Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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

Chapter List
- 35
- 36
- 37
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Six—We Go to War
Draco hurt all over.
He could feel the pain leaping and radiating through his body as if someone had stabbed a wand straight through his forehead. If this was a tenth of the pain that Harry had felt when the Dark Lord was nearby and he made his scar hurt, then Draco had to respect his stubbornness and will all the more.
But in the meantime, they had to stop him.
Draco drove forwards, whipping the bond and the emotions that flowed between him and Harry like a rope. It curled around the Dark Lord and the Horcrux, burning them the same way that the positive emotions had a moment ago. The Dark Lord didn’t roar, but made a sharp hissing noise. The Horcrux shrieked.
This time, though, the trick didn’t work as well as it had. The Dark Lord reached out and drove hatred and pain radiating through the tie the Horcrux had to the rest of Harry’s soul.
And through the faded remains of the Dark Mark on Draco’s arm.
It was probably just as well that the ritual had burned most of that away, or Draco would have been in more agony. As it was, he reeled, and his concentration slipped, and the Horcrux scuttled back towards Harry while the Dark Lord turned his attention to Draco.
Narcissa and Lucius’s traitorous son. You shall tell me where your father is before you die.
Draco shuddered and pressed his hands against his ears. His head radiated more and more pain down his neck and chest, and the agony in his arm was reaching down below that. He wondered what would happen when his body became one oozing sore of pain.
You will die. And then you will whisper the secret to me as you pass, and know that your father is going to die in front of you. I know ways to bring the dead back, to bind their bodies and a remnant of the spirit. You will watch from rotting eyes as your father suffers.
That touched something off in Draco, ignited an explosion he hadn’t known could still burn. He raised his head and screamed as loudly as he could, You are not going to kill another one of my parents!
An onslaught of a different kind of love threw the Dark Lord back, and Draco surged back into his body and drove the pain away again. He reached out, and found the soul-bond with Harry bracing him, behind him. Harry was trying to cope with the Horcrux, but he willingly lent all the strength that Draco asked for.
Because they loved each other.
Draco twisted around to face the Dark Lord, and thought about the words he had spoken, and let them burn through him, and blaze into a fire that drove the hissing power back. Draco swallowed and said, You killed my mother, but you won’t kill my father. Or me. Or Harry.
I have no wish to destroy Harry Potter.
Because of the Horcrux, Draco thought, knowing well how to complete that sentence. He shook his head. Do you know what we’re doing? We’re destroying the bit of your soul that you valued so much you left it in the care of someone else for sixteen years.
The rage that spiked and washed over him was murky and suffocating, and Draco barely managed to reach down the bond towards Harry. Throw the Horcrux back to me!
But that will mean you’re dealing with both of them—
Attack him from behind once I have it!
Harry never hesitated, something Draco knew he could be grateful for. He tossed the Horcrux back to Draco, and it crashed into him and raked him with teeth that made him bleed. He heard the Dark Lord laugh.
Then Harry attacked him, and the Dark Lord roared instead. And Harry hurled the one taunt that Draco would never have thought of, the one thing that might have made the Dark Lord pause in his attack for even a moment.
Draco and I are soul-bonded, did you know that? And that means the Horcrux is as much his as mine. And if you kill him, then I’ll follow. You can’t even torment him without tormenting the one who holds your Horcrux.
That made the Dark Lord pause—for a moment, but it was enough. Draco hurled the Horcrux away from him, breaking off pieces of it with the fire of his love, and whirled it back to Harry. Harry wound coils of purity and strength around it, the same emotions that Draco felt flowing down the bond whenever he looked into his bondmate’s eyes, and the Horcrux screamed in an agony that Draco heard in the depths of his soul.
You cannot do this! You cannot be working against us both!
Harry didn’t respond as he threw the Horcrux at Draco again—smaller, it was smaller than before—and Draco knew why. If the Dark Lord wasn’t smart enough to figure out that Draco and Harry were working together, while the Dark Lord and his Horcrux couldn’t do the same thing, then he didn’t deserve a fighting chance.
The Dark Lord did what he often did when he was confused and upset, as Draco knew from experience. He struck at Draco with his magic. Someone had upset him, so someone had to suffer for it. It didn’t matter whether hurting that one person made any sense. And it particularly didn’t make any sense right now.
