The Hard Road

by GrimmsterJ

Bright eyed people love platitudes like, "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." Normally, Draco Malfoy would be first in line to poke that lot in the eye, but the world looks a lot different after leading a failed revolution and being rewarded with two years in Azkaban. He had learned many things, like no good deed goes unpunished and never listen to Lucius Malfoy

10. Chapter 10

The Hard Road

Chapter 10

-/-/-/-/-/-

Blaring trumpets clawed Draco's eyes open. He was lying face down on the tile floor beside his rack with Koszjek's arm flopped over him. He kneed the giant, who sat up with a start, smashing him straight up into the steel bed frame. Ten minutes later, they were standing at attention while LeClerc marched up and down the line.

They ran and climbed, ground through endless push ups, sit ups, and squat thrusts. Then double timed it back to the barracks to clean up and don their uniforms. The first hints of orange were barely breaking through night's blanket of black when they tromped off to breakfast. The red staining the ropes attaching him to Koszjek spread while they stood in line for sausage and eggs. Draco's arms and legs ached as they ate in silence. Then it was back to the barracks for their dress uniforms. His body throbbed as they drilled the tightly squared parade formations. They stomped, pumping their knees in time while swinging the wooden dummy rifles.

It was midmorning when he was finally loosed from the giant Russian. Instructors split them off into four groups which he now recognized as water Wesen, predatory Wesen, non-predatory Wesen, and wizards. Draco's group of eight was tiny compared to the rest. Predators were the largest, but even non-predatory Wesen had twenty-five. The tiny group marched off, snaking around white concrete block buildings ringed by carefully manicured lawns, past the administrative building, cafeteria, and motor pool.

The cream colored walls in the cement classroom were shiny, but up close the paint was full of runs and drips. The gray-topped desks and floors only showed vestiges of their original finish in the corners. Greenish light flickered and buzzed with the infernal hum of muggle electricity drenching the whole place.

They stood at attention until a camouflage clad instructor walked in and motioned them to sit. He instantly launched into perfect French. "Welcome to the introduction to Military Magic. You were identified during the induction process as wizards. How many of you have used magic?"

Draco's was the lone hand. The recruit next to him was tapping his sleeve and muttering in German, "Eh, what did he say?"

Draco was in the middle of explaining when the instructor cut him off. "Mmm. So we actually have one? What's your name, recruit?"

"Malbec, sir."

"I'm sure you appreciate that is the... French... military." The camouflage clad man stared down his nose with piqued eyebrows. The implication was clear enough.

"Yes sir."

With that, the man launched into their first spell. He wrote the French incantation on the chalkboard, and then swished his hand once counterclockwise and recited it. A golden mirage shimmered through the air and swirled into the instructor's ears and mouth. He waved at Draco. "Well?"

Draco cast the simple translation charm exactly as instructed. Golden haze settled on his face and instantly the muttering in seven different languages became perfectly understandable. The other recruits eyes popped open as they nervously backed away.

The instructor motioned at the recruit behind Draco. The man's eyes bugged out and he shook his head.

One by one, the recruits murdered perfectly good French and flapped their hands until another one got it. The recruit shook and waved. He yelled in terror, swatting and swinging at the burst of magic chasing him around the room. Everyone laughed when the instructor stuck a hand straight out and froze him. He was craning away as glittering magic swirled into his mouth and ears. His surprise erupted when the instructor asked, "So, what do you think?"

"Are you still speaking French?"

"Yes."

"Am I speaking it too? Wait, I understand you?"

"Nice, eh?"

The beaming recruit chattered to the others in perfect French, "Hey, look at me. Now LeClerc won't kick me in the stomach."

Draco sneered, "Perhaps don't get your hopes up too much."

"Wait, you understand me too?

"I understood you before."

They chattered away for a bit while two more recruits muddled their way into accidental success with the language spell. The instructor made them write down the incantation for barracks practice while he moved on. They learned several more for cleaning, washing, drying, healing minor injuries, one that kept their uniforms creases sharp, and a charm to automatically resize them.

