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lomonaaeren) wrote2007-10-02 08:25 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2007-10-02 08:25 pm
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Chapter Twenty-Four of 'I Give You a Wondrous Mirror'- Dragons
Remember, DH SPOILERS in this story!
Thank you again for all the reviews!
This chapter continues, in some ways, the downwards arc. It certainly messes up Harry’s life all the more.
Chapter Twenty-Four—Dragons
It seemed to take twice as long as it should—at times, Harry felt as if he were moving underwater—but he got things done. He informed the Healers that George had died, and endured their condolences, and contacted the Weasleys’ solicitor, who for some years had been his own as well, and was the person the Weasleys would most trust to make funeral arrangements outside the immediate family. He held Ginny when she wanted to be held. He took a turn at comforting Mrs. Weasley (futile task though that was). He relieved Luna at home and reassured his crying, frightened sons that he was all right, and Mummy was all right, but Uncle George had gone away and wouldn’t be visiting anymore. Then he soothed the tears that resulted when James decided that Uncle George had gone away because of Al. He contacted Andromeda, let her know what had happened, and received her reassurances, one more time, that both she and Teddy were all right.
All the while, his secret burned in him like a torch. He acquired the odd idea that he was transparent to people; they would look at him and see the guilt reducing his body to shadow. But no, it was only Draco’s eyes he was that readable to. He gave thanks for it; if his wife even suspected the truth…
It would destroy them. Harry didn’t think he could keep going past that destruction. He would carry any burden to avoid it.
He thought he had been wrong to do it.
But then, should he have let George waste away in pain? That would have been equally wrong.
Harry had no idea. Luckily, Ginny arrived home at that moment and gave him something to do. He came to meet her with Lily tucked in one arm, sleeping peacefully—she was too young to know that anything important had happened today, despite her fright earlier—and kissed her forehead, and offered tea.
Ginny closed her eyes and shook her head, once. “No,” she whispered. “Let me make it. I can’t—I still can’t think, but this will give me something to do.”
Harry nodded to her, and then took Lily into her bedroom and laid her in her cot, singing softly when she stirred against his shoulder and would have woken. For long moments, he remained bent, gazing into her face. She had no traces of a lightning bolt scar. She had no traces of pain, yet.
He was determined that she would never have cause for any.
And letting her know that her father murdered her uncle and is uncertain about his marriage to her mother would give her some.
His hand shaking, Harry swept her hair out of her eyes and breathed a sigh. That was just another reason for refusing a relationship with Draco. It would hurt Ginny, but it would hurt his children even more, and he had to think about them.
And why am I thinking about this at all, with what happened today? Shouldn’t I be mourning George instead of angsting about my attraction to Draco?
Perhaps he should, but he did not feel the mourning as a distinct pain. It had blended into the general agony he was carrying, which could be endured only as numbness. He would have time to weep later.
He returned to cups of tea and Ginny mingling tears with hers. Harry maneuvered himself so that he could sit with one arm around her while he drank. Her head fell heavily against his shoulder, and she continued to cry.
“It was so senseless,” she whispered. “The attack, all the curses he took, the way he died—the Healers said he would live at least another week! Why do you think they lied to us, Harry?”
“I don’t think they did,” Harry said. The torch of his guilt wavered and scorched him. “I think they made their best estimate. It just turned out to be wrong, that’s all.”
“They shouldn’t have said anything at all, then!” Ginny muttered savagely, and downed her tea. Harry sipped his more slowly. Now that the moments of busy activity were past and he had a chance to think, he could feel his eyelids creeping downwards. He yawned, twice, and the second time Ginny glanced up at him with a watery smile.
“Ready for bed?” she asked.
It was only five in the evening, but Harry was. He nodded and finished his tea, trying to do it before he would lose all the strength in his hands and drop the cup on the table.
*
Someone was shouting his name, but it was at a distance. Harry didn’t think he needed to pay attention. He grumbled and tugged the sheets further up over his head, so that he wasn’t listening. Perhaps whoever shouted would take the hint and leave him alone.
Then a hand shook his shoulder. Harry didn’t want to pay attention to that, either, but it shook and dragged and finally formed its fingers into claws and sank them in. He sat up with a slurred mutter. His eyes were so gummed it took almost a minute to open them, and his movements dragged when he lifted a hand to bat his hair out of his face, clumsy with sleep.
“Harry,” Ginny whispered. He finally forced his eyelids to part, and realized he was staring at her in a bathrobe. He wondered how she could have risen from the bed and not awakened him. Of course, he had been tired, and he wasn’t sure she had gone to sleep at all. He’d collapsed the moment his head hit the pillow.
“Harry,” she repeated. “Hermione is in the drawing room. She came through the Floo.” She paused and licked her lips. “She says Hogwarts is about to be attacked.”
Those words, finally, broke the glassy haze exerting its hold over Harry’s imagination. He snatched his wand, cast a Summoning Charm for his own robe—he slept in his pants, normally, and he imagined that Hermione didn’t want to be subjected to that—and then stumbled into the drawing room.
More and more of the slumber fell away as he walked. It wasn’t grief keeping him on his feet, but rage.
He knew Hermione hadn’t come just to tell him the news, but to summon him to the defense.
This was a chance to take vengeance for George.
Sure enough, Hermione was dressed for early autumn flying, with thick gloves and robes, and clutching a broom. She nodded when she saw him, and said, “How soon can you be ready to travel to Hogwarts?”
“Five minutes,” said Harry. “Two for the clothes, one for the broom, two to firecall Draco.”
Hermione started and stared at him. “You don’t even know what the battle’s going to be like yet, and you’re bringing Malfoy?”
“Tell me what the battle’s going to be like,” Harry snapped, and then Summoned his clothes from the bedroom. Hermione turned discreetly away as he dressed, but the line of her back was taut.
“We got another warning a few minutes ago,” she said. “There will be dragons circling over Hogwarts. We need confident, powerful wizards who are good at flying.” She snorted. “I don’t think Malfoy fits any of those criteria except perhaps the last.”
“You didn’t hear his story of how he defended his baby son from a Blood Hydra this morning,” Harry said absently, and waved his wand to button all his robes at once—a habit that Ginny considered cheating, but he was in a hurry. “And I did say that he would fight at my side in this war, and I wouldn’t leave him behind.”
“Harry,” Hermione hissed, swirling around to face him again. “You can’t bring along someone who’ll hinder us just to keep a ridiculous promise.”
