FIC: 'Da Capo al Coda' (1 of 2) for Fanny Netherway (Author 58)
.
Title: Da Capo al Coda
Author: Augusta Flapp (Author 29) - xellas
Recipient: Fanny Netherway (Author 58) - starrysummer
Pairing: Harry/Draco, sort-of Ginny/Luna, past Harry/Ginny
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: about 11,400
Warnings: Violence, Dementors, gore, horror, death, sex, and very badly made-up Latin spellnames.
Summary: "Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them." - Remus Lupin, PoA, Ch. 10.
Notes: Fanny, I can't thank you enough for this prompt. It has been an absolute joy to write this piece and my only worry is that this won't live up to its potential. (The prompt has been placed in its entirety at the end of the story.)
Credit: Thanks and love as always to my delightful beta, the shiniest beta in all of fandom. Thanks also go to fluffyllama and corvidae9 for hosting this incredibly fun exchange.
Da Capo al Coda
Part I
Harry stood up, his ears ringing and scar hurting worse than it ever had, and it must have been the pain that caused tears to stream down his face like that. Unless it was joy. Or maybe it was relief because Harry's unasked-for Quest was finally over; what was left of Voldemort lay at his feet.
He was supposed to feel elated, he knew, and so he addressed the corpse, but his voice sounded flat and hollow: "Just look at you. Nothing, now, aren't you? So many good people have died because of you, you selfish bastard, and in the end, here you are, dead just like they are and nothing to save you."
Harry kicked like a five year old having a temper tantrum, and his foot broke right through fragile skin that stretched thinly across Voldemort's stomach. The once-powerful Dark Wizard's distorted, created body was pathetically weak now that the magic holding it together was gone. Harry sighed and grabbed the corner of the Headmistress' desk for support. Slowly, he scraped away every bit of the reddish, congealing sludge that adhered to his shoe with the careful habit of his secondhand past, when a shoe was not easily replaced.
"Look at that! He's nothing but slime." Harry smirked at Malfoy, who was crouched and hiding in a corner as he had been the entire fight. If Harry cared enough to think on it, he'd probably be surprised that Malfoy hadn't fled. "Bet you can say it now. Try it: Vol-de-mort. Come on, let it out! It will be good for you."
Malfoy shook his head and tried to press himself back farther back against the wall. Whatever they'd done to him in the year since he'd failed to kill Dumbledore, the Death Eaters had certainly taken the little snot down a few sorely needed pegs.
"Say it." Harry coaxed, holding his wand in front of him so that Malfoy knew he meant business.
Malfoy shook his head again, his expression panicked, but he did not say a word.
"Do it, damn you! Or I'll cast a spell on you that will make you wish I'd only cut you open again." How dare Malfoy put a damper on Harry's ultimate moment of triumph, the one he'd had his entire childhood, his parents, his life sacrificed for him to achieve.
Dammit, his scar hurt.
He noticed how scrawny Malfoy had gotten when he flinched, when he tried to curl in on himself the way a smaller thing does when it can't fight back. Harry wasn't the weak one, not anymore. He had killed, more than once, and it hadn't been that hard.
"My friends died for this. Everyone who has ever loved me has died so that this fucking thing could try to live forever." Harry looked Malfoy up and down. "God only knows what he did to you. I should think you'd be grateful. Now, say it."
Harry made a single, slight flick! of his wand. He wasn't casting a spell, not yet, but Malfoy fell for it. His mouth began to open.
Pure, white light streamed from between his parted lips, and through the glow Harry could see that the brightest part of the light was fluttering against the inside of his mouth, pushing between Malfoy's lips as though trying to escape.
The room seemed to grow colder as Harry realized what that light was.
"Petrificus Totalus!" It was the first thing he could think to do before it was too late.
Relief washed over Malfoy's features before his jaw shut with a snap and his body went rigid.
Crisis averted, Harry started to laugh, goosebumps rising on his arms. He'd nearly killed Malfoy yet again, without meaning anything by it. Malfoy couldn't seem to catch a break at all, poor bastard. "That's your bloody soul, isn't it?"
Malfoy glared, probably with some strong emotion, but in his current Petrified state it just looked as though they were both twelve again and sniping at each other impotently behind the teacher's back.
And that was the last straw. Harry roared with laughter until his sides ached and tears were streaming down his cheeks. His laugh was too loud, rough, awkward and new. He staggered forward, clutching his sides, only to step on Voldemort's head, which made a horrible squelching noise as it squished like an overlarge grape under Harry's foot, completely ruining his shoes, which in turn set him off on a fresh round of laughter.
Eventually, he looked at Malfoy who was watching him with open fear, and took several calming breaths. "I don't want to kill you. Honestly!" Several more chuckles forced their way up before he was able to continue. "I know you aren't as guilty as it seems, that you haven't murdered Dumbledore or anyone else. I'm not going to hurt you."
"Finite Incantatem!" Harry grinned as Malfoy was released from the spell. "You don't have to thank me."
Malfoy stepped forward, and Harry braced himself against the punch that he more than deserved, grinning in anticipation of the fight that would follow. Instead, Malfoy tugged urgently at Harry's sleeve, his eyes wide and terrified.
"No, Malfoy, he's dead, see?" Irritated, Harry took the two necessary steps to lean over and poke the messy corpse with his wand. "This was the end of him. He's dead and he's not coming back. He won't hurt anyone ever again." He glanced around the room. "And why is it so cold in here?" It hadn't been his imagination; the room's temperature had dropped at least five degrees while he had been busy laughing.
A strangled whine came from between Malfoy's tightly closed lips. Again, he stepped forward, this time to grab Harry's arm and pull.
"Something's coming." Harry finally caught on as the room grew still colder. He started to move. "Dementors. They are coming here, to Hogwarts."
Malfoy whimpered again, a child defenseless against the boggart living under his bed.
Off they ran, flying down the stairs from the Headmistresses' office. Harry had his wand out, ready to summon the stag should it come to that, but the elaborate spells he'd used to unravel the last remaining slip of Voldemort's soul had left him exhausted; he wasn't sure whether or not he would be able to pull it off if he had to.
Far better to get out of there and let the Aurors come back to send the Dementors away from the school. It was past time the Ministry was good for something.
Their pursuers were close; Harry's every breath burned frozen, forced in through his aching lungs, forming a small silvery cloud the moment he exhaled. He glanced to the side, wondering how a malnourished, tortured Malfoy would be able to keep up, only to find him still pressing their pace, glancing nervously at Harry and ahead of them.
The cold had become so severe that Malfoy's lips were beginning to turn blue by the time they reached the Great Hall.
"Not much further," Harry said to Malfoy, trying to comfort although he could not have said why.
But just as they reached the center of the hall, under an enchanted ceiling that currently resembled a ridiculously bright afternoon sky, with only Harry's wand and Harry's magic to protect them, they were forced to stop. Ten- twenty- fifty- one hundred Dementors came at them from every angle. They moved unusually slowly, every one of them staring at Harry. No matter which direction he turned, there were more, always more of them, taking him apart with their hollow eyes.
The cold had become a part of him, now, and his vision was swimming. Where once he had heard his parents' voices, he now expected to hear Hermione sobbing over Ron's broken body, to hear her beg him to come back to her. He braced himself against a new vision in green light, of it washing around her even as she sobbed, of her smiling in the final second before she slumped over Ron's corpse.
He saw nothing except the images his own exhausted and guilty mind naturally brought forth. Instead, the Dementors circled closer and closer, searching, sniffing the air around him, their breath rattling as though the air was not foul enough for them and they hated to breathe it in.
When they had gotten close enough that Harry began to lose the battle to hold back his rising panic, he felt a rough, rusty scratching in his thoughts. It sounded a little like Voldemort, and it told Harry what the Dementors wanted.
No. Harry answered silently when it finished. He did not understand, did not want to, and even if such a thing could be true, he wanted no part of it. "Expecto Patronum!"
