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Ceremonies of Strife	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16218 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this writing.

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Chapter
Thirty-Five�Movement

�� If you are
resistant to Veritaserum, then why should we trust that you�re telling the
truth?� Hermione interrupted suddenly.

�� Harry
turned his head to look at her, startled out of the cocoon of somber thought
that had settled around him. Hermione had her arms folded and her eyes
squinting, as if she could see the secrets hiding inside Aran�s head if she
looked hard enough. Draco glanced slowly back and forth between her and Aran,
eyes lidded so that Harry couldn�t tell what he was thinking.

�� There�s no
guarantee, of course.� Aran rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. �But
Nihil�s left me enough independence that I can decide what I say and how much
to give you. I was never his tendril. I had my own life before he ate it. I
don�t remember much of that life now�just what I needed to know to fool the
people around me, most of whom hadn�t seen me in years�but I remember the
eating, and I resent it.� His eyes gave a feverish flash.

�� That�s the
reason that you seem so different now from when we had you in class,� Harry
said suddenly, as pieces clicked together in his mind. �You were behaving the
way Nihil told you that you had to, to avoid suspicion, but now you�re acting
the way you want.�

�� Aran
nodded. �I was never that aloof. And I would not have made the offer to tutor
you if Nihil hadn�t wanted me to keep an eye on you and report any
extraordinary leaps forwards.�

�� What about
anyone else in the Ministry?� Hermione said, her voice so harsh that Harry
suspected she considered his tangent
to be little more than a waste of time. �Is there anyone else whom you know is
infected?�

�� Aran shook
his head. �We can�t recognize each other at a glance. We�re taught to act
together only when he commands it, and not otherwise. I will say that I know
Lowell and Weston aren�t infected, because he wouldn�t have sought you two out for your compatible magic��
he jerked his head at Harry and Draco ��if he already had a pair. And he tried
to take Portillo Lopez, but he couldn�t get into her head.�

�� Harry
nodded as if that wasn�t news to him, wondering if the tattoo that Portillo
Lopez and the rest of her Order carried on their skin protected them against
such attacks.

�� And
Gregory wasn�t infected, either,� Aran added. �But she was coming close to
discovering his secrets�she suspected Dearborn�and had to be taken out. I know
that her name kept returning to his mind more and more often lately, but I
don�t know why. We can hear some of the outer echoes of his thoughts when
they�re especially intense, like overhearing something on the wireless from
another room. We can�t hear everything, though.�

�� Draco
stepped in to take control of the conversation again. �What happened to
Gregory?�

�� Aran
grinned sourly. �If he�d found her or knew, he wouldn�t be so worried.�

�� Can she do
that much against him, though?� Hermione sounded thoughtful. �She�s a single
person, and even though she was Combat instructor here, I can�t imagine that
she would have a lot of contacts outside the Ministry. All she would have had
to do was go through the training program and then demonstrate enough talent to
teach others once she was an Auror.�

�� What she
has is something worse than that,� Aran said. �Hatred, implacable hatred, for
someone who forced her away from her job. Paranoia and observation skills
enough to suspect that something was wrong with Dearborn. Deter��

�� He broke
off abruptly, coughing. Harry started forwards, wondering if the ropes were
choking him again, but then Aran threw back his head in silent agony, his face
turning black.

�� Harry
stopped, drawing his wand, and cast his most powerful Shield Charm in front of
him. He knew what this was.

�� Aran�s
whole body, or at least the visible skin around his robes, also turned black.
He thrashed in the robes, hard, taking heavy gasping breaths, and then began to
rock in place. His muscles bulged and rippled weirdly. Hermione tried to help
him, but Harry cast another Shield Charm that kept her back like cage bars. He
didn�t want any of his friends being touched by the thing eating Aran.

�� Aran gave a
final thrash, and then his whole body exploded into black pulpy fragments,
decorated with flying blood and thick white liquid that Harry didn�t think
usually came out of living humans. Hermione cried out in disgust, and Ventus
surged forwards beside Harry, casting another spell. It was a good thing she
had, as the black fragments rose over Harry�s Shield Charm. Ventus�s
complicated incantation opened a pair of jaws made of fire, which ate the
fragments and then appeared to smirk before fading.