Harry cast the Summoning Charm for his broom, and felt his face falling into stubborn lines. He hated taking the opposite side to his family all the time, he thought wistfully. Just once, couldn’t they have accepted Draco the way they would have pushed for Draco to accept them, if he’d been dating Harry for years?
And that’s a dangerous kind of thought that I’m staying well away from.
“And you have no way of knowing whether he’ll hinder us,” Harry said. “I don’t think so. He’s recovering his confidence, and he’s determined to show that he can be of use. You’re just prejudiced against him because he’s Malfoy. As usual.”
“There were other things we discussed, Harry,” Hermione said in a low, deadly voice, as Harry moved past her and tossed a handful of Floo powder into the fire. His call of “Malfoy Manor!” was answered by the squeak of a house-elf, who faithfully bowed when Harry inquired after Draco and promised to wake him immediately. “Many of them involved your wife’s happiness in your marriage.”
“And what about mine?” Harry snapped, turning to look at her. Then he shook his head as she opened her mouth. “Forget that. I don’t know where it came from.”
He turned back again as Draco’s face appeared in the flames. His eyes darted to Harry’s broom, and he smiled grimly. He didn’t look as if he’d slept, but strangely, that hadn’t added dark circles beneath his eyes or other telltale marks; he looked pared to the bone instead, thin, hungry, ready to attack.
Even sleep deprivation just makes him more beautiful, Harry thought, and then felt a sense of despair, because both that thought and the sheer comfort he was taking in Draco’s closeness showed that he couldn’t even overcome his inappropriate lust when it was a matter of life and death. He was ashamed of himself.
He hurried on, hoping that he could speak the truth before Draco saw that admiration just as he’d seen Harry’s guilt in the matter of George’s death. “Hogwarts is about to be under attack by dragons,” he said quickly. “We need powerful, clever wizards who can fly well. Can you get a broom and meet us there?”
Draco’s lips parted in a slight, soundless gasp. Perhaps he hadn’t believed that Harry would keep his promise to include him in the war. “I can,” he said. “Is the Floo connection open?”
“For the next ten minutes,” Hermione intervened. She seemed to have accepted that Draco was coming with them, or perhaps she was just too polite to show her doubt openly in front of him. Her voice was cool, but not overtly hostile. “Then the Headmistress will close them, in fear that the enemy will come through them.”
Draco nodded, and then pinned Harry with a look he couldn’t translate. It was intense, and it held him, and perhaps that was enough. When Draco pulled away and the flames turned from green back to red, Harry blinked and shook his head. He had to snap out of this daze, whether Draco or sleep caused it.
“Ready, Harry?”
Hermione was speaking in that tone of voice that told Harry they would have things to discuss later. But for now, he was going into battle, and he had the chance to inflict some pain on the same people who had made the end of George’s life so horrible.
And Draco would be fighting on the same side as he was.
He stepped back to let Hermione have access to the Floo in answer. Since they would be leaving from inside the house, the bodyguards didn’t need to accompany them. In the moment of spinning darkness that consumed them before they landed in the school, the thought came to Harry that, what with the attack inside the house and then his traveling to St. Mungo’s in a crowd of people, he hadn’t had much need for them so far. Perhaps Hermione would let him get rid of them.
Probably not.
But that line of thought was still more productive than anything having to do with Draco.
*
“Where are you going?”
Draco didn’t look over his shoulder as he flung on his old Quidditch gear; he’d had one of his house-elves modify it with magic so that he wouldn’t have to tinker with tailoring spells himself. His broom was already near at hand, and he knew what the expression on his mother’s face would be if he looked: quiet appraisal. He hadn’t done something like this in ten years, and she knew it, and he knew she knew, and she knew he knew she knew, and there was no need to speak the truth aloud.
“To fight dragons at Hogwarts,” he said. “They’re being attacked, or about to be attacked, and I’ll fight at Harry’s side. Take care of Scorpius for me if I end up in St. Mungo’s.”
He heard a sound that he had to seek out the source of, then, because it was so unexpected: a soft gasp. He turned and found his mother with her hand held to her mouth, tears filling her eyes.
“You really are living again,” she said. “I had wondered.”
Draco smiled at her, and held her eyes for a moment—all he had time for. Besides, between them, it would speak literal volumes.
He picked up his broom and gave his mother a brief embrace. He wished he had the time to look in on Scorpius, but the nursery was the wrong direction from his bedroom and too far away. He had spent most of the day after he came back from St. Mungo’s with his son. He had said goodbye, if he needed to say it, in as many possible ways as he could. It would have to do.
“I will see you later,” he said, as if saying it could make it so, and then walked over to his fireplace, threw in a handful of Floo powder, and shouted, “Hogwarts infirmary!” It was the only Floo he could think of likely to be open. Possibly the Headmistress’s office was, but he didn’t know, and appearing in the middle of the Slytherin common room would only terrify the students. Besides, that was probably shut, and for good reason.
Sure enough, he appeared in the middle of a crowd of people. He looked swiftly about, eyes rejecting face after face and figure after figure as not what he was after, and then focused on one man who stood next to Granger, leaning on his broom, his eyes intent.
He hadn’t seen Harry in the middle of battle before, unless the Triwizard Tournament counted, but Draco found himself simultaneously relaxed and energized by the sight. Of course this was what Harry looked like. He strode towards him, and halfway there Harry noticed him and glanced up.
A few other voices in the room stuttered to uncomfortable stops, but Harry’s slow, blazing smile was more than enough to make up for them. Draco stepped up and set his shoulder against Harry’s, bumping him slightly. Harry bumped him back, and then, so subtly that Draco could hardly believe it, and thought it was likely that Harry himself didn’t know what he was doing, leaned on him instead of the broom. Draco took a few careful breaths and then forced himself to pay attention to the plan.
The warning had not been specific enough about the placement of the dragons, he learned quickly. It had said that ten dragons were coming, mostly Hungarian Horntails and Peruvian Vipertooths, but it did not know much more than that. They were to take their brooms up—the forty Aurors and Blood Reparations people that Granger had managed to round up on such short notice—and do what they could. Granger listed the spells effective against a dragon quickly, obviously expecting the people who listened to be able to memorize them and to already know the incantations. From the way people nodded at her, she wasn’t wrong about that.
