Chapter Five of 'Seasons of War'- Learning From Nusquam

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Four.

Title: Seasons of War (5/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, torture, sex, angst, profanity, ignores the DH epilogue.
Summary: The war against Nihil enters its final stages, Harry and Draco train as partners, and they may actually survive to become effective Aurors. Maybe.
Author’s Notes: This is the final part of the Running to Paradise Trilogy, sequel to Ceremonies of Strife, and won’t make much sense if you haven’t read the first two stories. I don’t yet know how long this one will be, but based on the others, I’m guessing 45 to 50 chapters.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Five—Learning From Nusquam

Draco could not remember the last time he had been this excited. His heartbeat was visible as a blurring in his chest when he looked down (at least before he put his shirt and robe back on). He could not stop smiling, and he reached out several times to put his hand on Harry’s shoulder so that Harry could help him balance.

He was aware that Harry was looking at him in concern, but Draco felt he could safely dismiss that. He wasn’t going to fall over or faint. It was just that they finally had the chance to learn more than the instructors or Nihil had permitted them to so far, and he was going to take advantage of it for as long as he could, before Nihil came up with some means to recapture Nusquam or kill her.

And Draco was the one who had made it possible.

He wasn’t weak. He wasn’t dispensable. He wasn’t incompetent, the way duels with the instructors could too often make him feel. He was himself, with his own set of skills, and if they were skills that others would judge him as evil for, that didn’t matter. Most of them had probably already judged him as evil for being a former servant of the Dark Lord.

He wasn’t beholden to anyone for this triumph, and it made him feel as if he were walking on light.

The first question, of course, was how to hide Nusquam. Draco had already thought of several possibilities, but Harry was the one who gave him his final idea.

“Aran said that Nihil was like a plant with tendrils twining in every direction,” he murmured, staring unhappily at Nusquam. She had fainted and hung in Draco and Harry’s binding spells, swaying gently back and forth. “How are we going to keep him from deciding to wither this one?”

Draco paused, then smiled. “Have you ever seen what they do with a climbing plant that they want to go in a certain specific direction?”

“No,” Harry said, looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “I didn’t grow up in a house with elves for the gardeners.”

Draco rolled his eyes. He thought Harry had mostly adapted to Draco being pure-blood and having more money than he did, but every so often he would come out with something like this. “It’s a perfectly ordinary technique,” he said. “For all I know, Muggles use it, and wizards may have picked it up first from them.”

That was an incredibly generous concession for him to make, and Harry obviously knew it. He blinked. “All right. Tell me.”

“They train the tendrils of the climbing plant to run around the pillars, posts, and gates that they choose for it,” Draco said softly, gazing down at Nusquam. She was starting to recover, so Draco Stunned her, wondering if Nihil already knew what had happened. Perhaps he was more reluctant to destroy someone he had grown out of himself, in a way, rather than someone whose body he had taken over, as with Aran. “It’s very simple. All you need to do is grab enough of the tendrils and weave them in different directions without breaking them.”

“Nusquam doesn’t have tendrils,” Harry said, as if he thought Draco might not have noticed.

Draco shot him a look of intense irritation, and noticed then that he was still hard. That made Draco feel a bit better about his own level of excitement and inability to communicate with Harry. Harry’s head was still swimming with hormones, of course, and he would be thinking about their interrupted session in bed more than about what they should be doing with Nusquam. “I know that. But she does have magic.”

“You’re going to bind her magic to something the way you’d bind the tendrils of a plant?” Harry blinked. “But what kind of pillar or post or gate would hold her?”

“Well done,” Draco murmured, impressed in spite of himself. “Yes, exactly. And I think a stake of pain should hold her.”

“Like the spell that you performed to make her relive her torture?” Harry was obviously trying to sound sophisticated and experienced in magical theory at the moment, and Draco bit his lip, because it was adorable.

“This one will be more physical,” Draco said, and waved his wand. A sharp corner of air came together and tapped Nusquam’s cheek, waking her from the stupor that Draco had cast her into.

