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The Same Species As Shakespeare	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 16108 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
- 12
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eleven�Not Passion�s
Slave

�� Lucius
watched Potter and Draco closely when they came back to the Manor, though
neither knew he was there. Draco sat on a couch in a room that Narcissa had
liked to use for the reception of guests whom she didn�t particularly want, but
which Draco had always liked for the heavy wooden shelves on the walls and the
glass windows that shifted back and forth in permanent enchantment, glowing
with jewel-like light. Potter sat on a chair in front of him, leaning forwards
with head bowed. They seemed to be arguing, but only rarely did their voices
rise enough for Lucius to make out the words.

�� At one
point, Potter said, �But of course I think the imposter is doing what he�s
doing with magic. There�s been no sign of anyone helping him��

�� It doesn�t
mean it can�t happen,� Draco said, and flipped his hair behind his shoulders
with a look Lucius knew well. Once it had signaled that Draco was about to
start bellowing for a toy or a sweet. Now, his tone only grew tighter. �You may
have missed something in your investigations. An accomplice. A link to me. You
certainly missed a Malfoy relative, if he can pass so easily through the
wards.�

�� You don�t
seem to believe there are any unknown Malfoy relatives��

�� But maybe
there are, and of course if they were unknown, then I wouldn�t know about them,
either, no matter how well-educated I was in the history of my family��

�� Their
voices sank again, and Potter leaned further forwards, eyes fixed on Draco as
if he were the sun rising after a long, thick night. Lucius hissed under his
breath. Potter, of all people, ought to be safe from Draco. He had vigilant
friends who hated Draco�s family and no need to depend on the Malfoys� wealth
or fame when he had plenty of his own. But no, of course Potter had become
attracted to Draco, or maybe even fallen in love with him.

�� Lucius had
seen that shining-star look in faces before, most recently in his own mirror
when he thought of Narcissa, but before that whenever he glanced at Bellatrix
daydreaming of her Lord. It could lead to nothing good when its subject was
alive.

�� In Bellatrix�s case, it led to�

�� Lucius
shook his head, sternly forbidding himself to think about that, and then blinked
as Potter stood up and strode out of the receiving room, leaving Draco to pout
by himself. Maybe they�d had enough disagreement for one day, or maybe Potter
needed to leave Draco to do some research for himself. Whichever it was, it
represented a chance. Potter was making straight for the doorway where Lucius
leaned.

�� He took a
step back, so it would seem as if he had naturally passed by and not as if he
were waiting for Potter, and listened to the beat of his own heart for long
moments.

*

�� Harry
paused curiously when he noticed Lucius Malfoy waiting in the doorway that led
to the staircase. He really had no reason to distrust Draco�s father, he
supposed, but on the other hand, he doubted that Lucius had a reason to like
him, either. He let one hand hover above his wand and inclined his head,
courteously enough, he hoped.

�� Hello,
sir,� he said. �Can I do something for you?�

�� Why are
you leaving my son alone?� Lucius glided a step forwards, and Harry wouldn�t
have been surprised if his own hand was resting on his wand, too. �I thought
you were supposed to protect him at all times whilst this attacker moves
about.�

�� Yes,� said
Harry. �But he�d had enough of my company for today, and he wanted to do some
research in a family library that he apparently can�t share with me.� A glance
over his shoulder revealed that Malfoy had already left.

�� And you
are willing to risk his life?�

�� Harry
regarded Lucius thoughtfully. �How secure do you think the wards on the Manor
are, Mr. Malfoy? Your son seems to trust them for the present. Now that you
know how our enemy entered, surely you can prevent it from happening a second
time?�

�� That is
the problem,� said Lucius, speaking roughly, as if he had made a belated
decision to trust Harry. �We don�t know
how he entered. Severus says that his inspection of the wards reveals that it
is as if Draco himself entered. The wards welcomed him like a member of the
family they had temporarily forgotten.�

