Chapter Thirty of 'The Serenity of His Rage'- Firewalk
Chapter Twenty-Nine.
Title: The Serenity of His Rage (30/39)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Warnings: Angst, minor character deaths, torture, violence, gore, magical bonding, AU
Rating: R
Summary: AU of HBP. Narcissa never made Snape swear an Unbreakable Vow, and in the end, Draco decides to accept Dumbledore’s offer of sanctuary. But when Narcissa dies and Dumbledore declares his intention to create a soul-bond between Harry and Draco mainly to get rid of the Horcrux in Harry, Draco becomes enraged. He’ll use the soul-bond and the sanctuary Dumbledore gave him. But not exactly in the ways that Dumbledore anticipated.
Author’s Notes: This story will be fairly dark and approximately thirty-nine chapters long. It should update every Tuesday.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Firewalk
“Is Dumbledore insane?”
Harry would have laughed at the words, but it was clear Draco meant them. Snape had just told them about Dumbledore’s proposed solution when it came to finding the next Horcrux. And now Draco sat there with his head in his hands, and Snape watched him.
They were once again back in Snape’s quarters, and there was a dusky red fire burning on the hearth. Harry looked at it bleakly and wondered why it seemed so much darker to him than most ordinary fires.
Maybe just the news.
He turned back to Snape, who had a tumbler full of some strong drink on his knee. Harry knew it was strong because he could smell it, and the scent made his nose itch. He tried to keep his voice as calm as he could. “What do you advise, sir?”
“Albus has made his demands clear. If you refuse to cooperate on this, then he’s going to start wondering what else you’re doing.”
Harry sighed and rubbed his scar out of habit. Draco reached out and caught his wrist, turning his hand over so they could link fingers. Harry smiled at him in thanks and then faced Snape again. “We’ll have to let him wonder, then. There’s no way Draco can walk across fire, and for such a-a nebulous goal. What would happen if he did it and then didn’t recognize the magical signatures of any Death Eaters? Or what happens if the Horcrux isn’t in Gringotts? These are just guesses on Dumbledore’s part.”
Snape raised his eyebrows slowly, as if he was considering something deep and interesting, and then nodded. “Your vocabulary has improved from your Potions essays.” He swallowed more of his drink, whatever it was.
Harry leaned forwards so far that he was secretly impressed with himself for not tumbling from his chair. “This is serious.”
“I know that.”
Harry started to speak again, but Draco put a hand on his arm, and a moment later, Snape cut him off with a gesture. “I’ve told you what Albus wants, Potter. That doesn’t mean I know how to convince him that it’s not what he wants, but I’m thinking about that. For now, I’d rather think than listen to your nebulous concerns.”
Harry leaned back with a mutter, and listened to Draco talking to Snape. They seemed to be talking about potions that would let Draco resist the fire, and from there they went on to theoretical magical concerns that Harry couldn’t follow. Draco was alert but relaxed, and Harry wasn’t getting a lot of worry or explanation down the bond.
But it made him want to be doing something, since he couldn’t join in their discussion. As he sat there, he knew he could come up with a plan. But Draco wouldn’t let him out of his sight so that Harry could actually do something about the plan. That was a problem.
The only thing to do was to wait until tonight, when they would separate again, and then write an owl.
And Harry wasn’t sure that he would follow through with what he’d decided. It might be that it would turn out differently than he thought it would. But he knew he had to do something, or go utterly crazy for lack of being able to help.
*
Draco kept a careful eye on Harry. They’d just come out of Professor Snape’s quarters, and Draco thought they would stay together, perhaps sleep in the Room of Requirement again. They hadn’t done very much today except talk to Snape and listen to what he’d said about Dumbledore’s plans to find the next Horcrux, but that was enough. It was a lot to think about, and Draco wanted to hold Harry in his arms and talk before they went to sleep.
It seemed Harry had other plans-something Draco had known from the way the bond had started thrumming when he was halfway through his conversation with Snape. Now Harry was yawning and stretching theatrically, and he craned his head towards Draco with another yawn. “I’m awfully tired.”
“So am I,” Draco said, and smiled a little when Harry looked at him. “Well, you know. Tired mentally and morally.”
“So am I,” Harry said, and the bond turned green and gold with what Draco thought were probably his true emotions. Then he coughed and added, “I mean, enough that I don’t want to-do anything other than sleep tonight,” and the bond turned muddy green and brown again.
“Oh, is that it?” Draco asked.
“Right. So, if it doesn’t bother you too much…” Harry trailed off, but Draco stood there, smiling and not being helpful, until Harry said a little desperately, “I thought I’d sleep in Gryffindor Tower tonight.”
“And I could sleep in the dungeons?”
