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Bard of Morning's Hope	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9573 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eighteen—The Bait
            “I don’t like this,” Potter muttered for the eighteenth time as he cast another protective spell on Draco. “I think the Bloody Baron could have found another way of drawing Colin in than doing this.”
            “If you have such great ideas, why didn’t you tell them to the Baron already?” Draco asked, adjusting his cloak around his shoulders and glancing into the mirror again. The mirror was the same one that Potter had spent so much time preening in front of when he was going to act Draco’s part in his father’s funeral. Draco hesitated, then shoved his wand a little deeper into his pocket.
            “I just meant,” said Potter, his voice a grinding noise between gritted teeth, “that I think he could have come up with something else. Not that I had.”
            Draco spun around to face him. Potter jumped and eyed him warily. Draco smiled and let his hand rest on Potter’s shoulder.
            “Tell me the truth,” he breathed. “You’re worried about me, aren’t you?”
            Potter stared at him some more, then snorted. “Of course I’m bloody worried about you,” he said, and squeezed Draco’s hand once before he knocked it off his shoulder. “I promised to protect you, and you’re about to go and put yourself at risk because of a ghost’s promise, at the mercy of a ghost that we’ve already failed to do anything about for months. Of course I’m worried.”
            “But it’s more than that,” Draco said, and ignored the way that one of Potter’s eyebrows rose. He couldn’t be mistaken about this. “Of course it is. You care more about me than about a random victim of the Bard’s attacks. I couldn’t have been fooled.”
            Potter drew himself higher, his face angrier than Draco had expected. “I care about all the victims I failed, or that the other Aurors failed.”
            Draco sighed heavily. “You aren’t usually this oblivious, Potter, so I’m going to imagine that you’re simply stubborn.” He leaned in, and even Potter’s breath stuttered a little at the way Draco was looking at him. Draco knew that wasn’t simply his imagination. “Come on. What do you think of me?”
*
            Harry wished Draco had given him an easier question to answer.
            That you’re a stubborn git and an innocent victim and someone who put himself in danger by going to a fancy robe shop and someone who shouldn’t have had to watch his father die and someone who was a prat to me in school…
            But none of those felt like the right answer. In fact, Harry knew they weren’t. Hesitantly, he reached out and squeezed Draco’s shoulder once.
            “Yes,” Draco breathed, and gave Harry a brilliant smile. “I thought so.”
            Harry opened his mouth to ask how Draco could tell anything about Harry’s emotions from a single gesture when Harry couldn’t tell what they meant, and then Draco leaned in and rested his mouth against Harry’s.
            Harry thought he should jump backwards. He should splutter and protest and tell Draco that he was insane, and just because they had been—well, close—for the past few days wasn’t the same as being intimate.
            But he couldn’t, and that was probably the clearest sign that Draco was right.
            Draco didn’t move, and Harry realized it was probably up to him to show he wanted this. Hesitantly, he kissed back, trying to decide if it would be different to kiss a man rather than a woman, if he had any idea, whether Draco would be knowing or expecting something better.
            And then he put it out of his mind as Draco kissed him back more ferociously, and moved him back towards the bathroom counter.
            Harry went with the motion, too dazed to resist. His back hit the counter hard enough to make him grunt in pain, and Draco chuckled and kissed him more firmly. Harry raised his hand and pushed Draco’s hair out of his eyes, which glowed with a determination Harry had only seen before in Quidditch.
            Then Draco’s tongue touched his lips, and it was a shock like someone had cast a healing charm on him without permission. Harry jumped, and Draco used the distraction to sweep his tongue into Harry’s mouth. Harry shivered and kissed back, one hand creeping around Draco’s shoulder to squeeze it.
            Draco finally pulled away, and Harry hoped that it was because he felt just as overwhelmed. He closed his eyes and sighed, “Perhaps this wasn’t the best time to begin things, when I have to go out and be bait for the Bard in an hour’s time.”
            “Is it that close?” Harry blurted out, and regretted it a little when he saw the way Draco’s smile had changed.
            “Lost track of time?” Draco purred, and hooked his fingers into the collar of Harry’s robes. “I had no idea my kisses were so powerful.”
            “Maybe not your kisses,” Harry retorted. “Maybe other ways you use your mouth.”
            He was pleased to see the fantasies that visibly lit Draco’s eyes after he said that, but when he reached out with one hand, Draco dodged, clucking his tongue. “My mother is still waiting downstairs,” he said. “I doubt we’d be able to explain the delay to her in any language she’d accept.”
            Harry choked a little, thinking about the way Narcissa would probably react if they tried to tell her why they were late. “Yes, fine,” he said. “But we’re going to continue this later. And do you know why?”
            “Because you’re attracted to me.”
            That was a statement, or at least Draco probably meant it to be, but it did have a hint of a question at the end, Harry thought, smug. He shook his head chidingly at Draco. “Because you’re going to survive having the Bard come after you,” he said. “You’re going to survive, or I’ll summon your ghost back, and what the Baron wanted to do to Colin will look like nothing next to the scolding I’ll give you.”
