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Ceremonies of Strife	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16218 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this writing.

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Chapter Twenty-Eight�Final
Preparations

�� Harry was
watching when the letter came. It helped that both he and Draco were eating in
the dining hall, and neither Ron nor Hermione had appeared yet. Ventus had been
there talking to them, but she had had an idea in the middle of the
conversation and wandered off to investigate it.

�� The owl
came soaring silently across the tables and landed right in front of Draco, on
his plate, staring at him with unblinking eyes. Of course, all owls flew
silently and all had unblinking eyes, but Harry thought those facts were more
ominous than usual just now. He put down his own toast, untouched, and turned
towards Draco, waiting for him to open the letter.

�� Draco�s
face was paler than usual, but he put down his fork and reached for the
envelope as if he had no doubt about what was in it. Harry, meanwhile, drew his
wand and began casting detection charms that should reveal the most basic
curses and hexes. No one would think it was strange for him to do that, given
how much caution the instructors had encouraged the trainees to have towards
their post.

�� I hate the way Nihil makes us live. Harry
scowled and tried to remember if he had lived like that during the war with
Voldemort. Not really, but he had been younger then, and also more prone to
believe that living cautiously wouldn�t do much good when he and Voldemort were
going to clash anyway.

�� Draco stuck
his finger beneath the seal when Harry nodded that it was safe and pulled out a
crisp, many-times-folded sheet of parchment. He spent a moment inhaling a
fragile fragrance that rose from the page, which Harry couldn�t identify. Harry
tensed, just in case that fragrance was potion fumes that were meant to control
Draco. Harry had learned, thanks to some history that Davidson had mentioned in
Concealment and Disguise, that pure-bloods could turn practically anything into a weapon.

�� Draco
opened the letter and studied it. Harry wished he could do something other than
sit there like a lump and smile hopefully, but he thought Draco would feel
crowded if he leaned in over his shoulder and tried to read the letter right
now.

�� He�ll do
it.�

�� So intense
was the atmosphere around them as he waited for Draco to say something that
Harry thought he had mistaken the words at first. He blinked and looked up. �He
will?� he asked stupidly. After we spent
so much time worrying, he�ll really do it? And he doesn�t suspect anything?

�� Draco
nodded shortly and stood up. �But he wants to bargain,� he murmured. �Another
letter, and he wants control of the time and day when we meet. I have to write
back quickly. No telling when he�ll change his mind and decide that there�s
some trap here, or what he might send instead of the glamour.� He dropped a
kiss on Harry�s forehead, seemingly oblivious of the avid eyes watching him.
�Do you mind covering for me in classes today? Tell Morningstar that I�ve been
feeling sick and won�t be in.�

�� Harry�s
chest tightened. He didn�t like leaving Draco by himself while he wrote the
letter. �Are you sure? If you waited to write it until this evening, I could be��

�� Urgency,
remember?� Draco shook his head, eyes fastened on Harry now with what looked
like a glimmer of disappointment in them, as if he thought Harry hadn�t been
listening properly when he spoke. �I have
to do this, Harry. Please don�t tell me that you�re going to turn your back
on me now.�

�� This has
nothing to do with that!� Harry snapped. �But I don�t like the thought of you
bearing this burden by yourself.�

�� Draco�s
face softened, and this time his kiss was on Harry�s lips and more lingering.
�I promise I�ll be all right. Cover for me.� He turned and ran for the door of
the dining hall, one hand clapped over his mouth as if he were about to throw
up. Harry had to admit that he did a convincing charade.

�� Harry
closed his eyes. He had to admit that at that moment he felt as if he had a lot
more to worry about than whether Morningstar believed him.

�� But Draco
was depending on him, and Ron and Hermione were walking towards him with
determined strides now and curious faces, so Harry would have to stop looking
so faint. They didn�t know that Draco�s �powerful� friend was Lucius. Harry
smiled, made his smile less shaky than he was sure the first one was, and stood
to greet them.

