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Easy as Falling	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 31246 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Eight—To the Death
            “Here.”
            Yaxley spoke the word a second before he threw a spell that Harry had never seen before at him. It looked almost like the black briar-whips that he had used to suck the life from the trees beside the Hogwarts gates, but this one was golden, and had more spikes, and it reached out and encircled Harry’s wrists like manacles.
            Harry could feel the song behind the spell, this time, as he hadn’t been able to when Yaxley had used the similar magic next to Hogwarts. There was a soft noise there, a lulling note, one that told him he had done more than enough, and now the time was come to yield. Didn’t he want to yield? He had carried so many burdens on his shoulders as the wizarding world’s hero and now since he became Dark Lord, but there were people who could help him to relieve those burdens. All he had to do was say the word, and he could yield and let it flow…
            Harry shook the manacles off. Yes, he might want to rest, but all he had to do was think of Draco and Ron and the students at Hogwarts and Briseis and the others who had come to depend on him, and that was enough to wake him up.
            Yaxley smiled at him, a smile without lips. Then he lashed again, and another spell encircled Harry like the curl of a whip.
            Ron was lying on the ground, his throat cut. Blood dabbled the ground all around him, and his eyes were fixed in a wide and horrified stare. The blood trailed in a long, thin line back to Harry himself, and smeared his front.
            He had cast the spell that killed his best friend.
            Harry flung his head back and wanted to scream, but he knew there was no way he could have done that, given how he was here, and Ron was somewhere in Hogwarts, writing a letter to Hermione, the way he did every day. He had not come here, and that meant Harry had not killed him, no matter what Yaxley wanted him to think.
            Instead, he forced his magic into the spell binding him. He couldn’t see the spell; all he could see was that vision of Ron, looming before him, trying to make him acknowledge it. But he would bring down the spell that he remembered Yaxley casting. He spread his magic and pushed it, and the slender thread of Yaxley’s glamour, which he could feel expanding around him and breathing with him as he breathed, broke down in ringing shards.
            Yaxley staggered back from him, the next time Harry could see, and stared at him. The expression held nothing of the respect that Harry would have expected to see after someone had bested one of his Dark spells, though, and little fear. He held up his wand and began to spin it around his head, in a gesture that Harry recognized.
            Harry hissed, and the sound fell from his lips to the ground. His magic animated it, tugged on it and smoothed it and shaped it, and a great serpent reared its head from the earth to regard Yaxley, tongue darting out so it could scent him. Then it slithered rapidly forwards.
            Yaxley leaped out of the way and cast a few Banishing Charms. Nothing worked. Harry smiled pleasantly and cast a glance at the barely visible ring of force that surrounded them, the legacy of the Baron’s Blood rules.
            He started when he saw people outside that circle, staring at them. Well, of course, he decided after a second. The duel being near Hogsmeade would have attracted attention, and they didn’t have the wards of Hogwarts to shield them from sight. Of course a duel like this would draw an audience, even though, based on common sense, anyone should want to stay far away from a travesty like this. Presumably, they knew they would be safe, that no magic could cross the ring.
            Then he had to turn back, as Yaxley hit the snake with something that did work.
            It looked like dark fire, and it consumed the snake from the inside out. The hisses that came to Harry’s ears were Parseltongue cries of agony. He cut the snake off from existence, absorbing the magic back into himself, and the creature faded.
            Harry stared at Yaxley. Yaxley looked back at him as though little mattered, his face a study in carved indifference. Harry began to move slowly around to the left, his eyes fixed on Yaxley as though nothing else mattered.
            And nothing else did, really, not when he thought about it. He had to destroy Yaxley, before Yaxley could put the same magic to work on his students and his friends and his lover and the people who relied on him for protection, like Rosenthal.
            He had not become a Dark Lord to destroy the Ministry. But for whatever reason, Yaxley wanted to destroy the things that gave Harry his reasons to be a Dark Lord in the first place. Harry would destroy him first.
