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Ceremonies of Strife	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16218 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this writing.

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Chapter Forty-Two�The
Truth Emblazoned

�� Draco was
about a hundred paces from the hill when Portillo Lopez�s weapon fired, which turned
out to be the perfect distance from which to see it work.

�� The flow of
light that encompassed both his father and Harry was like wind suddenly made
visible, rushing, nearly-white currents that filled Draco�s nostrils with the
scents of flowers, fresh fruit, and rotting leaves. He would have stopped and
coughed from that overwhelming mixture, but he was too caught up in watching
what had happened to think of anything else.

�� His father
screamed, but the sound abruptly faded as though someone had Apparated with him
in the middle of it. His body flared bright around the edges, and then thinned
and peeled away from the air. Then he
fell to the ground, imprisoned in what looked like a block of white cloth.

�� Harry flung
a hand across his face, although to Draco the whiteness that came along with
the light was nowhere near enough to blind. He gave a single cry of pain, and
Draco�s legs were pumping in response to that before he knew what he was doing.

�� But then a
green cobra, edged with shimmering black, hurtled across the hill and wound
itself around Harry. Draco didn�t know where it had come from, and he didn�t
think it mattered. The point was that the white light earthed itself into the
cobra, gathering there and pulsing, and didn�t touch Harry.

�� By that
point, Draco was on the slope of the hill. He gave a single glance at the bizarre
spectacle that was his father, then turned and reached out for Harry.

�� He couldn�t
touch him. The white light held him physically back, making his hands tingle
with what he thought was numbness. Then peace and good feeling seemed to flood
him, rushing to his heart from his fingertips.

�� Portillo Lopez did say that this was a force
of life, Draco remembered, still straining to reach through the light to
Harry. But she didn�t say what would
happen if Harry was stupid enough to set it off himself! And especially right
after necromancy! By then, he had seen the torn fingernail on Harry�s
thumb, and knew the snake must have come from the same sort of bloody illusion
that he had done on the battlefield against Nihil.

�� How fucking
long was this going to continue? The white light still spiraled around Harry,
and still vanished into the cobra�s scales whenever it tried to touch him. The
cobra was growing fainter and smaller, and Draco didn�t know how much longer
its protection could last.

�� In the face
of possibly losing his lover the way he had lost his father, he could do
nothing but continue to reach out.

*

�� Harry had
never been in the presence of so much life. He could smell roses, see in his
mind�s eye the whirling colors of summer, feel the turning of the planet
beneath his feet, and hear the chorus of birds.

�� He could
also see all that life hissing around him like a blade, and he knew that he
would do something worse than die if it touched him.

�� The cobra
wrapped him closer and closer. Harry didn�t know how he could breathe through
the scales, and then remembered that it was an illusion and didn�t actually
touch him.

�� But at the
same time, he remembered that the cobra was somehow protecting him against the
light, and how could it do that if it was only an illusion?

�� He shook
his head. He was beginning to think he had been stupid when he used the wand,
even though he knew it had stopped Lucius. Of course it would react to the
necromancy he had used. He should have thought of that before he had begun to
wield it.

�� Draco stood
beyond the light, continually stretching his hands out, feeling at the edges of
the barrier with his fingers. Harry wished he could touch him. He had reached
out himself, and the cobra had hissed, and he had had the strong sensation that
he would lose a finger if he reached one inch beyond its tight, guarding body.

�� So he stood
helpless, and meanwhile the storm of change that would decide his future raged
around him, showing no signs of slowing down.

�� Harry
licked his lips and fastened his gaze on Lucius, who now looked like a banner�a
white banner, with the only stain his figure worked in bold black thread in the
middle�draped across the snow. He didn�t know what it meant. Portillo Lopez had
said the wand would destroy creations of necromancy, including the living dead,
not change them into artwork.

�� If I�m going to die here, Harry thought,
glad that he had almost died so many times before so that he could think with
amazing clarity, I�m going to at least
give Draco his answers about what exactly happened to his father.

�� He took a
step forwards.

