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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
Sixteen�Changes

�� Very
good.� Weston�s voice was cool as she paced around them, watching them with
critical eyes�eyes that were critical of things Draco thought hardly mattered,
or didn�t exist, or at least weren�t clearly explained. He and Harry had
managed to get through the training exercise with the row of dummies, not
striking each other with a single spell. And still Lowell and Weston set the
bar higher for them, and shook their heads when Harry or Draco fell a bit below
their standards.

�� What standards are there for compatible
magic, anyway? Draco thought as he mopped at his brow and stepped back to
give Harry a perfunctory duelists� bow. Every
fighting pair is so different that there can�t be that many similarities between them.

�� There is
always room for improvement, of course,� Weston said. �But from the look of
things, you have not been sleeping well.� Draco bit his tongue so that he
wouldn�t say one cause of that was Lowell and Weston and their bloody
early-morning-on-Saturday lessons. �Go away and rest. For your next lesson, we
will expect you to have figured out the basics of the trick we used when we
tossed our wands to each other.� She turned her back on them and walked to the
door of the room, as if she were tired of watching them.

�� Lowell
lingered, his eyes expertly studying every move they made. Harry finished
stretching quickly and cast the charms that dried his sweat, then hurried away.
Draco wasn�t surprised, though he would have enjoyed a bit more of his company.
Harry had told him that he was having to write his essay for the Spell Lexicon
class over again. Though they�d had only one meeting with Aran, where he�d
spent most of the time talking about how honored they should feel to be his trainees,
he seemed to expect better work out of them than he did of the other students.

�� Draco
actually didn�t mind that. If Aran was demanding now, he had promised to repay
the effort they put into their work soon.

�� Trainee
Malfoy.�

�� Draco
glanced up, surprised. Lowell was gliding towards him as if he were a snake and
Draco a timely-spotted bird. Draco took up his wand instinctively, then
remembered that Lowell couldn�t want to duel him without his partner around.

�� Of course,
maybe he was going to attack for other reasons. One never knew who might be
corrupted or possessed by Nihil. Draco lowered his wand again, but kept a
careful watch on the instructor.

�� Lowell�s
face was grave, but he simply studied Draco for a time without saying anything.
Draco glanced around just in case. Sure enough, Weston was gone. He felt a stab
of worry he couldn�t explain. What was so grave that Lowell needed to explain
it to Draco without his partner, as
well as without Harry�s presence?

�� We told
you last week,� Lowell said, his voice calm and deep, �the barrier between you
caused by lack of communication was mostly gone.�

�� Draco
nodded, mystified. �Has it returned?�

�� Lowell
shook his head. �There is part of it that has not dissipated, and it should
have moved by now, as much time as you have spent together. Tell me, did you
share your secrets equally? Auror Weston, who is more sensitive than I am to
such things, thinks the barrier thickest on Trainee Potter�s side, and I am
inclined to trust her perceptions.�

�� Draco
paused. There had been so much happening since that day when he and Harry had
finally spoken, and Harry had been so much more open and caring, that Draco
hadn�t thought about it in detail.

�� But yes,
the conversation had been focused on him. He had been the one to confess his
love, his longing for power, his feelings against Mudbloods, and Harry had
listened and reacted and encouraged him past those beliefs he obviously felt
were barriers, but he had not really offered any confidences of his own.

�� I think it
should be,� Draco said. �We have shared things, and it seems right, but it�s true that he might be keeping secrets from
me.� Exasperation built up in him like ice as he spoke. What was so horrible
that Harry would think he had to keep it from Draco? Probably another of those
sores of his past that his sensitivity exaggerated. He would think that some
feelings he�d had years ago were too horrible to confess, or he would say
something about Draco�s longing for power. Any and all of those were possible candidates.
Draco sighed. �I�ll talk to him.�

�� Do so.�

�� Lowell�s
voice was so grave that Draco blinked and looked up at him. �Is something
wrong, sir?�

