Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Harco Empire	By : Toddy Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 34417 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or films. I do not make any money from the writing of this story, just enjoyment.

Chapter List
- 123
- 124
- 125
[Note: conversation =: “speech” & ‘thoughts’ & *telepathy* & #Parseltongue# & {telephone}]
~~~ DINERS ~~~
Almost as soon as the sun had risen on All Saints Day, Astoria, Hermione, Alexandrou and Probert arrived to harmonise the wards. The next people were Dorothy and some of the housekeeping corps to agree a thorough inventory with Sporcara. The result was that the Palazzo was full of hustle and bustle; not suited to two tired mages.
Sporcaro looked at his two worn-out masters, adopted a gondolier guise and offered a quiet tour of Venice. Luncheon basket on board they set off for the Lido, taking in, but not visiting, some of the sights on the way. After lunch the two mages spent a lazy time sunbathing, before swimming on the low incoming tide.
On arrival back at Palazzo Pevrello they were met by Narcissa: “My Darlings, how marvellous, I’ve always dreamed of owning a palazzo in Venice and now you have obtained one. It’s quite something to own a residence fronting the Grand Canal; Helena Rosier will be quite put out. She only has a place on the Lido.” Narcissa winked conspiratorially at Harry.
“So you like our little lodging, do you Mother?” Draco rose to his mother’s gentle humour and managed to make the remark to sound disparaging.
“Its historical setting and the antique furniture definitely outdo the Manor anytime, Draco. Just look at these tapestries, I shall enjoy entertaining here, very much.”
“Please be careful Auntie, we are not publicising the use of the portals yet. Most people know of the ones between the Annex, Hogwarts and Ireland, but we have kept the rest fairly private to just the Dumbledorians, family and a few trusted friends.”
“Don’t worry too much Harry. I can be quite discreet; however, you might think how to disguise the fact by pretending that these splendid rooms are within your London House. Most mages are used to having magical rooms within their houses. Remember that, during Carnival, Venice bursts at the seams with people, our invitees could apparate or even come by train.”
“Yes Masters, we’d love to decorate the gondola, our elfin family has felt so left out for eons, now.” Sporcara looked eager.
*To use this place for entertaining is a very good idea, My Sons*. Fawkes was inspecting the new domicile.
Harry ignored the interruptions: “Fine … Do you mean that magical houses have extra rooms like the insides of magical tents?”
“That’s a reasonable comparison, yes. However, I will be careful, it would be terrible if my ex-husband got the use of the portals, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes Auntie, that’s why the wards team is making the tholus compatible, we’re still a bit weary from making the portals and being at the fire ceremony, despite knowing how to gather the requisite earth thaums.”
“That’s well beyond my magical capability My Darlings. Not that I’m envious in the least. Despite of Draco belittling your mental gifts, Harry; you have a better grasp of such things than ever I had.”
“I’m not belittling Harry’s brain-power, Mother.” Draco side-hugged Harry comfortingly: “He has a much better grasp of practicalities than I do. When we operated Hermione’s thaumometer, he was the one that got it working, not me.”
“Yes Lover,” Harry touched foreheads with Draco: “But you had to sort out what the Hermione-written instructions actually meant.”
“That’s what I mean; our talents are complimentary, my potions and runes are better than yours and in the same way your defence and transfiguration are better than mine. That’s what makes us such an outstanding team, isn’t it?”
“That’s very refreshing, Draco; to hear a Malfoy admitting that someone is better than he. Lucius would have a fit if he knew.”
“That’s why we have to outwit his present gambit, Mother.”
“The Venetian and Florentine Sentores are going to requisition the plate dinner service, Auntie – something about doubtful provenance is their first line of defence, so I’m told. Freddy and Bertie will require Lucy to provide a bill of sale showing that he obtained the items legally.”
“They explained that it was a holding tactic, Mother, whilst they process all the various bits of paper that Francis is providing. Now we have the original will and inventory that has helped our case immensely. No doubt Father will be furious when he finds out. However, the Auctioneers have been asked not to inform him of the police enquiries yet. We had it explained to us as a normal procedure when items of doubtful provenance come on the market.”
