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
- 38
- 39
Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of The Serenity of His Rage. I hope you’ve enjoyed the story.
Chapter Thirty-Nine—O Wandering Soul
Harry felt the moment when the Killing Curse struck Draco, because he felt the moment when the soul-bond suddenly began to run with cold darkness like tarry blood. Draco slumped over with his eyes gone wide, but that was only the outer, visible sign of something Harry was feeling much more strongly inwardly.
No, he said, and there was no one to hear that, except Snape staring at him. There was an echo of emptiness down the bond that told him Draco wasn’t hearing.
Harry turned and plunged towards Voldemort. He was already close enough that it was a matter of scrambling across a tiny expanse of floor, and stabbing his wand into the creases of Voldemort’s robes.
“Delego,” he said without sound, the incantation of the Switching Charm, and flicked his wand at Draco’s body. “Delego.”
Voldemort laughed, a sound that gurgled in the back of his throat and made Harry think of dying things. Nagini would have laughed like that, if she could have, before he killed her. “Did you think it would be as easy as this? That you would suffer no loss?” Harry saw one white hand reaching towards him. “Do you think to switch young Draco’s death to me? Did you—”
And then his eyes widened, staring at something past Harry. Harry didn’t care what it was. He had turned his gaze back to Draco’s body, and was setting himself to resist the last fraying threads of the bond.
No. It’s going to hold. I want it to hold. I will it to hold. I refuse to give up on this bond. Draco didn’t give up on me when my soul went wandering. That should mean I’m able to hold on to him, too. Magical exhaustion can be just as deadly as a Killing Curse.
Harry grabbed the threads of the bond and held on. He ignored the way that Voldemort screamed and shuddered as the piece of soul still inside his body got ripped loose and plunged into Draco’s body, while the death hiding inside Draco infused his. Voldemort’s corpse toppled over like a hollow tree.
And then Harry turned to Draco’s body.
The last piece of Voldemort’s soul was essentially a Horcrux now, so weak that it could be moved around and placed in other objects like one. By himself, Harry knew he could still destroy it. Right now, the determination and the rage spread through him like the venom from a basilisk bite.
There was no Draco to help him, as there had been with the Horcrux inside Harry.
On the other hand, there was no outside Voldemort to attack them and make the task harder than it should be, either.
Harry bowed his head and closed his eyes. He reached along the bond that had tied him to Draco, and felt the confusing, hesitating magic. On the one hand, Draco was dead, the soul Harry had been bound to drifting further and further away.
On the other hand, Draco’s soul had dwelt in his body for seventeen years, and that was a strong bond, too. And Harry had been intimate with Draco, knew the touch of his hands and his legs and his eyes.
Harry plunged down the bond and hit Voldemort with that love, that knowledge. Voldemort tried to retreat into the distant recesses of Draco’s body, and Harry followed him, hammering him with the emotions that had once driven him away when he tried to possess Harry in the Department of Mysteries.
Voldemort went further and further, and yet Harry followed, because there was no piece of Draco he didn’t know, nothing that wasn’t his.
And all the time, he called and yelled and yammered down the bond, as loud as Draco had been when Harry’s own soul was the one breaking away.
I love you. Come back! Look at me! Look at what I’m doing on your behalf! Your body is still alive and yours for the taking. Voldemort is keeping it alive. Come on, come on, come to me, come back.
*
Draco opened his eyes to darkness.
Well, maybe not darkness. He could see stars overhead, if he looked. But he had the distinct impression that he didn’t want to see stars overhead. He wanted to see something else. He looked around, peering for a glimpse of light.
There was something in the distance, now that he thought about it. Something gold-green and soft, like a sun on the horizon that never moved. Draco set off towards it for lack of anything else to do.
He knew he was forgetting something, something important, but the languorous pace he had to move at infected his limbs and head, too. He would remember it when he was ready.
