Thank you for the reviews on the last chapter!
Now, this chapter illustrates one of the perils of having tension build all the time: sooner or later, it's got to explode.
Chapter Fourteen: Detention With DracoClink.
Albus sighed and straightened his back as the last link in his trap was placed. It wouldn't be possible to use it until tonight—the devices needed time to adapt to the spells he'd placed on them, and Harry would need to be in his rooms, sleeping, which would happen for sure after the Halloween Feast—but he doubted that anyone would discover it before then. He had commanded the house elves to place the devices in out-of-the-way spots, and of course, since he was Headmaster of Hogwarts, they had obeyed him gladly and swiftly.
He waved a hand to dismiss the hovering window through which he'd observed the trap placement, and then sat down heavily behind his desk, to once more mourn that such a trap had been necessary. If Harry had only listened to his mother's words in his mind yesterday, coming from one of the unmodified devices, Albus would not have had to do this.
If Voldemort had not done what he did the night he attacked Godric's Hollow, you would have no reason to worry about this at all.
Albus nodded his head, once, in determination, and then straightened. It was useless wishing for the present to turn back and change the past, and he had lived long enough to know exactly how powerless regrets were.
He swept from the room, then, to prepare for the Halloween Feast, giving Fawkes's perch only one irritated glance along the way.
"Draco, what is wrong with you?"
Draco turned around and relaxed a little. Harry was fine, though he looked windblown from Quidditch practice; the first game, against Gryffindor, was on Saturday, and Flint had been drilling all his team hard. Flint had also forbidden Draco from coming to watch the practice, claiming that he distracted Harry. Draco didn't think that was true, and even if he had, would have determined it fair payment for the way that he worried whenever Harry was out of sight.
Today, though, his jumpiness and twitchiness had increased, and he didn't know why. He just shook his head and reached down to touch a piece of Harry's hair that was sticking straight up from his head, grinning. Harry swatted his hand away with a practiced motion and shook his head.
"I'm going to go to the library and study with Neville," he announced, ducking down to pick up his bag from the floor.
"Good," said Draco, swinging down to collect the Transfiguration book he'd laid beside the bed. "I'll come with you."
Harry gave him a long look. "Zacharias will probably be there too," he said. "There's really no need for me to have an escort to the library, Draco."
Draco's nervousness spilled out his mouth before he could stop it. "Yes there fucking well is, Harry, and you know it." He strode up to Harry and pushed his hair back. The lightning bolt scar was inflamed, but not bleeding. Draco managed to hide his surprise and rally before that ruined the point he wanted to make. "Someone might try to attack you at any time."
"Somehow I think the Headmaster has better things to do than lurk around corners and wait for me, Draco," said Harry, and his magic swirled and grumbled.
"I don't."
Harry shook his head. "Fine. Come if you want to. But I don't enjoy the feeling that I'm keeping you from your homework. You know Potions as well as I do. Poor Neville doesn't, though, and that's what I'll be tutoring him in." He turned determinedly towards the door down to the common room.
"That's why I'll be studying something else," said Draco, and stifled a laugh as he saw Harry's flush. The poor boy does hate being embarrassed.
The further they walked away from the Slytherin common room, the better Draco felt—until they ascended the stairs into the entrance hall and he felt it again, a buzzing and nagging against his nerves, building to a pain like a beesting on his right temple. Draco turned to the right, and the beesting moved until it seemed to hit him in the face. Draco narrowed his eyes, staring hard at the tiny alcoves and doors scattered around the Great Hall. Where is that coming from? What is it?
"Draco?"
Draco could hear Harry tapping his foot, but he ignored him for the moment. If he had a way to get rid of his jumpiness, then yes, he would take it. He slunk forward, and finally traced the buzzing and the pain to a small door that was probably a broom closet. He found it hard to concentrate on. Notice-Me-Not spells seemed to be worked into the wood. After a moment, though, he grasped the door and swung it open.
The buzzing wrongness focused on the one odd object in the closet: a silver Pensieve, sitting on the floor and wound with glowing golden runes. Draco frowned. There was something wrong with the Pensieve's magic, something twisted away from the usual purpose, but he couldn't figure out what it was just from looking. He would have to touch it.
