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Seasons of War	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9694 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter
Thirty-Five�Racing to the Rescue

�� As they
came out of the Apparition, Draco looked around. He expected to hear screaming
from the Muggles, and the snap and roar of spells from
the direction of the War Wizards. The coordinates Ventus had got them had been
precise, so Draco thought they couldn�t have arrived too far away from the
scene of the battle.

�� Instead,
they stood in the middle of silence. Silence lapped and flowed over them in
great waves, and the air on his scars felt almost cool. Draco would have found
it reassuring, if not for the burn under his
scars, which told him that Nihil, or Nihil�s living dead, was not far away.

�� And if not
for the magic that his eye detected almost at once, heaving in a colorless
cloud over the streets.

�� Draco
winced when he looked at that cloud. He would almost have felt better if he
couldn�t have seen it at all. It was the same sight-dissolving yellow color Nihil
used for some of his glamours. And it extended tendrils in all directions,
touching two crumbled buildings around them and another burning one. Draco
couldn�t make out what it was doing to them, but he knew it would eventually
lead to their destruction.

�� In the
center of the street, rapidly expanding, was the ball
of nothingness.

�� Well. Not ball, not now. It had grown to the size
of a globe, perhaps as big as two or three large men, and Draco saw the edge
extend further as he watched. He had to look away from it, clapping one hand
defensively to his watering eye. It was even worse trying to look at that than
it was at the color of Nihil�s magic.

�� The War
Wizards were nowhere in sight. Draco smiled grimly. It seemed that his promise
to Holder and Robards to stay out of their way would be easy to keep.

�� Spread
out,� he told the rest of the comitatus. �Can all of you see the edge of the
ball of nothingness? Avoid it as much as you can. We know what will happen if
it touches you.� That probably explained the absence of Muggle buildings, he
thought, and perhaps even the War Wizards. If they had come too close, or
fallen at the feet of the ball, there was nothing to prevent it from swallowing
them.

�� We need to
contain it.� That was Herricks, his wide eyes fixed on the ball with such
terror that Draco was surprised his voice sounded calm.

�� Of course
we do,� Draco said, and allowed some of his real scorn through so that Herricks
would hear him and snap out of the fear consuming him. Sure enough, Herricks
turned around and glared. Draco smiled in some contentment. Occasionally, it
was good to have a rivalry with someone that he commanded. �And our best
strategy for it is still�� He turned to Harry.

�� Harry
started to reply, but Weasley interrupted. �You brought me along to strategize,
Malfoy, didn�t you?� he asked, his eyes narrowed on the ball in front of them
as if it were the only thing that existed in the world. Draco hadn�t seen him
stand like that before, without paying attention to Granger in the form of
constant little glances to the side.

�� Yes,�
Draco said, holding back his impatience with a slight effort. If Weasley had
something to say about the situation, then he would listen, although he
thought, from the flush on Harry�s face and the way his hand edged towards his
wand, that he knew perfectly well what had to happen.

�� Weasley probably does, too. But he likes to
show that he matters.

�� Then
listen to me,� Weasley said, and swept his hand towards the edge of the ball of
nothingness. �The War Wizards aren�t visible for a reason. I can�t believe that
something stationary just ate them. They would have known better than to keep
hammering it with spells once they saw that that tactic wouldn�t work.�

�� Ventus
lifted her head like a warhorse hearing the battle-trumpet, her eyes bright. �He�s
right,� she said, when Draco glanced at her. �They would realize that they
probably knew a spell that would contain it, but not one of the ones they first
tried.�

�� Are you
going to listen to me or her?� Weasley interrupted, before Draco could show that
he understood.

�� Draco gave
Weasley a long, cool glance, until he winced and turned aside as if he were
trying to conceal his uneasiness. Draco nodded, a
short nod that he hoped Weasley would take the right way. Yes, Draco would
listen to him, but he saw no reason why Weasley had to make a bid like that, to
take over from Draco and trample on Ventus�s words of
wisdom. While Weasley might know the situation, Ventus knew the War Wizards.

�� Both,�
Draco said. �I�m going to listen to everybody who might help us survive this.�
He glanced at Granger to see if she had anything to add, but she was staring at
the buildings around them and biting her lip. Draco swept them with one glance
to see if there was anything magical in them, but recognized nothing, so he reckoned
it was Granger�s innate connections to Muggles that were making her
suspicious�or nostalgic, or whatever the reason really was that she was doing
that. �So what do you suggest that we do, Weasley?�

�� Get out of
sight,� Weasley said. �Hide, try to join with the War Wizards, and wait for
something to happen.�

�� Draco
turned back to the ball of nothingness before he answered, and saw that it had
grown bigger. He shook his head. �We need to contain it,� he said. �Before it eats London, and the Muggles, and us all. I don�t
know how far it can spread, but that might not matter. Nihil will try to join
it up with other balls, of course.�

�� Now, Malfoy!�

�� Draco
blinked at the panicked note in Weasley�s voice, and then saw a boil of colors,
bleak and horrid, in the air with his magical eye. The ball of nothingness was
shooting a tendril towards them.

