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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-Eight--Final

�� They hadn't
told him that what he would have to do was fucking impossible.

�� Harry stood
in the forest that Portillo Lopez had Apparated him to, his arms wrapped around
himself. He could just have used a Warming Charm, but then he would probably
get overheated. He knew that the chill didn't come from the mild summer night
around him; it came from the thought of what Portillo Lopez and her Order of
necromancers thought he would be able to accomplish.

�� Harry
shivered and paced in a circle. He would have liked to be with Draco, but
Portillo Lopez had explained why that was impossible. Draco was the one sending
the distracting vision; Harry had to be in another place so that he could weave
the snake illusions around a different part of Nihil.
Nihil's ability to divide himself and make tendrils meant
that Portillo Lopez didn't think he would go himself to confront Draco,
especially since he had been wounded in his last confrontation with the comitatus. They needed to send the fear of the vision from
one direction, make him appear to Harry in some form that could be held, and
then use both combined as a distraction that would keep Nihil
from seeing the real plan.

�� It sounded
unnecessarily complicated to Harry, but he accepted, grudgingly, that they
couldn't trust Nihil to simply walk into a trap and
bring all of himself with him. Of course, that didn't explain why Portillo
Lopez thought only two traps would be enough. Why not three?

�� Or maybe it
did count as three, since the Order
would be attacking from a different direction. Harry shook his head in
impatience. When this war was done, he vowed, he was going to study magical
theory until it made sense to him,
even if it took the rest of his bloody life.

�� Abruptly,
something changed in the atmosphere of the night around him. It was as though a
skunk had suddenly died and added a putrid odor to what had been a sweet
breeze. Harry turned in the direction that he knew marked the Auror camp, eyes
narrowed. Portillo Lopez had said he would know when Nihil
began to respond to the vision Draco was projecting, but not how.

�� This felt
like it, though. Harry swallowed and conjured up his own portion of the vision.

�� Draco was
imagining what could happen to Nihil, thanks to the Order's having supposedly discovered
this secret weapon. Harry was supposed to imagine that it was happening right
now, to a part of Nihil.

�� I knew Nemo would
come in useful for something, Harry thought, and started to imagine as hard
as he could. The hooks that the Order had conjured--or would have conjured if
this vision had been at all real--were ripping into Nemo's
flesh, tearing it apart in ways that nothing else could have. Instead of
becoming useless blood and skin, or clots of oblivion, Nemo
was yielding his secrets to the Order.

�� What
secrets? Harry didn't know. That was part of the reason that Portillo Lopez had
chosen him to project this part of the vision, since she knew that Nihil knew that Harry wouldn't understand all the magical
theory, and that would make the threat both plausibly vague and more real.

�� We are trying to panic him, she had
said, when Harry complained about, essentially, being used for his stupidity.

�� Harry shut
his eyes and concentrated until he could see the light gleaming on the hooks.
And Nemo was screaming. He had no trouble imagining that, after the screams that he heard
during the war.

�� The night
shifted again. This time, Harry could feel it as a shimmering and shivering in
his bones, like someone had struck them with a tuning fork. It was similar to,
though not exactly the same as, the way he had felt when Nihil
launched his attack on the Auror camp all those nights ago.

�� He's coming, Harry thought, and
continued to concentrate on the idea of Nemo being
torn apart as if he hadn't noticed.

�� But when
the air ripped and the immense glamoured being that
was Nihil landed in the middle of the clearing,
filling Harry's eyes and ears and nose and all his senses with that sensation
of drowning in acidic mud, Harry was ready for him, snakes coiling and hissing
in each hand.

*

�� The Dark
Argus had thousands of eyes, and thousands of claws. All of them seemed to be
staring and scraping, respectively, at Draco in those first few seconds of the
fight.