“Well, Potter,” Draco said, in a low enough voice that Harry was the only one to hear, “it seems that you’ll get to see your Peruvian Vipertooth after all, though I can’t promise it’ll be anything like a holiday.”
Harry looked at him, and his face was shining. And then he whispered, “You’ve had that dream too, now?”
“Yes,” Draco said, and the affirmation was more than just an answer to the question, though he wasn’t sure Harry knew it.
Yes. Over and over again. No matter what the question is that he asks.
*
Harry squinted as they rose from the front doors of Hogwarts. The wind stung tears from his eyes, and, never having played Quidditch at night, he had not realized how thick the darkness would be. At least it was a full moon night, and where it did not shine, the lamps of Hogwarts or the stars sometimes did.
His broom was braced between Draco’s and Hermione’s; Hermione was still concerned that the organizers of the attack might target Harry specially, but she had the sense to realize that no bodyguard could keep up with Harry when he flew. She probably couldn’t either, though she had improved enough in the past ten years to become part of this vanguard. Harry saw her darting speculative looks at Draco, as if she were wondering whether Draco would actually be the best choice to stay at Harry’s side. Perhaps she had remembered the Hogwarts games with Slytherin and how close Draco often was to him.
Hogwarts.
They were high enough now that Harry could see the whole of the castle, the lake, the Quidditch Pitch, and a good part of the Forbidden Forest. He felt a wave of fierce, tender love sweep over him. This had been his first home, even if the house where he lived with Ginny was his home now. He would give his life to defend it.
He took his wand into his hand, while all around them the other Aurors and Blood Reparations workers fanned out. Harry stared to the south, wondering if the dragons would appear from there.
And then a shrill cry rose from the opposite point of the circle, and Harry spun around.
He could make them out already, dark shapes under the moon, flying rapidly from the north, their wings opening and closing with a horrific speed that made Harry swallow. He suddenly remembered that the dragon he had dueled in the Triwizard Tournament had not flown.
What can we really do—
And then he reminded himself that he had survived the encounter with the dragon he and Ron and Hermione had freed from the depths of Gringotts, and that this was really the best force they could put together right now. Hermione had called on other contacts of hers, and they would be coming later, Dragon-Keepers riding winged horses, but that would take too much time. There had to be someone here to meet the first attack, and protect the students.
There has to.
He wondered at first how they would tell which ones were the Hungarian Horntails and which ones the Peruvian Vipertooths, but he had forgotten that the difference in size of the dragons also made a difference in speed. Seven small, lithe shapes quickly pulled away from the rest, and swooped madly towards them, while the bigger dragons were still laboring past a tower of clouds that would obscure the moon.
“Now,” Hermione said, her voice stern.
Harry knew what the signal meant, along with everyone else she’d discussed this plan with before they took to the air, and lifted his wand. “Flamma solaris!” he shouted, and forty other voices shouted along with him.
He later thought, though he knew it was silly to think about, that his wand and Draco’s had both reacted at once.
Enormous flares of light struck through the darkness, bringing day into midnight and providing them with more than enough illumination to see the foe. Harry heard the eerie, keening wails that were dragons screaming, and suspected the light had stung their sensitive eyes. He grinned fiercely, and then shot a quick glance at Hermione. She nodded at him. She knew he was the best choice to handle one of the Horntails.
“Four to a dragon!” she bellowed; she must have cast Sonorus on herself. “More experienced flyers take the Horntails! Watch out for the riders!”
Startled, Harry looked at the Vipertooths again, who were close enough now that he could see the smoke rising from their nostrils and the gleam of the long front teeth for which they’d been named, and realized that there were humans sitting on their backs. He grimaced.
So much for not being able to domesticate dragons, he thought, and then whipped his broom into motion.
He charged past the Vipertooths, with Draco right beside and slightly below him, but did take the moment to cast a host of small stinging spells, which he knew would burrow under the dragons’ scales and drive them mad, if he was lucky. If the riders’ control of their mounts was fragile, it might even break them free altogether.
One Vipertooth began thrashing and screaming just then, and though Harry didn’t know if he could take credit for that, he liked to imagine he could.
They passed beyond the original range of the flare of sunlight, and he heard the first yells of exploding battle as the broom-riders began to close with the Vipertooths. Silently, he wished them well, and then cast the sunlight spell again. The Horntails were drawing near with terrible speed.
One large one attracted his attention immediately. He could make out the makeshift bridle that straddled the head, and the reins that led back to the hands of the rider—a heavily cloaked witch. Her face was well-lit, but still hidden entirely by a mask of black and purple worked in abstract designs.
Harry felt his face wrinkle into a snarl.
He did think it right that he engage with the Masked Lady, who seemed so very anxious to kill him and break Draco.
*
Draco knew immediately what kind of dance the contest with the Horntails would be—a dodge and duck and dart, the intense competition that his Quidditch games with Harry had been. Seekers would do well there. He hesitated for the merest moment, wondering if he should attack a Horntail himself.
But then he shook his head and stuck close to Harry. He had a responsibility, and both his own choice and practicality dictated he should stay where he was.
He gave a nod when he saw the masked woman on the Horntail Harry was heading for. Another advantage of his position was clear now: he had the chance for a little personal vengeance.
Harry shouted something of which Draco could hear only the words, “—you were dead!” But he heard the Masked Lady’s response, calm and clear as though there were still air and not wind between them. Maybe the spell she’d used to disguise her voice—of course it would be disguised—gave her words other properties as well.
“I regret that you are my enemy. I am only doing this for my own chance to take vengeance.”
And then she made some gesture with her wand, and the Horntail opened its mouth and breathed fire.
Draco was already rolling in evasive maneuvers, of course, and compared to dodging Bludgers, which moved in several different directions within a few moments, Harry must have thought this was child’s play. Draco righted himself and smiled when he saw Harry not only still on his broom, but above the Horntail, hurling curses at the Masked Lady. It was a good strategy: kill the human rider, and the dragon would probably go wild, which might mean disaster but at least was unlikely to keep them heading straight at Hogwarts.
And then Harry laughed.
Draco’s smile died at the sound of that. Harry sounded—wild. Mad. As though he had forgotten rational rules of battle and just wanted to hurt his enemies.
Draco pulled up, studying the situation with one hand on his wand, his peripheral vision telling him the other dragons had passed on and they were now in the rear of the battle. Flares of fire stitched the air in various places, and there were nearly constant screams, but no one was heaving up beside them to aid the Masked Lady. He and Harry should pull back and make a combined attack.
