Veniam Dare

Wanna spit out these grating emotions of mine because
There's no other proof of my existence
My future I thought I'd grasped
Is a contradiction between dignity and freedom

Wanna erase these distorted afterimages because
They show my limitations
In the window of my excessive self-consciousness,
There are no dates in last year's calendar

Erase and rewrite
Worthless, wild illusions

-Rewrite, Asian Kung-Fu Generation (Japanese lyrics)

*~*~*

Veniam Dare Chapter 3: The Escape Into Danger

As Harry and Draco neared the castle, their sense that something was slightly off increased. The castle grounds, normally crowded with students on a warm late spring afternoon such as this, were a deserted wasteland. Hagrid's cabin lay in ashes, and much of the surrounding ground was scorched bare. The castle itself was dark and seemingly empty.

One sentence repeated itself over and over in Harry's head as he walked. "This is all Draco's fault. This is all Draco's fault. He planned it, he executed it... this is all Draco's fault." And yet, Harry found himself unable to be angry with Draco. Draco's own panicked words from atop of the Astronomy Tower also played through his thoughts. "I've got to do it. He'll kill me. He'll kill my whole family!"

Harry couldn't help but think that, if he had had a family, he would've joined up with Voldemort to save them too.

In Draco's head, a similar series of words was swirling. "This is all my fault. I planned this...I did this...This is all my fault..." he thought over and over again, despite his best attempts to suck up his guilt. Whatever horrors lay inside the school, they were the manifestation of his mistakes, and no one else's. Well, perhaps they could've been Dumbledore's. Draco just knew the senile old man could've used his supposed great magic to do something.

The pair reached the steps leading up to the main doors.

"Well," Harry finally said after several seconds, taking a deep breath, "let's go."

Draco nodded, and they began the climb the stairs.

Upon reaching the top step, Harry asked, "Do you think the door's locked?"

Draco shook his head, and made a rather valiant attempt at rolling his eyes exasperatedly. "Use your head, Potter. If the outside gate wasn't locked, the doors probably aren't."

Harry nodded, likewise making a valiant attempt at ignoring the snarky tone, and put a hand on the metal latch of the door, warily pulling it open. It gave without much force.

Both boys paused before entering the opened doors. Neither was really sure they wanted to know what had happened at the castle after their hasty exit the night before.

"I suppose we should go in," Harry said shakily, after a few moments.

Once again, Draco nodded, and they walked into the school, very afraid of what they might see.

The first thing Draco noticed upon entering was the absolute normalcy of the entrance hall. There was nothing at all out of place, except the lack of students and faculty. "Well, that was rather anticlimactic," he sighed, letting out the breath he had been holding since Hogsmeade.

Harry, however, was not so easily relieved. "We're only in the entrance hall, Malfoy," he said, annoyed.

Draco sneered. "Potter, if you--" Before Draco could finish his witty retort, however, a series of loud thumps from atop the staircase leading out from the entrance hall cut him off.

"Someone's coming!" Draco exclaimed a little too loudly, obviously excited at the prospect of a person still in the castle.

At this, the footsteps abruptly halted. "Somebody down there?" a deep, gruff voice shouted from just out of sight. Apparently they had heard Draco.

Draco was about to reply when Harry clapped a hand over his mouth in the exact same way he had the day before. Draco thought of protesting this with a sharp bite to Harry's hand, but was suddenly distracted as the figure came into view at the top of the stairs.

"Oh, shit," was all he could think to say as he immediately recognized the Death Eater regalia.

A split second later, Harry had moved the hand covering Draco's mouth to his arm, and was now pulling him along by it as he sprinted through the corridors. The pair quickly ducked into a classroom and slammed the door behind themselves, as Harry muttered a locking spell.

"Nice... going...Malfoy," Harry said scathingly, although it was punctuated rather oddly as he was still trying to catch his breath.

Draco sneered. "It's you who dragged me to this bloody castle, Potter."

