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Siege Mentality	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 7869 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

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Part IV. Bleak and Barren and Burning

�� Harry tripped and fell into the
water when Draco began strangling him, and for a long moment, the surprise was
so great that he just lay there gaping and gasping and letting Draco do it.

�� Then he decided that, friend or not,
no one was killing him that easily.

�� A quick spell sent a jolt of
harmless electricity up Draco�s arms and made him flinch back, his hands
momentarily losing their grip. Harry pushed hard at his chest, and Draco fell
away from him into the water. Then Harry, deciding that he wasn�t about to take
any chances, cast a Body-Bind that tied Draco�s arms to his sides.

�� Draco thrashed madly, his mouth
open, his eyes bulging. Harry climbed slowly to his feet, never taking his eyes
off Draco even when he stumbled on the stones in the river. He raised a hand to
touch his throat, and swallowed again and again. Had Draco really gone mad? Had he killed the Aurors who came after him? It
was seeming much more likely than it had just a few minutes ago.

�� Harry took a deep breath, then, and
forced himself to calm down, the way he�d often had to after seeing Ron wounded
on a joint mission. He wouldn�t get any answers by standing around and worrying
until he went out of his mind. He would just have to ask Draco questions and
hope that they got somewhere against Draco�s obvious madness.

�� Draco?� he said, quietly, because
speaking loudly right now would agitate Draco further. �Are you all right?�

�� Draco glared at him, his eyes more
furious than Harry had ever seen them, even after Harry had accidentally
insulted a bloke he didn�t know Draco fancied. Harry stared back for a moment,
then remembered that the Body-Bind would have frozen Draco�s jaw as well. He
winced and undid the spell enough to let Draco talk.

�� Draco licked his lips twice, then
said, �I don�t know how you stole my friend�s voice, but I�ll never believe
you�re him, no matter what you sound like.�

�� He�s
worse than I thought. Harry had to take another breath to keep the concern
and sympathy from eating him alive. �I really am Harry,� he said, when he
thought he could speak steadily. �I came to find you, Draco.� He thought about
telling him that Kingsley had commanded this, but discarded the notion. Draco
might not even realize he�d killed the Aurors, and any reference to being
hunted by the Ministry would bring up memories of the war. Harry didn�t think
he needed to deal with those on top of the curse afflicting him. �Can you tell
me what happened? Was it someone in France who cast this curse on you?�

�� Curse?� Draco laughed harshly.
�Being chased all over the world is a curse
instead of torture?� Then he shook his head and dragged himself as much
upright as he could whilst he was still in the Body-Bind. �Not that you need to
know anything about that,� he hissed, �considering you were one of those who
cast the curse yourself.�

�� Assume I don�t know.� Harry waved
his wand and raised one stone above the surface of the water so he could sit
down in relative comfort. True, he could have moved to the bank, but that would
have involved getting further away from Draco than he felt ready to do at the
moment. �Assume I�m some new enemy that the rest hired to torment you.�

�� Draco�s eyes squeezed shut, and his
head tilted forwards, as if hearing the request had taken the last of his
strength. Harry winced again and held himself still by main force of will. You can�t do anything until you know what
his perception of this is. Don�t rush. You make mistakes when you rush. You
want to hug him right now, but maybe he�d just think you were some giant spider
trying to build a web around him.

�� You�ve been chasing me for months,�
Draco whispered. �I was stolen from my bed, from my home, in the middle of the night. I�ve run through forests to get
away from them, through swamps and icefields, but they�re always right behind
me. Sometimes they let me get food and rest, but that�s just because they want
to continue chasing me for longer, to kill me right when I�m on the edge of
hope. I know that�s the reason.� He
shivered and made a motion as if he would wrap his arms around himself, but the
Body-Bind still held them tight. �The worst�the worst was a time when I had to
run across the desert, freezing in the night and then burning when the sun came
up. I was delirious for three weeks from that, and they didn�t wait until I was
recovered to pursue me.�

�� An enormous surge of wild magic
rippled out from Draco just as Harry was opening his mouth to respond. Harry
grabbed his rock as the trees wavered like curtains around them and the stream
spluttered to a halt. And then the rock was gone, and the landscape bowed and
waved up and down, and Harry nearly broke his neck thrashing frantically
towards Draco to take him in his arms and shield him from whatever was
happening. He�d never felt magic like this; his own accidental bursts that had
blown up Aunt Marge and transported him to the roof of his school were nothing
in comparison. He understood now how not only the Aurors but multiple people
around Draco could have died.

