lomonaaeren

Chapter Twenty-One.

Title: Ceremonies of Strife (22/50)
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 Twenty-Two—Words Writ Upon Suffering

Ventus seemed to have made it her mission to shadow Draco no matter where he went. She sat not next to him but not far from him in Combat, and watched him so intently that Morningstar had partnered them together more than once. Draco always lost.

He would have let his resentment for that overcome his flattery at her admiration, but Ventus was so insistent that she had her own kind of charm. She talked relentlessly about the resistance against Nihil that she was so sure he would lead, and jerked her head to add emphasis to her words hard enough that her hair fell in her face. She would push it back into place and continue talking on as if she hadn’t noticed.

“But what makes you so sure that I can lead one?” Draco asked in the library one afternoon, a few days after Ventus had first approached him. “I know that you told me surviving the war must count for something, but I don’t feel as though it does, and a leader needs confidence.”

“I’ve watched you in classes,” Ventus said. “You know the answers most of the time. You just can’t always express them.”

Draco laid his book down and frowned at her. “What does that have to do with readiness to become a leader?”

“Leaders are there to issue commands and take action,” Ventus said, “not talk. And you issue commands well enough, and I think that you can apply the practical knowledge even when you sit there with your mind clogged because you can’t find the right words to put around a concept.” She sniffed. “Words. Who cares about them, anyway?”

Draco frowned more widely, not entirely pleased with the way she had put things.

But Ventus was just that way. She made it clear that she wanted to fight and believed Draco would bring her nearer that goal than anyone else, which was refreshingly honest and meant Draco had the kind of relationship with her that he hadn’t had with anyone since Hogwarts. She didn’t lie; Draco didn’t think it would occur to her to do so. She pushed Draco and expressed an unwavering belief in him that gave Draco his own kind of confidence, even as the days passed and Harry made no other attempt to apologize.

He had warned Harry away from apologizing, of course, but warnings had never been enough to keep him at bay before. Draco was starting to think that Harry let his emotions control him and distance him from Draco when it most counted—when he should have listened to his Gryffindor stubbornness and broken through Draco’s reserve.

Draco didn’t know if he would have accepted that had it happened, of course. He wasn’t ready to forgive Harry yet. But he would have been able to explain himself and release the accumulated poison from his veins, and he couldn’t do that with Ventus because he didn’t want her to know the details of the fight.

He was reduced to watching jealousy from a distance as Harry ate and talked with Weasley and Granger, as he worked through his projects alone, and as he once or twice sat back from his books with a grin, as though he had just made some important discovery. They hadn’t had another training session with Lowell and Weston yet, and they weren’t being asked to demonstrate compatible magic in class right now, so Draco had lost even that excuse for being close to him.

Draco reassured himself that he didn’t need a partner who would lie to him, someone who had violated his trust at every turn and didn’t even regret it. But he found his eyes tracking Harry when they shouldn’t be, his shoulders twitching at the sound of his voice, his ears waiting for Harry’s laughter.

He needed the bastard. That was the plain and sober truth of it. Draco wished it wasn’t so—wished so fervently that sometimes his waking seemed like a nightmare and his dreams, where he walked proud and alone, like real life—but wishing wouldn’t change things.

He still didn’t want to make the first move, though. His pride had been hurt. Harry should be the one applying balm to those wounds. He should apologize. Draco’s pride was the only thing keeping him upright at the moment, and he couldn’t bend it again.

So he waited, and pined, and hated himself for pining, and listened to Ventus and got his confidence up again temporarily, and did classwork and tried to pretend that Harry Potter didn’t exist.

*

It was days before Harry felt confident enough to put his next Draco-recovering plan into motion.

He had clung to the idea that had come to him the other day (before his conversation with Ventus, so that he didn’t have to say that he owed the idea to her). He would write Draco a letter. He might do better if he had more time to put his thoughts into words, and he could go back and cross out anything that sounded stupid. And if Draco chose to read the letter, at least he wouldn’t walk away in the middle of the conversation, before Harry had said everything that he wanted to say.

Of course, maybe Draco would tear the letter up instead, but in that case Harry was no worse off than he had been before.

