Chapter Twenty-Eight of 'Seasons of War'- Moving Forwards

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Title: Seasons of War (28/40)
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-Eight—Moving Forwards

“We have not been able to recover the eye.”

Holder had told Draco that yesterday morning. Draco had nodded as if he had expected the news, and saved his silent staring at the wall for after she left.

He should have expected it, he told himself. Even if the Aurors had more resources and time to devote to the research than Draco—which they certainly did—that didn’t mean they would necessarily find one eye torn out by a magically conjured beast and lost somewhere in the vast void between the worlds. Or had the Dark Argus taken him into that void after all? Draco didn’t know.

There was only one way that the news came as a relief. He could put aside any plans that centered on recovering his original eye, and start thinking about others.

Which was why he was standing in front of Portillo Lopez right now, while she examined his face and the scars on his cheeks, probing with gentle fingers that nevertheless made Draco wince. Then she lifted up the eyelid and probed into the socket, and Draco stepped back before he thought about it. The socket burned no more than the scars did, but there was something unexpectedly intimate about the invasion. He didn’t want any member of Portillo Lopez’s Order thinking they deserved intimacy from Draco.

“What are you doing?” he snarled. They stood outside the radius of the camp, beyond the tents, in one of the protected fields, and most of the Aurors and the trainees, except the comitatus, had stayed far from him since he rejoined the classes. Even the Aurors Draco knew were his allies didn’t seem comfortable around him. He would have said, cuttingly, that losing an eye wasn’t catching, but he knew they didn’t really fear that. What they feared was more complex and ran deeper in them.

Portillo Lopez didn’t fear him, though. She worked with a mostly unemotional coldness that Draco found more disturbing, in some ways, than the avoidance of the others.

“I tested the skin from the socket,” she explained, picking up a vial of what looked like burned black flakes. Draco reckoned that was what was left of his skin after she had finished testing it. “It told me nothing distinctive. In fact, if you were to ask me, I would say that it was skin that had never been touched by magic.”

“Skin that was dead,” Draco finished with bleak pleasure. He should have suspected that, after what the Dark Argus had done to him.

Portillo Lopez frowned at him. “Dead skin and skin that has never been touched by magic are not the same. Muggles are not dead.”

“Might as well be,” Draco muttered and turned away, his arms wrapped closely around himself. He was not looking forwards to the tests that he thought Portillo Lopez would have to perform on him, at least if he was to get a magical eye. And he was feeling more out of sorts than normal, since it was much harder to read and write after the loss of his eye than he had thought it would be. He deserved a few days to feel sorry for himself.

“They’re not,” Portillo Lopez said, and there was steel in her voice. “I know the difference.”

Draco paused and glanced over his shoulder at her. He reckoned she did, after all, know that. “All right,” he said finally. “But what does that mean for my magical eye?”

“It limits your choices,” Portillo Lopez said. Draco snorted. Of course it did. Everything limits my choices nowadays. “Most magical eyes come to rest on top of a magical injury. They connect with the latent power in the injury, as well as the magic in the body of the wizard they belong to, and work that way. Even if the magic is Dark, that doesn’t prevent the eye from being of some benefit.”

Draco thought that was the stupidest thing he had ever heard. Who designed magical replacements for missing body parts so that they would work because of the power left behind by cutting them off? “What you’re saying is that I can’t get a magical eye.”

“I would have told you if I meant that,” Portillo Lopez said, immune as ever to disapproval. “What I mean is that you’ll have to get a different kind of magical eye. They are available, luckily for you.”

Draco paused and considered that. It was actually pleasant to know that he still had a choice. Perhaps the limitation on the number of choices was even reassuring, although it didn’t feel like that at the moment. There was no way that he could hesitate for a long time among a large number of magical eyes, while other people urged him to pick certain eyes because that would be most appealing to them.

“Tell me which kind I can have,” he said.

Portillo Lopez nodded as if she had expected the demand and produced a small, thick book from beneath her robe. Draco leaned nearer and looked at it warily, but it wasn’t some obscure tome on necromancy. It was what looked like a catalogue, and on the front had nothing but the black letters that spelled out: Choice Selection.

