Chapter Twelve of 'Seasons of War'- A Series of Small Arguments

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Eleven.

Title: Seasons of War (12/?)
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 Twelve—A Series of Small Arguments

“Harry—”

“No.”

Well, that was quick, Draco thought in annoyance. He sat down beside Harry, who’d had his back turned to him and his arms folded for about fifteen minutes no. Draco had tried to start other topics, but Harry had always sensed that they would lead into the one he didn’t want to talk about and had refused to respond. Then Draco had tried simply speaking to him, and he shut that down.

He would have to get used to talking about it, though, because it was a good idea, something they needed to do, and Draco wasn’t simply going to give it up.

For a few moments, Draco was silent, thinking of his next strategy, and gazing absently across the camp in front of them. This camp was more interesting than the last; it had small hills ringing it, and Harry often went to sit on one of them when he needed to brood—that is, think, Draco amended it in his mind. He would get along better with Harry if he wasn’t automatically dismissive of him.

Soft green grass was just beginning to come out on the hills, and the sky was milder and bluer than Draco could remember seeing it for months. A few clouds floated directly above the hill in front of them, gamboling about with the wind as if they were substituting for sheep. Draco felt his muscles relax as he gazed at it. Yes, he could see why Harry liked this view.

“I don’t want to do it for more reasons than you know.”

Draco started, but took care to keep his eyes straight ahead. Turning to look at Harry right now might put too much pressure on him, and he didn’t want to do that. He simply grunted, as if it didn’t matter to him whether or not Harry chose to talk about this.

“I mean,” Harry said, and then trailed off. Draco clenched his right hand into a fist at his side, where Harry couldn’t see it, and forced himself to wait. Harry made a sound as if he were clearing his throat and continued, “During the war, I was able to see into Voldemort’s head through the link that existed between us. Mostly due to my scar, but also to the—the piece of his soul that I carried inside me.”

Even now it’s hard for him to talk about that, Draco thought, frowning. Why? Are the memories of the visions that bad? Or does he think that he’s somehow tainted because he got a piece of the Dark Lord’s soul buried inside him without his consent?

“This would be like doing that again,” Harry whispered. “Exposing myself to something evil for the war effort. I survived it last time, but barely. Voldemort could have turned the connection around, opened it, and made me betray everything that I knew. That’s—that’s what he did in my fifth year, when he gave me a false vision of my godfather being in trouble. That’s what got Sirius killed, because I dashed off to the Department of Mysteries thinking he was there. What if Nihil did something like that again? I don’t think it’s worth the risk, Draco.”

Draco edged nearer and wrapped an arm around Harry. Harry leaned against him with a sigh. Draco stroked his shoulder for a moment and hoped that Harry didn’t think this meant he’d given up on his idea, because he hadn’t.

“I didn’t know that,” Draco said. “But with these visions, you’ll have someone right beside you to tell you if something goes wrong.”

Harry chuckled darkly. “Hermione tried to tell me that something was wrong with the vision of Sirius, too. I didn’t listen to her. And can you be inside my head every single hour of the day? If Nihil sends me a vision or starts changing my thoughts, are you going to know?” He shook his head so that his hair rustled against Draco’s neck. “It’s just no good, Draco. I’m terrified of sharing my head with him, and his mind is so non-human that it almost destroyed me once before when I touched it. I won’t do it.”

Draco licked his lips. It was still a good idea, he felt, but he had underestimated the depth of Harry’s resistance.

“Harry,” he said softly. “I would be right by your side. I would do everything I could to help you. Will you please think about making a part of your mind at least similar to Nihil’s? Will you do the preliminary work while Granger and I and the rest of the comitatus try to come up with ways to make it safer?”

Harry stiffened. Draco waited, but his waiting, this time, resulted in Harry shoving him away and whirling around. Draco sprawled on the earth, blinking up as Harry bent over him, his face dark with rage.

“I told you all this that I’ve never told anyone before,” Harry said softly. “All this that I wouldn’t tell someone other than you who’d suggested it. I trust you more than my own best friends, Draco. I trust you more than the rest of the comitatus. You’re my leader and my lover and my friend. And still you’re urging me to do something that’s both dangerous and likely impossible? Still you’re acting as though it would be perfectly all right for me to do?”

“We don’t know how dangerous it is,” Draco said, getting his hands and knees under him and keeping a cautious eye on Harry as he struggled to stand. “I wouldn’t send you into danger without being sure.”

