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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-Six�On
the Altar

�� Draco
always felt, later, like he had never seen what Herricks did properly. That
would explain why he didn�t understand what he was seeing at first. Of course,
his magical eye was also weeping tears of pain, so he thought he could be
excused for not understanding and feeling impatience; this was just another of
Herricks�s stunts. If he made Nihil scream, that was just a coincidence, probably
based on something Harry had done.

�� But then he
focused on the white light that spread rays out from Nihil, stabbing at the
ground and the air, and he began to understand, even as a chill wind of fear
traveled down his spine.

�� The white
light turned in on itself, folding into a smaller package instead of expanding
the way that Draco had been sure it would. It glowed all the while with energy
similar to the packet of reality that Ventus had shown him, and it spat and
hissed like a cat with a mouse that refused to die.

�� In the
center of it was Nihil, now masked and made bearable by the presence of the
white light. Draco stared some more, trying again to see what he was really
like with the help of the magical eye, but his vision still blurred with tears,
so he concentrated on the white light instead.

�� It wasn�t
white, not when seen through his new eye. Instead, the edges of the steadily
shrinking light bore the same half-tame green and gold colors that had surrounded
Herricks the last time Draco looked at him, as though the light had taken on
Herricks�s magic.

�� As though the light had become Herricks.

�� Or the other way around, Draco thought,
and his heart started to pound sickeningly as he remembered the sound of
Herricks�s spell and where he had heard such spells before. Reading Dark Arts
books, yes, but in this case, what they described wasn�t a Dark spell. It was
used by proto-Aurors serving the proto-Ministry, to fight Dark wizards who
couldn�t be defeated in any other fashion.

�� The spell�s
single word, ara, meant �altar� in Latin. The person who cast it
made himself into an altar, and offered his life as a sacrifice.

�� Herricks
wouldn�t be coming out of the light again.

�� With one
part of his mind, Draco was shocked, but another part had to admire the logic
that had prompted Herricks to use that particular incantation, not a
possibility Draco had heard mentioned by anyone else. Of course, if he was
giving up his life, it stood to reason that the life would be used as a weapon
against Nihil. And how many times in the last few days had they said that they
had to find a way to do that?

�� A third
part of Draco�s mind, separated yet more from the rest, was determined to act
as Herricks probably would have wanted, and study the complex magic his life,
and life-in-death, had released. He might be able to understand other ways to
defeat Nihil if he knew how this magic worked against him.

�� Ways that
didn�t involve someone dying.

�� Draco cast
a spell that would dry his eyes, another to prevent salt water from forming so
that more tears wouldn�t blind him, and a general healing charm. Then he
focused on Nihil once again, and threw himself into remembering what he saw. If
he couldn�t understand it now, he could at least preserve the image so that
they could study it later.

*

�� Harry knew
he was lying on his back beneath the illusory snake who
was swallowing the edges of the globe of nothingness. He could see that if he
just looked around.

�� But he felt as though he were holding a weighty,
possibly pure silver, pair of balance scales that slid down and tipped heavily
to one side, but which someone had just reached into and added a balance to on
the opposite side.

�� Harry
gasped and tilted his head back, trying to understand. Above him, the snake
continued to swallow the globe, this time unhindered by Nihil. Harry turned his
head and saw the white light that he knew Herricks�s death had unleashed
fading. Nihil would probably be free to attack him again soon.

�� But he also
saw something else.

�� The air
behind Nihil was smoky, hazy, shimmering like a thin curtain. Harry thought he
could see another world behind the curtain, one that swayed back and forth,
tentative and hasty. Half of the time, he thought, it didn�t really exist. It
could come to life or be held back in stillbirth or only occur partially,
depending on the choices of everyone around them.

�� In the
world was a balance, but Harry didn�t see it as a pair of balance scales, this
time. He saw a great golden serpent, its eyes brilliant, its scales
life-giving, entwined about one that was the blue-black color of the void that
Draco had brought back to be made into weapons. They were entangled to the
point that Harry didn�t think anyone could separate them, and they were
wrestling.

�� Whoever won
the combat would determine the fate of the worlds entangled all around them,
including Harry�s own.

�� But then
Harry looked, and thought again. (He had time for that, amazingly, although
Herricks�s light was almost gone and he knew Nihil would break out again when
it was). The snakes were wrestling, yes, but they never separated, or struck at
each other with their fangs. They didn�t look as though they would prefer that
the other one didn�t exist. It was a bit hard to read a snake�s expression, but
Harry reckoned that he�d had more practice at it than most people.

�� This was
the imbalance between the forces of life and death, Harry thought, but it
wasn�t the war that Portillo Lopez had told him was happening, or even the
unequal balance scales he�d pictured. This was a cooperation. The snakes knew they were out of place,
and they were trying to get back into it before something drastic happened.

