Part 7 of 'Viper'
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Perhaps Harry didn’t intend to think about what had changed in the bond between them. But as Draco climbed, in the intense silence that Harry seemed to prefer, and because it took much longer to climb the distance than it had taken them to fall, he thought of little else.
He was, mainly, full of wonder. The bond had acted in a way that he never thought it could, and that was a clearer signal than any simple attraction that Harry was his Long-Desired. It had surmounted the problem Draco had considered most intractable: the fact that he could not give pleasure. Pleasure was so much of what held Lucy and the Collector together, evidently, that Draco had begun to despair.
But now…
Now, I am willing to follow my instincts. If my instincts tell me to do something counter-productive, then it might still be good if I do it after careful consideration. I’ll ask more often for Harry to let me bite him. He’ll rationalize the choice however he likes, but he’ll do it, and slowly he’ll come to crave that pleasure and to like the bite for its own sake and not because of the power that it gives him.
The power.
Draco licked his fangs. He could feel the magic sizzling through him like a tame lightning bolt, crackling up and down inside his muscles. He didn’t know yet what he wanted to do with it; one image dissolved almost as soon as it began, giving the magic nowhere to travel. But he would know when they began to fight the Collector.
They were near the top now; Draco could tell by the silently surging power that battered him like waves near the seashore, which he’d noticed when the Collector sent them through the portal into wizardspace. To get out, they would need to use a small amount of the magic that spread through his body. Finite doses, Draco reminded himself. And you need to consult with Harry, or he’s likely to resist when he feels you dragging on his magic.
“Harry,” he said gently, trying to imagine the tone that his girlfriend would have used to console him after a hard Auror case.
Harry’s arms started to tighten around his neck, and then stopped. Draco approved. Even in the midst of the sulks, Harry remembered that it was impossible for a human with merely mortal strength to strangle a vampire, who could contort his muscles into protective postures. “What, Malfoy?” he asked.
“There’s a gate here we need to open,” Draco said. “We can’t do it without using up all the magic that I have access to right now. So I’ll need to know what you know about portals, and their weak points.”
He paused so that Harry could appreciate what he hadn’t said: that Harry would have to give him more magic with more blood.
Harry did nothing but breathe for long, silent moments. Draco continued to wait. His internal sense of time told him it was about three in the morning, and that he still had a few hours before the sun rose. He was confident he was more patient than Harry.
“Gates usually have a weak point on the left or right side,” Harry whispered at last. Draco had the sense that he was trying to keep all emotion out of his voice-foolish when Draco could smell him and knew that he was worried and hated himself for the way he’d responded. “I don’t know which side it’s more likely to be on, and it’s small. I can’t tell you anything more than that.”
Draco nodded and looked up in the direction of the waves. “I’ll spread the magic as a detecting mist across the gate,” he said. “Then I’ll tell it to coalesce into a ball and shine when it finds a weak point.”
Harry shifted, the sharp smell of incredulity entering his scent before he spoke again, his voice as willfully blank as before. “There’s no spell like that, Malfoy.”
“The good thing about the magic shared between vampire and wizard,” Draco said, matching his tone, “is that it’s only limited by the imagination. Of course, a wizard’s imagination could be confined to traditional spells. Mine isn’t, in part because of the life I’ve led since you saw me last.”
“It’s not life,” Harry muttered, but he kept quiet as Draco released the magic above them and told it what he wanted.
The magic spread invisible tendrils that Draco could feel in much the same way he would have felt a wind blowing through his hair. Draco half-closed his eyes and did his best to force them to be ready and adjust to light. He didn’t want to be blinded when the spell began to shine.
A moment later, it did, concentrated on the left side of the gate. Draco clucked his tongue against his fangs in appreciation, and suffered a momentary urge to use the magic to blast the gate open. After all, there was more blood where what he drank came from, and the Collector was more likely to be overwhelmed by a powerful-
Draco shook his head and smiled wryly. Harry would say that I couldn’t change my nature. I still want to impress. And if impressing my Long-Desired would assist me in courting him, maybe I’d even try. But he’s more likely to be suspicious if I do something spectacular, because then he’ll think I had strength I was keeping back.
“All right,” he whispered, and turned his head in the golden glow to look at Harry. “I have the weak point. Do you want to strike it?”
Harry stared at him in silence, his jaw set and his expression so hostile that Draco would have been offended two nights ago. But now he stared calmly back, because he understood Harry too well. Harry was disgusted by his body’s betrayal, as he saw it, and that outweighed anything a vampire could do to him.