"Draco, don't."
Harry was holding his shoulder with one hand, and his other extended his wand when Draco looked. His expression had gone flinty. Draco stared in fascination. It was the first time he had seen open anger on Harry's face without an explosion of magic following that made him drop into a fetal position from the headache. The ferocity suited Harry better than the whimpering weakness that had afflicted him this summer, he thought.
"Why not?" Draco asked. "I know that's what's bothering me, Harry."
"I don't feel anything," said Harry stubbornly.
"You haven't been trained like I have," said Draco, as kindly as he could. "And even then, you're so powerful that your magic shields you from tiny influences like these. This is subtle. But I know it's been making me jumpy, or part of it." He brushed Harry's now-hesitant hand from his shoulder and walked forward, kneeling to stick his head into the Pensieve.
"Draco!" came Harry's anguished cry, and he heard feet running.
Then the memory swallowed him.
Draco blinked and glanced around. He knew for a fact that he didn't recognize this place. It was a small, neat room, with wizarding pictures on the walls that displayed an unfamiliar series of scenes, mostly grassy fields with the grass rippling in the wind. The chairs sat close around a cozy hearth, which in Malfoy Manor would have been twice as big, and a bookcase packed tight with books stood along one wall. A staircase off to his left led upwards, and Draco supposed there must be more rooms up there. He shivered. The house would be claustrophobically small if there weren't.
"Now, Harry, recite the names of the seven defensive kinds of curse for me."
Draco turned, and his breath caught in his throat and turned to glue. Behind him, near a couch, were two figures he recognized, despite not having studied them closely. One was Lily Potter, whom he'd briefly met in Dumbledore's office last year. Her face was worn and lined, her mouth set as she stared down at the child balancing on a chair next to her.
The other was Harry, Harry at perhaps five or six years old, with his glasses already in place and his eyes on the book that he held. At his mother's words, however, he shut the book and began to recite obediently.
"Shielding curses, mirror curses, dream curses…"
Draco recognized the names of only those first two types of defensive curse. The others he'd never heard of. Harry recited them flawlessly, and then sat with his eyes on his mother's face and waited.
Draco felt slightly sick when he realized Harry was looking at his mother the way a Crup looked at its master for approval. And Lily gave him what he wanted, with a nod and a smile and a motion of her hand that came damn near being a pat on the head. Harry beamed. Then Lily stood and backed to the far side of the room. Harry sat where he was at a subtle gesture from her.
She has him well-trained, doesn't she? Draco thought, anger burning like bile in the back of his throat.
"Now," said Lily, "pretend that I'm casting spells at you. This is a battle to save Connor's life. Connor is behind you and to the right." Harry's eyes half-shut, and Draco knew he was envisioning it. "Tell me what kind of defensive curse you would use to stop each kind of spell."
She drew her wand and moved it in a half-circle. "Reducto!"
The spell did not actually shoot towards Harry, but Harry tensed as if it had and said, "A mirror curse. Then you'd have to deal with your own Reducto reflected back twice or three times."
Lily nodded. "That will do. Consopio!"
"A dream curse," said Harry, "to arrest the sleep in mid-motion and throw it back to you."
Lily tilted her head briefly to the left. "Acceptable, if you think you could really catch my spell and throw it."
Harry lifted his head slightly, his eyes gleaming. Draco would have expected him to smile, but his face remained silent and intent. "Can I try?" he asked softly.
Lily nodded. "Consopio!"
The sleeping spell had barely left Lily's wand when Harry held up a hand and shouted, "Speculum Consopio!"
A milky substance formed in front of Harry, bouncing the spell so fast that Draco was still blinking when he realized Lily had sprawled out on the floor and gone to sleep. Harry hopped off his chair, ran to her, and lightly touched her cheek. Lily stirred and woke, staring at her son. "I thought you said you would use a dream curse, rather than a mirror curse," she murmured.
"I thought I would, too," said Harry. "But I think a mirror curse works better with that particular spell." He was smiling, and Draco stared. That certainly transformed his face.
