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Sister Healer	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 2860 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Two—By the Second

            “You can tell your best mate the truth, Harry. What is it really like, working with Malfoy?”

            Harry snorted and spent a few moments sipping his tea before he answered. He was lounging with Ron in the garden of the small house he and Hermione had bought a few years ago. It was literally a cottage covered with roses and honeysuckle, with a small but sturdy white fence around it and more roses growing in the garden. Harry had once thought he would spend the rest of his life in a place like this.

            But—there were reasons that hadn’t worked out. And he did think, as he smelled the roses, that it would hurt him in some inexplicable way to live like this.

            “Not like working with you, or Lionel,” Harry said, and sipped again.

            Ron leaned forwards and waved an irritable hand at him. “That’s not specific enough!” he all but whined. “I’m sure that you must have had horrible rows and then stomped around sulking in silence for hours afterwards, right?”

            “You’re coming up with the memories of the time that we had rows,” Harry reminded him. He knew by now that no fight he and Ron might have was going to be strong enough to sever their friendship permanently, but it did mean that they always followed the same course and Harry would just have to leave Ron alone until one of them was ready to apologize. “I don’t think Malfoy would let anyone else see him sulking. He would just give them this cold look and sweep out of the room to leave them to think about their sins.”

            Ron didn’t laugh the way Harry had thought he would. It was a vivid image, and exactly like Malfoy, after all. Instead, Ron leaned forwards, his hands dangling between his knees, and stared at Harry. Harry raised his eyebrows. “What?”

            “You sound as though you admire that way of doing things,” Ron murmured.

            Harry snorted so hard that tea came out his nose and fell back into his cup. Hermione would probably have squirmed in disgust if she was here, but luckily, she was staying late for a Departmental meeting at the Ministry. “Not really,” Harry said when he could speak. “I’m the one who inspires that disgust in Malfoy more than often enough, and then it’s a bitch to try and get him to talk about anything else for hours.”

            “I knew I had to be right about something!” Ron pointed a triumphant finger at him. “So it does last hours.”

            Harry nodded. “A lot of the time. But when he comes back, he’ll ignore everything and pretend it didn’t happen. It makes him a comfortable partner to work with some of the time, since I know that he’ll concentrate on what we need to talk about, not what he’d like to talk about.”

            “But not as comfortable as me.”

            Harry blinked and focused on Ron, then felt stupid for not seeing it before. Ron was biting his lip and avoiding Harry’s gaze, but his anxiety was there for anyone with eyes to see who looked. Ron was worried that Malfoy was replacing him in Harry’s friendship, especially since they no longer worked together as Auror partners. Harry reached out and gripped his best friend’s wrist hard, holding him still as he replied.

            “I promise, Ron. It’s never going to be like the partnership we shared. I can’t joke with him. Everything’s deadly serious. We fight well together, but how much of a partnership is fighting together?”

            “A lot more than ours was, now that you’re in Socrates,” Ron muttered.

            Harry shrugged with one shoulder. “I know, but still, we spent five minutes fighting Jerome—that’s the twisted—today and ten hours planning it. It’s not that common. Most of the time, we stay in the office and get on each other’s nerves.”

And attract each other, sometimes.

Harry shook his head over that last. He was sure the attraction only ran one way; he thought Malfoy looked nice, not the reverse. It was nothing deeper than looks. And even if Harry had wanted to have a chance, Malfoy had been engaged to a woman until recently. Not the best sign.

And even if there was a chance that Harry could be interested in Malfoy for more than his looks and Malfoy could be interested back, Harry was never going to tell his partner he had a crush on him again. Lionel had never completely trusted him after that. They had never worked together as smoothly. And so, Lionel had died. It was a big incident at the end of a tiny series of things they didn’t tell each other and not being able to explain their thoughts. Lionel was wary of what else Harry might say, and Harry hurt when he thought of the way Lionel had stepped back from him after his confession.

            Telling the truth is overrated.

            “Besides,” he continued, knowing Ron would appreciate what he was about to say more than he had anything Harry had said so far, “listen, this is hilarious. Malfoy was supposed to take the Healer back to hospital and go pick up the paperwork while I cleaned the shop where we found Jerome and then went back to the office. He didn’t come back until I was almost done writing my report.”

            Ron stared with his mouth open. “Mate,” he said at last. “I know how long it takes you to write a report, remember?”

            Harry snickered. “I know. I think Malfoy was stunned that I noticed how long he was actually gone. I’m just supposed not to notice when His Majesty has something he wants to do. Noticing how long he’s gone and how late he’s gone is for lesser mortals.”

            Ron shook his head. “Well, better you than me, mate.” He leaned forwards to tap his cup against Harry’s. “I know that I could never work with him.”