From the glare Harry gave him, Draco still wasn’t being helpful in the right way, but Harry wasn’t about to say so. He nodded and tried out another yawn, which Draco looked through. “We could? If you don’t mind?”
Draco rolled his eyes and decided he was done with pretenses. Honestly, he should have put a stop to this earlier, when he began to sense Harry’s busy planning, but he’d been debating a delicate point with Professor Snape then, and hadn’t wanted to back off the conversation. “I don’t think you should go to Dumbledore or Voldemort, Harry.”
Harry leaped as though Draco had pinched him, and came down glaring at him harder than ever. “I wasn’t going to go to Voldemort!”
“As though Dumbledore’s much better at the moment.” Harry opened his mouth, probably to say something in defense of his old mentor, and Draco continued, talking over Harry out of necessity. “They both want you dead!”
“Dumbledore would kill me for a specific reason-”
Harry stopped, probably because he’d realized how stupid he sounded. It would be hard not to, Draco thought, with Draco’s glare cutting through him. Harry glanced away and sighed, and sounded more normal when he spoke again, thank goodness.
“All right. I know. But I thought I might be able to talk to Dumbledore and come up with another way to find this Horcrux than having you walk through bloody fire. Or I might be able to work out whether he’s really going to depend on this, or it’s a cover for his real strategy.”
Draco sighed and put his arms around Harry. Harry stood stiff, for a second, as if he was expecting an explosion, and then he hugged Draco back.
“I might have known it would come from you trying to spare me,” Draco whispered. “Idiot. You’re such a beloved idiot.”
Harry said nothing, but Draco could feel the bond relaxing and contracting in regular pulses, like it was a heart pumping blood. That usually meant Harry was thinking. And Draco didn’t want to discourage the thinking, but when Harry did it on his own, he often got into trouble.
As witness this, he thought dryly, and brushed his hand across Harry’s cheek and up through his hair until Harry was paying attention to him again. “What is it? Do you think Professor Snape can’t protect me? That I can’t protect myself?”
Harry flushed hard enough that Draco could see the tips of his ears gleaming with embarrassment, and he shook his head. “Of course I don’t think that. Professor Snape probably knows more curses than I do, and…” He trailed off.
“You don’t want me to fight,” Draco guessed, with a faint sigh. “You don’t want to risk me the same way you didn’t want to risk your friends by exposing them to the Horcrux.”
Harry immediately pulled back and gave him a doubtful look. “Don’t think that I’m exposing you to the Horcrux on purpose. I didn’t know it would be a danger to you when we bonded, or I would have refused then.”
Draco paused. He had expected Harry to say that he hadn’t really known Draco when they bonded, so he hadn’t thought of him as in danger from the Horcrux, but of course that wasn’t Harry. Harry cared about everyone, even strangers.
At least when it comes to facing dangers that he thinks it’s his duty to face alone. Draco narrowed his eyes a little and folded his arms. “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean that you’ll always try to protect people who matter to you. This is another instance of it.”
“Yes,” Harry said slowly, while the bond pulsed as if he was trying to figure out what problem Draco had with him putting himself in danger.
It was hard to avoid rolling his eyes, it really was, but Harry must have picked up some of his true emotions through the bond and was already giving Draco an offended look. Draco held back a snort and said succinctly, “I don’t want you to put yourself in danger, either, you great twat. And if someone explicitly asks you to stop protecting them that way, you’re supposed to listen.”
Harry’s eyes widened a little, and then he nodded and looked away. “I’ll remember that,” he muttered. “Of course, that leaves us in the same position, where we don’t have any idea what to do next and no idea if the ritual Dumbledore’s proposing will work.”
“There’s no reason that we can’t use a variation on the plan you came up with,” Draco said. When Harry looked at him with blank eyes, he smiled and added, “I can be the one who talks to Dumbledore, that’s all.”
“Don’t be stupid, Draco. He’ll suspect you from the beginning.”
“He will,” Draco agreed calmly, “but he won’t be able to walk circles around me like he could around you. And he’ll think he understands why I’m there. Because he’s already suspicious of me, he won’t be as suspicious as he will be if he sees you come walking into the office, ‘ready’ to collaborate with him.”
Harry paused, then tapped his ear with the palm of one hand. “I suppose that makes sense in your head when you say it,” he admitted, “but it doesn’t really make much sense in mine.”
Draco sighed tolerantly at him. “What I’m telling you is that I can manipulate Dumbledore more successfully than you can, and if you think about it, then you’ll be able to see why that’s so.”
Harry grumbled at him, but if nothing else, from the clear blue and silver feelings streaming down the bond, Draco knew he had won. Harry would let him go, although he said aloud that it was only because of the bond that would let him know in seconds if something went wrong and Draco was feeling distressed.