“You’re trying to do that now.” Harry’s eyes could burn when he was angry. Draco stared, wondering why he’d never seen that before, and then winced as he realized that it was probably because he’d never made Harry this angry. “Look, I understand that we need to know what Nihil is up to. But there’s one other option that we could try. We know he likes to hide in the old Death Eater caches. And we have a map of them. We could at least try to spy on him that way before we send me into his mind.”

Draco shook his head. “I think that would be more dangerous,” he said.

“Why?” Harry was practically spitting. “Because this way, I’m the only one who gets damaged, and I should be able to fucking handle that? Because you want to protect the precious skins of the rest of the comitatus, but mine doesn’t matter?”

“Yours matters more to me than anyone’s!” Draco snapped. He hadn’t been angry before, but he could feel the emotion stirring in him now, far beneath the surface, a glow of cold light that was slowly rising. “Or haven’t I proved that already by the way I try to take care of you?”

“You seem to believe it some of the time and ignore it the rest.” Harry regarded him with bleak eyes. “You want me to do this because it was your idea, I think, more than anything. When I tell you that I won’t, that should be enough reason for you to back off and seek a different solution, but you won’t.”

Draco opened his mouth so hard that his jaw clicked, then shut it again. “Yes,” he said. “Well. I think it’s a good idea.”

“But not the only one we can have,” Harry said. “Admit it. How much of your opposition to my cache-hunting idea is that you didn’t think of it first?”

Draco scowled. At times it was hard to have someone around who knew him so well. “What would you suggest, then? We can’t just search all the caches randomly. He’ll know that we’re coming if we pick the wrong one and then botch something in our search.”

“We need information about what he’s doing,” Harry said calmly, “not to find him. I suggest that we study spells that will allow us to read the memories of objects, and then we’d be able to figure out who touched them last and what traces of magic they were carrying around with them. What?” he added, when Draco hesitated. “Don’t those spells exist? I know that Weston said something about them the other day, when she was talking about the ways for partners to leave messages behind for each other when they’re separated.”

Draco fidgeted in place. “It would take a long time to study and master those spells,” he said. He didn’t want to reveal his true objection, which was that Harry wouldn’t be able to learn the magical theory behind them.

“Longer than it would take me to make my mind similar to Nihil’s, especially when he’s not human and I don’t want to do it?” Harry countered instantly.

Draco thought about it, then conceded the point with a nod and stood. Harry clasped his arm to help him. When he got up, they stood there a moment looking into each other’s eyes. Draco watched the way that Harry’s breath ruffled his fringe and tried to understand the mixture of love, annoyance, and anger he felt.

“I do love you,” Harry said, smiling at him. “But sometimes you’re so stubbornly attached to your own ideas that it’s difficult to communicate with you.”

Draco could feel his jaw trying to fall open at the hypocrisy. He thought it was best to lean forwards and kiss Harry, so that that wouldn’t happen.

*

“I just want to know whether you’re capable of leading in battle. I thought it was a fairly basic question.”

Harry closed his eyes and massaged his forehead. He had to admit that Herricks was standing up for himself and his partner, nothing else, and that he had every right to do so. But his row with Draco had been going on for an hour now.

Of course, it didn’t help that Draco kept trying to change the topic and get Herricks distracted from his central goal: whether Draco was going to be a good leader when they actually fought Nihil. It made him seem as if he didn’t want to answer the question. Or else that he couldn’t. Harry knew which one Herricks would assume.

“Yes, I am,” Draco said, the brittle snap of frost in his voice. “Are you going to ask any more idiotic questions, or can we get back to planning this?”

Harry dropped his hand from his face and looked, in some dread. Herricks sat across from them at the plain wooden table that was almost the only furniture in Ventus’s tent, his arms folded and his face so bright with his scowl that Harry wondered how he could ever have thought the bloke was timid. Draco stood across from him, finger jabbing the map of Death Eater caches on the table, and his face had acquired an extra brilliance from his scowl, too.

“I don’t think it’s an idiotic question,” Herricks said. “Ursula has told me about your last battle against Nihil. It sounds like you survived mostly through luck, not through planning. None of you knew about Harry’s necromancy then or whether it would work, did you?” His gaze went briefly to Harry’s face.

Harry couldn’t help frowning. Herricks had started calling everyone in the comitatus—bar Draco—by their first names. Harry was happy if he was that comfortable with Ventus and Hermione and Ron, but he didn’t think that they were such good friends.

