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Running Battle	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Lucius Views: 2860 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Running Battle
- 2-Part Two
- 1
- 2
Title: Running Battle
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Lucius
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Violence, light angst
Summary: Sequel to “Battlefield.” The Ministry thinks Harry ought to be sorrier for the wounds he inflicted on the cause of negotiations with the vampires. Lucius thinks Harry ought to spend more time with him. Harry is patient with everybody.
Author’s Notes: This is another one of my Wednesday one-shots, for hpjk_addict, who asked for a sequel to “Battlefield,” one of my Advent fics from last year. This should have two parts. You really need to read “Battlefield” first, or it won’t make sense.
Running Battle
            “The vampires want damages for their lord. For the fires that you used in their cave. And the running water. And the artifact you destroyed.”
            “Oh. Is that all?”
            Kingsley gave Harry a long-suffering look and shuffled some papers on his desk. Harry tucked his hands beneath his chin and fluttered his eyes.
            “No. They’re also talking about mental suffering, and the damage sustained to their cave in the battle, and the illusions you destroyed on the way in, and how you protected someone they should have been able to eat. What do you have to say for yourself?”
            “Only this.” Harry leaned forwards and yawned a little. “If they filed all those sorts of complaints with the Ministry, then they have someone—maybe a newly-turned vampire—who can still speak in something other than mindless demands for blood. So that means they should be able to negotiate with us after all, not just eat us.”
            Kingsley turned slowly away. They were in his office, which appeared to have walls made entirely of files. Harry looked at them and tried to estimate how many of those were about his cases. Probably at least a third.
            “How come you’re never any good at diplomacy when we try it? You have the intelligence.”
            “Hmmm.”
            “I think you don’t want to be good at it.”
            “That, too,” said Harry, and gave Kingsley a dazzling smile when he turned around. Kingsley put his hand over his face, though, which was the signal for Harry to relent and tell him the truth. “I became an Auror to guard people and track down Dark wizards and battle monstrous creatures of the night. When I have to, I practice calligraphy on my paperwork.”
            “You realize that half my assistants can’t decipher your calligraphy?”
            “Hire better assistants,” Harry suggested. “But I didn’t become an Auror to munch little cucumber sandwiches and talk about how good Lord Fangtapper’s breath smells today.”
            Kingsley sighed. He kept wishing he could use Harry for more duties within the Ministry, but he had seen what happened when he tried to assign Harry to those duties. “Well. Anyway. I have a new case for you.”
            Harry smiled. He wouldn’t say “Of course you do.” He had harassed Kingsley enough for today. “What is it?”
            “It appears that Lucius Malfoy has received death threats and wants you to spend a week guarding him—I’m sorry, did I say something funny?”
            “I’m choking. Not laughing. I’m amazed that someone was sending him death threats. He told me all these things about not being relevant anymore and how being sent as a negotiator to the vampires was his last chance to make a difference.”
            “Try not to either choke or laugh when you see him,” Kingsley advised Harry dryly, handing over the file so Harry could look at it. “Some of these letters look like the real thing, although others might be pranks. There’s one about the artistic arrangement of his intestines that I shuddered at.”
            Harry flicked through the letters until he found the intestine one. He read it over, and couldn’t keep his lips from lifting in a satisfied smile. As Kingsley had said, it was gruesome and had the sound of someone who meant what he said.
            And it was familiar.
            “All right,” Harry said, standing. “I assume Mr. Malfoy is still in Malfoy Manor and hasn’t moved elsewhere for the duration?”
            “Yes.” Kingsley stared at him, no doubt trying to figure out what in the world was behind Harry’s bland façade.
            “Good, then.” Harry flung Kingsley a salute and strode out. He heard Kingsley ask a question behind him, but luckily, Harry had shut the door and could pretend he hadn’t heard it. He whistled a little as he made his way down the corridor. Let other Aurors stare at him. He was on his way to a duty he enjoyed.
            He knew exactly what he would say when Lucius opened the door, too.
