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Title: The Road (2/?)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rurounihime
Rating: hard R when all is said and done…
Pairing: H/D eventually
Summary: In the midst of a disintegrating war, Harry awaits the arrival of the Order’s last hope.
Warning: violence, character death, spoilers for all seven books. This fic is now AU because of Deathly Hallows. And at the risk of much silliness, I now discover that there are apparently DH spoilers in this story from the beginning. O.o
Disclaimer: The HP characters and most of the spellwork do not belong to me. Song lyrics from “Come By the Hills” (traditional).
A/N: This chapter is fairly dense. A lot I had to get done in it. Thank you to Fire and April for their fantabulous beta-ing, to Fru for her thoughts, and to Coffee for her constant feedback and encouragement. I will try to post a new chapter every ten days or thereabouts, but hey, we’ll play it by ear. The other major pairing in this is Blaise/Seamus, but there are minor het pairings as well.
…
Artwork for chapter 2: Loss byred_rahl.
...
**ETA: THIS CHAPTER HAS RECEIVED ITS FINAL EDIT**
Previous chapters
Chapter 2: Of Caves and Dusty Places
Early the next morning, Draco finally found what he was looking for, so early the stars still pricked the heavens and the moon cast a watery sheen over the leaves. Wiltshire rolled out to his left, the dew on the grass shining dimly. From his vantage point at the edge of the trees, he could see every tiny movement over the downs. The small hours of the night lent a silence that finally allowed his heart to settle. It was not the complete, worrying silence he had learned to be wary of; the air was full of rustles, the calls of night-dwelling animals. An owl hooted somewhere in the forest.
He looked over his shoulder to find Ginny Weasley coming along with weary steps. Her head was turned toward the forest, eyes flickering with an alertness not echoed by the rest of her body. She was deeper in the shadows than he was, and the greyish splash of moonlight meddled with his eyesight, even at that close range. Were she not moving, he would have had to stare for quite a bit longer to pick her out between the trees.
Draco changed direction gradually, heading further into the woods, and after some hesitation, his companion followed. The forest was beginning to abut against the massive rocks he had been looking for. They jutted up out of the ground for a few hundred metres. Not much cover. But it would be enough, provided the conditions were right.
Draco picked his way along, running a hand over the smooth chalkstone, and nearly stumbled over what he’d been seeking. Surrounded by a close circle of thorny shrubs, there was a narrow recess in the rock, low to the ground and darker than the night sky. Draco halted outside, heard Ginny stop behind him, and studied the opening. The bushes had been undisturbed for some time; no broken branches or scattered leaves. Unless the last visitor had been very, very careful, no one had been here for months. Draco crouched down and turned to Ginny. He was gratified to see that she was already perched low on the balls of her feet, swaying slightly to keep her balance.
“Stay here,” he whispered. She just looked at him. Draco turned and inched forward, peering into the alcove. All was still inside, as far as his newly accustomed eyes could see. He eased his hand into one pocket and closed his fingers around cool obsidian, then edged into the cave.
The cave did not go very far back, and he could instantly see that it was empty. He stood slowly—the ceiling inside was quite a bit higher than the opening had led him to believe—and paced the circumference, feeling his way along the walls. The air was cool and dry, and he could hear the trickle of water somewhere, possibly outside. Draco walked the space with the precision of detachment, crossing and doubling back until he had covered every inch of the floor. His hands trailed along the ceiling above his head in sweeping circles. He disliked not being able to use magic for this; it left so many uncertainties. But using it would be far worse. At least this way he could be sure of no invisibility potions or cloaks.
Finally satisfied that there was no one concealed within, Draco crawled back to the entrance and waved Ginny inside. She came through with a great deal of care and a greater deal of wariness, eyes darting and blinking as soon as she was standing again. She went straight to the far wall and began her own perusal of the interior. It impressed him, grudgingly.
She stopped at last and looked at him. Her shoulders were hunched, eyes narrowed. Draco paid it no mind. It really was inconsequential. He shrugged off his pack, sweeping the cloak from his shoulders. “We’ll sleep here.”
She snorted softly. “I’ll keep first watch, Malfoy.”
Draco looked her over. She was quite obviously worn to the bone. There were bags under her eyes and an acute slump to her frame that told him she teetered on the edge of collapse. Yet her face held a fervent distrust that shrouded even her weariness. She rocked on her feet. Her lips thinned and he saw that she was determined to gain victory in this.
He wanted to laugh at the absurdity. Here, at least, was something they had in common.
He gave her a dispassionate nod and lowered himself to the cave floor, wrapping his cloak around his body. Let her kill him as he slept if she wanted to. He was the only way she had of getting to where Harry Potter was; without him to guide her, she would never find her destination. As far as Draco knew, he was the only person who had been told the actual location of the castle, save those already housed within its walls.
Draco frowned, massaging a kink in his arm. Even with that knowledge, he was not fully equipped to find the stronghold. The spell surrounding the castle would never let them inside so easily. He was to wait for a signal, something that would guide them past the wards. He hadn’t the foggiest idea what it would be, but he had learned that ‘cryptic’ did not always—or often—mean ‘problematic.’ He would know what he was looking for when he got there.
Draco forced his twitching muscles to relax. Ginny sat down somewhere behind him, and he felt her staring at his back. He dragged his satchel under his head, then took a slow, deep breath and closed his eyes. With a practice born of long nights in jittery darkness, he sent his thoughts away until blankness was all that remained, and began to drift.
* * *
Harry woke with the scent of smoke hovering in his nostrils. Luna’s voice was bright and clear, filtering out of the very walls. The room shone; dust motes drifted through a thin shaft of yellow coming through the window, and the gold pooled on the floor.