“Well?” Herricks raised his eyebrows. “Is someone going to answer me? Ursula is many things, but I’ve never found her to be a liar.”

“That was at a time when we didn’t truly understand our opponent,” Draco said. “We do now, and we can plan better for a battle like the one that ended up happening in Wiltshire. That’s what we’re trying to do. Do you have anything useful to contribute, or are you going to fuss and faff around for no reason?”

“I don’t think trying to protect my partner’s life and my own—as well as the life of everyone involved in this comitatus—is for no reason,” Herricks said, and his voice had grown distinctly cool.

Harry heard Hermione sigh. She’d tried to intervene earlier, but Herricks had only ignored her and Draco had shot her a withering glare, and she hadn’t tried again. Ron hadn’t tried at all. He found watching someone challenge Draco entertaining, Harry thought. At least he was leaning forwards now, his hand on the back of Hermione’s chair and a vicious grin that he couldn’t conceal on his lips.

Ventus sat by, swinging her legs and looking as if she would follow whoever triumphed. Or as if she was so certain of Draco’s triumph that she saw no reason at all to stop this stupid row.

That left it up to Harry.

“Listen,” he said, and Herricks snapped his head around to stare at him. The expression of surprise on his face wasn’t very flattering, Harry thought. Herricks must have expected him to stand by and follow Draco like a good little boyfriend. “What exactly is the matter? Do you want to lead yourself?”

Herricks shook his head. “Of course not. I’d be no good at it.” Draco’s mouth twisted in a sneer, but Harry thought it was refreshing that they had someone in the comitatus who knew himself that well. Maybe this was part of why Weston and Lowell had thought he would make a good partner for Ventus. “But I need to know that someone I’m entrusting my life to, and Ursula’s life, is a good leader.”

“What would constitute proof for you, though?” Harry scratched the nape of his neck. “It sounds as though you won’t be satisfied until you’ve seen Draco lead a battle, but if you don’t agree until then, you could get in the way and disrupt his perfectly competent leadership because of your doubts.”

Herricks opened his mouth, then shut it again. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said. “For right now, I’ll settle for a plan that doesn’t sound as though we need large amounts of luck to make it work.”

“Luck is always a factor when we’re fighting Nihil,” Harry said, in time to beat Draco’s snarl. “We don’t understand everything he can do, and he might find a new way past the weapon that all the Aurors are so proud of. In the meantime, we’re going to try and pick a cache that he might be in, but we’re hunting information, not him. So really, we need to be able to sneak in and read the memories of the objects or do something else to learn what he’s up to, rather than engage in a battle.”

Herricks nodded. “That sounds clear. And it’s not what he was saying.” He stared at Draco. “He never explained clearly to me what was happening at all.”

“I tried,” Draco said. His voice was under tight, fragile control, which Harry knew was a bad sign. “You didn’t want to listen. You kept looking at other people as if they were the ones who would explain, and then you turned around and demand the same fucking explanation that I already gave.”

Harry put a hand on Draco’s shoulder and squeezed it, then looked steadily at Herricks. “Will you actually listen to him? I think that’s a precondition for judging whether he’s a good leader or not. You can’t judge him if you don’t know anything about him. That would make it a matter of luck who you decided to follow.”

He saw Herricks flinch a little, and then smile, as if he appreciated that Harry could turn his own point back on him. He nodded. “All right.”

“Finally.” Draco slapped the map and then jabbed a dark spot, marking a cache, on the northern edge of Muggle London. “There was one here. I think that’s the one we should look at.”

“Why?” Herricks asked.

Draco flashed Harry a look. Harry squeezed his shoulder again and tried to convey the message he wanted Draco to accept with his eyes. This is the part where you do have to give explanations. Not everyone knows what goes on inside your head.

After a moment, Draco turned around and nodded sharply. “Because I’m virtually certain that it’s one I visited once, when I was taken to meet the Dark Lord for the first time,” he said. “I didn’t know then, but I put together the clues later. There’s no reason that Nihil would take it for his particular base, but I know it better, and I’d be able to tell you if there was anything there that I didn’t remember being there the first time—anything that might have been added by Nihil in the form of traps.”

“If you know that cache, why wasn’t it the first one we investigated when we were trying to decide where to go?” Hermione asked.

Draco gave her a haughty, unfocused look. Harry knew that he was trying to look wise and distant, as if he saw more things than were just in the tent. Harry thought it made him look constipated. “Because there was no reason for me to trust you with personal memories at that point,” he said. “I didn’t know you well enough, and we weren’t a comitatus.”