“Ah, good, you’re awake,” Draco said, as cheerfully as though it was a coincidence. Harry had gone still beside him, and just watched. Draco wasn’t sure what his attitude towards the torture was yet, and didn’t intend asking until he felt like seeing Harry struggle with his words and morals. “Feel this. Configo bracchios!”

Nusquam screamed and lunged forwards as a large iron spike manifested and drove through both her hands at the wrist. Draco watched, half-expecting, half-hoping for some spasm of fear or revulsion in himself like the one that he knew Granger would feel.

Nothing happened, though, save a slight shiver of distaste at the sight of the blood. He simply didn’t care about the physical safety of people who had tried to hurt him and those he cared for more than once. He had warned the others about that, and they had chosen to ignore the warning. Well, they might.

He Levitated Nusquam into the air and then began casting the spells that would weave her magic around the spike, tying her to the physical pain, to the iron, and to the metal as it existed. He dug into her magical core, glad that she was enough like a human to have one. It made things much easier.

When he put her back down, her power was knotted so firmly around the spike that Draco thought it would probably be impossible to drag her away. Of course, Nihil had accomplished many things that were supposed to be impossible, but Draco thought this would be harder for him to overcome because of the associations of pain.

He turned to Harry, and found him sitting with his eyes averted.

“Is it the blood?” Draco asked quietly. “Or the screams? Or the fact that you simply don’t like seeing anyone abused?” He would call it by the name abuse if Harry wanted him to. He was willing to do that.

“None of that,” Harry said, as if startled, and he looked back at Draco. “It’s the fact that it’s you doing it.”

Draco blinked. “But you knew I was like this,” he said. “You knew that I care about very few people. Those I care about, I will defend. Those I don’t, I can hurt without remorse.”

“Yes, I knew that,” Harry said, in a murmur that Draco had to work to hear. “I just didn’t realize how much like that you were.”

Suddenly irritated, Draco stood up and once again Levitated Nusquam into the air, draping her with a Disillusionment Charm. They would have to move slowly through the camp, but they should make it at this point in the evening, when most of the trainees were resting and most of the instructors were planning how to make things even more difficult for them the next morning. “Then you come up with a way to get the information we need from someone who’s absolutely loyal to Nihil, and I’ll listen to you. Come on.”

*

Draco had said he was cold. He had warned and warned Harry, but somehow, Harry hadn’t paid enough attention or realized all it meant, probably because Draco was so kind to him most of the time.

And even then, Harry thought, as he followed Draco’s slow progress through the tents towards the edge of the camp, we have our rows, and he has his rough edges. But I would never have thought he could do something like this.

What Harry thought of when he saw torture wasn’t the way he would suffer if he was the one in the place of the victim, the way Draco seemed to assume. He was thinking of the way he had suffered, when Voldemort used the Cruciatus Curse or when Dudley rained down blows until Harry couldn’t catch his breath. It wasn’t as horrible as what Draco was doing to Nusquam, of course not, but Harry wouldn’t wish the way he had felt in those moments on anyone.

And Draco had tortured before, when Voldemort ordered him to and he didn’t have a choice. Harry would have thought he would remember those moments and not be able to harden himself anymore than he’d been able to when Voldemort gave the orders.

On the other hand, he had done it, hadn’t he? Harry could think of some people, like Hermione, who would rather die than do it.

Conflicted, miserable, silent, Harry followed Draco across the camp, and then blinked when they ended up in front of a small tent lying half-collapsed on the ground. A stray fireball had torn through it the other day, and left so little that the tent couldn’t be put back up. Harry had assumed that the scraps of singed cloth had been thrown away already.

“We’ll salvage what we can and put her in here,” Draco whispered, almost directly into Harry’s ear. “Then weave the whole with Notice-Me-Not Charms. I don’t think they’ll have to be very strong. This isn’t a high-traffic area, and most of the people around us are too distracted and afraid to examine little mysteries.”

