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Sanctum Sanctorum	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 28253 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
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Chapter Thirty-Two—In Salvation

            Draco watched Harry closely as he stood in front of the young apprentice Healer—who had identified himself as Simon Oakum—and questioned him. Oakum had taken the Veritaserum without protest, although Draco had reckoned him sufficiently frightened to tell the truth. But it was better to be safe than sorry.

            He watched Harry’s friends, too, who stood off to one side of the building and looked at Harry, or the hole in the floor that had revealed the egg, or, sometimes, Draco, although they always looked away again when they realized he was watching. They didn’t like the fact that he had eyes that could look back.

            They didn’t like the fact that Harry had done what he did.

            Draco wasn’t sure what had disgusted them more, his potion to make the Healers allergic to magic or Harry’s use of a fireball on the apprentice, although if they had any sense it would be the former. Then again, they might never have expected anything better of him, a sneaky, evil Slytherin. They would have higher moral standards for a friend.

            Weasley said something in a tone too low for Draco to make out, and Granger responded. Without removing his eyes from Harry—who so far was getting little useful information from Oakum, who had been rather low on the knowledge pole—Draco cast a spell that would swirl the air near their mouths and bring their words to his attention.

            “—don’t know what he’s been telling him, Ron, or teaching him. Do you want to lose Harry to the darkness because neither of us could stir ourselves into being interested in him? Do you?” Granger sounded as if she either wanted to snap someone’s head off or burst into tears, and might be close to either. Draco allowed himself a thin smile that he doubted either of them would look over to see.

            “Of course I don’t,” Weasley said, his voice a hiss. “But, Hermione, we have no proof that’s been happening. I think Harry has always been a little Dark, since the war, when he started using those spells he knew would bring results. Malfoy might have encouraged that, but I doubt he really taught him anything new.”

            Except how to use the Dark spells at the best of times, instead of the worst, Draco thought, and curled his lip. Weasley had been present at least once when Draco had told Harry bluntly about how the use of the Retrovoyance Curse encouraged madness. That he did not remember it now, in conversation with his wife, was telling.

            No matter what Draco did, he would always remain without the charmed circle of that friendship. Perhaps he should never seek an entrance.

            “We can at least make sure that they don’t go away together and shut themselves up again,” Granger said. Draco had hoped the pause in her speech indicated that she was thinking it over and had decided that she was a fool, but from the buzz and rattle of her speech in her throat, she wasn’t that sensible. Ah, well. Draco would simply have to live with the consequences. “I think that’s done the mischief. Harry was alone with him in Grimmauld Place for too long. That’s why he did things like take Moonstone’s magic from him.”

            “I don’t think Malfoy knew about that. He was as surprised as we were when it happened.”

            Draco cocked his head. Ah, there is your common sense, Weasley. It is good to know that it is not utterly extinguished when around your brilliant wife.

            “But he probably encouraged him,” Granger said. She sounded calmer now, but that might mean she was simply settling into her lecture mode, her ideas cooling and firming like hardened lava. “Harry would think different things, he would act differently, if he was around us more often.”

            “And how are we going to make that happen?” Weasley asked, with a break in his voice. “Hermione, he took Moonstone captive, and he assaulted Schroeder, and he’s supposed to be in prison right now. Not to mention that he has Adam to look after, and people will wonder where he came from. Do you really think that we’ll be able to keep Harry from hiding away at least some of the time?” He took a deep breath. “Do you really think we should?”

            The prophecy was settling its coils around them, then, Draco assumed, marking out the future course of his life and Harry’s. He minded less than he had expected. Of course, he would have preferred ultimate free will and for Moonstone and Schroeder not to have corrupted one of his assistants or intruded on his life, but then he would not have met Harry in the same way. It was…a price he was not willing to pay.

            I wonder what I will say to Harry when he comes to realize that both of us are the objects of another prophecy? He has referred to it as a vision, but it is the same thing, marking out the future. Will he see us as equals then?

