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Forgive Those Who Trespass	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 20650 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter Fourteen�Harry�s Test

�� Harry had
no idea how long he knelt there, holding Ron�s head, before it spoke.

�� With
Draco�s voice.

�� A pathetic
display, really, Potter. Have you learned so little about life and death, and
what they are both like here, that you assume your friend is gone without
looking further?�

�� Draco
slumped against him from behind; Harry thought him close to passing out with
the suddenness and the shock of the words, or perhaps just because it was his
voice. Harry looked up. He had not wept. His eyes were dry and burning. His
throat felt the same, and it took him several attempts at clearing it before he
was able to respond.

�� I will
look further,� he said. �I suspect you�ve never experienced grief, if you don�t
understand the practice of pausing for some time to mourn.�

�� The voice
laughed, and yes, it was Draco�s arrogant, sneering schoolboy laugh. Harry
wasn�t sure which struck him as more obscene, the familiar tones or the fact
that he could see Ron�s lips moving around the words, even as the blue eyes
continued to stare past him at the far wall of the maze. �Then come ahead. This
maze was never designed for you, but since it has gone wrong and your
friends were your reason for coming here�because why would you come for Draco
Malfoy, of all people?�you will be one of our best subjects for an experiment
done to test responses to the maze.�

�� Harry
nodded. He rose to his feet with Ron�s head in his arms and his gaze focused
down the tunnel that led to the right. He knew it wasn�t the route that would
take them to the Pensieve room.

�� He didn�t
care. He could no more have walked away from this than he could have walked
away from the sight of his friends tortured and dying in front of him.

�� A pair of
arms winding around his waist jerked him back hard enough to make him catch his
breath in pain. He glanced over his shoulder to see Draco digging his heels
into the stone floor, shaking his head frantically.

�� I mean
this in the politest possible way, Draco,� Harry said. He didn�t recognize his
own voice. Well, at least one of us doesn�t sound uncomfortably
familiar. �Fuck off.�

�� He twisted
to the side, kicking one leg to make Draco release him. He made sure to fling
him off gently enough that his collision with the wall shouldn�t harm him. But
he didn�t intend to stay put like a good little boy, even if that was the best
plan. And he couldn�t�

�� He knew
this wasn�t really Draco speaking. But at the same time it was Draco�s laughter
echoing in his ears, coming from his best friend�s lips, and he was beginning
to accept that he would find Ron and Hermione dead at the end of the corridor.

�� He ran.
Behind him he could hear Draco�s pounding footsteps, gradually catching him up.
Harry didn�t care. Draco was physically weak and unable to use magic. He would
have no choice but to stay out of this battle, and take his chances with
whoever, or whatever, won it.

�� For one
moment, his conscience tried to restrain him in turn, asking what would happen
to Draco if he were stuck down here without someone to take care of him. He
would suffer. He would die�

�� Then Harry
shrugged off that hold, too, much more easily than he�d got rid of Draco�s
arms. He�d come down here for his friends, not Malfoy. Yes, he wished Draco all
the best and would be sorry to see him die, but he owed his life to Ron and
Hermione. If they were dead and he could have saved them instead of proceeding
slowly through the maze in the midst of self-doubt and self-loathing, then the
least he could do was perish trying to avenge them.

�� The world,
which had gained such complexity that Harry felt as if he were continually
walking across shaky mud, had suddenly flattened and clarified itself again.
Harry hated the reason for it, but he rejoiced in the feeling of clean air
flooding his lungs, of his feet hitting solid ground again.

�� And still
Draco followed him. Harry cursed under his breath and sped up; the tunnel was a
large one, but had no side-turnings. He couldn�t lose Draco, but maybe he could
leave him behind.

�� He was
vaguely aware that he was carrying Ron�s head under his arm like a Quaffle, and
that it was still laughing at him. This was bizarre and would probably make him
vomit later, but at the moment it had no power to slow him down. Nothing did.