Dangerous with his level of fatigue, casting the spell was the only acceptable option. But, the silver stag came galloping in at full power. Harry looked to it and allowed its peace to fill him, wondering if he would ever be able to cast the spell again. At his command, the stag chased away the Dementors.
Harry turned to Malfoy. "I won't," he said, unable to explain, and then he collapsed.
*
He dreamt that he was in the ruins of Godric's Hollow.
Dobby walked in from the left, his arms full of the most improbable things: Harry's third year essay on werewolves, a bag of spiders, books, socks, marbles (only they were really eyes), a wheel of cheese, and a large, pink, plastic flamingo.
He dropped everything from his arms, creating a huge mess. Seven times, he left the room, only to return with more impossible things, dropping them on the floor so that they fell in a fractal pattern.
The seventh time, Dobby stopped, noticing Harry for the first time. "Harry Potter is here!" he said, and he bent over backwards until his large, flapping ears dragged on the floor.
"What are you doing?" Harry asked, wondering why he felt he should run away.
"These is all yours, Harry Potter, sir," Dobby said, righting himself and blinking his enormous eyes up at Harry mournfully. "Harry Potter has been very bad."
The next thing Harry knew, he was tied up in what looked like hundreds of tea cozies strung end to end.
Dobby held up a large, glittering, serrated knife. "Dobby will do what he must, Harry Potter sir, to keep Harry Potter safe." He drove it into Harry's scar.
*
Harry woke from yet another nightmare; the details of this one, like the rest, faded before he could catch any of them. He wasn't sure where he was, or even how long he'd been sleeping and was very uneasy as to what the answers might be.
Strange new thoughts, ideas, even flashes of Voldemort's memories floated through his mind. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't bring himself to feel anything, no regret, not for any of it. He wondered at what point a lack of pain became pleasure, or whether they were one and the same.
And if he murdered again, say he hunted down and killed Dolohov, or Lestrange, he could make a Horcrux of his own and bring justice to a Death Eater all at once, and where would it all really end? He didn't want to live forever; Dumbledore had taught him better than that. Still, a few extra years, insurance against life cut too short as it had been for Ron and Hermione, for Ginny…where was the harm?
Harry heard a sound at the door and was sitting upright with his wand pointed before he'd consciously directed the movement to do so.
The door swung open, and there was a muffled, startled noise when Malfoy allowed a full bowl of soup he'd been carrying to slide from the tray to the floor, getting wet noodles all over expensive robes that now looked too large for his slight frame.
"You saved me," Harry said in wonder. "You got me out of there."
Malfoy stared at him, heedless of the mess, and then his lips curved in a shy smile.
"Why did you do it?" Harry looked down at his hands. "I nearly killed you." You hate me, went without saying.
When all Malfoy did in response was shrug, Harry began to move his wand. Magic raced through it, through him as always from the act of spellcasting, only now it poured through him fiercer than before, hot in his veins. "What am I?" he wondered silently, and then pointed the wand at Malfoy's throat and said clearly:
"Dito Ventriloquus!"
"You can talk, now, without using your mouth," he told Malfoy simply. Or your tongue, he added silently as his mind flashed upon images of dungeons and prisoners, tortures slower and dirtier than Cruciatus.
He remembered slow, shallow cuts, forcing one wizard to watch himself bleed and then explaining oh-so-sensibly that his own distaste at the sight was proof that his blood was filthy. He remembered subjecting a Muggle to Imperius and forcing her to castrate her Mudblood son and then leaving them both alive to suffer. He remembered vivisecting human and nonhuman bodies, ruthless in a quest to find the organ responsible for the use of magic, in hopes of solving the problem of the Squib forever…
The thoughtimages did not stop or slow down. Flashes of blood and bone, of boring gray walls, of endless forest deprived of any touch or taste or scent until forced into twisting flesh, into skin too tight, pinching and pressuring, but it was almost like being human again, and he had a voice.
Potter?
Harry heard the word as clearly as he heard his own voice, though Draco's mouth hadn't so much as twitched. Coming from anyone else, Harry would've called that tone deferential.
"I- I think-" He was distracted, suddenly, by the need to know what was going on in Draco's thoughts. Despite everything, just then Draco looked sweet and familiar, temptation itself.
Potter!
"What am I?" His vision was blurry, and so he took off his glasses, only to find that he could see perfectly, right into Malfoy's grey eyes.
You're at Malfoy manor? Malfoy hedged, forcing a small smile as though unsure how his evasion would be received.
Harry bit back a harsh reply. If Malfoy wasn't going to give him any information voluntarily, he would find out what was going on another way.
Harry slipped right into Malfoy's thoughts and nevermind that he'd never mastered Legimilency. Effortlessly, he tasted Malfoy's mind, drinking in truth and lies, the sharp bitter tang of betrayal.
He saw Malfoy, surrounded by Dementors, scores of them. Harry watched them play with their victim, who had been stripped naked against their cold, while they were allowed to take thought after thought, circle him, feed. He could feel Voldemort's joy in it, a frisson of such cold pleasure that it made Harry hard, even though Voldemort had believed himself above such puerile pleasures as sex.
Talk to me, please.
Harry paid no mind to Draco's request, too horrified (and thrilled) by the remembered scenes of his torture.
The Malfoy in Voldemort's memory screamed until he was hoarse, and then laughed - or maybe cried - with what sounded like three throats at once, or one torn in three. Eventually even Dementors grew tired of their game and the largest of their shadows crawled on top of Draco, moving along his body like a lover, and began to lower its face.
Voldemort watched as Malfoy's soul was drawn out to hover just at his lips, his eyes squeezed tightly shut against a fate so much worse than death, worse than any pain or torture or insanity or Hell. The Dark Lord held off as long as he could, watching the hope (everything) drain from his prey's eyes, watched as the life instinct turned to resignation and then acceptance.
"Stop!" Voldemort commanded at what seemed the last possible second. He had been playing a game and not for the first time, allowing the torment to go on a little longer each time as though looking for that moment of no return. "You may not have him yet."
In the dim light the Dementor seemed to glow darker, creating an inky cloud of black ice rage that whipped out with smoky tendrils to score marks all over Draco's body. Once it was finished, it backed away and Malfoy's soul slowly sank back into his body.
But he did not move, not for a long time.
Potter! Draco's mind snapped closed abruptly, forcing Harry out.
"How many times?" Harry looked at Malfoy, finally noticing the lines that were beginning to form on his pointy face, lines that said he never smiled.
Malfoy had begun to back away, holding the empty tray in front of him like a shield, his grey eyes wide in terror.
"The Dementors. How many times have you been Kissed, Malfoy?"
At the question, Malfoy's hands flew up to cover his mouth. Harry watched his body tremble, and Harry's hand formed a fist, held tightly at his side against the urge to break Malfoy's nose.
Harry had saved the world. He wasn't Voldemort, no matter how many powers or how much of the dead man's knowledge he had absorbed. How dare Malfoy fear him?
"So many times that you can't even remember?" Harry answered his own question coldly. "So many times that you can't remember anything. Can't even remember what it was like to laugh unless Voldemort told you to."
I hate you.
Harry smiled, but it twisted on his face. "Yes, and that's the only reason you took care of me, isn't it. I'm the only one left that you can remember."
*
An ear-splitting shriek crashed and bounced through the empty hallways at St. Mungo's.
Luna Lovegood, Healer-in-Training and junior Member of Staff did not need the sudden drop in temperature to tell her what the sound meant: the Dementors had attacked again, and soon there would be victims to treat. She had designed the alarm herself, modeling it after the mating call of drunken Erumpents. This was the third time she had heard it in the past two weeks.
As a rule, there weren't many things that Luna hated. She knew it was a much stranger world than most believed and that it was important to keep an open mind. But the Dementors took souls and destroyed them, ended something that should have been eternal, and no one knew why, since the Dementors had never shown any signs of gratification after their feasts.
