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The Library of Hades	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 4439 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of The Library of Hades, and thus of the tenth story of the Cloak and Dagger series. It will be followed in a week by a one-shot, "There Was Glory." Thanks for coming all this way with me.

Chapter Twenty--Here Are the Ashes

            Draco felt the trembling tension that strung itself between Harry and Weasley--though Weasley, in her possessed state, would be unaware of it--and knew that Harry would never willingly break that tension. He would do anything rather than harm a friend. Draco had prized that quality when they became lovers, since it meant Harry was extremely unlikely to turn on him.

            Now...

            Draco fell back a step and touched Harry on the shoulder. Weasley's unnaturally blue eyes moved at once to him, proving the gesture didn't go unnoticed. Draco held her gaze and said nothing, while he worked his left arm under his sleeve to make sure he knew exactly where the Mark was. Sometimes it could feel as normal as any unstained part of his skin, and he would have to connect directly with it when he cast his spell. He knew he would get only one chance.

            "Relieved, Malfoy?" Weasley asked softly, her hoarse voice uttering his name with more contempt than Draco had ever heard from her during their school days. "Thinking that with your rival destroyed, your access to Potter will be free and clear?"

            Draco said nothing. He didn't see the point in trading words with their enemy, when Blue Eyes--Ernhardt--would go ahead and do whatever he wanted anyway. And if Ernhardt was stupid enough to keep possessing Weasley when he should take care of the more dangerous people in the room instead, that wasn't Draco's problem.

            Not stupid. It's necessary.

            And Draco understood, then, and could have laughed as he remembered. It was the very first thing they were told about hostages in Auror training, the weakness any plan involving them had. The captor had to keep control of the hostage at all times, or they could break free, turn into a distraction, perhaps even attack, and the people who wanted them back would certainly whisk them out of danger the first time a chance presented itself to do so. Blue Eyes didn't dare loosen his hold on Weasley's mind, or Harry would attack. She might even do so, although Draco didn't have that high an opinion of her mental strength when recovering from possession.

            In the meantime, he couldn't read Draco's mind, or take control of him and force him to commit suicide, and that had to be ripping into him, to be denied one source of his usual, undisputed strength.

            "This didn't turn out the way you wanted it to, did it?" Draco asked softly as he let his wand drift towards his left arm as much as he could without making it obvious what he was doing. "You planned for the Shadowborn to kill us, and then there would be no connection between you and our murders. It was why you declared us rogue and invoked their power. Their whole job is to kill rogue Aurors. No one would question your decision if it was made in that light."

            Weasley shook her head. "How little you understand of what you are," she said. "How little you understand of what you could be."

            Her eyes flickered to Harry, but he still hadn't moved. Draco didn't worry about that. Harry was all poise at this moment, longing and waiting tension, ready to strike the second he had a clear path. He couldn't be a danger to Draco, and he was content to wait until Draco could do something to make that clear path. Draco had never been prouder of him than he was at that moment.

            "Of what we could be," Draco echoed, and a minor mystery turned crystalline in his head. "Those definitions the Ministry came up with for twisted after the war, the ones that were supposedly based on the Dark Lord and recognizing future twisted for what they were before they achieved his level. You came up with the definitions, didn't you? That's why they're so inconsistent with the past research as well as the actual experiences of Aurors."

            Ernhardt said nothing, but the flare and shine of his eyes was getting deeper and deeper. Draco laughed softly at him.

            "What are you waiting for?" he taunted. "You could possess me and force me to burn my hands off for my contempt of you. Time was when you would have done it before now, for less than what I've said in the last few minutes. But you can't do it, can you? You can't possess more than one person at a time."

            The limit of his flaw, Draco knew Harry was thinking, but didn't say any more than Draco did. They were in tune by now; Draco knew the way Harry's heart beat, the way his breaths heaved, and the way his muscles shifted to point him straight at Weasley and Ernhardt. Harry might even have said it for him, if angering Ernhardt and not keeping his attention focused on Draco was the point.

            "You're paranoid," Draco said. "Classic sign of the twisted we've hunted. You've constructed this elaborate artifice to keep yourself safe, twisting the definition of the twisted so that people look in the wrong direction and eliminate those who might be rivals--or who might encourage Aurors to look into the bowels of the Ministry if they started thinking that anyone, everyone, could be a twisted. You had to keep people afraid of them but not afraid enough to get paranoid themselves. No wonder you wanted to kill Alto so badly and kept driving all the twisted she created against her. She had a power that was potentially greater than yours." He paused, because he was ready, the spell poised behind his lips and the location of the Mark glowing in his mind, and he needed Ernhardt distracted. "Or perhaps one that could even affect you? Her power was over the mind, to change people's personalities into slavish worship of her. Did she do that to you, too? Could she have?"

