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lomonaaeren) wrote2007-09-25 08:02 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2007-09-25 08:02 pm
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Chapter Twenty-Two of 'I Give You a Wondrous Mirror'- First Barrage
Remember, DH SPOILERS in this story!
Thanks again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Two—First Barrage
“And that’s as much as I know,” Harry said, sitting back with a little sigh against the chair in Hermione’s office. He glanced in several directions, but there was only one visible change to the room since he had visited Hermione to acquire the Dreamless Sleep potion: a large map of wizarding Britain, stuck to the far wall. Areas highlighted in red were mostly around London and included those places most in danger from a concerted attack by their enemies, Harry suspected. Similar red areas glowed around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade in Scotland, and there was a brilliant red speck in Wiltshire.
He was more than happy to look at the map while he waited for Hermione to decide on what he’d told her about the life-debts and the odd, shifting nature of the magic that connected him to Draco. Hermione’s face had started to change halfway through the recitation, and Harry suspected she was angry at him. He couldn’t really blame her. Not only her long friendship with Ginny but the fact that he was quite sure she’d never considered cheating on Ron would be against him.
“You’re sure it’s life-debts?” Hermione asked in a quiet voice. “Not anything else that might form the basis of this?”
Harry gave her a cautious look. That was a more neutral question than he’d thought she’d begin with. Of course, they were supposed to be discussing the choice of bodyguards who would accompany him everywhere but inside his home and Malfoy Manor—reluctantly, Hermione had agreed that even people chosen from the ranks of the Blood Reparations Department would have too many negative feelings towards Draco—and Draco was waiting for them to be done with it in the corridor outside. Maybe she didn’t want to start screaming and alert him that something was wrong, Harry thought.
“Yes,” Harry said. “Everything that Draco uncovered about that makes sense. If it’s something else, it would have to be something that fits all the parameters of life-debts but also has escaped any kind of description in books of magic. Draco has researched this pretty thoroughly.”
Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. Then she said, “The reason I asked was because the only way life-debts can work is by willingness.”
Harry frowned. “They work whether or not someone wants to be saved, I thought.”
“Not that.” Hermione shook her head, still not looking at him. “The effects Malfoy described, where the debts are trying to draw you closer together and make you decide that only the gift of yourself is sufficient to pay them off…that works by willingness. I’ve studied the history of life-debts—“
Of course, Harry thought. If there was something Hermione hadn’t studied, he didn’t know what it was. She had even acquired something of an expertise on mysterious pure-blood traditions, since when she became Head of the Blood Reparations Department she had needed to know if the pure-bloods they were trying to soften could claim a traditional reason for deferring contact with Muggleborns.
“And the only way that such a gift was ever made was sheer willingness. No one else could force another wizard into it. No one could ask for it, even; if it happened, it was considered to be in shockingly bad taste, and a wizard who tried to make the gift of himself without wanting to would simply fail to dissolve the life-debts.” Hermione opened her eyes at last, and her look cut through him. “So the only way this will ever change is if you decide that you’re willing to give yourself to him.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“The magic can’t force you into this, Harry,” Hermione said. “Malfoy can’t force you into this. No one but you can decide to make that sacrifice.” She leaned over the desk. “That means that as long as you do what you’re supposed to do, and keep on loving and being faithful to Ginny, then you’re in no danger.”
Harry looked down at his lap.
“Why is it so hard?” Hermione asked, in the tone of a kind friend who’d been rebuffed by someone she was trying to offer genuinely good advice to. Harry clenched his jaw. That’s what she is. She’s right and I’m wrong, and she’s making sure I know it. “What is so damn attractive about him that you’re willing to give up honor and turn your back on your marriage vows? Because nothing’s worth that, Harry. Would you really want your children to grow up unhappy? And what about Ginny? Does she deserve to suffer because you’ve got a few urges that she might not be able to satisfy?”
“No,” Harry said. “She doesn’t. And neither do the children, of course.”
“So don’t want Malfoy,” Hermione said. “And don’t even consider making him the gift of you. The life-debts aren’t actively dangerous, from what you told me. Even the way the fifth one put Malfoy’s life in danger only did it to establish a connection between you. There would have been no point served if he died. Concentrate on the war instead, which can endanger you.” She stared at him until Harry looked up again. “And I’d suggest that you spend less time with him, too, and more time with Ginny. I think you need to be reminded just how wonderful she really is.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, and no matter how he tried he could not keep the sarcasm out of his tone, “I do.”
Hermione’s face tightened. She said, “Keep on taking the Dreamless Sleep, as much of it as is safe. Spend more time with your wife. Spend more time with your children.” She hesitated, then added, “Have you and Ginny slept together much recently?”
His face hurt with the blush that overtook it then. Harry looked away and muttered, “No.”
“Well, then, that might be part of the problem.” Hermione sounded relieved. “If you’re experiencing sexual attraction to Malfoy, it’s probably just because you haven’t received any satisfaction at all, wouldn’t you say?”
Harry opened his mouth to tell her that the attraction he felt for Draco was nothing like what he’d felt for Ginny, even during those first passionate months of marriage when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and then shut his mouth again. Why should he tell her that? She would just dismiss it anyway. She was the one who, because she’d never wanted anyone but Ron, thought that it was impossible for one half of a happily married couple to want anyone else, either.
But she was right in at least one respect. What Harry felt was wrong. He should stop feeling it if he could, and he should avoid feeding it at all costs. He couldn’t control his feelings, but he could control his actions.
He would.
“Who are my bodyguards going to be?” he asked, to change the subject, and then went with Hermione over the names and abilities of each one.
In the end he chose two pure-blood witches whom he’d sometimes worked with on Blood Reparations cases—Timolea Wesley, a distant relative of the Weasley family whose great-grandfather had changed the spelling of their name, and Athena Mockingbird—and a Muggleborn wizard who was engaged to Timolea, Erasmus Grant. They’d meet him when he stepped outside the office, and keep up the protection until the moment that he was safely behind his own wards again.
Harry rose to his feet, thanking Hermione for everything. She spent a moment looking up at him pensively, opened her mouth as if to offer more advice, and then shut it with a snap and shook her head.
“Never mind, Harry,” she said softly. “I think you’ll see how right I am in a few more months, and how good it would have been if you had stayed away from Malfoy.”
