lomonaaeren

Chapter Seven.

Title: Ceremonies of Strife (8/50)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, Lucius/Narcissa
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, Dark magic, angst, profanity, sex (slash and het), character deaths (not the main characters).
Summary: Sequel to Soldier’s Welcome. As Harry and Draco head in to their second year of Auror training, they are resolved to try and balance the relationship between them with their personal difficulties. That might be a bit harder than they think when the difficulties include necromancy, Azkaban escapees, unicorn ghosts, the risen dead, a secret order of assassins…and the second war, guided by Nihil.
Author’s Notes: This is the second part of what I’m calling the Running to Paradise Trilogy, focused on Harry and Draco’s Auror training. A reader on AFF called SP777 suggested the idea for this series to me. I’d advise you to read Soldier’s Welcome first before you try to read this one, as this story doesn’t spend a lot of time recapitulating the first one.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eight—Burned

Draco tried to think of a good way to introduce the subject, and finally decided that there was none. So he simply started talking about it one night when both he and Harry were compiling a list of the moves they had trouble defending against in Combat. It was Morningstar’s somewhat ruthless way to make sure they knew their weaknesses.

“Harry?”

Harry, biting the end of the quill as though the bird it had come from had done something to offend him personally, blinked and looked up. “What?”

“I’ve received a letter from a War Wizard who seems interested in talking to us,” Draco said. “Both of us. Will you come with me and see what he wants?”

Harry bit the quill one more time, and then laid it aside. He leaned forwards, brow wrinkling. It made him look so honest and so puzzled that Draco wondered how in the world he had ever kept as many secrets as he had. “Both of us? But I thought you wanted training only for yourself.”

“I could never leave you behind!” Draco exclaimed, and so solved the problem he’d been wrestling with, whether he would take War Wizard training alone if that was what was offered. He felt a little shaken by the sudden revelation, but it made Harry smile, and for the moment, that was all that counted. “No,” Draco continued, “this is the first time that a War Wizard has answered my letters with something other than a pamphlet and a polite little note, and I think it’s significant that he mentioned wanting to see us both. So. Will you come?”

Harry didn’t reject the idea right away, the way Draco had been afraid he would. Instead, he looked thoughtful. “I’ve never understood what it is you see in the War Wizards that you can’t find in the Aurors,” he said. “After all, they both work for the Ministry and fight Dark wizards—although the War Wizards do it less often. Is that what you’re thinking?” He began to grin. “That Auror training is too much work?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Need I remind you who is currently doing better in our classes?”

“Just because you can keep up doesn’t mean you want to, or that it isn’t a struggle for you,” Harry said.

That was so unexpectedly insightful that Draco sat still and blinked for a moment before he could go on. “Yes, well,” he said. “I enjoy learning what we do in these classes, and I became an Auror in the first place because I wanted to show people what I could do on my own. I think that would be a goal less served in the War Wizards, because fewer people have heard of them.”

Harry didn’t respond, but cocked his head and waited, it seemed, for Draco to come to some kind of conclusion.

“On the other hand,” Draco said, scarcely aware that he had lowered his voice and leaned towards Harry until after he had already begun doing it, “the War Wizards wield more powerful spells. That has the potential to keep me safer than becoming an Auror would, and also give me a reputation that would matter to the people I want to impress. I don’t think I need to tell you why I’d be grateful for a little extra power right now.”

Harry nodded. “So that’s it? Power?”

Draco lifted his head defiantly. Harry hadn’t judged him so far, at least not the way Granger and Weasley frequently did, but that didn’t mean much if he had simply kept his judgments to himself. “Yes,” he said. “I want to defend myself. I want to show that I have pride. I want to be independent, and never rely on anyone else to shelter me ever again.”

“Including me?” Harry put a hand on Draco’s wrist. “Is that why you’re thinking about leaving Auror training behind, because the compatible magic makes you feel dependent?”

Draco stirred restlessly. He had never phrased the issue to himself in exactly those words—after all, the compatible magic was one of the things that united him to Harry, and he had meant it when he said that he would give up the chance to be a War Wizard before he would give up Harry. But sometimes, yes, he woke up with thoughts that told him his life was bound to someone else’s, and that made him panic.

What happens if someone corners me and uses my relationship with Harry to blackmail me or make me serve them? Even if my father didn’t choose to serve the Dark Lord in the second war, he would have had to, because the Dark Lord could easily have shredded the lies that let my father preserve his dignity in public. What if someone does that to me?

What if Harry leaves me?

“I think I understand.”

Draco sneaked a glance into Harry’s eyes. Harry didn’t look happy, but neither did he look condemning.

