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Soldier's Welcome	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 25565 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

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Chapter
Thirty-Six�What Can Be Held In Memory

�� The first
fall into the memory was so dizzying that for long moments Harry only held onto
Draco, disoriented. Then he blinked and looked around, and the confines of the
room seemed to snap painfully into focus.

�� They stood
in a small, dark house, with a dim window that Harry could believe looked out
on a garden full of deadly nightshade and strangling vines. The walls were
lined with shelves covered with vials, clusters of leaves, and corks, and that
meant potions, and he had never been comfortable around potions.

�� Draco
pressed hard on his arm. Harry turned around and looked the direction he was
looking in.

�� Snape stood
over a bubbling cauldron in the middle of the room. Harry started. He had known
that he would probably see the man, of course; he hadn�t expected to see him
looking so exactly like he had just before he died. These memories must be
recent, then, from the second war. Harry didn�t know why he�d expected them to
be from the first.

�� The
cauldron belched up green smoke that made Harry shudder. Draco leaned forwards,
his shoulder pressing against Harry�s, his eyes intent. Presumably he
understood what the potion was about. Harry didn�t and had no wish to.

�� Snape
thrust a silver ladle into the potion and rapped it sharply against the side of
the cauldron. As though the ringing sound the silver made was a signal, the
potion belched one more time and fell silent. Snape bent down, muscles tensed
as though he knew he�d have to flee any second, but the potion seemed to
satisfy him. With an ugly smirk on his face, he stepped back and made a
beckoning motion at a door Harry hadn�t noticed before.

�� Come in,
my lord. It is ready.�

�� Voldemort
stepped through the door.

�� Harry bared
his teeth and drew his wand. It didn�t matter that this was just a memory. It
was an instinctive reaction.

�� Next to
him, Draco turned white and swayed as if he would fall over. Harry promptly put
an arm around his shoulders, his own disgust calming. If he had someone to take
care of and help, then everything he suffered
was simple in comparison. He could put it aside and concentrate on those other
people he should help.

�� Well done,
Severus.� Voldemort barely seemed to look into the cauldron. Maybe he could
tell what the potion was from just a brief glimpse. Harry didn�t know, because
he still had no plans to learn anything about potions any time soon. �It is
only a beginning step, of course.�

�� My lord, of course.� Snape simpered and bowed, and Harry
could understand why Voldemort never seemed to have suspected he was a spy. He
had the manner of a cringing, cowardly Death Eater down pat. �The
first step along a long and glorious road to an ending of your creation and
vision. Who else could have dreamed this up? Who else would have dared
interfere with natural law in this way?�

�� Voldemort
laughed softly. Harry shuddered and felt Draco tremble as though with an
electric shock. He pulled him closer, but didn�t look away from Voldemort. It
really did seem as if he would attack any moment, and Harry had to be ready to
defend Draco.

�� Such power, Severus.�
Voldemort crooned the words and spread his fingers. A handful of the potion
rose from the cauldron and turned about, glittering. It was partially
transparent, like thick green glass, so that Harry could still see his white
and staring face through it. �The power to conquer death.�

�� Harry stood
straight up. Draco jolted next to him. Snape bowed.

�� And then
the memory twitched and threw them into another memory.

*

�� When will they be ready, Rabastan?�

�� Draco
blinked. Professor Snape�s house seemed suddenly to have ceased to exist, and they
stood in a broad, flat room with plenty of space. Draco would have thought they
were outside, except that there wasn�t the slightest gleam of light from above,
either sun or moon or stars.

�� Not a room,
Draco understood when he finally looked up to understand the contradiction, but
a cave. The roof rose to a height of perhaps thirty feet above them and then
dropped back. It was all plain grey stone, unmarked. Draco had thought at first
that Professor Snape had sent him these memories so that Draco could track down
the Dark Lord�s hiding places, but how was he supposed to do that without some
kind of identifying mark? The professor�s small dark brewing lab could have
been anywhere, and so could this cave.

