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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
Twenty-Five�United

�� Harry was
aware of eyes on him when he walked into his class with Weston and Lowell by
himself, and for unusual reasons as well as the usual ones. He acted as though
he didn�t see the stares, at least as best he could when he didn�t know what
Robards and Holder had told anyone yet, and took his regular place in the
forming circle.

�� Where is
your partner, Trainee Potter?� Weston looked at him with narrowed eyes, leaning
against air. Lowell, behind her, was talking with Herricks. Harry had no doubt
that Lowell was listening to the conversation despite the fact that he was
apparently focused on something else. Weston and Lowell were a pair; what one
knew, the other did.

�� Sick,�
Harry said. �Because of rumors that you may have heard.� He thought the
insinuation should be safe either way. If Robards and Holder had said nothing
yet, they would soon; if they had started to spread rumors, then Harry would be
covered.

�� Lowell
jerked a little, but his voice in the running monologue to Herricks remained
calm. Weston shrugged and stood straighter. �You�ll be unable to participate in
most of the exercises we�ve chosen for today.�

�� I know
that,� Harry said, and stared at her until she looked away and began speaking
with some of the other partnerships.

�� Ron worked
his way around the circle, necessarily tugging Hermione with him, until he
stood next to Harry. Hermione attended to Weston�s lecture with annoyance
seeming to bristle off her while Ron whispered to Harry in an undertone, �How
is he, mate?�

�� Not used
to it yet,� Harry said. He flashed Ron a brief smile. It wasn�t as though Ron
had any particular reason to care about Draco, except that he was Harry�s
boyfriend and partner. �Would you be?�

�� Ron grimaced
and scratched the back of his neck, then straightened up and nodded so that he
could pretend he�d been paying attention to Weston�s advice. When he turned
back to Harry, his face was grim. �Do they know what happened to his eye? I�d
hate to think of it ending up the way Moody�s did, or worse.�

�� Harry
shuddered. The memory of Moody�s magical eye stuck in Umbridge�s door was
hardly one of his worst memories of the war, but he thought it might become so
now that Draco had lost one. �They don�t know yet,� he said. �I think it�s one
of the things that Portillo Lopez and Raverat are working to find out.�

�� Ron
probably would have asked another question, but Weston called out for him and
Hermione to demonstrate a technique at that moment, and they had to shuffle
into the middle of the circle. Ron shuffled, at least; Hermione walked as
though someone had stuck a poker up her arse. Harry reckoned that she didn�t
think the wounding of someone else in the comitatus a sufficient excuse for not
paying attention in class.

�� Can he
still lead us?�

�� Apparently,
it was Harry�s fate not to be able to learn what Weston and Lowell were
teaching that day. He blinked and turned to Ventus. She rarely approached him
outside the comitatus, but it made sense that she would want to know now. In
fact, Harry was surprised that she hadn�t visited Draco yet. Perhaps it was a
touch of sensitivity or (more likely, knowing Ventus) she wanted the answer only
to her question and not anything else that Draco might be able to tell her.

�� I think so,�
Harry said. He kept one eye on the back of Weston�s head, which often seemed to
spasm before she turned around and pinned you with a deadly stare for talking
in her class. �He�s not�not himself, yet, obviously, but he has the will and
the strength to survive something like this and pull himself back together.�

�� But the
loss of an eye will damage his ability in battle.� That was Herricks, behind
Ventus. He had picked up Weston�s trick of leaning against thin air and did it
now as he studied Harry with an intense frown. �Can he retain the leadership of the comitatus? He might want to,
but whether he could do it in such a way that he benefits us is another
question.�

�� Harry bit
the inside of his cheek in a way that he hoped would keep him from shouting. He
had never cared as much about Herricks as Draco did, but at the moment, he
could see how one might dislike him.

�� I don�t
know yet,� he said, because it was the only answer he could give that was true
to Draco but would keep Herricks from arguing. �Yes, he lost the eye. That
doesn�t mean that he lost all knowledge of how to fight along with it. And I
don�t know how high the war is on his list of priorities right now.� High, perhaps, with the need to get revenge
on Nihil. But Harry was not about to tell something so private to other
people.

