Chapter Fifteen of 'Ceremonies of Strife'- We Are the Dead

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Fourteen.

Title: Ceremonies of Strife (15/50)
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 Fifteen—We Are the Dead

Draco studied Harry thoughtfully. They were on their way back to their rooms after having secured permission from the instructors to go to Hogwarts, and now that that worry was removed from his mind, he had time to notice Harry’s odd behavior.

Or has it been odd for a long time, and this is just the first time that I’ve paid this much attention to him?

Harry walked along with a frown on his face. He kept his eyes on the floor, lips moving as if he were counting his steps and wanted to be careful not to pass some important number. His fingers tapped out random rhythms on his hips, his legs, the backs of his hands. That was a habit that Draco didn’t remember Harry having before.

Is he nervous about something? Draco decided, after long moments of observation that told him nothing, that he might as well ask. After all, he and Harry were on better terms with each other since he’d told Harry he loved him, and Weston and Lowell had admitted that the barrier between them was much improved, if not completely lowered. Draco thought it would take time to lower it all the way.

“Harry,” he said, “is something wrong?”

Harry jumped and gave him a nervous, guilty look. Draco’s eyes narrowed. Nervous he could understand, if Harry was worried about an exam or an essay, but guilty?

Unless it’s that random guilt he always carries. He always seems to think he should be doing something different than what he is doing.

“I’m worried,” Harry admitted in a whisper. “I know that Snape left his library to you, but what if there are traps in place that he forgot to remind you of? No matter how clever he was, we don’t know exactly when that Pensieve memory was made, and maybe he changed his mind after he made it.”

Draco smiled. He knew the source of Harry’s nervousness now. He had nearly died when a spell in a Death Eater cache caught up with him last year, and Harry had been adamant against any more investigations after that happened. He was picturing the same thing happening again this time.

“I trust that memory,” Draco said. “We don’t have to worry, because I’m sure that if Professor Snape had changed his mind, he would also have changed the orders that the Pensieve was to be delivered to me after his death.”

Harry didn’t look completely convinced, but nodded anyway. And after that, Draco noticed, some of his tapping ceased, and he could discuss their trip to Hogwarts the next day like a normal person.

Good, Draco thought, curling up in bed beside Harry with his arm over his chest. His own feelings make him suffer more than any physical wound could ever do. If he knows that I’m safe, he won’t suffer.

*

Draco, I’m sorry, Harry thought, closing his eyes. It felt as if they were crusted with ice—the tears he couldn’t shed without Draco starting to think that something was really wrong. But you would never let me do this if you knew.

*

Draco had expected a greater shock as they walked across the grounds of Hogwarts, past the Forbidden Forest, heading for the castle. He felt as though too much had happened in the past year to separate him from the boy he had been when he was in school. He should have seen the towers like a blow; he should have been overwhelmed with memories when he saw the lake and the stretch of grass where the hippogriff had bitten him.

Instead, he noted those things with faint interest and curiosity, and nothing more. Thoughts of Professor Snape’s library immediately intruded.

I don’t know which books will be most useful to me, he admitted mentally as he and Harry began to round the edge of the lake, because my goals are so ill-defined. But he had them organized well enough that it shouldn’t be a struggle to sift through the information the way that it would be in a place like the trainee library.

As the thought of the library came to him in more detail, Draco found his shoulders rising in triumph, his strides getting longer. They’d had to get permission from Headmistress McGonagall to visit the school, too, and she hadn’t sounded gracious about it. Draco assumed they would have a nasty confrontation when they faced her.

But the prize waiting for him made it all worthwhile.

Draco abruptly became aware that his footsteps were crunching over the ground alone. He turned back. Harry stood near the edge of the Forbidden Forest, staring into it as if paralyzed.

Draco went back to fetch him, one hand resting on his wand. They had met Nemo’s beasts once in the Forest, and even though Harry had walked into the trap by going there to help the foolish gamekeeper, there was no guarantee that the beasts weren’t still lurking there.

“What is it?” Draco whispered as he came up beside Harry. He glanced into the forest, but it was an unbroken wall of solid green to him. From the devastated look Harry turned on him, he saw more than that.

“Don’t you see them?” Harry whispered.

“See who?” Draco tried another glance. The trees remained the same. He could hear no crackling or smashing sounds that would indicate the approach of large beasts like the ones who had attacked the Ministry, the ones Nemo tended to favor.

Then he looked again, and saw.

*

Harry had felt eyes on him from the Forbidden Forest the moment they arrived at Hogwarts, but he hadn’t thought much of it. After all, centaurs lived in there—centaurs who were less friendly to humans than ever since the war, as if they resented that a battle had occurred at Hogwarts—and probably some werewolves, and the latest beast that Hagrid would be trying to tame.

