Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Ceremonies of Strife	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16218 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this writing.

Chapter List
- 16
- 17
- 18
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Seventeen�A Storm

�� Draco didn�t
know exactly what Harry had been doing, but thanks to the chill in the air and
the circle of blood on the floor, he could guess. There were several kinds of
Dark Arts that required blood. They didn�t bring cold into the room with them,
though. It was a rare kind of Dark magic that would. Most of them conveyed
warmth, as though the wizards who had designed the spells didn�t want to scare
off too many potential victims too soon.

�� This was
necromancy.

�� How could he.

�� The thought
fell dead in his mind, not even a question. Draco stared at Harry, at the book
open on the floor beside him, which he thought he recognized as a book from his
own library, and could say nothing more.

�� His
expression must have been enough. Harry began to shift, casting glances at the
circle and the melting frost on the walls as though he wished he could clean it
up, and erase what had been happening by erasing the evidence.

�� Nothing can change this, Draco thought,
beginning to move slowly forwards. He didn�t know exactly what would happen
when he reached Harry, but he knew that the force of his own conviction was
drawing him steadily on. He could no more have disobeyed the urge than he could
have closed the door and left Harry to his bloody rituals. Nothing can destroy this, or make this not have happened, or make it
any better.

�� His breath
was beginning to pass more rapidly in and out of his lungs, and his hands were
clenching into fists.

�� Look,
Draco,� Harry said, and Draco thought his voice was nervous, if nothing else. Good, Draco thought, prowling closer to
him. It should be at least that. �This
isn�t what you might think it is.�

�� So it�s going to be more lies.

�� The fire
that sprang to life within him then�bursting through him, searing his veins
from the inside out, charring his hope�decided Draco on his course of action,
too. He reached up, grabbed Harry by the shoulders, and began to shake him so hard
that his teeth rattled together and his lips flapped.

�� Harry
uttered a garbled protest and grabbed Draco�s wrists as though he was going to
wrench his hands away. But Draco was talking now, and Harry had better listen
if he knew what was good for him.

�� I trusted
you. I told you the truth. I let you know what was happening in my life when it
would have been so much easier to keep it all to myself.� Draco was gasping and
panting through the words now, but that didn�t matter, because Harry was giving
him the sort of transfixed expression that told Draco he was taking in every
word. �I gave you everything. And you
kept this from me, and all the time
you were in league with Nihil.�

�� Harry
closed his fingers down on Draco�s wrists in a gesture that seemed to be pure
shock. �I�m not in league with Nihil,�
he snapped, and he had the gall to look hurt and angry. �I�m using necromancy
because��

�� He stopped.
Draco knew why. The admission was out between them now, hanging in the air, and
there was no way that Harry could ever take it back.

�� Draco
squeezed his shoulders once more and then tore his hands away and began to move
around Harry, his breath rasping. Harry turned with him, eyes large and wary
and still angry, as though that
emotion had a right to belong to anyone in this room but Draco.

�� Necromancy,�
Draco said. �Why? Just tell me that. Why?�

�� Because
there are so many people who are dead,� Harry said, and from the passion in his
voice, Draco thought he�d probably been wanting to talk about this for a long
time but had been denying himself. Not
that I care, Draco decided viciously. If
he�d talked about this to me the moment he had the stupid idea, then we could
have avoided every bit of this. �They died in the war or they died before
that. And they had so little time, or they had so little time when they weren�t
being hunted and persecuted. My godfather, Sirius Black. I�ve told you about
him. He suffered so much, Draco, and then he died because he was coming to
rescue me, because I�d done something
stupid��

�� And the
way you thought you�d repay him for his sacrifice was by doing something else
stupid?� Draco had to stop and stare at Harry; there was just no other action
that would adequately convey when he was feeling. �You don�t learn, do you?�

�� Harry
flushed. �It wasn�t stupid,� he said. �Not as long as I had the right rituals
and did the right things.�

�� Which didn�t
include telling me,� Draco said. The squeezing ball of hurt in the center of his
chest tried to spill out his mouth then, and he wanted to tell Harry how much
this had injured him, how at the moment he thought he would never trust anyone
again. But he forced that hurt back. Harry would strike at him where he was
vulnerable and try to force Draco to agree that his actions were rational if he
thought Draco was weak and in pain. Far better to show the anger only.

