lomonaaeren

Chapter Twenty-One.

Title: Seasons of War (22/40)
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 Twenty-Two—What Befalls

“You haven’t asked me about the book that we retrieved from Robards and Holder,” Draco told Harry that night.

Harry paused and lifted his eyes. He had been busy writing an essay a moment ago, but now he acted as though his entire being was focused on Draco. Draco frowned, not sure whether he liked that. The question had been meant to sting Harry’s conscience. Instead, he looked half-accusing.

“No, I haven’t,” Harry finally said, when enough silence had built up in the room to convey a buzzing electric charge. “I wonder. What was in it?”

“Plans,” Draco said. “They’ve done far more than they ever told us they would. More practice with the War Wizards. More use of spells against the living dead—so they must have captured more of them than they showed us. From what Holder wrote, it doesn’t seem as if they trust any trainee.”

Harry nodded, face still expressionless. “Well, that’s good in a way,” he said. Draco narrowed his eyes, and Harry shrugged a little. “At least it means that they probably don’t have spies on us the way that they’ve demanded you spy on the comitatus. They wouldn’t give them enough instruction because of distrusting them so much, and that means we would have spotted the spies by now.”

Draco frowned. “Unless they did choose people who are inherently more skilled, or Aurors who are full-fledged or instructors,” he murmured. He hadn’t thought of the possibility of spies on them in return. He had to admit, it was disquieting.

“Unlikely, or they would have written their names down in the book somewhere, and they would probably have shared more information with them. But you said they don’t seem to have shared it with anyone.” Harry clasped his hands behind his neck and stretched them over his head. “So what do we do now? How is the questioning of Nemo going?”

“Fine,” Draco said, still suspiciously. Harry was being awfully cooperative. “You didn’t care about that until now. You said that we could leave it up to Gregory and Portillo Lopez.”

“I still think that,” Harry said. “But you’ve been attending the sessions anyway, I imagine. Have they learned anything else? Does it seem like Nihil is hunting for him? He would have to, if Nemo is the only way that he has of raising these beasts.”

Draco slammed the book down and stood up, stalking across the floor to stand in front of Harry. Harry blinked back at him, but he didn’t seem concerned or afraid in the way Draco would have expected. “Is this the part where I start worrying that contact with Nemo’s mind did change you?” he asked.

Draco shook his head. “Not at all,” he said. He had noticed no changes in himself except for some bad dreams, and he still refused to go to Raverat, the way that he knew Harry would have liked him to. “The biggest problem is that you don’t seem interested in the book and Nemo, or you weren’t until I mentioned them.”

Harry looked at him steadily. “And you weren’t interested in what Raverat found out when he examined Hermione, either, although he seems to have determined the source of her nightmares.”

Draco stepped back, feeling as though someone had reached out and slapped his cheek when he leaned in for a kiss. Or, be honest, Draco. You feel as though Harry did that. “You didn’t tell me.”

“You didn’t seem interested.” Harry folded his arms and gave him a wry smile, which twisted on the edges just enough to make it bitter.

Draco turned away, shaking his head and running his hands through his hair for a moment before he remembered the way he would look if he messed it up and dropped his arms back to his sides. “We have to stop fighting like this,” he said quietly. “Why would you assume that I had no interest at all in Raverat, simply because I refused to let him examine me?”

“Because you refused to let him examine you,” Harry said calmly. He was standing up now, but he didn’t move towards Draco the way Draco had secretly hoped he would. “I thought you’d decided his investigations were nonsense.”

Draco swallowed air. He wanted to respond with a tirade, but it would look bad when, so far, Harry had managed to stay calm.

And he was aware of how Harry judged him, although he didn’t think Harry was. Draco knew that Harry privately thought he was stupid for jumping on Nemo like that and needing to be rescued. Harry might never say it, but the thought was there, and Draco was determined to cut through the tangle between them for once, rather than allowing it to spring up.

“From now on,” he said, “let’s agree to be honest with each other even if we think the other isn’t interested in what we have to say.”