Harry stood and stretched. He breathed deeply and the air was clear once again. He walked across the room to stand in the sunlight. He couldn’t remember a morning in the past two months that had begun with the touch of the sun. Always rain. Today, the stones under the mullioned glass radiated heat into his feet, his legs, and finally his body. Harry’s stomach jumped once, then settled, and he shook his head to clear the cobwebs of his dreams.
It had been an entire week since he’d dreamt of Hogwarts. Once again, he’d woken smelling the smoke.
It took a moment to find his clothing, heaped on a moth-bitten chair next to the bed, and he tugged on the chilly garments gingerly. He shook out his robes and swept them around his shoulders, sighing as the heavier cloth settled against him. When he came back, he’d light a fire for himself, enjoy the warmth.
The sunlight bathing the narrow hallway shifted as the wind rolled the clouds past outside. Harry stopped, caught by the colours the dusty stained glass made over the tapestries. The carefully cut and welded picture windows had not seen proper sunlight in months. He looked over the pictures as he walked, sinuous creatures and lithe half-humans depicted in translucent reds, tawny golds, and rich greens.
The largest window held an ancient shield with three lions, claws outstretched and teeth bared, surrounding a large white rose. Golden banners fluttered along the edges, and the ornate glasswork shimmered. Time had long since forgotten the family that had dwelt here. It was not a line recognised in any Wizarding text, and there were no Muggles in the vicinity to offer an answer of their own. Harry knew this shield from somewhere back before real magic had edged into his consciousness. Some class at school, some book… But it had faded, pushed to the recesses by more pressing matters.
Harry stopped by Luna’s room and found her being tended to by another house-elf, who had dressed her in royal blue robes and was changing the bandages on her hands with studious care. Now she was singing again, Luna’s hair sparkled, flowing in freshly combed tresses, and her voice leapt gaily about the room. She smiled in response to his greeting, and Harry made his way downstairs to the kitchens for his usual boysenberry scone and pot of spiced tea, before winding back up three floors to the dusky room that housed the library.
The library was still and stuffy, as always. He opened one of the massive windows along the east wall. Fresh air curled into the room through Luna’s ward, rustling the pages of the hide-bound tomes he had left out the previous evening. The light filled in the room’s nooks and Harry pulled his chair close to the book he had been perusing last.
It was worn green leather, possibly dragon hide, edged in wrought silver, and so large it had taken all his strength simply to get it off the shelf and onto the weathered dais where it now rested. This particular page was well-thumbed, having been studied by many members of the Order over the last year. Harry blew on his tea and scanned the tiny handwritten print.
Ah, yes. He’d been feeling depressed yesterday.
…the significant role Respondent Magic plays in a fully functional society. Although often relegated to less diplomatic eras, Respondent Magic remains a unique element of magical theory, and continues to shape the practice of several branches of commonly used enchantments. Respondent Magic was, for a time, outlawed as inhumane, but this is a direct contradiction to the very basis of this type of magic. It is simply impossible for true Respondent Magic to be forced upon any magic user, and it is equally impossible to cast any of the most practical applications without the utmost willingness and specific intent of the above-mentioned magic-user. Records of successful use of Respondent Magic date back to Ancient Sumeria and Classical Greece, but earlier evidence has appeared in pre-Egyptian records, and in the artwork of pre-agricultural civilisations. The cave-paintings of the Western Caucasus show deliberate usage and understanding of preliminary forms of Respondent Magic, but there is a distinct lack of control up until the coming of the…
Harry skimmed over the timeline detailing evidence of Respondent Magic until he found the dates pertaining to Ancient Greece and Macedonia. He paused, finger resting against the cracked parchment over “ασπίς άσματος.” Quilled with loving attention beneath the curved Greek letters was the English translation: Siren’s Ward.
This one was for use in less diplomatic eras. Luna had been right about that, at least. Diplomacy was a forgotten word. But Respondent Magic was ancient and unpredictable. Harry’s amusement was bitter. He himself was the product of Respondent Magic; his very existence was owed to the oldest form of it, and true to its nature, the magic had taken as much as it had given when his mother had invoked it almost two decades ago. And yet he had allowed it to be used again in another form, on one of his closest friends. The initial stages and demands of the Siren’s Ward had surprised even Mad-Eye, but by then it had been too late to call it off; Luna was already fast in its grip.
Harry wished he had been there to stop her. Too many people had given too much already. The more peaceful years before the war seemed like some sort of advance compensation for what the world was going through now, and the shards of normality that still thrust their way through the mire were tainted. Ginny Weasley was on her way to restore the balance. Harry could barely remember the exact colour of her hair, the playful quirk of her smile. But the price of his—their—happiness was already being collected. Luna was paying, and Hermione, and… Harry could picture the sharp, fatigued features of Ginny’s guide more clearly than he could see Ginny’s face. Draco Malfoy had already paid more than Harry had ever wanted to see anyone pay.
Yes, Draco Malfoy could understand Respondent Magic.
Harry snapped the book shut and turned to the smaller text at his elbow. Some days he just could not go down certain paths of thought.
Eventually the sunlight was drowned by the ever-present cloud cover. A house-elf slipped in to light the lamps before leaving just as unobtrusively. Harry found himself humming along with Luna as he read. The new tune was a song he knew fairly well.
He’d first heard it sung in the Three Broomsticks two years ago by a lissome witch with bottomless-black hair and skin. It had been late, he’d had a beer he shouldn’t have had, and the words rolled in calming waves. He had looked up at the singer, blinked, and suddenly seen the turrets of Hogwarts rising out of the darkness toward a scarred, messy haired eleven-year-old with no idea of what lay beyond those colossal walls. The lake had sparkled under the bright lights of the castle. Harry remembered the warmth of the place upon entering, the gargantuan dimensions of the structure. And of course, the shiver of otherworldly elements he had never recognised but had somehow always known existed within himself.
