Disclaimer: I am making no profit off this story. The characters and much of the setting are the property of JK Rowling and her associates.
Ch. 29: Day 14, Part II: Ashes
Two hours later, almost everyone was accounted for: in addition to Harry Potter and the original ten that had apparated out of the camp, nine more had been found injured (including Draco), but with a good chance of survival, and they were assisted to the Beta location. Six others had been found near-death, and they too had been rushed to Beta, but now only four remained, and the two bodies were simply laid side-by-side and covered with snow. The survivors simply hadn't the energy to do anymore.
The total death count was up to sixty-three, soon to be sixty-seven when the near-dead eventually crossed over into all-dead. That left sixteen people unaccounted for, including Moody, Mackin, and eight (of only eleven) Slytherins. The Weasleys half-seriously suggested to the scavenging recruits that a particular pile of charred debris was actually Moody's remains, and it was certainly very close to where he was last spotted. No one dared voice opinion as to what might have happened to the Slytherins, weighed down by the sort of oppressive fear that makes people try to be invisible. Whether the Slytherins were traitors and had fled, or had been captured and were being tortured, there was nothing to be done about it now.
Draco was woken by a coughing fit, as his lungs tried to hock up soot. Sitting up, the first thing to hit his mind was that, once again, he felt like total shite. Not only was he in pain, but it was fucking cold.
The second thing he noticed was the warm, clammy hand wrapped around his own. Panicking for a moment, he froze and stopped breathing.
It was Harry's hand. . . and that made him feel a little bit better.
He glanced around him: several meters away there were scattered cots with resting occupants; even further, three people were standing, apparently talking to each other; the sun shone with a mid-morning brilliance, reflecting everywhere off of pristine snow. What the Hell had happened? He had a fuzzy memory of stumbling amongst corpses and burning ruins; of running into the Weasley twins at daybreak.
Shivering, Draco looked back at Harry. The boy was obviously exhausted, body at an unnatural angle, glasses slipping off his nose and mouth hanging slightly open to get just the right acoustics for his rasping snore. With a messy chocolate mop on top, the Gryffindor was almost endearing.
Without letting his thoughts digresses further with such treachery, Draco pulled firmly on Harry's arms, gently yanking three or four times. "Harry!"
Dark lashes blinked open, squinting in the sunlight. "Draco?" he whispered, voice rough with sleep.
What had he needed to say? "You're alive," he stated awkwardly, as though unsure of his footing.
Harry smiled lazily, stretching out languidly on the cot, taking the time to work out the numerous kinks in his muscles.
Draco was a little bewildered. Was Potter trying to be sexy! Worse yet, was he actually succeeding! In that incorrigible, unconscious sort of way. . .
Harry let go of Draco's hand to sit up and push his glasses up, his movements tracked closely by the inscrutable Slytherin. He would have been worried, except that the pale, scrunched up face was sp adorable. So he grinned winningly and gave his best reply, "You're alive too."
For an intense moment, their eyes were locked, but then Draco turned away. Fingers shaking faintly as they tried not to fidget, he stuttered, "I c-couldn't believe it, you know, when you charged all those Death Eaters. It really, uh, b-blew me away."
Harry studied his profile, wishing he was better at this interpersonal shite; wishing he knew a way to put Draco at ease. "It was nothing, it was stupid even. Hermione always says I'm rush blindly into danger and she's right."
Draco didn't look surprised, and silence stretched shortly before Harry asked tentatively, "What happened to you?"
Draco's expression turned decidedly sour then, and he hesitated before answering softly, "They of were slaughtering my. . . people, so I guess I did some of my own blind rushing. I held out alright for awhile, I managed to, uh, drop a bunch of them. . . Oh, who am I kidding," he asked suddenly, irritable with himself. "I used Unforgivables, Harry. I killed people."
But both boys were too jaded by this point in their lives to be moved at all from their stoicism. "So did I," Harry answered coolly, refusing to feel any sympathy for the enemies he killed.
Draco nodded slowly, oddly comforted. Distantly he could remember three different alternate realities in which he had killed, and he could remember the acts themselves in detail, except for the one reality in which he had killed enough times for the memories to begin to fuse together. . .