�� My lord.� The sound of cloth scraping the floor, and Draco
glanced up. Rabastan Lestrange
was bowing in front of the Dark Lord and Professor Snape. Draco shivered. At
least the Dark Lord had his back to the watchers this time, so Draco didn�t
have to confront his face. �Their capabilities are close to the strongest they
can achieve, but they obey commands imperfectly.�

�� The Dark
Lord swayed his head slowly back and forth like a snake considering where to
strike. It was a gesture Draco had seen several times in the Manor when the
monster was feeling thoughtful. The sight now made him want
to vomit or flee, preferably both at once.

�� Harry�s arm
around him tightened, and Harry whispered into his ear, �It�s all right. I fear
him, too.�

�� Only Harry would comfort me by making a
confession of his own weakness. But Draco relaxed and fought back the
nausea because of that anyway. He wrapped his own arm around Harry�s waist,
returning the support, thanking Harry for it, and, though Harry might not
realize it, staking his own claim.

�� There was
no way he would let someone who could do this much for him, who meant this much
to him, go.

�� Show them
to me, Rabastan,� the Dark Lord commanded at last. �I
have an ideal in mind, but in reality, they need only be ready for attack.�

�� My lord,� Rabastan repeated, and lifted one arm in a sharp gesture
that looked longer than it really was because of the flowing robe that trailed the
movement.

�� The air
above him shook and rustled. Then several shapes dropped from of the roof of
the cavern and stalked forwards on unsteady feet.

�� Draco
narrowed his eyes. They had four legs, he could make out that much, but a
shadow seemed to cling about them and baffle his gaze when he tried to see more
details than that. Their heads swayed back and forth in a way that made him
think they had snakes in their ancestry. The tips of horns showed, and their
feet scraped along the rock as though they bore hooked claws.

�� One of them
opened its mouth and spat a gout of something red
across the cavern, which fell with a lashing hiss and left pockmarks in the
rock. Harry started beside him and murmured, �They look a little like the
things that I fought in the Forbidden
Forest.�

�� Of course. Draco thought he could understand now
why Professor Snape had left him these memories, and that let him forget his
fear. He straightened and nodded to Harry. �I think Nihil
and the others must have found some of the experiments that the Dark Lord left
behind,� he said. �They�ve improved them. I never heard of any Death Eaters
able to return from the dead.�

�� Except Wormtail,� Harry muttered.

�� Draco
frowned at him.

�� Harry shook
his head. �Private joke.�

�� From his
twisted smile, it was no very amusing one. Draco would have liked to pursue the
matter, but certain lines of hardness about Harry�s mouth convinced him it
would be out of the question to ask about it now. Promising himself
to ask later, he continued, �And these beasts are clumsy, nothing like the
enemies you faced. Still, it�s not out of the question that Rabastan
came up with the idea first and Nemo, or whoever
really created those animals you fought, simply refined on it.�

�� That would explain how Nihil
and his followers became so powerful so quickly,� Harry mused. �If they didn�t
have to do all the work themselves, then they could skip over years of magical
theory and experimenting and go straight into practice.�

�� Draco found
himself lifting his head higher and smiling at Harry. It was still a novel
experience for him to have Harry agree with him instead of resisting and
resenting Draco on principle. �Exactly,� he said. �And, for the first time, we
have something concrete to tell the rest of the Fellowship.� The name still
made him roll his eyes, but no one had proposed anything better and it was
easier to say than �the group of people wearing jade bracelets� or �the
instructors, you, myself, and whoever else they decide is trustworthy enough to
be informed.�

�� How concrete?� Harry gestured at the beasts, whom the Dark Lord was currently praising, with a raised
eyebrow. �We might know that Nihil and Nemo and Nusquam aren�t entirely
original now, but that doesn�t mean that we know how they bred these animals,
or how they used the potion that Snape came up with to stop dying or conquer
death or whatever it was. Snape himself said it was only the first step and
they�d need a lot more research before they perfected it.�

�� Draco
opened his mouth to retort, and the memory ended and spun them into another
one.

*

�� Harry
blinked and stared. This was a room at Hogwarts, or at least it might have
been; the slimy stone walls looked like they were in the dungeons. The room was
empty, though, except a single wooden table. Snape bent over a piece of
parchment on the table, his lips moving silently.

