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The Serenity of His Rage	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16981 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Nineteen—The First Summons

            “Hello, Harry. Thank you for taking the time to see me.”

            Harry bit back the instinctive response—that he’d only come to Grimmauld Place because Dumbledore had summoned him, not because they were old friends meeting for a chat—and only nodded. He sat at the table across from Dumbledore and looked around him. The house had slightly brightened, he thought. Maybe Hermione had cast Cleaning Charms at the walls. She would think it was cruel to use Kreacher.

            Dumbledore opened his mouth to speak, and then shut it again when Draco tumbled out of the Floo behind Harry. Draco brushed some soot off his robes, with what Harry thought was unnecessary fastidiousness, and then smiled at Dumbledore before he sat down on Harry’s right side.

            “Sorry I was a little late. I had to mend this sleeve that that acidic potion spilled on. You remember, Harry, this morning?”

            Harry nudged Draco in the ribs. Draco was being a bit too bright and chattery for someone who honestly wanted to get along with Dumbledore. Draco only turned his head enough that he could beam at Harry before looking back at Dumbledore.

            By now, Harry thought, the Headmaster looked resigned. Maybe he didn’t think Draco would actually betray Harry; maybe he was beginning to have some actual faith in their bond. Whatever it was, he only sighed a little and continued, “I have located the locket Horcrux. It is in a cave that Voldemort once took two children from his orphanage to. It has…formidable defenses.”

            “Which Harry isn’t going alone to defeat.”

            “Of course not,” said Dumbledore. “If nothing else, you would need two people to get into the cave, from what I have observed.” He glanced at Harry. “The cave includes a lake full of Inferi surrounding the small island where the locket is, and only a payment of blood can open the door to get to it.”

            “How wonderful,” Draco said. “One might almost admire the Dark Lord’s cleverness.”

            Dumbledore peered at Draco over the top of his glasses. “Mr. Malfoy,” he said, “I understand that you are unhappy I kept the truth from Harry. Perhaps even unhappy I engineered the soul-bond between you.”

            “I’d be a lot happier if you’d stop trying to manipulate people with every breath you take,” Draco said, shaking his head. “It’s at the point where I don’t even know if you realize you’re doing it, now. Do you? I’m happy being bonded to Harry. I won’t regret it no matter what you say. Save your breath if not your effort.” He gave Dumbledore a chiding glance and reached out to entwine his hand with Harry’s beneath the table.

            Harry was ready for that, but not the way that Draco promptly lifted their entwined hands to the top of the table and laid them there. He scowled a little at Draco. Draco looked back with fluttering eyelashes and smiled at Dumbledore.

            Apparently, he was going to deal with Draco’s accusations by ignoring them. He turned to Harry. “You admit that we need help on this?”

            “Yes,” Harry said. “Lots of help. Have you told Ron and Hermione what you’ve learned about the Horcrux?”

            “That I had found one,” said Dumbledore, tilting his glasses a little as if he wanted to see Harry from a different angle. “Not the specifics of the protections that I have just shared with young Mr. Malfoy and you.”

            “Then you’ll need to tell them. I think they need to come.”

            “While we need help, we do not need that much help,” Dumbledore said cautiously. “I think Miss Granger, in particular, might try to research solutions that would not aid us in this case.”

            “Why not?” Draco asked.

            “Because the research to be done is on Voldemort’s background.” Harry didn’t think Dumbledore had necessarily used Voldemort’s name to make Draco flinch, but he hadn’t held back on doing so, either. “I have already completed that research,” Dumbledore continued, sounding a little proud. “She would think there was more to do. She might have ideas about the door and the Inferi that would hold us back instead of help.”

            Harry stared at Dumbledore in silence. He only looked back, and Harry finally said, “Not if you tell her what you found.”

            Dumbledore’s face turned faintly flushed. “That is true,” he said finally. “I am sorry, Harry. Will you forgive an old man? I have been alone for too long on this quest, and I tend to forget simple things.”

            “I’ll forgive you if you stop using this pose of the harmless old man,” said Draco harshly. “You should at least be able to see things like this without someone explaining them to you.”

            Dumbledore turned a blank face towards Draco, and Harry stirred a little. “Draco.”