�� If I�d
told you, you would have stopped me,� Harry flung back.

�� And that
didn�t tell you something right there?� Draco snapped his teeth on the last
word, the closest he could come to his dreadful desire to bite Harry and force
the point on him through blood and torn skin. �Something I disapproved of that strongly,
some secret you couldn�t share with me or
your friends, was going to be something good?�

�� You�ve
always said I shouldn�t take too much on myself,� Harry said, and his new form
of gall was to stand up straight and looked proud and noble and innocent. �I
thought you�d say that this was another form of that, instead of just atonement
I really wanted to do.�

�� It is another form of that,� Draco said. He
would have liked to seize Harry by the shoulders again, but this time he
thought he would go far enough to hurt him, and he didn�t want to do that�if he
didn�t have to. Maybe it will come to
that, because Harry doesn�t seem to understand any other way. �Don�t you see? Who brings the dead back to life?
Who feels so much guilt that they would have
to do that, and who feels that the deaths of others are their fault?�

�� Everyone feels
like that,� Harry said. He looked puzzled, confused, and hurt. �Don�t you?
Wouldn�t you give a lot if you could bring Snape back to life somehow, because the
way he died wasn�t fair?�

�� You�re an
idiot,� Draco said, and he hissed the words because he wanted so much to scream
them. �I�m sorry he died, but I�m not going to use Dark magic to bring him back
to life. Why would I do that? It would be a betrayal of his sacrifice. He was
the one who killed Dumbledore so that I wouldn�t have to, so that I wouldn�t
have to hurt my soul by using Dark magic.�

�� Harry
blinked at him. �But you ended up using it anyway, when you used Cruciatus to
torture people for Voldemort.�

�� Draco
clamped his hands onto his arms. He was sorry now that he had ever told Harry
that. There wasn�t any secret he had given up that Harry wouldn�t turn against
him, he thought, no way that Harry would ever not try to hurt him. That hurt almost more than the fact of Harry
lying in the first place.

�� It�s not
the same thing,� he finally said. �And you�re trying to make it be, which only
shows how far you�ll go to protect your dirty little secret.� Shame and sorrow
burned away in anger, and he leaned forwards. �Did it ever occur to you what would happen, if I found this out? Did you
think that you were sacrificing my trust? Or was bringing back the dead all
that mattered?�

�� The
question he couldn�t ask stung the back of his throat like bile. Did you really love me? Or were you making
it up, humoring me, first because you were sorry that I didn�t have any friends
and then because you wanted to use any books I had on necromancy?

�� Harry shook
his head. His eyes were faintly dazed, as though someone had hit him and he was
trying to recover from the blow. Draco would have liked to think that his own
questions were the blow, but he doubted it. If he was that powerful, then Harry would never have turned to necromancy in
the first place, because he would have feared losing Draco�s approval more than
he evidently did. �That�s not�look, Draco, I knew that what I was doing would
hurt the living. But I was going to make it up to you, I swear. But I had to
make it up to the dead, too. It was my fault they died.�

�� You�re not
listening to yourself,� Draco said, his voice flat and calm, and he didn�t know�although
he wished he did�whether he was speaking the truth or simply a desire. �You can�t be listening to yourself. Or you
would know what you were saying was insane.�

�� Harry shook
his head, a faint, melancholy smile on his face. �Don�t you see? That�s the
kind of thing that people want to believe. Because so few people ever think that
they have a chance to make it up to the dead. Death is supposed to be the
ending of pain and the forgiveness of debts. But if you had the ability to make
up for your mistakes, then you would have to do it. People don�t want to make
the effort. They lie and they forget about necromancy, and they tell themselves
so many comforting little lies that eventually everyone in the world accepts
them as truth. Except the people whose guilt is stronger than their faith in
the lies.�

�� Draco�s
fingernails dug into the centers of his palms. It was an odd sensation, distant,
as though his fingers had done it of their own free will. He had to work hard
to free his tongue from the dry, dusty vault it seemed to occupy, the vault
that had formerly been his mouth. �Well. It�s nice to know that you think I�m
lying all the time, and that you�ve managed to turn things around so that you�re
the innocent and determined one who wants to make up for his mistakes and I�m
part of the problem.�

�� Harry
stirred uneasily again. �Draco,� he said. �I didn�t want to lie to you. I just
had to.�

�� Draco�s
temper burst the bounds that he�d been trying to impose on it, and he sprang at
Harry across the distance that separated them. He knew, dimly, as he went, that
he�d lost any chance of having a reasonable discussion with Harry.

�� On the
other hand, it was starting to look as though Harry was beyond any kind of
reasonable discussion, so Draco might as well hit him as hard as he could and
find relief for one kind of pain, the intolerable, boiling tension building up
in him.

�� He hit
Harry in the chest first, so that Harry wheezed and bent over. He hadn�t been expecting
it, Draco thought, his mind whirling and spinning and spitting sparks as though
it were a top that was frying the track it spun on. Even with all the words
that Draco had said to him, he still hadn�t thought it worthwhile to raise his
defenses, because he had thought he could persuade Draco around to his
point-of-view.

�� The second
time, Draco hit Harry in the face, the jaw, a punch that Morningstar had been
trying to get him to put all his force behind for months. She would be proud of
him, Draco thought madly as he heard something in Harry�s jaw pop.

�� Harry fell
to the floor and rolled, and Draco wondered if he should be concerned. But the
concern was a long way behind the constant thump of anger and fear and frustration
in the forefront of his mind, so he just stepped forwards again.

�� Harry
raised himself on his elbow. He had his wand out, and he pointed it at Draco
with a hand that shook.

�� I�ll cast
at you,� he gasped. �I swear I will.�

�� Draco stood
still, but he sneered and said, �And have you forgotten that the compatible
magic won�t let us hurt each other? You�re pathetic. You pretend to be so
strong, but you can�t even fight me. You have to use your wand instead, which I
wasn�t using because it wouldn�t work and
because I wanted to keep this fight on a minor level.�

�� I don�t
want to hurt you,� Harry said.

�� Then you�ve
done everything exactly wrong,� Draco
said flatly. He didn�t know that he could get through to Harry now, so he would
just say everything that came into his head. It would relieve his feelings, and
that was the only thing he cared about right now. �You�ve lied to me, you�ve
broken my trust, you�ve made me believe that I was stupid to say I loved you in
the first place, and probably stupid ever to love you. How do I know that you
weren�t lying from the beginning? You probably were. You have such a misplaced sense
of what you�re responsible for, you probably saw people treating me poorly and
decided that you would help me out just because you were sorry for me. And
maybe you wanted me to look up at you with big grateful eyes and worship you
like people did in school, too.�

�� Harry�s
voice cracked. Draco saw the devastation on his face, and rejoiced. This was getting through to him in a way
that Draco�s previous words hadn�t. �I didn�t�I never felt that way. I never
enjoyed the attention.�

�� I notice
you�re not denying the other accusations.� Draco would still have liked to hit
Harry�the bruise flaring along his jaw was huge, but not big enough�but he hadn�t
forgotten how to cut someone down with words. �You don�t care about me, do you?
Not the way you care about your precious dead.�

�� No, I do,
I do!� Harry said. His free hand scrabbled uselessly at the floor. Draco
wondered what he was looking for, and then told himself he didn�t care. Nothing
mattered about Harry anymore except the way he had tried to hurt Draco. �I
meant it when I said I loved you. I do! I want to help you. I want to be with
you. I�m sorry I hurt you.�

�� Draco
waited a moment, then cupped a hand around his ear. �What�s that?� he asked
brightly. �More lies? Why, yes, I
believe so!�

�� Harry stared
at him with eyes that were overly bright, though Draco wasn�t sure whether he
was about to shed tears. He wasn�t sure of anything, he told himself brutally.
All those little secrets he�d thought he�d discovered about Harry, whether he�d
been told them or learned them on his own�they were worthless. How did he know
what was true? If Harry could keep a secret of this magnitude from him, he
could keep anything.