�� He�ll win
and survive and come through,� said Ventus, with the comfortable assurance that
Harry had seen in her before. Sometimes he thought she willed her own reality
into being, by being so confident that she simply refused to accept anything
else. �Some of the greatest generals in the past have been wounded by Dark
curses and still struggled on. You must remember Mad-Eye Moody.� She turned to
Herricks with a faint smile, inviting him to agree with her. Harry wondered
what would happen if someone disagreed with her when she looked like that. He
might be interested in finding out, but only if he could stand some distance
away.

�� Yes, he
might,� Herricks said. �But coming
through doesn�t help a lot when we have a war to fight now, does it?� His
gaze was cold and intense as he leaned towards Harry. �You tell him that it�s
not shameful to lean on others and delegate some tasks to other people.�

�� I�ll tell
him,� Harry said, lying, for the first time, without a telltale stammer or his
face turning red. He disliked Herricks enough at the moment that the lie sprang
more naturally to his lips than the truth.

�� Herricks
started to say something else, but two things happened that prevented him:
Weston swung around and glared, and Holder strode through the ragged circle of
trainees into the center.

�� All
attention focused on her. Harry decided, later, that that must have really
irritated Weston, since it was the moment she had probably counted on launching
some blistering admonition about paying attention in her class.

�� Weston and
Lowell came to attention. The trainees scrambled closer together and tried to
stand up as straight as veteran soldiers. Ventus stared thoughtfully, her hand
falling down to her wand. Hermione jerked nervously, as though her secrets were
written on her face. Ron, Harry noticed, was the only one who had an
uncomplicated reaction. He would have liked to pound Holder into the ground
with his fists, and he didn�t care if she knew it.

�� Harry
wasn�t sure what his own face looked like, but Holder seemed to have
anticipated any reaction. When she turned in a slow circle and caught sight of
him, she nodded judiciously and beckoned with one finger. Harry�s face flamed,
but he walked towards her. If she tried to humiliate him in public, he would
probably have to go along with it, at least as long as it was part of the
cover-up for Draco�s injury.

�� And would I be able to perceive in time that
it�s not?

�� When he
stopped in front of her, Holder looked him up and down as if she had expected
to find more meat on his bones. Then she said in a soft but carrying voice,
�You may tell your partner, Trainee Potter, that his sacrifice shall not go
unrewarded.�

�� Harry took
a deep breath. He had to make a guess about how to react, and he wished Draco
was at his side to make it more certain. �Will you be able to give him a new
eye, ma�am? Or don�t you know yet?�

�� The
sacrifices themselves may be mentioned in public,� Holder said. �I think the
rewards a matter for privacy.� She laid a hand on Harry�s arm, and Harry was so
shocked that he nearly forgot to notice how cold and thin her fingers were.
�But know that we are proud of you. No one has done more in the war than you
have.�

�� She stalked
off the same way she had come, cloak flying behind her like a banner. Most
people stared. A few more edged away from Harry as if Holder�s favor was a
catching disease.

�� What did
she mean?� Herricks demanded.

�� Perhaps
you would have some idea if you ever listened for the meanings of words, Trainee Herricks,� Weston said.

�� Harry
started to grin, because he could feel the strength of her desire to say that
from here. But then Weston turned around and gave him a remote look, and Harry
winced and stepped back. He knew the next words out of her mouth would be as
devastating, but this time, they would be aimed at him.

�� Lowell
touched Weston�s arm and shook his head.

�� Weston
didn�t turn to look at him, but by this time, Harry knew that didn�t mean
anything. She studied Harry in a moment of long, posed silence instead, then
turned away and said in cold tones, �Everyone should come nearer the center of
the ring and listen carefully to our instructions. We will not repeat them.�

�� Harry was
glad to crowd around with the others. He didn�t yet know what the consequences
of Holder�s actions, and his, would be; he hoped that Draco was able to live
with them. Harry had thought he could survive almost anything, but Draco seemed
more fragile to him, now.

*

�� I want to
know what kind of trap you laid.�

�� Nemo had
been asleep when Draco and Raverat had come into the tent where he was being
held, but he snapped awake at the words, quivering. Draco stood staring down at
him and wondering how much of the wards and enchantments that held him were
really strange and how many were simply distorted by the sight of his single
eye.