            Draco paused. There was a thought reaching up to him, a magnificent thought, a teasing one, that drew on some of the magical theory Harry had mentioned when he explained the Blood Bubble’s functioning. Fascinated, Draco stood still and let it come.

            Then other thoughts broke it and brushed it aside, thoughts that did not originate with him. Draco spun around, his hand on his wand, as Harry reared back from Oakum and stared at him. His thoughts had gone jagged, like mountains with lightning dancing among them. Draco sensed none of their usual watery softness now. He moved forwards, his hand flowing to a Calming Draught that hung among the more extraordinary potions on his belt.

            “Repeat what you just said to me,” Harry whispered, and Draco realized that he had lost track of the interrogation, occupied with Weasley and Granger’s mumblings as he was. They had turned around, too, and watched Harry with an expression of dread that made Draco want to roll his eyes. Of course they would dread their friend having any reaction to the stories of the murder and torture of children, even though a fool could have predicted that those were the tales that Oakum would tell.

            “The egg in the bottom of the floor is the egg of an altered phoenix,” Oakum repeated obediently. “When it hatches, which should be soon, its magic is going to shed from it immediately. Like feathers. And our leaders are going to use that to make themselves immortal.” He blinked up at Harry. “Along with other people.”

            “Yes, I’m sure that you believe that,” Harry murmured. One might have thought him in control of himself again, given the stillness of his hand on his wand, but Draco felt his thoughts rear higher and grow icier. “And why is the egg so much bigger than a normal phoenix’s egg?”

            “They altered it with some of the magic they drained from some of the volunteers,” Oakum said, and Draco snorted. Volunteers, Harry’s mind said, and his answered. Still, it explained how they might have persuaded some of their more tender-minded Healer dupes to go along with matters, if they had believed that the drained magical children would be compensated for their donations. “It’s much bigger now, which means more magic, which means more power for all of us.”

            Harry half-shut his eyes. Draco wondered if he felt sick because of Dumbledore’s phoenix, or because he thought of the birds as “pure” beings in the way that so many Gryffindor wizards tended to. Draco himself felt queasy at the thought of what they were standing on, the unhatched egg of an enormous, fiery bird that might exhibit any sort of behavioral and temperamental differences from the traditional phoenix.

            “Is there anything you want to ask him?” Harry asked, stepping away from Draco. “That’s the last I can think to ask.”

            Draco glanced sideways at Harry, because he personally didn’t believe that, and then noted the way that Harry’s hands trembled, and his emotion seemed to distort his face for a moment. He nodded. Harry had withdrawn not because he could not think of more questions to ask, but because he was a bit afraid of what might happen if he did ask them.

            “Of course,” Draco said, and sat down in the chair Harry had conjured. “How many of the Healers know about Schroeder’s project?” he asked Oakum. “How many of them came along because he had donated to St. Mungo’s, and how many were innocent dupes, the way that you seem to have been?”

            Oakum hesitated, his eyes fastened on the Dark Mark on Draco’s arm, but then he seemed to decide that anyone other than the terrifying Harry Potter was good. He relaxed and shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice a little blurred as the Veritaserum began to release its hold. Draco made a mental note to place three more drops on his tongue in a moment. “They didn’t talk about things like that. I’m only an apprentice. They didn’t want to talk in front of me.”

            Harry made a convulsive movement behind him. Draco held up a hand for silence and stillness there, although he never looked away from Oakum. He wondered if Harry had noticed the way his best friends looked at him yet, and hoped that he might not have to. “But you must know something,” he said. “How many of them were willing?”

            Oakum looked away—yes, the potion was definitely wearing off—but the answer jerked itself out of his lips anyway. “They—acted as if they weren’t,” he whispered. “Sometimes they talked like it, too. But they promised them magic and money. They came for power. And almost all of them were willing.”

            “Even when they saw what they would have to do to children?” Draco made his voice as gentle as possible.

            “Even then.” Oakum stared at Draco with blinking eyes, as if he knew what he was about to say next was bad in some way, but not why. “And a lot of the children were Muggles. Who cares about them?”

