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Ceremonies of Strife	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16218 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Twelve�The Lowering
Gloom

�� Draco
leaned forwards. Pushkin, who had been assigned to investigate the beasts Nemo
had left behind on the chance that he could learn something from them, had said
he might sit in on the dissection. Harry had shuddered when Draco asked him if
he wanted to come and said that he would prefer to spend extra time studying
for Concealment.

�� Draco didn�t
mind. He was used to cutting things up for potions, after all, and he hardly
imagined that the beasts, or slices of their flesh, could smell more disgusting
than some of the ingredients he�d dealt with.

�� So far,
Pushkin had examined two skeletons, one of the small bat-like creatures that
had circled over Draco�s head in the corridor�which had dissolved into a
foul-smelling black goo the moment Pushkin had prodded it�and a drop from the
puddle of meltwater that was all that was left of the ice-breathing dragon. If
any of it had told him anything, he was an expert at keeping it to himself. Instead,
he simply nodded after each investigation concluded and then moved onto the
next one with admirable calm.

�� Of course,
Draco would have found it more admirable if he�d chosen to share the information.

�� Now he was
beginning on one of the tentacles that had ensnared Harry. The beast had fallen
motionless the moment Nemo was captured and had never moved again that Draco
knew of, even when its master was murdered. To appearances, the beast was
nothing but tentacles hooked to a smooth, round body. It was Pushkin�s theory
that they might move if he inflicted enough pain on them.

�� Draco
applauded the theory, and had carefully estimated the distance between himself and
the door of the small Potions lab as his part of the practice.

�� Pushkin
grunted softly and bore down on the tentacle�its color like a mixture of bile,
vomit, and urine�with a sharp knife. Draco tensed. Nothing happened. The knife
cut in smoothly, and a slow trickle of thick red blood worked its way out.

�� Pushkin
paused. �Fascinating,� he said.

�� Sir?�
Draco asked, alert as always for something that would let him understand the
creature better than Pushkin wanted him to. Knowledge was sometimes a paltry
kind of power compared to spells, but he would take what he could get when he
could get it.

�� This is
not exactly blood,� Pushkin said. �Nemo has twisted most of the ordinary
processes of life as we understand them. I had thought he was crossbreeding
creatures, but no magical creature could have blood like this. It would kill
its parent when it formed in the womb, and then die itself.�

�� Is it not
really a creature?� Draco asked, voicing something he�d wondered about. �It
doesn�t have a head or a mouth. Perhaps it�s some sort of organic machine?�

�� He
wondered, based on the look that Pushkin gave him, if he was about to be
scolded for so Mugglish a notion, but Pushkin simply shook his head and said, �It
is alive. That is all I need to know that it is a creature. But I will keep
your suggestion in mind.� He turned back and cut into the thing again.

�� Draco
shifted uneasily, and wondered if Nemo had left any magical traps behind to
ensnare those who might look too closely into his experimental breeding. Even
if Pushkin was right and it wasn�t quite experimental breeding, that didn�t
preclude the traps.

�� Pushkin finally
sliced a section of the tentacle free, smeared on its end with that blood that
flowed too slowly, and laid it on a table. Other than the creature, Draco, and
Pushkin himself, the table was the only large object in the room. Pushkin had a
trunk of small knives, pipes, mirrors, and other things that crouched at his
feet like an obedient dog.

�� Draco made
himself watch closely, and ignore the smell, as Pushkin cast a quiet spell on
the tentacle. Whatever it was, Draco didn�t recognize it. It made a sharp
yellowish-green light beam from the severed end of the tentacle.

�� Yes,� Pushkin
said. �I thought so.�

�� What did
you think?� Draco asked patiently, trying not to scream. He had once thought
that it was hard getting information out of Dearborn or Portillo Lopez.
Compared to Pushkin, they were models of clarity.