�� Nothing was
left clinging to the ropes except a few traces of blood and the white liquid.
Hermione used her wand to conjure a vial and then a spell to scoop some of the
white liquid off the ropes. It looked like heavy cheese, and Harry shivered and
glanced away. Meanwhile, Ventus burnt the ropes, ignoring the angry
exclamations from Hermione and Ron.

�� It�s too
dangerous,� she said calmly. �Who knows what could infect us if we touched them?�
She turned around and swept her glance over them as if she were counting their
teeth through their skin. �And it is perfectly obvious that we are not going to
reveal Aran�s death to the instructors. I would protect my comitatus even from
themselves if necessary.�

�� Harry stood
where his Shield Charm had left him, staring at the place Aran had been. He
felt frozen. One moment the man had been alive, doing what he could to help
them, apparently, even if that cost him his life�

�� And then it
had.

�� If you can call that life, Harry
thought, rubbing his face. And for all we
know, maybe Nihil has taken his spirit away and is going to put it in another
body. I don�t know if the people he infects become immortal in the same way as
the parts of him.

�� There�s so
much that we don�t know,� Draco said reflectively, as if hearing and echoing
Harry�s thoughts. �But I think we can get the answers if we continue to work
for them. And we have some that we can use.�

�� Harry
turned to look at him. Draco leaned his arm along the back of the chair where
Ventus had sat and smiled at the lot of them. His smile was more cheerful and
less cold than Harry would have thought it could be, so soon after he had
tortured someone and then seen that same person die.

�� That was
horrible,� Hermione whispered.

�� It was,�
Draco agreed. �But it gives us valuable advice. It tells us that Nihil is even
stranger than we thought, but not as powerful. The people he conquers retain
some independence. Maybe even Dearborn was more independent than we thought he
was, because he wasn�t the same person as the one who went hunting his
brother.� Harry looked at the floor for a moment, because he thought that was
something Draco would sincerely like to believe in rather than something that
was true, and he didn�t want Draco to see his pity. �And we know that there are
others who are fighting him, people we might be able to join up with.�

�� He looked
at Harry, cocking his head. �And we know that torture works against Nihil�s
minions, and might work against Nihil himself.�

�� Harry
couldn�t let that pass, but raising the moral argument against it so soon after
he�d lost it wouldn�t make Draco listen. He lifted his head, looked Draco in
the eye, and said, �All right. So what�s next?�

�� We try to
make contact with Gregory,� Draco said calmly. �We keep attending classes as if
nothing had happened, and look for other people we might be able to make
contact with, And we see if we can identify anyone who�s infected, a tendril of
Nihil, or someone who might be able to tell us the truth, like Aran did.�

�� We can�t
just not tell them anything,�
Hermione said, looking more and more distressed. �The instructors will want to
know where Aran went.�

�� Then let
them ask.� Draco turned away with a dismissive little motion of his hand. �When
the instructors do find information, such as what Pushkin discovered from his
experiments on Nemo�s beasts, they don�t use
it. All they do is push it into the background and then pretend that
nothing happened. I think they want the War Wizards to handle this, badly
enough that they won�t fight no matter what we give them.�

�� But one of
their own being infected��

�� They
thought Gregory was infected last year,� Draco said, craning his neck around to
stare haughtily at Hermione. �And they still didn�t try to do much about it
after she fled.�

�� How could
they, when they didn�t know where she went?� Hermione asked, but her voice was
low. She sighed and stared at her hands. �So who�s going to do what?�

�� Draco gave
them the instructions. Ron sometimes frowned, but he showed no more sign of
resentment than that. Harry shook his head. He wondered how in the world Ventus
could have seen that Draco had the gift of leadership before the rest of them.
He had thought he knew Draco better than anyone else, but that had been proven
wrong even before Ventus started to make her claims. Harry had jumped into
�love� with him and still not realized some of his most basic talents or
principles.

�� Like his talent for torturing people. Or not
caring about people except those he loves.