Next was a short lesson the nature and uses of military magic. He enumerated administrative, subterfuge and distraction, escape and evasion, ambush, retreat, intelligence and interrogation. Draco waited, but the most obvious thing was nowhere on the man's list. The end of the first lesson came with zero mention of magical combat.

He decided the instructor seemed competent in a Hufflepuff sort of way, so... "Sir, is there any way I can help the others during barracks time. They seem to be... Having trouble."

"With the incantations?"

"No sir. They don't seem to be able to use magic."

A smile creased the man's face. "That subject is more advanced than this introduction. I've only got you for the week."

"Could we come for extra lessons?"

The instructor rubbed his chin for a minute before mischief flickered in his eyes. The man scratched out a chit and pressed it into his hand. "Tonight at Seven. My office."

From there, they lined up into formation and ran off to meet the battalion at the practice field. Today was their first introduction to hand to hand combat. Instructors broke them into mixed groups of twenty. The head instructor marched up and down their lines. He was short and muscular with a shaved head under his black beret. "The duty of a soldier is to fight and to kill. While The Legion cannot turn you into a warrior overnight, we must start. How many of you have been in fight?"

Nearly every hand raised. He smirked. "Good. How many of you trained in martial arts or fought competitively?"

Many hands went down, including Draco's. The instructor continued. "Fighting in the military is not competition fighting. Some of you will have trouble unlearning rules you were taught. You will fight for your life. The rules of competition do not apply. In fact, we must teach you to dig deep, to fight dirty, and to kill. Have any of you killed a man?"

A few hands went up, and Draco's slowly joined them. A low murmur rumbled over the group. The instructor simply nodded. "A few I see."

The brown haired girl with coffee colored eyes full of tears streaming down her face. She cried out for her father and struggled against Draco's grip. The man groveled at his feet with both hands wringing his cloak tails. He spat out a curt, "Shut up muggle, or I'll make you watch while I torture her all night long!" and kicked the man away. His knuckles were white on the gilded stiletto perched high above his head. White moonlight glinted off the slender blade and cast a blood red glow through its ruby pommel. He swung, plunging the knife deep into the girl. In and out the blade pumped as he chanted his allegiance to The Dark Lord. He stabbed and stabbed until her body fell limp and the man's pleas turned to wailing. Her waxy eyes stared at him, unblinking as he cast her down and heaved the man up. "I'm a man of my word. Stand still or I'll turn you over to my friend for an evening snack."

Draco's fingers absently scratched at the tattooed adder twining through the skull's eye sockets as shame settled into the pit of his stomach. The instructor's stare bored deep into his soul, snatching him back into the present before moving down the line to Koszjek and three others. He stopped at DuPont and stared into his eyes. "You probably have deep regrets. We must push past that. Every single one of us must train to kill when war comes. This is the one thing that differentiates us from a marching band or a football club."

Draco didn't regret killing her father, not with the threat of Greyback looming, but the girl... The only thing separating that girl from Ada's childhood pictures was the father. The instructor marched past and continued. "The rest of you, especially those who have never fought face a difficult challenge. You have been raised to reject and vilify violence, especially killing."

He turned and marched back, eyeing each man individually. His voice took on a fatherly tone. "Between fifty and seventy-five percent of soldiers in The Great War could not kill. That is shocking, isn't it. They were so afraid of raising arms against their fellow man that they perished rather than fight. This was disastrous. Millions of good men died unnecessarily because they were never trained to kill."

First they ran through a set of drills. Quickly side stepping while pumping their fists and knees. Tumbling down and kicking up. Elbowing and kneeing. They practiced balling their fists tight and hard, and stiffening their wrists. At the end, they all donned black padding, gloves, and head guards. While he had been in several fights with Potter, as a rule, Wizards didn't resort to blows when they could duel. It had never even occurred to him that training for hand to hand fighting was an actual thing. Apparently, the same had escaped The Death Eaters. That's what made Potter's beat downs so embarrassing. The formality of the process intrigued him.