*

�� Dear Father:

�� Draco
stopped and considered the salutation. Was that too informal, or too formal?
Would Lucius suspect that Draco was rushing into the bargain too quickly when
he looked at the words?

�� Draco shut
his eyes. The plain truth was, he didn�t know.
His father had written the kind of letter back that Draco had expected�sly,
teasing, seeking to control their interaction�but Lucius might have known Draco
would expect that and written exactly that kind of letter to provoke Draco�s
own expected response.

�� His heart
danced in his chest. His throat tasted like dust, and at that moment, he
heartily wished that he had accepted Harry�s suggestion to go to class and
write the letter later, when he could think about it more.

�� But he also
doubted that the pressure of time would make the task easier.

�� In the end,
Draco kept the salutation and wrote on past that.

�� I wonder if you know what I felt when I saw
your response? Incredible relief. Sadness that it must have come to this.
Resentment, that you would presume I would not only surrender but let you
dictate the terms of that surrender.

�� But you are right. I have little choice. I
need this glamour, and you are the one who can best construct it.

�� I feel myself bound in cords, trying to be
an Auror still, as well as a dutiful Malfoy son. Pray only remember that my
duty to the family line will be best secured by dealing with me as an adult,
and not by obligation and coercion.

�� Draco
stopped for a moment and felt as though the pounding of his heart would make
his throat shut.

Something brushed against his
ankle, and he nearly screamed. When he looked down, though, he recognized
Politesse, who was staring up at him with fierce concentration, teeth slightly
bared and scorpion tail slightly vibrating.

Draco picked up the little dog and
buried his face in the short, smooth fur. Politesse wriggled around so that he
could watch over Draco�s head into the corners of the room, looking for danger.
His growl made him quiver, and Draco supposed he would have looked ridiculous
to someone who didn�t know what he could actually do.

�I�m sorry,� Draco whispered. �I�ve
been neglecting you.� It was true. His life had lately been filled with the
whirl of classes, which Politesse wasn�t allowed to accompany him to, and his
fights with Harry, which he�d kept Politesse away from because he might have
attacked Harry. He had only played with or touched the small dog when he was in
his rooms, which wasn�t very often.

Politesse licked his face once and
turned his head around to look at the door. Then he looked down at the letter,
and his tail swayed forwards as if he thought he could get rid of the danger it
represented by stinging it.

�� Draco gave
a choked laugh and set Politesse on the table. �Nothing so simple, I�m afraid,�
he said. �I�d like it to be, and I�ll let you know if you can do anything for
me. But not right now.�

�� Politesse
gave him a single intelligent glance, then jumped off the table and curled up
in Draco�s lap. Draco touched his hair and listened to his heartbeat slow
before he turned to finish the rest of the letter.

�� I will try to become your son once more. And
I agree to a meeting of your choice�if you send the glamour to me in your next
message.

�� Draco Malfoy.

�� There was
nothing else that he could say.

*

��

�� Harry, can
I talk to you?�

�� Harry
glanced up, surprised. He was in the library with Draco, and they�d been
discussing their latest assignment from Lowell and Weston, which involved
casting through each other�s wands in
combat, without exchanging them physically. Harry had enjoyed watching Draco�s
eyes light up with pleasure and the tight line of his mouth relax, and he
hadn�t thought about anything else in hours.

�� Now he
winced and cast a quick glance at Draco, but Draco had already sat back in his
seat and folded his arms. �Of course you need to go, Harry,� he drawled. �Your
duty is calling for you.�

�� Don�t be
like that, Malfoy,� Hermione promptly snapped. �It�s not such an imposition for
me to want to talk to Harry when you�ve had him for most of the morning��

�� I don�t
see why it has to be a problem,� Harry interrupted. �Why don�t I stay here and
you can talk to me?� He reached out and laid a steadying hand on Draco�s arm.
Draco took a deep breath, his eyes flashing shut and then open. He nodded
brusquely to Harry a moment later, and Harry pulled back his hand. Draco wasn�t
going to admit to needing that much support in front of other people.