Finally, Harry gave his head a tense little nod and unwound one arm from Draco’s neck to hold a hand towards the gate. Draco held back the words that he wanted to say: that Harry was still limited by conventional spellcasting and could have used the magic without the gesture. Instead, he focused on Harry’s weight and the erratic sound of his heart. The mere closeness of his Long-Desired could lull him into a trance, and of course he could not let that continue for long minutes, but it was relaxing if he permitted himself a moment of it.
Harry muttered something under his breath that Draco didn’t try to hear, and the gate shuddered above them and then broke like a piece of rotten cloth, letting down starlight that seemed pale against the shine of the magic-
And then the Collector’s hand struck through the opening and seized Harry’s hair, hauling him upwards. Draco didn’t have the time or the chance to think before he followed, lithe as a krait.
*
Harry let himself lie limp and coiled as the Collector hauled him around like a sack of potatoes. He probably couldn’t lie to her with his scent, but he pushed his fear to the forefront of his mind.
She wasn’t in the pit. She won’t know that I’m afraid of Draco and myself, not her. And she’s arrogant enough to assume that every emotion I feel must have some reference to her.
“So wonderful,” the Collector cooed near his ear. If he hadn’t been listening hard for every sound in the room, Harry wouldn’t have heard Draco’s growl. He probably doesn’t like someone else’s fangs so near his source of food, Harry thought sarcastically. “You survived. I will know how that happened. Perhaps you are unique after all, and deserve to become part of a collection, though not a collection of vampire hunters.”
She thrust him into the air above her head. Harry held himself limp still, though it was harder when he thought she might fling him into something. But instead, a cold link of chain slithered over his wrist.
No! They had little chance against the Collector, but a smaller one still if he allowed her to imprison him.
Without even thinking, he shoved out violently against her grip, and scolded himself for a fool in the next moment. Of course he wouldn’t be able to break a vampire’s hold-
And then her hands vanished, and Harry rolled on the floor, no more hurt by that than he had been by their landing on the kraits. He understood as he scrambled to his feet and called for his wand. He must have used some of the magic that flowed between him and Malfoy to cushion himself.
Damn it! We meant to use that for something else. And if I’ve already wielded most of it, then-
Then I need to use another of my body-based weapons, that’s all. Harry had no intention of letting Malfoy bite him for the rest of eternity.
“Better and better,” said the Collector, stalking towards him. Her eyes were bright enough to look like pieces of stars detached and shoved into her head. Harry backed up, not daring to take his gaze off her, but wondering where Lucy was. He hadn’t had the chance to look around the room, either. “Not only have you managed to survive my kraits, but you have managed to renew the bond with one another. Or else would you have that strength? I think not.” In the middle of her words, she suddenly shot out an arm, which lengthened as it grew towards Harry. Her nails curved into shining claws, and Harry could see with perfect clarity the damage she intended to inflict on him in his mind.
He had no intention of letting that happen, of course. He took a neat step forwards and murmured the command word for another weapon.
His skin shimmered and then parted painlessly in several places. Out came glittering spikes that matched the Collector’s fingernails in length and glassiness. And they were better weapons in at least one way. Harry smiled serenely at her and waited.
The Collector tried to retract her arm, but it suddenly vibrated and shot forwards instead. The spikes had been enchanted to act like magnets with vampire flesh only.
Harry laughed as he whirled; it was more effective to catch her hand between several spikes than simply to impale it. The Collector shrieked as her fingers shredded off and flew in different directions. The claws, still momentarily under her control after coming loose, tried to scramble towards Harry’s throat, but he whispered a second word, and the spikes rose higher and bristled more sharply. The claws ripped apart.
The Collector’s eyes, if anything, grew brighter. “I shall have to keep you,” she said. “And there is no better fate to inflict on you than to turn you.” She tapped one of her remaining fingers on the other hand against her lips. “Now, I wonder, what is the source of your antipathy to vampires?”
Harry snarled in spite of himself, and the Collector nodded. “I thought so,” she murmured. “It was one incident. Vampires destroyed someone you love? That is the case with most hunters. Few become our enemies by chance, and fewer still by choice.”
She desecrates Ginny’s memory simply by mentioning her. Harry moved a few steps forwards, calling out for his wand in his mind, trying to think of what the most painful spell would be for destroying the Collector-
And then he realized again that he had forgotten how smart this pair was, as Lucy stepped in front of him and said clearly, “Legilimens inter nos.”
*
Draco snarled as he watched the spikes pass through Harry’s body. Was there ever going to be any end to the surprises about his Long-Desired?
But he tore his gaze away from Harry and leaped to a higher position on the ceiling when Lucy passed in front of him. For the moment, both the Collector and her Long-Desired were focused on Harry, as the “unique” one. That left a bit of time open for Draco to use the magic that he’d gained from Harry on them.
If he had enough magic left after Harry’s stunt. It pulsed in him like the blood of an anemic patient.
