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Practicing Liars	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 63257 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 46
- 47
- 48
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Forty-Seven�Morning

�� Harry had
wondered when Dumbledore would warn him that Voldemort had come to the school,
but it turned out that he didn�t need much of a warning after all.

Three days after Dumbledore took
the Unbreakable Vow, his scar began to burn at breakfast, and Harry�s fingers
trembled open as he let a piece of toast fall back on his plate. He pressed his
hand to his forehead and moaned. Then he tried to sit back up, knowing how that
would panic some of the people watching him, but the damage was done.

�� Hermione
leaned towards him, putting one hand on his arm and speaking in a soft voice
that Harry was nonetheless sure everyone at the Gryffindor table heard, because
of how intently they were all listening. �Is it him, Harry?�

�� Harry
nodded. It was the only thing he could say, the only gesture he could make. The
scar sent keen lines of pain radiating down his cheeks and jaw, and he couldn�t
have opened his mouth to speak if Voldemort was standing in front of him right
then.

�� People
around him started to mutter, and the students at the other tables were leaning
over to stare. Harry heard chairs being pushed back, voices rising, the clatter
of spoons and forks and knives as people started dropping them. He wanted to
yell for everyone to sit still, because their panic wouldn�t help and they
might get in his way, but he still couldn�t speak. He turned his head towards
the High Table instead, because he knew that there were two people there who
would be necessary.

�� Dumbledore
was already on his feet, his gaze stern and commanding, his wand in his hand.
He nodded to Harry and turned towards the entrance from the Great Hall. Harry
knew that he would have to follow him. Dumbledore had mentioned that this spell
was too powerful to be performed in front of others, since they might try to interfere
and the backlash would be extreme.

�� And Snape�

�� Snape was
on his feet, too, though Harry knew he was going to stay in the school, because
he had promised. His face was very still and his eyes were very dark, and he
wore the expression Harry had seen on one occasion when Neville�s cauldron came
near to destroying the entire Potions classroom.

�� But he had
been able to do something about that. He wouldn�t be able to do anything about
this. Harry knew that, and his heart reached out to his father. He even wanted
to extend a hand, but he couldn�t. There were still Death Eaters in the school,
and if one of them saw Professor Snape�s pain and the way that Harry Potter
responded to that, that might mean they�d try to attack him during the battle.

�� Harry
settled for one glance, and gave the same to Draco, seated at the Slytherin
table, as he followed Dumbledore. Draco looked as though he lacked the strength
to rise to his feet. He simply shut his eyes.

�� Harry swept
out of the Great Hall, and fell into step beside Dumbledore. The pain his scar
had begun to ease. His heart was pounding, but he felt oddly distant from the
crazy beat in his ears, as though he were listening to a horn blowing for
someone else to come out and fight.

�� No, even
more distant than that, he thought a minute later. At least he would care more
if he was going to watch someone else go out and fight, and possibly die. He
just felt light and floating now, as though nothing could hurt him or touch
him. He wondered if it was a bad thing, then decided he couldn�t do anything
about it and looked up at Dumbledore.

�� Where are
we going, sir?� he asked.

�� Down to a classroom
in the dungeons that was warded up some years ago.� Dumbledore�s voice sounded slightly
distracted, but it was otherwise as calm and cheerful as ever. �And he will�ah,
yes, there he is.�

�� Harry,
thinking he meant Voldemort, looked up apprehensively, but instead a streak of
fire moved through the air and Fawkes spiraled down to meet them. He landed on
Dumbledore�s shoulder and rubbed his head against his cheek. Dumbledore looked
up and scratched his fingers through the phoenix�s feathers, but never turned
around or stopped walking. Harry hurried to catch up, shivering uncontrollably.

�� It�s finally happening. It�s really
happening, at last.

�� The journey
to the section of wall that contained the hidden classroom seemed short; Harry
could have blinked and they would have reached it. Dumbledore reached out and placed
his hand on the stone, his fingertips splayed out so that they formed a
star-like pattern. The stone trembled, and groaned, and sank inwards.