            “Compared to Hale,” Harry said dryly, “he’s not bad. At least I know that he’s not there to spy on me and report every little thing I do to the Minister.”

            “If you say so.” Ron’s return look was long and skeptical.

            Harry leaned back and reached for the bottle of Firewhisky standing on the table nearby. He didn’t want to know what else Ron might be skeptical about.

*

            Draco sneered at Potter, who came in late the next morning, and reeking of Firewhisky. The problem with sneering at Potter, though, was that he didn’t seem to notice. Perhaps he thought that he would never receive anything but sneers from Draco, so any that came his way weren’t remarkable. He looked around with wide, sleepy eyes, and then sat down behind the desk and drew a pile of parchment towards him, which he looked at blankly.

            “Do you even know what you’re doing?” Draco asked, unable to contain himself any longer.

            “Yes,” Potter said, and leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. Draco assumed he was going to sleep, and reached out, ready to slap the side of the desk and wake him up. Potter took a deep breath, chest inflating as if he intended to float off the chair, and then abruptly leaned forwards and nodded. “Now. You finished all the paperwork last night?”

            Draco stared at him. Potter stared back. The sleepy glaze was gone, and he looked as though he was ready to lunge at any evil wizard who might come through the door. Draco shook his head, somewhat in a daze, and leaned back in his own chair.

            “Yes, I finished it,” he said. “And we only have rumors to investigate today. There’s a man that escaped an Auror trap in Scotland, whom they think might be a twisted with the ability to teleport.”

            Potter rolled his eyes. “Someone always says that when they didn’t raise the anti-Apparition wards high enough,” he muttered, and then reached for the stack of parchment in front of him and began to sort through it.

            “How would you know that?” Draco demanded. “You’ve only been investigating twisted for two months.”

            “So have you,” Potter said, running a jaundiced eye over him. “What makes me different from you is that I went back and read through the old files on the twisted, and their identifying characteristics, and the people that were thought to be twisted and then turned out not to be. And the ways that their existence serves as a handy excuse for incompetent Aurors in other Corps.”

            Draco snarled at him. “I read those files, too.”

            Potter swept him a bow from his sitting position. “My apologies. Then what makes me different from you is that I didn’t assume you didn’t read the reports.” He went back to writing and comparing some of the notes that Draco knew had been on his desk for days against his copy of the report on the possible twisted.

            Draco stared at him, and tried to work out why the lightning was boiling and bubbling in him. He felt rage towards Potter at times, as was only natural for someone whom he had hated when he was a child and who had lied to him on their first case. But he felt it as cold contempt or dusty exasperation. Not this urge to reach out and hurt someone.

            He thought of the way Healer Alto had spoken to him yesterday, and grimaced. You’d think that I would be above taking my anger at someone scolding me and displacing it onto an ally.

            Then again, there were times that he didn’t think of Potter as an ally. Potter fought beside him and collaborated with him and argued with him. With Kellen Moonborn, Draco’s first partner, and even the temporary partners he had had during his training, it was more than that. They could laugh together and have moments of quiet understanding.

            And none of them were your rivals during your schooldays. The more amazing thing would be if you did have those sorts of moments with Potter.

            “Malfoy? Are you going to settle down and work any time this morning?”

            Draco turned away and began his labor. He would say something regrettable to Potter if he persisted in thinking about this, and while Potter might be able to get away with anything he did because the relevant people in positions of authority adored him, that didn’t mean Draco could afford the same kind of stupidity.

            Potter sometimes looked at him throughout the rest of the morning. Draco knew it because he could always feel those eyes. He kept tightening his shoulders and working away, making sure not to glance up.

            He would show Potter that he was not unnerved by what had happened yesterday with the Healer, that he was not an imperfect partner, that he was not an incompetent Auror. He would never have thought the day would come when he cared about impressing Potter, but the fact was that he must, at least enough to remain within the Socrates Corps. This was the best promotion that he could hope for, and Potter wasn’t going to lose it for him.

*

            Harry went for sandwiches in a small shop not far from the Ministry, which served them steaming hot and simple. He’d been in places that gaped when he asked for cheese or corned beef or something else that wasn’t fancy. This time, he had ham and had just sat down and taken a bite when the vision came rushing at him.

            It wasn’t as “complete” as some of the other visions he’d had before. He didn’t lose track of time and space; he didn’t see through the victim’s eyes. Instead, he knew that he was sitting at his desk, and he could see the piles of parchment in front of him and the wide, open Socrates office through a wavering curtain of mist.