On and on he went, and the dark country around him didn’t move or change, and the stars didn’t alter. Neither did the green-gold glow. But Draco did sense something he hadn’t before, and he slowed down to listen.
Music.
Soft and commanding, filled with a sweetness that made Draco’s eyes clench shut and his breath catch. He stopped moving to listen to it some more, but he immediately had the impression that that was the wrong thing to do. The music itself urged him to come to it, and he wouldn’t get anywhere if he was standing here.
The glow on the horizon, in fact, was getting bigger. Draco cocked his head in curiosity and kept drifting. The yearning call in the distance filled his mind. He thought it wasn’t music now—although he had to admit, he had a hard time remembering what music sounded like. It was someone calling his name.
And some other things, too.
I love you. Come back to me! Where are you? Come back this minute, Draco Malfoy
Draco would have paused again, unsure that he wanted to go towards someone who sounded so angry, but this time, he didn’t actually have a choice. Even when he tried to stop his feet, there was a motion like a current that pulled him forwards, across the dark featureless plain, closer and closer to the sun. Draco fought and struggled against it, but something within him rejoiced.
He came to a place where the edge of the golden-green light touched him. He gasped aloud as something new popped into his head.
A memory.
Green eyes and soft hands and a soul-bond so strong that Draco had once pulled Harry back from death because of it.
I’ll go to my death if you don’t come back! But part of you must still be alive, or I would have died already because of the connection between our souls.
Draco gave a gasp and began to run. Now that he was moving with the current, not against it, and towards the light, not away, there was a song of triumph in his mind, mingled with and yet separate from Harry’s words. It illuminated him, and stretched his muscles. Even the starlight from above felt warm.
On and on, and now Draco could make out other words. Words about Voldemort’s death and his soul-piece in Draco’s body, keeping it alive. How Harry had done that to try to make sure Draco’s body didn’t die before his wandering soul could come back.
But it’s your body, and that’s always an advantage. I know you can defeat him when you come back. His voice dipped. If you come back.
Draco tried to yell that he was coming, but it seemed he didn’t have that kind of voice here. After a second’s thought, he decided what he did have, and hurled emotions down the bond, love and fear and courage and ecstasy.
For a moment, Harry’s voice faltered and fell silent. Draco was glad that he had the light and the current to keep him moving in the right direction, or he might have got lost.
Then the green-gold glow expanded into a blossoming warmth that filled the darkness and the air and all the corners of Draco’s soul.
Draco.
Just that one word, sighed, not shouted, and Draco found wings where he’d had legs before. Or a broom! Memories were crowding back now, and he remembered flying beside Harry, fighting beside Harry, playing Quidditch against Harry.
I want to do that again. I’ll never do that again if I stay here.
On he ran. Draco could feel sensations leaking in around the corners, making him heave and pant and smile. He could remember what it was like to feel cold air burning his lungs, and his leg muscles burning as he ran. He could remember the strength of the hammering wind in his hair, and the grip of a broom between his legs.
And the grip of Harry between his legs, come to that.
As if the thought had been waiting to catch fire until he looked closely at it, suddenly Harry was the thought that consumed his mind. God, the way his eyes looked when he smiled, and how he had curved his arms around Draco as they made love, and the way he was pulling on him now, not letting him die, moving Draco closer and closer to the waking world—
Noise and confusion like nothing Draco had experienced hit him as he burst into his body. He was struggling with something that wrapped around him like a poisonous snake and crooned hideous words into his head. The thing was familiar, as if he had once followed it and listened to it.
But Harry’s hand was on his shoulder, and Draco knew without looking up what he would see: the beaming eyes fixed on him, the mouth moving in soft words of encouragement. He drew on the bond, and Harry responded without hesitation, wonder and courage and love that raced around Draco in widening spirals.
And it burned the oh-so-familiar thing whispering to him, which Draco now realized was the last piece of the Dark Lord’s soul. How it burned.
