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A Reign of Silence	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3889 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Twelve—Here Come the Bones

            Harry woke up to shrieks and rattles around him, the flash of powerful magic, and the feeling that he had already picked up a wand wearing a hundred pounds. He grimaced and forced himself up to his hands and knees, looking around for Draco.

            Draco stood over him, destroying the bone-creatures that Ernhardt was calling from the ground as fast as they could form. Harry shook his head. He should have known Ernhardt would survive the destruction of the house, which meant there was no sane reason for him to feel disappointed.

            And destroying the bones one by one like this wouldn’t help. Harry stood up and ignored his knees’ attempt to fall over with him. He willed it not to happen, which meant it wasn’t going to. He looked around for Elder.

            Elder was fighting back-to-back with Rudie, and it seemed his spells were effective in taking apart the bones, although Harry counted no powerful curses in the few seconds he watched him. Of course not. Too much power meant they would probably cross over the line into Dark, whatever Elder’s personal line was.

            “Elder!” Harry shouted, and Elder turned his head towards him, even as Rudie flicked her wand at another bone-creature and broke the spells that bound it. “You need your gift! The light! It’s the only thing strong enough to destroy them!”

            That led to a moment of blinking, and Harry feared horribly that Elder was going to say something about how his flaw was a gift of the light and only came when he really needed it, or was only useful against snakes, or something. But then Elder nodded, and when he turned to face the battle again, light and fire were waking around his heart.

            That half of the battlefield turned red and gold, and Harry whirled back to face Draco. He’d thought Ernhardt would have gone after Rudie first, but he hadn’t, which meant he was here for Draco—

            No, he wasn’t, Harry saw a moment later. Ernhardt was wielding Macgeorge’s body against Jenkins and Warren instead.

            And although Harry thought it had to be happening because of his weakened state when it came to his magic, his jaw still fell open when he saw the way they danced together.

            He and Draco could have equaled them on their best day. But this wasn’t his best day, not with the magic he had already used, and he was coming to be certain that Warren’s flaw was powerful and Dark curses. Warren stood in the middle of a storm of light and lightning, casting so fast Harry couldn’t tell one spell from another. He only knew that they made bones blacken and shatter and splinter and fly away from her, and it was really fucking bloody impressive.

            Behind her was Jenkins, and she was fighting the spells Ernhardt launched, a faint smile on her face. Harry saw the way that Ernhardt’s fingers twitched and his blue eyes flared, and thought he must already have tried to break into Jenkins’s mind. Her flaw would have protected her, then.

            Which didn’t say why he hadn’t tried to take over Warren’s mind, or at least Elder’s. Although maybe he thought he would become much too stupid if he was once in contact with the stubbornness that lived in Elder’s.

            But Warren would have made sense, especially since then he would have her flaw and knowledge of spells to turn against the rest of them. Or Draco. Or Harry. Harry must have been more vulnerable while unconscious than he would be now that he was awake and aware and watching Ernhardt.

            Harry caught Draco’s eye as he stepped up beside him to join in blasting the bone-creatures, and Draco nodded to him. Then he followed Harry’s gaze to Ernhardt.

            “I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Why isn’t he moving? He’s sacrificing his most powerful weapon to a talent that he doesn’t know how to use as well.”

            “Maybe he’s still working out how to control two flaws,” Harry suggested as he pierced a skull with a Lightning Dart. “And he can’t use more than one of them at the same time.”

            Draco gave a bitter sound that was not quite a laugh. “I’ll believe that we have that level of luck when we receive some outside confirmation,” he muttered, and turned to blast a creature with three femurs that was creeping up behind Harry. “No, I don’t know what it is, and I wish I did.”

            Harry nodded, but that was the only thing he had time to do before Ernhardt snapped his fingers, and a shock wave seemed to race around the bones. All of them rose into the air and began to soar. Tilting his head back and squinting, Harry thought he could see small, thin webs of Dark magic connecting them into wings.

