Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 5
- 6
- 7
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Six--What Follows

            The Healers weren't prepared for Harry to come blasting out like a dragon from a cave; that was plain from the way they scrambled. Harry lowered his head, aware that there was blood on his teeth from biting his tongue the way he had, and charged straight ahead, calling for his wand in his mind.

            He heard a fierce rattle and the wand flew out from a door off to the side of one corridor, settling into his hand with a slap just as the first barrier sprang up in front of him. It was a flexible net of crawling light, meant to bounce the prisoners from the Janus Thickey ward back into the ward without harming them. Harry dropped to one knee and rolled under the net before it could reach all the way to the floor, not something that most of the insane people he'd been imprisoned with would probably think of. He was up on the other side and continuing his run probably before most of the Healers realized that their trap had failed.

            He heard a few shouts, and then the corridor went strangely quiet. Harry knew what that meant. He'd once been in St. Mungo's when someone else--a criminal he was guarding as he went through medical treatment, in fact--had tried to escape, and the hospital administrators had told him to stand down and let their defenses handle it. They'd worked well, too.

            The end of the corridor glowed. Shimmering, transparent dragons that could have been Patronuses shot towards him, although they were made of violet light rather than silver. One of them bowed its head and belched fire at him. Harry knew that it would itch if it made contact, so much so that he would become preoccupied with scratching instead of escaping.

            That didn't matter. He made it not matter. He ducked his head again and murmured a short spell that he had learned when he was on the Gina Hendricks case; the creature he'd chased there, the one who killed Lionel, had once taken the form of a dragon. "Aconitum draconis."

            The shield that sprang into being around him was a dull, tarnished silver, flickering up with sluggish light to touch the dragon's breath. The fire vanished, and a moment later, when the claws of the flying dragons brushed through the aura, they shrieked in tinny voices. The aura extended upwards in a sudden surge, and they vanished into tiny, rippling motes of light.



            Someone swore and ducked out of sight, along with the rest of the crowd who'd been watching to see him caught and punished. Harry smiled grimly and leaped a stool that one of them had left in the center of the corridor, pounding down a flight of stairs and towards the door. The Dragonsbane Charm had been developed originally to try and drive back males in the rut and females protecting their eggs so fiercely that they couldn't be healed by Dragon-Keepers, but it had all sorts of uses for the person who wanted to apply it creatively.

            He was nearly there when another defense came together in front of him. This one looked like a mirage of a pool in the desert, swimming with the same pale blue and green and gold. Harry didn't recognize the spell immediately and therefore didn't know what it would do, but he knew he was dead--or Malfoy was--if he slowed down. He cast a quick charm around his head that would protect his face and let him keep on breathing, and bulled through.

            The mirage immediately closed down around him, and Harry realized that he was in the middle of a dense, bright fog. He could see nothing, and when he turned, it looked as if the fog extended for miles behind him, too. They could watch him wander in circles until they captured him.

            Not on my partner's life.

            He crossed his arms in front of him and snapped, "Lux aeterna!"

            The light that sprang out from his wand was as hot and brilliant as the desert sun that would have helped cause this illusion, if it was real. Crossing his arms meant it was held at enough of a distance from him that he wasn't immediately burned or blinded. Eyes half-shut, Harry held it up and waved it around.

            The fog of the illusion spell hissed and cleared, burned away. Harry sped on, and the entrance was in front of him, and he leaped through it and was gone.

            He had half-hoped that he might catch up with Malfoy before he Apparated, but he was glad now he hadn't. This way, the bastard couldn't tie him up and send him back into hospital. This way, Harry stood a chance of making a real difference.

            He ducked into an alley, took ten seconds to remove the protective charm on his face and cast a Disillusionment Charm instead, and then Apparated to the nearest Ministry entrance.

*

            "This is the situation as it stands."

            Warren was a better organizer and a more efficient Auror than Draco would have been inclined to expect, given the red hair. She had already pulled together a chart that showed the sequence of steps Larkin had taken to break out of his cell, and the people he had killed on the way. Beneath that were projections about where he was expected to run, plans for clearing people out of those places, and a series of questions that needed answers about how they could confront him.

            According to the chart, Larkin had waited until the height of noon, when the human guards at a distance from his cell were changing and the Dementors were weak from the sunlight. Then he had sent a vision to a shaken woman who had reported only that she had seen her death, a wall falling on her and potentially crushing her to death--the death she was most frightened of--if she didn't go at once to his cell and unlock it. Larkin had walked through the Dementors without seeming to notice them. Perhaps he wouldn't, was Warren's speculation, if he used magic based on fear; it would make him akin to the Dementors in some strange way, and probably leave him less vulnerable if the creatures were searching him for happy memories.

