Chapter Eight of 'Soldier's Welcome'- Black and Red
Title: Soldier’s Welcome (8/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairings: Harry/Draco preslash, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Violence (and plenty of it), profanity, references to sex, takes account of DH but ignores the epilogue, heavy angst.
Summary: It’s the first year of Auror training for Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and…Draco Malfoy, But with Hagrid, Snape’s second Pensieve, rogue Death Eaters, Auror classes, and someone trying to start a second war to worry about, Harry might not have the time to pay that much attention to Malfoy. At first, anyway.
Author’s Notes: This story is the first in a trilogy called Running to Paradise, which takes its title from a W. B. Yeats poem. Each story will be novel-length, and each will cover a year of Harry and Draco’s training as Aurors. Though there are a lot of fics out there about them acting as Auror partners, there aren’t as many about their training, so I hope to cover some original ground there. I’m indebted to a reader named SP777 for suggesting a training fic for me to write.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eight-Black and Red
Fine, Harry thought, as he leaned against the wall of Malfoy’s room with his arms folded and tried to pretend that he wasn’t interested in the thing sitting wrapped on the table. This is fine. We won’t ever talk about anything that really matters. We’ll fight beside each other and I’ll teach him spells and he’ll eventually master those spells and won’t need me anymore. He’s perfectly willing to let it go.
But as Harry shifted again and again, feeling as though his curiosity had taken the form of ants biting at his ankles, he had to admit something he hadn’t admitted so far.
I’m not willing to let it go.
How could he? He’d kept his head down in the past few weeks, doing all he could to soothe Hermione’s anxiety about his fits-which kept happening-and keep up in his classes and stay close to Ron. He’d barely let Malfoy intrude into his thoughts at all. When he had a dream about Malfoy, which wasn’t a nightmare but was frustratingly hard to define, he deliberately forgot the details instead of retaining them as he did with his nightmares. (He thought he could understand the nightmares if he considered them long enough). No one could accuse him of trying to take advantage of the accident of incompatible magic and get closer to the git.
But he kept noticing Malfoy in class anyway, listening for his voice when it was silent, watching the way he moved in Tactics and Combat. He had seen that Malfoy had faint wrinkles around his eyes when he squinted in Observation, and he was alternately smug that the prat displayed his age and angry with himself for noticing at all.
He didn’t need any more distractions than he had already had, given that the classes kept increasing in difficulty and Hermione and the instructors watched him with narrowed eyes. Harry couldn’t figure that last part out at all. It was natural for Gregory to distrust him, but why Ketchum and Hestia? Harry hadn’t always done well in their lessons, but he hadn’t done anything to make himself suspicious. Did they still think that he was behind that illusion and that message about Nihil somehow?
He needed mental space and clarity so that he could deal with those more pressing things. That, he told himself, was the only reason he spoke up now.
“Malfoy.”
Malfoy turned away from his latest wisp of silver smoke and gave Harry an impatient look. He didn’t speak. Probably thinks he’s too good to waste his precious words on me, Harry thought, his rebellion rising again.
“Does the compatible magic do other things to you besides making it impossible to attack the person you have it with with magic?” Harry asked, because the glance of those grey eyes made him forget any other question he could have asked.
Malfoy stared at him for a moment, then smirked. “Your sentence is a marvel of non-articulation, Potter,” he said.
“You know perfectly well what I mean.” Harry bristled and wondered if he would regret the impulse to interrupt Malfoy’s concentration.
“Outer appearances are at least as important as meanings.” Malfoy adopted a pompous expression, then let it dissolve and rolled his eyes, presumably because he could see Harry’s impatience. “To assemble the question that you flung at me as a jumble of stones into a coherent wall, Potter, yes, compatible magic does other things. It increases the chance of friendship. I told you that already. And it can resonate back to the other partner to create shared magical strength in duels, as you have seen.”
