Chapter Twenty-Six of 'Seasons of War'- Uncomfortable Allies
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Title: Seasons of War (26/40)
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-Six-Uncomfortable Allies
“Allow me to see your eye, Trainee Malfoy.”
Holder had started walking forwards when she saw him, stride so stately that it was a long moment before Draco thought to listen to the words she was speaking. Then he straightened his spine and took a step forwards. Raverat stirred at his side as if he would move up in support, too, but he said nothing. He would be content to remain a generic observer, Draco thought, even if Holder hurt him, because of what had happened between Draco and Nemo. Raverat was another one of those like Granger who thought torture unacceptable even when used against nonhuman enemies. It was no wonder that they got along so well.
“You can’t see my eye, Auror Holder,” Draco said, and was astonished at the coolness of his own voice. “It’s gone now.”
“I know that,” Holder said, and her voice was actually something approaching gentle. Or at least respectful, Draco thought. It was hard to estimate how much respect there actually was in her expression, or how much compassion, because of the way that his missing eye distorted her face. She cocked her head to the side as if studying him from a different angle would give her a better idea of his injury. “I merely wanted to look at the damage.”
“Why?” The words were cold and dry in Draco’s throat. He stood motionless, not touching the empty socket the way he wanted to in the face of Holder’s unemotional scan. “To get ideas of how to punish me and Harry in the future?”
Holder shook her head. “I would have destroyed you long ago if I thought that you were dangerous to our goals. Instead, I think we need you, but we have not handled you as well as we could have.”
Draco blinked, startled by something approaching nearer to an apology than he’d thought he would ever get from Holder, and she let out a long, controlled breath. After a moment, Draco realized that the flutter of his eyelids had probably given her a better look at his bare socket than he was comfortable with. He straightened his spine and glared at her. Holder made a smoothing-down gesture, as of someone stroking a ruffled cat to peace, and carried on intently staring.
“Yes,” she said at last. “A sacrifice. An unacceptable one.” Her eyes shone with a cold delight that Draco didn’t think he could have missed if he was blind, instead of only half-blind. “This will provide the spur Gawain needs.”
Of course I should have known that she was interested in me not because of what happened, but because of what use I could be to her, Draco thought, but it was hard to blame her for that. After all, he hadn’t expected compassion from her, and he would have tried to use an injury of hers in the same way.
“What kind of spur?” Draco asked. “To stop lying and treat trainees like normal human beings, instead of potential enemies?”
Holder serenely ignored his question. She examined him with wistful rapture instead, and then nodded and seemed to return to herself. “Do you know that you can grow it back?” she asked. “Or will you not try that, and take a magical eye instead?”
Draco shook his head impatiently. “I want to know what you mean by a spur,” he said. “Then I’ll answer your question.”
Holder’s face lost the traces of emotion it had gathered so far. Draco thought it probably would have been a struggle for her to keep them, really. She studied him, and studied Raverat, as though he would provide a key to the riddle. Draco preserved an impassive face. For all he knew, Harry might already have betrayed Raverat’s part in the process when he had gone and babbled out his heart to Holder.
He and Harry would have to have a conversation about that, very soon.
Finally, Holder inclined her head and seemed to decide that she had lost this battle-or else that she would have to sacrifice something to get something, which Draco thought a much more likely conclusion for her to reach. “Gawain has been reluctant to carry the attack to Nihil. He has thought to wait and try to determine the extent of his power and his servants, to see if an attack is necessary or only attributable to a desire for revenge.”
Draco snorted in spite of himself, because that was the most ridiculous thing he had heard in a long time. “Does he really think that Nihil is going to dry up and blow away in the wind without being opposed?”
“He does not,” Holder said, though the way she bit off the words made Draco think they came closer to describing Robards’s state of mind than she would like. “He merely wants to know whether you would rush impetuously into the middle of the attack on Nihil, when it comes, pleading the desire for revenge and the hatred that we know you feel, or whether you would be willing to wait and work with others who are more experienced.”
“More experienced at what?” Draco kept his face as bland as possible, though he wanted to snap. And he didn’t know if he succeeded, given the loss of his eye. That will affect me forever. Still, he felt more like himself than he had since the eye was taken. It felt right to have other people appealing to his authority and asking his opinion. “We’re the ones who have fought Nihil the most. When you’ve directly engaged with him via the War Wizards, it doesn’t seem that you’ve had much luck.”
Holder’s face cracked like an old wall. “We have not,” she said. “And we want to use your experience. But you need to tell us what you want.”
