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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-Seven�Like a Scythe

�� What do you mean by that?�

�� Draco�s voice was irritated, the way
it always was when someone came up with a new idea before he did. Harry could
understand it this time, though. Portillo Lopez�s announcement had gone through
him like a scythe, and then made an electric buzz spring up in his head. She
hadn�t properly explained yet, either, instead gazing in rapture at her notes,
which made Harry want to shake her until she did.

�� Portillo Lopez blinked and turned
her head, attention slowly focusing on them as though she had to bring herself
back from a long distance to see them as people instead of contributors to her
ideas. �Hm?" she asked.

�� Draco spaced his words far apart,
leaning forwards as though he shared Harry�s desire to strangle her. He
probably did, Harry thought, and once again, couldn�t bring himself to blame
Draco for that. �You said that you knew how to defeat Nihil. Tell us what that
means. If experience is any guide, you�ll run off to your Order soon, and they
may or may not do something soon, but we�ll be left in the dark. We�re tired of
that.�

�� Portillo Lopez raised her eyebrows
in such a perfect chiding motion that Harry thought Snape could have learned
something from her. �No need to be like that about it,� she said mildly. �I had
only just realized it myself. I would have shared it soon.�

�� Now,� Draco said.

�� Compared to the perspective in time
I adopted a few minutes ago, soon is now, now,� Portillo Lopez said, and
luckily went on speaking, so that Harry didn�t have to deal with Draco bursting
a vein in his head. �It came to me when I began to think of the struggle
between life and death as a dance, the way Trainee Potter suggested I do. And
that corresponds with the symbols around Nihil that you saw, Trainee Malfoy.�

�� Tell us how.� Draco had backed off
a bit, but he still radiated tension and impatience. Harry placed a hand on his
back, cautiously. Draco stiffened as if he would shrug it off, but ended up
sighing and relaxing into it. He never took his gaze away from Portillo Lopez,
though.

�� They are both symbols,� Portillo
Lopez said. �Intense areas of high magic can produce visions like this. Visions
of reality itself are, in fact, common, but the human mind casts them in a form
that we can deal with, and so observers may not always know what they are
looking at. You saw the forces of life and death, Trainee Potter. You observed
them in Nihil himself, Trainee Malfoy. That suggests that Nihil is a force of the
same kind that life and death are. Part of the same reality.�

�� Draco looked ill, and Harry felt the
sharp shiver that ran through him a moment later. �So Nihil can�t be defeated,�
he whispered. �If he�s become as basic to the fabric of life and death as that
idea suggests��

�� Not basic,� Portillo Lopez said, casting him a pitying glance that
Harry was glad Draco didn�t fully notice, or there would have been bloodshed. �Part. He can�t escape, after all. He
isn�t floating off in some isolated magical plane, the way I almost believed he
was. He isn�t exempt from the working of reality, even though he is exempt from the working of death.
That�s what we didn�t see before. That�s what we missed. We looked at him as
someone who had mastered death and wasn�t subject to life; we didn�t see that
he might be subject to their both working at once, the sum of the parts rather
than either separate one.�

�� Harry thought he could grasp the
idea, dimly. Even so��That doesn�t really tell us how to defeat him,� he
pointed out.

�� Portillo Lopez smiled at him. �It
tells us that he must react like other magical entities who have something
unusual about them. He isn�t invulnerable. He may not follow the same laws as
other necromancers, but we can still harness variants of those laws in this
war, rather than having to make them up on the fly.� She paused and cocked her
head like a curious bird. �I do wonder if Voldemort might have followed some of
the same rules.�

�� Harry found himself standing up. For
a cause like this, he would be willing to explain some of the things about
Voldemort and his reactions to them that he had wanted to keep hidden from the
prying eyes of the public. �What do you need to know?� he asked.

�� Portillo Lopez�s eyes rested on him
for a moment, musingly. Harry wondered if it was his imagination that there was
pity in her gaze. As long as she pitied him for what had happened, though,
instead of for his attempt to contribute now, he thought he could live with it.