�� This is a
spell used to tell the lineage of crossbred magical creatures,� Pushkin said,
as if such a thing were as ordinary as a spell to clean the dishes. �It is especially
useful in cases when the breeding has carried the animal so far from its
parents that its similarities to them are superficial. But it did not work this
time. As far as the spell is concerned, this beast came from nothing that
exists.�

�� Draco
swallowed. Pushkin had put a tiny emphasis on the word nothing that made Draco remember his claim at the Fellowship
meeting: that Nihil, Nemo, and Nusquam wanted nothing more than to reduce the
world to dust floating in an abyss.

�� But you
can�t create something from nothing,� he said.

�� Pushkin gave
him a quick glance like a whip. �I am aware of that, Trainee Malfoy,� he said. �But
that is what Nemo appears to have done.�

�� Couldn�t
he have just found something sufficiently unusual that the spell doesn�t record
it?� Draco asked hopefully. The thought of the abyss that they wanted, that
this thing might have emerged from, made his forehead sting as if the cold-dragon
had breathed on him again.

�� This spell
is meant to give pointers to the kind of magical creature,� Pushkin said, �such
as what it might eat or what region of the world it emerged from. That way,
even if it is not a familiar breed, the researcher had some solid information
to begin from. But according to this spell, its parents ate nothing, they came
from nowhere, and no one bred them.�

�� Draco
glared at Pushkin�s back. He couldn�t believe that the English echo of the
names of the Terrible Trio wasn�t deliberate. �Do you think it�s related to the
magic that allows them to travel beyond death?� he asked.

�� Pushkin
gave a sudden clucking noise, and snatched up one of his mirrors to examine the
bloody end of the tentacle. Draco held his breath, proud that he had apparently
given Pushkin a clue, and waiting to be told what the clue was.

�� Interesting,�
Pushkin said at last.

�� What?�
Draco asked, his heart beating so hard that it felt as if he were swaying on
his feet.

�� I had a
thought,� Pushkin said, �but it is not true, and the investigation reveals no
way that it could be true.� He paused, then added, �Rather like most of my
thoughts on Nemo�s murder, which may never be solved.�

�� Draco sat
down and sighed.

*

�� Harry gave
a quick glance at the circle in the center of the floor, checking to make sure
that it perfectly matched the circle sketched in the book. Then he walked
around it to be sure, and especially studied the curlicues. The circle was studded
with them, and with smaller circles, and with crosses and stars. They all had to
be right, and they had been horribly hard to draw.

�� He focused
his mind tightly and exclusively on the difficulty for a minute, so he would be
thinking about that and not about�other
things.

�� Then he
went back, picked up the necromancy book, and began to read again. He had
already memorized the instructions because he�d read them so many times, of
course. But he needed to read them one more time to convince himself to go
through with this.

�� Necromancy corresponds to sacrifice, because
sacrifice is the strongest magical expression of desires. Someone who yields
his life, or his limbs, or the heart of his beloved, is a wizard whose will is
strong enough to control the living dead.

�� Harry
swallowed and read on. The first paragraph was the most disturbing, he thought.

�� So he�d thought
more than once, and then always changed that evaluation when he read the next
one.

�� This ritual calls for one of the smaller
sacrifices, one that can be healed afterwards. This is the Calling. The spirits
that one wishes to summon back should be made to float near the surface of the
Sea, so that they may hear future Calls more clearly and manifest themselves in
the bodies that the necromancer has chosen for them.

�� The book
continually called the place where the dead were the Sea. Harry wasn�t sure if
that was meant to be a mere poetic image or not. He wasn�t sure that he wanted
to know.

�� But he knew
what he had to do.

�� He laid the
book down. He hesitated, then shut it and placed it aside, out of the way. He
had thought to keep it open so he could look at it for instructions during the
ritual, but he had read the
directions too many times, trying to make them sound nicer or less dark in his
head. It wouldn�t do. He just had to go ahead and perform the bloody ritual,
and hope for the best, the way he�d been doing for the past week, since he
resumed his interrupted study.

�� He stepped
up to the edge of the circle, stopped with his boots right next to the line,
and then backed away from it for a count of three heartbeats. The book had said
not to worry about a more precise amount of time or space; tuning the ritual to
his own heartbeats was one of the things that would make it his instead of something copied from a
dozen other practitioners.