            Draco stood up smoothly and brought his arm around so that Harry’s arm crashed into it. Then he turned to face Harry, shielding Oakum with his body, and hissed into Harry’s face, holding his wand back without much trouble. Harry’s thoughts had gone sleek, but as Draco had been able to control and ground him the first time that this happened, so he was able to do it now.

            “Think,” he said, into Harry’s face, into Harry’s furious panting and the way that he struggled against Draco without pausing. “Do you want me to fuck you? Is that what it will take for you to regain perspective?”

            Harry paused, and the green eyes changed color, while the thoughts slanted back and forth and roiled in confusion. Draco stood still, his hand clamped around Harry’s wrist, his body not relaxed but looking like it, and braced for the confrontation he thought they might be about to have.

            Granger and Weasley were hovering behind Harry, not as near as they should have been if they wanted to do anything about this. Draco met Granger’s eyes and shook his head. She bit her lip, but proved that she had good sense after all, and could trust a Slytherin. Her hand came to rest on Weasley’s arm, and Weasley scowled and lowered his wand.

            “I can control myself,” Harry said at last.

            Draco could feel the icy points still showing through what should have been the flowing water of his thoughts, and lingered, his hand tight around Harry’s arm. Some of that had to do with the pleasure he had in feeling the tight muscles bunch and release, but not nearly all.

            “We need Oakum,” he said. “He’s the only chance we have of understanding how much of this was deliberate, and how much a trick on Schroeder’s part where the Healers are concerned.”

            “I understand that.” Harry foamed in Draco’s grasp like a nervous horse, moving to the side so that he could glare over Draco’s shoulder at Oakum.

            “No, you don’t,” Draco said, and gave Harry a tooth-rattling shake that actually jarred him into looking more fully at Draco, to Draco’s gratification. “You act the same way you do when confronted with someone who can’t tell us anything, when confronted with what they were doing to Adam in the cavern. All that matters to you is getting vengeance. You promised that you would think of Adam first and foremost, but have you? If Oakum could tell us something that might let him speak English again, would you spare his life? Or would you be too angry about what some of the Healers might have done to hear him speak?”

            Harry stood still, and something flickered deep in his eyes that Draco hadn’t seen before. He turned his head, and looked back at the Blood Bubble. Adam was watching. Draco didn’t understand the expression on his face, and doubted that he would soon, either. At times like these, the boy’s inability to speak or understand English was a small blessing.

            “You’re right,” Harry said, and his voice was deep, and the thoughts in the back of his head were building together in a towering wave of water. “And we’ve wasted too much time on this one place, when we’ll have to strike hard at the rest of them in order to carry out our plan. We need information for that, not anger.”

            He faced Draco, and Draco raised his eyebrows. Harry’s eyes, in some ways, echoed Adam’s face, at least in their lack of comprehensibility.

            “But now,” Harry whispered, “I have to use the anger, or it’ll consume me. I’ll just save it. I’ll use it where it should be used, to destroy the phoenix eggs and any other weapons they have. And then I’ll rest.”

            It was Draco’s turn to let his face darken, because he didn’t like the implications of that final word. Harry half-smiled at him, and Draco considered letting his thoughts express it alone, but no, he rather thought Harry needed to hear this. “I won’t let you die.”

            “You may not have a choice,” Harry said, but he held his hand up when Draco opened his mouth. “No, I don’t mean that I’ll commit suicide. You’re right, I should have thought more about Adam—and Ron, and Hermione, and you,” he added, stepping close enough for a moment that his breath crossed Draco’s lips. “I meant that this is the last time I’m ever going to use my magic like this. I need—I need to do something, but I don’t like the person it’s making me into. At the same time, I’ve gone too far tonight to simply stop using it now. So. One last time, and make it the best.”

            At the last words, he seemed almost to be talking to himself. Draco held his arm until Harry met his eyes, and then said, “Legilimens.”