�� But Draco
had an advantage he hadn't even realized was an advantage. His magical eye
painted the darkness around the beast with lines and shimmers of vast color,
lines that seemed to link to nothing at first and which Draco was tempted to
ignore--until one line suddenly slanted a moment before the great clawed hand
on the left came down and struck towards Draco.

�� His magical
eye could see the motions the beast would make, and allow Draco, in turn, to
counter those motions the instant before they happened.

�� Draco
laughed aloud, and had the impression, from the way the lines of color twisted
and coiled, that the beast hesitated. But he didn't allow himself to dwell on
that for long. It was an advantage, yes, and one that he had to utilize fast,
before the beast realized what was happening and covered the hole in its
defenses, or, more likely, received something from Nihil
that would allow it to do so.

�� He saw the
red line that led to the right hand flare with blue, which the line leading to
the left had done before it moved, and so aimed his wand at empty air and
shouted, "Ardeo!"

�� The air
burst into flame, an expanding wheel of fire that was actually best-suited for
taking out enemies at the margins of an area--

�� Like the
Dark Argus's right hand, as it moved down and into
the edges of the conflagration a moment later.

�� It made no
attempt to escape until a few seconds after, Draco noted, when even more red
lines turned blue. That told him even more. It, or the magic that controlled
it, was slow and deliberate. It couldn't react
fast to new situations that suddenly developed; it was as though it had to
think about things.

�� He smiled,
and watched for a moment as the fire shimmered across the bony hand, wondering
what effect it would have. He hardly wanted to cast a spell that wouldn't work,
no matter how tempting some of the fire spells would be to use on a creature
that had trouble reacting to change.

�� The flames
faded, and left behind a dangling, blackened finger. Draco grinned, decided
that was good enough for now, and whirled into the battle.

*

�� The snakes
grew from Harry's arms, from his head, from his chest and neck and eyes. He had
envisioned only a crown of snakes at first, but that became a cloak, and that
became armor. He only had time to see a few of them--who looked like golden
cobras, the infinity pattern drawn in dark ash on their hoods--before they all
struck at once, lunging forwards and holding onto Nihil.

�� Nihil said something, or perhaps hissed something, in a
language so foul that Harry felt as though parts of his earlobes were simply
melting away. He gritted his teeth against the pain and conjured fangs on the
snakes that were already hanging on, making them sink deep, like the hooks that
Portillo Lopez had told him to imagine.

�� Nihil roared and thrashed like a lion. Then he lifted his
head, or rather a head-shaped part of the blob turned Harry's way, and Harry
was caught by a pair of eyes that, so far as he knew, Nihil
hadn't used before. One of them was a golden eye that imitated the shine coming
from his snakes.

�� The other
was Draco's grey eye.

�� Harry
hesitated for just a moment, which weakened his snakes, and Nihil
sent a tendril sliding and slicing through their protection, landing on Harry's
shoulder and inflicting a sucker-shaped wound.

�� Harry
shivered. It didn't exactly hurt. It was just very cold, and flashed blue-black at the edges.

�� It was the
color that told him what Nihil must be doing. He was
feeding the void into Harry, filling his veins with death the way that Nemo had done with the creatures that he brought back to
life from ancient bones. Harry had no idea what would happen to him once the
process was complete, but he doubted it would be anything good.

�� Irritated,
he focused his mind on the glowing golden warmth of the reality that Ventus had stolen from that other, more vital world, and imagining
it pumping down the fangs of his snakes into Nihil,
taking the place of the venom that might be there if they were poisonous.

�� Nihil screamed aloud.

�� The sound
set up vibrations in Harry's bones and made his head sag on his neck. The wound
on his shoulder seemed to widen and to grow colder, although honestly, Harry
didn't know how it was doing that. He trembled and felt an intense weariness
coming over him. What did it all matter, after all? They were never going to
defeat Nihil; he was simply too powerful. And hadn't
he fought in enough battles, seen enough wars? He should feel free to rest,
because no one else had ever be expected to do so much.

�� No.