Harry shifted one hip on the table he leaned against. “I haven’t lied,” he said. “I simply assumed that you wouldn’t want to hear about it. And when I was honest and told you that I thought you should go to Raverat, you reacted angrily.”

Draco looked away. He didn’t know how to explain his reactions in such a way that Harry could understand them.

But if I’m going to be honest, then I’ll have to try, even if I don’t think he’ll know what I mean. That’s the hard part of bargains like this: they bind you along with the person that you want to tie to you.

“I’m afraid of letting someone into my mind,” he said tightly. “After Nihil, after Nemo, I don’t like the thought of it. That was the reason I refused. And, too, we don’t have any reason to trust Raverat. You think that he’s telling you the truth, that he can actually read your magic the way he claims he can. But what proof do we have of that? That’s what I’m concerned about, Harry, the amount of truth, not the fact that he annoys me.”

“There’s no way that we can prove that Portillo Lopez knows as much as she claims to about necromancy, either,” Harry said gently, walking across the room towards Draco. Draco had to admit that it soothed him to have Harry wrap his arms around him and hold him, although he would have disliked admitting it aloud. “Abstract disciplines like this…we can’t look at them the way we can Gregory’s fighting skills. I trust Portillo Lopez, up to a point, and I trust the people she recommends. One of them is Raverat. Today, he said that the image of bones being pulled from a body that Hermione sees is an image of Nihil’s happiness. What she’s feeling is overflow from his mind, rather than something that’s targeted specifically at her.”

Draco stood there in shock. He hadn’t thought Harry would just tell him that. He had expected more questions, demands, and wary refusals of trust. He managed to swallow and ask, “And why would she be feeling that? She hasn’t been touched by the members of that trio the way we have been.”

“She’s a potential Seer,” said Harry. “And according to Raverat, they’re always more sensitive. That’s why she started feeling it first.” Draco could feel Harry’s lips moving against his head, and thought he might be grimacing. “I reckon that means that we’ll start feeling it, too, although maybe not for weeks.”

“Will we feel his rage when he comes to terms with losing Nemo?” Draco asked.

Harry sucked in a breath and then tried to chuckle. “That’s why you should have been with us when we talked to Raverat,” he said. “Because that’s the kind of question that neither Hermione nor I thought to ask. Me because I didn’t understand it enough, and her because she was too busy asking questions about being a Seer.”

Draco shut his eyes and tilted his head back to rest on Harry’s shoulder. Harry caressed his hair and said nothing. Draco could imagine the tenderness in his eyes without looking up. It seemed their fight had sealed itself behind them.

“Would you like to tell me what came out of the book and the questioning?” Harry asked quietly. “And how much of it, if any, you think we could share with other Aurors, the ones who aren’t part of our loyal group?”

Draco reached back and clutched Harry’s arm hard, the only demonstration he could offer right now of how much Harry meant to him. They had to be honest, yes, but there was no rule that they had to use words.

Harry kissed the back of his neck, and waited until he could speak.

*

As far as Harry knew, or at least as far as he was learning from Draco, the world was mad.

Nihil hadn’t tried to get Nemo back yet. Gregory, who was using torture on him and getting scattered answers that mostly had to do with the resurrection of long-extinct animals, couldn’t figure out why.

“He depends on him,” she said, with a disgusted shake of her head. She was pacing in Harry and Draco’s tent when they had this conversation, shaking her hair back as if she were about to go into battle. “I believe that. But now he leaves him in his enemies’ custody and lets small bits of information be wrenched out of him. Why?”

Harry ended up shaking his head in response, which was fine, since he thought Gregory simply wanted an audience that she could rant at, rather than someone who would actually try to offer her advice. She didn’t tend to take advice well.