�� I�m not
lying,� Harry whispered.

�� But how do
I know that?� Draco countered swiftly, and watched with satisfaction as hot as
lava while Harry paled. �Nothing you say can be trusted. You were just spouting
the most ridiculous shite as if you believed it. You always want to save people. You were going to bring back the dead because making up
for your mistakes and preserving your precious reputation as the Savior of
Everything is more important than not practicing Dark magic. Fuck, Harry! Why am
I supposed to believe you now?�

�� Harry
blinked again and again. He couldn�t be blinking against tears, Draco thought�not
genuine tears. They would only be tears of self-pity, if anything, because he
had been stopped from doing something else that would make him seem like a
hero.

�� I never
meant to hurt you,� Harry breathed, and this time he didn�t seem to think that
Draco would believe him if he said it. It sounded like the last gasp of a
broken machine.

�� Draco ran a
shaking hand through his hair. The problem with expressing your anger, he
found, was that once it was gone, it left you nothing to support you.

�� Except
weariness. And disgust. And a sadness that made him want to curl up and weep,
except that he would be weak if he did that, and he needed to despise Harry
rather than himself.

�� I�m not
going to be your partner anymore,� he said.

�� More
blinking. Harry really didn�t seem to know what was going on, and that
disappointed Draco, because he wanted the
git to know, and suffer. But he spoke the words anyway, in the hope that they would
linger in Harry�s mind and make their impact later.

�� I don�t
want to fight next to someone who lies to me and can�t even be honest about his
own impulses towards Dark magic,� Draco said. He started for the door, then
paused and Summoned the necromancy book. He wasn�t going to leave that with
Harry. In fact, he would search their rooms, because he thought it would be a
long time before Harry dared to show his face there, and find any other books
that he might have hidden. He�d destroy or hide them. Maybe he should give them
to the Fellowship. There was a faint chance that they might help them
understand what Nihil was doing.

�� Harry�s doing what Nihil did.

�� The thought
made Draco feel faint and sick, and fuck, this was the kind of accusation he
would never have believed if he hadn�t
seen Harry in the middle of a ritual for himself.

�� Draco.�

�� He probably
shouldn�t have turned around. After all, he�d heard the kind of weak
justifications that Harry tended to serve up when he believed himself in the
right. But because he was a fool, he turned around and reluctantly looked at
Harry, muscles braced tight against another disappointment.

�� Harry held
out a hand towards him. Draco�s heart wrenched, but then he thought about the
way Harry had betrayed him and how even this gesture might just be another way
that he would use to go on practicing necromancy, and his heart froze instead.

�� I didn�t
mean to do this,� Harry whispered.

�� Draco
jerked his head at the circle of blood, powerless now but not completely dry,
never taking his eyes off Harry. �This looks pretty bloody deliberate to me.�

�� I meant��
Harry shut his eyes. �I never meant to hurt you. That was the only thing I was
talking about.�

�� Draco took
a deep breath. He almost asked Harry if he meant to give necromancy up now,
meant to stop.

�� But the
words froze like his heart, because he had just remembered that he couldn�t
trust the answer even if Harry gave one.

�� He turned
around and left without waiting for a response.

*

�� You�ve fucked up now, and Draco�s left you
for good.

�� Harry didn�t
remember when he�d put his head into his hands. It seemed like forever. His
face felt a little better if he hid it.

�� He wished
he could do the same thing for the rest of his body, but it was no good. His
chest felt hollow with its heart gone, and his arms were chilled and shaking.
Even his hands felt cold where his cheeks and forehead rested against them.

�� How could I have done that?

�� He honestly
hadn�t realized how much his necromancy would hurt Draco. He�d kept it secret because he knew Draco would accuse
him of wanting to make up for too much, which he had, and he would be upset
that Harry was doing Dark magic. And he knew that Draco wouldn�t understand his
intense need to rescue the dead no matter how much he explained it. He�d
thought that Draco might even resent the time Harry was spending on the rituals,
rather than with him.

�� But he hadn�t
realized he was destroying Draco�s trust.

