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The Serenity of His Rage	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16981 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Five—The Next Horcrux

            “You had a bad night.”

            Harry scowled at his plate. Sometimes he regretted that the bond had no telepathic side, and sometimes he was glad. This was one of those times. It was annoying enough that Draco had picked up on the cause of Harry’s bad mood when they weren’t actually sharing thoughts. He didn’t want Draco to hear the cursing he was doing right now.

            “You know, most people think ignoring something makes it go away only until the age of eight.”

            Harry had to roll his eyes. “Did you meet some of our classmates?”

            Draco leaned towards him. They were eating together in Hogwarts’s Great Hall, at a small table that seated him, Ron, Hermione, Draco, Snape, Dumbledore, and the other professors still in residence—Hagrid, Trelawney, and Vector—without trouble. Hagrid had dominated the conversation with loud exclamations about “secrets” for next year’s Magical Creatures class and booming “whispers” about what Malfoy was doing there. Harry supposed it was a testament to how much Draco had changed that he ignored Hagrid.

            “Let’s play it this way, then. You could get away with ignoring this if I wasn’t here. But I am. So talk.”

            “Yes, I had a bad night. Dreams that there was a Horcrux somewhere in Hogwarts.” Even the word made Snape scowl at them, and Harry lowered his voice further, although Hagrid couldn’t hear them anyway, and Trelawney only seemed interested in her cup of what was probably alcohol. “Okay? I know they’re nightmares. I’m so paranoid that I’m dreaming about them everywhere.”

            Draco’s face had taken on a strange look, though. “Where did you dream it was?”

            “In the Room of Requirement.” Harry paused when he felt the blankness coming through the bond. Of course, Draco probably didn’t know it by that name. “Oh. I forgot. The room where you were—working. And the room where I held sessions of Dumbledore’s Army last year.”

            “Did you really have to name it that?”

            “Didn’t know then what I know now, did I?”

            Draco considered this, then seemed willing to be convinced of it. “There were so many old things hidden away there. It would probably make the perfect hiding place for a Horcrux. The Dark Lord would think that no one would look for it among all that rubbish.”

            Harry nodded slowly. “But I wasn’t dreaming like I was linked to him. It was just a nightmare. How could it be true?”

            “Why couldn’t it be true?” Draco interrupted at once. “You knew the difference between the decoy Horcrux and the real one when we were in the cave. What if you’re feeling some of the Dark magic now because you know you’re a Horcrux and you’re more sensitive to things you would have ignored before?”

            Harry hesitated. He wanted to say that he hadn’t ever had dreams like this before, except the ones from Voldemort. But maybe he had. Maybe he’d just ignored them, or forgotten them, or decided they were visions when they weren’t really.

            “We’ll check the room,” Draco said decisively, and reached out to snag some toast from his plate, even though there was a huge platter of toast right in front of them.

            The bond between them simply shimmered when Harry raised an eyebrow at him. Draco nodded at Harry’s plate. “Because this is warm from your touching it, of course. I’m surprised that you didn’t think about that.”

            Which utterly disarmed Harry, of course, and had probably been the whole point. But still he couldn’t help smiling helplessly at Draco, and letting him take whatever else he wanted for the rest of the meal.

            Sometimes Ron gave him baffled looks, but Harry only looked at the way he kept trying to take Hermione’s hand under the table without her noticing and saying something, and enjoyed it himself when Ron turned red.

*

            Draco looked around sharply as he stepped into the Room of Hidden Things. He couldn’t help thinking he ought to spot the Horcrux at once, now that he knew it was there; he had the Mark on his arm and a lot of experience being around the Dark Lord, after all. He could sense it as well as Harry.

            But either Harry did have a special connection to the Dark Lord because of the Horcrux in him or there were just too many artifacts in here with magic that felt similar and could block Draco’s perceptions. Draco turned towards Harry and waited.

            For a moment, Harry was turning his head back and forth with his eyes closed, like a dog blindly seeking a scent. And then Weasley and Granger piled in behind them—because of course they were there, of course they had insisted on that—and Harry’s eyes snapped open again. Draco hid a delicate, disapproving sigh and nodded to the nearest pile of rubbish, which had a few broken chairs with silver designs on the back and a moldering tapestry in it.

            “Should we start with that? It would be better to have a plan to tackle things instead of just plowing through random piles.”

            “Of course it’s easier if we have a plan. We should start with the biggest pile, though, and work our way down to the smaller ones.”

            Granger was forever ordering people around and changing perfectly reasonable ideas, Draco thought. But at least he could raise his hands and shrug his amusement when Harry glanced at him, and the bond between them recorded his honest emotions, which weren’t savage. Harry smiled at him in relief and followed Granger and Weasley to the highest pile.