“I’m not sure I could eat off a silver plate, Draco; I’d be scared to scratch it with my knife, or eat bits I’d unintentionally scraped off.”
“Silver knives are the answer, Harry – equal density. However, I agree. In a way they are historical items, maybe we should offer them to the Gringotts’ Museum.”
“It’s an idea, but let’s wait until we have the items back. C’mon I fancy another ride in our gondola. Would you like to join us, Auntie? It’s very swish and has a light cotton felze. Not the traditional black box but more like a frilly edged canopy; it gives us wide views and stops the glaring sun.”
“Thank you for the offer Harry, but no … I’ll be quite happy just mooching around our palace and dreaming of the receptions I might hold someday in the future. You two go and enjoy yourselves; I suspect you want to be quiet together. Hermione has explained how debilitating portal making can be. Why on earth did you attend the fire ceremony also?”
“Because we could actually celebrate the equinox twice, Auntie.”
“So that means that if you had a portal further west, say at the Dragon Sanctuary, then you could have three ceremonies,” Narcissa remarked sarcastically.
Draco smirked: “We rather like the idea of seeing in the New Year in at Moscow too!”
Harry’s mouth fell open and he looked at the two Malfoys worriedly.
Narcissa saw him and relented: “It’s all right Dear, we were only teasing you.”
~~~ DISCOVERY ~~~
The next day was Saturday; nothing was going to happen with the police and paperwork until Monday at least; so the Blakes decided to go sightseeing. Saint Marks was the first on the list and Alfredo said he had organised someone to act as a guide. Somehow Alfredo had impressed the church authorities that the two Blakes were VIP’s. The result was that one of the senior priests hove too.
“Buon giorno gentlemen, I am Father Giuseppe; you are very welcome to our church of San Marco. I am pleased to show you around.” His hands tingled when they shook; not that he, or they, made any sign of recognition.
They introduced themselves and had a potted history of St Mark’s; including the nefarious stealing of Saint Mark’s relics from Alexandria hidden under a layer of pork. There were references to certain Doges and to the sacking of Constantinople in the 1200’s plus the tale of the collapse of the campanile in the 1900’s and its rebuilding. The Blakes marvelled at the gold tessellated arches and ceilings showing pictures in the saint’s life and at the marble floors. Harry was particularly taken by a marble tesserae roundel in the floor which he thought looked like a Catherine wheel and another that seemed to have interlaced tapes – slightly Celtic he thought. Draco marvelled at the peacocks depicted on the floor in tesserae and the cunningly cut marble walls creating reverse patterns. They were both overwhelmed by some of the pieces on display in the treasury and equally overcome when allowed a private inspection of the Pala d’oro.
For an hour during their tour, one of the organists was practicing and Giuseppe told them of the great composers who had worked in the basilica, including Gabrielli and Monteverdi. Upstairs there was a small museum in which the original quadriga of classical horses resided. Finally, they went outside and climbed the stairs inside the campanile which, their guide explained somewhat breathlessly, used to be used as a lighthouse. As they were looking out over the revealed city’s roofs, he revealed that Galileo had used his telescope to study the heavens from there.
On descending the Blakes were invited to take a little refreshment. It was coffee and some delicate pastries, served by Giuseppe’s housekeeper in his lodgings.
After the ritual of entry, the priest said: “Ah … Mages Potter and Malfoy… Welcome to my apartment. I did not want to make any more fuss in public; it is not appropriate to do so. I understand from Alfredo that you are reasonably famous in your world. You wouldn’t be the same gentleman that my friend John writes to me about, would you?”
“Is he an Anglican priest?” asked Harry.
“Yes … He’s in charge of a church dedicated to a rather obscure northern English saint … Mmm … Cedric or something like that.”
“Could it be Godric, Father?”