�� Silver
chains linked Nemo�s wrists, so light that he probably couldn�t feel them, but
Draco saw the thorns coming out of the cuffs. A heavy pair of iron blocks
encased his feet. Blue light hummed around his head. There was also a stifling
presence in the tent, like incense, that Draco couldn�t see. He thought that
was probably the spell Gregory had discovered that would cut off contact
between a Dark Lord and his followers.

�� I don�t have
to answer to someone like you.� Nemo�s voice had no strength, and his nose
twitched like a rabbit�s.

�� Draco
crouched down in front of him. He had no fear of falling over and looking
ridiculous, although his legs had begun to tremble with the exertion of
squatting like this almost the moment he did it. He thought he was still not
fully recovered from the beast�s attack. But what he felt at the moment was sharp and cold and focused. He would get
answers out of Nemo, and he didn�t care what it took to get them.

�� I�m sure
you don�t,� he said. �But you�re going to.� He glanced at Raverat, who simply
studied Nemo grimly and gave him no help. Draco decided that he could risk one
of the spells he wanted to use. He took up his wand and aimed it at a bare
patch of skin on Nemo�s leg, above where the iron block ended.

�� Nemo leaped
and cried out in agony as Draco�s spell took effect. He tried to reach down and
scratch the exposed patch of skin, but the chains prevented his hands from
getting near it. He twisted around and stared at Draco, his nose twitching in
panic and his eyes darting from side to side.

�� What did
you do?� he whispered. �I can feel beast magic of any kind. What did you set on
me?�

�� Draco gave
him a serene smile. �It hurts, doesn�t it?� he asked, not answering otherwise.
The spell didn�t really implant a burrowing insect under someone�s skin. It
only felt like it. But the pain and the burning and the itch would grow until
the caster took the spell off. Draco didn�t think it was as brutal as some of
the torture that Gregory would have inflicted on Nemo. That didn�t matter,
given how annoying the sensation could be and how it would baffle Nemo by
intruding on his area of expertise.

�� Nemo
twisted, trying vainly to turn the leg so that he could see it. �I demand that
you stop this,� he said. �I demand that you release me.�

�� Of course
you do,� Draco said, and bounced his wand in his hand, and smiled.

�� What do
you want?� Nemo bowed his head and
shuffled in a cramped circle, trying to hitch the leg up so that it would reach
his chains and scratch itself. Draco laughed. Nemo heard him and froze,
shoulders hunched and shaking. �What do you want?� he repeated in a lower
voice. �I don�t know what Nihil might have done now that I�m not with him. I
keep telling you that. You don�t listen. I don�t know.�

�� I want to
know what kind of beast has bony claws and lights of eyes that fill the
darkness with fire,� Draco said.

�� Nemo turned
his head towards him. His face held more intelligence than it had a moment ago,
though ripples running beneath the surface indicated that Draco�s spell was
still functioning. �I won�t tell you,� he said.

�� Draco
shrugged and cast the spell again, this time on an unguarded patch of skin on
the back of Nemo�s hand. It hurt even more there, or so his father had assured
him. Nemo rubbed his hand furiously on the floor.

�� More of
that until you tell me,� Draco said.

�� Raverat
made a little noise in the back of his throat. Draco glanced at him curiously.
If he had thought the man would be trouble, he would never have brought him
along. He had made the suggestion and led the way, and hadn�t left yet, so
Draco had assumed that he could stand torture. Instead, his eyes were fastened
on Nemo�s body as thought he had never seen anything so horrifying.

�� I don�t
know,� Nemo said, and his voice rose into a wail. �You can�t make me. Why is
this so hard for you to understand? I�m a part of Nihil, and I obey only him. I
can�t tell you what he won�t allow me to tell you.�

�� Draco
didn�t believe that for an instant, since Nemo�s refusals up until that point
had been a matter of willful denial. He cast the spell on Nemo�s cheek, and
Nemo screamed this time. Draco smiled. He didn�t think the spell that bad. What
it did was trap Nemo in a cycle of pain that he couldn�t escape by ordinary
measures, and Nemo was part of Nihil. Pain that he couldn�t escape frightened
and enraged him as nothing else did, given the experience of part of him under
the hands of Death Eater torturers.