Instead, Harry attacked with any curse that came to his lips, some wasteful, designed only to cause pain. Draco ground his teeth, and started flying again, readying himself to aim a Conjunctivitis Curse at the dragon’s eyes. It was the only thing he could think to do.
And then a movement attracted his attention, and he turned his head.
The Masked Lady had excellent control of her dragon, and Harry had forgotten what breed he was fighting. As Draco watched, the deadly spiked tail rose and whistled straight towards his oblivious friend.
Draco’s mind went blank, save for a single long scream of rage and frustration. Luckily, his body had better sense, and was already bent flat along the broom as he flew.
*
Harry no longer felt as though he were transparent to any eyes that wanted to watch his wavering torch of guilt. It had gone to light the larger conflagration blazing in him, the happy, dancing, joyous fury caused when he saw the Masked Lady clutching her bleeding, broken arm, and knew that he had wounded her.
He saw the tail out of the corner of his eye.
He was reacting before he knew it, barrel-rolling to the side so that the tail would go past him. But he had moved too soon, or the dragon was faster than he had assumed, or it could change the direction of its tail at the last moment despite all the weight behind it.
The blow connected along his ribs. Harry shuddered and cried out as he heard his bones shatter like hot fat popping, and then the pain came, and his hands opened, and he fell from his broom.
Darkness and light and moon and stars and scales and blood flew past him, and Harry knew he would be dead before he hit the ground. He was still fighting in his mind, but his eyes were closing and the wounds along his side were hurrying the life out of his body as though they had decided independently on suicide.
And then arms caught him, snatched him, flew with him for a moment, and stopped his fall by drawing him onto a broom.
And everything melted in a wash of gold and white.
Harry was gasping, crying, coughing, even as he felt the line of the wounds along his ribs pull violently together, rejecting death just as his body had rejected life a moment ago. The bones slammed back into place. Pain kept him helpless and voiceless for long moments, and then he was aware again, blinking, dazed, as he watched the life-debt lightning vanish, and knew they were bound by a sixth scar in the shape of the jagged skin along his side.
Draco’s voice snarled in his ear, “I am going to look unattractive with that scar, Potter. On the ground, now.”
Harry had no objections, though, as he clung weakly to Draco, he did lift his head to see what had become of the Masked Lady and her Horntail. He blinked when he could find no trace of them, and turned his head, thinking Draco must have flown a long distance horizontally while he was senseless.
Nothing. In fact, he could see no dragons towards Hogwarts when he looked in that direction, either. He shook his head.
“What happened?” he whispered.
“No words,” Draco said briskly. “Rest.”
Harry made an impatient little noise in the back of his throat, hoping to convey that he couldn’t rest until Draco told him the truth. Draco sighed into his ear, and his fingers, locked around Harry’s waist, flexed, digging into the still-raw wound and making him flinch. Draco paused, then repeated the motion, more gently but still firmly.
Possessively.
Harry banished the word, willed it not to exist, and then listened to Draco’s explanation.
“The minute you fell, the Masked Lady turned her dragon away, and the rest followed. I’m not sure why. Maybe she thought you were dead, or she’d been too badly wounded to continue fighting, or she knew that the attack wasn’t going to achieve what she’d wanted it to. Roasting helpless children in their beds, most likely.”
Harry giggled at the venom in Draco’s tone. “See?” he muttered, drunk and dizzy with relief and joy and pain. “You do have a sense of ethics, after all.”
“Shut up, Potter.”
He sounded serious, for whatever reason, and so Harry sobered and watched Hogwarts come nearer and nearer in silence. He could feel something new struggling to be born in his mind, anyway.
Maybe it was a revelation about the Masked Lady, or the stupidity of revenge. He could wait for it.
*
Draco’s hands were shaking as he stared down at the infirmary bed where Harry lay. Even though the life-debt had healed him completely, the school matron had still insisted that Harry stay here with the other casualties of the battle, so that she could check him over. Draco had called Harry’s wound “small,” though, having no idea how he’d reveal the truth otherwise, and currently the mediwitch was on the other side of the room, examining a protesting Granger.
He looked at Harry, and the only thought that could pass through his clogged mind was, I almost saw him die in front of me.
The emotion was the same in degree, though not in kind, as he had felt that morning when he watched Scorpius in the coils of the Blood Hydra.
I don’t care what he thinks. We’re so bound—and by six of them, now—that there’s no going back. I won’t push, but if he tries to step backwards, I’ll hit him so hard that he’ll think it was another dragon.
*
Harry looked up at Draco. Draco’s eyes were bright and nearly frantic with worry. He touched Harry’s forehead, over the lightning bolt scar whose twin he bore, with a tender hand. Harry felt the revelation rising further and further to the surface of his mind as he lay there. He really didn’t want to look at anything other than Draco, despite the earlier temptation to lift his tattered robes and examine the new scar over his ribs.
The revelation rose fully.
A warm weight turned over in his stomach, like an egg rolling in syrup.
Holy God, I’m in love with him.
Harry’s eyes flared open. Draco said something, but Harry didn’t hear it over the sudden pounding of blood in his ears.
No. No, I can’t be. Please—
But the evidence was immediately in his mind, and relentless. His arousal with Draco wasn’t happening around other men, the same way his arousal with Ginny didn’t happen around other women. He’d wanted Draco to stay behind and safely out of this war, the same way that he’d tried to keep Ginny safe by breaking up with her before the Horcrux quest. He wanted to be near to him, he trusted him, he wasn’t panicked that Draco knew his guilt about George or even at how well Draco could read him, he missed the dreams of him that he hadn’t had tonight, he missed him every time he wasn’t around, he was ready to defy one of his oldest friends to stay with him—
He was in love.
Harry shuddered twice, a low whine rising in his throat, tears prickling against the outside of his eyelashes. He didn’t want to be in love with someone other than Ginny. He could envision the troubles this would bring, and he didn’t want them.
Not this, not this on top of everything else!
But he knew it wouldn’t go away. If nothing else, the life-debts would always be there to remind him.
And so he took a deep breath, and forced down the impulses to complain and ask for comfort—he had chosen this road, at least with part of him—and then looked up at Draco and managed a faint smile. He would tell him, of course. It wouldn’t be fair to keep it from him.
And at the same time, he could show Draco why a sexual relationship between them could never work, why this really changed nothing.
