Chapter Twenty-Six of 'Ceremonies of Strife'- Making Plans

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Twenty-Five.

Title: Ceremonies of Strife (26/50)
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-Six—Making Plans

Dear Draco:

Matters would be much easier if you yielded to your father.

That was the first sentence of the latest letter his mother had sent, at least on the surface, and the only one that mattered. The other sentences were all variants of the original idea, twining around each other in the sort of nest of writhing word-snakes that Narcissa was so good at. Draco skimmed the letter, just so he could be familiar with what his father would see if it came to that, and then read the hidden message.

It was short, and discouraging.

The potion is not taking effect, or taking effect in only a few distortions of his ideas. I fear what will happen next. He is not violent towards me, but talks more often of forcing you to obey him.

Draco had spent the night revising Dark potions and spells of the kind that Lucius might use, and finding none that could be cast or employed from such a distance.

Unless, of course, Lucius contacted one of the other trainees or the Aurors under a false name and persuaded them to do as he said…

Draco closed his eyes. His eyes ached from the late night, and his mind ached from trying to imagine and counter all the possibilities. And he had a full day of classes, as well as a meeting with Harry, Ventus, Granger, and Weasley later that night to try to figure out what they were going to do about Nihil and Wiltshire. He really wanted to crawl into bed and go to sleep, but he knew he couldn’t.

He sighed and started to shove the books he’d been looking at back into place on the library shelves, then jumped as someone touched his shoulder. He whipped around, hand on his wand, his tongue buzzing with some of the spells he’d just been reading that he could use to defend himself.

Harry shook his head as if Draco’s abnormal behavior were completely normal and took the nearest book from him, slotting it neatly back into place. “Relax,” he murmured. “It’s all right. I came to look for you because I could feel that you weren’t in the right place. I’ll help you back to bed and tell everyone that you’ve made yourself sick with too much studying, which is certainly the truth.” He slung his shoulder under Draco’s arm and held it there as he picked up the books, studying them for a moment before replacing them on the shelves.

Draco watched him hazily. He didn’t think Harry was putting all the books back properly, but he also didn’t think Harry would care. “What do you mean, about feeling me?” he whispered.

“That sense of each other that Weston and Lowell taught us?” Harry asked, as if he expected Draco not to remember. He snorted a little when Draco gave him a blurry glare. “It was troubling me. I—kind of know where you should be at each point of the day. And you weren’t in bed, so I finally had to get up and come see what you were doing. I thought you might be lying wounded in the library or something.” He mumbled the last words, his face flushing brilliantly.

“Oh,” Draco said at last, when it felt as though far more time had passed than should have while he contemplated that. “Well. I’m fine.” But he let his hand rest more heavily on Harry’s shoulder than usual, because Harry had cared enough to come find him.

And Harry had probably been practicing with their sense of each other, too, at least more than Draco had. Draco didn’t think he could have pinpointed Harry’s location that precisely.

“You’re not, or why you would be researching in the library at three in the morning?” Harry retorted. He put back the last book and then wrapped his arm around Draco’s shoulder, escorting him openly towards his rooms. Draco thought about objecting, and then realized that few people would probably be taken by surprise, given that they had reconciled more or less openly.

“Do you want to tell me about it?” Harry asked.

Draco blinked. Harry’s voice had the tone that told him Harry had asked the question more than once. “No,” he said. “Not right now. I mean. Maybe later.” His words stumbled over each other, and he would have liked to give a more adequate explanation, but he lacked the brainpower to do that at the moment.

Harry seemed to accept it, because he nodded and murmured, “Just remember that whatever hurts you, hurts me.”

There were all sorts of things Draco could have said to that, most of them sarcastic. Instead, he shut his eyes and let himself be carried. When they got to the bedroom, Harry tucked him into bed and lingered for a moment, hand resting on Draco’s forehead, as if he wanted to reassure himself that Draco wasn’t running a fever.

Draco opened his eyes and took Harry’s hand in his, kissing it.

Harry’s face flushed for a different reason, and he stared at Draco for a time before shaking his head. “I hope you feel better,” he said. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell all the instructors that you’re sick.” He broke free then, and walked to the door.

“Good night,” Draco called after him, dreamily certain that it was important he say it, though he couldn’t remember why.

Harry paused and looked over his shoulder. He was silhouetted against the light from the doorway, and Draco wanted to warn him that could be dangerous with an enemy watching. Then he frowned. Where were they? The barracks, or the Death Eater cache, or a battlefield in Wiltshire?

“Good night,” Harry replied quietly, and then shut the door. The light closed off, and Draco fell into oblivion.