*
            “Good effort on disguising your handwriting. I would have believed you didn’t write all of these to yourself if it wasn’t for the one about the intestines. That was one of the things you told me you should have done to the vampires instead.”
            For a moment, Lucius’s eyes watched him through the cracked door of the Manor. Then he simply nodded and waved Harry inside. “I wanted to bring you here. It worked.”
            “Making up death threats is Wasting an Auror’s Time. A very serious crime, I’ll have you know.” Harry stepped into the entrance hall, looked around, and waved a hand. “Weren’t there more—I don’t know, sconces, here? And gold? And I think there was a mirror. I’m almost sure. Admittedly, my memories right after being grabbed by Snatchers aren’t the most reliable guide in the world.”
            “Narcissa got most of the, as you would say, sconces in the divorce.” Lucius’s voice was as dry as a vampire’s. He leaned against the wall for a moment and watched Harry. “So serious a crime you haven’t reported it to anyone in the Ministry?”
            “There was one letter that was different.” Harry took the one he’d moved to the top of the file and handed it to Lucius. “This was the only one you got from someone else, wasn’t it?”
            “Yes.” Lucius had hardly glanced at it, instead watching Harry with opaque eyes. “Why come at all if you knew what I was doing?”
            “Because of something you said when we were battling with the vampires. How you almost wished you’d died there, that you weren’t relevant anymore. I thought without me here, you might decide high balconies looked good.”
            Lucius gave the ghost of a chuckle as he moved around Harry. “No, Mr. Potter. I believed that at the time. When a certain Auror grabbed me by the ear and hauled me away from the bloodthirsty creatures, I decided that I had to find something to live for.”
            “Nice pun on ‘bloodthirsty,’ I like it.”
            “I was not trying to pun. I never pun.”
            “Well, that was another reason I decided the first letter was genuine. It has a pun right in the first line.”
            Lucius gave a faint sigh and turned to nod into what Harry remembered as a vast dining room. All the furniture had been replaced by a single small table with two chairs near it, in front of the fireplace. A silver lamp stood next to that, spreading out a little circle of light. “I found a line of work I’d overlooked. Narcissa got much of the portable wealth, but nothing could remove the Malfoy properties from my name. And since my son changed his name as well, there was no way for him to contest them.”
            Harry cocked his head. He knew Draco becoming Draco Black had been a blow for Lucius, but he saw no reason to creep around pretending there wasn’t a wound bleeding all over the floor. He wouldn’t do it for most people. He saw no reason to do it for Lucius. “Why did he do that?”
            “For the same reason my wife divorced me, Mr. Potter. They believed I had not served the family well. They wanted me alive, but when I was safe, they remembered that I was the one who had chosen to kneel to the Dark Lord in the first place.”
            “Oh? I thought that might have been your father’s idea.”
            Lucius’s head abruptly tilted backwards, and he locked his eyes on Harry’s face. “Do not mistake me for a nice man, Mr. Potter. I am not. I made the decision to take the Dark Mark. Not a wise one. But I will admit my mistakes.”
            “Then you’re halfway there.”
            “Halfway where?”
            Harry grinned a little. It seemed the Mighty Lucius Malfoy wasn’t familiar with Muggle sayings. “Everywhere you want to go,” he settled for saying. “But you never told me what was so important about the properties that remain in your name.”
            Lucius shook his head a little and moved towards the table. “There’s one of my houses in France that has extensive grounds. I made a trip there earlier this month and removed the anti-Muggle charms, then got in touch with one of my distant cousins by marriage who is a Squib. She’s arranged to conduct tours over the house for me as a genuinely haunted ruin. It has a few ghosts. There is another house with extensive orchards and fields that I plan to rent out. That’s what I’m making arrangements for today.”
            Harry stared at his back. Lucius turned around a second later and studied him as though he couldn’t comprehend why Harry wasn’t rushing around checking windows for weaknesses. “Why are you standing there?”
            “It’s just—amazing that you’ve managed to scrape up this much fortitude. Renting houses to Muggles, I mean. Letting them walk through them.”
            “They are not houses I live in. I could not bear it here.”