She went to the side entrance, where the victims would soon begin arriving, brought in by the desperate hope of their loved ones even though there wasn't a thing anyone could do for them, except perhaps help their bodies to die quickly.
She hoped there wouldn't be any children this time.
When she got to the door, she stopped and quickly threw some green cheese powder in the air, to ward away any invisible Banicroffs, just in case they were causing her to hallucinate.
Unfortunately, the image in front of her did not waver. She had never seen so many victims brought in at once. At least one score of wizards and witches of all ages shuffled down the hallway blankly, less aware than vegetables, all accompanied by loved ones who could not or would not comprehend the horror.
"Please, miss, help my son!" One woman saw her and advanced, pulling the soulless shell of a teenage boy behind her, one Luna thought she recognized as a few years younger and from a different house in Hogwarts, though she didn't know his name. He had been a cute child, all healthy brown skin and plump cheeks and bright eyes. She thought she remembered dimples too, although even if there had been, they would never be seen again.
"He's gone." Luna looked the woman squarely in the eyes. No matter how many times she said it, it never got any easier.
"No, there must be some mistake. There's something you can do, I know it, if you'll just take a look at him, please!"
"I can give his body rest," Luna said sadly, "but that is all."
The woman's face crumpled, and she broke right there, her last faint hope denied, her world utterly destroyed. "Not my boy," she begged, and Luna wondered if she had any idea she was saying it out loud. "Please, me instead, anything to me, but not my boy, my sweet boy."
She dropped to her knees and held her son's body tightly. "You can't be gone. You're still warm."
Before Luna could correct the woman, she and her son's body were pushed out of the way by a young man leading what had been a singularly unattractive young woman. That pair was in turn pushed aside by several more people, all clamoring around Luna in a circle, begging and pleading and crying and threatening. They reached out to her, tried to touch her, and the circle pressed in ever tighter until Luna idly wondered if she was going to be trampled to death.
Because of the bodies, all warmhot and her fear making her heart beat so fast, adrenaline accelerating her systems, she did not feel it when the temperature of the hospital began to drop.
However, she heard the change when the people went from moaning and babbling to screaming, and shrieking. Simultaneously, the alarms sounded a new note of fear as a Dementor attack began.
Luna had heard about Ground Zero, and recognized it when she saw it.
The crowd around her broke up, some people moving slowly, trying still to cling to the bodies of the people they had loved. The Dementors reached out with slimy grey hands and caught them quickly, barely paying them any mind at all before swooping in to Kiss.
They were looking for something, Luna thought. It was a risk to attack the hospital, even for the Dementors. Voldemort (and she felt no reaction from thinking the name) must be dead after all, she thought as she watched the monsters go after purebloods and Muggleborns alike, or he would have stopped this.
A flash of light on one side, and on another, and Luna could see the souls being taken, violation of life itself on every side of her, and she could do so little.
But what she could do, she would try. Perhaps it would be enough, just her one against so many. She raised her wand.
"Expecto Patronum!" she called, and remembered a red-haired girl's warm smile. A bright, silvery fox jumped immediately from the tip of her wand.
It grinned at her before turning and chasing off the Dementors, and either it was strong enough or the Dementors did not find what they had been looking for, because one by one they all drifted away, leaving the familiar low black poison mist behind them.
"Not many people can cast a Patronus strong enough to drive away that many."
"Harry Potter taught me how to do it," Luna answered proudly. She turned and saw that the speaker was Rabastan Lestrange. She frowned. "You should go to bed now, Lestrange, before I forget myself. I know what you did to Lavender Brown."
He licked his lips. "You can't afford to forget yourself, little missie. You'll need me around when the fighting gets worse. And it will."
With an indecent, knowing, lustful grin he winked at her before turning around and wandering off.
Rabastan was more than half insane and knew nothing, although in his madness he sometimes believed he did. "Remind me to let the house-elves piss in his drinking water again," Luna said to no one in particular.
"You're on," Ginny suddenly said from behind Luna's back.
"I can't do this anymore. Something has got to be done," Luna said, too used to Ginny's sudden appearances to be surprised. She took off her Healer's smock and threw it to the floor. "The Ministry isn't going to help us. We need Harry."
"Let's go find him, then." Ginny said.
"Are you ready for that?" Luna asked, concerned. "He probably will be very upset."
"I know," Ginny agreed sadly, lack of experience and depression combining to sink her insubstantial body halfway through the floor, "but he has to find out I stayed behind eventually."
*
Harry was ripped from the first night's sleep he had enjoyed in a long while, from a dream that involved Draco Malfoy's lips working, his mouth opening without fear of anything being lost, only gained, as he swallowed Harry's cock gratefully. 'Harder,' Harry would say, or 'Slower,' and Malfoy would respond to his wishes immediately, desperate, and Harry couldn't decide whether to punish or please.
But then there was a muffled screaming, and Harry was awake without ever having decided to be. He grabbed his wand and ran down the hall immediately.
The sounds were coming from a smaller room, one he supposed was Draco's, even though he hadn't seen it once in the three weeks since he had first woken up after the final battle at Hogwarts.
He took a deep breath and pushed open the door, with no idea what to expect on the other side. Draco had insisted that the Malfoy's home was well protected against assault by any Dark creatures and would be perfectly safe from the Dementor attacks that had been reported in the Prophet and over the Wizarding Wireless from all over Great Britain. Harry had outwardly accepted the reassurance, but remained highly skeptical.
The room was empty. Malfoy's bed was on a raised platform in the centre, the curtains mostly drawn closed except where a pale foot had thrust itself between them and was kicking at the air.
One thousand hexes shot through Harry's mind, decades worth of research and study, lessons learned at the price of blood and beauty.
"Alohomora!" he said, with an ironic twist to his lips, taking great pleasure in avoiding Voldemort's accidental, unwelcome gifts.
The curtains swung open, to reveal Malfoy sleeping alone. A black scarf was tied around his mouth, and it was into that darkness that he screamed. His thin, wiry body twisted and fought in his sleep, lashing out against invisible enemies on all sides.
Just a nightmare, then. Harry approached, appreciating that he hadn't been woken up before, that Malfoy had apparently taken the trouble to spell the curtains to contain the sounds.
"Lumos!" he said, when he reached Malfoy's bed, pouring his magical energy into the spell, which flashed with painful brilliance almost instantly, the hot white light searing his eyeballs and nearly rendering him blind in the short amount of time it had taken to cast.
A grip of surprising strength latched onto his arm.
Harry was already angry over having lost control of his own spell - a simple, first year spell - to the ridiculous amounts of power flowing through him. He blindly felt along the smooth skin of that hand to find the wrist and then gripped it hard enough to bruise, to feel the bones start to give in his fingers. He pulled it away from his arm, but did not let it go.
Draco whimpered, the sound pathetic coming from a nearly grown man.
"Can't you do anything right?" Harry hissed. "I'm trying to sleep."
Draco shook his head from side to side, and mumbled something that might have been an apology through the gag.
Harry sighed and finally gave in to the knowledge that was pushing it's way forward eagerly, like Hermione raising her hand in a class, wanting, needing to be noticed. "Abrogo Somnium!"
"There. You won't have any more bad dreams tonight," Harry said. He'd taken the Dementors right out of Malfoy's dreams; it was the only way he could guarantee a decent night's rest, short of tying Malfoy down in the bed so he wouldn't kick the curtains open again.
He hadn't expected Malfoy's arms to fly around him in gratitude, to feel his smooth skin and heat. It was horribly uncomfortable to have someone that close, and he wondered if Malfoy could steal the air he breathed.
Carefully, he pushed Malfoy away, trying to be gentle lest Malfoy fall apart and become yet another mess for Harry to clean up.
Harry rose and walked to the door, the distance enabling him to smile at the puppy-like expression of adoration on Malfoy's face. "Goodnight," he said and left.
*
The next day brought with it an interruption of a different sort. Shortly after lunch, for the first time since Harry had been staying at Malfoy's home, there was a knock at the door.
