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Seasons of War	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9694 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter List
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Chapter Twenty-Two�What
Befalls

�� You
haven�t asked me about the book that we retrieved from Robards and Holder,�
Draco told Harry that night.

�� Harry
paused and lifted his eyes. He had been busy writing an essay a moment ago, but
now he acted as though his entire being was focused on Draco. Draco frowned,
not sure whether he liked that. The question had been meant to sting Harry�s
conscience. Instead, he looked half-accusing.

�� No, I
haven�t,� Harry finally said, when enough silence had built up in the room to
convey a buzzing electric charge. �I wonder. What was in it?�

�� Plans,�
Draco said. �They�ve done far more than they ever told us they would. More
practice with the War Wizards. More use of spells against the living dead�so
they must have captured more of them than they showed us. From what Holder
wrote, it doesn�t seem as if they trust any
trainee.�

�� Harry
nodded, face still expressionless. �Well, that�s good in a way,� he said. Draco
narrowed his eyes, and Harry shrugged a little. �At least it means that they
probably don�t have spies on us the way that they�ve demanded you spy on the
comitatus. They wouldn�t give them enough instruction because of distrusting
them so much, and that means we would have spotted the spies by now.�

�� Draco
frowned. �Unless they did choose people who are inherently more skilled, or
Aurors who are full-fledged or instructors,� he murmured. He hadn�t thought of
the possibility of spies on them in return. He had to admit, it was
disquieting.

�� Unlikely,
or they would have written their names down in the book somewhere, and they
would probably have shared more information with them. But you said they don�t
seem to have shared it with anyone.� Harry clasped his hands behind his neck
and stretched them over his head. �So what do we do now? How is the questioning
of Nemo going?�

�� Fine,�
Draco said, still suspiciously. Harry was being awfully cooperative. �You
didn�t care about that until now. You said that we could leave it up to Gregory
and Portillo Lopez.�

�� I still
think that,� Harry said. �But you�ve been attending the sessions anyway, I
imagine. Have they learned anything else? Does it seem like Nihil is hunting
for him? He would have to, if Nemo is the only way that he has of raising these
beasts.�

�� Draco
slammed the book down and stood up, stalking across the floor to stand in front
of Harry. Harry blinked back at him, but he didn�t seem concerned or afraid in
the way Draco would have expected. �Is this the part where I start worrying
that contact with Nemo�s mind did change
you?� he asked.

�� Draco shook
his head. �Not at all,� he said. He had noticed no changes in himself except
for some bad dreams, and he still refused to go to Raverat, the way that he
knew Harry would have liked him to. �The biggest problem is that you don�t seem
interested in the book and Nemo, or you weren�t until I mentioned them.�

�� Harry
looked at him steadily. �And you weren�t interested in what Raverat found out
when he examined Hermione, either, although he seems to have determined the
source of her nightmares.�

�� Draco
stepped back, feeling as though someone had reached out and slapped his cheek
when he leaned in for a kiss. Or, be
honest, Draco. You feel as though Harry did that. �You didn�t tell me.�

�� You didn�t
seem interested.� Harry folded his arms and gave him a wry smile, which twisted
on the edges just enough to make it bitter.

�� Draco
turned away, shaking his head and running his hands through his hair for a
moment before he remembered the way he would look if he messed it up and
dropped his arms back to his sides. �We have to stop fighting like this,� he
said quietly. �Why would you assume that I had no interest at all in Raverat,
simply because I refused to let him examine me?�

�� Because
you refused to let him examine you,� Harry said calmly. He was standing up now,
but he didn�t move towards Draco the way Draco had secretly hoped he would. �I
thought you�d decided his investigations were nonsense.�

�� Draco
swallowed air. He wanted to respond with a tirade, but it would look bad when,
so far, Harry had managed to stay calm.

�� And he was
aware of how Harry judged him, although he didn�t think Harry was. Draco knew
that Harry privately thought he was stupid for jumping on Nemo like that and
needing to be rescued. Harry might never say it, but the thought was there, and Draco was determined to cut through the
tangle between them for once, rather than allowing it to spring up.