But the eyes grew so close and persistent that he finally turned his head.

A unicorn stood staring at him from the edge of the Forest. Harry was surprised that one would come so close to a wizard—especially a male, adult wizard—but he prepared to enjoy the sight anyway.

Then he realized that the unicorn was transparent, and its haunches went through the trees. Its body was oddly distorted in shape, too, wavering at the edges as if made of smoke. Its horn was a short, stubby block one moment and a long, elegant corkscrew the next.

It stepped forwards, and Harry heard no sound from its hooves, even the slight crackle that was all he would expect to hear on the thick leaves.

Then the unicorn spoke.

The voice passed straight into Harry’s head without benefit of his ears. Perhaps that was because it held so much concentrated bitterness that hearing it aloud would have destroyed Harry.

We are the dead. We are the left-behind ones, the remnants of experiments, the ghosts of slaughter. You saw us made, and you did not avenge us.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harry whispered, his eyes flicking to the sides as more and more unicorn ghosts came up to join the first one. They blended into each other as easily as they blended into the trees, so it was hard to tell how many there were. “I’ve never killed a unicorn. The only one I know who has is—”

Harry stopped when he remembered how he had come upon Voldemort drinking from the blood of the dead unicorn in his first year. Yes, he had seen it die, and he knew others had perished to satisfy Voldemort’s appetite as well. But he had never thought of what they might leave behind, other than bodies and a grieving Hagrid.

Harry attempted to straighten up and speak more firmly. He could feel Draco coming back towards him, and that gave him courage. “I avenged you more than two years ago. Voldemort is dead.”

The ghosts crowded towards him. Their breath made the air cold. Their bodies made the universe sway. If Harry had seen unfulfilled longing in the eyes of his own dead, there was nothing but hatred here—hatred, and longing for a life that had been stolen from them, rather than anything Harry could give back to them.

Draco came back and asked a few questions. Harry thought he answered. He couldn’t remember, later. His attention was totally consumed by the unicorns, and his struggle to figure out what they were asking of him.

When long moments had passed, Harry finally shook his head and said, “Yes, I watched one of you die and didn’t avenge you.” He didn’t say that he’d only been eleven at the time. He doubted that ghost unicorns would care. “But what do you want me to do about it now?”

We are the dead, the voices said. They beat against his ears like a swarm of icy bees.

“I understand that,” Harry said. His fingers were turning blue, and he had to struggle to speak. “But what does that mean? What concrete action can I take, since you seem to want one?”

Draco’s arm tightened around him, and Harry thought he could hear him saying something about how Harry tried to take too much action, tried to take too much on himself. Harry couldn’t listen. He had to hear the voices of the dead, and he strained stubbornly forwards to them, listening.

We are the dead, said the unicorn. Suddenly the rest of the ghosts had vanished, and only one stood there. Harry wondered if it was the one he had first seen, but again, it changed so much there was no way to tell. We need peace.

It vanished. The sensation of watching eyes went at the same time. Harry didn’t think the unicorn ghosts were drifting through the Forest and looking at him reproachfully right now.

He shivered, and reached up an absent hand to pat Draco’s arm where it was slung around him, pulling him tight against Draco’s body. But his mind was on what the unicorn had said.

We need peace.

How in the world could Harry give them that, when they weren’t even human? He thought he understood what the spirits of people he had known in life would want, but not these others. They probably didn’t even have bodies to be buried anymore, which was what ghosts traditionally seemed to want in most of the stories Harry had heard.

“Harry!”

That shout, right in his ear, woke him up. Harry blinked and turned towards Draco. Then he realized his fingers were much colder than they should be, and beat them together as he stared into Draco’s eyes.

“Were they talking to you?” Draco’s face was pale. Harry couldn’t tell if that was fear, or strain and stress. He thought he once would have been able to tell, but he had traveled a long way in one direction, and it wasn’t a voyage that Draco could share with him. Harry wasn’t even sure if the unicorns had spoken to him because he had seen one of them die, or because he was becoming a necromancer, or because he was the one who was supposed to kill Voldemort, or for some other reason.

“Yes,” Harry said. “They said they were dead and wanted peace.” The words sounded strange when he spoke them, as though the dread majesty of their bitterness had been stripped away. He blinked and shook his head.

This is another thing that I can’t share with Draco. He would only tell me to—

“You take too much on yourself,” Draco said. His voice was steady, but flat with anger. He met Harry’s eyes and held them, a silent challenge to just try and look away in his gaze. “You always did. I don’t know what the fuck they wanted or what they would try to compel you to do, but just remember that you don’t need to listen to them.”

Harry nodded, but said nothing. How in the world could he make Draco understand? There was a claim on him, a claim because he was the one who had heard the unicorns speak and no one else. If other people wouldn’t clean up the mess, it was up to the person who discovered it.