“You don’t want to be subject to your father,” Harry said. “Or another Voldemort, or anyone else. You need to have your freedom because it was denied to you for so long. Of course you would fight to protect it, and be suspicious of anything that looked as if it might deprive you of it.”

Draco hesitated. That was a perception that made sense, that resonated with him, and that it would be easier for Harry to accept than the absolute truth.

In the end, though, he couldn’t let Harry go on thinking it, because it was also, partially, a lie.

“I want freedom,” he said. “But I want power even more, the power to keep that freedom safe and guard it. Do you understand, Harry? I want to be strong. I want people to fear me. I don’t want to be like the Dark Lord, but I wouldn’t mind if people walked cautiously through the Ministry corridors when they passed my office and worried about giving me cases that weren’t worth my time. And I wish I had your fame. I’d use it differently.”

Harry was silent this time, tracing a finger over the wood grain of the table, and Draco feared he had gone too far. But he couldn’t really regret it. Harry had to know him, or the chances that he would leave Draco someday or fall out of love with him were higher. Harry could swear all the promises of eternal faithfulness that he wanted, but Draco wasn’t a fool; if he did something that weakened the relationship, then their splitting apart would be no one’s fault but his.

“Yeah, I can,” Harry said at last. Then he looked up with a faint, fierce smile on his face. “But I think you’d feel differently if you had your fame because you were supposed to fight a wizard who was supposedly powerful enough to destroy the world. That’s all I’m saying.”

Draco nodded, and stood up, moving behind Harry so that he could massage his muscles. It was partially because he could see Harry straining under the tension and partially because that way, he could look away from Harry’s face and hide his own relief. “So you’ll come with me to the meeting with the War Wizard?”

Harry dropped his head forwards and sighed as Draco’s fingers slid beneath his robes and then his shirt. “That feels good. Yes, I will. Though I don’t know if they’ll give us what you want. And I’m perfectly happy training to be an Auror.”

“Because I’m here.” Draco bent down enough so that his breath could travel across Harry’s ear and stir the small hairs that clustered near the base of his earlobe.

“Yes, of course,” Harry said, and then arched his neck and gasped. “Draco, please.”

Draco smugly dragged Harry away from the table and towards the bed. That was one good thing about having an open, honest lover: it let Draco be sure there was something besides Auror training he was good at.

*

“I would prefer it if both of you came to join the War Wizards, of course. We like to preserve the magic of compatible pairs. They’re very uncommon.”

Harry had once thought that he could feel superior to the Dursleys just by being in the same room with them, especially after he found out he was a wizard. He could look at them and pity them for all the things they didn’t know, all the things they wrongly imagined were important. They still had the power to hurt him, and he would get angry about that, but pity was really his strongest emotion for them.

Until now, he hadn’t encountered someone who could make him feel inferior just by being in the same room with him. But War Wizard Alexander Santoro was that person.

It didn’t help that he was tall, and Harry had had to accept by this point in his life that he wasn’t going to grow anymore. Santoro also had a narrow, handsome face of the kind that the Dursleys would have called aristocratic, with a high nose that stopped just short of being pointed like Snape’s, and dark eyes that Harry knew were judging him, and curly hair so dark that it had a blue sheen to the curls. He wore heavy golden robes that should have looked horrible, but didn’t. He had extravagant gestures that should have seemed silly, but didn’t.

And Draco was fascinated with him, which shouldn’t have made Harry jealous, but did.

“Is there really no way that someone could combine training as a War Wizard and training as an Auror?” Draco was leaning forwards in his chair, eyes and face both blazing the way they did when he was deeply interested in something. Harry usually only saw him wear that look during sex. “Why not? It seems to me that combining the two types of work could provide us with the perfect solution for fighting Nihil.”

Santoro smiled. “That wouldn’t work,” he said. “For many reasons, but since you look unconvinced, I will list a few of them.” He linked his fingers together, cracked his knuckles—which made Harry’s tongue prickle in irritation—and then began to hold his fingers up as he numbered off his points.

“First,” he said, “both programs are intense, and require the student to give all his time to them. You can see why it would be impossible to work in them both at once.”

Draco scowled and opened his mouth as if to say that he could manage such an exalted feat, but Harry squeezed his hand. And anyway, it didn’t matter, since Santoro’s voice swept on, like an implacable river. “Second, the student who trains in the Aurors will pick up on many—bad habits, shall we call them? They are not bad from the perspective of an Auror, of course. Many of them are useful and necessary for the carrying out of their ordinary work.” Harry wondered if he’d meant to put such a dismissive emphasis on ordinary. “But when they come to us, we find that they often have to unlearn half of what they know. That makes the War Wizard training take even longer.

