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For Their Unconquerable Souls	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 29229 -:- 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-Eight�New Information

�� Draco
couldn�t stop staring at his father. He had never imagined that something like
this would happen: that one member of his family would be dying in front of him
and that he would be helpless to stop it. He could always do something. It was part of his charm, part of the
invincible way that he faced and would conquer the world if he tried.

�� But Lucius
was dying, and Draco had no time to brew a potion that would help, since Harry�s
Congelo charm had failed, and his mother stood
by with a look of pain in his eyes that made Draco want to kill, but their
enemies were unknown and still beyond their reach, and�

�� Harry
seized his wrist, pressing down on it until Draco gasped and stared at him.
Harry�s face was flushed and his teeth were gritted, as if he intended to bite
through his own tongue. Draco was about to remark that that wasn�t a productive
use of time when his father was dying, but Harry spoke first.

�� Invoke the
Malfoy blood magic. Now.�

�� Draco
opened his mouth. He wanted to say that he didn�t know if he could call it when
he wasn�t in control of himself. The churning emotions bounding and boiling
through him weren�t rational. What if he lost hold of them and Lucius was harmed
as a result? Draco thought he could bear Lucius dying, but he didn�t know if he
could bear having caused it.

�� Harry shook
his head.

�� That one
gesture made Draco seize control of his own will. He
swallowed and closed his eyes, then dived into himself, seeking the magic.

�� It came to
him, red and blazing, silver and brilliant, dragging Draco�s mind along with it
into an invisible tide.

�� And then
Harry spoke.

�� Guberno carmen
de Malfoy!� he said.

�� The magic altered. Draco knew it still sprang from
within him, but now it was streaming through Harry, as if he had turned the
course of the river that the magic resembled. And he was the one who reared
with it like a breaking wave, and Draco was the one who had to resign himself to being a passive participant in the healing
process, since he didn�t know the details of the spells Harry was casting.

�� Congelo!� Harry said again.

�� His voice
was the firmest thing in the world, Draco thought, and opened his eyes,
suddenly and absurdly calm. Surely not even the Dark magic that Lucius�s
enemies had cast on him could be firmer than this.

�� Harry stood
in front of him, fists clenched, head tossed back far enough that Draco could
make out his profile, his squinted-shut eyes, his forehead blazing with sweat. He
could almost make out the shine around Harry that was the tamed Malfoy power,
handled through a wand that shook with the ripples of pure magic.

�� This, he
knew, must be the force of will Harry had used to defeat Voldemort.

�� He was not
at all surprised to see the Mirror Maze spring into existence above Lucius for
a moment, rippling like crystal seen underwater, lovely and deadly. Nor was he
surprised to see it turn black and fall like volcanic ash across Lucius in the
next moment. Of course Harry�s controlled magic would win. There was no way it
could lose.

�� Lucius
stopped bleeding as the time-stopping charm took effect.

�� Harry
immediately cast another spell that burst in a fiery golden blaze above the
bed, then formed a vision of a slowly breathing man in
front of Harry�s face at eye level. Draco wasn�t sure what that one did, but it
seemed to reassure Harry. He dropped his head forwards and took a deep breath,
and his control over the Malfoy magic dissipated, so that it dropped back
inside Draco like a weighted pack.

�� Then Draco
had time to realize what had happened, as he saw his mother�s head droop and
her teeth let her lip go.

�� Lucius was
safe, for the moment.

�� And Draco
had helped to heal him.

�� He gulped
and moved his hand to cradle his wrist where Harry had squeezed him. A bruise
was forming there. But Draco would have gladly borne a broken wrist for the
sake of a healing father.

�� They had
done something Draco truly believed was impossible.

�� Or, rather,
he had provided the power, and Harry had directed it.

�� Harry
turned around, and Draco frowned, because the expression on Harry�s face was
not the look of pure joy Draco would have expected. He started to ask what was
wrong, but once again Harry began to speak before he could.