Harry shook his head in irritation. “That’s not what I mean. I mean-” He hesitated. He hadn’t clearly realized before that admitting he had noticed Malfoy in class would mean, well, admitting he had noticed Malfoy in class.
“Oh, this must be good, to make you stammer and flush so.” Malfoy’s voice had dropped low with delight. From observing him, Harry knew it was the tone he used when some complicated problem had fallen out the way he wanted it to. He bit his lip and wished he didn’t know that. “Out with it.”
“All right,” Harry said, stung and deciding that any humiliation a few minutes in the future was better than standing here like this and enduring Malfoy’s mockery. “I catch myself staring at you in class now. I know how you move, what makes you smile, what you look like in private moments. There’s no rational reason for me to do that, so I thought it must have something to do with the magic. That’s all.”
He linked his hands together behind his back for courage and faced Malfoy unflinchingly, waiting.
*
Draco stared into Potter’s steady eyes and refrained, with difficulty, from licking his lips.
So Potter felt drawn to him, did he?
The truth was, Draco had no idea whether such things were the result of compatible magic-which had some irregularities in its manifestation for each pair of friends it created-or simply because Potter was paying more attention to him because of the compatible magic. But either way, he could use this fascination.
In a moment, he had altered the battle plan he had hastily conceived when he saw Potter trying to ignore him. He would go straight through Potter’s barriers instead of over or around them. It was such an unfamiliar tactic, coming from a Slytherin, that he did not think Potter would be able to anticipate and counter it.
“Well,” he said, and deepened his voice to see what effect that would have on Potter. Potter shifted uncomfortably. Too little evidence to know whether the fascination has its sexual side or not, Draco decided with some regret. “The magic could cause such things, if they happened often enough. How much do you stare at me, Potter? You’re more subtle than I thought you were.” The compliment cost him nothing when he was about to gain so great a prize.
Potter heaved a deep breath and stared at the floor a moment, as though someone had asked him to hand over the contents of his Gringotts vaults. Then he gave a tiny nod at no one Draco could see, and looked up. His eyes blazed, but Draco found himself pleased by that rather than otherwise. Now that Potter couldn’t hurt him with his wand, it was rather interesting to see the flames that danced and flickered through his eyes.
“Every class,” Potter said. “There’s something about you that pulls me in. You don’t have to be casting spells or scrambling up stairs in Tactics. Or showing off the way you do in Combat,” he added, because apparently a speech that passed without an insult to Draco wasn’t a speech worth making. “You can be staring at one of those stupid flowers that Pushkin gave to us the other day and I look up from my flower at you. It’s like I can’t keep my eyes away.” He swallowed. “So it’s the magic, right?”
“Of course,” Draco said. He didn’t need any preparation to lie smoothly and plausibly; his parents had trained him well enough for that. “What other motive would you have to look at me?” Poor naïve fool. I reckon that I shouldn’t have thought Potter was insensitive to perfection. It just takes him years longer to notice it than other people.
“Oh, good,” Potter said, and sighed out noisily. “How do we get it to stop?”
Draco rolled his eyes as all his irritation with Potter came jumping down his throat again. “It’s like the force that keeps us from hexing each other,” he said. “We don’t stop it. We live with it.”
Potter gave him a withering stare. “I don’t want to fail my classes because I’m so busy staring at you all the time.”
“Then do something that can substitute for staring,” Draco suggested smoothly. Now to turn the conversation where I want it to go. “The lore on compatible magic suggests that the magic sometimes exerts force indirectly on the physical plane, because it can’t exert force directly on the mental plane.”
Potter snorted like a donkey, so hard that he blew his fringe off his scar. “In English?”
“It’s making you stare at me because that’s a form of connection between us,” Draco said, irritated again. He wished that Potter and Granger could have exchanged brains. On the other hand, that would mean that Potter would spout a lot of meaningless Muggle blather, so perhaps matters were better as they stood. “Find another form of connection between us, something as powerful, and the impulse to stare should stop.”