            “We’ll only get anywhere if we share the truth between us. And with Harry’s friends,” Draco added, both his tone and the rippling bond making that sound like a great concession.

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Fine. So everyone will be honest, and stick to being honest.” He looked hard at Dumbledore. “Is there anything else about the cave that you’ve neglected to explain to us, sir?”

            Dumbledore sighed. “The specifics of how we will cross the lake, and the defenses that I have thought of a way to get around.”

            “Great.” Harry stood up. “Then I’ll call Ron and Hermione down, and you can share them with everyone at once.”

            He was aware, as he left the kitchen, that Draco had turned an almost predatory gaze on Dumbledore. But Harry also thought that if anyone here was capable of defending himself, it was the Headmaster of Hogwarts.

*

            “You might as well stop pretending you care about him.”

            Draco said it casually, which he knew would make the words strike harder on Dumbledore’s ears. Other than a slight narrowing of his eyes, however, the Headmaster gave no sign that he’d noticed the manipulation. “I do not know what you mean, Mr. Malfoy.”

            Draco folded his hands together under the table. He could feel the resignation and the softly moving deeper emotions in the bond as Harry climbed the stairs. He still hadn’t completely got over the shock of hearing that he had a Horcrux inside him and had to die to remove it. He’d just adapted.

            You’ll be able to do that, Draco thought towards him. He wished once again that their bond was a telepathic one, and then he focused on Dumbledore. “You told him he had to die, and just expected him to accept it. I think it’s clear. You don’t care about him, just about the way he could save the world.”

            Dumbledore gave a single, subdued motion of his hand, and then relaxed. Draco watched him with his hands ready to move in return.

            Then Dumbledore said, “You are the one who taught him to think the worst of me. This would not have been such a shock, before. I would have been able to explain it to him in such a way that he understood.”

            Draco shook his head. “That he accepted, you mean. He would have gone ahead and died because you wanted him to.”

            “And you think that would not cause me grief?”

            Draco considered Dumbledore again. “The problem is, you’ve spent too long manipulating people. I don’t know how sincere any expression on your face is. I don’t know if you do,” Draco had to add, conceding what might otherwise be a bit unfair. “Whether you think what you feel is honest and you’re only feeling it, or whether you let it out a bit to shape people’s behavior and don’t realize you’re doing it.”

            Dumbledore was silent. Draco was content to watch him as a clock ticked and the old house-elf muttered to himself in the background.

Dumbledore finally said, when the sound of footsteps was on the stairs, “Then do you trust me to be honest with his friends?”

“I expect you to try as hard as you can to keep that promise,” Draco said coldly. “And I think you can try harder than most other people succeed.”

            Then he turned away to welcome Harry back. As much time as they might have to spend combating Harry’s enemies, in the end Draco knew Harry was more important than any one of them.

*

            By the time they Apparated to a desolate beach, Harry’s head was spinning with information. He almost wished he was back in the days when Dumbledore had kept all the secrets to himself and expected Harry to win his own way through to defeating Voldemort.

            Then he felt a comforting squeeze of his hand, and looked sideways to smile at Draco. And Ron and Hermione, standing beyond them but shoulder to shoulder.

            No. It was silly to think he had ever won his own way—that was, alone. He might have been alone when he faced Quirrell and the basilisk, but even then, the memory of Dumbledore’s words and Fawkes and the Sorting Hat had come to help him.

            I doubt Draco will ever let me be alone again, now. The steady, determined throb down the bond spoke of that, at least.

            “This way,” Dumbledore said softly, and led them towards the roaring waters that separated them from the cave. Harry shivered and tilted his head back. There was a keen edge to the wind that almost let him hear it howling and muttering. He wondered if Voldemort had chosen to hide a Horcrux here partially because he liked the weather.

            Dumbledore studied the water for a moment, and then nodded and cast a charm that Harry couldn’t remember seeing before. It only seemed to part the air like a golden knife for a second before it vanished.

“I cannot break all the spells Tom put on the cave,” Dumbledore said with a comforting smile when Harry looked at him. “For example, the ones that prevent us from Apparating directly into it. But I can break one of those that would force us to swim.”

