lomonaaeren

Title: Soldier’s Welcome (40/45)
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 Forty—The Cache

How did you go about preparing to raid a Death Eater cache quietly?

To Harry’s surprise, it turned out not to be that difficult.

The instructors met with him and Draco at times, but they were still stiff, reluctant, distant—except Ketchum, but he didn’t seem to have much solid information to share. Harry thought that their habit of shielding trainees from the realities of the world around them still controlled their actions.

Maybe they could have done more if they knew about the map and the caches around the country, Harry thought at one point, with a stab of guilt.

But his loyalty to Draco and his friends outweighed his loyalty to the instructors, a thousand times, and anyway, the instructors hadn’t told them what the Minister had said when they explained the threat of Nihil, either, or what else was being done. He saw no reason not to keep silent and go ahead with their planned raid.

According to Draco, who met with them, neither Kepler nor Margate had heard anything that might indicate Nihil was still in the Ministry. There had been no more attacks, no more disappearances.

Of course, there was no solid information about what had happened to Catherine Arrowshot or the vanished trainees, either. Harry would have welcomed an attack for the sake of more clues.

Maybe I should wait until we can put together the clues we have, though, he admitted, one night after making a list of what they knew so far and finding it hopelessly confusing.

He sat back and studied the list, his arms behind his head. The clues swarmed and danced in his mind and refused to come together. What did Nihil want? What was the point of learning how to change their appearances so well and infect people’s magic and ultimately bring back the dead? (Maybe. Harry had to qualify that, because Hermione was adamant on the point that it should have been impossible and Nusquam’s apparent survival was probably because she’d never died). How were they getting through the defenses of the Ministry? Why hadn’t Nihil tried again to infect him and Draco since they’d thrown off the attacks the first time?

Harry knew what he wanted the answer to that last question to be: that Nihil couldn’t infect people who had resisted the infection once. It would have made him happy to know Draco could never be in danger from that corner again. But he didn’t know, and the last few months had proven that it was ridiculous to assume.

Maybe I should leave this up to Draco and Hermione, he decided, and turned to the list of people in the Battle Brewing class that Hermione had compiled for him. He still hadn’t given up his project to find more friendship for Draco than he could provide himself.

Especially since I won’t be the one giving him just friendship, but something else instead.

He didn’t know how to think about that or handle it any better than he did about the scattered information about Nihil, and so he shied away from it in his mind and picked the first name from the list. Agravaine Carbury. It had a nice, solid ring to it.

*

Draco watched Harry from the corner of his eye as he and Granger prepared for and discussed the raid. Harry was up to something. He knew that instinctively, with the same sort of silent alarms that used to ring in his head when he saw Harry walking down the corridors at Hogwarts, his face a mask of determination.

But Harry didn’t come to him and talk about it, and far be it from Draco to force a confession out of him before he was ready.

He felt…well, sensitive, at least a bit, since that discussion with Harry about being the most important person in the world to him. Harry hadn’t referred to it again. He might as well have forgotten it happened. He seemed to frown at bits of parchment and spend a lot of time staring at people he’d never spoken to instead.

Can’t he at least think what it means that I want to be the most important person in the world to him?

Draco wanted Harry as his lover. But he couldn’t accuse Harry of being the only one who lacked courage and initiative. Fear held him in place, too.

Far more than Harry, he had the sense of how large the change would be if they committed to each other, what kinds of traditions they would be falling from and abandoning.

His mother had always spoken of the continuation of their family bloodline as something assured, beyond question. His father, at least the last time Draco had had communication with him from inside Azkaban, had expected the same thing. Draco was sure that Narcissa had accepted his feelings for Harry so easily because she did not expect them to be permanent. A few years’ liaison, and she would start hinting about the need for a wife and children.

Harry would undoubtedly laugh, but the fact of survival, of endurance, was so fundamental to the Malfoy mindset that it had taken Draco years to learn how to articulate the concept, and more years to see that not everyone shared the same driving desire.

He didn’t see Weasley or his family accepting Harry’s choice any time soon. Harry might be willing to stand up to his two best friends for Draco, but could he withstand the scrutiny of an entire family?

And that was nothing to what would happen when the news spread. Draco knew that Harry would have got plenty of mad post from adoring fans, but the Ministry’s wards put restrictions on owls that didn’t carry letters from people already personally known to the letter writer, at least for trainees. One of those fans might decide that Harry would be better off without Draco.

There would be the press in general. The taunting articles. The silent sneers and disdain of those circles who would tolerate Harry as Draco’s consort for the sake of power and prestige, but would laugh in their sleeves when the alliance grew longer and longer.