            Draco did make sure they were standing next to each other when Harry started sorting through what looked like a mound of broken watches, and murmured, “Anything?”

            Harry shook his head. “The problem is that I think he mostly uses Founders’ artifacts, and anything in here could be that.”

            “You think so? When there are so many dirty and broken objects here?”

            “That just makes it all the more likely that we wouldn’t recognize the value of something when we touched it,” Harry argued, holding a watch up in front of him and squinting at it before he shook his head and tossed it away. “And maybe Voldemort even cast illusion spells to make it look worthless.”

            “I don’t know,” Draco murmured. He wanted to say the Dark Lord was too arrogant for that. He would come up with strong defenses for his Horcruxes, but he wouldn’t make them look tarnished or like rubbish, because he would want others to admire them and envy him.

            But short of Harry sensing Dark resonances from the right object the way he had the real locket, Draco didn’t know how they would find it in the middle of these defenses. He went back to sorting through chains that had once been connected to the watches, and necklaces, and brooches and rings with missing stones. One of the Horcruxes had been a ring. It was possible that the Dark Lord would have chosen another piece of jewelry, too.

            Founders’ artifacts. What do I know about Founders’ artifacts?

            Not a lot, Draco had to admit. His family had mostly been interested in their own heirlooms and sometimes the artifacts of other families that they might be able to steal once they’d conquered those families; they’d retained a list of what the Weasleys used to own for a long time after the last Weasel ancestor of note had gambled their fortune away. But the only stories Father had ever told about the Founders concerned Slytherin, and Draco had never even heard of that locket the Dark Lord had housed his soul in.

            Sort, look at, toss aside. Granger was using her wand to float the discarded objects into a pile of their own, which Draco had to admit was a good idea, and they were already mostly through the tall one they’d decided to tackle. But so far, they hadn’t come near anything that made Harry flinch and grab his scar, or that felt the slightest bit like greasy Dark magic to Draco’s perceptions.

            “I don’t think this is going to work,” Harry finally said. “We could sort through everything in here and still miss it if it was tucked inside a box.” He took a step back from the piles and rubbed at the sweat on his forehead. He was fetching like that, Draco thought, even with the red of his scar glaring through the sweat like a lamp, and had to look away.

            “Well, then?” Granger didn’t sound challenging, but out of breath. “I don’t really know a better way, Harry.”

            “I know. And it might not be here at all. It might just be a nightmare.”

            Harry was casting Draco an appealing look, as if he wanted him to agree with that. Draco only stared back. He had no idea, honestly, but if there was the slightest chance that the dream was real and they had a chance to get their hands on a Horcrux before Dumbledore did, then he thought it was their duty to do it.

            Harry only nodded in resignation as though he wasn’t surprised to see Draco’s determination, and said, “I could sense the decoy locket wasn’t a real Horcrux right away. Let me stand still and see if I can feel the Dark magic.”

            “There’s too much here to confuse it—”

            “But we haven’t felt anything like that yet,” Harry interrupted, with a little glare at Draco. Honestly, though, it was the feel of the bond sending small pellets of ice flying into his face that made Draco shut up. “So maybe there aren’t actually that many Dark objects here. It’s worth a try.”

            “Yes, it is,” said Weasley, who leaned back against the wall of the room and fanned himself. Draco held back a snort. Was Weasley a wizard or not, that he had forgotten about the Cooling Charm?

            “You only think that because it means less work for you,” Granger scolded him in an undertone. “The way that you used to want me to do your homework for you because it would mean you’d have less work.”

            “But you love me for it.”

            Draco, with far less desire than the others might have to hear tales of Granger and Weasley’s love life, cut in, “Be quiet for a minute. Harry needs to concentrate.”

            That got him glares from both of them, but at least they melted when the pair of them glanced at Harry and saw him standing still in front of the pile they’d excavated, his hands held out. His scar was turning a brighter and brighter red as Draco watched. Draco shivered. Even knowing they would never have been soul-bonded without the Horcrux in Harry, he didn’t have any tender feelings for it. He wanted it out as soon as possible.

            He just wasn’t willing to pay any price to get it out of there, unlike Dumbledore.

            Harry pivoted slowly to face the back of the room. His hands were twitching now, at the wrists, and his fingers curling back and forth as if he’d been hit with a lightning curse. Then he nodded to no one in particular and started walking towards the far wall, marching over the sliding piles of bricks and books and furniture in the way.

            Draco hurriedly drew his wand and started to clear some of the floor, and glared across at Weasley and Granger until they helped, too. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to, Draco thought, but they needed someone with leadership skill to give them some direction.

