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Hero's Funeral	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 4933 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Five--Flight

            Draco woke up early, and padded over to make himself a cup of tea, grumbling under his breath and flinching where the sun shone through his kitchen window. He had lived away from his parents for seven years, and he still hadn't got used to mornings yet.

            Or the lack of house-elves.

            Draco's fingers closed hard on the handle of the tea-cup, and then he took a deep breath and shook his head. No. He wasn't going to think about that, no matter how tempting it was. Really, it should have been easier to avoid the thoughts. He had a full life, and his parents had thrown him out of the Manor the moment he began Auror training. If anyone, he should miss Daphne, and their engagement, and the normal life he had thought they would have before finding out she had committed murder.

            He should miss Kellen.

            Draco grimaced and flexed his left hand, smashed on the same case that had killed Kellen. His hand was healing, the tiny, innumerable breaks in the bones cured by proper and prompt attention at St. Mungo's, as well as the application of Skele-Gro. There would be no healing for Kellen.

            What had been done to him before the end was--

            Draco cut the thought off and shook his head. He was getting nothing accomplished by sitting here, staring out the window, and remembering the past. The present was the file on the table, the partner he had in hospital, and the possible link between Latham's death and Whitley's.

            Reading the file told him almost nothing. The Healers had probed into her body and discovered that she had a weak heart, the same flaw that had killed Latham. Again, she could have died at any time. That it was the night after Larkin had been arrested was, Draco had to admit, a major coincidence, but he still didn't understand what vision Larkin could have fed her that would have scared her to death.

            It was attributing too much omniscience to Larkin to assume that he knew about everything: Potter's visions, Latham's and Whitley's weak hearts, the way that his mother would betray him and his sister would try to stay loyal to him. Draco sipped his tea and grimaced his way through a series of silent admissions.

            What Potter had theorized still made the most sense. If Larkin had the ability to see the future, and share those visions with the people he wanted to terrify, then he could have warned his sister he would end up in prison. He could have known that the marking on the wall of his cell would come to life and try to devour Potter's feet. He could have shown Latham and Whitley the most simple and effective visions to kill them: their hearts bursting or exploding. They had to have lived with that fear most of their lives. Intensify it, and it would happen.

            Then what's his next step?

            Draco leaned back in his chair and thought about that. Surrounded by Dementors, Larkin wouldn't reach out to influence someone, to give them a vision that would terrify them into freeing him. Draco would be surprised if he could still use his flaw anymore when surrounded by the ghastly creatures.

            Yet we never did prove that there's a limit to the distance that he can cover when reaching out to affect someone.

            Draco swallowed, and decided that he wouldn't think about that anymore. Larkin was in prison, with no sign of his companions and his wand safely taken from him. He had concluded the case, closed it. It was regrettable that Latham had died, and Whitley, and that Potter was in hospital. But he didn't see anything else that he could do now.

            With that in mind, he laid the files aside and reached for his cloak. He might as well go to St. Mungo's and check on Potter.

*

            Being in the Janus Thickey ward wasn't as bad as Harry had expected. He had a room to himself at the moment, and a glass of water on the table beside his bed enchanted to replenish itself when he needed it, and a choice of books that would prop themselves up in front of him and turn their pages.

            Of course, his hands were manacled together and his legs were attached to the foot of the bed with chains and a Healer kept checking on him every ten minutes. And there were the moans and screams and giggles of the more hopelessly lost from beyond the door. But Malfoy would say that you couldn't have everything.

            At the moment, Harry was choosing to lie back on his bed and close his eyes. Acting calm and sane might convince Tella that he really wasn't going to rush off and kill himself the minute she turned her back. If she didn't change her mind, then rest would let him use his wandless magic more easily against any enemies who got in his way.

            One way or another, the vision that Larkin had sent him would come true. Harry stirred restlessly in his bonds as he thought about it, and then stilled as the suspicious Healer looked through the door. She nodded at him as if to say that she was proud of him for being such a good boy, and turned away as someone called her name.

            They had taken his papers away from him, but Harry was sure they'd keep them safe. Tella's wariness of being blamed if something happened to the Famous Harry Potter meant that they would almost have to. They could be blamed too easily if they lost something that turned out to be important.

            So he would die, and the letters would be delivered.

            He did wish that the vision had extended long enough for him to be sure what would happen to Malfoy and Larkin. His death was going to be bloody useless if Larkin took Malfoy out with another curse a few seconds later.

            You're getting upset again. If his heart beat too fast, the charms on the room would warn the Healers. Harry forced himself to lie flat and calm, and to think beyond his death, about what would happen with Ron and Hermione.