�� I think
that this secret may be graver than you know.� Lowell gave him an inscrutable
look. �If my partner�s talent with barriers extends to telling who creates
them, my talent extends to telling how troublesome they are. The barrier was
originally ordinary; it blocked your magic, and therefore it had to be dealt
with. But now it has grown darker, for lack of a better word.� Lowell shook his
head. �Someone should have invented the vocabulary for this already,� he
murmured. �Unfortunately, compatible magic is little studied.� He refocused on
Draco. �Yes, his secret is a dark one.�

�� Draco went
his way with his nerves jangling like plucked wires. What in the world was
Lowell talking about? Perhaps the Dark Arts, but Draco couldn�t imagine Harry
using the Dark Arts for any reason. Nor was there any indication that Harry was
changing in the way that most people who used the Dark Arts did: longing for
power like Draco, talking only about that subject for hours at a time. If
anything, Harry seemed unusually dedicated to his classwork and to taking care
of Draco lately�

�� Draco
paused.

�� Unless that�s part of a cover to keep me
from suspecting something.

�� His hand
closed into a fist. If Harry had been lying to him, and doing it well enough
that Draco had not suspected anything wrong, that would hurt.

�� In the
meantime, Draco had to watch.

*

�� Harry
murmured the spell over again. It was a spell he had learned in one of the
books he�d read last year while studying for Offensive and Defensive Magic, and
it had taken him some time this year to best use it, because he�d had to
substitute �necromancy� for �potions� in the original incantation. The Latin
hadn�t been right at first, or so Harry had decided when the spell produced no
result. Now he had it right, and it should show him any books on necromancy
among Snape�s collection.

�� Draco�s books, now. Snape left them to him.
You really shouldn�t be doing this. How would Draco feel if he knew?

�� Harry felt
his face burn, but it was a sensation he experienced from a distance, like the
guilty thought. He was more involved in watching to see if any of the books
glowed.

�� Draco
wouldn�t like it, yes. But Harry had decided that he would just have to do what
he could to help the dead, and then make it up to the living later. He had more
time to make it up to the living.
Though Harry couldn�t explain why, the feeling of a deadline pressed on him
when he thought about making it up to the dead. If a certain period passed, he
believed he would never have another chance.

�� That could be true. Next year, when the
training is even more intense, or later in this term, when Aran starts making
us work harder�

�� Harry
shivered, and watched.

�� A single
book was glowing, one in black leather�of course�that Draco had stood up on a
shelf between the bed and the bathroom. Harry walked slowly towards it,
wondering if it was trapped, and then reminded himself that Draco would have
sensed any traps and dissipated them before now. He didn�t want the books to
shock or hurt Harry if he touched them while Draco was out of the room.

�� You can trust him, and he can�t trust you.

�� Like all
the thoughts that Harry had had about Draco in the last few days, it was a
thing to brood over, feel bad about�and ignore. Harry reached out and started
to pick up the book. It had neither title nor author, he noticed.

�� Then he
heard Draco�s footsteps in the corridor.

�� In a panic,
Harry shoved back from the shelf, fell on the bed, and saw the book tilting to
fall after him. He quickly whispered a Sticking Charm so it would stay up
there. The last thing he needed was for Draco to walk in and find him with the
book on his chest.

�� The door
opened. Harry rolled over and tried to smile up at Draco sleepily, as though his
coming had awoken Harry from a nap.

�� I thought
you would be in the library,� Draco said, turning around to shut the door with
unusual slowness. Was he injured? Harry had thought he�d taken a heavier blow
in the Combat class the other day than Morningstar really should have allowed
without a healing spell. �Change your mind?�

�� Yes,�
Harry said. �I�ve been feeling more tired than usual lately for some reason.�
He yawned elaborately. �Of course, waking up at seven for Lowell and Weston
doesn�t help,� he added, with a grumble that he knew would sound realistic.
Draco almost hadn�t hauled himself out of bed in time this morning.

�� Oh.�

�� That was
all Draco said, before he walked across the room, picked up a book from his own
tottering stack, and sat down to read it. After a moment, he pulled out
parchment and a quill from a different pile and moved over to the table in the
center of the room, where he started taking notes on the book.

