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Rejoicing In Their Strength	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9780 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter; that belongs to J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fic.

Chapter List
- 1
- 2
Title: Rejoicing
in Their Strength

Disclaimer: J. K.
Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun
and not profit.

Rating: R

Warnings: Torture,
violence, profanity, insanity, character death (not Harry or Draco), creature!fic (werewolf!Harry).
Takes place after DH but ignores the epilogue.

Pairing: Harry/Draco

Summary: Lucius
went mad after the war, and he has killed Narcissa and confined Draco to Malfoy
Manor while he does magical experiments on him. Draco escapes at times by
astral travel. During one of his journeys, he is astonished to find Harry
Potter, who vanished after the war, living in the Forest of Dean.

Author�s Notes: This
fic is rather graphic in its descriptions of the torture that Lucius inflicts
on Draco. Tread with caution. It will probably be six or seven parts long.

Rejoicing in Their
Strength

�� Draco. How
are you?�

�� Draco
closed his eyes and took a deep breath. It was always worst when his father
began the torture by talking to him pleasantly. It would be better if he could
wear out that initial politeness and let the madness emerge. He lay motionless,
as if asleep, and listened to his father padding nearer, his bare feet soft on
the flagstones of the underground lab.

�� Oh, Draco.� Lucius�s voice was soft with sorrow, which was
worse still. �Do you think you can escape? You can�t. I have to cure you, and
I�ll do that no matter how much you scream, because it�s my responsibility as
your father to heal you.�

�� Worst of all. Draco decided that he might as well
meet his fate head-on, and sat up and turned sideways on the raised �bed� that
Lucius confined him to whenever he wanted Draco to stay in the lab. A cage of
blue light surrounded the bed, one that Draco could
have done something about it if he had his wand. Of course, Lucius had seized
that long ago, and he always kept Draco naked, so even if the cage did someday
miraculously disappear, Draco wouldn�t get very far.

�� Not in any conventional way, at least.

�� Lucius
examined him approvingly, and then nodded. �Much better, I think. The sores
have cleared up, haven�t they?�

�� The �sores�
were welts left from the last whipping Lucius had inflicted on him. Draco
swallowed. �Yes, sir, they have,� he whispered.

�� Lucius
stepped through the blue light as if it wasn�t there and laid a caressing hand
on Draco�s shoulder. �You don�t need to say �sir� to me,� he said, eyes clear
and concerned. �I�m your beloved father. There should be no formality between
us.�

�� Draco
nodded, gaze on the ground. Of course, if he forgot to say �sir� and addressed
Lucius by name, then the whippings and the �treatments� were worse. But Lucius
never remembered that during the moments before the thickest madness descended.

�� Good!�
Lucius stepped back and clapped his hands. �I think we�ll try the salt
treatment today. That one seems to be most effective.�

�� Then I�ll definitely have to go away, Draco
thought, and closed his eyes as his father raised his wand and began to chant
the spell that would turn Draco�s blood to salt in his legs. It hurt like
nothing else (except some of the other cruel �treatments� Lucius had thought
up) and Draco simply couldn�t stay in his body and bear it.

�� It wasn�t
that he didn�t want to fight. But without a wand, and against
a wizard of Lucius�s power and insane determination�against the man who
had killed his mother�it was impossible.

�� When he
heard the first syllables of the spell echoing off the stone walls, Draco
snapped his spirit out of his body and went.

*

�� Draco opened
his eyes to find himself hovering in a dark purple mist lit by small silver
sunbursts, which resolved into five-pointed stars if he looked at them closely
enough. He could feel nothing, which wasn�t a surprise. His �body� here was a
wispy thing, formed out of spirit and fog, so transparent the stars could
easily shine through it. But he could see and hear, and that was enough for
him.

�� He didn�t
know if this place in between the house where his body lay and his destinations
was real or not. He wasn�t entirely sure that the visions he saw when he
�traveled� were real. But that didn�t matter, as long as they took him away
from Lucius.

�� It�s not as though I�ll ever get to use my
information to threaten anyone or earn freedom, he thought sardonically.
He�d tried, in the days when he thought he might still be able to get access to
Floo powder or an owl. Lucius had cast a spell that Draco recognized in
retaliation, one that would cut off his fingers if he went near either one
again.

�� Though isn�t that counterproductive, that
you fight to keep your body whole when dying would mean you were free?

�� Draco shook
his head. He had long since stopped questioning most of the decisions he made.
He thought he was going mad himself, but there was so little he could do to
help that that he ignored the sensation and went ahead.