Draco paused and eyed her thoughtfully. He hadn’t realized she might agree to a bargain, an old and time-honored way of doing things among the pure-bloods, or he would have tried proposing one. Come to think of it, he didn’t know whether Holder was a pure-blood. The name was familiar, but she could have been a Muggleborn or a half-blood who just happened to share the name.
“I want acknowledgment,” Draco said. “Support. You cannot use me as a spy anymore, or express such violent distrust towards me.” He was considering rapidly in the back of his mind, meanwhile, whether Holder keeping this bargain would be enough that he shouldn’t hurt her for hurting Harry. He thought he could put aside that pain if Holder offered enough to them out of this deal. He wondered if Harry would feel betrayed, and then threw the question ruthlessly into the back of his head. He could almost say that he didn’t care if Harry did, given how he had reassured Draco over and over and over again that things would be all right if he would just allow Raverat into his head.
“Agreed,” Holder said.
Her voice was under strain. Draco thought he could trust his ears if not his eye. She was starving for a solution to this problem, he thought. He could see beneath the façade of self-deprecation and cold obedience to her own standards that she had created for Harry. She wanted to compromise, had to compromise, because of what they had discovered, but she would never cease looking for a way to get her own back.
“I want someone to try and find out what happened to my eye,” Draco continued. “If Nihil is using it as the center of a weapon, which he might, then it could become dangerous to all of us in the future.”
Holder tilted her head again. “And what did happen to it, that you remember?”
“I don’t know,” Draco said, and lifted a hand so that he could trace his fingers down the still-unfamiliar scars. It was a pleasure to watch Holder flinch when he touched them. He wondered what else he could do that would make her upset. “The pain was so overwhelming in the moment it was taken that it might have been cast aside and lost, or taken into the void, or devoured.”
Holder stood still for a moment, eyes wide and rapt, as if she was contemplating one of those visions. Draco wished he knew which one it was. Was she rejoicing in his pain, or shivering in disgust and thankfulness that it had happened to him and not her, or trying to think of a way in which Nihil could use an eye?
“Very well,” she said, turning back to him and nodding. “Then I do agree that the time and expense of research is necessary.”
“Who will you assign?” Draco asked. He could think of too many Aurors who would still try to treat him and Harry as children, even if Robards and Holder ordered them to do otherwise.
“I will tend to your request myself.”
That was hardly ideal, but then, nothing about this situation was. Draco decided to leave that declaration, which was made in a tone of ice and steel, alone, and work on something else. “We also need to know everything that you’ve tried against Nihil which hasn’t worked. Just because some of the information was in the book doesn’t mean everything was.”
“How well you know us.” Holder’s eyes were bright with amusement. “Yes, very well. We will get the War Wizards to share their records with us. They have kept more thorough account of the spells, which we have continued to classify by category rather than individual incantation.”
Draco tried to think of something else he could demand. It was odd, he thought; his head had been filled with bitter responses to all sorts of questions only two days ago, and now he had a meager store of them.
“I don’t want pity,” he said at last. “If I see too many people staring at me with pity in their faces, I’ll go mad.”
Holder shook her head. “I have already met with your partner for this morning and started the rumor that you lost the eye in our service, doing something we asked you to do. That should win you some admiration. However, even if we spread around a general order that no one should regard you with pity, there would be some who did. If only because they would assume that an order like that hid some experience that made you especially eligible for pity,” she added, almost under her breath.
Draco had to admit that she probably knew the temperament of the other trainees better than he did. Outside the comitatus, he really didn’t know the other trainees. That would have to change if they became full Aurors.
When they became full Aurors. All this training, and the sacrifices that he had made for it, was a matter of pride for Draco now. Even if he decided that he couldn’t bear to stay in a corrupt Ministry, he would keep fighting until he attained the coveted Auror badge, because he had come too far to let petty hindrances stand in his way.
“There will be those who ask you what you plan to do about your missing eye,” Holder continued. “It would be best if you had an answer to them.”
Draco grimaced. Oddly enough, he felt calmer talking to Holder about this than he would have felt talking to Harry, who had pressed him with some of the same questions. “I’ve considered a magical eye. But the one that Mad-Eye Moody had, for example, was ugly. I have no wish to be ugly.”
Holder didn’t laugh at the wish, to his surprise, though she gave him a harsh look that he wished he could have judged better. “Moody was ugly because he wished to be so,” she replied. “Though it’s true that no magic could have cured his eye and his leg injuries, he chose such crude replacements to intimidate his enemies. You do not necessarily have to follow his path. There are reasons to do so, but reasons that you should not, as well. Your lesser age might be a factor in making such a decision.”