"Actually, I think it was you who insisted on coming. And you who had to go and shout at the Death Eater like a great big git!"

"Well, I did assume that our favorite imbecilic old wizard, Dumbledore, would have cleaned the place up, or at least evicted the Death Eaters." Draco's voice was laced with contempt for Dumbledore, despite the debt he owed him.

Harry heard it clearly. "Don't you dare speak that way, when he saved your sorry Malfoy arse! If it had been me, I'd have thrown you back to Voldemort and left you to your just deserts!" Harry hissed.

Draco sniffed haughtily, suddenly reminded of his burning guilt, which put him out of his quarrelsome mood. "Shouldn't you be doing something more productive than arguing with me? Any moment, Naylor is going to rush in here and have our heads, probably literally."

Harry looked annoyed for a moment before deciding that it actually was rather counterproductive to stand there arguing. "Well, do you have any ideas as to how to get out of this situation, seeing as you got us into it?"

Looking smug, Draco pointed to the window on the other side of the deserted classroom. "We're still on the ground floor, right?"

Catching on, Harry nodded, and they both walked briskly over to the window to investigate. Sure enough, it led straight outside.

"Alright," Harry finally said, and then, harshening his tone, "Reducto!"

The window shattered into a thousand pieces by the force of the blast, and Harry jumped through, shards still raining down and catching the afternoon light. Draco couldn't help but stare, mesmerized at they way they shone, blue from the sky and silver from the light's glare. He especially admired the way that the pieces sprinkled in Harry's hair sparkled with such intensity against the black.

He was thrown out of his reverie when somebody, presumably their pursuing Death Eater, pounded on the classroom door behind him. Wasting no more time with foolishness, Draco followed Harry through the broken window, and began to run down the path that led to the main gate they had entered only minutes before.

Draco found himself wishing he had taken Quidditch more seriously this past year. He was thoroughly winded by the time the gates came in to sight, while Harry appeared only mildly tired. Not to be beat out by Potter, though, he made a point of running faster than him as they neared the gates.

Also as they neared the gates, Draco began to notice that something was slightly off. The magic in the air had changed faintly since their arrival.

Harry and Draco ran the last few meters toward the gateway, and then Harry shot out a hand to pull one of the gates open. It didn't give, however.

"What...What the fuck?" Harry panted, out of breath from their mad dash.

Draco also threw his weight on the gate, but it didn't budge. "Aperire!" he shouted, repeating the spell he had cast earlier to open the door to the Shrieking Shack.

The gate still didn't open, and Harry began to look around frantically. Their pursuing Death Eater was quickly gaining on them, the entire situation a twisted parody of their earlier escape from the Death Eater at the Shack.

"Malfoy, can you Apparate yet?" Harry asked, suddenly turning towards him.

Draco would have snorted had he not been so worried at their current situation. "Of course I can, Potter!"

Harry didn't even nod in response, simply grabbing Draco's arm and forcing them into the strange, suffocating darkness of Apparition.

Immediately, Harry found himself bouncing back onto Hogwarts' grounds, their position completely unchanged. "Wuh..What?" Harry stammered, disoriented after his failed Apparition.

Draco quickly pulled his arm away from Harry's hands. "What kind of a fuckwit would try to Apparate on school grounds! Even someone of your mental capacity should know that there are wards to stop that sort of thing, Potter!" Draco shouted, glancing tensely at approaching Death Eater.

Harry ignored the comment, mind racing frantically. The wards must have been put back up in the time between our entrance and now. But only Dumbledore can control the wards, right? So why would Dumbledore put them back up...

"I think it's your turn to propose an escape plan, Potter," Malfoy said, poorly veiling the desperation in his voice. The Death Eater was speedily nearing them.

Harry actually had absolutely no idea what to do, all he knew was that he couldn't give up. He would die fighting until the last.

This thought propelled him to once again grab Draco by the arm, tugging him away from the gate and back onto the grounds.

Draco cast another worried glance at the Death Eater. "Potter, what the bloody hell are you doing!"