�� Against the
despair that seemed to have taken the place of fear among Nihil's
weapons, Harry raised a barrier of ferocity and free will, courage and
compassion. Dumbledore might have manipulated him and kept the prophecy from
him, but Harry had still chosen to fight in the war. Nothing could have
happened unless he had willingly sacrificed his time and his efforts and even
his life against Voldemort. Nothing would happen here, could have happened, if
he had not chosen to fight the war against Nihil. He
could have dropped out of Auror training, as many had after the war became
obviously dangerous. He could have refused to study the compatible magic with
Draco. He could have refused to partner with him. He could have gone on
studying necromancy and not listened to Draco when he begged him to stop.

�� So many
choices, and everything would have gone differently.

�� So Nihil had chosen a poor weapon when he tried to tell Harry
that nothing he did made a difference.

�� The cold
flowing into his wound seemed to falter. Harry lifted his head and thought
again of reality pouring through the snakes' fangs, hitting Nihil
in the face or whatever other body parts he might have available for hitting,
weakening him, driving in warmth and life as he was trying to pour the void
into Harry. How long since Nihil had seen the sun,
held an animal in his arms, tasted fruit? All those were experiences of
the� outside world, of the world that Nihil had decided he would do his best to destroy.

�� The sucker
withered and fell away from Harry's shoulder. The snakes' bodies thickened,
grew stronger and brighter.

�� That's it, Harry thought in wonder. This is a battle fought on the mental plane
as much as anywhere else. Maybe it's because we're using fear against Nihil or because he's more powerful this way than any other,
but what we think can hurt him.

�� Harry
changed tactics, and thought this time of his love for Draco, of the way that
their compatible magic flowed through them when they were using it, of how
perfectly they dueled together, or how Draco arched above him, head tossed
back, eyes fluttering, when he was coming--

�� Nihil screamed in pain, a sound like the harmonics of
crystal bells shattering to Harry's ears.

�� Oh, that really hurts him. Harry laughed dizzily. I wonder if it comes partially from the fact that I'm thinking of
togetherness, and Nihil doesn't know what that means?
He's just this whole melded thing, and
all the people he works with are parts of himself. He's always alone. It's not
real cooperation.

�� Nihil turned his formless head again as if he had heard
that, and a new sensation stabbed into Harry's brain. This wasn't the cold of
the void, but something worse, something draped and flowing with black
rottenness. It only took a moment until Harry was gasping silently, bent at the
waist as he struggled to control his reaction, coughing as he tried to remove
the gag that it seemed intent on clapping into his mouth.

�� Thickness.
That was the best way to describe it, he thought, from behind the building
wall. Uniqueness. Nihil was trying to isolate Harry
from his thoughts and his friends by tapping into the feelings that lay
smoldering uneasily beneath the surface of his mind, bringing up all those
moments when he'd felt himself alone or so different that no one else would
ever understand him and cramming them together into one barrier like packed
earth.

�� Memories of
Dudley flashed through his head, and the way that Dudley
had laughed and taunted him, telling him that no one would ever love or want to
be with a freak. Draco drew away from
him, turning his head aside as he declared that he could never be with someone
who practiced necromancy. Ron left him in the Tri-Wizard Tournament and again
during the Horcrux hunt, and Nihil
was working hard to ensure that Harry didn't remember him coming back.

�� Harry
answered with grim resolve: the memories of going away to Hogwarts, of
reconciling with Draco, of Ron returning of his own free will when he realized
that Harry was in danger. But those memories were thin and shivering, wailing
things next to the solid muscle that Nihil rammed
into him.

�� His snakes
began to flicker and change. Nihil laughed in his
ears, not taunting; the laughter was too dead. But it was horrible anyway.

�� Harry
reached out instinctively, before he thought about it, seeking a source of strength
that had once meant everything to him, that the Aurors had trained him to work
with, that he had once sworn to lean on and consult before he did anything too
dangerous.

�� Draco!

