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The Same Species As Shakespeare	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16108 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Seven�In
Virtue, In Vengeance

�� A scramble
and a punch and a cry and a stab. Draco was fighting a creature as pitiless and
mighty as one of the Greek Furies.

�� And he was
losing.

�� He knew
that from the contemptuous ease with which the imposter kept any wand away from
him, with the rapidity of the elbows and fists slamming into his ribs and
shoulders, with the way the other man�s legs flailed beneath him and how he
cried out curses without a pause for breath. He hadn�t managed to unleash any
magic yet, given how close they were�he must fear that he was going to hit
himself with the backlash as well as Draco with the actual spell�but he was
causing Draco pain anyway.

�� Draco thought
about letting himself be driven backwards. He could lie on the floor, gasping,
his hands raised in surrender. The imposter would pause a moment and glare at
him in wrath, and in that moment Draco could�

�� No. Draco
doubted that would work. As maddened as the imposter was now, he would probably
rape Draco�s mind with Legilimency before Draco could decide what to do, and he
would certainly read the intention to attack on Draco�s face. Draco no longer
thought he was subtle enough to fool someone who had studied him so long.

�� You did once before, his mind hissed at
him as the imposter briefly pinned him to the floor and almost held a wand to
his throat. Draco coiled a leg around his hips and kicked him in the arse, and
the man lost his balance. Draco scrambled away and then behind and grabbed him
around the throat. Nails raked across his forearm.

�� Draco tried
to wrench to the side and throw the imposter to the floor again, but the man
snarled at him and bit his hand. Draco jerked it free automatically�he had been
taught to respond that way to pain, and then wait until house-elves could deal
with whatever had hurt him�and the imposter turned and pointed the wand
directly at his eyes.

�� This is
the end,� said the stranger, his voice muffled but the hatred clear in his
eyes. �Your obsession with Potter has corrupted you to the extent that you
could hurt me, the new version of
you, the only one in the world who wants what is best for you.� Hurt joined the
hatred, and Draco stared at him, baffled, not wanting to die at that moment
because he wanted so badly to understand what would make someone act that way. �He�s
flawed you. He�s twisted you and broken you, and you can�t even value a
peaceful death.�

�� Draco,
keeping his eyes steady on the imposter, started to shift a foot to the left.
If he could just whirl around the man�s body fast enough, he might be able to
snatch his hawthorn wand, which he could see sticking out of a robe pocket.

�� The
imposter shook his head, blond hair flapping around his tragic expression. �And
now I understand things so much better,� he said. �You will never end your
obsession with Potter until you see him lying dead at your feet. How fortunate that
he is now here.�

�� And he
turned and Apparated away. A moment later, Draco felt the snap as powerful anti-Apparition wards locked into place.

*

�� The blue
flame coiled around Harry and burned him from the inside out.

�� He tried to
keep his lips shut on the screams, but it didn�t work. The flames found their
way through his skin and then turned backwards, so that it felt as if he were
suffering from hundreds of ingrown nails all at once. And then the pain snapped
past that, expanding and racing throughout his body until he was entering new
horizons of pain, new landscapes of agony, throbbing and dancing and shivering
clouds of anguish.

�� Over his
screaming, he heard someone chanting spells, but the pain only grew sharper and
spikier, and Harry thought he felt something within the cradle of his skin fall
into ashes and ruin. Perhaps his liver. Perhaps his heart.

�� The thought
of losing his heart reminded him of Draco, and he forced himself to rise to his
feet by the simple expedient of pushing his hands against the ground and
concentrating on the motion of his muscles. The pain was real, yes, more real
than anything he had experienced in his life�except his love for Draco.

�� Ron and Hermione won�t like me naming it
love, he thought distantly, and the thought led him further still from the
pain. He had a gasping moment, a breathing space, when he wasn�t at the mercy
of the fire and the flames had paused as though unsure how to proceed. He had
to remember that Draco had likely suffered more than this, and needed Harry to
come to his rescue, however proud and stiff and ungrateful he might be at
first.