�� Well, the
possibility of Malfoy blood��

�� They
parted too smoothly for him to be a distant relative.� Lucius set his mouth in
a grim line. It didn�t improve his face, which in turn showed traces of the
insanity Draco had hinted at, Harry thought. He looked as if he had spent long
nights squinting at candles and into mirrors and reading books of Dark Arts.
�Besides, I have done my own research. We have no such distant relative.�

�� There�s
always the chance that someone missed something.�

�� Lucius
laughed. �This is the kind of mistake that my ancestors were extremely unlikely
to make.�

�� Knowing the
Malfoys� obsession with pure blood, Harry could see that. But he had to hold
out hope that he could solve the crime. �A distant relative remains our best
guess,� he said. �Unless you think the man I�ve been around for the last day
isn�t your son.� That would at least explain the oddities of Draco�s behavior
in the Imperatrix.

�� And some other things, said Hermione�s
voice in her head. Harry hoped he concealed his leap of startlement by shifting
his weight. She had gone away for a time to devote herself to her own studies,
and he had accepted that he wouldn�t hear her voice anymore today.

�� I do not
think that,� said Lucius. �But I would tell you to be careful of him
nevertheless.�

�� Harry had
to roll his eyes. �I think he�s hardly going to harm me, Mr. Malfoy.�

�� You have
no idea what sort of conversation he has haunted me with over the past few
years.� Lucius leaned forwards and spoke urgently. �He turned as dark as
thunder every time your name came up, or muttered and swore about how he would
defeat you someday. He started his business in the first place because he knew
it was something you�d never been connected with. That was why he refused to
become a curse-breaker or a Quidditch star, because he believed that others
would always mentally compare him to you.�

�� Harry felt
a squeezing flutter in his chest, but it was sympathy, and not hope. That life
was not a kind he would have wished on anyone. He might have mourned because he
couldn�t have Draco, but he had also kept abreast of politics, arrested criminals,
contributed to carefully selected charitable organizations, and found�and
lost�lovers. Besides, if Draco had a ruling passion, then surely it was the
power he obtained from the building of his houses, and his pride in how
graceful and beautiful they were. Harry, if he even counted on that scale of
Draco�s achievements, was surely a small dot.

�� You don�t
believe me.� Lucius�s voice broke into his musing. Harry looked up to see him
shaking his head in wonder. �Has Draco got to you that quickly? Has he convinced
you that everything I say must be false?�

�� I�ve been
around him the past day,� Harry said. �He�s done some strange things, yes, but
he�s in danger of losing his life and he has to deal with someone he hated for
years. Strangeness is to be expected and excused.�

�� You trust
his actions more than my words.� Lucius again shook his head. �Though Draco is
very good at lying with his body. I cannot tell you how many, both men and
women, have thought he was in love with them.�

�� That�s not what I want, Harry thought
instantly, not what I really want.

�� I thought it was. Hermione sounded
confused.

�� I want Draco to be happy, and free. I want
to stop him from being hurt. If I could play a part in the latter, that�s
enough for me.

�� Oh, Harry.

�� But
Hermione, even if she was privy to her thoughts, wasn�t privy to Harry�s
deepest and fondest wishes. He hadn�t shared them with anyone but Ginny. Harry
didn�t think he could keep himself from falling in love if Draco offered his
heart, but Harry doubted that would ever happen�not to him. Sleeping together
would have to be enough.

�� And now you�re willing to compromise your
morals and your wish for a deeper connection with him just for sex. Hermione
sounded caught between amusement and despair. Harry, have you listened to your own thoughts lately?

�� I will
attempt to bring you proof,� Lucius was saying, �proof that his emotions for
you run deep and are not always positive. I would wish you to be more alert,
but it does not sound as if that will happen.� He turned and walked away down
the corridor with a dignity that Harry had to admire, in a broken man.

�� Harry
climbed the staircase and lay down on his conjured bed in Draco�s room, closing
his eyes. Thoughts darted and threaded through his mind: Draco�s hair shining
in his office, Faustine�s words in the Imperatrix, Hermione�s worries, the way
Ron had teased and cajoled and shouted at him that morning.

