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Practicing Liars	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 63257 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

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Chapter
Twenty-Nine�Finding the Tiara

�� Draco
crouched under the largest bed in the first-year Slytherin girls� room and
tried not to sneeze as the smell of some sweet that one of them had stored in
her trunk filtered into his nostrils. He tried not to be loud as he whispered
the spell that would allow him to detect Horcruxes, either. No one was here
yet, but someone might notice something strange if they came in, and Draco had
already had to use a difficult combination of spells to allow him past the
protections that normally kept Slytherin boys out of the girls� spaces.

�� The spell
purred away into the darkness. Draco waited for some indication of the result.
Five minutes passed in silence.

�� Draco let
out a gentle breath and fought the temptation to put his hand over his eyes.
After all, there was no reason to believe that the Horcrux would be here. He
had increasingly come to the conclusion that it was stored nowhere in Slytherin
at all, despite the seeming naturalness of the belief that it would be.

�� Now he only
had to get himself out of here without running into anyone else.

�� Creeping
out from under the bed was easy as long as there was no one to see him, because
he had mastered the Disillusionment Charm. Then he stepped out the door and
performed the Lightening Charm, the Movement Charm, and the Hurtling Hex that
would get him over the staircase�s defenses.

�� The magic
made his body feel odd and too soft, the way it did when he was exhausted, but
at least he flew rapidly over the staircase and to the floor of the Slytherin
common room without triggering any alarms or meeting anyone coming up on the
way. Then he could settle into the back of a deep couch, cancel the charms, and
pretend that anyone who hadn�t seen him before simply hadn�t been looking hard
enough, while he considered what to do next.

�� The tiara
had to be somewhere in the school.
Draco had gradually adopted Granger�s faith that it was, simply because
anything else was so unthinkable. He could affect so little about Harry�s fate;
let him be able to affect this.

�� But if it
was not in Slytherin and not in the dungeons�Granger had checked there�and not
in the other reasonable places that they had thought of, where could it be?

�� Then Draco
paused, and sat up slowly, fighting the urge to close his eyes and bang his
head against his hands.

�� What idiots we are. Where else would someone
hide something in the school? Where else did I go when I still thought I was
going to complete the task for the Dark Lord and didn�t want to be disturbed?

�� The Room of Hidden Things, of course.

�� He stood up
and made his way to the door. It wasn�t late, and if he hurried, he could catch
Harry and Granger and explain things to them. After what he�d heard about the
Horcrux, he didn�t want to hunt it alone.

*

�� Harry
sighed and held out his arms so that Madam Pomfrey could run her wand over
them. The welts hadn�t reappeared since the last time the bloodline curse had
hit him, and Harry didn�t think there was any way to predict whether they would
again, though everyone else seemed to think so. After all, the bloodline curse
had left him alone for weeks at one point, but hit within a few days the other
times, once without giving him any welts at all. Who could tell?

�� Madam
Pomfrey, though, wouldn�t listen to him when he tried to argue. Instead, she
listened frowningly to some result of her spell that Harry couldn�t hear, and
then shook her head. �I don�t like this,� she said. �I�m sure that the
bloodline curse is based on fear, given what you told me, Mr. Potter, and yet
the physical wounds are inconsistent with that kind of curse. Can you tell me
what happened to you one more time?�

�� Harry
sighed again and did. This time, he mined his memory for the tiniest details,
because they seemed to be what Madam Pomfrey wanted from him, and maybe they
would convince her that he was telling the truth and really couldn�t remember anything else.

�� Ah,� she
breathed suddenly, and smiled, and reached out to put her hand on his shoulder.
�You say that the welts resulted when the Dementors touched you?�

�� When they
seemed to touch me,� Harry corrected her. �I know that they aren�t real.� He
wasn�t going to be suspected of thinking that they were real, not when Draco
and Snape and Ron and Hermione had told him over and over again that they
weren�t, as if they thought he didn�t know that.

�� That�s it,
then,� Madam Pomfrey said with great satisfaction. �Your fear of Dementors is
so extreme that you expected some result from their touching you, whether or
not they were real. It�s not the Kiss, of course, and thank Merlin it wasn�t!
But the welts are injuries that could be within the scope of what your body
would do to itself.�

�� Harry
stared at her. �I was so afraid that my mind affected my body?�

�� Madam
Pomfrey nodded.