The instructors ran down the line, punching and kicking each padded recruit. They followed, punching and kicking each man in the line. Several men were dismayed by the whole affair, though, and didn't do any more than brush the others pads. DuPont, Koszjek, and the rest of the ones who fought competitively threw punches that lifted him off the ground and their kicks left him on his back, scrambling, before the instructors kicked him. Those blows smarted, even with thick pads. The trained fighters clearly enjoyed pounding them.

By the time they finished, his bleeding knuckles throbbed and his shins ached. As he surveyed the group, all of the proper fighters were laughing and joking around. Not one had bloodied hands, or noses, or mouths. He wondered. They had paired him with a recruit that transformed into some sort of horse Wesen. The man was shorter and skinnier, but Draco couldn't land a single blow for the life of him. Worse yet, he was always walking straight into the recruit's punches and kicks.

An hour later, they snaked past the table outside the medical building. The Wesen were turning up their noses at the vials laid before them. One or the other bludbaden wrung his face. "What in the hell is this rancid stuff?"

"Wiggenweld. Just a general purpose healing potion. That's how it's supposed to smell."

"Don't need any." It was true. He hadn't even received a single scratch.

Rule one. Never turn down healing potion. Draco lowered his voice. "Give it here then."

The sandy haired Belgian eyed him and then slid his vial into his pocket.

-/-/-/-/-/-

Dinner was over and they were back in the barracks when he passed the instructor's note to LeClerc. The man's face turned blood red and he slammed a punch straight into Draco's gut. "Worthless sister fucking piece of shit! How dare you fall asleep in class? Think you're better than everybody else just because somebody taught you to use your magic?"

Kick after kick smashed his gut, but between ten-thousand situps, the shield spell, and his hasty charm work, it barely did more than bounce him around. He put on a good show, coughing, moaning, and rolling. The drill instructor hauled him to his feet. "So tonight, your sorry ass will mop the entire officers building."

Thunder rumbled in the distance as he ran across the campus to his meeting. Inside was a warren of identical cinder block walls and cheap wooden doors. Trinkets and certificates littered glass faced cabinets. Colored thumbtacks stuck curled paper full of announcements to ragged cork boards. His boots clattered up the stairs and around two more corners until he found the door. He knocked and waited but nothing happened. The door was locked. Draco shook his head, scratched his chin, and tromped off to find mops. On a hunch, he charmed them and sent them swabbing back and forth down the halls. Fifteen minutes later, the mops wrung out the last of the gray water. Half a dozen buckets wheeled into the broom closets and dumped down the drains. Cans of brass polish and rolls of blue paper towels floated out next. Tufts of cleaning wool flew off and busied itself on the kick plates and thresholds.

The toilet brushes had just finished their work when the officer ambled in. He nodded. "Nice work, recruit."

"Thank you, sir. I didn't want to waste time."

Thunder rumbled outside and the officer smirked. "Well then, Malbec, lets get to it. How much do you know about stimulation of magical abilities in the genus veneficus?"

Genus? Was there more than one genus of Wizard? "Less than nothing, sir."

"Less than nothing?"

"With all due respect, I was always taught it was impossible. That being a squib was a death sentence. Recent events have made me question several truths I was raised to believe as sacrosanct."

The lights flickered as another peal of thunder rumbled the whole building. The man nodded and mischief filled his eyes. "So, perhaps a bit of catharsis is in order."

Draco's smile bloomed. They were soon outside, running paths until they found a wide field on top of a hill. The man pointed at the dirt. "Can you transfigure a jar?"

Draco made the quick incantation and took up a clear glass jar.

"Nice work. Have you ever heard of furari fulgar?"

Gusts of wind had turned into a steady gale in the pale moonlight. The humid scent of rain and green leaves washed his way. "Not specifically by that name. Do you want it in the jar or just for me to catch it?"

"If you don't need the jar, then go ahead."

