expression on several faces, because he said, “The bracelet reacts to the presence of magic imposed from outside—magic that’s meant to change someone else’s mind or core. It gives an unmistakable warning, as you saw, and the minute the changed person attempts to use magic, it sends a jolt of pain up their arm. Then it confuses and disorients them, filling their mind with distracting visions. There’s no way that someone who wears this bracelet and has been corrupted by Nihil would be able to fight for him.”

He leaned forwards and put a hand on the table, not smiling. Portillo Lopez muttered something at him about not moving too fast after his ordeal, but Ketchum ignored her. “I suggest that we all wear copies of this bracelet. It will enable us to know in a moment if we shouldn’t trust someone who’s not part of the group. Yes, Nihil might still be able to infect us without our noticing, but he wouldn’t be able to use us. And since Maryam says that she knows how to cure the infection now, we could rescue that person.”

Draco glanced at the jade bracelet, just visible under Ketchum’s sleeve, uneasily. “I would have preferred an artifact that would enable us to identify the people on the other side, sir,” he murmured.

“The Unspeakables are looking for one like that,” said Ketchum. “But the problem is that this bastard is able to make his side out of ours. We have to have a warning that will last past the first moments. Even if someone can swear under Veritaserum, once, that they don’t have any intention of joining Nihil, there’s no saying what might happen later—and they might have been corrupted without knowing it.”

“This certainly fulfills the criteria of being noticeable,” Pushkin said. “I hope that it does not interrupt my classes and prevent my students from observing other phenomena that are smaller and quieter.” He nodded to Ketchum’s end of the table. “Do you have the Veritaserum with you?”

“Yes.” Ketchum dug out several vials and placed three drops from one of them on his tongue before Draco could even blink. “Daffyd, if you’ll do the honors?” he added, and handed the vial off to Dearborn.

One would have to know Dearborn well to see the flicker of interest in his eyes, Draco thought. His face maintained an expression of utter contempt as he spoke the test questions that asked for Ketchum’s name and status. Then he asked, “Do you serve Nihil?”

“No,” Ketchum said promptly. Draco relaxed in spite of himself. He had known, of course he had, that Ketchum’s appearance in the room with Nihil and the trainees was part of the instructors’ plan, but it was good to know that he could rely on that being true.

“Have you ever served Nihil?”

“No.”

“So far as you know, is your magic corrupted?” Dearborn leaned forwards. Draco supposed that he might be especially interested in the answer to that because he used Dark Arts himself, and there were some people who would say that using Dark Arts was a sign of one’s magic being corrupted.

“No.”

“Do you know the identities of any of Nihil’s servants that you have not revealed to the rest of us?” Dearborn leaned back now and stared at his fingernails.

“No.”

“Have you been approached by anyone who has tried to seduce or corrupt you into the service of Nihil?”

“No.”

And on it went, exhaustive questions being asked until Draco’s brain felt wrung. Every possible variation on a question he could think of, Dearborn asked. At the end of his interrogation, Draco still didn’t think it was impossible that Nihil would manage to infiltrate them—he had proven himself unexpectedly clever in many ways—but he did think it was a lot less likely.

Ketchum swallowed the antidote to the Veritaserum, and smiled hopefully around at them all. “Can I name it the Fellowship, since no one else seems to be interested in suggesting a name?” he asked.

Portillo Lopez rolled her eyes as she picked up the Veritaserum. “Only you, Samwise,” she said, in the moment before she downed the potion and Dearborn took up the questioning.

Draco watched faces as the time came nearer and nearer when he would have to take the potion, but saw no suspicious flinches or dread. Of course, someone who served Nihil would probably have come up with an excuse to be absent from this meeting instead of coming. He did look forwards to finding out if anyone would refuse to wear the bracelet, but that didn’t happen, either.

Harry made sure he took the Veritaserum before Draco, as good as his word. Draco didn’t think he needed the protection as much as he had thought he would, since Dearborn was the one asking the questions, but he squeezed Harry’s elbow in a gesture of appreciation anyway. Harry smiled back at him before his face became slack.

Draco’s questioning was anticlimactic. They asked him the same questions as anyone else, and he heard the same answers slide through his lips. Then the jade bracelet clicked into place around his arm, and at least didn’t start buzzing and glowing right away. That didn’t prove nothing would happen in the future, of course.

“It’s the Fellowship,” Ketchum said defiantly when the last of them was fitted with a bracelet and Dearborn had shown them a charm that could keep their new accessories hidden.

No one disagreed with him.

*

“You never told me that you’d read one of Dumbledore’s journals.”

Harry froze and stared down at his Observation homework for a moment. They were supposed to come up with fifty things they remembered about their childhood bedroom. Harry’s report was currently a mixture of things that wouldn’t sound too incriminating and extremely creative lies.

He shook himself a moment later. Why would Draco try to make me feel bad for not telling? It’s not like it was something that had much of a chance to come up before.

“Yeah,” he said, laying down his quill and turning around. Draco sat on the edge of his chair, but not tensely, as if he was that interested in what Harry was saying; he was toying with his own quill and yawning occasionally. That gave Harry the courage to go on. “I went back to Hogwarts last year, just to confirm that I could have other memories of the school besides the battle. Headmistress McGonagall told me that a few of Dumbledore’s old books had been discovered behind wards that fell when Voldemort died, and they were wrapped up and addressed to me. The journal was one of them.”