Draco opened it to a page that Portillo Lopez had folded down. The magical eyes that glowed in the photographs, turning back and forth as though to show off their colors, were bright, intimidating, radiant. He saw golden ones, bronze ones, and those of a more natural color. He could have a grey eye, he saw at once, that would look like the one he still had left, and not shed any unnatural radiance. That would probably be best.

Then he paused when he found a picture of a bright silver eye. It didn’t shine as brilliantly as some of the others in the pictures, but enough that no one looking at him would think it was the eye he’d been born with. Draco let his fingers rest next to it and thought. What did he want: a lack of stares, or the stares that would say the people looking understood the sacrifice he had made? With the scars across his face, there was no way that he could hide the loss of his eye for long, and he thought that the Auror trainees would probably make him notorious soon enough.

This might be a way to control his notoriety.

“This one,” he told Portillo Lopez, after reading the text beneath the picture and making sure that the eye didn’t require any unusual spells to maintain it or magical skin to function.

Portillo Lopez looked at the picture and then gave him an oblique look. Draco knew that much, although his eye was blinking and straining by now, trying to keep up with all the images thrown at it in the course of the day. “What?” he asked.

“That is—more striking—than I thought you would choose,” Portillo Lopez said quietly. “I thought you would wish to pretend that your loss had not changed you.”

Draco laughed, and stopped because it sounded too bitter. “That would be stupid of me,” he said. “Given that I’m famous now in my own right, and also as Harry Potter’s partner.”

“In the first days after your loss,” Portillo Lopez said, which Draco supposed wasn’t the most annoying way to refer to it that she could have found, “you acted as though you wanted everyone to think that nothing had happened. Although you were also sensitive, you disdained pity. Have you given up on that now?”

Draco took a deep breath and reminded himself that he had no reason to lose his temper with Portillo Lopez if he had managed to keep it with Holder. “I can’t control their pity,” he said. “What I can do is force them to feel something else, with any luck.”

“Such as wonder,” Portillo Lopez said. “Or perhaps horror.”

Draco smiled at her with his teeth alone. “Horror would be better than pity.”

Portillo Lopez spent a moment more looking at him. Perhaps she was engaging in that weighting up of motives that she seemed to use so often with Harry, and that Draco had to admit that he found incomprehensible. Then she said, “I see. You will do well. And I shall order the eye at once.”

Draco blinked, suddenly brought back to reality. “How am I going to have it—put in?” That was the best way of putting it that he could think of. “I can’t go to St. Mungo’s without leaving the training camp.”

“My Order will do it.”

Draco hardly thought that was the ideal solution, but he had time to think of an alternative, as Portillo Lopez didn’t seem to think the eye would arrive quickly.

And his steps grew lighter as he went back to the tent, thinking about the ways that he could use a magical eye to command more prestige and attention than he had yet.

*

“Potter. I need to talk with you.”

Harry paused and stared suspiciously over his shoulder at Herricks. Draco had continued not to attend the Partnership Trust class, because he said it would take him more time to adjust to doing exercises with Harry after losing his eye, and so it wasn’t surprising that Herricks had decided to catch Harry after it. But Harry didn’t know what he could possibly want.

Herricks gave him a small, tense smile when he saw the way Harry was studying him, and held up one hand. “I only want to talk with you, like I said.”

Harry was a bit dubious about that, but on the other hand, he didn’t see what Herricks could do when there were Aurors in every direction. He walked with him beyond the edge of the camp. Herricks led a winding path past the tents, as if he didn’t want anyone to see where they were going.

Harry didn’t worry about that. He had seen Hermione’s eyes focus on them and narrow before they left, and she had flicked her wand in the little gesture that usually indicated a tracking spell. Assuming that Herricks had something stupid in mind, she would be able to find them easily.

They kept walking until they reached an area somewhat secluded from the rest of the camp by a tiny grove of scraggly trees. Herricks turned around and braced his feet. It was the stance Lowell and Weston had taught them to use when resisting attack. Harry mimicked him, wondering if Ventus was going to come out and attack him from the side, and if this was a test of some sort to show that Herricks should be the leader of the comitatus.

Then again, that couldn’t be it, either, because Ventus followed Draco, looked up to him, and would never participate in a plot against him. Harry shook his head to clear it and decided to listen to what Herricks would actually say.

