Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of Ceremonies of Strife. The third story in the trilogy, Seasons of War, will begin in a little more than a week.

Chapter Forty-Five—Stirrings of Rage

Traveling through the tunnel was strange. Harry felt as if he continually brushed against chains that stopped being real when he walked past them. There was the hiss of stone on metal, almost out of hearing range, and now and then he thought he saw a shaft of light stabbing down. But he could never see it when he turned his head quickly or stared straight and steadily at a place where he thought one had been.

Draco sometimes hissed in the darkness beside him, as if imitating the half-heard sounds. Harry found his hand and gripped it. Draco gripped back fiercely. Harry didn't think he would have allowed Harry to do that if the tunnel hadn't been dark, though, and so mostly hiding them from sight.

Ketchum, ahead of them, was a figure more heard and sensed than seen in the darkness. Sometimes he paused and told them to be quiet, and they were. That happened three times, and on the third occasion, Harry thought he heard a heavy body passing, felt a flick of wind as though someone had flapped a cloak at them.

Or an enormous tail. He swallowed, then tried not to think about it.

Finally, the tunnel started to slope up. Ketchum glanced at them and whispered, "When you step through this doorway, you'll be going through an automatic Portkey. It can be disorienting. Try not to cry out, though, because you wouldn't like it if you screamed in the midst of camp and some people cast curses before they saw who it was."

Harry nodded. He couldn't see if Draco could, but Ketchum seemed satisfied, turning and striding forwards towards a gleam of real light.

There were noises that made Harry think they were emerging onto a Muggle street, but when Ketchum reached the light and abruptly vanished, Harry remembered what he had said about the Portkey door. He gritted his teeth and kept moving.

The nauseating sensation of being whirled through space by his stomach seized him, and for long moments he couldn't even feel Draco's hand holding his, though he had kept his firm grip and they'd both stepped through the doorway at the same time. Then the colors around him, which he'd only now noticed, faded, and Harry found himself on his knees in the middle of a large expanse of mud.

He stood up, glancing at Draco. Draco gave him a firm nod and then dropped his hand, although Harry would have liked to hang on for a bit longer.

There was plenty to see, however, as well as plenty of people to see them behaving in a manner that Draco probably thought was childish. The expanse of mud must have been a meadow once, but Harry thought the new arrivals, as well as Warming Charms to banish the snow, had made it what it was now, churned and ridged and drowned in muck deep enough for a battlefield. Tents were everywhere he looked, in bright colors but with an odd, subdued shimmer above their tops. Charms and wards, Harry thought, to keep them from being spotted by Muggles or Nihil's creatures. The larger tents flew flags with the symbol of the Aurors and an instructor name neatly stitched on them. The smaller tents, which looked big enough for only a few people each, had names of trainees on the flags. In the very center were two enormous, sprawling things, the likes of which Harry had seen at the World Cup.

Harry turned to Ketchum, who was waiting for them. Ketchum nodded at the big tent on the left, a bright blue-and-silver one. "Infirmary." He nodded at the red-and-green one. "Dining hall." He glanced up, beyond them, then, and his voice changed. "I'll leave you to one who knows the schedule of the camp better than I do."

With a few quick movements, before Harry and Draco could even turn around, Auror Gregory was in front of them.

Harry stared at her with his mouth open. Her face was far harder and colder than he remembered it, and she surveyed them with a gaze that seemed to locate their every weakness and tell them exactly how much she despised it. She wore, instead of Auror robes, brown-and-black ones that probably let her blend into the countryside better, and she carried a thin dark mask in one hand. At least it wasn't white like the Death Eater ones, Harry thought.

Draco found his voice first. "You tried to kill me," he said.

"Because I suspected Dearborn of working with Nihil, and you worked with Dearborn," Gregory said, and turned away, striding further into the wilderness of tents. Draco and Harry had to follow her or be left behind. Draco, Harry saw, looked disgruntled about that. He would be used to leading, now. "As you can see, I was right about Dearborn." She tossed a cool smile back over her shoulder and increased her pace.

Harry, though running to keep up, managed to pinch Draco's arm warningly when he opened his mouth to complain again. They needed to know as much as possible. Gregory was abrasive, but she would probably respond with information if they asked politely.

"Did you come in and join the attack on the defenders' side, ma'am?" he asked.

Gregory laughed. Harry couldn't remember if he'd heard her do that before. Usually she just barked a quick chuckle when someone in her class got wounded. But this went on for a long time and sounded cold and threatening. Several people turned to stare at them, but looked away again when they realized who it was.

