lomonaaeren

Chapter Thirty-Eight.

Title: Seasons of War (39/40)
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 Thirty-Nine--Enfolding

"Harry!"

Harry nearly caromed off Draco as he landed, and shook his head. He hadn't expected to Apparate into a Draco who was trying to Apparate to him. He held out his hands, and Draco clasped them and held himself upright, swaying.

"You're all right," Harry said, staring at the bones on the ground and trying to make it sound like a statement instead of a question. Draco probably heard the question anyway, since he stared at Harry with slightly narrowed eyes before he nodded.

"Yes. More than I expected to be when they separated us." His fingers curved into Harry's arms, and Harry reckoned he still hadn't forgiven Portillo Lopez for making the suggestion. "I want to know what happened. Did Nihil find you? Did you battle him in the way that Portillo Lopez had suggested?"

"With snake illusions, yes," Harry said. "And with weapons of the mind. Fearlessness. Courage. The memory of you." He grinned. "You sent compatible magic to me across the distance between us, didn't you? So it's as if we were never really separated at all."

"Don't be a fool, Harry, of course we were," Draco snapped, but Harry could see the glow in the back of his eyes. He laid a hand on the nape of Draco's neck and briefly brought their lips together. When he pulled his head away, Draco stood there with his eyes shut, smiling.

"I didn't know you could do something like that," Harry said softly. He knew they should get on with things, but this was important.

"Neither did I," Draco said, opening his eyes and blinking. "Not across a distance as great as that," he added suddenly. "Of course I never doubted that I could do something like that when there was a need."

Harry concealed his smile in the palm of his hand and nodded earnestly. "Right. Nihil fled. I think it's safe to say he's in the ball of nothingness, or one of them, if it's ever safe to say that. What do you think we should do now?"

"Find Portillo Lopez," Draco said at once. "And the rest of her Order. But the comitatus, first. Ventus was going to venture into that other reality to retrieve more of the light for us, and I don't know that she ever did." He paused, his eyes dimming for a moment, and Harry wondered if he was thinking about Herricks's death and how he should have done more to make sure that Ventus was all right after the loss of her partner. It was something Harry had winced over in the last few hours.

"Right," Harry said, and sent a Patronus leaping into the world with a gesture of his wand and a nonverbal spell. He could sense Draco's pursed lips, and grinned. That was part of the reason he'd done it.

The silver stag turned towards him, scraping the ground with a hoof, and Harry told it, "Ron, you need to come here right away. Go." The Patronus sprang into the air and vanished midway between the ground and the stars.

"Someday," Draco murmured, "I will learn to cast one of those."

"Someday," Harry agreed, and didn't bother not to sound patronizing.

Draco narrowed his eyes further, until they were slits, and then released a long, deep, shuddering breath. "It's incredible," he whispered. "To think that we might resolve this tonight. That the war might be over."

Harry shuddered back in response and leaned his head on Draco's shoulder, thinking of the war with Voldemort and what he hadn't had anyone to share with him at the time.

They stood like that until Ron's Patronus shot back to them, followed a second later by Ron, Hermione, and Ventus themselves. Ventus was holding a small box that shone gold and a smug expression. Harry nodded to her and then watched as Draco pulled out the Portkey that was supposed to take them to Portillo Lopez in an emergency.

It turned out not to be necessary as Portillo Lopez appeared before them, her hair mussed and clotted with blood along the side of her head. She nodded to them as they stared, then said, "He has retreated. We must go, now, and I do not think we will get much time." She held out a smooth stone towards them.

Harry thought all five of their hands descended on it as one, but even if that wasn't true, he knew that his and Draco's did.

*

Draco opened his eyes past the swirling colors of the Portkey's working, and froze.

He had known that the Order was going somewhere special and secret to work their gate open to Nihil. When Portillo Lopez had explained about the theory that connected parts of reality to one another, Draco had thought that she meant only that they had to pick a site Nihil had used in the past, mystically determined by connections to other sites that only a necromancer-killing assassin could sense.

He hadn't expected them to stand in the smashed trainee barracks outside the Ministry.

Well, it's fitting, Draco decided a moment later, when he could get his heart to slow down, and turned to Harry. He was standing with his mouth open, staring at the ceiling above them, which had a star-shaped hole in it. When he caught Draco looking at him, he shut his mouth, shook his head, and started to say something, but Portillo Lopez interrupted them.

"We should have guessed the truth before this," she said, her eyes bright and her posture so straight she seemed not to have a head wound. "Nihil likes symbols, and he spent some time pretending to be an Auror instructor. He was hiding in the place that he first began his attacks." She cocked her head to the side, listened to a signal invisible to Draco, and then nodded. "Yes. Here."

