[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Fading in the Sunlight, Harry/Draco, R, 3/4
Part Two.
Part One.
Title: Fading in the Sunlight (3/4)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, mentions of other canon background pairings
Content Notes: Horror, torture, gore, violence, angst, drama, dubious consent
Wordcount: This part 5700
Rating: R
Summary: The day that Draco Malfoy sees Harry Potter fade into the sunlight ahead of him as they’re both leaving the Ministry, his life changes. And the hunt is on to find out what really happened to Harry Potter.
Author’s Notes: This is another one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics for this year, and should have four parts, to be updated over the next few days.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Part Three
Draco straightened his shoulders and cast the spell that he’d been practicing for what felt like years on himself. It had only been two hours in the silence of his bedroom, but his senses strained for the feeling of time tumbling past him like sand grains in an hourglass.
He had decided it wouldn’t do much good to leave a record of his passage through the Ministry, even if it was just impressions of his body and voice in late-night guard spells. So, this charm.
He tossed Floo powder into the fireplace behind the Diagon Alley Apparition point, called “The Ministry for Magic!”, and then touched his wand to his heart. “Per saxum,” he murmured.
The charm immediately made the world around him waver and turn translucent. Draco glanced at the fireplace in front of him and saw glowing lines studded with what looked like stars, or at least bright silver points. He nodded and stepped forwards, blowing through it.
The green fire seemed to clasp around him as if it wanted to hurl and toss him the way ordinary Floo travel would, but there was nothing there. Draco blew out of the fireplace in the Atrium as a wisp of air, and traveled up through the motionless, glowing walls, no longer heavy stone but more like crystal columns. He reached the level of the corridor where the door down to Potter’s prison was, and took a deep breath.
Possibly he hadn’t needed to come here and could have just floated through the walls of the Ministry, but he didn’t know exactly what level the cell was on. Better to use the limited time of the spell as carefully as he could.
Draco oozed through the wall and found the staircase in front of him. At least going down it was easier now than when he’d taken it that afternoon, now that he was flowing like a ghost. He even kept partially within the wall, just in case someone was down here and might mount the staircase or open the door at the top any second.
No one met him. But then Draco met the sparkling barrier over the arched doorway at the bottom that was meant to prevent any passage in or out, and paused to study it.
Would his spell get him through it? The barrier had to be powerful to have contained a wizard as strong as Potter. And if his magic had truly gone feral, as Father had speculated, then it should have ripped its way free long since.
One way to find out.
Draco sighed and drifted through the stone on the left side of the barrier.
Although the wall seemed thicker than usual, tugging at him like mud on his boots, that could have just been the time that had passed since he had cast the charm. Draco was clear of it in a few moments, and floated towards the back of the cell and the illusion that covered it.
It dissipated the moment he was near it, which was slightly unnerving, but possibly it would react to the presence of anyone in the room who wasn’t Potter. Draco decided firmly that he would think of it that way rather than worry about it, and carefully lowered himself until his glowing, transparent boots were on the floor.
The man inside the cell lay huddled in a distant corner. Draco could make out that much with his eyes under the charm, better than he had seen earlier when darkness seemed to fill the space.
Draco willed the charm to end, since he could hardly use his wand in his gaseous state, and abruptly weight returned. Draco swallowed, and knew it wasn’t his imagination that the huddled figure shifted.
“Potter?” Draco whispered.
The man rolled upright and ran straight towards him, shrieking.
Draco flinched, but once again, the bloody hands slammed against the shimmering spell that kept him imprisoned. Potter scratched and snarled, staring at him, his lips open and the red cavern of his mouth showing.
Draco forgot himself. “Oh, Harry,” he whispered.
The figure stopped and stared at him. Then he shook his tangled hair and nudged his face forwards until his nose was against the shine of the barrier, perhaps only a few centimeters away from Draco’s. Draco stared at the green eyes and saw something flicker in the back of them.
“Malfoy.”
The voice was low and deep and rasping, but it was a word. Draco swallowed and nodded, and said, “Yes. I-I didn’t know you were here. How can I get you out?”
He’s not mad! sang his own voice in the back of Draco’s mind. He’s not mad!
But then Draco reined in his expectations. It was entirely possible that Potter was mad but capable of speaking complete sentences. Draco ought to know what that looked like, after having had Bellatrix stare into his mind for months.
“You,” Potter said, and his nails scratched and ranged up and down, but he didn’t look away from Draco and didn’t look as if he was falling back into his wild mood from before. “Mesh your magic with mine.”