Harry didn't waste his breath. "Forbidden Forest," he muttered. They had now sped up to an all-out run.

At this, however, Draco stopped dead. "The Forbidden Forest! Are you mad, Potter! We'll be killed! Eaten alive!" he sputtered.

Unfazed, Harry refused to stop his flight, and only tugged Draco more forcefully. "Look, we can't Apparate because the wards are up, which means we couldn't fly out either, even if we happened to have brooms. The gate is locked, too, and it's almost a certainty that the Floo network will have been cut off. Plus, a Death Eater is hot on our trail," Harry said, his voice remaining completely calm. "You wanted me to come up with an escape plan, and this is it."

Draco looked completely incredulous, but couldn't find the words to argue with. What Harry had said was true, and entering the Forbidden Forest would certainly lose the Death Eater, who would probably not venture after them. "You know, Potter, the purpose of an escape plan is usually to escape alive. I'm not quite sure that running straight into the thick of the Forbidden Forest is going to help accomplish that." His usual snark was absent, however. Apparently the direness of the situation had made Draco a bit more compassionate. And a bit more likely to follow Harry's orders and run for his bloody life, as he was now doing.

Every few paces, Draco sent a nervous glance back at the Death Eater, who had increased his pace to match theirs, and was less than a hundred meters away. Harry, however, kept his eyes glued to the forest, now only a few hundred meters off.

"Potter, can we hurry...hurry it up...a little..." Draco panted between breaths. "He's...gaining..."

Harry obediently put on a burst of speed, still refusing to look back at the Death Eater.

Draco was having extreme problems keeping up, but would've rather burned in hell than admitted it to his present company. He cast a look back again at the pursuing man, and was struck by how odd it felt to be chased by one of his own. Only yesterday he had been of the Death Eater ranks himself.

Suddenly the glance backwards turned from anxious to longing. The Death Eaters had preserved the stability he'd been accustomed to since childhood, the kind of stability that having a father in Azkaban would otherwise corrupt. In this way, he owed them a debt. Not that he would have ever willingly killed his ex-school's headmaster without their coaxing, but they had at least brought out a potential he never knew he had. To be able to plan something so intricate as that...he'd never known he could.

Still, he had to run on. Even if it was with someone he loathed as much as Harry Potter.

At that moment, they reached the heavy shade of the ancient trees of the Forbidden Forest. Harry continued to run, though, and still hadn't let go of Draco's arm. Finally, he looked back at the man following them, gauging the distance separating them.

"Quick, Malfoy, over here," he hissed, pulling Draco sharply to the left.

Behind them, Draco made out the loud, angry curses of the Death Eater, who appeared to have stopped tailing them at the fringe of the forest.

They crashed through the undergrowth for an indeterminate amount of time before Malfoy panted out, feeling as if he would collapse any moment, "Potter...stop, dammit!"

Harry finally stopped, and Draco actually did collapse, pulling the still clinging Harry along with him.

They landed in a heap on a soft bed of leaf and loam, both sweating and breathing heavily from their long getaway. When Harry came back to his sense, he found that one arm was wound around Draco's back, who was lying across his chest. He was even more disconcerted to notice that Draco's knee had somehow worked its way between Harry's thighs.

Somewhere, he must have had a bit of reserve strength left in his body, because he was able to push Draco off of him in a flash, rather too violently. Draco, however, had no such strength remaining, and merely lay limply on the spot of ground where Harry had thrown him.

Seeing Draco so helplessly exhausted, Harry couldn't help but feel a little ashamed of his sudden action. "Sorry..." he muttered awkwardly, blushing ever so slightly.

Draco didn't notice, and instead lay exhaustedly on the ground, wishing never to move again. Just about every muscle in his body burned with an unrivalled passion, and not in a good way. Closing his eyes, he let his head fall back. "Shut up, Potter. Your little traipse through the forest has caused me enough trouble already."