�� Harry
blinked. The flat tone seemed to indicate something was wrong, but Draco hadn�t
moved like he was injured when he bent down, and his face was closed-off. He
could just be concentrating intently. Harry had learned not to disturb him when
he did that.

�� Draco, what is it?

�� The
sentence formed in his head so easily.

�� And still
Harry couldn�t force it past his lips. In the end, he forced himself to start
writing the essay that was due on Monday in the Spell Lexicon class instead. It
was a struggle, because his thoughts wanted to fix on either Draco or the
necromancy book, and he wouldn�t let them.

�� Draco would
tell Harry what was wrong in his own time. Since they removed the barrier from
their compatible magic, he had been more open, and had even confessed a few
minor problems Harry would never have guessed at, so good was Draco at hiding
his emotions. Harry just had to trust that the same thing would happen this
time.

�� And he
could always pick up the necromancy book some other time when Draco was gone.

*

�� From what
I have learned,� Pushkin said, �Nemo bred these beasts out of nothing, they
came from nowhere, and nothing like them has ever existed.�

�� Draco
looked around the table at the other members of the Fellowship. Good. He wasn�t
the only one who looked as if he wanted to kill Pushkin.

�� You must
have learned something,� Ketchum
said, apparently because he willed it to be true.

�� And we
know that it�s not true the beasts resembled nothing,� Granger said. �The one
that attacked us in the corridor looked like a dragon. There were others that
resembled lizards, or chimeras, or griffins. So he had to have used a mold of
some kind for them, shouldn�t he? Even if he didn�t use normal animals?�

�� Despite
himself, Draco had to admit Granger had a point. He smiled reluctantly at her,
but she didn�t notice. All her attention was focused on Pushkin.

�� When Draco
looked back at him, he realized something he should have remembered earlier:
always observe the Observations instructor. Pushkin had something else to
impart, if the way he smiled was any indication. His hands were folded together
calmly on the table in front of him, but the thumb of one stroked swiftly
across the back of the other. Draco had seen him do that on days when he was
about to give exams.

�� He has something else to say. Draco
settled back in his chair and waited for Pushkin to stop being stupid and smug
and get on with things.

�� When
Pushkin had had enough of silence, or perhaps had bored himself, he said, �The
animals are formed from normal creatures after all, but they are disguised not
to look like it. They have been through the process that Nihil and Nemo
discovered which brings people back and beyond death. Death has been flushed
through their veins, and that changed their nature enough that the ordinary
spells I cast on the corpses could not recognize their parents. But now I know
how to distinguish an animal touched by such a process from an ordinary
experimental animal. I can isolate the nothing and turn it into something.�

�� Harry gave
a little gasp next to Draco. Draco shot him a quick glance. That was the kind
of gasp he would have expected of Granger, who instead sat in reverent silence,
watching Pushkin with shining eyes; to be frank, Draco wasn�t sure that Harry
would have understood Pushkin�s explanation. He barely understood it himself.

�� Harry
locked his shaking hands together a moment later and gave Draco a small smile.
Draco didn�t believe that smile, but Portillo Lopez was speaking now, voice high
and quick, and he didn�t have the time to question Harry about it.

�� You know
how to identify that process?� she said. �Do you understand what it is? How to
counter it?�

�� Eventually,
I will,� Pushkin said, peering at Portillo Lopez as if her excitement were a
compliment to him. �For the moment, I can only identify an expanse of
nothingness in the bodies of these particular beasts. Identifying it as a thing
in and of itself in the bodies of humans is still far off.�

�� Portillo
Lopez leaned back with her eyes shut and her hands folded over each other. Her
lips moved in what might have been a prayer.

�� What�s her part in this? Draco wondered,
and then decided that he didn�t care, at least for right now. He already had
one person to watch and figure out. Portillo Lopez would be an unnecessary
distraction.