The “real book” made clear the extent to which Holder and Robards distrusted everyone but themselves. There was no evidence that they were fighting a war, Harry sometimes thought—until you read that book. Then you saw the minor attacks Nihil was making, and the way that the War Wizards were trying to fight and contain him and failing. The problem was that they wouldn’t admit as much, and though they kept records of what weapons and spells didn’t work against Nihil, they shared that knowledge with no one. How were the Aurors and trainees supposed to fight Nihil that way, if he dropped suddenly into the middle of the trainee camps?

Raverat and Hermione were working on training her to be a Seer. Harry couldn’t follow most of the obscure magical discussions they had, though he attended some of the time, but he was glad he was there to hear the immortal line from Hermione, as she leaned back in her chair and threw down a scroll she’d been taking notes on:

“I should have listened more to Professor Trelawney.”

It was a small note of humor in the weeks that became bleaker and grimmer. Ron was glad that he understood what was happening with Hermione, but not pleased that she was spending so much time with Raverat. He complained to Harry and seemed to expect him to agree that anyone normal would want to sleep with Hermione. Harry had to nod and mutter and spend his days soothing his best friend so that the comitatus wouldn’t dissolve into bickering factions. And Ron didn’t like Draco spending the amount of time that he did with Hermione, either, so there was more soothing to be done.

Not that the comitatus was doing much at the moment, Harry thought. They hadn’t met on their own in weeks. They were always in the presence of the older Aurors when they had something to report, and that wasn’t a bad thing, but it meant that Herricks sat there with his lip sticking out, and Ron watched Draco and Raverat with brewing jealousy but no words, and there was no way to talk to just the six of them at once.

The world seemed to be splintering around him, with unanswered questions hanging in the air above his head and people whose relationships he was responsible for protecting talking to him about different things, from different sides, and the knowledge that Robards and Holder distrusted them making him doubt his own actions. Was he acting convincingly enough? Should he be fighting with Draco more? When were they going to find out that Harry and Draco had a copy of their book, and when would they find out about Nemo? Harry thought they would.

The gathering thunderstorm gathered much longer than he had thought it would. It was the last week of May before it burst.

*

Draco rolled his eyes as Raverat and Granger spoke softly about what was necessary to become a Seer. The list of characteristics included a certain “clarity and openness of mind” that Draco thought was code for “a willingness to believe anything and everything.” He found it hard to believe that Granger had been converted from her obsessive skepticism simply because Raverat had told her that she might be a Seer.

Harry shifted beside him, and Draco smiled at him. Though he knew it was a strained smile, at least he was trying. At least he was here, and after Raverat gave Granger some kind of exercise, then he was going to talk to Draco. Harry smiled back and nodded, as if to say that he appreciated Draco’s sacrifice.

Raverat handed Granger a piece of parchment and said something that made her beam and start scribbling. Draco shook his head. Maybe that was the secret: give Granger homework and she would try anything.

“Hello, Trainee Malfoy. You’ve been avoiding me.”

Draco nodded shortly and stepped forwards. Then he paused. Granger had the chair opposite Raverat, and Draco had been standing until this point. But from what Harry had said, he didn’t think he wanted to be standing upright when Raverat started to examine him.

“You’ve finally agreed,” Raverat said. He didn’t seem to recognize the problem, and just went on examining Draco with critical eyes while he leaned back in his seat. “Why? Why would you resist for so long and then accept?”

“For Harry’s sake,” Draco said. “And because I consider Granger to be partially under my protection, and I want to see what you’re making her do.”

Granger jerked her head up, staring at him. Draco ignored that. It was true, really. She was part of the comitatus, and that meant he was still responsible for her at least some of the time.

“I see,” said Raverat, studying him with more interest than he had shown before. Draco told himself to ignore the chill wave that swept over him. So far, Raverat hadn’t shown that he was evil in any way. Draco would have to accept that both Granger and Harry had emerged unharmed from his hands, and Harry, at least, had to be one of Nihil’s targets. “Sit down here, then.” He rose to his feet and offered his own chair.