            At the same time, Draco hissed and covered his left arm where the Mark would be blazing, Harry was sure, just confirming that there was Dark magic around. Harry stepped slightly away from him, and waited for the bones to hurtle down from the sky.

            Then his vision darkened, and he gagged, feeling the press of something sharp and splintery against the walls of his throat, feeling something else pinning him to the ground although he still stood. He tried to open his eyes past the pain, but he couldn’t. There was ebbing darkness waiting for him, tinged with red and black, and finality.

            A vision.

            This was the vision he was having of someone’s death, his own flaw coming to life. He almost never experienced it except for a genuine murder, which meant someone around him had a high chance of dying in a few minutes.

            Or seconds, even. Harry reached out and put a groping hand on Draco’s arm. Draco squeezed his hand and waited silently for him to speak.

            “He’s going to let the bones fall,” Harry whispered. “To fall, and pin us to the ground, and break apart in our skin. He’s going to pierce us like those insects that Muggles like to nail down. And I think I’m feeling your death.”

            There was a silence during which he found it hard to imagine Draco doing anything except going pale, but when he spoke, his voice was quiet, kind, and prepared. “It’s all right, Harry. I know what I have to do. Elder won’t like it, but since when do I care what he likes?”

            “Well, his flaw probably did save us a little while ago,” Harry said, and opened his eyes slowly as the vision faded. He had never felt one that strongly. Of course, he was already weakened this time, and most of the time, the deaths he envisioned were quicker if more awful. This was pain that had lingered. Ernhardt probably planned to leave them to bleed to death.

            “I still don’t care what he likes,” Draco replied. “I care about what he can do.”

            Harry laughed, and looked up in time to see Draco lift his wand and close his eyes. A certain stillness in his body told Harry what spell he planned to cast before he cast it.

            Harry grasped Draco’s arms and leaned into him, partially for his own support, but even more because Draco might fall over when the spell was done, and still more because he wanted to hear Draco’s heartbeat still laboring softly and know that he wasn’t dead yet.

*

            Draco was remembering long afternoons and evenings spent in the embrace of the library at Malfoy Manor. He had studied dusty books, and books worn with the fingers of his ancestors, and books that had warning spells attached to them, and books that had chains or jewels set around the edges of their covers. He had read spells he couldn’t imagine ever using, simply for the fun of research.

            And he had read one that would save them now.

            “Protego,” he whispered, and felt his power stir inside him, plus the flare of pain in his Mark that presaged the rising of Dark magic. “Protego contra tota.” The pain grew worse, and the power rose. “Protego contra tota!”

            The pain left him at the same moment as the power did, and Draco hissed as he watched the shield form over them, a huge, high dome looming against the sky, at the same moment as the bones wheeled away from their wings of Dark energy and began to fall. The bones did indeed have pointed ends that would have pierced flesh if directed, as Draco suspected Ernhardt could do. Harry’s flaw had saved their lives again.

            The dome built itself of dirt, a few bones that Ernhardt must have missed and left lying on the ground, the bark and branches of trees—and skin and flesh from the people it was supposed to be defending, which was why it was called Dark. Draco grimaced as a long strip of skin tore away from his arm, but he knew the shield would be all the stronger for it, attuned to the people under it. That meant Ernhardt would have a hard time sneaking in under it.

            Unless he chooses to leap out of Macgeorge’s body and possess someone who’s already sheltering here.

            But for whatever reason, Ernhardt hadn’t done that. Warren and Jenkins, the ones closest to him, hadn’t really tried to attack Macgeorge’s body either, but Draco knew why. Kill his body, and Ernhardt would have no choice but to abandon it and aim for one of them. They didn’t know which one he would most yearn to possess, either.

