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The Serenity of His Rage	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16981 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 33
- 34
- 35
"If Harry would talk to me, he would see that I mean him no harm."
It felt to Harry as if he was lying under an enormous, soaked blanket. He found his eyelids trembling, and scowled a little. He ought to be able to open his eyes and sit up right away, because that was what he wanted to do.
But instead, he had to lie in what felt like one of the beds in the hospital wing and listen to an argument between Dumbledore and--Draco? It sounded like him, but the bond between them was faint and muddied, and Harry couldn't feel as much as he should have been able to. He listened harder.
"But you did mean him harm. You held me back when I tried to go to him."
"That was saving your life, Mr. Malfoy. And I didn't think you were so ungenerous or unintelligent as not to realize it."
Draco made a snarling sound, and some of his emotions came down the bond to Harry after all. There was spiky rage, mixed with glinting golden-green waves of concern and regret. "The fact still remains that you wouldn't be upset if the ritual had killed him."
"Mr. Malfoy, I certainly do not--"
"Oh, wait, never mind, you would be upset," Draco continued in a sweet tone that made Harry wince for Dumbledore even before Draco got to the end of his sentence. "Because, of course, Harry has to die at the time and place you chose for him, probably by the Killing Curse, not just because a ritual went wrong."
Harry felt he had to sit up after that. At least it would probably distract Draco and Dumbledore from each other if he was a flailing, pathetic mess. He did his best, and it worked in at least one sense, in that Draco came racing to his bedside a second later.
"You ought to lie still," Draco muttered, one hand smoothing back Harry's fringe. Harry found himself wincing, because he thought his scar would be inflamed, but Draco's hand simply glided over it without hurting it. "You're still magically exhausted, and Madam Pomfrey doesn't know when you'll be able to leave your bed."
"I'll be all right," said Harry, both proud he could make the words come out and stunned because his voice was so faint. "Tell me what happened after I collapsed and you brought us back. Are Ron and Hermione all right?"
Draco stood beside him, in between Harry and Dumbledore, and gave Dumbledore an absolutely vicious glance when he tried to say something. With the smallest of sighs, and a shake of the head, Dumbledore moved back, although he continued to watch them both from under his lowered eyebrows.
"Weasley and Granger are fine, although Granger had to rest. Professor Snape checked and made sure you were going to live," Draco said, turning to Harry with an air of self-importance that made Harry have to conceal a smile. "Then we brought you to the hospital wing. You're magically exhausted." He paused and let his fingers brush against Harry's scar. "And something changed with the Horcruxes."
Harry blinked, and caught a pulse of warning down the bond. He didn't think Draco was necessarily talking about the one inside him, but they had to pretend they were since Dumbledore was there.
"What was it?"
"We don't know for sure," Draco said. Harry watched the flicker of his eyelid and lip and thought they probably did know, but they weren't going to say for now. He nodded. Draco bent down and kissed him lightly. "But there's this." He pulled back his left sleeve.
Harry stared. He could still see the Dark Mark on Draco's left forearm, but now it looked as though someone had traced it in Muggle pencil and never come back to complete the design. He touched it, and looked at Draco in wonder. "No raised scars, even," he breathed.
“No,” said Draco, and smiled at him with the kind of drowning expression that made Harry want to pull him into his arms. “The ritual accomplished that much.” He turned his head and looked evenly at Dumbledore, and Harry realized that Draco didn’t think it had accomplished much more than that, either.
“If you could bring yourself to talk to me, Harry,” said Dumbledore softly.
“I’m starting to think Draco’s right. What bothers you isn’t the fact that I might die, it’s that I might die in the wrong time and place. Right?”
Dumbledore sighed and reached out to take a chair near the bed. Harry only watched, and said nothing. On the one hand, part of him still longed to reassure Dumbledore, to tell him that he understood how hard it had to be to make decisions that affected so many people, and how he wanted to work with him.
But he still remembered the way Dumbledore had come up to him on his birthday and simply dropped the news of the Horcrux on him. And the way he had talked about Draco as if he was untrustworthy simply because he was a Slytherin. And how he had insisted that Harry undergo the soul-bond ritual and then tried to make him see it as a mistake.
Dumbledore made mistakes, too. The problem was that he didn’t want to admit them, and tried to keep other people from thinking of them as errors, either.
Harry realized that he was squeezing Draco’s hand as hard as Dudley might and projecting anger down the bond when Draco shifted next to him. Harry nodded in recognition and tucked his feet under him on the bed, watching Dumbledore and saying nothing for the moment.
Dumbledore didn’t seem to notice. “The ritual had one of the purifying effects I hoped it would, but not the other,” he said quietly. “Young Mr. Malfoy’s Mark is mostly gone, but not your Horcrux, Harry. From what I could tell of it, it didn’t even seem to be affected.”