“You know as well as I do that Malfoy can’t continue as our leader,” Herricks said. He had picked up a long, slender stick and was stirring it through the grasses in front of him, parting the grass and then making it spring back into place as the stick continued along its way.

“Do I?” Harry asked. He made his voice mild, although it took an effort.

Herricks looked up, seemed to see what was in his expression, and threw the stick away with an abrupt gesture. “Of course you do, Potter,” he said. His face when he flushed was distinctly unattractive, Harry thought, and he decided that he would remember that and tell Draco about it. Draco would appreciate the implied compliment. “He can’t see what’s coming from one side of him, which is going to make him useless in battle. We can defend him, so he can still come along on the missions and participate in the plans, but he can’t fight with his old effectiveness. That means that we need another battle leader.”

“Interesting that you should say that,” Harry murmured sweetly, “when Draco is the one who negotiated more independence for the comitatus out of Robards.”

Herricks flushed. “I don’t care what he negotiated,” he snapped, with plain untruth. “What matters is that he can’t lead.”

“And who would you suggest taking over?” Harry asked softly. “You know that Draco won’t stand for it if Hermione or Ron tried to claim the position. I don’t want it. Ventus won’t take it. She knows her strengths and talents, and they don’t lie in making plans for other people. She can’t protect them, as she’s admitted herself.”

“All your objections are true,” Herricks said. “You don’t lack intelligence, when you want to use it. That only leaves me.”

Harry spent a few minutes listening to the wind, and letting Herricks’s words fall into the deafening silence they deserved.

“Why shouldn’t I lead?” Herricks’s voice was soft, but too fast, and there were bright splotches of red on his cheeks that looked like the flush of fever. “I have as much right as he does. I’m as smart as he is. The others will trust me—”

“Ventus might trust you, because she’s your partner,” Harry said. “And even then, her blind faith in Draco is going to be a problem. The rest of us won’t. So that’s your answer. It’s not that you’re being unfairly denied a privilege that you ought to hold. The problem is that we want to follow someone we know and depend on, and you’re not that person.”

“I could be, if you supported me.”

Suddenly, it became obvious why Herricks had wanted to talk to Harry alone, instead of making his case directly to Draco or Hermione. Harry put his hands in his robe pockets and gave the other man a flat look. “You still have delusions about the power of my name, I see.”

“You should have been the war leader,” Herricks said scornfully. “I put up with Malfoy because I thought you supported him and would take a bolder stand if something ever happened to him. But here’s that exact situation, and you’re still holding back as if he has—as if has a chain on you. Don’t you want to be free?”

“I don’t value power,” Harry said quietly. “He does, and he does a good enough job with it. I’m watching him, and so is Hermione, to make sure that he doesn’t fuck up. If you want to do more than that, then you should have proved yourself, instead of just asking us to accept you because no one else wants the job.”

“I think Hermione would take it in a heartbeat,” said Herricks. “And you would, if you were being honest with yourself.” Harry simply rolled his eyes, because he knew that Herricks’s blustering was so much hot air, if Herricks didn’t. “Why won’t you be honest with yourself? The position is there.”

“Not as much ‘there’ as you might think,” Harry said. “Draco is going to get a magical eye. He’ll lead us again, and in the meantime, he’s counting on the comitatus to remain together, in part to look good to Robards and Holder. He won’t look kindly on your trying to create a—change in the ranks.” It was a much more polite word than the one he was thinking, but then again, he didn’t want to create a change by forcing Herricks away, either.

“That will take time,” Herricks said. “We need to be able to stand up and represent ourselves in the eyes of the other Aurors before then.” He waited, but when Harry showed no sign of agreeing with him, he leaned forwards earnestly and said, “Malfoy cares too much about power.”

“And you, of course, are agreeing to become a leader out of the goodness of your heart,” Harry murmured.

Herricks, oddly enough, didn’t get angry with him, the way Harry had thought he would. Instead, he leaned forwards some more, so that he was at the point where he was practically balancing on his toes, and whispered, “I want to do this job because someone needs to do it and I know that I can. I can fill a hole that I see in our defenses. I want to win the war with Nihil, and this is the best way. That’s it. That’s all.”