Harry nodded and took out his own shrunken broom, enlarging it with a tap of his wand and a harsh sense of satisfaction. It was wonderful to know that he was able to use his wand without the Trace, now. Ron and Draco were doing the same things. Hermione climbed on behind Ron, her eyes closed and her voice running in a quiet chant.

            Harry had to smile when he recognized some of the information on brooms and flying that she had memorized before their first lesson in first year.

Using the brooms, they flew quickly over the water.

            The narrow entrance of the cave was like a throat waiting to swallow them. But Harry felt Draco’s quiet strength flowing towards him down the bond, and he smiled and squeezed his hand for a moment.

            Inside the cave, Dumbledore spent some time searching the walls. Harry watched in silence. This was the place of the invisible door that could only be opened by a payment of blood.

            Dumbledore had never intended for someone else to pay the blood, or so he said, and Harry found that he believed him. Draco didn’t, and stood there squinting at him while he pulled out his wand. He relaxed only when Dumbledore sliced the palm of his left hand and blood began to drizzle to the floor.

            “Oh, Professor Dumbledore,” Hermione breathed. She sounded slightly sick.

            When Harry smiled at her in reassurance, though, he saw that she was standing solidly at Ron’s side. She had been told all about this, they all had, and so she wouldn’t try to force herself forwards and heal him.

            When Dumbledore smeared his blood across the door’s lintel, it snapped into being. Harry shivered. For a second, he felt a sharp pulse in his Horcrux, as though Voldemort had opened his eyes somewhere.

            “He can’t feel it when someone destroys his Horcruxes, sir?” he whispered.

            Dumbledore paused to give Harry a gentle look, even as the door swung open and Harry heard the lapping of water beyond. “He would otherwise have already begun his search for the diary and the ring, my dear boy. Or, more likely, since he knew the diary was last in Lucius Malfoy’s possession, demanded it from him the instant he returned,” Dumbledore added.

            Harry flushed. “Right.”

            Draco leaned heavily against him so he could whisper in Harry’s ear. “No matter what happens, he’s not going to find my father, now.”

            Harry nodded. Then they walked forwards into the cave, and he stared out over the dark lake Dumbledore had told them would be there. One reason Dumbledore had waited so long to go after this Horcrux was that he had wanted to make sure of all the Horcrux’s defenses before he tried to breach them. What had happened with the ring would never happen again.

            Harry couldn’t help sneaking a look at Dumbledore’s blackened hand. He’d said that Snape’s potions had managed to turn back the curse on it, a little bit, and give him longer to live. But he hadn’t actually said how long that was…

            Dumbledore was feeling around in the air before him with one hand, an infinitely patient look on his face. A second later, he started and snapped his fingers straight, and then cast a spell that formed a gleaming light around the links of a chain, and finally the shape of a boat.

            “I will ride this,” Dumbledore whispered. “We need to get across the lake without disturbing the Inferi.” He turned to Harry, and he nodded and picked up his broom again.

            The brooms soared swiftly over the dark water, while Dumbledore crossed in the boat. He was hunched, Harry thought as he looked back at him, and his lips were moving, too. Harry wasn’t sure what he was saying. Perhaps words to strengthen himself, perhaps some spell to keep the Inferi quiet under the lake.

            But the bond was blazing and strong, drawing Harry’s eyes away from Dumbledore and back to Draco. Draco smiled reassuringly at him. With that, Harry could forget, for a moment, even the sucking sound of the black waves as they landed on the island. Dumbledore was up beside them a second later. Ron and Hermione had to hover on his broom, since there wasn’t enough room for them to land.

            There was a basin there, as Dumbledore had said there would be. And looking into it, Harry thought he could make out the shimmering golden form of a locket.

            “How can we be sure that’s it?” Draco asked abruptly. “The Dark Lord could have taken it and put a decoy in its place.”

            “There is no sign of that,” Dumbledore said. “I researched this thoroughly, Mr. Malfoy. And I wish you would call Voldemort by his proper name.”

            Draco flinched, but not strongly enough that he would have been in danger of falling off the island, the way Harry knew once would have happened. He put his arm around Draco’s shoulders and silently sent a flurry of sparks of pride down the bond. Draco leaned on his shoulder in response.