            He missed a chance to speak to his friends most of all. He wanted to see Ron's astonishment when he understood that Harry was partnered with Malfoy and that it had lasted a day without them killing each other. He wanted to see Hermione smile at him and pat his arm and explain that she'd always known Malfoy would be less of a git if he had the chance, and wasn't Harry glad that it was working out this way?

            There were a few people in the Ministry he'd like to speak to, but not many. Ron didn't work there anymore. Harry and the current Head Auror had a firm, practical acquaintance, but not much of a friendship. His last partner but one, Hale, would more than likely turn her back if she saw him coming. He hadn't had a chance to get to know the other Aurors of Socrates Corps yet, in the way he'd like to. And Lionel...

            Maybe I'll see him again. Maybe I'll get to see Sirius and really get to know my parents. Maybe I'll get to joke with Dumbledore and apologize to Snape, finally.

            Harry felt a deeper relaxation than he'd been able to feign so far invade him. Some of the people he knew felt he was dangerously volatile and too fearless about death, but they didn't understand. It was just that Harry had faced death since he was young, and chosen a career that he knew wouldn't lead to a peaceful life, and had lost so many people. He had all of them waiting to welcome him.

            At least, if the afterlife was anything like the vision he'd had of Dumbledore in King's Cross. Harry really didn't know if it was. If it was darkness and nothing else, that might be preferable in some ways.

            "He's my partner, and I insist on seeing him."

            Harry turned his head and blinked. Malfoy's voice was coming from beyond the door, and he was speaking as if someone had tried to stop him from doing something he wanted. Well, if seeing Harry was something he wanted to do, that would probably be true, but Harry couldn't imagine why they would keep Malfoy out of the Janus Thickey ward. Or that Malfoy would be that eager to visit him, in fact. He struggled to sit up, and the Healer who'd been baby-sitting him came and stared at him threateningly again. Harry glared back.

            Another Healer was responding to Malfoy, his words soft enough that Harry had to concentrate to make them out. "I'm sorry, Mr. Malfoy, but Healer Tella thinks that Auror Potter should rest as much as possible. He tried to make his way out of hospital earlier this morning, and frankly, he's not well enough to do that. He doesn't need people from the Ministry urging him to take up extra cases."

            There was a long, thick silence that made Harry think Malfoy was considering the Healer's words, or else had gone away. Instead, he replied in a voice that had chips of ice floating in it. "You called me Mr. Malfoy. That should have been Auror Malfoy."

            "Should it have?" The Healer no longer sounded calm, but smug. Harry had spent a long time distinguishing between the two emotions, since most of the Dark wizards he hunted tried to use both. "I see the robes, but I hear they're giving them to anyone these days."

            Harry closed his eyes. As clearly as if he was there, he could see Malfoy narrowing his eyes and resting his hand on his wand, and then letting his fingers spring away as if burned. That would make him look aggressive in the eyes of anyone who responded to the Healer's call and was prejudiced against him, and in hospital, that was almost everyone.

            Malfoy folded his arms. Harry knew that even though he couldn't hear the creak of one kind of cloth against the other from here. It was the sort of thing he would do, and Harry felt as if he were moving in tune with Malfoy now, a kind of connection that good Aurors were supposed to have with their partners but which Harry had never experienced except once or twice with Ron.

            And with Lionel...

            He paused to chase the thoughts away, and that meant he lost the connection with Malfoy. He couldn't tell, except through common sense, which emotions underlay Malfoy's voice or which expression he would wear as he said, "Please tell Auror Potter that I am here to see him. The information concerns the current case we are working in, which put him in hospital in the first place. I believe that he will rest more easily when he hears what I have to say."

            Note, Harry thought. When Malfoy's angry, he takes the contractions out.

            "I don't see why I should." The Healer was palpably smug now. "Not when you'll probably take the chance to stir up a little trouble among the patients if I let you back there. That's what Malfoys do, isn't it? Especially the Dark Lord's torturers?"

            Malfoy didn't hiss or catch his breath, but the silence after the Healer's words was more profound than if he had. Harry winced in concert with him, and wondered how the Healer had known about that. He hadn't thought it common knowledge among those who didn't have a connection to Voldemort lurking in the back of their heads.

            Harry cleared his throat. His baby-sitter leaned in and tried the benefit of a little extra glare, but Harry shook his head. "I want to see my partner," he said, pitching his voice so that the stupid Healer down the corridor could hear him as well. "It's important not to agitate me, you know. I might start screaming and get some of the more dramatic patients upset if you did that."

            The Healer watching him paled. Harry gave her a nasty smile. He half-wanted to apologize, when the Healer backed away; he knew they were only trying to do their jobs, and Tella wouldn't have moved him here if she hadn't thought he was a danger to himself. But preventing Malfoy from reaching him and sharing important information about Larkin was not on.