Malfoy did not even look up. Harry grinned. As the days went on he would occasionally catch Malfoy behaving as he had before he had been called to his reckoning. This time, Harry would have bet his last Galleon that Malfoy subconsciously expected his non-existent house-elf servants to answer it.
The knock sounded again, louder and sharper. This time, Draco did look up. He met Harry's eyes. Neither of them moved.
Finally, the front door blew open.
"I know you are in here." The woman's voice brought back to life a fading memory of the luxury of tea and nonsense, wild creativity and thoughtless honesty.
Harry slid his wand from his pocket and began to slowly make his way to the front hall. In the doorway, he stopped and leaned forward just enough to peek out and try to catch a glimpse of the intruder. Pale in the white robes he'd taken to wearing, Draco followed close behind him like an inverted shadow.
Before he could see the intruder, she identified herself. "Harry! Where are you? I know the Midnicks can't possibly have gotten to you; they're all hibernating right now."
"Luna?" he asked, his voice catching. He felt strangely ashamed, not wanting her to see how the Savior of the Wizarding World, the Hero of the Day, had shut himself up at his old rival's house, too afraid of his own power to go back to the world.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Draco glaring at her, pure malice twisting the points in his face sharp once more.
"Harry!" she exclaimed, sounding absolutely delighted. She ran forward, her radish earrings swinging wildly, but stopped just short of embracing him. "How do I know you're really Harry and not a homunculus created to look like him?"
"What's a homunculus?" Harry asked, his head spinning almost pleasantly. It was great to see Luna again.
Who is she? She might hurt you, Harry. She can't come in! Malfoy folded his arms over his chest.
Harry tried to catch Luna's eye, but she ignored him, focusing her large blue eyes on Malfoy.
"My name is Luna," she said with a smile, her voice gentle. "We knew each other once." She held out her hand.
Malfoy did not take it, instead hiding behind Harry's shoulder. You would say that, wouldn't you, he muttered balefully.
"Come in, Luna," Harry said, and then remembered that she already had. "Or, come this way."
Luna stepped beside him in the wide hallway, looking around her serenely.
"What brings you all the way out here, by yourself? And how did you find us?" Harry had forgotten whatever art of small talk he had once possessed. He would have felt awkward about that, except that this was Luna, who wouldn't miss it anyway.
They reached one of the front rooms - Harry was never sure what to call it and had mentally settled for 'drawing room' even though he disliked how stuffy it sounded.
"Hm, you're only half right," Luna said, leaning back on the soft cushion and closing her eyes lightly. "I did find you, by scrying on Draco. I knew that if he was still alive, he would be with you."
She smiled at Malfoy, who scowled back. It was an impressive glare; Harry wondered how long it would be before Malfoy tried something horrid and juvenile.
"Malfoy, get some tea," Harry said a little too sharply. He wasn't entirely certain he would want to break it up if Malfoy flew at Luna's throat. "I'd like a few minutes alone, if you don't mind," he added more softly to the tenseness in Malfoy's retreating back. Malfoy flashed back a bright smile as he left the room.
"But Harry," Luna continued after Malfoy had left, her large eyes now showing concern, "I am not alone."
Harry pointed his wand at her. "I should have known it was a trap."
"No, Harry, it isn't," a voice said from behind him. Harry froze for a moment, and then turned around carefully, trying to see while still not leaving his back turned to Luna.
Ginny Weasley stood - floated, he corrected himself - behind him, looking not as she had the last time he had seen her, with her red hair all muddied and wearing her dull grey fighting robes, but as she had in their schooldays, her hair curled just so, her uniform clean and pressed. And all absolutely colourless, as pale as every other ghost ever forced to walk the earth.
He felt the blood drain from his face. He lowered his wand and staggered back a few steps, practically falling onto a sofa.
"Why did you do it?" The decision to become a ghost was a conscious one, something the witch or wizard had to prepare well in advance. Harry would have thought Ginny of all people to have had more sense.
"I wanted to make sure you knew that I was alright with it, with dying" she answered sadly. "Harry, I loved you - still love you - and I know you. You always think it is your job to save everyone, and I didn't want you to do anything foolish if they got me."
The room fell into a charged silence for a moment at that. Harry ran his fingers through his hair, over and over, trying to massage the tension from his temples and scalp. What was he supposed to feel? What did she expect of him? What did Luna expect?
"Did it hurt? When you died, did it hurt?" Harry broke into the quiet and looked over her translucent form. He found no wounds, no blood. No answers as to what had happened to her, or what would happen.
He wondered if she was going to haunt him, trail his steps with her ghostly form for all his days, a constant, well-intentioned reminder of her sacrifice.
"It didn't hurt at all," Ginny eventually answered his question, but she wouldn't meet his gaze.
"Lovely. You're stuck here forever now, you know that, don't you? Forever! Ginny, I'm not worth that. How could you be so bloody stupid?"
He wanted both of them gone. He wanted to be left alone with Malfoy, who never made him feel guilty, even though he had suffered more than any of them. Malfoy had brought it on himself; Harry owed him nothing.
"She's staying with me," Luna said unexpectedly. "I am going to find a cure for her condition, for all of the ghosts who wish it."
"I meant well, Harry. I'm not sorry." Ginny floated forward and stroked his cheek with her hand.
He felt nothing.
"It's fine," he said, drawing on hateful knowledge to hide the dead place in him, to pretend he didn't want to take out his wand and cast the dozen or so spells he now knew that could make even a ghost acutely uncomfortable.
"This isn't why we are here," Luna interrupted. "Harry, the Dementors are killing-"
"I know. It isn't my problem."
"WHAT?" shrieked Ginny's ghost.
"There is an old story about Dementors," Luna began. Her voice had taken on that light, familiar, dreamy quality, but her eyes were wide open. "It's been said that they were human, once. That all it will take is for someone to show them love, and they can be redeemed."
Harry barked out a laugh. "That is rubbish. The Dementors weren't human, never were human and that's why they can't be killed. They are the embodiment-" he cut himself off abruptly, as his memory suddenly went blank.
Luna watched him with open curiosity as he spoke and when he stopped she nodded as though in silent confirmation. His eyes narrowed as he realized that he had been tricked.
"I wondered," she said, "whether this would happen again."
He had told her just how he had come to learn Parseltongue years ago, before the first large battle, the one that had taken place in what should have been their seventh year.
"Do you think Voldemort is here, then, in my mind?" Harry drew back, and surreptitiously pulled his wand from his sleeve, but he couldn't have said whom he thought he might need to hex: the Luna, Draco, who Harry could see hovering about in the hallway with the tea, eavesdropping, or himself.
"No," Ginny said. "You're certainly Harry. Believe me, I'd know. Spirits can see things."
He hadn't even been aware of how deeply his fear had run until Ginny had eased it. He knew better than anyone how easily Voldemort could work his way into people's minds, how many ways he could confuse and subvert.
But it wasn't as easy as sliding back into his old life as though nothing had changed. His mind and his soul may still be his own, but he still wasn't the same boy she had dated. That Harry had no idea what Bertha Jorkin's face looked like the moment Wormtail had finally broken through her secrecy spells, or that Voldemort's tiny, raw fetal body had spasmed in delight when it happened, or any of a thousand memories of other things, great and terrible. That Harry hadn't been the most powerful wizard alive.
For the first time, Harry appreciated the struggle Dumbledore must have had to keep his humanity. Socks, indeed.
"Of course," he nodded to her, not wanting to shatter her illusion of him. Especially since she'd cut herself off from the afterlife in an effort to keep it.
"So are you going to come back and help?" Luna asked, her voice sharp and direct, her gaze no longer at all dreamy or aloof.
"I will come," Harry said, "but don't expect miracles."
Malfoy chose that moment to return with the tea. Harry watched him very carefully, just to make certain he wasn't going to poison their guest. Malfoy caught him watching and grinned.
