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Leopardspaw	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21311 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Twelve—The Daring of the Mad

            “My glamour itches.”

            “Glamours can’t itch,” Harry murmured, keeping his gaze ahead of him, on the boat that approached them across the grey waves. The Ministry changed the means of access to Azkaban from week to week, or sometimes day to day, to discourage possible escapes: sometimes a boat, sometimes permitted Apparition to a rare number of isolated sites, sometimes a Portkey, occasionally broom. Somehow, the people who had taken Lucius had known the method of access for that week. That only increased Harry’s suspicion to near-certainty that they had help among the Aurors.

            “It does anyway.”

            Harry twitched the chain that coiled around Malfoy’s hands, and Malfoy jumped a foot in the air. Harry smirked as he stepped down the expanse of trampled mud and sand to meet the boat. The chain resembled ones that the Auror Department had used to use, but gave up when it seemed that too many criminals were dying from them. It supposedly sent shocks to the victim’s heart when he did something his captor didn’t like.

            The chain was only a glamour, of course, rather like the black hair that Malfoy now sported, and the huge mole on his chin, and the yellow fingernails that had apparently been cut some time last century. The sullen expression was real, and that was the main thing Harry was counting on to fool the guards.

            The other was his own reputation. The sapphire, in his pocket, was going to wait for them actually getting to the island.

            The Auror in the front of the boat jumped out with a small nod to Harry and cast spells on Malfoy to check for glamours. He raised an eyebrow at what he found there and turned to Harry for an explanation.

            “Hard to lead him here undisturbed otherwise,” Harry murmured back, and flicked his wand sharply down. The mole and the fingernails wavered and dissolved. The hair seemed to, as well, but the color didn’t change, only the absolute and slovenly untidiness of it. There was a secondary glamour there, coiled beneath the surface, anchored in a partial wig that Harry had braided into Malfoy’s real hair with the help of spells and dye. Doing one glamour under another was tricky, but having seen one dispelled, the guards were unlikely to look for another, and doubly unlikely to look for Muggle methods. As Hermione had said once, most wizards lacked logic.

            There were other glamours that altered Malfoy’s features and eye color, and made him look like Nathan Thunderwhistle, a wizard who had committed (or was alleged to have committed) seven murders five years ago. The guard stepped back sharply from Harry, and then swallowed. “How did you run into him?” he whispered.

            Harry shrugged. “I was buying myself robes in Diagon Alley, and I felt a presence of strange magic behind me. You’ve heard that I can detect magical signatures?” Which was a load of bollocks, of course, but their usual eagerness to believe anything about Harry Potter helped him here. As the guard nodded, eyes wide, Harry closed his left eye in a slow wink. “I felt his behind me. I’ve only felt it once before, but you don’t forget someone like our friend Nathan here.” He smirked at Malfoy, who scowled at him. “And I turned around, dispelled the glamours he was under, and arrested him.”

            It had been a dramatic arrest, too, although Harry had deliberately chosen a time when a small crowd of spectators was on the street. Too many people, and he couldn’t have got “Thunderwhistle” out of there as quickly as he had. With the way things stood, those people would scatter and tell more people, but none of the details would quite agree, and the number of eyewitnesses was limited.

            Harry had actually thought an owl telling him to bring Malfoy straight to the Ministry might reach him before he Apparated this far, but it hadn’t, and he was going to keep right on hoping that it wouldn’t.

            “You’re the best Auror.”

            The guard was staring at Harry in a way that brought him quickly out of his daze of self-congratulations. Malfoy sniggered behind him, and Harry twitched the chain, glad that Malfoy remembered to gasp and wheeze and clutch at his chest as if it really had shocked him. “Quiet, you,” Harry snapped over his shoulder, and faced the guard, shaking his head. “Not really. I just recognize what I see and take advantage of it.”

            The guard smiled as he gestured them towards the boat. “I’ve heard someone say that luck is more than half of being a good Auror.”

            Malfoy didn’t make a sound this time, but nevertheless Harry could feel his smugness beating like a fire from behind him. Harry sniffed and put his head up. “Well, I’ve always had luck, that’s true,” he said, and walked Malfoy down to the boat.

            It was a small, grey, rocking thing, and the three other wizards who had come from the island with the first guard, plus Harry and Malfoy, made it ride lower in the water. Harry grimaced to himself, but kept his face on the outside serene. He knew why they had sent so many. They were used to simply taking prisoners, even difficult ones, and removing them to Azkaban themselves, while the arresting Auror Apparated away.

            But no one questioned Harry’s desire to see a criminal as dangerous and notorious as Thunderwhistle to the cell himself.

            I counted on that.

            Even knowing that, though, didn’t exactly make Harry feel as he should about this. Malfoy had said that people fawned on him out of misplaced spite, as a point in another argument entirely, but…

            Any Auror ought to know that that bit about detecting magical signatures without a spell was a load of bollocks. Current magical theory said it was impossible. People who claimed to have done it in the past were lucky, mad, or responding to something else, subtle enough that they hadn’t noticing it and had decided they’d felt the signature instead.