Draco actually had to turn away from the withering, shrieking screams of that soul-piece, which were as horrible as the death of the actual Horcrux in Harry had been satisfying. He clung to Harry until he couldn’t hear the screams anymore, and then leaned up and opened his eyes.
“Are you all right?” Harry should know the answer to that question because of the bond, Draco reflected, but his hands were moving anxiously, fluttering up and down Draco’s shoulders as if he were blind.
“I will be,” Draco said, and leaned against Harry’s chest. He was exhausted enough that he didn’t even protest when Professor Snape cast a Lightening Charm at him and scooped him off the ground.
“The other Death Eaters will be back soon,” Snape said, his voice vibrating with tension. “We must go.”
Draco just nodded, wordless. As far as he was concerned, it wasn’t really his decision. He would go along with whatever Snape decided, because at the moment he was probably the best voice of reason on offer.
“Of course,” Harry agreed, and then turned and stared long and hard at Voldemort’s body. Draco was about to ask what he was doing when he had just agreed they needed to leave, but then Harry waved his wand and incanted something long and nasty-sounding that Draco didn’t recognize. Voldemort’s body shrank and twisted and twitched, and in the end, Harry reached down to pick up a ring from the floor that looked as if it was made of bent iron.
“Potter, what in the world—”
“I don’t think anyone is going to believe Voldemort is dead without seeing the body,” Harry said, not flinching in the face of Snape’s absolutely disgusted expression. “Maybe they would. But I’m not taking the chance.”
Snape actually did hesitate a moment, then nodded. “Perhaps especially not Dumbledore,” he muttered, and then turned his head far enough to catch a glimpse of what Draco assumed was movement, although his head was lolling and he couldn’t be sure. “The spells against Apparition are gone. Take my arm, Potter.”
Draco let himself suffer from a little spasm of indignation as they vanished. The anti-Apparition spells being gone, when they should have been intact as long as the Manor stood, meant Voldemort had tied them to himself, and destroyed the work of a thousand generations of Malfoy ancestors.
Father will have words about this.
*
“Harry! You’re all right!”
Harry hadn’t realized how worried he was for his friends until they piled into the hospital wing, where Draco was asleep. Their shouts brought Madam Pomfrey scandalized and clucking out of her office, and so Harry led Ron and Hermione into the corridor where they could talk undisturbed (and where he could watch Madam Pomfrey so he would know when she’d gone away and he could sneak back in).
“Blimey, mate, what happened to Malfoy?”
Harry smiled at Ron, proud beyond words that he cared enough about Draco to ask that question. Ron promptly went pink and tried to mutter something about how Harry would be inconsolable if “that git” died. Harry didn’t care. He hugged him anyway.
“He took a Killing Curse for me.”
Harry had been planning on how he would tell them that, and it was just as satisfying as he’d hoped. Ron’s mouth hung open. Hermione began shaking her head as though she was cataloguing all the theoretical difficulties with what Harry had just said.
“But he didn’t have any special protection from his mum, or any protection against it—you can’t block the Killing Curse—”
“Oh, he didn’t block it. And neither did I,” Harry added, because they immediately both turned to him and clearly expected him to have done it. “He died. But because of the soul-bond, his soul wandered close to me, and so I took the piece of soul away from Voldemort’s body to kill him, and put it in Draco’s.”
Ron looked appalled, but Hermione’s eyes were shining as her mind raced through it. “The piece of Voldemort’s soul kept Draco’s body alive for long enough that you could reconnect it to Draco’s soul!”
Harry smiled at her, not least because she was calling Draco by his first name without any sign that she minded. “Right. It was kind of a stupid thing to do—” Ron snorted, and he and Harry exchanged grins “—but at least it worked.”
“And how is Draco?” Hermione glanced towards the hospital wing as if she could read the truth through the door.
“He’ll need a while to recover, Madam Pomfrey said. The same way I did when my soul was the one that went wandering.” Harry shook his head. If it had to happen again, which he sincerely hoped it never did, then he would rather be the one doing the wandering than waiting to see if Draco’s soul would come back. That had been unnerving like nothing else. “And magical exhaustion for both of us. She’s told me she won’t treat me if I try casting any spells before she says I can.”