            Draco’s smile lit his face again. He reached out one hand, and Harry took it and clasped it in in silence. Then Draco nodded, and they went downstairs.
*

            Draco hoped that he hid his fear fairly well. It was different, being out with the Bloody Baron near the boundaries of the Forbidden Forest, from standing inside Hogwarts and facing the Baron with Harry’s protective presence near.
            “I do not know,” the Baron murmured, “why you fear me so much when you have a much more powerful ghost who intends to kill you by turning your blood to ice.”
            Draco turned, glad for the distraction and despising the way his heart was reacting at the same time. “What do you mean, more powerful? How can you stop him if he’s more powerful?”
            The Bloody Baron made a hollow, booming sound that it took Draco a few seconds to understand. It seemed to be the ghostly version of clucking his tongue. “I meant that he was more powerful because he wants to harm you. I do not. There are things I could do if you had not been a Slytherin student…”
            His voice trailed off, and for a second, the ground seemed to waver in front of Draco. He was looking down into an abyss that swam with silver and grey mist, and something with low, thumping snarls was rising out of it towards him.
            Draco found himself flinging his hands out without thought to maintain his balance, crying out in desperation. The abyss vanished before he could fall into it, although the snarls lasted a moment longer. Draco stumbled on solid ground and turned to glare at the Bloody Baron.
            The Baron was drifting on curls of mist a short distance above Draco, and the shimmering blood that soaked his side was moving and falling like some kind of cloak blown by the wind. His pale eyes were fixed on Draco. Draco shivered, abruptly conscious of the same terror he had felt when he was a Slytherin student trying to deal with having the Bloody Baron appear at breakfast or in a dark corridor behind him.
            “Were it not for Potter being the Master of Death and the Bard giving ghosts at Hogwarts a bad reputation,” the Baron whispered, “I would be on his side, and not yours. Do not underestimate the gap between the living and the dead.”
            Draco thought he couldn’t do much more than swallow and concentrate on the ground in front of him. There was still fog out there, he saw, a thicker fog than usually gathered at Hogwarts even on winter mornings. And there was a dark shape deep in the midst of the fog that appeared to be floating towards him.
            “He’s here,” Draco breathed. He was abruptly sure of it, despite not having much warning before the past Bard attacks. He kept himself from reacting with a shout by sheer force of will, and it took something stronger than that to keep himself from backing away or running towards the school.
            Draco thought it was most what Harry would say, if he found that Draco had run when he was in the middle of a dangerous thing he had agreed to do. Harry was no longer purely Gryffindor, but Draco thought he probably couldn’t approve of cowardice.
            “Ah,” said the Baron, and when Draco glanced at him again, he had changed.
            Draco blinked, trying desperately to force his eyes through the fog of his own perceptions, rather than the physical sort, and see what was happening. But it was impossible. The Baron had become a mass of shifting shadows, some of them with faces, some of them like lions or other beasts, and some with forms that Draco knew he would see in his nightmares for ages. He whipped his head aside, controlling his urge to whimper.
            And rolling to meet the Bloody Baron was the transparent shape of the boy Draco had known as Colin Creevey, only different, again.
            Jagged, twisted blades seemed to grow from every point inside his body, spreading out to sprout through his eyes and mouth and fingers. Behind them and around them was a mass of dancing light that made Draco sick, some color between grey and white and brown that was none of them. And Draco could hear screams and feel, like winds plucking at the small hairs on his arms, rich tingles of pain. The Bard carried agony around him and before him, and it was hard for Draco not to faint as he started to back up.
            “Now,” said the Baron, although a dozen voices echoed his, most of them wordless, and flung himself forwards.
            The Bard’s movement paused for a second, and Draco thought he was attempting to go backwards. But the blades inside his body scraped and rooted deep into the earth, and that slowed him down long enough for the Baron to catch up.
            Or maybe the Baron was just stronger. Honestly, Draco thought a nauseating moment later, as his eyes rang with those shifting images and his ears with those strained cries, how would he ever know?
            He had to look away from the contest, as little as he wanted to, because it made him feel as though he was inviting a strike at his unprotected back. His throat trembled, and he put one hand on it. He didn’t want to vomit now, when he had survived the initial, unprotected glance at the Bard he’d taken.
            “Draco!”
            That was Harry, running towards him. Draco stared at him. Had Harry come to take him away from here? And why was Narcissa behind him? They had agreed to try the trap with only Draco as bait first, because he was the one the Bard seemed to want more, and so there was no reason for her not to wait safely inside the school.
            Then Draco heard a sigh behind him, and an icy stab entered his body under his spine.
*
            Harry had tensed when he heard what the Bloody Baron said. When Draco began to stumble as if he was drunk, Narcissa had reached out and gripped his arm hard enough to hurt.
            But Harry hadn’t started running until he saw one part of Colin’s ghost begin to separate from the rest that was engaging with the Bloody Baron.