�� And then the rippling stopped, and
Harry felt a pulse of heat on his head. He looked up and around in disbelief.

�� He knelt in the middle of a desert,
a hot, flat, white pan of ground with dunes arching on either side of him,
their sides sculpted by enormous winds. The sun stood directly overhead, at
noon, though Harry knew it had been later than that when he�d Apparated to
Malfoy Manor. The heat pressed down like an overturned pot lid on his back, and
Harry could feel sweat start along the curves of his shoulders and chest.

�� Draco stood up in front of him,
Body-Bind dissipated by the wild magic as if it had never existed, and stared
around with a hunted expression. Then he screamed, turned, and began to lurch
over the ground in a random direction.

�� Harry cursed softly and cast a
Cushioning Charm at the sand ahead of Draco, a Cooling Charm, and another
Body-Bind in rapid succession. Draco fell over as his limbs stiffened up again,
but the cooled sand caught and cradled him, so that he wouldn�t get scraped or
have his skin abraded. His face was wild with fear, though. Staring at him,
Harry felt almost helpless. He had no idea what was wrong with Draco or how to
help, and all his instincts were urging
him to help, telling him he was useless if he didn�t.

�� First
things first. Harry had to ensure that they survived the desert for the
length of time it might take them to find a way out. He cast a Cooling Charm on
himself, then conjured water and poured it over his head. A second Aguamenti charm thoroughly wet Draco. He
spluttered and stared at Harry in amazement.

�� Sorry,� Harry muttered. He wondered
for a moment what Draco�s delusions told him had happened, and then put that
out of his head. First things first.

�� He stepped up to Draco, Levitated
him into the air, took his arm so that he could lead him gently along, and
then, concentrating on home with all his might, tried to Apparate there.

�� Nothing happened.

�� Harry paused for long moments. Of
course, the desert had already proved itself different from the forest in that
Harry could enchant parts of it. But he did wish the differences didn�t extend
to keeping them captive when they tried to Apparate out.

�� Try
again before you panic, he chided himself. Maybe your home is too far away from this place, wherever it is. Wild
magic that powerful could have put you into the Sahara for all you know.

�� He focused on Malfoy Manor, making
his mind as calm as possible. Being back in the forest would be an improvement
over this.

�� And again nothing happened, not even
the shuddering jangle in his own body that Harry had become accustomed to when
he overestimated his own power and tried to Apparate too far. The desert stayed
the same around them, the sun broiling down and the sand shimmering obliquely
in the distance. Draco had closed his eyes and let his head fall forwards,
sweat rolling from his temples.

�� Harry shut his own eyes.

*

�� By the end of the day, as the sun
began to sink behind the dunes, Harry had learned a number of things about the
desert.

�� The first was that they couldn�t Apparate
anywhere within it, never mind outside it. When Harry had focused carefully on
one dune to the north and then tried to bring himself and Draco there, the
landscape had shuddered a bit, but they�d stayed standing on flat ground. And
yet, Harry couldn�t be absolutely certain
that this was an inherent property of the desert. Apparition relied on a
wizard�s internal picture of the place he was trying to go. Maybe, because
Harry had no training in deserts, his magic couldn�t work because he couldn�t
distinguish the one dune clearly enough from the others. It was maddening.

�� The second was that they might be
anywhere on earth. No matter how long they walked or in what direction, Harry
saw no distinguishing features that matched any desert geography he had ever
learned or heard vaguely about. The wild magic had been extraordinarily
powerful; there was no way to gauge what it might or might not be able to do.

�� The third was that, whilst Harry�s
wand kept them safely hydrated and cool during the day, and then warm at night,
it could do nothing about giving them food. Harry had never mastered the
Transfiguration spells that would let him turn something else into food, and of
course conjuring it out of thin air was impossible. And without food, his
magical strength would lapse eventually, and leave them exposed to all the
dangers of heat and thirst.

�� Harry finally had located a
projecting stone that had a shallow hole near the bottom, more like a scrape
than a cave. He�d laid Draco within it and arranged Draco�s tattered robes
around him so that they shielded him as much as possible before he cast the
Warming Charm. Then he lay down next to Draco and turned to watch the desert.
His wand was already stuck to his hand with another spell. Harry wasn�t about
to let wind or wild beasts snatch it away in the night.

