Building With Worn-Out Tools | By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 54266 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2 |
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Harry crouched behind a patch of gorse and peered at the house in uneasy fascination. He didn’t know exactly where they were; he only knew that they’d hopped north from Malfoy Manor, and the countryside had grown increasingly bleak around them. The golden cord ended at last, though, leading directly into the building in front of them.
The house itself was no more a prize than its setting. Its walls were made of black stone, but the stones had partially come loose, and Harry could see what remained of the mortar clinging to them like scum on the surface of a pond. One arched doorway was filled with a tumble of rock. The windows were broken, or boarded with crazed shutters of torn and tilted wood. What must have been a graceful garden at one point was filled with creeping honeysuckle, and vines that Harry could imagine bearing thorns but not flowers.
“She’s there?” Draco whispered beside him.
Harry nodded, but didn’t pause in his study of the house. He had to find out where Zabini and Lucius were before they attacked. “I must admit I didn’t expect them to be in a place like this,” he muttered.
“It’s probably one of the old manor houses that a pure-blood family couldn’t afford to keep up after the war, and so sold,” Draco said without interest. “Blaise’s mother probably bought it.”
“If she’s that rich—“ Harry said, taking his eyes off the house to glance at Draco for a moment. His companion concerned him. Draco’s face was paler than it had been, and his lips were pursed to the point that it looked as if he might start chewing through them at any moment. Harry sympathized with his frustration, but he also knew it was necessary to hold still and be calm at this point in the game, or they could ruin everything.
“She is,” Draco said shortly. “But the money in the family is hers, and Blaise can’t use it unless she dies soon.” His flattened lips lifted into a smile for the briefest of moments. “I can’t imagine why she doesn’t make more generous provisions for him now.”
Harry chuckled darkly, and then regarded the house again. The golden cord ran through a lower wall, turning it transparent to his sight, but then it continued on and up, towards the far side of the house, and he simply couldn’t see the ending from here. The only thing he could be certain of was that it did end in the house, since it wasn’t leading his eyes further on. “Stay here,” he murmured to Draco, starting to stand. “I need to scout the other side.”
Draco’s hand closed on his arm, causing Harry to grit his teeth against the pain. “Not a chance, Potter,” Draco said, his voice cracking like one of the windows under the strain. “We aren’t separating.”
“I need to do a reconnaissance of the other side, where Zabini and Lucius are,” Harry said, striving for patience. “I understand that you want to help, but you don’t know a thing about this, and I do.”
Draco stared at him with narrowed eyes for a moment. “From experience in the war?”
“Yes.” Harry regarded him with some suspicion in turn. Draco looked thoughtful, but that could be a bad thing.
“Hmm.” Draco released him abruptly. “You have ten minutes from now, Harry. Cast a Tempus charm if you need to, but then I’m coming to find you.”
“Thanks,” Harry said, not without some sarcasm, and then began working his way around to the other side of the house. It would have been quicker to Apparate, but he thought they might feel it from this close. There were some sort of wards on the house, but, just like so many other things, he wouldn’t be able to determine what kind they were until he got nearer.
*
Draco counted the minutes under his breath, glancing at the Tempus charm when he felt he needed to. It agreed with him, though. Harry had been gone eight minutes. Two more, and Draco would go to find him.
He could keep count in the meantime, though, and with perfect accuracy. His fear for his mother was not destroying his concentration, the way Harry seemed to think it would.
He blanked his mind of every speculation as to what could be happening to Narcissa, and instead numbered his heartbeats. Nine minutes had passed. He knew he shouldn’t have let Harry go by himself, previous experience or not.
And then Harry was back, Apparating softly in beside him, and bending down with a grim smile. “No wards to detect Apparition,” he whispered, his breath stirring the small hairs on Draco’s ear. “No wards to prevent it, either. I suppose they want the chance to get away quickly themselves, if it comes to that.” His mouth twitched away from the smile for a moment. “Remember that. They can escape.”
Draco nodded, his gaze not moving from Harry’s face. “And my mother? Did you see her?”