Harry sighed wearily, and flopped to the ground. "It's not exactly safe to sleep, completely unprotected, in the Forbidden Forest, you know. It's forbidden for a rather good reason."

Draco's sneer was evident in his voice, although much of the bite was gone, replaced instead with fatigue. "Really, Potter, that must have somehow slipped my mind," he said sarcastically.

Harry let a brief smile flit across his lips. "I'll just take that as a plea for my warding expertise, and cast a protection spell, then," he said, surprised at his own tolerance of Malfoy so far. A sarcastic comment like that would have usually resulted in a duel.

Harry spelled a few quick warding and shielding charms, defending them from the most common forest-lurkers, although they would do nothing against any exceptionally unusual or dangerous creature. Harry would just have to rely on his own instincts for that, which he wasn't entirely confident in.

His weariness finally catching up with him, Harry collapsed onto the ground, breathing a sigh of exhaustion and relief at the relative safety he was in for the first time that day. He was asleep almost immediately.

*~*~*

Harry woke up with a jolt a few short hours later, confronted with the true darkness of the forbidden forest at night. One of his warding charms was emitting a low whistle of warning. Sitting up quickly, Harry cast lumos and scanned the forest floor for any sign of Draco. He was nowhere in sight.

"Malfoy?" Harry called hesitantly, pulling himself to his feet and dusting wayward leaves off his cloak. Whatever had set off the wards obviously wasn't much of a threat, since the whistle was very low and relaxed, but it was still not a good idea for Draco to be off wandering alone at night in the Forbidden Forest.

Harry was seized with worry. Had this all been some plot of Draco's, to lure him into the deep of the Forbidden Forest and then leave him there for dead? Worse yet, could Draco leave him to be devoured by a dark creature? Or, Harry thought darkly, could he have led me straight to Voldemort himself? Even if Draco claimed to not yet be a Death Eater, it didn't mean his alignment was completely set with that of the Light, either.

As Harry's suddenly panicked mind raced through the possibilities, a memory strutted unbidden into his thoughts. 'Shouldn't you be doing something more productive than arguing with me?,' he remembered Draco saying, back in the empty classroom at Hogwarts, while they were still running from the pursuing Death Eater. 'Any moment, Naylor is going to rush in here and have our heads, probably literally.'

A slow horror, deeper and darker than the previous panic, engulfed Harry's mind. Naylor. Draco had said Naylor when referring to the Death Eater. He had known the Death Eater's name.

They're probably allies, still, Harry thought frantically. Draco's failed assassination attempt was probably just part of a greater plot, to lure us all away from Hogwarts and into further danger. And now, I'm lost and alone in the Forbidden Forest, and only Draco Malfoy, the supposed Death Eater, knows my location.

At that moment, Harry heard the crunch of stick and leaves behind him, and swing around to face the incoming creature. Without his realizing it, the buzzing of the wards had gotten louder. "Expelliarmus!" Harry shouted, not hesitating enough to see the face of the approaching figure. It flew backwards and slammed into a nearby tree, groaning in pain.

"Potter, what the hell are you doing!" came the unmistakable Malfoy drawl from the form, now doubled up against the tree he had been blasted into.

"Malfoy," Harry growled, all at once relieved that it wasn't some dark creature of the forest but furious that Malfoy even dare come back to camp after what he had surely done.

Draco, who had just started to regain his balance and walk away from the tree, immediately backed into it again. The magical power was radiating off of Harry in waves, and he had good reason to be afraid.

"Malfoy," Harry said again, low and menacing, "where the fuck were you?"

Draco, back now firmly pressed against the tree, felt a little comforted by the strong, solid bark against his back. He also refused to be intimidated by his long time enemy, and tried to make his voice powerful enough so it seemed that he actually wasn't. "I don't think that's any of your business, Potter. It was you who attacked me, anyway, and I think I therefore deserve more of an explanation."