“Third, the War Wizards’ knowledge is not for everyone, do you see? Not for public consumption.” Santoro spread his hands and shook his head in what Harry thought was mocking sadness, rather than true sorrow. “That means that we have to make many promises, even oaths, when we learn these spells that we will not teach them to others. And that, also, requires supervision and close mentoring before we trust a new trainee with the secret of much of that spells.”

“I’d make any oath you like,” Draco snapped instantly. Harry thought he understood better now, after Draco had explained to him how much he wanted power, why he sounded desperate. “I’d make a promise not to let anyone else see the spells unless I was going to kill them. Why couldn’t I do that?”

“Because we do not want any oath or promise,” said Santoro. “We want the ones that are sanctified by our training and proven in wisdom by long experience. And you would not understand why we required such binding words unless you had also been through the training and accepted our premises.”

A shiver crept up Harry’s spine. It sounded to him as though going into the War Wizards was like entering the Death Eaters. You’d surrender your freedom and your sanity in return for power, and by the time you got it, you probably wouldn’t be able to figure out why doing that was a bad idea in the first place.

Draco shook his head. “There must be some way that I can show you I’m trustworthy without going through the training.” His fingers were clenching into the table of the small room in the Ministry that Santoro had agreed to meet them in.

Santoro smiled remotely. “I’m sorry. I am not the one who invented these rules. They were put in place many years ago, for what were eminently good and sensible reasons my predecessors held. Perhaps some of those rules could be changed, now that we are in modern times, but it is impossible to be sure that we will not need them in a year’s time, particularly with a nightshade about.”

Harry started. Perhaps it was only because he was thinking about the deadly nightshade Portillo Lopez carried on her back, but the word had gone off in his ears like a thunderclap. “Is that what you call Nihil?” he asked.

Santoro’s eyes turned on him. There was a stillness in them that made Harry shiver. He didn’t think that he would like to have this man for a teacher. He made Dearborn look animated. “That is what we call people like him,” he said, “those who try to raise the dead as servants. Necromancer was once a term of respect, reserved for those who understood the dead and limited their activities with them, and I would like to think it still is. But nightshades are those who increase their own power and pay no attention to the strangling way in which it grows, a deadly poison to others it touches.”

Harry nodded, trying to understand, not sure he did. Was that why someone like Portillo Lopez, if she was really part of a secret order of assassins, would wear the plant? But why call people like Nihil by that name if it was a symbol of his enemies?

Draco, who didn’t seem to think that what the War Wizards called Nihil was important, broke in again. “And so you won’t take us at all unless we give up Auror training and decide to be War Wizards?” he asked.

“Perhaps not even then,” said Santoro, with what Harry thought he meant to be a courteous nod but which looked haughty and hateful. “After all, we do not accept all the candidates who present themselves to us. And with a nightshade at large, someone who seems to have learned how to raise the dead so that they can pass as the living, we must be especially careful with new recruits.”

Draco stood up, pushing his chair back from the table so harshly it scraped on the floor. “I think we’re done here,” he said, and turned to the door.

“If you change your mind,” Santoro said, rising to his feet, “of course we can speak again. I simply thought that you were owed a personal answer for the number of times you have communicated with us, for the sincerity and depth of your interest.”

Draco kept stalking across the room and didn’t look back. It was up to Harry to offer an embarrassed shrug to Santoro and hurry after his lover.

“You were rude, you know,” he said, by the time he caught up to Draco, almost three corridors away. Draco didn’t run, he almost never did unless it was a matter of life and death, but he could walk fast when he was angry.

“He didn’t give me what I wanted,” said Draco, in such a sulky voice that Harry almost expected him to kick the wall.

“Well, do you think he could?” Harry asked. “All the rules he explained to us sounded reasonable.”

“There’s always a way to be found around the rules, if you try hard enough,” Draco said. “Professor Snape used to say that, and he said that Headmaster Dumbledore had taught it to him. And—” He paused, and they walked some way back to their rooms in silence.

“And?” Harry finally prompted, because he thought that was an odd place in the sentence for Draco to have fallen silent.

“My father used to say that,” Draco whispered. “Merlin knows that he has plenty of ways for getting around the rules.”

Harry inclined his head in what wasn’t quite a nod, because he knew it was painful for Draco to speak of Lucius, and stayed silent the rest of the way to their rooms. When they got there, Draco flung himself into a chair with his Stealth and Tracking book and refused to speak, which Harry had to admit was probably the best thing at the moment. Draco found it hard to concentrate in that class, irritated as he constantly was by Coronante’s presence, and needed the study time.

Besides, if they had talked longer, Harry didn’t know if he would have been able to hide his relief. He didn’t want to be a War Wizard. He was perfectly satisfied with the way the conversation had turned out, and he would be just as happy if the subject was never mentioned again.