It will end his suspense over me. I can help him move on. And shouldn’t my highest priority be his happiness, when I’m really in love with him?
Chapter 25.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
This chapter continues, in some ways, the downwards arc. It certainly messes up Harry’s life all the more.
Chapter Twenty-Four—Dragons
It seemed to take twice as long as it should—at times, Harry felt as if he were moving underwater—but he got things done. He informed the Healers that George had died, and endured their condolences, and contacted the Weasleys’ solicitor, who for some years had been his own as well, and was the person the Weasleys would most trust to make funeral arrangements outside the immediate family. He held Ginny when she wanted to be held. He took a turn at comforting Mrs. Weasley (futile task though that was). He relieved Luna at home and reassured his crying, frightened sons that he was all right, and Mummy was all right, but Uncle George had gone away and wouldn’t be visiting anymore. Then he soothed the tears that resulted when James decided that Uncle George had gone away because of Al. He contacted Andromeda, let her know what had happened, and received her reassurances, one more time, that both she and Teddy were all right.
All the while, his secret burned in him like a torch. He acquired the odd idea that he was transparent to people; they would look at him and see the guilt reducing his body to shadow. But no, it was only Draco’s eyes he was that readable to. He gave thanks for it; if his wife even suspected the truth…
It would destroy them. Harry didn’t think he could keep going past that destruction. He would carry any burden to avoid it.
He thought he had been wrong to do it.
But then, should he have let George waste away in pain? That would have been equally wrong.
Harry had no idea. Luckily, Ginny arrived home at that moment and gave him something to do. He came to meet her with Lily tucked in one arm, sleeping peacefully—she was too young to know that anything important had happened today, despite her fright earlier—and kissed her forehead, and offered tea.
Ginny closed her eyes and shook her head, once. “No,” she whispered. “Let me make it. I can’t—I still can’t think, but this will give me something to do.”
Harry nodded to her, and then took Lily into her bedroom and laid her in her cot, singing softly when she stirred against his shoulder and would have woken. For long moments, he remained bent, gazing into her face. She had no traces of a lightning bolt scar. She had no traces of pain, yet.
He was determined that she would never have cause for any.
And letting her know that her father murdered her uncle and is uncertain about his marriage to her mother would give her some.
His hand shaking, Harry swept her hair out of her eyes and breathed a sigh. That was just another reason for refusing a relationship with Draco. It would hurt Ginny, but it would hurt his children even more, and he had to think about them.
And why am I thinking about this at all, with what happened today? Shouldn’t I be mourning George instead of angsting about my attraction to Draco?
Perhaps he should, but he did not feel the mourning as a distinct pain. It had blended into the general agony he was carrying, which could be endured only as numbness. He would have time to weep later.
He returned to cups of tea and Ginny mingling tears with hers. Harry maneuvered himself so that he could sit with one arm around her while he drank. Her head fell heavily against his shoulder, and she continued to cry.
“It was so senseless,” she whispered. “The attack, all the curses he took, the way he died—the Healers said he would live at least another week! Why do you think they lied to us, Harry?”
“I don’t think they did,” Harry said. The torch of his guilt wavered and scorched him. “I think they made their best estimate. It just turned out to be wrong, that’s all.”
“They shouldn’t have said anything at all, then!” Ginny muttered savagely, and downed her tea. Harry sipped his more slowly. Now that the moments of busy activity were past and he had a chance to think, he could feel his eyelids creeping downwards. He yawned, twice, and the second time Ginny glanced up at him with a watery smile.
“Ready for bed?” she asked.
It was only five in the evening, but Harry was. He nodded and finished his tea, trying to do it before he would lose all the strength in his hands and drop the cup on the table.
*
Someone was shouting his name, but it was at a distance. Harry didn’t think he needed to pay attention. He grumbled and tugged the sheets further up over his head, so that he wasn’t listening. Perhaps whoever shouted would take the hint and leave him alone.
Then a hand shook his shoulder. Harry didn’t want to pay attention to that, either, but it shook and dragged and finally formed its fingers into claws and sank them in. He sat up with a slurred mutter. His eyes were so gummed it took almost a minute to open them, and his movements dragged when he lifted a hand to bat his hair out of his face, clumsy with sleep.
“Harry,” Ginny whispered. He finally forced his eyelids to part, and realized he was staring at her in a bathrobe. He wondered how she could have risen from the bed and not awakened him. Of course, he had been tired, and he wasn’t sure she had gone to sleep at all. He’d collapsed the moment his head hit the pillow.
“Harry,” she repeated. “Hermione is in the drawing room. She came through the Floo.” She paused and licked her lips. “She says Hogwarts is about to be attacked.”
Those words, finally, broke the glassy haze exerting its hold over Harry’s imagination. He snatched his wand, cast a Summoning Charm for his own robe—he slept in his pants, normally, and he imagined that Hermione didn’t want to be subjected to that—and then stumbled into the drawing room.
More and more of the slumber fell away as he walked. It wasn’t grief keeping him on his feet, but rage.
He knew Hermione hadn’t come just to tell him the news, but to summon him to the defense.
This was a chance to take vengeance for George.
Sure enough, Hermione was dressed for early autumn flying, with thick gloves and robes, and clutching a broom. She nodded when she saw him, and said, “How soon can you be ready to travel to Hogwarts?”
“Five minutes,” said Harry. “Two for the clothes, one for the broom, two to firecall Draco.”
Hermione started and stared at him. “You don’t even know what the battle’s going to be like yet, and you’re bringing Malfoy?”
“Tell me what the battle’s going to be like,” Harry snapped, and then Summoned his clothes from the bedroom. Hermione turned discreetly away as he dressed, but the line of her back was taut.
“We got another warning a few minutes ago,” she said. “There will be dragons circling over Hogwarts. We need confident, powerful wizards who are good at flying.” She snorted. “I don’t think Malfoy fits any of those criteria except perhaps the last.”
“You didn’t hear his story of how he defended his baby son from a Blood Hydra this morning,” Harry said absently, and waved his wand to button all his robes at once—a habit that Ginny considered cheating, but he was in a hurry. “And I did say that he would fight at my side in this war, and I wouldn’t leave him behind.”
“Harry,” Hermione hissed, swirling around to face him again. “You can’t bring along someone who’ll hinder us just to keep a ridiculous promise.”