�� Into the future. Seeking some possibility
of escape.

�� That�s what brought you here, Draco
reminded himself, and then turned his gaze towards the transparent dark blue
floor beneath him. He wanted to go somewhere green tonight, somewhere wild,
where freedom still sang in the open and walked beneath the branches. It hardly
mattered where his magic took him. No one had ever shown the ability to see
him. Otherwise, Draco would have used this
method to seek out help.

�� As always,
once he had pictured a likely destination in his mind, the magic that drove him
this far reached out and chose a place. A cord suddenly snapped taut between
Draco and that place, and his �body� hurtled down through the misty floor like
a diving hawk.

�� Draco rushed
into green light, and golden. He blinked in surprise. He hadn�t realized Lucius
was torturing him during daylight. Of course, it was rather easy to lose track
of time in a dungeon.

�� All around
him, tall trees reached arched branches to the sky. The grass and moss
underneath were littered with only occasional briars or weeds; Draco thought
the trees had blocked the sunlight from reaching the forest floor. Drifts of
autumn leaves from last year, now mostly black, were more common.

�� And right
in front of him was a tall young woman with long tawny hair, walking along a
sandy trail with a swinging stride.

�� Draco
thought of leaving again, and the simple action made the forest grow mistier around
him. He had wanted a completely uninhabited place. The presence of this woman
suggested it wasn�t.

�� One thing
made him stay and look more closely at the woman, though. She had sticks
tangled into and woven through her hair. Why would anyone, even someone camping
in the woods, bear that instead of stopping to pick them out?

�� The longer
he looked�his spirit automatically flashed through the woods after the woman as
she moved on�the more oddities he saw. Her feet were bare. Dirt was worked in
under her fingernails, most of which were broken. A series of white scars
crisscrossed her left forearm, resembling bites.

�� Probably she�s just a Muggle runaway, Draco
silently argued with himself. Or someone camping who
hasn�t had the chance to bathe yet. There�s no reason for me to stay.

�� He could at
least look in on her destination, though. That might prove entertaining. Draco
was continually amused, now that he had the leisure to examine them, about the
sorts of hardships that Muggles put themselves
through. He hadn�t had the chance to see the way they scrambled in the wild.

�� The woman
rounded a corner in the trail and came out into the middle of a wide glade.
Draco blinked and glanced around. The only way he might have seen this clearing
was from above; it was well-hidden by a thick wall of trees that drew back
abruptly to reveal the open space of grass. In fact, he thought the abruptness
unnatural. Someone had cut those branches that might have projected beyond the
wall.

�� Celia!�

�� Draco turned
around�though as quickly as the magic made him move, it was more like
reappearing facing another way. He saw three other people jogging out of the
clearing to meet the woman. There were no tents, Draco saw. He blinked and
stared harder, wondering what sort of crazy Muggles he�d stumbled on.

�� Then he
realized there were faint, misty shapes in the air, which suggested houses
covered with a Disillusionment Charm. He�d stumbled onto wizards.

�� Why would wizards be living in the middle of
a forest, and looking like that?

�� The woman,
whose name seemed to be Celia, laughed and held out her arms to the first
person who came to meet her. He was a young man with dark hair and brilliant
blue eyes, and he waved a wand that removed the dirt and the twigs and the
grass stains efficiently from Celia. The bite scars stayed, Draco noticed; they
must have belonged to a much older wound.

�� How was
it?� asked the man, grinning.

�� Harder
than I thought it would be,� Celia admitted, and turned so that his wand could
wave over the twigs clinging to her hair. �For one thing, whatever our exalted
leader says, it�s not natural to go a
week without a bath.�

�� The man
rolled his eyes, while the tall woman behind him, who had streaks of grey in
her hair and bright black eyes, laughed. �He says that it�s necessary to
�embrace our lupine nature� and �learn to control ourselves when the change
comes,�� she said, altering her voice to a timbre that Draco almost recognized.
�Of course, he would. He�s been more successful than any of us at it.� She
brushed her hair away from her neck, and Draco saw the same sorts of white
scars there that decorated Celia�s arm.

�� That, combined with her comment about �lupine nature,� made
Draco shiver. They�re a werewolf pack.
They must be.

�� He thought
about willing himself away from there. On the other hand, none of them could
see him, either; he was standing right beside Celia, and no one had said
anything yet. And they could hardly hurt him when his body was immaterial and
any bite would go through him. Besides, Draco didn�t think it was the full moon
yet.

�� And he was
interested, more interested than he had been in anything in a long time.