            As he went, he had used Dark spells that turned the hands of the Aurors trying to pursue him into poisonous spiders, or turned their whole bodies into glass statues that Larkin then tipped over and shattered, or suffocated them with clear membranes that wrapped around their faces. For no reason. Because.

            Yes, he is a twisted, Draco thought. Only someone twisted, driven mad by the magic he used, would be able to kill that casually.

            Draco flexed one hand as he listened to Warren speak. The Dark Mark on his left arm stretched with the skin, made it rough and made it hard, and would be visible to anyone the instant he pulled his sleeve back. There was a reason that he wore formal robes all the time, and let others think it was because he was simply a Malfoy with the proper respect for tradition.

            One could use Dark magic and still escape with sanity and morals intact. But one had to respect that power. The spells would twist on the practitioner easily, speaking to his deepest desires, calling more into the world than he meant to be there. And banishing the results of a Dark spell wasn't as simple as speaking the right countercurse.

            Draco had heard people like him, people who knew the Dark Arts but hadn't fallen to their seductions, called tarnished, shadowed, darkened, almost anything but the proper term: cautious.

            He was different from Larkin. He would face him and kill him, though, because he was the only one in the Socrates Corps who understood that mindset from the inside.

            What about Potter?

            Draco felt his mouth curl up. Potter was still safely in hospital where he belonged, and by the time he came out, Draco would have his first Socrates killing under his belt and the greater respect of the Corps.

            "This is the way we will move," Warren said, and then cast a spell that left a sparking halo of blue-green energy in the air. Draco blinked. It sent a rippling sensation through him at the same time, like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. To look at her, he wouldn't have thought Warren capable of that kind of spellwork. Impressive. "We mark each other with this spell. It's a variant on a common Calming Charm used for Healing. Larkin won't be able to imitate it."

            Draco narrowed his eyes for a moment, wondering why--the spell was delicate, but not beyond someone of Larkin's power--and then felt himself flush. Because twisted can't use Healing magic. That's why. Perhaps he didn't know everything there was to know about the inner workings of Socrates Corps and hunting the twisted after all.

            Warren, oblivious to his discomfort, continued. "We take no chances. We will destroy Larkin. He's already killed Latham and landed Potter in hospital." She darted no suspicious sidelong glance at Draco, which also impressed him. Then again, there were only the three of them left out of Socrates's full strength of five, her and Draco and her partner Jenkins. "No chance of capturing him this time. Kill." She looked at Draco, and now there was a tinge of pallor to her face.

            Draco lifted his head. "I will aim at him, and not you," he said. Here it was, the distrust he had expected despite four years of steady work in Lucretius Corps and an impeccable record during his three years of training. "I know how important it is that we kill him before he can harm someone else."

            "That's not what she means," Jenkins broke in, leaning forwards. "What she means is that you seemed so relieved when you thought we could capture him. We don't know how often you've killed before. Will you be ruthless enough?"

            Oh. Draco let out a small, soundless breath. He thought, as he did so often, of Dumbledore and that night on the Tower.

            "I killed in the Sussex Necromancer case," he said. "Yes, I can."

            Warren inclined her head, and went on, without a further question. Draco stared at both of them, and Jenkins winked.

            Warmth squirmed to life in his belly. Perhaps this will not be the sentence I assumed it was.

*

            Harry leaned back against the wall outside the Socrates office and retracted the Extendable Ear that he'd sent crawling along the floor until he could hear the plans Malfoy and the rest were making. He watched his hands as they folded up the Ear and tucked it back into place among his possessions, expecting them to shake, but they didn't.

            I can work with that.

            He would stay out of the way as much as possible, though if he saw the chance to trip Larkin up or herd him towards the rest, he would take it. And he would wait for the moment when he had to...when Larkin cast the curse, and he would prevent someone else from dying the way Lionel had died.

            He'd seen the clouds swirling into place on his way into the Ministry under his thickest Disillusionment Charm, not enough to occlude the sun completely but enough to change its light to a thin greyness. And the rain had begun to fall, gentle and warm enough to create a faint moisture on his cloak hood.

            Today was the day of the vision.

            It won't be long now, Lionel. And then I can finally apologize to you for not doing what I should have done in the first place, and asking for another partner when I realized that you didn't feel the same.

*

            They appeared in a small alley off Diagon, close to where Larkin had been sighted, mopping rain from their faces. Warren began to cast the refreshing charm that would surround them with blue-green light. Draco watched the street and tried not to think about the rain.

            It's coincidence, what Potter told me. That's all.

            Warren finished casting the charm and stepped back, eyeing both Jenkins and Draco as if she wanted to make sure they were paying attention. Draco knew that her eyes lingered longer on him, and he made sure that he stared back with the same ferocity until she gave an acknowledging blink and turned away from him, facing back into the rain.