“Yes, Mr Malfoy, that’s the one. We met when we were both seconded for special training – there are so few of us that the modern churches co-operate. We both have a penchant for early classical church music.”
“I gathered you had from the way your eyes lit up when talking about Monteverdi.”
“Yes … much of his antiphonal music was written for San Marco’s. Some of our choristers play wind instruments and that also sounds superb inside the church. There are old musical manuscripts on display in the Doge’s Palace should you like to see them. You know, we keep on saying we’ll visit, but somehow …” The ecclesiast looked thoughtfully into his coffee cup.
D: *John can use the portals, Harry*.
H: *Yes, but not immediately*.
F, impatiently: *Do get on with it. They must get to know each other properly again.*
H: *It takes less than a day to get here by train, you know*. Harry was looking to see what disguise the phoenix was using, but never managed to spot him.
D: *Hmm …* “I will remind John when we get home, Father.”
“As friends of John’s you should call me Beppe, he does.”
“Therefore you should call us Draco and Harry.”
The conversation drifted off into other subjects, some about their world and the Smiling Ones, some about the treasures they had seen, and some reminiscences about the two priests’ antics when on the seminary course together. Sneaking off to concerts when they should have been studying rang equivalent bells with the two mages. In the end the housekeeper offered them lunch and, as a reciprocal gesture Giuseppe accepted an invitation to dinner at the Palazzo.
~~~ ANOTHER FIND ~~~
The Blakes returned in a very mellow mood, only to find Grammarian, Hermione and Astoria in an excited humour.
“Harry, Harry, guess what we’ve found?”
Harry giggled: “Not another wonderful ward, Hermione?”
“No … It’s a treatise on portal making … It was in the library here.”
“It has thrown some light on what you two were doing,” continued Astoria, “It’s akin to the structure you’ve been making. In the book it looks like a tree, with main branches leaving the trunk and then dividing twice. We think these places are what we call nodes.”
“Thus your tree would have its roots at Hogwarts growing its trunk through Chantry Cottage and Grimmauld Place to the Chateau and onwards to the Chalet. A lower branch would extend to Ireland and a larger one from London to the Scillies via the Burrow. It seems, at the moment to be rather side heavy with the bough leading to La Maison, but some balance is brought by the branches on this side to Vienna and here,” explained Grammarian: “There seem to be variations in which people are allowed to use them. They range from very open to extremely cloistered.”
“Fine; so that fits our idea of our portals being private; as well as the public ones. Do we still use portal as the name for the doors?”
Grammarian felt puzzled by the first half of Harry’s reply so he answered the last part: “Yes Harry. I imagine our idea about triple connections at the nodes was based on the minimum Arithmantic number.”
“So we can’t go above three?”
“From each node, correct” agreed Grammarian: “You no doubt remember the portal changing to WWW for the Manor when you added the chateau. However, because there are multiple nodes at Godric’s Hollow that might just mean a total of nine. We also think that the pressure idea wasn’t quite correct either. That big first rumble was you making the potential for the tree to grow. In the same way when you made the separate portal from school to the annex, that was the start of another tree and you were therefore worn out. As you said, it was easier next time you made a portal from the cottage. Another innovation is that; as long as one portal backs on to a chimney the other two can be adjacent and at right-angles to it. Thus you have a small space with three portals and a door to the building served. It must be said, however, that two linked minds are still essential for the fabrication of new portals. If our theory holds true it will be less tiring as well. What you have made already needs adapting slightly.”
“I now have a charm that will make our system private to people who are medal holders,” said Hermione: “They will have to have them next to their skin in order to see the portal and use it. Whereas the open portals are tuned to anyone with the thaumic gene. They seem to have a different name. We’re going to research that idea further.”
H: *We’re on leave, all next week, shall we have a try*?
D: *At least we’ll have time to recover*.
H: *We have to wait for the police to sort things out*.
D: *They’re called Sentores, Harry*.
H: *Whatever*!
“Is there anything inherently wrong with the present system?”
