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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter Twelve—By Words Alone

            The owl that fluttered around Harry dropped a feather in his cereal bowl before Harry could convince it to settle down on the back of his chair and take the message from it. Then he had to call Kreacher to make it a bowl of porridge, because apparently cereal half-softened by milk wasn’t the very best in owl fare and this bird felt that it deserved nothing less than the best. By the time that it shit on the back of his chair, Harry wasn’t in the best of moods where it was concerned.

            And that only got worse when he opened the letter and saw that it was from Scorpius, who said that he was very sorry but wouldn’t be able to talk to Mr. Potter until next week due to the sudden increase in his detentions.

            Harry leaned his head back—not enough to bring it into contact with the owl—and drummed with the letter against the edge of the table.

            He knew that Scorpius had made time for him before, that he had done almost anything he wanted to before, whether or not he was suffering punishment for sneaking out to go to Malfoy’s house or Grimmauld Place. The only conclusion Harry could come to was that Scorpius didn’t want to speak to him.

            And why not? Simply because Harry had enlisted Malfoy as an ally?

            Well, that was ridiculous. Harry trod carefully around Hugo because he had been devastated by an injury that had hurt Harry, too, and he was Ron and Hermione’s child. He had parents. But it seemed that Malfoy couldn’t do anything with Scorpius, and Scorpius had always shown in the past that he respected Harry and would listen to him.

            So Harry would do what he should have done in the first place, and firecall the Gryffindor common room. He stood up from his chair, avoided Kreacher as he tried anxiously to support him, and limped towards the stairs.

            He knew that he would pay the price for his sudden burst of energy later, but there were pain potions he could take for that, and this was more important.

*

            Draco swore as the latest potion melted into an unusable mess. After glaring at it for a while, which didn’t make the rotting-sweet smell or the sickly green color change in the slightest, he gave up on it and tipped it out into the sink.

            He had tried to use his memories of the curse on Potter’s knee to create a potion that would heal the damage. He had successfully worked before by combining memories with his natural talent at Potions, and done things by sheer intuition that he thought would have made Professor Snape proud.

            Better to have Professor Snape approve of things to do with brewing than your father.

            Another tiny, treacherous thought. Draco put that one, too, into the bundle of thoughts that he didn’t have time to deal with right now, and slapped his Pensieve down in front of him. The memory sprang to life the moment he ducked his head inside, and he stared at the spiraling galaxy of broken black lines and shook his head.

            It should be easier than this, it really should. There was something that made the memory slide away from him as soon as he thought he’d grasped it, and forget a breakage here, a line of damage there…

            Draco paused, his eyes narrowing and his grip on the edge of the Pensieve tightening until he thought it possible he would bend the soft metal. Then he stepped back deliberately and reached for the bezoar that sat on his lab table at all times. It was less that he thought he would poison himself with an experimental draught and more a reminder to himself that the most careful Potions master could die if confronted with a situation beyond his control, the way Snape had.

            When his hand closed around it, he felt a sharp surge of power that seemed to lance through his skull down to his toes, and bowed his head and gasped quietly. Then he looked again into the Pensieve, although he had to do a delicate balancing act for a moment to make sure he could hang onto the bezoar without knocking the Pensieve over.

            The picture of the curse looked different, now—and Draco was fairly sure that it wasn’t his memory that had changed, but his eyes. Someone had cast a spell among all the other spells, one that would project like a sudden thorn to touch anyone who might pierce through the first layer of protections. It deflected attention. It made someone looking at the knee assume that the damage was less than it should be. As a last-grade defense, it could blur the memories of someone trying to heal Potter.

            Someone had wanted Potter to suffer.

            Draco lifted his head slowly from the Pensieve and turned back to his experimental potions brewing with an expression that he knew would have made Scorpius pause if he was in the same room with him. Well, perhaps it would have made him pause, at least, and that slight chance was more success than Draco had achieved with his son in years.

            That explained why the Healers hadn’t healed Potter, and it explained why Draco might have the chance to. Because he was smart enough to notice the discrepancy, and brilliant enough to find a solution.

            I’m more brilliant than my father ever was.

            This time, there was no dissenting murmur from the back of his mind. Draco smiled, and spent some moments arranging the bezoar so that it hung around his neck on a slender collar that put it into contact with his bare skin. He didn’t think he had to have a hand free as long as it was skin-to-stone contact.

            And then he began to really brew.

*

            Harry had asked the young girl who answered the fire, with a wink, not to tell Scorpius that Harry Potter was firecalling him, because he wanted it to be a pleasant surprise. The girl, giggling and awed, had dutifully herded Scorpius along with promises about “someone” who wanted to talk to him, and now Scorpius was in front of the fire and would look really silly if he tried to back away.

            “Hullo, Scorpius,” Harry said calmly.

            “Mr. Potter.” Scorpius was leaning forwards with his shoulders hunched, in a way that told Harry his hands were probably on his knees. He had grown able to read defensive teenage firecall talk a decade ago.