            Harry’s thoughts leaped up, but there was no locking of his shields against Draco; he relaxed them and invited Draco inside, instead. Draco swept in and looked quickly about. There were memories and emotions here, magic, that might tear him apart if he lingered. He wanted simply to see if there was anything there that might counter Harry’s words and indicate that he was contemplating suicide after all.

            But no. The whole of Harry’s mind lay silent and bright under a single flame. What the flame wanted was to burn.

            Burn once, and then be at peace. Some of Harry’s words made sense now, and Draco touched other memories flitting by, memories of the Retrovoyance curse, and the nights he had spent under arrest for losing his temper, and the clashes with the Wizengamot and the corrupt Ministry hierarchy, and the way he had sometimes seen Granger and Draco and even Weasley looking at him.

            He wanted to rest. He wanted things to be different, because living constantly on the edge of a killing rage wearied him and made him feel at least a vague sickness.

            But first the flame had to burn.

            Draco raised an eyebrow and stepped out of Harry’s mind, back into his own body, staring at Harry thoughtfully as he went. Harry met his eyes, his back set and straight, his eyes so bright that it took Draco a moment to recognize the light as anxiety instead of defiance. Harry would do what he thought was right, but he would much rather have the support of his friends than not, as Draco thought almost anyone would.

            “Very well,” Draco said, inclining his head. “If you will promise me that this is the last time, then I’ll help you. Break the promise, and I’ll leave you.”

            Harry nodded, his lips smoothing down into a smile, because that sort of threat was something he could deal with, and then looked around the nearly empty building—if one discounted the limp bodies and the hole that Harry had dug when striving to reach the phoenix egg. “Do we need to stay here any longer? I think we would have felt the magic by now guarding any children, although I’ll look before we go.”

            “I think not,” Draco said, and then took out his vial of Veritaserum and stepped forwards, dropping the necessary three dribs onto Oakum’s tongue before he could even think about resisting. Oakum swallowed, his glare at Draco shining out unsubdued for a moment before his eyes grew glazed and his head sagged against the back of the chair.

            “What did you do that for?” Granger demanded. “It sounded like he’s already told us everything that he knows.”

            Draco shot her a small smile that he knew was mean and petty as he Stunned Oakum and then conjured a floating net of ropes to carry him in. “He may know more than we can think to ask about the other locations. We’ll take him with us, and make sure that he speaks only the truth when he gets there.”

            Granger cleared her throat.

            Here it comes. Draco turned to face her, and felt Harry’s thoughts snap and click together in the back of his head, wary and watching. He must know Granger’s tendency to lecture even better than Draco did. Draco wondered how the hell Granger thought she would get away with doing it now, though, when she had to have seen the expressions on Harry and Draco’s faces.

            Harry stepped up beside Draco, and said quietly, “Hermione, I know that what we did today wasn’t the best thing, and that I should have thought about it more deeply. But I think I’ve come up with a way to destroy these phoenix eggs…”

            Draco thought as hard as he could, You didn’t tell me that. And you didn’t tell me that you thought there might be more than one.

*

            Harry winced a little. The sheer pressure of Draco’s thoughts in the back of his mind was threatening to crack his skull. He didn’t regret asking for the potion, but it did take some getting used to, sometimes.

            I know, he said back, or tried to. But I just came up with the idea a minute ago, and it’s not really clear yet.

            After a pause, Draco’s mind settled back on itself like a cheetah sitting back on its haunches. Harry knew that he wasn’t forgiven, though, and would probably have to deal with some annoyance later.

            He’d be glad to do that, then, because it would mean they’d have survived.

            “It’s not at all the best thing,” Hermione said, and her voice was a little shrill. “Harry, do you have any idea how many people Malfoy killed out there? Or what you could have done, digging down to the egg? What if there had been children here?” She jerked her head at the Blood Bubble. “What do you think about what Adam had to see?”

            Harry looked with her, and saw that Adam was watching steadily, his face pale, one hand still clutching his bear. He caught Harry’s eye and just stared at him. Harry thought he’d seen that expression, a time or two, looking at himself in the mirror at the Dursleys’ or at Grimmauld Place. It was a summer expression. When he’d been at Hogwarts, he was generally too busy to look like that.