Draco took it, though he checked it carefully first for springs and loaded traps. He thought Raverat must be annoyed that Draco had waited so long to see him, and if the man had been in Slytherin—as seemed likely—a means of retaliation would not be out of the question. But he found nothing, and he finally sat down and looked up at Raverat.

“Now.” Raverat leaned forwards and held out his fingers in absurd patterns. Draco tried to keep his expression bored although he could feel his pulse leaping about in his throat. “Do sit still and be quiet. I need to learn the patterns of your mind first, before I can learn the changes that might be present among them, and sudden disruptions from your emotions or your movements will mean I have to start over.”

Draco nodded. So far as he could find that reassuring, he did. It sounded like what Harry had told him Raverat said. He leaned back in his chair and calmed his breathing, forcing himself to sink into the cold contemplation that his father had taught him in order to avoid boredom when he was waiting in the Ministry.

Raverat murmured something and began to move his fingers like dowsing rods. Draco let his eyes fall shut, because he couldn’t see what leaving them open would achieve. He would only have the absurd sight of Raverat, Harry’s concerned face or Granger’s worried one, and the walls of the tent to fill his sight.

Raverat came closer to him, though Draco sensed a touch from him only once, when it felt as though the edge of a fingernail scraped along his cheek. Draco bit his lip and said nothing, keeping his mind still. He wanted to find out whether Nemo had marked him as much as Harry did, though, he thought, for rather different reasons. For one thing, Harry would stop hinting that he see Raverat if he did.

“What—” Raverat’s voice, sharp and panicked.

The familiar darkness and bone-eating cold crept over Draco. He opened his eyes and bolted to his feet. There seemed no need to sit still if Raverat was speaking like that.

The tent was filled with the spinning void, though here and there Draco could see shifting sparks of what looked like distant yellow campfires. He had never seen that before, and it made him slow to react.

A great, skeletal hand reached down from above and grasped him, yanking him up. Another one grabbed Harry at the same time.

Draco could feel the cold better than he could feel the bones gripping him. He could see the sides of the tent speeding past him as though they extended far higher than he knew they did. He writhed and kicked, but the hand never loosened its grip, and in fact he heard someone laughing softly into his ear as though they had anticipated that and knew he would never get loose.

Draco drew his wand from its place in his sleeve.

The voice gasped as though drawing in breath, and Draco lashed out with his wand and his legs at the same time. But the hand, holding him from above, wasn’t vulnerable to that, and his spell flew wide. Draco turned his head, reaching out for Harry instinctively, trying to use the compatible magic that flowed between them.

He couldn’t see Harry. The small yellow sparks had died, and now he was in that familiar darkness that had almost eaten him three times before, and he was alone.

*

Harry didn’t know what Draco was seeing, but he didn’t think it was one tenth as strange as what he was seeing. He could see the bony fingers that reached down for them and gripped their shoulders and their hair. It was no trouble to see those. They loomed, as if shoving other things into the background on purpose.

The problem was, Harry could also see their glowing transparency, and he knew that meant they weren’t really there.

Behind them was nothingness, like the ball of nothingness, dripping tar that refused his sight. But Harry could make out the yellow sparks at the same time, circulating through the tar, popping out again in a way that seemed to suggest both of them could exist in the same place without touching one another.

It was dizzying. And worse than dizzying was the fact that, when Harry glanced to the side, Draco had vanished and the space where he had been was filled only with cold.

Harry closed his eyes and remembered the wheel that Draco had told him to envision, spokes and axle shining with roses. He wasn’t good at the crystal or the other visualizations that Lowell and Weston had told them to use, and he suspected this wasn’t a skill that he was ever going to get good at. But he had become as close to expert as he ever could with the wheel.

He reached out towards Draco, extending his consciousness or magic or whatever it was that allowed them to sense each other.

The barrier between them shivered, and broke apart. Harry saw Draco still rising through darkness, still held in the grip of a bony hand, and all around them drifted and rang Nihil’s laughter.

Harry concentrated. He didn’t know what would happen if he did, but he hoped that he could get through to Draco somehow, speak in his mind the way that Draco had said they should be able to do when they’d mastered this technique.