�� I could be
charged and fined, if not placed in Azkaban, for taking control of your magic
without your permission. If you want to do that, I won�t resist, but please
wait until Lucius has been treated. I�ve studied the Mirror Maze deeply enough
that I think I can find a solution and release him from the stasis spell in a
few days.�

�� Draco had
to bury his head in his hands, had to.
An enormous weariness swept through him, followed by an enormous anger at the
Muggles.

�� He thinks that we would see him arrested because
he saved my father�s life in a way that is not perfectly socially approved. The
Muggles have crippled him. They�ve given him a conscience too sharp, which he
only uses for cutting himself.

�� He heard
his mother speaking then, and was grateful to her, because she would say what
Draco found himself incapable of saying right now. �I
am amazed,� she murmured, �though perhaps I should not be, that you think Draco
would drag you before the Wizengamot for this. Professional Healer ethics do
not seem to sit well with Malfoy ethics, however. It is no wonder that you feel
so out of your depth here.�

�� Harry
caught his breath and shuffled around. Draco knew he was looking at him again,
and so he managed to look up.

�� You just
saved my father�s life,� Draco said. �Again. If
you had to use my magic to do it, who cares? That means I got to have some part
in rescuing him, which I needed, after my potion caused him such pain.�

�� Tears
pressed against his eyelids and his throat. It was no plea to gain sympathy
that made him shut his eyes and struggle against them.

�� Draco, no!�

Harry embraced him, drawing him
into one of his arms. Draco saw when he peeked that Narcissa was holding
Harry�s other arm and showed no signs of letting him go. �That wasn�t your
fault,� Harry continued earnestly. �It was completely the fault of whoever set
up the spells so that giving him the dreambane purge
would make the Maze react.�

You
idiot, then�

Once again, his mother might have
read his mind. She tapped Harry�s elbow and said, �And the reason that you had
to take control of Draco�s magic comes from the exact same source. Whatever it
may have cost, Harry, the result is worth it.�

Draco nodded. He had hidden his
eyes against Harry�s shoulder, because that was easiest right now, and he was
no longer strong enough to do what looked best. �You
thought of a solution in the midst of all that�screaming,� he said. He glanced
at the bed again, not quite able to believe that his father was lying there, horrid-looking
but still alive, after the spectacle of his near-death. �I couldn�t have. I was
panicking, which is something I was taught never to do.�

He briefly caught Narcissa�s eye,
and saw agreement there, but she did not scold him. He knew that she had barely
clung to her own rationality in the face of Lucius�s screaming.

�I was no better,� she said softly,
because Harry could not be expected to understand the silent communication she
and Draco had just exchanged. �Under other crises, I have managed to retain my
coolness of temper, but my husband has nearly died too often in the past
fortnight. We owe you yet another debt, Harry, or we would, if it were
reasonable to talk of members of the same family owing each other debts. For
that reason, accept Draco�s forgiveness and think no more of it. You have my
blessing to do whatever you must in the name of saving Lucius.�

�Mine as well,� Draco added.

�� Harry�s
head flopped forwards as if someone had turned all the bones in his neck to
water. He sighed, deeply enough to make Draco want to embrace him; he would
have if his position were a little less awkward. He whispered, �Thank you,�
twice.

�� Draco
nuzzled his nose into Harry�s neck for a moment, and then looked back at Lucius
and opened the kind of space in his memory that he usually used when studying
potions. Harry touched the back of his neck, and the bright curiosity in his
eyes was question enough without his speaking the words.

�� I�m trying
to memorize the way he looks,� Draco said. �That way, I won�t be inclined
towards mercy when we punish the ones who did this to him.�

�� He heard
the soft but distinct sound of Harry�s teeth grinding.

�� He ignored
it. They were different people, and he understood the codes of the family
better than Harry did. Harry would just have to learn to live with the fact of
vengeance. There was no reason he had to watch if he didn�t want to; of course,
he wouldn�t get to take the criminals to Azkaban the way he desired, but that
was too bad.

�� I know
nothing about how potions might interact with spells like this,� Harry said then,
in a transparent attempt to distract Draco. �I�ll need your help to figure that
out.�

�� Draco
rested his forehead against Harry�s chin, mostly because he wanted to. �You�re
hopeless at Potions, Potter,� he said softly.