The words to the song were simple, steeped in comfort he had never found except during that first night in Hogwarts, that sudden introduction to who and what he really was. The departure from what he had been.
“Come by the hills to the land where fancy is free,
And stand where the peaks meet the sky and the rocks reach the sea.”
It was silly. It was only a song.
He frowned, the sleepy ease of the library suddenly gone. He shook himself, muttering. “Get used to it. It’s been months.”
They had all lost things. Harry had lost almost everything inanimate that he’d owned. And the people to whom they had all been forced to say goodbye left a much deeper void. But Harry had never expected to lose Hogwarts, not even in his wildest nightmares.
And yet it had happened. Somehow, the impenetrable castle had been reduced to a burnt-out shell of masonry and broken glass. Scattered parchment, singed draperies twisting across a blackened lawn. The forest, rising up in flames.
And within the tumbled walls, something far more important and irreplaceable had been lost.
Harry shut the book with a thud and pushed himself to his feet. He left the library, knowing how dangerous his current thoughts were, and wanting to be in his room when the full weight of what had happened to the school hit him yet again.
Luna sang on.
“Where the rivers run clear and the bracken is gold in the sun,
And the cares of tomorrow must wait till this day is done.”
* * *
Draco’s eyes flew open. He jerked upright. Sleep still swam through his head, but every muscle was tight, quivering. He couldn’t catch his breath.
There was movement out of the corner of his eye. Weasley’s eyes darted. Her gaze was shrewd and suspicious.
Draco hunched his shoulders. His breathing was still too fast. He pulled his cloak off the ground and shifted until his back was up against the rock wall.
“Weasley,” he muttered. “Get some sleep.”
The look she turned on him was almost bitter. He could see she was holding back words, probably worth hearing at any other time, but today he didn’t care. Weasley slid to the ground, hesitated for one weighted moment, and then decisively turned her back on him, tucking her knees up. Draco watched until her breathing evened, but it took many more minutes before he was sure she was asleep.
Chilly air rushed into the cave, hastened by the narrow crevice entry. It was laden with the sweet tang of rain. Draco tugged his cloak around himself, pulling his knees close to his chest. The ends of Weasley’s bedraggled ponytail ruffled briefly and settled back to the cave floor. Draco looked away, forcing the last eddies of sleep from his mind.
It was not the first time he had dreamt of Albus Dumbledore, and Draco had no delusions that it would be the last. He no longer had any idea what to expect when he fell asleep. The dream took on new meaning every time he had it, warping itself into stranger, more disturbing versions of the same moment in time. There had been a point, the space of two months, when Draco could not remember what had really happened that night on the Astronomy Tower, when his persistent dreams wove terrible lies into the fabric of memory.
But the truth did not allow him to dwell in ignorance for long. It returned with silent stealth just when he thought he’d gone far enough out of his mind to rid himself of its presence forever.
Gloomy light filtered through the narrow aperture. Dusk? He didn’t believe he had slept that long. More likely it was only the reminder that, no matter how torn apart the country might be, he was still in rainy grey England.
His home. He hadn’t been able to claim a real home for almost two years. They were all homeless now.
Some nights, Draco found that Dumbledore’s arguments struck just deep enough and his wand fell from his fingers to the rooftop. The ancient wizard spoke the elusive word, home, so very gently, and Draco awoke, gasping back sobs at how bitterly impossible that was. How untrue, how there were too many years between then and now, and there was no way he could go back.
Whenever the dream altered, he could see it all laid out before him on a table, the pitiful nights when his subconscious tried to make a paradise of reality’s mess, tried to fit it to images he could still comprehend. Or perhaps it was that he was still willing to comprehend them. As though he enjoyed the pain.
At least this time Dumbledore had not hissed at him like a snake in the emerald-spangled darkness: It was you who did this, not he. Not Snape. Now there is no place for you.
There were other versions, just as disturbing. Some nights, Harry Potter stood there and watched him fail to act, or watched as he raised his wand and struck Dumbledore down in an eruption of green light. Those were the nights Draco woke without breath, feeling as if all the eyes in what was left of this miserable, rotting world were fixed upon him. To be observed at such a forlorn moment, to wake clenching his wand in shaking fingers, not knowing which spells had actually burst out of that wand and which spells were the fanciful leanings of nightmare.
Draco tightened his cloak further, scowling. He had no idea why he should dream such things; Harry Potter had not been anywhere near that rooftop. Draco had seen him later, chasing them down to the—
It was association, that was all. There was no sense in such pointless examination. The look on Potter’s face hung on the insides of Draco’s eyelids, but he forced it away. Nonexistent, past tense. Inconsequential.
But the past crept up on him anyway.
Draco turned his eyes to the patch of light coming through the entrance. Outside, it began to rain.
* * *
It had been raining that day, too.
His first plunge into the puddle splashed muddy water all over his trousers. His wand slipped in his fingers, still sizzled under the onslaught of rain. He’d not known a wand could get so hot. Behind him, Theodore Nott let out a muffled curse as he too hit the puddle, but Draco did not look back. They weren’t alone, his gut told him so, and after the close call moments before, he expected nothing less.
It had been luck. That was the only way he could push the rising hysteria from his mind. A Death Eater, right in front of them. No warning. All the same, Draco had fired first. The only spell the man had gotten off hit Theodore in the stomach, knocking him over, but leaving him blinking and shaken only. He’d gotten to his feet, and Draco had slapped a Minis-port on the prone body of their opponent. They hadn’t even waited until he vanished. Where there was one Death Eater, there were usually more. Even Minis-ports were traceable.