�� From now
on,� he said, �let�s agree to be honest with each other even if we think the
other isn�t interested in what we have to say.�

�� Harry
shifted one hip on the table he leaned against. �I haven�t lied,� he said. �I
simply assumed that you wouldn�t want to hear about it. And when I was honest
and told you that I thought you should go to Raverat, you reacted angrily.�

�� Draco
looked away. He didn�t know how to explain his reactions in such a way that
Harry could understand them.

�� But if I�m going to be honest, then I�ll
have to try, even if I don�t think he�ll know what I mean. That�s the hard part
of bargains like this: they bind you along with the person that you want to tie
to you.

�� I�m afraid
of letting someone into my mind,� he said tightly. �After Nihil, after Nemo, I
don�t like the thought of it. That was the reason I refused. And, too, we don�t
have any reason to trust Raverat. You think
that he�s telling you the truth, that he can actually read your magic the
way he claims he can. But what proof do we have of that? That�s what I�m
concerned about, Harry, the amount of truth, not the fact that he annoys me.�

�� There�s no
way that we can prove that Portillo Lopez knows as much as she claims to about
necromancy, either,� Harry said gently, walking across the room towards Draco.
Draco had to admit that it soothed him to have Harry wrap his arms around him
and hold him, although he would have disliked admitting it aloud. �Abstract
disciplines like this�we can�t look at them the way we can Gregory�s fighting
skills. I trust Portillo Lopez, up to a point, and I trust the people she
recommends. One of them is Raverat. Today, he said that the image of bones
being pulled from a body that Hermione sees is an image of Nihil�s happiness.
What she�s feeling is overflow from his mind, rather than something that�s
targeted specifically at her.�

�� Draco stood
there in shock. He hadn�t thought Harry would just tell him that. He had expected more questions, demands, and wary
refusals of trust. He managed to swallow and ask, �And why would she be feeling
that? She hasn�t been touched by the members of that trio the way we have
been.�

�� She�s a
potential Seer,� said Harry. �And according to Raverat, they�re always more
sensitive. That�s why she started feeling it first.� Draco could feel Harry�s
lips moving against his head, and thought he might be grimacing. �I reckon that
means that we�ll start feeling it, too, although maybe not for weeks.�

�� Will we
feel his rage when he comes to terms with losing Nemo?� Draco asked.

�� Harry
sucked in a breath and then tried to chuckle. �That�s why you should have been
with us when we talked to Raverat,� he said. �Because that�s the kind of
question that neither Hermione nor I thought to ask. Me because I didn�t understand
it enough, and her because she was too busy asking questions about being a
Seer.�

�� Draco shut
his eyes and tilted his head back to rest on Harry�s shoulder. Harry caressed
his hair and said nothing. Draco could imagine the tenderness in his eyes without
looking up. It seemed their fight had sealed itself behind them.

�� Would you
like to tell me what came out of the book and the questioning?� Harry asked
quietly. �And how much of it, if any, you think we could share with other
Aurors, the ones who aren�t part of our loyal group?�

�� Draco
reached back and clutched Harry�s arm hard, the only demonstration he could
offer right now of how much Harry meant to him. They had to be honest, yes, but
there was no rule that they had to use words.

�� Harry kissed
the back of his neck, and waited until he could speak.

*

�� As far as
Harry knew, or at least as far as he was learning from Draco, the world was
mad.

�� Nihil
hadn�t tried to get Nemo back yet. Gregory, who was using torture on him and
getting scattered answers that mostly had to do with the resurrection of
long-extinct animals, couldn�t figure out why.

�� He depends
on him,� she said, with a disgusted shake of her head. She was pacing in Harry
and Draco�s tent when they had this conversation, shaking her hair back as if
she were about to go into battle. �I believe that. But now he leaves him in his
enemies� custody and lets small bits of information be wrenched out of him.
Why?�

�� Harry ended
up shaking his head in response, which was fine, since he thought Gregory
simply wanted an audience that she could rant at, rather than someone who would
actually try to offer her advice. She didn�t tend to take advice well.

�� The �real
book� made clear the extent to which Holder and Robards distrusted everyone but
themselves. There was no evidence that they were fighting a war, Harry
sometimes thought�until you read that book. Then you saw the minor attacks
Nihil was making, and the way that the War Wizards were trying to fight and
contain him and failing. The problem was that they wouldn�t admit as much, and
though they kept records of what weapons and spells didn�t work against Nihil,
they shared that knowledge with no one. How were the Aurors and trainees
supposed to fight Nihil that way, if
he dropped suddenly into the middle of the trainee camps?

