Chapter Nine of 'Sister Healer'- Three By Three

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter Eight.

Title: Sister Healer (9/10)
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 Nine-Three by Three

“Brace yourself. This will hurt.”

Harry gritted his teeth and braced his shoulders against the wall as best he could. There were some good things, it had turned out, about having a partner who was all but a literal bastard. He knew independent Healers who didn’t mind working for Galleons, and who kept their quarters at a distance from St. Mungo’s, so a Healer from there was less likely to spot Harry walking into them. This was a little stone building that hugged the earth, and had dim and smoky rooms. Harry had been reluctant to trust the wizard who lived here to reattach his finger.

Then Malfoy had taken his shoulder and told him what was going to happen in a flat voice, and he had realized it wasn’t really his decision to make.

He had a partner. Someone he couldn’t trust at the moment, that was true, someone who would never be to him what Lionel was and had odd lights in his eyes whenever he looked at Harry now, but someone who wouldn’t let him suffer, because that would impair his effectiveness in battle and thus endanger Malfoy. Harry therefore extended his hand as he sat in the lumpy chair in the Healer’s lab with more confidence than he would have otherwise.

The Healer, a weedy man who had told Harry to call him Alfred, bent over his hand and frowned at the place the finger had been bitten off. His wand flicked back and forth, and Harry felt random diagnostic spells dance over him. Then Alfred seized the finger and jammed it back into place, spitting out an unfamiliar incantation at the same moment.

Harry bit his lip as his head sagged back against the wall, instinctively stifling the scream that wanted to escape. Malfoy was beside him, stroking his hair and forehead with one hand and whispering into his ear. Harry didn’t pay attention to the whispers. Malfoy could get someone to heal him, fine, but soothing him was out of the question.

Besides, no one had ever been any good at soothing him since he’d lost Lionel.

The pain was like the jackal bite in reverse. Harry thought he could feel skin reaching out and joining, crawling out of something’s mouth, scraping past teeth. He gritted his own teeth and bit down another scream.

“It would be better if you would scream,” Malfoy whispered into his ear.

Better for who? Harry wanted to ask, but opening his mouth would release the sound that wasn’t words. He only knew, as the pain grew worse and he thought he heard the sounds of bone snapping-or unsnapping-that Malfoy wanted him to make a noise, and he wouldn’t. He jammed his eyes shut and sat there, teeth grinding against each other, imagining the loss of all the enamel on them as he thought about it.

“There. Done.”

Alfred’s voice shattered the silent state in which Harry floated. He sat up and looked at his hands, spread across his lap in front of him. The finger was attached, as far as he could see, with only a faint circle of waxy skin marking the place where it had once been torn from the hand. Harry took in a breath, let it out, and then tried to flex the finger.

It bent.

Harry smiled, and shared the fierce look with Malfoy before he remembered. He shook his head and turned back to Alfred, ignoring the way Malfoy’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “What do I owe you?”

“Your friend already paid it.” Alfred had turned away and was washing his wand in a small fountain that had sprung up from the floor, and stank like acid. He didn’t look at Harry as he added, “I don’t want to know, okay? You were never here.”

“Right,” Harry said. After a second, he rejected the idea that he should try to pay anyway, so he wouldn’t be in Malfoy’s debt. You could look at it as Malfoy being in his debt, since he was the one who had unleashed his jackals on Harry in the first place, and been the one responsible for the loss of the finger. He turned away, walking towards the door with shaky steps, but on his own. He shrugged off Malfoy’s arm when it tried to curl around his shoulders.

“You would be better off if you would let me help you,” Malfoy said into his ear as they passed down the short entrance hall and back into the street that the house stood on. If you could call it a “street,” Harry thought. It was a dirt path, really, widening as it ran towards the nearest village, narrowing again as it came back towards Alfred’s domain. “Just as you would be better off if you’d screamed.”

Harry looked at him with his teeth bared. “Why? Because it would have confirmed your opinion that I’m weak?”

Malfoy showed him teeth back. “Because you’re going to need your strength to fight Alto. Wasting it holding back your screams is useless.”

“I don’t scream like that unless something takes me by surprise,” Harry said shortly. “The way the jackal bite did.” He changed the subject, because Malfoy was opening his mouth and looked, bizarrely, as if he wanted to pursue it. “Anyway. We need to go after her. It’s dangerous for you, and hard for me to get into hospital in the first place. Any thoughts?”

Malfoy struggled for a moment against his own obvious impulse to control Harry, and then shrugged. “You’ll go in under a disguise.”

Harry frowned. “You warned them about my Invisibility Cloak, you said.” That was part of the information Malfoy had told him as they made their way to Alfred’s house. “They’ll be on the lookout for that, and for any glamours we can use. What makes you think I can get past the defenses on the inside to see Alto?”