"You deserve an explanation my arse!" Harry shouted in anger, striding up to Draco, wand still poised to cast an offensive spell. "You've known all along, Malfoy. You knew that the Death Eater would be in Hogwarts, didn't you? You knew that the wards would be put back up and we would have nowhere to run but the Forbidden Forest, where you could easily turn me over to your precious Dark Lord!

"You knew that it would all turn out like this. In fact, you probably put up the wards yourself, while I was distracted with trying to get away from the Death Eater, Naylor," Harry accused, putting sarcastic weight on the Death Eater's name.

Draco looked completely flustered, although just as venomous as always. "Think, Potter! How could I, a mere sliver of your precious Dumbledore's age and might, put up the wards, while I was running for my life, nonetheless!" he shouted back at Harry.

Harry, however, was undeterred. "I know you did it. Why else would you have asked to come with me, back at Grimmauld Place? Why else would you, the biggest coward in the Wizarding world, beg to be brought into known danger, unless you were on a mission from your master? Answer me that, Malfoy," he hissed, face only inches away from Draco's.

Malfoy glared back for a moment before answering. "I don't know myself, Potter. Or is that answer not acceptable to your majesty, the mighty giver-of-all-judgments?" he spat.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Harry retorted belligerently.

Malfoy smirked. "It means you're a hypocrite, who hates when people judge but has already placed judgment on others. It means you've deemed yourself worthy to judge me guilty of crimes I was already cleared of, and certainly did not commit. It means you're a paranoid fuck who can't get his head out of his arse and realize that we're in this together, because I would certainly not willingly seek refuge in the Forbidden Forest, whether on orders or not. And, if you recall, it was your idea to come here anyway."

Harry's anger dissipated slightly, as the truth in Draco's words penetrated his mind, but he was still not entirely convinced. "Then how did you know the Death Eater's name at Hogwarts?" he asked suspiciously, still not backing down.

Draco sighed, and then spoke as he would to a dim child. "Potter, my father was in the Dark Lord's inner circle. I've grown up around these people. Not to mention that I did indeed work with them for most of last year."

Harry was about to say something more when he suddenly realized how close he and Draco were, their noses almost touching. He also realized that he could feel Draco's breath, hot from the heat of their argument, ghosting across his cheek. Something about this felt shamelessly erotic to Harry, and he instantly backed away, blushing.

Draco also seemed to have noticed their position, for he did not offer a contemptuous comment to break the awkward silence that had befallen the pair.

"We should, um, get going, I guess," Harry finally mumbled, ending the warding charms he had set up.

"Like we even know where we're going," Draco said sarcastically.

"Well," Harry replied, voice a little shaky from their argument, "all we can really do is go forward. The forest has to end somewhere, right?"

Draco nodded and started walking, but didn't speak. Harry was slightly abashed at his outbursts, but refused to apologize. His claims had been well founded, or at least he thought so.

After about an hour of walking in silence, though, Harry wasn't quite so keen on not speaking. He had been thinking the entire walk, and still had some questions for Malfoy. He decided that this time he'd take a more tactful approach.

"Malfoy," Harry finally asked with faked nonchalance, "how come you decided to turn against the Death Eaters? I mean, I can obviously see why, since they're a load of slimy, evil scum with backwards ideals, but I thought that all that was what you wanted to believe in."

Draco was silent for a few moments before answering. "I don't know," he finally replied, also with forced insouciance, waving his hand in a dismissive gesture. "My father was in Azkaban and my mother was all alone. I did what I had to, to try and keep her safe. Isn't that what perfect sons are supposed to do?" he said with a demeaning sneer at Harry.

Harry, not taking the bait, replied calmly, "I wouldn't know."

Draco mentally slapped himself. Of course Harry wouldn't know, being an orphan. He felt a slight pang of guilt, which caused him to blanch. A pang of guilt, for Potter? He was clearly losing his mind. Which, he decided, was a far better fate than actually identifying with the bane of his school years.