Harry didn’t answer. He stepped out of the office, greeted Timolea, Athena, and Erasmus, and avoided Draco’s gaze as much as possible. He also asked Athena to accompany Draco back to the Manor, just so Draco wouldn’t have an excuse to ask Harry to perform another Side-Along Apparition. It was occurring to Harry now just how many opportunities Draco had taken to touch him in the past few hours, and that he probably hadn’t needed help Apparating or recalling the entrance to the Ministry at all.
He couldn’t control his feelings, but he could control his actions, and at the moment, he thought the wisest course was to be friendly but distant from Draco.
Draco gave him a look just before he vanished in Athena’s company to show that he was less than impressed. He also reached out and deliberately squeezed Harry’s wrist, his hand lingering a bit longer than was comfortable.
Harry turned miserably away, not least because that brief brush of flesh had been enough to arouse him again.
But he had to think of his wife, his family, and Draco’s future. Draco would want to find another lover, since his marriage vows allowed for it and since he probably wouldn’t want to reconcile with Marian even if he saw her alive again.
Harry couldn’t be that lover. He couldn’t help Draco there. It was best if they just both accepted the quiet stillbirth of the possible sexual dimension of their relationship.
Harry wanted more than that. But that wasn’t right. And he had to remember to do what was right.
*
Draco gave a disgruntled sigh and attempted to read through the Daily Prophet again, though, since the “finest writers” at the paper were oblivious of political events of any import, it of course carried nothing about the war. There were a few articles wondering why Draco Malfoy hadn’t been arrested for murder yet, but even they were less numerous and more subdued than they had been. The Daily Prophet was again reduced to reporting on scandals in the Ministry and trying to follow Harry about.
Harry.
Did he really think Draco was above casting spells that allowed him to listen at doorways, when he couldn’t use the wards in the Manor to eavesdrop? And did he really think that Granger was cautious enough and good enough to catch any possible magic he used?
She wasn’t and she hadn’t, and so Draco knew exactly why Harry had avoided his eyes when he stepped out of the office, and looked torn between staying and pulling back when Draco caught his hand.
Granger was a fool. People couldn’t control their feelings, and Harry trying to discourage his desire would only make it grow. Harry had been a Gryffindor. Fear wasn’t natural to him, and Draco understood how to manipulate his natural inclinations towards fearlessness and the urge to protect other people.
Much better than his wife did, apparently.
The only thing out of that entire conversation that had cheered him, and somewhat removed the taste of Granger’s sanctimonious prattle about home and family from his mouth, was that Harry and his Weasley hadn’t slept together for some time. Perhaps his dreams had put her off, Draco thought hopefully.
He himself had had the dreams multiple times per night since the day Harry had saved his life, as if the magic were determined that he should know that vision of the other possible life as well as Harry did. He recognized a few of the more sexual ones from Harry’s descriptions. And he had had the one about the Portkey that deposited them in South America, too.
They remained with him even when he was awake, sharp and etched on his mind as though someone had cut them in a pane of glass with the tip of a diamond. Even if Draco’s own marriage vows had been stricter, he thought he would have succumbed to the quite distinct hunger that had grown in him for an equal partner like that, someone he could share trouble and danger as well as peaceful sunlit afternoons with.
Perhaps someone else would be even more perfect for him, but Draco didn’t intend to waste trouble and effort trying to find him or her. He wanted Harry. He was going to have him. He was—
A scream rang into the dining room. Draco was on his feet in instants, his heart beating so hard that his head hurt. His mother looked up more warily from the end of the table, where she’d been reading her own copy of the newspaper, and drew her wand with a small silken sound he wouldn’t have recognized if he hadn’t heard it for months and months during the Dark Lord’s occupation of the Manor.
The scream repeated itself, and Draco managed to identify it this time. Not Scorpius, as he’d been half-afraid, but the cry of a house-elf.
Still, this did not sound like the distress that accompanied the discovery of a dirty room. Draco began to edge his way towards the far door. His mother came behind him, her steps cautious but her eyes so bright that Draco thought she was good a warrior as any to have at his back.
Something heavy and dark red lashed down the corridor at him.
Draco had his wand raised and a Shield Charm up before he realized what he was doing. His studies of defensive magic, conducted since Harry had managed to rouse him to consciousness of the war, had sharpened his reflexes more than he realized. He had time, as the attacking thing struck the Shield Charm and slid down it in a liquid mess, to study and recognize it.
It was blood. And when it picked itself up and faced him again, it had brilliant green eyes, the sharp color of poison, located in the upper ridge of what could have been a head, and Draco knew what it was.
A Blood Hydra. It was a creature that could be created with the right incantations from any large wound, and which was incredibly hard to kill. The heads could be cut off, but it would sprout two heads in the place of each cut one, and it could create more and more until all the liquid supporting it was gone.
The only thing Draco wondered was how it could have got inside the wards, and then the answer came to him and he cursed aloud.
I should have realized Marian was probably performing blood magic with the incantations she was doing. The blood had vanished from her room, and Draco had thought it thoroughly cleaned up. If the Blood Hydra spell was already in effect, though, it would have simply shrunk into a corner and then resurrected itself when commanded to do so.
I am going to kill you, Marian, wherever you are, Draco thought, and bared his teeth at the creature.
A movement back in the coils alerted him. He looked up, and saw Scorpius’s terrified face, swinging above the serpent’s red, reared back. Blood wrapped his small body and streaked his blond hair.
Draco was still staring at his son when the hydra’s nearest head struck at him, enough force behind it to shatter the Shield Charm.
*
Harry sighed and cleaned cornflakes out of Al’s hair with a swift spell. James was responsible for their being there, of course. He was trying to look innocent at the moment, but since Harry had turned around just as he launched them at his brother, there wasn’t much chance of that.
“James,” Harry began, hating the weary tone in his own voice. But really. “How many times have we told you not to throw food at your brother?”
Ginny, currently cleaning up a bubble of milk from Lily’s face, looked up and nodded in support.
“Lots,” James said.
“Then why did you do it?” Harry said, and flicked his wand again to remove a trickle of milk from Al’s cheek. His smaller son was holding on to a brave face, but his quivering lower lip said that wouldn’t last long.
“Because he looks so stupid,” James said, and waved his hand at Al. “Look at him. Stupid face, stupid hair—“ Al’s hair was like Harry’s, black and unmanageable by any normal magic, while James had inherited Ginny’s own smoothness along with her red color.
