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Chapter Thirty-Five—Movement

"If you are resistant to Veritaserum, then why should we trust that you're telling the truth?" Hermione interrupted suddenly.

Harry turned his head to look at her, startled out of the cocoon of somber thought that had settled around him. Hermione had her arms folded and her eyes squinting, as if she could see the secrets hiding inside Aran's head if she looked hard enough. Draco glanced slowly back and forth between her and Aran, eyes lidded so that Harry couldn't tell what he was thinking.

"There's no guarantee, of course." Aran rubbed the back of his hand across his mouth. "But Nihil's left me enough independence that I can decide what I say and how much to give you. I was never his tendril. I had my own life before he ate it. I don't remember much of that life now—just what I needed to know to fool the people around me, most of whom hadn't seen me in years—but I remember the eating, and I resent it." His eyes gave a feverish flash.

"That's the reason that you seem so different now from when we had you in class," Harry said suddenly, as pieces clicked together in his mind. "You were behaving the way Nihil told you that you had to, to avoid suspicion, but now you're acting the way you want."

Aran nodded. "I was never that aloof. And I would not have made the offer to tutor you if Nihil hadn't wanted me to keep an eye on you and report any extraordinary leaps forwards."

"What about anyone else in the Ministry?" Hermione said, her voice so harsh that Harry suspected she considered his tangent to be little more than a waste of time. "Is there anyone else whom you know is infected?"

Aran shook his head. "We can't recognize each other at a glance. We're taught to act together only when he commands it, and not otherwise. I will say that I know Lowell and Weston aren't infected, because he wouldn't have sought you two out for your compatible magic—" he jerked his head at Harry and Draco "—if he already had a pair. And he tried to take Portillo Lopez, but he couldn't get into her head."

Harry nodded as if that wasn't news to him, wondering if the tattoo that Portillo Lopez and the rest of her Order carried on their skin protected them against such attacks.

"And Gregory wasn't infected, either," Aran added. "But she was coming close to discovering his secrets—she suspected Dearborn—and had to be taken out. I know that her name kept returning to his mind more and more often lately, but I don't know why. We can hear some of the outer echoes of his thoughts when they're especially intense, like overhearing something on the wireless from another room. We can't hear everything, though."

Draco stepped in to take control of the conversation again. "What happened to Gregory?"

Aran grinned sourly. "If he'd found her or knew, he wouldn't be so worried."

"Can she do that much against him, though?" Hermione sounded thoughtful. "She's a single person, and even though she was Combat instructor here, I can't imagine that she would have a lot of contacts outside the Ministry. All she would have had to do was go through the training program and then demonstrate enough talent to teach others once she was an Auror."

"What she has is something worse than that," Aran said. "Hatred, implacable hatred, for someone who forced her away from her job. Paranoia and observation skills enough to suspect that something was wrong with Dearborn. Deter—"

He broke off abruptly, coughing. Harry started forwards, wondering if the ropes were choking him again, but then Aran threw back his head in silent agony, his face turning black.

Harry stopped, drawing his wand, and cast his most powerful Shield Charm in front of him. He knew what this was.

Aran's whole body, or at least the visible skin around his robes, also turned black. He thrashed in the robes, hard, taking heavy gasping breaths, and then began to rock in place. His muscles bulged and rippled weirdly. Hermione tried to help him, but Harry cast another Shield Charm that kept her back like cage bars. He didn't want any of his friends being touched by the thing eating Aran.

Aran gave a final thrash, and then his whole body exploded into black pulpy fragments, decorated with flying blood and thick white liquid that Harry didn't think usually came out of living humans. Hermione cried out in disgust, and Ventus surged forwards beside Harry, casting another spell. It was a good thing she had, as the black fragments rose over Harry's Shield Charm. Ventus's complicated incantation opened a pair of jaws made of fire, which ate the fragments and then appeared to smirk before fading.

Nothing was left clinging to the ropes except a few traces of blood and the white liquid. Hermione used her wand to conjure a vial and then a spell to scoop some of the white liquid off the ropes. It looked like heavy cheese, and Harry shivered and glanced away. Meanwhile, Ventus burnt the ropes, ignoring the angry exclamations from Hermione and Ron.

"It's too dangerous," she said calmly. "Who knows what could infect us if we touched them?" She turned around and swept her glance over them as if she were counting their teeth through their skin. "And it is perfectly obvious that we are not going to reveal Aran's death to the instructors. I would protect my comitatus even from themselves if necessary."