�� Harry had
assumed without thinking about it that the imbalance meant life and death were
at war. But why? That didn�t make sense, not when he did think about it. Life fed death;
death ensured that life didn�t overrun the earth. It made more sense for them
to be in balance in the sense of cooperating, not fighting one another because
two relatively minor wizards had decided to try and become immortal or
nonexistent.

�� He went on
staring, fascinated, while his snake swallowed the last of the globe and the
white light that Herricks, he now understood, had sacrificed his life to create
withered and died as a flower would.

�� As the way
that flowers had to do, Harry understood, or there would be way too many of
them growing. But death didn�t devour things the way that Nihil wanted to do,
destroying everything so that there was no chance he could come back to life.
Of course there was nothing to be gained from destroying what death needed to
feed itself in the future.

�� Aurors
understood life and death in a certain way. That didn�t mean it was the only
way to understand them.

�� Harry
drifted in the midst of that knowledge for a long moment, feeling oddly
exultant. He thought he might be feeling what Hermione did when she discovered
some unknown fact for the first time. How true! How simple! How strange that no
one else had ever seen it before!

�� And how
nice that he would get to be the one to explain it to everybody!

�� Then reality
came back to life around him with a nasty jolt. The last of the globe of
darkness passed into the snake, and Nihil fought his way free of the white
light and turned his attention on Harry.

�� It was
worse than before. Harry could feel his body ripping apart, his soul fleeing
into the darkness of death rather than withstand what was before him. He
brought his hands over his eyes instinctively, even though Nihil�s presence was
mostly magical and so Harry knew that he would go on seeing, hearing, and otherwise
sensing him.

�� But when
his hand moved, it brought the snake with it, and the golden, glowing reality
the snake was infused with.

�� Nihil said
something soundless, something that blurred and rippled in Harry�s head and
then moved through his body as though it would rupture his stomach and any
other internal organs that it found. Harry gasped in pain.

�� But it was
only pain. And he found he could breathe again when he glanced up. Nihil was
gone as though he had never been, and only staring air remained. Buildings
smoldered around them, and Harry could see darting shapes drawing nearer that
were either War Wizards or Muggle police, and either way they would demand
explanations, but for the moment, he felt as if he could survive anything in
that vein. Nihil was gone.

�� Harry
doubted that he knew for sure what had caused it, either his snake or Herricks,
but he knew that he was grateful. He scrambled to his feet and started winding
the snake back into himself, not wanting questions that he literally couldn�t
answer if the people approaching were Muggles.

�� But Ventus
cried out in welcome a moment later, and Harry didn�t think she would do that
if they were random people who might need to be Obliviated.
At least, he was relatively sure that she wouldn�t.

�� Ventus was
darting around the War Wizards like a chicken around her chicks as they came
in, asking and answering questions in the same breath. Most of the War Wizards
ignored her, or so Harry thought. They were staring at Harry instead, or at the
spot where Nihil had stood. They looked unhappy.

�� Harry
finished destroying the snake illusion. He didn�t know what had happened to the
reality it was infused with, he realized a moment later. It seemed to have been
destroyed in containing the ball of nothingness, or perhaps that was what had
allowed him to see the reality of the vision of life and death for an instant.
Either way, it was gone.

�� Have you
permission to be here?� the leader of the War Wizards was asking Draco. He
looked grave to the point of constipation.

�� Harry
rolled his eyes and stepped forwards. For one thing, he had facts he needed to
tell Draco, and for another, he thought things would go better for the
comitatus if the War Wizards saw Harry. His scar could sometimes work miracles.

�� Harry still
didn�t like that, but there was
little that he wouldn�t do to save the world.

�� Or to save Draco, for that matter.

*

�� Draco
lowered his head and spent a moment composing himself, despite the imposing
line of War Wizards staring at him. He was not going to say something wrong
because he had hurried. That would be the ultimate in stupidity, when they were
the ones who had time on their hands. The War Wizards
could hardly rush the comitatus through the interview without losing important
information of their own, while the comitatus had survived the immediate battle
and couldn�t defeat Nihil any faster with their words.

�� Draco
needed to understand what he had seen, to make sense of the vast images and the
symbols they represented shifting there, before he made any effort to tell
anyone else.

�� Trainee
Malfoy,� said the War Wizard who had spoken before, or so Draco thought. He
hadn�t paid much attention to that one�s identity. �Answer me. Do you have the
permission of the Aurors to be here?�

�� Draco
wanted to laugh when he understood the import of the words. It always came back
to that, didn�t it, to allowance and authority and the minor webs of power? He couldn�t believe that he had wanted to join
the War Wizards, once. Yes, their spells were strong, but what kind of fool
ignored the evidence in front of him that earth-shattering magic had been
unleashed and instead wanted to know whether Draco was following the Auror
hierarchy like a good little trainee?