Draco blinked, and his hopes in favor of a more coherent Potter got deeper. “All right. But how? The barrier is in the way.”
Potter smiled.
The tidal wave of magic that came crashing towards Draco seemed to have actual roaring foam on top of it, and Draco gasped as he got caught in the very edge of it. It flowed around his ankles, around his shoulders, hissed like cold water in his ears, and then withdrew.
Draco blinked when it retreated and glanced at the barrier. That had been impressive, but he’d already known that Potter was powerful, and-
A crack stretched across the barrier’s surface.
Draco found himself gaping at it. Then he shut his mouth, swallowed, and stared again.
No, it was actually there, a shape like a white pentagram floating in space, sketched in the middle of the barrier’s rippling curtain. Draco snapped his head up and stared at Potter.
“Reach through the pentagram with your magic,” Potter whispered, leaning towards him, and his eyes flared again with madness. “You can do it. You can reach me if you try.”
And that was enough to make Draco reach out, his mind full of the Ministry’s secret prison and the debt he owed Potter and the years that they had been draining the man’s magic. And perhaps some thoughts of how little appreciation he had received as an Auror and how he wanted to get some more.
Perhaps.
The white pentagram flared as Draco fed his magic through it, and then it reached out and yanked. Draco gasped, his head falling back. His body froze, or he knew he would have collapsed.
But he might not have noticed if his body had fallen to the floor after all. Instead, all his attention channeled straight through the conduit flowing through the pentagram, and the stone around him turned to water. His perspective swung crazily, and then he was behind the barrier with Potter, staring through it with Potter’s eyes, and his hands were bloodied and his body swayed with the force of his magic-
And the magic was the only thing that was real.
It surged around him, rising up, a cold wave. It rose higher and higher, and the barrier couldn’t stand before it and neither could the stone of the walls. Things broke, with a high soundless vibration, as if they were all wineglasses.
But he was not.
Harry laughed, and the echo of his own name in his head was enough to tear Draco free from the melding. He snapped back into his own body, shuddering as he backed away from the no-longer-existing barrier. The whole room was filled with the whirl and the roar and the headlong drowning sensation that Draco suspected was what he would feel if he was capable of keeping his feet in the middle of a tsunami.
Potter caught his hand before he could back away too far, giving Draco a mad smile as brilliant as broken glass. “You rescued me,” Potter said, in a voice like a gravel pit. “I’ll remember it. You are safe, no matter what happens.”
“What-what are you going to do?” Draco breathed.
“Harm them.”
The stark words made Draco shudder, but he still didn’t look away. He didn’t know if he could. “Who?”
“Everyone responsible for this. I only know some of their names. But I’ll recognize their power.” Potter leaned closer to him, and Draco found himself staring into the gaps between Potter’s broken teeth, at his red and bleeding gums. In some ways, they were more horrible than the glaring eyes. “They fed on my magic.”
“What?” Draco was dizzy, breathless, sick.
“They used my magic to create the fake me. But they did more than that. They harnessed my magic to run machines of their own and fill potions with it. They ate it.” Potter’s hand tightened until pain flared up Draco’s arm from his imprisoned fingers. “As if they were vampires. But vampires would be more humane than they were. They will suffer. Then they’ll die.”
Draco swallowed, understanding for the first time what he’d unleashed. On the other hand, he truly believed there had been no other option if he wanted to live with his conscience.
Or stop the life-debt from making his spine itch.
He put out a restraining hand as Potter turned towards the secret staircase that led down from the top of the Ministry, although he knew he would have as much chance of actually restraining Potter as a child would have of stopping a volcano. “Wait.”
“Wait for what, Malfoy? I’m free. They’ll suffer.”
“And then die, I know,” Draco snapped, and froze as he watched the dark green, radiant, actually rippling eyes turn to him.
Unexpectedly, Potter laughed, and his gums trembled for a moment as if new teeth were working their way through, but he didn’t explode in some terrifying display of magic. He settled back with one elbow against the wall, glowing with power. “Fine, Malfoy. Wait for what? I’ve almost missed you mocking me, you know.”
Draco blinked, unnerved by the order of those sentences, but reasoned his way through. “If they muster up the full night of the Ministry against you-and they will, to protect this secret-then you’ll die. Is that what you want?”
“I’m dying anyway,” Potter said simply. “They fed on my magic to the point that it’ll turn on me next, without the constant draining. I might as well take them with me before I go.”
“No-”
“You don’t have a lot of say about how I take my vengeance, Malfoy.”