�� Draco
dived, wrapping his arms around Harry without thought and rolling them towards
one of the buildings that lay half-destroyed on the ground. His mind clattered
uselessly inside his head, telling him that it was no use, that of course he
was going to die and this was going to fail, because the ball of nothingness
could destroy anything it touched, so what was the use of hiding? They could
only get out of the way, and if the ball of nothingness could actually see or
sense them�as Draco was beginning to think it could, thanks to that cloud of
magic if nothing else�then it would only follow their movements.

�� But when he
looked up, it was to see the tendril slamming past overhead, and that everyone
else had had the same idea he did: Weasley lay nearby with his arms securely
wrapped around Granger and her book, and Herricks had tackled Ventus. Ventus
looked more annoyed than anyone else did, and was struggling to get up, her
wand aimed at the dark corridor that the nothingness had carved through the
air.

�� I can
destroy it,� she said. �Let me go into that other world and get some more of
the reality��

�� You were
right, Weasley,� said Draco, and then turned to Harry. �I want you to call up a
snake illusion and use it to contain some of the reality we brought along.� The
wooden box still rested in Ventus�s pocket, and Draco
didn�t think any had been spilled, or she would have been surrounded by a
golden glow. �Now.�

*

�� Harry
wanted to protest that he didn�t know how to form a snake illusion for the
purpose of containing reality. It wasn�t as though anyone had ever done this
before, had they? And he had counted on at least having some War Wizards around
him who could teach him spells that might modify or strengthen his snake
illusion.

�� But he knew
what Draco meant. They couldn�t wait until the nothingness devoured the Muggles
and the world around them, wringing their hands because they didn�t understand
it. They would have to take some risks.

�� Harry began
to grin when he thought about it that way. I
can do that. I can do that more than happily.

�� He reached
up and closed his eyes, envisioning his purpose, the nothingness contained and
wrapped in reality, more than any specific snake. That was the way he had
always done it. He hadn�t called on a cobra with a spread hood to protect him
from Nihil�s rain of fire the other night; he had just thought about being
safe, and the cobra had come along.

�� His fingers
tingled and grew cool. Harry opened his eyes and then stared when he saw the
slender silver body that extended away from his hand. It looked a little like
the snakes that had bitten into the side of the void to hold him up when Nihil
was attacking, but it had glittering blue patterns on its back that Harry
certainly hadn�t seen or imagined before.

�� The snake
turned back towards him once, its tongue flickering out from between pale jaws
that rather resembled, Harry thought before he could stop himself, the way
Voldemort�s mouth had looked. Then it turned away and surged straight towards
Ventus, who was arguing with Herricks.

�� I can
fight,� Harry heard her saying. �We don�t know
that we can�t defeat Nihil, and even if we can�t that�s no reason to sit
about��

�� The snake
went on extending, and latched its teeth into the box in her pocket. Harry
grunted. He could feel the impression when it struck, as if he�d thrown a rope
with a hook on it and caught the hook over the top of a wall. The line between
them grew taut, the snake�s body thrumming, and Harry thought he picked up an
echo of the throbbing that ran through his collarbone.

�� That�s it, he thought in some amazement,
as the snake bit down and steadied, and the reality began to leak into it. I felt the throbbing in the first place
because of the imbalance between life and death. I�m feeling it from the box because
the extra reality has its own presence in the world, and makes the balance
start to shift back again.

�� The snake
reared its head from the box, fangs shining. Ventus had fallen silent and was
watching it with wide, curious eyes. Herricks stood there, too, frozen, but
when he caught Harry�s gaze, he gave a nervous sort of bow, as though he
assumed Harry was a god who needed to be obeyed.

�� Harry
sighed in irritation. He hoped that Herricks wouldn�t start that nonsense again
about how Harry instead of Draco should be the leader of the comitatus.

�� But those
thoughts were unimportant compared to the throbbing that traveled up the snake
into his arm. The snake ate the reality, and Harry saw its jaws and then its
midsection bulge around it. Draco hissed beside him as though he thought that
there was something wrong with the sight. Harry shook his head, hoping that
that would reassure him. He was incapable of speaking right now.

�� Because the
snake had eaten the reality, it was, in a way, as if Harry had. He already knew
that his connection with this illusion ran deeper than his connection with the
others had.

�� Warmth
opened in his belly. He could feel a slow, languid haze creeping into his mind,
too. It was odd. He lost his fear of Nihil and his fear of the ball of
nothingness and his fear of not being able to do anything at the same moment,
for what felt like the first time in months. He was surveying the world from a
lazy distance, ready to be interested in anything he wanted, create anything he
wanted.