�� The word
rang across the miles between them, Harry didn't even know how many miles, and
he found himself holding his breath, hoping that Draco would hear him and send
help before it was too late.

*

�� Really, it
was almost too easy fighting the Dark Argus, at least once Draco had noticed the
messages from his magical eye. The beast always struck where he wasn't, and
soon it was roaring in frustration and waving its claws in random patterns.

�� Or they
must have seemed random to it, at least. It still couldn't move without the
magic to direct it, and that meant magic to signal it. Red turned to blue, and
Draco was out of the way or ambushing it, or, several delicious times, casting
a wind spell that meant its hand traveled further than it was meant to and
scraped against itself, causing chunks to fall off.

�� Draco!

�� The cry turned
his head, wrenching it physically to the side, and for a moment Draco lost
track of the lines of magic and the Dark Argus as he viewed them only with his
ordinary eye. The beast's claws swept over his head, parting his hair with the
riffle of the wind, and he ducked beneath them only just in time, tucking his
arms around him to roll. The beast roared or chuckled and shuffled forwards.

�� Harry! Draco reached out, uncertain,
fumbling. They had never tried to stretch their compatible magic over a distance
this great.

�� He received
only silent distress. There were no more words, and Draco was uncertain what
Harry wanted him to do. The silence was maddening. Harry might be dying right
then, and although Draco was sure that he would feel that, he didn't know what
he was supposed to do to stop it.

�� Then he
firmed his mouth and nodded once. The cry had been a cry for help, and there
was only one kind of help that Draco thought he could furnish from here, or
that Harry would ask for.

�� He flung
the compatible magic out in a reaching stream, a skein that sought and
hopefully found the reaching hand that sought it. For a moment, he thought he
felt Harry grasping it, and gratitude and wonder flowed through it. Lips
brushed the skin beneath his ear; a hand touched his hair.

�� Then the
skein lapsed, and left Draco shaking and facing a beast that he had weakened
but still couldn't defeat. None of the spells he had cast had touched the
glowing eyes.

�� Draco
formed his mouth into a quiet snarl. Well, he would just have to do something
about that, then.

�� And then it
came to him that there was a certain kind of magic he had been avoiding, and he
snorted in amusement and spread one hand. The wand followed it in a pointing
line, and he reached back into his memory for the incantations he had found in
books in his father's library.

�� He hadn't
used Dark Arts so far. But Dark Arts were as likely to work on a beast made of
bones and death as any other. Nihil's magic was
neither Dark nor Light, but something beyond either.

�� But not
undefeatable. Portillo Lopez had promised him that much, and that meant Draco
had to believe her and stay alive while he could.

�� "Ad finem!" he called, and his voice
was strong, even as magic began to bubble and boil in his gut that he had never
called on before.

�� The beast
snarled and came a step forwards, into the spell's range.

�� Draco
arched his head back as a black beam burst from his wand. It encircled the
beast and flung it--not physically, but magically--to the uttermost limits of
its time on earth, sucking greedily at its existence, swallowing it the way a
parasite would swallow blood.

�� The spell
was the only one he could think of that might work on a creature like this,
driven by death instead of life. A curse that swallowed life-force would be
useless on it, but one that simply swallowed the force that bound its bones
together ought to work. It wasn't a natural
creature, after all. Draco thought he could count on that to end its
existence as quickly as possible.

�� The Dark
Argus roared in silence and struggled against the whirlwind that seemed to have
surrounded it. Draco watched, panting, from his knees, and smiled when it
seemed as though the Dark Argus was about to retreat into the void; the air
around it turned blue-black and shimmered.

�� It wouldn't
matter if it did retreat, or at least that was what Draco remembered from the
description of the spell. The spell would follow it wherever it went, and
continue drinking until the last of the binding force was gone.

�� Draco was
somewhat surprised the creature was still standing, to be honest. Perhaps it
mattered that its body was so much bigger than a human's, and so the curse had
to work harder and take longer to eat what made it stand.