�� Hermione
put her hands on her hips. �It�s really important that this be a private conversation,� she said,
stressing the word while she looked at Draco as if she suspected him of not
knowing what it meant.

�� Harry
sighed. �Hermione��

�� But Draco
turned his back and resolutely gathered up their notes, so Harry reckoned he
had no reason to linger. He got up and grumpily followed Hermione, all the
same. He had just got Draco�s mind off the letter to his father and the
glamour, which Lucius hadn�t yet sent. Now it would go back, and Harry would
get minor grunts from Draco as answers to his talk for the rest of the day, if
he was lucky.

�� What do
you want?� Harry asked, as they walked through the library aisles to a table
near the back.

�� Hermione
took a quick breath and gave him a hurt look. But she didn�t say anything,
instead sitting down at the table and pulling out a book so thick Harry was
surprised to see it didn�t have a title. When she opened it, though, he
understood. It was one of Hermione�s notebooks, and she had the habit of simply
conjuring more paper inside one of them when she filled it up, instead of
moving on to a new one and losing a potentially instant source of information.

�� Harry sat
down across from her and prepared to be reluctantly interested.

�� I�ve been
reading a lot about the influence of Dark spells on one another, and the influence
of Dark Arts practitioners on each other, since you told us about the Mortal
Affinity spell,� Hermione said, and then paused and looked at him expectantly,
as if she thought that he would know what she was talking about.

�� So?� Harry
said.

�� Again the
hurt look, but Harry squashed down the guilt. Occasionally, the guilt he felt
about doing necromancy and hurting Draco was useful. It meant he could ignore
the more minor wounds he inflicted on people.

�� I was just
wondering,� Hermione said. �If there�s any way that Malfoy�� She paused
delicately. �We know he did Dark Arts in the past.�

�� Harry
didn�t have to blink at her for very long before what she was proposing
occurred to him. He shoved his chair back from the table with such violence
that someone in another corner muttered at them. �You�re suggesting he
influenced me?� he demanded, voice low. �That he�s the reason I made my stupid decision?�

�� Doing that
isn�t like you, Harry!� Hermione stood up, eyes dark and passionate, reaching
one hand out towards him as if she assumed she would need to restrain him from
rampaging through the library. �Perhaps he didn�t mean to do it, but some of
the books said the influence can be subtle and unconscious��

�� Oh, please,� Harry said, so contemptuous
that Hermione flinched. �You just need some way to account for this that blames
him.�

�� It�s not
like you,� Hermione said again.

�� It�s exactly like me,� Harry said, calming
down now. He knew what she was saying, why she seemed to need to believe this,
but the understanding still made him want to spit. �Exactly like my ridiculous
guilt complex and the devotion I have to people I cared about and all the
obsession I have with people I can�t help. I might have started doing it on my
own even if I was never an Auror or there was never a Nihil. I didn�t consider
anyone else when I made this decision. I jumped straight into it. And you
should have seen Draco�s face when he discovered what I was doing. He was
shocked and disgusted, Hermione. He would never have done this himself. And
that makes him a better person than I am, in some ways.�

�� Hermione
backed a step away from him. Harry could see the wavering uncertainty in her
face that meant a new suspicion was dawning in her.

�� You�re
not�� she said, and her voice trailed off, but that didn�t matter, not when
Harry knew the next words she would have spoken as if she had already voiced
them to him.

�� Not
blameless? Not perfect?� Harry folded his arms and glared mockingly at her.
�No, I�m not. I�m sorry if that upsets your notions about what kind of person I
am, but all that means is that those notions were wrong. Draco didn�t have anything to do with it. I did. It was all
me. If I�d listened to him, or to the promptings of my conscience, and told him
in the first place, then this could have been avoided.�

�� Hermione
turned away from him slowly, catching herself with one hand on the table as if
she didn�t see it. �I have to think,� she whispered.

�� Good luck
with that,� Harry said, and then turned and walked back towards Draco. His
emotions were churning around his belly and throat and head, and he had no idea
what else he could say. Hermione had not only dragged him away from Draco, she
had done it for a stupid reason.