�� Fight
anything he wanted.

�� He looked
up at the ball of nothingness, at the corridor of dark above them and the
steadily expanding globe that looked as though it would land on them soon. He
could see it moving, now, where he hadn�t before, creeping across the ground
like a cloud across the sun. Harry gave a lazy smile and shifted so that he was
aiming the snake and his arm both up at the edge of the ball.

�� He wouldn�t
permit this. He was going to contain it, and eat it, and surround it with
enough glittering reality that it would dissolve.

�� He reached
out, or he lay there and the snake reached out for him. It was hard to tell the
difference between them anymore. The warmth continued to stir through him, and
he had the strong impression that he could stamp his feet and birth a new
universe, if he wanted to. The muttering people around him might not believe
it; Draco had a doubtful expression on his face that made Harry want to roll
his eyes. And Ventus was staring at him, and Herricks looked terrified.

�� They only
looked that way because they couldn�t feel what he did, Harry thought.
Unfortunately, he could think of no other way of showing them what he felt than
by consuming the edge of the globe of nothingness.

�� And perhaps the whole thing.

�� The snake
reeled out from him, streaming across the sky like a silver banner. Its fangs
closed on the edge of the blackness, and it shook its head hard enough that
shimmers ran up Harry�s arm. His body ached, and he spat out something from his
mouth that writhed briefly on the ground.

�� Well, if he
could feel the pleasure and the warmth from eating reality through the snake,
he reckoned it was only fair that he feel the disgusting taste of the poison it
was swallowing and containing, too.

�� The snake
rose higher and higher, jaws parting and jutting forwards, as though it was
drawing more substance from his magic, or his soul, or wherever it grew from,
to become stronger. Harry didn�t mind. He continued to feel as though he could
give of himself to whatever needed it. Bring Draco�s father back to life? Yes,
he could do that. Bring the world peace from all wars? He could do that if he
wanted to. Bring Nihil down and restore Draco�s lost eye? Yes, as soon as he
thought about it.

�� The
blackness passed into the snake, and seemed to struggle for a moment, as if it
had a life and will of its own. But that was Nihil�s fault that it didn�t,
Harry thought smugly. He had pulled pieces of the void into this world, and the
void had no will. It could do nothing
but expand. It couldn�t evade danger. Even the piece of the globe that had
extended towards them, Harry thought now, had done so either because Nihil had
told it to or because it had sensed living flesh and wanted to consume them. It
was mindless.

�� After all,
consciousness and pain, suffering and the drive to change, were all part of life, not death.

�� A silent
shriek appeared in Harry�s ears. He didn�t know where it came from, but since
it coincided with an increase in the thrumming in his bones, he knew it was
probably from there. Nihil had found out what he was doing and was coming, or
increasing his attack, or feeding more force to the ball of nothingness. Harry
truly didn�t know, but he knew that he didn�t intend to lie around and wait for
Nihil to act.

�� He
envisioned the snake spreading the golden reality inside it all around the ball
of nothingness, engulfing it faster than it could by slowly swallowing it.

��

And suddenly the snake was much bigger, a silver serpent that reared into the sky like a
ladder, and Harry was a lot more tired. That
explains where the snake comes from, at least, he thought vaguely, hoping
that he would have the chance to explain the theory to someone else later. It draws its strength from me.

The snake had folded its fangs back
and was all but spitting gold on the ball of nothingness, bright as a dragon�s
flames. It seemed to be growing dark, but Harry had no idea if it actually was.
Perhaps that came from Nihil�s impending arrival, or the ball of nothingness
making the world around it less real somehow.

He didn�t know, and he didn�t care.
What mattered was that his trap was working the way it was supposed to, and the
snake was eating the ball of nothingness.

Then the air in front of him ripped
open at the same point as the thrumming increased so that the bones shook in
his skin, and Nihil came.

*

�� Draco had
listened carefully to Harry�s description of fighting Nihil in the camp at
night. He had thought he had understood what it entailed; in fact, he had been
sure he did, and hadn�t expected to feel frightened when he faced the
creature�thing�mastermind�himself.

�� But he did.

�� Nihil didn�t
look like the ball of nothingness, the way Draco had thought he might. He
didn�t look like the yellow cloud of magic that Draco could see drifting in the
air with his magical eye. Draco reckoned, with the part of his mind that wasn�t
cowering away and screaming in horror about the new arrival, that that was
because he had disguised himself in a glamour before
when he wanted to appear to mortals. This was the way he really was, naked,
unshielded, and without even the dream-like atmosphere that Harry had talked
about to make him less than he was.

�� Less real. Less
hurtful. Less likely to make Draco want to claw his own eyes
out and then cut off his ears, so that he couldn�t hear anymore.