“I didn’t mean no to that part. I meant that you-can’t be dying.”
It was one of the strangest things that had happened to Draco in the last few days, the way that Potter’s eyes softened with something like compassion. “I don’t like it, either, but that’s what happens. They were stabilizing me, in a way, by constantly taking from me. And I know I sound sane right now, but don’t be mistaken. I’m mad, and dying. The only thing I’ll have a chance to do is take them with me.”
“If-if you could have a chance at a revenge greater than that? Something that would get you remembered as someone other than a person who just went mad one day and leveled half the Ministry? Would you take it?”
Potter shrugged in a sinuous way that made Draco realize shadows were drifting around his elbows, as if he was fading like the doppelganger they had made from his magic. Draco quickly snapped his eyes back to Potter’s face. “If I could, sure. But I told you, I’ll be lucky to last even a little longer than this.”
Draco swallowed heavily and laid a hand on Potter’s arm. For a moment, the flesh did give way beneath his touch, and then it bounced back up as if he was touching a cushion. Potter watched him with a sardonic expression, maybe for his gulp.
“There are rituals that could stabilize you.”
“What kind?”
Pleased that Potter hadn’t immediately accused him of wanting to sacrifice unicorns or something like that, Draco held his gaze. “Sex rituals.”
Potter raised his eyebrows and said, “I don’t think my body is stable enough for that, either.”
“If-if we go to a highly magical place, like the grounds of Malfoy Manor and use the circle of standing stones that some of my ancestors used and we were both willing…” Draco crossed his arms over his chest as his brain caught up with his words. Was he really going to do this just to save a man who most people didn’t even know was dying?
Yes. I am.
And Draco could pretend that it was all down to the raking of the life-debt’s claws down his back and that he didn’t want to lose the power to fulfill that debt forever with Potter’s death, but in the privacy of his head, he didn’t have to lie.
He met Potter’s eyes, the shifting ribbons of sanity and bloody-mindedness shifting back and forth there, and then Potter nodded. Even that motion had a shadow it shouldn’t have had. “All right. But if you try to put me in the dungeons again, I’ll dissolve you.”
Draco had no doubt that Potter both meant it and was being literal. He nodded hastily. “I wouldn’t do that to you. Come on.”
And quietly, they went back up the secret staircase, Potter’s magic washing back and forth around them, and destroying every trap or barrier that might have held them in place. Draco’s only relief, whenever Potter glanced at him with those moon-mad eyes, was that the Ministry could hardly announce that Harry Potter had broken out of their secret prison where they were draining him of magic.
But they can report him missing when the doppelganger fades…
Draco shuddered, and climbed faster.
*
“Are you going to show me to your parents?”
Draco snorted and glanced over his shoulder. He was crouched in the ring of standing stones not far from the Manor, his hand steady as he traced his wand in the rune-shapes he needed. “No. They tried to persuade me not to rescue you. To give them some credit, they thought you were irredeemably mad.”
“How did you find me?”
“The doppelganger that they made from you faded right in front of me. It must have been at the end of the time when-” Draco bit his tongue and concentrated on the rune that was taking shape in the light of the Lumos Charm hovering as a separate ball of light in front of him. He couldn’t afford to mess up the shape.
“Near the end of the time when the magic powering it ran out.”
Draco finished the rune and glanced back at Potter again. Potter was leaning against one of the stones. The shadows that flickered around him had grown worse, to the point that his torso and part of his legs seemed to be covered with a drifting veil. His eyes and partially toothless mouth still shone above that, though. “You don’t mind discussing it?”
“Why would I? I’m going to kill them all.”
Draco paused, then nodded. His mind had already worked on that a bit. It would be easier for no one to miss Gawain Robards, who besides being retired was a notorious misanthrope. But Jared Skeeter would be much harder to make vanish, and Draco knew nothing about the Hit Wizards who had accompanied them, or anyone else who might have-
Fed on Potter’s magic. Make yourself think it, Draco. Face it.
“All right. But you know that you should probably have a better plan than just kill everyone, right?”
“Isn’t that where you come in?”
Draco frowned as he moved to another part of the circle to create a spiral of runes at the base of the next stone. “What do you mean?”
“You’re the cunning Slytherin. Plan something.”
“All right.” Draco kept his voice level with an effort. He had planned on being part of Potter’s vengeance effort if he could, after all. He just hadn’t known that Potter would welcome him once the sex ritual was performed and his magic stabilized.