“Because we’ll use Dark magic, of course,” Malfoy said, staring at him as if he was stupid. “And of the kind that no wards the Healers can spin will detect.”

Harry found the strength to give Malfoy a real smile at last. “Now you’re speaking my language. What are the incantations?”

*

Potter was fragile.

Draco had no surprise when he thought that. Potter had just gone through a torture session, and while Alfred had healed the cuts and bites on his body as well as reattached the finger, he should have rested. Then there was that stupid expenditure of strength in holding back the scream, and rejecting Draco’s support when he was limping out. Draco understood more now about why he might want to do those kinds of things-he thought it of as a tribute to his dead lover, that was clear-but not why he actually did them. Survival had to come first.

And revenge, although luckily in this case revenge coincided with their Ministry-given mission.

They stood an alley away from the front door of St. Mungo’s, disguised as men so filthy and reeking that Muggles avoided them instinctively and no wizards had yet given them a second glance. If they spoke to each other in whispers, well, people like that were always mumbling something, it seemed.

“I’ll get past the wards with that one, you said.” Potter tilted his head back and frowned. They leaned on the filthy stone and paid no mind to the way that people squinted at them for it. There were more important things at stake, Draco knew, and they could always use Cleaning Charms later. “Any idea how I’m going to kill Alto, especially if she knows how to use her flaw and she’ll charm me as soon as I get close enough?”

“Take her by surprise, of course,” Draco said softly. He watched the sheen in Potter’s eyes, wondering why he hadn’t thought of that, and then realized. Fragile. Of course. “Give her a fair chance, and she’ll kill you. You have to stab her in the back.”

Potter narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. He nodded. “What signal do you want me to give so you know when to come after me and help me out of there?”

“So certain you’ll need help?” Draco couldn’t help breathing on the back of Potter’s neck. He squirmed and stepped away. Draco stepped back in turn. He could live with that much acknowledgment.

“Yes,” Potter said. “With Alto dead, you won’t have anything to worry about. You can walk in openly. But I might not have enough left to both get back out of hospital and survive the battle.”

“You don’t have to worry.”

Potter jerked first, but Draco was the one who turned with his wand out. Behind them stood a tall woman in blue robes with a long, whippy willow wand in one hand. She glanced at both of them and nodded when she had finished the scan, as though they had pleased her or at least not surprised her.

Draco found himself watching her eyes. They were a light blue-grey and exuded none of the dangerous fascination that Alto’s did, but he distrusted it anyway, this fortuitous appearance of a woman who seemed to know what they were about and hadn’t yet tried to stop them.

“Who are you?” Potter demanded. Draco grimaced. He would have made the demand with more grace, but perhaps it didn’t matter. The woman only smiled at Potter’s question and inclined her head.

“You don’t recognize the family resemblance?” She picked up a strand of dark hair. “I’m shocked. My name is Annette Holinshead, and I’ve learned what happened to my sister.” Her smile was sweet and vicious. “She would never have become a twisted if not for her precious Miranda, more important to her than anyone in the family. I want vengeance.”

Draco frowned. He hadn’t seen Holinshead until after she was dead, but he had to admit this woman looked like the dead twisted. And Potter, who had fought her and looked into her eyes from less than a foot away, was straightening up slowly, a hard-edged smile playing with the corners of his mouth.

“You’re sure that you want this?” he asked. “You have no idea what Alto’s done, not really. You can’t.”

“I can examine files.” Holinshead reached into her robe pocket, with careful, exaggerated movements, and drew out a thin book filled with what seemed, to Draco, like sheets of creamy parchment. “And I can draw on the one resource that you wouldn’t have any idea existed. My sister’s diary.” Her own mouth twisted, and her hand twitched as if she would fling it from her. “She recorded what was happening to her. Every detail, every inch of what that bitch did to her.”

Draco felt a flash like winter in him, and shuddered. It was the impulse to defend Alto, to call her Miranda. Yes, it was a good thing he was staying out here. It would have been dangerous for him to go near Alto when he felt like that.

“Malfoy?”

Potter was watching him. Potter had seen. Draco shuddered and shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m not going to trust someone who walks out of nowhere at a convenient time,” he drawled. “I suspect you wouldn’t have any objection to Veritsaerum?”

“Of course not.” Holinshead pulled back her hair as though she assumed it would get in the way of distributing the potion and opened her mouth.

Potter blinked at him. “You have Veritaserum?”

Draco shrugged. It was part of the arsenal that he carried with him, most of the time, in case they needed to interrogate a witness who was being stubborn in giving them information. He used Dark magic, so why was it such a huge stretch to assume he would use illegal potions? he added in the silence of his head as he watched Potter’s eyes widen. Some people were better-prepared than others and thought about different weapons, that was all.

