Chapter Thirty-Four of 'Seasons of War'- Chewing Holes in Reality
Chapter Thirty-Three.
Title: Seasons of War (34/40)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, torture, sex, angst, profanity, ignores the DH epilogue.
Summary: The war against Nihil enters its final stages, Harry and Draco train as partners, and they may actually survive to become effective Aurors. Maybe.
Author’s Notes: This is the final part of the Running to Paradise Trilogy, sequel to Ceremonies of Strife, and won’t make much sense if you haven’t read the first two stories. I don’t yet know how long this one will be, but based on the others, I’m guessing 45 to 50 chapters.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Four-Chewing Holes in Reality
“I do not see how this can possibly work.”
Portillo Lopez’s voice was doubtful, but Harry had learned to listen for the tones of her doubt. She sounded intrigued, rather than turning away at once from an idea that she thought was impossible, and so Harry smiled at her and did his best to lean forwards and make his voice persuasive.
“Well, I don’t know that it’s the best idea. But you said that my magic is on the same spectrum as Nihil’s, and it seemed deadly to him when he attacked the camp the other night. It might be able to contain the things of his creation, too.”
“Making a container is not the same thing as making a weapon.” Portillo Lopez gave him a quick glance before she turned back to studying the wooden box that contained the piece of reality Ventus had brought back. “The theory is substantially different.”
“And let me guess, you don’t know the theory of making a container as well,” Draco drawled from the side. He was lounging in a chair in Portillo Lopez’s tent that Harry thought she had been sitting in before they arrived, and he hadn’t changed his position since he sat down. When Harry had looked at him, though, he saw Draco’s magical eye narrowed on both Portillo Lopez and the box, and thought he was doing his own work with it even as they sat there. “Because you use your marks and your voices and the vows of your Order against necromancers in that way.”
Portillo Lopez paused, head again moving in that bird-like tilt Harry had seen when she questioned him after Nihil’s attack. Then she nodded. “You are very clever for having figured out that theory,” she said. “Alas that we have already admitted the Order’s existence and helped you.”
“Alas?” Draco frowned. Harry let his hand drift down casually to his wand. There were still some things about Portillo Lopez that he didn’t trust.
“If we had not, then we could have pressed you into the Order for finding out a secret about it, and you would have been a fine addition to our ranks,” Portillo Lopez said simply, and then went back to studying the box.
Draco looked uneasy. Meanwhile, a slight smile tugged the side of Portillo Lopez’s mouth up. Harry suspected that she had means of getting her own back when she felt threatened by someone outside the Order.
“I could at least try,” Harry went on saying. “What if I called a snake illusion right now, and we saw whether we could infuse it with the reality that Ventus took?”
Portillo Lopez studied him much the same way she had been looking at the concealed piece of reality. “Why should we waste it? The theory must be tested first. If this does not work, we shall have wasted a small portion of a precious commodity, and we do not yet know what effects it could have on our world.”
“Ventus said that it would just make it more real,” Harry muttered, but he knew a refusal when he heard one. He also wasn’t sure that he would understand when Portillo Lopez explained the theory, because all her explanations had gone over his head so far. He sighed and sat down, dropping his head between his arms.
“We will learn,” said Portillo Lopez. She cast some sort of spell on the wooden box, but since she didn’t speak the incantation aloud, Harry wasn’t sure what it was. It appeared to do nothing, but Portillo Lopez nodded with that judicious calmness he hated. “I have a theory already. I need Leonard to help me conduct the test, but we will learn.”
“How long do we have?” Draco asked, apparently having overcome the stunned silence into which Portillo Lopez had cast him. “Nihil will be moving soon. We can’t take so long to make the weapon-container,” he amended, when Portillo Lopez gave him a mild impatient look, “that we lose out on the chance to defeat him.”
“When we have a theory,” Portillo Lopez said, “then we will know what to do.”
Draco sneered. Harry winced and sat back, because he knew what was coming next. Since Portillo Lopez never glanced away from the box, she missed any chance she might have had to receive clues from Draco and anticipate him.