Draco held up the Horcrux as a shield. The Dark Lord’s magic rippled through it and carved off some of the darkness faster than either Draco or Harry could have managed on their own. Draco laughed hoarsely, and watched drifting pieces of blood or flesh or soul bob around in the currents of his mind.
You dare!
Draco shook his head. The Dark Lord couldn’t even accept responsibility for his own mistakes. As Draco tossed the now-diminished Horcrux back at Harry, he wondered why he could ever have thought this man worth following.
Why did Father?
That wasn’t a question he could answer right now, though, so Draco concentrated on washing his mind clean of the floating pollution. The Dark Lord was still roaring and trying to hurt him, but his connection to both of them was weak now. The Horcrux was dying. The Dark Mark had faded.
Draco looked up into the image of red eyes floating in front of him, and smiled.
The Dark Lord struck. Of course Draco knew he would, but he still screamed breathlessly. It hurt more than he would have imagined. His hands flailed out, and he grabbed a thin coil of strength coming to him from somewhere.
It felt strange, not like Harry’s power, but he used it nevertheless, making a shield in front of him to absorb some of Voldemort’s blows. Draco found that he couldn’t think of him by his title anymore. He didn’t deserve it.
The shield in front of him wavered, but held. And then Voldemort cried out again in anguish, and Draco finally blinked his eyes open and looked at the thing that was strung between his hands.
What was left of the Horcrux, a tiny remnant of the incredible will that had once tried to come down the soul-bond to conquer Draco. It felt like an oiled canvas. Even as Draco watched, the last tatters wisped about like a cloud in the face of the sun.
Voldemort howled.
It was an incredible sound, hitting Draco’s mind and making him wince. But at the same time, he saw Harry plunge at Voldemort’s back, his courage astonishing and beautiful, and Draco reached out his hand to feel it clasped.
Voldemort was beginning to lose his hold on them. Harry could drive him out of their joined minds as Draco, still struggling with bits of the Dark Mark, could not. That meant the Horcrux was truly gone forever.
Voldemort turned, and there was rage all around him, sharp spikes that poked holes in Draco’s hope. He had to remember how strong the Dark Lord had always been, even if he was weaker now. They would never win if they depended on luck.
We’re not depending on luck, Harry told him, and Draco started as the words rang down the bond. He hadn’t known that Harry was paying such close attention to his thoughts.
For now, pay close attention to Voldemort! Harry advised him, and then swept past Draco and down in a spiraling motion. Voldemort roared again, but Harry was darting ahead of him, outrunning the traps that Draco sensed him trying to put in Harry’s way without knowing exactly what those traps were.
Draco grimaced and hit Voldemort as hard as he could with his own love, his own stubbornness, his own determination to survive. He hesitated, and then let Voldemort see that knowing his mother was dead was what had turned him against the Dark Lord. Voldemort had cost himself his own war.
A cloud of choking darkness reached out in response, and Draco reeled back. All he could see was that darkness, working its way into his eyes and nose like water dripping through cracks in rock, and all he knew was the pain as he began to die for lack of breath—
Catch!
That was Harry throwing a metaphorical rope to him, a rope of clean air and light and breath. Draco snatched it and reminded himself again of why he was fighting, and how Voldemort couldn’t have any power here now that the Horcrux was gone.
You still bear my Mark. You still swore to serve me!
A promise I don’t intend to keep, Draco retorted, and was surprised by how calm he sounded. He opened his eyes and stared down Voldemort, who snarled at him with pointed teeth. But he was already fading, no longer the overwhelming presence he had been in the first few moments. Leave. You are not welcome here!
As he spoke, he pushed, and felt Harry join with him at the same moment, that force of cooperation that Voldemort would never understand, because he trusted no one and thought all powerful people had to be branded and made subordinate to him—
Harry pushed. Draco shoved. And they watched as the darkness in their minds became fainter and softer, and then it was gone, and their bond was ringing with love and triumph and exhaustion.
Are you all right?
Draco smiled and turned his head to burrow his face into Harry’s palm. Can’t you feel how all right I am?
Harry chuckled a little, but his voice was still soft and his eyes never left Draco. I think we have to return to our bodies soon, or risk our souls wandering the way mine already has twice now.
Draco started. Now that he thought about it, the bond and their minds and magic seemed the most real things in the world, and he couldn’t feel any physical sensation the way he had been able to at the beginning of the battle. You’re right. Let’s go back to the classroom and make sure that we’re all right there, too.