After a pensive moment, he turned away from morbid thoughts. "Sev – uh, I guess I should call him Snape now. Anyway, he stunned me, it just grazed me, but it was powerful enough to knock me off my feet. . . I was sure he was going to kill me. I was so terrified. . . He's my godfather, you know. . . I didn't want him to be the one to kill me. He's always been kinda nice to me." His voice had deepened again, as close as he was willing to get to revealing emotional weakness, his well-hid hurt. "Then, it was so fucked-up, he walks up and starts beating the bleeding shite outta me. Sev never uses physical violence, and I would know. He dislikes touching people at all, and he always uses his wand if he needs to put someone in their place. . . But he just wailed on me, until I was out cold."
After another oppressive expanse of silence during which Harry considered his own encounter with Snape, he suggested tentatively (wanting to kick himself for making excuses for Snape), "Maybe he wanted to make it look like he had killed you."
Draco raised his hands to rub his face, having considered a myriad of different possibilities while roaming the smoking ruins of the camp. "Maybe. . . but he can't be forgiven for being a willing slave to that monster. He killed recruits, I saw him."
Harry licked his lips, willing himself to say just enough to walk the line, "He's a traitor to both sides."
Draco's striking gaze fixed again on his, his expression as blank as ever. Merlin, he was appealing as ever too, scuffed or not, coldly unimpassioned or hotly enraged. Harry acted on his impulse to break the distance and once again took Draco's hand in his own. The Slytherin was instantly uncomfortable and turned away to look out over the Beta site, though he did not pull his hand from Harry's.
"Harry. . . what are you doing?" he queried reproachfully, making a poor attempt to sneer that Harry could still make out from his profile. "You can't still be thinking about that, not after. . . what happened."
Harry hadn't really had much time to think about what had happened before the attack, but now that he did, briefly, it was pretty discouraging. Draco's reaction: it wasn't just a bad reaction, it was a terrible reaction, and almost certainly indicative of Post-traumatic Stress or some other manifestation of being completely fucked-up. He wondered suddenly if maybe the most humane thing to do wouldn't be to just leave Draco alone, instead of pressuring him in a direction that he was clearly not ready.
"I told you it was a bad idea," Draco said roughly, defensively, still facing away, as though conversing over a great distance.
But Harry's wasn't as dense about the blonde as he been just two weeks ago; a brief consideration of the situation, and of Draco himself, was enough to tell him that it was already too late to simply back-off. Glancing down at Draco's hand, tense in his own, he knew that Draco did feel something tender for him, whatever evidence he frequently presented to the contrary. It was obvious to Harry that just getting this far had been difficult enough for the damaged Slytherin, and he was close enough to know that hardly anyone else (if anyone else at all) was this close to Draco.
If he backed off now, Harry was pretty sure he'd never get another chance with the isolated boy with whom he was inexplicably smitten and devoted; even worse, if he backed off now, Draco may never open up again to the possibility of something real with anyone. Harry wanted to curse the gods who had given them their only chance in the middle of a damned war while Draco suffered from Post-traumatic Stress; but he also knew he cared enough to really want that one chance.
So Harry gently pulled Draco's arm, urging the hurting teen to just look at him.
"I really like you, it must be obvious," Harry rushed, a little embarrassed, and Draco's elegant eyebrows shot up. "I'm willing to wait, as long as it takes. It's strange, you know, 'cause we've been enemies for so long, but it's like I've never seen you until these last weeks. Now. . . we've been through some pretty awful stuff together, and I know that. . ." He swallowed before continuing, growing increasingly hot, and voice constricting, "To, me, you're worth waiting for. Whatever it takes, within reason. 'Cause, well, I really like you and all," he finished hastily, relieved but a slight nervous wreck.
naThere it was, he had put all his cards on the table.
Harry forced himself to look Draco in the eye, and for a tense moment he feared a bad reaction –
Then a tentative smile tugged at Draco's lips. "You're such a Gryffindor, Potter," he commented affectionately, rolling his eyes to break the tension. Sure, Potter's words were a little, uh, frightening in their commitment, and what that would entail. . . But it felt sinfully, undeniably good to be really wanted, really liked; by someone who wasn't a creep, who wasn't trying to mess with him or hurt him; by someone who maybe he could want, and like, and even learn to trust.
Not easily swayed, Harry squeezed Draco's hand, pressing his thumb along the smooth palm, urging him to, "Call me Harry again."
He'd hate to admit to it, but Draco quite charmed. Harry was right, few others had ever gotten close enough to be as nice to him, especially when confronted with the aristocrat's many faults and defense mechanisms. Draco's lifelong emersion in deception, interestingly, made him particularly susceptible to earnest cheesiness; a full, if shy smile was finally reciprocated. "Harry," he teased in an artificially sweet voice.