“Yes.” Harry stared back at him with an expression at once both sympathetic and hard, as if he wanted to reassure Draco but understood it would be useless. Answering the unspoken question, he murmured, “She looks to have a broken arm and a large wound under her right—breast.” He flushed for a moment, as if it had taken him a lot to say the word. Draco might have found it endearing if he didn’t have other things to feel. “She isn’t in danger of blood loss, though, since it’s bandaged. They’re all in a large room on the west side of the house. Ground floor. No obstacles; I think they want to be able to move quickly if they’re engaged in a fight there. Zabini is standing guard over Narcissa. Your father…I’m not quite sure what he’s doing, actually. Sitting in a corner and laughing to himself, and sometimes staring at his wand.”
“That’s normal behavior for him.” Draco once again took Harry’s arm. He felt as though he stood more chance of making the great idiot listen when he touched him. By the way Harry’s muscles stiffened under the touch and his eyes flew to Draco’s, the great idiot thought so, too. “Listen,” Draco hissed, just in case. “When we go in, my first priority is saving my mother—“
“Of course,” Harry said, sounding offended.
“—But the second is securing both of them so they can’t escape.” Draco’s hand clamped down more firmly, and he tugged Harry closer to him. “Blaise is mine. No matter what happens, no matter what I do to him, leave him to me. You’ll have to stop my father, since I’ve never won when I engaged with him wand-to-wand. Kill him, Harry. There’s no other way to stop him, or even slow him down.”
Harry tilted his head, and there was a cold, distant glitter in his eyes that Draco could have wished to see in the courtroom. “Yes,” he said. “I understand.”
“Take me, then.” Draco stood and wrapped both arms around Harry’s waist, leaning close as Harry drew his wand to Apparate them. Almost as an afterthought, Harry’s left arm slipped around Draco’s back.
I will be grateful when this is done and I can test how much it’s changed him, was Draco’s final thought in the moment before they vanished.
*
Zabini and Lucius hadn’t substantially altered their positions when Harry peered through the window again, though Lucius was apparently talking to his wand instead of just staring at it. Harry forced himself to remember the older wizard’s quickness and ferocity in their last battle. No matter how stupid he seemed, behind his Azkaban-induced madness he was still intelligent. All the madness had done was remove his instincts towards self-preservation.
Draco nudged him with an elbow, and pointed to Zabini, who had moved a bit away from Narcissa, as though he’d heard a sound at the door on the room’s south side and wanted to investigate. Harry understood the silent message as though they shared a single brain. They wouldn’t get a better chance to attack.
He had already planned out his first move. He drew his wand and Vanished the window. Satisfying as breaking it would have been, it would also have filled the room with flying splinters of glass that could have damaged Narcissa.
He jumped through the window a moment later, hearing Draco’s thumping footsteps just behind him. He paused when he heard a sound that could have been Draco’s elbow catching on the windowsill, but then the footsteps resumed, reassuring Harry that he was still on his feet.
He made straight for Narcissa, catching a glimpse of Zabini’s face as he wheeled around gaping, and seeing Lucius rise to his feet, flipping his cloak away from his arm so that he could better draw his wand. Then he narrowed his gaze to Narcissa, and as he came nearer, it was easier. She was wounded. She needed his help. He had to be gentle, and he had to be quick.
He dug down into his magic and cast a spell of more complexity than any he’d dared in the last five years, excepting the blood magic ritual that he and Draco had used to track Lucius this far. The air in front of him shimmered and sparked, and then turned solid white. In moments, it formed into a bubble around Narcissa, made of flapping crystal that would bulge and move as necessary to let air in, but would instantly seal tight shut in the event of an attack.
Harry had only cast the spell once during the war, and hadn’t been sure he would remember the incantation. He had, though. He allowed himself a moment’s pride before he drew up his magic for the next attack.
And then Lucius crashed into him, and Harry screamed as enormous pain flared along the middle of his back.
*
Draco didn’t allow himself to look around at Harry’s scream. He had Blaise in front of him now, and his overwhelming purpose was to put the bastard down so that, when he did turn to help Harry, Blaise couldn’t come up behind him and put a Killing Curse through him.