Harry stood where his Shield Charm had left him, staring at the place Aran had been. He felt frozen. One moment the man had been alive, doing what he could to help them, apparently, even if that cost him his life—

And then it had.

If you can call that life, Harry thought, rubbing his face. And for all we know, maybe Nihil has taken his spirit away and is going to put it in another body. I don't know if the people he infects become immortal in the same way as the parts of him.

"There's so much that we don't know," Draco said reflectively, as if hearing and echoing Harry's thoughts. "But I think we can get the answers if we continue to work for them. And we have some that we can use."

Harry turned to look at him. Draco leaned his arm along the back of the chair where Ventus had sat and smiled at the lot of them. His smile was more cheerful and less cold than Harry would have thought it could be, so soon after he had tortured someone and then seen that same person die.

"That was horrible," Hermione whispered.

"It was," Draco agreed. "But it gives us valuable advice. It tells us that Nihil is even stranger than we thought, but not as powerful. The people he conquers retain some independence. Maybe even Dearborn was more independent than we thought he was, because he wasn't the same person as the one who went hunting his brother." Harry looked at the floor for a moment, because he thought that was something Draco would sincerely like to believe in rather than something that was true, and he didn't want Draco to see his pity. "And we know that there are others who are fighting him, people we might be able to join up with."

He looked at Harry, cocking his head. "And we know that torture works against Nihil's minions, and might work against Nihil himself."

Harry couldn't let that pass, but raising the moral argument against it so soon after he'd lost it wouldn't make Draco listen. He lifted his head, looked Draco in the eye, and said, "All right. So what's next?"

"We try to make contact with Gregory," Draco said calmly. "We keep attending classes as if nothing had happened, and look for other people we might be able to make contact with, And we see if we can identify anyone who's infected, a tendril of Nihil, or someone who might be able to tell us the truth, like Aran did."

"We can't just not tell them anything," Hermione said, looking more and more distressed. "The instructors will want to know where Aran went."

"Then let them ask." Draco turned away with a dismissive little motion of his hand. "When the instructors do find information, such as what Pushkin discovered from his experiments on Nemo's beasts, they don't use it. All they do is push it into the background and then pretend that nothing happened. I think they want the War Wizards to handle this, badly enough that they won't fight no matter what we give them."

"But one of their own being infected—"

"They thought Gregory was infected last year," Draco said, craning his neck around to stare haughtily at Hermione. "And they still didn't try to do much about it after she fled."

"How could they, when they didn't know where she went?" Hermione asked, but her voice was low. She sighed and stared at her hands. "So who's going to do what?"

Draco gave them the instructions. Ron sometimes frowned, but he showed no more sign of resentment than that. Harry shook his head. He wondered how in the world Ventus could have seen that Draco had the gift of leadership before the rest of them. He had thought he knew Draco better than anyone else, but that had been proven wrong even before Ventus started to make her claims. Harry had jumped into "love" with him and still not realized some of his most basic talents or principles.

Like his talent for torturing people. Or not caring about people except those he loves.

As Harry thought about it, though, a knot of tension in his shoulders relaxed. Draco had said that he only cared about saving the world because of his family, but he had become an Auror without reference to that. The Ministry wasn't threatening the Malfoys right now, and would have only if they became aware of Lucius's escape. And the people Draco would be protecting wouldn't be only his family.

He has depths that he hasn't thought of. He has motivations that he might not understand.

When Draco glanced at him as if testing whether anyone was going to complain about his orders, Harry had the ability to smile back.

Draco leaned against the wall and shut his eyes. He knew he was in trouble if someone passed by, but he didn't think anyone would. The instructors had vanished into Portillo Lopez's office for their private meeting half an hour ago, and based on the meetings they'd been having lately, especially about Aran, they wouldn't be out any time soon. Draco had the ability to pierce the eavesdropping wards they'd raised and hear what they were saying—if he could only do it without being detected.

He breathed until he was centered in himself, and refused to think of all the secrets he might be losing, which might pass by him and sail into the darkness. The instructors couldn't know that much, or Draco would have caught hints of it during the Fellowship meetings. And he and Harry and the rest were in a better position of knowledge than they were, since they were in on the secret of Aran, among other things.

If they don't know much, why are you so desperate to overhear?

It was the sort of question Granger would have asked. Draco grinned sourly at the thought that she was part of his mental array of qualities now, and drew his wand as he gave the silent answer.

Because we know more about Nihil, but they know more about Ministry politics, Auror politics, and sheer training. Not individual spells, but the way that training works with all the subjects and connects them. They know more about being Aurors.

And I think we'll need to be Aurors to fight Nihil.