�� For that,
he received a kiss into his hair. Draco closed his eyes and let himself rest there for long moments.

�� He would
need the remembrance of this closeness and love when he began to brew the
potions that would take vengeance on his enemies and Harry�s Muggles.

*

�� Mistress
Narcissa.�

�� Narcissa
turned around with the thinnest of smiles. She had spent long enough, she
thought, gazing into the mirror and making sure that no trace of her grief over
Lucius remained, and now she was ready to do her part in bringing their enemies
to justice.

�� To justice. Her tongue tapped against her teeth as
she repeated the words to herself. They were strange words for a Malfoy to
speak, and stranger for a Black. She wondered when she had begun to think of
justice instead of vengeance.

�� When Harry came into my life. Many things changed then.

�� She focused
on Rogers, who stood before her with a sheet of parchment in one hand. �Yes, Rogers?�

�� Master
Harry and Master Harry�s clever friend is finding out who hurt Master Lucius,�
said Rogers
gravely, and he held out the parchment.

�� Narcissa
glanced at it, and almost smiled. The names there were familiar, very much so. Burne-Jones. Neverlong. Yes, they
were families with Death Eater connections, as well as connections to the
hospital administration. And Narcissa, though she had not visited the women of
the family in a long time, had connections that would make such a visit at the
moment seem not unusual.

�� Her eyes
lingered for a moment on the name of Foxe. A nephew killed with Lucius�s wand. Yes. It
could be so, but I think not.

�� Of course
she would investigate Foxe, simply to be sure.
Someone who had hurt her husband would not be allowed to get away with it. But
Narcissa knew to trust her instincts. She would visit Burne-Jones and Neverlong first.

�� She rose to
her feet, faced the mirror again, and began to breathe deeply. She would not
need to cast many glamours this time, as she had when
she visited St. Mungo�s, save to cover the marks of worry and lack of sleep. But
the face she assumed when she went among the Death Eater wives was a mask of
its own.

�� Mouth
curved like a scimitar�s blade. Eyes that looked wider and more knowing than
they really were. Hands that flexed open and shut again, and rested at her
waist as if she clasped the hilt of a sword, or the shaft of a second wand,
between them.

�� I am
going,� she said to Rogers,
and swept out of the bedroom, absently casting the glamours
as she went.

�� Mistress
Narcissa is having good hunting,� said Rogers,
in a tone too deep and bloodthirsty for a regular house-elf.

�� Narcissa
let her lips curve a touch more. That kind of statement was why Rogers was her favorite
house-elf.

*

�� Draco was
so tired the words were blurring before his eyes. It seemed that his rest had
been broken lately by worry about Lucius, worries about Harry, or the kind of
intense and enervating dreams he usually had when he was trying to memorize all
the aspects of a new potion.

�� And perhaps
he was tired because of the drain of the Malfoy blood magic that Harry had
pulled from him.

�� But still
he read, because he needed to heal Lucius, and he needed to punish their
enemies, and he needed to punish the Muggles. His thoughts were winging in six
different directions at once. He dragged them back to the page in front of him
and began to read against about potions ingredients that might be affected when
used on an individual who had been under the Congelo charm.

�� Then Harry
touched his shoulder and said, �Come on. You need to rest.�

�� Draco
stared up at him. He didn�t know what his face looked like, but Harry�s
expression softened, and he kissed Draco on the cheek, his other hand sliding
so gently through his hair it made Draco want to weep.

�� And if that wasn�t a sign of how tired and
desperate he was, he didn�t know what was.