“Not really except that the nodes can only have one branch away from the main trunk,” Astoria supplied: “And we don’t quite understand the way cabinets turn into portals, yet.”
“We were a bit sneaky, Harry …”
“My, my; Miss Prim-and-Proper being sneaky.”
“You’re letting the Malfoy show, Draco,” Harry warned.
“Sorry Hermione, do go on; tell us why you were sneaking.”
“We tested the thaumometer at all the nodes and the cottage one has the most potential. Hence the theory of multiple nodes. It’s also because a large number of ley lines cross at St Godric’s church”
“That’s not sneaky!”
“It was, because it was the first experiment and we didn’t know how it worked, so we might have blown us all up. There was no-one else there and we knew we had a back-up via the annex, just in case anything went wrong.” Hermione looked shamefaced.
Not so Grammarian; he grinned in satisfaction: “The book vindicated us. What had been an experimental contraption is described exactly in the manual. So now we are much further forward in our knowledge. It has helped to decipher some of the special Egyptian hieroglyphs that we inspected a month or so ago. They were the basis upon which our thaumometer information was created.”
“There is a way that you can restrict certain doors to certain people. According to the book, if anyone doesn’t have permission to use the door they cannot see it.”
“Can that be applied to the present tree system?”
“Yes, Draco.”
“How do we give permission?”
“Handing them through, like you did to John and the rest of us at Chantry Cottage first time.”
“So we’ll have to hand everyone through each one – that’s a wearying thought?”
“No! All those who have used a portal are deemed to have permission for that portal,” explained Astoria: “Thus the students who have only used the one between the cottage and the school should only be able to remember those two; however, without medallions on, they won’t have access. With the new privacy charm working, you’ll have to hand the Dumbledorians through any new portals when you make them.”
“That means we could restrict certain portals just to the members and family.”
“Yes.”
“Any other restrictions?”
“There’s a hex that stops up a door or doors to someone you previously trusted,” Grammarian informed them: “There seems to be a temporary permission, but that needs further research. We also have a portal moving charm available for you to use so that limbs can be removed from one node and attached to another.”
“I’m also altering the medallion charm; they were my inventions. The addition would be something on the lines of, ‘if you forget to wear it, you’ll not see the portal, even if you know where it is’.”
“Mmm … That sounds useful. So-o-o you’d like us to enhance the privacy charm soonest, yes?”
*At long last you’ve decided*! Fawkes sounded exasperated. Draco thought that the bird had eaten something that didn’t agree with him, but wisely did not voice it.
“Please Draco, now?” asked Astoria: “Then we can test it out on the Dumbledorians tomorrow.”
“Will it take too long; we’re entertaining Beppe to dinner?”
“Not too long … Who’s Beppe?”
Draco and Harry explained before they split up.
Draco and Harry rehearsed the spell a few times and then took up position. Harry stayed at the Palazzo by the new door and Draco at the Hogwarts apartment – a deliberate reversal of their positions.
“Commutarmus octo Portae intra inter privatus,” they pronounced together. Draco made a shooing motion with his hands whilst Harry made a circular gathering one.
D: *Nothing’s happened*.
H: *It will only show up if someone tries to use the portals whilst not wearing their medallion. Of course! It might be an idea if we labelled the recently made doors, I keep forgetting where I am, and all the cupboards are beginning to look much the same*.
D: *Okay! I’ve forgotten the one for words. But I can remember a picture one*.
H: *That’ll be fun*.
D: *Would a conical roofed tower and a lake do for Hogwarts*.
H: *Sounds good, but I think a something to represent the green ladies would be better*.
Draco shrugged, closed the door and envisaged the picture; placing his hand on the door and casting the charm. He withdrew it and a pensive green cloaked lady appeared. Harry had been watching mentally what Draco did and volunteered to make the next one. Firstly, they agreed that The Cottage would have a red flower, and then Harry made a rock-pick label for Glaswelltdy.
Hermione came through and looked at the labels.
“We’ll get muddled if we stick house pictures on each one,” she observed.