�� Why do you
think this is important?� he asked,
turning to Draco.

�� But Draco
ignored him, stepping up and bending over the parchment. A bit disgruntled,
Harry followed. He already suspected that whatever was written on the parchment
wouldn�t be interesting enough to justify the way Draco and Snape stared at it.

�� He was
right. It was a bunch of tiny pictures and lists, which were probably
directions for brewing a potion. He stirred and sighed. �This is a picture of
Snape�s own research,� he said. �Do you think it�s
research for Voldemort? But what�s the use of putting this memory into the
Pensieve if it doesn�t show us what the potion does? In fact, what�s the use of
most of these memories? Why did he want you to know about all the experiments
and such Voldemort did?�

�� He showed
me because he must suspect that these discoveries weren�t simply going to go
away,� Draco said tightly. �He also must have known that few people would recognize
them for what they were once they started appearing, and there were fewer still
he could trust with the knowledge. So he gave it to me. Right now, I�m
memorizing the instructions for this potion, and I can�t tell how long the
memory will last. Be quiet, will
you?�

�� Stung,
Harry turned his back and wandered to the other side of the room. It wasn�t
completely empty, he could see now. There were shelves near a door that must
lead into another room, and various things that weren�t potions supplies stood on one of them. Harry could see
books, a long rod that had a crystal bead at one end and a mirror at the other,
and a Pensieve. That gave him a turn. It was probably the same Pensieve Snape
had sent to Draco, the same one they were standing inside right now even as he
looked at it.

�� Most of the
books looked boring, but there was a single large one at the end, draped with
dark cloth, the way Draco had had the Pensieve covered up, instead of properly
bound. Curious, Harry reached up and took it down. It weighed heavily and
strangely in his hands.

�� What�s this filled with, anyway? Rocks? But maybe it was; Harry knew that some wizards
used hollow books as storage containers. He pulled it open, expecting to see no
pages but just a hole in the middle that had rocks in.

�� No, there
were pages. But they were covered with photographs. Harry frowned. He
recognized none of the faces, and he wasn�t sure he wanted to. One and all,
they were staring at the camera in terror and cowering as if they would have
liked to run out of the side of the frame.

�� Harry
flipped slowly through, trying to find someone he knew or at least a label of
some sort. There was nothing of the kind. Probably whoever had put the album
together had known these people and hadn�t thought about strangers looking
through it. Harry didn�t have labels in his, either, but those pictures were of
a much smaller number of people and he knew them all. He couldn�t imagine that
Snape could remember the names of all these.

�� Maybe they were the victims he tested his
potions on?

�� Harry!�

�� Harry
started guiltily and put the book back on the shelf before he turned around to
face Draco. Draco shook his head, as though to say he would ask what Harry had been doing, but he knew it would be
ridiculous before he heard the explanation, and then latched on to Harry�s
wrist.

�� I�ve
memorized the recipe for the potion,� he whispered. �I can see why the
professor thought it could lead to immortality. And of course the Dark Lord was
afraid of death, so it�s not surprising that he would have had Professor Snape
researching how to defeat that.�

�� Harry
gnawed his lip. He wanted to say something about Horcruxes
and how Voldemort had already secured
his immortality, but he wasn�t sure how much he should say to Draco about that.
Besides, it wasn�t as though Voldemort had to have only one way to be immortal.
He�d been paranoid. He would probably always be interested in ways to secure
his life in case the Horcruxes failed him.

�� And Draco knows more about potions than I
do. If he says that it�s an immortality potion, I can�t disbelieve him.

�� Is that
the end of the memories?� Harry asked. �This one�s lasted longer than the
others. Maybe we should leave the Pensieve?�

�� This
memory is longer than the rest because Professor Snape knew I would take some
time to memorize the recipe,� Draco said impatiently. �But there ought to be at
least one more, related to the beasts. If he ever managed to
spy on Rabastan breeding them, that is.�

�� Harry
wrinkled his nose. �No offense, Draco, but I really don�t want to see what the
mechanics of that would look like��

�� And then
the world around them rippled, blurred, and faded again.