With such thoughts circling in his head, finding no outlet and no end, Draco discovered, in Granger, a surprisingly good distraction.

*

“You’re Agravaine Carbury,” Harry said, wishing he sounded more sure than he did. But the tall wizard with the dark hair and thin pale face was the one Hermione had pointed out to him, and he didn’t think there could be two trainees in the program who liked to wear bright green brooches on their cloaks. The brooch was an enormous, ugly thing made of jade, but Carbury apparently never took it off.

“And no need to ask who you are.”

Carbury’s eyes were narrowed in suspicion. Harry grumbled under his breath. Sometimes he would have been grateful for the chance to approach someone normally, without any questions being asked or his pure intentions being doubted.

But that wasn’t the way the world worked, so Harry gave him a brave smile and said, “I hear that you’re good in Battle Brewing.”

“Yes.” Carbury relaxed a bit and cocked his head to the side in a way that reminded Harry of a large, predatory bird. “Do you need something brewed?”

“What do you think of Draco Malfoy?” Harry asked, ignoring the question. He wished he’d thought of it, because it would have been the perfect reason and way to approach Carbury, but it was too late to think of something now.

Carbury raised his eyebrows. “Yes, well, you would ask about him, since you’re inseparable,” he said. “But you ought to know that, even though I’ve been earning higher marks than he has, it’s not because I’m the favorite. If he was calmer or had more innate talent, then he wouldn’t need to overcompensate with flashiness the way he does.”

Harry frowned. He didn’t think he liked Carbury. But what was important was that Draco liked him. He wasn’t going to be Harry’s friend, after all.

“Would you have any objections to being his friend?” he asked.

Carbury paused, staring at him, then laughed. The laughter was rich and rolling and went on forever. Harry had to stand there in the middle of the corridor as people gave them curious glances and feel like an idiot.

Finally, Carbury stopped laughing and shook his head. “He wouldn’t want me for a friend if I was the last brewer on earth,” he said. “I told you, I’ve showed him up too many times.”

At least he could sound smug about it, Harry thought in annoyance. Carbury spoke as if it was a mere statement of fact. “But what about you befriending him?” he asked. “People treat him worse than they should.”

“Maybe because he was a bloody Death Eater,” Carbury said, one eyebrow rising to join the other. “He can’t complain about bad treatment because of the consequences of his own choices.”

Harry nodded. It was definite now. He didn’t like Carbury. And he couldn’t think of someone who would do worse as a friend for Draco.

But he couldn’t just turn his back and walk away. It was important that Carbury realize how Harry disapproved of him.

“I’m sure you’ve never done anything in your life that you were ashamed of or angry about,” he said. “Nothing you regretted when it was over, nothing you did because you were coerced to do it. Your will must be the most free in the world.” He wasn’t entirely happy with the way that last sentence sounded, but it was what he meant.

Carbury stared at him as if examining an insect whose wings he had to take off before he put it into a potion. Then he shook his head.

“I know you’re his friend,” he said, “so I’ll tell you this for free. Sometimes, we don’t get a choice about the consequences of our actions, even if we did do those things under constraint. Maybe Malfoy is an innocent victim. But other Death Eaters weren’t, and they hurt a lot of people. He has to understand where his reputation came from.” Again, that tilt of the head, and this time Harry had the impression that Carbury was about to stab his eyes out. “And I don’t think he would appreciate you fighting for his honor. He seems perfectly capable of doing that himself.”

He walked away, and Harry shut his mouth and hurried to get back to their rooms, away from all the staring eyes.

*

“We need to take account of the traps we might find there.”

Draco nodded, impressed in spite of his own reluctance. Granger thought through things more quickly and clearly and logically than either Harry or the Weasel. She saw the things that Harry would have missed, and she gave answers while Weasel would have been stammering his way through the questions.

Of course, whenever Draco thought she was too intelligent, he reminded himself that she had chosen the Weasel to sleep with. That put him back on a comfortable footing of superiority.

And there was the issue of blood purity, but Draco was ignoring that for the moment, because of how much trouble it would cause if he brought it to her attention, no matter how gently.

Let her pretend she’s as good as a pure-blood for a while. In this matter, she can do anything a pure-blood might do.

“We can count on beasts, and people with infected magic, since he’s used them so far,” Granger murmured, quill scratching on parchment. Then she paused and frowned. “Or can we? Wouldn’t he have removed the knowledge and artifacts he might have found there? What would be the point of leaving people to guard an empty cache?”

“To trap those who don’t know that it’s empty,” Draco said impatiently.

