Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 3831 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ten—News From the Outside



            “Masters Harry and Draco! There is being a letter.”

            Harry woke slowly, stretching from the knuckles of his fingers to the tips of his toenails. He lay in bed with Draco, in the large room that Draco had insisted they move to because the bed Harry had lain in while recovering wasn’t big enough for the two of them. And he and Draco had spent more than enough time in that bed last night, together, to make him feel wonderful.

            “Masters!”

            Harry started and turned his head. Even though Kreacher’s voice had woken him from the deep sleep he’d settled into after their lovemaking, he hadn’t paid much attention to what it actually said. The number of people who would send them letters right now, and the number of letters that could actually find them, was extremely small.

            “Let me see it, Kreacher,” he said, and Kreacher stretched out to put the letter in his hand. The house-elf was looking a little doubtfully at Draco’s back. Draco lay curled up facing the wall, his hands on the pillow. Harry caught Kreacher’s eye and smiled. “He’s fine. Just tired.”

            Kreacher immediately looked determined enough to frighten an army. “Then Kreacher will be making him a huge breakfastses!” he declared, and vanished. Harry could hear banging from the kitchen a minute later.

            Beside him, Draco grumbled and settled deeper into sleep. Harry let one hand rest on his shoulder as he took up his wand and cast the required number of spells to determine any hexes or curses on the letter, although the chance that Kreacher wouldn’t have detected such curses, or that the house would have let the owl past the wards with a letter like that, was probably as small as the number of people who would send it in the first place.

            The letter was clear. Harry cracked the wax seal, a thick one bearing an imprint of a swan and a harp that he didn’t recognize, and opened it.

            H.,

            I have found some help. Apparently one of the Aurors who was sacked two years ago when they did that huge “cleanout” of the Department was one who had suspicions of E. and tried in vain to get other people to listen to her. Her name is Diane Athright. She’s still bitter about the loss of her job and willing to aid us. Meet us by the sign of the black dog no later than midnight tonight. It shouldn’t be a long journey for you.

            S.

            Harry rubbed his forehead. He thought it was too early in the morning for codes and games, but it wasn’t like he had a lot of choice.

            “Here,” Draco’s voice said, rough with sleep, and he reached over Harry’s shoulder to grab the letter. Harry yielded it with a relieved little laugh, shaking his head.

            “It’s ridiculous,” he said, lying back with his head on the pillow. “But I can’t make out that code, even though I knew it was one we agreed to.”

            “Well, your first name begins with an H,” Draco started.

            Harry poked him in the ribs with an elbow, which took away any breath that he had for joking. Draco choked, spluttered, and coughed, and went on in a more solemn tone. “E is Ernhardt, of course. And S is Simone, Jenkins’s first name.”

            Harry scowled. “She doesn’t fit her name.” For him, a Simone was a delicate person, a Frenchwoman, probably, with long hair and a fragile face. Jenkins had short hair, and nothing else about her fit his mental image, either.

            “I’m sure she’s devastated,” Draco said, his voice dry enough to make Harry want some water. He scanned the letter again. “And the sign of the black dog is clear enough. The place where those dark dogs first appeared as part of the wards around Cuthbert’s Corner. She still thinks we’re there, so it would be no journey for us.”

            “It won’t be a journey for us as it is,” Harry said reluctantly. It wouldn’t take them long to Apparate to Cuthbert’s Corner, and perhaps five minutes to walk along the cliff to the place where they had first encountered the dark dogs. “But what are we going to do with Hannah and Montgomery in the meantime?”

            “Ask Kreacher to take them up to the attic and care for them there.” Draco placed a hand on Harry’s shoulder, gently rubbing. “It’s the most secure place in the house, even if the Aurors do come back and search. And I asked Kreacher a few questions yesterday, before you woke up, about his ties to this place. It’s the oldest and strongest house-elf magic there is, given how many years he spent serving the Blacks. A dozen Aurors could tromp through here and never find someone he’s hidden.”

            Harry closed his eyes and leaned into the rubbing. “What would I do without you?” he muttered.

            “Die, each case, several times over,” Draco said promptly. “Or be disarmed and helpless in the middle of a dried blood ritual, by now.” His voice lowered suggestively, and Harry blinked and looked at him. Draco was smiling at him, his hand trailing over the sheet. “What do you think of one more time, before we go?”