�� Already
Harry thought he could feel a subtle difference in the air. There was a white
spark dancing around the edges of the circle, or there was when he didn�t turn
his head to look for it. There was a dark shimmer near the floor even before he
cast the spells that the ritual required at head and foot of the circle,
raising fire out of the solid stone.

�� The fires
were blue for the most part, but the hottest flame near their heart alternated between
blue and black. Harry wondered what Hermione would say about that, and then
firmly put the notion aside. He hadn�t come this far to turn back now.

�� Portillo
Lopez�s warning sounded in his head then, about how he would go so far that
finally there would be no turning back, but he forgot that one as impatiently.
He was here, that was the point. He
had to move forwards and go on acting.

�� He stood in
place for some time; the book had said that he could take as long to relax as
he needed to after the fires were lit. Then he moved his head to the side and
whispered the incantation the book had given. Harry didn�t know what the
language was, except that it wasn�t Latin. The words felt hard and heavy in his
mouth, sharp, like they might cut his tongue.

�� When his
left hand grew heavier, Harry knew it had worked. He still let a count of ten
heartbeats, and then ten more, pass before he looked down to see.

�� He held a
knife, as heavy and ugly as the words, with a dull grey hilt and a greyer
blade. The blade looked as sharp as a cleaver. Harry didn�t turn it over, because
you weren�t supposed to. He lifted it, his gaze fixed on the circle.

�� Another
incantation, three words in the same language, or at least it sounded like, all
clack and hiss, the way Harry thought Parseltongue would probably sound to
someone who didn�t speak it. Then he brought the knife down.

�� He cried
out despite himself as he chopped off the tip of the smallest finger on his
right hand, but he had chosen Catherine Arrowshot�s old room�which had never
received another occupant�for that reason. It was far away from the rest of the
barracks. No one was going to hear him here.

�� The blood
flew in a perfect arch, drawn towards the circle by a magic Harry wouldn�t
pretend to understand. The fire that was further away from him ate it. The
nearer fire ate the tip of his finger.

�� Harry sank
to his knees, his teeth clenched. The pain was debilitating, and he knew that
he wouldn�t be able to go on with the ritual until he did something to deal
with it, although he�d meant to only heal the wound so he wouldn�t lose too
much blood. But the book hadn�t said there was any problem with delaying a
portion of the ritual after he�d made the sacrifice, so that was what he�d do.

�� He touched
his wand to his bleeding finger and whispered a Numbing Charm, then a minor
Healing Charm that would make the wound close. That didn�t do anything about
the blood on his palm, of course, or the memory of the pain, which was almost
worse than the real thing. But Harry wiped his hand off on the floor and
focused his attention on the circle, then whispered the next word. This one
wasn�t the strange language of the other incantations, or Latin either. It was
a single word in English. �Come.�

�� The silence
in the room grew heavy. Another spark appeared to dart around the circle, this
time creating lines of light between the fires and a momentary shimmer that
made Harry think a gate of some kind was opening in the circle. He flinched and
hoped it wasn�t. He didn�t have the protections up that the book said he would
need against an angry spirit who hadn�t been summoned back to take a body.

�� The
sensation and the sight vanished, and Harry saw the image of a grey river
flowing through the circle instead. It traveled through a blasted black
landscape, set here and there with brilliant white flowers. Harry felt a tiny
shiver of longing work its way up his spine. It was strange, with how ugly that
country looked, but it conveyed a sensation of rest and peace to him.

�� A figure
walked up to the other side of the stream, and stooped down to gather some of
the flowing water in two almost shapeless hands. They might have been paws, for
all Harry cared. His gaze was fixed on the figure�s face.

�� Tangled
brown hair streaked with grey, and tiredness in the face. He looked worse than
Harry would have liked him to look after death, but there he was. Remus Lupin.

�� Your life
was the most unfair,� Harry whispered into the heavy magic he could feel
gathering in the air, making the silence as thick as sugar. �You suffered because
Greyback decided to bite you, and then you died too early and you never got to
know your son, not really. I�m going to bring you back first.�

�� The
darkness behind Remus stirred and surged, as if it had heard that promise. Then
another figure came forwards to stand at his side.