“Have to get out of here.” Draco wiped his eyes free of water. He was soaking, rain dripping from his sleeves and trouser legs, running in rivulets down his arms. He looked around, but all he saw were trees, nearly black through the curtain of water. He spared a look behind him, then turned fully.
Theodore had gone down onto his knees, one hand on the ground. His arm was half submerged in the puddle. Draco took one last moment to check the treeline, then ran back.
“Just give me a minute,” Theodore hissed. He took a deep breath. Draco knelt, one knee in the water, and put his hand on Theodore’s back.
“We have to move.”
Theodore nodded, then doubled over and coughed blood into the water. Draco’s hands flew up to hold him just as Theodore toppled into him. “Hemorrhagus,” Theodore muttered. One hand climbed slowly over his belly. He drew a ragged breath and coughed again, and the blood flowed over his chin, turning the puddle crimson.
Draco’s heart knocked into his ribs. He turned Theodore carefully, laying him on his back on firmer ground. The rain lashed his face, streaking through the red and baring the pale skin of his chin. Theodore smiled ruefully up at Draco.
“I guess it wasn’t as harmless as… as I thought.”
Draco shook his head. He wiped the blood from Theodore’s lips, the rivulets sliding down his cheeks into dark hair. The front of Theodore’s drenched shirt was a widening stain, turning his skin ashen in comparison. It didn’t look real, any of it.
“Bad?” Draco said in a low voice. Theodore nodded, opened his mouth to speak, and another fit of coughing arched him from the ground. Draco slid his arm beneath Theodore and raised his shoulders out of the mud. Theodore choked, then swallowed.
“Bad enough,” was all he said.
Draco pulled him out of the slop into his lap. A clap of thunder ground into his ears. Theodore blinked against the rain. His breathing was raw and raspy.
Draco’s hand fluttered helplessly; his fingers tightened around Theodore’s already loose collar, slid over his rain-slicked cheek. “Grimmauld. I can Apparate us both.”
Theodore grabbed his wrist. “No,” he said, struggling not to cough. “They’ll feel it.”
“Then let me—”
“N… no wands,” came the breathless reply.
“Theodore, we have to get—”
The other man shook his head. He arched again and the fingers around Draco’s wrist squeezed painfully. Draco wrapped his arm more tightly around the Theodore’s body, thinking that he could hold everything in place.
“You.” Theodore took a gasping breath. “Have to leave, Draco.”
Draco shook his head. Theodore was so pale now. The blood traced his lips in crimson lace. Draco fought with his own shirt sleeve and wiped it away. “Fuck it all, I’m not just going to leave you here!”
Another bout of coughing had Draco struggling to hold him. It was worse than any before. He shut his eyes and clutched Theodore’s shuddering body closer against his. Theodore twisted and gave a great gasp, then slumped into Draco’s arms. The sudden cessation of the spasm frightened Draco and he jerked up, eyes darting over Theodore’s face. The man blinked into the rain, lips moving silently.
When Theodore’s eyes finally met his, they were calm, the colour of sea foam. He reached a shaking hand to touch Draco’s face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more to you,” he whispered.
Draco’s head was already shaking, shaking. He caught Theodore’s face between both hands, wiping at his chin with his thumbs.
“Don’t say that, gods, don’t say that—”
Theodore’s body began to jerk. More blood flowed over his lips, the darkest red Draco had ever seen. Draco’s eyes blurred. “Just hold on, please, gods, I can Apparate us both…”
Theodore was barely looking at him now. His breaths came in too-swift gasps. In out—in—out, in out—
There was an abrupt stillness, and his lover smiled up at him sleepily. In. Out… In…
The hand touching Draco’s face dropped, landing palm-up on the trampled grass. Draco dashed a hand across his eyes. Theodore’s pale irises went unfocussed, looking blindly into the rain. His body settled heavily in Draco’s arms.
Draco shook his head once, a vague twist of his neck. His hand crawled across the grass, found Theodore’s. “No,” he said weakly. He bent and pressed his lips to Theodore’s cooling forehead.
He took a breath, and then his lungs were heaving, spilling sounds into the rain.
* * *
Weasley turned over in her sleep and Draco swung up out of his reverie. The images faded, but the dark red remained ingrained in his brain, the green dwindling of Theodore’s eyes.
Draco had Apparated, stumbled through the wards right into Grimmauld Place to startled stares and frightened shouts. Hands pulled his lover’s body from his arms, others guided him to sit, tilting his head, wiping Theodore’s blood from his skin. But that was not something he truly remembered. It was what they told him had happened, afterward. Draco didn’t see much of anything that night.
The funeral was short, edged with uneasiness. Draco stayed until the chill fog crept in, darker and darker, until Potter’s stag Patronus erupted, until people were shouting, and he was forced to Apparate away with the rest. He spent the night staring with dry eyes at the moldy ceiling of Black’s old manor.
They knew Draco cried. They spoke of it in low tones.
And that made the guilt worse. Draco couldn’t tell any of them that he had not cried for Theodore. He cried because he did not cry for Theodore at all. The green eyes that haunted his thoughts were not the pale jade of his lover’s.
The rain dripped a soft pit-pat against the chalkstone. Draco grimaced. He joined wars for all the wrong reasons.
...
Chapter 3
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…
…
After note: Now, I don’t speak Greek, but I intended the Greek phrase in this chapter to translate to “shield of song.” If this is incorrect, I would love to hear from you guys.
This chapter’s music: The song featured in this chapter is a traditional titled “Come By the Hills,” and can be found here. Lyrics are here. I couldn’t find a link to the Heather Alexander version, which is more haunting and ethereal, but this link gets you back to Loreena McKennitt, who does a wonderful job, of course.
