Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Sanctum Sanctorum	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 28253 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 27
- 28
- 29
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Eight--In the Midst

            "This is what I think we should do."

            Harry nodded in response to Ron's words, but he was thinking of Adam. Adam had eaten breakfast, put up with a few spells Harry had cast him in an attempt to find out whether the Parseltongue was a curse wound around him or simply an unnatural ability, and then insisted on going exploring. Harry had accompanied him through two floors before either Adam's nightmares or the general gloominess of the place had overcome him. He'd wanted to go back to his room, and Harry had left him half-asleep on his bed, curled up as though he could keep someone from snatching him that way.

            Harry had surrounded the bed with wards that would prevent anyone but him or Kreacher from coming near. He'd thought of telling Adam about them, because they might make him feel safer, but in the end, Adam's skittishness about magic had kept him silent.

            At least they were there. At least Harry knew Ron would take over for him and do the best he could to save Adam if Harry died.

            "Harry."

            That was the way Ron sounded when Harry had done something especially exasperating. Harry came back to himself with a rough shake of his head and gave his friend an embarrassed smile. "Did Hermione help you with the plan?" he asked.

            Draco shifted in the chair next to him. Ron, on a chair that he'd conjured himself, gave the paper he held a haughty rattle. "You think that I couldn't come up with something by myself, despite the acknowledged genius for strategy I have?" he asked, with a sniff.

            "Of course you could," Harry said, and grinned at him. "But we would both feel better if Hermione also had a look at that plan, and I think you know it."

            "Yeah, and she did," Ron said, and held out the parchment. Harry cocked his head to the side so he could study it, since the parchment was more the size of a map than the size of a piece of paper someone might take notes on. He felt Draco get up and come to stand looking over his shoulder, which was fine, although Ron started and gave Draco a narrow look.

            The piece of parchment was a map, the locations that Moonstone's magical signature had revealed laid out with only rough notations of really important wizarding landmarks between them. Harry hissed and stabbed a finger down at two of the locations in London. "The bastard," he whispered. "Two of these are less than a mile from the Ministry!"

            "Probably an assurance of safety for him rather than otherwise," Draco said, his voice colorless. "He knows how many allies he can count on in the Ministry."

            Ron nodded, mostly a flash of blurry red in the corner of Harry's eye, since he couldn't bring himself to look away from the map. "Hermione's there as our wizard on the inside right now, checking to see how alarmed Schroeder is that he couldn't locate Moonstone right away."

            "We have to move," Harry said, his eyes lingering on those locations where, for all he knew, they were torturing children right now. The thought made his skin itch and feel too small for his hands. He slapped the map into Draco's hands and rose to pace. "If there's any chance that they're going ahead with their 'work' even though Moonstone has vanished, and they probably will, the bastards, because they'll think that they need more powerful magic than ever to face the enemies who took him--"

            "Harry."

            Draco's voice had the same lack of color as before, the same heat. Harry whirled around. "You don't care, do you?" he demanded. "I heard what you said the other day. How they were misusing Galen's notes. You don't care about the children in the same way."

            "Not in the same way, no," Draco said, watching him with eyes that shone like a mirror. "I don't approve of sacrificing a method that would need to be studied carefully before it was used, if at all, to the haste and greed of a few. I don't approve of the way they snatch Muggle children, because in the end it might increase Muggle attention to us. I don't approve of the way that they tried to threaten and bully me instead of seducing me to their side. And I don't approve of the way that it affects you."

            Harry ground his teeth, and watched Ron start to his feet. He knew what Ron was going to say in the next moment. How could Harry stand to be with someone who was so cold? Someone who didn't care at all about the child Harry had chosen to take care of, someone who would probably only stay until it wasn't too inconvenient or until he'd fucked Harry as many times as he'd wanted...

            Then Harry made himself think, rein in the stamping, snorting emotions in his head that wanted to take off like wild horses and go through his objections one by one. Draco only waited, his legs slung across each other. Some of his attention had shifted to Ron when Ron stood, but other than that, he didn't look like a man who thought he would need to defend himself.

            Draco wasn't in this for the same reasons they were. Harry had always known that. And yet, Draco had made no objection to Adam and had even held him a few times while Harry arranged his room or breakfast or clothes, when he should have refused to come anywhere near him if he really thought Adam was a filthy Muggle.

            "It makes a difference to you when they become wizards, doesn't it?" Harry said aloud. "If they survive the magic being poured from someone magical into them, then they're as much wizards to you as if they were born that way."

