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The Library of Hades	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 4439 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
- 12
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Chapter Eleven—Pieces and Shards

            “So you think the necklace broke at the same moment as I broke the mirror?” Draco leaned forwards so that his forehead rested against his hands, which were propped on Harry’s table in front of him. “Well. It makes sense. But I have never seen anything like that mirror before and I took no notice of the necklace when I first saw my mother wearing it, so I don’t know what the connection is.”

            Harry had to smile as he handed Draco another cup of tea to replace the one that had gone cold an hour ago. “I’m sometimes amazed that you became an Auror.”

            Draco peered at him. “Why? You’re not about to tell me that I should have stayed a pampered son in my parents’ mansion.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “Of course I didn’t mean that. Then I wouldn’t have you, and that would be unacceptable.” He waited until Draco had got over the minor wave of preening that remark produced before he added, “But you can’t stand not knowing things. I wondered why you wanted to be an Auror when your main job then is solving mysteries.”

            “That hatred of uncertainty is part of what drives me on,” Draco said simply, and put the cup down after a single sip. “And you’re holding out on me.”

            Harry blinked. “What?” He had described the shattering of Narcissa’s necklace to Draco several times, while Draco had only talked about his battle with the dangerous magical mirror once, and Harry had even told Draco about how he had used the imaginary connection to Parseltongue and the nonverbal spell to convince Narcissa he controlled the necklace. He was sure Draco had heard the insulting words Harry had used to win entrance to the Manor, and he didn’t appear to want to talk about those, so… “What didn’t I say?”

            “You didn’t say,” Draco said quietly, leaning forwards, “what convinced you that you had to threaten them with Parseltongue in the first place. Especially since they had given you safe-conduct promises on their blood.”

            Harry winced. Shit.

            He didn’t know how to say it. He thought his blood was racing faster than it had when Narcissa had talked about interviewing the Dursleys. He glanced away, and Draco got up and came around the table.

            Harry hunched, but Draco only stroked the back of his head and the nape of his neck, and went on stroking. Harry relaxed as he sat there. Of course it wasn’t the same, however much he wanted to keep silent about the Dursleys. The elder Malfoys were his enemies, and Draco wasn’t.

            “Harry,” Draco whispered. “What could they have threatened you with? They didn’t know I was in the Manor, or they would have come to stop me.”

            Harry took a deep breath and reached back to catch and squeeze that stroking hand. “They interviewed my Muggle family,” he said, when he knew that his voice wouldn’t shake. “Offered them enough money to talk. It must have been a lot of money, since they despise wizards so much.”

            “My parents would have that much money,” Draco said, his voice light, but not gentle. “What did they learn that scared you so? Where they lived?”

            Harry shook his head. “I didn’t even know that, after the war.” Draco’s hand tightened, but he didn’t speak. Harry licked his lips and plunged on. He was going to do this right. “They—learned about how my relatives abused me.”

            And he had even got out the word abused without his voice shaking. Harry was proud of himself.

*

            Ah.

            Draco shifted nearer. He had suspected something like this, just from casual remarks Harry would make about the way he had grown up, remarks that Draco didn’t think he was aware of. To be fair, Draco wouldn’t have noticed them either, half-a-year ago. It was only after he and Harry had become true partners, watching each other’s backs, that those careless words made him go on point, and wonder.

            But he hadn’t wanted to confront him about it. The times that he’d hinted towards it, Harry had backed off again. And Draco wanted the whole story when he did get it, the unconstrained one.

            It appeared that he was about to hear it, and because Harry had decided to offer it. Draco wished he could find some way to express how important that was to him, his consciousness of its rarity, but he kept his stance still, and Harry delivered after a moment.

            “She knew the most important details,” Harry said. “And she threatened to tell the papers. Which would make people pay attention just when they were mostly ignoring me, and pity me, and mess everything up. The case, the way the Ministry thinks of me—”

            “What abuse, Harry?” Draco rubbed his shoulders, first the right and then the left, never both together, in massive, soothing strokes. “Explain to me about it.”