Al closed his eyes tightly shut, but he had started crying anyway. Harry stepped around the table and picked him up, swinging him back and forth in the vigorous rocking motion that sometimes calmed him. James put a finger in his mouth and watched this, mouthing something that looked like, “Crybaby,” at Al.
“James Sirius Potter,” Harry said, and James’s face changed; he knew Harry was serious whenever he used his full name. “You are going to your room, and you won’t come out until this afternoon.”
“But Daaaaad,” James said, stretching the vowel out in the long drawl that was, luckily, the only way he resembled Dudley Dursley as a child. “That’s not faaaaair. Teddy’s coming this afternoon, and he was going to take us on brooms again!”
“Yes, I know,” Harry said. “And maybe next time you’ll think about that before you hurt your brother.”
James stamped his foot. “But he was just standing there, looking stupid—“
Someone Apparated into the house. Harry jumped before he realized it was Andromeda, who had free access to enter through the wards. She was holding Teddy by one hand. Harry supposed she’d wanted to bring him a little early; sometimes a ten-year-old wizard could be a bit much for an elderly witch living alone.
Then he saw Andromeda’s white face, and folded himself around Al as he stepped closer to her. “What’s wrong?” he asked. He caught a glimpse of James from the corner of his eye, looking hopeful that this might mean he didn’t have to go to his room, and Ginny, folding herself around Lily the same way he was instinctively trying to protect Al. He was glad that they had that much in common at the moment, since they’d had a quiet but intense argument last night about the amount of time he was spending around Draco.
“Read these,” said Andromeda. She held out a sheaf of parchments to him, and shut her eyes. Trickles of tears ran out from under them, but she turned away and tried to busy herself with Teddy—who protested—so he wouldn’t see.
Harry looked through the parchments, expertly balancing Al on one hip and with one arm. They turned out to be letters, and each one was written in the same disguised hand that had sent the warning to Salazar’s Snakes about his and Draco’s presence in Diagon Alley. The things they proclaimed they would do to Andromeda, and to Teddy while she watched…Harry was shaking with rage at the end of them. If they were from the Masked Lady, she had learned the art of personal torture from a finer master than Voldemort.
He lifted his eyes, ready to reassure Andromeda that of course he would do anything he could to protect her and his godson.
And then the attack happened.
Enormous balls of yellow-green gas puffed up from the center of the table, where the Daily Prophet lay open. Harry reacted so fast he could barely follow his own movements; he drew his wand, cast a spell that knocked James to the floor, and then dived, sheltering Al under his body.
He heard Ginny and Andromeda cry out, but far more terrifying than that were the screams of his children.
Harry felt the gas curl around the edges of his hair. Just that touch of it made his skin crisp and his eyes water and the horrible, tearing impulse to cough start in his chest.
He did not even want to imagine what that gas would do to a three-year-old, or a two-year-old, or a five-month-old baby.
He rolled over on his back, though he had dropped Al and was still sheltering him with his shoulders, because he had to be able to see where the gas was. It had lowered and spread, and now extended lazy tendrils around the table towards James and Andromeda, and further into the house, so they couldn’t run away from it.
His rage boiling inside him, Harry lifted his wand and shouted a spell that he wasn’t supposed to know, a spell that he had got from studying one of the Dark Arts books that Hermione kept in her office purely for research purposes.
*
Draco couldn’t breathe. His eyes watered with the effort of staring, trying to make sure that Scorpius was all right. The Blood Hydra had broken the Shield Charm and knocked him down, and now the nearest head swayed menacingly above him, as though the evil will behind the spell were trying to decide whether it should dive and break his ribs, or savor its own triumph further.
But Draco couldn’t care if he did die in the next moment. The Blood Hydra had his son.
He had to do something to save Scorpius, but he had no idea what he could do. The nearest loop of the dark crimson body was pinning his wand and his wand hand to the floor, and so far, it hadn’t done anything to Scorpius. They were all caught in a sharpness beyond fear, waiting for the moment when the tension would break.
A moment later, he realized the Blood Hydra and he himself had made the same mistake: they had forgotten about his mother.
“Ardus!”
The Blood Hydra screamed and thrashed like a living snake as Narcissa’s spell arched past Draco, surrounding it with a corona of white-yellow glare like the light of a desert sun. The Dehydration Curse struck deep into the blood, drying it from the inside out, greedily swallowing and destroying the material it needed to exist.
The weight on Draco’s wand arm vanished.
And when Scorpius, who had been suspended in the midst of the wet coils several feet from the floor, began to drop, he was ready.
“Accio Scorpius!” Draco shouted. He hadn’t cast a spell with so much force in his life, and the result was that the spell obeyed his unspoken intention as well as his stated one. Instead of yanking his baby boy across the air, the Summoning Charm floated him gently into Draco’s arms. Draco embraced him and bowed his head to rest his cheek on the sweat-matted blond hair, wondering if he’d ever be able to let him go again.
He felt Narcissa’s hand on his shoulder a moment later, and then Scorpius whispered, “Daddy?” And Draco had to blink the tears away.
But not the burning rage that assaulted him now, slow and long-blazing, the desire to kill the person or people who had caused him that moment of fear. The tears might abandon his eyes, and welcome. That rage would never leave him.
*
“Spiritus conpello!”
Harry’s shouted spell gave him control of every molecule of air in the room. He was suddenly intimately aware, in ways he had never wanted to be, of how his wife and Andromeda and the children were breathing. And he could feel the small currents passing around his own hair and in and out through the window and beneath the door.
This spell was considered Dark Arts because it would be easy for a wizard using it to suffocate an enemy without fuss. But Harry had wanted to use it to take control of the air on which the gas drifted, and it let him do that.
The gas drove together into a compact ball at his will, though he could feel the magic that had raised it out of the newspaper in the first place fighting weakly against him. Harry shrieked, a sound of pure frustration and hatred, through clenched teeth, and the magic bowed to his greater force. In moments, every tiny bead of yellow-green smog was whirling together, faster and faster. Harry cast another spell he wasn’t supposed to know, this time nonverbally. In the next moment, the gas had ceased to exist.
He muttered the Finite next, to release his control of the others’ air, and at once turned to check on Al. Al was crying silently when Harry picked him up, and he clung so hard to his father that it was difficult for Harry to check his nose and mouth at first, so that he could make sure no gas had burrowed into his sinuses. But no, he was well.