�� The wind
shrieked at him, the songs of birds changing to the noise of clashing swords.
Harry wondered about that at first�it seemed to him that swords would indicate
death�and then remembered what Portillo Lopez had said about this being a
weapon of change. The sword motions of dead men would never change, but the
living ones could fight with passion, and the sound shifted back and forth in
his ears as though first one side and then the other were losing.

�� Harry!�
Draco�s voice was barely audible above the swords.

�� Harry shook
his head at him�he knew no way to defeat this, and he had been stupid, and he
was sorry�and took another step forwards. If he could just touch the white
cloth, he thought he might have the answers. It certainly wasn�t natural. It
shimmered at the edge, and now and then he caught a flicker of movement from
Lucius, too, as if he wasn�t stitched there but trapped. But Harry could also
see the stitches that made him up.

�� One last mystery to solve, he thought,
closing his eyes as he forged forwards and then reached out one hand to caress
the edge of the banner. It�s appropriate
that I should die doing this, if I have to die.

�� He touched
the edge of the banner, cold and silky beneath his fingers for a moment before
it dissolved. The light broke through the barrier of the cobra at the same
time.

�� Silence
swallowed the world.

�� Harry
opened his eyes. He had expected death to hurt rather more, and�well, he didn�t
really know what he had expected after he
was dead. Oblivion, maybe. But surely this silence should have come along with
the pain, not just by itself?

�� He drifted
in a shining world, all of it as white as the banner. Now and then Harry caught
a glimpse of something shifting in the distance, forming shapes like the
outlines of stones set in a wall, though they always dissolved. Or there was
the shape of a cobra, or the shadow of a waving banner, or the same blast of
light he had seen when the wand went off. Harry didn�t know where he was, but
he didn�t think it was the place he had been supposed to go if Portillo Lopez�s
wand had murdered him.

�� The
drifting sensation started to stop, and Harry realized that he was falling.

�� He shivered
and reached for his wand. He still had it, but when he held it up and tried to
shout incantations that he hoped would stop the fall, he discovered that he didn�t have his voice.

�� Harry
snarled silently. Was this going to be the way he ended, then? After everything
he�d survived, after Voldemort and Nihil�s infection in his blood and the
necromancy and dying to save the world from Voldemort�

�� Harry
stopped.

�� He had been
in a white world like this once before: when he died and went to King�s Cross
Station to speak with Dumbledore. No, it hadn�t been long, but the memory had
returned to him like a dream now that he was once again in a place that
resembled it.

�� He wasn�t
sure how much of the King�s Cross Station dream he should trust; this time, no
friendly Dumbledore had appeared to help him. But since he had died once and
come back to life, maybe that was why the necromantic weapon was reacting to
him so strangely.

�� And that
might mean he still had a chance to control what was happening to him and get
back to the real world. Or at least find out Lucius�s secrets so that he could
give them to Draco the way he had wanted to.

�� Harry put
his wand back in his pocket and struck out in a certain direction, sticking his
arms in front of him as if he was swimming. He saw the outlines of stone walls,
like the walls of the place where he had met Dumbledore, start reforming around
him, and there were waving banners, too. Harry chose the �direction� that
contained the most of both and set out towards it, bowing his head against the
pressure of the wind that still assaulted him sometimes.

�� The place
rippled and bulged around him, and Harry felt a blade whisk through his hair.
Somewhere, somehow, the weapon was still trying to hurt him.

�� He didn�t
care. He swam.

*

�� The light
was now so bright that Draco couldn�t see anything on the hilltop at all.

�� But the
pressure of the wind against him was gone. Draco wrapped an arm around his
head, to deter anything that might come flying at his face, and pressed in. His
legs were tensed in case he stumbled over something, and he wondered what would
happen if he touched Harry�s body and he didn�t respond.

�� However, he
didn�t stumble over anything. When Draco finally removed his arm from his face,
he found that he was standing on the other side of the hill, on the slope that
was beginning to lead downwards.

�� A chill
struck his spine. The hill wasn�t that large. He couldn�t have stumbled past
both Harry, especially not past Harry�s body, and the banner that had somehow
contained his father.

�� He turned
around.

�� The snow on
the hilltop wasn�t thick enough to hide the figures that lay there motionless:
a human body, still encircled by what looked like the body of a large snake,
collapsed over a patch of cloth whiter than the snow.

