White Horses

Jackie Stevens

Story Summary:
[COMPLETE] They say that there are no white horses - those that we think of as white are really just a faded and deceiving grey. Names can be misleading, and definitions can be false, and yet through the maze of artifice and deceit, we might just find something true. When Harry returns for his last two years at Hogwarts School, he will find that boundaries are shifting and not everyone is who he thought - including himself. He will have to learn that change is like those elusive white horses: swift, beautiful and irretrievable.

Chapter 38

Chapter Summary:
The funeral and many restless ghosts.
Posted:
07/01/2005
Hits:
4,321

TUESDAY AFTERNOON FOUND HERMIONE AND Ron fighting about the American university idea again, though there was one major difference in today's argument: it wasn't just about Hermione.

They were walking back to the Tower, after dinner had finished in the Great Hall. Ron was striding stiffly ahead of his girlfriend as he ground out, between painfully clenched teeth, "You had no right to apply for him."

Hermione frowned at her boyfriend's back and directed her reply at his thick skull, covered with flaming ginger hair, "Oh, now you're concerned for Harry? That's rich, after you practically told me we ought to abandon him at his lowest. Besides, I didn't apply for him. I just asked him and he agreed."

"Why the hell did you go and do that? It's not like you ever asked me to go."

She imagined tackling the tall prefect for a moment, enjoying the thought of knocking his hard head into the ground. "Ron! There was no reason to ask you to go."

The boy walked even faster as he snapped, "What, because my marks aren't as good as you and Harry's?"

"No. Because you aren't trying to escape from the Wizarding world, you prat!"

Ron stopped and turned partly around to look at the Head Girl, "What?"

Hermione shook her head in frank amazement, "Haven't you listened to anything I've said? This isn't a place like Hogwarts that Harry's applied to - it's a Muggle school." She stared seriously up into Ron's blue eyes, "Harry is leaving the Wizarding world."

Ron repeated stupidly, "What?"

"Come on," Hermione sighed in exasperation. "Let's go to the Prefect's lounge and I'll explain it all again."



WEDNESDAY MORNING, DRACO DRESSED IN his finest black robes and walked out of Hogwarts' bounds. Once he passed the front gate of the school, he turned onto the well-worn path, which lead its wending way to Hogsmeade. He had reservations for the 7:30 a.m. train to London, and from there... he was going home.

He wasn't sure if he could still call the manor his home, but it had been for years. All through his childhood, he'd never imagined himself anywhere else. Even at the worse times - when his father would make him study horrifying Dark magic, when his mother would treat him to one of her 'punishments' - he had known that the ancestoral manor was his home. But now, with both his mother and father gone...

Was it his parents' absence, he wondered as the kilometres flew by the train's window, that made the manor seem so unwelcoming? Or was it his betrayal of them - tantamount to the betrayal of his whole line?

Or was it that summer with Potter, in a Muggle town that felt more like 'home' than that echoing, old manor ever has?

Draco bit down on the inside of his lip until the acrid taste of blood sprang into his mouth. He had to remind himself fiercely, It doesn't matter how 'homey' that summer may have seemed. See how quickly everything went to pieces once we were back in our real lives? It would never have worked.



HARRY HESITATED, NEARLY PICKING UP the note he had left on Hermione's desk to discard it. Looking at his own sharp handwriting, he tried to convince himself that what it said was true:

Hermione-

Thanks for letting me crash in your room for so long, but I think I need to get out for a bit. I'm going down to Hagrid's, if you need me.

-H

That's right, he thought as he left the note on the book-laden desk, I need to get out for a bit. But Harry was unspeakably frightened to leave the Head Girl's room. He didn't know what sort of reactions he would face out there and as he imagined meeting his schoolmates, he wished desperately for his dad's old Invisibility cloak. He could go get it from Malfoy, but the Head Boy was of course the person he wanted least to meet.

He pushed himself up from the chair, silently groaning at the weak feeling that had invaded all his limbs. Ever since the boggart incident and his magical dehydration, he just hadn't felt right. He was physically tired all the time and his body felt so weak that it sometimes seemed impossible just to get up out of his bed in the morning. Of course, not eating anything for the last five days hadn't seemed to help this feeling.

As he walked slowly out the door, closing it reluctantly behind himself, Harry thought back enviously to his old quidditch days. For the last several years, he'd been in the best shape of his life - strong and energetic, thanks to constant quidditch practices and an abundance of healthy food. Now he felt as weak as he'd been when he'd first come to Hogwarts, half-starved and scrawny.

