lomonaaeren

Chapter Thirty-One.

Title: Ceremonies of Strife (30/50)
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 Thirty-Two—Full Speed to Understanding

“I don’t understand it.”

Harry kept his face relaxed and his eyes aimed straight ahead as Weston walked slowly around him. On the other side of the classroom, Lowell was walking as slowly around Draco. Draco’s face was locked in a frown, but he said nothing. Harry knew his true state from that “sense” of him that he’d developed more than anything else.

“A barrier remains between you, but you are functioning together more effectively than you ever have,” Weston said, halting between them and glancing back and forth as if she thought Draco and Harry had done this on purpose to perplex her. “How is that possible? What is the nature of the barrier?”

“A private argument,” Draco said, before Harry could come up with any soothing lie. “You don’t need to worry about it, Aurors.”

“But we should.” Lowell leaned forwards, staring into Draco’s face from so close that Harry knew he would have backed away if he was Draco. But Draco stared back boredly, not twitching an eyelash, and Lowell finally made a disgusted sound and backed away himself. “We are the ones training you in using compatible magic.”

Draco smiled. “Exactly. So why should you worry if you’re doing it right and that means that we’re leaning things?”

Lowell turned and looked at Weston instead of speaking again. She raised her hands and extended them, palms up and empty. Harry had no idea what the gesture meant, but Lowell suddenly looked more resigned than frustrated.

“Very well,” he said. “Be here in a week’s time for your next lesson. By then, I think you should have mastered casting through each other’s wands without any unfortunate accidents.” He touched the singed ends of his dark hair where one of Draco’s spells, cast through Harry’s wand, had caught him, and raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, Auror,” Draco said, and then grabbed Harry’s wrist and dragged him out of there. Harry had time to nod to both of them before he was forced to follow Draco, but that was all.

“Do you think that was the right thing to do?” Harry asked, as they rattled back to their rooms. No one else was awake this early in the morning in the trainee barracks, at least most of the time, and their footsteps seemed to bounce off the walls more loudly than Harry knew they really did. “They might only be more curious now.”

“They know that we’re hiding something, but not what,” Draco said shortly. “I’m more worried about what our enemies actually know, and what they could use to hurt us.”

Harry looked at him sidelong. Draco’s smile had dropped away as if he’d never used it, and his teeth were gritted, his face shiny with sweat. Harry blinked. “Draco, what’s wrong?”

“I’ve been thinking more about what you told me the other day,” Draco said. Harry remembered what he had said about Portillo Lopez and her order, and nodded slowly, though he didn’t see what Draco was getting at. “What’s to keep them from attacking you at any time they like?” Draco asked grimly. “How do you know you can trust them? What happens if they go to the Aurors themselves about what you did, or even drop a note? Or she could pretend to find a note like that.”

“I don’t know,” Harry admitted. He hadn’t thought much about that “danger.” “Why should she? If she wanted to, she and her people could probably have killed me back there on that battlefield. I was tired, and there isn’t much I could have done to stop them.”

“Killing you is one thing,” Draco said. “Especially far away from the Ministry, where they would have to explain what they were doing there themselves, and they might not have been able to get rid of all the witnesses. But getting you arrested for Dark magic? The press would be having too much fun with the accusations in the first place to pay any attention to how you’d been found out.”

Harry sighed and pulled on Draco’s wrist until he slowed to a stop. Draco continued to tug ahead for a few seconds, like a dog impatiently pulling against the leash, and then turned around and lowered his head. His face was so hostile that Harry had to wonder how much stress he’d been living with in the almost-a-week since the battle.

“I love that you worry about me,” Harry whispered. He lifted both hands and drew his fingers slowly through Draco’s hair, pressing against his temples, caressing the skin. Draco sighed, and his eyelashes fluttered, and his head dropped. Harry leaned in and kissed his cheek gently. “I appreciate it. I only wish that it didn’t hurt you so.”

Draco took a few gentle breaths and then opened his eyes. “I’m all right,” he said, his voice more normal.

“I don’t think you are, though,” Harry told him quietly. “There’s no reason for Portillo Lopez and her group to turn against me.”

“There’s no reason for them to protect you, either,” Draco said harshly. He stepped back from Harry—Harry bit his lip to see that his attempted comfort had so small an effect on Draco—and drove his fist into the wall. “If we had a hold on them of some kind,” Draco said, half-ranting, “if we could blackmail them, or if you’d put a spell on them that would let you kill them from a distance, that’s one thing. But you can’t trust people you don’t have in your power.”

