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Seasons of War	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9694 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Thirty�Gifts
and Surprises

�� We are
still learning from our researches.�

�� Draco
sighed. He knew, from the stiff way Holder spoke and the direction in which she
turned her head, so as to avoid his gaze, that the words were simply a cover
for the lack of success or knowledge or new
information that the Aurors were finding. Draco had to appreciate that it
wasn�t easy to research death, but that didn�t mean that they shouldn�t go
further and try harder.

�� He leaned
forwards, angling his head so that Holder would have to take notice of his
single eye. He wasn�t above playing up the �unacceptable sacrifice� that had
put Holder on his side in the first place. If she was guilty, then she might
hurry up and start putting together the basics of a plan to defeat Nihil. �Fine. Is Robards still behind you? Will he support a direct
attack on Nihil?�

�� Holder made
a small gesture with one hand. �He will. I know that you question his
commitment, Trainee Malfoy, but he is simply cautious. He doesn�t want us to overcommit ourselves to one course of action too soon.�

�� Move too
slowly, and we�ll find Nihil overcoming us,� Draco muttered, leaning back in
his chair. He was sitting in the entrance of Holder�s tent, while the breeze blew
on his face from his blind side. It was soothing, and eased the odd, burning
ache that Draco would feel in his empty socket and his scars at random moments.
�Just remember that.�

�� I am.�
Holder turned and glared at him. �And before you can say it, yes, I also
realize that we might not be able to rely on your partner to save us this time,
if his magic is part of the same continuum with Nihil�s. That would require��

�� She went
still. Draco narrowed his eye as he watched her rise to her feet. She was extending
one hand in front of her as though to grope around an invisible wall that had
suddenly appeared in her way. Her expression was stricken. Draco couldn�t tell
whether she was feeling fear or excitement from it.

�� Auror?� Draco asked, making sure
his voice was edged.

�� It might,�
Holder said, and didn�t complete the sentence, instead whirling around and
sprinting out of the tent. Draco started to rise to his feet and follow her. He
didn�t generally move as fast since the loss of his eye. He didn�t want to trip
over his own feet and be an object of more embarrassment and staring than he
already was.

�� Malfoy.�

�� With a
sigh, Draco turned around. He had taken on more responsibilities since he
confirmed his position as head of the comitatus, and it seemed that all sorts
of people came to talk about different problems and suggestions, to the point
that he didn�t automatically recognize all the voices that addressed themselves
to him anymore.

�� His
heartbeat quickened when he saw Portillo Lopez standing behind him, however.
She cradled a red lacquered box in her hands. Draco bit his lip and tried to
look as if he wasn�t sweating, though of course Portillo Lopez would be swift
to spot it if he was.

�� A silvery
glow came from the box.

�� My eye is
here?� he whispered.

�� Portillo
Lopez, whose gaze often seemed fixed in the distance as if scanning the
mysteries of the dead rather than the living, was looking directly at him now.
She nodded and reached out to put a cold, strong hand on his arm.

�� And my
Order is here to restore you.�

*

�� Harry had
thought he knew what anxiety was when he was watching Draco in the middle of
the circle of silver fire, dueling Herricks. He hadn�t had any idea. This was anxiety, to stand silent and
sweating beside Draco�s bed while a circle of Portillo Lopez�s Order surrounded
them, draped in heavy dark robes that hid their faces. Ron and Hermione were
somewhere outside the tent, with Herricks and Ventus, but Harry found it hard
to think about them.

�� Or, really,
to think about anyone except the man who lay on the bed, his arms stretched out
rigidly at his sides, his head tilted back and the empty eyelid propped up with
a spell that let Harry see straight into the socket.

�� Portillo
Lopez had warned Harry that he couldn�t interfere, no matter how much it might
look like Draco was in pain. Of course he would be, Portillo Lopez had said;
the body didn�t easily accept the transfer of a new magical object into itself
at the best of times, and this was a new eye
connecting with dead skin. But they knew how to restore Draco. Harry would
have to remain silent and stay out of it if he trusted them.