Draco nodded. It appeared that he didn’t consider not mentioning the journal a lie. Harry relaxed.

Then Draco asked another question, one that made him tense all over again. “For someone who got all this knowledge out of the journal, you didn’t seem eager to employ it at the meeting today.” He was toying with the jade bracelet, a habit Harry hoped he would get over soon. It would tell anyone who looked that something was hidden there under the glamour charm.

“Well, I started wondering,” Harry said, and then stopped.

“Yes? Go on.” Draco’s eyes were mild and merciless.

Harry swallowed. He won’t kill you. If he didn’t kill you when you first put yourself forwards in the instructors’ meeting, he’s not going to do it now.

“I started wondering how useful my experience would actually be,” Harry said, shrugging. “I never led any battles. I never saw the original Order of the Phoenix operate. It’s reading and hearsay. The most I did was kill myself, or let Voldemort fire the Killing Curse at me, which was the same thing.” He laughed nervously. “How much war experience does that translate into?”

“You still went through a war,” Draco said quietly.

“Yes, but so did others,” Harry said. “Some of them were Aurors, even if none of the instructors fought. There are people who could do better than I could. I stood up and said something about it because I was just so frustrated and it was the one thing I could think of that would make them listen. But now I wonder why they aren’t inviting other tacticians in. And generals, if there are any.” Harry wasn’t sure about that. The wizarding community in Britain seemed so small that no general could possibly exist unless they were under the control of or in the pay of the Ministry.

“You made a contribution that they seem to have accepted,” Draco said. “Is that what’s been worrying you the past few days?”

Harry nodded too quickly, and knew it by the look Draco scathed him with.

“Out with it,” Draco said. When Harry hesitated, he added, “What do you think I’ll do to you for telling the truth? Got the image in your head? Good. Now compare it with what you think I’ll do to you for telling lies.”

Harry shifted uncomfortably. He knew he’d told Draco a lot of other things, things that were more damaging than this, but Draco had found out about most of those because Harry had no choice. He’d overheard the conversation with Ginny and been there for Nihil’s attack on his magic. Harry had never had the option of keeping them quiet.

This, he did.

“Harry.”

When he looked up, there was acceptance in Draco’s eyes. Not resignation, not anger, not the hatred that Harry sometimes dreamed would appear there again, but acceptance. He wasn’t going to scold Harry for keeping it secret. He simply wanted to know what it was.

Truth was more important to him than anger.

Harry’s whole body seemed to breathe out at once, not just his lungs, when he replied, “I had another fit while you were in Battle Brewing.”

Draco nodded and stood up to wrap an arm around his shoulders. Harry allowed himself to lean briefly against Draco before he sat up again and added, “It was the Fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement this time.”

Draco stiffened. Harry wrapped an arm around him in return and held him until the words that he could feel working their way up and down Draco’s brain came out his mouth.

“Why is that one of your worst memories?” Draco whispered. “I mean…I thought…you rescued me. I know Vincent died there, but I didn’t think you cared about him.”

“I care about him the way I care about everyone else who died in that damn war,” Harry said wearily. He felt tired now. He’d had a few nights of broken sleep, and then the heavy, dreamless slumber that couldn’t refresh him because he knew that a fit always followed it. “Besides, the memories that come back to me aren’t exactly the way they originally happened. In this one, you fell off the broom behind me when I swooped too low and burned to death.”

“God, Harry.”

Draco choked the words into his hair, and Harry stood up now and embraced him completely. He was more comfortable when he had someone else who required protection, and Draco was imagining how awful it was for him as well as revisiting his own memories of the fire. He was the one who needed a soothing presence and voice.

“It’s all right,” he whispered. “I know it didn’t happen that way. And I woke up from it pretty soon.”

“They shouldn’t be happening at all,” Draco said, lifting a pale face. “And I do wish that you hadn’t kept it from me.”

Harry winced, but nodded. If that was all the scolding he got, he would count himself lucky. “I know, but I don’t think that we can afford the time to research just them right now. I kept it from you because—I don’t know. It makes me feel weak.”

Draco gave him a silent glance of perfect understanding. Then he turned and looked at his closet, biting his lip. Harry followed his gaze curiously, wondering what was wrong.

“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” Draco said in a low voice.

Harry nodded, more than happy to shift the conversation to Draco and Draco’s problems. He had the uncomfortable, jagged feeling in the back of his throat and the desire to take it all back again and pretend he’d been joking that always followed his urge to talk about himself.

Changing the subject especially helped because that way Draco, who seemed to have an almost miraculous ability to spot his lies, wouldn’t see the secret hiding in the bottom of Harry’s mind.

Draco could forgive him lying about a fit, but not for thinking about this.

*

When he laid down the covered Pensieve in front of Harry and explained how he got it, Harry blanched for some reason, but said, “I can’t blame you for not wanting to look into it.” He hesitated, then added, “Do you want to look now? I’d go with you.”

Sometimes, Draco thought, staring at Harry’s face, his gentle expression and worried eyes, he knows exactly the right thing to say. He’s not eloquent, but he’s true.

“With you,” he said, in a calm voice before he could change his mind, “I think I would.”

Chapter Thirty-Six.