Chapter Six of 'Sister Healer'- And Half a Dozen of the Other
Chapter Five.
Title: Sister Healer (6/10)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco pre-slash, mentions of OC pairings and Ron/Hermione
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, gore, OC character death, angst, torture.
Summary: Harry and Draco find themselves hunting a series of twisted with a grudge against a Healer-or perhaps a series of twisted being used as proxies by someone else, from a distance. How much evidence is there for a new Dark Lord? Fourth in the Cloak and Dagger series, sequel to “Rites of the Dead.”
Author’s Notes: Welcome to the next fic in the Cloak and Dagger series, with Harry and Draco as Auror partners hunting dangerous Dark wizards. The series consists of mingled one-shots and longer fics-so far “Invisible Sparks”, one-shot, “Hero’s Funeral,” multi-part, and “Rites of the Dead,” one-shot. The one-shots are not strictly necessary to read, but do add to the internal chronology. This story will consist of about nine or ten parts, and be updated every Wednesday evening.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Six-And Half a Dozen of the Other
The way Harry saw it, things had worked out like this:
Malfoy had refused to sign the parchment Okazes had given him. That meant, technically, they were still partnered. And if Harry tried to take the parchment back to Okazes’s office without Malfoy’s signature, or to forge it, he would have to face questions he couldn’t answer.
On the other hand, if he simply laid the parchment aside for the point when Malfoy would emerge from hospital and continued working as if he had the right to continue alone, then no one should question him. Okazes was too relieved to have got rid of him, and Warren and Jenkins, the other two Aurors in the Socrates Corps, were involved in tracking a Dark wizard whom unreliable reports called a twisted. Harry would move slowly at first, tackling paperwork, until he found a case that he could take alone.
And then he could be alone, as he always should have been.
No. The way I should have been is with Ron beside me, or Lionel, never learning the truth.
Harry grimaced and took another sip of the lukewarm tea in front of him, hoping it would help keep him awake. He was revising the files that St. Mungo’s had kept on Jerome, Holinshead, and Lewin, all the twisted they’d killed so far in the last week. He didn’t forge Malfoy’s signature on important Ministry parchments, but there was no one around to keep him from doing it on requests to the Healers. They wouldn’t respond to anything with Harry Potter written on it, therefore making them the opposite of most people in the wizarding world, but Malfoy was the hero of the hour for many of them, since he had saved a fellow Healer’s life.
Harry wanted to know exactly how long these Healers had worked in hospital, when they had quit, and whether they had expressed jealousy or dislike of Healer Alto before attacking her. All of them were facts he should have learned long since, but they had learned who Jerome’s victim was only after his death, and the others had simply come too quickly for Harry to even write separate reports on them, never mind investigating their backgrounds.
And Harry was looking for another thing, too. He wanted to know if any of them had ever been seen with bright blue eyes.
The memory of those eyes clawed at him. They were the one thing he had not told Malfoy about and thought he should have. Something-some enemy, at least-haunted the minds of those twisted, and even the minds of other Ministry officials. For some equally mysterious reason, that enemy wanted Healer Alto dead.
It made little sense. Harry would learn what there was to be learned, though, and it was possible that that enemy might have left traces of his presence in the files of people he hadn’t thought to kill until later.
The files offered less help than Harry had hoped, at least on the surface. Jerome had been a talented young Healer who specialized in helping patients recover from ailments of the lungs. Then he had been discovered using a Dark spell that forced the dying to breathe while he experimented with potions designed to keep them living, a variation on necromantic magic, and sacked.
Harry shook his head when he read that. You’d think the Healers would be bang alongside the idea of trying to keep their patients alive by whatever means necessary, considering that they wanted to chain me up in the Janus Thickey ward so I couldn’t commit suicide.
Then he sighed. Perhaps that wasn’t fair. But he found it hard to be fair to the Healers, who had been so much less than fair to him.
He read on. Jerome had worked with Healer Alto at several points, including when he did research on the spells that were later found to include the Dark ones, but had never expressed jealousy and dislike of her. That didn’t happen until he started ranting about her after he was sacked. Did he blame her for that? The reports were incomplete, and it was unclear whether she had been part of the team who had decided to sack him, either.
Harry sighed and turned to the next file. Holinshead had worked with wounds for the most part, especially wounds created by knives and swords. Harry remembered her wand, turned into a needle-like sword, and scowled. He had put the bloody thing away in the Ministry Archives, where it showed no sign of changing back into a wand, and let the Unspeakables have at it. So far, they hadn’t been able to make it change, either.
Holinshead had cooperated with Alto to teach mediwizards about the danger of leaving wounds untreated. She had come out of it with a coldness in her eyes so complete some of her friends had tried to talk to her. She’d killed one of them and vanished. The Healers had declared that she was sacked, of course, and the Aurors-a different Corps, Lucretius-got the order to hunt for her. But at the time, there were no indications she was a twisted. No mention of blue eyes, either.