Harry nodded. It was a better solution than he would have thought of, and it let them control who would see her. If the instructors knew they had Nusquam, they would take her away, and lose her, and then probably accuse both Harry and Draco of being traitors.

Harry was not sure what Ron and Hermione’s reaction would be when they saw the way Draco had decided to hold Nusquam. Ventus probably wouldn’t care.

Draco Levitated Nusquam over to the side and, together, they used their compatible magic to lift the scraps of the tent and repair it as best they could. Harry shivered. The Reparo rolling from his lips, and the immediate wash of power down his spine, made him feel as if he were bathing in cold, sweet water. Why hadn’t he and Draco used their magic more like this outside of battle?

Because battle is what we’ve had to do to stay alive, he reminded himself, and no longer felt so guilty.

When the tent was standing, the cracks in the cloth sealed—although it was only large enough now for one person—Draco levered Nusquam into it. He let Harry cast more binding spells and Silencing Charms, although he insisted that sinking the iron stake into the ground and leaving her entwined with those spells to reinforce pain would be enough.

“If Nihil can get through this, then we’ll have to think of something better,” Draco said, when Harry asked what would happen if they returned in the morning and found Nusquam gone. He sounded utterly undismayed.

Harry nodded, and then followed Draco back to their own tent, ducking around the sentries. It was easier than it should have been, but Harry knew that was partially because the wards had been tied to the oath they’d taken before they came here. Anyone who had sworn it could go easily back and forth. Anyone who hadn’t would be pinned in place by lights, binding charms, and high-pitched shrieks from the wards called shrills.

Draco kissed him once they got back and whispered, “We’ll make love tomorrow, all right? I think we’ve had enough excitement for one night.”

Harry nodded and smiled, and lay still in the bed until he thought Draco had fallen asleep. Then he got up and went to sit in one of the chairs. He needed to think, and shifting around next to Draco would usually wake him up.

Was this right?

Harry didn’t know. There were answers of different kinds everywhere he looked. Torture was wrong. He didn’t want anyone to suffer as he had. That was a given. He could have agreed with Hermione, had she gone that far, without hesitation.

The problem was, Nihil and his followers didn’t think torture was wrong. They would hurt and kill as much as they could without any problems, because Nihil wanted to destroy everything. If Harry and Draco and the rest of the comitatus swore they would never perform torture, they deprived themselves of one of the few weapons that could work against Nihil. The only one they would have left was Harry’s not-quite-necromancy.

And Harry was so tired of the fate of the world resting on his shoulders alone.

Besides, would the rest of the Aurors agree with them? Harry didn’t think Holder would. She had no problem practically torturing him, and he was supposedly on her side. Draco could make his vow like a good little moral person, but Holder and Robards wouldn’t understand and would probably force him to break it.

But maybe that was all too easy, too convenient. Wasn’t doing the right thing supposed to be hard?

Harry shut his eyes. If he concentrated, he could bring back how the Forbidden Forest had felt, surrounding him, as he walked towards his meeting with Voldemort and what he thought at the time would be permanent death. His steps stabbed down to the earth, and even seeing the shades of the dead when he used the Resurrection Stone made him feel pierced by sadness, though it had made the walk a bit easier.

That had been the hardest thing he’d ever done, but at the same time, it was clear. After he saw Snape’s memories, Harry had no doubt what he should do. He still could have refused and run away, but there were only two choices.

Here, he had a bunch of different choices, and there were arguments for all of them, just enough to paralyze him.

He opened his eyes and looked at Draco, comfortably asleep in their bed. He looked peaceful in the dim light of Harry’s wand, his eyes shut and his chest slowly moving and his face not showing any of the lines of pain or torment that were supposed to be there after you tortured someone.

I think that’s the best thing I can do for right now, Harry decided slowly. Watch him and try to keep him from going too far—although I don’t know what “too far” is, either. Maybe I’ll know it when I see it. I hope I will.

But until I can get some clear answers one way or the other, until I can be sure that I’m not just making things worse by reacting, then I don’t see what else I could do.