�� How could
she blame Draco? Harry had thought she had forgiven him easily because their
friendship was so old, and that she was stubborn and cold towards Draco because
she believed that he had somehow encouraged the �Dark side� of Harry that
yearned towards necromancy. But he had no idea that it was something like this.

�� She didn�t really forgive me, Harry
seethed to himself as he walked around a shelf that held a stack of large,
dusty old books that didn�t look as if they�d been moved in years, she just made up a version of reality where
it was Draco�s fault, and then she found the �evidence� she needed to
substantiate her theory and�

�� Hands
caught him. Harry looked up sharply, but his sense of Draco had told him who it
was, and he relaxed before he could touch his wand.

�� He didn�t
resist when Draco bore him back into the bookcase and loomed close to him,
looking at him with fierce eyes. Then Draco bent down, face hard with passion,
and whispered, �I heard.�

�� Harry eyed
him. Draco didn�t look as upset as Harry would have thought he�d be over
Hermione�s accusations. �Then you know��

�� I heard all of it,� Draco interrupted, and
forced Harry into a kiss that tasted of sweat and passion and left him gasping
soundlessly after air before Draco pulled back. Draco had only retreated to get
some air of his own, and he came back again in seconds.

�� This time,
Harry met him mouth to mouth, and rejoiced in the way their tongues swirled
around each other and their teeth clacked together, almost catching a hold of
those elusive, darting tongues but never really managing.

�� Draco
stepped back at last, one hand resting on Harry�s chest and a small, mean smile
touching the edges of his lips. Harry would never have assumed that he could
find such an expression attractive�it was the way Draco had looked in Hogwarts,
really�but all that smile did now was make him want to kiss it again. He
waited, though, because he doubted Draco would have broken the snog they both
wanted unless he had something important to say.

�� I trust
you more than I ever have right now,� Draco said, voice charged with crackling
electricity. �So don�t fuck it up.�

�� And he took
Harry back to their table in the library for more studying.

�� Harry could
hardly believe it at first. They had shared a kiss like that and Draco wanted them to study?

�� But when
Draco sat down, carefully arranged himself, and shot Harry a glance full of
promise, Harry understood the theory, however much he disapproved of the
practice. Draco wanted the smolder to build between them until it broke apart
in a flame of new intensity. Probably he couldn�t think of any other way to
break the long drought of affection between them than to wait until they broke
it because they couldn�t stand it anymore.

�� Harry
grinned back, sat down, and picked up his book, already imagining the moment
when Draco wouldn�t be able to wait any longer, and would seize him, and throw
him against the wall, and�

�� He shifted,
and Draco sniggered.

�� Perhaps
there were some thoughts that weren�t appropriate for a library.

*

�� Go in
quickly, without thought. Thought would only slow him down.

�� Draco
closed his eyes, counted to ten under his breath, and then opened them and
started to move smoothly and naturally down the corridor, as if he had every
right to be there.

�� Only one
trainee passed him, and she kept her eyes on the book in her hands the entire
way. Draco did tense, because though he wore a weak glamour�the only kind that
wouldn�t set off the wards the Ministry had enhanced since Nihil�s attack last
year�someone who looked up with enough suspicion might recognize him.

�� But she
communed with her book, as blind as Granger to anything outside the pages, and
Draco arrived unsuspected at the door of Pushkin�s lab and lightly pushed it
open.

�� Harry had
wanted to come with him, but Draco had pointed out he knew Pushkin�s labs
better, having visited them several times when he was dissecting Nemo�s beasts.
And then Granger had pointed out that someone would suspect the truth if they
both disappeared at the same time, and Harry would be better off appearing in
public with �Draco� (a glamoured Weasley) on his arm in case the theft was
discovered.

�� Draco had
ground his teeth against Granger�s implication that of course the theft would be discovered and against his
temptation to protest�agreeing with Weasley�that no one who knew Draco would be
fooled by his impersonation. Granger had snapped back that it was just a
precaution and they should take care to be in front of people who didn�t know
them well, and in the end Weasley had meekly agreed.

