Chapter Twenty of 'Seasons of War'- Dangling Over the Abyss
Chapter Nineteen.
Title: Seasons of War (20/40)
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 Twenty-Dangling Over the Abyss
Draco could practically hear Harry hissing behind him, but he knew what he was doing. That was Nemo out there, and they wouldn’t get another chance to capture him if they messed up the first time. He tossed and caught his wand as he ran, to make sure that it was in his hand when he needed it, and concentrated on the flicker of movement in front of him.
One moment, he saw nothing but the darkness, broken here and there by faint shafts of starlight and the glow from the glamours that Granger had placed around the false book; then, as if his eyes had suddenly adjusted, he could make out the tall man in the black cloak who was studying the book with his head bowed.
Draco managed to get within three feet of him before the man seemed to realize that something was wrong. He spun around, one hand rising, and the night at his feet shifted and coalesced into heavy dogs. They didn’t bark before they hurtled forwards at Draco, lean and rangy as wolves, but with the heavy jaws of mastiffs. Around the neck of each was a thick collar of what looked like metal protecting the throat.
Draco raised a Shield Charm around his legs, focusing more on Nemo than his beasts. Nemo might take the chance to flee while they were engaged with the dogs, and their trap would have been for nothing. If Draco was lucky, though, he would be too much intrigued by the book to run until he’d got through the wards.
His first sign that something was wrong came when jaws closed on his legs and shook him hard enough to spill him from his feet. His wand nearly flew free, but he clenched his hand down on it instinctively and rolled. He came back up, panting, and found that the wolf-dogs had leaped straight through his shield as if it wasn’t there and were now on him, flinging themselves on his chest in deadly silence.
“Confringo!”
With a snapping noise and a nasty-sounding whimper, the creature on top of him flew away. Draco scrambled back up and nodded his thanks to Harry before he stepped forwards to confront Nemo again.
*
Harry cursed under his breath. First Draco didn’t check to be sure that his Shield Charm had actually stopped the dogs-which Harry had kept a sharp eye on because he knew that Nemo’s beasts had all sorts of surprising abilities-and now he was acting as though he didn’t need to pay attention to the rest of them. There had been four dogs, and Harry’s spell had only defeated one.
But they were partners, and Harry knew they should work together rather than spend time yelling at each other. He finished off the rest of the dogs with direct offensive spells, since it seemed as though defensive charms didn’t work on them, blasting one apart from the inside, opening another’s jaws so wide that the last one ran down its throat, and then bursting that one with the stuffed stomach open while it was still trying to figure out what had happened. Then he turned to go after Draco.
Nemo was fighting back not with a wand but with handfuls of drifting dark powder that flashed and sparked around him like immature fireworks. Each of them formed into small bat-winged creatures that circled around Draco’s head, getting their wings in his eyes and their feet in his hair. Draco was dodging them with no more than exclamations of annoyance so far, but Harry, standing behind him, could see what he didn’t think Draco could. The swirls of creatures were forming into a larger pattern, one that had wings of its own, and taloned feet, and hungry jaws.
Harry cried “Confringo!” again, and the creature lost a patch of its left wing. The rest of the hovering swarm turned towards him, looking suitably malevolent, and Harry repeated the spell. At least he could distract the thing’s attention from Draco if he couldn’t do anything else.
Not that I would have to do this if Draco had waited for me and not jumped headlong into taking risks as if he was me, he had to add, if only in the privacy of his own head.
The bat-like creatures split up as they came after him, flapping their wings in random patterns and swerving whenever he thought he had a clear shot at them. Harry swore at them so they would know he was displeased and then rolled himself into a ball as a small flock came in behind him. The flock swept over his head and collided with the larger one. To his disappointment, Harry didn’t hear any shrieks or crashes that would indicate the breaking of tiny bones.
He promptly scrambled back to his feet and fell into the rhythms of battle, give and take and sting and cast, and hoped that Draco would have the sense and luck to take care of himself for a few more minutes.
*
Draco had never fought such a skilled opponent before. It seemed strange, because he was used to thinking of Nemo as the weakest of the three after Nusquam and Nihil, but then again, he had never exactly closed in battle with Nihil. And perhaps Nusquam’s prowess had been in areas other than battle.
Whatever the cause, he found himself on the defensive, or rocked on his heels and forced to retreat, far too often. His one advantage was that Nemo still seemed to think that the book was real, which meant he wouldn’t want to retreat too far from it. And whenever Draco had to stop and deal with one of the problematic animals that Nemo flung at him, Nemo would turn back and start trying to break through the glamours again. That gave Draco small pauses of breathing space.