Harry tried to look sideways at Draco without letting Dumbledore see. Had Dumbledore cast some spell on him as he lay there? What had he learned about the Horcrux and the soul-bond?
But the only thing he knew for certain was that Draco was calm. That must mean Dumbledore either hadn’t done anything too bad or didn’t know anything. Harry sighed and said, “So are we going to try another plan, now? Or are you going to let Draco try his?”
“I was unaware that young Mr. Malfoy had a plan.”
“He said that he thought that other Horcrux must be with the Lestranges, because Voldemort trusts them the most. So we should try to get into Gringotts and their vault, right?”
Draco squeezed Harry’s hand. Harry paused. He knew Dumbledore would probably just see that little motion as something meant to calm Harry down or maybe thank him for his support.
But to Harry, along with the pulse of very strong emotion down the bond, it was suggesting something else.
Harry restrained himself from asking what Draco meant for the moment, and simply inclined his head to Dumbledore. “What do you say? Are we going to try and break into Gringotts?”
“I know of no way to pass all the security of the bank. Otherwise, believe me, Harry, I would already have tried. Young Mr. Malfoy’s guess is as good as any, and I believe we are running out of time before Voldemort either figures out that some of his Horcruxes have gone missing or launches a major offensive. That means that we need to finish this quest quickly.”
“But there must be some way. I mean, Quirrell broke into the bank during my first year. Why can’t we just figure out what he did and do it, too?”
“Two reasons. First, the goblins will undoubtedly have discovered whatever flaw in their security let the attempted theft of the Philosopher’s Stone happen and patched it.” Dumbledore pushed his glasses up his nose. “And second, we can be sure that whatever method Tom used, it was Dark. I will not stoop to using the Dark Arts.”
Harry could feel the incredulous way Draco was staring beside him, and spoke hastily, almost before he thought, simply desperate to keep Draco from ruining everything with Dumbledore. "But what if that Dark method is the only way we can win the war, sir? Then can we use it?"
"There is another way we can win the war," said Dumbledore, and his eyes were lingering on Harry's scar.
"No, you bastard. No."
Harry made a hasty grab at Draco, but Draco shook him off and sent a blast of cold down the bond that made Harry cough and reel. Draco moved, turning a little, shielding Harry from Dumbledore's sight. The only frustrating thing about that was it meant Harry couldn't see Dumbledore's reaction, either. He nudged at Draco's ribs with his elbow, but it still didn't make Draco move or change the implacable stare on his face.
"Killing Harry, having Harry kill himself, wouldn't win the war." Every one of Draco's words clanged like an iron ingot falling out of his mouth. "Even if his Horcrux was destroyed, that leaves Nagini and the Horcrux in the bank. The one you say we can't reach. We can't break into the bank with Dark Arts, because that would be a step too far for you somehow, but we can send someone who's fought as hard as he can to his death. My bondmate. How is that sane? How can you stand here and preach victory when we would still have Horcruxes to destroy?"
"Mr. Malfoy--"
"No. I want to know. Why are you so desperate for Harry to die? More secrets you're hiding from him? I have no idea how there could be more after the Horcruxes and the prophecy, but that's Light wizards for you, I suppose. What is it, Dumbledore?"
For a long moment, there was silence. Harry finally managed to sit up and lean so he could see Dumbledore's face. His expression was drawn and old, and he sat gazing down at the blackened hand in his lap, the remnant of his own battle with a Horcrux.
Harry felt a stirring of pity, only to find himself hit with a blast of snowflakes and freezing water down the bond.
"Don't you dare," said Draco, in a whisper so low and hissing that Harry jumped. He thought for a moment that a snake had somehow got into the hospital wing. Draco turned and faced Dumbledore, and once again his face looked as if it was carved out of iron. "I want an answer."
Dumbledore looked up slowly. His voice was gentle and faltering, and Harry thought he had never seemed so old. "The answer, Mr. Malfoy, is that I cannot taint my soul with Dark Arts. Nor do I want to taint yours when I worked so hard to rescue you." He turned a slow, moody look on Harry. "But Harry--"
"What? Deserves to be tainted? Needs to split his soul? What?"
"I knew Harry would have to kill Voldemort. The prophecy said so. And when I found out about the Horcrux, I thought--well, he has a taint there already. It will not hurt him as badly if he is the one who uses the appropriate methods to recover the Horcruxes. He cannot--he will not be spared at least the taint of murder, by the will of fate. This way, he at least could take the fall and spare innocents who have a choice."
Draco, Harry could tell from the bond, was lost in a rage so incandescent that he couldn't speak. So Harry was the one who did.
"I understand."
"No. No."