            But because he was Harry Potter, he got away with it.

            What the fuck else could I get away with? Maybe I ought to become a Dark Lord just to teach them about the peril of having heroes.

            He spent the rest of the journey to the isle brooding, and started a little when the boat grated on the stone, and the guard he’d talked to first turned to him and said, “We’re here, Auror Potter. Not half quiet, is he?” He was eyeing Malfoy, one hand on his wand.

            “I told him what I would do to him if he rebelled on the way,” Harry said glibly, standing up and tugging on the chain. Malfoy came with him, ducking his head and muttering to himself, which made the other Aurors in the boat nod appreciatively. They’d apparently always known that Thunderwhistle would sound like that if he was actually captured. “Besides, he hates water.”

            “That makes sense,” said the guard, nodding wisely.

            No, it fucking doesn’t, Harry thought, as he trudged behind them up the winding path towards the prison. Malfoy trudged, too, kicking pebbles and muttering to give the children someone to glare at. Does no one have any curiosity? Am I the only one who would want to know more right away? Or at least ask why I didn’t take him to the Ministry so I could tell Kingsley personally that we have him?

            He ought to set up a training program so that all Aurors would learn something more about the curiosity that had saved his life and kicked his arse when he was at Hogwarts, he thought with speechless indignation, following them up the path. What would have become of the world if he and Hermione and Ron hadn’t been curious about the Philosopher’s Stone, or Nicholas Flamel? Or if they hadn’t wanted to know about the Heir of Slytherin instead of sitting back and saying, “I’m sure glad that’s someone else’s problem! Now, what’s for lunch?”

            No, that’s the reason to become a Dark Lord. To teach people to ask questions.

            He had to picture Aunt Petunia’s face if she ever heard him say that, given how many times she had told him not to ask questions during his childhood, and snickered.

            “Um, Auror Potter, we’re here now,” one of the younger Aurors said, cringing when Harry looked at him. Perhaps Harry hadn’t kept his Dark Lord thoughts off his face while they climbed as much as he thought. He gave the boy a gracious nod that looked as if it would set him up for life, from the shining expression of hero-worship on his face, and turned to face Azkaban.

            He had forgotten the impact of the place, although he had spent some time on guard duty here himself before Kingsley had decided they needed him exclusively on the harder cases. It was like being under the knees of a giant with a thundercloud on his head and a really bad case of gas, if gas smelled of salt and rotting fish.

            Harry grimaced as he crossed the final stretch to the prison, and tugged on the chain when Malfoy lagged behind. It made sense that he would lag behind, since Harry could hardly imagine that he would have happy memories of this place whether or not he had visited his father, but right now, anything that made sense would attract attention. The Aurors here had so little of it they probably reacted to its appearance by attacking whoever displayed it.

            “We have a secure cell for him,” said the boy who had bounced up to him, puppy-like. The other younger Auror was a woman, and she hovered on Harry’s left side as if hoping that would involve her getting some sort of gift. “You don’t need to worry about that, Auror Potter. We’re never letting him go, ever again.” The woman nodded firmly, her hands sticking out to the side as if she was going to fly.

            Harry sighed. He wanted to use the sapphire now, and command these blithering idiots to leave him alone, but he had no idea how many people he could affect at once, and it would probably be more critical to wait for the Aurors inside the gates. So he just smiled and nodded and murmured, and kept on walking up the path as it wound through the crooked boulders and past overhangs, the better to give the impression that the island was really a desert. Someone who’d designed this had had some sense.

            The gates were huge and barred, with more guards on alert than usual. Harry muffled his snort. Yes, be alert after an escape, when it did the most good.

            “Auror Harry Potter, leading Nathan Thunderwhistle,” Harry said, barely getting it out before the boy walking beside him tried to blurt it. The boy looked a little annoyed. Harry, his hand in the pocket on the sapphire, hoped that annoyance didn’t affect the way someone succumbed to the jewel. Right now, his boat escort seemed determined to accompany him inside.

            The guards’ eyes widened, and they scrambled for the sides of the gate, relaxing the wards on the prison at the same time. Harry studied the way the wards went down narrowly, and knew without looking over his shoulder that Malfoy would be studying them, too. They were in tune like that.

            And other ways, too, no matter what Malfoy wants to think.

            Whoever had taken Lucius would have to be clever, and fast, but yes, they could have managed it in the time the wards were down. For long seconds, as Harry paraded Malfoy in his chains through the gap in the gate, there were no wards anywhere on those vast stones. It would take intense coordination, but it might be possible.

            Which is something the Ministry should change. What’s the point of heightened alertness and leaving the wards the same after an escape?