�� Draco had said nothing all day, even
when Harry removed the Body-Bind on his jaw so he could drink. Now and then he
stared at Harry as if Harry were demented or possibly a Dementor, but if he had
opinions on the strange behavior of one of the �creatures chasing him,� he kept
that to himself.

�� Harry stared out into the desert,
squinting and then widening his eyes, sniffing as much as he could, and
listening intently. There were ways to pierce an illusion by exercising the
senses well enough, and he�d learned some in Auror training. On the off chance
that the wild magic had created a glamour of a desert around them instead of
actually transporting them to one, Harry wanted to dissipate it.

�� Draco finally spoke when a very
real-looking moon had soared above the stone and was casting frosty light down
on the sand. �You�re taking care of me.�

�� Trying to, yes,� Harry said
absently. Was the shadow of the dune in front of them different than it had
been a moment ago? He didn�t think so, but he couldn�t stop hoping. �I�m sorry
I can�t get you any food.�

�� But the creatures never try to take
care of me,� Draco whispered. Harry heard him stirring within the confines of
the Body-Bind. Without looking away from the desert and anything that might try
to sneak up on him, Harry picked up his wand and cast a spell that would loosen
the Body-Bind enough that Draco could be a little more comfortable. �They�re
never nice to me. They never say sorry.�

�� I�m not a creature.�

�� Draco scoffed. �Of course you are.�

�� I�m not.�

�� You are.�

�� I�m not.�

�� They repeated the words a few times
each, an exercise that Harry found almost soothing, though he knew that they
were probably wasting water as they talked. At least it was an improvement over
Draco screaming that Harry wanted to hurt him or running as though a nundu was
after him.

�� Maybe you�re not a creature,� Draco
said suddenly. �They always hunt in packs or at least pairs, and I haven�t seen
anything but you since we got here.�

�� Where are we, anyway?� Harry rolled over and looked at Draco with
interest. He hadn�t asked before because he thought it was just as likely that
Draco wasn�t seeing a desert, or not the same desert, with the delusions that
seemed to hover behind his eyes. But the answer to the question was at least
worth checking out, as Hermione and Kingsley would no doubt have reminded him
before now.

�� The same desert we always are in
when you chase me here,� said Draco, his voice dull and weary in a way that
made Harry frown. �Dry, barren, and almost featureless except for those damn
dune and a few rocks like these.� He reached out and brushed his hand against
the rock arch above him, which made Harry frown further. If Draco can see the same landscape I do, why can�t he see me as a
person? �This is the part of the journey I hate most, because you never let
me stop to drink or rest.�

�� The journey?� Harry eased himself
closer, then paused when he saw the way Draco stiffened.

�� From place to place,� Draco
whispered. �You�re always hunting me. You�re always hurting me. It never matters to you, that I might have a life
to get back to like anyone else.� He turned eyes full of fury and hatred on
Harry suddenly. It took an effort for Harry to remain curled up in the sand as
close as he was. �I hate you.�

�� Harry rubbed his shoulder absently;
it felt as though some poisoned dart had stung him, though he knew that was
ridiculous. Draco couldn�t help what he was saying. If anything, Harry should
feel bad that he hadn�t gone after Draco before, or hadn�t asked more questions
when the letters stopped coming. �I care,� he said, and decided that he might
as well do some investigating, if neither of them was going to sleep. �Tell me
about the life that you want to get back to. What were you doing just before
the chase began?�

�� Draco lowered his head to the ground,
closing his eyes in an obviously fake parody of someone going to sleep. �As if
I would tell you that, and let you give the creatures more ways to torment me.�

�� But maybe the creatures are getting
bored,� Harry said. �And aren�t you tired, anyway, of this endless chase?
Wouldn�t a different kind of torment at least make your life a bit more
livable?�

�� Draco tensed, but didn�t say
anything for long moments. Harry waited with some confidence. Draco had been
vulnerable to absurd arguments like this in the past; he couldn�t resist the
temptation to make Harry look foolish by practicing his own �Slytherin�
cunning.

