lomonaaeren

Chapter Thirteen.

Title: Ceremonies of Strife (14/50)
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 Fourteen—Steps on the Path

Draco had stood outside Aran’s door for too long. He was beginning to think that he should leave if he was so frightened.

And what’s to be frightened of? he thought. Aran’s intense, but that’s a good quality in a teacher. He cares about what we learn.

He stood there some moments more until the truth occurred to him. He wanted a teacher who would value him for himself, who would seek him out instead of Draco having to do the work, who would admire and condole and admit that it was the fault of other people for not noticing Draco, rather than Draco’s fault for not standing out enough. Dearborn had done something like that. Draco missed him still.

But Dearborn is dead, and my father is free, and I have to think of my future, instead of what I wish would happen, Draco decided, and knocked on the door.

It opened almost at once. The Spell Lexicon teacher squinted at him. He had a golden ring and a rag in his hands; it looked as if he’d been polishing the ring. Draco blinked despite his determination to appear adult and unconcerned with Aran’s inner thoughts. It seemed very mundane for someone of Aran’s talents to spend his time doing that.

“Sir?” Draco asked.

“Yes, Malfoy, what is it?” Aran started rubbing the ring again without taking his eyes off Draco. Draco felt a twinge from the insult, but perhaps it wasn’t meant to be an insult. Perhaps Aran simply wanted to accomplish two tasks at once. Draco had to admit that he had never sensed any hostility from Aran towards him, the way he probably would have if Aran hated Death Eaters.

“I wondered,” Draco said, and the words froze in his throat so that he had to melt them with the fire of his courage before he could speak again, “if you would consent to mentor me.”

Aran jerked his head up and stared. Draco clenched his hands together and met the stare. Surprise was not a refusal.

“Well,” Aran said at last. “That’s an unexpected request.” He considered for a moment, then stepped aside. “Come in.”

Draco followed Aran into a spare, neat office, almost pathologically neat. The books stood upright on the shelves with space before and behind them, and Draco was sure he would find them all in alphabetical order by author if he looked at them. The carpet on the floor was a rich red with dark swirls, and in the center of that stood an ebony desk with a hard wooden chair behind it. There was no other place to sit, but Aran casually Transfigured a stack of blank parchment into a stool and set it before his desk. He took the chair, sitting in a way that told Draco he must have received scoldings about posture when he was a child. He never took his eyes from Draco, and he never stopped polishing the ring.

Draco cleared his throat, rested his arms on his knees, and tried not to mind the fact that his head was now considerably below Aran’s. “I decided on you because I think we would get along well, sir,” he said. “I want to learn as many spells as you can teach me, and I’m always looking to expand my repertoire. And I want the same thing you do.”

“Which is?” Aran cocked his head to the side. He appeared to have finally finished polishing the ring to his satisfaction, and put it in a drawer of the desk, which he locked. Draco wondered what kind of Dark artifact it was. He couldn’t envision Aran being interested in it unless it was Dark, or at least powerfully enchanted.

“To see more of the students learn more spells,” Draco said. “I think it’s disgraceful that some of the Auror trainees barely learn more than they do in Hogwarts, and they’re always relying on elementary charms and defensive magic to get out of trouble.” He was relaxing now. Aran continued to watch him as if he were fascinating, and any result that wasn’t being yelled at to leave was a good one for Draco. “As your trainee, I could help the others much more than I could if I were studying on my own.”

Aran nodded, a small motion, like a bird dipping its beak to reach a crumb. “That is the speech you planned to give me,” he said. “Now I want to know your real reasons.”

Draco blinked. “Sir?”

Aran rested his hands on the desk as he leaned forwards, half-rising from the chair. Draco stared. There were muscles bulging and flexing along Aran’s arms that he hadn’t realized were there. Was the man good in unarmed combat as well as with spells? Probably, Draco thought. He didn’t think Aran would disdain any means of beating an enemy. “I’ve watched you, Malfoy. You’re skilled, yes. But if you give a fuck for anyone besides that partner of yours, I haven’t seen evidence of it.”

Draco flushed. “I do want to see the others do better,” he said. “It’s physically painful to watch them struggle with spells they should be able to cast easily.”

“There’s that,” said Aran, still looking unmoved. “But is it important enough to you to give up the time and effort that I would demand from you? I doubt it. So tell me why you sought me out, instead of someone like Lowell or Weston, who I think would be more to your taste. Not to mention that they would be able to teach you how to use compatible magic.”