Author:
rurounihimeRating: hard R when all is said and done…
Pairing: H/D eventually
Summary: In the midst of a disintegrating war, Harry awaits the arrival of the Order’s last hope.
Warning: violence, character death, spoilers for all seven books. This fic is now AU because of Deathly Hallows. And at the risk of much silliness, I now discover that there are apparently DH spoilers in this story from the beginning. O.o
Disclaimer: The HP characters and most of the spellwork do not belong to me. Song lyrics from “Come By the Hills” (traditional).
A/N: This chapter is fairly dense. A lot I had to get done in it. Thank you to Fire and April for their fantabulous beta-ing, to Fru for her thoughts, and to Coffee for her constant feedback and encouragement. I will try to post a new chapter every ten days or thereabouts, but hey, we’ll play it by ear. The other major pairing in this is Blaise/Seamus, but there are minor het pairings as well.
…
Artwork for chapter 2: Loss by
red_rahl....
**ETA: THIS CHAPTER HAS RECEIVED ITS FINAL EDIT**
Previous chapters
Chapter 2: Of Caves and Dusty Places
Early the next morning, Draco finally found what he was looking for, so early the stars still pricked the heavens and the moon cast a watery sheen over the leaves. Wiltshire rolled out to his left, the dew on the grass shining dimly. From his vantage point at the edge of the trees, he could see every tiny movement over the downs. The small hours of the night lent a silence that finally allowed his heart to settle. It was not the complete, worrying silence he had learned to be wary of; the air was full of rustles, the calls of night-dwelling animals. An owl hooted somewhere in the forest.
He looked over his shoulder to find Ginny Weasley coming along with weary steps. Her head was turned toward the forest, eyes flickering with an alertness not echoed by the rest of her body. She was deeper in the shadows than he was, and the greyish splash of moonlight meddled with his eyesight, even at that close range. Were she not moving, he would have had to stare for quite a bit longer to pick her out between the trees.
Draco changed direction gradually, heading further into the woods, and after some hesitation, his companion followed. The forest was beginning to abut against the massive rocks he had been looking for. They jutted up out of the ground for a few hundred metres. Not much cover. But it would be enough, provided the conditions were right.
Draco picked his way along, running a hand over the smooth chalkstone, and nearly stumbled over what he’d been seeking. Surrounded by a close circle of thorny shrubs, there was a narrow recess in the rock, low to the ground and darker than the night sky. Draco halted outside, heard Ginny stop behind him, and studied the opening. The bushes had been undisturbed for some time; no broken branches or scattered leaves. Unless the last visitor had been very, very careful, no one had been here for months. Draco crouched down and turned to Ginny. He was gratified to see that she was already perched low on the balls of her feet, swaying slightly to keep her balance.
“Stay here,” he whispered. She just looked at him. Draco turned and inched forward, peering into the alcove. All was still inside, as far as his newly accustomed eyes could see. He eased his hand into one pocket and closed his fingers around cool obsidian, then edged into the cave.
The cave did not go very far back, and he could instantly see that it was empty. He stood slowly—the ceiling inside was quite a bit higher than the opening had led him to believe—and paced the circumference, feeling his way along the walls. The air was cool and dry, and he could hear the trickle of water somewhere, possibly outside. Draco walked the space with the precision of detachment, crossing and doubling back until he had covered every inch of the floor. His hands trailed along the ceiling above his head in sweeping circles. He disliked not being able to use magic for this; it left so many uncertainties. But using it would be far worse. At least this way he could be sure of no invisibility potions or cloaks.
Finally satisfied that there was no one concealed within, Draco crawled back to the entrance and waved Ginny inside. She came through with a great deal of care and a greater deal of wariness, eyes darting and blinking as soon as she was standing again. She went straight to the far wall and began her own perusal of the interior. It impressed him, grudgingly.
She stopped at last and looked at him. Her shoulders were hunched, eyes narrowed. Draco paid it no mind. It really was inconsequential. He shrugged off his pack, sweeping the cloak from his shoulders. “We’ll sleep here.”
She snorted softly. “I’ll keep first watch, Malfoy.”
Draco looked her over. She was quite obviously worn to the bone. There were bags under her eyes and an acute slump to her frame that told him she teetered on the edge of collapse. Yet her face held a fervent distrust that shrouded even her weariness. She rocked on her feet. Her lips thinned and he saw that she was determined to gain victory in this.
He wanted to laugh at the absurdity. Here, at least, was something they had in common.
He gave her a dispassionate nod and lowered himself to the cave floor, wrapping his cloak around his body. Let her kill him as he slept if she wanted to. He was the only way she had of getting to where Harry Potter was; without him to guide her, she would never find her destination. As far as Draco knew, he was the only person who had been told the actual location of the castle, save those already housed within its walls.
Draco frowned, massaging a kink in his arm. Even with that knowledge, he was not fully equipped to find the stronghold. The spell surrounding the castle would never let them inside so easily. He was to wait for a signal, something that would guide them past the wards. He hadn’t the foggiest idea what it would be, but he had learned that ‘cryptic’ did not always—or often—mean ‘problematic.’ He would know what he was looking for when he got there.
Draco forced his twitching muscles to relax. Ginny sat down somewhere behind him, and he felt her staring at his back. He dragged his satchel under his head, then took a slow, deep breath and closed his eyes. With a practice born of long nights in jittery darkness, he sent his thoughts away until blankness was all that remained, and began to drift.
* * *
Harry woke with the scent of smoke hovering in his nostrils. Luna’s voice was bright and clear, filtering out of the very walls. The room shone; dust motes drifted through a thin shaft of yellow coming through the window, and the gold pooled on the floor.
