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Sanctum Sanctorum	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 28254 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Thirty—In Battle

            “I wish there was a less dangerous way of doing this.”

            Draco raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Granger had arrived and decided that the world, or at least the part of it currently gathered in Grimmauld Place, needed to know her opinion. Well, now they knew, and Draco didn’t see why she would need to say anything else, or more.

            “It’ll be all right,” Weasley whispered, but he didn’t look as if he believed his own words, and it became clear in a moment that Granger wasn’t really addressing him. She leaned around him and gave Draco an even look.

            Draco looked back at her, and said nothing. If it came to that, he was more focused on Harry, whose thoughts murmured of his unhappiness. He had gone upstairs to introduce the Blood Bubble to Adam and induce him to climb in. Draco wanted to follow and comfort him, but Harry had said that he would prefer to do this alone, since Adam didn’t trust most other adults. At least Draco knew Harry would hear his opinion on the matter, now that the potion linked them both to each other.

            “You have some influence with Harry,” Granger said, and then paused to curl her lip and tell him without words what she really thought of that “influence.” “Can’t you—I don’t know, make sure that he doesn’t do things that are dangerous?”

            Draco laughed. Granger recoiled as if his laughter was poisoned and looked at him suspiciously, but Weasley put a hand on her arm and shook his head, forestalling whatever she might have said to him.

            “He doesn’t have that much influence,” Weasley muttered. “And remember, Hermione, Harry’s been an Auror for a long time.”

            “Not only that,” Draco murmured, “but he has the right to decide for himself what is dangerous and what is not. I can persuade him. I cannot force him. I am surprised that the champion of house-elf rights would suggest such a thing.”

            Granger tried to wither him with a stare. But Draco had been wilted by experts, among them his father and Professor Snape, and Granger simply could not compare. After a moment, she turned away with a sniff that tried to pretend this had been her own idea. Draco folded his hands in his lap and tried to look helpful and attentive.

            Weasley whispered something that Draco could interpret without hearing it, and Granger snapped back, “I’ve never seen Harry look at someone the way he looked at Malfoy before he left the room. Can you blame me for asking? For trying? That’s all I wanted to know, whether he would try.”

            Draco blinked, and then gave a slow smile that no one else needed to notice. Harry had indeed glanced at him several times when he welcomed his friends to the house and they went over the plan one more time, but Draco had assumed that was natural. He and Harry had had their disagreements, after all, and Harry was the sort who would want those settled before they went to battle, in case one of them died. No regret left behind, Draco was sure.

            But if it was different, then perhaps Granger was right and Draco possessed a sort of influence over Harry that no one else did. It would be pleasant, to think he held a unique place in Harry’s life the way Harry had so long held in his.



            I can’t leave him here.

            Draco stiffened and lifted his head. He then flicked his eyes sideways, trying to decide whether Granger and Weasley had noticed, but as far as he could make out, they were still bickering.

            That had been an unusually clear thought from the back of Harry’s mind, and not one Draco had expected to hear. It had been settled, settled long since, that they would take Adam with them. What else could Harry be thinking of? Why would he decide at the last moment that Adam should stay behind?

            And then Draco remembered who else was upstairs, and realized there might have been another reason that Harry had insisted on going up alone.

            He turned away from Weasley and Granger, and took a step towards the stairs. Of course, Granger noticed at once and called after him, and Draco turned around, his mind and tongue scrambling to find a plausible lie.

            Then he felt a great, silent burst of magic that shook the house like a group of pillows rolling down the stairs. Draco’s hand went before he thought about it to one of the more battle-ready potions that hung at his belt. Granger gasped and stood. Weasley was up before her, his wand drawn and his hand shaking.

            Then the magic died down, and something was different. Draco did not know what it was. But he had become attuned to the power residing in the house over the last few days, perhaps because he was a Black by birth, and it had changed. Draco took a single step forwards, his hands held stiffly.

            Then Harry came down the stairs—Draco was attuned to the sound of his footsteps even more than the difference in magic—and stopped when he saw them, blinking. Behind him floated the Blood Bubble, with Adam, a large stuffed bear that Draco was sure Harry had conjured for him, and several small baskets of what looked like food in the bubble with him. It was like looking through red glass. Draco noticed that even though he was preoccupied with what else Harry might have done. He was still interested in the Blood Bubble and the way it functioned, always.

            “Is something wrong?” Harry asked, staring from face to face. “You look as though someone attached strings to you and yanked you up.”

            Didn’t think it was noticeable, said his mind.

            “We know you did something,” Draco said. “We felt the change in the magic. Why don’t you tell us what it was, so that we don’t have to drag the truth out of you and embarrass everyone in the process?”