            "There are ways that we can draw him to us," she said quietly. "I've decided that this is the best way." She crouched down and took what looked like a handful of crushed rose petals from her pocket, casting them in a circle on the stone in front of them.

            Draco backed a step away before he could stop himself. Warren glanced up at him. "Is there a problem, Auror Malfoy?"

            Draco clipped off the shake of his head. "No, Auror." His left arm hurt and jerked under his cloak, but he hid that by folding his arms and glancing down the alley as though to make sure that he could guard them from a crazed attack by Larkin. His neck still ached with the shock, though.

            How many people know that the Aurors in Socrates Corps are using a summoning spell that began life as a Dark ritual?

            Warren finished scattering the rose petals and closed her eyes. For a moment, her fingers traveled back and forth on the stone in front of her, inside the circle, and then she intoned three deep Latin words that made Draco's spine vibrate. "Accio, frango, revelo."

            Draco grimaced. That first word had made almost everyone think that this was just some version of the Summoning Charm; he'd read it described that way in several books. The real grimoires, such as the ones in his parents' library, said that spells like this one used the innocent first word to hide their real purpose.

            "Summon, break, reveal" weren't an innocent combination if one knew Latin and thought deeply enough about it.

            Warren broke the circle with a tap of her fingers that crushed one rose petal, and something insubstantial and milky rose from the stone with a swirl and arrowed away, aiming in a southwest direction. Warren rose to her feet with a faint smile. "It won't be long until he's here," she said. "I've already warned the Ministry to tell shops to shut down and clear the Alley of any curious onlookers."

            Which was more than Draco had known she was going to do. He ground his teeth and told himself silently that he would learn more about how the Socrates Corps operated and what the relative standing of other people inside it was. As soon as this case was done. He wasn't fool enough to dispute what Warren was doing when two people had died so far and more might.

            "Now," Warren said, when a bright red glow came from what looked like less than a mile away. She and Jenkins moved out in perfectly balanced wholeness. Jenkins was wearing her scary smile.

            Draco jogged along behind them, trying not to feel left-behind and useless. He didn't have a partner at the moment...

            Which doesn't mean you need one. Particularly when Potter wouldn't have survived the trap Larkin left behind in his cell without your spellwork.

            He drew his wand and concentrated on the bobbing blue-green auras in front of him. He didn't want to get separated from Warren and Jenkins, identifying auras or not. They were the ones who had hunted and killed twisted before he had, and Draco intended to watch and learn.

            Then the air filled with cloudy, billowing forms. Draco dived under the nearest one and came up to one knee, staring. They looked like ghosts with sharper edges than normal, like the ones that certain witnesses to Larkin's first escape claimed to have seen taking him out of the cell--

            But the one Draco faced looked like Latham.

            He understood after a moment, and wished he hadn't. He can summon and control the ghosts of his victims. That's what these are.

            Latham faced Draco, barring his further entrance into the Alley. Draco edged to the side, and the ghost didn't move, just watched him. Draco took some confidence that he wouldn't actually attack, and leaped past him, aiming for the spot he had last seen Warren and Jenkins.

            Latham spread, that was the only word, extending the space he filled, and Draco was filled and surrounded by the fog--

            And the pain in his chest, the pain, the fear as he realized that they'd never known what Larkin's flaw was or how to counter it, the storm of faces of the people he was leaving behind, the pain, the end--

            Draco came out of the vision, which could only be a vision of Latham's death, writhing on the ground and screaming in a thin, high-pitched way that embarrassed him. His fingers hurt with the way that he had clutched at his own chest, and he sat up, breathing hard enough to embarrass himself. He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to make his chest move.

            He had felt a heart attack. But that had been Latham's death, and Draco was still alive, and if Larkin thought that would delay him for more than a few moments, he should think again. Draco reached out to splay his palms on the stone and begin to rock himself to his feet.

            Latham's ghost swept over him again, and the same thing happened, the distance in his ears, the pain in his chest, the way that he could feel his heart give a great bound and then stop, the faces--

            Draco came back to himself this time curled up around his heart and behind a Shield Charm that he must have cast instinctively, a reflex learned during his Auror training. He sat up and spat, weakly. He was shaking.

            There was no reason Larkin couldn't keep giving him that vision, again and again, until he died of the shock and the pain. It had been no less intense the second time.

            Draco lifted his wand and held it as a barrier between him and the ghost. He knew a spell that would work, but he would have to do it quickly. The ghost was already coming around for another sweep, and he doubted that he would get back on his feet after this one, at least not without help.