�� And then he
realized the reason he had a space amid the flames was that they had stopped
burning. He blinked and looked up, trying to catch a glimpse of the boulder. It
seemed to have vanished. So had Lucius and Snape and Ron, as a matter of fact.
A wall of white wind enclosed him from all sides. Harry warily held up his
wand, wondering if this was some new manner of ward. His hand shook with spasms
of lingering pain, and so he clasped his fingers around the shaft of the wand
and braced his elbow on his side.

�� Potter.�

�� The word
had a cool tone, but Harry had yearned for the warmth that lay under that
coolness. He looked straight ahead, and Draco stood in front of him.

�� And it was his Draco, the Draco he had imagined,
with a reluctant half-smile tugging at his lips and his head tilted to the
side, with a small piece of hair falling in front of his eyes, as if he needed
it to shield him from the terrors Harry�s gaze might pour out. Harry took an
eager, sidling step towards him, and then stopped, unsure.

�� But when he
reached out, he could feel the vibrations of the hawthorn wand. The wand was
stuck in Draco�s robe pocket, and Harry laughed aloud. Draco at once drew back
and away from him, his hand hovering above the wand, as if he were going to
draw it if Harry were amused at his expense.

�� No, no!�
Harry whispered. He wavered from the pain again, but this time he didn�t care.
He could drop his own holly wand to his side and stand free from fear. Draco
had managed to rescue himself. �I was laughing because�because it�s you, and
you�re whole, and I didn�t even need to come into the rock and save you.�

�� You�ll
never need to save me,� said Draco,
with a twist to his voice that Harry imagined implied Draco thought Harry would
need saving himself.

�� No, I don�t
reckon I will.� Harry took a deep breath, because he was remembering the letter
now, and the articles, and the way that he had felt when he woke in the grass
amid the dew and under the moon after Draco had slept with him and then
abandoned him. He almost wanted to clench a fist and punch Draco; he almost
wanted to lunge forwards, grab his shoulders, and kiss him.

�� He knew he
didn�t want to do the responsible thing, which was what he did next. He nodded
to the wall of white wind orbiting around them. �Do you know how to drop this
thing?�

�� Draco
blinked, twice, his long lashes�why had Harry never noticed how long they were
before? And he called himself an expert on Draco�brushing his skin and then
rising slowly again. �Why would I know how to drop this thing?�

�� Because I
thought the imposter might have told you. Or maybe you discovered it when you
broke free.� Harry glanced in irritation at the wind wall. Ron must be frantic
by now, and Lucius would be imagining what could have happened to his son, and
Snape�Snape was probably preparing his best lecture for the moment when Harry
appeared again. �You didn�t, did you? Then I�ll try.�

�� He lifted
his wand, and once again his hand shook wildly. And this time Draco stepped
towards him, resting one hand on his arm and smiling. �Harry,� he murmured. �You
have to rest. Whatever you encountered on your way to not-rescue me must have
taken much out of you.�

�� Yes,� said
Harry, but he was looking at Draco�s face, and the way Draco looked at him
without a hint of resentment over the letter. He was thinking of Draco�s voice,
and the way he had called Harry by his first name.

�� No
hesitation, either. Even though, when they had first seen each other just a few
minutes ago, he had spoken �Potter,� also without hesitation.

�� Harry
thought Draco might love him, someday, when he had grown the sensitivity to do
so, but he didn�t think they could have a placid relationship yet, without
addressing the issues of the letter and Draco�s betrayal.

�� Why are
you staring at me as if I were about to knock you down and snatch the Snitch
from you?� Draco asked, his voice soft, mild, amused. �Let me handle this,
Harry. I want to be free of it as much as you do, and it�s clear at the moment
that you would be�incompetent to handle it, let us say.�

�� Too smooth. Harry gave a great shudder,
and the wound in his side throbbed, as if to remind him of what had happened the
last time he mistook the imposter for the real Draco.

�� And yet, was
it beyond imagination that Draco would want to avoid talking about those things
until they were out of danger? The wards and leaving the imposter�s
neighborhood were more important than
threshing everything out right now.