�� As Harry
thought about it, though, a knot of tension in his shoulders relaxed. Draco had
said that he only cared about saving the world because of his family, but he
had become an Auror without reference to that. The Ministry wasn�t threatening
the Malfoys right now, and would have only if they became aware of Lucius�s
escape. And the people Draco would be protecting wouldn�t be only his family.

�� He has depths that he hasn�t thought of. He
has motivations that he might not understand.

�� When Draco
glanced at him as if testing whether anyone was going to complain about his
orders, Harry had the ability to smile back.

*

�� Draco
leaned against the wall and shut his eyes. He knew he was in trouble if someone
passed by, but he didn�t think anyone would. The instructors had vanished into
Portillo Lopez�s office for their private meeting half an hour ago, and based
on the meetings they�d been having lately, especially about Aran, they wouldn�t
be out any time soon. Draco had the ability to pierce the eavesdropping wards
they�d raised and hear what they were saying�if he could only do it without
being detected.

�� He breathed
until he was centered in himself, and refused to think of all the secrets he
might be losing, which might pass by him and sail into the darkness. The
instructors couldn�t know that much, or Draco would have caught hints of it
during the Fellowship meetings. And he and Harry and the rest were in a better
position of knowledge than they were, since they were in on the secret of Aran,
among other things.

�� If they don�t know much, why are you so
desperate to overhear?

�� It was the
sort of question Granger would have asked. Draco grinned sourly at the thought
that she was part of his mental array of qualities now, and drew his wand as he
gave the silent answer.

�� Because we know more about Nihil, but they
know more about Ministry politics, Auror politics, and sheer training. Not
individual spells, but the way that training works with all the subjects and
connects them. They know more about being Aurors.

�� And I think we�ll need to be Aurors to fight
Nihil.

�� The spells
to get around the eavesdropping wards curved and flowed out of his mouth, as
though he were slowly extracting a piece of liquid silver. Draco kept his eyes
closed as he chanted, trusting to his ears to warn him of anyone�s approach and
the Disillusionment Charm he had on to render him invisible enough to fool
casual observers. He would have used a few of the more powerful protective
spells that Granger had found in the library, but there were none that wouldn�t
set off the wards surrounding the room where the instructors met.

�� The chant
finished. Draco opened his eyes and waited. Had he succeeded? The instructors�
voices should start coming to his ears in a minute, if so.

�� don�t
know what we can expect a crowd of trainees to do!� Lowell�s words were sudden,
loud, and right in his ear.

�� Draco
controlled his reaction with nothing more than a slight gasp. He hadn�t
actually broken through wards like this before, and so hadn�t realized that the
natural sound of their voices would startle him so.

�� Hush,�
Weston said. No more than that, but Draco could almost feel Lowell relax. They
complemented each other very well, Draco thought. He hoped that he and Harry
might learn to do that someday.

�� They will
be part of the Ministry�s line of defense, should Nihil attack us again.�
Portillo Lopez, her voice much calmer and deeper than Draco had heard it in
some time. Of course, he hadn�t had her for classes this year. �I think it
worthwhile for them to know how to defend themselves. They didn�t when Nihil
came hunting at the end of last year, or it was not adequate, and some of them
were wounded who should not have been.�

�� Of course
you pay more attention to the wounded than we do.� Davidson. Draco heard a
creak and shuffle that was probably her leaning forwards in her chair. �But we
cannot allow concern for their safety alone
to dictate what we do. We are running a program here. They will be Aurors
someday, and there are things they need to know that we can�t excuse them from
knowing. We have to think beyond the war.�

�� No,�
Ketchum said, his voice almost a bray after Davidson�s cool, elegant words.
Draco rolled his eyes, and didn�t know if he was rolling them at Ketchum or at
his own prejudices. �This is an enemy who stands a good chance of defeating us
if we think that way. I agree with Portillo Lopez. Let�s get the trainees
through the war, and then we can start picking the ones who would only make
good soldiers and not good Aurors out of the mix. But we need to worry about
surviving to see the future, and making sure they survive, before we worry
about vague and nebulous consequences. They�re our charges. We should act like
it.�

�� We�re here
to train them�� Davidson began.