            There was an abrupt murmur of voices, and Malfoy appeared in the door of the room. The man behind him was trying to act stern and like he was in control, but he threw one glance at Harry and turned away, hastily scurrying off. Harry snorted.

            "Why do they have you manacled like this?" Malfoy sat down on a chair next to the bed and stared at him. "Did you really try to leave hospital on your own?"

            Harry shrugged. "Larkin sent me another vision. Excuse me for thinking that I needed to get out there and make sure that you were all right, and to get the latest information on the case if possible."

            Malfoy leaned forwards and studied Harry's face from so close that Harry crossed his eyes. Malfoy jerked and pulled back a bit, but he was shaking his head. "Larkin's in prison now. He's going to stay there. He did kill Latham, though."

            Harry jolted. He hadn't known Auror Eric Latham that well, but he had been the one who welcomed them to Socrates Corps and gave them the details they would need to fit in there. "I didn't know," he whispered, and then focused on Malfoy. "Anyway, he won't stay in prison. Get me out of here."

            "Are your feet healed well enough to walk?" Malfoy cast a frowning glance down at the chains around Harry's ankles. "I believe that Healer Tella said it would take you twenty hours to recover from the spell. It hasn't been twenty hours since we arrived here. Seventeen, yes."

            Harry stifled a groan and tried to think, tried to recapture the connection he had felt with Malfoy when the idiot Healer challenged his right to come in here. This had never been an issue that he had to worry about with Ron, who was happy enough to help him sneak out of hospital. He hadn't been together long enough with Hale to worry about it. Lionel...

            Probing the memories was like probing a sore tooth with his tongue, but he did his best. Yes, Lionel would have helped him, and grinned wildly all the time at the daredevil thrill of it.

            Malfoy was different. Harry would have to think of an argument that made sense to him, rather than depending on his sense of fun to handle it. He released a long, slow breath and said, "Seventeen hours is close enough to twenty that it doesn't matter, I should think. And perhaps we can defeat Larkin's visions if we move fast enough. Or maybe they don't always mean what he thinks they mean. After all, he seemed to believe that I was watching my death in those visions he sent me, but you saved me each time."

            "What was the vision you had this time?"

            Shit. Because while Malfoy might not like him, Harry didn't think he was the sort to let the Great Auror Harry Potter sacrifice his life for him. If only because the paperwork that he'd have to deal with, and the nasty publicity, would be enormous.

            "That I'd jump in front of you when he cast a curse at you," Harry said, which was functionally true. "Is it raining today? That was in the vision."

            Malfoy leaned back in the chair and placed his hands flat on his knees. Harry tried to curb his impatience and just watch. What did I say to set off his alarms?

*

            Something was wrong.

            Draco didn't know what, but he had the sense to realize something was. And after years in service to the Aurors, he was wise enough not to ignore his instincts.

            Fighting back the instinctive temptation to think that it was Potter, and something was always wrong with him, Draco focused on the pale, sweating face instead of the bonds that held Potter in place. He could see why Healer Tella had thought she had to imprison Potter for his own good. He looked desperate, and his eyes couldn't meet Draco's for long. They darted off to the sides, as though he believed Larkin would come through the walls and project a vision at him that way.

            He's used to these visions, I thought. He shouldn't feel so off-balance merely because Larkin fed him new ones. Ones where he died. Draco knew what he would feel if he saw, and felt, his own death happening to him, but that was because his mind was unprepared for it. Potter would have more experience, the kind of experience that Draco thought indispensable for dealing with the visions.

            "Explain the vision to me in more detail," he said. "Where were we?"

            Potter's eyes returned to him, with a nervous little flutter that Draco also noticed and distrusted. He's lying. But why?

            Unfortunately, two reasons, ones that might complement each other, occurred to Draco at once. Potter wanted out of hospital, and if he could come up with a vision that would require him to be back and working on the case, at least to all external appearances, he would tell the lie. He also desperately wanted to be right about Larkin's flaw. Perhaps the "vision" he had received didn't exist or said something else, something that gave Potter a reason to doubt its truth. But his pride couldn't take the blow of thinking he was wrong, so he created this instead.

            Draco could feel a slow swelling of disgust from the bottom of his throat. He didn't want to spend time playing nursemaid to someone who neglected his own health, and the truth, in pursuit of being right. Draco had his pride, but he had learned to make it flexible, and if he was wrong, he could admit it.

            "Explain," he said, and saw Potter jump at the snap in his voice. Draco didn't care. He ought to have told the truth from the beginning if he wanted sympathy.