“We’ll ask the Headmistress about them,” Draco said, more calmly now, but still looking a little wild around the eyes. “I can’t imagine that a bunch of unicorn ghosts wandering the Forest would go unreported.”

“It might depend on who comes out here, and when,” Harry muttered as they began to trudge towards the castle again. “What if they were attracted by me, and so they came out for the first time?”

Draco gave him an odd look. “Why would they be attracted by you?”

And that was another of the things Harry couldn’t explain. Luckily, he had an out. He could shake his head weakly and mutter something about how he just thought it was likely, and Draco would see it as another instance of his tendency to be overdramatic and imagine himself at the center of events when he really wasn’t.

When did I become so good at lying? And manipulating someone I love, who loves me, someone I’m supposed to have the most honest relationship in the world with?

Harry had to close his ears to those objections. He had to. Because he wouldn’t betray the dead for the sake of the living. He wouldn’t do it the other way around, either, of course. That just meant that he had to be as careful as he could, and walk a thin line, and consider all his actions before he made them.

He would work it out in the end. He would have to.

*

“But surely someone must have—”

“Nothing like what you described has been reported, Mr. Malfoy.” The Headmistress’s voice was as smooth as ice. She took one glance at Harry, though, and her voice softened. “Are you sure that you don’t want help searching in the dungeons? No one has been near Severus’s rooms since he died, and I don’t know what kind of traps he may have left in place.”

Draco rolled his eyes and wondered when Gryffindor loyalty lessened, or if it ever did. Yes, Harry had been a Gryffindor and McGonagall’s student and the Savior of the World and all that rot, but Draco had been her student, too.

It sounded extremely thin, when he put it that way. He decided to stay silent for now, while Harry gave McGonagall a weak smile.

“I think we’ll be fine,” he said, and his eyes went to Draco. “Snape left his library to Draco, we know that—and he was on our side in the end. I don’t think he would have left traps that could hurt Draco.”

“When it came to the protection of his knowledge, Severus was adamant.” The Headmistress started gathering her robes around her as if she would rise and accompany them. On the walls, the portraits of past Headmasters watched with interest. Draco had the impression that Dumbledore was particularly interested, though he refused to look up at him. Snape had a portrait, but wasn’t in it. “I think I should make sure that two of our most famous students aren’t injured in the pursuit of it.” She looked pointedly at Draco.

She really does think that I would try to do harm to Harry, right here and now, Draco thought incredulously, and opened his mouth to defend himself.

“No, Headmistress,” Harry said, and his voice was firm. “We’ll be fine, but thank you. Stay here and do the more important work we interrupted.” He took Draco’s arm and gave her a much firmer smile.

He can sense that she doesn’t like me, Draco thought, and calmed. He would never want Harry to defend him all the time, but it was nice to know that someone was on his side no matter what happened.

“Very well,” said McGonagall, after so long a pause that Draco thought she was going to force the issue anyway. “Then go.” She sat down and rearranged the papers on her desk, probably to cover her loss of dignity. One of the portraits cackled and said something in a Scots accent so thick that Draco couldn’t understand it, but McGonagall turned and glared.

“Come on,” Harry said, and hauled Draco out of the office and onto the moving staircase. Draco stood there and fought memories of Dumbledore until they consented to lie down like the dead things they were.

Only then did he look at Harry, who stood with one elbow braced on the turning wall and watched everything with calm, intelligent eyes.

“You seem to have got over your encounter with the unicorn ghosts,” he said.

Harry turned his head quickly, blinked, and studied him. “Draco, are you jealous?” he finally asked. “You sound like it.”

Draco blew his breath out and tried to pin the irritation he was feeling down to a singular cause. “Maybe,” he admitted at last, aware that he sounded sulky, but not sure what he could do about it. “I don’t see how you can escape the memories here, but you’re doing better than I am.”

Harry reached out and stroked his arm. “Mine are less traumatic.” Draco snorted almost hard enough to expel a lung, but Harry persisted. “No, listen to me. I fought Voldemort here, and it hurt, yes, but I was triumphant in the end. That’s what I remember, more than anything else. The last few times you were here were times of fear and pain, and you didn’t get a lot of closure the way I did. So it’s understandable that you’re suffering the way you are.”

“It makes me weak,” Draco said.

Harry’s face underwent a short, sudden change, which in the end faded back to his calm expression. “I don’t think so,” was all he said.

Draco followed him down to Professor Snape’s rooms, wondering about the suppressed expression and what it meant.

*

Harry had never realized that a library could smell so overpowering.

The scent of dust was everywhere. So was the scent of leather. So was a scent that Harry thought of as wet and green, though he wasn’t sure what it really was. Probably some Potions ingredient left behind, or a small creature who had managed to get inside the wards surrounding the library and then died there.