            Harry willingly opened his arms to him, and Draco climbed on top of him and kissed him as if he was a Dementor and could draw Harry’s soul out that way. Harry tried to murmur to him that Draco had had his soul long since and could do anything he liked with it, but Draco was a little too focused on the kissing to notice.

            And a second later, so was Harry.

*

            This might be the last time.

            Draco had thought that before, some of the moments they spent in bed before engaging in the most dangerous part of a case. But he had never thought it with the urgency that it had this time, striking and stinging through him like the crack of a whip.

            He made the urgency all the more reason to be tender with Harry, though, to fasten his lips on Harry’s and suck on them instead of kissing once and moving on, to trace his fingers up and down over the old scars on Harry’s back and turn Harry over so he could reach them more easily. Harry sighed when he did, lowering his chin to rest on his hands and shutting his eyes. Draco stroked and stroked, and Harry made a heavy purring sound. Draco might have thought he was getting ready to go back to sleep, but he knew Harry better than that.

            This might be the last time.

            What Harry had said made sense, and it even made sense that some people in the Ministry besides Jenkins and Warren might be able to help them, but that didn’t mean it would be easy. And in the meantime, anything could happen. Draco’s parents could hire another killer, this time to take out Harry. The Montgomerys could get free, or someone else from the Aurors could seize Harry and conduct a ritual that would render him helpless. Someone could control Warren with the Imperius and make her betray them. (Not Jenkins, whose mind was sealed shut against any intrusion, but if Warren was in danger, Draco didn’t trust Jenkins to choose them over her partner).

            For now, though, this moment, Harry was here and heavy and present under Draco’s hands, arching his head so that Draco could touch the nape of his neck and smooth his fingers up and down, and then rolling over and sucking Draco’s fingers into his mouth when Draco would have withdrawn the touch.

            Draco all but narrowed his eyes, and pinned Harry to the bed, knees on either side of his hips. His wand was in easy reach, and he cast a lubricating charm on himself, watching the way Harry’s eyes widened in contrast to his. Harry wanted their lovemaking to be rough and tumble? Draco could do that.

            He lifted himself hard and high, his head tilted back as his fingers worked down and under himself, and then he was on Harry, his hips, then his cock, while Harry gasped and gaped up at him and in general rested his fingers on Draco’s side as though he had no idea that Draco could do that.

            “Satisfied now?” Draco whispered down at him, his breath coming harsh from the pain. And it was pain, he wouldn’t deny that. That just mattered less to him than the chance to be with Harry. “Ride with me.”

            His fingers clamped demandingly down on Harry’s legs, and he made a little noise of protest but moved obediently with Draco. A second later, the obedience was gone, and he was rolling them to the side. For a few seconds more, they thrashed awkwardly on the bed. Then Harry was up and looming over Draco, driving down into him and staring at him with enormous eyes.

            Draco reached up to snare Harry’s neck and kiss his lips roughly. Harry half-growled and thrust wildly. Draco opened up his legs to welcome him, half-laughing when Harry shook his head at him.

            “You’re mad,” Harry whispered, his lips swollen.

            “But I’m going to be satisfied,” Draco said, and caught his breath sharply as Harry hammered into him. Harry’s eyes glowed, taking on that feral edge that Draco loved and saw so seldom. The last time he’d seen it, it had been trained on either Hannah or Montgomery and not on him, where it belonged.

            “You will be, if I have anything to say about it,” Harry whispered back, and began to surge up and down, snapping his hips.

            Draco closed his eyes and surrendered. Thoughts whirled through his head and then were crushed to powder and less than powder as Harry thrust into him. Sometimes he thought there was something he had to worry about, and then it would scatter again. Harry’s breath sawed in his ears. Draco turned his head and sought Harry’s mouth, only finding it sometimes, Harry was bobbing so fast and in such an irregular rhythm.

            “Christ, Draco,” Harry moaned, and Draco’s hips hurt from the pounding he was required to take.

            It didn’t matter. This was what he had wanted, and he stretched out his arms and his legs to embrace it. Harry laugh-roared above him, and continued carrying Draco with him on his rough journey, to heights and depths that Draco hadn’t felt in a long time.