            Harry sighed audibly, making Lucius narrow his eyes at him. “Oh, good. I was afraid I’d have to go and lead a search for the kidnapped Lucius Malfoy.”
            “I must spend some time finalizing the arrangements and letting my steward know what is and is not an acceptable price.” Lucius sat down at the table. “Are you going to check the house’s perimeters? If you worry about leaving me alone, I will ask you to wait until I am done with this. I often lose my concentration when interrupted in the middle of my work.”
            “Oh, I don’t need to leave the room,” Harry said. “Not now that I’ve been invited inside, anyway.”
            Lucius turned halfway back in his chair to observe Harry as he lifted his wand. “You did not tell me you were related to vampires.”
            “Except for the fangs and the bloodsucking and the pallor and the aversion to running water and the liking for living under a king, I’m exactly the same. I’m surprised you didn’t figure that out already.”
            Lucius was watching his wand so intently that he seemed to have forgotten to chuckle. Harry told himself to remember he’d have to adjust his sense of humor, and then cast.
            “Noctua finium!”
            The air in front of his wand surged, and a pale blue owl unfolded from the tip. Harry nodded to it, and said, “The house.” In a second, the owl had taken off, speeding through the wall as if it was a Patronus.
            Harry leaned against the fireplace. He could feel Lucius’s stewing curiosity from where he stood. He knew, sooner or later, that Lucius would have to ask. And finally he did, although there was a snap to his voice like that of breaking ice. “What spell is that?”
            “The Boundary Owl Spell,” Harry said, and beamed at him.
            “I have never heard of it.”
            “Mmm, you wouldn’t have.”
            “Was it taught at Hogwarts since I left? I can hardly believe that my son would not have mentioned such a useful spell to me.”
            “No.” Harry paused, drawing out the tension, until Lucius was almost glaring at him and he had to remind himself that it would do no good for them to be at odds, not when Harry was supposed to spend his time protecting Lucius. “I invented it.”
            Lucius sat back at his table and did nothing for the whole time the owl was gone, just rapping his fingers on his papers. His eyes bored holes in Harry. Harry merrily did nothing about it, only looked at the ceiling. The owl always completed its survey of a perimeter from above.
            Sure enough, about ten minutes later, the owl dropped back through the ceiling. Harry raised his arm, and the owl alighted, although the only sensation Harry could feel was a faint heat, as if he was holding his hand near a bonfire.
            “Now?” he whispered, and the owl leaned in towards him and breathed out. A swirl of colors like a Portkey, except that these were exclusively shades of blue, poured out of the owl’s beak and into his ear.
            Harry closed his eyes. He could see an accurate map of the Manor, as surveyed by an owl in swift flight, opening on the back of his eyelids. And because of the nature of the spell, he saw, particularly, places where the already existing defenses were weak, where escape routes lurked unhindered, where certain windows might be forced open without an intruder being immediately noticed by someone in another wing.
            “Six doors to the outside,” Harry murmured, and heard Lucius gasp. “Three in tunnels. One in the front. The main one opening out into the grounds. And one that leads into a small room where—ah, I see, one of the shields on the wall is an always-active Portkey. I’d watch those large windows above the flowers if I were you. They’re too easy to break one of the small panes, and then you have no defense for the lock, since the warding spell is keyed to the glass itself. Sloppy. You have a nice, defensive bedroom, but there’s a lot of room under the bed where someone could hide if they got in. I’ll have a look at that and make sure I can protect it. And those sloppy windows, too,” he added, before he opened his eyes.
            Lucius was sitting at his table, staring at him. He had his fingers cocked as if to hold a quill, but he’d dropped it. Harry grinned and bowed.
            “You told me when we were with the vampires that simple spells often failed for you.”
            “They do. Although sometimes in useful ways.”
            “And yet you can create spells this powerful?” Lucius gestured at his shoulder, although the blue owl had disappeared completely after it had delivered the map to Harry.