When he turned, he realized that Andromeda had already completed a similar check of Teddy, and Ginny nodded at him over the tops of James and Lily’s heads to signify that both were unhurt. She was clutching them tightly enough that James was fussing. Harry couldn’t blame her.
He rose swiftly to his feet, still cradling Al in his arms, and strode into the drawing room. He didn’t consider the immediate consequences of his actions, how it would get him a lecture from Ginny and from Hermione if she knew, because he needed to know.
He lit the logs with a wave of his wand, cast a handful of Floo powder into the flames, and shouted, “Malfoy Manor!”
It took him several minutes to receive an answer, which made him stamp and fret and stroke Al’s back in an attempt to recover a semblance of calm. But then Draco appeared, holding Scorpius close enough that his head also softly entered the flames.
Harry met Draco’s eyes. He knew in an instant that something similar had happened, though not the details, and he knew intimately the killing fury that had eclipsed all of Draco’s other emotions.
He had never shared a look so intense with another human being. Harry felt another bond settle into place between them with a solid click, though it was more like an iron chain than the soft, infinitely flexible connections of the life-debts. They would fight this war together, yes, and now for the same reasons.
“He’s well,” Draco whispered.
“And all’s well here,” said Harry, the tension melting from his shoulders. “We—“
A thundering knock sounded on the door to the house. Harry turned around, wand already held up before him.
He heard Ginny asking a question, and smiled grimly. Good girl. It was probably Ron or Hermione at the door, but she would make sure, first, that it wasn’t someone using Polyjuice, by asking something only the four of them would know.
Ron was in the room a moment later, shaking off windblown bits of leaf, and flecks of soot, and blood.
He answered Harry’s questions with an expressive grimace, and then, “They hit Diagon Alley. Brought down all the force they could, which was—enough. We received a warning just a few minutes before, and so we were able to avert what might have been the worst of it. But—“ He shook his head.
Harry had known Ron Weasley for seventeen years, and he knew something was wrong now. “What is it?” he asked.
Ron shut his eyes. “They hit every shop along the Alley especially hard,” he said. “We need you to come right away. George is dying.”
Chapter 23.
Thanks again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Two—First Barrage
“And that’s as much as I know,” Harry said, sitting back with a little sigh against the chair in Hermione’s office. He glanced in several directions, but there was only one visible change to the room since he had visited Hermione to acquire the Dreamless Sleep potion: a large map of wizarding Britain, stuck to the far wall. Areas highlighted in red were mostly around London and included those places most in danger from a concerted attack by their enemies, Harry suspected. Similar red areas glowed around Hogwarts and Hogsmeade in Scotland, and there was a brilliant red speck in Wiltshire.
He was more than happy to look at the map while he waited for Hermione to decide on what he’d told her about the life-debts and the odd, shifting nature of the magic that connected him to Draco. Hermione’s face had started to change halfway through the recitation, and Harry suspected she was angry at him. He couldn’t really blame her. Not only her long friendship with Ginny but the fact that he was quite sure she’d never considered cheating on Ron would be against him.
“You’re sure it’s life-debts?” Hermione asked in a quiet voice. “Not anything else that might form the basis of this?”
Harry gave her a cautious look. That was a more neutral question than he’d thought she’d begin with. Of course, they were supposed to be discussing the choice of bodyguards who would accompany him everywhere but inside his home and Malfoy Manor—reluctantly, Hermione had agreed that even people chosen from the ranks of the Blood Reparations Department would have too many negative feelings towards Draco—and Draco was waiting for them to be done with it in the corridor outside. Maybe she didn’t want to start screaming and alert him that something was wrong, Harry thought.
“Yes,” Harry said. “Everything that Draco uncovered about that makes sense. If it’s something else, it would have to be something that fits all the parameters of life-debts but also has escaped any kind of description in books of magic. Draco has researched this pretty thoroughly.”
Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her eyes. Then she said, “The reason I asked was because the only way life-debts can work is by willingness.”
Harry frowned. “They work whether or not someone wants to be saved, I thought.”
“Not that.” Hermione shook her head, still not looking at him. “The effects Malfoy described, where the debts are trying to draw you closer together and make you decide that only the gift of yourself is sufficient to pay them off…that works by willingness. I’ve studied the history of life-debts—“
Of course, Harry thought. If there was something Hermione hadn’t studied, he didn’t know what it was. She had even acquired something of an expertise on mysterious pure-blood traditions, since when she became Head of the Blood Reparations Department she had needed to know if the pure-bloods they were trying to soften could claim a traditional reason for deferring contact with Muggleborns.
“And the only way that such a gift was ever made was sheer willingness. No one else could force another wizard into it. No one could ask for it, even; if it happened, it was considered to be in shockingly bad taste, and a wizard who tried to make the gift of himself without wanting to would simply fail to dissolve the life-debts.” Hermione opened her eyes at last, and her look cut through him. “So the only way this will ever change is if you decide that you’re willing to give yourself to him.”
Harry narrowed his eyes. “I’m not sure I understand.”
“The magic can’t force you into this, Harry,” Hermione said. “Malfoy can’t force you into this. No one but you can decide to make that sacrifice.” She leaned over the desk. “That means that as long as you do what you’re supposed to do, and keep on loving and being faithful to Ginny, then you’re in no danger.”
Harry looked down at his lap.
“Why is it so hard?” Hermione asked, in the tone of a kind friend who’d been rebuffed by someone she was trying to offer genuinely good advice to. Harry clenched his jaw. That’s what she is. She’s right and I’m wrong, and she’s making sure I know it. “What is so damn attractive about him that you’re willing to give up honor and turn your back on your marriage vows? Because nothing’s worth that, Harry. Would you really want your children to grow up unhappy? And what about Ginny? Does she deserve to suffer because you’ve got a few urges that she might not be able to satisfy?”
“No,” Harry said. “She doesn’t. And neither do the children, of course.”
“So don’t want Malfoy,” Hermione said. “And don’t even consider making him the gift of you. The life-debts aren’t actively dangerous, from what you told me. Even the way the fifth one put Malfoy’s life in danger only did it to establish a connection between you. There would have been no point served if he died. Concentrate on the war instead, which can endanger you.” She stared at him until Harry looked up again. “And I’d suggest that you spend less time with him, too, and more time with Ginny. I think you need to be reminded just how wonderful she really is.”