“That’s why I’m choosing a big red flower for Chantry Cottage,” Harry informed her.
Thus in due course, Number Twelve got a Beefeater, the Burrow a twisted house, with a lobster for Laggen Lodge and shells for Shell Cottage. The Chateau had its namesake with an island for L’Isle Gétorac and a Surfboard for La Maison. Chalet Cadmus was given a water snake, the Schwartzberg a snowy mountain and the Grunrasenhof a tram. Not forgetting the tower in Malfoy Manor which was given a peacock. Their newest acquisition had, of course, a gondola.
As they sat in Chantry Cottage’s living room sipping tea, Narcissa came in looking worried: “Draco, I’m trying to go to the town house but the portal won’t open!”
“Mother … Have you forgotten to wear your medallion again?”
“Yes … Why does that matter?”
Hermione explained the privacy/medal charm and Narcissa went to don her charmed galleon.
There was another interruption:
“Hey Guys, what yer been doing? We like the labels.” Seamus stood there with Dean peering over his shoulder.
“New look portals, Mates, we have a new one to show you? You are wearing your scarabs aren’t you?”
“Course we are, never take ’em off, don’t yer know.
“Okay guys let’s go to the Schwartzberg.”
Once they were in the portal at the mountain retreat Draco held his hand out: “Right … Dean, come and hold my hand for a minute.”
Dean lifted his eyes comically, but took Draco’s hand. Draco gave him a no-nonsense look and took him through the portals into Palazzo Pevrello.
“Where have they gone?” asked Seamus in puzzlement prodding the wall.
The two mages reappeared.
“We need to see if you can show someone the way, Dean; or whether we have to introduce everyone.”
“Right Draco … C’mon Lover, hold my hand.” Dean held his hand out towards the Irish mage.
After they had been through the doors Seamus was able to see the new Portal also.
Meanwhile Ronald plus a couple of Dumbledorians had come in and another explanation took place.
Harry stood: “Okay Guys; just for the moment, please only introduce other Dumbledorians to all the portals. For anyone who isn’t we’ll do the intros, okay?”
“In that way, those students, who used them before we made the direct portal between the annex and school, will no longer be able to see those portals. That is if we ever allow them entry into our private living areas.” Draco explained: “We’ll sort out family, teachers, John and co, all right?”
He got nods of approval, Dean and Seamus, having time to spare, went to explore the Palazzo. Harry called Kreacher and explained to him the arrangements and said that he could choose which elves knew about which doors. There were various proposals as to where the other portals might lead to, but the Blakes put off making more until the portal/ward team had read the new book thoroughly and done some more research.
The next entrant was John; he opened the Hogwarts portal: “Hello Dear Boys, what have you been doing now?”
“Making the Portal’s as they should be, John. You will need to wear your scarab from now on when using them.”
H: *Shall we*?
D: *Why not*?
F: *Get on with it*!
“How many meals have you missed at home this week, John?”
“I know I’m naughty like that, but don’t make jokes about it, please.”
“Sorry! How well do you know a certain Father Beppe?”
“That’s someone else I feel guilty about. Am I in the confessional?” John looked slightly pained.
F: *Ask both of them*.
H: *Right*! “How would you and Isabel like to have dinner with us tonight. I can promise that it will salve your conscience.”
“We had nothing planned, just a quiet time together; we try at least once a week. You intrigue me?”
“May we surprise you as well, please?”
“I love surprises, as long as they don’t hurt too much.”
“This one won’t, I can guarantee that. No special dressing up, but bring a coat it might get a bit chilly.” *In the gondola*.
*Venice by moonlight, they’ll love it*.
“Righty-ho, what time?”
“Seven thirty at Chantry Cottage. Oh; and ask Isabel to wear this medallion, please.”
“So you’re taking us through the portals are you – I bet it’s to the Swiss Chalet.”
“It could be, but we’re not telling.” Draco forbore from correcting John’s guess. It was really a French chalet.
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