He eased himself slowly down the stairs, leaning heavily on the wall and walking so slowly in part because of his fatigue and in part because of his dread. Making it through the common room wasn't nearly as bad as he'd expected, though. Harry had forgotten that it was a weekday and so almost all the other students were in class for these morning hours. Heaving a truly-felt sigh of relief, he ignored the couple Gryffindor present and went on his way, trying not to imagine their hostile, curious eyes on his back.



DRACO WALKED THROUGH WEST AMESBURY, the dusty little Wiltshire town on whose outskirts lay Malfoy manor, and ignored the surprised looks of the inhabitants who recognized him. Not that many did - what with his short hair and glasses - but those who did quickly nudged their neighbours to point him out.

No one seemed sure how to respond. He was the snotty boy who had terrorized them as a child - but was here for the funeral of his prematurely deceased mother. He was the new Lord Malfoy and as such held sway over their lives - but he was the oft-slandered retrobate that the papers were always insulting. Faced with his unprecedented question of etiquette, the townspeople simply stared silently as he passed, and whispered furiously in his wake.



THIS IS WORSE THAN I thought," Harry muttered tiredly as he sat on the stairs to the courtyard, beneath the great clock tower. He'd had to stop and take a break, because just the walk from Gryffindor Tower to the school's first floor had left him shaking and out of breath. "I suppose I really did need to get out," he continued darkly, as he listened to the heavy hands of the clocks click and whir, "if my condition is this bad."

He lay down on one of the wide stairs, practically asking for someone to come tread upon him, but all the students were still in classes. He toyed with the idea of giving up, but the hike back up six flights of stairs seemed much worse than staggering his way across the bridge and down the hill to Hagrid's. Grimacing at the black spots that danced in his vision, he forced himself upright again and, after only a few moments of swaying on the edge of collapse, started off again.



DRACO STOOD AT THE END of the long drive that led to Malfoy Manor. He'd been standing there for several minutes already, staring unsurely at the house which now belonged to him, as the new Lord Malfoy. It was a handsome building, if nothing else.

When the first Malfoys had come across the Channel some four hundred years ago, they had seized (quite forcefully) this prime bit of Wizarding real-estate and set up a modest thirty-room chateau. The locals called the rise which the chateau was situated on Coneybury Hill and from its crest one could see not only the ancient towns of Amesbury and West Amesbury, but all of Salisbury Plain stretched out into the distance, only interrupted by the humps of the barrows and the great Stonehenge itself. Subsequent generations of Malfoys had expanded the chateau - though in an organized fashion, not like some disgraceful, ill-respecting, ginger families - so that it now contained over a hundred rooms in its additional two wings, as well as a stable, a menagerie, a whole row of sparkling greenhouses, and the finest gardens in this half of England.

The last Malfoy continued to stare at the imposing buildings, all made of the same cold bluestone as the outer sarsen circle of the Henge. Turning away from nearly five hundred years of his families work and pride, he strode off across the grounds. He overlooked the carefully raked paths of white stones - surely imported for some horrible amount of money - and strode brazenly over the velvety grass instead. He ducked through childhood paths which weaved in between award-winning lilies and exclusively bred roses, until he arrived just on the outside of the stone wall enclosing the family graveyard.

He could hear a brief murmur of voices inside that thick wall and realized his guests must have arrived before him. Taking one last deep breath before facing their scrutiny, he turned toward the gates and walked in.

Standing in nearly the middle of the wide field were Andromeda and Nymphadore Tonks. The two women looked up when they heard the gates screech open, heralding his arrival. They were standing beside the newest addition to the graveyard, a plot of freshly turned dirt which was being watched over by an unsettling marble angel who shared his mother's face and her cold eyes, strangely at odds with the figure's protective stance.

Draco realized immediately just where the grave had been placed, though he couldn't say who arranged it. Next to his mother's grave was a tiny, undecorated headstone. It had no name or date engraved on it and simply read, "My baby, forever loved." On the other side of his brother's grave was the only empty spot left in that section of the graveyard, which was clearly meant for his father someday. There was no space for Draco in his family.

Had they contacted his father? It seemed like something he would order.