Or of their companions, Harry couldn’t help noting. Not Jerome’s shadow-hounds, or Holinshead’s wolves, or Lewin’s fire-foxes…
Though, now that he thought about it, one specific similarity was that they were all dog-like.
Frowning, he scratched a note down about that and went on reading.
Lewin was the strangest case. He had been Alto’s friend, perhaps her lover-the file skirted any mention of such things-for years. Then he had disagreed with her over whether more Blood-Replenishing Potions or more Boil Cure Potions should be ordered from the Potions masters that St. Mungo’s regularly worked with. Such a strange thing to disagree about, at least in Harry’s opinion, but what did he know about heated debates among Healers? Perhaps they spent their evenings flinging cutlery at each other over how many hairs were supposed to grow in a typical human nose, and whether you could pluck them or not.
But Lewin had left hospital, and burned most of his papers when he did so, so the Healers were unsure what experimental potions or notes he might have taken with him. Perhaps that was the source of his affinity to fire, Harry thought, scrawling notes with his free hand while he flipped through the pages of the file with the other.
Not much more than that, though. There was a picture of Lewin and Alto leaning against each other, their mouths open in what looked like laughter, moments before one of them playfully shoved the other. Then the photograph cycled back around to the two of them standing together again.
I wonder if Malfoy knows about this, and what he would think if he did?
Then Harry shook his head. Malfoy had chosen his allegiance. Harry didn’t put up with partners who deliberately wounded him, or those who thought he was stupid and easy to trick. That meant he didn’t put up with Malfoy. He wondered idly if the fool would think he was welcome back, and how soon he would try.
You don’t care, remember? You don’t care if Malfoy’s attractive, because you don’t have the right to think about him that way. You don’t care if he has a crush on Alto or it’s just a spell, because he chose her, and you could never have him even if he was bent, since that worked out so well last time. You don’t care what the hell he does, since he hates you.
He only had to glance at the wound on his arm, the second one, to know that.
But…
The possibility remained, nagging, in the back of his mind. If Alto had cast spells on all the others, spells no one could detect, might she have done the same to Draco? Perhaps she was a twisted herself-
And there Harry’s mind stopped, because Alto was a Healer, and someone would have noticed by now if she couldn’t use Healing magic. All of the others had apparently become twisted only after their departure from hospital. Not to mention that Draco didn’t fit her choice of victim, if she had one. An Auror rather than a Healer, and someone who hadn’t spent much time with her. The shortest period of association with her that Harry could find was six months, for Holinshead. All the others had spent far more time with her.
He sighed and closed the files. There were a few test spells he could cast on Malfoy, if the bloody bastard ever left his lady-love. For now, he was going home and making sure his wounds were properly treated. Since Malfoy couldn’t look out for him and other partners were out of the question, Harry would just have to take care of himself.
*
“He was mine, you know.”
Draco leaned down and kissed Miranda’s hands as she opened and closed them helplessly. “Sssh,” he whispered. “Try not to talk. I know this is hard for you, but it’ll be easier if you don’t talk.”
She shook her head at him, eyes wide and wet and miserable. “No. You don’t understand. He was my-my boyfriend. Calling him that sounds so ridiculous, but it’s the truth.” She closed her eyes. “Lewin. My Daniel. And now he’s dead.”
Draco swallowed. He wondered why his throat was so cold, his thoughts so sluggish. Was he jealous?
Impossible. I won’t be jealous of someone like Lewin, who went insane in the end and tried to kill Miranda. She might want me to be, but-I can’t. It’s like asking me to be jealous of Potter because he gets less than tender attentions from the Healers.
Besides. Draco held her hand and let his fingers play over the tender bones in the back of it. If she feels sadness over the loss of a former lover, that’s only right and proper, and shows her gentle heart. I would hope she would mourn for me in the same way if I died.
“My lady,” he whispered. “Do you want some water? Something to eat?” Miranda had emerged from a coma after twelve hours in it, and the Healers, yielding to Draco’s evident desire to stay, had advised him that she would need nourishment. It was her custom to eat a light meal early in the morning and then nothing after it. “Perhaps just some water?” he added, when he saw her face puckering up.
“No.” Miranda caught his hand. “I want to talk about Daniel. Will you let me?” She smiled tiredly at him. “You’re a true friend, Draco.”
The bliss of having her speak his name was sheer delight, like swallowing a mouthful of cheesecake. Draco kissed the backs of her hands again in answer. “Of course, my lady,” he murmured.
He sat back and listened as she rambled through memories of Lewin: the potions they had worked on together, the way they had sat day after day in her office drinking Firewhisky and conversing-
Like us. But I’m alive now, and here, and he’s dead.