�� He tried to
quell his worries about Draco and the feeling that he might be attacked whilst
Harry wasn�t with him. The times Harry had
been with him, he had been able to hold the imposter off, but not to stop
him Apparating away. And he had to rest at some point; the wounds he�d taken
earlier and two battles in twenty-four hours had exhausted him.

�� Besides,
Draco had said that the only people who could enter the library he was going to
were him and Lucius. He ought to be
safe.

�� I�ll look into the mystery of how someone
could appear to be Malfoy himself, Hermione said suddenly. I hope it might help. And get you away from
Malfoy more quickly.

�� Harry
grunted his thanks, and then drifted into an uneasy sleep. He dreamed of
flapping parchments, for some reason, each covered with secrets that he had to
read before they disappeared�but Draco, standing on the other side of the room
and covered with a cloak of braided red ribbons, kept tearing them to shreds
before Harry could capture them. His face was utterly emotionless.

*

�� The philosophy of an unerring Time was
widely accepted among wizarding experts in the sixteenth century. This was the
view that any mistake with a Time-Turner or a traveling spell was not fatal,
because Time would simply absorb the mortal who had tried to change it and
resume its natural course. But others have argued that we could not be sure
what the �natural course� of Time was, and we might believe that it was exactly
as it had always been simply because our memories altered with changing Time�

�� Draco
sighed and leaned back in his chair, stretching his arms above his head and wringing
his shoulders from one side to the other. The author he�d been concentrating on
for the past hour, Parcelsus Greenblatt, wasn�t the most exciting writer in the
world, and so far he seemed more interesting in recounting various theories of
time travel than asking what would happen if a mistake was made.

�� But Draco
still thought it most likely he would find an answer here. After all, how could
the imposter be anything but himself from an alternate time-stream? That would
explain why he looked so much like Draco but had a few details wrong with him.
Of course the Draco of that other century or other time would have developed
differently. But his blood and his bone would still be Malfoy, and the house
would recognize him. Even the wards on Draco�s office probably would.

�� He bent
over the book again, skimming the long paragraphs until he finally reached one
where it seemed that Greenblatt was going to talk about consequences.

�� The theory of Time I most favor argues that
we each have a home, a place in the braided streams of time and space that we
might call our own. We exist in many forms, and every major decision we make in
our lives produces another stream, with a slightly altered version of ourselves
existing in that world. Of course, the other versions of ourselves can die, and
it would then be safe to visit that time-stream, because you would not be
disturbing or replacing anyone. But I think the place that you were born in
would still call out to you.

�� But what might happen if one came into a
time-stream where a version of oneself still existed�where that person was at
home and you were not? Then, I believe, the case would be very much altered.
The other version would be the �real� version of yourself there, and you the
ghost, the shadow. When one sees one�s doppelganger, runs the ancient legend,
one is about to experience disaster or an evil fate. I believe many of those
evil fates were the result of the time-stream reasserting itself, championing
the rights of the version born in it to exist there and rejecting the false
one.

�� What might happen to the intruder? Several
things. He could be sent violently back to his own time. He might die in an
accident�or his other self might die in an accident, because though Time and
the world would champion the one born there, claim him as their natural child,
that is not to say that he would not be destroyed in the convulsions of the
moment as it tried to come right again. And of course the intruder might kill
the version of himself who is truly at home there. Such tales are rife among
the children of the wizarding world, in part because of the belief that all
such intruders are fleeing the destruction of their worlds and
time-streams�this is not true�and in part because of the daydream that we could
escape into a better life for ourselves, complete with family and friends and
all our best memories, if we only knew how. In the case of such a murder, I
believe the alternate version of the self could settle comfortably into the old
one�s place, as he could if he traveled to a world where the version of himself
had already died.

�� Draco
nodded slowly. This theory was a bit sketchy when applied to his imposter,
perhaps, but it accurately explained everything: the minute differences from
Draco, the way he�d grown increasingly desperate and tried to kill Draco
directly�he must be afraid of Time�s vengeance catching him if he didn�t kill
Draco soon�and even the minor crimes. He�d been trying to embarrass Draco
enough to make him leave the country or withdraw from society, and then he
would have had a much easier time claiming Draco�s place.