            But he could also see Healer Alto pressed back against the wall of what looked like a potions lab, her eyes wide and her hand held against her mouth, as a menacing presence moved towards her. The presence was a woman, Harry thought, squinting desperately to get the details. Long black hair, absolutely straight, and robes of Healer’s green. She must have sneaked into them when she decided to go into hospital, rather than being a real Healer, because shadowy wolves flowed along beside her, and there was a symbol carved into the skin of her right arm, an arrow through a heart. She was a twisted without a doubt, and twisted couldn’t use Healing magic.

            The woman’s head turned, and Harry caught a glimpse of intense blue eyes. He’d seen those eyes before.

            The woman held out some kind of long, thin blade, and it stabbed Healer Alto neatly in the chest. Through the heart, Harry was certain. He watched her eyes roll back in her head and her throat quiver, and he swore. He had visions of murders, always visions of murders. Always that and never any other crime.

            But sometimes he saw them soon enough to stop them.

            Harry flung himself sideways out of his chair so that he wouldn’t have to take the time to push it back and ran like a madman towards the door of the office. He didn’t know where Malfoy was right now, but he didn’t know if he could waste the moments needed to find him. He pulled out his wand and began to concentrate on the memory of his first flight, so that he could summon a Patronus.

            Then he bumped straight into Malfoy and slammed back into the wall. Malfoy, whose robes were now covered with the remains of the poncey lunch he’d been carrying—something that seemed mainly made of chicken and eggs—looked down with an expressive face, and then looked back up.

            “Healer Alto is in danger from another twisted,” Harry said shortly. “Vision.”

            He expected some bitching from Malfoy, who never seemed to believe in his visions even when he had proof that they could come true, but his face darkened at hearing the Healer’s name. “Again?” he asked, shaking his wand into his hand from his sleeve. “That’s rather a coincidence, isn’t it?”

            “I don’t think it’s a coincidence, but we don’t have time to argue about the word right now,” Harry said, and kept running. He heard Malfoy mutter a cleaning charm behind him before he followed. Harry rolled his eyes. I bet he would make sure that he had clean pants on at the end of the world, just like his mother told him.

            Then he let the thought blow out of his mind, and concentrated on running. He was sure the room in the vision had been at St. Mungo’s, so they would go there first.

*

            Draco didn’t understand everything that Potter had blurted at him, and he didn’t know where they were going yet, but he had the essential information, the information that made his breath come short and his heart clench.

            Healer Alto. Someone was threatening Healer Alto again, and if Draco hadn’t agreed with everything that she told him about killing twisted, at least she was someone who thought he was important enough to talk to that way. Not someone who automatically assumed he was a Death Eater whose soul couldn’t possibly matter. Not someone who turned her head to the side and ignored him, the way his parents had managed so effortlessly.

            He ran.

            Potter was heading for the Atrium, he realized quickly, and managed to crowd into the lift beside him before it went down. Potter made way for him without complaining, his eyes closed and his face pale. Draco had seen that expression before. It meant he was studying his “vision” for clues as to what would happen next, and when.

            Draco snarled beneath his breath. He had to accept that Potter’s visions were real, and that they might be of some use in catching twisted. But their first case had already included a twisted who could manipulate those visions to his advantage and convince Potter that he should commit suicide—heroically, of course, saving Draco, but still. Draco thought Potter relied too much on them and the information they could give him.

            Still, a clue was a clue, and Draco didn’t want to play around with a Healer’s safety. Potter led him straight to the nearest Floo when they reached the Atrium and then came to a halt, cursing.

            “What?” Draco knew it couldn’t be the lack of Floo powder. That was visible in a bowl on the mantle of the fireplace, right where it should be.

            “I can’t go into hospital, remember?” Potter’s mouth twisted. “Banned. I’ll have to stay outside. You go in and find out where Healer Alto is and if she’s in any danger. The killing might not have happened yet.” He turned towards a second fireplace, Floo powder already in his hand and a name already on his tongue.

            Draco opened his mouth to snap that that didn’t matter, and why did Potter have to make even a Healer’s danger about him, and it didn’t matter—

            Then he flushed. He was usually the one who would have remembered something practical like that, and used it to time their arrival more precisely and send the right person through the fire. Potter was being more pragmatic than him at the moment, something he didn’t like to think about. He turned back to the fire, cast in the powder, and yelled as loudly as he could, “St. Mungo’s!”

            Heads turned all over the Atrium, Draco was sure, but he didn’t care. They had already attracted it with their wild run, and people would be more used to it from Harry Potter than from the calm, cool Draco Malfoy. He leaped through the fire, feeling a moment of heat before the flames parted for him.

            He tumbled out of a fireplace on the first floor of St. Mungo’s, swiping dust and soot from his clothes as he looked around. He could hear sounds from above and below—normal, everyday sounds. No screaming, no sobbing. He swallowed. That might mean that Potter’s vision hadn’t happened yet.