-and working together and trying their hardest to smooth over the little disagreements that opened up between them, but nothing worked, until they had utterly lost it with each other in a stupid fight over potions. Miranda laughed through her tears as she recalled that, shaking her head, but they were still tears, and Draco murmured to her soothingly as she turned her hands back and forth in his grip, restless, unable to be comforted.
“I never thought that the last time I saw him before he died, I’d be screaming at him about Boil Cure Potions being a better investment,” she whispered, and then she gave way at last to tears.
Draco held her, cradling her against him, feeling her slim form shake. She was nothing like Daphne, who had pretended to sophistication but never gentleness, Draco thought. She was tender and soft and loving. She had even offered to treat Potter, not something most Healers would have done.
Potter.
The memory of the parchment he had brought to Draco, the suddenness with which he had arrived, made Draco shake his head a little as he thought about it. It seemed so distant, not part of the same world where he could listen to Miranda whispering his name with reverence and reaching up to touch his cheek with one finger.
“Draco? What are you thinking of?”
Draco thought that was only the second time she had used his name instead of his surname, although he wasn’t sure. He caught her hands again, but this time didn’t kiss them; he needed his lips to answer her question. “Of many things, my lady,” he said. “But mostly of my partner, who was apparently so angry about the way I broke from him that he had to come to me and get me to sign a paper stating that I would no longer be his partner.”
Miranda took a long breath which seemed to rattle her lungs. “But you didn’t sign it?”
“Of course not!” Draco said, and massaged her fingers for a moment. “What do you take me for? I don’t think what I’ve done in defense of you is so awful that I deserve to be punished for it. It’s true I wasn’t of much use the last few times that Potter battled a twisted, but I was with you, defending you.”
Miranda gave him a faint smile, and Draco flushed. She was probably thinking that he couldn’t do much defending of her last time, not when he was locked up in a cage and watching helplessly as Lewin advanced on her.
“I do hope you won’t let him chase you out of Auror work,” she said, “not if that’s what you truly want to do. Of course you may change your mind at any time, and I would support you if you made the decision to do that. But I don’t want your partner’s fears to chase you away.”
Draco snorted and shook his head. “He wishes he could chase me away! I would make it hard for him even if he wanted that.”
“You think he doesn’t?” Miranda cocked her head at him like a curious falcon. Her hands were gripping his now, and releasing, in a regular pattern, as though she thought that was the best way to learn the texture of his skin. Draco took a deep breath each time he felt the pressure lessen, but when it returned, he bowed his head in gratitude.
“No,” Draco said. “I think he hopes I’ll go to another Corps in the Aurors, and not trouble him any longer.” He sneered. “Probably worried about ruining that perfect record with the Ministry that means so much to him.”
Inwardly, he felt a bit of drifting fog coil across his mind. That wasn’t right, was it? Potter didn’t have a perfect record with the Ministry. Draco had seen that for himself, when he looked through the old files and reports for information on his new partner. He got in trouble regularly, and the fact that he was banned from St. Mungo’s showed that. It was only the last one in a long line of attempts to control him and hold him back-for his own good, of course-that the Healers had made, and Potter had exasperated every one.
“I can understand that,” Miranda whispered, and then sighed. “I think a few of my fellow Healers want me gone, too. I’m an embarrassment to them, what with all this attention I’m attracting.”
“I don’t believe that for a second!” Draco protested warmly, and locked his hands more firmly around hers when she made a motion as though she would draw them away. “What are you talking about? In what way are you an embarrassment? Yes, some of the people you worked with turned into twisted, but that has nothing to do with you.”
Miranda glanced at him and then down at her pillow. “Some of the-some of the other Healers might say that that’s not true,” she whispered. “Because, Lewin aside, they were my protégés, and I’m responsible for what they do and say after they leave my hands.”
Draco shook his head. “Is Potter responsible for what I am? Am I responsible for him? We can only do so much for the people we work with, Miranda. If we blame ourselves for everything they turn into, then we drive ourselves mad.” And I do not wish to see you mad. His hands tightened on hers to the point that she gasped in pain, and he pulled them back at once and murmured an apology.
“It’s all right.” She was studying him more intensely than he had thought she would when he spoke a truth so simple. It wasn’t as though he was wise, like her, and knew a lot about people from having seen them in pain.
Memories of the Cruciatus Curses that he had cast under the Dark Lord tried to intrude, and he shook his head sharply. No. That doesn’t count. There’s no reason to think it counts.
Miranda reached up and traced the shape of his face. “Perhaps you’re right,” she whispered. “Perhaps I shouldn’t blame myself so much for Lewin.”