�� Just like he�d agree to everything his
girlfriend told him, Draco thought as he stood at the door of the lab and
waited.

�� He had
wagered his ability to come this far on his knowledge of Pushkin. Pushkin was
the Observations instructor, and faithful to his subject�to a fault, in fact.
He wouldn�t want to set traps that someone could figure out their way around.
Instead, he would capture a perfect picture of his lab, remember it, and then
compare that picture to what he saw when he returned. Draco had to be careful
to change nothing.

�� He
whispered a small spell that most of the Ministry didn�t know existed, and his
feet rose a few inches off the floor. He swooped forwards in response to the
impulse of a second spell, changing neither the faint covering of dust nor
anything else that Pushkin might have left lying about.

�� The room
where Pushkin had dissected the creatures had its door half-open. Draco paused,
calmed his breathing and his impatience, and forced himself to see what was
really there, as Pushkin had insistently taught them last year, rather than what
he thought or wished to be there.

�� He smiled
when he saw the glistening arc of a spiderweb extending from the edge of the
door. Most other people would have cleaned that up, but Pushkin knew the value
it held as an indicator. Draco cast a few sticking spells, carefully detaching
the web from the wall and fastening it more strongly to the door,� and made sure he memorized its original pattern
before he moved the door.

�� Within the
lab itself, there were other spiderwebs, and hairs, and patterns of
condensation from cold mugs. Draco drifted through them. He couldn�t know that
he saw all the things Pushkin would, but he had got the best mark in his class
that Pushkin had given in years. He was fairly sure that their minds worked the
same way.

�� And there
was the glass case that held the bit of bone Draco had instructed his father to
copy. Draco grinned. Pushkin had bothered with a lock for this one, but he had
never read the books in Malfoy Manor that Draco had.

�� Draco held
out his wand and performed a complicated circling pass that it had taken him a
month to learn. �Resurget,� he
breathed.

�� The magic
seemed to rip itself out of his body; it took more power to cast this spell
than most of the War Wizards� unsubtle efforts, Draco thought with justifiable
pride. He couldn�t imagine how much it must have taken to create the spell in
the first place.

�� Once free,
though, the force was gentler than a sunbeam. It reached out and stroked the
lock. The lock fell to dust and ashes.

�� The glass
case swung open.

�� Draco
studied the specific molding of the white cushion inside it, and then reached
down and enchanted the bit of bone to rise from it. The glamour that he took
out of his pocket floated down and took the original bone�s place.

�� No traps
clanged; no wards sprang into life and shrilled to let Pushkin know what was
happening here.

�� Then Draco
gestured with his wand again, repeating the circling motion he had done earlier
backwards.

�� And the
lock returned, dust and ashes springing back into the original shape as if
nothing had ever happened to it. The lock drifted forwards, and the glass lid
came down to meet it. The case looked exactly as it had before it was
disturbed.

�� Draco
smiled. He�d like to see Pushkin try to figure out the Resurrection Spell, when
he couldn�t even suspect its existence.

�� He flew out
of the lab, put the door half-ajar with the spiderweb in the right place, and
ghosted back to the original door, where he spent some more time studying the
floor and the doorway to make sure he�d missed nothing. When he was back in the
corridor, feet where they belonged and the bone in his pocket, the smile faded
from his face automatically.

�� He had
promised his father to be in Wiltshire two days from now, at nine in the
evening.

�� And he would be in Wiltshire on that day. Just
rather earlier, and with a different purpose in mind.

*

�� SP777:
You will actually get to see Harry partially use it in the next chapters,
though not in an �everyday� sort of fashion.

Still waiting to work on the sequel to Mark of the Fox until I have some more
time.

�� polka dot: If
Lucius uses the same spell as before, then he wouldn�t have to have Astoria
there to bind Draco to her.

�� Dragons
Breath: Harry is very conscious of the way he�s changing at the moment, but
Draco doesn�t yet realize the way he�s altering.
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Ceremonies of Strife