Lily stood up, and the smile evaporated as Harry watched his mother. "Tell me why you changed your mind," Lily said, in a tone of quiet iron that Draco had never heard even his mother use. Well, maybe the time I chased fairies all through the eastern rose garden and broke most of the flowers, he thought.
"Because I—" Harry stopped, chewing his lip.
"The truth, Harry," said Lily, still in that iron voice.
"Partially because I thought it really was a good idea," said Harry, bowing his head. "And partially because—well, does it matter if a Death Eater is asleep or asleep and having nightmares? They still couldn't chase us."
"They do deserve to suffer for attacking your brother," Lily said, sinking to her knees in front of Harry. "That is the way you have to think, Harry."
"But I thought being nice was a good thing." Harry sounded timid, fragile, unsure. Draco wished he could do something to change this, but morbid fascination—and furious curiosity about why this Pensieve had been placed in the broom closet—made him keep watching.
"It is," said Lily gently. "For your brother. Connor is the one who has to remain innocent to defeat Voldemort, Harry. Remember, I told you about that last week? Connor has to show mercy."
Harry nodded, his eyes half-lidded, as though he were trying to recall a difficult lesson, or a dream that insisted on escaping his grasp. Draco had to swallow bile again.
"But you have to be strong," said Lily, and then put her hand beneath her son's chin and tilted his head up so that his green eyes met hers. They were almost the same shade of green, Draco thought, and wanted to believe that was the only similarity he could see between their faces. "That means that if an enemy comes up to you and tries to hurt you, you have to be willing to hurt them back. If someone tries to kill you, then you have to be willing to kill them. Or Connor will die before he's eleven years old. Do you want your brother to die?"
"No," Harry whispered.
Lily hugged him. "And I know that you don't want to kill him through inaction, either. Just keep this in mind, Harry. Anyone could turn out to be an enemy. Almost everyone, except the Gryffindors and the known pureblood families who serve the Light, could be a traitor or a Death Eater. So you've got to be careful. I know that you'll make friends when you go to school, but you have to be careful around them all the time. And if one of them says something bad about Connor, or tries to hurt him, then you'll have to hurt them back."
Draco wanted to step out of the Pensieve, but not strongly enough to resist watching the rest of the memory. It's a wonder that he didn't hex me for the first remark I made about his brother. It's a wonder that he's in Slytherin and seems to like it. It's a miracle that he has any sense of compassion left.
"I know," said Harry, and he looked and sounded solemn.
"Other than that," Lily said softly, "you are doing very well, Harry. You have just that little bit left to learn. Connor comes first, always and forever. When you've learned that, then I'll never worry about him again. I know that you'll be there, protecting him against all his enemies, and making them hurt if they try to hurt him." She touched a hand to his forehead, resting it over the lightning bolt scar. "Connor has mercy and compassion. You'll have to be justice, Harry, and sometimes the executioner."
Harry nodded at her, and then the memory trembled to a stop, and Draco knew that it was ended. He wrenched himself backwards with a gasp, and then kicked viciously at the Pensieve. The golden runes on the sides were hissing like Harry's snake had done last year, but they quieted when the silvery liquid of the thoughts inside splashed out and ran across them, dousing their glow.
Draco turned towards Harry. He had one hand pressed to his temple and was breathing harshly. He opened his eyes, but they had gone half-glossy.
"What are you hearing?" Draco whispered.
"My mother's voice," Harry whispered back. "Telling me that I have to be justice, I have to be executioner, because Connor is the gentle and merciful one." He gritted his teeth, and Draco wondered if it was against pain, real or remembered, or to make himself speak the next words. "I can hear them repeating over and over in my head. The phoenix web is coming back."
Draco gave a sharp glance at the Pensieve, knowing now how that was possible. Then he grabbed Harry's shoulders and lowered him gently to the floor. Harry was panting as though he fought an enemy, and Draco could feel his muscles jumping like a nervous unicorn's.