            "Yes, of course," Draco said, raising his eyebrows as if he'd never thought he would have to explain that. "And everything else I said is true. It could draw attention to us. I object to the way they tried to use me, and you." He paused, then added, with the sound of pulling teeth, "I am not someone who cares about people I've never met, you must know that. I am someone who--cares about people closer to hand. There is no reason for my concern and my strength to go elsewhere, not when it means that I will probably only be wasting it on someone who will not care for me in return."

            "Well, yeah, if your family had been more caring in the past, then you might not have so many enemies," Ron snapped.

            Draco ignored him, and held Harry's eyes. Harry grimaced a little. He had seen for himself that Draco had strong emotions; he just held them in check better than Harry ever could.

            But that led to a natural conclusion that, if Draco didn't care about people except those close at hand or those who had done something for him, then all those strong feelings were saved up and poured over the heads of those few. He had given Harry advice, he had wanted his attention, he had been far more irritated by the fact that Campion was a criminal than he would have been if Harry had arrested a random Potions assistant who wasn't his.

            Belong to him, and you're valued. Don't belong to him, and you're not interesting. And even then, there's gradations. Pure-bloods are more interesting than half-bloods, and wizards are more interesting than Muggles.

            Draco smiled, and Harry reminded himself that Draco could hear part of his thoughts. "Forgive my bluntness," Draco added, smoothly enough that it was easier to forget his earlier remarks if Harry really tried. "But I don't like seeing you as upset as you were, and it does seem likely to damage our plans as well as your own. There's no point in tearing off without a plan, which I think Weasley said he had." He turned to Ron and nodded to him. "What is it?"

            Ron stared at him for a moment, then snorted and said, "You're not so bad, Malfoy, when you don't want to be." He sat down and pulled another sheaf of parchment from a robe pocket that was bulging out as if it were going to tear free. "This is the plan Hermione came up with. What do you think?"

            Draco reached out to take the first sheet and turn it over, and left Harry staring at him, tasting his heartbeat.

            He hadn't, really, thought Draco was different. This was the just the first time he'd heard him put his opinions in those particular words--and thought beyond the terms of an alliance that they'd established when they hadn't been sleeping together.

            But for Draco, this wasn't a contradiction, that he could want to sleep with Harry and still not care about what Harry wanted to do in the same way. If he could put up with it, and Harry wanted to put up with it, then they might as well both go on with things. Harry had reminded himself just the other day that they probably wouldn't last forever, anyway.

            He sighed and sat down in the chair he'd had before. Draco nodded to him and handed him the first sheet of the plan, beginning to speak in calm, cool words of what they would need to make it happen. Harry leaned back in his chair and resigned himself to listening.

*

            As far as Draco could see, Weasley and Granger had been thorough, trying to design plans for a series of locations that they didn't know the exact layout of and which might have protections that Moonstone hadn't revealed to Harry. They proposed that a small band, consisting of them, Draco, and as many allies as they could muster, would hit each location hard in a series of running raids, cutting off their communication with the other hiding spots of Moonstone and Schroeder's merry allies, rescuing the children they could, and taking captive who they could. The main project of importance was keeping those raided from getting off warnings to anyone else.

            It was exactly the sort of hit-and-run tactics, backed with powerful magic, at which Harry would excel.

            And exactly the sort of thing that Draco didn't know if they should permit him to try, not when he had Adam in tow.

            "What are we going to do about Adam?" Weasley asked, and tackled the problem with more openness than Draco would have wanted to try. As he could have told Weasley would happen, the words bit Harry as delicate hints would not have. He sat back in his chair and crossed his hands over his stomach. His thoughts said, Should have known and Adam is important.

            "What do you mean?" Harry asked, with a smooth face that Draco thought would have done credit to some of his assistants when they were trying to lie about why they'd got a potion wrong.

            "Come off it, Harry," Weasley said, and once again showed Draco that his relationship with Harry was a very different one from Draco's. That was good. Draco need not fear the competition. "You know that you want to keep him with you. Fine, that's an admirable goal. But what are you going to do with him if you want to go along to these battles? You can't keep him with you, and you can't stay behind. Or, at least," and Weasley's voice faltered, "I reckon you could, but we'd do best if we had you with us."

            Harry nodded with no expression on his face. His thoughts had calmed down into splintering, scintillating reflections of emotions, moving so fast that Draco did not know what he would say before he said it. "I know. And I've been thinking about that. Adam still has nightmares and fears about magic. I want to go slowly, to let him heal, but I also want him to see that the people who hurt him are being punished."

            "You can't bring him along," Draco said, and this time chose the course of Weasley's openness, because this was something that must not be danced about. "It would be more than mad."