�� Harry
stepped into a room that still throbbed with what seemed barely contained
energy. He stared around curiously at the dark splotches on the walls and
wondered what had happened here.

�� But
Dumbledore was turning around with his wand raised, and there was no more time. Harry moved away from the door and
waited.

�� Dumbledore
smiled wistfully at him. �Have you forgiven me, Harry, for the harm I meant to
do to you?� he asked.

�� Harry bit
back an impatient exclamation. Dumbledore was not stupid. He wouldn�t have started
talking like this if they really didn�t have time for it. So Harry thought carefully
about it for a moment. Could he give Dumbledore the mercy he needed to go to a
peaceful death? He wouldn�t have asked if it wasn�t important.

�� But in the
end, Harry knew the answer. He met Dumbledore�s eyes and shook his head. �I�m
sorry, sir. I can�t, not yet.�

�� Dumbledore
said nothing for so long that Harry was afraid he had forgotten about the
spell, and Voldemort, and everything they had to do. Then he sighed, nodded,
and said, �Perhaps I deserve that.�

�� It has
nothing to do with deserving,� Harry said, meeting his eyes and holding them
until he was certain Dumbledore understood. �I just can�t, yet.�

�� And
Dumbledore nodded again, and smiled this time, and Harry felt an ache in his
heart. He swallowed. Dumbledore held up his wand and began to speak in soft
Latin, punctuating the words with little swishes of his wrist. Fawkes edged
down his shoulder to his arm and sat watching the wand with his head cocked on
one side. Harry watched the phoenix and wondered what he thought about
Dumbledore dying to give Harry his magic.

�� Fawkes
spread his wings as Dumbledore�s voice grew deeper. The walls of the room began
to glow with red-gold light. Harry blinked at them and wondered whether he
should be worried. After all, he hadn�t asked Dumbledore to make another
Unbreakable Vow before they came in here, and he hadn�t asked what all the
effects of the spell would be.

�� But such
worries would have to be for someone else, like Snape or Draco, because the
glow was spreading, and the walls were shuddering to the beat of a giant heart,
and the magic was cresting around Dumbledore in a wave of light. Harry stood
braced firmly for it, though when the wave began to dip down to meet him, he
knew no one could ever be really ready for an experience like this.

�� His scar
burst into a fiercer burning when the magic touched him. Harry wondered for a
minute why his scar was burning if the Horcrux had been destroyed, but lost the
question as the magic charged around his shoulders, circled his arms, and swept
into his body by the elbow joints.

�� The magic
was warm, and joyous, and Harry could feel it like breath down the back of his
neck, like windy laughter. His body twitched when it began to absorb those
sensations, and Harry held his breath. He hadn�t even wondered how the power
might join, or not, with his own magical core. It hadn�t seemed like a necessary
question to ask.

�� It wasn�t,
as it turned out. The blending was seamless, as much as Harry could feel it,
which wasn�t much. He felt a brief overlapping sensation, as though he was
trying to see through his glasses and over them at once, and then the magic had
stopped pouring into him and was still. Harry took a deep breath and opened his
hands, wondering if he had the extra power after all.

�� Sparks fell
from his palms. Harry felt the almost uncontrollable urge to touch his wand and
cast a spell, just to stop the pressure from building up inside. He had to bite
down on his lip and close his throat against a shout. All this magic, and he
would have to use it soon, if he wanted to defeat Voldemort.

�� Only then
did he think to look up.

�� Dumbledore�s
body lay still on the floor. Fawkes was sitting on his back, rubbing his cheek
very gently against the tumble of Dumbledore�s beard. As Harry watched, he
spread his wings and rose into the air, hovering above Dumbledore like a symbol
on a banner, his wings fully extended, his voice traveling up and down in a
continuous croon of harmonies that made Harry�s eyes blur with tears.

�� Then light
gathered around Fawkes, and he vanished in a twist of fire. Harry stared at the
disappearing sparks, and had the strong impression that no one would ever see
the Headmaster�s phoenix again.