�� How strong was his influence over
the balance between life and death?� Portillo Lopez asked. �How close did he
come to achieving his goal? Why did he want that goal in the first place? These
are not all questions that may have answers; some of them are probably lost in
time, or to the memories of people who are now dead. But anything that you
could tell us would be valuable.�

�� Harry hesitated. It wasn�t that he
didn�t really trust Draco and Portillo Lopez with the knowledge of Horcruxes
and the way he had died to get rid of part of Voldemort�s soul; he had told
them enough bits and pieces that he doubted what he had to say would surprise
either of them. It was just that he didn�t know how to make himself sound like
anything but an arse when talking about it. He would have conducted himself
during that war so much differently
now.

�� Starting
with rescuing Draco from the Manor.

�� But there were some things that he
couldn�t change, so Harry nodded and began. Draco was the one who had his hand on Harry�s back now, and Harry
had to admit that it felt really good to have that support to lean back
against.

*

�� There
might be a way.

�� Draco had been irritated because he
had suspected that Portillo Lopez wouldn�t explain her reasoning. He had
wondered whether her answer would be too theoretical for him to understand. He
had a slight burn of resentment now that everything seemed, as everything
always did, to come down to Harry.

�� But the predominant sensation he had
felt when Portillo Lopez had told them that there might be a way to defeat
Nihil and end the war was a wash of cool relief, and he could still feel the
echoes of that as Harry spoke.

�� There was a way to get out of this
endless war. Draco still wanted to be a leader, he still wanted power and
glory, but he no longer felt the need to have them at the expense of everything
else. Working through the hierarchy of the Aurors, working with the comitatus,
and perhaps losing an eye had taught him that much. There were things he valued
more, even if it was difficult to see that at times.

�� Harry finished describing the way he
had defeated Voldemort with an Expelliarmus, and
Draco looked instinctively at Portillo Lopez. She didn�t, somewhat to his
disappointment, tell him that there was a simple spell they could use to defeat
Nihil in the same way. She stood there, eyes closed, swaying slightly in deep
thought.

�� And then her eyes flared open.

�� It is the same principle,� she
breathed. �I do not believe that Nihil has actually used the Horcrux theory,
because he can bind himself to any living object. But the bonds are still
there, the same way that, once one knew of the Horcruxes, Voldemort was no
longer indestructible. The idea that he was was based
on illusion only. And Nihil has encouraged and fostered in us the illusion of
his total power. That, I think, is one reason he has struck across lines so
often in inconsistent attacks such as the ones he used Nusquam and Nemo for. He
would have been pleased to achieve something with them, but that was not their
main purpose. Their purpose was to keep us afraid of him, to think that he
could appear at any moment, anywhere, and do anything.�

��

�� We knew that already,� Draco
snapped, because he had hoped that this was a real answer, and so far it
sounded like Portillo Lopez was simply rehashing what they already knew. �We�d
reckoned that Nihil was doing this because he knew that he could keep us afraid
if he did. So why are you repeating it?�

�� Portillo Lopez gave him the kind of
smile that Draco hated, the distant one that was only a step away from pity or
any other sort of false compassion. He tightened his grip on Harry and fought
for calm. Harry turned to him with a blink, as if to say that he found Portillo
Lopez�s conclusions revealing and wished that Draco would hush so that he could
hear more.

�� With an effort, Draco controlled the
temptation to snap and inclined his head to Portillo Lopez, waiting to hear
what she would say.

�� Yes, he is doing this because he
wants to make people fear him,� Portillo Lopez said slowly. Draco didn�t think
she was picking her way over unfamiliar territory, but trying to be as clear as
possible for someone simple-minded. Since he had done much the same thing to
her a moment before, he bit his lip and nodded. �But there might have been
something behind that pretense. We didn�t know how strong he was. We didn�t
know what this Dark Argus that took your eye was, or why it could force itself
past the camp�s defenses. Now I think it was only ever bluffing. He wanted to
frighten us so that we wouldn�t look too closely into some of his activities,
or realize what he didn�t want us to realize.� Her eyes narrowed in triumph.
�That he is part of the same spectrum of reality as all of us.�

�� So he can be killed,� Harry summed
up.