Potter watched in silence as he drew the vial out and used the stopper to place three drops on Holinshead’s tongue. Holinshead rolled her eyes and swallowed, and then her face changed to a pale, passive lack of expression as the potion took hold.

Potter leaped in first, of course. “Are you Annette Holinshead?” he demanded.

“Yes.” Flat, the way it should be.

Draco took up the next question, the one that he didn’t think Potter would have the sense enough to ask. “Are you the sister of Sarah Holinshead, the twisted that we killed a few days ago?”

“Yes.” No hesitation, and no flicker of something like triumph in the back of those blue-grey eyes.

“Why are you doing this?” Potter inserted then. “Why come to us?”

Draco glanced sideways at him. Potter seemed to have forgotten his distrust of Draco, at least enough to be near him when they were doing something like this. That was good. They worked well together as partners when they forgot to fight, and Draco intended to see that they went on doing so.

“Because no one else will help me avenge my sister.” Holinshead was saying words that Draco knew she would probably have given a sneer at at most times, but now she was smoothed out and calmed under the influence of the potion. “Everyone else will say that she was a vicious twisted and deserved what she got. I know it’s more than that. She’s worth more than that.”

“And you want Healer Alto dead?” Draco asked. Holinshead seemed to mean what she said, but she wasn’t a trained warrior. Draco wanted to know if she would falter when they were going in for the execution.

“I want her torn. I want her scraped. I want her bleeding.”

Draco nodded. At least that much was on the level.

“How did you find us?” Potter asked, and Draco had to stop his hand before it could reach out and touch Potter’s shoulder blade in admiration. That was a question he should have thought of, and asked before now, but he hadn’t.

“You’re the Aurors assigned to the case.” Holinshead looked between them, and her lips twitched as if she wanted to force them into a smile but didn’t have the will. “Not hard to follow and find when you don’t care about what the consequences will be, as long as they include Healer Alto broken.”

Draco asked a few more questions, but he had to admit that her answers to all of them seemed to be true. And he himself had brewed the Veritaserum, and during a time when he was calm and concentrated on his work, so he didn’t think the potion was giving Holinshead room to lie.

Potter nodded at Holinshead as the potion started to wear off and sense crept softly back into her eyes. “You can come with me, then. Help me sneak into hospital.”

Holinshead bowed her head, but before she could say anything, a voice spoke from behind him, and it made Draco’s spine ache. “Why would you need to do that? I can come and treat you, if you need it.” A pause. “And you look like you need it.”

Draco turned slowly. Alto stood behind them, bright-dark eyes staring back and forth between him and Harry and Holinshead. “You could have come to me if you needed help,” she whispered. “You, too, Annette. I’m fond of Sarah still, in my memories, even if she did try to kill me.”

Everything happened very fast then.

*

Harry acted instinctively. Malfoy was an idiot and a bastard who should have known better than to think Harry would trust him immediately after he tortured him, but he was also someone who had suffered from Alto’s ability to make someone else into a twisted. Harry knew he had to protect him from the flaw she might be wielding again, at the moment, simply by talking to him face-to-face. Malfoy stood still enough that Harry thought he was listening.

And that was not acceptable. He would not fail another partner again, not after Lionel. He would not.

He sprang between Malfoy and Holinshead and Alto, and he cast the first spell that came to mind, one of the Dark incantations that he would have used on the twisted before this if there had been time. “Veritas repens!”

The spell rushed forwards as a wind, and carried him into the depths of Alto’s mind before he could breathe or blink. This wasn’t Legilimency; it was a pouring-out of truth, a tearing and a dumping, breaking down the walls that had loomed in Alto’s mind and kept her from any knowledge of what she was doing.

Because that was the case, Harry realized suddenly, swimming in her thoughts, immersed in her grief and her anger. She hadn’t known she was twisted. She hadn’t corrupted people on purpose. She had talked to them, and they had fallen into new patterns of thought. And then they would make some effort to claim her and keep her away from others, and she would object to that, and they would hate her for it.

She created obsession, said the magic that foamed around him in a bright crimson sea, carrying truth back to him. She created twisted who were driven insane by their own fascination. And she did not know it.

No. I couldn’t have done that-I would have known-

More walls flew apart with silent explosions, green and blue barriers, emerald and sapphire, breaking down. She could ignore her own flaw, but it had taken work, the work of her own mind and her own fear, to make her aware that she no longer used Healing magic, that every spell she cast to ease patients’ suffering was a Dark one. She had gone too far into Dark magic that could be used for such purposes, she had investigated and wept when she couldn’t save lives and vowed to do so, and had tipped, almost gently, over the edge into madness without realizing it.