            He watched Harry’s hair bob as he bowed his head, and the sound of his swallow ran long and thick through the room. Then Harry said, “They starved me sometimes, and I had to do a lot of chores. They told me I was a freak for doing magic. They didn’t tell me I was a wizard. They had me sleep in a cupboard until I started getting Hogwarts letters.”

            Draco stood there, and thought about that. He heard Harry grunt, and quietly took back his hands, which had curled deeply enough to stab his fingers into Harry’s shoulders.

            Then he said, “I had not realized it was that bad.”

            “It’s not something I like to think or talk about much.” Harry rubbed the nape of his neck as though it ached for Draco’s hands now that they were gone. “Would you, if you were me?”

            Draco shook his head. “Not unless I was giving someone instructions to avenge me.”

            “That’s what I don’t want.” Harry kept facing forwards, but Draco could see the side of his face, and the lines that tightened there as if carved in glass. “That’s why your mother could make it into such an effective threat. I don’t want someone taking revenge for me, or drawing attention to it. No one.” He turned around and faced Draco then, his hands rough in their motions, his brows drawn downwards. “Do you understand me, Draco?”

            Draco nodded to him, and thought about the slenderness of Harry’s wrists, and the way that he had never seemed to grow as fast and as tall as the other boys in Hogwarts—though he was more than perfect in height now—and the way that he sometimes started breathing heavily when they were in small rooms. “Perfectly.”

            Harry’s mouth tightened. Well, why not? Draco’s reply hadn’t reassured him.

            But he let out a light pant a few minutes later, and said, “Well. That’s everything that happened to me in the Manor, everything your parents talked to me about. And now we only have to figure out how it connects to the case of the blue-eyed twisted and Smoke and Mirrors, and do something about it.”

            Draco nodded to his description of it, and said, “I think that we have waited long enough. We have the minor mysteries to pursue, but we also have the books.” He touched one of the tomes he had brought out of the Manor. “And there are certain things, such as Weasley’s flowers, that we will simply have to wait to know more about.”

            Harry tilted his head to the side in a way that said he didn’t agree on Weasley’s flowers, but only asked, “What do you want to do?”

            “Set a trap for Smoke and Mirrors,” Draco said. “By calling him out.” He smiled at Harry. “You and I are too famous to be his victims, but other people aren’t.”

*

            “What you’re doing borders on the immoral.”

            Harry blinked and glanced up. He and Draco had been deep in discussion of the obscure person they would cook up as the perfect victim for Smoke and Mirrors, and he hadn’t heard Rudie enter the office. Draco’s shoulders tensed and his head tossed, which meant he hadn’t, either.

            But he turned around with a pleasant enough smile on his face, though Harry thought Rudie a fool if she took that seriously. “Why, whatever do you mean?” he asked.

            Rudie had a vial in her hand containing a silvery liquid. “You need to see this,” she said. “It’s a memory of Nicolette firecalling me last night.”

            “Because, of course, we keep Pensieves lying around.” Draco smiled at her and tapped Harry with an elbow.

            Harry stood up and walked around the desk. Rudie looked the way she had when he and Draco first met her, after interviewing her on a case where she’d battled a twisted and lost her first partner. “There’s another way,” he said. “If someone takes the memory and puts it directly in their mind. Is that what you want us to do?”

            Rudie nodded, slight, tense, quick. “Yes.” She uncapped the vial.

            Draco stepped up between them and held out his hand. “You’ll permit me to examine the vial for taints first, of course,” he said.

            Rudie stepped back. Her hand was on her wand, which she had drawn whisper-quick, and from the way her eyes darkened, Harry decided that she distrusted Draco more than she did him. Perhaps Macgeorge had hinted that Draco was the one who wanted her to use her necromancy. Harry didn’t know why she would care otherwise. “What do you mean?”