Draco frowned. He had assumed, without thinking about it, that of course Moody would have the best replacements available, because he was an Auror and the Ministry would require him to do so. But it made much more sense that the Ministry couldn’t do anything against Moody’s hard-headedness than that those were the uttermost limits of healing magic, Draco had to admit.
“I’ll think about it,” he said.
“Then that will be your answer to those inquiries?” Holder gave him an abstract look, as though she was judging his intelligence on how he planned to respond to rudeness.
Draco stood up straighter and gave her a flat look. “It will be,” he said. “I don’t understand why everyone in the camp needs to know what I’m doing about it as soon as possible.”
“Leaders have a need to reassure others,” Holder said. “Those who might panic because they know what Nihil can do across a distance to someone who was so far successful in fighting him would be calmer if they knew that you were not frightened of him.”
“A sure answer could demonstrate rashness, as well as lack of fear,” Draco said.
Holder gave him a faint smile. “And there you are too subtle for the average trainee, and even most of our Aurors. They will accept appearances at face value.” She paused, and then added, “Pray do not fear that I am trying to make some sort of crude pun. Nothing could be further from my intentions.”
Draco nodded thoughtfully. Up until this point, he hadn’t thought of himself as a leader except in the comitatus and in the partnership that he and Harry had. Strange to think that he had wanted power and yet hadn’t considered how he would look to the larger world. He should start thinking about it if he expected them to take him seriously.
“I’ll tell them that it’s a magical eye,” he said. “Don’t expect me to give them names for the product. I really will have to look around for a time before I decide on that, and their desire for reassurance won’t push me faster.”
“Understood,” Holder said, and studied him a minute longer, as if she were fearful that she would forget what he looked like. Draco studied her back as coolly as he could when he didn’t know what she saw in his scars and empty socket. Holder turned then and strode past him, close enough for her cloak to brush his, but in such a way that said he had just been dismissed from her mind.
Draco waited until she was gone before he turned to Raverat. “You haven’t entirely convinced me that you aren’t a traitor,” he said.
“Who took you to Nemo?” Raverat’s face was still pale, but a look of wonder had come into it, as well. Draco noticed the way his gaze kept darting after Holder. Perhaps he thought it remarkable that anyone would want to deal with Draco on an equal footing, Draco thought sourly. “Who suggested that you could get information from him? If I’m a traitor, then I would have freed Nemo by now.”
“Unless Nihil told you to keep quiet for some reason, until he could free him without exciting such suspicion,” Draco muttered. Things had changed. Harry’s crazy gamble had paid off. Draco almost hated to admit that, since it meant he couldn’t accuse Harry of betrayal any longer.
Then again, if he really was going to go out into the camp and join the other trainees instead of acting like a recluse in their tent the way he’d been half-planning, he would have to have Harry’s companionship and trust, and trust him in return.
“I almost think that no proof I could offer you would be enough,” Raverat said in exasperation.
Draco nodded at him. “Good guess.”
Raverat paused, then shook his head. “Then why invite me to speak with you? Why debate with me over whether I am a traitor or not? If no proof would be enough for you, why should I care what you say?” By now his face was red, and Draco enjoyed the effect. He had managed to turn this seemingly unflappable teacher red and then white in the same day. He could see that much, could be sure about the color of someone’s skin, even if he was unsure, at the best of times, where their gaze was directed or what they felt about him.
“Because you still have to work with Harry and Granger,” Draco said. “They’re part of my comitatus, and they’ve known me longer than you. If I tell them to follow me and ignore you, they will.”
Raverat paused, then raked his hand through his hair. “Fine,” he said. “You win. Not that I can tell what you want.”
Draco ignored his tone and smiled serenely. “It really isn’t all that difficult,” he said. “First of all, I want you to swear a vow on your wand that you didn’t try to set a trap for me, either by invading my mind or suggesting that I interrogate Nemo.”
“A vow on my wand is serious,” Raverat said, his face changing again, almost back to the serene expression that Draco had seen him wear at first.
“But not as serious as an Unbreakable Vow,” Draco said, “which, believe me, I considered. And if you really have no evil intentions in mind for me, you should be able to make them without effort.”
Raverat closed his eyes. “Clearly I can’t expect you to understand,” he said, in an exhausted voice. “But such vows might bind me in unexpected ways as I work further into the theory of esoteric magic, later in my life.”
“They probably can’t bind you more than the vows you’ve taken that make you a part of this Order of assassins, can they?” Draco asked in a friendly voice. “I didn’t think so,” he added, when Raverat opened his eyes and looked at him in startlement. “Now. Make the vow, in which case I’ll think about trusting you again, or leave. But you should make a decision soon. Harry will be back in a few hours, I think.” He squinted at the angle of sunlight on the wall of the tent and nodded.
