Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 41050 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 33
- 34
- 35
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Calling Back
            "You're sure this is going to work?"
            George's face was so pale that Harry thought he could have counted his freckles, despite the only light being the flickering candle in George's hand. Then his hand jerked, and the candle moved away from his face, and wild shadows danced around the walls of the spare room in Harry's home. Harry had moved all the furniture out and spent a day Transfiguring the wooden walls and floor into the simple, bare stone required by the ritual.
            "Yes," said Harry.
            He was sure, and that was the attitude that supported his voice, but he knew George had needed to hear it even more than he had. George took a deep breath and steadied his hand again, and Harry thought a little more color had returned to his face. He set the candle down at his feet and took out the small, black-handled silver knife that Harry had said he needed. Harry had offered to provide the knife himself, but George had said he had one.
            "It needs blood," George murmured, as he had more than once since they started discussing the Calling Back ritual, and looked up at Harry. "You're sure that it won't count as Dark magic?"
            "What separates it from Dark necromancy is the time we're doing it," Harry nodded towards the ceiling of the room, although they couldn't see the full moon from inside, "and your intention. You're not calling Fred back to make him tell you something. You only want to speak to him again. Right?" he added.
            "Of course." George's voice was hushed, as if he was a Muggle speaking in a church. He knelt down in front of the candle a second later, and Harry stepped back and closed his eyes, reaching for that calm place inside himself he'd once sought and failed to find when he was practicing Occlumency.
            But Harry had long since accepted his share of that failure, and no longer blamed himself, which could have caused an imbalance of his mind that would be fatal to the ritual. He was the bridge, the one who would contribute the magical strength that linked Fred and George. George was the initiate, the one who had to shed the blood and use his desire to begin crossing that bridge.
            And Fred...
            Well, Fred was the crosser between worlds. If they could reach him.
            Harry banished the doubts, as he touched the calm that had stood him in good stead all those years when he was wrestling with his friends' problems. If he could manage that, then he could manage this, to be the bridge and the anchor that held everything together. This was another manifestation of the same thing, of helping George, the way Harry did when he held him through a shaky period or listened to his nightmares. He could do this.
            They could do this.
            The calmness wrapped Harry as it had seldom failed to do since he learned, and he opened his eyes and turned towards George. George was staring at him so intently that Harry thought he could have ordered him to admit Draco and Scorpius to his shop at the moment, and he would have.
            Not that Harry would ever have misused the trust George had in him that way, but it did promise excellent things for the Calling Back ritual. He held out one hand, and made it as steady as he could, while he curled one hand into a soft beckoning motion.
            George knew what that signal meant; they'd discussed it before they began this. He closed his eyes tightly as he drew the knife along his forearm, and then up in a spiral. He did it perfectly, despite his shut eyes and the nervousness that had made his hands tremble only a short time ago. Harry watched, holding his breath as the blood spread out on the floor.
            George hadn't moved his arm at all while he was cutting, but nevertheless, the blood raced across the floor in a precise pattern, as though it was dripping through an invisible sieve in the air between George and the stone. It formed a spiral like the one George had carved into his arm, the inner point of the spiral right beside George's knee and the open side pointed towards Harry.
            Harry smiled. He could feel the tenuous force of the magic shivering all around him now, partly George's and partly something else. He had never felt Fred's magic, so he couldn't say for certain what it was, but he reached towards it with his own power, and caught the edge of a warm presence like a clasping hand.
            Harry chanted the single actual incantation the ritual would use, the small Latin spell that would open up him to the world beyond. "Voco anima, invoco anima, in nomine animorum."
            The words were stronger and more confident than Harry had ever heard himself say a spell. A second later, he realized a second voice was speaking the words along with him, which might account for it.
            And the voice was familiar. Harry opened his eyes and saw a patch of air in front of him that was bulging and rippling strangely, and then it twisted and grew the features of a face that was recognizable to Harry because he saw its twin every day.
            "Hello, then," said Fred, in a voice that made Harry's ears tremble, and he turned around and looked at George. A gust of warm wind blew past Harry, and he relaxed. If this had been a hostile spirit, or if they'd been doing a necromancy ritual that verged on Dark Arts, the wind would have been cold.
            "Oh, Fred."
            Harry had to close his eyes, once he was sure that doing so wouldn't break the magical connection that had brought Fred here. There was so much in George's voice, so much emotion that he wished he could get up and leave the twins to experience alone. But he had to be here, as the bridge. The only thing he could try to do was make sure that he didn't intrude too much on their privacy.