“I want to be powerful,” Draco said. If he can be that blunt to me, blunt to the point of offensiveness, so can I. “I think that you can teach me to become so.”

Aran sat back down in his seat and smiled. “That’s better, lad,” he said. “But there’s another condition to discuss.”

Draco inclined his head and sat waiting. That sounded like half an acceptance, anyway.

“I know that you have compatible magic,” Aran said, looking at Draco with eyes that glinted like his ring. “And I know that partners who have magic like that never work well alone. You teach one, and then you have to go and teach the other because he didn’t learn it and he needs to. I might as well instruct both of you at the same time, don’t you think? And since you’re so obliging as to show that you care about him, I think we’d better have your partner in here as well. I can mentor him so that I won’t have to spend a second hour on his education for each spell, and you can have his presence so that you aren’t as distracted as you’d probably be without him.”

Draco didn’t appreciate the characterization of himself as easily distracted, but he knew that Aran wouldn’t care if he made the objection. In fact, he might lose everything that he’d gained so far. So he swallowed, nodded, and said, “I don’t know if Harry will agree, though.”

Aran shrugged. “Do you know that until you ask? Ask him first, and then bring any noise of a refusal to me.”

Draco nodded. Aran glanced from him to the door, and Draco stood up and left at the indication of dismissal, though he wondered privately if he could work with Aran after all. The man was considerably more rude and abrupt than Draco had realized from his performance in class.

But he had power, and he knew power, and he had offered to teach both Draco and Harry that power. Draco was certain that Harry would want to know the spells so that they could work together, if not because he cared about being magically strong. This was the best offer they would get.

*

“I don’t know.” Harry frowned at Draco. The news that Aran wanted to mentor them both was startling, and somewhat unwelcome. How am I going to practice my necromancy if I have to go to training sessions with him all the time? It’s already hard enough with my ordinary classwork and the compatible magic lessons with Lowell and Weston. “How much work do you think we’ll have to do?”

Draco, lying beside him on the bed, snorted and rested his head on Harry’s shoulder. “That would be the first thing you think of,” he said. “Instead of how much we can get out of this, or whether it will make us better fighters, or even better Aurors. How much work you’ll have to put in.”

“Oi!” Harry pushed at his shoulder. “I worked hard during the war, I’ll have you know. I don’t see that it’s so unreasonable to want relaxation after that.”

Draco laughed outright and rolled to the side so that he was lying on the pillow instead of on Harry. “If you wanted that, you never would have chosen a career as an Auror,” he said. “You’d be sitting on your arse in some rich manor house, drinking and thinking of ways to spend your money.”

“And I would have gone mad in three days like that,” Harry finished with a sigh. Yes, I need something to do. I need people to rescue, a world to save. But there doesn’t seem to be much I can do about Nihil—which is another reason that I want to bring the dead back. “Yes, all right. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“I have no idea,” Draco said easily. “Aran’s more demanding than I thought he was. But, Harry, we’ll get advanced instruction.” He smiled at Harry. “That ought to make our other classes easier.”

Harry eyed him skeptically. “Is he an expert in Stealth and Tracking? Concealment and Disguise?”

“Our classes for next year, if not for this one.” Draco was unrepentant, and that told Harry more about how proud he was of himself for securing Aran’s tutelage than any mere words could. “Come on, Harry! Will you do it?”

Harry traced a curve over Draco’s hip that a line of sweat had already marked, and thought about it. He had been shaken and ashamed—afterwards—by the honesty that Draco had used with him the other day. Here was Draco offering up all his secrets, and Harry at the same time holding back the truth about his necromancy.

But then he remembered again what would happen if Draco learned about it, and shuddered. He would react so badly. Nothing he could say would drive me away from him like the truth would drive him away from me.

This was something he could do to make up for it, maybe. Harry smiled at Draco. “If you really want to. But if it’s too much work, then I’ll have to quit, all right? I need to make sure that I can actually pass my classes.”

Draco kissed him instead of answering, and Harry let himself be borne back into the pillows, telling his guilt to shut up.

*

Draco received the letter that morning at breakfast.

The owl that brought it was ordinary, an undistinguished post-owl, and Draco opened it almost without thought. His first idea was that one of his friends from Hogwarts was writing to them. Some of them were still incredulous that he had chosen an Auror career and regularly wrote to inquire about what he was doing and if he’d come to his senses yet.

Then he saw his mother’s handwriting, and instinctively folded over the top of the paper so that no one could see it.