Potter folded his arms so tightly that Draco heard his elbows creak. “But what would that be?”
“Tell me the truth about your fits.” Draco gave him a charming smile. Most of what he said about compatible magic wasn’t true, but it would give him what he wanted, and how likely was Potter to go and look the truth up?
Potter spun around as though he suspected that Draco might try to stab him through the chest. His voice was clipped when he said, “No.”
“They’re going to interfere with us in the future.” Draco made his voice as delicate and reasonable as he could. His hand was twitching to grab his wand and let a curse fly, but that impulse would do no good if he did give into it. “When we have to fight and you fall to the floor shaking and screaming.”
Potter glanced over his shoulder, one eyebrow raised. He had a sneer on his face, and that was how Draco found out that he thought the expression unnatural and disfiguring for someone like Potter. “Why would talking to you about them change that?”
“Because, you idiot,” Draco said, his voice sparking in spite of himself, “that might give me some clue of what causes them and how to stop them.”
“You know what causes them,” Potter said. “No one can stop them. I’ve tried. Good-bye.” He marched across the room and flung the door open.
Draco opened his mouth to remind Potter that all he had to do was mention was the truth of Potter and Weasley’s drunken escapade the other night and the instructors would take Potter’s cloak away at the very least-
And then Potter fell back in front of the racing ribbons of black and red magic coiling through the door, and Draco grabbed his wand and charged to his side, glad of a responsive target for his anger.
*
Harry heard his mother’s scream as a trailing edge of the black magic coiled around his throat.
He felt the cold fingers of Dementors gripping him as the red ribbons joined the first one. He heard Voldemort’s laugh, and saw green light cutting the blackness, and felt the same overwhelming love of life that had consumed him when he realized that he would have to die to destroy the Horcrux embedded in his scar.
The world around him trembled and vanished. He stood outside the Shrieking Shack and saw Pettigrew race into the distance, taking the last chance for Sirius’s freedom with him. He heard Hermione scream as Bellatrix tortured her. He saw his father grin and turn Snape upside-down, using the charm that would reveal his pants. Sirius tumbled through the veil, Aunt Petunia shut the door of the cupboard in his face, Cedric fell to Wormtail’s wand, Remus and Tonks lay motionless in the Great Hall, Fred hit the ground as a corpse with a dazzling grin. The memories closed hands around his throat and squeezed.
Harry tried to fight back against them the way he tried to do against a fit, reminding himself over and over that this wasn’t real, that it had happened before and he was alive while they were dead and he would wake up-
But the memories squeezed and squeezed, and he screamed in misery and hatred, and then stopped breathing altogether.
Malfoy came for him.
Harry saw his wand like a streak of light cutting the darkness, a streak of light that turned over and brightened into a sword. Malfoy’s voice rose in a steady chant, shaking the memories that crowded in about Harry like dropped stones. His hand brushed Harry’s shoulder, no more than a glancing touch, but one that made the clutching hands fall away from his throat. Harry drew in deep, grateful gulps of air.
Then he surged to his feet, pushing Malfoy away from the ribbons of red and black that reached for him. Malfoy kept a hand on his shoulder, so that Harry had to follow, swearing and stumbling all the way. They came together in the middle of the wall nearest the door, backs to the stone and shoulder to shoulder, both their wands aimed at the red and black mass in a gesture so natural Harry almost thought the compatible magic had nothing to do with it.
The magic curled back in on itself, seething. Harry squinted at it, trying to use the Observation skills that Pushkin had drilled into him, but could make out nothing solid at the center of it. It looked the way water would if it was different colors and was able to do what it wanted instead of obey the law of gravity.
“It’s like fire,” Malfoy breathed. “See the way it shifts?”
Harry gave a private, inward roll of his eyes. It seemed that he and Malfoy were doomed never to see things the same way, no matter how often they fought beside each other.
“Yes,” he said. “And it’s bloody awful when you touch it, like fire.” He shuddered and gripped his wand tighter.