�� Raverat and
Hermione were working on training her to be a Seer. Harry couldn�t follow most
of the obscure magical discussions they had, though he attended some of the
time, but he was glad he was there to hear the immortal line from Hermione, as
she leaned back in her chair and threw down a scroll she�d been taking notes
on:

�� I should
have listened more to Professor Trelawney.�

�� It was a
small note of humor in the weeks that became bleaker and grimmer. Ron was glad
that he understood what was happening with Hermione, but not pleased that she
was spending so much time with Raverat. He complained to Harry and seemed to
expect him to agree that anyone normal would want to sleep with Hermione. Harry
had to nod and mutter and spend his days soothing his best friend so that the
comitatus wouldn�t dissolve into bickering factions. And Ron didn�t like Draco
spending the amount of time that he did with Hermione, either, so there was
more soothing to be done.

�� Not that
the comitatus was doing much at the moment, Harry thought. They hadn�t met on
their own in weeks. They were always in the presence of the older Aurors when
they had something to report, and that wasn�t a bad thing, but it meant that
Herricks sat there with his lip sticking out, and Ron watched Draco and Raverat
with brewing jealousy but no words, and there was no way to talk to just the
six of them at once.

�� The world
seemed to be splintering around him, with unanswered questions hanging in the
air above his head and people whose relationships he was responsible for
protecting talking to him about different things, from different sides, and the
knowledge that Robards and Holder distrusted them making him doubt his own
actions. Was he acting convincingly enough? Should he be fighting with Draco
more? When were they going to find out that Harry and Draco had a copy of their
book, and when would they find out about Nemo? Harry thought they would.

�� The
gathering thunderstorm gathered much longer than he had thought it would. It
was the last week of May before it burst.

*

�� Draco
rolled his eyes as Raverat and Granger spoke softly about what was necessary to
become a Seer. The list of characteristics included a certain �clarity and
openness of mind� that Draco thought was code for �a willingness to believe
anything and everything.� He found it hard to believe that Granger had been
converted from her obsessive skepticism simply because Raverat had told her
that she might be a Seer.

�� Harry
shifted beside him, and Draco smiled at him. Though he knew it was a strained
smile, at least he was trying. At least he was here, and after Raverat gave
Granger some kind of exercise, then he was going to talk to Draco. Harry smiled
back and nodded, as if to say that he appreciated Draco�s sacrifice.

�� Raverat
handed Granger a piece of parchment and said something that made her beam and
start scribbling. Draco shook his head. Maybe that was the secret: give Granger
homework and she would try anything.

�� Hello,
Trainee Malfoy. You�ve been avoiding me.�

�� Draco
nodded shortly and stepped forwards. Then he paused. Granger had the chair
opposite Raverat, and Draco had been standing until this point. But from what
Harry had said, he didn�t think he wanted to be standing upright when Raverat
started to examine him.

�� You�ve
finally agreed,� Raverat said. He didn�t seem to recognize the problem, and
just went on examining Draco with critical eyes while he leaned back in his
seat. �Why? Why would you resist for so long and then accept?�

�� For Harry�s
sake,� Draco said. �And because I consider Granger to be partially under my
protection, and I want to see what you�re making her do.�

�� Granger
jerked her head up, staring at him. Draco ignored that. It was true, really.
She was part of the comitatus, and that meant he was still responsible for her
at least some of the time.

�� I see,�
said Raverat, studying him with more interest than he had shown before. Draco
told himself to ignore the chill wave that swept over him. So far, Raverat
hadn�t shown that he was evil in any way. Draco would have to accept that both
Granger and Harry had emerged unharmed from his hands, and Harry, at least, had
to be one of Nihil�s targets. �Sit down here, then.� He rose to his feet and
offered his own chair.

�� Draco took
it, though he checked it carefully first for springs and loaded traps. He
thought Raverat must be annoyed that Draco had waited so long to see him, and
if the man had been in Slytherin�as seemed likely�a means of retaliation would
not be out of the question. But he found nothing, and he finally sat down and
looked up at Raverat.