�� His scar
burned, summoning him to the battle. But Harry knelt down and put his hand on
Dumbledore�s shoulder for a long minute.

*

�� Draco
leaned against the couch in the Slytherin common room and closed his eyes.

�� The
students had all been dismissed to their common rooms by their Heads of House
the moment the Headmaster and Harry left the Great Hall. Draco had caught
Professor Snape�s eye and asked a silent question. Was he supposed to go, too?
If there were still Death Eaters among the students, they might try to hurt him
while everyone else was distracted.

�� Snape had
nodded firmly, and so Draco had come back here.

�� Here, where he was uselessly far from
the battle and could do nothing.

�� He hissed
and clenched one hand into a fist on his knee. It wouldn�t be noticed. Everyone
around him was muttering or wringing their hands or sitting in one place with
their arms folded across their chests. This was only another gesture, a mild
one at that, to deal with the pressure the moment was putting on all of them.

�� Someone
touched him on the shoulder. Draco opened his eyes and turned his head sharply,
the hand that wasn�t fisted already dipping into his robe pocket to touch his
wand. If this was a Death Eater�

�� Blaise sat
down beside him and gave him a long look from eyes that were almost painfully
clear. Draco swallowed. He wondered if Blaise was about to say something he
didn�t want to hear, was about to say that Harry had died, and then decided
that was ridiculous. There was no reason that Blaise would know before Draco
himself did.

�� But it was
so hard trying to be rational, when he was so worried.

�� Draco,�
Blaise whispered, after a glance around the common room that seemed to say he
wanted to remain unobserved as much as Draco did at the moment. �I know about
your relationship with Potter.�

�� Every muscle
in Draco�s body was iron. He whirled and brought the wand up to Blaise�s throat
in the kind of smooth move a machine would use, and he looked him straight in
the eye, and he didn�t blink, and he didn�t flinch. He would hate killing
Blaise, but he would hate it later, when Blaise was safely out of the way and
couldn�t be a threat to Harry.

�� A few of the
Slytherins glanced over at them, but no one made any move to interfere, and wouldn�t
even if Draco cast on Blaise, he sensed. Private quarrels were a good way to
work out the tension that thrummed through the room, the tension that all of
them could feel and none of them could escape. None of the prefects would
realize until too late that this duel was more deadly than some of the others
they had seen in their time.

�� Blaise
breathed lightly, not even trying to fight where the wand rested against his
neck, never taking his eyes off Draco. �Wait,� he whispered. �I don�t mean that
in the way you think I mean it.�

�� How do you
mean it, then?� Draco�s voice was flat and calm. His mind had charged ahead and
taken up another possibility. It was possible that Blaise thought Draco and
Harry were only friends, but knew something about Professor Snape being Harry�s
father. The same thing would happen, though. Either secret could be enough to endanger
Harry, because Death Eaters in the school would try to strike at both the
professor and Draco.

�� I mean,�
Blaise said, his breathing still light and his eyes painfully direct, �that I
know about it, and I won�t betray it. It doesn�t matter what the Dark Lord
does. My ultimate loyalty is to you, and not him.�

�� Draco
blinked. He wanted to let the wand fall, but he knew that would be a mistake.
This was the kind of thing that Blaise might say so that he could have an in
with Draco, to make him react with shock and, in the meantime, drop his guard.
Or maybe he thought that Harry would win the battle and wanted to prove his
loyalty that way.

�� I mean it,�
Blaise said, and he smiled a little, probably because he was saying the word �mean�
so many times. He reached up and gripped Draco�s wrist. Draco moved his other
hand forwards and put it in a fist near Blaise�s chest, near his ribs. Blaise
nodded. All of the Slytherins knew the spell that one of their prefects had
invented years ago, which would conjure a knife in the hand opposite the one
holding the wand and drive it home in the same instant.