Harry held up his hand to make Draco be silent, and never looked away from Dumbledore's eyes. He thought it was okay. He knew Dumbledore wouldn't dare try Legilimency right now, not after he'd just admitted to the crime he'd been committing against Harry. "I don't mean I'm going to march out there and die. I just said I can understand the logic. It's like locking up someone who has a disease so they don't spread the disease, even if that means they die anyway. It's what we do with werewolves. It's like cutting off a limb that's dying to make sure the rest of the body doesn't die." He glanced at Dumbledore's hand.
"You do know it," Dumbledore breathed, and closed his eyes. Harry saw the gleam of tears around the corners of his closed lids, and didn't even think he was being manipulative.
“That doesn’t mean that I’m going to agree when we have an alternative.”
“But the ritual did not work to destroy your Horcrux,” said Dumbledore at once. Harry wondered, for a moment, if he saw all the possible ways that this conversation could turn in his mind, and he was ready to block any possible gambit. It must be like playing chess with instinctive strategy, the way Ron did. “That means that we have no choice but to destroy it another way.”
“Which doesn’t have to involve me dying.”
“It must. Can you not see that, Harry? A moment ago, you acknowledged the necessity.”
“I said I could understand why you would see it that way.” Harry sighed and braced himself against the strength in the bond, which was flowering with approval now, as Draco understood what he was doing and supported him in it. “That doesn’t mean I agree.”
“If you know that you must die, that you must be cut off from the body for the body to flourish—”
“But that’s still just a metaphor. And I’m a human being, not a limb.” Beside him, Draco nodded so hard that Harry felt him wince a second later; he’d hurt his neck. “And we don’t have two of the Horcruxes yet. How will having me die before we get them help with anything?”
"I can think of ways to deal with those other Horcruxes," said Dumbledore quietly. "Fiendfyre. The basilisk fang. I would not put you through those painful ways, Harry."
"That assumes you could get hold of the other Horcruxes in the first place." Draco's part of the bond was lashing with fury, as much like wild waves as it had been since they started to put up the Occlumency walls, but his voice and face were both tranquil. "So you want Harry to die, just not in pain. I see. What a generous distinction."
"The Killing Curse is painless. And I believe that having Tom cast the curse at Harry that he survived once before--"
"Is the mark of a generous human being. A great leader. A--"
Harry squeezed Draco's hand to shut him up just as Dumbledore interrupted. "I said I believe that it would give Harry a chance to survive the curse, in a way he most assuredly would not if he was having a different spell cast at him, or one in the middle of a battle. We need to make sure that we set up a situation where Tom can cast the spell at him and not be suspicious. Then there's the chance to come back."
"You believe."
"I also believe I said that, Mr. Malfoy."
"But that means that you also don't know. That also means there's the chance Harry could die. And if he did, you would just expect him to go ahead and die, right? And me with him. That would be the price of doing business."
Dumbledore bowed his head.
Draco was shaking as if he'd fly apart. Harry decided that he really didn't want him to speak anymore. His part of the bond was so upset that it would only hurt him more if he did. So he sat up, and shook his head when Draco tried to turn on him with fire in his eyes.
He also sent a strong pulse of reassurance down the bond. Draco might think Harry was actively trying to hurt himself, but he ought to know that Harry would never do anything that would drag Draco into death along with him.
“I understand,” Harry repeated. “That doesn’t mean I’m going to do what you want, sir. Not this time. Not ever again.”
Dumbledore raised his head. “Nothing, Harry? Not even take the actions that would save dozens of lives? Perhaps hundreds, if Voldemort finds out what we are doing before we complete it and creates more Horcruxes? I never want to accuse you of selfishness. This is perhaps the first thing you’ve said that’s selfish.”
Harry took a deep breath and held it. It helped. It also helped that Draco was now so overcome with outrage that he couldn’t speak at all.
Dumbledore, of course, went on, his voice eloquent and pleading. “I won’t say that the whole burden should rest on your shoulders, or that what you’re being asked to do is fair. But because of the prophecy, we have to think of you as the only one who can do this. I don’t know any other way to interpret the words.”
Draco squeezed Harry’s hand. Harry suspected he knew what Draco would say if he had the breath and sanity. Just because you don’t know…
“And there is truly no greater contribution you can make than getting rid of the Horcrux inside you. Other people, including me, can hunt the other two, and destroy them. But there’s only one way to remove this one.”
Draco was almost writhing. He stopped only because he saw Harry sitting up and opening his mouth, Harry thought. And not even that impulse would hold him silent much longer.
That meant Harry had to make this good.
“I won’t do as you say,” Harry agreed quietly. “And it has nothing to do with your belief that getting rid of the Horcrux in me with the Killing Curse is possible. It might be possible. And it might also be possible that I could survive it. I don’t know.”
Dumbledore seemed to be the one holding his breath, this time. “And what is the real reason you won’t listen to me?”