"Yes," she said. "I have been gathering forces, people who were weary of Nihil's domination and the ineffectiveness of both War Wizards and Aurors. I learned of the attack an hour before it happened. Though I went to the Ministry first and Nihil attacked the barracks, so that my preparations could not completely prevent the casualties, more people survived than would have if not for me."

Draco caught Harry's eye and gave him a fierce frown. Harry understood the silent message. She's so arrogant that I don't know if I can work with her.

Harry stroked Draco's arm and asked, "Are you the one who came up with the plan of moving from camp to camp and living in tents instead of the barracks?" He tried to make his voice respectful and admiring.

"Yes," Gregory said. "My people have been doing it for months. The people who lived in the Ministry are softer and don't like it, of course, but if they want to survive, they will. Those who are here are a bit tougher than usual. They would have had to be, to take that oath and the binding. I have high hopes for them." She abruptly jerked to a stop in front of a small, squat tent with red and white stripes. "You need to speak to the ones meeting in here. I know they'll want to know where you were."

She stopped, and then turned her head and stared at them with a slowness Harry thought was meant to terrify. It did a bloody good job, in his case. It was hard to keep standing and look Gregory in the eyes when she acted like that.

"Something is different about you," Gregory told Harry. "I am good at sensing changes in others, now. I had to be when Nihil was trying to plant spies among my group and bring me low." Her nostrils flared, as though she could smell the dark shimmer that had taken root in the back of his head. "We'll talk, you and I."

She was gone in a moment, cloak sweeping behind her, already calling what sounded like challenges to a group of students training with curses in a warded ring. Draco growled in his throat as he looked after her.

"I don't like her," he said. "And she hasn't been changed at all by her exile. Why do they tolerate her?"

"Probably because she saved their arses," Harry told him pointedly as he lifted the tent flap. There was no way to knock and Gregory had seemed to think they should go in immediately, so that was what he planned on. "And she does seem to know more about what's happening around here than anyone else does." He couldn't get over the aura of competence that Gregory carried about with her. Maybe part of that was fake, but it was a bloody good imitation if it was.

He had assumed, without thinking about it, that the people waiting in the tent for them would be the instructors, Portillo Lopez in particular, who would ask them uncomfortable questions and scowl but let them go in the end.

It wasn't like that at all.

Draco halted the minute he stepped into the tent, which made Harry grunt and crash into him. Draco flushed at the undignified picture that he knew they made, but he couldn't help it. He had expected to see Portillo Lopez sitting at the head of the table, since she would probably have the most power over the other instructors if Gregory wasn't there.

Instead, Gawain Robards, the Head Auror, sat there. Draco had seen him only once before, when he welcomed the trainees into their training. He had arms that seemed as if he could pick up a dragon and shoulders that suggested he could carry one. His glasses were in one hand at the moment, as he wiped at them with a cloth. His hair was pale brown and looked as if it had hurriedly been cut short, maybe to remove blood. He stared directly at them with a bleak, composed face.

Rising to her feet next to him was Alice Holder. Draco forgot what her official title was, but he knew that she did all the things it was rumored Robards didn't want to dirty his hands with. She had grey hair coiled at her neck and the dark line of a burn scar like a chain at her throat. She leaned forwards with an intent stare that made Draco unaware of most of the other people in the room, though he could see that Morningstar and Portillo Lopez were there when he glanced out of the corner of his eye.

"Ah," she said quietly. "Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy. Please sit down."

They did, in two chairs that were available at the end of the table, though Draco couldn't decide if the please was a good sign or not. Supposedly Holder only said things like that when she was about to eviscerate someone, and you really wanted her to be rude to you.

On the other hand, Draco had had about enough of rudeness from Gregory. He would be glad if someone treated him the way he deserved to be treated.

Holder stepped towards them. No one else in the tent said a word. Draco looked, and saw Davidson and Coronante sitting at the table, too. Davidson had her fingers placed together. Coronante's tongue was caught between her teeth. She saw Draco looking and gave him a sharp glance that was probably meant as a warning.

"It has come to our attention," Holder said, crashing to a halt in front of them, "that the two of you have outstanding information about Nihil that you have not shared with the rest of us." She paused and bent towards them, her nose poised like a beak that was about to scoop out an eye, Draco thought. "Now, you must have taken the oath or you would not be here. I assume that means you are not traitors. What was the reason for your concealing the truth from those who could use it to good effect, then?"

Draco could practically feel Harry getting ready to meet this accusation with truth. He had never been very comfortable about lying to the Aurors, Draco knew, and he would be partially relieved that he could explain about everything.