A figure moved in Draco's peripheral vision, and he bolted around with his wand aimed, but it was only Raverat. Raverat didn't even bother reacting to Draco's sudden turn; he nodded to Portillo Lopez and said, "Yes, no trace left."

"Good." Portillo Lopez turned to Granger. "I would like your confirmation on that, if you please, Trainee Granger."

"What do you mean?" Draco snapped. "If it concerns one of my people, then I ought to know what you're talking about."

Granger half-shook her head at him. "It's something we've been talking about in the past few days," she said, "Raverat and I." Draco opened his mouth to ask why he hadn't been involved with or noticed that, and then shut it again when he remembered that he and Harry had been rather busy thinking about the notes that they were going to present to Portillo Lopez and the plan she had come up with for them to participate in. "I think I can get a general impression of safety or danger in the near future with my--Seer abilities." At least she still flinches when she talks about them, Draco thought in some satisfaction. "And it helps when I'm in one specific place. I was able to predict it when Ketchum assigned one of the other trainees to attack me from behind, and then predict when he claimed he had but he really hadn't. I should be able to sense whether Nihil is going to attack in the next few minutes."

She bowed her head and crimped her fingers open, the way that Raverat had done around Draco's head and Harry's when he investigated them. She turned to face in a certain direction, towards a pile of rubble--Draco thought it was southeast--and took a slow, deep breath. When she exhaled again, her eyes snapped open.

"Nothing," she reported. "I don't think he left any guards here. He probably didn't anticipate pulling back all his tendrils at once."

"All his tendrils are in the ball?" Draco demanded. "Do we know that?" Harry's fingers rubbed soothingly up and down his arm, but he wasn't about to be soothed without some extra conformation that Granger, Portillo Lopez, and Raverat were right. "I thought there was no way to sense that."

"Not directly," Raverat said. "I believe we can trust Trainee Granger's abilities to sense danger, though, and there would certainly be danger if a tendril was still free enough to detect us."

Draco nodded reluctantly. "Where is the ball of nothingness?"

"Here."

Portillo Lopez had gone over to the other side of the cracked and ruined room, which could have been his and Harry's room when they were in the barracks for all Draco knew; the chambers had never been that unique, and a lot had changed. She was bending over a sheltered corner with an extended hand. Draco winced, but when they came closer, he saw that her fingers were an inch or so from the ball.

"I've searched, and the rest of my Order has searched, and found no other clot of the void in these halls, nor any place where he might bring the void through," Portillo Lopez said quietly. "I believe that it is here."

Draco swallowed and glanced sideways at Ventus, who had come up with the box in her arms. She looked at the ball of nothingness, at his face as if she didn't know why he was concerned, and then nodded and started to open the box.

"Wait, Trainee Ventus," Portillo Lopez said sharply. "We must wait until Trainee Potter summons his snake illusions."

"I want to do it on my own," Ventus said. "He killed my partner. I want to stop him." She said the words with a faint smile, but Draco had seen that smile before and knew how hard it could be to counter.

"Will you still listen to me?" he asked, leaning forwards so that she could see his face. "You know that if you open the box, the reality will simply spill to the ground without any chance to contain it. Is that the fate you want for a weapon that you risked yourself to get?"

Ventus paused, seemed to ruminate, and then responded, "I know that I can be the one to enfold the ball of nothingness."

"How?" Raverat asked. Draco started to say something else, but again Harry stroked his arm and silenced him.

"Because I looked up a spell that would allow me to do so, of course," Ventus said, and Draco thought she sounded disgusted with the world's stupidity for the first time in all the months he'd known her. She tapped her wand against the box, then against the ball of nothingness, or near it. Draco thought her wand would have vanished had she touched it. "Implico nihil," she whispered.

To Draco, it sounded like an ordinary Covering Charm, and he opened his mouth to say so.

But bright red sparks were coursing around Ventus's wand. As Draco watched, they began to emerge from the box as well, until they covered it in a scarlet cloak hanging almost to the ground. Ventus shook the box, and the sparks resolved into a fall of shining cloth.

"Trainee Ventus," Portillo Lopez breathed.

"Shhh," Ventus said, and repeated her spell. The cloth spun slowly in midair, then broke away from the box and dangled from her fingers instead. Ventus whispered the spell a third time, and the cloth extended straight up and out, swooping and yearning towards the ball of nothingness.

Down the bridge it made ran the gold of the reality that Ventus had fetched. It looked like thick golden oil, of the kind that Draco and Harry had more than once used as lube. Draco felt Harry snort beside him.