�� Draco began
to walk towards them, his fingers clenching down on his wand and his mind
blank. He didn�t know what he would do when he reached them. The distance
between them and him seemed to have increased. Perhaps he never would.

*

�� Harry
struck something solid at last, and reached out and clenched his fingers into
it. As he watched, it become more and more solid, forming into a white stone
wall with cracks between the stones. Harry could make them into fingerholds,
and he promptly did so, while looking around and up. He had seen the banner
waving in this direction, or something like the banner. He had to find it and
take secrets back out of this strange place to give Draco some peace about his
father.

�� He didn�t
know why he was so determined on that. But he was, and so he caught a shimmer
from beside him and released his hold on the stone at once, reaching out to
grasp it.

�� The banner
burned his fingers this time, before melting like hot snow. Harry snarled a
curse and closed his hand into a fist, trying to keep hold of as much as he
could. He would find out what the
fuck was wrong with Lucius, if he was the living dead or a ghost or something
else, and he would bring it back to
the surface. He had probably destroyed Draco�s last chance to find out what had
happened to Lucius, or whoever that had been, with Portillo Lopez�s weapon. So
he owed him this.

�� Then images
began to unscroll in his head. Harry caught his breath and concentrated.

*

�� Draco knelt
beside Harry and brushed the snow away from his face. It was so still and pale
that it left no doubt to Draco about what had happened. And his chest beneath
Draco�s hand didn�t move.

�� There was
no pain like this, Draco thought. There had never been any pain like this, not
even when he killed the cat after he bonded it as his familiar. Then, his soul
had been torn apart by pain that speared to the center of him. This time, the
center was simply gone, and he didn�t think he would ever recover it.

�� I trusted
you,� he whispered, hardly conscious of what he was saying, and leaned down to
put his hand on Harry�s forehead, as if he was checking for a fever. �And you left me. So much for your advice that I
should express my trust and love more openly. My father left me. My mother had
to flee. And you��

�� The pain
was too great even for anger, though, and Draco did something that in the
numbness of his brain made perfect sense. He bent down and pressed his lips to
Harry�s, tightening his hands on Harry�s shoulders. People would keep him away
from the body when he took it back to the Ministry, he knew they would. His friends had never thought Draco should
associate with Harry in life, and they would be sure that Draco had killed him.
This was probably his last chance to kiss the man he loved.

�� Once, Harry
had kissed Draco because he needed to pour his compatible magic through Draco�s
lips. Draco thought it was that when he felt something stirring behind Harry�s
lips and pouring into him.

�� It wasn�t.

*

�� Harry saw a
damp, dark, tiny little cell. Someone held a candle near the bars, which
flickered and danced and cast shadows everywhere. He wondered at first why they
would use a candle instead of a Lumos Charm,
and then the person holding the candle shifted and he saw the ragged edge of
the grey cloak that the guards of Azkaban wore. The prison probably had wards
to detect the use of unauthorized magic.

�� What do
you mean, you can�t get me out of here?� Lucius Malfoy hissed, his hands
clenching on the bars.

�� Harry
personally wouldn�t have recognized Lucius, but a certainty that wasn�t his own
thrummed through his bones and aided him. His hair hung around ragged and dirty
around his face; someone had tried to cut it, probably with a knife, and hadn�t
done a very good job. His fingernails were broken and his hands encrusted with
grime. His eyes had gone so wide and desperate that they no longer looked like
the cool grey that Harry associated with Draco. He could have been any
prisoner�if not for the faint platinum color of the hair that Harry could
discern under the dirt, and the Malfoy bone structure that he knew as well as
if he had seen it in the mirror every morning.

�� I mean
that things have changed.� The guard�s voice was flat and uninterested. �The
people I thought I could bribe are more resistant than I thought. You�re not
going anywhere.�

�� I can get
you more,� Lucius said quickly. Harry pitied him then, because his voice was
too fast, and he didn�t sound like the haughty aristocrat he obviously wanted
to play, but like anyone else trying to bargain for his freedom and his life
with limited means of payment. �Money is no problem. What do you want?�

�� It doesn�t
do any good,� the guard said, shaking his head. �If I have too many Galleons, I
can�t spend them. People will just ask where I got them. And the market for the
goods I can buy with the money is drying up. They�re tightening security.
Someone nearly escaped last week. I think it made them paranoid.�

�� You must help me,� Lucius said, with a
flicker of the proud tone that Harry recognized from the times he would scold
Draco for staying up too late and letting exhaustion ruin his good looks.