Hermione nodded thoughtfully. Harry rolled his eyes. He doubted that was the reason. Draco had probably put together the clues only recently, and didn’t want anyone else to know that, because it would destroy his image of “wise leader.”

Then again, with the way Herricks was challenging him, perhaps he had more invested in maintaining that image this time.

“Are we going to tell the Aurors about this?” Herricks asked.

“Of course not,” Ventus said. “They wouldn’t let us go if we did. And we’d have to explain all about the caches and the memories from Snape’s Pensieve and what we’ve done already and the rest of it.”

Herricks frowned. “But I thought they knew about most of it. Didn’t Harry and Malfoy here make a full confession when they reached the camp a few months ago?”

“Not a full confession,” Draco said coolly. Harry was glad that he had something to argue about which Harry didn’t have to interfere with. This was in the past, and Herricks could either accept the facts or dispute them uselessly. “We told them what we thought would most help them in developing defensive strategies. But they haven’t done that. We’ve done that. They don’t need to know about what we’re doing now, because Ventus is right. They would try to prevent us from going to the cache out of the sheer belief that we don’t know how to do it, because we’re younger than they are.”

“You don’t know that,” Herricks said. “There are those you could ask. Hestia Jones; she’s younger than the rest. And I notice that Lowell and Weston are closer to the pair of you than to the rest of us.”

“That’s because they’re giving us private lessons in compatible magic,” Harry said. “That doesn’t mean they’re more loyal to us than the Aurors.” He leaned forwards, hoping he had found an argument that would get rid of Hericks’s obsessive focus on how wrong they all were. “Besides, if they have their way, you’ll never see Draco lead in battle and never get to judge whether you want to be a part of the comitatus, because they’ll simply take over all the action themselves.”

Herricks fell silent and thoughtful, and let them plan the rest of the journey to the cache without interfering. When they were departing the tent, though, he came up to Harry and stared into his face for a long moment.

“What?” Harry asked. He usually had some idea of what Herricks was thinking or about to say, but this time, he didn’t, and it unnerved him.

“I wonder,” Herricks murmured, “whether you know that other people would be more willing to follow you than Malfoy.”

Harry saw Draco’s shoulders stiffen ahead of him. He had to work hard not to roll his eyes. He only hoped that Draco wouldn’t bitch and snipe about this later, because Harry wasn’t the one who had brought it up.

“Yes, I do know that,” Harry said, as patiently as he could. “That doesn’t mean that I want to indulge their fantasies.”

“Fantasies?” Herricks gave him that skeptical look again.

“Their fantasies of following the hero who saved the wizarding world,” Harry said. “They think I can be a good leader just because I did that. It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to, and my particular skill is more in leading a small group of people than anything else—”

Herricks smiled and looked around at the comitatus.

“A small group of people who have a common goal,” Harry said patiently. “We don’t, yet. You’re challenging Draco’s fitness for leading, while Ventus only really wants to follow him and fight. My friends still don’t completely trust Draco yet. I have to act as peacemaker, and we all question each other’s decisions. There’s fragmented trust everywhere. I notice that you haven’t called Draco by his first name yet, although you’re doing it with everyone else in the comitatus. Why?”

“I didn’t think it would be polite to call someone I disagreed with by his first name,” Herricks said, with a blink.

Harry shook his head. He hadn’t even considered that as a motive for Herricks calling Draco Malfoy. “Fine, but maybe you should talk to him directly about this, rather than asking me? I assure you that he’s thought about people following me as much as I have. Speak with him more often without yelling at him, and he might be friendlier.”

“I don’t yell,” Herricks said, and now he sounded offended.

Harry rolled his eyes and followed Draco out of the tent. He thought—well, he hoped, anyway—that they would become more grounded and compatible as they worked together in the comitatus, but he had little time for someone who twisted his words around.

*

Draco ended up going back to their tent alone; Ketchum had ambushed Harry on the way there and told him with a cheerful smile that they were going to practice Tactics physically, since Harry had so much trouble with the written side of it. Harry had groaned and given Draco a pitiful look as he was dragged away, but he’d had no choice but to surrender.

When Draco saw who was waiting for him inside the tent, he was grateful.

“Trainee Malfoy.” Holder rose to her feet, eyes fixed so fiercely on him that Draco felt he could have tried to run and it would make no difference. “You must come with me immediately. We have discovered that your partner is conspiring against the Aurors and need your recommendation on how to deal with him.”