�� I can�t even tell him that, because he doesn�t
believe a word I say.

�� Harry
shivered and finally dragged himself back up again. He looked at the circle of blood,
and he still did wish he could see Sirius spinning to life in the middle of it.
Because he knew necromancy was wrong, and he knew he had disappointed Draco,
maybe alienated him forever, and he knew that he never should have kept this a
secret, but spoken about it with Draco in the first place.

�� But one
thing no one could tell him. Even taking his necromancy book away just made it
a harder question to answer.

�� How in the
world was he supposed to make up for his mistakes to the dead now?

�� There didn�t
seem to be a way. They would just remain in the darkness, forever unavenged,
forever without bodies or justice.

�� Harry took
a step away. He was still shivering. He put his hand to his head and frowned.
There seemed to be a heaviness in the back of it that was strange, as though he�d
opened the top of his skull and packed his brain with rocks. And he couldn�t
hear well. The silence around him was punctuated by the sounds. They tore
through it like knives tearing through heavy canvas.

�� Then the
memory seized him.

�� He was lying in bed the night after he
destroyed Dumbledore�s office, the night after Sirius died, his eyes wide and
tearless and staring up at the ceiling. The broken mirror rested on the table
beside him. He�d had it all along. He could have communicated with Sirius and asked
him if he was all right. He could have escaped the consequences of being
responsible for Sirius�s death. Sirius might still be grumbling in Grimmauld
Place how no one ever let him do anything.

�� Grief tore into him, its claws longer than
he remembered, and anger, and hatred�he was going to make Bellatrix pay�and pain. And he still couldn�t cry. And soon
he would be going back to the Dursleys�, where he could never cry.

�� The pain was
as real and as present as though he was living it over again. Harry shook, his
heart laboring in his chest, his mind grey and dizzy with tears.

�� When he
opened his eyes again, the ceiling looked as strange as the silence had felt
before. He lay there, licking his lips, coming to terms with what this meant.

�� He�d had a
fit�his first in over a year.

�� Harry lay
still and let the memory leave him, and thought of the way he and Draco had
searched through the library of Malfoy Manor and hadn�t been able to find a
cause for those fits. Draco had believed it must have something to do with his
magical core. Still, no information they found seemed a whole explanation, and
the intriguing partial explanations that were almost like the fits didn�t lead anywhere.

�� Harry
braced a hand on the floor beneath him and levered himself slowly back to his
feet.

�� He thought
he understood the cause of the fits now.

�� They were
caused by his grief for the dead, his guilt taking itself out on him the only
way it could, because he couldn�t make up for what he�d done. The fits had
stopped when he became more interested in Draco than he was in the dead, and
then, even when he was hurting Draco, they hadn�t come back because the
necromancy was a way to deal with his grief and guilt and atone at last.

�� With both
those protections gone�

�� Harry
smiled bitterly.

�� I�m probably going to die of them.

�� He kept one
hand on the wall as he slowly stumbled out of the room, barely remembering to
turn back at the door and banish the circle of blood from the floor. All the
time, his mind was working, dry and savage and remarkably clear.

�� Draco had
been partially right. The fits came from his magical core. The memories couldn�t
be that clear and powerful without a magical component.

�� Harry�s
magic was punishing him for what he�d done wrong, because no one else would do
so.

�� I can�t tell Draco, either, because he
wouldn�t believe me. And I�ve hurt him enough already.

�� As he
limped down the corridor, heading for Ron�s rooms�he doubted Draco would want
to stay in the same small space with him�Harry decided, carefully, that he was
fucked.

*

�� anciie:
Thanks! And, well, consequences secured.

�� SP777:
Thanks! I assure you that Harry does have it.

�� No, because
I don�t think I�ve actually listened (knowingly) to any songs by David Bowie.

�� MewMew2:
Thanks for reviewing.

�� qwerty:
Because it made a good chapter ending?

�� Thrnbrooke:
�Nearly everything� in both cases. Not that it does any good.

�� angelmuziq:
No time at all to wait for the fight!
- 16
- 17
- 18
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Ceremonies of Strife