            I just hope that won’t need to give them this much direction if they’re with us when we destroy the next Horcrux.

*

            Maybe it was just that he’d been in the same room for long enough now to disregard some of the other impressions he received, but Harry could hear the Dark magic of the Horcrux as clearly as a shout.

            He moved slowly forwards through the clutter, his eyes closed and his feet stumbling. If he opened his eyes, he was afraid he would lose the source of the emanations. But the bond with Draco would jump whenever he was on the verge of losing his balance, and Harry would readjust the way he was walking and go on.

            The Dark magic came from something solid, and Harry ran his hands up what felt like the back of an overstuffed chair. And then there was something else on top of there. A bust? A statue? His fingers were exploring eyes and ears for a second, and then—

            There was something still higher than that. Something thin and flexible, and when Harry touched it, he shuddered. It was made of metal, the way the locket had been, and maybe metal just held Horcrux magic better or something, but Harry knew that he was receiving a much clearer impression than he had been.

            Then his hand actually touched the thing, and he opened his eyes in time to see that it was a thin headband of some sort, a tiara or crown or something, before an explosion of Dark magic hurled him backwards into the wall.

            The thing tumbled off the bust it’d been hanging from, and to the floor. Harry saw Ron reach out to pick it up, and yelled as loudly as he could, “No! I think it has defenses—the way the locket did when we tried to destroy it—”

            That was as far as he got before a dark band crossed in front of his eyes, blinding him, and then pain stabbed his temples. The Horcrux had a defense, all right, but it was in him, trying to possess him the way Voldemort had in the Department of Mysteries, and Harry cursed and then screamed aloud at the pain.

            His real concern, though, was Draco. If Draco could feel the same agony through the bond, then Harry was frantic. And if the Horcrux somehow managed to flow through the bond and possess Draco because they were connected…

            There was an echoing, choking laugh in his ears. The Horcrux, laughing and pressing close as if looking eagerly through his ears into his brain.

            Yes, yes, I know. You care more for him than yourself. And that settled, why am I here? Why am I not already possessing him? Unless you were willing to trade yourself for him so I would leave him alone…

            Harry opened his mouth, not sure what he would say. The pain was so great, and he didn’t want it to continue, and the Horcrux was stabbing as his thoughts and memories with little jabs like bolts of lightning, and he hated it. But he would hate the thought of the Horcrux possessing Draco far worse…

            Then it’s all right with you? We have a bargain?

            Harry never got the chance to see what would happen if he’d said yes, because the pain suddenly had a whole new target, and he heard the sound of metal ripping apart at the same time, and the black band flew away in front of his eyes as he heard the Horcrux snarl again.

*

            We have a bargain?

            Draco didn’t know how he could hear the words—perhaps because he was floating the Horcrux in the air in front of him when Harry started to scream—but he knew what they meant, and they maddened him. Harry probably would sacrifice himself to keep the Horcrux from touching Draco, which was romantic and all, but Gryffindor and horrible, and Draco had to keep it from happening.

            He didn’t know what possessed him to cast the spell that should start melting the metal of the diadem—because that was what it was, maybe even Ravenclaw’s, the legendary diadem that had been lost for hundreds of years. But he did it, and he heard the same scream down the bond and saw the black band crossing Harry’s eyes loosen and fade.

            Then Draco had to turn, because the diadem was flying towards him and it was dripping molten metal on the floor, and it was too, too pitifully obvious that he couldn’t just fire spells like that at a Horcrux and expect to destroy it.

            The diadem tried to bind itself around his head. Draco ducked under that. Then he rolled desperately aside from the drops of molten metal, and ended up casting a charm that cooled the silver and stopped it from dripping. It was just too dangerous with the diadem flying around the room like that.

            The Horcrux came to a stop, hovering, above a huge pile of empty boxes and snapped chair legs. Then it darted behind it and out of sight.

            But Harry was still panting like a dog, and even though the Horcrux had stopped blinding him and speaking to him, Draco didn’t think its influence was gone. He crept over to Harry without taking his eyes from the spot where the diadem had disappeared, and whispered, “Are you all right?”

            Harry gave him a fragile nod, and Draco felt the same reassurance come down the bond. What made him really relax was Harry’s solid anger, like lava, burning up or transforming the water that was usually Draco’s picture of the bond. Harry stood up, shook his head, and said, “Where did it go?”

            “Behind there,” Granger said, pointing, and took a step forwards.

            The diadem came zooming out and straight at her. Draco shouted. He didn’t think Granger had anything that would let her resist, not like the soul-bond with him had let Harry resist. And it made sense that she would hesitate just a little too long at the thought of all the knowledge in the diadem, because she was the most Ravenclaw-like of them, and lose to it.