�� He vaulted
over a small rise of stone steps and into the middle of a chamber so enormous
he was forcibly reminded of the portrait room. But this one wasn�t crowded with
pictures. On the walls hung what looked like webs, instead.

�� Webs
starred with people, instead of flies.

�� Harry�s
eyes locked on Hermione�s head, in the middle of the nearest and largest web.
And to one side, hanging in swathes of browned silk that must have been older,
he recognized her arm, and one of her legs. Harry stooped to place Ron�s head
carefully on the smooth flagstone floor, and drew his wand. He could do nothing
about the past desecration of her body, but he would not leave her here to hang
like this.

�� A sharp
noise from the other side of the room, the side not lit by the globe floating
beside him, caught his attention. Harry whirled towards it, his eyes wide and
his arm already aiming.

�� What came
forth was not a spider, as he had been expecting, not even an Acromantula,
though it was as large as that. What came forth was an enormous snake,
shimmering green-white with sickly phosphorescence, its eyes large and yellow
as a basilisk�s. Harry knew what basilisks looked like, however�none better�and
this was not one. He didn�t recognize the breed of snake, though he carefully
noted the clanking rustle of its scales on the floor and its enormous fangs.

�� That solved
the mystery of what hung on the walls. Not spiderwebs, after all, but swathes
of the snake�s shed skin.

�� Draco�s
voice laughed and spoke out of the mouth of Hermione�s head this time. �All the
creatures you have encountered so far have been immortal, Harry Potter. What
makes you think you can defeat this one?�

�� Harry said
nothing. What was there to say? He wanted to take his friends� bodies
out of here. The snake was between him and his friends. That meant he was going
to kill it or disable it, whatever else happened. He began to move carefully to
the right, causing the snake to turn its blunt muzzle towards him. The forked
tongue, at least a foot long, flicked out from its mouth. The eyes shone with a
cruel and devastating intelligence, enough to make Harry assume it might have
played some part in torturing Ron and Hermione before they were ripped apart.

�� His eyes
fixed on the snake, he spoke in what he knew must be Parseltongue. �Someone
killed my friends.� �Friends� came out more like �hatchlings of the same egg.�
�Was it you?�

�� The snake�s
head reared back as if in surprise, but it said nothing in response. Instead,
it coiled the upper third of its body beneath it, swaying slightly back and
forth, and Harry knew it would strike. He couldn�t tell the direction or speed
of the strike, though, or what weapon it would use. The size argued for a
constrictor; the fangs argued for venom. Since the Unspeakables might well have
created this snake, and if not it was a magical creature, Harry saw no reason
it couldn�t use both.

�� The snake
lunged at him, coming from the left.

�� Harry began
his spin to the side, calling a Blasting Curse to his tongue in the same
moment.

�� And then
the snake vanished in mid-motion, appearing with a solid thump behind
him.

�� Bloody
hell! It can Apparate! Harry didn�t try to correct his course; by this
point, it was too late anyway, he�d built up too much momentum. He flung
himself forwards, half-stumbling, half-falling. The Aurors had taught him how
to control his falls. Now was the time for the training to be effective, if it
ever could be, and Harry had the satisfaction of hearing the coil the snake had
flung out to catch him clank on the floor at his heels. There came an
inarticulate hiss that sounded for all the world like a human grumbling as he
got out of bed in the morning.

�� Harry
scrambled back to his feet, and found the snake considering him with more
respect this time.

�� I will
kill you,� he told it.

�� Again, no
response. Its motion forwards held a dream-like slowness, as if it had assessed
the threat he represented completely in a few seconds, and was no longer
concerned about what he might do.

�� Harry aimed
his wand at the ceiling. The snake uttered a little chuckle of a hiss and
slithered towards him faster.

�� Frigus!�

�� The
temperature in the room dropped at least forty degrees. The snake faltered for
a moment, and Harry, though he had no doubt it would adapt to the cold in time,
took the opportunity to rush it. He was able to draw near before it Apparated
away�or maybe it wanted him to come to it, but he couldn�t worry about that
right now�and he planted a foot on one metallic fold of the body and leaped
straight up.