�� You know all about it anyway,�
Draco said at last. �You were the ones who chased me out of the house. You were
the ones who came to me after I�d been doing something completely innocuous and
started this as revenge for God knows what crime.�

�� Harry controlled his breathing.
Maybe he was getting close to an answer, yes, but it could as easily be another
of Draco�s delusions. He didn�t exactly count as a trustworthy witness after
the way he�d tried to strangle Harry. �But what were you doing? I don�t know. And
I don�t want to hurt you.�

�� You stole his voice,� Draco
whispered. �You sound like Harry, but you aren�t him. I think I should distrust
you most of all.�

�� I�m here to rescue you,� Harry
said. �I don�t want to hurt you.� He hesitated, wondering if he should continue
playing one of Draco�s creatures to build on the arguments he�d already
started, and then threw caution to the winds. It was more important for Draco
to believe, if he could, that he had one friend in this nightmarish world with
him. �Draco, I am Harry, and I
promise, I�ll do what I can to get you out of here. But I don�t understand how
we got into the desert, and I�ve never seen one of the creatures chasing you. To
understand, I have to know what you were doing just before the chase started,
what might have caused the creatures to notice you.�

�� Draco shivered as if he were cold.
Harry cast another Warming Charm, and scowled at the desert sky. Any other
environment, except perhaps an actual icefield, would be easier to survive in.

�� I was meditating on the history of
my family,� Draco said, and then added, in a haughty tone, his eyes shut, �This
doesn�t mean I trust you. I am bored of being chased all the time, though.
Maybe you can use my own failures against me to try and torment me now.�

�� Harry smiled and resisted, barely,
the temptation to reach out and stroke his hand across Draco�s forehead. If
Draco was seeing his hand as a paw with talons or worse, then Harry would only
panic him where he meant to comfort. But Draco was�well, rather cute when he
acted like this. �All right. You were meditating on the history of your family.
And then what happened?�

�� I had got into a deep trance state
that one of the books I read said was necessary to summon the ghosts of your
ancestors.� Draco was speaking normally, rather than trying to whisper and make
his voice sound all spectral the way he did sometimes when talking about pure-blood
traditions to Harry, but Harry still felt a shiver run over his skin. This was
the center of the secret of what had happened to Draco, he was certain, and
therefore what had happened to the Aurors and the other victims. �I could see
them lined up in front of me like portraits, and I could walk a corridor
between them. I reached out and touched the face of a woman. I think she was my
grandmother�s grandmother. She opened her eyes and said something to me; I
can�t remember what it was. Then the whole world went shiny and dark and
silvery, and I wished I was somewhere else, and the chase started.�

�� Harry frowned and concentrated as
hard as he could on what he�d read of wild magic, but the memories were years
old. The Auror trainees had studied it briefly. Their instructors didn�t think
they needed to know much about it compared to Dark magic and common jinxes.
Other departments in the Ministry were more likely to deal with the results of
children�s accidental magic, which were the most common form of wild magic and
rarely deadly. If silver light meant anything special, then Harry couldn�t
remember what it was.

�� So perhaps the answer might lie in
Draco�s other words.

�� But he couldn�t remember anything
about a corridor of ancestors, either, or ancestors being ghosts, and though
he�d studied the Malfoy line, he didn�t remember the particular name or attributes
of Draco�s great-great-grandmother�

�� Oh.

�� Abruptly, Harry felt extraordinarily
stupid. He�d assumed without thinking about it that Lucius�s family was the
only possible source of clues, but Draco had had two parents. Perhaps he had
inherited a wild magic talent from one of his Black ancestors.

�� It still didn�t explain the talent
manifesting so late in Draco�s life, or why a ritual that should have been safe
would have produced it. (And Harry knew Draco wouldn�t have chanced a ritual
that wasn�t safe, no matter how desperate he was to know something about his
family. After Voldemort, Draco had a prejudice against most Dark Arts that
rivaled Harry�s own). But it gave him a new direction to look in.

�� And then he felt more stupid still.

�� You wished you were somewhere
else,� he said carefully.