The sudden movement caught Weasley’s eye, but he only shook his head as though he expected Slytherin secrets and went back to eating. Harry leaned forwards, eyes concerned and warm. “Are you all right?”

“I need to leave,” Draco said, and shoved the tray back, knowing that Harry would take care of it. He almost ran out of the eating area, but gritted his teeth and walked, in the end. He didn’t want to draw more attention to himself than necessary.

He halted in the first empty corridor that he came to and unfolded the top of the letter. His heartbeat shook his body, and he felt as if he would start losing bits of himself at any moment: teeth, stands of hair, fingernails, anything that could fall off would.

His mother’s handwriting had nothing strained about it; the letters weren’t blotted, or larger than usual, or marching in anything but a straight line across the page. Draco still stared intently at it for a long moment before he could persuade himself of that, and even then he had to take more than one glance before he decided that he should read it.

Draco:

I am writing this letter while Lucius sleeps in the bed that has been ours for longer than you have been alive. His face has lines that were never there before he went to Azkaban. He says that the glamour-creature he left behind is sure to die soon, and that you will receive notice from the Ministry. Pretend to grieve. It will be safer for all of us.

Draco tapped his fingers against the paper and wished his mother was here, in front of him, so he could say what he thought of that. If there was one thing that was different in this paragraph from the rest of her letters, it was the way it rambled, turning in several different directions and including odd instructions, instead of saving them for the end. He continued.

I know that you feel yourself caught between the open future of your own life and the pressure of family tradition. But I would caution you to remember that no one can make a present and future who forgets the past.

Draco snorted bitterly. “You’ve always said that,” he whispered. “But this is the first time that it feels like it has resonance, and of course that resonance is supposed to matter more than what I want.”

You should remember duty. You should remember that your father does care for you, and other than restricting your access to the Malfoy vaults, he’s done nothing that would hurt you. It does not seem to have injured you much. I suppose that Harry is letting you live on his money?

Draco frowned and shifted his shoulders. On the one hand, that last question seemed painfully contemptuous, but on the other, his mother had called Harry by his first name. She was sending confusing, mixed signals.

Come home when you can, Draco. You need to speak to your father, and we need to find a way forward for the family, together. How can we do that when our heir is so far from us and cannot add his voice to the conversation?

“Yes, of course,” Draco muttered. “The way for me to add my voice to the conversation is to be spelled into marrying someone.”

I have persuaded Lucius that is it not in his best interests to hurt you further. But we still require your presence. We will look for you at the Christmas holidays, if not sooner.

Your loving mother,
Narcissa Malfoy.

Draco shook his head. The letter was practically useless, containing the advice his father would have given.

Well, at least I reckon I know which side she’s on now.

Draco started to crumple up the letter and throw it away, but then he saw a slight, shimmering stain on her name. He frowned and tilted the paper to the light, and the stain grew, spreading out until it looked as though there was something inside the paper itself.

Draco caught his breath, remembering some of the notes that his mother had written to him during that terrible year when the Dark Lord had taken over Malfoy Manor and any communication between them was suspect.

I’m a fool.

He held his wand up to the paper and whispered a Heating Charm. As the warmth spread over the paper, the stain turned from transparent to pale brown. Draco had to squint, but he could read the message Narcissa had written behind the original letter and in the blank lines between its words.

This is the message that your father will never see; I wrote the other letter to satisfy him while sounding as if I hadn’t quite made up my mind yet. He is clever enough not to believe that I would fall in behind him so quickly.

Draco, my darling son, do whatever you must to be safe and happy. I love Lucius, but the trick he has played has endangered us all. And I now feel as if I do not know him. I do not know what other magic he may have studied and kept secret from us, if he is as powerful in illusions as he claims he is.

I do know what my tasks are: to keep you safe, as I did during the war, and to ensure that someone who I fear means you harm does not do it. I will conduct a private war against Lucius, and I fully expect to have more success than I did against the Dark Lord. He still has the heart of the man I love, and part of the mind, though he thinks strange thoughts and laughs at strange things. The first dose has been administered, and its remnant created these lines.

Love, Narcissa.

Draco shivered and closed his eyes. He did know what his mother’s last words meant, as strange as they would have seemed to anyone else. Narcissa made the ink that hid the words from the crushed heart of a Galumphus Toad. For most of the time Draco had known her to use it, she had only used the inner blood of the heart and thrown out the rest of it.

But shavings from such a heart could create a potion that would, over time, slowly alter someone’s perceptions of the world, while leaving them firmly convinced that they were making all their own decisions.