            But Harry didn’t run the Ministry, and not even the thought of becoming a Dark Lord could make that tempting, so he just had to stand there and pretend he was as flattered by their examination of Malfoy and the chains and their exclamations over his prowess as they wanted him to be.

            Really, he thought as he led Malfoy further into the tunnels, lit only by torches, that bore straight down into the stone, why do they want someone to admire so badly? It’s different with me and Malfoy, because I found him by chance. I wasn’t just sitting around all the time sighing because I was lonely or because I wanted someone to worship. I looked, and I found him, and now I have someone.

            If they’re really that bored and can’t find someone they want to idolize, then they should go out and do admirable things themselves. It can’t be that difficult if I do them.

            So Harry thought, and the people around him murmured and exclaimed and waved their hands, and he had to stop at all the little guardrooms buried in Azkaban at each level so more people could join the group and exclaim and murmur and wave their hands. By the time they reached one of the deeper levels—the one where Lucius Malfoy had probably been held, and where Harry knew Sirius had been—they had quite a crowd following them.

            Harry sighed. He wished there had been a way of having Malfoy examine the sapphire before they left and tell Harry how many people he thought it could conquer. But then, as Malfoy kept reminding him, his expertise was in Potions and not in all Dark Arts of any kind, so he might not have been able to tell.

            Time for a change in plans, then.

            Harry found himself smiling. Malfoy would probably want to kill him, but this was a surer plan, and it wouldn’t involve breaking the law—not exactly. If someone figured out what was going on, they would be upset, but Harry knew he would be able to pass it off as a prank if he had to.

            Because I’m Harry Bloody Potter, that’s why.

            That didn’t seem like such a bad thing when he could play it off for someone else’s benefit, though. Like Malfoy’s.

            Abruptly he bent his head and sniffed, then straightened up, holding his hand out for silence. Nervous giggles sprang up from what sounded like the younger Aurors, but there were hisses to be quiet, too, and Harry knew that the older ones had probably heard about his “hunts” or witnessed them themselves.

            “Lucius Malfoy was held near here, wasn’t he?” Harry whispered, creeping along. He caught the glimpses of impressed expressions from the corner of his eye, and wanted to roll his own. It was a reasonable guess, and their reactions gave away the truth. Besides, he would have been able to tell if someone had lied.

            “And this was his cell.” Not hard to tell, when someone had put Lucius’s name outside it. Harry conjured Lumos on his wand and leaned in, staring hard.

            There was nothing to be seen on a quick first glance. The Aurors would have searched for weapons, of course, or letters, or anything else that would indicate Lucius’s intent. But whoever had sent a letter—if they had—threatening him or promising to free him would have been intelligent enough to remove it, too. Harry was looking at scraped-bare stone, rumpled blankets, and crumbs of food here and there.

            Malfoy made a small sound behind him. Someone else made a rough joke about whether Thunderwhistle would be able to expect such good conditions. Harry didn’t pay any attention, stepping slowly inside the cell, tugging Malfoy along behind him with the chain. He was breathing deeply, his mind whirling.

            He despised the fetish the other Aurors made of it, but he was good at hunting things down, finding them and following trails that wouldn’t even seem to be trails to most of the others around him, and he could feel something here now. The mood could be broken by the wrong word in the wrong place, by a gesture from behind him.

            But it wasn’t. The other Aurors remained rapt, watching him work, and Malfoy was silent.

            Harry scraped his hand to the side, against a stone that looked oddly worked. Of course, there were always stories about Azkaban’s prisoners trying to dig through the walls to the sea, but Lucius Malfoy would have been less desperate, Harry thought.

            The stone turned slightly to the side. It offered no exit, but there was a tiny alcove in the wall, and in it lay a folded parchment. Harry picked it up and held it in the air.

            The Aurors roared, but Harry was watching the way that Malfoy shut his eyes and then opened them, briefly, shivering.

            “And now,” Harry whispered, tucking the letter away. “I don’t—” He narrowed his eyes and pretended to look hard at Malfoy, who opened his eyes to stare back. Harry could almost feel him flinching, thinking, He could betray me now if he liked.

            Instead, Harry twitched the wand and removed the glamours that made Malfoy look like Thunderwhistle, Vanishing the black wig at the same time. As the Aurors stared, Harry stalked up to Malfoy, looked in his face, and then spun around, shaking his head and rattling his chain.

            “Thunderwhistle tricked us!” he cried, and in the ensuing tumult about that and the way Harry appealed to other Aurors to help him unlock Malfoy from his chains and give him any news they had of Thunderwhistle, no one thought to ask why such a good Auror as Harry would have hauled a glamoured innocent onto Azkaban’s island in the first place.

*

            unneeded: Mostly because Harry decided it was less trouble to obey them than not, honestly.

            js: Thank you! This dynamic is different for me, too, and fun.

            Seiren: Thanks for reviewing!

            Night Owl: Well, I think this latest twist was a pretty big one.
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