            “The problem is too much power, most of the time.” Harry shrugged. “Easier for most people to walk the house and learn the problems with eyework. And the owl does sometimes miss something. This is only for the most obvious holes or gaps in the defenses. A clever human Auror or criminal can exploit a weakness it wouldn’t see.” He chuckled a little. “Do stop looking at me as if you think I’m Merlin in disguise, would you?”
            “Never that,” Lucius said. “But I did think that your defeat of the Dark Lord was based on luck alone.”
            “Luck and love,” Harry said firmly. He wasn’t going to let anyone think differently or take the credit away from the people it really belonged to, mostly his mother. “It’s what I did later that’s really important.”
            Lucius stood from the table and stalked over to him. Harry felt a sudden fluttery banging invade his heart, and wanted to scowl at himself. He had no reason to react like this, just because it…
            It was the way that Lucius had reacted before when the threat of danger was past.
            Lucius laid a hand on his shoulder and stared deeply into his eyes. Harry stared back. He had wondered if what had lingered for a moment before between them would ever return. This time, he hadn’t just saved Lucius’s life.
            But it seemed that this mood could come back even without life-saving. Harry cleared his throat. “I should get on with repairing those weaknesses.”
            Lucius moved slowly back, but his gaze had gone heavy. “If you think you must.”
            Harry nodded, enchanted the fireplace mantel to warn him immediately if Lucius was in danger, and then left the dining room. He wished it didn’t feel so much like he was running.
*

            “I’m about to go upstairs, Mr. Potter. Did you want to sleep in my bedroom, or are you going to remain on patrol?”
            Harry smiled and drew a vial of rusty red potion out of his pocket. He saw Malfoy focus on it immediately, but he was too polite to question it, only lifting his eyes to Harry and waiting for the conclusion.
            “This is a variant of Pepper-Up,” Harry explained. “Keeps you awake and gives you some extra strength.” He gulped it in one motion—the only drawback of the potion was its utterly foul taste—and rose to his feet. “Thanks to the excellent meal you served me earlier, I shouldn’t have any trouble remaining awake all night.”
            “The food is necessary to interact with the potion?”
            “Yes. You don’t want to take this potion on an empty stomach.”
            “I shall endeavor never to do so.” Lucius rose slowly to his feet, not taking his eyes from Harry. Harry stared back, wondering what Lucius would come up with next. He moved slowly towards Harry.
            Harry knew he could step back or ask Lucius what was going on if he wanted to. He also knew he would miss out on some interesting currents flowing between him and Lucius if he did that. He remained still, and Lucius laid his hand along Harry’s cheek and smiled at him.
            “You are braver than you know,” Lucius said softly. “And more powerful, and more intriguing. If I had known what would come from you simply acting as a bodyguard during my visit to the vampires, I would have employed you long since.”
            “I don’t know if I can be braver than I know. I think I’m pretty brave. But I’m willing to accept the other compliments.”
            “Good.” Lucius moved away from him in the same leisurely manner, drifting like a tropical fish around a coral reef. “Perhaps tomorrow, or whenever this danger resolves, we can discuss what else you’d be willing to accept.”
            Harry nodded. “Perhaps we can.”
            Lucius gave him one faint smile and said, “Good night, Mr. Potter.” Then he walked out of the study, and Harry silently listened to his footsteps ascending the stairs. Every one of them was also enchanted to cry out in case Lucius got in trouble walking up them.
            But none of them did. And a second later, Harry felt the special spells engage that meant Lucius had made it to his heavily warded bedroom. He smiled and began the first steady, soft beat of his patrol.
            It led him out of the dining room, to the right down a corridor that stretched out far enough Harry could imagine past Malfoys making their house-elves run up and down it when they wanted to be sadists, and then past the back windows that led into the garden. Harry felt his breathing picking up a little. He had replaced the defective enchantments on the glass, but he had left enough tempting dangling threads of magic that someone who had scouted out the house might still try to make this their entrance.
            A slow pacing along the side of the windows produced no results. And when Harry turned and whirled on his heels, there was no one there, either. Harry shook his head and relaxed a little.
            There might be no one trying tonight. If I was the criminal, I would definitely wait a few days to see what the new protector’s strengths were.