But if they did, then there was no reason for them to be included in the rest of the Aurors' decisions. And Draco was going to have a place there. He pinched Harry's knee hard under the table, which made his indrawn breath turn into a surprised squeak instead of speech, and tried to meet Holder's gaze with one as cold as her own.

"Because of what you would treat us like," he said. "Do you assume that my parents taught me nothing?"

Silence. Robards let his eyebrows climb to his hairline. Holder's expression never changed. "Explain."

"I'm a former Death Eater," Draco said. "Or at least in the service of the Dark Lord." He didn't want to go so far in his defense that they would lock him up for crimes he hadn't committed. "And Harry is the Boy-Who-Lived, someone it would be easy to make into a pawn. You could treat us like those pawns, like toys, and there aren't many people outside of our friends who would object. We kept our secrets and acted the way we did because we wanted to have some power, some relevance. You would have tried to keep us from that." He mixed scorn and disbelief in his voice and hoped it would prove to Holder's taste. She was the main one in the room they needed to convince, since Robards would take his cue from her. "Can you blame us for this?"

Holder started to say something, but Robards raised his hand, palm out, fingers spread as though he was hooking them into invisible notches. Holder's mouth seemed to curdle. She nodded a moment later, though, and spoke on smoothly. "An understandable motive. But what makes you assume that you have the right to keep that information to yourself when people are dying? I had not thought you so mercenary."

She was focusing on Harry, Draco saw, who squirmed in his seat. She knew Harry was the weak link in this defense. Draco spoke once again, forcefully enough to draw her attention to him. "Harry has some tender bones, that's true. But he wasn't willing to be cast aside and treated like a child, either, and that was the way the instructors were treating us during the first attacks. Not, 'Oh, people are dying, why don't you offer us any conclusions that you can?' But 'Oh, people are dying, but you're just children, not future Aurors! Don't worry about them!' We've been told it's changed, but I don't see any evidence so far. You're still talking to us like we're those children."

"Draco," Harry hissed, but Draco didn't move and didn't take his eyes from Holder. He knew what he was doing, better than Harry did. And he wasn't going to be patted on the head and put on a shelf. No more. No longer.

Holder smiled for the first time—really smiled. Draco had looked at torture devices that made him less uncomfortable.

"You are condemned to participation in the war now," Holder said. "I can promise you an active place, no matter what kind of information you have to deliver. You have sworn the oath and taken the binding, and that means you aren't traitors." She inclined her head. "You have my permission to speak."

Draco fumed at the word "permission," but knew that it would never do to show her he was fuming. That would only let her win the contest. He sat up straight and began to recite the facts about Harry's necromancy and how he had discovered that Aran was one of Nihil's constructs and how he feared torture more than death.

The room was silent as he spoke. Davidson leaned forwards. Coronante raised her eyebrows. Portillo Lopez didn't move and didn't act as though she wanted to. Holder would sometimes glide a step closer, and sometimes lift a hand as though tracing her burn scar would give their words more weight.

Robards watched everyone with the same neutral, half-interested gaze, and Draco realized, halfway through the recitation, that he was addressing most of his words to him. He tried to stop. He knew that trick. It was one that Lucius had sometimes used to make Draco confess to more mischief than he wanted to.

Knowing about it didn't make it stop working. Robards might have been an undertow, pulling all of Draco's attention and words towards him. Draco eventually gave up and simply chose his words with care. He wanted to impress without making himself and Harry seem as hapless as they'd often been.

Then he spoke about the imbalance of life and death in the world, the unicorn ghosts, and the shadow of his father. Holder let her teeth click together when he finished, and Draco tried to ignore the sensation that she'd just severed a thread of his life or fate.

"An interesting tale," Holder said when they had finished. "And while I am less inclined to believe one half, the other would explain much." She abruptly faced Harry and gestured with her wand. "Veritas!"

Harry's back arched and he cried out in a muffled voice as Holder's spell hit him. Draco reached for him, but an invisible barrier held his hands back. He could only watch while a dark star flared in the center of Harry's chest and spread out to encompass his limbs, turning them transparent along the way.

What replaced his skin was the appearance of parchment scrawled with words—words that would describe his magical ability, Draco knew. There were words he could just make out about the compatible magic, and Harry's skill with Defensive magic. And yes, there was the word necromancy in the center of Harry's forehead.

There was also a reference to visions that Draco didn't understand, and return. Draco clenched his hands into fists and fought his anger. Holder would win if she saw him enraged. Draco settled for a cool stare at her instead, as if the words being written across Harry were of no interest to him.

He knew this spell. He knew it hurt. And Holder hadn't even given Harry the chance to agree with it of his own free will.