�� Harry shut
his eyes. It was Sirius, the way he had looked when he fell through the veil,
the way Harry had seen him when he summoned his spirit in Grimmauld Place. He
looked care-worn, defiant, strange, sad.

�� Or maybe
your life was the hardest,� Harry muttered. �In prison for a crime you didn�t
do, and then only free for two years before you died, most of which you had to
spend in a place you hated. It isn�t right.�

�� And that
was the real reason he was doing this, he thought, the reason Portillo Lopez
would never understand. Yes, he wanted to bring the dead back because he wanted
to see them again, but really, the injustice was the worst thing. Everyone
mourned Dumbledore, and some people had even started saying that Snape should
have had a better life, but no one mentioned Sirius or Remus.

�� Or the
other figure who came to stand next to Remus now, her hair colored grey and
purple, her eyes wide with yearning.

�� Tonks,�
Harry whispered. �I promise, I�m going to bring you back, too. Teddy needs his
mum.�

�� The
darkness gave one final sigh. Not even death could dim the color of Fred�s
hair. And Harry thought the yearning in his eyes was probably worse than the
yearning in the eyes of all the rest, because he�d died younger.

�� Your
family still talks about you,� Harry told him. �It�s awful. But they�re starting
to act and think like getting over your death is for the best.� He smiled
painfully. �Except George. He still misses you more than he loves life. That
will help him, to see you again.�

�� They stood
there, looking at him, and the emptiness behind them finally began to take form
in Harry�s eyes. It did look like a
sea, with endless black waves rolling in to the blank shore across which the
river crawled. That was what the book meant, and Harry thought more spirits
would have come out of it if he had Called.

�� But these
were enough for right now, and he sat there looking at them until the fires
burned down and the vision vanished. Then he set about using the healing spells
the book had suggested for correcting the sacrifice and making it look as if he
had never lost part of a finger.

�� The
yearning in their eyes wasn�t something the book had talked about, and
certainly not something Portillo Lopez had thought was important.

�� They want to come back so badly. If
necromancers are always taking them unwilling from death, why is that?

*

�� Better,�
Weston said grudgingly, twitching one shoulder as though it hurt her arm to
give this praise to Draco. �But you need improvement.�

�� Draco
nodded shortly. He was doing his best to ignore the comments that Weston and
Lowell gave him now, and simply work at the stupid exercise they had set up for
him and Harry, the line of dummies they were supposed to destroy. He had
avoided sending most of his spells in Harry�s direction this time, but they
wouldn�t be satisfied until it was perfect, he suspected.

�� And that�s
what he wanted. To be perfect. To be the best. Since he and Harry had started
the Partnership Trust class, sometimes he thought he could feel the compatible
magic stirring between them like a beast slowly waking up from a nap.

�� But it wasn�t
strong enough yet to suit Draco�s needs.

�� He sighed
and started to cast a spell that would dry the sweat on his forehead, since
Lowell and Weston regularly let them out of their private training after three
trials, but Lowell stepped towards him and signaled with one hand that he
should wait. Draco raised his eyebrows and did so.

�� There is
something about your performance in the last few sessions that bothers me,�
Lowell said, shifting his eyes to Harry. �When was the last time that you spoke
in any great detail about your compatible magic?�

�� Draco
looked blankly at Harry, to find blank eyes looking back at him. He couldn�t
remember it. They had trained with compatible magic over the Christmas holidays
when Harry was staying with Draco, but since then�

�� I don�t
know, sir,� Harry said, and Draco shrugged and nodded right behind him.

�� You have a
barrier,� Lowell said, in the same grim tone that Draco thought Portillo Lopez
would use to announce a mortal wound. But Harry just shook his head, and Draco
didn�t know what Lowell was talking about any more than he did.