Realizing he had been staring silently at the tiny grave of his twin brother, he turned his attention back to the Tonks women, saying, "Please excuse me, I'm not quite myself." He gestured to the new grave, which he certainly knew held no body, "Shall we get started?"

Nymphadora continued to watch him warily, while her mother asked, "Shouldn't we wait for the others?"

Draco shook his head and explained calmly, "There are no others coming. I am the only surviving Malfoy, and you two are the only relatives of the house of Black who will be coming. I only invited you out of respect." He nodded to Andromeda, "She was your sister after all, as well as my mother. Otherwise I would have done this alone."

Both of the women started ever so slightly when Draco described Narcissa as his mother. Of course she was the boy's mother - but when one met Draco, so independent and frigid, it was hard to imagine him ever being a child, being cared for by a mother.

Nymphadora, known simply as 'Tonks' to anyone who knew her, stepped closer to her own mother as she glared at her cousin. Their small family of three people was incredibly close, since both mother and daughter had been disowned by the Blacks, and even as an adult, she shuddered at the thought of losing her mother. How could the Malfoy boy be so cold about it? Heartless little rotter.

"I should perhaps explain," Draco started as he looked down at the plot. It would contain personal effects and other mementos to help draw the woman's spirit. "By marrying into the Malfoys, my mother became completely one of us. That meant that she would not only be buried in the family graveyard, but that she would have a proper Wizarding funeral, when the time came. As such, I will be performing the Sending."

Andromeda sucked in her breath sharply, while her daughter looked disgruntled. Tonks demanded, "What the hell is a 'sending'? I've never even heard of it, and as an auror, I've heard of most things."

Her mother responded in familiarly reproving tone, "No, you never were one for history. A Sending is an antiquated - even ancient - Wizarding ritual. I've only heard of it because the Blacks are an old enough family to have records of such things... but it supposedly went out of practice hundreds of years ago. It's assumed that no one even knows how to do it any longer."

Draco took a velvety soft cloth from his pocket, then removed his glasses to clean them meticulously. It was becoming a quick habit of his, since he hated for his appearance to be sub-par in any way. As he gently rubbed the heavily charmed glass, he met Andromeda's searching gaze, "Well, the Malfoys at least have never let the practice die. And I would be surprised if we were truly the only family to do so." He slipped the spectacles back on and carefully refolded the cloth into a square, "If there are no further objections...?"

His aunt shook her head of long, glittering black hair, unable to completely quash the gleam in her silvery-grey eyes at getting to see a bit of forgotten magic. She still was a Black, after all.

The boy stepped closer to the side of the grave, opposite to the Tonks. Without any ceremony, he started intoning what seemed would be a long chant in... French? It sounded rather like French, but the words weren't right. Andromeda wondered if it was some dialect, before realizing that it must be Old French. Of course - a ritual that was performed hundreds of years ago, even a millennia ago, would hardly be in modern French!

Tonks stepped ever closer to her mother, as they watched with wide eyes the new Lord Malfoy chanting in the dead language, his grey eyes cool behind his glasses and fixed on the grave between them.



HARRY HAD FINALLY MADE IT to Hagrid's door, with no little difficulty. Just as he dropped onto the roughly hewn stone steps, he heard the great clock chiming noon at the castle and thanked his luck that he had made it out of there before the lunch rush started. He could see Herbology students spilling across the grounds from where he sat leaning against Hagrid's door. Reaching one hand above his head, he knocked on the door which he was propped up against. He heard Hagrid's lumbering footfalls coming near and then the door was jerked out from behind him. He weaved as he looked up at the hairy face above him, which exclaimed, "Harry! What in Merlin's name...?"

The half-giant picked him up as if he were a kitten and deposited him on the huge, lumpy bed. Before Harry could say a word, he'd been weighed down with a half-dozen rough blankets and had an enormous mug of steaming tea thrust into his hands, and Hagrid was asking him, "Do yeh need somethin' ter eat, Harry? Yer whiter than Mal - er, yer lookin' mighty white, that is."

Harry shook his head weakly, but Hagrid didn't even see it because he was already standing over the fire and easing out the plate of biscuits that had been left there to warm. He brought the steaming platter over and set it down on the table in front of Harry, where it started hissing and smoking. The old half-giant immediately snatched the plate back up to reveal a round burn spot on the old wood.

Harry cleared his throat and waved one hand at the iron trivet hanging on the wall, between rusty animal traps and a well-used crossbow, "You may want to..."

