Chapter Seven of 'Seasons of War-' Spies, Arguments, and Other Exciting Things

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Six.

Title: Seasons of War (7/?)
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 Seven—Spies, Arguments, and Other Exciting Things

“He really said that?” Hermione spoke softly, her eyes on the ground as she played with her quill. They were waiting for Ketchum’s class to begin, and Harry had taken the chance to speak to her so that she would know what Draco had decided about torture.

“He really did,” Harry confirmed, peering over his shoulder at Draco. Draco stared back, eyes narrowing, and Harry waved before he turned back to Hermione. He didn’t think Draco would like it if he knew what Harry was doing, but he could put up with it for right now. “It took him a little while, and I had to point out that he hadn’t said he would torture people like Holder who had hurt me. But he agreed in the end.”

“Agreed to what?” Ron jogged up to join them, looking bright and flushed. He gave Hermione a beaming look. She tried to ignore him, but her cheeks turned pink in a way that told Harry what they’d been doing just before they came to class.

“Agreed to only use torture on a few people, the nonhuman servants of Nihil,” Harry said briskly. He didn’t want to leave a chance for Hermione to explain it, because he didn’t know if she would get it right or not. Sometimes he still thought she had a bias against Draco, however committed she was to working with him. “I had to persuade him, but he thought it out in the end and agreed that it was the only consistent position.”

“Harry.”

Draco stood behind him, and Harry knew he was angry just from the tone of his voice. He rolled his eyes at his friends and turned around, fixing his face in the most determinedly polite smile he could. “Yes?”

“They didn’t need to know that.” Draco was staring at both Ron and Hermione with lowered eyelids. They might make him look sleepy, but Harry knew the truth of that particular look by now. Draco was awake and ready to strike if he saw or heard something that displeased him. “Why did you tell them?”

“Because they might not trust me if I’d said that you changed your mind on your own,” Harry said. “They had to hear the process.”

“The less said about your process, the better,” Ron muttered.

Draco started to open his mouth, but Harry sighed and laid his hand on Draco’s arm. “He’s not talking about our argument process,” he said. “He’s talking about the ways and times we have sex.”

Draco closed his mouth again and swept Ron with an expert glance. “Perhaps you should consider not hanging advertisements for the world all over yourself first, Weasley, before you scold others for doing it.”

Ron turned from pink to red and started to snap back. This time, it was Hermione who stopped him, by leaning her head on his shoulder. Ron closed his mouth and turned away, one arm around Hermione’s waist. His silent stare at Draco was antagonistic, though.

“Great,” Harry muttered, and tried not to bury his head in his hands. Their classmates were already looking at him with curiosity, and he didn’t want to give them more room to stare or suspect a disagreement between the comitatus. “Do you have to do this?”

“They’re the ones who distrust me, not the other way around.” Draco folded his arms.

Harry waited until Draco wasn’t trying to stare off into the distance, caught his eye, and then snorted very loudly, twice.

Draco had the grace to grow a little pink. “Yes, well. Perhaps it’s mutual. But they’re the ones who tend to start the arguments. Have you forgotten that Granger still thinks you shouldn’t be dating me?”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t know if she thinks that anymore. She hasn’t said anything to me about it lately. The point, though, is that we should be able to put petty little rows like this aside by now and work with each other. Or do you want the comitatus to go into battle and then fall apart over who’s going to lead?”

“That question has already been solved, I thought,” Draco said, in what sounded like genuine surprise. “I am, of course.”

Harry sighed, but he didn’t get the chance to say anything, because Ketchum strode in just then, and they had to take their places in the circle around him like good little note-takers. Ketchum looked worn and tired, and Harry reckoned they weren’t the only ones trying to come up with good solutions to the problems surrounding the war with Nihil and failing.

On the other hand, he no longer thought that allying with the instructors was a solution to the problem, not when the instructors had their own superiors immediately at hand to please.

I can’t believe how cynical I’m becoming, Harry thought, and sat down next to Draco. Draco grabbed his hand and squeezed it. I thought I had Draco to be cynical for me.

Maybe it was just another example of the way they had traded roles, though. Now Draco was the leader, instead of Harry, the way people had expected him to be all throughout the war with Voldemort. Now Harry was the one who spent time trying to persuade his friends out of unreasonable assertions, instead of trying to persuade Draco. And now Draco was the one who had lost his family, instead of Harry being the only one.

Harry squeezed back.

*

“Much better,” Weston murmured when she passed Harry and Draco at the start of the Partnership Trust class that morning. “I can already tell that you will work better together than you have been. Because of this, we can spend more time with our hopeless cases.”