�� He had cast
the Self-Lifting Charm, the one that he and Draco had used to cross the room
with the bone-eating spiders, already, nonverbally, and he flew towards the
snake�s head with the force of his leap. The head gracefully twisted, the mouth
opened, and a spittle of dark-colored venom came flying from between the fangs.

�� Harry felt
some of the poison strike his hands and shoulder blades, and begin eating holes
through him like acid. He didn�t think he flinched. He was wondering, all the
while, if this was the last sight Ron and Hermione had seen before they died,
and thinking it must have been, and deciding that that made it more appropriate
he should suffer the poison, too, on the way to vengeance.

�� He caught
hold of one huge fang and swung around it as he might around the Keeper�s pole
on the Quidditch pitch, aiming himself directly into the gullet. The snake
rumbled, a sound of pleasure, and started to close its jaws on him. If he was
so polite as to come to it, it was saying to itself, then it would quite
happily swallow him.

�� Harry
closed his eyes. Auror Donaldson�s voice, in his head, chanted an incantation,
and then said, If I ever catch you using this spell, I will beat the shit
out of you, because Azkaban will be a better fate than you deserve. So I better
not catch you using it.

�� Cutis
falcis, Harry thought, and moved his wand in a star-shaped pattern. Right,
and left, and left, and right. Had Ron and Hermione tried to cast that spell
before they died? Where were their wands? Had the serpent torn them apart, or
was this only a collecting room for the victims of other beasts in the maze?

�� Blades
sprouted from Harry�s skin, serrated knives tearing up through his arms, swords
unfolding like wings of steel from his shoulders, his teeth lengthening and
curving. One reason Auror Donaldson had forbidden this spell was the danger of
killing oneself with it, along with one�s opponent.

�� Harry
rather thought, though, that the pinpricks he felt as the blades grew were
nothing compared to the pain the snake endured as its mouth closed firmly,
definitely, on him�and the blades impaled it through the cheeks and jaws.

�� Black blood
drenched Harry at once, boiling, trying to flush him out of the mouth. Harry
crouched under the worst of it, and then began pushing his way deeper, dragging
and digging furrows in skin and flesh with his blades. The serpent tossed its
head and folded and unfolded its fangs; that only made the going a little
harder. Harry grabbed hold of a lesser tooth, one that didn�t bear a venom sac
he could see, and hung on when the climb briefly became vertical.

�� Then he was
over the rolled carpet of the tongue, and into the gullet itself. Harry slipped
down a few feet and braced himself hard, slamming the sword that grew from his
right shoulder into the throat wall to hold his place. He thought of Ron and
Hermione for a moment more, envisioning their faces clearly, hoping they would
be the first two people he saw on the other side if he killed himself with
this, as he fully expected to.

�� Then he
aimed his wand down the throat. Strange, that he could hear his own voice over
the sound of the serpent�s strangled cries, but fitting.

�� He spoke
the spell aloud this time. No taking the chance that speaking nonverbally would
deprive it of some of its force. �Cutis falcis!�

�� His
faithful globe of light had followed him. Harry could see the blades rippling
along the serpent�s neck, stretching to meet one another like ingrown fangs.
Harry cast the spell again, and again, and the magic traveled further and
further down the throat, turning the serpent into a mass of weapons�from the inside.

�� Slicing it
apart.

�� Harry
closed his eyes as another tide of blood drenched him. He could remain here and
allow himself to be cut apart by the blades or crushed by the constricting
muscles. In some ways, it was no more than he deserved, for having failed Ron
and Hermione.

�� He wanted
to. The intensity of his grief numbed all other emotions. He had never
surrendered in his life, but that was because they had been beside him or ahead
of him or behind him, urging him not to surrender. With them gone, what
good was he? What did he have to live for? He didn�t know for certain who had
done this to them, so even the ideal of vengeance was useless, now that he had
killed the snake keeping their bodies from him.