�� I would
never have told you if I really didn�t mean it.� Blaise tilted his head back,
baring his throat. Draco kept his hand where it was, near Blaise�s ribs, but he
understood the gesture. Blaise wasn�t trying to defend himself. His hands rested
on his knees, both open. �I understand what you�re going through, because it�s
the same thing that I felt when my mother told me that the Dark Lord might kill
you. I�I believe some of the same things he does, but not enough of them to
kill a friend. Never.�

�� Draco
wanted to shut his eyes. The prefects were watching them now, because the
confrontation had gone on too long. They would react if Blaise tried to hurt
him. Draco wanted to believe his friend and believe that he was safe and that
he would have someone to sit with him during the battle who knew how this felt,
to comfort him if Harry fell.

�� But he
couldn�t. Not completely.

�� He kept his
hand and his wand in place, and shook his head at Blaise. �If you�re right,
then I�ll say sorry later,� he murmured in a voice so scratchy it hurt his
throat. �But I can�t believe you right now.�

�� I know.�
Blaise�s hand twitched as if he would reach out and squeeze Draco�s wrist, but
then he seemed to realize what a bad idea that would be and kept it still. He
did give Draco a sympathetic look.

�� Draco
treasured that look for what he could, and then they sat in place, one
threatening, one sprawling defenseless, waiting for news.

*

�� Severus had
known where Dumbledore would take Harry to give him the magic; there was only
one place in the school with wards strong enough. He was waiting outside the
door when Harry stumbled out and made as if to lean against the wall,
shivering.

�� Severus
moved, putting his hand on Harry�s shoulder and shaking until Harry looked up
at him. The question he asked then was a favor for himself�there was no
escaping that�but it also gave Harry something else to concentrate on rather
than the part he had just played in Albus�s death.

�� Will you
not show me your real face one time, before you go to your battle?� he asked
quietly.

�� Harry
stared with such wide, mindless eyes that Severus was momentarily afraid the
Headmaster has found a way to get around the Unbreakable Vow and cast a
different spell after all, one that would possess Harry and give Albus a new
life in his body. But then Harry straightened up with an expression of genuine
shock�shock that anyone would care about such a thing where he was concerned�which
relieved Severus�s fears. Yes, this was his son.

�� Remove the
glamour?� Harry asked. �But that doesn�t matter. Dumbledore is dead.�

�� And in a
short time, you may be,� Severus said. I
should have remembered that bluntness works best with Gryffindors in the first
place. �Will you deny me the sight of my son?�

�� Harry
shivered once, his face flushing deeply, as if he might think that he and Snape�s
son were two different people, still. Then he reached up and twitched his wand
at his face. The glamour snapped away like a sheet of lightning, so fast that
Severus knew Dumbledore�s extra magic must be affecting even Harry�s simpler
spells.

�� Severus
knelt down in front of Harry and shuffled about to the side so that he could
see better in the light of the torches shining from the walls. Harry�s eyes
were as wide and as green as ever, but the face about them was subtly
different. None of the changes by themselves were large, and Severus understood
why it had not been difficult for Harry to attach the glamour over his real
face. But together, the tilt of the cheekbones, the angle of the nose, the
wideness of the eye sockets, all added up.

�� The messy
hair was still the same, perhaps a bit less tangled. Severus reckoned he had to
accept that something in the mingled blood of his ancestors and Lily�s
resembled something in the blood of James Potter�s. And that was not such a surprise
when one considered that Lily�s ancestors had probably been Squibs, and all
pure-bloods were intermarried and related to each other in diverse ways.

�� Severus
touched Harry�s face with trembling fingers, and then embraced him once. He
made it quick, so that he would not linger too long and be unable to let go,
and he made it hard, so that Harry would carry the memory with him.