Draco tried to ignore the warmth that pulsed to life beneath his breastbone. He shouldn’t feel that way about a compliment from someone who had spent so much time defeating and hectoring him, trying to force him to change the way he fought and the way he communicated with his partner.

He felt it nevertheless.

In the middle of the expanse of mud that was their “classroom,” Weston and Lowell turned to stand side-by-side, eyes narrowed as they surveyed their students. Both of them had their hands planted on their hips, their heads turning slowly from side to side as though they were counting the little sighs and fidgets and eyerolls of everyone present. Draco vowed to himself to remember that tactic. It made them intimidating without a great deal of effort. He might be able to use it later in confrontations with Granger and Weasley.

“We must find you partners,” Weston said. “You will not be able to function as a fully trained Auror by yourself. For that reason, we will make the final selections today.”

Draco smiled. If he had not been partnered with Harry, he would have felt anxious at the words, concerned that they would partner him with someone who matched him in level of skill but hated him personally.

But he was outside the circle now, and could watch with high glee as Granger and Weasley, the first pair summoned by Weston and Lowell, shuffled forwards, heads hanging as if they expected a scolding.

“Now,” Weston said. “You are close to each other in level of skill, and your attachment to one another means that you are unlikely to work well with other students. Therefore, we are assigning you as partners.”

That wasn’t the outcome Draco had hoped for, but he had to admit that watching Weasley close his eyes and Granger tilt her head back in relief afforded him a secondary level of entertainment.

“You will have to work harder than most, to make sure that you concentrate on spells and not on simply being with one another,” Lowell told them.

Neither Weasley nor Granger seemed to hear. Draco snorted. It was good for them that they would be working with him and Harry in the comitatus. He and Harry had good combat experience as well as experience working together. They would be teachers by example for Granger and Weasley.

Lowell and Weston assigned more pairs, most of whom weren’t surprising to Draco after watching them practice together in class, and none of whom were interesting, until Lowell called, “Ursula Ventus and Robin Herricks.”

Draco blinked. Herricks was a quiet boy who had kept up with the exercises well enough but who had nothing like Ventus’s brilliance in battle. He watched in concern as they came forwards. It might be harder to keep Ventus in the comitatus if she had a partner who insisted on tagging along with her everywhere.

Or perhaps there was a growing romantic attachment between Ventus and Herricks, and he had simply missed it. That romantic attachment seemed to be Lowell and Weston’s motivation for some of the other pairs they’d assigned.

But no, as they stood side-by-side, Ventus simply looked bored. Herricks looked nervous and afraid, shifting from foot to foot and glancing over his shoulder as though he expected someone to charge up on a white horse and rescue him from this unwanted situation.

“This is the most unexpected choice we have made, I know,” Weston said, voice soft as she looked at them. “You have spent little time practicing together, in part because Ventus prefers not to work with others.”

“I prefer to work by myself, yes,” said Ventus, sounding utterly unabashed. Draco could wish that he had her indifference to criticism.

Then he shot a sideways glance at Harry. On the other hand, with that indifference, I might not have the best thing in my life.

Weston sighed, but Draco thought she was concealing a smile. “I believe that we have made the best choice for other reasons,” she said. “Please step away from us and face each other. Herricks, cast a Shield Charm while Ventus tries to strike you with an offensive spell.”

“What kind of offensive spell?” Ventus looked and sounded interested for the first time.

“It doesn’t matter,” Lowell said. “I think you’ll spot the reason for our decision no matter which one you use.”

Ventus smiled and spun her wand between her hands, studying Herricks as he stood in front of her. Draco saw that he had large, weak blue eyes, prone to watering, and despised him even more. He swallowed and glanced at the instructors. “When should I raise the Shield Charm?” he asked. “Now, or when I see the spell coming?”

“When you see the spell coming.” Weston leaned back against an imaginary post, the way she had a habit of doing in some of the private training sessions with Draco and Harry. “And Ventus, cast whenever you’re ready.”

Herricks swallowed again. Ventus spun her wand some more, then tossed it up lightly and caught it. Draco didn’t hear the spell when she cast it, and he hoped that was because she had cast nonverbally and not because he had been distracted by her wand-spinning technique, which he knew was a distraction.

The spell hissed, a thick stream of directed smoke that arrowed in towards Herricks’s ankles. It was a spell that Draco hadn’t seen before, and he wondered how well the Shield Charm would work against it. Weston and Lowell might have given Herricks bad advice by restricting him to one spell. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time.