*

�� Draco
blinked. He knew the room they were standing in now, for the first time. This
was Professor Snape�s private sitting room, where he occasionally called his
most talented students for �talks.� Those talks were ways to try and pressure
them into pursuing Potions-related careers, but since Draco had always intended
to do that in any case, he�d found the conversations pleasant.

�� This room
had stone walls and floors, just like the other dungeons, but the floor was
covered with brilliant rugs and the walls with tapestries. Each portrayed an
intricately woven scene of the triumph of some Dark
wizard or another, or sometimes their falls, provided those falls were glorious
and also managed to kill many incompetent �good� wizards around the way. Draco
found himself turning instinctively to seek out his favorite tapestry, which
showed a black mountain illuminated by lightning and a full moon. A gold-robed
wizard stood on top of the mountain, calling the lightning into his hands and
using it to stab his enemies at the base. Professor Snape had never been able
to tell Draco for certain which wizard that tapestry depicted, or maybe he had
known and preferred the advantage of secrecy, but that had never destroyed
Draco�s pleasure in its beauty.

�� When he
turned about, it was to recognize the comfortable green chair sitting in the
middle of the largest rug, with a bright lamp beside it, and Professor Snape
sitting in it. A book was open on his lap, but he glanced up and began to speak
as if he knew they were there, despite the fact that Draco knew they must have
appeared as empty space to him.

�� Draco. I
wish you to know that I believe you will survive this war. The Malfoy family
has managed survival, if not always success, for a long time. Your father�s
error lies in mistaking money and political connections for the surest markers
of success, when in reality one must live to enjoy those first.�

�� Harry
lightly touched his shoulder and then faded back towards the walls. Draco
swallowed a lump in his throat. Harry had a delicacy that Draco wasn�t sure he
could have practiced himself, if he was curious to hear what someone said to
Harry in a memory. No matter how impossible it was to prevent himself from overhearing, Harry would at least act as if he could leave Draco in
privacy.

�� You are a
Malfoy,� Professor Snape went on, with the thin smile that always made Draco
uncertain if he was being sarcastic or not, �but you are more than simply the
sum of your father�s traits, and you will have gifts undreamed of by your
father. Perhaps your mother has dreamed of them, but I rather suspect not.
Constant, quiet, humble, and yet unsurpassed, they are these.

�� You have
the ability to observe and the wit to use those observations. You do not, as
Lucius does, assume that what you do not want to be true cannot be true, even
if you see it, or simply use your observations to support foregone conclusions.
You can change your mind. You can admit your mistakes. I have seen this in the
Potions classroom, and I am confident enough of my own perception to believe it
extends beyond those confines.

�� You will
survive, Draco, but you will not necessarily become powerful in the way your
father envisions.� Professor Snape leaned forwards, his eyes intent. �You will realize that the changed nature
of the wizarding world, after the war, to some extent limits you. You will know that blood purity is no
longer the guiding or only criterion that someone should use to make friends
and allies.�

�� Draco
started. He was sure that early that
Harry�s side would win the war? He didn�t know exactly when the memory had
been made, but he thought it must be at least a few months before Snape died.

�� You must
employ your talent and your intelligence.� Professor Snape leaned back in his
chair and tapped his fingers on the cover of the book. �Thank heaven, you have those things to employ. There are few
Potions masters; you could pursue that route. You might also use your father�s
political connections to bring your abilities to the appropriate person�s
attention. Or you could simply look at what surrounds you and make your way by
your own effort.�

�� Draco had
to smile, then, wondering if the professor would be disgusted to know that
Draco had chosen the Aurors, or simply pleased that he had chosen one of the
most powerful careers in the Ministry.

�� You will
make something of yourself,� Professor Snape said. �However, no one can go entirely
without help. To you, I bequeath two things and recommend one.

�� The
recommendation is a good memory. Never let this fail you. Books succeed at
preserving much, Pensieves and letters are useful,
but they are outside your head and not inside, where they might be kept from
others.�

�� Draco
nodded. He could see why Snape would say something like that when he had left a
whole potions recipe for Draco to memorize.