If Father finds out Mother is using that…

Draco shook his head in the next moment. Narcissa could take care of herself. His concern for her might be overwhelming, but she would not thank him for paying so much attention to her that he forgot to keep himself safe.

He would watch out for Lucius’s next move, and he would watch for letters from his mother, and if he could do something—such as sending back letters that made vague agreeing noises to keep Lucius from getting too suspicious—then he would. Otherwise, he would play his side of the game and let Narcissa play hers.

This is another reason to become as powerful as I can, Draco thought as he strode back to their rooms. He needed a short time to recover himself before he went to class. It will mean that I can protect myself from my father if the need arises. God knows what other magic he’s learned, as Mother pointed out.

*

Harry rapped his fingers against the page of the necromancy book in agitation. The rituals that the book advised him to perform next were all complicated, and all of them required some sort of props—not just salt and the black candles, which Harry had been prepared to accept, but knives of silver or crystal, shallow pewter dishes on which to burn meat, sacrifices of living animals. How was he supposed to get all that?

Draco opened the door, and Harry hastily tucked the necromancy book under the pile of other books that he needed for his classes. The skin on his back still crawled as he turned around to smile at Draco. He hated having the book out in the open where Draco could see it, and if he’d been wise, he would have hidden it when he knew Draco was close to coming back from his study session in the library. But he was growing frantic to perform another ritual, so he could at least tell the dead he hadn’t forgotten about them, and he kept looking at the words just in case he’d missed the description of a small and simple one.

“I’ve thought of something,” Draco said. His voice rang like a bell, and he dropped to a crouch in front of Harry and laid his hands on Harry’s knees. His eyes were so bright that Harry wondered with irrational fear if they could see better than usual, and therefore if he would spot his book. But he tried to smile back, because that would distract Draco better.

“What’s that?” Harry reached out and ran his fingers through Draco’s hair. It felt less soft than usual. Was that perception real, he wondered, or just because he was thinking of the wispy, cold softness of the dead?

“Professor Snape left his library to me,” Draco said. “We haven’t sought it out yet. I understand why. We had better things to do, and then Nihil attacked and Dearborn died and—I didn’t have much time to think about it.” His breath caught, and he closed his eyes. Harry caressed his hair and wondered what he would say if Harry told him that he might be able to see Dearborn again. “But I think we should,” Draco continued in a stronger voice. “There could be books there that might tell us more about what the Death Eaters did, the things that Nihil adopted or changed from their research. There might even be information about Nihil himself, though under another name. And there might be books that would help us if my father ever proved to be a threat.”

Harry nodded. Draco had told him about Lucius and what Narcissa was doing against him. Harry had to admire her bravery, especially when he wondered if Lucius knew necromancy. “When did you want to go and fetch the books?”

Draco blinked at him, as if he had thought Harry would make more opposition, but said, “What about tomorrow afternoon? Aran wants to see us in the morning for our first training session.”

Harry dug his fingers into the arms of the chair, but nodded again. He would have wanted that time to look through the necromancy bank, except that he already thought he wouldn’t find anything no matter how long he stared.

That’s another good thing about getting Snape’s library. Maybe there’ll be books on necromancy among them.

“Good.” Draco leaped to his feet and looked at Harry for a minute. “There’s so much pressure on me, from all sides,” he confessed in a low voice. “But you’re helping me to bear it.”

Harry smiled at him, but shut his eyes when Draco turned his back. He wasn’t one-half as supportive as he should have been, if Draco had only known that.

Draco went into the bathroom, and there was a small, sharp note immediately, like a plucked string. Harry looked around, but saw nothing unusual until he looked down and realized that there was a note on his leg.

It was marked on the outside with a wheel, tangled with spikes of deadly nightshade.

Harry unfolded it, wondering numbly how it could have just appeared there, given all the wards in the Ministry. The note held only three lines in a small, tight hand. It could have been Portillo Lopez’s writing, but then again, it might not be.

You are in the first stage, greed and hunger. The second stage, obsession, is coming on. After that is the bloodthirst, and then worse. Accept help, before it is too late. You will not be allowed to reach the fourth.

The note dissipated into motes of light as Draco came back out of the bathroom and smiled at him. “Did I ever tell you how lucky I am to have you?”

His conscience aching like a wound, Harry stood up and came over to hug him. “I love you,” he mumbled, pressing his face to Draco’s neck and breathing in his hot scent as if that would mean he could forget about the dead.

It didn’t work. The moment he closed his eyes, their yearning eyes were there.