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The Descent of Magic	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 18803 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Eleven--Words of Respect

            "What? You want to talk to us?"

            Harry snorted in spite of himself. Al's face in the fire looked so wary that he wondered if he was projecting some aura of menace, despite sitting up in bed as he spoke to the fire and being wrapped in blankets like someone nearer Arthur Weasley's age than his own. "Yes, I do. Can you come by this afternoon?"

            Al bit his lip and looked aside for a second. "Um. They sort of caught us leaving Hogwarts the last time, to go to Malfoy Manor," he whispered.

            "What kind of detention did you get?" Harry asked in interest. He didn't know all the teachers at Hogwarts as well as he knew Neville, but he did know that they seemed to have a lack of creativity when it came to punishments. Or maybe Snape had simply been a kind of inspired sadist.

            "Spreading Blast-Ended Skrewt shit on these experimental crops Hagrid has in the Forbidden Forest," Al said, and his frown grew.

            Harry laughed in spite of himself, and then tried to choke it off when he realized the way his son was glaring at him. "Well. Then it might have to wait a while. I don't want to get you into trouble; you do that enough on your own." Al relaxed, seeming reassured that Harry wasn't firecalling him for a bad reason. "But maybe next weekend? There's something I should talk to Scorpius about."

            "If you mean that idea you were spreading about house-elves, he already knows," Al said, with a shake of his head that recalled his mother to Harry, and especially the morning when she had decided that there was nothing more to be said, when they had both decided that, and kissed and parted for the last time. "And I don't think it's going to change anything that you're working with his dad. Mr. Malfoy's always been a wanker, always will be."

            Harry was startled by the blaze that sprang to life inside his chest, sharper than anything he'd felt when Hugo sneered at him. "Al," he said. "Don't refer to him like that again."

            Al had always been better at judging Harry's mood and whether he was serious than Jamie or Lily had been. He opened his mouth, stared at Harry, shut it, and then opened it again to say, "Seriously, Dad. What is he doing?"

            "Helping me," Harry said, and shifted a little so that Al could tell he was bringing his knee closer to the fireplace, whether or not he could see it from that angle. Al was sensitive to little movements like that, too. He would be able to pick up on it.

            Al's mouth opened and closed and opened again. This time, what came out was, "But you're not going to start liking him, are you? I mean, Scorpius doesn't even like him, and he's his dad!"

            "I intend to talk to Scorpius about that," Harry said calmly. "And it really doesn't matter whether I like him personally or not, Al. He's helped me, and he's helping me with the alliance to spread the ideas about house-elves and other magical creatures, and he might even help me with my knee. He's already found a curse on the joint that no one else noticed. That makes him a brilliant observer, at the very least. Who knows? He might be able to brew a potion that would help me walk again."

            Al stared at him again. Then he said, "I'll...make sure that we can talk to you on the weekend, at least. I don't know about getting away from the school. But I don't think that you're really going to change Scorpius's mind about his dad."

            Harry smiled at his son. "There were people who thought I couldn't kill Voldemort either, Al. And I know there are a lot now who think that I can't change the way anyone behaves towards house-elves. They're going to be proved wrong."

            "Scorpius isn't--he isn't Voldemort, Dad." Al had a strange look on his face, half-queasy. Harry wondered idly if he was that upset at the idea of one of his parents disliking any of his friends. It was true that Scorpius was the most controversial of them, or would have been if both Harry and Ginny hadn't grown up a little before Al became friends with him.

            "Maybe this is the kind of battle that I have to fight right now, then," Harry said. "The kind of battle I can fight without moving out of bed. Just ask Scorpius to talk to me. I can owl him if he's absolutely unwilling."

            Al promised in a dazed little voice, and then shut the Floo connection. Harry leaned back on the pillows and shut his eyes, listening to the beat of his heart.

            Once, he would have felt exhausted after a conversation like that, one that had even a hint of conflict in it, and would have wanted a nap immediately. Now, the buzz of his heartbeat just sang through him, and he would have liked to leap out of bed and stride around the room. He shifted his bad leg on the pillow instead and reached for the parchment and quills he kept beside the bed. It was time to start writing a letter to Susan Bones.

*

            Draco sat back from his Pensieve memory of the curse, and frowned. Yes, it did look much like the kinds of spells that were cast on daggers and swords, especially the kind that were meant for one hand only, and intended to poison anyone else who touched them. But there were also numerous differences that he hated the look of, and he had to wonder what they meant.

            There were those lines of shattering and breakage that extended out of the curse throughout Potter's knee, for one thing. Draco had accepted the first time he saw them that they were connected to the curse, and that removing the curse would remove them. It was not a stupid thing to think.

            Your father would not have thought it, said the quiet voice that was always at the back of his mind when Draco's thoughts were not perfectly in accord with Lucius's.

            He wasn't a Potions brewer of my expertise, and he had no reason to help Potter, Draco thought back. He never would have looked at all.