            But Granger stood her ground and coolly cast a wordless spell that made a net rise from the floor around the diadem. It must have been some sort of charm meant to trap birds, because the net snapped together at the top and sides, and when the diadem tried to turn to the side and slip through the space between the meshes, Granger just tightened it. The Horcrux ricocheted around inside, making insane noises when its silver scraped against the net, but at least it couldn’t escape.

            Draco sighed and knelt down beside Harry, who had dropped back to his knees. “Is it talking in your head again?”

            “Not talking. Just sort of muttering.”

            Draco kept his hand supportively on Harry’s shoulder and looked at Granger. “Can you get Professor Snape and bring him here?” Because it was for Harry’s sake, he made his voice polite.

            “Right. And Professor Dumbledore.” Granger turned towards the door, shaken, but looking stronger by the minute.

            “Not him.”

            Granger spun to face him. “But this is serious! This is about Horcruxes, and Professor Dumbledore has done the most research on them!”

            “Of course he has,” said Draco. He made his voice less condescending when he saw the way Granger glared at him. She could make things difficult for them, as much as he hated to think that. “But I don’t think he has the best intentions when it comes to me and Harry and the soul-bond, and I could only hear the Horcrux because of the soul-bond. Come on, Granger,” he added impatiently, when he saw her opening her mouth. “Harry was the one who came to me and told me that you offered to help us against Dumbledore. It’s the only reason I trusted you enough to bring you along.”

            “What about me, then?” Weasley demanded.

            Draco gave him a withering glance. “I thought you’d made your allegiances sufficiently clear by distracting Dumbledore at Grimmauld Place. Otherwise, of course, you’re simply a disease that follows Harry and Granger around everywhere.”

            Weasley turned as red as a blood-splattered rose, but Harry spoke before anyone else could. “W-wait, Ron. Please. Get Professor Snape.”

            Weasley bent down at once, and Harry relaxed a little at the sight of his concerned face. That reassured Draco. It was the only reason he let Weasley ask the question instead of shooing Weasley away to do what Harry had asked him to do. “Why, mate?”

            “Because he knows Legilimency,” said Harry with a sigh, and closed his eyes. He was leaning so heavily on Draco now that Draco was afraid he was going to slump over if he moved. “And he’s been in my mind before. And he helped set up the soul-bond, but he doesn’t want me to just go and die. P-please.”

            Weasley gnawed his lip like his teeth needed the exercise for a second, before his face went blank with determination and he jumped up. “Right. Come on, Hermione.”

            Granger only raised her eyebrows, as if to say all her protests were exhausted when both her best friends were against her, and followed Weasley out of the room.

            Draco sank back down against Harry. “How do you feel, really?” he whispered, seeking out the bond. It shivered with exhaustion, and felt thinned and stretched. Draco really, really hoped that was because the diadem Horcrux, still dashing around in its net, didn’t sit in the middle of the bond between them. He hated the thought of sharing his bond with Harry with that thing.

            “Tired. My head hurts. And I want Snape to make sure that the Horcrux didn’t leave anything in me.”

            Because that was the exact same fear he had, Draco tightened his arms around Harry, and they stayed like that until Professor Snape and Harry’s friends came through the door.

*

            Severus sighed when he opened his office door and found Weasley and Granger there. He sighed harder as he sorted through the confused tumble of their tale and figured out what had really happened.

            “So you went after another Horcrux,” he said. “Without a basilisk fang or anything else that could potentially destroy it with you.”

            He could still make Granger pale with his voice alone, but Weasley, who’d developed a most undesirable streak of independence, glared and answered back. “Well, the last one didn’t fight back until it was time to destroy it! We thought the same thing would happen with this one!”

            Severus simply shrugged and went to fetch a Headache Draught. Clearly, there was no arguing with some Gryffindors. Potter, as much as it pained Severus to say it, was the most sensible one among them, in sending for him.

            It was only as he turned around with the potion in hand that a realization came to him. He was preparing, now, to defy Albus openly. Before, he had had the pretense of making his conversation with Potter the one that Albus had wanted him to have.

            This, he had no sanction for.

            Severus stood still only a moment to say farewell to his old self, the one that had labored under his debt to Albus and hated teaching all the little brats that came through the school and believed he was winning some manner of redemption by spying on the Dark Lord and working with the Order of the Phoenix. Then he took the first step on the road away from that self.

            “Let’s go,” he said, sweeping past Weasley and Granger.

            He did retain enough of his old self to be amused as he watched them scramble in his wake.

*

            AnonymousTigress: Thank you so much!

            SP777: Albus is desperate. That’s really the cause of most of his actions.

            And thanks. ;)
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The Serenity of His Rage