“You don’t know what you’re doing yet,” Draco said softly. “We’ll waste time and perhaps reality proving your theories, and in the end, we’ll still have none and Nihil will be closing his darkness around the world. It’s only his obsession with the balls of nothingness and his wariness about destroying Harry and me that have held him back so far.”
Portillo Lopez turned and really looked at him for the first time. But she still shook her head, then paused to tuck the scarf she wore around her hair more carefully back into place as it was dislodged.
“I think you are wrong. Yes, our timeline is shortened. But Nihil is not a true necromancer, which is why our spells did not work against him. He is not human. His obsessions are pain and the void. He wants the balls of nothingness to-exist-” Portillo Lopez frowned as if such an inadequate word was painful to her-“more than anything else right now. You are right about that. But you are wrong if you think that you and Trainee Potter have held him back alone. There are other factors, most of which we cannot even guess at, and I will not move too fast and lose our best chance because you are worried.”
Silence. Draco stared at her. Portillo Lopez looked back, and seemed deeply unimpressed when Draco’s stare turned into a frown. In fact, she had started to turn back to the box when Draco’s words arrested her once more.
“Who’s come up with most of the ideas and most of the weapons in this war?” Draco demanded, his hand curling around the arm of the chair. “Who’s fought Nihil more and harder than anyone else? Who did he target first, before we knew what or who he was? He was mentoring me through his Dearborn skin, and he let us discover that first sign that he left in the trainee barracks. That sounds to me like he thinks that we’re his greatest enemies, and he’ll come after us first.”
“He mentored you through his Dearborn skin, yes,” Portillo Lopez said. “And he was angry and afraid when you discovered the truth about his origin. But you spread that knowledge to other people before he could destroy you. And he is Dearborn no longer. He has shed the most human parts of him, and you destroyed Nusquam, who was arguably the second most human. He never invested as much of himself in Nemo, as can be seen by his making no move to reclaim him yet. I do not believe that we can predict him, not truly. You stand the chance of predicting the wrong moves and setting yourself too high in his sights if you think that you and Trainee Potter are of such importance to him.”
Draco stayed silent this time, frowning fiercely. Harry knew that he was trying to find holes in Portillo Lopez’s words, and he’d probably go on trying for longer than it was worth. His pride was roused up now, and he wanted to prove that he and Harry really were as important as he thought they were.
Harry coughed and leaned forwards again, catching Portillo Lopez’s eye. “If he’s that inhuman, then why do you think that we have a chance to fight him at all?”
Portillo Lopez launched at once into an explanation Harry had thought she might have prepared, but from her abstracted expression, he didn’t think so. It was just the way she was. Theory would always be more attractive to her than practice. “Nihil still exists in the worlds of life and death, of the void and time. He is enfolded in them, and to find a way to escape from them is what he wants. He can be predicted by the same methods that one would use to predict a storm. Simply not by the methods that one would use to predict a human.”
Draco jumped in suddenly. “That’s one reason why you had Raverat come here, isn’t it? Because he’s trained as a Seer.”
Portillo Lopez gave Draco a look of mild surprise. “Of course. I wondered when you would notice.”
Harry could hear Draco grinding his teeth from this distance, and he tried to think of something he could say to turn the conversation before Draco grew more offended. But, to Harry’s surprise, Draco only nodded in the end and said, “But he admitted that he’s never managed a true vision of the future in the way that Seers do. That makes me wonder what you think he can do against Nihil.”
“There are other things to See, and we need all the weapons we can get,” Portillo Lopez said simply, and went back to studying the box.
Draco looked at Harry for some reason. Harry immediately tried to seem innocent. He didn’t want to become the pawn in a battle between Draco and Portillo Lopez.
But Draco didn’t voice a loud question or attack Portillo Lopez’s last statement. He leaned back in his chair instead, hands flexing open and magical eye focusing on the box as if it held the answers to all their questions.
In a way, Harry thought, looking back at it, too, it does.