            Ernhardt trembled, but didn't lunge. Draco pushed again. "You really did take Morningstar captive, didn't you? Because she could time travel, and you were trying to see how that could be useful to you. She was desperate enough to come to us." Draco smiled. "Too bad for you that she escaped, and we eliminated her. The same way we'll eliminate you."

            And then it came, Ernhardt's mind lashing out, reaching so fast that Draco only felt the sliminess sliding past him for a moment before that foulness was within him, spreading like whips of bile down his limbs, readying him, melting him, making him yield.

            Or trying to make him yield.

            At the same moment as Ernhardt moved, Harry moved, snatching Weasley up in his arms and whispering some fierce protective spell that Draco only knew was protective because he was so attuned to Harry. He had no time to pay more attention to it, not with Ernhardt there, and his own magic roaring through him, giving him time and space to act.

            "Creo pontem!"

            The same spell Harry had used, down in the Atrium, when they were trapping Ernhardt and he had forged the link between his scar and Ernhardt’s flaw. This time, Draco was the one to make the link, and make it direct, and he followed it up with a Dark curse, the Darkest he knew that wouldn't kill someone, while Ernhardt was still reeling with shock.

            "Conflagro!"

            The flames took root on the skin of one of the Aurors guarding Ernhardt, and he dropped straight down, mouth open in agony that he couldn't get the breath to turn into a scream. He was writhing, and he was dying, but the spell had been meant to burn a sacrifice alive, and make a gift of their pain to ancient gods or worse forces. The fire would continue to exist, and make him exist, for a long while. And in the meantime, it sent Dark magic spiraling into the air.

            Draco thrust his left arm out, only able to move that far, he knew, because of Ernhardt's shock. He didn't have the mental defenses that Harry did, and he couldn't have conquered otherwise.

            But he had already used Ernhardt's rage to tip him off-balance, and the man still hadn't recovered from the surprise of someone learning who he was, either. And then there would be the lingering pain from the spell Harry had used earlier, and sent flowing down their link.

            And now there was Draco's pain.

            He felt the flaring Dark magic as pain, and he slammed it straight down the link between him and Ernhardt, all the stronger now that Ernhardt was using the possession flaw directly on him, and from so close.

            The scream that came from Ernhardt's mouth was worse than a dragon's. Draco stood up against it, his eyes shut, divorcing himself from the agony that flowed down his arm and flared in his skin. Yes, it was there, yes, it was devastating, and yes, he knew it would take him hours later to recover from it.

            But this wasn't hours later. This was now. And Draco intended to roast Ernhardt's flaw out of him, so that he would be left an ordinary wizard without that most dangerous of gifts, and they could hunt and arrest him all the more easily. Send pain through him while he was possessing someone else, and he ought to be catapulted back into his own body and left unable to leave it again, his mind crippled from reaching through the mental links.

            So Harry had theorized, anyway.

            It was rather hard to be the proof of such a theory.

*

            "Harry, Harry, Harry..."

            That was all Ginny could say again, over and over again, as she stood clutching his shirt and bending her head towards him. Harry understood. He had been possessed by Blue Eyes himself, and at least he had the means to comprehend it, through the definitions of the twisted that he knew about, and the means to resist it because of the strength of his will. Ginny was simply left shaking.

            He was content to stand there and hold her, though, only because he knew there was nothing he could do to help Draco now. Draco had started this particular battle over again, and it was a contest of endurance. Trying to add himself to the link, the way that Draco had when Harry battled Ernhardt directly in the Atrium, would throw them both off-balance, and Ernhardt might be the one to emerge triumphant in that kind of contest.

            The other Aurors in the room were trying to beat out the flames that were consuming their fellow, or supporting the Head Auror, or staring helplessly back and forth. That was the other thing Harry could do: keep an eye on them, and make sure they didn't interfere, either. Luckily, it seemed that more than half of them had no idea what was going on, and the remnant didn't believe what Draco had said to Ernhardt. Hard to fight an enemy you didn't believe in.

            Because he was watching Draco, Harry didn't note the door opening at first. But Ginny did, and her gasp drew his attention.

            In through the door walked a mangled body. Not mangled beyond recognition, because the face was still intact, but definitely too dead to have survived those wounds. Bainbridge floated, his arms outstretched, his mouth open to show the tangled remains of a tongue and windpipe at the back of his throat.

            And behind him came Macgeorge, her eyes dark and shining and calm.

            She's gone, Harry knew, the moment he met those eyes. She killed him, but she went full twisted in doing it.

            And he knew nothing that could combat a necromancer.

            Macgeorge smiled at them, nodding around the room as though she recognized everyone in it and wanted to greet them personally. Then she twirled her wand between her fingers and said to Harry, “You were the one who recognized what I was, first. Thank you for doing that. Without you, I would not have learned my true purpose in life.”