            And then he sat there and stared at the wall for a time before he wrenched his mind back on track, because he wasn't treacherous to his father that way. He aspired to be like him; he knew that Lucius had been craftier than he had, better controlled, more skilled at hiding his true feelings. Draco could value his own capacities, but not see them as in conflict with Lucius's without later discovering some memory that assured him his father had been cleverer and stronger than he was in that area, too.

            He shoved the tangles aside to join the tangles over his feelings for Potter and Scorpius, and went back to the unexpected thing about the curse on Potter's knee.

            The lines of breakage radiated from it, now that Draco could study it more closely, but they weren't connected to it. His metaphor of a hole in ice was inaccurate, after all. It was as if the curse just sent out poison, instead, and the poison would remain there if Draco removed the curse.

            Someone else could do it. The Healers at St. Mungo's could. You seem to have appointed yourself Potter's personal Healer for no reason.

            Draco dismissed that thought with a curled lip. He had begun this, and he would finish it. Besides, why hand Potter back over to the care of the same Healers who had missed the existence of this curse the first time around?

            The curse was also double-layered, not simply one rope of pain twisted through Potter's knee, but multiple folds, all invisible under the top dark line. Draco didn't know yet whether it was different spells that had been enchanted to look the same to a Healer's sight or the same spell cast multiple times, but either way, it would prove hard to heal.

            And then there were the thin lines of skin and muscle that had embraced the curse, cradling it. The magic was a part of the knee now in the same way that Potter's magical core was part of his vital organs. They couldn't simply yank it out.

            Draco snorted. You couldn't have a simple problem to work on, could you, Potter? You just had to be challenging and live with the problem instead of complaining about it the way you could have, which would have meant someone investigated it and found out what was tormenting the Chosen One before it got to this point...

            But he felt an undertone to his thoughts, as though he was about to smile without willing it, the way he so often had at Scorpius when he was a boy. Oh, Draco would enjoy this challenge, and although part of it would certainly be hard, boring work, there was prestige waiting if he chose to struggle for it.

            And there was the look that might come into Potter's pain-clear eyes, if he could remember for long enough who had done this for him...

            "Master Draco, there is being a firecall for Master Draco!"

            Draco jumped and turned around. The house-elves didn't usually bother him in his potions lab. He opened his mouth to snap at Orty, the elf with endlessly dripping eyes and nose who had interrupted him...

            And then stopped. Boring as it might be, he had to restrain himself, or reduce his own fertility, and perhaps Scorpius's chances, too. "Who is it, Orty?" he asked, with what he hoped came across as dignity instead of choked anger.

            "Mistress Astoria, Master Draco!" Orty bobbed several times, the rag around his waist hitting the floor each time.

            Draco relaxed a little. That explained why the elf had interrupted him, at least. Astoria and Scorpius still had access to the fireplaces and to him, or so the elves believed, because they had been born to or married Malfoys. Trying to teach them to forget about that had been more trouble than it was worth, so in the end Draco had accepted the inconvenience of these infrequent summons.

            Wondering now whether Astoria had come to threaten him again about his plans to disinherit Scorpius, Draco laid down the flat cover that he kept over his Pensieve whenever it had a particularly valuable memory in it and followed Orty to the Great Drawing Room.

            Astoria's face hovered in the fire, and she leaned forwards as though gripping the edge of her own hearth. "Did you come up with this ridiculous deception that Potter's putting out?" she asked, fire-quiet.

            Draco stared at her, then shook his head. "What? No. I didn't want to believe it at first, in fact. It rather goes against my principles to imagine that Granger, of all people, might have been right about something."

            He expected Astoria to smile at hearing him admit he'd been mistaken, or perhaps gape. Instead, she said, "I don't believe it. And I want you to stop spreading those rumors, or I'll reveal some of the secrets I gathered during my years of being chained to you."

            Draco's turn to gape, instead, and he didn't put a hand out to the back of a chair for balance simply because showing her even that much of his emotions was intolerable. "You are the one being ridiculous, Astoria." He kept his own voice more level, calm, as though that would convince her of her own stupidity. "I am helping Potter, but he is the one who made the discovery. And now that Granger has hold of it, it will spread faster than you can contain it, even if you reveal what I told you on our wedding night."

            He could hear Astoria's teeth grinding. Then she said, "You are doing this only so that you might look more natural when you disown Scorpius."

            "I have no idea how that would make me look more natural," Draco said. "Do you think that I'm eager to reject my own son? I gave him chance after chance--"

            "You are going to do something that will make you look good in Potter and Granger's eyes," Astoria said, in the flat tones of someone who had heard a prophecy. "Perhaps donate to Granger's defense for house-elves with the nonsensical name, I don't know. And then you'll claim that you're free to disinherit Scorpius and marry again, because the magic that supposedly punishes pure-bloods--can you really tell me that you believe that, Draco?--will have given you your fertility back. I won't allow you to do it."