�� I know the
solution is here,� Draco whispered. �I know it is. If I can just find
it�� His hands scrabbled over the sides of the table
for a moment, and then he flushed and made himself stop. There�s no excuse for such a display of weakness even if I am tired at
the moment. �What if I go to bed, and that means I miss a discovery that
could save his life?�

�� That won�t
happen.� Harry gently pulled him from the chair and towards the bedroom. Draco
heard him murmuring Cleaning Charms as they went. He couldn�t find the strength
of will to be insulted. �Lucius is under the Congelo
charm. It won�t fade.�

�They might have put on some spell
that could dissipate it.� Draco twisted restlessly in Harry�s arms, but that
had more to do with wanting to stop the babble coming out of his mouth than it did with wanting to be free. Harry�s concern felt like a
touch of healing coldness on a burn. �We don�t know enough about the Mirror
Maze to say that they didn�t.�

�I know that much,� Harry said.
�I�m absolutely sure they didn�t foresee this happening. In fact, the magic
they used in the Maze might actually help the stasis spell endure, because they
wanted him to remain alive as long as he could under the stress of such pain.�

�� A sob
slipped out of Draco before he could stop it. Harry laid him on the bed in his
bedroom then, and his lips brushed Draco�s cheek, ears, and mouth.

�� Do you
mind sleeping in your clothes?� Harry asked. �I�m afraid I don�t have enough
strength myself to undress you.� Draco heard a yawn almost rip his jaw apart a
moment later.

�� He doesn�t mind being weak in front of me.
He�s showing his weariness, his concern, his tried patience. This is what it
means to really be honest.

�� And that
realization gave Draco courage enough to say what he did next.

�� I mind
sleeping alone,� he said, and held out his hand.

�� Harry
smiled and took it, climbing into bed with him. Draco turned dazedly towards
him, resting his head in the crook between Harry�s neck and shoulder.

�� It�s like a Gryffindor to find weakness
charming, he decided, but there was no rancor in the thought. He would find
it difficult to muster rancor for Harry in the future, he decided.

�� A strong,
warm hand stroked down his spine. Harry spoke soft words, or maybe only made
wordless sounds, into his hair.

�� Draco fell
asleep too quickly to hear Harry�s own breaths deepen and slow, but he was
certain they did.

*

�� And I
wanted to show Aunt Lina and Uncle Pierre my new
dress robes, but I can�t when they�re by themselves
all the time,� Angela Burne-Jones finished with a dramatic sigh, throwing
her hair behind her shoulder.

�� Narcissa
made clucking noises of sympathy, holding her teacup in such a way that it
shielded her mouth somewhat from the girl. She had been told before�mostly by
Lucius, but he was not always a poor
observer�that her mouth was most likely to betray her emotions, at least to a
stranger.

�� She had had
better luck than she had suspected. Instead of finding Lina
Burne-Jones at home, she had discovered her niece Angela, a sixteen-year-old
witch with boundless energy for shopping and displaying herself and a
confidence in Narcissa that included a conviction she was of low intelligence,
simply because she was older than Angela.

�� It was an
inexplicable attitude, and Narcissa could only trace it to the girl�s having never attended Hogwarts. Her Death Eater uncle
and aunt, who had raised her, had been too nervous about having her exposed to
Mudbloods. Instead, they had kept her home and had her tutored. Angela had been
able to rule all the tutors just as she apparently ruled her family, and so had
never learned to respect the authority of adults. She knew the entire world,
her flashing eyes and rising and falling hands proclaimed; they didn�t.

�� So far she
had told Narcissa that her aunt and uncle had been recluses for the past few
weeks, which was promising; it made matters sound as if they feared vengeance
or had been involved in planning the complicated curse that had felled Lucius.
Narcissa did not have proof yet, but�

�� Oh, yes,
this is the new painting that Uncle bought!� Angela said abruptly, clapping her
hands together and beaming at Narcissa. She had risen from her gloom as
suddenly as she had fallen into it. Narcissa was glad she had insisted on a
traditional education for Draco. He had never been as open as this child, however
much of himself he felt forced to expose around Harry. �Isn�t it pretty?�

�� Narcissa
looked up at the wall.

�� And then
her breath rushed out of her lungs, because the picture that hung there was the
same as a painting she had seen in the Neverlong
house she had just come from visiting. It depicted a five-pointed star, but the
mesh of lines within the star worked back and forth in such a complicated
pattern that Narcissa could feel her head swimming when she tried to trace them
with her eyes.