            “The potion cannot be changed or altered in any way,” Dumbledore said. “Not Vanished. Not Transfigured into water, which would be a normal way of bypassing something with liquid defenses. Not absorbed.” He sighed. “It must be drunk. And I fear it will be fatal for whoever drinks it.”

            Harry felt a jump in his stomach. Dumbledore had told them the first part before, but not the second one. He stared, and Dumbledore smiled sadly back at him.

            “I never intended that you should do this, Mr. Potter,” he said. “Or anyone else. I always meant to be the sacrifice myself.”

            Because he thought I would have to die later, and he never intended to bring anyone else along, Harry thought, with strong indignation.

            He didn’t realize he was also feeling Draco’s indignation, until Dumbledore started to bend his head towards the basin and Draco said abruptly, “Wait. How are we going to find the other Horcruxes without you?”

            “I’ve left the information in a private letter at Gringotts,” said Dumbledore simply. “Including information about how to destroy them. That letter will come to you when I am dead.”

            “You’re still being ridiculous,” said Draco, and drew his wand. “Serpensortia!”

            The snake that boiled forth from the end of his wand was a deep black with swirls of silver and green in its scales. Harry narrowed his eyes at Draco. “Show-off,” he muttered, knowing Draco had probably given the snake Slytherin colors on purpose.

            Draco only shrugged, smirking, and gestured the snake to crawl forwards. Dumbledore watched it with wary eyes.

            “Why not at least have the snake try drinking the liquid first?” Draco argued. “You seem to leap straight to the idea that you have to sacrifice someone, but that’s not true. A conjured creature is worth less than a human.”

            Dumbledore considered Draco for so long that Harry winced, sure Dumbledore was about to find fault with something Draco had said or the way he’d said it. But at last Dumbledore shook his head a little and moved aside with a faint smile. “You’ve said it well, Mr. Malfoy. Why not let the snake try?”

            The bond twanged for a moment, and Harry thought Draco was probably reading “snake” as “Slytherin” and another insult. But he moved majestically towards the basin, ignoring it, and commanded the snake, “Come up here and drink.”

            The snake twined up to the edge of the basin and lowered its head. It began to drink, and Harry stared at the green liquid. It really didn’t seem to be changing in level at all, falling or not.

            But the poison hadn’t killed the snake yet, and it went on slowly sipping.

            After a little while, Harry realized he could see a change. The locket looked closer to the surface of the basin than it had been. It seemed he couldn’t actually see the green liquid diminishing. Maybe a snake could get around the enchantments on the locket and the cave and be able to just haul it up?

            But nobody else seemed to think so. Dumbledore was bending down—close enough to the poison that Harry got a little nervous—and nodding as he watched the snake drink.

            “Fascinating, fascinating,” he said. “I should have thought of it before. Tom always had an affinity for serpents. He would probably create a venom that couldn’t poison a snake, just in case he ever had to conjure one.”

            Draco smiled slightly. “Or maybe just because he didn’t want to injure one.”

            “Possibly. Although if he cares about anything besides himself or Nagini, I haven’t seen it yet.”

            Draco only shrugged and faced the basin and the drinking snake again. Harry began to relax. Maybe, in the end, it would go all right.

*

            Draco felt the bond loosen and soften, glow with light, as Harry lost some of his tension. He smiled. He knew Dumbledore might take that wrong, but he didn’t care.

            He didn’t understand the man. Confronted by a dangerous potion that couldn’t be magically altered, what did he do? Volunteer to drink it. The same way he had decided to volunteer Harry to die.

            At least he shares it around equally.

            But Draco didn’t like the idea that Harry might have been volunteered to die simply because Dumbledore was mad. He kept his eyes on the snake and away from the Headmaster, but he had no faith left now, and he knew he would have to talk to Harry about it at some point.

            The green potion went down so slowly that Draco’s nerves started jumping again. Maybe the Dark Lord didn’t have enchantments on the cave that would tell him when people simply broke in, but he might have one that would tell him when the potion had been disturbed.

            At last, though, the potion was only flecks of green in the bottom of the basin, and Harry reached in and picked up the golden locket, after looking at Dumbledore as if for permission. Draco shook his head a little. They would have to talk about that, too. He didn’t think Harry had given up being a follower, instead of a leader, in his heart yet. But he would have to.