The spells to get around the eavesdropping wards curved and flowed out of his mouth, as though he were slowly extracting a piece of liquid silver. Draco kept his eyes closed as he chanted, trusting to his ears to warn him of anyone's approach and the Disillusionment Charm he had on to render him invisible enough to fool casual observers. He would have used a few of the more powerful protective spells that Granger had found in the library, but there were none that wouldn't set off the wards surrounding the room where the instructors met.

The chant finished. Draco opened his eyes and waited. Had he succeeded? The instructors' voices should start coming to his ears in a minute, if so.

"—don't know what we can expect a crowd of trainees to do!" Lowell's words were sudden, loud, and right in his ear.

Draco controlled his reaction with nothing more than a slight gasp. He hadn't actually broken through wards like this before, and so hadn't realized that the natural sound of their voices would startle him so.

"Hush," Weston said. No more than that, but Draco could almost feel Lowell relax. They complemented each other very well, Draco thought. He hoped that he and Harry might learn to do that someday.

"They will be part of the Ministry's line of defense, should Nihil attack us again." Portillo Lopez, her voice much calmer and deeper than Draco had heard it in some time. Of course, he hadn't had her for classes this year. "I think it worthwhile for them to know how to defend themselves. They didn't when Nihil came hunting at the end of last year, or it was not adequate, and some of them were wounded who should not have been."

"Of course you pay more attention to the wounded than we do." Davidson. Draco heard a creak and shuffle that was probably her leaning forwards in her chair. "But we cannot allow concern for their safety alone to dictate what we do. We are running a program here. They will be Aurors someday, and there are things they need to know that we can't excuse them from knowing. We have to think beyond the war."

"No," Ketchum said, his voice almost a bray after Davidson's cool, elegant words. Draco rolled his eyes, and didn't know if he was rolling them at Ketchum or at his own prejudices. "This is an enemy who stands a good chance of defeating us if we think that way. I agree with Portillo Lopez. Let's get the trainees through the war, and then we can start picking the ones who would only make good soldiers and not good Aurors out of the mix. But we need to worry about surviving to see the future, and making sure they survive, before we worry about vague and nebulous consequences. They're our charges. We should act like it."

"We're here to train them—" Davidson began.

"To live," said a voice that was probably Morningstar's. Draco could almost picture the smile she would be wearing, the same one she used when someone whom he'd underestimated threw him across the room in Combat class. "We thought they needed one set of skills in order to do that. It turns out they need another. We'll adapt. We'll teach them to adapt. And we can change things back after the war. The Auror program will survive."

There was silence, as if that announcement carried more weight than Draco knew. He braced himself with one boot against the wall, leaning as close to the door as he dared, trying to hold his breath. If someone spoke more quietly, or gave the reason for the silence, he wanted to be sure he heard.

"I'm not sure," Lowell murmured. "When I think of how young they are, some of them, and struggling with the set of skills we want them to learn now…"

"We'll make it," Weston said. Her voice had clear affection in it, and Draco could imagine her stroking Lowell's arm. "We always do."

"But will they make it?" A creak and a rustle as Lowell shifted in his seat. "That's what I'm worried about."

"I think they will," Ketchum said, "if we turn all our abilities to making sure they do so." There was a stomp and slide of boots, and Draco was sure that he had risen to his feet. "And I'm more than willing to admit, my friends, that we were wrong if this doesn't work. But I think it's clear by now that simply doing as we have done is no way to counter Nihil. We should try something different. If that works out horribly after the war, well." He blew out a harsh breath that sounded as if he had used up all the air in his body. "At least there will still be Aurors to try and solve the problem."

Silence, and then Portillo Lopez said, "I stand with Samwise."

"And I."

"And I."

One by one, the voices of the instructors affirmed a decision that Draco could understand the general outlines of, if not all the details. They had just chosen to try and teach their trainees, including him and Harry, skills that would actually matter to the battle against Nihil—perhaps milder versions of the spells the War Wizards used, perhaps something else.

It didn't matter. Whatever it was, Draco could feel his heart bounding along, and he had a level of respect for the instructors he hadn't possessed an hour before. (Which still didn't mean that he was about to tell them about Aran. If there were infected ones among them, they had probably been coerced into agreeing by the rest).

They wouldn't hide their eyes in the sand and pretend there wasn't a war on, as the Ministry was prone to doing too often. They would move faster. Draco might learn things that would enable him to save Harry's life, or his parents' lives, or his own.

They were moving.

"Block this." Lowell's voice was soft, and he stepped towards Harry with an extravagant gesture, as if he assumed that Harry wouldn't see him coming otherwise.