Continued in Part II
Title: Da Capo al Coda
Author: Augusta Flapp (Author 29) - xellas
Recipient: Fanny Netherway (Author 58) - starrysummer
Pairing: Harry/Draco, sort-of Ginny/Luna, past Harry/Ginny
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: about 11,400
Warnings: Violence, Dementors, gore, horror, death, sex, and very badly made-up Latin spellnames.
Summary: "Dementors are among the foulest creatures that walk this earth. They infest the darkest, filthiest places, they glory in decay and despair, they drain peace, hope, and happiness out of the air around them." - Remus Lupin, PoA, Ch. 10.
Notes: Fanny, I can't thank you enough for this prompt. It has been an absolute joy to write this piece and my only worry is that this won't live up to its potential. (The prompt has been placed in its entirety at the end of the story.)
Credit: Thanks and love as always to my delightful beta, the shiniest beta in all of fandom. Thanks also go to fluffyllama and corvidae9 for hosting this incredibly fun exchange.
Da Capo al Coda
Part I
Harry stood up, his ears ringing and scar hurting worse than it ever had, and it must have been the pain that caused tears to stream down his face like that. Unless it was joy. Or maybe it was relief because Harry's unasked-for Quest was finally over; what was left of Voldemort lay at his feet.
He was supposed to feel elated, he knew, and so he addressed the corpse, but his voice sounded flat and hollow: "Just look at you. Nothing, now, aren't you? So many good people have died because of you, you selfish bastard, and in the end, here you are, dead just like they are and nothing to save you."
Harry kicked like a five year old having a temper tantrum, and his foot broke right through fragile skin that stretched thinly across Voldemort's stomach. The once-powerful Dark Wizard's distorted, created body was pathetically weak now that the magic holding it together was gone. Harry sighed and grabbed the corner of the Headmistress' desk for support. Slowly, he scraped away every bit of the reddish, congealing sludge that adhered to his shoe with the careful habit of his secondhand past, when a shoe was not easily replaced.
"Look at that! He's nothing but slime." Harry smirked at Malfoy, who was crouched and hiding in a corner as he had been the entire fight. If Harry cared enough to think on it, he'd probably be surprised that Malfoy hadn't fled. "Bet you can say it now. Try it: Vol-de-mort. Come on, let it out! It will be good for you."
Malfoy shook his head and tried to press himself back farther back against the wall. Whatever they'd done to him in the year since he'd failed to kill Dumbledore, the Death Eaters had certainly taken the little snot down a few sorely needed pegs.
"Say it." Harry coaxed, holding his wand in front of him so that Malfoy knew he meant business.
Malfoy shook his head again, his expression panicked, but he did not say a word.
"Do it, damn you! Or I'll cast a spell on you that will make you wish I'd only cut you open again." How dare Malfoy put a damper on Harry's ultimate moment of triumph, the one he'd had his entire childhood, his parents, his life sacrificed for him to achieve.
Dammit, his scar hurt.
He noticed how scrawny Malfoy had gotten when he flinched, when he tried to curl in on himself the way a smaller thing does when it can't fight back. Harry wasn't the weak one, not anymore. He had killed, more than once, and it hadn't been that hard.
"My friends died for this. Everyone who has ever loved me has died so that this fucking thing could try to live forever." Harry looked Malfoy up and down. "God only knows what he did to you. I should think you'd be grateful. Now, say it."
Harry made a single, slight flick! of his wand. He wasn't casting a spell, not yet, but Malfoy fell for it. His mouth began to open.
Pure, white light streamed from between his parted lips, and through the glow Harry could see that the brightest part of the light was fluttering against the inside of his mouth, pushing between Malfoy's lips as though trying to escape.
The room seemed to grow colder as Harry realized what that light was.
"Petrificus Totalus!" It was the first thing he could think to do before it was too late.
Relief washed over Malfoy's features before his jaw shut with a snap and his body went rigid.
Crisis averted, Harry started to laugh, goosebumps rising on his arms. He'd nearly killed Malfoy yet again, without meaning anything by it. Malfoy couldn't seem to catch a break at all, poor bastard. "That's your bloody soul, isn't it?"
Malfoy glared, probably with some strong emotion, but in his current Petrified state it just looked as though they were both twelve again and sniping at each other impotently behind the teacher's back.
And that was the last straw. Harry roared with laughter until his sides ached and tears were streaming down his cheeks. His laugh was too loud, rough, awkward and new. He staggered forward, clutching his sides, only to step on Voldemort's head, which made a horrible squelching noise as it squished like an overlarge grape under Harry's foot, completely ruining his shoes, which in turn set him off on a fresh round of laughter.
Eventually, he looked at Malfoy who was watching him with open fear, and took several calming breaths. "I don't want to kill you. Honestly!" Several more chuckles forced their way up before he was able to continue. "I know you aren't as guilty as it seems, that you haven't murdered Dumbledore or anyone else. I'm not going to hurt you."
"Finite Incantatem!" Harry grinned as Malfoy was released from the spell. "You don't have to thank me."
Malfoy stepped forward, and Harry braced himself against the punch that he more than deserved, grinning in anticipation of the fight that would follow. Instead, Malfoy tugged urgently at Harry's sleeve, his eyes wide and terrified.
"No, Malfoy, he's dead, see?" Irritated, Harry took the two necessary steps to lean over and poke the messy corpse with his wand. "This was the end of him. He's dead and he's not coming back. He won't hurt anyone ever again." He glanced around the room. "And why is it so cold in here?" It hadn't been his imagination; the room's temperature had dropped at least five degrees while he had been busy laughing.
A strangled whine came from between Malfoy's tightly closed lips. Again, he stepped forward, this time to grab Harry's arm and pull.
"Something's coming." Harry finally caught on as the room grew still colder. He started to move. "Dementors. They are coming here, to Hogwarts."
Malfoy whimpered again, a child defenseless against the boggart living under his bed.
Off they ran, flying down the stairs from the Headmistresses' office. Harry had his wand out, ready to summon the stag should it come to that, but the elaborate spells he'd used to unravel the last remaining slip of Voldemort's soul had left him exhausted; he wasn't sure whether or not he would be able to pull it off if he had to.
Far better to get out of there and let the Aurors come back to send the Dementors away from the school. It was past time the Ministry was good for something.
Their pursuers were close; Harry's every breath burned frozen, forced in through his aching lungs, forming a small silvery cloud the moment he exhaled. He glanced to the side, wondering how a malnourished, tortured Malfoy would be able to keep up, only to find him still pressing their pace, glancing nervously at Harry and ahead of them.
The cold had become so severe that Malfoy's lips were beginning to turn blue by the time they reached the Great Hall.
"Not much further," Harry said to Malfoy, trying to comfort although he could not have said why.
But just as they reached the center of the hall, under an enchanted ceiling that currently resembled a ridiculously bright afternoon sky, with only Harry's wand and Harry's magic to protect them, they were forced to stop. Ten- twenty- fifty- one hundred Dementors came at them from every angle. They moved unusually slowly, every one of them staring at Harry. No matter which direction he turned, there were more, always more of them, taking him apart with their hollow eyes.
The cold had become a part of him, now, and his vision was swimming. Where once he had heard his parents' voices, he now expected to hear Hermione sobbing over Ron's broken body, to hear her beg him to come back to her. He braced himself against a new vision in green light, of it washing around her even as she sobbed, of her smiling in the final second before she slumped over Ron's corpse.
He saw nothing except the images his own exhausted and guilty mind naturally brought forth. Instead, the Dementors circled closer and closer, searching, sniffing the air around him, their breath rattling as though the air was not foul enough for them and they hated to breathe it in.
When they had gotten close enough that Harry began to lose the battle to hold back his rising panic, he felt a rough, rusty scratching in his thoughts. It sounded a little like Voldemort, and it told Harry what the Dementors wanted.
No. Harry answered silently when it finished. He did not understand, did not want to, and even if such a thing could be true, he wanted no part of it. "Expecto Patronum!"