            “I wanted to talk to you about your dad,” Harry said, shifting position so that his knee projected more towards the fire, just the way he had with Al. If it came down to manipulating the way that he appeared helpless and vulnerable in front of people because of his injury, then he’d do it. “Are you so reluctant to talk to me now just because he’s helping me with the house-elf research?”

            Scorpius’s mouth opened for a moment, and then closed. Then he said, “You know I have a really difficult relationship with him, Mr. Potter.”

            Harry nodded. “I know. I reckon I’m asking you to tell me about that. Are you going to stop talking to me because he’s helping me?”

            Scorpius looked away with a frown. Then he turned back. There was a reason that he had been Sorted into the House of the Brave, Harry thought, and it was there in the fire shining in his eyes.

            “He’s a wanker,” Scorpius said, low and fierce. “He’s always been a wanker. He told my mum that he didn’t care about her divorcing him, because she was too emotional to be a proper Malfoy wife. And he’s told me over and over again that I’m not a good heir for him, because I have Muggleborn friends. I can’t imagine what he would do if I told him that I wanted to marry one.”

            “Do you?” Harry asked, momentarily diverted. He couldn’t believe that he wouldn’t have heard about that, but perhaps this was one affair of the heart that Scorpius had managed to hide even from Lily, Harry’s usual source of Hogwarts gossip.

            “That’s not what I meant,” Scorpius said, though with a sharp blush that reminded Harry of the way Malfoy had looked after a few of their conversations. “I mean, I don’t believe him when he acts as though he cares about who pure-bloods not in his family marry. He’s only doing this to—to make himself look better, or something. He doesn’t believe it.”

            “I think he does,” Harry said. “I offered him the chance to prove my theory wrong, and he wasn’t able to do it.”

            Scorpius made a single sharp, curved motion with one hand. “You should have had someone else take a look at it, Mr. Potter. I mean, no offense, but you’re new to this, and my father isn’t the fastest broom in the shed.”

            Harry waited a moment, for the appalled defensiveness that had burst inside him like a firework to flare and die, and then said, “I’m new at this. But your dad knows a lot more about pure-blood history and genealogy than I do, and he took the threat seriously. And I think that he’s thinking about who you’ll marry. What if your spouse can’t have children? What if your children can’t have children? That’s the way it matters to him.”

            Scorpius tensed up, and then sprang around on hands and knees. His eyes were brighter than ever now, and Harry heard a confused chatter behind him, as though the other kids in the common room were taking notice. Scorpius roared over his shoulder at them, and the chatter shut up. Scorpius’s head turned slowly back to stare at Harry.

            “He’s lying,” Scorpius whispered. “He couldn’t change his mind on that, so quickly. Even if he decided that he could work with you, because you’ve talked to each other sometimes thanks to me and Al, he would never work with Al’s Aunt Hermione.”

            Harry smiled wryly. “It’s been a battle, trying to urge them to cooperate,” he admitted. “But it’s also been more fun than I anticipated.” He paused when he saw the look on Scorpius’s face. “Scorpius, no, really, I mean it. This is something to wake me up out of the stupor that I’ve been in the past few years.”

            “You haven’t been in a stupor,” Scorpius snapped. “Is that another thing he told you? He’s always doing that, trying to persuade you to listen to him for what he says is your own good. Lying and complaining—”

            “No,” Harry said, and used a tone that he hadn’t used in years, one that he was more accustomed to use on rebellious junior Aurors than his children’s friends. Scorpius fell silent and stared at him again. “No one tried to convince me of anything that I didn’t want to believe. I simply want to know why you didn’t show your father more respect, and now I know. Well. You ought to realize that I wouldn’t work with anyone who constantly insulted me unless I believed they could help, that there was a greater goal out there than getting anyone to revere me.”

            “That’s not what I meant,” Scorpius said, face pale and tense now. “I think that he’s lying, holding his contempt in reserve, hiding it. But sooner or later, he’ll betray you just the way he betrayed my mother.”

            Harry snorted in spite of himself. “I’m hardly going to marry him, Scorpius.”



“You’ll see,” Scorpius reported mournfully, and the fire winked out, taking his face with it, before Harry could form a reply.

Harry leaned back thoughtfully in his chair. It sounded as though Scorpius had something of the same problem as Hugo, though of course with a different person. Hugo imagined that Harry’s injury was the center of the universe, and that Harry had to feel sorry for himself and mourn his lost ability to be a field Auror, because that was the way Hugo felt. And Scorpius imagined that his father had to act like a wanker around Harry, because that was the way he acted around Scorpius.

            That still didn’t lessen Harry’s determination to change Scorpius’s attitude, though. Ultimately, he couldn’t do much about Hugo’s because he didn’t want to change himself, but he knew that Malfoy was a better person than Scorpius was painting him, and that enough evidence on that side of the books might change Scorpius’s mind. Scorpius was two years older than Hugo, and that much more reasonable.

            I am going to show him, and Hermione, and all the rest of them, that Malfoy really isn’t a bad person.