Smarter and stronger than I thought, but he’s still not all that smart, Draco thought as he swatted the bodies of some crawling bugs with painful stings out of his hair and once again shot a curse at Nemo’s back. Otherwise, he would hammer me until I dropped and not care how long it cost him to do it. Or he would have sensed by now that the book’s a fake.
Draco smiled. It was always a comfort to know that one was smarter than one’s enemy.
Nemo didn’t seem to realize that he was coming back this time. He was standing above the book with one hand extended so that the fingers fit in between the illusory wards stretched above the cover, his lips moving in what was probably a chant. Draco struck from the side, hard enough that Nemo nearly lost his balance before he whirled around with a sort of wordless yell.
“Bastard,” Draco said, on general principles, and began to incant a long and complex binding charm that should prevent escape in another form as well as ordinary escape. Nemo had got out of custody the last time they had him, and Draco wasn’t minded to let it happen again.
Nemo laughed aloud, a hollow, booming sound that seemed to roll in from a much greater distance than he actually stood from Draco. “Fool!” he said. “Look into my eyes.”
Draco jerked his head up because he had no choice; it felt as though someone had dug long fingers into his neck and forced him to do so. He found himself looking into Nemo’s large, dark eyes, moist, like the eyes of a seal.
The void was waiting behind them.
Draco didn’t struggle that much at first as he went in, partially because the hands seemed to be holding him still, and partially because he had done something like this with Nihil, who was stronger, and survived it. But quickly he discovered that this was a different part of the void than what he had seen before, or so it seemed. The flickering shadows that he was familiar with didn’t dart past him. The chilling sensation sank deeper and faster into his bones than it ever had.
And then he began to lose himself, piece by piece and bone by bone, the way Granger had described.
It was no more pleasant to experience than it had been to listen to. Draco could feel links that ran between the parts of his body, links that he had never known he had, weakening and splitting. His bones splintered, and the splinters floated through his flesh and dug into his eyes. At the same time, his skull seemed to be drifting free, as if the breaking of the links in his lower body was a prophecy of what would happen to him later. The pain was worse than the cold, and Draco knew he was screaming.
He did not know how to escape.
He could feel his thoughts stuttering and slowing, and one of the last he had was that he wished he had listened to his own advice to Harry about not dashing into dangerous situations.
*
It took Harry longer to get rid of the bat-creatures than he had thought it would, since they continued to break into smaller and smaller groups just when he’d thought he’d eliminated one of them. After the destruction of that first group with the Breaking Curse, Harry thought, they’d learned, and now they never stayed still long enough or formed into clumps large enough to present a good target.
Finally, the last one turned into drifting ash that couldn’t claw out his eyes or tug his hair out of his scalp no matter how much it might want to, and Harry turned, panting, to face the rest of the battle.
The first thing he saw was Draco, lit weirdly from within by a smoky light that made him look like a statue made of frosted glass. One hand was lifted as if to shield his face, and his eyes were wide with pain and horror.
Harry dashed forwards. No matter what promises he might have made to Draco in the past, there was no way that he could simply leave this alone.
Nemo faced him and made a careless gesture. The air between him and Harry filled with flying insects that bore a pattern of a skull on their backs. Harry ducked under them, rolled across the grass, and came up in front of a surprised Nemo. He had started to turn to the false book, and now he started to turn back, raising his hand and frowning as if it was very tiresome of Harry to require him to actually pay attention to the battle.
“You do not know what you are doing, boy,” Nemo said, in a voice that clacked and rustled like a room full of the insects he’d conjured.
“Yes, I do,” Harry said, and took another risk, because Draco wasn’t here to stop him. “I know where the real book is hidden, for example, which is more than I can say for you.”
Nemo paused and cocked his head. “This book is not the real one?” he asked doubtfully. “But it looks real.”
Nihil must not have put that much of his brain into this one, Harry thought, and decided that he should pursue the advantage while he held it. Nemo might stop believing him and kill him at any moment, or Nihil might show up. “I know,” he said. “It was meant to. But that’s just an illusion. I can give you the real one, if you care enough.”
Nemo whispered something, and then reeled back as though someone had slapped him. “Yes, it is fake,” he said, and studied Harry. “What do you want?”
“Release my partner,” Harry said, with a nod to Draco. He hoped that he looked less frantic than he felt, and that Nemo hadn’t inherited Nihil’s extreme grudge against them, which would probably make his tendril kill Draco instead of release him.