It made something that wasn’t exactly warmth rise up in him as he realized that Potter would welcome his participation. But “warmth” would do as a name for it.
Draco stood when he finished the last rune and took a deep breath. He turned to face Potter. “All right. The runes are done. I’m going to power them with my magic because I’m the Malfoy here and you’re-going to be involved in a different magical effort deeply enough as it is. How do you want to do this?”
“The ritual has requirements, I thought.”
Potter’s head was lowered, and his eyes gleamed as if they were those of a beast lurking beside a fire. Draco reminded himself that this particular beast didn’t want to hurt him, and held Potter’s gaze. “It does. But I don’t know what kind of sex you’ve had with men in the past or what trauma you might have as a result of being imprisoned.”
Potter’s eyes widened for a moment. Then he snorted. “You probably remember that I was dating a man when they-” He glanced away for a moment.
Draco didn’t mention that it had taken his mother to inform him of that. “I know. And I prefer men. We do need full penetration for this, but I thought I’d let you choose the position and anything else required.”
“You don’t have preferences?”
“I haven’t had so much sex in the last few years that I could afford to turn up my nose at anything, Potter.”
Potter paused for a long moment. Then he pushed away from the stone he was leaning against and glided across the circle towards Draco. Draco swallowed while feeling his desire rise. He tried not to move or show that, having no idea how it would make Potter react.
Potter gripped his shoulders and leaned close to whisper into Draco’s ear. His hands, at least, were as solid as the stones of the circle.
“I don’t want you to do something against your will. I will never do anything like that to anyone again who isn’t one of my enemies. Do you understand?”
Draco nodded, overwhelmed by Potter’s closeness, and the heat beating from his body as if he was a bonfire, and the feeling of his magic rearing up again like another tsunami, except a hot one this time. He nodded a second time when he realized that Potter was still staring at him as if he hadn’t seen the first one.
“Good.” Potter stepped away from Draco. “I would prefer to top you. I can’t stand to be held down.” He started to take off his clothes, although they were such rags that it amounted more to tearing them off.
Draco licked his lips in anticipation and turned to face the runes in the circle even as he began to remove his own robes. The runes lit the instant they felt his intention, and a dome of silver light rose to encircle the standing stones. Draco was just glad that this ritual wasn’t classified as Dark Arts, or he would have been unable to complete it due to the oath that he’d sworn to the false Potter.
Although…would that oath hold if he had sworn it to a doppelganger?
Draco shook his head. He would think on it later. He didn’t have to wield any Dark Arts to use the circle to stabilize Potter’s magic. The will they both brought it to and the energy they would generate because of their fucking would make it powerful enough.
When he was naked, he cast the charms that would soften the earth a little; while the runes would take care of most of the discomforts or distractions that could prevent a successful sex ritual from happening, there was no reason to strain them. Draco turned to face Potter, and caught his breath a little.
Naked, Potter still had the shadows drifting around him, and there were ropy scars circling his torso that suggested either the wild magic could leave a mark or that his captors hadn’t always taken their toll on his power alone. But he was all corded and shining, alive and pale, and blazing with strength.
Potter glanced away. “You don’t have to stare,” he said, his voice as bitter as oil.
“I can’t admire a survivor?”
Draco winced the minute the words were out of his mouth. They would probably sound mocking no matter what, and he didn’t want someone with an unstable mind and magic to turn on him. But Potter huffed out a blast of air and turned back to face him.
“You must know that you’re beautiful.”
“It’s still pleasant to hear.” Draco stepped up to Potter and extended his hands. Potter eyed him until Draco said, “You need to clasp them and draw me closer. Our chests need to touch.”
Potter nodded slowly and did it, also slowly. Draco thought he understood when his chest touched Potter’s, which was as soft and cold as drifting snow, as if it was breaking apart underneath his touch.
Draco still stepped forwards, until they were pushed together from shoulders to groin, and heard one of the runes link to another behind him. He stood there until the others did the same thing, and a golden dome of light like an upended cup rose between the sanding stones, curving nearly high enough to meet the silver one overhead.
“Come with me,” he whispered, and started to pull Potter backwards.
Potter stopped him with fingers on Draco’s shoulder that felt too thin. Draco looked at him, and Potter leaned in and, clumsily, slowly, kissed him.
Draco sighed in pleasure and leaned forwards until he was almost swaying from his feet. Despite the missing teeth and the bloodied gums and everything else that had made it hard to look at Potter when he rescued him from the cell, this was still warm and pressing and from someone who wanted him.