"It's all right," Draco whispered. "It's just a memory, Harry, and she can't hurt you. And you've already protected other people than Connor. You protected me from Ron's hexes last year. You protected Luna from being bullied. You've protected Neville from failing in Potions. You got between Granger's wand and me in the library the other day. You protect and shield all kinds of people. You show mercy and compassion all the time." His own heart was pounding, and he wished suddenly that his mother was there. He knew he could soothe Harry, since he'd done it this summer, but Narcissa could soothe him, and make him as strong as he needed to be for Harry.
"But that's different," Harry whispered. "Wrong. I shouldn't have done that, not when Connor needed me." To Draco's horror, he looked up with that glint in his eyes that Draco had hoped was gone forever, the one that said he was sorry and valued Draco's friendship, but expected it to be dropped any moment. "I need to go find him."
Draco started to respond, and felt several sharp buzzing pains center on his face. There must be other Pensieves, he thought. That's why I'm feeling them now. And we've triggered the trap, or maybe disrupting this one Pensieve did, and they're all focusing on Harry and trying to put him back under the phoenix web.
Draco told Harry, "Stay here," rather unnecessarily—he didn't think Harry could have moved—and then rushed out of the room and turned his face in the direction of the pain. It was like facing into a stinging wind, but he found the source of the problem almost at once. There was a Pensieve in a closet on the other side of the hall. Draco kicked it over without bothering to glance into it and see what memory it held.
Then he tracked the pain into the dungeons, and kicked over two Pensieves in a corridor near the Slytherin common room. There was one near the Potions classroom, and another near Snape's office. They'd formed as much of a circle around Harry as possible, Draco thought as he soaked his shoe kicking over the sixth one. When he lay in his bed that night, probably, they would have sprung into motion, and he would have been overwhelmed and buried by the onslaught of memories.
The buzzing pain was quite faint by now. Draco breathed a sigh of relief and turned towards the stairs out of the dungeons. He thought the final one would be near the Great Hall. He could disrupt it, and then—
The Headmaster was standing down the corridor, watching him.
Draco took a deep breath and plastered a smile across his face. "Hello, Headmaster, sir," he said. "I didn't know you went walking in the dungeons. It's a good place for a chill morning walk."
"You have been disobedient, Mr. Malfoy," said Dumbledore. He raised his wand. "And I think that you have earned yourself—"
Draco let out another sigh of relief as he felt the magic that erupted from behind Dumbledore, bathing him in the scent of roses on flowing crystalline waves. The air brightened and turned sweet, and then Harry stalked around Dumbledore, who had frozen the moment the magic broke free, and faced the Headmaster. Draco couldn't see the expression Harry wore. He didn't think he needed to. The way that Dumbledore's face blanched was enough.
"How dare you do this?" Harry whispered. "How dare you try to hurt him?" His magic climbed, but still the sensations Draco felt were mostly light and sweetness. He shrugged, deciding not to question the change. It was more pleasant than the pain he usually felt when Harry was angry. "Would you have hexed him or tried to kill him, the way you did Peter?"
Peter? Draco thought, and decided that was one of the things that he would ask Harry about later. Right now, he didn't think it was a good idea to ask Harry anything.
The Headmaster, of course, was the kind of fool who would try, and who, moreover, would paste on a scolding look as he watched Harry. "Harry," he said mildly, "you know that what I was doing was only for your own good. The Pensieves would have tamed your magic and made you able to think of your brother kindly again. I know that you have been having arguments. This would soothe them."
"I want to be able to choose the arguments I have, thank you, Professor," said Harry. Draco watched ice glazing the stones under his feet. "And that still doesn't explain what you were going to do to Draco."
"Harry, my dear boy, I was only going to assign him detention." Dumbledore fixed Draco with that same mildly scolding glance. "Disrupting my measures to help you the way he has done deserves missing the Halloween Feast, I think."
Draco stuck his tongue out at the old man. He was sure that the punishment would have been much harsher if Harry hadn't interfered.
He saved me again, he realized then. He might not like to think of it that way, but he does keep getting between people who aren't his brother and harm.
"I want detention with him," said Harry.
"But, my dear boy, you have not done anything wrong," said Dumbledore. "At least, you have not broken school rules. You have been morally wrong, and that is a blow to your relationship with your brother that it might take a long time to recover from, but nonetheless—"
He shut up then. Draco edged a step to the right, and caught a glimpse of Harry's face. Yes, I would have shut up, too.