�� That�s disgusting, Harry thought. It makes me seem like I�m a coward, a little
baby who wets the bed. �But why welts?� he asked aloud, hoping Madam
Pomfrey would come up with something that would prove her wrong.

�� I don�t
know that, not for certain,� Madam Pomfrey said, giving him a gentle smile.
�Probably no one except a Mind-Healer would. The connections between our bodies
and minds are intricate, Mr. Potter, and often we don�t properly understand
them in the way that we should do.�

�� I understand I�m a coward, Harry
thought, and scowled down at his arms. �Is there any way I can keep it from
happening again?�

�� Come to me
if you see the visions of Dementors again,� Madam Pomfrey answered briskly. �In
the meantime, Professor Snape can brew a few of the potions that act against
curses based on fear.� She leaned down and whispered to Harry, as if she
thought this information was more important than the rest she�d given. �I think
the worst crisis is past, though. The curses generally build up to some point
where people die or recover from them. You came very near dying. It will
probably happen again, but it won�t be as bad.�

�� Harry
nodded dismally and left the hospital wing when she told him to. He couldn�t
believe this was something he had done to himself.
How afraid of Dementors could he be? He�d stood up to them in his third year,
and now he was three years older! He ought to be able to do something about
this stupid emotion.

�� He needed
something to cheer him up, and so he was happy to meet Draco hurrying up the
corridor, his cheeks as bright as if he�d been outside in the snow, his hands
reaching out and catching Harry�s and squeezing so tight that Harry wondered
for a moment if something had happened to his mum. Madam Pomfrey had finally
said that Mrs. Malfoy could leave the hospital wing, but Harry didn�t know
where she�d gone. Draco had looked embarrassed when Harry asked, and Harry
reckoned that it was a house under Fidelius.

�� I�m just glad Draco didn�t go with her, Harry
thought.

�� The force
of that thought made him cough, and he almost missed the whisper Draco made
into his ear. �I think I know where the tiara is.�

�� Harry
squeezed Draco�s hands so tight back that Draco winced, and Harry had to shake
his head and say, �Sorry. But you really do?�

�� Draco
nodded. �And it�s so stupid, because
I should have thought about it immediately. It�s in the Room of Hidden Things.
It must be. Where else would you put something that you wanted to be safe? And
I think I even kicked a tiara aside once, during one of those times I was
frustrated with the Vanishing Cabinet.�

�� Harry
grinned. �It�s not stupid that you didn�t think of it before. It�s smart that
you thought of it now.� He paused a minute to watch the way Draco beamed and
flushed and didn�t seem to know what to do with himself, and then shook away
the thoughts that wanted to strike him because of that. �Let�s go tell Ron and
Hermione, and then we can come up with a way we should deal with it.�

*

�� Harry and Draco mean to do something.

�� Severus
didn�t have to look at them to tell that. They stood together a moment too long
in the corridor outside his Defense classroom; they gave each other meaningful
nods and looks. If most of his students weren�t dolts, Severus thought, then
they would have been able to see it, too.

�� Of course,
some of his students included spies for the Dark Lord. Perhaps he should be
grateful for their shortsightedness.

�� From the
way Harry looked and winked and nodded, his Gryffindor friends were involved in
it, as well. Perhaps that should have reassured Severus, but it did not. He
knew how often Harry had persuaded Granger to go against the rules, and the
girl had a tendency to get overexcited and forget what she had learned if she
was under great stress. Some of the exams Severus had given the Defense and
Potions classes made her turn green as if she were going to be ill.

�� Now the
only thing for him to determine was if it would be dangerous or not, and
whether he should say something if it was.

�� But he
never managed to catch Granger and Weasley whispering to themselves again as he
had the one time. It seemed that Granger had taken Harry�s caution to heart,
and no longer discussed their private business anywhere in the open. Severus
waited for them to pass notes to each other in class, but they didn�t do that,
either. And if they had a secret meeting place, they seemed to inhabit it
during times when Severus was teaching other classes or busy with other duties.