But none of them made any noise as the cloth bowed but didn't break under its burden, and the gold reached the ball of nothingness and sealed around it in a first, thin shell. More and more gold came after it, and Draco swallowed, beginning to believe it would be as easy as that, after all.

Then the shell broke.

Tendrils writhed out from the ball, aiming towards them all, dividing and multiplying as Draco watched. Harry's hand clamped down on his arm, and then Harry and Portillo Lopez stepped in front of him, blocking his view.

"Harry," Draco hissed in his ear, and tried to drag him out of the way. But Harry shook him off, giving him a single glance that flamed hard enough to make Draco's tongue catch against the roof of his mouth.

"No," he said. "I know that you mean well, Draco, and I'm not acting without considering, but I think this one has to be mine."

*

Portillo Lopez nodded slightly beside him, confirming his guess. Or was it a guess? Harry wondered, turning back to face the cloth that was steadily ripping and the swaying black portions of Nihil. It felt more like a certainty.

Life and death made a balance. He had seen that with the images of the serpents. They couldn't help to simply cage Nihil and dismiss him from the world. They had to give him a reason to appreciate life again.

Harry thought he knew one.

He waited until one of the tendrils snaked near him, and then conjured more illusions from his hands and grasped it. This time, they were hulking dark snakes, black boas marked with reverse patterns of gold, and they flung their coils as well as their mouths around the tendril, not eating it but holding it captive.

Harry closed his eyes and thought of the moment when he had walked into the Forbidden Forest to die.

The shades had come forth to greet him, and he'd seen his parents for the first time in something other than a photograph or Pensieve. Harry had gone to Voldemort of his own free will. Dying had been more painless than he had expected, and he had a choice. Dumbledore had said so.

Nihil had a choice, too.

Down the tendril Harry pushed it all, those thoughts of the free moment in his mental King's Cross when he could have decided to stay if he wanted. He came back not because he had to, but because he wanted to.

Nihil might never understand that kind of love and sacrifice, but he had understood a different kind, once. He had gone to find his brother and rescue him from the hands of Death Eater torturers when he was still Daffyd Dearborn, and he had become Nihil in the first place because he had to get beyond the pain. He'd had an urge to survival, not just to annihilation.

Beside him, Harry could hear dimly, Portillo Lopez was chanting, her voice rising and falling in steady Latin syllables. Harry didn't understand a word of them, and it didn't matter. Nihil was feeling these thoughts as he'd felt Harry's compassion and fearlessness during their earlier battle.

Laughter again scored Harry's ears. You cannot want me to live, not when it would mean so much evil for you.

No, Harry answered. But you can still choose to die, rather than resist. Isn't that what you wanted in the first place? To cease to exist? You can choose it, and not be driven to it like an enemy or an animal.

There was a silence that ran deeper than the mere lack of words. Harry could feel it in his bones, flooding over him. It took away every sound except Portillo Lopez's words, and he thought he might be imagining those.

Harry reached out and behind him, towards the members of the comitatus. He gathered them close together: Draco and the love Harry felt for him, beating in him like a second heart; Ron, who had made mistakes and come back to make up for them more than any other person Harry knew; Hermione, who could see some of the future and a lot more of the past; Ventus, who didn't know what fear was. He wove them together so that he could show Nihil his choice.

I live, he said. I didn't just give up and seek destruction because it would have meant destruction of people like these. You can't choose life in the old way, but you can still choose.

More silence, but Harry sensed it going out now like a tidal wave, and knew that it would fall on him in much the same way. He winced and braced himself, still pulling the thoughts of his friends and his loved ones close to him, winding them around him like ropes or twine.

Sirius was there, making his first offer of a private home for Harry. It had never worked out, but it had sustained Harry, and that was enough to make Harry still love him, never mind what came later. Dumbledore, smiling and admitting to his mistakes and offering Harry that choice in the middle of King's Cross. Even his parents, little as he'd known them, waving madly from the photographs.

Hagrid, his first friend. Hedwig, dead in the war but not forgotten. Remus, who had made mistakes but had gone back and faced up to them in the end. Teddy Lupin, who Harry hadn't spent enough time with.

Out he reached and gathered them close, all the people who had cared for him. There were more than he had ever thought there were, more than he would count in a normal frame of mind, and he experienced a brief moment of warmth, pride, and wonder.

I never knew that I was so loved.

Portillo Lopez's chanting, distant until now, soared abruptly to a crescendo. Harry gasped as the memories he had entwined with surged to the side. Portillo Lopez, in some way that he didn't understand, was grasping and weaving them into a new cloth that took the place of the cloth Ventus had enchanted, which was strong but not strong enough, since it had been magic and Nihil could oppose magic.