But the Shield Charm slammed into existence, and Draco blinked. He didn’t think Harry could have done a better one. It was a thick, glowing wall, not translucent the way it usually was, and it dissipated Ventus’s spell around to the sides, rather than bouncing it back the way most of those Draco had seen did.

Ventus leaned forwards on her toes to peer at the spell, then looked up at Herricks again. “You didn’t tell me you could do that,” she said, in a mildly accusatory tone.

“Of course I can do that.” Herricks’s face was much better with a shot of indignation, Draco thought, and wondered if the instructors had noticed that before now. “Everyone can do that, if they try.”

Draco exchanged a glance with Harry, who smiled a little and shook his head. If he thought he couldn’t do such a strong Shield Charm, then Draco was inclined to believe him, though also to believe that he might achieve one with a bit of practice.

“And that is the reason that we partnered you,” Weston said, looking back and forth across the class as if daring anyone to disagree with her and Lowell’s choice. “Ventus is good at offensive magic almost exclusively, Herricks at defensive magic almost exclusively. They will have to work together to develop their capacities to the highest degree and learn how to interact with one another, but they will be a strong team in the end.”

“I’ll accept him, until I see that he’s falling behind,” Ventus said. Lowell gave her a quelling glance, but she didn’t notice, as she didn’t notice most things, Draco thought. She was at least studying Herricks with an interested expression, which Lowell and Weston might realize was a triumph when it came to her.

“And I’ll do the same for you,” Herricks retorted, raking a hand through his hair as if pushing it out of his eyes would make him braver.

Ventus smiled amiably and took him over in a corner to practice. Draco half-closed his eyes and began to imagine how they would integrate Herricks’s defensive skills into a battle.

If he could be trusted to be Ventus’s partner in everything. If we can really make him part of the comitatus. Strong skills or not, he might not agree with what we’re doing.

Draco was pleased with himself. He was acknowledging that other people had their own emotions and ambitions and might not want to bow to his needs. That was being a good leader, he thought.

*

Harry would have found it hard to say why he’d followed Holder when he saw her striding across the camp, her face set in a grim line. After all, he’d seen her walking about the camp with orders or messages from Robards before, and never had the urge to follow.

But this time, he did.

He tried to make sure that she had no reason to glance over her shoulder by stopping to talk to Ketchum and Portillo Lopez on the way, and wandering along rather than walking purposefully like she did, his eyes on the ground. But it was wasted effort. She never looked around, even to make sure that she wasn’t going to bump into someone.

Of course, she probably doesn’t need to worry about that when everyone gets out of her way anyway, Harry thought, as he cast a Disillusionment Charm over himself and settled near the flap of Robards’s tent. He wasn’t going to cast any eavesdropping charms, which they probably had wards to detect; he just thought he’d overhear anything he could from simply listening.

“I have the list that you requested, sir.” Holder’s voice was almost polite. Harry heard the rustle of parchment. “Very few of the trainee pairs will be ready to face Nihil by the end of this season. I would say none, but there are exceptions, such as Potter and Malfoy.”

Harry stared in blank amazement, although he couldn’t see anything through the flap without moving his head, which he didn’t want to do in case they heard something. She’s complimenting us? And she didn’t immediately fall dead of the effort?

“Their readiness for this war is not the only consideration,” Robards said. “How many of the current trainee pairs will be ready for work as full-time Aurors after the war’s end?”

“More,” Holder said. “But they and the battle-ready pairs do not overlap. Sir, if you follow my advice, you’ll cast Potter and Malfoy out of the trainee program at the end of the war. They’re too independent. They won’t follow orders or correct procedure. They might be the saving of us all from Nihil, but they’ll use excessive force with ordinary Dark wizards when they have to arrest them, and never see anything wrong with it.”

Harry rolled his eyes. Oh, yes, I see. She compliments us, but only so she can follow it up with a complaint a moment later.

Still, he was a bit shaken to think that Holder believed he and Draco might save them all. He wasn’t sure it was a responsibility he wanted, of course, but Holder and Robards wouldn’t care about that.

“We will see what must come of it, Alice,” Robards said, with a snap in his voice that Harry recognized. Dumbledore had sounded the same way with McGonagall sometimes, or McGonagall with Snape.

“Of course, sir,” Holder said, with no sign that she was subdued. “But I am making a list of Potter and Malfoy’s strengths and deficiencies to present to you soon. I trust that you will read it?”

“Yes.”