            "I can ask him if he wants to go," Harry said. "If he would rather be separated from me, or if he would rather stay here with me. But there's a protection I can offer him that would keep him safe no matter what happened. A Blood Bubble."

            Draco stared. "I do not know that spell," he said, and Harry gave him a half-smile, as if he understood the reason for the anger behind his voice.

            "No one is saying you should," he replied. "But--"

            "You can't use it," Weasley said, and his voice had a calm covering that kept shifting, rather like hardened lava on top of molten. "If you did, mate, then you would be useless during the battles. Using it would destroy the whole purpose for you coming along. You should wait here. Stay with Adam. At least he knows that you'll always protect him and you'll be ready to flee if something goes wrong."

            "And leave you and Hermione and Draco and whoever else decides to come with us to go into battle without knowing the outcome?" Harry shook his head. "That's another argument against staying here. If something goes wrong and you're all captured or killed, I wouldn't have any way of knowing. And if someone uses the same spell I did, or torture, to get the information about Grimmauld Place from you, then it might be too late for Adam and me to flee. No, I think I have to go."

            "What is the Blood Bubble?" Draco asked. He thought he had been patient to wait that long. Then again, he had expected an explanation. Both Weasley and Harry seemed too involved in their own row to give him one.

            "A spell I invented," Harry said. "Not Dark, but based on a few other Dark ones, distilling some of the theory so that it comes out right--"

            "A mad spell," Weasley said flatly. "It drains more strength from him than anything else I've ever seen him do. And it shouldn't work. I know it does, mate," he added, as Harry opened his mouth. "And frankly, it's too creepy to use all the time. You--you don't understand all the theory. It shouldn't work the way it does."

            "Perhaps you would do me the goodness of explaining it to me, so that I can judge for myself," Draco remarked to the ceiling.

            Harry started and turned to him. "I think it'll work in this case," he said. "And you can probably give me potions that will strengthen me after I use it." He coughed when Draco stared at him again, and perhaps remembered that no Potions master could brew draughts unless he knew exactly what target he should be aiming for. "Anyway.

            "The Blood Bubble is a protective shelter that I make out of my own blood. It forms this clear red bubble; you can see out of it, and hear the sounds, muffled, but no one can touch you through it, and smells and tastes can't get in. It floats behind me, and it's indestructible. I've tested it with every spell I can think of, including the Cruciatus Curse, and nothing happens." He flicked a glance at Weasley, and thus missed Draco's reaction. "If I die, then the bubble will immediately float away to the safest place for the person inside it. It doesn't matter if I don't know that safest place personally or not. It'll go there. I think that's the part Ron finds creepy."

            "It's impossible," Weasley hissed. "Okay, fine, it might go the Burrow if I was in it, right? Because you know the Burrow, and it's my family's house. But you told me it would go back to someone's family that you don't know, or it would go someplace that they'd never been before and where no one knew them but which would still have people that would protect them. How can it know that, Harry? I've had enough of trusting things that think where you can't see their brains."

            Draco raised his eyebrows, and wondered who had originally told Weasley that. It sounded like something too wise for him to have come up with on his own. Weasley had strengths, as Draco had reason to know from the last few days, but they did not include wisdom.

            "It's not a matter of knowing," Harry said calmly. "It has to do with the prophecy I was under and the curse scar," he added, turning towards Draco. "I'm not still subject to a prophecy now, of course--at least, not one I know about--but it leaves a sort of lingering mark on you if you have been. Kind of like a taint. People who are Seers are more likely to get clear visions of you--"

            Draco tilted his head down, and Harry raised his eyebrows and flashed him a smile without stopping his words.

            "And people who cast spells that are supposed to enhance their senses when they're around you might see a few seconds into the future." He glanced at Weasley. "I know that's happened to you, too, Ron, so you don't need to object."

            "That doesn't mean anything," Weasley said, and folded his arms. "It happened, what, once? What you're talking about is some kind of magical disturbance on a fundamental level. I don't think it can possibly be as important and far-reaching as you're talking about. It can't be, or we would have heard of it before now."

            Harry snorted. "I'm working on piecemeal and guesswork, patching these together, I told you. And I did find that the same thing was true about people who were subject to other prophecies. There just hasn't been one as publicly known as the one I was under for a long time. People tended to keep it secret. But anyway, this is a combination of magical theories, not a single one by itself. And it oughtn't to work even then, but it does. That's all it is."

