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Seasons of War	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9694 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Ten�Their
First Weapon

�� It is
dreaming while you are awake. It might be easier for you to think of it that
way.�

�� Harry
gritted his teeth. Just like all the other �easy� explanations that Portillo
Lopez had come up with so far, he didn�t think this one was particularly
simple. �I can�t dream while I�m awake,� he said. �I can daydream. Is that what
you mean?�

�� Portillo
Lopez shook her head almost hard enough for the scarf to slide off her hair.
They stood in a bubble of warmth beyond the camp, towards the place where they
had kept Nusquam. Gregory leaned against a table that Harry thought she had
conjured for the specific purpose of leaning�although Portillo Lopez had
quickly taken it over with the hanks of thread and boxes of metal pieces that
she seemed to need�watching critically. Draco stood just behind Harry and
smoothed his shoulder with one hand now and then.

�� Daydreams
are too fragile to contain the information that must move through them,�
Portillo Lopez said. �Dreams are stronger and have some existence independent
of us, in that we do not control them and alter them at our pleasure as we do
with daydreams. And they take us behind the world, though through the route of
the mind rather than through the route of death, unlike the road that Nihil has
discovered.�

�� Draco must
have sensed Harry�s tension, because he squeezed Harry�s shoulder reassuringly
and cut in before Harry could say anything. �I don�t think the magical theory
is necessary.� He turned Harry to face him. �What did you do when you realized
that I was in trouble? How did you reason out the best course of action?�

�� I didn�t,� Harry snapped. He had already
said this, and he couldn�t comprehend why Draco would want to hear it again. He
was usually impatient with repetition. �I saw you in trouble. I grabbed you and
tore open a wound so that I could use blood for my necromancy. I didn�t make
any conscious effort to go after you, because I didn�t know what had happened. I only know that I was following
you a few seconds later.�

�� Ah,�
Portillo Lopez said, and smiled at him. �I should have known. Yes, you would
find it harder to follow the road if you took your first steps onto it
unwittingly. In this case, Nihil provided the means for you to walk it. You
will have to learn to walk it on your own, and that is a separate process.�

�� That�s the
first bloody thing she�s said that made sense,� Harry muttered. Draco murmured
soothingly in his ear while Portillo Lopez seized one of the threads from the
table and pulled it taut between her hands.

�� You know
that you can use a piece of string to escape a maze,� Portillo Lopez said. �Lay
it down behind you, and it provides a trail that you can follow if you get
lost.� She brought her fingers closer together and looped them through the
thread. �Of course, that is not the only game one may play with it.� She moved
both hands in a complex pattern, and Harry was looking at a spiderweb, a bigger
one that he had thought could have been spun from a single piece of thread.

�� Yes,�
Harry said, since Portillo Lopez had paused and looked at him, apparently
expecting him to say something.

�� Portillo
Lopez glanced back at her web. �The method of entering the road is the hardest
part, but once there, you must also lay down a trail so that you can find your
way back. In your case, you were able to use the blood from your wound. The
sensation of warmth and life would call to you, given the contrast of darkness
and cold all around you. But others, such as your partner, do not have that
ability.�

�� I can lay
down the road,� Harry said, �but I don�t know how to enter. On the other hand,
Draco seems to understand your theory but he wouldn�t be able to find his way
back even if he bled before he went in. So why don�t both of us work together
at once, and counter our weaknesses like that?�

�� Portillo
Lopez went silent. Gregory straightened up from her leaning posture on the
table and clapped her hands together using only her fingertips. Draco dipped
his head and whispered into Harry�s ear, �You are very clever.�

�� Of
course,� Portillo Lopez said, before Harry could finish absorbing the shock and
the sweetness of Draco�s compliment. �You already work together as partners and
you already share compatible magic. Why did I not envision you working together
as a pair when it came to this?� She sounded vexed with herself.