“But where would they get the knowledge of the cache’s existence?” Granger touched her lips with her fingers contemplatively, which made Draco have to look away, because his mother sometimes made the same gesture. Granger and my mother are not equal. “The Death Eaters are all arrested now. I’m sure Nihil knows that. Who else would he have thought would come after him?”

“What you’re saying is logical, but it’s not the way Nihil thinks, for all we know.” Draco reached out and took the list of notes away from her, ignoring her offended look. She would be a lot more offended if she knew about all the thoughts passing through his head. “Maybe the cache is empty. Maybe it’s full. Maybe it’s partially empty and Nihil has guards there because he hasn’t had time to remove everything. Or room to store everything,” he added, scribbling furiously as he thought about it. “How do we know that he has unlimited space to store everything that he might like to keep? The abandoned Death Eater spaces would work as well as anywhere else. And maybe that’s why no one has been able to find the infected trainees, because he’s hiding them in one of the caches.”

“We can’t know that,” Granger said.

“We can’t know anything.” Draco glared at her. “And that’s why Nihil has succeeded against us so often, because he’s had the advantage of knowing our motions when we don’t know his. Fuck, we don’t even know how he knows about the caches. I don’t think he was a Death Eater, or he wouldn’t find it so easy to mock the Dark Lord’s symbols, but who else would you expect to be aware of the caches?”

Granger opened her mouth, and then froze with it half open. She looked stupid, Draco thought in savage satisfaction. Witless.

“Why didn’t I think of that before?” she whispered. “Of course there’s another group of people other than Death Eaters that would know about the caches, and Nihil being part of that group would explain why he wanted to mock Voldemort.”

Draco was glad that she was too caught up in her own apparently immense revelation to notice his wince. “I beg your pardon?” he asked.

“The Death Eaters would know where the caches were,” Granger said, raising eyes that were wide with something that looked like pity to his face. “And so would their victims.”

Draco paused. Of course. That made a good deal of sense. If someone had managed to survive the tender attentions of people like his aunt, they would want revenge. And though they might not know where a certain cache was if they’d been forcibly Apparated to it, they could have found out if they were determined enough.

Draco had seen the expressions of the people who watched the Wizengamot acquit him and who hadn’t wanted that acquittal to happen. That kind of determination could fuel a task much more difficult than the finding of caches that must have left some sign, no matter how hidden they were.

“That would explain why he mocks the Death Eaters,” he admitted. “But why would he want to use the knowledge at all, in that case?” A possible answer to the question occurred to him as he spoke, but he wanted to know what Granger would say. “And it still doesn’t tell us anything about Nihil’s purpose.”

Granger might not have heard him. She was staring at the wall, one hand over her mouth. Her fingers flexed open and shut. Draco wished they weren’t in that precise place, as they muffled the words she spoke.

“Imagine someone being tortured,” she said. “Imagine how he hated it, how helpless he was. And then he survived, but he saw most of the Death Eaters subjected to trials, not the insane vengeance plans he’d probably dreamed up. And Voldemort was dead, of course, so that meant he couldn’t reach him at all.” Draco wished she would stop saying that name. “He walked back into society, and there were some of the people he blamed for his pain acquitted, not paying as he thought they deserved to. Well, he had the knowledge to combat them. Twisted by rage and pain…” She shook her head. “I doubt he hesitated before he decided to use that knowledge. To him, it would be a fitting punishment for the Death Eaters who were still alive and free, to be killed by their own weapons.”

Draco licked his lips. He didn’t like to admit that her vision might be the truth, especially because she spoke with a hollow sound in her voice that made him remember she’d been a victim of torture, too, in his home.

“That doesn’t tell who he is,” he said. “Other than enormously skilled. And dangerous.”

Granger nodded. “I know,” she said. “But it narrows down the list. The Death Eaters took a lot of victims, but not everyone in Britain. And I’d imagine the number of people who suffered horrifically but managed to escape is small.”

“What is his purpose, then?” Draco flattened his hands on the table and leaned forwards. “I can understand why he attacked me, but why Harry? Why everyone else, all the trainees who were infected? Not all of them took part in the war.”

“Maybe he thinks they should have,” Granger said. “Maybe he thinks they should have suffered because he did, and it wasn’t fair—it was mere chance—that they didn’t and escaped. And Harry…” She sighed and shook her head. “He spoke for some Death Eaters. Take a mind twisted enough, and that would be enough to taint Harry in his eyes.”

“And then he could find allies among people who did suffer with him, and who believed in what he was doing,” Draco finished. “Whatever that is.” He paused, then added, “I have to admit that my biggest obstacle to believing this is that most of his attacks don’t seem to be focused on the Death Eaters in particular.”