            Warren and Jenkins were ahead of him. They wouldn't see him, wouldn't know, if he used a Dark spell to banish the ghosts, the way he should have at the beginning.

            But before Draco could speak the spell, someone shouted it from behind him, the exact one he was thinking of using, the pronunciation perfect and a blast of power in it that made Draco's hair stand up on the nape of his neck. "Abigo effigam!"

            The air around him turned the color of a stomcloud, and the sky seemed to crack at the same moment, as a jagged purple bolt like reverse lightning twisted up from the ground and embraced Latham's ghost. He struggled for a second, his features coming into clearer alignment as his eyes widened and his mouth opened--

            The ghost whirled down to a silver pinpoint in the mouth of the lightning, and was gone. Draco crouched there, panting, as the stormcloud faded and the rainy, grey light came back again. He stared over his shoulder, and saw nothing but the shut doors of shops and the barrels and crates on the street from the ones offering special displays of their wares that he had already noted.

            "Potter?" he whispered.

            No response.

            And I don't have time to hang about and look for him, Draco realized as he heard the shouts from ahead. If the ghosts were still attacking Warren and Jenkins, then at least he knew how to banish them now. He shoved himself to his feet and began to run.

*

            There are advantages to being good at Disillusionment Charms, Harry thought, smiling to himself as he leaped over a barrel and shot after Malfoy. He was a good runner, and Harry, still wincing in pain sometimes as he hobbled on his chewed feet, was hard-pressed to keep up with him. But as long as he had Malfoy in sight when they reached the corner of the building from his vision, then he thought it would be all right. He would see the building soon. He would recognize it.

            The vision was coming true.

            There was a certain peace in giving yourself over to death, Harry decided as he splashed through a shallow puddle. He had felt that way a few times on the Gina Hendricks case, when the creature had cornered him and he had thought it would kill him, before Lionel came up and blasted it aside. When he had slaughtered it for the crime of killing Lionel, he hadn't felt the same way; there had been the blaze of righteousness inside him, the endless tunnel of light that he thought he might fall down, but not until he had avenged his partner.

            Not now. The memory filled his chest with brewing anger and threw off his stride. Malfoy had dodged between the edges of two crates up ahead and was closing in on Warren and Jenkins. Harry followed him, wondering if they would also be part of the vision. That flying glimpse hadn't included them one way or another. They might be side-tracked, sent off somewhere on a mad chase by Larkin--

            Malfoy roared the spell that banished the ghosts, and he did it better than Harry. Harry spent a moment admiring the way that his hair framed his face and blew back from it as he did that--

            No thinking like that.

            Then Harry snorted to himself. Exactly who would he hurt thinking like that? He was going to die in a few minutes, and no one would ever know his thoughts, unless there was an afterlife after all. Then he could laugh about them with his parents and Lionel, and Malfoy would still never know. Harry couldn't imagine they would associate in the same places even in death.

            This was a temporary aberration, their partnership, which fate had taken it on itself to resolve.

            But it would last long enough for Harry to save Malfoy's life.

            Then Malfoy whipped away from Warren and Jenkins and took off. Harry, straining his eyes, saw it too: the trailing edge of a cloak that whipped around the corner of a building.

            Madam Malkin's.

            Harry followed Malfoy with a laugh in his heart. Yes, this was the appropriate place for it to end for both of them, where it all began.

            Malfoy rounded the corner. Harry cast a Feather-Gliding Charm and sprang onto a barrel and then down on the other side of Malfoy, his cloak spreading out like wings to enable him to get slightly ahead.

            He could see Larkin, waiting, while at the mad angle he was taking, Malfoy couldn't. Harry nodded. There was light in him after all. Better to die doing something he loved than in some of the cold and lonely ways he'd pictured to himself after he lost Lionel.

            Larkin opened his mouth to laugh. Malfoy rounded the corner. Larkin lifted and aimed his wand.

            Harry dropped the charms that kept him invisible and leaped between.

            He felt the pain eating him, saw Malfoy's mouth, open in shock, and Larkin's, open in laughter--

            And then the pain really was the whole world. Harry closed his eyes, and thought of Lionel, and surrendered.

*

            unneeded: Harry is lying because he fears that Draco would try to stop him otherwise and the vision would go off in an unexpected direction.

            Draco still doesn't really know Harry, remember, and so he falls back on old memories whenever it seems as though there's something happening that he can't explain.

            Minue: Draco's not entirely immune, since Larkin had Latham's ghost attack him. But Larkin was concentrating on the one he thought was a threat, and that was Harry.

            SP777: Well, I do plan a longer series out of this! And he did make his feelings clear to Lionel, and Lionel didn't share them.
- 5
- 6
- 7
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Hero's Funeral