�� Harry
paused. How do I know that?

�� He reached
out and felt another presence in his mind, shifting around. He would have been
more worried about it if the scene in front of him hadn�t been so compelling.

�� No,� said
the guard. He still sounded flat, not hostile. Harry knew that was probably
worse for Lucius than anything else. He needed people to respond to him, to his
existence, to his importance. �There�s nothing I can do, I told you. And if you
try to hurt me in any way, then you just won�t get your meals.� He turned and
walked away, carrying the candle with him. Harry found that he could still see
in the darkness, though, as if they had adopted the sight of Lucius�s own
dark-adapted eyes.

�� Lucius
rocked back on his heels and clenched his hands on his knees. Then he began to
speak in a low, steady voice that wouldn�t echo beyond his cell.

�� I curse
you. I curse you, walls and bars that stand between me and my destination. I
curse you, enemies who put me here. I curse you, Harry Potter, wherever you
are.� He lifted his head, and his face was haggard. �You could have fought
harder for me.�

�� Shadows
pooled in the corners of the cell. Harry looked instinctively for the wand in
Lucius�s hand, and then told himself not to be stupid. Azkaban prisoners
weren�t allowed wands, and Lucius wouldn�t have had to rely on bribing the
guard if he had one. He was adept with the Imperius Curse.

�� And how do I know that?

�� The shadows
began to hiss and writhe. Harry stared at them. Was this another example of
wish magic, the way Nihil had used it to join his brother and himself? But he
would have expected the wish magic to either get Lucius free or simply ensure
that the obstacles to his freedom vanished.

�� Lucius fell
asleep. The shadows reached out and surrounded him, dancing up and down along
his body. Then one of them turned away from Lucius and began to grow as though
a second person were standing in the cell.

�� Before it
was done, it became obvious that that was exactly what was happening. The
second Lucius stood up, smoothed his hands up and down his body, and admired
himself for a moment as if in an invisible mirror. Then he turned and walked
out through the walls as though he were a ghost.

�� A shadow, Harry thought incredulously. A shadow of Lucius�s hatred and curse.

�� And there
the vision ended, and Harry felt as though he were rushing back to the surface
of an ocean he had dived into.

*

�� The best
moment of Draco�s life was when he opened his eyes and saw Harry breathing.

�� He had seen
the vision of his father and the shadow parting from his father�s body, too,
and he knew that he would have to deal with them eventually. But for now, he
wrapped his arms around Harry and pressed his cheek against his chest and
waited, eyes shut, for whatever might happen next.

�� What
happened was Harry�s chest heaving and a slurred voice whispering in his ear,
�Draco? Is that you?�

�� Who else
would it be?� Draco muttered, nuzzling further into Harry and wishing that he
didn�t have to make decisions like an adult. He would have liked to stay like
this, resting against Harry like a child, while Harry wrapped his arms around
him and did what he did best: protecting Draco. �Who else is insane enough to
follow you out into the snow and then try to reach you when you do a stupid
thing?�

�� Harry�s
laughter was weak and bubbling. �Ah, yes. I forgot that I�d used a necromantic
ritual right before I used that wand.��

�� Draco shook
his head, because all the words he could say about that would be too bitter for
his happiness. He would scold Harry later. �You saw what happened to my
father?� he asked instead.

�� Harry�s
breath caught, and he stroked his hands down Draco�s back. �I knew I felt a second presence in my
mind,� he said. �And I was thinking things about Lucius that I couldn�t
possibly have known. Your mind must have joined with mine somehow.� His arms
tightened. �Yes, I saw.�

�� I kissed
you,� Draco whispered. �I think that joined us the way our first kiss did.
Remember? When we needed the compatible magic while we were fighting Nihil�s
grief magic?�

�� How could
I forget that?� Harry shifted and sat up. Draco came with him, blinking in the
dazzle that was the sun reflecting off the snow. �Now. I think I know how to
interpret what happened to your father, but I need your help. Let me know if
anything sounds wrong, all right?�

�� Warmth that
was not the fading charm gripped Draco. Someone else was taking over the hard decisions for the moment, such as stating
Lucius�s fate aloud. He curled up against Harry and looked into his face.