Harry let the sound of those assurances die out. Then he rolled his eyes and said, “You want to do it at the worst possible time, when everyone is unsure about us. We haven’t convinced Holder and Robards of anything important, you know. They still expect us to fuck up and wish that we would sod off. They’re used to thinking of Draco as the leader of the comitatus now, and thinking that the comitatus supports him. If you insist on showing them that we have cracks in the façade, though, they could change their tune. We might be back as mere support for the Aurors again, left out of missions like children, if that.”

“I only want to do what’s right,” Herricks said, and his expression was so earnest that Harry wanted to slap him.

“I’m sure,” Harry muttered.

Herricks turned to the side and picked up a stone. Harry tensed automatically, but Herricks simply hurled the stone at the nearest hill, apparently to express his frustration. “Are you with me or not?” he asked.

“I’m not,” Harry said. “I’m on the side of the person I think can lead the comitatus most effectively, and that’s Draco.”

Herricks gave him a pitying smile. “You know nothing,” he said. “I know that Holder and Robards will feel plenty of enmity for Malfoy once they start thinking about him again.”

Harry smiled faintly and looked up. “And why is that? Do you have any plans to encourage that animosity?”

That accusation actually did make Herricks freeze in place and blink as if, for once, Harry had come up with something that he didn’t have an answer to. Then he shook his head and said, “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I might well say that to you,” Harry said. “You want to change things now? When everyone else in the comitatus is still settled on following Draco and any instability might make us look unstable?”

“I thought you would agree to do what was right,” Herricks said, his eyes unreadable. “I should have realized that you were in Gryffindor House, and Gryffindors sometimes let personal loyalties blind them to the greater good.”

Harry wasn’t sure what it was about those words that broke his temper. Perhaps it was simply that he’d last heard them offered as a justification for Dumbledore’s actions, which Harry was far from thinking good. Perhaps it was just that Herricks was being stuck-up and stupid and threatening someone Harry loved with a lot of stress and strife that he didn’t need. In fact, that was probably the likeliest explanation. Harry was a Gryffindor and a slave to his personal loyalties, after all.

What really mattered was that suddenly he had his hands tucked into Herricks’s robes, drawing them strongly shut around his throat, and Herricks was dangling from his hold and making desperate little urk sounds.

Harry didn’t really remember moving or taking the grip. But now that he had it, he sure wasn’t going to waste it.

“You arrogant little pissant,” he whispered. “When you’re alive because the rest of us trusted Draco. When Ventus is alive and the rest of the comitatus is around because we depended on each other when there was no one else. You think that you can come here, the last and latest of us, and change everything about our structure around to suit yourself? You have no idea. You never will.”

Herricks’s face was turning red. Harry deposited him on the ground again and shoved him contemptuously away. It was long moments before he started speaking again, but Harry honestly wasn’t sure if that came from the choking or just from shock.

“Listen,” he said at last, while Harry stared at him with his arms folded because it was simpler than choking him again would have been. “You had no right to do that to me.”

“Is this the part of the spiel where you get into threats?” Harry opened his mouth in a rude, elaborate yawn. “I could see that working. Far better than the words that you’ve spoken and the proposals you’ve made so far, at least.”

“If you’re against anything breaking up the comitatus, why did you do this to me?” Herricks’s face was still pink, but he seemed to have refocused on the real issue. Harry reckoned he had to applaud him for that, at least.

“Because you needed to see that I won’t support you,” Harry said. “And you were counting on my support, weren’t you? There was no sense in making the proposal to me otherwise, when you know that I’m Draco’s partner.”

Herricks jerked his head down. “I might not need your support,” he said.

Harry simply smiled at him and walked away. He didn’t know if Herricks would have the same idea he did, but it was best to get back soon in case he did. Harry would warn Draco first, and then Ron and Hermione. Ventus might believe Herricks instead of him—though Harry doubted that, given her devotion to Draco—but his friends, and his lover, would believe Harry.

Then Herricks, who had tried to outflank Draco and isolate him from the safety of the others, would find himself isolated in turn.

Perhaps he shouldn’t take as much pleasure in this as he was, right now. But Harry had meant what he said. He took threats to Draco seriously, and if he had to keep much of his attention, and enmity, for Nihil, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t spare some for someone as stupid as Herricks was acting.

Harry smiled, and walked faster.