�� Harry gave
Severus a look when he was untangling his arms from around Harry�s chest that
Severus didn�t recognize, and didn�t have time to interpret. But Harry reached
out, hesitated, then patted his shoulder and said, �I didn�t realize it meant
so much to you. I�ve heard�I�ve heard people say I look like James Potter, but he wasn�t there to look at me and
show me that it was important. Or I don�t remember if he did. So I�ll�I�ll go
into battle like this, if you want. Because it matters to you.�

�� Severus did
not have words. He only had a squeeze of Harry�s shoulder and a convulsive
shake of his head that Harry seemed to understand without the explanation. The
Dark Lord�s eyes were too keen even in a moment of crisis. He might notice the
difference, understand it, and then figure out a way to torment Severus, or to
send a message to one of his Death Eaters within the wards.

�� Harry
nodded, renewed the glamour, smiled at him, and departed.

�� Severus
stood still.

*

�� When Harry
stepped out of the castle, muted light was everywhere. The sky was grey, the
sun glowing from around the clouds, their underbellies white sometimes. Harry
stared up at them, and then lowered his head and faced across the battlefield
when he thought he could.

�� Voldemort
was waiting at the edge of the Forbidden Forest. The scar on Harry�s forehead pointed
the way like a signal fire.

�� Harry took
a deep breath, and began to walk.

�� He wondered
as he went what the plan was for keeping the Death Eaters away from the fight,
something Dumbledore hadn�t addressed, and then smiled. Voldemort�s pride was
so great that Harry probably only had to offer to duel with him and then
dismiss any reluctance as fear, and he�d tackle Harry alone willingly, the way
he had in the graveyard.

�� Or maybe it
was the magic, whispering and humming in him so that it was like walking on a
beating heart, all the way across the earth. Harry raised his wand and hoped
that he could create a shield big enough to shut him and Voldemort away from
the Death Eaters he could see stirring like maggots on the edge of the Forest.

�� Then a curl
of scarlet caught his eye.

�� Fawkes
dipped down from above, turning his head as he flew and giving Harry a single,
lovely, sad trill, as if to say that he had thought about this and it was the
best way to go on, as much as he missed Dumbledore. Then he opened his wings
and tilted sideways, and a sheet of flame spread from under his body, raging up
and down, speeding forwards, so that in instants Harry and Voldemort were
enclosed in a ring of phoenix fire.

�� Thank you, Fawkes, Harry thought, and
lifted a hand in soundless farewell as Fawkes turned again to the sky, forever
this time. I don�t think anyone will get
through that wall.

�� Voldemort
stood still, looking at him, and he was as horrible as ever, flat-faced and
red-eyed and the man who had caused all of Harry�s nightmares.

�� But, Harry
realized as he came to a halt and held up his wand, this was the man who had
also mattered to him least in the last few months. Harry had been far more
concerned with Snape and Draco. He�d spared more thoughts for Dumbledore and
Lucius Malfoy than for Voldemort.

�� He paused
as much as in surprise as anything else, and that gave Voldemort a chance to
speak above the almost musical crackle of the flames.

�� Come to
face me at last, boy?� He smiled, or did something that Harry supposed could be
called a smile, and held out his wand eagerly. �Ready to duel?�

�� Harry
nodded, but it was more his own thoughts than Voldemort that he was nodding to.

�� Voldemort
had become insignificant, or at worst had seemed a lurking threat on the
horizon, inevitable, like winter or a storm, but something that could be faced.
Harry had been more frightened of what Snape would say when he found out that
Harry was his son, more afraid for Draco when it had seemed as though he would
suffer the loss of both his parents. He had cared more about the way Dumbledore
had mucked about with his life and the way Ron and Hermione�s bickering had isolated
them from him.

�� So much
else to care about that wasn�t death. So much to worry about that didn�t have
anything to do with the evil wizard who had killed his parents�well, his mother
and one of his fathers�or had something to do with it only tangentially.

�� Voldemort didn�t matter. Not next to the people
Harry loved.

�� Unable to
speak, boy?� Voldemort stepped forwards and began to weave a spell, a nonverbal
one, trying to use his words to distract Harry from it. �Unsurprising. Your
father was mute when he died, too. I didn�t give him enough time to scream.�

�� Harry
looked at Voldemort, and smiled.

�� Voldemort
paused, his eyes narrowed in doubt.

And Harry decided it was time.