            “Something’s wrong.”

            Draco raised his wand at once, but Granger wasn’t looking at the lake, and apparently no Inferi had begun to rise out of it. Instead, she was looking at Harry, and Draco narrowed his eyes, annoyed that she had noticed Harry’s mood change by the expression on his face faster than Draco had noticed it change through the soul-bond.

            “It may be nothing,” Harry said at once. But he continued to stare at the locket in his hand with the bond twanging.

            Draco didn’t ask permission, even though most of the time he would have. He simply reached out and snatched the locket away. The thought that it might have been poisoning Harry wouldn’t let him leave it there.

            “Draco.”

            Several of the most searching spells Draco knew didn’t reveal poison on the links of the chain, or on the locket surface, the place Draco would have thought it most likely for someone to smear it. He lowered the locket and eyed it again. Holding it, he felt nothing Dark from it.

            Nothing Dark…

            “That’s it, isn’t it?” he asked Harry, as their eyes connected over the empty basin. “You don’t feel it as Darkly as you should? Or maybe you thought it would respond to the Horcrux in your scar and it’s not doing it.”

            Harry nodded. He glanced at Dumbledore then. “I think you told me that no one except a Parselmouth could open the locket?”

            “That’s one of the legends,” said Dumbledore, his eyes narrowed on the locket in a way that made Draco want to slap him. But then, he felt there were a lot of reasons for wanting to slap Dumbledore. “I am inclined to doubt it, myself. The locket has had enough different owners that few of them would have been Parselmouths. Still, Harry, if you would do the honors?”

            Handing the locket back to Harry was a lot easier now that Draco knew it most likely wasn’t a Horcrux. Of course, as Harry hissed at the thing, Draco had to look around at the lake and boat and hidden door, and wonder.

            If the Dark Lord had set up this elaborate a trap to protect a fake, what would finding the real one be like?

            “There’s a note!”

            Draco whipped around. The contents of the note could tell them a lot about the Dark Lord’s state of mind and whether he had come here recently, especially if he mentioned Draco or his father.

            Before he could take it, though, Dumbledore held out his hand, and Harry put the note into it. Draco narrowed his eyes. Another thing we have to have a talk about is blind trust.

            Dumbledore studied the note, and then read it aloud in a slow voice. Draco knew he would have to make sure to look at it later, so he could tell if Dumbledore had left out any of the contents.

            “To the Dark Lord

I know I will be dead long before you read this but I want you to know that it was I who discovered your secret. I have stolen the real Horcrux and intend to destroy it as soon as I can. I face death in the hope that when you meet your match you will be mortal once more.

R.A.B.”

            Draco blinked. “So someone else found out about the Horcrux and came here to exchange it? How long ago?”

            “There are some spells we can perform on the parchment that will estimate its age,” said Dumbledore. His hand moved to his wand.

            “But those spells would destroy the note, Professor Dumbledore,” Granger said anxiously. “Shouldn’t we copy it first?”

            Dumbledore gave another of those long, slow sighs that he used when people were acting like human beings instead of blindly going along with his plans. Then he nodded. “You are right, Miss Granger. I suppose…” He trailed off, staring at the note for a moment, then shook his head and stuffed it back into the locket.

            “Well, we’re not worse off than we were,” said Weasley in a heartening tone. “At least we know that he doesn’t have the locket.”

            “Unless this is another trick,” said Dumbledore, but even he sounded doubtful.

            “It would make more sense to change the protections on the cave if he knew that information had got out,” Draco argued. “It wouldn’t make sense for him to just put a fake locket here and then not sign his name to the note.”

            “True. And Tom does love taunting those who he thinks are not intelligent enough to catch on to his plans.” One more sigh, and Dumbledore faced the lake again. “I think we should head back while we still can…”

            He trailed off. Draco looked around him, and saw why. A hand had come out of the water and clasped the edge of the island.

            As Draco watched, the Inferius hauled itself out of the lake and came for them with silent, wide, dripping jaws.

*

            SP777: Oh, it will be.
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The Serenity of His Rage