Harry stood still for a moment. He knew that Draco hadn’t meant his last words to hurt Harry, and since Harry had done plenty of things to hurt Draco in the past, he could live with the immediate sting and grow past it. He could.

Then he said, “I do have a sort of power over them. I could reveal the existence of their order, and my proof—Pensieve memories—would be of the same sort they would have to use if they wanted to prove that I practiced necromancy. Portillo Lopez and I have a truce, though. She won’t reveal me if I don’t reveal her.”

Draco shook his head. His face was pale again, except for the streaks of brilliant pink in his cheeks. Harry wondered how long it had been since he’d seen Draco without them. He couldn’t remember, actually. “It has to be more than that. She might decide that her principles outweigh her terror of being exposed. I told you, you can’t trust anyone unless you know that they’re terrified of you.”

“Does that include me?” Harry asked softly.

Draco jerked a little, as though Harry’s words had awakened him from a dream, and stared at him, blinking. “What are you talking about?”

“Do you have to have some sort of hold over me before you can trust me?” Harry asked. He leaned forwards and braced himself with his hands on Draco’s shoulders—or perhaps he was trying to restrain Draco. He really didn’t know. “Would you trust me at all if you didn’t know secrets about me that you could expose, if you wanted, to put me at a disadvantage?”

Draco shook his head as though Harry had asked him a question that made no sense. “It’s different,” he said. “I was talking about enemies. Of course I want power over people with the means to hurt me.”

“But you said anyone,” Harry murmured. “And I have more power to hurt you than anyone else. You made that clear when you found me practicing that magic in the first place.”

Draco shook his head again. “You’re confusing things,” he said. “You’re distracting me from my real point, which I was making, and which you should listen to.”

Harry said nothing, but waited. Draco was more than intelligent enough to figure out what Harry was driving at. In fact, he probably already had, but he didn’t want to admit it.

Harry just hoped that his answers would be of the kind that Harry could hear, and live with.

*

He knows that I didn’t mean him. Or friends in general, though I don’t have any friends like he has Weasley and Granger. A pulse of jealousy traveled through Draco when he thought that. He has to know that I didn’t mean anything like that. He’s just decided to take it more literally than I meant it and to cause trouble.

“I trust you,” Draco said. He spoke the words with barely a puff of breath between his lips, but he didn’t think Harry needed more. Anyway, the lines of tension were already easing from his face, although he didn’t smile. “I think I’ve proved that enough, given what you did on the battlefield, and the fact that I accepted you back into my rooms afterwards.”

“Maybe,” Harry said. “And I don’t want to keep testing your trust. But I have to wonder—if you want power over anybody and everybody, do you ever completely trust them? Because the more you do, the more you hand them power over you, too. And I don’t know how deep your dislike of possibly being betrayed or controlled runs.” His hands smoothed along Draco’s arms, down from his shoulders.

Draco drew a deep breath. He could still remember the sharp, terrified look on Harry’s face when Draco had walked into the necromantic ritual. He could still remember the way the betrayal had struck him like a blade in the back.

But he hadn’t considered that at all when he was talking about Portillo Lopez and her group. He had simply assumed that Harry would know what he meant and agree with him, without further explanation.

“I like power,” Draco said at last, and he resented the way his words stumbled. This was a truth he had long since accepted about himself. It ought not to be so hard to explain it to someone else. “I panic when I can’t defend myself. I hate it when someone else has to rescue me. But you knew that,” he added, realizing that Harry’s eyes hadn’t widened in surprise or anything like it.

Harry tilted his head to the side and bit his lip thoughtfully. “Yes, I did. I had assumed that you made an exception for me and other people you trusted, but then I wondered if you trusted anyone else, and then I remembered what I had done to make you distrust me, and…” He sighed and inexplicably leaned in to kiss Draco’s cheek. Draco had thought they were arguing. “I hate to think of you being lonely,” Harry whispered into his ear.

Draco jerked his head back in spite of the sweetness the kiss had sent pouring through him. “What are you nattering about, idiot? This is about weakness and strength, not about solitude.”

“If you can’t trust anyone,” Harry said softly, “or if you don’t dare let anyone close to you because of lack of trust, then you’re standing in a circle of loneliness. And I think you deserve better than that.” His eyes were completely and utterly sincere.

Draco stared at the floor. He hadn’t thought about it that way, mostly because the occasional thoughts that occurred to him about it got pushed away. He couldn’t afford to stand around sniffling about how he was lonely. He had to find ways to defend himself, and for a while he had thought he would have to find them alone.