“Yeah,” Harry said, and no matter how he tried he could not keep the sarcasm out of his tone, “I do.”
Hermione’s face tightened. She said, “Keep on taking the Dreamless Sleep, as much of it as is safe. Spend more time with your wife. Spend more time with your children.” She hesitated, then added, “Have you and Ginny slept together much recently?”
His face hurt with the blush that overtook it then. Harry looked away and muttered, “No.”
“Well, then, that might be part of the problem.” Hermione sounded relieved. “If you’re experiencing sexual attraction to Malfoy, it’s probably just because you haven’t received any satisfaction at all, wouldn’t you say?”
Harry opened his mouth to tell her that the attraction he felt for Draco was nothing like what he’d felt for Ginny, even during those first passionate months of marriage when they couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and then shut his mouth again. Why should he tell her that? She would just dismiss it anyway. She was the one who, because she’d never wanted anyone but Ron, thought that it was impossible for one half of a happily married couple to want anyone else, either.
But she was right in at least one respect. What Harry felt was wrong. He should stop feeling it if he could, and he should avoid feeding it at all costs. He couldn’t control his feelings, but he could control his actions.
He would.
“Who are my bodyguards going to be?” he asked, to change the subject, and then went with Hermione over the names and abilities of each one.
In the end he chose two pure-blood witches whom he’d sometimes worked with on Blood Reparations cases—Timolea Wesley, a distant relative of the Weasley family whose great-grandfather had changed the spelling of their name, and Athena Mockingbird—and a Muggleborn wizard who was engaged to Timolea, Erasmus Grant. They’d meet him when he stepped outside the office, and keep up the protection until the moment that he was safely behind his own wards again.
Harry rose to his feet, thanking Hermione for everything. She spent a moment looking up at him pensively, opened her mouth as if to offer more advice, and then shut it with a snap and shook her head.
“Never mind, Harry,” she said softly. “I think you’ll see how right I am in a few more months, and how good it would have been if you had stayed away from Malfoy.”
Harry didn’t answer. He stepped out of the office, greeted Timolea, Athena, and Erasmus, and avoided Draco’s gaze as much as possible. He also asked Athena to accompany Draco back to the Manor, just so Draco wouldn’t have an excuse to ask Harry to perform another Side-Along Apparition. It was occurring to Harry now just how many opportunities Draco had taken to touch him in the past few hours, and that he probably hadn’t needed help Apparating or recalling the entrance to the Ministry at all.
He couldn’t control his feelings, but he could control his actions, and at the moment, he thought the wisest course was to be friendly but distant from Draco.
Draco gave him a look just before he vanished in Athena’s company to show that he was less than impressed. He also reached out and deliberately squeezed Harry’s wrist, his hand lingering a bit longer than was comfortable.
Harry turned miserably away, not least because that brief brush of flesh had been enough to arouse him again.
But he had to think of his wife, his family, and Draco’s future. Draco would want to find another lover, since his marriage vows allowed for it and since he probably wouldn’t want to reconcile with Marian even if he saw her alive again.
Harry couldn’t be that lover. He couldn’t help Draco there. It was best if they just both accepted the quiet stillbirth of the possible sexual dimension of their relationship.
Harry wanted more than that. But that wasn’t right. And he had to remember to do what was right.
*
Draco gave a disgruntled sigh and attempted to read through the Daily Prophet again, though, since the “finest writers” at the paper were oblivious of political events of any import, it of course carried nothing about the war. There were a few articles wondering why Draco Malfoy hadn’t been arrested for murder yet, but even they were less numerous and more subdued than they had been. The Daily Prophet was again reduced to reporting on scandals in the Ministry and trying to follow Harry about.
Harry.
Did he really think Draco was above casting spells that allowed him to listen at doorways, when he couldn’t use the wards in the Manor to eavesdrop? And did he really think that Granger was cautious enough and good enough to catch any possible magic he used?
She wasn’t and she hadn’t, and so Draco knew exactly why Harry had avoided his eyes when he stepped out of the office, and looked torn between staying and pulling back when Draco caught his hand.
Granger was a fool. People couldn’t control their feelings, and Harry trying to discourage his desire would only make it grow. Harry had been a Gryffindor. Fear wasn’t natural to him, and Draco understood how to manipulate his natural inclinations towards fearlessness and the urge to protect other people.
Much better than his wife did, apparently.
The only thing out of that entire conversation that had cheered him, and somewhat removed the taste of Granger’s sanctimonious prattle about home and family from his mouth, was that Harry and his Weasley hadn’t slept together for some time. Perhaps his dreams had put her off, Draco thought hopefully.
He himself had had the dreams multiple times per night since the day Harry had saved his life, as if the magic were determined that he should know that vision of the other possible life as well as Harry did. He recognized a few of the more sexual ones from Harry’s descriptions. And he had had the one about the Portkey that deposited them in South America, too.
They remained with him even when he was awake, sharp and etched on his mind as though someone had cut them in a pane of glass with the tip of a diamond. Even if Draco’s own marriage vows had been stricter, he thought he would have succumbed to the quite distinct hunger that had grown in him for an equal partner like that, someone he could share trouble and danger as well as peaceful sunlit afternoons with.
Perhaps someone else would be even more perfect for him, but Draco didn’t intend to waste trouble and effort trying to find him or her. He wanted Harry. He was going to have him. He was—
A scream rang into the dining room. Draco was on his feet in instants, his heart beating so hard that his head hurt. His mother looked up more warily from the end of the table, where she’d been reading her own copy of the newspaper, and drew her wand with a small silken sound he wouldn’t have recognized if he hadn’t heard it for months and months during the Dark Lord’s occupation of the Manor.
The scream repeated itself, and Draco managed to identify it this time. Not Scorpius, as he’d been half-afraid, but the cry of a house-elf.
Still, this did not sound like the distress that accompanied the discovery of a dirty room. Draco began to edge his way towards the far door. His mother came behind him, her steps cautious but her eyes so bright that Draco thought she was good a warrior as any to have at his back.
Something heavy and dark red lashed down the corridor at him.
Draco had his wand raised and a Shield Charm up before he realized what he was doing. His studies of defensive magic, conducted since Harry had managed to rouse him to consciousness of the war, had sharpened his reflexes more than he realized. He had time, as the attacking thing struck the Shield Charm and slid down it in a liquid mess, to study and recognize it.