�� Everyone
has a weakness,� Gregory said. Harry wondered if Portillo Lopez would pick up
on the sarcasm in her voice. Portillo Lopez might have, because she glanced at
her sharply, but Gregory was staring so intently at Draco and Harry that she
could claim to have missed that. �Well? I do not understand the theory, either.
How do you propose to go behind death, Trainee Malfoy? And how do you know you
will not get lost there?�

�� Harry
turned around in interest. He�d like to know the answers to those questions,
too. And it was nice to have the burden of doing the impossible resting on
someone else for once.

*

�� Draco
smiled. He hoped the smile would conceal his lack of confidence about what
exactly he was going to do next. He understood the theory, but that was a long
way from putting it into operation, as more than one of Professor Snape�s
students had learned.

�� But he
would not show weakness in front of the instructors, and Harry looked at him
with eyes full of a shining trust that Draco would give his life not to damage.
He reached out and took the thread from Portillo Lopez�s hands.

�� I see the
world differently than either you or she does,� he explained to Harry, trying
to ignore the way Gregory gave a thin smile. Perhaps she knows this is a delaying tactic. But Draco didn�t
intend to let her criticism worry him. �I see the weakness of the barriers,
perhaps, more strongly, and I have more control over my thoughts and emotions,
so the dreaming awake analogy makes more sense to me.�

�� Harry
didn�t waste time barking that he did so
have control over his thoughts and emotions, the way Draco had thought he
would. He nodded as if accepting the obvious and waited for more. Draco licked
his lips and unfolded the string, tying a loop at the end of it and beginning
to swing it around his head.

�� I can also
keep the paradox that Nihil told me about in mind. The idea of the fly moving
in amber who doesn�t know it�s trapped and so can keep up that slow motion�slow
only to someone looking at it from the outside, not to the fly. Nihil moves in different ways than we do, has his
changes in clockwork positions, but that�s still movement, that�s still
change.� Draco swung the rope faster and fixed his eyes in front of him.

�� It took
little to no effort to remember the sensations that had flooded him when Nihil
pulled him into the dark. The memories that had leaked from his head. The icy
teeth grinding into his limbs. The sense of hopelessness and despair.

�� Emotion was
a kind of motion. Draco could feel the memories overwhelming him, the world
they described replacing and wavering into the world that he stood in. He could
still feel the sunlight, but distantly. He was amazed, privately, that Harry
had been able to use his blood as a guide back to the real world. The
sensations of the one where Nihil lived were so much more powerful.

�� Shivers
struck his spine and gripped his limbs. Draco could feel the string in his
hand, but only the way he might have been able to feel a piece of ice with numb
limbs. His body froze, and his mind leaped out of his head and pushed back the
barriers.

�� At the last
moment, he felt hands lock onto his shoulders as someone came with him. He was
dimly grateful for that.

*

�� Harry had
no doubt that they now stood in the same world Nihil had pulled Draco into. The
darkness was the same, and the despair that crept over him, and the hanging
cold that he could feel hissing past his ears in a motion that wasn�t motion,
like a frozen wind.

�� And he had
no idea how Draco had done it. From what he�d seen, Draco had simply focused
his gaze vaguely ahead, maybe using the spinning string to hypnotize himself,
and gone into this place without moving. When the string had snapped taut, the
loop at the end of it vibrating as if hooked over the neck of an invisible fly,
Harry had lunged forwards and gripped Draco instinctively.

�� It was a
good thing he had, he thought as his teeth began to chatter.

�� Draco was
moving ahead of him in odd ways, creating dark silver ripples through the
darkness that Harry could barely see. Now and then the string trembled, but it
didn�t move. Harry gritted his teeth and wondered for a moment how they were
going to get back, since he hadn�t spilled his blood this time.

�� Well, he
could try to correct that. He removed one of his hands from Draco�s shoulder
and lifted it to his mouth.

�� He couldn�t
feel or find the skin. His teeth were chattering too hard to bite anyway. He
glanced over his shoulder and saw nothing there but endless night, closed in
thick and muffling as a fog.