Harry cast the Summoning Charm for his broom, and felt his face falling into stubborn lines. He hated taking the opposite side to his family all the time, he thought wistfully. Just once, couldn’t they have accepted Draco the way they would have pushed for Draco to accept them, if he’d been dating Harry for years?
And that’s a dangerous kind of thought that I’m staying well away from.
“And you have no way of knowing whether he’ll hinder us,” Harry said. “I don’t think so. He’s recovering his confidence, and he’s determined to show that he can be of use. You’re just prejudiced against him because he’s Malfoy. As usual.”
“There were other things we discussed, Harry,” Hermione said in a low, deadly voice, as Harry moved past her and tossed a handful of Floo powder into the fire. His call of “Malfoy Manor!” was answered by the squeak of a house-elf, who faithfully bowed when Harry inquired after Draco and promised to wake him immediately. “Many of them involved your wife’s happiness in your marriage.”
“And what about mine?” Harry snapped, turning to look at her. Then he shook his head as she opened her mouth. “Forget that. I don’t know where it came from.”
He turned back again as Draco’s face appeared in the flames. His eyes darted to Harry’s broom, and he smiled grimly. He didn’t look as if he’d slept, but strangely, that hadn’t added dark circles beneath his eyes or other telltale marks; he looked pared to the bone instead, thin, hungry, ready to attack.
Even sleep deprivation just makes him more beautiful, Harry thought, and then felt a sense of despair, because both that thought and the sheer comfort he was taking in Draco’s closeness showed that he couldn’t even overcome his inappropriate lust when it was a matter of life and death. He was ashamed of himself.
He hurried on, hoping that he could speak the truth before Draco saw that admiration just as he’d seen Harry’s guilt in the matter of George’s death. “Hogwarts is about to be under attack by dragons,” he said quickly. “We need powerful, clever wizards who can fly well. Can you get a broom and meet us there?”
Draco’s lips parted in a slight, soundless gasp. Perhaps he hadn’t believed that Harry would keep his promise to include him in the war. “I can,” he said. “Is the Floo connection open?”
“For the next ten minutes,” Hermione intervened. She seemed to have accepted that Draco was coming with them, or perhaps she was just too polite to show her doubt openly in front of him. Her voice was cool, but not overtly hostile. “Then the Headmistress will close them, in fear that the enemy will come through them.”
Draco nodded, and then pinned Harry with a look he couldn’t translate. It was intense, and it held him, and perhaps that was enough. When Draco pulled away and the flames turned from green back to red, Harry blinked and shook his head. He had to snap out of this daze, whether Draco or sleep caused it.
“Ready, Harry?”
Hermione was speaking in that tone of voice that told Harry they would have things to discuss later. But for now, he was going into battle, and he had the chance to inflict some pain on the same people who had made the end of George’s life so horrible.
And Draco would be fighting on the same side as he was.
He stepped back to let Hermione have access to the Floo in answer. Since they would be leaving from inside the house, the bodyguards didn’t need to accompany them. In the moment of spinning darkness that consumed them before they landed in the school, the thought came to Harry that, what with the attack inside the house and then his traveling to St. Mungo’s in a crowd of people, he hadn’t had much need for them so far. Perhaps Hermione would let him get rid of them.
Probably not.
But that line of thought was still more productive than anything having to do with Draco.
*
“Where are you going?”
Draco didn’t look over his shoulder as he flung on his old Quidditch gear; he’d had one of his house-elves modify it with magic so that he wouldn’t have to tinker with tailoring spells himself. His broom was already near at hand, and he knew what the expression on his mother’s face would be if he looked: quiet appraisal. He hadn’t done something like this in ten years, and she knew it, and he knew she knew, and she knew he knew she knew, and there was no need to speak the truth aloud.
“To fight dragons at Hogwarts,” he said. “They’re being attacked, or about to be attacked, and I’ll fight at Harry’s side. Take care of Scorpius for me if I end up in St. Mungo’s.”
He heard a sound that he had to seek out the source of, then, because it was so unexpected: a soft gasp. He turned and found his mother with her hand held to her mouth, tears filling her eyes.
“You really are living again,” she said. “I had wondered.”
Draco smiled at her, and held her eyes for a moment—all he had time for. Besides, between them, it would speak literal volumes.
He picked up his broom and gave his mother a brief embrace. He wished he had the time to look in on Scorpius, but the nursery was the wrong direction from his bedroom and too far away. He had spent most of the day after he came back from St. Mungo’s with his son. He had said goodbye, if he needed to say it, in as many possible ways as he could. It would have to do.
“I will see you later,” he said, as if saying it could make it so, and then walked over to his fireplace, threw in a handful of Floo powder, and shouted, “Hogwarts infirmary!” It was the only Floo he could think of likely to be open. Possibly the Headmistress’s office was, but he didn’t know, and appearing in the middle of the Slytherin common room would only terrify the students. Besides, that was probably shut, and for good reason.
Sure enough, he appeared in the middle of a crowd of people. He looked swiftly about, eyes rejecting face after face and figure after figure as not what he was after, and then focused on one man who stood next to Granger, leaning on his broom, his eyes intent.
He hadn’t seen Harry in the middle of battle before, unless the Triwizard Tournament counted, but Draco found himself simultaneously relaxed and energized by the sight. Of course this was what Harry looked like. He strode towards him, and halfway there Harry noticed him and glanced up.
A few other voices in the room stuttered to uncomfortable stops, but Harry’s slow, blazing smile was more than enough to make up for them. Draco stepped up and set his shoulder against Harry’s, bumping him slightly. Harry bumped him back, and then, so subtly that Draco could hardly believe it, and thought it was likely that Harry himself didn’t know what he was doing, leaned on him instead of the broom. Draco took a few careful breaths and then forced himself to pay attention to the plan.
The warning had not been specific enough about the placement of the dragons, he learned quickly. It had said that ten dragons were coming, mostly Hungarian Horntails and Peruvian Vipertooths, but it did not know much more than that. They were to take their brooms up—the forty Aurors and Blood Reparations people that Granger had managed to round up on such short notice—and do what they could. Granger listed the spells effective against a dragon quickly, obviously expecting the people who listened to be able to memorize them and to already know the incantations. From the way people nodded at her, she wasn’t wrong about that.
“Well, Potter,” Draco said, in a low enough voice that Harry was the only one to hear, “it seems that you’ll get to see your Peruvian Vipertooth after all, though I can’t promise it’ll be anything like a holiday.”