Draco nodded, and made soothing sounds of his own, and then took him to sleep in the Room of Requirement again. And do something more than sleep. Even though Harry had planned to confront Dumbledore tonight, Draco preferred to do it in the morning, when he would be fresher.
And Harry didn’t have it in his heart to disagree with him, not when Draco gave him the little winsome smile he’d been working on perfecting.
*
Severus knew he had had more Firewhisky than was good for him, but he suspected his vision was no more muddled than before he’d drunk it.
Particularly my mental vision, he thought as he stared sullenly into the fire. There was a dark red flicker at the heart of it that resembled a ruby, and Severus kept surprising it there when he’d thought it had vanished. I can’t see any way out of the trap Albus has set, or even if it’s a trap. It might not be. It might just be the best hope that anyone can come up with, the vision that Albus has had and needs help to come true.
There was something nagging at him, though, more than his usual conviction that he had failed somewhere along the way and there should have been a way to prevent Albus from coming this far and trying to force them into a corner. Severus drank another half a glass, frowning, before the memory came to him.
He stood and strode rapidly along his bookshelves, his fingers skimming spine after spine until he came to the one he wanted. With a grunt, he pulled out the heavy book bound in red leather and slapped it into his arms, then stood back to stare at it.
Fire and Its Purifying Properties.
Severus skimmed rapidly through the pages. He didn’t need to look at the index, because he had only ever read two chapters of this book. One was on potions that were fairly tricky to brew unless the balance of elements in the cycle was exactly right.
The other was on rituals that concerned themselves with fire. Severus had read it in hopes that it might complement the potions chapter, but he had ended up more bored than anything else.
Once he reached that chapter, he flipped through a few pages of rambling paragraphs that were more like the writer’s private notes and preoccupations-one of the risks one took with older texts like this-until he landed on what he remembered.
The firewalk is one of the most dangerous and yet most trustworthy rituals in the whole pantheon of elemental magic. It shows that the one who commits to it is pure of purpose, because otherwise the coals will burn his skin off. It takes that will and that purpose and works great magic, magic so strong that some have sought to combine the firewalk with other rituals to do more than grant a single wish. It has never worked, however. Fire is too pure to be chained to a lesser ritual; it will burn through pretenses to take its rightful central place once again.
Severus rolled his eyes. The book’s author, Wilhelm Grimmnasty, had expressed himself with characteristic pompousness.
But that was what he had remembered. Albus talked of having Draco firewalk in service to another ritual. But that wouldn’t work.
Thoughtfully, Severus laid the book aside. He would raise the point with Draco the next time he spoke with him, and advise him on how to proceed. If he wanted to take the risk anyway, then he must, but Severus did wonder how Albus planned to pull off something that went contrary to the laws of elemental magic.
*
“You wanted to see me, Headmaster.”
Draco had hoped coming this time of the evening would at least disconcert the Headmaster a little, but Dumbledore seemed perfectly composed. In fact, he looked composed for sleep, with his phoenix already sitting on its perch with its head tucked under a wing. That phoenix raised its head and gave a reproachful trill when Draco walked in.
“I was not expecting to see you precisely, but I did want to ask you something.” Dumbledore gave a small smile. “Without Harry present. The same way I wanted to talk to Harry without you when we were first discussing his unfortunate Horcrux.”
Draco didn’t react the way Dumbledore might have expected him to, by spitting and running out of the room. He had known when he came here that Dumbledore would be infuriating, and he had survived living with someone who was more than that, who was actively terrifying. Keeping the lessons from the Dark Lord in mind, Draco simply nodded. “Yes, sir. What is it?”
“I want you to know that it is of utmost importance that we find a way to destroy the other Horcruxes before we work out a way to destroy the one in Harry.”
Draco just kept his face rapt and attentive as he nodded. His private thoughts raged about how, if the one in Harry was so delicate, they should work on it first, and how Dumbledore hadn’t cared about that when he came to talk to Harry on his birthday…
But he smoothed out his thoughts, and strengthened his Occlumency shields. He already knew how to look at someone and appear to meet their eyes without actually doing so. Dear Auntie Bellatrix was good for one thing. “All right, sir. But how are we going to get Nagini away from the Dark Lord?”
“I do wish you would call him by name, dear boy,” Dumbledore chided. “Calling him Voldemort or Tom reduces his power. And if you think of him as Tom, then you don’t even need to flinch,” he added, as Draco flinched.
If it means thinking of him as less powerful than he really is, that seems like a good recipe for suicide to me. But Draco chased that thought away, too, and simply nodded again. “Yes, sir. I see what you mean. How are we going to get Nagini away from Tom?”
“I will worry about that when we have the last Horcrux, which I suspect is Helga Hufflepuff’s Cup, in hand.”
“Yes, sir. You said something about having me walk across coals?”
