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Bard of Morning's Hope	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9573 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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Chapter Twelve—Intimate Secrets
            “It’s a good idea.” Kingsley’s face was thoughtful in the flames. “But I don’t know how we’re to investigate it. There are no experts in the Auror Department on the half-real.” He raised an eyebrow at Harry.
            Harry grinned back at him. He knew this was a challenge in some ways, and given how much trouble he’d given Kingsley over arresting Dennis—only to have him turn out not to be a good lead after all—he should have anticipated it. “But you have experts on wards and the way that wards react to external threats.”
            Kingsley blinked. “Even though wards haven’t stopped the Bard so far?”
            “We haven’t seen any sign that they react to him so far,” Harry corrected him. “This is the first incident where we have some proof that they do. And the Bard is probably going to try again, soon. If we have some ward experts on the subject, then maybe we have a chance of keeping him out.”
            Kingsley nodded slowly. “There are a few…Lowell would probably be glad to have a chance to do something involving active duty right now.”
            Harry grimaced a little. Allison Lowell was among the most unpleasant Aurors he had ever met. The hard thing was that she was also devoted to her job, and would throw herself unhesitatingly in front of a curse to save someone she was bodyguarding, or dive down a black hole after a Dark wizard. She would just scratch you with words when you tried to praise her or help her.
            But he knew she had been injured in a case a few weeks ago, confined to desk duty, and it would be a kindness to her and the people in her office both to give her some work that actually benefited a case.
            And a kindness to the Malfoys, too, as long as she could ignore their past Dark record to apply herself to the ward problem.
            “Yes, all right,” Harry said, and Kingsley smiled at him. “Has Hermione come up with anything about that handkerchief she was studying?”
            Kingsley shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard.”
            Thinking about it, Harry had to admit that Hermione probably would have contacted him herself if she had. He resigned himself to waiting with a nod, then reached out to shut the Floo connection. But Kingsley spoke before he could.
            “There is one thing I wonder if we have to worry about, Harry, and that’s your objectivity.”
            Harry stared at Kingsley, and then snorted a little. “Of course I’m not objective. I know that. I want to stop this bastard, and that means I’m involved in the case. But I would make a pretty poor bodyguard for the Malfoys if I weren’t.”
            Kingsley gave him a little, tight-lipped, unhappy smile. “I think one thing you should consider, Harry, is whether you’re the right one to do things like question Dennis. Someone less involved, someone who can see both the costs of catching the Bard and the costs of not catching him, might be better.”
            Harry smoothed out the disgust from his features, and said pleasantly, “Dennis said I was the only one he would talk to. Who else should I have handed the duty to?”
            Kingsley hesitated, then nodded. “But I am concerned the Bard might switch to making a target of you, Harry. I know that’s not the way he usually works, but you’ve thwarted him multiple times now.”
            Harry sighed. He was sick of these endless, useless discussions with Kingsley, where it seemed like Kingsley was trying to make him into a political player aware of all the ways that a case could go wrong or someone could escape custody. Harry would have appreciated the warnings if he was working a case where a powerful pure-blood was about to use his money to bribe the Wizengamot, and Harry hadn’t been aware of that because he didn’t keep up with gossip and politics.
            But in a case like this, where Harry was already trying his hardest simply to solve it, it felt like interference. He held Kingsley’s eyes and murmured, “Dennis told me that the Bard feels a great admiration for me. I can’t help but wonder if that’s the reason he broke off his attack on Narcissa Malfoy, because it happened in my house or he realized I was coming. I’m probably safer than any other Auror you could assign to the case right now.”
            “Will Lowell be safe, then?”
            Harry frowned. Kingsley was backing away from the discussion again, which on the one hand was a good thing, because it meant Harry could do as he needed to capture the Bard without interference, but on the other hand, it meant they hadn’t had it, and Kingsley might think he could just interfere when he wanted to once more.
            “Yes,” said Harry. “He really hasn’t varied his pattern so far, or shown any signs of attacking Aurors. Unless Lowell was at the Battle of Hogwarts and fought on Voldemort’s side secretly, then she doesn’t need to worry.”
            “She wasn’t there.” Kingsley stretched out one hand. “Harry, I’m worried. I think that you’re falling too far into this and taking unnecessary risks.”
            “Because I arrested Dennis?” Harry stared at him incredulously, and then had to laugh. “That’s a little too far even for you, sir.”
            “Because you went alone to talk to him first.” Kingsley’s face was drawn. “I don’t think you’re fully considering the consequences of your actions, and I know you haven’t had much sleep lately because you always starve yourself of sleep when it comes to a bodyguard case—”
            “I’ll do what I think necessary, yes,” Harry cut in sharply. He was tired of the look in Kingsley’s eyes, tired of being told what to do, tired of almost everything except what would help him catch the Bard. “Will you be sending Lowell over this afternoon, sir?”