Even if that person wanted his strength and his magic to continue to survive…Draco didn’t really care. He continued to pull and tug, and Potter stumbled slowly after him, biting his lip, eyes wide and anxious.
Anxious was better than mad, as far as Draco was concerned. He smiled and glanced over his shoulder once to make sure that the runes had done everything they were supposed to. Yes. The grass and dirt between the standing stones had turned into an enormous, pillowy mattress.
“I’ll lie back, and you can straddle me,” he whispered. “All right?”
“Lubrication.” Potter said the word uncertainly, his eyes flickering between Draco and the domes of light above and beneath them.
“The circle will provide it. It’ll do everything we need it to.”
“Why?”
“Because we come to it willingly, and seeking strength,” Draco whispered. He didn’t think it a good idea just then to mention that there were other circles on the grounds that could be used for rape and sacrifice, or for seducing an enemy and coaxing weakness into their magic. Those were his ancestors’ faults, and he would be making up for them now if anything could. He swallowed. “Do you?”
Potter hesitated, but since he seemed to be thinking it through, Draco didn’t panic, just waited for him. And finally, Potter nodded, his mouth curving into a ghost of a smile.
“Yes.”
He crossed the edge of the golden dome, stepping over it as over the rim of a bathtub even though there was no need for that, and joined Draco.
*
Draco had known, in theory, how this ritual would work. His father had brought him here when he turned seventeen and instructed him in it. The memories stood out in Draco’s mind in crystalline perfection, even as terrified as he’d been that year with the Dark Lord living in the Manor, because they were meant to. The circle itself would stamp the memories into a Malfoy heir’s mind to ensure that they were passed down.
But he was unprepared for the swell of power that scooped him up and held him, floating, in the air for a moment, like the warm counterpart of the cold one that he’d felt coming from Potter’s cell.
Potter screamed, a sudden, haunting sound, and Draco turned to him in panic. But Potter was only staring at his body, and Draco watched as the drifting shadows were peeled away like a cloak and flung over the rim of the golden dome, out of the circle of stones.
Potter closed his eyes, and tears made their way down his cheeks. He wept without a sound.
Draco politely averted his eyes, and smiled as he felt the slickness of some sort of oil trickle down his cleft and legs. He flexed his arse a little, and yes, his muscles had relaxed. He felt as if someone had spent half an hour lovingly, patiently playing with him.
He felt a stab of regret that he would never have that with Potter, but needs must. At least he would have this.
He held out his hand. “Harry James Potter,” he said, “will you join with me?”
Potter stared at him with eyes that were still wild, but saner. “Yes,” he said, and walked over to Draco, although he paused halfway there to stare down at his cock. Draco knew he must have felt it becoming slick.
Draco lay back, and the mattress that the grass had transformed into rose to meet his back, cradling him. He hardly made a dent in it. He spread his legs and sighed, lifting his arse. A pillow-like projection formed under it at once.
Potter laughed, and put a hand across his mouth as if the sound had come from outside of him. Then he knelt down in front of Draco. He put a hand on his hip. Draco met his eyes steadily, and Potter blinked, and another pair of tears slid down his cheeks.
“Am I real?” Potter whispered. “Are you?”
“Yes,” Draco said. “And yes.”
Potter bent over his body and kissed him desperately, fervently, as if Draco’s words were the permission he’d needed to do so. Then he reared back, placed both his hands on Draco’s hips, and slid into him as Draco lifted his arse to make the angle a little easier for the both of them. The warmth and the fullness made Draco close his eyes.
But he opened them almost instantly, because Potter had made a soft noise of distress, and because, for his own selfish reasons, Draco didn’t want to lose a moment when he could be making love with Harry Potter.
Harry-Draco could call him that, if he liked, even if it had to be in the privacy of his own head-shivered and began to thrust. The golden magic crawled the rest of the way up the standing stones, reaching the silver dome that hovered above them, and they looked as if they were cradled in two halves of a giant egg.
“I don’t think I can be-gentle.” Harry forced the words between his clenched and missing teeth.
“You don’t need to be. This circle is going to ensure that we don’t get hurt.” Draco laid his hands out above his head, but then reached over to squeeze Harry’s clenched forearm. “Do what you need to do.”
Harry swallowed once, and then nodded and began to thrust so hard that Draco knew he would undoubtedly have been in pain outside the ritual. But they were within it, and he felt only heat and pleasure.