            But then Harry turned sharply back, because he could hear some small turning sounds. He looked around wildly, thinking for a moment that someone was actually attacking the windows there.
            Luckily, he remembered the fact that he’d cast other spells in different places in the Manor to alert him if someone tried to break into them there. This one was a passive, simple Listening Charm, letting him hear what was happening nearby. And he’d cast that one…
            On one of the escape tunnels.
            Harry immediately began to run. The soft, rippling echoes of his own footsteps came back to him as he hurtled through moonlit corridors. There was almost nothing to muffle them. All the tapestries were gone.
            In the meantime, Harry’s thoughts were at work. Who could know about the escape tunnels? People hired by Draco and Narcissa Black, as they were now?
            But no, Harry didn’t think they would have betrayed Lucius in that way. Lucius had said they wanted him alive and safe, just not around anymore.
            Harry cornered fast, and spun around as he arrived at the entrance of the tunnel. It had probably been better-hidden when the Manor was better-decorated. If nothing else, Lucius could have hung a tapestry across the shimmering lines in the wall.
            The soft unscrewing sound was coming directly from behind the door.
            Harry counted to five under his breath while he triggered a few wordless spells around the door that he’d cast earlier. Then he stepped back and slammed the wand down in a sharp tap against the door.
            The spells triggered at once. One made the wall transparent, so Harry could see behind it. Another outlined the door itself with glimmering blue flames, cool and harmless, but capable of making people stare and throwing off delicate operations.
            And the third made a fireball bloom into existence next to Harry’s ear. If his suspicions were correct, he’d need it. If they weren’t, well, a fireball was always useful.
            The people in the tunnel glanced up in shock. They were carefully using cloths wrapped around parts of the door to unscrew the stones. They had no wands. And they crouched and snarled when they saw the flames around the door, showing teeth that flashed too long and too crystalline to be human.
            Yep. Vampires.
            Harry flung the door open and sent the fireball into motion, skimming down the tunnel above the vampires like a rubber ball on a string. He pulled it back with a sharp snap of his wrist when it had caught a few with their hair on fire and made them bolt.
            And of course they’d attack here. Technically, the tunnels were ways to get around the usual vampire prohibition of needing to be invited inside, because they weren’t “real” entrances; they were deliberately kept secret and deliberately avoided the wards.
            Harry was already casting as he landed in front of the nearest vampire. “Innocens! Sopio! Stupefy!”

            As he had feared might happen, the Stunner had no impact. Vampires weren’t affected by a lot of magic that would bring a human down. The one he’d tried to Stun leaped over the other two and ran up the tunnel after the ones who had already fled because of their burning hair.
            His first two spells had caught the first duo in line, though. Harry turned around to look at them with satisfaction. The Harmless Curse made the vampire it had caught blink at him like a baby, innocent in mind, and the other one was asleep as profoundly as if it was in its coffin at the bottom of a grave.
            “Good vampires,” Harry muttered, and led them into the corridor.
            Lucius was waiting for them, wrapped in a robe that showed some luxury Harry would rather have left to his imagination. He tilted up an eyebrow absurdly when he saw Harry. Harry shrugged back.
            “Sorry for waking you up. In the meantime, I think these two might tell us something interesting once we have them trapped in a silver cage. You have one, right?”
            “Remarkable.”
            “You don’t have a silver cage. How sad. I’ll just have to conjure one, then.”
            “No. I meant you.”
            Harry paused. The heat in Lucius’s eyes made the shimmer of the fireball beside Harry’s ear suddenly feel small.
            Not until I’m off the case, Harry sternly reminded himself, and nodded to the sleeping vampire. “Can you Levitate that one? The other will follow of its own free will.”
            “Remarkable Harry Potter, whose Levitation Charms don’t often hold.”
            “Right on,” Harry said, and smiled back at Lucius. He still had a sense of humor.
            This might work after all.
            There were lots of things those words might refer to, and Harry decided that he didn’t care about exploring all of them in depth right now. He had vampires to interrogate.
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Running Battle