�� We�re going to die here.

�� Harry
clenched his teeth down, grinding them against each other to produce a modicum
of sensation, and thought that it was probably hard to die when they were
already behind death. He just had to find another way out of this situation,
that was all.

�� Let�s see.
What had he had last time? Necromancy that wasn�t necromancy. Snakes. Blood. A
driving desire to see Draco rescued that meant he could fight against Nihil,
will pitched against will, and win.

�� That�ll have to be enough right now, since I
don�t have anything else, Harry thought, and slid his arms down Draco�s
neck until they were clasping the front of his chest. Draco�s skin was like ice
or metal under his hands, or perhaps petrified wood; Harry thought he had
already lost the ability to distinguish between textures that similar. He thought
of the way Draco had made love to him yesterday, the warmth and sliding of his
body, the feeling of Draco�s cock in his arse.

�� A twinge of
pain soared through his muscles at the reminder, and Harry nearly groaned
before he realized what that meant. If he could still feel something like this,
then he might be able to feel other things, and each feeling would draw them
closer and closer to the world they had left behind them.

�� Harry
clenched his arse down, remembered the way Draco�s eyes shone and the bruising
grip of his fingers on Harry�s hips, and began moving backwards, step by step.
He didn�t glance over his shoulder. He saw no reason to dishearten himself with
the sight of a �landscape� that didn�t move or change.

*

�� Draco knew
he wasn�t alone. Harry was at his back, yes, but in a distant way. They might
have stood there with a pane of glass between them. Draco�s attention was
focused in front of him, on the darting, swimming things that plunged past him
and then turned and came back again to study him without any sound.

�� He couldn�t
see them, either. He could sense them,
but not as he would sense most other things, with a brush of wind against his
cheek or a nearness that raised the hair on his spine. He no longer had cheeks
or a spine here. His body was one whole plane of being and nothingness, like
the insect trapped in amber.

�� Instead, he
felt them as if he were in a dream.

�� Think of this as a dream and it will be less
frightening, Draco told himself, though he knew he should experience fear
only in an academic way. He felt interest instead. He waited until one of the
plunging forms was next to him, drifting close enough to alter and stir the
darkness and cold, and then shifted his perception. He could dream awake. That
meant controlling, at least in part, what happened in the dream.

�� In seconds,
or some other longer measure of time�it didn�t matter, since both were equally
meaningless here�he held a thrashing thing that resembled, so much as it
resembled anything, a desperate fish.

�� Draco
glanced over his shoulder, ready to tell Harry that he had something valuable
and they could return to the real world.

�� He saw
nothing. Blackness unrolled behind him. The ice encased his limbs and rendered
both them and the creature he cradled motionless. He was already beginning to
forget light, the way he had when Nihil held him prisoner.

�� No.

�� He hadn�t
given up last time, under far more hopeless circumstances. Draco leaned
backwards, trying to convey the truth to Harry by the pressure of his back and
shoulders. If Harry could feel them�and of course he could�he would know that
Draco was ready to leave this place and come out from behind death.

*

�� Harry
closed his eyes. He knew they might burn with tears, though heat was harder to
imagine than most of the other things he was currently feeling. But Draco had
pressed against him, and that indicated he still had his own spirit and
desires. Harry took a step backwards, keeping his hands locked in place on
Draco�s chest, pulling Draco with him perforce.

�� Draco
didn�t reach back to help, for some reason. Perhaps his hands were stretched
out in front of him to explore as much as they could of Nihil�s domain before
he was pulled back, Harry thought. It didn�t matter. He didn�t need to
speculate on that part of this journey, because Draco was the one who had
handled it and the one who would give him a coherent account�or not�when they
were back with Gregory and Portillo Lopez.