That Harry was offering this, and that even in the middle of a fight about whether or not Draco trusted him he had been concerned first for how Draco suffered from the effects of his own paranoia—

Draco didn’t know what to do with the emotions boiling in him, which felt like anger but were too soft-edged for it. Anything he spoke would probably spoil the mood, and he didn’t want to watch Harry back away from him with a carefully shut face again.

So he translated it into action, leaning forwards, roughly grabbing the back of Harry’s neck, and slamming his mouth viciously home.

Harry gasped at first, but then returned the kiss with more than interest, his fingers sinking into Draco’s arms as if he could use them like manacles to keep and hold. Draco twisted nearer, winding his free arm around Harry’s shoulders, pulling so hard that he almost didn’t care if he hurt Harry.

Well, he did care, but he had to show what he was feeling more, and this was the only acceptable way to do it.

Harry murmured incoherently against his mouth, bit and licked at his lips, and then met him tongue to tongue. Draco had never had a kiss that was so like a battle. Of course, he didn’t think he had ever kissed someone as ferocious and committed as he was, either.

He thrust his hips into Harry’s and bit the inside of his cheek. Harry hissed and tore his head away to gasp in air.

“We shouldn’t do this where anyone might see,” he hissed, even as his hands dug into Draco’s skin and he felt as if he would be more than willing to continue.

Draco chuckled, finding it strange that Harry was speaking in the voice of reason for once, and held back a bit of his intense desire. He nodded and began to pull Harry in the direction of their rooms once again, doing his best to think of something other than how Harry’s muscles flexed under his touch and how he gasped and smelled.

When they were inside the room, Draco shut the door firmly, cast a spell that should prevent any intentional voyeurs from hearing what was going on, and then fastened his mouth back in place.

Harry returned as eagerly as he received, his hands holding Draco’s hips and the back of his head this time, his tongue leading the way for nipping little bites. When Draco was dazed and breathing hard, his throat bobbing with the effort to control himself, Harry dropped to his knees.

Draco stared down at him. He hadn’t imagined something like this happening—which was idiotic, since he ought to have been imagining all sorts of things like this when he and Harry were sleeping chastely beside each other in the bed. But he had assumed, without thinking about it, that more months would pass before they had sex again, and that he would decide when they did so.

Harry paused, looked up into Draco’s eyes, and shook his head as if surfacing from a long sojourn underwater. “Is this all right?” he whispered, his hands sliding up to Draco’s hips. “Can I do this?”

Draco swallowed. He still felt a surge of uncertainty, but the power went deeper than that, welling up from so far beneath him that he felt as if he were a cork tossed about on an ocean. Harry might be the one who had chosen to move things along, but Draco was the one who would get to choose how far he actually went.

“It’s more than fine,” he said, and splayed his legs and started to tug at his trousers, so Harry wouldn’t get the idea that he was a passive victim in all this.

Harry smiled and leaned in to press a kiss to Draco’s erection through his trousers. Draco started and shivered, and nearly embarrassed himself right there. But he held back, and by the time that he thought to look down again, his trousers and pants were gone and Harry was lipping hesitantly at the head of his cock.

Draco wanted to shut his eyes and tilt his head back until it brushed against the wall, but that might seem weak. Besides, it would take away from a sight he wanted very much to see: Harry’s mouth opening to take him in, while his eyes fluttered shut and he gave quiet moans. So Draco struggled, and won, and watched Harry suck him.

It felt incredible. The brushes of intense warmth and wetness were tentative, as though Harry still wasn’t sure of the best way to use his tongue. Well, he hadn’t sucked Draco a lot before he had started practicing necromancy and they had lost this, Draco thought forgivingly as his hips flexed. And he didn’t need to be some expert. What he could do was more than good enough.

What he could do was what Draco needed.

“I do trust you,” Draco whispered to him, when the pleasure began to spin him about and his control over his tongue loosened. “I promise. I trust you more than you know. There’s no one else I would let do this—oh, like that—”

Harry spun his tongue and then stroked it along the vein under Draco’s cock as if to say that he was delighted to hear it.

“So wonderful,” Draco said. “Hard as you are sometimes, and stubborn, and bloody dangerous, there’s no one else—there couldn’t be anyone else—” He latched his fingers in Harry’s hair and tugged as the pleasure came charging at him like sunlight. “Never anyone else—”

He fell headlong into bliss, and he cried out weakly, his hips pumping forwards and his fingers digging deep. Harry made a gagging noise, then swallowed, and Draco slumped against him, thinking absently that it was Harry’s mouth more than the wall that kept him upright.

Harry stood up, wiping at his mouth and staring at Draco, and then seized Draco’s hand and wrapped it around himself. Draco shuddered and tried to help, but he really was feeling weak, as though his legs had done more work to make him orgasm than they really had. So Harry wanked himself with Draco’s fingers more than Draco brought him off.