Dangerous with his level of fatigue, casting the spell was the only acceptable option. But, the silver stag came galloping in at full power. Harry looked to it and allowed its peace to fill him, wondering if he would ever be able to cast the spell again. At his command, the stag chased away the Dementors.
Harry turned to Malfoy. "I won't," he said, unable to explain, and then he collapsed.
*
He dreamt that he was in the ruins of Godric's Hollow.
Dobby walked in from the left, his arms full of the most improbable things: Harry's third year essay on werewolves, a bag of spiders, books, socks, marbles (only they were really eyes), a wheel of cheese, and a large, pink, plastic flamingo.
He dropped everything from his arms, creating a huge mess. Seven times, he left the room, only to return with more impossible things, dropping them on the floor so that they fell in a fractal pattern.
The seventh time, Dobby stopped, noticing Harry for the first time. "Harry Potter is here!" he said, and he bent over backwards until his large, flapping ears dragged on the floor.
"What are you doing?" Harry asked, wondering why he felt he should run away.
"These is all yours, Harry Potter, sir," Dobby said, righting himself and blinking his enormous eyes up at Harry mournfully. "Harry Potter has been very bad."
The next thing Harry knew, he was tied up in what looked like hundreds of tea cozies strung end to end.
Dobby held up a large, glittering, serrated knife. "Dobby will do what he must, Harry Potter sir, to keep Harry Potter safe." He drove it into Harry's scar.
*
Harry woke from yet another nightmare; the details of this one, like the rest, faded before he could catch any of them. He wasn't sure where he was, or even how long he'd been sleeping and was very uneasy as to what the answers might be.
Strange new thoughts, ideas, even flashes of Voldemort's memories floated through his mind. And no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't bring himself to feel anything, no regret, not for any of it. He wondered at what point a lack of pain became pleasure, or whether they were one and the same.
And if he murdered again, say he hunted down and killed Dolohov, or Lestrange, he could make a Horcrux of his own and bring justice to a Death Eater all at once, and where would it all really end? He didn't want to live forever; Dumbledore had taught him better than that. Still, a few extra years, insurance against life cut too short as it had been for Ron and Hermione, for Ginny…where was the harm?
Harry heard a sound at the door and was sitting upright with his wand pointed before he'd consciously directed the movement to do so.
The door swung open, and there was a muffled, startled noise when Malfoy allowed a full bowl of soup he'd been carrying to slide from the tray to the floor, getting wet noodles all over expensive robes that now looked too large for his slight frame.
"You saved me," Harry said in wonder. "You got me out of there."
Malfoy stared at him, heedless of the mess, and then his lips curved in a shy smile.
"Why did you do it?" Harry looked down at his hands. "I nearly killed you." You hate me, went without saying.
When all Malfoy did in response was shrug, Harry began to move his wand. Magic raced through it, through him as always from the act of spellcasting, only now it poured through him fiercer than before, hot in his veins. "What am I?" he wondered silently, and then pointed the wand at Malfoy's throat and said clearly:
"Dito Ventriloquus!"
"You can talk, now, without using your mouth," he told Malfoy simply. Or your tongue, he added silently as his mind flashed upon images of dungeons and prisoners, tortures slower and dirtier than Cruciatus.
He remembered slow, shallow cuts, forcing one wizard to watch himself bleed and then explaining oh-so-sensibly that his own distaste at the sight was proof that his blood was filthy. He remembered subjecting a Muggle to Imperius and forcing her to castrate her Mudblood son and then leaving them both alive to suffer. He remembered vivisecting human and nonhuman bodies, ruthless in a quest to find the organ responsible for the use of magic, in hopes of solving the problem of the Squib forever…
The thoughtimages did not stop or slow down. Flashes of blood and bone, of boring gray walls, of endless forest deprived of any touch or taste or scent until forced into twisting flesh, into skin too tight, pinching and pressuring, but it was almost like being human again, and he had a voice.
Potter?
Harry heard the word as clearly as he heard his own voice, though Draco's mouth hadn't so much as twitched. Coming from anyone else, Harry would've called that tone deferential.
"I- I think-" He was distracted, suddenly, by the need to know what was going on in Draco's thoughts. Despite everything, just then Draco looked sweet and familiar, temptation itself.
Potter!
"What am I?" His vision was blurry, and so he took off his glasses, only to find that he could see perfectly, right into Malfoy's grey eyes.
You're at Malfoy manor? Malfoy hedged, forcing a small smile as though unsure how his evasion would be received.
Harry bit back a harsh reply. If Malfoy wasn't going to give him any information voluntarily, he would find out what was going on another way.
Harry slipped right into Malfoy's thoughts and nevermind that he'd never mastered Legimilency. Effortlessly, he tasted Malfoy's mind, drinking in truth and lies, the sharp bitter tang of betrayal.
He saw Malfoy, surrounded by Dementors, scores of them. Harry watched them play with their victim, who had been stripped naked against their cold, while they were allowed to take thought after thought, circle him, feed. He could feel Voldemort's joy in it, a frisson of such cold pleasure that it made Harry hard, even though Voldemort had believed himself above such puerile pleasures as sex.
Talk to me, please.
Harry paid no mind to Draco's request, too horrified (and thrilled) by the remembered scenes of his torture.
The Malfoy in Voldemort's memory screamed until he was hoarse, and then laughed - or maybe cried - with what sounded like three throats at once, or one torn in three. Eventually even Dementors grew tired of their game and the largest of their shadows crawled on top of Draco, moving along his body like a lover, and began to lower its face.
Voldemort watched as Malfoy's soul was drawn out to hover just at his lips, his eyes squeezed tightly shut against a fate so much worse than death, worse than any pain or torture or insanity or Hell. The Dark Lord held off as long as he could, watching the hope (everything) drain from his prey's eyes, watched as the life instinct turned to resignation and then acceptance.
"Stop!" Voldemort commanded at what seemed the last possible second. He had been playing a game and not for the first time, allowing the torment to go on a little longer each time as though looking for that moment of no return. "You may not have him yet."
In the dim light the Dementor seemed to glow darker, creating an inky cloud of black ice rage that whipped out with smoky tendrils to score marks all over Draco's body. Once it was finished, it backed away and Malfoy's soul slowly sank back into his body.
But he did not move, not for a long time.
Potter! Draco's mind snapped closed abruptly, forcing Harry out.
"How many times?" Harry looked at Malfoy, finally noticing the lines that were beginning to form on his pointy face, lines that said he never smiled.
Malfoy had begun to back away, holding the empty tray in front of him like a shield, his grey eyes wide in terror.
"The Dementors. How many times have you been Kissed, Malfoy?"
At the question, Malfoy's hands flew up to cover his mouth. Harry watched his body tremble, and Harry's hand formed a fist, held tightly at his side against the urge to break Malfoy's nose.
Harry had saved the world. He wasn't Voldemort, no matter how many powers or how much of the dead man's knowledge he had absorbed. How dare Malfoy fear him?
"So many times that you can't even remember?" Harry answered his own question coldly. "So many times that you can't remember anything. Can't even remember what it was like to laugh unless Voldemort told you to."
I hate you.
Harry smiled, but it twisted on his face. "Yes, and that's the only reason you took care of me, isn't it. I'm the only one left that you can remember."
*
An ear-splitting shriek crashed and bounced through the empty hallways at St. Mungo's.
Luna Lovegood, Healer-in-Training and junior Member of Staff did not need the sudden drop in temperature to tell her what the sound meant: the Dementors had attacked again, and soon there would be victims to treat. She had designed the alarm herself, modeling it after the mating call of drunken Erumpents. This was the third time she had heard it in the past two weeks.
As a rule, there weren't many things that Luna hated. She knew it was a much stranger world than most believed and that it was important to keep an open mind. But the Dementors took souls and destroyed them, ended something that should have been eternal, and no one knew why, since the Dementors had never shown any signs of gratification after their feasts.