It was blood. And when it picked itself up and faced him again, it had brilliant green eyes, the sharp color of poison, located in the upper ridge of what could have been a head, and Draco knew what it was.
A Blood Hydra. It was a creature that could be created with the right incantations from any large wound, and which was incredibly hard to kill. The heads could be cut off, but it would sprout two heads in the place of each cut one, and it could create more and more until all the liquid supporting it was gone.
The only thing Draco wondered was how it could have got inside the wards, and then the answer came to him and he cursed aloud.
I should have realized Marian was probably performing blood magic with the incantations she was doing. The blood had vanished from her room, and Draco had thought it thoroughly cleaned up. If the Blood Hydra spell was already in effect, though, it would have simply shrunk into a corner and then resurrected itself when commanded to do so.
I am going to kill you, Marian, wherever you are, Draco thought, and bared his teeth at the creature.
A movement back in the coils alerted him. He looked up, and saw Scorpius’s terrified face, swinging above the serpent’s red, reared back. Blood wrapped his small body and streaked his blond hair.
Draco was still staring at his son when the hydra’s nearest head struck at him, enough force behind it to shatter the Shield Charm.
*
Harry sighed and cleaned cornflakes out of Al’s hair with a swift spell. James was responsible for their being there, of course. He was trying to look innocent at the moment, but since Harry had turned around just as he launched them at his brother, there wasn’t much chance of that.
“James,” Harry began, hating the weary tone in his own voice. But really. “How many times have we told you not to throw food at your brother?”
Ginny, currently cleaning up a bubble of milk from Lily’s face, looked up and nodded in support.
“Lots,” James said.
“Then why did you do it?” Harry said, and flicked his wand again to remove a trickle of milk from Al’s cheek. His smaller son was holding on to a brave face, but his quivering lower lip said that wouldn’t last long.
“Because he looks so stupid,” James said, and waved his hand at Al. “Look at him. Stupid face, stupid hair—“ Al’s hair was like Harry’s, black and unmanageable by any normal magic, while James had inherited Ginny’s own smoothness along with her red color.
Al closed his eyes tightly shut, but he had started crying anyway. Harry stepped around the table and picked him up, swinging him back and forth in the vigorous rocking motion that sometimes calmed him. James put a finger in his mouth and watched this, mouthing something that looked like, “Crybaby,” at Al.
“James Sirius Potter,” Harry said, and James’s face changed; he knew Harry was serious whenever he used his full name. “You are going to your room, and you won’t come out until this afternoon.”
“But Daaaaad,” James said, stretching the vowel out in the long drawl that was, luckily, the only way he resembled Dudley Dursley as a child. “That’s not faaaaair. Teddy’s coming this afternoon, and he was going to take us on brooms again!”
“Yes, I know,” Harry said. “And maybe next time you’ll think about that before you hurt your brother.”
James stamped his foot. “But he was just standing there, looking stupid—“
Someone Apparated into the house. Harry jumped before he realized it was Andromeda, who had free access to enter through the wards. She was holding Teddy by one hand. Harry supposed she’d wanted to bring him a little early; sometimes a ten-year-old wizard could be a bit much for an elderly witch living alone.
Then he saw Andromeda’s white face, and folded himself around Al as he stepped closer to her. “What’s wrong?” he asked. He caught a glimpse of James from the corner of his eye, looking hopeful that this might mean he didn’t have to go to his room, and Ginny, folding herself around Lily the same way he was instinctively trying to protect Al. He was glad that they had that much in common at the moment, since they’d had a quiet but intense argument last night about the amount of time he was spending around Draco.
“Read these,” said Andromeda. She held out a sheaf of parchments to him, and shut her eyes. Trickles of tears ran out from under them, but she turned away and tried to busy herself with Teddy—who protested—so he wouldn’t see.
Harry looked through the parchments, expertly balancing Al on one hip and with one arm. They turned out to be letters, and each one was written in the same disguised hand that had sent the warning to Salazar’s Snakes about his and Draco’s presence in Diagon Alley. The things they proclaimed they would do to Andromeda, and to Teddy while she watched…Harry was shaking with rage at the end of them. If they were from the Masked Lady, she had learned the art of personal torture from a finer master than Voldemort.
He lifted his eyes, ready to reassure Andromeda that of course he would do anything he could to protect her and his godson.
And then the attack happened.
Enormous balls of yellow-green gas puffed up from the center of the table, where the Daily Prophet lay open. Harry reacted so fast he could barely follow his own movements; he drew his wand, cast a spell that knocked James to the floor, and then dived, sheltering Al under his body.
He heard Ginny and Andromeda cry out, but far more terrifying than that were the screams of his children.
Harry felt the gas curl around the edges of his hair. Just that touch of it made his skin crisp and his eyes water and the horrible, tearing impulse to cough start in his chest.
He did not even want to imagine what that gas would do to a three-year-old, or a two-year-old, or a five-month-old baby.
He rolled over on his back, though he had dropped Al and was still sheltering him with his shoulders, because he had to be able to see where the gas was. It had lowered and spread, and now extended lazy tendrils around the table towards James and Andromeda, and further into the house, so they couldn’t run away from it.
His rage boiling inside him, Harry lifted his wand and shouted a spell that he wasn’t supposed to know, a spell that he had got from studying one of the Dark Arts books that Hermione kept in her office purely for research purposes.
*
Draco couldn’t breathe. His eyes watered with the effort of staring, trying to make sure that Scorpius was all right. The Blood Hydra had broken the Shield Charm and knocked him down, and now the nearest head swayed menacingly above him, as though the evil will behind the spell were trying to decide whether it should dive and break his ribs, or savor its own triumph further.
But Draco couldn’t care if he did die in the next moment. The Blood Hydra had his son.
He had to do something to save Scorpius, but he had no idea what he could do. The nearest loop of the dark crimson body was pinning his wand and his wand hand to the floor, and so far, it hadn’t done anything to Scorpius. They were all caught in a sharpness beyond fear, waiting for the moment when the tension would break.
A moment later, he realized the Blood Hydra and he himself had made the same mistake: they had forgotten about his mother.
“Ardus!”