�� Harry
wasn�t entirely sure that he did trust these men and women, at the moment. They
looked too much like Death Eaters.

�� But Draco
had said that he wanted the eye back, and God knew what they could do if the
Order didn�t help. Harry wouldn�t trust himself with something like a magical
eye, and they couldn�t betray secrecy and the war by going to St. Mungo�s�who
might not even have specialists who could do something like this, for all Harry
knew. So he stood there, silent, and heard the chanting rise and fall all
around him. If any of the Order were using their wands, he couldn�t see it,
since the heavy sleeves of the robes concealed their arms and hands. The only
thing he could be sure of, the only thing that seemed real in the universe
besides Draco, was their voices, rising and falling.

�� Draco lay
still. It was more than Harry thought he could have done in the same
circumstances as Portillo Lopez opened the red box at the foot of the bed and
dipped her hand inside. Harry half-wanted to look around and see what the eye
looked like when she brought it out, but he couldn�t turn away from Draco�s
clenched jaw and locked muscles.

�� Besides, he
could see well enough when Portillo Lopez stepped around the bed and extended
her cupped palms to Draco.

�� The eye
shone like a crystal ball in Treleawney�s rooms back
at Hogwarts, although it also pulsed in a faintly disturbing way that Harry
reckoned was meant to show it was alive. Portillo Lopez murmured words that
could have been instructions or soothing words for Draco or even commands to
the eye. Then she knelt down beside the bed and delicately let her fingers
explore the sides of the eyesocket and the scars.

�� That must
have hurt, too. But Draco lay still.

�� Harry moved
nearer, hoping that Draco would sense him there, somehow, despite Portillo
Lopez�s injunctions that they mustn�t touch.

�� Portillo
Lopez urged the eye down. For a moment, it pulsed brighter than ever, and Harry
was afraid that it was too big for Draco�s empty socket. What would they do
then? They could send for another one, he supposed, but it would damage Draco�s
hopes, and it would dismay the rest of the comitatus. Harry saw how they relied
on Draco now, although they might deny it.

�� Portillo
Lopez pursed her lips and gave a shrill whistle.

�� The
chanting all around Harry soared to a pitch high enough to shatter glass, and
froze there. Harry had to clap his hands over his ears, but at least he never
blinked or looked away from the bed.

�� The eye
turned misty and transparent. Then it seemed to ooze, or melt, from Portillo
Lopez�s fingers into Draco�s socket. Harry took several deep breaths, because
that was one of the more disgusting things he had ever seen, and then Portillo
Lopez flattened her fingers out and spread them apart.

�� The eye was
no longer in the middle of them.

�� She stepped
away from the bed, and the members of her Order nodded approvingly and sang and
stamped and began to move in a distinct, dancing circle. Harry huddled a little
closer to the bed so that he could escape the dance, staring at Draco�s face.

�� The eye
settled into place, for a moment still a magical extension separate from his
body. Then it glowed, blinked, and focused.

�� Draco
turned to look at him.

�� Portillo
Lopez settled back with a loud gasp, staggering as though she would fall.
Luckily, one of the Order dancers caught her and set her back on her feet;
Harry was incapable of leaning over and helping her at the moment. �Thank
Merlin that�s over,� Harry heard her mutter, sounding more human than she did
most of the time.

�� Draco
extended a hand. Harry clasped it. �How do you feel?� he whispered, hardly able
to believe that it wasn�t horrible. But Draco was seeing with the eye, and that was the important thing.

*

�� Draco could
understand what Portillo Lopez had meant when she warned him that the eye might
be awkward at first.

�� His head,
and the skin of his face, seemed to bulge and stretch around the eye. The world
turned in two different directions at first, as his body sought to integrate
the eye had that got used to seeing on its own and this new, magical one. Draco
could feel random pulses of energy traveling through his body from his face. He
reached up, half-wondering if he would pluck it out and fling it from him.