            “Sometimes a vial isn’t properly cleaned,” Draco told her, only the muscles of his mouth moving out of all the muscles in his face. “That means the next potion poured into it can be contaminated by the traces of the prior potion that remain. I simply want to make sure that hasn’t happened to this memory.”

            Rudie widened her eyes and stood so still for a moment that Harry thought she would object. Then she handed the vial over.

            Draco performed a number of small and intricate charms on it, peering at it in a way that made Harry wonder what he saw, and if he would let Harry take the memory into his head. Then he gave the most minute of shrugs and turned around, holding the vial out to Harry. “It seems to be clean.”

            Harry looked into his face as he took the vial. Draco made a small swirling gesture with one hand. It is clean, but you’re going to be the one to put the memory into your mind.

            Harry didn’t object to that. He didn’t distrust Rudie, but on the other hand, he had no idea what her background was with things like Legilimency and Occlumency. He stuck his wand into the memory and pulled; the silver strand followed his wand up. Harry laid it next to his ear and closed his eyes, trying not to remember the last time he had done this, after Lionel had died.

            Then Rudie’s memory took over, and he couldn’t think about Lionel.

            The colors in front of him were subdued and grainy. Harry blinked at brown curtains, wood panels on the wall, and beige carpeting, and shook his head. Rudie wasn’t much of a decorator.

            In the midst of all that dimness, Rudie’s blonde hair shone where she knelt before the fire. Harry forged his way to her, feeling as though he walked through knee-high waters, and leaned so he could see over her shoulder.

            Some of the difficulty in walking came from the emotions Rudie was feeling, Harry realized when he saw Macgeorge’s face. Rudie had been shocked by the sight of her partner when she firecalled, and the shock had bled into anger and fear, which turned the air of the room nearly to smoke.

            “Tell me what you’ve been doing,” Rudie said, her knuckles skinned from her grip on the rough bricks in front of the hearth. “I think you owe me that much, at least.”

            “I don’t owe you anything.” Macgeorge held her cloak in front of her and shivered as if she was cold. Her eyes were encircled in dark blood, a mask that continued down the front of her face and onto her chin. Her fingers were thinner and bonier than Harry remembered from his last sight of her, as though she’d pared flesh away from them for use in necromancy. Macgeorge opened her mouth to speak again, and Harry saw the brown color her teeth had turned. “We’ve worked together as partners for a few months. You aren’t involved in this investigation, and we don’t have any current cases right now where you would require my presence. That’s the end of it.”

            “If you’re on a case, then I should be with you,” Rudie said, and leaned forwards until she nearly went face-first into the fire. Harry wondered if she had noticed, as he did, the way that Macgeorge’s teeth snapped at each other when that happened. “That’s what partners means. That’s what we are.”

            There was a little silence, and Harry thought he detected a softening in Macgeorge’s eyes that might have signaled she was going to listen. But then she twitched her head away and shook it. Rudie watched as a wisp of her hair came loose and tumbled down her neck, continuing until it lay on the invisible floor.

            “I think that’s what you think we are,” Macgeorge said, her voice harsh and cool. “That doesn’t mean it’s true. And it doesn’t mean that you have the right to accompany me into the darker waters.”

            “That’s not the first time you’ve given me this babble about ‘darker waters’ and not explained what you meant,” Rudie said, and clasped her hands in front of her as though she was about to dive. “Is it—does it have something to do with your necromancy?”

            Macgeorge turned around so fast that Harry winced. She stared at her partner in silence for long minutes, except for the wheezing breath that worked in and out between her cracked teeth. Rudie didn’t move and didn’t speak, which was more self-control than Harry had given her credit for.

            “You weren’t to know about that,” Macgeorge said, and sounded as if she was upset with someone who wasn’t present. “You weren’t to know.”