He could barely hold on to all the
singing, dancing magic in him, a power greater than the world, a power greater
than any one wizard should have. And he was a Gryffindor. He believed in brute
strength, Snape would say, rather than subtlety. And he probably couldn�t beat
Voldemort in a one-on-one duel anyway, because he wasn�t as ruthless and he
didn�t know as many spells and his extra strength would bleed away, as
Dumbledore had warned him, the longer this took.

�� Harry
reached for the extra power. He didn�t know what he was doing, not exactly, but
there was the strength, and it was joined to him but still different enough
from his magical core for him to feel it, and he gathered it up and rolled it
down to the end of his wand.

�� Voldemort
stared at him.

�� Harry
plunged deep inside himself, gathering up his memories of the people he loved.
Draco was there, with his smile, and Snape, with his fussing over Harry lying
in bed, and Hermione, with her need for logic, and Ron, with his understanding
about the most surprising things, and the Weasleys, laughing, and even
Dumbledore, Dumbledore at the last, giving of himself to save the world.

�� The world is worth saving, Harry
thought, the first time he had ever put it into words. When he had thought it
would be his duty to die and destroy the Horcrux, he had thought of the world
as an abstraction, a shapeless mass of people that he would die to save because
there was no other choice.

�� How stupid.
One couldn�t love a shapeless mass. The world was individuals, a small and
selfish thing compared to the entirety, the people of whom one said, My world would end without them.

�� One of them
was gone. Harry would make sure it was no more.

�� His love
joined with his magic, and Harry did not speak an incantation, any more than
his mother had when she died to save him and her will powered the sacrifice. He
called to the power, and it answered him in a conflagration of light, and out
it shot from his wand, transformed by his love, and rolled around him, blazing
brighter than a thousand phoenixes. Harry threw open his arms to welcome it. It
felt like sunshine on his skin, sun just on the edge of being too hot.

�� Voldemort
screamed�the way he had screamed when Quirrell�s fingers had touched Harry�s
skin in their first year.

�� Harry gave,
and willed, and looked, and loved. With his own magic, it might not have been
enough, especially since his wand was brother to Voldemort�s.

�� But Dumbledore�s
magic was with him, and the wand was no more than a conduit.

�� The light
came.

�� When it was
gone, Voldemort was, too, and the phoenix fires were dying, and Harry turned to
the Death Eaters, cloaked in light, and they broke and fled.

*

�� Severus was
the first one onto the battlefield. He had been watching from the battlements,
of course, with the other professors, standing ready to defend the school if
Harry failed, and McGonagall was racing beside him. But Severus outpaced them
all, and knelt beside his son, who was lying on the ground, on pounded white
ash all the way up to the border of the circle of flames that had swallowed
him.

�� He was not
injured. He was breathing. He was awake and aware. Severus gathered him in his
arms and wished he believed in miracles, because then he might have had a name
for this.

�� I am sorry
I could not be with you,� he whispered.

�� Harry
blinked at him and frowned a little. �But you were,� he said. �Of course you
were.�

�� Then he
fainted, and McGonagall came up and started arguing that she should take Harry to the hospital wing, as his Head of House,
and the most delirious moments of Severus�s life were past.

*

�� k lave
demo: Dumbledore was annoying, but I think, in the end, he wasn�t afraid to
live up to his principles, which a lot of people would have been.

�� I probably
won�t be writing the sequel to The Mark of the Fox for a few months, yet.

�� Sneakyfox:
They actually won�t be having sex in this story. I am writing at least one
epilogue fic for this story, and may do another, about their first time.

�� KienaBeana:
Thank you! That�s sweet. I find it hard to believe that it�s almost done, at
last.

�� SP777: It
was simply too unlikely that he wouldn�t have figured it out, though I can understand
your disappointment.

�� anciie: They
were thinking that Harry would have to face Voldemort in a duel, and they didn�t
have much hope that he would manage to beat one of the most skilled duelists.

�� I hope you
like the way Snape acted in this chapter, too.
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Practicing Liars