            The dome finished itself, and the only sound was blood dripping into the mud from their wounded arms and Warren and Jenkins catching their breaths. Both of them stepped back at the same time and turned their heads to look at Draco. Draco raised his eyebrows and shrugged. He had done what he had to, and if he’d warned them, there was no keeping it from Ernhardt, either.

            Elder was the first to speak, of course, the light dying away from his arms as his flaw went back to sleep. “More Dark magic?” he asked, his voice as heavy as the bones would have been in the still air. “Of course it is. You don’t know how to use anything else, Mr. Malfoy.” He sighed. “I’m afraid that only speeds up my decision.”

            “To report me to the Ministry?” Draco asked, not at all surprised when Elder nodded. “And that means that you’ll report Harry and Warren and Jenkins and Rudie as well?”

            Elder frowned at him. “Other than Auror Potter, they didn’t use as much Dark magic as you did.”

            “Necromancy is Dark magic,” Draco said, but had to cut off when Rudie’s dash at the side of the dome reminded him that they had bigger problems than Elder’s moral code. He raised his wand and cast a Tripping Jinx that sent Rudie sprawling on the torn-up earth of the clearing. “Are you mental?” he snapped at her. “Wanting to break the dome? Ernhardt is still out there, and he can’t get at us right now, but he’ll find a way to do it on his own soon.”

            “He still has Nicolette’s body,” Rudie said grimly, struggling up. “There’s a chance I can give it back to her.”

            Draco shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, so Harry was the one who answered. “Isla,” he said gently, “Nicolette is dead. She has to be. Ernhardt would have murdered her the minute he took over her body, so that he would have full access to it and her talents.”

            “Really?” Rudie turned and sneered at them. “Then why hasn’t he jumped away from this empty body he could leave lying on the ground and possessed one of us?”

            “We don’t know that. He could still be trying to learn how to control the necromancy—”

            “If he’s left rotting corpses as guardians on his house, then he’s done one of the most difficult things of all.” Rudie paced in a circle and glared at them all impartially. “I know you don’t want to believe it, but I know a little about necromancy from what Nicolette said. And that’s a hard thing to do. He’s mastered it. But why doesn’t he leave the body?”

            “We’ve been hunting him too closely,” Jenkins said, but her voice was thoughtful, and she watched Rudie as if the idea was new to her.

            “No, we haven’t,” Rudie snapped. “He could have possessed someone and drawn them here to help him before we arrived, while he hid Nicolette’s body safely somewhere else. Then he’d leap the minute we damaged that body. No, I think that Nicolette is still alive, and he hasn’t managed to kill her at all. I think he was damaged when he was forced to take her over, and this is the best chance we have to kill him permanently. I think he doesn’t dare possess someone else because then she’ll take her body back.”

            Draco blinked. He had to admit that the idea was intriguing, and it would explain some of the things Ernhardt had done that didn’t otherwise make sense.

            But they had no proof, and he wasn’t willing to risk all their lives on one Auror’s wild speculation. “Isla,” he said, hoping that addressing her by her first name would win her attention for him just as it had done for Harry, “you don’t know that, and you can’t put our lives at risk just because you want her back.”

            “None of the rest of you care.” Rudie’s eyes flashed like a wolf’s. “I might as well fight for her, because no one else will.”

            “If you could prove this to us,” Jenkins said, “then the rest of us would join you in fighting.”

            Elder stood up a little and held his head in a way Draco thought was meant to make light flash off his hair, although under the dome it had little effect. “Not all of us,” he said. “It would depend on whether the rest of you proposed to use Dark magic to free Macgeorge or not—”

            Jenkins gave him a look that seemed to wither his tongue in his mouth, a look Draco wished he could learn from her. With Elder silenced, she turned back to Rudie. “Is there any proof you can offer us?”

            Rudie smiled like the house had, with all her teeth and with the flesh seeming to draw back from the bone on her cheeks. “Nothing you can accept. I know that Nicolette is still alive because I take it on faith.”