�� What does
that mean?� Draco asked. �A barrier preventing or blocking what, and where does
it come from?�

�� A barrier
across the flow of compatible magic between you.� Lowell was staring at the air
between them, eyes squinted, as though he could actually see both the magic and
the barrier. �It�s preventing you from drawing as effectively on your awareness
of each other as you should. You should be
further advanced in your training by now, but you�re still stumbling through
beginner�s steps. That would be acceptable only if you had recently learned
about your compatible magic, not worked together for over a year.�

�� Draco
clenched his hands. He could have had
more power, and something was keeping him from it? He wanted to destroy it,
right now. �What is the barrier formed from?� he asked, and was glad to hear
that his voice came out cold and strong. �Alien magic?�

�� No,�
Lowell said. He reached out a hand, and Weston was simply there, moving gracefully forwards to stand under his touch. Draco
felt a spasm of envy, but tried not to feel it, and waited as they closed their
eyes.

�� Lowell
opened his almost at once, his glare furious, but it was Weston who spoke. �The
barrier is formed of a lack of trust,� she murmured. �You have not spoken to
each other about your compatible magic in too long. You are both hiding
important secrets�at least, secrets that are important to you and to your
feelings. You must exchange thoughts
and information, ideas. The magic follows the flow of your thoughts, the flow
of communication. No wonder you are not yet advancing.�

�� Draco
glanced at Harry, only to find him looking back with a bleak expression. Come
to think of it, Draco thought, they hadn�t spoken to each other about important
things in a really long time. They
always seemed to be busy with homework or something else equally important, like
Draco�s expeditions to watch Pushkin dissect Nemo�s creatures. Harry spent time
with his friends or went off and studied to make sure that he could keep up in
the classes. A few times they�d wanked each other off, but it was a means of
releasing tension more than anything else. The last time they�d done it, Draco
had been grateful when Harry rolled over and started snoring.

�� Did you
stop for a specific reason?� Lowell was looking back and forth between them.

�� Or for a
reason that seemed good at the time, but really is not?� Weston grimaced in a
way that told Draco that she was familiar with the sensation.

�� Not�no,�
Harry said. �We just stopped talking. It just happened.� He extended one hand
towards Draco, and Draco clasped it. Harry winced. Draco tried to relax the
grip of his fingers. He was frustrated with the situation, not with Harry, and
he wanted to show that.

�� Then go
away and get reacquainted,� Weston said bluntly. �It�s the only way to make
sure that you function together, both as people who share compatible magic and
as ordinary partners. I wish we�d known this before,� she added in a distracted
tone, as she turned away. �It would have saved us some time, and we would have
used exercises that you responded to instead of failed at.�

�� Draco
ground his teeth, and then turned away with Harry. He wanted to make sure they
weren�t interrupted while they had their talk, and he wanted to start it as
soon as possible. Staying behind to argue with their instructors would be
counterproductive.

�� Are you
all right?� Harry asked quietly as they made their way back through the
corridors. �You look angry.�

�� I am,�
Draco said. He wanted to hold the words back, but he�d been doing that too much
already, and that had resulted in the barrier. He tried to look at Harry, tried
to answer as honestly as he could, and it still hurt, it was still hard and
awkward.

�� Harry gave
him a strained smile. �Then why don�t we go in,� he suggested as he opened the
door of their rooms, �and you can tell me all about it.�

*

�� polka dot:
Or had it thrust upon him. His childhood wouldn�t really give him that.

�� anciie:
Probably someone wasn�t in the room because they didn�t trust Nemo not to
corrupt a lone person who was in contact with him for long periods of time.

�� Nihil�s
plan should be impossible. On the
other hand, so should finding a way to transcend death.

�� Thank you!

�� Dragons
Breath: Portillo Lopez now has a way to test for infections of magic, so it�s
unlikely that Nemo would be able to take the place of a trainee. Especially
someone whom he probably doesn�t know.

�� SP777: Yes,
he�ll be going up against Portillo Lopez if he gets bad enough that she has to
put him down.

�� I don�t
want to tell you straight out why Nihil wants to turn the world into
nothingness, but remember his past. That will give you a clue.

��
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Ceremonies of Strife