            Kingsley spent one more moment studying him, and then bowed his head and nodded. “I hope you can accept that what I’m doing, I do out of concern for you, Harry,” he whispered.
            “I don’t appreciate the concern when you seem to think that my life is of more consequence than the lives of the people I’m guarding, that’s all,” Harry told him sharply, and then pulled back and out of the Floo call without waiting for an answer. His head was pounding and his throat was dry.
            When he was free, he stood up and leaned his head against the fireplace mantel. Honestly, this had been coming for a long time. He feared that there was a time when he would either have to leave the Aurors, or he would have to start investigating whether Kingsley had done things like cover up criminal activity by certain people because it wouldn’t be “politically savvy” to arrest them.
            He didn’t want either to happen. He didn’t want either to be true.
            “Trying conversation?”
            That was Malfoy, behind him. Harry sighed and turned around, nodding. Malfoy took a step towards him at once, eyes up and bright and fastened on his as they had been since Harry let him into his mind to do Legilimency.
            Malfoy seems to attach a lot of importance to that, Harry thought, and decided it was because Malfoy had never expected to have Harry grant him that much of himself. For better or worse, since they were children, Malfoy had wanted his attention, and now he did have it.
            “There’ll be an expert on wards coming over,” he told Malfoy, to distract himself from the thoughts of Malfoy’s gentleness, and how it had made him think differently about Legilimency. “Probably this afternoon. She’s hard to work with, but if anyone can tell us about half-real things trying to come through wards, it’s her.”
            “Hard to work with because she agrees with the Bard?” Malfoy had folded his arms and was now lounging back against the side of the doorway. Harry sighed a little. Of course it was much better to keep things between a victim and an Auror as professional as possible, and he had been a fool, probably, to let Malfoy into his head to use Legilimency in the first place.
            But he had to admit, he missed it a little when Malfoy pulled back like that. He shook his head, though. “Not in that way. She’s simply prickly and snappish, and she hasn’t been working cases lately because of an injury on the job. She’ll have her own ideas, and she’ll want everyone to defer to them.”
            A ghost of a smile crossed Malfoy’s face. “I’ve had some practice at that.”
            Harry blinked at him a moment, and then remembered Voldemort. And Lucius Malfoy, although he would never say it, especially not now. He nodded. “Reckon you have,” he said, and started to brush past Malfoy and into the kitchen, where they would eat together. Harry preferred neither Narcissa nor Malfoy to leave his sight, not now.
            Malfoy caught his arm, between the shoulder and the elbow. Harry stared down at his fingers, mesmerized. They cradled his arm, he thought, the way Malfoy had held his face when he bent over and used the Legilimency on Harry.
            Great Merlin, I’ve got to stop thinking about that.
            “I want you to know,” Malfoy said softly, staring at Harry’s arm—in the spot where a Dark Mark would be if he’d ever borne one, which was creepy—“that I do appreciate what you’ve done for my mother and me. Even if I don’t show it. Even if I am a smug and self-righteous git, sometimes.”
            Harry swallowed back several things he could have said. All of them would have been wrong, would have reciprocated Malfoy’s actual reaching-out with a slap back.
            Even if things were supposed to stay utterly professional between victim and Auror, Harry already knew it had gone too far in the other direction. Probably his own past history with the Malfoys would have assured that.
            “Thanks,” Harry said. “It’s nice to know that someone likes it when I try to do my job.”
            It was a way out, and Malfoy took it. He slid his hand off Harry’s arm and fell into step with him as they went towards the kitchen, his eyebrow rising. “Someone dares to tell the Great Harry Potter how to do his job?”
            Harry flicked a mild Stinging Hex at him, which Malfoy easily dodged. “It’s more that Kingsley’s worried about me arresting the wrong person, or getting hurt, or all sorts of things which I think come down more to public perception of the Aurors than whether we can manage to capture the Bard. Hell, at this point he might be more worried about the fuss the papers are making than the actual victims.”
            Malfoy’s head tilted, and Harry expected him to ask whether Kingsley supported the Bard. But instead, he asked, “Do you think you can do that?”
            “What?” Harry kept himself from folding his arms, but he didn’t understand what Malfoy meant, and he hated not understanding. “What are you talking about?”
            “Can you capture him?” Malfoy’s face was as smooth and featureless as a set of porcelain teacups that Aunt Petunia used to keep for Marge. “Or will you try to kill him, instead?”
            Harry stared at him for a second. He wondered where the boy who had tried to kill Dumbledore on top of the Astronomy Tower, and hadn’t even been able to raise his wand, had gone. Then he shook his head roughly and grabbed Malfoy’s arm for a second, pulling him close enough that he could whisper into his ear.
            “This is the sort of thing that I would normally only tell people who were trying to recover from almost being murdered themselves,” he whispered. “But yes, I will kill him if he’s going after you and your mother, and there’s no other choice.”