�� What to do about it?

�� Draco gave
a small smile and began to flip pages towards the back of the book, where
Greenblatt had listed a section called �Banishing Spells.� Those might help in
exiling the imposter back to his own time. Draco had no particular wish to kill
the bastard, when there was an entire Auror Department waiting for the chance
to accuse him of murder, and he couldn�t depend on Time to choose his side
instead of the other�s.

�� Of course, the best that could happen might
be Potter killing him, and then my �falling� into bed with him, overcome with
�gratitude.� He is such a Gryffindor
that he might easily buy that.

�� But first
things first, Draco told himself, and began to read the section on Banishing
Spells, which indeed seemed to be what he had thought it was, though it would
take a while to choose the best one.

*

�� Harry
hesitated outside the blank door, staring at it. It was superficially different
from the similar door he had once confronted in the dungeons at Hogwarts: it
was made of shining golden-colored marble, a single flat sheet of it, and not
ancient wood, and the corridors around it were also high and bright, not
dripping damp stone. But nevertheless Harry thought he could feel cold and
poison breathing out around it. If he sniffed hard enough, surely he would
catch a hint of hemlock fumes.

�� He did not want to enter Snape�s private potions
lab, he thought, even as he raised his hand and knocked. But he really didn�t
have much choice.

�� Over the
past few days, Draco had done continuous research, Lucius had continued to
speak blunt warnings that Harry couldn�t believe, Hermione had given him a
chattering stream of ideas about time travel and alternate worlds but nothing
concrete, and Harry had driven himself slowly mad watching for further attacks
that didn�t come. Kingsley had suggested, when Harry owled him, that three
failed attacks in one day might have been enough for their criminal. He was
withdrawn now, plotting a strategy that he thought would win him everything
when he finally attacked.

�� That was
what Harry was worried about, of
course, because if he plotted well enough, he might really manage to kill Draco
next time. But Kingsley hadn�t responded to the latest owl in which he
suggested that, and Harry wanted to do something with his fear.

�� That left
Snape, whom he hadn�t seen in several days, as the only source of information
that Harry didn�t know for certain was uncommunicative right now.

�� No one had
responded to his knock. Harry hissed under his breath and pounded on the door
hard enough to rattle the marble in its frame.

�� The fourth
or fifth time his fist descended, the door grew soft beneath it. Harry yelped
in surprise as his hand sank into cloud, and then he was pulled violently after
it. He tried to muster enough wandless magic to defend himself, but strips of
choking mist wrapped around his mouth and crept down his throat, and he lost
the impulse in the terrifying struggle to breathe.

�� Then all
his blood rushed to his head as he was suspended upside-down, the sudden
reversal of gravity making him quite ill. Harry shut his eyes and hissed again
under the forming pressure of a headache, hearing no sound behind the beat of
his heart for long moments.

�� Then slow,
menacing boots stalked towards him. Harry opened his eyes and found himself
staring at a pair of black-clothed legs.

�� As usual,
Potter, you have got yourself into a predicament that is no one�s fault but
your own,� said Snape�s bored drawl. �You should have suspected that the door
of a Potions master would be warded.�

�� Could you
let me go, sir?� Harry asked, and he thought his voice was polite. �I need to
ask you some questions about the potions you�re brewing because of the case.�

�� Snape waved
his wand and said a single word, and the spiderweb that had apparently held
Harry to the door snapped and let him drop. He banged his head so hard on the
floor that blackness swam in and tried to possess his vision. Harry gritted his
teeth and rolled over, attempting to get his arms under him and think past the stunning pain.