�� You�re
always agreeing with him, Leila.� Celia looked at her from beneath a strand of
hair as the man charmed the last of the twigs out of it. �I find it tiresome.�

�� At least
I�m here to argue with him,� said the third person, who had been standing
behind the man and whom Draco had failed to pay much attention to until now.
She was another woman, though small and slim enough she might have passed for a
teenage boy from a distance. Her hair was red like a Weasley�s, but she had no
freckles. Draco was relieved. There was only so much of an assault that his eyes
could stand. �So you can give thanks for that.�

�� Maybe she
shouldn�t,� the man murmured idly, though the tension in his shoulders as he
stepped back from Celia told Draco it wasn�t idle at all. �How many people have
you nearly eaten now?�

�� The small
woman moved forwards, bristling. Her red hair seemed to stand on end, and she
was actually showing her teeth. The man fell into a defensive crouch, his wand
weaving back and forth in front of him. Celia looked torn between amused and
alarmed. Leila folded her arms and rolled her eyes.

�� Enough.�
The authoritative voice spoke from a house that Draco thought stood farther
away from the others, though he hadn�t paid much attention to those
arrangements yet, enthralled as he was with watching the people. �Josh, you
should know better than to tease Hyacinth. Her wolf is stronger than the rest
of ours, that�s all.�

�� Except
yours,� said Josh, looking grateful for an excuse to put his wand away.
Hyacinth relaxed and let her lips drop back over her teeth.

�� The harder the struggle, the worthier the victory.� The
voice sounded as if it were quoting something.

�� Draco
turned around, finally, to look at the man who could make angry werewolves calm
down, and found himself staring at Harry Potter.

�� Potter
leaned against the invisible house behind him, one heel cocked to rest on the
wall, his arms folded like Leila�s, his green eyes wary and brilliant at the
same time. There was no doubt it was him; the shaggy hair still slid apart to
show the lightning bolt scar on his forehead. But he had changed, and Draco
didn�t think the slightly ragged clothing or the scarred bite visible on his
right shoulder were the biggest parts of it.

�� He carried
an aura of power with him now. Draco
couldn�t feel anything in his spiritual state, and yet this reached out to him
and crackled around him the way it seemed to crackle around Potter�s fellow
werewolves. It was a soothing lightning, if such a thing existed. It threatened
greater strength than any Draco could command and promised protection. If he
would only yield, then he could lean on that strength and be comforted and
sheltered for the rest of his life.

�� It was so
long since Draco had felt anything like it that he found himself staring,
enchanted.

�� Potter
looked past his pack, and his eyes abruptly fastened on Draco. He started
forwards with an exclamation, his hand stretched out. �Malfoy?�

�� Draco
panicked. No one was supposed to be able to see him when he was traveling like
this. He had been in more than one situation where it would be dangerous to be
discovered, but this would be the most dangerous of all.

�� The other
werewolves were swinging around to look at him now, their confused voices
making a chorus that haunted Draco. If someone discovered what had happened to
him�if they mocked him because he hadn�t been strong enough to escape from
Lucius�

�� He leaped
without thinking, and snapped back into his body. At once the burning along his
veins twined around him like loops of strangling rope, and he screamed.

�� A better
reaction than I�ve had for some time,� Lucius said, sounding pleased. His hand
stroked down Draco�s back and pressed firmly in the middle of his spine, as if
he thought that he could urge further cries out of him that way. �Yes. Do scream, Draco. A purging of pain is
necessary to rid you of the disease, and, alas, the only way to purge pain is
to suffer it.�

�� It was too
much. He hadn�t been braced to endure the agony, since he hadn�t felt anything
until this very moment. Draco buried his head in his arms and wept, while
Lucius stroked his back and his hair and murmured soothing nonsense words.

�� His father�s
wand was always ready with a Rennervate whenever
Draco passed out.

*

�� Later, when
he was lying in the soft bed that Lucius sometimes gave him after he had
tortured him and wincing as lingering jolts of shock and pain ran through his
muscles, Draco found his mind returning to what he had seen of Potter�s little
werewolf pack.

�� It was impossible that Potter could have seen
him simply because he was a werewolf. The others hadn�t been able to, if their
yelps of confusion were any indication. And Draco had been around people before
in his spiritual travels, though not by choice, including people who had known
him much more intimately than Potter. None of them had betrayed the slightest
awareness of his presence.

�� If they had, Draco thought, curling up
into a position that left his head buried in his arms but his legs stretched
out, then I wouldn�t have spent so much
time cooped up in this house with a madman.