Hermione let out a little breath that had relief and wonder and love and lots of other things in it, and threw her arms around him. “Thank Merlin it’s all over, Harry.”
“Don’t let Draco see you doing that. He’ll get jealous,” Harry said, even as he hugged her back and patted her shoulder.
“Draco?” Hermione’s eyes widened innocently. “I’m not worried about someone who can’t even lift a wand for a week yet. Ron, on the other hand…”
Ron just scowled back and then snorted. “As long as it’s Harry,” he said, both destroying the joke and bringing both of them into the circle of his smile.
Harry grabbed both of his friends at once, and for a long time they leaned on each other, silent, soaking up the depth of what had happened to them, what they had survived, and what was still to come.
*
“The mad way the situation played out…the risks he took…”
Severus, sitting on the edge of one of the two chairs in Albus’s office, said nothing. For one thing, he might have agreed that what Harry had tried was mad if he had heard about it beforehand and not seen it unfold. Perhaps fortunately, Harry hadn’t explained it in detail until after they had returned to Hogwarts.
And for another thing, Severus saw no reason to engage with Albus’s mutterings. He had told him what Harry had done, and that would be enough. He had no intentions of entering a long conversation with this man.
Albus leaned forwards, making Severus reluctantly look at him again. “You think neither of them will have lasting side-effects?” Albus whispered hoarsely. “Their souls and magic both seem normal?”
“I am hardly an expert in the soul, and Madam Pomfrey has forbidden them from using magic for at least a week,” Severus drawled. The darkness in the back of Albus’s eyes deepened, and Severus rolled his own and gave the answer he knew Albus was really looking for. “Neither of them has become another Horcrux, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I was not.”
Albus’s dignity was wounded. Severus’s stare was more piercing. After a moment of clearing his throat and fidgeting, Albus looked away. Severus leaned back in the chair and waited for the next question. It wasn’t as if they were finished.
“Do you think Harry would want to speak to me again?”
“That’s a question Harry would have to answer.” Severus observed the score the invisible whip of his voice had left on Albus, and continued in a milder tone, “I think he is ridiculously forgiving and would probably speak with you. But you’ll never resume the relationship you had. Better not to ask for it.”
Albus nodded in silence and stared down at his desk. His blackened hand was more prominent than Severus had seen it in some time, although Severus didn’t think the curse had advanced. After observing him for a time, Severus decided it was because Albus had stopped trying to tuck the hand into his robe, to hide it.
“I little knew what I was doing to him,” Albus whispered, “when I bound young Malfoy to his soul.”
Severus shrugged once. “You didn’t. But it is the reason Draco is alive now and the Dark Lord is dead, and that is enough reason to be thankful for it.”
“The way Malfoy changed him…”
“I would not continue with that line of thought, Albus.”
Albus paused, and then tilted his head downwards. “I understand, Severus. But you are not Harry. I thought I might confide some of my misgivings to you.”
“I do not wish to listen to them,” Severus said calmly. It felt strange, as if he were standing in a wash of cool wind, to know that he could say whatever he wanted to Albus, and not be punished for it. After all, the Dark Lord was gone now, and Severus stood no chance of going back to Azkaban. “Draco and Harry achieved something remarkable. I thought you would wish to celebrate that, instead of downplaying it.”
“I only…”
Severus waited, but Albus was the one who had interrupted himself, and he did not continue. Severus sighed and stood. “If you wish to discuss something from a rational perspective,” he told him, “then call on me. Otherwise, I think it would be wisest to leave both Draco and Harry alone.”
Severus made his way to the door, and only paused once he was there to peek over his shoulder in what he hoped was a subtle manner. As it turned out, it wouldn’t have mattered. Albus was staring at his blackened hand in a way that took all his attention.