            He drew back. Malfoy kept hold of his arm as he did, twisting with him, so that he was out and reared up in front of Harry, eyes locked on his.
            “I want to remind you that I am in that position of recovery,” he said. “The attack in the back of Madam Royal’s shop qualifies, if nothing else.”
            Harry shook his head and shut his eyes, but not in denial. He should remembered that. He nodded. “Okay,” he said. “Forgive me. I just—it’s hard to adapt to—”
            He cut off his babbling, furious with himself. He would just have to adapt to what was going on around him in a better way than this. He stepped back and gave a little bow to Malfoy. Malfoy’s eyebrows rose as he considered Harry.
            “I’m sorry,” Harry said. “Of course you fit that profile, and you deserve to be protected as well as anyone else.”
            Malfoy’s face was pale and constricted for a second, but he nodded and put out a hand. Harry gingerly accepted it so he could shake it. Then he turned and led the way into the kitchen, where Narcissa was waiting for them with a curious expression. She didn’t say anything, but Harry could see the way that her eyes went back and forth between him and Malfoy, trying hard to understand.
            Harry took a seat in the middle of the table and reached determinedly for the breakfast that Molly had sent over, keeping one shoulder turned to Malfoy. He was furious with himself for forgetting, for reacting like a berk to a question that should have been obvious—
            And for the promise he had made. He was an Auror. He brought people to justice. He didn’t murder them.
            But he also knew that he had struck to kill without hesitation, even if he hadn’t always killed everyone he was aiming at. And those had been times when he had judged that he couldn’t capture the criminal alive, or times when he had known they wouldn’t stay captured, that he didn’t have adequate spells to catch them or a prison to hold them.
            He was prepared to do it again, with the Bard, even if it would leave unanswered questions behind him.
            Worse, he didn’t know if he would have done it for just anyone, or if the Malfoys were special like that.
            Malfoy got his attention by leaning forwards to hand him a plate of scones. Harry, because he had to if he was going to live with himself, looked away.
*
            Allison Lowell was a loud, noisy, unpleasant person who stood there with her mouth pursed in when she didn’t get her way. Then she would sniff and launch some other demand or question or answer at them. And while she knew a lot about wards, she looked at all the wards on the Black house as though they were beneath her and she wouldn’t use them to guard a chicken coop.
            She and Draco got along famously.
            The first time she tried to blame him for the shoddy state of the wards, Draco had spread his hands and said, “It wasn’t me, it was Auror Potter here. My cousin, Sirius Black, left him the house, and he hasn’t maintained the wards.”
            Lowell turned on Potter after that, and Draco was free to lean back and admire the way she could talk in terms he’d never heard before about wards he’d never heard of before.
            And he could admire, too, the way Potter handled it. Despite one intense look of irritation at Draco when he turned Lowell loose on him, Potter had gone on to answer her questions without getting impatient. He had showed her the silver fire that was guaranteed for the protection of Slytherins. Even Lowell paused then, and sounded a little more respectful when she next spoke.
            Draco liked that, too. He liked seeing someone else respect Potter, if only because he was their bodyguard and of course a Malfoy should have the best bodyguard available.
            Lowell talked mostly theory at first, but when she learned of their idea that the Bard was a sentient curse, she had nodded and started talking about wards that were meant to reflect particular kinds of spells. Building those in, weaving them around the ordinary wards, was their best bet.
            Draco followed her curiously as she went into the dining room where Narcissa had seen the image start to come through. He wondered if she would manage to locate the traces of the Bard there. She had already been all over the house, even in the bedroom where the aborted attack had happened on Narcissa, and complained that there was no evidence.
            But when they stepped into the dining room, Lowell lifted her head and began to move in a clipped way, with short strides, staring around and then sniffing as if she could catch a trace of some scent that would alert her to the Bard’s nature after all. She walked over to the corner where Narcissa had seen the image without being told, and stood staring up at it. Then she cast a spell Draco didn’t know, one that made the wards flash.
            A sharp tingle sped through Draco’s nerves, and he licked his lips. There was a cool, minty taste in his mouth.
            “Yes,” said Lowell. “The Bard was using cold magic. What appeared between the wards was the beginning of an ice spell.”
            “Like the one that he killed my father with,” Draco whispered. It made sense to him.
            When he turned to Potter, though, he was frowning. Draco opened his mouth to ask a question, but Potter spoke before he could. “The Bard’s never used the same kind of magic to kill twice in a row. It seems strange that he would use cold magic when he’d already used it to kill Lucius Malfoy.”
            Draco shrugged, but Lowell was the one who tore into Potter. “If you doubt my conclusions, perhaps you can spend the ten years studying wards necessary to being here and pursuing this case…”
            Potter listened without moving, and then caught Draco’s eye and shrugged. Draco smiled back, a little. He might not know why the Bard had used the same magic twice in a row, but he trusted Lowell’s conclusions.
            And that meant they had a clue, however small.
*
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Bard of Morning's Hope