He debated and struggled and tried his best to listen to his feelings while he was building up his courage. He watched Draco from a distance, noticed the way he talked to Ventus and sometimes to other people that he had “control” over—which Harry assumed meant he had blackmailed them—and the way he sat writing in class or while hunched over his homework.

How did he feel about that? How badly did he want the separation between them to end?

I miss him.

That was the most concrete observation to come out of Harry’s time spent looking at Draco, and he was afraid it sounded stupid and wouldn’t be strong enough. He ought to find subtle, elegant, refined words for Draco, words that would reach out and grip his heart and persuade him to give Harry another chance. He ought to be better than his own limitations would let him be.

But he wasn’t, and so in the end he decided that he needed to write the letter as the person he was and not the person he would have liked to be. He sat down with a quill and parchment and ink during an hour when Ron was “visiting Hermione’s rooms” and poured out his feelings onto the paper.

When it was done, he stared at it and bit his lip hard enough to make it bleed. This was too honest, he thought. He shouldn’t give it to Draco because Draco would have blackmail material for the rest of Harry’s life. He would only have to whisper a few words of this with a smirk, and Harry would die of humiliation.

But he’s changed since Hogwarts. And I trust him.

The trust finally made Harry stuff the letter in an envelope and find an anonymous post-owl to send it by. He would have to hope that Draco would give the letter a chance, and that the honesty wouldn’t put him off.

*

The owl came winging down into the middle of the dining hall and straight for Draco. He accepted the letter warily. All the trainees had been urged to watch their post for signs of nasty tricks or hexes. Since Nihil wasn’t trying to get past the wards anymore, he would probably attempt to sneak in another way.

There was no name of the sender on the envelope, which increased Draco’s trepidation—until he looked hard at the scraggly, slightly rounded letters that made up his own name and realized he knew them.

He jerked his head up, narrowing his eyes at Harry’s back, and then realized Harry had already left the dining hall.

And people were beginning to give him curious looks, attracted by the way he had handled the letter. If Draco didn’t want someone to start spreading gossip about his private affairs, it was better to act as if the message contained nothing significant. Draco tucked the letter away in his bag without opening it and continued eating.

All the afternoon he could feel the letter burning there like an icy ember, until finally he reached his rooms again and could take it out to read it.

Dear Draco:

I still feel comfortable calling you that, despite everything we’ve gone through. I can’t imagine that I’d go back to calling you Malfoy, no matter how much distance we put between each other.

I’m sorry.

I’ve told you that before, but I remembered that I didn’t tell you why I meant it, why it was different from what I said when you first confronted me about the necromancy. I’m sorry now because I saw the darkness in Nihil’s mind and I know what it means. The thought that I could become like Nihil really scares me. That was what I needed to make me realize that I should stay away from it.

I confused the dead with the living. I thought the dead could still think and feel like the living, and would resent the fact that I hadn’t saved them. So I had to do anything I could to make it up to them, and it didn’t matter what it cost me, because it’s never mattered what it cost me. I didn’t think about the living.

I’m not sure what that says about me. Maybe that I still have that hero complex you told me I had last year, when I took off to try and help Hagrid without telling you. Maybe just that I’m not very thoughtful and don’t consider what kind of claims other people have on me. Maybe both, or some other possibility that I haven’t even thought of. My mind tends to go in circles a lot. That’s one thing you do for me—help me out of the circles—and one reason I love you.

I don’t know if I can change anything or make anything up to you. Maybe the wound goes too deep. Maybe it would be better for you if I let you go, so that you could find someone who respects you and whose word you can trust.

But I can’t.

I’m selfish, Draco. I didn’t pay enough attention to you, and that was stupid. I need you, and not just because you pull my mind out of the circles. I’ve missed you this last week. I want you with me because I’m a better person when you’re here. You open up new perspectives to me. You teach me that the living really do matter, and that I shouldn’t take dumb risks. You’ve taught me that I matter to other people, too, and I can’t thoughtlessly sacrifice my life, or even do it thoughtfully, and hope that the world will improve.

What do I give to you? I’m less sure about that, and I don’t really want to answer, because you might think that it’s presumptuous. I think you need to define it.