            Harry half-lowered his head and looked as though he was bracing himself. Well, that was fine. Draco let his hand fall on the nearest potions vial. If he had to duel Harry, then he certainly could. He was not going to let him go, and he was not going to let him always win.

            “It had better not be something Dark,” Draco added quietly, partially because he had to say it and partially to provoke the fight he thought might be coming on. “We talked about that.”

            Harry’s nostrils flared, and then he looked as if he was making himself drop his hand and step away from the bubble. Adam, Draco saw, was watching them with wide eyes. Harry’s refusal to duel probably had more to do with not wanting to fight in front of his adopted child than not wanting to fight Draco at all.

            And that was how Draco Malfoy, Potions master and brilliant strategist and the reason that Harry Potter had survived more than once, learned that he could be jealous of a five-year-old. He stroked the glass of the vial beneath his hand, used its smoothness to remind himself of his own age and experience and the reasons why he didn’t need to be jealous of a five-year-old, and then refocused.

            “It depends on what you think of as Dark,” Harry said. “I used magic on Moonstone, yes. We couldn’t leave him here, just in case he did take the opportunity to escape from the traps, and my efforts to put him into a magical sleep—failed. I think he’s protected against such things.”

            “For goodness’ sake, Harry, you could have had Kreacher watch him,” Granger said, and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Unless you think Kreacher’s not loyal.”

            Draco blinked at her in astonishment and pity. He would hate to go through life like she did, looking for reasons to quarrel.

            Harry shook his head. “It’s not that, but he might persuade Kreacher to free him because he has to know about house-elves’ respect for pure-bloods. So I took his magic and stored it. For the moment, he’s a Muggle, and not proof against a magical sleep.”

            The silence then was worse than the noise the magic had made. Draco glanced over his shoulder at Granger and Weasley and thought that both of them had better expressions than he did, in that they had expressions at all.

            “You did what?” Granger asked, and her voice had icicles in the middle of it, too. Harry folded his arms and shifted his weight. Knew they wouldn’t understand, it was only an application of Galen, said the back of his mind.

            Draco wondered if his own thoughts were responding to Harry’s in voices as clear. Perhaps not; he was naturally more secretive. Or they might, but Harry didn’t yet know how to read them. Because surely he would have looked at Draco in wonder if he knew what Draco was thinking.

            You are more talented in magical theory than you are as an Auror, Harry. What in the world are you thinking, wasting it like that?

            “I did a variation of the same thing to him that he did to Adam and all the rest of the children,” Harry said, backing up with the words as though he assumed he would have to shield Adam from them. So, Blood Bubble or not, he didn’t have much faith that the child would escape harm, Draco thought. That was something to take into account and adjust plans for accordingly. “It wasn’t taking away his magic forever. It was just taking his magic and putting it somewhere else, and when I think that he deserves it back, or when we survive and escape, then he can have it.”

            “Where did you store it?” Draco asked, because he could see from the way Granger’s mouth was opening and the way Weasley’s simply hung open that he was the only one who would ask this eminently sensible question. Granger decided that she had to glare at him instead, and Harry gave a faint smile, as though also appreciating Draco’s sense.

            “In a crystal jar that I can trust Kreacher to keep safe, because it was a Black heirloom,” he replied. “And Moonstone doesn’t know what I’ve done, or at least he won’t know where I put it.”

            “That’s awful, mate,” Weasley said, making one of the least productive additions to a discussion that Draco had heard him make since they started working together. “Doing what they did.”

            “I didn’t kidnap or torment children,” Harry said, and he held Draco’s eyes as he spoke, which was more sensible of him than Draco had thought he would be, when confronted with an accusation like that. “I didn’t sacrifice children when it turned out that they didn’t fit into my experiments, and try to make sure that anyone who attempted to stop me was imprisoned. Moonstone talked about wanting to experience a different level of power. I gave him what he wanted. Just not in the expected direction.”

            Draco nodded slowly, and tried as hard as he could to project approval. Harry smiled at him, although it faded when Granger began her tirade.

            “Harry, how could you? Yes, all right, it might be a clever way to keep him quiet, but it’s still immoral.”

            “Only if we don’t come back and there’s no way I can let him have his magic again,” Harry said, his tone much steadier now than it had been. It seemed all he needed was a bit of support, and he was getting that from Draco. “And actually, Hermione, I don’t think it’s all that bad. I haven’t killed him. I might be able to give him his magic again if we know that there’s no way he can use it against us. Do you think being a Muggle is such an awful fate that it’s not suitable even for someone who tortured children?”

            Granger half-bowed her head, and spent a moment seeming to think. Then she said, “But you did something they did, Harry.”

            “I’ve done lots of things that people I hated did,” Harry said, his voice speeding up. “Killed people. Imprisoned them, or at least taken them to prison. Interrogated them. Used Dark Arts spells. Honestly, Hermione, is this the breaking point where you tell me that you don’t want to fight beside me anymore or something?”