            “It was awful,” he said. “But he’s not asking me to go back yet.”

            Hermione stared at him, then threw up her hands. “Of course you would put that much trust in the beliefs of a child,” she said. “Just like you put that much trust in the judgment of a Malfoy, so why am I surprised?”

            Harry felt the shift in Draco’s thoughts, and knew that he had just classified Hermione as a possible enemy. But when Harry glanced at him from the corner of his eye, Draco simply stood there, looking bored. The shift hadn’t been a flinch, then. Good. The last thing Harry wanted to be mediating between was Hermione’s accusations and Draco’s hurt feelings.

            Draco raised a brow that told Harry his last thought had been heard and dismissed. Harry grinned and turned back to Hermione.

            “I think it’s important, what you’re saying,” he said. “But for later. We need to get moving and go to these other sites, and see if they have phoenix eggs, too.”

            Hermione didn’t move. At her side, Ron shifted from foot to foot badly enough that Harry thought about asking him if he had to use the loo. But he knew that wouldn’t be fair. Hermione just made people nervous like that. And Ron was probably worried about having to pick between his best friend and his wife.

            A logical fear. If Hermione tried to force this issue here, Harry knew what his answer would be, what his answer would have to be. He could only hold back the flame for so long, and if this was going to be his last explosion of temper, the last time that he might ever use Dark Arts—

            (And he wanted it to be. Oh, how he wanted it to be. Until the last few days in Grimmauld Place with Draco and Adam, he hadn’t realized how much his Dark-burning temper had been part of his life, and how peaceful and fulfilling existence could be without it).

            They had to do it now, without waiting for Hermione’s moral crisis to be over.

            Hermione finally dropped her arms and stared at Harry. Her eyes were bright with tears, her lashes thick with them. She swallowed and said, “You’re not going to listen to me no matter what I say, are you?”

            Gently, Harry shook his head. He was sorry for this, he really was, but the plain fact remained that Hermione was not important right now. Adam, and the other children he might be able to rescue assuming that Moonstone and Schroeder were holding any captive right now, was.

            Hermione finally nodded, and then said, “But we will discuss this later, Harry James Potter.”

            “Glad to,” Harry said, smiling this time because she reminded him so much of Mrs. Weasley in tone, and spun around so that he could hold Draco’s eyes. “You have everything that you’ll need for another raid?”

            Draco smiled, his expression lazy and dangerous. “Of course,” he said, stepping near enough to lower his head and sniff at the edge of Harry’s neck. “Let’s go.”

            And if I die like this, Harry thought, as they started the final search for any captives before they left, then at least I did it fighting beside the person who complements me best.

*

            unneeded: The Ministry might be able to bury the scandal, or cause an even greater one by revealing what Harry did to Moonstone. But yes, if he doesn’t want his Auror job back, there’s little they can do to affect him professionally.

            SP777: Normally I don’t say that much about the Ministry hierarchy because I’m afraid of contradicting something I don’t remember from the books.

            You certainly do keep me busy with story ideas! Now I’m playing with that one…

            As far as I know, the corruption dates from the first time that happened; my older stories that I did check appeared to be fine.

            moodysavage: Well, considering how many people they killed, I think it’s appropriate!

            Makoto_Sagara: I think this chapter fulfilled a lot of your predictions!

            Yes, the lecture isn’t something either Harry or Draco have the patience to deal with right now. However, Draco doesn’t want an insane partner, either, so demanding that he calm down or Draco will leave is probably the best bet.

            And thanks for the compliments on the battle scene. I think it comes out of writing original fantasy.

            polka dot: And another one next!

            LeaniaSTL: Close, but no cigar, on it being a dragon’s egg. You’re pretty close about the purpose, though.

            Hermione and Ron do feel that they know Harry, and I think Hermione raises some good points. It’s just the wrong time to raise them, if Harry’s going to go into battle with an undivided heart.
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