            Finally, Harry stiffened, still rocking above Draco, reluctant to come. His head dipped down far enough that Draco could get his teeth into Harry’s earlobe, and the taste of flesh in his mouth satisfied Draco—

            And satisfied Harry, too, if the way he groaned shakily and thrust irregularly was any sign. Draco clamped his teeth down a little harder and let himself go, the burning rush through his groin slaking him as any gentler riding could not. He ran his hands through Harry’s hair, moaning in discontent when Harry rolled away.

            “I just have to go to the bathroom,” Harry whispered back, kissing Draco’s own bitten and swollen lips. He didn’t remember when that had happened.

            Draco rolled over, stretching a lazy arm along the bed as he watched Harry walk to the bathroom. He smoothed his hand down the sheets, staring at the small tumbled ridges that he and Harry had left.

            No matter what happened to them when it came to the Ministry, no matter what the Ministry might tell itself, there were legacies that would survive them, Draco thought. The Ministry could not make their love affair not have happened. They couldn’t erase the embarrassment that would forever pursue them for having let Ernhardt work his way into the position of Head Auror, while they had looked the other way and tried to blame his crimes on Harry and Draco instead.

            And before he and Harry left today, they would put things in motion to ensure that the Ministry never would forget.

            If we die, if we’re trapped, then others will carry on our fight.

*

            “There you are. I thought you would make us wait another hour.”

            Harry ignored the tone in Jenkins’s voice, and nodded to Warren instead, who stood back with her arms full of parchment. “What did you bring us?” he asked, his eyes darting to the third figure who stood quietly behind Warren.

            “This is Diane Athright,” Jenkins said, seeming to realize that scolding them was useless. She brought the other woman forwards with a hand on her arm. “Once an Auror, and now a crusader against the incompetence and corruption of the Ministry.”

            “A discreet crusader,” said Draco, with a hard smile on his face, as he stepped up and extended a hand to Athright. “I don’t remember hearing of you.”

            “You probably wouldn’t have.” Athright’s voice was calm and deep. Harry glanced at her and found himself lowering his eyes quickly. She had one of those stares that was hard to meet, reminding him of Hedwig, although her eyes were only black and not gold. “The Ministry kept me on undercover cases when I was an Auror, and bound me with some oaths that I can’t break when I left. The only people I know I can talk to are other Aurors.” She flashed a bright smile at all of them. “How fortunate.”

            “What did you know about Ernhardt?” Draco stood with arms folded and his hair blowing slightly in a breeze.

            He wants to get right down to business, Harry noted, and opened his mouth to apologize for Draco if he needed to. But Athright nodded at Draco and said, “I suspected that he had become corrupted by the study of the Dark Arts. He was too slow in hiding some of the books he was studying, during the times when I visited his office. And I saw his eyes shining blue more than once, and felt him pushing at my mind.”

            “Pushing at your mind?” Draco folded his arms tighter and considered Athright from the bottom of her shoes to the top of her hair. “What does that mean? As far as we know, there were very few people he couldn’t possess. We both had to fight him off at various times.”

            Athright inclined her head. “I was an Auror for fifty years, and during the time that we trained, we received instruction in Occlumency, although not Legilimency. We had more criminals then who knew the Mind Art, and we might know various secrets about trials and ambush plans that couldn’t be revealed to just anyone.”

            “Did you tell the other Aurors about Ernhardt?” Harry asked, wondering why someone hadn’t at least investigated what Athright was talking about.

            Athright laughed, a little bitterly. “There were one or two people who might have listened to me, but not many. The vast majority were just too relieved to have a Head Auror who didn’t have any personal scandals attached to him and who didn’t look like he was bucking to become Minister of Magic. And the people who wanted to listen to me—well, I reckon I don’t have to tell you what color their eyes always were when I went to talk to them.”

            Harry nodded, understanding. No one Ernhardt had possessed remembered what they did when he was possessing them, so they wouldn’t have remembered the conversations they had with Athright, either. “Do you know why he wanted to be Head Auror and not Minister in the first place? It seems like being Minister would have protected him even more from investigations that might happen into his wandless magic or his past.”

            Athright flicked her fingers. “This is only speculation, you understand. I couldn’t follow what he was doing very well after he got me sacked.”

            “Speculation is acceptable,” Draco said, moving from one foot to the other. Harry reached out and put a hand on his shoulder, and Draco subsided. Harry could guess that it wasn’t Athright’s testimony that troubled Draco, or even the cold on the cliffs and with the night wind blowing past them. It was that Athright’s testimony indicated they might be getting closer to attacking the Ministry, to bringing Harry’s plan into reality.