            Granger put out a hand, then dropped it. Draco, watching them, had no idea whether he was witnessing a breaking of their friendship or a strengthening of it past an obstacle in the road. He knew which one he would have wished for, except that the moments before they went into battle wasn’t the best time for Harry to lose his friends.

            “We’ll talk about it later, all right?” Weasley said firmly, putting a hand on Granger’s shoulder and giving Harry a keenly unhappy look. “No offense, mate, but we need to concentrate on something more important right now.”

            “No offense taken,” Harry said, with an easy smile, and flicked his head a little at Draco. Draco could hear the chatter of his thoughts, which none of the others could, about Don’t know why it surprised them, and They knew what I could do, and What makes this so different?

            Because they haven’t come to terms with what you are, not yet, Draco thought back, as hard as he could. Weasley knew about the Dark Arts spells, but they happened one at a time and in the middle of work that he cared about, too, and he could ignore them. I’m the one who saw you for what you were and only scolded you for the stupid parts of it, not the immoral ones.

            Harry’s eyes stared straight at him for a moment, even as his body turned back towards the Blood Bubble and his voice spoke to his friends, and there was something bright and complex dawning in them that Draco wished he had more time to investigate. But Harry had to reassure Adam, and his friends had to bustle about getting their own weapons in order, and then they were leaving, and Draco had no chance.

            He did make sure that his hand was in place in the middle of Harry’s arse for a moment as they filed towards the front door, both a claiming gesture and a supportive one. And Harry leaned back into it, and his own hand brushed Draco’s arm.

            Then they were out in front, in the bleak grey day this was, and ready for the first Apparition, and there was no more time.

*

            Draco had told Harry that Harry’s thoughts sounded to him like someone talking, and sometimes a river, and sometimes a sea, and sometimes a storm. As far as he had thought about it before he began to hear Draco’s thoughts through the connection to Draco’s actual mind, Harry had thought that his mind might be like a mountain, hard and cold and difficult to grasp hold of.

            Instead, Draco’s mind was like a snowstorm. Most of the time, thoughts fell past, slowly and steadily, but sometimes a wind would spring up and whip them around, and then they became hard to listen to. And overall was an abiding coldness, a calmness, that Harry simply didn’t have.

            But other than that, they were less different than Harry had either suspected or feared.

            They don’t understand because they don’t know what you are, Draco’s thoughts said to him, clear as a patch of blue sky in a blizzard, during the argument Harry was having with Ron and Hermione. I do. Nothing to do with morality.

            Harry bit his lip to keep from laughing at that last thought—he didn’t know if Draco had meant him to hear that, after all—but the rest of it, he appreciated. And the hand in the middle of his arse, he liked all the more.

            Even if it did make Hermione catch his eye and frown fiercely.

            Harry understood her objections. If they had time, or if he could have trusted Moonstone more, he would have done something different. But they didn’t have it, and there was no way on earth that they could trust that bastard. So he hadn’t, and come up with a solution instead. At least both Ron and Hermione knew there was no way they could stand around having a row about it, either.

            And that was unfair, thinking that kind of thing about his best friends. He wouldn’t have been thinking it at all if not for what he’d done to Moonstone, and that was the kind of thing that he’d thought he’d been compelled to do, but what if he was wrong? And what—

            Draco’s hand reached out and clamped on his arm. They were getting ready for the Side-Along Apparition now, Hermione standing closer to Ron and Draco moving closer to him. The fewer pops of Apparition they made, Hermione had reasoned, the more chance they had of making sure that they could sneak up on any wizards who might be in this particular location.

            Don’t worry about it. Ridiculous.

            Draco’s thoughts still didn’t come through as clearly as he probably wished they did, but there was more than enough there for Harry to steady himself and admit that Draco was probably right, and he was being ridiculous for no good reason. He gave Draco a shaky smile and focused his attention on the Apparition. He had studied the map and Ron’s memories of one scouting mission to the location until he ought to be able to summon the coordinates in his sleep. He could do this.

            Draco pressed his lips against Harry’s ear and murmured, “Let me do it. Just once. Concentrate on towing the Blood Bubble along with us.”

            “Oh, it goes everywhere I go,” Harry said automatically. He would have said something about that before if he’d thought that Draco would worry about it. “It was made of my blood, after all, and its surface tension comes from the pressure of my blood against my veins. It can’t leave my side.”

            Draco pulled back, staring at him. Harry stared back, noticing absently that Ron and Hermione were already gone, and wondered what could be important enough to make Draco wait.

            “Do you realize how brilliant a magical theorist you are, and how wasted you are in your Auror job?” Draco asked, and his voice was so low and charged that Harry took an instinctive step away from him, eyeing him.