*

“Why haven’t we told the instructors about this? The instructors in the Fellowship, at least. I know that we can’t really trust the others.”

Harry sighed noiselessly. This was Hermione’s latest argument against acting on their own in Wiltshire. It was their second meeting since they had decided they could trust Ventus, and they still weren’t close to forming a coherent plan.

Harry could understand why she objected. Except for Draco, none of them really knew the country well, and sending five people up against Nihil sounded crazy in a way that sending a hundred War Wizards didn’t. And they still hadn’t decided on what they wanted to learn about Nihil, the information they would try to gain that would make all the risk worth it. On the face of it, they were doing a dangerous and a mad thing, and Hermione didn’t want one of them to get hurt or die.

But even Ron was starting to look impatiently at her now, although it was Ventus who answered. “I do not know who the instructors are in this Fellowship of yours,” she said, spreading her hands over the map, which was flat on a table, “since you will not tell me. But I will share this information only with the four of you. I do not know about you, but I have found my comitatus.”

“That’s Latin,” Hermione said, frowning at her.

“It is,” Ventus said blandly, and then bent over the map, drawing a red line of her own with her wand up the side of some hills, and said nothing else.

Hermione frowned more fiercely. Ron touched her shoulder and started to explain, but Draco’s cool voice sliced through his words. To Harry’s relief, Ron only rolled his eyes before listening.

“A comitatus was a band of wizards who fought together in the days when the wizarding community in each country was disunited and a war was less likely to involve destroying central structures,” Draco said, as easily as if he had the book he must have learned the definition from in front of him. Harry looked carefully at him, but Draco seemed normal after his late night and day of sleep, if a little pale. “Each had a specific role to play. They acted together, always, and were loyal only to one another.” He turned to Ventus. “An unusual word to use for us, when we have never fought together and you know that the four of us form pairs that leave you out.”

Ventus laughed. Harry started. The sound was light and normal, dancing like a rain-shower, and he didn’t think he’d ever heard her do it before. “I care most about loyalty to fighting,” she said. “And I will trust you until you prove that you can’t be trusted.”

“When will you know that?” Harry had to ask.

Ventus gave him a contemplative look. “In battle.”

“And you don’t at all care about not being able to trust us before that?” Hermione demanded. Harry thought she was bothered more by Ventus’s calm than she would have been by struggle and argument from Draco. During the last few days, Hermione had calmed down around Draco, though she hadn’t completely stopped giving him evil looks or watching him with doubt, ready to pounce if he made a mistake.

But she hadn’t had any such fight with Ventus, so perhaps that made it easier for her to express her disbelief openly there.

“Of course not,” Ventus said. “Outside battle, anyone can lie. I wasn’t with you when any of you took Veritaserum, though I’m sure all of you have. I haven’t been friends with you for years. I’m not your lover.” Hermione’s face flamed, and she cast a look at Ron, the way she tended to do if someone mentioned romance, Harry had noticed. “I can listen to your boasts and your ideas, but I won’t know that they’ll pan out until I see you in action. Action is the final test.”

Hermione scowled. “That’s insane.”

“It’s the way I am,” Ventus said. “Many things that make sense in my world would be mad in yours, I suspect.” Her wand moved sideways, and she whispered an incantation. A sparkling white line joined the red one on the map.

“What plans are you making?” Draco asked, leaning forwards. He had apparently taken the sensible position that, since they couldn’t make sense of what Ventus was thinking anyway, they should ask about what she was doing. Hermione at least was quiet. Ron patted her shoulder in camaraderie, and Harry thought he looked at Ventus a bit more thoughtfully than before. He didn’t interrupt, though, and Harry was grateful for that. He wasn’t asking for his best friends to be perfectly reconciled to this, just to think about it a bit more before they reacted and consider what impact their words could have on other people.

“We must draw Nihil out,” Ventus said. She looked up from the map, and Harry stared. She wore a smile that had transformed her face, and she reached out and made a clenching gesture in the air with one hand, as if grasping the reins of an invisible horse. “We know that large-scale attacks like the ones the War Wizards have tried do not work.”

“They might if they had someone competent directing one,” Draco muttered.

Ventus seemed deaf to this. “So we make a series of small, darting attacks instead. We appear in the middle of what the War Wizards think is the battlefield, close to a spot where the walking dead have been spotted.” Her eyes shone with malicious enjoyment, and Harry thought it was the most normal she had looked. “We cast a glamour on a bit of the material they took from Nemo’s beasts when he attacked the Ministry, to make it seem as if we’ve reconstructed the whole thing.”

Harry caught his breath. Draco was staring, and Ron and Hermione seemed to have frozen, so it was up to him to state the obvious. “That ought to bring him running if anything will.”