*

            It was one of those potions where there was distance between what Draco wanted to do and what he knew he was going to achieve. He could imagine the potion that he would brew for Potter, shining perfect in yellow-green, looking like leaves with the sunlight falling on them, so thick that Potter would have to scoop it up with one hand and slather it over his knees, where it would cling and smell like ripening grapes.

            In reality, the potion that took shape under his hand was a deeper green, and thinner in consistency. Draco scooped it up and shaped it with a few motions of his fingers, and it broke and trickled back into the cauldron. He sniffed deeply, but smelled bananas instead of grapes.

            Now, though, with the memory working in his head and the determination and skill working in his fingers, he knew that he was going to arrive at his goal. So he shouldn’t be too disappointed that it wouldn’t match perfectly with his dream.

            Between one blink and another, the potion surged and glittered and reached that final moment, the one that was so hard to define for someone else. When Scorpius couldn’t learn it, Draco knew his son would never be a Potions master, even if he was a good Potions student. You knew it by instinct or not at all.

            And Professor Snape would despise you for saying something like that. He believed in skill and art, not instinct.

            So did your father.

            Draco shook his head slowly, eyes fixed on the potion. He scooped up some of it with a ladle, and it broke and clung to the sides of the ladle the way that it was supposed to. He didn’t dare taste it, of course, because it was meant for Potter, and he didn’t know what it would do to him if it found its way into his body.

            But this was the way he worked. By instinct, and going along with his emotions sometimes and violating them at others. He had tried so hard to keep them subdued and unexpressed for years, but he knew, now, that it hadn’t worked. He had still shown them when he talked to people like Astoria and Scorpius, who knew him well.

            But not well enough.

            Draco poured the potion into a vial and corked it, moving sedately, half in a dream. Then he dropped the vial into his pocket and stepped towards the Floo. It was time that he contact Potter and tell him about the possible threat from Astoria to their project, which he hadn’t done yesterday. And about the potion and that he might be able to heal most of the damage done to his knee, of course.

            Potter brings out emotions in me.

            His father’s voice whispered from the back of his skull, telling him to avoid Potter at all costs, then, that he had to or he would end up a sobbing mess. But Draco only smiled and threw more Floo powder on the fire, making it spark and flare as he called out the name and number of Grimmauld Place.

            If they’re the right emotions, expressed the right way, then I don’t need to worry.

            That was probably the problem he had had all these years, he thought. His father was able to work with a perfectly blank and cold mask, but not Draco. The feelings bubbled up no matter how hard he tried to keep them down, so it was best to just go ahead and work with them until he learned how to wield them like other weapons.

            The Floo powder caught, and opened the fireplace to show Potter’s face. He looked up from something in his lap. Draco thought it might have been a letter, but then wondered if it was the edition of the Daily Prophet that Astoria had begun spreading her rumors in. He had been too busy during the last day to check the paper when it was delivered this morning.

            “Malfoy, hello,” Potter said, and smiled at him. “Have you written the letter to Highfeather?”

            Draco shook his head. “Not yet. Something else happened.” He held up the vial of potion, and watched Potter’s eyes widen as they fixed on it. He did want to walk again, Draco thought, no matter how convenient he found his leg as an excuse to stay apart from politics. “May I come through?”

            “Yes,” Potter said, and shifted backwards. Draco cast in more powder and stepped through.

            For some reason, he had thought he would step into the drawing room, the one room of the house where he had always arrived so far. Instead, he was in Potter’s bedroom, and the door of the potions cupboard was closed, making Draco pay more attention to the faded paper on the walls, the plaster roses on the ceiling, the ridiculous blue-and-yellow checked pattern of Potter’s quilt. He had the quilt draped over his legs, of course, and looked like a kindly old grandfather. Draco sneered and handed him the potion.

            “This is a potion that should do some of the healing for the curse,” he said shortly. “Or at least enable you to feel some relief from the pain. No one else had found the curse because it had a secondary spell on it that deflected attention.”

            He intended to go on, to explain about Astoria and the other reasons that he hadn’t got around to writing the Highfeather letter yet, but Potter cradled the potions vial between his hands, staring at it, and then looked up at Draco with a shining face.

            Draco swallowed slowly. There was a lightness in his head and a trembling in his limbs that, he told himself, came from not eating much today. He sat down.

            “Thank you,” Potter whispered.

            Draco nodded shortly back. There was no reason for him to feel as though he was floating, he thought. Except lack of food.

*

            dominique1: Draco will try to heal Harry’s knee, but there’s no guarantee that he’ll walk without pain again. It’s going to take more than just one potion.

            SP777: Yes, I think so.

            moodysavage: Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait for Chapter 13 to find out. ;)

            ChaosLady: We’ll have to see.

            unneeded: Scorpius isn’t a side issue for Harry. He would like to see Scorpius accept his father more.

            Astoria really does think that she’s doing the best thing for a son whose father doesn’t give a shit about him.
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The Descent of Magic