Granger speared him with a glance. “So,” she said, “the biggest problem is that?”

Draco glared at her. “I just said so.”

“And not the ‘purity’ of the person presenting the argument?” she asked sweetly.

Draco looked down at the parchment with a scowl.

*

“Let’s go.”

Harry started. He had thought Draco would be the one to speak and start them on the adventure now that they were out of the Ministry and, as far as the instructors and their bodyguards were concerned, at the Burrow or Malfoy Manor. But it was Ron who stepped forwards with a brilliant smile, almost sniffing the air, as though he could smell the track Nihil had left.

“Come on,” he whispered, and reached out to clasp Hermione’s hand, his face so bright that Harry smiled back. He was reminded now of why he liked to go adventuring with Ron.

He took Draco’s wrist and pulled him along. Draco drew the map from his pocket with his free hand, moving stiffly. Harry glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. Is he embarrassed? Well, too bad. Hermione and Ron are doing it, too, so he doesn’t need to feel like we’re behaving indiscreetly, or rudely, or whatever he thinks.

“This way,” Draco said, stabbing the spot they’d chosen again. “Remember, it has a little stream next to it, and it’ll be a magically constructed cave under an overhanging boulder.”

Hermione nodded and closed her eyes at the same time as Ron. The next moment, they were both gone with an echoing crack. Harry prepared to follow them. They were far enough from the Ministry that he didn’t think the anti-Apparition wards should trouble them.

Draco’s cold fingers on his arm stopped him. Harry opened his eyes and looked at him in concern. If anyone had thought of a reason why they shouldn’t go, it would be Draco.

And Harry would have been half-glad for a reason like that. He didn’t know if he wanted Draco to risk his life going into battle, or fighting traps, beside him. Still, Draco would insist on coming along if Harry tried to leave him behind, and it was better for him to be with Harry than somewhere else.

Draco leaned forwards and pressed his lips against Harry’s. The kiss was desperate, his tongue working at Harry’s lips until Harry opened his mouth, and then plunging inside and sweeping violently over his teeth. Then he stepped back again, nodded, and Apparated them both.

They landed with a bump on the bank of a small stream, and Harry shook his head in dazed wonder. What was that all about?

He looked around, because he knew he would blush if he tried to look at Draco right now. They stood on a sloping bank, scattered with old snow, a few trees behind them. Harry suspected that there would have been Muggles here, including Muggle buildings, but the soft hum of Repelling Charms echoed in his ears and told him they’d probably been pushed out a long time ago.

“There it is.” Draco pointed ahead of them, and then pulled his hand back as if he thought that something would bite his finger—or as if he was shocked at himself for pointing, such a vulgar act.

Harry looked along the length of Draco’s finger and saw the dark opening across the stream, in the mouth of another bank that sloped up considerably more than the one they stood on. Dusty clumps of icicles, mostly melted, clung around the mouth. Harry could see stones on the ground, oddly-shaped stones. After he looked at them for a minute, he thought they were the remains of doors.

Hermione nodded when he said that, her eyes grim. Harry remembered what she thought about Nihil and wondered if he had destroyed them when he had come back to claim the knowledge in the cache. That suggested that maybe he did things in uncontrollable rage sometimes; Pushkin was teaching them now to draw psychological and logical conclusions from the human activity they observed.

Ron was the first one to step forwards again, lighting his wand with a whisper of, “Lumos.” He wore a grin like a boy’s. Harry leaped the little stream and joined him, peering into the darkness. He knew it was just the angle they stood at, but it seemed the light really didn’t pierce very far into the darkness.

“Ready?” Ron asked, turning and glancing at Harry. Harry blinked as the comradeship between them, strained by their rows and the way he’d spent more time with Draco lately, suddenly sprang back to life.

“Ready,” Harry said, and they strode in at the same time.

The tunnel twisted several times, then plunged straight back. A few steps after that, it widened, and Harry stepped into the central room feeling as if he was ready for anything, including an immediate attack by infected trainees.

Anything, maybe, but skeletons strung on enormous wires across the ceiling and the walls, all of them draped with dried skin and hanging bits of gnawed flesh. Wide dark marks on the floor suggested that there had been dried blood spilled there at one point and never cleaned up.

Carved into the skull of every single skeleton, between the eyes, was the Dark Mark. On the single clear wall was the enormous word, in letters of magically preserved fresh blood at least five feet high, NIHIL.

“I think,” Hermione said weakly into the silence that gathered around them, “it’s safe to say he was very angry.”

Chapter Forty-One.