Hagrid swore under his breath and grabbed the trivet to place it under the plate. Finally he could toss his pot-holder (actually a bundle of worn cloths from an old shirt) onto the table and drop into the chair across from Harry. He looked sternly at his young friend until the Gryffindor gingerly picked up one of the piping-hot biscuits, and then he asked, "Now, what in tha world is this, Harry? There's bin all sort of hogwash in the papers, of cours', and I've bin hearin' from the other professors that yeh've not bin to any of yer classes this week - and here yeh show up on my doorstep, lookin' like death warmed over!"

Smiling ruefully, Harry continued to juggle the steaming biscuit from one hand to the other as he said, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to give you such a scare. I didn't think that the walk would take so much out of me..."

Hagrid leaned forward to beer at his friend critically, "Are yeh ill, then? Yeh ought to be in the M'me Pomfrey's care, if that's the case. Come on, I'll take yeh myself-"

Harry opened his mouth to protest, but found himself coughing instead. He waved one hand at Hagrid and the other he held clamped tightly over his mouth as the fit continued. Eyes watering, he could feel the muscles of his chest and back strain, as if they were tearing under the strength of his coughs. Hagrid was watching in shocked worry as the harsh, wheezing coughs wracked Harry's thin frame, but after several full minutes, the Gryffindor was able to again breathe calmly, as long as it was shallow.

The hot biscuit had fallen to his lap when he started coughing, but Harry left it there as he grasped greedily for the thick clay mug of tea that Hagrid had given him. He tried to gulp the liquid down, but found he could only swallow a single mouthful before he would need to breathe again. It took him a few minutes of alternately sipping the fragrant tea and gasping for air before he could answer his worried friend.

"No - no, I don't need to go to Pomfrey. I'm not sick."

Hagrid shook his bushy black head in disbelief, "Not sick? Harry, yeh just nearly lost a lung on my floor - the hell yeh say, not sick!" He hoisted his large body up, "That's it, yeh're goin'."

Harry continued to shake his head, though he was still trembling. "No. Hagrid..." He looked up at his old friend with pleading eyes, "Please, I just need to be away from the castle for a while. Hagrid. Please?"



TONKS WAS THE FIRST TO notice a glittering particle zoom past her and into the grave. She nudged her mother and they both watched as several more particles flew in, seeming to have come from the direction of the manor. Tonks realized for the first time that Malfoy was actually performing magic, though he had no wand in sight.

Although it may not have looked it to the Tonks women, Draco was actually struggling difficultly with the spell. This ritual was so old, it predated wands being used and it was the reason that he had first learned wandless magic from his father. Which was also the reason he had been able to teach Harry wandless magic a year ago.

Draco shuddered, the thought of Harry nearly making him lose his control. He continued the long spill of Old French, hearing the modern French in his head and focussing desperately on the meaning of those words. The draw of the spell was condensing over the grave and dozens of the little particles were gathering now: from the manor, from the grounds, even from he and Andromeda. They were forming a pulsing cloud of glittering light, which twitched spasmodically, as if not sure what it should be.

More particles continued to stream in, drawn by the commanding words that were being formed of Draco's modulated voice. The chant didn't even sound like language anymore, but aching beautiful music. Neither of the women knew what was being said, but it sounded as if Draco had lost the most important thing in the world to him.

Beneath the elaborate stone angel, the amorphous cloud was beginning to take a shape. It sprouted long legs and arms and, though the face was still vague, it shook back a long head of shimmering hair, that all of them remembered being unnaturally blond.

This shining and incomplete spectre of his mother reached out to Draco and he braced himself. This would start the most difficult part - but he showed no hesitation as he gave her his hand, the words of the dead still flowing between them.

The transparent hand latched on to his own with surprising strength. It was as cold as the deep burial earth in November, and as unforgiving and hard as the marble headstone. Then the spectre pulled.

Andromeda exclaimed softly as she watched her nephew brace himself on his side of the grave. He never faltered for an instant in his chant, the liquid words continued to pour smoothly from his lips, but he was obviously using all the strength he had available to resist his mother's pull. The spectre of Narcissa had wrapped both hands around her son's thin arm and was digging into the boy's white skin with enough force that they could all see the purple welt forming beneath her clear fingers.

Suddenly her indistinct face swung to look past Draco's shoulder. The young Slytherin didn't know immediately what had happened to draw her attention, but a great stream of glittering particles rushing toward the grave gave him a terrible idea. There was only one other person he could think of, who would hold that much of his mother: his father, of course.