He climbed back into the bed. Draco curled up to him, probably drawn by nothing more than the warmth, but it still made Harry stroke his hair and neck for a long time before he fell asleep himself.

*

“I can’t believe you did that to her.”

Draco found that he didn’t feel quite as much triumph in the face of Granger’s soft, shocked voice and wide eyes as he had thought he would.

Weasley was quieter than Granger was—Draco thought Granger would find words at the ending of the world—but paler. He had taken one look at the spike that bound Nusquam’s wrists and magic and then walked away to the other side of the tent. Or ducked away, more properly, because the tent, even with the addition of wizardspace, was hardly big enough to contain them all. He stood there with his head hanging and one hand playing restlessly with his wand, as if he wanted to hurt someone but didn’t know who.

Ventus had looked at the situation, shrugged, and then knelt in front of Nusquam, using her wand to lift the other woman’s head. “What can we learn from her?” she asked calmly, eye to eye and not flinching, despite Nusquam’s glare.

“I’ve already learned how they keep getting through the wards,” Draco said. “Links, focused on particular people. To break those links, the person will need Finite Incantatem cast on them by several different people.”

“Ask her about Catherine Arrowshot,” Harry said suddenly.

Draco glanced up at him. Harry was leaning against the central pole of the tent, his arms folded as though trying to keep out a chill. He was looking at Nusquam, though, not Draco, which made Draco feel slightly better about his clenched teeth and shuddering shoulders.

“Yes, I could do that,” said Draco. It was a suggestion, a place to begin, and no one else had offered one. Ventus seemed content to let him take the lead, as always. He knelt down in front of Nusquam.

She stared at him as if she was trying to poison him with her eyes. Draco smiled. He might have been affected, but the Dark Lord’s eyes were the ones he saw in his nightmares.

“Do you remember the last time I asked for information from you?” he asked calmly. “We can do that again. Or you can volunteer the information.” He laid his wand against her cheek and waited for her decision.

“You have no reason to trust me even if I did speak the truth.” Nusquam’s voice was hoarse, and she paused to trace her lips with her tongue. “I will surrender nothing to you. You must take it.”

“As you wish,” Draco said with a regretful little shrug. He didn’t much enjoy this method, as it was confusing to employ and time-consuming, but it was the only way she had given him. “Legilimens dolens!”

This variation of Legilimency was really what the Ministry had moved to outlaw, Draco knew, though they had gone too far as usual and covered all Legilimency with the same blanket. It tore into the victim, filling their minds with pain as it scattered the memories and brought the ones the Legilimens was most interested in to the forefront. Memories could end up damaged, the brain torn open and bleeding magic.

But it worked, you had to say that for it.

He rode down darkness in a wheel of knives, and the pain that he felt was distant from him, the contracting, dying spasms of Nusquam’s mind as she tried to fight him off, and failed. Draco thought absently that this technique might be even more effective on someone like her, who feared pain so much, than it was on others.

Memories drifted before him like filthy patches of smoke, and Draco reached up and curled his fingers around the nearest one. Cold and pain passed briefly over him, then dissolved into solidity.

He could see Catherine Arrowshot’s face in a dark room, then in a bright one, then in a dark one again. And then more visions appeared, more and more: visions of Arrowshot being tortured, made to bow, laid down and strapped to beds or racks, or taunted by a faceless presence Draco had to assume was Nihil.

Draco sighed and pulled back, hovering. He had recovered the information about Apparating inside wards without trouble, but he was starting to think that was because Nusquam had been primarily responsible for its development. She seemed to be more distant from other thoughts in Nihil’s mind.

Tell me, he said. Tell me what you had to do with her.

He spoke the spell again, and this time the knives dived into a squealing, churning hunk of flesh and hauled it towards him. Draco reached out and grasped it in his hand as before, but this time it became a vision that made him blink and squint with its brightness.