*
The thought of the theory they needed to understand and predict Nihil’s actions haunted Draco during his classes, while he was sleeping, and while he was training himself to understand and use the data that his magical eye provided. It would have haunted him when he made love to Harry, too, but he was occupied with something rather more pleasant then.
There was a way to predict Nihil’s actions, perhaps, but Portillo Lopez wouldn’t tell him what it was. It probably related to the vows of her Order, Draco thought, or she would have had no reason to conceal it; he thought they were firm enough allies for that now.
And they needed to ensure that Nihil couldn’t come back to life, although he had managed to resurrect himself from every death so far. And they needed to find something to do with the reality Ventus had brought back, come up with containers for it, or sculpt it, somehow. Draco decided that it would be worth going to the Manor library and fetching his ancestor’s diaries after all.
He went to Holder and Robards to ask for their permission to leave the camp and found them bent over a desk, discussing something in low, serious voices. They stopped and glared at him the moment he entered the tent, and Draco decided that that would stop at once. If they were true allies, then they should be able to tell him what they were doing.
“Well?” he asked, as he stepped into the tent and drew the flap shut behind him. “Have you heard something that we should know?”
Holder and Robards exchanged intense glances, and then he nodded and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes as if weary of it all. Draco privately sneered at him. Robards almost never interacted with him, Harry, or the rest of the comitatus. He left that up to Holder, as if he were too superior to do so. Draco suspected that they got more respect from her than they would have from Robards, though, so perhaps it was for the best.
“Nihil has begun to move,” Holder said. “Reports, so far confused and frightened, of a large spot of nothingness expanding in the Muggle world, in the middle of London. They don’t know what it is or how to stop it. Whatever touches it vanishes. Becomes nonexistent.”
“I could have told them that,” Draco muttered, but his skin was prickling and his mind leaping wildly. Now they had to come up with a solution, and no amount of theory or Portillo Lopez’s need to keep secrets could be allowed to stand in the way.
“Could you have?” Holder was watching him with a distant expression in her eyes, and Draco recognized the one she wore when she was about to lash out at someone, for no better reason than their being there.
Draco sneered at her. “I didn’t know this was going to happen exactly when and where it did. But I know what the balls of nothingness do, and I know that we should have moved before now instead of dawdling about. What is the Ministry doing to help the Muggles?”
“They’ve sent the War Wizards.” Robards spoke suddenly, opening his eyes and considering Draco as if he thought that he had become interesting or potentially smart. “With the Obliviators. The War Wizards believe that they can contain the nothingness for a short time.”
“For a short time?” Draco asked softly. “And what happens when they can’t do that anymore?”
Robards and Holder both looked grim, but kept silent.
“We have to do something,” Draco said. “We have to use the weapons that we know we have, Harry’s snake illusions and the reality that Ventus managed to bring back. We don’t have time to stand about pondering and deliberating anymore.” He could feel his heartbeat shaking his body. He didn’t care. He was too involved in the sensation of finally, finally doing something to care.
“I think you have been overly influenced by your partner, Trainee Malfoy.” Holder leaned forwards. “What makes you think that springing into motion with no plan is a good idea? Particularly when you would be in the way of the War Wizards?’
Draco took a deep breath. No one else could see inside his head, he reminded himself. They didn’t understand the racing connections that made his plans sound workable rather than simply crazy to him.
“You don’t expect the War Wizards to succeed,” he said. “But they’re on the spot. Why not send them into the world of life and have them return with some reality that they can pack around the ball of nothingness until we can arrive?”
“And reveal the existence of potentially our best weapon before we are ready?” Holder shook her head. “Also unadvisable.”
Draco closed his eyes and stood still for a moment, his heart still beating so furiously it made him want to run or fall over or throw up. He needed to consult with the comitatus, he thought. He could use Granger’s calm expertise, Ventus’s knowledge of War Wizard spells, and the boundless enthusiasm for the thought of doing something that Harry would bring along.
“Are you going to stop the comitatus from going there to rescue the Muggles?” he asked, opening his eyes and looking back and forth between Holder and Robards.