�� Their
bodies.

�� He still
had to take those out of the maze, and show the people who knew nothing about
what had happened down here, who only knew that Ron and Hermione had vanished
utterly, that he had kept what faith he could.

�� He cast a
Feather-Light Charm on himself, and let the blood and the poison wash him out.
He floated back to the floor, and spent some moments wiping liquids and chunks
of flesh off his face, so he could watch the serpent�s demise. As an
afterthought, he retracted the blades back into his body.

�� The blades
he had seeded kept growing, cutting straight through the snake�s slim body,
passing one another and stabbing out the opposite side they had started from.
The snake was, in essence, turned into an endless string of shish kebab. Its
struggles did no good, considering that the enemy was coming from inside it.
When it turned and began biting itself, Harry thought he was smiling, a smile
that hurt his mouth from smallness and coldness.

�� At last
each piece of the serpent was separate, and left twitching. Harry knew it was
probably still alive. That didn�t matter. By the time it could get itself back
together again, he and Ron and Hermione�s bodies would be long gone, back to
the surface.

�� Harry had
no desire, anymore, to learn what lay in the center of the maze.

�� He turned
to the disjointed limbs and heads and torsos clinging to the swathes of the
snake�s skin, and aimed his wand. A Cutting Curse made the skin droop and shred
and part with a sound like tearing silk curtains. Harry continued chanting
Cutting Curses, mildly surprised his voice was so strong, and slowly Hermione�s
head slid to the floor, and then her hands, and then her legs. They were still
clad in tatters of the robe Harry had last seen her in, that day she and Ron
left the office.

�� Draco�s
voice still called to him from the lips of Hermione�s head. �Do you think this
will stop it? Do you think that defeating one guardian�not even a very
important one�of the Collecting Rooms will enable you to pass the test, or walk
to the center of the maze and achieve immortality?�

�� Death
would be very welcome right now,� Harry said, clearly, and then pointed his
wand at the moving lips. He would not mutilate Hermione�s body further by
destroying her mouth, but he could seal it shut.

�� Before he
could, two things happened at once: a brilliant dot of light flew out of
Hermione�s mouth, laughing all the way, and passed straight through the wall;
and a pair of arms closed around him from behind.

�� Harry
hissed, annoyed. It seemed that Draco�s voice, detached from his body, was
under the absolute control of Richard or whatever other Unspeakables were left,
and he had no chance of stopping or catching it. He would probably encounter it
again if he went ahead into the maze, which he was not going to do.

�� The arms
continued to cling, and now Harry could feel a cheek resting against his back.
He hissed again. �Let me go, Draco. I need to clean this off me, and you
probably need rest. And then we need to find our way back to the Ministry.�

�� Even a pair
of foreshortened hands could spin him around roughly, he discovered. Draco was
staring at him, shaking his head back and forth frantically. A huge splash of
black liquid clung like insect guts to the front of his robe. Harry cleaned it
with a Scourgify, and then did the same thing to himself, though he had
to do it twice.

�� We have
to,� he said to the shaking head. �There�s nothing here for me anymore. Ron and
Hermione are dead. I owe it to their families to get the bodies back to them.
And the quest I came on is fulfilled.�

�� Draco
glared at him and held out a lump of blackened meat. Harry blinked and frowned.
�Is that a piece of the snake? You�d better put it back. I don�t fancy it
chasing us because it�s missing a chunk of its belly or intestines.�

�� Draco
tossed the lump at him, forcing Harry to catch it. Only then did Harry make out
the traces of red hair clinging to the top of it, and the faint indentations
that might have been lips and eyes and nostrils, once upon a time.

�� Ron�s
head?� he whispered, and stared at Draco.

�� Draco
turned and plucked the communication sphere, floating behind him, from the air.
Then he tapped the facets for Dark magic. Artifact. He held Harry�s eyes
as he moved from that set of words to another, related set. False. Illusion.