Except that, knowing Draco and the strength of Draco’s desires when it came to getting something he wanted, it would be.

*

“Trainee Malfoy.”

Draco looked up, wary and hostile. It seemed that all his teachers were intent on finding fault with him today. Morningstar had thought the way he’d learned to block Harry’s blows wasn’t the proper technique. Ketchum had assigned him an impossible obstacle course and then had the gall to look disappointed when he failed. Davidson had told him that he had a naturally immobile face and would have to find other ways to disguise himself than by constant alterations of expression, as she’d learned how to do. And Coronante had been especially Mudbloodish today, cracking jokes that only half the class laughed at and telling cheerful anecdotes of times that she’d spent in the Muggle world, as if those had any relevance to living as a wizard.

(Draco suspected Mudbloodish wasn’t a word. He didn’t care).

So, when Lowell came striding towards him across the Partnership Trust classroom and spoke in that tone, Draco said, more sullenly than he would have otherwise, “Yes?”

Lowell paused, looking closely at him, and then, to Draco’s shock, smiled. “Yes, I have had days like that myself,” he said. “Don’t worry. I don’t come here to drop another burden in your lap, unless learning more about your compatible magic is a burden.”

Draco looked over his shoulder to see if Harry was here to listen to this, but he was on the other side of the room, being talked at by Weston. From the confused, excited look on his face, she was probably saying the same thing her partner was. He turned back to Lowell. “You’re offering extra training, sir?”

Lowell nodded. “Yes. Compatible magic is too rare and valuable to allow trainees who have it to flounder about on their own.” He looked sour for a moment. “We should have begun tutoring you last year, but several of your instructors felt that you’d already been granted a mark of unusual distinction by being assigned as partners, and didn’t want to single you out too much.”

Ketchum, probably, Draco thought. It’s the kind of thing a Mudblood would do. “I’ll accept, sir,” he said firmly. It wasn’t like becoming a War Wizard, but it was the second-best thing at the moment.

At least there’s someone who sees that I—and Harry—can be powerful. At least there’s someone who wants to train us.

Lowell smiled and nodded to him. It occurred to Draco that occasional pleasantness could be quite as good as the reserve that Dearborn had maintained. “Good, then. We’ll see you at seven on Saturday morning, here in the classroom.”

Draco watched him move away, and then watched the way that Weston moved in relation to him. They were like dance partners, he thought, classically trained, but they would probably be even better at it than Draco’s parents. It was clear, although knowing they had compatible magic helped, that they depended on each other and felt each other’s presence in a mystic way, the air throbbing between them like a tugging on strands of an impalpable web.

Then the class began, and Draco settled down to the lesson of how to tell where your partner was at any given moment. This was a class he was good in, and now he had an extra reason not to disappoint the instructors.

*

Harry yawned. The library was spinning around him, the words on the page doing a lazy dance that told him he should have gone to bed hours ago. And he would have, except they had training with Lowell and Weston tomorrow, and they tended to spend too much time awake each weekend night anyway, sucking each other off or wanking.

Arousal mixed with the haze of tiredness in Harry’s mind, and he gave up research on ancient methods of altering the face as a bad job. He would simply have to come back sometime this weekend. Or add a load of bollocks to the essay and watch Davidson mark him down. It wasn’t as though he needed to be good at essays in Concealment, he thought, standing up and slinging his books into the satchel, as long as he was good at the practical aspects of the class.

He threaded his way out between the tables, occupied with many trainees studying and more of them sleeping, and stepped into the corridor. It was quiet this time of night. Some of the trainees made a point of going to sleep early, and others had probably slipped out. Making the wards tighter so Nihil couldn’t come in only encouraged the trainees to find more devious ways around them.

Harry’s footsteps echoed in the corridor, and his head bobbed to the rhythm of them. Only instinct made him look up when a shadow crossed his path.

The woman in front of him was pale and taking rasping breaths that should have been loud, except Harry could hear nothing. He only knew she was breathing that way because of how her robes moved. She was clad in robes from head to foot, in fact, and the only bare skin was on her face and neck.

He knew her. It was Catherine Arrowshot, the trainee who had shown them the secret meeting place of the trainees corrupted by Nihil and then vanished without trace in the aftermath of the battle there.

Harry drew his wand and flattened his back against the wall. He wondered if Draco was running towards him even now, drawn by the sense that he was in danger.

Arrowshot stretched out her hands. Harry began to chant a spell that would blast her away if she tried to touch him.

But Arrowshot did nothing else other than open her lips and mouth one word, as silent as her breaths. “Help.”

Then she vanished, and where she had been, there was the smell of dust and burning.

Chapter Nine.