Ventus closed her eye in a slow wink at him. “Exactly.”

“But how are we going to get hold of one of those samples?” Hermione asked, recovering. “It’s all stored in Pushkin’s labs, and if he’s done any more experiments with it, we haven’t heard about them.”

“How did I get hold of the map from the War Wizards?” Ventus asked.

“But this isn’t something we can copy and put back,” Ron said, exchanging a concerned glance with Hermione. “I really think that he’ll notice it’s gone.”

“Leave that to me,” Draco said. He was drawing his wand between his fingers, a small smile on his face that Harry didn’t like. “I know someone who has an enormous talent for glamours. I believe he can reconstruct the piece we steal well enough to fool Pushkin, as long as I send him a good description.”

Harry winced. He knew who Draco was talking about; Draco had told him enough about how Lucius had escaped Azkaban for Harry to know that. But he hated to think about how much it would cost Draco.

He tried to catch Draco’s eye, but Ventus nodded and said, “That will do nicely. And we will have other glamours working, glamours that will make it seem as if we have learned their secrets about Apparating in and out of warded buildings.”

“Let me see the map,” Ron said suddenly.

Ventus handed it to him without pause or comment. Harry wondered if that was strange, and then told himself to give up on the wondering. Thanks to their questioning of Ventus under Veritaserum, they knew she could be trusted with the large things. They would grow used to having her in the group eventually, and until then, it would be worse than nothing to lunge after every gesture she made and question it.

Ron bent over the parchment and studied it in silence for a few moments, then smiled. “These are the best hiding places,” he said, indicating several areas on the map in between the lines that the War Wizards and Ventus had drawn.

“How do you know?” Draco asked, with a charged tone that made Harry decide he was thinking about the Weasley and Malfoy feud, and whether the Weasleys might ever have spied out Malfoy Manor. “Have you ever been in Wiltshire?”

“Anyone could see it from looking at the map,” Ron replied, so mildly that Harry thought he hadn’t really noticed who was asking the question.

“Anyone who played chess as much as you do,” Hermione said, looking proudly and fondly at Ron.

Harry relaxed. Hermione might be more reconciled to this trap they were going to set if Ron could contribute to the plan.

“Create a list of the hiding places,” Draco ordered, pushing parchment and ink across the table to Ron. Ron started scribbling without looking away from the map. He even paused now and then, tilting his head, as if he were listening to a quiet voice. “Granger, Ventus, start constructing the glamours we’ll need to make Nihil and company think we’ve stumbled on their secrets. Harry and I will be in charge of taking the sample from Pushkin and getting it copied enough to fend off suspicion.” He gave a feral smile as he rose to his feet. “I already know what sample I want to use—one that’s complex enough that Pushkin shouldn’t immediately think of a glamour, but simple enough for my—associate to easily copy.”

Ventus turned to Hermione and described a glittering arc through the air with her wand, chattering away in a low voice. Hermione looked reluctant at first, but suddenly opened her eyes wide and leaned nearer. Harry smiled. Yes, that was her look when a new subject intrigued her, and from this point on, Ventus probably wouldn’t be able to drive her away with a Cruciatus Curse.

Only when he and Draco left the room did Harry realize that Draco had given out the orders and everyone had obeyed him as naturally as Ventus had claimed they would.

*

It was perhaps the hardest thing he had ever done.

Draco filled his inkwell. He picked up his quill and made sure it was sharpened to a careful point. He spread a fresh sheet of parchment out in front of him and shut his eyes, trying to see the words spilling across the paper in his mind as he could not see them in reality yet.

He waited, and still no inspiration came to him, no miracles of wording or subtle tricks that would make his father agree to what Draco wanted without revealing at least part of Draco’s weakness in having to beg.

“Can you do this?”

Harry’s voice came from the side, so low and calm that Draco could pretend it was the voice of his own conscience if he wanted to. So that was what he did, answering without opening his eyes. “Yes. I have to. More, I promised Ventus that I would, and she’s not the kind of person that you break promises to.”

“She would understand.” Harry reached out and took his fingers, squeezing them hard enough that Draco felt the blood leave them for a moment. Then he released them, and tingling rushed back into the fingertips. Draco shook them and hissed. “She has so much faith in you that she would accept that you couldn’t do it,” Harry continued, “and she would be able to come up with something else. She’s a lot more intelligent than I thought she was at first.”

Draco sighed. “And what do you think your friends would say?” It was so much easier talking to Harry with his eyes shut that he resolved to remember the tactic for the future when he was exasperated. “Something very complimentary, no doubt, about my inability to do as I had promised.”