            Yaxley panted a little as they circled. Harry didn’t think it was exhaustion, more was the pity. He sounded excited instead. Harry grimaced and shook his head. He didn’t want to believe it, but there was every sign of it, and it didn’t seem to be lessening as they fought. Increasing, if anything.
            “You will not win,” Yaxley whispered.
            Harry summoned his magic as an answer.
            It filled the circle with them, for a single moment a howling wall of black fire that made what Yaxley had cast on his snake look like nothing. Yaxley tumbled back from him, unnerved, and Harry laughed and released his hold on his magic. Now it outlined him in a soft and shining halo, Dark but not oppressive. Nothing like the feeling of the magic that Yaxley had cast in the circle and on the Hogwarts grounds.
            Yaxley locked eyes with him. He looked as if he would have liked to back off. Harry stalked forwards, willing to reinforce that impression. He had looked forward to an easy duel, but the easiest duel of all would be if Yaxley just lay down on the ground in front of him and refused to go on, after all.
            Then Yaxley lifted his wand. Harry braced himself, but Yaxley leaned his wand against his chest and whispered something. Casting defensive magic, then, Harry assumed.
            The spell encircled Yaxley in trembling red rings of power. Harry watched it, then shrugged after a second. He didn’t recognize the spell, but there were lots of spells that he didn’t recognize, as witness the way he hadn’t known what any of the others Yaxley used so far were. He wouldn’t let it deter him.
            He lifted his magic higher and higher, around him and out over his shoulders, like arched wings. Yaxley licked his lips in response. His face was pale, but his eyes still shining, and he swung another thorny whip of power at Harry’s feet.
            Harry leaped over it easily enough, and landed closer to Yaxley. This time, he struck hard. He was tired of going slowly, tired of waiting for his opponents to do something. He was going to make sure that Yaxley couldn’t hurt him, either. It would do Hogwarts no good at all to have its Lord out of commission.
            The whip flowed back on Yaxley as Harry willed it. Yaxley didn’t move. He stood there, with a strange smile, and watched it come. Harry stared, wondering if Yaxley only used the kind of magic that would never turn on its caster.
            But the whip encircled Yaxley, and he shivered and drooped much as the trees had done as some of his life and strength ran out of him. He stumbled, and caught himself with one hand against the radiating ring of the duel’s oath that surrounded them.
            It blasted him back into the center of the circle. Yaxley hissed and shook his blackened palm. But he never took his eyes from Harry, and his smile had only grown wider and stranger, revealing extra teeth at the sides.
            Harry shook his head. What was Yaxley playing at? He hadn’t been playing when he swung the spell at Harry, that was sure.
            It was almost as if he wanted to lose, or wouldn’t mind losing. But Harry didn’t understand that, either. Why come and attack Hogwarts, making such a point of drawing Harry out, if he didn’t care one way or the other?
            Harry approached Yaxley more cautiously this time, raising a shield against a rain of fire from his wand. He didn’t want the Ministry to trick him, particularly with a deception that Hermione or Draco or Briseis could probably figure out in a second. He was going to be cautious, and smart, and prudent, and figure this out.
*
            Draco gave a soft, satisfied sigh as he lifted a glass of pumpkin juice to his lips. It was no longer one of his favorite drinks, as it had been as a child, but he was feeling nostalgic.
            This particular party, and the meeting that took place immediately after it between Draco and some of the more prominent pure-bloods and Ministry members he was trying to persuade to support his cause, had gone well. And part of it had even been due to Harry, rather than in spite of him. It seemed that some of the Ministry workers were sick and tired of the stupid tricks that Minister Tillipop was pulling in an attempt to destroy Harry, sick of the way he was making the Ministry a joke.
            They didn’t trust Draco, but they trusted that he took the campaign seriously. He would restore some image and polish to the Ministry. And as one of them, Azalina Rahad, who was probably the most important person in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement despite not holding the highest rank, had told Draco, polish was what they needed right now.