As he rode down the moving staircase from the Headmaster’s office, Severus decided that he understood. Albus knew he was dying, now, and while the Dark Lord was gone, he had not died in the way Albus had designed. The world would be quieter and at peace when Albus left it, but without the Headmaster of Hogwarts have such a great impact on its peace.
Severus balanced his emotions in his mind, and discovered he felt more wonder than pity. The war was over. Whether it ended in a particular way or not was less than a matter of no mind for Severus.
And now, I am going to enjoy things.
*
“What are people saying about the way Voldemort died?”
Draco looked over at Harry as he raised his eyes from a letter he’d been reading. His hair hung raggedly over his forehead, but that looked appropriate, Draco thought. They had been through a battle.
The bond radiated blue and gold and soft, soothing pink as Harry grinned. “What, you think you might have fans sending you post?”
“I want to know what they say,” Draco insisted, and sat up, giving a cautious look over his shoulder. Madam Pomfrey was back in her office, but nevertheless, Draco didn’t dare to reach for his wand on the bedside table. She didn’t want him casting any spells until his magical exhaustion had faded. Draco could admit that made sense, even if he had to admit it reluctantly. “I want to know if they think we’re both heroes, or we all are, or only you.”
Harry leaned nearer and kissed him on the forehead. “As if I would let anyone deny your part.”
Draco smiled at him, torn between gratitude and wishing they had the privacy and energy for Harry to kiss him somewhere a bit lower. “Then you won’t deny me an answer, either.”
Harry rolled his eyes and began to read. “‘Rita Skeeter requests an exclusive interview with Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy, to tell the tale of how their heroic actions saved the wizarding world—’”
“Ugh!” Draco buried his head in the pillow. “I would have told you to save it if I knew that you were going to read me something from Skeeter.”
Harry chuckled and put the letter down, from the sound of crinkling parchment, then reached out to run his fingers through Draco’s hair. Draco relaxed into the sensation despite himself. “Most people know the truth, or a version of the truth. I said that Voldemort’s soul was unstable and we used the soul magic to kill him and save you.”
“You don’t want to talk about the soul-bond?”
“I don’t want people who want to kill me targeting you in an attempt to harm me.”
Draco blinked and rolled over. “But if we don’t tell people, then there might be idiots who think they can date you. Or ask you to marry them. I want people to know, Harry. Most of the people who would have reacted worst already know, anyway. Like your Weasleys.”
Harry blew out a short breath, his eyes focused on Draco. “And you don’t think that people would want to marry you, once they understand that you switched sides and played just as much of a part in destroying him as I did?”
“Maybe they would. I don’t care at all.” Draco let his fingers intertwine with Harry’s, not even glancing back at Madam Pomfrey’s door. He was strong enough for this, and blast all interfering mediwitches. “I want everyone to know, just like they understand the truth—or part of the truth—about how we did him in.”
Harry looked at him quietly, the bond and his eyes shining. And then he lowered his head and gave Draco the softest, most gentle kiss that Draco had ever received. Draco arched into it, and felt as though it was soothing warmth trickling through the parts of his body and his soul that still ached.
“I would be honored to stand beside you in every way,” Harry whispered.
Draco closed his eyes. He was going to cry if he didn’t, and he wanted to hold back the tears so that there was no possible way Harry would misunderstand his reaction.
Then he started as he realized that he had a method there was no possibility of Harry misunderstanding. So he opened the bond as far as he could and flooded it with all his warmth, his heat, his love, his strength, his desire.
Harry swayed as it hit him. Draco felt that much in the hand Harry had cupped along his jaw, but he still didn’t open his eyes and look in his direction until Harry said in a hoarse voice, “Look at me.”
Then Draco did.
And beaming back at him from Harry’s face, and then his lips as he lowered his head to kiss Draco again, was so much promise, Draco would have let his soul go wandering again just to see it.
The End.
*
SP777: But it was a good thing for the drama!
- 38
- 39
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