�� Yes,� he
said at last, because it cost him nothing to do that. �We have the permission
of both Head Auror Robards and his second-in-command, Auror Holder.�

�� It was
obvious the War Wizard hadn�t expected to hear that. He rocked back once on his
heels and stared at Draco. Draco stared back, bored and showing it. They had
better things to worry about.

�� Such as the loss of Herricks. Draco was still mostly in
shock over that, but he didn�t like to think of how Ventus would be grieving,
and the way that Holder or Robards�he was less sure about Holder�would try to turn
that loss against him as leader of the comitatus.

�� The War
Wizard cleared his throat. �Did you not hear the announcement we made that we
should draw back and disengage from the globe? We have the weapons to contain
it, but they were stored elsewhere. We had sent several of our number to fetch
them. In the meantime, you put yourselves in danger and quite likely caused the
appearance of our enemy.�

�� Draco
concealed his smug smile. Irritating as the situation was, he knew that they
wouldn�t have told him even that much a month ago. He had become someone they
had to respect, however reluctantly they did it. �But how do you know that they
would have returned in time?� he asked. �It�s true that we may have caused
Nihil to appear, but that means that he was forced to make an attack where he
did not intend to. In the meantime, the ball might have consumed the city
before you discovered a weapon capable of destroying it.�

�� If you did. He left the words unspoken, but the War
Wizard confronting him seemed to hear them nonetheless. He narrowed his eyes
and turned his head aside to spit on the ground. Draco kept a firm grip on his
temper.

�� Sir.� Harry�s voice was calm and as respectful as it ever
got, but when Draco glanced to the side, he saw those green eyes filled with
the fire he knew. �We should make a report. Can we leave, now?�

�� The War
Wizard closed his eyes, and Draco could see the vein working in the man�s
forehead. He probably would have liked to keep them there and make them
miserable, Draco thought, but they were technically under the command of the
Head Auror, and the War Wizards would want to preserve good relations with the
Aurors.

�� Very
well,� he said at last. �You have permission
to leave.� He traded sneers with Draco and then turned away.

�� Draco
snorted bitterly and turned his head aside. He wanted to stay and argue, at
least with some of his mind. How dare they belittle the people who had saved
them? Were they so concerned about prestige and who had done what that they
couldn�t appreciate Draco and his comitatus lifting the burden from their
shoulders?

�� And you�re doing the same thing at the
moment.

�� Draco
squared his shoulders and faced Ventus. She looked at him with an expression
wiped clean of everything, then glanced at the place where Herricks had fallen.

�� He died
defending people,� she said. �He died attacking, I know, but he would have
thought of it as defending.� Her voice was so slow and quiet that Draco
couldn�t make out from it what she was feeling any more than from the expression
on her face.

�� That�s something, I suppose, Draco
decided. He wouldn�t argue with quiet mourning. He would simply keep an eye on
her in case it turned into something dangerous later. �We should return to the
camp as quickly as we can,� he said. �To tell them the news of Herricks�s death
and�to share the information we have.�

�� He looked
at Harry again. Harry blinked tiredly back at him. Draco put one arm around his
shoulders and squeezed lightly, trying to convey how impressed and worried he
was without words. There were people around who didn�t need to hear them.

�� Harry
reached up and touched his jaw with a faint smile. Draco was relatively sure
that he understood.

*

�� The person
Harry really wanted to see when they
got back to the camp was Portillo Lopez. He was sure that she was the only one
who would know much about the struggle he had seen. Well, Raverat might, too,
but Harry was more sure of seeing her since Raverat
seemed to stay in his tent and rarely come out at all nowadays.

�� But since
there was a hierarchy of rules to respect no matter how much they might not
have wanted to, they had to go and report to Holder and Robards first. Harry
followed Draco to the tent, and stood solidly behind him while Draco described
what had happened. When Holder turned and pinned him with an iron gaze, Harry
recited the details about the snake illusion and how he had swallowed the
reality.

�� That
pleased no one. Harry hadn�t really expected it to.

�� You swallowed some of our best weapon?�
Holder sat still, but Harry knew her well enough by now to see the tension in
the lines of her arms, and the way she twitched as if she would stand up and
stalk about the tent. Robards leaned back in his chair and watched her more
than the rest of them.

�� If I
hadn�t, then the globe of nothingness would have gone on expanding,� Harry
said. It was best if he remained as calm and inoffensive as possible, so that
no one would get the impression that he was angry about this. He was only angry
about the delay. He was proud of what
he had done.

�� Although I didn�t do it in time to save
Herricks.

�� Harry shook
his head and blinked. He honestly didn�t understand what had motivated Herricks
to make that sacrifice, except that he obviously had something greater in him
than any of them had known about. Harry wouldn�t do honor to his memory by
blaming himself, though. Herricks wouldn�t have wanted that.