�� Then the
pulses solidified, and thickened, and extended into his body like a cable.
Draco could feel the eye anchoring
itself into place. The gelatinous images he had half-seen became real, and then
crossed over with the views from the real eye, and blended, and steadied. Draco
changed his reaching hand into a sunshade that would protect him, or should,
from the sudden reality that
stretched all around him.

�� It wasn�t
perfect. Seeing through a magical eye wasn�t like seeing through one of flesh
and blood, and couldn�t be, even though Draco had chosen one that was without
the more exotic magical properties of Moody�s. But the images around him had a
soft silvery glow, and he could live with that. And they were sharper on one
side than the other, but he could live with that, too. It seemed that his real
eye had the ability to see further with peripheral vision, but his magical one
gave him better vision straight ahead.

�� Draco could
live with that, too. The most important thing was that so much of what had been
darkness was now light.

�� He looked
up at Harry, and found that he was no longer peering at two separate images of
his face, stamped on darkness with nothing behind them. He was seeing Harry�s
face, and he could make out all the little nuances that flickered through his
expression, the tightening of the skin around his eyes and his anxious look.
Harry had his hand and was whispering, �How do you feel?� over and over, in a
way that meant it wasn�t the first time he had said it.

�� Draco
nodded twice, then stopped himself before he began to
look like a ridiculous Muggle toy. �Better than I would have thought,� he said.

�� Can
you�can you see?� Harry spoke the
word with a hushed reverence that would have made Draco laugh, but he understood.
Harry was trying to ask how he felt in a different way. Draco let his hand
tighten on Harry�s by way of answer.

�� Let me
up,� he said. �I want to see what happens when I look around the room, and then
I want to see how I look in a mirror.�

�� Harry nodded
and hauled him up. Draco wondered if he was aware of the strength of his
muscles when he did that, if he knew how strong he was altogether, or if he
knew how his magic shone around him�

�� His magic.

�� Staring,
Draco realized that he could, indeed, see Harry�s magic. It glowed and rose and
fell around him in sparkling cascades, silver and green shot through with red
and black on the edges. It was one of the most fascinating things Draco had
ever seen, if not always the most beautiful; the black and red made it look
like a volcanic eruption sometimes. But he could see more with his new eye than
his first one had allowed him.

�� It was a
gift. Draco firmly told himself to believe that, rather than seeing it as just
another level of his strangeness.

�� Are you
all right?� Harry was squinting at him, as if he knew that Draco had gone quiet
and still for a reason and not simply because the world was strange around him.

�� Yes, of
course.� Draco kept his voice as calm as he could. The members of Portillo
Lopez�s Order had left, but Portillo Lopez was watching them, and he didn�t
want to sound too excited or upset in front of her. Only God knew what she
would decide to do if he did. �I can see magic, that�s all.�

�� Everyone�s
magic, or just mine?� Harry asked.

�� Draco
blinked. He hadn�t expected Harry to ask a question so intelligent�

�� And I do need to stop underestimating him
like that.

�� Draco
turned his head away and fixed his attention on Portillo Lopez. She stood up,
as though she knew what Draco was seeking to understand about her and wanted to
help him by showing off as much of her height as possible.

�� The magic
around her was a different sort than the kind that encompassed Harry. In fact,
Draco could only see three rings, like the rings of a planet, each a deeper
gold than the next. Portillo Lopez might have been walking around the world in
a costume made of brass. The rings hummed quietly, and Draco wondered if it was
a measure of how much under control her magic was, or if it was touched by necromancy
and her struggles to murder necromancers and that made the difference. Would Harry�s magic look more like that
as he grew older and learned to tame his power?

�� If any of us survive to grow older, and
Nihil doesn�t destroy the world the way that he�s been threatening to do.

�� But Draco
couldn�t think about that right now. He nodded in response to Portillo Lopez�s
curious gaze. �Yes, I can see you,� he said. And although he could only see the
magic through his new eye, he no longer felt as disoriented as that revelation
had made him expect to feel. His head, or his magic, or both, were working hard
to blend the impressions from both sides of his brain. He relaxed and leaned on
Harry, letting Harry escort him across the tent so that he could see the mirror
waiting on the other side of it.