�� How did
you defeat the imposter?� he asked.

�� Draco stiffened,
then sighed. �You won�t approve of it when I tell you,� he said. �I�m trying to
avert an explosion for the moment. Let me think of dispelling charms right now,
won�t you? And you mustn�t mind if I use Dark Arts.� He raised his wand and
murmured an incantation too soft for Harry to hear. The whirlwind shrank, but unfortunately
contracted inwards as its walls lowered, so that Harry was forced a step back
towards Draco.

�� That sounds like something Draco would say.
And it�s like Draco not to get the incantation right the first time. He�s not
as great a wizard as he sometimes thinks he is.

�� So many
clues pointing the one way. So many clues pointing the other. And Harry had to
worry, too, about what Draco would say if Harry made the wrong decision and
attacked him, and it turned out he was the real one after all.

�� Harry
swallowed and said, �There�s one thing I have to know first, because it�s
plagued me since you disappeared.�

�� Draco gave
him an indulgent look out of the corner of his eye even as he lifted his wand, which
must be the imposter�s stolen wand, for another try. �What�s that?�

�� How did
you react when you first received my letter?�

�� And there
was a momentary blankness in Draco�s face, which could have been startlement or
wariness or mere surprise that Harry would bring up something like that at a time like this, but Harry thought he knew what it really was, and he wasn�t
about to take the chance that this Draco might not be the real one, not now.

�� He
attacked.

*

�� Lucius fell
back a step when the white wind surrounded Potter. The suddenness of the ward�s
rising gave him no time to consider reactions. He lashed out with a Lightning Curse
that had broken stronger wards in its time than most Death Eaters would ever
know; it was how Lucius had smashed the defenses of several of his rivals in
the original war, so that the Aurors could find them. A Malfoy�s faith was
always qualified.

�� The
lightning rebounded and came back at him. Lucius knew it would have struck him
if Severus hadn�t already erected a shield, a glittering blue diamond that
dissipated the lightning harmlessly along its surface. Lucius let out a long
breath and turned to thank Severus.

�� Severus
hadn�t waited to be thanked. He had stepped past Lucius and begun to chant
something in a strong, rolling voice, but no language Lucius knew. His wand was
aimed at the white wind, and Lucius calmed, knowing that Severus could break it
if anyone could. They had only to wait.

�� And, in the
meantime, look for the boulder. Lucius knew he ought to be able to see it still
past the relatively small circle of the whirlwind, but it had vanished as
though it were illusion or a spell like Severus�s shield, meant to last only
until it was no longer needed. Lucius frowned and took a step to the side,
peering.

�� Weasley nearly
knocked him down. He was groaning, and swearing, and yelling, �Harry? Harry,
come back here, you mad bastard!�

�� To Lucius�s
disgust, his voice held the sound of tears. Lucius rolled his eyes and snapped,
�Weasley, your weeping can�t help him now. Help me find the boulder. The man
who attacked him lives there. If we can find him, we can make him drop the ward
and free Potter.� And free my son, he
thought, but he doubted that argument would have convinced Weasley.

�� After a breath
that made him sway on his feet, the red-haired menace nodded and aimed his wand
beyond the whirlwind. He chanted a Seeking Spell that ought to find the
presence of any stone in the vicinity, if Lucius was construing the Latin
right. Reluctantly impressed�he had not supposed that Aurors knew such useful
magic�Lucius cast the Seeking Spell in another direction, and waited.

�� Nothing
came back to them, no report. Perhaps the boulder had indeed vanished, or had
never existed in the first place.

�� Lucius was
about to shed some of his own blood and cast the Seeking Spell again, this time
to seek the presence of similar blood�Draco�s�when Severus finished his spell.
A black cloud appeared out of nowhere to engulf the white wind. It appeared
like an eclipse, and steadily darkened like one, until Lucius had to look away.
The thin rim of light around the darkness threatened to blind him.

�� And then it
stopped. And Severus cursed, with that rarest of notes in his voice: disbelief.