Draco nodded. “Now. Can you think of anyone else who left you and who might attack you out of jealousy? Anyone else who was using Dark Arts before he or she left? Anyone you argued with?”
Miranda frowned, her brow crimping. “I don’t think so. I would be more worried about this partner of yours at this point.”
“Potter?” Draco felt his muscles tighten like squeezed rubber. It bothered him, for some reason, to hear her talk about Potter, even though Draco had been the one who brought him up first. “What about him?”
“I worry that he might try to pull you out of the Aurors,” Miranda said quietly. “And I worry that he got into hospital. He came to you to give you a parchment to sign-that means he was here, doesn’t it? And that means our new defensive wards have done nothing, or he might have shattered them to come this far.”
Draco shook his head. He wished she would stop talking about Potter. He wished she would go back to talking about herself instead, even mourning Lewin. It was ridiculous that she blamed herself for his death, but at least it would mean Potter, and the supposed danger to Draco, was off her mind. “I’m sure we would have heard the moaning over the wards by now, if he had really broken them to come this far. I’m sure he didn’t, Miranda.”
For a moment, she glanced up at him with a fleeting smile. “I don’t remember you addressing me by my first name before.”
Draco cleared his throat. “Well-I hadn’t until I saw you almost die in front of me. But I think I’m allowed to, now. Aren’t I?”
“Yes.” And this time, it was Miranda who kissed his hands instead of the other way around, brushing his warm, smooth skin with her eyelashes lowered but her eyes visibly fixed on him. Draco went still, watching them and not heeding the motion of her lips until she whispered, “But how did Potter get here?”
“He had his Invisibility Cloak with him,” Draco murmured, mesmerized by the grey in her eyes, and the tender and noble soul it revealed. He had been wrong to think he could ever love Daphne. She had been selfish and shallow. Miranda was the kind of person he would have mocked in school-upright, rule-obeying, probably a Hufflepuff when she was at Hogwarts, so much like Potter-but now, he saw the point of having a companion he could trust absolutely, rather than someone who would compete with him and mistrust him the way another Slytherin would.
“That could have fooled the wards, then,” Miranda said, and stroked his hands once more before releasing them. Draco clenched them together so he wouldn’t miss her warmth. “But-I am surprised. Did it seem as though anyone else knew he was here?”
“I don’t know.” Draco cursed his slow tongue, which couldn’t tell her what she really wanted to know at the speed she wanted to know it, and concentrated on the words. “I didn’t see any other Healers in the corridor while I was talking to him, so I don’t think so.”
“Oh, Draco.” Miranda pulled back a little, which hurt hard enough that Draco thought he felt his heart actually stutter. “And you know we want to keep him out of hospital. Why didn’t you go and alert someone about him?”
We’re partners, Draco almost said, but that wasn’t true, was it? Potter had wanted to discard him, had come here specifically to discard him. The way his parents had discarded him when he became an Auror, and the way Daphne had thrown him away because killing someone she felt had wronged her mattered more to her than spending her life with him.
The way Miranda might throw him away, if he couldn’t give the right answers to her question.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to leave you, and I thought you might die without me being here. I’m sorry.”
Miranda relaxed a little, and nodded. “I can accept that answer,” she said. “But I survived, Draco. Would you go and find Healer Tella, now, and tell her that Potter came into hospital once and they should be on guard against a second try? It might be we can’t stop him, not when he smashed our strongest defenses once before, but we can at least get some warning of him if he uses the Cloak again.”
Draco stumbled to his feet. He felt as though he moved through syrup. On the one hand, he wanted to defend Potter, to say that he had broken free out of the best motives last time, when he thought Draco would die if he didn’t-
But he had trusted too much to his visions, hadn’t he? And Draco hadn’t died this time, and Miranda hadn’t died the time Potter supposedly had a vision of Holinshead.
And perhaps Miranda was right. It did seem strange that Potter would come all this way into hospital to get Draco to sign a parchment, when so far he had respected the ban to the point that he hadn’t come into St. Mungo’s to save Miranda when he thought a twisted might kill her.
Why had he stayed out, that time?
Could it be-
Draco licked his lips. No. He understood Potter, now. He could compare him to Miranda, and he knew Miranda knew him better than anyone else ever had, and he was learning to know her. Potter was too noble to abandon someone to death simply because he resented the profession they were a part of.
But he had come in to demand something ridiculous from Draco on the day that he knew he stood guard at Miranda’s side. He had stayed away from her when Holinshead went after her. He had rescued her when Jerome took her hostage, but then acted as though he was more than glad to let Draco escort her back to hospital. He had stumbled on them when Lewin was going to torture her by accident.
Would he have rescued her if I wasn’t there to watch him?
“Draco. Go, please.”
Draco rode the waves of that gentle voice away, while his mind rioted with strange versions of Harry Potter.
Chapter Seven.
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