�� The mirror
was large and made of silver, unflattering but real. Draco blinked, and saw
both eyelids slide shut over both eyes, exactly as if the silver one had always
been there. It shone, but not as radiantly as it had when he watched Portillo
Lopez bring it out of the box. Draco shuddered
privately. The memory of her holding the eye towards his face, while it dripped
through her fingers like ice cream, would stay with him as a private image of
torture for a long time.

�� But now�

�� Draco
reached out and touched the mirror with one hand. Yes, it was where he thought
it should be. No more problem judging distances and angles. Draco would have
expected more, but then again, this was a magical
eye. It had already bonded itself, or it should have, with his internal
power and begun to adjust itself to the needs and the differences of his body
and his expectations. Draco smiled, and the reflection in the mirror smiled
back.

�� I can�t
wait for the others to see you,� Harry said. His expression was bright and
wistful, and he leaned on Draco�s shoulder with a smile that Draco reached a
hand up in turn to trace, relying on his reflection for guidance. It worked;
his hand landed where it should be instead of hovering in the air off to the
side, and Harry made it easier by leaning forwards and kissing his fingertips.
�Can I bring them in?�

�� With a
warning to Herricks first,� Draco said, nodding majestically. �I�m only the
poor patient who might be wounded by an insult otherwise.�

�� Harry
raised an eyebrow at him and stepped back to the flap of the tent. Draco went
on studying himself in the mirror. The glass wasn�t enchanted, and that
accounted for why he saw no banners of magic rippling from it, but when he held
up his wand, he couldn�t see anything there, either.

�� Then he
wondered: why couldn�t he see his own magic?

�� It didn�t
work in the mirror, apparently, but when he looked down, he saw sparkling bands
of deep blue and green that encircled his wrists like bangles. Draco held them
up to his face, closer to the magical eye than the other. They hummed like
Portillo Lopez�s�no, they sang, and he liked their restrained, pleasant music.

�� You have
made the right choice.�

�� Draco
blinked and looked up. Portillo Lopez stood not far from him, studying him with
critical detachment. Draco realized that he hadn�t heard her move. He had got
used to not paying as much attention to his surroundings under the influence of
losing one eye. That was a mistake that he would have to correct as soon as
possible. His comment to Harry notwithstanding, he didn�t want anyone thinking
of him as helpless, even while he was still adjusting to the magical eye, or
easily tricked.

�� Did you
worry that I wouldn�t?� he asked, and examined himself. The scars really did
detract from his appearance, he had to admit. They would be the first things to
go.

�� Yes,�
Portillo Lopez said. �I thought that you might decide it was better, for your
pride and your image, to have no eye than a magical one. That would have satisfied
you in some ways, but led to a poorer outcome for the battle and the war.�

�� Draco
chuckled. He couldn�t remember hearing her speak like that before. �Do you
think that I�m that important to the defeat of Nihil, then?�

�� Portillo
Lopez gave him a strange blance. �Of
course.�

�� In and of myself?� Draco had to press. He didn�t know what
was taking Harry so long to come back with the rest of the comitatus, but he
would take advantage of it to question Portillo Lopez. �Not simply as
Harry�s�balance, and partner?�

�� She shook
her head and gave him a single, slight, puzzled look. �Why would you assume
that anyone valued you only for that? Most of those who despise you also
despise Potter, and would see no reason to keep either of you about.�

�� Draco shut
his mouth as Ventus and Granger came into the tent, Weasley and Herricks
approaching more slowly, but he couldn�t help but think there was a flaw in her
reasoning. Someone like Holder could want to use Harry and see Draco as an
obstacle, someone who had to be eliminated before Harry could be usefully
manipulated.

�� On the
other hand, Draco didn�t think Holder was against them now, though her behavior
this morning had been odd. He turned to greet the rest of the comitatus,
resolving to focus on the challenges in front of him while keeping an eye open
for the rest.