Malfoy gave him a quick curious glance. “What was it doing to you?”
“Making me relive memories.” Harry kept a wary eye on the water-fire as he talked. So far it wasn’t charging forwards to hurt them, but then, he hadn’t expected it to be outside Malfoy’s door, either. He should probably expect it to do unexpected things. “All the people I love who died in the war. And so on.” He wasn’t about to tell Malfoy anything about his mother’s scream or how terrified he still was of Dementors. The git would think it was a great idea to dress up like a Dementor in class, the way he had on the Quidditch field at Hogwarts.
“That’s odd,” Malfoy murmured, his voice distant. “It looked like it was choking you to death, and it shouldn’t have to make you relive memories to do that.”
“Well, that’s what it did.” Harry managed to hold back his impatience, even though it was hard. After all, they needed to know more about what the magic did in order to defeat it. “How do you suggest we get rid of it?”
*
Draco stared at the black and red ribbons. He wanted to shake his head. He’d seen tinges of those colors in other curses. The black was in spells meant to induce despair, the red in curses meant to kill.
He’d never seen this combination before. In fact, he hadn’t known it was possible to combine them-or necessary. The despair spells traditionally were used when one wanted a slow death that would look natural from the outside. The red curses killed quickly and bloodily in order to intimidate.
He hadn’t the least idea of how to go about dissipating them when they were wound together like that. So far as he could see, every black ribbon turned red somewhere along its length, and vice versa, and there was no way to disentangle them.
Draco licked dry lips and told himself to rise to the occasion. They had to do something, or the magic would just attack when it liked and kill them. And a Malfoy was never helpless in the face of an enemy the way that this magic wanted to make Draco helpless.
Let’s begin with the magic that you would normally use on despair and blood curses, he decided, lifting his wand. At least it’ll show me conclusively what happens when I try to treat it like a combination of those spells.
“Potter,” he said. “Listen to me. I need you to concentrate as hard as you can on the spell you’re speaking. We’ll need to cast at the same time, instead of letting the magic bounce from one to the other of us, because your magic is biased towards getting rid of Dark Arts and my magic is biased towards combat.”
Potter gave him a narrow glance, as if he was wondering how Draco knew that about his magic, but didn’t interrupt him to yap nervously about it. He seemed to realize that the power in front of them was the greater immediate danger, wonder of wonders. He nodded. “All right. Do you want me to cast Finite, then?”
“Yes.” Draco aimed his wand at the left side of the shifting mass, and noticed that Potter had chosen the right side. He couldn’t help giving him a quick approving smile. Potter grinned back. Draco wished he could ignore the desperate edge to it, because being on the receiving edge of a sincere smile like that would have been agreeable. “I’ll cast a spell that is meant to shred immaterial things-hostile ghosts, and the like. We need to cast at the same time, though, or the magic will bounce from one to the other of us like it usually does, and I don’t think strengthening just one spell will work.”
Potter’s eyes lit up. “If we can cast at the exact same moment, then you think it’ll strengthen both of us?”
“Yes, I do.” Draco reached out and put his hand on Potter’s shoulder, needing the physical connection to brace himself as he leaned forwards. All right, and perhaps the solidity of Potter’s body is its own protection. “So far, we haven’t tried to do that, except when we were aiming the spells at each other.”
“That’s true,” Potter said, and grinned even more widely. Then he turned his attention to the magic, which had moved a little closer to them. His face went grim as he reached up and anchored himself with an arm around Draco’s shoulders. “The exact same time. Do you want to count, or should I?”
“You do it,” Draco said, because he was more confident about his ability to take cues from Potter than the other way around. What else had he done during countless Quidditch games?
It was strange, but no tingle of bitterness went through him at the memory. This was simply the truth; they were a matched pair challenging a power that wanted to destroy them, and Draco saw no reason to ignore any aspect of themselves that would make that match stronger.
“All right,” Potter said. His voice wavered for a moment, then stabilized as he began to count. “One. Two.”