“Because you soul-bound Draco to me without thinking of the consequences. And you keep talking as though I should just allow myself to be killed while doing nothing to save him. I think you knew about the ‘only’ method to get rid of the Horcrux when you set up the soul-bond ritual, not just when you came to talk to me on my birthday. That’s right, isn’t it?”
“I suspected it, yes. But I didn’t know it until I had done some research. I swear to you, Harry.”
“And you took the risk anyway. You decided to tie Draco to me even though you knew it might mean his death, because you were so—I don’t know, desperate or hasty. You only did the research about how I could get rid of the Horcrux later.”
“I thought that the soul-bond might still work the way I hoped it might, that it might draw away your soul from the Horcrux and towards Mr. Malfoy’s—”
“The point is,” Harry said, and felt the words ache like a spike driven into his lungs, “you took risks with Draco’s life. And you were even thinking about taking them with Ron and Hermione’s, when you listened to Hermione’s plan to soul-bond with me. It’s not—you can do what you want with my life. I might put myself into your hands and trust you with that. You have no right to do the same thing with other people.”
Dumbledore was silent. He looked at Harry with sharp eyes. Harry didn’t bother to look away. If Dumbledore read some of the truth out of his mind, then so be it, although Harry thought he would recognize the sensation of Legilimency by now. But he needed to face Dumbledore down and make him understand.
He’d had no right.
Finally, the Headmaster stood up, looking as though he’d had to pick up the burden of the world. Harry only watched him. He knew how that felt, but Dumbledore knew so much more than he did and didn’t have a soul-bond. He ought to be the one to figure out what they were going to do.
Some other way.

“I can only hope that you will reconsider,” Dumbledore said, in a whisper so soft that Harry would have missed it if he hadn’t been listening intently. “If you would only see how much more you can do than any other…it’s not only that you’re already marked and prophesied, Harry. It’s that you have talents other people don’t.”
“Like what?” Harry asked. From the way Draco squeezed his hand, he probably thought Harry shouldn’t risk even this much conversation, but it was still something Harry wanted to try.
“Like being able to stand up to evil and not run away from it. Did you never wonder why the wizarding world was always so eager to shove the saving of the world off on your shoulders, when there were powerful and experienced wizards available to save it?”
“Don’t try that one on him,” Draco snarled, apparently having reached the point where silence was physically impossible for him. “Just don’t. Not when he was one year old and no one knew he would have this supposedly remarkable world-saving ability.”
“But when he defeated Voldemort when he was eleven—”
“That was Voldemort as a spirit and hiding on the back of Quirrell’s head,” Harry interrupted impatiently, noticing that Draco wasn’t even flinching. Good for him! “Not now, with him back at the height of his power and still having some Horcruxes. I’m not going to walk out and die for you, Headmaster. Get used to the idea.”
Dumbledore continued to gaze at him with a long, searching, earnest look. Harry stared straight back and said nothing. Dumbledore finally had to turn away, with a weary, defeated sigh, and make his way to the far side of the hospital wing and out, his shoulders slumping.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” Draco said, and raised so many protective and privacy spells around the bed that Harry blinked in surprise.
“What? Your sexual fantasies?”
*
Draco paused, both to chuckle and to feel the overwhelming rush of relief and gratitude. This could have been lost forever. Harry’s stupid jokes and stupid trust in Dumbledore would have died along with the rest of him during the ritual.
But Draco had rescued him. And Dumbledore had better not try to do anything else to Draco’s favorite possession.
Draco crowded in close to the bed and whispered, “Professor Snape managed to summon the cup Horcrux.”
Harry’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes widened so far that Draco could read the thoughts in the back of them without Legilimency. But luckily, he didn’t ask anything stupid like why they hadn’t told Dumbledore yet. He reached out and grasped Draco’s hand, and Draco gave him a hard squeeze back, grinning.
“How are we going to destroy it?” Harry murmured, barely moving his lips, as if he wanted to keep them from being read.
“The basilisk fang, probably.”
Harry nodded and leaned back on his pillow. His face turned sly. Draco blinked and focused on the bond, which hummed with a strange candy-colored glow he’d never seen before.
“And I know I have you to thank for my life,” Harry whispered. “We have a little while before Ron or Hermione or Madam Pomfrey come back, probably. How would you like your reward?”
Draco twitched, and then leaned closer. Harry’s lips were so seductively parted, and his face was so earnest…
“I don’t think we have enough time, regrettably,” Draco breathed out. “But let me tell you what I want.”
And he did, so thoroughly that by the time Weasley and Granger did enter the hospital wing five minutes later, Harry had three blankets balled on top of his groin to make sure no one could catch a glimpse of what Draco’s words had done to him.
Draco just sat back, listened, thought of the Room of Requirement later, and smiled.
*
SP777: In this case, it's embedded too deeply for thatk ind of ritual to get it out.
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The Serenity of His Rage