Nemo bit his lip for a moment. Then he said, “I would do much more for that book. Are you sure that you would simply like him released?”
“Unless you would both release him and betray Nihil, then I don’t see any reason to ask for anything else,” Harry said, and his voice was dry in spite of himself.
“Not my elder brother,” Nemo said, which Harry decided made no sense, unless that was the way he referred to Nihil. “But tell me one thing first. Have you read the book? Do you know what it contains, and will the notes stay with you if I destroy this copy?”
“We read it, but we didn’t understand it, so we couldn’t take notes,” Harry said. He knew that was the sort of lie that wouldn’t have fooled Hermione for a moment, but it was becoming clearer and clearer that Nemo wasn’t as smart as she was.
“I see,” said Nemo. “Then I will release him, and you will bring me the book. I will accept no tricks, mind,” he added, and sounded like nothing so much as a stern parent. Harry hoped that he didn’t look as though he was going to laugh, the way he had suddenly felt in that moment.
“I promise,” Harry said.
Nemo nodded, and then faced Draco and passed his hand up and down, as though waving a fly away. A swarm of the insects gathered behind his head, hovering in agitation. Nemo didn’t seem to notice them, or perhaps he had such complete control over them that he didn’t need to. There was a sigh, and then Draco stopped glowing and looked like himself again. He staggered backwards, though, and his eyes were shut, his head shaking as though he needed to shut out whatever it was he had seen.
Harry leaped forwards and caught him. Draco moaned and turned his head back and forth uneasily. “Where am I?” he whispered.
“Here, where the trap was, in front of Nemo and me,” Harry whispered back, and cradled him gently down to the ground. Draco moaned again, and Harry’s hands tightened on the sides of his head. He wondered what sorts of horrors Nemo had showed him. When Nemo was speaking-and sounding-like a stupid child, it was hard to think of what he had done, but Harry didn’t think that he was willing to take the risk with Draco’s health. Nemo was still powerful and dangerous, and he had to remember that.
“The book,” Nemo said commandingly.
Harry nodded and stood up. They were lucky that Nemo and not Nihil was here tonight, but Nihil might be able to reach through this servant the way he had through Nusquam when she was in the tent. Best to act at once.
“I have to Summon it,” he said warningly, “and then it will need to come through the wards that my friends have on it, so it’ll be a few minutes getting here.”
Nemo made a negligent gesture. “So be it.”
Harry held up his wand and said loudly, “Accio real book!” He had no idea what, if anything, that would bring, but the point was that he had Nemo’s trust for a few fragile seconds-as he saw when he turned around and realized that Nemo had relaxed, enough to smile and beam at him approvingly.
“You have better sense than most of your friends,” Nemo said. “A pity that you have chosen to fight against us.”
Harry hesitated, while his heart drummed. He was playing this by ear, and he had never been good at lying. But he thought what he was doing now was right. “Actually,” he said, “there’s a concession you could give me that would bring you to my side.”
Nemo laughed in delight. “What?”
“Can I come closer and whisper it to you?” Harry looked around and then down at Draco lying at his feet. “Someone might hear it otherwise, and I don’t want them to, just in case you’re unwilling to give me the concession and I have to stay on their side.”
Nemo cupped a hand invitingly round his ear. Harry stepped closer and spent a fleeting moment wondering if Nihil had ever regretted not giving this particular piece of himself more brains. Well, perhaps Harry’s actions would be the ones that made him regret it.
“All right,” Harry said, and licked his lips as if nervous. “Incarcerous maximus!”
The ropes snapped out and around Nemo’s limbs. Nemo hissed and tossed back his head, dark hair suddenly flying, eyes so deep that Harry thought for a second he would be captured as Draco had been. But he danced back in time, and lowered his gaze, and then kept repeating the charm, which added not only ropes but anti-Apparition wards in the air around the prisoner, psychic locks to slow their thoughts, and a gag.
Nemo was thrashing on the ground in instants, so buried under ropes that it was difficult to make out his face or the color of the clothes he was wearing. Harry just kept repeating the spell, never varying or lifting his voice, and stopped only when he heard Draco sit up, wheezing, behind him.
“What happened?” Draco whispered.
Harry added a Stunner, hoping that Nemo would be less likely to escape if he was unconscious, and then knelt down next to Draco and hugged him hard. Draco put a hand on his shoulder as if for balance, his eyes cloudy, and glared at Nemo. At least he knew who was responsible for his predicament, Harry thought in satisfaction. He would have hated to suddenly end up with a wand under his throat.