That seemed to be all the answer Holder required, because she came out of the flap of the tent a moment later. Harry stifled his instinct to scramble away immediately; Ketchum had taught them that panicked retreat on the battlefield or when in hiding was one sure way to get the enemy to hear you. Harry knew he was enough out of the way that Holder wouldn’t trip over the corner of his cloak.

Nor did she. She went on her way, still looking neither to right nor to left, one hand on her hip and face settled in an abstract frown.

Harry let out a slow breath and then went to find Draco, who with all luck should be in their tent.

Of course this turned out to be the one time when he wasn’t. Harry hesitated in the flap, then turned and headed for the small tent where they were keeping Nusquam.

*

“I don’t understand why you can’t use this Legilimency to read Nihil’s mind through his servant.”

Draco sighed and resisted the temptation to press his hand over his eyes. He wanted to explain that the answer to Gregory’s question wasn’t as simple as she thought it was, but the problem was, he would still have to simplify it a little, and he didn’t know how he was going to do that.

“Because,” he said, with what he thought was iron patience, “Nihil’s mind isn’t human. His constructs’ minds are closer to it, if only because they have human bodies and he’d need them to be able to act and look normal in various situations, not just like part of him. But we can’t reach out through them to him without entering a realm where he would be in control. We tried it once, Harry and I. Harry nearly died.”

“But you used a spell, you said.” Gregory was staring at Nusquam, as she had been since they entered the tent. She never even looked away from her to argue with Draco. “This time, you have a stronger link.”

Draco shook his head. “I won’t try it. The risk is too great.”

“Then how can you wonder that we have so little information?” Gregory moved her fingers as though dismissing what Draco had gathered so far, about the means of transportation past the wards and the specific rituals with Catherine Arrowshot that Nusquam had been involved in. “We need more than this.”

“And we’ll get it when we’ve refined and developed our torture techniques,” Draco said, choosing the topic as one he thought likely to distract her.

Gregory smiled. “Yes. There is something else that I wanted to try.” She faced Nusquam, who was looking down at the floor of the tent as though the patterns in the mud and drifted snow would tell her how to escape. She raised her wand.

Nusquam shook her head. “This will end,” she said in a weary voice. “You cannot continue to torture me forever. Sooner or later he will claim me back and destroy me.”

“How will he do that?” Draco asked, thinking it would do no harm to speak the question. “Reabsorb you? Will you ever come out again?”

Nusquam’s expression was still pure hatred during the moments when she forgot herself. Then again, Draco thought, she seemed more afraid of Gregory than of him. He wondered if he ought to take that as an insult or a compliment. “You understand nothing about the transformation that we have gone through.”

Draco tucked away the word transformation in the back of his mind to think about later, and smiled temperately at her. “I don’t see why we can’t discover it for ourselves. It was an accident that Nihil became what he did. He wasn’t a great magical genius who discovered this because of his experiments.”

Gregory was holding still, he noticed. At least she was wise enough to look past her obsession with pain and realize when Nusquam was giving him useful information.

“You have no idea what he is,” Nusquam spat. “Your lover found part of the truth, but there is so much more than that.”

“I don’t think there is,” Draco said. “Why should there be? You go behind death. You go beyond and through it, in the way that Harry described so graphically when I asked him about it. There’s no reason that we can’t understand and duplicate that by drawing on Harry’s memories of it. In fact,” he added, seeing no reason why he shouldn’t lie to an enemy, “that’s what Harry is working on at the moment.”

Nusquam’s eyes widened, and she sat very still for a moment. Gregory crept forwards, eyes focused on her throat as if she were going to try a strangling spell.

Then Nusquam threw her head back, ignoring the pressure of the bonds above her throat that cut off her breath when she did so, and bellowed, “Master!”

The air and the ground thrummed. The tent twisted sideways. Draco reached down and locked his hands in the mud, even as he shut his eyes and felt the spinning stop. It was purely a sense phenomenon, then, something happening in and through their heads rather than in the physical world around them.

Gregory didn’t seem to know that, and cast a curse. Draco didn’t hear it strike anything. But the tent was full of wild, roaring noises now, and he was listening desperately, trying to tell the real from the false, trying to sort out what was happening.

And then—

Then cold washed the tent, and Draco had to open his eyes because he wanted to see what was happening in front of him.

Nusquam still sat before them in bonds, but her face was gone. In its place hovered the sickly yellow mask of glamours that Draco had seen Nihil use before when he wanted to appear in person.

“If you wish to know what it is like to transform,” he whispered, “you are welcome.”

And an invisible arm lashed out, caught Draco, and dragged him into cold and darkness.