�� No! No!
No!� Nemo was flailing about, and Draco would have been worried that someone
else would hear his cries, but he had checked the silencing wards on the tent
when they came in. �You can�t�what is it?
You have to get them out! You have to leave me alone!�

�� I know
that you can tell me the name of the beast, if you want to,� Draco said.
�You�re the one who would know, since you raised them for Nihil. And you�re cut
off from him. He won�t know if you tell me.�

�� Nemo�s
screams filled the silence between them, and nothing else. Draco thought he
would succumb eventually. He leaned back on his heels and waited, turning his
head from side to side so that he could get a sense of the whole tent. He hated
the restriction of his peripheral vision that happened with one eye gone.

�� Must you
be so cold?� Raverat whispered.

�� Draco
looked at him. �What?� Perhaps the expression on Raverat�s face was part of the
distortion, too, but Draco didn�t think so.

�� The others
at least appeared grim or determined,� Raverat whispered. �You look as though
you enjoy what you�re doing to him.�

�� Draco shook
his head. �I�m enjoying my revenge on the only part of Nihil that I can reach
right now, and Nihil is responsible for my condition. I do want the answers to
those questions, yes, but that�s a secondary concern.� He sneered then. �Unless
you�re going to tell me that I should waste sympathy on someone who would do this to me.� He gestured angrily at his
face.

�� Raverat
looked stern and grave, as though he knew the answer he wanted to give was not
the one Draco wanted to hear. But Nemo responded, not seeming to know when it
would do him best to keep silent. �That wasn�t the plan! We were supposed to kill you, not only steal an eye!�

�� Raverat
turned rapidly towards Nemo. Draco didn�t. He thought such movement would only
startle the idiot into keeping his mouth shut after all. �Really?� he asked, as
if bored. �You�ll excuse me if I don�t believe you.�

�� No!� Nemo
ducked his head and apparently attempted to rub his cheek against the chains.
�You have to believe me. We meant to
kill you. You�ve been a nuisance to us long enough, you and that partner of
yours. The trap was meant to spring when you were together in the presence of
someone who could be blamed.�

�� Now we�re getting somewhere, Draco
thought, closing his eye. He didn�t know if the pain or his own delusions had
prompted Nemo to respond, and as long as it sounded like truth, he wasn�t going
to question it. �That�s a trap that I�d thought beyond your abilities,� he
said, lacing cool contempt and grudging respect together in his voice. �You�ve
surprised me, Nemo. Perhaps you�ll surprise me again.� He paused just long
enough to let Nemo�s hopes rise, and then finished, �But I don�t think so.�

�� No!� This
was a full-throated cry of agony, and Nemo was scrubbing his cheek so hard
against his shoulder that it had started to bleed. �Really! I just tied the
trap with the beast�s name and nature, and the beast was the one who would
sense when it was needed. Not me at all.� He smiled pathetically at Draco. �I
know I�m not the smartest. That means that you need to believe me, and stop
them!�

�� Draco
opened his mouth to ask what Nemo meant by �them,� and then smiled thinly. Of
course. Nemo still believed the itching arose from insects rather than a spell.
He had probably worked with beasts so long that he preferred to attribute any
magical effect to them rather than to reality. �I might,� he said. �If you give
me more.�

�� Nemo froze
for a moment. Then he jerked his head and began to babble. �Yes, yes, why not?
You know the most important things already. The beast was supposed to kill you.
The eye was an accident.� His voice sank. �Not that he won�t find some way to use it. You know that he will.�

�� Yes,
perhaps he will,� Draco said, and showed as much indifference as he could.
�What is the name of this beast?�

�� Nemo said
something that sounded like a kitten gagging on a mouthful of rotten porridge.
Draco raised his eyebrow. �The English name?�

�� I don�t
know if it has one,� said Nemo. Again, for a moment, he looked calm and regal
as he considered his area of expertise, though the image was undercut by the
way that he tried to scratch his legs with his bound hands. �I would call it
the Dark Argus, perhaps, because of the hundred eyes.�

�� Draco
nodded. The reference made sense, and that was as much as he expected from Nemo
right now. �Is it sturdy? Can it be killed? What harms it?�

�� Nemo
twisted towards him and stared with narrowed eyes. Draco felt Raverat touch his
shoulder. He shrugged in irritation. The touch had come from his blind side,
and Nemo was reacting so well that Draco had nearly started to forget the loss
of his eye. He could have cursed Raverat for reminding him.

