The Echoes Of Yesterday

The Echoes Of Yesterday…by Samayel

Chapter 19: Spirited Intervention


Draco fled down the hallways of Hogwarts with his face burning, ducking past students quickly to hide his appearance. The disheveled clothes and humiliating tears were nothing he wanted others to see. The safety of his own suite was all he craved, and he raced into it and slammed the door behind him, mind racing with events of the last few minutes.

He’d been wrong. So terribly, terribly wrong. It was a miscalculation, but with a far higher cost than he could have guessed. He was inured to punishment. His years at Durmstrang…and home…had made physical pain a fleeting thing that was no longer feared, He’d imagined he’d be punished for his outburst, and that perhaps the man would relent just a little and tell him what he wanted to know. He’d known that Harry Potter was capable of losing his calm demeanor and acting ‘the disciplinarian’. He’d also thought that the man’s basically gentle and retiring nature would make him more pliable and willing to speak afterwards. He hadn’t even imagined a disaster of this scale!

Harry Potter had looked utterly psychotic, almost crazed with rage and grief. Draco should have known better than to bait him. He should have done something different, anything, but he hadn’t. He pushed the man a little further and all hell had broken loose.

The instructors at Durmstrang had been cold and emotionless in their giving of pain, delivering punishment with a detached kind of amusement. The bitter, spiteful words and acts of his grandparents had been a calculated expression of their hatred and resentment. But…in the whole of his life so far, Draco had never seen a person so completely out of control…not even himself!

He’d ruined everything! His actions had been poorly chosen, even if he’d felt them justified. He’d wanted to know. It had been unbearable, to think that Harry Potter had simply let his parents die and then retired quietly to become a teacher. He’d had a right to those answers! It wasn’t…it wasn’t supposed to have happened like this!

The man had done it. It was certain. No one so overwrought could speak a complete falsehood so convincingly. It had to be true. He’d avenged the Malfoys, and had committed murder to do it. Harry Potter was a cold blooded killer, and was terrifying to behold in his wrath. Was that enraged face what Lord Voldemort had seen on his last day of life? Was that chilling look the one his parent’s killers had seen last?

It was so clear now. Harry Potter wasn’t a hero of legend, at perfect peace with his every act. He really was just a man, and one who hadn’t easily carried the scars of battle after decades. He was different…much different than Draco had ever imagined…and now it was over. There would be no teaching for him here. His actions had been unforgivable, and he’d touched off a rage that looked like it wouldn’t dim quickly.

He had to leave…he had to pack and get out now before worse happened. A series of counter spells opened his trunk, and Draco snatched at things about the room and flung them in. In the corner of the trunk was his solace, his guidance, his deliverance. He’d lost himself in its contents a thousand times when beset by stress and fear, and his hand itched for its pages now. Draco reached for the book.

His fingers had only brushed against it for a second when a sudden and seemingly random thought struck him. He simply knew something he hadn’t seen clearly before. It was important…overwhelmingly important. Harry Potter was ill! The man needed help and needed it now. The Headmistress would know what to do. He had to tell the Headmistress enough to make certain that she went to look for professor Potter. Immediately!

Draco pulled his hand from the trunk and shut it quickly, spelling it safely locked before he hurried down the hallway, headed for Minerva McGonagall’s office. He couldn’t have defined the source of his certainty that Harry Potter needed aid, but the all-consuming desire to deliver such a message was with him just the same.

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Harry waited until the sound of Draco’s heels was out of earshot. His hands were trembling violently, and his skull already ached with the feedback of adrenaline that couldn’t be vented. He was torn between a hunger to lash out at a world that had left him empty and hollow for so very long, and a terrible shame for his sudden violence against a teenaged boy.

It wasn’t fair! Not that life had ever been fair to anyone in particular, but he’d tried so hard. He’d done the right things. Tried to be a decent and good person. He’d saved a world that had made him a hero before he was even of age, and it had nearly cost his life. He’d done it all willingly. Thrown himself into risk and pain. He’d done it with a smile some of the time, knowing what might come. He’d given the very best of himself for the benefit of others.

Then he’d found one brief, bright moment of happiness for himself. His and his alone. And then it was gone. All the decency and good in the world hadn’t bought him one small mercy. It was self indulgent to wallow in pity that way, but damn it all to hell, when had he ever indulged himself in any other way?

It hurt. Was a man weak or wrong because he just wanted to not hurt? Just for a little while? Just long enough to rest in black peace and silence, untroubled by dreams, nightmares and memories? Harry’s skull was pounding, and his muscles were aching with tension that he could barely contain. His breath was short, his chest felt tight and his vision was fuzzy at the edges. Potions be damned, he felt like hell.

He felt thirsty. Hollow and ready to be filled. He wanted a drink. Enough to blanket memories. Enough to stop hands that shook. Just enough to rest. There was a bottle. In the closet. Not a stash. It hadn’t been kept as a reserve. It was a gift, dust-coated and never opened. Aged thirty years in port casks. The kind of whiskey that cost a small fortune in Muggle currency. The stuff that would come out only to toast a wedding, a birth or a funeral. It was for joy and sorrow, and Harry had sorrow aplenty.

His feet were moving like an Inferi’s. Stumbling, sluggish and unsure. He was owed just a little comfort, wasn’t he? A moment’s respite. There, in the back, still wrapped. The bottle was beautiful, almost a work of art all its own. On hands and knees after pawing through the contents of the closet, Harry cradled the bottle delicately, blurry eyed and yet surreally hyper-conscious.

A pull at the cork and its sweetness surrounded him. It smelled divine. Fire and smoke and sweet mash cooking long and well. The potions hadn’t been enough. They hadn’t taken away his dreams…or let him sleep the night in peace. He could rest when he was numb. This would take it all away. This would let him have peace.