After several minutes of awkward silence, Malfoy spoke again, condescending air fully in place. "I was just sick of it all. Like I said, I did what I had to be done to keep Mother safe. The Dark Lord offered me protection at first, after my father was imprisoned. There was never any reason for me not to join the Death Eaters; we have concurrent beliefs, and I always wished to follow my father. But then the Dark Lord became the threat to my mother, and my father. He threatened to kill them. And, I suppose, I still had to do what I had to do to keep Mother, at least, unharmed."

Harry looked quite openly astonished. "You mean you, Draco Malfoy, actually have a redeeming quality somewhere?" Perhaps his earlier notion on this topic hadn't been quite as far-fetched as he had thought.

Draco sniffed disdainfully. "Loyalty to the family over loyalty to the cause, Potter, even when the cause is as important as the Dark Lord's."

The tips of Harry's mouth scrunched slightly into a frown. "So you still believe in the righteousness of Voldemort's cause? Of murdering innocent people, simply over their heritage?"

After shuddering a little at the mention of his former lord's name, Draco answered confidently. "Absolutely."

Harry shook his head sadly, frown still sitting on his face. "How can you, Malfoy? Even after all the Death Eaters have done to you, have made you do? They threatened your family for gods' sakes! And what the hell does it matter how pure someone's blood is, when you can look at their heart or their character and get a much better picture of who they are?"

Narrowing his eyes, Draco replied scathingly, "Unless I'm quite mistaken, I don't recall this being Question Draco Day, Potter. I believe what I believe, and that is not for you, Golden Boy, to question. Mudbloods and Muggles deserve what they get, anyway."

Harry stiffened. "I can't believe you. I really can't. How can anybody deserve death and torture?" Harry's voice had started to shake in barely controlled anger. Although Malfoy's prior words had caused a small glimmer of hope in Harry that Draco couldn't be entirely awful, this was clearly the Malfoy that he had known all along. Even the most rotten apples have a spot or two not entirely devoured by worms, Harry thought bitterly.

"You don't have to believe me, Potter," Draco replied, nonplussed.

Harry clenched his teeth, but didn't respond, instead venting his frustration by crashing loudly and violently through the trees.

Draco, conversely, suddenly halted, standing stock-still, head cocked to the side. "Potter, do you hear that?" he asked, voice hushed.

Harry, still annoyed, swung around. "Hear what, Malfoy?" he snarled. Then, however, he too froze mid-step. "Is someone...something...out there?" he said, voice now a whisper. There were most definitely crunching sounds emanating from nearby, as if a beast was stomping through the forest, much like Harry had been moments earlier.

They both stood in silence, listening intently to the noises, trying to discern where exactly they were coming from. Harry turned around in a slow circle, scanning the area, but the trees were far too thickly laden with leaves, and the ground level far too shaded, for anything to be easily seen.

"Shit," Harry whispered, barely daring to breath, "they're getting closer."

Draco's heart was pounding wildly as he frantically searched the forest for any sign of where the movement could be coming from, but all was dark and still as far as he could see. He glanced over at Harry, who had drawn his wand. Fumbling a little as he fished it out of his pocket, Draco did likewise.

Just as quickly as the mysterious beast's noises had begun, they stopped. For a moment, the forest seemed to stand still, the air leaden with suspense and quiet. The seconds of total silence dragged on, the dark trees seeming to press in on the two boys, making to trap and suffocate Harry and Draco in their thick foliage.

The hush finally reached its peak, and Draco, adrenaline rushing through his veins, could no longer take it. He let out a slow, controlled breath, gaining confidence as nothing seemed to happen.

"False alarm?" he asked in Harry's direction, very, very quietly.

Harry looked about to response, mouth open, when any words of his were drowned out by a horrifically ear-splitting screech, right behind them. Both Harry and Draco spun around wildly, eyes wide and faces ashen, only to be greeted by a row of razor-sharp teeth, stained red from some liquid Harry refused to contemplate.

"I don't think so, somehow," Harry muttered in response to Draco's question, eyes transfixed by the teeth only inches from his face.

*~*~*