She went to the side entrance, where the victims would soon begin arriving, brought in by the desperate hope of their loved ones even though there wasn't a thing anyone could do for them, except perhaps help their bodies to die quickly.
She hoped there wouldn't be any children this time.
When she got to the door, she stopped and quickly threw some green cheese powder in the air, to ward away any invisible Banicroffs, just in case they were causing her to hallucinate.
Unfortunately, the image in front of her did not waver. She had never seen so many victims brought in at once. At least one score of wizards and witches of all ages shuffled down the hallway blankly, less aware than vegetables, all accompanied by loved ones who could not or would not comprehend the horror.
"Please, miss, help my son!" One woman saw her and advanced, pulling the soulless shell of a teenage boy behind her, one Luna thought she recognized as a few years younger and from a different house in Hogwarts, though she didn't know his name. He had been a cute child, all healthy brown skin and plump cheeks and bright eyes. She thought she remembered dimples too, although even if there had been, they would never be seen again.
"He's gone." Luna looked the woman squarely in the eyes. No matter how many times she said it, it never got any easier.
"No, there must be some mistake. There's something you can do, I know it, if you'll just take a look at him, please!"
"I can give his body rest," Luna said sadly, "but that is all."
The woman's face crumpled, and she broke right there, her last faint hope denied, her world utterly destroyed. "Not my boy," she begged, and Luna wondered if she had any idea she was saying it out loud. "Please, me instead, anything to me, but not my boy, my sweet boy."
She dropped to her knees and held her son's body tightly. "You can't be gone. You're still warm."
Before Luna could correct the woman, she and her son's body were pushed out of the way by a young man leading what had been a singularly unattractive young woman. That pair was in turn pushed aside by several more people, all clamoring around Luna in a circle, begging and pleading and crying and threatening. They reached out to her, tried to touch her, and the circle pressed in ever tighter until Luna idly wondered if she was going to be trampled to death.
Because of the bodies, all warmhot and her fear making her heart beat so fast, adrenaline accelerating her systems, she did not feel it when the temperature of the hospital began to drop.
However, she heard the change when the people went from moaning and babbling to screaming, and shrieking. Simultaneously, the alarms sounded a new note of fear as a Dementor attack began.
Luna had heard about Ground Zero, and recognized it when she saw it.
The crowd around her broke up, some people moving slowly, trying still to cling to the bodies of the people they had loved. The Dementors reached out with slimy grey hands and caught them quickly, barely paying them any mind at all before swooping in to Kiss.
They were looking for something, Luna thought. It was a risk to attack the hospital, even for the Dementors. Voldemort (and she felt no reaction from thinking the name) must be dead after all, she thought as she watched the monsters go after purebloods and Muggleborns alike, or he would have stopped this.
A flash of light on one side, and on another, and Luna could see the souls being taken, violation of life itself on every side of her, and she could do so little.
But what she could do, she would try. Perhaps it would be enough, just her one against so many. She raised her wand.
"Expecto Patronum!" she called, and remembered a red-haired girl's warm smile. A bright, silvery fox jumped immediately from the tip of her wand.
It grinned at her before turning and chasing off the Dementors, and either it was strong enough or the Dementors did not find what they had been looking for, because one by one they all drifted away, leaving the familiar low black poison mist behind them.
"Not many people can cast a Patronus strong enough to drive away that many."
"Harry Potter taught me how to do it," Luna answered proudly. She turned and saw that the speaker was Rabastan Lestrange. She frowned. "You should go to bed now, Lestrange, before I forget myself. I know what you did to Lavender Brown."
He licked his lips. "You can't afford to forget yourself, little missie. You'll need me around when the fighting gets worse. And it will."
With an indecent, knowing, lustful grin he winked at her before turning around and wandering off.
Rabastan was more than half insane and knew nothing, although in his madness he sometimes believed he did. "Remind me to let the house-elves piss in his drinking water again," Luna said to no one in particular.
"You're on," Ginny suddenly said from behind Luna's back.
"I can't do this anymore. Something has got to be done," Luna said, too used to Ginny's sudden appearances to be surprised. She took off her Healer's smock and threw it to the floor. "The Ministry isn't going to help us. We need Harry."
"Let's go find him, then." Ginny said.
"Are you ready for that?" Luna asked, concerned. "He probably will be very upset."
"I know," Ginny agreed sadly, lack of experience and depression combining to sink her insubstantial body halfway through the floor, "but he has to find out I stayed behind eventually."
*
Harry was ripped from the first night's sleep he had enjoyed in a long while, from a dream that involved Draco Malfoy's lips working, his mouth opening without fear of anything being lost, only gained, as he swallowed Harry's cock gratefully. 'Harder,' Harry would say, or 'Slower,' and Malfoy would respond to his wishes immediately, desperate, and Harry couldn't decide whether to punish or please.
But then there was a muffled screaming, and Harry was awake without ever having decided to be. He grabbed his wand and ran down the hall immediately.
The sounds were coming from a smaller room, one he supposed was Draco's, even though he hadn't seen it once in the three weeks since he had first woken up after the final battle at Hogwarts.
He took a deep breath and pushed open the door, with no idea what to expect on the other side. Draco had insisted that the Malfoy's home was well protected against assault by any Dark creatures and would be perfectly safe from the Dementor attacks that had been reported in the Prophet and over the Wizarding Wireless from all over Great Britain. Harry had outwardly accepted the reassurance, but remained highly skeptical.
The room was empty. Malfoy's bed was on a raised platform in the centre, the curtains mostly drawn closed except where a pale foot had thrust itself between them and was kicking at the air.
One thousand hexes shot through Harry's mind, decades worth of research and study, lessons learned at the price of blood and beauty.
"Alohomora!" he said, with an ironic twist to his lips, taking great pleasure in avoiding Voldemort's accidental, unwelcome gifts.
The curtains swung open, to reveal Malfoy sleeping alone. A black scarf was tied around his mouth, and it was into that darkness that he screamed. His thin, wiry body twisted and fought in his sleep, lashing out against invisible enemies on all sides.
Just a nightmare, then. Harry approached, appreciating that he hadn't been woken up before, that Malfoy had apparently taken the trouble to spell the curtains to contain the sounds.
"Lumos!" he said, when he reached Malfoy's bed, pouring his magical energy into the spell, which flashed with painful brilliance almost instantly, the hot white light searing his eyeballs and nearly rendering him blind in the short amount of time it had taken to cast.
A grip of surprising strength latched onto his arm.
Harry was already angry over having lost control of his own spell - a simple, first year spell - to the ridiculous amounts of power flowing through him. He blindly felt along the smooth skin of that hand to find the wrist and then gripped it hard enough to bruise, to feel the bones start to give in his fingers. He pulled it away from his arm, but did not let it go.
Draco whimpered, the sound pathetic coming from a nearly grown man.
"Can't you do anything right?" Harry hissed. "I'm trying to sleep."
Draco shook his head from side to side, and mumbled something that might have been an apology through the gag.
Harry sighed and finally gave in to the knowledge that was pushing it's way forward eagerly, like Hermione raising her hand in a class, wanting, needing to be noticed. "Abrogo Somnium!"
"There. You won't have any more bad dreams tonight," Harry said. He'd taken the Dementors right out of Malfoy's dreams; it was the only way he could guarantee a decent night's rest, short of tying Malfoy down in the bed so he wouldn't kick the curtains open again.
He hadn't expected Malfoy's arms to fly around him in gratitude, to feel his smooth skin and heat. It was horribly uncomfortable to have someone that close, and he wondered if Malfoy could steal the air he breathed.
Carefully, he pushed Malfoy away, trying to be gentle lest Malfoy fall apart and become yet another mess for Harry to clean up.
Harry rose and walked to the door, the distance enabling him to smile at the puppy-like expression of adoration on Malfoy's face. "Goodnight," he said and left.
*
The next day brought with it an interruption of a different sort. Shortly after lunch, for the first time since Harry had been staying at Malfoy's home, there was a knock at the door.