�� Lucius
never escaped from prison,� Harry said quietly. �Certainly not in the way he
told you he did. I�m afraid that it was his body the Ministry found, killed
while he was trying to escape. What you saw was his shadow, who came to you
because it separated from the rest of Lucius. The shadow of his hatred and his
curse.�

�� It just
makes no sense,� Draco muttered, shaking his head. �I know that my father never
had any power like that, or it would have manifested during the war with the
Dark Lord. I know that he was more desperate then than he ever looked in the
vision.�

�� Harry
nodded. �But I don�t think it was exactly related to that. I think it�s more
akin to the unicorn ghosts, who would never have shown up if not for Nihil�s
disturbance to the world.�

�� Draco�s
heart surged. �I�d like to believe that,� he said quietly, and leaned his head
on Harry�s chest again. �But is there any way to be sure?�

�� I think
so,� Harry said. �Lucius�s shadow left the prison and came to you, after all.
It didn�t go anywhere else. Did he act like your father?�

�� Not
exactly,� Draco said. �In some ways, yes. My father was always inclined to
treat me as though I possessed no independent thought of my own. But I was shocked
when he tried to forcibly betroth me to someone else. The man I thought I knew
would have found a subtler way to coerce me into what he wanted. And I can�t
believe that he would ever have mistreated my mother,� he added wistfully,
though he knew he would never know now. Narcissa and Lucius would never see one
another again.

�� Among the hardest things I have to do will
be telling her that.

�� And he
went mad when he heard that you were so close to me,� Harry murmured. �Lucius
cursed me before that shadow left him. I think the shadow was trying to exert
his revenge in the only way possible.�

�� What do
you think happened between him and my mother, then?� Draco asked, but he could
answer the question himself before Harry did�which was a good thing. This dependency
could last only a short time, not more than that. �He probably revealed more
and more mad tendencies, because he was made of hatred, not love. No wonder he
wasn�t vulnerable to the potions that she tried to give him, either. I don�t
think magical creatures built half of illusion and half of a curse would be.�

�� Harry shook
his head. �You probably would have noticed something even more wrong if you had
met him again, but you didn�t. And thank God you stayed at a distance. I don�t
know what he would have done to you.� His arms tightened possessively around
Draco.

�� Draco
finally dared what he hadn�t dared before, and turned to look at the snow. The
white banner representing his father was gone. He shook his head. �Where do you
think he went? And why did he become a picture?�

�� I think he
vanished,� Harry said. �Destroyed by the forces of change and life, or else
faded because your father is dead and he couldn�t survive for long without the
real person. He crumbled at the first serious challenge.� He hesitated, then
added, �It�s only a thought, but I think he became a picture because that�s
what he was�an image that looked real but wasn�t.�

�� I said
once before that you were intelligent and perceptive,� Draco murmured, slipping
his hand beneath Harry�s chin. �I mean it.�

�� Harry
kissed him, so passionately that Draco�s mouth hurt. He knew he would have to
come out of the kiss sooner or later and face the messy reality.

�� But not
right now.

*

�� qwerty:
Thanks! Your guess is very close, but in this case, Nihil probably didn�t have
anything directly to do with his creation, anymore than he had to do with the
unicorn ghosts.

�� polka dot: Why?
She could easily have killed him before this, if she wanted to.

�� SpiritOfBeyond:
It worked, but not in the way that anyone could have anticipated. Harry�s
explanation is probably the correct one, or else the wand, having encountered
something it had never faced before, just did the best it could.

�� purple-er:
Thanks!

�� SP777: No,
I reached the end of the normal length for a chapter. ;)

�� Dragons
Breath: Probably not. Nihil could have done a lot more with an illusion of
Lucius than what actually happened.

�� The wand,
of course, didn�t really make that distinction.
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Ceremonies of Strife