�� Portillo Lopez nodded to him.
�Perhaps the correct term would be �made not to exist,� but yes, it is
possible.�

�� Draco nodded back to her, and hoped
that his expression helped make up for his snappishness earlier. Yes, that was information that they hadn�t known
before. �But what is your plan?�

�� Portillo Lopez turned back to face
the table on which their notes were spread, along with her own. Her eyes shone,
and she moved with purpose. Draco didn�t think he�d seen her this excited since
the night when Nihil had attacked while almost everyone was asleep and her
spells hadn�t done anything.

�� We could sever his connection to
reality, in the way that Trainee Potter destroyed the Horcruxes,� she said.
�But not even that would provide a solution in and of itself, because when the
Horcruxes were destroyed, there still remained the physical shell of
Voldemort�s body to deal with. What we must do instead is encourage Nihil to
remain connected, to become still more connected, so that we can trap him in
one corner of the vast space he can command and force him to retreat.�

�� Draco blinked. �Like the vision that
I saw in the Mirror of Secifircas,� he said. �Make
him paranoid enough, and he might retreat into the ball of nothingness, knowing
that nothing could touch him there.�

�� In both senses of the word nothing,
yes,� said Portillo Lopez, and smiled at him. �And if we can enfold that space
in reality, then we win.�

�� How are you going to convince him
to retreat?� Draco asked. �He�ll be more panicked than ever, once he figures
out that we know he�s not invulnerable. I can�t think of anything that would
frighten him enough to make him flee, especially now that he seems to be on the
verge of filling the world with his balls of nothingness.�

�� Portillo Lopez simply shifted her
glance so that she was looking at Harry, which, in a way, was its own kind of
answer.

�� Does everything have to depend on
him?� Draco asked quietly. He knew that he was asking out of both concern for
Harry and exasperation that everyone still seemed to depend on him even after
they had seen that he worked most effectively with the comitatus, but at least
his concern for Harry was sincere, unlike the majority of emotions that
Portillo Lopez and most of the other Aurors would be feeling. �Just because he
defeated one threat doesn�t mean that he can defeat others.�

�� I know that,� said Portillo Lopez.
�What�s needed at the moment is courage to take on this task, more than
anything else.�

And she knows that
courage is the one quality Harry has more of than any other, Draco thought,
swallowing angrily around the lump in his throat when he remembered the way
that Harry had befriended him in the past, the way that he had charged ahead in
various dangerous situations, the way that he hadn�t hesitated to sacrifice his
life if it meant that he could rescue Draco or someone else.

�It
would help if you told me what the task was,� Harry said, with more calmness
than Draco would have thought he could muster under the circumstance. Harry did
swallow, once, but that was hardly remarkable. And he didn�t volunteer without
hearing what the plan involved.

His
worst fears assuaged, Draco smiled at his partner. Harry smiled back, and then
turned to Portillo Lopez. Draco happily decided to stay quiet until he spotted
a question that he could answer.

They
supported each other.

*

�� As a matter of fact, Harry already
suspected what Portillo Lopez�s plan was, at least part of it. Her eyes hadn�t
gone to the scar on his forehead, whatever Draco thought; she had looked at the
air around him, as if she had seen his snake illusions hovering protectively
above his shoulders.

�� Harry could do this because he could
summon the weapons that would attract Nihil�s attention, distract him, and
confuse him. But Harry doubted that he would be the one killing this particular
Dark Lord.

�� If
you can call someone a Dark Lord who wants to destroy everything instead of
rule it, he thought.