            "I couldn't tell exactly where we were," Potter began. "You were coming around the corner of a building. Larkin was waiting ahead. I didn't see myself in the vision at first, but Larkin cast a curse at you, and I came from the side and jumped between it and you. I didn't see what happened after that, whether Larkin got away or whether you killed him or captured him."

            "Captured, hopefully," Draco murmured, before he remembered that he believed Potter's vision untrue. He shook his head and leaned closer. "You said that the weather was rainy?"

            "Yes," Potter said, and bobbed his head several times as well, as if he believed the single word wouldn't reassure Draco. Of course it wouldn't, not if he's a liar. One thing Draco had learned about chronic liars--partially from his father, and partially from being partnered with two during his training--was that they lived in a state of paranoia, needing constant signs from others that they accepted the lies as truth. "Not entirely, more of a drizzle, but enough that I thought you would slip when you rounded the corner."

            Draco rolled his eyes. "Not enough to go on, Potter. And even if it is, we can wait a few hours for your feet to heal." That was a reasonable compromise, he believed. If there was something to the vision, if it wasn't a mere excuse for Potter to get back into a position of power where he could control how the case went, then he wouldn't mind waiting those few hours.

            Potter bared his teeth. "No, we can't. He could be escaping now. What if someone innocent dies because we waited?"

            Draco shook his head slowly. "You believe that all his visions come true, and yet you can claim that? We can't prevent his killing someone, in that case."

            "I didn't see anyone die, in the vision," Potter said, and his eyes fluttered again. Yes, he's lying. Certainty moved deep in Draco, and the only question now was when he would show that he didn't accept this "vision." "But just because that was true doesn't mean someone else might not die. And the problem is--the problem is, in the past, the visions I saw could sometimes be prevented, if we got there in time to stop the murderer from killing the victim. I think that might be blending with Larkin's gift, because the visions I see from him are so similar. So perhaps we can stop it, if we get there in time."

            Draco shook his head again, and stood up. Potter looked up at him hopefully, then dropped the expression when Draco let the silence go on, let his eyes bore into Potter's face as he said nothing. Potter winced and shifted his weight and looked away.

            "You won't trust me," Draco said. "There are either things about this vision that you're not telling me, or Larkin isn't behind it, or you never had one."

            Potter snapped his teeth at Draco, increasing his resemblance to a chained dog. "If you're going to argue that the visions I had in the office, the visions you saw me have, aren't real--"

            "Not those," Draco said. "Just this."

            "Why, for God's sake?" Potter made his bonds rattle as he leaned forwards. "What would I have to gain by--"

            "Because," Draco said, lowering his voice to a vicious hiss so that the Healers wouldn't hear and come to scold them for disturbing the peace and silence of the ward, "you want to prove me wrong. You want to be the one to have the glory of capturing Larkin, if he does escape. You want--"

            He paused, because Potter had settled back against his pillow and was shaking his head. There was a grim, awful expression on his face, and Draco didn't know what to make of it. Perhaps Potter had gone half-mad from confinement and lack of sleep. His eyes certainly seemed bloodshot.

            "Glory," Potter said. "Yes, of course. My part in the vision couldn't be different. I couldn't need to be there just because I need to be there."

            Draco stared at him, silently willing Potter to meet his eyes and tell him the truth. But Potter kept his head turned away this time, and said nothing no matter how long Draco waited. Draco finally hissed beneath his breath and turned away, disappointed and furious at himself for being so.

            A Patronus came bolting up to him the minute he stepped outside the door of Potter's room, a delicate silvery antelope with long, curving horns that swept over its back. It crashed to a stop when it saw him, reared, pawed the air in front of his face with both hooves, and panted in Warren's voice, "Larkin's escaped. Come to the Socrates office."

            Then it dissolved, and Draco swore and went running, trying to ignore the uncomfortable feeling that prickled up and down his neck.

*

            Harry had heard the Patronus's message. Oddly, a heavy calm descended on him as he listened to Malfoy running away.

            This is it, then. He's not going to help me. I'll just have to do it myself.

            He lifted his chained wrists and closed his eyes. He rarely did this in front of other people, but it could work.

            The magic burst out from within him, uncoordinated, wandless, taking the easiest path to escape. The manacles binding him sizzled and shattered. Harry rolled out of bed, found himself still held by the foot-cuffs, and paused to pick them off. His feet didn't look too bad, and they bore his weight when they hit the floor.

            It would have to do. He had an appointment to keep.

*

            unneeded: Tella is going to be even more frustrated when she finds out what Harry's been doing now.

            As far as whether Harry is right or not? He certainly is.

            polka dot: Not really. She honestly fears Harry will probably die, which is pretty rational considering his track record so far.
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Hero's Funeral