            "Why did you call me back?" Fred asked, but he didn't sound accusing, only curious. Harry breathed out slowly and hoped it would stay that way.
            "Because I missed you," said George at once. "And I wanted to know something, something important. Did you want me to take revenge on people?"
            "On what people?" Fred was looking around when Harry opened his eyes again. He seemed to be examining the stone on the walls, and Harry wondered if he didn't know where he was, and if George would explain. But instead, Fred muttered, "This is surprisingly good Transfiguration. Did you--"
            "Harry," George interrupted, shaking his head. Harry bit his lip hard as his heart ached a little. They no longer finished each other's sentences, or not in the same way. "I want to know if you want me to take revenge on the Malfoys."
            "What do the Malfoys have to do with it?" Fred turned back and stared at George. "Did they cause my death?"
            Harry held his silence, although that was also difficult. He wanted to say that not even Lucius Malfoy had been anywhere near the spot where Fred died, but it wouldn't do any good. This was something Fred and George had to work out for themselves.
            "No," said George. "I've been trying to find out who cast that exact spell, but I couldn't." He drew in a wavering breath, still staring at Fred. Harry didn't think he'd blinked once since Fred's ghost had appeared. "They--they were Death Eaters, though. And Harry here has taken up with Draco and practically adopted that son of his."
            "I didn't know he had a son," said Fred, and he glanced at Harry over his shoulder for a second. But it was George he turned back to. "No. Don't worry about it. Just try to find the person who cast the spell that killed me. Then you can take revenge on them." The dark smile on his face made Harry think of the way the twins had grinned on the day they left Hogwarts when Umbridge was in charge. "That would be nice."
            George nodded slowly. "So you don't want me to come join you?"
            "Of course I do, when you die." Then Fred shook his head. "But don't think that you can get me to tell you what it's like, over here. It's literally indescribable, and it's forbidden for a reason, anyway."
            George, who Harry knew would once have pounced on that demanding to be told what was indescribable, instead gave Fred a searching stare. "But you don't want me to die and join you now?"
            Fred abruptly billowed closer to George, frowning at him so hard that Harry blinked a little. "What stupid thoughts have been going through your head, little brother?" Fred muttered. "I know that you've changed, but what have you been thinking?" And his misty hand flashed through the air, smacking George on the side of the head.
            George gasped and rocked, although Harry hadn't heard any sound of impact. Maybe the twin bond Harry had read about that made the necromancy legal also meant that George could feel Fred where no one else could.
            "You've got stupid, is what it is," said Fred with conviction, floating around George so fast that parts of the mist that made up his body seemed to linger behind him like trailing smoke. "It's a disease that you've caught off little Ronniekins." Abruptly, he looked towards Harry. "Is little Ronniekins still that stupid?"

            Harry hesitated, but George looked as if he was in shock, and Fred appeared impatient. Harry probably did need to answer that one. "No," he said. "He was for a little while, but he's grown-up now. And he's doing better with his trauma from the war than he did for a long time. So is George," he added, when Fred frowned at him.
            "This is doing better?" Fred asked doubtfully, and turned around to look at his twin. This time, the way he touched George's face was reminiscent of a caress, to Harry's relief. He wouldn't have wanted Fred to hurt George every time he touched him. "He must have been badly off."
            "He was," Harry said simply. "He has been since you died. That's why I thought it would help him to see you and talk to you again."
            "Oh," said Fred, as if he had never thought of it like that, and then, "Oh. Yes." He looked for a second at his twin, his face gradually changing. He looked different from George now, and Harry knew it wasn't just the different ages between the living and the dead. Fred had acquired a knowledge that George hadn't, the way that George had one that Fred didn't possess by living alone with his pain for so long.
            "I can't do that much," Fred said suddenly, and his face was normal again as it became desolate. "Give him answers to a few questions. Tell him the truth about what I think." He looked at Harry again.
            "I think that will be enough," said Harry, suffering a surge of desperate pity and equally desperate amusement that he had become the person who even dead Weasleys looked to for advice.
            "That's enough," George said, and Harry's heart swelled at the sound of his voice. George might have needed some help, but he was strong and confident and in control now. He was standing up, and his gaze at his brother was loving, but without that dangerous yearning which Harry had seen in it that day George had talked about committing suicide. "I thought--I thought I heard your voice calling me. I would never have considered it normally, because I did know that it would hurt Ron and Harry and Hermione and Mum and Ginny and all the rest of the family, but I would have done it rather than let you suffer alone."