Harry looked at him, and his face was shining. And then he whispered, “You’ve had that dream too, now?”
“Yes,” Draco said, and the affirmation was more than just an answer to the question, though he wasn’t sure Harry knew it.
Yes. Over and over again. No matter what the question is that he asks.
*
Harry squinted as they rose from the front doors of Hogwarts. The wind stung tears from his eyes, and, never having played Quidditch at night, he had not realized how thick the darkness would be. At least it was a full moon night, and where it did not shine, the lamps of Hogwarts or the stars sometimes did.
His broom was braced between Draco’s and Hermione’s; Hermione was still concerned that the organizers of the attack might target Harry specially, but she had the sense to realize that no bodyguard could keep up with Harry when he flew. She probably couldn’t either, though she had improved enough in the past ten years to become part of this vanguard. Harry saw her darting speculative looks at Draco, as if she were wondering whether Draco would actually be the best choice to stay at Harry’s side. Perhaps she had remembered the Hogwarts games with Slytherin and how close Draco often was to him.
Hogwarts.
They were high enough now that Harry could see the whole of the castle, the lake, the Quidditch Pitch, and a good part of the Forbidden Forest. He felt a wave of fierce, tender love sweep over him. This had been his first home, even if the house where he lived with Ginny was his home now. He would give his life to defend it.
He took his wand into his hand, while all around them the other Aurors and Blood Reparations workers fanned out. Harry stared to the south, wondering if the dragons would appear from there.
And then a shrill cry rose from the opposite point of the circle, and Harry spun around.
He could make them out already, dark shapes under the moon, flying rapidly from the north, their wings opening and closing with a horrific speed that made Harry swallow. He suddenly remembered that the dragon he had dueled in the Triwizard Tournament had not flown.
What can we really do—
And then he reminded himself that he had survived the encounter with the dragon he and Ron and Hermione had freed from the depths of Gringotts, and that this was really the best force they could put together right now. Hermione had called on other contacts of hers, and they would be coming later, Dragon-Keepers riding winged horses, but that would take too much time. There had to be someone here to meet the first attack, and protect the students.
There has to.
He wondered at first how they would tell which ones were the Hungarian Horntails and which ones the Peruvian Vipertooths, but he had forgotten that the difference in size of the dragons also made a difference in speed. Seven small, lithe shapes quickly pulled away from the rest, and swooped madly towards them, while the bigger dragons were still laboring past a tower of clouds that would obscure the moon.
“Now,” Hermione said, her voice stern.
Harry knew what the signal meant, along with everyone else she’d discussed this plan with before they took to the air, and lifted his wand. “Flamma solaris!” he shouted, and forty other voices shouted along with him.
He later thought, though he knew it was silly to think about, that his wand and Draco’s had both reacted at once.
Enormous flares of light struck through the darkness, bringing day into midnight and providing them with more than enough illumination to see the foe. Harry heard the eerie, keening wails that were dragons screaming, and suspected the light had stung their sensitive eyes. He grinned fiercely, and then shot a quick glance at Hermione. She nodded at him. She knew he was the best choice to handle one of the Horntails.
“Four to a dragon!” she bellowed; she must have cast Sonorus on herself. “More experienced flyers take the Horntails! Watch out for the riders!”
Startled, Harry looked at the Vipertooths again, who were close enough now that he could see the smoke rising from their nostrils and the gleam of the long front teeth for which they’d been named, and realized that there were humans sitting on their backs. He grimaced.
So much for not being able to domesticate dragons, he thought, and then whipped his broom into motion.
He charged past the Vipertooths, with Draco right beside and slightly below him, but did take the moment to cast a host of small stinging spells, which he knew would burrow under the dragons’ scales and drive them mad, if he was lucky. If the riders’ control of their mounts was fragile, it might even break them free altogether.
One Vipertooth began thrashing and screaming just then, and though Harry didn’t know if he could take credit for that, he liked to imagine he could.
They passed beyond the original range of the flare of sunlight, and he heard the first yells of exploding battle as the broom-riders began to close with the Vipertooths. Silently, he wished them well, and then cast the sunlight spell again. The Horntails were drawing near with terrible speed.
One large one attracted his attention immediately. He could make out the makeshift bridle that straddled the head, and the reins that led back to the hands of the rider—a heavily cloaked witch. Her face was well-lit, but still hidden entirely by a mask of black and purple worked in abstract designs.
Harry felt his face wrinkle into a snarl.
He did think it right that he engage with the Masked Lady, who seemed so very anxious to kill him and break Draco.
*
Draco knew immediately what kind of dance the contest with the Horntails would be—a dodge and duck and dart, the intense competition that his Quidditch games with Harry had been. Seekers would do well there. He hesitated for the merest moment, wondering if he should attack a Horntail himself.
But then he shook his head and stuck close to Harry. He had a responsibility, and both his own choice and practicality dictated he should stay where he was.
He gave a nod when he saw the masked woman on the Horntail Harry was heading for. Another advantage of his position was clear now: he had the chance for a little personal vengeance.
Harry shouted something of which Draco could hear only the words, “—you were dead!” But he heard the Masked Lady’s response, calm and clear as though there were still air and not wind between them. Maybe the spell she’d used to disguise her voice—of course it would be disguised—gave her words other properties as well.
“I regret that you are my enemy. I am only doing this for my own chance to take vengeance.”
And then she made some gesture with her wand, and the Horntail opened its mouth and breathed fire.
Draco was already rolling in evasive maneuvers, of course, and compared to dodging Bludgers, which moved in several different directions within a few moments, Harry must have thought this was child’s play. Draco righted himself and smiled when he saw Harry not only still on his broom, but above the Horntail, hurling curses at the Masked Lady. It was a good strategy: kill the human rider, and the dragon would probably go wild, which might mean disaster but at least was unlikely to keep them heading straight at Hogwarts.
And then Harry laughed.
Draco’s smile died at the sound of that. Harry sounded—wild. Mad. As though he had forgotten rational rules of battle and just wanted to hurt his enemies.
Draco pulled up, studying the situation with one hand on his wand, his peripheral vision telling him the other dragons had passed on and they were now in the rear of the battle. Flares of fire stitched the air in various places, and there were nearly constant screams, but no one was heaving up beside them to aid the Masked Lady. He and Harry should pull back and make a combined attack.