“They’re still learning their way around trusting you,” Harry said, “but the latest reasons for that are my fault, not yours. They’d be a lot more comfortable with you if I hadn’t fucked it all up with the necromancy.”

Draco opened his eyes, because he had to see the expression on Harry’s face just then. Harry was leaning forwards across the table, his eyes bright and fixed on Draco. It struck Draco that this was one of the few times Harry had been in his rooms since their row. If it bothered him, or if he had memories leaping from every piece of furniture, as Draco knew he would have in the same situation, Harry didn’t show it.

“I never thought you would say that,” Draco murmured.

“Once, I never thought so, either.” Harry met his gaze, and Draco could see a few beads of sweat forming on his brow this time, but he kept speaking with no apparent effort. “I was stupid enough to think I could just do the necromancy and then back away from it and put it down once I had what I wanted.”

Draco blinked. He had to know this, even though he should be thinking about how he would write his letter to Lucius, not thinking about the wound they had managed to cure. “Quite apart from the addictive effects of the necromancy,” he said, “what did you think we would say about several dead people suddenly coming back to life?”

“That’s why I was a fool,” Harry said, lifting and then dropping one shoulder. “I never thought that far ahead. I didn’t dare to. If I had, then maybe I would have realized how stupid it was.” He paused, blinking at a corner of the ceiling. “And maybe that’s why I could turn away from it more easily than otherwise,” he added softly. “Because I’d had that nagging suspicion all along that I shouldn’t do it, that there was something wrong beneath the surface.”

Draco could have said many things, but he contented himself with a small nod and close attention to the surface of the parchment. It wasn’t less blank for all his talk with Harry, but he did feel better about it than he had.

And he had decided on his course of action, because there was only so much left once he had discarded the absolutely unacceptable. He grimaced and began to write, beginning with his father’s full and formal address.

To Lucius Malfoy, head of the Malfoy Line,

I come to you asking not for complete surrender, but for compromise. You would despise me if I crawled to your feet, panting and licking like a dog, and asked you to forgive me. But I can come to you as the leader of a nation defeated in war and ask for good terms, can I not?

There is a certain thing I need done, and no one but you has the skill in glamour to do it. A piece of an animal’s body must be removed from the labs of one of my instructors. He will notice that it is gone and be able to deduce who took it by means of spells that I can only guess at—unless he never has the chance to notice its disappearnace.

Will you create a glamour of the body part for me, and send it to me so that I can substitute it for the reality? You have the skill. You and no one else.

In return, I will come to you at the end of this month and admit that I was wrong. I will accept a temporary betrothal to Astoria Greengrass, but not one compelled by the betrothal spell. I will negotiate like the leader I wish to become and not like the disobedient child I have acted.

The body part is a small piece of spine bone, with three vertebrae, each with a half-inch between them. The bone is white, slightly curved between the vertebrae, and with a sheen reminiscent of polished alabaster. The top of the bone has a black smudge the size and thickness of my index finger.

If you agree, then send me a package containing the glamour and a letter naming the date and place when I am to surrender to you.

Your son,
Draco.

He set the letter aside until he thought he could deal with reading the treacherous words and looked up at Harry. Harry came to him at once and squeezed his hand with a savagery that made Draco’s eyes water and his fingers tingle again. But that was better than being by himself, and he leaned against Harry and closed his eyes, letting his breathing calm from its rushing pace.

He heard Harry shifting around so that he could read the letter. Then Harry said, in a brittle, calm voice, “What will you do to get out of the betrothal?”

“Nothing.” Harry surged against him even though he didn’t move, and Draco added, “I don’t need to, because I’ll never agree to it. I’m not going to the meeting with my father.”

There was silence, while Harry did nothing except touch his hair. Then Harry murmured, “I don’t understand.”

Draco sighed. “I have two advantages in this situation that my father doesn’t. First, everyone thinks he’s in Azkaban right now. They’ll think that he’s dead soon. He can’t move openly to reveal himself, and he’s paranoid enough that I doubt he would trust any allies.”

Harry nodded, cheek moving against Draco’s.

“Second,” Draco said, and flexed his fingers and opened his eyes, “he trusts me. He thinks I’ll keep my word if I’m going to humble myself to him at all. And he believes that I believe in the family honor, and that I love the idea of being a Malfoy more than I love you.”

“What happens when he realizes you don’t?” Harry’s voice was tiny, dazed, and Draco knew he was deliberately avoiding the revelation Draco had just given him.

“Then I sacrifice that advantage,” Draco answered.

He didn’t speak of what else he was sacrificing. Harry bent over and touched his lips to the skin behind Draco’s ear to show he understood.