Think, think. He had only a short time to do something small and powerful, and he could think of nothing. He found it hard to do anything but listen as Harry’s breathing became rapid and his heartbeat ragged when Lucy cast her spell.
A heartbeat. I wonder if the magic is strong enough to influence Lucy’s heart? It would be easier if she were older, or if I knew that she had some weakness there already, but-
And then a thin tendril of mist curled away from Harry’s head and began to form an image in the air between Lucy and Harry, and Draco found himself as caught as Harry seemed to be, because visible in the mist was a flash of red hair.
It was Harry’s She-Weasel, and she was laughing as she ran across a green field, glancing over her shoulder and calling Harry’s name. Harry tore after her, so young that Draco’s breath caught.
But no, he couldn’t be that much younger than he was now, if the angles of his face and the brightness of his eyes were so similar to the ones he now possessed. It was more that he was innocent. The Harry who delighted in killing vampires, who had told Draco in a thick voice that he would take pleasure in hurting him, didn’t yet exist.
But I think I’m about to watch the moment when he came into existence. It was dusk in the memory, red fingers of sunlight sprawling across the green grass. Draco knew he could be up and abroad at that time if he tried hard enough, and he knew that the She-Weasel had died at the fangs of one of his kind.
Harry yelled something that was lost in the wind of his running; Draco didn’t think this memory was as clear as the moment when it had happened, or as it would have been if Lucy had used Legilimency on Harry to keep the memory between them. The She-Weasel came to a stop, rolled her eyes, and darted into a thicket of briars. Draco winced in spite of himself. That would be a perfect hiding place for a vampire to rest during the day, the plants thick enough to hold off sun and rain alike, and he could imagine-
Then the She-Weasel shrieked, and there was no need to imagine any longer.
Harry’s face changed so abruptly that Draco would have staggered if he were still mortal. He yelled, “Ginny?” and stepped forwards.
And out came the vampire, a strong, powerful, pale master vampire, cradling Harry’s Ginny in the crook of his arm. His fangs were already fastened in her throat, in her jugular vein, Draco judged expertly, in the position vampires used when they wanted to drain and so turn. Ginny was moaning, her head fallen back to give him full access, her face slack with pleasure.
Harry yelled and fumbled for his wand. The vampire grinned at him and turned lazily back in the direction of the briar patch, tearing sideways with his head. Too much skin of Ginny’s throat parted, leaving a gaping wound. Draco shook his head. Even if Harry had somehow managed to rescue her from the vampire right then, she wouldn’t have survived. The wound was too wide, and the blood spilled down the front of her blue dress as if she were a slaughtered pig.
Draco licked his fangs in reflexive hunger, but he had never admired butchers. It was in his heritage; Caspar and Thalia had both been delicate, careful drinkers.
Harry was screaming now, his voice so tattered it was once again impossible to tell what he was saying. He cast a fire spell; the vampire moved easily aside. And then he sighed and gave a long final suck, and dropped Ginny Weasley’s unmoving, drained body at his feet.
Harry stood there looking at her. His eyes were frozen, his face was frozen, and Draco could pinpoint this as the moment that the emotions inside Harry had frozen.
He looked up. And that was the moment, as his eyes burned and flared, when a predator was born. Harry understood the vampire was a killer, someone who fed on humans. He would make himself the opposite, a human who fed on vampires.
The butcher yawned, his teeth already folding back against the roof of his mouth. His face was covered in blood, bathed in it, smeared in it. He shook his head when Harry aimed a shaking wand at him, and then turned and leaped into the air, landing hundreds of feet away, with the same grace that Draco could muster when he had fed well enough.
Harry knelt beside Ginny and stared down at her. Then he reached out and laid a hand in the sticky mess on her throat, and closed his eyes.
The mist blurred and wavered suddenly, and then Harry was standing outside in another green field, this time at noon. He had a book in the grass beside him, and Ginny’s body lying on a blue blanket to match the color of her dress. Her hands had been folded on her chest, and Draco knew Harry must have done that, as she had not died that peacefully.
Unless she has risen once, and did that herself when she lay down? But Draco saw that her cheeks still held death’s pallor, without the faint flush of life that would have filled them if she’d drunk.
Harry looked down at her, and Draco expected to see an expression of tenderness, but there was nothing on his face except the ashes of old grief, as if Ginny had died years ago. Then he nodded slightly and reached into a bag sitting on the grass near him that Draco had barely noticed, so focused was he on the two bodies.
Out came a stake, and Harry knelt beside Ginny’s body and pressed it into place above her heart. Draco reckoned the book must have told him where to look, and warned him about the danger of the stake getting caught in the ribs. He whispered something under his breath that not even the spell was strong enough to pick up, and then began to push.