�� You will
not kill the Dark Argus,� Nemo said in a thick, eerie voice, as if pronouncing
a prophecy. �You cannot. You will not. You dare not.�

�� Shit. Draco knew he should have trod
more carefully, and that this particular danger was no one�s fault but his own.
He knew how protective of his beasts Nemo was. Of course a question about its
vulnerabilities would lead him to rise above whatever pain he might be
experiencing at the moment and fight for it.

�� But showing
his knowledge of all that would be worse than stupid. So Draco stared, arms
looped around his knees, and let his face reflect nothing but boredom and
contempt. �Certainly I won�t,� he said. �It will probably die now that you�re
no longer at Nihil�s side to feed it, anyway. I know that the beasts don�t last
long without someone to tell them what to do, and I don�t think Nihil�s as good
at it as you are.�

�� Nemo�s face
had a complicated expression on it, one formed of combined outrage and
flattery. �You dare not,� he whispered, and then shook his head. �But why am I
concerned? You cannot kill the Dark
Argus. It has no vulnerabilities.�

�� Including
being fed the improper food and choking to death on it, the way Nihil will
probably make it do?� Draco asked brightly.

�� Its mouths
are like steel,� Nemo said. �Its stomachs are like steel. It perfectly obeys him. There is no way that you can kill
it.� He sounded now as if he was talking to himself, and his fingers flexed
nervously in the air, no longer scratching. �It is the beast that was meant and
summoned and made to last.�

�� This was also
getting somewhere, although Draco didn�t know how many details he would be able
to fetch out of that morass Nemo called his mind. He shrugged. �It can�t have
been that hard to summon, if someone else can control it.�

�� Do you
know how long I spent collecting owl feathers and kneeling among the bones that
I found in the south of Wiltshire?� Nemo demanded. �If you think that you could
do it yourself, you are more than welcome to try.�

�� Wiltshire, again. Draco had assumed,
when he heard last year that Nihil had often appeared in Wiltshire, and when he
battled him there, that it had something to do with the shade of his father
that had taken up residence in the Manor. But this was more likely, that there
had been some creature there Nemo needed to spend time digging up and
researching.

�� Raverat
shifted beside him, as if even the mention of necromancy was enough to make him
want to hurt Nemo. It recalled Draco to himself. He thought Harry would come
back to the tent soon, and he didn�t want to remain here. He stood up. �Perhaps
I�ll summon a Dark Argus myself,� he said. �Perhaps I�ll kill it. Who knows?�

�� Nemo gave a
number of outraged cries that blended with sounds of pain as the itching
returned to his consciousness. Draco smiled and walked out without lifting the
spells. He didn�t want Nemo to realize that he�d told Draco anything important
and connect it to the relief he�d been granted from the torture.

�� Raverat
came behind him. He gave Draco several troubled glances, which Draco felt more
than saw. Finally, Draco turned to him, rolled his eye, paused a moment to think
about how pathetic that gesture would look with a single eye, and then
demanded, �What is it?�

�� You are
colder than I thought you were,� Raverat responded.

�� It was all
he would say no matter how much Draco questioned him, so Draco gave up and
returned to the tent.

�� Where
Holder was waiting for them.

��

*

�� SP777:
Draco is probably not going to be satisfied unless Raverat gets down and
grovels.

�� Thanks for
reminding me about your e-mail; I�ve replied to it.

�� qwerty:
Draco knows exactly the sensation you
mean.

�� thrnbrooke:
Not enough to content Draco, evidently.

�� Dragons
Breath: They didn�t kill the beast. And as Nemo says here, they might find that
extremely difficult.

�� Draco
trusts Portillo Lopez more than Raverat, because at least she wasn�t in the
tent when the beast attacked.
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Seasons of War