Malfoy did not even look up. Harry grinned. As the days went on he would occasionally catch Malfoy behaving as he had before he had been called to his reckoning. This time, Harry would have bet his last Galleon that Malfoy subconsciously expected his non-existent house-elf servants to answer it.
The knock sounded again, louder and sharper. This time, Draco did look up. He met Harry's eyes. Neither of them moved.
Finally, the front door blew open.
"I know you are in here." The woman's voice brought back to life a fading memory of the luxury of tea and nonsense, wild creativity and thoughtless honesty.
Harry slid his wand from his pocket and began to slowly make his way to the front hall. In the doorway, he stopped and leaned forward just enough to peek out and try to catch a glimpse of the intruder. Pale in the white robes he'd taken to wearing, Draco followed close behind him like an inverted shadow.
Before he could see the intruder, she identified herself. "Harry! Where are you? I know the Midnicks can't possibly have gotten to you; they're all hibernating right now."
"Luna?" he asked, his voice catching. He felt strangely ashamed, not wanting her to see how the Savior of the Wizarding World, the Hero of the Day, had shut himself up at his old rival's house, too afraid of his own power to go back to the world.
From the corner of his eye, he could see Draco glaring at her, pure malice twisting the points in his face sharp once more.
"Harry!" she exclaimed, sounding absolutely delighted. She ran forward, her radish earrings swinging wildly, but stopped just short of embracing him. "How do I know you're really Harry and not a homunculus created to look like him?"
"What's a homunculus?" Harry asked, his head spinning almost pleasantly. It was great to see Luna again.
Who is she? She might hurt you, Harry. She can't come in! Malfoy folded his arms over his chest.
Harry tried to catch Luna's eye, but she ignored him, focusing her large blue eyes on Malfoy.
"My name is Luna," she said with a smile, her voice gentle. "We knew each other once." She held out her hand.
Malfoy did not take it, instead hiding behind Harry's shoulder. You would say that, wouldn't you, he muttered balefully.
"Come in, Luna," Harry said, and then remembered that she already had. "Or, come this way."
Luna stepped beside him in the wide hallway, looking around her serenely.
"What brings you all the way out here, by yourself? And how did you find us?" Harry had forgotten whatever art of small talk he had once possessed. He would have felt awkward about that, except that this was Luna, who wouldn't miss it anyway.
They reached one of the front rooms - Harry was never sure what to call it and had mentally settled for 'drawing room' even though he disliked how stuffy it sounded.
"Hm, you're only half right," Luna said, leaning back on the soft cushion and closing her eyes lightly. "I did find you, by scrying on Draco. I knew that if he was still alive, he would be with you."
She smiled at Malfoy, who scowled back. It was an impressive glare; Harry wondered how long it would be before Malfoy tried something horrid and juvenile.
"Malfoy, get some tea," Harry said a little too sharply. He wasn't entirely certain he would want to break it up if Malfoy flew at Luna's throat. "I'd like a few minutes alone, if you don't mind," he added more softly to the tenseness in Malfoy's retreating back. Malfoy flashed back a bright smile as he left the room.
"But Harry," Luna continued after Malfoy had left, her large eyes now showing concern, "I am not alone."
Harry pointed his wand at her. "I should have known it was a trap."
"No, Harry, it isn't," a voice said from behind him. Harry froze for a moment, and then turned around carefully, trying to see while still not leaving his back turned to Luna.
Ginny Weasley stood - floated, he corrected himself - behind him, looking not as she had the last time he had seen her, with her red hair all muddied and wearing her dull grey fighting robes, but as she had in their schooldays, her hair curled just so, her uniform clean and pressed. And all absolutely colourless, as pale as every other ghost ever forced to walk the earth.
He felt the blood drain from his face. He lowered his wand and staggered back a few steps, practically falling onto a sofa.
"Why did you do it?" The decision to become a ghost was a conscious one, something the witch or wizard had to prepare well in advance. Harry would have thought Ginny of all people to have had more sense.
"I wanted to make sure you knew that I was alright with it, with dying" she answered sadly. "Harry, I loved you - still love you - and I know you. You always think it is your job to save everyone, and I didn't want you to do anything foolish if they got me."
The room fell into a charged silence for a moment at that. Harry ran his fingers through his hair, over and over, trying to massage the tension from his temples and scalp. What was he supposed to feel? What did she expect of him? What did Luna expect?
"Did it hurt? When you died, did it hurt?" Harry broke into the quiet and looked over her translucent form. He found no wounds, no blood. No answers as to what had happened to her, or what would happen.
He wondered if she was going to haunt him, trail his steps with her ghostly form for all his days, a constant, well-intentioned reminder of her sacrifice.
"It didn't hurt at all," Ginny eventually answered his question, but she wouldn't meet his gaze.
"Lovely. You're stuck here forever now, you know that, don't you? Forever! Ginny, I'm not worth that. How could you be so bloody stupid?"
He wanted both of them gone. He wanted to be left alone with Malfoy, who never made him feel guilty, even though he had suffered more than any of them. Malfoy had brought it on himself; Harry owed him nothing.
"She's staying with me," Luna said unexpectedly. "I am going to find a cure for her condition, for all of the ghosts who wish it."
"I meant well, Harry. I'm not sorry." Ginny floated forward and stroked his cheek with her hand.
He felt nothing.
"It's fine," he said, drawing on hateful knowledge to hide the dead place in him, to pretend he didn't want to take out his wand and cast the dozen or so spells he now knew that could make even a ghost acutely uncomfortable.
"This isn't why we are here," Luna interrupted. "Harry, the Dementors are killing-"
"I know. It isn't my problem."
"WHAT?" shrieked Ginny's ghost.
"There is an old story about Dementors," Luna began. Her voice had taken on that light, familiar, dreamy quality, but her eyes were wide open. "It's been said that they were human, once. That all it will take is for someone to show them love, and they can be redeemed."
Harry barked out a laugh. "That is rubbish. The Dementors weren't human, never were human and that's why they can't be killed. They are the embodiment-" he cut himself off abruptly, as his memory suddenly went blank.
Luna watched him with open curiosity as he spoke and when he stopped she nodded as though in silent confirmation. His eyes narrowed as he realized that he had been tricked.
"I wondered," she said, "whether this would happen again."
He had told her just how he had come to learn Parseltongue years ago, before the first large battle, the one that had taken place in what should have been their seventh year.
"Do you think Voldemort is here, then, in my mind?" Harry drew back, and surreptitiously pulled his wand from his sleeve, but he couldn't have said whom he thought he might need to hex: the Luna, Draco, who Harry could see hovering about in the hallway with the tea, eavesdropping, or himself.
"No," Ginny said. "You're certainly Harry. Believe me, I'd know. Spirits can see things."
He hadn't even been aware of how deeply his fear had run until Ginny had eased it. He knew better than anyone how easily Voldemort could work his way into people's minds, how many ways he could confuse and subvert.
But it wasn't as easy as sliding back into his old life as though nothing had changed. His mind and his soul may still be his own, but he still wasn't the same boy she had dated. That Harry had no idea what Bertha Jorkin's face looked like the moment Wormtail had finally broken through her secrecy spells, or that Voldemort's tiny, raw fetal body had spasmed in delight when it happened, or any of a thousand memories of other things, great and terrible. That Harry hadn't been the most powerful wizard alive.
For the first time, Harry appreciated the struggle Dumbledore must have had to keep his humanity. Socks, indeed.
"Of course," he nodded to her, not wanting to shatter her illusion of him. Especially since she'd cut herself off from the afterlife in an effort to keep it.
"So are you going to come back and help?" Luna asked, her voice sharp and direct, her gaze no longer at all dreamy or aloof.
"I will come," Harry said, "but don't expect miracles."
Malfoy chose that moment to return with the tea. Harry watched him very carefully, just to make certain he wasn't going to poison their guest. Malfoy caught him watching and grinned.
Continued in Part II