            “When my partner starts acting oddly, then I investigate all the possible avenues of knowledge I can,” Rudie said flatly. “And it’s not as though I didn’t know about your affinity with the dead, not with that bloody paperweight on your desk. So. Is it that, then?”

            Macgeorge did a little more breathing, then said, “I don’t thinks continuing this conversation will be profitable to either of us. Good-bye, Rudie.”

            Rudie lunged forwards, nearly singing her hair, and shouted, “Nicolette! Wait! What if profit isn’t the only thing I care about in my partner?”

            But she shouted to an empty fireplace. The Floo connection had shut, and Harry could feel the silent ringing refusal of its magic to carry her message.

            The memory ended. Harry opened his eyes, shook his head, and lifted his wand to his temple to transfer the memory back to Rudie.

            “You don’t need to,” Rudie had started to say, but Harry could deal with the minor echoes of the memory better than he could the despair that had haunted the whole conversation. He solemnly handed the strand back to her, and Rudie ducked her head before accepting it on her wand and into her mind.

            “We are not responsible for whatever your partner did,” Draco said, his arms folded. He had already decided, Harry knew, from one quick glance at Harry’s face, that there was no way to put this off or pretend it didn’t matter, or that Macgeorge hadn’t helped them. “It’s true we asked for her help—once. After we gave her certain information, we didn’t see or hear from her again.”

            Harry cocked his head, silently interrogating Draco as to whether he was going to mention the blue-eyed twisted to Rudie. Draco remained still, and Harry checked a sigh. He thought it couldn’t do any harm, and might help Rudie if she knew what to look for and Macgeorge showed up again with blue eyes, but he wouldn’t undermine Draco in front of someone else, either. That wasn’t what they were partners for.

            “I want to know what the information was.” Rudie stood with her hands on her hips and her feet spread wide apart, as though bracing against a charge.

            “Why?” Draco sneered at her. “You said yourself that you don’t already know. If Macgeorge wanted you to know, she would have mentioned it. To talk to you is to betray her trust.”

            Harry remembered a time, only a few months ago, when that would have made Rudie, as the youngest Socrates Auror, back down with furrowed lines in her brow. Now she simply shook her head, once, twice, and her hair swirled and fell around her like flames. “I don’t believe that,” she said simply. “Not now. Nicolette might have thought it best to keep it from me—although she had to know that I would support anything she did—but I don’t think she can make the decisions for herself anymore.” She looked at Harry. “You saw her face.”

            Draco glanced at him again. Harry met his gaze, trying to put everything he could into his eyes, and nodded.

            Draco sighed like a teakettle sputtering out the last drops of steam. “All right,” he said, and waved his wand to tighten the anti-eavesdropping wards on the office door. “Macgeorge was looking into the body of one of the victims for us, the latest one, Michael Moxon. She asked questions and answers appeared on strips of skin torn from the body. I also got her a vial of his blood, and she’s been looking at it. I have no idea what she might have discovered in the blood or why it took her like that. We haven’t seen her much since then.”

            “That’s not everything.”

            Draco blinked. Harry folded his arms and waited. He would let Draco make the decisions, since Harry had seen the memory and might be overly influenced by Rudie’s concern for her partner, but honestly, he thought it would make the most sense to explain the blue-eyed twisted. Rudie obviously noticed when they left things out anyway.

*

            Draco would have liked to take Harry into another room and explain to him, but that wasn’t an option with Rudie standing right in front of them and glaring as if Draco had killed her Crup.

            The blue-eyed twisted had so far chosen Draco and Harry as enemies, and Macgeorge as a victim. Draco thought it was more because she had aided them than for any other reason, which meant Rudie was in no danger as long as she didn’t become involved in the Smoke and Mirrors case. That meant that they didn’t have to explain, either, and that in fact it might be dangerous to do so, as it would draw the blue-eyed twisted’s attention.