�� Shrieks
traveled with Nihil. So did smells. Draco could feel those sensations crawling
over his face, drowning him. It was like being buried alive in vomit. His body
was alive with so much visceral disgust, so much rejection of this thing and the death it brought with it,
that he couldn�t even stand up and fight.

�� This is the rejection of life for death, Draco
thought, somewhere within the one part of his mind that remained rock-steady
and rock-calm, unmoved by the acts that his body wanted him to commit. They are opposites. They are also entwined within
the worlds, but not in our world. We can�t think that way. We�re in human
bodies, and we can only think with human brains.

�� Draco
battled it, hard, because this might be his one chance to see what Nihil looked
like by using his magical eye, and he wanted to know that information so that
he could use it.

�� His eye
showed a flaring of tatters, black holes worse than the one in the center of
Nemo�s aura, sliding mud that reformed into nothingness so dense that Draco�s
skin felt as if it was blistering from the looking. He stared, though, until
his eye closed of itself and a cloud of warm steam arose in front of his face.
Reaching up, Draco recoiled. His eyelid over the magical eye bore a large burn.

�� Nihil
lashed out at Harry�s snake. Draco knew what had happened only from the way the
snake shuddered and hissed. He couldn�t see the weapon Nihil had struck with or
the method he had used. And that bothered him, but when he tried to open his
magical eye again, radiating pain ran through his face. He didn�t think he
should try using that eye again right now.

�� A glance to
the side showed that Granger was leafing frantically through her book. Weasley
stood over her, protecting her, although Nihil hadn�t yet glanced in their
direction. Ventus prowled around the perimeter of Nihil�s body, as far as one
could call it that, keen eyes saying that she was looking for a place and way
to attack.

�� A question
darted into Draco�s mind like a bolt of lightning.

�� Where is Herricks?

�� He turned
around quickly, but he didn�t see him. A ball of cold settled into the pit of
his stomach. He wondered if Herricks had betrayed them all along, if he had
somehow managed to circumvent the oath that everyone swore and which should
have held him�

�� And then
Draco shuddered in irritation and dismissed the notion. Nihil was here. If Herricks had meant to betray
them, it seemed that he wouldn�t have much more to do that could damage them.

�� Except hurt Harry.

�� Draco
surged to his feet and walked as close to Harry as he dared, holding his wand
out. No, he could do nothing about the private battle between Nihil and Harry
for the moment, but he could keep him safe in the event that Herricks tried to
determine the end of the struggle by casting a mortal curse at Harry from
hiding.

�� No matter
where he turned, he didn�t see him, but Draco kept looking. This, unlike the
confrontation with Nihil, was something he felt he could handle.

*

�� Harry was
holding his own, but he didn�t know how much longer
that could continue.

�� It helped
that he had seen Nihil unshielded once before, and that this time, he had a
weapon, or was filled with a weapon, that could consume Nihil. Enfold him. Hold
him at bay. But the blows that Nihil launched at him felt as strong as the ones
that he had used the other night, and that position had not endured long.

�� Harry
gritted his teeth and held on. So far, the ball of nothingness was continually
fading, and the snake didn�t appear to dim or grow smaller as it went on. Harry
had no idea how much reality the snake had taken from the box in Ventus�s robes, or how much was needed to make a ball of
nothingness that size harmless, but he would keep on holding on until something
changed.

�� He saw
Draco from the corner of his eye, and he saw someone else drawing near. Ventus? Harry didn�t think so. He didn�t think she could
possibly be that close to Nihil without attacking, and Ron and Hermione would
have come to his aid by now if they were coming. Nihil might be holding them
paralyzed in place by the sight of him.

�� Nihil
flicked out a long, ghastly tendril�trying to look at it was like trying to
look death in the eye�and tore a slash down the snake�s side.

�� The snake
roared and hissed, and a pain like nothing he had ever known swelled through
Harry. He cried out and felt Draco stirring restlessly beside him, wanting to
do something and unable to do it. Harry gave him a pained smile that he hoped
Draco understood. That was the way Harry had felt before Draco got the magical
eye.

�� The person
he had seen out of the corner of his eye moved again, and then Herricks was
dashing straight at Nihil, his wand raised and a manic courage burning in his
eyes that Harry had never seen or suspected him of. As he stared, Herricks
raised his wand higher and higher, and then screamed out, in a voice that
should have made Nihil look around if he had any self-preservation instinct at
all, �Ara!�

�� Harry
didn�t recognize the spell, or the white light that it caused to blaze around
Herricks�s limbs.

�� Or the way
he jumped forwards, a moment later, flying into and vanishing into Nihil as if
he had gone a much longer distance than the jump implied.

�� He only
knew that, a moment after that, Nihil
screamed.

*

�� Review
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Seasons of War