She was crying. Harry leaped out of her mind and opened his eyes, and found her with the tears sliding down her cheeks, her hand reaching out as if she was catching the last of her deception and cradling it against her. Harry stared at her, feeling sorry for her and hating her at the same time, and felt the lash of power that uncurled from her, so neat and delicate you wouldn’t know it was there.

Her flaw.

Draco roared in agony and charged.

At Harry.

Holinshead reacted before Harry could, raising a barrier that Draco slammed into. He ran his hands over it, snarling, his face so distorted that Harry didn’t think he would have known him without having seen his expression change. Harry shuddered. He had never yet seen Draco forget to use his wand. Turning to the use of hands first was something more Muggle-raised and Muggleborn wizards did than pure-bloods.

But Alto was still reaching, the whip of power curling its tendrils in the air like a plant. That was what she did, Harry realized. She found those she thought were a threat to her and made them into friends.

But because it was a flaw, Dark magic by nature, it wasn’t enough to put them under a mild Imperius-like effect and then leave them to come out of it when they were away from her. It made them slaves, and killers. It made them disregard everything else but her.

I should never have let Draco come this close, Harry decided, and raised his own defense against the flaw. Images of Lionel passed through his mind like a lightning storm. The bright dark eyes, the way he laughed and shut his eyes sometimes when he did, even the way he turned away from Harry with his shoulders hunched when he heard that Harry loved him. All those were shields because Harry had already found someone he loved to the point of madness, and Alto didn’t have the power to either give him back to Harry or change Harry’s mind about him.

She fell back from him, her face so bright with fear that Harry’s shields almost wavered. He wished he could comfort her, he wished he didn’t have to make anyone look like that, he had used Dark magic himself and he didn’t think it worthy of the punishments that the Ministry liked to hand out-

But then he felt the scrape of the flaw against him again, and remembered. He closed in on Alto, and snapped out the spells he needed.

“Expelliarmus.” Her wand went flying from her hand, a precaution. She was far deadlier without it than with. Most twisted were.

“Incarcerous.” The ropes bound her arms to her sides, and she tilted her head back against the pressure of the ones around her neck, her throat working.

Harry stopped in front of her, and rested his wand right above the pulse.

She stared at him, and her grey eyes were like Draco’s, and shit, the flaw was edging into him even though he was aware of it. Harry gritted his teeth. He had to fight it only long enough to kill her, which would be easy, this close.

“I didn’t know,” Alto said, and her voice had sobs threaded all through it. “I promise, if I’d known it I would have stopped it, if I had to kill myself. I never wanted to hurt anyone else. I never wanted to make them hurt me.”

“I know,” Harry said. Her flaw dragged that much gentleness out of him.

“And I only touched those who had some connection to the Dark themselves,” Alto whispered on. “I promise. I never-I never knew, I could only have made them become twisted if they had the potential. Have you thought about the way that Draco turns his head in reaction to Dark magic? Have you thought-”

Harry shook his head. “Don’t mention him again,” he said quietly.

Alto fell silent and stared at him. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For so many things.”

Harry held her eyes as he whispered, “Diffindo,” and watched the line of red open across her jugular. He owed her that much.

Or her flaw convinced him he did. He stepped away from her body as she slumped, not understanding what had made him feel like that.

He turned around. The shield that had held Draco back was gone, but he scrambled across on all fours and knelt over Alto’s body instead of attacking Harry. He put out one hand as though to touch her wound, and then pulled it back and cradled it to his chest. He was making ragged sounds under his breath.

Harry turned to Holinshead, nodding to her. “Thanks for your help,” he said.

“I did little enough, in the end,” Holinshead said, and smiled at him.

Harry fell a step back. He would have said, before, that her eyes were a dull grey, not so different from Alto’s in color. But they shone now. They shone like stars.

They shone blue.

“What are you?” he whispered.

Holinshead chuckled and bowed to him. “Someone you recognize, I see,” she said. “And someone willing to work with you in order to eliminate a rival. Remember that.” She looked past him at Alto’s body and spat. “Someone who can possess other twisted, but not only that.”

He was after Alto because she could make twisted, and somehow that threatens him.

“The Veritaserum-”

“The body and mind I’m in now did want to avenge their sister.” Holinshead, or the twisted wearing Holinshead’s body, glanced at him. “Sometimes I take them willing.” She bent closer, and her smile was a dragon’s. “Other times, not. Remember me.”

And Harry felt the passage overhead of something like a dragon’s downbeating wings, and Holinshead staggered and blinked, saying in a different voice, “What happened? Did-did I help Sarah?”

Harry couldn’t bring himself to explain for the moment. He looked back at Draco, who still wasn’t touching Alto, but was still crouched over her. He made no noise, now. His face looked like washed marble when he raised it.

Sometimes, I hate this job, Harry thought, and turned away, to leave Malfoy his privacy, while he answered Holinshead’s questions.

Chapter Ten.

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