So. Someone advised me that I should grovel to you, and I’m ready to do that. But I’m not sure what kind of groveling would be best, because I know that you don’t want apologies so far, and promises from me would mean nothing. Will you tell me what you’d like from me? I know that in one way I’m putting the burden on you again, demanding that you advise me, but I really am out of ideas. And I think we’ve seen that my ideas aren’t always the best ones, anyway.

Love,
Harry.

Draco sat there for a long time when he’d finished reading the letter. He thought he should have more of a reaction. He thought that he should feel scornful and tear up the letter.

Instead, his hands were numb, and his tongue was still, and his head was filled with a buzzing, clear light.

He read the letter again, and a third time. When he finished, his head danced with the words, and he could almost have recited the letter from memory.

Various reactions began to rush through him when he could think of something other than the clear light, words that collided with each other and spun around one another like dance partners.

I don’t believe any of it.

He’s demanding guidance from me, just the way he did in the library. If he was really sorry, he would pick some course and follow it, and if he really knew me, he would have known without asking what would please me.

Someone else recommended groveling? He can’t even have that much initiative and that much of an idea about what would help me?

Draco turned the letter over, thinking as he went that he really should feel something more than sad disbelief, and then saw a note that Harry had scribbled on the back. At least, it was in the same handwriting as the rest of the letter. Draco had to admit that he didn’t know that Granger hadn’t stood over Harry and dictated this to him; it sounded too honest, too real, too full for Harry to have written on his own.

I was thinking the other day about how we don’t really know each other at all. We sprang over some of the immediate steps; we were friends and partners and lovers too fast, and the compatible magic made everything too easy. If you accept this letter, could you meet me somewhere so we can talk about it? A conversation is what we need.

It was as if Harry had read the thoughts about how little Harry knew him out of Draco’s head and anticipated them.

Draco flung the letter on the table and stared at it.

He had never heard Harry sound like this, which increased his suspicions that he was looking at something Granger had come up with instead. And that was cheating. Draco was tempted to go to this meeting with Harry just so he could spit those words, see his face crumple, and then leave haughtily.

But that would still be looking at him. Talking to him.

Draco shook his head. He didn’t understand. He was upset, exhausted, and confused. It felt as though he was being swept out to sea after having struggled a long time with a heavy current. He couldn’t think.

He wanted to see Harry, and he didn’t. He wanted to accuse him of cheating with Granger’s help, and he wanted to believe, desperately, that he had written this letter himself and meant every word. He wanted to blame Harry because he had asked Draco for advice on apologizing again, and embrace the trust it implied, that Harry was letting him direct the terms of their reconciliation.

And he couldn’t do any of that, because there was no way that he could trust or believe any of what Harry had written. He was a liar.

Draco seized a quill and ink and wrote a response on the paper below Harry’s note, before he could stop himself. Meet with me at seven tonight in the library. I’m going to bring Veritaserum. I want you to confess everything that you just told me in the letter under the influence of that potion.

It was the only way he could protect himself, Draco thought as he went to search for a post-owl. If Harry refused to do it, then Draco would know he was a liar, and he wouldn’t have to think about him ever again.

If he agreed…

Draco straightened his spine and shook his head. He didn’t have to think of that possibility, because there was no way that Harry would ever agree.

*

Harry read Draco’s note and closed his eyes, taking a deep breath. This was what he had wanted: a chance to prove himself. And he swore up and down, if only to himself, that he wasn’t going to fuck it up this time.

He opened his eyes and frowned. A strange, shimmering, heavy haze hung at the corners of his eyes. He blinked and rubbed them, thinking it might be bits of sleep clinging there, but the haze remained.

Harry shrugged. He really didn’t have time to worry about it. Draco’s letter needed a reply, and he wouldn’t feel good until he’d written one. Draco would probably be waiting for it, too, with his arms folded and a sneer on his face.

That’s how I know I’m in love with him, because even picturing that sneer just makes me smile, instead of resent him.

Harry dipped his quill in the ink—

And the world around him turned inside out, sounds becoming muffled drums in the distance, and Harry found himself spinning down into the depths of a memory.