�� Yes, I just said that,� Draco said irritably.
�Along with Harry�s voice, you managed to steal his capacity for not paying
much attention to anything around him.�

�� The way you mentioned a desert
right before we appeared here.� Harry slapped himself in the forehead, then
winced, because it hurt. �I�m stupid. I should have put the clues together
before now. You�re transporting yourself to other places somehow, when you
think about them hard enough.�

�� I�m not doing it.� Draco had folded
himself up into a ball, and his voice was a soft growl. �How can I be the one
doing it, when the creatures are chasing me from place to place? Why wouldn�t I
imagine a comfortable place and keep myself there?�

�� I don�t know that yet,� Harry said,
and smiled at him, because he felt more optimistic at the moment than he had
since he started the case. �And I�m not sure why you see me as a creature,
either. But at least I know that we can get out of the desert. You haven�t died
here yet, so I think your body and mind probably cooperate to get you out of
danger when there�s a large chance you�ll be permanently hurt. As long as I
stay with you, then I�ll probably go along with you when you transport
yourself.�

�� Draco folded his arms and glared at
him. Harry understood. Draco had never liked being blamed for anything, even
those things he acknowledged that he fully deserved to be blamed for. He would
hate the idea that maybe he�d been responsible for his own plight all along,
and therefore, he could have stopped it at any time.

�� The thing was, Harry didn�t think he
really could have stopped it. The delusion about Harry, and maybe about the
creatures, if they existed at all, argued that something else ran under the
simple concept of wild magic that could transport someone from place to place.
The Aurors had died somehow. So had the other people blinded or crippled or
maddened by their exposure to Draco�s peculiar magic.

�� If what you say is true,� Draco
said, �then I should be able to wish myself back into Malfoy Manor.�

*

�� The world shifted and melted. The
creature who had Harry�s voice reached out and clutched at him, and Draco
ducked, shoving his face into his arm, though he knew it wouldn�t do a bit of
good against those cutting claws.

�� But the beast didn�t scratch him.
Instead, it only gently held him, and the next moment the sand had faded and
they were lying on sheets that felt like silk�the familiar, perfumed silk of
Malfoy Manor�against Draco�s skin.

�� Draco took a few moments to gasp softly,
new thoughts flooding his head. He had been home before he appeared in the
forest, and naked. If the creatures were really chasing him and controlled
where he went, why would they have left him go home at all? He had assumed they
were doing it to hold out a promise of rest and then torment him by snatching
it away, but they couldn�t be both that subtle and the mindless beasts he�d
been considering them all along. And why would they have clothed him in robes?

�� And now he was home.

�� With the creature that had Harry�s
voice, and that seemed to understand the helpless way Draco stared at the
familiar walls of his room.

�� We�ll find out the truth,� it said.
�Now that we�re here, with a library, we can try and locate the source of the
wild magic that�s dragging you from place to place. It�s under your control, but
not completely.�

�� I did this,� Draco whispered. �I
still did this.� Dread began to pile in on him as he wondered if any of the
creatures had been other people, if he had hurt them when they ran after him.

�� Not all of it.� The creature laid a
claw gently on his shoulder. The face, featureless except for the teeth, leaned
towards him. Draco shuddered, and it stopped moving, but the voice was still
soft and caressing. �I�ll stay with you and keep you safe, Draco.�

�� It took Draco quite a lot of trust to
believe that voice, considering the body and face it emanated from, but it had
been so long since he had hope that he was willing to lean even on the shoulder
of a beast.

*

�� Black Padfoot: Don�t worry; Draco
isn�t as well-trained as Harry in this story. Harry�s been an Auror for a
number of years.

�� Callistianstar: Thank you. I hope this
chapter cleared up a little what Draco sees and what he doesn�t.

�� hieisdragoness18: Thank you.

�� DTDY: Well, Draco probably won�t
realize the full truth for a long time. He has to rely on his senses, and Harry
is not part of those.

�� Mangacat: I don�t know. Why do you?
;)

delfina:
Thanks for the review. And you were dead right about the Black line. Harry is
just too used to thinking of Draco as a Malfoy alone.

�� Akumu_Suta-Raito: Thanks! I hope you
continue to enjoy the story. And Harry and Draco do have a history, but as
friends, not lovers.

�� SP777: Afraid I can�t shed much
light on the mystery yet, though Harry gets closer to it here.

�� I think it would have made a fitting
ending in some ways if Harry had died, but not simply as a way to avoid the
Harry/Ginny romance. I would have wanted it to fit into the larger pattern of
the books as a whole.

�� I think there are clues in the text
that Dumbledore is gay, if you look hard enough.
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