Blaise was dancing backwards, swinging his wand and casting curses that cracked like whips, forcing Draco to spend more time dodging and ducking than using his own spells. That was all right. Even as weirdly-colored beams of green and blue light traveled past him, he was sinking into a crystalline trance in the center of his mind, the kind he used for exceptionally difficult magic, and the kind that had finally produced his plan to connect the Vanishing Cabinets during sixth year.
Blaise finally had to pause for breath, and to favor an ankle that he seemed to have slightly twisted, and then Draco aimed his wand directly at him and cast. “Suppressio infinitum,” he heard his own voice say, as drained of emotion as though he were merely using the incantation on a stranger to see what it did.
Blaise screamed. Draco doubted he had recognized the spell so quickly. Rather, he was probably feeling the first sensations as it whirled into the center of his brain, gripped his deepest fears, and yanked them front and center.
Slowly, Blaise sagged to his knees, holding his hands in front of his eyes. They shook. His gaze was focused past Draco, wide and unseeing, and then he began to scream, again and again, sounds that seemed to core out the center of his throat. Draco carefully cast a Body-Bind, and watched without emotion as his old friend’s body turned and crashed to the floor. Blaise couldn’t easily have caused trouble when all he saw were his own, unending nightmares, but he might have run wildly about the room, and that would have been inconvenient.
Draco spun on his heel. He saw the white bubble that protected his mother, and raised his eyebrows in grudging respect. He thought he knew what spell Harry had used, but he was not sure that he could have managed it.
Then he looked to the battle raging between Harry and Lucius.
And his mouth went utterly dry, nearly as dry as it had when he had heard that his mother was taken.
*
Lucius had used the Flaying Curse, Harry knew within seconds of the first agony, and had removed most of the skin from his back, all at one go.
He really should have expected it, he told himself, as he got his knees under him and whirled to the side so that he wouldn’t slip in his own blood. Even with the need to keep Narcissa safe, he shouldn’t have neglected his own defense for that long. He still had to win this battle, after all.
He couldn’t roll, or he would only cause himself more pain. He had to keep turning, making the first curses that Lucius shot at him fly by harmlessly, and then spring to his feet. The wound on his hip twinged, and his right leg briefly sagged as if it would fly from beneath him, but luckily Nagini’s bite only truly hurt him when he was tired. He was rested enough for this battle.
He had to be.
Harry surged up, and Lucius came straight at him, apparently disdaining lesser magic and reaching for the Killing Curse. Harry looked carefully into his opponent’s eyes, the way Alastor Moody had taught him, and saw nothing sane there. He had to kill him.
All right, then.
The beam of green light came in low, at his knees, and Harry leaped over it. He whipped his wand sideways as he started down, shouting, “Sectumsempra!”
Lucius looked down in surprise at the bloody cuts on his chest, but he hardly seemed to feel them. That, Harry acknowledged as he landed with a grunt, and the strange angle and the pain in his back had probably reduced the effectiveness of the spell. Whatever the cause, Lucius looked up with a rictus of a grin a moment later and moved towards Harry once more.
He had obviously survived the maiming of his arm, Harry thought, and reattached it with his own magic or that of some skilled surgeon. But the fact that it had been wounded at all gave him an idea.
It was Dark magic, what he was about to use, but so was Snape’s curse. And Hermione wasn’t here to scold him for it.
“Volnero porro!” he called, and forced all his will through the narrow core of his wand, directly at Lucius.
Lucius, mad, smiling, walked on. But Harry’s spell hit him in a coruscating wave of blue light, and Harry, holding his breath, saw that it had worked. Bright bruises flowered over his pale skin first, racing across his arms and face, and then blood burst from his chest. The Old Wounds curse forced all the ancient injuries of one’s opponent back to the surface, from the least serious to the most serous, making him suffer them all at once. Harry didn’t think he had long to wait before the curse once again severed Lucius’s arm.
But Lucius came on, mad, smiling. He moved his wand in a pattern Harry didn’t recognize, and though he tried to bring up the Shield Charm, this was either a curse that couldn’t be blocked by it, or he didn’t manage in time.