�� It would, wouldn�t it?� Portillo
Lopez asked, in the tone of someone having a revelation. Harry rolled his eyes.
He had accepted, by now, that there was no way to hurry her. He would only have
to hope that she revealed everything, rather than keeping some of it back
because she thought that he couldn�t understand it or only the Order needed to
hear it. �Very well. I want you to hold Nihil in one place while we open an access
to the reality around him.�

�� Harry nodded. Rather what he had
thought, then. But something about the words she had just spoken didn�t make
sense. He hunted about in his mind until he found it.

�� I thought you said he was part of
the same reality we are,� he said. �Why do you have to open an access to where
he dwells?�

�� To that particular part of the reality,� Portillo Lopez
said. �The same way that you use an Apparition to go from one part of it to
another.�

�� Most people call those places,�
Harry said, irritated. �And I appreciate that it might be a bit more
complicated to Apparate to where Nihil is, but surely it�s not so different
that you have to use an entirely different language.�

�� There is a subtle difference in
magical theory, in fact,� Portillo Lopez said, sounding as if she were coming
to life. �The duality of time and space is a fascinating topic, but I fear that
we have time for no more than a few brief notes on it. When one Apparates, one
is going from one place to another only in the classical sense, in the same way
that the sky is only blue to the untutored eye. What really happens��

�� Harry distracts Nihil, and you open
a gate,� Draco said. �What happens next?�

�� Harry grinned at Draco in gratitude
for translating, and Draco nodded back before he focused on Portillo Lopez.

�� I believe I know a way to make him
fear,� Portillo Lopez said, slowly, eyes focused on the wall of the tent as
though she could make a hole through it that would show her the way to Nihil�s
secret heart. �Yes, I do. If he was allowed to cause baseless fear in us, if it
served his purposes, why should we not do the same thing to him?�

�� Are we sure that we can make him fear?� Draco asked, frowning. �I thought
that was the problem, or one of the problems. He didn�t fear anything because he
can�t die, and he can�t die because he�s already conquered death in every way
possible for a mortal.�

�� But he does not know every law and
detail of existence,� Portillo Lopez said equably, �or he wouldn�t have had to
create parts of himself that were devoted to research. He wouldn�t have had to
adopt Death Eater discoveries from their caches. He could have simply acted on
the knowledge that was already present in his�I hesitate to use the term head.� Harry grinned, and then wondered
whether he wasn�t supposed to find that funny. Draco was simply leaning
forwards, and didn�t appear to notice anything amusing about it. �We can
assume, therefore, that he is aware of the existence of phenomena that he
doesn�t know anything about, and we can, perhaps, panic him into a possible
stampede by implying that there is more of it than even he knows.�

�� Maybe,� Harry said. �How are we
going to do that, though? From what you�ve said, he realizes that he doesn�t
have anything to fear from your Order.�

�� Portillo Lopez smiled. It was a bit
disturbing. �He need not realize that permanently,�
she said.

�� It�ll have to be a good lie, to
make him fear it,� Draco said, with a doubt that made Harry feel more confirmed
n his own. He had thought that Portillo Lopez was being a bit optimistic about
their ability to trick Nihil, but then again, he didn�t know enough about the
Order of necromancers to be absolutely sure.

�� Yes, I know,� said Portillo Lopez.
�And that is one reason that the both of you are going to act as though you
believe it.�

*

�� Draco clenched his fists and took a
deep breath, reminding himself for the fourth time that this plan was the
result of several days of intense discussion and training. That didn�t actually
help, though. He was still waiting outside the Auror camp and essentially
trying to bait Nihil into arriving.

�� On the basis of an unproven theory
offered by an Order of necromancers that Draco didn�t know if he could actually
trust, despite the vows offered by individuals like Raverat and Portillo Lopez.

�� On top of everything else, Harry and
he had been separated.

�� Draco still didn�t understand the
necessity of that. Once Portillo Lopez had said that they would try to trick
Nihil into fearing them, Draco had assumed she�d dropped the idea of a
distraction technique focused on Harry�s snake illusions. Why wouldn�t he? Nihil,
panicked, would be easy enough prey without having to use Harry�s snakes and
put him at risk.