�� Lucius
looked back at the ward, and saw that it had grown smaller and tighter, but had
not vanished, as Severus�s spell seemed to have been designed to make it do.

�� And that it
was swaying back and forth, like a sack full of cats fighting.

*

�� Draco had
found the stone room where the imposter had first brought him without trouble,
but from there, he could find no exit. He crossed the central floor five times.
He banged on all the walls as high as he could reach, looking for a hidden
door. He cast a wandless spell that should have revealed the presence of steps
to him. He tried to Apparate, envisioning the last place he could clearly
remember the imposter bringing him before they emerged into this hidden lair,
and reappeared in the same place.

�� But we Apparated to get in here! I know we
did.

�� The image
of the way the imposter could be torturing Harry made his head ring harder than
the fear itself. He darted wildly in several directions, like a rabbit running
from a hawk�s shadow, before he slowed himself with a forcible jerk and a
fierce breath.

�� I can�t let myself be consumed by this. I�ve
got to remember that Harry�s depending on me, and so that gives me more responsibility
to keep my head, not less. I know certain spells can mimic Apparition, and it�s
by one of them that we must have traveled. What one would the imposter be most
likely to use, given what�s here and what I know about him?

�� A leap
through darkness, Draco�s old reading whispered to him. That was what Apparition
was, the simplest description of it, if one ignored the squeezing sensation and
the distance crossed and the magical theory that hummed in the back of one�s
mind and polluted one�s understanding of the act. (There had been a period when
Draco couldn�t Apparate because he had paid too much attention to the impossibilities
of it as expressed in magical theory and didn�t trust his body and his wand
anymore). A leap through darkness had to have light to lead it. Some spells
that mimicked it traveled by sun or stars or moon, harnessing the light of heaven
to pass through wards. The lights of heaven laughed at wards.

�� And so
could other light.

�� Draco
snapped his eyes open and stepped towards the fireplace, laying one hand on the
cool stone. He spoke the incantation that mimicked Apparition through fire,
concentrating solely on the syllables as he rolled them and released them, so
he wouldn�t panic himself by trying to remember if he actually remembered or by
thinking of his wandless state.

�� And then
the spell seized him, and he was tumbling through a darkness brilliant with
tiny sparks of light, like the night sky spangled with stars, and triumphant
words rang in his head.

�� I do use logic to solve problems, most of the
time. I don�t fight like Harry after all.

�� And then he
was in a tight, narrow space with someone who looked like him and a charging figure
that looked extraordinarily like Harry, and there were white walls around them,
and the hawthorn wand was directly in front of him as the imposter flung up a
spell that scorched across Harry�s face.

�� Draco
snatched at the wand. His first instinct had been to fling himself between
Harry and the imposter�s magic, but he would be useless with only flesh instead
of magic to block it.

*

�� Harry had thought the imposter a
mad genius before, when he was fighting to defend himself and kill Harry.

�� Now he was
fighting for his life, and he was brilliant.

�� Lightning
stabbed the darkness around them; light coruscated and became burning fire;
showers of earth rained to earth and
rose up again as water; rose petals fell on Harry�s face, stung him with small
thorns, and then became buzzing bees whose stingers dripped a deadly green
venom that Harry knew he didn�t want on him. Crack and flash and alteration and
change, and Harry could barely defend himself.

�� He tried
the academic means of defense that the Aurors had instilled in him, carefully
paced Shield Charms and offensive spells and absorption spells and Vanishing
spells alternating, and found himself scorched and limping in under a minute.
So he gave in to instinct and listened to his body, and he was soaring in
seconds, driving back the imposter�s attacks with a glittering array of his
own, spells uttered before he knew what he�d choose or heard the words on his
tongue.

�� But he was
only holding his own�which, though impressive enough in itself, wouldn�t free
him from the cage of this ward, or stop the imposter from hurting Draco, or stop
the imposter altogether.

�� He needed
something else, something that would compensate for the lack of ground here,
and the imposter�s genius, and the other wards and defenses that he probably
had buried around the boulder and would call upon in a moment.