            “Idiot,” Draco said, without much heat. “What do you think we’re going to say to that? Of course we don’t have a choice but to keep you back, because you might do anything in the name of winning your precious Nicolette.”

            “She deserves that kind of devotion,” Rudie said, facing the dome again. “She was spending her strength like water on your case, but there was no one to tell her she shouldn’t do that, because God forbid that she tend to her own cause for once.” Her voice hissed like a dying fire. “So, yes, I’ll do this. I’m the only one who cares enough to.”

            She lifted her wand, and Draco didn’t know what spell she might have uttered, because Jenkins gestured with her own wand. Her nonverbal hex stiffened Rudie and toppled her into the grass. Warren stepped up and disarmed her.

            “That was my partner you just assaulted,” Elder said, but Draco noticed that he avoided looking at Jenkins as he spoke, opting to look grave and stern at Warren.

            Warren shrugged. “And she was putting us in jeopardy. She oughtn’t to have been allowed to come on this case at all.” She turned to Jenkins. “Do you think we ought to consider the Joining Circle?”

            Jenkins grimaced. “I hate that. It takes so much out of you.” She glanced at the rest of them. “And Elder might not lend us his strength for it, and Potter is already exhausted, and Malfoy isn’t much better after raising this dome.”

            “What Joining Circle are you talking about?” Draco asked, trying to stand up straight and not sway. “I know several spells by that name.”

            “Then you’re better-educated than I am.” Jenkins touched her mouth with one finger. “There’s only one I know of. It means that all the Aurors join their minds and their magic, and then the strongest one, or the least exhausted one in this case, directs them to act as one. They can be stronger than the sum of their parts that way.”

            “That’s the one I was thinking of,” Draco said, and tried to swallow away his fear. “You really think the situation is desperate enough for that?”

            “Yes,” Jenkins said. “Or, at least, I think that Warren wouldn’t have brought it up if there was any other choice.” She slewed around and stared at her partner. “Would you have?”

            Warren looked at Jenkins and raised her eyebrows. Draco read some of the silent communication that flowed between them, which clearly said that Jenkins should stop asking stupid questions.

            “What makes you think I would help you?” Elder had recovered the full use of his tongue—which was a pity—and stood with one hand cocked on his hip and turning his head back and forth between them with a frank stare.

            “We know you won’t,” Jenkins said. “So we won’t ask you.”

            Warren grimaced at her. “It won’t work as well with two strong Aurors and two exhausted ones as it would with three strong ones and two exhausted ones.”

            Jenkins inclined her head in the way Draco had seen wizards use to acknowledge a curse hitting during a duel. “I know. But I don’t think that we’ll get anything useful out of him, and I would rather go ahead and chance failure than try to convince him.”

            “It might be that you could convince me,” Elder said, rocking forwards a little. “If you would talk to me and explain why a spell like this isn’t Dark.”

            “Ridiculous,” Jenkins said, and turned her back without waiting for a further argument, which Draco appreciated was much the best way to deal with Elder. “All right, Thomasina. If you’re ready, you can begin the Chant.”

            “I suppose it won’t do me any good to ask what you’re going to do?” Harry asked, almost meekly.

            Jenkins smiled at him and shook her head. “Just stand ready to lend your strength to the Chant when it gets to you.” And she walked over and bent down to check on Rudie, as though to make sure her binding still held.

            Harry glanced at Draco as Warren closed her eyes and began to speak, in what sounded more like a mumble to herself than an incantation. “I suppose you know something about what’s going on?” he asked.

            Draco had to smile at the way Harry had opened the question, the same way he had when asking Jenkins and Warren about the Joining Circle, but said only, “Yes. It joins us together and makes us into one being, but with greatly multiplied strength. Someone has to lead, though, and that’s the person who begins the Chant. Warren is the least tired of us, I think, so it makes sense that it should be her.”