“What an interesting question.” Holder stared at him with narrowed eyes. “Why would you want to go there, Malfoy, you who hate Muggles and have been touched more deeply by Nihil than the rest?” She looked at his magical eye and then away.
“Because I live in the world that Nihil wants to eat, too,” Draco said. “Now, answer the question.”
“If you interfere with the War Wizards, then we will,” said Robards, and he went back to his intense, soft conversation with Holder as if Draco had left already.
Draco didn’t need to hear anything else. He whirled and ran towards his own tent, so swiftly that the dark red rings of controlled magic that surrounded Robards’s body traveled with him as afterimages.
They would find and stop this. Nihil had done something at last, and Draco couldn’t wait to oppose him.
*
Harry had been uneasy all day.
It had started as an ache behind his eyes when he woke up, not specifically a headache but haunting the sockets and the lashes and the brows. He kept rubbing at his eyes, which did no good and made Hermione offer to cast a spell that would soothe the invasion of little biting insects she thought he must be experiencing. Luckily, that pain had gone away about mid-morning, and Harry soon couldn’t remember how it had felt.
Then there was the sensation of the world spinning and sliding away beneath him. He was dodging through one of Ketchum’s obstacle courses when the obstacles went mad around him, the stones seeming to drift above the ground, which itself tilted and ran downhill like a river. Harry staggered and fell, and Draco, chasing him, had fallen over him and then given him a curious glance.
That sensation ended, but now there was a loud, noiseless thrumming in his bones, so like the sensation the night Nihil had attacked that Harry kept watching for him. But everyone else remained awake, and Portillo Lopez and Raverat didn’t come pounding through the camp to find him, so Harry thought it must mean something else.
It was almost a relief when Draco did come running up, with the news that the nothingness was spreading in London and the War Wizards had gone to combat it.
“We’re going, of course,” he said, before Harry could say anything. “As soon as we get the rest of the comitatus together and decide if anyone can offer any suggestions beyond the obvious before we act.”
Harry nodded in relief and sent a Patronus to Hermione, while Draco went to fetch Ventus and Herricks, whom he had briefly seen on his run here. Harry stayed behind in case anyone important came to the tent while Draco was gone. When he received Hermione’s Patronus in turn, promising to come in a few minutes but saying nothing about Ron, he sent one to Ron, too.
Ron actually got there before Draco did, his eyes wide and his face so pale that he looked like he might faint. “This is really it, huh, mate?” he muttered, sticking his hands in his pockets and looking around helplessly.
“Yeah.” Harry gave him a tentative smile. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah,” Ron said back. “Just thinking about the battle in Wiltshire, and the way that we couldn’t do that much. You and Ventus were the only ones who did anything that hurt him. What if it’s like that again?”
“We’re not going to oppose Nihil this time unless we have to,” Harry said firmly. “All we have to do is figure out a way to stop the nothingness from spreading.”
Ron frowned. “And that will show Nihil what we can do, won’t it? Then he can decide to do something else with the balls of nothingness, something that would get rid of or get around the precautions that we’ve established. What if this is a test, rather than a serious attack on the Muggles?”
Harry paused for a moment, stricken. He hadn’t thought of that, and he should have. Nihil wasn’t stupid, despite the way that he sometimes seemed to attack without forethought and focus too much attention on Harry and Draco. He could be waiting and watching to see how they would respond, so that he could come up with an answer to their reality-containers at his leisure.
But in the end, Harry had to shake his head and say, “Even if that’s the case, Ron, our response has to be the same. Because he’s trying to destroy people with an expanding pool of nothingness that will go on expanding if someone doesn’t stop it. Stay away, and this could become the real thing instead of a test.”
To his surprise, Ron’s color returned, and he gave Harry a nod and a smile. “Yeah. Reckoned that might be the case.”
Harry was still wondering why Ron would take reassurance from him so much better than from Draco when Draco returned, Ventus and Herricks in tow. Behind him was Hermione, panting loudly from running across the camp and clutching an enormous book against her chest.