It didn’t matter. Draco still got to watch the way a flush worked along Harry’s throat, and his head fell back, and his hips thrust, and he moaned loud and long and then louder and longer when he splattered into the palm of Draco’s hand.

Draco shut his eyes when Harry’s spasms had passed, utterly content. Harry laughed and kissed him.

“You should see the look on your face,” he murmured.

“I suspect it’s nowhere near as good as the look on yours,” Draco murmured back, and leaned against Harry. He could feel the wetness squishing on Harry’s hand and his shirt. It didn’t matter. He was more content than he had been for days. Harry had managed to relieve his fears with his words even more than his actions.

“Are we all right?” Harry asked into Draco’s ear, blowing gently along his shoulder while Draco shivered.

Draco nodded. “We are.”

*

“I’m sorry, Harry.” Hermione gave him an apologetic smile and paused with her finger in one of the books that were piled in front of her. Harry had found her in a corner of the library with books sprawled on her lap, her notes, a second chair next to her, and the floor. “I’ve looked everywhere I could think of for information about necromancy in other languages. None of the books references Parseltongue.”

Harry scowled. He had been sure that Hermione, who thought all the answers could be found in books, would search until she found something. If Parseltongue could be used to command illusions to turn into a giant snake, Hermione would say, that meant someone had done it before, and that meant someone had written about it. Harry hadn’t realized how much he’d been counting on the reassurance of nice, sane information until the reassurance was gone. “You’re sure?”

Hermione nodded, giving him a soft look. “Why don’t you go back to bed? It’s Sunday.”

Harry gave a pointed look at the pile of books that surrounded her.

Hermione might have flushed the tiniest bit. “I’m different,” she said, and then placed her nose back in the tome in front of her, resolutely ignoring him. Harry thought the tome looked like some sort of history book.

Harry sighed and left her there, going back to their rooms with a scowl on his face. The Parseltongue necromancy might have spared his life when he was speaking about it to Portillo Lopez and her friends, but it was strange enough—and so was the dark shimmer at the back of his head—that he wanted answers.

The dark shimmer stayed, even though it had now been more than a week since they fought Nihil. Harry sometimes caught glimpses of floating figures out of the corner of his eye, too, although they always disappeared when he turned his head. He’d questioned Hermione and Ron as subtly as he could to find out if they saw them, too, and had got blank looks and shaking heads for his trouble.

Harry had told Draco about the visions; he was done having secrets from him. Draco had seemed to think it was connected to the vision of Nihil that Harry had already seen in the mirror, but he didn’t know how or why, either.

The figures often were misty and grey, clad in cowls, which made Harry worry that he was seeing Death Eaters at first. But the one face he’d caught a glimpse of was a terrified young girl’s, her lips parted and her eyes so wide that she looked ready to faint. Of course that had made him turn around faster, wanting to help, and of course that had meant she faded all the faster.

I just want some bloody answers, Harry thought as he stomped down the corridor that led to the door of his and Draco’s rooms. You’d think it wouldn’t be all that hard to get them, for once in my life. But no, even without Dumbledore around to conceal the secrets, strange things just keep happening to me.

Another flicker of movement showed in the corner of his eye. Harry whirled sharply towards it, wondering if he could take the floating figures off-guard if he just moved fast enough.

But it wasn’t a ghost, or whatever those figures really were. Instead, Roger Aran, the Spell Lexicon instructor, stood there, a bright scowl on his face. Harry gulped, wondering if he’d missed a lesson with him. Aran hadn’t really mentored him and Draco as such, just given them extra work and lectured at them, but he would still get angry if they missed an appointment.

“Listen,” Aran said. “I did not want to do this.”

“Sir?” Harry asked tentatively. The first thing he could think of was that Portillo Lopez had told the other instructors about his necromancy after all and sent Aran to find and arrest him. He was sure, now, that he hadn’t had an appointment to meet Aran for a lesson today.

“I never asked for this role,” Aran said. “The others would be angry if they knew.” Then he paused and shook his head as though conducting a silent argument with himself. “Of course, the whole point is that they don’t know.”

Harry put one hand on his wand, hoping it was unobtrusive. Aran might be dangerous; at the very least, he sounded a little unbalanced. “Sir?” he asked again, thinking that was his best bet right now.

Aran’s wand moved so smoothly and swiftly that Harry was still gaping at it when he heard the sound of the incantation. “Abdo donum aquilum,” Aran murmured.

Harry’s world vanished into a vortex of pain.