And then she reached out--Harry could feel the flowing of the spell and the way she touched the people he had been thinking of, both--and pulled similar memories from Draco, Ron, Hermione, and Ventus. Harry, half-opening his eyes, thought he caught a glimpse of Herricks's face, and Narcissa's, and Mrs. Weasley's, and a man and a woman who would be Hermione's parents.

He didn't know how Portillo Lopez was doing it. He hadn't known that she was capable of doing anything like this. But he could hear Raverat's voice joining hers, and the net of memories, stronger than Harry had thought it could be, visible mainly because of its warmth, settled into place around the ball of nothingness, singing and shining.

The silence in Harry's bones that he knew represented Nihil was motionless now. He found himself holding his breath, unable to tell what would happen next, but no longer afraid as he had been.

Draco embraced him from behind and leaned his head on Harry's shoulder, and together, they waited for what would happen next.

*

Draco knew it was necessary to save the world, but still, he could have done without the questions Portillo Lopez had asked his mind and memory in order to find out the people whom he loved. And he could have done without those memories being added to the mesh that surrounded Nihil.

So he thought, and steadfastly ignored the part of him that was squirming in pure pleasure.

Portillo Lopez finished her chant on a high note; Draco could hear the squeaking and croaking in her throat, and suspected that she couldn't have gone on much longer without her voice faltering, in any case. She brought her hands down hard, and then they were left with Raverat's chant. He moved a step forwards, looking at the ball of nothingness as though it was the center of his universe, his hands gesturing to the sides as though he was spinning the net Portillo Lopez had woven to catch a fish.

When he brought his hands together, Draco could feel the resistance. Somewhere, Nihil was screaming, over and over, silently. Harry tensed against Draco as if he heard it and felt sorry for the bastard. Draco didn't, and didn't want Harry interfering, so he simply squeezed his shoulders and waited for the moment when things would be over.

Raverat closed his eyes. Draco had the impression that they might have burst from their sockets otherwise. His voice trembled, and Draco listened intently, wondering if Portillo Lopez could take it up if he slipped on a word or dropped a syllable. She stood by as if she had no intention of doing so, arms folded, head critically cocked to the side. Apparently she judged his performance and didn't find it wanting, Draco thought. He had to take some pleasure from that.

Raverat's fists touched.

The net of memories and warmth spun out and encircled the ball of nothingness.

Draco's scars seemed to burst into fire. He went to his knees without even thinking about it, crying out in pain. One of Harry's arms encircled him, and Draco shut his eyes, trying to concentrate on the comfort and not the pain.

He felt that way because Nihil was writhing in torment, he realized. Nihil felt the enfolding of that reality--both the kind that came from their memories of life and the golden reality that was flowing down after it--as torture. And there was nothing that he feared more than torture.

The pain flared, more intense and higher. It was emotional pain mostly, Draco thought, mingled with perhaps some memories of what he had suffered when he was in Death Eater hands.

Though hardly able to move, Draco brushed his fingers over his Dark Mark.

It worked, that reminder of the people who had destroyed Caradoc Dearborn and, in a way, caused Nihil's creation in the first place. Back he writhed, and back, and the agony in Draco's scars began to die.

Harry's hand dropped to rest on his arm, too, partially overlapping the Dark Mark. Draco turned his head and rested his cheek against Harry's knuckles.

Harry had died once, and changed the balance between life and death. The Death Eaters had done the same thing, if unwittingly. Choice and accident, Light and Dark, good and evil, balanced by love, they hovered there, and Nihil retreated from them. The net and the reality covered so much of the ball of nothingness that, when Draco forced his eyes open, he could no longer see it.

The last sound Draco ever heard from Nihil was silence, a great wave of it that broke blue-black over him and made him think for a moment that he was back in the void. But he wasn't. That was simply the way it sounded, and the wave raced over him, crested, and broke.

They surfaced again.

Fear and pain had driven Nihil to surrender rather than continue existing with such terror. Draco saw the gold of the reality flare once, and then it melted into wisping tendrils, shredding away and drifting apart.

Raverat's chant stopped. They stood there in real silence, and Granger was the one who asked. "He's gone?"

"He's gone," Portillo Lopez confirmed, voice heavy with wonder.

Quiet descended once more. Draco turned his head and let his cheek fall fully on Harry's chest, listening to the beat of a living heart.

"Draco," Harry whispered. Draco forced his eyes open to see Harry staring back at him, face softly lit as though by starlight. "Your scars."

Draco reached up and found flaking skin that fell away with a touch.