�� But�the
voice�� Harry faltered. It was true, based on the little he knew of Dark
magic theory, that it would have been easier to make Draco�s voice speak from a
specially enchanted model, rather than through flesh and blood. Corpses were
even harder to work with. You could make Inferi out of corpses, but it took an
enormous amount of power to cause them to speak and respond like the living
people. Better to invest that power elsewhere, and sculpt models, or cast
glamours, or use Polyjuice, to impersonate the living.

�� False, Draco�s
hands on the globe insisted again. Illusion.

�� Harry
swallowed, and stared across at Hermione�s head still hanging on a strip of
snake-skin near the floor, right above a twitching scrap of serpent. Holding
his wand towards her, he whispered, �Finite Incantatem.�

�� The glamour
covering the head splintered apart with a pop like a Muggle light bulb burning
out. Harry could see the same lump of blackened flesh that had taken the place
of Ron�s head.

�� Harry fell
to his knees, pushing his hands into his eyes. That ground his glasses into his
skin. He didn�t care. He had almost committed suicide, almost ensured there was
no one left to avenge his friends, because he had sprinted ahead without
thinking.

�� This
just proves how badly I need them, he thought. This just proves that I
shouldn�t be trusted on my own for longer than it takes me go to the loo, and
we�ll probably all die before I can get them out of here.

�� He felt a
surge of yearning as he considered the plan he�d devised which might free
Draco from the maze. Something like that, he could be good at. Something like
that, he understood. It only required mindless courage and strength.

�� But even if
he chose to implement that plan, that, too, would need to wait until the very
end of the journey.

�� Draco�s
hand was on his shoulder. It didn�t grip hard, of course, but Draco leaned all
his weight on it, and Harry understood the force of his silent demand.

�� No more
charging ahead without thinking. No more stupid risks. It�s not just our lives
that depend on your actions now. Have you passed the test of your own temper,
Harry?

�� And Harry
thought he had. Finally. At last.

�� He twisted
his head enough that he leaned his cheek against the back of Draco�s hand,
trapping it on his shoulder. That couldn�t have been pleasant for him,
considering Harry was still covered with the stench of the serpent�s body
fluids, but Draco dew nearer still, and then his arms closed about Harry�s
shoulders in an embrace as fierce as the one he�d used to catch Harry in the
corridor.

�� He
understood what had happened, and why. But it had better not happen again.

�� They rested
like that, until the stench and increasing speed of the serpent�s twitching,
along with Harry�s aching knees, forced them to their feet and back in search
of the right path.

*

�� WeasleyWench:
Yes, I tend to be hard on my characters at the end of chapters. It makes for
better cliffhangers that way. ;)

�� Mangacat:
You were right about the head.

�� QueenBoadicea:
Of course, even given that this wasn�t Ron, the Unspeakables might have done
something even worse with him.

�� Solemnbard:
Yes, Skele-Gro should be able to regrow Draco�s bones. If that�s even
necessary.

�� Ramandu:
Thank you!

�� Darkshadowarchfiend:
Ron and Hermione would probably have shared the same fate�unless the
Unspeakables separated them, of course, which is possible.

�� Lilith:
Sorry, but I can�t answer any of those questions yet.

�� Lacegag:
Sorry, but I can�t tell how long this story will be yet. Based on average
amount of chapters between Pensieves, I want to say something like 30 or
32 chapters, but I really have no way of knowing for sure.

�� I have
written original novels. They taught me some of the very most basic things,
grammar included.

�� Tepee712:
Ah, but the Unspeakables experiment with mutilation as well as immortality.

�� SoftObsidian74:
Yes, for some reason this story never goes to the top of the list. I�m not sure
why. The only stories of mine that do are the new one-shots. However, to make
sure that you don�t miss anything, you can give me your e-mail address if you
want; that way, I can put you on the list of people I mail when I post a new
updated. Hope you wouldn�t mind a lot of e-mail!

�� And thank
you for the review!
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Forgive Those Who Trespass

Chapter Fourteen�Harry�s Test