            “We have the power,” Rahad had said, her hands clenched so hard that even Rosenthal couldn’t coax her to open them enough to slide a cup into. “But we have no grace. The Minister is late for meetings with ambassadors, assumes things about people based on their names, and is loudly and inappropriately blustery in the middle of meetings where we need to be calm and convince them we’re serious.” She had glared at Draco, then nodded. “I know that you won’t be like that.”
            “And my faults?” Draco cocked his head winsomely to the side. He was enjoying the argument. He admired Rahad, especially because she seemed to have endured years under Tillpop without exploding. Tillipop didn’t even know that much about her existence, Rosenthal had told Draco.
            “I’m sure you have them,” Rahad said. “But I would rather bring in someone new, and figure out their faults, and fight them as necessary, than keep what we have.”
            Left alone now, Draco smiled to himself. The others had fallen in behind Rahad, showing how very much the decision-maker she was. That meant he had a good many of them in the palm of his hand.
            Not for long. Not for always. They would stab him with little bee-stings of power and ambition soon enough. But even a moment was rare.
            “Draco.”
            In seconds, Draco had put down the cup and was sitting up, turning to face the doorway the voice had come from. He could count the number of times Rosenthal had called him by his first name on one hand. And the way she stood now, wrists braced against the doorframe, hair dangling around her face, spoke the worst.
            “What is it?” he asked, standing up and reaching for the cloak he had deposited just a short while ago. “Something to do with Potter?”
            “He’s fighting a duel near Hogwarts,” said Rosenthal. “Against Ignatius Yaxley. Baron’s Blood rules.”
            Draco froze in his reaching. He knew that the rules had been named after a famous dueler named Alexander Baron who never left his opponents alive. He wondered if Harry knew that, or if he had accepted the challenge unthinkingly, unhesitatingly.
            But no, Draco realized a moment later, his immediate suspicion, that Yaxley had tricked Harry into a duel to the death to kill him, didn’t make much sense. Yaxley knew the rules, whether or not Harry did, and he would have to suspect that Harry’s much greater power meant that Yaxley was the one more likely to die.
            “It’s what the letter warned us about,” Draco said softly, and shook his head when Rosenthal peered at him.
            “Yes, I think it is,” she said. “But what are we going to do about it? Someone sent me an owl a few minutes ago. The duel may be over by the time we get there.”
            “We’re still going,” Draco said, and slung his cloak over his shoulders and slapped a glamour on his face. As he walked past Rosenthal, he lifted an eyebrow at her and murmured, “Someone sent you…?”
            “I have spies in Hogsmeade,” Rosenthal said calmly, following him. “Originally to keep an eye on any speeches or other activities that Minister Tillipop might conduct near there, of course. But useful for other purposes as well.”
            “Of course,” Draco murmured. “I would suggest that you tell Potter about them when this duel is over. He might regard them as extra protection for his school if you tell him.”
            He saw Rosenthal’s nod out of the corner of his eye, and then he extended his arm. He Side-Along Apparated them both to the road near Hogsmeade, which would be close to the duel if not exactly at it. There was a dearth of locations close to Hogwarts that weren’t on the grounds itself, and Draco suspected Yaxley wouldn’t want to fight among houses or trees.
            He saw them immediately, and the slight shimmer of the ring of power that enclosed them. Yes, the Baron’s Blood rules were in effect, and no one would be able to touch them or cast magic at them until one of them was dead.
            Draco narrowed his eyes as he stepped up close to the barrier. No one opposed him. People wanted to see, but no one except him wanted to be that close. They probably didn’t trust in the power of the oath-magic the way Draco did.
            Yaxley was battered and bloodied, one arm broken and cradled close to his side. He retreated before Harry, who looked unwounded other than a shallow gash on his forehead. Yaxley was panting and snarling curses, most of which weren’t magic. Harry was pale, but seemed determined, with a massive frown on his face.
            Good. He suspects something is wrong, too.