            “That, and because there’s a greater chance Ernhardt might try to take over her mind,” Jenkins said over her shoulder. “He can’t take mine, you know how to fight him, and this spell lends Warren some degree of protection.”

            Harry grimaced and nodded. “How do we know when we should join?”

            “You’ll feel the magic reaching out,” Draco said, his voice thick. He disliked surrendering like this; he had once promised himself that he would never do it again after taking the Mark. But needs must when something that might be worse than the Dark Lord was on the other side of the barrier. “Believe me, you’ll know. And not have much choice.”

            “Does anyone care what I think?” Elder asked loudly.

            “No,” Jenkins said. “Because we know that you’ll only get in the way, and intrude your moral scruples where it’s your magic we want.”

            Elder took a step forwards, but something—perhaps the wand Draco saw moving lazily by Jenkins’s leg—stopped him from continuing. “I could help you,” he said. “Give me a few moments, and I could find some sufficiently Light magic that would free us from this dome and keep us safe from that monster out there.”

            “Then tell us what it is,” said Jenkins, and faced Elder with a faint smile. Draco knew she was probably only indulging him at all because it would be a means to spare her partner. “Let us know what powerful spell exists that doesn’t involve expending a lot of energy and isn’t Dark.”

            Elder sneered at her. “Wouldn’t you like to know what it is?”

            “Yes,” Jenkins said serenely. “That’s why I asked.”

            Elder looked stumped, and Draco turned away from him. He thought it unlikely that Elder would cast a spell requiring their attention, and he needed to speak to Harry about a few things that would matter when the Circle came around.

            Harry’s eyes were closed, and his face pale. He seemed to concentrate entirely on his breathing for a few seconds, and jumped when Draco touched his arm. “What?” he snapped, opening his eyes to stare at him.

            Draco sighed softly. “I wanted to know whether you think you can do this. Are you too tired? I’ll make sure that the full burden of what Warren’s asking falls on me when the spell comes around, if you are.”

            Harry swallowed, and tried several times to get the words out before he said, “How do I know that you’re not too tired to do this? Or maybe you would be fine with as much as the spell’s going to demand from you, but you would collapse if you had to take my own part and yours too. No. I’ll be fine.”

            Draco eyed his pale face, but said nothing. He recognized the Chant building from Warren’s lips, and he knew that the magic would come seeking them soon.

            It started with a tumbling of sparks from Warren’s direction, sparks that turned a harsh and radiant white. Harry watched them in wonder, blinking now and then, with long, slow seconds between the blinks that were filled with the beat of Draco’s heart.

            Then the sparks swept towards Harry, and he stepped forwards and opened his arms to embrace them.

            The sparks surrounded him, leaping up and down as though they were ashes cast on a hearth. Harry tossed his head back, and gasped aloud once, in a way that hooked harsh claws into Draco’s heart, but a second later he smiled, and the sparks blended into his skin. He turned and held his hand out to Draco.

            Draco started forwards to take it, and take his place in the spell.

            Then he heard a scuffle off to the side, and a moment later the dome began to tremble and rip, with a blue light blazing beyond and shining under the skin and bones and bark and all the other things Draco had lifted to make it.

            Harry cursed in a ragged, breathless voice and slapped his hand out. Draco didn’t have time to blink before Harry grabbed him and dragged him close, and the magic burst into his own skin and through him as Harry shouted something out—

            Something that was not the Joining Circle or any chant connected with it that Draco had ever heard.

            He had only a moment to remind himself of how Harry could develop spells from his core before the dome collapsed, and Ernhardt stood before them.

*

            delia cerrano: Thank you! Elder’s not quite a one-dimensional villain, but he is still stubborn and stupid in some ways.

            Rina: Oh, the Malfoys have a plan. It’s already in operation.

            SP777: This story will have more about Ernhardt’s plans and past, but not right away.

            I have read Pet Semetary. Definitely good, but I never want to read it again.
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A Reign of Silence