�� The Dark
Argus shuddered, once, and its claws rose as if it would scrape out its own
face. Then it simply collapsed, the dark whirlwind of the spell vanishing in
the same instant. Draco ducked several times to escape the thud of bones around
him and the smaller, softer patter that he thought was eyes.

�� When he
looked, it was all over. The creature that had taken his eye and scarred his
face lay dead around him, and Draco surged to his feet panting with triumph,
and turned his head in the direction of Harry's earlier call.

�� He was
going to find his partner now and battle beside him, the way it always should
have been.

�� And fuck
what Portillo Lopez would say if she knew.

*

�� The
strength that passed into Harry nearly lifted him into the air; it felt as
though someone had strung a wire beneath his feet.

�� He rode the
lightning up and up to an invisible height, and then dropped, shaking, back
into his body. His breath hissed through his teeth; his hands felt new and
unfamiliar on the wand. For a moment, it seemed as though Draco was with him, physically present, standing
behind Harry with his arms wrapped around Harry's waist. Harry felt a hand in
his hair, soft lips brushing the softer skin beneath his ear.

�� Then the
sensation faded, but it didn't matter, because new life was pumping into the
snakes that held Nihil still, and Harry could see, by
turning his head, that the cold-dripping wound in his shoulder had already
faded.

�� He laughed
aloud.

�� A roar came
in response. Nihil was turning in for another attack,
and Harry could see that golden eye, paired with the grey, staring at him,
trying to push fear into him so that he would surrender and fall apart, and Nihil could get on with things.

�� Harry shook
his head and pushed the fear away from him with one hand, and then attacked
with a new snake that grew from behind his ear. It was as golden as the others
had been, but with fangs that shone more, and a coiling tail, and eyes that
were wide with intelligence. When it struck, it drove Harry's confidence into Nihil, and the compatible magic, and the feeling of togetherness
and love that he had shared with Draco--

�� And his
fearlessness.

�� Harry
realized that he had found another weapon that would work against Nihil, and chuckled viciously as he employed it. Nihil had to live with the knowledge that he was always a
coward, part of him so broken by the fear of torture that his immortal servants
could be destroyed by it. Harry had gone through greater fears and had been
willing to die to spite them. Nihil had fled death
instead, and had sought ever since for what he had thrown away.

�� Nihil cried out in his mind. Harry knotted his hands
together and grew a snake from between their entwined fingers, one that had two
heads. One head contained green eyes, the other grey.

�� This one
lashed out and tore the eye Nihil had stolen from his
head.

�� The scream
then was deafening, thunderous, filling all the world, and Harry went to one
knee as he heard it. But the sound behind it was pain, not outrage, not fear,
and that cheered Harry. He readied the two-headed snake to strike again, this
time picking a target lower down Nihil's body. It was
too much to hope that Harry would hit his groin--if he even had a groin in this particular
incarnation--but he could still hope to inflict a mortal wound.

�� And then Nihil turned and cried out again, and Harry was sure that
the emotion behind this sound was
despair. Harry smiled. The Order must have found a way through to attack Nihil directly.

�� He
vanished.

�� Harry
called the snakes back into him at once, and stood there listening to the
vibration in his bones. It was ridiculous to think he would be able to tell
where Nihil had gone, but he listened anyway.

�� A distant
groan rose and fell, and then there was silence. Harry smiled slowly. The
vibration in his bones had gone.

�� Portillo
Lopez had said that Harry would know when Nihil had
retreated into the ball of nothingness and so could be cornered and enfolded in
reality. Harry didn't know for certain if that had happened, but it seemed
likely.

�� Which
meant, of course, that Harry was going back to Draco. He didn't know where the
main battle was right now, and it would be stupid to try and find it. He
belonged with Draco.

�� He
Apparated, the noise of battle still in his ears.

*

�� Review
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Seasons of War