�� That should
have pleased him. At least, if his son must engage in dangerous maneuvers, he
would have companions who might be able to hold him back or prevent him from
risking his life.

�� But Severus
could see well enough that the position Harry held among his companions was not
akin to the one Severus had held among the other Slytherins when he was a
student. He wasn�t someone who was grudgingly tolerated for the sake of his
skills (and Severus had begun to accept that the boy had no great wish to be
skilled in Potions, though he still hoped to inspire some thoughtfulness on the
matter). He was the leader, the rush of bright and shining water that would
sweep others off their feet and bear them along, perhaps even against their
better judgment. So Severus had still to worry.

�� He woke one
morning with the worry on his mind, his first thought, and the second one was, Shall I ever shed this?

�� He did not
know, and sat for some time contemplating whether his mother had ever shed her
worry over him, even long after he had become more capable of defending himself
than she was.

�� Severus
held his peace, and thought, and worked on the Entwining Potions as the best
choice to remove the Horcrux from Harry�s body. What he discovered in those
studies was hopeful, but did not please him.

�� He spent
more time thinking about the danger that Harry might be entering into now than
about the Entwining Potions.

�� And,
dangerous as it might be, secretive as it undoubtedly was, in the end he held
his temper and his peace. He had spied and interfered in Harry�s life; Harry
had made that clear enough, that it was the standpoint from which he saw
Severus�s actions. Severus would rather have incurred any amount of hatred than
have seen Harry die. He had done that without tremor when the boy was only the
Boy-Who-Lived to him, after all, and his survival necessary so that the Dark
Lord might fall.

�� But now, he
wondered what he would do if there was no real chance of Harry dying, but he
was still tempted to interfere anyway. Once, it would have seemed pardonable to
him�indeed, he would not have cared if the boy had pardoned him or not, because he was alive, and what else
mattered?

�� Now things
had changed.

�� Severus
could not truly name how they had changed, because any name might be a lie to
the way that Harry felt, and he was the one who must determine their relation.
Severus could give him no control of his parentage, no control of the potions
that must remove the Horcrux from his body�he could try to let him understand
the theory, but so far Harry had shown little interest in that�and no control
of his fate in being sought by a madman. He could give him control in this.

�� So, in the
end, though with a feeling as though he was wrapped in the meshes of a net that
might cut him to slices fit for a Skinning Potion even if he held still, he sat
still and said nothing on the evening that all four of them vanished together
from the Great Hall, after swallowing not enough dinner to feed a Jarvey.

�� He sat
still, and did nothing, and hated the way that he felt as if he were holding up
his unguarded mind to the Dark Lord, without moving to change it.

*

�� Draco
glanced over his shoulder. Harry was the one immediately behind him�for which
he was grateful, because he still didn�t really trust Granger and Weasley to
protect him if something went wrong�and then came Granger, holding a large
basin of pure water that she thought might protect them from the Horcrux.
Weasley brought up the rear, gingerly holding a basilisk fang. Draco shivered.
He had gone down into the Chamber of Secrets with Harry to retrieve that, and
though they�d seen the great snake lying rotting and dead, he still couldn�t
help imagining what had happened there four years ago.

�� Ready?�
Harry whispered.

�� Draco
straightened up and nodded. Yes, he was. He had needed Harry�s words to let him
know it, but that wasn�t a surprise. He always needed Harry�s words for
something or other.

�� I think I need him a lot more than he needs
me, Draco thought, and tried his best to think of that without resentment.

�� He reached
out and grasped the handle of the door he�d conjured by thinking very hard
about the Room of Hidden Things and what he needed to find in it. The door was
plain and wooden, with a silver handle, unlike most of the ones that Draco had
called up when he was working on the Vanishing Cabinet. But when it swung open,
they were looking in at the same clutter of objects. Draco nodded and swallowed
and tried not to breathe in the dust as he edged into the room. He didn�t think
anyone had been inside since Harry had confronted him here.

�� Granger
cast the Horcrux-finding spell the moment the door closed behind them. Draco
tensed, wondering what he would do if he was wrong and the Horcrux wasn�t here
after all. Weasley would never let him hear the end of it.