Harry reached out once to stroke his cheek before his image faded from in front of Draco. You were so brave.
Preening to himself, Draco eventually remembered that he could preen just as well in human form, and let himself fade after Harry.
*
Severus hissed under his breath as he watched these mad children begin to breathe in regular patterns again. He had come rushing into the room the moment his Mark began to burn him. He knew that the Dark Lord was here, but given how motionless both Harry and Draco lay, he didn’t know how to aid them.
In the end, he had remained silent and tense, knowing that interfering when they were in the middle of a mental battle could doom them all.
And now he was rewarded for his patience and good sense. He watched as Draco’s cheeks flushed again—his skin had looked far more like alabaster than even a Malfoy’s should look—and his lips parted to let a sigh escape. Harry rolled over and mumbled, and then abruptly sat up and blinked around.
“Did you feel it, sir?”
“I felt him,” said Severus softly, grateful that Harry hadn’t spoken the name aloud. “I don’t know exactly what—”
He abruptly choked, and fell to his knees next to the pallet Harry had been lying on, staring. Harry reached out to him, but Severus shook his head, and Harry’s hand dropped. It was Severus’s hand that rose, reaching out, tracing the suddenly unmarked forehead.
Harry’s scar was gone.
“Oh, that.” Harry sounded absurdly nonchalant, which made Severus want to strangle him. “We got rid of the Horcrux in me. So I’m not surprised the scar’s disappeared. Brilliant, right?” He yawned.
“You’re going to tell me what happened,” said Severus, in the sort of voice that he was more accustomed to using on Neville Longbottom. Threats hadn’t worked on Harry Potter since his first year.
“Don’t be bitter just because you weren’t there,” Draco said sleepily from behind him. “We just tossed the Horcrux back and forth between us until it started to tear apart, and Voldemort showed up to attack us, and we went on getting rid of the Horcrux, and he couldn’t stand alone against the combined might of our love. Simple, see?”
Severus did not see. He also knew that he would probably get nothing more out of Draco right now, given that Harry was asleep and Draco's eyes were closed with his breathing already gentle, and his own state of stunned wonder wasn't the best one in which to comprehend answers anyway.
"All right," he said reluctantly. "But if you do not tell me what is happening the instant you wake up..."
Twin snores answered him.
With a grimace of disgust for both their state and his own sentimentality, Severus conjured a blanket that he drew over the two of them. Draco rolled towards Harry and smiled a little, as though he assumed Harry was the one who'd done it. Severus stepped back and shut the classroom door with more force than necessary.
Granger and Weasley were waiting for him outside. Severus immediately raised the most powerful privacy spells he could think of and glared like a basilisk. Here were two people who were awake that he could take out his temper on.
"What did you mean, coming to this classroom when the Headmaster might come by?" He whisper-hissed the words, and saw Weasley flinch. At least I can still intimidate someone. "He might have followed you, and--"
"He didn't," Granger interrupted, with that blind confidence Severus had always itched to put a dent in. "I mean, we watched out behind us to make sure he wouldn't--"
"You stupid girl, you have no idea what powerful magic the Headmaster is capable of--"
"Don't call her a stupid girl!"
Severus ignored Weasley, but he did notice that Granger's mouth tightened before she seemed to put up her head haughtily and decide to ignore the way Severus was taunting her. "I admit I don't, sir," she said levelly. "But we gave him a lot to think about. We told him we didn't agree with his prejudice against Slytherins, and especially against you and Draco. I also confronted him with some of the things he said in newspaper articles in the past. He didn't much like that," she added.
Severus tilted his head. Perhaps Granger deserved to have smugness practically dripping off her. "What things did he say in newspaper articles? I am unaware of any recent interviews he has given."
"Not recent. I'm talking about things he said right after the war with Voldemort." Granger ignored his flinch. "He said that we all had to be on guard against the darkness in ourselves, because the way Voldemort really gathered support was from people who didn't care enough to stand up against him. Or who thought donating a little money to the Death Eaters was okay. Not the same as raiding with them, was it? Or who secretly sympathized with him even though they wouldn't have said that if you asked them. We had to be vigilant because we could think someone else was right to be horrible and bigoted, even a monster, as long as they weren't attacking us."
"And you accused him of having fallen back into that mindset."
"Yes. Or saying that it's all right for some people to die as long as they're 'bad' people. Like Slytherins."
Severus snorted in spite of himself. "Harry is not a Slytherin."