“I captured Nemo, after he tortured you,” Harry said. “I think he won’t escape now. What about you? What happened?”
“I felt myself being ripped apart bone by bone, the way that Granger was,” Draco said simply. He never took his gaze from Nemo, and his eyes were wide and hostile with a rage that Harry had only seen in them a few times before.
Harry swallowed. “I’m sorry,” he said, which didn’t seem adequate, but was true. “Do you think that you would benefit from talking to Raverat? He looked into my mind and seemed to do a good job.”
Draco turned a scathing glance on him and opened his mouth, probably to resume the argument they’d been having before Nemo interrupted, but at that moment something bumped Harry’s elbow hard enough to make him yelp. He turned and caught at it, wondering if one of Nemo’s beasts had escaped his control, though he’d thought they all vanished when he cast the charms that imprisoned Nemo.
It was a book, bound in thick leather and tooled with black letters that made Harry feel ill looking at them. He turned it over, trying to find a name on it, and saw a small brass plaque. Harry squinted at it, feeling ridiculous and almost wanting to hand it over to Draco for a glance. He couldn’t believe there was someone in the camp who put brass plaques on their books.
But he understood when he saw the name. Gawain Robards.
“What’s that?” Draco demanded, predictably enough.
“A book belonging to Robards,” Harry said in a daze, passing it over. “I told Nemo that the real book was elsewhere and cast a Summoning Charm that said the real book should come to me. I didn’t know that it would summon something like this.”
Draco turned it over twice. Harry was just starting to notice that there didn’t seem to be a way to open it-and no sign of pages, either, as if the book was all one spine-when Draco touched a section of the left side and made the book hiss and sigh and fall open to a set of thickly creased parchment pages.
“What is it about?” Harry asked, craning his neck.
“This is a book of plans in Holder’s handwriting,” Draco said in a voice so quiet that Harry wondered if he was suffering from some of the effects of staring into Nemo’s eyes, at least until he started to pay attention to the words. “It-means that she must have written down the orders as Robards dictated them to her. Yes, that sounds like a division of labor that would make sense to them.” He turned a few of the pages, and others were revealed behind them, the number not diminishing at all. Harry wasn’t sure if that just meant the book was stuffed full of them or if it was some magical effect. “It’s a book of war plans. What they plan to do, as far as coordinating with the War Wizards and other Aurors, to fight Nihil.”
Harry stared and asked the first question he could think of. “But why would it come to my Summoning Charm?”
“Someone-Robards or Holder-must have thought of it as the ‘real book,’” Draco said, and ran a possessive hand over the cover. “Perhaps they have other plans that they’ve been convincing someone they don’t trust are real, but these are the ones they intend to put into action.” He was touching the book like an adored child now, and with a dreamy smile on his face.
“Well, we can’t keep it,” Harry said, because he was really afraid that Draco might try. “They’re sure to miss it.”
“Oh, keeping it is out of the question, yes,” Draco said, returning to himself. “But there’s nothing saying that we can’t copy it.” He began to chant in Latin, moving his wand over the parchment pieces and turning them over slowly as if showing them to the wand. Harry wasn’t familiar with the spell and glanced uneasily at Nemo, thinking they should probably move him into a more sheltered area as soon as possible. He wondered if Draco would want them to keep this capture secret from the other Aurors, as they had with Nusquam.
“Potter? Malfoy?”
Harry turned around. It was Gregory’s voice, and only then did he remember that she and Ketchum were next on guard. He stood up and stepped around Hermione’s still-glowing platform-Nemo hadn’t had a chance to dismantle most of the illusions-to explain the situation. He wasn’t sure what should happen yet with the book they had retrieved from Robards and Holder, whether Draco would want anyone else to see it. The Aurors had helped them so far, but betraying their leaders this directly could be a breaking point.
*
Draco sped up his copying charms when he heard the voices of his instructors. He didn’t know if he should show the Aurors the “real book” or not, but he did know that he wanted the choice, rather than having it revealed to them by default.
He wondered if he should have told Harry not to mention it, and then snorted and dismissed the notion. He could trust Harry that far, he thought.
And I can trust him to save my life and capture Nemo and do brilliant things without planning them on purpose. I just can’t trust him to spare his own life.
Despite the ache in his brain, despite the pressure of tremendous and terrible dreams behind his eyelids, Draco was burning with excitement and the temptation to consider the evening a success.
In this book was the key to a different kind of power-among other things, the power he needed to punish Holder and Robards for the humiliations that they had inflicted on him and Harry.
Chapter Twenty-One.
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