No! I don’t have time for a fit! Not when Draco’s waiting for me! Harry struggled with all his might, trying to send his mind surging upwards and out of the whirlwind that threatened to consume him. He was sorry the dead were dead, that was still true, but he didn’t care, he couldn’t faint, Draco was waiting—

The images that wavered in front of him were familiar, of the first time he had gone to see Teddy after his parents’ death and found himself thinking that he might have prevented Teddy from being an orphan if he had just been a bit quicker, a bit smarter, a bit more attentive during the battle—

That’s not true, Harry thought, flinging the words at himself that he knew Draco would have used. It didn’t mean he believed them, but they were the best weapons he had available on short notice. I didn’t kill Remus and Tonks. I’m sorry they’re dead, but it’s not my fault, and I can’t change anything, and—

The truth burst out of him, cutting through the tired words that could never get rid of the burden of his guilt. And I’m so tired of these stupid fits!

The memory tore like mist. Harry found himself crouched over the table where he’d sat down to write his letter to Draco, blinking and massaging his head. He cast a swift Tempus Charm to reassure himself that he hadn’t lost time, but no, it was only a few minutes later than it had been the last time he remembered checking. He hadn’t missed his meeting with Draco.

What had happened was so momentous that it took Harry a while of sitting there and rubbing his forehead to understand it.

I can control these fits! I really can. I don’t need a Mind-Healer. I just need to think through what I’m saying and thinking more often, and hate the fits enough to get rid of them.

Harry whistled under his breath and grinned. If the fits were caused by his intense guilt, then of course they would go away if he didn’t feel the guilt anymore. That was so simple he didn’t know why he hadn’t considered it before.

Luckily or unluckily, an answer wasn’t long in coming.

Because I don’t deserve not to feel that guilt. And I need my conscience. I can’t cast it aside because it makes certain things inconvenient. If I’d been listening to it in the first place, then I would never have hurt Draco.

Harry frowned and spun his quill over between his fingers. How did other people make up their minds about these things? He knew that sometimes they worried over things that Harry didn’t—like the way Hermione worried about marks—but they didn’t do it intensely enough to cause themselves fainting and convulsing fits every few days.

And wasn’t it better to worry too much over causing deaths than not enough?

But did I cause them?

Harry gnawed his quill, and then stopped, because it stuffed his mouth full of feathers. He started cracking his knuckles instead, just to give himself something to do while he thought.

He didn’t know the answer, that was the problem. He thought he’d had the power to save them. To save Sirius, all he would have had to do was listen to Snape and not go to the Department of Mysteries. That made that particular death his fault, even if none of the others were. Something he had done had directly caused it.

But could he have saved Remus and Tonks?

If I’d been stronger, faster. If I’d worked out that I was the last Horcrux on my own and confronted Voldemort right away, then there wouldn’t have had to be a battle. I could have died, and come back to life, and Teddy would still have a mum and dad. I don’t want anyone to grow up the way I grew up.

That was the familiar track of his thoughts, but Harry did something he’d never done before: he braced himself in his thoughts right there and tried to follow them to their logical conclusion.

Was Teddy really going to grow up like him?

No. Andromeda loves him, and he has me—even though I haven’t visited him much lately—and other people, like the Weasleys, who know about him and are interested in him. Nobody except Dumbledore knew where I was, and I didn’t know about the wizarding world, and nobody visited me. So he’ll still be an orphan, which is awful, but it isn’t going to be exactly like me.

Harry licked his lips when he finished thinking that thought, and flinched a little. It made sense, or it seemed to, but it still hurt.

What if I’m wrong? What if I hurt more people the way I hurt Draco, because I’m not paying enough attention to what’s right and wrong? I would rather suffer a lot myself than hurt someone else.

Then he remembered that he had hurt Draco because he was trying not to hurt the dead, and shut his eyes and shook his head.

This is ridiculous. I can’t be perfect. I need to do something to make it up to Sirius, yes, but maybe not everyone else. And I’m going to hurt Draco and my friends some of the time. What I need to do is make sure those are small wounds, just the kind you get from living together—the way Ron and I would row at Hogwarts. Not the big ones.

It felt weird, like trying to put on the wrong pair of glasses. But it was the best thought that Harry could come up with for now, so he wrote his response to Draco’s note and then went to send it.

And he hoped that Draco would ask him questions about the way he’d been feeling since the attack on Nihil, because Harry wanted to tell him that the mere thought of him had helped drive away one of Harry’s fits.

I can bear Veritaserum. I can bear anything, as long as I can have Draco with me again.