            And then he told himself that now was not the time, and glanced back, and caught Adam’s eye, and smiled, and reached out to squeeze down on Draco’s wrist and give himself the moment to relax.

            “You get us there,” he said firmly. “I promise to stop theorizing and astonishing you until after the battle.”

            Draco smiled, an expression that was no more than a thin stretch of his lips, and the world vanished briefly. Harry kept his head pointed in the same direction, though, and made sure he was looking at Draco’s face when they and the Bubble and Adam all appeared in the small, dim alley next to the building Moonstone and Schroeder had chosen to hold their slaughterhouse.

            “There, you see?” he said, and stirred his hand in a circle. “You got us here. I knew you could.”

            And he turned away and fell into a study of the area, obscurely determined to prove to Draco that his Auror skills had some use after all.

            The alley was covered with dust, grime, and the sort of paper and plastic rubbish that would accumulate in a place like this, which no one cared enough to visit. Ron had already stretched the subtle barrier of a Shield Charm across the mouth of the alley, and Hermione was covering him. She frowned at Harry, probably because he and Draco had taken so long getting here. Harry shrugged back and then sprang forwards, his hands clinging to the walls as he cast spells that should give him a spider’s climbing ability. Most of the time, it worked, and Ron made too big a fuss about the one time it had failed and left him with a spider’s ability to spin silk instead.

            It worked this time. His fingers stuck to the stones, and his body cringing away, Harry made it to the top of the wall and cautiously poked his head over.

            He could see the back of the building, which was made of the same stone that the Ministry walls tended to use, and under a variety of Notice-Me-Not Charms that left a thick dust of distaste on his tongue. There was a door, or so Harry thought; he had to squint through the shimmer of the charms. And there were a number of windows, the small, arched, barred kind that you might get in a Muggle castle.

            He slithered back down and ignored the way that Draco was staring at him. If Draco wanted to scold him for taking risks, his thoughts could do that, instead of the white silence they were currently producing.

            “No guards,” Harry told Ron, turning to him instinctively, because of the way they had planned together in situations like this before. Movement beside him reminded him that Hermione and Draco would probably like to be included, and he turned towards them and nodded apologetically. “I don’t know why. Perhaps they think the spells they have on the outside are enough, and guards are better off inside.”

            “There have to be wards,” Hermione said, and her forehead wrinkled in the old familiar way that made Harry smile. “Could you sense them?”

            Harry shook his head. “That might be another reason for the Notice-Me-Not Charms. They dull the sense of wards that someone observing might otherwise pick up.”

            Hermione nodded grimly. “And you can’t hear anything from the inside, of course, or see anything that would tell us where to go.”

            “The windows are too small.”

            Hermione nodded again, like a general who had expected ambush, and pushed her hair out of her eyes. “I wish I could use a Patronus or a seeking spell to scout inside, but there’s too high a chance that someone would see it and report it to Schroeder, if he’s here, or later. And we have to hit them hard and fast enough that they can’t flee, or get the warning out.” She picked up her wand and gave Harry a wan smile. “So I reckon we do it your way, and charge in without thinking.”

            “Why does everyone think that’s my way?” Harry muttered. “I’m happy to have a plan, when I can get one.”

            “It’s the not waiting for one that makes us think it,” Ron said kindly, and then turned to face the end of the alley, removing his Shield Charm. Hermione came up to stand beside him, and put her hand, and, briefly, her head on his arm. Ron curved an arm around her shoulders in response. Harry swallowed, and felt a brief, bright, bitter envy that he had never admitted to them.

            Then he glanced back at Draco, whose thoughts were speaking again, and at Adam. Adam caught his breath and gave a small nod. Harry nodded back, and tried to project calm and reassurance as much as he could, and then turned to glance at Draco.

            Draco held his eyes, and there was nothing of the long, warm companionship that Ron and Hermione had for each other in them. Harry knew he would have been stupid to expect it. After all, he and Draco hadn’t had each other for long, and their companionship was much more jagged.

            But there was brightness there, and intensity, and fire, and that was perhaps the right kind of thing for them.

            And so they charged, Harry with his friends ahead and his lover and adopted son behind, and if it wasn’t the best charge anyone had ever made, Harry thought it was in the top ten.

*

            LeaniaSTL: I did mean to do the scene with Adam reacting to the Blood Bubble, but it didn’t work out that way.

            Harry and Draco can sort of communicate? Most of the time, what they’re picking up are impulses, which are clear in some cases, but not in many others.

            SP777: Things have definitely come a lot further on that front than Draco ever thought they would have.

            Moodysavage: Thank you! At the moment, it’s helping both Harry and Draco think about other things, really, and calm down before the battle.
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