Draco stumbled over his words for the first time, as he turned away from the grave. That was all Narcissa needed, though. His attention slipped for the two and a half seconds it took him to accept that his farther truly was standing behind him, arms and ankles chained in adamantine and orihalcon and flanked by three guards. And once he had loosed his hold on the grave, Narcissa's cold hand shot out to grab him by the throat.

His attention forced back to his mother, he tried to regain the rhythm of his chant, though the shade was cutting off most his air with her stony grip. He could hear Lucius chuckling behind him, but ignored it fiercely as he pried the icy hand from his neck. He had to struggle to force the woman back with only one hand, since she still held his other, but managed to get her back within the bounds of her grave.

Gritting his teeth but continuing to chant, Draco plunged both his hands into the heavy air over his mother's grave and took the woman's face in his gentle but firm grip. She continued to struggle against him, spitting and hissing since she had lost the faculty of speech, but he continued the ritual. She had the most power now - since she had most her spirit back, thanks to Lucius - and so this was even more difficult.

"Halt sunt li pui e li val tenebrus, les roches bises, les destreiz merveillus." He said softly, finally arriving at the end of his long chant, "Rest, mother." Her clear face stared at him hatefully and he slid his fingers down her brow, forcing her eyes shut. "Rest."



AFTER THE LONG CHANT WAS finally over, the shining figure of Narcissa Black Malfoy had disintegrated back into shimmering particles, winking like glitter as they faded away and scattered to the wind.

Draco stayed frozen with his back, tense but straight, to his father. Lucius took a heavy step toward the boy, his chains rattling across the verdant grass, but before he could reach his son, Tonks stepped across the grave. She grabbed Draco by his limp hands and pulled him across to her side.

"Come on, cousin," she said in a dangerous voice, as she linked her arm through his and dragged him away from the graveside. She hurried the boy from his father and they strode across the family graveyard in silence.

Draco looked over at the strange young woman, and said, "I'm not sure why you did that, but-"

"Oh, don't thank me. I didn't particularly do that to help you." Tonks spat the words forcefully, but she knew that she had pulled the boy away at least in part because of a strange sympathy. She shook her head furiously and turned on him, "I just wanted to know what you've been up to. I'm worried about my cousin." At his disbelieving stare, she said spitefully, "Not you. Harry."

Draco was taken aback and the moment of shock seemed to please his witchy cousin. He'd forgotten that Potter even knew the Tonks women - but of course Harry had come to that fugitive's funeral with them the year before.

"Potter is not your cousin," he protested in bafflement, "and I don't know why you even know him; you're not even a Black."

Tonks squeezed on his arm painfully and hissed back, "I'm glad not to have that filthy name. But Potter was Sirius's ward and Sirius was part of my family. So, though he's the heir of the house of Blacks, Harry is part of my family - whether we share blood or not. And I would take him over blood relatives like you any day, so I'm asking you: what are you doing to Harry, cousin?"



DRACO DIDN'T ARRIVE BACK AT Hogsmeade until the evening. The sun was not yet down, but clouds were so heavy overhead that it might as well had been. He walked dazedly back up to the castle, not paying much attention to anything around him - too caught up in the happenings of his day - until he heard a girl's voice call out to him, questioningly, "Malfoy?"

He looked up from the grass at his feet to see Hermione Granger hurrying over to him and exclaiming, "Malfoy! It is you! Where've you been? You weren't in Arithmancy."

Just as the girl arrived several feet from him, Draco felt the first heavy raindrop hit him between the eyes. He blinked furiously, reaching up to clean the water droplets from his glasses, when the clouds burst open up on them. It was one of those torrential downpours that hit you like a bucket of water and before Hermione could even shriek and tug on his arm, they were both on their way to getting soaked.

"Come on! I was just on my way to Hagrids; it's closer than the castle!"

But Draco wasn't moving from where he was rooted to the lawn, and he held her back as he said, "Granger, wait... There's something I have to tell you."


Author notes: Please Note! There only six chapters remaining and they will be coming with increasing speed. I hope to have the whole bloody thing finished by the time HBP comes out, because I'm quite certain none of you will come trolling around fictionalley for a while once you've got your hands on genuine JK goodness. ;) So check back often or check the site @ http://whitehorses.enacre.net/