Nusquam stood beside a chair in which Arrowshot, as usual, was strapped. There was a bored expression on Nusquam’s face, and she several times glanced over at the wall as if checking a clock that was invisible from the angle Draco was seeing the memory at. Arrowshot looked agonized, as usual.

“I am ready to begin,” Nusquam said, apparently because it was important that the air should know that, and then stepped forwards and knelt, taking Arrowshot’s head between her hands.

Arrowshot tried to thrash, but a single word froze her in place. Then Nusquam was gazing into her eyes, and she was weeping, and Draco began to understand what he was seeing when Nusquam parted her lips and blew once, then again, on Arrowshot’s hair.

Two pieces of the hair came free and drifted towards Nusquam. Nusquam caught them both and braided them around her fingers. Then she began a soundless chant over them, while at the same time gesturing with her wand towards Arrowshot, weaving a complex pattern of spirals Draco didn’t try to memorize. Now that the memory was essentially his as well as Nusquam’s, he knew that he could put it into a Pensieve and study it again whenever he needed to.

The spirals solidified and became real, puffing out sparks and smoke that made Draco glad he wasn’t trying to spy on this memory in person; he would have coughed and given himself away if he had. They reached out and joined with the hairs around Nusquam’s fingers, which she had, Draco saw, wound in the same shapes. Light began to vibrate back and forth between the hair and the spirals of magic, apparently rendering them both more real.

Then Nusquam lifted her head and spoke two names in a bright, chilling voice that made Draco lose any doubts he might have about torturing her. “Harry Potter. Draco Malfoy.”

The spirals leaped together and formed two hanging chains of what looked like brass links, though Draco would never have tried to describe them that way to anyone else. Nusquam stood up, spun the chains, and then lashed out with both at once, as though trying to lasso two necks. She vanished with a crack that sounded like the crack of Apparition.

Draco took a deep breath and pulled his mind back from Nusquam’s memory. He had no doubt that he had just seen what Nusquam had done before she came here. Obviously, there was a variety of ways to make the links to people that would carry her and her kind past the anti-Apparition wards—Draco had seen others yesterday—but this one was too fresh not to be recent.

It also pointed to another reason that Arrowshot might have been taken. She had associated with both Harry and Draco. Perhaps the link was simpler to create, or stronger, if constructed from the body of a person who had been their ally.

Draco opened his eyes and studied Nusquam. She had settled on a mixture of terror and hatred that Draco would have found frightening on the Dark Lord’s face. Once again, she was not the Dark Lord.

“I think we should break the links now,” he said. “The links that allow Nusquam and Nihil to Apparate past the wards into buildings and camps, I mean. She may be the one who knows how to use them best, but there is nothing to prevent the others from coming when they realize that she’s truly a captive.”

“Shouldn’t you have done this last night?” Granger asked, her voice harsh. “Rather than torturing her? Shouldn’t breaking the links be the higher priority?”

Draco shook his head. “Not when breaking them requires so much help. And not when we’ll have to think up reasons to convince the other people they have links to to let us do it.” He drew his wand and looked at Harry. “But Harry and I are two of those people. We can begin it, at least.”

Harry nodded and stepped forwards. “What do I have to do?”

Draco smiled. At least someone here had some bloody trust in him.

“Stand under my wand,” he said. “No one can break their own link. Someone who knows the procedure will have to do it for them.”

Harry stood under the wand without hesitation. Draco touched his cheek and looked into his face for a moment, until he was sure Harry understood what he was trying, without words, to say. Then he breathed into his nostrils and reached out to pluck a hair from his head. Harry winced, but didn’t complain.

“Finite Incantatem,” Draco began, only the beginning of a long, long process.

And Harry stood there and let him do it, while Granger and Weasley averted their eyes when they came over to cast the Finites on Harry and Ventus watched with impatient reverence.

This is the way it will have to be for right now, Draco thought during a pause in the chanting, when Weasley and Ventus were trading off. But sooner or later, I should be able to persuade them to my side. Torturing her in this way has not harmed me so far.