Raverat gritted his teeth and drew his wand. He hesitated, then knelt at Draco’s feet. Draco smiled. He had hoped that Raverat would take the more formal step of swearing the vow like this. It wasn’t strictly necessary, but it made him feel happy and important, and he could use things that fit those descriptions right now.
“I feel ridiculous,” Raverat said in a low voice.
“I know,” Draco said. “But I’m only asking you to swear the truth, or at least two things that you say are the truth. It doesn’t even suggest that you can’t set traps for me or lie to me in the future. Only swear to the truth of the past events.”
Raverat’s nostrils flared delicately, and Draco thought he might stand and walk out of the tent for a minute. Then he pressed his teeth together with an audible grinding noise, sighed, and said, “I-I swear on my wand that I did not set a trap in your mind that I triggered when I touched it.”
Draco nodded. “Good. Now the other.”
Raverat’s eyes flashed, but he said, “I swear on my wand that I did not suggest you interrogate Nemo because I serve Nihil and thought to trap you that way.”
Draco waited for a moment, but Raverat’s wand didn’t catch fire, which would have been the usual order of events if he was lying. Draco sighed in what he told himself wasn’t disappointment and reached out to push Raverat’s wand back. “Fine. I believe you now. You can go,” he added, hearing a crunch of footsteps outside the tent flap that told him Harry was probably coming back.
Raverat gave him a look that Draco thought combined puzzlement and loathing, and then stood up, swept him an ironic bow, and stormed out through the front of the tent. Draco chuckled. Harry, who was coming in, called after Raverat for a minute, then shrugged and came up to hug Draco. Draco embraced him back and tried to convey through the force of his arms how glad he was to see Harry. He knew that saying aloud that Raverat got on his nerves probably wouldn’t win him any points.
“I’m glad to see you,” he whispered at last, deciding words could help.
Harry pulled back and gave him a baffled smile. “And I’m glad to see you,” he said, and then his eyes darted around the tent. “What? No burned spots or destroyed belongings since this morning?”
He was trying to joke, but Draco knew he wouldn’t have been surprised to come back and find that. He leaned forwards, holding Harry’s gaze, so that Harry would know he was serious when he said, “This is the best I can expect to be now that one of my eyes has been taken from me. I’m serious,” he added, because he recognized, half-blindness or not, the doubt that made Harry’s eyes a deep green.
Harry hesitated, nibbling his lip, then nodded. “I believe you. But explain why you feel so much better.”
Draco told him about both the interrogation and his talk with Holder. Harry might not like torture much better than Granger or Raverat did, but at least he wasn’t going to waste his time scolding Draco about it. He listened, instead, and nodded several times, laughing at the end when he heard about Holder’s promises.
“You’ve got what you wanted,” he said. “More power.” He hesitated, then added quickly, “Not that I’m saying you should have had to sacrifice your eye to get it.”
“I don’t think of it that way,” Draco assured him. “I know this wouldn’t have happened if I was still whole, but I’ll accept good consequences as well as bad ones for such a sacrifice, with pleasure.”
Harry smiled in relief. Then he hesitated and added, “And have you forgiven me for inducing you to go to Raverat, and for going to Holder?”
Draco let his smile fade and the silence stretch between them. Harry fidgeted and glanced away, then glanced back. That bloody courage of his would never let him hide from anything long, Draco thought. He reckoned he should be glad that Harry sometimes paid attention to his admonitions about plunging in and risking his life recklessly at all.
“I have to remember that you did save my life,” Draco said. His voice was more reluctant than he liked, but he owed Harry his honest feelings, as he had been trying to remind himself more than once in the last little while. “And I have to remember that you wouldn’t have pushed me into these situations if you thought there was danger.”
Harry shook his head, frowning. “I thought there might be danger with Holder,” he said. “But I couldn’t stand it, just lying there beside you and doing nothing while you mourned, and I thought it might win us some allies, or at least some ability to do something about your eye. And you weren’t in a state of mind where I could talk it over with you.”
“True,” Draco acknowledged carefully. “I wasn’t. But in the future, I would appreciate it if you never take such a step without consulting me.”
“Fine,” Harry said, with a grateful smile in Draco’s direction. “I won’t.”
A missing eye didn’t affect the way he saw Harry smile, Draco found, and nor did it affect the kiss on the cheek or the embrace that Harry gave him a moment later, or the way they moved towards the bed.
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
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