His chest began to rip open. Harry could feel his internal organs also beginning to dance, and either they were trying to yank themselves free or they were simply rupturing themselves with the force. Pain like nothing he’d ever felt was suddenly his world, and he had to sag to his knees, and then further than that, sideways, down, until the floor was pressing against his cheek. He didn’t know the counter to the spell, and he didn’t think he would have been able to pronounce it even if he did, given his screaming.
But as he fell into pain, so he fell into rage. He picked up those emotions and held them near him, in some strange internal world where he had all the time that didn’t exist in the external one. He called up the uncontrolled magic that had flourished around him for five years, and he told it he had a task for it. It danced in his head, hummed in his bones, and made him feel strong even as he began to die.
Kill Lucius, he told it, his mind flashing with the possibilities of Lucius not dying in time of the blood loss, Apparating away so that he could remain to trouble Draco and his mother, or somehow turning and forcing his way through the bubble that protected Narcissa. I don’t care what pain I have to suffer, but kill him, damn it.
The magic shuddered, and then the same rippling, earthquake feeling went through him that Harry had felt when he killed Voldemort, as if he did not bear the lightning strike but rather were the lightning strike. He flung the power forwards, hurried out of him, and then managed to force his eyes open to see what would happen when it landed.
The magic hit Lucius like a burst of white-hot, liquid sunshine, and Harry found, incongruous though it was, the memory of Hermione once telling him that the sun was made of something hotter than fire. It clung to Lucius, burning, and finally the madman screamed in pain. And then the white-hot glow contracted inwards, writhing like a snake struggling to get a huge meal down between distended jaws, and Harry vaguely smelled burning flesh, and then the whiteness folded up, and he knew Lucius Malfoy was dead, because no one could have survived that.
Of course, no one could have survived throwing it, either. Harry realized he was breathing his last breaths. He let his eyes fall closed with a faint smile. At least he was dying to save someone else’s life. After the war had ended, he had thought there was never a chance of that.
*
Draco had to fling an arm across his eyes to shield himself from the blinding flash as Harry’s magic ate his father, but he had already seen Harry’s pitiful condition, made into scraps of flesh and streaming blood. And he didn’t allow the flash to interrupt him as he cast the needed spell, any more than he would have allowed a scream from Longbottom to disrupt his concentration during Potions.
“Stabilitas!” he shouted, and the Stasis Spell settled around Harry and contained him, freezing him in his present condition, the way that it could preserve a volatile potion on the edge of exploding.
Draco turned and headed for the bubble that embraced his mother. He was not sure how to break it, but he had to break it. Narcissa was on her feet now, her good hand splayed along the white surface, her eyes wide and hopeful. Her mouth moved in some greeting to him that he couldn’t hear.
Draco cast a Vanishing Spell, reasoning that that might help. If anything, the bubble simply clamped down tight, the sudden lack of any hold forcing his hand away. Draco nodded grimly. He could only hope that the Healers at St. Mungo’s had seen something like this before, and so could counter it.
He cast a Levitation Charm on the bubble, making it bob gently into the air, and then renewed the Body-Bind on Blaise. He didn’t want his old friend going anywhere before he had a chance to pay for his atrocities, but there truly were more important things right now.
Then he turned and cast Mobilicorpus at Harry. He shuddered to watch the way the Stasis Spell brought bobbing chains of blood along with him, suspended in the air as blobby drops that couldn’t fall.
But he couldn’t think about it right now. Harry needed help. He had nearly died to save Narcissa’s life and Draco’s, he had brought them peace that Draco hadn’t ever expected to know by killing Lucius, and he was going to live so that they would have a chance to win this divorce case.
Draco gripped Harry’s arm with one hand, laid the other on Narcissa’s bubble, and Apparated to St. Mungo’s.
He was not sure if the taste in his mouth was bitterness or triumph.
*
Anon: Draco and Harry are meant to be counterparts to each other, yes.
And, essentially, the cutthroat methods are condoned in wizarding divorces. It’s an “any means necessary” kind of thing, reinforced by the precedent of everyone else who tried to commit murders and blackmail during the cases by this point in history.
Thrnbrooke: At this point, no one is going to be in the courtroom tomorrow, so the trial simply cannot happen.
Berkie88: Not really; I understand that it’s a long story and people can forget details which haven’t been mentioned since Chapters 1 or 2.
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