�� But Portillo Lopez had had some more
complex game in mind, or she had wanted to examine Harry�s magic as he used it
to fight Nihil. Draco suspected it was the latter. Portillo Lopez was not one
to give up her theories on the edge of battle.

�� Draco understood her reasoning
perfectly well. It had been explained several times, thrashed out between them,
the rest of the comitatus, Raverat, Portillo Lopez, the other Aurors who had
been their allies�and who, if they were displeased to learn of the comitatus
going off to glory in London, had hidden it well�and Holder, and Draco thought
that it would work. He would simply have preferred to have Harry under his eye.

�� Both of them, really. Draco had
discovered that the magical eye was good at telling him when Harry�s emotions
were swirling about his mind, because the colors of his power would become
agitated as well.

�� Now he paced back and forth in the
darkness, shut his eyes more tightly, and called up and clung to the vision
that Portillo Lopez had conjured for him. She had made an actual vision, using
illusions, glamours, and memories in a complex mix that she had then placed
into a Pensieve.

�� Draco went on thinking, repeating
the details of the vision in his head until it was clear. Then he turned his
head in a random direction. Portillo Lopez had told him to look in the direction
that he thought Nihil was most likely to be, but she had more faith in Draco�s
powers of intuition than he did.

�� Draco imagined the vision with such
intensity that he felt as if it were playing out before his eyes.

�� He imagined the Order flinging
silvery ropes, with hooks at the end of them, catching around the tendrils of
the monstrous and indistinct figure that he'd come to picture Nihil as. He had accepted that his brain wasn't adequate to
hold the reality of the figure he'd faced on the battlefield in London, so he just built
up the closest approximation and used that. The Order's hooks and the ropes were
the important part.

�� Draco envisioned the hooks tearing
into the nothingness that made up Nihil's
"body" in this vision, ripping it apart into small and separate
chunks. Then Order necromancers, all of them dressed in cloaks and hoods as
they had been when Draco first met them, concentrated on each of those small
pieces, chanting spells that destroyed them.

�� Draco infused the vision as best as
he could with fear and awe. He still didn't think that Nihil
would be stupid enough to fall for this, but their best chance of trying to
make sure that he did was to fill one's head and heart with those emotions, so
that Nihil would at least be attracted.

�� He thought he felt a faint vibration
in the direction of the southeast. Draco faced that way and once again
projected the vision.

�� A long snarl came out of the
darkness, though there was no mouth to make it. Draco smiled coldly. He had
heard sounds like that before, and he was sure that this was Nihil, or at least the part of him that he had dedicated to
watching for threats from his enemies.

�� He heaped more detail into the
vision, as though he was watching it happen right now, or imagining it, or dreaming
it. The Order necromancers clustered in a line and knelt down, aiming their
hands at the scattering shreds of Nihil's being.
Their voices rose and fell in a disciplined chant, bringing down the tiny birds
that Nihil's darkness became as they tried to flee to
safety. When they succeeded, they rose to their feet without fuss or anger, the
way Draco thought they would, and turned to the next target.

�� Nothing that Nihil
could come up with would escape them. Nothing that he could do would foil them.
They had finally discovered the one weapon that would suit against a being as
powerful as Nihil, and they would soon be ready to
use it.

�� A blast of cold air in the face made
Draco stagger backwards. As his magical eye blinked furiously, he saw swirls of
chill yellow and dark red appear in the air in front of him--some of the colors
of magic that he had seen forming around Nihil's true
being in London.

�� The colors gathered themselves,
churned together, and funneled into a being much like the Dark Argus, complete
with glowing eyes and skeletal hands.

�� Nihil had
sent his beast here, instead of
simply being distracted so that the Order could sneak up on him.

�� I
knew they shouldn't have separated me and Harry, Draco thought, more than
slightly breathless, and prepared for battle.

*

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Seasons of War