“Look here.” Dumbledore reached out and picked up an immense book that had been lying on his desk facing him, so big that Draco’s eyes hadn’t even told him it was a book; it had looked like a mat for the desk itself. He turned it around, and Draco bent down and looked at what he quickly recognized as a ritual diagram. The Dark Lord had worked on them often.
“This illustrates the way that a firewalk can be connected to visions and feelings of magical signatures,” Dumbledore said in a low, urgent voice. “We have several challenges here. Finding the Horcrux is only one of them. Entering Gringotts is another. So is identifying the Death Eater who actually has the artifact in their vault, so that we do not waste time entering those that aren’t candidates. With this ritual, we can do it all at once. Do you see?”
Draco studied the diagram and nodded as if he did. In reality, this kind of esoteric ritual theory was beyond him. He could understand the ideas, with a little more explanation, but he didn’t know how to interpret the sketches that showed how it all fit together. “What if we had another method, though?”
“Another method?”
Draco stepped back and pretended to be looking into Dumbledore’s eyes again. “Yes, sir. I was in the Death Eaters’ inner circle for months, and they didn’t bother to hide anything from me. They always chattered in front of me as if I was a dumb animal that couldn’t understand anything they said.” Draco didn’t have to feign the bitterness in his voice. Dear Auntie Bellatrix had been one of them, which was why Draco didn’t feel like thanking her for her Occlumency training.
Dumbledore leaned forwards. “Go on.”
He probably thinks that my bitterness is going to make me absolutely loyal to him, or something. Draco did. “There are very few Death Eaters that the Dark Lord would trust with something like this. My father was entrusted with one Horcrux, and I don’t think the Dark Lord would give him another one, knowing what happened to it.”
Dumbledore nodded. “But we cannot know for sure that the Dark Lord knows about the diary. He cannot feel their destruction, or he would know what we are doing already.”
“Then in that case, he probably doesn’t want to give more than one mysterious artifact that guarantees his immortality to a single person.” Draco shrugged. What he was saying made sense to him, and Dumbledore was wrong to tell him that it had to be wrong. “And he doesn’t trust Fenrir Greyback. He’s made that clear on many occasions, usually to Greyback’s face.”
“He might be saying that to fool others…”
“He also said that when he was alone with me, when he was alone with me and Aunt Bellatrix, and when Greyback was absent,” Draco said dryly. “He thinks of werewolves as beasts, not humans. He wouldn’t.”
“Say that I accept your analysis for the moment, Mr. Malfoy. You’ve only provided possibilities for where the Horcrux isn’t. Who does that leave as a trusted Death Eater who would possess it?”
“My aunt.” Dumbledore only sat there without reacting, which made Draco wonder if he didn’t know of the family connection between the Black sisters. Draco hid a shudder as he added, “Bellatrix Lestrange.”
“The Lestranges are possibilities, yes,” Dumbledore said. “But only one among the many I had considered.”
It’s not my fault that you don’t have enough insight to power a Lumos. “Her fanatical devotion is easier to see when you’re close to the Dark Lord,” Draco said, and ignored the smile of pity Dumbledore gave him. “She values him above anything else-her wand, her life, her husband, her sisters. She used to be a little more sane about it, two years ago, but not now. And I think she would be the only one he would give it to.”
“If he gave it to them before the war, then would that still be true?”
Draco snorted. “I was only an infant when she went to prison, but I always heard that she didn’t bother hiding her allegiance to the Death Eaters, sir. She was one of a very few who didn’t. And two of the others share a vault with her.”
Dumbledore sat silent and still, frowning. Draco watched him. He wondered for a moment if Dumbledore simply didn’t trust him and that was the reason for his resistance to Draco’s ideas, or if he wanted to use this ritual for another reason.
Maybe it’s also a way to sever my soul from Harry’s.
Draco buried the desperate panic that thought immediately invoked. He didn’t know, not for certain, so he wouldn’t try to defend against the possibility until he had more proof than his fears.
Would that Dumbledore could follow the same course.
“We could try to confirm it’s the Lestranges,” Dumbledore said slowly. “But we will only get one chance, if that, to break into Gringotts. I would rather make sure before we waste our resources.”
And trust the word of a Slytherin, right? Draco only shrugged. “All right, sir. Can I go now?”
“There is another reason that I wanted you to undergo the firewalk, Mr. Malfoy.”
“What’s that, sir?”
“It might be a way to destroy the Horcrux in Harry at the same time.”
Draco stared at him, and then he sat slowly back down. Even knowing that Dumbledore was a master at manipulation, even knowing he had probably been lucky to get Dumbledore to listen as much as he had, he still couldn’t ignore the chance.
At least he had an ally on his side who would recognize both the probings of another Legilimens into Draco’s head, and the attempt to alter memories.
“Go on,” he said.
Chapter Thirty-One.
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