Harry grimaced and braced himself. His wand was on the far side of the large training room, under Weston's careful guard, but Draco stood at Harry's back. He should be able to cast the Shield Charm that he would need to defeat Lowell through Draco's wand—always assuming that he had mastered the skill sufficiently. Of course, Lowell and Weston thought he and Draco had spent time practicing that they had spent foiling Nihil instead.

For the first time, Harry felt a squirming bit of guilt at having fooled their teachers. Draco's news had made Hermione beam and Ron nod and Ventus look interested—she had said it was "about time" that the Auror instructors had started giving them "a real education"—but it had made Harry feel worse. They had disdained the help of people who had turned out to be a bit sensible after all.

But is there anything that doesn't increase your guilt? he thought in Draco's voice, and then shook his head and focused his eyes on Lowell. It was time to start thinking about what mattered in this particular moment.

"Vinco!" snarled Lowell.

Harry was already in motion, reaching out to his "sense" of Draco that he had started cultivating, and envisioning the hawthorn wand in his mind as hard as he could. He had held it this way when he used it to duel Death Eaters, and this way when he was casting healing charms with it, and—

A cold wind seemed to blow down his spine. His mind expanded as if a door had been thrown open. He felt himself lifting on invisible wings, riding the surge of compatible magic that raced towards Draco and dived into his wand.

Harry had never done this before. It was terrifying, exhilarating, addictive. He found himself breathing hard, his eyes shut as his chest struggled. And yet he could still see, including the yellow light of the spell bounding towards him, and Draco's tense face, and the wand lying on the floor, innocent, supposedly, of any danger.

"Protego!"

Squeezing the Shield Charm out of the end of the wand was the hardest thing he had ever done. It felt as if he were squeezing it out of himself, weaving it of blood and flesh and skin. His muscles shuddered, and Harry felt a sudden hardness against his back. He was sure he had fallen to the floor. His odd, doubled sight of the room went dark, and when he opened his eyes he immediately turned his head.

A Shield Charm hovered shimmering between him and Lowell, holding back the yellow spell, which crackled and dissolved.

Lowell nodded, panted, and gave Harry a smile. "Good," he said. "If not quite to the point where you should be."

"Give them a chance to prove themselves again," Weston said, predictably. "At least the barrier between them has finally dissolved."

Harry nodded enthusiastically, hoping Lowell would agree with her and otherwise leave them alone. The barrier had faded, probably because he had finally shared the secret of his necromancy with Draco. That was progress, wasn't it? And that meant Lowell had no reason to stare at them with hooded eyes like that.

Draco came forwards shaking the hawthorn wand as if it burned him. "It's a strange sensation," he complained, "having someone else cast through your wand."

"It is less strange for you than it would be for many others, since you have the compatible magic," Lowell promptly began, turning to lecture Draco. "Of course, if you did not have the compatible magic, you would not be able to perform the feat at all…"

Draco nodded solemnly in response to Lowell's lecture, while catching Harry's eye to mouth You're welcome. Harry smiled and sat up, then made his way to his feet, rubbing his back. He'd hit hard when he fell. His back throbbed in time with his head.

Then his headache became more persistent.

Harry noticed his fingers were cold when he reached up to touch his forehead. The skin there felt stretched and tight around the scar, though the scar, contrary to what he thought he felt for a single panicked second, wasn't burning. Then the numbness surged up through his hand to his heart, and his vision blurred at the edges.

He knew in an instant what was happening, though the symptoms were worse than before. He was about to have another vision, courtesy of Nihil.

Draco already seemed to have sensed something wrong and was turning towards him, eyes narrowed. That attracted the attention of Lowell, who stopped his lecture and faced Harry as well. Weston took a few quick steps forwards and was at his side, one arm firmly around Harry's shoulders, as if she assumed that he would try to escape.

"What is happening?" Weston's voice was sharper, softer than Lowell's, and accompanied by the jab of a wand into Harry's side.

"I don't know," Harry responded truthfully, ending in a gasp. He didn't know what caused him to be connected to Nihil, other than the fact that they had both practiced necromancy—but then why wasn't Nihil connected to other necromancers? Portillo Lopez hadn't said anything about this.

There was a buzzing in his ears. He couldn't feel his hands. Through the buzzing a voice began to call, softly, endlessly. Harry had the feeling that he didn't know want to know what it was saying.

"Harry!" Draco, from a distance.

Darkness. Cold. The call.

And then Harry opened his eyes to find himself somewhere entirely different.