"Really?" Harry asked darkly. "I think attacking the Headmaster ought to do nicely." He raised both hands.
His magic bulged and rippled around him, and then turned abruptly sideways. Draco felt a wind pulling and tugging on him, causing him to move a step closer to Harry. But it let him go almost at once, and lashed out, focusing on Dumbledore. Draco watched in confusion. Was Harry just trying to make the Headmaster trip and stumble over his robes?
No, he wasn't, Draco realized after a moment. The wind wasn't physical, and it was blowing towards Harry, not away.
It was pulling on Dumbledore's magic, tearing pieces of it away from him and merging them into Harry's power.
Draco felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. That would be pretty terrifying, if it was focused on me, he thought, with a haze of both fear and contentment in his mind, and then pressed closer to Harry's back so that he could watch. The sensation was what counted, the rippling waves of power and how they ceased to exist as separate entities the moment they hit the magic around Harry, but the look on Dumbledore's face was well worth watching.
It ended soon enough. Dumbledore set up a barrier of some kind, and the magic ceased to flow. Draco hugged Harry, and sniffed roses as his magic bounced back and rippled around him. Harry let out a harsh breath.
"That, Mr. Potter, was a serious magical crime, and not merely a breach of the school rules," said Dumbledore. His voice was mild. His eyes were not. Draco supposed this was a glimpse of the White Wizard who had taken the field against Grindelwald. He found himself shivering.
"And what would you call attempting to bind the mind and magic of a child, Professor Dumbledore?" Harry's voice was absolutely level, but Draco could feel the fine tremors that ran through his body. "What would you call trying to reinforce the phoenix web in my mind long after I had said I did not want it back? What would you call trying to kill another man who was only trying to shield me?" His voice was building, and so was his magic. The stones between him and Dumbledore were ice-covered, and in the silence between Harry's shout and his next whisper, one of them shattered, shards falling to the ground from the immense stress the ice was putting it under. "I want you dead," Harry whispered, and Draco felt his rage join the magic, filling the corridor with the unbearable pressure of an angry wizard. Draco grimaced. Now the sensations of his magic felt like pain again.
Dumbledore did not strike back. Draco didn't know why. Perhaps he thought even now that he could use Harry, or perhaps he would rather have Harry angry and half-free than opposing him in magical battle. Draco could understand that. Instead, he only inclined his head and said, "Both of you will miss the Halloween Feast tonight. Your detention is to pick up branches and leaves off the lawn. You may not use magic." Then he turned and walked away.
There was a moment when Draco thought Harry would strike at his back. Harry's magic trembled, fighting the leash he had it on, and then collapsed abruptly into him. Harry shook his head and leaned back against Draco.
"Thank you," he said.
"I think that you're mistaking who those words should go to," said Draco, running his hands over Harry's shoulders. He couldn't seem to stop touching him. The magic was probably responsible for that, he thought, and then shook his head and set Harry gently back on his feet.
"I mean it," said Harry, and glanced back at him. "For all of it. For finding the Pensieves and kicking them over." His hands clenched in front of him briefly. "The phoenix web was coming back yesterday, and it was my mother's voice that spoke to me. That must have been why it was happening. And I want to thank you for being here and holding me back. I could have killed Dumbledore." He turned fully to face Draco. "And I want to thank you for not being afraid," he said softly, "when you found out that I could drink magic."
"Did you know?" Draco asked.
Harry hesitated briefly, then admitted, "I think I swallowed part of Voldemort's power in the Chamber of Secrets last year. But it wasn't something I've ever tried consciously to do. So no, I didn't." His eyes were back on Draco's face, studying it closely. "But you aren't frightened."
"It wasn't my magic that you were trying to swallow," said Draco, puzzled as to why this was such a large deal for Harry. "It would be like being afraid of you because you're a Parselmouth, Harry. So long as you aren't drinking my magic or setting a snake on me, there's no reason for me to fear it."
Harry abruptly embraced him, his body trembling violently. "Thank you," he whispered. "Thank you."