            “What is that?” Harry asked. Sometimes it was possible to speak to a twisted as if they were sane, and at least distract them from what they might do otherwise. Postpone it, if not turn back time.

            Macgeorge smiled. “Teaching others that necromancy has a place in the Dark Arts of the nation,” she said. “If we can use some of the spells that you have used in your pursuit of justice and the truth, then we ought to be able to use this one.”

            The way she said it made Harry’s skin hurt. “Well, maybe,” he said. “But you know that most people don’t have the gift for it. So how could they use it in Auror investigations?”

            Ginny was stiff in his arms, and hissing something that Harry couldn’t make out, probably about how he shouldn’t talk this way and encourage Macgeorge in her delusions. Harry rubbed her back. He had no idea what she had suffered in her ordeal with Ernhardt, but he knew that she couldn’t understand the full nature of twisted, or what Macgeorge had become.

            “There will be me, to do it for them,” Macgeorge said, and then nodded at the slumping Bainbridge. “Do you like him? I ended your case, when you could not. I killed him for you.”

            Her eyes were beginning to shine, to fill with lightning and strength, and Harry found it hard to look away. He swallowed and got out, with an effort, “Right. We owe you thanks. But I don’t think you need to keep him here, do you? Let him go, and give the body to his family, if they still want him.”

            “He has none,” Macgeorge said. “His gift isolated him, and pinned him in a world that most other people could not understand.” She paused, and the way she spun her wand between her fingers became a little less confident. “The way that my gift has me,” she added softly. “What else can I do but fight for my place at the heart of things, when there is no one who loves me?”

            “Isla does,” Harry said, sure it was true. Perhaps not the way Draco loved him, no, but the way one Auror partner could love another. “Go to her, and ask her. She would take you back, I know. She would give you her attention and her time.”

            Macgeorge shook her head. “Once I might have listened to you, but I understand your motives now. You want to change everything you see.” While Harry was still wondering what that meant, she unfolded her arm and pointed a long finger at him. “And I have reason to fear that you would hunt me along with the other twisted. You wouldn’t leave me to hunt them on my own. You wouldn’t leave them to my service.”

            “Your service?” Harry asked, but he already knew what she meant, and when the body of Bainbridge turned towards him and lifted his hand, he knew he would be fighting that deadly, twisting magic for the second time in a week. And Macgeorge knew the trick he and Draco had used to try and burn the flaw out of Ernhardt.

            “Ginny, get behind me,” he said, so gently and softly that his voice sounded strange to his own ears. She did it, without much more than a little shuffle and a sob. Harry raised his wand and prepared, as best he could, to meet the flaw of a twisted who could command other twisted.

            We did it once before. We were fighting those twisted that Ernhardt was sending after Alto.

            But those twisted had been ones with more minor gifts, less experienced in the use of their flaw than Macgeorge, and under a possession that kept them from using their natural instincts. Harry was sure that Macgeorge’s magic would work with Bainbridge’s, rather than against it.

            There was nothing he could do but go ahead, though, and slip aside from the first attempt Bainbridge made to tug him out of his skin.

*

            Draco shook sweat-dampened hair out of his eyes. His left arm had gone numb. He wanted to pant, and didn’t only because he thought that might be a visible signal of weakness for Ernhardt.

            He would do the best he could. He would keep Ernhardt at bay until the last possible minute, and burn out his flaw if he could.

            But the pain passing through him was beginning to take its toll. It might drive Ernhardt mad—well, more mad than he was—or destroy him, but Draco thought it would do the same thing to him. He didn’t have insanity to cushion him, either. The only thing there was was the pain, a whole world of it, and he was panting and his stomach was flopping in strange ways that had nothing to do with sickness.

            He saw something from the corner of his eye, and half-turned his head, to see Macgeorge turning to face him. Bainbridge, dead and leaking power, stood in front of Harry.

            Draco felt determination surge through him. More than anything else, he wanted to protect Harry. He would snap the link holding him to Ernhardt if he had to. He moved—

            And the link faded, and Draco felt something soft and spidery pass in front of his face, delicate as silk, there and then gone, so that he sneezed and wondered what the fuck was happening.

            Then he knew. The link had faded. He no longer held Ernhardt.

            And neither did Ernhardt’s body, that Draco and Harry had worked so hard to trap him in. It slumped over his desk under the panicked eyes of his Aurors. Instead, Macgeorge turned her head, and her eyes shone killing blue.

            “A strong gift,” Ernhardt said. “I do thank you for this. It may not have occurred to me to possess her otherwise.” He nodded Macgeorge’s head to his own body on the desk. “That one was nearly worn out, but this one will do.”