"No, but he has a piece of Voldemort's soul inside him, doesn't he?" This time, Granger only looked at him with pity when he flinched. "That tainted him by definition, the way Dumbledore looked at it. It wasn't as much of a problem if he died, even though it would still be tragic, because it wasn't the same as an innocent dying. He brought up a Muggleborn Gryffindor first-year as the kind of person Harry had to die to save, I reckon because he thought it would make me sympathize with him, and all I said that was that the Gryffindor first-year couldn't be a better person than Harry."
"So they deserved to die?"
"Neither of them deserve to die," said Granger, so fiercely that Severus took a step back. "We need to find another way around the problem. Not just throw up our hands and sigh and say at least it's not someone more innocent dying."
Severus raised his eyebrows and nodded. It was the sort of thinking he once would have expected to hear from Albus and Albus alone, but, well, that had ended quickly. Albus had said the right things in the right places, but Severus thought he hadn't believed them for years.
"So we told Dumbledore we were concerned about his attitude," said Weasley, and grinned. "I thought he'd get angry, but he sat there frowning and looking like he had a stomachache."
"It's because we're Gryffindors," said Granger, although she sounded resigned. "He just takes us more seriously. I don't want it to be that way, but it is." She sighed. "We also told him that he'd have to find another way to get the Horcrux out of Harry or lose our support, because we're never going to support just killing him."
It occurred to Severus that he was in a position to give them news he would never have thought possible. He schooled his face and said, "Such withholding of support might not be necessary."
They both stared at him, but Weasley, blunt as always, was the one who demanded, "How can you know that? You were down here and we were with him all the last hour. Did he send you a Patronus telling you he changed his mind or something?"
"No," said Severus. "The Horcrux is no longer in Harry."
That made them both shout, and Severus gladder than ever that he had raised the privacy spells. Yes, they protected them against Dumbledore overhearing, but they were also important to keep Draco and Harry blissfully asleep.
"How?"
"Did you do something to help them?"
"Did you shoot the Killing Curse at Harry?"
"No," snapped Severus, more than a little disgusted, and had the "good fortune" of at least seeing Weasley nod apologetically.
"Then how did it happen?" Granger said.
Severus decided they deserved no better than to have the rambling explanation Draco had given him, and arranged his face in studiously concerned lines. "They just tossed the Horcrux back and forth between them until it started to tear apart, and the Dark Lord attacked to defend his Horcrux, and Draco and Harry continued to fight the Horcrux, until he couldn’t stand alone against the combined might of their love. Simple, isn't it?"
Silence. Granger narrowed her eyes.
"Of course, when you put it like that, it's bloody simple," Weasley muttered, not loudly enough that Severus had to hear and scold him for language.
"There must be more to it than that," said Granger, shaking her head. "When they tried to share the Horcrux between them before, it almost destroyed Malfoy, didn't it?"
"This was not sharing," Severus said. "It was oscillating. And I do not think they used their soul-bond as a weapon before. I highly doubt this would be possible for any pair who was not soul-bonded."
He said that as much to hopefully head off Granger's self-recriminations as because he believed it true, and saw her eyes fill with a hard look anyway. "If we had pursued that plan to become soul-bonded to Harry--"
"He would not have been as familiar with your bond as the one with Draco, and any plan like this would therefore have taken longer to accomplish," Severus interrupted. "Even if it might have been safer with more of you, Harry and Draco both survived. You can talk to them when they wake up."
Weasley spluttered, but Granger gave him a too-perceptive smile and a little shake of her head. "You're very protective of them, aren't you, sir?"
"They have become my only hope of getting free of the Dark Lord," Severus said, and he hoped his voice was forbidding enough that Granger would think before she said anything.
No such luck. Granger only smiled more broadly and said, "I think it's more than that."
"I am Draco's Head of House. And I swore an oath to protect Lily Evans's son that I cannot believe Harry has not told you about."
Granger reached out and patted his elbow. "It's all right, sir. We won't say anything." Weasley nodded vigorously behind her, looking ill at the thought of saying anything. "It's not something they need to know about, anyway. We'll get some rest. And we'll come down later and take over guarding Harry and Draco later if you want."
They marched off. Severus stared after them. This had not been his afternoon.
The only mercy is that the privacy spells would also have prevented Harry and Draco from hearing anything, even if they had been awake.
- 35
- 36
- 37
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

The Serenity of His Rage