Draco took the crown of the hill and scratched his hands through the dirt. His mind drifted back to the last time. A scrum of Hufflepuffs plebs were huddled on top of the astronomy tower. Each one clutched an empty pickle or jelly jar, while the prefect barked out orders. He crested the staircase behind Yaxley and Carrow. The headmaster was fuming. "And just what do you suppose you are doing here? Just what do you think your parents will think about illegal hazing?"

Draco pushed past, surveying the scene. "Oh, come on now. Even I know better than to call a game of lightning bug hazing."

"Lightning bug?"

"Of course. My mother and aunt played it with me when I was a child. Perfectly safe." He squinted at them and drawled out, "Unless, of course, they truly are muggles, but, I think you'll agree that far too many pretenders crept in under our prior headmaster. The Dark Lord has decreed a firm stand to root out the undesirables, has he not?"

A wicked smile bloomed on Yaxley's face as he surveyed the trembling first years. "Yes, Draco, why don't you lead them in this little game."

"My pleasure, headmaster." He barked out the orders as the youngsters stared, wide eyed.

The seventh year 'Puff prefect stomped out with a tall jar full of bubbling goo. "But sir!"

Draco snatched the container out of the boy's hand, sneered, and scooped a blob of the stinking, green paste. He savored the squish as it smeared all over the face and arms of a little blonde haired girl. "Children, don't forget your paste."

He splattered a blob on the nose of a trembling, curly haired boy. "Scrub it in pygmy puff, don't want you catching cold."

One by one, he slicked then with the ointment ground from poison arrow frogs, electric eel skin, and herbs. They sputtered and gagged as he slopped it into their mouths and noses. The first giant raindrops splattered over the huddle, bringing more shaking and yelps. "Come now little ones. It's time for our game. Each of you hold up your jar and recite with me."

Draco cupped his hands, held them straight out, and wrung them in an empty figure eight. His mouth was watering. His tongue flicked over his lips. The hair on his arms and legs rippled and Draco relaxed every inch of his body. Sand hissed around his feet. A tingling itch washed across his skin and every single hair stood on end. His smile bloomed an instant before the roar and blue-white flash.

The air reeked of ozone. A crackling orb of electricity slithered like a ball of eels in his hands. He couldn't help but laugh as the power siphoned off into his body. Merlin, he missed the burn and then euphoria of magic overflowing. Every time he did it he remembered running around his mother in the Manor's soft lawn, waiting, begging for another storm to come up. Everything would be perfect in the world for the rest of the night.

The instructor's eyebrow quirked but his smile beamed. "You said you played this 'Lightning bug game' as a child? And the unguentum magicae? You called it paste?"

Draco nodded. "I helped Mother make it."

The boiling magic within in his body made him giddy. He barely repressed the goofy smile it always left. The instructor continued. "Surely you didn't start straight off catching lightning?"

"Of course not, we started slow and worked our way up."

"Do you remember today's lesson?"

"The charms?"

"No, the lecture."

Honestly Draco hadn't paid much attention. "I'm sorry, sir. I was a bit distracted when the one recruit enchanted his uniform incorrectly and choked himself."

The instructor snickered as the rain pelted their umbrella charm on their jog back to the office. "Happens every time."

On the steps, they scourgified and sharakus'ed their uniforms before tromping back through the white hallways to his office. Once seated, the officer got back to it. "So, do you remember the nature of magic? From the lesson?"

"Magic is an ability to manipulate matter and energy."

The instructor nodded. "And what is the nature of the wizard's ability?"

"The wizard possesses the ability to control the equilibrium between matter and energy, both within his body and within the world around him."

"Very good memory. What does it mean?"

Draco paused. He hadn't considered the possibility that the introductory lesson would be any utility. "i suppose that I can create and harness magic."

"Out of what?"

"Matter and Energy, I suppose."

The instructor's laugh huffed out. "It may come as a surprise, but the military has no interest in teaching theoretical material for the sake of learning. Our little exercise tonight. Did it give you a burst of magic?"

"Yes."

"But the mopping earlier. I'm going to presume you did not need to catch lightning to charm them."