“Raverat lent me this,” she said, when Harry looked curiously at the book. “He’d said I should study it, and there’s something in here that might be useful against Nihil. I don’t know for certain, though.”
Harry shook his head, wondering if they would actually have time to look things up, but Draco was talking by then, and he had to pay attention.
“We’re going to London,” Draco said, his eyes so brilliant that even Herricks lost that look of stoppered sullenness he had worn around Draco since Draco won their duel. “We’ll get the Apparition coordinates from the War Wizards. They’re there already, but there must be some who are left in the camp. Ventus?”
Ventus blinked a little, as if she didn’t understand the question. “I don’t know the Apparition coordinates off the top of my head, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Draco clenched his teeth down, but kept his voice calm. He had done remarkably well with that lately, Harry thought, resorting to calmness instead of immediate violence when a member of the comitatus pissed him off. “I appreciate that. I was asking if there were really War Wizards left in the camp, and if you would have any trouble learning the coordinates from them if there were.”
“Oh.” Ventus paused, staring at the tent wall the way Harry had seen her look politely at Ketchum as he tried to teach her defensive maneuvers. “Yes, I think I can. And there are always some left to secure any base camp, in case they have to bring wounded back.”
“Good,” Draco said. “Go fetch them.”
Ventus’s face was bright with joy as she obeyed. Harry admired that, too. There was nothing she liked more than to be doing something, and so Draco was employing her exactly the right way.
“Granger.” Draco turned to Hermione so fast that Harry saw her blink apprehensively. “Do you think you could use those Seer talents to predict whether or not Nihil is coming to the fight himself?”
“Er, no,” Hermione said, turning a bit pink. She held up Raverat’s book again. “But Raverat said this can help. I can try to read through it and find something that will tell me about Nihil, or-or about ways that I could use my Seer talents.”
Harry grinned to himself. He thought that was the first time he had ever heard Hermione stammer in any high-pressure situation. Well, she was probably trying to figure out what immediate good her skills could do, and she didn’t have the protection of Ventus’s calm and polished demeanor.
“Good,” Draco said, and whirled around to face Ron. “I want you to use those strategizing skills of yours when we get there, Weasley. Figure out the best way to approach the nothingness and keep out of the way of the War Wizards and those running, screaming Muggles that we’ll probably also encounter.”
Ron stared at him. “What strategizing skills?” he asked, and his face had turned red to match the pink of Hermione’s. “You’ve never let me do any of the planning when we’ve gone into battle before!”
“I didn’t trust you enough before,” Draco said, and his tone of voice said that he wasn’t going to offer an apology for that, although Harry could see Ron opening his mouth to demand one. “But everyone tells me that you’re good at chess, and I know that you pay attention in Ketchum’s class better than most of us. That’s what I want you to do.”
Ron straightened his back and shot Draco a disgusted look. “Yes, sir,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. But Harry knew that he would do his best, if only to spite Draco, and that was enough for Draco, who nodded and turned to Herricks.
“You’re to hold yourself ready for any eventuality,” he said. “Come to the aid of anyone who looks like he needs it.”
Herricks might have objected, too, but Harry thought the memory of what had happened when he challenged Draco for leadership of the comitatus was too strong. He nodded in silence instead, and that left Draco free to turn to Harry.
“You feel it, don’t you?” Draco asked.
Harry touched his collarbone, which throbbed especially hard with the sensations traveling through him, and nodded.
“Hmmm.” Draco tapped his finger against his lips for a moment, and then clenched his hand down on air and smiled. “We’ll be together at the forefront, you and I, and use our magic as we see fit.”
“How?” Herricks demanded. “I thought Potter was the one who managed to defend the camp the other night, not you.”
“Yes,” Draco said, not even growing angry. “But I was asleep then, and didn’t feel it coming. This time, I do, here.” His finger skimmed the scar that Nihil had given him.
Herricks fell silent, looking nonplused, and Ventus came back with the Apparition coordinates, and they all had other things to think about.
Chapter Thirty-Five.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/324845.html. Comment wherever you like.