            As Harry pounded across the grass and dirt that separated him from Draco, his mind leaped back and forth with the reasoning for a second. Colin was made up of the pain of a lot of different people. Maybe the Baron could take most of those people, but one had got away and was still going to kill Draco—
            Then Draco went down, before Harry could get there.
            And Harry felt as if he had been walking a tightrope that had dropped him into the middle of a frothing sea of sharks.
            That’s it. This is when I do whatever I must to survive.
            Harry reached into the deepest pocket of his robes, one that he had enchanted like one of Hermione’s bags to contain much more space than it seemed as if it could, and pulled them out, bundled together, the Invisibility Cloak and the Elder Wand. And they were near the Forbidden Forest, where he had dropped the Resurrection Stone.
            He focused furiously on the grey shape that was still dancing behind Draco, ice rushing down the intangible sword it appeared to have stuck in him. The ghost barely had a face, but it did have a head and hands, and Harry could see the moment when it jerked and turned abruptly to face him.
            Harry gave it a sweet smile and slid his hands into the Cloak, clutched around the Wand. He drew on the power of the Deathly Hallows, which he had never tried to do before, and felt them come to thrumming life in his hands, deep and cold. It felt as if he was the one holding ice now, although he was also the only one that the ice couldn’t hurt.
            “Go,” he whispered.
            His voice echoed in several different dimensions that didn’t have anything to do with his own, and the world turned sideways like a piece of paper flipping over. Harry could see, in sparkling shades of grey, a glowing figure inside both Draco and Narcissa. It was probably their souls, he thought dimly. The soul didn’t exactly have the shape of their bodies, but it flowed as if it had a heartbeat.
            And in front of him were the ghosts, glowing figures alone, but more solid than those embodied souls.
            Because they’re disembodied souls, Harry thought, and he turned to the one attacking Draco. It had a face here, although Harry didn’t recognize it. It looked young, and dismayed. Probably another student, like Colin, who had died when the Death Eaters attacked the school. Maybe one killed by Lucius Malfoy.
            Right now, Harry didn’t give a shit.
            He snarled and snapped the Cloaked wand at the ghost. He had a spell in mind, but he wasn’t sure if it would actually materialize out of the wand, and so he simply threw raw will and power through the Elder Wand.
            It worked—for a certain value of “worked.” The wand glowed a brilliant blue-green, like the color of the lake when Harry had swum through it in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and the spell emerged from it as a series of bubbles. The bubbles swarmed around the ghost, and the ghost uttered one shrill, harsh scream that took forever to come to Harry’s ears, moving as slowly as the bubbles had.
            Then they popped.
            And took the ghost with them.
            Harry staggered. The world around him flipped over again, and he was back where the sun could reach him, where he could hear sounds and see colors that had nothing to do with either grey or the spells he might cast with the Elder Wand. He staggered one more time and managed to hold himself up by locking his legs. It would be embarrassing if he fell over something. Aurors were trained to avoid such compromising situations, lest it make them look weak in front of the criminals they were trying to arrest.
            But when he looked around, with dazed eyes, the first person he saw—for a value of “person”—was the Bloody Baron.
            The Baron was moving slowly away from the edge of the boundary that marked the limits of Hogwarts and the limits of his power, something drifting behind him. It looked like a globe of light to Harry, and inside the globe flickered Colin’s face, and sometimes a pair of hands that looked like they were drumming on the globe.
            “I believe that we had a deal, Harry Potter,” whispered the Bloody Baron. “Master of Death.”
            “We had a deal that involved you keeping Malfoy safe,” said Harry. His own voice sounded weirdly distorted to him. Narcissa had run past him and was crouched down at Draco’s side. Harry didn’t know how badly he was hurt, if he needed a Healer right away. He could only trust that Draco was still alive because he thought Narcissa would have burst out screaming if he wasn’t. “You didn’t. One of the ghosts that composed Colin broke through the barrier and hurt him. Didn’t it.”
            “The power of the Master of Death is not to be wielded so heavily,” the Baron continued, apparently not hearing him. “You could have done many things, Master of Death, but not what you did. You could have trapped the ghost and imprisoned him, as I have done. You could have driven him away. You could have stripped him of his power and left him drifting as a bodiless voice on the wind.”
            His power was swelling, billowing around him like a rising pair of wings. “But not destroyed him.”
            And he struck, giving Harry no time to shield himself with the magic of the Deathly Hallows.
*
Severus1snape: You’ll see more of it in the next chapter.
SP777: I want to write stuff like this all year-round, not just for Halloween. And thanks!
Kain: Well, no, as you can see, it didn’t work smoothly at all. ;) The Bloody Baron is going to do something very hard for Harry to handle in the next chapter—but harming the Baron would probably mean freeing Colin.
Yes, Colin is made up of lots of different people who weren’t strong enough to rise as ghosts on their own but poured all their own anguish and rage into him.
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Bard of Morning's Hope