�� Or else he
would have wanted it, because he would think it was a sign that Harry was about
to take the comitatus from Draco. Harry honestly had no more idea about what
his character had really been, anymore.

�� You could
have done something else than rid the world of a portion of our only weapon,� Holder said, and tightened
her fingers on the arms of her chair until Harry thought she would break something.

�� It was the
only thing I knew to do,� Harry said. �I did see two great snakes struggling
behind Nihil that I think represented the forces of life and death in the
imbalance, though.�

�� As he had
known she would do, Holder dismissed that and continued to berate him for
sacrificing some of the reality Ventus had brought back. Harry doubted that she
thought his vision important. Draco, though, was staring at him, and he
answered the next few questions Holder asked of him inattentively.

�� The moment
they were outside the tent again, he cornered Harry and snapped, �Why didn�t
you mention that before?�

�� Because I
don�t understand what it means,� Harry said. �I�d wager that you don�t
understand everything you saw with your magical eye when you looked at Nihil,
either.�

�� Draco
blinked and rocked back on his heels. �How do you know that I was looking at
Nihil with my magical eye?� he asked, but he was no good at lying when it was
on a subject this important to him.

�� Or maybe I just know him too well, Harry
thought as he answered. �You were staring at him for so long. You couldn�t have
avoided noticing what he was doing and what he looked like, even if you weren�t
specifically trying to gather information.�

�� Draco gave
him a small smile, and then said, �I need to write down the symbols and show
them to someone I�m more certain will understand them.�

�� Such as
Portillo Lopez,� Harry said, and then smiled blindingly back at Draco when
Draco blinked. �Can you suggest a better candidate? Especially since I know
that you distrust Raverat.�

�� No,� Draco
said. �I can�t. Let me create a list, and you create one, and then we can both
take them to her.�

�� Harry
glanced around. Ventus had already left, but Hermione and Ron lingered nearby,
with Hermione leafing through her book frantically. Harry decided that he might
as well do something for her, which Draco didn�t seem inclined to at the
moment. �If you find something that you think relates to defeating Nihil, then
you�ll come and tell us at once, Hermione, right?� he asked.

�� Yes!�
Hermione said, and all but ran away, probably going back to their tent to find
a table where she could spread the book out and take notes. Ron rolled his eyes
at Harry in a gesture that seemed to plead for compassion and then followed
her.

�� Harry
turned back to Draco. �Do you think that one of us should find Ventus and make
sure that she�s not too torn up over Herricks�s death?� Holder hadn�t reacted
much to that news, Harry thought.
She�d been far more concerned over the loss of the weapon that she believed
that captured reality could become.

�� She won�t
kill herself or do something drastic because of him,� Draco said. �She�s not
that kind of person. I think she�ll practice more intensely at her spells,
which can only be to the good.� He looked pointedly at Harry. �In the meantime,
we should start making our own contribution to the war effort.�

�� Harry
followed him, frowning. He wished that he could mourn more for Herricks, but
the simple fact was that he had mostly known the man as Ventus�s
partner, an occasionally good Auror, and someone whom Harry had wished would be
less of a bully and arrogant claimant to Draco�s position as the head of the
comitatus. Harry was sorry he was gone, but more for Ventus�s
sake than simply because he had died.

�� I can salute him, though. And wonder if I
would have the courage to do what he had done.

�� And whether that was what defeated Nihil,
more than the snake illusion that I summoned.

*

�� I think
you are right.�

�� Portillo
Lopez raised her eyes from the simple notes that Harry had put down about his
vision of the two serpents struggling, and they shone. Draco bit his lip. She
hadn�t looked that way when she examined his notes on the symbols he had seen
shifting around Nihil.

�� Draco
himself didn�t know what they meant. Dead roses, blasted
deserts, glass masks, thrones of bone like the ones that Granger had seen more
than once�he didn�t understand. But he had written them down because he
thought they were important, and Portillo Lopez seemed unable to understand
how.

�� Not an
imbalance in the sense that we understand it,� Portillo Lopez was murmuring,
her curved hand scooping out strange gestures in the air. �Or
at least, not the same kind of
imbalance. Not a struggle, but a dance. The way we
perceive things not being the only way. The way that Nihil handled
them�and the fact that they appeared with him, as the background that he was
acting against, rather than in service of him�it is not as bad as we feared. He
has not made himself master of death. He operates in that context like any
other necromancer.�

�� She whipped
around suddenly, and laughed, a pure, bright, clear sound. Draco exchanged
mystified looks with Harry. He didn�t know what that meant any more than Harry
did.

�� Yes,�
Portillo Lopez said. �That is it. That is the way to defeat Nihil.�

*

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Seasons of War