Instead, Harry attacked with any curse that came to his lips, some wasteful, designed only to cause pain. Draco ground his teeth, and started flying again, readying himself to aim a Conjunctivitis Curse at the dragon’s eyes. It was the only thing he could think to do.
And then a movement attracted his attention, and he turned his head.
The Masked Lady had excellent control of her dragon, and Harry had forgotten what breed he was fighting. As Draco watched, the deadly spiked tail rose and whistled straight towards his oblivious friend.
Draco’s mind went blank, save for a single long scream of rage and frustration. Luckily, his body had better sense, and was already bent flat along the broom as he flew.
*
Harry no longer felt as though he were transparent to any eyes that wanted to watch his wavering torch of guilt. It had gone to light the larger conflagration blazing in him, the happy, dancing, joyous fury caused when he saw the Masked Lady clutching her bleeding, broken arm, and knew that he had wounded her.
He saw the tail out of the corner of his eye.
He was reacting before he knew it, barrel-rolling to the side so that the tail would go past him. But he had moved too soon, or the dragon was faster than he had assumed, or it could change the direction of its tail at the last moment despite all the weight behind it.
The blow connected along his ribs. Harry shuddered and cried out as he heard his bones shatter like hot fat popping, and then the pain came, and his hands opened, and he fell from his broom.
Darkness and light and moon and stars and scales and blood flew past him, and Harry knew he would be dead before he hit the ground. He was still fighting in his mind, but his eyes were closing and the wounds along his side were hurrying the life out of his body as though they had decided independently on suicide.
And then arms caught him, snatched him, flew with him for a moment, and stopped his fall by drawing him onto a broom.
And everything melted in a wash of gold and white.
Harry was gasping, crying, coughing, even as he felt the line of the wounds along his ribs pull violently together, rejecting death just as his body had rejected life a moment ago. The bones slammed back into place. Pain kept him helpless and voiceless for long moments, and then he was aware again, blinking, dazed, as he watched the life-debt lightning vanish, and knew they were bound by a sixth scar in the shape of the jagged skin along his side.
Draco’s voice snarled in his ear, “I am going to look unattractive with that scar, Potter. On the ground, now.”
Harry had no objections, though, as he clung weakly to Draco, he did lift his head to see what had become of the Masked Lady and her Horntail. He blinked when he could find no trace of them, and turned his head, thinking Draco must have flown a long distance horizontally while he was senseless.
Nothing. In fact, he could see no dragons towards Hogwarts when he looked in that direction, either. He shook his head.
“What happened?” he whispered.
“No words,” Draco said briskly. “Rest.”
Harry made an impatient little noise in the back of his throat, hoping to convey that he couldn’t rest until Draco told him the truth. Draco sighed into his ear, and his fingers, locked around Harry’s waist, flexed, digging into the still-raw wound and making him flinch. Draco paused, then repeated the motion, more gently but still firmly.
Possessively.
Harry banished the word, willed it not to exist, and then listened to Draco’s explanation.
“The minute you fell, the Masked Lady turned her dragon away, and the rest followed. I’m not sure why. Maybe she thought you were dead, or she’d been too badly wounded to continue fighting, or she knew that the attack wasn’t going to achieve what she’d wanted it to. Roasting helpless children in their beds, most likely.”
Harry giggled at the venom in Draco’s tone. “See?” he muttered, drunk and dizzy with relief and joy and pain. “You do have a sense of ethics, after all.”
“Shut up, Potter.”
He sounded serious, for whatever reason, and so Harry sobered and watched Hogwarts come nearer and nearer in silence. He could feel something new struggling to be born in his mind, anyway.
Maybe it was a revelation about the Masked Lady, or the stupidity of revenge. He could wait for it.
*
Draco’s hands were shaking as he stared down at the infirmary bed where Harry lay. Even though the life-debt had healed him completely, the school matron had still insisted that Harry stay here with the other casualties of the battle, so that she could check him over. Draco had called Harry’s wound “small,” though, having no idea how he’d reveal the truth otherwise, and currently the mediwitch was on the other side of the room, examining a protesting Granger.
He looked at Harry, and the only thought that could pass through his clogged mind was, I almost saw him die in front of me.
The emotion was the same in degree, though not in kind, as he had felt that morning when he watched Scorpius in the coils of the Blood Hydra.
I don’t care what he thinks. We’re so bound—and by six of them, now—that there’s no going back. I won’t push, but if he tries to step backwards, I’ll hit him so hard that he’ll think it was another dragon.
*
Harry looked up at Draco. Draco’s eyes were bright and nearly frantic with worry. He touched Harry’s forehead, over the lightning bolt scar whose twin he bore, with a tender hand. Harry felt the revelation rising further and further to the surface of his mind as he lay there. He really didn’t want to look at anything other than Draco, despite the earlier temptation to lift his tattered robes and examine the new scar over his ribs.
The revelation rose fully.
A warm weight turned over in his stomach, like an egg rolling in syrup.
Holy God, I’m in love with him.
Harry’s eyes flared open. Draco said something, but Harry didn’t hear it over the sudden pounding of blood in his ears.
No. No, I can’t be. Please—
But the evidence was immediately in his mind, and relentless. His arousal with Draco wasn’t happening around other men, the same way his arousal with Ginny didn’t happen around other women. He’d wanted Draco to stay behind and safely out of this war, the same way that he’d tried to keep Ginny safe by breaking up with her before the Horcrux quest. He wanted to be near to him, he trusted him, he wasn’t panicked that Draco knew his guilt about George or even at how well Draco could read him, he missed the dreams of him that he hadn’t had tonight, he missed him every time he wasn’t around, he was ready to defy one of his oldest friends to stay with him—
He was in love.
Harry shuddered twice, a low whine rising in his throat, tears prickling against the outside of his eyelashes. He didn’t want to be in love with someone other than Ginny. He could envision the troubles this would bring, and he didn’t want them.
Not this, not this on top of everything else!
But he knew it wouldn’t go away. If nothing else, the life-debts would always be there to remind him.
And so he took a deep breath, and forced down the impulses to complain and ask for comfort—he had chosen this road, at least with part of him—and then looked up at Draco and managed a faint smile. He would tell him, of course. It wouldn’t be fair to keep it from him.
And at the same time, he could show Draco why a sexual relationship between them could never work, why this really changed nothing.
It will end his suspense over me. I can help him move on. And shouldn’t my highest priority be his happiness, when I’m really in love with him?
Chapter 25.