�� His heart
leaped with wonder then, and he paused and swallowed, wondering if he dared
reveal his situation to Potter and ask for help�

�� But he
rejected the notion in the next instant. Potter had made it all too clear
during their schooldays that he would love to see pain inflicted on Draco of
exactly the kind that Lucius was inflicting. He had even done it himself with
the Sectumsempra Curse. Why would he
spare any effort to rescue Draco now?

�� Draco
wanted the pain to end, but if it had to continue, then he would prefer to deal
with it himself. He didn�t want the memory of mockery to ring in his ears.

�� And the
pain would never end.

�� Despair
rose above him and came down as a great black crashing wave, burying him
fathoms deep in silence and darkness.

*

�� Your mind doesn�t make any sense.

�� It didn�t make any sense for him to have
returned to the forest to observe Potter�s little werewolf camp, Draco
acknowledged to himself. He had every reason to stay far away. Fear of mockery,
fear of what else Potter might be able to do to him if he could see Draco, fear
of encountering savagery and bloodlust instead of the peace he needed to see on
these journeys, fear of Potter enlisting other people who might able to sense
him�because if one could, maybe others could�in the hunt for Draco�

�� All of them boil down to fear.

�� Draco
shrugged. It had been months since his existence had consisted of anything
else.

He wondered for a moment if he was
going mad, because this was the most irrational thing he had done since Lucius
had imprisoned him. But he rejected the thought, shouted at it and broke it
over his knee. Lucius had encouraged Draco to distrust his own perceptions from
the first day he tortured him, told him that he was sick and shouldn�t fight
the pain because it was meant to help him. He hadn�t forced Draco down that
road so far. Draco would not travel it on his own.

So he stood behind the trees,
because if Potter could see his spirit form there was at least no indication
that he could see Draco through solid objects, and watched the werewolf pack
going about their day.

Josh, the only man in the pack
besides Potter, was practicing what seemed to be meditation, crouching on a
woven grass mat with his eyes closed and breathing slowly. Celia, the woman
Draco had followed through the forest the other day, was reading a book which
she moved her lips over; Draco had sneaked as close as he dared, but still
couldn�t see the title. Leila, who apparently agreed with everything Potter said�as if he could make a home in the wilderness
without at least one of his little sycophants around�hummed under her
breath as she brewed a potion that had the smell and consistency of Wolfbane. An impromptu lab had been set up under the trees
at the very edge of the clearing, and Draco, after watching Leila for a time,
had to admit she was clever in substituting some forest-given ingredients for
rarer ones she was obviously missing.

Potter sat in the shade of a
flowering bush not far from one of the disgusted houses and talked softly to
the woman named Hyacinth.

�� Draco
sneered at that at first. Of course everyone
else in the pack would be busy and devoted to their tasks, while Potter did
what he could to avoid work. And Hyacinth didn�t look as if she particularly
welcomed the conversation. She stared over Potter�s head into the forest, her
eyes slitted and her breath moving in rasping huffs
over her bared teeth. Potter was probably just talking to hear the sound of his
own voice.

�� But when he
had spent a few hours watching them, Draco noticed something else. Another half-hour, and he had to admit it existed, against all his
inclinations and all his prior knowledge of Potter.

�� Hyacinth
had started out with her teeth bared and her expression uninterested. But
slowly, she uncoiled and turned her head towards Potter like a sunflower
tracking the sun. By now she was lying with her hands folded underneath her
chin like a wolf with its head on its paws and watching him with a dull wonder.
Before, Draco would have said that she was on the verge of snapping and running
like the wild thing she was into the trees; now she seemed calmer and more
human.

�� Celia
regularly glanced up from her book at Potter. Josh turned in his meditation so
that he could face him. Leila would finish a stage of the Wolfsbane, shake her
head, take a satisfied breath, and then look so that she could catch a glimpse
of him over her shoulder.

�� Potter was
the center of his little pack�s existence, as thoroughly as the sun was the center
of the solar system.

�� Draco
curled his lip. He laughed�under his breath, because he wasn�t sure how much of
his speech Potter could hear. He pictured Potter lounging under the adoration
of the pack like a spoiled prince, every now and then showing his scar so that
he could produce excited little squeals.

�� But the
effort to make himself despise Potter for ruling the
lives of his companions didn�t work, because Draco could feel the effect of
that strength.

�� His father
had taught him to worship power, and however much Draco rejected the later
manifestations of that attitude, he remembered it as
something comforting in childhood. If one of his friends injured him or argued
with him, he could rest secure in the knowledge that his father would do something
about it. Lucius was a man others cowered before. Draco remembered several
times standing tall and proud at his side and seeing someone else slink away
with lowered eyes.