Draco watched in silence as Harry staked the woman he loved so she wouldn’t rise again as a vampire, and did it less than three days after she died, or she would have risen already. There was no blood, of course, only a faint pulping sound as the stake passed through her. Then Harry raised the body and looked around it to make sure the stake had emerged from her back. It must have. He nodded and placed Ginny back on the blanket.
And then he drew a knife from the bag, and began to slice across her throat, using the wound the butcher vampire had made to begin his way. Back and forth sawed the knife, waggling up and down. Harry’s face held no expression, even when he turned away to vomit into the grass. Perhaps ten minutes later, he took off her head and laid it carefully aside from the body. Draco had to admit that he’d done well for his first decapitation.
Harry stood up, backed away, and aimed his wand at the body and the blanket, away from the stake and the cleaver and the books. No matter how bitter he was, Draco thought, he was not one to waste good tools. “Cremo,” he whispered.
Intense gouts of fire leaped up from the earth, wrapping the blanket and the corpse in flames. Harry shut his eyes. He flinched only once, when a thin shriek, the death cry of the new vampire which would have woken in Ginny, cut across the air.
The fire faded at last, and a large patch of ashes was left. Harry put his wand away and gathered them up by hand, though surely Levitating them would have been both cleaner and easier. But Draco was beginning to think, after watching this memory, that Harry had deliberately eschewed the easy path.
He Apparated, and reappeared next to a stream Draco didn’t know. Harry whirled in place, and cast the ashes over the river. With a conjured wind, he blew them far enough apart that there was no chance of anyone gathering them, even by accident, and resurrecting his beloved as a vampire. A second, smaller shriek crossed the air. Harry closed his eyes, but if he was still capable of tears, Draco didn’t see a sign of them.
The memory blurred again, and then Harry was standing over the vampire who had killed Ginny. The vampire was already half-burned and had been immersed in running water, if the black splotches covering his skin and the melted fingers were indicative. He screamed hoarsely and bucked against magical bonds Draco couldn’t see.
Harry stood watching him with no expression on his face at all. Then he moved forwards, and began to burn the vampire with concentrated blasts of sunlight-flame, the same kind he’d used to cage Draco. There was nothing of the sophistication he had shown when facing Draco and Caspar and the Collector here, though. It was sheer, straightforward, brutal infliction of pain.
And the longer it went on, the more the vampire begged and pleaded for his life-and that told Draco how far gone the butcher must be, to allow his pain to overcome his arrogance-the more life and animation returned to Harry’s face.
At the end, he conjured a fireball that burned the vampire to death in one long, agonizing current like lightning. And then he lay down and began to roll himself deliberately in the ashes that were left, laughing as he did so. The ashes clung like snow to his skin, and some of them began to work their way beneath it.
Draco nodded. I would not be surprised if that was the origin of his power to sense vampires and draw us to him.
Harry stood back up and tilted his head to the sky, baring his teeth like a wolf. His eyes were more alien than the starlight.
The memory faded. Both Lucy and the Collector were staring at Harry, the present-day Harry, in silence. Harry stared back at them, his face blank and his body coiled. But Draco knew the Collector could hardly have smelled more keenly than he did the pain Harry was in.
“I was wrong,” the Collector said, slowly. She turned to Lucy, disregarding her missing hand entirely. “He is unique, yes, but far too dangerous to keep in any collection. I want him and his vampire taken to the Glass Room.”
Lucy bowed. “My lady.” Then she hesitated. “But should they not be kept separately? There is still the chance that they might break free, as they did from the kraits.”
Draco crouched down and drew hard on the magic that burned between them. He was going to strike at Lucy first, and then-
But the Collector looked up, and gestured, and another invisible net snapped Draco off the wall and trapped him upside-down.
“He hates vampires,” the Collector said. “No; that is too small a word for what he feels for us.” She laughed aloud. “Cooperate, Lucy? I think the mortal will be rather glad when the inevitable fate for prisoners in the Glass Room comes about. The only thing he hates more than us is himself, for not being able to save her.”
She sketched a little bow to Harry. “I admire your determination, especially because you rid our world of a messy feeder who would have exposed more of our kind, but your debt to your beloved was fulfilled when you found and murdered her killer, and when you prevented her from becoming a creature she loathed. Perhaps you will thank me for granting you death.”
She turned away. Lucy gestured in turn, and Draco’s net, and the one now holding Harry, floated after her. Draco looked at Harry.
He was silent, his face locked up tight again, and looked as if he would prefer to die that way.
I don’t care, Draco thought, and settled down to wait. I must convince him otherwise. I will do whatever it takes to do so.
He bared his fangs.
Part 8.