Holder returned Draco's gaze with a faint smile. Draco knew she was Robards's second-in-command, yes, and also his disciplinarian. Rumor said she couldn't be corrupted, that she was fanatically loyal.

But that didn't mean she couldn't be hurt or damaged.

Holder stepped back when the spell finished and turned to speak with Robards. Harry didn't hear what she was saying at first. His heart was beating too fast and he seemed to be taking two breaths where he only meant to take one. He reached out and clasped Draco's wrist.

Draco rubbed his arm and whispered promises of vengeance. Harry listened with a grateful ear and fought through the temporary deafness that had overtaken him so he could hear what Holder was saying.

"…and a small but persistent gift of necromancy that seems activated with Parseltongue," Holder finished. She gave Harry a glance that had no mercy in it and added, "He is also carrying a powerful weapon that seems aimed at the destruction of the dead."

"That was a gift from me," Portillo Lopez said, and rose smoothly to her feet as she came around the table to retrieve it.

Harry stared up at her. Draco had kept any mention of her Order out of his story, and he was so good at lying that Harry, at least, hadn't noticed any holes. Why would she be willing to expose herself now, when she could potentially get away with no trouble?

Portillo Lopez put her hand on his shoulder and said, so lowly that Harry saw Draco lean over to hear, "You have offered me more hope than I have known since joining the Order. Necromancy might be able to be used as a weapon." She reached out and pulled the ivory wand from Harry's pocket. "And if there is an imbalance of forces of life and death in the world, perhaps mastering the forces of life and change on a greater scale than we have yet done can provide the means to correct it."

Harry gaped,, and tried not to make it too obvious, as Portillo Lopez returned to her seat. No one had objected to her claim that she had lent the weapon to Harry. She seemed to have some kind of power here. Harry wondered if it was because she was the only Battle Healer in the tent, or something else.

"You wanted relevance, Trainee Malfoy," Robards told Draco. "You wanted power. You shall have more of either than you could have desired."

Doubt flared across Draco's face, and Harry knew why. Draco wanted a lot of power, and it wasn't as though he would be contented with whatever scraps Holder and Robards would toss them.

"You will be placed at the center of a study program." Robards leaned forwards. "You have uncovered the only solid weapons we have against Nihil. Trainee Potter, you will work with us to use the necromancy as an even greater weapon, and to teach it to others if you can. Trainee Malfoy, you will help us discover acceptable techniques of torture that may be used to unmask Nihil's spies."

For some reason, Draco's face turned white and rigid. "We will still be partners," he said.

Robards started to answer, but Portillo Lopez interrupted. "Their compatible magic is too great an advantage to be surrendered," she murmured. "I suggest continuing their extra lessons with Lowell and Weston as well as their new training."

Harry didn't need Draco to interpret the heated glare that Holder sent towards Portillo Lopez. There was a power struggle going on between the two women, and it seemed that neither of them wanted to back down. Portillo Lopez, though, ignored her rival more successfully than Holder did, gazing at the ivory wand in her hands as if it was the center of all her contemplations right now.

"You will remain partners," Robards said. "Next time, Trainee Malfoy, may I suggest that you make your requests in a less demanding tone?"

Draco apologized with humility and grace; you had to be holding his hand, Harry thought, to realize how false it all was. Then they were dismissed from the tent and told to find their friends, since the tent where he and Draco would stay was near them.

Draco shook his head, blinked in the sunlight, and murmured out of the corner of his mouth, "I'm not sure that the camp won't be more dangerous to us than Nihil was. Holder especially."

"Well, they believed us," Harry said, trying to think of good things he could say about the last hour. "And that means they won't be dismissing us from the Auror program as traitors or imprisoning me for necromancy.'

"They hurt you."

Harry winced at Draco's measured tone, and the long, slow look he gave Harry. It was probably useless to try and discourage Draco's revenge. He would only nod and smile and then try to have it behind Harry's back.

In the meantime, he had to admit that he was angry about Holder's spell himself.

"With my magic and your cleverness," he said, "I'm sure that we can turn the circumstances to our advantage."

Draco smiled, but what he would have said was lost in a chorus of excited cries.

"Harry! Malfoy!" Hermione was sprinting towards them, with Ron right behind her, his face flushed.

As Harry held out his arms to embrace his friends, and felt Draco squeeze his shoulder possessively, he could have sworn he felt a pair of cold eyes on his back. Holder was probably watching them from the flap of the tent.

We're going to survive this, he thought. We have to. And Nihil is more of a challenge than Robards's hunting hound.

Hermione's arms closed around him, solid and warm. Ron's followed a moment later.

And from beside him, Draco sent a flood of compatible magic, compelling and cool and powerful.

The End.