Draco tensed. He could feel lightning racing through his veins, but he didn’t strike, however badly he wanted to. The red and black magic drifted a little closer, edged and darting flames reaching for them.
“Three!” Potter roared.
Draco felt the pull in his muscles as Potter raised his arm, since his hand was resting there. He responded from the roots of his being, more freely and fully than he had dared to hope he could.
“Finite Incantatem!”
“Spargo imagines!”
The spells whipped out from their wands, expanding in umbrellas of power such as Draco had never experienced before. Fanning plumes exploded around him, and the magic drew from his stomach, his heart, his brain, his neck. His muscles snapped taut, and he let out a soundless gasp, feeling Potter sag against him at the same moment.
His spell manifested as a throwing star of brilliant purple light, which landed in the middle of black and red and started turning them different colors. The magic writhed, screaming.
Potter’s spell launched into it from the side.
The red and black imploded. Draco had a brief, confused vision of blood and bits of black stone raining down, and then it vanished and he was left staring at a scrubbed-clean floor and a table that leaned on a charred, smoking leg. He tensed when he realized that Snape’s Pensieve had slid closer to the edge of the table and cast a spell that would keep it in one place and upright. Then he dropped his head forwards and let out a deep, huffing breath, shaking his head.
“That was-incredible,” Potter said.
Draco turned and looked at him. Potter was giving him a tired stare and a wearier smile. His face was scorched and his fingers were still white-knuckled where they gripped his wand. But his eyes were alight and open, and he reached out a hand to Draco as though they had always been friends accustomed to clasping wrists.
Draco couldn’t let the moment pass so casually. He took Potter’s hand and said, in a tone that he also couldn’t make conciliatory, “I reckon I’m the right sort now, eh, Potter?”
Potter’s head tilted back, nostrils flaring, easy smile wiped away. He studied Draco narrowly for so long that Draco became aware of a pulse of uneasiness. He had expected Potter to storm away or shrug the moment off with a laugh and a grin, as he would do if it really didn’t mean anything to him.
Not this scrutiny, this stare that seemed to suggest he really did pay attention in Observation, whatever Pushkin thought.
Then Potter gave him a smile that snapped at the edges and squeezed down so hard that Draco felt as though the bones in his wrist would turn to powder. “Yes,” he said. “The right sort for fighting with and defeating enemies with.” He looked away at the space where the red and black magic had been and shook his head. “For doing incredible deeds with.”
Draco closed his eyes, because if Potter looked at him right now, he would embarrass himself.
That had been what he wanted. He was jealous of Potter’s friendship with Weasley in school, yes, but more scornful of it-
Except during those times when Potter defeated the Dark Lord somehow and Weasley was along. Then Draco experienced sick and unadulterated envy. He wanted to do great things; it was one of the reasons the Sorting Hat had placed him in Slytherin. To do them at Potter’s side would add to his prestige and his fame.
And now Potter, whether he knew it or not, had elevated Draco into the place that Weasley had always occupied.
Draco kept his eyes shut, and after a moment, Potter seemed to decide that he wasn’t going to respond. He moved away from Draco with a snort. When Draco looked again, he was kneeling to examine the chars on the table leg, brow furrowed as if he wanted to know what could have done such damage.
Draco let out a rattling breath. In a moment, he would step forwards and add what he knew about the colors of the magic to Potter’s knowledge.
In a moment.
I couldn’t respond because it was a precious gift you gave me, he told Potter’s bowed head and hunched shoulders. I need to learn how to handle it, how to cradle it and protect it the way it should be protected.
I need to know how much this changes the relationship between us. It’s not the friendship I was hoping the compatible magic would create for us, but it might be better.
Draco knew one thing, and only one thing, for certain: he would fight to preserve this fragile understanding he shared with Potter.
He clung to that realization until it hardened in his mind like coal being pressed into diamond.
Then he stepped up to join Potter.
Chapter Nine.