He leaned against the wall in the entrance to the room and watched as Draco turned slow circles in the middle of it, staring at the neatly organized books. His expression was rapturous. Harry smiled in spite of himself. He thought that was the kind of look Hermione would wear if this library had been left to her.

And I do wonder if Snape had any books on necromancy.

Just looking at the books, Harry couldn’t identify any. The books were all uniformly bound in black leather, with gold lettering on the spines that spelled out their titles or, sometimes, an author’s name with no title. Draco seemed to understand the organization perfectly well, because he had already stepped up to the nearest shelf and was running a finger approvingly along one set of books. But Harry didn’t know whether the library was ordered by subject, title, author, nastiness of magic involved, or something else known only to Snape.

“This is interesting,” Draco said, and pulled out a book. “This might be something we could use in the study with Lowell and Weston.” He turned the book so that Harry could see the title. Pressures of Compatible Magic.

“Pressures?” Harry asked, coming closer and trying to look interested and not as if he was scanning the shelves for something else. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Draco said, and flipped the book open, apparently preparing to get lost in the words.

Harry coughed delicately, and waited until Draco peered at him. “Not that I want to interrupt your reading,” he said. “But we should crate these books up as soon as possible and bring them back to the Ministry. Our leave was only for the morning.”

Draco blushed—the first time in a long time Harry had seen him do that in a situation that didn’t involve sex—and tucked the book under his arm. “Of course,” he said. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking.”

Harry shook his head and couldn’t help giving Draco an amused smile. “It’s all right. But I thought you’d like to know about it before we ran out of time.” He drew his wand and conjured the first crate. He and Draco had discussed the best method of moving the books, and agreed that it would be containers they could shrink and carry, but neither of them had been able to Transfigure or conjure an acceptable trunk. Crates were easier.

He and Draco worked in silence, moving the books into the crates and conjuring more crates as necessary. Draco sometimes stopped to exclaim over a book or stare at it with greedy eyes. Harry patiently outwaited every incident of that. Draco was still moving along at a good pace, and Harry still couldn’t ignore the teasing promise of possible information that waited in the necromancy books in the library.

If it has any.

“Look at this.”

Draco’s voice was choked. Harry looked up. He was holding a book that looked much like all the others, if smaller. Harry couldn’t see the title or author from the way Draco’s hand was positioned on the spine. He leaned in.

The book was a neat listing of names, with numbers, locations, dates, and notes beside them. At a first glance, Harry couldn’t see anything that remarkable. It looked like a list of Potions masters across Europe that Snape might have kept for his own use, and was, for all Harry knew.

Then Draco pointed a shaking finger to the name on the page that had drawn his attention, and Harry caught his breath in shock.

Caradoc Dearborn.

Harry blinked. “That was—that was Dearborn’s brother, wasn’t it?” he asked. “The one who disappeared during the war?”

Draco nodded. “This is a list of all the victims of the Death Eaters,” he whispered. “God knows why Professor Snape kept it, but he did. We should be able to find out something in here about Nihil, and maybe about the research they were conducting.”

Harry looked at the note beside Caradoc’s name. There was the date he had been captured, the name of the cache he had been taken to—which Harry had to admit meant nothing to him; they had a map of the caches, but didn’t know all the names that the Death Eaters had given them—a number that could have meant anything, and then notes. Notes on how he died, Harry thought. If Dearborn himself had ever seen this, it could explain why he was passionate about Dark magic; he might think that he needed Dark magic to fight the kind of people who would do things like this to his brother.

But those notes were less informative than Harry could have hoped. They said, Tortured almost to death using the Flesh-Shredding Curse. Interrupted by o. Transformed.

While Harry was frowning at the last word, Draco said, “This has to be it. The solution to the mystery.”

“What do you mean?” Harry asked, looking up at him.

“He was tortured almost to death,” Draco said fiercely. “And then he changed into something else. What can that mean except that Caradoc Dearborn is Nihil? He discovered some means to pass beyond death, perhaps because he was in such excruciating pain. Wizards can do amazing things with their magic when they’re pushed. He probably did. They would have no reason to cease the experimenting prematurely. They were interrupted. What did it? He did.”

Harry nodded slowly. It looked as though Draco was right, and Dearborn’s true identity had been hiding among Snape’s papers all along.

While Draco eagerly flicked through the ledger, looking for more information, Harry thought again of that notation. For some reason, even though he couldn’t prove it had anything to do with necromancy—and he wanted nothing to do with Nihil’s brand of necromancy anyway—it aroused his curiosity.

Interrupted by o.

Who or what was o?

With no good evidence, Harry was inclined to think it wasn’t Caradoc.