�� And then he
was there, the real Draco, breathless, with his hair flying around his face,
and he snatched the hawthorn wand out of the imposter�s pocket, handling it as
if the wand had been with him from childhood.

�� As it had.

�� Harry
relaxed and smiled. A doubt he wouldn�t have admitted he had, even under pain
of death, melted away from him, and as the imposter stared at him, he snarled
another Shield Charm and let down part of his guard as if he were faltering
from weariness at last.

�� In the
meantime, Draco struck him in the back with a spell shaped like a silver dagger
and edged with blue flame.

�� Harry
couldn�t even feel that it was dishonorable for the imposter to go down like
that, not when the white ward faltered the moment he did and left them in the
open air again, and not when Draco caught his eye and grinned, sleek and savage
and shining, a predator.

�� If he can still smile like that, Harry thought,
smiling back, dizzy with pain and relief and exhilaration, then he wasn�t hurt too badly.

�� That, at
the moment, was a wonderful gift all its own.

*

�� Severus had
awaited the moment when the ward would fall, and the fighters inside would be
revealed to him. He was sure Potter was one of them. Potter would fight if the
sky were falling and the sun burning out; he had a dogged stubbornness that did
not know what it meant to give up.

�� Of course,
if he were fighting Draco himself, then Severus would have killed him. But no,
when the ward fell, he and Draco were meeting each other�s eyes, and a third
figure sprawled on the ground between them, his eyes fixed on the sky and his
lips moving in what could have been a prayer but which Severus was certain was
a malediction.

�� Weasley
gave a shout of relief and rushed forwards, no doubt to gather his friend in
his arms and slap him on the back in some Gryffindor ceremony of greeting.

�� (No one
had ever done that for Severus. Even Lily did not often embrace him, and when
she did, it felt as if it were a gift granted from heaven, which meant Severus
stood stiff and unresponsive in her arms, trying to memorize every nuance of
the moment, and did not enjoy it).

�� Lucius was
not far behind him. His face shone with a subdued light no one would see if he
were not familiar with it, and which Severus himself had not seen there often
since Narcissa died.

�� (Should he say �was killed?� Died seemed too
sanitized, as if she had died of old age instead of being murdered by
Bellatrix. But on the other hand, Narcissa had done a stupid thing in rousing
Bellatrix�s jealousy).

�� Severus
ignored them both. In a moment they would be in the way and would interfere
with his vengeance, but they were not yet. He made a subtle gesture with his
wand that he had memorized when he first studied most of the Dark Arts books
that crowded his shelves. Some of the products of his lab were simply too
dangerous to touch as one administered them.

�� The
circular vial containing the Curse Potion shot forwards, darted around Weasley�s
shoulder and under Lucius�s arm, and smashed into the man lying on the ground.
He leaped back to his feet as if at the shock of cold water, and blinked at
them all for a moment. Draco and Potter fell together, wands leveled.

�� But the
imposter did not try to attack. He merely stared, and then he Apparated away.

�� Shouted
remonstrance came Severus�s way. He was sure Potter would have cursed him
himself, if he had dared.

�� Severus
looked away and flicked a bit of dust from his sleeve. The Curse Potion was the
only appropriate vengeance, and if the imposter seemed free at the moment, he would
not remain so. His cursed fate, instead, would ensure that he ran until he felt
an inexplicable compulsion to return and confront Draco, and then the potion
would take effect.

�� He had the
illusion of freedom, but not the reality.

�� (Severus knew what that was like all too
well).

*

�� Yun: I
think Snape�s ending was a little strange, as well; I would have liked to see
how Harry would have dealt with him if he lived.

�� Harry
negotiated with the Cobra Curse to go away in Parseltongue.

�� linagabriev:
The imposter did want to show Draco the incantation that would destroy him, but
he wanted Draco to say it. Draco�s
plan was to gain time by pretending not to understand the incantation or to
mispronounce it at first.

�� The spell
would have made the imposter understand Draco perfectly, and be able to become
him.

�� Thrnbrooke:
Thank you!
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The Same Species As Shakespeare