�� It also looked
remarkably similar to the pattern the Mirror Maze had formed for a moment above
her husband this afternoon, just before Harry neutralized it.

�� Narcissa
changed her smile from hungry, which she knew it would have become the moment
she recognized the pattern, to appreciative, and turned to Angela. �It�s very
pretty indeed, Angela,� she said. �When did your uncle acquire it?�

�� Oh,
recently,� said Angela, and moved up close to touch one gleaming red line. She
tried to follow it with her finger, but had to give up. �The
last few weeks. He said it was important, but not why.� She turned to
Narcissa and dropped her voice confidingly. �I think he�s planning to make it
the centerpiece of an art display that he�s putting together for this autumn.�

�� Oh, doubtless, Narcissa thought. For a
moment, she considered whether Angela�s story could be true, or the connection
with Neverlong merely a coincidence. It seemed
unbelievably arrogant of their enemies to have the Mirror Maze�s pattern out
where anyone could see it.

�� But then,
it had been arrogant of them to attack Lucius in the first place. And they had
no reason to think that Narcissa would visit them, singling them out from among
the enormous number of wizards who could have constructed the curse. And the
painting was not marked in any way; most people who saw it, even if they
assigned a sinister meaning to it, would assume it marked the beginning of a
new Order rather like the Death Eaters, rather than that it formed a Mirror
Maze.

�� Yes, she
would accept the evidence that had been handed to her.

�� That�s so
pretty, Angela darling,� she said decisively, �that I think I have to copy it
for my son.� She stopped herself from saying �my sons� with difficulty. It was
not yet common knowledge among the pure-blood families that the Malfoys had
adopted Harry Potter. �Do you have some parchment and a quill about?�

�� Angela
gulped, and her eyes widened. �Oh, but I think Uncle would object if someone
else had it on their wall before he showed it!� she said.

�� I don�t
plan to display it publicly.� Narcissa leaned forwards and lowered her own
voice. �To tell the truth, dear, my husband is feeling rather�poorly at the
moment. We will be staying close to home for the next short while. But we would
love to have this painting as a source of beauty to gaze at.�

�� There. If Burne-Jones questions her, Angela
could tell him a story that should satisfy him Lucius is still suffering.

�� Oh, of course.� Angela gave her a glance of shining
sympathy. �I know what it�s like to have to stay confined to the house all the
time! I�ll send a house-elf to fetch the parchment and quill right away, and
you can borrow my owl.� She tripped off.

�� Narcissa
gazed at the painting again, this time forcing herself to comprehend the angles
and diagonals and subtle spiral pattern that the lines made. She would copy
this for Harry, and he, at the least, should be able to diagnose whether it
resembled the Mirror Maze.

�� And in the meantime�

�� Narcissa
started to take up her wand, but hesitated. She had moved without thought to
cast a plague spell that would ensure the Burne-Jones family suffered in
lingering pain for at least two decades, but now Harry�s face was in her head,
blotting out even the pattern.

�� He would hate it if I took vengeance.

�� He need not find out�

�� But he is a mediwizard. He is more likely to
find out than otherwise.

�� Narcissa
paused one moment more, on the brink between action and inaction. Then she
tucked her wand back into her sleeve as Angela skipped across the drawing room
to hand her the parchment.

�� The trust and love of my son means more to
me than suffering that I will not even observe.

*

�� Thrnbrooke: Here it is!

�� Anon: I
agree that the Malfoys� intense reading of motivations and action is sometimes
a weakness. In this case, however, there will be little practical difference as
long as they don�t try to convince Harry to adopt their point-of-view. If Harry
is satisfied with being comfortable with them, and they�re satisfied, then they
can go on thinking it�s �weakness� as long as they
like. Harry will correct them sharply when they presume too much.

�� Michelle
Wolf: Not as messy as it could have been, no, but not clean either.

�� hieisdragoness18:
I hope this story does sometimes give you that sensation.

�� DTDY: Thank
you!

�� Saki-chan: I�m pretty close to the end of this story, so
hopefully cliff-hangers won�t be too frequent.

�� Ellie: Here
you are!
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For Their Unconquerable Souls