�� To live,�
said a voice that was probably Morningstar�s. Draco could almost picture the
smile she would be wearing, the same one she used when someone whom he�d
underestimated threw him across the room in Combat class. �We thought they
needed one set of skills in order to do that. It turns out they need another.
We�ll adapt. We�ll teach them to adapt. And we can change things back after the
war. The Auror program will survive.�

�� There was
silence, as if that announcement carried more weight than Draco knew. He braced
himself with one boot against the wall, leaning as close to the door as he
dared, trying to hold his breath. If someone spoke more quietly, or gave the
reason for the silence, he wanted to be sure he heard.

�� I�m not
sure,� Lowell murmured. �When I think of how young they are, some of them, and
struggling with the set of skills we want them to learn now��

�� We�ll make
it,� Weston said. Her voice had clear affection in it, and Draco could imagine
her stroking Lowell�s arm. �We always do.�

�� But will they make it?� A creak and a rustle as
Lowell shifted in his seat. �That�s what I�m worried about.�

�� I think
they will,� Ketchum said, �if we turn all our abilities to making sure they do
so.� There was a stomp and slide of boots, and Draco was sure that he had risen
to his feet. �And I�m more than willing to admit, my friends, that we were
wrong if this doesn�t work. But I think it�s clear by now that simply doing as
we have done is no way to counter Nihil. We should try something different. If
that works out horribly after the war, well.� He blew out a harsh breath that
sounded as if he had used up all the air in his body. �At least there will still
be Aurors to try and solve the problem.�

�� Silence,
and then Portillo Lopez said, �I stand with Samwise.�

�� And I.�

�� And I.�

�� One by one,
the voices of the instructors affirmed a decision that Draco could understand
the general outlines of, if not all the details. They had just chosen to try
and teach their trainees, including him and Harry, skills that would actually
matter to the battle against Nihil�perhaps milder versions of the spells the
War Wizards used, perhaps something else.

�� It didn�t
matter. Whatever it was, Draco could feel his heart bounding along, and he had
a level of respect for the instructors he hadn�t possessed an hour before.
(Which still didn�t mean that he was about to tell them about Aran. If there
were infected ones among them, they had probably been coerced into agreeing by
the rest).

�� They
wouldn�t hide their eyes in the sand and pretend there wasn�t a war on, as the
Ministry was prone to doing too often. They would move faster. Draco might
learn things that would enable him to save Harry�s life, or his parents� lives,
or his own.

�� They were
moving.

*

�� Block
this.� Lowell�s voice was soft, and he stepped towards Harry with an
extravagant gesture, as if he assumed that Harry wouldn�t see him coming
otherwise.

�� Harry
grimaced and braced himself. His wand was on the far side of the large training
room, under Weston�s careful guard, but Draco stood at Harry�s back. He should be able to cast the Shield Charm
that he would need to defeat Lowell through Draco�s wand�always assuming that
he had mastered the skill sufficiently. Of course, Lowell and Weston thought he
and Draco had spent time practicing that they had spent foiling Nihil instead.

�� For the
first time, Harry felt a squirming bit of guilt at having fooled their
teachers. Draco�s news had made Hermione beam and Ron nod and Ventus look
interested�she had said it was �about time� that the Auror instructors had
started giving them �a real education��but it had made Harry feel worse. They
had disdained the help of people who had turned out to be a bit sensible after
all.

�� But is there anything that doesn�t increase
your guilt? he thought in Draco�s voice, and then shook his head and
focused his eyes on Lowell. It was time to start thinking about what mattered
in this particular moment.

�� Vinco!� snarled Lowell.

�� Harry was
already in motion, reaching out to his �sense� of Draco that he had started
cultivating, and envisioning the hawthorn wand in his mind as hard as he could.
He had held it this way when he used
it to duel Death Eaters, and this way
when he was casting healing charms with it, and�

�� A cold wind
seemed to blow down his spine. His mind expanded as if a door had been thrown
open. He felt himself lifting on invisible wings, riding the surge of
compatible magic that raced towards Draco and dived into his wand.

�� Harry had
never done this before. It was terrifying, exhilarating, addictive. He found
himself breathing hard, his eyes shut as his chest struggled. And yet he could
still see, including the yellow light of the spell bounding towards him, and
Draco�s tense face, and the wand lying on the floor, innocent, supposedly, of
any danger.