The Blood Hydra screamed and thrashed like a living snake as Narcissa’s spell arched past Draco, surrounding it with a corona of white-yellow glare like the light of a desert sun. The Dehydration Curse struck deep into the blood, drying it from the inside out, greedily swallowing and destroying the material it needed to exist.
The weight on Draco’s wand arm vanished.
And when Scorpius, who had been suspended in the midst of the wet coils several feet from the floor, began to drop, he was ready.
“Accio Scorpius!” Draco shouted. He hadn’t cast a spell with so much force in his life, and the result was that the spell obeyed his unspoken intention as well as his stated one. Instead of yanking his baby boy across the air, the Summoning Charm floated him gently into Draco’s arms. Draco embraced him and bowed his head to rest his cheek on the sweat-matted blond hair, wondering if he’d ever be able to let him go again.
He felt Narcissa’s hand on his shoulder a moment later, and then Scorpius whispered, “Daddy?” And Draco had to blink the tears away.
But not the burning rage that assaulted him now, slow and long-blazing, the desire to kill the person or people who had caused him that moment of fear. The tears might abandon his eyes, and welcome. That rage would never leave him.
*
“Spiritus conpello!”
Harry’s shouted spell gave him control of every molecule of air in the room. He was suddenly intimately aware, in ways he had never wanted to be, of how his wife and Andromeda and the children were breathing. And he could feel the small currents passing around his own hair and in and out through the window and beneath the door.
This spell was considered Dark Arts because it would be easy for a wizard using it to suffocate an enemy without fuss. But Harry had wanted to use it to take control of the air on which the gas drifted, and it let him do that.
The gas drove together into a compact ball at his will, though he could feel the magic that had raised it out of the newspaper in the first place fighting weakly against him. Harry shrieked, a sound of pure frustration and hatred, through clenched teeth, and the magic bowed to his greater force. In moments, every tiny bead of yellow-green smog was whirling together, faster and faster. Harry cast another spell he wasn’t supposed to know, this time nonverbally. In the next moment, the gas had ceased to exist.
He muttered the Finite next, to release his control of the others’ air, and at once turned to check on Al. Al was crying silently when Harry picked him up, and he clung so hard to his father that it was difficult for Harry to check his nose and mouth at first, so that he could make sure no gas had burrowed into his sinuses. But no, he was well.
When he turned, he realized that Andromeda had already completed a similar check of Teddy, and Ginny nodded at him over the tops of James and Lily’s heads to signify that both were unhurt. She was clutching them tightly enough that James was fussing. Harry couldn’t blame her.
He rose swiftly to his feet, still cradling Al in his arms, and strode into the drawing room. He didn’t consider the immediate consequences of his actions, how it would get him a lecture from Ginny and from Hermione if she knew, because he needed to know.
He lit the logs with a wave of his wand, cast a handful of Floo powder into the flames, and shouted, “Malfoy Manor!”
It took him several minutes to receive an answer, which made him stamp and fret and stroke Al’s back in an attempt to recover a semblance of calm. But then Draco appeared, holding Scorpius close enough that his head also softly entered the flames.
Harry met Draco’s eyes. He knew in an instant that something similar had happened, though not the details, and he knew intimately the killing fury that had eclipsed all of Draco’s other emotions.
He had never shared a look so intense with another human being. Harry felt another bond settle into place between them with a solid click, though it was more like an iron chain than the soft, infinitely flexible connections of the life-debts. They would fight this war together, yes, and now for the same reasons.
“He’s well,” Draco whispered.
“And all’s well here,” said Harry, the tension melting from his shoulders. “We—“
A thundering knock sounded on the door to the house. Harry turned around, wand already held up before him.
He heard Ginny asking a question, and smiled grimly. Good girl. It was probably Ron or Hermione at the door, but she would make sure, first, that it wasn’t someone using Polyjuice, by asking something only the four of them would know.
Ron was in the room a moment later, shaking off windblown bits of leaf, and flecks of soot, and blood.
He answered Harry’s questions with an expressive grimace, and then, “They hit Diagon Alley. Brought down all the force they could, which was—enough. We received a warning just a few minutes before, and so we were able to avert what might have been the worst of it. But—“ He shook his head.
Harry had known Ron Weasley for seventeen years, and he knew something was wrong now. “What is it?” he asked.
Ron shut his eyes. “They hit every shop along the Alley especially hard,” he said. “We need you to come right away. George is dying.”
Chapter 23.
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In short: Hermione is really pissing me off. YAY harry at least accepts he wants a sexual relationship with draco. A step in the right direction at least. Draco's deviousness is still utter love. The scenes with the attacks on Harry and Draco were fantastacly written, and that *look* they shared afterward was just priceless. And oh, god, no GEORGE! *sobb*
Uhm.... I think thats everything.....
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Harry can admit it to himself, at least, and not all Hermione's discouragement will make him take that back. What will be hard is deciding how/if to act on it.
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in parts sorry for and very negative about Ginny.
That's about the reaction I want right now. :)
The next chapter should probably be up on Saturday.
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I think my heart skipped a beat during the scene with the Blood Hydra and Scorpius. XD;
...D:
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And thank you!
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Would Marian have really been willing to risk Scorpius's life? I know Draco thinks it was her, and if he's right, then she deserves everything Draco will do to her. But I thought that she loved her son, despite not being able to get close to him. Perhaps she's of the mentality that if she can't have her son, Draco won't either?
Of course Hermione is going to be on Ginny's side. She even has a good point, as much as my H/D loving heart dislikes it. But Harry isn't going to be able to do it. And people are going to be hurt all around, save maybe Draco. I'm so curious to finally see how you're going to deal with Harry and Ginny's marriage vows, because Harry does belong with Draco--that's where his fire is.
Oho, James needs a time-out. Brat.
This story is DH-compliant, right? That means that Fred died in the war, and now George is hanging by tenterhooks? *cries* And now I'm even more confused about Harry and Draco and their wives, because you said this fic is epilogue-compliant, as well, and I don't see how Marian could be at Draco's side in the Epilogue given this. Perhaps he re-marries another woman? But what of Harry? *wibbles* I have faith, though, that you will make it all work out, and that it will make sense in the end. *hopes*
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Marian's mentality is an unanswered question right now, and important as a plot point later, so 'fraid I can't answer that yet.
Even Draco will be hurt. Harry has to make one horrible decision in Chapter 23, and another in Chapter 25. But this is a case where there are no good answers.