�� This,
combined with the information about Caradoc Dearborn that Potter and Malfoy
brought us, makes me hopeful.� Ketchum leaned forwards and nodded at all of
them one by one, perhaps assuming that his notice was the only thing they
lacked after such good news. Annoyingly, Draco felt a sunburst of satisfaction
flare to life in his chest.

�� But where
do the unicorn ghosts that Trainees Potter and Malfoy reported fit in?� Hestia
Jones tugged on one curl of her frizzy hair and looked from one to the other of
them. She�s so stupid that she probably
thinks someone has been able to discover the clue to that puzzle already, Draco
thought scornfully.

�� We don�t
know yet,� said Ketchum. �But until phantom unicorns start attacking people, I
won�t worry much about it. We have Nihil and Nemo and Nusquam on our minds
instead. We need a battle plan.�

�� Pushkin
began to object that they couldn�t do anything until he understood the process
of traveling beyond death better; otherwise, their enemies would simply melt
away from them and take new bodies, as he believed Nemo had done. Draco didn�t
listen to that, or Ketchum�s spirited replies, or the interjections Granger
occasionally made. Ordinarily, he would have been interested in a debate on
theory, but he had to be practical for right now.

�� Weasley and
Harry were having a soft-voiced argument. Draco pretended to wait breathlessly
for Granger�s convoluted sentences, while in reality casting a charm with his
wand under the table so that their voices became more distinct.

�� You were
supposed to meet us for dinner last night,� Weasley said. �Where were you?�

�� Draco
arched his eyebrows. The dinner with his friends was the excuse Harry had fed
him when Draco asked if he wanted to eat together last night. Harry had been
apologetic and had managed to look the picture of realism when he admitted that
it was terrible his friends still didn�t trust Draco.

�� A burning
sensation like a firework invaded Draco�s gut.

�� I can�t trust him at all anymore.

�� I got
dizzy on the way to the eating hall,� Harry said. He ducked his head and stared
at his hands. Draco wondered if Weasley knew him well enough to tell the signs
of a lie. �I thought I might have a fever. I was going to find Portillo Lopez,
but then I remembered the way she fussed last year.� He rolled his eyes. �So I
returned to our rooms. And the dizziness left after a little while. Then Draco
and I�� He let the words trail off and gave Weasley a significant look. Weasley
promptly turned green.

�� No need to
say more, mate,� he said weakly. �I think I understand.�

�� I�m your shield against them, am I? Draco
curled his fingers hard enough into the edge of the table that it jolted, and
Ketchum and Granger looked at him. He didn�t care. Harry, what the fuck are you hiding?

�� Is
something wrong, Trainee Malfoy?� Ketchum had a look of concern on his face
that Draco was sure was false.

�� No,
Auror,� said Draco, and smiled at Harry when Harry turned around to look at
him. Harry smiled back and squeezed his hand under the table.

�� Two can play at the lying game, Harry. Two
of us can speak wide-eyed little deceptions and pretend that we care about each
other when we�re really pursuing our own ends.

�� I�m glad
you�re fine,� Harry whispered.

�� And I�m better at it than you are.

*

�� Harry laid
his new book down on the floor next to him and studied the ritual one last
time. Yes, it was amazingly simple�so simple that Harry was really surprised
his first book on necromancy hadn�t included it. It didn�t require expensive
props or an elaborate circle. Harry just had to be prepared to give up blood so
that he could speak with one of the spirits he was trying to bring back to
life.

�� What�s that, when I�ve spilled so much of it
already?

�� He rested
the knife�an ordinary knife, unlike the one he�d had to conjure for his last
ritual�against his left palm and waited until his heartbeat calmed down. The
book said that it would be best if he was relaxed before he made the cut,
because panic would induce him to try and close the wound before he had all the
blood he needed. The advice made sense to Harry.

�� Why can�t all our textbooks be that clear? Harry
had spent hours struggling with the Spell Lexicon book and swearing at it for
not including clear definitions of the terms it wanted him to use. He would
definitely ask Aran about that at their next meeting.