            Draco felt something large and dangerous stir in him, and for the first time in years, he willingly thought of the Dark Lord summoning Nagini to feed. He leaned forwards and shook his head. "You don't understand, Astoria," he said. "This has nothing to do with Scorpius. Or everything to do with him. Do you want him to be able to have children in the future, too? Then he is highly likely to marry someone from a pure-blood family, on at least one side."

            "He could marry a Muggleborn." Astoria looked ready to bite through steel.

            Draco rolled his eyes. "And this affects your grandchildren, too, even if he does. They might want to marry pure-bloods. Astoria, why would I be doing something like this, overthrowing so many principles I've always accepted as true, simply to disinherit Scorpius? You know that I was willing to do so before Potter ever made the announcement."

            Astoria continued to stare at him. Then she said, "There is no other reason for you to do something like this."

            Draco grimaced. He wasn't about to give her an account of his own changed thought processes and what had led to them. She would only mock him whether he kept silence or confessed, so he would take the choice that led to the greatest amount of privacy for himself. "I thought about it, and although Potter might still be wrong, all the evidence I could come up with that he was was countered by something else in his theory."

            "Theory." Astoria snorted. Draco winced, and then remembered that he had done much the same thing earlier. Clearly, being around Potter was bad for him. "If you can call a set of airy suppositions with nothing to back them that."

            "We'll present the evidence in the second round of letters," Draco said steadily. "We wanted to stick to the basic outline first, because if we got too technical too fast, they'd reject it anyway."

            Astoria shook her head. "Potter and Granger believe in this, I'll grant them that. But you, Draco." She eyed him. "Your loyalty to your own family has always outweighed your loyalty to other pure-bloods. You only joined the war in the first place because the Dark Lord threatened your parents. So don't try to persuade me that you suddenly care about house-elves or the children that Scorpius might have or all the rest of it. You care about having the chance to enforce your perfect vision of the future on Scorpius."

            "Believe that if you want," Draco snapped, very near throwing up his hands and simply walking away. "You seem to."

            "All you need to do," Astoria said, leaning close again, "is believe me. Drop your support of them now, or I'll spread the rumors."

            Draco met her sparking eyes, and any hope that he could talk her around died. They had parted on bad terms--or what Draco would say were bad terms for Malfoy spouses, what with the open expression of emotions--and she had long since decided that he hated Scorpius and their son had only one parent who wanted to protect him. As a corollary of that, she was incapable of seeing Draco in any way that didn't relate to Scorpius.

            And so he did what he had known, in some quiet part of himself, that he was going to, perhaps from the moment that he had done something Lucius would not do.

            "Then spread the rumors," he said. "I'm sure I'll find them embarrassing, but the paper will have new stories to concentrate on from our direction any day now, and they'll get lost in the flood."

            Astoria's eyes fluttered fast, the way they only did when she was nervous. "Do you understand the threat I'm making, Draco?" she asked finally.

            "Yes," Draco said. "What I think you don't understand is the power of my allies. Potter breaking silence for the first time since his injury, speaking a theory that will revolutionize the wizarding world? If I ask him to stand up for me, and I know he'll agree if only to protect our alliance, then your accusations will seem like so much straw in the torrent."

            Astoria looked at him. Draco looked back. He didn't know what to call the emotion that was thrumming through him right now. Nothing so thin as triumph, or at least what he had been accustomed to call triumph in the past few years. And happiness was a properly brewed potion, and smugness was knowing he had proved someone else's theory wrong.

            I wish Potter had not begun to teach me so many things. I do not know where I will stop, now.

            But Potter had no place in this confrontation between him and Astoria, except as a potential threat, and so Draco waited until Astoria spoke again, from what sounded like a dry throat.

            "I think that you will still rue this, Draco," she said through stiff lips, and then she shut the Floo connection and left Draco alone with the scrape and rustle of his heart.

            He found himself smiling at the hearth, and then turning around with new thoughts about the curse on Potter's knee already stirring in his head. He wasn't cowering the way Astoria would have expected him to. He did feel on edge, he could imagine the first reactions to the rumors Astoria would release, but he could think, he could plan, he could turn in many different directions.

            He tried to remember the last time he had felt like this...

            And remembered nothing more recent than his fifth year at Hogwarts, when he had thought that he had power because of Umbridge's Inquisitorial Squad, and his father had remained free.

            Twenty-eight years ago.

            So long ago, now.

            Perhaps that is enough time for things to change.

*

            Mehla_Seraphim: It helps that Draco now has a new thing to concentrate on, the pain in Harry’s knee and what he can do to heal it.

            SP777: You may be pleasantly surprised with how Draco rebels against the shadow of Lucius in the next few chapters.

            No, I wasn’t a member of the Coven.

            ChaosLady: Thank you!

            unneeded: Thank you! Harry wouldn’t have had pain with the whole knee replaced, but he would as long as any of the original was left; the curse has expanded throughout all the skin and bone there.
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The Descent of Magic