            "So," Draco said, whose mind had raced through the meager knowledge he had of prophecies and Seers himself, "this bubble is--strung along threads of future possibility around you? If you died, itself a future event, then the bubble would ride the expanding waves of possibility to a place where its occupant could be safe. Not something it knows, or something you know, any more than a Seer knows how the future she Sees will come to pass. Something that could be glimpsed, one of a myriad number of possibilities."

            Harry grinned and leaned forwards to clasp one of Draco's hands. "Excellent! Better explained than I managed when I tried to tell Ron. But yes. The only thing you're missing is that, when I die, that restricts the possibilities a bit, and kind of--releases the future magic, the attraction to prophecy, that hangs around me." He gestured in the air. "As far as I can figure out, that's the influence of the curse scar, changing my magic to be a bit unlike other people's. So the bubble can go someplace that can't be predicted unless you know more about the person inside it, but it won't be as many places as it could be when I was still alive. And it'll use the released magic that was embedded in my body while I lived to do so."

            "I still don't the fuck understand that," Weasley said, apparently to the ceiling. "I don't care how many times you explain it. And really, it's bad enough living with one bloody magical theorist, I have to live with two?"

            Harry laughed and reached out to punch Weasley in the shoulder without letting go of Draco's hand. "I'm only one when I have to be, you know that. I think Draco's of the opinion that I don't think enough, and rush in enough to be a stupid Gryffindor far too often as it is." He grinned at Draco, half-ducking his head.

            Draco nodded, and kept the words he wanted to speak carefully unspoken. Harry was brilliant when he wanted to be, able to put together diverse concepts that drew upon his own strengths and weaknesses. Why did he not apply that brilliance to things he wanted to accomplish such as rescuing these children? Draco did not know.

            "Anyway," Harry went on, shaking his head, "the Blood Bubble could keep Adam safe, and take him to someone who wants to protect him when I die. But I don't know if he would want to come at all.'

            "If he doesn't?" Weasley asked, moments before Draco would have asked the same question. They caught each other's eye, and Weasley gave him a sympathetic grin that Draco did not think he deserved but decided, on careful analysis, that he did not intend to reject.

            "Then," Harry said, with a sigh that practically kicked him back in the chair so he could stare up at the ceiling, "I'm going to have a hard decision to make."

*

            Adam was so quiet when Harry told him what was happening that it outweighed the silence of Draco, who leaned against the doorway behind Harry and stared at his back.

            "I don't know," Adam finally whispered. "How can I--you want me to come with you? Back to that place?"

            "Not the same place," Harry said, starting to feel like he hadn't explained this well enough. Then again, he had had to leave out the magical theory and just explain to Adam that they were going to rescue other children like him, and punish the people who had hurt him, and Adam could come if he wanted and still be safe. "But other places like it. People who are like you."

            "They can't speak human, either?" Adam cocked his head to the side and frowned.

            "You are human," Harry said thickly, and felt Draco shift behind him, probably because he had heard the changed tone of Harry's Parseltongue words but didn't know what they meant. "Never think you aren't. You're human. You're real. You matter. Never think you don't."

            Adam shut his eyes for a minute and tugged hard at his chin, a habit that Harry thought he did for comfort. He wondered who had taught it to Adam, his mother or his father or someone else, and swallowed. He didn't know if he would ever know.

            Then he said, "They're hurting other people like me? They're hurting other kids?"

            Harry nodded. "They are. And killing some of them." He winced as Adam flinched, but he didn't know any other way to make it clear how serious this was. Adam was going to have to understand the whole thing and the risk he was running, as best he could, or Harry wouldn't take him with them.

            Adam got up and turned away. Harry had no idea what he was thinking or feeling, and once again had the sensation that he didn't make a very good parent. He stayed still, though, and let Adam think.

            Then Adam turned back and said, "All right. I want to go. I just want you to go, too, and I want you to stay safe." He stared at Harry and ducked his head, obviously trying not to cry.

            Harry reached out and hugged Adam close, murmuring encouragement. He glanced back once at Draco, who remained still and quiet, considering Harry with those mirrored eyes.

            At least there was no disapproval in them, and no disgust in them when they rested on Adam, and Harry thought that was as much as he could ask for.

*

            unneeded: As Draco makes clear here, he also wants an investment for the rare investment of his emotions in someone else.

            Harry is going to try.

            ChaosLady: Thank you!

            SP777: It would be hard, unless Harry and Draco could somehow get back to Hogwarts.

            Fullmoons_wings: Thank you. Draco has explained as much as he's comfortable explaining in front of someone like Ron. He might be willing to give a fuller one if Harry asked him, but Harry is unlikely to do that right at the moment.
- 27
- 28
- 29
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Sanctum Sanctorum