            Harry lunged with a spell that Draco could feel the raw power in, although he didn’t know what it had been meant to do; Harry might not even know, from the way he paused and growled halfway through. Macgeorge, or Ernhardt in her body, moved aside, and the spell crackled into the wall and turned the stones black.

            “I shall have to remember that one for future use,” Ernhardt whispered, and then Macgeorge’s body turned and surged away, Apparating before Draco could even think to prevent him. Then again, it hadn’t occurred to him that anyone could break through the anti-Apparition wards around the offices, either.

            And they were left with the dead body of Bainbridge, now slumping on the floor and staring up with torn eyes, and the dead body of Ernhardt, limp on the desk with his mouth slightly open and color in his face that mimicked someone who had died of a heart attack. And a crew of staring Aurors who were pressing closer as though they wanted answers.

            Fuck, Draco thought, caught in the midst of pain that was going to fell him. He reached out and put a hand on the desk for lack of anything better to do, wishing that he could wake up and have this be a dream.

*

            “Did you kill the Head Auror?”

            That was an Auror Harry had worked with when he was still in Lucretius Corps, Andrew Pestle, a good man but a hard one, and one prone to jumping to conclusions. He only said what others had been thinking, too, from the way they formed up behind him. They might have a riot on their hands in a moment, especially because of the flames that Draco had used on another Auror and which had only snuffed out when Draco lost the link to Ernhardt.

            Harry grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck. He was tired, and wanted to collapse. They had failed in all ways, except saving Ginny’s life and killing Bainbridge. And while those might not be small things, they still felt like it in the wake of their overwhelming loss. Blue Eyes still lived, and he possessed a body that could use necromancy, and Harry doubted they would ever see Macgeorge as her own independent person again.

            But that didn’t give Harry leave to collapse, especially since neither Draco nor Ginny looked as if they could handle any more right now.

            “You heard what he said,” Harry murmured instead, locking eyes with Pestle. He conjured a chair for Ginny and moved forwards to support Draco with a gentle hold. Draco leaned against him, and Harry ignored the stares from those Aurors who might be slow on the gossip-listening skills and hadn’t realized that he and Draco were dating.

            “That he was—Dark?” Pestle said, and practically whispered the words, which was a foolish thing for an Auror to do, when he ought to know that all sorts of wizards could go Dark.

            “Yes,” Harry said, and turned away from the ill look Pestle was giving him to support Draco into another conjured chair. “He was behind part of the case that we’ve been pursuing, and he was the one who ordered the Shadowborn into action, to get rid of us when we began to inconvenience him.”

            There was more silence after that, and then even more questions. Harry answered them as patiently as he could. He was the only one in the room at the moment who knew everything that had gone on, and the only one able to answer questions.

            Things got a little easier when Hermione appeared, out of breath from her run through the Atrium. Harry turned some of the questions over to her, and went on answering the ones that only he could. In the meantime, Ginny began to speak, and Hermione listened to her and offered the comfort Harry didn’t think he could.

            At least he was able to send Pestle for Mind-Healer Estillo, so Draco would have someone competent to tend him. Pestle, by that point, seemed to be a converted believer in what had happened to Head Auror Ernhardt, and started trying to convince the others.

            Through it all, there was one person Harry was waiting for, one person he dreaded to see appear. And he saw her in the doorway when his throat had begun to feel dry from talking and Mind-Healer Estillo had just declared that she didn’t see anything wrong with Draco that a little bit of rest wouldn’t cure.

            Isla Rudie.

            She looked at Harry, and no one else—not Bainbridge dead on the floor, not Ernhardt dead on the desk, not Draco leaning forwards with his head on his left arm and whispering to Estillo what being possessed had felt like. After a moment, she gave a nod as though responding to silent music and asked, “Is it true?”

            “It is,” Harry said, the truth forming a giant, sticky lump in his throat.

            Rudie simply looked at him with those remote eyes, and then turned and walked away. Harry found himself listening for the slam of a door, and didn’t feel better for not hearing it.

            Then he had to go back to talking, to persuading the others that the Shadowborn should be called off and he and Draco shouldn’t be arrested for murder.

            He supposed, in a way, that it was the end of a case, and they had done what they wanted by bringing Bainbridge within reach of someone who could kill him. But it would be a long time before Harry felt as if anything important had concluded.

            In a fever, in a torment, he reached down and squeezed Draco’s hand.

            After seconds during which Harry heard only his own heart, Draco squeezed back.

            The End.

*

            SP777: Thank you so much! I really appreciate the support and encouragement.

            Yes, the Head Auror is an obvious candidate once you think about it—one reason that I never mentioned his real name in the other stories.

            And I hope you enjoyed this chapter, as well.

            unneeded: Yes, it makes sense. And Ernhardt was the original one, as his coming up with the definitions of the twisted shows.
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The Library of Hades