            Fred looked down at the ground and shook his head. "I would never do that to you, George. And even the revenge...you said that you had tried to figure out who it was and you couldn't. If you can't, you can't." He looked back at George and stretched out a hand again, although he didn't make contact this time. "I would rather that you live."
            George was the one who took Fred's hand. "As long as I know that," he said. "The uncertainty was the worst part. I couldn't be sure whether this was what you wanted or whether you were speaking to me at all, but now I know what your voice sounds like. I'm not going to forget again."
            Fred snorted. "You never should have forgotten, git. My voice sounded like yours, except a lot cleverer. The way I looked like you, except handsomer."
            George didn't even frown at the past tense, although Harry felt a small shiver travel through him at the sound of it. He only grinned and said, "I'll remember that, brother." He stood there for what seemed to Harry a long time and not long enough at all, scrutinizing Fred's face and the mist that made up his body and trailed behind him. "And now," he whispered, "I think it's time to say goodbye. Harry looks pale. He's been holding onto this bridge long enough."
            "You've been there for him, then," Fred told Harry. "Thank you."

            Harry smiled. He would never have called Fred back just for this, but it was good to hear it from him. "Thanks to you. I'm glad this worked."
            "Yes," said Fred, and turned to make his farewells to George in private. Harry lowered his eyes to the floor and hummed as loudly as he could, so that he wouldn't hear the words.
            "All right, I'm ready."
            Harry didn't know, when he looked up, who had actually said that. The twins' voices did sound a lot alike, now that they were in the same room for the first time in ten years. He nodded to Fred and then to George. "Ready?" Fred had to come back across the bridge, symbolically, before Harry could end the magic that supported it.
            "Never," said George, and looked into his twin's eyes again, but he stepped back from the bloody spiral on the floor.
            "I am," said Fred, and gave George another stern look. "You've had ten years to get used to this, you should be better at it by now. I know that I would have been if I had been the one to survive."
            George gave a smile that was more full of real feeling than Harry had seen in ten years. "Yes, well. That just shows that I'll have to do a lot better because now I'm living for two."
            Fred said something that Harry couldn't hear, and George's voice changed a little. "I know."
            The magic was aching in Harry, and it was with relief that he saw Fred pass him, looking mistier than before. Fred winked at him, and then said in a low voice, "I know you've taken care of him, Harry. The mark of that is all over him. Your magic and your care. Just--do what you need to, and help him stand on his own feet."
            "I will," said Harry, feeling an intense sadness for a moment. Fred had died so young, without the chance to experience so many of the things George had gone through, the things Fred should have been able to do. It was unfair.
            Fred seemed to read that off his face, too, because he smiled briefly and said, "I'm used to it, by now."
            Then he was gone, tattering into strips of mist that vanished before he got near the wall, and Harry dropped the magic with a gasp that felt as if it tore out his heart. He turned around in time to see the blood on the floor bursting into flame and flaring up with a dark red light that vanished like Fred a second later.
            George sank down on the floor, and Harry went over to him. But he had simply bowed his head into his hands, and he murmured thickly through his fingers, "We actually did it. I think that we--that was what I needed. I can't imagine not speaking to Fred again."
            "I don't know if we should call him back again," Harry began cautiously.
            "That's not what I meant." George lifted his head, his eyes shut, and groped with one hand until Harry took his and held it. "I meant that he was right. I should have been able to listen to my voice, and know what his sounded like. And I should have known that he would want me to live and have all the experiences for him that he can't have so I can tell him about then when I get there. I should have known that all along."
            He squeezed crushingly down. Harry held his hand and said nothing for a moment, trying to choose the right words, and then only, "Sometimes we need outside help to make us see what we should have known all along."
            George opened his eyes and nodded. "Yes. And in this case, yours was the help." He glanced up at Harry, held his gaze for a second, then stood up. "Let's get out of here. And you can Transfigure the room back. I won't need it again."
            He walked out of the room with his back straight and his eyes shining in the corners with tears. Harry smiled and began the process of Transfiguring the stone back. It did need to be done. George was right.
            And it gave George a chance to stand in the drawing room and look at the full moon through the windows, and if he talked to Fred or himself while he was alone, no one else needed to know.

*
            staar: No, nothing too bad. This is mostly a fluffy fic, after all.
            SP777: Draco couldn't join the ritual. There was no ceremonial place for him.
- 33
- 34
- 35
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

There's a Pure-Blood Custom For That