            But Draco had not thought Rudie would pick up on his omission, and he had no backing story prepared. He glanced at Harry, who glanced at him, and wore his bleeding-heart expression openly in his eyes. Draco sneered, and sighed, and turned back to Rudie.

            “There is a twisted who hunts us as we hunt him,” he said shortly. “We’ve seen signs of him for months now, beginning with the first case we handled together, when Harry saw him in Okazes.”

            “Saw him in Okazes?” Rudie strained nearer, then caught herself with one hand on her desk when she would have tumbled forwards. Draco allowed himself a smile of petty triumph, which was ruined when Rudie didn’t look in his direction. “Tell me what that means.”

            “He possesses people,” Harry said, which ruined all the neat explanations Draco might have come up with. “You can tell because their eyes turn blue. We saw it happen to Macgeorge the other day. They have no memory of what happened while they were possessed, and they feel a foulness in their minds.”

            Something, perhaps the flatness of his voice, made Rudie stare at him. Then she murmured, “You had that happen to you, too.”

            Harry nodded. “I fought the possession off in time, so I can’t say I had the full experience.” Draco wondered if he had ever looked as bitter as Harry had in that moment, his eyes full of cold coals, his hands locked as though gripping the edge of a shield. “But in general, that’s the way it works. We have no idea who he is, or where he is, or what the limitations of his flaw are. We only know he hates us, and that he’s been interfering in our cases as long as we’ve been handling them.”

            Rudie was silent for a moment, eyes flickering back and forth between them. Then she said, “You ought to have told all of us about this the moment it happened, you realize. Or else the moment we came into the division.”

            “We chose not to,” Draco said coolly. “Perhaps that is a choice we will pay for. We’re willing to pay the price.”

            “And if Nicolette does it, and not you?” Rudie said, touching one hand to her mouth. “Oh, I forgot, you never liked her. Of course that means you’re willing to pay.”

            And she whirled and strode out with her whole back bristling with indignation. Draco shook his head. He could have said many things, including that he distrusted Macgeorge because she had pried at them from the beginning and declared a sexual interest in his partner, but Rudie would not welcome the words at the moment.

            “That could have gone better.”

            Draco turned back to Harry. “I refuse to accept responsibility for what has happened to Macgeorge,” he said. “She knew the risks of necromancy, and if she is now in trouble because of them—”

            “We could have handled it better,” Harry said, with the calm coolness that meant he wouldn’t discuss it anymore, and turned his back so that he was facing the desk again. “I still don’t understand the outlines of this plan you have to trap Smoke and Mirrors. How does it work?”

            “You didn’t understand me because we were interrupted before I could explain,” Draco murmured, but he strode back to the table and picked up a list of facts he had begun creating, headed with the name Sarah Nickell.

            “You refused to talk about it last night except to congratulate yourself for being such a genius.”

            Draco bowed his head until the same prickling irritation had come and gone, and said, “I should have said something then.” Harry’s gape when he apologized was still precious to him, but it would vanish if Draco drew attention to it, so he continued instead. “We create a list of facts about someone named Sarah who doesn’t exist. No one more obscure than that, or more suited to this twisted’s desire to tell the truth.”

            “You’re sure someone with the name Sarah Nickell doesn’t exist in the wizarding world, then?” Harry looked doubtfully at the list.

            “I checked the Ministry birth records for the last hundred and fifty years this morning,” Draco said. “We’re safe.”

            Harry nodded. “And when Smoke and Mirrors starts trying to find out more about her?”

            Draco smiled. “A few carefully-cast glamours, some comfortable positions, and we can wait for him.”

*

            SP777: It’ll probably depend on how much damage the elder Malfoys can do.

            Ha! Yes, that was one of mine.

            unneeded: Harry and Draco don’t really know the answer to the questions about the mirror and the necklace, either, but it does seem likely that there’s some sort of link.

            If necessary, Lucius and Narcissa would find a cousin to inherit. But they would prefer to have Draco back.
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The Library of Hades