Harry stood and stretched. He breathed deeply and the air was clear once again. He walked across the room to stand in the sunlight. He couldn’t remember a morning in the past two months that had begun with the touch of the sun. Always rain. Today, the stones under the mullioned glass radiated heat into his feet, his legs, and finally his body. Harry’s stomach jumped once, then settled, and he shook his head to clear the cobwebs of his dreams.
It had been an entire week since he’d dreamt of Hogwarts. Once again, he’d woken smelling the smoke.
It took a moment to find his clothing, heaped on a moth-bitten chair next to the bed, and he tugged on the chilly garments gingerly. He shook out his robes and swept them around his shoulders, sighing as the heavier cloth settled against him. When he came back, he’d light a fire for himself, enjoy the warmth.
The sunlight bathing the narrow hallway shifted as the wind rolled the clouds past outside. Harry stopped, caught by the colours the dusty stained glass made over the tapestries. The carefully cut and welded picture windows had not seen proper sunlight in months. He looked over the pictures as he walked, sinuous creatures and lithe half-humans depicted in translucent reds, tawny golds, and rich greens.
The largest window held an ancient shield with three lions, claws outstretched and teeth bared, surrounding a large white rose. Golden banners fluttered along the edges, and the ornate glasswork shimmered. Time had long since forgotten the family that had dwelt here. It was not a line recognised in any Wizarding text, and there were no Muggles in the vicinity to offer an answer of their own. Harry knew this shield from somewhere back before real magic had edged into his consciousness. Some class at school, some book… But it had faded, pushed to the recesses by more pressing matters.
Harry stopped by Luna’s room and found her being tended to by another house-elf, who had dressed her in royal blue robes and was changing the bandages on her hands with studious care. Now she was singing again, Luna’s hair sparkled, flowing in freshly combed tresses, and her voice leapt gaily about the room. She smiled in response to his greeting, and Harry made his way downstairs to the kitchens for his usual boysenberry scone and pot of spiced tea, before winding back up three floors to the dusky room that housed the library.
The library was still and stuffy, as always. He opened one of the massive windows along the east wall. Fresh air curled into the room through Luna’s ward, rustling the pages of the hide-bound tomes he had left out the previous evening. The light filled in the room’s nooks and Harry pulled his chair close to the book he had been perusing last.
It was worn green leather, possibly dragon hide, edged in wrought silver, and so large it had taken all his strength simply to get it off the shelf and onto the weathered dais where it now rested. This particular page was well-thumbed, having been studied by many members of the Order over the last year. Harry blew on his tea and scanned the tiny handwritten print.
Ah, yes. He’d been feeling depressed yesterday.
…the significant role Respondent Magic plays in a fully functional society. Although often relegated to less diplomatic eras, Respondent Magic remains a unique element of magical theory, and continues to shape the practice of several branches of commonly used enchantments. Respondent Magic was, for a time, outlawed as inhumane, but this is a direct contradiction to the very basis of this type of magic. It is simply impossible for true Respondent Magic to be forced upon any magic user, and it is equally impossible to cast any of the most practical applications without the utmost willingness and specific intent of the above-mentioned magic-user. Records of successful use of Respondent Magic date back to Ancient Sumeria and Classical Greece, but earlier evidence has appeared in pre-Egyptian records, and in the artwork of pre-agricultural civilisations. The cave-paintings of the Western Caucasus show deliberate usage and understanding of preliminary forms of Respondent Magic, but there is a distinct lack of control up until the coming of the…
Harry skimmed over the timeline detailing evidence of Respondent Magic until he found the dates pertaining to Ancient Greece and Macedonia. He paused, finger resting against the cracked parchment over “ασπίς άσματος.” Quilled with loving attention beneath the curved Greek letters was the English translation: Siren’s Ward.
This one was for use in less diplomatic eras. Luna had been right about that, at least. Diplomacy was a forgotten word. But Respondent Magic was ancient and unpredictable. Harry’s amusement was bitter. He himself was the product of Respondent Magic; his very existence was owed to the oldest form of it, and true to its nature, the magic had taken as much as it had given when his mother had invoked it almost two decades ago. And yet he had allowed it to be used again in another form, on one of his closest friends. The initial stages and demands of the Siren’s Ward had surprised even Mad-Eye, but by then it had been too late to call it off; Luna was already fast in its grip.
Harry wished he had been there to stop her. Too many people had given too much already. The more peaceful years before the war seemed like some sort of advance compensation for what the world was going through now, and the shards of normality that still thrust their way through the mire were tainted. Ginny Weasley was on her way to restore the balance. Harry could barely remember the exact colour of her hair, the playful quirk of her smile. But the price of his—their—happiness was already being collected. Luna was paying, and Hermione, and… Harry could picture the sharp, fatigued features of Ginny’s guide more clearly than he could see Ginny’s face. Draco Malfoy had already paid more than Harry had ever wanted to see anyone pay.
Yes, Draco Malfoy could understand Respondent Magic.
Harry snapped the book shut and turned to the smaller text at his elbow. Some days he just could not go down certain paths of thought.
Eventually the sunlight was drowned by the ever-present cloud cover. A house-elf slipped in to light the lamps before leaving just as unobtrusively. Harry found himself humming along with Luna as he read. The new tune was a song he knew fairly well.
He’d first heard it sung in the Three Broomsticks two years ago by a lissome witch with bottomless-black hair and skin. It had been late, he’d had a beer he shouldn’t have had, and the words rolled in calming waves. He had looked up at the singer, blinked, and suddenly seen the turrets of Hogwarts rising out of the darkness toward a scarred, messy haired eleven-year-old with no idea of what lay beyond those colossal walls. The lake had sparkled under the bright lights of the castle. Harry remembered the warmth of the place upon entering, the gargantuan dimensions of the structure. And of course, the shiver of otherworldly elements he had never recognised but had somehow always known existed within himself.