He closed his eyes and bathed in it, feeling his magic flowing away from him in glittering streams to touch the runes of the circle. But the streams glittered only on the insides of his eyelids; when he fluttered his eyes open to look, he saw nothing. He was glad for that. It might have reminded Harry too much of what it had looked like when his enemies had harvested wild magic from him.
Then the pleasure burst in him like Fiendfyre, and Draco forgot to keep track of the progress of the ritual. He was on the mattress beneath Harry, now and then managing to touch his arm or another piece of sweat-soaked skin, but mostly reveling in the sensations that Harry’s fucking was sending through him.
And he was holding Harry’s eyes, always, because Harry was keeping his neck crooked in the same position, with an effort that looked painful, his gaze fierce and demanding and locked on Draco’s.
It was the best sex he had ever had. Draco didn’t know how much of that was the ritual and how much was the circle and how much was Harry, but he didn’t have to know.
He had to keep looking, and he had to lift his arse now and then to push himself back and get a little more impaled on Harry’s cock, and he had to watch the play of silver and golden light over Harry’s body, the dance of it like lightning in his eyes.
It went on longer than Draco could have thought it would, bearing them up and up on a cascading sea. Then Harry jerked forwards, bit his lip, and finally lost eye contact with Draco as he came, violently.
Draco found himself following. It was unexpected enough that he let out a cry. The ritual had compelled it, he knew.
And the energy seized from both of them, their willingness and their pleasure, crackled into the runes and made them flare like comets crashing to earth. Draco did manage to turn his head and watch the runes lift off the ground, streaking across the sky like falling stars-
Or rising stars, given that they blasted through the silver dome cradling the circle of standing stones from above and soared up beyond that, to form another circle in the sky, perfectly positioned relative to the standing stones and the places on the ground they had come from. They glittered, once, a huge pulsing of light.
Then they fell down and slammed into Harry as he crouched over Draco, panting.
The runes branded themselves into Harry’s chest and back and scars and forehead. Harry screamed, and for a second, it was the same agonized sound that he had uttered when the light of the ritual space peeled the shadows from him and drove him back into a solid body.
Draco gritted his teeth and endured it. He knew what was coming.
And it did. In seconds, Harry’s cry of pain changed into one of exultation. Draco looked back at him with a smile, and watched as his skin smoked and healed, his chest glowed and grew fuller, his magic throbbed and settled into his skin as if it was a beloved pet coming home, and a few of his teeth grew back in.
It wasn’t a full healing. That would take potions and time. But Harry was staring at his hands and trembling, and Draco knew he was closer to the sanity that he needed to function than he had been in months.
Perhaps years?
Draco gave a quick shake of his head. He couldn’t think of that, or he would rise straight off this mattress when the ritual ended and go hunt down Harry’s enemies for himself.
Harry caught his eye and smiled. It wasn’t the same smile that Draco had sometimes seen on his face when he laughed with his friends at Hogwarts. For one thing, there were still the missing teeth and red gums. For another, there were shadows in his eyes that Draco suspected would always be there, no matter how potions he took and how many years he spent healing. Some things, magic couldn’t cure.
But he was no longer the mad thing that Draco had helped to escape the cell. He was a vengeful thing as he rose from his knees and the mattress dissipated beneath them, lowering them gently back to the grass. Draco wriggled his arse, and Harry withdrew carefully. Draco reached out and rolled a small stone that was pressing right into the small of his back away.
“Are you all right?”
Harry’s gaze was so intense that Draco felt as if he could see by it, even as the golden and silver domes crackled out of existence and left only his little floating Lumos Charm as their light. He nodded and said, “I told you, the ritual provided everything we needed so as to make it not hurt.”
“I’m not talking about that.”
Draco stared into Harry’s eyes and took a long moment to speak, so that Harry would know Draco was treating his question with the seriousness it deserved. “I am,” Draco said finally. “But I would very much like to help you kill your enemies. As long as it doesn’t involve Dark Arts. I swore an oath to-well, the doppelganger of you that I wouldn’t practice them anymore.”
Harry lifted his hands. Silver knives formed at the edges of his fingers, and he swept his hands down, hard, over Draco, to embed in the grass on either side of his body.
Draco gasped, on the edge of a shriek. The knives hadn’t touched him, but they had torn something away from him, something like an invisible caul that had been covering him and which he’d ceased to notice.
“There,” Harry said softly. “That oath is broken. You can use them if you want.”
Draco licked his lips. “Then it would be my honor to hunt beside you.”
Harry gave him a smile that Draco sincerely hoped would be the last one Robards and Skeeter and the others saw before they died.
“You’ll be welcome.”
Part Four.