�� But a
sullen glow began to well from behind a rack of moldering robes, and Granger
whispered, �There. That�s it. I can feel the Dark magic from it on my arms.
It�s�� She gulped a little. �Cold. Cold and slimy.�

�� Like a
snake,� Weasley whispered.

�� Draco
didn�t turn around and glare over his shoulder, even though he really wanted
to. He held out his wand and carefully lifted the rack of robes into the air,
so that they could see what was behind it.

�� The tiara
lay on the floor as though someone had kicked it there, and Draco thought probably
someone had. There were shadows squirming around it, or so Draco thought at
first when he looked. Then he looked again, and they were gone, but the sense of shadows slithering and writhing
around it was still present. Draco had sometimes had the same sensation when he
was near Dark artifacts that his father had preserved in the dungeons of Malfoy
Manor, but never so strong.

�� We need to
be careful,� Granger said, her voice a squeak. �There could be traps around it.
We don�t know what they are.� Draco heard her shifting the vat of water in her arms,
and wondered if she really thought that that would protect her. Yes, sometimes
water protected against Dark creatures, like vampires, but for the most part,
it had to be running.

�� Yeah, we
do,� Harry said, speaking for the first time since they�d stepped into the
room. �But we can�t be too cautious, or we�ll never get the tiara out of here.�
He glanced at Draco and squeezed his shoulder. �Are there any spells that you
know to disarm Dark artifacts? We could use them now.�

�� Draco would
probably have tried to say with someone else that he didn�t know if those
spells would work on something as powerful as a Horcrux. But there was
something about the way Harry treated him, as if he thought Draco should have
the same confidence in himself that Harry had in him, that calmed his nerves.
He could only try. He nodded and raised his wand.

�� The first
one, which was meant to remove any wards, whispered over the Horcrux without
affecting it. The second one stilled Draco�s sense of the shadows circling
around it, but he wasn�t sure that was much better. The Horcrux seemed to be
paying more attention to them now, as much as something without eyes could pay
attention.

�� Draco tried
a few more spells, but nothing else happened. He finally shook his head and
lowered his wand. �I don�t know,� he said. �I don�t think there�s any way to be
sure about what traps the Dark Lord could have set. Probably things that we�ve
never heard of.�

�� Harry
nodded, and then pointed his wand at the tiara and paused as if he was
gathering up his strength. Draco blinked and looked back at Granger and Weasley
to see if they knew what this was about, but they seemed as baffled as he did.
Weasley looked even uglier than usual with that blank expression, Draco noticed
for his private edification.

�� Defendo mundum,�
Harry said.

�� Draco knew
the spell, but it wasn�t one that he�d thought a student could cast. He was
just opening his mouth to protest, and worry about whether Harry could handle
the magic, when the spell took effect.

�� A silvery
wash lit the area around them, as if they stood in the middle of an immense
river that had been invisible until then. The walls of the Room of Hidden
Things trembled, and Draco thought he saw some of the older and more fragile
objects stored in it dissolve into dust and air. Then the silvery light sent a
beam towards the Horcrux.

�� Draco
tensed, ready to move.

�� The
Horcrux, or more precisely the ground and air around the Horcrux, began to spit
with fat black sparks, and Draco dived to the floor. He heard Granger and
Weasley crying out and falling, too. He reached up to try and tug Harry flat,
but Harry might as well have been a statue. He was standing motionless,
breathless, staring at the black fire building around the Horcrux.

�� Draco
remembered, then, that you had to stand upright or the spell wouldn�t work. He
lay there, hoping for the best. He would have closed his eyes, but that would
have felt like abandoning Harry.

�� The black
fire whirled upwards, spinning in place but looking less and less like a
whirlwind and more and more like a human. Draco winced. This spell was one that
gathered up all the evil from a Dark artifact or a cursed place or wizard and
forced it into a single form, one that the spellcaster could fight.

�� But the
spell didn�t guarantee that the person who cast it would survive the fight. And
since the spellcaster would have to act alone, imprisoned as well as defended
by the silver light around him, Draco didn�t like the odds.

�� The figure
finally stood there, looking like the Dark Lord would look if he had dead stars
for eyes. He opened his mouth, but what came out was in Parseltongue, not
English. Harry responded in the same language, and Draco thought the figure
hesitated for a moment, but that might be his own wishful thinking.