His mind was moving faster now, searching for the correct answer. "Ah, the food I eat. it replenishes my magic."

The man tapped his cheek and leaned forward on the desk. "And what happens if you expend more magic than you can consume via food and other sources?"

Every wizard had. "It's like the worst hangover in your life."

"More than that?"

He was lost in thought trying to riddle it while the instructor tented his fingers and smiled. Dark magic? "It consumes part of you?"

"And what if you come up with some particularly nasty and roaringly powerful magic that consumes your magic faster than you can shut it off?"

His stomach knotted. Vince... "It consumes you. So there is a time element involved. Rate of consumption."

The itch gnawed in the back of his skull. Something extremely important was tickling, barely out of reach, but they had already gone over the allotted hour.

His mind ran a hundred miles an hour as puddles splashed under his feet. The cold rain pelted his repellant charm on his way back to the barracks but never got through. His curiousity shunted when he came upon a soaked mattress and blankets scattered outside on the road. His hand was on the door when his steamer trunk shot out the second floor window and exploded on the wet pavement. Cursing and fury streamed out the broken window. He cast a quick protection charm over his things and then a drying charm before mounting the stairs.

Nine camouflage clad drill instructors screamed and smashed, tearing the room apart while pointing at a single mismatched sock in one recruit's trunk. Another yelled that a recruit's bed had an incorrect fold on the sheet, and a third had left his trunk unlocked. Every single locker was dumped. Every bed pitched as the hurricane of destruction battered the barracks.

One sergeant grabbed him by the shirt and threw him into push up's while screaming questions at him. He shot up and down, squatting, running in place, jumping jacks, and more push ups while answering the questions machine gunned at him. He recited the command structure, the hierarchy of ranks, the list of standing orders, lawful versus unlawful orders, the Laws of Magic, and their batallion motto, over and over.

Then, the fury dissipated as quickly as it had erupted. Drill instructors were lecturing each recruit about cleaning and tidying as they stomped back out. Three fights broke out, with recruits blaming the others for the problems. LeClerc's shouting silenced the din. He was dressing them down. Berating them for his embarrassment at the hands of other drill instructors. That got them more push ups, sit ups, and squat thrusts, and running in place before he too stomped out.

Draco quickly magiced all his things back through the broken window, charmed it dry, folded, and put away. He was mending the window and five other recruits' smashed foot lockers when LeClerc burst back in. "Malbec!"

He snapped to attention. "Yes Chef."

Four huge military police with steel pot helmets and cattle prods grabbed him and hauled him away. LeClerc was cursing them and threatening to hack their heads off.

One wearing chief sergeant stripes simply shrugged. "Sorry Luc. You know the drill. We got orders."

His feet weren't even hitting the ground as they splashed off towards the stockades. In the rainy night, though, all four of the guards eyes glowed fiery red. He had assumed they were some sort of Wesen, but up close, their silver hair, canine snouts full of white teeth, and ridiculous strength made him think werewolves. It didn't make sense, though, they were uniformed and in control. "Chief Sergeant, what's this about?"

"You missed a medical screening."

"I'm sorry to inconvenience you. If you tell me where to go, I'll walk myself. Am I in some sort of danger?"

They eyed him without missing a single step. "Orders are orders."

Magic was still crackling from the lightning bug earlier, and being carried wasn't particularly comfortable, so... The spell leaked out of his fingertips without uttering a single word. Soon, the four guards were escorting him on foot towards a brightly lit building with no windows. A guard swung a studded steel door open and the chief sergeant nudged Draco.

Up close, the guard checking names off the clipboard was also sheeted in silver fur, bore a canine snout full of white teeth, and his eyes glowed fiery red. His nose raised and slightly twitched. "Chef, you sure he's supposed to be here? Name?"

His escort shrugged, so Draco answered. "Malbec. What's this about, caporal-chef."

The senior corporal paged through a list and tapped his pen against the clip board. He waved at a line. "Medical screening. Standard stuff. Your lucky day. You're on the list."