The words to the song were simple, steeped in comfort he had never found except during that first night in Hogwarts, that sudden introduction to who and what he really was. The departure from what he had been.
“Come by the hills to the land where fancy is free,
And stand where the peaks meet the sky and the rocks reach the sea.”
It was silly. It was only a song.
He frowned, the sleepy ease of the library suddenly gone. He shook himself, muttering. “Get used to it. It’s been months.”
They had all lost things. Harry had lost almost everything inanimate that he’d owned. And the people to whom they had all been forced to say goodbye left a much deeper void. But Harry had never expected to lose Hogwarts, not even in his wildest nightmares.
And yet it had happened. Somehow, the impenetrable castle had been reduced to a burnt-out shell of masonry and broken glass. Scattered parchment, singed draperies twisting across a blackened lawn. The forest, rising up in flames.
And within the tumbled walls, something far more important and irreplaceable had been lost.
Harry shut the book with a thud and pushed himself to his feet. He left the library, knowing how dangerous his current thoughts were, and wanting to be in his room when the full weight of what had happened to the school hit him yet again.
Luna sang on.
“Where the rivers run clear and the bracken is gold in the sun,
And the cares of tomorrow must wait till this day is done.”
* * *
Draco’s eyes flew open. He jerked upright. Sleep still swam through his head, but every muscle was tight, quivering. He couldn’t catch his breath.
There was movement out of the corner of his eye. Weasley’s eyes darted. Her gaze was shrewd and suspicious.
Draco hunched his shoulders. His breathing was still too fast. He pulled his cloak off the ground and shifted until his back was up against the rock wall.
“Weasley,” he muttered. “Get some sleep.”
The look she turned on him was almost bitter. He could see she was holding back words, probably worth hearing at any other time, but today he didn’t care. Weasley slid to the ground, hesitated for one weighted moment, and then decisively turned her back on him, tucking her knees up. Draco watched until her breathing evened, but it took many more minutes before he was sure she was asleep.
Chilly air rushed into the cave, hastened by the narrow crevice entry. It was laden with the sweet tang of rain. Draco tugged his cloak around himself, pulling his knees close to his chest. The ends of Weasley’s bedraggled ponytail ruffled briefly and settled back to the cave floor. Draco looked away, forcing the last eddies of sleep from his mind.
It was not the first time he had dreamt of Albus Dumbledore, and Draco had no delusions that it would be the last. He no longer had any idea what to expect when he fell asleep. The dream took on new meaning every time he had it, warping itself into stranger, more disturbing versions of the same moment in time. There had been a point, the space of two months, when Draco could not remember what had really happened that night on the Astronomy Tower, when his persistent dreams wove terrible lies into the fabric of memory.
But the truth did not allow him to dwell in ignorance for long. It returned with silent stealth just when he thought he’d gone far enough out of his mind to rid himself of its presence forever.
Gloomy light filtered through the narrow aperture. Dusk? He didn’t believe he had slept that long. More likely it was only the reminder that, no matter how torn apart the country might be, he was still in rainy grey England.
His home. He hadn’t been able to claim a real home for almost two years. They were all homeless now.
Some nights, Draco found that Dumbledore’s arguments struck just deep enough and his wand fell from his fingers to the rooftop. The ancient wizard spoke the elusive word, home, so very gently, and Draco awoke, gasping back sobs at how bitterly impossible that was. How untrue, how there were too many years between then and now, and there was no way he could go back.
Whenever the dream altered, he could see it all laid out before him on a table, the pitiful nights when his subconscious tried to make a paradise of reality’s mess, tried to fit it to images he could still comprehend. Or perhaps it was that he was still willing to comprehend them. As though he enjoyed the pain.
At least this time Dumbledore had not hissed at him like a snake in the emerald-spangled darkness: It was you who did this, not he. Not Snape. Now there is no place for you.
There were other versions, just as disturbing. Some nights, Harry Potter stood there and watched him fail to act, or watched as he raised his wand and struck Dumbledore down in an eruption of green light. Those were the nights Draco woke without breath, feeling as if all the eyes in what was left of this miserable, rotting world were fixed upon him. To be observed at such a forlorn moment, to wake clenching his wand in shaking fingers, not knowing which spells had actually burst out of that wand and which spells were the fanciful leanings of nightmare.
Draco tightened his cloak further, scowling. He had no idea why he should dream such things; Harry Potter had not been anywhere near that rooftop. Draco had seen him later, chasing them down to the—
It was association, that was all. There was no sense in such pointless examination. The look on Potter’s face hung on the insides of Draco’s eyelids, but he forced it away. Nonexistent, past tense. Inconsequential.
But the past crept up on him anyway.
Draco turned his eyes to the patch of light coming through the entrance. Outside, it began to rain.
* * *
It had been raining that day, too.
His first plunge into the puddle splashed muddy water all over his trousers. His wand slipped in his fingers, still sizzled under the onslaught of rain. He’d not known a wand could get so hot. Behind him, Theodore Nott let out a muffled curse as he too hit the puddle, but Draco did not look back. They weren’t alone, his gut told him so, and after the close call moments before, he expected nothing less.
It had been luck. That was the only way he could push the rising hysteria from his mind. A Death Eater, right in front of them. No warning. All the same, Draco had fired first. The only spell the man had gotten off hit Theodore in the stomach, knocking him over, but leaving him blinking and shaken only. He’d gotten to his feet, and Draco had slapped a Minis-port on the prone body of their opponent. They hadn’t even waited until he vanished. Where there was one Death Eater, there were usually more. Even Minis-ports were traceable.