Harry just smiled back, liking the sound of his name on other boy's lips, however affected. When Draco didn't break their eye contact after several seconds, Harry found himself drawn closer again; leaning forward until his face was quite near to Draco's. The Slytherin did not withdraw a millimeter, but Harry thought he could identify the traces of apprehension in his expressive eyes and his tempting lips. Watching his tongue dart out to moisten the pink flesh, Harry had to breathily ask, though he dreaded the answer, "May I kiss you?"
A slight shiver ran through Draco, but then he nodded faintly, and that was all Harry needed to close the space between them by placing a long, chaste kiss on his lips. After several seconds, his mind whispering careful, careful, he broke the kiss and, placing his free hand lightly on Draco's neck, pressed their foreheads together. "I'm really glad you're alive. . . I'm so stupid sometimes, I just act on impulse. I should've stayed with you when they attacked. . . I'm not, uh. . . very good at keeping other people alive."
Barely touching, Draco brushed his nose against Harry in an intimate gesture that soothed them both. "It's not your responsibility to keep me alive," he whispered. "A lot of people died last night, but it's not you're fault."
Harry's eyes closed unhappily and tiredly, and he nodded, unbelieving but comforted anyway. "You, Pansy, and Tia are the only Slytherins that made it here, though Tia is injured pretty badly. We couldn't find the bodies of the others."
Draco drew back, turning his face away even as anger and pain clouding his features. "They be taken home, tortured. . . put under Imperius, then we'll have to face them in battle."
Harry sat up straighter, now that they were moving into war mode. He wasn't sure if Draco's version of events was true, but he wasn't about to make an issue of it now. Instead he said, "We should get up, get everyone together. Maybe come up with a plan."
! BREAK !
Though Harry wished for his best friends' help (Hermione in particular was very nifty at figuring out what to do), he and Draco, aided shortly by Oliver Wood and the Weasley twins, did a fair job of hammering out a makeshift plan.
For the next eight hours, the fourteen uninjured and mildly injured would take shifts resting and doing the many duties Harry came up with – treat the injured, cook a meal from the Beta rations, reinforce the defense and heating wards, and scavenge the camp for any survival tools to take with them. The Beta location came equipped with an emergency portkey to England, but when Harry had asked on his first day where exactly, Mackin had just replied, "Nowhere you want to be. It won't come to that."
In retrospect, Harry realized that Mackin had jinxed them all (muggle style) with those words. True to fashion, it had come to just that. They would be leaving in eight hours, under the cover of winter's early darkness, to wherever luck would send them. Harry had conceded to take a few hours rest later, but in the meantime he was fastidiously 'overseeing' the other recruits and uncertainly trying to somehow prepare for the future.
Draco had some basic knowledge healing (it had been useful knowledge in the Malfoy household), but it was enough to be helpful amongst the injured. It was predicted that only half of them would really be up and ready by departure time. Three more of the critically injured died, and Malfoy used a spell to bury them in the snow by the other dead. Harry (as expected) said a few inadequate words, and then a handful of people gave a moment of silence over their frozen graves.
"Ashes to ashes, dust to dust," Pansy said hoarsely over Tia. "May your body lie here in ice for centuries and millennia, so that you may be some day dug up and displayed on exhibit as a specimen of our era. You will be an excellent ambassador," Pansy sniffled, a tear escaping her lashes. "You were innocent, and brave, and unjustly taken before your time! I hope you live on in the future we will secure for you!"
Everyone was rather astounded, though several were brought to tears nonetheless, Harry included. The recruits began to disperse to their tasks or rest, and Harry approached Draco where he stood over the grave of his fallen housemate, the youngest and smallest of the recruits, just a scrawny fifth year Slytherin. Had she not even been worth taking back? It hurt so much, so often, it was predictable, normal even. Who was next? Pansy? Potter? Himself?
Pansy had remained too, and she watched Harry approach. He looked at Draco with concern and sympathy, hesitating to say anything. . .
So she said something, "Where are we gonna go, Potter? When we get to Britain?"
Harry turned towards her, as if just seeing her. He had been considering the topic mere moments before, and he now attempted to articulate his conclusions. "Well, I've been thinking, and there's a few things we can do, depending on the situation we find ourselves in. We could attempt to contact Dumbledore, or any of the Order members. We could make a team to scope out the Ministry. If we can figure out what is happening, maybe snoop around Diagon Ally or St. Mungo's. Right now our ignorance is our greatest weakness, so we need to gather intelligence. Worse comes to worst, I know how we can hide out in the muggle world while we find our bearings." Hermione, the other Weasleys, and Lupin were high on his list of people to contact.