By will alone, Harry warded the room and Floo, guaranteeing his privacy. He’d made his peace with what he was about to do. Harry closed his eyes and raised the bottle, only to feel it jerk to a halt halfway.

When he opened his eyes, a faint and misty form was before him, sad and resolute, one hand outstretched to stop the bottle and push it down. It wasn’t impossible, that a spirit presence could touch a material object so casually, but it was rare. Was it a vision? Was it his own ghoulish subconscious making a last bid to preserve his newly won sobriety?

Harry sat with mouth agape, tears trickling down a face that was haggard and expressionless, staring at the flickering form of his only love, dead almost two decades.

Draco’s mouth formed a single, silent word. Through the haze of grief and anger, even through blurred eyes and a mind bent by incredulity, it was still clear. It was a simple plea.

‘No.’

And then it flickered out, gone as quickly as it had appeared. Harry reached out too late to grab hold of some small part of the elusive image that had entranced him, only to find thin and empty air before him. When the bottle spilled from his hand and he scrabbled across hard flagstones in search of what was clearly gone, Harry snatched up the bottle and flung it into a wall, screaming incoherently, expelling the sum of his loss in howls that would have been deafening if anyone had been there to hear them.

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Minerva McGonagall ordered the doors of her office to open, livid that anyone, much less young Draco Malfoy, would have the nerve to pound on them so while shouting inelegantly from the hall. The young man rushed into the office in a complete frenzy, while Minerva attempted to retain her usual crisp and stolid dignity.

“What, precisely, do you think you’re doing, banging on the-”

“Professor Potter needs help! NOW! In his classroom! He’s sick and he needs help! You have to go there!”

“A moment please…and your silence.” Minerva cast her Patronus with a careful incantation, willing it to deliver a message along with it’s appearance. It would notify John Prewett of the matter, instructing him to meet her at the DADA classroom.

“Very well. Help is on its way. You may follow me while you explain your abominable conduct! I’ve already heard of your outburst today. Inexcusable. Not to mention-”

“NO! You need to hurry! We should use the Floo! He needs help now, damn it!”

“YOUNG MAN! That will be the last of that tone you use with me! Your time here at Hogwarts is at an end!”

“I don’t care about that! Please! You have to hurry! I’ll leave if you want, but you have to help him…now!”

There was nothing feigned or ingenuous in the boy’s tone or look, and in fact, he appeared to border on desperation. Minerva made a mental note to chastise him later, before expelling him, but gave in largely out of concern for Harry. Minerva moved toward the Floo.

“Fine! Let’s…blast it! He’s warded his office. We’ll have to Floo into the one next to it. Listen closely to what I say, and follow after me.”

Draco nodded silently, listening intently as Minerva McGonagall intoned the classroom by name and floor, watching as she disappeared in a puff of green flame. A moment later, Draco clambered into the Floo and flung the powder to the floor, calling out the same precise destination.

He stumbled out of the Floo into a classroom he hadn’t been in before, and followed Minerva’s hurried form through the door and around the hall, ultimately stopping at the entrance to Harry’s office. The Headmistress was already uttering a spell in the direction of the door, wand flicking sharply with irritation.

“Harry’s usual good work. I’ll need help to break these…I’ll have to summon-”

Draco had already recognized the type and feel of the wards, and reached a hand out toward them.

“What do you think you’re doing?! Those could-” Minerva’s outburst was cut off by Draco’s muted and vague reply. It was so matter of fact and quiet that it carried a weird air of authority.

“Harm me? They’re standard Repulsers. They’ll sting, and they hurt if you come at them forcefully, but they aren’t fatal. He would never risk hurting students.”

“Of course not! And that’s as may be, but-”

“I can walk through them…if I go slowly enough. If you don’t use force they respond less. I’m going in. He needs help now, not when everyone arrives. I might be able to get him to take down the wards if he’s conscious, or at least break them on my own if I have to. Either way, I’m going in.”

Minerva’s first concern was Harry. She’d genuinely believed that the man could handle more than he imagined, and it had shaken her quite badly to think that he might genuinely be ill. If Malfoy believed he could handle walking through painful wards, then he could try if he liked. The worst that could happen would be his failure, and others would come soon enough. There was still the chance that he might succeed, and even the best wards were more vulnerable from the inside. It was worth it.

“Do it then…if you can. Find him, and break the wards if you must. I’ll summon others in the meantime.”

Minerva’s wand cast a string of Patronus charms, sending silver shapes dashing down the halls, while Draco reached forward nervously with both hands…and pushed ever so slightly.

Ward-fire crackled along his nerves, leaving his entire body feeling as if he had just touched a Muggle electrical wire. He wasn’t pushing hard, but rather making himself a dead weight, limp and boneless, almost falling into the wards by accident. Where the wards touched his skin, the energy burned brief and bright, tingling violently like pins and needles on a grand scale. Wildly uncomfortable, but easily survivable.

Pain was nothing to be afraid of. The instructors’ whips and switches at Durmstrang had hurt far worse than this. Pain could be endured, failure…that was unacceptable. If he could accomplish nothing else, Draco could make some small amends for what he’d caused.

He didn’t dare say it aloud yet, but he knew instinctively that this was entirely his own fault. What he had done in his hunger for answers had touched off more than he’d conceived of as possible. His instincts screamed that Harry Potter needed help, and he would help without question now. The man avenged a family that others had scorned…at the cost of his career…and a lot more besides. That priceless gift would not go unacknowledged, and so Draco gritted his teeth, skin on fire with the energy of the wards, and slid further forward still.

And then he was through.


TBC!!!