�� You should
have known better than to knock on my door like a maniac with that in mind, as
well,� said Snape. He had already turned back to his potions table, as Harry saw
when he glanced up at him. He was moving a hand in what Harry reckoned were
stirring motions, though his body blocked them and Harry couldn�t be sure. �A
civilized confrontation in the corridors would have been preferable.�

�� How could
I do that, when you never leave this bloody place?� Harry was reasonably
certain he didn�t have a concussion; he�d experienced several during his work
as an Auror and knew what they felt like. That didn�t mean the crack on the
skull didn�t bloody hurt. He braced
himself on the wall with one hand and stumbled slowly back to his bruised and
aching feet. �Anyone would think you�re avoiding me.�

Snape laughed, a bark sharp enough
to make Harry wince away from it. Then he turned around and put his back to the
table he�d been working at, still concealing the cauldron from Harry�s view.
His eyes shone so hotly that Harry had to fight an impulse to retreat. The only
time he�d seen Snape this angry was during his third year at Hogwarts, when
Snape found out that Sirius had been spared the Kiss.

And
he lived through the war, whilst Sirius didn�t. Harry felt a poisoned
clench of anger around his heart, which enabled him to meet Snape�s gaze
without looking away, though the temptation was great. Looking at Snape was
like having needles driven into his eyes.

�I will say this once, and once
only,� Snape whispered. �I do not know for certain why the attacker who
threatens Draco�s life and reputation was able to get past the Malfoy bloodline
wards. I have created potions that will alert Lucius and myself if he tries
again, despite his apparent indistinguishableness from Draco. They took some
time and work to develop, which is the reason I have �avoided� you for the past
few days, Mr. Potter.

�� I know why
you are here. You carry a bevy of feelings for Draco that would destroy his
life were you allowed to express them. That must never happen. And you tempt
Draco against his will into a self-immolation that he, perhaps, could not
survive.� Snape sneered at him. �Of course, he is wiser than to become involved
with you, but the danger is real. You destroy everything you truly care for,
Potter, and you always have.�

�� Ron and
Hermione�� Harry began, even as his brain screamed at him that it was stupid to
argue with Snape, given his intractable prejudice against Harry.

�� Name your
friends, of course,� said Snape, with a flick of his fingers. �Their doom is
delayed, but real.� He leaned forwards, and Harry flinched; now the needles
were drilling into the back of his skull. �You will destroy him if you stay
here. More than the imposter can do, you will do. You have destroyed Lucius�s
peace and my own already. You might tempt Draco, little by little, and hint at
what you can share together, and bind him, and drag him, and make him think
foolish, unwise things. He has always noticed
you, even when he should not have. You will destroy a bright and beautiful
thing, and you will not even notice that you are doing so, because what, to
you, is one more trampled butterfly?�

�� Snape�s
spittle was hitting Harry�s face. Harry held on to his temper. He thought of
Snape�s strange, self-contradictory ramblings�Draco could not fall to him, but
would�and thought he knew what this was about.

�� You�re
afraid that I�ll do to him what you think James did to my mum?� he asked
quietly.

�� The force
of Snape�s slap carried him off his feet and made him reel back into the door,
blind with pain. He moved his tongue along his lip, where a tooth had cut it,
and spat blood.

�� Snape
hissed a single word of Latin, and Harry stood in the corridor again, staring
at the solidly closed door.

�� Harry shook
his head, shut his eyes, and limped away in search of a book of healing
incantations. He didn�t know why he still tried. Snape was never going to
change his opinion of Harry, that was obvious.

�� As you thought Draco would never change his
opinion of you?

�� Harry
sighed. He knew why he tried. Even if Snape never changed, even if Draco was
lying, Harry was still himself, and he would not have felt right unless he
tried.��

*

�� Thrnbrooke:
Well, so do I.

�� linagabriev:
Lucius will try to help Draco, but he�s approaching through Harry rather than
through Draco. He knows he can�t persuade his son as matters stand between
them.

�� And I think
Draco is mixing honesty and lies to himself. He probably won�t be able to tell
the truth until the worst happens and he can determine how he feels in the wake
of that.

�� Mangacat:
Thanks! There�s another clue to what happened to Narcissa in this chapter.

minn yun: That is chronologically
the last entry in Narcissa�s journal. I do plan to include other parts of it.
But no, there are no coded messages.

��

��
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- 12
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The Same Species As Shakespeare