�� Now.�
Raverat leaned forwards and held out his fingers in absurd patterns. Draco
tried to keep his expression bored although he could feel his pulse leaping
about in his throat. �Do sit still and be quiet. I need to learn the patterns
of your mind first, before I can learn the changes that might be present among them,
and sudden disruptions from your emotions or your movements will mean I have to
start over.�

�� Draco
nodded. So far as he could find that reassuring, he did. It sounded like what
Harry had told him Raverat said. He leaned back in his chair and calmed his
breathing, forcing himself to sink into the cold contemplation that his father
had taught him in order to avoid boredom when he was waiting in the Ministry.

�� Raverat
murmured something and began to move his fingers like dowsing rods. Draco let
his eyes fall shut, because he couldn�t see what leaving them open would
achieve. He would only have the absurd sight of Raverat, Harry�s concerned face
or Granger�s worried one, and the walls of the tent to fill his sight.

�� Raverat
came closer to him, though Draco sensed a touch from him only once, when it
felt as though the edge of a fingernail scraped along his cheek. Draco bit his
lip and said nothing, keeping his mind still. He wanted to find out whether
Nemo had marked him as much as Harry did, though, he thought, for rather
different reasons. For one thing, Harry would stop hinting that he see Raverat
if he did.

�� What�� Raverat�s
voice, sharp and panicked.

�� The
familiar darkness and bone-eating cold crept over Draco. He opened his eyes and
bolted to his feet. There seemed no need to sit still if Raverat was speaking
like that.

�� The tent
was filled with the spinning void, though here and there Draco could see
shifting sparks of what looked like distant yellow campfires. He had never seen
that before, and it made him slow to react.

�� A great,
skeletal hand reached down from above and grasped him, yanking him up. Another
one grabbed Harry at the same time.

�� Draco could
feel the cold better than he could feel the bones gripping him. He could see
the sides of the tent speeding past him as though they extended far higher than
he knew they did. He writhed and kicked, but the hand never loosened its grip,
and in fact he heard someone laughing softly into his ear as though they had
anticipated that and knew he would never get loose.

�� Draco drew
his wand from its place in his sleeve.

�� The voice
gasped as though drawing in breath, and Draco lashed out with his wand and his
legs at the same time. But the hand, holding him from above, wasn�t vulnerable
to that, and his spell flew wide. Draco turned his head, reaching out for Harry
instinctively, trying to use the compatible magic that flowed between them.

�� He couldn�t
see Harry. The small yellow sparks had died, and now he was in that familiar
darkness that had almost eaten him three times before, and he was alone.

*

�� Harry
didn�t know what Draco was seeing, but he didn�t think it was one tenth as
strange as what he was seeing. He could see the bony fingers that reached down
for them and gripped their shoulders and their hair. It was no trouble to see those. They loomed, as if
shoving other things into the background on purpose.

�� The problem
was, Harry could also see their glowing transparency, and he knew that meant
they weren�t really there.

�� Behind them
was nothingness, like the ball of nothingness, dripping tar that refused his
sight. But Harry could make out the yellow sparks at the same time, circulating
through the tar, popping out again in a way that seemed to suggest both of them
could exist in the same place without touching one another.

�� It was
dizzying. And worse than dizzying was the fact that, when Harry glanced to the
side, Draco had vanished and the space where he had been was filled only with
cold.

�� Harry
closed his eyes and remembered the wheel that Draco had told him to envision,
spokes and axle shining with roses. He wasn�t good at the crystal or the other
visualizations that Lowell and Weston had told them to use, and he suspected
this wasn�t a skill that he was ever going to get good at. But he had become as
close to expert as he ever could with the wheel.

�� He reached
out towards Draco, extending his consciousness or magic or whatever it was that
allowed them to sense each other.

�� The barrier
between them shivered, and broke apart. Harry saw Draco still rising through
darkness, still held in the grip of a bony hand, and all around them drifted
and rang Nihil�s laughter.

�� Harry
concentrated. He didn�t know what would happen if he did, but he hoped that he
could get through to Draco somehow, speak in his mind the way that Draco had
said they should be able to do when they�d mastered this technique.

�� But Harry
only ran into darkness when he tried. The chill grew worse, and he felt as
though it were dancing in the middle of his bones, hollowing them, eating the
marrow. He cursed and tried again, and the laughter in his ears�Draco�s
ears�grew worse. Whatever the vision of the wheel had permitted him to do, it
wouldn�t let him rescue Draco by speaking into his mind and coming up with a
plan.