�� It wasn�t
comfortable to have that same strength wielding a whip over you or causing
fungus to grow through your skin, of course. But when you could lean on it,
shelter within it�

�� And
Potter�s strength was a palpable aura around him, and his packmates
obviously reveled in it.

�� Finally,
Potter stood, with Hyacinth lying at his feet and drowsing in the sunlight.
Josh and Celia turned around immediately. Leila took a bit longer, involved as
she was in the potion, but she finally glanced up, and then whipped around as
if she�d committed some offense in not responding to Potter at once.

�� Potter
nodded and started speaking. His eyes moved constantly from face to face, but
that didn�t give Draco an impression of nervousness; instead, he seemed to be
checking for any sign that his people didn�t understand his words. Draco
stirred unhappily. That was the kind of leader he�d thought the Dark Lord was,
once. It still hurt to remember how wrong he�d been.

�� Enough of pain. Enough of fear.
I�m here to observe something that doesn�t concern me and forget for a little
while. So Draco did his best to pay attention to Potter�s words. They were
loud enough, God knew. Potter hadn�t lost his liking for making speeches.

�� Tomorrow�s
the full moon. We�ll have the potion, but remember:
this isn�t about subduing the wolf.
If we wrestle with it, it�s angry and becomes harder to control later, and
we�re condemning ourselves to a life of needless guilt, because it can�t be banished completely. I knew
someone whose entire life was a misery because he decided that he was a
monster, even when he didn�t hurt people, simply because the wolf existed.�
Potter�s eyes grew distant for a moment.

�� Lupin, Draco thought, remembering the
scruffy Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. Yes, he looked like someone who hated his
life and probably felt needlessly guilty.

�� It isn�t
about giving in to the wolf, either,� Potter continued, apparently because his
daily quota of looking Pale and Stern and Noble hadn�t been fulfilled yet. �The
ones who do that become true monsters, like Fenrir Greyback.� His right hand
made an aborted little movement that rendered Draco dead certain Greyback had
been the cause of Potter�s own bite. �No, we have to pursue the middle course,
and be both human and wolf at once. That�s the reason I�ve had you living �wild�
in the forest, the way that some of you have complained about.� He looked
directly at Celia.

�� It�s the
living without a bath that I object
to,� Celia muttered, pushing strands of tawny hair away from her face and
frowning at Potter.

�� Potter smiled.
�I know it takes some time to get used to,� he said. �But the last time I
transformed, I did it with the potion in my body and my mind calmed and soothed
by having listened to some of the
wolf�s impulses. It�s a delicate balancing act, but it�s the kind we have to
perform if we don�t want to lose our minds.�

�� I don�t
want to lose mine,� Hyacinth said,
lifting her head and shaking herself off as if she�d been immersed in water. �I
just don�t believe that this is going to work. And if I don�t believe it will
work, then it won�t.� Her voice was full of gloomy satisfaction.

�� Potter
dropped to a crouch in front of her and tucked his hands under her chin. �Don�t
give up,� he whispered. His voice was low, but intense enough that the hair on the
back of Draco�s neck stood up. �And it�s not a simple matter of belief.
Nothing�s simple anymore, now that we�ve got the wolves inside us. If you
fight�and I know you�re a fighter, Hyacinth�then you can achieve that balance.�

�� The pack
became still, staring at Potter, who seemed to be sending out invisible ripples
of confidence. Draco sneered. To be that
dependent on one person would make me ill.

�� But he
could see the temptation of it. If there was someone who was
counseling him to hold on to his sanity while Lucius tortured him, because
someday he would come and pull Draco out of the Manor�

�� Draco
shredded the fantasy. Start thinking like that and he would go mad whether he
wanted to or not.

�� Potter
stood up when Hyacinth lowered her head and glanced from one member of the pack
to another. He acted as if he could see each of their souls when he looked into
their eyes. Draco knew he really couldn�t, but he had to admit, grudgingly,
that it was a good act.

�� We are
going to dance with our wolves,� Potter said. �And we are going to lead the dance, not stumble hopelessly
through it.�

�� Everyone
nodded as if hypnotized. Draco snorted.

�� Potter
immediately took a step forwards, his head cocked. Draco froze again, but it wasn�t
enough, because Potter gave a single deep sniff and then said, in a voice that
had descended several levels, �Malfoy, why don�t you come out of hiding? I know
you�re there.�

�� Terrified,
Draco snapped himself back to his body again. At least what Lucius was doing to
him was an evil he understood.
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Rejoicing In Their Strength