�� Harry
raised a shield in front of him just as the figure threw a clashing, jangling
spell that made Draco�s teeth hurt. The shield held, and then Harry spun
forwards from behind it, throwing a curse Draco was surprised he knew. The
figure absorbed it, but shrank a little in doing so.

�� If he can do that well all through the
battle, he might win, Draco remembered thinking.

�� After that,
though, he honestly lost track of how well Harry was doing. The dark figure and
Harry were both intertwined with racing spirals of light, and geysers of yellow
dust that leaped up and then fell back again, and with distortions of the floor
and walls inside the spell that made Draco feel as if he were trying to
concentrate on a mirage when he had a sick headache. The figure used magic
Draco didn�t know�or was that Harry? The power flowed so thickly between them
that trying to determine its origin was impossible. The smell of burned sugar
flowed into his nostrils, and almonds, and rotting fruit, and vanilla. He
tasted blood on his tongue, but he thought that was because he�d bitten down in
sheer fear.

�� The battle
swelled and surged, fell and broke back in a storm of petals and fathers that
Draco could have thought was harmless if he didn�t know better. Harry and the
figure seemed almost to transform, but Draco knew Harry wasn�t an Animagus, and
in the end he had to attribute the shapeshifting to the way that his eyes saw
things. Harry was waist-deep in snakes at one point; the figure lost its legs
into a melting puddle and attacked like a bird standing upright in a pool of
water.

�� Granger
tried to fling the pure water at the barrier of the spell. It splashed back
again, soaking uselessly into the floorboards of the Room.

�� Weasley
tried a few defensive spells. They vanished as if they�d never existed, and
then his wand flew out of his hand and hit the far wall. After that, he lay
still with a whimper.

�� Draco was
the only one who knew for certain that they couldn�t interfere. In the end, the
incantation was �I defend the world� for a reason. The person who cast it was
agreeing to take all the burden of defense and forcing back the Dark magic on
himself. There was simply no way around it.

�� Draco tried
to resign himself to his lack of control over the situation, and gasped
nevertheless when the silver wall dissolved. It swept up the dark figure almost
casually as it went, and when it was gone, so was he.

�� Harry stood
there, swaying, smiling at them.

�� There�s
still part of Voldemort�s soul in the Horcrux,� he said, �but it�s small and
deep and can�t hurt us anymore. That was all the traps and all the wards.� He
sat down heavily, and Draco stared at him for wounds, but he just looked
exhausted. �I�ll be all right after I have some rest,� he added, catching
Draco�s gaze.

�� Granger was
immediately on him in a flurry of scolding, and Weasley was growling threats.
But, though there was part of Draco that wanted to do the same thing�why hadn�t
Harry told them he was planning on
doing something that stupid and dangerous?�he didn�t think that was what Harry
needed right now.

�� He just
reached out, and took Harry�s hand, and smiled helplessly at him.

�� And felt
his soul warm when Harry smiled back.

*

�� Thrnbrooke: It is a turning point, but I don�t think Harry
realizes how much of one yet. I�m glad you liked it, though.

�� anciie: Well, honestly, I can�t blame Harry that much; he
has so much else to worry about.

�� DTDY: Aw,
thank you!

�� k lave
demo: Ah, I understand you now. Well, Severus is making the first steps towards
being the kind of dad that Harry needs, maybe: someone who will watch over him
but not prevent him from living his life.

�� And not
every ending is meant to be a cliffhanger! I can�t help if people take it that
way.

�� SP777: Just
you wait for the chapters coming up!

�� Sneakyfox: Thank you!

�� tiggator: Thanks! One of the things these relationships
give to all three of them is a chance for them to be honest about their
emotions.

�� Sarah: Well,
we�ll see!

�� polka dot:
With Harry�s thoughts about a crush, I think he gets it. He does at least
recognize that that could be what he feels for Draco.

�� MewMew2:
Thanks!

�� HeartStar: Thank you! While they didn�t really interact in
this chapter, I think Severus is making some strides that he needs to take on
his own, without Harry telling him what he�ll like or want all the time.
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Practicing Liars