�� Protego!�

�� Squeezing
the Shield Charm out of the end of the wand was the hardest thing he had ever
done. It felt as if he were squeezing it out of himself, weaving it of blood and flesh and skin. His muscles
shuddered, and Harry felt a sudden hardness against his back. He was sure he
had fallen to the floor. His odd, doubled sight of the room went dark, and when
he opened his eyes he immediately turned his head.

�� A Shield
Charm hovered shimmering between him and Lowell, holding back the yellow spell,
which crackled and dissolved.

�� Lowell
nodded, panted, and gave Harry a smile. �Good,� he said. �If not quite to the
point where you should be.�

�� Give them
a chance to prove themselves again,� Weston said, predictably. �At least the
barrier between them has finally dissolved.�

�� Harry
nodded enthusiastically, hoping Lowell would agree with her and otherwise leave
them alone. The barrier had faded,
probably because he had finally shared the secret of his necromancy with Draco.
That was progress, wasn�t it? And that meant Lowell had no reason to stare at
them with hooded eyes like that.

�� Draco came
forwards shaking the hawthorn wand as if it burned him. �It�s a strange
sensation,� he complained, �having someone else cast through your wand.�

�� It is less
strange for you than it would be for many others, since you have the compatible
magic,� Lowell promptly began, turning to lecture Draco. �Of course, if you did
not have the compatible magic, you would not be able to perform the feat at
all��

�� Draco
nodded solemnly in response to Lowell�s lecture, while catching Harry�s eye to
mouth You�re welcome. Harry smiled
and sat up, then made his way to his feet, rubbing his back. He�d hit hard when
he fell. His back throbbed in time with his head.

�� Then his
headache became more persistent.

�� Harry
noticed his fingers were cold when he reached up to touch his forehead. The
skin there felt stretched and tight around the scar, though the scar, contrary
to what he thought he felt for a single panicked second, wasn�t burning. Then
the numbness surged up through his hand to his heart, and his vision blurred at
the edges.

�� He knew in
an instant what was happening, though the symptoms were worse than before. He
was about to have another vision, courtesy of Nihil.

�� Draco
already seemed to have sensed something wrong and was turning towards him, eyes
narrowed. That attracted the attention of Lowell, who stopped his lecture and
faced Harry as well. Weston took a few quick steps forwards and was at his
side, one arm firmly around Harry�s shoulders, as if she assumed that he would
try to escape.

�� What is
happening?� Weston�s voice was sharper, softer than Lowell�s, and accompanied
by the jab of a wand into Harry�s side.

�� I don�t
know,� Harry responded truthfully, ending in a gasp. He didn�t know what caused
him to be connected to Nihil, other than the fact that they had both practiced
necromancy�but then why wasn�t Nihil connected to other necromancers? Portillo
Lopez hadn�t said anything about this.

�� There was a
buzzing in his ears. He couldn�t feel his hands. Through the buzzing a voice
began to call, softly, endlessly. Harry had the feeling that he didn�t know
want to know what it was saying.

�� Harry!�
Draco, from a distance.

�� Darkness.
Cold. The call.

�� And then
Harry opened his eyes to find himself somewhere entirely different.

*

�� polka dot:
Thanks!

�� Mehla Seraphim:
Harry�s main worry is that Draco will lose some of his humanity for situations
that require it. Some parts of war might need torture, but surely not all of
them.

�� But yes,
Harry is going to have to find a way to compromise with his ideals when he
starts working seriously as an Auror.

�� SP777: I
don�t know that I would describe this as entirely Slytherin, either. For one
thing, Draco is much more honest with Harry than he used to be.

�� No, I had
the explanation about Nemo and Nusquam in mind from the beginning.

�� And I�m
glad you liked the confrontation. Really, Harry and Draco couldn�t have dueled
each other anyway, since their compatible magic makes that impossible.

�� Thrnbrooke:
About Draco�s propensity for torture?

�� Dragons
Breath: Good point! And both those things are going to be important to the
battle against Nihil.
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Ceremonies of Strife