�� Draco was
above him, pushing into him, his eyes wide and wild. Draco was above him on the
bed in Malfoy Manor, this time accepting Harry�s cock into his arse, his head tilting back and his throat working as he
struggled to gulp back words. Harry could taste his tongue, hear the crunch his
teeth made when they came together in crisp food, and smell the very slightly
scented shampoo that he�d tended to use when they still shared a room in the
barracks.

�� Harry
thought and remembered, thought and remembered, and, when the coldness of the
world around him seemed to drain those memories dry, thought of new ones rather
than clinging to the old. He had many, didn�t he? He and Draco had been friends
for more than a year, lovers for months. That was plenty.

�� He raised
barriers against the darkness around them, barriers of perception and desire,
and the darkness snapped away and dripped down the walls of the world like tar.

�� Harry gasped
and found himself on his knees in the bubble of warmth, his hands still locked
faithfully around Draco�s chest. Draco did
cough and tug at Harry�s arms, and Harry realized that there might be a
problem with blocking Draco�s air supply, now that he was kneeling. He
sheepishly let him go.

�� You nearly
died.�

�� Portillo
Lopez was stooping over them, shaking her head. Harry looked at her through
hazy eyes and wondered what she would do if he pulled off her head-scarf. It
was making a bid for freedom anyway.

�� Next
time,� Portillo Lopez said, �you must bleed
before you go into Nihil�s world. It is a surprise that you made it back at
all. You used memories, but memories are fragile things, and if you had spent
too long in the darkness without thinking of that tactic, you might have lost
them all without finding the way back.� She reached down and took Harry�s hand,
squeezing it. Harry gasped. His fingers were waking up from what felt like
intense sleep with a chorus of pins and needles. �Did you think?�

�� Not
really,� Harry admitted. �I just wanted Draco safe.�

�� I�m more
than safe.�

�� Draco
turned around. Harry stared. He had an ingot of blue-black in his arms,
something that thrashed weakly and then fell back into stillness. It was hard
to focus on, since Harry kept expecting to see depth to it and it had none.

�� How did
you get that?� he asked. �What is it?�

�� I captured
one of the things I could feel swimming around me,� Draco said simply, and then
looked down at the blue-blackness as if even he was puzzled or dazed by it.
�And I think it�s one of the dead.�

*

�� Draco
didn�t think he needed to sit in the
tent where they had kept Nusquam, a mug of hot tea in his hands and a blanket
thrown over his knees. He had felt far better and stronger when he came out of
that second sojourn in the darkness than he had the first time. He hadn�t
forgotten heat or sunlight. And he wanted to see what Portillo Lopez and
Gregory could do with the dead spirit or thing he had captured.

�� But Harry
had insisted, and from the way he had trouble keeping his hands off Draco�s
shoulders, Draco knew that it would save time to give in and do as he wanted.
So he sat down, and sighed, and rolled his eyes to an invisible audience when
none of the real one was looking, and settled for watching Gregory and Portillo
Lopez through the gap in the flap of the tent.

�� They had
laid the blue-blackness on the ground and were casting a mirrored shield of
some sort over it. Draco could occasionally hear Gregory�s questions, most of
them concerning the thing�s nature. Portillo Lopez answered only once or twice,
her brow wrinkled and her wand in constant motion.

�� I thought
I�d lost you.�

�� Harry
insisted on kneeling in front of him and blocking his view. Draco smiled at him
temperately and remembered how he had felt two days ago when Harry had brought
him out of the blackness. This time, he hadn�t been afraid of getting lost
forever, and he thought it reasonable to be less affected, although Harry
wasn�t.