�� Harry
sharpened his concentration and ignored the way that the chill seemed to be
deepening around his own limbs, too. There had
to be a way past this. They couldn�t just give up and let Nihil take them.

�� He looked
up, and realized that the bony hand that gripped Draco wasn�t transparent. He
channeled his magic towards it without thinking twice, the compatible magic
that ran through their bodies and which he seized control of without thought,
since Draco wasn�t using it right now.

�� The
creature that held them shrieked as chips of bone splintered from its hand.
Harry grinned fiercely and hammered away at it with power again. If the one
holding him was illusion, this was the real one, and it could be killed like
the beasts that they had fought in the past.

�� Draco
seemed to understand what he was doing at the same time, because Harry felt the
leap of understanding in his brain, and then the magic that was flowing through
Harry redoubled. Together, they hit out with it like a whip, and the bony
fingers shattered enough to drop Draco into the void.

�� Harry
snapped himself back into his own body, and found he was falling, too. The
creature had somehow lifted both of them with only one hand. It didn�t matter
that he understand it right now; it only mattered that he and Draco get back to
the real world.

�� He reached
out to Draco, and this time the compatible magic flowed back to him at once.
Harry envisioned the tent with Raverat and Hermione in it as hard as he could
and sent the vision to Draco, who answered back with a wordless blast of
emotions: relief and determination. They would find it if they could.

�� Harry wound
the compatible magic into a loop of rope and tossed it to Draco. The one thing
they had to avoid was getting separated. Harry didn�t know that he could
venture into the void again to rescue Draco, since what they had entered was so
different from the darkness they�d experienced the other times.

�� Down they
fell, and then the rope caught, drawing them together, pinwheeling them around
until Harry gasped in discomfort. But he had a tight hold on Draco now, and
could feel his body pressed against Harry�s, shaking with the magic, although
he couldn�t see him. He shut his eyes and pictured the tent again.

�� The
laughter was in his ears again, snarling so hard that Harry flinched. He
thought he could feel spittle striking him, but no breath. Of course not, he
thought, Nihil was dead and there was no reason for him to breathe.

�� You will die for this. You will do more than
die. I will send you into nothingness and not allow you to return.

�� Draco
screamed. Harry�s eyes popped open, but no matter how hard he stared, he
couldn�t see him. He tightened his hold on him and thought again of the tent.
That was the only thing that might stop whatever pain Nihil was inflicting on
Draco.

�� Warmth
suddenly flooded around them, driving the cold away. Harry looked again and
found himself sitting on the floor of the tent. Hermione was standing over
them, reaching out to probe his head, and Raverat stood behind her, his face so
white that Harry thought he was about to faint.

�� A trap,�
he whispered. �There was a trap in Trainee Malfoy�s mind, waiting for someone
to spring it. I didn�t know�I never meant�I hurt him.�

�� He is
hurt,� Hermione said, in a voice that was so careful Harry turned at once.
�Tilt his head back, Harry, will you?�

�� Harry did
it, swallowing hard enough to make his throat ache. There was a series of long
parallel scratches on Draco�s face, striking from his forehead down to his
chin. Draco�s head sagged, and if it hadn�t been for the fact that he was still
breathing, Harry would have thought he was dead.

�� Then he saw
what Hermione and Raverat had already seen, and wanted to vomit.

�� Draco�s
left eye was gone. The scratches suggested the claws that had made them had
simply scooped it out, whole, and tossed it somewhere into the middle distance.

�� Harry shut
his own eyes and shook with sickness, revulsion, and fear. He didn�t know what
Nihil had meant to accomplish with this attack, but he knew what had resulted:
Draco marked again, in a permanent way.

�� Hermione
was saying something to him about a Healer. Harry couldn�t listen. He didn�t
think he would faint, but the fear consumed him.

*

�� SP777: As
described when he first appears, Raverat has black hair and grey eyes. He�s
probably in his late thirties.

�� And Harry
and Draco would be close to 21 at this point.

�� polka dot: Draco
is suspicious that Raverat is a Nihil plant, or else someone he just doesn�t
want touching his mind.

�� Dragons
Breath: I think Draco is too focused on himself at the moment to care that much
about Hermione.

�� Shadow
Lily: Thank you! You may like her line in this chapter.
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Seasons of War