�� However,
books do have their place.� Snape absently smoothed the page of the one he was
reading. �I bequeath my private library to you, all the books in my personal
quarters at Hogwarts. No one should have disturbed them, since the rooms will
have locked themselves upon my death. You must repeat the three most common names
of wolfsbane in alphabetical order to unlock them.�

�� Aconite, monkshood, wolfsbane,
Draco thought. That�s no problem.

�� Something
else distracted him, though. Why had Professor Snape been so certain he was
going to die? The way the Dark Lord had killed him was not something anyone
could have foreseen. Perhaps he was simply pessimistic in general and had seen
no reason not to make this memory. He could always destroy it if it turned out
that he had no need for an heir.

�� The second
thing is the knowledge that you will have divined exists because of this
Pensieve.� Professor Snape�s stare could have drilled holes in steel. �That
knowledge must be used well and wisely, but it cannot be left to lie. Someone
else will discover it if you hesitate, and they may not wield it to your
personal advantage.�

�� Someone else already did, Draco thought,
but that presented a new mystery to him. How
exactly had Nihil, whoever he was, stumbled into
the Death Eaters� caches of artifacts and books and experimental notes? Pure luck? Draco would have thought he was a Death Eater,
but the mocking use of their cloaks and masks for his attack force stuffed with
grief magic argued otherwise.

�� Still, who
else would have known about those caches besides the Death Eaters? Who else
would have been there?

�� Take this
memory with you,� Professor Snape said, a faint sneer lifting the corner of his
mouth. �A memory within a memory, as a moron like Potter
would say. Tabula arcana.�

�� A starburst
of light went off in front of Draco�s eyes, and he stumbled backwards, his arms
flailing. He felt someone catch him, and knew it must be Harry, but he was so
disoriented that he couldn�t be sure what was happening. The memory twisted
around them, he thought they were leaving the Pensieve, and then�

�� The
darkness behind his eyelids, burning with afterimages from Snape�s spell,
turned the color of parchment. And Draco saw a vast map stretching there,
showing England as well as Scotland, Ireland,
Wales,
and some of the islands scattered in the sea along the coasts, marked with
burning spots where the caches lay hidden.

�� Draco
gasped and shivered. He had not known such a spell was possible,
or that it could be cast in a memory and affect the observer of that memory. He
wondered what had happened to Snape when it was cast. Probably
nothing. If he had the knowledge of the map already, he would have no
reason to acquire it a second time.

�� aco! Draco! Are you all right?�

�� Draco
blinked, and the map vanished, though he felt it lingering in his mind, ready
to be called back at any time. He stood in their rooms again, and Harry had his
hands clasped on Draco�s shoulders, massaging them. Draco turned around and
felt a brief pang of sympathy. Harry looked the way he had, he was certain,
when Harry had gone chasing monsters into the Forbidden Forest.

�� I�m well,�
he said at last. �And with some quite interesting knowledge to take to the
Fellowship. A map of the places the Death Eaters hid their experiments.�

�� Harry
nodded and cast the Pensieve a dark glance. �Snape to the last,� he muttered.
�Leaving knowledge to you because he thought you might make use of it rather
than because it could do good.�

�� Draco
snorted and stretched his cramped fingers; his palms hurt where he�d dug his
nails in. �What else would you expect him to do with it, Potter, truly?�

�� Harry.�

��

�� Draco
squeezed Harry�s shoulder in apology, because he sounded hurt. �Harry, what
else would you expect? He was a Slytherin, and a
faithful Death Eater at one time, no matter what else he might have been.�

�� I know, I
just�� Harry shrugged and looked away.

�� Draco
thought it best to change the subject. �Look at it this way,� he said, and
waited until Harry turned to face him again. �Now we know where Nihil got some of his material, and we�ll have knowledge
that he didn�t expect�and maybe more knowledge from the caches he hasn�t found
yet.�

�� This time,
Harry�s smile was a hunter�s grin that matched his own.

*

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