            “Good,” Athright said. “I don’t think he wanted a very public position. The Minister is always under more scrutiny than the Head Auror. As long as the Head Auror does his job and can keep political blackmail on some of his colleagues, no one pays much attention to him.”

            Harry grimaced. “He had the perfect blackmail material. All he had to do was possess someone and make them commit a crime or just do something that would horrify them, then call them in and pretend he knew about it from unknown sources.”

            “Exactly.” Athright let out her breath in a long hiss. “But at the same time, he was frightened. Always frightened. I sensed that about him very early on, long before I knew what he might have to be frightened about. He wanted the thrill of power and people obeying him, but he wanted to make sure that no one could turn on him or endanger him even more.”

            “What had frightened him?” Draco took a long step forwards and back, as though he was considering marching up to Athright to demand the answer, and then retreating to Harry’s side as his good sense overcame his impatience.

            Athright held Draco’s gaze, then shook her head. “If I knew that, I could have resisted him when he got me sacked.”

            “All right,” Harry said. “But do you have suspicions? Whether or not you know for sure?”

            Athright studied him in a way that made Harry wonder what he had said to make her dissatisfied, and then smiled. “I expected the Malfoy of the pair to notice the implications of words,” she said. “Not the Potter. I congratulate you, Auror Potter, and I see some of the reasons the Ministry is afraid of you.”

            Draco shifted his weight again. Harry patted his shoulder. Athright seemed to notice, and added, “They have reason to be afraid of you, too, Auror Malfoy. Without you at his side, it seems likely that Auror Potter would have died when he tried to go up against these machinations.”

            It was Draco’s turn to blush and mutter, but he said, “Can you tell us what you suspect, then?”

            “I think someone discovered that he was twisted, or flawed, or whatever name you want to give it now, sometime in the past,” Athright said quietly. “And he became determined to prevent it from ever happening again.”

            Draco made a complex sound that had Harry reaching out to him again, although Draco didn’t seem inclined to reach back. He was blinking at Athright in dismay. “I don’t see how we’re to find that out,” he whispered.

            “You have at least one obvious candidate that could tell you,” Athright said, and glanced over her shoulder in the direction she probably thought Cuthbert’s Corner stood, although as it was she looked past it. “Notes that he left behind in the house of his youth, a place he took strict precautions to protect, might tell you.”

            “I know what you should investigate,” Jenkins said suddenly, startling Harry a little as she leaned forwards. “That lab we found, the one with the chained skeletons and the signs of collecting human blood.”

            “Would we find what had frightened Ernhardt down there, instead of the fear he caused other people?” Harry had to ask.

            “Maybe you’ll find out why he was so determined to make other people fear him, and put himself in a position of strength,” Jenkins shot back. “The direction of someone’s research can often tell you that.”

            Draco muttered something that sound a lot like, “And how would you know that?” Harry curled his lip to keep the laughter that bubbled up down, and nodded a little to Jenkins.

            “We’ll continue looking, then,” he said. “In the meantime, I have an idea that I wanted to tell you about, and information that I wanted to share with you.” And he launched into an explanation of what he had learned from his interrogations of Montgomery and Hannah.

            He watched their eyes widening and burning, in the case of Athright. He thought he could count on them to help. Warren and Jenkins were steadier allies, and Warren stood with arms folded and a repressive frown on her face as if she thought that it would demean her to agree with him. But Jenkins had a faint smile on her face, and Harry had never known the two partners to disagree for long.

            We’re going to do this.

*

            SP777: Ernhardt is definitely dead. But, of course, he has lingering effects that they’re going to look at now.

            Harry does think that they’re taking on a big chore, but it’s the only thing that he can really see working to get the Ministry off their backs.

            Sasunarufan13: Harry has one pathway open now, to get to the Mind-Healers through Athright. But it’s going to take a lot of work, no doubt.

            Rina: Thank you! I am not published yet, although maybe someday I will be.

            The Malfoys will return in a few chapters. Next chapter is Cuthbert’s Corner and some things that the Ministry really didn’t want Harry and Draco to learn.
- 9
- 10
- 11
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Mansions of a Monstrous Dignity