            Draco drew his wand. No magic could cross the barrier, or he would have already done something to aid Harry unobtrusively, but there were spells that could make certain things more obvious, relying on the caster’s own sight. He whispered, “Signum revelo.”
            The spell sparked and danced across his face. It had always been uncomfortable, and Draco was no fonder of it now than he had been when he learned it. But it was essential, and he leaned forwards and concentrated, refusing to allow the tiny prickling pains along his limbs to distract him.
            The spell concentrated on his eyes, then spread out, framing them. For a moment, Draco saw through a current of red and silver, and then it cleared and he could make out all the defensive spells inside the circle.
            Harry had a shield of some sort moving in front of him, a cascade of golden sparks that frequently turned back on itself and fell over in new showers. Draco cautiously relaxed. He had no idea what that was, and while he didn’t think he had as much ability in Dark magic as Yaxley probably did, he thought he had close to as much theoretical knowledge. If he didn’t know what this was or how to get through it, Yaxley probably wouldn’t, either.
            Then he turned to Yaxley, and ended up tensing all over again.
            Cast over Yaxley was a shimmering red cloak, one that flowed and blazed and floated behind him. Draco knew nothing of this could be visible, or he doubted that Harry ever would have been lured into a duel with him. But it was there, and Draco didn’t know what it was, either.
            But he had seen something like it, once. He thought.
            He studied the red cloak as Yaxley and Harry dueled, moving so fast that Draco wasn’t surprised to hear a murmur of discontent from the crowd. Duels were exciting when you knew what was going on. If the duelers traveled too fast or didn’t use spells that were familiar—and both were happening here—it was hard to tell who was losing, who was winning, and who was acting out of good strategy and who was winning because of their opponent’s exhaustion or sheer luck.
            Yes, he had seen something like it, Draco decided at last. Not the shape of the spell or the way it flowed about Yaxley, but the color of the spell. Bellatrix had used magic like that, and so had Rabastan and Greyback sometimes. Greyback more rarely, because he preferred his werewolf teeth and nails, but…
            What had he said?
            Draco closed his eyes, shutting out the duel, and the room in the cellar of the Manor returned to him. He had been coming up from tending to the prisoners, and Greyback had been coming down past him, decorated with blood, laughing.
            He’d caught Draco’s eye and winked. Draco had stood there, tensely, unwilling to look away even though he knew Greyback could smell how disgusted he was.
            “Flowing currents of blood,” Greyback had muttered to him, stepping closer and letting his rotten breath caress Draco’s cheek. “Spells that look like blood. Your opponent can’t see them.” He laughed, the dark chuckle that Draco still sometimes heard in his dreams. “The ultimate defensive magic. Dark, of course, which was why the Ministry banned them. But when your enemy gets lucky enough to wound you, know what happens? The same wound opens up on him.”
            Draco’s eyes snapped open.
            He leaned forwards, shaking a little. He could feel Rosenthal close to him, putting a hand on his shoulder, but he couldn’t turn around. The spell was still in effect, and he had to watch the crimson strands soaring and snapping around Yaxley’s body.
            If a small spell could cause wounds to appear on an attacker, what would a spell this large do? And inside a circle that could only be dissipated by death?
            Harry’s magic arched forwards and descended in a rain of black arrows on Yaxley’s head, at the same moment as fire swept up from underneath, golden and black mixed, straight at his knees. Yaxley fell, screaming, but in the back of his voice was a laugh.
            Draco heard himself shouting, not that he could make out the words.
            And at the same instant, Harry’s magic swept back and leaped on Harry, turned against its master by the spell that brought death to whoever killed Yaxley.
            Brilliant fire filled the sky and the earth, and Draco’s voice was lost in the sound of Harry’s screaming.
*
            delia cerrano: Good guess!
            SP777: Well, maybe not as detailed as you wanted, but I needed Draco’s perspective to explain what was going on.
            You might like the next chapter, though.
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Easy as Falling