            If Potter’s vision is real. Potter thought they all were, but he had also admitted that some never happened before, as he thought, he got there in time to save the victim. That must mean they were inherently changeable, and couldn’t all happen. Not at once.

            Draco jogged through the corridors towards the nearest Healer, a tall black woman who had watched him come in and stood watching him with a frown. She seemed familiar, and he recognized her after a moment: Healer Tella, the one who had treated Potter the last time he was actually allowed inside St. Mungo’s. She made her way towards him, snapping her eyes around. Looking for Potter, Draco was certain.

            He intended to allow her no time for questions. Potter was outside the building and would remain that way. The important thing was getting Healer Alto to safety. “Where is Miranda Alto?” he asked. “We have information that another twisted is after her, and probably means to kill her.” He wished now that Potter had been more specific about the content of his vision, but Draco was sure it concerned murder, death. It always did.

            Tella took a single breath, then seemed to decide they had more important things to do than ask useless questions. She turned and closed her eyes, then pointed up the corridor towards the nearest flight of stairs. “In the Spell Damage ward. She’ll be there all morning, or at least she’s supposed to be.” A shadow of worry passed over her eyes. She must have seen, and possibly treated, some of the things a twisted’s flaws could do, Draco thought.

            Draco nodded his thanks, and rushed away. He could feel people’s stares on his back, hear them calling after him, and didn’t bother turning around. They would only get in his way, and he had someone he wanted to save.

            Someone who had looked at him with enough concern to make him feel it, someone who had offered to treat even Potter if he was in need and came to her.

            I’m coming, my lady.

*

            Harry arrived in the alley outside St. Mungo’s and got immediate confirmation that his vision hadn’t happened yet and that they were in time. The woman from his vision was walking calmly up the middle of the alley, surrounded by shadowy forms and with the long, needle-like blade in her hand glowing.

            Harry put his fingers in his mouth and whistled.

            The woman spun around, those intense blue eyes flashing at him. Harry nodded grimly. He had seen those eyes through the face of Julian Okazes, one of his superiors, shortly after the Larkin case, and then they had seemed to belong to another twisted who could take people over from a distance and was angry about Larkin’s defeat.

            “You’re ready?” he asked the woman. He watched the wolves who walked beside her, turning around and snarling at him. They were growing more solid. Harry smiled coldly at them, wondering what her flaw was and not afraid of it. He was going to find out. He was going to kill her, the way that twisted should be killed. Malfoy would probably be here soon. “Let’s dance, then.”

            The woman moved forwards, the sword in her hand rising and falling. The scrape and sing of the blade through the air made Harry have to grit his teeth. He saw no trace of a wand on her, and thought her wand had probably become the blade. That might refer to her flaw; it might not. He didn’t know. He leaned forwards and cast a spell that ought to shatter the material of the sword.

            It didn’t. The blade looked like it was made of glass or the thin metal of a needle, but it must not be. Harry nodded. All right. He could live with that. He edged to the side and cast again, this time a spell that was meant to sweep her feet out from under her and drop her right in the middle of her own wolves.

            It didn’t work. The woman swayed a little, as though pushed by a strong breeze, but didn’t move backwards. And then she thrust her blade at him, and Harry tried to move backwards himself, and found that he couldn’t.

            He got a Shield Charm up in time to meet the blade, but it rang with a high chime as it slid down the air that the Protego had changed and defined, and he found himself shivering in a way that had nothing to do with the impact of the sound against his ears.

            All right. I think I’ve found her flaw. Once you get in a battle with her, you have to finish it. No method of retreat possible. He tried to move his feet and found that he could indeed move towards her, but stepping away was as impossible as trying to lift a mountain with his back.

            The wolves snarled softly behind him, circling, ringing him, but not trying to approach closer. Harry smiled coldly, and he couldn’t have said whether it was at the twisted or himself. Of course it made sense that her companions would be wolves, known for hunting prey with stamina more than speed, and it made sense that the symbol on her arm resembled an arrow through a heart, a target pinned.

            I’m so smart. I can figure out so much about twisted because I’ve learned so much. That still doesn’t mean that I should die fighting her.

            Malfoy should be along any minute, and with two of us in the battle, then I don’t think her blade and her flaw can overcome us.

            It has to be that way.

            It has to.

            The twisted made another feint at him, and Harry discovered that he could go sideways, and the blue eyes flashed at him, and he barely escaped a cut from the blade, and his attempt at a spell that broke her leg bones didn’t work.

            Malfoy should be here soon.

            Any minute.

*

            Unneeded: Thanks! Sorry I didn’t update last week, but I got a little overwhelmed.

            SP777: You’re welcome to, although I don’t know if you’ll be right…
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Sister Healer