�� You
didn�t,� Draco said, and patted his hand. �Don�t you think it�s an achievement,
though, bringing that spirit out of Nihil�s realm? It might even be one that
Nihil enslaved himself, or at least that he knew how to use.�

�� It�s
remarkable,� Harry said, and Draco felt a flood of warmth more persistent than
anything the tea could give him. �It wouldn�t have been worth your life,
though.�

�� Draco
sighed and shifted in place. �But if I�d died there, then that thing wouldn�t
have come with me out of the darkness, either,� he said. �So it�s not a case of
choosing one over the other. One depends on
the other. You could have died as easily if I did, and that would mean more to
the world, losing you, than losing me would.�

�� It doesn�t
make any difference to me,� Harry answered stubbornly. �We�re talking about
emotional reasons, not logical reasons.�

�� Draco
hesitated, then let his hand rest on Harry�s shoulder so that he could press
down. �I appreciate that,� he said softly. �I�ll think more about it in the
future. If we go on hunting expeditions for Nihil�s people, then we should be
able to make sure that we survive them. And there are other things I�d like to
do than die heroically in the pursuit of new knowledge.�

�� No
kidding,� Harry muttered. �I brought us back because I held onto the memories
of you talking to me and having sex with me. I�d like to do a lot more of
that.� He looked up at Draco, and his eyes were luminous.

�� Draco
smiled helplessly and reached down to touch the side of his face. �I have to
admit that I would, too,� he muttered.

�� A loud bang
sounded from outside the tent, rather as though someone had speared a balloon
full of air that had exploded. Draco jerked back and turned to look. He saw
Portillo Lopez rising to her feet, waving her wand hastily back and forth and
chanting in frantic Latin. Gregory had leaped ten feet back on the blue-black
thing�s other side and was doing the same thing, though her Latin was more
clipped and her incantations shorter.

�� The
blue-black thing was bleeding on the ground�if you could call emitting a colorless
liquid and a foul smell bleeding. Draco stared as it lost its shape, and then
set aside the cup of tea and surged to his feet.

�� I�d like
you to stay away from that,� Harry said mildly.

�� Draco
wasn�t fooled by the mildness, but he also had no time for it. �I can�t,� he
said and bolted out of the tent, his wand drawn and his mind bristling with
memories of Nihil again. If he had to, he would step back into the dark realm
with the creature and see if being there would heal it.

�� Harry
cursed and followed him. Draco didn�t bother looking around. He was welcome in
any attempt to contain or tame the creature�s blood, assuming it was as harmful
as Portillo Lopez and Gregory thought it was. If he tried to grab Draco and
drag him out of danger�s way, then Draco would cast a Body-Bind on him and take
his wand and that would be the end of that
for a while.

�� Unfortunately,
by the time he arrived, the excitement was over. Gregory had gathered up the
smell and the liquid together in a glass globe that looked like a Muggle light.
Portillo Lopez was calmly chopping up pieces of the blue-blackness and laying
them out like pieces of fish.

�� What
happened?� Draco demanded.

�� Portillo
Lopez looked up. �This is not a spirit of the dead,� she said calmly, but with
an undertone of excitement that made Harry press heavily against Draco�s back.
�It is part of the darkness itself. We disrupted its integrity when we tried to
carve it up. Now we have the trick of it, and we are spared an outburst from death
into our world.� She smiled. �We may even have to thank the imbalance of the
forces of life and death for the fact that you were able to bring this into our
world in the first place.�

�� What are
you doing?� Harry asked. Draco relaxed. Harry had stopped thinking exclusively
about Draco�s safety if he could ask that question.

�� Making a
weapon out of it,� Portillo Lopez said, as if genuinely surprised at the
question, and returned to her chopping.

�� Draco
experienced a rush of pure bliss. They might not yet have torture techniques
that worked reliably against Nihil, but he had helped in the development of
their first weapon.

*

�� Dragons
Breath: Thank you! And yes, the snakes simply disappear. Nihil understands the
world of death and necromancy better than Harry does, but since his techniques
are instinctive/non-trained/amateurish, that actually makes it harder for Nihil
to fight Harry.

�� Portillo
Lopez was more sympathetic to Harry because of his intent, but she actually thinks
that he doesn�t use necromancy now because the whole point of necromancy is to
commune with or command the dead, and he doesn�t do that.

�� polka dot:
Even Flash and Politesse aren�t very useful against Nihil, though.
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Seasons of War