Draco and Pansy were both looking at him now, the former stoically, but the latter nodding a hesitant acceptance: Harry Potter, the bleeding Boy-Who-Lived, had some okay ideas, and right now, that was enough.
"I guess that will have to do," Pansy complained defeatedly.
Returning his attention to Draco, Harry took two steps near, conspicuously close to the teen who stood as still as a white marble statue. Pansy's eyes widened as Harry took Draco's hand.
"Wha-?" Draco started, startled, drawing his arm away; but Harry held on, and Draco glanced worriedly at Pansy to gauge the damage. Just a little bit, but she was smirking at him! Using his smirk! "It's not what you think," he hissed with a scowl so fierce that Harry's grip on his hand trembled.
Pansy quickly back-peddled, close enough to Draco to know that whatever was going on between him and Harry was very delicate subject. "I know," she soothed, changing tactics like a true Slytherin. "I know you'd never do something like that. . . not that I think there's anything of wrong with it of course."
"Whatever," Draco growled, relaxing slightly despite clammy palms.
Harry squeezed his hand, "Why don't we take a rest? We've both been up for hours, healing is so draining. . . "
'Much like watching people die,' Draco added silently; but he nodded anyway. He was tired, exhausted even, and they'd be on the move again soon. Pretending that he wasn't actually doing something that Harry bloody Potter had encouraged, Draco turned to leave the little burial site, giving Pansy a daring look over his shoulder.
Silently they returned to their parallel cots and lay down. Draco was asleep within minutes, but Harry couldn't escape his worries so easily; the future was terrifyingly uncertain. He was stranded, without Dumbledore, with almost no idea what was going on. Had there been other attacks? Had the ambush at the Ministry provoked some unimagined retaliation? How had everything spiraled out of control so quickly?
For the first time in months, since before Sirius died, Harry found himself actually reaching towards that dark corner of his mind. . . forcefully contained, like a black hole leading to Tom Riddle's twisted mind –
It was closed on the monster's end too.
As awful as the dreams and paranoia had been, Harry regretted it now; now, he was flying blind.
! BREAK !
At 2000 hours, the troupe was as ready as it was ever going to be. A fair number of supplies had been scavenged from the ruined camp, and had been packed up and shrunk. There were now only twenty recruits left, four of which still weren't steady on their feet. But they couldn't just wait, not while who-knows-what was going on, not in this isolated and desolate wasteland.
Harry's expression was not encouraging. Wood and the Weasley twins had apparently elected themselves to his war cabinet, all three having come to him at least twice in the last eight hours alone – offering opinions, insights, ideas. They were there now, as were Draco and Pansy, surveying the survivors just as Harry was.
"Maybe we could assign four stronger recruits to the four injured," Oliver Wood suggested after a moment. "They could look after them, you know, if they need help."
Harry nodded immediately. "That's a good idea. Try to assign someone who knows them, if possible."
"Right." Oliver marched towards the four weak recruits to set the plan in motion, unaccountably chuffed to be working and fighting in such close quarters with Harry Potter. It had been cool at school, though Harry had seemed so much younger then. . . Now, however, it was war, and being on Harry Potter's team meant something much more.
"Alright, mate?" either Fred or George asked. Harry could usually tell, but it was more difficult with the winter robes and hoods on.
Harry eyed the twins, and for a moment Ron flashed through his mind. The twins were taller and lankier than their brother, and their hair much longer, but their faces held his familiar warmth and strength. He mustered a smile. He wanted to say, 'We'll make it through, we always do,' but too many people had died for that to be true. Cho, Tia, Will, O'Brien; most of the Slytherins were gone. . . Oh Merlin, Cho. . . Could he have failed her any more?
When Harry failed to answer for several seconds, Draco responded for him, "Of course he's not alright, no one's alright. But we'll all do what we have to anyway."
The twins looked at Draco with a strange mixture of distaste, shock, and agreement; then Wood returned, urging everyone closer. It was time.
The codeword-activated portkey was actually a self-sizing rope, with space enough for everyone to hold on as Harry whispered, "Cassiopeia."
Then there was a familiar yank at his navel –
! CHAPTER END !
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