A way around the marriage vows happens, and by the time it does, Harry won't be that averse to taking it (see: horrible choices in Chapter 23 and Chapter 25).
Yes, completely DH-compliant. And it will be compliant with the epilogue, in the end. But the biggest part of the resaon that's so has to do with unrevealed things about the nature of the magic binding Harry and Draco, so again, I can't reveal it.
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Hermione is just begging for me to smack her up the side of the head. She's so smart, and I think because of that her ties to what pure emotion can make you want are cut off. There are different ways to love and need and desire, and they don't all fit into a neat little box. She's irritating me! (You're writing it very well!)
The attacks were nail-biting in their intensity, and I adore the fact that Harry needed to know if Draco was alright. But not George!!! ACK!!! More please.
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I'm glad you understand Hermione. Yes, she's being smackable, but she's not just haring off on a wild trace and deciding that Harry shouldn't be happy; that's the way she would behave in a similar situation, so she wants Harry to do the same thing.
Chapter 23 is one of two relatively horrible chapters (25 is the other). We'll see.
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And yay for Narcissa! I've always liked her quite a bit, in canon and most fanfiction. I love the way you characterize her in this story. And Al and Scorpio are adorable. Poor little Al. He just needs lots and lots of hugs!
And oh no! *cries* I am sad about George and the attack on Diagon Alley.
You write this so well. I can't wait til the next chapter!
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DH demonstrated that Harry could use Dark magic, even Unforgivables, when the spirit moved him, and I like using the new character traits that appeared in DH whenever possible.
I'm glad you like the more 'minor' characters. This is the fisrt time I've ever written Al, so his characterization is something I'm trying to be particularly careful with.
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I always planned to make this chapter end where it did, though for some people the cliffhanger about George was quite horrible enough. :)
Next chapter will probably be up Saturday.
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P.S. Hermione's a real bitch!
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But oh, the action! It just became something more entirely now that the kids were involved and I loved this part: He had never shared a look so intense with another human being. Harry felt another bond settle into place between them with a solid click, though it was more like an iron chain than the soft, infinitely flexible connections of the life-debts.
Excellent chapter ♥
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I tried to write Hermione to be infuriating, but as understandable as possible. She's doing what the right thing is by her lights. And to her, it really is simple that even if Harry wants to do something else, he'll do what's right instead. There have been times in the past ten years she wanted to quit the Blood Reparations work, but she overcame her weariness and pushed on, because it's important. And keeping Harry's family together is important, too.
Harry is furious that his kids were attacked. He is fully committed to this war, now.
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Sexual frustration does still take up a good strand of the plot, but the war dominates the next few chapters.
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And poor Harry . . . now trying to do the "right" thing and stop himself from wanting Draco. As if people have control over their desires. Hermione was incredibly frustrating, but I think the way you've written her character-- that she can't understand the concept of cheating because she herself has never wanted to cheat on Ron-- works for the way she was heading in the books.
All in all, brilliant chapter and I can't wait to read more!
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Harry is realistic enough that he knows he can't stop the desire. (Though he thinks it would be a good thing if he could). He's just trying to control the way he acts, for now.
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“So don’t want Malfoy,” Hermione was too annoying and some of her arguments were totally stupid for someone as intelligent as you made her sound to be in the other chaps.
And at times it looked like she was telling Harry that the problems he's been experiencing for the last years were insignificant and his own fault,and that the only solution to that is re-bury his own happiness and re=become the wizarding world hero by solving the new war !Which is kinda of ... when you know that this time there are no prophecy justifying Harry's involvement.
And I loved the way draco stayed "slytherin" and is still sneaky with little scenes like the listening behind doors!!! And I'm glad to see that he can resolve some of his curses problems without Harry always running to rescue.
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Hermione has grown hard. I think she's still brilliant, but her emotional intelligence is fairly low; the biggest challenge she's ever faced in that arena is her conflicted love for Ron, and by this time that's far behind her. So she just generalizes from what she'd do and thinks everyone else would do the same thing.
To her thinking, compared to the war, Harry's problems are pretty insignificant. And no, there's no prophecy, but Harry's sense of right and wrong is still powerful, or he wouldn't have been able to befriend Draco in the first place.
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Would Harry run away with the tree of them hahaha living Ginny alone?..
-sighs- i want to read more! i know it would take time for Harry and Draco to end or maybe not together :0! be will waiting ..
i should stop my ramble now
-gives u cookies and chocolates-
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I like that you've left Hermione rigid. I tend to balk when she just accepts that Harry would even think of leaving his family and running off with Draco (or anyone else for that matter), particularly since Ginny has been confiding in her for years. Unfortunately for Hermione and Ginny, Harry already wants it. Only his guilt and commitments are holding him back right now.
Perhaps you've just tried to throw us off course, but I was suspecting Andromeda wasn't so innocent - until she was there during an attack she couldn't have known Harry could stop. Woe. WIPs kill me.
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The way you weave the individually beautiful strands of a story together to create a final masterpiece is totally captivating each step of the way. Your characterizations of all of the characters are so IC that it makes the story come alive on a whole higher level.
I've always been kind of irritated by Hermione's 'know-it-allness', even though she's academically brilliant - her emotional understanding is pretty low. She really feels that its as simple as Harry 'not wanting' Draco. She is convinced that not only does a simple answer exist - but that she has it. She obviously doesn't understand Harry's moral center... he can no more step away from Draco than he can stop breathing.
Your depiction of the attacks was INTENSE - I think I held my breath the entire time I was reading BOTH of them *gasp gasp*.
I am a long-time Ginny hater - but darn you, you've made me feel somewhat sympathetic towards her. After all she is a woman simply trying to save her marriage. I can't wait to see how you make this epilogue compliant - not the least of which that I desperately want Harry and Draco to end up together.
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Awesome, intense chapter! Great spells, love those!
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I am enraged with you. For one thing, you are asking Harry to continue taking a dangerous, ADDICTIVE substance. I could smack you upside the head right now and ask what the hell you're thinking! For another, learn to mind your own damn business. I know it's against your nature, but try.
Thanks,
Cheryl
PS(You do realize that your not-so-subtle demands are only going to irritate Harry, right? I mean, Ginny might be clueless about that, but you should know better. I'll blame it on the fact that you're working too hard. Maybe you should try some Dreamless Sleep?)