Draco gave up on arguing that he owed Harry thanks, and just hugged him back. The pain was retreating from his head, the ice was retreating from the corridor, and Harry's magic now merely draped his back like a warm blanket. Draco couldn't feel any commands from it. If it wanted him to keep holding Harry, then he was more than happy to oblige.
Harry sighed and stooped down to pick up another branch. The wind really had been brisk this weekend, and individual leaves from the Forbidden Forest had colonized the Quidditch Pitch until it looked as if it were growing a second kind of grass. The branches were almost worse, because of how quickly they usually broke when he picked them up.
Harry half-grimaced to himself. You just aren't used to doing chores without magic, he thought, as he carried his latest armful to the edge of the Pitch. Dumbledore hadn't told them to put the leaves and branches in any one particular place, so they'd chosen this one and hoped the wind didn't start blowing again before they finished their detention.
Harry added his armful to the pile and turned to study Draco. Currently, he was chasing a leaf and trying to pick it up without dropping the rest of what he held in his arms. Harry thought it was a doomed effort, considering how many twigs he clutched. A small rain of them already followed his feet.
He'd thought as carefully as he could about the detention and the process of the detention to avoid thinking about what had got them the detention in the first place. He'd attacked Dumbledore, and somehow, both he and Draco were still alive and free. His head hurt like mad, but the phoenix web was a glittering mass that shifted under the surface of his mind, not the whole of it. Harry knew Dumbledore would likely try again, but at least this plan had failed.
And Draco had saved him. And then Draco had not been afraid of him when Harry had struck out and sucked part of Dumbledore's power away.
Those were facts so wonderful that Harry felt he couldn't let his mind fully touch them. His thoughts kept skittering around them and then returning, peering as warily at them as he had looked into the final Pensieve before kicking it over. He kept expecting to awake and find it a dream, that Draco had defended him so fiercely and accepted his fierce defense in return.
That is not something that would have happened with Connor, his thoughts told him abruptly. Connor couldn't protect you like that, not against Dumbledore, and you know that he would be afraid of you.
Harry shook his head. He didn't want to compare his relationship with Draco to his relationship with his brother right now. He just wanted to think about Draco by himself—
And perhaps laugh when he dropped the next handful of twigs, which happened in the next moment. The integrity of the bundle in Draco's arms was completely disrupted, and Harry laughed as it slid through Draco's frantically grasping hands and left him with a few leaves and one twig.
Draco flung down the leaves and the twig and stamped his foot at him. "I don't see you helping," he declared.
Harry started to walk towards him, and then paused when he saw a flash of movement near the pile of branches. He recognized the lifted, twitching nose and hairless tail in a few moments. Peter was there, in rat form, and wanted to speak with him. Harry let out a slow breath. He hadn't seen Peter in the school, not even on the Marauder's Map, since the attack by Dumbledore. Dumbledore had probably strengthened the wards so Peter couldn't enter again.
But would Draco understand this?
Harry swallowed and turned towards his friend. "Draco," he whispered, catching his attention in a moment. "Please, will you cover for me? There's someone I have to talk to."
Draco didn't laugh. His eyes were deep as they stared into Harry's. "Who is it?" he asked.
Harry let out his breath. "Peter Pettigrew."
"You have the strangest friends, Harry," said Draco, a little too calmly. "Not including me, of course. But yes, I'll cover for you. If you'll just leave an illusion of yourself here, it shouldn't be hard."
The edge to his voice said he would demand an explanation later, but Harry didn't mind. His heart was singing with relief. He waved a hand, and an illusion of him formed and stooped to gather up a stick. His hand passed through it, but Harry thought it would take a lot to notice.
"Of course, it doesn't actually help," Draco bemoaned it.
Harry looked hesitantly at him. Draco waved him on. "Go talk to him. The sooner you go, the sooner you can get back and tell me all about it."
Harry nodded to him and slipped around the leaf-pile, following the rat's tail further and further into the grass. Peter didn't transform until they were almost to the Forbidden Forest, and when he did, he sat with his back against a tree and stared intently at Harry.
"I think you can know why Dumbledore made me be your parents' Secret-Keeper now," he said softly.