“Have to get out of here.” Draco wiped his eyes free of water. He was soaking, rain dripping from his sleeves and trouser legs, running in rivulets down his arms. He looked around, but all he saw were trees, nearly black through the curtain of water. He spared a look behind him, then turned fully.
Theodore had gone down onto his knees, one hand on the ground. His arm was half submerged in the puddle. Draco took one last moment to check the treeline, then ran back.
“Just give me a minute,” Theodore hissed. He took a deep breath. Draco knelt, one knee in the water, and put his hand on Theodore’s back.
“We have to move.”
Theodore nodded, then doubled over and coughed blood into the water. Draco’s hands flew up to hold him just as Theodore toppled into him. “Hemorrhagus,” Theodore muttered. One hand climbed slowly over his belly. He drew a ragged breath and coughed again, and the blood flowed over his chin, turning the puddle crimson.
Draco’s heart knocked into his ribs. He turned Theodore carefully, laying him on his back on firmer ground. The rain lashed his face, streaking through the red and baring the pale skin of his chin. Theodore smiled ruefully up at Draco.
“I guess it wasn’t as harmless as… as I thought.”
Draco shook his head. He wiped the blood from Theodore’s lips, the rivulets sliding down his cheeks into dark hair. The front of Theodore’s drenched shirt was a widening stain, turning his skin ashen in comparison. It didn’t look real, any of it.
“Bad?” Draco said in a low voice. Theodore nodded, opened his mouth to speak, and another fit of coughing arched him from the ground. Draco slid his arm beneath Theodore and raised his shoulders out of the mud. Theodore choked, then swallowed.
“Bad enough,” was all he said.
Draco pulled him out of the slop into his lap. A clap of thunder ground into his ears. Theodore blinked against the rain. His breathing was raw and raspy.
Draco’s hand fluttered helplessly; his fingers tightened around Theodore’s already loose collar, slid over his rain-slicked cheek. “Grimmauld. I can Apparate us both.”
Theodore grabbed his wrist. “No,” he said, struggling not to cough. “They’ll feel it.”
“Then let me—”
“N… no wands,” came the breathless reply.
“Theodore, we have to get—”
The other man shook his head. He arched again and the fingers around Draco’s wrist squeezed painfully. Draco wrapped his arm more tightly around the Theodore’s body, thinking that he could hold everything in place.
“You.” Theodore took a gasping breath. “Have to leave, Draco.”
Draco shook his head. Theodore was so pale now. The blood traced his lips in crimson lace. Draco fought with his own shirt sleeve and wiped it away. “Fuck it all, I’m not just going to leave you here!”
Another bout of coughing had Draco struggling to hold him. It was worse than any before. He shut his eyes and clutched Theodore’s shuddering body closer against his. Theodore twisted and gave a great gasp, then slumped into Draco’s arms. The sudden cessation of the spasm frightened Draco and he jerked up, eyes darting over Theodore’s face. The man blinked into the rain, lips moving silently.
When Theodore’s eyes finally met his, they were calm, the colour of sea foam. He reached a shaking hand to touch Draco’s face. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been more to you,” he whispered.
Draco’s head was already shaking, shaking. He caught Theodore’s face between both hands, wiping at his chin with his thumbs.
“Don’t say that, gods, don’t say that—”
Theodore’s body began to jerk. More blood flowed over his lips, the darkest red Draco had ever seen. Draco’s eyes blurred. “Just hold on, please, gods, I can Apparate us both…”
Theodore was barely looking at him now. His breaths came in too-swift gasps. In out—in—out, in out—
There was an abrupt stillness, and his lover smiled up at him sleepily. In. Out… In…
The hand touching Draco’s face dropped, landing palm-up on the trampled grass. Draco dashed a hand across his eyes. Theodore’s pale irises went unfocussed, looking blindly into the rain. His body settled heavily in Draco’s arms.
Draco shook his head once, a vague twist of his neck. His hand crawled across the grass, found Theodore’s. “No,” he said weakly. He bent and pressed his lips to Theodore’s cooling forehead.
He took a breath, and then his lungs were heaving, spilling sounds into the rain.
* * *
Weasley turned over in her sleep and Draco swung up out of his reverie. The images faded, but the dark red remained ingrained in his brain, the green dwindling of Theodore’s eyes.
Draco had Apparated, stumbled through the wards right into Grimmauld Place to startled stares and frightened shouts. Hands pulled his lover’s body from his arms, others guided him to sit, tilting his head, wiping Theodore’s blood from his skin. But that was not something he truly remembered. It was what they told him had happened, afterward. Draco didn’t see much of anything that night.
The funeral was short, edged with uneasiness. Draco stayed until the chill fog crept in, darker and darker, until Potter’s stag Patronus erupted, until people were shouting, and he was forced to Apparate away with the rest. He spent the night staring with dry eyes at the moldy ceiling of Black’s old manor.
They knew Draco cried. They spoke of it in low tones.
And that made the guilt worse. Draco couldn’t tell any of them that he had not cried for Theodore. He cried because he did not cry for Theodore at all. The green eyes that haunted his thoughts were not the pale jade of his lover’s.
The rain dripped a soft pit-pat against the chalkstone. Draco grimaced. He joined wars for all the wrong reasons.
...
Chapter 3
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After note: Now, I don’t speak Greek, but I intended the Greek phrase in this chapter to translate to “shield of song.” If this is incorrect, I would love to hear from you guys.
This chapter’s music: The song featured in this chapter is a traditional titled “Come By the Hills,” and can be found here. Lyrics are here. I couldn’t find a link to the Heather Alexander version, which is more haunting and ethereal, but this link gets you back to Loreena McKennitt, who does a wonderful job, of course.