�� He smiled
grimly when he had that thought. Of course he could do that. He had one eye now
to spare, after all.

*

�� Did it
work?� That was Hermione, leaning forwards in interest, thinking as much about
the process of putting in the magical eye as about the potential abilities it
would give Draco, Harry knew.

�� Is he our
battle leader again?� That was Herricks, his arms folded and his voice so
determinedly neutral that Harry would have rolled his eyes if he hadn�t thought
Herricks would notice him doing it.

�� Ventus and
Ron were silent, but they had bright-open, hopeful expressions. It touched
Harry to see the one on Ron�s face. Ron had grieved over Draco�s lost eye more
for Harry�s sake than Draco�s, but it seemed as though that was enough to make
him happy Draco might finally be getting it back.

�� It
worked,� Harry said. �He can see out of the eye.� He thought he would leave it
open to Draco to speak about the magic he could see. He might want to keep it
silent, a secret advantage even from those who knew him best, for now. �But,�
he added, as they started to crowd towards the tent, �I want to tell you
something before you go in there.�

�� Hermione
halted as though she were bracing herself for bad news. Ventus and Ron simply
looked impatient. Herricks looked as if he alone had some idea of what was
coming next, and glared at Harry.

�� I don�t
want anyone speaking as though this change weakens him or makes him less
handsome,� Harry said. �The eye glows, and that might disconcert you. But if
you imply as much, I�ll hurt you.�

�� Hermione
blinked. �Malfoy chose the eye, though. He must have thought about the way he�d
look with it. He�s not as blind to personal appearances as you are, Harry,� she
added, and Harry couldn�t tell which of them she meant to compliment. Maybe neither.

�� Yes, but
Draco�s realized that he can�t control the thoughts people have about him.�
Harry caught Herricks�s eye. �He can only refuse to accept insults. But there
are subtler ways of insulting him, especially when
you�re working closely with him, which isn�t something that most of the
trainees and the Aurors do. So I want you to act as if you�re happy and nothing else. Like I
said. Insult him, and I�ll hurt you.�

�� Ron nodded
and touched Harry once on the shoulder before he walked past him. Hermione went
with a backwards glance. Ventus sighed as if the whole discussion bored her and
ducked into the tent. Herricks lingered behind her. He had an effective glare
when he wanted to use it, Harry thought. He looked coolly back until Herricks
rolled his eyes and turned away.

�� I know
that you were talking about me,� he said. �It couldn�t have been more obvious.�

�� I know the
way your mind works,� Harry said, not raising his voice. �I know that you might
think Draco is weak again because of the way the eye makes him look, and
because a magical eye can�t possibly be
as effective as a real one. You gave your promise to Draco, but you didn�t make
any promise to me.�

�� I�ve kept
my promise so far.� Herricks�s arms crossed more tightly.

�� It�s been
two days,� Harry pointed out tartly. �I meant it, Herricks. You could attack
him again; we both know you could. And we know that you�d lose. But this time,
you would suffer even if you won.�

�� Herricks
exhaled and glanced away. �Don�t worry, Potter,� he said. �Malfoy has proved to
me that he has the will and the determination of a leader, as well as the
battle spells. It�ll be better now that he also has the ability to judge distances
and see the world the way other people do. Trust me,� he added, when Harry
opened his mouth. �I know�there are reasons I could despise him. But now I�m
not trying to.�

�� He went,
and Harry had to be content with that.

�� Coming into
the tent, he saw Draco in the middle of the comitatus, receiving their
congratulations and comments like a king with his courtiers. And from the
intent way he peered at them, Harry was sure he saw their magic, and also that
he didn�t see fit to warn them he did.

�� Harry briefly
caught Draco�s eye�both of them�and smiled as broadly as he could.

�� Merlin, I�m proud of him.

�� Draco
flushed slightly as he ducked his head back.

*

�� Review
responses from the last chapter are at http://lomonaaerenrr.livejournal.com/4035.html
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Seasons of War