But Harry only ran into darkness when he tried. The chill grew worse, and he felt as though it were dancing in the middle of his bones, hollowing them, eating the marrow. He cursed and tried again, and the laughter in his ears—Draco’s ears—grew worse. Whatever the vision of the wheel had permitted him to do, it wouldn’t let him rescue Draco by speaking into his mind and coming up with a plan.

Harry sharpened his concentration and ignored the way that the chill seemed to be deepening around his own limbs, too. There had to be a way past this. They couldn’t just give up and let Nihil take them.

He looked up, and realized that the bony hand that gripped Draco wasn’t transparent. He channeled his magic towards it without thinking twice, the compatible magic that ran through their bodies and which he seized control of without thought, since Draco wasn’t using it right now.

The creature that held them shrieked as chips of bone splintered from its hand. Harry grinned fiercely and hammered away at it with power again. If the one holding him was illusion, this was the real one, and it could be killed like the beasts that they had fought in the past.

Draco seemed to understand what he was doing at the same time, because Harry felt the leap of understanding in his brain, and then the magic that was flowing through Harry redoubled. Together, they hit out with it like a whip, and the bony fingers shattered enough to drop Draco into the void.

Harry snapped himself back into his own body, and found he was falling, too. The creature had somehow lifted both of them with only one hand. It didn’t matter that he understand it right now; it only mattered that he and Draco get back to the real world.

He reached out to Draco, and this time the compatible magic flowed back to him at once. Harry envisioned the tent with Raverat and Hermione in it as hard as he could and sent the vision to Draco, who answered back with a wordless blast of emotions: relief and determination. They would find it if they could.

Harry wound the compatible magic into a loop of rope and tossed it to Draco. The one thing they had to avoid was getting separated. Harry didn’t know that he could venture into the void again to rescue Draco, since what they had entered was so different from the darkness they’d experienced the other times.

Down they fell, and then the rope caught, drawing them together, pinwheeling them around until Harry gasped in discomfort. But he had a tight hold on Draco now, and could feel his body pressed against Harry’s, shaking with the magic, although he couldn’t see him. He shut his eyes and pictured the tent again.

The laughter was in his ears again, snarling so hard that Harry flinched. He thought he could feel spittle striking him, but no breath. Of course not, he thought, Nihil was dead and there was no reason for him to breathe.

You will die for this. You will do more than die. I will send you into nothingness and not allow you to return.

Draco screamed. Harry’s eyes popped open, but no matter how hard he stared, he couldn’t see him. He tightened his hold on him and thought again of the tent. That was the only thing that might stop whatever pain Nihil was inflicting on Draco.

Warmth suddenly flooded around them, driving the cold away. Harry looked again and found himself sitting on the floor of the tent. Hermione was standing over them, reaching out to probe his head, and Raverat stood behind her, his face so white that Harry thought he was about to faint.

“A trap,” he whispered. “There was a trap in Trainee Malfoy’s mind, waiting for someone to spring it. I didn’t know—I never meant—I hurt him.”

“He is hurt,” Hermione said, in a voice that was so careful Harry turned at once. “Tilt his head back, Harry, will you?”

Harry did it, swallowing hard enough to make his throat ache. There was a series of long parallel scratches on Draco’s face, striking from his forehead down to his chin. Draco’s head sagged, and if it hadn’t been for the fact that he was still breathing, Harry would have thought he was dead.

Then he saw what Hermione and Raverat had already seen, and wanted to vomit.

Draco’s left eye was gone. The scratches suggested the claws that had made them had simply scooped it out, whole, and tossed it somewhere into the middle distance.

Harry shut his own eyes and shook with sickness, revulsion, and fear. He didn’t know what Nihil had meant to accomplish with this attack, but he knew what had resulted: Draco marked again, in a permanent way.

Hermione was saying something to him about a Healer. Harry couldn’t listen. He didn’t think he would faint, but the fear consumed him.