�� He pressed
the knife down, and the skin parted before the blade. Harry had to saw deep;
this was a knife from the eating hall, meant to cut bread and not meat. But he
had a respectable cut and a good amount of blood dripping before long. He began
to walk in a circle, holding his hand out so the blood dripped as evenly as
possible.

�� All the
time it spread, he concentrated on the image of Sirius. He had called him up
once before, or at least the vision of him, at Grimmauld Place, and he was
probably the one Harry missed most. Harry had been most responsible for his
death, after all, and so Sirius should really be the first one he brought back
to life.

�� When he
finished, the circle of blood was lopsided, but present. Harry smiled as he
cast a Numbing Charm on the wound. The book had said that it was his will that
really sealed the circle, not chalk or salt or even the blood itself. The dead
would feel how much he was willing to give up to bring them back to the world
and would draw near of their own accord.

�� He stepped
back and closed his eyes, trying to picture the tunnel the book had talked
about. To this author, the world of the dead wasn�t some vast and silent Sea
that the spirits had to float out of. Instead, the worlds of the dead and the
living were only separated by a thin barrier, but a necromancer had to envision
a tunnel as projecting through that barrier, a hole of warm black air with
light at one end and darkness at the other. That was the tunnel he would send
his voice through to summon the listeners.

�� Not that I�m really a necromancer, Harry
reassured himself as he began to call. Just
that this is the best way to make up for the wrongs I did.

�� He thought
hard of Sirius, of everything he knew about him: the place where his name had
been burned from the Black family tapestry, how he�d been Sorted into
Gryffindor, the way he�d looked in Snape�s Pensieve, the startled look on his
face as he fell through the veil, the sharp way he hugged, his Animagus form.
And slowly, a mist that he hadn�t tried to consciously picture seemed to rise
from his body and reach out through the tunnel that he was trying to picture to the mind on the other end.

Sirius
Black, Harry called, and then repeated it, feeling the name almost wrenched
from him by the demands of the spell. More memories of Sirius were sleeting
through his head now, memories that he thought he hadn�t tried to call,
memories that weren�t his. Sirius Black!
The world of the living requires you!

�� The air in
Catherine Arrowshot�s old room turned so cold that, when Harry opened his eyes,
his fingers had already gone blue. He shivered and wished he could cast a
Warming Charm, but that might disrupt the delicate pattern of frost growing
along the walls.

�� And the
blue swirl slowly coming to life in the middle of the circle.

�� Harry
caught his breath. Yes, this was different from the vision he�d seen in
Grimmauld Place, and it was the real thing. The balance of magic changed in the
room, and Harry felt a faint echo that might be Sirius�s magical signature. He
smelled the scent of a wet dog, and saw the familiar face form on top of the
blue swirl. Then his body shimmered and changed into Sirius.

�� Sirius stood
there with his eyes closed. Harry wondered for a moment why he wasn�t
breathing, and then remembered that he hadn�t called him back into a body yet,
just here as a ghost. He didn�t need to breathe.

�� Moments
passed, and Sirius didn�t look at him. But Harry was patient. The book had said
that it might take a while for the spirit to make sense of the transition from
the world of the dead to the world of the living.

�� The door
blasted open.

�� Harry spun
around, staring in spite of himself. Something�his sudden movement, the
startled breath he took, his lack of concentration�made the balance waver, and
when he looked up, the frost was melting from the walls and the spirit was
melting in lazy spirals from the center of the circle.

�� Harry might
have turned back and tried to summon Sirius again. He was already cursing the
instincts that made him turn towards every source of noise because it could be
dangerous.

�� He might
have done that, except that he was staring at Draco in the doorway.

�� Draco�s
eyes went to the circle of blood and the traces of cold on the walls, and then
came back to Harry.

�� What the
fuck are you doing?� he breathed, and there was anger enough in his voice to
make worlds break.��

*

�� SP777: Yes,
that�s a good point. On the other hand, now they have a big fucking row to look
forward to.

�� Thrnbrooke:
Thanks!
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Ceremonies of Strife